Month: October 2019

I Have a Skeleton in My Closet!

My Great-Grandmother, Mabel Applegate, wrote a book of her life that began at 2 o’clock in the morning on January 2nd, 1897.  She had quite a few of the books coil-bound and gave them to all her children, grand-children and great-grandchildren.

It’s marvelous.

I wanted to add on to her story.  I wanted to preserve the family history, so I started working on my parents’ story several years ago.  It’s been a LOT of work!  I scanned almost 800 photos to save on a stick to be shared so everyone in family could enjoy them.  I spent hours and hours talking with Mom and Dad, taking notes and asking questions.  Then I started writing the book, deleted it, started over, tried editing it, deleted it and started over again.  Eventually, I found my way through it and can finally say:

I’M DONE!!

It’s true!  I sent the entire manuscript to one of my sisters, Janine, and she went through it all for me.  I was worried.  What if she thought it was terrible?  What if I insulted someone?  It’s terrifying to put your work out there for everyone to critique.  My anxiety is through the roof, but I’m in too deep to back out now.  Thankfully, Janine loves it and says I shouldn’t change a thing.

The last thing to do before having it printed, is to transcribe Mabel’s book into the back of my parents’ book.  Since Mabel’s book was printed, there have been great-great-grandchildren born and I want to make sure that her story isn’t lost to the following generations.

While I was transcribing, I came upon a story she told about Andrew Hellman, alias Adam Horn in 1820.

What?!  Now, that’s interesting!  An alias?  Ooooo…..I hope it’s because he’s a pirate and that he collects powdered wigs, pinching them off the person’s head without them even being aware that it is gone!

I’ve read Mabel’s book several times but for some reason I’ve completely forgotten about Mr. Andrew Hellman and why he needed an alias.  He was only a tailor, after all.  This story was passed around in the family, but Mabel copied the text out of a book from that era.

According to the author of that book, Hellman was…

“…a young man of good personal appearance, sober, steady, and industrious, well behaved and mild in his demeanor and withal, intelligent and well informed.”

That doesn’t sound like someone who would need an alias.  I continued transcribing.

“He seemed, however, to have imbibed a lasting dislike to the whole female race, looking upon them as mere slaves to man…..a convenience for the other sex, to serve in the capacity of hewer of wood and drawer of water: to cook his victuals, darn his stockings, never to speak but when spoken to, and to crouch in servile fear whilst in his presence.”

Ugh!  I think I know why he needed that alias!

Hellman met a farmer named George Abel who was Mabel’s great-great-grandfather.  Hellman managed to hoodwink the entire family, by

“…restrain[ing] the fiendishness of his disposition.” 

Isn’t that Fabulous?!

Completely taken in by Hellman’s act, George lets him marry one of his daughters – Mary.  She is described as

“…in the twentieth year of her age, a blithe, buxom and light-hearted country girl, with rosy cheek and sparkling eye, totally unacquainted with the deceitfulness of the world.”

What a delightful description!!  The entire story is written like this and it’s fantastic!

Long story short:  Hellman begets a child with Mary – a girl and he’s not happy about it.  He begets another child with her – a boy but he’s not happy about that either because he thinks Mary was screwing around and refuses to acknowledge the boy as his.  The third child is another boy who is, you guessed it, apparently not his either, and Hellman threatens to kill Mary if she has another child.  She doesn’t.  Hellman tries to poison Mary, but she figured it out in time.  He then poisons all three children, two of which die.  Then, Hellman chopped Mary up with an axe.  Henry, the surviving poison victim, was visiting his Uncle at the time or he would have been chopped up as well.

Hellman escapes custody before he can be brought to justice, flees to Baltimore, assumes the name Adam Horn, and marries another woman.  He kills her, too.

“On the 4th of December 1843, the prisoner [Hellman] was brought into Court to receive the awful doom of the law…..that he be taken to the jail of Baltimore  County, from whence he came, and from thence to the place of execution……there be hanged by the neck until he be dead.”

So, pinching powdered wigs wasn’t the reason for the alias.  I’m disappointed, to be honest.  A powdered wig pinching pirate (say that 3 times fast) is so much cooler than an axe murderer on a branch on the family tree.  On the other hand, Andrew Hellman turns out to be a celebrity among the Unquiet Souls enthusiasts.  I checked.  He’s the unwanted gift that keeps on giving.

