You Can't Wash Crazy Away

A few posts back I mentioned that I might someday write about my crazy aunt. Humor always outweighs any compassion I might fleetingly feel. I know this so that 2 seconds that I wavered back and forth deciding if I should or not was really just wasted time. That was precious time I could have used unwrapping my Cadbury candy bar. Two seconds makes a big difference to the taste buds when your in the midst of a craving.

I knew from the time I was about 6 yrs old that something wasn't right, the rest of the family tried to make excuses for the things they were seeing, saying she was just eccentric. A small sampling of the early signs to me were:

1.  Someone was always peeping in her windows....but it was a man.....and he wore an Abe Lincoln hat.
2.  No one could ever spend the night....because they would get germs on the sheets.
3.  She cooked spaghetti 7 days a week for dinner....because it's "safe" (what makes it "safe" we never knew)
4.  She bought 4 gallons of milk a week, letting 3 of them spoil....because "someone higher up" told her to.
5.  She refused to have a phone in the house....because someone might call them on it.
6.  She couldn't have car insurance on her car....because if she had a wreck someone might insist she use it.

Fast forward a few years and we come to the night that blew her cover with the rest of the family. I was still living there at the time and my oldest son was only 2yrs old. Like anyone with children when they go to bed for the night about the only thing you would wake them up for is a personal home visit from Jesus....and even He better come bearing expensive gifts. Anyway, my son and I were in bed, sound asleep at 3 am when my phone rang. It was my aunt, now I was not about to ignore her because part of her illness is excessive shopping and to keep my uncle from knowing she would give away everything she bought before he could see it. She had practically furnished my entire apartment and weekly would leave 5 or 6 bags full of groceries on my doorstep. Ignoring her would have been stupid because I still wanted to redecorate my bathroom. So I answered the phone and out came a story that left me amused, confused, disbelieving, wondering "what the fuck" and excited because the shit was getting ready to hit the fan and I had a ring side seat. Her story was that she had just found out my uncle was having an affair. Someone at the doctor's office told her all about it. If I had not been in a still cloudy sleep induced state I might have questioned why the hell the dr's office was open in the middle of the night and just why was she there. But I didn't, that clue went right over my head. My uncle was several years older than my aunt, he was 76 yrs old and had had 3 quadruple bypasses in the past year and a half. He was lucky to just walk across the room by himself. But stranger things have happened in life. We hung up and I called my Mom to tell her what just happened. Her response was pretty much like mine, "There is no way he would or could do this, but what if he did and we missed out on a chance to spread some really good gossip through the family"? It was a chance we weren't willing to take so we rallied around my aunt with all the proper pity comments, the "the son of a bitch should rot in hell for enternity" lines and all the "how could he do this to your crazy sweet self" lines we could muster up. For the next three weeks the entire family was in an uproar over this. Most of my family lack the gene that should be telling them to stay out of other people's business and went  to talk to him and he always denied it. We didn't really know who to believe and I honestly didn't care because it was giving me endless hours of amusement. Then one afternoon she called and ask if I could take her to her doctor appointment to get her thyroid medicine refilled. No problem or so I thought. I was like a lamb being led to slaughter, had no idea what was about to hit me. We got to the clinic and I waited in the car while she went in. Suddenly the door to the clinic flew open and my aunt is running across the parking lot like she was training for the Olympics. She jumps in the car, locks all the doors and starts screaming "Get us out of here, now! Hurry up before the police get here!!!". I am dumbfounded and not about to run from any law enforcement agency so I sat there with my mouth rather unattractively hanging open and I am almost positive I was drooling in fear. The police do show up and then I get the story of what happened. There was no appointment, my aunt thought the woman my uncle was having an affair with worked there and she went to confront her. After verbally attacking several in the office she finally barged her way into the back looking for the woman. She had gone into each exam room, some with patients in them, the whole time screaming for "the whore that is trying to wreck my home". The problem was this woman had never even heard of my uncle before. While the woman was telling the police this my aunt is screaming over her "Whore! Just because you change your name and hair color and work at a different place every day doesn't mean I can't find you!" I did a double take. What? Changes her hair color and name every day and works in a different place? What the fuck are you talking about?! The police let us go after my aunt promised never to go back there (and like a good police officer should never should do, he believed the obviously crazy woman). By then I was seriously doubting the whole affair story. We went to my Mom's house where she then told us about several other women she had found out from "someone of importance" who were also having an affair with my uncle (this line has become her staple for years now, it is always "someone of importance" that gives her information on everything). Oh yes and out of those ten new women she had found out about three of them had new babies by my uncle. Again with the double take, only this time it wasn't in disbelief, it was to check and make sure she had no sharp objects in her hand to attack me with because that was the very minute the entire family finally realized she was more than a little eccentric she was just plain bat shit crazy. Here we are now 30 years later and even though my uncle died 20 years ago he has somehow figured out a way to cross dimensions and drop his sperm all over town leaving a wake of illegitimate children everywhere. We know these children really do exist because my aunt reads about them in the newspaper every day and right beside each and every one of their names is the line---fathered by (uncle's name here). At last count we counted that he has, according to my aunt, somewhere in the neighborhood of 67 illegitimate children running around and she has "long since lost count of the many women he laid down with". Obviously the quotes are her words, not mine. I would have said "many women he fucked". But that's just me. In the real world, which is the world outside of my aunt's mind, there was never any woman or affair.

