Monday, August 24, 2009

How do I even title this post?

This is a picture of a pair of my favorite pants. Well, they were my favorite until today.

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I'm not sure how well you can see this picture taken with my phone and I'm sorry there can't be a better one. My cell phone was the only camera I had available and this picture HAD to be taken.

You see, I'm traveling this week for work. I got on a big plane at the Sacramento airport and flew to Los Angeles. I then proceeded to the car rental terminal with my boss. MY BOSS. We approached this sexy red Mustang and I smiled with delight at how wonderful the ride to the office would be in this lovely beast.

The smile quickly disappeared and was replaced by shock and horror as I sat down on that beautiful leather seat and heard the most distressing of all noises.

RRIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!

"Holy Crap!! My pants just ripped out!" My boss laughed and continued to embark on our travel. I really don't think he appreciated just HOW ripped my pants were. But I could feel the leather on my skin. I knew it was bad. Titanic bad. And I began to wonder how in the hell I was going to get from the car in the parking lot to the building where we worked.

Because I had this problem....

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My plan quickly came in to development in my mind and I informed my boss that he was going to need to get my suitcase out for me once we got to the campus where our building was. My plan was to get something....ANYTHING...out of the suitcase and drape it around my waist.

Once we arrived and parked, my boss exited the car and I really took a good look at my pants. I quickly realized that NOTHING in my suitcase was going to cover the grand canyon of rips in this pair of pants. The natural air conditioning was just lovely but it was doing nothing to cool the heat I felt in my face.

Help me.

So the plan changed quickly. Very quickly. As my boss brought the suitcase to the side of the car, he mumbled "Mmm...Hmmm.." Yeah. Exactly. I promptly announced that I would be changing in the car. He promised he wouldn't look, but didn't say anything about keeping any passer-by lookie-loos from the windows. Oh, well. I've been in worse situations.

Like when this EXACT thing happened a few years ago. With co-workers. In the bowling alley during league. And I still had 2 games left to bowl.

Yeah. That's how my life rolls.

I'm very thankful for 2 things today: That the good Lord didn't let this happen while I was ON THE PLANE and....and....and the other thing? That I didn't have on my thong underwear.

You know, like that night at the bowling alley.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

One of my new favorite blogs...

The Internet is just simply a wonderful thing. And a bad thing with how much it sucks me in to its vortex. But it's mostly a wonderful thing.

I've found long-lost high school friends, made brand new friends and reconnected with old co-workers. It's a delight to catch up with all these folks. It breaks up the monotony of my own life. Do not confuse "monotony" with "dull".

mo·not·o·nous (m-ntn-s)
adj.
1. Sounded or spoken in an unvarying tone.
2. Tediously repetitious or lacking in variety.


It perfectly describes my life. I'm always yelling at my children in the same, unvarying tone and they tediously and repeatedly lack in their variety to actually do what I ask them to do. It's not dull, but it's doesn't vary much. Hence, the monotony of my life.

I'm off track. I do that a lot here.

So after much arm pulling and begging and...oh, who am I kidding. I was just nosey and decided I needed to join Facebook one day. Strange little community, this Facebook. I found old classmates, old co-workers, old friends, and some people that I didn't really want to find at all. Hey, you take the good with the bad. What can I say?

But I ended up finding a particular person that I worked with many years ago. He was THE first person who welcomed me to this new job in Sacramento outside of my boss. I was just a scared little country girl and this guy acted like he had known me all his life. It was quite comforting and we ended up becoming wonderful lunch buddies. It was a big group of us, actually. It saddens me because I believe I am the sole survivor of that big lunch crew. *sigh* (Still trying to figure out a good date to have lunch again!) But imagine my delight when I saw him as a friend of a friend of one of my friends. (Yes, I'm a Facebook stalker).

So we got to chatting one day...and he ended up just calling me on the phone. I didn't even realize people still wanted to do that. But it was so good to hear his voice. We talked for awhile and the whole subject of blogging came up. I told him how much I loved to blog and he said, "Yeah. My wife has this *little* blog she writes on all the time."

Meet the *little* blog:

Nanny Goat in Panties

Okay, he didn't say little. Because it's not. But he was very excited for me to go read it. And read it I did....for about 4 hours on night shift one night! This woman's writing is incredibly funny and highly contagious. I read her entire post history that night and always look forward to my little notification that she has updated.

I stalk her.

Well, I do comment over there quite a lot, too. So that's not *really* stalking, is it?

So go visit Margaret at Nanny Goats In Panties. You will absolutely NOT be disappointed!! Start with this post. You will find yourself reading the whole stinkin' blog. Trust me.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

A sneaky little hidden gold-mine

I am addicted to the gas station auto car washes. I admit it. Now you can either call that laziness on my part or resourceful. I don't care. Either way my car gets washed and cleaned and prettied on the outside without me having to break a sweat dragging a hose out to the driveway, dipping the ginormously freaky oversized sponge in to the converted empty-kitty-litter-bucket and stretch all over the car to wash it. And I NEVER get the top center of the car clean. I'm physically challenged that way just like any 5'2" person would be.

