clickmom

time

We went to see grandma today and the kids were busy with each other. Grandma can't really hear unless she is half lip reading and you are talking directly to her and keeping it s.l.o.w. so she was just watching them. I asked them to please try to engage grandma.

Josh leaned in nice and close to grandma and said "So, uh, what are you in for?"

I was very happy when we left because grandma did not want to go to bed for a change (she was probably too hopped up on sugar- yup, we took her for ice cream again) so I put her in front of the television. But as we left I saw her scooting her wheelchair across the room to where there was a group of old ladies gathered around and chatting. Grandma is not usually so social. It was a good thing.

Also, I am going to the Eagles concert tonight at Madison Square Garden!! Woo Hoo!!! Yay husband and his ticket scalper! And I am going to know every single word of every pre-year 2000 song! Watch me sing-a-long! Woo Hoo!

Hhhhhello

Okay, here comes the post about the detox.

Are you still with me? Wow, I am impressed by your dedication.

When I went to good doc last fall and told him how crappy I felt and he started running tests he also recommended that I read Ultra-Metabolism by Mark Hyman MD. Good doc said that it was the diet that he lived by. Which pretty impressed me since good doc is a fit and trim older than me guy and also judging by the photo on his shelf in his office his wife is quite the fox. I'd like to be a fox too. So I bought the book. And it sat there gathering dust on my shelf for a few months. But I had mentioned it to Bubbles. And in February when it was my birthday and the book was good and dusty on my shelf Bubbles, who did not know that I had already bought the book, only remembered that good doc had recommended the book to me, gave me another copy of the book. Wow, I was totally guilt ridden. So I started to read the book that Bubbles gave me and gave the dusty one away.

And I told myself that I was going to read all the background and then understand the reasoning behind the diet and then do the diet. Which was a great idea. Add then I read the book painfully slow. But the first 200 or so pages is all about why we end up fat and all the imbalances and toxic causes of a slowed metabolism and I pretty much read the book and shouted "OMG that is SO ME!" all the way through. Because now that I have had every single bodily fluid and bio hazardous waste of mine examined and I know how many alarming issues I am harboring I can confidently say that I am chemically messed up. And this program claims it can turn my metabolism around. And clean me up and restore my health, and polish the scrapes out of my bumper, ...oh wait, that was my dream last night.

Pretty much the diet part of the book is the same old Mediterranean Diet that every one is all worked up about these days. But the two week detox before the rest of the diet is where I am now. Today is day 4 for me. The one huge draw back I am finding is that every meal and the two snacks a day all require some serious in the kitchen time. I don't normally do kitchen time for lunch and snacks. (Because why cook when I can simply unwrap?) And also, waiting a whole hour to cook some brown rice for breakfast is pushing it for my somewhat crazed morning routine. But I am doing it. And that is what counts. And truthfully, there isn't a drastic difference yet (so impatient grasshopper) except that I am less bloated (not sure anyone else can tell). I have no energy at all but who knows if that is stress related (1 more day to finish cleaning out grandma's apartment) or health related. I should be having a nice yeast die off right about now. That could make me feel poorly. Also, if all those heavy metals are on their way out that could drag me down too. Or I could have my own personal stressful life and then get rear ended by some Mario Andretti who thinks he can drive 50 MPH in a parking lot and ..... never mind. You get the idea.

But the upside of this diet is that the weight is melting off already. I am sure much of it is water weight (hence the less bloated feeling) since yesterday, on day 3, I dashed off to the bathroom about every 45 minutes. I hope all that pee contained arsenic! The food is palatable though (with the exception of the banana soy smoothie that made me nauseous for a good hour and a half this morning-never eating that again!) and the kids are even eating and enjoying some of the dinner dishes. Some of the dinners are vegetarian and I have to make an additional meat for the boys because around here if no animal has been sacrificed then it doesn't actually count as a real meal. Maybe a snack. And they want their meals real at meal time.

