Welcome to Adulthood

Wonder if this boy above told his mom he was a "Grown-Ass Man". Look where that got him....

I've spent a long day thinking about where I came from and where I am. My ADHD thought process made me then think of Paris Hilton, the Kardashians and countless other uber-successful by birth people.


Really, I came from nowhere. When I think back to my teen years, I thought we we did well. I thought we were better off than most. I thought we had all we wanted or needed. I mean, I saw people who didn't have what we had. They must have been "the poor people".

As an adult, I realize we didn't have squat. (In the voice of a 13-year-old girl), O-M-G, WE WERE SOOOO POOR. I Lived on Main Street here in the fine village of Podunk until I was almost 20. We had a pool, satellite, cable, video games, dirt bikes, 3-wheeler, (little supervision as I think back) and a purple scooter.
I never remember being hungry; although, I do remember gorging on payday when the groceries came in from the box store where Subway is now. I do remember eating the ass ends off of cold hot dogs and sticking the middle in the trash for fear that I'd be caught "wasting" food. AND I remember my brother living on Gerber baby cereal (the flake kind you mix with milk) for most of high school.



I don't recall eating out EVER, or a class t-shirt or lunch money. I do remember lots of Aigner clothing, the Village Boutique and prom dresses that were WAY OVERPRICED. I recall buying 76 cents of gas one time for the biggest piece of shit car IN THE WORLD. I thought that's what you did. You turn 16 and the stepmother gets a new car. Right of passage sort of thing. 


When I became an adult, I judged a successful life on having a pool, having satellite TV, having cycles, cable, and "things". As the kids started high school, ALL kids had cell phones. Neither kid got a NEW car, but I was teaching them character (and after all, they had a damn cell phone for the triple AMY if they needed roadside assistance). They both had what they "NEEDED" in high school.


Both kids have had gas money, lunch money, insurance, cell phones, prom attire, money for any occasion needed, class rings, no jobs to interfere with sports and academics. "We've" footed the bill. 


It is of my opinion that my job as a mother (unlike my own mother) is to send my kids out into the world with a solid education, manners, good credit and good teeth. 


I am fully happy to continue to provide these privileges to both my kids as long as they continue their education (for as long as they choose to continue) and I see that they are helping me to help them. There are no free rides, my people. These grants are way more than I was EVER given. I'll have student loans until I die, and that's a payment I don't mind paying EVERY. SINGLE. MONTH. FOR-EV-ER.


I guess when I think abut the uber-privileged, I become sad. As I look at my life, I had nowhere to go but up (or two blocks west). If you start at the bottom, your goals don't have to be in the upper tiers of society. You can be in the middle class and still be "winner, winner, chicken dinner". As long as I feel like I am better off than when I started (still like the ass end of cold hot dogs), then there is no outside pressure to perform.


Were I have began my life as a celebrity child or professional athlete's kid, I would be expected to do grand things. As a coal miner's daughter, I'm only expected to exist and have utilities. I wonder what kind of a life my kids will look back on and feel like they have to maintain to be considered successful?


Paige continues in school (I secretly hope forever) and Kane is a typical undecided 18-year-old. I would be fine if either of my children were to join the Peace Corps and live in mud huts. I now see success as not "things", but more of options. Success is taking a day off "BECAUSE YOU CAN", traveling "BECAUSE YOU CAN', and just having the utilities auto drafted.


We are not "successful" people. We do not live on the upper rungs of society. We live, we work, we pay, we work some more. Bills come, they go back out. It's just life. You save and something needs tires. You save and the water heater goes out...or a transmission fails....or LIFE just slaps you in the face.


I guess the point to my slobber is I don't mind helping "YOU" if you are helping yourself. I don't mind giving a hand up, and I expect the same from my government, my neighbor and my kids. Schutt kids, you will have been successful if you have helped even ONE person along your way. I love you both, now get your asses out there and make something of yourselves. 


(Who's the best mom in the whole wide world?)....all together, kids.

Mentioning the Un-Mentionables

As a child, my grandmother called them your unmentionables. Later she'd call them panties, underwear, drawers, draws, skins, and a plethora of other nouns. I like to call them unnecessary, but there are occasions when it is inappropriate to just lie around the house without them. Unless you are from a third-world country or a resident in an assisted living facility, you should not have draws hanging around like the above photo.
There is a place for everything, and NO ONE WANTS TO SEE YOUR draws blowing in the wind.

