The Torn Pages

Archive for October, 2005

Blogus Interruptus

Because of my daughter’s short trek from Kansas… (YIPPEE!) and my overwhelming workload (BOO! HISS!) I may not get to visit your blog for a couple of days. Please feel free to carry on without me. Talk amongst yourselves. Hell, you can even talk about me, if you want to! I’ll be around soon to catch up with you.

One of the Fastest Ways to Piss Me Off

Is to let me totally process a new job for you, send it to you via e-mail, then have you write me back and say, “keep the job as there is another field coming and I want them all done as one farm”.

In other words, I have just spent an hour of my life doing something for nothing. Dumbass.

Visiting the Darkness

The link to The Dark Madness will be permanently posted over there —> so you can check it out from time to time. It isn’t there to bum anyone out. It’s just some other pieces that make up this creature known as me. Although I’ve been sending people over there recently because of the Domestic Violence Awareness month, it’s not all about DV, but rather many of those darker shades of glass that I still look through occasionally. Remember, it’s just like this blog, it’s mine and only I am subject to its critical reviews. I’m not aiming to entertain the masses, but rather purge the demons. Just so you know…

Oh, and these posts will be sinking after the end of the month, but (Becky) remember there are new posts below…

The Brave Bloggers

In honor of October being Domestic Violence Awareness month, I’ve been inspired by some brave bloggers out there. Bitchitude and 3T have done a wonderful job of sharing their stories. They make me strong. I’m ready to share. I have another blog. It’s subtitled “the other side of the happy life“. I put it out there to purge some of what I’ve gone through. Welcome to the Dark Madness.

(I’ve edited this to stay on top for awhile so everyone gets a chance at it…)

Clueless in Iowa

Hubby: You know, when the banker came out and rode with me in the combine the other day he was saying some really nice things about you.
Me: Oh, yeah?
Hubby: Yeah. I think he really likes you. He’s really impressed with you.
Me:…
Hubby: No, you aren’t “fooling” him.
Me: Have you been reading my blog?
Hubby: Why?
Me: I just put a post on the other one about that very thing.
Hubby: What other one?
Me: You know, the Dark Mad… the other blog… the one about all the bad stuff
Hubby: I just thought that was a post on your regular blog!
Me: …
Hubby: How many blogs do you have?!?!

Done?

Hubby: We’re done combining!
Me: GREAT!
Hubby: So… are you done with your work?
Me:…
Hubby: Guess that’s a no, huh?

A Christmas Story

It’s a bit early, but bear with me. I get to be the mom and tell a tale on Em. (Payback for “Okla-ohshit-homa”…)

When she was just a wee type, about three years old, she was such a cutie. Red hair, porcelain skin, big brown eyes and a yellow stuffed cat permanently attached to her arm.

One Christmas we were having the family to our house. We open a few gifts on Christmas eve at my in-laws, then they and my parents would come over Christmas morning to open the rest.

My parents lived in a nearby town and we’d been there a few days before, bringing gifts home with us to save them some hauling.

(Children should leave now – major spoiler alert!)

Because we have four children, Christmas eve becomes rather hectic. “Santa” must fill the stockings, eat the cookies, drink the milk, and put every 412-piece Barbie dream house or matchbox car set together before finally being able to lay his/her head on the pillow – only to be awakened at 5 a.m. by squealing laughter and whispers of ‘look what Santa brought’ …’can we open our stockings now?’… ‘when can we open presents?’ That’s the way it’s supposed to work anyway. That is until a little red-headed-pea-picker (as Hubby called her) came up with another plan.

The stockings are hung by the chimney with care (okay, we didn’t have a chimney – they were hung on the entertainment center). The cookies and milk were history. The ‘santa’ gifts were wrapped – always in paper different than any under the tree – that had to be hidden away since, of course, I wouldn’t have the same paper as Santa! To bed, to bed… at last… to bed.

Noises penetrate the fog of sleep. What am I hearing? It makes no sense. I start to follow where I think I’m hearing the noise. Downstairs. Uh-oh. Downstairs – where the Christmas tree is. I round the corner and there she is…my sweet little red-headed devil child. Happy as a clam amidst paper and ribbon and boxes. All over the room. She turns and gives me a million-watt smile and says, “Hi mommy!”

Damn.Damn.Damn. Now what do I do? As much as I wanted to pull her limb from limb, you can’t exactly beat your child to within an inch of their lives on Christmas Eve, can you? Believe me… I had to have that discussion with myself for a good 10 minutes. I pick her up, tell her she isn’t to tell the other kids about what they’re getting. (She’s always been unusually good at keeping secrets.) …and sent her off to bed with a hug.

Now becomes the fun part. I get to re-wrap everything! Oh, yeah… including my parents’ gifts. No clue who they go to, but by God, they got wrapped. Needless to say it made for an interesting Christmas morning. I’m sure glad she found other things to facinate her as the years went on!

I pity her husband… and her dog.

Friday Flashback

Originally post November 2, 2004

Dear Ex-Son-In-Law

There is a reason you are an ‘ex’. I take that back. There are several reasons. One of them is because you are a dumbass. Yes, I really mean that. I normally don’t like to be critical of the father of my grandchild, but this time you have really done it. The word fits.

Why, oh why, did you forget about Beggar’s Night? Didn’t you notice little children dressed in wild costumes going door-to-door through your neighborhood? Didn’t you turn on the television anytime this weekend and notice that Halloween was here? Didn’t my grandchild show up on your doorstep on Friday night all excited about the Halloween party he had at school that day? Didn’t he show you his costume? Didn’t he express excitement about seeing all the other kids and collecting gobs of candy? Did you really “forget” – or were you just being lazy? Either way, you are not excused. To a six-year-old, this is a big deal.

Dumbass.

While You Were Musing

After posting that little tidbit about memories, it got me to thinking. Memories are one of those elusive things. They can pop up unexpected with a few notes of a song or a brief scent floating on the air in a crowded theater. They can be something that lives inside of you that won’t leave you alone and haunts you, in the case of a bad memory. It can effect your whole life… for years. I know. It did.

It can be happy, triggered by a holiday or a movie re-running on HBO in the dead of night. A child may laugh and you suddenly are transported to a time when your children were small and giggling came easier. It can be a favorite food. For me, the combination of a cup of cocoa (yes, Em, the real stuff) and a piece of buttered toast will take me back to being four-years-old and sitting in my grandmothers’ kitchen. A train whistle will remind me of dark nights sitting on the stair landing next to a small window and watching the trains go by across the block.

Sometimes you have to dig for a memory. It can be a good one, but it’s gotten stuck behind the everyday this-is-why-I-make-lists stuff. I’ve always been a list maker, notetaker. People ask me why. I say, my brain only holds so much information. If I make a list then I can remember one thing; where I put the list. I don’t have to remember all the things that are on the list! I make grocery lists and lists of things to do and songs I hear I like and blog thoughts. Recently, they have been memory lists. Things I want to share. I want to write down. Things I don’t want to lose.

Bear with me. These may pop out from time to time. It’s all part of the process. Besides. It’s my blog, remember? I make the rules… you just have to put up with them. Or leave. Whatever. I hope you stay. I hope you find something in my memories that spark one of your own. Good, bad or indifferent. Of course, the bad ones will probably be over on that other place… ’cause that is where they belong. Don’t worry. I have lots of happy ones, too…

Can I Cash In Now?