Vodka Break

Everyone knows during any heavy duty cleaning project breaks must be taken.  Allworkandnoplaymakesjackadullboy...allworkandnoplaymakesjackadullboy...allworkandnoplaymakesjackadullboy...but I digress.  It is essential therefore to catch one’s breath, get out of the dust, into the daylight again, and pour a lovely chilled vodka drink to reflect on the progress thus far.  Or maybe to ignore what’s still there for a while.  

My job, the one I get paid to do, is to provide customer service solutions and direct sales support for consumer electronics from home via chat.  And I’m actually quite good at what I do.  However it often makes me want to scream.  Sometimes I actually do scream, and sometimes its quite profane. This doesn’t go over well with darling husband who works beside me on the phones. Its fine to talk back to ridiculous chatters as long as you don’t type it, but not when his clients can hear you.  Bad, bad, bad.  I have wondered aloud things like “WHEN MY FUCKING HEAD EXPLODES, WHO IS GOING TO CLEAN UP THE MESS?!?”  He tries to brush it off  as if I am an unstable co-worker with Turrets (because his client company is very progressive and believes in employing the handicapped) but he’s gotten reprimanded for background noise before.  Can you imagine?  

I’m pretty even tempered, but I have a very low tolerance for stupid, because as the Blue Collar Comedy Team have shown us over and over, “you cannot fix stupid”.  There are lots of things that you can overlook in a relationship or in life, but stupid, for me, is rarely one of them.  I’m not talking about developmentally delayed individuals, but the fully functioning idiots out there.  I think the Darwin awards are brilliant.  That people can take themselves out of the gene pool on their own, hopefully without propagating, is genius.  Thank you God for natural selection.  

My bullshit meter is almost always on.  Whether you are a customer, an acquaintance, a co-worker (just because I work from home, doesn’t mean I don’t have co-workers) or my own children.  Don’t try to tell me anything but the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  I come from a long line of liars and storytellers and there is nothing you can tell me that I haven’t already tried.  If you are my child don’t try to tell me that the dog ate your homework unless you are prepared to bring me scraps of it in her poo.  I’m telling you been there, done that.  Hmmmm...does that make me a cynic too?  

For now the break is over dearest ones who are following my crap.  Don’t know that I’ll dive back into the depths of cleaning by next time or not.  We’ll have to see where next time finds me.  Hell, I may still be on vodka break. 

Nudists

So, how many of you are aware that there are degrees of Nudism?  Is that even the right term?  For now it is.  Anyway, really there are.  There are those who are clothing optional only within the home and some who go out and spend weekenders with the family at nudist camps and there are those who live at the nudist camps and only get dressed ever to go to town and get supplies and groceries.   

Between the ages of about 3 and 10, I guess that’s about right, we were both clothing optional in home and would take weekenders to the nudist camps.  The camps were mostly family environments not so different from most other campgrounds that you can go to.  They have a pool, volleyball, horse shoes, playground, cabins, campers and tents.  The stuff you’d expect, except everyone was running around naked as the day they were born.  For many of them this was a very long time ago.  Like when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.  Imagine your grandparents....just saying is all. 

Given my former post about mother and husband number 3 being swingers, I’m not sure how this applied to the nudists if at all.  Because mostly that isn’t why Nudists are Nudists.  During the day people make use of the pools and outside activities at night the kids would gather in someone’s trailer and play board games or watch tv if you could get reception (recall this was the 70s).  The adults would play cards, strip poker was always popular although I never really go that.  You spend all day naked where is the penalty or added pleasure of having someone take off an item of clothing when they lose a hand. Which brings me to my next observation, from what I remember most of the folks who were nudists were not really people whose bodies you would imagine wanting to see naked.  They come from all walks of life.  Some are skinny, some are fat, some are wrinkly and some have parts that gravity has gotten the better of.  Most are perfectly lovely people who are comfortable in their own skin.  Which is an awesome thing.  I wish I had managed to grow up that comfortable in my own skin.  

To an extent during this time I was that comfortable.  To the point that I would think nothing of running out the door of our apartment when I was about 7 years old, yell to mom that I was going to play, and have no shirt on.  I never thought a thing about it.  It all ended one day when one of my friend’s parents called my mom and said 

“Do you realize that your daughter is outside wearing shorts?” 

“Okay, it’s warm outside”

“No, I mean ONLY shorts”

“Oh”

So we had to have the talk about appropriateness.   

Mostly I liked the nudist camp.  Actually mostly I liked the pool.  I could care less if I were clothed or not.  No one else was wearing any clothes so I didn’t feel any different.  Perhaps I should mention that I am so white that I am nearly blue so I burn easily and I think I have previously mentioned that Mother was not always super diligent about making sure that I wore sunscreen properly.  I’m sure you see where this is going. One weekend, I was probably in Kindergarten, or maybe even still pre-K.  My bottom (and the rest of me) got burned so badly that I couldn’t wear panties or anything else for 3 days because the pain would make me throw up.  Mom couldn’t work for those days because who could she get to babysit that she could explain why I couldn’t have any clothes on? Or how the entire real estate of my body got scorched? She didn’t really like me that much, so spending 3 extra days of the week with me was not something she wanted to repeat.  So, I spent the rest of the summer being the strange kid in the pool who had to wear panties and a t-shirt so she wouldn’t burn.  

