She sat down at her desk thinking she might have an email or two to answer. Behind her he rattled around on the keys, she noticed that his typing had gotten faster and more accurate. She rarely heard the long pauses between key clicks as he hunted and pecked his way across the board.

He’d spent a lot of time online on the football message boards lately. She was tired of getting bypassed for the keyboard.

“I think I’m going to have to shut this thing down.” He said glancing over his shoulder.

Since she had been hinting all night that she had “needs” that she was absolutely desperate to have met, her hopes soared thinking he meant to shut things down and go upstairs.

“Oh, really?” She asked flirtatiously.

“Yeah. I think this thing is dragging and needs a reboot.”

She turned around and swallowed the last of the scotch in her glass, picked up the empty coffee mug from this morning and chucked it at the back of his head.

She missed, of course. But the split second the coffee mug shattered across his desk he jumped so hard he flipped ass over tea kettle out of his chair and she was fairly certain he might have lost all control of his bodily functions.

“Good night, sweetheart.” She said as she stooped down to kiss his forehead and made her way up the stairs.

From the kitchen I hear Deirdre say, “I will KICK your ASS!” and I hear Julien respond, “You can’t even kick your own ass!” and then laugh and laugh and laugh.

Later Rowan is playing a ridiculous video game that involves cowboys, saloons and brothels.

“Julien! Is your sister playing that game that you promised me you wouldn’t let your sisters ever see?”

Julien, “Mother, I have no idea what you are talking about.” The mother thing comes out when he puts on his best Cary Grant or David Niven and attempts to lay on all the charm that a 1940′s movie can muster. (if you’ve read the Witching Hour you might now have some idea why I named Julien, Julien around here.)

“Remember, the summer before you started high school. You made me watch it and I told you I didn’t want your sisters seeing it! It’s that one where you get extra points for killing prostitutes!”

Julien paused long enough for both of us to realize he fully remember and said, “Now wait a minute! You get points for saving prostitutes, mom, not shooting them.”

“Aha, see that, Deirdre, he remembers! He knows exactly what I was talking about!”

Deirdre smiles and says, “I never played that game. I watched… but I didn’t play. I did notice he totally got points for saving a whore though.”

——————

Deirdre is sitting on the counter in the corner of the kitchen. Her feet dangle several inches above the floor and she’s casually munching a salad while telling her dad and I all about her day and the various social entanglements.

…”So then B. comes up to me and asks, Do I intimidate you? and I look down and he’s wearing pink bunny slippers!”

“What did you say?” I asked.

Deirdre, “I said, uh, no. Are you supposed to?”

I said, “Hmm. You should have told him that when your brother has a wild hair he wears his girlfriend’s clothes, tapes on a mustache, and impersonates Freddy Mercury while playing Seaside Rendezvous on the piano… AND after that? Pink bunny slippers don’t even stand out on a Saturday night around here.”

It’s been a long time since I received any awards or pay it forward type of cool things like this. I adore Tiffany of Snerkology and have for a very long time. There are a very small handful of people who have followed me through one crisis after another, one blog to another, and as if that weren’t enough have actually reached out to offer me an ear, a shoulder to cry on, and that all important phone number with the genuine instruction to “call any time day or night”. Tiffany, is one of those people.

If you read her post she talks about a dear friend who gave her these awards and how they have never met in person but forged a long-distance friendship across the internet. My closest friends are much the same although I’ve been extremely fortunate to have met two in person. I count Tiffany among those friends. She’s a really awesome person with a really wicked sense of humor and I suck because I don’t get over to her blog nearly enough.

I’m just going to quote Tiffany on the things that go along with the awards.

For the Happiness 101 Award, I am encouraged to list the ten things that make me the happiest. For the Sugar Doll Award, I am encouraged to list ten things that you all may or may not know about me. For both, I am requested to pass the awards on to five blogger friends, who then post the awards on their site with the required information and then they, too, pay it forward to five of their blog friends. And on. I confess I have no idea the origins of these particular awards, but the concept is what keeps us all connected.

