The Life and Times of Merna Caboo

You really don't know me at all, do you?

2011-02-22T19:50:00.000-08:00

So earlier this evening I was at the Scout's Blue and Gold Banquet. It is an annual event that is to commemorate the founding of the Boy Scouts (I think) and it is something I dread. In fact I dread every scouting event that I am supposed to attend. Once a month I am supposed to accompany my son to pack meeting and every month I try to get out of it any way I can. The thing I hate most about pack meeting is the number of boys between the ages of 8 to almost 11. The noises these small boys make are more than I can handle. Something I hate almost as much as the din of too many boys is the incredibly lame "cheers" we are all forced to participate in. How can I not enjoy pretending to be a sprinkler, you ask? I guess I was just born that way.
I have always been an extremely reluctant participant in all things scout related, so tonight I was shocked when one of my least favorite people on the planet asked me to do something that I would equate with being dragged by a horse. He asked me to be an assistant scout leader. HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HA! I immediately told him there wasn't a chance in hell I would ever be willing to participate in scouts more than I already have to and he continued to try to convince me that I should be excited for this opportunity. He asked me again and I explained to him in detail just how much I hate attending pack meeting. I reminded him that I work until nearly 6:00 everyday and that the scouts meet at 4:30 and still he persisted. He told me that he was asking me because he thought I would do a great job and I told him he didn't know me at all if he thought that. I told him again that I would never ever in a million years be willing to take part in any kind of scouting leadership and began to take my leave. He was still trying to convince me as I walked out and shut the door on him.

Shimmereen?

2010-09-05T20:52:00.001-07:00

So, I know that my family makes up the bulk of my blogging audience and that we already talked about this but I have to make known my absolute disgust with people that give their kids funky names. At this week's Sunday Party...that's what my kids call the weekly gathering that usually takes place at my parents' house...my brother horrified us all with the story I will now share with you. One of his neighbors named his daughter Shimmereen. To me, this amounts to child abuse, or at least extremely questionable parenting skills and definitely a liberal amount of idiocy. What the hell kind of name is Shimmereen? Don't try to tell me it's a family name...unless that family member you named your daughter after was a stripper, as your daughter will no doubt eventually become. It isn't her fault. With a name like Shimmereen what other choice does she have? Talking about the names people pick for their children reminds me of the chapter in Freakonomics that talks about how you can determine the education level of a mother by what she names her child. If I was in kindergarten, I may have thought Shimmereen was a pretty name. If these parents were acquaintances of mine and told me that they had decided to name their daughter Shimmereen, I would have had no choice but to slap them until they came to their senses. I don't know these people at all but I am tempted to call some child welfare agency to have them look into it. Poor little Shimmereen. She has a horrible name and obviously her parents are complete morons. I hope that she can rise above her stripper name and her idiotic parents and be a happy and productive member of society...but I don't think it's likely.

I'm such a slacker

2010-08-23T21:59:00.000-07:00

When I started my blog, I had so much fun writing about my strange life experiences but it seems like in the last year nothing strange enough to write about has happened. I don't want to waste time writing about boring crap that no one is going to want to read so what should I write about?
I guess I will start with the yard sale I had last week. Yard sales are way too much work and I hate doing them but I really needed some money because Dave is taking me to Italy in October and I am going to be missing work and not getting paid (oops! I used up all of my vacation days). So Dave helped me because he is the sweetest man that ever lived. He carried most of the crap outside for me and, because I forgot to wear pants with pockets, he let me stick all the money in his pockets. During the yard sale he carried heavy items for people and after the yard sale he helped me load up the car and drop all the leftover crap off at the D.I. He's the best boyfriend EVER! So the yard sale...not much happened to write about except for one thing that I thought was funny. This lady was interested in buying a dress that I bought a few years ago and then never wore because of the wibby-wibby on the tops of my arms, also known as Relief Society Arms. Anyway, before blowing a whole $2 on a dress, she wanted to try it on to make sure it fit. So I let her into my house to try on the dress. I showed her to the bathroom and then returned to my customers while she tried it on. She was taking a long time so I decided to make sure she wasn't somewhere in my house going through my useless crap in the hopes of finding something valuable. When I checked on her she was still in the bathroom and I asked how it was going and she came out and gasped and said, "You're so pretty!". This was unexpected. Outside she had been talking to me for 20 minutes about how her son was returning from a mission and how she wasn't LDS and that she needed a dress that wouldn't be to revealing, about her own yard sale that she had had the week before, about moving from a big house into a smaller townhouse nearby...so I wondered what kind of gargoyle I had appeared to be before she had tried on the dress as opposed to after. She sounded so shocked at her own exclamation about my appearance. I wondered if maybe I was like Jerry's girlfriend on Seinfeld...the one that was beautiful in certain lights and a nasty hag in others. Or was it that she really liked the dress but couldn't possibly part with $2 for it and she was trying to flatter me into giving her a better price. I didn't. $2 was a damn good deal and I wasn't about to go any lower, especially since I wasn't sure I should even be flattered...I was feeling more insulted by how surprised she was that she found me suddenly attractive.
Anyway, that was the most interesting thing that happened at my yard sale.

