The Hot Mess

My friend Cindy is what I refer to as a hot mess. In a good, funny, loving way. It was her birthday and she arrived at my work desk with a couple of pictures to show me. Now Cindy works in another department and made the trip special just to share these pictures. It also happened to be Throwback Thursday and if you spend anytime in twittersphere you know what I’m talking about. Her pictures spoke a thousand words of a young, vivacious, svelte, beautiful woman wearing a daring outfit. The other was her baby picture.

The baby picture was cute, but the young hot Cindy in 1984 is what caught your attention. Cindy is now 61 wonderful years and full of stories about her anything but dull life. Even heading into year so called golden years this woman is living a drama filled, but fun life and she loves to tell you about it. Great fodder for a writer! in fact we even based a character on her in our third book The Body Hunters: Dirty Secrets, Naked Truths . To put it simply Cindy is awesome. I could in no way have handled her life or begin to even imagine being as daring as she was and still is.

To the outsider Cindy can be a mental handful. As I stated she loves to talk and if you don’t love to listen to people then she is not the person for you. Her stories make it all worth it. The celebrity encounters she’s had in questionable situations to even current boyfriends make you drop your jaw and shake your head all the while smiling and laughing with her.

The whole picture exchange took less than 3 or 4 minutes and soon we were all back at our respective jobs and I didn’t think anything more of it. That is till the woman who sits on the other side of my cubicle said something to me over the cubicle wall.

“Why do you attract the weirdest people?” she asked.

“Huh?” was my intelligent response.

“These weird people always flock to you, you need to get some normal people in your life.”

Now this woman, let’s call her Mary to protect her not so innocence, is a 40-ish beautiful black woman, single mom with a teenage son. I have been to 1 outing with her and a couple of other friends to of all movies, a midnight showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. You know the one where people dress up and yell comments through out the whole movie? yeah that one. One of my friends that went with me that night is my age and a lifelong friend named Barb who is a musical wonder and a talented artist in paints and any other type of medium she gets her hands on. She’s high strung and like all artists of a high caliber, very brilliant and unfortunately lives in her own world. She is also an alcoholic, severely broke after having made an ungodly amount of money and is having trouble facing her new reality and frail physical and psychological  health. She is a real hot mess and not in a good Cindy kind of way.

I will not lie, I prayed Barb would behave on our outing and just for once enjoy herself getting lost in this ridiculous movie. She did for all of 30 minutes and then her addiction and depression struck. She eventually left and found a bar to shoot back a few tequila’s down only coming back at the end of the movie. I was embarrassed for her and for me. Though I am not responsible for her actions, she had begged me take her along wanting the girls night out and I could have said no.

Mary is a former alcoholic. Mary lived a little of Barb’s life and should understand the addiction and what it does to a person. Mary is now sober and a church going upstanding citizen in her own eyes. Mary made several comments about that night and how she could relate to what Barb was going through, felt bad for her ect….which is why it was a shock to me that she made the comments she made.

Back to Cindy. Cindy is not Barb, Cindy holds a job, takes care of her aging mother and tries to make herself fun to be around. Mary’s comment  to me about how I attract the weirdest people struck me as odd. Why was she being so critical? and what is she saying about herself? She after all did hang out with me too. She then said to me she thought Cindy was lying about having any current boyfriends. Cindy being 61 is not the skinny woman she used to be and her body no longer lends itself to dressing like a woman of much younger years. Cindy dresses for work in age appropriate clothes for a person on our meager salary.

I asked Mary why did she think Cindy was lying? What reason does she have to lie? Mary told me it was because she needed to compensate to me for lacking in something that I have that she doesn’t. In other words she told me Cindy was jealous of me.

“Wait, What?”

Jealous of me? I am a living large and in charge kind of gal, in other words fat. My manner of dress is relevant to my size and financial situation. For Christ’s sakes I cut my own hair to save money since my husbands medical bills are so high. Why the hell would anyone be jealous of me?

“Ain’t no woman dresses like her and has a man. You have a long term marriage and she’s jealous of that.” she reiterated again I need normal people in my life.

Ok, who’s jealous of my having a husband? Um….her or you?

I mean how critical can you get? Mary as I have learned is very self critical calling herself things like ugly and fat, even complaining about her dark skin color calling her self Aunt Jemima after the pancake syrup character. Wow! How self loathing can you get? I wanted to cry for her and remember, I’m the living large and in charge gal who cuts her own hair.

