The Definition of Confusion (Thank You, Mother)

Reposted from 3/15/2010 edited:

When my children were still quite young and in school, they used to visit their grandparents on school holidays. I would drive halfway to Pensacola to meet my mother and place my children in her care. The first few days always felt like utter bliss and then the house gradually became a mausoleum. By the time I would pick up my children, I was more than ready to have them come home again. I welcomed that deafening chaos and unruly banter that came with three children.

My mother was always rather rigid while I was growing up and had a very democratic way of handling punishment. If the guilty party didn't confess the first time when my brothers and I were asked who did something, we all suffered the consequences. As I grew older and eventually became a parent myself, the woman who raised me seemed to change. She got soft in her old age! Had I broken her spirit? Possibly! But each time my children would rave on about the fun-loving person who they perceived their grandmother to be, I knew it wasn't the same person who raised me. My mother was proof that aliens do exist! They has abducted my mother and left in her place a female Captain Kangaroo or would it date me too much if I said Shari Lewis and Lambchop? Ask anyone from my old neighborhood! They knew my mother was a force to be reckoned with. Her voice alone could raise the dead. 

Each time my children would go for a visit, it took weeks before I could straighten them out. My mother waited on them hand and foot and made them do NOTHING but fun things while they visited her. When they came home sassy and quite lazy, I would want to pull my hair out. One time while driving home, my children seemed quite mesmerized by a joke book one of them had gotten while in Pensacola. One of their visiting rituals was for her to take them (her angelic grandchildren) to Hawsey's, a used bookstore and let them each purchase a large paper bag full of books to read. All three of my children loved to read so going to Hawsey's was always a fun thing to do.

Since they were quiet on our trip home and this was an oddity for them, I tried to engage them in conversation only to be told they were busy reading jokes. That explained the occasional chuckle I heard from the backseat. I asked them to read me aloud some of the jokes. My youngest child, Matthew spoke up and said he would read one. Although he was only 7 at the time, his reading skills were quite advanced for someone his age. As Matthew read, I almost drove off the road.

Whats' the definition of "confusion"?

Twenty blind lesbians in a fish market!

WTF? Now, with glee they started reading more jokes from the book as fast as they could until I could gather my thoughts and ask them where they got the book. In unison they told me...HAWSEY'S! And of course I asked if  their grandmother let them buy that book? Well, I was told she never screened the books that they bought, so the book titled Truly Tasteless Jokes was easily purchased by my son, Daniel (age 9).

Then they all went on to start reciting the dirty little ditties my mother had taught them. It was then I knew she had truly lost her mind or maybe the rules that apply to being a parent were different from those that apply to being a grandparent. It definitely was a gotcha moment lovingly given to me by my mother. To this day, my mother just smiles innocently when this story is told. What I want to know is why she never taught my brothers and me these ditties when we were kids or why my grandmother never taught them to us? Geez! I feel cheated! 

An example of one of the my mother's ditties:

A flock of birds

Chocked full of turds

Flew over my father's castle

They stretched their necks

And shit a peck

Then closed up their assholes.

Gratitude statement: I'm thankful I don't live in a castle near a fish market.

Tara

It was Christmas Eve 2008 when Tara came to live with us. Whitey (my last surviving Himalayan cat) had just about grieved himself to death after Chewy, his brother passed away in May. He needed a friend, but I wasn't ready for another cat. Chewy was my baby. I loved him dearly and it crushed me when he died. He had cancer and I had to have him put to sleep. I guess that's the polite terminology for euthanizing your pet, but there's nothing polite about death.

Like a fool I used to go out doing last minute Christmas stuff and I had my son, Matthew with me. When we were headed home, I turned into the Escambia County Animal Shelter and he looked at me and asked me the obvious. Whitey had given us very specific instructions to follow: NO FEMALE CATS and NO BLACK CATS. The reason for this was that his very own mother hated him. Yes, his mother wasn't very nice (she used to bite him and the bites would et infected) and my mother had a black cat named Bob who got ahold of Whitey once and tore his neck open...so NO BLACK CATS and NO FEMALES CATS.

