Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

Monday Memories – the question is this:

Do you have a memory of being sick as a child? It might not have been anything more serious than a bad cold, or you may have had your tonsils out.. it could be anything. What do you remember?

I was always sick as a kid. I had bad tonsils and was poised to get them taken out (and man was I excited about the ice cream… little did I know it’s not worth it!) but it was right at the time when “they” decided that too many kids were getting their tonsils out unnecessarily so they canned my surgery. I ended up having them out when I was 19, which was no fun at all.

Whenever I got sick, my mom would bring me tomato soup made with milk, and Ritz crackers. She’d put it on a tray and bring it to me in my room. To this day, cream of tomato soup makes me feel better, even if I didn’t feel badly to begin with.

I would always have weird dreams when I had a fever. One I remember quite clearly, although I was probably only 4 when I had it. I was lying in bed and watching a bunch of animals having a banquet on my ceiling. I watched them for what seemed quite a while, then ran to the bathroom to throw up. I didn’t make it, much to the chagrin of my mother. Looking back, I was pretty sick – I wonder if I was hallucinating. I certainly didn’t think I was asleep at the time. I’m not sure if that was the same illness when my fever was so high that I had to have an icewater bath.

I was home sick the day that Reagan got shot. I was only 10 at the time, so I didn’t understand the full import of what happened, but Mom did. She brought out all the things she had saved from when Kennedy got shot and told me about that time in her life and what it meant to her. She said that what she remembered most clearly was the funeral drums.

I miss being cared for and fussed over so much when I’m sick. I’m the mommy now, so it’s my turn to create lasting memories.

Good grief. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. This is a sordid mess of a poor guy who was completely duped by someone who claimed to be dying of cancer. In the last 10 years that I’ve been around the internet, I’ve seen:

€ a man who created a fictitious wife for himself
€ a few guys pretending to be girls and having ‘mudsex’ with hapless guys
€ a guy who pretended to be a girl who eventually faked suicide
€ a pregnancy newsgroup troll who pretended to die from childbirth complications
€ a pregnancy newsgroup troll who pretended her child died from complications
€ a woman pretending to be a man who had a cyber-romance with an unknowing woman

My oh my, the list goes on.

And there always has to be drama, conflict, a soap opera. I’ve seen 2 bigass uproars on 2 different webrings lately and I find myself tuning in for today’s helping of pain. Sorry to be so crass, because I know I’m feeding on someone else’s anguish, but it’s like slowing down to watch a car wreck. I worry about being so dehumanized that I don’t care enough about my fellow man, I worry about the internet turning us all into automatons, but then I remember the case in NYC in the sixties where a woman was screaming for help as she was being killed and none of her neighbors did anything because they “didn’t want to get involved”.

Sorry to be such a downer tonight. It’s not like I’m in a bad mood or anything. Just ponderous.

I hate to admit this. I really do. I’m starting to like the Apple keyboard.

There, I said it. Oh lord, what’s next for me – I’ll want one of those stupid-ass mice that don’t have any buttons?

Save me.

Well, the mystery bug bite, whatever it was, is almost gone. I guess I will never know what it was that got me. I think I halfway expected the doctor to say “Oh yes, that’s an arpanthicara mystopheres bite, very rare, and how strong you must be to have lived through it.”

Did you know that when you join a RingSurf ring, your password gets mailed to the ringmaster? I think it’s a basic case of laziness; they just CC the confirmation letter to both joinee and ringmaster. I wrote them a Strongly Worded Letter telling them if they don’t change it, I’m going to take my toys and go home.

Everything seems rosier in hindsight. Thinking back to those days when we’d have Spades tournaments all day long and play Nintendo Monopoly and hang out it seems like… dunno… ideal? But I know it wasn’t a bed of roses. I was supposed to be going to school but was skipping all my classes and I felt terribly guilty about it. I still have nightmares about skipping classes but not being able to stop doing it, or forgetting when classes were.

