When I was about eleven years old, my Grammie and Grampie came to stay with us because of proximity to a first-rate hospital, which wasn’t available in our little pissant hometown. The hometown that I dearly love.

Grampie had had a heart attack in his mid-fifties. We weren’t supposed to jump out of nowhere and go “Boo!” because that might get his heart all wonky. This was revealed to me after several such incidents.

He was also very superstitious. I tortured him by raising an umbrella inside the house. I’m sure he was freaking out all day (now that I consider it. I was a total arsehole then, and considered nothing) That same day, I fell through the ice at recess, while playing on the forbidden lake, and hid this from Grampie, so he wouldn’t say “I told you so.”

But the nicest way I killed my Grampie was at mealtime. We had to stay seated at the table until our plates were cleaned. There were only two things I absolutely could not gag down. Liver. And cabbage. I never did make friends with liver.

Grampie, because of his heart condition, was not allowed chicken skin. Thus, the bargaining would begin. I would cleverly hide my chicken skin under the heaps of cabbage on my plate, and we would both eat very slowly. Everyone else was excused from the table. Grampie was left to supervise the cabbage consumption. My Grampie would wait until the coast was clear, and eat my cabbage for me, to reveal the forbidden chicken skin underneath.

Oh, how we rubbed our hands together in conspiratorial glee that we had foiled the food police together!

Unfortunately, Grampie died while staying with us. Another heart attack.

I miss him.

And I still save the chicken skin for him.

It’s the least I can do.

Redneck Mommy is on a road trip. A six hour trip with three kids and no husband.

Amateur.

I’ll bet she has one of those roomy suv thingies with dvd players.

I travelled from the west to the east coast of Canada with my family. In a hillman station wagon, which, I believe, is now extinct.

Photo found here.

So? I’m old. Get over it. My point is that there were four kids in the one back seat. Of a tiny car. With very cranky parents, who were on the verge of killing one another and their children divorce.

Of course, we want to travel cross country under those circumstances. Who wouldn’t?

When there was fighting or any disruption whatsoever from the back seat, Dad didn’t even look. He just back-handed a wallop, and whoever was in the way got it.

I very shrewdly made it my business to sit directly behind him, out of reach. I was smarter than my siblings.

Many times, the trip was boring, boring, boring. From my relatively bullet-proof position, I would bug my siblings. Maybe poke them, anything to annoy. I was inconsolable. Elvis had been drafted into the army. Anything to take my mind off my grief.

Tanis? Be very grateful you didn’t have my eight-year-old bad self in your backseat.

Enjoy your trip.

Lightweight.

Snicker.

UPDATE: I saw on twitter that Redneck Mommy’s husband had been gassed at the workplace. He’s in critical condition in the hospital in Edmonton.

Anybody have kind thoughts, prayers, healing energy, please send them Tanis and Boo’s way.

Long ago, I used to sell cars. This was thrilling to me because I was the first female car sales rep in my region. I’m a groundbreaker alright.

Friday nights were a hoot. All hands were on deck, but nobody wanted to greet any customers. Why? You might very well ask.

The sales manager, Saucy Man, would gather us in his office for the weekly “sales meeting”. There was always full attendance.

The sales meeting would begin with Saucy Man producing a 40 oz bottle of Bacardi, removing the cap, and throwing said cap in the wastebasket with the same announcement “We won’t be needing this anymore.”

It was there that I learned to play bullshit poker, but with money, rather than cards. I forget now how it’s played, except if you were called on your serial number, and didn’t have what you said you had, you lost the money. We also made crazy bets, like one guy suckered me into a bet that he could drive a stick shift without ever stalling and without ever using the clutch. I figured he had forgotten about stopping, so took him up on it. He switched off the ignition upon stopping, thus preventing a stall.

It was there that I first learned the word “dirtbag”, a word I promptly used on the winner of aforementioned bet.

We ate lunch at the tavern, every day.

I saw some sleazy things go on in the dealership, and it wasn’t until much later that I figured it out. By “it” I mean, how did they live with themselves?

I myself, was insulted if someone distrusted me and assumed I was lying. It drove me crazy.

Most of them did lie and misrepresent the used cars. I was also indignant when they stole my deals out from under me.

Guess liquor is great for pushing that pesky conscience aside.

Fuck you very much.

My Mom was a real pissah, and I mean that in the best possible way. She died three years ago, and I still miss her.

She was plenty quirky, and could be tough. I knew that she loved me, and that? That was enough for me. I accepted her exactly the way she was. Hah. Like anyone was going to change her or anything. Not.

Whenever someone does something that could be trouble, I often say “I’m telling Mom”. Because it is meant to strike fear in their hearts. Even though she’s dead and all.

I was bantering with Angella last week because she wrote something about donkey balls on her blog. It was a bit of a surprise from her straight and narrow approach, so I immediately gave her the “I’m telling Mom”. She didn’t seem very afeared but she should have been.

My Mom had a boardinghouse at one time. This meant that there were up to ten working men who took meals and lodged at the house. She had to get up very early to make their lunches and breakfast. I know this because I helped her. It was quite the production line, but always fun, because we did it together.

If payday came in the middle of the week, some of the boarders would bring booze up to their rooms, play guitar, and generally get wasted.

Mom would holler up the stairs that they had to keep it down because she had to get up early. She wasn’t kidding.

When does a drunk person ever keep it down? The noise, I mean.

I’ll tell you when. Mom threatened after the first warning that the next time she would come upstairs, haul down the drawers of the offender, and slap his arse.

Yes, grown men.

That’s exactly what happened. She administered a spanking on a grown man’s bare arse in front of his buddies. They all started snickering, but stopped instantly when she turned her fury on them and pointed.

“If you keep it up, you’re next.”

It became very quiet that night. After that, all she had to do was holler once upstairs, and the party, it was over.

Told you she was a pissah.

Nan has challenged me to write a true ghost story. Which to choose? I have plenty.

I have slept in the deathbed of two different people. Different beds. The second was completely uneventful.

The first was old Dan Coakley’s deathbed. Yes, the bed came with the house. It was an estate sale. That worked for us because we had sold our house and everything too expensive to move, and used what we could in the death house located right next door to the house where I was born.

They look too happy to be near a haunted house, don’t they? One time, my pyro brother, the one on the left, saw something that made his eyes go very wide, and his face go white. He was too young to talk then. We can only guess.

My mildly amusing OCD stepmother often heard a baby cry in this house.

I could live with that. What got me was this one night, (at band camp?) when I had prepared myself for sleep with my beauty routine of putting my hair in rollers, and tying a scarf around my head to keep said rollers in place, I noticed a buzzing in my ears.

A very loud buzzing.

I extracted a beetle from my headgear.

Still buzzing.

Went to the mirror, saw that my head was covered in beetles. And my bed as well.

Imagine the freaking out. Head slapping and screaming ensued.

I think old Dan was objecting to a female in his bed wearing hair rollers. Maybe it pissed him off when his wife did that. Because nothing says no nookie like a woman wearing painful bristley rollers on her head. Unless of course, she sews the hem of her nightgown shut.

He got his way. I never wore hair rollers to bed again.

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