You Can Take the Girl Out of the Ghetto…..

Posted on by Standard 22
Not if you lose my truck, I don't!!

Not if you lose my truck, I don’t!!

There are days that I am just in the mood to write, and I’ll sit staring at my laptop, perusing different memories, looking for something that might be interesting. Sometimes I find one, sometimes I don’t.

Today is definitely not one of those days. Today, I know exactly what I want to write about, and yet, I’m over-run with a plethora of different angles that I can steer this story-ship towards. In a warped way, I’ve hit the jackpot, and I don’t know where to spend my first dollar. This day was the gift that just keeps on giving. :-)

My mom used to tell me it wasn’t polite to laugh at the misfortune that befalls others, and I agree with her 100%. But I do have to ask,  what if it’s funny?  I mean, what if you are genuinely sorrowful for the complication that has landed on someone’s life, and yet your warped gene pool gave you this dark sense of humor, and you just can not help giggling at the absurdity of the situation? I am trying to see this through the stern, adult eyes of a grown woman, but the writer in me is just going insane!

I pondered this little ethical dilemma all day long. Should I write about it, or not. Back and forth, back and forth….

Hey. What can I say. The story is awesome... and I’m only a mere human. Let it be noted that I did wrestle with the decision.

By the time I left work, though, I had stumbled upon a technical way to tell you the story without actually telling you  the story….Below is my letter to the Story Wrecking Company, who handles all towing of vehicles for the City of Tulsa. This isn’t even a fraction of the whole story, which, let’s face it, is going to be magnificent when its been played out. Seriously. Maybe I should wait for it all to play out, but I just can’t.

It’s making my brain bleed not getting to tell you all the whole thing yet!

Let’s think of this as a little appetizer.  :-) Enjoy!!

Why, yes. I did send it. I was grumpy from lack of sleep and the fact that Chef's newest squeeze LOST his truck.

Why, yes. I did send it. I was grumpy from lack of sleep and the fact that Chef’s newest squeeze LOST his truck.

Looking For A Dear John Template? Try Google!

Posted on by Standard 5

Each day has been bringing to my attention, new, tiny victories over the anguish of  losing my marriage, and today I actually had to laugh at this latest one.

iloveafoolI know you’ll all find this just mind-reeling, but I’ve always written to Chef when I felt it was super important that he hear what I was saying. We have always had a battle of dear johnthe wills when it has come to our own point of views, and any emotionally charged conversations tend to get lost down side-roads of nonsense. A letter, I had found out early on, helped us stay on track for the most part. Plus, it usually gave me the needed amount of time to truly think before I spoke. And poor Chef, who doesn’t enjoy reading, and who is completely convinced that print is dead, has read his fair share of words over the last couple of decades. I can say without exaggeration, I’ve written him at least one set of encyclopedia’s worth of letters. And about half of those were just this last year alone. But, as people are prone to do when they’ve just messed up in a really big way, he completely refused to read any of them. Finally, the urge in my soul to reach him died down to embers of what they once were, and I saved the heart-wrenching prose for the super, really big stuff. It’s been months since I’ve written him anything more than a text message, and today, another “big” event landed, and I knew it should be addressed.

The problem though, was I had almost nothing to say. I’ve written about every part of this soul-crushing experience many times now, and frankly, I just don’t know if I have another one in me.

I found myself this morning, looking at a blank screen, trying to coax something intelligent, emotionally moving, and balanced with love and care, yet equally stern, out of my rather oddly relaxed, seemingly unaffected  brain. Not a thing stirred in there, and finally, exasperated, I decided to give old Google a try. Going by the search terms I read on this site alone, I’m thinking Google knows all, and might even be more awesome than the Wizard of Oz.

So, I typed in, ” Template for a letter written to a cheating ex husband who won’t pull his head out of his a**.” And here are the glorious results!!!!!

As God as my witness, I'll never be silenced again!!

As God as my witness, I’ll never be silenced again!!