My relationship with my family was very strained at that time. Two of my family members even came to town to stage a sort of mini-intervention with me to get my ass on the right track. I was so defensive at that point that their visit did absolutely nothing for me but make me utterly resentful.

My brother wrote me a very frustrated and angry letter then, basically telling me to grow up and take some responsibility. It shocked me, but furthered me on the road of resentment. A couple of years ago, during a quiet moment while I was visiting him, he pulled me aside and said “I wrote you an angry letter a few years ago. I want you to know how proud of you I am now, for coming so far in your life from where you were then.” I think that was the best moment I’ve ever had with him, and it meant so much to me for him to say that, and I’ve never been able to tell him that.

Looking back on that time now is like looking at a movie of someone else’s life. Now I’m the (mostly) responsible one, with a husband and a house and 2 little girls and a dog and three cats. And nothing else seems to piss me off more than to look at a friend who can’t turn herself around the way I did. I would write more about her, but it’s not my story to tell. A very sad story at that. I miss her a lot and wish that we were still on the same page of life. I don’ t know if we ever will be again, and that breaks my heart.

Well I’m depressed now.

Disturbing search requests for today:

panty inspection video – I’m number 1 on this list. Neat.
men in girdles – the newest sexual craze?
weird scuba things – I don’t think I want to know more about it.

If I had a marketing department, I’d bitch about it. But I don’t. The most marketing we do is a yellow pages ad. Ha!

Here’s a question for those of you with children: do you tend to refer to your husband as “Daddy” – even in private thoughts? As in, “We’re out of condoms, Daddy will need to get some more next time he’s at the store”. Is this an isolated thing that I should talk to a shrink about?

My dad, speaking of Daddy, was the master of jerry-rigging things. He would go for function (sometimes barely functional) over form every time. As an example, he poured cement for some steps that led to our house, only he didn’t brace the side, so the steps were slanted to the right and bowed out on the side. But they worked.

You may wonder how I have all this time to dig up links. Simple. While nursing I browse my favorite weird link sites, then compile them all. Since the boob leech nurses about every 2-3 hours, I have lots of time to look. More information than I’m sure anyone needed to know, but I did want to point out that I don’t live to dig up blog links, there is a madness to my method. Or something.

Which brings me to another point. Wouldn’t it make more sense, and more of an impact, if we said “You can’t eat your cake and have it too”? “Having your cake and eating it too” is a no-brainer. It’s very rare that you eat a cake you don’t have.

In closing, I would like to propose the introduction of the word “amn’t”. Viz:

“He’s ugly.” “No he isn’t.”
“I’m ugly.” “No you aren’t.”
“You’re ugly.” “No I amn’t.”

I couldn’t stand it anymore so I went to the urgent care clinic to have a doctor look at it. He said it’s some sort of bug bite or sting (well duh) and it might be infected. I’m not sure about that since it gets a whole hell of a lot better when I take a Benadryl and then swells way up and gets red and insanely itchy when the drugs wear off. Anyway, I will take antibiotics and hope it goes away very very soon.

It itches! IT ITCHES! IIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTCHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEESSSSSSS!

Sorry, the Benadryl wore off. My arm is totally swollen and itchy. Gotta take more. More more more. Every time I scratch it it gets bigger. Bigger bigger bigger. If it were going to kill me, it would have by now, wouldn’t it?

I think it’s affecting my thought processes.

Last night I outlined the borders of the redness from this weird bite thing I have with a lip liner. When I woke up this morning the red had crept about 1/8″ outside the line. Still itchier than hell. I took a Benadryl to see if it would help. Hub found a tiny wasp-like creature flying around the kitchen today. Wonder if that’s what got me?

Why is our first reaction so often “NO!” when someone offers to help? Is it a pride thing, or stubbornness? It frustrates hub to no end when he offers to do something for me and I tell him no even when it’s obvious that I can’t do it myself. I wonder if it’s some sort of Superwoman complex, where we have to present the image, at least to ourselves, that we can do it all. I think part of growing up is knowing when to ask for help.