Well, I have already shared this story with a few people but maybe YOU haven't heard it yet. First off, I will confess (but only this once): Texas Women don't really carry knives in their hair. They just tell everyone that. And no one has yet had the nerve to test it.
Now, back to the story. It started with an incredibly on target remark re my whining about some chest pain. The comment came from some female who shall remain nameless (see? I did NOT mention you by name, Bike Princess!) and she wrote: "so puleeease be better after another fucking nights rest..." She knew not how so very apropos her comment/wish was. Well, guess fucking what? I got me some of that "fucking nights rest" and I feel ever so much fucking better now.
Recently, after a night of not eating enough food and drinking various "liquids" I woke up not in my own bed with a really bad headache and feeling like I had been brutally stabbed all over my chest. Which it turns out, I had! By a bunch of men wearing masks and I had even paid them for the privilege. I had chest surgery to remove the old chemoport (which I wore out) from the left side of my chest and have a new, modern chemoport installed. Surgery went pretty long because they could not put the new one in the old location. So they had to chop on the right side and install the port over there. With the extra anesthesia required I also got to delight in vomiting for the next 24 hours. Which aggravates chest stab wounds. Did you know that? Neither did I! Plus, I didn't even get to bomb myself out with The Really Big Ass Post Surgery Drugs you are supposed to get to enjoy--especially with big honking glasses of wine, some gin and tonics and, of course my favorite: Pomegranate Martinis. But, noooooo! They, the Really Big Ass Drugs, not the booze, made me throw up even more.
I managed to sleep a little bit on Thursday night (4/17 the date of surgery) sitting upright in a La-Z-Boy chair. Friday I just cannot get to sleep and at 3am (which technically makes it Saturday so it's not a work day for Mr. Pansy) I went in and woke Mr. Pansy up. Because he gave me permission to do this years ago whenever I have this problem. I demanded he fuck me until I could get some fucking decent sleep. The crazed look in my eyes and the fact my hair was all in a spikey standing up scary everywhere way (and it was fucking 3am!) convinced him, yet again, that I probably had a knife somewhere to back up my demands. One long fucking hour later, Ta Da!!! I slept like a woman who had been, well, fucked good and hard and long! YOU try finding a comfortable position when YOU have had your chest all stabbed up to hell and back AND you are going cold turkey since the surgery because the pain pills only made you throw up even more. Believe you me, it is HARD to find a good fucking position under those conditions. But Mr. Pansy bravely persevered.
I am still going cold turkey over here and in a fair amount of pain. For "regular" people (that would be big assed gay pussies like YOU) the pain is about an 8. For me it's only 4 or so. And then on 4/24 I got my first chemo with the new port. Boy, did I really need major blinders on my eyes. Those beast nurses and the satanic doctor just shoved all over the port LIKE IT DIDN'T HURT THEM A BIT to do so. What shits. Makes me extra glad that check I gave them today is going to
bounce.
A cute response I got re this story was this: "wow! sex therapy for chest stab wounds?!? That Mr. Pansy is one lucky sumbitch! Now, did he have to go to medical school to learn that or what? and if so, which school and was there much homework? And do they accept 51 year old first year students?" The answers to ALL your questions, Slow Moe (see? I can keep TWO names secret!) is: NO. Especially when it comes to YOU.
Now, this therapy began at 3am and each dose is only good, apparently, for 12 hours. Mr. Pansy is getting very worn out. Like I give a fuck. I WANT a fuck. Hey! Is it almost 3 o'clock? Anywhere? Mr. Pansy! Get over here, Now! Some people have reacted to my story like this is not what usually happens after surgery. I have not had enough surgeries to know one way or the other. But evidently nothing gets in the way of my needing some of that Mr. Pansy Rousting Rodeo Riding. I am beginning to think they spiked my anesthesia! hahahahahhahaha!
Oh, and lest you stupidly think I may not, after all, be the Most Manned Up Woman In The Universe........72 hours after surgery I went for a bike ride. With the usual caveat: "Let's just see how far I might be able to manage to ride, honey." THIRTY FUCKING MILES later we finally went home. Okay. We did NOT fuck during the 30 miles. That was done AFTER the 30 miles.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Pansy Loves Grease
It took years of Mr. Pansy's begging before Pansy finally acquiesced to going to: The Auto Rama. Who could possibly enjoy that? It's nothing but a buncha stupid cars. Sitting around, with their stupid owners sitting around their stupid cars while other, possibly more stupid, people walk around the sitting around cars/owners. Perhaps the walking around people are more stupid. After all, they paid to come look at the sitting around cars/owners. But wait? The sitting around their cars owners also paid to be IN the Auto Rama. OK, it's a tie as to who is more stupid. The cars for sure aren't the stupid ones. They are the innocent victims. Like Pansy. She knew she would hate it.
NOT! Within a very embarrassingly few SECONDS Pansy realized she was In Love! With the cars. With their owners. With everything about the Auto Rama. OMG, she's a Closet Greaseball Whore Bitch Twin to Paris Hilton! Those stupid cars are hot! Their sleazy, slimey, greasy, stupid owners are hot! Pansy would pay the hot sleazy, slimey, greasy, stupid owners to take her in a hot split second. In fact, she would pay extry if there is grease under their hot nasty pinchy fingernails which she would want them to use to pinch Her Hot Nasty a Lot, or certainly at least until their hot nasty pinchy fingers cramped up. Where did this awful recessive gene come (hot nasty pun!) from? And how did it go so dominant so fast?
Pansy should have known. For many years prior to this Auto Rama she and Mr. Pansy have been avid Drag Racing fans. Not the kind Pansy would like to see which would involve men dressed up like Big Time Female Icon Stars competing in races in high heels. No, Pansy, poor thing and being the Most Manned Up Woman Ever, has had to do that stuff all by herself in all her triathlons/marathons because No One Else Will. But that's yesterday's news.
I'm talking here and now about the monster horsepower, permanently deafening, ground shaking that registers on a Richter Scale, erection simulating/possibly causing actual erections because Pansy damn near gets an erection herself, top fuel drag racing. This stuff can only be fully appreciated Live and In Person. Forget the TV broadcasts, which we also watch without fail. Many a year we'd drive down to Bakersfield, CA in March and much like being at the Tour De France.....right there in front of you, willing to chit chat, etc. are all the biggest, greatest, smartest, home-grown backyard engineers/mechanics/damn near rocket scientists you could ever hope to meet. These guys are actually geniuses, inventors, innovators, serious high-end athletes with jet fighter pilot reflexes and they are greaseballs---all in one hot nasty package and they have PACKAGES, too! And most of them (swoon) are of that "shorter" size Pansy lusts for the very most. Don't even try to hold me back.
Lucky for Pansy there is a stupid little podunk drag racing strip near her neighborhood and one year DON GARLITS came to town as a goodwill gesture. If you don't know who Don Garlits is, do not tell Pansy. She will kill you for that crime. Google him up and even then you cannot know how fabulous this guy really is. You can read all the National Dragster Weekly editions from since before Pansy was born (which she has read because even before she was conceived she was a Very Good Reader) and biographies about him. And read his own stories he has told about himself. And even then you won't know as much about him as Pansy does. Why, at this very second, just writing about him, she is all sweaty and pantish. Ooops! There went her panties. I guess she has a crush on him! ~blush~ And he so deserves it.