In we went to the Animal Shelter and they had a great selection of kittens and cats, but none of them seemed too playful or had very much personality except one and it kept sticking its paw out through the cage EVERY time we walked by. Hey, pick me! You guys, pick me! It talked and talked and talked and carried on until we came over and read its card and talked to it. So we ended up bringing that cat home for Whitey...it took him about a week to get used to HER. Yes, it was a FEMALE! And yes it was BLACK! He taught her all his bad habits and told her she didn't have to be a lap cat, but about a month before my mother's cat died she started sleeping on my mother's bed as if she knew my mother would need that when Pat was gone. Basically, she's become my mother's cat over the last few years and I think that's a good thing for both of them.

Today Tara is having surgery. She has a mass on her lower left side. The vet says that in cats that it's usually cancer, but they won't know for sure until the pathology report comes back. I know she's just a cat, but if you can please keep Tara in your thoughts I'd really appreciate it. She's a good kitty and we'd like to have her back home and healthy. Fenway, Libby and B.A. are cogs (cat/dogs) and Tara is a member of their pack. They patiently await her return...

Addendum: Thursday November 7, 2019 7:24am: This was written as a draft and was supposed to be posted on Thursday and not on Wednesday. It was my screw up for posting it early. Tara is getting operated today. I'll be dropping her off at the vet in less than hour.

Addendum: Thursday November 7, 2019 3:36pm: Tara is home and doing well. She was sent home with pain meds to take if she needs them. The vet at Megan's Landing Veterinary Clinic said the mass was easily removed. It appeared to be in a sac and had not metastasized to any other surrounding area. We'll know more when the pathology report comes back. I'd like to thank everyone for their support. It means so much to me.

Last Update: Sunday December 11, 2022 8:55am: The mass was cancer, but to date it never returned. Tara is now 14 years old and still a member of the dog pack. 

WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MILDRED?

When I first made this discovery I was like the Tasmanian Devil I was so mad.  It's hard to keep your cool when you want to lash out and do something to a person, but you know there's nothing you can do and it's so frustrating you want to pull your own hair out.  So, you sit there fuming for awhile saying some very colorful language and then you slowly calm down because there's no point in staying angry. [grumble, grumble, grumble....and finally a huge sigh]

When the troll first appeared on my blog I was mildly irritated. At first, I hoped the person would simply go away, but that didn't happen. Obviously, trolls want to be annoying and only go away when blocked or impeached! The subject matter the troll selected to discuss in the comment section of my blog was what I referred to as a "British cum dumpster."  I won't mention the cum dumpster's whole name and I will get into that reason for that shortly, but when I googled that person I found out she was some 1980's porn star. Her first name is Pauline.

Like many people out here I had my settings on my blog set so anyone could leave a comment, but when this troll wouldn't go away, I changed my comment settings so only people with a Google account would be able to comment on my blog. All this change did was eliminate people from leaving anonymous comments. So far, this first step up in security eliminated the troll. So far so good!

Every now and then I check the "Traffic Sources" to my blog. When I did this a few days ago, this is when the Tasmanian Devil came spinning like a top out of control. The first URL I didn't recognize (it had the name monica29 in it), and it had like 175 hits on it coming to my blog. The second and third URL's I did recognize and had fewer hits than the first. I clicked on the first URL to find out what it was and was absolutely stunned when the page opened to a porn site. Nothing about the URL indicated it would be a porn site or I wouldn't have clicked on it. There I sit looking at a site called Chatubate (spelled wrong for obvious reasons).

After having a huge WTF??? moment I figured out why my blog was tied to this porn site. You see, when the dear troll kept referencing this British cum dumpster by name in each comment he left on my blog, it left a "footprint" for the search engine robots to index. I don't know how often they make their rounds throughout the internet, but what I should have done which I didn't do initially was delete all the trolls comments. I did however go back yesterday and delete everything he wrote. Hopefully, this will correct the problem in the future. For now, Mildred Ratched Memoirs is linked to Chatubate (again spelled the wrong way) because the British cum dumpster was mentioned by that darling troll. I wonder if his name was Donald! hmmmm! Wouldn't that be a hoot?

If this idiot has gone to any of your blogs, you might want to check your traffic sources, too under your stats and see if your blog is linked to any sites you don't recognize. I told Martha that I was going to write a blog post pitching a holy old fit about this troll and what he did, but why bother? He's just a little internet maggot that isn't worth the time and effort and besides I don't think I know enough bad language to describe him adequately.

VISIT A FELLOW BLOGGER

I've been a little too wrapped up in politics lately until Jennifer left a comment on my last blog post and I went to her blog Sparrow Tree Journal to repay the visit and got blown right out of my chair.

