clickmom

written on 12/2/2006 and never posted

We needed a new remote (that is a whole long other angry post) and the husband picked a very funny very large one up at Br**kstone today. When he couldn't program that one, and the Dir*ct TV guy (last thing I need google hits for) was no help, he went to the electronics store and got one in the same brand as our tiv0 receiver. He couldn't program that one either. Here is the conversation that followed his unsuccessful attempt at programming the second remote.

husband: (Enter kitchen hanging head in unmanly shame) I can't program the new remote.

clickmom: (Rolls eyes simulating a perfect teenage attitude- holds out hand, juts out hip) I'll program the remote, just give it to me.

husband: (muttering) I hate it that you can do these things better than me.

clickmom: yeah, yeah

husband: (makes the "I have a secret" smile) It's like the other day when I was locked in the garage and I couldn't get out. I was banging on the door and calling for help. No one heard me.

clickmom: (face brightens with smile of heavenly delight) When?

husband: (blushes) The other day, when I had to ask you how to raise the garage door.

clickmom: You were locked IN the garage?? (snicker snicker)

husband: Yeah. (averts gaze)

clickmom: IN?!?!

husband: yes

clickmom: (suppressing laughter and delighting in imagining the torturous possibilities of a husband locked IN the garage) And how did you get out?

husband: Evan came and opened the door for me.

clickmom: (screams) Evan, we need to talk.

trio

Actual email I received from Kitten:

This morning, my friend and pilates instructor, told me that the client before me said that she is really trying to make an effort to curtail her spending because of the fiscal crisis.

This week, instead of purchasing Prada shoes, she bought Cole Han.

(You see why I don't fit in here, in Stepford, don't you? I buy my size 12 shoe/boats on Zappos and I still can't believe that shoes cost more than 50 bucks.)

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I swear this is true:

me: Matt, I don't think you should eat those honey cashews, the devil got a hold of them and stuck her nose in the jar to eat some.

Matt: (Looks at honey cashews in his hand.) They are good..... (Looks at me. Looks at hand full of nuts. Shrugs. Proceeds to eat a previously possibly devil dog slobbered upon and then dried sugar coasted cashew.)

me: You're willing to eat devil spit?

Matt: They are that good.

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How to piss off three bus drivers at the same time:

Went on that class trip with Josh today. Could not figure out why the damned bus I was following (class dad had to ride the bus to fill in for a no-show) kept changing lanes so much. It was a challenge to stay right on his tail, but I did not let him out of my site, because Josh was on that bus and I was not about to get lost.

Turns out they wanted me to follow the last bus in the chain and not the the first bus and he was purposefully trying to shake me. Oooops!

doomish

Did I mention that I am teaching religious school? It's an odd combo, me and religious school, because I am somewhat conflicted when it comes to organized religion. I see the purpose of it for people that need all the structure but honestly, I think (I could be wrong) that I am a pretty moral and spiritual person with out the organized part. And then there are those other people.

The husband is pretty much in charge of religious everything. So when the rabbi said "Click I want to talk to you." after school the other day, I got a little panicky inside. My mind started racing. OMG! What did I say to those kids?? I faced the rabbi waited for the ax to fall and then she looked me straight in the eye and asked "How are you? The holidays can be so hard after a loss." Off the hook!

So, we took a long drive to an art store today. I needed some art supplies for a class that I let Peanut talk me into. On our way down I was sitting quietly thinking to myself about religion and how it is so very important for some people and how it is so misused by some other people. Should I learn more? Maybe our congregation has something special, after all, it's the hippie congregation. If you look through the directory you are just as likely to find a Meghan O'Shaunessy or an Anthony Devito. We have lots of jews by choice. And also gays. So it's a very cool kind of accepting place to be. The powers that be even changed some wording of certain prayers to include every person and not just jews. I like that part. I just wonder if I need it or not. And also if anyone anywhere is using it for an evil cause. And I was thinking about organized religion and whether or not I was making something out of nothing when we were passed by an SUV with a bumper sticker that read "CHOOSE JESUS OR CHOOSE HELL" and I just felt doomish. See, I don't think that that is a good purpose.

Then a few hours later, on the highway going in the opposite direction, the very same scary SUV passed us for a second time. How freaky is that?

family band

The ukulele that Matt made this summer has been slowly morphing into a non playable shape. It was a sad sad decline. And it was (obviously) most panful for Matt who loved his ukulele so much that he wondered if he could bring it to school so that he could play it while walking home from school each afternoon.

I told Matt to check out some ukulele reviews on line and get back to me when he did some research. Matt was interested in some brands, and much to my surprise they did not carry more than a couple of ukes in our local big chain music stores (these garden staters are so BORING) and they were mostly the brand that did not get good revoews (acording to Matt) so I called up the uke maker in Hawaii and then I hoped onto a plane and went to Hawaii for a uke for my baby took Matt to my hometown, the center of the universe, Manhattan and we went to a lovely little music store right between a sex shop and a bong shop, (wholesome family outing!) but hey, this music place had all sorts of ukes and sitars and bongos and rain sticks and even didgeridoos. Matt fell for a mango wood uke. Happy Hanukah Matt!