And as far as appetite is concerned I have none. It's nothing short of a miracle. Or maybe the stench of my own breath. I think that the reason I have no appetite is that everything except breakfast is heavy on garlic, onions and herbs and right about now I am smelling like a garlic flavored gum chewing middle eastern restaurant cook after a long night's work. How's that for foxy?! Hhhhhhhey Hhhhhandsoooohhmme. I am hoping that after a week I can hop on the scale and see Biggest Loser type results, (with less than 4 hours a day in the gym) and if the first 4 days are an indication of things to come, then I am going to be very happy next Tuesday! As far as I am concerned, water counts. And if trim (FOXY) has to equal stinky then let it be so. Bring on the garlic. I figure I will get used to it.

So that is my exciting detox news. I will have the second set of follow up blood tests in June, so hopefully something good will be the result.

crying

The salvation Army came to day to pick up the bulk of grandma's stuff. I was sad, and sitting around in the apartment that grandma is not healthy and strong enough to live in anymore waiting for them was so painful that I took a nap on what is now a for sale at a Salvation Army somewhere in the garden state very comfortable sofa. It was a good sofa. Have I told you about it? Back in the old days when grandma was a mere 88 years old her then sofa's cushions turned to cement. At the time her old sofa was already almost 40 years old. So lil sis and I called my mother and scumcle and told them that grandma needed a new sofa. And they told us that 88 year olds do not get new furniture. And lil sis and I looked at each other and we knew that we couldn't just leave that cement for cushions sofa in grandma's apartment so we took grandma to a sofa store and bought her a new sofa and a new recliner too because her old one was getting pretty darned ratty. It was a fun day because Evan was 2, Matt was 6 and my little nephew was a crawling baby all over the store and we were quite the kiddie circus in there trying to explain to the sales guy that an 88 year old can not wait 10 weeks for delivery! We told ourselves that if grandma had a nice soft comfortable sofa for even 6 months that it would have been worth the price. Ha! That was 8 years ago!

We were so right about that one.

Anyway, giving all of grandma's stuff away was just too hard for me. It's like closing the door on grandma. It's like I am really giving up on her. It's like admitting that she is never going to wake up one day determined to walk again and start pacing the hallways and getting stronger and be able to go back to the OFH. Because the OFH was so much better than I realized when she was there. And I secretly hoped that she would wake up one day and decide to be strong again and work her way back to walking around. But then yesterday the nurse at the nursing home told me that grandma's disorientation was serious and that grandma would scoot her wheelchair into any old room and go to sleep on any old bed. Which I totally believe since when I got there I found grandma sitting all alone in some other person's room. She was probably psyching herself up to make the transfer from chair to bed.

Once the guys came it wasn't so bad, because at least then I had someone to talk to. Also, the younger (cuter) of the two Salvation Army guys was totally flirting with me and I ate it up. Actually I totally needed it and I got down on my knees and begged for more. No I didn't! But I did play along, shamelessly. Come on now! You know you would too! He was shocked (!) that I have three kids! He couldn't believe my real age! For real! And he was all smiley and nice. Just what the doctor ordered.

But then sweet flirty flattering guy drove off with the grumpy salvation army guy and I was all alone (ALONE) driving my way to the middle school to hand in forms where my sweet baby Evan is going next year (OMG he is growing up too faaaast!) and I had this overwhelming urge to pick all my kids up from their respective schools and get them to hug me. Simultaneously. And then maybe I wouldn't collapse to the ground like I felt like I might. I started to cry. I really just needed to see my reasons for being brave, standing up straight and carrying on but they had 2 more hours of school to go. I would have to wait.

Also, you should know that I cried in the diner last weekend when the waiter brought my eggs to me and the cook had put some toast (glutenous enemy of mine) on them. I'm fragile these days. On a scale of 1 to 10 I'd say that emotionally I am running about 14.7. Maybe a little higher.

