clickmom

tooth salve

I was totally one of those sobbing crying weirdos in the airport today.

Because dad flew out of a tiny little airport I got to watch him (and coach him) go all the way through the x-rays machines and into the waiting area. It is clear to me that mom not only took care of everything, but also that she never bothered to discuss the details with dad. The 3 ounce bottle in a quart sized bag for your carry on thing... Dad finds it incomprehensible. Dad also did not want to classify his poligrip as a liquid since it came in a tube. Dad hopefully came up with a handful of names for the poligrip which would not inspire one to conjure up liquidy images. My favorite was "tooth salve". Also, who goes to the airport with $5 worth of coins in his pockets? Also, trying to get dad to remove the laptop (which he does not know to work) from his carry on and put it in the gray plastic bin? Hahahaha. I love my dad.

The crying part came into play when I had to remind dad to get someone to help him put his suitcase in the overhead bin, and then when he gotten too far for me to call to him I prayed that some kind samaritan would help dad haul his carry on case off of the x-ray machine platform. And when no one did help dad my heart caught in my mouth because I thought he was going over trying to get the suitcase down. Then dad gave one more look back towards where I had been, but I had moved closer, and he didn't see me. I tried to pound on the glass separating us, because I wanted him to know that I hadn't walked away yet, but he didn't hear me. I watched dad put his goofy yellow baseball cap (because he was wearing his different colored yellow cardigan) back on his head, pocket his cell phone, shake the 2 pounds of change from inside his loafer back into his dropping pants pocket, slide into the loafers, reinsert the laptop into his bag and do the old guy shuffle, head down and too big pants dragging under his heels towards the gate.

He never looked so sad, alone or so small before.

they are wearing chunky this year

Lil sis came over today and we went upstairs to divvy up some of mom's costume jewelry. When we left the kitchen grandma's candle (which made it through the night) was looking very low and when we came down an hour and a half later grandma's candle was out. So it's finally out. Now I have to throw it away.

I want to tell you about today, but I am too exhausted and sad. Dad is going home tomorrow and I don't want him to leave.

2 ply lottery

Grandma's shiva candle is down to the very bottom. I know that when I go to bed tonight it is going to go out. I can't tell you how much comfort I got having the candle in my kitchen to look at. I can't tell you how much sorrow the candle extinguishing causes me. The candle going out is another big old shouting symbol. "She's gone!" the burnt out candle says "and you have to move on!" it adds "Time to move on!" If my mom were here she'd tell me to get on with my life. That was one her favorite expressions. She wasn't exactly the epitome of sensitivity.

Today I had a breath stopping muscle spasm in my side back all morning. The husband claimed he could feel the knots in my back. And now I have the rawest of sore throats. I feel like I have been breathing caustic smoke all day long. Can't raise my voice. Maybe all these complaints add up to something viral. That would be just lovely since virus tend to run themselves out unceremoniously. Or maybe not. Because my boob still hurts. I'm tired of the hurting boob. Maybe I have viral areola-itis. And that causes sore throats.

Maybe I have an 11 year old who is like something out of a bad sitcom. Ean is very obviously deep in the hormonal throws of puberty. He contradicts everything out of my mouth including subjective stuff like "I'm sad." Yup, he will either argue that point or forcefully declare my sadness not his fault, because HELLO! the kid will not take responsibility for a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g. Even if it is his fault. During lunch I said "Evan, you have sauce on your arm." He shouted "I didn't do it!!" "Ev, just wipe your arm on the napkin." I suggested "It's not my fault." he muttered. I'm crawling into a cave until he is 24.

Tomorrow is dad's last night here. He is going back on Sunday. Now I get to worry about dad long distance. And you don't need to know me well to know that is precisely what I am going to do. I wish he had friends near Stepford and would want to stay. It occurred to me that once the boys all go back to school (on Thursday!) I just might have that 6 1/2 hour a day break that I have been waiting 15 1/2 years to experience. And for the first time ever I will not have to dedicate my time to anyone but me.

Geez.

I am not sure if I know how to do that.

The choices are endless. Do I plan things? Take a class maybe? Do I have unstructured time? Do I dare pretend that this is the year I get my house organized? ppffffft! I amuse myself. The only commitment I have made so far is that I plan on resuming my therapy with the new new undead therapist. Maybe I should book a double (or triple) just to bring him up to date.

Dad thought for sure that scumcle would be calling me about something this week. So far, no scumcle. Could I be scumcle free? Time will tell, right?