let's catch up

2010-01-10T07:55:00.000-08:00

So, it's been quite a while since I have written a post. I feel terrible about that...can you ever forgive me? Perhaps when I tell you what I have been up to, you will understand.
December, is, of course, always a busy month. My lovely boyfriend Dave was here several times and the last time he was here I got to meet his 5 children, all of whom are awesome.
Christmas went reasonably well and my kids were very sweet and not greedy and pissed off about the amount of gifts they received.
My ex-husband has managed to stay sober since the week before Thanksgiving, which is always nice. I have even been able to let him have the kids a couple of times, which is AWESOME for me. It's nice to get some time to myself again.
January has not been great so far. On the 6th I came home from work to find that my basement full of water. FULL of water. Apparently the water for my sprinklers was never shut off and the result was a pipe that froze and burst. I'm not sure what my thought process was as I plunged into the freezing cold water but I did find where the water was coming from before I realized I could no longer feel my toes and got the heck out of there. I returned to dry land (upstairs) and called Advanced Restoration Services. Still not thinking clearly, I returned to the basement with a bucket and attempted to bail out the mid-calf-deep water by dumping it in the shower. Since it was coming in 10 buckets at a time and I was freezing my toes off again, it didn't take me long to realize that this was not a good idea. I went back upstairs and rubbed the life back into my toes as I waited for help to arrive. The first on the scene was a man wearing running shoes, who fearlessly forged his way into the basement. After soaking his shoes and up the leg of his pants, he realized that to stop the water he would have to go outside and jump into my window well...in the freezing cold. Poor bastard. He then returned to the basement until his colleagues arrived...all twelve of them. The men and women of ARS got to work removing all of my belongings from the basement. They brought the soaking wet items up the stairs and through my kitchen and into my garage as I tried in vain to keep my hardwood floors clean and dry. After getting all my stuff out of the basement, they finally brought in the big hoses to suck out the water. Couldn't they have been sucking the water out while they were hauling the stuff out? I don't want to tell them how to do their jobs but it seems like a good idea to me. Anyway, after nearly 7 hours of working on my basement, a little after midnight, the clean-up crew had done all they could. They left behind 18 high-powered fans to dry out the carpet, which brought me to my next catastrophe.
Yesterday, January 9th, I was taking a nap when I was awoken by an annoying beeping noise coming from the basement. I was in bed, wondering what could possibly be the cause of this noise and wondering when it would stop so I could go back to sleep. Finally I decided to get out of bed to try to find the source of the noise. My bedroom door was closed to keep out the noise of the 18 fans in the basement and as soon as I opened I realized the problem. I had a gas leak and the beeping was coming from my carbon monoxide detector. The smell of gas put me immediately in a panic. My flood made me realize that I am not good in an emergency situation and once again I found myself running around in circles. I called my sister to ask her what I should do and her husband suggested I call the gas company and offered to come over to shut off the gas. I called Questar to report the leak and found myself talking to an extremely unhelpful man I will name Dick. I wanted to know if I should get out of the house, if I should try to turn the gas off, if I needed to get my dog and hamster out...Dick was telling me not to light any matches. I may not be great in an emergency but I DO know that if you smell gas, it's not the time to start any fires. In the meantime, my brother-in-law Matt and my brother Craig had shown up and managed to shut off the gas. I decided to evacuate my pets, Delila and Nugget, and to open doors and windows to let the gas out...only the windows won't open because the flood has caused the windows to swell. So I took my dog and my hamster to my mom's house and returned home to wait for someone from Questar to come. After an hour of waiting in my cold and toxic house, the dude from Questar finally shows up. I was going to get ornery with him for taking so long but he turned out to be a nice guy and since I needed his help I thought it might be wise to stay on his good side. After doing whatever it is he needed to do, he gave me the bad news. He told me I didn't have a gas leak. What I had was 18 high-powered fans keeping the carbon monoxide and gas fumes in the house. He also told me that both of my furnaces had serious problems. One of them had water damage from the flood and the other one had plugged chambers, whatever that means. Apparently, plugged chambers are much worse than water damage. He told me that I was lucky that I had a carbon monoxide detector, I was lucky that the my basement furnace wasn't on, and I was lucky that my hot-water heaters had been off. How did my hot-water heaters get turned off, you ask? I have no idea. I only know that after the flood I had no hot water and instead of calling someone about that I had been heating water on my stove so I could take a tepid bath. So, it's Saturday night and I have no heat. What's slightly worse is I have NO money. So I call my brother Keith, who is a builder and I think might have some knowledge to impart, and may even be able to help me out with this furnace situation. Keith tells me I need to call someone that fixes furnaces. When I point out that I haven't got a cent to my name, he helpfully tells me that I don't have a choice and asks me if I am planning on moving in to a homeless shelter. I'm not sure what this comment means, but it does remind me why I never call Keith when I need any sort of assistance. I assume that Keith has called my brother Craig, who calls me to see what he can do to help. He offers to call his Furnace Guy to see if he can get him to come to my house right away and I realize that I really don't have a choice. I have to have heat in my house, whether I have the money to pay for the furnace to be fixed or not. So I have Craig call his Furnace Guy, who, it turns out, either can't or won't come to my house on a Saturday night, He will, however come on a Sunday morning. So I have a house with no heat, the doors have been open for hours, and it is the middle of winter in Utah. Sweet. I decide that the best course of action is to get my heating pad and all of my blankets and hole up in my bedroom with my dog. I decide that my freezing house is no place for a hamster and I leave him with my mom overnight. Happily, Carter and Adam are with their dad, where for once I am sure they are better off than they would be if they were with me. Having no heat gives me a perfect excuse for staying in bed for the night. Delila and I get under the covers and pig out...I eat when I'm stressed out, ok? At 9:30 on a Saturday night, I turn off the t.v and the lights and go to sleep, using the harrowing events of that day and the days before as an excuse to be lazy...though when have I ever needed an excuse?
So Sunday morning comes and with it, Craig's Furnace Guy. He shows up bright and early, making me feel justified in my super-early bedtime. He goes to work, leaving me to speculate on what Furnace Guy charges for coming out on a Sunday morning. After a couple of hours, Furnace Guy emerges from the basement to give me the bad news. My furnace with the plugged chambers will have to be replaced. Apparently furnaces cost around $2,000, when you figure in labor and what-not. The what-not, by the way, is the pvc piping that will have to be put in for the energy-efficient furnace. Luckily, Furnace Guy takes credit cards, and though I have no money, I still have tons of credit cards.

