Author Archives: debaucherysoup
Jumping spiders and Buddha too!
Thursday at work, I noticed in my peripheral vision ‘something’ on the wall in front of my desk. I glanced up from being very busy and important to see a little spider. Okay. Little is good. Wall is good. Carry on.
He was industrious because not long after that my peripheral radar alerted me of an intruder on my desk. I laid eyes on him and decided it was time he went outside.
You may be thinking now that I am ‘bug brave’. I am not. I don’t do bugs. But I can’t just kill one either. So I do bugs when I have to. Even scorpions in the Summer get caught or vacuumed up in the bagless machine and placed outside.
Yes, my blood pressure rises to an unhealthy level, yes I have nightmares, yes I’m unreasonably itchy for hours afterward in some psychosomatic state – whilst my eyes dart around the room incase it was just one of one hundred, but I really do try not to kill them
Back to spider.
So I’ve decided he’s going out. (For all intents and purposes, it’s a ‘he’ apparently).
I get a slice of paper and put it in his path. Surely he’ll waltz right onto it and I’ll simply carry him out to the leafy bush outside.
He didn’t know how to waltz. But he had leaping down!
This is the part where I’m squealing like a little girl. Audibly.
A lot louder in my head – trust me, but my vocalizations finally get the attention of the loan officer at the desk across the room.
I explain that no conventional method of capture is going to work for this guy. “Help me! It jumps!” might have been the actual verbiage I used.
He meandered over. “Where is it?”
Good question – I’d taken my eyes off of it. Peripheral Powers Activate!
I focused in and there – on my desk – was the spider taking the last few steps to hide under the shadow of my shut-up Buddha. You remember him?
So he’s at the base of Buddha’s rock. Probably meditating on how much higher he could leap at me should I go through with my attempts of relocation. (The shut-up Buddha isn’t working by the way, I bite my tongue and look at him, but unedited words still fall out of my mouth all day long).
“Get an envelope” the loan officer says. Oooo! Good idea. Yeah – we can encase him safely for the trip!
Goes off without a hitch.
I scoop up the envelope.
“Don’t squish it”, he says – as I close the flap gently, just in case. No! I didn’t Close it close it – just put it down so there was no escape route.
Outside I go with him.
There. He’s happy. He’s free. I’m happy (a little itchy and looking around the room, but happy).
Back to work we go.
Fast forward to Friday.
Alone in the office – peripheral alarm starts to bleat out a warning.
What the heck?!?!
On my wall – a jumping spider.
I’m fairly certain the other guy didn’t find his way back in – so as I was telling my friend Betty, we’re left with the only reasonable, non-alarmist, sane answer – Jumping Spider Infestation!!!
(Okay, probably there might be a little family. But I’m sticking with infestation).
I emailed the loan officer something that could have passed for a telegram SOS.
“Help! Spider! Infestation! Should close office!”
He responded sometime later that yes, sounded like immediate closure was called for.
Followed by a damn winky emoticon. Pfft. Those ‘winky’ things mean someone is kidding right? I was left with the real danger.
I made it unscathed through the day. And this morning – my Betty puts this horror on my Facebook page.
It’s over four minutes long, you won’t need to watch for that long to be itchy and darty eyed the rest of the day.
Happy Spider! Saturday!
Picking up my basket
Last couple of days have been kitten-on-crack crazy!
To put it plainly, I dropped my basket. (If you’ve read Divine Secrets of the Ya–Ya Sisterhood you know what I mean by that).
The rift between my son and I, over the most ridiculous matter – fed itself with silence and grew. And grew. And grew.
Yesterday morning had me inelegantly dropping a toaster strudel and it’s plate onto his bed (I’m SO mature) and lead to him leaving without a hug or a goodbye.
So I spent yesterday at work in a daze. Physically ill. A little crying jag at my desk.
My last blog post is staying. It’s exactly how I felt at the time. Drama Queen sash please. And a little crown too?
This parenting stuff is HARD! I would literally give my life for this human that has the ability to mortally wound me with one cutting look.
Bonkers. Teddy Bonkers!
