What fresh hell is this?

I hope my boobs don't hang down to my waist when I'm old. I really hope there was NOT a bra involved in the situation I saw earlier today.

I love frozen pizza more than the pizza from most restaurants. I have no idea why.

I wonder if anyone will ever love me as much as my cat Sheldon does. She eats my hair while I sleep and puts her dirty butt in my face, though, so slightly less love could be a good thing.

I talk to my cats as if they understand me. Like full on conversations and asking them what they want.

What if we're just part of somebody's dream and we're not real? What happens when the dreamer wakes up? Do we disappear? Do we pop up in someone else's dream? Maybe our lives are really just us moving from dream to dream in a continuously shared dream journey among all the people (aliens? monsters? other beings?) dreaming about us. Maybe that's why life can seem so disjointed...

S'mores anything...with peanut butter. Yum.

I could eat nachos every day, but I won't. I want my pants to fit.

I had the morning news on last weekend, and  a televangelist show came on after the news ended. I'm not into that stuff, but I did catch one useful piece of advice: Remember who you are.

If you have to decide between doing two things, and doing one thing might land you on Judge Judy or Maury Povich, do the other thing!

Bizarro Jack Tripper

My father left when I was little because he was gay. I don't know if he knew he was gay when he married my mom, or if he just didn't want to face it. I guess he tried to live the "normal" life. I'll never really know what he was thinking or feeling. My mom sometimes wonders what he thought of the premise of Three's Company, being that he was actually closeted.

About a year or so after my youngest sister was born, he left to live his life as a gay man. Three kids and a wife and a house with a screened patio and a swing set just weren't for him anymore. Responsibility wasn't his thing. My mom wasn't his thing. We weren't his thing.

He'd basically been raised by my grandmother to believe he was the best and his father and brother were trash. Rules didn't apply to him. His shit didn't stink. He was reckless and irresponsible, never paid a dime of child support. He was vain. Spoiled his mother rotten.

He acted like my mother was garbage because we ended up on welfare and food stamps when he left. Called her cheap because we drank Kool-Aid. Made fun of her car. Never mind the fact that he'd had her stop working once my little sister was born. Never mind that he never paid his $300 per month  court ordered child support. Or the fact that she got her nursing degree (her third college degree) and turned everything around in just a couple of years.

His tune changed when he got sick. He needed my mom's help and she was one of the first people he told he had AIDS. I don't know if he ever apologized to her. But my mom helped with everything despite how badly he had treated her. And she never bad-mouthed him to us the way he had. She would have been justified if she had, though.

I should probably be more angry at my dad, but I'm not. He came around a little when we were older, showed up for my weird costume birthday parties. He was good to my baby brothers (from my stepdad). When we helped him move when he was very sick, we joked around and I pushed his cowboy hat around on a dolly. Because it was SO SO heavy. We talked on the phone about getting dessert at The Ranch restaurant. We never went, he died before that could happen. I still keep that hat, even though I have no idea why he had it. I had his wedding ring and wore it every day until I lost it...I still hope to find it again someday.

My dad died Memorial Day weekend my junior year in high school. He was 42. Less than a month shy of his 43rd birthday. After a long weekend with my sobbing family, I tried to go back to school because I couldn't handle the sadness anymore. I don't think I made it through even half the day before I went home. My 3 year old brother kept asking why daddy-Dave wasn't coming back. And I'd have to explain and then I'd break down all over again.

It's been 25 years and it's still painful for me. There was never any real closure. My dad wouldn't let us see him in the hospital because he looked bad. We never got to say goodbye. He'd asked for his ashes to be scattered at Vernal Falls in Yosemite. My grandma went, got halfway to the spot, and dumped the ashes. None of us were invited to go or to help.

It's also difficult for me because I feel like my sisters just don't care. I said this to my mom the other day, and she explained that my sisters were so young when he left, that they don't really remember him as daddy. He wasn't living in the house for long when they were little. I was the one who really knew him as my daddy. I'm the one with memories of riding in the truck with him and going to the drive-in and watching movies on a mattress in the truck bed. I'm the one who remembers watching him and the neighbors help right a VW bus that tipped over in our front yard. I'm the one who hit him in the leg when he promised to come back home to live with us and didn't.

So I don't really know what the point of this was other than to get it out. To vent. To explain myself. To practice typing while blinded by tears. One or all of those things.

Dog ears

     My sisters and I used to go to our dad's house every other weekend. He'd left us and our mother when I was 4 or 5. We'd sleep in the extra bedroom, all three of us in one bed. When I'd get scared of the dark or of an unfamiliar noise, I'd cover my eyes with my Snoopy's ear. I don't know what I thought that would really do, but it always made me feel better. If I can't see it, it's not there!

     I still have that Snoopy, and I sleep with him whenever I feel sad or lonely. He's been there through most of my life. I've never been good at sharing my feelings with most people. I always felt I'd be mocked, as I often was by my sisters. I love them both, but I've spent my life feeling terrible about myself because of them (among other things). Always scared to express myself or try new things or meet new people. Afraid to be vulnerable. To speak my thoughts out loud, good or bad.  

     It's why I always want to make other people feel good about themselves, especially when they've done something dumb or something bad happens. I make up silly worst case scenarios so they'll either laugh or realize everything could be worse. I minimize their mistakes, telling them it could happen to anyone and that they're not the first or last person to make that mistake. I do the things for them that I wish people would do for me. If I know someone well enough, I can even excuse their sometimes shitty behavior because I can see how they arrived in that place. 

    I don't always give myself that benefit of the doubt. It is the worst case scenario. It is all my fault. How could I be so stupid? Why am I never enough? Why am I so forgettable?

     Covering my eyes and pretending it's not there doesn't make it go away. I'm an adult and I know better. I have to keep my eyes open and face unpleasant things and keep going on with my life. I know I have to work at feeling better about myself and being more positive. Some days, though, I just want Snoopy's ear, covering my eyes in the dark, making it all better. 

The actual Snoopy