Through the years she has gotten worse. Much, much worse and her delusions have gotten bigger and wilder. Here is a highlight of a few of my favorites here:

There is a man that lives in the 3 foot tall Virgin Mary statue in her yard. He comes out every night, looks in her windows wearing his Abe Lincoln hat, tears the siding off of her storage shed (the storage shed is brick) and takes her car for a drive (this car has no engine it it).

There is a government conspiracy going on with "the higher ups" (keep in mind that the "higher ups" are above "people of importance"). Their objective is to take her house away from her and give it to all the illegitimate children my uncle has created and if they have to "see her in her grave" to do it then that is what they will do. This plan has been put in motion and no one, not even "the higher ups" can stop it.

She calls my husband and I one night at 1am while we were in town visiting my Mom and ask if we could come and "check out" her furnace. It was winter and bitter cold out. We were thinking maybe the pilot light went out and needed re lit. My husband asked how long it had been that way and she replied "several hours now" so off we went to fix it for her. We walked in her door and noticed right off the house was toasty warm. We were a little puzzled but thought maybe the house hadn't had time to cool off yet and she was afraid it would before morning. He asked her to tell him just what the furnace was doing (he was new to this and didn't realize you NEVER ask a crazy person what something is doing). She looked at him as blank as she could be and ask what he meant. He told her he wanted her to explain to him what the furnace was doing right before she called him. She gave him an "I don't know why your wasting my time with nonsense" look and said: "Nothing, I just was looking at it and thought it was so beautiful I wanted to share it with you."

The neighbors flash morse code to each other with their porch lights at night talking about her.

Her next door neighbor comes out every night, and has for years now and moves one whole side of her 10 ft privacy fence an inch toward her house. He is stealing her yard and doing it slowly hoping she won't notice. I can't count how many times she has called the police for this one! However, she has no answer for why SHE went out with a sledge hammer in the middle of the night one night and tore down this same neighbors privacy fence.

The city dumps a dump truck full of gravel in her driveway every night.

She is obsessed with numbers. All numbers have special coded meanings to her, usually having to do with the government conspiracy in motion to take her house. As a result any mail that comes to the house with any number on it, which is everything because they all have date stamps,  has to be made into four copies each and carefully filed in a filing cabinet. The labels on these folders are truly hilarious, such as "Illegitimate child #14", "Cousin of lady with blonde hair who slept with (insert uncle's name here) in 1983", "picture of husband of the cousin of the lady who slept with (uncle's name here) in 1983 (the picture can actually be anything, she just digs out random photos to put in these folders)". She thinks that all these " bastard children" are paying her utility bills because they think if they do that then they will get her house faster. So every bill she sends in to pay is unreadable with all her notes on them, such as: "This is MY (here she writes her name and address ) bill, it does not have anything to do with my husband's bastard children, do not accept their money, thank you.", "If bastard #53 tries to pay this he will be lying, don't take his money", "I used my water from 6am to 6:30am on (insert date) and again at 3:15pm until 3:20pm on (insert date), any other water used that day on my meter is one of the bastard children or a sneaky thieving neighbor and I won't pay it", or my personal favorite "I can't pay this because it has numbers on it, please send me the bill again without numbers. Spelled out numbers are still numbers so don't even try that".

She refuses to use a bank because those pesky bastard children have now gained control of the banking industry so she carries hundred's of thousands of dollars in an overnight bag that she takes everywhere with her. I have always wondered why Queen Elizabeth is never seen without her purse, it's clear to me now, that is where she keeps the Crown Jewels.

She can't have car or house insurance. It's that number problem again, plus they want her to sign her name so the bastard children can see her signature and try to copy it. She can't renew her driver's license or car tags for the same reason.

She can't go to the grocery store alone because the bastard children have a plan to kidnap her. She can go anywhere else so apparently they can only kidnap her in a grocery store.

There is a man that comes every night and takes one shingle off of her roof, he is trying to get enough to put a new roof on his own house without paying for it.

She called the police and reported her own daughter for theft, actually she has pulled this one several times. Claiming that she breaks in steals all the tupperware lids in her house, another time it was 3 rubber bands, once it was 23 paper clips, etc. Her daughter lives in another state. She thinks she drives 8 hours to get there and then comes in and steals things and sneaks back out to drive another 8 hours to get back home. She does this five or six times a week.

She has at one time or another been kicked out of and told to never return to every utility company and dr's office in town for going in and accusing the people working there of either being in on the conspiracy with the bastard children to take her house, covering up for the bastard children or sleeping with her dead husband.

She has gone to every lawyer in a 100 mile radius trying to sue the imaginary bastard children over this conspiracy.

Every time you go to her door, before coming in she has to show you all the marks on the door where "they" are using crow bars to break in. We see nothing but a perfectly smooth and intact door, but in her mind she actually sees these things and will even count the marks for you.

Cell phones are evil listening devices created by the bastard children to listen to her, so all cell phones have to remain outside her house. I found out the hard way that sneaking one in doesn't work when you forget to turn off the ringer. I then became part of the conspiracy for about 3 months. Then one day she called to tell me that the "higher ups" had done a check on me and I was cleared.

