Dear Depression,

Dear Depression,


Apparently I toyed with a tiny version of you early this week.  That is, my friend Heather told me at dinner last night that I toyed with you, depression, based on my actions.  


This week was Spring Break.  I was off all week long.  Evidently I start toying with depression when my mind is idle.  Work...chaos...life...those things keep me sane.


So what behaviors of mine constitute a diagnosis of depression from Heather?  Uh...YouTube.  I was describing to Heather that I watched the video of Jonathan and Charlotte and that I cried, albeit only a few tears, because I was so happy for Jonathan.  Since the story broke I've only watched the video 3 times!  Geez.


This kind of depressing behavior segues into me surfing the news sites and finding the story/video of blind dog rescued and given sight that really made me cry and start surfing ASPCA site for dogs to adopt.  WHICH led me to google the video of Christian the lion...you know the one reunited with the men who raised him. The lion video ALWAYS makes me cry.


This is the point of the conversation in which Heather stops me and asks me if I was feeling a little depressed this week.  Apparently I watch heartwarming videos on YouTube and news sites when I need a little pick me up.


Thank goodness I am going back to work on Monday.




Careless

Dear Marriage,

Dear Marriage,


Thank you for 15.8 years.  Although we have not yet parted our ways, I thank you immensely for all the memories and HUGE chunk of my life that I have devoted to you.  This last year of my life has been "very difficult" to say the least.  But you know what?  I am surviving. Only through the guidance of God, conversations with my sister (how she repeatedly talks me off the ledge) and support of my friends.   And in these last few months it is as if I am opening my eyes for the first time in years and breaking through your fog.


I feel good!  Woot!  And we are friendly.  For instance, I went out to lunch with my husband last weekend and we enjoyed ourselves.  That feeling that I had lost a best friend has disappeared and I have a great relationship with my husband again.  Weird, huh?  A very different relationship from what I ever imagined, but a happy one.


And things are only getting better.  Thank you.


Careless.

Dear Local City Schools,

Dear Local City Schools,


Thank you for the pleasure of driving my daughter to school each morning.  I really appreciate the fact that you have recently taken away the high school bussing, because you don't know how to manage your budget.  Next up?  I "get" to pay $300 per child per sport to give my children the privilege for playing public school sports.  IN PUBLIC SCHOOL!


Let us take a step back.  I currently pay OVER $7000 a year in property taxes.  Seriously?  $7000!  I understand that our local public schools have been rated as "excellent" for over ten years.  But $7 G's?  I pay $7G's and you can't drive my kid to and from school?  You would like me to pass a levy that raises my property taxes ANOTHER $1800 per year.  WTF!?


Unless I fork out another $1800 my children will loose their gifted classes, Media Teachers (Not the Librarians!), and my middle school child will loose his bussing.


So now, like all the other schlumps in this town, I have the privilege, ne' the honor, of wasting 45 minutes each morning driving my gorgeous girl and the two neighbor boys the 2 congested, traffic at a stand still miles, to school.


I need to move.


Hugs and long kisses in the backseat,


Careless

Dear Driver,

Dear Driver,


Thank you so much for your generosity to others, you really are a gem.  You are so kind to completely stop entire lines of traffic and let oncoming traffic make left turns in front of you because you cannot seem to recall the rules of the road, even though you only took your initial drivers exam only a few years ago.


Why is it that people seem so inept at relating to other humans, but put them behind the wheel of a car and some of them turn into over accommodating, stop traffic, psychos that forget all rules and right of ways of the roads?


Hugs and impatient kisses,
Careless

Dear Lady,

Dear Lady,


Thank you so much for your kind offering of toilet paper, but I don't know you and where your hand has been.  You, my new friend from Kentucky, are very sweet, but since we don't know each other you would never know that (shhhh), I  am a germaphobe, and unless I am related to someone, I wouldn't have a conversation with anyone seated next to me in the adjacent bathroom stall.  It's just me.  Call me crazy.  And, no, I'm not planning on running for Congress, or visiting the Minneapolis airport in the near future.  I just have a problem with germs.