Gratitude

2009-11-22T12:05:00.000-08:00

Since it's Thanksgiving I want to enumerate all of the many things that I am thankful for.
The thing I am most thankful for is my family and all they do for me. Last Summer, knowing that I didn't have the money to pay for someone to watch my kids while I was at work, my siblings and some of my nieces and nephews offered to watch Carter and Adam while I was at work. This saved me thousands of dollars that I didn't have and took away a huge worry for me. They gave up so much of their time to watch my kids and I am so grateful that they would do that for me and my boys. Without them I don't know what I would have done.
This year I am thankful to have a man in my life that is sweet and caring and who, somehow, loves me as I am. He is the best thing that has happened to me in a long time and I am grateful for him everyday.
Though I hardly ever show it, I am thankful for my children. Yes, they make me crazy but I wouldn't trade them for anything. I love them and I need to do a better job of showing it.
I am thankful for my job and for the ability to earn a living. I may not love my job but I am very happy that I have one and that I am able to support myself and my children.
I am thankful for all the necessities of life. I realize how lucky I am to have all that I have, to be in need of nothing, and to be content with life as it is.

a few of my favorite things...and the things I hate too

2009-11-22T11:39:00.000-08:00

As I have gotten older, I have realized that things are not important. It doesn't matter what kind of car I drive as long as it runs well. I don't care where the clothes I buy come from, just that they can do a reasonably good job of hiding my fat. Buying a bag that costs more than $40 is unheard of for me and the idea of spending hundreds or thousands on a purse that will be outdated before it is paid for makes me want to vomit. Is this because I am a poor single mother who has to make due? Maybe a little bit. If I had money flowing out of all of my orifices would I feel differently? Perhaps. But I have also leaned to appreciate the simple things in life and have made a list of some of my favorite things. To balance it out I made a list of things I really don't like.

THINGS I LOVE: (these are not in order)
reading in the tub
animals, especially dogs
bread*
massages
the ocean
Christmas lights
family
late Spring
early Fall
my Blanky
naps
books
traveling
pedicures
hydrangeas
diet coke
holding hands

THINGS I GREATLY DISLIKE:
sourdough bread
snotty people
cruelty
smells
speeding tickets
calories and fat grams
gray hairs
arrogance
chick flicks
winter
stupid drunkard ex-husbands
fake people
cleaning
adult acne
when my kids fight
bad grammar
roses, carnations, and chrysanthemums
seeing my kids unhappy and not being able to do anything about it

I don't need much in life. I am learning that I am pretty good at economizing and re-purposing and reusing and that shopping isn't the only way to entertain myself or make myself happy. Now if I could only convince my kids that they don't really NEED iPods and PSPs and what all the other kids have, life will be perfect.

Dating After Divorce

2009-11-01T08:45:00.000-08:00

The idea of dating after my divorce was initially an exciting one. That excitement didn't last long. First of all, how do you meet other single people when you aren't in college? I don't know how people did it back in the day, but it seems that now the only way is the internet. For those of you who have never been forced to write a profile for yourself, trying more or less to talk others into wanting to date you, let me tell you that it is pretty humiliating, especially if in the talents and interests box all you have to write is that you are a champion napper, you can shop longer than anyone you know, and your favorite t.v. show is the Office. And the selection of men that you are trying to make interested in you is, in general, a frightening, toothless, grammatically-challenged lot that no one with any self-respect would want to date anyway. My dating life quickly became a case of "which man on this website is the least objectionable"?

