ADD Ramblings

This just about sums it up for me:

"One day a beaver and a termite were walking down the road together. 'I can eat through a tree with my teeth,' said the beaver.

'That’s nothing,' said the termite, 'I can burrow through a tree.'

Then they heard a voice behind them. 'You two think you’re so smart, but you’re NOTHING!' It was a bitter old drunk lady." --Jack Handy

******

This weekend Jack was pulling out drawers and rummaging through cabinets in the kitchen—nonfood-oriented cabinets and drawers, mind you. “What are you looking for?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Then how will you know if you find it?” I foolishly inquired.

“Oh, I’ll know!” he replied.

O-kee-doh-key.

******

"Life is a constant battle between the heart and the brain. But guess who wins? The skeleton."
--Jack Handy

******
I went to the UPS store to mail our taxes (another year of extensions). This lady with a nasal voice and an abrasive NY accent (sorry, but not really) was going on and on about how another place hadn’t charged her as much for shipping a larger box the week before, so she was going somewhere else to complain some more. Then she complained some more about the packing cost. Then she complained that they put too much tape on the box, so where was she going to put the label when she supposedly got a cheaper price from the other place where she was going to complain? All of this in this high nostril tril while I was in the middle of my would-have-been brief transaction.

The guy helping me told her that he would help her with the package if she would just wait two seconds, but she said she’d drive her car up and get it herself because she didn’t want to have to carry it all that way. When she came back in, the UPS employee offered again to help. “No, I’ll just have to carry it myself,” she opined.

As she struggled through the door, it took her several times to get through—she bumped against the sides of the door repeatedly with the big package, struggling to see her way through--but I just leaned against the counter and watched. So did he. Then I said, “What a whiner! Anybody else, I would have held the door open or something, but I really didn’t want to.”

“Yeah, I agree,” he said.

Is that bad?

******

“Instead of a trap door, what about an area of the floor that just shoots up real quick and smashes the guy against the ceiling?”--Jack Handy

"People were always talking about how mean this guy was who lived on our block. But I decided to go see for myself. I went to his door, but he said he wasn't the mean guy, the mean guy lived in that house over there. 'No, you stupid idiot," I said. 'That's MY house.'" --Jack Handy

******

For some reason, David and I were talking about sunburn. I told him about my Dad’s (his grandfather’s) love of the latest trends. For example, I know he was the first in the neighborhood to bring home the “Peppermint Twist” album.

Anyway, in the early 1970s—yes people still were alive then who are miraculously living today—he purchased a sun lamp with an alternate therapeutic heat lamp bulb. Jennifer (younger sister, but in her teens, so age is no excuse) decided to see if the warming bulb would melt a caramel on her head. So she unwrapped a Kraft caramel, stuck in on her head, and fell asleep under the lamp. Sadly, she mistakenly had the sun lamp in the fixture, not the heat lamp, so she woke up with a terrific burn and a prominent white square in the middle of her forehead that was near to impossible to cover with makeup for over a week.

“Don’t we have any normal family stories that I can pass on to my children?” David asked.

******

“I hope I never do anything to bring shame on myself, my family, or my other family.”—Jack Handy

The Lunatic is in My Head

(Dedicated to cousin Diana--no she isn't dead, but she thought I might be.)


Have you ever felt like a rat in a maze and you don’t even want the cheese anymore? That’s about how my summer has gone. Spending a lot of time alone while Jack travels—he recently returned from Cannes, France—I realized the other night that if someone trained one of those spy cams on me for any given twenty-four-hour period that Jack would have plenty of fodder to have me committed.

Just last night consisted of wandering out to the pool at midnight to make sure no frogs had drowned, talking a Newfy into coming into the house during a violent thunderstorm, and screaming, “That’s it! Where’s the bad dog spray!” as London (a combo of wit and wily) tortured the pug. As leaves, tree limbs, and nuts (besides me) hit the windows, I discovered that Newfy the Bear had already eaten half of a hundred-dollar bed I’d purchased for him. “Bad dog! Bad dog! No more bed for Bear!” I screamed as I hurled the huge mattress into what was once David’s room but has now become a giant catchall for any unwieldy object in the house—including unfolded laundry. Of course Bear didn’t care; he just reclined on the sofa watching my mad Bride-of-Frankenstein choreography enacted to the background of blasting thunder and streaks of lightning.

(An aside: Just the other night, Jack, suffering from jet lag fell asleep on his chair. David, home for the weekend, and I were watching a movie. Still asleep, Jack stood up with arms outstretched and started veering forward and backward while mumbling.

“Look Mom, it’s Franken Dad,” said David. So I guess Jack and I are an appropriate couple.)

Composing myself, I open an e-mail containing the story and a video of Christian the Lion, returned to the wilderness by his owners who had raised him from a cub. Now tears are flowing down my cheeks and I am sobbing aloud as my canines look at me with what-the-hell’s-wrong-with-her-now? expressions. Drying my tears, I turn on an old episode of “Seinfeld” and laugh and laugh (somewhat maniacally, one might say) until the Newfy lands in my lap with London the American Eski-Beagle-Basset-Mo attached. The impact leaves me breathless as the combined weight of over a hundred pounds hitting your ribs tends to do. And then “No Bite! No Bite!” as Bear begins to nibble on my buttocks with his giant white teeth. If you think raising a dog with good manners is difficult, try teaching manners to one that was raised with bad ones by somebody else.

What is that in the little one’s mouth? Oh my God, it’s one of those giant buzzing bugs and it’s still alive! It’s flying at my head! Loud screaming ensues. I have had enough for a day and my imagined spy cam now has some great close-ups of me in a full range of manic emoting: rage, tears, laughter, sorrow, pain, abject fear, and back to rage. Also some good action shots as I crawl under the table on all fours to pick up the shredded hot pink tissue paper that the pups have secreted from a drawer and turned into giblets. “No! No! That is not why I’m in that position!” Where is the bad dog spray, (actually just a spray bottle of water) when you really need it? Now a disheveled, near molestation victim of a mess, I decide I’ve had enough. The pug sleeps with me but this requires some maneuvering as the “pups” like to push their way past me into the bedroom, grab whatever suits their fancy, and escape out the doggy door into the woods to decimate their hapless victims.

Oh yeah! Say I’ve lost control! You try to hold back two dogs with your feet and squeeze through a door while holding an aged twenty-pound pug!

I’ve managed the separation but dare I venture out into the hallway to turn down the air conditioning? No, I decide not to take the risk. Exhausted I fall asleep, but there really is no rest for the weary. I dream that I’m married to Billy Bob Thornton who as it turns out is a twisted, mentally abusive SOB, at least from my experience as his wife. Nice, then mean, then nice he gaslights me by saying, “Now don’t be lak thaat” whenever I react.

“Okay Billy Bob, you’re out of here, because it’s morning,” I say as I get up, get outta bed, and drag a comb across my head. Later I go to get the mail. There’s an invitation to my high school reunion. DAMN IT! Does the torture never stop?

Notice to the class of 1800: Gail will not be attending the reunion. She is currently weaving baskets at a nearby facility for the unstable.

(At least he sent me to a place with arts and crafts.)