Blow Out The Candles and Laugh Out Loud....

Monday was my 36th birthday and my mom's 57th. We celebrated on Saturday at her house.

My mom picked out the candles.....

Birthdays mean a lot to most people but for me it is deeper because I get to share mine with one of the strongest women I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. I am honored to share that special day with her.

It started on Friday night when we decided to try and dye our eyelashes at home. My advice is don't....Redheads have blonde/red eyelashes and it makes us look like we don't have any. Mascara is nice but there tends to be gaps near the root where the mascara won't get. We tried the dye and other than thinking I may have blinded myself, I saw no difference except where the dye had gotten on my skin. My mother had a slightly better outcome but I didn't feel the feeling of chemicals in my eyeball was worth it. I think we will just get it done professionally next time...

Then when went to the store to get me a new dress. Every woman should have at least one fancy outfit for special occasions and none of my old dresses fit anymore. We found really great deals and I got out of there fairly cheap.

After makeup and doing my hair we left to go to our chosen restaurant....we picked the wrong one. It took 45 mins to get our cokes. The waitresses were really busy so I wasn't upset about it but after another twenty minutes I was starting to wonder if the kitchen area that all the waitresses kept going back to was actually the Bermuda Triangle of wait staff. We were given spinach dip that resembled something scraped off of the windshield. It tasted so strongly of onions that I had to resist the urge to expel it from my mouth with such force it would have ended up on my mother's forehead, I forced myself to swallow this offending spinach. I almost didn't make it. I thought I was going to die. I was not so secretly hoping that the rest of the food would be better.

Then after an hour and a half our food order came. Well, more accurately my mother's food order came. Mine had apparently been given to another table on accident and they ate it. The manager came over to apologize profusely and offer my meal for free. He acted as if the people of the table had stolen my sandwich. I wasn't too worried about it, I mean if someone has given my plate to another table I sure hope they eat it after they breathed all over it because I sure as hell am not going to.

Thirty minutes later my food arrives. My only regret is that someone else wasn't there to have "stolen" my second sandwich. It was terrible. It tasted as if someone had drenched it in pickle juice. I later found out my mayo may have been separating. The manager came over to ask me how it was and he had so much hope in his eyes I lied to him and told him it was great.....I just couldn't do it. I could not tell him that I would have rather went out to the parking lot and licked the tar off the tires of my car rather than finish this sandwich. This free sandwich....beggars can't be choosers.

So I ate half of it just out of hunger and we left. It was so funny. I rarely get upset at hiccups like this. I do however laugh my ass off. I mean as far as birthday dinners go it was pretty bad. But it was the company I had rather than the food I ate and I was happy to have just spent the day with my mom. To talk to my mom. To laugh about my bad luck with food with my mom.

We then had cake at mom's with the rest of the family and opened gifts. I got some cool things and I was really excited to get my new fangled cheese grater........Moral of the story is always appreciate the good things you have, especially the people, and learn to laugh at the small stuff. It isn't important and it makes for great story telling. Just blow out the candles and make a wish and laugh out loud.

I also learned that with my dress on sale and my meal being free, I am a cheap date, so there is always that. :)


With sincerest regards,
Neurotic Nelly

Cat food, Leeches, and Worries...Oh My.

Today's my brother's birthday.I call him many things bubba, big bro, sometimes jerkface, but mostly my childhood pet name for him, Christopher Robin. In honor of this big (and old, muhahaha) event I would like to share a story with you guys in which he is the main character, if you will. A story that I have learned a great amount of wisdom from totally at his expense, as it probably should be.

My bother was born first. He was born four years before I was even a glimmer of a thought. As a baby he had bright brilliant red hair, so much so that the nurses in the hospital made it into a huge curl on top of his head. My mom thought is was adorable, his dad..... not so much.

To say my mother's children share a resemblance would be an understatement. All three of us (my brother, my sister, and I) all  have red hair in varying shades. I have the lightest and I always wanted their more rich almost copper color. We all have blue eyes, my brother having a beautiful sky blue and my sister and I have more of a marbled dark midnight blue. We all have the pale white complexion of Elmer's glue.
We grew up visiting each other on weekends. My brother lived with his father, my sister ,who is two years older than me, lived with her father's side of the family, and I lived with our mom.

Our summers consisted of sunburns, laughter, and pranks. My brother is ever the prankster. His sense of humor is keen and sharp. He wears his hair in crazy styles that makes others sometimes stop and stare. He is unabashedly blunt.....kind of like someone else we know. He has had many struggles and trials and he has beat them. I am truly proud of the things he has overcome. He amazes me sometimes, I am not sure I could have beaten addiction the way that he did. I am not sure that I would recover from some of the bad things he has gone through.  He is my brother and although we don't always see eye to eye I love him very much.

