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 |  Where am I going, and why am I in this handbasket? |
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Fair Warning: I've upped the rating on this blog. It is now set at GC. |
| You know what I said about being being conflict avoidant? Well, some conflicts are more easily avoided than others. My lovely Monday morning started with a phone call from a crazed dissatisfied woman who does not feel her daughter is being adequately served by our agency. Now her daughter's casemanager is Beth and Beth is a primo-worker. If I could clone Beth I would. Beth only works part time for us now, and she also works part time at the local university as a fitness trainer. Beth is a marathon runner and triathlete. I'll get the relevance of that in a minute. So anyway, the mother (we'll just call her Satan) is looking for recreational programs and respite care for her teenage daughter who is so violent that she is close to being kicked out of school. If we had rec programs to offer, they'd bounce this kid out on her ear. She needs intensive behavioral supports. How convenient that she's already been referred for those services. Apparently the services didn't work out too well with the first provider because the staff kept quitting.  Considering that they were working with Satan and her daughter in their home, I'm really not surprise. Still, Beth had done her job and located a new provider. Ah but what about recreation, what about respite? Hmmm... Why don't we do the job we are being paid to do instead of sitting around gossiping and drinking our fucking coffee? "Maybe if Beth spent as much time helping my daughter as she does exercising she might have services by now. But doesn't care about helping anyone! You don't think I see what she does. I see her. I see her running around on campus. Always running by my house all smiling. Why should she be smiling when I'm sitting here miserable. I don't need her smiley self in my face." Note to self: *Tell Beth not to smile while she is running.* People who smile when they run really can be annoying.  "Well, I can see that Beth put you're daughter on the waiting list for funds. We have identified her as having a critical need (that would be a step below emergency need), but we do not have the funding at this time to serve her." No point in mentioning that even if we had money, we probably wouldn't be able to find a provider, no, that might make her ANGRY. "How long has she been on that list?" Satan asks "Her information was last updated in March of 2007." "So she's been waiting a whole year! That's not right. You see that. If we were still in New York you know she'd be getting services. You know what this is. You are prejudice. The whole fucking county is prejudice." I don't like to admit it, but I'm only human and I do have my prejudices against pushy damn New Yorkers (whatever their race may be) who move out of the city and then bitch that they can't get the same services that were available in The City. Shit! We barely have public transportation out here in the sticks. "Who can I complain to about this shit because I am real unhappy right now?" DING, DING, DING!!!! We have a winner! I offer her the State's fabulous customer service line. Please, oh please, call them and complain that you're caseworker is too smiley. Please!!! I can be a little mean, but I know they have to investigate everyone of those calls.  "Fuck that," Satan retorted. "You have to provide some kind of service before you can just hand me off to some customer service line. I just want to know when you plan to serve my daughter." So, I launch into our standard explanation of how the waiting list works. It really isn't a list that we follow from top to bottom. It is a way to match available funds to the people with the most emergent needs. I use our old stand-by analogy to explain this. "It isn't a Deli line where you wait for your number to be called, and then you get served." "Oh I see what this is! You treat my daughter like she is some piece of meat in the deli!" She ripped into me awhile longer, but eventually hung up on me and went off to spread sunshine to someone else's day. Hope everyone out there is having a great Monday.  |
| It irritates me that I am writing this entry. Self examination holds little interest to me, and the past, I believe, should be left in the past. Oh, I’m not talking about reminiscing, and sharing stories, that can be great fun. I dislike the ruminating that I’ve done over the past few days. It serves no purpose. Ah but maybe the seeds of it go back further. It started, with a round of blog entries on the subject of self. What makes us who we are? How are we defined? My initial though on this was simple. We are what we do. Just as our fictional characters come to life through their actions and reactions, we are weighed and measured according to the events we experience, and what we do with those experiences. I’ve revised this notion a bit since then. We are not simply what we do. We are also the culmination of all the factors that drive us to act as we do, and all the fears, anxieties, and assorted baggage that might prevent us from taking action. Who the hell am I? What are the factors that drive me to act? This is where my ruminations are leading, but it isn’t an especially flattering portrait. bugzy is baaaccck!!  