A decade and 60 pounds later

 It's been 20 years since I posted anything. Wow! Time really flies when you get lost in the world of work and life. To be quite honest, not much has changed in the last decade except for my waist size. My biscuit can officially popped open in 2012 after my first back surgery. I have the dough bulging out everywhere now, but I digress. (Yes, that was a nod to Golden Girls).

2021 ended in the worst way for most of us. The loss of Betty White is still coursing through our veins and the pain is real. I never realized how much that lady was a part of my life! I vowed to make 2022 better, it couldn't get much worse right? Let's just run through a few of the shitty things that happened in 2021 before moving on. 

1. I had to have a caudal epidural for the back again. 

2. I started a part time job at Starbucks because I though I was still 30. I wasn't. 

3. A spider tried to eat my eye. 

4. Robby had a heart attack.

5. In spite of being vaccinated, I caught a breakthrough case of COVID-19. 

That's just the top 5 moments. Brilliant, right? 

Looking forward I couldn't wait for the New Year. I was primed and convinced that it would be smooth sailing for awhile. Little did I know, Robby would have an incident around 1am on January 2nd. I thought, and so did he, it was another heart attack. I called 911 after fighting with him and telling him he couldn't die in our bed because I couldn't afford a new one. 

The ambulance arrived and checked him out. They decided to transport him to the hospital. One catch, we had to go to Columbia which was about an hour away. There wasn't a Cardiologist on-call in Mexico. Note to the people in my town: Plan your chest pains. Did I mention that the weather dropped almost 2 inches of ice on us that day? 

I went to start my car and of course the doors were frozen shut. I cut my thumb on the handle trying to muscle my way into it. Once I realized I was injured I decided to pour water on the car doors to be able to get inside. It worked! I started the car and had to let it warm up. There was so much ice on it that it took an hour to make enough progress to scrape it. Of course, I didn't have a scraper so I improvised. I used my Pioneer Woman wooden spatula. It broke but I was able to scrape enough ice to be able to start the journey. 

Two hours later I made it to Columbia to pick Robby up. Turns out, he had a gallbladder attack instead of a heart attack. That was good news but now I had to drive back home with him slamming his imaginary brake pedal every 200 yards. 

I got him home and we both thought it was a good idea to get some sleep. I spent the next 2 days trying to get my sleep pattern right again. I am still working on this issue. 

Lesson for 2022: We are old and falling apart. 

My trip

In case you all don't know, yesterday Robby and I decided we would take a trip on the spur of the moment to see my cousin, Michele. I had a wonderful time and miss her so much. It was really good to get away. However, as with any trip, it was not without incident.

First, Robby wouldn't listen when I told him that he needed to get gas before we left. He waited until we got to Wentzville, where he realized that he had to prepay. This set him off and caused him to not be able to find Starbucks.

Once we got to Fenton, I got my morning coffee at Starbucks and a pound of Christmas Blend, which by the way is AMAZING this year. He paid because I had to wait so long and I kept unusually quiet the whole time. He thought I was mad. This of course was the plan all along.

We made it to Cape Gireardeu and I had wonderful day. We went shopping, I got to spend time with Michele and Julie. Everything was going good. We had dropped Robby off at the Casino at 8 a.m. so he wouldn't be in the way.

7 hours later, I had to go into the casino to find him. He had lost his ass, according to him. I never knew he had one. I put a 5 dollar bill in a machine and won 50. Cha Ching. We left and went to dinner at Lambert's Cafe in Sikeston. I had food thrown at me and I don't catch things well. Robby had to do the catching but that is typical in our relationship.

On the way home I decided that I wanted to sleep. Robby told me that I needed to keep him awake. I gave him a choice, sleep or sing. He turned the radio off. Just about the time I dozed off, I hear him say "FUCK" I jump and then I smell it. He hit a skunk.

I didn't say aything at this point, I pulled my shirt over my nose, turned the radio on and started singing the Grease soundtrack while looking at him like Bazooka Joe. He got the point.

We made it home around Midnight and he flopped down on the couch and looked at me and said the following...

"At least you had a good day."

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Childhood and Torture

I was reminded yesterday of a time when my cousin Michelle and I used to torture my sister. This was something that I was always up for no matter who my accomplice was. Being almost two years younger than her always gave me the motive to make her life miserable whenever possible. Everything Tina ever did was ammunition. The fact that she had discovered boys before myself just meant that I could tease her. Before I reveal the secrets of my torture, please note that I love my sister. She is family and I would die for her. Also, I want to thank Michelle for reminding me of this, so thank you Michelle, I love you.

