More Reader Questions

Wrapping up on the reader questions:

Taoist Biker asked about the photos I had up on Flickr of the drag races. I never was into drag racing before Calvin and I were together, and now we go at least every year. We live very near to Firebird Raceway, which hosts the Checker-Schuck’s Kragen Nationals, the Bug Run, the Boat Drags, and various Jets vs. Funny Cars events. It makes for a fun day, wandering around with $10 beers in hand, checking out the team booths, eating food that is very bad for us, and finding a place in the stands to feel the thump of the drags in our solar plexus as they go by.

The crowds were very annoying this year, though, and they had way too much reserved seating and not enough general admission seating. In the end the folks were ignoring the chickie that was hollering, “General Admission! ONE OVER!” and trying to get people to sit in the correct seating. When there weren’t enough reserved tickets sold and the stands were standing 3/4 empty, while folks were packed in like sardines in the GA seating, they should have opened all the stands up. But that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Jen asked for me to talk about, “Growing up. Being a grown up. When are you a “grown up?” How is the you of today different from the you of yesteryear?”  Well, for one thing, I like myself more as an adult than I did as a teenager.  It didn’t occur to me, any earlier than thirteen or so, to have an opinion about myself one way or another.  I don’t feel much different inside my head now than I felt when I was sixteen or seventeen.  But I’m far less petulant now.  I’m more patient.  I understand things better now.  I know how to do things now.  I have MUCH more confidence in myself.  I’m not nearly as insecure as I used to be.  I have complete control over my temper, which used to be the bane of my existence.  My world has expanded from the narrow view it used to have.

I had an excellent childhood.  I was given all the values I needed to grow into a responsible adult.  I was taught the value of hard work.  Very little was ever “given” to me.  All my needs were met, but my “wants” had to be prioritized.  We were not rich by any means.  And so I babysat and did filing and worked at the stable where I boarded my horse.  I earned the things that I wanted, and therefore appreciated them more.

I guess because of the responsibilities I had early on, coupled with being brought up by my grandmother and that subsequent generation gap, predisposed me to being older in behavior and mind than my fellow teens.  Then I got married at seventeen, and moved three thousand miles away from home at nineteen, both of which served to further push me toward being a “grown-up”.  I would say that my growth into adulthood was firmly cemented when I decided to get out of my abusive relationship with my ex.  I was twenty-two.  I ran out of my house in my t-shirt and undies one night and never looked back as I drove away.  The following year of filing papers and getting a restraining order and getting stalked and living alone for the first time and learning how to shoot and engaging a lawyer and then finally having the divorce finalized “in absentia” when my ex (thankfully) disappeared, well, that would be enough to mature even the most immature of young adults.

I would never “go back” to being a teenager.  I might not even “go back” to my early to mid-twenties.  I like myself as a person now better than I ever have before.

I really enjoyed this reader question meme.  I welcome anyone at any time who has a topic that they would like me to write about!

Rockin’ out.

Right this very second I am sitting on the couch with Michael and Calvin, Michael’s girlfriend is on the loveseat, and we’re making OH so much fun of the “Separate Ways” video. Which we have on DVD. Because we’re not just fair weather Journey fans. Oh no, we’ve stuck with them through the air keyboards and the mullets and the skin-tight jeans with uncomfortable looking bulges. And now they’re on their, what, eightieth lead singer? This guy from the Philippines? Haven’t heard him yet. I’m kind of reluctant.

We (the four of us, on two motorcycles) rode up to Scottsdale again today and hit the tequila and taco bar we were at last weekend. Too lazy to link to the entry, sorry, just scrolly scrolly. It apparently cost the bar $1400 to get the bottle of tequila that they charge $200 a shot. We still didn’t get one. We got their tacos, though, which were THE SHIT. Then we rode back down to the Darkhorse for a couple of beers and $10 worth of jukebox hero. And now we’re back home watching a Journey DVD because it’s Saturday night and we can.

Last night I sang karaoke. Yes, ME. Not once, but TWICE. Calvin ran out to the parking lot both times. Otherwise they’d be cleaning his brains off of the bar stools still today. I totally rocked Frankie Valli and Pat Benetar. Well, perhaps not so much rocked as made it through without embarrassing myself too much. There were shots involved. It’s quite possible I sucked worse than I remember. Calvin doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.

