ODE TO O

30 years ago, I was in the hospital awaiting the birth of my first, and as it turned out, only, child.  I still remember how I felt that night.  I was excited to be meeting my child but sad also, that she would no longer be inside of me where I could protect her.  It was just her and me.  Never again would we be that close.  I remember weeping thinking that this was the end of the greatest time in my life.  But I was wrong.  Her birth was just the beginning of the best years of my life.  I have loved being her mom.   From birth, she has had such a sweet spirit.  Never one to complain or criticize.  Always loving and caring.  Not perfect, but pretty darn close!  She has been the joy of my life.   The song in my heart.

Happy Golden Birthday dear O.  May your children be  as much of a blessing to you as you have been to me.  I love you more than you can ever imagine.  Today, tomorrow and always.  For eternity.

Mom

THE SYNDROME SYNDROME

I am a woman of syndromes.  Most haven’t made it into the medical journals yet but that hasn’t stopped me from having them and giving them my own personal names.  Let me share them with you and who knows, you too may have some of them and you didn’t even know it!

BUT-FIRST SYNDROME:  I was first made aware of this syndrome name from an article in the newspaper.  Ok, it was actually a “Pickles” comic strip but it was in the paper.  But-First Syndrome is where you start to do something and then realize that you could be doing something else first as in, “I am going to do the dishes but first I’ll do a load of laundry” or my personal favorite, “I am going to diet tomorrow but first I’ll finish off that half-gallon of ice cream” and the ever popular, “I am going to clean this pig sty but first I’ll check my email/facebook page/messages”.  You will know if you have this syndrome because you will be busy all day long but get nothing totally done.  I’ll tell you how I cured myself but first let me finish this blog…………

SCARLETTE  O’HARA SYNDROME:  This is also a personal favorite.  Whenever I should make a decision or think about something unpleasant or stressful, I fall into this syndrome….”I’ll think about it tomorrow.  For tomorrow is another day”.  I have gone many a day without actually ever thinking…just ask my husband.

TOMORROW SYNDROME:  Before I had this syndrome, I weighed a normal amount but thought I could stand to lose a few pounds.  That was all I needed to catch this disease.  The Tomorrow Syndrome is sneaky.  You decide that Tomorrow you will start to diet/quit  smoking/drinking/stalking/whatever and so today you will eat all the junk in the house, smoke all the cigs you have, drink all the booze in the house, etc.  because Tomorrow you are going to go cold turkey and NEVER touch sugar/cigs/booze/etc. again.  The problem is I also suffer from CRS Syndrome and I wake up and first thing I do is grab a cup of coffee and splash a glub of flavored creamer in it.  Halfway thru the first mug, I suddenly remember I wasn’t going to have sugar anymore.  Oh Hells Bells!  I have already blown it and it was only 15 minutes in.  OK, I’ll start Tomorrow and see what else I should eat up before tomorrow.  I have had this syndrome for years and years and have now gained as much weight as a full-sized person, in addition to those few little pounds that started the whole dang thing.

WHEN WILL I LEARN SYNDROME:  I believe the definition of insanity goes something like this:  doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  WWIL Syndrome is a form of insanity.  Not only have I never learned from my mistakes, I keep on doing the same dumb things expecting different results, over and over.  Examples:  see above syndromes and below syndromes, struggling to pay off credit card debit and then charging up a storm and then struggling to pay them off again and again, thinking of new ways to make money and spending money that I don’t have to buy things to make money with but never making those things again and again.  It is a vicious cycle.  I believe for me this is a chronic syndrome.

DAYDREAM BELIEVER SYNDROME:  I bet many of you have this syndrome.  It starts out innocent enough.  You lay down to take your nap (what do you mean you don’t take naps?) and instead of sleeping, you lay there Daydreaming about being thinnner/richer/cooler/more wonderful/ect.  and pretty soon hours have gone by and you are psyched about how great this new plan is and you can’t wait to try/do it but first you have to clean up your work room/order materials/send for that new exercise video/ect. and eventho experience will show that you never actually do what you daydreamed about, you really believe that this time it will be different.

