Personal Growth

Goodbye belt hole #4. It's been great! Thanks for helping me keep it all together. Thanks for always being willing to "meet me in the middle". I know times have been tough lately and maybe even, at times, a bit painful. I am sure you have felt the tension. Sorry if I ever put too much pressure on you.

I'm moving forward now to belt hole #3. Nothing against you, it's just a better fit. I am not sure how long I will be in this new position but with the holidays being right here, it's possible I might even advance to the number two spot.  I can't say that I will never be back; we worked well together and made a good team.

For now, while I am experiencing a period of growth, I have to find a place with a little more space so that I can have room to expand and feel comfortable doing it. Just wanted to leave a quick note to let you know how much I have appreciated all your support over the years, through thick and thin. Really, I'll just be right around the bend but until we meet again, so long belt hole #4.

Answering the Call

Really? CSS (Climbing Sheet Syndrome) at 4 a.m.? I thought I
was going to lose my mind this morning. I am not sure why it is always so annoying but there is
something about feeling the cotton blanket next to my feet instead of the cool,
smooth sheet that drives me crazy. That cotton blanket might as well have been
sandpaper. I flipped and I flopped but I just refused to get up and fix the
situation by re-making my bed. I kept trying to push the sheet back down to the
bottom of the bed, sort of like running in place, only while on my side …and in
bed.

The longer I flip flopped, the madder I got and the more I “treaded
sheet” the more awake I became. Two hours later I was wide awake, irritated and
suffering second degree blanket burns on my feet. Let me just say that if you
ever suffer from CSS, just get up and and re-make the bed; it’s the only way. As
my temper and heart rate climbed it hit me that I had just treaded sheet for
two hours and that was going to count for my cardiovascular work for the day.

As comforting as knowing that cardio was behind me, I still
couldn’t relax. There was just so much noise , so much noise coming from the
kitchen. I could hear my name over and over again.  I knew where it was coming from but I was
trying to ignore it. Before long, I had to get up and answer .

You see,  yesterday my dad’s church had a dinner-on-the-
ground. Last night, my  dad dropped of
the “go-box” he had created, filled with deserts from the church ladies. All
were holy-made (homemade by church ladies) and my selection was a fat oatmeal raisin
cookie, a piece of toasted coconut pie and a couple of slices of Orange Supreme
cake. It doesn’t really matter if it is Lemon Supreme, Apricot Supreme, Orange
Supreme, etc. but it is not a proper southern church dinner-on-the-ground-
unless one of the members of the Supreme family is there. Those blessed items
from the church were calling my name from out of the dark. I could hear them,
calling.  I tried to ignore the calling
but when you have blessed items from the church, prepared by holy hands calling
you out in the dark of the night, you had better answer the call. I answered
the call. It was like a bucket of flavored sugar and butter, divine.  I’m no expert but I think there is some
sainthood that needs to be handed out to some of the women at my dad’s church.  All of this
made for one long sugar-coma day but all in all, I feel blessed. Plus, I
think I kind of liked getting my cardio in early.

Don't You Hate It When: Stalling Out

Don’t you hate it when you are out of town and you stop at a
local home improvement store just to check and see if possibly they carry
anything different from your local home improvement store so you run inside for
a quick inventory scan/time kill, and as you go up and down some aisles you
think you notice a few different things (as if you have the entire inventory
back home memorized) and before you know it you are walking down the shower
stall aisle and you remember that once upon a time you had thought about
putting in a walk-in shower but it had been a year or two since you had checked
them out so you start looking carefully and trying to picture how it would all
look in your bathroom and all the sudden you come upon a snazzy looking corner
shower with a rounded wall and a rounded sliding glass door and you start
thinking about how much space that would save you and you start picturing the
shelves you could build to hold towels, like a spa, and you start to get
visions from every HGTV show you have ever seen on bathroom makeovers and you
just know you have found the missing link to making your ugly bathroom  a place where guest will want to come over
and just hang out so you check the price and it is on sale and suddenly the endorphins
start flowing and your check card is starting to quiver and every thought of
your current shower reminds you how hideously ugly it is and you wonder why you
hadn’t thought about it more so the more you look at this new shower the more
you have to have it but the only thing you worry about is whether or not you
will fit into it so you try to mentally teleport yourself into it but you know
that there is nothing like the real thing so you check it out and the handle
for the door is all the way to the back of the display and beside the display
is a large crate, so your squeeze your arm between the crate and the rounded
wall/door and all the way to the back you are able to grasp the handle and
slide the door forward and open it and without much hesitation you climb inside
and feel really tall and wide so you pull the rounded door back around so that
you are enclosed in rounded glass and fiberglass and you move around a bit and
cautiously go through some shower motions to make sure your elbows won’t hit
anything and even though you are doing ok you somehow have a feeling that this
space saving shower might just be lacking in space and that if you were to go straight
out “full shower” you might break something so you try to start convincing
yourself that maybe it is not such a good idea and if you did build that shelf
for your towels that you would need to buy some new fancy ones as yours have an
occasional hole in them or a stain from cleaning up a kitchen disaster or last
minute car scrub and towels aren’t cheap, at least not the fancy kind, and if
you did all this the vanity was going to look dated and the whole room was
probably going to need a new coat of paint and before you know it that shower
stall is not so appealing so you try to regain focus and when you do you see
people are walking nearby so you decide to get out of the shower before someone
notices you and for some reason that curved door will not open so you slide it
back and start over but it snags again and you feel the panic start to set in
mixed with a huge desire to go to the bathroom so you push and pull on that
stupid curved door wondering who in their right minds would ever want a tiny space
saving shower with a curved door and before you know it, you feel eyes on you
and you look up and there is a little Asian lady, about 150 years old, just
standing there staring at you with her purse dangling from her arm so you ask
her to get some help but she just stares at you as if you were a rare species
at the local zoo being featured that month and before long you have to accept
the fact that she doesn’t speak English but before you write her off and yell
over her head she holds up one finger, the international sign for “hold on just
a second”, gets her phone out of her purse,  snaps a picture of you, checks said picture, and
then walks off shaking her head and utters what sounds a bit like “Thomas” you
are pretty sure she said something insulting so you give the door a couple of
potentially harmful tugs and bam, the door pops of its track and wedges between
the curved shower wall and the giant crate beside it and the reality that you
are completely stuck settles in so you start softly calling for help and slowly
turn up the volume as the pressure from claustrophobia and pressure from your
bladder start to compete for your attention and finally a kid straight from
high school algebra class, but in uniform, walks up, looks at you, says “sorry
but this isn’t my department soo….uh, I think the guy that works in this
department may be on break soo…” so you let him know that absolutely anybody
will do and he leaves and comes back with the oldest living female to currently
be working in a home improvement store in the Continental US weighing in at
just under 100 pounds and she looks at you and tells you the story about how
she too once got stuck in the shower at home and had the door taken down and
put up a shower curtain (from The Wal-Marts) instead, and to this day refuses
to have anything but a shower curtain, and then she pulls out a phone, not to
take a picture but to beep a fellow employee to come help, who is apparently
The Flash when he was not at work because it takes him all of about two seconds
to appear and he quickly organizes himself and Jr. to push the crate a few
inches over so that he could then remove the door and get you out of there
while still maintaining his best training by asking you what you thought about
the corner shower and all you can think about is finding the nearest restroom
and the only thing you are sure of at that moment is that once you get inside
that restroom, no matter what, you are not about to go into a stall and as you
make your way to the restroom doing your best quick step you decide that your
bathroom at home is really not all that hideous after all? Yeah, I hate it when
that happens too.

