Archive for October, 2011

So yesterday I spent the day picking hooker heels out of ceiling fans and scrubbing midget vomit out of the carpet before the J-Man’s arrival home, which obviously indicates that my weekend orgy was a roaring success. In fact, if I don’t have herpes, I’ll be very, very disappointed.

I kid. In fact, B. came over Thursday night to have me help him with a paper, and we wound up catching the tail end of a movie about a woman with teeth in her vagina.

Yes, you read right.

The movie is called Teeth, and was apparently about this crazy bitch that became angry during sex, sprouted teeth in her hoo-hah, and bit off men’s Johnsons.

People, I was horrified by this to the point in which I was grabbing my crotch, and I don’t even have man parts.

At one point, the woman stood up victoriously and stared at her bloody victim while the severed organ fell to the floor, and a nearby Rottweiler – a thing that I have always maintained makes a stellar family pet – picked the penis up in its mouth and chomped on it.

I mean, really, movie writer. Really. Could your mind possibly be any more twisted? Did you have a particularly horrible relationship that led you to this creative moment in your career?

I probably don’t want to know.

We’re the dumbasses that watched it though, and I suspect that a lot of people have checked it out simply because it was just so damned disgusting and twisted.

Then again, maybe I’m just a sick fuck.

Friday night led me to a huge sports bar with a group of friends in order to celebrate my girlfriend A.’s new job working with autistic children. There was an enormous costume contest in progress, which we didn’t know, so all the little hookers and monsters were out in full effect.

Now, I’m used to girls dressing like whores for Halloween because A: they want to attract mates, B: they can get away with it, and C: there isn’t much else available in the way of women’s costumes other than Slut/Dork. And hell, if I were a size four, maybe I too would participate in this practice.

Probably not, but maybe.

Still, I was actually shocked by some of the outfits in this bar. Some of the dominatrix getups would have been far more at home at the punk rock bar, and some girls were wearing nothing more than string bikinis and costumey hats.

“Let’s see… what can I go as this year? Oh yeah, NAKED!”

I mean, shit. I wouldn’t do it simply because when there’s a lot of alcohol involved, you’re almost begging to get groped by every available gentleman, and perhaps raped in the parking lot. And I know, some uber-feminist is undoubtedly going to pipe up and tell me that no matter what one wears, one shouldn’t be a target for sexual assault, but come on, kids, this is the world we live in. You’re leaving yourself wide open if you show up to a bar in a string bikini.

That’s just how it goes with pervs who have had ten shots of Jagermeister.

Speaking of shots, two dudes sat down at our table and asked us to dance. After several rounds of refusal, they started plying us with shots, which is, of course, always a good thing. Free drinks? Sign me up! I generally only drink beer, but during the rare occasions in which I’m out with these particular ladies I tend to indulge.

So I had a couple shots of tequila, and then something cinnamon-ish was placed in front of me that I didn’t recognize.

“It’s Liquid Cocaine.”

Sweet Holy Mother of God. Not only was it inordinately nasty, it left me reeling. It left all of us dancing to something called the Cupid Shuffle, which I certainly didn’t know, but I learned. I learned it because it was both the easiest and dumbest line dance I have ever seen in my life. What happened to stepping that took some actual skill?

There are photos of the evening, and in all of them I think I am screaming “WOOOO!”, because I am that drunk girl. I am also the drunk girl that texts a lot, and allow me to remind T-Mobile once again that they really, really need to put a breathalyzer on my phone.

B. doesn’t drink, and he claims to get a kick out of my drunk texting, but I’m sure it inspires an eye roll or several.

Afterwards we ate like ravenous wildebeests and I then went home and drank a quart of Gatorade and a gallon of water, so I wasn’t hung over the next day, but I sure was tired due to the fact that the J-Man started to text me at eight o’clock in the morning and every ten minutes thereafter to tell me that Yes, he was coming home. This left me with three hours of sleep.

You may think you can party all night as a parent; but really, you never, ever can, even when your kid is a thousand miles away.

J. arrived home last night with tales of monuments and memorials and a funny bus driver, and even though his partner for the trip was the ONE KID there that bullies him in school (what luck), I think he had a pretty good time.