And that’s the news.

Sad.

My manager pulled our group into a meeting at 8:30 this morning to let us know that a co-worker had passed away yesterday.

I didn’t know her very well; we only had the occasion to talk personally a few times, otherwise we just exchanged courtesies during common group lunches and team meetings.   She’d been on medical leave for a year, and then on temporary leaves for parts of a year before that as well.  She’d been battling cancer and a myriad of health problems that come with protracted chemotherapy.  We hadn’t heard anything from her or her family about her status for a long time, and then our manager got the call from her family yesterday that she had died.

My manager had tears in his eyes as he told us, and our admin has been weepy off and on all morning.  Everyone’s really subdued and sad.

The thing about working for a company as large as AcronymCo, is that it seems there is a new “In Memorium” article on the corporate page a couple of times a week.  Just a month ago it was a guy that I’d worked with and even sat next to for years, whom I haven’t had much contact with since I switched organizations.  He was paraplegic (for years, that wasn’t the contributing factor), he was bitten by a brown recluse spider, which reduced his immune system so that he caught pneumonia, and he died.  The day before yesterday there was a “Memorium” notice of a young lady in her early 20’s that died “unexpectedly”.  And now my co-worker’s “Memorium” will show up in the next day or two.

Mortality sucks.

Tagged, like, a long time ago.

A while back, LauraH tagged me for a simple little meme.

Seven Random Things About Myself

1. Sometimes, in order to get the mood going in the right direction before work the next morning, I will leave the CD player set to a good song in the truck the evening before, when I pull in the driveway after work. That way when I get in the truck in the morning the first thing I hear is a favorite song. I did this a few days ago. I do believe I said out loud to no one in particular, “I’m so smart!”

2. It takes an act of God to get me to fold laundry and put it away in the same week in which it was washed. I actually sometimes get ANGRY, like, throw-shit-around angry as I’m folding the laundry because I totally hate it that much. There is no childhood trauma that I can point to and say, “That’s what fucked laundry for me for the rest of my life.”

3. When I was little (around five to around twelve or thirteen) I was enrolled in tap, jazz and ballet lessons, with a smattering of breakdancing thrown in there (it was the 80’s, hush you). I could do the backspin and the worm. I really doubt I could do them now. I still remember smatterings of recitals that I performed in. And one of the final jazz recitals I performed in was to Sheena Easton’s “Strut”. I don’t think the teacher listened to the words too terribly closely, otherwise she wouldn’t have had a bunch of pre-adolescents dancing around to, “Come on over here, lay your clothes on the chair. Now let the lace fall across your shoulder. (Oh no oh no.) Standin’ in the half light, you’re almost like her. Take it slow like your daddy told ya.”

4. Remember the truck that Marty lusted over in “Back to the Future”, and eventually got in the end? I TOTALLY wanted one of those, when I was slavering to get my license and a vehicle. I’ve always been a truck girl at heart. Though I wouldn’t say no to a Corvette. My sister got a Vette for her sixteenth birthday, and ten years later when I turned sixteen I got a computer. How’s that for being born under a bad sign?

5. When I turned thirteen years old my sister held a slumber party for me at her house for my birthday. We (the partiers, not my sister) watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I was quoting the part at the dinner table, where Charlie Sheen’s character is explaining to Jeanie, “You wear too much eye makeup. My sister wears too much. People think she’s a whore.” My sister overheard me and thought I was actually talking about her. She was really, really pissed. Also, one of the girls at the slumber party hid tater tots in the potted plant next to the table and I didn’t say anything to my sister and I didn’t take them out and the plant was dead three weeks later and my sister was really, really pissed.

6. I alternate between having a craving for a Dairy Queen strawberry sundae, and having a craving for McDonald’s french fries. It’s always one or the other, never at the same time, and the craving sticks until I’ve satisfied it. I’m currently working on a DQ craving that has lasted for the past six weeks. And counting. I am woman.