So, Pansy goes to some store where greaseballs go to buy tickets to the local drag strip when Don will be in town. To surprise Mr. Pansy. Because it would definitely surprise him to see Pansy run away with Don Garlits right in front of the whole town. Pansy was babbling (can you believe that?) to the counter clerks about Don this and Don that and Pansy loves Don even more than Mr. Pansy loves Don (but not in a gay way) and such. They are smiling and Pansy knows they are patronizing her but she does not care. She is all high just to be able to talk to someone who knows what she's talking about. No, the counter clerks did not know what Pansy was talking about but we can all pretend here for just a moment, can't we? Finally, one clerk excuses himself and goes back into the offices. He comes back out with......FUCKING DON GARLITS. Who has overheard (can you believe that?) Pansy's babbling about him. OH. OH. OH. Don is just beaming at me and so proud that I know all about him and his Swamp Rats and his this and his that. He then comes outside with me, poses with me for pictures which meant he TOUCHED ME!
MMmmmrrrrrRRrrrrHHhhhhhhhhhhhH! I have not bathed since.
Hey! Did you know that Mr. Pansy is a packrat? He is awful. Not to the point that we have a maze of ceiling-high stacks of old newspapers to negotiate through our house. But he is a packrat. I am a military child. Nothing in my possession makes it past 3 years. Except for Mr. Pansy. He's stuck with me. But this particular packratting story has me rethinking my attachment to Mr. Pansy:
Mr. Pansy has saved every spark plug from every car tuneup he has ever done on any car since HIS FIRST CAR TUNEUP in his life. And said used spark plugs were carefully placed in zip lock bags that are clearly and legibly labelled with: 1) make, model of vehicle; 2) mileage on spark plugs; 3) date removed. We no longer even own the cars these fucking used spark plugs came out of. But the bagged, labeled spark plugs live on in our garage. Why? Because, in his very own fucking words, Mr. Pansy says "When the depression comes, these will be useful." There'll be a depression all right. When I'm done slamming the bags of spark plugs into his skull.
Three times....THREE TIMES....Mr. Pansy caught me at the garbage can "that close" to tipping the box of labeled/bagged/used spark plugs into oblivion. Each time Pansy tried to toss the spark plugs it created a fairly severe crisis in our relationship. And then those fucking snotty spark plugs went back into the garage, into their cabinet. The one with special "soft glow" lighting under which the sneering sparkplugs would bask and mock me. You just wait until next time, you little shits.
Pansy actually finally gave up the fight over the spark plugs. This is how bad it got rubbed in her face. (rub anything you want in Pansy's face, Don) Mr. Pansy's brother lives in Atlanta, Georgia. He went to Florida for some reason or other and made a special trip to the Don Garlits Museum (lord let me die now if I can just go to the Museum once) to buy and send to Mr. Pansy this item: a singular spark plug from THE car that Mr. Pansy and his brother saw Garlits race in Bakersfield back in the 50s. It arrived, in a lovely presentation gift box, in a plastic bag, labeled with 1)specific Swamp Rat drag racer it came from; 2)some sort of data re the spark plug; 3) date used/removed. FUCKING DON GARLITS also has saved every fucking thing associated with all of his racing, ever. And labelled it. And bagged it. Well, if it's good enough for FUCKING DON GARLITS, Pansy says "have at it, Mr. Pansy." (please please god let me have at it with Don Garlits just for a few minutes)
I got to give Mr. Pansy not just tickets to the Don Garlits event but also a lovely framed photo of me hugging all close and up personal onto Don himself with big smiles on both our faces. The best part is, if you look real close, there is lipstick smeared on my teeth. How utterly attractive. No wonder all those counter clerks and Don were smirking so much! ~blush~ I can only hope Greaseball Girls are allowed lipstick mishaps. I'd mishap whatever Don wanted me to on him with my lipstick as much as he wants. I know. Pansy should not talk like that about Don. He is not that kinda guy. Really.
Mr. Pansy and I eventually mated and produced two girlie girls, who also rather enjoy drag races. Not as much as mama and papa but they sure won't forget their first, and so far ONLY, event. It was at Sears Point Raceway (last I knew it's now Infineon), which is near the California coast, which means always, always, always cool/foggy weather. Good for racing, kinda chilly for viewers. It had also been quite a few years since the Pansys had been to a live event. I called for tickets, was asked where we wanted to sit, so I said "front and center". Really, where else would a Pansy want to sit? Guess what? Things have changed since those Bakersfield days. More safety (courtesy of Inventor/Innovator Don Garlits) evidently has allowed for more up close and personal seating. We used to sit miles away in bleachers while the cars exploded down on the track. Now we were at most 40 feet away from the exploding cars. How can this be?
We don't know. We don't care. Rock on! Until that first car fired up on the line. Oh. My. God. The concussion thumped our bodies like we were being given full, head-to-toe body blows by Muhammad Ali. The fuel fumes immediately scalded and chemically burned our exposed flesh and our internal flesh. And blinded us by the instantaneous spurting of tears from our frantic eyeballs. And the smoke from the burnouts gave us retroactive lung cancer. What had happened in the intervening years? We figured the crews down on the track were suffering as much as we were, except for that part about they had breathing apparatus on and full bodysuits and NASA ear protection. No wonder not one other person was sitting within 50 feet of either side of us four schmucks! The girls literally dived to the ground, crying and wailing in fear! We all bailed for the concession booths where they were selling ear protection. Not until we bought all 4 options available did we find something that would work for the girls. We were willing to be brutalized by the cars but they were really terrified. And we moved down the bleachers toward the finish line.
It seemed warmish that day and we were overdressed for the anticipated cool/foggy weather. As it got hotter and hotter I, being a Good Mother, kept taking the girls into the restrooms and soaking all their clothes with sink water so that they could stay cooler. With the extra clothing I made "cooling blankets" to keep their legs and arms from burning. We had to re-soak the clothes every 25 minutes. It also seemed we were buying bottles of water every time we turned around but there was no denying it was hot. And it's not even noon. Finally, I cleverly noticed the First Aid Trailer. If you are a mother with darling little wilting children they let you into the trailer. Where is it Air Conditioned! And they had ICE! So I am sucking up all the valuable resources there because I could get away with it. No one else seemed to notice the impending doom.
Around 12:30pm things took a turn. The authorities/announcers "suddenly" realized they had a full-on emergency happening. The whole place was fainting away, especially those who had been drinking beer aka The Official Fuel Of Spectators of Sporting Events. It was 115 degrees in the air.....so god knows what the track temp was but it got freaky! The race is somewhat suspended while trucks came screeching in from everywhere loaded with Now Free bottles of water which at first the stupidoes threw randomly into the air toward the people clamoring like they were in a Fourth World country. That didn't work so well when many of the bottles hit people on their heads. The lines at the First Aid Trailer were huge. I think even the beer sales were suspended.
I told people around me to go soak their clothes in the bathrooms. How stupid are people anyway when they have to get advice from a Pansy? This is how stupid: I had to tell them to NOT use the toilet water, use the SINK water. I suppose some just were too desperate to differentiate. Oh, well. After awhile things calmed down, the races began again, and people were subdued for lack of a better word. That event is still talked about to this day on race shows because it was so uncharacteristically hot. And not in a Paris Hilton hot kind of way.
