Didn't I Hear All This On Dr. Phil?

Ever had a couple glasses (bottles) of wine and started to comprise your list of relationship "warning signs"? You know, actual things that have happened in your past relationships that you were to stupid to heed but in retrospect, with a head soaked in a little too much alcohol, you realize can be tragically hilarious?

Cuz really, pain and sadness not only deepen our strength and give a greater luster to our colors, but it also gives us some kick ass stories to tell as we whistle past the graveyard.

• STBX put an engagement ring on my finger and as I was going all gushy he says "Yeah, that ring has only been on the finger of one other girl. She turned me down." Hmmm. Smart girl.
  
• My former father-in-law warned STBX against marrying me because I was filled with too much "moxie". What the hell does THAT mean? That I'd get a little pissy if you hit me? Apparently it was a latent moxie, also known as "Mamma Bear" syndrome.
• My former father-in-law explaining to me, as I held my newborn, how it was important to know that you should beat your kids if you needed to, cuz it's the only way to get your point across at times... Yeah, thanks for that Doctor Spock. Hooray for stellar parenting! He also chewed me out for dressing my little girl in blue because it would make her "funny". Sorry to rain on your parade dad-in-law, but the first signs of a lesbian baby are the booties. They will be VERY SENSIBLE.
  
• After being found out as a cheater, having STBX literally look me in the eye and say "You know, I could go and visit her on the weekends and stay here during the week." This was about 24 hours before I learned the whole story. This was his line of thinking and to this day, I regret not dope slapping him with a crowbar.

We all have them...cringe-worthy moments...let's discuss!

Self Induced Domestic Assult

While out walking Thing 1 and Thing 2 this morning (or perhaps I should call them Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dumber), another poor soul with two dogs walked by about a quarter of a block away.

Since Kirby, the adopted dog from the Cloquet Shelter, thinks I am indeed a Goddess and I do indeed own the world (he failed to get that memo on division of responsibilities), and I of course OWN every street in Lakeside, he went APE SHIT!

From being at the end of his leash heading east, he whipped around and not only headed west, but a little northwest.

That's when my hand holding his leash landed squarely in the middle of my own gut.

Yes, I sucker punched myself this morning. Thankfully, it was on a well populated street so that I not only made an ass of myself in public, I will be famed in song and story as the "Lakeside Woman Who Took Her Own Breath Away".

Instead of being a story about a frequent shopper at Smitten Kitten, it will instead be a sad sorry tale of a woman who punches herself in the stomach and then spends five minutes holding onto a tree, gasping for breath, and checking to see if she has started to spit up blood.

Right after that, she straps on her helmet and climbs aboard the short bus.

I am so glad it's Friday.

Applying Strong Upward Motion To The Bootstraps

Random observations from the past two weeks of my life:

I drove from Cloquet to Duluth and witnessed gas prices at five different gas stations. Highest price? $2.70. Lowest price? $2.49. Some people obviously aren't getting the memo.

I ordered half a pig awhile ago from Green Pastures Dairy. My little piggy went to market on Tuesday. Wednesday night, my little piggy was in my freezer. I know have bacon for the apocalypse. I also have an entire chest freezer filled with porcine goodness as well as farm raised chickens and buffalo. Next week? Power outage!

The Youth Exchange jerk from the previous post apologized for my "misinterpretation" of his behavior. I registered my complaint with another member of the interview panel and he came back with his apology which, I must admit, is quite funny. He is restrained and well mannered and asks my daughter to reconsider because she was chosen to go onto the next tier of interviews. Her response? Yeah, started with an "F", ended with a "U".

My son started taking Russian this week. My daughter can speak to him in Japanese, he can sputter out some basic Russian, and I can sit between them like Bill Murray in Lost in Translation.

While watching the news and learning about folks that decided to buy a home fifty miles away from the husband's job in an upscale suburb, I watched the guy talk about how gas prices made him put $250 into his SUV every two days and yes, they were three months behind on their house payment, and yes, they bought more house than they really needed but it was so AFFORDBALE at the time, and then learning that this guy had access to a light rail line which connected to a bus which could get him to work but his answer to that was "I'm not the kind of guy to take public transportation", well, I really have a hard time mustering up sympathy for this family. But don't worry, they're voting for the party that has the most faith in Jesus because hey, as you know, SUV's run on faith. I on the other hand, was the un-american who was shouting at my tv that these rotten turds were probably going to get bailed out with my tax money. Here are your bootstraps bitches, I suggest you use them.

