A little guilt goes a long, long way.
I received three decent questions this week while I was not blogging. Why wasn't I adding daily meaning to your lives with my eloquent prose? In less than seven days I caught both a stomach flu and a nasty head cold, the latter of which is only starting to dissipate. When I said I would attempt 365 posts in 365 days, I also added a disclaimer about not wasting precious energy posting when I could barf on my keyboard or some such. I would also think that too much sneezing would make keys sticky and non-responsive. I've had three keyboards in two years on this poor laptop. It's bordering on ridiculous and I refuse to buy a fourth, ok? Ok.
Onward with the questions!
Dear Maven,
I'm sitting and drinking a cup of hot chocolate as I calmly consider the pros and cons of matricide. I thought you might have some helpful advice for me. Here is my situation:
I live in a house of five people. Other than my wonderful self, these five people consist of ...
1) a husband who likes everything to run as smoothly as a Jedi council meeting. (Well, you know, the meetings before Anakin goes over to the dark side and hacks everyone to pieces with his light saber.)
2) my wonderful free-spirited, non-conformist, unpunctual, unorganized self
3) a daughter who has a genius level IQ and is therefore, perfectly capable of walking into any room (say the bathroom), standing still and becoming lost in her own thoughts for an hour or more with NO CONCEPT of the passage of time
4) a son who is five, active, and nicknamed "Gozer the Gozerian"
5) my aging mother, who's super power is to be able to sense when would be the worst possible time to get in the shower, and then do so.
We have one bathroom. Not one and a half. Just one. Adding another bathroom or moving to a house with more bathrooms is not in the budget right now, despite the rut the housing market is in.
Every morning, I, who am not a morning person, face this terrible choice
A) get up at the ass-crack of dawn and get in the shower before 7am
B) wait until close to 9 am to get a shower, then grouse for the rest of the day about how I can't get anything done till 10 am.
Why are those my choices? Cause my mother is in and out of the bathroom between the hours of 7 and 9. She needs in to use the rest room every 15 minutes. Tomorrow I shall time this phenomena to prove my point. If I'm not out of the shower by 7:30, she's in a panic cause she's going to be late to work. (She's late to work every day, regardless of whether or not I shower.) Even if I am out of the shower before 7:30, she's standing in the hall with her legs crossed cause she really needs to go (despite the fact that she went right before I got in the shower.) I typically occupy the bathroom for 30-40 minutes when showering. I don't think that's an unreasonable length of time. Therefore, after calmly considering this, I'm coming to the conclusion that matricide might be the best solution to my situation.
Sincerely,
Requiring Another Necessary Today
Dear RANT,
I empathize with your situation; there is not a single one of us who hasn't considered matricide at some time. (Except me, mom. Never once have I thought about contributing to your untimely demise. Unless you count the episode when I was thirteen and you found both my cigarettes and drugs while doing my laundry, punished me severely and refused to give either back to me. Big meanie.)
Good news: Surprisingly, there are ways to avoid killing your mother. Sure, that might be the simplest solution, but then you have to figure out how to cover it up, bribe the cops, or find a judge who's sympathetic to your need for an early shower. And in the end, do murders just never work out the way we want them to? Sadly, no. It's disappointing, but we need to move beyond the woe-is-me attitude and become more proactive. I have a few suggestions for you.
Do you need your mother living with you for financial reasons, or would running her out of the home be a viable option? Asking her to leave is just going to create waves; running her out of the house is far better. Ultimately, you want her to make the decision to move out. To do so, you could try some of the following conversation starters:
"So, we've joined this nudist colony..."
"Hubby and I are going to turn the house into a free-run shelter for orphaned tarantulas. You don't mind shaking your clothes out in the morning, do you? Those furry little cuties can hide in a lot of places!"
"The thing is, by removing the bathtub/shower and hosing ourselves down outside, we'll save a lot of energy and make the lawn look nicer, too. Oprah says it's all about getting back to basics, you know."
"Mom, we've been talking and think you deserve more for your monthly contribution. So, every time you pay your portion of the mortgage, we're going to get you a lap dance. No, no, don't thank us. We insist! That's just the type of giving people we are."
If mother moving out is not feasible, you could slowly warp her aging mind with some of the following statements repeated several times daily until she starts believing them:
"If you shower at night you'll save soooo much time in the morning. You really must make use of every minute you have left. Don't you think?"
"You should try sponge bathing with a bowl and a rag. All the cool elderly are doing it!"
"If you stop drinking liquids by about 4PM every day you won't have to pee until you leave the house in the morning. Talk about efficiency!"
As you can see, matricide is not the only solution to your hygienic dilemma. Let me know how it goes.
