Mind of a Mad Woman

I have a PAC meeting coming up next week at Ashlee’s school. (That’s PTA to all your American folks out there. Parent’s Advisory Council.) In preparation for said meeting, I thought it only prudent to put together a shopping list. Think of it as a preventative measure, if you will.

What am I trying to prevent? Ahhhh…well. My darling friend Corey would tell you that I “need everyone to love me”. This is not actually the case, it’s more along the line of wanting to feel helpful and busy and productive. Somehow, this translates into me volunteering for everything that is mentioned within ear shot of me. So, in an attempt to stave of this apparent addiction to helpfulness, the aforementioned shopping list was prepared.

1) Rope - my thinking is that if I tie my hands together, behind my back, and then tie my hands to whatever chair I happen to be sitting on, that I will not be able to wave my hand back and forth frantically in an effort to make myself seen through the throng of at least 9 people.

2) Duct Tape - tying my hands is all well and good but really, if I can still speak and say “Why don’t I do it, I have nothing better to do?” then what is the point. So some good old fashioned duct tape is in order. I figure maybe I can use the rest of the roll to wax my legs later…..make the ride to hell all that much smoother.

3) Date Book - odd I know, but I’m told that maybe I could purchase someone’s old date book with all their appointments written in. In the event that the rope and the duct tape fail me or Monica decides that I’m in dire trouble and saves me, I could flick through the date book and noticed that every date that they need volunteers for is fully booked. How social I am! How happy I am to be so in demand! How incredibly UNavailable I am for ALL events that require volunteers!

I’m sure there’s more but that should do for now.

Don’t get me wrong, I *love* helping out at Ashlee’s school, and her Sparks unit - it makes me happy, and by extension makes my beautiful girl happy. At this precise moment in time, I am also talking on the phone to another mother from the school while trying to organise an auction. I’m pretty sure my head it going to explode soon.

Does this all look good on my non existant resume? Will it help me get into the peaceful gardens of the afterlife (whatever and wherever they may be)?

Ah who cares? It gives me something to do for awhile.

Once in awhile it will occur to me to go rifling through boxes of stuff that I have so lovingly hurled into the cave otherwise known as my hot water heater cupboard. Today was one of those days. As I dug my way through the mountains of containers, boxes, books and paper, I found myself staring into a mound of photographs that I had thought lost long ago. Pictures of my children, pictures of my husband and his family, some of my mother and two of her husbands (love you mom), and of course some of myself.

I suppose it is inevitable that when looking at pictures of yourself, there would be the odd one that would give you pause for thought. Often, with me anyway, this thought it rather along the lines of “Oh dear God, who the hell can I kill for taking such a horrible picture, and how many fucking chins do I *have* anyway?!”. ‘Twas not the case today, oh no! Today, I was blessed (?) with the opportunity to find pictures from my childhood. And, as it is hump day and I think we all deserve a good laugh to get us through the day on Hump Day, I thought I might swallow what little overinflated pride I have left, and share them with you.

Hotty Hubby thinks I am certifiably insane for even considering this, but such is life, and really he doesn’t have any idea what torture these photos could bring in the future as he was somehow blessed with the “Hotty” gene. More about that incredible stroke of luck another day.

Where was I?

Ah yes, pictures. Hands up who remembers having a Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine! Yes, many of us were lucky to be given one to continually torture our parents with “Mooooooommmm, can I have a sno-cone? It’s ONLY -13 out there!”. As it happens, I too was one of the lucky ones and the moment was caught on film. Please note the beautiful long hair on my cousin Tracy, and the ..um…. helmet on me. We’ll have a discussion on this later.

According to my mother that..um..helmet look was rather “in” at the time. I was almost willing to believe that parents all over the Western civilized world were using bowls as a guide for cutting their daughter’s hair for that time period until I found a picture that was taken almost FOUR years later and was shocked, nay…Horrified (yes that’s right, with a capital ‘H’) to see that I *still* had the same hair cut. The difference this time was that my loving parents (read: tormentors) had added yet another fashion accessory. See if you can spot what I’m talking about….

Oh the memories. You cannot even begin to imagine how happy it made me to come across these mementos.

