The Dropout

Face it. I am a social drop out. Let me list, in no particular order, my failed attempts at social club type things.

1. Swimming lessons. Being that there were no puboic swimming pools within 20 miles of home, and the fact that seaweed and the lake version (lake weed?) Gave me the heebie jeebies, I didn't know how to swim for quite some time. I took a few lessons at age 12 when visiting my grandparents in Oregon, but when the swim coach decided to teach me to swim in 10 foot deep water, I screamed until she was forced to call my mother to take me home. I never went back. I still don't like swimming in water deeper than I am tall. And being a swim drop-out, all I can do is doggie paddle.
2. Dance lessons. In elementary school it was tres cool to take tap lessons at this one lady's house. She had a real dance studio in her basement, complete with mirrors and dance poles and stuff. Everyone's parents would drop them off for an hour of dance class. In this day and age, you wouldn't dare drop your kid off at a dance lesson in some lady's basement. But, back in the day and in my small safe town, it was normal. I remember pink leotards and a shiny brown floor and doing tap moves and even some ballet. In fact, I kept getting suckered into it. I think I did ballet once and tap twice but never learned a damned thing. Being an antisocial tomboy of sorts, I would get bored a few lessons in, and re-join when a new friend suckered me into it.
3. Singing lessons. I was really into the drama club in high school and all my friends were in choir. I was dying for a part in a play and thought, if I could learn to sing, I'd be golden. I would get the lead in Oliver or Fiddler on the Roof. Well, I didn't, and I dropped out of singing lessons. I did hours a week of lessons and note reading and musical theory and bla bla bla from a retired real operatic singer. I was a second soprano and was going to sing a solo in a little recital and I gave up. I was dreaming of reading notes in my sleep and it was like pulling teeth.
4. I am at 4 right? Sororities. Anyone who knows me woukd ne shocked to even hear me mention sororities due to my distain of them. If you like them or were even a sorority girl, I have no qualms but it is just not for me. But I pledged twice. Kind of. See ,curiosity had got the best of me and I wantee to know the enigma of a sorority.why did people want to join and what did it offer? I was so perplexed that I wanted to do a sort of sociological case study of a sorority. Besides, while I am a self avowed misanthrope, I also love people, quite a conundrum, and so I keep seeking social activities. A sorority was the ultimate social activity. I pledged, paid my dollar fee, and that was that. The pledge activities seemed like something from kindergarten and no amount of alcohol could make me that...I don't even know.
5. Girl scouts. I dreamed of girl scouts until I was old enough to join and gladly rushed to the community center behind school to sign up. I got my application for my uniform and went to the two "free, before you must buy your uniform" meetings. I blamed the cost of the uniform on my dropping out, but it was a farce. Girl scouts was lame. I wanted boy scouts ,but for girls. I wanted to start a fire out of rocks and climb trees and go fishijg. I wanted to tie weird knots and go camping and shoot bows and arrows. All we did in girl scouts was talk about character and cookies. We wouod sit in cliques and giggle and I would just scowl. On my second day, I got the brilliant idea to get the girls to go outside, and you know, do outside stuff. Across the parking lot was a soccer field which had muddy puddles along the edges, infested with tadpoles and frogs. We could catch tadpoles and raise them into frogs! We could climb the rocks above the community center! We could, apparently, stand on the cement and throw a ball twice before the other girls got bored and went inside to giggle about cookies and hair bows.
6. Birthing class. I wanted to be prepared to give birth, and to be knowledgeable and all that. I mean. I love learning and I am secretly a control freak so why not? And best of all Idid not do it alone, husbands were mandatory. We paid our fee and hubby reluctantly came along. We attended maybe 5 of the 10 meetings before dropping out. Maybe it was that we both worked full time and went to school full time. Maybe the classes moved too slow. I am really not sure, but yeah we dropped out. I kind of regret it as I learned nothing about birth itself and was horribly unprepared and dumbfounded during labor. Oh well.
6? 7? Anyways mommy and me. The local library has a mommy and me story time thing. I thought, wow, I can meet friends who live nearby and have young kids and must have lots in common with me. We can socialize, the kids can socialize, and they can listen to a book and watch puppets and it won't be me making cutesy voices and singing lame bursery rhymes that haunt me in my sleep. Win win! Maybe it was that the meetings were at nap time. Maybe it was that my son kept getting ear infections. Maybe it is that he would cry bloody murder whenever anyone couod clap, cheer, or make sudden movements. Maybe it was that my utopian ideal of awesome welcoming moms who were like my soulmates was unfounded. But I maybe attended four times in an entire year, when the meetings were weekly.
I bet there are even more circumstances which escape me. But social things get too loud and giggly and superficial, or too scary, or tooslow and dumbed down for my liking.or maybe I don't get along well with others. Who knows. Either way, I will certainly join and drop out of many more social clubs and events in my life. I hope some day I can find a club that I actually enjoy.

