Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri
Katy is represented by
Greg Johnson at
WordServe Literary
Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net
Recent Posts
- Try
- Becoming Brenda Starr
- Off Beat
- Scattered
- That’s It
- So I’ve Finally Signed With An Agent. Now What?
- The Spoon
- Sciatica
- Sweetheart
- A Woman’s Train of Thought Has No Caboose
- However much we own, we are all still living on borrowed time
- After all, when restaurants shrink portions, they don’t shrink prices.
- As with everything in life, balance is key.
- Slow down, you move too fast…
- Yeah, I know. I have issues.
Syndicate
E me at katy @ ngenius.com
A Fallible Year In Review (#853)
My blogging buddy Carrie K., not to be confused with my darling daughter Carrie K., did this fun idea on her site and I thought I’d give it a whirl over here.
To perform a Blog Year In Review on your site, simply list the opening sentence of the first entry for each month of 2005, in order. I’ve taken the liberty of using more than one sentence if the result is more compelling, bizarre, or gross. In the case of the month in which I refer to Michael Main (Number One Of The Four Michaels Who Comment Here), I decided the title of the post was much more meaningful than the first sentence, so I used it.
If you compile your own post of twelve one-liners, let me know in the comments section, so we can read yours, too!
I haven’t previewed mine until now, so I’ll be just as shocked, mystified, and confused as you. That’s only fair, huh?
Here goes:
Usually, when I come down with one of those rare disorders/diseases that no one’s ever heard of because only one out of 100,000 people in the general population contract it, I end up feeling pretty lonely.
“If I Die Today, There’s Not Enough Make-Up In The World To Make Me Look Good In My Casket.” You probably think the title of this post sounds like something my mom would say but, uh, it came out of my own mouth.
Tell me this: Aside from being in Ireland to tread the auld sod today, what’s your idea of a great St. Patrick’s Day celebration?
I’ve come to the conclusion that few of us—if any—ever fully believe in the strength of our own stories.
I’m not the kind of woman who puts on make-up to make a run to the grocery store, even if I’m crossing the state line into Kansas, into one of the most prosperous counties in the nation.
We are getting absolutely pounded here with torrential rains and 70 to 90-mile-per-hour straight-line winds.
Well, the nurses and docs went into overdrive to compensate for failing to accurately document my mother-in-law’s spiking fevers.
I keep my head behind the china cabinet, just so I know where it is. Now I wish I kept my breasts there, too.
Michael Main Is One Of The Most Very Extremely Intelligent Men Alive Today!
Well, this is a red-letter day. Not only did I find out that my biopsy turned up no skin cancer, but Doug found out his brain is “unremarkable.”
I…I…I…well, that was weird. After typing the word “I,†nothing else came.
The emails and phone calls have begun. You know the ones I mean, where the circle of friends and family finally becomes unbroken, as once a year everyone tries to worm out of everyone else what everyone wants for Christmas. I haven’t even started shopping, and already I’m exhausted.
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Career Advice Sought Here (#851)
I trust you people. You know that, right?
Some of us have been together five years already and even those of you who are my newer online friends have probably already got more insight into my personality and writing style than I have myself.
Here’s the deal: In two short days, I turn 52 years old. On Christmas Eve, my beautiful 23-year-old daughter Carrie and I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, bettering ourselves. I said, “You know, this whole old age thing—” And she broke in and said, “Yeah. I hear it sucks.”
We both laughed, but you know what? The only real reason why old age should suck is if you haven’t done with your fleeting life what you want to do—yet. And what I want to do is write books.
So, can you give me some free advice? If I were to start all over again writing a novel from scratch, would you counsel me to:
a. write in first person or third person?
b. write chick lit? lady lit? women’s fiction? romantic mid-life crisis comedy? romantic suspense? nursing-home thriller?
c. write what I know, or run from everything I know like there’s no tomorrow?
d. forget the whole writing thing, and stick with cooking the books for Doug’s website design firm, (n)genius media, inc.? (Did I say cooking? I meant keeping.)
Any and all comments appreciated and taken under serious or comedic consideration, depending.
Thank you for your support!
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Resolved (#850)
OK. I’m serious this time. New Year’s resolutions. I’m. Not. Kidding.