Josh was head over heels for an african drum. I wrote down the brand and am considering it.

And the husband kind of fell for the didgeridoo and when he blew into it it made a sound. You have to hear this sound to believe this sound. Matt, because he loves me so much found a didgeridoo video on youtube, so you viewers can experience the heavenly pleasures too. Go ahead and click away on the video below and enjoy, and incase you are wondering, I do plan on insisting that the husband play his new didgeridoo in full aboriginal makeup, but only because I love him so much. Also, because I really like to laugh.

i wuv my silly little poltergeist

Okay, a quick "grandma is haunting me" (in a totally good way) recap for those of you who may have missed it. Once I came back from utopia the tv in my bedroom went on twice while I was sleeping alone in my room (because the air conditioning was broke and the husband fled to cooler temps downstairs) and then again a third time when the husband had returned to our repaired colled attic sleeping space. And the husband still didn't believe it was grandma, even though he saw it with his own two extremely near sighted eyes! Then one night, in the middle of the night as usual, there was a beeping kind of sound and it was coming from the tv too.

When we spent the night in utopia Saturday night, I thought to myself that if the utopian bedroom television should happen to turn on and glow dark purple (that is what happens to the home tv) then there would be no doubt in my mind that it was grandma and surely anyone (as in any doubters) else would also be swayed by that kind of phenomena. Guess what happened! Yes! I rolled over in the middle of my utopian sleep fog and the tv was all aglow!

My theory is that grandma is coming back as some kind of energy field.

Yesterday evening I broke the news of the utopian tv to the husband who still (because he is not a spiritual person) refuses to believe. I was in the kitchen at the time and he was sitting in the family room area watching tv. Just as the husband declared his doubt of what is so obviously true the picture on the screen went black but the sound stayed on. And when I saw the husband fussing with the remote I went over to assist him and we couldn't even get the tv to go off, even when I pressed the power button on the tv itself. Ahem.

Then, with no tv to watch, the husband gets into his luxury automobile with Evan to run to the store and the old fashioned (it has hands instead of an electronic read out) clock on his dashboard goes crazy and the hands start spinning around and around. Ahem.

As I was saying, some people might not want to believe my haunting is true, but me, I want to believe and it makes me feel good thinking that grandma is near me and playing with me and no one gets hurt no matter what I believe, so I feel quite certain that what I want to believe is true and if you don't, well I have a hammer I can hit you over the head with.

mass 2 is my favorite one

Josh was using my computer and when I turned it on later in the day I saw this.

As if I am not worried enough.

About me.

Went to that breast specialist today. The specialist was nice enough.

It seems that I can check off just about everything on the long list of things that might contribute to mysterious indeterminate (and incurable) breast pain.

stress. check.
weight gain. check
age of possible perimenopause. check
neck injury. check

Luckily cancer does not usually cause pan.

Oh, wait there are two things a girl could take to see if they help with the pain. One is tamoxifen (no thank you) and the other is male hormones (uh ..... double no thank you). Sometimes these two things work. Sometimes. Yeah, that doctor was pretty hilarious, don't you think?

She ordered an ultrasound. The ultrasound technician was a bitch. I had an internal panic attack when she squirted the ultrasound gel on my boob and I couldn't feel the coldness of it that I had braced myself for. I figured I had had pain in the boob for so long and had tried so hard not to touch, poke, stroke, irritate the boob for so long that I had lost sensation in it. Afterwards I spotted the ultrasound gel warming device on the table. HA! My bad!

The ultrasound itself seemed thorough enough, the technician zoomed right in on my painful spot and my swollen spot and took lots of pictures. And then more pictures. It wasn't the number of pictures that has me totally unabashedly freaked out it is that she took a quick swipe of the area before zeroing precisely in on the area of interest. I feel like she saw something, which naturally she would not say if she did because the liar said she only took the pictures and that she didn't know if there was anything there to be concerned about. Liar. I wanted to slap her. I hate liars.

Then she left me in the room alone while she went to "see if the pictures were good" and I peered over at the machine to see if she had left the last image up. There was no image, but my personal info was still on there and so was a column with "Mass 1 Mass 2 Mass 3" in it. If you are or know an ultrasound technician please tell me that this is the standard outline on the screen and nothing to be alarmed about.

B thinks that being thorough is what they do at the breast center and I should not be worried. I am worried.

They were supposed to call me from the nice doctors office when they got the report but so far no word. Will update if I hear today.

bad-ass

First you should know that I am totally PMSing.

