Easter Week Chaos

“If you want to see the sunshine, you have to weather the storm.”~ Frank Lane

I am greatly considering either writing a book, or starting a brand new blog when it comes to the great people and experiences here at the SGC.

Allow me to present to you the events over the past 24 hours.

It is late March. Tis the season. Texas went through a lot of rain overnight and into this morning and early afternoon. However the insanity started to break when our beloved meteorologists were warning that “storms could be severe.”

Texas translation? MILK AND BREAD! MILK AND BREAD!! AND BATTERIES!!!

The corner gas station was completely wiped out of the items.

On this day in 2014. Just saying Texas likes to be stormy on this day.

So it rained and rained. There was thunder. There was lightning. And there was a promising look of local flooding. But it all subsided. In the end, store owners got richer and the area got some much needed rain to help with the drought.

When the sun came up this morning and it was time to get that all important cup of coffee, I suddenly realizing that I had walked into a room full of outspoken and loud obscenities.

F bombs were flying!! “Fuck this and fuck that. Fucking fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” And when you are trying to wake up and having a hard time making sense of the day, being bombarded with profanities isn’t the best way of going at it.

It would have been easier to handle, if there was a point to it. But the guy just couldn’t stop swearing. He was just rambling on about various things. And then he finally stood up and left.

The neighbors have labelled him as “the insane one.” From people who know him however, apparently he is highly intelligent. So there you have it.

The chaos train had started rolling at full speed.

Today was our special Easter dinner event. It was a catered event from a seafood restaurant and only a few select people could attend. There was a sign up sheet that the residents had to sign in order to be able to take part. If you were not the list, you were not offered any food. Easy enough to understand.

There was supposed to an Easter egg hunt, but due to the fact that at 11:30 AM looked like 10:00 PM and the rain was pouring down, that was cancelled.

In an effort to avoid bodies bumping into everything while trying to get in line to get food, they decided to go to the sign up sheet and call people’s name one at a time. Your name was called and you got your food. Once you were handed your food and you walked away, the next person was called.

It was a process that I felt worked out very well.

And the guy who had the potty mouth this morning?

His name was not called. His name was not written on the sign up sheet that the social worker had in her hands. And so, without his name being on the list, he was refused being served food.

GUESS WHAT HAPPENED NEXT???

Round Two. Screaming and wailing. Minus the profanity for whatever reason.

Our resident who had coordinated the event with staff was trying to talk to him to tell him that she had his name on the list and that he can go ahead and get something to eat. But in his blinding rage, he did not hear her. And so instead of having that saving grace that he was in fact included on the list, he stormed his way out of the building and into the pouring rain with bitterness in his heart. Even though the coordinating resident was trying to get in a word over the shouting. She simply was overpowered.

Apparently what unfortunately had happened was that the resident attempted to e-mail the social worker last night to add him to the list. But the social worker never received the e-mail.

He was gone before the resident could resolve the problem.

Being that I was sitting at the same table as the coordinator, I heard the conversation between her and the social worker when they both realized what the problem was. And there was not anything they could do about it because technology had failed.

I can believe it as I was without Internet for several hours last night. So the e-mail probably was never sent.

Food however WAS set aside to be given to him after the fact. I do not know what happened when they went to deliver it to him at his home.

The other residents began their buzzing. One guy even came up to the coordinator and decided that he was going to put the full blame upon the shoulders of the social worker. He stated that the social worker handled it extremely poorly and it should have never went down the way that it did. And there were others that were just as willing to chastise and point fingers.

I realized at that moment that the craziness of living here would NEVER go away!! I understand that there are over 60 people who call this place home, and that means there’s probably going to be over 60 different opinions.

The fighting and the minutiae will forever be present here at SGC. And that’s why I wonder if I should start writing more and more about the events that go on here because it has to be wildly entertaining for some of you!!!

And finally to bring this tale to an end, the social worker decided that she was going to just hand out plastic Easter eggs to those who were in attendance because there would be no Easter egg hunt.

Inside of each egg were treats. Basically bite size pieces of chocolate and quarters. I stopped in the social worker’s office to say “good morning” to her early last week when she was putting them together.

Each person got several eggs. Most of which contained one piece of candy and one quarter. I believe the intention was to give out enough eggs that there would be enough money to use for the laundry machines. At least to wash your laundry.

