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I like to have warning of when someone in my family is about to come home.  Usually this warning consists of a noise.  So i listen.

When we had a driveway, i knew the sound of The Mister's car, then the garage door opening.  Now it's the faint whine of an elevator i am listening for.  If it's a long lasting whine, then it's likely to be him, as we live near the top of the building.

I like to have warning so that i won't be caught doing ........ nothing.  I feel guilty doing nothing.  I feel like i will be judged for doing nothing.  Although when i am doing nothing is when i am thinking.  Which appears to the casual observer to be a lot like doing nothing.

To be clear, The Mister has never, ever criticized me for doing nothing, even when it would have been justified, so the difficulty lies in my own head.

 Picture from our hike to Mt. Baker this weekend, photographed by The Mister.

Sometimes i fail to listen and get caught doing nothing thinking deep thoughts anyway.

Unrelated Things

I've decided to keep score in a different way, one that will be sure to get me into heaven; if i believed in heaven that is.

It must be easy for nice people to be nice.  I wouldn't exactly know, but i'm imagining that less effort is required than is required for me.

Being rather a snarky person, i often have some snarky comment bubbling up inside me.  I'm now going to give myself credit for every comment that i DON'T say!  Believe me, there must  be thousands of them every year.

Brilliant!

Feel free to use my new accounting method!   

You're welcome.

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The Mister and i were talking about orange juice the other day.  For both of us, when we were children, our mothers gave us special teeny tiny glasses of orange juice in the morning, and that's all we could have.

It's as if orange juice was this special expensive treat that must be doled out sparingly.

What's up with that?  It can't have been all that dear as we always had frozen.   Making orange juice involved getting a can out of the freezer and plopping the contents into a pitcher and adding exactly 4 and a half cans of water and then poking at the lump of orange concentrate with a wooden spoon until it finally dissolved. (Sometimes we would even lick the lump, but don't tell mom.)

Our mothers must have gone to the same mom school.  How about your mom?

Blah blah blah

Thanks y'all for the support and good wishes.  And thanks for listening.  It's nice to have someone to "talk" to.

The results?

Good news and bad news.  It's nothing cancerous, but it is (i just always have to be special and different) a rare form of tumor that will most likely have to be excised. (it's called a Phyllodes Tumor in case you are the type of person who likes to look shit like that up, which i do.)

I was advised to make an appointment with a surgeon to get her opinion.  But of course, my cynical self believes that surgeons like to recommend surgery.

So i have been and will be doing more research and getting more opinions before i agree to any such thing.

Part of me wants to throw myself on the floor and kick my feet and beat my fists on the ground because i DON'T WANT TO!  I'm guessing that's not really a useful option though.

I'm going hiking tomorrow instead, Because the hiking season has finally started around here.

Don't touch!

Ice Tits.

Sounds like something one would enjoy on a hot day.

"Hey, who wants an Ice Tit?  I have blueberry and banana."

Having gathered more information, i decided to go ahead and get the biopsy done.  My doctor seemed all for it, but of course, that would be her view.

I liked the (woman) radiologist  who did the procedure MUCH more than the (man) radiologist who did the original ultrasound.  She explained it all very carefully and told me WHY she felt it needed to be done.  Actual information, what a concept.

My left tit was numbed with some Novocaine mixture, a tiny incision made, and a small bore tube shoved in, guided by the image on the ultrasound. Then a smaller needle was inserted through the tube to shoot out 5 times and get samples.  Sounded kind of like a staple gun.

She showed me the samples afterward.  Looked like little white bits of fat floating in a tiny jar.  (Maybe next time they could biopsy my thighs and get some of the fat out there.)

Now i am sitting here with an ice pack on my tit.  Good thing it's 90 degrees outside.  I get the results tomorrow.  Oddly i don't feel worried at all.  The lady radiologist was most reassuring, saying it looked like a blah blah blah thingie.

But really, it's a lose/lose situation for the medical industry.  I will be pissed if it turns out to be nothing, and i will be pissed if it turns out to be something.

I am nothing if not contrary.

from the ridiculous to .....the ridiculous

Years ago, when i was knocked up with Em, The Mister and i would go to prenatal appointments together.

When checking in at the front desk, we were always asked, "Is this work related or an accident?"

The possibilities for smart-assery were unlimited.

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Yesterday i went for an ultra-sound as a follow up to a mammogram.  This doesn't freak me out as i get a call back after a mammogram probably at least half the time, and i've been getting them for over 15 years. 

