Tag trailer trash

Welcome To Texas, You’re Pregnant

Heather Christena Schmidt 7 Comments

I never thought I’d say this, but I miss California.

I miss the way you can go outside and not break into a sweat from the sheer heat and humidity, that is both oppressive and shocking – given that it’s only the beginning of April.

I miss our salads. Oh do I miss our salads with our hints of gorgonzola and our notes of fennel. I miss the ability to add beets or carrots to your salad, and I miss the endless options that are both fat free and gluten/soy/sugar tolerant. I miss our sprouts.

I actually miss our pizza. Yes, I said it. I miss our pizza. It may not be Chicago-style pizza, but it’s certainly pizza. I don’t even know what it is they’re serving out here in the heart of the Lone Star State.

I crave the way we all know that Los Angeles drivers suck. I crave our acceptance of this suck-age, as if we all understand and therefore abide by the hidden rules that come with such an acceptance. Like this one: drive like an asshole in your own lane.

Because let’s face it: Texas drivers don’t realize how horrible they are at it, and because of this it takes 3 hours to go 6 miles, and you almost get killed at least 15 times.

I am dying to walk outside and not be attacked by a bug I cannot identify. I want to go a day without a mosquito bite. I need to not find hundreds of bugs squashed in the parking lot. I’m over seeing cockroaches squished with their legs in the air.

I miss skinny jeans, even on men. I miss our attitude glasses, because as ridiculous and stupid as they look it is at least a sign that people are reading. I would kill to go outside and not break out in a sweat because any amount of clothing is too much in this humidity.

I need things to do. I crave them. I need museums that aren’t rip offs. Open spaces that I can walk in and enjoy nature through, and not be accompanied by 500 other douchebags talking on their cellphones and running into people. I need things besides watching television and sitting in traffic to get to the local mall-slash-eatery-slash gun store.

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I’ve been in Texas for a full week now. And I hate it. This isn’t to say to other Texans that you are awful for choosing this place, I’m sure you find some redeeming qualities to this cesspool. But to me – well, it’s a dump. At least in the suburbs of Houston, where I’m holed up while my daughter visits her biological father down the highway. I have been in a lot of truly contemptible places in my life, and this is by far the worst.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that this is the most miserable place I’ve ever been. I would go as far as to say that. It’s like a total trash dump covered in some nice buildings and a lot of people.

Oh my God, so many people.

And while I know that in Texas a lot of locals pride themselves on their sense of hospitality and decency, the community I am in holds some of the rudest, most horrible people I have ever encountered. Yesterday I went to the nail salon for a manicure and pedicure, and while there saw women literally yell at the innocent nail technicians, for no reason at all. None. Today I went to get dinner only to find that the first two places I hit up had no one stationed to seat people. After a considerable wait at each of the two places (continuing to stand there to be seated), I went to a third – where I got out of the car to find a used pregnancy test on the ground in the parking lot.

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Now I am not always the biggest fan of California. And I am homesick and ready to pack my shit and move back to Chicago pretty much every day of the year. But my God can I not wait to get back home. To my sunshine and my cooler temps. To my salads not covered in 20 pounds of beef. To my people that are either polite, or at the very least so wrapped up in their own lives that their rudeness doesn’t spill over into my space.

Welcome to Texas, you’re pregnant. Pregnant with a sense of horror, misery, and disbelief that no other state could produce quite the same. I miss California. Either this place really is that bad, or I don’t even know myself anymore.

Sorry fellas, but I’m taken… (a video blog book trailer)

Heather Christena Schmidt 4 Comments

When you watch this video, you’re going to fall into one of two camps:

1) You will be a man and find yourself kicking yourself for not having found me before I met and married my husband; or,

2) You will be a woman and find yourself taking notes on how someone can be as glamorous and classy as I.

I’m just kidding, you’re going to think I’m a slovenly hillbilly with zero class and a complete lack of manners. If you do, the point will have been made.

For the record, I never realized this, but belching loudly is actually a really hard thing to do. At least for me.

Are you intrigued enough to watch the video?

Hurry up and watch before I lose my gumption and take it down. I mean the Internet is – like – forever-ever, and this is perhaps the most humiliating public display I have ever made, and on so many levels.

In case you missed the memo, I have another humor book coming out, March 1st. Prepare yourselves with this book trailer…

My Horrible Evening At Pukeplantation

Heather Christena Schmidt 14 Comments

Pukeplantation

Am I overwhelming you most faithful blog followers with too many posts? This is something like the fourth in two days, I’ve just really had a lot to say these past few days. I promise, I’ll slow down (maybe).

Went to dinner this evening. Just me and Pookies, which meant that it ended up being somewhere kid-friendly. I wasn’t in the mood for Denny’s or Panera Bread, though; and fast food was of course out of the question. So Souplantation it was.

