Once upon a time, I was in a video store with my then boyfriend trying to pick out a movie to watch. I picked up John Carpenter's Vampires, and proceeded to tell the boy about the coolest scene in the movie, where a guy uses his hot-from-being-fired gun to cauterize a wound he received. Said boyfriend looks at me, shakes his head, and says, "You're not like other girls, Betty."
Name::Braindead Betty From::Indy, Indiana, United States
I just got some really good news on the military front. My cousin, who's stuck on a boat until sometime in February, just won "Marine of the Quarter." And, while I'll be the first to admit that I have no idea what that means, I understand that it's kind of a big deal. I couldn't be more proud of him. He's going to be in port in about 3 weeks or so, so I was hoping to get a care package out to him this week in order to catch him. Any of you who've been in the military or know someone who has have any suggestions about what to put in it?
My heart is breaking. I have one cousin in the Middle East now, in the midst of his 3rd tour of duty over there, and another cousin who's headed that way on a MEU the end of this month.
Yeah, I’ve been gone forever. My computer broke. It sucked. Here’s the Cliff Notes version of my past month:
I had a baby. For blog purposes, we’ll refer to her as Daisy. Everything went okay, and she is, naturally, perfect.
Moo. Just call me Bessie.
Somehow, I got old. My little bitty baby cousins are now a high school senior and in their second year of college, respectively. Yikes!
I figured out how I’m going to get rich. Or, at least, how I could get rich if I knew how to write software. Someone needs to create a database of celebrities who do voice-overs in commercials, and the products they shill.
Speaking of celebrities, I have a new celebrity crush. Zach Braff is absolutely adorable! I’m typically up for feedings late enough to catch the late night “Scrubs” reruns, so I’ve only just now caught on to this show. It’s fantastic; someone should have clued me in sooner.
There’s a serial arsonist running around Indianapolis. Fortunately, they’re just burning abandoned buildings so far. Let’s hope it stays that way. 13 fires in 17 nights is pretty messed up.
Major news on the homefront: I HAVE LANDSCAPING! I'm so excited! Jay and Bean planted 5 mini-spruces yesterday while I was at work to surprise me. Bean was so excited to have helped. She's claimed one tree as her very own and calls it her baby tree. Say it with me now....AAAWW.
One thing I must say about Jay being out of work; while it's made our budget much tighter than is comfortable, he and Bean have gotten quite close. It's awful cute watching her tag right along behind him, Daddy's little shadow. If you want to know the honest truth, I'm kind of jealous. I know it's gender-typing, but I feel like, being the mom, I should be there kissing her booboos and teaching her the joys of vegging out and playing Halo all day. Okay, so maybe he is teaching her different things than I would.
I don't really grudge him the time with her, though. She's happy enough to see me when I get home, and he's happy enough for a break by that time. (Let's face it, no matter how cute the 2 year old, they're still pretty demanding.) And I know it's important for little girls to have a good relationship with their dad. Besides, once she starts dating, I know I'll be the favorite again.
We had a little bit of a family scare the other day. Alzheimer's disease runs in my family, and my Grandma was acting pretty loopy the other day, so everybody was getting scared that the disease may have begun claiming her. Come to find out, Grandma's just a druggie. Okay, that's not exactly fair to my Grandma. She fell on the ice twice this winter and managed to break both of her wrists. One of them was broken pretty badly, and she had to have surgery. After the surgery, she got a Vicodin prescription, and instead of taking it as needed no more than once every four hours, she was taking 1000 mg every four hours on the dot. Needless to say, my Grandma was in a pretty happy place. I wonder if she was trying to make up for the sobriety of her youth, and is happy letting us believe that it was an honest mix-up. I just wonder how my aunt who's been staying with her to help completely missed this. For four days. Oh well, it at least makes me feel less like the black sheep in the family.
RSM recently talked about her relationship with her mother and gave some examples of punishments she received growing up. It made me think of me and my mom, and some of the things we went through when I was growing up.