I have dense breasts, or, it's a cyst, i'm always told.  About 10 years ago, they wanted me to get a biopsy and i refused.  (I worry that to a carpenter, everything looks like a nail, you know?)  Whatever it was they saw, it went away.

So yesterday, after more mammogram pictures and then the gelling and wanding of my boobs, the technician and the doctor come in and ask me when i want to schedule the biopsy, just assuming that i will want to do that.   (As an aside, great bedside manner to not tell me anything, other than that the next step is a biopsy.)

They were pretty shocked when i said i wanted to think about it.

I kind of have a bee in my bonnet about the medical industry and the reason that insurance is so expensive.

Or maybe i'm just in denial.  I am still thinking about it, but i really don't know what to do.  I'll be pissed if it turns out to be nothing, which is the likeliest possibility.  But i suppose i'll be more pissed if it doesn't and i didn't do anything.

Steam of conciousness starting with a hickey

Em's boyfriend just left this morning after being here for a week.  I am pretty sure they had a good time.

One of the days he was here i met them at a mall.  I noticed a....something...on Em's neck and as i instinctively bent over to look at it i realized that it was a hickey at the same time that i heard Morris (the boyfriend) giggle and say "Oops!"

I ignored it after that, i mean, i don't care. It's a rite of passage that they will get over.  I'd give The Mister a dope slap if he gave me a hickey now.

But....ah...a hickey...the memories.

My first and only one was when i was 20 and i was living at home for the summer with my parents so that my boyfriend Dan and i did not have the freedom that we were used to when i was living at the dorms.

One late night as he was dropping me off at my parent's house he got a little carried away and left a hickey on my neck.

My neighbor noticed it the next day and said, "Hey!  What's that on your neck?"  His wife stopped him and said, "Jack, you are showing your age."

Carol Davidson.  Oh Carol. I remember you.  She was a woman who, for a few of my teenage years, i could talk with about things i would never talk to my own mother about.  Carol never had kids and i think she enjoyed our quasi-mother-daughter relationship as much as i did.  I would wander over to her house and enjoy the calm and conflict free atmosphere, just chatting with an adult woman who was not constantly judging me.

What a welcome haven for me. Thank you for that Carol.

Reminds me to be open to opportunities to provide that haven for someone else.

Holy crap!

The toilet in Em's bathroom refused to flush starting late last week and persisted in this state despite all of my usual tricks (repeated flushing, pouring water into the bowl from my exalted altitude, getting The Mister to plunge, etc.)

So i had to break down and call a plumber.

Tom the Plumber (Joe was busy) looked under the bathroom sink and upon noting my choice of wiping material, told me that Charmin TP has LATEX in it.

Can that really be true? I looked it up on the interwebs and couldn't find anything about it. What about people who have latex allergies? Wouldn't this cause them to have rashes in unpleasant places?

Tom was unsuccessful in unclogging the toilet because (heh) his snake wasn't long enough. So he called a different company to come and remove the potty from the floor and use a longer snake.

Rufus the Rooter came over and when i mentioned that Tom thinks we use the wrong TP, he said, "Charmin or Cottonelle?"

I guess this is one of those little secrets that plumbers like to keep to themselves.

Having just been to Costco, i was flush (heh) with Charmin. I offered to pay them with toilet paper, but oddly, they both declined.

Senior moment

I am one of those people who leaves the shopping cart at the end of the aisle and darts around to get the things to put into it. I think it's faster and i can get around those people who feel the need to stop in the middle of the aisle and ponder the difference between Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Caffeine-Free Coke, Caffeine-Free Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, Vanilla Coke, Diet Vanilla Coke, Lime Coke, Diet Cherry Coke, Caffeine-Free Diet Cherry Coke, Diet Lime Coke and Classic Coke.

While i wish them well in figuring out which kind of complete crap to drink, i would like them to get the hell out of my way.

I do the same thing at Costco, leave my cart wherever and wend my way through the store like a cat weaving around ankles in a crowded room.

Yesterday i was all done shopping when i headed back to where my cart was waiting.

.

..

...

....

Where did i leave that cart?

Not here. Not here. Let's see, i was near the kegs o' soy sauce when i last saw it, right? Nope.

Fuck!

I spent about 10 minutes trying to find the damn thing and i never did.

I had to start all over.

Next i will be wandering the parking lot at the mall looking for my car all day,

Sometimes i am not a hypocrite

Em's boyfriend is coming to visit us from New York in a few weeks.

