HalfAsstic.com

Has anyone noticed anything new about my blog?  Anything missing, or not in place?  Aside from the moving of some buttons and the addition of MeMarieLane’s button?  Nothing?  Not like two missing posts?

I present to you exhibit A.  The younger child, (known for reasons soon to become obvious as “Positively Insistent Sarcastic Sister And Not Thoughtful”, or PISSANT), took it upon herself to rectify a situation that she disapproved of.  She, apparently read my post about her behavior and decided to delete it.  I have the computer set up so that when I open up any of the things that I need there are no passwords or locked doors, or secret handshakes to get in.  It’s my computer, (my loving husband would probably like for me to point out that it is also his and he can use it anytime he wants…well, when I’m not on it…), and I don’t see any reason to have to go through a gauntlet of crap to get to where I’m going.  So, really no secrets there.  She did not like me saying anything negative about her and I guess, in retrospect, I can see how it might be disturbing and if I had to do it over again I might not have left it where she could read it structured my sentences in such an unflattering light, HOWEVER, I am not talking to her friends, or anyone she is likely to ever even meet.  PISSANT, on the other hand, blasts me out of the water every time we have a fight verbal altercation to all her pals on her MySpace page who come over to the house.  I am face to face to these kids who, no doubt, believe I breathe fire.  On her.

The really weird thing is that when I found out she had done it, I wasn’t just mad.  I was devastated. I felt so totally betrayed and violated.  I’s so weird, I had no idea this meant so very much to me.  And she had left some comments on the posts before she erased them that I removed, (edit, edit, edit), that said things to the effect that I should not be “talking shit” about her and it’s stupid for me to be so worried about her giving money to her friends and at least she HAS friends and not just pretend friends on line.  Yes, she used those words.  Made me furious.

I calmed down a bit and told John who is a soft shoe with the kids, but was alarmed that she had done it and said he was going to talk to her about it.  I crossed her path in the living room when she came in and stopped her and told her “Do not ever read, comment, or touch my blog in any way, shape or form again.  I don’t go snooping around on your MySpace and have fits about what you write about me.”  PISSANT didn’t say anything and I think, for one brief moment we had a meeting of the minds.  She did look contrite, so maybe she got it.  I think she did.

I talked to Cam, (brother dearest), and he pointed out that friends are people you care about and talk to and get and give advice to, so if my blog buddies aren’t my friends, who is?  Good point, Cam.

Now, that is out of my system and she can go back to being My Darling Keelan.  However I am going to have a hard time making a good accronym out of MDK.

Today at Chez Lopez we are undergoing technical difficulties.  However, not in a too terribly tragic way.  The cable is stuck.  Every cable channel is frozen.  And not in the most attractive poses for the people on said channels.  Basic channels all work fine.  But, hey, it’s Saturday and there is no sense in explaining how utterly and completely useless basic channels are on a Saturday.  OK, maybe not for someone out there.  But not me.  Henrietta is distressed, also.  No good can come of this.  I am gonna have to get dressed, walk outside, and get the damn paper to read. I need to just sue the damn cable company.  But I guess they have so much money they’d hire a very good, snooty, high powered attorney and investigate my situation and see quite clearly that my time is best spent cleaning house and not watching TV anyway.  I would lose.  They’d probably sue me for annoying them and I’d lose my house…. But, then I wouldn’t have to clean it!

I smell a lawsuit coming on…

I feel so bad right now that death is preferable. Well, I guess not really, but, you get the idea. I woke up this morning not feeling particularly good, but not completely wrecked either. By the time I was writing that last post I was thinking the world was coming to an end. I managed to spew out words and get a point or two across, but that’s about it. Now I just await death. My head is killing me and I can’t hear. My whole body is rejecting any notions of making large moves. John and I put up a ceiling fan and a track light. Under protest. From me, anyway. No, not really. He is being very sweet.

