Yanno....((WARNING: Non-Humorous Post))

Everyone else blogs about these socially important things. Either that, or highly personal, poignant, emotional things which tear at people's heartstrings. I read some of these blogs, and then look at mine. Mine, as I state in my "About Me" section, is of absolutely no socially redeeming quality whatsoever. It's merely snippets of my history, or of my present, living in what I so lovingly refer to as "weird~shit~land". Some of it is truly funny, when looked upon with the passage of time. Some of it is sad or is simply outrageous. But, it's mine. I've been told so many times to write a book, or to do stand-up comedy, that I can't even count them. However, that seems so, well, public to me. That puts these intimate pieces of my life so far out into the public domain for public ridicule that I don't know if I can bear it. Call it fear, call it vanity, I'm not sure which.

I just read a blog of a woman who's given birth to a baby who has anencephaly, literally meaning, the baby has no brain. They determined this when they did the baby's first ultrasound at 19 weeks gestation. They wanted her to terminate the pregnancy, but she didn't. She carried the baby to term, knowing that she might only have hours with her baby after birth. The baby is now over 40 days old. She's blogging about her and her life with this little soul when she gets the chance. It's compelling. People are now sending her hate mail, I can't for the life of me understand why. Because she didn't kill the baby?? Because she didn't let her die at birth and harvest her organs immediately?? Because she let her live at all??? She's not going to live long, the mom knows and accepts that. She's already got a DNR in place for her. But, she's doing "normal" things for her. They say that babies like that can't hear, but she startled at a dog barking, so she CAN. So, there's some sort of brain activity beyond brainstem.

I don't know, it sort of makes this blog seem rather lame. One of my friends writes about the social wrongs of censorship. Another writes about the things he sees in his line of work where there is distruction, or the stupidity of others. But, me, I write of the whacked out world that I see. From the weird things that happen to me, which are a lot. It sounds pointless and stupid, but, somehow, in the seriousness of this world, where there is so much pain, and so much ugliness, I think that people need to be reminded that there are funny things too. That there are things that are totally beyond our control that when you look at them in the right light are downright funny. That I have a way of looking at things that I can see the humor in these situations rather than simply seeing the negative in them. Yes, I could just wallow in the drama, but I *CHOOSE* to find something funny in them and make myself laugh rather than stay miserable all of the time. Sometimes that's hard, and I have to remind myself that "Someday" I'll find the situation humorous. Sometimes the situation isn't funny at all, but, when I think about it later, I see *something* amusing in it that I couldn't see when I was in the throws of it.

Maybe that's the point of my blog. To show people not to take themselves or their lives *too* seriously. Not to dwell on the negative, but rather to find those amusing attributes to the negative situations so that they can let their brains cope with them better. Maybe it won't work, I don't know. But, maybe it will. But, I think perhaps that's part of what I had in mind when I started this little endeavor, a peek into my real life *weird-shit-land* window so that people can relate. See their own WSL and maybe find their own humor. Once you find that humor, the situation isn't so horrible. Isn't so bad. Isn't so frightening, and can't hurt you quite as much. At least, that's how it works for me. A defense mechanism? Probably. But, one that I'm willing to share, sort of. Right now, only a few people know how to get in here. When I get braver, I'll let more in. They'll read the other posts before this one and either think I'm crazy and stop reading, or they'll laugh until they see this one and see the "method to my madness".

Either way, that smile is all I'm hoping for. It's what makes people feel better. It's what makes me real to them. It's what'll make people come back. For now, I'll be happy if people understand why I don't write the dramatic blogs that most people do. That's important to me. I really want to be understood about this. It's not because I'm stupid, or that I want to be pointless, it's because what I have to say is different than others.

It doesn't make it less important.

~m~

It can't possibly get any.........

People have always told me NOT to utter the expression "Things can't possibly get any WORSE", because from that moment on, they will. I don't know if I didn't really believe them, or if I thought it was just an old wive's tale or what exactly, but, I personally won't ever use that expression again in my natural life.

WonderHubby's parental units live in the outskirts of San Diego, CA, having moved there on his mother's demands from New Jersey upon completion of her PhD in Cardio Physiology (YUCK). Once there, it dawned on her that she couldn't see us once a month like she was accustomed to (go figure) so, after a multitude of guilt trips, we went out to visit. It had been a horrible winter here in PA, literally an ice storm every Thursday, temperatures down to -15 to -20F. If you looked up the definition of "Glacier" in the dictionary, TECHNICALLY, we had one in our front yard - albeit a small one, it was a glacier nonetheless. Needless to say, we couldn't wait for a southern CA vacation. The ironic thing about it was, while we were gone, there was a weird "heat wave" here and it was in the 50's the entire time we were gone. Approximately the same temperature it was where we were at his parent's. I think it was a plot.

