My Update

Well, I started a new job. It was a bit untimely since it began the day after Mom’s funeral and we got off to a bumpy start. My favorite comment at the moment being, “Beth, it’s ok if you come to the Christmas party alone. Lots of people do.” I made sure to let Jay know he was off the hook. It’s behind my other favorite from my first day at work, the day after the funeral, when I was asked in front of a large group, “Soooo Beth, tell everyone something about you.” This from someone who knew better. I had to collect myself, because I gathered no one wanted to hear, “I wish I were dead, too.” Something about that brings the mood down. People are too sensitive nowadays.

I’ve learned a ton about fashion and the maximum amount of stretch you want in pants. 1-2% for the curious. They’ve even managed to throw some praise my way. “You got your hair done. I liked the red better.” The sad thing is, I agree. The red was actually violet, and I liked it better, too.

Still, I’m troopering through.

They have contracted with incompetent IT staff who come in and half ass their job. They smile at me gleefully while trying to dazzle me with their skills. All I can think is, “Dude, I’ve run cable through ceilings, down walls and punched them down without breaking a sweat – your inability to set-up an account on an Exchange server is amazing. I give you my whole hearted golf clap. Bravo.” I’ve been such a jerk to the IT guy while text messaging in front of him “this IT guy is a complete schmuck” that he’s finally gotten the hint that I don’t think he’s cool or competent. Seriously, if you don’t share the last name with my significant other or your name isn’t Dave Benton the God of All Things IT (I include his full name, because if you’re hiring and can pay him trunk loads of cash, he’s worth it and twice more http://www.ausven.com/team/teammember.asp?id=44 – BRILLIANT guy – just BRILLIANT!)

My new mission - I’m trying to identify the nerds in the group; I need friends! Among all the formal business attire, it’s becoming a bit of a challenge, but there’s hope – one guy wears sweater vests, says his girlfriend dresses him and has a slight overbite. I see great promise in that one. Now I have to figure out how to work things like “rail gun” or “I like to think of this report as my preciousssss, how about YOU???” and then I’ll lean in, elbow him and wink.”

Anyway, that’s my state of the Beth account for this week. I’m still working on finding humor. Give me some more time.

EDIT NOTE: Seth, I now reserve the right to edit up to 24 hours after I post. No reading until then.

Helsinki Complaints Choir

http://www.youtube.com/v/ATXV3DzKv68
Hopefully, you can actually read the lyrics by going directly to the link.

I desperately need to find a choir like this in town... and take singing lessons.

I'm Here for the Mints

The funeral is over, the flowers are losing their color and by all accounts life is marching forward. I am truly blessed with some of the best friends and family. You get a real feel for who you can turn to after a major event and all the people who stood by me during “The Big Mistake” as Anna calls it, were just as solid and strong this time around. Thanks to everyone for all the kind words and many great stories. Thank you for thinking the funeral truly reflected my Mom; that’s what I was hoping for but you never know and I was critiquing it with my mother’s eye so I saw all the unpolished bits that I wish would have been better – but short of a full blown Broadway production, I don’t know how it could.

That being said, I’ll move on with my personal favorite story from the funeral – the crazy lady. I guess since one of my other aunts couldn’t be there, this woman volunteered to try and make me go wild eyed – of course, she didn’t have my own aunt’s knack, which is a good thing – otherwise there would have been big drama, and I can’t stand big drama at funerals.

So I promised a story…
A half hour before the visitation, after I’d visited with the Reverend and as my cousin was making all the displays look top notch, a lady walked in. Everyone had a “job” except for me and since I’m “the daughter” I guessed my job was to talk to strangers. I introduced myself and found out this woman worked with Mom… so she says. In a short amount of time, I learned about her grandkids, her sinus troubles (three doctor’s visits missed), how her grandmother had passed away when she was 92 or maybe 94 (my head was reeling at this point), and on and on and on it went. She asked me how old I was, which I thought was one of those questions that fell under politics, religion and weight. I told her – maybe out of morbid curiosity to see where the conversation was going and she then told me about how she’d lost her parents when she was in her mid 20’s, but she begrudgingly acknowledged that yeah, mine was bad, too.

Let me take a moment to reflect on this bit – I completely get that she was trying to sympathize, but big flags went up – was she trying to compete? Was she saying mine was bad, but really hers was much worse? That may be completely true – I don’t know. I wasn’t there, but cut me a little bit of slack – hers was 25+ years ago, and mine was 4 days before and on that day I got to watch my world turn upside down very vividly.

