Scouting in the Woods

My little brother was a boy scout for a short period of time. He only went to a couple of camp outs. My mother boycotted the Boy Scout idea after the last camp out he attended. He came home full of stories of massive wedgie attacks (not minor wedgies but horrendous stretch your underwear up somewhere maybe on your head? I don't remember where and I don't have a point of reference not being male) on younger boys by the older troops and the TROOP LEADERS. (thus in my mind forever after, the boy scout official name has been "Wedgie Boy", I cannot help it. Everytime I hear the word boy scout, wedgie boy instantly pops in my mind.) There were also disturbing tales of rampant nakedness in the woods, both adult and child nakedness.

My mother decided that this particular troop was a little, well, weird. (she was not the best judge of young male behavior, she had trouble with the whole raising a boy thing.) I did agreed with her this time. (why would an adult give a child a wedgie?) (Why run naked thru the woods? This was many years ago and to be honest the thing that bothered me the most about the naked in the woods thing was the poison ivy. WHAT, WHAT ABOUT THE POISON IVY YOU FOOLS AS YOU RUN NAKED THRU THE WOODS GIGGLING, AND DOING GOD ONLY KNOWS WHAT ELSE???!!!)

Don't get me wrong, I have no evidence the Boy Scouts are not a healthy club for boys. To the contrary, I think that the majority of Boy Scout troops are probably great places for boys to learn useful things and to hang out with adult males.

Over the years, I have stumbled on a few stories about Boy Scout leaders going awry. The Boy Scouts aren't the only organization beset by accusations of wrong-doing by leaders, any profession or organization that deals with children seems to be fair game for predators.

Nothing like this however:
Longtime Program Director of the Boy Scouts and chairmain of it's Youth Protection Task Force pleaded guilty in court today to a charge of possession and distribution of child pornography.


Makes me feel downright queasy when I think that he could have been giggling naked in the woods and giving poor younger boy scouts wedgies.

Easter Sunrise

dogwood,
originally uploaded by E_llie.

"He is not here: for he is risen, as he said."

Matt 28:6

Happy Easter!

Finger Food

I wish, I wish, I wish I had more hours in my day to blog. So many great stories out there, so little time.

Woman gets more than a mouthful when she took a bite of her chili in a San Jose Wendy's earlier this week. She was eating her chili when she bit into something unusual. She promptly spit out the offending food and discovered to her horror, she had bitten into a human finger complete with fingernail.

All employees on the scene had their digits intact.
Officials believe it is a woman's finger that had a well manicured nail. Their have been no incident reports of accidents involving anything of this nature at the Wendy's food processing plant.

The coroner is attempting to find a fingerprint match.

Eureka Moment in the Middle of the Night

Have you ever woke up in the middle of the night and realized you did something extremely stupid? I did tonight. (today, it is 2:30am my time) My stupid cat woke me up like he always does, and I was restlessly trying to go back to sleep rehashing things at work, etc. I had a what if thought. Then in horror, I went rushing to my purse to see if my what if was a reality. It was.

I have 2 checking accounts where I currently live. My primary bank is the one I write checks from. The other bank, I no longer use but have a residual amt of money in it and I keep it open just in case I decide to switch back.

I ran out of checks. I went to my drawer where my checks live. In my mind I was looking for the checking account that was my primary. I saw my secondary acct check books, and rejected them immediatly and grabbed the others. The other check book I grabbed? From my old bank in AZ. I no longer have a checking acct with them. It is closed. Arghhhhhh.

I did not realize my mistake until just now. I made a frantic call to the utility that I had sent the wrong pmt to. They could not help me and advised I not pay till the check comes back. I made a frantic call to my old bank. They were fairly soothing, but it did not help my feelings.

Don't people get arrested for using checks from a checking acct that has been closed? I understand I am being hysterical and this probably does not happen, but I thought such action was overtly illegal. Aren't there people who stand around and wait for such actions with finger over the prosecute button?

Sometimes that cat does me favors. If he had not awakened me, who knows how long it would have taken me to realize my error. I might even have (horrors) written multiple checks from this acct. He still makes me crazy though....

Stormy Weather

It is supposed to storm here after midnight. I could be severe. I hate bad weather. One of the things I liked about living in Arizona was that you really did not have to worry about bad weather. Sure it rained from time to time, and we had really spectacular dirt storms, but it was nothing to really worry about. (unless you had a really bad dirt storm that obscured vision while driving, a rare event in Phoenix)

I lived in TX for about 8 years, most of the time in Dallas. For a year of that time we were in a tiny town north of Dallas. While there, a tornado came thru and killed 4 people right down the road over the railroad tracks from our house. The sky turned a pale pea green and it was raining so hard you could not see anything. The only clue that anything was amiss at my house was the state of the sky and a fantastic boom of thunder. That was it.

While in living in North Carolina, in a town outside of Raleigh, a tornado hit while I was driving home from work. They issued a severe thunderstorm warning when I was almost home. I could see the weather was ugly but opted for trying to make it to the house. I ended up having to pull over to the side of the road as small tree limbs blew past my car. Once I got home, I learned they had issued a tornado warning and a big rig was flipped on the highway not too far away.

