Considering the other side of my children.

So, what do I write about tonight? My daughter, once again, had a horrible abdominal migraine. I waited to dope myself up with cough and cold medicine until I could get the over-the-counter yet behind-the-counter stuff. I ran into one of my daughter's friend's dads. I didn't know he was a pharmacist. We never exchanged names, and I don't really mind. I was Sunny's mom; he was Sunny's friend's dad. After that, it didn't matter, because Sunny and her friend are very good for each other. They're both shy kids starting to break out of their shells, and Sunny actually likes leaving the house for a sleepover, now. She won't even stay with my mother, that's how comfortable she is in her zone. I like The Friend.

We did some talking. I amused all with my froggy voice. I took the slip for the good stuff up to the counter and handed it to the clerk.

"I need your ID."

Oh, yeah. Right. Silly me. I kind of laughed that smoker's-on-top-of-chest-crud laugh.

"And your birth certificate."

"You want my firstborn, too? This is a good week for it."

Then I spotted Friend's Dad, and he ask me how I was doing, and I told him, other than jonesing for some seriously good sinus medicine, I was doing okay.

"I wouldn't call that jonesing," he said, laughing.

I said, "Yeah. I need something to chisel this junk away."

I always speak with my hands going. I mimicked hacking myself with an icepick, which all behind the pharmacy counter found immensely interesting.

"Maybe a water hose?"

"Don't tempt me," I said. Only when I got out to the car did I think about how I should've said something about joining the volunteer fire department for a two-day stint or something. Hey, give me some credit. I'm barking like a seal!

Then I told him how Sunny felt. He had a really, really good line of thought, here, one I'd not considered. Almost, but hadn't got it all thought through, I guess.

He's theorizing that parasympathetics and sympathetics are jumping too much, i.e., Sunny's jumping off one cliff to the ground below.

Then, I remembered my mother-in-law. I hate to admit that Sunny's genetic makeup is due partially to her. That one was a piece of work. I mean, I had a cop come to my door to let the woman I hadn't seen in 14 years (she lived among the corn fields in Iowa) had passed on, and *ours* was the only address they found. She had kids less than one hour in one direction and three in the other, but she had *our* address. And all I could think...and I am so incredibly ashamed...is how long it takes a 450-pound body to be cremated. The things she did to Stud and his siblings are too horrible to mention, and I don't know all the details. I don't want to.

Could she have been saved? I think that now and wonder. Had someone loved her enough to step in, could she be saved? Her psychosis started early, and she picked up with her three kids and left, starting a horrible life with a chain of bad men. One pulled a gun on my husband when he was only eight. She got worse, too, requiring her daughter to dress her like she was some kind of queen. I'm having feelings for her - feelings that should've been there long ago, but dammit, we did try to help her for six months, and she wreaked hell on our marriage, stole our money, ran up our phone bill, and stole one of our credit cards.

Sunny. I always thought perhaps I could blame it on me, because that's convenient. I know how to deal with me, but maybe I'm not Sunny's brand of...of...of...something. Maybe it's time to find someone who knows what they're doing for someone else, i.e., my little girl.

So, mom-in-law, I never stopped to consider what you might have been, just what you were. I'm sorry. I think I've finally come to terms with you. Your son hasn't, and I know you daughter hasn't, but I have. Sunny's mine, and not yours. I'll burn in hell before she becomes anything like you.

A funny post...from me? Ms. Morose?

In case you're wondering, my lungs hurt from all the fumes from the could've-been-a-lot-worse episode last night, but I realize that my posts are quite morose, for the most part, and especially of late. To rectify the situation, here's something I wrote a while back. This will never make the "fluffy" blog, but it's funny. I can be quite funny at times.

From my diary on March 23, 2006:

We have a vertical latch to the (extremely) old door to the back part of the house. It fits into the floor and likes to get stuck. I had to put the cat out back (it's unfinished) to keep him away from the other animals' food and water supply so he could get neutered the next morning. Long story short (editor's note: This is not a SHORT story, apparently), he broke out during the middle of the night and I had to use that damn latch. It got stuck, but usually I can stick the toe of my shoe under there and kind of kick it up, but no go.

So, I reached down with both hands and lifted, catching my thumb at the top of the latch. It's on the outside part of the thumb, a nice dent, too wide to sew up and just under the nail (it missed the nail itself...thank goodness). There's quite a bit of tissue missing and it doesn't help that I keep bumping it. You should have seen me trying to get the cat in the carrier, though, dripping blood everywhere. I needed him in the carrier because I had everything worked out just so to keep him from being traumatized in the carrier. I allowed 15 minutes to get the cat ready, with the carrier on the bed and the cat in the back part of the house, leaving five minutes to chase him around if need be. I brought the cat in and tried to cram him into the carrier. I know now, after my trip to the vet, that the cat weighs a good 15 pounds! So, small carrier, big cat, bleeding thumb...

If you take the cat by the front and back legs, stretch him out really long and feed him into the carrier, it's kind of like shooting an arrow and he flew inside. I decided then was a good time to fix my thumb. I went to clean it up and I heard this cathunk-boom. I ran back into the bedroom. The orange tabby WAS on the bed in the carrier when I left the room; he was on the floor when I went back in, upside down, with his sister on one side of the grate and him on the other, mewing back and forth. The dog didn't like the noise, and he kept running between the bathroom (where I was fixing my finger) and the cat carrier (which I did put upright), trying to get me to fix the problem.

Car time--The cat mewed so loudly and so baby-like that I actually had a let-down sensation! I know, gross, but it happened. When I got to the vet, trying to carry this squirming, howling creature into the office, I opened the door into peals of laughter.

I said, "He's loud, isn't he?" to which they replied, "Honey, we heard him just as soon as you opened the door to your car."