7. If I haven’t seen the ocean for a while I start to long for it. It doesn’t matter which coast, it doesn’t matter if it’s a bay or a long uninterrupted stretch to the horizon. I think it’s something about the smell of the salt water and sand, and the sound of the shoosh of the waves. The sound of a flock of geese flying overhead makes me homesick, too. Whenever I hear geese in the sky I go outside (if I wasn’t already), spot them, and watch them fly by until they’re barely discernible specs. Also, I miss chickadees.

Wuh le fuh?

I posted the UK video of The Killers’ “All These Things That I’ve Done” in yesterday’s entry. This is the US version of the video. First, anybody know why there would be two different videos for the two countries? Second, what the HELL is up with the US version? I found the UK version to be kind of uplifting and hopeful. I found the US version to be a (bad) Dali painting come to life.

There had to be some marketing genius out there who convinced The Powers That Be that the song wouldn’t be popular in America unless its video was shot in a trailer park and used cowboys, sluttishly clad women, a midget, and a donkey. And if that be the case, what that says for the American culture just makes me sad.

Oh, the things that get me going when I have insomnia.

In General

Did anybody notice Calvin’s sneakiness, posting as Nivlak? “Calvin”, spelled backwards, with a K. I totally didn’t see it. He had to point it out to me. Sneaky. What, did he think I was going to answer his question with, “Gee, if I could go back and do it all over again I would SO avoid ever meeting Calvin!” Dork.

So, gang? Do we get an HD DVD player or a Blue Ray DVD player? The DVD player in the bedroom shit the bed, the one in the living room doesn’t play anything other than standard format DVD’s, and it’s time for some new electronics around here. I’ve heard that the HD DVD format is becoming obsolete and all the studios are going to Blue Ray… is that true? I’m so not savvy with this stuff.

I am currently working my way through Season Three of Battlestar Galactica, delivered to my door last week. I have so very little time before Season Four starts and anticipate my DVR filling up with unwatched episodes as I can’t begin Season Four until Season Three has been watched! But the lovely part about that is that I won’t have to wait several months (or, what was it, a year?) for the continuance of the story.

I may have to commit catricide. Oz is racing around the house, getting into things, LITERALLY climbing the walls, and terrorizing Zoe. He gets snarky after he’s been fed. The fucker.

Calvin, Marie and I went to Calvin’s sister K’s house for Easter lunch. I brought a salad and Strawberry Cloud, she made roast and mashed potatoes and green beans and yams, and her husband made a champagne drink with sherbet. We rolled out of there several hours later very satisfied customers indeed.

As an update on previous discussions, the cleanse is going very well indeed. I feel so. much. better. And the Avon products are working very well for me, IMHO. Not that they’ve turned me into a supermodel or anything. But my face looks younger and fresher, I think. Thanks to everyone for their recommendations.

Some opinions on recently watched movies (possible spoilers):
- “We Own the Night”: Decent, though I continue to think that Joaquin Phoenix is creepy.
- “I Am Legend”: It’s a forgone conclusion what’s going to happen to it, when a dog is one of the primary characters. And the ending was less than satisfying. Sequel, perhaps?
- “Dan in Real Life”: HIS DAUGHTERS PISSED ME RIGHT OFF.
- “The Martian Child”: Very cute movie. Love it when John and Joan Cusack are in a movie together. However, again with the dog thing.

Finally, I leave you with this:

Wandering around on Friday night

Calvin and I got home from work yesterday afternoon and promptly took a long and satisfying nap. I LOVE taking naps with him – snuggling up in the dim and cool bedroom, covered up and comfy with Calvin at my front and the cats in the hollows of my body at my back. Plus, naps (any kind of sleep, really) are entertaining to me because I ALWAYS dream. Always. Sometimes they’re really screwed up, sometimes they’re just entertaining.

Anyway. When we got up we started the whole, “What do you want to do?” “I don’t know, what do you want to do?” round of negotiations. We decided to ride the motorcycle up to the mall and hit BJ’s Brewery for dinner. We got seated outside on the patio with some KILLER potato skins, a couple of shots of Gray Goose, and a cider for me and beer for him. We gabbed. AND we gabbed. We watched the world go by, and gabbed some more. We got our entrees (salad for me, pot roast sandwich for him), and ate. And gabbed.

