Is it Friday yet?! CRIPES...

Ok Stephen, I don't know about YOU, but I really am fed up with the way this world is going.  It's all just utter chaos, frankly, and I'm sick of it.  I mean, why the hell would a 22 year old kid take a gun and go shoot innocent people at a grocery store?!  What the HELL is going ON in this stupid world of ours?!  I am especially sickened to the core about the 9 year old girl who was born on September 11th, amid tragedy and horror, only to die in a tragic and horrible shooting.  It makes me sick to my stomach.

Some people are suddenly scapegoating Sarah Palin about the "crosshairs" that she had on her web site regarding the political opponents she wanted to defeat in upcoming elections, one of whom was this Giffords lady in Arizona.  Now, I don't know about you, but I loathe Sarah Palin with a red-hot-fiery passion unbridled...she's a complete TWIT, and even though Mr. Ted "The Nooge" Nugent thinks she's "intelligent," that really does NOT convince me otherwise, since HE is a total TWIT as well.  Hey, I'm from Michigan, remember? I used to see him driving around in that zebra-striped Suburban vehicle all the time, talk about an attention whore!!  I don't share in his beliefs about killing animals, either, especially when it's well known that he PENS THEM UP in his backyard. Not very sportsmanlike if you ask me. He really should put the gun down and pick up the guitar more often....and keep his mouth shut too. Seriously.

But I digress.

As much as I really loathe Sarah Palin and her cronies who believe her shit don't stink, I have an uncomfortable feeling about suddenly scapegoating ANYBODY for ONE GUY'S BEHAVIOR.  I mean, Sarah Palin does not deserve her 15 minutes of fame---God knows she's drug it out wayyyy too long already---but she has a knack of being in the limelight or on the news almost DAILY, (another attention whore, no wonder Ted loves her, they are cut out of the same cloth), but this shooting in Arizona really has NOTHING to do with her stupid ass, as far as I can tell, so why the hell BRING HER SORRY ASS INTO IT???  Let her fade into oblivion where she BELONGS.  Stop putting a spotlight on her, dammit!!

People really do create their own monsters.  The media does too.  She is one of them, and she is increasingly becoming unstoppable and uncontrollable---which, if you pay close attention to the body language of John McCain (who FREAKISHLY looks exactly like my DAD by the way and gives me the CREEPS), you can tell even HE was fed up with her stupid antics and bullshit rhetoric.

Yeah, we all know she's a narcissitic attention whore, we all know she's not very intelligent, and we all know she thinks she's the greatest thing on earth since sliced bread.  But, I sincerely DOUBT that she's got the INTELLIGENCE ENOUGH to actually be somehow to blame for some crazy 22 year old gunman in Arizona...she doesn't realize her own ability to create more problems than she solves...and that is scary as hell, really, when you think about it.  But, I have a real uncomfortable feeling when somebody decides a crazy gunman's behavior is somehow politically charged...it's like, "Hey look, we're politicians, we are the most important people on earth so it MUST somehow be related to US..."  and it makes me sick.

THIS SHOOTING HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYBODY BUT THE GUNMAN AND THE VICTIMS.

It's just a sidenote---or should be----that Giffords was involved in politics. This 22 year old kid didn't know his own head from his ass---how many 22 year olds DO??----so to think that he's somehow another Charles Manson or something is simply disgraceful, and it DISRESPECTS those victims he killed, by making him seem more hugely evil than he is.  He's just a stupid kid who is mentally ill.  He's no ogre, he's no worse than anybody else on this fucked up planet.  He just happened to own a gun.

He just happened to want some attention.  Hmmmm....do you see a REAL parallel here?  Attention whores are the scourge of our society. They are growing in number, and they are more and more pathetic as the years go by, but they are dominating our society.  Look at ME, I have BLUE HAIR!!  No, look at ME, I have TATTOOS all over my body!! No, look at ME, I've got everything PIERCED that you can possibly imagine!  Look at ME, I'm Courtney LOVE!!  (Another chick who makes me sick).

