My Kind of Crazy

My name is Misty Marquardt and my mother is crazy.

Oh, wait ... this isn't SSMI (Support for Siblings of the Mentally Insane)? Oh well. Just in case you weren't aware of it, my mother is crazy. Loco. Insane. Out of her head. Off her rocker. Missing the top branches in the mental wellness tree. Shy of a full load. Around the bend ... and the next one after that.

I worried for years that I'd wake up one morning and be crazy. Well, crazier. Like mom. Everyone always says that no matter what you do, you will eventually turn into your parents. Well, that's okay if you have the normal stuff to look forward to: weight gain, receding hair line, a uni-brow.

It's not so okay when you have insanity to look forward to.

I remember the year that I quit worrying about the sizing of straight jackes. It was the year I turned thirty four. With my mother being just eighteen years older than I am, I realized that by the time she was thirty four I had been sixteen. She'd already been WAY crazy for years by then and I wasn't showing any signs of that type of insanity. Go me!

So, the real reason behind this post ...

I was having lunch with my friend the other day and I was explaining about this weird habit I have that drives me bonkers. I explained the most recent display of said issue.

1. Bonnet told me she needed a crib set for her daughter. I wanted to make one like I remember seeing in a book I use to have.


2. I can't find the book. I spend a week trying to track down or locate a copy of the book with no luck; driving to three different book stores and spending hours online searching.


3. I decide I can reprodcue the crib set without the book so I spend another week surfing the web for photos of similar crib sets. When I finally locate one, I realize how expensive it is going to be to purchase the material to make one. I could easily spend $150 or more on material and then have to spend a week or two making it.


4. Deciding to give my self some slack, I look on the local craigslist and find a cute set for $35. I send Bonnet a link and ask if that is okay. That's fine by her, so I buy it.


5. I hate it. It's got bunnies on it. How did I not notice it had bunnies before I bought it. Maybe if I take one side of the bumper pad and change it to a solid color I'll like it better. Then I can use the old fabric to make a matching curtain. So I spend four days taking the pad apart carefully.


6. I also buy fabric for the back of the pad and enough to make three matching sheets and complete a curtain; spending $25-$30.


7. While in a thrift store I find a bumper pad I fell in LOVE with for $4. So I buy it. I get home and the dust ruffle from the other set sort of goes with it. But the blanket doesn't. Well, I can just make a new quilt that matches.


8. Another trip to the store and I've spent $35 on fabric to make a quilt out of and a matching window topper.


9. Since I no longer need the taken apart bumper pad or matching quilt I am going to sell them in a garage sale that my sister-in-law is having over the weekend. So I spend three hours putting the bumper pad back together. By this point I have also come to the conclusion the ruffle really doesn't match with the new fabric I purchased to make a quilt out of, so I'll sell it to.

I end up selling the crib set for $5 at a sale. After 3-4 weeks of time, energy, and several trips to the store for supplies, I've managed to spend a minimum of $100 on a crib set I haven't even started yet.

Sadly, this isn't the first time I've taken this convoluted path to reach a destination. My entire past is littered with detours and wrong turns that would drive a person to drink. It is just something about the way I'm wired, the way I work.

After I tell my friend about my issue she just smiles at me and says,
"It's just your kind of crazy."

She was also raised by an insain mother. As she pointed out, while we may not end up with our mother's insanity, we all end up crazy.

Oddly, I feel much more at peace with my slip into insanity now.