It's fun to go to drag races. Lots of crazy people to watch, lots of noise, lots of meeting and touching big names like John Force, Tony Schumacher, the Pedregons, the Bernsteins, etc. And not to forget the pro stock and motorcycle classes, either. We just try to pretend and forget about the fumes/exhaust/ear damage/future health problems these things have got to be contributing to. But some things are just plain worth it.
Meanwhile, back at the Auto Rama one year Pansy spied this Extra Special Yummy Snackboy scampering along: Jimmie Lee Vaughn. He's in town at the Auto Rama because he has entered his "Ironic Twist"......one gawdawful fucking ugly GREEN glitteramick metal-flake honking huge Land Shark car. For a short guy, he can sure hustle along. Pansy had to run to catch him! Her pickup line: "What is a handsome Texas Boy like you doing in Sacramento?" He swooned right into her waiting clutches. (Car pun!)
p.s. What ever did happen to those spark plugs you ask? That fucking low life cheating cruel scab sucking shit Mr. Pansy.....Threw Them Away. By himself. Alone at home one day during a remodel he decided it was time for them to go. And he didn't tell me for days. Some load of crap about grieving over them. He thought that "event" was worth crying over? I'll make him cry like a person's never cried before over anything. I may never forgive him. But then he goes and wiggles those hot nasty pinchy greasy fingers of his and............
NOT! Within a very embarrassingly few SECONDS Pansy realized she was In Love! With the cars. With their owners. With everything about the Auto Rama. OMG, she's a Closet Greaseball Whore Bitch Twin to Paris Hilton! Those stupid cars are hot! Their sleazy, slimey, greasy, stupid owners are hot! Pansy would pay the hot sleazy, slimey, greasy, stupid owners to take her in a hot split second. In fact, she would pay extry if there is grease under their hot nasty pinchy fingernails which she would want them to use to pinch Her Hot Nasty a Lot, or certainly at least until their hot nasty pinchy fingers cramped up. Where did this awful recessive gene come (hot nasty pun!) from? And how did it go so dominant so fast?
Pansy should have known. For many years prior to this Auto Rama she and Mr. Pansy have been avid Drag Racing fans. Not the kind Pansy would like to see which would involve men dressed up like Big Time Female Icon Stars competing in races in high heels. No, Pansy, poor thing and being the Most Manned Up Woman Ever, has had to do that stuff all by herself in all her triathlons/marathons because No One Else Will. But that's yesterday's news.
I'm talking here and now about the monster horsepower, permanently deafening, ground shaking that registers on a Richter Scale, erection simulating/possibly causing actual erections because Pansy damn near gets an erection herself, top fuel drag racing. This stuff can only be fully appreciated Live and In Person. Forget the TV broadcasts, which we also watch without fail. Many a year we'd drive down to Bakersfield, CA in March and much like being at the Tour De France.....right there in front of you, willing to chit chat, etc. are all the biggest, greatest, smartest, home-grown backyard engineers/mechanics/damn near rocket scientists you could ever hope to meet. These guys are actually geniuses, inventors, innovators, serious high-end athletes with jet fighter pilot reflexes and they are greaseballs---all in one hot nasty package and they have PACKAGES, too! And most of them (swoon) are of that "shorter" size Pansy lusts for the very most. Don't even try to hold me back.
Lucky for Pansy there is a stupid little podunk drag racing strip near her neighborhood and one year DON GARLITS came to town as a goodwill gesture. If you don't know who Don Garlits is, do not tell Pansy. She will kill you for that crime. Google him up and even then you cannot know how fabulous this guy really is. You can read all the National Dragster Weekly editions from since before Pansy was born (which she has read because even before she was conceived she was a Very Good Reader) and biographies about him. And read his own stories he has told about himself. And even then you won't know as much about him as Pansy does. Why, at this very second, just writing about him, she is all sweaty and pantish. Ooops! There went her panties. I guess she has a crush on him! ~blush~ And he so deserves it.
So, Pansy goes to some store where greaseballs go to buy tickets to the local drag strip when Don will be in town. To surprise Mr. Pansy. Because it would definitely surprise him to see Pansy run away with Don Garlits right in front of the whole town. Pansy was babbling (can you believe that?) to the counter clerks about Don this and Don that and Pansy loves Don even more than Mr. Pansy loves Don (but not in a gay way) and such. They are smiling and Pansy knows they are patronizing her but she does not care. She is all high just to be able to talk to someone who knows what she's talking about. No, the counter clerks did not know what Pansy was talking about but we can all pretend here for just a moment, can't we? Finally, one clerk excuses himself and goes back into the offices. He comes back out with......FUCKING DON GARLITS. Who has overheard (can you believe that?) Pansy's babbling about him. OH. OH. OH. Don is just beaming at me and so proud that I know all about him and his Swamp Rats and his this and his that. He then comes outside with me, poses with me for pictures which meant he TOUCHED ME!
MMmmmrrrrrRRrrrrHHhhhhhhhhhhhH! I have not bathed since.
Hey! Did you know that Mr. Pansy is a packrat? He is awful. Not to the point that we have a maze of ceiling-high stacks of old newspapers to negotiate through our house. But he is a packrat. I am a military child. Nothing in my possession makes it past 3 years. Except for Mr. Pansy. He's stuck with me. But this particular packratting story has me rethinking my attachment to Mr. Pansy:
Mr. Pansy has saved every spark plug from every car tuneup he has ever done on any car since HIS FIRST CAR TUNEUP in his life. And said used spark plugs were carefully placed in zip lock bags that are clearly and legibly labelled with: 1) make, model of vehicle; 2) mileage on spark plugs; 3) date removed. We no longer even own the cars these fucking used spark plugs came out of. But the bagged, labeled spark plugs live on in our garage. Why? Because, in his very own fucking words, Mr. Pansy says "When the depression comes, these will be useful." There'll be a depression all right. When I'm done slamming the bags of spark plugs into his skull.
Three times....THREE TIMES....Mr. Pansy caught me at the garbage can "that close" to tipping the box of labeled/bagged/used spark plugs into oblivion. Each time Pansy tried to toss the spark plugs it created a fairly severe crisis in our relationship. And then those fucking snotty spark plugs went back into the garage, into their cabinet. The one with special "soft glow" lighting under which the sneering sparkplugs would bask and mock me. You just wait until next time, you little shits.