just awarded me a merit badge for “Inner Beauty,” but I cringed a bit at the notion. You see, my snarkiness is not some thin veneer to protect a tender soul. It is quite genuine. In the spirit of full disclosure, I updated my blog intro with a poem I wrote some time ago. It sums things up fairly well. So what are the needs that drive me. I think I can make a list, but these are in no particular order. 1. Autonomy. In addition to being damn near pathologically defiant, I have very specific and highly fortified personal boundaries. They are part of the reason why I can’t believe I will ever really post this drivel in my blog. I have been accused of being aloof, indifferent, and even a <gasp> snob. I’m not, but I can take or leave people. I don’t have a high need to be liked or even included. It isn’t, as some might assume, a defensive posture to keep from getting hurt. I just don’t have a lot of unmet emotional needs. 2. Conflict avoidance. I think this is just an innate piece of who I am. I am extremely uncomfortable with conflict, and always have been. As a small child I was very sensitive to anyone taking a cross tone with me. I just don’t like confrontation. It feels wimpy, and juvenile, and I’ve worked at getting over this, but I still get that anxious “I’m in big trouble” feeling when I’m being confronted, and I have to work up the nerve to confront someone else. Well crap, there are probably lots of others, but let’s just look at these two for now. Go ahead and light up a cigar while I lay back on the couch and tell you about my mother. I’m the youngest of three, and the only girl. I did not have protective older brothers. At their kindest they were indifferent from there the continuum follows all the way over to abusive. We had a pretty good bell curve thing going so we spent most of our growing up years somewhere in the middle of that continuum. My brothers think I was the spoiled baby of the family. I don’t think that is quite accurate, but I was raised by a different mother than my brothers had. Sure, she was technically the same woman, but they were raised by the stay at home version of mom. The stay at home version was attentive, but nagging. By the time I was 7, Mom had returned to the work force. She did that for a couple years, and then quit to go back to school. She kept going to school until she graduated with a Master’s in Social Work about the same time that I was turning 16. I was pushed into independence at an earlier age, and in truth, I welcomed it. I wanted to be left alone. Also, while studying Social Work, my Mom’s view of the world, child rearing, and gender roles skewed considerably. Part of the reason I don’t know how to cook is because I convinced my mother that it was unfair to expect me to learn how to cook just because I was a girl. The rest of the reason I’ll just attribute to an all around decline in Mom’s domestic pursuits while attending college. While in Graduate school, around the time I was 14 or 15, Mom had cancer. She needed surgery and radiation, but not chemo. Mom was not well supported emotionally during that time. I helped out around the house, but I think Mom wanted more emotional support from me than a highly autonomous adolescent could provide. I, in turn, felt burdened, resentful and guilty. Enter the selfishness. Mom decided I was deeply selfish. Possibly she was right, but the male members of the household had cornered the market on selfish. I was a girl. I was supposed to be different. So much for all that stuff she learned about gender stereotypes. I remember being a teen and feeling that although my mother loved me, she didn’t especially like me. I think my mother was resentful of my selfish nature because she felt that she never had the option of a selfish choice. My parents and I entered into a sort of bargain. I got good grades, and didn’t get into visible trouble . . . no police cruisers visiting the house, no suspensions from school, no complaints from the neighbors . . . in exchange for making their lives easy, my parents selectively blocked out everything else. We didn’t fight except for when I felt they were stepping out of the bargain and infringing on my autonomy. I wasn’t a bad kid, but I wasn’t as good of a kid as they would have liked to believe. I became very self reliant. When my parents moved up to Pennsylvania and left me with my brothers in Maryland for the summer, it felt quite natural because I was very much accustomed to operating without a safety net. To this day, most of the conflict I have with my mother follows along these same themes. I am too selfish in the face of all that she’s done for me. I don’t call enough, or disclose enough about the details of my life. I get along with my mother pretty well most of the time. We talk about gardening, or play yahtzee or rag on my sister-in-law, but every now and then we have a big blow out. It usually starts out with her saying something to the effect of “I want to know why you never talk to me about things anymore.” Thus goes the cycle . . . selfishness, guilt, resentment. And one more . . . AVOIDANCE. Yep, this was just as long and pointless as I feared it would be. Moral of the story: Don’t sow the seeds of autonomy and then bitch that I’m distant.  |
