DeLarla

Chris, Lou & the Bowman brothers on one of our picnics.

I couldn't resist taking a pic of this chick's pink bike!

Darren & Tina - we all took the chair lift to the top of Brianhead with some beers, carbonation and all!

A couple of pack mules right as we were leaving Vegas Friday morn.

I finished my bottle, but I'm too beat up to feel good after my crazy weekend. I guess you gotta drink the Xango ALONG with a healthy lifestyle? And here I thought it was my miracle!

Now that I'm old(er) I can laugh at this stuff, but my life as a child was somewhere between Carrie and Cybil as far as mental abuse and living like a freak. The momster's mental health got worse with each passing year, till I came home one day to find all the windows painted army green. She was afraid "they" were looking inside, so she got her house paint and roller out and permanently closed our house off to any light. She scratched a peep hole in one window, which was covered with tape and a little paper flap. That was the only light inside. Today, I hate dark rooms. Let the sunshine in. Or should I say, LET THE F-ING SUN SHINE IN! Don't take sunshine for granted!

Once again, I had it bad, but there's always someone who had it worse. My momster beat me with a hose on a rare occasion, but most of my abuse was mental. Unfortunately, where she left off, teachers, neighbors and school kids took over. If you come from an abused home, you become a target to society. As an adult, the most ignorant thing I've ever heard from parents is, "children can be so cruel." BS, that's learned behavior. When teachers and parents allow bullying to continue, they may as well jump in on the torture treatment.

Terri, I think it sounds amazing! Congrads on being MO. I'm MO, he's MO, she's MO, and now you are MO! Glad that you are out of that danger-danger-danger zone!

Last night my husband mentioned the forbidden words - ice cream. Yes, the stuff can go bad even when it's brand new. The stuff probably melted and refroze a couple times before it hit the shelves. It was grainy and disgusting. Boo hoo, I didn't finish the entire 3 pints. Dogs don't mind tho.

LAUGHING AND POINTING! I was in the same boat as you before I PB'd. I just didn't feel like part of the club. Don't you miss being a loner now?

Hey everyone, I would kill anyone that hurt a cat, but read the whole thing before you think it's mean (the author cracks me up.) Instructions on how to clean your toilet 1. Put both lids of the toilet up and add 1/8 cup of pet shampoo to the Water in the bowl. 2. Pick up the cat and soothe him while you carry him towards the bathroom. 3. In one smooth movement, put the cat in the toilet and close both lids.. 4. The cat will self agitate. You may need to stand on the lid. Never mind the noises that come from the toilet, the cat is actually enjoying this. 5. Flush the toilet three or four times.This provides a "power-wash" and rinse". 6. Have someone open the front door of your home. Be sure that there are no people between the bathroom and the front door. 7. Stand behind the toilet as far as you can,and quickly lift both lids. 8. The cat will rocket out of the toilet, streak through the bathroom, and run outside where he will dry himself off. 9. Both the commode and the cat will be sparkling clean. Sincerely, The Dog

My precious Travis (Hungarian hunting dog) got sick with leukemia, but the vet said he could live happy and healthy for quite a while with treatment. I came home to find a "healer" waving her hands over Travis, then I got beaten because the magic stones were missing out of his Water bowl. The healer provided "healing crystals" which I later found in the yard. The Momster laughed when she realized she tossed the crystals into the yard when she emptied his water. She had to put Travis to sleep because she never followed through with the vet because she believes in magic. She put up extra locks to keep out vampires after reading that vampires were killing livestock (she believes anything in the Enquirer.) Babs, I think your dad wins for the meanest. I met my asshole I mean dad when I was 17. He abandoned us (me, bro & sis) when I was 2 months old. When I met him, he had a whole new family. He told me, "I already screwed up one set of kids so I have to try extra hard to give my new kids everything they want." He actually thinks that makes me feel good, as if he's done something right. Pig.