I was starting to twitch, but because this woman was so early there was no graceful escape. She asked if my mother had any grandchildren… this woman who supposedly knew my mom. I swear, but Jay think I’m misremembering a bit, that she asked if I had siblings, too. This woman knew my Mom? Not buying it.

Then she’d get really close to me and hug for long periods of time, then pull back and stay within an inch of my face while saying, “Your mother is still here with you”. I’m not sure if her aim was to make me bawl, if so, it wasn’t working. What was happening, as most of you guys know, is I was FREAKING OUT – I despise people touching me, especially people I don’t know and that meaningful conversation an inch from my face (I’m farsighted, for starters – can’t stand anything close to my face) was pushing every single one of my crazy buttons.

At one point while she was beating her chest to indicate that my mother was there in my heart (thank the Lord for small favors that she wasn’t beating my chest) – she said, and I’m not even kidding:
“I still talk to my grandmother, only she can’t talk back. Well, she does talk back but I can’t hear her yet.”
(Not so bad, right… wait for it.)
“Well, actually she does talk back to me all the time.”
I gave her my best “I think you’re NUTS smile”.

I admit, I zoned completely out when she started mentioning “retarded” people. I only remember that line because I squeezed Jay’s hand to send the “I think she’s retarded” signal. Thankfully after about 45 minutes one of my co-workers arrived. YAY! I hugged him, because he’s on the “ok to hug” list and I dumped her on him. Yes, I know I owe him big.

The whole time I kept looking down the chapel at my Mom in her coffin and I wanted her to pull me to the side and tell me who this woman was. Unfortunately, all that popped into my head was, “she must be here for the free mints”. Thanks Mom. One day maybe we’ll have a little chat about that.

As she finally made her way to the door, which was more by accident than design, Jonathan, who hadn’t really heard about the craziness yet but can sniff out crazy called after her, “go easy on the meds!!” with a huge smile. And with that, Jonathan made me laugh the way only your close friends can when you’re profoundly sad.

From Anna...

I Wish...
Remembering Tina Nelms

Thank you, Anna for everything. Mom would have been deeply touched by what you wrote, but I'll say this for her "I thought Anna would want to see the possum." I think there was a real reason, but I've forgotten because we teased her a lot about that moment to the point that she finally just smiled, nodded and took the ribbing. You should have been there the day she found the dead coral snake. I think deep inside she was a natural scientist, which is one thing we didn't mention - all the snake skins, fossils, etc. that she had.

Everlasting Memories

Everlasting Memories

Cook Walden Funeral Home has provided my family with the above tribute to my Mom. My favorite piece is the "movie"; it has many of my favorite pictures and several of hers (I'm biased because I got to select most of them).

The biography is the obituary that was printed in the paper on November 14. In it is a quote from the Wizard of Oz. We stole it from the memorial piece my Mom wrote for her youngest sister Jenifer Lindman who died on June 24, 2005.

The Soundtrack

Some of you that knew my Mom would appreciate this, so this post is for you.

For the funeral we were asked what music we'd like and the word "hymns" was thrown out. I went along with it because it seemed "appropriate" and then I got home and decided that wasn't Mom. So, here's what they played during the visitation and before the actual service:

Try to Remember (the Fantastics)
There's No Business Like Show Business (Annie Get Your Gun)
Get Happy (Judy)
Anything You Can Do (Annie Get Your Gun)
Easter Parade (Easter Parade)
Top Hat, White Ties & Tails (can't remember... but sing it with me ... I'm puttin' on my top hat...)
Heat Wave
Singin' In the Rain
Make 'em Laugh (Singin' In the Rain)
All That Jazz
I Am What I Am (La Cage Aux Folles)
Some People (Gypsy)
Ol' Man River (Showboat)
Luck Be a Lady (Guys & Dolls)
One (A Chorus Line)
Send in the Clowns (A Little Night Music)
Cabaret (Cabaret)
Seasons of Love (Rent - because Mom threatened to kill me if I kept singing this song in the ER - five hundred twenty five thousand six houndred MINUTES... :) Her attempt to keep me from tapping in the ER also failed - lucky her I just performed from my chair - 5 years of tap should account for something)
I Got Rhythm (American In Paris)
The Trolley Song (Meet Me in St. Louis)
Camelot (Camelot)
Don't Cry for Me Argentina (Evita)

During the service:
You'll Never Walk Alone (Carousel)

End of Service/Graveside:
Over the Rainbow (The Wizard of Oz)

Of course, the song I'm listening to is "Mad World" from the Donnie Darko soundtrack.