By the time I was on my way home from the grocery store (my next stop) I was completely distracted by imagining what kind of politically correct thing a cop could say to the muslim woman I saw driving with her cell phone tucked securely half way into her hijab. I mean technically, that did make her cell phone hands free, but it was still a cell phone on her ear. I gave this much thought.

I also want to tell you about the detox I am doing (day 3 and still fat!!) and also, I know I have to write that letter I said I wanted to write to scumcle. I am going to mail scumcle a package of stuff like grandma's golf trophy from 1967. Also, his diplomas and some other funky crap. You know just in case he is sitting around remembering that it all exists. I am going to tell him how out of line he was accusing me of stealing some earrings. Maybe I will work on these things this weekend. See folks! I am giving you something to look forward to!

game

Let's play a little game. The game is called "Make a list of the last things clickmom needs!" Okay.... GO!

Now, how many of you put car accident on that list?

Wow, you guys are good! So here is my day in a nut shell-

1. Wake feeling quite sure I must be thin after an industrious 24 hours of detox diet. WHoops! It's gonna take more than a day!
2. Posh Club for super hard workout. (Go me! Go (away) my fat!)
3. Blissful cranial sacral therapy for myriad of skeletal issues.
4. Happy visit with grandma where I wheeled her to an ice cream shop and got her a sundae.

Sounds good right?

5. Leave nursing home just in time to run into grocery store for missing dinner ingredient before school pick up.
6. Pull backwards out of parking space and get rear ended by some little speed demon maybe trying to
a. reach 50mph into the parking lot and
b. could have possibly (judging by the angle of his car after impact) been trying to speed past behind my truck as I pulled out of the spot.

After the jolt and the crash I was so angry I was shaking. And the guy WHO HIT ME was throwing his arms up in the air like it was my fault! So I dialed 911 and the cops were there in about 2 minutes, so I guess they weren't all ticketing unseat belted drivers today, and he took our info and a brief statement from each of us, sat in his bar lined crook containment car filling out forms, came back and told us to call the station in 5 to 8 business days for the report. And then he looked at me and asked me if I had any questions and I asked him if there was fault assigned in his report (because I will be damned if I am going to pay for this guy's damage!) and he said "I haven't decided yet." And folks, I managed to restrain myself, you would have been so proud. And I didn't tell the youngster cop, (yes I could have been his youthful mother) to stop chewing gum like a pig or people were going to start making pig jokes, or that if he keeps up the tanning he's going to look like a leather chair by the time he is my age, or even what dreamy big green eyes he had, I just said okay and got into my truck and counted to a zillion waiting for him to move his vehicle out of my way so that I could go pick up the kiddies from school.

And now I am sore. In more ways than one.

shopped

This is totally the best shirt summer I have lived through for a while. I mean this summer is even better than the tunic summer. I can't even imagine a better shirt summer than this, unless everyone else was forced to gain 50 pounds or something. I mean, really, it's kind of hilarious (but in a good good very good way) that plain old women are all wearing maternity clothes with nice comfy loose floaty mid sections and all the preggers out there are wearing tight form fitting navel clinging tube tops. Yay for fashion! There is nothing that a double jelly rolled full figured gal like myself appreciates more than a slack roomy oversized and yet still in style shirt. I'm so happy I could just leap and prance about through a field of wild flowers with a crown of daisies in my hair. I got me some new shirts! Get the picture?

bloomfield

Grandma has been asking to go home lately. I can't bring myself to tell her she is permanently living at the nursing home now. I tell her she will go home as soon as she starts walking again even though I know she won't be walking around again. If she did somehow decide to get strong again one day I would totally send her back to the OFH. It looks better every single day. It's not that the nursing home is bad per se, it's just that some of the old people at the nursing home are kind of scary. Some of them are totally checked out and I don't like to see that for grandma or for myself. And the kids get a little freaked out seeing it too.