Shoulder Balls

Ok, I did a really stupid thing two days ago for exercise
and since I only hurt yesterday and didn’t feel abnormally sore, I didn’t
stretch. This morning when I woke up, I couldn’t reach my feet to put my socks
on, no joke. It took me all morning to get my clothes on. I’ve been walking around
like I have a book on my head all day. Mostly, it is in my hamstrings (back of
my legs). I don’t want to be melodramatic or anything but I think the best way
to describe the leg pain is that it feels like I have a handful of ninja stars
embedded into the backs of my legs…yeah, ninja stars.



So what did I do? It’s actually to stupid to repeat….so here
I go. I noticed that a buddy of mine has really increased the size of his
shoulder muscles. He had those huge lumps on his back that I’ve always wanted
(I call it the “back rack). He had also increased the size of those big round
muscles that are on the outside edge of the shoulders. It looked like he had grapefruits
at the top of his arms. I call those “shoulder balls” and I've always wanted some. I noticed that he was
talking about a new fitness program that was really kicking him and it was some
kind of boxing thing at a new gym in town.



Well, I started thinking about it and I have never ever
considered anything like that at all but going into the holiday season already
15 lbs over my limit, I thought this might just be what the doctor ordered. I
went online to look it up and right there they offered a free pass for the day.
It was meant to be. I called and asked about classes and they had a lunch time
class so I signed up. I figured since a lot of people work out on their lunch
hour, I could go there and get lost in the crowd and see if this was something
I might be interested in. Now sometimes I surprise my things a the things I
figure out on my own and sometimes I surprise myself at the things I don’t
figure out on my own. For some reason, the fact that this new gym was named “UFC”
was totally lost on me. What did I think that stood for, “Ultimate Fun Club”? The
person on the phone there told me I would be attending a class called “kickboxing”
and that it was for all levels.



Well, I walked in the door and right up front  was an MMA cage…wait, what? Surrounding the
room were posters of MMA fighters. The exercise area was a big maze of hanging
punching bags. Oh my word…UFC…MMA…what was I thinking? I am so anti all of that
and here I was getting ready to “take a class”…whatever that meant.



A girl behind the counter asked me to come over to her and
hold my hands out in front of her. I did and she started wrapping my hands and
wrists. Hmmm…surely somebody would turn on some zumba music soon and a girl in
bright lycra would appear from somewhere…right? My hands were wrapped and she
said, “Here you go” and handed me some bright yellow boxing gloves, what? I
looked at them, back at her ,back at them and then my instructor walked up and
introduced himself.  He was a young guy that
informed me he was a top boxer and that his hands are legally registered as
weapons. I had nothing. I had a driver’s license, my car was  registered and could be used as a weapon and
I had an alarm button on my key fob but I was grasping. I felt like a girl…and
not in the pretty, curvy, fairer sex kind of way. Plus, what was I supposed to
do with those gloves? Why had the counter girl given them to me? Did she want
me to hand them to the instructor? Were they his?



I quickly informed the instructor that I was new and had
some old injuries,etc. Actually, I rambled for quite a while watching someone
else who was about to join the class putting on his gloves and I was trying to
mask the fact that I had no idea how on earth a person was supposed to put on
those Mickey Mouse gloves. I started to ask if he had any red boxing gloves as
my shoes had red on them but that little voice in the back of my head (the one
that tells you to shut up before you get killed) told me to hush. He comforted
me by letting me know he has quite a few old people like me in his class and
that I could move at my own pace. Wait, “old people like me”?….maybe I would
take a swing and blame it on being new; I had my car keys in my pocket.