Thank you, too, lady from Kentucky, for your pleasant "in line waiting"conversation in the very small bathroom in the Chick-fil-A.  I could tell that you "seemed" normal with your "MONTANA!" sweatshirt, and your concern for your college aged daughter, but, still, I would rather not use toilet paper than accept a pass from under a dirty stall wall.


Lady, you are well intentioned.  It's just me.  I have issues.  I'm still trying to get the image of your hand coming at me from under the wall, out of my head.  


Hugs and Chicken-y kisses,


Careless

Dear Next Door Neighbors,

Dear Next Door Neighbors,

Thank you so much for single handedly supporting the economy with your Halloween spending and DP and L usage.  I, too, had to support the economy and buy black out curtains for my windows so I could sleep.

Let me guess.  Your favorite movie is Christmas Vacation.  Because I think I may write National Lampoon and tell them to sue you for copyright infringement (whatever that is), because Halloween Vacation?  That is what your yard looks like.  But unlike the happy go lucky Santa characters, and smiling reindeer, you chose to put out your full size cocooned body hanging upside down from a tree.  Sure, there are smiling witches, hundreds of pumpkins, and Casper-ish ghosts, but the bodies hanging from trees always make me cross to the other side of the street during my pre-dawn dog walking.

The beacon illuminating the witch to make a pretty shadow on the side of your house?  Shines into my house illuminating the entire top floor.

I love how you had the forethought to think about taking weird odds and ends, with no obvious theme, saving them for years in big boxes, and then dumping those boxes of crap on your front lawn.  It is now suddenly clear to me why you have a STUFFED FULL three car garage AND a barn on your property. I think after I write National Lampoon, I may call Hoarders and out you.

Hugs and spooky kisses,

Careless

Dear Eyes Part Two,

Dear Eyes,


I know that you are feeling left out in the bling department, after all my teeth have had some recent bling, my butt has had some new pants, my feet new shoes, and my hair a new cut...but new glasses?  Come on!


Really?  We can't get by with reading glasses from CVS?  You have to go all "two different PROGRESSIVE lenses" on me?  Seriously?  I know that I am 42 now, but progressives?  That is just a nice way to say bifocals (like reader Eileen said).  


First my hair decides to go all grey, then my hips decide that exercising is so passe', now YOU, eyes, are requesting progressive lenses?  Do I have any dignity left?


Then...I start looking at frames, that I have to wear EVERYDAY, and everything is all bedazzled.  What on earth would indicate that a 40-something year old woman would want rhinestones on the sides of her glasses?  What in the hell says Hannah Montana like bedazzled hearts?  Butterflies?  Then there are the cheetah prints, Coach logos (no thank you), and gold lame'd circles.  Seriously?


Of coarse the non-bedazzled ones are the "Vera Wang" glasses and the $400 danish something or others.


And how am I supposed to make a choice like this when my eyes are dilated?  It is a racket, I tell you a racket!  So for now, no glasses.


Blurry kisses,


Careless

Dear Eyes,

Dear Eyes,


Thank you so much for forty two years of service.  Why are you failing me now?  First there was the reading glasses purchased at the airport last year, to help me get by and read the fine print.  Now it's the fact that I can't see for crap when my son holds something up for me to gaze upon, unless it is 5 feet or more from my face.  I can't read labels.  I can't read the newspaper, only the ads.


Your contribution to my well being is weakening.  After trying to thread the needle on my sewing machine today I gave up and came upstairs and made myself an appointment.  An eye appointment.  Gasp.  I am voluntarily going to the doctor IT'S THAT BAD.  After all these years of protecting you and feeding you carrots, this is what I get.


Blurry kisses,


Careless

Dear Scary Guy,

Dear Scary Guy,


Thank you for scaring the sh*t out of me each morning while I am walking my dog.  I really appreciate how the only indications I have that you are lurking, are the glowing tip of your cigarette, and the way my dog starts FREAKING out when she smells you and your dogs.


Thank you, too, for eerily stopping and waiting while I am 100 feet away, and holding that pose until I am 100 feet in the opposite direction.  The way you dress head to toe in dark colors?  Just adds to your extra special persona.  AND the fact that you have two ENORMOUS black dogs on scary choke leashes, that look like the demon dogs of hell, also does not convey "safe" person in my mind.  Keep in mind, Scary Guy, that my dog may look like a 9 pound fur ball, but she'd rip your face off if you came close to me.  I swear.