I recently saw 6-week panties at Gander for $18 a pair. The concept is that (hopefully) you buy two pair, go on that long hike, bike ride, camping trip, etc and you wear a pair, in the evening wash said pair out and put on second pair while the first day's product in its anti-bacterial form corrects itself. Wonder how long you could wear them with their dissolving? Someone try them and let me know.

Now, look, you naysayers, I can appreciate a nice, tight ass. Hell, I'd probably trade a little toe (maybe a ring finger) for a forever tight ass. (Yo, Genie, no tradesies and then I get the old girl back in the fine print).

If you have a tight, fit and firm ass, by all means, let that girl out. Let your freak flag fly. HOWEVER, most of the women I have contact with do not fall into said category. For these ladies, I ask, please, for the love of all that is holy, KEEP THAT SHIT PUT UP. I don't want to see your draws.

The point of my rant is that today I had occasion to shop for some run-of-the-mill, not getting my freak flag on unmentionables. I saw big panties, little panties, thongs, boy shorts, bikinis, boxer briefs. I saw some that said Love and peace and Go Team, butterflies, every geometric shape known to Sheldon Cooper and the list goes on and on.

Here is my beef: Even as a middle-aged woman who is not looking for panties with Tweetie Bird, I also don't want panties that scream "Just-Brought-My-Baby-Home-From-The-Hospital" pink or blue either. I don't want panties that look like the tablecloth my grandma saved for the occasional family gathering, or her nightgown, or the cloth that covered that little round table in the corner of the living room and had fake plastic flowers in a vase. If Avon sells it, I DON'T WANT IT.  To you vendors in New Delhi who are making these calls: WE DON'T WANT THE SAME PATTERN OF PANTIES THAT YOU USE ON KITCHEN RUGS.

Let's see if we can't narrow this down to black, white, nude. Throw a red or hot pink in there if you want...or a nice charcoal. But let's limit the cartoon bullshit to children's section. No real man wants to open the golden gates to heaven and see pantie with a fucking daisy on them. It's a turnoff for all involved. Mickey isn't who you want your partner thinking about during sex.

(As a caveat, should you be a fan of the baby pink/baby blue panties, Google a site for you to meet others like you. In due time, the GIG will have a phone number you can call and for $9.99 a minute you can tell an English-speaking American man/woman all about your panty fetish. We'll keep you posted. Until then, if you're not getting laid, now you have some insight into why. If you are getting laid, that is great that you've met someone just like you. You're soulmates. Hope it lasts forever....but have a financial backup plan for when he learns to use the Net and finds hot women online WITHOUT the panties of an 8-year-old.) You've been warned.

Life on a Turd Ball

So each night I go to the DVR in hopes that there will be a Real Housewives of Somewhere Else recorded. I record because I have no sense of schedule, meaning I don't know when anything is on. I wonder what a RH of SoIll would consist of. I was thinking today about what a production crew would get of me, were they tagging along. 

There aren't any exotic trips to foreign land for most of the people around me. I often hear Florida. Rarely do I hear of travel to Beijing or Zimbabwe. Are we without culture? Do I know anyone who plans on visiting The Met? Maybe.

Today, I cleaned maggots out of rabbit drop pans and cleaned off the concrete for two coon dogs. Would they get an image of my reflective side view? Would America be dazzled by the excitement of a vine-ripened tomato?

If I planned an extravagant outdoor event, there would be wine. I'd hope that "Crazy Eyes" wouldn't attend, so I'd purposely omit Pinot Grigio from my wet bar. I would, however, have a few kegs of various blends for the ones I love. I'd have Gretchen and all of my favorite girls from Atlanta. Candy would bring X-rated gifts. NeNe would keep everyone in check.

I know that there are others like me. There are women, like me, who've shared their vaginal region with an offspring and turned into a coach, a hunter, a gunman, pageant coach and all kinds of stupid shit that we'd have never taken part in. It's like kids suck all of your life out of you and leave their scent from the inside out. I just don't know if these are things that justify an hour of DVR space for many.

So how do we as So ILL ladies entice Bravo and others to show the world what we have to offer? We don't, and we rejoice in the fact that we can wear tube tops and sit in lawn chairs in the front  yard and watch kids ride their bikes barefoot down a side street. We can scream profanities at people who drive too fast down our side streets. We can have a yard sale with a toilet in the yard, without the stinkeye from passersby.