Now I do typically enjoy Souplantation. Typically. We used to live in the heart of Los Angeles and had a really nice one. One that had everything, plus amazing customer service. Their space was bigger than any restaurant I had ever been to. And it was walking distance from our apartment – just awesome.

The Souplantation out here is a far cry from that; although it was still decent up until recently. In the last few months, though, it’s become a little ghetto. Or perhaps more accurately, it’s become proof that the town in which we live is going downhill. More white trash. A lot people running into each other and acting like total pigs. Basically the entire swath of the state of nature, all packed into one tiny restaurant with a 210 person capacity.

Sad to say, today was the last time we will ever go to that Souplantation. By the time you get through our experience, hopefully you will support my decision.

4:45 pm

We cruise into the Souplantation parking lot. It looks like the dinner rush is starting to get there a little early, but then again it shares the parking lot with Ross – dress for less – so maybe it’s just overflow from early high school prom shoppers.

4:50 pm

Finally inside, we are beginning to make our way through the line. A family of four has come in behind us. The husband is holding a baby that looks like it hasn’t been bathed. Ever. The husband begins sneezing. I start to push Pookies a little quicker down the salad bar. I notice the fourth in their group is a teenager. He has blue hair, in a flock of seagulls cut. He has handcuffs hanging from his belt buckle. Maybe he’s just broken out of jail. He starts sneezing too.

5:00 pm

I’ve paid and we’ve found a booth as far away from the rest of the people that are already seated. Kids are screaming and running around. The family of four sit near us shortly afterwards.

5:05 pm

I go to get drinks. The drink bar is in complete view of the table, so I go alone. The kid with the blue flock of seagulls hair cut walks past our table, and it looks like he has said something. I rush back to the table.

5:15 pm

Finishing up the salad and it’s starting to get packed. People are sneezing, coughing, belching, and ripping ass everywhere. The woman sitting at the table next to us actually lifted her ass to blow one – I kid you faithful blog followers not. You know I’m not a fan of ass jokes, this is really happening.

I decide we are not at Souplantation. We are at Pukeplantation. Time to get some Pukeplantation soup.

5:18 pm

I’m waiting at the soup bar to get the chicken and alphabet soup. There is a rather portly man in a hooded sweatshirt and khaki shorts filling four bowls. I assume he is getting them for multiple people. Or that he really likes the soup. In spite of all the belching and burping and blowing and puking and sneezing and snotting, I will admit – that soup is tasty. He is taking forever though, so people are getting in line behind me, and I inch a little closer. He turns around and rips a belch so loud, so ferocious, that I swear I see his lips quiver. Like Barney on The Simpsons. Or worse.

As I’m dishing up the soup, I realize he’s belched a piece of chewed food onto my sweater.

5:25 pm

I have had about enough of this place. Having totally lost my appetite wiping the stranger’s food off my sweater, I sit and wait quietly. The lady sitting next to us rips another one. Her husband tells stories about “Rod in seasonal” grabbing his ass. He’s wearing a Home Depot polo shirt. I assume he works at the Home Depot in the same shopping complex. I make a mental note never to go this Pukeplantation or that Rip Ass-Grab Butt Depot ever again. I consider running to my car and speeding home to drink heavily and forget about this place.

But the deal with Pukeplantation is that dessert is always a given. Fat free frozen yogurt is a healthy way to dessert anyway. I sprint to the yogurt machine so that we can leave soon.

5:32 pm

There are four exits from this particular Pukeplantation. The one closest to us is in the back of the building and we are parked in the front, but rather than wade our way through the belches and boogers of this rancid state of hillbilly nature, we walk out the back door and just traipse around the entire building to get to my car.

While walking I am informed of what transpired when the blue haired flock of seagulls, jail break walked past our booth while I was getting our drinks. As he walked by, with his handcuffs clanging against his leg, he leaned over and said “hey … your mom’s hot …”

From there we ran to my Jeep.

We will not be returning to that place. Ever. Again. Would you? It concerns me that so many of these experiences are cropping up more and more around my community. Is it just that I’m hanging out in the wrong places? Or is pigslob hillbilly becoming the status quo?

MWF Seeking New TTF

Heather Christena Schmidt 17 Comments

I wanted to do SWF, because that would sound more like that creepy Single White Female-movie with Jodie Foster correction: Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh (you are so right, Jeremy … I have no clue about movies). But then my husband would get upset and/or confused; and my mother in law would call. We would have massive levels of family drama and the gossip train would continue on down the rail line.

You know the drill.