We live in a nice neighborhood Scary Guy.  I would hope that you have some sort of livelihood that did not include the words "black-market" or "organs."  I have informed key witnesses (my husband) that if I turn up dead in the creek, YOU are the first person that he should question after the appropriate time of weeping and mourning.


Air hugs and kisses,


Careless

Dear Mr. Superintendent,

Dear Mr. Superintendent,

Thank you so much for your advanced thought in today's pre-school activities and the havoc they would wreck on my driving and scheduling.  I really appreciate how you planned middle school AND high school orientation for EXACTLY THE SAME times.  I guess ours is the only family in our district that has both an incoming freshman and an incoming 6th grader.

Both my children came home completely overwhelmed and freaked out that they were never going to make it from first period to second period and so on.

Not only did you plan the 3 orientation events (two middle schools and one high school) at the same time, but you created a traffic jam around the area of each school in question so as to make attending both impossible, picking up both your children impossible, and just plain a MESS in our usually traffic-less Stepford community.  It took me a half and hour to travel the distance of a mile this morning because of your orientation geniousity and planning.

While we are on the subject of your mad planning skilz, let me also commend you for your let's get rid of half-day public Kindergarten and replace it with full day only on EITHER Mondays/Thursdays and every other Wednesdays  OR Tuesdays/Fridays and every other Wednesdays except in the month of November.  What? you are asking?  What schedule is this?  That is exactly what everyone in our community is asking.  WTF?  Yes, this new Kindergarten policy has provided me with a job, but can we all just say what WERE you smoking when you devised this?  Not one person understands the schedule and how you devised this.

I understand that this master plan of yours saves the district money because of bussing, but seriously?  What is the dollar amount?  Can I write you a check?

Sorry, not your biggest fan at the moment.

XOXOXOX,

Careless

Dear Crazy "Be Kind to Dead Animals" person,

Dear Crazy "Be Kind to Dead Animals" person,


Thank you so much for being so kind to the road kill right outside my neighborhood.  I understand  the type of person you are, but not why you did what you did.  You are very kind to animals.  You care.  But, being kind to road kill?  This is the circle of life baby.  Be an adult.


The curious way you tucked the sheet of cardboard around the giant dead possum in the street was truly touching, but it also made the poor thing look like it was taking a nap in the middle of the street.   His (?) little head was poking out of the cardboard like you had swaddled him in his blankie, NOT like he was dead and waiting for Mike Rowe's Dirty Jobs friends to come and pick him up.  As my favorite line in Such A Pretty Fat said, the possum was taking a "nap on the side of the road after eating his jelly donut."


I am wondering about your intentions.  I have had some over the top pet-owner friends that shower their pets with treats, carry them around in purses, and send them to daycare while they are at work, but none of them pampered the road kill.  Please explain.


Hugs and Jelly Donut kisses,


Careless

Dear Forties,

Dear Forties,


Thank you so much for kicking my butt lately.  It is so kind of you to remind me on a daily, no hourly basis, that things are just getting warmed up and I have 8.3 more years of you.


Last night when I went to the Sushi bar with some friends of mine (in their early twenties) it was really great that you made me pull out the grandma reading glasses so I could read the sushi menu.  Then, when we left the restaurant you stung me again when the girls (frankly anyone female under 25 at this point can be called a girl) made the comment about how we should meet again because hanging out with me on a slow night for them wasn't so bad since I was twice their age.  Ouch.


This week as I have dropped my child off for VBS each morning you have slapped me in the face with the fact that I am BY FAR the oldest parent with a participating child.  Yes, Bubba is my youngest, but I still have some time left before I feel like I am twice the age of the girls there too, don't I?


Daily you remind me you are still here and laughing in my face when I run, get out of a chair, climb stairs, rise from sleeping, or any other gross motor movements.  Are you kidding me?  Please, please tell me that your good friend Fifty will be kinder to me.