Unfortunately, there were only two other people in my class.
Both were younger athletic guys who had been in the class for a couple of
months. Wow, no way I was going to blend in with the crowd or get lost in it.
Since it was my first class, I got one on one attention, the very thing I didn’t
want. Yep, the instructor stayed by my side the entire hour…hour.



We stared by doing things while traveling across the floor
that required some kind of hop. Well, I can’t hop, so I just looked like
someone with no rhythm. We did some warm ups and odd looking moves and then went
into throwing a few jabs and kicks. I can’t remember when the last time it was
that I kicked something, elementary school? When he told me it was time for me
to make some jabs, I was trying to think of something to criticize. He walked
us over to a mirror and we practiced jabbing which is the same thing a
punching, I think. I tried to channel my inner Rocky but all I could focus on
was my 15 lbs I was sporting like a front facing fanny pack in this overly
bright gym. I was shocked but had to look passed the jiggle and focus in my
Sylvester transformation, and in vision my future shoulder balls.



When I was about to call it quits, we started. OMG. I am not
sure what I was doing but I think I was copying the guy in front of me. We
punched the bag over and over and the trainer let me know that I didn’t have to
be so nice to the punching bag which I found to be a very polite way to say, “You
hit like a girl”. I used that insult to fuel the fire and keep on going. We
threw in some kicks which, I am sorry, I just was no good at. I have no skill
at standing on one leg at a time or raising my knee higher than my waist. There
were punches and kicks and my hip flexors were screaming but I just kept going
and chanting to myself, “Shoulder balls, shoulder balls”, I wasn’t about to
stop. We had to do this thing towards the end where we kicked the (body bag?)
with each leg once, then twice, and all the way up to five times and then work
our way back down again. I thought I was going to die. Oh to have been a
marionette. I was soaking wet! Then the instructor, who was still at my side,
announced we were going to do the same thing all over again but that we were
going to work our way all the way up to ten kicks and then back down again. Ug.
Remember, I was wobbly, and sweating and stumbling around like a drunk person
and I am pretty sure that those other two guys lost count. They were finished
when I was just getting ready to work my way down from ten. I guess I was
working at my own pace,right? I wasn’t worried about it until the instructor
told the other two guys to do jumping jacks and squats until I got finished.
Nothing like peer pressure, right? I could feel the heat from their glaring
eyes.



Finally we were finished (and by we I mean me) and we all
sat down…and the sit ups started. I have always heard that you aren’t supposed
to go all the way down and all the way back up again; it’s bad for the back.
Well, that’s what we were told to do and I wasn’t going to complain even though
I was sitting on indoor/outdoor carpet stretched over concrete and was pretty
sure I was about to experience something that would make a chiropractor cry. I
have no idea what these things were called but I am going to call them “tailbone
grinders”. Never, ever will I do those again. My tailbone still feels like it’s
broken.



During the entire event, the instructor was very supportive
telling me I was getting it and even that I was   improving. When it was over, he was explaining
how that everyone that is new is just like me and doesn’t know how to do
anything and looks like they don’t know what they are doing. I think I know
what he meant to say. I was just glad it was over. I had no idea how to get the
gloves or the tape off but I’ll just tell you that if you tug hard enough,
those gloves will eventually come off, especially if you have small hands and
skinny wrists. I think I should have left the hand wrapping on for the rest of
the day just so I could tell people, “Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I just took
off  my boxing gloves. I had them on in
my kickboxing class. Yeah…taped up…yeah. My car is registered. I can use it as
a dangerous weapon”.



I used muscles that I thought had died off. My legs are still
killing me and I almost couldn’t get in and out of my car all day. I have a
feeling that tomorrow won’t be much better as new aches and pains are starting
to set in tonight. I loved the class in a way because I was completely shot by
the end of it but it is just too far out of my comfort zone and too darn hard.
I don’t think I would get my money’s worth as it will take a week to recoup
from each class. So, if you see me walking funny this week, no I am not working
on my posture; I’m just sore. I do recommend the class for others though. It
will definitely hit you in areas you are not used to, unless you get into a lot
of street fights; then you can go to the head of the class.  I looked at quite a few pain killers tonight
with their list of all the things they helped. Not a single one of them listed
that they helped kill ninja star pain.

Junk In My Trunk

Today was the day that I officially cleaned out the trunk of
my car. I am not going to say how long it has been since this epic event has
taken place but let’s just say I found a couple of items from early 2013/late
2012 in there. I tend to hoard real estate half signed contracts. They are
those that only one part is signed and then you fax them and the other party
signs them and new ones get printed off…..those. I am not sure why I keep them
but I still have that “paper trail” mentality. I am working on it. Anywho, I
decided that I had too much junk in my trunk (in so many ways) and attacked it
today. For some reason, my handyman neighbor had also picked today to clean his
spotless truck. Yes, he was out there with some kind of special cloth buffing
his truck into some kind of glossy work of art. It is a thing of beauty, bright
red with tons of chrome that just screams, “look at me, I’ve just been waxed!”….like
a Kardashian but without the whine.  I
was parallel to him in my driveway , emptying the contents of my bird poop
covered car. It was almost like we were doing the exact same thing, only
different.