“He haunts his former house/the road by his house/the local lovers’ lane, ax at the ready for new, teenaged victims…”  taken from:

http://hauntedohiobooks.com/news/hatchet-man-a-story-for-atlas-obscura-day/

I suppose I shouldn’t complain.  We do have a skeleton in the closet and that’s more than some people can say, right?  And maybe, if I put a teaser at the front of the book, it will get new generations interested.

 

 

Pudding Crypts for Cookies

When we adopted Izzie (the black succubus from Hell), and Teddy later (the feline equivalent of Joey Tribiani), The Viking did a shitload of research into the best cat food versus the best price.  After developing a complex algorithm, he decided on a brand and invaded the pet store to purchase it in bulk, both dry and canned.

For three years we’ve fed the Cats the same food and everything was fine.  Until it suddenly wasn’t.  They just stopped eating the canned food one day.  I don’t know why – it smelled fine, it looked fine, the ‘best before date’ was fine, it was FINE.  According to the Cats though, it was a toxic stew that we should be ashamed to call food.  So, The Viking went back to the complex algorithm, found the next best food and invaded the pet store again.

And guess what?  They love it!  They love it so much they’re willing to trample me to death to get to The Viking as he dishes it up.

However, we still had a couple cans of the old stuff.  Personally, I was willing to just get rid of it because it was apparent that neither Cat gave a thought to being fiscally responsible.  We discussed it and they were adamant: not a single speck of the old food would pass their lips for the rest of their lives!   But nothing annoys The Viking more than wastefulness*.

So he came up with a diabolical plan that is only slightly less diabolical (only because he didn’t do it to me) than my Mother’s diabolical plans.  She used to make delicious pudding when I was a kid and then hide old, dead cookies in the bottom of the bowl and we were forced to eat it because child abuse was not quite as frowned upon as it is these days.  And now The Viking took a page out of Mom’s diabolical book and mixed the toxic stew with the new food and presented it to the Cats like it wasn’t abusive at all.

I’d like to say that both Cats noticed immediately and refused to eat it.  But, nope!  They happily chowed that crap down and licked the bowls clean and I find that reprehensible.  It’s like they compromised without a thought.  Where’s their pride?  What happened to standards and expectations?  Don’t they know they have a responsibility to the rest of us?  When they give in to tyranny once, the overlords know they’ll do it again.  And if Cats will cave, then humans will cave, too, because everyone knows that Cats have an aversion to authority that surpasses even The Viking’s aversion to authority.  It is common knowledge that if you want to take over the world the plan begins with Cats and they’d better have good catnip toys.

What they’ve done is create a world of possibilities where any atrocity is possible.  They’ve shifted the current Space/Time Continuum and we now live in an entirely different place.  A place where Mom’s diabolical Pudding Crypts for Cookies is the norm and not considered the unimaginable horror that it is.

And I can’t just ignore who kicked off this current regime of terror – The Viking!  He has become the kind of person who will hide terrible food under delicious food.  He’s become a Monster!  If he’ll betray our cats, it’s only the smallest of steps to betraying me.  How can I trust any food he makes now?  Will I find Pickled Herring masquerading as a pork chop?  Fried Liver hiding under a lovely cream sauce?  Sauerkraut disguised as Spaghetti?  Curry Meatballs pretending to be any normal kind of meatball?

I’ve given this considerable thought and my only option now is to install HD video surveillance in the kitchen.  Yes, I could sit and monitor exactly what he does when he’s cooking, but he’ll bide his time until I need to pee, or the phone rings, or another Just Energy salesman rings the front doorbell, before he slips Kale into something.  I would rather be safe than sorry, so I’ll install a Viking Cam in the Drinking Horn on the sideboard.  And then I’ll squat like Golem in a dark closet with the monitor, watching every move he makes until I can bust his ass for Food Crimes Against Humanity.

The cats are on their own, though.  The little traitors deserve every gross thing The Viking hides in their bowl because they brought this on themselves.

 

*Slow drivers in the fast lane comes in a close 2nd.

Corpse Legs

First and foremost, I want to send a huge Shout Out to all the people who sent hugs and luvs and support when my Father passed away last month.*   You all have my deepest gratitude.  Thank you.