So I stuck with MWF – Married White Female. I always look for MWF in the personal ads to see if anyone ever actually puts an ad in the personals when they are married. What would they look for? Friends? That’s sort of sad if you put out a personal ad for friends. I’m sorry if I just offended any of you faithful blog followers, I just think there would be better places to find friends – Meetup.com for example. I always thought that if anyone that was an MWF or an MWM or even an MBF, MBM, or any other designation starting with the Married, chose to put out a personal ad, they were looking for something kinky.

Kinky. Dirty. And nothing we want anything to do with.

So now that I’ve digressed for way more than I should have, let’s get to the point. I’m an MWF Seeking a New TTF. What’s a TTF you ask?

Trailer. Trash. Family.

Reason #1

My mom is the trailer park queen. She never used to be this way. No, she used to be normal. Pinafores and frocks and cookies at Christmas and shit. Then something snapped in her brain and she started digging at the bottom of the barrel for love, and other assorted frills.

We’ve discussed all of this before.

As a result of her being a trailer park queen, she inserts as much bullshit drama into every single moment of life as she can possibly manage. The most recent was that her hillbilly husband had skin cancer then he didn’t then he did then he didn’t then he was going to start chemo, now he doesn’t again. What’s the fucking truth?

Now she says she has some spinal problem that is going to require surgery before the end of the year. It all sort of came out of nowhere, and I’ll see her walking normally until she sees someone is watching her, then the acting and dramatics come out. She told me recently too that I haven’t a clue what back pain is like.

Have I mentioned I had spinal fusion for scoliosis when I was only 13? That was a 14 hour operation.

Reason #2

Over the years, my mom has poisoned her family members’ minds to believe that I am some awful person that lies all the time. It’s almost as if she is projecting her own issues onto me to them to create some weird, fucked up family drama.

When I was living with my boyfriend and he beat the shit out of me (and you faithful blog followers know I do not exaggerate – he beat the living shit out of me), my mom got upset because she loved him so much. So she told her whole family that I made the whole thing up and that he was just such a nice guy.

A couple years ago, we had a birthday party for Pookie and no one from my mom’s family came to it. She didn’t either, which was kind of messed up; but it was only later that I learned that the reason for this is that she hadn’t communicated it to anyone as she said she would. They hosted their own party – hours away, near my aunt’s house – and didn’t invite me or my husband. When we didn’t show (obviously, because we thought it was just a grandma day playdate), she told everyone that we were bad parents and just didn’t have the time to be bothered.

Sadly, those dumbasses are just as bad as her; so they buy into all of it. When I’ve talked to them about it, they’ve told me they have “allegiance” to my trailer trash mom. Nonetheless, I have continued to attempt to extend the olive branch. It’s hard living here and having no family of my own except my dad.

Well the olive branch can extend no more, after I got this comment this morning from my cousin, whose wife had already RSVP’d a simple “no” to my kid’s birthday party. (I should mention we have driven down to every one of their little bastard kid’s parties for as many years as I can remember):

“Maybe if you would show up once in a while for family events, we’d show up for yours.”

You don’t say? I seem to remember I just went to your ugly ass kid’s birthday party over two hours away just last month.

In Conclusion

Hillbillies are way overrated. For some reason they’re really into fightin’ and shootin’ and gossipin’ and lyin’ and trailer parkin’ and I’m just not really into that shit. If you are, cool. If you like to four-by, post videos of yourself on the toilet on YouTube, screw your sister, and other assorted things only the most hillbilly of all mountain williams do, far be it for me to stop your fun.

I really wanted to try and nurture this stupid relationship for the sake of being able to continue to see my grandparents, but then sometimes they act just as bad and nasty. I’m not sure what I’ll do about them, but in the meantime it seems that my trailer trash mom and her fucked up family have complete control over grandma and grandpa anyway at this point.

So I guess really it isn’t MWF seeking new TTF. Because the trailer trash part of that is a little much at this point. It’s MWF seeking new F. The F is for Family. Or maybe, because I do have a family, just thousands of miles away, it’s really MWF says FTTTS. The FT is for Fuck That Trailer Trash Shit.

Hottie Maintenance Man and My Trailer Trash Mom’s Crap Pants: A Love Story

Heather Christena Schmidt 40 Comments

Those of you that follow me on Twitter and Facebook (if you aren’t, well why the hell not?) have seen me bitching and griping all morning about how my mom was supposed to come over for breakfast around 10 o’clock and did not show up. Well, she eventually showed up, and in her grande, late entrance proved yet again why she earned her title Trailer Trash Mom.