Trips to the grocery store with her are enough to make you want to stick sharpened pencils in your ears and pray it doesn't take long to get to the chemicals aisle so you can quickly down some rat poison. She waits until in a crowded area of the market and very loudly will say "I know you can't afford anything (not true, she assumes this about everyone but herself) so I will get it for you. Don't be shy now, get yourself some food, I'll pay for it. Here, here is some cash to buy yourself something special with." At this point she turns and looks at any stranger within hearing distance and says "I don't know why they act like this, they know they have no money and that I will buy it for them. My goodness, even a dog has to eat!" Refusing her money or offer of food only makes her louder and more embarrassing, but it's a double edged sword, because staying quiet and accepting it to keep her from getting worse makes it look like you really are broke and homeless. It is also always a worry that she will see one of my uncles imagined conquests and scream out "Whore!" or "Jezebel!" to some unsuspecting innocent woman. I now carry my own pencils with me, it takes too long to unwrap those in the store.

Restaurants are always fun too. She never fails to ask everyone working there if they washed their hands after they went to the bathroom the last time because even pee pee makes your hands dirty. They are never prepared for the tirade that is sure to follow if they lay a ticket with numbers on it on the table, followed by a "Just whisper in my ear how much it is and I will be happy to pay it, I just can't take anything with numbers and I don't want the other diners to know how much I am paying. They might tell the government and I work too hard at keeping my business private to let you ruin it."

She washes all her laundry by hand, even though she has a very nice automatic washer and dryer in her house.  It has never been used. She can't use it because.....wait for it.....everyone knows those things are government tools that have chips in them to drive you crazy then they can commit you somewhere and not have to pay you your retirement check.

Like I said, you can't wash crazy away.

My List

As I have gone through life I have amassed a rather large list of "things that annoy me" and find daily that the very small list of "things I like" is slowly getting smaller as I have to move things over to the "things that annoy me" list. Then there is the ever present debate raging in my head of should I actually write this list down, memorialize forever the "things that annoy me". There are pros and cons. I don't want to wake up with Alzheimer's someday and not remember my list. The very thought of finding myself leaning over some very ugly baby saying "Oh my that is a beautiful baby!" makes me ill. I don't ever want to live with a mind and mouth that has a usable filter. You know all the little notes at the nursing homes that are put up to remind those now running on only a half a tank of fuel what day and time it is?  Since I don't give a fuck what day and time it is now I can't imagine that I will suddenly want to know when my fuel tank gets low either. I want my notes to have important things on them, things that will really help me get through my remaining days. Things like "Your ex husband is a dick head in the first degree. You decided years ago to make his life a living hell" or "All small children are feral" or "Always open your mouth and blurt out the first thing that comes to your mind". So I have decided to write this list down for reference, just in case. So in no particular order here we go.

1.    People who tell me I have an accent-Do they really think I don't have that first brain cell of my own and don't realize that I might sound different in this foreign land known as the south? This was made glaringly obvious during a conversation with my ex shortly after coming here. I don't need the winner of the "Miss Hogpens Forty" beauty pageant pointing this out to me.

One day the louse walks in with an emergency roadside kit in his hand and asks what I want him to do with it. After getting over the shock that he was serious and thought there might be another use for it, totally making that "roadside" in it's name unnecessary, this was the conversation:

Me: Just put it in the boot.
Louse: Ok.
(He leaves only to quickly return and announce)
Louse: It doesn't fit.
Me: What do you mean it doesn't fit? Just put it inside the boot in the car.
Louse: We don't have any boots in the car.
Me: Trust me, our car has a boot, it's a four door sedan for God's sake, not a sports car.
(Again he leaves and now I am seriously questioning my decision to marry this imbecile in the first place. As it turned out years later I was right. He returns.)
Louse: Look, I have looked all over that car and there aren't any boots in it, only a pair of sandals you left in it from the beach the other day. Even if I could find a pair this damn kit wouldn't fit in them!
(Now don't get me wrong, once I figured out what the miscommunication stemmed from I calmly explained to him what a "boot" was in my world. What bothered me was the fact that he went looking for footwear to stash a roadside kit in, where was his common sense?)

2.    Children-Even the good ones get on my nerves. While I own the fact that mine might have been worse than your average run of the mill kid and might even display some psychotic tendencies, I also own the fact that, in my perfect world, all children would live on their own fenced island far away from me until they become legal drinking aged adults. A place similar to the leper colonies would suffice. If the island becomes over populated I could tolerate letting the teenagers out, at least their attempt to lie for absolutely no reason other than they opened their mouth to speak amuses and amazes me. Am I really suppose to believe that a 17yr old boy and his girlfriend are behind a locked bedroom door only watching television? Am I really suppose to believe that someone broke into my house while we were sleeping and the dogs didn't bark? They then walked past two laptops, two Android phones, a 2 carat diamond ring laying on the kitchen island and then proceeded down the hall to my bedroom, came quietly in and stole $2.00 out of my purse? Must be the same thief that comes and steals the gas from my car all the time. When I catch him there will be a beheading.

3.  Stupid-any kind of stupid, it's no secret that I don't suffer fools gladly. Or quietly. How could you not get irritated with the neighbor who woke you up one morning at 4am because her car wouldn't start and she wants to know if you can give her a jump, only to discover when you go out in freezing temps that the reason her car wouldn't start was because she didn't put the key in the ignition? How could you not be irritated with the mail lady for telling you that if you will leave the window down in your car when it's raining she could leave your package in there so it won't get wet? Bitch are you serious?! It is important that the interior of my car stay dry so the gas thief doesn't get his delicate ass wet when going to pick up his virgin girlfriend.