The two weeks surrounding Dad’s passing were the most stressful of my entire life and it goes without saying that when I get stressed I do Stupid things and the greater the stress the greater the Stupid.

Two days before the funeral, I ripped through my closet looking for something to wear only to find that nothing fit (thank you Diabetic Medication).  I went shopping and found a dress, then stood in front of the two colors of pantyhose the store had in stock.  And I definitely needed pantyhose to disguise my poor un-tanned legs (thank you, shitty summer).  Light or dark.  Light or dark.  The dark ones were stupidly dark but the light ones were close to the actual colour of my legs, so those were the ones I grabbed.

And now…..a quick word on Anxiety.  There are going to be people at this funeral.  Even worse, Family people.  Family people who know every stupid thing I’ve ever done, have heard all the stories, have re-told all the stories and watched me humiliate myself in spectacular fashion on numerous occasions.  They aren’t terrible people; they just have knowledge I would rather they not have.  And the effort to avoid more humiliation in front of them fuels ever more anxiety.  To be honest, I’d rather stand in a crowd of strangers because those people have no point of reference to compare – they take me as I am, right at that moment, totally unaware that I’m a train wreck waiting to happen.  They’ll be just as surprised as I am when shit happens and it’s easier to avoid strangers than it is to live down the reputation that precedes me at family events.

Anyway, the morning of the funeral, I made myself a promise to just let it happen.  Take what comes with dignity and grace and hope for the best.  Deep breaths.

And it worked.  Until I was getting dressed and realized that those fucking pantyhose were too light!  So light, in fact, that my legs resembled something from The Walking Dead.  I would have tossed them and went au naturel except I hadn’t shaved my legs because I had Pantyhose!  That’s a terrifying choice to make on the day of your Father’s funeral – corpse legs or hairy legs.  I feel another ‘Typical Lori’ story coming.

Just forget about it, Lori.  There’s nothing you can do about it now so stop beating yourself up. 

And that worked brilliantly until I got in the car and saw my legs stretched out in front of me.

Geezus!

via GIPHY

I almost chickened out completely at the Funeral Home, but I put my chin up and wiggled my way through the crowd.  I found the Funeral Director in the middle of the foyer and asked where Mom was – in the Family Room, of course.    I was relieved for exactly 23 seconds until I realized the Family Room was filled with Family.  White spots started dancing at the edge of my vision and my chest tightened.  Fuck me!  I immediately looked for the Sister I was most comfortable with and headed in that direction before I passed out.  Everyone was looking.  Probably without judgement but that would end as soon as they saw myfuckinglegs!

I sat down on a sofa behind my Sister and said, “Look at my legs!  They look like CORPSE legs!”  She turned around, most likely to tell me to keep my voice down when discussing corpses at this particular moment but before she could say anything, I lifted a leg and made point-y/stabby motions at it.  “CORPSE LEGS!”

And then my mind froze, and my vision darkened.  Did I just say the word “Corpse” at a Funeral?  My Dad’s funeral?  Christ!  Not only did I say it, but I shouted it, didn’t I?  Everyone in the entire building heard me compare my legs to a corpse.  In a building built specifically for corpses.  Sweet Jesus!

via GIPHY

At the Luncheon in the Seniors Centre, I hoped to get a cup of coffee and a dark corner.  That wasn’t to be, though.  What followed was a wonderful/terrifying hour of hugging and exchanging pleasantries.  People who were friends of Mom and Dad, came to introduce themselves and they were so kind and sweet.  One of them had been wanting to meet me because my Dad always talked about me.  Oh Gawd!  Really?  What stories do you know?!  A teacher from 6th grade came over.  “Mrs. Venables?!”  She had been hoping to see me, too.  Oh Gawd!   Please don’t tell an embarrassing story from 6th grade.  I hoped I wasn’t the only person in the family she was hoping to see.  My favorite cousins were there, and it was so wonderful to see them again, too.  There were many others and, joy of joys, no one told a humiliating story about me even once.

That I heard, anyway, but I’m willing to accept that as a win.

So, I lived through it.  None of my worst nightmares happened.  I was worried for no reason at all and I should learn from this experience.  Besides, no one will remember my Corpse Legs by next week anyway.  Or will they?

Pre-booking my next Anxiety Attack now.

* Especially you, Catherine – the card was perfect!  Cherie did excellent!  Give him a hug for us.