Pansy actually finally gave up the fight over the spark plugs. This is how bad it got rubbed in her face. (rub anything you want in Pansy's face, Don) Mr. Pansy's brother lives in Atlanta, Georgia. He went to Florida for some reason or other and made a special trip to the Don Garlits Museum (lord let me die now if I can just go to the Museum once) to buy and send to Mr. Pansy this item: a singular spark plug from THE car that Mr. Pansy and his brother saw Garlits race in Bakersfield back in the 50s. It arrived, in a lovely presentation gift box, in a plastic bag, labeled with 1)specific Swamp Rat drag racer it came from; 2)some sort of data re the spark plug; 3) date used/removed. FUCKING DON GARLITS also has saved every fucking thing associated with all of his racing, ever. And labelled it. And bagged it. Well, if it's good enough for FUCKING DON GARLITS, Pansy says "have at it, Mr. Pansy." (please please god let me have at it with Don Garlits just for a few minutes)
I got to give Mr. Pansy not just tickets to the Don Garlits event but also a lovely framed photo of me hugging all close and up personal onto Don himself with big smiles on both our faces. The best part is, if you look real close, there is lipstick smeared on my teeth. How utterly attractive. No wonder all those counter clerks and Don were smirking so much! ~blush~ I can only hope Greaseball Girls are allowed lipstick mishaps. I'd mishap whatever Don wanted me to on him with my lipstick as much as he wants. I know. Pansy should not talk like that about Don. He is not that kinda guy. Really.
Mr. Pansy and I eventually mated and produced two girlie girls, who also rather enjoy drag races. Not as much as mama and papa but they sure won't forget their first, and so far ONLY, event. It was at Sears Point Raceway (last I knew it's now Infineon), which is near the California coast, which means always, always, always cool/foggy weather. Good for racing, kinda chilly for viewers. It had also been quite a few years since the Pansys had been to a live event. I called for tickets, was asked where we wanted to sit, so I said "front and center". Really, where else would a Pansy want to sit? Guess what? Things have changed since those Bakersfield days. More safety (courtesy of Inventor/Innovator Don Garlits) evidently has allowed for more up close and personal seating. We used to sit miles away in bleachers while the cars exploded down on the track. Now we were at most 40 feet away from the exploding cars. How can this be?
We don't know. We don't care. Rock on! Until that first car fired up on the line. Oh. My. God. The concussion thumped our bodies like we were being given full, head-to-toe body blows by Muhammad Ali. The fuel fumes immediately scalded and chemically burned our exposed flesh and our internal flesh. And blinded us by the instantaneous spurting of tears from our frantic eyeballs. And the smoke from the burnouts gave us retroactive lung cancer. What had happened in the intervening years? We figured the crews down on the track were suffering as much as we were, except for that part about they had breathing apparatus on and full bodysuits and NASA ear protection. No wonder not one other person was sitting within 50 feet of either side of us four schmucks! The girls literally dived to the ground, crying and wailing in fear! We all bailed for the concession booths where they were selling ear protection. Not until we bought all 4 options available did we find something that would work for the girls. We were willing to be brutalized by the cars but they were really terrified. And we moved down the bleachers toward the finish line.
It seemed warmish that day and we were overdressed for the anticipated cool/foggy weather. As it got hotter and hotter I, being a Good Mother, kept taking the girls into the restrooms and soaking all their clothes with sink water so that they could stay cooler. With the extra clothing I made "cooling blankets" to keep their legs and arms from burning. We had to re-soak the clothes every 25 minutes. It also seemed we were buying bottles of water every time we turned around but there was no denying it was hot. And it's not even noon. Finally, I cleverly noticed the First Aid Trailer. If you are a mother with darling little wilting children they let you into the trailer. Where is it Air Conditioned! And they had ICE! So I am sucking up all the valuable resources there because I could get away with it. No one else seemed to notice the impending doom.
Around 12:30pm things took a turn. The authorities/announcers "suddenly" realized they had a full-on emergency happening. The whole place was fainting away, especially those who had been drinking beer aka The Official Fuel Of Spectators of Sporting Events. It was 115 degrees in the air.....so god knows what the track temp was but it got freaky! The race is somewhat suspended while trucks came screeching in from everywhere loaded with Now Free bottles of water which at first the stupidoes threw randomly into the air toward the people clamoring like they were in a Fourth World country. That didn't work so well when many of the bottles hit people on their heads. The lines at the First Aid Trailer were huge. I think even the beer sales were suspended.
I told people around me to go soak their clothes in the bathrooms. How stupid are people anyway when they have to get advice from a Pansy? This is how stupid: I had to tell them to NOT use the toilet water, use the SINK water. I suppose some just were too desperate to differentiate. Oh, well. After awhile things calmed down, the races began again, and people were subdued for lack of a better word. That event is still talked about to this day on race shows because it was so uncharacteristically hot. And not in a Paris Hilton hot kind of way.
It's fun to go to drag races. Lots of crazy people to watch, lots of noise, lots of meeting and touching big names like John Force, Tony Schumacher, the Pedregons, the Bernsteins, etc. And not to forget the pro stock and motorcycle classes, either. We just try to pretend and forget about the fumes/exhaust/ear damage/future health problems these things have got to be contributing to. But some things are just plain worth it.
Meanwhile, back at the Auto Rama one year Pansy spied this Extra Special Yummy Snackboy scampering along: Jimmie Lee Vaughn. He's in town at the Auto Rama because he has entered his "Ironic Twist"......one gawdawful fucking ugly GREEN glitteramick metal-flake honking huge Land Shark car. For a short guy, he can sure hustle along. Pansy had to run to catch him! Her pickup line: "What is a handsome Texas Boy like you doing in Sacramento?" He swooned right into her waiting clutches. (Car pun!)
p.s. What ever did happen to those spark plugs you ask? That fucking low life cheating cruel scab sucking shit Mr. Pansy.....Threw Them Away. By himself. Alone at home one day during a remodel he decided it was time for them to go. And he didn't tell me for days. Some load of crap about grieving over them. He thought that "event" was worth crying over? I'll make him cry like a person's never cried before over anything. I may never forgive him. But then he goes and wiggles those hot nasty pinchy greasy fingers of his and............
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
PANSY, YOU CAN DRIVE MY CAR! But please stay away from my motorhome.
It was all my MicroManaging Stupid Elderly Baby Sister's (SEBS) fault! She started it and she dreamed it up. It happened long, long ago.....maybe even STILL not long enough ago.
'Twas the Summer of 1990 and there was a Family Reunion down home in Texas. My SEBS said "let's buy the parents airplane tickets so you and I can drive their motorhome to the reunion with all the kids." A Road Trip!? OMG! Yew Becha! So, without even consulting the Old Folks we bought plane tickets, presented them to the parents, swiped their motorhome keys and began planning our Road Trip.
It was gonna be me, SEBS, our five (5!) children, ranging from 1 year to 12 years old, all the credit cards, and.....and The Very Best Part? NO HUSBANDS!!
THE DAY BEFORE DAY ONE:
We are All Set for the Road Trip adventure. I call MicroManager SEBS who has designed the entire trip and I ask her: "Um. Do YOU get the motorhome and come get me and the 2 girls? Or do I get the motorhome and come get you and the 3 boys?" Neither of us knows the answer. SEBS bites the bullet and asks her husband. He looks aghast at her, calls Mr. Pansy, who looks aghast at me, so I call SEBS, who looks aghast at her husband. I finally break the silent, aghast staredown to demand "So which the fuck is it?" Both husbands laugh and laugh and laugh and say "You two are so on your own with this one. Good luck, bitches." Then they HANG UP! WTF? We DO know we are going to want to eventually end up in Texas and that is "east-ish", isn't it?