After pulling out tons of unnecessary files that belonged in
file 13, I realized that I still had all the stuff in there from last year’s
Alzheimer’s walk (signsm empty donation canisters,etc) , two folding lounge chairs, two small umbrellas, four gigantic
golf umbrellas (I don’t play the sport but I do appreciate their umbrellas),
three vests, a jacket, a bag of 50 empty plastic containers that I forgot to deliver,  a pair of my favorite shoes that I had forgotten that I
had lost, two thermoses, a half of a sledge hammer (the heavy end), a missing
black sock and a missing white sock, five T–shirts, a real estate sign, a
cowboy hat (gift from a client that I am afraid has bodies in his crawl space),
a mountain of recyclable bags from various events (that subsequently got
recycled into the trash can-don’t judge me), a real estate sign, Tupperware, a
CD of “Two Dollar Hot Dog One Dollar Water” (given to me by the artist
himself), another set of floor mats made out of rubber, a million plastic coat
hangers, a couple of bottles of bug spray, a bottle of hornet spray, a few bags
of things I was supposed to return from Christmas, two boxes of Thank You
notes, a gallon of paint, paint brushes, stirring sticks, a Bagster  for holding up to 3300 lbs of debris (maybe I
should have just driven my car into it), a bottle of Tylenol, a bag of rubber
bands, a few original shoe inserts that have been replaced with fancy shoe
inserts but that I am still not convinced should be thrown away, enough antihistamines
to put me on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, a gallon of windshield wiper fluid, a
cooler, a plethora of  plastic cups that
I have used to bring out ice to my car cup, an electric hedge  trimmer, and last but not least, an 80lb bag
of mortar...and a bag of guilty chips I had put in there last night. The mortar
still holds residence inside my trunk.



My neighbor never said a word. He just kept buffing his
glistening truck. I am sure he was waiting for the clowns to start climbing
out. I just couldn’t believe how huge my trunk was once it was sort of empty. I
felt like I had a new car. I’ll bet I will start getting better gas mileage ,
well, once that bag of mortar gets unloaded. I have no idea what my neighbor
was thinking but he took an awfully long time to buff his truck. I think he was
just silently taking it all in….or filming me. All I can say is that my trunk
was like a time capsule and it really brought back a lot of memories. Maybe I
should invest in a scrap book. If my neighbor could have read my mind, he would
have heard me singing, “Whatcha going to do with all that junk, all that junk
inside your truck?” but as it was, we both just remained silent and cleaned our
cars in peace. Now that the car is clean…ish, I have to figure out what to do
with all that junk, all that junk from inside my trunk. On a positive note, I
have a new/old pair of shoes to wear.

Heeeeey Essential Accessories

 

I went to a track that I haven’t been to in over a year

yesterday. It’s the one where the little old lady always show up before I can

get half way around the track just to say “Hey”. She has mastered this as she

walks in the opposite direction of the flow of walker traffic. I am sure this

goes on all day whenever a man shows up to get his walk on. She lives right

across the street in an apartment and from what I can tell, sits by the front

window, dressed and ready to go.

 

 

 

Usually she show up in hot pants and a really tight t-shirt

or tank top and some form of bedazzled flip flops and three essential accessories.

She surprised me yesterday. All I had time to do was park and get out of my car

and go less than half way around the track. I looked up and there she was,

almost halfway around the track in the opposite direction. As she neared me I

took in the new outfit. She had bought skinny jeans…very skinny jeans…and a

tube top. She might weigh 90 lbs  looked

like a pair of pliers walking towards me.

 

 

 

As she got near enough for my trifocals to focus, I saw her three

essential accessories:   a 32oz cocktail in one hand, a cigarette in

the other and a purse slung over the cigarette supporting arm. She sort of scoots along, dragging her flip flops along the track as

if  trying to scrape something off the

bottom of them at a pace of someone standing in line with a sort of “tail

tucked under” posture. She got close enough to speak and  let out a very deep, guttural “Heeeey” and

that was the end of her routine. I can’t help but notice every time I see her

that I am probably looking at the future of my skin in just a few years. She

has a tanned hide that only decades of no sunscreen and way too many trips to

the Chernobyl tanning beds of the 70’s could produce. I mentally put a “pick up

exfoliant and sunscreen” on my to-do list for the day.

 

 

 

I don’t know exactly where she went; she didn’t go straight

back home like she usually does. Instead, when I was coming around the end of

my first loop, she somehow showed back up again. She must have been hanging out

by the bushes or something. Anyway, she was suddenly walking in  front of me, going the same direction I was

walking in and was walking off through the grass leaving two crop circle-ish

stripes in the grass behind her with her dragging flip flops. I looked up and

noticed something different about her…something very different. Somehow, some

way, possibly Wal-Mart, QVC…I don’t know, but somewhere she had found some

padding. Yep, she was walking away with a bodacious Kim Kardashian /apple

bottom jeans, kind of look. What? It was one of the most bizarre things I have

ever seen on such a boney frame. I was trying to think positive and erase the

image from my memory banks all at the same time. I was trying to think “You go

Granny!” but I just couldn’t. Oh my word, that image is forever branded into my

brain. She really is a character right out of Greater Tuna. The image of that

overly tanned, scrawny woman in a tube top, skinny jeans and bedazzled flip

flops, slowly scooting around that track while carrying a large cocktail, a

cigarette and a purse, who now has “junk in the trunk” is not something that can just go

away…not without professional help. I can’t wait to go back.