Some Kind of Woman

The Big Blue Mess is going on hiatus for a bit, which could mean a few days or it could mean a few weeks, but I’ll leave you with a poorly worded and poorly constructed “eulogy” or more precisely my random ramblings about my Mother and her “passing”.

I wish I believed as some of my friends do that death is a glorious moment. That being there in that moment, with that person was something to envy. The image I have on replay in my memory is not glorious or comforting; it’s one of confusion and running down a hall yelling at people – relying more on frantic hand gestures than words that the nurses then passed down the line stirring up an entire group of people to run into my Mom’s room. I looked in once to see that she was still convulsing and then I stayed outside the room completely alone. I felt small and upset – angry that the world didn’t just stop just for a few seconds to quietly mourn.

My Mother lived somewhere between the Emerald City and Pompeii at the moment Mt. Vesuvius erupted. If I were to ask her how she would want to be defined, she’d say “not by The Wizard of Oz” which she’ll forever be associated with. She would want people to remember her love of history, Jane Goodall’s work with primates, the Challenger shuttle, robots, model building, tennis, football and movies particularly musicals. In fact, the kind of service she’d love to have would be choreographed by Busby Berkeley, although Bob Fosse would be more than welcome to throw in a number or two. She was the kind of person whose knowledge of movies was so great that she frequently corrected magazines, newspapers and people she saw on air. When I went to visit her on Saturday she was enjoying a "Touch of Evil" on TCM and whispered, "just a second, I want to hear this line..." When Janet Leigh uttered "he was some kind of man" she smiled and said, "ok" indicating that we could start talking.

My Mom also loved to read and write and relate stories and whenever you were about to say goodbye, she’d end with “…just one more thing” so you’d listen a little longer.

My aunt asked me to write her obituary. She said, “you write well, you should do it” but what can you really express in the small space a newspaper allows that encompasses a long and full life?” So let me add a couple more things I really couldn’t for the paper. She grew up in Highland Park and was very proud of that. She got her degree from UT at Arlington in Sociology and took graduate classes at UT in Austin. Her education and where she came from were very important to her; they truly defined my mother more than ruby red slippers ever could. (Although, she once wrote a paper in graduate school about the symbolism of color in The Wizard of Oz – it’s no small wonder that my Mom and that movie were always paired together.)

On Wednesday we’ll release balloons at her graveside while playing Over the Rainbow and all my “… just one more thing before you go’s” will drift away.

But just one more thing…. I’m so sorry Mom. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I love you and I really like you.; you were “some kind of [woman]” and a good friend.

February 3, 1941 - November 11, 2006

I love you

Lung Cancer LOL

Communicating over the internet (or the internets if you prefer), whether it’s through e-mail, IRC, MUshes, MOOs, MUD’s, MMORPG’s or any other acronym, has always been tricky especially when you’re dealing with a stranger – someone who doesn’t know your personal quirks of speech. We started really reaching out and communicating on a large scale beginning with the first bulletin board. Since the bulk of us were not well trained journalists skilled in carefully crafting our words this led to a lot of miscommunication. I know back in the day I spent countless moments talking to strangers starting sentences with “no, that’s not what I meant.” “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to upset you.” Thankfully someone came up with the idea of the emoticon. Glory be to a little bit of clarity! We now had a tool to better express our intent by adding a little :o) or a :P. I could now say things like: “I hope you die horribly. =P” and people thought I was kidding. (I mean, people KNEW I was kidding.) Still, that wasn’t quite enough, so out came a world of acronyms that we paraded around our words. “I hope you die horribly. lol }:-)” not only said, “I’m kidding”. It also expressed, “isn’t that devilishly funny?” Of course, adding a “jk” would suffice.

But why am I telling YOU this, you already know the history? I’m telling you this, because I have a beef. It’s with the acronym “lol”. It’s a pestilence akin to locusts. I swear for every sentence I read that goes, “…you made me lol – funny stuff”, I get “I’m going to the bathroom now, lol.” “afk, lol.” “I snapped my spine in two and am a paraplegic lol lol lol”. And I am genuinely perplexed, because I feel like I’m missing the joke. I feel like I’m not truly experiencing the joys of these activities properly because I’m more a “meh” kind of girl - “afk, meh” “going to the bathroom, bad magazines, brb, meh”. It’s like a bad designer has come in and decorated every sentence on the internet with a “lol” – like the world is perpetually high on nitrous oxide.