It was a big day utopia. Today I got what I had only fantasized about all summer long. Today the guy who does stuff around here finally put the long awaited "tissue holder" (aka: toilet paper doo-hickey) on the wall. Cue the heavenly chorus! No more soggy TP from the window sill in a rain storm, no more rolls rolling under the tub, no more twisting around searching for rolls on the toilet tank. Now all I have to do is look right past my left knee and voila! paper. It's a summer dream come true. Well, that and winning the lottery.

annoy me

I am at the drive-in with the kids posting from my iPhone. Normally I adore the whole drive-in experience but tonight I am only annoyed. The bugs are annoying me, one of kids shaking a leg or some other body part is annoying me, Matt com- fricking-plaining when he chose to come even though he could have stayed home is annoying me, the filthy bathroom, the smell of compost in the air, and most of all the feature of the week Clone Wars is annoying me. About the only thing not annoying me is the faster than ufual Internet connection I have out here in the middle of nowhere.

Post mom died me was getting by on 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night. Post grandma died too me could sleep for 16 hours a day. Maybe I will just snooze for the rest of the movie.

oh my boob!

I called good doc this morning and said "Wahwahwah, tell me what to do my boob hurts." and then good doc asked me a bunch of questions one of which was "When your last mammogram." and I lied for no good reason except maybe because I don't want to be responsible for me dying of breast cancer cause I too was in denial- family trait remember? to get one on schedule said "Two years ago." (It was 2 1/2+ years ago) And good doc said to get one as soon as possible and he said to order "A diagnostic mammogram, not a standard mammogram because you have SYMPTOMS." And when he said the word symptoms I stuck my fingers in my ears and sang LALALALALA really and truly nearly fainted. SYMPTOMS! Dear gawd. But I did make that appointment for Wednesday 9/3.

Until Wednesday here is a partial list of the other things I am planning to relegate my symptoms to and obsess over, because I just don't have the emotional resources to preoccupy myself with my own possible chances of breast cancer right now.

Reasons why my right boob hurts like a SOB

1. I ate something! (or more accurately... I ate everything)

2. That rare strep infection from June came back and it found my boob!

3. I ate something!

4. The dog scratched my boob through my bathing suit one day about a month ago when she swam too close to me in the water. (really happened-same boob different location) It's all her fault.

5. I ate everything!

6. Stress.

7. I picked something gross up at the nursing home. (shivers)

8. My boob is telling me stop talking about the future breast reduction surgery I fantasize about.

9. It's all in my mind. I'm just crazy.

Suggestions welcomed.

little purse

Those tiny little purses with long straps that a girl could wear across her chest all day long and hardly even notice it was there came into style right about the time self conscious me entered junior high school. I had a great group of girlfriends back then and we did girl stuff like crimp our hair on the same day, wear skirts on the same day and all buy the same style of frye boots and we all wore our tiny little purses when we had our very embarrassing periods. The purses were perfect for stashing feminine protection. Those handy pad carrying purses saved us from the shame of declaring to the world that we had indeed become women. Yup, I grew up in the dark ages before junior high school girls walked around in skin tight clothes and half naked. The junior high girls in my time still looked like girls, not Jessica Rabbits.

On one of our final days of junior high school we were sitting around in a group with some of the nicer boys on our class and reminiscing about the past two years we had spent together as a class. We were all relaxed and opening up and the boys told us that they had noticed how we girls did our certain things together and also they told us they could tell when we had our periods. We were astonished, we had never openly snuck a pad out of the classroom, we had our purses! And then the boys told us they knew we had our periods when we wore our little purses. We didn't fool anyone.

Today I find myself still carrying that little tiny purse. This 2008 purse is just as comfortable to wear and ignore all day long as the actual real purse I carried in 1978, the only difference is that the 1978 purse was real and the 2008 is figurative. The 2008 purse, my symbolic purse, envelopes my depression. Right now I carry it with me at all times. Sometimes, because my purse is so small and discreet I forget that my purse and it's contents are here lying right on my side, but only for a minute or two because my purse and what it inside of it doesn't leave my side, this depression toting purse, is my constant companion. When I am laughing at the hilarity of my kids, I can feel the purse pressing on my side, when I pretend to smile at the check out girl, I feel the strap of my purse laying against my neck, and when I spend the day hiding from the water and the sun and the fun I know my purse is extra heavy that day and I wait because I hope that the next day will find my purse filled with feathers instead.

run on sentence queen and too tired to care

One of my utopian friends went to ikea and gave Josh a little gray mouse stuffed animal that the devil dog claimed as her own. Devil dog bounds around the property with the little gray mouse in her mouth and don't you know that each and every time I see the devil coming, mouse in mouth, I have a mini stroke thinking it is the real thing, even though the four inch long white ikea tags are hanging right out the other side of the devils mouth. Wound a bit tight these days, I am.

I invited some other utopian friends over for lunner, and the husband suggested I make lasagna. Since Matt, Evan and I can not eat lasagna due to our dietary restrictions I at first reacted ahem somewhat harshly towards the husband for even suggesting lasagna, but then I remembered how much dad loves my lasagna and I decided to make one anyway. I asked Matt (who had just had some real whipped cream on his soy frozen dessert) if he was okay with eating the lasagna and he said he didn't think it would be worth it, which only served to prove one thing, and that one thing is that it has been so frigging long since I have made my exceptional lasagna that Matt has completely forgotten how worth it it is. I made it. It came out fair. Not worth it.

