Living Proof

My father should start blogging. I can hear the roars of laughter coming from my mother and three sisters as I write this. Dad is still adjusting from the rotary telephones. My sister Carla gave him her old cell phone, which has the little number pad on it. His big fingers try to struggle to punch in the correct number. My cell phone rings. I see “Dad” coming up on my caller id. Oh Lord. I know he is out on the job working on some machine doing excavating. Why does he want to chit-chat with me now? “Hello?” “Ah, yeah—is this Dempsey Pipes?” “Dad, you dialed me idiot!” “Ha-ha-ha-ha!" His big wheezy laugh was blaring out of my Nextel speakerphone, as I shook my head in disbelief. He had mistaken “Debbie” from “Dempsey”. I’m going to bring him to an eye doctor if he calls me one more time. My dad is a talker. He can talk your ear off sometimes. That’s what we love about him though. He has stories that are so incredible, sometimes too graphic; nevertheless, entertaining. Often enough...

What a rambler I am; simply talking about my life. Why would anyone even care? Did you ever hear someone say, “Oh she told me her entire life story?” Maybe it’s because I don’t talk much about what really bothers me. I don’t even tell my psychiatrist half the sh*t I tell the blogger world. Interesting, huh? Maybe it’s because I get more feedback from posting than I do with telling Lurch. (My psychiatrist) Now, if someone who is a reader of my blog can prescribe me my meds, I’ll leave Lurch and stick to this. No one knows me. They think they know me. They don’t. I’m the loudmouth lipstick lesbian who gets into controversial political and religious conversations just to get a rise out of people. I’m the girl every bartender in town knows. “Where’s Deb tonight? She always sits right in this seat.” I have my own assigned seat in over five local bars. I have my own assigned seat in Provincetown, MA in another five. All the bartenders know me there too. Why? I’m the big flirt. I’m flirtatio...

"Come on Deb, you’ll be late for school, let’s go!” “Coming! Hold up!” I said, fumbling for the rest of my stuff trying to make it out the door. The bus never came to pick me up because I lived on a mountain that was one mile high up a dirt road. My mother had to drive me down to the bus stop every morning, or I could have walked. I never walked. There were no kids my age on that hill and it was too desolate. Never mind the bear problem- the neighbor’s dogs were to be feared. My parents never let me walk that hill alone anyway. I was sixteen years old at the time and always managed a way to miss the bus. I did this purposely, because I didn’t like the kids I rode with. They all irritated me and I would isolate myself almost next to the front seat, so I wouldn’t get agitated. I always got carsick sitting on a bus for some reason, and my poor mother always ended up driving me to school. If I could catch my sister Cathy with her awesome little white pimped up Dodge Daytona to drive...

“It’s simply not what the object is. You’re not drawing the actual subject.” Miss Griffen says, looking over my shoulder to see my replica on paper of what was sitting in the middle of the room. There was a pile of two by fours interlacing one another. We were supposed to draw these pieces of wood ‘as they were’; in the exact perspective that was given. Each person had to draw the same exact thing, but in a different point of view. We all sat in a circle with our big art desks and materials, trying to muster up something that looked like a pile of nothing. “Your shading is off. The light is coming from behind the pile, not in front of it. Change the lighting.” She badgers me once again, as she took her enormous eraser, and made my shading disappear herself; as though I was just some little kid trying to finger paint. “Deb, you’re an artist, why can’t you get this down right? This isn’t correct and I don’t want to give you a low grade.” “Is art supposed to be ‘right’? I’m not into ‘d...

“I can’t believe I’m going to sit there for forty-five minutes again, Madelene.” “I’m thinking the same thing.” “I mean, he just sits there and stares at me as if I had two heads.” “There’s no other psychiatrist. They’re all booked up, Deb.” “I’m going to sit there, and play with his plants like I usually do.” Driving up the thruway heading towards my doctor’s appointment, Madelene starts sneezing her head off. By the twentieth sneeze, instead of “God bless you”—I was simply going to tell her, “SHUT UP!” She’s too cute though. Besides, she is coming along for the ride to be bored out of her skull waiting for me to get analyzed by some quack. We get into the office. It’s a very large square office. Each door has a different type of doctor inside. You walk into this square room, full of chairs surrounding the door of each doctor. We head over to where my psychiatrist’s door is. It’s usually dismal and dark over in that corner; quite eerie to tell you the truth. “Psst, you think he’s...

The flu? Or not the flu? It’s definitely the question as I sit here still recovering from being sick all weekend. It started Saturday afternoon. I continuously kept fleeing for the bathroom every five minutes. I couldn’t keep anything down. I kept backtracking what I ate that morning, and the night before. Madelene and I got take out from our favorite restaurant. We ordered a thing of mussels, and pasta. How wrong can you get with that? I know you can really get sick of clams, but mussels? Anyway, that Saturday evening was horrific. I didn’t sleep. I just kept upchucking my eternal organs because there was nothing else I ate that day. My head began to pulse like a drum; as if my brain was being smacked around my huge scull. My body ached from all the hurling and coughing that night. It was awful. I don’t wish this on anyone! All I wanted was my bed. Here’s my discoveries while being sick. Lifetime. Oh yeah. Big top ten on my list for those entire three days. If I see another wife beate...

WARNING! Before you read this post, please keep an opened mind. I’m of Christian faith, and this post holds many beliefs of mine that I am sharing. If you are of another religion, please take this with a grain of salt, or you may want to skip this post. “Honey, where’s my cream colored blouse that I just got out of the drycleaners?” “It should be in the pile of the clothes that you brought back, Deb.” “ No… Nothing.” I said, fumbling through garments wrapped up in bags. “Well when did you last see it?” Madelene asks. I hated when my mother used to ask me that very same question when I was interrogating her for a lost item. That question alone has to be more absurd than, ‘Are you sleeping?’ “Never mind, I’ll just wear this.” I replied, avoiding all arguments regarding that stupid question. I wasn’t about to reply, ‘Well if I knew where I last saw it…………” (You know the drill) At the age of twenty-three, I thought I would have a little more tolerance for life. I was agitated and way ...