Happiness 101 – Ten Things That Make Me Happiest

This is a really good one for me to do and I want you to know that I’ve struggled with the ten things because I wanted them to be really meaningful and I wanted to challenge myself to some soul searching focused on happiness. The way things have been rolling around here it’s been far too easy to focus on the bad stuff and I happen to believe that what you focus on grows, so God knows I need a shift of focus. You might not believe this but I had one helluva time working up this list. Seriously.

1. I am happiest when my family (specifically husband and children, including Scarlet) are in the same room for an evening getting along, cracking jokes and genuinely enjoying each other’s company.

2. I am happiest when I am being creative and it works out. There is no substitute for quality zing time.

3. Quality time alone with my husband. It recharges my battery and gives me the strength I need to keep moving in a positive direction.

4. All the bills being paid.

5. The right music at the right time. It can make my soul soar.

6. A hot bubble bath, glass of wine (or whiskey on the rocks), iPod, and being able to text and giggle with friends while I zone out.

7. When S.O. rolls over in the middle of the night and wraps his arms around me like he might not be able to keep sleeping unless I’m curled up next to him.

8. My son when he’s in a good mood and being his usual funny, witty self.

9. Cooking. I really enjoy getting lost in chopping, dicing, prepping and putting my own spin on things.

10. Meditating outside in the sunshine.

Sugar Doll Award – Ten Things You May Not Know About Me

1. I love Anne Rice and one of my favorite books is The Witching Hour. So much so that I named myself and my children (on this blog) after characters in that book. Unfortunately, the character I would have wanted to name S.O. after has the same name as S.O. and that’s what you call ironic.

2. The movie “50 First Dates” makes me cry every time. No matter how hard I laugh during, I’m always left with a glass half-empty / glass half-full clusterfuck feeling that never ends well.

3. I drink coffee almost every morning and at least once a week Deirdre finds a cup in the microwave that I warmed up and forgot about.

4. I cry every time I listen to “Better Than A Hallelujah” “I Need A Silent Night” and “Overnight” by Amy Grant. Actually, there are a few of her songs that choke me up… so I generally avoid listening to them unless I have the emotional stability to handle it. If Deirdre puts it on it’s usually when we are alone and she is kind enough to ignore it or I have my sunglasses on and hope she doesn’t notice my voice cracking as we both sing along.

5. I sing. I’m not professionally trained because my mother was a professionally trained singer who actually cut a couple of records back in the 80′s and let’s just say she would not have tolerated anything that might remotely feel like competition. My singing was kept to Christmas pageants at church and the occasional karaoke night after I had a couple of drinks. My vocals are saved for lullabies and my children unless it’s Christmas time and the whole family joins in. I don’t do microphones… ever.

6. Before my sister got all strange on me, we actually were researching building our own drive-in movie / restaurant. We used to have 2 drive-ins here in town but both have been shut down. Kind of sad, really. I grew up going to drive-in movies and sitting in the back of my dad’s truck.

7. I used to love to write. My mother wanted me to be a children’s author. She picked apart every story I ever wrote, none were ever “cute enough” to her satisfaction, now I can’t finish a story to save my life. Clearly, there is a psychological thing going on here and I’m not exactly interested in exploring it.

8. Any Willie Nelson song reminds me of my grandpa. He used to call Willie “Ol’ pigtail” and every time we got in the car to go somewhere grandpa always started singing, “On the road again…”

9. I never really liked my grandfather’s second wife. I’m not even sure if she’s still alive.

10. I hated beer until I was pregnant with Rowan and actually began craving beer. No, I did not drink while pregnant but I boy did I smell a lot of beer while I was pregnant. Now I’m a hopeless convert.

Okay, so I’m supposed to pick 5 people to bestow this upon…

Dayle @ Sin City Mom
Chickie @ Skittering Thoughts
Marissa @ Marissa Turner
Trish @ Not Your Typical Granny
S @ Simply Sneaky

You might notice if you have read much around here for very long, that I’m a bit Joe Friday, “Just the facts, ma’am.” That’s not exactly true 100% of the time, but what really is?

