cleolinda: (Default)
cleolinda ([personal profile] cleolinda) wrote2008-05-27 08:41 pm

A couple of things I forgot to mention

You wanna know something hilarious? I had this Anne Taintor calendar last year (see icon for more of her work), and every month the text seemed to have some weird bearing on my life at the time. So I got another one this year, and it's been just the same... only more so. Here's April's text: "Of course it buys happiness!" It being money, of course. What did I spend most of April doing? Freaking out about our tax bill and our household debt. And then May rolled around: "Was she in love... or was it just allergies?" CREEPY. (I haven't mentioned the allergies since April, I don't think, but I've been sneezing constantly--so loudly yesterday that I scared the dogs.) So--okay, I have this superstition about not changing a calendar over until the first day of the month, or at least very late on the night of the last day of the previous month, but... I went ahead and looked at June:

A bride: "Love, honor, and... what?"

Now I'm just puzzled. And maybe a little concerned.

Oh, I almost forgot, my mother wanted me to tell y'all a story. Every summer, we have some kids on the street who decide it would be fun to play ding-dong-ditch. You know, ringing the doorbell and then running like hell before the door opens. Late at night, if you're these kids. This makes my stepfather very, very angry. One time he tried to hide in the bushes with a baseball bat to catch them, but they could totally see him so it didn't work. It's a very DAMN KIDS, GET OFF MY LAWN!! kind of thing.

So school let out for the summer last week, and what do you know, the doorbell rings one night last week. My mother goes to answer it and sees a gaggle of young girls--that's a fresh twist--booking it down the hill. But they go straight to the same house as always. (When asked, this neighbor always swears up and down that her kids and/or their friends didn't do it, or if they did, it was the friends who did it, not her kids. Her kids just tagged along. And then they all ran back to her house. Right.) But Mom's a little more slick than George. The front porch light's broken, so it wasn't on anyway, but the lights along the front walk were--so the kids had approached a dark and shadowy door, and the walk lights hadn't illuminated it any. They wouldn't notice anything, that is to say, if my mother stood in one of the recesses on either side of the door. (We have a tiny little roofed brick porch, you see--just big enough to stand in comfortably and not get wet if it's raining.)

So she waits. And she waits some more. Just chillaxes in the dark, in a nook beside the door, with the patience of the predator, for about, oh, forty-five minutes. And then she hears the girls coming back. She can hear them coming up from the driveway on the side of the house, up the walk and across the yard, and just as they round the little bend in the walk she steps out into the light like AN AVENGING ANGEL OF THE LORD and intones, "You'd better not ring our doorbell again tonight." The girls explode in this piercing choral shriek--I hear it all the way upstairs inside the house--and flee with a warning cry of, "IT'S THE LADYYYYYYYY!"

"Oh my God," my mother says when she comes back in, and she does a real live facepalm. "I'm That Crazy Old Lady Up the Hill."

"Maybe someday, if I'm really good," I say, with stars in my eyes, "someday I will be, too!"


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[identity profile] caersidi.livejournal.com 2008-05-28 10:21 am (UTC)(link)
I must ask for an Anne Taintor calendar next year.

[identity profile] wyldirishtric.livejournal.com 2008-05-28 11:28 am (UTC)(link)
Can I borrow your mother? We get ding-dong ditch here too, and it's really damn annoying.

Your mom is full of awesome. I give her internet cookies!

[identity profile] maetang.livejournal.com 2008-05-28 11:51 am (UTC)(link)
Your mother rocks!

[identity profile] bigeyedrabbit.livejournal.com 2008-05-28 12:12 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh! I love stories about your mother. I think if she joined forces with my mom, they could have the entire universe cowering before them.

[identity profile] heathrow.livejournal.com 2008-05-28 12:20 pm (UTC)(link)
I look forward to growing up into that lady. :)

[identity profile] oxymoron67.livejournal.com 2008-05-28 01:04 pm (UTC)(link)
Your mom rocks. While gender renders me incapable of being the "crazy old lady up the hill", I can't wait until I;m old enough to be "the crazy old guy down the street".

[identity profile] robyn-ma.livejournal.com 2008-05-28 01:40 pm (UTC)(link)
I wonder what happens when ding-dong-ditch happens to Gerald.

'My Doorbell Has Rung, And Yet There Is No One At The Door. Why Has This Transpired?'

[identity profile] pigsnicket.livejournal.com 2008-05-28 02:19 pm (UTC)(link)
Your mom is amazing! hee hee hee!