4.   People who complain about dog hair in my house-They live here, you don't, they are obviously smarter than you because they have figured out a way to live rent free with utilities paid and you're wanting to bunk on my couch tonight because your power has been turned off for non-payment. Be grateful I don't make you sleep in one of their unused doggy beds. What? You expect me to feed you too? In all this flying dog hair, are you out of your mind?!  Maybe you should go to McDonald's, I'm pretty sure my son has $2.00 he could loan you and they do have a dollar menu.

5.   Weather or political coverage that takes over my television-Do they not know how important it is for me to see Judge Judy everyday? Would Rainman easily tolerate that kind of disturbance to routine? I don't either. There is nothing that brightens up my day more than Judge Judy reaming some guy a new asshole or telling some air headed bimbo that "there is something seriously wrong with you". Judge Judy, my hero, that woman so eloquently puts into words my thoughts.

6.   Pageant Moms-Because doesn't everyone want their three year old toddler to look like a cracked out Dolly Parton who uses Tammy Faye Bakker's make up artist? I use the term "artist" lightly here. The boys vying for that princess crown bother me even more.  I can't imagine one of my sons getting up on stage in front of an audience in white glitter tights and doing the hula hoop for "talent". Even at three years old they could recognize that wasn't going to be a look that would remotely work for them. But it's all right to parade them around like trollops because all their winnings are going into their college fund. Obviously a place Mom and Dad are strangers too considering they can't see that the $20,000 they put out for their child to win $500 would have gone a lot farther in the ole college fund. Here sweetie, have another pixie stick.  Who in their right mind deliberately hypes up small children?

7.   Extreme Moms-of any kind. Is it really necessary that your 7 yr old child play on the basketball, football, baseball, soccer and hockey teams between Boy Scout meetings, year round? Oh look, you brought a grill to the field and your grilling Filet Mignon for the team to celebrate this important life changing win! I have a family member with this mentality. He thinks his 10 year old daughter is destined for greatness as a star athlete. He spends literally thousands of dollars every year to, in his own words, further her career. They travel every weekend to out of town sports events, some far enough away that a motel is needed for a night or two. He worries endlessly about scouts (Just why and who scouts 10 yr olds anyway? This just seems more than a little creepy to me) coming to the games to see her play. This poor child never gets to just play and be a 10yr old. All playtime and all gifts must be structured and sport related. She has to get up at 4:30am every morning to "train" for 2 hours before school and training for another 3 hours after school is mandatory. Between all that she has to somehow squeeze in some time at The Sylvan Learning Center, costing another couple thousand dollars, because she is failing in school. They are totally blind to the fact that she is failing because she doesn't have time to do school work. Now I tolerate love this child but they can not look at her and possibly see any resemblance to future greatness on the basketball court. She passed chubby years ago and moved straight into the obese category. She is a good 4 inches shorter than the next shortest child in her class. The poor child can't walk across the room without tripping over her own feet, possibly due to her disproportionate body. At least they did recognize putting her in beauty pageants wasn't a wise move.

8.   Posed family portraits-just why? When you look back at those pictures years from now are they going to look natural to you? How many times do you get together with family and all at once someone yells "Pose!" and everyone one runs to get into the family portrait pose just for the hell of it? I prefer to remember the time my cousin was laughing so hard he peed in his pants at a family outing when he was 14, and contrary to what my mother says I was NOT down on my knees and laughing louder than the other kids. But do we have that golden moment on film? Of course not. I want to remember when my fat great uncle sat down in the lawn chair at a family picnic and totally annihilated that lawn chair promptly getting the frame stuck to his ass and rolling around like a beached whale trying to get up. Now those make memories worth recording!

9.   Facebook posts written "with style"-iF It iS wrItTeN LiKe tHIs i aM nOt GOinG tO BoThER rEadIng iT! If your the whitest kid in school,weigh a whopping 96 pounds and talking gangsta you have to know it makes you look like an idiot. I confess to reading some of those because they make me laugh. A couple weeks ago someone on my list posted "Yo, imma get yur ass! imma tird of yur shit dog. yur running(I think this was suppose to ruining)mah street cred. We gunna get it after schol tday, yur gunna b my nigga now!" Please keep in mind this poster is a female, in a wheelchair and lives with her parents in a million dollar home. The closest she has ever been to a rough neighborhood was watching it on television.

10. Strangers that tell me their life story while in line at the grocery-I just want to get my shit and get out of there. I hate shopping more than just about anything and listening to someone tell me how hard it is to make ends meet now that Bill has run off with the neighbor lady leaving her to raise their 7 kids alone during the holiday season, especially since little Joy Ellen has all those developmental delays. Poor Billy Jr's seeing eye dog ran away last week and she can't get him another one because they are accusing her of neglecting it and that is just a bare faced lie because she fed and watered that dog twice a week! But it's all good because when the welfare lady comes back to the house to check on the kids again she is going to give her a piece of her mind cause "ain't nobody should have to live with people watchin everything they do like that."

I am beginning to realize just how big of a project writing my list down is going to be. I am going to have to do it over the next several years which means it will never get done because I find someone or something everyday that is deserving of space on my list. So as to not bore you my dear readers I will stop the list here for today.