He was a lot quieter on the trip home the next day, but my thumb is still very problematic. Fortunately, it is on the tip and not the knuckle, so it's not slowing me down too much typing-wise when using the space bar, but my house is a wreck and, since it's hard to shower, it's even harder to wash dishes, grab washcloths, turn clothes inside out, button/zip, tie shoes, put the dog on the chain, etc.

My idiot doctor, in his infinite 2nd-year resident wisdom, pushed on it and says, "Does this..." I screamed "YES, goddamit!" and he finished with "hurt?" The kids keep laughing because, a thumb being where God put it, tends to be used subconsciously, and I yell, sometimes profanely.

In fact, I yelled "F*ck a duck!" and Junior looked at me, grinned, and said, "Mom, I didn't know you liked ducks so much."

I don't ever want to be thankful for this again.

I'm a fucking emotional wreck. We bought the loudest damn alarms...and I couldn't hear them. I wasn't even working at the time.

At 1:00 a.m., my son stumbled into my room. He waved to me and said, "Can you come here?"

I figured he'd barfed somewhere. God knows my cuisine is quite creative.

I walked back into the laundry room and smelled it, then heard the alarm.

Junior awoke to the alarm, and then the smoke.

This old fucking house. I hate this goddamn place. It's my fault we bought it. Mine. I didn't care that the main part of the house was built in fucking 1840 or whenever, it just had space. Lots and lots of space. Space entices a person, a family of five living in 650 square feet of it being offered over 2500 (some not finished) for jack shit.

You get what you pay for.

This was in the NEW addition...the part that was added on in 1940. We had more faith in that part of the house. We have lovingly and painstakingly taken care of that part of the house and put it together right, evenly distributing the power (which was already there), insulating the drywall, making sure the power-consuming items don't overload the systems. Holy fuck, we ordered shit based on how many amps they used! So? So?

The smoke hung heavy in the snake room. Stud has electrical wire (fully padded, tested, taped, and on a thermostat) running across the shelves for the snakes. I immediately looked for the snakes moving furthest away from the heat source. I found the big girl #12, who scooted to the front of her box. I lifted her box up, and felt the tape. No. Not that.

Meanwhile, Junior successfully awoke Stud. He immediately did what I was doing, checking the heating wires on the shelves while I moved in to inspect Junior's room.

Junior has a wonderful, amazing room. It's far away from us, so we've got security gizmos and lots of loud fire alarms back there. He really doesn't use it other than to sleep, though, which is fine. Stud moves some of his extra stuff in/out of there, just because Junior doesn't want to hang out all by himself. Having a teenager hiding out in his room is not my ideal for nurturing my kids. I hid out in my room (read: Don't be like me).

I pulled my shirt up over my nose. Definitely, without a doubt, the problem was electrical, and Stud hacked and coughed, and I kept my shirt over my nose and breathed through my mouth. Although the scent seemed worst in Junior's room, the smoke dropped the visibility in the snake room more significantly.

Junior had a suggestion, and it was plausible--he ran the portable heater on the timer for a while, just to get the temp down a smidge before he went to bed. I turned it on and felt it, smelling. It actually made the air clear and the smell improve around the heater, and I felt the floor, wondering if fibers got caught up in the bottom somehow, and went to the opposite wall where it was plugged in by a proper extension cord and felt the socket.

Nope. No problems.

I crept around with my hands out against the walls and kicked off my slippers. I felt no heat variance. Meanwhile, Stud, after pulling every snake from the shelves, found no hot spots in his carefully tended and planned wiring (he diagramed placement of the damn things before laying the heating wires).

I looked at the portable heater again, and turned it on. Again, the scent was better in the immediate area, but Stud looked at me like, "What the fuck?"

I said, "Follow the [regulated, amp-tested, diagramed not to overload the circuit] extension cord!"

He pulled up a rolled-up carpet remnant and its accompanying pad, a nice thick pad, to reveal a perfectly coiled orange extension cord...now melting, fused together in a perfect circle, burned into the carpet and on its way through the subfloor.

Fuck. My kid sleeps in that room. My fucking baby was 10 feet away from that bastard.

This house kicks our azz at every goddamn turn. I'm grateful as hell my boy's okay, but, SHIT, I'm so sick of this money pit, and now possibly death trap. We've fucking got copper wiring still in the old part of the house, but the fire started in the NEW part. The NEW part. By MODERN people...with no fucking brains. We counted on their expertise...and now my subfloor has a nice ring the size of a nicely coiled extension cord AND MY BABY WAS 10 FEET AWAY. I mean, its plastic cover had melted together. It looked like smushed-up clay, not plastic. And the stench...

Electrical + plastic + carpet + padding + adhesive + subfloor = knock you on your azz.

My son rarely lets me hug him. Rarely. He's 16 now; displays of affection aren't really his thing anymore, but God, he let me hold him tight and kiss his head. Funny thing is that he said earlier that he was "lazy" and didn't feel like going out back; he wanted to just crash on the couch and I told him his feet stank and not to get my couch "stanky," too. As much as I hate he was out there, if he hadn't been, the entire wing and our snakes would be gone, and the rest of the house in serious danger, because I didn't hear the damn fire alarms.

The scent only drifted into this part of the house because of the fans we turned on to diffuse some of the horrible stench and the smoke. If the snakes get sick from the fumes, I don't know what I'll do. We've invested so much in Stud's business...

but my son's okay. Shaken enough to let me wrap my arms around him and cry because I was shaken, too.

So I'm grateful. Pissed off at the former owner and his family of do-it-yourself nutjobs, but grateful.

God, I don't know you very well, but you seem to know the rest of my family just fine. Thanks. Take it for what it's worth.