She wrote a moving post titled Shocking about a student whose mother committed suicide. The post rattled me and made me realize how fragile we all are. You never know from day to day what's going to happen and who looks okay and who doesn't. Don't ever take anyone's mental health for granted. Please go to her blog and leave a comment. Thanks!

Post a Movie Scene

The night before Halloween is called Mischief Night so in honor of that let's have some good old fashioned fun. Since I can't go egg the White House or leave a bag of burning dog poop on the front steps (I don't live close enough lol), I'll have to settle for some blogging chuckles instead. Jack Nicholson always gets me in this scene... who does it for you?

MESSAGES FROM ABOVE

Every now and then I pay attention to billboards I see around town, Here are a few I've seen in my travels around the Redneck Riviera:

It looks like we might still be fighting the Civil War here.

Didn't anyone tell these folks the war was over in 1865?

That doesn't look like one nation under God to me.

This one gave me the creeps. Okay, I get it! Don't sleep with your baby!

You might smother your baby, but come on, a billboard?

What happened to common sense?

It looks like we have a local syphilis problem!

So go to your doctor.

Get some penicillin. End of story!

Oh yeah! We definitely have a syphilis problem

when I see at least 5 billboards in a few miles. 

So go see your doctor and stop spreading 

that stuff around you nasty scum buckets!

This one just seems crazy to me! I know there's people out

there who don't vaccinate their children, but they usually live to regret it

as soon as their child gets one or more childhood diseases.

I've never known anyone who gotten these things listed here from a vaccination.

When I was a child how childhood diseases were handled was if there was an outbreak of measles or chicken pox, you'd expose your child to them to get them over the disease. One winter when I was very young. I don't think I was even school age yet, I was very sick. I had one thing right after another. By Christmas, I was so weak I had to be carried downstairs to open my gifts. The one thing I didn't have that winter was chicken pox.

I saved that honor until I was 28 years old and my husband gave me a helluva case of chicken pox when he came home on leave. That's a post for another time...

I guess what I want to say here is why wouldn't anyone want to protect their child against getting this disease or any other disease? Any medicine has a risk of having a side effect. Does that mean don't take it? You take it with caution. You educate yourself. You arm yourself with the facts and then you do what you think is best. Some people think putting an unvaccinated child out in this germ filled world is what's best while others want to do everything they can do to safeguard their child. What do you think?

An afterthought: Don't schools require vaccinations in order to register your children for school? Is the way around that requirement to homeschool your children? These children are not only high risk to catching childhood diseases as adults, they also develop no social skills because they grow up being isolated from other children. Wow! Wow! Wow! And again wow!

KEEPING THE DOGS HAPPY

Spoiled dogs waiting for bones

Saturday morning I was coming back from a "shopping trip" at a local medical cannabis  dispensary (VidaCann) when I took a short cut across town because I wanted to stop at a certain grocery store to buy my spoiled dogs some bones. Publix is the only store here in Pensacola where the butcher packages the discarded bones and puts them in the freezer section. I cut across Michigan Avenue to get to Publix and before I knew it I was right by where I used to live with my ex-husband.

Keep in mind it's been a very long time since I've been married. When I say a very long time, I mean a VERY long time. I've been divorced since 1997. I'm not against marriage. I don't hate my ex-husband. I'm not bitter. I don't hate men. I think holding grudges and harboring resentment only hurts the person who holds that negative stuff inside them. I had to let that stuff go and forgive...not for their sake but for mine. And as for marriage... I found that being alone was better than being with the wrong person. I'm not saying there isn't a right person out there for me. All I'm saying is that to date, I haven't found that person. I'm not actively looking so chances of me finding that person is slim to nil...

Anyway, getting back to my little story. When I drove past where I used to live I had the strangest reaction. I got a knot in the pit of my stomach.  I'm not what I would call a high strung, anxious person, but seeing my old home sure brought out some anxiety or something in me.  All of sudden it was hard to breathe. I felt hot all over. I had a knot in the pit of my stomach and then I felt nauseous. It all passed rather quickly. Almost as quickly as it started. But I kept having a strange feeling like I almost expected to run into my ex-husband at the grocery store or some place else. I didn't and I'm glad I didn't. It just was weird and it rattled me for a moment or two and I usually don't get rattled. By the time I got home I was okay and my dogs were glad to see momma had brought them a special treat.

