misunderstandings – hellsfunnybelle

Mommy Snearest

May 13, 2014May 28, 2014 by lizcarey2014, posted in parent life, southern life, the girl with the inner purple hair, Uncategorized

There are days when I find myself trying to measure up to the idea of the perfect mom.

You know the ones… they’re online – on Twitter and on Facebook – always talking about their perfect lives and their perfect families and their perfect days at home, working around the house.

They’re the ones that are all matchy-matchy, from their bows in their hair to their designer shoes. And while they talk about their problems, they actually don’t have any because their kids are actually perfect, as are their husbands, their dogs and their houses.

While there are days I wish I could live like them, the fact of the matter is I will never live like them.

In the first place, I have to work for a living. In the second place, I’m about as far from perfect as you can get. And in the third place, I just wasn’t brought up that way.

Don’t get me wrong; my mom brought me up right. If it weren’t for my mother, I would still be dressing in nothing but jeans and t-shirts… okay, I still do that on the weekends, but that doesn’t count. I mean, if it weren’t for my mother, I would not be making a conscious effort to have my underwear match my outfits… kinda like that clean underwear mama mantra on steroids.

It’s just that she also brought me up to be myself and to love who I was instead of always trying to live someone else’s life.

So, that kind of mom isn’t really my way of life.

They are the moms who drive their BMWs to the local organic farm to purchase local fresh produce for their gourmet meals, made possible by the fact that they have all the time in the world to drive to the organic farm and come home and cook a gourmet meal.

I am the mom who roars up to the farmers’ market in her Jeep, in a tie-dye t-shirt and matching sunglasses, with INXS blaring out the windows and grabs the closest box of strawberries to save a few minutes before roaring home to throw something together for dinner.

They are the moms who “salon” to have all manner of their body hair teased, tweezed, tweaked or otherwise tamed.

I am the mom who calls her kid from the back porch and asks them to bring her a razor, because she missed some hairs while she was in the shower.

True story. Just happened.

They’re the moms whose housekeeper takes care of all of the problems in the house while they “work” on their “mommy blog” next to the pool.

I am the mom who writes at night after my second glass of wine and sweeping the kitchen floor for the seventh time since I got home from work.

And while they are the moms whose children were in their perfectly spotless rooms before Mother’s Day making them gifts to celebrate their motherliness – like knitting them a coffeemaker to replace their broken one, or creating art out of tooth picks and dryer lint that would most certainly be hanging in the Louvre if it weren’t on her walls, I am the mom whose kids borrowed my credit card last weekend to buy my Mother’s Day present and argued for the better part of an hour over whose was better.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge those moms their perfect lives, and I’m sure they are happy.

There’s just always that niggling little voice in the back of my head that reminds me I am not one of them. And that for some reason, I should strive to be one of them.

But I can’t live like that.

I’m not home baking cookies; I’m at work. I’m not president of the PTA – I did that once. It wasn’t pretty. I’m don’t have dinner ready by the time they and their father get home from their important things. I slap together the occasional casserole when I have my own important things to do.

And more than that, I’m not perfect. I have curves. I haven’t had the same hair color six months in a row since I was 29. I have a wardrobe that consists primarily of jeans, stretch pants and business attire in red, black, white and tan. I’m a workaholic. I live in flip-flops and bare feet whenever I can from April until November. I can be a little crazy.

Stop rolling your eyes and saying “a little?”

I’m not the ideal mom to others, I suppose, but my kids and husband think I’m pretty okay, even when I dance in the grocery store aisle or sing off key.

I guess all that’s important is that I’m the ideal mom to them.

I can live with that.

Monster jobs, ripe for the picking

May 6, 2014May 28, 2014 by lizcarey2014, posted in the girl with the inner purple hair, work life

Every time I get depressed about my job, I go to my email inbox.

It almost always reminds me, life could be worse.

Friday, when I was contemplating how busy I was compared to my friends who were traveling across the country, I got an email from Monster.com.

According to them, I am uniquely qualified to be: an HVAC technician, a vending machine route supervisor, end-user technology support for a feminine hygiene and toilet paper manufacturer (I shit you not), a chain restaurant general manager and an activity director for a senior living center.

Really?

So much for the English degree.

Now, I have never touched an HVAC unit, outside of the thermostat, and the only time I’ve ever diagnosed that anything was wrong with one was when ours started squealing at 2 a.m. on one of those nights when it was 267 degrees outside. My diagnosis? It was about to be shot if it didn’t find the will to work. It did stop squealing after I yelled at it several times. The repairman we called the next day said there was nothing wrong with it. I like to think it just decided to shape up.

Oh! The Vending Machine Supervisor is here! Huzzah! said no one ever... — Oh! The Vending Machine Supervisor is here! Huzzah! said no one ever…

And I wouldn’t be a vending machine route supervisor if you paid me to – which of course, I guess is the reason for the ad – mostly because I don’t like getting yelled at. No one ever says “Oh! Thank GOD, the vending machine supervisor is here! The Snickers bar row is refilled! Our lives are complete! Huzzah!” No, what they say is “Hey, you! Three weeks ago this stupid machine ate my 75 cents causing me to nearly pass out from not getting my afternoon Skittles sugar rush, I want my money back WITH INTEREST!”