First you took my muscles, and gave me aches and pains in return, then you took my eyesight and saddled me with reading glasses, then you took my smooth skin and gave me fly hairs growing out of my back, now you are taking the idea that I am young and fun, and turning me into an old hermit that would rather sit at home and read, sew and watch t.v., than go out to a social event.  What is next, Forty?  What is next?


Hugs and hairy kisses,


Careless

Dear Betty Crocker,

Dear Betty,


Thank you so much for making such a delicious product.  Words cannot express the amount of love I have for your fudge brownies.  The happy red box.  The easy prep.  The mouth watering result.  I dream of your brownies.  I plan events just so I can make your brownies.  You are the cause of many hours and miles on the bike and on the street running off your yummy product.


If asked my favorite food, the answer is ALWAYS Betty Crocker brownies.  NOT Ghirardelli.  NOT Hersheys...Dunken Hines...Pillsbury.  None of those brands can match your taste, your perfect crunch and crackle.  No bakery can produce such a product as yours, and God forbid someone adds a nut to a brownie and tries to offer it to me.


As a gift, last year, I received an all edge brownie pan and it has changed my life.  The problem is that the all edge brownie pan I now own has three channels for brownie.  There are four of us in our family, and unless one of us is gone, there isn't a good way to break up three rows for four people.


Once the red fudge brownie box is in my pantry it calls to me.  It beckons me to make it.  To eat it.  I can't leave the box alone, it gets lonely.  I get lonely.


Hugs and fudgey kisses,


Careless

Dear Axe Body Spray,

Dear Axe,


Yesterday when Hannah's new friend Bryce got in the car, please do NOT take offense that Sam asked what smelled.  Sam did not mean to accuse you, Axe, and imply that something was malodorous.  


Leave it to little brothers, Axe...come on, you have got to understand that there was no harm intended on your good teen product name.  Bryce smells good, and the sudden change in the car from old farts and buffalo breath, to nice clean boy smell, was just a sudden shock.


Bryce "claims" that it wasn't you, Axe, but just soap and pit stick, but we know the truth.  Teenage boys really stink.  Puberty does funny things to their smell.  Your product is a godsend, Axe, but PLEASE, PLEASE remind them that it is best in small doses. 


Thank you, Axe.  From all of us.


Hugs and stinky kisses,


Careless

Dear Bank Teller,

Dear Bank Teller,


Thank you so much for putting up with my 10 year old.  You were very kind and patient with us when we showed up to change his allowance money into singles.  You, smartly, counted all twenty (2 months worth of allowance) ones back to him so he would not think you "jipped him on anything."  


Thank you, too, for patiently answering his questions about how many ones you keep on hand at the bank, in case he wanted more, and you very smartly commented on how thick 20 ones looked in his wallet.  You, my friend, are a pro.


Unfortunately normally I think your bank sucks.  Your bank has personally screwed me and my husband too many times to count and it makes my blood boil just to walk into your lobby.  But you, nice bank teller lady, redeemed your employer just a little today.  A TINY bit.


And, no, Bubba is not going to a strip club, which is I am sure what you were thinking when he asked for his bills to be broken into ones, he is not longer extended credit at the Bank of Mom, and has to pay for his itunes apps as I type in the itunes password.  Just in case you were wondering.


Hugs and single kisses,


Careless

Dear Recumbent Bike,

Dear Recumbent Bike,


Thank you so much for kicking my butt every morning.  Ever since I ran 5 miles last Wednesday, I haven't been able to walk, ne sit in a chair for extended periods of time, but you, exercise bike, have made it so I can still burn some calories.


The strange thing, exercise bike, is that you make me sweat weird.  Don't take this the wrong way, but why does sweat drip down my arms like James Brooks in Broadcast News when I am riding a bike?  It seems that my arms, lying flaccid at my sides get more action than my quads.


And can I say that you are not very helpful when you flash my results at the end of my session and you give me some weak number like 300 calories burned when I have just worked my butt off for 40 minutes!  I am expecting better numbers from you, bike!  How am I supposed to work off whole pans of brownies and, let's face it, 5 or 6 donuts when YOU can't make that burned calorie number higher?


