Christmas dinner for sport

Christmas dinner for sport

Christmas night after Del got home from work, we went to Bob and Pixie’s for dinner. Pixie’s son Jonathan was also there.

A little about Jonathan- for a kid that is going to be 18 in a few weeks, he’s one of the good ones in my book. I have no idea what this kids future plans are but whatever they may be, he will- without question- excel at what he chooses. Most 18 year old kids have their heads so far up their asses they can diagnose and treat a case of tonsillitis.

In other words, I like this kid. So does Del. They have a few conversations about politics (snore) and seem to be on the same page with almost everything. He is wicked intelligent and pretty passionate about the things they talk about. You don’t see a lot of conviction in kids these days (at least, I don’t- but then again I don’t know a lot of kids anymore-without permission, mine grew up) like Jonathan has.

Sure, he bickers with his mom, he’s supposed to. That is his job at that age. Kids that are soon leaving the nest are some of the most difficult to get along with because (from my arm chair analysis anyway) it makes it easier for them to leave. For some reason we (parent and the kids that are leaving) have to have all these problems and fights because it’s too hard to face the fact that soon life as we have known it for so many years is about to change permanently and forever.

I don’t know, I guess it’s just easier to let someone go if you are mad at them. It’s not but I think that is the deep physiological thinking.

One night when I was there they had an argument over a salad. Seriously, a salad.

It’s the circle of life that not a lot of people talk about but I am sure if you talk to parents that now have adult kids, they can tell you stories similar to that.

For example, darling Nikki and I had some kind of a fight over something (for the life of me I have no clue what it was, could have been a salad fight) and she went storming into her bedroom.

Now when I say storming, I mean she slammed the door so freaking hard that the shelf over Del’s head (in the living room, mind you) leapt from its nails and crashed onto his head, nearly knocking him unconscious.

He wasn’t even involved in the fight but he is the one that got hurt. After that, whenever Nikki and I started raising our voices at each other, he would automatically get up and stand in the middle of the living room so nothing would hit him in the head.

You have to feel sorry for the poor guy because usually on his off time he is battling on some game on Xbox Live. He’s not bothering anyone. He’s just minding his own business playing a game. So you have to picture him standing in the living room, trying to watch what’s going on during his game while ducking and looking over his shoulder to see if he is safe in his own house.

(Note- Del’s gamer tag is delnrobin and he plays every night. I don’t judge that, I’m on a message board or Facebook every night. If you or someone in your house is currently playing Gears of War 2 or Call of Duty 4, look him up for a game. No little kids though, most of the people he plays with are grown men and they can get pretty crude.)

Okay so anyway, back to dinner.

Brother made so much food that we had to put some of it on the window sill because it wouldn’t all fit on the table. There was ham with pineapples and cherries and a gravy bowl of sweet glaze, huge double mashed baked potatoes, cranberry sauce, homemade bread, asparagus, corn, green bean casserole, two different kinds of pies and 4 different kinds of cookies.

We should have been eating off platters, not plates. It was a lot of food. We had to eat it in shifts.

The double mashed baked potato was the size of your fist and that is what Jonathan started with so when the other food came around, he was pretty full.

He got shit for that.

Costello’s and Stanwood’s (oh, I’m one of each-weird) are professional eaters. We know better than to start with the potato, that is eaten a little during the meal or completely last. When the second platter of ham hit the table, he sat back in his chair-exhaled and said “I’m done. I’m full.”

Could anyone leave it at that? No. He got a comment from everyone at the table about being full and stopping. Pant unbuckling was suggested and if I recall correctly, sweatpants were even brought up.

“Eat that potato and tell me that you’re not full. It only takes a few bites and you’re done.” He said to his mother.

Pixie is about the size of a pixie. Why she did it is beyond me, I guess she thought she could prove that eating that fist size potato and the rest of the food was doable.

Pixie was down for the count next.

It was the third helping that did me in. Brother and Del were still going strong. Jonathan, Pixie and I just looked at them as they kept loading up their plates. “Just eating for sport now” Brother said.

If we ate like normal people there would have been enough food for at least 3 more people.

I was so full from Christmas dinner, I think today is the first day I have actually gotten hungry again.

Del and Brother have a religious belief about food though. “Leftovers” don’t happen. They don’t revisit food. It goes into the refrigerator to become a science project, and then it (and sometimes even the bowl it’s been stored in) gets thrown into the trash.

Over the years leftovers have never been a thing in my house anyway. I can’t think of too many things I’ve packed up and put into the fridge to store for later because usually it’s all gone.

At the moment though, there is a pot in the back of my fridge that I’m afraid of. I know what it was when it went in there weeks ago; I don’t know what it transformed into. I am going to have to deal with it soon though, because I need the pot.

Dealing with pot. Humm. I can remember a day when that wasn’t a bad thing.

Happy I love you day!

