Archive for the ‘ Keelan ’ Category

The Funky Chicken

 

So it’s Saturday morning and Kes comes in and drags me out of bed to go do a little shopping with her.

“OK”, I says, “Let’s go.”

So I hop up and while she gets dressed I am in a little quandary since I can’t find anything to wear that fits. You see, I’ve lost weight. A good deal of it, as a matter of fact. So have Kessa and Keelan. We’ve all been on the diet train.

I put on a sleeveless white blouse and walked into the living room and stepped into the stairwell.

“Kessa!”

“What?”

“Come look at this and tell me what you think.”

“In a minute! I’m getting dressed.”

So Keelan has wandered in and looks at me and says, “Why? What’s the matter with it?”

I extended my arms and asked if the hanging armholes looked ridiculous.She shrugs halfheartedly as her sister enters the room and Keelan says,  “What are you going to be doing that would require you to put your arms out like that?”

I immediately reply that there may or may not be an occasion during our shopping trip where the need to do The Funky Chicken occurs.

Kes’s head snapped around like a homing device and her eyes zeroed in on me.

“Mom, let me make this perfectly clear… We will NOT be doing The Funky Chicken at ANY TIME TODAY.”

At some point in the day, on the way to the car, I had a pair of reading glasses perched on top of my head, (I mean how else am I going to read price tags?), and I was taking a pair of sunglasses out of my purse to apply to my eyeballs, having completely forgotten the reading glasses up there.

Kessa pipes up, “Mom, you’ve got too many pairs of glasses on at one time… one’s the limit.

I told her that I always wear two pairs when I’m going to do The Funky Chicken and she came to a complete stop in the parking lot.

“Mom! There WILL BE NO FUNKY CHICKEN, TODAY!”

I think this leaves the chance open for another day and if I keep my mouth shut and don’t remind her that it’s even a possibility… Well, I could very well be seen doing The Funky Chicken in the parking lot of Target near you. Or maybe even far away. The priceless thing won’t be me doing it, but the look on the young lady’s face with me.

 

 

The STAGE FIVE CLINGER

My sweet lil’ baby, Keelan, is going through a hard time right now. She has recently broken up with her boyfriend and, while that is always a difficult time in a girl’s life, it has been exacerbated by a stalker. This 23 year old guy started working at Sonic with Keelan about a month ago and almost immediately attached himself to her side. The other employees went so far as to refer to him as her “Shadow”, and I believe that’s where the nickname, “Clinger” was first applied.

She was dating her long time boyfriend at the time, but this didn’t stop our Clinger. He repeatedly asked her out, swore his undying love and would NOT stop following her.

He followed her to Payless Shoes where she and Kessa were shopping one day. Freaked her out and her sister, too.

He told her he wanted to have children with her!

He went from charming and sweet to obnoxious, freaky, and downright scary in a matter of days. As a matter of fact, the first few days he worked with her.

I am happy to report that her breakup was not caused by this joker. However, when her feelings were still raw and hurt after she and her boyfriend parted ways, Clinger got mad at Keelan for her constant rejection, (she says recoiling), and he told her he was going to go to the ex-boyfriends workplace and tell him that Keelan and he had slept together just so there was no chance things would ever work out with them.

Clearly, this young man is disturbed.

After Keelan had been refusing his advances for about three weeks he started being really rude to her at work. Her boss, the owner, arranged the schedules so that they weren’t working together. However, that was to start next work week.

Saturday, March 5th, Clinger convinced Keelan that he HAD to talk to her about something “super important, and work related”. There had been no agreement with her boss about separating their work schedules yet so she was pretty sure he was going to tell her that he was taking over her friend’s morning shifts and would be spending every morning, ALL morning with her.

This was a tragic consideration of epic proportions. Think “major angst”.

Since Kee refused to go with him in his car, (I mean…REALLY?!), they were to meet at Starbuck’s…

The first thing to piss him off was the fact that Keelan brought a friend with her. (My girl’s no dummy and has survival instincts.)

Then, when the conversation didn’t revolve entirely around him, and his plan to woo Kee fell apart, things went south. He made numerous nasty remarks to Kee and her friend and ended up telling Kee that he would be telling her things that would depress her so badly that she would kill herself. Actually told her she would end up ,”blowing her brains out”.

