That's What You Get

I'm planning to sneak into your room at about two-thirty in the morning and stand beside your bed watching you sleep. I think I'll take a moment to listen to you snore. You probably snore pretty loudly. Everything else you do is nice and loud.
Maybe you drool. Constantly. You lie with your mouth agape and a long, thin line of drool travels from your face to the pillow, forming a nice, dark, round wet spot. Hopefully, it's uncomfortable and makes you dream unpleasant, cold, watery dreams.

I'll stand there staring at you snoring and drooling and whimpering against cold, wet, dreamland monsters with a large bat or a club of sorts, maybe a crowbar, held high over my head, ready to be crushed down upon your sleeping head.

But I would never do anything that violent. I'm not violent, not ever. This is just a fantasy of mine.

I think I would just stand there and wait for you to get that creepy feeling you get when you're dreaming. The feeling that speaks to your conscience and says that something's not quite right with the real world. You'd better wake up and find out what it is.

And then you would scream bloody hell because you would see me standing there, poised to kill. You'd probably piss your pants, because you were already sleeping on a wet pillow, and therefore more apt to need to pee.

I might piss my pants, too, because loud noises scare me, and I know from personal experience, that I don't have the bladder control I used to.

And then we'd both laugh and laugh at ourselves for screaming at pissing for nothing. It's just me, after all. I wouldn't hurt anything or anybody. Not on purpose. I'm a gentle soul. How funny we are. (Well, I would laugh. You'd probably keep screaming.)

You probably shouldn't have called me Vanessa. You absolute lobotomy. I've told you four-thousand-one-hundred-ninety-seven times that my name is not Vanessa. It's written right there on my name-tag.

It's just Nessa.
.
.
.

Because She Didn't Leave a Will

In the beginning you told me that you would help me. We could be co-administrators, you said. We would make all the big decisions together.
I knew, even then, that it wouldn't happen. You've always been so good at talking the talk without walking the walk. You probably told all your friends that you had a heavy load of responsibility on your shoulders. You probably told them you were taking care of it all on your own, and your bitch of a sister was making things difficult for you.
When it came down to it, you signed all the responsibilty over to me without so much as an explanation. You knew I would take care of everything, just like always, even though I had to drive all the way from Amarillo to do it. Over and over again.
It didn't matter to you that I had a full-time job and four kids to take care of. It didn't matter to you that my tumor had grown to the size of a soda can. It didn't matter to you that I almost died trying to keep up with everything I had to do.
Two blood transfusions and a hysterectomy later, you called me a whiner. You thought I was being over-dramatic.
You were just a "single" guy with no real responsibilities. No steady job, no visitation with your kids, no worries at all. Maybe I expected too much from you, to think for a second that you would help me at all. You were right there in town, but you didn't even offer to mow Mom's lawn. Joey and Jason did it when I couldn't make it over there. Did you know that? And the rest of the family kept a steady eye on the place after Annissa moved out.
I don't know why you decided to start making things harder on me. I guess you thought I would just cut you a check on the first day the estate went into probate. You didn't realize the time that would be involved in selling a house, paying off Mom's personal debts and repaying Jim for all the hospital bills and property taxes and insurance payments. The paperwork, the IRS...
I don't know why you thought that threatening me would make things move along any faster. I don't know why you thought you could invade our cousin's home and harrass her. Sure, it was Mom's house, but it was our cousin who lived there. She had every right to her security and her privacy. You had no authority there. You signed it over to me, remember?
Did you know Jim was kind enough to have the roof replaced before we sold it? He didn't have to do that. And he dealt with the insurance company when that drunk driver slammed into the central air unit. Those were things that you could have done.
I guess you were too busy fucking that seventeen-year-old girl. (How old were you then? Thirty-two? And I suppose she thinks your married now, even though you haven't divorced your last wife yet. Does she even know about the last wife?)
I don't know why you bothered to show up at the courthouse that first day, when I was sworn in. I don't know why you cursed at my lawyer, telling him I was incompetent because I hadn't evicted our cousin from the house yet. As if I ever would.
He was much more curteous to you than I would have been. I think he told you politely that I had been administrator for all of five minutes. What exactly did you expect me to accomplish in that amount of time?
Later, my lawyer admitted to me that if he were me, he would have shot you already. Don't think I didn't fantasize about it. I didn't want to kill you, but I thought a little suffering would do you some good.
I thought it was pretty fitting that when I finally was able to write you a check, I had to send it to you in Lubbock County Jail. I'm smiling now, remembering it.

Invisibility has its perks.

I am a self-absorbed, anti-social, society-shunning, reclusive philanthropist.

 
That doesn't really make sense to me, but it's true. I love people. I love my kids, and I love my friends, and I love watching my neighbors out the window. I don't necessarily want to interact with my neighbors everyday, but I manage to wave every once in a while. I'm not shy to walk next door and hand them mail that was mistakenly placed in my box. I like to donate to the garage sale that seems to happen every weekend across the street. I buy Girl Scout cookies as often as possible.

 
I think every one of my neighbors knows my dog's name. She's a wild one. She jumps the fence and runs off. She knows every other dog in the neighborhood by bark and by smell. Once, she escaped while in heat and managed to give birth to five puppies, each created of a different father. She's a popular one. She's not like me at all. I love her even so.

One of my best friends recently quit working for the same company as me. Her husband still works there. He works in my department, and we get along very well. He's often inviting me to their house for a "wild alcoholic booze party" (private joke, haha), but I haven't gone. Not once since she abandoned me. And I hardly talk to her. I'm a bad, lazy friend. I can't believe she still wants to hang out with me.

My daughter moved out a couple of years ago, and has given birth to my grandson, The Ruler of My World. (If you don't yet have children, may I suggest having grandkids first. They are so much more fun.) Anyhoo. I don't want to bother my daughter. She's busy. She works and has a baby, and she has many many friends that keep her running here and there. When she visits, she usually has a friend or a cousin in tow. They often arrive with laundry. I like those days, but I act annoyed, mostly because I don't want her to show up everyday with even more friends. They eat all my food and they don't clean up after themselves.

My sons are different. They still live here, and they are teenagers. They have much better things to do than to hang out with their cranky mom all day.

David is in the living room, right now, contradicting me. He and his friend Zakk have been here for a week, and they just won't leave. My niece Laura came and took them the other day, but they were back in the house within two hours, asking for something to eat. Begging for money. (Not getting any.)
My dog thinks Zakk lives here. I'm not for sure if Zakk doesn't think he lives here.

I don't care who's President, as long as it's not me, but I vote in every election for the one I like better.
I volunteered at the Food Bank recently. I had to interact with the public and smile without receiving monetary compensation. It wasn't so bad. I didn't bite anyone, and I barely growled. The other volunteers were nice, but they stopped talking to me when they discovered I was thirty-seven AND a grandmother. I look younger than I am. It makes people uncomfortable. If I ever get married, I hope it will be to a blind man.

Ah, here's Zakk, asking for a ride to work. I didn't even know he had a job.

So Be It

A feeling of dread came over me today as I was driving home during rush hour traffic.
As my tires crunched slowly over the debris not yet cleared from the most recent accident, a little white Chevy cut off two lanes of traffic and pushed ahead to get to the I-40 on-ramp, startling those drivers who were next in line. They slammed their brakes and swerved. The little Chevy didn't give them a second glance or a sorrowful wave or even the finger.
There's nothing to be done aboout it, so the rest of the law-abiding drivers simply sighed, or cursed, or whatever they did, but they just moved on.
Road-rage doesn't seem to exist in this little part of the world. We simply accept the craziness and push through the day.