 

 

Dirty Santa Stole My Mancard

You know how some small little machines make much more noise than little ones? Well I ended up with a mini electric food processor at some office Christmas party last year. It was the soul survivor of a vicious game of “Dirty Santa”. Let me tell you right now, trying to cook with a mini food processor is like cooking with a little kid. You are going to end up doing the work for them after they are done and when all is said and done, they are both going to need a bath. I had to chop everything up smaller and smaller to make the food processor work.

 

It was a beautiful night and I haven’t been outside much at all, so I decided I was going to grill out. I made the perfect beef tasting half chicken burger ever. It was half ground chicken and half ground up portabella mushrooms. I call them chick-a-bella burgers…”mush-ken” didn’t sound all that appetizing. I decided to fire up the grill (to burn off the rust…that’s normal right?) and I took my mini food processor outside too…cause I am an outdoorsy kind of guy. What I didin’t realize was how short my processor cord was. It was mini too. I’ll bet it was about five inches long. So I went out on the patio and found a flower pot I could turn upside down to rest it on. I sat there in a wicker chair feeding mushroom chunks into my mini processor only a handful at a time.

 

That thing was so loud! It sounded like some kind of power saw. Well this caught the attention of my neighbor. The one that heard me scream like a white woman when a rabbit jumped out of my storage shed. He’s a great neighbor but he is one of those guys that knows how to do things. He doesn’t just have power tools, he knows how to use them… and has. He built an entire privacy fence; including digging all the post holes and filling them with concrete, all by himself. Yeah, he’s one of those. Well he heard the sound of my mini food processor and reacted like a cat to the sound of a can opener. I heard a “Sounds like somebody got some new tools!” I gave a quick “oh yeah” and fired up my spinning blades of death to drown out the rest of the conversation. I then heard a noise and looked up and he had done a little pull up to look over the fence just long enough to let out a  “What the……?” I fired up the blades again. I looked up after it stopped and there he was again white knuckling the fence with just his eyes showing, “Is that…..a food processor”?

 

Oh holy mancard ding…what could I say? I told him that is was and that I was getting ready to grill on my huge gas grill with the new tank that I had installed ALL BY MYSELF, and I may or may not have used the word “chick-a-bella” ramble, ramble, and then I went back inside the house to mix the mushrooms with the ground chicken and to find my pride. I just kept re-living that peek-a-boo moment and wondering how completely absurd it had to look to my neighbor to think he was going to look over the fence and see someone cutting some wood for some kind of man project only to look over the fence and see me sitting on the patio in a wicker chair, using a mini food processor that was sitting on top of an upside down flower pot. Oy. What part of “privacy fence” does my neighbor not understand?

 

Oh my word, I really hadn’t planned on doing much landscaping this year but it looks like I am going to be in the yard doing manly things for a while. I may even trim a tree…or cut one down. There will be loads of mulch; that’s for sure. “Chick-a-bella burger”…really…that sounds like a sandwich you would get served inside Cinderella’s castle. Say what you will, those chick-a-bella burgers tasted just like beef burgers…I mean exactly like beef burgers. I think I am going to change the name…maybe to “Manwich”. All I know is that I am going to go out and hunt for a big food processor, a diesel powered weed eater and a couple of tall evergreens. Dirty Santa….Dirty Santa indeed.

Goodbye (a serious note)

There is that line that is hard to find where privacy and
social media cross. What is exactly appropriate and what is not. I am crossing
that line right now and I know it. I envy people who look at social media
places like Facebook and immediately see the marketing and business
possibilities that can be drawn from it. For me, the site started because of a
class reunion several years ago. I was told that was how we were all going to
reconnect. Thus, I started my page. It hit me that I have been told many times
that I should write down the weird things that tend to happen to me before I
forgot them. Unfortunately , most of those memories have been over ridden by
new ones.



I started writing them down and it slowly became something I
had never had, a journal. So, for me, Facebook has always been about 90% “Dear
Diary” and 10% ….or less, networking. With that in mind, I decided to write
something to honor my mom on Mother's Day. I take notes from Facebook every now and then and post them here. I know no one wants to sit and read a eulogy but I
am putting it on here anyway. It’s my diary and I’ll cry if I want to.



It was determined a few years ago that it might be nice if I
could “say a few words” at mom’s funeral when the time came. I had always
planned on doing so and even though mom had been weak for so long, I had
still  never given any thought at to what
I would say.



Well, the time came and I still had no idea. I decided that I
was pretty sure that I would be nothing but a hot mess that day of the funeral
and that I needed to just write something down and give it to the guy who was
presiding at the funeral.  At the
visitation, I was fully anticipating falling apart and having to be shot with a
tranquilizer gun and carried out on a stretcher. That didn’t happen. The flood
of support lifted me up and brought back so many good memories I had long
forgotten. By the end of the fourth hour I was starving and delirious and still
standing and greeting people. There were so many familiar faces from my past
and I just couldn’t remember how well I knew or didn’t know some of the people.
By the end it seemed rude not to hug people and I was in a huggy mood by the
end of the night, not to mention completely dazed from the sugar free blood crawling
through my veins. So, if a face looked familiar, I assumed it was an old family
friend or someone at church that goes to first service (which means I only know
them from the church directory) and they got a hug. I remember a man stepping
up and I knew that I knew his face well but couldn’t place it. I gave him a big
hug. He paused a minute and stepped back and said, “I’m your plumber.” Oh! I
had just met him two days earlier when he removed a water heater for me but
apparently he knows my dad well. That one makes me laugh every time I remember
it. That night gave me a false sense of “being stronger than I thought”. I
decided that the next day, if I felt up to it, I would stand and say farewell
to my mom at the funeral.  