And the inside? Well, I have to sweat for that. Or go to a "fancy" car wash place and pay $25 more dollars for it. And I'm kind of cheap.

So I choose to hit "yes" to the "would you like to buy a car wash" when filling up my gas tank. It saves me money. And sweat. And a few sore muscles. When I'm all done, I stare at the reciept depository anxiously awaiting that glorious little piece of paper with the magic number on it. My number to freedom. My number to a sparkly clean car. My car wash code. Then off to the machine I go.

I will say that I am somewhat choosey about WHICH gas stations I will purchase car washes from. I do NOT like the ones with the huge muppet-like monsters twirling around your precious automobile beating it to death with its rubber fur. Ugh! How can someone do that to their car? I like the "touchless" ones because who likes to actually be touched by a stranger at the car wash? Not me.

My favorite part of the whole process? When the machine gently layers a coat of fruity smelling waxes and soaps all over the car. Hmmmmmm. I just want to eat it.

Imagine how excited I was when I noticed I needed gas when I got off work yesterday. Even though I got off work semi-late because northern California is currently trying to burn to the ground, I'm positive there was a glimmer in my eye. I wish I would have looked in the mirror to see it. And how excited I was to hit that "yes" button. How giddy do you think I was to see that little golden-numbered ticked printing out? Apparently not excited enough because I got sidetracked thinking of my husband wondering why I was running late while dinner was getting cold....AND DROVE OFF WITHOUT MY TICKET.

The horrors!!!!

So I'm finally getting to the point of this post. How much money do you think is made by these gas stations by people who do the very thing I did yesterday? I'm not sure how to even approach the clerk at the gas station...or if there is anything they could do about it anyway. I paid for a car wash. I didn't get my car wash. They got my money and didn't have to spend a dime providing me with electricity, water or yummy smelling soap and wax stuff for my car.

Hmmpf!

But there is irony in this story. A couple of weeks ago I pressed "yes", got my golden-numbered ticket and proceeded to the car wash. The vehicle in front of me pulled in and sat for a moment...and another moment...then a few more moments....then pulled out without a car wash. As I pulled up to enter my number, imagine my suprise and delight when the screen said, "Please Pull Forward."

I got a free car wash that day. I gave the one I purchased to my daughter.

But it seems as though I ended up paying for it anyway.

God is funny like that. Keeping us all honest and stuff. And if you like this story I have a GREAT one about a Christmas tree tag-swapping trick that ended up costing me twice as much money.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Dilemma #1,974

Quick background: Potty break at work taken perilously close to having an accident. Run-walk to the closest bathroom which is inside a locker/shower area with ONE dedicated toilet.

Delimma: The previous user did not flush the toilet and the paper toilet seat cover remains with the unflushed contents.

What do you do?

And why does this crap always happen to me? (pun intended)

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Woe is the Child of an Aging Parent

So I just mentioned I fell off the face of the earth for awhile. I fell while pushing my mother in a wheelchair around Target. Somewhere between the Polygrip and the Depends was a black hole...invisible to the naked eye until that unsuspecting moment where you wheel through it to stay until you come to grips with the fact that you have now switched roles with your aging parent.

Before I continue, I must preface this entire post by telling you that I love my mom dearly. She is, after all, my mom. She would give up everything she had for any of her 3 children or 6 grandchildren. Her heart is huge. Her patience is unending. Her sense of humor with her grandchildren is immense. She sacrificed years of sanity by running me in 27 different directions playing 3 different sports while I juggled 4,731 friends. All of those things, by the way, came back to bite me in the butt seven-fold with my own three children. Yes, laugh if you must. My mother does all the time. I usually just crawl in to the corner and suck my thumb.

My mom is almost 73. She fell and broke her femur 3 months ago. Today was the 12 week appt. with the Orthopedic Surgeon….who, by the way, is completely hot. I think that is really why my sister and I BOTH want to attend the appointments so badly. But that’s another story. It’s a good story. A short story. He’s totally hot. End of story.

The actual story right now is that my mother has been recovering from this break for 3 months: the first 6 weeks in a convalescent/rehab hospital. Soooo not good for one’s mental state, know what I mean? My mom broke her leg, but she was of pretty sound mind. Well, once most of the surgery meds wore off. And we wanted to keep her that way so we needed a plan to get her out of there. So the rest of her recuperation has been at my house, 2 hours away from her home. There are a few reasons for this, but mainly because I was the one with a walk in shower off a bedroom that could easily be vacated once I gagged and bound my 17 year old daughter and drug her out kicking and screaming.

Okay, I didn’t really gag her.