Sometimes I prefer facts and running down situations and the order of events to vomiting up all the uncomfortable emotional feelings that I experience during these events. Over my life I’ve had to be tough in many situations. I’ve learned to be hard the hard way. I prefer voicing anger to voicing hurt, it’s easier and it involves fewer tears and certainly far less vulnerability.

You know how they say that a cat who lets you pet its’ stomach is a cat that trusts you? I don’t expose my stomach, let alone allow someone to touch it. I also have always identified far more with cats than with dogs.

So, it’s easy to claim to be venting and purging while I run down histories and current events. The truth is that sometimes the emotions don’t get purged. They hang around long after I’ve hit the publish button and set forth another stream of expletive laced electrons.

I accepted Princess Twatface as a friend on FB.

I don’t know what that means. It probably means more to me than it does to you and what you might not understand about that is that I don’t have very many family members or people who live in the same town as I do on my FB. I prefer it that way. The truth is my online activities have always been my own. My own little world and I decided who I wanted to allow in. I know that sounds ridiculous given the very essence of the internet but it’s my illusion of comfort and I plan on maintaining it.

And, yes, God knows I keep lists of who can see what and when… but I don’t trust that either, so I try to be careful.

The new revelations have made S.O. and PT comrades in arms so-to-speak. For him, it’s a “work friend” for me it’s an entanglement I never wanted. He can keep a distance… meanwhile she can go home (and I know this isn’t the case it’s just a stupid example!) and listen to ridiculous stories about me growing up, my grandparents, and the small portion of my life that I hold very near, dear and borderline sacred.

My cousins (PT’s husband and sister-in-law) were two of my favorite people on the planet next to my grandmother. Those family vacations in the mountains with my parents (still together), grandparents and cousins (the afore mentioned two) are some of my most treasured memories. The kind of memories where you can still smell the breeze blowing over the lake, feel the sand between your toes on the shoreline, and the taste of peanut butter spread on graham crackers. Dreams of my grandmother have always involved that lake and the forest around it.

When my grandmother died the only people I wanted around me were those two cousins. I doubt they felt the same about me. They were 12 and 13 while I was 8. Sometimes that age gap felt like an eternity to me. The term hero worship probably doesn’t do it justice. I remember late nights following our grandmother’s death telling stories about my grandmother and each of us taking turns laughing until some reminder jabbed us and one by one we’d lean on each others shoulders sobbing until someone said something funny enough to break through the grief and the next story would begin. We were simply too young to completely bear the enormity of the loss thrust upon us.

Even 6 years later, living at my grandparents house my cousin would come by and eventually he’d break down and cry. I lived there in the middle of my grandmother’s world, he was a visitor with no grandmother to visit. I remember seeing him cry and feeling like my heart was breaking for him.

My older cousin (the girl) taught me to draw, read The Chronicles of Narnia to me and gave me a treasure trove of phenomenal books and stories that I have shared with my own girls. Her brother (the one married to PT) taught me to skip rocks across the lake, climb rocks, and get into trouble. No one ever made me laugh as hard as those two did when they would recount various exploits, adventures, and troubles they had gotten into.

Once my parents divorced things where never the same. My mother was promptly ostracized by her family for divorcing – even though both of my uncles were on marriage #2. My mother is no saint… but they aren’t either. Those men are guilty of some pretty horrific atrocities. The worst sort, actually. From beating wives and children, to rape, and worse.

When I was pregnant with Julien, my mother in one of her freak out moments called my cousin and told him that I was being held against my will by my father. He hopped on a motorcycle and drove three hours at night, in the winter, through an icy mountain pass to get to me and make sure I was okay. He didn’t attend my wedding to S.O. although he was invited. His sister did and her husband (at the time) was my wedding photographer.

The contradictions here are bizarre and they seem even more strange as I look back at them. Drive three hours to check on me… don’t show up at my wedding.

My other cousin is now buddied up with my mother. She used to try to engage Deirdre in conversations, take her out for coffee – and I trusted her. I trusted our past, our relationship, and my belief in her being an honest upfront person. She was basically spying for my mother and when she couldn’t get Deirdre to sway to the dark side – she dropped her like a hot potato. I haven’t heard from or spoken to her in over a year.