I’d like it noted for the record, that website amount up there is well over  29 million. 29 million cyber-places all connected by the pain, agony, guilt, and other numerous side effects of the broken bonds of love. Sad in a way, but also one of those accidental reassurances that you aren’t alone in the pathetic weakness that accompanies that mind-twisting pain.

coachSo, for those people out there that might have reached the end of that well of words, know this: there is literally a website for just about anything in the world you might need. And I’m going to venture out on a limb and say, by the time you have to google for a template to kick-start a heartfelt, meaningful dialogue with the one who broke your heart, you can rest assured there’s some healing that’s been happening while you weren’t looking.  :-) Win/Win.

– Bird

All Talking Donkeys Aren’t Messengers From God

Posted on by Standard 10

Occasionally, I’ll look at the dashboard of this site, and one or more of the search terms will catch my eye. Mostly, even after the hellacious year I’ve had, the search terms that are the most likely to drive traffic here are “three boobs”, “motorcycle gangs”, and my personal favorite, “nipple shirts”.

Let’s face it.

Three Boobs and Nipple Shirts are subjects that aren’t really good foundations for a serious conversation about life. It’s just appalling to me that men wear shirts that showshrek and donkey their nipples. Ugh. I’d like that to stop immediately.

“Motorcycle Gangs” is more interesting, but again, I doubt I have much to contribute to that subject anymore.

Ahhh, but today, I found one in my little collection that made me stop and say “hmmm”. The term was this;

meth spiritual enhancement

So, to the person who typed in this awesome search term, this post is dedicated to you.

In my quest to understand what Chef was going through, I studied everything I could find about this creepy drug. What I found out could fill up volumes, but for this discussion, I’ll boil down some things I understand about the drug that I believe should be considered directly in connection with spiritual enhancement, or any kind of enhancement, for that matter….physical, academic, cultural, etc.

Bird Fact #1: Enhancements when you are high are only Huge Brain Farts when you sober up again.

To my understanding, the drug affects the pleasure center of your brain. This magnificent computer we carry around inside of our skulls works like a file cabinet, storing stop dudeand categorizing things constantly. If a memory makes you happy, it tends to store that memory close by for future quick reference. If some memory makes you sad, it gathers that clutter up, and safely keeps moving it back into the recesses of your brain, out of reach of accidently being hurt by it. It’s the same for things that give us pleasure. Those things that give us pleasure are  stored safely within reach in our pleasure centers of our brains.

That being said, I do wonder if people actually stop and really examine what we each have stored there. Meth is an excellent way to find out, except who really needs to know that badly? The bad side of this drug greatly outweighs the good, so no, I’m not saying you should try it even once so you know what really makes you happy. Figure it out..You’re smarter than that!!

Bird Fact #2: Don’t be an idiot and try this drug because you want to know what really makes you flush with happiness. You might not like the answer, and you can’t unlearn what you already know. Frankly, neither can anyone else who finds out either.

If singing show-tunes on top of your roof in your birthday suit for the entire world to see is something that you derive real pleasure from, chances are this drug will enhance that desire in you, and your filter which considers consequences of such an action will be bypassed. You’ll dance, sing and traumatize the neighbors to your heart’s content, and you’ll feel good about it…

“I finally get to be me!”  you’ll be assuring yourself.

wrong if it feels good

Wanna Bet?

And then,  your filter comes slowly back to life again as you sober up, and you find yourself  in jail for public nudity, dressed in a discarded moomoo that smells like someone died in it, holding an eviction notice in your hand. To make matters worse, your best friend not only recorded your spectacular plummet from respectability, but then uploaded your shameful experience onto YouTube, and the creepy perv down the street that no one makes eye-contact with, has baked you a cake with a shank in it. Suddenly, the problems you were trying to escape from in the first place don’t seem as bad as the ones you’ve just created during your “mental vacation”.

See how that works? If God, spirituality, religion, or some such thing is something you get pleasure from, you bet your booties, it’ll come up when you are high. I know, because when I used this drug, God was foremost in my thoughts and actions. And yet, even in my intoxicated state, while I felt like God appreciates all the publicity He can get, my conscience kicked in at the same time, imploring me to wait until I was sober before launching into whatever ridiculous thing I was poised to do for Him, like what I’d learned about Him while I was high. I’m pretty sure He’s grateful I didn’t try to “help” the cause during those moments.