That’s not to say that I don’t throw out the occasional lol, but it’s more a LOL because I’m serious about my lol-ing. When I use the caps it lets you know that you’ve genuinely made me laugh. If you get a lower case lol from me, it’s usually accompanied by an unseen golf clap and likely a yawn.

So, I’m going to have to beg you to please include me in on all the jokes. I’m feeling a bit left out. lol. (oh wait, maybe my ending should be more a: ZOMG ROFLMAO! – lol)

The Pizza Troll

I’ve angered the pizza troll. I’ve been trying to come to terms with this all week, shrugging off the troll’s importance in my life, but let’s face it; I need to win the pizza troll back over. I need to get back in the troll’s good graces.

It happened innocently enough. Last week before our big TV night I ordered pizza. Who knew if you paid with a credit card you were supposed to announce your tip on the spot? I sure didn’t. Plus, I’m old fashioned. I want to see the service first. I mean honestly, the guy could stomp on my pizza and there he’d be rewarded with a couple of measly dollars feeling good about himself and there would be my pizza doing a wonderful impersonation of the treads on his shoes.

So, here comes the pizza guy, pizza in hand and I quietly size it all up and decide a tip shall be rewarded. I’m giving the guy a tip. He hands me the receipt but there’s no “tip” line. “Where do I write in the tip?” The troll growled, “you can’t. You have to do that before hand.” I was completely embarrassed. I mean, I thought I had the delivery rituals down like I have weddings, funerals and football games down. I usually know when to sit, stand, cheer or just shut-up. I was going pink because I had absolutely no cash on me. I had pennies and really, it’s just better to not give a tip than to unload twenty pennies on a guy. Fortunately, Jay recognized my upset noises coming from the door and ran over with a $5. I held it up proudly. Salvation!! Oh looky, we do have a tip! I showed it to the troll and he handed me the receipts to sign.

I had to go back in the house because I couldn’t get his pen to write while using my leg as a table. I apologized, said I’d be right back but that I had to close the door a bit since the cats were becoming very interested in an escape. See, they know pizza trolls are outdoor enablers and the trolls will always watch them run out the door with a completely blank expression.

“Can you turn the light back on?” That’s just common courtesy, but I couldn’t. Our porch light has a sensor that detects movement. It doesn’t stay on and no, you’re not smarter than we are so stop thinking you could drop by and magically make it happen. I told the guy “it’s on a sensor, just move around and it will come back on” meanwhile I’m trying to close the door and sign this thing.

Well, he starts messing with the light explaining that there are switches. Mm hmm. Really? Switches you say. Wow, we would have never thought to try those. Then after fiddling with it he makes it so the light absolutely won’t come on. Good work, troll.

I hand him the signed receipt and the man stomps off. This isn’t even one of my “oh, Beth’s exaggerating moments” – no, the man stomped. I looked at Jay and Jay looked at me and we kind of snickered and said “what an angry little man who just got $5 – can’t even say thank you.”

That’s when we found my copy of the receipt sitting on top of the $5. “Oh SHIT! Jay, we didn’t give the man a tip.” “We can’t order from there again!” “God, he’s probably keying the car.”

So, we’re about to face Battlestar Galactica tonight sans pizza. A sad day because I like to face my Cylons with a slice of pepperoni. How can I watch Starbuck implode without any sign of pasta sauce? Oh… what a sad, sad, TV night. At least the Chinese food deliver guy still loves me.

Blog Recap

Anna just got me to sign-up for MyBlogLog – a website that tracks your site stats and tries to be for blogs what Flickr is to photographs. I’m still getting the hang of it, but I think it’s got a long way to go before it will get a big thumbs up from me. The thing I’ve found the most interesting is the number of hits I’m getting for one posting here on The Big Blue Mess. It’s something I wrote about my high school reunion and John Kelso, a local columnist. In fact, it’s the only article from a previous month that generates any notice. I’m completely baffled. It’s not that good and it certainly doesn’t say much about John Kelso, so I can’t imagine why it keeps getting hit.