I'm not going to attempt to describe the oddities of my in-laws in this blog post. It would take up the entire post and that's not the point for this one. Suffice it to say that it was an exhausting trip. His mother needs to be moving constantly and had our agenda constantly *filled* from the moment we arrived until the time they left us at the gate to come home. We were absolutely exhausted for our return flight, and we were supposed to go to work the following morning.

We didn't fly into a major metropolitan airport, but rather a smaller, more local airport, so our arrival time was somewhere close to midnight. Not bad, we'd still make it home in time to get a good night's sleep so we could go to work in the morning. First, we looked for our luggage. We found a suitcase that looked EXACTLY like ours, but, upon inspection, found that it belonged to someone else. Apparently, the person that owned this particular bag took ours thinking it was theirs without bothering to look at the name on it. So, we took the bag that wasn't ours to the baggage claim office and told them what we thought happened and they said they would contact these people in the morning and would arrange to have our suitcase delivered to us the following day. So, great, going home with no luggage. One of us says the fatal words:

"It can't possibly get any worse.".......WRONG.

We drive home (easily, I might add, because a lot of the ice had melted, our glacier WAS still intact however), opened the front door to our house and discovered that one of our six (yes six, we were stupid) cats had knocked over a ceramic lamp onto the hardwood floor and it had crashed into thousands of little pieces, also landing on an antique glass turtle that was of great sentimental value to me. So, now, I'm in tears over the turtle, and we have to clean up the remains of the lamp AND the turtle before we can go to bed. Did I mention that it was now somewhere after 1:00AM?? Work was going to be tough, but was still doable. We finally get everything cleaned up, the cleaning supplies put away and we head upstairs. One of us AGAIN states those infamos words:

"It just can't get any worse, right?".......WRONG.

We leave all of the toilet lids in the house DOWN for a reason. We don't want stupid cats falling in. It's pretty simple. Slightly graphic moment here, when I'm done, standing up and lowering the lid is all one maneuver because we don't want stupid cats falling in at inopportune moments. Well, that night, stupid cat #6 (names Ziggy after David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and the Spider's from Mars) came flying into the bathroom, jumped up onto the sink bashed into my arm as the lid to the toilet was going down and fell totally into the toilet uh...BEFORE I'd flushed it. So, now it's 2:00AM and we're giving stupid cat #6 a bath in the sink (cats REALLY don't like baths) with antibacterial soap; one of us doing the holding, one of us doing the actual bathing and rinsing part. THEN, the cat has to be blown dry with a hairdryer because he's a Burmese and only has one layer of fur and it's COLD and we can't let him run around soaking wet. OK, it's 2:30AM, work will be hideous but, will be done, the cat is taken care of, we finally get ready to go to bed, WonderHubby utters the inevitable:

"Thank GOD, it can't get any worse."......WRONG.

At 3:30AM our phone rings. WonderHubby vaults over me because if the phone is ringing in the house at 3:30 in the morning, someone is DEAD, right? Wrong. It's the stupid people who took our luggage home from the airport. The conversation went something like this:

Stupid Guy: "I have your luggage"
WH: "OK"
Stupid Guy: "Do you have mine?"
WH: "No"
Stupid Guy: "Why not?"
WH: "Because I'm not stupid and don't leave the airport with other people's luggage"

Totally Dead Silence....

Stupid Guy: "Well, aren't you going to meet me so we can trade luggage?"
WH: "No."
Stupid Guy: "Why not?"
WH: "Because I don't have it, it's at the airport with the luggage handlers for XXXXX Airlines."
Stupid Guy: "So, how do I get my luggage?"
WH: "You drive back to the airport, give them my luggage, and they'll give you yours."
Stupid Guy: "I have to drive all the way back to the airport?"
WH: "If you want to get your luggage, yes."
Stupid Guy: "Do you know how far that is from here?"
WH: "Well, since I didn't take your luggage and I don't know where you live, no, I don't."
((WonderHubby was losing his temper by this point, the sarcasm was building because Stupid Guy actually was annoyed with him for not being as stupid as he was and taking the wrong luggage home))
Stupid Guy: "Well, I guess I just have to waste another trip to the airport"
WH: "Maybe next time you should read the luggage tags."

He hung up the phone, came back to bed, and started to say that expression again. I interrupted him. We'd had enough for one night. So, we settled down and went to sleep. We never did make it in to work the following morning.

I never EVER use that phrase. I think my reasons are clear enough.