That was four years of unwanted memory triggers and human cruelty that we’ll never get back.
Santa’s boo boo
“People outside of New York who have called 911 on Santa is a statistically tiny group. Maybe you should *list it on your college applications.”
*She’ll probably go work on an Alaskan fishing boat to avoid my transition from endlessly saying “put it on your application” to “add it to your resume.”
Love you too, dear
Doug: “You see this old person here? <- points at me -> She has lived and learned and you need to start listening to her.”
Teenager: <- giggling -> “Mom’s looking at you funny, dad.”
NoBloNo
Instead of blogging daily in November as I have done for years and years, I skipped the month entirely. Let’s call it, no blog November. I’d like to claim that I did didn’t blog because it was a statement or something, but honestly, November sucked and I didn’t have anything funny or snarky to say. It is what it is.
Holiday ranking
Halloween > Thanksgiving > Christmas
Another evening petting a stranger’s dog
“Do you want to go?”
“No.”
“You’ll have fun. You’re going.”
“I’m a teacher. My partner is a principal.”
“I’m a software engineer.”
“Same.”
“Same.”
Everyone connects to a hivemind and simultaneously turn toward me: “What do YOU do?”
“I’m just a mom.”
<- stunned silence ->
“How nice for you.”
“That was fun. I don’t know why you didn’t want to go.”
No unicorns here
“Are you reading in the bathtub again?”
“I’m a narwhal. This is necessary.”
Opinionated creatures
The husband put a motion sensor that makes Star trek noises at the bottom of our staircase. Reactions were mixed. One child picked it up and played with it while mumbling to himself. Another walked back and forth to set it off repeatedly while giggling. One of the children turned it off, hid it and refuses to confess.
Guess which reaction is the guilty party?
I hate talking about health issues
But I’m going to do it anyway. I once went to the Doctor with one eyelid swollen and painful. He looked at it from his wheelie stool on the other side of the exam room and then gave me a script for topical ointment. When I filled the script, it said in big letters, “Do not use on or near eyes.”
Another time, I told the Doctor that the woman giving me a pedicure said I should call my physician and tell them my nailbeds were separating from my skin. The Doctor told me that wasn’t a thing. My favorite recent visit was when I told the Doctor that sometimes my fingers would not bend and they lost sensation. The Doctor bent them a bit and asked if it hurt me. I told him I couldn’t feel anything. He said my hands are fine.
So, this week, I woke with a full blown migraine instead of it gradually getting worse over the course of a day. As with all migraines, there was vomiting. Thirty hours of vomiting that evolved into constant dry heaves after my stomach was emptied. When I wasn’t vomiting, I was sleeping. I couldn’t stay awake for five minutes the entire thirty hours before I asked to be taken to the Doctor.
The Doctor gave me a stroke test. I was completely lucid and both sides of my body were functioning equally, but that was their only guess. Then, they stabbed me in the hip twice and sent me home with a script for migraine meds. After sleeping another 12 hours, I looked at the paperwork from the Doctor visit.
Diagnosis: Personal Aging
“Personal aging? Seriously? If the rest of my life is going to be puking and sleeping, I’d rather die. That is zero quality of life. I’m not doing it.”
“Yes dear.”
Creepy Reads
The first ‘sleep with the lights on’ book I read was Firestarter. It was handed to me by my father. “You’re too old for Nancy Drew. Read this.” I loved it and not just because it felt like I’d graduated to the world of adult books. For months after reading it I was glaring at everyone who annoyed me and mentally immolating them. When you’re an adolescent female in a patriarchal evangelical world, there’s a lot of annoyance.
My youngest daughter was at a birthday party once and someone from the movie version was there. I know I made a mental note to share the book with her before she watched the movie version and recognized the person she knows IRL, but her version of adolescent angst includes refusing to read books or watch movies that I suggest.
Some of my favorite scary books as an adult are The Graveyard Queen series by Amanda Stevens. They’re filled with ghosts, corpses, murders and secrets, but with deeply southern gothic twists. They’re also really fun books to read. It’s the kind of thing that you assign all your college students to read before tasking them with writing something creepy based on their own families.