| We've arrived at Friday. Woohoo! I'm thrilled to be at the end of another work week. I'm thrilled also to have received a merit badge today from the very generous Debi Wharton . Thanks Debi! Today I was talking to my friend Bonnie. She is in the process of trying to sell her house so that she and her boyfriend Mark can buy a bigger house together. Now she's listed her house, but she hasn't started looking for a new house. She was afraid that she would find her dream house before she was ready to act. As a cautionary note, I told her about the move my family made up to Pennsylvania some 18 years ago. My parents were living in Maryland at the time. They spent several months house hunting with nothing to show for it. Finally they found a house, but it was under construction and would not be complete until July. It was late March at the time, and they thought this would allow them a good amount of time to list and sell the Maryland house. As it turned out, they received an offer for the full asking price on the day the house was listed. It was unheard of, but there was a contingency. They had to close in 30 days. My parents jumped at the offer in spite of the fact that I was still in school until mid June, my mother was working, and both of my brother's, who were in college at the time, had summer jobs lined up in Maryland. Nevertheless, we were out of the house by late May. My father had an apartment near his new job up in PA, and the rest of us moved into a rental home in Maryland for the summer. It wasn't ideal, but it was adequate. Then one night I awoke to a series of thumps and shouts in the middle of the night. My mother had been up late doing paperwork, and was heading to bed in a dark and unfamiliar house. She opened the wrong door and instead of stepping into her bedroom, she walked through to the rude surprise of the basement steps. She fell down the flight of stairs and landed in painful jumble at the bottom, unable to get up. I heard her and went to her aid. I was 17, drowsy, and not the most helpful first responder she could have hoped for. I haven't improved much over the years either. I still have the tendency to respond stupidly. "Holy Shit! Are you okay?" seems to be my stock response to blood and gore. On the other hand, I excel at CPR where the first step is to shake the victim by the shoulders while asking "Are you okay? Are you okay?" Fortunately for both of us though Mom was conscious and so I could have skipped that step. Mom told me she couldn't get up, she needed an ambulance, and she was pretty sure she had broken her arm, and possibly her hip. The arm was obvious. Even I could tell that. It was limp and bloody and I could see the bones. That is never a good sign. To my credit, I remained calm. A little too calm. But I believe I offered to wake my brother and get her an ice pack. Maybe not. She might have told me to go wake my brother, but I know I offered to get her an ice pack. "Hey Mom, do you want an ice pack for that bone sticking out of your arm?"  Fortunately, my brother Max was more responsive and called 911. Mom bruised, but did not break her hip. She shattered her right wrist and broke her humerus. She was lucky she didn't break her neck, though I don't think she felt very lucky at the time. Mom needed surgery to pin her wrist, and needless to say she was laid up for awhile. Imagine her frustration. Her right arm was casted from shoulder to hand and, of course, she is right handed. This left her pretty helpless. Fortunately she had her three children to care for her . . . a resentful 17 year old daughter who was being moved away from all her friends the summer before her senior year, and two sons age 19, and 20. Poor Mom was at our mercy. I don't remember all the details, but I believe we ate a lot of take out. Oh, and somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, my brother adopted an adorable little kitten that tortured my mother by climbing the curtains in her bedroom and pouncing on her each time she moved. The pouncing caused her to flinch, and the flinching caused her to scream in pain. As soon as possible, Mom left us in the unkempt squalor of our rental (teenagers are lousy housekeepers) and rejoined my father up in Pennsylvania. My Grandmother flew out from Idaho to stay with Mom and Dad, help unpack from the move and settle the new house according to her own grand design. And that is how I came to spend most of my 17th summer (and I was just barely 17) in the complete absence of adult supervision. It was a great summer. |