Turns out she no longer speaks to her brother. And the two of them? At just a year or so apart in age had always been closer than close, the very best of friends. They protected each other from an abusive father and cold, nasty stepmother, they provided a shoulder for each other to cry on… and now? The two don’t speak because one of them has a relationship with my mother and the other knows my mother for what she really is.

Now I’m sitting here on the fringe wanting nothing to do with anyone from that side of the family… and my husband works with PT. We run into them at the local home improvement store, she was kind enough to drop a bottle of wine off at my house yesterday just because she thought I might like it.

But no word from him.

In fact, he’s talked more to my husband than he has to me in the last ten years.

He’s friendly with S.O. they laugh and crack a joke when S.O. has to meet PT at her house for work stuff. He knows S.O. is married to me… and he’s never reached out. Not once.

I’d like to… because I see pictures of him and I remember my grandparents and it’s almost like there is a little piece of them still there.

But it comes back to that cat analogy and I won’t reach out. Too many times I’ve reached out and had my hand slapped in return. And, of course, the ultimate, that the feelings aren’t similar and aren’t returned – and that would hurt most of all.

The school year is coming to a close. Julien and Scarlet are graduating. Deirdre will be a sophomore next year and Rowan has kindergarten graduation coming up.

Don’t get me started on kindergarten graduations. I’m not a big “every occasion needs a graduation” person. But, S.O. wants to take Rowan to the park (where they are having the graduation) so she can meet the other kids who are doing the same thing (home school) that she is.

I’m looking forward to summer. Only because it means less garbage going on, less opportunity to run into people we don’t want to run into. Less structure… less “have to be here now” and of course, by the end of summer I’ll be craving consistency and schedules and regular bedtimes.

Earlier this week my sister called to say she “had something” for Deirdre and Julien. She came over with two yearbooks roughly $150.00

My sister really doesn’t have that kind of money.

Also? That’s not really something she would do.

Where do we think the yearbooks came from?

Take a guess.

Given that they have that full page ad with pictures of my children and my brother’s not so cryptic senior quote?

Yeah. I’m guessing my mother got them and had my sister bring them over as if she had gotten them. My sister never claimed to have bought them (typical of her – lie of omission) and they weren’t gift wrapped or anything it was just “I have something for you.”

Is that how you give a gift you spent that much on?

Probably not.

S.O. is livid. It’s one thing if she wants to have a relationship with our mother. It’s quite another to do my mother’s dirty work.

We’ve had our ups and downs with Scarlet. All in all, I’m very happy with my son’s choice in women. Scarlet is here every weekend and most days after school. She’s definitely a part of the family and I really do feel like she’s one of mine.

Over the last couple of years I’ve realized some of my shortcomings where communication is concerned. I can also look back to my childhood and see where some of those come from. It’s not a lack of desire to communicate better or assertively, it really comes from a place of extreme anxiety when dealing with difficult topics.

I’d like to hope that our family can work through issues instead of having one issue fester and explode until it comes to weeks or months of not speaking. Not that I have a particular issue or situation in mind. At the moment anyway.

Yesterday I had the extreme displeasure of actually listening to Scarlet’s mother throw another one of her temper tantrums. The woman is very careful to appear to be some loving, wonderful, but tough mother. She’s very big on appearances. Unfortunately, she doesn’t quite get that when she is on the phone screaming at her daughter people even a room away can hear her.

It’s not the first time, it’s easily the 20th time I’ve had to listen to her scream at Scarlet for little to no reason. She has a knack for making a .5 into a 10 in no time at all. She also fully knows Scarlet’s every button and achille’s heel – since she so cleverly installed them with years of abuse.

I sat across the room watching Scarlet tear up, attempt to appease, beg and then be subjected to verbal abuse including but not limited to calling her names (bitch) swearing (fuck this fucking that, etc. etc.) and so on and so forth. If Scarlet attempts to react maturely and rationally (and I’ve heard her do so and would be pleased if my children responded to me in such a manner) her mother darts the other direction telling Scarlet that she is NOT Scarlet’s peer but her SUPERIOR and that she will ALWAYS be her SUPERIOR and that Scarlet is not to talk to her as if they are on an equal level.

