Parental Cruelty

Early this morning I got a message from my nerdy parents, calling me from my dad’s car to say good morning. I figured they were out running errands and that I would call them back later.

As I was out running my own errands, I got an email on my phone from my dad. It said, “At the hospital now. Will call you when I know more.”

Then there was a picture attached, a picture of my normally very pretty mother, with her face looking something like this:

My mom.

Of course, I freaked right the hell out. I already knew from their early call that they were out driving around, so immediately I assumed they must have had an accident. it looked like she had scraped her face on pavement, or maybe gone through a freaking windshield. Or maybe the airbag had deployed and hit her in the face?

Despite the email saying that he would call me when he knew more, I called his phone right away, from the utensil aisle at Bed Bath and Beyond…

And now I am no longer speaking to my parents. Neither is my brother. To explain further, Boy wrote up his own post for this blog…

Why Mom And Dad Suck

by Boy

So my fiancée had to get her wedding dress fitted today.  This meant I finally had nothing at all to do for an entire day.  As a result, I stayed in bed reading until after 11:00, after which I planned to get up and watch as many episodes of Babylon 5 as my obnoxiously narcoleptic roommate and I could possibly cram into one day.  (I have the whole series on DVD, ‘cuz - yeah - I’m that cool. ONR has never seen the show before and is trying to finish it before summer break ends and he has to go back to teaching.  This means frequent yells of “Wait, what happened?” followed by rewinding because of the aforementioned narcolepsy).

In between books and T.V., though, I sat down for a few minutes to surf the web - looking for various things I will be needing in relation to the big day in November.  No, not condoms.  Shut your yaps.  While there I received the following IM:

Mom: Have you seen the email from dad this morning?

Me: no

I normally leave my email client open at all times so it will alert me if I have a new email, thus eliminating my need to “check” it.  Recently, however, I’ve gotten in the habit of powering down at night, so I forgot to turn all those little things back on.  When I did look I found an email from Dad’s second wife (iPhone) with the subject line “We are at the hospital” and the body text “I’ll call you when I know more.”  Attached was a picture of my mom with horrible bruises and discoloration all over her face.

Naturally, my father is a douche bag, so at first I assumed Mom was wearing makeup and they were just trying to play mean tricks.  After all, if something was wrong, they would call, right?  Didn’t cross my mind that they were serious until I realized that the picture showed her standing in a room I did not recognize.  A room with pamphlets everywhere and what appeared to be some sort of front desk.  Waiting room.  So, still pretty sure that somebody was being a douche at some level, I decided to ask WTF.

Me: What happened? I just saw.

Mom: I woke up that way

Me: Are they scabs?

Mom: Not yet

Me: Or just like bruises?

Mom: Bruises. Actually do you want the real truth? Your father beat me….

Me: That’s impossible.

Mom: Why do you say that?

Me: Because if that were true I would have already killed him.

Mom: LOL! Yea I had laser done on my face for the red veins.

Now it should be noted that at this point we began talking about two different things.  My mother believed that everybody was aware of, and horrified by, tiny red veins that had been visible on her face for some time - to people standing six inches away and squinting.  She was telling me that she had had some sort of laser treatment to correct this and that the treatment caused the bruising. I, on the other hand, not giving a flying crap about tiny red veins that Encyclopedia Brown would have trouble remembering, assumed she was still talking about the horrible disfiguring bruises that a blind man could see in the picture.  Obviously, bruises are caused by broken blood vessels, so I thought she was describing the bruises as “red veins” and that she had gone in for some laser treatment to remove them.  See, the photo was taken after the treatment, but at this point I still thought it was from before. The wife-beating comment had satisfied my expectation that Mom would make some joke so it never occurred to me that the previous explanation had also been a joke. I still thought she had woken up with mysterious bruises.  To continue:

Me: What do you mean you had laser done?

Mom: yes with 3 more treatments ahead

Me: Well what caused it?

Mom: Hereditary

Me: Broken blood vessels?

Mom: yes I am sure you have seen them on me

(Yeah right, ‘cuz that’s what I do with my time.)