| We got new posters at work to advertise the State's customer service line. Since the state does not provide customer service, it would be more accurate to refer to it as the complaint line. And why the hell would we want to advertise it when we are the ones that get complained about? Ah, but they tell me complaints are not bad. We want complaints. We welcome complaints. Complaints are opportunities to improve the quality of services we offer. I think that is a dandy philosophy, I just wish every opportunity for improvement did start with a "what the hell are you people doing?" phone call. That said, we dutifully hung the new posters around the office. I even wrote it on the bathroom stalls under the promising tag of "for a good time call . . ." Okay, I didn't really do that, but it was a near thing. Speaking of complaints . . . All of our agency cars have those "How's my driving? Call 1 800 . . . " stickers on the rear bumper. The agency got a break on auto insurance for having them, but the answering and reporting service proved more expensive than the old insurance rate. The service was dropped and if you call the 1 800 number now you get dead air somewhere over New Delhi. Imagine the concerned citizen who tailgates a car for miles just to get the 1 800 number off the rear, and then takes the time to call and report your unsafe driving. How unsatisfied do you suppose that Samaritan will be when no one even answers. I think VERY. So, I'm campaigning to get new stickers that will direct all the pissed off drivers to call the State's customer service line. |
| This came across my desk today at work. Other than changing the names, this is exactly how it read. To Whom it May Concern: LETTER OF MEDICAL NECESSITY Jane Doe has been a patient of the practice since 1996; she has document diagnoses of Cerebral Palsy, scoliosis, deadness and is legally blind. It is now being requested that authorization be given to obtain a “gotalk20.” device. This will enable her to communicate with other people. Sincerely, Mary Smith, CRNP Given the diagnosis of deadness, I think a ouija board might be a more effective communication device. Other than this one bright spot, the day pretty much sucks. Work is a shit rainbow painted in various shades and textures of unpleasantness. How’s that for imagery? I think the poetry writing is really paying off. Hope you all are having good days! |
| Today I sat in a meeting for most of the day. That in and of itself is very uninteresting, but it had its moments. For those of you who’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you’ll remember my friend Bob. He works for the state and is responsible for keeping us county folks in line. It’s a tough job, and he approaches it with a lot of humor and humility. For this reason, Bob and I get along exceptionally well. Well Bob was at the meeting today, and before the meeting started, he shared with me a story about the perils of working late. The story goes like this . . . Bob works at a state office building. The building is officially locked up for the day at 7:00 PM. Period. Everyone is expected to be out of the building by 7:00. Those who don’t leave are locked inside. Once that happens, the employee must call security to come find them and let them out of the building. By this time, the security folks are into overtime. Consequently the poor bastard locked in the building must pay a fine to cover the overtime costs. So anyone who thinks that working for the State is a good gig . . . not only are you not paid overtime, but if you work late, you might get fined to pay someone else’s overtime. Is it any wonder if government workers are less than highly motivated. Well now, Bob is a very diligent worker and has been caught in this situation a few times. He is not inclined to pay for the aforementioned escort service. No, he has found his own ways out of the building. The problem with Bob’s method is that it is not entirely legal. As ridiculous as it sounds, he could be arrested for breaking out of the state office building. As with all brilliantly constructed plans, the key to success here is simple. Don’t get caught. As Bob told it, he and another worker Michelle got locked in last week. They were working late and lost track of the time. Next think they knew it was 7:20. Michelle wanted to call security. “No,” Bob says. “I know a way out. Trust me.” “But what about security?” Michelle asked. Michelle was at the meeting also. She decided to pipe up in the telling of the story to elaborate a few points. First off, security in the state office is nothing to trifle with. They are real deal, gun caring police officers duly sworn to uphold the law and assigned to protect the building. Secondly, trusting Bob felt a little like aiding and abetting. “If they see us, run, and don’t let them catch you,” Bob said. So they quietly made their way to the stairwell, something about the door slamming closed behind them attracting unwanted attention. “Don’t stop,” Bob warned Michelle. “Run for the door and DO NOT let them catch you!” “But they have guns,” Michelle said. “Hey!” shouted security. They yelled something else too, Bob didn’t stick around to hear it though. Michelle on the other hand, stopped, turned around and yelled up to them. “What?” “Why are you talking to them?” Bob yelled back. “Run!” “Don’t run! You have to stop,” the security guards yelled as they closed the gap. Michelle struggled with her indecision and the conflicting fight vs. flight impulses. Everyone was yelling at her. Yup, she was screwed. Bob was waiting for her when security escorted her out. It was nice of Bob to stick around considering he was the instigator . . . not to mention Michelle’s boss. “You two shouldn’t have run” the security guard scolded. “Did you see any running?” Bob asked. “Come on . . . look what I have to work with,” he said with an impatient gesture toward Michelle. Michelle interjected into Bob’s story again. “I was wearing four inch heels,” she explained. “I wasn’t going to run down three flights of stairs in my heels. Besides,” she accused Bob. “You should have told me they could arrest us.” “What part of ‘Don’t let them catch you’ didn’t you understand? Haven’t you ever been to kegger? When the police show up you don’t stick around. You run. You don’t stop when they yell at you.” As it was the two of them got off without fines or charges, but it isn’t likely they’ll be working late again anytime soon, and Michelle will probably think twice the next time Bob says “trust me.” |
