FrankenArm; Painful Reality
A while back I relayed the tragic and historically inaccurate tale of what I have come to love and accept and refer to as my FrankenArm. It was worse at one point, it was FrankenZombieArm when it was melting off nuclear green allergic reactive flesh. Anywho, I admitted in those blogs that I hadn’t quite told the whole truth about how my beloved FrankenArm came about. For the sake of historical accuracy, I will do the best I can now.
I did break it in a fall, but the fall was helped along by my 15 (at the time) year old daughter. She and I were in the midst of a heated argument after I found out she was lying to me about some activities she’s been involved in. Push did come to shove and when she landed on the floor, she began kicking out and slapping at me, she slapped my glasses off at which point I backed up and began extricating myself from the area, my brains had kicked in and alerted me that this situation had gone too far and stop immediately… as I turned and moved away from her to walk away down the hall, she at once tripped me with one foot and kicked me with the other, propelling my 200lb as down to the floor in a tripped up, flailing fall, which I attempted to (stupidly) stop by catching my (remember, 200lbs) self with my left arm. All my weight, falling down hard and fast, landing on my outstretched, single arm. How smart was I?
The sound of that snapping (I heard and watched both bones in my forearm snap as I collapsed) is horrible to me, and I can still hear it in my head. The only thing I’ve ever broken before was a middle toe! Heck yeah, I had 2 kids and didn’t blink an eye, but that was different…
The other day I came to some realization of why I reacted so ‘dramatically’ when my arm broke. First and most obvious was just the situation itself. I had actually gotten in a physical brawl with my beloved daughter whom my therapist often told me I was ‘deifying’. She was the reason I got up in the morning for years. She was the only reason I was/am actually still breathing and walking the planet and not sleeping with the worms like I had every intention of being before I found out I was pregnant with her. She had changed my entire world.
Secondly, I’ve spent my whole life being ‘the strong one’ and was just damned tired of it. I decided to just take a little ‘me’ time and scream like a loon until the paramedics got there (they were called because the girls thought I might have whacked my head on the bricks on the floor as well… bricks? You say? They were holding down the base of the cat’s kitty tower until it could be re-tightened. My head never hit them, I was just being a shrieking drama queen for the moment).
So that’s it. The truth about HOW the arm got broken. I’ve spent the last 2 years either flat out lying about it or sugar coating it. Next, I’ll clear up the ‘after’ story. I lied about my recovery at home and the ‘help’ I got from the Girls. TOO (the Other One) did what she could, she had 2 small kids…PS (Princess Satan) didn’t even stay with me when I got home from the hospital. Even though when I was discharged I do remember somebody instructing us that I wasn’t to be alone for a while. After a few days PS would even refuse to take my dog out for me, saying ‘Your arm’s broken, not your legs!’ My Mom told me on the phone she felt bad, she should have came out & taken care of me (she lives in Cortez, CO) so I lied & told her the girls were making meals for me, doing my laundry, helping me bathe, etc. None of it was true. A bath would take me so long I had to nap afterwards because it wore me out, washing my hair was terrible. TOO helped once because I got in while she was here, and PS helped twice…both times bitching and rushing and snapping at me when I’d direct her to rinse an area or get behind my ears…so it was easier to just take my time & do it. That’s the one positive thing breaking my arm taught me; slow down, take my time, it’ll get done. Oh, and I can do stuff for myself I didn’t think I could, just create a new way to get it done. Like opening cans with a regular can opener (god forbid I asked PS for help, but most of the time she wasn’t there…this is the time period she moved in w/ TOO because of the problems she & I were having that culminated in the broken arm incident.) It took ages to get them open, and hurt, but I figured it out (one handed, lol).
To me, Family is just another word.
First, you need to remember I was adopted at 6 months of age.
I was talking to my mom today, we talk almost every day, and discussing my Nana in England’s (my Mother is British) 100th Birthday on Nov. 6th and that she and my Aunt Jane (who still lives in England) had been discussing what to include in the local newspapers little interview they do with all the significant birthdays/events, like where she grew up, what she did as a job, etc. and my Mom says to me that they discussed ‘this & that,’ ‘and that she has one Daughter living in Wroxham and a Daughter living in the United States.’
Period. That was the end of it.
