Surviving my childhood Part 2 AKA Dumpster Diving

Don't feel sympathy for me yet, let me explain. It's not that kind of dumpster diving. When I was a kid, my mom and my grandmother both did "Trash for Cash" or refunding as they called it. For those of you unfamiliar with refunding, you turn in a UPC code(s) or box tops or full labels or whatever that particular manufacturer was requesting along with the rebate form and in 4-6 weeks, you get money.

So.. my mom and granny weren't just occasional refunders, they were FANATICS! SO much so, out garage was tuned into a storage place for lack of a better word trash! (see this post for more about that) Boxes and boxes and boxes on shelves and shelves and shelves of trash. Boxes were all labeled so if a refund offer was requesting a box top from a box of crackers, she would know right where to look.

Back to the point of this post before I forget it all together.

When I was with my mom, she was always on the lookout for anything she might be currently needing for a rebate. That meant, pulling over on the side of the road if she saw something. Depending on the road, she would send me or my brother out of the car to get it, or if it was a busy road, she'd get it herself.

Sometimes, she would park behind a store and peek in the dumpster. If she say something she needed.. you guessed it, either my brother, cousin, or myself were boosted into the dumpster and displayed various boxes, bottles, labels..etc for their approval. once, I saw a perfectly good half eaten sandwich while I was in there and pretended to be digging for more stuff for them while I ate it.

Then there were the coupons. Though that was not nearly as weird as the dumpster diving, it was still pretty hazardous. I had paper cuts to the billionth power form cutting them out, sorting, and throwing away the expired ones for her. I made the mistake of telling her how fun that was once... it became my job until I went on strike and refused to do it.

So there you have it! Now that you have read those last 2 posts..it explains a LOT about me, doesn't it?

Surviving my childhood Part 1

I know we have our share of crazy stories to tell from childhood. Time to tell mine.

My dad is a recovering alcoholic. He has been sober for about 14 years now. My mom worked at her own ceramic shop full time. My dad also had a full time job. How he was able to go to work everyday still remains a mystery.

As a kid, if my mom was working nights, like she sometimes did, it was up to my dad to watch my brother and I. He watched us through beer goggles, so we pretty much got to do whatever we wanted. Hell, even sober, he didn't really care what we did.

He had some old collectors trucks in our back yard. He was going to restore them. You know.. someday. My brother, my cousin and myself would go in the back yard, which also served as a trash burning pit, and jump from top of truck to top of truck. We would also attempt to push each other in the fire. No one ever got hurt, thank God, but we could have.

When we got older, my dad used to let us drive the old Vega station wagon. On our street which was never very populated (unlike now) My brother, who is 3 years older than I, would drive, and I would ride on the roof holding on to the luggage rack. Don't worry, my dad was in the passenger seat, so it was OK!

When I was 12, my dad let me drive. My brother rode on the roof. As I was pulling into the driveway, I got mixed up with the gas and brake, so as I approached the pine tree I panicked and floored the brake gas pedal. I heard my brother all 'George-of-the-Jungle' like "watch out for that tree" But, it was too late. I hit it, not with full force because somehow I managed to let off the gas before we hit.. maybe at 15 MPH. My brother was able to stay on the roof.

When I was about 6, I was riding in one of my dads old cars. I can't remember what it was, but back then, there were no seatbelts.I was leaning against the door for whatever reason. The door wasn't shut tight. We went around a corner and you guessed it, I fell out of the car and rolled acrossed the road. Lucky for me, he was sober and we weren't driving very fast. Otherwise, he might have left me there.

If one of us kids got hurt, dad's solution for anything bleeding was to pour alcohol on it. Straight from the bottle. So of course, after we got back to the house, he emptied half a bottle of rubbing alcohol on my wounds.

There is a big hill in my neighborhood (I still live on the same street I grew up on) I tied my Big Wheel to the back of my bike and my cousin and I took off for the hill. She rode the Big Wheel. We were going pretty fast down the hill when she fell off. Her foot got caught and I dragged her for about 25 feet before I realize those were screams of terror and pain, not of joy that I was hearing. We managed to get her back to the house where my dad "took care" of the wounds. My cousin hated him for a while.

If my mom was home and he was passed out (though just yesterday he claimed he was exhausted and sleeping) with a beer in his hand, my mom would show us how to take the full beer can from his limp hand and dump it in the sink and return it without waking him up. That became our nightly entertainment. We would also find his beer that he would hide from Mom and "dump" it. Sometimes it was a 12 pack, sometimes just a 6. Needles to say, as teenagers, we were popular with the neighborhood kids when we found the beer in the woods.

Hide and seek was always fun. We played in the house. My dad would help one of us climb into the attic. No stairs or ladder, just shelves that my mom used for her "trash for cash". But that's a whole other story, one for another blog post.

He would help us climb the shelves so we didn't have to bother him anymore. He would help us climb into the top of the narrow linen closet. It was IMPOSSIBLE to find someone, because there was no light. If you giggled... you were toast.

Dad also has a few poems that he could only recite when he was drunk, they were funny as hell, but I can't find them on the internet. One of my favorites is "Pierre Hunts the Skunk" absolutely hilarious, but as many times as I have heard it, I can't remember it. I am going to have to get him drunk one night so he can recite it, then I'll write it down


WOW! This post was longer than I intended it to be, but if you stayed to the end, thank you.

