Duck! Goose?

I am now spending my days with the parents looking for blogging material. Several of you remarked on my mother's unusual vocabulary. Yes, she can always be counted upon to have something to say, even if it makes no sense whatsoever.

One of her many quirks when communicating is her impatience. Example:

"Mom, that's the wrong button. Stop pushing buttons! Wait!"

"This is my remote and I can push buttons if I want to. If someone would take the time to teach me how to use this stupid piece of malarky I might be able to make it do what it's told."

"That's the problem, dear. It is doing what you tell it to do."

"Well, it clearly is not. Do you see Bob Barker on there?"

"He doesn't host Price is Right anymore."

"What planet are you living on? China? Of course he does. I tell you, Rebecca, I am starting to worry about your mental health."

"Too late for that."

And her need for the last word:

"You lost my card? How does a person lose a card?"

"Sorry."

"I mean, how? Does it have legs like a centerpede?"

"I'll keep looking."

"It profounds me how it could be here one minute and gone the next."

"It is a mystery."

"This is just ridicilus."

Silence...

"Oh, I give up. I am surrounded by incomparable people. What's the use?"

This makes her seem like a real sourball (to borrow her phrase) and she's not always like that. Well, I should say, people do tell stories of times when she was perfectly personable. The witnesses are mostly dead now, but the incidents are documented...somewhere. I'll start looking for them as soon as I find the 2004 Christmas card from the Logsdens (also dead) that I seem to have lost.

Motha, Motha

So, my precious mother is home from the nursing home. She was delightfully overwhelmed with gratitude for the first 24 hours or so. I was personally hoping she had experienced a life-altering attitude adjustment that would replace her chronic crankiness with serene acceptance of all things domestic. Alas, it was not to be.

Name-calling commenced early on the second day with "blowhot", "pollywallace" and "jerkjockey" landing on the Most Memorable list. She threatened to "bake my oven", "pepperspray my pockets" and "light a fire under my nose".

When I came out of my room this morning, my dad was standing in the livingroom wearing a back brace and she was hovering over him saying, "Hurry up, Fred. I don't have all day."

"What's going on here?" I wonder.

"Well," daddy begins.

"We are fixing the leg on the table."

I glance to the corner where a 50lb. antique table once stood. It isn't there.

"Don't tell me..."

"We had to get it out of there so we could fix it," mother offers.

"Where is it?"

"We took it into the dining room."

I round the corner and there, sitting upside-down on the dining table is this footless monstrosity. UPSIDE DOWN!

Now, dear reader, you must know that the "we" referred to by mother dearest is used in the loosest regard imaginable. "We" to mother means she told him and he did it.

"You must be joking," I say.

"I need to sit down," dad says.

"We've got work to do! There will plenty of time to sit when we're done here."

"Dorothy, my back is hurting."

"Oh, you'll say anything for a little attention."

She wobbles off muttering about not being able to find good help anymore and then yells from the other room for me to bring her the sweeper.

"Let me look at the table leg and then I will vacuum," I reply.

"I will do it! Just bring it to me!"

"Mom! I am not bringing you the sweeper. Just sit down and make a list of what you want done and I will do it!"

Her head rears back and she says, "Well, there is no need to raise your voice."

Good times.

As I write, she is happily reclined watching "All My Children" with the remote in one hand and a cookie in the other. I am about to walk by her and say, "You better not get any crumbs on my freshly swept carpet."

She will no doubt reply, "Don't be a jerkjockey. We'll just vacuum again tomorrow."

My Immodesty Knows No Bounds

Oh, lawd, lawd. What can I find next to embarrass myself doing? Say you are dying to hear what I did today...say it! Well, ok.

I am in the church kitchen, where so many bawdy things have happened of late, with my dear friend BJ (hi, Beeg!)and we are discussing my weight loss. I am so excited to tell her that I am really taking it off, that if I hold my breath real good, my skirt would just fall right to the floor!

I said, "See?" I start pulling the skirt up and say, "I can even put this up over my boobs!"

Well, dear reader, said skirt was rather short to begin with, so imagine what happened when I yanked it up over my considerable boobage. Yeah.

I catch movement out of the corner of my eye and turn to see little Justin, age 12, with eyeballs the size of saucers bugging out of his precious head. He ran screaming from the room. (That's happening alot to me lately, too.)

BJ is hiccuping with laughter and is calling, "Justin! Come here! I need you! Jus-tin!"

But, alas, no Justin. We surmised he had raced to the sanctuary and was hiding under a pew seeking the face of God to remove the mental picture I had so masterfully painted onto his brain. God is good, but I don't know if He's that good. This guy is toast. He will never look at thighs the same way again, I can tell you that. Years from now he will see a girl about to pull an article of clothing over her head and he will become numb struck with nausea and not know why. Kneecaps will make him blanch and stepping into a kitchen with women in it will make him break out into a cold, hard sweat.

And all because of me.

I am leaving my mark on the world, one unsuspecting innocent at a time.

Hey Baby

My doctor called me "kiddo" today.

Now, if you are a faithful follower, you might recall my doctor is the hottie of the hospital over in Port Huron. He is impossibly adorable. So naturally, being his kiddo for a moment was sa-weet.

Makes me contemplate, and not for the first time, my unknown reader, what makes people attractive to one another. (I am not saying he is attracted to me, but really, how could he not be...am I right?)

There are so many people out there who draw lines around what you can find appealing and what is officially off limits. I have always chaffed against that. I am getting in deeeeep water here, but isn't it nice to imagine a world where it's ok to smile and feel and be?

Everyone knows I am in over my head. My views on so many things make my conservative friends look at me sideways...and my family! They just smile and nod, having accepted long ago how "out there" I am. But, let me say how sincerely I wish folks would just relax and let people be who they are. REVISION: I don't want you to let them "be", I want you to ENCOURAGE them to be...exactly who they are, here/there/everywhere. If they don't match your level of perfection, well, suck up your condescension in your old mental baggage, throw it in the closet and slam the door.

I invite you to join me here in this bubble of acceptance. Where the right and left meet, where the new agers and old-timers dance together and the seekers of truth find a wealth of opinions and theories to guide them forward.

Get out there and BE...kiddo.