About the time that Tina turned 14 she had really started to notice boys. Michelle was staying with us for a few days and we had made it our mission to terrorize her. We sat out to follow her on one of her many trips around the trailer court to impress a boy named John. Now John was a very handsome young man, he lived just a few trailers down and Tina just knew that this was the man of her dreams. She had spent the better part of the morning fixing her hair and spraying it down with auqua net to make sure it was as high as possible, she had checked and re-checked herself in the mirror to make sure that her perky little breast were as high as they should be and that her butt didn't look to big. The makeup was on and she was ready to start her journey. Michelle and myself were also ready.

We knew that she would be mad at us for what we were planning so we didn't let her know. We waited until she left and then we started out on our journey about twenty feet behind her. She kept asking us to go back home and to leave her alone. She said she was only going for a walk, but we knew what she was doing for sure.

Once she got to the spot where John could see her and us, we sprung into action. First we decided to start barking like dogs and whimpering. When that resulted in a red faced scream for us to stop, we decided that the only thing left was to start lifting our legs on the trees and bushes to mark our territory.

Needless to say Tina decided it was best to go back home and wait for another chance to impress the man of her dreams. Victory was ours and we went about our business, planning our next attack on Tina when she least expected it.

I don't know how she ever forgave Michelle and I for this, but she did. I guess she figured she owed me for almost killing me, according to Grandma, when she hit me in the head with a belt buckle while we were practicing our Sonny and Cher routine. That fight was over who was going to sing Cher's part.

Time Changes Everything

40 years on this planet and a lot has changed. Technology is so much better than it was as a child, and I am sure that it will only get better. For those of you who read this blog and are over the age of 20 I am sure you will get a smile out of some of the things I remember.

Cell phones amaze me. As a child we had an avocado green rotary dial phone that hung on the kitchen wall. It was understood that phone calls were a luxury and not something that we could afford for idle gossip. In Wellsville you could dial 4 and the last four of the number you were calling in town. We also had a party line. There was a time limit on these calls and you typically had another person who spent their time listening to everyone else's conversations. 

I never dreamed growing up that someday almost everyone I knew would have their own phone and they could take it with them wherever they went. When I was a child it was a HUGE deal when Mom was able to find a chord that would allow her to talk on the phone while standing across the room! 

I was one of the first people in my family to purchase a cell phone. For those of you who know me well, I believe this is when I officially became a phone whore. I was very proud of this brick shaped phone. It only cost me a dollar a day and $.50 a minute to use. 

Television...we had 3 channels, two we could watch without having to go outside with the pipe wrench and turning the antenna while Dad would yell, "a little more! Back! Wait! Right there! Nope, you went too far! Go back!" 

Now we all bitch because there is never anything on and we pay too much for all the channels we get. Most of us end up watching the shows we watched as kids for free on channels we pay extra for now. 

Cars were big, heavy, metal and you could use regular or unleaded gasoline. As kids, we could go in and pay for the gas and get a pack of smokes for Dad while he pumped. Now we have to pre-pay in most places and you have to be 18 to buy those smokes. You also can't get a pack of cigarettes and 2 gallons of gas for five bucks any longer. 

Words...Gay meant happy, Queer meant odd, retarded was the proper name for kids on the short bus and nobody knew what LOL, OMG, or what a text message was. If you needed to get a message to a friend, you rode your bike to their house and left it on their door, or actually talked to their face. 

A lot has changed in my life, but one thing remains constant. A trip to Walmart will leave you at some point with an expression on your face that says, WTF? 

Slugs and Tumors

I haven't blogged for 13 days. What can I say? I am a lazy slug. Truth is, I have been working on getting Tupperware going and I was busy looking for a new used car. I have gotten both of these accomplished. I have gotten into a bad habit of laying around on the couch like an old gas station dog. I don't have any motivation and I don't know why.

I have went mushroom hunting a couple times and I have been working on an afghan. I have officially became a tired ole queen at this point in my life. Now to either fight this or accept this is the future I am faced with.

I have always been somewhat of a slug though. Even as a young boy my cousin Kim would come to my house to go outside and play and I would want to stay inside and watch Guiding Light. Kim would tell on me and then I would have to go outside and play. This would usually result in an injury or sweating. I didn't like either of these options.

As I got older, I found it much easier to make an excuse as to why I didn't want to do something, however it was still difficult to convince people that I actually had a floating or 24 hour tumor. Nobody seemed to believe that this was possible. I am here to explain to everyone that it is.