Well, thank you exercise bike.  I appreciate all you have done for me, now I am going to go and make you my bitch.


Hugs and sweaty kisses,


Careless

Dear Hasbro,

Dear Hasbro,


Thank you for making the Nerf products.  This week we purchased ANOTHER one of your Nerf guns for a birthday present, the gift of choice of young Samuel.  Bubba is a huge fan of Nerf and owns 4 or 5 of your rapid fire guns.


This evening, upon dropping my child off at her crushes' house, Hannah and her crush went and showed their age and innocence by running off to play Nerf war with their younger brother and sister.  Yes, the war was played in the dark, in the basement, and there were times that Hannah and her boy crush were alone in the dark...when she spills her guts to me tonight I'll ask if boy-crush FINALLY made his move and held her hand, or, gasp, kissed her.  


But Nerf, it made my heart swell with the fact that there was a little "kid" left in her after all.  Thank you for that.


Hugs and rapid fire (hopeful) kisses,


Careless

Dear Neighbors,

Dear Neighbors,


Thank you for your warm and generous hospitality to others.  It is so wonderful that you beautified your yard with an in ground pool and volleyball court recently, and that you have a constant stream of gangly teenage boys in droopy swim trunks trying to woo your gorgeous blonde twin high school girls.  


We have had such a long and rainy spring then surprisingly hot spring, it has been a welcome change to have had this week of 75 degree days and 55 degree nights.  Now that these "perfect" days and nights are here and I do NOT have to have my air conditioner running full blast all night, I am sleeping with my windows open.  Last night, while trying to get to sleep from 10:30-11:30 it was a little frustrating to have the beach bums holding a raucous game of volleyball outside my window.  No, I am not employed.  No, I am not a senior citizen.  I just like to go to bed by 10 most nights.  And, might I say, that if I am horizontal, I am fast asleep within seconds, which is a gift AND a curse, but I digress.


Thank you, mainly, for your privacy fence so us lookey-loos can't see you having all these parties.  EVERY night.  EVERY weekend.  With NO invitation to us common folk outside the walls of your newly constructed compound, mind you.  And thank you, too, for said privacy fence so I don't have to look at my child's teachers and former teachers in their bathing suits, since you work at the Elementary and are BFF's with every teacher my son has ever had for some strange coincidence.  Better seen than heard in this instance.  My retinas thank you.


Hugs and wet kisses,


Careless

The Chilean People

Dearest People of Chili,


Thank you so much for making my introduction to your ingenious product such a smooth and buttery one.  I am newly acquainted with your product and am quite happy I took the chance and purchased your sinfully yummy drink.


I am quite finicky and have had some poor reactions to other products in the past, but your red ambrosia soothed me after a long days work moving 8 tons of dirt in our yard.


Whilst I have been a fan of the Australians in recent years, your sheer genius in producing such an excellent product has demoted the great people of Australia to second place in my book.  I am now hearing the great chants of "Malbec....Malbec...Malbec" in my dreams.


Keep up the good work!


Hugs and drunk kisses,


Careless

Dear Super Mom,

Thank you so much for allowing your child to come over to our house for a school project/play date on Thursday.  I know, I know, that I must have seemed a little unrealistic when I suggested the two boys could get together after school sometime, but I real appreciate the way you went through Super Kid's schedule and found an hour of time for Bubba.  I was so kind of you to be able to fit Bubba in only 10 days from the original request.  


I understand what with guitar lessons, softball, other play dates, and all the other myriad of tasks you set out for your son that you plan each hour of your child's life with a Daytimer.  Who wouldn't?


I also appreciate how over prepared Super Kid was for the 58 minutes Bubba was allowed to spend with him.  It was so kind of Super Kid to bring an electric guitar, amp and music to my house to really show Bubba his mad guitar skills and make Bubba feel like the idiot child.


The best part of the whole 58 minutes for me, though, was when you corrected me.  THAT was really kind of you to show me the error of my thinking.  In front of my child.  I really needed to be reprimanded.  Let's make sure we get together again soon.  I'll check my calendar and get back to you.


Hugs and sloppy kisses,


Careless