Now I just have to upload the nine hundred photos that he took off of his iPod onto the computer and see whether he took any pictures of quality.

Today is my mother’s 65th birthday. She is celebrating by getting tipsy on Metamucil and white wine and filing her Medicare paperwork.

We’re also having the redneck relatives over to the house, so it should be a raucous good time.

Tonight is our second little writer’s group, and once again I will be a nervous little bitch when I have to read my crap.

I’ve got to get over that. Maybe I should start reading aloud to the cats.

Or drinking copious amounts of wine beforehand.

Yeah, that.

Happy Sunday.

My son is now safely ensconced on a bus somewhere in the wilds of Washington DC, sightseeing up a storm; having made it through airport security without mentioning the word “bomb” and having made it through his first plane ride without vomiting in his lap.

This begs the question: What will I do for three days and two nights?

I will tell you.

First, I’m going to kick my mom and my stepdad to the curb. I don’t care where they go, they just need to get gone. They can go to a nice hotel, they can move to Arizona, or they can go collect change on the side of the expressway for all I care. I am child-free for the next three days, damn it, and this house is mine.

Then, I’m going to call up everyone I know and also post an event on my Facebook wall, inviting everyone to a massive free-for-all bash out here in the cornfield.

What will take place at this bash, you ask?

I can’t get into too many specifics because I really don’t want the police showing up, but I know that I’m going to have strippers. Lots of strippers. And not crappy, flabby, six-kids-having, Northwest Indiana strippers, either; but some truly amazing-looking strippers from the finest Chicago clubs – girls with the best bodies and the least noticeable nose jobs.

Next I’m going to import some truly high-quality cocaine, because I need something to snort off of the strippers’ asses.

Obviously.

Since this isn’t going to be some crappy kegger, I’m going to need a lot of top-shelf liquor. The strippers are going to be far less likely to get involved in the orgies without a lot of good-quality booze.

Orgies, you say? Of course! My kid is out of town! Of course there will be orgies. I plan to cover entire bedrooms in plastic wrap just to ensure that nothing is permanently damaged, so depraved and dark and twisted shall these orgies be.

I already have my outfit all picked out. It’s composed mostly of leather straps with a little chain from the Home Depot thrown in for good measure.

The fun begins tonight and will last through Saturday morning, giving me a little time for cleanup, a couple of threesomes, and an eight-ball or two before the kid gets home Saturday evening.

Then, if my mom and stepdad are lucky, I might let them back in the house.

Assuming that all the girls have been paid and that all the black tar heroin has been disposed of properly, of course.

Here’s hoping you have a good weekend, too.

So the J-Man is leaving in TWO DAYS and ye gods, I am viewing this trip with such trepidation that it is keeping me up nights.

Is this child going to climb on the Lincoln Memorial? Rip pictures off of the hotel walls? Joke about bombs at the airport? Get lost in the mean streets of DC? Use bad table manners??

I’m a wreck.

I can only hope that I have raised him right – at least partially – and send him off on a jet plane with the carefully packed luggage he will undoubtedly misplace; and pray to God that he doesn’t get beat up or lost, or worse, break his expensive new glasses.

Tonight is the school’s Halloween dance, and the child is dressing up as a corporate zombie, resplendent in a suit, zombie makeup, fake blood, and money coming out of his pockets.

I think that this is absolutely brilliant and I can’t wait to post pictures.

In other news, I was without internet service for a couple of days, and God knows I’ve been miserable without constantly sucking at the Dell teat.

Yesterday Comcast called me to confirm my service call and actually spit this recording into my shocked ear:

“We are calling to confirm that a technician will arrive between 7:30 and 10:30 on Tuesday, October 25. Please hold for a service representative. There are currently seven calls ahead of you.”

SEVEN CALLS. I was supposed to wait for seven calls after they called me.

What crap!

I hung up, wishing fervently that I could hang up seven times.

Comcast came out this morning and promptly deduced that there was a problem with my router. My router isn’t that old, but he unplugged it and plugged it back in several times, and then told me I’d have to get a new one.

