Thursday, July 26, 2012

Glory-FREAKING-Hallelujah


I had asked my grandkids to help me straighten up the living area once and was ignored. Twice more I asked the same question, twice more I was greeted with the same non-response.  I got a little loud, yelling “HEY” in their general direction. 8 limpid eyes rolled towards me, blinking furiously as if they had just been woken from a trance or pulled up from the depths of the sea. The children make little sighing, grunting strung together sounds which all seem to end with the only understandable word being ‘tired’.  After 15 minutes of this I shouted (This is how you know I am a college educated, literate, refined and calm woman) “Dammit all, if you can make a freaking mess for 10 freaking hours straight you can help pick up your freaking mess  for ten freaking minutes without wearing your scrawny freaking mess-making ass freaking out!  FREAK IT, FREAKEDY FREAK FREAK FREAK IT ALL!”

At this point I feel I must explain a few things:
  1.          I stopped smoking. Since homicide is frowned upon, and lollipops are NOT a satisfactory oral substitute, I find that my temper is, on occasion, a bit quick and disproportionate.
    2.    Yelling ‘freaking’ is just not as satisfying as dropping an F-Bomb so I need many more of them, more and louder it seems, to get my point across with the same intensity. I have yet to determine the number of ‘FREAKING’s necessary to make people snap to it as crisply as one well placed F*CKING would have done before I became a kinder, gentler person but I can tell you the eleven  repetitions  in the sentences above are still not nearly enough.
    3.    We were supposed to close on a new (to us) house a month ago. In anticipation of the move my son, his wife and four children moved in with us as they would be renting the house we are in now. Their lease ending overlapped our closing by a few days, NO BIG DEAL. Surely everyone can get along for a few days! A month later all 8 of us are nearing the end of our patience and my poor house is a shambles. Boxes line every wall; people are crammed into every room…. Picture cold war era Soviet Union style (but bigger, granted) living quarters. Without the vodka. Not even a Zima. Argh
    4.    Our air conditioner chose a day with a high of 98 degrees and about the same percentage of humidity to conk out on us. I have vaulted ceilings upstairs so by 6 pm it was 100 degrees in my bedroom and still warming up nicely. My husband was working late, fixing someone ELSE’S air, and wasn’t sure when he would be home.
    5.    Gobstoppers stuck to the carpet stomped on with bare heel when one is nicotine starved, sweat soaked and claustrophobic are the freaking tripper of all triggers. Who’d a thunk it?

The kids, like wild animals penned up together for too long snarled and snapped at each other until their mother jumped in. With lots of tattling, ‘I didn’t touch it’s and ‘that’s not fair’s the rooms were picked up, swept up and vacuumed up in a random kids-don’t-see-mess-but-mom-promised-us-junk-food-if-we-do-it sort of way. I felt a little bad about losing it, but not enough to not appreciate the now litter free rooms. 

By the time they were done the kids had forgotten what they were snapping at each other about and were enthralled with the forgotten treasures they had found while cleaning up. I pointed out to the tots that they had complained for an hour and only cleaned for 15 minutes. Although I clearly remember doing the same thing when I was little I don’t remember WHY so I decided to consider this an invaluable anthropological experience. When I asked them, because I am a foolish granny who apparently loves redundant and/or rhetorical questions why they balked so when I asked them to help me clean up responded “But it’s easier to make a mess!”  How can I argue with that? 'Freaking-A' I responded.

My son piddled about in the kitchen with supper and my husband came home and Glory-FREAKING-Hallelujah had the needed part for our AC in the garage. I ate my meal, went upstairs to a now seemingly balmy 96 degree room and listened to the hum of the air conditioner while I contemplated what I had learned.

Air conditioning can be considered a necessity in the south in July if for no other reason than that it stops gobstoppers from melting into the carpet. Kids never, ever change from generation to generation, and there might be some merit to being a pack rat although I will deny I ever said that if called out by my mate, I am glad I stopped smoking even if it isn’t freaking easy and my life is never dull. All in all a handful or worthwhile lessons.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

You shouldn't be ashamed to say how someone you loved this much died...

One of the reasons I stepped up my writing these last few years is to relive the moments, bittersweet all, spent with my son who committed suicide on August 5th, 2008. His father, having also died by his own hand in 1994, left a deep and terrible void in all of our lives. Both fought the good fight, but in the end mental illness and fatigue won out. While these tragedies scarred my family for life we are far from alone. Tens of thousands of men, women and children across the United States take their own lives each year leaving devastated families and friends behind asking why. The Out of the Darkness walks are a small step in the direction of clarity, bringing together broken hearts trying to mend (albeit with missing pieces always) and people wanting to help end this horriffic scourge. My friends and family are participating in a walk here, in Atlanta, in November. Please, join us or support us if you can by clicking on the link I shared below. 