I sat there at the table and I was making jokes about the social worker looking like the Easter bunny. But it went terribly, terribly wrong!!

It was probably the biggest faux pas I had made in over a year.

Instead of saying “She looks like the Easter bunny handing out treats.” I said, “She looks like the Playboy bunny handing out treats.”

It was met with dead silence until I realized the error and quickly corrected myself for it.

I swear I thought I was next to be crucified for it.

After I survived that scare, the social worker came back around a few minutes later asking for the emptied plastic eggs. They wanted to be able to keep them and use them in years to come.

A majority of the eggs contained Hershey’s Kisses. Not all, but most of them.

In a moment of quick thinking, when the social worker came around to collect the eggs from our table I said, “Thank you for the kisses!!”

The social worker busted out laughing so hard that she bent in half. And in the next moment the entire building was laughing as hard as they could.

I probably saved myself from certain social and personal destruction after the “bunny” comment.

I am not sure what “holiday” will be served up next here. If I had to guess, it could be Memorial Day or Independence Day.

And as always…. stay tuned!!!

The Halloween Humiliation

“One man’s transparency is another’s humiliation.”~ Gerry Adams

Last night was the annual October showing of the cartoon, “It’s the GreatPumpkin, Charlie Brown.”, one that I would have to say that has been a part of my life each and every October. And each time I am reminded of my childhood memories of Halloween and Trick-or-Treating.

Sufficed to say that even in my adult life, I have watched that cartoon every October ever since I can remember and have missed it, but once in my life time.

And with those childhood memories comes a tale of a child’s Halloween nightmare.

Living on a circle drive, my parents were very serious about us, their children, not to wander too far down the block on either side. But one year for Halloween, we were actually “smart” enough to have gone all the way around the entire neighborhood as fast as we could without the parents wondering where we were.

Naturally this was back during a time when Halloween or parents were concerned with the dangers of children being out at night. Still though, when we went out each Halloween, we always had an adult with us, whether it had been my father or mother. But this one year, we were left to the supervision of the two elder siblings to watch over us in the night as we went door to door begging for candy.

For years, our neighbors were kind of predictable. We knew which neighbors gave out healthy stuff like boxes of raisins, and we knew who had “the good stuff” which was chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate. Not to mention bubble gum. Our favorite house actually was the one who handed out the bubble gum. Not to say that its better than chocolate since that is a matter of opinion, but those neighbors across the street and one house over, had that gum in a candy dish– all year long. We knew it was a for sure bet.

But this particular tale would have moved my childhood into the next chapter of Halloween activities as our small-sized plastic pumpkins with the handle on it would prove not to be enough from the bounty that was inevitably before us. If we only were smart enough at that young of an age to have used our pillow cases!!

It just so happned that year on Halloween  on that same evening, or late afternoon, there was a wedding and I went with my father and younger brother to that wedding. We knew that there would be a reception, and let’s face it… when you are that young, the dream of having wedding cake as well as assorted salted nuts and those pink, yellow, and green colored mints added on to the piles of candy that would have been taken during the night was a child’s wet dream before they even knew what one was.

Needless to say, my father did not allow us that dream.

We had a choice: Wedding reception or Trick-or-Treating? We thought that we would get more out of the evening if we went home and went door to door. We were SO right!!

Also with the underestimated candy luggage was the action of doing away with the old standby Halloween costumes that were easy to slip on, like a shirt with a mask that was held together by a thin rubber band and tiny holes for the nose to breathe out of and of course the eyes to see. That Halloween, we did not have to dress up like a character from Scooby-Doo or a princess or whatever it was that we had. I think a Frankenstein monster, we had one too? I don’t recall. What I did remember was actually being “grown up” enough to wear the make-up and paint.

So we went out. We skipped over those who were bearing fruits and nutrition-filled food, as well as those just handing out caramel apples and went straight across the street for our gum. That year, we got TWO pieces of gum and we thought that this was the beginning of a marvelous adventure.

Door to door, house to house. Both sides of the street. And then we had reached our “limitations” to what we were used to. Going any further in the neighborhood was unheard of, but the elder two siblings said “Let’s Go!!”.

We left nothing unchecked. Each and every house was struck. Several neighbors that we never saw face to face or even knew as neighbors would definitely remember our faces as we stomped across front yards and cut across lawns to get to the next front door faster from the house before.

