St. Baldrick’s Foundation

Monday, December 29, 2008

Even I can be psycho.

**Note: These events happened on December 6th & 7th. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.**

From what I can remember, Saturday was a fairly decent date in history. Peabody met me at Mom & Dad’s after getting in from Dallas. He was going to go with me to town – a few stores were having really good sales. Instead he vouched to watch the kids (the saint!) and visit with my Dad while my Mom & I ran out instead. We got back in around 11 p.m. All was well…until I woke up the next morning.

B y the way, this is a slighly long story, so I won’t mind (and I’ll never know) if you don’t read it to the end. I really wanted it for our family history books, somewhere down the road.

What I thought would be a short trip to the bathroom at 5:30 a.m. instead lead to an entire fiasco. I realized that I never loaded the slides for church the previous Friday. No big deal really, as long as it was taken care of before the 1st service started at 9:00 a.m. I brushed my teeth, pulled on some clothes, and hauled butt to the office to load them. Before leaving I noticed the bulletins, still UNFOLDED, sitting on the copier. Great. I decided to take them back to my Mom’s house to fold and bring with me when I came for church. Again, no big deal really. I hauled it back to Mom’s, got business taken care of, and jumped in the shower to get ready. Then I remembered that TooCool would need cash for later in the day when he went Angel Tree shopping with the Youth Group. I didn’t want to wake Peabody up to ask where the check card was, so I looked everywhere possible with no luck. I woke him up enough to ask the question – where was the card. He said it was probably in the console of his car. I ran out to the car, mad that I was running late, just mad in general. Pregnancy rage. 10 times worse than road rage. And what happened next was just the thing I needed to push me over the edge.

For the few who know me (and the rest who don’t) I’m not generally a jealous person. Peabody has always been a big flirt. Seems like it’s only become an issue in the past when I’ve been pregnant…lol…and this is the 4th and LAST time. Anyhow, I run out to the car, look in the console, and the wallet wasn’t there. More anger. I happened to glance in the back floorboard when shutting the car door, and then I lost it. Not got slightly frustrated or a tad bit upset, but went total bat shit in 10 seconds flat – although I’d be willing to bet good money that bat shit had more composure than I did at the time. A lone Playboy Magazine was lying there. I could tell, instantly, with my eagle-like vision, that the magazine appeared to be untouched. Ever. That meant no difference to me. I also was able to see that the magazine was from AUGUST. Still, no difference. I tore that magazine in so many pieces it would be impossible to ever find them all. I tore out the poster of Miss August, and spread her across the dashboard. I tore out some helpless twin girls on another page and smashed them through the steering wheel. The most unfortunate victim was impaled through the gear shift. The rest of the girls were no longer recognizible as girls.

I stomped back in the house where I noticed Peabody’s wallet lying on his jacket. I got the card out, stomped to the bedroom and said, “Hey F-er. I found your wallet and got the card. And that money I deposited yesterday? Forget it. I’m emptying the entire account. You can figure it out, you piece of shit.” His response was classic! “Sam.Hill, what? What? What happened? Did I say something in my sleep? What did I do? What’s wrong? Honestly, I don’t know what’s going on!” He was still half asleep, and truly had NO idea what had just happened.

I ran out the door and peeled out of the driveway with such lightening speed I’m sure there was no rubber left on the tires. How mature I can be sometimes. I drove like a maniac, cursing with every breath. I sped to TooCool’s friend’s house, where he had stayed the night. I had told him the evening before to make sure and set his alarm, but I knew that was a long shot. Instead I called 4 times with NO answer. How DARE he?!?!?!?!? I resorted to banging on the window of his friend’s room to wake them up. He drug out about 10 minutes later with NO shoes (the boy NEVER has shoes on, can’t EVER find them, even when nailed on. Drives me nuts. But that’s another story.) I tore down the road driving to the church to drop off the bulletins in my state of madness. TooCool clearly feared for his life. He didn’t know anything, only that I was pissed at him for not answering his phone.

My cell phone rang, and it was Peabody calling, still flabbergasted by the attack. I gave him NO clue as to what he’d done. I told him he was the idiot who’d made the mistake; SURELY he could figure it out. Rat bastard. The phone rang again, this time with a text message from my boss. He wanted to know where the bulletins were. This pissed me off even more (how that was possible, I don’t know) because I’d already sent him a message an hour before saying I’d bring them with me when I came to church.

By this time I had decided not to attend church. I wasn’t crying yet. Generally speaking, I’m not a cryer…more of a cusser, and although I needed a good sermon at the moment, I was in NO mood. No mood at all. I screeched into the church parking lot 10 minutes before 9, and ran through the “main” front doors where EVERYONE was coming in. Lovely. I handed a random person the bulletins, and ran back out. Jumped in the car and started back for Mom’s to finish off Peabody. While I was gone he questioned my Mom and Dad to ask if they knew what my problem was. Of course, they had no idea either. Mom said, “Who knows. You know how she is when she’s pregnant.”

TooCool ran in for a shower and I sat in the living room and pouted. Peabody dared to come out of the bedroom to ask more questions. I answered with nothing but hateful comments. Finally he gave up and said he was going back home. He said he had done everything possible to try to figure out what he’d done wrong, and to fix the situation, and he didn’t know of anything else to do. He went out the door, and I immediately ran to a window in my parent’s room to see his reaction to the “death of the poster-girls”. Another classic response….laughter!