A quick rundown on my Trailer Trash Mom, for those of you that are relatively new faithful blog followers. My mom left my dad when I was eight, and she high-tailed it shortly thereafter across the country to be the “other woman” for a guy she met at a bar. My dad raised me alone, with regular visits to see my mom in which I was subjected to one boyfriend after another, and slowly watched her descend from normal person to crazy hillbilly. When my dad and I moved to California, she was still living near Seattle, but decided that her dream of moving back to California where she grew up would then be coming true. That’s right, she followed us and started using us in every way she possibly could. In my adulthood, she’s lied to me, she’s stolen from me, she’s mooched off of me, she’s flaked out on me time and again, she’s eloped with some hillbilly she hardly knows, and she’s basically become a wart on the asshole of society. Many of you are probably asking: whycome you still have a relationship with this woman, B(itch)? Simple: my grandparents think she’s the greatest thing next to stick butter, so I need to let her hang around (within reason) for the sake of having a relationship with them while they are still alive. And plus, after all is said and done, the stories that come out of interactions with her have me rolling around, laughing hysterically after the fact.

But I keep my distance.

So yesterday, my Trailer Trash Mom called and asked if she could come over this morning to hang out for a bit. Wanted to see the Pookies and all, so I figured it would be OK and even asked if she wanted breakfast. She said she’d bring donuts, to which I said “NO!” (stupidly), and then we resolved that she would bring a carton of eggs and I’d make eggs and toast and we’d eat the raspberries we picked yesterday.

The time was set: 10 o’clock.

This morning 10 o’clock came and went. While I was finishing putting on my make up and doing my hair, 10:15 rolled on by. I checked my phone: nothing from my mom. 10:30 came and I went ahead and made breakfast, figuring she wasn’t going to show up. I called my husband to start my bitching. I then was mad, so start Tweeting and Facebooking. 10:45 rolled on by and we were done eating breakfast. 10:56, I saw Hottie Maintenance Man outside (there is only one good looking maintenance man in our complex, and he happens to be “assigned” to our building). He was repairing the light above the stairway that goes to the apartments above us. I looked. And looked some more.

And then I saw my Trailer Trash Mom walking up the walkway to the apartment.

Quickly I opened the door lest she ruin my future look-a-thons with Hottie Maintenance Man by coming onto him with her teeth falling out or something, and creeping him out. This was my biggest mistake of the morning.

What I should have done was let her open the door and come in. I’m still kicking myself for not, because by opening the door I opened the flood gates for her to start making her excuses right there, in front of Hottie Maintenance Man.

There, standing in front of Hottie Maintenance Man; with the Pookies at my side and neighbors walking by, my mother blathered out her hillbilly nonsense:

“Hi! Sorry I’m late. Grandma and Grandpa and I went out for Mexican food last night, and I had way too many beans. Anyway, I was drivin’ here and went to let one from all those beans and I accidentally crapped my pants.”

Yes. Yes, you read that right faithful blog followers. My mom was late because she shit her pants, thinking it was just some arbitrary gas leftover from last night’s spicy beans.

What the fuck?! is right. I may swear a lot, and I may be uncouth, but goddammit I’m a fucking lady. That is just too much for me.

Hottie Maintenance Man started to laugh. I turned around and walked in the house. My Trailer Trash Mom followed and said she wanted cheese in her eggs.

Party Peeves

Heather Christena Schmidt 10 Comments

We went to a couple family parties this weekend. One was a Labor Day bar-b-que – which was relatively mild; the other was a family dinner in honor of the seventh birthday of my cousin’s kid. These parties (the latter for the most part) inspired me to compile yet another list of pet peeves. Today while we were eating lunch at Panda Express, I got a little teary over the music they were playing and realized it must be getting close to Rag Time, so excuse me if my reasoning sounds particularly bitchy.

Party Peeve 1:

You Scratch My Back, I’m Not Scratching Yours

How many birthday parties have we gone to where the other person never comes to ours? These people with this seven year old kid (relatives of my Trailer Trash Mom) are the worst offenders. They are the only real family we have in California – which makes it particularly difficult – because every kid party we have they never show up for, making ours sort of un-kid kid parties.

Year after year, though, I send down a gift when it’s time for one of their two kids to celebrate another birthday. When they have a family party for it, we make the two hour drive there and two hour drive back and bring wine and a side dish. We smile. We listen to people talk about their hillbilly family dramas. We show interest when my aunt talks about all the oppressions put upon her working for the Girl Scouts. We laugh when her husband tells jokes about watching pornography on the Internet.

But when it comes time for a kid party here, they can’t make the same trek.

Party Peeve 2:

Cow-Towing To the Old People

I’m sure when I’m elderly, I’ll want everyone to cow-tow to me like they do at my family parties. Kiss my ass and act like everything I say is plated in gold and shit. I’m not being a dick, either, by saying it’s a problem to let the elderly have the comfortable chairs or use the bathrooms first or whatever would make me sound like a real asshole. Because that’s not what I mean.