I even finish the last bites on other plates. My friend, Darren, ate a cheeseburger Sunday (I had already eaten) and he left the best, most cheesiest corner of the burger on his plate cause he was too full. WHAT? So I ate it. No pride. But come on, it was that one bite with double cheese dripping over the side as if all the cheese in the world ended up on that corner of the burger.

Last month's Redbook has a comparision of the best deodorants, and Adidas won. I'll see if I still have the article and post it tonight. They also mentioned the one you use the night before as being effective. I don't know about all those other odors, though. My husband is really honest with me, and he never said I smell different, except my pooh (there, I said it.) That smells really foul no matter what I do, so I just keep the Apple Lysol handy since it's the only one that doesn't just mask the odors.

If the salt shaker is too far away, dump sugar packets, the ashtray, or anything you can get your hands on. Guess what? It's not the end of the world... it actually makes you stop eating. I suppose we could throw the food at the wall, but some might scoff at that.

I tossed a baggie of fresh veggies in my purse this morning figuring I'd have them for lunch. But I forgot I brought them and didn't have them at lunch (uh, there were nachos here, you decide.) Do you think I'd have forgotten a bag of Cookies in my purse? Uh, no! So I'm getting ready to leave for work and I found the veggies. God is with me today, cause I actually ate them. Good girl. Being bad is just so easy.

The worst part about all this that makes me sadder than anything, is that as bad as we had it, others had it worse. That's the part that hurts me.

This thread is actually fun and therapeutic. What did your momsters make you wear? I recall wearing the same clothes for an entire week. She would tease us and tell us we're going school shopping, but then we came home to each find a huge K-Mart bag stuffed with new clothes. Oh how we tore into those bags, desperate for new jeans. But nooooo... men's leisure suits were on sale, the orange/rust color ones, 3 piece (think of Barney Fife's roll doing Mr. Roper from 3's company.) Yep, they were on sale so she bought 3 shopping carts full of the same leisure suits, then divvied them up figuring between the 3 of us we could mix and match. Could you see a kid showing up in school in men's polyester pants and matching vest? And to think I only got beat up once (threatened daily, but only beat up once.) I had one normal sweatshirt once, but I got a stain on it. So she took out her oil paints and turned the stain into this huge hideous flower (always orange or rust color.) Then she took the only pair of jeans without a hole and turned the bottoms into bell bottoms by sewing in an orange triangle panel, in which she hand wrote my name in the bell. God help me. BUT STILL LAUGHING!

And now there are things I'm learning about the Momster that I never even knew! My sister and I took a trip (and I mean a TRIP) down memory lane last week when I was in California and drove past our childhood house, which has since turned complete ghetto. All the houses have bars spray painted bright green or orange with 12 or 13 cars on blocks. Much to our shock, one family still lived there! And since it was a holiday weekend, the entire family was there! There were 7 kids, who all have kids of their own now, so there must have been 30 people in that tiny house. They were telling us crazy stories about the Momster that we never even knew... apparently, she used to garden IN DRESSES WITH NO UNDERWEAR. Holy crap, the woman would bend over and show the whole neighborhood, and she's not the slutty type, just the obnoxious one that doesn't give a damn what people think. The neighbors told us kids would cover their eyes and run in the house screaming. Now if you can't laugh at that.... Alex, you remind me of the Momsters famous outfit. She doesn't dress for style or comfort, just for warmth, and she'd wear paisly print with checkers. I'm gonna see if I can find the one pic I have of her in the famous outfit, which consisted of polyester flood pants (came above her ankles way before capris were in.) But it's worse, they were bell bottom stretchy fabric with elastic waistband, worn with black go-go boots 20 years after go-go boots went out. Then she wore one of those huge crinolin (sp) fuzzy hats that looks like a giant snowball (so she didn't have to wash hair.) Looked like an enormous cotton ball. Toss in the sun glasses they give you when you get your eyes dilated - why throw them away when they make perfectly good sun glasses?