We finished dinner, rode back home to get the truck, went to the store for a few necessities, then decided that the night was too nice to just sit around in the living room and watch movies. So I grabbed our CD collection (the WHOLE thing, which takes two trips) and we got in the truck and drove around with the windows rolled down and the music rolled UP.

Driving Around Soundtrack
- Van Halen
- Uncle Ted
- Duran Duran
- Bannanarama
- Godzilla Soundtrack
- Scorpions
- Lita Ford
- Judas Priest
- Metallica

Now. Most of these things belong together. Which of these things does not belong?

We ended up in Scottsdale, and Calvin recalled a taco and tequila bar that he heard about on the news. We found a fortuitous parking spot (never easy in Old Town Scottsdale on a Friday night) and went to Cien Agaves. It’s a very funky place with a massive selection of tequila. We sat at the bar and ordered a mid-range sipping tequila for each of us. I took pictures and we gabbed with a nice couple sitting next to us, here on vacation. We took turns daring each other to buy a shot of their highest quality tequila, a bargain at two hundred dollars per SHOT. Not per bottle. Per shot.

Yeah, nobody bought one. Though we told the couple we would pay five dollars a piece to just smell their breath afterwards.

Some pics of a really fun night. Hover to see comments.

The whole set is here.

Reader Question #2

Obviously I am not answering these in the order in which they were received. Nivlak requested the following entry topic:

If you had a time machine what three things would you go back and change and what three things would you make happen for the future.

So. If I had the ability to go back in time:

1. I would not have married my ex.
2. I would have finished college right out of high school.
3. I would have lived at home with Grandma until her passing.

The first one’s pretty easy – the only good thing that came out of my relationship with my ex was moving to Arizona so I could meet Calvin. That, and learning to balance the checkbook. So to say I would not have married my ex, is to assume that I would have wound up in Arizona some other way to meet Calvin. Calvin and I = meant to be. My ex and I = heap big whopping mistake from hell. So if some deity came to me and said that there was no other way to meet Calvin but to be married to this other bozo for six years, well, I still would have done it. Otherwise? NOT.

The second one stems from my frustration with how many years it’s taking to finalize my degree. Part of it is my own lazy fault, part of it is AcronymCo’s fault for changing the tuition reimbursement rules. There are times when I wish that I had had the traditional “college experience” with dorm living and all night studying and roommates and toga parties (“Boon, I anticipate a deeply religious experience.”) Then I reflect upon my lack of outstanding student loans, and it cheers me.

The third one is a struggle. There is still a lot of guilt inside me about how Grandma passed. Oh, not that it was shady or suspicious or anything like that. No, I just know, based on multiple conversations with my Grandmother over the years, that she wanted to die at home, dignified in her own bed. Instead she had a series of strokes, developed dementia, got shuffled around to various nursing homes, and ended up in an “end-care” home hopped up on ever-increasing dosages of Morphine, until she finally passed. If I had been there when she had her original strokes, she wouldn’t have lied in bed for a couple of days (we think) before a neighbor checked on her, saw her through the window, and called me (three thousand miles away) to ask permission to break into the house when Grandma wouldn’t stir or answer the door. THAT is a suck feeling, that knowledge that I was so far away and couldn’t do anything. If I had been there, I could have gotten her help much more quickly. The strokes wouldn’t have caused so much damage. I could have cared for her in her own home, and maybe she would have been more there, more herself, up to her final days. A lot of “what if’s” and “if only’s”, but there it is.

Now, if I had the ability I would guarantee the following for the future:

1. Find out which oh-my-God winning stock to invest in so that by the time Calvin and I are ready to retire, we’re millionaires.
2. Because of the aforementioned money, moving back to Maine at some point would be guaranteed.
3. Also because of the aforementioned money, we can ensure that Michael and Marie would be able to have nice homes and college educations, we would be able to secure our extended family member’s futures (pay off bills for them, etc.), and we would be able to spoil our friends rotten.

There is, of course, the whole “world peace” and “solve world hunger” issues that I would like to help out on. So any of those three goals might be circumvented if I could figure out how to secure these things for the future. Bigger minds than mine have tried and failed, so I stuck with the shallow, personal wishes for the future.

