Sunday Selections

 I got this idea from Elephant’s Child. It’s not Sunday yet here in Texas, but it is somewhere in the world, and anyway her post is up so I might as well.  

The rules are simple- to post photos you’ve never shared before. So here goes. 

This is my favorite selfie of me and my cat Alex. 

When my daughter was about five, she got a recorder in music class and loved it so much she drew a picture of it. 

Alex as a baby in my old- old apartment. “How did you get up there?!”

When I was into jewelry making, I let my daughter have free rein over the supplies to make whatever she wanted. She made this choker. 

This used to be on display at the science station at my old job the children’s museum. Seeing it made me actually understand the scientific method for the first time. It was a good analogy for a scientifically illiterate person like myself who’d been working with kids half my life at that point. 

Me and my daughter walking on the beach! 

Jesus Christ goes trick or treating 

One of my favorite rest areas in Southeast Arizona, off of I-10 between Benson and Wilcox. 

An Alternate Reality

 I got back to thinking about my first boyfriend who died February 9th. I looked up his obituary again and took a screenshot of his picture. I uploaded my picture in my rainbow dress with the screenshot from his obituary and asked ChatGPT to make a family portrait of us with 7 kids. 

When we were young, we used to say we wanted 7 kids. I wonder, in what universe would we have really made it to baby number 7. We had so much opposition. The picture above would have only been a one in a million chance. I guess according to AI, it would have been four boys and three girls. Some of these kids look the same age, but that’s ok. It can be explained away with either twins or adoption. 

Pipe dreams abound. He’s creeping back into my memories again, and I kind of wonder if he took his own life. I’ll never know for sure. There’s definitely that possibility. He wasn’t like this when we were together, but about a couple years after we went our separate ways, he started getting some pretty extreme thinking. He held a lot of conspiracies. I sometimes wonder if that was my fault. I broke up with him, but I did try to reconcile a month later and he refused. 

Whatever it was, I just hope he’s at peace. 

Happy 80th Birthday 🎂

 I don’t have a recent picture, but I have this throwback of me and my mom at my own high school graduation in 1996. 

Today my mom turned the big 80!  We had to work, but it only took two hours. We have been pretty busy lately, and will be busy next week. So I’ll take a two hour work day on my mom’s birthday. When we got done, we went to Kroger by her house and got flowers and cake. I didn’t get a whole cake, because it was just the three of us and we’re all trying to avoid junk food. I just got a big slice from the bakery that could easily be cut into thirds. I texted my mom from the store asking if she still had candles in the drawer. She said yes. But when we got there, she didn’t assume I meant birthday candles and only said yes because she had the extra long dining room ones. So that’s what I stuck in the cake. She didn’t care. 

I’m glad her birthday is over. I was dreading it. I have this weird anxiety when I am around her and my husband. I’m afraid she’ll insult me to my face in front of him, because that would bring a pang of humiliation. But at the same time, I sometimes want her to, just so he can witness it for himself. It’s a catch 22. 

We then went grocery shopping. Actually he got a haircut while I did the shopping in the same plaza. Now we are home and I put spaghetti with vodka sauce, mushrooms and red onions in the crockpot with veggie broth to top off and boil with. I’m allowing myself to have spaghetti dinner once a week now. I’m back to being kind of strict on that diet, but I’m honestly sick of fish. It’s ok, there’s definitely other things than fish. I’d rather make the pasta day on a day that I also had cake so I can’t cheat any other time. I can feel more weight dropping, but not getting in the scale until at least after my daughter’s birthday. I’m also doing arm reps in the mornings. I have zero upper body strength. 11 years of panic attacks really ruined me. 

Sewing Thoughts

First of all, unrelated, I picked this massive squash from the garden. All others so far have been about half this size. When I diced it, I saw that it was light colored and spongy. Idk if that means it’s not good or what? 

 Secondly, I gave my coworker back her grandson’s swim trunks that I took in half an inch on each side. 

