you get more than magnets

Ok, I think my Wilson temper tantrum has passed just enough for me to say what I wanted to say before 2012 is over. I was going to explain why this blog is here in outerspace, and why it will probably make no sense to you if you happen to come stumbling along to read it. And it's just a simple answer that it is a love letter to the one man who has had the courage to stand by me through good times and bad, through red, little mermaid orange, blonde and alarming raspberry colored hair, the man who has cleaned up my kid's puke and sat vigil at their bedsides and mine whenever we were sick, the man who squeezed into a twin sized bed with me every night for too long, the man who has learned that McNuggets is one of my trigger words, the man who stayed by my side whether or not we had working toilets or electricity, the man who called 911 when I thought I was absolutely dying in the middle of the night, the man that celebrity lookalike says is a dead ringer for Leonardo but is 100% better looking, the man who recorded a record album for me before we even met- I love you and I don't care if no one else ever reads this or gets me. This is for you:

first you'll crash and then you'll burn

I was going to give a year-end state of the blog address today, in which I explain the whole reason I ever bother writing stuff no one reads, but I am in a bad mood. Like,

                         Tell him I'm @#$%*&# coming!!

that.
So all I want to say right now is, Dear douchebag who totaled our car,

Always crashing in the same car

If you are playing spacemonkey1138 catastrophe bingo at home, I have great news for you, you can go ahead and put a chip on "car wreck" now.

                   Things get damaged. Things get broken.

If you will recall, I did tell you that everyone seemed to be gunning for the Captain's ship. See, I am not paranoid. They were coming, two by two, hands of blue. Last week they succeeded in the form of a hipsterish, skinny jean-wearing being that appeared to be male (if you can get your junk into a pair of skinny jeans without looking like a porn star, you do not qualify as a man). Apparently his lack of genitals led to some mental confusion, causing him to WRECK OUR FREAKING CAR. Of course, he is trying to make it all sound like it wasn't entirely his fault. That's what guys who lack testicles do, shirk responsibility for things that are obviously their fault. So we have to wait to find out what the insurance adjusters think. Which we won't know until after Christmas because things move slower than molasses in this region. One can only imagine the hell awaiting us here at the end of the worst year ever. Have you been keeping score? Your card may be a winner! We've had:

a broken laptop, a leaky ceiling, eyeglasses that had to be returned 100 times, a busted toe that wouldn't heal, a dead stepfather, a widowed mom move in, a dead uncle, two family friend funerals, multiple unsuccessful trips the the so-called foot specialist, a trip to the ER, an adult with a baby disease, a ruined vacation,  a dead grandpa, a diagnosis of a killer disease, a domestic dispute over McNuggets, braces, high deductibles& tripled health insurance premiums (thanks, Barack!), a brother being sued by his neighbor, hit by a douchebag, undrive-able car, and just all kinds of other unmentionable BS that is too personal to go into.

Let me know if you have a winning spacemonkey1138 catastrophe bingo card so I can send you your prize, which will be whatever pile of ashes remain after they finish burning what is left of our broken lives.

Meanwhile, an ode to a car I never liked, but teared up for when they hauled it away...

I'll be waiting with a gun and a pack of sandwiches

Lately it seems like everyone is trying to plow into us with their automobiles. This past week was no exception. Call this vacation the one I almost ended up in the hospital, or perhaps jail because I wanted to throttle this guy who ran a stop sign with his big fat diesel guzzling truck and almost plowed into my door. If you want to see me really pissed off, run a stop sign/red light/whatever with your big hulking truck and come gunning for me (I guess I should explain that this isn't the first time this kind of scenario happened to me, but I just don't want to talk about it). Other than that I daresay our vacation didn't go horrible this time. Only because I unjinxed myself by announcing our vacation curse to the whole planet. In other news, if you are ever sitting there listening to Franz Ferdinand and get an annoyed feeling, it is because you really want to be listening to Interpol. True story. You're welcome.

