Checks and balances for a sucky day.

These bad things happened today:

1. My new clothesline failed. Or falled. Take your pick.

2. My kid got his first-ever busted lip and messed up chin by thinking he could jump off a swing while it was swinging high. It's so pathetic to see. What's more pathetic is that he'll be 18 in September. He wonders why I've never allowed him to get his driver license but this is why...he can't even drive a swing. Why would I trust him with a car?

3. I'm growing tomato plants out of the bottom of a basket as an experiment. As of yesterday, they were beautiful, strong, healthy, and vibrant. Much like I used to be. This morning, the basket fell. Yeah. They are now much more like I am...broken and slightly dehydrated.

4. Jake, aka Busted Lip Kid, asked me about child support for the first time in 5 years today. He wanted to know how far in arrears his dad is, etc. I told him nearly $12,000. I've not pushed hard for child support for many years because when he was younger, the whole drama of it all upset him since his dad felt the need to tell him everything. Today, he tells me to push hard but to please not ask for his dad to go to jail. I explain that while I won't ask, it could still happen. He said that that would be his dad's choice, then. How sad it is when a kid is so disgusted by their own father that they don't really care if he goes to jail? This just isn't how it is supposed to be.

5. I saw a roach (okay, fine, it was a palmetto bug - same thing in my mind and I think it was 19" long) in the bathroom and I couldn't catch it to kill it. I will now have nightmares about them crawling on me, since where there's 1 there will also be 5,736,923 more who have his back. I guess, really, killing that one wouldn't have mattered a lot but it might have sent a warning. I sleep with my mouth open, though. I'm dying here.

These good things happened today:

1. I did not die from heat exhaustion in my own bed or recliner.

(struggles some to come up with more)

2. I fixed the cold water faucet in my shower.

3. I got a random and unexpected kiss from the bitchiest of my cats, Beatrice.

4. Tucker, my young, feral male cat, made a huge stride in trust today by staying on my bed the entire time I made it up and killing the sheet wrinkles for me. Typically, a sheet change will send him into hiding in another room for hours. This was huge and only (lol, because what else do I have to do?) took 9 months.

5. I didn't spend any money.

There. I've balanced positives against negatives and will leave the internet with a sense of balance tonight. And a need to pee. Who am I kidding? Once I pee I'll have my second wind and be back online.

So what? It was just a Sunday.

Man, what a wasted day.

It is hot, hot, hot and living in Florida without air conditioning just plainly sucks. It's going to be a long summer, involving many naps in the recliner with ice packs on my body and yes, that's every bit as attractive as it sounds, make no mistake. I may wind up biting a very expensive bullet and springing for a new a/c as much as I hate that. I woke up this morning intending to have some yogurt and coffee, then spend the whole day working in the back yard...I wanted to hang a retractable clothesline because my white-trash reflex, which is similar to a gag reflex only in my butt, kicks in at the idea of having a real clothesline while living in a older subdivision. A clothesline out in the country? Is a thing of beauty. Here? It looks like my dryer broke and I can't afford a new one. Now, I might not be able to afford new central a/c without pain, but dammit, I can buy myself a new dryer if I need one. In the end, my country roots won out and I compromised with a 49 foot, retractable clothesline. I have the pleasure of owning a non-working street light in my backyard, so I attached the contraption to it and the cup hook thingie to the wooden door frame of my utility room and got myself 40' of clothesline that runs diagonally right through my back yard when in use. It is the anti-epitome of class, I tell you. Of course, it isn't as bad as what the previous owners of this house did...they had a 2-pole clothesline with a pole on either side of the patio. They never had to get their (assumption being made) bare feet dirty while they gathered their clean Marlboro freebie t-shirts. Impressive. I cut that shit down with a hacksaw the first week I owned this place. Anyway, I got it up and it works. I never did get to the laundry, though, and it is sorted in stacks in my living room. I'm trying to think if them as "color splashes".

I also intended to dig out my new garden for late Summer/Fall, start prepping it. It won't be big but I dearly miss having one and have made my list of things I want to grow: tomatoes, green pepper, colored pepper, jalapen(insert squiggly mark over the n)o pepper, eggplant, scallions, garlic, many types of squash, watermelon, pickling cucumbers, green beans and gourds. To the side, I also want a new herb garden. My plan was to dig it out today, then begin adding in peat and manure, as well as some fencing. How far did I get? Well, I took a can of purple spray paint and sort of measured and marked it out. Then I got hot. And hungry. I came in, had some chicken salad and had a nap in the recliner. I might go mark some more with spray paint tomorrow. Truly, it's a lovely thing that my kid doesn't depend on what his mother grows to feed him. Oh, and I asked him what he wanted to grow. Celery. He wants to grow fucking celery, that I can get for $1 a bunch and I always throw half of that bunch away. Yeah, he'd have better luck asking me to grow weed. Um. Not that I told him that and not that I would. But hell, at least it's worth more than $1 a bunch.

