Mother's Day

Well this Sunday is Mother’s Day so I thought I’d give a big shout out to all the moms I know and love - and I’ve known a lot of them. It takes all kinds to be a mom - aunts, cousins, grandmothers, friends.....and no one knows this more than my sis and I. You see my sister and I were not raised by our mom, we were raised by our dad. That doesn’t mean we never celebrated Mother’s Day.....we did....we just celebrated it with our dad. 

My sister and I learned a lot from our dad, aka: TheOldMan. We learned that you’re supposed to stick your head out of a moving vehicle and meow when you see a beautiful woman or a woman with big boobs. We learned how to distinguish a “rug” from real hair. We learned which crayons work best to draw on the tv, to put your postage stamps upside down to protest the war and how to turn ordinary swear words into MegaSwearWords...to this day I know people who still say “Assholio”. 

My dad was in way over his head. He had no idea how to raise two little girls from the ages of 4 and 2. But goddamn if he didn’t try. Our upbringing wasn’t normal, especially in 1969, but then again what's normal? He was a painter (especially nudes) so there were a lot of boobs and crotches all over the house. We looked at Playboy a lot growing up since my dad used them as ‘reference’ to paint his nudes..... ...right. After taking a bunch of us kids to the movies, he took us “hooker hunting” on Sunset Blvd and we actually saw a few! He put us in private school because he didn’t want us to salute the flag. Yeah, it was nuts but we did the ordinary thing too. We had birthday parties at Disneyland and cakes covered with sugar frosting and Cinderella carriages, we had play dates and sleepovers, we had music lessons until I told my piano teacher to fuck off. He showed up to our school plays, took us to Dr. Linker, did carpool and on his turn he’d take us to get popsicles, he taught us to cook, taught us about cars, etc....I never thought our upbringing was bad or wrong and I for one never missed not having a mom since I had a mom....she was my dad.

But the bummer for me now is that TheOldMan is really old. He doesn’t remember teaching me about cars, he doesn’t remember how to make red sauce, he doesn’t even remember telling us to meow at beautiful women. Now I’m his mother and he is my child and that is crushing. These past few years have been especially hard dealing with this new person that is my dad. I try to be patient but inside I'm screaming "Hey! You taught me this!" It's beyond frustrating and deeply painful. And just when I think he's totally gone and I've lost him for good, he pulls an old school dad - like flipping the guy off next to us on the freeway and screaming "Assholio!" And that gives me hope! 

I think this Mother's Day gift will be a Playboy and maybe I'll even take him hooker hunting.

Happy Mother’s Day Dad!

Hot Head

I am a hot head. When you look up the word hot head in the dictionary, you’ll see my picture there. The slightest thing ticks me off and if you happen to be in my general vicinity then you’ll be privy to my rant. I come from a long line of hot heads. My dad is a hot head, both of my grandmothers were hot heads, from what I heard, my great-grandmother on my father’s side was a hot head. I’m frustrated constantly and and I hate everyone equally. Everything pisses me off! I don’t volunteer at my kid’s school because of my hot headedness. I’ve never left a job voluntarily, it’s always been because I’ve gotten into a fight with a co-worker or better yet, the boss. I yell at the tv, I speed, I tailgate, swear like a sailor....even in front of kids, I flip cars off while I’m in the car, I flip off cars while I’m walking, I swear at cars....I’ve heard my voice echo off buildings while yelling at something or someone while in my car. I yell at the guy who cut me off without a signal and then slowed down, I scream at the pedestrian who walks so fucking slow across the street that I miss the goddamn light, and I am that pedestrian who flips the car off that revs it’s engine as I’m walking across the street. “I have right of way, asshole!”. And because I’m Italian, I get so worked up over every little thing that I've said, that I cry. I feel really bad for the things I’ve yelled or screamed or said and then I worry that I’ve hurt someone’s feelings and then I can’t sleep. Good fucking times!

I envy those folks who are calm. I have a few friends who are so calm, if they woke up next to horse shit they’d say “Where’s the horse?” Even the teller at my bank looks like she just woke up. How can people be so calm? I want to be calm too. It is my dream to be calm and zen. I’ve tried the Yoga, to become calm and zen, but I had to quit because I got into a fight with the yoga teacher. I tried the walking to walk off my ‘agita’, but I got into a fight with a woman who walks the same route as me.... “hey lady, you don’t own the entire fucking sidewalk!” So I tried the next best thing....drugs. I went to my doctor and I told her I felt like a caged rat because I was afraid to leave the house due to my hot headedness. So she put me on an anti-depressant with a side of anti-anxiety meds. I didn’t think I was depressed and I didn’t think I had anxiety but the crazy people always think they’re sane. I gave it a go. 

The first day felt like my brain was a grape and someone was squeezing it. I was dizzy and unable to walk upright - I had the same haunch like that drawing of prehistoric man right before he loses the hair. The second day was worse and FYI it’s not a good idea to try this stuff when you have to take your kid to Michael’s to buy crap for a school project. But after a few weeks of being on the miracle drug, I realized I was actually going the speed limit, I found myself parking in the mayhem known as the Trader Joe’s Parking Lot, I had dinner ready without even knowing I’d made it, the dishes were magically in the dishwasher, all my crap had miraculously been removed from the dining room table, my hair was brushed, those rogue hairs above my lip were gone.....I had become.....a Stepford Wife. I could get used to this. 

But because I wasn’t anxious anymore I had developed a hearty appetite. As a matter of fact, I ate so much and gained so much weight that my muffin top turned into a cake top. My clothes stopped fitting, I started sweating...a lot, I had gas beyond gas and the worst part of all, the very worst part of all......I stopped laughing. You know that big, hefty, deep, super-sized laugh that really gets your ya-yas out? Gone. I had no passion. Yes, I stopped yelling and getting irate but I was so calm I was dead. I wasn’t sewing or experimenting with food, I wasn’t thrift shopping, I wasn’t drag racing. And you know how I started writing this thing I’ve been writing.....I couldn’t find anything to bitch about! I wasn’t mad or sad or happy or glad. I had no opinion one way or the other. “Go ahead, cut me off...you must really be in a hurry. Please be careful.” I had essentially stopped being me. With no passion, no zest, no ups, no downs, I was like a lump of shit. I was on cruise control. While the medication helped the rest of the city I live in breathe a sigh of relief (literally, some guy who I regularly see on the road pulled up along side me and asked if I was ok because I wasn’t drag racing him), the medication turned me into a zombie of sorts and that was a true bummer.

So I stopped the meds. They didn’t make me calmer, they just made me duller. I know, I know, it’s not ok to yell so much and drop the F bomb at the Target Pharmacy when they don’t have my prescription ready.....I’m working on that (even if I did call them the day before so there is no excuse for it not being ready!) But 'getting it' means I’ve made progress! If being so calm is at the expense of being a funny, vocal, creative, opinionated, person, then count me out. Sure being calm and relaxed can certainly make my life easier but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will make my life better. This is not to say I'm against meds! Let me be clear! They actually helped open my eyes a bit. But for now, I'm ok with being the hot head that I am. Mr.P said he likes when I yell at the tv and sing made up songs about the cats and lean over him while he’s driving and honk the horn and come up with crazy dinners that look like shit but taste good. He said that’s why he married me! And that made me calm. 


So now that I've had my rant, I’m gonna go deal with those douchebags at TJ’s! Fuck me!