Wrong side of the bed

I think I may have crawled out of the wrong side of the bed this morning. I'm fairly surly.

I made oatmeal this morning, and because my hubby likes a little more than what comes in one package, I tried to pour some from the round "box" into the bowl to nuke with the water before I used the pre-mixed stuff, and lost my hold on the round box, and now have oatmeal everywhere.

About that time, hubby comes out of the shower, and I'm hauling the vacuum into the kitchen.

"Okay, what mess did the dog and/or cats leave you?"

I give him "the look".

"It wasn't the dog or the cats?"

Another "look".

A bit of exchanged words...and explanation that *I* am the culprit for this mess and why, then retreat to the kitchen with vacuum in hand to clean up the mess that shouldn't have happened, and probably wouldn't have happened if I weren't such a nice wife...like making my hubby breakfast now and then--just to make him happy.

Well, I should have stayed in bed. Oatmeal. All over the floor. Not COOKED oatmeal, thank god, but wet, none the less. Not even one oatmeal flake stayed in the box--NO--they all had to fly out and experience freedom.

"Away and be FREE!"

So after cleaning up the mess, I got his coffee and breakfast around, and then sat down to blog and read email--something that some days takes me all morning to accomplish. And while he sits there enjoying his breakfast, I'm telling you about oatmeal and he's telling me about work. I'm listening and responding appropriately, and writing about my morning. Even at 5am, I can multitask!

So why can't I pour a little oatmeal into a bowl without disaster striking?

That one has eluded me for years.

So I joined another group a few weeks ago. This one is pretty cool. It's called "Monthly Washcloths". and I've been working on their monthly knit along with a scrap of Sugar 'n Cream when I run out at Row 20 or so. God help me. So I started over with a new skein, and frogged the other one for making another Tribble at some point. They also worked on a washcloth that is posted as a free pattern on the Berrocco website--but it's also in their files, and is the dishcloth for December. A snowflake. So yesterday, I went to the "cheap yarn store", and got a couple of balls of plain white Sugar 'n Cream to make at least one, if not two of these "snowflakes".

Got absolutely no progress done on hubby's socks yesterday--and drew the Lord reversed for my tarot card--the ace of swords for hubby's.

I told him he'd need to use a bigger screwdriver on the dies this morning. The machines are giving him headaches and aren't doing what they are supposed to be doing. His card was an easy one. Mine is not so easy-a major card, these usually mean something "deeper" and more important is going on. The explanation in the book says "you have a problem with people in authority". GEE, YA THINK? (I look back to my meme from yesterday, and remember fondly the feelings it illicited.) Then the book talks about how I had a tumultuous relationship with my father or father figure--and a suffocating relationship with my mother (gee, I didn't know there was a movie about MY life...who stole my identity and put it in this book?), and that today I would be doing a lot of soul searching over the issues relating to these things.

I think I should go to bed right now!

There is no need for me to "soul search" over how my family...and before you say "methinks thou dost protest too much..." let me inform you that I've known about the tumult in my childhood, and gone over it and over it. IF ONLY my parents were a functional unit. IF ONLY my father wasn't an alcoholic. If only my mother wasn't an enabler. If only I wasn't the scape goat. If only my little brother wasn't such a (well nevermind--I am trying to keep from swearing in my blog--New Year's Resolution, ya know?)...

My father would take my brother and me to the swimming hole--not to the beach like other kids got to go, but to the boat launch, where the rocks were sticky with scum, and the water depth dropped off suddenly into murkiness that you were sure the Loch Ness monster was living--and that she would pop up and gobble you down...and...wait...no I hated having to swim at the boat launch. The upside? My father was protecting ME from pedophiles, I suppose that was his aim, but he would sit in the car and drink the entire time.

After a couple of hours, he would be completely wasted, and before too many years went by, I was driving us home. Imagine my stress? Driving was nothing compared to the stress I felt constantly about either:

1. Getting into an accident.
2. Getting pulled over for drunk driving by the police, dad being hauled off to jail, and mom has no way to come get us, because the family has only one car....or
3. Not getting pulled over by the police, and having to deal with the stress of #1 and #2 all the way home.

I mean, it was basically a crap shoot everytime I got in the car with him!

My mother didn't like riding with him AT ALL, so she tried to turn me into dad's enabler. This worked in some ways, not in others. She'd make him take me when he went to town to get a few things--he would stop off at the bar "for a few", and make me sit in the car and wait in the heat. They don't allow that for children anymore--but when I got old enough to realize that by not having me "right under his nose" he could basically forget that I was still in the car--so I started going into the bar when I got tired of sitting in the hot car.