I have no time for self loathing, self hatred and internal or outwardly name calling. People will do that for me and to me on a regular basis. I told Mary the reason the off center, kooky, crazy, troubled, weirdo’s (who are just normal human beings getting through life the best way they know how) are attracted to me is because I try not to judge and I listen. In them there are several life lessons to be learned and shared. Everyone has value even if you can’t or refuse to value yourself. For a woman who overcame her own addiction just to constantly put herself and other women down is sad. She is not an Aunt Jemima, Mrs. Butterworth or any other sticky syrupy commercially racist character. She is a beautiful black woman who turns men’s heads wherever she goes. I’m guessing the reason she can’t keep a love interest is beyond her beauty. If you can’t respect and love yourself how are you going to love someone else?  Cindy is not lying about her life or the men in her life. I believe she still attracts men not because she is still the raving beauty of her youth, but because she is still a fun loving, quirky light hearted individual that loves life and has no problem in sharing it.

So here’s to all my weird, wacky, troubled, artistic, fun loving friends. Keep on keeping on. and to Mary, lighten up your heart already, it ain’t that serious!

The Marrying Man

My Father

The innocent looking boy in the picture is quite the cutie isn’t he? He would live to be 87 yrs old before being called home, and while on this earth, lived quite an eventful life. He married 6 times, with only 2 marriages ending in death, my birth mother, wife #3, and wife #5. 

He worked in the auto industry for most of his adult life. He believed in Generous Motors until the financial collapse of GM’s bankruptcy broke his heart. Life changed around him and he just couldn’t understand the why’s. He refused to believe that after all his years of blood, sweat and toil to a company he loved, he suddenly had to pay doctor co-pays and worry over the possibility of his pension being cut. The latter thankfully never happened.

 I’d love to say in this post that he was a perfect father ect…. I’d love to say it, but truth was, he was blissfully unaware that he was a complicated man. He believed in simplicity and yet he convoluted his life so badly when it came to his family. With his last wife, he believed his kids should have just fallen all over the woman he loved, and love her just as much as he did, even as she was ripping our family apart.

This of course was his pollyanna, his utopia. Blood will always be thicker than water and the woman made sure that her grown child and grandchildren were to always come first in his eyes. At times I believe she succeeded and enjoyed rubbing my nose in it.

That’s not to say he didn’t love us. I think he just assumed we knew he did, and felt he had to outwardly show it to her children more. He had to prove to the new wife his loyalty, and I believe she exploited it to a high degree. I know in later (rare) private conversations with him, he later felt trapped in that loyalty, but felt powerless to do anything about it.

I loved him to a fault when I was young, and I do have many fond memories of him. My most valued memory is the father/daughter dance at my wedding. It was one of the few times I really felt connected to him, that he cared and was happy with my choice of partner. he loved my husband and thought highly of him. He even defended him against my husband’s own father. Yet another father story for another time.

 After wife #5’s death, my brothers and I struggled to reconnect with him, feeling that for the first time we could have had that long awaited, and unencumbered relationship with him. 

Not so much.

 I quickly realized that he was the ‘marrying man’, when he announced at 73 yrs of age, that he was seeing yet another woman. This was literally months after wife #5 died. It was like a sickness, he just couldn’t be without a woman whom he wanted to give control over his life.

As an adult I began to see the pattern emerge. I don’t know much about wife #1 and 2, except with #2, he had 2 boys that he let another man adopt because he didn’t want anymore animosity and fights between wife #2 and #3, besides he had young children with #3 and another new life. 

With wife #4 he had no children, and after a contentious relationship, ended up leaving her for wife #5. With wife #5 he gained 4 stepdaughters that he truly loved. It was inexplicable to me that he also dropped them all by the wayside when #6 came around, though later he would believe wife #6 when she said it was their fault and they abandoned him. It’s that ‘why didn’t they worship #6 like he did’ kind of thing. Through rose colored glasses of love and obsession, he failed to see #6’s jealousy and that she pushed us all away.

The 4 girls would never be able to have any semblance of a relationship with him again, with only one of them being able to see him once before he died. Wife #6 made sure of that. She also made sure my brothers and I were tossed out of the picture until she finally relented to having me around. 

This was an eggshell walk for me, treading water carefully as to not upset the balance that allowed my continued visits. My brothers just gave up.

