I'm Going Straight To Hell

I'm going straight to hell. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.00, just get my ass into the hot place for all eternity. I kid you not. I guess I need to explain why I'll be wearing 3000 SPF for my next 3 lifetimes but first, let me say this: my husband is a wonderful guy. I also am grateful that the man does not read this blog or I'd be vacationing in hell for more than 3 lifetimes. Way more. Let me also add that my husband is extremely easy to embarrass. OMG is he ever! It's like shooting fish in a barrel, stealing candy from a baby, rolling drunks in the street. With that in mind, let me tell you why I'm now on the express track to the furnace. We went to Walmart the other day. We passed by our regular grocery establishment when he remembered that we needed items for the week so we veered in to our local 24 hour Supercenter. We picked up the necessities of food & pet items when he remembered that we were also almost out of condoms. Shock! Horror! Now my darling dear hubby will NEVER buy them in a store. EVER! He can't do it. If we need them, I buy them-when I'm alone. He won't have them in our shared grocery cart. He usually buys them online-discreetly. You see where this is going in regards to his pride? I can't take birth control because of the hormone/estrogen levels in pills because I had a stroke and even though he's had a son & does not want any more children-he won't get a vasectomy. Well, I had been discussing another form of control method to catch any loose strays so to speak. Vaginal Contraceptive Film. I wanted to try it. Foam is messy & he says the gel kind of burns sooooo, film it is! I put a box of VCF in our cart (white box with pink & blue lettering on it) & he proceeds to place a bag of cat food over it so no one will see it! This is a man that refuses to allow feminine products in the cart when we shop together, or he'll hide them behind other items. I roll my eyes & off we go to finish up our shopping. While we are in the electronics department & he is browsing the shelves for some esoteric geek object, I decide to read the VCF box as I'm waiting for him. I'm standing there in plain sight for all & glory to see what I'm doing because folks, I'm 35 years old & have been buying feminine products since I was 13 so very little embarrasses me, if anything at all. Even a loud fart in church by yours truly just blows over (no pun intended). I hear "oh hell no" and suddenly the box is snatched out of my hand & tossed in the cart as I'm hustled out of that department.At this point I stop dead & drag my heals. When h looks at me I ask him-Don't you think it would attest to your virility that I need to protect myself from your fucking little swimmers? I honestly thought he was going to drop dead right there. I also said-it's not like I was reading the instructions out loud to you & everyone in the fucking electronics department!(I tend to swear when I get a wee bit irate-it's my Connecticut upbringing) I am no longer allowed to take things out of the cart to read them so nonchalantly in public nor am I allowed to even buy the stuff when he is present. Ya gotta love the man but he is a little bashful on soethings. I dare not ever ask him to buy me a box of tampons-even if I was bleeding to death & desperately needed one to survive. He would hemorrhage himself in anxiety fits. He says I am not allowed to discuss this with my mother-who by the way about pissed herself when I told her, nor am I allowed to share this with any of my friends!ok, so I don't know any of you personally do I?

Doing laundry is not a dirty word

This is a front end loader. Don't fear it. It won't bite you, I promise. It's not difficult to use either! Modern accoutriments in do-it-yourself laundry makes it easier then ever to seperate, sort, load, wash, & dry your laundry all by yourself! The term Doing your laundry, is not a dirty word, I swear! Let me give you a brief history of washing machines & the theories behind them. I found this online & am quoting directly here to save time: "For centuries, people on sea voyages washed their clothes by placing the dirty laundry in a strong cloth bag, and tossing it overboard, letting the ship drag the bag for hours. The principle was sound: forcing water through clothes to remove dirt. Catharine Beecher, an early advocate of bringing order and dignity to housework, called laundry "the American housekeeper’s hardest problem". Women from all classes tried to find ways to get relief from doing laundry. Some hired washerwomen and others used commercial laundries. Eventually mechanical aids lightened the load." ( http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/story067.htm ) I grew up in a household with two older brothers. My mother worked and was going to nursing school once I hit about 6 years old. She figured, if you could see the door of the machine, you were big enough to do your own laundry. Graned our washer was not a front loader back then, so she cut me some slack & helped me out, but the theory was still the same. Same with my brothers. Now Rob is a neat freak! He gets it naturally, whereas Mike, eh, we don't refer to him & neatness in the same sentence. I, on the other hand, cannot stand clothes on the floor, and yet I cannot tolerate other people touching my clothes! I'll take my dry-clean only stuff to a dry cleaners, because it needs a professional's touch. I'm not a pro in dry cleaning. But you know what? 25+ years in washing, folding, drying, hanging, etc, my own clothes pretty much qualifies me to handle my own personal items. In my house, you do your own laundry. I don't mind pulling your t-shirts/jeans out of the washer & throwing them in the dryer for you, or even letting you do the same for me. But when it comes to my unmentionables..... back away from the front loaders my friend! I could never take all of my personal items to a laundromat & hand them over to a stranger & say.... "see you tomorrow around 6ish." I just couldn't do it. It would be like abandoning my own dog for too long. It hurts me inside to do so. Nope. Can't do it. My friends, doing your laundry yourself, is not a dirty word. It's ok, to admit it in public that you can do so. It's also ok to admit that you can't. It's nothing to be ashamed of! I know of some people that prefer not to! Maybe that's a blessing in disguise. They might turn their tighty whities pink from washing a red sock in with them. Who knows. Ok, enough of laundry. Now on to kitchens!