Great Expectations

I'm going to keep this short and sweet and fill this with as little drama as possible. I'm sure the people who read this blog and/or comment here have noticed there's a troll who has attempted to hijack the comment section on a few posts. I just changed my blog settings from allowing anyone to comment on my blog posts to allowing only people who have a Google account. Hopefully, this at least will prevent said troll from lurking in anonymity and quite frankly, bugging the hell out of me by rambling on about some British chick he'd like to bang.  If this troll chooses to stick around and to continue to dazzle everyone with his comedic genius then he'll have to do so with his actual Google account.  

Just so everyone is clear about my expectations... If you come here to read, then read. If you come here to read and comment, then read and comment, BUT please stay on topic.  If you need to contact me or ask me a question that doesn't pertain to the topic then do so at one of these email addresses : red_kitten1@yahoo.com or red.kitten1@gmail.com BUT Mr. Troll that isn't an invitation for you to flood my inboxes with email.

Now, carry on and do all those disgustingly fun Monday night things all Mildred Misfits do, but don't forget to take pictures!!!

HRH Mildred Ratched

Really Priceless!

My Surprise

Several years ago my daughter assembled a book of poetry from various poems my mother had written. Just about every subject was covered except one. She had never written a poem about me, her one and only daughter! When I brought this to her attention, she did what she always does. She started to argue with me about it, but I proved her wrong. The fact of the matter was that she had never written a poem about me. I have to admit it hurt my feelings that my existence didn't inspire her to write something...anything about her ugly duckling daughter. I didn't expect something to rival William Shakespeare. A little Mother Goose would be nice!

Like many elderly people, my mother has a daily routine. She likes to spend her afternoons in her art studio. I call it her cave. One afternoon several months ago upon returning from her cave she placed this piece of paper in my hand:

At 91, I have to admit that she's going strong! Yes, she went through that period I called her "empty pod" or "alien abduction" period and I really doubted she was going to come out of it, but she did. It took a lot of work on my part and it almost put me in a rubber room in the process, but she's back and doing better than ever. Her health is great and her mind is sharp (sharper than mine I have to admit). Maybe what we both need is some medical marijuana and a smile! Now, that's a strange trip I don't know if I'm ready for...smoking dope with my mother just seems a little too weird even for Mildred.

When Serenity Shatters

Growing up as a child of the 1960's something scared me more than the boogeyman, more than a werewolf, more than Frankenstein, more than Count Dracula and more than invading aliens from outer space all rolled into one huge, very real threat.  The Cold War between United States and Russia had escalated to a fever pitch. I remember having air raid drills during school hours in case of a nuclear attack.  Since Bangor was home to Dow Air Force base we, residents of Bangor, Maine were very aware that our small community would be just one of the many ground zero targets. 

Even as a small child I knew there was no bomb shelter secure enough that could save me and those people I loved. I had seen the films of nuclear bomb explosions. I watched the news! I heard what was said! Everything in the path of a bomb blast would violently evaporate in flames in just a split second. What I saw in the faces of the adults around me was that we really were on the eve of destruction and our fate rested in the hands of our elected leaders. The whole world held its breath while the nuclear scenario played itself out. 

Needless to say, many years later I'm able to look back and shake my head as I remember those turbulent days and now I wonder how today's children feel as they have "active shooter" drills in their schools.  My generation was able to move forward and graduate and become adults, yet today's youth feel the very real threat of gun violence everywhere around them. Where can they go today that hasn't been desecrated by guns? Is there any truly safe place these days? Do you feel like you're living in a country that's becoming more divisive and hate-filled every day? To what do you attribute the rise of gun violence and what can we do to change its trajectory? 

Like before I'm holding my breath and hoping for a favorable outcome, but to date our elected officials seem to be deaf and blind to what's happening to this country. I wonder just when will enough be enough. Who will be the last person killed before our elected officials do something to keep all people safer?

BACK IN THE DAY...

I found a newspaper article awhile ago and honestly didn't know how I felt about it. Parents are children's first teachers and role models so if parents want their children to cuss like drunken sailors then I'm all for teaching children how to spell "fuck" right along with teaching them how to spell "cat" and "dog" correctly.  So if we want our young females to look and act like hoochie mommas/cum dumpsters then we (mothers) must set that example at home and other places. Why not have our young daughters wear make up, skin tight daisy dukes and low cut crop tops to school or better yet to church? Or how about let's teach our children that school is a place to get an education? A place that will only better their life in the future if they put in some time and effort into it and treat it with the respect it deserves. OMG! When did I drink the Kool-Aid? lol! Mildred is that really you?