My first post-divorce sorta relationship was with a man we will call Bob. His real name was Shannon, which, as everyone should know, is a girl's name. Bob may be a common and not very exciting name but at least it belongs to a man. So I met Bob on match.com and though he really didn't seem that promising, I decided I'd give it a shot. The fact that he lived with his parents at the age of 39 caused a bit of concern, as did the fact that he was only required to pay his ex-wife $300 a month in child support for his FIVE children because he made so little money. But I decided I was just being shallow and that I needed to give him a chance. So we went out. Our first date wasn't so bad. We went to dinner and talked...well, he talked. He talked a lot. He told me that he was a former Baptist minister and also a former meth addict. Huh? That's right. And guess what? I continued to go out with this guy for almost 3 months. He was a very nice man, though not too bright. He hung the curtains in the house my kids and I were living in and fixed my kitchen sink. His handiness may have been the best thing he had going for him. Why did I stop seeing Bob? Well, it may have had something to do with his calling me COLLECT from prison to tell me he was sorry he had missed our date. Something I didn't know about Bob was that he had a couple of DUIs under his belt and when he was arrested for the third time they didn't cut him much slack. I told him to have a good life and reminded him to be vigilant about guarding his bum while he was in there. Most men would have realized that this was the end of whatever relationship we had but Bob didn't get that message. He sent me letters from prison, asking me what we should do on our first date after his release. I ignored the letters and hoped that he would get the idea but as I said, Bob wasn't too bright. I didn't see Bob when he got out of prison, at least for a while. Many of you may be surprised to hear this but I am WAY too nice for my own good. One day I got a call from Bob, telling me he had been in a terrible accident and that he wanted to see me. I was a little curious to see what damage the accident had done...morbid, I know. But I wasn't doing anything so I went to his parents' house to see him. It was pretty gruesome. He had a hole in the top of his head that his mother kept shining a flashlight in to show people how deep it was. His whole body was covered in road rash and he was covered in bruises, though somehow he had managed to keep all of his bones unbroken. His mother immediately put me to work. She had me feed him soup and make his bed. It wasn't until his mother introduced me to the other visitors as Bob's girlfriend that I decided it was time to go. And that was the last I saw of Bob.

My next sorta relationship was with a man named Derik. Derik was in the process of getting a divorce when we first started dating. Our first date was awesome, despite the fact that he accused me of looking for a better looking man when my eyes wandered around the restaurant for a second. After getting to know him better I realized that he was probably joking. Derik was smart, attractive, and funny but he was also still in love with his soon-to-be ex-wife and many times I felt more like a therapist than any sort of girlfriend. Still, we dated off and on for quite a while. What ended my relationship with Derik was a call I got from him one day, telling me that he was getting married and that the woman he was marrying was about to have his child. I was rather surprised at this but not overly hurt as we had always been friends more than anything. After his second divorce, Derik and I became friends again and I hope when he reads this he finds nothing to be offended about.

The next guy I dated was Michael. Michael was, on the surface, everything a woman would want. He was 6'5", extremely good looking, and rich. Under the surface he was a complete and total asshole. Our first date went fairly well. He took me to an expensive restaurant in Salt Lake, which was a total waste on me because I prefer simpler food and get uncomfortable when men spend too much money on me, but the date itself went well. One thing that bothered me was that the sidewalk was icy and I was slipping and sliding all over the place and it never occurred to Michael that I might appreciate an arm to hold onto. Since I didn't actually fall, I let this small thing go and thought that he probably just wasn't very observant. On our next date, we started out at an indoor go-kart racetrack. These are not for children...these things are FAST. So we raced go-karts and he enjoyed making fun of me for how thoroughly he wiped the track with my butt. I was annoyed at the fact that he was behaving like a 13 year-old boy but I let it slide. We left the racetrack and headed to Ogden for dinner. His friend managed the restaurant he was taking me to and he called him to make sure he had saved us a table. While on the phone with his friend, I heard the friend ask if I was hot. Michael's reply was and unconvincing "Yeah" which prompted his friend to ask "What is she? About a 6?" and Michael again said "yeah". When Michael was no longer on the phone I asked him if his friend always spoke so loudly and he laughed and said yes. After a few seconds it dawned on him that I was trying to tell him that I had heard his entire conversation and, instead of being contrite, he laughed so hard I thought he was going to wet himself. Let me clear something up: I do not have any delusions that I am above a 6. I actually think a 6 may be a little too generous. What bothered me was that the guy I was dating thought I was a 6. When you are dating a man, what would make him interested in you if he thought you were only a 6? I asked him to take me to my car, which was parked at his house, so I could go home but he refused. He told me that I was an 8 at least and that he and his friend were just joking around. He said that he would never go out with a 6, thinking this would make me think better of him somehow. I repeated that I would like him to take me to my car and he again refused and instead, took me to the restaurant managed by this odious friend. As soon as he saw this friend he told him that I had heard the entire conversation and the two of them laughed like it was the funniest thing they had ever heard. After that, Michael behaved as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened that night and kept asking me why I wasn't my usual happy self. Perhaps in an effort to cheer me up he decided to tell me about all of the super-hot women he had dated and of all of the super-hot women that wanted to date him. For some reason this did not change my mood and when the date was finally over and he took me to my car, I was happy to be rid of this tall, hot, rich jerk.

