Assume Nothing

I was on Mindless Waste of Hours Towards Some Meaningless Goalbook last night when an epiphany materialized … mind you I did not have an epiphany, it more like materialize as in words written in the sky in front on me… okay not the sky perhaps on my ceiling. This (Mindless Waste of Hours Towards Some Meaningless Goalbook) really is something I am not sure I want to be a member of… Oh, I like playing Scrabble® and tending my pretend farm because six Scrabble® games are not enough to juggle. There is also the ability to make smart-ass comments then delete them after someone has called me out. Yes, I actually find some slight amusement in doing the latter. However, besides Scrabble® and occasional pictures and links, I find that (Mindless Waste of Hours Towards Some Meaningless Goalbook) a waste of my time. So if I disappear I have found somewhere else to play Scrabble® and talked my opponents into joining me there.

I need more food and some sanity…that was the only segue I could come up with, hell it is after midnight, my brain is not …

There has been cooking happening in my home, and I am the one doing it. It has been years since I cooked meal so reacquainting myself with the kitchen has been a little hazardous. The first thing I had to do was reclaim the kitchen and organize it to my liking. Then I had to inform my eldest that things stay and go back where I put them if he wants food. The food statement was all I really needed to make, since he cannot drive. There is logic to that sentence if you think it all the way out…

On Saturday, my youngest came over and while cooking sour cream pound cake muffins I grabbed the corner of the pan, and forgot to let go. All I can say is ice and an Aloe Vera plant saved me from tears. It was a nasty burn with the burning flesh smell and all.

Last night I was chopping onions with some of the dullest knifes in history when I took off the tip of my finger. Now I do not have long nails, in fact it looks as though I am a nail biter however, truth be told, I am a compulsive filer. Nevertheless, I somehow managed to cut off the tip of the nail and alter my fingerprints since the cut was on the same hand as the burn. Damn I could have used these altered fingerprints if I had gone into another career choice… spy… I mean working for the State Department.

I have been busy putting ducks in a row the last month and a half. It is really difficult when ducks decided that they do not need to be in a row, and you have to convince them that they should. I am still messing with said ducks and it looks like it might take a good year of training at this point. Cryptic enough for you?

Last weekend my youngest son and I went to SA to help my father with a computer, well several computer problems; the worse actually being a blasted HP printer. We never got the damn thing hooked up the way he needed it, but I will be damned if we didn’t give it a go… you would have to see my father’s two computers, a scanner, fax machine, three printers, photo scanner cocktail to understand why putting one more printer on this could cause such a mess. Oh, all wireless too. I told him that the one printer, copier, scanner, photo scanner, fax all in one that he bought me would be perfect and he could just plug it in or have one machine do it all, not to mention it uses less ink then an HP. However, he told me that since he already has about 20 ink cartridges he would stick with his HP.

So this morning I received an email from my father…

Well we finally got all three of my printers working correctly. I was on the phone with the Tech for 10 hours. But he really fixed up everything. He found where I had some problems with my operating system and corrected any number of things on my computer, plus getting all my printers installed and operating correctly. He couldn’t help me with the 15 errors in my operating system as I do not have a CD for my XP system only for my XP home edition which would not work as this computer is not a home edition.. Anyway, it’s working and I’m happy. Thanks for the offers.. Figure this cost HP much more that the $49 I paid for the printer. Can you imagine 10 hours of long distance to Canada?

My response was…

Well I am glad you finally got that taken care of… I know how stressful it can be having computer problems. Not to mention that is how your business is run… anyway I am glad all is squared away. Haven’t seen my youngest today, I think he is afraid I will drag him back to SA for another full day of screwing with your computer.

In other news…

The daughter and Special Ed just came buy to pick up my eldest for the night, and to Rent a Cleaner (that is what they call renting my eldest to help clean.) He gets all excited both spending the night and cleaning. There is a blessing in there with that kid…he may be mentally retarded but he hates dust and messes…not to mention, but I am my kitchen is always spotless.

Speaking of kitchens…

Yesterday my daughter and I made empanadas with Pillsbury Crescent rolls, soy (fake Mexican chorizos) and Brie… it doesn’t sound good, but we ate the whole batch… great hors d’oeuvres or breakfast food. Earlier in the week I made enough Chicken Adobo for about eight people not realizing I should probably have cut my recipe in half. My eldest is enjoying the fact that I am cooking again, and I am actually getting some satisfaction out of the realization I still can cook, not to mention the benefits of eating well. I have not gained any weight, but at least I am holding at 114.

I am cat sitting for my daughter and her man. Arnie, the teenage cat that went through kitty boot camp here, is staying for a while. He likes it over here and visits occasionally. I took him in this time (my idea) because I noticed that he was getting skinny and my daughter has a new kitten and puppy… hell poor Arnie just wasn’t getting enough attention, nor did he want to hang out in the house. Since he has been here he has not left the house… he has claimed a chair and there he has stayed. He did not even try to leave with my daughter this morning when they came to pick up her brother. He just hung out in his chair.

Last night Arnie got on top of the fish tank and knocked over the fish-food can. This cat must have opposable thumbs because he managed to open the container and had it half eaten. It isn’t as if I don’t always have cat food out, heck I have a food dispenser.