I came home to a boy behind closed-door again. I was so … sad. I crossed the line in the sand (his threshold) and went in.
I’ll spare you and my son all the in-between bits – but at one point I was told (well, technically he wasn’t talking to me, so I was IM’d) the sentence that I had made it almost 18 years without hearing. “I’ll move out as soon as I can”.
Now, I don’t want to stereotype, but I imagine most parents upon hearing that would chuckle to themselves and wish their offspring ‘good luck’, while knowing deep down their birds were not going to actually leap from the nest.
Not me.
Nope.
That sentence shot through me like a bullet. My gut suddenly had a brick placed in it. My eyes welled up and I furiously typed back in response to my sons words. (Yeah, we’ve really come to that. Typing to each other).
Fast forward to him cautiously coming out of his room after I fell apart and told him he has never ever, ever been told he had to move out – (man did he play me like a fiddle xbox!) and we mended our bridge.
I hugged him tight – tears streaming down my face, and I’m gulping air like … I’m not sure what gulps air?? You get the picture. As I sobbed “don’t SAY that – don’t ever SAY that” it dawned on me I was wound around his little finger tighter than unbreakable thread. (It’s apparent to me now that I’m going to need to buy a house … with a basement for my 40-year-old. Because whether he wants to take flight or not – I’m clearly not up to it).
The relief at the disappearance of the tension in the air was palpable.
We both joked and laughed. Then his joking got a little cocky. Then a little rude … and I looked at my almost-a-man boy and asked, with wet cheeks and racoon eyes:
“I thought the flu was going around, not asshole?”
Self. Indulge me.
Indulge me – and my foul mood.
You know, I read a friends blog who has Aspergers, and a common thread that I pull from her carefully woven words is that she is trying to process the world around her and her place in it. But what I feel from her words to a degree of envy, is that she knows herself.
I don’t know who I am anymore.
I feel, right now, like a bundle of contradictions – my muscles and my gut tight with the many facets of me that don’t play well with one another.
I despise liars, cannot stand to lie – yet lie to myself.
I cry at romantic movies, and a part of me yearns for the fairy tale ending, while the rest of me knows no one could possibly scale the walls I’ve built around me.
I abhor child abuse – and yet, just this afternoon I spat ugly words over the phone at my son after I perceived that he lied to me, when he was suddenly ‘not hungry’ after I asked him what he wanted from the shop for dinner rather than a drive thru. The sudden, let down, it’s-not-good-enough tone of his voice hit me where it hurt. I seethed. Thinking, ‘Ingrate’. And let him have it.
I might as well have slapped him, because I know how painful venomous words are.
I am impulsive and ugly. I am better alone.
I am always so desperate to please, then resentful that people take so much from me.
I am contradiction incarnate.
And now I am home – and the door to my sons room is closed, and the light is off. And we may as well be a thousand miles apart.
And we are.
I’m in my self-hatred and he is probably letting a nap take him after licking his wounds.
I won’t open his door.
I am stubborn. I am grateful for every day and painfully aware of how, without warning there can be no more days – and yet I squander them.
I don’t plan for the future.
I am content with ‘enough’, yet also settle.
I work hard – I give and I give all that I have. And I am tired. I am not well.
Somedays I only know what day it is because my pill-box reminds me.
I count my blessings, and neglect them.
I am 43 and responsible – and inside right now I just want to curl into the smallest ball I can muster and sob my soul right out of me.
I’ve never felt so alone, and yet have so many friends.
I say I’ll bare it all on my blog and yet, almost every post I find I edit in some way.
Well not this one.
Pressing myself to read … a 2013 challenge
I’ve given myself a challenge. You know, when I accidentally lost weight years ago, it motivated me to keep going. I succeeded beyond my expectations.
It occurred to me a week or so ago that since Christmas, I’d read 6 books. Thanks to some gift cards for Barnes and Noble I filled my nook with amazing authors.
I LOVE to read. Ever since I was little, I immersed myself in fairy tales and incredible stories of far away lands, real and imagined.