My parents were great at punishments. I'm sure I stretched their imagination a time or two, because I was always getting in trouble, but they sure never let me down in my belief that their sole purpose in life was to make me miserable. The simplest thing they did, and the one that caused me the most heartache, was that they would never ground me for a definite time frame. When my friends screwed up, they got grounded for two weeks, or a month, or whatever their parents deemed appropriate. When I screwed up, how long did I get grounded? "As long as I feel like it." was my dad's standard response. It made making plans a real pain in the butt.
Some of the better punishments my parents came up with involved touring a working convent, moving my bed into their room (when I got caught sneaking out at night), and threatening to throw all my clothes away and buy me nothing but Tommy Hilfiger instead. I know to some people that probably would've been a dream come true, but I hung out with the goths and the skaters and the punks. It would've been hell. Actually, this must've been the most effective threat that my mother ever came up with, because it never actually progressed past the threat stage.
I actually moved out of my parents house the first time because of a punishment that I felt was unfair. I had stayed out past curfew (my 11:00 curfew at 18 years old and already graduated from high school), and when I got home, my dad was waiting up for me. No big surprise there, but what he did next pissed me off to no end. He made me sit in the living room and stay awake ALL NIGHT LONG. Looking back, I see his point, that I made him miss sleep, so he would make me miss sleep, but at the time I was livid enough to pack up all my stuff the next day and move in with some friends. And I do still to this day think 11:00 is a ridiculous curfew for an 18 year old high school graduate.
Luckily, my parents and I both survived adolescence with very few psychological scars, and we're closer now than ever. It's amazing what grandkids will do to mellow a person out.
Why is it that your family retains the ability to completely embarass you, no matter how unflappable you normally are? My parents, Bean and I went to visit my aunt & uncle this past weekend. That was when I made the announcement about my being pregnant official to the rest of the family. My parents, of course, already knew. My aunt starts in on the "You know how that happens, right?" teasing. I briefly debated saying something trite about God choosing to bless me, but my parents don't like it when I get smart-alecky about God, so I just mumbled, "Yes." (What was that I said in my last post about women and sexuality? You're welcome to call me a hypocrite now.) My aunt just wouldn't stop, either. She kept going on about how I'm not going to stop & she's sure I like it. I must've been crimson all the way to my hairline (which is a considerable way, with my high forehead) when I busted out with, " I can't say that in front of my dad! As far as I'm concerned, my parents only had sex twice. I don't care to know any more than that about them, and I'm sure they don't want to know about me, either!" Silence for about 3 seconds, then everyone busted out laughing at me. I love my family, even when they do make me feel 10 years old again.
Jay is my husband. He can be a total jerk, like when he told his little brother the way to get rid of a hard on was to punch it as hard as you can, but he can be the sweetest guy ever, like when he rushes to kiss a boo-boo on our little girl. He's in a punk rock band called Pipe Bomb. He's a total blue collar guy. He's worked in construction for years. There's nothing that he wouldn't do for his family. He's the only guy I've found that can consistently put up with my shit, so I think I'm gonna' keep him.
Bean is our daughter. I refer to her as Bean because she never walks when she can hop. She's like a little jumping bean. I could go on & on about her, but it'd just be the same things every moms say about their kids. Suffice it to say that she's reasonably cute, smart & funny, and we'll just move on.
Sicko is my best friend, simply because she's just as big of a dork as I am. We have a blast every time we get together. 9 times out of 10 we end up having conversations about penises. (Penii?) Regardless, "Dance like noone is watching" could easily be her life motto.
And then there's the band. Left to right it's Eeyore, Jughead, Trippy & Jay. Eeyore suffers from a lot of mental problems. Depression, anxiety disorder, etc. He's also a junkie, which I'm sure doesn't help the problem at all. He's an effing genius when it comes to the bass, though. I've never seen anyone as talented as him. Jughead is, simply put, an idiot. He can't multiply 2 and 100 in his head. Seriously. Trippy's just your average guy, wife, two kids, 9-5.
These are the names you will more than likely see crop up most often in the course of the blog. I'll add other people as the need arises.