By cow-towing I mean that everyone in the family acts as they always do – as though what the old people say goes. An example: my grandma and grandpa went to college in Nebraska, so of course are Cornhusker fans. But if you aren’t a Cornhusker fan too, you have to sit there for forty-five minutes while grandpa fucking yells at you for being such a dumb ass. It’s really mean, actually, if you think about it because he will shout at you and tell you to get out of his presence if you support a team other than the Cornhuskers.

Just about everyone in the family swore their allegiance to the Cornhuskers a long time ago just to get grandpa to shut the hell up.

Party Peeve 3:

Feeding Kids Different Food

Oh dear God, this really roasts my ass. If you think it’s totally acceptable to let your kid drag you around by your she-balls, and therefore prepare meal after meal after meal until you settle on Spaghetti-O’s because your precious cargo has been conditioned (by you) to be a terribly picky and unhealthy eater – well then you should stop reading now. Because I don’t tolerate that shit, and so it really pisses me off when other people do it at a kid’s party we attend.

I can see that not all kids at the party are healthy eaters and the host just doesn’t want them to go hungry. I’ll accept that a lot of people were born and raised in a barn and, therefore, don’t care much about instilling basic values in their kids’ upbringing.

At our house, you have to try everything that is put on your plate. If we go out to eat or to someone else’s home for dinner, we all eat what is served. We do not request that people make us something special because we’d rather have neon-orange fat-O’s in a can.

At the family dinner Sunday night, they served BBQ chicken, bread rolls, fresh fruit – all in all, a pretty healthy meal. You can imagine, then, that I was fucking livid when I saw my mom carrying plates of per-request food for all the kids, none of which had BBQ chicken or fruit. All of which were covered in Spaghetti-O and macaroni and cheese slop.

Party Peeve 4:

Inadequate Planning

When I plan a party, I typically plan everything down to the “T.” It isn’t what you faithful blog followers are probably thinking: that I’m terribly anal retentive and OCD. (Well I am, but that isn’t what this is about.) The thing is that when people take the time and effort to come to a party you’ve thrown, the least you can do is have things organized at least enough so that things don’t get out of control and chaotic.

I mean, every party in which kids are involved is going to have a little chaos. But at least have it be organized chaos.

This party on Sunday was so poorly planned (go figure, it was done by my mother and her sister with the porno-watching-husband). It was supposed to be a kid’s party (sort of), but they really didn’t plan anything for the kids to do besides terrorize everyone else with chaos, out of control screaming, and whining that they were bored.

Of course my Trailer Trash Mom was too busy rambling on about her recent Hillbilly Husband sagas to actually entertain the kids. My aunt was busy cooking the food. My grandpa was yelling at me for being a Notre Dame fan, instead of the Cornhuskers. My aunt’s husband was in the other room looking at his Internet porn. Pretty much everyone else was just sitting back, watching carnage unfold until finally, towards the end of the party, Poor Nick and I took charge and played Duck-Duck-Goose with the kids to try and get things under control.

Party Peeve 5:

Dresscode

This is always a sensitive subject for some people. I get it: people didn’t come to the party to see my fancy house or my fancy clothes. So the place isn’t perfectly cleaned, and I’m wearing sweatpants – but we’re family so it should be OK, right? Or as a guest, you should just be grateful that I came and spent the money on a birthday gift and the time preparing these appetizers and the gas driving down and my Sunday that could have been spent doing something else I actually want to do, so I should be cool in these coolots and halter top, no?

Actually, NO. You should not be “cool” or “down” with people dressing down for a party. As is the case with organization, the least people could do is wear regular clothes or even just pants. When I opened the door to my aunt and her husband’s home Sunday, you can all imagine my surprise when I was greeted by her porno-watching husband wearing nothing but a t-shirt and Cornhusker boxer shorts. Maybe he was trying to impress my grandpa. Maybe he needed easy-access for when he’d be spending the duration of the party in the other room, looking at Internet pornography. Maybe he was just really hot. I don’t know, I just thought he could have actually put a pair of pants or at least shorts on. His boxers, in combination with my mother’s pant-wedgie that lasted the duration of the entire party and seemed to cause her nothing but pleasure, made the dresscode at this particular hillbilly brawl just intolerable for me.

After the lack of organization, the food problems, the underpants, the screaming at me for not pledging my loyalty to the Cornhuskers, and my mom rubbing her pant-wedgie further and further up her asscrack during the inevitable family photos that always cap off a family party with these people, I had just about had it.

What are your party pet peeves, faithful blog followers?

STFU Fridays: Restaurant Loudtalkers, Illegible Texters, My Mom’s Gut

Heather Christena Schmidt 16 Comments

Here I am. It’s Thursday night. I’m in my pajamas. As you see, no make up. I’m just hanging out. I’ve written a lot today – both a blog post, as well done revisions on my new blog book coming out soon. I also went bowling and to the library. Those were pretty good times. I should be spending my night relaxing and reading my new Hem biography with a nice glass or two of skim milk.