LYMI

Another article was published today about Starbucks

Starbucks in Kissimmmee Florida

Want to hear something cute about this Starbucks? When I first moved here a friend of mine gave me a gift card for Starbucks and one day I decided I wanted coffee. I asked (really nicely too) my GPS where the closest Starbucks was and the damn thing took me to a hotel across the street from Universals Nickelodeon hotel.


If I wanted coffee I was going to have to park and go into the hotel. I wasn't in the mood for that and I thought it was pretty stupid that my GPS thought that was the closest one to my house.

My house was 2 turns away from the Animal Kingdom gate. You can't honestly tell me that 1/2 way across Florida was the closest Starbucks to my house.

Anyway, I had given up and was running some other errands. (Read that as lost bigger than shit trying to find my way home)

So while I was trying to find my way back home I was on the phone with Dan from the Lodgeboards.

Dan and his wife Jen live in Jersey. Del is convinced that he is a real Soprano and one day he is going to stuff him in a dumpster (but not one behind a Chinese food restaurant because Del insist they don't have dumpsters).

Dan is a big, good-looking guy. His wife is tiny and beautiful. These people could do a magazine cover for "Jersey Life" if such a thing existed.

Anyway, while I was driving I was getting pissed off because I really wanted a cup of coffee. I really wanted a free cup of coffee more (gift card) and said something to Dan about it while we were on the phone.

"Where exactly are you right now?" Dan asked.

I rambled off some landmarks (Duhh, a gift shop with a big clown and a Denny's) that were around me and he said "Just go over the bridge and look to your left. You'll see a Nike store. Next to that is a Starbucks."

Well spank my ass if he wasn't right.

The guy who lives in JERSEY had to tell the person who LIVES HERE how to find a Starbucks- over the phone with no real distinguishable landmarks to go by.

So that is how I originally found this Starbucks. I'm trading in my GPS for a hotline to Dan.

LYMI

My latest article published today!

New article published today! Whoo-hoo!

An oldie but a goodie

I brought back an oldie but a goodie for Associated Content. For every 1000 views, I get $1.50. Would you mind being a viewer?:

I Rachael Ray-ed Myself into a Corner

Angelina Jolie had the twins; Jennifer Aniston got the twins out

Angelina Jolie had the twins; Jennifer Aniston got the twins out

Just in case you have been living deep inside a cave somewhere in the Fiji Mountains and haven’t heard the news, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt had twin babies.

In retaliation to this, Jennifer Aniston will have her twins out on the January cover of GQ magazine.

I’m starting to think these people are all involved in a very elaborate publicity stunt. A gossip magazine manajatwa, don’t you think? Honestly, one does something and other is immediately in the news doing something else.

Brad Pitt farts (he probably lifts his leg to amplify the sound in the privacy of their home/homes) and they put a picture of both the women on the covers of the gossip magazines whether they have done something of interest or not.

When my first husband and I got divorced, I was devastated. I really believed that we were going to be married forever and ever until death did us part.

That’s the kind of thing you think when you get married at 16. It was supposed to be so much fun all the time. We were going to get to play house for real and it was all going to be perfect.

Yeah, people didn’t mention to us how hard it was going to be for him to be working two jobs, for us to have babies 17 months apart and to be a military family moving around all the time.

In all honesty, I did love him back then. (I really don’t know the man now; it’s been 20 some odd years since we have said more than a handful of words to each other). I believe that at one time he loved me. When we got divorced it was an ugly, immature and messy one. We were married 3 years and it took us that long to finally get the divorce papers signed.

When he remarried shortly after our divorce, I was insanely jealous. He married a girl named Heather.

Heather, not only was she gorgeous, she had a beautiful name. I wanted to hate her. She was my Angelina. (Although, I was no Jennifer).

No matter how hard I tried to hate her, she made it impossible. She was just a really good person inside and out.

I really wanted to hate her when I found out she was pregnant with the twins. I tried to stuff my jealous feelings about it when ever I talked to her (because everything regarding visitation was arranged through her to keep peace) but she could hear through it and she addressed it with me.

I got it all off my chest. I was being an asshole to her because I felt like she was living my life, the dream life I thought my ex and I were supposed to be having. The more we talked, the more I realized that it wasn’t my life, it really was hers. She and he belonged together at the time, it was obvious.

I was being childish. I was 22 years old, that’s what we do at that age sometimes.

But you know, even after the birth of their twin boys (they look just like Nikki, really adorable boys), I never thought about getting my boobs out. Not once. Even if it had occurred to me (or the offer have even been put on the table) I still probably wouldn’t have done it.

I say ‘probably’ because I don’t know how much money we would have been talking about. I was 22, not in my 40’s. I do have a price tag on them now, a gazillion dollars. Nobody would ever pay it because trust me; nobody wants to see them now.

And if they did and were willing to pay the price, I would use that money to change my name and move to that cave in the mountain in Fiji.

I’d have too. Once you see the boobs, you can never see my face again.

