Because I’m Accountable

Because I’m accountable to my co workers as part of an exercise challenge at work, I’m moving again.  The goal is 6000 minutes by 11/27 between the eight of us. We’ve got 2750ish minutes so far as of the start of week two. Woo hoo.  

Anyhoo.  I was originally going to take today off. B had an appointment. Then late yesterday he got a text to reschedule.  Doc’s flight had been delayed and he was stuck overseas. B is now scheduled for Thursday. 

Anyhoo part two.  My routine was off.  I was out of sorts and needed to walk it off.  Ya know to keep from crying 😢.  And if you really wanna know how to keep from crying, trust me you don’t.  Tears flowing release stress.  

Speaking of stress. Here is the dialogue from the show I watched while I walked it off.  

Guy: I don’t drink.  I don’t smoke.  I eat fish and lots of fruits and vegetables.  I exercise daily and I haven’t eaten ice cream in six years. Why am I the one who had a heart attack?

Girl: Stress caused your heart attack. 

Guy: I don’t feel stress. 

Girl: Yes you do. 

Insert J-Dubs two cents. You’ve gotta let it out.  Aaaaaaahhhh.  Calgon take me away.  Guess what bloglandia? You’re my stress relief ❤️ 🎃 😎

Scents of Childhood

B: Jill really? (Points to TV tray)

Me: what?

B: That’s three days of orange peels. 

Me: I do that on purpose. 

B: You do not.  

Me: I do!  Orange peels smell good. 

B: Not anymore. 

B (continued): You sure you’re not just being lazy?

Me: Not this time. Hehe 😉 

My mom used to make a concoction with orange peels, cinnamon, and cloves.  I never got her recipe but I’m the diffusing queen.  Close enough and I do have a few good memories.  

Phone Call Continues

Dr. AB Ce: Mr. Free (his attorney) is trying to get him out and back to his group home.  I am trying to verify what he told me.  Do you know his diagnosis?

Jenny: Yes, childhood schizophrenia.  He heard voices, mainly Jackie Turner, a race car driver, played off as an imaginary friend.  Our mother covered up everything.  We only found out the official diagnosis after she died.

Jenny: (holding back tears) Benjy’s caseworker told my dad and me the extent of Benjy’s disabilities.  We sat in stunned disbelief.  I talked to my mom every day.  She never mentioned it.  Dad kept saying Are you SURE you didn’t know? 

In a whisper, she never said anything.

Jenny:  Shortly after that meeting, Benjy went into the system.  There was nothing in River Town.  Capital City is more progressive. You know the slogan … keep Capital City strange.

Dr. AB Ce: (laughing) We are very bongos.  Anything else?  Besides schizophrenia?  How are his faculties?  Has he ever sustained a brain injury?

Jenny:  Hmm Let’s see.  He can’t read or write.  He was hit by a bus.  Knocked him out of his shoes.  He had a concussion.  His hip was never the same.  He was always very clumsy.  He had special shoes and leg braces as a kid.

Jenny: (continuing) I think his birth mother was a drug addict or alcoholic.  My aunt said as much and Mom quit talking to her.  He didn’t walk until well past two.  Did I mention the corrective shoes? I am sorry I’m repeating myself.

Dr. AB Ce: Wait! He’s adopted? Hold on Jenny.

Jenny doesn’t hear Benjy, but she knows he is there. She hears Aww, that’s okay, don’t worry.  You’re doing fine. 

Dr. AB Ce: He just told me he’s sorry he forgot he was adopted.

Mental Illness is Not a Halloween Costume

Sue writes “If you want to dress up like a person with mental illness, wear normal clothes.” I agree. May also be part of why they call it the invisible illness. I am a little loose with my word choices too but only when I am referring to myself. I need to ponder that one for a bit.

My Loud Whispers of Hope

One year, when my oldest daughter was about ten years old, she dressed up like a cereal killer. When she told me about her idea, I loved it and thought it was a very clever and creative idea. I loved the play on words, cereal killer versus serial killer.

We made her costume to look like she was a box of cereal and then added a lot of blood, maybe too much blood. We were having fun and may have gotten a bit carried away with adding too much blood. I helped turn her into a scary, gory and ghoulish looking box of cereal. I thought she looked great and I was proud of her creative idea. I love creativity.

So the bad mom that I unknowingly was at that time for letting my daughter dress like this, sent my cute little daughter out onto the streets to go trick…

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Tips To Keep From Crying

1. Put a tack in your shoe.  
2. Meditate. 
3. Face the issue head on. 
4. Walk it off. 

Ouch, a tack in the shoe is for passing a lie detector test and might actually bring more tears 😭 

Meditation works but I can’t drop everything right now. 

