Captain Me Planet

So. Last night, in my dream, I was one of an elite company of six women who were fashion models for a line of clothing designed specifically to benefit breast cancer. Does this exist? If not, you can’t have it. I’m going into business. Each piece of clothing has the little pink ribbon somewhere on it.

Anyway. I am the only baffoon in the bunch. The others are professionals. I am not. I can’t get my outfits on correctly. I put two different shoes on. Some wierd hot pant shorts thing I’m supposed to wear, and buttons up the side, keeps falling off and causing me to flash the patrons. In one scene, I decide to wade through a pool in my outfit, and all the color comes out. The coordinator of our gig is mad. You can’t see the little ribbon anymore.

We walk around swanky dining rooms, where wealthy people eat and drink. And at some point, get courted by extremely wealthy oil barons from the Middle East. They’re all dark, swarthy, and wearing super chic and expensive suits. And one of them wants to show me his 9 billion dollar estate with marble stairways, alahambra like architecture, and a back estate area full of horses. He want me to marry him.

I tell him I’m married already. He gets mad at me. And at some point, I think he messes with the brakes on my Rolls, and I crash into the gate trying to leave his American palace. This makes my husband mad.

That’s pretty much the last thing I remember. Except that as my sister models walk beautifully around the dining tables, showing off our Breast Cancer Benefit Fashion, they look like Jade off America’s Next Top Model. I look like an SNL spoof. All awkward, gangly, wooden and unphotogenic. Pretty much like it is. I can’t jut out my chin, and raise my knees that high. My knees tend to be knocked. I am unbelievably uncoordinated.

On to other bits of minor interest:

The children did this Captain the favor of cleaning out the old Previa’s glovebox. This is what we found. I testify right now, there is not one itty bitty tidbit of exaggeration here. I wish there were.

1 half City of Atlanta map
3 tire coupons
2 infant seat instruction manuals (we haven’t had an infant is 4.5 years)
Georgetown SC warning for speeding ticket 6/03
5 matchbooks
2 notepads
2 emmissions test slips, 4 and 5 yrs. old
1 friend’s CD
6 straws
2 pencils
1 pen
1 cigar cutter
something I can’t identify
other car key, missing 7 years (all this time, we’ve wondered where The Colonel’s copy was, but never duplicated mine)
1 headset
6 expired insurance cards
1 empty Ziploc® baggie
4 bills for car repairs
1 set TV antennae, in original packaging
1 TV operational manual
1 Pawleys Island summer resident bumper sticker
2 car seat registration cards
12 maps
1 Erector Set piece
1 suction cup
2 sweeteners
6 insta clears (for glasses)
somthing else I can’t identify
3 disposable pee bags
1 kids praise tape
1 broken disposable camera
1 sermon tape, 4 yrs, 1 state and 3 moves ago
1 of those see-the-baby-backwards-in-the-seat, put-it-on-the-rearview-mirror that always popped off and scared the *&^ out of me.
1 metal shoulder harness adjuster
1 bunjee cord
1 set earplugs
1 bandaid
1 Imetrex ( I don’t even get migraines)
2 antacids
3 Tylenol
4 stay awakes (cheap NoDoz)
1 Immodium
1 safety pin
3 window shades
$4.52, mostly in pennies

And, about the dreams again, after reading the Dynasty inspired episode, The Colonel reminded me of a dream I had when we were first married.

Apparently, he and I were cats. In trouble, and running from something. But we could fly if we chewed grape bubble gum fast enough. So the dream was a lot of frenetic gum chewing to get up and over the city, as cats, and away from our evil enemies. Whoever they were.

Something’s not right about my brain.

Private One, our eldest son, 10 and a half, just. started. a. shower. for. himself. without. being. asked.

Because he just felt like it.

My dreams were whacked out last night.

I think it may have started with what is now my new favorite show, Shalom in the Home, and is hosted by my new favorite person, The Rabbi Shmuley. Love him.

For instance.

Parents today are guilty of believing that they can have healthy children without having a healthy family environment.

There are no bad children. Only bad parents. When our kids act up, it’s time to look in the mirror.

Have you really been successful if the people who mean the most to you, think the least of you? (or don’t think of you at all?, my addition)

These, I’ve just learned, are called Shmuleyisms. Wow. He has his own isms.

So, last night’s show. Girl gone so wild. Bad, bad behavior. Only 9 years old. A little demon. She literally growled. But then, her parents were beasts. Well, one beast and a beat up, defeated, TV addicted Mom.