About that, I just want to say this: There was a time in my life where I was semi obsessed with learning to sew, but it was short lived and I was a young adult. I remember thinking out loud that maybe I could either have my own business or side business doing this for people. And just like with every other idea I had at the time for myself, it was shot down. I was told that customers would complain about my sewing skills, things I made or altered would tear and not fit people properly. Etc, etc. This was just one of many things I was taught as a young person that turned out not to be true- that I’m this horrendously incapable person. No one would want me to touch their items, they’d sue me if it came out wrong and I’d lose in court every time. When I look back on some of the stuff I was told as a young person, I not only scoff at how ridiculous and extreme it is, but I can’t imagine ever telling my daughter the same things. I think with her, if she truly wanted to do something she wasn’t good at, there would be guidance and training and practice. I also don’t think I was ever that bad at sewing for people to say those things. I now know that they wanted to bring me down. 

It’s just funny that I ended up in a life situation that proves them all wrong about so many things. And one of the things that ended up happening is that I be asked to alter some clothing because I know how to. It’s not that wild, but to me it is. I didn’t charge her, but I am going to look into how exactly to charge people in the future for things like that. She agreed to tell me if anything went wrong with the swim shorts such as tearing, etc, but she said it with a semi eye roll as if to say “nothing is going to happen.”  

Graduation + Alterations

So I only got choked up a little bit!  Anna did great, I’m so proud of her. It was held at NRG Stadium, which is right next to the astrodome. I was exhausted afterwards. 

I must say, I would not want to stand up in front of thousands of people and recite 600-700 full names of people. I’d be afraid to mispronounce. 

I thought back to the “2007 expecting clubs” on the old IVillage message boards. Does anyone here remember IVillage?  There were “expecting clubs” for every month. I used to lurk the ones for May and July due dates too, but not post in them. I remembered when everyone announced the names of their babies on there and wondered how many of the graduates I was seeing walking across the stage had moms who posted in those expecting clubs. 

On another note, my coworker bought Minecraft swim shorts for her grandson and asked me to take them in about a half an inch on each side for her. She said she’d “pay me”, but I’m not going to let her. I honestly had a lot of anxiety about this. I make whole ass quilts, but doing an alteration that’s super simple for someone else made me think I would do something wrong. It honestly took no more than five minutes. Yes I pinned the waistband too. I did reinforcement stitches on each side as well. It’s not stretchy fabric, so a zigzag stitch wasn’t necessary. Even the lining was not stretchy. What do you think, did I do ok? 

 

Graduation Dinner

Speaking of the second to the last episode ever of The Handmaid’s Tale in my last post, here is the main character surviving getting hung. I’ve rewatched it several times now. It does remind me of The Crucible, but with air strikes. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down” was a famous line from the original book and season one. I love that the actress stares right into the camera when she says it. 

On another note, today Kevin and I went out with my daughter and my mom so my daughter could receive her graduation gifts from my mom. Even though she’s been out of classes for about a week and a half, the actual ceremony is tomorrow. I’m taking the day off and going by myself. Kevin has to work, and my mom doesn’t want to walk around at the stadium where it’s being held. 

I’m actually glad I’m going alone, because I feel like I’m going to sob. I’m definitely going to try and do it quietly. I have had three relatives who’ve all said that as soon as they saw their youngest or only child “walk across the stage”, they felt “ready to die.”  I thought to myself- I hope I don’t feel that way. Of those three relatives, only one was, actually, dying. The other two now that I look back on it, were just being a drama king and a drama queen. I’ve seen a lot of older people use their impending deaths to guilt and manipulate people. That’s probably what my two non-dying at the time relatives were doing. 

As for me, I’m just getting started. 

That’s my mom and daughter walking out of the restaurant. They look like twins not only from the front, but apparently they look like twins from the back too.  Almost the same hair. 

The waiter saw her opening gifts and automatically brought out the birthday strawberry. I guess they ran out of cake. 

When I graduated from high school 29 years ago, I remember the very next day just instantly feeling like life in the “real world” was so extremely different than what I’d been taught it was like when I went to school. Ever since then, I’ve unlearned and relearned a million and one things. 