Walk it off!   Yes! But of course today is rainy.  I’m sugar; I will melt.  

This people pleasing non confrontational neurotic mess (PPNCNM) prefers to be an ostrich.  So much for ISFJ and Myers Briggs. I’m so freaking tired 😓 y’all. In my head too much and likely making stuff up!  Likely not!   All my crazy assumptions are true! No ass of u and me.  

Though I do feel better having written this mini feel sorry for me ploy. Gets the noise out of my head. Maybe write the feelings out should be #5?

Happy Halloween 🎃 

I’m Glad It Happened

Me: Do you remember what Monday is?

Pony: The day before our anniversary, the 30th?

Me: And?

Pony: And what?

Me:  11 years ago?

Pony: Oh that? yes I remember.  How could I forget?

Wise: That was another one of the first few stories he told me.

Pony: I am glad it happened.

Me: Really? you are?

Billy Bob: Jill that’s history.  We’ve all put it behind us.  No one else memorializes that day but you.

Pony: Yes I am really glad it happened.  That’s a great story to tell.

Me: What makes it great? It was awful.

Pony:  It is just so far-fetched.  A story that starts with two guys pick up two hookers in Austin and go on a joy ride.  Chaos ensues!  What’s not to love? (chuckles).

Me: I am not memorializing it.  I can’t help I remember it.  As hard as it is to believe, it’s real.

Pony: And because it happened, we are where we are today.  Anything different and everything would be different.

And with that the conversation shifted gears.

 

 

The Imagination of a Nine Year Old Boy

We had a wonderful evening last night with Pony and Wise.  Today Billy Bob is in a much better mood because of it.  When Pony said he’d cheer up his dad, he was true to his word.  We are still giggling over his silly tales. And he and Wise together.  I am over the moon happy that they found each other.  Such a similar path to our own yet uniquely their own. Happy almost anniversary kiddos!

Wise started the conversation  What’s the earliest age you remember something? And from there Pony regaled us with stories. She did too.  Remind me to tell you sometime about her friends Ted and Cruz.  Not to be confused with the politician.  These elderly gentlemen were her neighbors.

Pony: Earliest age?  I do not remember anything before this morning.

Wise: Rage Cage?

Pony (to us): Oh ya.  So remember when you guys kicked me out of my room? I must’ve been nine, 9 1/2?

Billy Bob: We didn’t kick you out.  That was when your sister was born.  Not a lot of options on Huth Dr. for living spaces.

Pony (chuckling): So anyway, you kicked me out of my room but it was okay because you put a TV in my room with a Sega Genesis game console. I was never allowed a TV in my room before then.

Me: And this caused Rage Cage?  You were mad at us or worse mad at your sister?

Pony: No! I always wanted a sibling.  Actually that is my earliest memory … playing on the swing set in the back yard, wishing for a brother or sister to be out there with me.

Pony (continued): Remember the big green Rubbermaid tote that also served as my toy box?  Well, I would remove all my stuff and get in.  Snap it closed and then kick like hell to get out.

Billy Bob (laughing)

Me: What? How did you snap yourself in?  What if you got stuck in there? Did Charlie snap you in there?

Pony: Mom it was 20 years ago.  And there was this whole thing.  I would lay the tote sideways and get in.  Put the lid between me and the bed.  Push against the bed til I heard it snap closed and then roll over to upright the tote before I’d start rage caging it. (chuckling, his laugh. To me, there is no sweeter sound!).  I had to think up stuff on my own. It was fun.  I always broke free.

Wise: That was one of the first stories he told me.  He also used to play Hobo.

Pony: Stop! Don’t say anything else.

Wise: Why? It’s not embarrassing or anything.

Pony: Except for me.  The person we are talking about.

Pony continued: Mom always took me to Elf Louise or the Angel Tree.  To wrap gifts and then deliver.  I met folks down on their luck.  Every year we helped a different family.  I would wonder what it was like to be them.  In the game, I’d turn the shower to cold and get under the faucet part and imagine.  I probably shouldn’t have called the game Hobo but I knew I was very lucky.

Billy Bob: Why didn’t you call the game Navy Seal?

There’s more but at over 500 words, I am FIN.   My imaginative little boy.  FIN is how he ended all those movies he made with his buddies in high school.  Back when the world was his oyster and he wanted to be a film director.  I wonder where the FIN sign is? I wonder if we still have the tapes somewhere around here?  I wonder but in an amazed way.  I am also at peace.

As always, more to come.

Gender Roles

On the way out this morning, we stopped for gas at the local Valero

Me: Will you fill up MY car or do you want me to? 