During the trip from France to India, reading kept me company on the coach. When we hit a man in a small village during our travels, I kept my nose in Alice in Wonderland to keep from the chaos that was too much for a 9-year-old girl.
Books have always been my friends. My favorite pastime.
So! My challenge for myself – to read 50+ books by next Christmas.
I’m on my 8th book so far.
I would recommend any of these, here’s the tally/list so far:
Gillian Flynn is one of my new favorite authors. She had me at Gone Girl and brought me to Dark Places and then Sharp Objects. I found Jodi Picoult who spun a tale with alternating narrative called The Pact: A Love Story.
Harlan Coben reminded me that not everything is as it seems in Caught.
Cathy Glass broke my heart and reinforced my faith in humanity at the same time in Damaged.
Stefan Kiesbye blew my mind with, Your House is on Fire, Your Children all Gone. (SERIOUSLY amazing book – I’ll have to read it again because there are so many layers to digest).
And now I’m out of my comfort zone with a Sci Fi book recommended by a friend. Richard K. Morgan is expanding my mind and my vocabulary with Altered Carbon.
I found it hard to get through the prologue – but I love a challenge. By Chapter three I was hooked. Plus, I actually had to use my nook ‘look up’ tool. I had never heard of the word ‘maelstrom’.
Coincidentally, it also appeared in the Kiesbye novel. Now I know the word well.
I love that about books! Coming away from one smarter – wiser – mind expanded – opinions changed. I love growing. I love connecting with the characters and being taken on their journey.
If you have any page turners (Gawd! There’s nothing like a page turner!!!!) to recommend (fiction please, but I’m game for any genre in that category) please let me know! Discovering new authors is part of the fun!
Mustard Monday
Busy weekend. Long awaited replacement of my bathroom floor occurred. I knew it would be loud and knew Butters would be barking and outside. I requested Monday off. I wanted a day to clear up the sawdust and then to relax.
Nic and I pulled some weeds to the soothing background sounds of a compressor to our left and screaming and fighting to our right.
Yup. The neighbors.
I debated calling the Sheriff – decided against it and went inside.
Later, I was on my porch chatting to my mom on the phone. I saw my neighbor walking to the trash bin we share.
“I’ll call you back mom.” I said. Clicked the phone off and called out to the neighbor lady.
She stopped and walked toward my neck of the lot. I met her half way and I told her I wanted her to know if she ever needed anything, I was available. If she ever wanted to bring the little ones over at a ‘bad time’, I could put a cartoon on for them. She told me, with tears in her eyes that when she got her tax refund, she was leaving. I gave her a hug and reiterated that if she ever needed me … I was here.
I felt like I had finally done something of purpose. Something tangible – I hadn’t called the police, but now she knew she wasn’t alone.
Now I’m feeling a tad different. Woke up this morning – my day full of promise. A day off! A day off!
Got Nic off to school and turned and smiled at Butters. What to do? Read first? Put a movie on? Go back to bed??
Read.
I sat on the porch and as the sun came up and the words of a new book started warmed the cockles of this reader’s heart – I saw … this.
UG! I’m no sleuth, but considering I’ve never ever had an incident of this type before or ever been a victim of shenanigans – the coincidence was glaring.
I didn’t know what the substance was – but groaned before grabbing my camera realizing part of my day off was to be taken up by dealing with whatever ‘this’ was.
Called the Sheriff. I went out to the car once he arrived and noticed there was more.
And more
I filled the Sheriff in on the history with my neighbor. He went next door to ask them if they ‘saw anything’. Yeah right.
And, if they didn’t admit ‘yeah, I did that’ – basically there was nothing he could do.
Of course, they didn’t know anything.
I wanted to call CSI and have them find drops of the substance – I wanted it to lead back to their house, to be on his shoe. GOTCHA! But, apparently that only happens on TV.
So, after the Sheriff left – I grabbed a watering can and cleaned off what I had originally thought was egg yolk. Picturing someone inside their house watching me and chuckling to themselves.
I held my head up higher than was probably necessary just in case.
Who dunnit? I have no proof – but considering the substance, I know we can’t rule Colonel Mustard out.
Debauchery Soup 