I have many memories of my brother joking with me or getting us both in trouble. He was always good at getting me to do stupid things that eventually would get us spankings or grounded. He was a master of fooling me, like when he pretended to eat a piece of dry cat food and convinced me to actually try some too.  He thought it was hilarious as I chewed with a horrible expression on my face. F.Y.I. it tastes like greasy, salty bits of crumbs. Quite disgusting.

When I was ten and he was fourteen we had a day I have never forgot. My brother had come over for a visit. It was mid summer and a million degrees outside as it often is in Texas.We had walked the four blocks to one of the town's big parks. This one had a slide, a swing set, and a long shallow creek that was lined with natural shale rock. It had rained recently and we decided that we would take off our socks and shoes and walk in the cool refreshing liquid. Anything at this point would have to be cooler as we were quite sure we were physically melting into the pavement. We splashed water at each other laughing about whatever kids laugh about. He started walking in the creek ahead of me. All of a sudden he reached down to scratch his ankle. He touched something odd and as he did, he started to elevate his voice with fear,"What is that....what is tha...Oh My God, is that a leech? Is that a leech??!!" By the time he had finished this sentence he was screaming in  the highest pitch his voice could muster. He started grabbing at his ankle and rolling around on the ground yelling at me to go get mom. Now, I knew nothing about leeches except what I had seen on the movie Stand By Me. And this leech looked more like a tiny black string of snot rather then the huge leeches the characters of that film had on them. It occurred to my ten year old mind, that my brother watched horror movies all of the time so he must have understood something about leeches that I did not. I thought it had to painful to be sucked on by a leech the way he was yelling and screaming and rolling around. It had to be a bad sign because he was yelling it was sucking all of his blood. I became frightened that this thing could kill him. I ran home as fast as my ten year old legs would run. I would get tired and out of breath but this high pitched voice inside my head pleaded and shouted for me to get mom. I had to get mom. The whole way I screamed for our mother hoping she would hear me and come out of the house before I got there. Four blocks started taking it's toll and my chest and side started to ache. My screams became  more of harsh whispers. Finally I had made it home and I beat on the door. Our mother was frazzled as I tried to explain what was going on but I was so out of breath it sounded like," help.... hurt... need you... ...ankle....doesn't want to die."

Then as she eyed me she said,"What is that noise? What is that sound? Is that your brother?" Apparently my brother was now screaming so loud that we could hear him four blocks away. It wasn't his voice in my head rushing me to get mom, it was actually his voice screaming at me for real. 

I had awful images of what we would find when we got back to the park. Maybe the slimy little leech had been sucking out his blood for so long that we would turn the corner just to see him deflated like a balloon. He would just be lying there like a husked out shell of his former self unable to move as this monster sucked his life force except to raise his hand slightly in our direction in a last desperate silent plea for help. (I had a very vivid imagination). Instead as we rounded the corner  I realized my brother  had made it from the creek bed to the picnic table twelve feet away and was now on his back still screaming and rolling around. A crowd of adults had encircled him with senses of awe and worry on their faces. Our mother and I finally approached the picnic table  only to see a guy walk from the crowd and fumble in his pockets. This man wore the kind of cut of jean shorts only done in the eighties fashion that were too short and a tad to tight. He was covered in blue and black ink prison tattoos, sported one silver dangle earring, and wore his black hair in a combed back wave kind of like Patrick Swayze a la Next Of Kin. He smelled faintly of motor oil and cigarettes. He reached out of his pocket and presented a cigarette lighter. He flicked it and as we held down my brother so he wouldn't move, the man burned the leech and it dropped off. Crisis averted. My brother thanked the man over and over again assured that this man had most definitely saved his life. I was sure of it as well. My mother looked at us both like we were insane.

We laugh at that story now because now we realize that a single tiny leech isn't a life threatening experience. That he was in no real danger of bleed to death or being sucked dry. It was silly and we reacted to it in a ridiculous and over dramatic fashion. He pokes fun at me about the cat food and I poke fun at him about the leech and we go on laughing like siblings do.

What this experience taught me though, was much greater than just the knowledge leeches are not that dangerous. What it taught me is that sometimes I get so carried away with I perceive to be wrong with me (health fears), what I fear might happen to someone I love (intrusive thoughts), or what might be around the corner that I blow it out of proportion. I dwell and dwell and dwell  until I am almost hysterical. I react at these things like my brother reacted to the leech in the park and I assume the worst. I become terrified and over dramatic.  It helps to remember this story and remember that just because I cry and get scared, just because I am afraid of what I think might happen does not make it true. That mostly, I have hyped up what is going on with me and it isn't ,in reality, that bad.  I need to breathe and look at things from an outsiders view. Is it really that bad? Am I blowing things out of proportion or letting the fear take over? Most likely. I like to remind myself of this story in times like these and it helps me.