Billy Bob: I always do.

Me: That’s right you do because I am a gurl.

Billy Bob: And that matters how?

Me: Gurlz don’t pump gas.

Billy Bob: Of course they do, you get special treatment because I love you.

We have fallen into mostly stereotypical gender roles and I have to wonder if that is a problem or if how B and I treat each other is instead based on a mutual love and respect.  I was driving us today but for the first how ever many years of our marriage, he did all the driving when we were together even if we took MY car.  After his first on the job accident, I started driving Mister Daisy.  Now we each drive each other around in our own respective vehicles.

Sidebar note – We are blessed to be a two car family in a world of hurt.  And we only know the world is joyful because we can contrast joy with pain.

Continuing on B is our resident chef who does 99.9% of the cooking.  I also cannot remember the last time I mopped the floors as that is his job.  I make the bed as part of an OCD regime.  We each wash our own clothes.  He gets the outside and keeps up the yard and extended property.  I get the inside with some exceptions like the mopping just mentioned.

Things that make you go Hmmmm.

Wishing you a peaceful Sunday.

As always, more to come.

Warm Fuzzies

Pony: so how is he?

Me: how do you think? He’s broken.  

Pony: that’s why I’m calling. What happened?

Me: you’ve got to make the offer through a contract. We were both confused and assumed the two realtors had reached an agreement. We thought the contract was a done deal. But they rejected the offer and won’t budge from the asking price. 

Pony: what’s next?

Me: we look at more places. I hate xxxxx.  I could truly hurt xxxxx.  

Pony: no kidding. 

Me: I tried to get him to invite you to lunch. He said go without him.  I told him if he doesn’t go I’m not either.  He’s outside staring at all his gear.  It’s pitiful.  

Pony: tell him tonight we’re going to Maggiano’s for our anniversary and he’s going too.  No choice.  I’ll cheer him up. 

And that he did.  Our sweet Pony boy. When you have a two hour dinner with laughter til you cry, it gives you the warm fuzzies. Well that and to see them content and in love.  It really was a cause to celebrate 🎉 even if we were 3 days early.  

I’m still giggling as I write this.  Learned some new stories.  Things he got away with as a kid.  My baby is turning 30 soon. How’d that happen when I’m only 22.  

People not things.  My heart is full 

Featured image courtesy of Lulu. Her own stencil.  So cute!

#SoCS for 10/28/17 ~ which/witch/wich

Which way will this stream of consciousness flow today? Hmmm.  Well, I cannot do my usual think, think, think because … well because there are additional instructions today that I must follow for points.  Glorious points!!!!

Wait!  Well was two weeks ago.  You are behind the times J-Dub.  Move along.

Start with Which.  Check.

Add witch in there somewhere.  Check.

This is Halloween weekend.  Ever wonder why people are calling it that.  Halloween is a day … falls on a Tuesday this year.  There is no such thing as Halloween weekend until the day of Halloween falls on a weekend again.  I believe folks are just looking for excuses to have fun and eat candy.

I have always loved Halloween.  For decades, the grade school I attended had our fall carnival on the last Saturday of October.  Halloween themed with haunted house and cardboard tunnel maze to crawl through.  A fish pond and cake walk.  We got to wear our costumes.  I was a witch one year.  I was also Frankenstein and Casper. There was also a sock hop and a raffle.  Good times I tell ya!

Now I know what you’re thinking.  J-Dub grew up in the 1950’s.  Sock hopping and all that but nope.  The 1950’s were the generation before my own.  I did however enjoy a bucolic existence.  Very Mayberry.  Ours was a small community like the bar Cheers where everybody knows your name.

Oh and you’re also thinking how many times is one time too many to write Halloween in a post?  Six, the answer is six!

This year the school shuttered its’ doors due to lack of enrollment.  I find that very sad but inevitably.  No one lives inside the loop anymore.  The parish is shrinking.  I won’t belabor the point though.  I have fond memories that will live on forever.  People for who at time in my life were my everything!  People who helped shape me into the person I am today.

Shame on all of you!  I am a neurotic mess.  Lol!  I only jest. Kind of, sort of, not really.

Okay, bring it home girlie.  Use a word that ends with wich.  Well, … Here we go again; well was the prompt two weeks ago.  Stop it! I’m telling.  There is only one word I can think of and that word is sandwich.

Happy Saturday y’all.  I hope you have enjoyed this rambling mess as much as I have enjoyed writing it.  From the mind of one J-Dub McGillicutty with special thanks to Linda G. Hill’s #SoCS prompt for 10/28/17.  Here are the Rules and Ping Back  Play along if you dare. BWHAHAHAHA.