When I think of vacation, I tend to imagine five star accommodations, room service, gourmet meals, shopping, museums, maybe a play or two. Sometimes I think of a luxury cruise with stewards and waiters to do my bidding.

Tennessee Smoky Mountains? Not so much.

But that was the plan devised by the family with a shrug and whatever by me.

Whatever indeed.

What I was not considering at the time was that:

1. It is July.

2. Mountains involve hiking.

3. Mountains go up.

I spent most of the vacation waving and saying God Bless.

The rented "cabin" was nice. The only thing cabin about it was that it was made of wood and was unpainted. We all had king sized beds and private commodes. I was able to rough my way through that with nary a complaint.

They did convince me to go white water rafting which was more like stagnant creek pushing. There is currently a drought in Tennessee and the rocks that usually lay unnoticed at the bottom, are now part of an obstacle course. Oh, don't get me wrong, we still had to paddle our asses off to get around said rocks. Which of course led to painful arms and shoulders.

So here I am. Done with vacation. All my nails are broken, my arms, legs and shoulders hurt and I have a sunburn.

Next time Club Fucking Med.

Toilet Seats, Electicity and Stupid Employees.

The CEO of my company came in earlier today with an elongated toilet seat in hand. Now personally I would think any conversation would begin with the explanation of a grown man carting around the hat of a porcelain pony. But alas he simply inquired what time the board meeting was going to take place that afternoon.


"4pm and nice bracelet"


"Oh yeah, I was going up to reception to find out why this thing was on my desk."


My horror was abated when he explained it was new and clean when it was placed on the center of his desk.


Turns out maintenance ordered rest room parts and my brilliant receptionist decided that the CEOs office was the perfect place to put the new hiney platform.


In the immortal words of Forest Gump, that's all I have to say about that.

I am usually the last person to leave my office each night. I enjoy the peace and quiet of the place without hormonal women bitching about everything from torn pantyhose to who is fucking whose boyfriend and why. As I walked around turning up the AC and flicking off the lights, an annoying thing happened. One of the lights would not go out. I flicked the switch, a flicker and right back on.

Hmmmm.

Fortunately, this particular light is controlled by two switches, one on either wall. So I calmly crossed the room and flicked the other one. Same thing.

Double hummm.

Somewhere in my dysfunctional upbringing I must have heard horror stories about electricity and fires because things like this scare the shit out of me.

I refused to leave the light on and needed to figure out how to turn the circuit breaker off until the electrician could be called the next day. The next problem is how to know which breaker controls the light since the breaker box is on the other end of the floor and I won't be able to see if I start flicking breakers which lights go out. Yeah know, because what would the builders actually label the fucking things. That would make far too much sense.

I catch one of the employees in the parking lot, drag them back in to watch, call their cell and start flicking.....finally, the light goes out.

I call the electrician, leave a message and head home.

This morning I came in and the lights are on. Since I left a note not to turn on the lights and that the electrician had been called, I assumed he showed up.

I would be wrong.

I was informed that it was only the circuit breaker and a very industrious employee figured this out and switched it back on.

Sigh.

I was dreading the family reunion taking place next week in Tennessee that I will be attending but right now if it is a choice of these numnutz or the numnutz that are of my blood, I'll choose family any old day.

See you all July 28th. Keep a light burning but only if it won't cause a fire.

Stinky Cheese Man rides back into town having traded his black hat for white with a plan to chip away at the 100 Reasons why I hated the smelly fucker.

Doesn't he understand that I have no material for my blog if he kisses my ass, makes awesome meals, pay the bills and keep the house spotless?

What a selfish bastard.

I am a couple of weeks late. No, I don't mean for high tea at Buckingham Palace, I mean I should have begun bleeding from the crotch many many days ago.

Since I had my tubes cut, burned, tied off and kicked around the floor by the surgical staff, it is very unlikely that a little SCM is cooking. However, since one of his husbandly responsibilities include servicing his wife every night, he noticed that Aunt Flo hasn't been around lately.

Not that he is complaining about the nightly workout but he did ask expectantly if it is possible that our little family could soon include another eating, sleeping, shitting machine.

I pictured this little bald headed, ugly baby with my bad attitude and SCMs horrible sense of humor and gasped. We lucked out with our 9 year old daughter. Fortunately, she is nothing like either of us.

She is actually sweet, funny, loving and generous.

I wouldn't dare tempt fate again.

First let me say that I love my mother dearly. I have to preface my entry with this as my sister has taken to checking on my blog every once in a while and I don't want to give her motive to have me cut out of the will.

So, Mother, yeah, awesome, beautiful and multi talented woman.

I was catching up on your blogs yesterday and came across an interesting entry from Karen. Apparently she was amazed and enamored with a new find called Shake and Bake and mentioned that her mother never used such conveniences while she was growing up.

As someone who practically grew up on Hamburger helper and Shake and Bake, I was jealous that I didn't have a mom like Karen's.

It wasn't until I was out on my own that I found out that green beans and peas don't always come in cans and real soup doesn't require equal amounts of water added. Fresh broccoli and Cauliflower weren't only available at Christmas and Thanksgiving and people actually make biscuits that didn't require being plummeted on the side of the counter to open.

In Mom's defense she was a busy woman. She had all those crosswords to do and black coffee to drink. She was a phenomenal housekeeper and I would never take that away from her. But lets face it, after raising a family, doing all the housework , laundry and running a small company, Mother had it made.

No, no, hold your applause.

She was very talented at painting a room in 1968 and taking credit for it until 1985 when she got around to painting the next one. She also mowed the lawn in the summer and shoveled the walk in the winter.

I don't want her to seem like a spoiled brat, she was anything but that.

Mother is unique and all siblings have to have one crazy parent to create a bond between them and she fills that role quite nicely.

I just wanted some homemade fucking biscuits and peas that weren't gray and squishy. Was that too much to ask?

Why is every neighborhood child under ten in my pool right now?

They all have pools so that isn't it. The kids are always here...playing inside, in the backyard. in the pool or in the oven. (That is just wishful thinking).

Somehow the little shits got together and decided that I am the....Kewl Mom.

FUCK on a biscuit.

All the other parents get to send their kids out for the day to play. Not to be seen or heard from until the street lights come on but not Ms. Chris.

Oh no! I get to watch, feed and clean up after their little monsters every fucking weekend. And when I say every weekend, I mean every weekend.

I was recently informed by one of the snot nosed brats that I rock.

I thought about this for a while. Why do I rock? Why are they here and not down the block? What am I doing wrong?

And the answer came to me.

I don't give a flying fuck what they do here as long as they don't annoy me. The rules consist of no sharp objects, nothing that can cause a flame, don't' drowned the dogs and keep away from my booze. Other than that, it is a free for all.

Every once in a while I will bring out some juice boxes and chips and let them go to town. The dogs manage to clean up what lands on the patio and SCM bitches about old juice boxes in the skimmer but it is well worth it.

As long as they don't bug me.

In essence, I like it because contrary to what you may think..I am kinda attached to my kid and like to know where she is. I am not one to set her loose in the neighborhood looking for danger and destruction.

When she's here and putting dish washing soap in the pool to make bubbles, at least I know she's safe and sound.

Ut oh, it just got quiet, I'd better check for smoke.