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The summer I was 9 I was out playing in the yard when my dad came outside to do some work on the house. Naturally he was in shorts, after all it was summer...in Washington...he's from Wisconsin. Any way, being the observant 9 year old that I was I noticed a rather large discoloration on the back of his leg. Roughly 4 inches above, below and including the back of the knee. It was a strange bean shape, and I'd never seen anything like it before.
Not only was I inquisitive but I wasn't afraid to ask questions. This was before people started really laughing at you in class for asking the infamous "no question is a dumb question" question. So, I asked my dad what the large mark on the back of his leg was. He told me that when he was a kid he had been bitten by a butterfly. A very large butterfly. Then he proceeded to go into detail about the size of this insect, using arm gestures and the whole nine.
Naturally fascinated I watched in horror as my dad recounted his vampire butterfly attack. It was so graphic that it caused me to question everything I knew about insects up to that point in my life. Which, granted wasn't much, but enough to know that butterflies weren't roughly the size of a bread box with fangs and attacked people for no reason. I contemplated this whole situation for days before asking my mom about it. To which she promptly replied "Dad's lying. It's a birthmark." Oh.
Why do we tell our children such lies? Probably because it's fun. It certainly caused my imagination to go into overdrive. And 16 years later, I can still remember the whole incident in detail down to the color of the shorts my dad was wearing...pink.
When you're a kid, adults, most often your parents, will tell you things like "you have it so good, it's hard to be an adult." You assume that they mean you will have to pay bills and go to work. Yea yea, no biggie. After moving out of my parents house these "hardships" were no big deal for me. I had a really good work ethic instilled in me when I was a kid, so a job was never a problem (when I could actually get someone to hire me). However, all that aside, these are not the hardships that your parents and well intentioned adults mean when they tell you that your life will be hard when you grow up.
What they do mean is that you will have to make decisions. Sometimes they're really fun to make; do I buy the red dress or the black shoes or both?!? Sometimes they're shit, how do I tell my husband I lost my job? They also don't tell you that decisions aside, you're now going to be burdened with things that you have no want or remote desire to contemplate.
Recently I've been faced with lots of facts that I don't want to deal with. These are the hardships that my parents must have actually been talking about. My life is relatively sublime. I love what I do for a living. I'm totally in love with my husband. We don't have money issues to worry about. And we get to travel due to his job, so I'll get to see lots of stuff before settling into any kind of family situation. I have no need to complain. I know lots of people are far worse off than I am. However, I've recently had a series of blows the last 2 years or so that make me question karma's intentions.
About a year and a half ago I was diagnosed with a condition that is not only rare but basically incurable. It might go away, it might not. Last year my grandpa was diagnosed with mesothelioma at age 65. We're not sure how much longer we'll have him with us. He's my only grandpa. In the last 2 months I've simultaneously been diagnosed with yet another condition that is basically incurable and might or might not go away; and at the same time my mom was diagnosed with heart disease at the age of 42. She'll have to go through surgery in a couple of weeks to have the sac around her heart removed.
I should thank my lucky stars that I'm not facing skin cancer, or something deadly myself. But two people really close to me are very close to that, and it scares the crap out of me. I've never lost anyone close to me. I don't think I can handle it if I have to face 2 deaths within 1 year. I don't think that will happen, I hope it won't. But why don't they tell you that these are the hardships that you will face when you grow up?
So, I made a hat! Well, I made two. The first one was a beautiful olive green; but it was too small. It fit, but it gave me a headache cause it was tight. Soooo I made a bigger one with a gorgeous garnet yarn.
I am not a good knitter. I know how, but I don't like to do it because it takes too long. For my birthday my grandma got me a Nifty Knitter loom that was a large rectangle for making scarfs and purses. After making a scarf in about 3 hours (a really long rainbow scarf, see previous post), I knew I had to get the circles! Since the weather has FINALLY gotten cold here I need a hat, and rather than buy one, I decided to make one; now was the time to get those circle looms I'd been eying. Plus, they were on sale.
I did this hat in 2 hours. 2 HOURS!!! Hell yea!
So, a few weeks ago I noticed my cat tweaking out for no reason. Well, seemingly no reason. We'd be sitting on the couch, watching tv and all of a sudden she'd launch herself off the couch and into the kitchen. Where she'd be staring intently at the cupboards. I slowly came to the conclusion that maybe we had a mouse in the house; but had never seen it, so I just kindof wrote it off.
Then, Leo decided to take down the Christmas tree. Which had been sitting in the corner well into January, and we had taken quite a bit longer to getting around to taking it down than usual. He lifted up the bottom third of the tree (yes, it's one of those huge fake ones), and all of a sudden, he screams and jumps up onto the couch. Immediately realizing that he sounded like a little girl, he jumps off the couch and proceeds to start looking behind our stereo and the couch for something. I, sitting at the other end of the couch, am now completely intrigued. So, I ask him what the big deal was, did he see a huge spider or something? Nope, it was a mouse. According to him a big fluffy brown mouse, and it ran "right across his foot!" Alright, my hunch was correct, and now we have confirmation.
Now that Leo finally believes me that there might be, and in fact there is, a mouse in the house, and I am not as crazy as he would have me believe, he decides that we're going to the Home Depot "TODAY!" to get the mouse traps. Me, being an animal lover, I agree because you can't very well live with a wild mouse living in the house, but secretly decide to get the humane ones. Once there we grab the "catch and release" traps and a package of the sticky traps, which come 4 to a pack. We get them home and place them around the house in strategic places. Leo and I agreed that putting the catch and release trap in the kitchen was probably the best idea because that's where I'd seen Stardust run to most often; so it gets loaded up with peanut butter and placed beneath the cupboard.