1. Either get the novel I’ve already written in publishable shape, or write another. It’s not rocket science, Katy.
2. Finish all the paperwork to get both my British and Irish citizenships.
3. Bulk up the travel fund ASAP, and make the journey with Doug to Ireland and Scotland. Stay until we really want to come home.
4. Don’t join the gym, but do exercise at home.
5. Continue to thin out possessions. Plan future purchases around items with intrinsic, increasing value rather than fleeting, decreasing value. In other words, stop buying and warehousing worthless junk.
6. Avoid doing any type of meditation which encourages me to “find my center of emotion.” That’s too scary for even the firmly resolved to contemplate!
7. Invest in relationships—with God, my family, and friends both new and old. Sing “Auld Lang Syne” on New Year’s Eve with a Scottish brogue and a devoted heart.
That’s it for me. How about you? Anything you intend to do or—equally important—avoid doing?
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Holy Day (#849)
It’s Christmas Eve morning.
Carrie arrived home last night. Her boyfriend drove her into town and stayed a while, which was really nice. He’s a great guy. He and our daughter have excellent taste.
Scott and his wife Brooke and our youngest child, Kevin, will arrive in a couple hours. We’ll knosh on goodies and open our “little” family’s presents before we head out to Doug’s family gathering.
Doug and I are cozy in bed, except for that I got up to put on the coffee ten minutes ago.
“Baby,” I say, “I can’t believe you’re still snoozing at 7:50…”
“It’s still early until it’s 8 o’clock…”
“But it’s Christmas Eve! I thought maybe you’d get up and get me a cup of coffee.”
“Okay.”
I wait a few seconds until his snoring sets back in.
“Honey? My coffee…”
“I said OK,” he says. “I didn’t say NOW.”
This sets off gales of laughter from both of us, because Doug NEVER says stuff like this when coffee is involved. He knows not to mess.
While he’s pulling on his pants, I say, “Carrie was right. You’re looking thinner. Your stomach is totally flat.”
“I’m holding it in.”
He pushes it out to demonstrate the difference, and sure enough, he was holding it in.
“I thought you hated being bothered with holding it in. Did you do it last night because Marc was here? Were you trying to make a good impression?”
“Maybe.”
He sticks it out and makes himself comfortable, along with making a not-so-good impression.
“But why don’t you always hold it in?” Enquiring minds, and all that.
“It’s too much work. Besides, this is real.” He points to his belly, which in the early morning light is reminiscent of a bowl full of jelly.
“Trust me,” I say, speaking very much from experience, “if you can hold it in, it isn’t real.”
So begins another holiday, and another Holy Day, too—a day set apart from the first lame joke, the first bulging belly, the first sip of coffee, the first magically grown-up child’s Christmas greeting.
Set apart to celebrate the wonder of a family’s love and the goodness of the Savior’s gifts to us, who need Him more than we’ll ever, ever know.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
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Ready! Aim! Charge! (#848)
The only credit card I ever use is a Kohl’s card. Other than that one, I’m debit all the way, baby.
But Kohl’s lured me a couple Christmases ago when I was about to plunk down a huge chunk of change, by offering an easy 15% discount if I opened an account that day. So I took the bait, knowing I would pay my account off in full every time it has a balance, and also knowing that 15 times per year, Kohl’s would be mailing me—a Very Special And Obviously Loaded Customer—a coupon for 15% off a day’s total purchases.
Two weeks ago, Doug and I made our annual visit to Kohl’s to do some serious holiday shopping. I had my sales circular in hand, plus my 15% off coupon. I addition, there were doing that fabulous thing they do every Christmas—the one where they give you a $10 gift card for every $50 you spend.
We made sure we spent our hard earned credit in multiples of at least $50, because to fall short of that miraculous number would mean forfeiting the coveted $10 card. We may not be the brightest bulbs on the bush, but we’re not dumb enough to leave any cards on the counter.
The only drawback to the gift cards was that they must be spent by December 24, or lost forever.
I can handle a lot in the way of commercial bonuses that border on blackmail, but “lost forever” is more than even I can take.