This kid is 9. She hits her parents. Yells at them. Talks back like I’ve never heard. And I thought I was a rebellious teen. Whew. She makes my angst ridden youth look like Gidget. And her Mom just sits there like a punching bag. And the Dad says something brilliant like do something. Anyway, you get the picture.

Just let it be know that The Rabbi Wonderful had their number, and got right to business. Love him.

So, my dream? My gentle, bright, albeit hard-headed 10 year old was out of control. Sneering at me. Grabbed my wrist with one hand and hit me with the other. Defiant beyond imagination. And. I. was. furious. (that’s probably what got me about last night’s show…they didn’t seem to give a rip their child was on route to total head spinning and yarfing pea soup)

And then I was sad. Devastated. But before I could exact discipline, some sort of party suddenly happened at our neighbor’s (that partially morphed into an attempted “intervention” by our old church people that we divorced) and I had to send the defiant Private home. To wait. While I told those church people what they could do with their intervention. And then when I got there, I realized he was having a party of his own. With like, 15 other kids off all ages, I’ve never even seen before. And when I asked him where his siblings were, he just shrugged. Oooooh, I was mad.

Now, in the real world, he would not be home alone, especially in charge of his siblings. Nor would he ever have a friend over without my being home.

So all the kids were like, Mo-o-o-m, chill, let the guy live a little (did I say he’s 10?), and I’m all like, chill? Did you say chill to me? I’ll chill you, you jerk, or some equally dumb sounding comeback. Yeah, I was scary.

But then, the really interesting part. To me, at least. And it’s my blog. Everything morphed, and I had a gravely ill infant in NICU, while wearing evening wear befitting Dynasty.

Is that Heather Locklear?

And I arrive back home bearing concerning news, but there are people I vaguely know. Acquaintances lounging all over our home, the gardens, the fountains and pool. While my cook serves them drink after drink (we’re living some sort of Danielle Steele scene). And my husband, who looks like my husband, but is not my husband, is cavorting around his home office desk with a very young and perky (read boobs) assistant.

I am so devastated. Again. As I try to tell him we need to talk about John (the child’s name), his assistant fake plants a kiss on him, and leers at me (was some sort of weed in my burger last night?). I just walk out, with my husband trailing after me, offering weak it was nothings.

I retreat to my dressing room. It is larger than the first floor of our current home. Filled to the rafters with designer clothing. Multi-hundred dollar shoes. Furs (I don’t even care for furs). Dressing gowns of silk. Diamonds.

And I start to rip it all apart in a fit of rage. But hear some women chattering. So I hide behind the Chinese imported armoir, and wait. They’ve come in to try my things on! They don’t think I’m home! And here I am, grieving my ill infant son (have I seen too many soaps?)! They’re getting silk robes and ascots out for their husbands! The indignity!!!

I wait for them to leave, and think. I know. I’m stopping this outrage right now (apparently, we just live some sort of lifestyle, like in that 80s movie about the weekend at Bernie’s, where people just mooch off us all the time, whether or not we’re actually hosting anything). So. it. has. to. stop.

I charge into the main house, and begin ranting everybody out! Out, out, out! You too! And put down that vase (although, I said v-a-a-z).
And some prissy guy was passed out in a green cashmere dressing robe of my husband’s, so I just jerked off of his body, and pushed him out the glass doors, naked. Yeah, that’ll show’im.

At this point, I realize I have some repugnant teenage children, like a boy and a girl, who have their friends over, and have become stricken by my looney behavior. Tough shit, I scream to them. It’s time to pull a little weight around here (I don’t really scream those sorts of words to my real children, of course, desperate times call for desperate measures).

I only allow my mother to stay. Although for the life of me, I can’t figure out why she’d ever allow such a thing to be going on. This dream mom must not represent my mom, cause she’d be putting a smack down on that silliness, and jerking a knot in my husband’s something.

And then I start deliriously laughing and stating that I feel soooo much better. It was time to clean house. Get rid of those moochers. At this point, my husband murmurs something about institutiolizing me, but I remind him that all this is my name, and he can’t get to it, for some reason or another, if I’m put away, so he shuts up. And I get to picking up the mess, and formulating how to start over.

Then, I remember our infant son, John, and begin to cry beautifully, and tell my husband what may be wrong. This brings us together, and he abandons his ridiculous behavior with that bimbo, we fire her, and reclaim our life together.

I really did dream all of this.