But I’m just so fucking excited for this week’s Shut the Fuck Up Fridays that I cannot wait to post it. So I’m writing it early and posting it tonight because it is just that good. At least as it’s worked out in my head.

Shall we begin?

Restaurant Loudtalkers

Have you ever been in a restaurant, only for someone to be talking so fucking loud that you just want to break a glass and cut the motherfucker to get him to shut the hell up? It’s not always men – that’s sort of sexist for me to say “him.” In fact, more often than not, it’s been the broads.

Once we were out to eat and these three humungous women (I don’t mean their physical girth … well, they were a little heavy, but I mean like Amazon Women – tall, muscular, and quite frankly frightening); these women were loudly rambling on about their new marriages, the inadequacies of their husbands, and how nice it would be if they didn’t have to get porked every night. In the middle of the goddamned restaurant! In front of children! I will never forget as they pounded out of the restaurant, little Pookies clung to me in fear then asked what they were talking about. I really appreciated that.

Today’s experience was no different. We were picking up take-out salads and this old guy was shouting – literally shouting – to the person sitting right across from him. MY NEW NUMBER IS 7-9-5-4-4-3-7 … NO!! 7!!! 7!!!!” Then he kept going on and on about how his grandkid was in soccer and his son was getting a promotion and his fantasy football club was meeting up again and blaa blaa blaa blaa blaa, in the highest decibel possible. In the five minutes I waited for our food, I learned more about this guy’s life than I have ever wanted to know about another human being, a complete stranger no less.

Walking out, I was so overwhelmed by the Restaurant Loudtalker that I immediately turned into this crying lady who has the balls I don’t have to say what’s making me cry:

Illegible Texters

The other day I was talking about how my Trailer Trash Mom started texting and it is – like – seizure-inducing to read the things. I’m not talking about texters like her, though. I’m talking about the people that text, Tweet, email, Facebook, Instagram – whateverthefuck social whoring you want to reference – shit that just looks stupid.

B4

L8

Ta2

H8er

Seriously. There are very few acronyms I find to be acceptable alternatives to basic English literacy. OMG is one. WTF is another, with its variants WTS and WTH. B4 and L8 are not; nor is Ta2. H8er just makes me emotional again:

My Mom’s Gut

Everyone has been asking what the conclusion of my Terrible Tuesday was the other night. My mother and grandparents came over to dinner; it was such an awful day and I was essentially wasted by 6 o’clock. Before that, though, my mother announced that she was going to bring my grandparents over around 2 or 3, instead of when I invited them to come over, at 7. Being a generous host, I canceled my afternoon plans and made sure to be home by 2.

They showed up at 4:45.

So I had laid out some appetizers since they’d be there for so many hours before dinner. Just some chips and dip, and some caprese salads. I spilled an enormous amount of chips with dip on my chest, licking every one of them up with no comment from the crowd. Then I served dinner – again, relatively healthy. Nothing too bad and pretty low cal.

To be precise, I served some garlic bread, nonfat tortellinis with fat free feta, bar-be-qued sirloin (even though I don’t eat red meat), and a medley of vegetables (brocollini, asparagus, and snap peas). My mother – having just returned from her couple of months at the trailer with her hillbilly husband – was not used to eating such an healthy meal. It’s all Ramen, chili dogs, and McDonalds for those two, so her gut was a little ill-prepared for such an easily digested and nutritious meal.

As everyone sat and let their food digest before taking a piece of red velvet cake for dessert, my mother suddenly leaned forward and scooted to the edge of the couch. She spread her legs and positioned her hands on her knees, then puffed out her chest and let out the most uproarious and earth-shattering belch I have ever heard another human being let out.

My grandparents sort of sat there as if nothing was going on, although my grandfather did verbalize what she had just done by saying belch, like he normally does when he does it.

To make matters worse, when she was done letting out the gut-busting, time-stopping esophageal foulness, she wiped her mouth, giggled and said “I guess I’m ready for dessert.”

While everyone else ate their dessert – acting as though not a goddamned thing had happened – I snuck to the bathroom and sat there, tears leaking from my eyes at the horrifying display my mother had just turned the evening into. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was my Trailer Trash Mom’s gut rot. No one will ever know, but in the end it was all emotional and teary and STFU:

 

My Trailer Trash Mom Returns

Heather Christena Schmidt 12 Comments

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It isn’t often that you find a sequel that can be called good. Usually they suck – the plot line has gotten old; the characters look way too aged if years have gone by; and, more than anything, some of the flare from the original just isn’t there. Don’t get me wrong – there are a lot of sequels that are just as good (if not better) than their originals. Back to the Future 2 and Die Hard 2 are ones I can think of off the top of my head.