So today, when my shopping was already finished and I was in the mood to put festive finishing touches on four loads of laundry and dust the cobwebs off the wreath that’s been hanging on the door since this time last year, I realized that time was not on my side.
If I didn’t hightail it to Kohl’s whether I wanted to or not, I would forever lose $80 worth of merchandise.
It took me TWO HOURS to decide how to spend $80. Not counting traveling time! I wandered through that store several times, meeting the same forlorn looking husbands coming and going. First, I’d see them in fragrances, then in lingerie, and finally in jewelry.
The fact that I didn’t meet the same guys back in spatulas speaks well of their good intentions and their hard-won experience from disastrous Christmases gone by, but what does it say about my desperation to spend down my cards?
Spatulas? It’s come to that?
Then there were the women. Two varieties scoured the aisles, and I didn’t fit in with either group. The first were the career gals, dressed for the office and trolling the store during their lunch hours, looking dazed and frazzled. I heard one of them screaming into her cell phone, loud enough for God to hear, “Why didn’t you TELL me you were going to Sam’s? You could have picked up a brisket! What am I going to feed these people? You should have CALLED me!”
If her husband ends up at Kohl’s later to pick up a little something for her, I have a feeling she may score a meat thermometer.
The second group consisted of young moms wheeling toddlers, most of whom have endured about as much shopping as I can stand. “I want my MOCHA!” I heard one yell, and then her little kid said that Starbucks sounded good to him, too.
I spent my cards, and charged another $50 bucks worth of stuff, because Today And Today Only’s Additional 15% Discount If You Use Your Kohl’s Charge was too good to pass up.
Thank God they weren’t passing out any more gift cards, though. I’ve lost the will to shop.
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Time Out (#847)
Yesterday in Starbucks, my current favorite barista, Abby, had on an odd looking Christmas brooch. Or at least that’s what I took it for until I got a closer look.
“Was is that you’re wearing?” I asked. It didn’t sparkle or blink or twinkle or glitz or gleam, so what could it possibly be?
“It’s a digital timer,” she said. “I had a task I needed to complete in ten minutes, so I timed myself. And I got it done.”
“Whoa, baby! I need one of those,” I said. And then out of my mouth came these words, words I didn’t plan or expect to emerge, and yet there they were: “I haven’t gotten anything done in years!”
Of course, that’s not entirely true. I’ve gotten LOTS of things done, just not the kind of things that generally appear on a thoughtful, motivated person’s list of New Year’s resolutions.
Hey, just yesterday I finished wading through Missouri’s 42 Medicare Part D prescription plans to find and sign up for the one that’s best for my mother. By my calculations, and those of the trusty federal government of these United States, she stands to save more than $10,000 on her prescriptions next year.
Ten thousand dollars, people!
If I’d known last January that I’d be called upon to untertake a momentous task like making sense of Part D, you can be sure I would have added it to my list so that I could check it off now!
Wouldn’t THAT have been an eye-popping resolution: “Score drugs for Mom, on the taxpayer’s dime.”
I may get myself one of those timer brooches like my barista has. I need the challenge of getting important things done on a timely basis, of setting, meeting, and exceeding personal goals.
But after the way this year’s gone, I’ll tell you this much: If I get one, it had better have a snooze button.
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Desperate Housewife (#846)
They say desperate times call for desperate measures. What they don’t tell you is that in desperate times, desperate measures don’t seem nearly as…desperate.
I’ve done things these past few months I never imagined doing in my life. Allow me to illustrate.
Last week, when the Funny Farm called to say they were throwing Mom in an ambulance, I grabbed my pre-packed overnight bag and threw my toothbrush in. We didn’t end up staying at the hospital, and Liz volunteered to spend the night with Mom, so I came on home.
I dropped the bag on the counter by the door that night, figuring I might need it again before morning came. Stranger things have happened, believe me.
The next day when I went to brush my teeth, my brush was missing from its holder. I immediately remembered that the toothbrush was in the bag by the back door, a distance of perhaps thirty paces. Exhausted, I took another look at the toothbrush holder exactly zero steps away.
An aged, bristle-missing toothbrush of questionable provenance peeked from behind Doug’s pristine brush.