IF I BUY IT IT WILL MOTIVATE ME SYNDROME:  I live in a make-believe land where I really believe that if I spend money on something, I will use it to acheive whatever lofty goal I have set.  I cannot tell you how much money I have wasted on this fantasy.  It first started back when I was single and pretty thin.  If I was a size 9, I would buy(charge) a bunch of wonderful clothing in a size or two smaller, thinking that by having the clothing in my possession I would be motivated to lose some weight.  I know that works for some folks, but it never, ever worked for me.  I had clothing from size 5 all the way up to size 14 that still had all the tags on them.  Everytime I would look at them, I would get stressed out and eat more!  Every so often, I would purge my closet and give away most of what I had (notice I said most…I still have my “burial outfit” that I will have to have just placed on me cause unless I waste away to practically skin and bones there ain’t no way it will fit me.)  But then I would lose a pound or two and think that I was on my way to the next smaller size and I would charge up a storm buying clothes again…that didn’t fit.  Again and again.  To this day, I have clothes in my closet that have the tags on them that do not fit.  This syndrome is terminal to my hopes of ever not working.

CHRONIC PILES SYNDROME:   Not what you think.  My dad had “piles” and would use PreparationH.  I wish that would work for me but my piles are of a different kind.  Remember “Pig Pen” from the Charlie Brown comic strip.  He was the little boy who always had a whirlwind of dirt around him, well I am his female counterpart only my whirlwind is paper, books, magazines, crafts.  Everywhere I go, I leave a pile of stuff.  I swear I don’t know how it happens!  It just appears!  If my husband ever leaves me it won’t be for another woman, it will be because can’t find the house under all my piles.  Sometimes my piles have piles.  I am not a saver or a horder.  I give away huge bags of stuff all the time….huge.  I do not save newspapers or magazines or foil or string…tho I do save twisty ties cause can you ever really have enough?  It would get so bad that my husband would place all my crap under my pillow and when I would go to bed,  in the dark as husband always goes to bed before me, I would go to lay down and there would be this mound of stuff under my pillow.  Of course, I didn’t deal with it then, so I would put it somewhere on the floor to get to it the next day (see But-First Syndrome) and it would sit there for days/weeks.  A few times it was so bad that I would come home from work and walk into the house only to be greeted by the lower living room entirely filled with my piles.  Filled.. No room to walk….then I find out that our Pastor and his wife stopped by for a surprise visit and husband actually let them in.  Good thing we are close friends(Pastor and wife, not husband!).   If I didn’t suffer from WWIL syndrome I would have remembered the time I left a pile of dirty clothes in our bathroom (including my “unmentionables”) in a rush to get out of house and up North to go camping with a friend and as luck would have it, it was Toxic Tuesday and I had relatives who had evacuated Duluth and had stopped on their way North to use my bathroom!!!!  Now, is it me, or would no one’s husband have thought to check out the bathroom BEFORE letting anyone go in there?  Is it just a woman thing????   I was mortified.  But not mortified enough to make sure my house is in company order before I leave nowadays.  Obviously.  Stop by unannouced and I will probably hide in my bedroom closet until you leave.  Call first so I can pick up my most embarrassing piles.

ADVICE SYNDROME:  I think this one is inherited.  I feel a duty to give unsolicited advice.  Mostly to my family.  Mostly to my daughter.  And son-in-law.  I try to give it to my husband but somehow he never really appreciates it as I think he should.  I firmly believe I am somehow helping them by pointing out all the pitfalls/advantages of whatever I feel they should know.  I tell them honestly, that I am just giving them information and they can do whatever they want after they know all the facts.  After all, I am the oldest person in our family and quite well read (“People magazine counts, right?”).  I am only trying to save them from the pain of making mistakes.  I have made a whole shipful (can you say, Titanic) of mistakes in my 57 years so why should they make the same ones?  Learn from your elders.  Gee, you would think I should get some kind of reward for trying to save them….like a Bronze star or Purple heart (no disrespect to our real heroes who have truly suffered).  Instead I get no respect.  Oh well, even Jesus had a tough crowd in his hometown.