OK! Now that I've got my typing-music issue sorted, let me tell you all about my Halloween adventure. I went in the company of a ninja and a princess and looked something like this:

Even though I hung back on the sidewalk, people kept offering me candy. Actually, by "people" I mean a bunch of skeevy men and one perfectly friendly lesbian. All of which I turned down, awkwardly. Ninja tried to save me by announcing that I didn't need to take any candy because I can have whatever candy I want, whenever I want, from their stash. Which should have helped but only made me feel like some kind of candy bully. I know you are probably questioning my sanity for turning down free candy, on Halloween, from people I let my children take candy from. IT'S FREE CANDY!! But the second a guy goes from handing out candy to neighborhood kids to offering it to grown women, he transforms from neighborly guy to faux-Charlie Sheen pervert, and taking candy from faux-Charlie Sheen perverts is totally creepy.

I also got a lot of compliments on my hair ("I like your hair MOM I LIKE HER HAIR!") One little girl asked me what I was, and in the face of such unexpected social interaction, I said, I'm just a mom. Seriously, I tried to explain myself, that I was just a mom out with her kids. I even pointed to them! One innocent question and I felt like I was on trial! And she said, "But you have pink hair". What is this, the Spanish Inquistion? My reply: I'm a mom with pink hair. I know, I know, I could have indulged in all manner of Larry David sarcasm with the kid but I froze. I'm not used to being approached by little kids wanting to talk about my costume, or lack of costume, or hair. It was like,

                                          I don't care...
that. Perhaps it is a good thing that I haven't been able to procure all the necessaries for my dream costume (Alex DeLarge) since I have this much trouble explaining myself. I also had kind of an awkward run-in with a toddler that had a meltdown while being carried across the street, after which he was set down, calmly, a few feet from me. He stood there staring at me and I said something like, "There you go, that's better... temporary insanity, it happens to me all the time." Then his parents kind of laughed and walked away. You know, on second thought, maybe Willy Wonka wouldn't be a half bad costume for me.

Anyway, there is one thing I really love about Halloween, and that is the smell inside one's treat bag, that glorious smell of all kinds of candy cohabitating in one small space. I wish I could bottle that smell before the kids finish growing up. Being that I have two teenagers I guess that happened right about... NOW, and I am out of luck. By this time next year, the ninja will probably be too tall to pass for someone young enough to trick-or-treat. Maybe the princess could go, but this year was hard enough what with her having braces and not being able to eat a large percentage of her spoils, and next year will be no different. So it kind of feels like maybe the party's over. Last dance with Mary Janes. Last night I made a dessert of swedish fish, sour patch kids, and dots, and I was thinking of skipping dinner sometime and just indulging in some kind of candy casserole. That sounds mature and emotionally healthy, eating a bowl of candy while fantasizing about telling off Stop Sign Ignoring Truck Guy with a rant that would make Don Logan blush.

                        Why are you swearing? I'm not swearing.

But I'm over that. We made it through our vacation without any deaths, diseases, injuries, forced home remodeling or any of the other usual suspects. Thank you Jesus.

stay away from the future. don't tell god your plans.

You should know by now that you can't have everything you want. You want a life of happiness? A roof over your head? A place to call your own and all that jazz?

There's a rumor going around that we have a vacation coming up. By vacation, I mean that week in which my other half is excused from work and the children possibly take a homeschooling break (depending on the time of year). I don't want to confirm or deny the existence of such an event. You see, beloved and I have what can only be described as a vacation curse. We also have an anniversary curse that tends to involve things like puking kids and complete emotional breakdowns over a piece of chicken, but I don't want to get into that. The vacation curse is infinitely worse because vacations last a whole week. Also, the vacation curse tends to involve things like ER visits, rare illnesses, statements like "Well, it sure is a good thing we didn't have our hearts set on going to Chattanooga", and other such nonsense.

