Dirty word substitutes

Gotcha.  That was just a very obvious bit of bait to get you to click here from other sites.  Thanks for being so impulsive.  No really, I appreciate every click I get.  I hate stooping to these tactics, but I'm taking the weekend off.  I promise not to use these dirty low down tricks often but I can still keep my hand in. And speaking of low-down dirty tricks, here we go.
I hate to admit it, but to tell you the truth, I am capable of cussing like a sailor.  I am half way proud of it.  When my kids are grown I might some day be all the way proud of it, but I doubt it.  This practice appalled my mother, when it didn't impress her.  She found it appalling when it was turned against her but heartening if used in her defense.  (Insert obligatory "just like a woman" joke here).  She tried to tell me it sounded "low-class and undignified".  I was unconcerned with this viewpoint for many, many years.  I wouldn't say it is a talent, exactly, but I will say it is an art.  It is also a great stress reliever, given the right surroundings.  (Those "surroundings" would be isolation. )

This capability of mine made me proud when I was younger.  It was a good way to hold my own, I thought.  (What did I know, I was 12, then 18, then....)    It made people laugh a lot, and it made me sound pretty formidable.  I later met and married a man who, in comparison to me, was a real champ when it came to cussing.  This caused much consternation during our early days.  He would start cussing and I would start crying.  It was exhausting.  Finally he explained to me that I should not take it personally, because it was not directed at me specifically.  It was more a way of blowing off steam that worked for him.  It ran in his (very nice, not low class at all, very dignified,) family.  He has an uncle that is a virtual champion of cussing.  Legend runs that he can literally turn the air blue.  Sweetest man you would ever want to meet, also.  But when he gets mad, let me tell you, people pay attention!  While I never witnessed air truly turning blue, he is a sight to behold in this mode and not ever forgotten by anyone within hearing distance.  After it was explained to me that cussing could be a way to relieve stress, I started using this method myself and found it to be a most excellent way of blowing off steam, provided no one else could hear me. 

I once scared a poor innocent woman half to death in a bathroom stall at a truck stop, and still feel terrible about it to this day.  I wasn't talking to her at all but it was after the invention of cell phones and I was having a bad day and a bad relationship, exactly one of which I could do something about, if you know what I mean, and I had reached the point marked "THAT is IT!"., accompanied by the jabbing of the finger into the air .  My stall neighbor didn't figure out that I was talking on a cell phone, I guess.  At any rate she seemed afraid to come out of her stall.  Apologies to anyone this may resonate with.  Sorry you had to hear that, stranger, but it was justified and so completely worth it. When I'm done I really get there in a hurry, it's just how I roll.  I can't seem to change.

After I had children and the guilt came.  Admittedly, it didn't come until the first time my small child said the f word, but it came, and when it came it arrived with a vengeance that I couldn't escape.  So I had to both limit my cussing (hard) and come up with alternative words (not hard at all). 

Here are a few words I have heard used in place of cussing, but do not find any satisfaction in saying them:

Fudge - this is a poor substitute for the F word, not satisfying at all to say, probably because it lacks that K sound at the end that you can put extra force behind.

Ding Dang It -  Forget about this one, it will just make you sound like an idiot and will not make you feel any better, just more idiot-like, which is probably not your goal.  It lacks bite and is also hard to say with any force behind it.

Daaaaaaam - this is not exactly a substitution, more of an alternate way of saying it.  For some reason this word does not seem bad or shocking if you draw it out and say it with a slightly southern accent.  I rate it pretty high on the lame substitute scale.  Which I just made up.  Do not bother me with details.

What the..... - not exactly a cuss word, more of an implication of one that will never come.  It's weak and will make you seem so too.  It's best used by 10 year olds who want to give the impression of cussing without technically saying the actual word.  Leave it to the small fry.


THIS, on the other hand, is a list of substitutions that are not only not bad words, but waaaay more satisfying to say.  Use these words and people will think you entertaining at best and addle brained at worse.  Not low class or undignified at all.  Use with liberally and with abandon, guilt free anywhere.

Instead of the hard to resist Bull Sh*t, try:

Balderdash(!)  It's flashy, dignified and just down right fun to say. It's definition is
      1.senseless, stupid, or exaggerated talk or writing; nonsense.

      2. Obsolete . a muddled mixture of liquors. 

It is received much more warmly than the other word, and means exactly the same thing.