She was a bit… agog. However, she had the presence of mind to tell him that there really is nothing he could possibly say to her that would cause this effect.

His parting words, as Kee and friend were dashing out to the car? “Tell (ex-boyfriend), I said, ‘Hi!'”.

Sunday, March 6th, Clinger got to work and his shift overlapped Kee’s by two hours. So, she’s thinking, “I can do this… just two hours and I am outta here”.

He was hateful, demeaning, obnoxious, and downright scary every chance he got. Many of the employees witnessed it again.

So Keelan got through and left work later that day. Then, the manager on duty called her and said that Clinger had just gotten up and left work with close to $400.00 dollars of Sonic’s money and hadn’t even bothered to clock out.

The thinking at this point is that maybe he had forgotten to turn it in before he left. I mean it was a possibility, though not very probable.

The manager finally got in touch with Clinger and there was, reportedly, a screaming conversation between them in which Clinger insists that the manager and Keelan conspired against him together to make it look like he had stolen the money.

Keelan wasn’t even THERE. The manager has worked there for five years or so and has always seemed to be an outstanding person.

The owner is pressing charges against Clinger and we don’t know if the cops have found him yet. Or even if the address on his employment application is correct or not.

If Keelan hears from this guy again, phone call, text, or, (heaven forbid), in person, we will get a restraining order.

My doors are locked at all times. And I am not usually a paranoid person. I MEAN, AT ALL!

I know I am continuing the Texan stereotype by saying this, but I’m glad we have guns.

Yes. I said it.

Heh. NOW, can I get some hate mail and consider myself a “real” blogger?

To be continued….

 

 

 

 

 

The long awaited Henrietta Update


A couple of weeks ago, on the 17th, a Wednesday, I believe, Henrietta had a visit from Darnell, her P.A.. She came out to see her because I had begged asked her to since she was turning into such a shrew and cried, (multiple times), almost everyday  about… who knows what.

So Darnell shows up and visits with H for a good while. Asks her all kinds of concerned questions, listened patiently to what I’m sure felt like dozens of stories about things that happened 40 and 50 years ago, and I finally decided to rescue her and went on in H’s bedroom.

I plopped my happy ass down on the bed and we discussed all the goings on of late. H was sitting there watching and we were talking loud for her to hear. I said she needs to be on an anti-depressant and Darnell agreed, whipped out her drug book and commenced to look up the perfect concoction for H.

Lexipro. OK, great. She’s taken it before, a few years ago, and it worked just fine. So she sat there and wrote out a script for it and handed it to me. I went to great lengths to get that rascal to the pharmacy that day and John picked it up on his way home.

I took in her pills that night. One in each little pill giver cup because she insists she can only take one at a time and will drop the pill or the cup or anything else close to her if she has to dig one of the two pills out of a solitary cup to take it. So here she is with three cups instead of two. OH MY. Her eyes grow big. “Krissa, what have you done?” She’s peering into the cups and sees that there are two little white pills, (her Ativan and now her new Lexipro pill), and a little brown stool softener in the third, as per normal procedure.

“I can’t take two Ativan’s Krissa! I’d overdose!” Looks at me accusingly as if I am trying to kill her.

“No, Henrietta, this is the new pill that Darnell and I were talking with you about today.”

“Whaaaaa? What’s it for?”

“It’s an anti-depressant, remember? Because you keep crying.”

“NOOOOOOO, Krissa! I don’t need that! You tell him that I won’t take any of his drugs!”

Of course I immediately know who she is talking about, but act like she is off her rocker. Which she clearly is, by the way. Don’t think that this has escaped my attention.

“Who are you talking about, Henrietta?”

In a conspiratorial whisper, “Gilbert!”.

Oh shit, here we go.

And we did. Round and round. I finally convinced her to take the damn thing and that Darnell had prescribed it right there in front of her. She just kept saying that she thought I was getting a refill on her Ativan.

So she took it and the next evening told me that she had had a stomach ache the whole day that day and she just couldn’t take that pill. It didn’t agree with her digestion.