“What if it’s just the power supply?” I said.

“Hm.” He took out a new power cord and plugged it in.

Eureka.

“You know, we’re hiring right now.”

I just always look for the simplest solution.

In other news, I was perusing the Target sale paper this Sunday and checking out the Halloween costumes, noticing as always the two choices for women: Slut and Dork; when I came across a Halloween costume for a grown man that disturbed me to my very core.

It was Ernie from Sesame Street, complete with rubber duckie.

I’m sorry, but if you are a grown-assed man dressing up as Ernie from Sesame Street, you have such issues that no woman is going to have sex with you, ever, world without end, Amen.

Ernie from Sesame Street?? Really?? I would like to know whether anyone purchases this particular costume, and then I would like to know whether or not he is a eunuch. I would like to know whether his mother tucks him in at night with a blankie, and whether or not he still reads Goodnight Moon.

I would like to know many things about this man, but I don’t have to wonder what his sexual predilections are, because I’m sure he has none. None whatsoever.

Ernie. Come ON.

In still other news, I am looking into continuing my education online. I am a few credits short of a degree, which is stupid, and I’ve decided to pull a Rodney Dangerfield and go back to school.

Purdue offers online classes, so back to Purdue I go. I am hoping for some sweet financial aid, given the fact that I’m Po’, and also because once upon a time I had some scholarships and Pell grants and all of that happy horseshit.

It would be really fucking nice to be able to defer my student loans as well. They’re not astonishing, but they’re another bill I could do without.

It’s sort of exciting, thinking of returning to school. It gives me something to look forward to.

In still other news, this morning I was talking to the Comcast guy about trick-or-treating and how unspeakably lame it is now, with only a couple weak hours of daylight meanderings; and how when we were kids one used to be able to go out until ten o’clock at night and bag a whole shitload of treats, canvassing multiple neighborhoods.

This then led to a conversation about how no one really gave a shit about safety when we were coming up in the world – how we used to be able to ride bumpily in the back of pickups sans seatbelts, or in cars on laps, how no one wore bike helmets or kneepads while rollerskating, and how kids got all banged up and never saw the inside of an ER (“Put some alcohol on it!”), and how playgrounds had harsh metal slides and metal swing chains and certainly no wood chips to cushion one’s fall. There were no table pads and toilet locks and cabinet locks – you just didn’t touch.

We survived with flying colors, though.

I’m all for safety, but sometimes I wonder whether kids today are too soft.

Does that make me sound like an old curmudgeon?

Good, because I am.

Heh.

Happy Tuesday.

So yesterday B. and I started a little writer’s group with a friend of his, something that is going to grow as we invite others.

I entered into this with much trepidation, as I don’t really consider myself a Serious Writer – more a blogger, a dabbler, someone who writes bullshit on the internet for a small audience of sick people with nothing better to do than read my stupid meanderings. (I kid. You know I love you all more than my luggage.) I used to attempt to write Serious Shit while in college and thereafter, but this sort of fell by the wayside as I grew old and ignorant and started to lose my mind due to overmedication.

We met at a coffee shop, and much to my chagrin I had to read my shit out loud, which is something that I truly loathe. I am not a good reader. I get nervous as hell, I read too fast, and my hands shake. Even though it was just B., with whom I am supremely comfortable and who has read some of my crap anyway, and one other person, I was a wreck.

I managed to muddle through it, and the other girl gave me some really nice feedback and even said that she thought it was publishable, which surprised me.

Hopefully this will be a very good thing and will lean me toward being an actual Serious Writer, and who knows, maybe I will get off of my fat behind and try to publish some stuff one of these days.

Afterwards, I went to B.’s for a family dinner, which was a trip. I haven’t seen his family in almost twenty years, so it was pretty odd to be tossed back into the mix. They were warm and welcoming and sweet, though, and it felt great to be there.

B.’s grandfather lives there, and he’s deep in the throes of Alzheimer’s disease. Watching him took me back.

My mother’s mother started to develop Alzheimer’s when I was about twenty. For a while, I quit my job in order to take care of her.