Second you should now that my right leg has once again floated right out of my right hip socket and I am in a fair amount pain. Pain makes me mean.

Third is that photographers group I was so psyched about was supposed to be tonight except when I pulled up the place was dark and there were three bewildered looking guys sitting outside wondering if someone was going to come and open up the place. No one came and my editor (the photo hobbyist) and I did end up chatting with the three other dupes and they were nice enough. I now fear the group might be a bit amateurish for me, one guy, the professional, said that he thought the critiques were a bit too on the positive side and not constructive enough. Here I am to save the day! Have I ever mentioned how completely critical I am? I can be brutal. Now I have to wait a another month?!?!? Damn!

And lastly, Evan's teachers sent home a little question form and they want us to answer all sorts of questions about Evan's personality and possible quirkiness. I feel quite certain that Evan's teachers are not going to read all 172 forms they get back. I think they are just going to file them away in case the kids get into trouble. I think we should write "Evan is bad-ass. Don't mess with him." and send the questionnaire back. The husband doesn't think that that would be quite as funny as I do, but I'm thinking that when Evan (and this just might be inevitable since Evan already got reprimanded in the hallway by a teacher for punching his friend's book, which according to Evan is merely some kind of manly bonding game they play only because they are such cool dudes) does get into big trouble, and the teachers whip out the form to see what Evan's parents think of him, that this would be the perfect thing to have on there. Agree with me please! Come on people!

Flower

At some point during the worst summer ever the air conditioning in my bedroom broke. The air conditioning in the rest of the house (3 zones) was fine, so the husband just slept in Evan's bed since the rest of us (as in ME) were in utopia tending to our octogenarian widower cancer victim father, while still mourning the death of our mother, and dealing with the impending death of our beloved grandmother and pretty much doing nothing at all.

So when I came home and the husband had to sleep in back in our actual bedroom, which used to be the attic (and hence the separate and necessarily so air conditioning zone) I figured the heat bothered the husband more than it bothered me so I wasn't going to go out of my way to fix it so fast either. Then that little heat wave hit and I second guessed the intelligence of that revenge plan. And last night it occurred to me that the ceiling fan was blowing air down into the room and that if we reversed the air flow the fan could suck cooler night air through the windows (or more hopefully air conditioning from the lower floors of the house) and be more effective in colling off the room. So the husband, following my command, reached up and flicked the switch reversing the fan.

Then around 4 in the morning I got a whiff of the unmistakable scent of Flower. and I considered looking out the window to see if I could spot the fun loving little critter but I was pretty damned sure by the sheer pungency of what I was smelling that chances were I spot Flower on the roof rack of my truck, mooning in the direction of my bedroom window while simultaneously shooting me the bird. I kept my head on the pillow and tried to sleep. Unsuccessfully. Flower had been undeniably close by.

And if you are a husband fan, you will rejoice in the fact that the ceiling fan in reverse does seem to pull in more night air through the windows. And the somewhat congested husband never smelled a thing.

she's baaaaack!

This morning I woke up suddenly at 5 AM. At first I thought I saw Josh or Evan run through my room, but then I realized that there were no foot step sounds. And if you know my kids, they don't walk without shaking the whole room, let alone run across my shoddily built addition of a bedroom with out rattling the windows. The alarm hadn't gone off yet, so I shrugged it off, figured I had another hour to sleep and hoped I'd be able to doze off again. Which I did. But then about 45 minutes later I saw a flash of light through my closed eyes, opened up my eyes in time to see the television screen bright white and then fade to dark purple. The screen was solid purple and the tv had the buzz of a tv that has power. I looked down at my night stand, saw the remote sitting there untouched and picked it up. I pointed the remote towards the tv and pressed power. The tv turned off. I just knew it was a ghost.

I relayed the story to lil sis later in the day after confidently announcing "Grandma is haunting me!" and lil sis asked me how I knew it was grandma and why it couldn't have been mom. I told her that I had asked myself that same question but when I wondered who was more likely to play tricks on me, I had figured it reeked of grandma. Lil sis said "You're right."

While out running errands, I did stop in the hardware store for a lock for Matt's locker. I told the story of the tv flashing itself on to the hardware guy and he just kind of stared at me. He asked me a few questions and was genuinely concerned that I had an electrically malfunctioning appliance at the foot of my bed. Then I told him not to worry because I had lost two close family members this summer and I was quite sure it was one of them playing tricks on me.

But just to err on the side of caution, I will snuggling up to a new guy tonight. Meet my new bed buddy! I'd like you to meet Tony.....

ANd because I promised you this, here is the first day of school photos that I took right after I asked each kid "So, how do you feel about going back to school?" Matt feels dead inside, which made it impossible for him to brush his hair:

Evan is secretly happy, but pretending to give me the response he thinks I want from him:

And Josh, who is anxious to reunite with his buddies, is taking it all in stride just like he always does.

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.