August ROFL awards

It is ROFL time again and I have a post for you: The I'mperfect Mom on Becoming Part of Mom.

I loved this post because it is both funny and poignant.

Pretty soon, I was scraping off dried pink Dove soap and blue Head & Shoulders shampoo bits off the tub with my fingernails. Five minutes later, instead of soaking in a lavendar and chamomile infused soup of relaxation, I was in full Toilet Cleaning mode, replete with gloves, Scotch Brite sponge and Kaboom! Shower, Tub and Tile Cleaner, rubbing and scrubbing.

In addition to being genetically incapable of relaxing in the bathtub, The I'mPerfect Mom captures that realization that we all have sooner or later (hopefully sooner): OMG MY MOM WAS HUMAN! With faults and tiredness and confusion just like me!

A full list of winners can be seen over at either Chicky, Chicky Baby or MetroMama.

Congrats to all the winners. And I'mPerfect Mom, I will send you your button just as soon as I figger it out.

Ink stained fun

I was just sitting around feeling miserable about the achy state of my heart and my recent overwhelming home ant infestation when my neighbor Jay called out from his back porch:

"Sue, hey Sue."

I came out to see what he wanted and he pointed out a glowing red sky in the distance.

"You wanna go check it out?" I asked. Even though he was wearing his jammies, he said yes. Jay is a good sport that way.

We hopped in the Bluemobile and went looking for news. We had to drive around for a bit because the power was out downtown and it was dripping with blackness and we took a few twists and turns because everything looked so unfamiliar in the dark dark dark.

But eventually we found a hillside on fire, a downed power line, some firefighters and sheriffs, and a handful of onlookers. I dug my press pass out of the glove box and dragged Jay out of the car.

"Um, I'm in my PJs here," he said. I think he might have been a little high, too.

He was too late to stop me. I was already in girl reporter mode and started talking to people and found the guy who had discovered the fire. I scrawled some quotes on a folder I had found in my car because a notebook was nowhere to be found.

After a couple minutes, I decided that it wasn't that big of a deal and that Jay probably wanted to go home, so I brought him back and called the night editor with my quotes. Somebody else will get all the details from the fire department and write the story tomorrow.

I don't care that I'm not writing the story or that I won't get more than an "also contributed" at the bottom.

It just put me in such a better frame of mind. Me going out on a news story is like how a border collie must feel while herding sheep: doing what I am meant to do. All neurons firing. Happy.

How long, o Lord, how long?

I have been mostly avoiding writing about my grief over my sister's death.

It is just generally too tedious for public consumption, isn't it? I mean, the world wants you to Move On and Be Better, but that doesn't always happen on a neat little timeline.

Today my mom was saying that she hoped my brother-in-law would find a nice lady to spend his life with.

On the surface, I could agree. He certainly deserves all the love and fine companionship in the world.

But the other part of me was screaming inside "GOD YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND, DO YOU? IF YOU THINK MY SISTER CAN BE GOTTEN OVER IN 3 MONTHS, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHO SHE WAS."

And I'm thinking this about my own mom, my sister's mom. I know she is trying to be nice, to think of my brother-in-law.

But the hole in my universe is so much bigger than that. It isn't something that can be ignored or stepped over. It is shocking to me that my mom doesn't see it, doesn't feel it the same way I do.

Of course she is in her 80s and feels ready to die herself (she has told me so), so her perspective is different.

And I think my sister was probably ready to die, but that doesn't mean I was ready for her to.

(Weird about this post: it labeled ITSELF "God." I swear I had nothing to do with that. I went back and erased it because it was freaking me out.)

Extra day

What is it about having ONE MORE DAY in a weekend that makes it so magically delicious?

I got so much stuff done this weekend and it all seemed fun and effortless. The fridge is clean, the floors are clean, all the laundry is done AND I got to go to the beach and the pool and the gym and the movies.

I could totally do this every week.

Snackish is back

I have been meaning to revive my food blog, Snackish, for some time.

I got a couple review copies of cookbooks in the mail and that was the little shove I needed.