And while we’re on the topic of haircuts and “style”, let me take you back a couple years to before the glasses fiasco. I’m 5 years old and I’m thinking that somewhere along the line, some embodiment of the Devil himself waltzed up and whispered in my mother’s ear that I would just *love* to have that short new hair do that everyone is raving about. The only other feasible reason for this upcoming photo that *I* can think of is that I mentioned to a friend of a friend of a friend that I’d like to have the same hair as that gorgeous little girl down there, and through a long convoluted game of Chinese Whispers, it finally made its way back to my parents that I would like to look like a blonder version of freakin’ PETER PAN! What were they thinking? Really? Was it a game in the early 80s to see how much torture one could inflict on their child before someone actually said something? Was it not enough that my hair was hacked to look like I had survived the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I had to be dressed to look like a boy also? I think I feel a migraine coming on.

On the other hand, by looking at these pictures, I am beginning to see where my hellions….cough…children, get their stellar good looks from.

I am told that at some point, all of us went through a phase where we tried this Blondissima look. Thing of it is, I wasn’t trying for Blondissima, I was trying for a witch. I was 15 and it was Halloween on a British Air Force Base in Germany. What else would I do but make my face white, eyes dark and hair a blue rat’s nest? Exactly…nothing. Sadly, I cannot even blame this particular look on my parents, this is the pure unadulterated foolishness of weird teenager that had nothing better to do. Even worse? I’m *still* that foolish. Surprise!

I believe it was also at that age that I was shocked, frightened and rather mortified at exactly how much I looked like my mother. Except she doesn’t have blue hair and heavy black eye liner. It wasn’t til I was almost 18 that I was able to hear someone say “you look like your mother” and take it as a compliment. Now, when they say “you SOUND like your mother”, that’s another matter. You might want to strap on your running shoes and take off pretty damn quick because this baseball bat is going to come down on the back of your skull.

Seriously though, my mother has her faults like all of us, but I think in the long run she did a very good job of raising me…and she’s still working on my sister and step sister. Bless her heart. Sooooo close to freedom and she gave birth AGAIN. Hahahahaha. Not that I was any smarter.

And for your final round of amusement in this game we call “Hahah look at Meg..what an idiot”, here is a picture that for years I thought was awful thanks to comments made to me about how I looked something like “pigs wrestling under a blanket” or some such thing. Looking back now, I realize how incredibly smoking HOT I looked. Hell, I’d do me. And that handsome guy standing next to me? As much as my darling spawn would like to tell you that that is Daddy, it is indeed NOT Hotty Hubby. That would be Rory. He kindly escorted me to my Grade 13 Ball ( military boarding school….another post altogether) after my boyfriend at the time unceremoniously dumped me OVER THE PHONE (asshole) for a cheap slut in the grade below me who happened to be my friend. And no, I’m not bitter.

 Well, th-th-th-that’s all folks! Hope y’all had a good laugh at my expense…..albeit a cheap one. I aim to please, and if nothing else it made me realise that I should never again allow my parents to have a say in my hair styles or choice of glasses, and I should never ever try that “witch” look again.

There is a new syndrome making the rounds. Could this be the beginning of an epidemic? It appears that people under a certain age, or perhaps height, become suddenly vulnerable to attacks of invisibilty upon entering grocery stores. This leaves them particularly susceptible to bashings from shopping carts, and continual pushing from towering Amazonian adults. Suggested remedies include strapping these small folks into carts, attaching stilts or having them walk in a bubble.

Ok, so I exaggerate a little. But really - are you REALLY not seeing my 5 year old as she’s walking down the aisle? Is she so unobtrusive that you cannot maneuver your shopping cart around her instead of running into her before walking on without so much as an apology? Personally, I find that a child that size can be mighty “present” in my world and I am very aware of where she is. Come to think of it, her 3 year old brother is no less present, and I question his affliction also.

Is it too much to ask that when I go shopping with my children, who are usually VERY well behaved, that people not continuously run into them, push past them or step on them? Would it also be too much to ask that if you DO run into them inadvertently, that you might actually SAY something?