He put his hands on his head and started laughing! The NERVE! Then he began “picking up the pieces” and the last thing I saw was him heading for the trash can with 2 armfuls of trash. Did he come back in to profess his undying love and apologize? Hell no! And that was probably the smartest thing he could’ve done.

About 20 minutes later I loaded the girls in the car and went on my way to drop TooCool off at church. Before I could get there I got pulled over. Fortunately, for the officer, he decided to let me off with a warning. Lucky guy. I pulled up to the side of the church, let TooCool out, and was on my way back to my parent's house when my phone rang AGAIN! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!! Can you not FEEL the rage surging out of every pore of my body?! And who was it? My beloved boss, calling again, to ask me a question! “Uh, hey, you DO know it’s Communion Sunday, right? The bulletins are wrong, and the slides are wrong too. And So-and-So’s not here yet so he can’t fix them. ” “Are you kidding me?!?!!?! Holy hell. Of course they’re wrong. Why would anything good happen today? I guess the idiots can’t read out of a hymnal!!!! They HAVE to have the slides. Fine.” I wish I could insert a sound byte of exactly how I sounded at this moment. A few days later my boss told me it sounded something like a loud, evil growl, and a long NOOOO! I hung up, threw the phone across the car, and did a u-turn in the middle of the highway.

I went back to the church again, and by this time I was sobbing like a moron. Uncontrollable, ugly, pathetic sobbing. I nearly tore the transmission out by throwing the car in park so fast. All I wanted to do what run in, fix the slides, and run back out, without speaking to anyone. I wiped my face off, took a deep breath, and headed for the door. By this time it was 5 minutes after 9, and I figured most everyone would be seated. Nope. No such luck! There were so many people in the foyer I could barely get through. I kept my head down and didn’t talk to anyone. When I got to the computer So-and-So was already there fixing my mistakes. I was relieved that I had one less thing to do, so I turned my back to get away and So-and-So just HAD to ask, “Everything okay?” Then I lost it again.

I just waved my hand in the air like it was no big deal, started crying again, and shot back down the stairs. I ended up running head on into a friend, who said, “Oh my gosh, Sam.Hill, are you alright? What’s wrong!?” Of course I couldn’t answer, still in the ugly cry, and just pushed past the mob of people and ran out. Even worse, she followed me outside and I just drove away. Again, like the mature 31-year old that I am.

Within 5 minutes I had at least 4 different texts from people at church who witnessed my meltdown. I still think it's funny that there are other “emotional” people in our church family who cry at the drop of a hat, and we think nothing of it. Let people see me cry? And obviously the whole world is falling apart. Fortunately most of them figured it was just a P.I.P.E. (pregnancy-induced-psychotic-eposide).

I got home a bit later and Peabody was watching “My Super Ex-Girlfriend”. I happened to walk in on the part where Uma Thurman tossed a giant great white shark into the guy’s apartment, and it was trying to eat him. I muttered something about wishing I had a great white shark to throw.

I finally gave him 5 minutes to explain the situation. How the Playboy Fairy must've played a joke by putting magazines in his car. He finally explained that the day before, while in Dallas, he stopped by our good friend’s house to eat. While there, our friend gave him 2 old Playboy magazines he’d got from his father-in-law (ewwww…..used! yuck, lol) and that he’d already memorized all the girls in them. He was just doing his “manly duty” by recycling them. When Peabody got ready to leave, he threw them in the back floorboard without a 2nd thought. After a 2 hour drive from Dallas he showed up at Mom’s house and didn’t think twice about them. That made it even funnier later…that he honestly had no idea what had made me so mad. And the poor guy never even got to look at them. Pretty funny now.

I semi-got-over-it throughout the rest of the day, with profuse apoligizing from him, and almost constant sarcastic comments from me (Oh, well I guess if I could carry an airbrush around with me, I could look that good all the time too; or, how I thought he was making a pathetic attempt to make himself feel less guilty since I had no other option than to be a fat, pregnant, cow for the next few months, etc.).

The funniest thing happened a few hours later when I picked TooCool up from his shopping trip. He told me he’d taken out the trash that morning after Peabody left, and he asked me if what was in the trashcan was the reason I was mad at his Dad. I laughed and told him yes, I was mad about the magazine, and that one day when he was older and had a girlfriend he’d probably go through the same thing. Then he said, “Well, Mom, I guess I don’t really know about all that stuff, but there’s one thing that I really don’t understand. Why did you have to tear all the pictures up in tiny little pieces? I mean, you could’ve just given it to me and told me not to let Dad see it. Or you could tell me to hold it until I was 18 or something.” I couldn’t stop laughing. He’s in 7th grade right now, and will be 13 in March. At least he’s honest, though. When Peabody was in junior high he had a bunch of his dad’s magazines buried in the back yard!

That evening Smartie had her very first Christmas Program with the kids choir. I was apprehensive about how she’d do, since a few days before at practice she refused to move a muscle or sing one note. I had already started getting over the fact that there was a 99% chance she wouldn’t perform. I was SO glad to be wrong (for once! Write that down!). She nailed it, singly loudly and smiling for pictures the entire time. I didn’t care one bit that I was holding a Christmas present on the front row for bribery – she performed! And soooo….after a long, tumultuous day, we ended on a high note!

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