It is my opinion that most people, especially men, tend to have sex in their pleasure centers, and women tend to have love in theirs. Meth is considered a sex enhancement drug, but it didn’t work that way for me at all. Because of my complicated relationship with sex, it didn’t actually take up residence in the pleasure center of my brain; but love did. As long as Chef made me feel like he loved me…high or not…I was on board with the sex thing. But if he didn’t, he was on his own. Meth is a very selfish drug. Right there, you can almost see why this crappy drug ruins marriages. One person wants to feel loved; the other wants pure, animal sex. And for most people, there is the ability to love someone without having sex with them, and to have sex with someone you don’t love.

Hence, breakdowns occur.

Bird Fact #3: I’d always be very careful about anything that you “learn” on meth, or any drug. Without that consequence filter, we are susceptible to accepting lies, and turning them into truths in our own minds, which invariably leads to being slapped on the side of the head with our “Oh-Crap!-What-Have-I-Done” brain-gag reflex instead.

Can you learn spiritual truths when you’re high? Sure. You can probably learn anything on dope if it’s important enough to you.

Once upon a time, God made a donkey talk but just because you see the Donkey from Shrek  jabbering at you while you’re high, it doesn’t mean you actually a) saw a donkey physically speaking to you or b) that you’re a character on the next Shrek, or that c) all donkeys secretly know how to talk and are laughing silently at us clueless humans, or even that d)  God had something special to tell you from this lively donkey. It just means you burned your brain a tad too much, and you’ve hallucinated a fake donkey singing a Tina Turner song  to you.

My advice: Render that little nugget of experience to the mental trash can it probably deserves to be in.

If it was so important that God get a message to you that He’d use a donkey  or even more unbelievable, a Tina Turner song, He’d have probably waited until you were sober and there could be no question it was a miracle of God instead a miracle of Dope.

We all look for reasons to excuse something we’re doing that we know we are wrong to do, by finding something positive enough to justify it to others, and mainly ourselves. I’ve found that the “I’m spiritually awakened” excuse is pretty common amongst those of us that tend to like to have a little chemical uplifting from time to time, and frankly, it’s a pathetic one.

Here’s life choices in a nutshell — you don’t owe anyone a reason or excuse for what you do or want to do; but by the same token, you’re the one stuck with the consequences, so don’t be surprised when you’re eating a bucket-full of guilt, shame, and general self-loathing. Own your crap, pay your dues, learn from it, and start a blog or something. Most importantly, forgive yourself and move on.  Don’t waste a whole lot of time on coming up with an acceptable reason or excuse that people will buy. Nobody really cares about that but you anyways.

I’ll leave you guys with one more observation that I’m pretty sure everyone can identify with.

learnBy a show of hands, how many of us know at least one old hippie-wanna-be who’s burned out his/her brain so much, we roll our eyes when they head down Enlightenment Lane?

Yeah. That’s what I thought… :-)

Don’t be that person. Find your enlightenment and spirituality with a full set of brain cells working. That way, you’ll be prepared to defend your opinions and views, and not have people rolling their eyes as you walk away, telling their little children to stay away from you because you think you’re Shrek or something. I’m just saying…

Hope all the mothers had a wonderful Mother’s Day! Especially you, Diane! I love you!

– Bird

PS: I want to wish DJ, my son, a Happy Birthday! You’re my favorite son, little man! I love you!

Are You Prepared For Being A Friend of Mine?

Posted on by Standard 4

Here’s something I’ll bet you didn’t know about me.

I’m extremely fearful, to the point it is an actual phobia, when it comes to going to the hospital. It has something to do with the way they smell and sound. One whiff of fear of spidersdisinfectant and the sweat of fear, coupled with some feminine, bored, muffled intercom voice communicating life and death in rainbow-colored codes, and I have been known to incapacitate myself with a full-blown panic attack.

A rumor that someone I know might be going in to the hospital for something is enough to make me hyperventilate and avoid Facebook, pigeons and voice mail for a week.

Because of this crippling effect on me, there is a kind of process I go through mentally before I’m going to step one foot into these sinister, stinky hubs of health. I’ve established an Is-It-Worth-It Checklist that I complete in my mind before I commit to visiting someone at the hospital.

Well, there are actually 2 lists – one for whether I should go for my own health, and the other for being a supportive, good friend.