Don't worry, I think most of us learned to laugh long ago. I used to get locked out in the freezing cold until I wrote some stupid sentence 1000 times. Most kids would write, "I will not leave the lights on." But how the hell was I supposed to learn a lesson when I didn't even know the meaning of the sentence I had to write 1000 times? And if I couldn't spell a word she'd make me look it up. Like, "Allowing pourous wood to soak in water results in dry rot and renders cutting utensils useless." What the hell does that mean to a kid? Looking back, I guess I never let my wooden knives soak in water, but I had no idea what the heck I was in trouble for back then.

The only way I can do it is play, "RUIN THE FOOD FAST." The second you feel full, dump water and salt on your plate. If there's huge leftovers for another meal, then I wrap it up. But those last few tempting bites will torment me if I don't ruin them.

Okay, what's the most insane diet you've ever tried? As Harley Nana would say, "fess up." Mine has got to be the Schick Center for Weight Loss back in the 80's. All the other kids spent their money on Spring Break vacations, while I paid $1,000 (huge money for a teen back then) for TORTURE CAMP. The Schick Centers used electric therapy to make you stop smoking and eating. I went twice a week for "Electric Aversion Therapy." Each session I had to bring my favorite binge food. I'd sit in a sterile white room flooded with heat lamps. They'd attach a battery-operated electric zapper thingy to my inner wrist, while a Nazi drill sergeant stood over me instructing me what to do. I'd have to shove the offensive junk food in my mouth and chew, then spit in the trash. With every bite he'd give me a good zap, then make me shove another mouthful in. They made me dump the candy on the table, then they emptied a huge bag of sugar on top and made me cram tablespoons in my mouth. Each time the zapping got harder till I'd jump out of the chair a little. Then I spit and started again. This time close your eyes and shove more sugar in your mouth, only when my eyes were closed they dumped salt on top of the sugar so now I'm crying with my mouth stuffed with M n' M's, table sugar and horrifying dry salt - cheeks stuffed full and mouth so dry that the salt and sugar fell through my pursed lips like sand through an hour glass. Then as if I weren't humiliated enough with tears dripping into the sugar and salt making paste on me, they squeezed fish emulsion scent under my nose while making me grab rolls of fat and visualize how disgusting the junk food was with my left hand and mashing melted M n' Ms with my right hand. Just before I sank to the floor in heaving sobs, Hitler tells me to wipe the melted chocolate all over my shirt, then yells at me when I refuse. Try to picture a fat teenager, bawling with melted candy smashed in her hand sitting next to a trash can filled with spit-up food in a room smelling like the foulest dead fish, chocolate smeared all around mouth with salt/sugar past dribbling off her chin and an electric shocker taped to my baby-fine soft inner wrist flesh. Here's my challenge: Top that.

Jenna, we all got your message. Voo and Sachi were listening to you say hi to them, that was the sweetest. Sorry you can't come, you'll be missed.

I'm an easy going Libra, and I was always afraid of my momster, but my defiant, sister, the fire-spitting Scorpio, got it worst. My sister once found a mayonnaise jar filled with fleas under her pillow. The Momster spent all day picking fleas off of cats and poking holes in the jar to keep them alive. Other times we came home from school to find our mattresses on the front lawn. Not sure what that signified, but it was a pretty typical punishment. One time my sister came home from school to find her entire belongings piled in an enormous heap on her bed. Don't ask me where the Momster found a manikin, but the naked manikin's arm was sticking out of the pile of stuff holding an eviction notice.

Zoe, you crack me up! Maybe my story is the most electrifying, but back then it was pretty popular so there are others like me (or was it all just another bad dream and it never really happened?) Meanwhile, my really skinny friend, Shelly, is an herbalist (her mom actually owns an herbal store.) She has 2 teens and wears a size 2. She lives on chicken and vegetables and never puts an ounce of crap in her system. OH, but it's okay that she smokes a pack of cigarettes every day. Lately she's been horribly ill after a bad "raw oyster" experience. She's been going to doctors for two months and they finally found her problem - she's got two bleeding ulcers. I told her to eat a plate of onion rings and call me in the morning. All those herbs and aloe vera, yet she's got bleeding ulcers.