| I can’t remember how all the petty crap started. There are some folks at work that I just don’t get along with. Fact is, we have a long standing tradition of intense, knee jerk dislike. Most of the people I have problems with like to say things like “I don’t find your sarcasm to be helpful.” I regard them as humorless, sanctimonious twits, and they in turn see me as a pernicious weed among the good and decent folk. It is possible that I own some responsibility for the bad blood. I know I said I was going to blog about crock pots, and I will, but you’ll have to bear with me for a moment as I lay the groundwork for that story. Okay, imagine me in a work environment full of people who take everything very seriously. Those would be the folks in Mental Health services. Fun is not allowed. Levity is not allowed. They have serious issues to attend to and nothing to laugh about. I started out working in Mental Health, and trust me when I tell you, there was always something to laugh about, but that’s beside the point. Now I work on the Developmental Disabilities side of our agency and we have a very light hearted approach to things. Are the problems any less serious? No. It is just a different work place culture. Unfortunately, both departments are pieces of the same overall agency, and we function about as well as anyone with a split personality can be expected to function. There have been interdepartmental resentments and feuds going back to the founding of the agency. I’ve only been here 10 years, and I know the lines had been drawn long before my days. Still, I like to think I contributed a little something along the way. Looking back, I think it stated with our special corner. It was a discrete area on the side of a filing cabinet where we (as a department) started to post our world views and commentaries. One of our best features was an interactive extravaganza called “Dr. Phil or GW?” It featured pictures both of Dr. Phil and President Bush along with quotes (only a few of which were fabrications) glued to magnetic strips. The point was to accurately arrange the quotes on the filing cabinet according to who said them (or who we imagined might say them). There were challenging gems such as “we have to make the pie higher.” Trust me. It was great, and I wish I still had it. Our clever display caused the humorless twits to scowl and make unkind remarks. How dare we mock Dr. Phil. In response, my friends and I (aka “The ring leaders,” or “instigators”) changed the display out of sensitivity to their comments. In keeping with the events of the day, we went with a Martha Stewart behind bars theme. OH THE HORROR! It seems as though the free Martha Stewart movement had a strong foot hold in our agency. Having bloodied a few toes, we took it to the next level. We planned a Martha Stewart sentencing luncheon, and as a gesture of good will and community building, we invited the entire agency. A word of advice . . . never attend a party that has me on the planning committee. It didn’t help that the committee chair was my friend Denise. Denise has a wicked sense of humor and great organizational skills, but she is no Martha Stewart. If you need someone to coordinate a pet spay and neuter campaign or change your tire, Denise is your girl. If you need someone to bring a three bean salad to your picnic, you would never think to ask Denise. Denise brings the bag of chips. Her culinary and entertaining credentials make mine look good. That said, our Martha Stewart sentencing luncheon was destined to be memorable. The menu, we decided, should be simple jail house fare . . . hot dogs, sauerkraut, beans, that sort of thing. It would be a covered dish sort of thing. I brought cookies and Denise was in charge of the hot dogs. We would need to cook them though, and we couldn’t use the lunch room. We needed to have our luncheon in the conference room so as not infect the rest of the office with our lack of good taste. As an aside, we began receiving hate mail which steeled our sense of purpose. We got an anonymous note from someone complaining that our luncheon was very upsetting to her because she had an aunt who was serving time in jail and it was insensitive of us to make light of Martha’s sentencing. Since we were confined to the conference room, I got the idea to use a crock pot for the hot dogs. It turns out that I’d gotten one as a wedding present and had never used it. Having no experience with such things, I thought it would work kind of like a large scale hot pot. The term “slow cooker” did nothing to dissuade me and I had Denise’s full