The one for me is really just the one line of questioning – how bad does it hurt and will they give me excellent drugs to make it stop hurting?

The other, though, is kind of more complex, and until they start giving out the excellent drugs to the visitors, I’m probably always going to use it. It goes something like this:

Bird’s Is-It-Worth-It Checklist

1. How serious is the condition my friend is in the hospital for?

a.Could they possibly die? (Here I calculate the odds of survival, and adjust accordingly.)

Floating Petri Dish of Disease

Floating Petri Dish of Disease

b. Not life-threatening? Like plastic surgery or a mild heart-attack? (See you when you get out, dude!)

c. Odds are, this could be the end of the line for them. (What are the chances I’ll be seeing them in heaven? Just kidding! This one is unflinchingly rigid.)

2. Just how angry or hurt will they be if I just call them on the phone instead of physically going to the hospital?

a. Really, really angry? (Are they prone to kicking butt when displeased, and if so, can I take them down? Also, how bad will it hurt?)

b.Indifferent – (They’re super popular; they actually begin their recovery after they return home. The hospital visitors actually sign a guestbook walking into the patient’s room. $5 and a broke friend, my name can be there, too.)

c. Hard to tell – (They might act like they don’t care, but last time you did find a stuffed animal of yours boiling in the kitchen…It seemed like it was some kind of warning.)

d. They get the really cool drugs and won’t be lucid for weeks after they get out. (I’ll photoshop a picture of myself in front of the hospital, and presto! I’m a good friend!)

e.They hate visitors – I’d being doing them a favor! (I’ve never met someone I could use this one on.)

3. If I buy them a really cool get-well gift, can I get off the hook?awesome me

a. No. They’re flush with stuff, and a gift isn’t going to go very far with them unless I had to take out a loan to buy it. (Not likely these days.)

b. They practically live in a cardboard box. A gift certificate to Taco Bell will buy me a pass for the next three hospitalizations. (God bless Taco Bell’s Dollar Menu!)

c. Depends on the kind of gift. Am I willing to go to the mall (another phobia of mine, though to a much lesser degree) and spend the ridiculous amount of money they charge for something from Hot Topic or Victoria’s Secret? (I’ve never answered yes to this one. It’s included because eventually one of my friends will get a boob job, and this one will finally come into play.)

d. No. This friend isn’t superficial or materialistic. Next time, be pickier about the kinds of friends you want. :-)

4. Is it in any way possible to pretend I didn’t know they were in the hospital until they get out?

a. Yes, if I pretend I’ve just been super busy. Once upon a time, I could actually get away with this one. I’m notorious for being hard to get ahold of most of the time. These days, though, my friends all know me pretty well, (or I’ve already done this the first couple of times they were hospitalized), and this doesn’t fly anymore.

b. No. They ran ads on every television and radio station in Tulsa, left text messages and voice messages on every telephone I have, sent a telegram, two pigeon carriers,hilarious a note on my windshield, sent a note from my mother to my boss, and paid to have their name and room number written in the sky over my apartment. My presence is requested, and my absence will be noted and unhappily addressed when they are released.

5. How important is this friendship to me in the long run?

a. I can make new friends; giving me one of your kidneys doesn’t make us sisters under the skin, right? Actually, I find it pretty nerve-wracking to try to even talk to someone I don’t know, so this is a stupid thing to even be on my checklist. Still, it does cross my mind…

b. Will they quietly be hurt, or will I find a dead fish wrapped in newspaper on my doorstep? Quietly hurt, in my opinion, can actually be worse than a threat from the mafia that I’ll be sleeping with the fishes, especially since I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

c. Friendships are pretty important, and I really love this person a lot. Oh, fine!! I’ll go to the stupid hospital, but I’m not promising I won’t pee myself on your floor when I smell alcohol swabs, spray you with snot when I can’t breathe because I can mentally see the needle in your IV stabbing through the walls of your vein,  or puke in your trash can when that horrible intercom voice blares through my head. Hey! It’s what you wanted!! Still want me to be your friend??

I wanted to take a minute to thank the fellow bloggers that nominated me for some awards. I promise, I’ll try to get to those some time this weekend. Thank you so much!!fear of trust

– Bird

 

Know Your Role

Posted on by Standard 11

Tonight, I’m kind of going through something tough, and I’m going to ramble a moment about the reasons I’m not going to dish the latest A-Marriage-Going-Down-In-

Right?