Unfortunately for everyone, a few years later they ended up getting divorced. I was going through my divorce from my second husband at the same time (and aside from the custody battle straight from bowels of hell) I still think Heathers was just as bad to deal with.

She had become much more than a step-mother, she was my friend too. I didn’t want to see her go. We were both newly single again and almost everyone else we knew was married.

So she moved in with me.

My- opps, OUR ex-husband nearly popped a vein in his head when that happened.

We never understood that either. It’s not like we sat around the apartment, drank flavor coffee and talked about him. We went out, we did things and we had fun.

His name rarely, if ever- came up. It was better if nobody knew that we were both married to the same guy because most people were pigs about it and assumed it was at the same time.

And then came his next wife, Cindy. When we all became friends, our ex considered taking a bottle of pills.

It’s not our fault he had outstanding taste in women, is it?

A lot of years went by and I lost track of Heather and Cindy after the last divorce. Occasionally I check the magazine rack at the supermarket and I still haven’t seen either one of them on the cover with their twins out. (Heathers actual twins or Cindy’s breasts)

The last I ever heard, he was serious with a woman named Pam for a while that was- from my understanding, wicked nice. Then there was the last woman named Robin, which made me laugh.

He told Nikki he was going to her college graduation with Robin. Nikki was confused why 1) he was calling me by my name to her instead of saying “your mom” and 2) What the hell happened to Del.

“No Nikki, when you have been with as many women as I have, eventually you start to duplicate names.” He told her.

So I guess I can compare my 1st husband to Brad Pitt. He has great taste in women but I’ll always be the first.

That’s all I need. I’ll keep the girls covered.

You’re welcome.

And no matter what woman comes into his life next, they will always have to deal with Heather. Those two still haven't figured it out yet, but they really are meant to be together, they just haven't gotten their shit together.

LYMI

(P.S. In case you are wondering who could be better than Brad Pitt, the next time you are in Disney, check the pilot of the monorail. He’s defiantly an upgrade. 1/2 his age and twice the fun!)

So you know when you move into a new place?

So you know when you first move into a new place…

You find yourself at the store a lot for all those ‘must haves’?

Sunday, Brother introduced me to a store (I’m assuming it’s a southern store because he said he used to buy things there when he lived in Tennessee and I had never heard of it before) called Dollar General.

It’s very similar to a Family Dollar store. There are a ton of those around here too so I’m not sure what makes this store stand out from a Family Dollar store (more rank maybe?) but we went there and I picked up some of those must haves I mentioned before.

The place we left was fully furnished meaning (in case you are one of those people who have never rented a fully furnished place before- I was one) all we had to do was walk in the door and put our clothes away. Everything you could need is already there.

The place was 1700 square feet and could sleep 10. It had 4 bedrooms and 3 ½ bathrooms.

The weird thing was the cooking stuff- like pots and pans- could only feed about 2 people at a time. I tried to make steak ‘ems one night for the guys and could only cook one thinly sliced steak at a time.

Then I had to cook the onions, green peppers and mushrooms separately. I didn’t have to cook as much of those as I did steak because the only vegetable Bill would touch is corn and ketchup.

Have you seen the size of Del, Brother and Bill? You think they are eating one steak and cheese sub?

I vowed never to spend 3 hours of my life cooking something as stupid as steak and cheese subs ever again. Don’t get me wrong, I love steak and cheese subs as much as the next guy, but if I have to dedicate that much my time and life to a meal, I’d prefer to have several courses involved.

So I do own a really great frying pan and a super sized lobster pot.

I’m a Mainer-it’s a requirement.

I also own a muffin pan because Bea came down for a visit and I planned on making blueberry muffins for her. When she was a baby, she was hooked on them like crack. She and I would drop off Chris and Nikki at school every morning and as soon as we walked in the house she would say “Mumma! I gotta hava boo-bewie muffin. Gotta have it mumma!”

My secret to “crack boo-bewie muffins”? Sprinkle just a tiny bit of sugar on the top before you bake them. A little kid will hang up their coat and put their shoes away for them.

I also bought cookie sheets because I guess people who go on vacation never have an urge for french fries or cookies.

The last cookware things I own are two loaf pans to make meatloaf with. I had to buy two because when I made meatloaf (you know how Del loves his meatloaf) I had to make separate loaves because Bill wouldn’t eat it if it had anything other than bread crumbs and ketchup in it.

Yeah, I’m such a bitch.

So as far as cookware when moving in here, I was set up pretty good. I even have plates, bowls and cups because my friend Kimball (from Badshoe.com) mailed me some a few months ago.

Why would she spontaneously do something like that?

I think she is clairvoyant.

You have a better reason for it? The box just showed up in the mail months ago with stuff I am actually using as I write this. I’m drinking water out of one of the cups right this minute.

I knew we wouldn’t be living in the resort forever, I didn’t know we would be moving as soon as we did. Kimball’s box of plates couldn’t have shown up at a better time.