I have been mashing it up in her oatmeal every day since then and the difference was amazingly fast and remarkable. She has completely stopped crying and is so much nicer! She makes no bones about hearing all sorts of voices that she says are Gilbert and he is always doing things he shouldn’t but she no longer sits in her room yelling down the hall all sorts of things to Gilbert while John and I are trying to sit in there and watch a movie. For the two hours(ish) that John and I sat and watched The Blind Side the other night before the new pills were working, she sat in her room and yelled all kinds of things at Gilbert and just generally made the movie watching an unpleasant experience. No amount of visits to her room to tell her Gilbert wasn’t here and hadn’t been all day made a difference. And yes, I know what you’re thinking. I asked her to let me push her into the living room and see. Multiple times. She wouldn’t have it. And she wouldn’t shut up.

She’s still nutty as a fruitcake, but no longer is as paranoid. She’s happier and easier going.

Last Saturday I was changing the third of four shitty diapers she would have that day and, out of the blue, she said, “Krissa, does John have BM’s?”. Swear. To. God.

I was a bit stunned and waited for her to complete the sentence with something like, “on a regular basis?”, or “every day?”, or something like that. No, she just wanted to know if he has them. Period.

I said, “Henrietta, everybody has B.M.’s. They have to.”

She waved that away like it was rather unimportant and said, “Well, yeah, but he doesn’t eat, anymore.”.

So I told her that of course he ate. He’d be dead if he didn’t eat, and she just looked at me like she was trying to determine if I was lying or not.

I called John later and told him what she had asked me and he about fell over laughing. He told me I should have told her no, he stopped having them months ago.

That is something he would have definitely done. 😉

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And in the really BIG news…

Keelan has been saving money like mad and has bought her first car! It is adorable, and I got to drive home from Buffalo, Texas with her in it. She found it online up in a town close to her Nana and Pop’s house in Decatur, (Mither and Pop), and they went and looked at it and drove it and what not and she took care of the down payment over the phone with her bank card and all that. Then the dealership Fedexd the papers to her and she signed and sent them back.

It was all very slick and went without a hitch. Mither and Pop drove down to meet us about half way in Buffalo and she was so excited she was beside herself.

Heh, me too.

Now tell me is this not the perfect little car for a teenage girl?

Here she is with her boyfriend, looking like The Shit!

Just as cute going as coming!

Now, how’s that for adorable? 😉

You know. I have several friends, some of them extremely close, who have male children that are wonderful, sweet, mature for their age, able to show emotion, completely functional people that are not emotionally or psychologically stunted.

And then there are the others.

I am admitting to something here that is very hard for me. I am biased and prejudiced and probably not a decent human being. But, hey, I’ve still never had any hate mail and am waiting for it before my chest can swell up with pride and I can feel like a real blog writer!

I am prejudiced by sex.

No. This isn’t a “sexual” post. It is a sex post. Ok, that still sounds a bit creepy. Let’s try this again.

My whole life I have been around people with nice little girls and horrid little boys.

OK that’s not really true. Most of the people I have known have had it that way. I have to admit that there have been those that had very nice, sweet, well behaved, human little boys. But they were in the minority.

Not that they didn’t exist! And I am not by any far stretch of the imagination trying to say that all boys are vulgar, violent, hateful loudmouths who will do anything to draw attention to themselves…

Some of them just seem that way at times, and it throws the others in the fire.

Really, the problem is clearly MINE. We wanted girls both times. We got girls both times and I think we ended up feeling superior for obvious reasons. Not so much because we trumped the “dealer”. (Two out of two… Woo-Hoo!) But because we went into this whole thing with preconceptions about the differences between boys and girls. (I still feel bad about that.)

I remember telling John and the doctor that I really wanted to know what sex the baby was because we wanted a girl and if it was a boy we needed time to get to want him as much as we already did a gitl. And we would have, too. There would definitely have been no sad faces in that delivery room if the thing had popped out with a penis.

But we were forewarned and happily anticipating our first and second daughter.

Now comes the part that you are going to suspect is fiction more than fact.

I swear, I am telling the God’s honest truth.