A 24 hour or Floating tumor is something that causes you pain or discomfort. It can cause your to be quite tired as well. Typically these symptoms go away after a day or two.

Now that I am 40, all I have to do is say "I don't feel like it." People seem to take this excuse withouth question and then you are able to spend the next 48 hours on your couch with your groceries on the coffee table watching a marathon of The Golden Girls on the Hallmark channel.

Please understand if I tell you that I don't feel like it. I am not going to die. I am just being a lazy slug. If you still want to spend time with me, bring the salt.

A Night of Purple Passion

I was reminded at lunch today of how simple life used to be when we were teenagers. We all started talking about how much cheaper everything was. Gasoline was $.89 a gallon and you could get a bottle of Strawberry Hill wine for $1.79 at the local quick store.

I started remembering the times I had with both of these items. How we would all save our lunch money and just eat minimum stuff and then use the rest for cruising up and down Main Street on a Friday night. You can really make several trips on just a couple dollars of gasoline back then. The Strawberry Hill was drunk out of soda cups with straws. This was for two reasons. First it gave the illusion that we were drinking soda, second, drinking cheap wine through a straw makes your head spin that much faster.

Then we discovered something called Purple Passion. This stuff was considered the shit. It tasted like grape Kool-Aid and had a powerful kick to it. Everyone was drinking this stuff and we all knew that we were so much smarter than the adults because they would never ever catch on to this trend.

As I remember it, there was a night of food, fun, and a lake. Several of us decided to go to a private lake so we could have a bar-b-q and go swimming. It was going to be such a blast as I recall. Then only a few people showed up so things started going downhill.

After several hours of listening to songs on the radio and cassette tape we all decided that it would be much more fun if we had alcohol. A trip into town to get the supplies was needed so I went along with some of the people going. I had my eyes and stomach on some pickled sausages that the convenience store sold.

Once we returned, the party started kicking into gear. The cheap wine and the Purple Passion were flowing freely. I had chosen to eat my pickled sausages in place of the grilled hot dogs and hamburgers. After a couple more hours and several red plastic solo cups of the grape nectar of the gods, a couple of us decided it would be fun to go swimming. Well, actually skinny dipping, but I won’t go into those details.

A funny thing happens when a person has had too much alcohol and pickled sausages. Especially if they do something stupid; such as getting into a lake to go swimming at midnight. You get sick, and I do mean sick. The next thing I can recall is projectile vomit in the form of sausage bits and purple liquid.

To a drunken kid this could be mistaken for a serious medical situation. It seemed perfectly logical for me to get upset over the fact that I was now vomiting my intestines in small pieces. The fact that I was crying over this trauma was soon eased by my cousin who reminded me that I wasn’t throwing up my intestines but it was all those damn sausages I had eaten.

If anyone knows where they sell Purple Passion now please contact me. I will skip the sausages.

Lady and the Stalker

I used to always believe that it would be completely amazing to have a stalker. Somebody who was so obsessed with me that they would do anything to be near or with me. At a very early age I learned the hard way that this was not true.

A gay man should never feel so sorry for someone that they take them to their prom as a pity date. It never works out. Of course, the fact that I thought at the time, what the hell, let’s try this and see what all the fuss is about was not exactly in my favor. So part of the blame with this situation does come back to myself.

After the prom and what I will forever refer to as the “incident,” this girl became completely obsessed with being with me. I would often come outside to find messages on my car windshield written in shave cream. They would always have a heart somewhere in the message that was used to dot a lower case i.

Phone calls in the middle of the night were very common in our house, it didn’t matter what time it was. The phone would ring and of course there was no caller id then, so I would answer it to hear Michael Bolton playing in the background. She seemed to prefer the song How Can We Be Lovers, If We Can’t Be Friends?

This sort of thing continued for several months until finally everything came to a boiling point. She showed up at my house honking the horn repeatedly.  She did not want to get out of her care, either she was afraid of my dog lady, a black cocker spaniel, or she was afraid that she would look like an idiot for showing up at my house.

I went outside to see what the issue was and she started screaming at me that she loved me and would do anything to be with me. When I informed her that it was over, she decided that it was time to back out of the driveway at a high rate of speed. Unfortunately Lady was behind her car and she got the full force of the back tires. When I screamed at her, she looked down at my dog, put the car in drive and pulled forward; once again, Lady got the full force of the tire.

At this point, I had no choice but to tell her the real reason I couldn’t be with her. The fact  was, as I explained, she had been the one to turn me homosexual. With tears in her eyes over me and tears in mine over Lady she left. 

Later in life she caught her husband in bed with another man.