So some of the ‘must haves’ I needed were things like silverware, pillows, blankets…crap like that. I took a trip to General Dollar with Brother and picked up a lot of those things.

Then I went to Walmart with Del (because he needed a haircut) and picked up a few other things.

I ended up with two can openers. I can’t even take one of them back because I can’t remember which came from what store.

Do I need two can openers? I don’t think so. The only reason I can think of that I would ever need two can openers if it I am conducting a can opening race.

They are manual can openers too so the only one I can conduct can opening races with is Brother because they are right handed can openers.

Did you know that some things are just designed for right handed people? I wasn’t aware until I married a left handed man.

Thankfully things like Spaghettio’s now come in pop off tops. If Del wants a can of green beans though, he’s pretty much shit outta luck.

When he was in the military, he had to have a left handed M-16. I had no idea they even made left handed guns. If he used a right handed gun, the hot shells would spit out and burn his arm.

Left handed people are kind of screwed in this country. You don’t really think about the right handed stuff until you hear a left handed person swearing about it.

Del has become ambidextrous against his will.

That’s fine. What drives me crazy is he is trying to make me left handed. The world was designed for me, I don’t have to conform to his left handedness, he has to conform to my right handedness. The two of us don’t have the power to change things; he needs to get off my back.

When we sit down to eat, I have to sit on his right side or his elbow ends up in my plate.

I seem to have bought the right kind of scissors though. The handle is shaped exactly the same on both sides. I guess before I had right handed scissors because one of the handles was molded differently for the thumb and he couldn’t use them.

I text messaged Pixie because I know she is left handed too. I asked her what else is right handed and she said coffee cups.

“Coffee cups? Why can’t you just turn them around and use them that way?” I asked Del.

Del doesn’t drink coffee but his best guess was because the picture on the cup would be facing the wrong way.

My, left handed people are pretty fussy, huh?

I still have some ‘must haves’ to pick up but I think I need to take an inventory of what I have now.

Unless you are right handed and want to stop by for a can opening race.

LYMI!

What would I do without him?

What would I do without him?

Honestly, I am really lucky and I know it. I don’t know what I would do without Brother. He has always had my back even when I bolt unexpectedly into a men’s room.

I do those kinds of things. It was news to me; I was just as surprised as you are to find that out about myself.

Why is there a little blue chip thing in the urinal? Is that where you guys aim? Does a scent of some kind come out of it when it comes in contact with urine- maybe flowers or cheeseburgers? Do they work in regular toilets? Should women envy them?

Brother was helping me get the furniture for my new apartment because Del was working. We would have needed Brother anyway, he was the one that found it and set up arrangements with Greg (the seller) to pick it up. Without Brother, we wouldn’t have the furniture at all so all we needed from Del was his truck and his paycheck from work to pay for it- (and a little help from mom).

Brother is still driving around with his Harley in the back of his truck because it still has two flat tires on it. The thing weighs 700 (or more) pounds and nobody is real interested in busting a nut (or ovary for that matter) trying to get it out of the truck just to load it again to get the tires put on it.

Besides, if something went wrong and it fell over, it would either do some pretty expensive damage or crush someone. That would fuck up everyone’s day.

During the moving back and forth we stopped at an Albertson’s grocery store because he was looking for a certain spice (hell of a cook, I tell ya) and I needed to use the ladies room (hell of a pee’er, I tell ya).

There was a line for the ladies room. The Albertson’s we went to only had one toilet in the entire store for ladies. Why the hell is that? One toilet for the ladies? Aren’t ladies the ones that do the most shopping? Statistically wouldn’t it make sense to have more than one toilet? Women pee far more often than men, right? An extra stall would break the bank for them?

I think my friend Chris Mushrush is getting an email. I bet there is a mathematical formula for that.

You definitely better make sure you pee before you go to that store. Either that or don’t wait until almost the very last minute to try and find the damn thing. You’ll be standing there doing the pee-jig.

Anyway, I was in line and the lady in front of me turned to talk to me about my boots.

“Why are you wearing two? What did you do?” She asked me.

I find that a lot of people around here know what RSD is and so I’ve been saying that instead of telling them I was skydiving and landed wrong or that I was a vacationing Storm Trooper.

“How did you get that?” She asked me.

“Nobody knows for sure. They think it was because I got frostbite so many times and did too much nerve damage.” I said and started to wiggle around a little because I really had to pee.

“You can’t get frostbite in Florida.” She said to me like it just happened to me.

“That’s why I moved here.” I said.

I don’t like to make a lot of conversation when I need to pee.

Suddenly and without warning she grabbed me by both shoulders and started rubbing up and down my arms.

Were we about to kiss? Would there be tongue? Or did she think I was cold and at risk of frostbite again? Was she trying to warm me up? Where the hell was Brother? Why was this total stranger mauling me?

I’ve never been mugged before either. Is this how it starts? Did I need to scream? If I screamed, could I still hold my pee?

So many questions.

“Do you believe God leads you places for a reason?” She asked me while looking deeply into my eyes.