DISORDER DISORDER:  Ok, this isn’t a syndrome but it fits here also.  This is a term I coined many years ago and my husband thinks I should write a book about it.  It is very similar to Adult Attention Deficit Disorder but worse.   Not only am I the president of this club, I am a top ranking member.  Disorder Disorder affects every area of my life.  I need a special service person to follow me everywhere keeping me on track and focused. I would be the one in the harness, tho.  I wander from one room to another, from one task to another, from one conversation to another never finishing anything.  My lists have lists.  I once bought myself a voice recorder to help me remember and I forgot to use it.  Some days I meet myself coming and going and wonder who the hell is in my house.  I rationalize it by telling myself I have just too much on my mind and I can’t remember it all.  But this morning I was walking out of the place where I was working all night and had a moment of terror wondering if I had remembered to take off my pj bottoms and put on my pants!  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to check myself from top to bottom on my way to a job hoping I remembered to put a skirt/shirt on.  (I have on too many occasions had my “unmentionables” on inside out….they are usually black and I have no vision without my cheaters which I don’t wear while getting dressed so I can understand how that might happen…right?)

Well, there you have it.  All my dirty syndrome secrets.  Whoops, I forgot one….CRS(CAN REMEMBER SH*T) SYNDROME.   Need I say more?

THE BLAME GAME

Already there is talk about stricter gun control needed in this country since yesterday’s tragedy.  Would making guns harder to get have stopped this disturbed young man from harming others?  No, I don’t think so.  He had hoped to kill more by booby trapping his apartment so do we call for stricter bans on chemicals and explosives?  When are we going to stop blaming the tools used in these horrific killings and start blaming the people who perform these heinous acts?   At the risk of sounding trite, we have to remember, “People kill people”, and they will use whatever is available to accomplish that task.  Guns are just one option.   Personally, I would rather see a ban on violent video games.  We have a nation of young people who have grown up “killing” in cyberspace and it has got to desensitize some to the horror of taking a life.   And what about all the violence in movies and on TV?  Can we watch years and years of it and not be affected by it?   There is something about men and violence.  Does being violent equal being macho?  If you watch the movies, it does.

So, what’s the answer?  Wish I knew.  But something has to change in this country and for that matter, the whole world.   I have my opinions as to how it could start but what if we just started being nicer to  one another.  One baby step in a journey to a different world.   If one person can make a difference, just think how 10, 20, 50, 100…people could affect the world.  It just takes one spark to make a wildfire, one snowflake to make an avalanche, one drop of water to make a tsunami.  Just one.  You.  Me.

I SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN ADVERTISING

Instead of doing anything constructive this afternoon, I’ve decided to match up song titles with organizations or companies for a whole new look at “truth in advertising”!   Feel free to add your own in the comments.

Match.com=ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE, WHERE DO THEY ALL COME FROM

ASPCA=WHO LET THE DOGS OUT

The National Weather Service=HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THE RAIN/WHO’LL STOP THE RAIN/WHO LOVES THE SUN

Sex Addicts Annonymous=WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME TOMORROW/HOW DEEP IS YOUR LOVE/ARE YOU EXPERIENCED/WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT

FTD=WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE

Map Quest=DO YOU KNOW THE WAY TO SAN JOSE/HOW MANY ROADS MUST A MAN WALK DOWN BEFORE THEY CALL HIM A MAN

E Harmony=DON’T YOU WANT SOMEBODY TO LOVE, DON’T YOU NEED SOMEBODY TO LOVE, WOULDN’T YOU LOVE SOMEBODY TO LOVE/IS SHE REALLY GOING OUT WITH HIM/ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT

AMA=DO YOU REALLY WANT TO HURT ME/WHAT BECOMES OF THE BROKEN HEARTED/WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THE PIECES OF A BROKEN HEART

AA=WHO AM I/WHAT’S GOING ON/WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH A DRUNKEN SAILOR

Sex Offenders Relocation Program=WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR/WHY CAN’T WE BE FRIENDS/WHY CAN’T I TOUCH IT

DNR=WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG, BAD WOLF?