I can’t believe this is happening. John is on vacation, Mither and Aunty-poo are coming tomorrow, Wednesday we are having a celebratory dinner with a bunch of our friends for Kes’s graduation and then she is graduating on Thursday. And I’m sick.

Life is so sucking right now.

I have virtually nothing to post about today. Background info, anyone? H’s poop stories? I gotta tell ya’ the poop stories wear a little thin with me pretty quick, depending on what’s been going on in that department. Sometimes I feel like I am bursting at the seams with valuable information about all things BM. And, hey, deep down inside I just KNOW I must share and keep you, my dear reader informed. But, really. After a while, isn’t it just a crutch? Yes? That’s what I thought, too.

Thankfully, (for you), H is a bit constipated right now. Too much info? Oh well.

How ’bout my situation. You may or may not remember when I first started posting me mentioning that I don’t drive. The reason for this is that I’m partially blind. Actually, half blind. Literally. Now you are thinking that I am blind in one eye because that is the obvious thing to think. But I’m not. I am exactly half blind in each eye. Weird, huh? It is due to a brain injury I had when I was two weeks shy of 15 years old. I was in a car accident while a friend of my cousin’s was driving my little boyfriend and me to a nearby town to go to Sonic. At least that might be the story, as is typical with brain injuries I don’t remember anything about what was happening that night or anytime around there, before or after, for a good while. Apparently he was going very fast and neglected to turn with the road, when he ran up in someones yard and hit a tree. I was reportedly turned around backwards talking to my boyfriend who I had stuck in the backseat. I hit my head against the window, windshield… something and had neurosurgery to remove an “acute subdural hematoma” in Lafayette-stinking-Louisiana. Now, I don’t want anyone living in Louisiana to be offended because of my feelings toward it. The fact is that in the body of the state of Louisiana we lived pretty much in the armpit. Or maybe somewhere between the asshole and balls, take your pick. It was an incredibly tiny little town called Vidrine, just outside of Ville Platte. There were a few very nice people there, but the majority of the population made hillbillies look cosmopolitan.

Anyway, putting aside all my feelings for the Neanderthals that lived there….Oops. I digress. Again.

OK, back on track. I got shipped to Lafayette via ambulance and a super smart guy dressed as a neurosurgeon saved my life in short order.(Yes, brain surgeon. Think Jethro Bodine’s wannabe occupation.) There are all kinds of dramatic things to say about the whole affair. My heart stopped a few times on the way there in the ambulance. Yes, paddles, “CLEAR!”. All that . I was paralyzed on my right side for a while afterwards and had to learn to walk, feed myself, brush teeth, write, control the weird muscle spasms that seemed to be working my body for me. Oh! and control my bladder. I wet the bed a few times after I got home before I regained the use of my right side, which was a long, painstaking process.

The emotional problems that just almost go hand in hand with head trauma were particularly hard for me to handle. I’m not saying harder than they were for anyone else who’s ever had a head injury, but it was, the hardest part of my experience. Well, that and being a bald 15 year old girl was particularly hard. Ya know they shave your head when they do that crap. Not a good look when your extremely skinny anyway. Can you say, “concentration camp prisoner”? That’s what I looked like.

My memory has never fully recovered, although I am able to get by without anyone noticing too much with the aid of lists, lists, lists of the things I need to remember.

But, without a doubt, the single hardest remaining thing that hangs over my head and will never let me forget about that part of my life is my vision loss. The injury wasn’t to my eyes, it was to my optic nerves so you can’t look at me and see that I’m partially blind.

And here is where my report, thesis, docudrama, long-ass boring…post was left after Wordpress deleted at least 2/3 of it.

