I’m The Gingerbread Man

Have you ever had a menstrual period, Mr. Thatcher? Ever suffered from "the curse"? I’m guessing you haven’t. Well, my "time of the month" is starting right now. As I type, I can already feel hormonal forces violently surging through my body. Just a few minutes from now, my body will adjust and I’ll be transformed into what my husband likes to call "an inbred hillbilly with knife skills". Isn’t the human body amazing?

As brand manager in the feminine-hygiene division, you’ve no doubt seen quite a bit of research on what exactly happens during your customers’ monthly visits from "Aunt Flo". Therefore, you must know about the bloating, puffiness, and cramping we endure, and about our intense mood swings, crying jags, and out-of-control behavior. You surely realize it’s a tough time for most women. In fact, only last week, my friend Jennifer fought the violent urge to shove her boyfriend’s testicles into a George Foreman Grill just because he told her he thought Grey’s Anatomy was written by drunken chimps. Crazy!

The point is, sir, you of all people must realize that America is just crawling with homicidal maniacs in capri pants. Which brings me to the reason for my letter. Last month, while in the throes of cramping so painful I wanted to reach inside my body and yank out my uterus, I opened an Always maxi pad, and there, printed on the adhesive backing, were these words: "Have a Happy Period."

Are you frickin kidding me?

What I mean is, does any part of your tiny middle-manager brain really think happiness – actual smiling, laughing happiness – is possible during a menstrual period? Did anything mentioned above sound the least bit pleasurable? Well, did it, James? FYI, unless you’re some kind of sick S&M freak girl, there will never be anything "happy" about a day in which you have to jack yourself up on Motrin and Kahlua and lock yourself in your house just so you don’t march down to the local Walgreens armed with a hunting rifle and a sketchy plan to end your life in a blaze of glory.

For the love of God, pull your head out, man. If you just have to slap a moronic message on a maxi pad, wouldn’t it make more sense to say something that’s actually pertinent, like "Put Down the Hammer" or "Vehicular Manslaughter Is Wrong”? Or are you just picking on us? Sir, please inform your accounting department that, effective immediately, there will be an $8 drop in monthly profits, for I have chosen to take my maxi-pad business elsewhere. And though I will certainly miss your Flexi-Wings, I will not for one minute miss your brand of condescending bullshit. And that’s a promise I will keep. Always.

The Invitation

by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

I’ve read and worked The Invitation, the book, for four years now.  My heart’s longing is for my kid’s to move away and come visit me on weekends for card games and barbeques.  I dream of it constantly.  It ain’t no closer to happening.  Two years ago it became 18 years further away!

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

Now this one I have down pat.  I am willing to look like a fool for anything, anytime, anywhere.  I don’t feel like a fool while I look like a fool.  I feel like I’m having fun.  Do other people think so?  Surprisingly, most people are envious of my freedom to bust a move in a store, or giggle like mad with my kids, or yell "Marco!", or answer "POLO!" in the department store.  Tell the clerk you’re buying those steaks because you LOVE to feed them to your man and make him grin and wink at her, sit on the bus or walk down the street and mumble loudly to yourself and giggle…have some FUN!

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.  I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I love to hide my pain.  I’m addicted to it.  I don’t want people trying to fix it or help me with it, other than bringing me pills and whiskey, depending on if the pain is physical or emotional, of course…never at the same time!  I love knowing others care about my pain, as I care for others, deeply care–I’ll take you to the ER if you are broken, slap a band-aid on you if you bleed, hold you all night if you are bent over wracked with sobs *if that is what you want*…but I’d rather go with you to the SOB’s house and sugar his gas tank, molasses all his windows, think up clever and evil ways to make him/her miserable if you want to stay in the house too…I have a wicked, wicked mind and I am eager to use it.  Pain is a tool.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

Now this is my favorite of Oriah’s…because it is one of the hardest for most people to do.  Be joyful.  This dang society cautions us so much, so often to be careful, be slow, be cautious, save, watch out, think, hold on….he/she is too good to be true…that job could fall through…put it away for college…it’s just a song….it’s just an ‘A’…it’s just_____

*DAMNITALL*  CELEBRATE!  The entire purpose of caution is to give us the moments to celebrate…the entire purpose of sadness is to make us SEE the glory of happiness.  Why doesn’t anyone see that???  We are given sorrow to appreciate joy, hardships to understand bounty…APPRECIATE IT!  Dance, revel, shout it out, WAHOO!  YEEHAW!!!  I did it!  My kid did it!  The house is clean for THIS five minutes!  I look *GOOD* today!  I feel good today!  Heck, I’m happy when I don’t notice a grey hair first thing in the morning and I haven’t tripped over a cat.  That is a morning dance!