Stuff I was so sure would happen never happened. Consequently, things I never thought would happen did. Like having her. Among countless other things. I was taught a lot of wrong things that I had to work very hard at to get right. In a way, it’s almost a good thing that I don't even feel close to feeling like I’m done relearning, because if I did, I might be actually trying to live vicariously through her. I just want her to pursue her own path and be there if she needs to figure it out all over again a few more times. 
 

Handmaid’s Tale Spoiler Meme

I’m so glad there’s only one more episode ever of The Handmaid’s Tale, because I hate that I’ve been so addicted to that show for 8 years. I also want to cancel my HULU subscription, just like I do every time a season ends. 

Warning spoiler ahead:

The main character June Osborne was in love with a commander Nick Blaine.  The older guy here is supposed to be Commander Lawrence, who supposedly “designed Gilead” but regrets it now. June was supposed to drive him to a plane that all remaining high commanders were going to board.  Lawrence was then going to plant a bomb on board and get off before the other commanders arrived. Then June was going to be his getaway driver. Except, the other commanders also arrived early and Lawrence didn’t want to blow his cover, so he decided to board the plane anyway with the bomb, and just kill himself. Then another car pulls up, and Nick gets out. June is devastated, because she’s realizing that she’s killing the man she loves, and the father of her second child. But speaking up would not only get her killed in that moment, but also ruin mayday and the rebellion. So the last scene is her standing out on the runway, watching the plane take off, and then explode. She grieves Nick and Lawrence and that’s the end till the finale next week.

This meme is hilarious!  It’s a depiction of that scene with Nick and Lawrence surviving 🤣 

I can’t. 😂 

 

Three Weeks

Now that it’s almost Wednesday, it’s literally 3 weeks now until my daughter turns 18.  She was born on her due date, which I heard was only 5% of babies. I remember looking forward to May 21 because that would make me the magical “37 weeks”. With a singleton baby, being born any time after 37 weeks is full term, with their due date being at 40 weeks. I was so scared to have a preemie!  I remember reaching that day and watching the top story at the time, which was the disappearance of Madeline McCann. I thought to myself- yeah I’m never leaving her alone while I go out partying. Dumb parents. Do I think the German guy did it?  I don’t know. I think they need to just come out and say what proof they have. They had a flash drive that was his damning evidence. They never said if Madeline was on the flash drive, though. 

This is what her entire day looked like on Sunday. She wanted to spent the day at my mom’s but crapped out on the couch literally all day. She looked through uber eats and put her selections in the cart, and I ordered once

I got home. By the time the food arrived, she was fast asleep. It went in the fridge. School is out and she only works weekends, so she must be up all night gaming. I really don’t care. She has earned it. 

Evidence for my Point

A couple of days ago, I posted about three strikes I have against me when it comes to finding a therapist who hat will help me through panic attacks.  1. I regret my college degree, 2. My parents stayed married and 3. I endured every type of abuse except sexual abuse growing up. 

Then I decided to try something. I typed up this message making it perfectly clear that I was trying to find a therapist to help me with the panic attacks I started getting when I got my college degree. I wanted to make it perfectly clear that that was my goal for therapy, and therefore weed out individuals who would just argue and not help. I don’t have time, money, or energy to interview people and ask if they have a problem with the fact that that’s how I feel. I pasted this greeting to more than 20 therapists near my zip code. 

So far no one has responded except for this lady, Jessica from a facility called S.T.A.R.S. 

Once she responded, I realize what the acronym was for. “Survivors Triumphing Against Rape and Sexual Assault.”  Oops!!
 

So I responded with this email- I didn’t realize what the acronym stood for and the reason why I added that I’ve been through every other type of abuse except sexual was just in case she was ok with that.  

This was her response. Scroll down for my reaction. I did not respond to her, but I will share my thoughts here. 