The next day I wasn’t a hot mess and I actually felt like I
just might live through the day. I told the preacher that he was to be on
standby behind me to pick up my paper where I left off. I was fine until we had
some congregational singing. Church songs get me every time. I had bargained
with my siblings that I would go first, knowing that my sisters beautiful words
and my brother’s poignant and meaningful comments would put me in a progressed
state of leakiness. It was time; I was fine.



Our family was sitting in a side room and as I rounded the
corner and stood there beside the coffin, up at the podium, I saw the crowd for
the first time. All those familiar faces…front to back, side to side, there
wasn’t a place for my eyes to land that didn’t share some kind of meaning. I
was wearing the last suit that my mom had ever picked out for me. It had to be
at least twelve years old. I think it was for Easter. I had on the tie she had
picked out to go with it and even the cuff links she had given me for Christmas
one year. Suddenly, everything had meaning and I realized the gravity of what I
was doing. This was it; I was saying goodbye. My voice shook on the first words
that came out of my mouth and all I was doing was thanking everyone for being
there. Even though I had promised myself that I was not about to stand up there
and boo hoo (cause ain’t nobody got time for that) I refused to stop and let
the preacher take over for me. I had decided that mom would have done it for me
if she could have and that I should, if I could, do this for her. To be honest,
I was a mess the whole time and am not sure people could even understand me. I
just wanted to honor her by telling a bit about her and to try to see a little
good in all the horror that she had been through. I decided to tell a story
that most of you have heard before, plus a little bit more. So here it is:



I have to stop first and thank everyone for being here to
show their respect and to offer support. It really does help us get through
this sad moment in our lives.

I’ve had several years to prepare for today, to be ready to
say goodbye, to be ready to let go, but I am not ready. Fortunately, mom lived
her entire life for today. She used to always say, “I want to go to Heaven”, so
that’s how she lived her life.



 How do you sum up a
person’s entire life with just a few words in only a matter of minutes? You
can’t , and yet, here we are. Maybe I can give you just a glimpse.

Mom’s favorite color was red and she looked great in black.
I know that every kid thinks their mom is beautiful, but my mom never thought
of herself that way, even though she had heard it all her life. In so many ways
mom had a beautiful life. Her life wasn’t easy, not with four kids, but she
worked hard to surround herself with beauty. I think that is one of the reasons
why she became a florist, an amazing florist.


Mom knew how to take flowers and turn them into works of art. She really had
the gift. I remember one of her friends saying, "Your mom could make
something out of nothing." Mom worked hard to give us a beautiful home.
Anything she could find in our house to decorate she would. She would  add a bow to anything, work her magic, and
turn everything into something beautiful.



I remember a period of time when everything she would create
would either get a teddy bear, a bird or a little wooden mouse on it. Of
course, all of these creatures would be sporting a bow …. “to make it cute”.
It’s kind of ironic really that she used little wooden mice in her decorations
(especially if you knew her) because  one
of my earliest memories is from when I am about 3 or 4 years old. We were living
on a farm and I heard a blood curdling scream come from the kitchen. I ran in
and there was mom standing on top of the kitchen chair with one foot up ready
to climb on top of the table. She was pointing at something in the corner. I
didn’t know what it was but I started screaming too and jumped up beside her on
the chair. Before long my sister and my brother were all in the kitchen
standing on top of chairs screaming and trying to find the monster that my mom
was pointing towards. My dad came running into the house to rescue us and mom
screamed “It’s a mouse!” Dad quickly  saved the day. This scenario played out
several times throughout in my life. It’s funny how things like that can leave
an impression on you. All I can tell you is that if a mouse runs across this
floor today, you are about to watch a six foot man jump up on top of one of
this podium and scream like a white woman.



Mom loved people. She saw the good and beautiful in everybody even when no one
else could. Mom also used to stress that "you have to take care of those
who can’t take care of themselves." Her passion was being an advocate for
the most vulnerable. She was a strong advocate for nursing home residents , and
children. She absolutely loved children.


Growing up, mom would find out about children that needed help or had no way to
get to church and we would sometimes pick them up and bring them to church with
us. We would sit there and take up a whole row with kids of every race, color
and creed. As kids, we didn’t stop to think what others thought, that was just
the way things were. That was the 60s and 70s; looking back our mom was kind of
progressive and we didn’t even know it! It was vital for my mom that children
from all walks of life felt they were important and could belong, anywhere. What
a great lesson for them and for us.


Mom was kind to everyone but she did know when to draw the line, God and
Family. She would do anything she could to let people know that God loved them .She
let people know that they wanted to go to Heaven. She said it because she
believed it, with all her heart. As for her family, she would go to any length
to protect and care for her family. I think mom’s training as a cheerleader in
high school helped prepare her for being a great mother. She was our biggest
cheerleader. She helped us believe we could accomplish anything. My family just
lost it’s best cheerleader.


Alzheimer’s took my stole my mom. It is an ugly disease created by Satan
himself. It is the disease that robbed her of the last 12 years of her life and
our ability to share it with her. With all the horror of it, there were times
when all we could do was laugh.


At some point, my mom forgot who my dad was. She could talk to him over the
phone as Charles Perry, but that man that kept coming to her house at night was
definitely not her husband. She called him Charlie.   She remembered my
dad from 20-30 years ago. She no longer recognized dad but talked to him on the
phone regularly and wondered why he never came home. In person, she thought my
dad was a stranger named Charlie that lived in her house.. She didn’t know why
Charlie moved in but she would talk about him a lot and really wanted him to
move out. It aggravated her that he was there every night. She would call my
dad on the phone and complain about him. I remember my dad calling and laughing
about a phone call he had just gotten from mom. She said to him, "I wish
you would tell that old fat gray headed man to move out." I remember so
many times my dad trying to convince mom that he was her husband and then she
would look at him like he was crazy and tell him, "My husband is dark
headed, a lot younger and a whole lot better looking than you.”