About a week passes, with us checking the traps every morning, and every time we get home, with nothing. Then, one morning after Leo had gone to work, I got up and stumbled into the kitchen to get my breakfast. Lo and behold, the catch and release trap is in the middle of the floor. Curious I bend down and peek inside; sure enough we caught a mouse! After doing a little victory dance I assessed the situation. This little guy was no bigger than an inch in every direction! HA! This was the mighty mouse that had caused my big navy submariner to jump up onto the couch?!? Oh, this was too good!
I briefly thought about just taking the mouse outside and let him go when a couple of thoughts entered my mind. First, he would probably just get into our house the same way he did before. It was cold outside, and I'm sure that's the chief reason he came into the house in the first place. Second, it really was cold outside! The temperatures had just dropped to the low 20's and me being the bleeding heart that I am couldn't bear the thought of him just freezing to death outside! So, I placed him on the counter, out of the way of the cats (who had obviously been playing with the trap all night), and presumably into the arms of safety.
On the counter he sat, all day, until Leo got home. I didn't want to just make a decision like keeping the little guy without consulting my husband first. The results could be disastrous. So, once home I told him about the mouse and we agreed that we could get him a small cage and some food, but "only until the weather got warm!" Of course this decision was reached complete with heavy sighs and eye rolls.
So, off to PetSmart to get the little guy a cheap cage and food. Once we got home and got the cage ready it was time to take him out of the trap. The poor thing had been in there all day, and was covered with peanut butter from head to toe. Leo took one look at him and said "he looked much bigger before, I'm sure he's fluffier without all the peanut butter on him!" Uh huh. After getting him into the cage we noticed that he's got a gimpy arm! The poor little guy had been fending off cats for weeks with one good arm. So, now we're teetering between letting him go when it's warmer, and just keeping him. He's awfully cute; but like we need another pet.
So, for now, we've got an uninvited house guest.
Do you ever wonder if your friends miss you? You move away from "home" and start a whole new life. Lots of things happen, and being humans we tend not to keep in touch like we should. I, for one, am particularly bad at this. Even with the friends that I've known for 12 years.
I suppose I'm feeling a little home sick. I couldn't tell you why. When I left home, I only really kept in actual contact with 2 friends that I'd known since school days; and that was sketchy. I'm terrible at making new friends, and working from home didn't bode well for making friends since I'm not a huge fan of Navy wives. Needless to say when I left Washington I had so few friends I could count them on a hand and a half, sometimes more and sometimes less depending on moods.
Maybe I'm a little too good at weeding out friends. But I also happen to know that they're really good at weeding me out. I've had friends just up and hate me for no reason. In fact, this happens so often that I've gotten an actual complex from it. When I don't hear from a friend for a week, or they stop returning my calls; I immediately assume that they're mad at me for some reason. Then I pour over the things that I've done and said over the past weeks to make sure I haven't stuck my foot too far down my throat to salvage a relationship. Only to find out that it was something as mundane as a dead cell phone battery; a lost cell phone; or they were simply out of town. Heaven forbid they have a life.
So, while I'm feeling homesick, I couldn't tell you why. I don't even want to go home to visit family. The only family I still have living in Washington are my aunt (and cousins), and my grandma and grandpa. My aunt is so busy she can't answer my emails, and my grandma isn't even in Washington right now, she's down in California.
So, it's not family drawing me home. It must not be friends either...of the people I still talk to back home one of them is even gone. I don't even think I'd have a place to stay, I'd have to get a hotel somewhere. How sad is that? When you can't even go home? And being displaced feels more and more like home every day?
Bored tonight, I find myself searching through MySpace profiles yet again. This time I'm going over friends or rather people from high school. There's been a profile set up for people from my high school who graduated in 2000. As I peruse their profiles I realize how truly sad Port Orchard really is...
They got the multiply part right; but why hasn't anyone gone forth!?!
I'm not saying noone has gotten out; but a good 80% of the people I graduated with seem to either still be in Port Orchard or have ended up back in Port Orchard. Granted there is something to be said for living in a small town. But having said that why in the world would you want to just stay put? Why stay in a town of less than 8,000...keeping in mind that when we graduated our class was nearly 1,000!! The rest of the population in that town seems to be comprised of retired people.
Honestly, who am I to question people's choices? However, it still seems sad to be proud of the fact that you've got 2 kids and you're working at the local Wal-Mart and on your second marriage?!? UGH!
I am SO glad I got out of that black hole!
You ever spy on someone on MySpace? Go looking for that long lost love; or old friend? I do it probably too often. I think it's the voyeur in me. I'm curious to see how their lives are going. What's been going on, what hasn't. That sort of thing.
The other day I was snooping around and I came across an old flame. Pretty serious at one point. But just didn't work out in the end. I keep checking back to his page in the hopes that he'll update his pictures or write a new blog; but it just hasn't happened. There's no way on earth I would ever contact him directly. The consequences could be disastrous (mostly for him - I just don't like being called names). Of course this is probably just the melodrama in me. He's probably tell me to fuck off and die and then I'd leave him alone. Why can't he just update his damned life so I can get on with mine?
If you keep a MySpace page, be kind to all of us voyeur's out there and if you're not going to update your profile at least put up a notice. Cause it's really irritating when we can't read your blogs and look at new pics. and see who you're becoming friends with.