Even if they don't know me well enough to actually ask, the first question everyone WANTS to ask when i tell them this is, "Where will he be sleeping?"

He'll be sleeping in Em's room.

Why?

Well, because she's old enough to make her own decisions, she's been away at college for two years now and could have (and may have) been doing god knows what while she was there, and because i am in favor of pre-marital sex. (To quote sex advice columnist Dan Savage, "Sexual compatibility should be established early and often!")

In my day (YOU KIDS GET OFFA MY LAWN) when you went home for the summer or for a visit with your boyfriend, you did NOT get to sleep with him at your parent's house because that would have meant that your parents were 'condoning' your slutty behavior. Because if you were sleeping with your boyfriend, even if you were 20 years old and you and he had been together for two years, you were still a shameless hussy who should have been content with dry humping just like your parents did before they were bound in holy matrimony.

But really, i just can't imagine that it's a good idea to EVER marry someone with whom you have never had sex.

Bottom line - i trust my child to make her own decisions, and if she is comfortable with it, so am i.

Sorry mom.

I kissed a juror

I spent the last week and a half on jury duty.

I spent the first two days sitting in the Death by Boredom potential juror waiting room and thought i had successfully avoided getting empanelled.

I was two minds about this.

Mind One:

Oh, oh, pick me, PICK ME!! I am special. Whatever your criteria are, i meet and probably exceed them.

Mind Two:

Shit, get me out of here! I have things to do, squash games to play, quilting to attend. My cat is lonely.


One of me got her wish, Dammit!

At the very end of the second day, just when i thought i had made it without actually having to do anything, i got called as Number 12 for a potential jury. Sadly, i was not able to say anything offensive enough to get out of it. (Even wearing my "KILL 'EM ALL AND LET GOD SORT 'EM OUT!" t-shirt didn't work.)

Being on a jury is quite weird. This was a civil case about a man suing the local Bus Authority because of an injury sustained when he was getting off the bus.

It's just amazing that 12 people can watch the same thing and come up with such different perspectives.

I decided to lay low so as to not get elected as the "presiding juror." In the end this might have been a mistake as the woman who did get elected got all officious and emotional and kept saying things like, "HOW CAN YOU EVEN THINK LIKE THAT?"

Well excuse me all to hell for trying to apply logic to the situation.

Anyway, jury duty is over and i'm back to living my unimportant life doing unimportant things.

Out of nowhere

Sometimes it creeps up on me, despite my best efforts to distract myself with shiny objects and food.

We are NOT IN CONTROL. Any one who thinks we are is a fool.

Something horrible could, and often does, happen at any moment, without any warning.

Earthquake, Nose piercings, Car accident, Cancer, Heart attack, Meteorites, Plane crash, Car bomb, Locusts, Oil spill, McDonalds.

And so on. The list is literally infinite.

There is no amount of money or planning that can insulate us from these events. As the bumper sticker says, "THINGS OCCUR." (Or something like that.)

But there is really know way to live knowing that at any SECOND, things could deteriorate into utter shit. So i blunder on. What else can we do?

Nothing in particular triggered this in me, things are a bit uncertain right now in regards to selling our house, it might happen, it might not, either way we'll be fine. But it's the suspense that's driving me anxious.

Must practice denial skills.

My Big Mouth

picture purloined per Wikipedia.

I was half-assedly listening to the radio and i heard a promo for this upcoming segment "How to repair a sarcastic friendship."

My eyebrows went up as i thought, What an interesting topic! I could use that information.

What my brain failed to process is that i was listening to a cooking show and the upcoming topic was "How to prepare a sarcastic fringehead." (A real fish, see above.)

Big difference.

But i am still interested in how to repair a sarcastic friendship. Sometimes i meet someone who is a real smart ass (like me) and we get going, moving from sarcasm to amusing insults and never recover. I then find that the other person has a higher tolerance for sarcasm and amusing insults than i, and i wonder how to tone it down so we can actually get to know one another, because i'm bored with the sarcasm and insults.

I find myself in this very situation with someone The Mister and i are becoming friends with, one half of a couple. I've come to be very wary to be around this person.

See? Mom was right, It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt!

It's difficult for me to play the earnest dim wit, but i think that's the course of action i've settled on. Perhaps when things settle down a bit i can bring the sharp tongue back out.

Of course the best thing would have been to not get started in the first place, but given my medium level of social anxiety, i'm not sure what to do without that coping behavior.