Now. As I was saying… AGAIN. There is an optic nerve going from the right side of both your eyes to the left side of your brain and one going from the left side of both your eyes to the right side of your brain. Well, the swelling on the right side of my brain, (where they went in and removed the hematoma), caused damage to that optic nerve. And, as we all learned in biology class, nerves don’t regenerate. So, the really bizarre outcome is that from the middle of both eyes to the left, all the way, I have no vision. So in order to see something on my left I have to look directly at it. Well, actually, I have to look at the left side of it to get the entire thing in my view. It is a very precise thing. If I focus on the head of a pin I only see half of it. There is no leeway.

This whole fiasco happened in April of 1978. 30 years ago. That is so incredibly hard for me to believe. And after 30 years you would think that I would have stopped running into things and stumping my toes on door facings. Yeah, well you’d be wrong. God knows that I would certainly think that I should have by now. All the toes on my left foot have been broken, usually one at a time. Several of them more than once. My left shin is all dented up and has a good many scars. Yes. Dented. I mean not huge dents, but, in good light, in the summer, (when I’ve shaved), you can see little dents up and down that shin under the skin. I must have incredibility strong bones, cause I’ve never broken anything but my toes. (Knocking on wood right now…)

I had my license for years before I gave up driving. I was a fairly unsuccessful driver and that’s all I’m gonna say about that. I haven’t had it for about 20 years now and I DO miss it tremendously. Cabin fever can run high around here. There are times that I would just love to be able to get up and walk out and go somewhere. Just me. By myself. And take all the time I want and do what I want. I so took that for granted.

I think the very hardest part of all this was raising two little girls and not being able to do the regular mommy stuff with them that all moms do without getting somebody else to haul us around. I could never just pick up and take us to the park or shopping or anywhere unless we were asked to go by someone else. I have cried many, many tears about that. Wrangling rides for them to go to…things, was an occupation in itself.

It’s amazing to me that there is no peripheral vision test at the DMV. Apparently they don’t think it’s important. HA! Shows what they know.

I love shopping with John cause I just put him on my left and we hold hands. I don’t have to be super aware of my surroundings, watching out for displays and people. My friends never want to hold my hand when we go shopping. *sigh*. I gotta get a better group of friends.

I just clicked “save” and it did! It didn’t erase! It doesn’t hate me today! YES! Wordpress now validates my existence. This can’t be a good thing.

Where ties now reside…

Where ties SHOULD be.

Oh, God in heaven. John’s tie rack and approximately 8 zillion ties now reside on the floor of his closet. I have searched high and low for an adequate tie rack for him and can find absolutely nothing that comes close to holding enough. This spinning kind just gave way and fell yesterday. It never held enough anyway. I do believe I am going to try to con my mom or dad into getting out to their workshop and making me one with the drill press, a board, and about a million pegs.

Mom, if you are still paying attention and love me at all-AT ALL…. I’m thinking about 3 feet long and make the holes for the pegs about 2 inches apart with two rows of pegs and yeah, be sure and stagger the two rows so that there is enough room for the ties on the upper row to hang down between the ties on the lower row.

I am very busy here taking care of your grandchildren and son-in-law and, yes, his mother. I have a headache. My tummy hurts. A hangnail. Some gray hair. And I’m not above using guilt and sympathy to get what I want. LOVE YOU MOM AND DAD!

Well, it could explode. Things seem to grow so larger than life in there that it’s a distinct possibility. I went in her bedroom to take her breakfast and she said, “Krissa, I wanted to ask you, when you emptied my trash can,” she gestured to it, ” did you find a fork in it?” I said no, was there a fork in it? With the obvious question being WHY was there a fork in it? She said, “Your comic husband! The other night when you went with Kessa to buy her a new dress I was eating my supper and dropped my fork so I rang the bell for John to get me another one. That crazy man, picked up the fork off the floor and threw it in the trash!”

At this point I need to point out that this description sounds EXACTLY like something John would do. He teases everybody and she is no exception.

So I said to H, “Well did he ever get it back out?” To which she replied, “NO! He didn’t and I told him, ‘John don’t throw the fork in the trash!’ and he said, ‘Why not? It’s dirty!’ and I said, ‘Because John, you have a dishwasher! You can just wash it!’ And I don’t think he ever got it out!”