I'm sure that this was not a comfortable thing for him. My dad was desperately concerned about men and their um....illicit urges...so he would down the rest of his glass once he saw me walk into the door, and before you know it, we're back in the car and on the road, headed home. I'm sure that he had discussion with my mother over it...

"Why do you keep sending Tenna with me to pick things up?"

"So you won't stop at the bar and sit there for hours on end getting drunk."

So very early on, I learned how to make my father be a little more responsible for me--and when I turned 13, he let me drive home, which eased my stress considerably. I became a pretty good driver, too--and learned about how to figure out where you are, when you don't know where you are. I learned how to watch out for everybody else quickly--because you never know--they might be drinking, right?

So I have to say that I became a bit more responsible for myself a bit earlier than most. I resented my father for not being able to manage himself, and I resented my mother for continuing to allow it. I hate authority because of it's controlling nature. All you blog readers who are stuck in abusive relationships, heed this....an addict doesn't change. They are selfish and faithless. As the book says "All dogs return to their own vomit." (I know that's pretty graphic--but it is true.) And an addict is LOWER than dogs on the hierarchy scale. (Sorry, I didn't want to insult the wonderful dogs, who, even though they do tend to return to their own vomit...they are still the most devoted animal there is--and an addict is only devoted to where they can get their next fix.

Both my parents were heavy smokers. Not just in the house, but in the car, where you can't get outdoors and away from the SMELL and the SMOKE. I can't begin to tell you how often I would cry in the back seat, because I was quite literally SUFFOCATING.

Now, I am not asthmatic--at least I don't THINK I am, but put me in a crowded room with a smoker, and suddenly, I can't breathe. I take one breath and my airway simply closes up! I never smoked myself--just second hand stuff. This made it doubly difficult when I started my early 20's and wanted to go dancing...you could only dance at the local clubs, and that's where the smoker's "convened" too. In my 30's, I learned ballroom dancing, and the places we went didn't have a smoking issue--these people competed--they were serious about their bodies. It was an enjoyable time, because I loved dancing as much as I hated smokers and smoking. I even broke up with a few men (sorry guys, but I have "standards") because I found out that they'd lied about being a smoker.

But I used to hate it when my parents smoked in the car. I complained and whined bitterly, but I was just a kid. What did I know? My mother, bless her heart, quit smoking, and that's a tall order when you consider that my dad WOULDN'T quit, and so she had to continue to ride with him smoking in the car. At that point, she apologized to me, saying

"Now I understand what you meant by suffocating in the back seat."

How did she manage to quit? Well, possibly shear will power, but she was a neatnick that liked her house to be "clean". One day, she washed the sheer window dressings--but didn't have enough room in the washer to do all of the house, so she just did a few at a time. She took the 2nd load down to the basement and took the 1st load into the basket to bring up, and in so doing, had a chance to compare the two...the result was utter shock and denial. The first set of sheers were clean and white. The 2nd set was stained yellow from all the tar and nicotine. Yes, you smokers out there--that smoke ain't as WHITE as it looks coming from the end of your cigarette and into your lungs, and out of your mouth and nose as you exhale. And just because you spew it off to the left or right does't mean that same smoke isn't going into someone else's lungs! Smoke has no boundaries---something that smokers fail to "get".

Somewhere I read that there are over 2000 harmful chemicals (including urine!) in cigarettes. It would be healthier to drink out of the stool!

So I never smoked. And I came to believe that smokers are really stupid people. I mean, I can get stupid about yarn and books about yarn or crafts, but am I hurting anybody else? Am I putting their health and lives at risk by buying that next ball of yarn? I think there are worse ways to die....bury my husband in a pile of yarn...hmmm....no...I don't think I could use yarn to commit murder...and it sort of just "sits there" waiting to be knit. And I'm not spending money on it that I don't have...so it's rather innocuous--perhaps a waste of money--after all, all that yarn, fermenting in the plastic zippered bag...all those dyes and who knows how they interact? POOH! But I never smoked. I didn't do drugs either. In fact I figured drug addicts to be even MORE stupid than smokers or alcoholics.

Don't get me wrong--I get that some people's addictions are driven by painful things that they want to forget....but I have had some pretty painful and traumatic things in my life, too. Does that give me a good excuse to go out and be irresponsile and hurt others with my addiction? No. Does it give me the right to cry and stamp my feet and talk or write about the unfairness of it all? Well, perhaps the painful/traumatic things, yeah--but to cloud it with some addiction--no. There just comes a time when you have to "man up" and face it. (Man up is a new term coined by one of the drummers in the pipe band--and I think it's a good one, so I repeat it here.) I mean, get a backbone and get over it! Life was never promised to be FAIR people!

Well, all this soul searching, and it's still not daylight outside.
Maybe I should just go back to bed for a while!