I really could have used that advice show.

The Human Disaster Report

I organized a function, a "Tea Party" (and thank you to those fuckers for ruining THAT phrase) to thank the former volunteers of the organization i volunteer for.

One of the women i invited is someone i don't really care for, but i figured she would get lost in the crowd and i wouldn't really have to interact with her.

Which was mostly true, but she managed to deepen my dislike of her in 5 seconds. Pretty impressive!

This woman, i'll call her Cynthia, LOVES bad news with almost a sexual excitement. She'll rush up. panting slightly, and say, without even a" hello" first, "Did you hear about **fill in disaster here**?" There's this little gleam of excitement in her eyes.

I find it really unappealing.

Someday, with all the work scientists are doing on brain chemistry and genetics and all that, i wonder if there will be some genetic marker for people who are REALLY FUCKING CLUELESS socially inappropriate.

Something really horrible did happen to someone close to Cynthia, but she made it really hard to respond sympathetically because she seemed so aroused by being able to deliver the news.

Wrong venue, wrong delivery, wrong audience.

Yuck!

Can you read this? It cracked me up. I don't think they appreciated me taking a picture of it but the customer is always right, right?

It's been a good week.

1.) Someone made an offer on our house. Which we accepted. And now the waiting begins.....

2.) Something good happened to Em, which is her news to tell, but it made her happy and that makes me happy.

3.) The Mister "found" some extra money that he forgot we had. Silly, silly man! (This is why i balance the checkbook.)

and,

4.) I have a BRAND NEW laptop that is better than yours in EVERY WAY! (At least for a week until the next version comes out, but WHATEVER!)

5.) I am in San Diego visiting with a friend and so far the weather is lovely.

(Yes, number 3 and number 4 are connected.)

Some bad and sad stuff happened too, but i am choosing to live in denial, just for a little while.

What's up with you?

A brief thought

A conversation from The House of Meno last evening:

Me: (after the cat had just yawned in my face) Brown Cat has Kitty Breath!

a moment of silence...

Me: I suppose his breath is pretty good considering he never brushes his teeth.

The Mister: Maybe if i only ate cat food i could skip brushing my teeth!

another moment of silence...

Me: Yeah, and then you could skip sex too.

Kitty Litter Saga

We recently moved to an upper floor condominium, where my previously indoor/outdoor cat would have to use a litter box for all his potty needs.

He's a good boy, so he hasn't had any problems with this, but honestly, all the litters out there SUCK!

Attempt the first: The usual standby, clumping clay litter. Oh My God! The dust! I felt like i needed a face mask just to scoop it every morning.

Attempt the second: Compressed pellets of sawdust. Says on the package that it's an ecologically sound use of recycled material. What they DON'T tell you is that upon contact with moisture, it disintegrates into a soggy pile of smelly stink that sticks to the sides and bottom of the box.

Attempt the third: This cool looking blue and white crystal stuff. Oh My God! The noise. It sounded like he was mining gravel when he scratched around in the middle of the night. Who would have thought that kitty litter could be so noisy? PLUS, it didn't clump and some of the crystals would turn yellow with pee and that's just gross. PLUS, he tracked it all over the house and those little crystals HURT when you step on them.

Attempt the fourth: Corn-based kitty litter with "Fresh Pine Scent." Oh My God! The smell! I don't want to smell a whole fucking pine forest when i walk within 20 feet of his potty room. At least it clumped.

Attempt the fifth: Wheat-based kitty litter. It clumps. It's renewable. It has very little smell. But again, he tracks it all over the house. Sigh. Looks like i get to vacuum every day.

You'd think with all the chemical engineers we have in this country whose job it is to turn cat pee into cement there could be a perfect kitty litter out there by now.

Grumble grumble.

I amuse myself

My dad got a k!ndle for my mom for Christmas, and since i already had one i was appointed to help her figure out how to use it. This was a smart move on my dad's part, as she tends to resent his interference and him telling her what to do, and since she wants me to like her, she will listen to what i say.

Right after Christmas i got her device all set up and registered to their Amaz0n account, and we bought a few books for her. It was painful, but we muddled through.

So far so good.

At the last family cluster fuck, she showed me her k!ndle and asked me to fix it as she couldn't seem to buy any new books. Turns out she had somehow managed to deregister it.

(As an aside, why is it that older people, at least the ones i know, all have ONE e-mail account, and ONE Amaz0n account between them?)