Have You Ever Really Been Scared Before?

I’m not talking about the goose bumps while walking through a haunted maze at an amusement park or feeling the sweaty palm nervousness about standing up in front of a group of people and giving a speech on something. What I’m referring to is that spine chilling fear that roots you to the spot and turns your blood to ice. Where you feel yourself going weak in the knees and your stomach starts to tie itself in knots and you wondered how on earth you got yourself in to this mess? Where you can actually feel your scalp tingling in anticipation of a scream being ripped from your throat! Yes, that’s the fear I’m talking about. I never really felt that fear before. I only thought that I had! I had faced death head on and came out the victor in a battle for my life a decade ago. I was on the low side of my mid-twenties when it was found that I had a brain tumor about the size of a grapefruit sitting in my noggin. Non-cancerous fortunately, but deadly all the same for its position and size and for the side effects that had already been happening. The neurosurgeon spent thirteen hours scraping around inside my cranium to get it all out and left me with one heck of a headache and a titanium plate as a commemorative badge of honor, but for the most part, it was gone! And none to soon to be honest with you! If we had waited even a few days more, there was a good chance that the tumor would have taken my life with one good sneeze. Was I scared about it? Not really. I didn’t have a chance to be scared. When the doctors found it, they had to get in there and get it out within a couple of days of finding it. So there really wasn’t time for me to become scared about it. The fear I’m referring to now is something altogether different. I’m talking about roller coasters and one in particular: Sheikra at Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida. Sheikra is a steel roller coaster with a track consisting of steel tubes or rails that measures a total of 3188 feet in length with a total height of 200 hundred feet. It has one inversion and a vertical angle of ninety degrees which you experience twice! Yes, I did say twice! It has three cars per train so while one is running, another is filling up. These cars are arranged eight people across in a single row for a total of twenty-four riders per train. The ride’s top speed is seventy miles an hour that last for a three heart pounding minutes that seems to go on for much longer than that! Sheikra is a species of African hawk that is known to dive straight down for its prey, which is exactly what this ride does! While waiting and winding through the line to get on this ride, your anticipation builds. You can see the cars go through their movements and hear the screams of the riders and you begin to wonder if this is for you. But you figure, “it’s only a ride, how scary can it be?” After sitting down and strapping in, your car climbs to the top and hangs at a ninety degree angle for several seconds before plummeting straight down into a tunnel. You are so stunned by this you that for a moment, you forget to breath. As soon as you have caught your breath, you are soaring straight up into the air two hundred feet and heading in to the inversion and you ARE screaming! It curves back around out of the inversion and hangs again at that ninety degree angle, perfectly, serenely. You know it is going to soar straight down again and there is NOT A THING that you can do about it, except maybe scream some more. You are so scared that you can’t even close your eyes as you race back to wards the ground at seventy miles an hour! At the last second, your car veers out parallel to the ground and slows it itself down by using a water break that splashes the knowing onlookers watching form the ground. The car returns to the unloading platform and you are waiting for the safety harness to unhook so that you can TRY to step out. Your knees are shaking, your stomach was left behind somewhere on that first ninety degree angle, and you’re scared. You can hear the screams overhead of the next passengers and you wince. You know what fear is now, at least I do.