Hillbilly Mom Cranks Again

Hillbilly Mom is not in a good mood. Some might say she's down-
right cranky. Others would say she's a b*tch-on-wheels. Large
SUV wheels. Any way you slice her, HM is a bitter pill to swallow
today.

First cat out of the bag (No. I keep explaining to you, it's just a
saying. No cats, no bags.) this morning, the boys and I were all
ready to leave for school, and I had no keys. I looked in the side
of my purse, where I ALWAYS keep them. None. I looked all
around the kitchen counter beside my purse, where the kids
sometimes drop them after unlocking the door, because hey, it
would be too much work to move their hand another three inches
and drop them into the purse itself. None. I was formulating the
alternate I've gotta find some way to get us to school, by cracky!
plan when I decided to look for HH's keys. Sometimes he leaves
his keys to my car lying about on the dresser. Aha! I snagged
his keys. No need to call my poor Hillbilly Mama to drive out
to our house to pick us up, and come to school at 10:53 to rush
me to the other building, and pick us up after school. She was
probably on the internet anyway. And her cell phone won't get
a signal in her house. We might as well be using two tin cans
and some string, for the fine phone service we get around here.

I had tried to call HH before I found his keys, because yesterday
he used my keys driving home from the Labor Day Picnic. So
you would think he would bring them in and at least drop them
near my purse. No. HH was in a fit of peevishness when we
arrived home, due to me questioning him about grabbing #2 son
(the sweet one) by the neck coming out of Casey's after getting
gas, and all the people in the parking lot stared at him, he was
so rough. HH would not answer my call, even though it was
10 minutes before he was due to start work. I left him a message
about needing my keys.

While all this was going on, #2 son decided to go sit in the car.
That boy is an eternal optimist. He ran back in to proclaim that
"Your keys are in the ignition!". He has quite a vocabulary, too.
Hmm...seems that HH, in his fit of anger, stalked out of the
garage, leaving my keys in the ignition. All night. That may fly
in your neck of the woods, Okie pals, but we live near a medium
security prison. Methinks we should not be leaving the keys
in the car in an unlocked garage.

I found out this afternoon that HH had called my Hillbilly Mama
at noon to see if I ever found my keys. Then he called me at
4:40 p.m. to ask the same thing. He said, "The last thing I did
with them was leave them in the car for you." Yeah. Like that's
the most normal thing in the world to do. It's the passenger's
responsibility to check the ignition for the keys when exiting the
car. HH acted like it was my fault the keys were lost.

Thennnnn, I gave a writing assignment at school, with the prompt:
The biggest mistake I ever made was...Great Googley Moogley,
people! You wouldn't believe some of the stuff I got! Not that
it made me any crankier, mind you. It was just bizarre, and made
me not dwell on the HHkeygate scandal any longer.

I started out by telling them my biggest mistake was trying to get
a bee out of my pocket while driving a curvy road at 55 mph.
That little episode ended with a car that was destroyed from
rolling over three times down the middle of the road, and myself
not feeling too spry for a few weeks. "Top that!" I told them.
So they did.

There were kids who jumped off the roof of the house, kids who
took a gun to a friend's house, kids who threw a dart through
Mom's cheek, kids who fed Grandpa's pet squirrel a 'last supper'
and took him out and shot him, kids who tried to stomp out a
fire and melted their boots to their legs, kids who stole their
brother's credit card and took out $400 at an ATM, kids who
burnt the trash too close to the riding mower and caught a tire
on fire. So my life isn't all that bad.

But I still reserve the right to complain about it.