This was starting to feel like the beginning of a dirty novel.

“I believe I was lead here to relieve my bladder.” I said.

“I am a qualified acupuncturist. I can cure you completely.” She said as the bathroom finally became free.

(*Note- acupuncture has been brought up several times in the last 2 ½ years by my doctors. No, it isn’t going to cure me; it’s going to leave me with pin holes. I had to pee pretty bad at that point, I would have sprung leaks.)

Thankfully, just when I needed him, Brother came up behind us and said to the lady “Less talking, more peeing” and pointed her to the open bathroom door.

“My rates are the best you’ll find too. $200 for the first session…” She started to say.

“More peeing please!” Brother said a little clearer (especially when he heard her trying to make money off me) so the lady would let go of me and get into the bathroom.

The second I was free, I booked it for the men’s room. “Don’t come out until I give you the all clear.” Brother said.

I wasn’t coming out before I was done peeing. He was the one waiting for the all clear. He thought I was hiding from a crazy lady; he had no reason to know the volume of my bladder. It was none of his business.

Even if I wasn’t seconds away from filling my boots with urine (they aren’t water tight, I would have left a trail as I walked), I would have gone in the men’s room anyway just to get away from her.

So that was the first time that day Brother saved me.

In case you haven’t heard, I am a gimp. Gimps make terrible movers. Should you ever need to move things like a sectional couch with a queen size bed and recliner in it or solid wood bedroom furniture or even a surprise gift of a TV set the size of a small car (thanks Brother!), you’re not going to want a gimp to do it.

There is not one thing that is in this house that would be here if Brother didn’t help me get it in here. He spent his entire day going back and forth from one end of Kissimmee to the other side of Celebration.

Greg (the seller) helped him load it and Del helped him carry it upstairs. Brother really didn’t get a break.

That was the second time that day Brother saved me.

Now, Brother and I share a phone plan. If for some reason I fall behind, I usually try to keep it paid enough so nobody knows what’s going on with them until I can get them completely caught up. (I’m almost there too) Del has a phone too but it’s just the Em hotline and a Tetris game. Del doesn’t even really need a phone.

Bill wanted on my plan too until we found out he owed more than I pay in rent on his last phone bill. I’d cut my wrists before I ever let my bills for non-necessities get that high.

So that was a ‘fuck no’. We had to beg him for his share of the rent; we didn’t need to share any other bills with him to beg for. I like my phone; I’m a text messaging mental patient.

Now when you get behind on your bill, Sprint sends you a text saying “Jackass, pay us something.”

That might be paraphrasing.

What I didn’t know is if I neglect to do something about it, the next day Del gets a text followed by Brother.

Third time that day Brother saved me.

He does it in a way that doesn’t make me feel like a total loser either. I’m having a hard time not working because I’ve always worked. He’s been really good to me about helping me out when he can.

He knows I’ve been really sick because of my RSD but I am writing more articles for Associated Content. He knows I’m trying to the best of my abilities right now.

He also puts up with me ‘being a girl’ for no reason. The last day I was trying to get things packed up and ready to move out of the other place, he walked in the door and I was standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding my good frying pan and crying my eyes out.

“Is something wrong or are you being a girl?” He asked me.

“Just being a girl. Nothing is wrong. I’m just overwhelmed.” I said.

He hugged me then asked “Are you almost over it or do you need more cry time?”

“No, I’m over it.” I said.

Brother bought me an ice coffee on the way to drop off a load of my stuff because an ice coffee fixes everything.

Yeah, I’m lucky. I have everything I’ll ever need in life. I have my brother. He’s pulled me through a lot the last couple of weeks.

I hope you have someone like that in your life too. If you don’t, I’ll lend you Brother.

LYMI

Well, we moved into our new place

Well, we moved into our new place

I hate moving with a royal passion. I love to unpack though. I think a lot of people are like that because whenever I say that to someone, they seem to agree. It’s fun to find places for your things. In a weird way it makes your old things look like new things.

It takes me forever to pack because I like things in a certain order- kitchen stuff in a kitchen stuff box or bathroom stuff in a bathroom stuff box.

Del on the other hand, thinks that opening a box (or plastic bag) and sweeping everything into it, is packing. If there is still room in the box (or plastic bag) he moves on to a different room.

There are days I tell you that I’d like to stick a ball point pen into his temple.

But I won’t.

Today.

No promises though. It’s really going to depend on how long it takes me to find simple things I need to use, you know what I mean? I wasn’t super happy about my deodorant being in the same box with my good frying pan. I don’t think my cooking requires all day freshness and he just made work for me. (Now I have to wash a clean pan that smells ‘baby powder’ fresh)

He stays away from all the unpacking though and I love him for that. I want to know where things are, he can ask me if he can’t find it. Besides I’m afraid his unpacking would resemble his packing and I don’t want my good frying pan under the bathroom sink.