Me: No I think I would remember seeing this.

Mom: And a thing called Rosacea

At this point I hit up Wikipedia and found Rosacea and the relevant symptoms.  The article had no actual photographs of anyone exhibiting this symptom, so even though it intended to describe something different than what I saw in my mom’s picture, it still kind of fit, and I still didn’t catch on that I was being had.

Nonetheless I replied with quotes from the article, trying to calm my mother down so that she didn’t get scared and start crying because of the inexplicable hideous bruises that had appeared on her face overnight.

Me: “Erythema is redness of the skin caused by capillary congestion. It can be caused by infection, massage, electrical treatments, acne medication, allergies, exercise, solar radiation (sunburn), or waxing and plucking of the hairs — any of which can cause the capillaries to dilate, resulting in redness.” I think you’ve been exposed to pretty much all of those things at one time or another.

Mom: Absoutely

Now at this point I began to suspect that I had misunderstood my mother about the laser treatment.  See, I’m not a total idiot.  Note how I directly ask her the following question to make sure we’re talking about the same thing:

Me: So are you saying you got laser treatments to fix this or that your laser treatments caused it?

Now note how she blatantly lies to me:

Mom: Laser to fix it

Here is my next attempt to make sure my mother feels comforted about what I now believe will be a recurring condition of fucked up shit all over her face:

Me: Famous people with Rosacea include:
Bill Clinton[24]
J. P. Morgan[25]
Diana, Princess of Wales[citation needed]
W. C. Fields[24]
Rosie O’Donnell[26]
Mariah Carey[27]
Margaret Bobonich[28]
Ricky Wilson[29]
Lisa Faulkner[30]
Rembrandt

See how my mom now tries to make sure I am sufficiently terrified of what she has made me believe is a recurring condition of fucked up shit all over the face:

Mom: See you will probably get it also. If you don’t have the start of it already.

Note how that doesn’t work because I am a guy and have long since been comfortable with being ugly as fuck. Thus, I brush off her comment and try again to make sure she is physically and emotionally stable:

Me: Well that doesn’t matter. As long as you are not hurting.

Mom: Not badly

Me: How come it just came up all of a sudden?

Mom: I have been wanting to get this done for along time this is the first appt. I could get because he is so busy.

Ah, so now the charade begins to fall apart.

Me: Wait what? You said you just woke up with it.

Mom: No. I have had it builing up for long time.

Excuse me?  I live three miles from my mother and I’m pretty sure I would have noticed if she had gradually started looking more and more like she’d been doing penance after the manner of Monty Python monks.

Me: I’ve never seen anything like that on your face before. I’m confused. You just said you woke up this way and you went to the hospital.

Mom: I was teasing about that.

Me: Well you sure didn’t look like that last time I saw you. Or any of the previous 8 million times.

Mom: Well trust me it’s there.

At this point I begin to get angry as the full impact of my mother’s full-of-shit-ness lands upon my shoulders.

Me: … You’re telling me that in the week since I’ve seen you your face has been slowly turning into a war zone and this is the first time you’ve bothered mentioning it?

Mom: No the bruises are from todays lasering. The red veins have been getting worse for the last year.

So as I suspected, I was the victim of a half-assed deception followed by a half-assed retraction that just made everything more confused.

Me: … Oh. Well who gives a shit about red veins? Now you’ve got bruises all over your face.

Mom: So you are saying I look like a war zone. LOL

Me: I thought this picture was from before the treatment.

Mom: They will be gone in about a week.

Me: You mean your face looked just like it always does until you purposely asked a guy to shoot you in the head with a laser? Now I have no sympathy. I thought you woke up all bruised and crap.

Mom: Oh come on

Me: *(#@^%%$!/

Mom: Girl won’t talk to dad anymore.

Me: Why because of the picture?

Mom: yes and the words he said

Me: What words?

Mom: “we went to the hospital and will let you know more when I do”

Me: Yeah, that’s wrong.

Mom: I’m sorry i didn’t mean to make you mad. I was just trying to be funny like you guys are… Well okay dad was.