While I was living away from Mississippi, my home town was hit by 2 tornados that killed 6 people. It was out in the country and the storms left a huge path.

I could go on. When we moved from TX we lived back in MS for a year before moving to NC. During that time, a huge tornado struck about 15 minutes from us and killed 4 or 5 people.

I hate bad weather. My mother would stand in the open doorway during extremely bad weather and say Shhhhhh! What's that sound?
I don't blame her for my phobia. It has lessened in time. When I was a young adult I would have debilitating panic attacks at times of bad weather. (Once in a El Nino year or the other one that comes after that, Las something, we had 14 tornado warnings in our county, none of which touched down) As I had my children, I realized I could not scare them to death. And my mother was only listening to see if we needed to get in a closet or something. My children have been in closets too and I have been known to look outside when severe weather hits.....I do try really hard not to say Shhhhh!!! whats that sound.

Professional thong swipers

Officers in Fairfield, Conn. are probably like policemen everywhere, prepared for almost anything, especially danger during routine traffic stops.

I doubt they were prepared for the 220 pairs of thong underwear they found in Monica Barbosa and Anparo Cruz's car after their car ran a redlight. It is true that there were other articles of clothing found in the car, but I the thongs got the most attention. I wonder, male and female apprehended, were there female and (that most hideous creation) male thongs? (I also think female thongs are atrocious in that they are extremely uncomfortable and could have only been created by a male person who wanted to see females in them)

The items came from stores like Victoria's Secret, Banana Republic and The Gap.

According to police, the couple had a device that let them leave the store without setting off shoplifting alarms.

The Art of Catastrophizing

I am prone to anxiety attacks. My anxious state is an inherited one. (or is it learned?) My mother would catatrophise and sometimes share her thoughts with me. I try to remember her hysteria when I am having my own hysterical moments. Unfortunately, knowing you are being irrational does not always change the irrational thinking process. It helps to take deep breaths and to make a phone call.

My little brother was about 10 years old. He was a normal little boy, but my mother, who only had experience raising girls, would constantly say "Well, what is wrong with _____"? She would make this comment when he broke Coke bottles in the back yard or tore up his toys. Pretty standard boy stuff.

She confiding in me one day when I was a young adult, told me one of her catastrophe scenarios. She had decided that my little brother, 10 at the time, was never going to be very tall. He was in fact going to be quite undersized as an adult, much like a professional horse racing jockey. She had also decided he was going to be an alcoholic. (alcoholism runs in my family) She further shared that she feared he was not going to be your average semi-functional alcoholic, he was going to be a homeless wino in a ditch somewhere with a bottle in a paper bag. She also had decided he was going to be a homosexual. Sigh.

In her mind, my little brother was going to be a gay, tiny, shrunken, ditch wino.

Today my little brother is over 6 feet tall, is a supervisor at his place of employment where he works about 60 hours a week, and has been married with child for years. If he has a drinking problem, it has not diminished him in size, affected his work habits yet, or changed his sexual orientation.

I did not know what to say when she shared this tidbit with me. Fortunately, I did not laugh. I looked at her as if these statements were a bit odd (they were) and mumbled a few comforting words. If she shared this with me today, I think I would say, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out......

Does She or Doesn't She

I am indebted to my mother in so many ways. She was a wonderful person and I owe my sense of right and wrong and "class" to her and my Grandmothers.

She could be a bit hysterical in her mothering philosophy. When I was very small, I remember fervently believing if you said "damn" or "hell" (the extent of my cussing vocabulary) 10 times, you would be struck by lightning sent from above. You have to understand, my mother never TOLD me this, it was something I gleaned from her demeanor and my sunday school education (which never said that either, I was just a hysterical child).

My mother thought coffee drinkers were evil, (This made no sense, my mother created laws that made no sense. A large part of my awareness of the evilness of everything was from listening to her gossip with my grandmothers both who drank coffee), cigarette smoking women were loose and so were certain health care professionals, namely nurses. I do not know where the evil nurse thing came from except she and my grandmother seemed to feel that since nurses worked grave yard shifts, drank coffee and sometimes were spotted smoking, they were evil. See, if you work graveyard shifts around MEN, namely doctors, you were bound to consort with them after smoking all those cigarettes and drinking demon coffee.

Another sure sign of looseness in my mother's eyes was hair dye and certain styles of makeup. (Remember the old commercials for hair dye,"Does she or doesn't she. ) I have no idea why. This was not a conviction borne out of her religious beliefs. The denomination we were apart of did not condemn hair dye, makeup, coffee or even smoking really since back then the majority of the adult population smoked. Sigh.

I decided at a very young age (bitter middle child) that I was NOT GOING TO BE LIKE MY MOTHER. I have therefore made many mistakes trying to not be like my mother. I felt she was too dependant on my father and should have divorced him which made me more open to the divorce solution when the rocks started jutting more painfully in my 19 year marriage.