“Looks good to me,” I heard myself say, and the next thing I knew that puppy was inside my mouth, doing its thing.
This from a girl who not that long ago wrote about how I couldn’t handle it if Doug’s toothbrush and mine were FACING each other in the holder.
Come on, people! Toothbrushes don’t have faces! Lighten up, already!
And WHO CARES that the funky brush I plunged into my precious oral crevices might have seen combat duty scrubbing grout in the shower? I’ve got BIGGER ISSUES!
So. Suffice it to say I’ve thrown all my oral hygiene Standards Of Excellence to the four winds. Unfortunately, they’re not alone out there.
Also blowing around somewhere in the great abyss is my cell phone. If you listen carefully, you may hear the faint ringing riding in on a wintry breeze, and you may be asking yourself right now, “Is anyone EVER going to answer that phone?”
Ummm…probably not. It’s been Out There Somewhere for three entire months, ring-ring-ringaling, ting-ting-tingaling, too. Deal with it. I have.
I’ve now taken the desperate measure of driving in the boonies and beyond largely phoneless, or—if in possession of Doug’s phone—performing the duties of his unwitting and unpaid over-the-road admin assist.
I can now mindlessly multi-task by fielding calls from Doug’s important clients while ambulance-chasing my way to the nearest hospital.
Who knew the old girl had it in her?
One more thing I never thought I’d do: drive without a license. That’s right. I lost it the same day I lost my cell phone, back in September.
The day I realized it was gone, I told Doug he’d need to drive me to the Department Of Motor Vehicles to replace it because I’ve never, NEVER broken the laws of the State Of Missouri by driving licenseless, and I didn’t intend to sully my perfect record now.
He said, “I can’t get away today. But I’ll help you tomorrow.”
By the next day, folks, I’d become a Hardened Criminal—a speeding, red-light-running, ambulance-chasing, someone-else’s-toothbrush-using fugitive of the laws of both God and man.
Now when a check-out clerk asks to see my driver’s license, I just twirl my car keys in my hand, pick up my shopping bag, and say, “Sorry. Don’t got one.”
I’ve got to tell you: once you let yourself cross over to the desperate side, it gets easier and easier to be badder and badder.
Some days I wonder if I can ever go back.
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Where Has She Been All Her Life? (#845)
I called Mom early this morning, right after she should have finished breakfast. I hoped to catch her before she went down for her after breakfast nap, which comes right before her before lunch nap.
Too late. She was sound asleep.
Still, she wanted to talk, so we talked. Um…kind of.
“I am SO MAD,” she said.
“What happened?”
“I woke up at midnight, and patted myself and realized that I had on a diaper!”
“Yeah…”
“And I got furious to think none of my daughters told them that I do not wear diapers!”
“Except that you have for the past three months or so…”
“I NEVER wear diapers when I am in my own home, and this is my home!”
And she’s been back there for five weeks already. This is the first time she figured this out?
“Mom, you can go back to wearing your own underwear, with a pad. All we care is that you have some protection, so that you don’t pee on the floor and slip in it.”
“They started making me wear diapers because six drops of pee landed on the floor. That makes me so mad.”
“You’ve fallen twice now in a puddle of pee, Mom…”
“I DON’T wear DIAPERS.”
“Okay. Well, Mary’s supposed to bring you a new supply today. Tell her she can just take them back to Walmart.”
“Or she can give them to her grandkids.”
“Um…I don’t think they’d fit, would they?”
You should know that my mother weighs 250 pounds.
“Why not?”
“Mom, I think it’s going to be a while before any of those little kids weighs over 200 pounds.”
A pause, during which I hope and pray she’s putting 25 and 200 together.
“Well, I don’t know how much they weigh!”
I’m not going for a chuckle here, people. Right this minute, I’m rather dismayed. I’ll find something to laugh about later today, I’m sure.
I’m going to need a venti latte first, that’s all I know.
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Hey, Can We Drive Through On The Way Home From The ER? (#844)
Thank you all so much for your prayers and well wishes for Mom.
I put in my ten hour shift yesterday, the end result of which wasn’t as bad as I expected. The bone doc said Mom isn’t really much worse off than she was before: that’s the good news.
The bad news, of course, is that she was really bad off before!