My other plan o' the day was to caulk the cracks in the front of the house so that come next hurricane, we won't be sopping up water with clothing because we have no power to run the Shop Vac and we've sopped with all the towels already. I've already caulked the worst (southeast) side but I need to do the front before I repaint. I got nowhere with that plan. I can't even lie and say I tried. I sorely need to do that, especially around my front door and Jake's room but it was hot and I was spectacularly unenthused.

I did make chili-lime shrimp and a summer squash casserole for dinner. I worked a suduko puzzle. I scooped 2 litterboxes. I watered my geraniums, my fuschia and my petunias. That part was hard. It involved sitting in something other than my recliner and my legs were forced to hang down in the process. I read some blogs. I worked on a letter to my state rep about child support, or rather, my lack thereof. That last one pissed me off and and caused me to put a bottle of wine in the freezer to chill down fast.

The day ended with me letting my kid go spend the night at some friends' house for the 3rd time this week and with my normal question to him as I dropped him in front of their house at 8pm: "Are you going in through the window or door tonight?" After all, I am an involved mother and insist on knowing what my kid is doing. "The window" was the reply, and I nodded. Then I saw him walk to the door and knock. Like any good mother, I immediately wondered why he lied and if he was up to something, and I will ask him about this tomorrow. He was supposed to go in the window, dammit. I felt better after I came home and had a glass of wine and watched Dog The Bounty Hunter. In my recliner.

So, in the end, it's safe to say today was a waste. I didn't even shower. And I'm still wearing what I wore to bed last night. Tomorrow will be a better day.

::flicks a bluebird off my monitor::

Chastity Bono, God and Jesus.

So, here's the deal going on in my head...first, I'm not a Christian. Let me make that very clear. I do not believe Jesus was the son of God any more than any of us are the sons and daughters of God. We all have our very special and needed jobs to do on this Earth, in this life. I believe that Jesus was one of many people put here to help lead us all to the end goal. That all said, I'm a huge fan of Jesus and his teachings and, cliche' as it is, have found an answer I need on more than one occasion by asking myself "what would Jesus do?" Add into all this, I'm *very firm in my belief that God makes no mistakes. Ever. We might feel He's made mistakes when things don't suit us and we might try to change those things and even use God in justifying it. Infertility comes to mind. How many times have I heard "God gave us the science to cure infertility" or "If God didn't intend us to use IVF, He wouldn't have given us the science that made it all possible." I've got news for you - given this line of thinking, God also made it okay to blow people up with nuclear weapons, burn children with Napalm, mail Anthrax, shoot people in drivebys, perform abortions, etc. Yeah, I know. I piss people off when I insert logic into religion but let's face it - God is pretty damn logical.

So, let's move on, shall we? After all, it's my mind we're taking a tour of and the MindBus is ready to roll again. So, which is it? Does God say "I gave you the power, my children, so use it all!" or does God say "I gave you the power, my children, to do both good and evil. Don't let selfishness confuse them. Just because you want it and it can be done doesn't mean it *should be done." Personally, I vote for that last one. God made us as we are...some of us have big noses, some of us are blind, some of us are infertile, some of us are gay, some of us are drop-dead gorgeous, some of us are geniuses, some of us are shy, some of us are born to die young and the list goes on and on. God makes no mistakes. Everything has a reason and I believe we need to stop second-guessing God and instead of bemoaning what we have that makes us different and trying to change it, we need to learn to embrace the fact that God makes no mistakes and we are as we are supposed to be. He has reasons and just because we don't understand those reasons doesn't mean we can discard them. For those who may read this, are you a parent? Don't you often make decisions your kids don't understand or like but that you know are best? Of course you do. And some of those decisions are ones children just can't grasp because they lack the maturity and wisdom to understand. God, by whichever of His many names you wish to call him, is my spiritual father. Is He yours? We lack His wisdom and maturity to understand many things and that's where faith and trust should be coming into play, just as we expect that from our own children. Some of us were never meant to have biological children or maybe we were only meant to have one. Some of us were meant to die at age 3. Some of us were given too much or too little of something by man-made and so-called "normal" standards, be it good or bad. But, by God's standards, we are all EXACTLY as He intended us to be, so we should accept the fact some of us don't fit the man-made definition of "normal" and embrace that instead of trying to change it. Embrace that God made us different for an important reason. He made us special, out of the so-called norm, because He felt we could be trusted to be different. Why anyone would mess with what God created if one believes in God? I admit, that's a hard one for me and it's hard enough I'm game to call it wrong. It's wrong to second guess God. It's wrong to correct what you deem to be God's mistake. It's wrong to say "Well, God gave us the science to fix it". Why in the world would God give you something "wrong" and then give you the science to fix it? Don't you think He has better things to do with His time than to play little mind games with you? I do.

And if you haven't figured out where Chastity Bono fits into this post yet, reread it. It's a damn shame she hasn't figured out that's she's perfect as she is, as God created her. If she can't accept that, if she can't figure out that gender isn't a black and white thing but just a guideline with many options in the middle, that surgery isn't the answer and maybe God or therapy is, then I'm very sad for her. I mean, I am truly and deeply sad for her.

In the end, God makes no mistakes.