My grandma was one hell of a woman. She sewed, quilted, and crocheted for the entire family. She could make a thousand pierogi by hand at Christmastime, flipping them nonchalantly while sipping a beer as the kids ran through her tiny kitchen. She walked to church every Sunday until she was well into her seventies. Every weekend, she watched Soul Train. She rode every ride at Disney World, including Space Mountain, completely ignoring the warning signs: IF YOU HAVE A PACEMAKER OR HEART PROBLEMS, DO NOT RIDE THIS RIDE. (She previously had a quadruple bypass.)

My grandmother moved in with us when she started to become forgetful and neglected to take her diabetes medication, and she became a strange woman. She would wake up in the middle of the night, take everything out of the kitchen cabinets, and put all of the cups and plates in the middle of the kitchen floor. She talked to people that weren’t there. She would begin to crochet strips of afghans, stop, and start more. We have a bag somewhere of afghan strips that no one has had the heart to throw out.

Taking care of Grandma was a labor of love, but it wasn’t always easy. Giving her insulin shots was like wrestling a bear. My previously mild-mannered and sweet grandmother became combative and angry when faced with the needle or even the blood sugar monitor. I frequently got punched.

Sometimes I had to laugh, rubbing my sore arms. Sometimes it was all I could do.

Last night, B.’s grandpa stared at the cat and said, “I have to get my shoes.”

“What shoes?” said B.’s stepdad.

“Right there,” said Grandpa, pointing at the cat.

Alzheimer’s is sad and scary and makes you fear for your future, but sometimes you have to laugh.

Happy Monday.

I am in a much better mood today.

Period hormones. They are a bitch. Yesterday I was ready to rip someone’s head off, and that person was very likely going to be my stepdad. Why? Because. Just because.

I would dearly love a hysterectomy, and not just due to the hormones, but because I tend to have more seizures the week before and the week during the evil curse.

I don’t know why this is, but the neurologist tells me that it’s not unusual. This means that half the month, I’m largely fucked.

I have a problem with this.

It would seem that there would be something that could be done about this – some sort of hormone blocker or some sort of med that would alleviate this situation, but as always the neurologist is useless and simply acknowledges the situation and moves on to handing me a big, fat bill.

God love him, because I sure don’t.

I’m currently selling a bunch of shit on Craigslist to the local yokels so that I can fund my trip to Green Bay this year.

No one needs to own as many pairs of hot shoes as I own, so off they go, including the cherry-red patent leather Doc Martens, which are in surprisingly good shape.

It breaks my heart to let some of this stuff go, but I’m just not a kid anymore (sob), and I suppose my need for Docs has waned.

God, it sucks getting old.

In other news, yesterday I had the J-Man practice throwing punches at me. The kid actually can throw a decent punch. He puts all of his weight into it and has a pretty fair right hook, and my hands actually are very sore today from blocking his blows.

I also had him practice shoving me into the couch.

This probably all sounds pretty stupid, as I’m certainly no self-defense teacher and I don’t know my ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to fighting, but I do want him to be able to fight back when he’s getting shoved into lockers at school.

“You know what?”

“What?”

“If one of these little bastards puts his hands on you, I give you full permission to deck him.”

“Really?”

“Yes. And I don’t care if you get in trouble.”

“Really??”

“Yes. As far as I’m concerned, it will be worth it. Just don’t hit anyone in the face and knock anyone’s teeth out, because I don’t want to get sued.”

“Wow.”

“I’m serious. You need to make a statement.”

“OK.”

It probably sounds barbaric and definitely isn’t the politically fucking correct way to deal with this situation, but God, I’m fed up, he’s fed up, and maybe it will send a message to these little assholes that he’s not just going to sit there and take it.

After the first hit, the fight’s usually broken up anyway.

At least I hope so.

In still other news, the spiders seem to have subsided for the time being. Is this because I have killed them all, or is it because they have all taken up residence under my bed??

This is disturbing: I have what looks like a large red welt on my neck. I thought it was a big period zit. My mom, upon seeing it, had another theory.

“What is that on your neck?”

“A zit.”