The two sections of broken bone have shifted rather dramatically, but don’t seem to be hitting a nerve (she still has feeling and movement in her hand). And evidently the only other thing we’re to be “watching for” is the bone actually coming through the skin.
That would be something to see, huh? Should we charge admission?
The bigger event actually happened before I arrived yesterday morning. My sister Liz had spent the night with Mummy, since the ER doc had wrapped her torso tightly in a sheet so that her arm couldn’t move, and she needed extra help.
In the middle of the night, Mom must have pushed her call button, though she doesn’t remember doing it. The aide came in and asked Mom what she needed.
Liz listened from the couch in the next room. Mom only answered with one word, “Bathroom.” But then the aide couldn’t seem to get Mom out of the bed. The girl was about to give up and leave the room when Liz arrived on the scene.
Mom was sweating profusely, couldn’t speak clearly, and later remembered that her good harm had fallen limp to her side and she was unable to lift it.
Liz took one look at her and said to the aide, “I think you should check her blood sugar.”
It was 42. A dangerously low level for anyone, and Mom’s an insulin-dependent diabetic. The aide brought orange juice which Mom could barely swallow, she was falling so hard and fast. They rechecked her blood sugar every hour until they got it up to 70.
Liz doesn’t consider herself to be “medically inclined,” but I told her any 50-year-old woman who’s raised kids and has a lick of sense can discern when someone’s in obvious physical distress.
She said, “But isn’t it terrible that I had to be the one to suggest that the girl test her blood?”
“Yes,” I said, “it’s terrible. And necessary. Mom could easily have died if you hadn’t been there.”
Then Liz remembered that on the way home from the ER the night before, Mom wanted some of her trademark chili-cheese tater tots from Sonic.
“I’ll bet it was the tater tots that did her in,” Liz said.
“What are you saying?” I said. “You don’t think Mom should become a tatertotatarian?” That’s the hilarious word Sonic has come up with in their latest TV ads.
“What I’m saying,” Liz answered, “is that if she’s not careful, she’s going to become a comatosatatertotatarian.”
Score one for Liz!
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Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down (#843)
Some of you will remember that on Saturday, August 6, my mother fell and broke her left humerus (upper arm) and a right rib.
You may or may not know that her arm is destined to never heal, and that she’s such a poor candidate for surgery that two well-respected ortho docs agreed she shouldn’t go forward with an operation.
Only a couple of you will know that she fell again on Saturday, October 8, and broke a rib on the left side. I didn’t blog about it at the time, because there was the small matter of a very undignified detail that would almost have to be said in order to make the story compelling.
Today I’ve decided to reveal that small detail. Why, you may ask? Because yesterday, Saturday, December 10, Mom fell again in the exact same manner as Fall Number Two, and reinjured her broken arm, in the precise same area as Fall Number One.
How did she fall? She slipped in a puddle of her own pee, that’s how.
She’s been advised she can take off the annoying fracture brace that she’s worn since August, and only put it on if she’s going to be doing something “strenuous.”
Unfortunately for her, strenuous can easily be defined as trying to pull up her own pants, or perhaps turning the pages of a newspaper.
So she wasn’t wearing her brace yesterday, since she was taking the nap after lunch that comes right before the nap before dinner. Neither was she wearing a disposable undergarment or any long pants.
Yeah, you’ve got the picture now. For some reason known only to God, she was naked from the waist down. A fall-in-a-puddle-of-pee not waiting long to happen.
She insisted she wasn’t hurt at all, but when I arrived there this morning, I could see the shiner from across the room.
“You hurt your left arm again,” I said.
“Well, it hurts a lot, but I don’t know why.”
“You fell yesterday in the bathroom, remember?”
“Yes, but I didn’t hurt myself. I already told you that.”
“But, Mom, there’s an eight-inch diameter green bruise on your arm. And it’s swollen even more than usual.”
“I can’t imagine why,” she said.
“You fell, Mom. And another thing: Why are you lying here with your long pants down around your knees?”
“I couldn’t get them pulled up all the way.”
“This is really dangerous, Mom. Walking like this.”
“I’m not walking. I’m sleeping.”
“When did you pull your pants down?”