support and encouragement also. Unfortunately, we hadn’t planned on hours to cook a pack of hot dogs. We set up the crock pot in the conference room about 30 minutes before lunch, and proceeded to decorate for the occasion (it was a Martha Stewart luncheon after all). After 20 minutes, the hot dogs were still cold. Desperate to speed up the process we went to the lunch room and boiled several mugs of water until we managed to fill a bowl with really hot water. We carried this through the office and back to the lunch room hoping that when we added it to the crock pot, things would start cookin'. It didn’t work the way we hoped. Aside from the spills and the scald wounds, it didn’t accomplish much. The water was hot, but the hot dogs were still cold. Next we took the hot dogs out of the crock pot and put them in the bowl. Denise carried the bowl back through the office to the lunchroom. I would need all of my fingers and most of my toes to count the number of people who asked Denise why she was walking through the office with a bowl full of hot dogs. So in the end, we microwaved the hot dogs in batches, put them back in the bowl for the return trip through the building, and then dumped them in the crock pot. No one was the wiser (except for the 16 people who saw us with the bowl of hot dogs), and the luncheon was fun albeit lightly attended. I think Martha would have been proud of us for pulling it all together. |
| Well this whole intern thing has potential. Turns out they are here to do work for me. I sifted through my “To Do” pile and gave them some busy work. The bright side of being super busy is that the morning flies by. Here it is lunchtime already! I figure I’ll blog at lunchtime until I’m back online at home. On Sunday I went to the grocery store and they were having a big meat sale. Go figure. Now, by the time I got there they didn’t have a chicken breast left in the store, and very little in the way of ground beef. Still, they had some wonderful deals on steaks, roasts, lamb, turkey and pork. Hmmm…. I think I’ve mentioned that I’m not much for the whole cooking thing. I have a fairly limited repertoire which has always functioned pretty well with my children’s limited palates. However, I’m tired of it. I’m tired of fixing the same things over and over. I’m tired of never knowing what I’ll make for dinner. So I decided to make some changes. Looking over the selections at the meat sale was a little overwhelming though. I was clearly out of my depth. I might know 10 or 12 things to do with a chicken breast, but a pork cutlet? Sweet Merciful Martha Stewart! A roast? Ah Hell. I bought a roast. Along with some assorted steaks, and pork cutlets. I brought it home and told my husband, “I sure hope you know what to do with this stuff.” So far we’ve made it through two dinners. Woohoo! I’ve decided that for all my husbands supposed knowledge of cooking, he doesn’t know shit about meal planning. He lacks my mother’s skill in preparing a meal so that the dishes are all amazingly ready to hit the table at the same time. I guess it takes practice. More than that, he seems to be a one course kind of guy. He doesn’t think about adding a salad, biscuits, or fruit. Quite honestly, I’m better at that part. So last night we had the pot roast. My husband slow cooked it in the crock pot all day. I decided to make my children mashed potatoes to go with it. Now, I’ve never, ever made mashed potatoes. First up, I got my daughter to deal the potatoes. She is a lot like an intern that way, and I was starting to think the potato thing might not be that hard. I put a pot on and after consulting with Tony as to the number of potatoes and the approximate size to which they should be cut, I broke out the big knife and got busy. That lasted through literally half a potato. Tony came in muttering something about severed fingers and took the knife away from me. He cut up the potatoes and I added them to the pot and wandered away to look at the new seed catalog that had come in the mail. When Tony called me back into the kitchen to “check” the potatoes I looked into the bubbling pot and once again felt out of my depth. “What am I checking for?” “Doneness.” “How do I do that?” “Move,” he said, nudging me aside. Apparently they were done. Next came the straining. Tony did that since he had the lid handy. Then he added butter and milk since I wasn’t sure how much, but I mashed those potatoes up nice and fluffy with the mixer. My daughter was very impressed with the mashed potatoes I made, and she and her brother seemed to really enjoy them. Since I don’t eat mashed potatoes, I’ll just assume they were delicious. Now I need to update my resume to include this new skill. Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the first time I tried to use a crock pot. |