Hair For Men Club=DO YA THINK I’M SEXY/WHAT KIND OF FOOL AM I

ABA=WHY DO FOOLS FALL IN LOVE/WHOSE BED HAVE YOUR BOOTS BEEN UNDER/WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO

The American Mental Health Association=WHY ME/WHY  NOT ME/WHAT DO THE SIMPLE FOLK DO

OCD Association=SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO

Humane Society=HOW MUCH IS THAT DOGGIE IN THE WINDOW/WHAT’S NEW PUSSYCAT/IF YOU LEAVE ME CAN I COME TOO/WHEN WILL I BE LOVED

ACS=WHO WEARS SHORT SHORTS

Makers of antidepressants=WHY WORRY, BE HAPPY

Zulu Time Zone=DOES ANYBODY REALLY KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS, DOES ANYBODY REALLY CARE

READERS OF THIS BLOG=IS THAT ALL THERE IS?

JUNK IN MY TRUNK OR I GOT ME SOME JIGGLE IN MY WIGGLE

Here I sit on a gorgeous summer day blogging when most folks would be outside enjoying this fine day.  In my defense, I did work all night and by all rights I should be in bed cause I am babysitting the grands tonight and need my rest but I felt a blog coming on and you know how that is, hold it in and you get “blogapation”!

I was sittin’ here eatin’ my beans and franks thinkin’ about fashion and visual role models and I got to wondering which model type do most human beings find alluring?  I just watched an Oprah special on the Kardashians and dang, say what you will about them but that Kim is sure a looker!  That got me to thinking when did we start to worship the Gywneth Paltrow’s and Kate Moss’s and those scary Olsen twins as the figure to aspire to?  Think back to the glory days of film and the posters of the most desirable women and there wasn’t a stick figure among them.  Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn, Rita, Betty Grable, Ava, Rosiland….those ladies had luscious booties and curvy figures and men went crazy over them.  I would love to see a study done where you line up gorgeous women of all sizes and then have men of all races, creeds and economic classes rate them on how desirable they are to them and see who is the most popular.  I wouldn’t use celebrities as they are so enhanced or altered but real life attractive women (as much as I hate that, you gotta be realistic. ) Then I would do the same test using women as the raters and see how different the results would be.  I think most women are brainwashed into thinking thin is better.  Not me.  I think the most gorgeous women on the planet are JLo, Fergie, Rhianna (whose first name is Robyn, honestly), Selma H, Adele and Kim Kardashian.    Who are your most gorgeous women (looks only, personality doesn’t matter in this game!).  Inquiring minds want to know!

WHEN PIGS FLY OUT OF MY BUTT OR THAT WAS SOME BAD BACON

How many folks do you know who have pig stories to tell?  Probably not many.  I have three “tails” for you today so sit back, grab some pork rinds and let’s “git er done”.

My husband decided that we should have a couple of pigs.  The fact that we knew nothing about pigs never bothered him.  So off he went to a neighbor’s and procured us two piglets.  These little porkers were around the size of fat beagles.  Cute as a sow’s ear but noisy.   Just think of that commercial with that annoying pig “wheeeee-ing” out the car window and multiply that by a couple of decibels.  Their squealing used to make the enamel on my teeth peel.  They also are very hard to catch.  Like a naked, wet, toddler.  So we get these two piggies, (which are supposed to be castrated….notice I said, “supposed to be”) and we name them Ruby and Gertie after our mothers.  No Freudian slips there, eh?  We had them a few days when Scott goes out of town for work and we get a severe storm. O and I are down in the basement in her bedroom getting ready to get into the cubby under the stairs (our safe place) and I am on the phone with my mom-in-law assuring her we will be safe, when all of a sudden there is a piglet running by the window.  Followed by another.  Somehow they had gotten out of the pen and were running amok.  In a storm.  No husband home to send out to get them so I had to go out in the storm, amid all the tall trees, with the lightening and wind and rain, trying to catch these sons of a sow.  Ever see at the fair the piglet catching contest? Not easy as they run fast and if you do catch them, they flail and kick and squeal up at storm.  Now try that in a storm being very out of shape and scared witless.  I had grabbed a couple of dog collars and leashes hoping to grab one, collar it, leash it and drag it back to the pen.  “Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men.”   Now, dear reader, just close your eyes and imagine me running like a wild woman, praying out loud, “God help me”, and yelling, “Here piggie, piggie”.   Too bad it was before cell phones, cause I’m sure a video on You Tube of this would have gone viral!   Somehow I got those &^%$ pigs back into their pen (I must have blocked it from my memory…..you do that in traumatic events..).   I wish I could say that that was the only time they got loose but no, we had many more adventures with the pigs but I had to narrow it down!