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy…That stirs up some stuff, doesn’t it?  Oriah uses marriage as one example in her book, I don’t really agree with it.  I still wrestle with this one.  I have plumb kicked my own butt to keep promises to people that I really couldn’t…especially the kids.  Had a few major fights with Mike when he tried to back out of something he’d told the kids he would do and then thought he couldn’t…you don’t betray your kids…that’s the kind of faithless you just don’t get to be in front of me…

I wonder….what is acceptable here to *you*?  I have my own ideas.

 

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it’s not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence.

This is easy.  LOL  There’s nothing as beautiful in it’s own warped way as La in her full-out Alien conniption fit.  It’s intensity, it’s fullness, the concentration and completion.  I am fascinated with the cruelty of my medical process now…and it is ugly.  But so beautiful in its mechanisms and science and coldness.  The detachment of it all is what I hold on to…keep in mind, love about it for that detachment is what will hold me to Earth somehow.

 

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes!"

Well sure.  Failure is just opportunity’s way of saying "Try again", isn’t it?  There is still a beautiful lake to swim in, a full moon to make love under, and all that sky to shout up to…dance, baby, dance.  I *said* Dance…and Shout!

 

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

I know I’m not supposed to sorta roll the kid off the bed onto the floor and drop a blanket on her…or cuss under my breath when she climbs up on me at 4 in the morning and shoves her hair in my face.  I don’t care.  I get up and do my job.  So does Mike.  So do you.  It sucks, doesn’t it?  Until they look at you with that face…then you’d do it for 80 more hours in a row.  The power of kids is infinite.  Brats.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It does interest me how you came to be here.  Not *here* my blog, but HERE, Earth…but we won’t know that this go ’round, will we?  I start a lot of fires.  Some just for toasting marshmallows, keeping the bugs away and telling stories, and some to rival the Chicago Fire that burnt down the poor city.  I’m a firebug.  If you stand with me, I promise not to run, to hold your hand, and to spit on you until you go out if you start to burn.

 

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

My imagination.  My determination to find a way to laugh at myself.  The belief that my will is stronger than my problems.  Love.

 You?

 

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

 

I like it a lot.  I just don’t remember what being alone with myself is.  I used to like it, anyway. 

You?

You don’t use signal turns because everyone knows where you’re going, anyway.

No social events can be scheduled when the school gym floor is being varnished.

You call a wrong number and they supply you with the correct one, and then spend 10 minutes visiting with you on the phone.

You have to name six surrounding towns to explain to people where you’re from.

You have to drive five miles out in the country to smoke a cigarette.

Headline news is who grew the biggest vegetable this year.

There is no point in high-school reunions because everyone knows what everyone else is doing anyway.

Driving cars up and down the main drag is a universal high school experience.

You can name everyone you graduated with.

You know what 4-H is.

You ever went to parties at a pasture, barn, or in the middle of a dirt road.

You said the ‘f’ word and your parents knew within the hour.

You schedule parties around the schedule of different police officers, since you know which ones would bust you and which ones wouldn’t – same goes with the game warden.

You ever went cow-tipping or snipe hunting.

School gets canceled for state sporting events.

You could never buy cigarettes because all the store clerks knew how old you were and if you were old enough, they would still tell your folks.

When you did find someone old enough and brave enough to buy cigarettes, you still had to go out to the country and drive back roads to smoke them.

You were ever in the Homecoming parade.

You have ever gone home for Homecoming.

It was cool to date someone from the neighboring town.

You had senior skip day.

The whole school went to the same party after graduation.

You don’t give directions by street names or references (turn by Nelson’s house, go two blocks to the Anderson’s turn left and it’s four houses left of the football field).

The golf course had only 9 holes

You can’t help but date a friend’s ex-girlfriend.

Getting paid minimum wage is considered a great job.

You refer to anyone with a house newer than 1980 as "rich" people.

The people in the city dress funny, then you pick up on the trend a few years later.

Football coaches suggest that you haul hay for the summer to get stronger.

Directions are given using "the" stop light as a reference

The city council meets at the coffee shop.

Your letter jacket was worn after your 19th birthday.

You have ever taken a trailer or dog to school on a daily basis.

Weekend excitement involves a trip to the grocery store.

Even the ugly people enter beauty contests.

You decide to walk somewhere for exercise and 5 people pull over and ask if you need a ride.

Your teachers called you by your older siblings names.

Your teachers remembered when they taught your parents.

So is the closest mall.

It is normal to see an old man riding through town on a riding lawn mower.

Everyone who played sports had to play on every type of team, or there wouldn’t be enough people to have a team.

Being able to hit a road sign with a beer bottle while driving down the highway is considered a necessary skill.

A cool vehicle had big tires or a bad-ass stereo.

You can remember when your town finally got cable.