“No, it looks like a spider bite.”

“AAAAAGH! Don’t say that!!!”

“Well, it does.”

“Do you even realize what you’re saying?? You’re saying that a freaking spider crawled up into my bed and BIT MY NECK.”

“Yes. Because you need to clean out under your bed.”

“AAAAAGH!”

“I’m just saying.”

“It’s a PIMPLE!”

“No it isn’t.”

Sometimes I hate my mother.

You can damned well bet I’m cleaning under my bed today, though.

*shudder*

In still other news, we’re taking my sister and her kids on a hayride with the Lutherans on Sunday.

Hayride with the Lutherans! Will we sing Glory, Glory, Glory in a soft monotone? Will we roast S’mores and hot dogs over an open fire afterward while talking about The Gays and their imminent demise? Will we softly toss hay at each other in the wagon while quoting the verses of St. Paul?

GOD, the anticipation!!

Happy Friday.

Here is where I am today. Sorry for the lack of blog post, but DAMN.

Hope your day is going infinitely more smoothly than mine.

People, I am so distressed.

As you know, I am a basement-dwelling troll. This means that deep in the dark recesses of the TranceCave, I am often plagued by all manner of creepy-crawlies, including large centipedes and spiders.

Now let it be known that I am not just your average arachnophobe. The eight-legged freaks not only strike terror into my heart, they chill me to my very soul. Even the small ones get to me, and upon seeing a spider, I spend the rest of the day frantically clawing at my skin; believing in my heart of hearts that something is crawling on me.

I know it’s ridiculous, I know that I’m a frillion times bigger than the arachnids in question and that all I have to do is stomp on the damn things, but I just can’t help it.

Anyway, recently I found one in my bathroom that was the size of a small tarantula. I swear to God I’m not exaggerating. Its body was the size of two quarters put together, and its hairy little legs were thicker than matchsticks. I screamed, ran to get a broom, and beat the shit out of it for a half an hour until it was completely eviscerated.

This sent me into a panic so badly that I couldn’t even sleep that evening. Surely there were more, and surely they were going to suck my blood until I was nothing more than a pale, crispy corpse.

I wasn’t wrong.

On Monday I headed to the downstairs fridge to grab my twentieth Diet Coke of the day and There I saw one of its evil brethren poised above the washing machine, staring at me, daring me to make a move in its dark direction.

I couldn’t approach it. I did what I had to do.

“MAAAAAAAHM!”

I’m not proud.

My mother, assuming that I probably had fallen and couldn’t get up or was bleeding from the ears, came rushing down the stairs breathlessly.

“WHAT?”

“Giant spider!”

“Where?”

“Look.”

“GAH!”

“You have to kill it. I can’t go near it.”

She took a page out of my book and grabbed the broom and proceeded to beat the hell out of the nefarious little beast.

We then grabbed a can of Raid and sprayed the living hell out of the laundry room, about which I had mixed feelings. Were the spiders going to relocate, possibly to my bedroom?

I wasn’t wrong.

Monday night when B. came over, he was in the bathroom and I noticed something moving slowly across the tile floor in the cave.

It was another spider, another huge one, just ambling around in plain sight as the useless cats watched and did absolutely nothing.

I screamed and hit it with my boot.

Surely this was the last one, I thought. Surely there had to be some sort of cap on giant spiders.

Today I woke up at six and went to feed the cats. I moved the bag of cat food, and out skittered another giant motherfucking spider, who immediately dove under the dryer.

Surely this particular mutant is going to wind up in my bed and eat one of my toes.

I am so frazzled that I can’t think.

I’m ready to set off bug bombs in the house, poison be damned, to hell with the residue. My nerves can’t take another one of these gargantuan monsters.

If you could only see them.

I live directly in front of a cornfield (yeah, make all the Indianny jokes you want), so I can only assume that the creatures are coming from there, so obviously the solution is to soak the field in gasoline and burn it down.

Burn it. Burn it all.

Either that, or I’m definitely going to have to move.

My only consolation is that I found the spiders and not the J-Man, because he’s even worse than I am and surely would have had a fucking aneurysm.