My next "relationship" was with a man named Brian. Brian was a 40 year old man that had never been married..he was in fact an actual 40 year old virgin. This was new! Brian was a sweet guy, which was exactly what I wanted after Michael and he was also rather attractive. He obviously liked me and I might have liked him more than I did if he wasn't also a smidgen odd. On our second date he wanted to take me to a church so he could play the piano for me. Am I the only person that thinks this is weird? He told me that he loved roller blading and while I'm sure that is perfectly normal, the picture in my mind was of him on Venice Beach wearing too-short shorts, wearing big headphones and weaving in and out of the crowd, singing along to the Captain and Tenielle he was sure to be listening to. Another thing about Brian that made a relationship between the two of us impossible was the fact that kissing me made him feel guilty...and he blamed me for it. I was causing him guilt. After our third or fourth date, I told him I didn't appreciate being made to feel like a whore because of his inability to resist making out with me and that I didn't think we should see each other again.

In addition to these men were the vast majority of men that didn't make it to a second date. One of my worst dates was with a man who asked me to meet him at his house before we went to a movie. I know I should be more careful about this sort of thing but, as I said in a previous post, my only real fear is retards and I did not yet realize that this man may very well fit into this category. I was driving back from Salt Lake after leaving my kids with their father and agreed to meet him at his house in Ogden. Upon entering the house I quickly realized that "his" house was actually his parents' house. He had told me he was 28, which is younger than I prefer but when I met him I was sure he couldn't be more than 23 or 24. He told me that his parents were out of town and that, since we had a while before the movie started, we had plenty of time to make out. The guy had balls, anyway. I told him that as tempting as his offer was, I would rather go to the theater now, especially because I was starving and wanted to get something to eat. He insisted that we had plenty of time and that it would be a shame if we did not take advantage of the fact that his parents were out of town and asked me if I wanted to see his bedroom. I said that no, I did not want to see his bedroom, I did not want to take advantage of his parents being out of town, and that what I wanted to do was go see "I Love You, Man" . He asked me if I would at least lay on top of him for a few minutes. What does a sane person say to a request like that? I told him that no, I would not lay on top of him for any amount of time and that I was going to go to the theater now. If he wanted to go to the movie, I couldn't stop him but I wasn't going to go in his car and he wasn't going to go in mine. So I left and he did show up at the theater, which was fine, and I sat next to him during the movie, which was fine and the movie was hilarious. What wasn't fine was his attempt to hold my hand and kiss me after the movie when I thought for sure he knew by that point that I hated him. It was then that I made it clear that I was in no way interested in him, that he was not allowed to kiss me, or even touch me and that I wished him a nice life. With that I got in my car and drove away and was only mildly surprised to receive a text from him moments later asking me if we could go out again sometime.

There are SO many other horrifying men that I could tell you about but I would never get away from my computer once I started. Happily I am now dating a man that is smart, attractive, funny, and sweet. He is incredibly patient... he stood and watched me obsess over the dolphins at Sea World for at least an hour, without getting even a little bit ornery about it, even trying to distract the Sea World employee that was keeping me from jumping in the dolphin pool so I could swim with the dolphins. It doesn't bother him that I have to play with every dog I see. He puts up with my kids shenanigans and doesn't even mention how annoying they are. He doesn't care that I am crazy and he even seems to enjoy it. He treats me better than any man has ever treated me. He is amazing and I feel so lucky to be the one that he loves. I know I don't deserve him and I am so glad that he hasn't realized this yet.

retards

2009-10-02T19:30:00.000-07:00

Yeah, yeah...I know that the term retard is politically incorrect and rude and whatever but if you have a stick up your butt about that kind of stuff, you probably shouldn't be reading my blog in the first place.

Along with men that are determined to show me their junk, retards are also drawn to me for some reason.

