Family Tree

If you shake my family tree all manners of people would fall out. Educated people & professionals, also crackpots (not to be confused with crackheads) & rum pots. Unfortunately, if you shake one branch of my family tree crackpots and rum pots are all that will fall out. I call it the crazy gene. My Grandmother refers to it as the curse. As a southerner, I'm not ashamed of the rum pots and crackpots. That's what makes being a southerner so great. I myself am admittedly "unstable". We as southerners, have a long history of being proud of our crazy people. We don't hide them away like secrets, we keep them in our homes and let their mothers, sisters or daughters take care of them. I say all this to preface a story. When my husband and I were first, married we thought we would have children and all that stuff like other couples think of. A couple years after we got married we learned that it might be very difficult for us to have children, I was upset and said I would never quit trying. We adopted a perfect little girl though. This little girl was and still is our pride and joy. Two years after that I got pregnant and nine months later our son was born. My son is the exactly the opposite of my little girl. It did not occur to me when I was vowing to create a baby, he may not be "stable" given our families mental history. My son is above average developmentally but it's said that there is a fine line between genius and insanity. My little boy is a body rocker/headbanger. He has bumped in his crib so much, that the screws come out it every couple of days and we have to put them back in. He goes into the refrigerator and takes marinating meat, fish or chicken and takes bites out of it. One day I found him under the dining room table eating applesauce with his hands. I got a glimpse into what could be my possible future. Myself at sixty years old taking care of my 30 year old son. My daughter calls him brother so we call him brother. I would say to family: "Well I can't stay to long at such & such's family function cause if "brother" doesn't get his animal crackers and apple juice, he can be hard to deal with." Crazy people love animal crackers and apple juice. Or another scenario would be, I could bring "brother" with me to the family function but I have to make sure he takes his meds so he doesn't scare the children rocking back and forth like that. With prayer, hopefully none of those scenario's will come true. Hopefully "the crazy gene" or "the curse" will skip him all together and his off the wall activity will dissipate the older that he gets or maybe he will only get a mild case like I did. Either way it goes he's a beautiful boy and I love him to pieces.

The Usefulness of Crackheads

Our old neighborhood was very skechy. Half of the block was made up of elderly black people while the other half was made up of crack dens and crackheads. Crackheads will do anything for ten or twenty dollars. That worked out very well for us because we owned a whole empty lot next door to our house. The empty lot of course had grass and we used it as a play area for our little girl and a giant yard for the dogs. We had a particular crackhead that we paid to cut the yard. Whenever Gary the crackhead got "the junky shuffle" he would come to us to do things around the yard for us. One particular time I didn't have any money. Gary got aggressive with me. What Gary didn't know is that the "Other Jaime" is an extremely confrontational person and he couldn't intimidate her. We owned 4 Great Danes at the time, the largest one weighed 165 lbs and stood 37 inches high at the shoulder not the head. I told Gary if he didn't get off my porch talking crazy to me I was gonna shoot him, cut him up and feed him to my dogs and that there wouldn't be enough of him left for the police to find unless they looked through my dogs turds. Gary never got out of line with me again after that.

That Old House

My husband and I love old houses, they're wonderful and have so much character. We bought an old home built in 1939 and had 3200 sqft. The house needed a lot of work but we were cool with that. Let me just say we bought that house in 2002 and no longer own it. Anyway the house sat for years with no one living in it before we bought it. I should have expected things like rats but I didn't. The first time I saw one of course I came completely unglued. We put out poison and I began to see dead rats. That shocked me too for a while, but then I became desensitized. To tell you the rest of this story I have to say that I talk in my sleep. My husband tells me the next day about all the crazy things I said to him the night before. Anyway I was up very late one night and when I got ready to go to bed I took the cordless phone to put it on the base in the butlers pantry. We always kept the light on in there so we could see while we were walking down the hall. I opened the door and saw a possum. This house was in the middle of the city five minutes away from downtown. I say that to say that a possum was the last thing I expected to see when I opened the door. I tried my best not to make any noise and backed out of the room as I closed the door. I ran up the stairs to tell my husband about it. He said "Go back to sleep you're dreaming." He thought I was talking in my sleep. I pushed him and told him I haven't been to sleep yet, there's a possum in the butlers pantry. I avoided the butlers pantry for a couple days after that. I was also never surprised again by what I found in the house.

