Red wigs on a clothesline....

When I was a kid, my mother was married a few times.

First to my dad...

Then to my brother's dad...

Then to my second step-dad who was from Kentucky...

Then to the third step-dad who was from Massachusetts...

Then last but not least to my last step-dad who is still my step-dad.
GIVE THAT MAN A METAL!



Yeah...there were a few others in between the husbands who almost made it to the wall of alimony but they escaped before the nuptials.

Anyway...today I will tell you about one of my step-grandparents.
Yeah...that's right. All those step-dads meant step-grandparents, step-aunts, step-uncles and step-cousins.
LOTS of people to have in and out of your life huh?

My first step-dad and my brother's father was from Long Island New York. He was stationed at Loring Air Force Base and that's how he met my mother. I lived with her and my aunt in a trailer about a half mile from the base. I can still picture myself standing in my crib, looking at a pink and purple and orange paisley curtain hanging over the window. I can also remember the man who gave me my elephant. He was tall with short brown hair and wore birth control glasses...like these...



I still have the elephant. I have always loved it. It was yellow and purple with a paisley print all over it.
Paisley was popular in the sixties no?



See? They made shorts out of the same print as the curtain I remember.
Anyway...my first step-dad's mother was named Julia.
She didn't approve of my mother mainly because my mother wasn't rich or Catholic. Of course her son worshiped the ground my mother walked on, so he married her anyway, against the wishes of his mother.
So she decided to come visit us in Northern Maine, quite a different place than Long Island, no?
She was a loud woman, short and busty with bright red hair. The first time I saw her, she scared me shitless. She talked non-stop and sewed like a maniac. Apparently she had made good money making dresses and such for the ladies on Long Island.
She made me tons of clothes and genuinely seemed to like me.

Still...she scared me a little because she was loud. Well....it was that and the wigs.She had half a dozen wigs, all of them styled like this...



Now I know that's not scary. The scary part was that I didn't KNOW her hair came OFF her head and when I saw six of those wigs hanging on the clothes line it FREAKED ME OUT A LITTLE.
I was standing at the window, watching those wigs blow in the wind when she came up behind me, wearing a kerchief on her head. For some reason it petrified this poor little four year old kid enough that she remembered it clearly 37 years later.
Later that year when my brother was born, I kept a close eye on Julia. I mean after all, someone who can take their hair off might want to eat a baby, right?

Yes...I did have a rather large imagination as a child, but it was an escape tactic to get away from the bad stuff...I treasured my imagination.

So...eventually, the creepy hair removing grandmother left and so did step-dad number one. He got sent to Vietnam and didn't come back to us. I thought he'd been eaten by a huge snake. I told people that a big snake had eaten my black haired daddy and he was never coming back. I suppose that's because he sent a picture to us from Vietnam holding a huge anaconda across his shoulders. I just figured it had eaten him and that was that.
I still don't really know what happened and why he didn't come back, but step-dad number two was in the house before the divorce was even final.
As for my brother, well he never got to meet his dad. He's tried to contact him but doesn't ever get any response. And when my sister-in-law contacted my brother's uncle, the uncle claimed that there was never a baby born to his brother.
It's a terrible mystery that my brother's father refuses to enlighten us about.

And my mother?

Well...she knows what happened but she won't tell either. She has this way of completely obliterating the ex's once she's done with them.
They cease to exist and if they happen to be your father, too bad.

I met my father, but that's another story for another day.

In other news of the strange and unusual, today is Elderly Hell Day. I made an emergency trip to the grocery store last night to avoid having to venture too far from my house today.
So with that said, todays word will be "safe".
Try to trick as many people as you can into saying it and then make LOTS of noise when they do.
Drives people NUTS!!!
It's a great way to have some adolescent fun.

Speaking of nuts and adolescent fun...
Last night before I went to bed I had a bowl of Grape Nuts with Vanilla Soy milk. I was busy typing up minutes from our Board meeting and I let it sit a little too long. When I went to take a bite, it was a mass of mush.
Feeling somewhat naughty, I decided to form it into a phallic shape and leave it sitting for my husband to see when he got up in the morning.
Sure enough, he got up and went downstairs to check his email and found my Grape Nuts, dried up and 'stiff'.
When he came upstairs I sat and watched him.
He said nothing.
I said nothing.
Then finally, he spoke.
"You should be medicated, you know that?"

Here is my mood today....



Like the red wig reference? Today I say,"Life is too short! HAVE FUN WHILE YOU CAN!!!!"

There's nothing like looking at the past in order to appreciate a new chance in the future...