Tied The Knot

On the 27th of May, Combat Boots and I tied our union down at the county courthouse. We wore our finery, went to a nice dinner that evening and got a hotel room with an in room jacuzzi, jaaaa. It was a planned ordeal which was supposed to originally occur in February, not May, but because one of his superior officers had a hair up his butt one day, it got pushed back. We finally got to tie the knot and I'm happy we did. I'm not very happy that we only had two weeks with each other, though.

He was granted his two weeks of leave before his deployment to towelhead land, which he had to leave to within a week from when he got back to his station. We spent an amazing two weeks spending time with each other and family. One week at his parents house in Maine; one week at my father's house in California. Maine was gorgeous and beautiful, California pissed me off. I hate traffic. Especially California traffic where everybody drives like an asshole. About half the time we were in California we were either smothered by my G-ma or stuck in traffic.

Although we had such a limited time, we enjoyed each other in Maine, where we spent time out together or with on of his siblings or even just with a few of his relatives. Except for when we got called up in front of his mother's church. I didn't really enjoy that. Nope, not really. In California, we enjoyed each other and food. That would sum up California pretty good, other than we were both about ready to throw my G-ma overboard.

We started out our marriage healthy and happy. He leaves for Afghanistan this weekend which makes me nervous, but I'm sure he'll make it home in one piece and I'm sure our marriage will survive the year he'll be gone. 'Cause if we can make it through a year of him gone living in a war zone, we can damn near make it through anything.

The Gopher Mocks Me

For the past year, my backyard has had a Gopher which undoubtedly has turned into the Gopher and it's offspring, which has continued to tunnel and tear up my yard. We've shoved the hose down countless of fresh holes (One time even managing to get it stuck four feet in the ground. Intelligent fucking rodent). We've shoved poison down its holes. We've sat outside with BB and pellet guns, waiting for it to rear it's small little rodent head out of one of its many holes. I've even sprayed the entire backyard with weed killer in order to try to deter it, kill it, make it go away.

It won't leave. It won't leave permanently, anyway. It seems to pop in between my horny neighbors' yard and my own, and probably some of the other neighbors yards as well. No matter what we seem to do to get rid of it, shy of blowing up the backyard, doesn't seem to work and since it's been mocking me the past two days, I'm even more determined to kill it.

We've been tearing down the pool we've had in the backyard for about the past ten years or so, a rather large dough-boy. It's gone through numerous liners which all seem to fail and allow grass to grow through, it's suffered through the Gopher tunneling under it, making some parts underneath the liner cave and sink. And It's suffered from greenness (lack of chemicals). It just got to the point where it was hard to keep up with the upkeep of it, especially since chemicals aren't cheap, so it was decided that we (as in me) tear it down. And the Gopher seems to enjoy mocking me while I carry out this mission.

Yesterday, while pulling pool parts onto the concrete so the lack of sun wouldn't kill the grass (or what's left of it), the gopher presented itself two feet away from me, nibbling on some grass. I lacked in hand killing tools, and as I reached for the area I heard it (with gloves on of course), it got away. I shoved a handful of poison in three of the holes nearby and when I went to put the poison away, one of them had been filled in by time I had returned. I hoped the poison would take effect.

Today, while filling in the area where the pool had been in, I came across a tunnel in our man-made hill which I was getting the dirt from. I continued on digging and filling up the pool area, when suddenly the Gophers little rodent head reared itself out of one side of the tunnel. Bye time the shovel had come down where its head had been, it was gone (and not in a dead way).

I am determined to kill it, but the poison doesn't seem to work. Trying to drown it doesn't seem to work. Weed killer doesn't seem to help. My dog is defective, he doesn't seem to help. And trying to shoot it doesn't seem to work either with the network of tunnels it hides in. I need explosives. Because it will die, one way or another.

Off Limits

There are definitely points in time in my life where I just want to turn around, bitch slap someone and say “what the fuck”. Especially to my neighbor.