Back in April, a school in Houston, Texas set a dress code for parents...yes, you read that right! I wrote "P-A-R-E-N-T-S". Please read the letter that was sent home to the parents and tell me what you think. Should schools have a dress code for both students and parents? Do the schools have a right to dictate what a parent can wear on school property? Or are dress codes a violation of a parent's 1st Amendment Right? What do you think? I know! People should know better! Parents should set a good example! Blah! Blah! Blah! But take a look around...do they really know better? You tell me????

A mother in Texas claims she wasn’t allowed to enroll her daughter in school because of the outfit she was wearing. KPRC reported that Joselyn Lewis was asked to leave Madison High School after wearing a T-shirt dress of Marilyn Monroe and a head scarf. Lewis said she recently pulled her daughter out of another school due to bullying and wanted to enroll her at Madison High.
“I wanted to see proof of where it says parents can come dressed a certain way, but it wouldn’t show me that. I wouldn’t leave, so they called the police department. They called them on me and I guess he was coming to tell me to leave, but I was already on the phone with the school board,” Lewis said.

(I don't mean to throw Ms. Lewis under the proverbial bus because I've seen mothers dressed much worse, but this is the photo that came with the article.)

I think back to a time when my mother wouldn't leave the house unless she was all decked out. When she moved to Florida, it took her a long time to get used to casual dressing and wearing shorts out in public. Now, whenever I go to Walmart I see people in pajamas and worse. They look like they rolled out of bed and I'm beginning to wonder if there's such a thing as "sleep driving" (similar to sleep walking) because they all seem to end up at Walmart. Follow your dreams to Walmart, but don't forget to bring your wallet!

DARK SHADOWS

When I was young younger, I used to race home from school to watch Dark Shadows on the boob tube. Yes, it was a poorly made, low budget horror? soap, but most kids from my generation ate it up as if it was written by God himself.

Several years ago I bought the complete Dark Shadows set and I sat and watched it with my Shih Tzu, Fenway. She and I thoroughly enjoyed the simplicity/complexity of it and its packaging was simply genius. The DVD's come in a coffin housing the individual DVD's that make a picture of Barnabus Collins (Jonathan Frid), a 175 year old vampire resting in his coffin.

Is there anyone out there who was a Dark Shadows fan and wants to come binge watch Dark Shadows with me? I'm sorry, but the plane ticket is not included, but the popcorn is!

Spinning The Principal

By the time I got to 6th grade, Mr. Honey (pronounced Hone-ey) was not only the principal of Larkin Street School, but he was the 6th grade teacher as well.  I guess he figured all 6th graders at his school needed a special kick in the butt before entering Junior High School and he was just the man for that dubious distinction.  For the most part, I'd give him an A for being a good teacher, but an F for being a horrible, hardass principal. 

Our class was probably average sized for that time period.  There was roughly twenty of us to his one.   Class sizes had shrunk considerably a few year before when Dow Air Force Base was decommissioned.  Out of those 20 or so in my 6th grade class, today I can only remember a handful of people's names: Mike, Rod, Noreen, Margie, Sherry, Dana, Nancy, Bart, Junior, Carol, Cheryl and Colleen.  I guess that's a pretty big handful, isn't it? 

On many occasions Mr. Honey not only taught us the standard 6th grade curriculum, but he tried to prepare us for life as best he could. I remember him telling us that statistically speaking one of us wouldn't make it to adulthood. What? One of us would die?  His words, I'm sure, were said to make all of us a little more watchful of our own actions and the actions of others, however; I doubt his words were remembered by many after he spoke them.  After all, at that age, aren't we all invincible?  His words have definitely resonated in my head a few times along the way and for awhile I believed I was going to be that statistic.  But lo and behold not only did I fool myself, I fooled many others who had the same thought.

Sixth grade was definitely a year of spreading my wings and learning to think outside the box.  Until this point I was a good kid and a good student.  Sure, I was a little on the chatty side and my mouth seemed to always be described in detail in notes on my report cards.  I even earned the nickname "Gabby" when I was younger and thank God it didn't stick!  I had in many instances learned that clowning around and running my mouth was a good cover for what was really going on underneath.