But then there are sequels in real life. Those are rarely ever good. A reoccurring dream replays itself over and over again during the night – usually in the format of a nightmare. Some banking problem never seems to get resolved. And then there is the worst: some drama-ridden hillbilly from your past resurfaces to spew their hillbilly shit all over the place again.

Those of you that have been around for a while remember the saga of my Trailer Trash Mom a few months ago. For those of you that weren’t, here it is in a nutshell: my mother (I call her my Trailer Trash Mom) hasn’t ever been eligible for Mother of the Year, really, but has gotten particularly use-y and trash-y since she married a hillbilly from New Mexico exactly one year ago last Friday. Around Mother’s Day, she volunteered me to cook a big family dinner in honor of my grandmother, which turned into the biggest hillbilly shit brawl before said family dinner that I had ever seen.

Enough about the original, though – let’s move onto the sequel.

Friday of last week I got a phone call from my mother. I don’t usually answer her calls anymore; but this time she called from her hillbilly husband’s trailer line and I didn’t recognize the number. She BS’ed with me for a few minutes before saying that her hillbilly husband was going to tell me all about their anniversary plans to celebrate one year since they eloped to the county courthouse (the witnesses were the checkout ladies from the Goodwill she bought her wedding frock from, I shit you not faithful blog followers).

But when her hillbilly husband came on the phone, he didn’t say a damn word about their anniversary.

“Heather? Listen… are you going to let Alexis go to Colorado with her dad?”

“What? Oh, um yeah – I agreed to it and I really have no reason not to.”

“You know it’s going to be hard to get her back once she’s across state lines.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I mean if he doesn’t want to come back. Look, I have experience with this! EXPERIENCE!!”

“Okay. Well it’s a little late for this and I think you are being a little paranoid. I’m sorry, I thought you were going to tell me about your anniversary plans.”

“Look, all I’m saying is your mother and I have been talking and we decided we should let you know we’re going to be suing you for grandparent’s rights.”

“Uh huh…”

“What you don’t think we will? When I get to California with your mom in August, I’m stirring up the dirt!! I’LL GET MY GRANDPARENT’S RIGHTS! I WANT VISITATIONS AT MY HOME IN NEW MEXICO – AND NOW! LET THEM THROW ME IN JAIL IF THEY HAVE TO!!!”

“Uh huh…”

“I GOT RIGHTS!”

“Uh huh… look, if you aren’t going to tell me about your anniversary plans, I really need to get off the phone now. We’re on our way to Chuck E. Cheese.”

“HAVE FUN EATING AT A RESTAURANT OWNED AND RUN BY A RAT!!”

And then he hung up.

‘What the fuck?’ is what I said too. I have met this guy – in person – for a total of 20 minutes, over two years ago when they first started dating. He told me then that he and my mom had been busy for a few weeks “keeping warm if you know what I mean.” A few weeks later my mother asked me if I knew of any types of gondola rides that “allow for private time,” and also if I knew where she could buy some crotchless panties for a woman her age. At that time, I didn’t think things would last too long; but then one day she was “visiting” him in New Mexico and called to say they had eloped. Since then it’s been one hillbilly shittin’ thing after another: trailer dramas, moving dramas, hillbilly-mother-in-law dramas. And I’m sure none of you will forget when my mother showed up at my father’s garage sale to sell some of her own wares, and displayed them on a Poise pantyshields box she dug out of the dumpster behind my grandparent’s assisted living facility.

Fucking crazy, right?

So after a few days of speculation, I realize that there are a couple of possibilities that made this sequel a clear path down the trail to psychosis:

1. They live in a tiny, aluminum trailer in New Mexico. It’s fucking hot in New Mexico. Maybe the air conditioning broke and their brains are now fried.

2. They ran out of crazy pills and thought that rather than pay another copay, jelly beans would be an adequate substitute.

3. One hillbilly brawl ended and now they are looking for another hillbilly brawl, because (quite frankly) brawl and shit is what hillbillies like to do.

All I know is that from now on I’m back to not answering numbers that are unrecognizable.

Pigslob Trailer Park Queen

Heather Christena Schmidt 15 Comments

So when my Trailer Trash Mom showed up the other day for the impromptu garage sale and lemonade stand (you know, the one where she used a Poise Pantyshields box to display her coffee mugs for sale), she got wind of the fact that my father was out of town until tomorrow and that we were housesitting for him. Somehow she weaseled her way into staying a night, which turned into two; then today she has shown up again to spend the night.

The complexity of this situation is trifold:

(1) My parents have been divorced for over 20 years; my mother is remarried. But as she was being “courted” by her hillbilly husband, she stayed in my old bedroom at my dad’s house because – quite frankly – she had nowhere else to live. My father is a very nice person. A very very nice person, who believes so much in Catholic charities that he lets himself get raked over the coals time and again to try and be a good person.