Attention whores are the problem.  Politicians are full of shit, but they are simply HUMAN BEINGS who need to be held accountable and responsible for EVERY WORD and EVERY ACTION that they spew out into the cosmos.  But, they cannot and should not be blamed every time somebody shoots somebody else.  Just like they are now targeting the song "Let the Bodies hit the floor," which is that gunman's favorite song----it's ridiculous that rock and roll would LEAD a kid to kill people.  That is a stupid notion from the early 50's, that should never have taken seed in our world at all in the first place, but continues to permeate any unfortunate or tragic event where a young adult is involved.  I mean, do YOU know the favorite song of Saddam Hussein?  Or that idiot in Iran whom I also LOATHE with every fiber in my being, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad---do you know what HIS favorite song is?? HELL NO YOU DON'T---nobody does!! So WHY IS THAT RELEVANT?!!

I have met Rob FRICKIN' ZOMBIE, in person, and shook his hand, telling him he's a sexy beast.  I love to rock out to his music!  I love the band DISTURBED, I love Metallica!!  I love Godsmack!! I even like some of KORN's music!!  Hell, I even love badass Marilyn Manson (regurgitated Alice Cooper though he is).  But again, he is definitely an attention whore.  Show me a musician or actor or stage performer who ISN'T!!  But they don't go out and shoot people at a grocery store.

This kid was hurting somehow, his parents are at a loss, but probably contributed to his anger, it's the same old textbook psychology of killers...but he didn't know his ass from a hole in a ground, how the hell would he know much at all about politics, and why would he shoot a politician who isn't even in the limelight, who poses NO THREAT to anybody else, who just represented people in Tucson...who just simply wanted to DIALOGUE with people that she knew in her town....she wasn't hurting anybody.

This kid is clueless, and reckless, and needs mental help.  He's not in any way, part of a "conspiracy" of Republicans OR Democrats, to rule the world.  He's not connected to Palin, or any other politician, he's a complete NOBODY.  But he's a product of this fucked up world, with all its homespun monsters, (like Melissa Etheridge sang, "they're eating at our tables, they're rocking in our cradles, their teaching in our schools and preaching in our churches." (Something like that...love that song...absolutely LOVE HER). But these monsters are OUR OWN CREATION.  They aren't really monsters at all.  They are human.

The politics of our country have gone right down the shitter in recent years, and it makes me sick.

I saw a bumper sticker once that said, "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention!!"

So, I'm just paying attention---and even if YOU aren't,  I most definitely AM sickened, disgusted and absolutely outraged.  This world is going to hell in a hand basket (as my grammaw used to say), and DEAR GOD ABOVE, I am fed up!!

Something's gotta give....just like the bodies hitting the floor....something's gotta give...and it will, it is, and it's getting completely out of control.

In other news....

Florence had one of her angry outburst episodes today, my poor momma, she was the only one here to deal with it, since Pete and I had to go see the chiropractor.  (SIGH, I have scoliosis don'tchaknow, and it's a bitch...I'm trying to talk Pete into getting us a Sleep Number bed).  Anyway, so my spine is out of whack, I'm diabetic, and I've got high blood pressure, I had a lump in my breast (benign), a bone spur in my heel, my eyes are getting worse---I'm a friggin' MESS of a girl, I tell ya---but poor Florence, now SHE is the biggest mess in our household.  She's 89 and sometimes she acts like she's 15, stomping her feet, waving her fists, yelling and swearing, angry at the world.  I've never had kids, so I have NO CLUE how to deal with an 89 year old acting like a 15 year old teenager throwing a temper tantrum. "Go to your room" doesn't really work on her, ya know?

I've been a nervous wreck all day. We had to call a crisis center to have two mental doctors show up at our house to evaluate her---and if she had been acting the same way she was BEFORE they came, they would have taken her to a psychiatric hospital immediately.  She's a friggin' LOON.  I don't know how to deal with her.  My poor mom, with 20 years of Home Care experience, didn't know how to deal with her.  She took the brunt of Florence's abuse, and I feel badly for her.  It pisses me off, actually.  How DARE this old BAT start giving my mother a hard time, when all she's trying to do is HELP HER??

But the caregiver, unfortunately, is the scapegoat in this situation.  I'm "that other woman" that "her husband" (Pete, her son) "cheated on her with, and how DARE HE marry her!!"  Yeah, she threw a FIT when she said how disgusted she was that he and I "lived in SIN before we were married, with HER right under the same ROOF."  (She often gets Pete confused, calling him her husband AND sometimes her father).  She's confused, she's angry, she's got Alzheimers and Bipolar...she's a mess, and it makes ME---someone who is uber-sensitive and empathic to a fault---a nervous fucking WRECK.