I will focus for the sake of brevity only on our last vacation, which was in June; more specifically, it was centered around my birthday. Not because I am big on birthdays, but because a certain someone else is a sweet, sentimental fool of a darling. Anyway, said vacation did in fact involve a trip to the ER, a fever of 102, excruciating pain, a rash, and a subsequent diagnosis of roseola. Right about now, if you don't know me personally (why are you reading this? How did you get here?), you are probably thinking that we have a baby or a toddler. Which is a logical conclusion, but I am sorry to say that you are wrong, thank you for playing. We have two teenagers. So with that piece of information at your disposal, your next logical conclusion would be that one of the children was stricken with what is 99.9999999% of the time, a baby/toddler/small child's illness. And you would be correct, but only partially. One of the children did in fact end up with a bit of a fever and rash later in the week. But that child is not the one who spent their birthday sick. That would be ME. And for the record, I am not a baby/toddler/small child. I would tell you how old I am, but that revelation would have to be followed by about ten Bruce Lee crescent kicks in rapid succession, leaving you in utter agony, and hopefully dead. It doesn't even matter, what matters is that I was sick every month when I was a child, but apparently never contracted the most common childhood illness ever conceived by a fallen, sinful world. I had chicken pox and, according to some tests years ago, also appear to have suffered Mono at some point, but no roseola. Which I'd like to point out is a disease that is pretty harmless in kids but potentially fatal in adults. Do you see? VACATION CURSE.

Anyhoo, I could regale you with all manner of similar stories regarding our tanked vacations, but I don't want you to start feeling dreadfully sorry for us. And you would, if you have any shred of a beating heart. My point here is that we have stopped making plans during our vacations, and now by extension, any off-time. This past Saturday we were going to do something incredibly simple- go to DQ for a pumpkin pie blizzard. No prob, right? I am sorry to say that instead we spent the day 80+ miles from home attending the burial of my sweet one's dear grandfather. This shouldn't even come as a surprise, because 2012 has seen a record high of deaths both in and out of the family. Not to mention a metric ton of other assorted BS. The people who think that 2012 is the end of the world or whatever are probably not too far of the mark, because at our house, 2012 has found us in some kind of bizzaro-world where trips to DQ= being a pall bearer for your grandpa, and vacation= sick with potentially fatal kiddie disease. In 2012, Shrodinger's cat is not simultaneously alive and dead, but simultaneously being assimilated while killing Laura Palmer with Bill the Butcher's knife, and blowing the Borg collective to hell while wearing a bowler hat, eating stale poptarts, and saying HIS NAME IS ROBERT PAULSON, to inifinity.

So if there is a vacation to be had, we shan't speak of it. We will pretend we are going to Iceland in search of lamb-free hot dogs. We definitely will not be going for any walks, watching any X-Files, eating Zaxby's or Orange Leaf, or otherwise hibernating in hopes of recovering some of our lost sanity of this dreadful year.

  And then I'll be arrested and sent to jail and you'll live happily ever after with a friendly guardian, spending your time inventing things and reading books and sharpening your little monkey teeth, and bravery and nobility will prevail at last, and this wicked world will slowly but surely become a place of cheerful harmony, and everybody will be singing and dancing and giggling like the littlest elf! A happy ending! Is that what you had mind?


Bottom line, we're screwed.

merely a blip on an otherwise uninterrupted downward trajectory

I bet you're wondering where I've been for the last year and some odd months. Well, we went all the way to Milliways, and I came home looking like this:

I know you are dying to hear all about it, but we'll get to that some other time. There is something much more pressing that has brought me all the way back from the end of the universe, and that is the fact that Sick Boy is on the telly.

Wonderful, yes, but.... oh the terror. I know how this ends, Robert Smith knows how it ends, BOTH OF US KNEW HOW THE ENDING WOULD BE.

so it's all come back round to breaking apart again

 breaking apart like i'm made up of glass again

making it up behind my back again
holding my breath for the fear of sleep again
holding it up behind my head again cut in deep
to the heart of the bone again round and round
and round and it's coming apart again over and
over and over

Girl you know it's true, they will cancel this show and then I will be forced to go 6 different ways of both Malcolm McDowell and Christopher Walken batsh*t crazy on CBS.

Sad Face.