“While trauma survivors are the targeted population, I do accept and have ample experience with all mental wellness concerns.”  Read that again. Something that isn’t rape isn’t considered “trauma” to her. It’s just a “mental wellness concern”. If she has a masters degree, she should know that a LOT of things cause trauma, INCLUDING rape or sexual assault, but it’s not the only thing. This is just evidence of what I was saying before. I can tell her about some of the physical and emotional abuse I endured from my mom, for example, but to her it’s not traumatic enough. I do not believe that wording was unintentional. It seems very intentional. And “be blessed” screams, I’m filled with Christ's love!

It’s better to just not respond to her. And yes I know I’m usually good about keeping someone’s identity private, but it wasn’t necessary here. I’m not lying about what she said to me. The proof is in the screenshots. The fact that she was “still willing to see me anyway” is probably just because business is slow. And that’s all therapy is at the end of the day. A business. 

I’m not exposing this to say that people who are more “allowed” to get therapy are “luckier”. They are, but they aren’t. They are because perhaps it does help them. They aren’t because of all the time and money that have to spend on it. We all suffer from the human condition bo matter what we’ve been through in our lives. A psychotherapist should at least understand that. 

Fooling Around with AI 🤖

 Kevin was cleaning out his stuff and found this picture of himself when he graduated high school. 

Then I asked AI to clean it up and this is what I got:

Out of Options

 It’s been over 11 years now since I started suffering from panic attacks. I’m starting to really really accept that I am the only one who is going to help me get through them. Sometimes my husband can. Sometimes my mom can. Sometimes my best friend can. However-

As far as professional help, there just isn’t any for me. We are told in our society that when you go to a psychiatrist, “you just have to keep trying different meds and doses until you find what works for you.”  Ignoring the fact that the reason they say that is because psychiatric conditions aren’t physically provable- I did find what works for me medication-wise. It’s called gabapentin. It’s normally used for diabetic nerve pain, but used off label for anxiety. It worked wonders for me. But on the other hand, the same doctors in the same field will shame you for wanting that specific drug. Gabapentin is not a narcotic, nor a benzodiazepine, nor even a controlled substance in my state. But medical professionals and pharmacists will audibly express their disdain. I don’t think it should matter. I also think they get kick backs for some of the medications they try and push on people, because like I said- none of these conditions are physically provable. I’m “supposed” to be taking gabapentin daily, but I don’t unless my anxiety is really really bad. If I do take it one day, I make sure I go at least 48 hours without taking it again, preferably 72 hours. This is because there’s just so much shame out there in taking it. Once in a blue moon (definitely less often than once a month), the pharmacy will text me that I have a 30 day supply ready and I’ll go get it in the evenings when it’s young people working and I know they won’t comment. It’s just an uphill battle with the medication, and if I start over with a new psychiatrist, then he or she will just make me try stuff I already tried and know does nothing for me. 

As far as therapy goes, I’m not sure how many therapists I’ve tried since 2014. At lest 8-10, probably a dozen. I have three strikes against me when it comes to therapy:

1. My parents stayed married. I was not from a broken home or a single parent home. Growing up with both my parents together is considered a privilege, and I’ve been chewed out by therapists for “still being depressed”. 

2. Even though I did endure a lot of abuse growing up, none of it was sexual abuse. It was every other kind. I don’t think all therapists think sexual abuse is the only type that is supposed to warrant needing therapy, but I did get that impression from a couple of them. Especially the one that told me St. Jude commercials didn’t count as a “trigger” because “kids dying of cancer has nothing to do with sex or sexual assault.”  I’ll never forgive that bitch for saying that. In fact, she inadvertently cured me of those ads being so triggering, because now whenever I see them I gawk at her audacity. 

Strike 3: I regret my college education. Therapists hate hearing that. They worship the education system, and always try to convince me that actually I made a good choice. Actually I didn’t!  I need you to actually help me through the mess I made of my life, not argue with me that it’s not actually a mess. 

I go back to This article about weekly. It’s 13 things to help you through a panic attack. When it comes to therapists, you might pay them $100 or $200 per hour or more, and literally all they’ll do in the end is recite that article. While it’s there, free on Google. Do any of you make $200 per hour, because I don’t. And the money you save on their ridiculous fees can actually be used towards whatever thing is causing you anxiety. 