I told her I’d call him and ask. Well, he got totally pissed at her and said something to the effect of “Oh for God’s sake! I didn’t throw the fork in the trash and I told her I didn’t! She had food all over the floor and I threw it in the trash! I never said anything about the fork being dirty! She never said anything about cleaning it or putting it in a dishwasher or anything to indicate she didn’t understand it was FOOD I WAS PUTTING IN THE TRASH!”

This is how stories grow and grow in her little head. And that is nothing, my friends, er, friend. (as readership is down, dismally.) Let me regale you with the twisted evil story of how she attempted to get me committed to an insane asylum. Ok, not really, but she pretty much wants me chained here with her and THAT’S THE SAME THING.

To start off with she had been telling John and I assume my sister-in-law, (who comes to visit an average of once a week for, usually two to four hours), that I was getting drunk every night when John was at work late. The truly astounding thing here is that JOHN is the one that has a, (as in ONE) drink when he comes in from work and she sees him drinking the same looking screwdriver every evening. I guess she thinks he has a real affinity for OJ. He told her repeatedly that NO, I wasn’t even drinking and she was wrong and she would purse her lips and shake her head and tell him that he was just taking up for me and he was refusing to see how bad it was and I had a drinking problem. I have to admit this made me so furious I couldn’t see straight. I didn’t want to confront her with it at first because it would be obvious that John had betrayed her trust and told me something that was told to him in confidence. I kinda went from that, to wanting SO BAD for him to tell her that he believed her and I was going to go into rehab, you know, for my DRINKING PROBLEM, so she was going to have to go to a nursing home for a while, till I got back and could take care of her again.

Anyway she did this from time to time with no apparent reason for doing it or not doing it. Could never figure it out. And then my mither came to see me and we had several projects going around the house. H, presumably, felt…left out? ignored? abandoned? not enough attention was heaped upon her? Keep in mind that she had the bell and when it was rung I was going and doing whatever she needed.

One evening she told John that my mom had been doing all the work and I was drinking the whole time she was here. Doing NOTHING! I guess the first thing that upset me was the fact that I WORKED MY ASS OFF. Secondly, my poor mom is 70 years old and could hardly do EVERYTHING we did. Thirdly, as you may or may not remember, my natural father was an alcoholic and my mother is a big time tea-totaler. If I was going to drink anywhere it would not have been with my mom here and while she was doing “all the work”. Once again John told her that was nuts and once again she didn’t believe him.

The Final Chapter of ridiculousness is when her old hospice nurse, Connie, came by and picked me up to go and eat down the road for a quick, early supper one evening when the girls were here to stay with H and get me the hell out of here. At least for a little while.

H takes her supper anywhere between 7:00 and 7:45. It is almost always at 7:00 and occasionally as late as 8:00. Well, her supper was already done and waiting in the fridge for me to warm up and serve and I knew this, but either of my teenage girls could easily have fed it to her. She KNOWS this. So we ate, drank ICED TEA, and came home. I walked in and picked up the phone as I headed for the kitchen to prepare her food. I called John and told him I was back and asked how his night was going. Told him I was fixing her plate and taking it to her. I hung up to do so. I found her very belligerent and in a very bad mood with me. This has never happened before, it’s usually attacks behind my back. So I asked her what was wrong and she said she was HUNGRY! It was 7:05. I acted like I didn’t know what the problem was and said, “Oh yeah, it’s 7:00. Time to eat! Just like always!” I gave her her food and drink and set everything up and left the room. Later, when I came in and was putting her to bed, she was pissy and I asked her what was the problem and she said, “Krissa, look! When you leave like that nobody here knows if you’re coming back!” I am still astounded by that statement. Of course “nobody here knows”, translates to “I don’t know”, but this really threw me. I told her of course I was coming back and I had never in my life left and not come back. She had her lips pursed and head shaking the whole time. I knew where this was all heading and what she was thinking. That I was out at a bar with her 65 year old hospice nurse getting drunk and I can’t rule out chasing men. Oh, and I would have to assume dancing topless. I mean wouldn’t you?

