Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: appreciation, chores, family, humor, kids, spouse, surgery
This last week has been a true test of my family’s ability to “step up” and help out more around the house and with me in general. Since my elbow surgery on Friday the 3rd, I haven’t been able to do much around the house and have had very limited use of my right hand and arm. Even the simplest of tasks is a chore for me and I’m not used to being an invalid so I have been hopeful that the other members of my household would take on a few more tasks, willingly……but as you may guess that has not always been the case…..at least not the “willingly” part.
Rather than launch into a long diatribe of how disappointed I am I would prefer to make this post about some of the comedic observations that I’ve noted this last week. In an effort to boost my morale and offer something humorous to my readers here are a few noted items:
- Other members of my household have no problem sitting at a table that has not been wiped off after 3 or more uses. They also do not have a problem preparing food on a kitchen counter that hasn’t been wiped down for 4 days. This makes me cringe.
- It’s taken me about 5 days but I am an ace at brushing my teeth with my left hand. If you haven’t tried brushing your teeth with the hand that you don’t usually use I would challenge you to try it. It’s not easy at first.
- Washing hair and body with one hand is next to impossible. Having a spouse do it is more fun for them than for you, trust me.
- Teenage daughters do not like to be asked to help mom hook her bra, but they do like doing mom’s hair!
- It is possible to apply deodorant to the armpit connected to the arm, connected to the hand of the same arm. It’s not a pretty look ( a bit monkey-like) but it works.
- It’s a bit embarrassing going to dinner and asking someone to cut your meat. It’s even more embarrassing to try to eat the meat uncut.
- It takes three to four times as long to write down a phone number with my left hand. As a side note I understand that I’m challenging my brain, so that’s good!
- Tweenage boys get a lot of entertainment value out of seeing how close I can come to touching my nose and/or hair with my bad hand/arm, but encouragement is everything “go, go, go, go, go mom, you can do it!”
So this last week has made me learn to appreciate my right arm…..that sounds really weird but I think that you get the picture. I’m not sure that my family has learned to appreciate me at all. The laundry is overflowing, the floors need vacuuming and dust bunnies are making homes in every corner of the living room (I know this because my daughter pointed it out, and laughed). I’ll be the last one laughing though, the kid’s chore board is filled today, they’ll be up till midnight!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bike, bruise, clumsy, fall, funny, humor, hurt, husband, Jupiter, kids, lazy, trash, Uranus
Last Friday morning I took a pretty bad fall……because I’m klutzy and that’s what I do!
I had just returned from my early morning walk and noticed that FS never took the trash out to the curb the night before. This is his chore, every Thursday, and he knows this, but he’s lazy! It was still pretty dark out and I wasn’t paying attention as I backed out the trash can and as I was backing up I tripped over FS’s bike which was lying on the driveway, which isn’t suppose to be lying on the driveway, which he knows, but he’s lazy!! Strike 2.
As I began to go down I attempted to steady myself with the trash can which was a really stupid idea because it has wheels and that really only proved to make matters worse bacause it ended up coming down with me and landed on top of me, with me landing on top of the bike.
I have failed to mention what type of bike I’m talking about. This bike is a dirt bike, it has pegs coming out of the middle of the wheels, one on each side (just like the pegs on the bike that Napoleon Dynamite had on his bike when Pedro rode the pegs, remember?). These are very strong steel pegs that stick out about 4 inches off of the wheel and when the bike is on the ground, on it’s side, as it was when I fell on it……..well you can imagine where I landed.
Now had I landed about 4 inches further to the right I would have created a new oraface with which to crap out of (sorry to be so crass) but in this case I managed to land my left butt cheek squarely on that peg and I cannot begin to tell you the pain that ran through my ass at that moment.
I laid in that position for about a minute. Me on top of the bike with the trash can on top of me…..this surely was not a good look. I was halfway hoping that someone would come along and help me up and then again I was halfway hoping that no one saw the whole fiasco, although if they had I probably would have to help them off the ground because they would be there writhing in pain from the laughter!
It didn’t take long for the color to appear. When I was finally able to crawl my sandwiched ass out of that mess I came into the house to look at my butt. MFH heard me cursing a blue streak all the way to the bathroom and followed me in to see what had happened. As I removed my sweatpants I saw that the bruise had already formed and it wasn’t going to be pretty. By day 2 I announced to MFH that my bruise was the “color and size of Jupiter” to which he replied “No honey, it’s more like Uranus”…….he thinks he’s funny.