“When I went to the bathroom.”
“How did you get from the bathroom back to your bed?”
“I walked, silly.”
“Bingo! We have a winner! Mom, if you can’t pull up your pants, you have to ring for help. That’s why Patricia and Kania are here. They want to help you. You can’t try to walk with your pants around your knees.”
“No one’s ever told me that before.”
“I’m telling you now, okay?”
I called the ortho doc, and he said, “If the bone is not poking through the skin (“Hello! Don’t you think I would have mentioned it if THAT had happened?”), I don’t think you need to bring her to the ER. But do come into our office for an xray first thing in the morning.”
Um. Okay. Whatever you say, Doc, but I have a feeling something evil this way comes. In the meantime, I guess I’ll go get another venti latte to replace the one I got on the way to Mom’s which I spilled ENTIRELY in my car without taking the first sip, and head home. I’m really anxious to let Doug experience our vehicle’s “new latte smell.”
Before I sign off, I want to mention that the weird thing about this latest fall—besides the fact that Mom’s falls are spaced two months apart and always on a Saturday with an even-numbered date—is that…
RED ALERT! INSERT FOUR HOUR BREAK FROM BLOGGING FOR EMERGENCY ROOM RUN WITH ELDERLY MOTHER HERE!
I have no idea how I might have finished that thought. I’m not even sure what my name is anymore. Oh, yeah. Fallible.
So the nurse called mid-typed-sentence from assisted living to say Mom’s arm had swelled to something like twice it’s already bizarrely shaped self since I’d left there a short while earlier, and that she was shipping Mom to the ER in an ambulance.
There’s some serious derrierre (or derierre, or derierre or possibly deriere, but I don’t think so) covering going on right about now, because today’s nurse believes with all her caregiving heart that yesterday’s nurse should have called an ambulance while Mom was on the bathroom floor—puddle of pee notwithstanding—and that just because THAT woman was derelict in duty doesn’t mean SHE intends to be.
Still, I think she made the right call.
They took a new xray and the two sections of broken bone have apparently done some serious shifting, which clearly could have happened not so much from the fall itself, as from being helped up from the floor by two women at the facility, one of whom’s job description is the assisted living equivalent of a Cruise Director.
Sheesh.
Anyway, they put her arm in a sling and then bound it to her body with a folded sheet and taped it tightly together, rendering her arm completely useless and her unable to use her walker until further notice. I’ll take her at the first opportunity tomorrow to see her ortho doc yet again.
“Hey,” I said, always looking for an opportunity to inject levity into an otherwise awful situation, “Now instead of calling you Mommy, we can call you Mummy.”
And you know what? In spite of everything she’s been through, the lady very nearly smiled. And then, just for good measure, so did I.
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To Do Or Not To Do? That Is The Question (#842)
I’ll be the first to admit I’m crummy at setting goals and even more pathetic at reaching them.
Making to-do lists, though, is a task at which I excel. Unfortunately for me and the various and sundry people who might ride to their own personal success on my over-achieving coattails, I am clueless when it comes to prioritizing the items on said list.
I’ve read “Getting Things Done” or, I should say, part of it. I couldn’t even get THAT done. I think I’ll put it back in the to-be-read pile and give it another go.
Who knows? I might get it read all the way to Chapter Three next time.
Then there’s “The Tipping Point” and “Blink,” books that would have no doubt infused me with the understanding that if I could just take a project so far, it would then magically develop a life and ambition of its own, and carry itself through to a wildly sensational conclusion.
I’m afraid the tipping point for me came when I blinked once, then twice, and then fell asleep altogether.
The truth is, I’ve never been able to ignore the urgent for the sake of the so-called important. I’m not even sure I know the difference.
One fellow whose motivational daily e-letter I read insists that every night before he goes to bed he makes his to-do list for the next day. I’m okay with this strategy so far, but what he does after bulleting the items is where he loses me.
He marks each item according to whether or not it’s urgent, whether another person will get on his case if he fails to do it, whether it might cost him more time or money down the road if he postpones doing it, or whether it’s truly important.
I’m confused by the fact that the folks who are able to discern the urgent from the important never find ANYTHING important about the urgent.