Scarlet is eighteen. Her mother constantly tells her that just because she is eighteen is absolutely NO reason to think that she (her mother) does NOT control ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING.

She won’t allow Scarlet to apply for financial aid for college because she finally admitted to her that she’s been fudging on her taxes for years (and on the taxes of other people’s that she prepares) and it could get her in a lot of trouble.

Scarlet has been told (from a very young age) that she will never be as smart as her mother because half of her genes are “stupid” since they came from her father (the ex-husband). Scarlet is underweight, has severe hormonal issues due to this and her doctor told her to gain 5 pounds. When she gained 3 her mother waited until they were in the car and began berating Scarlet for being “fat” – the girl has a dancer’s body. She’s tall and leggy.

Yesterday after calling Scarlet atrocious names she hung up on her. Then 10 minutes later called back to scream at her and tell her “not to cry” because she wasn’t going to have her playing some “oh poor me act” in front of Julien – AND – that JULIEN was NOT to give Scarlet ANY sympathy at all.

That’s the one that broke it for me. I was nearly on the phone with the woman. If she wants to treat her daughter like garbage – that’s fine. But it will be a cold, cold day in hell before she thinks she’s going to order MY BOY around. She hasn’t seen angry or violent, but she’s about to.

I talked to S.O. and the two of us talked to Julien who then discussed it with Scarlet. We both think it would be in her best interest if she moved in with us. She practically lives here anyway and, unfortunately, her mother isn’t the only problem. She has a stepfather (who she is forced to call “dad”) who has gotten inappropriately grabby with her, is abusive (has broken her mother’s nose) of her mother, and has gone after Scarlet physically. The last time was last summer when Scarlet finally told them that she was going to call the police and that S.O. and my dad would be over to pick her up. The coward (stepfather) backed down then as most men like that do.

I’m attempting to encourage Scarlet to thoughtfully create an exit strategy that will allow her to keep her things (clothing, etc. since her mother has that sort of temper) and not make the final move until all of her bases are covered. We’ve already researched and found that if she has been forced from her home due to abuse, etc. that she would be granted financial aid for college right on the spot.

S.O. keeps pointing out that maybe we have gone through all the garbage with our mothers so that we have some sort of insight to provide to someone else. I haven’t really gotten into S.O.’s mother much… maybe I will later on. Suffice it to say she’s almost worse than my own mother.

I’m so tired of the “mama drama” it’s all around me and it seems I keep having to deal with it in some way, shape, or form on at least a weekly basis.

I think sometimes that depression “hole” kind of sneaks up on you. I can be tripping around my life, wiping noses, counters (not with the same cloth, thank you!) and doing laundry thinking, “wow, shit is so not as shitty as it was this time last year!” and then – whammo. I find myself at the bottom of the hole with an emotional equivalent of a busted leg and I think, “Holy shit. I so did NOT see this coming!”

Like Mother’s Day. I woke up Saturday feeling uncharacteristically bitchy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m familiar with traditional bitchy, but this was a bitchy that I don’t like. I detested everyone around me no matter how nice they tried to be, I was angry and had no idea why.

Sunday morning I received a very thoughtful gift from my kids. The second I saw it, I hated it. I convinced myself it was ugly, horrible, and for the love of God why couldn’t they have put it in a gift bag or wrapped it nicely? I thanked them with all the sweetness I could muster up and I returned to my bedroom.

I sat with my back against the headboard, knees curled to my chest, angrily flipping channels and sobbing. My phone was screwing up – again and I threw it across the room watching the back fly off one way the battery another and the phone land face up in the middle of the floor.

S.O. tripped upstairs later, “Can I get you something to drink?” He glances at the floor, his blue eyes twinkled a bit, but he kept a somber look on his face. “Was that what I heard thumping up here?”

“Probably.”

He left and returned with a pint of beer. Then he sprawled across the end of the bed on his stomach and pretended to be interested in anything that was on television. He seemed unmoved by the constant channel changing and didn’t appear to notice that I made it a point to put it on every sort of show he might dislike – much like a child testing boundaries, I was testing his patience.