So in short, don't let your fears become a leech. Don't let them drain you dry and remember just because you become hysterical with fear it does not mean there is real danger. Most likely you are just scared and that is perfectly okay.

Oh and happy birthday "Christopher Robin". I love you.

Neurotic Nelly 

Momma........

I don't know if I will have time to write tomorrow because it's my birthday. I probably have it listed on the 15th on google + just because I am paranoid about putting my accurate birthday online, which makes no sense because I am writing this post and telling everyone my actual birth date and then sharing with the world.....oh well no one ever said I had to make sense.

This post is called Mama because of course not only is my Mama the reason I am here but also because tomorrow is also my Mama's birthday. I was born thirty four years ago on her twenty first birthday in a semi-little town in Texas.

It may seem weird for a grown woman to call her mother,  Momma but as a southern girl we all call our parents the same childhood names we called them as children no matter how old we get. It is not unusual to overhear a fifty year old call her parents Mama and Daddy. You usually start off calling them Mommy and Daddy and at some point you change it to Mamma and Daddy. It is just how things are done down there.

To share a birthday with someone you are extremely close to, for me, has been a blessing. I know no matter where we are or how far apart we may have been, that she remembers our birthday. She was always the first one to call me and wish me happy birthday. The first to send a card. The first to show up at my door. Which makes perfect sense because she was the first person to feed me and hold me. She is after all, my Momma.

There are few things in life that have the bond like between mother and child. As a mother myself I can now better appreciate the sacrifices she made for me. The unbending will to stand up for me. To stand beside me no matter the consequence. To be there for me at anytime in any situation.

She taught me so many things about myself and honestly she is there with me every step of the way, as I continue to learn. She was the first to recognize my mental illness. The first one to get me help. The first one to sit me down and be completely honest and open with me. We have that kind of relationship where I can ask her anything without fear of judgment or embarrassment.
She was the one who went to my high school and confronted the scariest principal on the planet because I have dyslexia and couldn't remember correctly my address. The principal scolded me for an hour calling me a liar and my mother a fraud in front of other students and didn't let me go until I started to cry. My mother went there and totally made the principal so uncomfortable that for the rest of my time in that high school the principal made a point to wave to me in hallway and to be extra nice. My mother would put up with a lot of things but messing with me was not one of them. I have no doubt that she would walk on burning coals or broken bits of glass and not bat an eye if it were to protect me. I feel the same way about my children and I believe that unwavering lack of fear is something she passed down to me or instilled in me.

She put aside her PTSD, Bipolar disorder, and Lupus to take care of me. To go to my singing concerts. To show up at any school function no matter how horrid she felt. To drive me and my friends to the mall. Many times when I had a panic attack and couldn't go to school she would drive me on a very long drive and we would get KFC and talk. Not just mindless drivel but actual real conversations.

She taught me when to be a lady and when it was okay to be not so ladylike. She taught me when to bide my time and keep my head down and when to stand up and not take crap from someone. She taught me the importance of learning a big vocabulary. She taught me that just because we were on welfare we could still present ourselves the way we wanted to be viewed. Many times she went without just so I could have something. She taught me to be compassionate and kind. She taught me to believe in myself. She taught me to independent and strong. She is strong and beautiful, and unique. She is after all my Momma.

So tomorrow we are going to do what has been our tradition for ten years. We are going to get all gussied up, break out the high heels and dust off the dresses, slap on some war paint, curl our hair and go to dinner. No one else just me and her. We are going to eat and laugh and be silly. We are going to be ourselves and share our bond. No longer just a bond between child and mother but a bond that has strengthened as two women who are so magnificently alike. A bond of two people that have been not just parent and child but also the closest of friends. My rock and hand holder. The woman who kissed my scraped knees and told me when I was being a completely know it all angst ridden teenager. The woman who hugged me but had no fear of grounding me. The woman who made sure I knew she was proud of me in all of my endeavors and always supported my decisions even if they weren't very good ones. The woman who taught me how to paint my nails and put on make up. The woman who let me traipse around her too big of shoes and play in her closet as a child. The woman who gave me my first perm (think Reba McIntyre early eighties) and  taught me the importance of wearing a bra. The woman who taught me how to shave my legs and manage not to cut off any appendages while doing so (I am still working on that).The woman who stood up for me and held me when my mental illness was at it's worst. My confidant. The woman who sent me care packages from 1500 miles away when my depression was at it's lowest and I thought of ending it all. The woman who was there in both birthing rooms and held my hand as I cried out in pain. Because she is amazing and there is no one else on earth I would rather share my birth date with. She is my Momma after all. I love her, I respect her, and I am grateful that she is in my life and always has been.

Neurotic Nelly