More on why I live alone

The Halifax newspaper, The Coast, has a piece on roommate drama. (Of course I read the Halifax Coast. Doesn't everyone? No, for reals, I found the link at the wonderful Passive Aggressive Notes.com)

And while I am presently enjoying my status as Head of Household where "Household" = me + one large dog, that wasn't always the case.

From 1983 to 2001, I shared a variety of apartments and houses with a variety of people. To be more precise, 2 apartments and 4 houses with 29 other human beings, only 2 of whom I was having an intimate relationship with. (Or not-so-intimate, depending on how much we could stand each other at the time.)

In all that time, I only had 3 roommates that really sucked. One couldn't help it - she was manic-depressive and didn't have her meds worked out yet. It stunk to live with her, but I am sure it was worse to BE her.

Another was a pathological liar. Let's call her PL for short.

I should have known something was up when she told me she was studying to be a dancer, and she was 33 at the time. 33 in dancer years is like 150 in human years - if you aren't already a dancer (instead of in the "studying to be" phase, you ain't never gonna be anything more than a second-string instructor at Arthur Murray).

But it was summer in a college town, and we were desperate for a renter. So we (me and Miss Bamboo Lemur Boys) took her.

I have blocked out most of those memories, but I have this to say about PL - she had mad lying skillz. I am a pretty good liar, but PL had me beat all to hell. She was an International Grand Master of Lying, because she could think of your response, her response to your question, your response to THAT and her comeback, all before you could start to think "Huh, wait, this story doesn't add up somehow."

She was like the Bobby Fisher of lies or something. I wish I could be more specific, but it all happened so head-spinningly fast that I could never quite get a grip on "Wha' happened?"

My worst roomie by far was the first stranger I ever took on. During and after college, there were people I knew and lived with, but eventually they all moved on and out, and I was left searching for someone to rent the room upstairs.

She was seemingly glamorous. A child of diplomats, she was from another country and had lived all over the world. She had an exotic, practically unpronounceable name, which she had actually changed her name TO (from another exotic, practically unpronounceable name that was practically the same, but she insisted all the people that knew her learn her new name, a process that took much tedious explanation and correction ("No, not 'Bashjeeya', it is now 'Barshguiya'" "Barshjeeya?" "No, Barshguiya," and so on. That is not the real name but close enough.)

Because of her status, she had grown up with servants, who apparently did everything, because she did not do housework. Ever. At all.

I called her room "Lockerbie" because it had exactly the same level of organization and cleanliness you see after a mid-air explosion: none. This is not an exaggeration.

I don't really care how my roomies keep their quarters. What did bug me about Princess (which is what her parents called her) was that she ate my food. All my food. All the time.

I had mentioned that my old housemates and I had had congenial grocery-sharing agreements - we picked things up for each other, offered each other food when we had purchased too much, and it all worked out pretty even.

She took this to mean that "All your food is belong to us" and proceeded to 1. Never buy groceries and 2. Eat all my food, even after I told her not to.

At first I thought it would be limited to my leftovers or prepared foods (frozen pizzas, for instance) but no. If there was one lonely can of corn left in the cabinet, she would open that and have 15 oz. of corn niblets for dinner. I would know because she would leave the can and fork sitting out on the coffee table for days until I cleaned it up.

I'll never forget the first time I invited this guy over for dinner. We were talking and he was following me around and I went in my room, opened my dresser drawer, and began taking out the ingredients I needed.

Yes indeed. I had had to turn my bedroom into a pantry because she would not venture in there. You forget how nutty you have to act when you live with a lunatic, because it becomes everyday routine, but the look on his face was priceless.

In addition to not cleaning up after herself and not buying food, she eventually quit working and quit paying rent. She would get "bad cramps" and lay around menstruating in a white robe that became all smeared with blood because she had something against pads or tampons. Yeah, nice.

I kicked her out, not according to the laws of the State of California, which mandate a lengthy process that may take over 90 days. I kicked her out according to the Laws of Suebob, which meant that when she was 5 days past due on the rent, I put her stuff out on the lawn and bolted the doors.

Illegal? Yes. Effective? I have never seen Barshguiya again, which is all I really wanted.

Ok, tell me your roommate horrors. I am dying to know. Do it on your own blog if you want. I will love reading them.