Taste the rainbow indeed.

I don’t know what kind of end user technology support a toilet paper manufacturer could possibly need (“No, ma’am… it doesn’t really matter if the roll goes over or hangs under.” “Yes, ma’am, it’s okay to use it to blow your nose, so long as you don’t do that AFTER you’ve used it for something else.” “No, sir, I’m pretty sure the fact that your wife is a wadder when it comes to the tp in question, does not have anything to do with your plumbing issues. I take it you’re a folder?” And yes, I looked it up… 38 percent of women are wadders; where as 52 percent of men are folders. Only 20 percent of people are wrappers. Six percent don’t know… Uhm, just a question… how do you NOT KNOW? Thank God Monster didn’t say I should start a career as a survey taker.)

“No, sir, I’m pretty sure the fact that your wife is a wadder when it comes to the tp in question, does not have anything to do with your plumbing issues. I take it you’re a folder?”

More over, I’ve worked in restaurants before and suffice it to say, that’s pretty much the reason I finished college. And since most of my activities involve alcohol and/or signing release forms, I’m pretty sure I’m not the person to be the activities director for a senior citizens community… although that does give new meaning to white water rafting, now doesn’t it?

I told Monster I had management experience and excelled in communications and marketing. Either every job on the face of the planet now requires those qualifications, or, and I’m thinking this is more likely, there are just way too many English and marketing majors out there.

There are just too many people who know how to write and promote businesses all applying for the same jobs. Which would leave very few left for me, if I ever decided to actually leave the job I’m in now.

So, I have a thought… let’s round up all of the unemployed English and marketing majors and let them compete, a la “The Hunger Games,” for survival. We can drop them all in the wild and let them write or market their way out.

English majors and marketing majors should compete for jobs in a more satisfying way... — English majors and marketing majors should compete for jobs in a more satisfying way…

Pen a great paragraph and you get a map to the exit. Make a killer logo out of twigs and stones and you get food for the rest of the game. Promote your cause via social media which goes viral and gets you more votes than Delvin on “The Voice,” and you win your way out of the wilderness and into a job as a vending machine route supervisor.

It really probably won’t be good for the English major community.

But it sure as hell will make being already gainfully employed seem a lot more appealing.

Culture shift

February 23, 2014April 24, 2014 by lizcarey2014, posted in Uncategorized

So, when you move to the Upstate of South Carolina, one of the first things you learn is that the Confederacy was born and died right next door in Abbeville County.

Jefferson Davis signed the Articles of the Confederacy during a meeting at the Burt-Starke House in the city of Abbeville, county seat of Abbeville County. Five years later, when the War of Northern Aggression (seriously, that’s what some call it STILL) came to a close, Confederate troops ran through Anderson with the Confederate gold, and stopped at the Burt-Starke Mansion to let Davis sign the treaty that ended the Civil War.

The other thing you learn pretty quickly is that there is a big Black population here. When I lived in Cincinnati, it was shocking how few African-Americans were in the area. That area had about a 5 and 10 percent black population, but here it’s closer to 35 percent, if not higher in some areas.

So, I’d been here for about 6 months, and my newest friend was the public information officer for the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office. She invites me out to “choir Practice” on a Wednesday night – which is so named because it’s Karaoke night at the Islander, which she gets to go to while her step mom takes her son to church. So, my friend is recently divorced and was there at choir practice with her then loser boyfriend Steve. And Steve, because I’m a reporter and I’m new, starts telling me all about the area. And since he has lived here forever, he just won’t quit. And I’m looking over to my friend to have her help me, but she’s off singing (if you can call it that) karaoke to “You give love a bad name” which seems appropriate for her ex, but seems to be a bad sign for the relationship if it’s about Steve.

Anyway, I’m trying to pay attention to Steve, which is hard because he’s really boring, when he says “Has anyone told you about the Black Panthers in Abbeville?”

Immediately, my ears pricked up. Having covered Klan rallies in Oxford, Ohio and going through riots in Cincinnati, and almost covering the Klan in Brookville, Indiana, I was immediately interested.

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “They’re all over the place. I’ve seen a bunch of them in Abbeville.”

Now, I had just gotten finished writing a story about this guy that ended up stealing about $3k made during an event that was supposed to go to charity. And my editor was constantly telling me to “go out there and rake some muck.” And I’m thinking “Holy crap! Militant black activists in the cradle and grave of the Confederacy? What the heck?! This is going to be a great story!!!”

So I start pumping Steve for more info and I’m asking him where these black panthers are and what they do and what everyone thinks about them. They live in Abbeville, he says, and everyone pretty much ignores them because what else are you going to do, you don’t see them much, so it’s not like you can shoot them.

To say I was a little shocked at that sentence is an understatement.

And then he says “Oh, yeah, I see them all the time on my way to and from work driving down the Abbeville Highway.”

I was looking at him like a deer hit by a bus and I ask, “Well, how can you tell they’re black panthers?”

And without batting an eye he says “Oh, that’s easy – you can tell cause of their long tails. Otherwise, they’d just be bob cats….”

My chin almost hit my beer glass my jaw fell open so much.

Yup…. Welcome to the rural South, Miss Uppity Northern Reporter…

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