TRUCKSTOP TALES AND OTHER STORIES (c)2004

I worked at a truckstop for many years, and quit my lucrative position at the watering hole a couple years ago. Everyone always asked me why the heck I was working in this shithole. There are many answers to that question. Some days I asked myself that, because it was one of the most mentally grueling jobs I've ever had. Delivering food is hard. Just kidding. That's the no brainer part. It's the mental abuse that you have to take from nutty truckers and disgruntled fat asses whose french toast isn't hot enough. I have so many great stories, some of them I wrote down, and some of them I just fondly remember. The truth of it all is that I never hated a job so much, while liking it just as well. I met so many people from literally, around the globe.
Truckers are a breed of their own, and most are decent human beings. However not all of them are like what you hear about cowboys singing on the country stations.
I have always wanted to tell them to somebody, because I make myself laugh thinking about some of them. I have always led this crazy life, where murphy's law always applies. That's why I had to write "Other Stories". I had always planned to write a book about the events that take place in my life, hoping that it would make somebody laugh. I take great satisfaction in being the self-dubbed comedian in my already nutball family. (Including my husband and offspring). To begin, I have to start by telling you about my day two days ago.


MY SHIT FILLED DAY

I have a laundry mountain that would put any dry cleaner to shame. Sometimes, I just throw the stuff out and don't tell my family. They don't really notice because they don't ask where stuff is, so all the better. The only problem is, the proverbial other sock sometimes get stuck in the layers. We have a ton of mismatched socks. In an honest attempt to do some laundry, (I got tired of drying off after a bath with sheets or anything else that was clean and nearby.) I put the baby in his crib so he wouldn't take a tumble down the stairs or eat an inanimate object. (A common occurrence in this house.) I was in the laundry room and the baby started to cry so I put him in his walker. My two year old just runs circles around me, and she was darting in and out while I folded laundry.
You know how things get quiet? So quiet that you know that somebody is up to no good? After folding a pile of clothes, I was looking for my two year old, and she had crawled into her baby brother's crib and stripped the sheets for me, crawled onto his dresser, and peed all over the top. Pee. everywhere. In the drawers, down the side, on the floor. I love cleaning up pee, just ask my floormate. It probably has urine stains on the inside. I never look inside of it, I just dump it and rinse it out. It took me a while, but I cleaned it up.

We recently acquired a cat. She is a beautiful calico persian. I saved her through an animal adoption agency. (That's overdoing it. Rather, I saved her FROM the adoption agency.) I remember signing a contract that said I wouldn't have her declawed and blah, blah, blah. The woman also stressed that there was no guarantee to the cat's mental well-being. ok. What exactly does this mean. A paranoid schizophrenic cat? A cat with a drug dependency? I signed it. The cat hid in between the ceiling and floor for a week. I don't smell catshit in the walls, so this is a good thing. The cat came out and my kids were holding it. This is right after the pee thing. I was washing laundry that just got peed on and again, my two year old disappears. Fast forward to ten minutes later. My two year old dumped all of the clumping litter in the toilet, washed the cat in the toilet, put the cat in the garbage can, and repeatedly dumped cupfuls of this newfangled clay/toilet water (l'eau de toilette?) onto our dog.
THE DEMON DOG

Good grief. I save the cat, pat dry the dog, and begin cleaning the water/kitty litter off of the floor. My ten year old is admiring the cat who is now so scared, she's hiding in a basket on my daughter's lap. While scrubbing the floor, I hear, "Oh my god. Poop! Poop! The cat pooped!" "Where is the poop?" I ask. "In the basket on my lap!" Oh brother. I finish cleaning up the bathroom, and grab my daughter's jeans covered in cat shit. (There is no worse smell in the world. Besides maybe the smell of chicken shit.) I wash the cat with the sprayer in the bathroom sink and blowdry her. Done. The cat is hiding under the table in the 1/2 bath and proceeds to shit itself on the blanket. I washed the cat AGAIN. The basked too. Shit everywhere.

The baby, all the while sitting in his walker nibbling on his bottle, is smiling and growling. It's his new thing. I knew what he was doing. Get the sprayer.