DAYS ONE, TWO, THREE:
SEBS picks up me and the girls. See? Problem Solved! We hightail it to Disneyland, set up, look at each other and realize we are ahead of schedule! SEBS is one serious ass bossy MicroManager but somehow she miscalculated how long it would take us to get to Disneyland. No matter. We go to Disneyland right then and there instead of waiting until the next day like on the Original Big Plan. Disneyland was in the final day of a monster heatweave so there were no lines anywhere for any of the rides, we stayed until they closed at 2am, lots of fun! Same thing next day: no crowds, stayed until 2am, lots of fun. Same thing third day UNTIL....when we got back to the motorhome at 2am "suddenly" SEBS and I decided to re-check the Original Big Plan only to discover we are in serious trouble. What had possessed us to not remember that we have to actually BE on the Coast of Texas before July 4th if we are to celebrate July 4th AT the Family Reunion? Damn that Heatwave and Damn that Disneyland! Damn them both to Hell! OMG! We hauled ass outta there, at 2am. Problem Solved! Please don't tell the husbands.
DAY FOUR:
We drive to El Paso, Texas, where our next KOA reservations are for: two days ago. Stupid Magic Kingdom! But we call and they assure us they have space for when we arrive. We are SUCH Problem Solvers! Silly Husbands and their mockery. We drive nonstop, except for.....we are on Vacation and our Only Rule of Vacation is this: We Must, and Will, stop for every tourist trap Souvenir Roadside Stand/Reptile Garden/Exotic Freak Animals HERE!/Genuine Artifacts [made in China] For Sale Cheep/Shit Here 4 U! We had already stopped at 6 places between home and Disneyland and we were not about to break our streak. In fact, we had told the five (5!) children: If you see something and want to stop, we will. Democracy Is Cool! Or maybe it's Anarchy Is Cool!
We had a wonderful time driving and shit shopping, until we got to El Paso. El Paso is one freaking wide-assed city. When we got to the west side we think we are "almost" there. THREE HOURS LATER we finally get to the KOA in East El Paso...and we are driving 65mph. Perhaps even 80-ish mph. Please don't tell the parents. Finally we arrive at 2am, do the hookups and collapse. Then those five (5!) children wake up at: 5-fucking-am. Hungry, needing care, all kinds of disgusting me-me-me behaviors/demands. But it is just as well. We are still more than a day from the Coast of Texas. Because once you are inside Texas, all the roads have 90-degree turns every 100 yards.
DAY FIVE:
We are Seriously Hauling Ass now, especially since we have to stop for every tourist trap shopping opportunity, and we absolutely cannot make it any further than the Odessa, Texas KOA, where we finally arrived at 2am. What is it with that accursed 2am? It was the witching hour for us throughout that entire trip. Odessa is one sorry place to have to live. Winds incessantly howl through there so all the landscaping was rocks and plastic plants. But the KOA was pleasant enough, even with the whitecaps surging across the swimming pool. And if you discount the pedophile that actually tried to hit on Oldest Boy. Eewwww! Please don't tell the husbands.
DAY SIX:
It is now July 3 but we make it to the Family Reunion in the late afternoon with our five (5!) children. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, Travel Mercies Gods! Plus, we did not miss out on any tourist trap shopping opportunities! Glee! The entire clan is so impressed with "those two girls a-drivin' by theyselves acrost the inntyre USA!" Pansy has never claimed grammar or geography are her family's strong suits. The July 4th-reunion-orama is a massive success and now it is time to head back home.
DAYS ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR GOING BACK HOME:
We head for Carlsbad Caverns, shopping at every tourist trap along the way which required we take that motorhome down rutted dirt roads where motorhomes have never been before and should never have gone in the first place at all. Please don't tell the parents. We do just fine, thankyouverymuch. Well, except for that part where Miss MicroManageress totally fucked us over with "we will buy gas at that town." Except that there was NO town. Just a solitary building: a closed down/abandoned gas station. Well, there is still that next town ahead. It's another solitary, closed down/abandoned gas station. Stupid AAA maps!
There is nothing else on the map except for the next town which we knew was too far away for us to have even the remotest hope in hell of reaching before we run out of gas in that fucking gas guzzling monster motorhome! Stupid cheap-ass parents couldn't have thought to buy a motorhome with a bigger gas tank? Do you think the mileage might have been affected by the dirt road side trips to buy tourist trap shit?
The only live things we see are lizards (not for sale) and Drunk Cowboys (available Cheep!) in rusted trucks racing up and down the dirt roads. We are going to have to draw straws on who has to prostitute herself for gasoline while envisioning newspaper headlines: "Shop-A-Holic California Mothers Kill Five (5!) Children Because Mothers Are Horrible Stupid." Only by God's Very Own Grace, which we totally did not deserve but probably the five (5!) children did deserve, we miraculously make it to that next town. When we filled up the motorhome it took 44.8 gallons. It had a 45 gallon tank. We were so freaked out we never drove more than 15 miles before filling up again for the rest of the trip. Please don't tell the parents OR the husbands.
Next, we go to the Grand Canyon where we decide to go for an airplane tour. Now this was in the Olden Days, when things were looser and more relaxed. SEBS didn't want to pay for her baby to go on the plane so we solve that problem by LEAVING HIM WITH THE COUNTER CLERKS FOR 2 HOURS, which Counter Clerks of course are people we do not know. Good God, what were we thinking? I am pretty certain they did not even have emergency contact information should our plane have crashed. Please don't tell the husbands. Especially SEBS' husband. He is a very big man.
Then we are in Las Vegas. It was in the middle of a monster heatwave and all traffic has been stopped on Hoover Dam while the poor workers had to pour molten tar/asphalt/whatever on the road surface. It is so hot and the wait was so long (3+ hours) the motorhome's air conditioner/generator/whatever blew up. We will never forgive the parents for being so uncaring and cheap in their choice of crappy motorhomes. The kids are broiling alive and they all stripped down to just their underwear, whereupon Daughter #1 precociously says "I sure am glad I have not developed yet or this would be embarrassing." hahahahhaha!
We got over Hoover Dam, cruise the Strip, set up the motorhome on the grounds of Circus, Circus at......2am. But everything is OPEN so we wholesome mothers introduce the children to gambling. Circus, Circus has a great area for children to learn early in life how to gamble/bet/lose/get all upset/beg on street corners for money with which to get home. Tip: If you are begging for money and a prospective charitable person says "But how do I know you aren't just going to gamble with this money I give you?" YOU SAY: "Oh, I HAVE gambling money!" No, we didn't make the kids beg for money. They SAID they wanted to! Guess What: Cash Advance! Problem Solved!
Upon leaving Las Vegas the next morning, SEBS drove the motorome through a McDonald's driveup. Until she did about $900 of structural damage to the passenger side of the motorhome where it wouldn't fit past the concrete guide poles. She was an insurance adjuster so she knew how to estimate how much damage was incurred. And all because her SPOILED BRAT BOY CHILDREN demanded McDonald's whereas my PERFECT ANGEL GIRL CHILDREN were Quite Content to eat the oatmeal their Wholesome and Much Better Mother made for them. I'm thinking maybe that unbroken string of 18-hour days was beginning to take its toll on our normally very good natures.