Those two were the most perfect babies and toddlers that you have ever come across.

There is 17 1/2 months difference in their ages and they were thick as thieves in their early years. One did not ever do anything without the other and they constantly looked out for the other as well.

They have grown apart during Jr. High and High School, but are starting to pull back together again just as destiny dictates. They’ll be fast friends  before long and best friends for life.

I say so.

But that doesn’t make them the perfect children to raise, does it?

I swear, I am not lying, neither one of them ever had a “terrible two tantrum”, or three or anything else for that matter.

I never had to wrestle them to get them to take medicine. Even when tiny babies. I just put the foul tasting stuff into a medicine giver with a nipple on it and they made horrible faces while sucking it down. (I know, you’re wondering about intelligence here… turns out to be above average! Surprised me, too!)

They were so obedient that it made me stop and take stock and pray over and over that God wouldn’t second guess what he had given us and make it hard. Because it wasn’t. They did everything I told them to as if it was not comprehensible not to. It simply didn’t occur to them to test the system.

I feel so horrible for new mothers, or even mother’s of older children who are having a really hard time and I can’t even imagine what they’re going through.

I swear mine were perfect. I would do the entire thing again in a heartbeat.

Yes, I know the nursing every three hours was a pain and all that, but it didn’t last forever. Just a little blip in my lifetime and hers as well. Plus, I can’t say it wasn’t enjoyable. That’s the one time that I could see my daughters looking up at me knowing it’s only me that can do this for them. And it was so good to feel so connected.

They were cuddly and sweet and loved hugging and kissing. This is something that boys, in general just don’t do. (Note the “in general”, I DO know that there are those penis bearing types out there that are loving in this way, but I still feel they are very much in the minority.)

They never put anything in their mouths that did not belong. I swear, they didn’t try to eat everything in sight that would fit into their mouths. Only food that was put into a plate in front of them. They were clearly much smarter than other kids their ages in that they could identify FOOD. They had teething rings and what not and got through all that unhappy crap really early. Like, I’m not kidding you, between 5 and 12 months.

They didn’t pick up anything and attempt to make a weapon out of it. There was not beating or hitting.

Ever.

There was no screaming or yelling. They didn’t spend the majority of their time attempting to be so obnoxious that there was no way to not to notice them.

As a matter of fact they were so confident in themselves there was never any reason for them to scream.

They just calmly said what was on their mind and trusted that the world would see their insight or questions for what it was.

Heh. I like to think, “From the mouths of babes”, was coined after them.

It SO wasn’t.

I believe Jesus said it, though I can’t think why. Or what book it’s in… Oh well.

So does it make me a horrible person to feel like, just in general, girls are so superior to boys?

I am writing this while John is asleep beside me and baby is between us at the foot of the bed. She is making funny little grunting and sighing noises in her sleep. I wonder if she is dreaming of a hamburger? Every now and then she begins to run in her sleep… wonder if the burger is making her chase it?

Last night Keelan decided she was going to sleep downstairs on the rug in the living room.

No one knows why and this is good with us.

So she is lying there reading on the rug that was vacuumed two days ago and she announces that she is going to vacuum it if she is going to sleep down here.

I certainly am not going to complain.

So she goes to the broom closet that doubles as a coat closet in the foyer, (Have I ever mentioned that my house was designed by a man?), and stands there for a minute looking in.  She then reaches in and grabs something and pulls it out.

HalfAsstic Daughter: “Is this the vacuum?”

Me… dying laughing and a tad distressed at the question, “YES!” I mean how bad is THAT?  Of course it’s not the upstairs vacuum and it is also in there with a steam mop and carpet sweeper but, DAY-UM!  “IS THIS THE VACUUM?” is NOT something you want to hear your 18 year old daughter ask you.

So shoving the feelings of inadequate parenting aside, I ribbed her unmercifully for a moment or two and she giggled good naturedly.

She also picked up her cell phone immediately and began texting what had happened to J, her new boyfriend.  I told her not to let him know she can’t identify a vacuum cleaner and she promptly replied, “As long as HE knows what a vacuum looks like, we’re golden.”

I take it he will be doing the vacuuming in her daydreams of the future.