This didn’t completely shock me, in fact it took a few seconds to register, because I’ve been through this before. Being dis-included, that is. In something as monumental as my Granny’s 100th Birthday. Because I am her ONLY Granddaughter, (the only other ‘Grandchild’ is my adopted Brother; my Aunt has no children) and I am the ONLY Grandchild who had kids, I have 2 girls, and my oldest daughter is pregnant with her 4th, so that makes ‘and 2 Grandchildren, 2 Great-Grandchildren and 4 Great-Great-Grandchildren in America…’
Only none of that is there.
Mom also say stuff like ‘My Dad’ when she talks about her Father instead of ‘Granddad’ or ‘your Grandfather’, the same with Dad/her husband. She refers to him as ‘Dusty’ and not ‘Dad’ or ‘your dad’. She’s even corrected herself when she did say ‘dad’; I don’t understand it.
Even with my own little family I’ve ‘created’, I still feel so unattached and alone. My oldest is closer to her dad’s side of the Family, and my youngest, I just don’t know, it’s like she spends so much effort keeping me at a safe distance and control.
Maybe I tried to hard and ended up getting the opposite.
Seriously?
I cannot be serious. Seriously. I can’t. I keep trying and it never works, I just can’t BE serious. I can fully appreciate serious and situations that are… I can understand it, hold it, feel it, express it in other ways, I just cannot *be…have* nor verbally reply seriously unless I really fight to accomplish such. Felt the need to see it in words. Carry on then.
I am not stupid. I am not shallow. I’m not unfeeling nor simple, clueless, ridiculous, uneducated, uncultured or ignorant. I’m just me. Which is a bit more than a bit much to take for some.
Al
~Alcohol.~ Some can completely lose who they are, as they consuming it, it consumes them. I drink. I love my beer. It does not rule me. It’s like I said when I was using… ‘They’re (we’re) already dead. They just don’t know …it yet. Walking zombies, waiting to cease to exist. Deadening the pain while killing themselves.’
YOU VILL SPELL ZE VERDS OR YOU VILL BE PUNISHED!
I’ve said before, I’m not the world’s best speller, and my grammar is off the mark somewhat often… but people, at least I TRY!
Every single day I’m on here reading updates, headlines and captions that would send even a 6th grade teacher into a psychotic rage! Most of the offenders are these whipper-snappers (anyone 23 & under) who are growing up with all the internet & texting abbreviations filling up more of their experience that the 10 word spelling test once a week in class. I remember a time when my biggest (vocabulary) peeve was people using ‘big’ words out of context. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m also guilty of that (that’s why it bugs me so much, I guess) and the other things I’m talking about, but NOT TO THE EXTENT I see it now.
What adds salt to the wound is there are SPELL-CHECKER applications/add-ons/programs that sit stealthily right in your browser and empower you with the ability to learn how to spell correctly, catch a typo and not annoy the frigging crap out of the rest of us who’s brains start flashing red and making that loud, obnoxious warning alarm noise that you always hear in movies when somethings about to self-destruct or crash.
I use the Firefox browser and have the cool little Google spell-checker in it. Now, as for grammar, my Microsoft Office program has a feature for that if I write something with M.O. so I have to fend for myself while online, but again, at least I try. Just because I’m 41 doesn’t mean I quit learning.
Whipper-snappers, I have some advice, fix it now before you turn into some guy in his late 30’s who cannot even write let alone spell! Get this… THEY (yes, more than one I know) ACTUALLY GRADUATED!!! How does that happen in this day & age? How? Seriously!?
Now, I’ll say it again, I’m not perfect. I refer to something I heard about Hemingway when his editor came to him with numerous misspellings he replied ‘I’m a writer, not a fucking speller!’ and something about how that was their job to correct, lol. I don’t think he had spell check… but guess what… we do. But do fix it now before it’s an ingrained habit and you bee-bop on through life with atrocious word skills because nobody want’s to ‘embarrass you’ by pointing it out. Older people (this includes some who I am close too) it’s not too late. Get help now! A dictionary is your friend and there are hundreds of free ones online.
Now, if it’s absolutely not that important to you (yes, I know a few of these too) then by all means, continue, but be aware of how it looks from the outside, and don’t be surprised if you’re talked to like a kindergartner, spoken to slowly, tisk-tisked at, considered ’slow’ and ’special’, not taken seriously and left out of conversations.
I’ll now spend 5 minutes publishing this then re-editing it because for some reason my awesome Google spell-checker doesn’t work worth a spit on a MySpace blog while I’m creating it… only after it’s published.
And in no way am I criticizing anyone who misspells a couple of words in their blog, I mean the ppl who are just glaringly, consistently, and mercilessly slaughtering words by the dozen in every sentence!