Searching For Reality

Today I decided to check out some other blogs, just see what else is out there that I might enjoy reading. While I did find a few gems to follow I also found a lot of, what to me, is drivel. I do realize that it is not drivel to others but I find myself drawn to humorous, irreverent, "not afraid to say fuck" blogs.

I don't want to read about your profound commitment to God, church, your community, your charities or anything else. All written with the "I may be just a little bit better than the rest of you" tone. I don't really care if you trudged 5 miles in the snow to sing Christmas carols to the little old lady that is housebound, went in and cooked her a 7 course Christmas meal, cleaned her house before you left and promised to come back once a month to repeat the whole process, all in the name of God and community. Because I know in my heart that you cursed that old lady all the way back home.

I don't want to learn how to do cutsey crafts with picture by picture instructions. I will just hit up a flea market and buy mine for a couple of dollars, saves my sanity and gives me a few extra bucks to spend on the really important things in life. Like a cheap Mojita mix or a Taco Bell pizza. I know I could save on gas and cut down on pollution by making my own,  but hey, I have to get in the car to drive to Taco Bell anyway so it really isn't a bother.

I seriously don't care to read a day by day description of your wonderful family complete with pictures of your perfect kids. I have four of my own, I know there is no child on this earth that is perfect and your blowing smoke up my ass telling me different isn't going to make me believe it. I will only conclude that you live in a fantasy world and need some serious therapy. Tell me about the time the dog/cat puked in the floor and the baby ate it before you could get to him. Tell me about the old man that pissed you off in the grocery store check out lane, even better if you told him off, I'm going to follow your blog for sure if you hit him. Tell me about your crazy aunt/uncle/cousin, etc. We all have one and they make good reading. As a matter of fact I think my next blog will be about my own crazy aunt.

I admit to being a sucker for the dog blogs. I find all of them good. I might have found Lassie's blog a little boring, after all just how many times can you pull a kid out of the well before the parents of that child realize that the child has some obvious deficits in the learning department and decide they need to keep him away from the damn well? Give me a Turner and Hootch kind of dog to read about any day. Having two of those of my own I can relate to that.

And all those vacation blogs? Forget it, if it isn't My vacation and I am not on the beach drinking margarita's while ogling half naked men then why would I want to read about it? This is one of those things in life, along with giving birth, where the old saying "you just had to be there" really applies.

As for all the birthing experience blogs, yes I did find several of them, they just bring back unpleasant memories and I will skip those too. But thanks anyway for sharing your horror stories with all those pregnant ladies that think they are in for some wonderful, magical moment in their life. Better to let them find out on their own that they may still be so pissed over that whole pain thing that they may not find the sight of that new baby all that great. Sometimes it takes a day or two. Or longer, actually I have yet to forgive my third child and she is now 25 yrs old. Trust me ladies all that soft music, focus points, water births, loving husbands rubbing the back, alternate birth positions and wonderful doctors do not make that pain better. Only heavy sedation and planned C-Sections does that, which is why I found the children from my last pregnancy to be beautiful the moment they were was born and they was forgiven immediately.

So I think I will go cruise some more, there has to be more people out there who write about reality.

My Days At The Asylum

For legal reasons such as I don't want to get my ass sued I will call my former place of employment "The Asylum" or TA for short. It wasn't actually an asylum, that was just our nick name for it. I went to work at this place just as a stop over, always with the intention of moving out of there as fast as I could.
Let me introduce you to some of my patients during my time there. All names have been changed to protect the insane, and again, to keep my ass from being sued. These are my patients for one six month period at "The Asylum."

I ask for third shift so I wouldn't have to deal with "the families", thinking it would be quieter. This is the scene I walk into one night.

Meet Paul-I walked in, clocked in and went through the ritual of  "the changing of the drug cabinet keys" that is done every shift. I left the drug room carefully locking it behind me. As I came down the hall I heard yelling, nothing out of the ordinary, after all some of those people are crazy. They yelled a lot. No cause for concern until I got closer to the front of the station and I noticed there was not one single person there. Big no-no at that facility. I was getting irritated because I was in charge of this shift and right off all my nurses and aides were gone. As these thoughts were forming in my already cluttered brain I heard rapid, shuffling footsteps behind me. Being relieved that at least one person was there I turned to greet them only to be blind sided and tackled to the floor by a 6'7" patient. New admit. So there we were rolling around on the floor, me yelling for help, him yelling for help and I lost a shoe. A few more rolls around the floor and he lost his hospital gown. So now I was wrestling with a very big, very mad naked man. Security showed up, but only two of them, we needed more. They pulled the guy off enough so that I could squirm out from under him and make a mad dash to the drug room. With his free hand he grabbed a chair and tossed it at me. I dove to the floor and slid behind the station as if I were going for a home run. I then came face to face with all of my missing nurses, aides and one doctor. Hiding UNDER the station. One of the idiots looked at me and told me to be careful. Really? You are just now telling me this? Why no phone call before I got to the unit to warn me that we had a problem? At least give me a fighting chance to survive. I got up and made it to the drug room, drew up a syringe of Haldol that would have put a horse to sleep and headed back to my patient. It was safer because I had security to help. At least it would have been if the patient had not decided to take the exact moment I was getting ready to inject him to do the alligator roll causing me to inject one of my security guys. He dropped like a fly, he would be sedated for hours. One of the dim wits under the station finally managee to have a moment of clarity and called the police for assist. About that time my patient broke lose and went running down the hall, naked as the day he was born. Midway down the hall was a fire break, this is just a set of break proof double glass doors, a small hallway with another set of glass doors opposite the first ones to separate the wings. These doors are automatic and only close in the event of a fire or with a special key, which was at the nurses station. I held my breath and timed it so that I could catch him just right, hit the fire alarm which activated the doors effectively trapping him in that small hallway. It also set an alarm off at the fire department. Soon I had a whole fire crew, more police and a naked man trapped in a hallway. I came out with ripped scrubs, one shoe, a black eye, sprained wrist, multiple abrasions. Oh and a still heavily sedated security guard. I am then informed that we have him because the state refused to take him back and some idiot authorized his transfer to us. Do you realize how crazy and dangerous you have to be for the state insane asylum to refuse to admit you?