On the flip side, I got a call from the DFL a couple nights ago with an extremly pushy woman that suggested I donate $150. She was amazing in her ability to read her script and not deviate in the least. I snorted at the suggestion of $150 and told her I needed to buy food for my family. She actually came back with "But you obviously don't realize how important the issues are ma'am." "Really?" I asked her. "More important than gas in my car, food for my children, and paying off the thousands of dollars in medical debt that we have because we're uninsured? Really?" She then launched right back into her script as if I had just told her I would be selling off one of my summer homes and a yacht tomorrow. I finally broke in and told her that if she continued, I would vote for Norm Coleman and it would be all her fault. It was at this point that she discontinued the call.

As Fannie Lou Hamer said so eloquently, "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired."

Immaculate Gutters

It started because I needed a ladder. We have lived in our house for twelve years or so now and we have never cleaned out the gutters on our garage. Not that this fact haunts me or anything, although it seemed to haunt our old neighbor as he pointed out to me a couple times "You have trees growing in your gutters!"

He was a bit of a dramatist. They were only seedlings.

The only reason I wanted to clean out the gutters as of late is that I would like to invest in a rain barrel next year and it is best placed below your gutter downspout. Well, in order for THAT little arrangement to work, you actually need to have water flowing through your downspout.

So I've been casing out ladders. I haven't really wanted to mortgage my soul for one since the job would only take five minutes and rarely do I wander around my house saying "If only I had a nine foot extension ladder, all my problems would be solved!"
Ladders can be expensive. Either that or I am really cheap.

Thus, last weekend when I went to the Superior Dragon Boat Races with the only member of my family that cared to attend (my dog), and I stopped at a garage sale on the way home only to find a nine foot extension ladder, I was giddy with excitement. I must admit, I do have the Midas touch when it comes to garage sales. If I ruminate on what I'm really looking for, I will find it at a garage sale within a week.

Now, this might seem like a fabulous skill. It is tempered, however, by my inability to look at a situation rationally and ask myself a key question: How in the hell am I going to fit a 9 foot extension ladder into a Geo Prizm and drive over the bridge with no one to help me but a Pembroke Welsh Corgi who really doesn't care one whit about my gutters?

Well, I rolled down the back window and put the ladder into the back seat with a fair amount of it hanging out of the passenger side. I then wrapped my right arm around the ladder to keep it from extending as the wind caught it and buffered it like a sail if I went so much as fifteen miles an hour. I was also concerned that I would take out a pedestrian as they waited to cross the street. I'm guessing that not too many people are expecting Geo Prizms to be sporting ladders hanging out the back window.

I did have enough sense to put on my emergency flashers and I kept up a mantra as I started over the bridge. It went something like "shit! Shit! SHIT!!!!". A quarter of the way across the bridge, my arm holding the ladder was numb, halfway across the bridge, my shoulder started screaming, and three quarters of the way across the bridge, a hornet appeared and proceeded to sting my dog on the ass.

Of course I didn't know there was a hornet in the car. All I knew was my dog suddenly started to yelp and spin in circles in the passenger seat, knocking his butt against the gear shifter and forcing the car into neutral.

Thankfully, a vast amount of society can recognize an idiot when they see them and cars steered well clear of me. I was able to whip my arm from the ladder, pop the car back into drive, and grab the ladder again before it blew out of the car, over the bridge, and undoubtedly onto a 1000 foot laker below, sinking it and killing all the sailors aboard before they ever left the harbor.

Shakily, I took the first exit once I got to the MN side of the bridge and composed myself in the parking lot of Goodwill. There is nothing like overweight people wearing white leggings three sizes too small with blue flowered underwear to calm the mind and bring one back to reality.

I found the offending hornet, disposed of it, kissed the dog, said a prayer for four different religions, and made my way home where I cleaned out my damn gutters.

If I had realized that this would have been such a simple operation, I would have done it years ago.