[identity profile] raynala.livejournal.com 2008-05-28 02:30 pm (UTC)(link)
Hahaha, that is a freaking beautiful story.

[identity profile] bludrummergrl.livejournal.com 2008-05-28 04:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Your mother ROCKS!
Edited 2008-05-28 16:13 (UTC)

[identity profile] pinstripe-bindi.livejournal.com 2008-05-28 05:08 pm (UTC)(link)
I totally want to be That Crazy Old Lady when I'm old. I look forward to it with great glee.

[identity profile] --kali--.livejournal.com 2008-05-28 05:42 pm (UTC)(link)
proof that your mother is quite awesome. And also very patient.
elbales: (Kaylee  :D)

[personal profile] elbales 2008-05-28 06:07 pm (UTC)(link)
Your mom is made of 100 percent pure, Grade-A win.

[identity profile] txvoodoo.livejournal.com 2008-05-28 06:53 pm (UTC)(link)
""Oh my God," my mother says when she comes back in, and she does a real live facepalm. "I'm That Crazy Old Lady Up the Hill."

"Maybe someday, if I'm really good," I say, with stars in my eyes, "someday I will be, too!" "


I'm totally That Lady, too.


The kids here, when school lets out, they ride around drinking beers. They don't want to have the evidence in their cars when they get home, so they throw the cans out their car windows. They like throwing them over our fence. One year, one can hit Cache (wee adorable black dog (http://pics.livejournal.com/txvoodoo/pic/0005qxpb)) and since he's got PTSD from having been abused as a puppy, he ran around SHRIEKING at top doggie volume.

This FIRED ME UP. I was totally in AVENGING ANGEL OF THE LORD (AND PUPPIES) mode. I secreted myself near the fence, behind a bush, waiting for cars to drive by. One did. I saw a window roll down, an arm come out, with beer can ready to launch. I sprang up, shouting "DO NOT THROW THAT CAN AT MY HOUSE. IT HIT MY DOG AND I'LL RIP OFF THE ARM OF THE NEXT PERSON WHO THROWS A CAN".

Car sped off.

A few nights later, I was out with the dogs again, but not visible from the street. I see a suspicious car slow down...a window roll down...and then I heard "dude, not THAT house. THE CRAZY LADY LIVES THERE."

I am That Crazy Lady. *beams*

[identity profile] angulique.livejournal.com 2008-05-28 08:02 pm (UTC)(link)
Your mother is AWESOME!

[identity profile] krazycat.livejournal.com 2008-05-28 08:17 pm (UTC)(link)
You should post more mother stories. They are awesome.
karintheswede: (Default)

[personal profile] karintheswede 2008-05-28 08:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Your mother is my hero.

[identity profile] nymphy.livejournal.com 2008-05-28 09:38 pm (UTC)(link)
one day....

i want to have a lawn where i can scare kids off it too! And maybe egg them....but fun!

[identity profile] foresthouse.livejournal.com 2008-05-28 09:42 pm (UTC)(link)
Your mom continues to be made of Win.

Also, is it me, or are the allergies KILLER this year? I had a couple of days this weekend where I could hardly move for sneezing. I must have used up a whole box of tissues!!

[identity profile] ilanka.livejournal.com 2008-05-28 10:21 pm (UTC)(link)
I love your mom =) Hopefully, one day I can be like her, too =P

[identity profile] emisi.livejournal.com 2008-05-28 10:25 pm (UTC)(link)
Your mom rocks. Maybe next time she should get a bucket of water and wait to drench them. That would be hilarious.
ext_39640: Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls (Default)

[identity profile] 4492.livejournal.com 2008-05-28 11:45 pm (UTC)(link)
I'mma agree with everyone else here and say - your mom ROCKS. BIG TIME.
I want to see her team up with Gerald and fight crime.

Also - loving everyones crazy old lady stories!

[identity profile] snapdragon76.livejournal.com 2008-05-29 12:07 am (UTC)(link)
Your mom rocks.

[identity profile] stringertheory.livejournal.com 2008-05-29 12:29 am (UTC)(link)
I love your mother.

Can I be her when I grow up? She can be between my Cate Blanchett and Helen Mirren stages.

Word.
Edited 2008-05-29 00:31 (UTC)

[identity profile] patchofsky.livejournal.com 2008-05-29 02:21 am (UTC)(link)
Not that it hasn't been said a-plenty already, but your mom = win!

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