Poppycock(!) This is both fun and satisfying to say for obvious reasons.  It's definition is
      1.  Senseless talk; nonsense.
You will feel yourself skating along the very edge of undignified, but you will skate on by on the whimsical nature of this alternate alternative for the dreaded bull you-know-what.  Unless you say this word in front of little children, and then you better hope to heaven they remember the whole thing and not just the last part.  Parents will not thank you.  But they might laugh a little.

Piffle (vaguely makes me think of piss)  It's definition is
      1.  Foolish or futile talk or ideas; nonsense.

All of these have the added sting of dismissal, I highly recommend them.  I know these all start with P, which is just a coincidence, I think. 

There is one word that is not bad at all, but I think it is the best cuss word ever just on the strength of the satisfaction you feel when you say it. This magic word is

Fax

 Go ahead, say it out loud.  Say it in a mean voice.  Shout it out.  Say it slow, with a growly voice.  Use it as an adjective or an adverb, it works every way and doesn't lose any of it's punch.  ( What are those FAXING kids DOING down there? It's 2 am and I am FAXED out.  If I have to tell them one more FAXING time to go to sleep I'm going to FAX them like they've never been FAXED before!!)

Satisfying, no? 

I have used it for years and never had anybody think I was anything but crazy, and even those people were not offended.  It's my crown jewel secret weapon of bad words that are not bad words at all, and I am giving you the gift of using it too.

Feel free to use these words for your daily frustration and save the really bad ones for situations that warrant using the big guns.  They have certainly helped me, but I am nothing if not a work in progress, as are we all.

Happy verbal defense!

My Girls Rock

I am so very excited for this weekend to get here that I don't know how I'm going to be able to wait. 

This weekend there are going to be girls in my house.  No boys.  Just girls. 

Events have transpired to make it possible for me to spend at least Friday night and Saturday with not only The Beautiful Redhead, but my pretend grand baby and her mother, my Bonus Child!

Having cleaned the carpets and feeling like the queen of my domain, I am ready for them. 

Each one of these girls is so dear to my heart that they can make me cry at the drop of a hat.  They can also make me want to shake them at the drop of a hat, but that's how I know I REALLY REALLY love them!  That I let them live is testament to my love!  I can have faith here because I easily remember being just as stupid self involved brave and headstrong as they do now.  I have the sort of sinking feeling that it's time to tell them the reality version of some of the choices I made, instead of the bright, shining, cleaned up version I have striven so hard to maintain for so long.  Why would I do that?  To protect myself them, of course!!

We are going to eat whatever we want, regardless of it's nutritional value and with abandon, drink wine, take bubble baths, talk all the time, and do whatever that sweet baby dreams up.  I will be her Lady in Waiting for the entire night and following morning, at least.  Last time it was making tents that pleased her.  I actually have a real tent to put up in the basement that was a big winner with my own little ones......and a blow up mattress, should you be experienced in slavery to small children and be thinking ahead about how that could all go wrong.  I am prepared.  BRING IT.  She also is big enough now to drag the chair over to the sink, where she has spent many happy hours wearing rubber gloves, splashing water all over the place and sporadically throwing food around.  Shredded cheese is my least favorite substance for flinging, and in her defense, most of that is actually dropped.  Boiled eggs are probably my favorite flingable substance, but only if she hasn't eaten them down to the yolk yet.  This is how memories are made, people. 

I simply cannot wait. 

If I don't live to see my own grandchildren, God forbid it, I will die happy that I got the chance to pretend.  I have the best time with that child.  It's hard to explain how you can laugh out loud till tears run down your face for 20 miles in a row because you can hear her talking to someone on your cell phone and just kissing, kissing, kissing, whomever she is talking to, while simultaneously wondering who in God's name she really is calling and not caring enough to pull over and take away her happiness.  The entire time that was happening I was also feeling terrible because I knew she was missing her mother and wanting to make up for that.  You kind of had to be there.  Or to have been there once, at pretty much any point in your life.  You never forget those moments, nor should you.  I just always have the best time with her--sniff, sniff.

Also, my kids will have a good idea of what a grandmother is supposed to do.  It is one of the things that have amazed me the most, as a mother, how we change ours life styles in order to give our children a picture of what a mother is supposed to be like.  Like a filter that we conform to, even the most selfish of us.  This is bringing me to a little bit of a throw down I had to have with one of my oldest, best friends, whose mother has Alzheimer's Syndrome.  But that is another story for another day. I won't forget, and I want to end this post on a positive note.  Positive notes are getting more rare every day.  So unless the world stops spinning before this weekend, I have something to look forward to.  I need it, it's been a looooooong winter.