Meet Ella-Ella was in her sixth year of a permanent vegetative state, couldn't regulate her body temp, was on dialysis and insulin because neither kidney's or pancreas functioned like they should have, she was tube fed and totally ventilator dependent. She tok a lot of time to care for but obviously caused no trouble. Ella's family was a different story. They wanted Ella up and dressed in street clothes every day and taken to the day room, ventilator and all, so she could "socialize" with other patients. Socialize? The girl had no clue she was even in this world let alone that other people were here too! They wanted us to teach her to feed herself again and according to them it would have been really nice if we could also teach her to walk again because she was going to need those skills when she went back to school. Never one time did they ever suggest that teaching her to breath would have been a good first step.  They couldn't bring themselves to believe that an ant had higher brain function than Ella did or that it was a catastrophic injury she would never recover from. You see Ella was an unbelted passenger in the vehicle her boyfriend was drag racing in, she was ejected through the sunroof, actually breaking the T-Bar brace with her head before slamming head first into a tree while the car was going over a 110mph. Ella simply didn't have anything left to work with except the very basic brain stem function that kept her heart beating.

Meet Hazel-There was absolutely nothing wrong with Hazel, she had no business being there and was probably in better condition than those of us taking care of her. Her problem was she was a very rich lady who was also very lazy. So she used her money and her connections and just lived there, using staff as if they were her personal maids. Hazel would not walk to the dining room or to the bathroom by herself. She wanted to be wheeled. She would not even get herself from the bed that she stayed in constantly to the wheelchair by herself even though she was perfectly capable of doing so. She wouldn't wipe her own butt, feed herself, dress herself, turn her room lights on or off, reach across to the nightstand to get her book, pour herself a glass of water from the pitcher that was within arms length, hold the telephone receiver while she talked on the phone, brush her own teeth, etc. The woman would do nothing for herself and drove her private nurse crazy. Hell Hazel drove us all crazy. But you can get away with stuff like that when you have a billion dollars and make heavy donations to "The Asylum". I don't grovel well and since I wasn't personally benefiting from her "generosity"  I refused to wipe her ass let alone kiss it. She hated the nights I worked.

Meet Pauline and Claudine-They were the sweetest women you could ever meet, I loved them both to death. Well, that might not be a good choice of words but you know what I mean. Pauline and Claudine were identical twins. They had never spent a single night apart in their 80 years on this earth. Both had declined to get married because they each felt it would have been too traumatic for each of them to be separated and knew no man would want to share a house with his wife's sister. In a sense they were married to each other. Both were school teachers. When Claudine developed a heart condition in her late 70's and had to be admitted it was known that she would never leave before she died. Pauline came with her and stayed day and night attending to her every need around the clock. They sang together, read books to each other, watched the same tv shows and reminisced about the past. You could always hear laughter coming from their room at the end of the hallway. They were both so thankful for everything that was done for them. Pauline became ill while caring for her sister and also had to be admitted. We put them in the same room, they would never have tolerated being separated. They died within 24 hours of each other, gracious to the end.

Redneck Neighbors From Hell

Who gets up at 5 am to clean house on a Saturday with music blaring? What is wrong with silent cleaning? My upstairs neighbor's, that's who. I try to remember these are the same neighbor's that had a stripper pole in the middle of their living room floor, two indoor pit bulls and one indoor sooner dog, pretended their hallway was a bowling ally, worship Chuck Norris and think domestic violence is a normal way of life. This is the part of this blog where you should all learn to spell R E D N E C K.

I have not lived in an apartment for years but wanted to move into something much smaller than my house and not have to worry about repairs or yard work now that I am on my own. So I sold my house and went apartment hunting. I found this one and love it. I love the built in gas grill on my private patio, that I never use because that would involve cooking, but just knowing it is there in case of a major snow flurry storm brings me comfort. My fireplace that I never turn on because it freaks my pug the hell out.  My pool that The Boy uses every day because it keeps him from running the streets and learning redneck ways. The nicely lit and fenced tennis court that I use as a dog exercise area because my persnickity Chihuahua won't touch grass or concrete with his feet or his delicate ass. The location is convenient, it is a small luxury complex and my son is the only person in here under the age of 25 so there are no kids to deal with. I am NOT a kid person. I  like my own children, most of the time, but barely tolerate anyone else's. The grounds are landscaped beautifully in a wooded setting (if Bigfoot is out there he stays quiet), assigned parking, only four units per building and they allow pets.  Up until six months ago it was very quiet. The apartment next to me belongs to an officer in the military who is gone for months at a time, I have honestly never seen or heard the people that live above him after the day they moved in and they have been here for almost two years. The apartment above me belonged to a single woman who also was never home. It has been very quiet here since I moved in four years ago. Until my upstairs neighbor got transferred for her job. That is when THEY moved in.

