YOLO

January 1, 2016

I've never been so glad to see a year end. Today is just one day away from one of the most trying years of my life. Realistically I know this year could (and I say could instead of will because I'm an optimist) have challenges ahead for me. Bumps in the road of life as I call them. 

Right now, in this moment, the road is flat. A calm spot. And I'm sucking up every second of that calm. 

Life is an adventure, ultimately. Some people face adversity with an attitude of fatalistic gloom and doom. But if you see things negatively, it's easy to lose the ability to laugh. If you can't laugh, your soul withers. 

I choose to laugh. Every day I will find something to laugh at. I choose adventure. 

I choose...LIFE. 

...and I wouldn't mind getting into that size 10 top in my closet, calling my name. That's optimism too, isn't it?

the starry night

One night last week, I found myself lying on a lounge chair under the stars, with my youngest daughter Deborah lying beside me on another lounger.

It had been a difficult week for both of us. I had been to the radiation oncologist and was one step closer to getting my boob barbecued.

Deborah's week had been equally difficult.  Life has been sending her curves for a while now, and every time she gets a foothold and feels as though she is beginning to move forward, something knocks her down.  This time the something was enough to make her feel hopeless for a bit, before she righted herself and decided to plunge forward.

So there we were, watching the Perseid meteor shower on the peak night in August when they were shooting across the sky leaving long trails, talking about a lot of different things.  It brought to mind a favorite song about one of my favorite artists and that song ran through my mind while we lay there star gazing.

The talking included a couple glasses of wine, so that may explain why our conversation ambled along about these subjects:

Nocturnal cow mooing.  We thought it was a romantic time of the month for cows, and the meteors were putting them in the mood.  One cow in particular bawled her way across the pasture from where we sat, mooing loudly from one end to the other.  Occasionally another couple of cows would chime in.

Tiger chuffing.  Not to be mistaken with roaring.  Deb said it was a sign of her lack of a social life, that the last thing she searched for on her iPhone was tiger chuffing.  It was replaced by cow mooing, which is when we discovered it wasn't cow sex going on, but one cow trying to find the herd.  Which totally burst our romantic notion about cows.  I was irritated at this point by the cow screaming across the road, so I.....

Stirred the cows up with my iPhone flashlight.  I know, totally mean of me, and I paid for it by being flogged by a million bugs rushing at the light and up my nose, in my eyes and ears, and...well you get the idea.  Deb also was eaten alive while Googling cow mooing.

Our California road trip.  Possibly the best road trip of our lives.  While we reminisced about the trip, we also talked about our own insignificance in the scheme of the universe, watching the sky light up with orange meteors shooting past in the sky overhead.  Then things deteriorated again when we decided to move our lounge chairs to face the house because it seemed like the meteors were coming from there.  That was when....

I peed my pants trying to get up off the lounge chair to move it.  I hadn't been to yoga in a couple months due to recouping from surgeries, so my abdominal muscles were jello, and so were my legs, which led to the above.  After we got settled down, we realized that the meteors were actually more visible in the direction we had just turned from, and somehow I made it up off the lounge, then Deb said something, I laughed, and peed my pants again. Just a little.   At that point, we started to laugh and talked about....

Estrogen levels and how they affect homicidal behavior.  I had just been taken off all estrogen, given a tablet to block my body absorbing any estrogen it might try to produce on its own, and told that the pill would probably give me hot flashes.  By a doctor who was smiling so kindly at me when he said it that I thought seriously about slapping him.  Just for a second.  Which means this ain't gonna be good, if I felt like that while I had estrogen still floating around.  About this time a leaf blew off the tree and hit Deb's shoulder, and she screamed loudly.  Which made a cow start mooing again and made us....

Laugh at shadows, more bugs, and leaves.  About that time we were sipping the last of our wine, and didn't notice Steve slip out and say something in his booming deep voice.  I jumped and screamed and so did Deb.  I thought a cow had gotten loose, circled around behind us and was about to charge us.  I invited Steve to join us, but he said no, he was going back to bed, which caused me to wonder out loud why the *#&$ he had bothered coming out at all.  Except I knew why.

He wanted to make me scream and pee my pants.

Because he is evil that way.

Thanks Deb, my Wretched Daughter, for being there to watch stars with me.  Let's do it again kiddo. Same time, next year.

(This post is in response to two prompts on Friday Reflections, how I deal with anxiety, and reflecting on my favorite song.  Somehow, this week, they were both tied together.) 