The “urgent” seems to be even worse than an interruption to them—it’s more like an annoyance, like a fly that won’t stop buzzing around their ears. They refuse to dignify that pesty fly’s actions by responding with a good old-fashioned swat and having done with it.
Invariably, these masters of the to-do list end up advising me to ignore the urgent, even if she’s on her way to the emergency room with multiple broken bones or abscesses on her liver and gall bladder that will kill her within 48 hours if something isn’t done about it RIGHT NOW!
Instead, according to those in the know who are WAY more advanced on the board game of life than I am, I should take my daily list of 25 items, and choose to do the four or so that I determine will be the most important to me FIVE YEARS FROM NOW.
The idea is that five years from now, I won’t regret it if I’ve exercised, travelled, written a novel, invested wisely, and taken care of my health, because those things will have kept me alive and kicking, and probably increased my health, wealth, and wisdom.
But this is what I keep asking myself: What will be the most important things on my old earthly to-do lists when I stand before the Lord?
Does He really value my fledgling writing career more than me caring for my mother?
In five years, I doubt I’ll have her in my life to care for anymore. Will I look back and say she was just an urgent demand on my time and attention that I rightfully ignored, and that I’m so much closer to my personal, professional, financial, and spiritual goals because I deleted her from my list?
Or will I realize that sometimes the urgent and the important are one and the same?
I guess only time will tell.
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Freak Out! (#841)
At Halloween, I posted a vintage pic of an endearing group of miniature clowns, consisting of my kids and their cousins. My sister Bridget commented that clowns have always freaked her out, and I had to admit I feel the same way.
The only way I could handle dressing my innocent kids up in red wigs and atrocious make-up was by repeating over and over to myself, “These $2 costumes were the cheapest deal this side of the Mississippi. Get over yourself!”
But the Christmas season holds a particular terror for me, one that’s WAY scarier than clowns will ever be: Nutcrackers!
Doug and I enjoyed a lovely day of holiday shopping today, except for the fact that everywhere we went, we were fairly assailed by the sight of them. Golfing nutcrackers, bagpiping nutcrackers, cowboy nutcrackers, all with the selfsame squared off jawline and beady eyes.
I made myself pull the lever on a couple of those dudes, because you know, it’s very important to face our fears.
And when their mouths jerked open and then clamped down like a vise, I’m proud to say, I only screamed a little.
Anything about Christmas that terrifies you?
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Santa, Baby (#840)
It all started last Christmas when my niece Erin and her fiance Josh threw their lots in with a couple of their cousins to purchase my mom a life-sized singing and dancing Santa Claus.
Now, Mom lived in a small one-bedroom place, where the only spot she could find for her table-top tree was on top of a kitchen counter. But did that stop her from embracing a jolly new fellow with a tummy like a bowlful of Jello?
Of course not! She absolutely loved the old coot.
At the end of the season, her disassembled decorations were boxed and crammed into her one walk-in closet—actually her only closet. She had to get rid of two extra bedspreads and a 30-gallon Rubbermaid container of photos to make room.
But then last March, she moved into a different apartment in the same complex, a unit in which the closet was clearly not meant to accomodate a tree, must less a Claus.
So I loaded her Christmas stuff into my station wagon (you read that right; we’re the last SUV-hold-outs in the lower 48) and added her stash to my own enormous basement holiday storehouse.
At the time, I didn’t imagine she’d live to see another Christmas, the diagnostic news was so grim.
I was pretty sure back then that I’d seen Santa to his final resting place, so much so that the box containing his remains was laid out horizontally on the cold steel shelf. Rest in peace, good man…
Since March, Mom’s spent three months in a nursing home, and now has switched apartments yet again—back into assisted living.
Not long after settling into her new digs, she began asking about Mr. Claus.
“You have him at your house, right? ‘Cause I’m going to want him here soon.”
Then the emails started in earnest. My brother John, whose children have put the ornaments on Mom’s tree the past few years, wanted to verify that I would be delivering the goods to Mom’s apartment.
“I’ll have them there on Saturday morning,” I responded, as efficient as all get-out. “You can begin the festivities as early as Saturday afternoon.”