Long story short, FS gets no allowance because he failed to do his chore and care for his bike and MFH now has a bruise just like mine, from where I kicked him after the “Uranus” crack! (not really, he doesn’t bruise as easily as me)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bad, bad business, behavior, good, humor, ironic, irony, karma, predatory business, revenge, rude
I believe in karma, the idea that what you put out into the universe is what you will also get back. I have to believe it because I’ve seen karma come back to bite people in the butt and I’ve also seen karma come back to bite people that really may not have earned it. Of course there’s also good karma. One of my favorite sayings is “The best revenge is success (or living well)”. That’s a form of karma, right??
I think that one of my best karma stories has to do with a friend of mine (who shall remain nameless to protect her identity). Several years ago this friend and I were pretty close. It’s unfortunate but our friendship took a downturn during my divorce. The funny thing is that you really find out who your real friends are when you go through hard times. She acted as though divorce was contagious, and now that I think about it, it was! There were quite a few people I knew that followed in my footsteps. Now I’m getting off track………….
Anyway, this friend had a great sense of humor. She also had an uncanny knack for impersonating people and was especially good at impersonating a deaf person. Trust me, I knew that it was not politically correct but she was amazingly good at it and every once in a while when she poured the impersonation on I would roll on the floor with laughter. I feel a little bad telling this story because it is horribly politically incorrect but hind site is 20/20 and I can tell you now that I would not find any humor in it today. You guessed it, karma came through. My friend was diagnosed with a tumor on the eustacian tube in one of her ears. Fortunately it was benign and through surgery the tumor was removed. Here’s the downside, it was considered brain surgery and the recovery was very lengthy but worse, she lost all hearing in that ear. To the best of my knowledge she hasn’t performed that impersonation since then and even if she did, it wouldn’t be funny.
I also can’t help but think that in some way the crappy economy is due to karma. So much greed and so many bad spending habits by so many people (forget the corporations, that goes without saying) has led to financial ruin. I’ve seen a lot of it right within my own industry. When real estate was hot there were a lot of Realtors and mortgage brokers that took advantage of buyers and sellers. Some of you may be happy to hear that I know quite a few of these people who are now loosing their own houses and their businesses…..and for the most part, they deserve it. Now that’s irony, brokers loosing their own home after predatory and unethical practices screwed over their clients that were buying a home….it’s almost funny!
Here’s one more example. CAM told me this story about how she had gone to the gas station to fill up her car. There were no other cars in front of hers and instead of pulling forward she stopped at the first pump. There was a guy who pulled in right behind her and couldn’t get around her car to get to the first pump (which was the pump she should have gone to in the first place). Before she even began to pump her gas he came over to her and asked if she would please move her car forward, she refused. The gas attendant came over and the two men explained that it would nice if she could pull forward so that this gentleman could fill up too. She still refused and proceeded to fill up her car. Both men walked away in a huff. She ended her story by saying to me “Can you believe how rude they were?”, I was stunned. This woman professes to be a “born-again” Christian. Did she not learn that you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you? She must have missed church that Sunday. CAM got a two-fer, she chose to piss off two people for the price of one and how did karma respond to this? After a number of other jaw dropping incidents I have chosen not to have her in my life and subsequently she doesn’t get to see her grandchildren.
So the moral of the story is just that: put out good, get good. Put out bad, get bad. It’s pretty simple but it bears repeating and it’s a good life lesson for the new year. May karma be kind to you and your family in 2009!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: CVS pharmacy, daughters, friends, funny, humor, Menstral Cycle, menstruation, pads, Period, sex education, tampons
I felt like a change, I hope that you enjoy the new look of my site……I think it’s peaceful!
I must preface this post by saying that if you’re a man reading this, you may want to think twice. Although I think that this is an amusing little story about a mom explaining the facts of life to her daughter, a man may be put off. So there it is, I’ve given you fair warning!
4 years ago FD was about 10 and believe it or not she actually had friends that were starting to get their periods. (As a side note: I blame it on the hormones in milk and other food products, but I have nothing to back up this claim, it’s just my belief!) One evening she was complaining of a stomach ache and since I was so paranoid that she could be getting her period I decided that it might be time to have “the period talk” with her. I asked her to localize her pain. “Is it up here?” I inquired, placing my hand just below my chest “or is it down here?” I asked, very carefully placing my hand on my abdomen.