Then, we are filling up the gas tank (because we had driven at least 12 miles since the last fillup) and get told by the Manager that our tires are about to blow out and have no tread left! We will have those stupid parents put in jail for life for letting us drive our five (5!) precious children in an unsafe, air conditioner blowing up, tire blowing up, gas-guzzling crappy motorhome. Nothing that a few hours and $1000 of new tires won't take care of. Problem Solvers Is Us! We drive away mightily cursing those now feloniously stupid parents of ours.
YOSEMITE:
We arrive, after all the requisite tourist trap shopping, at the "beginning" of Yosemite. Micromanageress SEBS had read some blurb about Yosemite having a shuttle system to reduce vehicular traffic inside Yosemite. Except she didn't read far enough to get to that part about you still have to drive down into the Valley before you can park your vehicle and use the shuttles. Well, by the time we got down into the Valley and park in our campsite we had driven every last foot of Yosemite roads possible. Stupid fake Yosemite Valley "green" traffic-reducing shuttle plan.
We were, however, mighty fucking grateful to have gotten down into the Valley at all. Because on the narrow, winding road going down into the Valley there was an "incident." I was at the wheel but it was NOT my fault! A huge Buick kind of car came roaring around a curve and was over the double yellow line headed straight for us. I had two "choices": a full-on actual headon collision or......kind of drive a little closer to the right edge of the road. I chose to slow down and go rightish------right up against the low rock wall. The Buick did veer back to its side of the road but kinda AFTER the last second since it was fully beside my window before it went back into its own lane.
What the low rock wall did not tear off from front to rear of the entire bottom half of the entire right side of the motorhome, the thick stand of pine trees tore off from front to rear of the entire top half of the entire right side of the motorhome. SEBS loudly said my name in a quite blood-curdling Exorcist/Rosemary's Baby scream kinda way. We continue driving since we can't stop and just block the road and besides the Buick really took off after that close call. We drive to the next turnout. During this eerie 1/2 mile we hear really loud screechy/scraping noises and see lots and lots of SPARKS coming from the right side of the motorhome. Being that we have become Highly Experienced Problem Solvers during this trip we responded very rationally: we started laughing. We laughed so hard I do believe there may have been some loss of bladder control and I'm not talking about the baby. We finally get to a turnout so we can stop and a nice couple behind us also stopped to see if we were okay. We were unable to answer them due to continued laughing. All the noise/sparks was only coming from the mostly torn off metal stair/step so now we knew the motorhome was not going to burn to the ground and we would still have a roof over our heads that night.....if not a wall. Who could have guessed how truly shitty and tarpaper shacky motorhomes really are? Stupid sucker parents to have ever bought a motorhome at all!
We get to the campground, hook up the tattered motorhome and are all settled in and it wasn't even 2am! The next day Daughter #1 and I went for a horseback ride. SEBS was going to take the other four (4!) kids and do something or other. Halfway through the horseback ride a sudden and violent electrical storm hits. These are Serious Ass storms and nothing to mess around with. But, the wranglers told us that we were past the "point of no return" so we were going to have to slog on through. There would be a truck waiting at a road a few miles away, after we crossed a creek, for anyone who wanted to quit the horseback ride. The woman in front of Daughter #1 completely, and I mean completely, freaked out. She was literally screaming and boo-hooing. My daughter precociously said to her in her sweet and well-brought up way to calm the woman: "Shut up! You might scare the horses and you are hurting my ears! I said, Shut up!" hahahahahahha!
When we got to the "creek" we learned a new lesson about sudden, violent, electrical storms: they cause flash floods the likes of which I have never seen. The creek was such a torrent we literally all had to get off the horses, form human chains of inter-locked arms and inch our way across the waters that were up to my armpits. Normally this creek is about 10 inches deep. Who knows how screaming boo-hoo bitch got across the creek but she dramatically "collapsed" into the truck. No one else bailed on the horseback ride because this was one great kick-ass ride! Eventually, our stalwart horses sensed we were getting near the end whereupon they reverted to their rental horse, barn-soured, beastly selves and galloped home like possessed animals with us Soaked Rats Riders hanging on for dear life!
Daughter #1 and I climbed into a shuttle bus to get back to the motorhome. At that precise moment the rain stopped and a hail storm with hail the size of golf balls begins mercilessly pelting us in the Open Roof Stupid Ass Shuttle! We grab newspapers from the floor and attempt to avoid getting a concussion. We straggle up to the motor home where everyone else had spent all that time trapped inside watching: The Little Mermaid. Evidently Daughter #2 (my precious 4 year old Child From The Netherworld) was so powerful in her persuasion skills that none of the boys or Auntie SEBS had dared defy her request for The Little Mermaid! hahhahhaha!
A few hours later, SEBS looked at me and said "You know, screw my MicroManaged Original Big Plan. We can just go home, Now!" Yahoo! But first we stopped to shop at a tourist trap, for Old Times Sake.
Odds Bits 'n' Things:
1. Without exception, at every KOA (EVERY ONE) when the women in the bathrooms figured out we were on our own with five (5!) children they would ask "But....but....WHO drives your motorhome for you?" Oh. My. God. They were serious! We would respond with "Well, who will drive your motorhome if your husband gets hurt or sick?" They would pooh-pooh that scenario as not credible. So then we would say things like "Oh, we just pick up hitchhikers that are big and burly because they are also likely to know how to change a flat tire." THAT one they believed and they actually advised us to NOT do that, if only for the sake of the children. WTF!!!????
2. The interior of motorhomes is Major Crapola, too. Baby managed to pull off whole panels of the motorhome no matter where we set up his carseat.
3. Every day we made videotapes of what we did and we would watch them that night. That was seriously great entertainment since our 18-hour days were so long we would actually forget what we had done, when, and often where. We have 8 full-length tapes of that trip. The husbands have never seen them and never want to see them. They know there are many things they do NOT want to know.
4. The parents had, in fact, had the motorhome and its tires thoroughly inspected and approved as road worthy for 2 women and five (5!) children. But did they tell US? Nooooooo!! Sheesh! With their proof of road worthiness they negotiated with the Las Vegas Tire Shill so that the tires ended up costing only $140, total.
5. The insurance adjuster just howled over the entire debacle of the destruction of the motor home and even threw in repairs of the baby-altered interior. His own parents had suffered a somewhat similar sideswipe incident with their crappy motorhome so he actually believed my story. Plus, Oldest Boy backed me up as he also saw the "ghost Buick" which no one else saw because everyone else was asleep at the beginning of the "incident."
6. The "incident" occurred on Friday, July 13, 1990.......my 40th birthday.
7. Yep, it was an Epic Trip and among my greatest adventures/memories with my dear SEBS and her spoiled brat boy children.
'Twas the Summer of 1990 and there was a Family Reunion down home in Texas. My SEBS said "let's buy the parents airplane tickets so you and I can drive their motorhome to the reunion with all the kids." A Road Trip!? OMG! Yew Becha! So, without even consulting the Old Folks we bought plane tickets, presented them to the parents, swiped their motorhome keys and began planning our Road Trip.
It was gonna be me, SEBS, our five (5!) children, ranging from 1 year to 12 years old, all the credit cards, and.....and The Very Best Part? NO HUSBANDS!!
