Good Lord, It’s Hot

I honestly do not know how folks lived in the South before air conditioning. I mean, I get what the women did. We probably regularly soaked our bloomers in cold water and put them on under long dresses that focused airflow into our core. But how did people who wore pants do down here?!

I honestly don’t get it. In my childhood, in the North, we’d leave our cars running in the winter, if we went into a store. When I first moved down here, you’d see people leaving their cars running in the summer if they ran into a store. This morning, the DJ on the radio said “Our official temperature is 84, but the bank on my way in already said 90.” And that was at 9:00 in the morning.

Good lord, no wonder cacti and yucca grow wild here.

Anyway, I got some new underwear, speaking of bloomers, and they must have the thickest top band known to underwear. I am going to bet you a million dollars that they don’t have a fat woman designing underwear for fat women, because your choices are always underwear that goes up to your armpits (which, I guess, you can tuck up under your boobs, to help with crappy bra chafing) or underwear that seems like it was designed for… I don’t know whom. I’m trying to imagine what the woman who this underwear was designed for would look like. Apparently she has a very large butt, but then a very tiny circumference area between her cooter and her belly? Like right where your actual hipbones are? And that’s where they have the thick stretchy band?

I guess in case a big wing catches all that extra fabric in my butt area and I lift off like a kite, they don’t want these puppies falling off me, leading me to crash to the ground, and suing them.

I wonder at what point my underwear is going to come with a safety belt.

I wonder if women whose underwear does have safety restraints have more exciting lives than mine…

Nephewligan

Well, I spent the evening with my nephew while the Butcher was at Bonnaroo. We had Oreos for dinner, because we ate lunch so late, and he played video games and we watched TV. I know other folks have organized activities for their family members when they get together. Hell, when my parents come, we always have to play cards.

The truth is, I really hate that crap.

I had a nice visit with my brother.  It’s funny to hear my complaints and my realizations about our family coming from someone else. He’s on this big “You need to tell the Butcher to do this. You need to get on the Butcher to do that.” kick, but I explained to him that I don’t want to be the Butcher’s parent or the boss of him. It would suck so much for me to have to do that. And my other brother was all “It might suck, but you might get him to straighten out his life,” and I was like “it’s not my job to transform the Butcher’s life into what I think it should be.”

And then later he was all “Well, I told him he could move down to Georgia with me, but he’d have to get a job.”

And at first, I was pissed. For all kinds of reasons, believe me, ever single phrase in that sentence is hilarious. But mostly it was kind of like “Well, you had your chance to straighten the Butcher out. Now it’s my turn.”

And I thought, “Is that why the rest of our family thinks the Butcher’s here? Because he’s my project, which I am failing?”

But then, I took a deep breath and I realized, he never told him that.

It’s like this. The Butcher called to tell us his Bonarroo situation had clarified. I was in the store, so I didn’t answer. My brother was in the car with the dog, so he did. My brother told me he told the Butcher that he couldn’t leave until we got home, because he didn’t want my nephew being left by himself.

When we got home, the Butcher was gone.

If that had been me, I would have been fucking livid–if I had told someone to not leave my kid unattended and he left anyway.

So, I was momentarily confused that my brother was not pissed off.

And then I realized, he told the Butcher to go ahead. But he told me he hadn’t. Why? Who knows? Who fucking cares?

But that’s how things go with him. It never upsets The Butcher–“He’s been that way our whole lives. Why does it bother you?”–so I’m trying to learn to just roll with it and not let it bother me.