I will post some of my "Mom adventures" another time

My dad , his euphenisims and a nephrectomy

My dad went into the hospital last Tuesday to have a nephrectomy.. or in layman's terms, a kidney removed. It was cancerous, but the Dr said there was no spread and since the other kidney is healthy, no need for chemo. Thank God for that!

Dad has a helluva sense of humor (another reason I know I'm not adopted) and he had everyone in pre-op and post-op in stitches.

He was in the navy for 20 years and of course he has a lot of stories, antidotes and jokes to tell. NEVER is he at a loss for one of the 3 to share at any given situation. Dad was telling a story to a male nurse Mike, who kept calling him 'sir.' My dad told him, in the Navy, if he was addressed as 'sir' he would tell them "You don't have to call me sir, I'm no better than you." After telling the story, Mike called dad 'sir' (out of respect, not to be a smartass) Of course Dad said, "Get the wax outta your ears, didn't you hear the story I just told?" Mike laughed and changed the subject. "So you're a Navy man huh? What's the matter, the Army didn't want you?" My dad took a big breath, grinned and said, "No, it's not that, I was too damned intelligent for the Army" That brought a lot of laughs. Shortly after, they knocked him out. Coincidence? I think not!

Surgery went well. After recovery, they wheeled him back to his room. The nurse were amazed! They couldn't shut him up and have never seen anything like him coming out of recovery. He was coherent, but they couldn't understand his euphemisms. They laughed politely to humor him though. They cracked up when I explained what he meant.

As you may or may not know, they starve you and "clean your pipes" before surgery. So when he woke up, he told them "I feel like your belly button is gnawing a hole in my spine", or "My stomach feels like my throat's been cut, or my asshole is eating my underwear". When they asked me I said "Oh.. he's just going around his ass to get to his elbow to say ' I'm hungry' " About this time, they were ready to move us both to the 6th floor (psychiatric ward.) He would tell a joke about 2 bulls (he told it about 4,363,855,837,363 times) but I can't remember it. I think I blocked it out.

They gave him a meal of solid foods right after the operation, which is dumb because it just blocked him up. (this hospital REALLY sucks) So after 4 days of him not being able to go #2, they decided to give him laxatives, suppositories and an enema. By yesterday he was "shitting 20 paces through a keyhole and not hitting the sides" He called me and said "I passed a BIG milestone a few minutes ago" I was laughing so hard "Is THAT what you call it?"

I brought him home last night, hopefully he won't drive my step-mother crazy.

There you have it, if you ever wondered about my humor, wonder no more.

Revelations ... no not of biblical proportions

I got my birth certificate in the mail last week and was horrified to learn I was NOT adopted. I also learned that I was not born, but dispensed like a Pez candy. Not in a hospital, but in a Naval Weapons Center. Yes.. I can hear you all! It does explain EVERYTHING you all have come to learn about me doesn't it? Seriously, on my birth certificate, it says "Place of Birth.. Dispensary", like I was a developed weapon or some shit. "Street address.. Naval Weapons Center. " Which happens to be in the middle of a desert on California. Growing up, I used to tell my friends that I was born in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Because that was the only named desert I knew.

Why am I just now getting my birth certificate? My mom says she gave me my birth certificate when I go married, but I don't remember, and I don't have it so I was just hoping against hope that I was indeed adopted. The problem with that theory is that I am too much like both of them not to be adopted. Now I am assuming it was my brother who was adopted, because he's not like any of us. I haven't seen his birth certificate though.

Anyway, I was a dumbass at let my drivers license expire. I got online to renew it and guess what? You got it! It wasn't that easy. Due to the new Homeland Security laws put in place, you need so much more. In Florida, you need birth certificate, marriage license (if your last name changed), social security card (or a tax document showing SS number) 2 proofs of residence (state issued ID's wont work) you need a utility or mortgage bill, car or voters registration, bank statement etc.) I also didn't have (because I never ordered it) my marriage license. Luckily, you can order these documents on-line, no matter what state you are in now, or in what state the event happened. Mine all came within a week of ordering them a day BEFORE my appointment. THAT, my friends is a miracle all in itself. I NEVER have that kind of luck. Before all of this happened, I was thinking about legally changing my name to 'Murphy Murphy Murphy' just to accommodate the law my life has been living. When I saw the paperwork required just to renew my license though, I quickly changed my mind.

When I got to the DMV there was a long line ahead of me...SURPRISE! But I had an appointment. The 9 people in front of me, didn't have all the required documents they needed. apparently they were dumbassses too Then yell at the girl behind the counter. Lucky for her, I did all of my homework and came with all the right stuff. To watch her face when I gave her the blood, urine and stool samples was priceless.

PS Go check out my daughters blog. She picked a helluva a topic to make her blog-comeback

It's been so long I don't know if I remember how to blog...

..and my blank post box is mocking me daring me to come up with something good. I've lost followers (can't say that I blame them) I have no good excuses as to why I stopped blogging, just really lame ones like "I'm working a lot of overtime" and "I'm addicted to a video game and Twitter."

But recently, I have discovered that I miss not just writing my blog, but reading yours as well. I miss all of you and I feel bad, especially when I see some of you on Twitter. Every time I see your names, I wonder "What I'm missing on their blogs today?" I used to blog at work, but we are understaffed and therefor VERY busy, so I can't do it there, I cant even write 140 charaters or less between calls.

Well, enough excuses, I am going to promise to at least TRY to write at least one post a week and be a lot better at reading all of yours .

That's what I was afraid of.. it's been so long, this isn't even funny.. well maybe tomorrow.

Baby steps people baby steps