Spending most of my morning un-showered and still in jammies,
The Maven
Dear Maven:
How can i get my daughters who are 11 now to put their dirty knickers in the damn laundry basket, instead of on the ground, so that the dog doesn't eat them? She so loves dirty undies!
It's really quite embarrassing when I'm at the dog park and the missus goes for a shite and out comes pink and purple Dora underwear.
Sincerely,
The Panty Whisperer
Dear PW,
That sounds very problematic. I'm sure there's a hotline for this kind of thing but I can't seem to find the number. Have you checked on the back of a milk carton?
While your children definitely need a lesson in hamper usage - and if you put them in a course I would also like to enroll Gutsy, the king of dirty laundry pyramids - I would be more concerned with your dog. If she were human, would she still be eating knickers? Would she insist on filling her belly with cartoon-plastered undergarments? Isn't that behaviour some kind of early warning sign for serial killers?
I recommend some serious puppy therapy and a Hannibal Lecter-like mask until the help kicks in. With any luck she can be reformed before she starts chewing up bras and shanking other dogs in the park with leftover underwires.
I wish you all the best. Please keep safe.
From the woman whose cocker spaniel wears a doggy diaper,
The Maven
Dear Maven,
In all your vegetarian goodness, what would you do if someone did a drive-by ham throwing at you?
Sincerely,
Getting Porked
Dear GP,
I think you raise an important issue, and one that I don't take lightly. This video depicts the cruel act of violence brought on by omnivorous vigilantes. I warn you: it will burn into your psyche and haunt your dreams.
Unfortunately, as with most minority groups, hate crimes are enacted on innocent vegetarians all the time. I, myself, have not been a victim of a drive-by hamming, but I know the permanent damage this can cause non-meat-eaters and their families.
How many bottles of stain remover must we go through to get the grease off our good walking clothes? How many washes before the fake smoke smell is removed? How many vegetarians need to lose their homes because they can't pay their chiropractic bills? How many of us must be buried after a large pig thigh is hurled at our unsuspecting heads?
I pray the day will never come when a cured carcass part is launched from a passing vehicle at myself or my family. However, one must protect the ones they love; I have told the gremlins not to mention our "lifestyle" to people they don't know. Especially people who eat ham.
Munching on an organic apple (with the blinds closed),
The Maven
I received three decent questions this week while I was not blogging. Why wasn't I adding daily meaning to your lives with my eloquent prose? In less than seven days I caught both a stomach flu and a nasty head cold, the latter of which is only starting to dissipate. When I said I would attempt 365 posts in 365 days, I also added a disclaimer about not wasting precious energy posting when I could barf on my keyboard or some such. I would also think that too much sneezing would make keys sticky and non-responsive. I've had three keyboards in two years on this poor laptop. It's bordering on ridiculous and I refuse to buy a fourth, ok? Ok.
Onward with the questions!
Dear Maven,
I'm sitting and drinking a cup of hot chocolate as I calmly consider the pros and cons of matricide. I thought you might have some helpful advice for me. Here is my situation:
I live in a house of five people. Other than my wonderful self, these five people consist of ...
1) a husband who likes everything to run as smoothly as a Jedi council meeting. (Well, you know, the meetings before Anakin goes over to the dark side and hacks everyone to pieces with his light saber.)
2) my wonderful free-spirited, non-conformist, unpunctual, unorganized self
3) a daughter who has a genius level IQ and is therefore, perfectly capable of walking into any room (say the bathroom), standing still and becoming lost in her own thoughts for an hour or more with NO CONCEPT of the passage of time
4) a son who is five, active, and nicknamed "Gozer the Gozerian"
5) my aging mother, who's super power is to be able to sense when would be the worst possible time to get in the shower, and then do so.
We have one bathroom. Not one and a half. Just one. Adding another bathroom or moving to a house with more bathrooms is not in the budget right now, despite the rut the housing market is in.
Every morning, I, who am not a morning person, face this terrible choice
A) get up at the ass-crack of dawn and get in the shower before 7am
B) wait until close to 9 am to get a shower, then grouse for the rest of the day about how I can't get anything done till 10 am.
Why are those my choices? Cause my mother is in and out of the bathroom between the hours of 7 and 9. She needs in to use the rest room every 15 minutes. Tomorrow I shall time this phenomena to prove my point. If I'm not out of the shower by 7:30, she's in a panic cause she's going to be late to work. (She's late to work every day, regardless of whether or not I shower.) Even if I am out of the shower before 7:30, she's standing in the hall with her legs crossed cause she really needs to go (despite the fact that she went right before I got in the shower.) I typically occupy the bathroom for 30-40 minutes when showering. I don't think that's an unreasonable length of time. Therefore, after calmly considering this, I'm coming to the conclusion that matricide might be the best solution to my situation.