Here in Podunk, entertainment is simple. It's time to think about canning, trees and shrubs are on sale, and many are thinking about where to go for fireworks. These are not things that city folk want to watch. For all of our sanity, let's make an effort to keep it that way. For the squeamish, below is what we could use as a logo. It made me laugh out loud (LOL to you whippersnappers), so I felt compelled to share it.

Air Hugs. (3-year anniversary for BPS's accident tomorrow. Still taking one day at a time. Remember, if you don't laugh, life's turd ball will make you cry.) ....    Amy

Some Things Never Change

I doubt I am alone when I say that girls were bitches when I was young. I know, I was a bitch too. We have to be bitches to make it in what used to be a man's world. We, as women, have made great strides in today's society. We still don't have a woman in the Masters Clubhouse. We still don't get to join the Mason's. There will always be an "Old Boys Club". I'm okay with that. I want men to do men things, so that I may do things without them as well.

In the same thought process, it is of my opinion that 50 Shades of Grey has become the secret porn hit that it is because we (speaking for women like me) are tired of being the Type A, Alpha Female. We want the fucking pedestal back. I like having my door opened. I like the mystery of NOT KNOWING what a man does in the bathroom. I like a man who'll take charge and be the decision-maker. I'm the chief all day, every day. Please let me be the Indian everywhere else. For just one moment of my life, don't ask my opinion. Don't ask me to handle it. Just do it like you would if I weren't around.

(Insert ADHD moment).  I spent the weekend in Chicago at the Ride the Drive event. It was awesome. It's insanely expensive to live there. (Think $3800 rent downtown). The picture above is my girl in the Grand Ballroom of the Chicago Hilton. (The one on Michigan by Grant Park, not the other. Which is nice too, but not even the same category of great). It's been a pleasant few days. But here's what I've discovered:

1. Tony Schutt and I are not meant to spend time within reaching distance for more than a few hours. We are not nice people. Neither of us have the patience to suck it up and hold in our thoughts.

2. I like nice things. Like, REALLY nice things. I love valet. I mean, if the Kroger had valet, I'd use it. I know it's frivolous and wasteful. But I LOVE IT. I love the cart, the strange man packing my bags, asking if I need directions or a drink, a place to sit. I think courtesy is a dying art.

3.  I think allowing a strange woman to turn down your bed and provide you a mint is ridiculous and you might as well let her tuck you in. If I'm a grown-ass woman and I've not found a way to get between the sheet and comforter yet, I have much greater issues than the needs of the help.

         Back to the point of this snag.  Here we go.     Girls are bitches.
 
The more I try to take the high road, turn the cheek, be the "better" person, the more contact I have with these strange beings. (Please re-read the part where I say I'm a chief ALL THE DAMN TIME).

                    Maybe it is ingrained in us as teenagers that girls are the enemy. Maybe the struggles of competition when we are young is a hard habit to break.
                    I've said a million times (and I shall repeat), until you are comfortable enough in yourself and those people and belongings that you have, you can never make a true, true friend. For some of us, it takes a little longer to get there. Until you are confident enough in yourself and your worth, you will always look at other women as a threat to your relationship, position in life, et cetera.
     A group of women of different ages (much like Lord of the Flies) will establish a leadership pyramid. Such is life. Such is acceptable and expected. The issue with this is that when you have too many chiefs and not enough Indians, things are not effective, efficient or enjoyable for the Indians. Rodney King would say, "Why can't we all just get along?".

The short answer: Because girls are bitches. We are mean to each other and clique up in the same old habits we've lived with since two vaginas fought over a cock in a cave in the beginning of time. If those two women had just learned to share, things could be so much different today.  Give a girl a break. I think most women have a higher opinion of their product than the general population. You're the boss, he's your cock, few others want him or your lot in life. Be confident in who you are and what you have. For god's sake, lighten up, Frances.

Let me not be remiss in inserting here. I've thrown down. I've rolled in gravel. I've slit tires. I've sent those little magazine inserts to addresses from the library. I've put sugar in gas tanks. I've participated in vile, ugly things of which I'm not proud. I try EVERY DAY to be better. To put those habits and episodes behind me. I TRY to turn the other cheek and consider that it is my karma that I am responsible for. I TRY. With that said, I am not behind smacking a bitch down if I see you bully even a stranger to me. I know what it right and wrong. Should I see you bring another grown-ass woman to tears (or myself), do not be shocked when I pull a Drita from Mob Wives on you and roll like a booger.

Back to my endless amount of screens to clean. I feel better already. Happy HO-Liday.