| I was looking around the site for a little writing inspiration. Something fun. Something different. Well, I checked out the Writers Cramp prompt. The prompt was to write a short story or poem about a new miracle pill. Well, that got me going. Unfortunately, I didn't see it until about 30 minutes ago which meant there was't time to finish it to meet the contest deadline. Any way, I played around with it while listening in on a conference call at work. It isn't exactly contest material anyway, but I thought I'd just throw it in here. Seeing as it is Friday, bad poetry seems to be in order. The Magic Pill I’ve just heard about a new miracle pill. It’ll solve all my problems, cure all my ills. It will stop all my nausea, my aches and my pains. It’ll end all the bloating, and the vicious migraines. It’ll drop my cholesterol and my blood pressure too. It’ll give me the courage to say “NO!" and "fuck you!” This pill fights odors, and also kills germs. It wards off bad hair days, and intestinal worms. It will open my air ways And make breathing easy So I can have sex without getting wheezy. It will stop the sneezing and the itchy, red eyes. So I can pet Fluffy without getting hives. My kidney and gallbladder will stay free of stones and I won’t grow tumors from using cell phones. My memory will improve Along with my mood And I’ll lose weight enjoying My favorite foods. It’ll help me lose weight and will strengthen my heart I’ll drop a pound each time that I fart. It makes my eyes shiny; it leaves my skin bright. It’ll help me to get a good sleep every night. This pill makes teeth straight, healthy and white, while also suppressing strange appetites The hair that I have will all stay intact, and they promise the rest of it soon will grow back. It will leave my hair soft and strong like silk, and keep my corn flakes crunchy in milk. It will stop the voices I hear in my head. It will stop the hysterical tears that I shed. The pill keeps me from feeling irritable, tired or blue, and if I get anxious . . . I can always take two. Feel free to add your own verse or two. |
| What happens when an early riser marries a night owl? Seriously! My husband is up at 5AM most mornings. I, on the other hand, prefer to sleep in. Later on, I’ll get a fresh burst of energy at 8PM, while Tony is generally nodding off in front of the TV by 9. This leaves us a bit puzzled on the logistics of having sex. More specifically . . . WHEN! Among the many possibilities and solutions out there, one of the most fun and easily executed is the Sunday afternoon romp. When the kids were little they took naps. Then as they got a little older, they could be parked in front of the television with a bowl of popcorn and a Disney flick. Ah… those were the days. Or were they? It is possible that looking back I remember it a little better than what it was. Really, I’m not sure my kids ever got the hang of the whole napping thing. And, come to think of it, when they did nap, I usually fell asleep too. It is exhausting trying to get young children to sleep. As for the movies, well I think that trick might have worked a couple times, but a momentary distraction was really all that could be hoped for. Surely as the kids get older and more independent, privacy has to become less rare as commodities go? I’m still waiting. Sunday is laundry day at my house, and I got an early start on the chore. Now, as a strange rule, I prefer to do laundry in my jammies. Somehow it feels more efficient because I’m not musing any new clothes as I go about my laundering. So, long story short, It was around noon before I hopped in the shower. Tony caught me coming out of the shower and greeted me with a subtle proposition consisting of locking the door and untying my robe. Since I was already undressed, and as mentioned before, I’m a big fan of efficiency, this seemed like a good idea. And it would have been, if we didn’t live with children. The first knock came only slightly before we were ready to, and we instantly sprang apart. Had we locked the door? Of course we had. Grumble, grumble, grumble . . . Tony walked over to the door and in the same tone of voice one might use with a persistent telemarketer, he snapped “WHAAAAAAT?” “Um Daddy,” the boy child began with a rattling of the door knob. “Could I please . . . May I have . . .” came the stammered words of a boy who’s attention was torn between asking a coherent question and advancing to the next round on Star Wars the complete saga for Nintendo DS. “Please may I . . . can I have some apple juice please, Daddy?” “Yes! Help yourself to some apple juice” “No!” I shouted envisioning the newly opened 64 oz bottle of apple juice spilling all over my kitchen floor. I might not be the cuddle-all-afternoon type, but mopping up 64 oz of spilt apple juice is not a preferred post coital activity. “Ask your sister to help you!” Tony listened at the door to the retreating sounds of the light saber battle, and then returned to the bed. Mood somewhat dampened, we resumed our activities with raw determination. Then, just as things were looking up, we heard a tentative knock at the door. Tony again made his way to the door. “WHAT NOW!” he barked. “Uhm… Daddy?” This time it was the girl child. “I was wondering if I could go over to Kassandra’s house a little earlier . . . like now. They are already on their way over to pick me up.” “Whatever! If they get here before I come out, you should just go,” Tony said, talking through the door. So after we stopped laughing, we finally had a stretch of uninterrupted peace, and since I had planned to strip the bed and wash the sheets next, it was all very efficient as well. |
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