Sure, it could be someone doing a search on John Kelso, but I’ve posted more that included Kelso than just this one article. In fact, I have more about my reunion and John Kelso than just that one post. I guess it could be someone trying to confirm that I really didn’t want to go. Here’s a spoiler for them: I went. John Kelso went. The “guys” tried to entertain him in the hopes he’d write a story. He didn’t. I know, I know, you wanted to catch up on your own after reading the one article 6 times. Sorry.

To catch them up to speed here’s a little recap of my “blog”:
I like comments, I hate comments, comments aren’t so bad, I have forums (see the right sidebar).
I saw the Diana, Princess of Wales exhibit – I was traumatized by the red hat brigade, but the dresses were nice.
I wrote Kelso, I wrote him again, I posted about it, I wrote some more, I kept those to myself.
We bought a house, Jay mowed the yard, and some kid down the street thinks it’s awesome.
Everyone in our neighborhood is named Julie including the men. I suspect they’re part of a witness relocation program. I also suspect they’re serial killers.
I like things, I hate things, I whine about things and on rare occasions my friends throw up their hands and say “wah”.
I like balloons.
I wish I wrote like John Kelso, Dave Barry and P.J. O’Rourke (although I may not have mentioned that yet – well, there you have it).
I’m a “daddy’s girl” and he’d look darn fine dressed as a woman – don’t you dare say otherwise.
Jay is my best friend and the smartest person I know.
My friends are taking a collection to buy me an iPod for my birthday. They’re swell.
I’m also a Texan.

There you have it.

Halloween 2006

We celebrated our first Halloween in our suburban utopia – many kids dressed up as princesses (including one boy who was about 13 and looked he wanted to die while escorting his younger sibling dressed as the most adorable little skunk), the Incredibles, Spiderman, soldiers, Scream and an assortment of monsters I couldn’t place. Of course, the little boy I wanted to grab up had a crazy green lizard like mask and cloak. For the life of me I can’t place the character, but it seems very familiar. He LOVED kitties and our two were sitting at a safe distance watching the little loud candy beggars. His mom had to help him get his mask off so he could see, but out pops a little 7 year old with wire rimmed glasses who loved my cats more than the candy in his bag.

My favorite family came from up the street. The mother introduced herself as “the such and such family” – there were a lot of consonants involved so I hope she doesn’t expect me to call her Mrs. Czhrzspt or whatever name she said. I recognized them as the family that has the house across from the mailbox. The crazy husband sits in the garage and hollers at the people as they pick up the mail. I do a great drunken crazy man impersonation of the guy if any of you ever want to hear it. Her kids were grabby, they weren’t impressed with what I’d given them candy-wise (Butterfingers and Crunch bars) and wanted the little box of Dots instead. Who wants those? I was happy to toss those in, too because I didn’t want to see them in my cauldron today. (Yes, I bought a special candy cauldron.) There was a little hand slapping, she called them greedy and attempted to instruct them on why people didn’t do what they were doing. She’s probably one of those people that felt I was judging her parenting skills. No, I was sitting there thinking, “you’re the crazy guy’s wife? Daughter? Wait, where did you say you live? Gah, I’ll never remember that name. Could you drive on, we’re watching Stephen Colbert on DVR and we just got Chinese food.”

Then the little boy peered into our kitchen window and declared, “You’ve got a COOOOOL house!” Immediately, I made a mental note about this kid’s fine taste. *POP* she swatted that kid “stop being a nosey nelly” and when he wouldn’t move and was still peeking in we got more *POP**POP*. The kids were forcibly dragged out of my yard. Ahhhh the Halloween spirit – heartwarming.

Of course, next year I want to do a Haunted House or something spooky. See, I LOVE Halloween and I love to dress up. Sitting around passing out candy just doesn’t cut it for me. I’ve got so much more to give. I like make-up and costumes. In fact, if you’ve seen me with the blue hair, that’s last year’s Halloween outfit. There wasn’t much to it, but it was fun.

I live for places like Austin’s Lucy in Disguise where I’ve gone to just try on costumes. In fact, I tried to justify a $400 costume for the longest time, but could never quite do it. I have a suitcase filled with costumes, stage make-up, fake teeth, wigs and ears (Vulcan/fairy – your pick and a pair cat ears that I got mostly to annoy the cats).

Soooo… here’s what I need from you guys. I need ideas, I need builders and I need volunteers for next year.(Discussion on the BBM Forums) Who’s with me?