Ever since he’d moved in next door he’s been oogling me to the point of even trying to make a go for my pants. Not that I didn’t look when he first moved in (before he acquired a beer belly and a disturbing red beard), I did. But I was also desperate (very). I hadn’t had much (any) male contact for about two years which had been even remotely similar to dating.

When I had started going out with guys again, he took notice. By that time I had definitely lost interest in my not so hot neighbor. However, he’d watch my dates walk me up to my porch after our date (or in some cases see the pathetic jerks drive off). Then take that as his que to launch right in through text message, calling, or sometimes catching me unawares while I’d be out going to my car or collecting mail. Poor fool for not realizing I wasn’t interested. And I, not having the heart to tell him off, just tried avoiding him.

He was fairly persistent though, especially when I’d been dating Air Force Fag. He could have seen us together and by time Air Force Fag had driven off, I’d be getting invited next door. He didn’t think it was a problem I had a boyfriend. He just wanted to have a little fun with no strings attached.

No strings attached you say Not So Hot neighbor? Well aren’t you just a barrel of laughs. Being the type of person I am, I could never cheat. Even if I knew a relationship would never last. And if I were to be tempted to cheat, wouldn’t I want it to be with somebody remarkably better looking? With somebody who had a bit more to talk about than weed, baseball and hockey? I am more content at the moment with sitting and talking with my fiancé about absolutely nothing and watch him pick his nose, than sit there with my neighbor and talk about that crap. I have almost no interest in sports and I hate drugs. I’m pretty sure that would cut down the topics of conversation.

Even when he has been told off, he just hangs out on the sidelines, still watching me wash my car or do yard work. Occasionally he’d text message me, which is somewhat easy to ignore.

I guess I just don’t understand how many times you need to tell a person no in order for them to get the picture and just move on. It's not that I play hard to get; I don't. I play 'I'm off limits, don't touch me.'

The Little Things

It's interesting that something as simple as a letter can bring a smile to your face.

On my never ending quest to get the house ready to go, I came across the stack of letters I'd received from my fiance when he was in basic. They were sitting nice and orderly next to a pile of school work on the floor in my former bedroom. I grabbed them and sat on my parents' ridiculously over sized California King bed and sat there, pouring over them. Reading them in the order they had been sent.

At the time we hadn't been a couple. Just good friends who were obviously attracted to each other, but each of us held back by something (Mostly just stupidity, on my part anyway). To sum it up, I was wasting my time with an Air Force Fag, and he had just gotten out of something with a woman I prefer to refer to as Harpy.

He'd left off to basic in March, on his birthday. I kept giving him my address and made him promise to write me, after all, he wasn't going to be giving my phone seizures anymore with our constant text messaging so how else was I supposed to talk to him? They took his phone when he got there.

I was so anxious to get his first letter, with our line of communication hindered, it felt like something was missing. When I finally did get my first, my father had brought it in and gave me a smile and a hard time over receiving something from him. Apparently it was quite a shocker when we asked his permission on marriage. Harhar Daddy, harhar.

The phone calls that he managed to make my way when he'd finished talking to his family, the letters, the text messages. I'm not sure if it could have been any more obvious. Had I known a year from then that I'd be engaged to that man, it would have made a lot more sense. However, had I known five years ago that we'd be getting married, I'm sure both he and I would have gotten quite a laugh out of it.

There's a fine line between love and hate. And Sometimes you have to do one before you can get the other.

Five Minutes From Now

I've always considered myself somewhat of a writer. Not a dedicated blogger or diary writer, I don't chronicle-ize every event or detail of my life. As far as I know, there aren't even many pictures of the major events which have taken place in it. Not like anybody would recognize me in half of them anyway. I was a fat kid. I liked cake, as well as most things with sugar.

Getting back to my point, I've been feeling the itch to write lately. Not the stories I can never finish because my mind drifts to a completely different idea after the first chapter or two have been written. Not my classy rhyming animal story-poems which everybody seems to love getting (courtesy of six to seven text messages in a single minute while I'm bored at work). Not even my normal poems. I've just been wanting to write; write about something, nothing, anything. I'd been pushing off creating a new blog or journal for a few weeks, but tonight I need to get it out of my system and I'll have the common decency to hit it on a sad depressing note that hits home.