My stepdad thinks that this is all a hoot and when he finds a big spider outside he intones, “Got a big juicy one for you!”

Have I mentioned my distaste for this man?

Yeah.

Anyway, Happy Wednesday. May your day be spider-free.

Still waiting for my MRI results to come in, which I am assuming is a good thing, because anything gnarly would certainly have been spotted and reported immediately, right? I think so.

I should hear something today.

There was no sleepover on Friday, because the J-Man and his guest decided to attend a mass sleepover at the kid down the street’s house.

Now let me explain the insanity of said child’s mother. She’s recently divorced and lives with her three boys. She frequently has the J-Man and six other children from the neighborhood spend the night all at once.

ALL AT ONCE. This would mean that she has ten boys in her home at the same time.

Can you fucking imagine the carnage?

I generally send food and drinks when J. goes there because I feel like I should at least contribute to the fray, because surely they eat the woman out of house and home.

I still can’t get over it. Ten boys. What the hell is she thinking?

She must be on Xanax.

Saturday night B. and I went to see 50/50, which was good, if a little flat. Bryce Dallas Howard’s character was one that you wanted to slap the shit out of, Seth Rogen’s character was, as always, one that you wanted to hang out with; and Joseph Gordon Levitt’s character was one that provoked sympathy and definitely a little empathy.

It reminded me a lot of my mom and her experiences with cancer and chemotherapy.

Afterwards we went out for coffee, and God, do I need to switch to decaf.

Yes, I said it.

I can’t be drinking pot after pot of regular coffee at night. I’m not sixteen anymore. B. was only over until three, but I was up until four-thirty in the morning, tweaking.

All of these late nights and over-consumption of caffeine caught up with me big-time on Sunday and I crashed and burned just as I predicted, having a whopping three seizures and sleeping them off most of the day and evening.

It pissed me off, not only because I wasted an entire Sunday, but because I knew I was playing with fire and did it anyway.

Sure, I’ve been having an absolutely stellar time, but I know that I can’t mess with my med schedule or stay up until four in the morning or go crazy on the caffeine or I’m going to pay for it.

I’m torn between “You Dumbass,” and “It Was SO Fucking Worth It”.

The J-Man is leaving for Washington D.C. in a scant couple of weeks, and I have to admit that I am a nervous freaking wreck.

He’s never been on a plane. He’s never been away from home for more than one night. He’s going to be traveling with the very kids that bully the shit out of him. He’s going to be so far away.

This is my precious BAY BEE we’re talking about, folks.

I know, So Pathetic.

Still, I feel I have every right to be a little worried. I can barely beat the kid out of bed in the morning, and he’s supposed to manage four days in Washington? I shudder at the very thought.

We have been having Very Long Talks about responsibility and taking charge of oneself and getting one’s shit together and ignoring people’s shitty remarks and respecting other people’s time (that’s a big one for my Slowsky) and other such things.

The kid is probably so sick of lectures that he’s ready to duct tape my mouth shut in my sleep, but I am trying desperately to drill this shit into him.

it’s important.

In other news, I sort of love running. I think it gets me a little high.

Happy Monday.

I drank approximately forty cups of coffee last night at a local coffee shop while talking about government and health care and idealism and my future. I came home to my parents’ house with the boy I lost my virginity to and had an absolutely insane amount of mad, crazy, monkey sex. I didn’t bother to wash my face last night, which will surely amount to a face full of pimples. I texted until three AM. I got three hours of sleep. I still smell like boy.

Hello, I am eighteen again.

I freaking love it.

Surely this bodes badly for my health and I am going to crash and burn, but before that happens, before that fateful day; I am going to enjoy the shit out of it.

What I haven’t said about B. is that he more than likely has the worst version of MS, Primary Progressive. He walks with a cane due to foot drop in both feet and has a plethora of other MS-related problems. He’s also on disability, but is in school at the moment to become a nurse. Obviously he won’t be able to be a floor nurse, but he plans to be an advocate for people with disabilities and work in some sort of administrative capacity.

I joke that between the two of us, we have one good brain.