It’s times like that when he amazes me most. He faced the television, impervious to my jabs, sipped his own beer and occasional glanced back at me to ask a question.

“What got you so sad today?”

“Sad? You call this sad?” I said… fighting back tears. Somehow it almost made it all worse that someone would try to care or be interested in the black, tarry, ugly mood that had overcome me.

Mother’s Day has never really been about me. I’ve been a mom for 18 years and it’s never really been my day. Usually I’m scrambling around helping make a nice dinner, even with S.O. and the kids shooing me away and attempting to convince me that they were also doing this for me.

Nope, I’ve always focused on my mother for Mother’s Day. I don’t remember last Mother’s Day. But, I hope I don’t forget this one.

By the time I could manage to make it downstairs S.O. was grilling chicken, the house was clean, the kids had all disappeared (S.O. sent them on a last minute errand) and I ventured out to the patio…

Just in time to see a batch of the ugliest, blackest clouds ever rolling in. It was as if the weather was going to match my mood and see who could hold out the longest.

It wasn’t a bad evening. My dad and stepmom came by for dinner, there were lots of laughs and the all the usual family dinner stuff.

The next morning I woke up embarrassed and ashamed but all the while knowing that I didn’t exactly have a lot of control over what had happened to me. These “mommy issues” run deep and just about the time I think I’ve dealt with them something knocks me on my ass again. But, about the time I get knocked on my ass I get something hand delivered by the universe plopped into my lap. Usually it’s nothing more than a good reminder of why I don’t have her in my life anymore, sometimes it’s more satisfying than that.

S.O. has spent most of this week working with my cousin’s wife. I think I’ve referred to her as Princess Twatface in the past. Her dad owns the company that my mother’s boyfriend is supposedly taking over and of course my mother’s bf is S.O.’s boss.

Turns out – Princess Twatface isn’t so happy with my mother.

See? My mother is hanging out with my cousin’s mother. That would be my mother’s EX-Sister-in-Law. So while everyone at the company knows my mom and boyfriend have their relationship and my mom works for boyfriend as well – seems my mother then shows up at family functions (funerals, Easters, etc.) with my brother and his father (the guy my mother lives with) as if they are a perfectly normal family.

My cousin doesn’t get along with his mother. Having to deal with his mother now buddied up with the aunt he hates makes it even worse.

Turns out that PT and my cousin were convinced that she was going to lose her job because my mother started working at the company (when your dad owns the company what do you have to worry about? But, whatever) they also thought that S.O. was tight with my mom’s boyfriend and was sent out on spy missions to keep an eye on PT. Seriously. WTF? Soap opera central here.

Two days of heart-to-heart talks and it turns out that a lot of the shit we thought was being directed at us over the last year, PT and my cousin thought was being directed at her. And? Some of the bullshit emails I received from my mother and statements she made on her blog about “coming clean” with the men in her life – might have been inspired by PT complaining to boyfriend that he and my mother had no right putting her in the position of having to put up with them at work and then my mother and her other family at personal family functions.

Are you keeping up with any of this? Is any of it making sense? I’m not trying to be cryptic here as much as I am actually trying to be somewhat brief and not get stuck in a giant recant of all the past year’s activities. Feel free to leave questions for further clarification in the comments – I promise I will answer.

Somehow this has all managed to work out in our favor because S.O. and Princess Twatface in their mutual dislike of my mother and support of their spouses have now sort of joined forces and begun backing each other up. Thus, my mother’s manipulation along with boyfriend (the boss) isn’t going to get so far any more. Especially given that Princess Twatface’s daddy still owns the company.

I’m not entirely thrilled with PT but I think I’ll learn to tolerate her a lot more since she sees through my mom’s bullshit now as well.

I clicked a link somewhere and ended up finding an old “friend” from high school on FB today. That link ended up to more linking and so on and so forth. I soon found myself in a quagmire of faces from my past some with interesting lives and some with uninteresting lives. I found people on other people’s friends lists that I never would have imagined because I was in on some of those smack-talking sessions.