Sometimes people will tell you “just find another therapist!”  Ok what’s the name of one that will not have any problems with any of the things I listed above?  They are basically all the same. I actually find it a little cultish that “no therapist” is not a valid answer to that question. I dread the day when I run out of gabapentin and there are no more doctors who will prescribe it. Maybe at that point I can retire in Mexico. Olé

True Story Time

 Saw this on Facebook, and first of all I thought she was naked on the bottom too. But no, those are just flesh colored tights. 

When I was in high school I had a friend named C who had a baby boy when she was 15 years old. I remember thinking I was just so extremely cool because I was friends with a teen mom. Which come to think about it, may have been one of the reasons my feminist aunt felt the need to try and beat me with a hot iron but anyway. It was cool until my friend C became a grandmother at age 33. And not just one grandbaby. She got two!  Her son that she had at age 15 got two sisters pregnant just a couple months apart. They both had girls, and this made C’s two granddaughters half sisters and cousins at the same time. A couple years later, she was babysitting both girls a few days a week. She would dress them like twins, and post pictures on social media of the half sisters/cousins dressed alike. I really wanted to ask her- do you take them out in public dressed like that? And if so, do people stop you and say “Are they twins?”  C had absolutely no filter whatsoever. So if anyone ever did ask if they were twins she probably told the truth, and the whole truth. I wonder where they are now. The girls would be 14 now. I hope they don’t take notes from their parents. . 

Things that Didn’t Happen

 Do you ever read things online and think, wow, that didn’t happen?  There’s a whole meme about it online- a jeopardy category “Things that didn’t happen”. I’ll take “things that didn’t happen for $500, Alex.”  

A woman posted that 18 month ago, she had a stillborn baby girl. I’m so sorry for her loss, but she said she was at a thrift store and saw a cute dress in size 18 months that she decided to just buy for the hell of it. If her daughter was alive, she imagined she’d be super cute in it. Nothing wrong with the story so far. But then she said a woman with four kids at the register demanded to know why she was buying a baby dress if she didn’t have a baby. I just don’t believe that happened at all. No one demands to know why other people in stores are buying certain products. Have you ever seen a person in a store without a baby buying baby things?  I’m assuming I have, but either their baby wasn’t with them or they were buying for someone else. Have you ever encountered anyone in stores demanding to know why anyone else was buying anything?  That’s just weird. The moral of her story was “don’t judge me, I had a stillborn”. And ok I get it. I go to 25 cent days at thrift stores where half the stuff is on the floor and people are pushing and shoving. No one demands of anyone else why they’re buying THAT. No one ever asked me why I was buying 59 pairs of jeans. People just don’t care. Sometimes I was looking at something and a person right by me seemed like they wanted it so I just walked away and let it go. But no “WHY DO YOU NEED BABY CLOTHES?!?!”  

It’s rage bait. They get paid for engagement.  So if you tell them that you don’t believe their story, not only are they benefiting financially from that comment engagement, but you technically can’t “prove that it didn’t happen”. 

There’s another lady with kind of a large online presence, and she has a service dog. But she’s always recording people giving her a hard time about having a service dog, which makes it kind of sus. She seems to get into altercations with people constantly.  If it happens once, I can see if someone was mistaken, but it seems to happen so often that I wonder if she’s either paying people to fake having a problem with her medical episodes or she does shit on purpose to instigate it. She claims that the dog alerts her to when she’s about to pass out, but she never actually passes out. In the latest video, a woman is telling her to move over because she’s just sitting on the floor in a high traffic area, and she’s literally telling her “Actually I’m having a medical episode!  Actually I’m passing out!”  And she never passes out. She has a lot of energy to argue with this lady who then says she’s going to call 911 if there’s really a medical emergency going on. I just don’t get why she has all this energy to set this woman straight but can’t actually just scoot out of a high traffic area. Or actually let the lady call 911. She seemed to think the lady was discriminating against her for calling 911. 