My first retard was Scotty. He lived two houses away from me and was 12 years older than me. Scotty seemed nice and harmless at first. I was about 9 and he was 21 but he didn't seem to think age mattered when it came to love. He would "write" me love notes that were actually just scribbles. He would set up his keyboard outside my bedroom window and serenade me at all hours. Most of the things Scotty did were pretty innocuous and I had no problems with him until...he proposed. He came over to the house and wanted to talk to my parents. He sat me down on the couch and told my parents that he wanted to marry me. He kissed the top of my head as he asked their permission. This may sound sweet to you but to me things were starting to get a little bit creepy. My parents gently explained that I was only 9 years old and that I wouldn't be of marriageable age for at least another ten years. I was relieved...not that I thought my parents would marry me to a retard 12 years older than me when I was 9 years old, I just thought maybe that would put an end to some of his efforts at wooing that were starting to get old. That didn't happen. Instead, Scotty got stealthy. One morning I woke up and Scotty was standing over my bed, watching me sleep. After that my parents finally started locking the doors at night.
Around this time, a couple of my dolls went missing. When we found them, they had holes in the parts of them where the vagina would be, if dolls sported privates. This was far more upsetting to me than all of the other stuff combined. I had a pretty good idea why those holes were there and what had happened to my dolls and I wasn't having any more of this business. The next time Scotty came over I'm afraid I wasn't very nice to him. I told him that I never wanted to see him again and that he needed to leave me alone. I have a feeling my mom may have talked to his mom about keeping him on a shorter leash because he never bothered me, or my dolls, again.

My next encounters took place quickly and without warning.

When I was in grade school there was a girl with Downs Syndrome that I was friendly to. One day on the playground she took my hand and put it down her shirt. I'm not sure what her motive was but I took my hand away and kept my distance after that.

In middle school there was a retard named Willy. I know that these are God's special children and that I am being rude by calling them retards. If I knew specifically what was wrong with Willy, other than being a lecherous retard with an unfortunate name, I would refer to him by his own particular brand of retardedness. I don't know what was wrong with him, other than that he liked to put his hands up girls' skirts and down the front of their shirts. Do I need to go on or do you see where I'm going with this?

My most surprising retard encounter came at the Logan Library. By this time I had learned to keep a respectful distance from retards but sometimes that isn't enough. I was entering the building that houses the library while a group of tards was walking out. I smiled politely at a very large one and was subsequently smacked in the face, twice, very quickly. That retard had some impressive reflexes. And he was incredibly strong. His handler apologized and I smiled and said that it was ok and moved quickly along the hall and into the library. This is when I knew for sure that retards and I just shouldn't have anything to do with each other. If a friendly smile could unleash the anger of the biggest retard I had ever seen, I needed to stay as far away from them as possible.

Staying away from retarded people is more difficult than you might think. They're everywhere. A few days after the incident at the library my sister and I were shopping at Michael's craft store when I noticed there was someone following me. It was a retarded woman that normally wouldn't have given me any cause for concern but my recent smack down by retard and the fact that she was following me everywhere I went gave me the creeps. I started to freak out and asked my sister if we could please leave.

I have learned to give all retards, no matter how harmless looking, a wide berth. I try not to be prejudice but really, it seems, they are the ones that have it out for me. Some people are scared of spiders or snakes or the dark. My one and only fear is a retard.

flashes of brilliance?

2009-10-01T15:37:00.000-07:00

The first time I was flashed I was in kindergarten. A repulsive little boy named Cory Spackman stood up on my desk and dropped trou right in my face. My little old lady kindergarten teacher was surprisingly wily and snatched him off my desk and spanked his bare butt before most of the kids in the class even had a clue that anything was afoot. I didn't know it at the time but that was the first in a long line of men (or boys in this case) showing me their junk.

The second time I was flashed was by far the most disturbing. I was in first grade and my friend Michelle and I were riding our bikes in a church parking lot, pretending that we were on Dukes of Hazard. We were arguing over who got to be Daisy when a man got out of his car at the opposite end of the parking lot and started jogging. Unfortunately, this man was not out for exercise but out to expose himself. He was dresses in normal jogging clothes but his penis was poking out of his shorts. He was jogging toward us but was still quite far away when Michelle decided she should apprise him of his penile situation and headed off in his direction on her bike. I stayed put and watched in horror at what unfolded. I could hear her talking to the man and thought how ridiculous this situation was, and that what we should be doing was getting the BLEEP out of there. I heard her say,
"Did you know your dick is hanging out?"
and heard him reply
"Yeah, do you want to touch it?"
As she was telling him that she did NOT want to touch it, he grabbed her by the arm and touched his penis to her bare arm. She started freaking out and I started coming over, when the man ran back to his car and drove away.
Michelle's house was right next to the parking lot and we booked it to her house to tell her mom what had happened. Michelle's mom called the police, who asked us all kinds of uncomfortable questions and thanked us for reporting what we had seen.
After talking to the police, I rode my bike the short distance to my house. For some reason I didn't really want to tell my mom what had happened. I guess I was embarrassed by it. When I did tell her about the incident, I was surprised to find that her reaction to me being flashed by an adult man was to yell at me and to tell me never to do it again. Ummmmm...this was my fault? I couldn't figure out HOW it was my fault but judging by my mom's reaction, I could tell that it definitely was.
That was the last time I told my mom that I had been flashed.