Now here’s the weird part, as time went on he just couldn’t understand why things were the way they were. He couldn’t see his role in the drama. Sensing that he was losing his touch on reality in his last years, I let it be and decided instead to try to persuade the brothers to make up and just be a family before he passed. It didn’t work. I spent years on this fruitless endeavor, arguing and pleading with them to no avail. I swallowed so much pride I was drowning in my own tears.

I was with him that weekend at his home, watching his chest rise and fall with each ragged breath, hanging on to life with him in his few moments of clarity, in-between  blissful pain free naps. I held his hand, stroked his hair and prayed for a peaceful ending, letting him know he wasn’t alone. 

I watched as the funeral home came and zipped him up in a body bag and carried him out on a gurney at 5am, after hospice came and declared him what we already new him to be. 

I sat in the funeral home alone for calling hours, my husband having been taken ill that day. I was surrounded by wife #6’s family, very few I truly believed loved him, and senior center friends of his I didn’t know. My family was nowhere to be seen. It was totally awkward sitting there. Many of his ‘other’ family didn’t know who I was, since I was never spoke of by #6. I felt like it was me, not him, that was the ghost in the room. Only one of #6’s family offered a condolence to me, thankfully it was #6’s daughter, who was gracious enough to put aside her own grief to see that I too, was hurting. I dreaded the funeral the next day.

Then a miracle happened. The 3 step sisters who were still alive (1 passed away 2 yrs prior)  and their spouses and children, who’s hearts were also broken by the man lying in the casket, had made a last minute decision and showed up at the funeral, swallowing their pride with me, shedding tears for the relationship they remembered with him, not what for what it became.

I don’t want my readers to get the wrong impression about this post. It’s not a bash my father for the last time kind of thing. He was, after all, a funny man with down home, countrified kind of humor. He enjoyed playing his music and was quite an accomplished singer and guitar player. He played in many bands and gave generously of his time to playing for the ‘old’ folks at the senior centers and nursing homes in his seventies and early eighties, before his health demanded he stop. He was beloved by his friends as an affable, kind man, who would give you the shirt off his back. Like I said, he was complicated without ever realizing it.

There is, of course, a huge amount to tell of his life that would have to be classified as fiction, because, well, truth is stranger than fiction. I just wanted to share this more for me than anything, to help reconcile on digital paper my feelings of undying love for this man and simmering disappointment of what could have been.

If any of you have had a parent like this feel free to comment and tell me about it. I’d love to know I’m not alone.

 

 

 

 

YES I AM ONE OF THOSE

HELP STOP FELINE ABUSE

I didn’t start out like this. I laughed at and sneered at the crazy people who just couldn’t get enough of their pets, treating them like children. Then I met my loving adorable husband. He was a feline aficionado, a rare quality in a man to say the least. He never denied his love of cats even to other men, secure in his own masculinity to say I love….Cats. We’ll save the other euphemism for another time. 😉

Now I am an animal lover myself don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t till I was on my own and had an apartment that I discovered all things feline. I was bound and determined to raise them with dignity, no cooing and coddling, they would grow to be the adult cats with the respect they deserved.

I worked with a woman at that time who had a Shih Tzu named Charlie. It was one of those mop dogs, the kind you wanted to stick a pole up its bum and mop the floor with it. Supposedly a cute small yipper. Charlie went everywhere with her and it was Charlie this and Charlie that. Charlie had to get his hair cut, She had to go right home and make Charlie’s dinner ect… I’m not joking when I say this, for the first six months I knew her, I thought Charlie was her husband till one day she comes into work and mentions Dave.

My world spun! how could this middle-aged woman be cheating on Charlie? I was aghast in horror! till another co-worker who snickered and laughed at me said Charlie was her freaking pooch!

Now this part is sad I’ll warn you.  Charlie developed cancer and mercifully was given the gift of a peaceful death. My friend was devastated of course and she announced Charlie’s funeral would be held in two days for all those who would like to attend.

Wait, What? A funeral for a Swiffer?

My eyes rolled and I shook my head. Thankfully, I thought to myself, that I had to work and couldn’t attend, but I was lucky enough to share in the pictures of Charlie lying in his little doggie casket at his viewing. He was buried lovingly in a pet cemetery.

This whole melodrama was foreign to me. I was brought up that pets are animals and we may cry when they leave us but it is after all an animal and we move on. I believed that till my McTavish. I had Mctavish before I was married and he was a gift from a dear friend. Living alone I appreciated his company, his constant need for attention taking my mind off of the fact that I lived alone. He was a Scottish Fold and my constant companion.