Me: You’re trying to make me think you’re all diseased! And you’re just getting cosmetic surgery!

Mom: Sorry really yes cosmetic surgery. The laser caused me to look bruised but I have red veins on my face. But with the lasering it will take them all away.

Me: Well nobody could see your veins! How is this better?

Mom: I can see them. And I have hated them.

Me: Yeah, well now you look like you got thrown down the stairs. This by you is a good thing?

Mom: It won’t last but about a week and then the red veins will be gone.

Me: uh huh. Whatever you say lady. I’m gonna go watch TV now.

This is why our parents are bad, bad people.  I know what you’re saying “she tried to tell you earlier she was just kidding, but she didn’t realize you didn’t get it.”  Yeah, well that’s too bad.  She shouldn’t have been telling her kids she had horrible diseases in the first place.  Our parents are hereby shunned until such time as justice is visited upon them.  And it will be visited.  Thus saith the BOY.

Sadly, I don’t dig the track and field stuff. So the Olympics are almost over for me.

(Watching yet another swimming event…)

JR: “What is this we’re watching here?”

Hue.esband: “Swimming. It’s THE OLYMPICS.”

(I think I have officially turned Husband into an Olympic-Lover.)

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Okay, ya’ll with your purple-boob-demands. the reason I didn’t explain the purple boob is because its not interesting. At all.

I just thought it was freaking hilarious when Husband said “JR’s wardrobe malfunctioned and her boob turned purple.” That’s good stuff, people.

What happened was… Husband ironed my white shirt for me while I showered that day, because I was running late. The iron spit some of the brownish crap out onto my shirt, like irons do sometimes, and from the shower I advised Husband to get bleach on a q-tip and blot out the brown stuff. Then I got out of the shower, put on my very pale pink bra and the white shirt, and we left. When we stopped at the bank for cash, I glanced in the reflective glass and noticed that my shirt, which had been perfectly white when I left the house, now had a giant purple spot right on my boob. Apparently the bleach hadn’t completely dried and the pink bra combined with the bleach and the white shirt created a giant purple boob. Like, seriously, DARK purple, and GIANT. We went home, I changed, and later when I checked that shirt again the purple had disappeared (I guess as the bleach dried).

See how boring the purple boob is? Sorry for the disappointment.

Purple Nurple

First of all, I do little else during the Olympics than watch and discuss the Olympics. Yeah, I’m that girl, SORRY.

Second, I got a promotion at work and so far that has meant two things: A) Doing both jobs for the last two weeks while we were working on getting someone to fill my previous job, and B) Training in a different, much farther away location this week. Not a lot of free time happening over here, people. Oh AND - we got a treadmill, and I’ve been using that every night. Which is very cool and I’m super proud of me. But I miss your blogs, so I’ve decided I need a rolling desk thing, like the thing they serve food on to patients in the hospital. If I can find one of those that’s tall enough, I can read blogs and walk at the same time. Awesomeness.

Two of my RL friends did amazing, impressive things this week:

BFF had a baby girl! By far the prettiest one I’ve seen yet. (Ya’ll, she makes the most perfect little babies, with perfectly shaped heads and beautiful, perfect skin. Just general perfect-ness. It helps that she gets them out of there quickly - one minute she’s like, “Oh, I’m in labor.” And the next minute she’s like, “Oh, here’s the baby!” Seriously, I’m exaggerating only a tiny bit, and she really is that calm. Now when I have babies, it sure as hell ain’t gonna go anything like that, I tell you what.) CONGRATS BFF!

and

Hamster Grrl is now Dr. Hamster Grrl! So awesome! Mucho kudos!

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Call Husband had to make last Sunday:

“Hi, um we’re gonna be late to lunch. We have to go back home… JR’s wardrobe malfunctioned, and her boob turned purple… No, I really can’t explain it anymore than that. Her boob is purple, we’ll be late.”

amanaplanacanalpanama

Wherein I “live blog” (read: tivo and watch later) the Olympic Opening Games. FYI - this blog is about to become All Olympic, All The Time. I FREAKING LOVE THE OLYMPICS.