I feel bad for the dog honestly. 

Working with Kids Memory

Right after I got my college degree and discovered that the jobs the academic advisors told me I could get didn’t really exist, I got a job as an aide in an elementary school nearby. They hired four others in the same position at the same time. I learned later that the school hired as many of us as possible in an attempt to save themselves from the deep crap they were in from the state. Why were they in deep 💩?  Half the kids in the school were failing their grade. It was a really bad school. They could blame “NCLB” and “parents” all they wanted, but at the end of the day it was just a bad school, and they were bad teachers who didn’t do their jobs. Everyone got laid off at the same time. It added to the reasons why that time period was the onset of my severe panic attacks. 

The kids at that school called me “Ms” and by my last name at the time, which was the last name of my first husband and daughter. It’s a very simple name with one syllable and four letters. It’s very hard to mess up. Yet this well meaning second grader drew a picture of me and labeled it “Mrs. Cacks”. My last name wasn’t Cox!  Not even close. This just goes to show how far behind these kids were.  I forgot about this picture, and I didn’t realize I had it in my phone. It made me think of picking out the cake in Father of the Bride. 

I almost hate to say it, but I look at stuff like this, and it’s hard for me to feel bad for bad teachers. 

 

Grad sign

We got this lawn sign announcing that my daughter Anna is graduating. Kevin’s parents gave her a card with cash. Kevin was extremely meticulous about getting the sign right. He first met Anna last year when she was 16. He was also 16 when he met his stepfather. Whenever he reminisces, he says that he was a “real shithead” to his stepdad at first and is very glad that my daughter isn’t like that to him. I taught her how to make the zucchini flowers from the garden (which is right next to the grad sign). She loved them. I’ve been able to do that about every other day. 

 

The Graduate

 I started crying immediately when I saw these. I hope I can keep my composure when they call her name 👩🏻‍🎓 

Zucchini!!!

This is what I picked from my garden this morning. This is about the fifth or sixth time I’ve picked boy flowers from my seed ball garden. I cut the stamens out, filled each one with a little bit of shredded mozzarella, made my batter with flour, salt, water and milk, and pan fried them. Then I sliced these zucchinis, also from the garden. I know they don’t look that big, but there are many more tiny ones that need to also grow. I added them to the frying pan and when I turned off the heat, I sprinkled feta cheese. This was my lunch. The neighbor’s cat has also visited a couple times, checking out the catnip. 

 

Happier Days 🌞 😊

 Work is really dead, but me and Kevin are enjoying being around the house a lot.  We got a new account, and thought they’d want us to start tomorrow, but they don’t want us till the 15th!  I’m not worried about it, because:

I’ve been working on my writing and my sewing. I’ve been listening to a lot of music. With the book I’m writing about working with children, I’ve decided to now start to jog memories about the 7 or 8 some odd year period that I worked at the children’s museum. That was the only thing I did in my life to help kids that was very joyful and happy instead of hard and sad. I started there in the spring of 2006. I found out I was pregnant on October 6th, 2006, and worked there until I had my daughter in June, 2007 and then went back the following year up until she was about in first or second grade. It was not only a joyful job, but I had a very strong support system there. I went through my divorce in 2010, before my daughter turned three and I do not know what I would have done without the people at work and the people at her daycare. My daughter used to love what we called “Busman’s Holidays”. This is when you visit your place of employment as a customer. I never had to pay to get in. We always had free memberships. My daughter was obsessed with the museum. 

While working there, I saw a lot of “aha moments” in many children. I want to talk about as many of these that I can. I also want to talk about some of the activities that we did in the exhibits that can easily be adapted at home. My entire book will tell a story as well as raise awareness and be educational. 

I surfed the museum’s website today with my five subject notebook and jotted things down. From the pictures, it looks like the discovery guides (that was my position title) are now wearing chartreuse shirts!  When I was a discovery guide there, we had to wear khakis and turquoise shirts. The higher up positioned people who were called “educators” wore darker blue shirts. But chartreuse is literally my favorite color, and I would have loved wearing that. Even with khakis. 