And what does all this mean? It means that at 44 years old, there is a reason I don’t live with my mother. You can’t take the mothering out of a mother. Try it. You’ll see I’m right. I have nicknamed my mother “The Informant” because “Tattletale” seems so inappropriate for a 73 year old woman. I have been “informed” of thousands of things I care nothing about with regards to my husband/children/pets. So I have an aging, recouperating, mothering informant living in my zoo of 2 adults, 2 adult-like (read: never-leaving-home-pain-in-the-butt-can’t-help-but-love-them) boys, 1 high school girl, 3 dogs, 2 indoor cats, 1 outdoor cat, 1 stray cat that is currently pregnant….and my mother’s aging dog who is deaf AND blind and desperately needs doggie diapers.

Yes, I’ve just about gone completely mad.

During the early years...*cough-cough*...days of my mom’s stay here, I felt the need to entertain her…and get her comfortable for her recovery. We purchased several medical supplies to assist with that, took shower doors off and replaced them with a curtain, rearranged furniture, purchased a couple of small pieces of furniture, uprooted my daughter from her room and kicked one son to the couch. You know, small sacrifices. Entertainment came to be expected and sort of morphed in to waiting on mom. Oh, she would always give the obligatory response of, “I can do it!”, which was followed by a lot of sitting and staring and sighing and interesting attempts before we got the hint she didn’t really WANT to do it. In the past 6 weeks I have cut toenails, fetched water, purchased ointments/lotions/salves/creams, reprogrammed the remote control FOUR (yes, four) times, got rid of feather pillows and replaced them with fiberfill, raised/lowered wheelchair legs by fractions of an inch 7,893 times, short-sheeted the bed BY REQUEST, counted over 1 million pieces of stucco on my acoustic ceilings (aka “popcorn” ceiling) while waiting for mom to decide if the straps on her brace were tight enough or loose enough before she got dressed or crawled in to bed. The sound of Velcro will forever haunt my dreams….

Today was the day that the mother/child relationship crossed the threshold of child becoming mother when she decided it would be a “good idea” to get in the shower BY HERSELF without telling a single living soul in my house what she was planning. At 6:00 a.m…..downstairs and across the house from the bed where my husband and I lay sound asleep and would not have heard her if she slipped on the watery floor or fell getting back in her wheelchair….my mom shuffled her way in to the shower. When she told me what she had done, I think she was almost proud of herself until I glared at her and told her, “You WILL never do that again, right? What in the hell were you thinking??!!” She proceeded to tell me, “But it was no problem. I got in and washed my hair and got out. It wasn’t a big deal.” Ummmm….yes. It was. She relayed this story to my sister and one of her own friends at lunch. It resembled a toddler telling someone that his mommy got angry because he did a no-no….complete with pouty-face.

She seriously needs a time-out.

But how in the world do you scold and punish your own mother? I guess I can ground her. I could just hide her wheelchair and she would have to request it every time she needed to get to the bathroom. On second thought, maybe that wouldn’t be a good idea. Wait! I could put a bell on the shower curtain to alert me anytime she went in there. Yeah. Like a trap for a wild animal. Or I could just hope that my mother won’t be quite so stubborn next time she needs a shower.

At this point I’m sure half of you are laughing and half of you are thinking I’m going to hell for being mean talking this way. But I’ll be honest with you. If I don’t get this out of my head and find some humor in all of this it will consume me, depress me, anger me and cause me to stab 400 pins in my eyes. Okay, I probably won’t stab myself.

In all fairness to my mom, there have been good moments, too. We've had some fun shopping experiences....we can recognize a good handicap bathroom stall from a bad one RIGHT away; my husband has cooked up some pretty mean dinners; good conversation over coffee in the morning while she shivers because my husband is so extremely hot blooded and she is, well, not; laughing with the grandkids; laughing at my animals and their daily antics; watching the Andy Griffith Show and America's Funniest Videos...2 staples in my house; and some laughter while she tries unsuccessfully to figure stuff out in her state of cripple.

My sister told me a story today of a woman going through her line at the grocery store. She had several packages of Depends, other “aging” medicinal items and a bottle of wine. She requested they be rung separately. My sister assumed she was going through a similar predicament and asked who the bottle of wine was for. The woman responded, “for both of us…I’m going to drink it because if I don’t I may hit my mom over the head with it.” She was on a third broken bone (a hip) with her mother. When my sister let her in on our situation, she responded by saying, “Well I’ve got news for you. This is probably the first of many.”

Now where exactly IS that pincushion?

What happened here?

I fell off the face of the earth for about a month. Yes, it's true. It happens. It's a treacherous place, off the face of the earth. Just sayin'. And while I was gone, trying hard to climb back on, people came to visit my blog. People I don't know. Strangers, you might call them.

Hmmm....and LOTS of traffic here.

Maybe I should fall off the face of the earth more often. I seem to be much more popular that way. Who knew so many people would be interested in listening to my dog sing me Happy Birthday....or feel pity at the lack of windows in my life...or pop in to my older posts and laugh at my awkward years. (Okay, everybody knows people will laugh at my awkward years. Whatever.)

So it was nice to climb back on the face of the planet and be welcomed by all these lovely comments. So whoever you all are....all these 33 followers that have popped up...thanks for visiting. Hope to see you again soon!
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