My Phone service

So I switched phone service in December. I won't say to what company because the things I'm about to say could get me sued. This particular company handles my phone service and DSL. Every time it rains my service ( phone & DSL signal) will go out, I've come to expect it. Before my service goes out though, I get static on my phone line & then I hear every word of a radio station coming through loud and clear. The station is KRLD 1080. When the tech guy comes out to fix the service I always tell him that I hear the radio station. Every tech guy looks at me with the type of look that says: "Did you forget to take your meds today." The last time the guy came out. I had a litter of puppies and of course my 3 big dogs. To the outside world I appear to be "The crazy dog lady that hears the voices on her phone." I think I'm one step away from having the neighborhood kids ringing my doorbell and running away. "Run", they would say. "Run away from the crazy dog lady." "She might get us and feed us to her dogs. The parents would tell their children to "Stay away from the dog ladies house, I never see her bring dog food in."

Weird Neighbors

I live in a Cul-de-Sac, 2nd from the last house on the left. My Grandmother gave my husband and I a car when we really needed one. After a while we no longer needed it. We're trying to get it sold. There's really only room for 2 cars in our carport so we parked my grandmother's car on the street in front of our house. It's not in bad condition or anything. After a couple of months the police came to my door and asked me if the car was mine. I said yes. The police officer says if I don't move the car it will be towed. He said there was a complaint. Well I knew the complaint was from the people who live to the right of me. Since they live in the last house, they never have to come passed my house. They are sooo weird. To let you know how weird they are, they named their children Mary & Joseph. Last I checked, Mary and Joseph were married. Anyway the "Other Jaime" came out and her instinct was to drive Grandmother's car up to their door and park it there. They keep they're yard very nice with flowers and bushes etc. Anyway they're front door faces my carport and they have a sort of enclosure as a porch. If I drove my car up there, they wouldn't be able to get out they're front door unless they climbed over the car. In my mind, I saw my car in front of her door and her going out her backdoor to come tell me to move it. I would tell her no, have it towed. If she would've had the car towed it would have messed up all her "beautiful" shrubbery and flowers, not to mention she'd have long tire tracks through her well maintained yard. The only reason I didn't do it, is because Grandmother would have been mad at me for having her car towed. The "Other Jaime" pleaded with me: Do it, do it. That would serve them right, they cause trouble on the whole Cul-de-Sac. They've pissed off everyone of our other neighbors. I told the "Other Jaime" no that wouldn't be right. The "Other Jaime" got mad and wouldn't talk to me for a while.

Ling ling

My little girl wanted a cat for her4th birthday. What my girl wants, my girl gets. We got a Siamese. I have dogs and they're not interested in fish. For dinner one night I took out Mahi Mahi. I let it thaw out in a pyrex dish on the cabinet. I go through kitchen to let out the dogs and did a double take. Ling ling was on the cabinet eating the raw Mahi Mahi. Well I couldn't let that happen cause that was our dinner. I went to pull Ling ling off and that didn't work, she wouldn't let go. I was suddenly in a "Clash of the Titans" with this 7 lb. cat. Finally I was able to wrench the fish from her mouth. We had it for dinner that night. I no longer thaw out fish on the cabinet.

Black Licorice

If you like black licorice, there is something wrong with you!! Candy is supposed to be a sweet tastey treat. Black licorice tastes like nightmares & evil. I imagine that's probably what Sauron from Lord of the Rings would tate like if he had a flavor. In fact I may start giving my child black licorice as a punishment. I'll tell her "You sit in your room and chew on this licorice until you know how to act."

The Godfather Part 3

Okay, so I loved The Godfather part 3 even though Sofia Coppola's performance was horrible. I do believe that one of the best scenes ever put on film was when Michael had his stroke. The question that has bothered me for the last fifteen years is: Did Michael have the stroke when he realized it was Don Altobello behind the whole thing or did the stroke force the realization out?

A day in the life

My aunt emailed me from Iraq yesterday and said I should have my own column. I have to admit that strange things happen to my family and I quite often.

Four years ago my husband and I bought our second house. It was built in 1939. The house was 3200 sq ft and needed a lot of fixing up. My husband and I were no strangers to that as we had done it before. The house we bought was in a sketchy part of town but we thought we could handle it. We worked none stop on trying to get this house live able and we did. We had a problem though. Th crackheads kept breaking into our cars. So finally I devised a plan. I called the police station store front which was around the corner and asked them if I could booby trap my car with a bear trap. The police officer said: "A what." "A bear trap, I said." "You want to booby trap your car with a bear trap, he said again." "Yes, I said to him." "No ma'am you can't booby trap you car with a bear trap, booby trapping of any kind is illegal but if this person comes on your property after dark you can shoot him." "Well, I asked him, can I sic my dogs on him?" "Ma'am, he asked me, do you live on the corner with those big dog?" "Yes sir I do, I told him that's me." "OHHH, he said, I know your house." "We'll put extra patrol on your block at night." At the time my husband and I owned four Great Danes. My largest one weighed 165 lbs. and stood 37 inches high at the shoulder. She was mean to people she perceived to be a threat. The entire time we lived there our house was never broken into and I came to be known as "The big dog lady."