Godfather

Why did I have a music box as a child that played the theme song from The Godfather? It is kind of disturbing that that melody soothed me as a child and is still that way today.

goth-esque

Most of my favorite authors and bloggers went through a goth stage when they were younger. I kept feeling all high and mighty cause, pshaw, I so didn't do that.

Oh crzp, or did I? I guess you, the reader, can decide. See, I escaped adolescense as a teen. I came home before curfew, didn't date, drink, curse, or do drugs. I even made honor roll. But then came college and suddenly I was 19 going on 14. And yes, perhaps, I went kind of goth.

I did not wear the black eye crud or lipstick, and I kept my tresses brown. But I did listen to Type O Negative, The Cure, Stabbing Westward and Nine Inch Nails. I owned a blac kand red brocade gown-like dress that I did, indeed, purchase at Hot Topic. I wore Doc Martens (might they be more punk than goth? I am bad at cliques). I read a lot of existentialist authors ahd penned sad poetry. I drew depressing art, like a lithigraph of a bleeding hand surrounded by sad song lyrics. I owned way too many candles. I mocked the popular crowd and didn't get why people could be so happy in such a sh1tty world.
So does that mean I indeed was kind of goth? Was I just in denial or am I truly too dense to realise the goth clique cliches?

Life is fleeting

I remember I was sitting with my son in his play pen when my husband came in and said, "I don't know how to tell you, so here goes; your dad had a heart attack. He is in the hospital."

I didn't believe it. In fact, I went back to browsing my Nook and watching Veggie Tales. I was likely in shock and unable to process things. It was about 2pm and I thought, will my dad make it?

I decided we had to go see him. I did not want to stay at home if these were his last minutes on earth. However, I had to wait for my husband to finish a conference call, and had to pack. We had a 14 hour drive ahead of us, and had to find a place for the dogs.

We left at about 5pm, dropped off the dogs, and drove until 1am; exhausted, we checked into a hotel to get rest, but for me, rest didn't come.

My mom called in the morning an I held my breath, expecting the worst. She said they were still in the hospital but things were looking up. She told me not to worry, not to come up, please stay home. But I didn't listen. She called again and I asked her how far her house was from the border. She couldn't tell me to turn back now!

Everything turned out okay, but I still worry.

On Christmas Eve, I saw that my best friend (of over 20 years!) had posted that she wanted her dad back. Shocked and confused, I texted her. Her dad had passed in his sleep, likely of a heart attack. He is younger than my dad, probably about 55 and one heart attack took him away with no warning. Alive and healthy one minute, gone the next.

My best friend, now in mourning, shock, and sadness. My heart aches for her and her family. I keep telling her I am sorry and that I am here for her. I keep telling her I love her, but all these things seem trite. Words cannot express what I feel and what I want to say.

This tragedy has made me more appreciative of my family, because you never know when someone will be gone forever. You cannot live in fear, but you must enjoy every moment of those close to you. Tell them you love them and tell them often. Call up your grandma just to chat, take your cousin out for coffee, buy your best friend a little gift just because. Do it. You will thank yourself and you will bring joy to others.

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Fleeting

Life is fleeting and enjoy it. Hi your loved ones.

My best friend's dad passed away in his sleep a few days ago. He was not too old, probably 55? An unexpected tragedy for the holidays.

I wasn't close to him but my best friend is like my sister and we spent so much time together that I did see her dad a lot. My heart aches for my friend and I am at a loss of what to say r do. I mean, what can you say or do? Sorry seems so..empty and trite. My sorrow doesn't have words and my love for my best friend, especially now, is huge. And now I am tearing up dammit so I will stop.

Please, love those special to you in your life, and even those not as life is fleeting.

odd appreciation

I did not grow up in a normal household, even if it seemed normal to me at the time.