Right?

Flames dirt on my public blog.

I tend to get at least one or two thank-you’s from time to time for being so open and honest in my posts about what I’m doing, or saying or thinking during a various crappy situations. When I write about the latest turn of events in the sinking Titanic that is my marriage, I do tell a lot and I present it as honestly as I can, as I understood things to have happened.

That being said, there are parts of all of this drama that I don’t talk too much about, if at all. It isn’t that I want to spin a different tale or make myself or Chef look a different way, or that I’m just too embarrassed to share how things really went down. Believe you me, I’m not really sure I can be any more embarrassed than I already have been on here.

(If you guys weren’t around for the wisdom and tact that only vodka and a broken heart can give, you missed out on some truly memorable – and temporary– posts!! You snooze, you lose!)

No, the reason I can’t share everything is because some things that happen in my life aren’t only my story to tell. How much of what someone else’s story should I feel free to hold up for the world to see and sit in judgment of; especially if, in my story, they are the villain causing me all the trouble?

I’ve always seen my life as a series of different, yet related, stories; all linked together by the star of each one…me. And to me, everyone else’s lives are stories starring them. People in our lives have supporting parts, and they are important, but in the end, when we look back, we are the common thread in our own lives. We are the star in our shows, and hopefully, we were the good guy. And if we weren’t, we’d like to believe that at least our motives were understandable, if not honestly good ones. I know that I myself cringe when I look back and find that I was just a rotten creep in someone’s story, with no excuse other than I was a selfish snot. I try not to be in that role too much.

I truly loved Chef once upon a time, and even now, despite everything, I feel a certain responsibility to tell his part of my story with care. When Chef is remembering this particularly tragic story later down the road, he will still be the contract-bound star of his own story, and the whole sordid affair will probably look much different through his eyes than it did through mine.

Even if he is the villain in this particular drama, he isn’t guilty of always being my nemesis. I have volumes of stories where he is the hero, and only one in which he was my enemy. How he understands all of it will, in my opinion, shade his interpretation of his role in his own book. Messed up on drugs, he won’t, and doesn’t, care a lick. But sober, this particular chapter of our lives is going to hurt him tremendously.  And that will decide how he classifies himself – the good guy everyone roots for or the bad guy everyone roots against. This is super important to most people, if not all of us. It’s tricky territory you’re getting in to when you have enough power that you can actually shade someone else’s own perception of himself. Given the set of circumstances we’ve been dealing with – memory altering drugs, big, angry emotions floating about everywhere, questionable motives on all the major character’s parts, and my own penchant for writing on a public blog – it isn’t all that unreasonable to believe that I could possibly influence this man’s opinion of himself, and I don’t take that kind of responsibility lightly.

If we have learned anything from movies and television these days, it’s that it’s all in the way you tell the story. Any mafia movie like The Godfather or television series like The Sopranos is a prime example of what a villain/star looks like, and it isn’t much of stretch to apply that same method to our own lives. Ironically, it was Chef who taught me this clever little saying back when we first started out together – my perception is my reality. What I write on this blog about the capsizing and slow descent of my relationship in to the murky waters of divorce is just that – a story told from my perception, and of course, I’m still the star of my own little life.

There are things I’ve said and done in my own Book of Bird that I was very distinctly, and shamefully, the villain. I’m also the kind of person that thinks that if I admit my faults to the world, I’ve taken a weapon away from my enemies that they can use against me later. That, coupled with my belief that only Jesus has the right to judge me, has pretty much shielded me from allowing someone else’s opinion of me as the ultimate truth about what kind of person I am. I’m finding out, though, that I may be in the minority of people who think this way, and I’m positive Chef isn’t in line with that thinking. I have this optimistic approach to people that makes me think that they can relate with me on these bonehead levels and will show me some mercy. He just thinks I’m a bonehead for admitting to the entire world I’m prone to being a bonehead. I love differing perceptions. I really, really do.