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Paraguay/Uraguay

“They are such liars!”

“Who? Paraguay?”

“YES! Don’t you read my blog?! Wait… Maybe it’s Uruguay that are liars… I can’t remember. Why don’t you read my damn blog, then YOU would know?”

———————————————————————

“Alright Brazil, enough already. We get it - you’re beautiful and you wear bikinis.”

“Do they? SHOW ME.”

———————————————————————-

“Bush just CHECKED HIS WATCH during the Olympic Opening Ceremonies! He’s Bush, what the hell does he have to go do?!?!”

——————————————————————–

“13 million people and all you could cough up was one jock?”

——————————————————————–

“Why can’t I remember the name of that guy from Nicaragua?”

“What guy?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ghana!”

“No, that’s not it.”

——————————————————————-

“How many did they have from Canada?”

“I didn’t catch, but apparently several.”

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“The Congo! They have gorillas!”

————————————————————

“Hungary… Ah, the Drug Lords!”

“You’d have to be on drugs to wear those dresses.”

————————————————————-

“Kenya! Yeah, they got a lot ’cause they can freakin’ run, man.”

“But they can’t hide…”

“Not cool, man. Not cool.”

———————————————————————-

“Fuck that! They’ve got good food, you’ve got good food, let’s put it together!”

“Frinese food?”

“No, Chinese food with cheese and crossiants on the side.”

—————————————————————–

“I really don’t think you should be allowed to compete for Bulgaria if you live in FUCKING HOUSTON.”

—————————————————————–

“…they dove to the sand and celebrated like few other have before…”

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

“Sand wrestling?”

———————————————————————

Now I must go to bed, I have tivo’d (tivoed? tivo’ed?) the Opening Ceremony and will finish watching it tomorrow.

Earthquakes and Ass Knuckles

JR: You should read Crazy Aunt Pearl’s very short post about the earthquake ya’ll had. It’s short.

jerbo: Don’t forget to cover you arms with you head.

JR: Is that the funniest thing ever?

jerbo: No, the funniest thing ever happened to me this morning.

Bridget IM’d me and said her computer could kiss her… knuckle.

Except when I read it I put the word “ass” in there even though she didn’t say it and I’m like “What’s an ‘ass knuckle’?”

I can’t even say it now without busting up.

JR: I’m not sure I understand. Is it the phrase “ass knuckle” that is busting you up?

jerbo: Yes, if you don’t think that is funny you can kiss my ass-knuckle.

JR: Ha!

jerbo: I have just been bustin’ up all day thinkin’ about what the hell an ass-knuckle is.

JR: I think it’s like plumbers crack.

jerbo: I guess your tail bone is actually our ass knuckle but it still sounds funny.

JR: I think the other day I pooped an ass knuckle.

Crotch Around The Collar

“I’m telling you, it’s fine to just wash everything together.”

“No. It is gross. You cannot wash your shirts with your underwear.”

“Why not? It’s all going on the same body!”

“DUDE! It’s disgusting! I don’t want my shirts rubbing against my panties! Then you end up with… with… Crotch Around The Collar!”

“Hahaha! Crotch Around The Collar! Is that anything like Ring Around The Collar?”

“You know, you don’t hear anything about Ring Around The Collar anymore. Did it go away?”

“I guess they just solved it.”

“Geez, finally.”

Barrel of Monkeys

We bought a desk from a friend of ours (well, technically we haven’t paid him for it yet, sorry SUCKA!) and it was originally supposed to be Husband’s new desk. Because he has a giant, ugly desk from someone’s office in the 70’s. But then he kept talking about how much he loves his giant ugly desk, so I said, “Fine. I’ll take the new desk, and I will sit there and blog to my heart’s content.” (I’m such a martyr.)

Then we actually went and picked up the desk, which I of course remembered was beautiful and freaking awesome, but Husband apparently didn’t know (or forgot) how awesome it is. So once he saw, he obviously started to change his mind and wanted to make it his desk again.