The next time I was flashed happened in Mexico City when I was 16. I was there with a small group from school, staying in a rather frightening hotel too near the Zona Rosa (the red light district). The elevators in the hotel were slow and creaky so we would often use the stairs instead. The stairs in this hotel, unlike stairs in most hotels, were not in a separate area closed off by doors. The stairs went through the middle of the hotel, and as we went down them, the doors of the individual rooms were about 3 feet away. As I came down the stairs, I heard a man clear his throat and when I looked in the direction the noise had come from, what I saw made me start taking the stairs 3 at a time. In the doorway of one of the rooms stood not one, but two fat naked Mexican men. Needless to say, after that I took the elevator.

The next time I saw a naked man in public, it was less of a flashing than a publicity stunt. Apparently, this man in Germany named Ernie is famous for doing things in the nude. I think the guy just wanted some attention and would show up in various places without any clothes on. When I saw him I was walking down the street in Berlin with some friends and before I could see him very well, I could tell he was naked. I had developed a sort of sixth sense for discerning nudity before it became obvious. Anyway, Ernie was riding a bike toward me and my friends and I said to my friends, "That dude is naked!" and they argued that he was just shirtless and that I was being ridiculous. I let them think what they wanted...I knew the man was naked. It wasn't until he was a few feet away from us that my friends realized that I was right. When he turned a corner and we saw him from the side, it was very clear that he wasn't wearing a thing...not even a sock.

My next flashing took place when I was in college, on a Friday or Saturday night. My friend Sarah and I were walking east on fifth north, past a house on the corner when the door suddenly opened and about 20 men came running out, butt naked and screaming at the tops of their lungs. Well, we had to investigate this one. We followed them into the park and asked them what they were doing in the middle of the night in a park, wearing nothing. I don't remember the answer but I do remember that we ended up joining them at their house for a little while. No, nothing inappropriate happened. Geez, it's not like I hadn't seen it before.

The rest of my flashings have been via text message. For some reason men seem to think that if you are willing to give them your phone number then it's ok for them to send you pictures of their genitals. F.Y.I. all you men out there...it isn't.

What should I be when I grow up?

2009-09-27T09:14:00.001-07:00

No, I still haven't grown up...yes, I realize I should have by now. The thing is, if I am forced to do what I have been doing for the last 2 years for too much longer I am afraid my brain will atrophy and I will not be able to do anything else. So what should I do? I am seriously asking because I have no idea. I mean, I have ideas but none of them seem very practical. These days there are so few openings for queens, or even princesses, and living in Logan, Utah makes me an especially unlikely candidate for any of these positions.
If you are going to decide what I am going to be when I grow up, perhaps first you need to know what I am good at and what I am not good at.

THINGS I AM GOOD AT:
*sleeping
*shopping
*traveling
*giving back rubs
*giving my opinion, whether it is wanted or not
*collecting tacky ceramic dogs
*playing with animals

wow...that is a short list, and not very helpful

THINGS I AM NOT GOOD AT:
*cooking
*cleaning
*sewing
*being a mother
*math that is beyond a 9th grade level
*complicated computer stuff
*getting out of bed in the morning
*dealing with stupid people
*selling stuff
*making stuff
*fixing stuff
*watching animals suffer

I'm going to stop there, though I am sure I could go on.

So if anyone has any ideas about what I should be when I grow up, or if anyone has any sort of royalty position they would like to offer to me, please let me know.

Why Do They Call Me Merna?

2009-09-26T19:35:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't know me very well, or who don't know me as well as you thought you did, or or those of you who want to know me more than you've ever wanted anything in your life, I will explain to you why I am known as Merna.

My two best friends have always been my nieces, Jamie and Julie. One day when we were probably around 9 or 1o, we decided that we were going to come up with the ugliest names we could think of. The name I chose was Merna Caboo, Jamie was Agnes Zilch, and Julie was Joice Yuzam. My dad wanted to name me Myrna when I was born, after some old fart actress and that is why I chose that name. You may notice that Merna and Joice do not use the traditional spellings...we didn't know how to spell. At this time I would like to apologize to those of you named Agnes, Myrna, or Joyce....all beautiful names for beautiful women, I'm sure. Along with our ugly new names, we chose the ugliest colors we could think of. My color was orange, Agnes's was puke green, and Joice's was yellow. A few years later we added middle names, all of which were physical ailments or anomalies...Goiter, Adenoid, and Polyp. We had a lot of time on our hands as children. One of our favorite things to do was annoy everyone we came in contact with. The people we loved to annoy the most were the employees of the Cache Valley Mall. Back then our parents thought nothing of dropping us off at the mall for a few hours to get us out of their hair but if they had any idea what we were up to when we were there, I'm pretty sure they would have forbidden us from ever entering its doors again. First of all, we would wear the most bizarre things we could find. My mother,as the one who generally dropped us off, was fully aware of what we were wearing and said nothing. If my brother Ralph or his wife Marsha had had any idea, they never would have let Agnes and Joice near me ever again. We would find huge pieces of material in my parents' basement and "make" dresses out of them. Really we just folded a piece of material in half and cut a hole in the top and put it over our heads and then belted it. To accessorize we would add a clown wig or a white plastic cowboy hat, or something equally stylish. Once at the mall we would make a game out of annoying people. We would go to the candy counter at ZCMI and ask for one of each flavor of Jelly Belly, and then put it on my mom's credit card. We would take a jar of pennies and ask sales people to change it into quarters, nickels, or dimes and then ask them to turn it back into pennies. We made one poor ZCMI employee jump up and down so we could hear if he had any change in his pockets, which we would then beg him to give us...and he would do it! His name was Boyd but we called him Oye Oye Oye. I should be embarrassed about the shenanigans of my childhood but we had way too much fun for me to wish it hadn't happened.