(2) With that last point in mind, it is obvious what my mother did to my dad’s home while she stayed here (for really only about eight months). She destroyed three of his sets of blinds. She broke his microwave. She destroyed his dryer to such a point that it was irreparable. She broke cabinets, closet doors, and a window screen. And somehow she created a large, gaping hole in the wall of my old bedroom. Countless things have gone missing from his home as well – obvious where they went coming from the woman who just showed us her copy of “Guide to Receiving Free Gifts …”. My father now believes that this is some sort of a vendetta she is trying to exact against him. After the last few days, I don’t know. She may just be this deeply embedded in her new position in life.

(3) My mother is called my Trailer Trash Mom for a reason: she’s a fucking hillbilly. She wasn’t always an hillbilly, though; in fact, my father says that now she is like a completely different person than she was when they were married. As does her family. As do her friends. Regardless, after the last few days of her glomming onto this free ride as much as she could, I have realized more than ever that my mom is now, at her core, a pigslob, trailer park queen. And in the fine words of Benjamin Franklin, “…fish and house guests smell after three days.”

#1 The Destruction of My $75 Sur La Table Kitchen Strainer

I’ve had a pretty crappy weekend, which began with that awful theft of my things at the mall. I’m used to it though – crappy times for me seem to be the norm, at least since I moved to this fine Golden State of ours. But the icing of crapdome really takes the cake when my Trailer Trash Mom is involved.

Last night my husband went to hit up the bathroom to brush his teeth and then go to bed. He was in there for a mere thirty seconds, though, when he came out with my $75 Sur La Table kitchen strainer in hand, filled with bath toys. My dad doesn’t cook much, so of course I brought some of my own materials – included in there was my kitchen strainer. I suppose it’s my fault for not having the forethought to realize someone might mistake my strainer – clearly used for cooking – as a tool for drying children’s bath toys.

#2 Today’s Coffee Leftovers Debacle

So my dad has a cleaning lady that comes once a month to clean his home, and she is scheduled to come tomorrow. When our cleaning lady comes (actually the same woman), I usually pick up around the house the day before and make sure things are in good order so she doesn’t have to spend any time picking up clutter. My mother, being the pigslob trailer park queen that she is, leaves clutter fucking everywhere in her path. When she left today, she had left behind her a trail of things that needed to be picked up – a feat that took me about four hours to take care of this afternoon. She was gone for most of the day, and to be quite honest I thought (hoped) she was not going to be coming back. But then she did, around 5 o’clock, and the first thing she did was get mad because I had dumped out her coffee.

Well, first of all, her coffee was a huge fucking mess. It was in the way, and that sign had been sitting there for two days (notice the illiteracy of it too…). I had a hard time believing that she was still going to drink coffee that had been sitting there for over two fucking days. Sue me for thinking she had taste buds or dignity or common sense. In any event, she got upset because I dumped her coffee, and the whole time I was reminded of the time I was ten and she screamed at me for throwing out some saltines I had dropped in the dirt.

#3 This Morning’s Pancakes

The thing that really pissed me off today was that my mom promised she was going to make buttermilk pancakes and, while she did, she only made me two miniature ones (smaller than silver dollar pancakes); and she left behind a huge mess in the kitchen. I don’t just mean a few dirty dishes faithful blog followers, I mean that bitch splattered batter and egg everywhere and didn’t clean it up.

This morning she got up around 7:15 and proceeded to do what she does most of the day – talk loudly on the phone to her hillbilly husband. She woke everyone up with her loudness and then talked and talked and talked until she realized it was almost 9:00 and she had to leave to take my grandma to the doctor. She had just enough time to throw together some pancakes for apparently everyone but me, make a huge mess, and then run out the door.

More annoying than this is what she has done since she got back, which is talk on the phone more only now it is to give her husband updates on the hockey game. Apparently he hasn’t paid the cable bill and the TV was turned off so he can’t watch the game, so my mom is watching it and calling him every few minutes (being the big fucking sports fan that she is) to scream and yell in the phone about what’s going on. I didn’t really care about hockey before; I think I might actually hate it now.

There are some other glaringly disturbing things that I haven’t mentioned here, like the fact that to my knowledge my mother has not showered in three days. I also am of the belief that she has a large number of creditors after her because she keeps getting calls she either says she “doesn’t want to take” or she accidentally answers and once she says “yes, this is she” and listens for a second, she hangs up. It wouldn’t be the first time for that. I am almost starting to pity my Trailer Trash Mom because it’s clear that she really has become, well like I said – a pigslob, trailer park queen. She’s heading back to New Mexico and her trailer and the hillbilly husband in just three, short days. It’s bittersweet, really. I’m so glad she’ll be gone, but what the hell am I going to have to write about?