The museum chapter of my life was such a significant one that it needs to be included in the book. If it’s not, then the book will be pretty much a bombardment of misery. It will only raise awareness of serious issues like abuse and childhood adverse experiences, and not simple things like fun games that actually teach them math and science. And the museum memories won’t make me sad and affect my mental health the way my other jobs working with kids did. Sometimes Kevin asks why I don’t go back to the museum. I mean I could. It was such a mistake to leave. I left so I could finish my degree, and that was catastrophic for me. But when I worked there, I was in my late 20’s and early 30’s. Most other guides were college age “kids and there were a handful of women who were grandmother age. If I went back now, I feel like I’d be one of the grandmother guides and the young guides would be calling me Ms. Danielle. In Texas, most younger people call older people Mr. Or Ms. First Name. No one called me Ms. Danielle back then but they would now. And we all called the 4 or 5 grandmother discovery guides Ms. First Name. If I did, I would get to wear chartreuse shirts too!  But I won’t. I would need a lot of caffeine now to get through a day with a gazillion kids running around. I tend to believe I had more energy for it in my 30’s, but I might could muster the energy now. I also feel a level of loyalty to the company I work for now with Kevin and have no interest in leaving. After all, that company not only brought me a husband but has been financially digging me out of the college hole at a pretty good rate. During slow times I can either do the apps if I need money, or mill around and do my interests at home. 

I made my mother a patriotic wreath and will ship it to her so I can have practice shipping wreaths. It’s gotta be tricky. I also altered my t-shirt that says “proud parent, class of 2025” for my daughter’s graduation. She is going to stay up here with me all next week because she only has school one day for one final and that’s it. Seniors get out a week early. It’s so surreal that my kid is graduating and will be a legal adult in five short weeks. Tomorrow we’re going grocery shopping and Kevin is going to mow and put up our “2025 Grad” lawn sign so my daughter can come home to it on Sunday when she gets here. 

Songs Taken Literally

 I was in a store this morning when on the overhead “Dancing on the Ceiling” by Lionel Richie was playing. I remember being a little kid hearing that song and thinking, “How is he dancing on the ceiling?”  In fact I asked my mom how dancing in the ceiling was possible and how that worked. I don’t remember what she told me, but she did have a quick response  when I asked her why George Michael was Never Gonna Dance Again. “Guilty feeling, got no rhythm.” She literally told me, “Because they chopped his legs off.” 

I was about five or six and remember feeling startled when she said that. Now I look back on it and laugh. 

I remember learning about that phase in child development class when kids take everything super literally. I think it was called “the concrete operation phase” but I might be wrong. I learned nothing in formal education, just memorized shit for tests. 

When my daughter was going through that phase, she heard the song “Sound of Silence”, which has a famous line- “And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made.”  My daughter asked me, “Mommy? How do you make a neon god?”  I kind of chuckled and said I didn’t know but she could take glow sticks and make them into a stick figure if she wanted lol. I don’t think she ever did that. 

Then she heard an Eminem rap song where one line was, “Like a fuck you for Christmas, his gift is a curse.”  My daughter got this confused look on his face and said, “How did he get a fuck you for Christmas?”  I facepalmed and reminded myself not to listen to Eminem in her presence anymore. I said something like, “He didn’t really. Someone just did something bad to him and he’s mad about it.”  My explanation made her more confused. 

Kids just have to outgrow the concrete/literal phase before you can really explain nuances, or things that are artistic/figurative to them. 

I “Kid” You Not 🐐

 You can’t make this stuff up. Today I spent the day in Austin doing my side jobs. There were just more of my favorite ones there and on the way.  But good lord, Austin seemed chaotic today. On my way from Elgin to Pflugerville, apparently there were no actual highways for me to take, and my gps took me on a wild goose chase down this two lane country ass road with absolutely nothing. A red SUV started tailgating the hell out of me so I sped up a little until I was going about 15 over the speed, and she was still on my ass. I said that’s it, I’m not speeding any more for her. She can pass me when the opportunity arises. But it never did. It was not only just constantly a double yellow line, but sharp curves in the road that had posted speeds of only 20. There was no way people, including myself with red on my tail, was only going to do 20. It was scary and irritating. This woman was very intimidating. 