She must have thought I was nuts because that’s the look she gave me (and she gives me this look ALL of the time). Either way she informed me that she was sure that it was her stomach and not a pain in her abdomen. While this was a relief to me it also sparked the opportunity to ask her about her knowledge of the female anatomy. So I asked “Do you know what it looks like in here?” and I placed my hand back on my abdomen. She shook her head no and gave me an inquisitive look, so I made the suggestion that we find a picture of the female organs on the Internet.
Hind site is 20/20 and if I had to do it over again I would never have allowed my 10 year old to look over my shoulder while I googled “female organs”. It’s horrifying what you find……and it certainly sparks a whole plethora of questions! After my initial shock I suggested that FD “sit down and watch TV while “mommy finds an appropriate site to visit”.
Eventually I found the proper diagram and I invited FD back over so that I could show her where an egg develops and travels and what the uterus is all about. She seemed fascinated…..and then I got to the part about our “monthly visitor”. I prefer to call this visitor Flo, she visits every month, stays for about a week (just long enough to wear out a welcome), we’re glad when she leaves but we hope she comes again, same time, next month. OK, that’s not exactly how I explained it, but you get the idea. Speaking of ideas, I had what I thought, was another great one……..but remember hind site?
After I felt confident that she understood how periods worked, I decided to show her what tampons and pads look like and how they function. I thought back to an experiment that we did in sex education when I was in school. It must have had an impact on me because I can’t believe that I remembered it! Here’s what my health teacher did: she took a small glass of water and dunked a tampon into the glass. SLOWLY, the tampon soaked up the water, not all of it but enough that we all understood the concept.
Tampon technology has sure come a long way because that’s not exactly what happened in our experiment. I got the glass of water and went into the bathroom. I pulled out a REGULAR (not Super nor Super Duper) tampon and as I dropped it into the glass my FD and I watched in stunned silence as the tampon soaked up the entire glass of water in less than 1 second…..it may have even happened in a nano-second, it was that fast! She was horrified, completely freaked out, and I had a lot of explaining to do.
She vowed to never use a tampon and I was almost right there with her! I had to explain to her the science regarding the differences between certain substances but that really did nothing to calm her fears. In the end I apologized, threw out my mess and FD and I went back to what we were doing before our little chat began.
FD finally got her period recently and at an inopportune time…..while we were on vacation! I took her to the local CVS which was across the street from where we were staying and as we stood in front of the “wall of pads” we laughed hard about the different options. I had to explain that I had no idea what she should get since I used tampons, and based on our experiment from several years ago that was not an option for her. I asked her what her friends used and she gave me the “are you nuts” look again. It took a while but we finally settled on something with wings, to which I reminded her “when in doubt, take flight”!
I think that it’s great that I have a relationship with FD where we can laugh about “that time of the month”. Periods were no laughing matter when I was a kid….I was devastated and begged my mother not to tell anyone when I got mine. FD couldn’t wait to call her friends, she is proud and I am proud of her. Little does she know she has many, many years of fun times ahead!!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: aging, doctors, falling apart, humor, old age, sick, Webmd.com
I’m falling apart. My body is failing me. It’s really very depressing but I suppose that it’s not entirely to be unexpected, after all, I’m getting older and it’s all part of the aging process, or so I’ve been told.
In the past year I have had more “issues” than ever. I’ve always been very healthy. Other than child birth and a tonsillectomy (at age 4) I have never spent time in a hospital; unless it was to visit a friend or family member. Those of you who have not been as fortunate as I, have no sympathy and I understand and forgive you (BFF J is now telling me to put two pairs of my big girl panties on). I am the furthest thing from a hypochondriac…..when I get sick I’m in denial, but when I’m REALLY sick I’m a huge wuss, because I never get sick. Does that make sense? I’m a wussy when I do have health problems because I’m not suppose to have health problems, I’m healthy! Until this last year that is.
I must preface this next paragraph by telling you that Webmd is probably the most irresponsible on line tool that no one should be using…..and of course I’ve highlighted it to provide you with a link so that you may see just how bad it can be. Please, whatever you do, do not rely on the diagnosis of this site. It is always in your best interest to consult with your own doctor, and when you do so, do not tell your doctor that you are there for a visit based on what Webmd told you was wrong with you. They REALLY hate that. It’s understandable and here’s why: According to Webmd, after inputting my symptoms I have cancer, and I’m dying……and I may be gone by the end of the year, “sniff”.