I find it so strange that we’ve been going through a lot of the same things – the fight with Social Security, the endless neurologist visits and testing, the pain, the bullshit.

It connects us on a fairly deep level.

Last night he looked at me and said, “God, this is intense.”

It is.

It doesn’t scare me, though. I feel as if I’m right where I’m supposed to be.

In other news, it’s sleepover night at Chez Trance, which means there will be no sleep again tonight as my house is visited by one of the kids from the cul de sac. This so happens to be one of the kids who very recently made the J-Man cry. Am I holding a grudge? I’m trying to follow the J-Man’s example and not do so, but I have to admit that it’s very, very, very difficult.

This particular kid is the J-Man’s “best friend” (most of the time) and he’s normally a well-mannered, nice kid, but I think he very occasionally subscribes to the mob mentality and once the others start in on J., follows along.

I don’t appreciate that shit in the slightest, but I’m willing to forgive if the J-Man is.

Hell, all they’re going to do is play video games and surf YouTube anyway.

I had to ask my mother to ask my stepdad whether J. could have a friend over. This is how ludicrous our family dynamic is, people. Anyway, she did, and he snapped, “Wonderful.”

This pisses me off beyond the limits of reason. The J-Man is not allowed to have kids in the house, ever. His friends don’t come in. There is no playing at our house, not even in the backyard, because my stepdad (who had FIVE BOYS, mind you) cannot tolerate children. J. is only allowed to have sleepovers once in a blue moon, and only if my mom or I beg.

I understand that the man is old and crotchety and pretty much over having kids around, but for fuck’s sake, we live here. He wanted us here. We have lived here for over a year now, and I am sick to death of walking on eggshells.

God forbid he heard B. and I having sex last night. I will be either put on punishment or stretched on a rack.

He treats me like a child as well, and God, do I feel like a child even saying that. It’s completely true, though.

Anyway, maybe I’m not eighteen. Maybe I’m twelve.

Happy Happy Friday.

I’m so fucking done with these migraines. I’ve had one every damned day for the last six days, and it’s tired, old, and just plain painful.

The triptans I’m taking for them take forever to work, and when they finally do work, they knock me out for a good three hours, thereby wasting a good chunk of my day.

I’m having an MRI tomorrow, and if that’s inconclusive, I’m having an MRA.

This ought to yield a big, fat bill. Still, I need to get to the bottom of this.

I’ve had migraines since I was a young kid. I can remember curling up on the floor of our old house in pain, sobbing, not having a clue what was wrong with my head and wishing I would just die already.

It’s a vicious, stabbing pain, and I’d have to say it’s worse than all the slipped discs put together.

Hopefully this testing will shed a little light on the subject before I perform my own craniotomy with a pair of unsterilized nail scissors.

In other news, the J-Man came home sobbing last night after playing with the kids in the cul de sac.

Apparently he quit a game they were playing and they all started in on him, calling him fat (which is utterly ludicrous, given the fact that he just lost 23 pounds and is nowhere near fat any more), “colossus”, and telling him to go and kill himself.

I swear to God, I would love to cane these children.

I did what was probably the worst possible thing and called one of the kid’s mother to let her know what had gone on. We’re friends, so I didn’t come at it from a place of rage, and we actually had a very nice and productive conversation, but I’m worried that now the kid in question is going to be even more pissed off.

I wish that the J-Man would take these insults with a grain of salt, given the fact that most junior high boys don’t mean what they say and generally talk out of their asses ninety-nine percent of the time; but he is extremely sensitive and takes everything so hard.

I wish I could go through this for him. I really do. He doesn’t want to go to school, he’s stressed out all of the time, and the bullying just never seems to let up.

At the beginning of the school year it looked as if things were going to turn around, but now we’re back to the same old shit.

He’s been marked as a target because he flips out easily, and it’s tough to escape that stigma.

I wish to God I knew what to do. Telling him to toughen up isn’t cutting it. Therapy doesn’t seem to be cutting it, either. He’s just so unhappy, and it breaks my heart.

Junior high is horrible. Just horrible.

Anyway, that’s it for today.

Happy Tuesday.