You can trust Paula Deen

Around the first of the year, on a Sunday morning, my oldest baby asked me for waffles.  I said yes if he would plug the waffle iron in for me while I stirred up the batter.  He did, and I started stirring, and about 10 minutes later my kitchen was flooded, defiled is actually a better term, with the most horrible smell that I think I have probably ever smelled in my life, and I am not exaggerating.  I quickly determined that this smell was coming from the now hot waffle iron.  I cannot really describe the smell, but let me tell you what went through my mind as possible scenarios that could have produced this smell:

1)A mouse had somehow gotten in there, given birth, and then been killed while out searching for food, leaving poor baby mice to starve and then be slowly cooked in the waffle iron by an unwitting, unobservant, and unsuspecting innocent child.

This was my first thought.  I lacked the courage to open the lid yet, but for some reason I had the brilliant thought that I should try to clean it.  I know that was not a winning thought.  At least I know it now.  This is why hindsight is so important.  It's important to rehearse what you may think are "crazy" scenarios in your head, all the time--people---so that you will be better prepared in emergencies such as this.  Let's face it, we NEVER see these things coming!

My poor oldest baby was standing right beside me, possibly with the idea that he could help in some way, poor dear, when I, in my panic-induced frenzy, opened that waffle iron and plunged it into running water.  This assured that the horrible smell moved more quickly through my entire house, and it was January, and we couldn't open any windows.  We were now rocking the "steamy horrible smell".  So we opened the doors and started fans because there was no way on earth any human being should be asked to take that ......concoction into their lungs, let alone past their olfactory glands.  I mean it was a smell like rotten meat, or death.  It was extremely pervasive and we could not breathe without choking and gagging. 
When I opened it up, it was not poor starved abandoned baby mice.  Which led me to the second scenario:

2)  A piece of plastic casing from sausage that somehow got closed into the waffle iron by an unwitting, unobservant and unsuspecting innocent child.  Or adult, our clean up routine is above all things FAST, very FAST.  Plus it involves males helping.  I hope I don't have explain what that means, because it is a blog post all to itself.  At any rate, it wasn't just a rotten meat/death smell, it had the added bouquet of burning plastic mixed into it.

After throwing that waffle iron into the trash, opening the doors and running the fan, we were still having little relief from the horrible smell.  I went to the Mecca, aka Wal Mart, for some kind of solution.

This is why I will always remember the exact place I was when I discovered them. 

This is where I found Paula Deen candles. 

They are  bit more expensive (not bad), but I was willing to pay a little more for a product I could rely on, you know?  I had no idea that she even did candles, but I knew she was a good cook, and I was willing to put my money on Paula for help with this problem.  Also, I needed to trust and believe that somehow this problem would go away, and who is better to comfort you in this condition than a Southern lady who cooks?  My faith was well placed.  Not only do her candles smell like you have food cooking in your house, they have the cutest little recipe's printed on a convenient removable tag so that you can actually make whatever your candle smells like.  Is that a great idea or what? 

Do you have any idea how many family members will be thrilled to find out that what they are smelling is not just a good front, but an actual dish to be eaten?  I think you probably do, if you live with any family members.  How many times have I had a male walk into my house and hopefully ask "what smells so good?", only to have their hopes dashed when I tell them it's a candle.  Many, many times.

Well, those days are over.  Or at least they can be, if I follow through and make the dish.  Which, knowing me I probably will unless these recipe's involve a lot of ingredients I do not have on hand, and Paula is not really that kind of girl, so the odds are good.

I should also mention that I bought another waffle iron.  My old one was at least 20 years old.  I had no idea how advanced the world of waffle irons had gotten over the past couple of decades.  Let me just say that they are reasonably priced (compared to the price of say, gas, or milk, you get the picture) and work very well and very quickly. 

I guess the moral of this story is mainly to always check before you close the waffle iron, but if you haven't tried the Paula Deen candles you won't be disappointed.

Here's to preventing horrible smells whenever physically possible, and purging them when necessary.  And Paula Deen!  She has no idea who I am or that she is a hero in my book, but she is, she is.  She is a lady you can trust.