I did comment to one lady after the ran into my daughter for the 2nd time… “You could at least say sorry to her” and was told in a VERY loving way (hehe) that had I been “more in control” of my daughter or if she “knew her limits” that it wouldn’t have happened, and why “should she apologize to someone who is only five or six”.

It’s amazing what conflict ones body goes through when trying to decide whether to laugh hysterically at such foolish and naive comments or whether to slug the troglodyte who just uttered them. I chose instead to sneer at her, mutter under my breath, call her a cow and walk away, making a mental note to crash into HER cart next time I encountered her.

I cannot imagine being quite so blind and self absorbed that I don’t notice others around me, regardless of their age or stature. Seriously. What a crock.

So I’ve been doing some schooling, and if I may say so myself, excelling at it. Yes that’s right. I’m doing well. I have mastered a fine art…procrastination. Some may disagree with me and say that it is not a fine art but I insist it is. It takes a lot of skill to *not* do all the things I should be doing. To sit on the couch just so. To be able to do so many mindless things on a computer, all the while knowing that there is vacuuming, laundry and errands to do. I firmly believe you must be as talented, if not more so, to be able to procrastinate with style, than the people who do not.Â

Procrastination can be simultaneously exhausting and fulfilling, pointless and incredibly important. There are times when just the mere act of putting something off, exhausts me more than doing what I should have in the first place, leaving me to wonder why I bothered delaying the inevitable. On the other hand, I oftentimes find myself feeling rather fulfilled from having spent a day on the couch reading my book or colouring with my children instead of doing the pile of clothes that is quickly beginning to look rather like the garbage monster from Fraggle Rock. This is also where the pointless vs incredibly important argument comes in. It has been said “what is the POINT in putting it off? Why not just get it over with and then go enjoy yourself?”. Well, true. Why not do that? There are days when that is exactly what I do. But, is it not also as important sometimes to not rush into it, to pace yourself, to put it off until you know that you can give it your fullest attention?Â

My point is, I think over the last 28 years I have managed to perfect the finest points of this “art”. For the most part, I know when it is reasonable to put something off for a while, when it is not so important for me to do that pile of laundry right this second so that I can spend time with my kids. As a rule, I know when I need to get my butt in gear and go run those errands and pay those bills. But…and yes, there’s often a “but”….there are times when I get it wrong. I know, I said I had perfected the art. Well, there’s always room for improvement right?Â

One of the times that I have gotten it wrong is when it came to my weightloss. I have many theories surrounding this, and I am exploring them all. What I have so far is that since I was 17, I have gotten progressively heavier. People have commented on it, and instead of thinking “hey, I should do something about that”, I said “screw them, they want to see fat? watch this!” Occasionally I would catch one of those much dreaded glimpses of myself in the mirrors that I so vehemently avoided, and I would be so shocked at what I had turned into that I would start a “diet” and vow to be on track and lose all the weight. This would last about 2 weeks to a month and I’d cave and buy a bag of chips. MMMMMmmmm. Prime example of the art I’ve been mastering I think?

I cannot continue to put this off. As of New Years, I have gone from 353 pounds to 337. Regular gym trips, better eating and, I think, a better attitude towards all this has certainly helped. Looking back at baby pictures of my kids, looking at the people they’ve become now, and dreaming about the people they will grow into….THAT is what has helped the most. I do not want to be another statistic that you hear Dr. Oz talking about when he appears on Oprah. “15 out of 20 women aged 30 to 40 die of………brought about by their weight”. I want to watch my daughter walk down the aisle, watch my son acheive his dreams. I want to live a long healthy life with my gorgeous husband and be a wife he can be proud of.

No more procrastination when it comes to my weight. I can do this.

I waltzed my way into Weight Watchers this week expecting to see the numbers fluctuate in some way, probably to my detriment, but I got lucky. I didn’t lose any weight, but nor did I gain any. I held steady at 337. Not great, but not horrible.Â

And now, I am off to check on the pile of clothes in the laundry room to make sure it isn’t moving on it’s own, and then I’m going to play mindless games on here while thinking of all the errands I will NOT be running tomorrow.