I didn’t write much in my blog about us moving because it was a lot of serious stress for me. Del and I along with Brother and Bill were living in a resort- Emerald Island.

Living in a resort sounds pretty cool (and much of it was) but it had many downsides that you don’t have when living in an apartment complex.

Now the resort itself was great. We loved the people who worked there, they were awesome. The place was well taken care of and there was always free coffee in the clubhouse. The internet connection sucked ass though and you know how important the internet is.

We couldn’t just get our own internet either because it wasn’t available (no wires or something to do with connecting it). I have you guys; Del had his friends on Xbox Live that he had to live without the entire time we lived there.

Xbox Live is more than a bunch of kids playing video games. It’s a community of friends that play games. I’d be pretty miserable without my online friends too.

The karaoke Friday and Saturday nights was almost enough to make you want to end your life by nose diving off the balcony some nights though. The guy that ran the karaoke loved the sound of his own voice and would crank that music up as loud as it would go.

I shit you not there were nights that we had to use the close captioning on the TV to find out if we were ‘Smarter than a fifth grader’ or not.

I hate to be a complainer so it was a long time before I ever said anything to the bartender. He was thrilled that he finally had a resident complain (it drove him batshit too) and he could finally do something about it.

I didn’t truly ‘complain’ about it. I more like asked him “Are those microphones hardwired or cordless?”

“I’m not sure. Why?” Dave the bartender asked me.

“Because when I finally flip out, I’d like to know that pushing that jackass into the pool while he is holding the microphone is going to have a shocking effect.”

There was some Sunday mornings that Del has to be up at 4:45 AM to go to work. I used to call the club house and ask them to have him either turn the shit down or end it by 10:00 PM (like they were suppose to) instead of 12:30 AM.

He wouldn’t. I couldn’t stand the guy. I wouldn’t have been so pissed off if he would have just stopped trying to sing Areosmith songs. He couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket and he would butcher the songs. You know I love me some Areosmith, stop trying to rape them.

Then there is the thing about the people living around you. They were all on vacation. They didn’t give a shit if they were in your parking spot or standing outside your window in the middle of the night playing basketball. There was no hoop, so we are talking more about a constant dribbling sound going on.

All

Night

Long.

It was weeks before Brother could even look at a basketball without wanting to drive over the damn thing with his truck.

But anywhere you live, you’re going to deal with bullshit. That’s life, move on. What ended the deal living there for us was the black mold growing all over the ceiling of the first floor over the door. I asked my landlord to fix it and he didn’t for months.

I begged him, I pleaded with him and I threatened him. He didn’t want to do shit about it.

According to our lease and Florida state law, he had 7 days to fix it. I’m sorry not fix it, remove it. The department of health here is pretty clear that ANY amount of mold is unacceptable and potentially life threatening.

Sorry, but I already have RSD. I’d really rather not live with another condition thankyouverymuch.

So for months I fought with that asshat about the mold. He tried to spoon feed me a pile of bullshit that when he bought the place he believed it was brand new and couldn’t understand why it would have mold in it. He was working on finding out who was responsible to pay to have it removed and repaired.

See, I don’t know shit about buying property. I do however, have many friends that do. My friend sent me a link to the public records that he had bought TWO of those condos and the year that they were built was ON THE TITLE.

I was pissed so I sent him an email saying I had a real hard time believing that someone could spend nearly ½ a million dollars on properties and not have a clue.

Eventually after a ton of threats, he had someone come to the place to find out the source of the mold. This was almost 5 months into the entire thing.

You can’t even begin to imagine how blind bullshit mad I was to find out that the mold (and the water running down the front door onto the door handle) was from the toilet in my bedroom.

We were handling black mold and sewerage every time we walked in and out of our front door- real nice.

His assistant (because he is very rich and very important and just couldn’t be bothered) had the nerve to have a prayer with me (in Jesus name, even) that things would work out and I wouldn’t have to leave my home.

I hate people who hide behind a religion and try to make you believe (which I did) that they are good people that wouldn’t try and screw you over.

One word- fucktards.

I was just done with it all. I told them I wanted out of my lease so I could move on. I couldn’t handle the stress of it all anymore, I was sick of being at their beck and call for appointments to have people ‘look’ at the problem- IF they ever showed up, they were usually late and they never did anything about it- I was just done.

My health was more important. My sanity of it all was tipping on the edge.

I was sick a lot while we were there too. I blogged about that, I didn’t realize at the time it could have been because we were living in such unsanitary conditions.

In Jesus name.

The only thing they ever did finally do (just a few weeks ago) was cut out the visible mold on the ceiling and seal up the toilet pipe. They never removed it from inside the walls.

We finally agreed to amicably break the lease. (I was ready to take this to court if I had too. I have emails, pictures, everything) I feel really sorry for the next set of tenants he has because he was one of the worst landlords I’ve ever had to deal with.

As I write this, I honestly can’t think of any landlords I’ve ever had that I didn’t get along with and work things out with. I don’t know, maybe all these years I’ve just been really lucky. I’ve had some really great landlords.