Now, I’m writing this very tongue and cheek. I’m sure that I’m fine. In fact, I visited my doctor and I’m fine….other than the fact that I’m falling apart. But, I’ve been told that happens at my age so I need to get over it. In the past year I’ve been diagnosed with kidney stones, tennis elbow, and now I need a skin grapht done on my lower gumline & my wisdom teeth removed. For someone who has never had a serious injury (other than a minor nose fracture in a freak bar fight in college….that story is for another time) I am in no hurry to proceed with any of the procedures that are required….because frankly I’m a wuss and I don’t feel the need to voluntarilly have pain inflicted on me, even if it’s covered by insurance and could make me feel better.
I’ve watched my parents and my grandparents age over the years and I think I’ll be ok, they are of pretty hardy stock so I’ve got that much going for me. I also enjoy a glass or two of red wine every so often and I know that’s suppose to be good for me. I don’t smoke and I eat pretty well so I’m going to attribute my rapid aging process to having a teenager. Those of you reading this that have a teenager will probably agree. Even the best kid will still give you an ulcer every so often and although I’m blessed with two great kids I can’t help but think that the grey in my hair and my physical ailments began to really show when the middle school years were upon our family.
Either way it could just be that I’m getting older and there is no stopping it. If you’re thinking that “it’s to be celebrated (with a big cheery smile)” then you’re wrong about that too! As I approach 40 I’m just going to rely on some of the new catch phrases that I’ve heard: 40 is the new 30 AND grey is the new blond! (and as I’m writing this I just pulled out my reading glasses, those are new too!)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Christianity, commandments, crazy, honor, humor, mom, mother
Last weekend FD, FS & I all attended church. MFH wasn’t feeling good and stayed home, or maybe that was just an excuse to skip church, you decide. We’re your average protestant family, we attend church about twice a month but always make it a priority to force it on the kids through confirmation classes!
So at the service the confirmants in FD’s class all had to memorize and recite the 10 Commandments. There are 5 kids in her class so each kid took 2 commandments, recited them and then explained them. In addition, the pastor used this as his sermon lesson for the day. It was pretty impressive, the kids did awesome!
But that’s not what this story is really about…..I just wanted to brag! No actually this is sort of about the commandment that says “Thou shalt honor they mother and thy father”. I’m not telling this story in an effort to get all preachy, I’m actually laying out the foundation of issues with my mother.
My mother is nuts. We call her CAM, Crazy Ass Mother. That’s not exactly what I would call “honoring” but I think I’m ok. I’ve pretty much fallen short on all of the commandments at some time or another (although I’m not a murderer or an adulterer) but I’m told that I’m forgiven so I’m good! Anyway, I don’t really talk to CAM anymore. I removed her from my life about 4 years ago, for good this time. There were other times that I tried to stay away but she kept pulling me back in. She really is truly messed up but I hope the best for her (and those around her) but I just cannot have her in my life, it’s a recipe for disaster……a pinch of grandiosity with a dash of boundrylessness (something my therapist put in my head).
CAM has always been a bit controlling and I’m sure that most of us would say something like that about our mom, that’s what they do. But her controlling behavior reached a new height when she found the Lord. Please don’t misunderstand! I think it’s great when anyone finds Jesus it’s just that SOME people become holier than thou, and that’s what happened in this case.
The last few times that I have had the misfortune of hearing from CAM it was to inform me and the kids (with a postcard) that she was in NY, attempting to convert the Jews or (by letter) asking us for a donation in her name so that she could go on a mission trip to India to save the Lost Tribe of Menashe (and I only remember the name of the tribe because there is a law firm here in town and Albert Menashe is the lead Partner!! LOL).
The last time that I actually saw her was about 2 years ago when MFH took me to visit my Gramma (not my crazy one) while she was recovering in a nursing home after a fall. When we got there we weren’t expecting CAM to be there also, that was a bonus. MFH had never met her before but had heard stories. The visit started out very nicely and CAM was making ME look like the crazy one…..she was on her best behavior, dammit! But it wasn’t long before the crazy came out and I felt redemption coming my way. She started questioning MFH about his salvation, his beliefs, his Savior etc……she even had the nerve to hand us some mini brochures about how we could find Jesus. My response: “Found him already, thanks!” Needless to say I was more than a little embarassed but MFH got the education that reinforced the decision to keep CAM out of our lives.
I have finally come to terms with my Christian guilt regarding the honoring of my mother. I think that the best way to “honor” her is to keep her away. God knows that if I let her back into my life she would make me crazy and I would probably end up breaking another commandment…….the REALLY bad one!