I got that all figured out and fixed it up and presented it back to her.

What i didn't tell her was that i purchased her an extra (free) book called "Male Call - Hot Zones Book 1" that will appear on her device the next time she turns it on. My niece and nephew (who were looking over my shoulder) and i all thought this was hilarious.

Today i signed back into their Amaz0n account and gave the book a 5 star rating.

Oh the LOLs!

They will NEVER figure out why they are suddenly inundated with recommendations from Amaz0n for trashy light porn novels.

What a waste of a day.

Oh My God, you guys, it was awful. Em and The Mister and i all came home feeling creeped-out and pissed-off. Not such a great way to end the day.

Today was the day i have been in denial about for a month or so. It was the day that we, we being my entire family, got together to do the "Family Video" that i have been dreading. It was something that my middle brother, Tim, bought at some auction or other and thought would be a cool thing to do for my parents. Something that we would all be interviewed for and would come up with happy beautiful memories of my parents to preserve forever on video.

Something we could all have a copy of and watch when we felt like it. (Which would be fucking NEVER for me, thank you very much!)

So we all gathered, dutifully, because one thing we all are is dutiful. We were told to be there at 10:30. As i suspected, there was no planning and no one had organized the event. So we waited around, all 14 of us crammed into my parent's apartment pretty much the whole damned day. I finally got "interviewed" at 3:30 pm. A whole beautiful Saturday, wasted!

Oh the pressure to some up with some happy memories, the pressure to preserve the illusion that nothing was ever wrong growing up, that we all love my mom and dad.

Yuck!

There was lots of sarcasm. You are shocked, i know. I kept saying, to anyone who would listen (who wasn't my brother or my mom or dad,) "I just can't tell you how much i've been looking forward to this. No, really, i can't!"

And the end result? Who knows, i mumbled some crappy answers when it was my turn. I mean, really, three words that describe my mother? (I said prolix, stubborn and outdoorsy. How lame is that?)

The end result is that i love my family. All of them but one. One of the two about which this video cluster fuck was about. My mother. Yeah.

That was what we all danced around. We danced around the fact that we all love each other, but we don't love one of the seeds of this family.

Later, after thinking about it for a long time, i decided not to give her that much power. The power to ruin a family that is pretty damned cool, a family of survivors of her.

So what i say? Out loud? I love 13/14ths of my family!

But i didn't say that on video.

One cool thing i got out of the day is this picture of my brother and me at ages 15 and 13, respectively. Same hair, same glasses, same clothes, same body shape. I think we are so cute!

Umm, Thanks?

I should have been suspicious when my mother asked me for our new address. I suppose i was hopeful that she might be sending me a check!

I forgot all about it until last week an unexpected package arrived from who-the-hell-is-Meg-McMathers?

I had no clue until i opened the package and a funny old freshwater pearl necklace and a note popped out.

Turns out Meg McMathers is the name of an old friend of my mother's who has been married twice more since i last knew her, 40 years ago, hence my not recognizing her name.

Despite the fact that i was puzzled as to why the hell she would think i would want this necklace and why the hell she would send it to me, i sent her a nice thank you note, because without regard to what you may think, i was not born in a barn.

It must be that since i have forbidden my mother to give me HER old stuff, she's having other people send me theirs!

Peeved by ignorant sound bites

I swear to god, what is it with people and their stupid bumper stickers?

Yesterday's entry into the Hall of Shame and Dumbassery:

AMERICAN AND PATRIOTIC WILL NEVER VOTE DEMOCRATIC!

Great, so being patriotic and an American means that no thinking is ever required for voting? And if i ever vote for a Democrat i am not an American or patriotic? Awesome, just awesome.

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To those of you who have contacted me to ask if all is well in my world, Thank you. I truly appreciate your caring. All is well actually. The Mister and i went off to Hawai'i for two weeks and had a wonderful time and avoided the tsunami.

It's whale season there right now, and we could hear them singing when we were swimming. It was magical.

I am pretty content right now. I am just busy enough and have been getting the regular exercise that i require for my mental health.

Em is coming home this Friday for the second half of her spring break. She's off in NY city right now staying with a friend and his parents. I love it when she stays with other families and sees their dynamics. She sent me this text message yesterday:

"Watching Mark and his mother interact is one of my least favorite activities. Yikes. I am so grateful for you right now."

That warms a mother's heart right through i tell you!

Up next! A story about my mom, because it's such low-hanging fruit.