RIP Skanky baby

Yo homies. I should be in bed, but just am not in the mood to go. Actually, waiting for the towels to dry to i can put my coat in the dryer, which is sure to wake everyone because the frigging thing has more zippers than Michael Jackson.
I don't know why but I just feel blue tonight. One of those sighing, listening to Joni's "Judgment of the Moon and Stars" over and over again kind of nights. Ah well, life's a bitch sometime, isn't it?
For some reason, I keep thinking about this cashier from a few years ago. This would be at least 3 years or so ago, when I was at my old job and worked downtown, right in the core of poverty and crime. One day Sharon and I decided to take a coffee break and walk down the road to the Red Apple, which is like SAAN in Butcher Holler, to get some chocolate. It was located on the scariest street in the downtown, where all the drug dealers, convicts, and pimps hang out. On the street, they call it Hep Street, because of all the Hep C junkies. But anyway. We go to the Red Apple, because we had been there a few weeks prior to buy some blankets for a round dance giveaway (I am not making any of this up), and they had Hershey Bars, the plain kind that you can't get in Canada anymore. So being the nostalgic whores we are, we went there, and it was around this time of year. Working there was this woman who looked like she had just got out of the clink or was on some rehab work placement thing or something - she was all tatooed and street looking and shit, and she served us and struck up a conversation with us - well, more with Sharon, because I was the uptight looking white guy and Sharon was the high class Indian girl. So anyway, she was blabbing on and on and asked us if we had our Xmas shopping done and we said yes or whatever and she said she kept thinking she was done and told her kids they were just getting 2 things each but then she kept getting other little things for them and couldn't stop and when she bought another thing for one, the rest had to get something too, and on and on, and I mean, she worked hard for the money, you know? I am sure she lived in the hood, and the toys for her kids were probably the little things from the Red Apple she got on discount, and I was just somehow incredibly moved by this woman and how she still made Christmas for her family and all of that, and I got all choked up, and I have never forgotten her. So then, today - Rachel, if you are reading this, stop right now, because I am going to talk about a gift for you -I'll give you a line or two to stop:


Anyway, today I was contemplating a gift I want to get her for Xmas. You see, since we had kids, our policy is to not buy each other anything, because we buy what we want whenever we want anyway and why waste money yada yada... but we don't always follow it - a couple years ago i broke that when she got her Kitchen Aid, sewing machine, and digital camera. She broke it the next year she i got a treadmill and mp3 player. Last year, I think we stuck to it. This year we plan to, but there is this one thing I've wanted to give her for a year, and it would be a huge suprise because she doesn't even really know that I know that she wants it. But it's a huge pile of change. However, it would be worth it, and sort of practical in a way. But anyway, I was trying to figure out if I could pull that money out of my ass somehow, and started thinking that whole poor poor pitiful me thing yet again, and then I got to thinking: My kids will be spoiled rotten at Christmas. We always go overboard. We have so much. But, alas, sometimes I don't realize it, when I think "oh, if only I could buy this" for her, a hugely extravagent gift. But then, after I looked at this wanted gift lovingly on the internet today, I felt ashamed and dirty and thought of the Red Apple woman, who scraped and sacrificed to get her kids some dinky-ass shit from the Red Apple. And that got me to thinking how lucky I am and how it is only by the grace of God that I am here in my new house and she is there 5 miles away in the hood. And so yeah, I feel ungrateful and bad and defective because it's never enough with me - it's always "I want and need more!" and I don't, really, but I always feel like I do, and that's so wrong. I hate realizing when I'm selfish and shallow and all of that. But it's a good lesson, too. And then it's rough with my dad too, and that makes me sad, but at the same time, i think I have to stop being so pitiful because I think of so many people younger than me who have had horrible things happen to their parents or have HAD horrible parents, and on and on, and I just need to be thankful for what I had, and what I have at the moment. I just get disgusted when it's all me-me-me, because I pretend I am not like that, but I am. It pisses me off. So, that's my melancholy for tonight.
But let me leave you with a funny story - this one IS me whining, and I don't care, because it IS all about me. I need to sadly report on the loss of a member of my family. Though not connected by blood, really, last night, at 1:50, I lost an intimate member of my inner circle. I lost a member of the inner circle that has seen me through the worst - I've laughed on his shoulder, cried into his neck, hugged him like a mother, rolled all over him whilst playing hide the sausage, bled on him, sweated in heatwaves and illness on him, revelled in his comforting smell, and tucked him under my shoulder and neck every night, while he sat on top of my head, keeping the bad energy away.
Yes, at the tender age of 30, my beloved feather pillow from childhood, ceremoniously named Skank by Rachel, imploded last night.
I've had Skank since childhood. He was one of those feather pillows that you can't buy anymore. You know, old school feathers. Heavy, mallable, comfortable. I've always had to have a pillow over my head to sleep, and Skank worked wonders, because I'd tuck him under my neck on one side and wrap him around under my neck on the other, and he'd keep the noise and light out. He's been all over Canada with me and nary a trip was taken, even overnight, without him. Rachel wanted to kill him for years, because he got heavier and heavier, and leaked feathers everywhere, up to the point where he was in 4 pillowcases at the end. She thought he was heavy with dust mites and thought he was going to kill me. Not a week would go by without her wanting to get rid of him. I just held him lovingly and told him he was not going to go live on any "Farm".
But last night, it happened. It was 1:50, and daughter number deux was crying horribly for a reason I never did find out. The mrs. poked me and I got up, grabbed Skank, and off we went to go to her bed and calm her down.
Only Skank never made it. He dropped unceremoniously in the hallway between the rooms, exploding on impact. I never had a chance to say goodbye. Poof! I looked and the girls' room was knee-deep in feathers, and bam, our room was too, and the rest was in the crime-scene - the hallway. So, what does one do with a house of little feathers at 2 am? Well, I couldn't vacuum, because it was too loud, so I had to sweep piles of feathers and that kept me up for ages. Then this morning I had to vacuum before work. I put the feathers in our bedroom bathroom's garbage and Rachel was blowing her hair this morning and feathers were flying and it was a gong show.
So I dont' know what to do. I have some other older feather pillows at the lake, but who wants to drive 45 miles in this weather? It's just not right. So, expect me to be complaining of neck spasms and stiffness and such until I figure out what to do. Donations made to the hen house of your choice would be appreciated.
Now I must get to bed because ultrasound comes bright and early - and no panic about twins now because now we are thinking she might just be a little farther along - we are remembering a weird, short period and unprotected sex now, from the month before, so perhaps that's what all the fuss is about! Hurrah, as Briget Jones would say!
xo
JT