Well, sure enough, days later she told John that I had gone out “drinking” with Connie and came in very late and didn’t get her fed until very late and I was drunk and rough when I put her to bed. Well, this time John said that no it wasn’t late and he KNEW it wasn’t because I called him when I got home and I was fixing her supper when I called. She let that go and said I was drunk and he said no, I had simply gone to the Mexican restaurant down the road, eaten and come home. She was having none of it. Then when Millie came to visit she told her all about it, too.

This time I wanted a confrontation. I was cool to her for about 24 hours and she finally asked me if she had done something to offend me. I snapped the invite up and said “Yes!” I told her that I was tired of her lying to John and Millie about me and I resent her being so put off by me wanting to leave and do things occasionally with a friend. She said she was sorry for what she did and she was going to pray for forgiveness and started crying. I have to admit that it felt so good to just have it off my chest that forgiveness from me came very easily.

I still don’t go do things with friends very often, but it’s not and has never been because of her disapproval, I just don’t get the chance when there’s someone here to sit with her and there’s something for me to do at the same time. I know some day she is going to be gone and I will miss her when she is, but sometime I just wish I could get up and leave like everybody else can. When John is working crazy hours and is exhausted day after day when he comes home, 4 or 5 days can go by with me not going anywhere but to the mailbox and straight back. And that gets old. Older than H.

This is by far the longest post I have ever done and I am wondering if I should put it up since it is all bitchy and sooooo long. I guess I will and we will see if readership drops off to nothing…..AN EXPERIMENT!

Hot Mama over at Law School Sucks and so do lawyers, has a post today that I sooo relate to that I feel the need to expound upon it.

We have lived in this house for three and a half years and the list of things to do have grown and grown. And, of course, none of them are cheap.

I like to think that we are pretty easy on our domiciles, but the fact remains that none of these things were wrong when we moved in. This house might as well have been brand new. It was in pristine condition. Fresh paint inside and out, new carpet upstairs and down, everything worked perfectly and nothing was broken. Oh. Well, there is one ceramic tile in the kitchen that has a hairline crack in it that you can barely see. That is the only thing that is preexisting. I do think that the lights on the ceiling fans that we are having trouble with are nothing that we did. The wiring is just shitty and both of them, living room and breakfast room, have shorts and flicker on and off.

The front door is getting weathered and is peeling, needs refinishing.

The leaded glass in it has some broken places.-(thanks to one of Keelan’s dumb-ass friends)

The sprinkler system has a broken valve thingy.

The hot tub has two broken jets.

The carpet in the master bedroom needs cleaning. (The upstairs isn’t getting done until the pigs girls move out. I know when to cut my losses.)

At this point the liquor cabinet is depleted.

The hood vent in the kitchen is kaput. That means no one can burn anything cause we are limited in our ability to export smoke. So, like, there is no cooking going on cause, hey, we burn things on a regular basis.

When we have hurricane force winds, (remember I live down here by Houston, deep up in the armpit of Texas), there is a leak around the atrium window.

We desperately need sand in the backyard, and some in the front. The ground is uneven and holds water that I would really rather run off to my neighbors’ yards. (I AM TOO A GOOD NEIGHBOR!)

The liquor cabinet needs….redecorating.

Speaking of liquor cabinet… The sink in the wet bar is very slow to drain.

My closet would look much better if I had a new wardrobe.

Come to think of it, the floors wouldn’t look that bad or even need sweeping if I had freshly pedicured feet to look at on them. I mean, really, who would even notice the floors if my feet looked fab?