THE DAY BEFORE DAY ONE:
We are All Set for the Road Trip adventure. I call MicroManager SEBS who has designed the entire trip and I ask her: "Um. Do YOU get the motorhome and come get me and the 2 girls? Or do I get the motorhome and come get you and the 3 boys?" Neither of us knows the answer. SEBS bites the bullet and asks her husband. He looks aghast at her, calls Mr. Pansy, who looks aghast at me, so I call SEBS, who looks aghast at her husband. I finally break the silent, aghast staredown to demand "So which the fuck is it?" Both husbands laugh and laugh and laugh and say "You two are so on your own with this one. Good luck, bitches." Then they HANG UP! WTF? We DO know we are going to want to eventually end up in Texas and that is "east-ish", isn't it?
DAYS ONE, TWO, THREE:
SEBS picks up me and the girls. See? Problem Solved! We hightail it to Disneyland, set up, look at each other and realize we are ahead of schedule! SEBS is one serious ass bossy MicroManager but somehow she miscalculated how long it would take us to get to Disneyland. No matter. We go to Disneyland right then and there instead of waiting until the next day like on the Original Big Plan. Disneyland was in the final day of a monster heatweave so there were no lines anywhere for any of the rides, we stayed until they closed at 2am, lots of fun! Same thing next day: no crowds, stayed until 2am, lots of fun. Same thing third day UNTIL....when we got back to the motorhome at 2am "suddenly" SEBS and I decided to re-check the Original Big Plan only to discover we are in serious trouble. What had possessed us to not remember that we have to actually BE on the Coast of Texas before July 4th if we are to celebrate July 4th AT the Family Reunion? Damn that Heatwave and Damn that Disneyland! Damn them both to Hell! OMG! We hauled ass outta there, at 2am. Problem Solved! Please don't tell the husbands.
DAY FOUR:
We drive to El Paso, Texas, where our next KOA reservations are for: two days ago. Stupid Magic Kingdom! But we call and they assure us they have space for when we arrive. We are SUCH Problem Solvers! Silly Husbands and their mockery. We drive nonstop, except for.....we are on Vacation and our Only Rule of Vacation is this: We Must, and Will, stop for every tourist trap Souvenir Roadside Stand/Reptile Garden/Exotic Freak Animals HERE!/Genuine Artifacts [made in China] For Sale Cheep/Shit Here 4 U! We had already stopped at 6 places between home and Disneyland and we were not about to break our streak. In fact, we had told the five (5!) children: If you see something and want to stop, we will. Democracy Is Cool! Or maybe it's Anarchy Is Cool!
We had a wonderful time driving and shit shopping, until we got to El Paso. El Paso is one freaking wide-assed city. When we got to the west side we think we are "almost" there. THREE HOURS LATER we finally get to the KOA in East El Paso...and we are driving 65mph. Perhaps even 80-ish mph. Please don't tell the parents. Finally we arrive at 2am, do the hookups and collapse. Then those five (5!) children wake up at: 5-fucking-am. Hungry, needing care, all kinds of disgusting me-me-me behaviors/demands. But it is just as well. We are still more than a day from the Coast of Texas. Because once you are inside Texas, all the roads have 90-degree turns every 100 yards.
DAY FIVE:
We are Seriously Hauling Ass now, especially since we have to stop for every tourist trap shopping opportunity, and we absolutely cannot make it any further than the Odessa, Texas KOA, where we finally arrived at 2am. What is it with that accursed 2am? It was the witching hour for us throughout that entire trip. Odessa is one sorry place to have to live. Winds incessantly howl through there so all the landscaping was rocks and plastic plants. But the KOA was pleasant enough, even with the whitecaps surging across the swimming pool. And if you discount the pedophile that actually tried to hit on Oldest Boy. Eewwww! Please don't tell the husbands.
DAY SIX:
It is now July 3 but we make it to the Family Reunion in the late afternoon with our five (5!) children. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, Travel Mercies Gods! Plus, we did not miss out on any tourist trap shopping opportunities! Glee! The entire clan is so impressed with "those two girls a-drivin' by theyselves acrost the inntyre USA!" Pansy has never claimed grammar or geography are her family's strong suits. The July 4th-reunion-orama is a massive success and now it is time to head back home.
DAYS ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR GOING BACK HOME:
We head for Carlsbad Caverns, shopping at every tourist trap along the way which required we take that motorhome down rutted dirt roads where motorhomes have never been before and should never have gone in the first place at all. Please don't tell the parents. We do just fine, thankyouverymuch. Well, except for that part where Miss MicroManageress totally fucked us over with "we will buy gas at that town." Except that there was NO town. Just a solitary building: a closed down/abandoned gas station. Well, there is still that next town ahead. It's another solitary, closed down/abandoned gas station. Stupid AAA maps!
There is nothing else on the map except for the next town which we knew was too far away for us to have even the remotest hope in hell of reaching before we run out of gas in that fucking gas guzzling monster motorhome! Stupid cheap-ass parents couldn't have thought to buy a motorhome with a bigger gas tank? Do you think the mileage might have been affected by the dirt road side trips to buy tourist trap shit?
The only live things we see are lizards (not for sale) and Drunk Cowboys (available Cheep!) in rusted trucks racing up and down the dirt roads. We are going to have to draw straws on who has to prostitute herself for gasoline while envisioning newspaper headlines: "Shop-A-Holic California Mothers Kill Five (5!) Children Because Mothers Are Horrible Stupid." Only by God's Very Own Grace, which we totally did not deserve but probably the five (5!) children did deserve, we miraculously make it to that next town. When we filled up the motorhome it took 44.8 gallons. It had a 45 gallon tank. We were so freaked out we never drove more than 15 miles before filling up again for the rest of the trip. Please don't tell the parents OR the husbands.
Next, we go to the Grand Canyon where we decide to go for an airplane tour. Now this was in the Olden Days, when things were looser and more relaxed. SEBS didn't want to pay for her baby to go on the plane so we solve that problem by LEAVING HIM WITH THE COUNTER CLERKS FOR 2 HOURS, which Counter Clerks of course are people we do not know. Good God, what were we thinking? I am pretty certain they did not even have emergency contact information should our plane have crashed. Please don't tell the husbands. Especially SEBS' husband. He is a very big man.
Then we are in Las Vegas. It was in the middle of a monster heatwave and all traffic has been stopped on Hoover Dam while the poor workers had to pour molten tar/asphalt/whatever on the road surface. It is so hot and the wait was so long (3+ hours) the motorhome's air conditioner/generator/whatever blew up. We will never forgive the parents for being so uncaring and cheap in their choice of crappy motorhomes. The kids are broiling alive and they all stripped down to just their underwear, whereupon Daughter #1 precociously says "I sure am glad I have not developed yet or this would be embarrassing." hahahahhaha!
We got over Hoover Dam, cruise the Strip, set up the motorhome on the grounds of Circus, Circus at......2am. But everything is OPEN so we wholesome mothers introduce the children to gambling. Circus, Circus has a great area for children to learn early in life how to gamble/bet/lose/get all upset/beg on street corners for money with which to get home. Tip: If you are begging for money and a prospective charitable person says "But how do I know you aren't just going to gamble with this money I give you?" YOU SAY: "Oh, I HAVE gambling money!" No, we didn't make the kids beg for money. They SAID they wanted to! Guess What: Cash Advance! Problem Solved!