My dad and mom had separated for a few years after my dad fell into the wrong drug abusing biker gang (no joke!), and so my best friend (I was daddy's little shadow) had left my life. He moved to a local forest area with sparse campsites and we would visit him occasionally to gather his laundry, provide him with canned goods, and check on his well being. Most people would say he has homeless since, well, he didn't have a home, but tome he was merely camping. He had a teepee atop a rock outcropping and a campfire, a clothes line, and a cooler so to ke, he lived there. I still to this day cannot think of him as being homeless.


After he had cleaned up and got back on his feet, he returned home and life went on as usual. Well, as usual as life can be for a man diagnosed with a smorgasbord of things like Asperger's, borderline persinality disorder, ADD, anxiety, sociophobia, agorophobia, major depression, and probably another handful of things I seem to forget. I did not have a dad who wore slacks and a tie, or who coached littlea league, or watched football, or played poker with the guys. This also meant holidays and birthdays were abnormal. He is not good with numbers and so he doesn't remember birthdays (he would forget his own), and he,being himself, wouldn't go out and buy gifts or dress as Santa or decorste the tree. While he loved me and I knew it, he was kind of a scrooge. But I nevef questioned it.

One year I recall seeing something in a plastic grocery bag under the tree and he asked me to open it,a gift from him. He might give you a handpicked wildflower bouquet or sign a card but a present? So I eagerly opened the bag to find some paintbrush-tipped markers. There were not the markers kids get, but markers artists and adults use. The kind of markers thaf cost a dollar each. I was so excited that I looked past the missing colors ,appreciative of the colors I did have. I spent hours that night coloring picture after picture.

I remember thinking, how did he manage to go into a store, which had to be way far away in the city, to buy markers with money he didn't have? I had to ask, and he being too honest sometimes, let me know he found them at the dump. Now you would think I would scream bloody murder, cry, and scrub my hands furiously and call him a monster but I didn't. I knew he had to have washed them off very well, and since it was winter, the dump was freezing so it wasn't like they were sitting in a pile of hot garbage. Besides, I had played eith them for a while and hand't concocted some weird uncurable mystery garbage disease so they were fine. I just knew I couldn't tell my friends about my markers because they would ostracise me for having dump markers.

I had told someone of this (I forget who it was) and they were repulsed and felt sorry for me. I didn't understand and still kind of am baffled. Maybe it is just perspective. When you have lived with someone like my father, who cannot just go to Walmart or whatever, cannot hold down a 9-5 job, but who still does care about and love his family. You don't sweat the small stuff and you appreciate the little things. I guess if you weren't me you would feel sympathy for the poor little girl with dump markers but even to this day, I know he cares and when he saw those markers, his heart filled with love and he brought them home to give his daughter a gift he has picked out. A gift she would love. And I did, as it is 20 years later and I still remember those awesome markers and the joy of getting a gift from my dad.

Yuck E Cheese

So I have sinusitis which is weawy fum I wub mot bweawing oup my bose.

So I spent two freaking hours in urgent care. While I love living in a first world nation, in second and third worlds you can walk into the farmacia or apothecary and get medicine. I don't advocate we adopt this policy for addictive drugs and the like, but it should be adopted in some cases.

Case in point, I get sinusitis yearly. As a kid it was a few times a year. I know the symptoms and how it differs from other illnesses. In fact, I in officially announce I am a sinusitis expert, having had it probably 100 times in my life, no exaggeration.

I am allergic to lots of medicines, and pregnant to boot, which leaves me one medication on earth to prescribe to me. Zithromax. It is safe for pregnancy and doesn't give me hives or anaphylaxis.

So why do I have to wait two hours and spend $30 to do this? Especially when m diagnosis is even circumspect anyways. Ugh.

And why am I so miffed about this?

I wasted two precious hours of my son's second birthday sitting in a disease ridden room away from my birthday boy.

Sprout TV has a birthday card, song, dance thing that my son loves. I sent in a handmade card and they didn't show it. His name didn't scroll across the screen. His card wasn't even on the website. I was pissed.

I was in a sinus daze instead if enjoying his special day.

I also was in a gaseous haze. Yep. We went to Chuck E Cheese and got pizza and it gave me the worst gas.y dogs once ate their poop and barfed it up and that is exactly what I smell like. I don't want to be near myself.

I can't take anything for my gas or congestion.

And it is making me obviously cranky.

Grr.