Sincerely,
Requiring Another Necessary Today
Dear RANT,
I empathize with your situation; there is not a single one of us who hasn't considered matricide at some time. (Except me, mom. Never once have I thought about contributing to your untimely demise. Unless you count the episode when I was thirteen and you found both my cigarettes and drugs while doing my laundry, punished me severely and refused to give either back to me. Big meanie.)
Good news: Surprisingly, there are ways to avoid killing your mother. Sure, that might be the simplest solution, but then you have to figure out how to cover it up, bribe the cops, or find a judge who's sympathetic to your need for an early shower. And in the end, do murders just never work out the way we want them to? Sadly, no. It's disappointing, but we need to move beyond the woe-is-me attitude and become more proactive. I have a few suggestions for you.
Do you need your mother living with you for financial reasons, or would running her out of the home be a viable option? Asking her to leave is just going to create waves; running her out of the house is far better. Ultimately, you want her to make the decision to move out. To do so, you could try some of the following conversation starters:
"So, we've joined this nudist colony..."
"Hubby and I are going to turn the house into a free-run shelter for orphaned tarantulas. You don't mind shaking your clothes out in the morning, do you? Those furry little cuties can hide in a lot of places!"
"The thing is, by removing the bathtub/shower and hosing ourselves down outside, we'll save a lot of energy and make the lawn look nicer, too. Oprah says it's all about getting back to basics, you know."
"Mom, we've been talking and think you deserve more for your monthly contribution. So, every time you pay your portion of the mortgage, we're going to get you a lap dance. No, no, don't thank us. We insist! That's just the type of giving people we are."
If mother moving out is not feasible, you could slowly warp her aging mind with some of the following statements repeated several times daily until she starts believing them:
"If you shower at night you'll save soooo much time in the morning. You really must make use of every minute you have left. Don't you think?"
"You should try sponge bathing with a bowl and a rag. All the cool elderly are doing it!"
"If you stop drinking liquids by about 4PM every day you won't have to pee until you leave the house in the morning. Talk about efficiency!"
As you can see, matricide is not the only solution to your hygienic dilemma. Let me know how it goes.
Spending most of my morning un-showered and still in jammies,
The Maven
Dear Maven:
How can i get my daughters who are 11 now to put their dirty knickers in the damn laundry basket, instead of on the ground, so that the dog doesn't eat them? She so loves dirty undies!
It's really quite embarrassing when I'm at the dog park and the missus goes for a shite and out comes pink and purple Dora underwear.
Sincerely,
The Panty Whisperer
Dear PW,
That sounds very problematic. I'm sure there's a hotline for this kind of thing but I can't seem to find the number. Have you checked on the back of a milk carton?
While your children definitely need a lesson in hamper usage - and if you put them in a course I would also like to enroll Gutsy, the king of dirty laundry pyramids - I would be more concerned with your dog. If she were human, would she still be eating knickers? Would she insist on filling her belly with cartoon-plastered undergarments? Isn't that behaviour some kind of early warning sign for serial killers?
I recommend some serious puppy therapy and a Hannibal Lecter-like mask until the help kicks in. With any luck she can be reformed before she starts chewing up bras and shanking other dogs in the park with leftover underwires.
I wish you all the best. Please keep safe.
From the woman whose cocker spaniel wears a doggy diaper,
The Maven
Dear Maven,
In all your vegetarian goodness, what would you do if someone did a drive-by ham throwing at you?
Sincerely,
Getting Porked
Dear GP,
I think you raise an important issue, and one that I don't take lightly. This video depicts the cruel act of violence brought on by omnivorous vigilantes. I warn you: it will burn into your psyche and haunt your dreams.
Unfortunately, as with most minority groups, hate crimes are enacted on innocent vegetarians all the time. I, myself, have not been a victim of a drive-by hamming, but I know the permanent damage this can cause non-meat-eaters and their families.
How many bottles of stain remover must we go through to get the grease off our good walking clothes? How many washes before the fake smoke smell is removed? How many vegetarians need to lose their homes because they can't pay their chiropractic bills? How many of us must be buried after a large pig thigh is hurled at our unsuspecting heads?
I pray the day will never come when a cured carcass part is launched from a passing vehicle at myself or my family. However, one must protect the ones they love; I have told the gremlins not to mention our "lifestyle" to people they don't know. Especially people who eat ham.
Munching on an organic apple (with the blinds closed),
The Maven