Upon leaving Las Vegas the next morning, SEBS drove the motorome through a McDonald's driveup. Until she did about $900 of structural damage to the passenger side of the motorhome where it wouldn't fit past the concrete guide poles. She was an insurance adjuster so she knew how to estimate how much damage was incurred. And all because her SPOILED BRAT BOY CHILDREN demanded McDonald's whereas my PERFECT ANGEL GIRL CHILDREN were Quite Content to eat the oatmeal their Wholesome and Much Better Mother made for them. I'm thinking maybe that unbroken string of 18-hour days was beginning to take its toll on our normally very good natures.
Then, we are filling up the gas tank (because we had driven at least 12 miles since the last fillup) and get told by the Manager that our tires are about to blow out and have no tread left! We will have those stupid parents put in jail for life for letting us drive our five (5!) precious children in an unsafe, air conditioner blowing up, tire blowing up, gas-guzzling crappy motorhome. Nothing that a few hours and $1000 of new tires won't take care of. Problem Solvers Is Us! We drive away mightily cursing those now feloniously stupid parents of ours.
YOSEMITE:
We arrive, after all the requisite tourist trap shopping, at the "beginning" of Yosemite. Micromanageress SEBS had read some blurb about Yosemite having a shuttle system to reduce vehicular traffic inside Yosemite. Except she didn't read far enough to get to that part about you still have to drive down into the Valley before you can park your vehicle and use the shuttles. Well, by the time we got down into the Valley and park in our campsite we had driven every last foot of Yosemite roads possible. Stupid fake Yosemite Valley "green" traffic-reducing shuttle plan.
We were, however, mighty fucking grateful to have gotten down into the Valley at all. Because on the narrow, winding road going down into the Valley there was an "incident." I was at the wheel but it was NOT my fault! A huge Buick kind of car came roaring around a curve and was over the double yellow line headed straight for us. I had two "choices": a full-on actual headon collision or......kind of drive a little closer to the right edge of the road. I chose to slow down and go rightish------right up against the low rock wall. The Buick did veer back to its side of the road but kinda AFTER the last second since it was fully beside my window before it went back into its own lane.
What the low rock wall did not tear off from front to rear of the entire bottom half of the entire right side of the motorhome, the thick stand of pine trees tore off from front to rear of the entire top half of the entire right side of the motorhome. SEBS loudly said my name in a quite blood-curdling Exorcist/Rosemary's Baby scream kinda way. We continue driving since we can't stop and just block the road and besides the Buick really took off after that close call. We drive to the next turnout. During this eerie 1/2 mile we hear really loud screechy/scraping noises and see lots and lots of SPARKS coming from the right side of the motorhome. Being that we have become Highly Experienced Problem Solvers during this trip we responded very rationally: we started laughing. We laughed so hard I do believe there may have been some loss of bladder control and I'm not talking about the baby. We finally get to a turnout so we can stop and a nice couple behind us also stopped to see if we were okay. We were unable to answer them due to continued laughing. All the noise/sparks was only coming from the mostly torn off metal stair/step so now we knew the motorhome was not going to burn to the ground and we would still have a roof over our heads that night.....if not a wall. Who could have guessed how truly shitty and tarpaper shacky motorhomes really are? Stupid sucker parents to have ever bought a motorhome at all!
We get to the campground, hook up the tattered motorhome and are all settled in and it wasn't even 2am! The next day Daughter #1 and I went for a horseback ride. SEBS was going to take the other four (4!) kids and do something or other. Halfway through the horseback ride a sudden and violent electrical storm hits. These are Serious Ass storms and nothing to mess around with. But, the wranglers told us that we were past the "point of no return" so we were going to have to slog on through. There would be a truck waiting at a road a few miles away, after we crossed a creek, for anyone who wanted to quit the horseback ride. The woman in front of Daughter #1 completely, and I mean completely, freaked out. She was literally screaming and boo-hooing. My daughter precociously said to her in her sweet and well-brought up way to calm the woman: "Shut up! You might scare the horses and you are hurting my ears! I said, Shut up!" hahahahahahha!
When we got to the "creek" we learned a new lesson about sudden, violent, electrical storms: they cause flash floods the likes of which I have never seen. The creek was such a torrent we literally all had to get off the horses, form human chains of inter-locked arms and inch our way across the waters that were up to my armpits. Normally this creek is about 10 inches deep. Who knows how screaming boo-hoo bitch got across the creek but she dramatically "collapsed" into the truck. No one else bailed on the horseback ride because this was one great kick-ass ride! Eventually, our stalwart horses sensed we were getting near the end whereupon they reverted to their rental horse, barn-soured, beastly selves and galloped home like possessed animals with us Soaked Rats Riders hanging on for dear life!
Daughter #1 and I climbed into a shuttle bus to get back to the motorhome. At that precise moment the rain stopped and a hail storm with hail the size of golf balls begins mercilessly pelting us in the Open Roof Stupid Ass Shuttle! We grab newspapers from the floor and attempt to avoid getting a concussion. We straggle up to the motor home where everyone else had spent all that time trapped inside watching: The Little Mermaid. Evidently Daughter #2 (my precious 4 year old Child From The Netherworld) was so powerful in her persuasion skills that none of the boys or Auntie SEBS had dared defy her request for The Little Mermaid! hahhahhaha!
A few hours later, SEBS looked at me and said "You know, screw my MicroManaged Original Big Plan. We can just go home, Now!" Yahoo! But first we stopped to shop at a tourist trap, for Old Times Sake.
Odds Bits 'n' Things:
1. Without exception, at every KOA (EVERY ONE) when the women in the bathrooms figured out we were on our own with five (5!) children they would ask "But....but....WHO drives your motorhome for you?" Oh. My. God. They were serious! We would respond with "Well, who will drive your motorhome if your husband gets hurt or sick?" They would pooh-pooh that scenario as not credible. So then we would say things like "Oh, we just pick up hitchhikers that are big and burly because they are also likely to know how to change a flat tire." THAT one they believed and they actually advised us to NOT do that, if only for the sake of the children. WTF!!!????
2. The interior of motorhomes is Major Crapola, too. Baby managed to pull off whole panels of the motorhome no matter where we set up his carseat.
3. Every day we made videotapes of what we did and we would watch them that night. That was seriously great entertainment since our 18-hour days were so long we would actually forget what we had done, when, and often where. We have 8 full-length tapes of that trip. The husbands have never seen them and never want to see them. They know there are many things they do NOT want to know.
4. The parents had, in fact, had the motorhome and its tires thoroughly inspected and approved as road worthy for 2 women and five (5!) children. But did they tell US? Nooooooo!! Sheesh! With their proof of road worthiness they negotiated with the Las Vegas Tire Shill so that the tires ended up costing only $140, total.
5. The insurance adjuster just howled over the entire debacle of the destruction of the motor home and even threw in repairs of the baby-altered interior. His own parents had suffered a somewhat similar sideswipe incident with their crappy motorhome so he actually believed my story. Plus, Oldest Boy backed me up as he also saw the "ghost Buick" which no one else saw because everyone else was asleep at the beginning of the "incident."
6. The "incident" occurred on Friday, July 13, 1990.......my 40th birthday.
7. Yep, it was an Epic Trip and among my greatest adventures/memories with my dear SEBS and her spoiled brat boy children.
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