Okay well I have a Scrabble game or two to tend to…

I am developing my own simple guide to work through my shit. It is making lists! No really, it is all about setting things to a list. As long as everything is checked off the list things are fine. Then, start another list. Filing is an important thing to prefect. Now one would think this is basic organization, but when one is dealing with something emotional it is a little tougher than you might think. Then there is another little problem… someone else is putting cogs in my organizational skill set. I have no idea, where the empty file folders are anymore.

Okay this will be a short rant.

I can never find anything in my house because the minute I put it down on a surface it is literally gone into some illogical corner, desk, and drawer, anywhere in my house. As anyone who lives with someone that is MR and is ODC about things on surfaces can tell you organization, no matter how good you are, cannot be achieved when trying to locate things where they were originally placed.

I am here to say, tools have been discovered in dresser drawers, software in the kitchen, and paint tape found in packed suitcases that where stored empty. Things are eventually found, but only after I have been replaced something out of frustration, because their whereabouts where surely never to be seen again and the house has already been searched top to bottom. I have actually bought my transcript five times in two years, replaced my passport twice, and my birth certificate well, hell I suppose the State of California can always send me another sealed photocopy.

This would not be so damn frustrating, but when asked said person with OCD where something is, he doesn’t understand what it looks like or that it was there. He only knows that it was on a surface and that alone upset him so he had to move it, to make it clean. Sometimes I wonder if he is just fucking with me… after all he is my son.

So you can see when I say I am having problems getting my shit together I really am! It seems as soon as I clean one area and know where everything is I make the mistake of laying something down, and it isn’t there anymore. Last night I had a post card beside my bed, I left the house for fifteen minutes and today I found it in the kitchen. My room is off limits. I will not even get started about my office area.

Tomorrow I am buying two shredders (it is on the list)… one for my son-in-law and one for me to get rid of piece of paper that does not have anything to do with anything that is not important. The next thing to be added to the list is to go through every drawer and write down what goes in there. If I have to turn my house into a where things go for idiots, so be it…I am turning into an idiot so I might as well be prepared.

Actually considering my OCD house mate if I had enough money I would just take pictures of everything all of the time and ask… where the fuck did you put this… or better yet have a machine that says, “Where did you put this?” with a picture to match it to. Perhaps this would help both of us… me with checking items off my lists and him with understanding what the hell I am looking for.

I think I will put that on tomorrows list, to put on another list. Tomorrows list is already too long.

When I was a little girl, about ten or eleven, my parents put me in a catholic school. Thank god, it was coed, or I would have really been even more awkward growing up.

Hell, we moved so much growing up the military, my only constant in life was my sister, it was she, the hired help, and the Irish priest and nuns, who really raised me in a world I was not prepared to face. On the bases we lived on, we had local movie theaters, buses that we could take anywhere, roller skating rinks, the local pool, and well other military kids looking to connect, with working parents.

Seldom did anyone not have two working parents, yes, back in the 50’s and 60’s; it was the only way some people could actually acquire the American Dream. Unless your father, was someone or you had more than one college degree you were really just stuck in the military. Though my father had a college degree he chose to be an NCO, he did not want to be an officer so he was a Master Sergeant in the Air Force; he had been a radioman in the Navy. However, when I was born then my mother insisted that he go into the Air Force. It was safer for her. After all, who wanted a man who was mistaken as Montgomery Cliff on more than one occasion on shore leave? Father had an impressive skill set, he was a quiet man, but for the 3 weeks a month, if we were lucky he was a regular dad.

When we lived in Japan, father took us to the river every Saturday, with some of the guys he worked with. It was always potluck, and Liz Malone would always bring the best damn chocolate cake with the yummiest frosting (most likely containing a great liqueur.) My mother got the recipe but never made it… I really wanted that recipe, but I am sure it had since been modified to a different palette’ not that of a seven year old in love with that taste.

After each picnic, us kids would run around and finish the beer cans. It was Black Label to some and cervezas to others; everyone was our uncles and aunts, some really were related too. Anyway us kids would look into the cans to survey the lack of butts and minnows that Uncle Ski taught us to catch with empty beer can. No one wanted a swig of butts, or minnows. I remember clearly on one occasion, Ski was with us as we made our rounds of half empties, and Ski drank some minnows.To this day I don’t know if he knew they were in there and let us pull a prank by not stopping him or if he was that just that good at hiding emotions and reactions.

My father was pretty damn good at hiding emotions and reactions, unless my mother was around to push and prod, but it was back then when she used her work, or the bowling alley to keep her mind off of him being gone. She was always so in love with him, but her version of love I have never been able to grasp.

Anyway, back the original story, minus the side trip into my thought process.

I always wanted to be a nun, back in my Catholic school days. Okay I have and had urges, so that kind of screwed me in the whole marrying jesus thing. I was positive I was going to cheat on god’s son! Oh yeah but I was also terrified of the real world, also of the United states, a place I was born, but hadn’t grown up in. I knew those sweet nuns and priest from Ireland would take very good care of me.

My family laughed at me… I really was very religious at the time; and after all, I had just seen the Sound of Music. As sure as I knew Hayley Mills was going to smoke in the bathroom in “The Trouble with Angels, I knew I would cheat on god if any of the Van Trapp family came my way, or a shallow substitute.

I put away those childish thoughts of god and refolded all of the white towels I wore as the headdress to my habit, and I knew that my idea of security was over. Well security in my own little life, Hell I was 11…. Little did I know I was to leave home for the first time the next year.