When I was younger I was a make-up fanatic who would not leave home to even go to the grocery without the proper made up attire. And as a teenager my makeup reached hysterical proportions, a pre-goth look entirely my own. I am a little looser about the whole makeup thing and have been spotted (gasp) out and about completely makeup free at times.

My hair started turning gray when I was 28, just a strand here or there. I immediately decided to remedy the situation. I have had many hair disasters and colors. It has been a ghastly maroon and a hideous pale blond that made my head look like a light bulb. My hair is naturally a light brown. It currently is a dark reddish blond. It is supposed to be dark blond but if I use an ash color it turnes a greenish hue. (nothing worse than showing up at work with a new heinous shade of green on your head) If I go too light it washes out my complexion. I have, at times in the past, paid big bucks to have it colored. I am currently braving it myself though I can see the days of professional coloring on the horizon again to try to get it right.

As my mother aged, sanity crept in and she was no longer so hystrionic in her parenting approaches. My 9 and 11 year younger sister and brother had a much different type of parenting style and have no clue about how my mom was "back then". She was an excellent example and my mentor when I had my first child.

I have in the past and am trying now to be a little more like her, now that the waves of destruction from my divorce have calmed considerably. I do want to emulate her stability and strength of character. That does not mean I plan to give up coffee or stop dyeing my hair. I don't plan to reconcile with my unstable ex-husband or stop wearing makeup. I do want to be there for my children and be a source of stability for the family.

I want to like my mother (only the good parts).

Mommy Dearest

Mommy Dearest,
originally uploaded by E_llie.

Police in Instanbul Turkey have arrested a man posing as his dead mother to collect her retirement check.

He showed up at a bank, dressed in womans clothes complete with proper support hose. The officials became suspicious of their account holders deep voice. A manager secretly photographed him and called police.

Serafettin Gencel, told police that his 68 year old mother had been dead 2 years. He had buried her body in the basement at her death to be able to collect her checks.

Police are exhuming the body to see if foul play was involved. The man is being held on various charges.

Cruising the Friendlys

My oldest sister flew to Seattle yesterday, just in time for the latest Mt St. Helens eruption. I hope the volcanic activity did not increase turbulence. I have 2 sisters that are a little sensitive to airplane travel, though I must say she is the bravest by far.

I tend to be a basket case when flying and eat Ativan like candy before and during the flight. (I take one about 30 minutes before the flight, another when taking off and then another whenever the fancy hits. Not very safe) My other sister, (the younger of us three) has to be wheeled off the plane she medicates so well. I actually, (don't laugh) chose bus travel once over flight, I was so afraid. The difference in fares for coach air travel at the time, a whopping $20.

If you have ever ridden a bus for any distance at all, you know how horrible it is. I stinks, is uncomfortable and is generally unpleasant. Feeling a bit deranged, I almost got into an argument with some of my fellow bus mates. Not safe. When I finally staggered off the bus, I felt so grubby and was so demoralized by the whole experience, I almost did not recover. (did I mention my sisters and I also tend to be a bit dramatic)

I hope she is ok. Someone would have called if she wasn't. If she had a mental breakdown brought on by rough flying conditions that rendered her helpless and drooling. What if she was so traumatized by the whole experience, she chooses to take a bus back rather than fly? It would never happen. She would probably walk back before choosing a bus. It would make for a great story.....

Bad Monkey

When I was a child, I asked my mother for a monkey. I wanted one as a pet. We already had pets and there didn't really seem to be a limit on them. I thought a monkey was a wonderful choice. They were so cute on tv in their little diapers and they would swing around eating bananas and kissing their owners. I thought it would be like having a baby sister or brother. My mother quickly discouraged me. She said they were nasty and had diseases and didn't make good pets. She also said they were dangerous.

Me, being the sensisitive type and the middle child, collected this disapointment and put it in my bag of "I've been wrongeds". (did not my sister GET A PARROT when she had her tonsils out, I asked myself) I later realized, she was of course right, and it would be absolutely hideous to have a psuedo-human bouncing around in your house. Is it animal or human......animal or human.....human or animal.

She was also right about the dangerous part according to this article :

Monkey attacks man and chews of part of face and genitals.

Green Day

I started my new job today. The drive was relativley uneventfull though kind of long. It would have been shorter if I had not GONE THE WRONG WAY. Thankfully discovered my error before too many miles had passed and I arrived on time, 15 minutes early as instructed by my new boss. I pulled into a deserted parking lot right before reaching my destination to smoke really quickly, in an upwind position so that I would not smell like smoke.

I then proceeded to walk in the office feeling like I was going to puke and pass out. I had taken a pain pill and it did not agree with my quick smoke. I had fleeting visions of me as I approached the entrance running to the bathroom to spit. Thankfully, the need to spit sensation faded before I made it in. Wonderful start. I did explain to them that I had been to the dentist and was taking medication. I think they understood...

Oh and a cat update. He is no longer peeing on everything and is feeling better. I am contrite and feel bad about yelling at him when he was sick. My contritness tends to dissipate when he wakes me up in the middle of the night as always with the infernal pointless meowing designed to send me over the edge and I go running hissing and throwing things..............