Mostly the care over there seems pretty good, though there is definitely a hierarchy of duties there that the people will and will not do. The lowest job on the hierarchy is assisting the bathroom. Today I walked in to see grandma being wheeled by the lunch lady over to the nurses station. The nurse doesn't do bathroom duty so she had to fetch an aide and poor grandma just sat in her chair softly saying saying "Help me, oh please won't someone help me." I was afraid to help her myself, I didn't know what to do, so I just watched. The whole wait was two minutes but it seemed forever. And witnessing grandma's pitiful cry for help didn't sit well with me.

They have some kind of laundry problem over there at the nursinghome and despite the fact that I have cleaned Sears out twice of their size 10 black polyester elastic waist pants every time I go over she is wearing someone else's clothes. Mostly she is wearing borrowed pants, but every once in a while she has on someone else's shirt, and sometimes, the shirts do not match grandma's wise with age level of sophistication. See example below:

Grandma still has her social graces about her. When she knows a picture is being taken she can smile with the best of them. It makes it a little easier to bear.

This week I face the always less than pleasant task of cleaning out grandma's apartment. Again. We are paid up on the rent until the end of the month and I have the salvation army coming on the 29th for her furniture, but I have to do another cleansing of the bric-a-brac. I figured what ever was left there was pretty much worthless since the scumcle and his witch of a wife had long ago absconded with anything of obvious monetary value. But then I was surprised to see the very same little ring holder she had on her dresser in a Waterford display at the department store. Now I wonder. I'd love to know if there are any stories behind the bowls and little statuettes. Are any of them from my great grandparents? Special anniversary gifts? Anything with a good story? I just don't know. I feel bad giving her history away. So I am going to pack it up and take it to an antique dealer and see what there is. I know the dealer won't be able to tell me the stories I imagine make these pieces worth while, but she will at least be able to tell me if the things are old and where they come from so I can guess for myself.

sharp

I am pretty bad at giving the kids chores and making them responsible for stuff around the house. Which really isn't working for me since I end up doing everything all alone and getting all resentful about it. The one chore I have been making Evan and Matt do themselves is packing their own stuff for trips. At first I gave them lists to refer to for packing thoroughness but somewhere along the line, I just gave the boys a whole lot of credit and started saying something vague like "pack for three days and two nights". How's that working for us? Yeah, uh... that's been what I have been asking myself these past couple of days.

You be the judge.

Three things Evan did pack for utopia:

1. the wood carving knife lil sis got him for hanukah
2. his swiss army knife
3. the fisherman's utility blade I found on the side of the street while walking the devil one day last April. I brought it home and gave it to Evan.

Three things Evan did not pack for utopia:

1. pajamas
2. socks
3. underwear

I'm thinking I might have to revert back to the detailed list method here.

made

me: (with lots of over dramatic frustration) Josh! I just made your bed!! Why are your blankets on the floor?!?! (Josh can't hear me. He is on the basement)

Evan: I'll make his bed.

In my head: ALARM BELLS

Me: Evan, how did Josh's bed get unmade 20 minutes after I made it?

Evan: (eyes wide with total fakery innocence) I have no idea but I would be happy to help out here.

In my head: I smell a rat.

So I call up Josh from the basement. I ask him why his blankets are on the floor.

Josh: its not my fault! Evan said I should put them on the floor so he could wrap himself up like a burrito.

Evan can not make eye contact with me. He tries to skink away but I offer his bed making expertise to Josh and Evan, despite his pleas of innocence, accepts his assignment and makes Josh's bed because he is Guilty and not because he is a easy going helpful kind of guy.

sing

Evan and Josh made up a song. There is one word in their song. They sang it high, low, loud and soft. The one and only word in their song is diarrhea.

We are in utopia. So that makes their song beautiful. As a matter of fact, I am going to encourage them to sing another round.....as soon as we leave the restaurant.

right?

Too chicken to write that letter today l but I will. Maybe after the weekend. I can't spoil a holiday weekend can I? Okay, maybe I will work up a rough draft over the weekend. Too bad it isn't letter month on NaBlo. What a letter! Really, I am working on it in my head (which I can do, a whole letters worth pre written and just waiting for my fingers to do the dancing.)