                                       In loving memory of my little buddy and baby boy.
                                                Henry Roger Gramme 1986-2008




If you want to know how my family and I are coping with these tragedies or better understand what survivors of this heartbreaking experience are dealing with you can learn about my book here. This is certainly no how to manual or gut wrenching expose. It is instead the tale of a family that holds on tightly to each other throughout this bumpy jouney we call life. Click here==>   'Road Trip: Anecdotes and Essays of a Life Well Traveled' to purchase. I am donating ALL monies per book sold from July 15th - November 1th-- Help me make the largest donation possible!

Monday, July 2, 2012

The Price of a good security fence...

Thanks to my cousin Dianne Richard for this one. I figured anything that can make a person laugh out loud is worth sharing. :) Happy Monday everyone!

This was allegedly written by a retired dentist. 

We have the standard 6 ft. fence in the backyard, and a few months ago, I heard about burglaries increasing dramatically in the entire city. To make sure this never happened to me, I got an electric fence and ran a single wire along the top of the fence.

Actually, I got the biggest cattle charger Tractor Supply had, made for 26 miles of fence. I then used an 8 ft. long ground rod, and drove it 7.5 ft. into the ground. The ground rod is the key, with the more you have in the ground, the better the fence works.

One day I'm mowing the back yard with my cheapo Wal-Mart 6 hp big wheel push mower. The hot wire is broken and laying out in the yard. I knew for a fact that I unplugged the charger. I pushed the mower around the wire and reached down to grab it, to throw it out of the way.

It seems as though I hadn't remembered to unplug it after all.

Now I'm standing there, I've got the running lawnmower in my right hand and the 1.7 gigavolt fence wire in the other hand. Keep in mind the charger is about the size of a marine battery and has a picture of an upside down cow on fire on the cover.

Time stood still.

The first thing I notice is my pecker trying to climb up the front side of my body. My ears curled downwards and I could feel the lawnmower ignition firing in the backside of my brain. Every time that Briggs & Stratton rolled over, I could feel the spark in my head. I was literally at one with the engine.

It seems as though the fence charger and the piece of shit lawnmower were fighting over who would control my electrical impulses.

Science says you cannot crap, pee, and vomit at the same time. I beg to differ. Not only did I do all three at once, but my bowels emptied 3 different times in less than half of a second. It was a Matrix kind of bowel movement, where time is creeping along and you're all leaned back and BAM BAM BAM you just crap your pants 3 times. It seemed like there were minutes in between but in reality it was so close together. It was like exhaust pulses from a big block Chevy turning 8 grand.

At this point I'm about 30 minutes (maybe 2 seconds) into holding onto the fence wire. My hand is wrapped around the wire palm down so I can't let go. I grew up on a farm so I know all about electric fences. But Dad always had those piece of shit chargers made by International or whoever that were like 9 volts and just kinda tickled.

This one I could not let go of. The 8 ft. long ground rod is now accepting signals from me through the permadamp Ark-La-Tex river bottom soil. At this point I'm thinking I'm going to have to just man up and take it, until the lawnmower runs out of gas.

'Damn!,' I think, as I remember I just filled the tank!

Now the lawnmower is starting to run rough. It has settled into a loping run pattern as if it had some kind of big lawnmower race cam in it. Covered in poop, pee, and with my vomit on my chest, I think 'Oh God please die... Pleeeeaze die'. But nooooo, it settles into the rough lumpy cam idle nicely and remains there, like a big bore roller cam EFI motor waiting for the go command from its owner's right foot.

So here I am in the middle of July, 104 degrees, 80% humidity, standing in my own backyard, begging God to kill me. God did not take me that day.. He left me there covered in my own fluids to writhe in the misery my own stupidity had created.

I honestly don't know how I got loose from the wire.

I woke up laying on the ground hours later. The lawnmower was beside me, out of gas. It was later on in the day and I was sunburned.

There were two large dead grass spots where I had been standing, and then another long skinny dead spot where the wire had laid while I was on the ground still holding on to it. I assume I finally had a seizure and in the resulting thrashing had somehow let go of the wire.

Upon waking from my electrically induced sleep I realized a few things:

1 - Three of the fillings in my teeth have melted.

2 - I now have cramps in the bottoms of my feet and my right butt cheek (not the left, just the right).

3 - Poop, pee, and vomit when all mixed together, do not smell as bad as you might think.

4 - My left eye will not open.

5 - My right eye will not close.

6 - The lawnmower runs like a sumbitch now. Seriously! I think our little session cleared out some carbon fouling or something, because it was better than new after that.

7 - My nuts are still smaller than average yet they are almost a foot long.

8 - I can turn on the TV in the game room by farting while thinking of the number 4 (I still don't understand this???).

That day changed my life. I now have a newfound respect for things. I appreciate the little things more, and now I always triple check to make sure the fence is unplugged before I mow.

The good news, is that if a burglar does try to come over the fence, I can clearly visualize what my security system will do to him, and THAT gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling all over, which also reminds me to triple check before I mow.