piecrust promises

It's Official: I'm My Mother.

So my mother and I have, what you might like to call, a so so relationship.  We've mostly gotten over that span of about six years when I did a lot of drugs that she didn't know about my rebellious teenage years. She hasn't accepted my lack of the Catholic religion...but she's dealing with it. (Or at least she's stopped openly talking about the baby spending eternity in purgatory and me burning in hell.) (I once had a nun explain purgatory to me like this....it's like having all the pancakes you could ever want, but with no syrup. The pancakes are still good...but not quite what you wanted.) (This is why I am so fucked up...my formative years were spent with a bunch of loonies comparing eternity to breakfast foods.) (Side note...Hey JD! Sister Myra told me that...remember her?) (Moving on.)

My mother and I have a once-a-week, 15 minute max, standing phone call.  It's like taking off a bandaid...you don't want to make the call but you know you have to...and then you do it as fast as possible with the biggest grimace on your face...but you keep saying out loud that it's no big deal.  So these phone calls generally consist of filler...like what she watched on TV that week, which one of my wonderful full members of the Catholic church elementary school classmates she saw in the Safeway, what the baby has been doing (with mumblings suggesting that maybe the kid wouldn't climb the bookshelves or keep stealing the remote if she had a bit more of the Lord in her), etc.  This past week she was talking about something that she heard on the radio...something that she heard on MIX 107.3 to be exact.  This is a station that I know well...non-offensive Top 40's with a little bit of cleaned up pop from the 70's, 80's, 90's, and today!  It was all I was ever allowed to listen to when I was a kid.  It's the quintessential Mom station.  And it's the type of station that I've been avoiding for years...heaven forbid my dial land on that sort of station!  Oh the embarrassment!  Or so I thought...

So I'm driving in the car this morning...and I'm listening to the morning show that is a blend of some music, some talk, some news, some contests...and then I hear it.  "You're listening to MIX 105.1!"  I'm listening to a mix station.  I'M LISTENING TO THE FLORIDA EQUIVALENT OF MY MOTHER'S RADIO STATION...FOR WEEKS! And I never noticed.  There I was every morning...laughing along with freaking Scott and Erica!  Playing along to the $25 Pyramid!  Yelling about how Florida is full of idiots...obviously the category is "Alternative Names for Wombat Dung!"  Singing along to Leona Lewis (KEEP BLEEDING! KEEP KEEP BLEEDING!) and fucking Daughtry.  DAUGHTRY...as in AN AMERICAN IDOL WINNER! WHY DO I EVEN KNOW THAT!? And the entire time...my sweet, innocent, naive child sitting in the backseat...dancing and clapping when they play the pick-me-up song of the morning...laughing at mama yelling at the voices.

When did I become a pre-menopausal woman?  I don't even consider myself to be a woman yet...I refer to myself as being a girl...not a woman.  Women are old and wrinkly and serious and listen to mix stations.

Now I've been struggling with this whole age thing for a while...but this seems like the beginning of the end.

And then this lead me to another line of thought...everyone has a musical expiration date...a time when you stop keeping up with current music and you just stop liking anything new.  New music sounds like noise..."those damn kids don't know what good music!" is you say...and you mean it.

I think I've hit this time period.  I used to listen to all sorts of music...now I just want to hear things from 1994. I've been trying to pinpoint when my musical preferences stopped evolving...luckily iTunes is good at helping out with this sort of thing. 2002. 2002 was the end for me. I pretty much stopped adding in anything new in 2002. I was only 21. I peaked musically at 21.

How soon before I peak at everything else?

So tell me...have you reached your musical peak?

Monday Night Confession: Back in Action Edition!

Ah yes, the Monday Night Confession...how I have missed you.  Just in case you forgot...Monday Nights are when I confess to something deep, dark, or possibly just annoying about myself.

This week...I just don't get it.

So on my way home from work today, I find myself sandwiched between two gigantic Hummers.  Seriously? People still own these things?  Really?  It's easy to say that you shouldn't have one now...but even two or three years ago...how could you go to a car dealership...break out your step ladder...climb into one of those things...sit on a phone book...and say, "Yep, this is the one for me...it's just about damn perfect!  What's it get...2 - 21/2 miles to the gallon?  Who cares!  Look how high up I am! The Peterson's down the street are going to shit when they see me driving this beauty around town!  What color should we get?  Hmmm...do you have any that are the color of piss after a four day binger?  Honey, let's get you one so that we can have a matching set!"

I can't even say the name of the damn thing without cracking up.  How do these people tell others that they own a blowjob mobile? (I can just imagine some of the inane jokes that come along with this, "Oh I've got a Hummer alright...and I'm not talking about the one that sleeps in the garage!  Har Har Har!") I just can't get over how ironic the damn name is in relation to what I think of all these people. If I owned a Hummer I would have to refer to it in some other fashion...like my "this only makes up for some of my inadequacies" mobile or my "obviously I shouldn't be allowed to make important decisions and my vote in the next Presidential campaign should only be seen as a humorous suggestion" ride.

Something else I don't get...the back of one of these cars had a "Princess" bumper sticker.  Really?  Because you're really just stating the obvious over and over again now aren't you?  There are only two types of people in this world who openly refer to themselves as having "Princess" attributes: 1) White trash and 2) The 12 year old daughters of white trash.  The end.  No one else is idiotic enough to be proud of the fact that they are brainless, spineless whiners who are simply waiting around for someone else to solve their problems.

Now if that's something to be super proud about...I just don't get it.

Excuses! Excuses!

Yeah...I know.  It's been a while...ok ok...a very long while since I came and paid attention to you all...and I've got lots of excuses ready and waiting for you.  I know these excuses very well because I've been making them to myself every time I thought about posting again.  I'm too busy, too tired, too depressed, too happy, too bored, too whatever the opposite of bored is...and on and on and on.  Turns out though...none of those things are actually correct...I just didn't know that until today.

I've been too frustrated to write anything new.

It happened a few weeks ago...or whenever my last post was.  I came home from work in a big huffy mood and I pounded out everything that had happened during an incident at work and I felt oh so much better about it.  But then...just as my mouse hovered over the publish button...I realized I couldn't let it out into the world.

It contained too much information about what I really think about a few choice people...people that I give big giant fake smiles to every morning, people that I make idle chit chat with, people that I have to deal with and work with every single day.  People that I can't afford to piss off or offend.

And that's just about the most frustrating, depressing, ridiculous thing I can think of.  I'm not the type to give a shit what others think...and I've rarely been able to keep my mouth shut.  I'm generally known for having a constant case of verbal diarrhea.

So what's stopping me?

Yeah...her.  Again.  I know, I know.

When you've got someone tiny who likes to eat and have a place to live...you don't get to give the big fuck you around the office anymore.

And that's been a hard one to swallow.  And in classic Dana tradition...I overdid it on my thought process and reaction...I felt censored and bitter and frustrated over having to act like I know when to zip it...so I gave the big fuck you to writing this blog instead...only I didn't know that...I thought I was just being lazy.

But I'm over it...and I'm back.  Let's see who has stuck around with me...and who gave up.