I found the ex-best friend, mentioned here and I was momentarily thrilled because she’s far fatter than I am. Okay, that was petty and shitty, I know, but she slept with my ex-husband so I think I’m entitled to some snark here or there. That is a whole Jerry Springer chapter of life I would prefer to forget.

I tripped through and saw other faces, faces of people I was close to for several years (years before high school even). I lost an hour or so, gave myself a headache, and managed to dissolve any vestige of self-esteem I have been trying to muster for years.

Okay, maybe not that bad, but kinda.

It’s just strange to see the same groups of people still socializing, knowing I used to be a member of those groups and have somehow been completely forgotten. /needless ego rant.

I’ve read that sometimes we find ourselves repeating situations or circumstances over and over because we haven’t learned how to deal with them. I also believe that sometimes people or thoughts sort of come in and take up a great deal of your consciousness for a period of time because you are getting an opportunity for closure, resolution, or just another life lesson.

Remember that friend whose boyfriend turned into an octopus last 4th of July?

While she has somehow managed to ignore birthdays, major holidays, etc. for whatever reason she elected to text message me on Mother’s Day to wish me a Happy Mother’s Day – now for the record, it should be noted that she sent out a mass email. I haven’t received anything personal or personally directed to me since our “conversation” about her boyfriend’s behavior last summer.

But, that has brought to mind other things. Like an old friend I’ve known since high school. When Julien was diagnosed with cancer she called me to tell me that she knew just how I felt because her newborn niece had heart problems and required surgery. She didn’t ask how Julien was, didn’t ask about his prognosis, she got me on the phone and spent the entire conversation telling me about her niece. This was literally just a week or two after Julien was diagnosed. And, it had been MONTHS since we had spoken. I haven’t spoken to her since. Wouldn’t want to anyway. She hasn’t emailed, called, or even commented on Facebook.

Not sure what I expected from someone that I threw a baby shower for and have never even met her kid.

But, the point is that she’s been on my mind lately. I deleted her off my facebook months ago and I doubt she ever noticed. I haven’t paid her much thought but just over the last couple of days she’s popped up in my mind.

Much like how the other friend pops up in my mind just days before I received some strange random mass send text message.

I don’t know what it means. Other than… well, you can see why my closest friends are people I’ve met online and have only met in person once or twice or never at all.

Lalalalala.

Sounded like a good opening (in my head) maybe not so great in practice though.

Julien saw “I Love You, Man” and has been running around telling everyone to “mind your own fuckhole! AAAAHHHHH!!!!” ever since. I’m considering putting it on video and posting it to my FB account. It’s just that funny.

Rowan and Julien have been running around “wrestling” until Rowan caught boxing on a sports channel and slugged him in the stomach. The boy went down. Hard. But, no lasting damage, it’s just his abdominal wall is really weak. Thus the following:

Julien, “Okay, so you want to box or wrestle?”

Rowan, “Wrestle.”

Julien, “Okay, let’s go!”

Two seconds later *smack* *pow*

Julien, “That’s not wrestling that’s boxing!!!!!!”

The next day…

Julien, “Rowan, you can hit me in the face, arms, legs, head, but do NOT hit me in the stomach!”

Rowan, “Hey, bring your face over here!”

Wait, wait… it gets worse…

Rowan, “Ooo, my name is Julien and I’m a BIG baby! I cry to my mama and I poop my pants and? I’m a big asshat!”

That’s 6 year old taunting, Rowan style.

Last week Rowan had been outside playing with our dog. She ran in, “Julien, I need you to pick up the dog poop!”

Julien went out and returned several minutes later complaining, “What? Did she WATCH him lay a fresh pile and then ran in to get me? What is WRONG with her?”

Rowan, “Julien, did you pick up the dog poop?”

Julien, exasperated, “Yes, Rowan, I did.”

Rowan, taunting, “Did you use your haaaaaands?”

Julien, “Yes, yes I did! Then I wiped them all over your TOYS!”

Rowan, “AUUUUUUUGGGH!!!! Noooooooooo!!!!”

That pretty much describes my Mother’s Day weekend.

Minus the panic attack Saturday night and the emotional melt down on Sunday.