When I married my husband, the feline aficionado, remarked that McTavish was my ‘first’ husband since a lot of my daily concern was for my aging cat. I was slowly starting on my journey to being one of ‘those’. We had by then added to our family several more feline children and as the years progressed on, our decisions even ones where to live centered around the cats. McTavish was by now an old man in cat years approaching 80 + years and I’m positive he appreciated that we moved somewhere that was one level only and I to this day believe it’s the reason he lived to 18 human yrs ,101+ feline, but even then I still hadn’t completely transformed into one of ‘those’ quite yet.

Then ‘they’ came.

Bindi Sue and Cheech

The two bundles of lil’ dog love that insidiously completed the transformation and it all started with the first sweater I bought them. It was January in Detroit after all. The frozen north and the two little ones who weighed no more than a pound a piece when I brought them home needed extra warmth. They are after all Chihuahua’s and barely had fur.

They had to have coats!

They’re gonna laugh at me at the dog park

Help Me the crazy lady is at it again!

Now there is nothing cuter than Chihuahua’s in hoodie parka’s except maybe this

Foolish feel I!

and this

I gotta wear this for how long?

and of course this

I HATE YOU!

So now every time I go to PetCo and PetSmart passing by the mini coats, sweaters, booties, sundresses and team jerseys, I call my sponsor from Pet Clothes are Just Too Damn Cute Anonymous. My sponsor is my husband who says only one word. “NO” 😦

Though recently he did have to admit they did look awful cute in their hoodies.

Now if I can only get him to let me have one of these!

Have a sweaterific day!

Passive Agressiveness and The Art of Writing Drama

The term passive-aggressive is defined as the “unassertive” expression of negative sentiments, feelings of anger and resentfulness. So instead of verbally or physically expressing frustration or anger — or even simply saying “no” when asked to complete a task — someone described as passive-aggressive might simply act agreeable but then not follow through with completing the task.

 

I am a classic passive aggressive. My entry into this world was filled with drama having been born early and with the umbilical cord around my throat. I joke and say I was trying to leave before I even arrived. Ok,  not really funny but that kind of humor is what has gotten me by all these umpteen yrs. I was supposed to be dead and if it weren’t for 1 pediatrician that had refused to give up I would have been. My drama doesn’t end there. My mother for reasons speculated but ultimately unknown killed herself in a most dramatic fashion 1 month before my 1st birthday. my brothers witnessed all the drama and aftermath that shaped their lives forever. My father could only mentioned it when he was drunk. In all my baby pictures and there are not a lot of them, she is never pictured holding me.

Now before you get out a tissue and give me a bunch of ‘awws’ please don’t. My aim in telling you all this was not for pity. I’m over it in a lot of ways except the eternal questions that will haunt me forever and even that’s ok, it’s supposed too. No, I told you this so you know how my passive aggressiveness started and why it is I think it makes for my love of writing drama.

My co-author Joi recently decided to write the drama of a 4 way argument of our characters in book 4 of our series we are writing now. She told me by the end of the day she was utterly exhausted having the arguments in her head and having it with each character telling her what they wanted to say. If you’re a drama writer I dare say you’ll understand that statement.

Now I am the one who usually handles this and even though, yes it is exhausting , it is also where I live. It gives me the ability to take out the hidden aggression buried deep in my psyche and release it on an unsuspecting audience. I want to tap into anger? I only have to look no farther than into a ready stream of memories of my childhood.

Here’s the weird part. I love to write drama, I want you to feel the thrill of the roller coaster ride of emotions that ensues when you know something big is going to take place. I want you talking back to the characters, yelling at them how mad you are at their actions and words. I want you to believe they and all their problems and triumphs really exist, but I can’t watch it neither on television or in the movies. I watch Scandal on the edge of my seat eating Tums. I recently saw an ad for a new movie with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney where they are in deep shit in deep space. I have to change the channel till it’s over. The ad also has the nerve to say you can enjoy the movie in 3D. Are they serious? I would have a heart attack!

Now if anyone reading this is a psychoanalyst or just psycho, please feel free to comment on the weirdness of that. Just keep it clean. I would also like comments on your feelings on writing drama. What do you tap into? Where do you go to bring it out and bring it to life on paper? How do you feel after writing a scene that is argumentative drama and what do you do to get yourself back to a normal emotional state?

Looking forward to your comments and here’s wishing you good mental health.