Five minutes from now, would be my parents twenty fifth anniversary. It would also be the day my mother died. It was the end of a long struggle which involved breast cancer, big rigs, pack-rat tendencies, brain tumors, hospitals, designated time of living allotted, strokes, doctors, pack rat tendencies, Race For the Cure, free samples, garage sales, yard sales, coma, pack rat tendencies, bad motor skills, another coma, and finally kicking the bucket. I don't know if I mentioned the pack rat tendencies, because those were absolutely horrible (I'm still cleaning up after them. I don't understand why somebody would need so much useless junk).

On a more serious note, I did love my mother, I still do. How could you not love the woman who carried you in her womb for nine months and probably went through hell in order to evacuate you from her uterus prison? Then proceeded to raise you with love and affection, even if she did have somewhat of an odd sense of humor. She was a strong woman who drove trucks, and apparently wore three inch heels when she did it and didn't swear like a longshoreman. She fought through a life threatening illness starting with the breasts, migrating up to her head, suffering from a major stroke and two minor, pulling out of a coma and raising two children. She was a fighter and a survivor.

She also had a knack for collecting useless crap. And lots of it. Heaven forbid if you drove past a garage sale (or a yard sale or an open house) sign and didn't hunt for that fucker in one of those intricate maze of a neighborhood. Nor could she pass up a Pick-N-Save (currently known as Big Lots) without stopping. After she had stopped driving (after her first stroke), her fellow drivers would joke that the company trucks she had driven were programmed to stop at them. Did I mention she had a fascination for free stuff? She had a fascination for free stuff, no matter what it was, and she was determined to stuff it, cram it and coax it into every nook, cranny, and crevice which wasn't filled with her garage sale/Pick-N-Save stuff.

My mother definitely had her hobbies, but writing to complain about them and how I'm still cleaning up after them really wasn't my intention.

Five minutes from now, that strong, fighter of a woman was on her death bed, in a coma she wasn't going to come out of. She had been in hospice care for a week, taken off of life support after a couple week struggle in CCU because the doctors said if she actually pulled through that time, she'd hardly be more than a vegetable (with a tracheotomy). I think telling the doctors to pull the plug was one of the harder things I've ever had to do in my life and it was done as a group effort with my brother and my father.

We shuffled in that week: me, my brother(who I keep wanting to refer to as Idiot. Is that so mean? Ah, hell, Idiot), my mother's sister, G-ma (because my grandma is so gangsta, not really), various other family member's I'm not going to touch base on tonight, and some of my mother's support group friends. Each of us sat there almost in turns, sometimes together, sometimes alone with my mom. We'd pass the time by reading or listening to music and I remember going out and buying Dumbo and Grease on DVD so I could pop it in my laptop and hoping that she might like watching one of her favorite movies before she was gone. Not once since my mother was moved to the nursing home did my father go see her, and frankly I don't blame him for not. He's not the type of person who's ever been good with hospitals or death (not like anyone is). I couldn't blame him especially after her last full day, because that's when the death rattle began. It's a sound I never hope to hear again in my life. It's a sound I hope most people never have to hear. Like ever.

I remember when I finally convinced him to go see her for the last time, not long after seven pm. We didn't even make it out the garage when my mother's sister called him and as far as I know, she didn't even say anything. We rushed over to get Idiot after that, who's street of residence of the time was blocked off by the police because of a high speed chance which had just ended there (convenient, eh?). The rest of it is rather easy to gather, I'd imagine. It's not something I really like thinking about, not like I like thinking about any of it because it's quite depressing. I'm not sure if it's horrible, but all I can seem to think about now is how I hope I don't look like that when I die.

Today, Idiot and I will each go at different times to buy flowers and go to the pier to pay our respects. She was cremated and her ashes spread in the ocean. We'll each call our father and either hope he doesn't realize what day it is and have a normal conversation, or somewhat console him.

I know my mother didn't like it when my father forgot about their anniversary, but damn, what a way to make him remember it for the rest of his life.