Mr. Honey fell from my grace the day he suspended several of us from school because he knew all of us would have to face our parents as well.  Kids rarely use their brains when being mischievous especially kids with poor impulse control.  Planning things out is a learned behavior and comes with experience.  A bunch of us had decided to play spin the bottle after school with a glass milk bottle one of us had stolen from inside the school.  We selected a secluded corner of the schoolyard in back of the school for the spot to make our circle.  None of us gave a thought to teachers still being inside the school.  We all thought the spot we had selected was safe from any prying eyes.  In reality, I'm sure whatever teacher witnessed this spectacle was amused by what she saw, but such unruly actions had to be severely dealt with by administering a punishment that would keep us all from doing anything like that again. Suspension was what Mr. Honey selected and all that did for me was make me want to test authority all the more.

Addendum:  I can't count this as my first official kiss because I didn't get kissed because the game was rudely interrupted before that could happen. I hate when that happens! These are just some of the woes of being a clueless, numb as a stump 11 year old who got suspended from school for playing spin the bottle!

The Rock Psychosis

My family has a rock psychosis. Maybe I should call it a fetish to be more polite, but I've always called a spade a spade and in this case, a rock a rock.  I don't know exactly why, when or where it started, but my first recollection that something was amiss in the genepool was when I found out about my grandfather Ingalls' rock collection.  When my daughter was a young girl, my mother and step-father would take her to Maine whenever they went.  When she was about 8, she came back to Florida with tales of her great grandfather's rock collection.

He had asked her if she wanted to see his rock collection when they visited him.  What she was expecting to see was small samples of various types of rocks, so when he opened the dresser drawers in his bedroom that housed his rock collection she was surprised by what she saw.  All the drawers in the room were crammed full of rocks of all shapes and sizes that he had found on the ground wherever he went. None of them were colorful or in any way special except to him. She concluded her story by telling me that he must be crazy.  Although I did tell her it wasn't very nice to say that about anyone, in reality, she had hit the nail directly on the head. I was silently proud of my daughter for being so astute at such a young age.

As the fever grew and spread, my mother and my oldest brother developed the psychosis.  In the beginning, my mother would bring rocks home from Maine to use as doorstops or various other things.  I guess that was acceptable, but when I went to Maine one year and used the car she kept there to use during her extended stays, I found rocks in the trunk and under the front seat. All I could do was shake my head when I made the discovery.  As my mother started her collection my oldest brother started building stone walls on his property at the same time. Everyone was quite impressed by all he had done. His stone walls were beautiful! Everyone knows it takes a certain eye to be able to look at a rock elsewhere and know it's just the right shape and size to go in a certain spot in the wall you've been building.  I think the fever really took hold of him when he skillfully lined the ditches in front of his property with rocks.  It looked wonderful, but unfortunately, he was forced to remove all his ditch work due to some county ordinance. Unfortunately, Big Brother was apparently watching my big brother!  I prefer to think it was probably some jealous neighbor who had rock envy who ratted him out and not some county official riding around looking for ordinance violations.

   

Old Lady With Sagging Breasts

BLOTUS

I was selective in which rocks I hauled back to Florida.  They all had to come from a loved one's yard so each one would have good mojo in them.  It was like bringing a part of that person back with me.  My rocks found a new home in my flower garden. Florida is rather barren where rocks are concerned, so I have to get my "rock fix" while traveling.  After strategically stacking my rocks and closely scrutinizing the structure I had built, I dubbed it "Old Lady With Sagging Breasts".

When my daughter and her husband went to Europe last year, I forbid her to buy any gifts for me while she was traveling. I told her to pick up some rocks from the ground for me from the places they went. When she came back, she presented me with a jar full of rocks that had been bagged and tagged. I laughed and told her that the Pope had probably peed on the one from the Vatican. She assured me that she had washed all the rocks before putting them into baggies. When she had visited Berlin many years ago, I asked her to bring me back a piece of the Berlin Wall. Of course, she did as I asked and I think that may be my favorite rock/piece of concrete or whatever material the Berlin Wall was made from.

As my "large" rock collection grew, I decided to disassemble "Old Lady With Sagging Breasts" and replace it with a larger statue. I had no particular idea in my head when I sat on the ground and built a new statue. My daughter says it looks like a gorilla. Initially, before I attached a penis to it, I said it reminded me of Angelina Jolie (it must have been the lips) [lol]. My youngest son said it reminds him of an alien. What do you think? He ultimately was given the name BLOTUS.