Tonight as the sun went down the water was a fabulous shade of blue. Then it turned purple and I was completely awestruck.

Matt continued to grow his nasty mutton chops out and I bit my tongue and never said a bad word about them. Then one day I was looking at Matt and feeling all mushy sentimental and I stroked his right side mutton chop with all the tenderness of a mom wondering how in the hell her sweet little baby could ever have such pungent BO could muster and guess what happened. Matt shaved the chops off! Hurray! I'm gonna be real affectionate to his 17 year old klepto girlfriend a lot now too!

My right knee still hurts as do my right boob and my bruised and scraped right arm. It must be throwing my equilibrium off because now my right ankle, right neck and right lower back are beginning to protest something as well.

I could sleep all day long, as a matter of fact, I am so sleep screwed up that I have passed out in the living room each afternoon for the past two days. Even though some worker guy has been assembling bookshelves right over my head. I wish I could make the workers leave, I'm just afrad that they won't come back and finish when I leave.

Which brings me to the sadness of saying that my lake friends are drifting back to their winter homes and I am feeling lonely as can be, also, I totally did not do anything special with this miserable summer, and just as I predicted, I can barely even remember it at all. I so seriously need a do over.

food issues

I am in a bad way over here with the food. Yesterday morning I was doing dishes standing close to the cake I bought to fatten dad up a bit and I WANTED THAT CAKE. All I could think of was WANT CAKE WANT CAKE and I knew I was being like a two year old having this internal tantrum, but dammit, I WANTED CAKE so I cut myself a big old piece of cake and that not all that wonderful cake did absolutely nothing for me, so I had a bagel too. And then 20 minutes later I wondered why my stomach hurt so much an I have been either running to the bathroom or sucking up some gluten and dairy laden treat ever since.

My stomach is in trouble here.

Why? Internet, I have got to get a grip on these allergies/intolerances and stop.

sleeping on the left

Still in some kind of "It's too much all at once stupor" over here.

Right now everything on the right side of me hurts. First, I woke up in the middle of the night about a week ago with some kind of searing right boob nipple pain. But since I am more sleep deprived than ever, when I do manage to sleep I am dead to the world, I simply registered some pain and rolled over. Well, here it is , a week later, and still I have this pinching poking sharp right nipple pain. I guess I'll be making an appointment with some kind of nipple doctor when I get home. Then today, while walking through my utopian friend's house I walked too close to a half paneled doorway and scraaaaaaped the side of my right arm on some rough cut wood paneling. Yeah, ouch. So I came home and did some kind of shake off my shoes while steeping into the house spaz move and I banged my knee into the outside sharp edged corner of the doorway. Ooouuuuuch. All this calamity had to happen on the same side of me and now my right side just throbs.

All that and I watched the last episode of Nip/Tuck and now I have wait until 2009 to find out what happens next.

Sometimes life isn't fair.

jailbait

A moment of comic relief during my latest family tragedy came just as lil sis and I pulled into the funeral home on Thursday to sign some final arrangement papers. My cell phone rang and I answered when I saw a Utopian area code. I didn't recognize the number so I answered just in case and the call turned out to be from the lake cop. The lake cops usually patrol Saturday morning and Sunday evening and they mostly harass teenagers and never seem to stop the out of town visitors from throwing their beer cans into the lake or peeing off the side of their boats. The lake cop is not well loved by this lake resident. ~ahem~ The lake cop told me that jailbait had the nerve to be tooling around in our boat with gasp 9 teenagers. (Because .... ummmm.... it's our boat and we said he could.) And that 9 is the legal limit that our boat holds. (SO?? IS there a problem occifer?) The lake cop told us that he asked jailbait to prove that he had the required 9 life jackets for 9 passengers and jailbait showed the lake cop the dozen or so life jackets that were in the boat. Then the lake cop told me he asked jailbait to prove he was legal to drive the boat and that jailbait had to go home to fetch his valid and legal boating license. (WTF??)

And then the lake cop told me that jailbait gave him attitude. (Maybe a "Quit harassing me, Pig" attitude??) And I didn't know what to say, since I was thinking with some attitude myself and I just said "okay." And the lake cop didn't think "okay" was enough of an answer so I put on my best "mom in charge" voice (which was hard to do with any modicum of sincerity) and I said "Well, officer, I am going to have a long talk with jailbait tonight!" And the lake cop bid me a satisfied farewell and we hung up our phones.

I saw jailbait this morning and I told him that I promised the lake cop that we would have a long talk about jailbait's attitude after being stopped and patted down for no reason other than being a (an incredibly adorable and gorgeous) 17 year old, and I told jailbait in my firmest voice of authority "I hate cops too." Except this time I was truly sincere.