I told her, with gritted teeth, biting my tongue, (after the psych people left), that "every time  you have a bad angry outburst like this, Florence, I'm calling them, and they will come here, and if we have to put you in a psych hospital, that's what we're going to do."  I added that we love her, and we're trying our best to take good care of her, and if that's what it takes, that's what we'll do.  But it was also a semi-veiled threat, telling her that I'm fed up with her attention whore antics, and sick of the roller coaster ride that she's got us all on.  If she keeps it up, I will either pack my bags and leave, or she'll be committed.

I love her. I know it sounds crazy, but I do, she's a good woman...she just pushed me over the edge today and I'm venting about her.  I would never want to lock her up somewhere, seriously, like her stupid nieces did in the nursing home.  That is reprehensible.  But, at the same time, I'm fed up.  At the end of my rope, ya know?  I've been taking care of this woman for over 2 years, and it's killing ME slowly to see her suffer, and decline, and to see her losing her mind like this.  Alzheimers is horrible.

Well, so that's been MY day. Pete even left work to come home to deal with her.  If that's not an attention whore, I don't know what is.

I've never been, nor do I ever want to BE, an attention whore. I just stay to myself, fade into the woodwork, and keep my observations to myself (on a blog!) or in a journal. I just don't want to get old.  Old people just plain suck shit through a straw, and frankly I don't deserve to go through that.  I've been a good kid all my life, ya know?  Straight A's in high school, graduated college (first person in my family to do that), played the flute for 30 years, had a poem and two magazine articles published, worked at the Holocaust Museum in DC for six years trying to save the friggin' WORLD....and Florence was an OR nurse most of her life, saving people, helping people, catering to others ALL HER LIFE...she adopted two kids...she lived a Christian-churchy lifestyle, and she's given a lot of her money to charities for many years.  She doesn't deserve this bullshit either.  Hey God, why don't you just give Alzheimers to EVIL people who DESERVE it?  Where is the rhyme or reason when it comes to people who suffer??

A 9 year old girl died this past weekend, she never even had a chance to live, to become an awesome athlete, to graduate high school, to get married, to have a kid herself.  She never had a chance.  An 89 year old woman in Pittsburgh is having a tough time losing her mind, killing me slowly every day as I sit here feeling helpless and ineffectual.  I said to Pete and my mom, "I want to get a baby gate to keep her from going up those stairs (which she did AGAIN today by herself)...because I am so afraid that she's going to fall and break her hip or something...or never recover from it."  But they both sat there berating me---it felt like they were yelling at me, actually---because "you can't protect anybody 24/7, from anything...you should know that...it's just like having a KID..."

I stopped them right then and there, reminding them that I HAVE NEVER HAD A KID.  And then I asked, "If you have no ability to protect them, why the HELL would anybody want to HAVE one?!"

I am clueless about parenting, and I sure as FUCK don't want to be a parent to an 89 year old crazy lady.

Sorry that I'm using the F word so much today, but you're a big boy, you can handle it, right?? I hope so. I'm usually not this obscene when I write...unless I'm writing SMUT....hehehehe....but today was just a total episode of clusterfuckery that completely left me wilted and exhausted, both emotionally and physically.  It's only 7 p.m. right now and I feel like going to bed for the night.  I'm only 42 years old, I'm too young to be dealing with this shit.

Well, as always, thanks for listening to me rant and rave about life in general. This isn't exactly what I had in mind when I started this blog, but what the hell.  You are someone who comforted me all my life with your words as you sang, so it's only natural for me to write to you when I need some comforting. Ya know what one of my favorite songs is that you sang?  "Sweet and Simple."  I adore that song.

I wish life could be more sweet and simple. I need to find some sanity, some refuge...this world is just too crazy for me. (I'm seriously thinking about getting Florence some medicinal MARIJUANA and STEALING IT FROM HER FOR MYSELF)!!!  And that says a LOT, from a woman who has never smoked anything in her whole life!!  Stress is really killing me.  I need to take up alcoholism I think.

Ah well, I'm strong, I'm young, I'll be okay.  I'll get through the tough times, and kick anybody's ass who stands in my WAY of getting through a tough time.  That's how I've always been.  Thanks for listening.

Love, Rebecca