Second story involves pigs from a neighboring farm…….

Picture this:  Beautiful summer day, O and I are sitting out on our swing down  by the road, there is a work crew putting on an addition to the house and all is well in the world when suddenly trotting down our driveway are three big pigs.   Now, I realize that we do live in the country and to see wild life around our house is not unusual but pigs????  We didn’t know anyone in our area who was even raising pigs so I did what any sane mother would do, I yelled, “Run to the house” cause I thought maybe the pigs were rabid or mad.  Like I say, I have a very vivid imagination and watch way too many crazy shows on cable TV.  So O and I run for the house and I yell for the men working on the house to watch out for the pigs coming down the driveway.  (I bet that was something they had never heard before or since!) And of course, husband is not home. (He was never home in any crisis…..but then, if he had been I wouldn’t have these great stories to tell!)  The workmen tried to shoo the pigs away but once a pig gets something in it’s head there is no moving it and they made themselves at home.  Ok, who do you call about some rogue pigs?  Pig Busters?  Plunket Pig Control?   The Piginator?   There was no 911 at that time and can you really call the pigs on the pigs????  So O and I stayed in the house and the workmen left cause they couldn’t work with pigs running around.  Finally husband got home and I must say he was quite calm at the prospect of a herd of wild pigs in our yard.   He convinced me they weren’t rabid or mad and I needed to help him try to get them to leave.  Pigs love to root around in dirt so they were having a field day making holes in our yard.  So the three of us went outside and two of the three pigs decided they had visited long enough and trotted back down the driveway, hung a left, and trotted down the road.   The biggest pig tho, decided it was going to hang around for a bit longer.  While we were outside trying to figure out how to evict a pig from our premisses, a young couple come by and ask if we have seen a pig. They were “pig sitting” for a neighbor and the pigs had gotten out of the pen and two had come back on their own but they were missing one.  Well, funny thing, we HAD a visiting pig….what are the chances?    But how to get it to go home?  We tried pulling our truck up to the ditch and putting a piece of plywood down to make a ramp and we tried corralling it with a metal ladder…only result was I got my arm smashed between pig and ladder.  Pig decides we are not very good hosts and trots off to the woods with young couple and husband following as pig must go home.   Pig has no intentions of going home so husband decides to take matters into his own large hands and grabs a 16# sledgehammer and figures if he knocks out pig maybe then we could get it into the truck to bring home.  Any idea how hard a pig skull is?  Husband hits pig on head, pig grunts, shakes head and trots off.  By now, it is getting dark and it is decided that the pig can stay as long as it wants as we are defeated.  The pig stays a week, destroys the inside of our stable, eats all our dog food and then decides it’s vacation is over and trots back down the driveway, hangs a left and starts down the road.  Husband takes no chances and follows pig in truck ready to head it off should it decide to turn back.  In family lore this story is called, “The Pig From Hell” and we are still talking about the great ham and bacon we got from our neighbors when they returned and learned of our week of hosting said pig!

Third story happened a few years ago as I was driving home.  I took a side road in Saginaw and as I was driving, I saw a line of creatures on the road ahead of me.  At first I thought it must be a pack of dogs, but as I got closer, I realized it was a line of pigs!  There they were, happy as can be, trotting down the road enjoying their freedom.  Perhaps they were on their way to get a beer….what goes better with pork rinds than beer?  I pulled up behind them unsure as to what to do next.  Since they took up both sides of the road, I couldn’t go around them.   Now as much fun as it is to watch pigs trot down the road, I had better things to do so I beeped my horn which only made them trot faster but still in a line.   So I beeped a couple of times which made them all run to the ditch and I was able to pass but I’m pretty sure I saw one of them flip me the hoof as I passed by!