Took Josh and Ev to see the new Indiana Jones movie tonight. Harrison Ford is my type. Except unlike Callista I only the dig the version of him that is my age. Did you guys know that I am a total age-ist? I just hate having to take people younger than myself seriously and do not ever see older men sexually, except for some reason I can see older women sexually, maybe I am secretly an old gay woman! In the mean time we all know that I adore the really old folks and would mow down a class full of kindergardeners just to help an octogenarian across the street. And I just love to look at their old soft faces and try to see the young person inside.

Speaking of faces I saw Lonnie Anderson on tv and she is marrying some guy she dated when she was 17. Which is totally sweet, right? But Lonnie has fucked up her face and she had these nauseating dead fat slug lips and the rest was mostly frozen, plus the artificial bleached out hair helmet she has had since the 80's and I thought to myself that she must be in her mid 70's with all the totally obvious facial work going on but NO! She is in her late 50's. I was shocked. I can't wait until Hollywood figures out how scary they are starting to look. Also, am I right here? Does a lady (or effeminate man, because how girly is it for a man to have work done on his face? Are you listening Arnold? Sly?) look older than her actual years when she has very obviously had tons of face work done? Anyone notice how I keep specifying FACE? Anyone recalling my tummy tuck/breast reduction fantasy? Hey, I am the first to admit that I am checking in for my own plastic surgery as soon as I find myself weighing something normal again. But I am leaving my face alone. I draw the line at overpriced promising the world creams, lotions and potions. No knives (or needles) above the chin. That's my motto. At least for now.

Also, no hair cuts above the chin. Which brings me to another tid bit of information .... I got a haircut for the first time since September. Once, BTB (before the blog), I grew my hair real long and then chopped it off and donated it to locks of love. And I thought that maybe I would do it again before I got too gray. They don't want the kinky gray straws that I am rapidly sprouting, only the colored stuff. One day last fall grandma mentioned how long my hair was getting and I told her my plans. She was very worried and did not want me to cut off my hair. So grandma found something she could remember and every time I saw her she would check my hair and make sure it was still all there. So I decided I would not cut the ten inches off while she would still notice it. And I just didn't cut my hair all winter. And got real long. And it bugged the crap out of me. And every day I would get giant rats nest knots in the back and rip out hair trying to brush it. And the front parts would end up lying down either side of my neck covering my boobs like a big hot hair shawl. And worst off all everything I ate all day and other small objects would get caught in my long hair shawl/collar which laid across my breast shelf like the crumb magnet it was, and by the time I went to bed at night I cold pick through my hair for things like sushi rice, legos, spiders, pencil erasers, gluten free crackers, and other assorted house hold odds and ends. (Sorry didn't mean to turn you on like that...) Plus, as lil sis likes to point out, the longer my hair gets, the more the top of part of it tends to (cling like saran wrap to the top of my head) lie flat and that is a less than flattering look on my fat face. Tuesday I marched into my favorite hair dresser said "make it look healthy again" and walked out with about 4 inches less hair. Whew. What a relief. Then I went to see grandma and she did not even mention my hair, so I asked her if she liked my haircut and she said my hair was long and didn't look like it was just cut.

And oh yeah, about that phone call and follow up letter, I think I might actually have those earrings scumcle spoke of! Can't easily check because my safe is broken and unable to open. But here is the thing, if I do have them, I am pretty sure grandma gave them to me when I was still in High School which means pre-1982. But definitely before Matt was born because I haven't worn earrings in that long. I am still going to pretend that I have no idea what he is talking about. Cause I am pissed. I can't believe he is sitting around today remembering jewelry he last saw maybe 25 years ago and feeling the need to find it. And give to the ice queen. And lie that they actually belong to the ice queen and that she lent them to grandma and just now happens to want them back. As if!! I know... I know... it's all so sick. Crazy right?

Stay away from the botox. Okay?