These people are unlike anything I have ever seen. I have been in the south for a long time, trust me, I have seen Redneck's but these two take it to a whole new level. Within a week of them moving in I was going to my car one morning and from no where came a giant fur ball that slammed into me and knocked me down. I have no idea what breed mixture this dog was, I'm still not convinced it wasn't a pony, I don't care how many times my son swears on his life it was a dog. For the next three weeks I watched this unleashed 120lb animal terrorize the complex and everyone who lives, visits or works here. The landscaping took a definite beating, doors were chewed, car tires were chewed, people knocked down, dog hair in the pool (the beast liked to swim), all downstairs windows were subjected to massive amounts of dog slobber and any lawn furniture was carried off. To this day I have not found three of my chairs, the last sighting of them was the beast dragging one across the backyard and into the woods. From there the trail goes cold. Management finally stepped in and gave them the option of moving or getting rid of the dog when the mail lady refused to deliver here and the dog ran into someone's apartment and refused to leave, necessitating a call to animal control. Unfortunately they chose to get rid of the dog instead of moving.

Then it started. We kept hearing strange noises coming from upstairs combined with being able to hear every single thing they say because they apparently were never taught to use their inside voices. We could not figure out what these noises were.  I'm a ghost hunter, my team and I have heard a lot of strange things over the years but nothing like this. I can only describe it as sounding like an elephant with flapping wings running at top speed and then slamming into a wall. This went on for weeks. The windows and ceiling fixtures rattled and threatened to break. Then one night I was coming back from the mailbox and they had their curtains open.  I saw the woman run across the room and jump into mid air followed by a loud crashing sound.  Suddenly the noise made sense. They had erected a stripper pole in the middle of their living room floor. She obviously wasn't very good at it and misses more than she lands it. My next door neighbor comes back from Iraq and complains to management. Think about that for a minute. Think how bad that noise had to be if it bothered someone who just came from a war zone.

They removed the stripper pole per managements request. But soon took up another indoor activity. Bowling. I shit you not. These fools actually had real bowling pins lined up at the end of the hall and used real bowling balls to "practice" their skills. That hobby only lasted until the ball went through the wall damaging a water pipe on the way and flooding their apartment and mine causing several hundred dollars worth of damage.

The bowling ally closed down and the mixed martial arts studio opened. These are not tiny people, hell they aren't even normal size people. She weighs roughly 250 pounds, which may also explain her difficulty getting on the stripper pole. Her boyfriend is an easy 300 pounds. Two people that size slamming each other to the floor makes you uneasy. You're just waiting on them to come through the floor and land in your lap while you are sitting there in Mickey Mouse pajama bottoms and a Tweety Bird t-shirt with chocolate stains on it, eating popcorn and engrossed in reality TV. Scary, because if you're expecting company you would have on the good Betty Boop pajamas or at the very least you would have matched your characters better. Then one night they got mad at each other over who won and a real fight ensued. They beat the living crap out of each other, not even stopping when the cops showed up to seperate them. He hit one of the cops and they hauled his butt off to jail. He never came back. Now he was gone and the beast was gone. Sanity briefly returned. But it was fleeting.

A week after the love of her life was hauled off and she kicked him out because he hit her, guess she didn't notice that he was in far worse shape than she was, she found a new love and moved him in. This one comes with two full grown pit bulls and a medium sized rather cute, if ill mannered, sooner dog and an angry ex wife who isn't happy about the whole situation. Made worse by the fact that "his sorry ass can't even send in the child support and she has to come beating on the door every damn week to collect". I know this because she screams it every week when she comes to get it. I hold my breath every week in fear that she is going to get fed up and leave those four Capuchin monkey's on the door step for him to take care of. If it happens I will grab two of them in each arm and chase her out of the parking lot screaming "Wait...you forgot your monkey's!" I will chase her car all the way to her destination if need be.

New skinny Redneck boyfriend likes basketball. A lot. But he doesn't like it on the basketball court, he likes it on their front porch, late at night. That's always fun to listen to for 3-4 hours every night.

They are on their third television. The first two having been tossed over the balcony and through the windshield of her car during one of what she calls "their disagreements". Along with several cell phones. The major disagreements must be the ones when he grabs her by the throat and tries to throw HER off the balcony. God forbid he ever gets strong enough to actually pick her up and she lands on her car. There will be no fixing that car as big as she is. Probably safe there I doubt his 130 lbs will ever be a match for her 250 lbs. At this point I am thinking my only hope is that she accidently smothers him some night during wild sex.

At least they are clean, very clean. They vacuum every night in the middle of the night or very early morning hours and do 2-3 loads of laundry every day, always off balance so the entire building shakes. Saturday is cleaning day. But it seems they have to be motivated by very loud rap music during which he shows his redneck white boy rapping skills by "singing" along with the track. Only louder, so as to drown out the music in an effort to show us all how talented he is.