My mom loved to go for car-rides. She was always ready to do. Dad called her
“Lillie Go Brown” since “Go” was her middle name. She loved life, the beauty of
nature and the excitement of being around other people. When her Alzheimer’s
progressed and she no longer drove her car, my dad, or I guess I should say,
the man my mom knew as  “Charlie” would take
mom for a ride around town every evening. On the weekends, he would drive her
all over the county. Even though she didn’t know why this Charlie was willing
to drive her around she always thanked him for doing it. In the back seat would
be their dog "Little Roscoe", who would be anxiously waiting the
regular stop to Baskin Robbins. He had his own bowl and preferred to be spoon
fed. Mom spoiled him as badly as she did all the rest of her kids. He was and
is the grand-dog.


One day while driving along the countryside, my mom asked my dad to pull the
car over. She insisted so my dad pulled over. She looked at him and said,
"I need to tell you something. You know, I am married to Charles Perry…I
have married the wrong man; I should have married you." My mom, with her
loss of memory from the past, had fallen in love all over again with the same
man she had fallen in love with as a teenager and married over 50 years ago.
There is no sweeter love story than that. There could have been no better
Godsend to my dad who was so often at his wits end (and never complained) than
to have heard these true heartfelt words from the woman he loved. My dad will
take that memory with him for life and know that there was no mistaking it;
they were meant to be together.


Seven years ago mom fell and got a traumatic brain bleed. She required full
time care ever since. Every time I visited I just hated to leave her . I was
worried that she would be afraid, being surrounded by strangers. I just prayed
everyone would be nice when we weren’t there. Each day when I left, I would
tell her the exact same things. I always wanted her to know that I was coming
back. So today, I will end by saying to  a beautiful woman who tried
always to see and create beauty in our lives, that same thing I have said to
her almost every day for the past seven years, "Bye bye Momma, I love you
and I will see you later.”

 

Mom is fading away (A serious note)

Saturday night mom had to be put on oxygen. Her health is failing and it seems her body is shutting down. It’s so hard to know what to post in this modern world of overshare but at the same time what a wonderful way to stay in touch, informed and updated. It is nice to some times have all your friends in one room. So…I share. Mom is very weak, not eating, and on her way out of this world. As many ...times as she has been near death’s door, we know that she is too frail to rally back and we all feel her time is near. Today it seems like it is eminent.

We will fall apart; I am sure of it. It’s hard to not be selfish here but it is harder to watch someone struggle for breath. I see my dad and I reacting alike, trying to ignore the obvious until we can no longer do so. Tonight we went through pictures, so many forgotten memories. Right now I barely remember anything about her other than the past few years with Alzheimer’s. I am looking forward to the flood of good memories to come back.

Right now it’s like sitting on the bottom of the pool underwater and looking around…suspended animation. This will be a rough week. My thoughts are with my dad who is about to lose his wife/girlfriend/mother of his children/soulmate. He will be lost. I know a lot of my friends have already gone through this. They all seemed so strong. I am not; I won’t do it well. I know there are the thoughts of mom being free from the bondage of a broken body and for her to be happy and whole again. I’ll get there; I am working on that, but for now, it is all just hopelessly sad.

Never Alone (a serious note)

My mom has been on Hospice for over two years from her complications with Alzheimer’s. She hasn’t been able to move, speak, or from what I can tell, even know when we are in the room for a very long time. Her body has atrophied and twisted…yet with that being said, she is still “healthy”. If I could understand for one moment what she has been going through in her own mind, I am pretty sure I would break apart and just collapse into the ground.

 

When people watch their loved ones go through these types of things, it is hard, it is frustrating and it leaves them with a sad/angry frustration that can permanently flip their lives around. Often the range of emotions are so big that people tend to isolate themselves and “go to their corners” to think, worry, plan and weep. It seems odd but we often pull apart in isolation when we should pull together for support. It’s part of our human nature that is a weakness and not a strength: to do the opposite of what is best for us.

 

Maybe part of this is to not burden others or maybe we just don’t trust our emotions in public. Either way, we often find ourselves suffering in silence when our loved ones are facing a terminal illness or traumatic event. In these same situations, I see people lose their faith…I understand that. When the human experience turns so terrible we wonder where God is. We question how He could let it happen. We forget that we are trying to explain things in human terms. It’s like having one little black piece of a giant puzzle and trying guess or assume that we know what the entire picture is. I have my ideas and ways to help explain, we all do. The thing I think that is important is that I don’t think for one second God likes this. I think He grieves with us and for us . He also knows our time here, though precious, is brief. In the bigger picture, our entire life here on earth is like one breath in our eternal life. We have to remember that God lets man make his own decisions. He lets man make bad choices. He allows man to pollute the air, water, food and every aspect of this earth. Unfortunately, innocent people end up paying the price for the evil intentions and ignorance of others. No matter how blessed or cursed our lives seem to be,  it is a temporary appointment.