From the beginning of the chapter of my story that details the excruciating pain involved with breaking marital bonds that have been in place for so long  until now, I’ve told a lot of stuff that if taken just from this blog alone, would give a lopsided view of Chef and who he is as a whole person, and that, to me, is almost as bad as telling a bald-faced lie. Chef, if taken as a whole book and not just this one chapter, would be classified as a really good man who lost control of a situation and ended up the bad guy in one chapter of a couple of people’s books.

The sum total of most people is never completely good or completely bad. I’m guessing that even our worst criminals had one or two qualities that were shockingly good, or clever, or even endearing. The human character is complicated, and complex…it’s a tapestry of a lot of different things, and as such, a good person can do bad things, and a bad person can do good things. And this, to me, invalidates anyone from being labeled a good or bad person at all. The key is that we’re all fallen creatures, and given the reins of our own lives instead of handing them to our Creator, we all end up in bad situations that mostly all started out with an understandable, and maybe even a good, reason.

To me, Chef, like a lot of people, didn’t want to grow old. He had things that he wanted to have done, places he wanted to visit, and goals that had slipped away from him. Time had passed by so quickly it seemed. He tried to change how he felt with something that he unintentionally lost control of, and the change in his brain caused him to act without considering consequences. He hurt everyone he loved, and has lost everything he worked so hard to get in the first place.

Say what you want, but as probably the one person on earth who truly understands this man, he’s paid for all of this in spades already, even if he doesn’t quite realize it yet, and if he does get well again, he’ll be harder on himself than anyone on earth could ever be.

I hope that my readers understand that sometimes I’ve written from solely my perception and my hurt, but I never wish to set anyone, especially Chef, up for ridicule, judgment, or condemnation. I still harbor a hope that Chef’s story will have a happy ending. And sometimes, the world just doesn’t need to be privy to every single thing a person has done wrong in a situation.

–  Bird

Chef and Bird Try to Communicate

Posted on by Standard 14

 

Yes. Like that.

Yes. Like that.

In deference to my earlier post, and to emphasize how unstable our relationship has truly become, I’m posting this little tidbit of conversation. Let’s call it a little fly-on-the-wall peek at how things usually go when Chef and I have to be around each other longer than an hour or if the stars aren’t aligned just so.

Hungry, we’re deciding what we’ll have for dinner:

Chef: Church’s Fried Chicken is having a special on their 15 piece chicken meal. We ought to get some tonight.

Bird: Sounds okay to me. Wait. How do you know they’re having a special? You don’t have cable, you don’t get the newspaper…. Wait a minute!! Isn’t Church’s her favorite place to eat? You’ve been calling her, haven’t you. Or she’s been calling you, right? Don’t think you can be all technical with the truth with me, Chef! I’m listening to you very carefully. Why are feeling all nostalgic for your girlfriend all of a sudden, you p****? I knew it! I knew you’d be cheating on me again first chance you got. You lying … (Yeah, let’s stop there. You get the jist..)

Chef: No! I get a couple of channels on the tv. I saw it on tv! She hasn’t been here at all. I swear!! We haven’t talked!! Church’s isn’t her favorite place to eat! She likes The Olive Gar…

Bird: (very, very softly and coldly) You remember where her favorite place to eat is, but you can’t remember my freakin’ birthday?? (Incidentally,  he did only once in all of our 22 years together actually forget my birthday, and of which I’ve never brought up in a fight until now. It was the nuclear warhead I’d been saving for just such an occasion as this little nugget of insanity!!)

Chef (slow to think, quick to speak):…den. ……..S***.

Bird: (Sitting silently trying to make his head explode with  just my mind and then very graphically cursing when my mind proved nonlethal and somewhat confused by me itself.)

Chef: You know what I mean, Bird. Why are getting all bent out of shape. She’s gone. She’s out of my life now, so I’m all yours now.

Bird: Gee, where do I send her the thank-you card? I love being a back-up plan. And I’m sick of how you talk about her all the time! Why does EVERY conversation always end up about her? I’ve had it. I’m going home, #$%@#$%!!!

Chef (trying to just keep up with me): …I just wanted some chicken…but.. just..save so money…no, please…I….Bird!

 

Note: I know I sound like a complete moron.

Another Note: In some circumstances, I am a complete fruit-loop. This was one of them.

Last Note:  I hate Church’s Chicken.

 

:-) Good Night!

– Bird