Man, I’ve got to stop watching Lifetime. Or, start trying to get this stuff published, and produced for Lifetime. Maybe starring Judith Light, or Meredith Baxter Birney.

at the fact that a family, that we’ve had to break up with (can’t find the post to which to refer, but I covered this at some point), continues to call. A couple of times a week or so. Which we NEVAH answer. We’ve said we can’t see them anymore (for reasons I won’t belabor here). We’ve said our children can’t play anymore (ditto). And just now, twice in a row, they called. And on the second time, had their son leave a sad, mope-y message. Imagine down, 11 year old voice…Hi (insert our last name and make it plural). Just calling to tell you we miss you. Hope we can see you soon. God loves you. Um, we hope we can see you soon. Bye (with even more mope-y tone). Whaaaaaa??? What about we can’t see you anymore do they not understand? Do I have to change our names and go into an ex-church member protection program?

At Valentine’s, with 4 minutes warning, via our answering machine, they showed up at our door, children bearing cards. What mother would put her children through this? I had to say thank you, and close the door on their expectant faces. Just trust me, this is not a healthy family in any stretch of the imagination. This break up was necessary.

So now, every few days or weeks, the phone ominously rings again…and that number appears on our ID (thank you God for caller ID). And I get a knot in my stomach for having to not answer. And I am concerned for our children if they see the number and know we won’t answer. Or if they hear the kind of message we had today, from a friend they once had and still love. They can only understand so much, obviously.

Do I get confrontational? Rude? Swear out a warrant for some reason I can’t think of right now? What? This Mom is perpetuating the falsehood to her own children that if they just keep calling, and showing “God’s love”, that we’ll come around at some point? We left that relationship because we are the healthy ones (all relative, of course). We’re not “out of fellowship with the Lord”, or “lost”, or confused, or anything of the sort. We make a tremendously difficult decision to sever a relationship due to personal and significant reasons, and it ain’t cause we don’t know God. It was God that led us to this really painful decision.

Seriously, I don’t know what to do. They are apparently NOT getting the point. What now?

It is a sickness. Really. I. just. have. to. say. one. more. thing. (why oh why can’t I just ignore some things?)

I’ve gotten several comments that a certain previous, won’t mention it’s name or content again, post was not quite on target, or that it was misleading. Or rambled. Or should have had a better introduction to the content that followed, and the like.

I really was under the impression here that while some posts will be like that, because it’s an on day, or it just turns out that way, that others are just what blogging is about. Rambling. Free association thinking. Wandering. I did not think that these posts were subject to grading based on style, being consistently on point, or a good introductory paragraph.

What the h*ll is up with our 5 year old putting his finger in his, um, bum crack, and then getting his siblings to smell them?!?!?! Where did he learn this?!? Where have I gone wrong???

Overheard last night:

Our youngest son: Hey (our daughter’s name)…smell my fingers, they smell like roses…

The sister: Ack! cough, cough…gag, Mo-o-o-o-o-o-m! He put his fingers in his (I’ve stated this before) and made me SMELL them! Mo-o-o-o-o-o-m!

Me: speechless. I have not been trained for this.

a la Ellen. Over at her kingdom, she’s discussing what super human ability we each have, and what would our name be in light of this amazing ability.

I am Super Sphincter. I will not fart. Unless I am aaaaallllll alone, and no one will be entering the room any time soon. And even then, I try not to. I may drop menstrual pads out the leg of my pants in grocery stores, but farting? Not me. Very Mom’s recent post on the 9th about farting in yoga class. A lot. Horrifies me. I now know I will never be a yoga master. If all the reeeelaaaaaax and breeeeathe and twisting the innards causing one to fart. Outload. In public. I’m not going there. Ever. And for the first 4 years of our marriage, I wouldn’t poo if my husband was home. I waited. Till he was gone. Didn’t want any trace of ever having pooed to even be in the house. I told him I never went. I was superhuman. I had no need. Imagine his glee when during the birth or our second, and the mystery of marriage being anilhilated by the birth and c-section of our first (I mean, come on, he saw my stomach, the organ, on the table beside me), he actually saw me poo during the pushing. It was a great moment for him. But I’ve pretended in the last 8 years it. never. happened. No. It did not. He just thinks it did. Because I am Super Sphincter. I can hold it. Forever if necessary.

My husband says that if one holds gaseous matter inside, the laws of nature and physics just insist it must exit somewhere. In my case, he says, it most surely explains why I just talk so freakin much. It’s got to come out somewhere. Just as long it ain’t from down there, I’m good. And look! You can get as good as I am too, and never have to fart again!