 

I understand how people can lose their faith when faced with seemingly impossible life situations, situations that are tragic and have no happy endings. Once again, I think we find ourselves doing the opposite of what we should be doing. We pull away from our faith, God and our church families when what we need to be doing is clinging to and leaning on, all of the above. If you find yourself in one of these type situations, remember to try to keep perspective. There are times when you will need to be alone but remember not to wall yourself in . Allow people who care about you to care for you. God has the broadest shoulders and wants you to lean on Him. He wants you to know He is there to support you through all of life’s struggles. He will let you pull away, walk away and fall away, but He will stay and wait. We bear the burden/joy of living in a broken world, a beautiful, damaged, wonderful, tragic, amazing, broken world…but we are really never alone, no matter how much we may feel it or how much we may try to isolate ourselves.

Chip and Dip

 
I know better than to bring any kind of snacky/chippy things into the house. I know that no matter what size the bag, I will treat it as one serving. Well, last night’s Kroger run happened whilst I had the munchies. I saw a bag of some kind of flat pretzel-thins that were labeled “less fat” so I got them. It hit me later, “less fat than what?” I also grabbed some baked “less fat” (less than what?) corn chips and some baked “less fat” (less than what?) kettle style chips. Why did my inner chipaholic emerge? What was the trigger? Well, I had decided to make some spinach/artichoke dip. I don’t do this often so when I actually do make it, I make it cafeteria style …aka enough to feed a room full of people (even if that room is just going to be filled with me).          

 

The flat less fat pretzels were designated as the travel snack that would see me safely and non-hypoglycemically back home for the one mile ride. Once home, I whipped up a trough of dip and tried it with my remaining half bag of less fat pretzels. MMMmmmmm. For some reason, when something is labeled as “less fat” , I tell myself it has no calories. As the bag emptied I flipped it over to see how many servings it was supposed to be (in Ethiopia) and then did some math. It seems I had just had 1000 calories of less fat pretzels. I still had some dip left in my version of a single serving so I wanted to try it out with my less fat corn chips. Deeelish! About ¼ bag into this I ran out of my single serving dip and decided it was time to put the chip clip to good use, either on the bag or on my lips. When I put it away I noticed my less fat kettle chips and thought that now would be a great time to comparison taste. You can eat a half a family bag of those hearty crunchsters before you know it.

 

I don’t have a calculator handy, so there is really no possible way for me to know the damage of my post dinner plunder but I am pretty sure it has been significant. All I know is that I wasn’t feeling the least bit guilty during Dipfest 2014. My non-guilty conscious was telling me that I was getting my daily dose of spinach and artichokes while my love handles and subsequent jiggly parts (known  hithertofore as all adjoining parts that continue to move for a few seconds after I stomp my foot) were simply chanting “cream cheese, cream cheese”.

 

I”ll be glad when all this chip and dip is out of the house…which will probably be by this time tomorrow night. In the future, if you see me at Kroger with a bag of chips in my hands just run up to me and smack them right out of my hands; just do it. You will be doing me and my pants a favor. If you do see me in Kroger and I have a bag of chips in my hands and you walk over and smack it right out of my hands, I am sure you will be safe. On the off chance that hypoglycemia has set in, you will notice my ears fly back flat to the sides of my head and my hair will stand straight up on top of my head as a result of suddenly being chipless. If that happens, just back away…slowly, and nobody will get hurt.  

My Hang Ups

OK, what's the deal with hangers? All I have to do is open my closet and some article of clothing will kamikaze right off of a hanger without me even touching it. On the other hand, if I want to get an empty hanger out or if I need to pick a hanger up off the floor (every day), that hanger will stick to anything and everything like the world's best round of the  Barrel of Monkeys game. Today I tried to pick up a fallen hanger and somehow it hooked up and around the hem of my pants and locked in. I picked up my leg and that hanger was white knuckling my hem. I put my foot back down and tried to get better balance for the unthreading procedure and my other foot got stuck inside the hanger. Next I knew the game had changes from Barrel of Monkeys to Pogo stick riding and then to a failed Houdini trick. I seriously almost broke my neck doing this. I did break the hanger. Who designed hangers, Satan? I tell you what, design a better hanger system and you will be rich.ed to pick up a fallen hanger and somehow it hooked up and around the hem of my pants and locked in. I picked up my leg and that hanger was white knuckling my hem. I put my foot back down and tried to get better balance for the unthreading procedure and my other foot got stuck inside the hanger. I seriously almost broke my neck doing this. I did break the hanger. Who designed hangers, Satan? I tell you what, design a better hanger system and you will be rich.ed to pick up a fallen hanger and somehow it hooked up and around the hem of my pants and locked in. I picked up my leg and that hanger was white knuckling my hem. I put my foot back down and tried to get better balance for the unthreading procedure and my other foot got stuck inside the hanger. I seriously almost broke my neck doing this. I did break the hanger. Who designed hangers, Satan? I tell you what, design a better hanger system and you will be rich.ed to pick up a fallen hanger and somehow it hooked up and around the hem of my pants and locked in. I picked up my leg and that hanger was white knuckling my hem. I put my foot back down and tried to get better balance for the unthreading procedure and my other foot got stuck inside the hanger. I seriously almost broke my neck doing this. I did break the hanger. Who designed hangers, Satan? I tell you what, design a better hanger system and you will be rich.ed to pick up a fallen hanger and somehow it hooked up and around the hem of my pants and locked in. I picked up my leg and that hanger was white knuckling my hem. I put my foot back down and tried to get better balance for the unthreading procedure and my other foot got stuck inside the hanger. I seriously almost broke my neck doing this. I did break the hanger. Who designed hangers, Satan? I tell you what, design a better hanger system and you will be rich.