These things also apply if I find out that Calvin and I are, you know, alive in the future. If I find out otherwise and it’s because we drank too much or partied too hard or ate too much bacon or sucked in too much second hand smoke or was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got ourselves kilt, well, I would do things in the present to change that future.

Great question!  I still welcome any other suggestions for entry topics, and will answer the others that have already been posted probably by the end of the weekend.

Reader Question #1

Jean asked in the comments of this entry to write about adult children living at home (heh, you asked for it!).

Michael is twenty-five (in a couple of weeks). He joined the military at eighteen. Five years later he moved back in with us, then about a year and a half later he moved into the apartment his sister was vacating, because she couldn’t manage it anymore. If she hadn’t had to vacate it Michael would probably still be living at home (he can’t qualify for an apartment so he just took over Marie’s lease payments).

Marie is nineteen (twenty in September). She moved out for a couple of months late last summer, first living with friends, then her own apartment (which we co-signed on so she could qualify). She moved back in with us after she and her ex-boyfriend broke up. At this point I don’t believe Marie has any plans to move out – in fact, her current boyfriend (not the same as the one she lived with) is now living with us too (extenuating circumstances on his end), and they will both be contributing to the utilities starting next month.

Not much in either of their circumstances have changed since last August when the whole apartment thing came up – I’m kind of curious to see what will happen with Michael when the lease is up this August, because we are SO not co-signing again to renew it.

Currently Michael comes and goes a few times a week (mostly unannounced) – raids the fridge, hangs out during the day to watch TV when everyone else is at work (he works nights on varying days of the week), picks up his mail, and has dinner with us occasionally. We’re not on him as much about his finances, job, school, etc. as we used to be because he’s not living at home at the moment. So we just assume that he’s handling his shit and will believe so until proved otherwise. Again, this August should prove to be interesting. I need to remember to drop a bug in his ear to start making plans soon for where he’s going to live or what he’s going to do – August might seem like a long way away to you, but I know our son. He needs the planning time.

Marie works full time and is not, as yet, going to school. The rule was if she was going to live at home past eighteen she’d have to pay rent if she wasn’t going to school. Rent is starting up next month, since up until this point it looked like she was going to go to school at least part time. She started and stopped a couple of times, but in the end things fell through as she realized that she has no idea which kind of degree she’d like to pursue. Anyway, Marie’s home most nights and weekends – she has an 8-5 M-F schedule. Her boyfriend has a funky schedule and works only three or four long days a week. He keeps a pretty low profile and doesn’t seem to like being at our house when nobody else is home. So he heads over to his mom’s or goes skateboarding with friends or something like that. We hardly know he’s there, really.

So, there’s the current situation. There are pro’s and con’s to having adult children living at home/nearby. They are as follows:

Pro’s

• We like Michael and Marie. They’re good people and fun to hang out with.
• We don’t have to worry about what’s going on with them, if they’re okay, etc.
• Calvin and I have always been family-oriented, and it’s good to have family around.
• It’s hard to be lonely when there’s always somebody around.
• (Theoretically, hopefully soon to become a reality) There’s someone else to help with the chores and to help with the bills in the form of rent.
• Free house-sitting when we go on trips!
• We love them. This is their home too. They’re welcome.

Con’s

• If I cook for two, four show up to eat and there’s not enough. If I cook for four, two show up to eat and food gets wasted.
• The potential of unannounced arrivals curtails parental nudity and/or couch sex.
• Drain on food and utilities if they’re not helping out in that area.
• No privacy or alone time.
• Their drama is our drama.
• With the children comes their friends, and sometimes the house is quite full.
• We have to sleep with the bedroom doors shut (we’d prefer to leave them open to allow air to circulate – it gets very stuffy in our room especially with the heat lamps on the lizard’s tanks staying on all night). We get woken up a lot in the middle of the night in our echoey, echoey house. Which leads to…
• There’s coming and going all hours of the night and day, and I’m paranoid that the doors will get left unlocked or even open, that the cats will get out, that unsavories will get in, that electricity is getting wasted, that the heat/AC is left blasting all day long (these are not unfounded fears, all of these things (except that no strangers have come in that I know of) have happened at least once, sometimes more).
• The knowledge that at any given moment they could lose their jobs (and it’s happened to both of them recently) which would necessitate that we take over their bills because we co-signed on the apartment and Marie’s truck is in my name.  SO not co-signing or in any way tying ourselves to their financial stability AGAIN.
• Having to hear, “I know,” when we’re trying to explain to them things that they, obviously, don’t.