Our lousy plastic pumpkins were full before we even made it half way. The thought of going and knocking on strang doors started to bother me, so I every once in a while I would surrender my candy-filled pumpkin and tell my brother, “I don’t like this house. It’s creepy and the porch light isn’t on. I don’t want ANYTHING from this house.” And so my brother would go ahead and take my pumpkin and come back several seconds later. Clearly, I would end up with far less than he would.

My humiliation came to me when we had finished the entire lap around the block and came home for the inevitable “parental scanning for dangerous objects and mother/father candy taxes” were applied. Yep, we had to go through that TWICE.

Needless to say that a majority of the chocolate items were gone before they gave back our candy. But then I would see in my brother’s pumpkin some items I had never thought possible to be given out for Halloween.

Someone had given him a Little Debbie’s Star Crunch. It was untampered with in a singled package. And on top of that, he had a single dollar bill.

When I asked him where he got them, he simply smirked with a bold smile of bragging and said, “You said you didn’t want anything from those houses, so I didn’t get you anything.”

Neither my mother or my father would take that Star Crunch from my brother. So this fabulous snack treat, and some pocket change totally was lost because I didn’t trust the houses on the other side of the block. So humiliating!

I would learn never to turn down Halloween treats, from anyone at anytime no matter what. We were still going to have to go through the parents to make sure everything was safe. But all that meant was more for us for the next week. Even if we lost the grandest of all treats to the parents, we still had awesome replacements because nobody from that point on when we went out, would dare say “I don’t want anything from this house.”

 

Diamonds Are Not A Girl’s Best Friend

It appears as if the days of the stereotype sung by Carol Channing in the Broadway production of “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”, might be over with.

With the advent of several birthdays, anniversaries, and the soon approaching Christmas holiday, I find myself in a rather odd position. The stereotype in what women want as gifts doesn’t seem to be the case anymore at all. The things in which we (as men) grew up to learn about what women wanted has been thrown out the window entirely.

It used to be a safe bet for a man to buy a woman either chocolate, flowers, or jewelry, or all of them. But I am finding out that within the group of female colleagues and friends that its not really what they want any more.

Sure, I don’t see a woman turning down these things. I don’t see how a woman would want to turn away from FREE chocolate. But it really isn’t what they WANT from anyone. It appears that the female population (at least within my circles) want things that are less tangible and more meaningful. They seem to want to hang on to the bond of friendship more often than not. That they want that to grow and develop, rather than a bouquet of flowers or a box of chocolates.

I will say that some of my female friends are already married. So perhaps if it is chocolate and flowers and jewelry that they want, they could probably seek it from their husbands. But, not all of my female friends are married or in a relationship. And they still would rather pass on the objects and maintain the emotional bonds.

I have a friend’s birthday that is coming up and I have absolutely no clue at all what she would like or would want. Perhaps the first step would be to ask. Yet with previous conversations I have had, she’s not exactly the “material girl” either.

That is not to say that ALL women have abandoned the stereotype and aim for less tangible things in which they desire. There are still those who want these things. I am just saying that through my social life, those women that I speak to regularly are NOT those kinds of women.

I personally have no problem giving my female friends chocolates or roses. I am not opposed to ordering a small and simple vase of flowers for their special day. Whether they are married or not. My intentions are always true… “This is for your special day. Be happy!”.

I recall one time that I sent a half dozen roses that were white, to a female friend of mine who was married. It was for her wedding anniversary. She was thrilled. But when she got home, the gift in which her own husband had purchased for her, she found less endearing than the white roses. Oops!!

They do laugh about it now.

Clearly, it was not the objective to outshine her own spouse. That’s just what happened. I’m also not opposed to “downgrading” a gift, just in case that may happen again.

One thing that I always run into over and over and over again is “Don’t spend your money!”. Well, I am creative. I can create greeting cards, write poetry, give simple gifts in lieu of roses, chocolate, and jewelry and it would be tons cheaper if not at any cost at all. But what exactly is it that women want any more??

Perhaps it all depends on who the woman is. And that would make sense to me. If I was friends with a woman, and I knew she loved Chinese food. I’d probably buy her a gift certificate for the nearest Chinese restaurant. I think that it’s really, all a matter of paying attention.

If she’s been raving about a particular film that is about to come out, then I’d get her free movie passes.

Each woman is individually unique. That goes for anyone in this world. And I love all of my friends, male or female, in my own unique way.

It is just- what in the world do women want??