Pink Elephants

***WARNING****  This is sort of long and really not much fun, but, I believe a necessary part of my journey.

While I am clear on the fact that I don’t want this to turn into an ‘I hate mom’ thing, when you start looking at your earliest memories mom is a prevalent figure in most of our lives.  One of my few constants anyway (constantly inattentive, constantly drunk, constantly abusive....you get the idea).  I cannot begin to address my own emotional junk without addressing my relationship with her.  That would be like leaving the giant pink elephant in the room and pretending it isn’t there.  Besides, until I address the elephant and thus relocate it or with any luck remove it completely I won’t be able to get at the other stuff.  

This won’t be pretty, it rarely is. I am insanely jealous of those who actually do have good relationships with their moms but also very happy for them.  Everyone deserves a good relationship with their mom.  Unfortunately there are a great number of walking wounded on this planet and so many of those wounds were caused by our moms.  

Mom was only 20 when she had me and she informed me that she never wanted me but abortions were illegal when when she got pregnant and she was scared to go to one of the ‘back alley butchers’.  Funny thing is, she didn’t spit it out when we were having one of our epic mother-daughter showdowns, we were just having conversation. Nope, not even kidding, she actually told me that.  Wow, mom, so nice to know that I have always been a reminder of something you never wanted. 

Anyway, it was the early 70s, love was free, she fucked around and was stuck with me.  It is my understanding that we lived with my grandparents while she was pregnant and for a while thereafter.  I’ve never met my father although I have a name and he lives in the same city as me (as far as I know), I sort of figure if he wanted something to do with me, he would have come around long before now.  Who am I to show up on his doorstep some 40 years later?  I’m sure he has a life and has moved on.  The name on my original birth certificate is the name of her first husband, but she was separated from him and he’s not my father.  Anyway she finalized her divorce and started hopping around from man to man moving from city to city and toting me with her like I was just another piece of luggage.  

I know this is starting to sound a lot like poor me, but that isn’t my intent at all.  In fact, these early years, I don’t remember at all.  Funny thing, I find that there is a LOT of my childhood that I don’t remember.  I don’t remember much at all until my mom married husband number 3 and we moved to Kansas. He was 19 years older than her and financially secure.  She was his trophy wife, before the phrase had ever been coined. That marriage lasted nearly 10 years though, I guess.  But even it had a fatal flaw.  

Anyone who remembers the 70s, even dimly, probably is familiar with the term ‘swinging’ or ‘wife swapping’.  They were swingers.  Except she didn’t have the decency to hide it from me. Rather than getting a sitter for me (I was an exceptionally sweet and easy to manage child  - no, really I was, stop laughing) they would take me with them, stick me in a bedroom with a tv and some oreo cookies (I was amazingly self winding) and I’d stay there until they were done or I fell asleep whichever came first. It only really left scars when I would wake up in a strange place and start wandering around.  Ooops!  I mean, when you’re a child you don’t want to see your mom and dad, ‘doing it’ much less your mom and someone else’s dad.   

I’m not sure she was really into the swinging thing though, because she stayed drunk most of the time.  I’m guessing it was her coping mechanism.  You see, as a trophy wife she was offered up to all of husband number 3’s friends like a party favor. Pretty sad for her actually.  I just mostly tried to stay out of her way.  Unfortunately that isn’t always possible.  

On top of being amazingly self-winding (as an only child), I was also astonishingly lazy and preferred to spend my time daydreaming than doing my chores or schoolwork.  I would pretend things like I actually belonged to another mother altogether.  They gave me to the wrong mom at the hospital.  My ‘real’ mom was wonderful and attentive and baked cookies. Not really sure why the baking of cookies was a pre-requisite for my fantasy mom, but she always baked.  

There were many times when I failed to clean my room and even more times when I decided that I had better things to do than homework.  No one was interested enough in what was going on with me to make sure it was getting done so mom never knew that I was falling down academically until report cards came out.  Those were usually particularly bad nights.  She was already angry with me because of my grades which led her into my bedroom (which was NEVER tidy).  A lot of yelling would ensue along with throwing things and beating me with whatever was handy.  Again that sounds a lot like poor me, but it is essential to understanding.  

Once, I was having a sleepover with a girlfriend and she saw me changing clothes.  I had large angry purple welts all over my legs.  She was horrified and said that we had to tell someone.  I begged her to let it go that it was fine and I deserved it.  I know now that I didn’t and do much better by my own children.  I refuse to continue the cycle of abuse.

The upshot of the whole thing? Mom’s neglectfulness, abuse, drunken, swinging, ways didn’t change the fact that I loved her dearly.  Or maybe its just that the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know?  I did, and do, love my mother but I was terrified by the prospect of not having her even though she often terrorized me.

I have a feeling there will be a lot more about the pink elephant as I proceed on my trek to the truth.  But for now, lets fast forward.  When I was 13 she separated from husband number 3 because she found someone new.  Once again, I was just along for the ride.  All total she’s been married 7 times.  I think the 6th was the worst.  The 7th was actually a remarriage to husband number one.  I do appreciate your efforts to keep up as this seems very convoluted even to me sometimes. 

The truth can be a bit elusive, but we’ll get there.