We have decided that the person who gets the desk is the person who can fit it into their room best (his room = The Office; my room = The Guest Room). But that was last Sunday. All week long, the new desk has been sitting in our entry way, blocking multiple doors and making me crazy. Neither of us has had time to try and fit it in our respective rooms, but I think later today I might wait until Husband is distracted with his studying and then re-arrange my room enough for the new desk.

And that, folks, is the most exciting thing that’s been going on over here. I know what you’re thinking, “Damn! My life would be changed if only JR had blogged that earlier!”

Speaking of changing lives, there’s this girl at my work who makes ice cream, and she was telling me about her favorite flavors. She swears that I have to put both flavors in my mouth at the same time, and ohmygod did she go on and on about it! At the end of her diatribe, she yelled, “GIRL! It will CHANGE. YOUR. LIFE.”

So all weekend that’s all I’m going to be saying to people. Don’t you wish you could spend time with me? I’m a barrel of monkeys.

I’m going to hang out in the mall later with some friends, because we are 13 years old. Actually, it’s because it’s 137 degrees outside so we must go somewhere with good AC. One of them (my BFF) is about to bring a tiny little girl named Cate into this world, and possibly the walking in the mall might help speed things along.

Which reminds me, BFF and I went for pedicures last weekend and they did 10 minute reflexology on both of us. They were hesitant to do it on BFF because it can apparently induce labor, but her response to that was, “I’m two weeks from my due date, she’s fully cooked, BRING IT.” (Or something to that effect. I may have added the BRING IT. Whatever.) Then after the reflexology, I felt SO FREAKING SICK. I was incredibly nauseated for the rest of the day, and the next day I was super Blah and still feeling sick. Apparently this means I have mucho toxins in my body. Yuck. OR, it could be because I told her that one of my toes is possibly broken, and she cracked that knuckle anyway, and it hurt. like. damnit. And I learned on the one episode of House I’ve ever watched that people can get really sick and die from broken toes, so probably that is what was happening to me.  She must have released infection from my broken toe and I am dying. This is almost certainly true. I will miss you all.

“I’ve gone through 3 pairs of panties today!”

Dude, last Saturday we went to the Parker County Peach Festival*, and did I mention it was 102 degrees that day? Like, I’m not exaggerating, it literally  was 102.

I use the word literally too much. Literally.

Anyway, I got up and showered and put on panties. (And other clothes, duh.) Then we went to the festival, and despite the lovely Peach Juleps and homemade Peach Ice Cream, I was a disgusting sweaty mess. So when we got home I changed my panties.

Then we went fishing, at the deadly Devil-Water-Cow Lake. Shockingly, my body was able to create more sweat, although my level of exertion was drastically lower than earlier. When we got home (no fish were caught, and no Devil-Water-Cows were spotted) I had to shower and put on my third pair of panties.

Now, let me tell you why this is really funny. See, when Husband and I were driving home from the Peach Festival, a hawk flew out of the woods and started flying towards our car. He was clutching a snake in his claws, and that snake was wiggling around like you can’t believe. We both started yelling and pointing at it, and Husband slowed down to look more closely. Then we realized that it appeared to be heading directly at us. I started panicking that the hawk, with snake attached, was going to fly right through Flick’s windshield.

Well, that didn’t happen. What did happen was, that damn hawk flew right in front of us and DROPPED THE LIVE SNAKE. Which we then HIT. It flew just right, so that we hit it with the grill of the car while it was still in the air.

Let me repeat that, just to be clear. A FREAKING HAWK DROPPED A FREAKING SNAKE ON MY FREAKING CAR.

I screamed, then I felt guilty and sad for the snake. (Did ya’ll know that snakes are extremely terrified of falling? True story.) Then I decided that it must still be on the car, probably int he engine somewhere, and it would bust out through the air conditioning vent and kill me one day when I least expect it.

Husband told me he saw it laying in two pieces on the road behind us, but I think he just said that to calm me down. I’m pretty damn sure it’s in my engine.

Anyway, after that happened (”that” being  A LIVE SNAKE FALLING ON MY CAR) we spent the rest of the day randomly looking at each other and saying things like, “I can’t fucking believe that fucking happened!”