So. I’m having a bit of, well, feminine spotting. You know, light. Just needed a little Lightdays. All well and good. Except I don’t wear undies. Nothing kinky going on, just that I HATE thongs, and I hate the way panties bunch, and the lines, so commando just makes sense. Until you think that the Lightdays will stay affixed to the crotch of the jeans you are wearing. And then you’re running through the grocery with your three children, trying to make it home in time to cook the St. Patrick’s Day Irish Stew that must cook four hours, and it’s already after two, and then you feel something odd on tickling downwards on your leg. And in the next two steps you see your pad on the floor of the grocery store, one step behind you in the Mexican and Ethnic aisle. And, you’re not the only one in the Mexican and Ethnic aisle. And you can’t just leave it there. That would be disgusting. You have to stop, in front of people looking oddly at you, and pick up the pad. And act like it is no big deal. You routinely drop menstrual pads out the leg of your pants. Yeah. No biggie. What a beautiful memory.

Fortunately, the pad was clean. That helped a lot. And oh yeah. The luck o’ Irish to ye.

Can you break up with a friend? You know, just finally say this isn’t going to work out afterall, we need to go our separate ways. Isn’t there a Friends episode with some such plot? Or a Seinfeld? If so, I need to find those reruns.

If you discover that you are not going to be compatible in a long term way with someone you date, you simply end the relationship. It may not be pretty. It may not be fun. But everyone knows that’s what’s to be done. But when it is a guy friend, or girl friend that you’ve been hanging with, or doing play group with, or in some book club, quilt circle, Saturday morning pick up basket ball game, or the monthly neighborhood cocktail association?

I just broke up with a friend. A friend we were in church with. 2 friends, actually. And their husbands and their children. So my husband and my children had to break up with all of them too. And it has been horrible. Just rotten. Because one of these women and her family will not let us go!

There were problems, naturally. I didn’t just arbitrarily get up one morning and say hey, I want to hurt someone’s feelings, and crush their children. This woman and her husband were very unhappy people. Something that took time to realize. And every time our children spent time with theirs, we had hours, if not days, of behavior problems that were not addressed in this family. Things including but not limited to 1. hugely disrespectful attitude toward parents, 2. anger, bitterness and hatefulness between siblings, 3. treating our 5 year old poorly, and 4. being quite sassy towards me when I had them. Things that, trust me, I waited and waited in hope that they would clear up, were just some sort of phase. Lord knows our children don’t walk in perfection. Over 9 months or so, no improvement.

The woman was what the article previously post describes as an energy vampire. I. just. could. not. keep up with her emotional demands. And constant negativity. I began to dread the phone ringing. S**t. I can’t take this right now. The Colonel would come home at the end of the day and I’d be stressed to the gills. She called 4 times again today, and the other one called 3. And she was hating her house. And she was hating her husband. And screaming at the children, and asking me what to do, and never listening to what I had to say, and then “do we want to get together”, and NO, I just don’t, but what can I say?. So we got caller ID. At least I could decide when or when not I would muster up the energy necessary. And then the invitations to get together and do stuff got to making us miserable. What do we say this time? Don’t you have a lot of work (wink wink) you have to do, hon? Crap. I think one of the children has a cold. And a fever. Yeah, definitely a fever. I have a migraine. We’re going to Atlanta (then we’d have to hide out in our house all weekend with the lights dimmed). And of course, to keep up pretenses and keep trying to see if we could maintain the relationship, we’d accept, or even initiate sometimes (which really bit, because we really really really didn’t want to). And then, after leaving town on a trip for 3 weeks, and realizing we were dreading our return, we knew what we had to do. But we were chicken.

We hemmed and hawed and mulled it over, and got together several more times with both families. And I just stopped calling them. And often didn’t answer the phone. They would call hey, just wondering if you’d fallen off the edge of the earth, it’s been 14.2 days since you called me (whine). And I knew all the time they didn’t understand. I hadn’t told them anything. To them, I’d just dropped out. So we tried one more time to muster up restoring the relationships. Had one family over one evening. And he and she went at each other all night. In front of the children, theirs and ours. And then she snapped at one of ours, in quite an ugly manner. And they started bad mouthing each other to each of us, seperately, after we tried to not so subtly diffuse the situation. They finally left, after I claimed a headache, which really wasn’t false. And this capped it off for us. That night was indicative of the struggles we’d been having. Every dealing with these people was like sucking the life out of our very veins. After long hours teaching the children at home, running a home, earning a living, raising the children, and all that involves, we just couldn’t afford any more negative out flow of energy. Call us selfish. I call it survival.

So we sent letters. Yeah. Maybe should have done it in person. But how do you just tell another family they aren’t compatible with yours? And when they beg tell us why (which they did later), do you actually go about pointing out all the points of struggle? We didn’t want to be judgemental, or hurtful. We just wanted to get out. Out. Out. Out! Is this crazy?