Doug and I loaded up the wagon and hauled the tree, wreath, decorations, and Santa into Mom’s place, right on schedule.
We pulled Santa out of the box by his beard and were shocked to find that since last Christmas, he’d become a double amputee.
“Where’s his rear end and legs?” Mom asked, as if Doug and I hadn’t noticed the poor gent’s boggling disabilities.
“Don’t worry,” Doug said in that ever-optimistic way of his. “His tush is here somewhere. We’ll just unpack the rest of these boxes…”
Mom sat and watched, her eyes getting bigger and sadder with each passing moment. When the final box was emptied, she couldn’t take it any more.
“Santa can’t very well dance without his hips, now can he?” she said, stark disappointment coloring her features.
I got the feeling she was calling into question not only my organizational and administrative skills, but perhaps my caregiving sensibilities, as well.
“Look, Mom, we’ll find his rear end, OK?”
I sounded more confident than I felt, because I knew Doug had hauled everything of Mom’s our basement had to offer. I also knew we’d just come from a trip to Goodwill, where we’d dropped off umpteen boxes of who-knows-what, any one of which might have accidentally contained the Claus’s patoot.
Instead of visions of Santa Claus dancing, I had visions of Santa Claus qualifying for a very special-needs wheelchair. With a little luck, on Medicare’s dime.
Doug and I left my freaked-out mother (who wouldn’t be a little dismayed by the sight of half a life-sized man propped up by the sliding glass door?) and hustled home to scour the basement and the attic, too.
Nothing. More emails, to all the sibs this time.
“Buttless Santa Alert!”
I begged them to check their own basements and attics, in case I was wrong about me being the one who took all Mom’s Christmas stuff. One by one, the dismal news came back to me.
“No Santa butts here. Or Santa legs, either. Sorry. Better luck next year. Ha-ha-ha-ha.”
I resigned myself to shelling out fifty bucks to get my mother another life-sized singing and dancing Santa. I figured the double amputee could be re-interred in the box from whence he came, and reshelved horizontally in the depths of the basement, along with my reputation as a caring, loving daughter.
And then, one final email—one message of redemption to save me from myself during this emotion-charged Christmas season—arrived from my sister Liz.
“This came to me like a flash in the middle of the night,” she wrote. “I remembered something Erin told me when she purchased the thing. He collapses on himself! If you twist his head, his legs will pop out.”
We all have so much to be thankful for this Christmas, don’t we?
I’ve got to say, though, that in all my years on earth, this is the first time I’ve given thanks for Santa’s rear end.
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Too Bad I Didn’t Know About Title Loans Back Then (#604)
If you dig down in my archives as far as you can, you’ll find yourself in December, 2002.
I didn’t know this until last night—when I went to find the very first blog post I wrote back in December, 2000—but the first two years worth of posts didn’t make it into the archives when we switched to a new blogging tool a while back.
I’ve got a really cute guy, though, and he’s got my complete archives on his computer, because he’s the one who exported them all from Blogger.
But he’s the only guy who’s got them, and even though he’s in the next room and I can see the archives whenever I want, you guys aren’t as…um…fortunate.
Perhaps my guy will be able to figure this out, since he’s already determined that the reason the rest of the archives didn’t transfer is that I didn’t title each post then like I do now.
In the meantime, you’ll have to take my word for it that December 7 is my blogiversary. Five whole years!
Who knew being Fallible could be so much fun?
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Footloose (#602)
So my sister Liz purchased these really cute shoes for Mom when she was about to leave the nursing home and move into her assisted living apartment. They’re slip-ons, a must for a lady with a permanently broken arm, and resemble mocassins. Or moccasins. Or possibly moccassins, but I don’t think so. Whatever.
I liked them so much that I couldn’t wait for a chance to get over to Payless to grab a pair. Today I wore them to Mom’s. We sat side by side on her couch, going over some paperwork and chatting.
She had both leather-clad feet firmly planted on the floor, but I had one of my feet resting on the coffee table right in front of us.
I waited and waited for her to say something about my new shoes, and got nothing.
“Mom,” I finally said, “I can’t believe you haven’t noticed that we’re shoe twins.”
She didn’t miss a beat. “Oh,” she said, “I thought that was my foot.”
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