Then, out of nowhere, I go around a sharp curve and a herd of about 10-12 goats start crossing the street. They just moseyed on by as if they owned the road!  Maybe they did. I slowed down for them almost to a complete stop, and the woman in the red SUV tailgating me must not have seen that I was slowing down for a dozen goats, because she angrily swerved into the other lane to pass me, even though it was a double yellow line. She came within an INCH of hitting one of the goats. I honked my horn and the goat that she almost hit gave her his own little “F You” by doing this little skippity run with his back legs and going “Baaa!” At that point, I am pretty sure I heard her car stall. She moved over more to the left, out of oncoming traffic, but didn’t pass me. Something happened that incapacitated her, maybe, because she didn’t pass me even after the goats were out of the road. She just stayed there. When the goats crossed I just drove on. It was a good thing she didn’t actually hit the goat, then I probably would have had to called the cops. 

I really really hate being tailgated on like that, especially when I’m speeding up to get the person off my tail. It makes me feel paranoid like someone is after me. It almost makes me feel like someone wants to pull a Princess Diana on me. 

No T-Shirt Quilting for Me!

 A while back, I decided I wanted to try and learn to make t-shirt quilts. So I bought a bunch on 25 cent day and cut them to make squares. I bought ten yards of fusible interfacing in order to stabilize the knit fabric. 

The other night, I finally got them out and tried to iron on the fusible web. It just wasn’t working. I tried a couple different things.  I did a damp cloth. It wasn’t working, and my iron phobia was starting to take over. 

I suffer a little bit of iron phobia due to an incident with my abusive aunt when I was a teenager. My mom was in the hospital at the time, and she stayed with us to “help”, even though she was actually the opposite of help. She was ironing my dad’s shirts and didn’t like something I said and blew up at me in a rage. I mouthed off to her a little I guess and she pulled the iron with her as she lunged at me to try and strike me with it. Of course it came unplugged from the wall, but of course was still hot. I started running all over the den and kitchen, and she ran after me, constantly yielding the hot iron. I was jumping up on furniture and knocking things over to get away from her. Eventually I got to the front door and just ran down the street to a grocery store about four blocks away. The store manager brought me into his office to call my dad at work. My dad ended up leaving work early to come and get me from the grocery store and take me back home. When we got home, the cops were there. My aunt called them because I ran away. I told the cop what my aunt tried to do and he didn’t care because I didn’t actually get burned. 

Being a seamstress requires ironing. There are some projects that I’ve overcome my iron phobia to do, like minor patchwork where you have to iron after every seam. I can iron new fabric purchases if they are small, but if they’re larger than half a yard I’ll either cut them or ask my mom to iron them for me. 

Fusible interfacing and this t shirt project just isn’t going to happen, and that’s ok because I have a lot of other things to work on. It’s perfectly ok to let go of something that’s not for you, even if at one time you really wanted it. 

I saw this picture on social media saying something to the effect of “This is motherhood”. I kind of don’t like things like this. The attitude behind them can lead to child abuse. 

I sent it to my daughter, thinking back to when she was that age. If she’d witnessed that happening to me, she would have lost her ever loving mind. Here’s what she said about it:

She would have freaked out. This kid not giving a shit that his mother fell down the stairs like that has two possibilities: 1. He looks like he’s just coming in from another room and didn’t see it happen. 2.  He’s too young to understand the gravity of the situation only seeing that his mom is lying at the foot of the stairs. Or 3. He did witness all of it and is a psychopath. 

No person, child or adult, who witnesses something like that is going to be “screw you, go do something for me.”  We will all run up to the person asking if they’re ok, including little ones like this.  Even an infant who witnessed this happening to their mom would probably start crying. 

This is not some accurate description of “motherhood”.  That’s my unpopular opinion for the day. Thanks for listening.