Did I mention they like to start cleaning at 5 am?

Just Call Me Grinch

While I love the sounds and smells of Christmas I have to accept the fact that I don't really want to do anything to achieve them in my own house. I like them much better in someone else's house. A friend called today telling me how exhausted she is from baking, cleaning, shopping, decorating and she still isn't done. She has to make cupcakes for her son's school and something for after church Sunday...oh...and she is making a platter of Christmas goodies for her husband to take to work. I don't think she saw the humor in my suggestion that she could cut that list down considerably by getting a divorce, putting the children up for adoption and becoming an atheist.  She says I really need to come and visit her house because she has a Christmas tree that plays music,she has the most adorable little village that also plays music and her children have learned Christmas carols they can sing to me. She also didn't appreciate it when I told her I would come by as soon as I got my Klonopin prescription filled because I would need it being bombarded by so much Christmas music in such a small area combined with the presence of her howler monkey children. She then informed me I was worse than The Grinch at Christmas. She is quite possibly right. I consider my house fully decorated if I just manage to get the tree up. Maybe it has something to do with being single again. I use to go all out, inside and out decorating for Christmas. I didn't realize then how much I hated doing that every year until the year I decided not to do it. That was the Christmas I enjoyed, no pressure to decorate by a certain time, no large crowd coming in for dinner every single year and leaving without helping clean up anything, no gifts to shop for, no baking and delivering goodies, etc. So now I have decided to enjoy it every year. Besides, all those nice decorations kind of lose some of their beauty when you're standing in the middle of them with your hair uncombed and pug drool covered pajamas on. That snowflake robe only covers so much! I also don't think many would find the lovely glittery logs my pug Lola leaves on the Christmas tree skirt, every morning since I put the tree up, quite as decorative or as amusing as I do.

I still bake my Christmas goodies, but on a much smaller scale, I no longer feel the need to feed the neighbors, the police department and all emergency services too. I might take an offering to the 911 service just as an insurance policy. I would really hate to have them answer a 911 call to my house, come in, see who it is and say: "Oh hell no, Jack that is the bitch that stopped bringing us rice krispy treats shaped like wreaths, stop with the ambu bag, just let her go!"

I only have teenagers, they don't want wrapped gifts, only cash.Since I hate shopping with every fiber of my being I am going to make them happy again this year.

To me the perfect Christmas is snuggled on the couch with a Pug and a Chihuahua in my lap, lights twinkling on the tree, all those Christmas movies I have recorded from the Vagina Network this year on TV (do these movies change from year to year or am I watching the same ones over and over and just don't realize it? I can't tell anymore.), the smells of the ham baking in the oven and the pies cooling on the kitchen island filling the house, my son happily counting his cash and a plate of goodies I don't have to share on the coffee table in front of me.

The best part? The best part of all is no fucking Christmas music coming from my tree!

The Real Story

 Posted, through tears of laughter, for a friend:

A few months ago, I.sat innocently perusing Facebook for mindless entertainment when I happen accross a post from a member of my family, specifically my whore cousin who I haven't had any meaningful contact with in well over two decades.

We all have those relatives that if given the choice between claiming them or receiving an enema in Walmart on date your cousin day, you'll take the enema everytime. Yeah, THIS RELATIVE.

She has several children by several baby daddies, her first son spent an insane amount of his formative years with his grandma while my cousin continued her whorish streak, got knocked up some more,etc.

This kid is now eighteen and has assumed a false ghetto gangsta persona. I wouldn't be shocked if he "tattooed" thugs life on his stomach with a washable crayola for extra street cred.

I read the Facebook status that he was stabbed at a house party. While my humiliation of any biological link exists, I'm not a complete asshole, I'm concerned.


Shortly thereafter, the stabbing victim posts on his own behalf. Not only is he a victim of a traumatic stabbing,he is fluent in bad grammar and ebonics. Winning. I'm paraphrasing here but it was something similar to "these mutha effas can't keep me down. I got stabbed yo. For reals, I'm gangsta I'm gansta," that's pretty accurate-ish.

His posts continue,along with his butchering of the English language and his impending rise to thuggish fame. He reveled in his new found glory UNTIL it was in the local three page paper. This almost two paragraph media blitz allowed us the knowledge that he was "injured" with a kitchen utencil, to be fair, the article did say stabbing in the title.

He takes this two paragraph makes him feel invincible, like fiddy cent has a rival on idiotic wounds from "da gang life". Apparently, he has had some hard times, requiring him to "hustle" to make those ends. I personally didn't know what the Hell that meant until I looked it up on urban dictionary and it translates to paying the bills. Um, he has no bills, I digress.

My Aunt, who is equally ashamed of this tomfoolery informs me that this gangsta event was quite different from the version painted on facebook. You ready?????

Mini gansta and his aspiring gangsta cronies "hit da chronic"(got high) and got the mad munchies and ran for the border for some chalupas and whatnot and upon arriving at the party shack, got into an arguement which resulted in one.PULLING A SPORK and jabbing him with it. A taco bell spork. A spoon / fork hybrid. S P O R K. *thud*

Upon hearing this piece of info, I felt compelled to inbox him and ask how he is.doing.....don't hate, its Jesus would freakin do and ya know, I was curious. From what I could decipher in my limited knowledge of ebonics, his "wound" is healed but the mental scars have fueled his desire to rap. Lord.