So after my shower that evening, when I exclaimed out loud, “I’ve gone through 3 pairs of panties today!” Husband’s response was, “Because of the snake?”

Which is funny on many levels, none of which I feel a need to explain because we’re all grown-ups here.

And that is the whole point of this post. The End.

*I like how it says, “The peaches provide a good reason to have a festival…” As if, “We could not possibly bear to be around any of you people if it weren’t for the delicious peaches.”

PS - How fun was Blog Share? Man, I love Blog Share Day. It’s like Christmas. (Except, I finally wrote something that people liked and I can’t take credit for it! Damn it!) It was so frustrating to me to be stuck at work all day. All I wanted to do was come home and read posts. Next time there’s a Blog Share, I’m totally taking off work that day.

Blog Share Post

I know this is blog share…and I don’t want to disappoint, but R. also explicitly said that she did not want to be subpoenaed.  Therefore, no stories about that time I stole that necklace from Macy’s or all those murders I’ve committed.*  That said, I wanted to let you know something that only one other person knows and that is that I am a violent person.  Tremendously so.  It sounds so ridiculous and it is so shameful.  But there you have it *I* am an abuser.

Occasionally, my anger has been fueled by alcohol, but certainly that is not the only trigger.  It doesn’t help that I was in a relationship with someone for years that had similar anger issues so that our fights would escalate to the point where I would hit or bite him so that he would hit me back.  Convenient that.  So I could play the role of the “victim,” when I was so often the aggressor. 

The last time, I was so absurdly drunk that in the middle of a bar I up and kicked him (hard) in the groin.  We went back to his place and when he said something to me that offended me, I bit him so hard that he had a giant baseball sized knot and black and blue in the soft part of his upper arm.  Apparently to get me off of him, he had to shove my face hard.  I had bruises around my jaw.  I apologize for the vagueness, but you see, I don’t remember the incident.  At all.  I remember getting home or rather getting out of the cab.  And the next thing I remember was my boyfriend crying and apologizing for hurting me and bruising my face.  There were grapes spilled on the floor.  A boyfriend with a giant bruise on his arm.  My swollen lower jaw.  And I couldn’t remember it.

I wish I could say that I have stopped drinking, but I have not.  I have been extraordinarily careful since that date with both my anger and my alcohol.  It is just such a thing of shame:  the trying to keep myself in check, the escalation of my anger, the eventual explosion.  Really, I just want to say in all prospective relationships with friends, family and otherwise: men, women, whoever, “Be careful.  I hurt people.”  And my goodness, I can’t have children.  Could you imagine?

I have worked so hard to keep myself in check since then.  And thankfully, to date I have not stepped over that line.  But frankly, I don’t know what else to do.  I’m like the Hulk minus the green skin and stretched proportions.

There you have it.  My moment of shame.  Not exactly something I wanted to share, but probably something that I needed to.  Thank you for this.

*Kidding about the necklace and murders.  Not so much for the rest, unfortunately.

Blog Share List

The list of blogs participating in Blog Share*, for your reading pleasure…

Vent Vox
Turn On The Stars
Trudie - Life After AC
Swimming With Sharks
Stefanie Says
Shhh! Librarian-In-Training
Sauntering Soul
Sass Attack
Reflections in the Snow Covered Hills
Red Red Whine
Our Simplicity
One New Duck
Oh My Seven
The Occasional Truth
No Lady
Nancy Pearl Wannabe
Muse On Vacation
Messing With Texas
Melliferous Pants
Lizland
Live Work Dream
Just Below 63
Jonniker
Java Literally
Heidikins
Full of Snark
Face Down
Ex Everything
Everything I Like Causes Cancer
Did I Say That Outloud?
The Daily Tannenbaum
The Coconut Diaries
Citystreams
Catheroominations
Bright Yellow World
Breath Smiles Tears
And You Know What Else
Alyndabear
3 Carnations

*For those of you who may not know, Blog Share is organized by the lovely -R-, and presents an opportunity for bloggers to post anonymously on a fellow blogger’s site.