This is an explanation of why I chose The Life and Times of Merna Caboo as the title of my blog...don't start calling me Merna if you have never done so before. It's a hideous name.

My Very First Post

2009-09-26T17:43:00.000-07:00

I always said that I would never have a blog. That changed yesterday when my friend Dave told me that if my blog got enough traffic, I could actually make money blogging. I hear you saying to yourself, "Who is this delusional woman who thinks she is going to make money blogging? What does she have to say that people are going to want to read?" Well, I will tell you.

My name isn't Merna...to a few select people I am Merna but my real name is Amy. Hello...it's a pleasure to have you meet me. I'm going to give you a tasty little bite of my life but I will go into detail, too much detail probably, in my later posts.

I am a single mother of 2 little boys. My ex-husband is an alcoholic loser who as of now isn't having a lot to do with the kids. We'll talk about him later, though he's kind of a depressing subject. Anyway, my kids, my dog Delila and I live in Logan, Utah. We live in a house we can no longer afford because my ex has decided he shouldn't have to pay child support or alimony anymore. He's kind of an idiot that way.

While I was married I was a stay-at-home mom and when I got divorced I suddenly had to find a job. There were a couple of problems with this situation...1) I had been a stay-at-home mom for 7 years, and 2) I have a college degree...in German. People weren't exactly clamoring to give me a job and living where I do made it even more difficult. So after filling out what seemed like a million applications, I finally found a job. At first I was happy just to be employed but more and more I feel like my prodigious intelligence and many talents are being wasted. I'm pretty sure that a trained monkey could do my job, though I've never had the opportunity to test that theory.

Let me take a minute to explain why I have a degree in German. I could never decide what I wanted to be when I grew up because I felt that my true calling in life was to be the ruler of a small-to-medium sized country. Unfortunately, one must always be born into those situations, unless one decides to take over the military and form a dictatorship, which I was hesitant to do. So I started college with no idea what I should study and to make the situation worse, my dad, a professor at my school, who I am only rarely on speaking terms with, signed himself up as my advisor. He had also changed my major from undeclared to Plants, Soils, and Biometeorology. Was this a hint that he wanted me to follow in his footsteps? Who cares? All I know is that I had an advisor that I couldn't speak to without getting into a big fat fight, and, though I didn't know what my major should be, I knew it had nothing to do with dirt. I got my generals out of the way and took German classes because I was already nearly fluent from what I had learned in High School and from living in Germany for a month. After my sophomore year I had the opportunity to go to Germany for 2 months, to an intensive German-language program at a place called the Goethe Institute (more about those 2 months later, I promise). I still didn't have a real major but I kept taking German classes because I was pretty freaking good at them. After 6 years in college I had taken every German class, most of the literature classes, several history and political science classes, as well as billiards and ballroom dance and I still had not decided what to major in. Then I got married...dun dun DUN! (that was creepy music, did you get that?) and my then husband pointed out that if I would just declare German as my major, I would be done. He also said that since I was going to be a stay-at-home mom anyway, it didn't really matter what my degree was in. I was pretty sick of school by this time and what he said made sense to me so I said "I am a German major and I am out of here!" and that was that. I know I said I would take a minute to explain that and, depending on how fast you read, that explanation likely took more that a minute. For that I am truly sorry.

Ok, so I am a divorced single mother with a useless degree and a job that my 7 year old son could do in his sleep. What else would you like to know about me? Oh! I know! I am the youngest of ten children. You may wonder why this is significant to who I am, to what makes me ME. Here are a few of the reasons: my parents are OLD. Most of my siblings are also old. My oldest brother just turned 61...I'm 25 years younger than he is...I'll let you do the math if you want to know how old I am. I have nieces that are the same age as me, one that is my best friend and one that is a huge pain in the ass, which you will hear about in detail later. I have great-nieces and nephews that are the same age as my children. With all of my siblings, their spouses, nieces and nephews and great-nieces and -nephews I am part of a HUGE family. Most of my family lives within a 10 minute drive and that makes it easy to get together a lot...no, seriously...A LOT. Every Sunday we go to my parents' house to gossip, eat whatever candy my dad has bought a case of that week, and listen to my mom yell, "What did she say?!" every few minutes (she's pretty deaf). We get together for every holiday, no matter how trivial. We are, on the outside, a very close family. In reality, we know very little about one anothers' personal lives.

I think that this is probably enough for my first post, and anyway I have to pee.