And I know Florida is bad for having mold. But landlords around here are really good about taking care of it quickly.

So here we all were, homeless for the holidays. You want to talk about being scared out of your mind?

Brother moved in with Pixie. I’m sure they were headed in that direction anyway.

Bill- oh, poor Alicia. She and I haven’t really talked in a week or so but I think- that she thinks- Bill is just staying with her until he finds his own place. She told me herself that she wasn’t ready to move in with him yet but she is the kind of person who likes to help people out.

I have bad news for her; she has herself a room mate. Once Bill moves in, he stays in. He has never lived on his own before (he lived with their parents until he was 28 for crying out loud) and I don’t think he’s going to start doing it now.

He tried a few other avenues- like (you won’t believe this) calling that skank that cheated on him to get her to move here and split the rent with him on something because she gets a state check and all that stuff so his bills would be really cheap. Then he tried to get another girl from back in Maine to move down here and share a place with him.

I think he has Peter Pan/Michael Jackson syndrome. He doesn’t want to grow up and he is fighting it every inch of the way.

He also didn’t understand that things to run a household cost money. Never mind that we were forever begging him to pay his share of the bills on time (which was ¼ of the bills. He never once did and never paid any of the late fees. He said he didn’t pay attention to those kinds of things.) but to get him to buy a box of garbage bags, laundry soap or dishwashing liquid was like asking him for a kidney. He just wouldn’t do it.

He was pretty shocked that after feeding him for four months when we suddenly stopped. The food fairy dropped dead. He missed the funeral.

I mean he’s family, we love him and wish him well but man, Del and I are so glad we don’t have to help support him anymore. We just couldn’t afford another ‘kid’.

And the tension he was causing between Del and I was almost enough to end our marriage a couple of times. We thought we were helping him out letting him move down here with us, we never expected it was to take advantage of us. But it’s over, done with and behind us so there you go.

So moving ended up being best for everyone. (Well, except maybe for Alicia but I really hope not.)

Del and I found a cute little one bedroom apartment. It has a screened in balcony that I love and we can get a normal internet connection.

The tough part was that when we moved here, we had sold everything we owned and moved into a fully furnished apartment. Remember all the eBay?

When we drove down here “at the speed of tarp” almost all of that shit was Bill’s. Del and I only had a couple of totes and our clothes. Since we have lived here we have accumulated a few things (like a really good pan, you just have to own a really good pan) so we are starting all over from scratch again.

But that’s okay. We are doing better than some people are doing right now, you know. I’m grateful for what we have.

This place is unfurnished so we were on the floor for a couple of days. We found some WICKED nice furniture from a WICKED nice guy that lives over in Celebration. The stuff was barely used and he gave us a great price on it. So we have a great living room set and an amazing bedroom set.

It’s starting to feel like home again. We knew the resort thing was going to be temporary anyway (just not this quick) and it’s nice to have a place Del and I can finally settle into.

So that is the latest update on what has been going on for us.

LYMI!

Bus race!

WE WIN!!

LYMI!

Motorcycles, dirt bikes and scooters 101

Motorcycles, dirt bikes and scooters 101

You’d think that someone who has spent more on time in his life on 2 wheels than 4 would remember one simple thing.

They require gas to go.



Or maybe he did it on purpose so he could ride this too.



Hard to say.

LYMI

Brother tried to take my drivers license away from me twice

Brother tried to take my drivers license away from me twice

This is stuff that happened about 20 years ago and I have no idea what made me think of it today. I’m farting around between writing for Associated Content, playing on Facebook and working on updating and optimizing my blog. My brain is all over the place today.

These are two different incidences where Brother tried to take my drivers license away from me. I think it was a sibling rivalry thing. I had a clean (eh, almost) record, and he didn’t.

Brother has finally spent the required amount of money and time in traffic court to now drive like a normal human being today. There was a time though, that he was just begging for the cops to drag him out of his car and beat him senseless with their night sticks.

He’s done some dumb things while driving when he was younger which was his prerogative. You want to drive like a jackass, pay the fines, have your car impounded and maybe spend some time in the clink- that’s your business. It’s not nice to try and do it to your sister though, right?

Just because he got into so much trouble doesn’t mean I had to. We aren’t conjoined twins (even though most of our family doesn’t grasp that to this day).

Brother jokes that he isn’t a fan of cops because “Every time I’ve been arrested, it was by one of those sons of bitches.”

The first time Brother tried to take my license away from me was when we were at my mother’s house. There were a bunch of us standing in the driveway (mom was inside) watching Brother showing off in his new car.

I really liked that car too. It was a Grand Prix that he and his friends did something to that made it a wicked fun car to drive (and play) in.

Brother had the car out on the street in front of mom’s house. Mom lived on a country road with very little traffic and barely any kids. As a matter of fact, all the kids were standing in the driveway watching what Brother was going to do.