And now? If I were ever doubtful of this decision, one of these women just won’t let it go. I’m fairly certain now that she. is. just. not. stable. This occurred over 6 months ago, and until about 2 months ago, she called every day, 3 or 4 times a day. And had her children call ours. Left messages. And showed up at Valentine’s, and sent the children to the door to give ours things they’d made. And she has continued to send emails. Sharing news. Inquiring about whether or not we’ve reconsidered and could meet to talk. Sending letters from her children to ours, asking why they don’t play with them anymore. We have never responded. Not once. And I didn’t even let her children in the house when they brought Valentine’s (sounds heartless I know, but I thought it’d be harder on them and ours if they all saw each other, and couldn’t play…what’s heartless is their mother continuing to subject her children to hope that we’d all reconcile). Is this some sort of stalking, or what?

Have you ever had to break up with a friend? What happened? This is just bizarre to me! Wouldn’t you think that once you had to, they’d just accept it and move on?

Climbing in bed at 2 am with a head full of Minwax fumes, as we are staining our new kitchen cabinets, I just awoke from one most bizarre dream.

I’m in a hospital. Immediately on the heels of a c-section, for our 4th child. We have no 4th child. It’s just the dream. My mother is there, and as I’m being wheeled down the hall after my due time in recovery, we’re just chatting away. And she doesn’t know that A. I’ve been pregnant at all, and B. that while she is talking with me, I’ve just had major surgery and given birth. And C. That I’m hiding our new baby in a plastic grocery sack, on ice and wrapped in a baggy. So she won’t know. Nor does she wonder why, at all, we’re visiting in a hospital in the first place. Now some people may could actually hide these bits of pertinent information from a mother, but they don’t have my mother. There are no secrets from my mother. She’s sees all.

Flash to our room. Which really proves this bizarre nature of this dream. I have a suite mate. If I have just had major surgery and given birth, I have. a. private. room. So anyway, once in there, the baby morphs several times into different looking creatures. One is about the size of a beenie baby. And then suddenly, in some odd turn of events, my baby is gone. But my parents, particularly my mother, is still unaware that the baby that was now clearly at my breast, was mine at all. So she calmly says, I’m sure they’ll find that baby, and I have to say, well, that was my baby. Is she surprised? Shocked? Nope. In a eerily accurate move for a dream, she heads to the nearest phone, calls the other grandparents, and starts cooking. Meanwhile, the hunt for our infant is on.

At a really weird flash of a scene in here, I go ballistic all over the doctor who says he’s ignored our orders to not circumsize the baby. As I’m railing on him, I suddenly realize our baby is a girl, and it doesn’t apply to her at all. Even though the doctor had just told me he did indeed, circumsize her. Here, I’m still confused.

Turns out, there is a baby stealing ring in the hospital, which is accentuated by the HIGHLY IMPOSSIBLE fact that some nurses are forgetting to match wrist tags for mom and baby. Besides, don’t they have some sort of baby Lo-Jack deal now? And of course, as at some point when I am walking through the hall with now a baby that I don’t realize is mine, it is taken from me to check for matching to me. My suite mates turn out to be 2 men, one of whom is only masquerading as a just-given-birth woman, for the sole purpose of snatching babies. And when I discover this, much kung-fu like battling ensues, with no thought to my newly sliced and stitched belly. I even topple a large armoire from a second story balcony onto one of them, just after they land a punch to my head, and when failing to injure me there, go for my swollen, newly lactating breast.

Somewhere in here, a group of women appear, not unlike that roller skating chick competition show on some cable channel. And they are all in cahoots with my faux suite mates. I begin to scream where is my baby, and one of them finally caves and points to an upstairs shop in the hospital, which is sort of like an indoor mall. The shop is a Papa John’s pizza joint with an apartment in back. I race upstairs, again with no thought to the pain. A woman must save her baby. Burst through the doors, and see another woman, who’d been in maternity with me, and had truly lost her baby due to an unfortunate death. The entire ring of baby stealers was coordinated by her mother, a bitter Italian woman that was cooking marinara in the background. She replaced her daughter’s dead baby with mine. Anna, Anna, I yelled. Why I knew her name, I do not know. You cannot have my baby!

I grab my darling baby from the traitorous breast, to finally hold and nurse my own, beautiful, tabby kitten. And as I gazed into those green eyes, and stroked the soft whiskers, I knew my baby would never be parted from me again. And just as I started to give what for to that Bitter Italian Woman, our 5 year old burst into our bedroom, and tore me from my justice. Oh well. At least our kitten baby was restored to our family, and we could get on with our bonding.

We may need to crack a window today as we proceed with the staining.