Which brings me to my next list of general concerns and issues.

• WHEN did children get that entitled attitude? They (and I’m talking about their age bracket in general) seem to want everything given to them, and want mommy and daddy to subsidize them on their terms. Quit the parenting when it’s inconvenient (say, lectures on all-night partying, going to school, etc.), but expect to parent when they want it (oh, say, birthdays, feeding time, gas money).
• Michael and Marie (not sure about everyone else’s experience with their own kids in this area) don’t want to start at the bottom and work their way up. They want to move from our house into someplace equally posh on their own. They want to make the same kind of salary, drive the same kind of vehicle, and have the same kind of life that their parents do, without going through the fifteen years of work to get there.
• At what point should children be deemed self-sufficient? I’ve got nothing, here. I was at seventeen. Calvin was at seventeen. We never went back home, never looked for someone else to bail us out of some financial situation, and handled our own stuff from day one of moving out. The first and only time we moved out. So, because the fact that they still need us and/or they still live with us doesn’t suck THAT bad, at what point do we go tough love on them, for their own good?
• Neither one of them have any ambition at all. I have no idea what to do about this. They seem perfectly happy to keep doing what they’re doing (no education, dead-end jobs, not truly living on their own) and don’t seem to feel the need to move forward and better themselves.

The tone of this entry makes things seem harsher on Marie and Michael than I intend. We love them, and they really ARE welcome in our home because it doesn’t just belong to me and Calvin, it’s also the house they spent the majority of their childhood in. So how can we be itching for them to be on their own, while at the same time not mind having them around? I don’t know.

Yes, I do. We want to know that they’re able to support themselves. We want to know that they’re capable of being out on their own and being true grown-ups. We want to know that if we kick it suddenly, they’ll be able to make it on their own. We want to know that they’re capable of being mature and responsible. 

(We want to have the house to ourselves to do whatever we want whenever we want to, without the risk of shocking sensitive eyeballs.)

We want to know that our children are safely and successfully and entirely on their own, so that WE don’t have to plan for the crap that their lives throw at us.  There’s nothing like your life being impacted because of something somebody else did.

I already know what a lot of folks are going to say – when you become a parent you sign up for a lifetime of parenting. It never ends and you’ll always have to be there for them. YES, I agree with that. I know that. And I even WANT that. But stepping in and helping out when it’s an emergency due to unforseen circumstances is much different than having to be a constant safety net because of their irresponsibility – or worse (and this is KEY) - their assumption that they don’t have to try as hard because we’re ready to catch them. We want them to be able to count on us when they need us, yes, but we also want to be able to count on them.  Most of all, we want them to have a sense of pride in themselves that they can live life completely on their own.

Aran sweaters and pubs

It has been a long-held dream of mine to go to Ireland.  This dream has been moved to the forefront of my mind after watching a marathon of Ireland-oriented programs on the Travel Channel yesterday.  In honor of “Driving Pagans Out of Ireland Day”, as Jen so eloquently puts it.

So I got on line and started looking around, and figured that IF the US dollar and Euro are more or less equal (which they SO are not right now), we (Calvin and I) could have a pretty grand vacation for $6k. That’s flying to Dublin, renting a car, staying for three nights in Dublin, driving down to Cork and spending three nights there, driving up to Galway and spending three nights there, then driving back over to Dublin for a final night before flying back home. Plus food and spending money. Ten nights/eleven days of Irish bliss, rolling misty hills, lilting accents, Aran sweaters (I WILL OWN ONE, SOME DAY), and pubs. It sounds like heaven to me.

I chose those three cities because of their locations (one on the East side of the island, one on the South side, and one on the West side), so we could use them as a “base” and drive around visiting the surrounding areas. Of course, if any of you dear readers have ever been to Ireland and have recommendations for things not to be missed, I’m all ears. This vacation isn’t going to happen this year or probably even next, but hopefully within the next four or five years we’ll see ourselves on our way.

I’m already itching to buy travel guides.