Brother did a burnout for so long that the smoke still lingers over Australia today. There was so much smoke from the tires burning; you couldn’t see the car at all.

A few seconds later, Brother pulled the car into mom’s driveway. When he got out of the car he tossed the keys to me.

When someone tosses you something, your natural instinct is to catch it right?

My advice to you from me is, if Brother tosses you something, you are better off being struck by it and letting it fall to the ground, okay?

Because mere seconds after that happened, me- standing there holding the keys to the car with a foot in the air and my hand on the door because I was going to borrow the car- Officer Robert Stone of the Saco Police Department appeared from the cloud of smoke in his cruiser.

Son of a….

Officer Stone stepped out of his vehicle and said “Hello Robin. I think we need to have a little talk.”

“I didn’t do it.” I said. There was no need to waste a lot of time talking about what was done, it was all around us.

Do you have any idea how much getting INTO a car looks like getting OUT OF a car?

Officer Stone was a very good friend of our mother’s. Not just because of me and Brother, he was a friend of our dad’s. After our dad died though, he got to know me and Brother much better than I think he really wanted too.

Brother and I felt the same way about him to be perfectly honest.

And Officer Stone had heard “I didn’t do it- he/she did it” from both of us one more than one occasion.

This could be somehow connected to the conjoined twin confusion people have about us.

Our mother conveniently looked out the window while Officer Stone was standing there, not believing me. The more I said “I didn’t do it” the more he believed I did do it.

Because I was ‘always picking on my widdle brother’, blah, blah, blah.

Brother’s mother (phhhf) came out to find out what I did.

You’d think the cloud of smoke would have been some kind of a freaking clue.

They talked for a few minutes like I wasn’t standing right there listening to them- (apparently in their little world simply holding a set of car keys renders you completely deaf) - trialed and convicted me of a crime I did not commit.

Brother, who happened to be standing next to his girlfriend at the time, said to the both of them “Well, she is holding the keys.”

Now, let the record show that I was BORROWING the car. I wasn’t going to do anything more than drive it to the store…

For what, you ask?

Diapers for my baby, Chris. Plus, let the record show that I would have had to pull the seat back so that my ‘enormously pregnant with Nikki’ stomach would fit behind the wheel.

But yeah, I was out there doing burnouts. It was me. My husband at the time was going to love hearing that while he was overseas serving in the Marines.

I looked over at Brother’s girlfriend (who oddly enough was also named Robin) for help.

“Say anything.” I said to her. Brother’s mother (phhhf) and Officer ‘thinks I was trying to kill my unborn baby’ Stone both looked at her.

“Uh, well…” She said then looked at her feet.

That’s all I needed. She didn’t admit who did it but she didn’t say I did it so they could assume Brother really did it and she didn’t want to rat him out because he was her boyfriend so because there where there were no witnesses the case was dropped.

Do you see the bullshit behind that cloud of smoke?

The second time Brother tried to take my drivers license away from me was when we were on the Maine State turnpike headed for our third funeral in Massachusetts in a month. Three Mondays in a row, we had to go to Massachusetts for a funeral.

Mondays still kind of freak us out a little.

The third funeral we were running pretty late for because I had three different kids that I had to drop off at three different babysitters. One of my babysitters was going to need to use my car to collect all the kids later, so Brother and I rode in his different girlfriend’s car to Mass.

We were going to be late and harshly judged by the rest of the family (who all lived down there) because by this funeral we should have had a routine down, so Brother was doing about 100 MPH (not kidding) to make up for lost time.

And people wonder why I HAVE to drive anywhere I go? Really? Any questions now?

We were in the southbound lane when the northbound State trooper spotted us.

I glanced quick behind us to see if he had cut across the grass to try to catch us.

He did which really when you think about it was super stupid because no matter how fast Brother was driving, you can never out run a radio.

I quickly faced forward so as to look inconspicuous. I wasn’t driving, I wasn’t going to jail for criminal speeding, I didn’t have a care in the world.

Uh, besides missing the funeral. (opps, I’m an ass) I had already been to two that month; I knew what was going to happen anyway.

I looked over to Brother to say something- I’ll never, ever remember what it was because of my shock of what I DIDN’T see.

There was nobody in the drivers’ seat. Brother had jumped into the back seat and was hanging onto the steering wheel from there yelling at me to “Scoot the fuck over!”

Do you think I had any choice? Ifso, infacto- what was it? The car was still going extremely fast, even though it was losing speed because nobody was pushing the gas peddle any more but (think hard about this because it’s the most important part) there was nobody to push the damn brake peddle either.

I scooted the fuck over.

I honestly can’t tell you how the hell I got out of going to jail. I have no idea what I said to the cop when I pulled over. I think it was some crap about it not being my car and that the gas peddle got stuck or some dumb shit. I know for a fact that whatever it was, would never work again in anyone’s lifetime.

I’ve waited a lot of years to get that off my chest.

Thanks for reading it.

LYMI!