The light track over the fireplace, and more importantly over where H sits in her wheelchair while reading the paper, just stopped working. For no apparent reason at all. We got a new wall switch and swapped it out and changed the bulbs and everything else you can think of that was cheap. No. Must have new light track.

That is all I can think of right now. There is a more extensive list, (if you can believe that), living on John’s Palm.

You know, some people have their lives completely centered around money. Some, (Mostly young horny guys) can think of nothing but sex. Some are so co-dependent, (you know who you are… no, I guess you don’t…), they can’t do anything without involving their co-dependents. Some people are career driven and totally obsessive about getting ahead. Me. I am completely ruled by this little old lady and a damn bell. I think I am hearing it in the middle of the night and wake up and have to become alert before I can determine if she has rung it or not. And to make matters worse it is a cowbell. Not the most pleasant sound at any given time. My whole day hangs in the balance when she is on the pot, because nothing can move forward until she is done. It is almost 4:00pm and I don’t feel like going out and weeding now. I am tired of planning and wanting to do it and it is hot as blue blazes out there and I feel… deflated.

I am in a cranky mood and everything is getting to me today. Stuff that I usually just ignore. I took H in to use the bedpan and when I was leaving the room she said, “I’ve got my bell here, I’ll call you when I’m done.” I felt like yelling, “Of course you’ve got your bell! I have never hidden you bell! That is where your bell lives and it is always there! Yes, I know the drill because for three and a half years I have been depositing you on the bed pan and getting you off when you ring the bell. I KNOW YOU ARE GOING TO RING THE BELL WHEN YOU ARE DONE! WHY MUST YOU ANNOUNCE IT AS IF I DON’T KNOW THE RULES TO THE GAME AND HAVE NEVER PLAYED BEFORE. ARE YOU AFRAID I AM GOING TO RUN IN HERE AND YANK YOU OFF THE POT MID-SHIT? CAUSE, HEY LADY, I CAN ASSURE YOU THAT THAT IS THE EXACT KIND OF MESS THAT I HATE TO CLEAN UP AND I WILL DO WHATEVER I CAN TO KEEP IT FROM HAPPENING! YOU COULD MAKE THE GAME SOOOO MUCH MORE ENJOYABLE BY RESPECTING THE FACT THAT I KNOW WHAT I’M DOING AND AM NOT A COMPLETE MORON. not completely.

Then I went upstairs and…eh, “picked up” my 17 year olds room. I took out a metric ton of trash and threw the duvet up on the bed and piled up all the clothes she needs to sort through to determine clean/dirty. Some stuff was still carefully folded, (by ME), and other stuff was obviously worn. Not my problem. But I basically got the room ready to be organized. I might point out that she has had another little girl living here with her for a couple of weeks and that has significantly added to the mess problem. This chick is not going to be here for that much longer and the room had better not ever get in this condition again.

But, anyway, she and same girl came flouncing in after school and trotted their happy asses up stairs to change clothes for work and trotted back down and left and NEVER SAID ONE WORD TO ME. NOT “HI.” NOT, “BYE.” NOT, “KISS MY ASS.” NOTHING.

Today is my birthday and the little brat didn’t even wish me happy birthday. I may kill her, clean up her room, and take it over for…something, for me. Yes. That’s the new plan.

I am 44 years old and I’ve got a freakin cavity. ( No. Not between my ears, Dad.) I have one in my mouth and it is starting to hurt. I have called my dentist and after much searching for my chart and determining that they have never heard of me because it has been OVER SEVEN YEARS since I was last in, I made an appointment. I am a bad, bad patient. I can’t believe it has been that long since I was to the dentist. My kids records were there and up to date. Even John’s was current. Well, to be totally fair, his was current because he had to go have a root canal because he didn’t go in when his cavity first started hurting. Boy, I am! I am THERE, BABY! No siree, no root canal for me! Just fill that bad boy!

Yes. I am all a dither with excitement. Next week, Wednesday to be exact. I am getting drilled. And not in a good way.