...life is good. ~cat
i am @jonesbabie on twitter

rubberband man

Two weeks ago I opened my closet door, searching for the lightest material I could find. It had to be light as gossamer, and not add one ounce to the scale when I stepped up at the doctor's office. I knew jeans would add at least a pound of fake weight, so I dug through sweaters, tops, pants, jeans, searching...searching...beginning to feel desperate.

Then I saw it. Tucked back out of sight, never worn because it had always been too clingy. Too revealing of bulges and bumps I didn't want on display. The dress. Just a simple navy, scoop neck knit. You ladies know the type of dress I am talking about. I twisted my lips as I wondered if I could get into it. Then I lifted it off the hanger and my decision was made.

It weighed about 2 ounces. Perfect. If I could just squeeze my ass into it. I went to ask Wretch if she had a slip I could borrow. It had been so long since I wore a dress that I didn't own a slip. Wretched Daughter handed me a slip as she uttered the fateful words:

"It's a slimming slip."

That should have clued me. The key word was slimming.  I didn't have time to think it through so I grabbed the slip and headed to the shower to get ready for work. That is when the fun began. I learned some valuable lessons as I struggled to get this piece of spandex hell on:

1. Never put on anything spandex while your skin is still damp from a shower. It sticks like glue and refuses to budge.
2. Never use lotion before putting on spandex for reason #1.
3. Never EVER put it on over your head.  STEP into it.
4. Once you have put it on over your head, you are trapped.

It was nice and soft and stretchy when I was holding it in my hand. Once I got it over my head and under my armpits, it turned into a boa constrictor. It rolled up firmly under my armpits, and refused to budge. I couldn't reach it to pull it over my head, and I couldn't unroll it to pull it down.

I was stuck. At that point, I got a bit panicky, and started to sweat like a pig. Which made the boa constrict tighter. It began to feel like I would die, and end up with a rubber band buried up in my armpits.

I pulled from the front. Then realized I was pulling the bottom of the slip out over the top and it couldn't roll down. Not even one inch. I tried to unroll it from underneath, but it decided that it wasn't going to budge that way either. I tried to reach behind my back and pull it down from there.  Nope. I tried to pull the whole nightmare of a slip off over my head. Nope. By then my body was swelling from having the blood flow constricted, and it was buried even deeper into my flesh, if that was possible.

I was running out of time and made one last effort. I grabbed the front of the slip and yanked on it like I was pulling down a shade. It hesitated, then suddenly unfolded. I rolled it down my thighs, and then stopped to catch my breath.

Suddenly it felt pretty good. Or maybe it was that I could breathe again. I slid my dress over my head and looked down. Bumps, bulges and odd spots all under control. It really was a miracle slip. Wretch cautioned me that it wouldn't remold me (dang it) but that it would smooth me.  It sure did. I felt like a tire with a new tread. Today was going to be great, I could just feel it.

I drove to work. When I got out of my car, I realized that the rubberband slip was going to let me know all day who the boss was.

Because every time I sat down all day, the backside of the slip slid up and cupped my behind. I spent the entire day feeling like my ass was in a sling.

All that effort to save 6 ounces on the scale at the doctor's office.

The dress went in the garbage when I got home that night. The slip is still embedded in my skin.


...you're bound to lose control when the rubberband starts to jam... ~cath
i am @jonesbabie on twitter

nightlife is the bright life

Reminiscing tonight after seeing something on the television triggered a memory for tonight's photo response to the NaBloPoMo prompt, NIGHTLIFE.

When Jim (our middle child) was about 4 or 5 years old, we were eating dinner and talking when we noticed that Jim had gotten quiet.  We looked at him and started laughing.  He had fallen asleep in his chair, with a half eaten chicken leg still grasped in his left hand, his arm dangling at the side of the chair. As we laughed, it led to another "Jim story" from about the same time.  Steve got up before daylight one morning to find the refrigerator door standing wide open. Lying on the floor in the light cast from the open door was the red rind off a piece of bologna, an empty cheese wrapper and an empty soda can. When Steve checked on Jim, he found half a piece of bologna laying on the pillow beside his head.  He asked Jim why he had left the door to the refrigerator open. Jim's response: "because it was dark and I was afraid I couldn't see to get back to bed."

Nightlife in my house revolves around the family refrigerator.  The welcoming gleam of the interior light provides security in a darkened room, foods and treats to scavenge, and drama after a big family meal when we struggle and fight to find places to stuff all the leftovers. Then there is the unsolved mystery of the light. Is it on all the time, or only when the door opens?  Even Jim still hasn't figured that one out, 37 years later.

(Happy Birthday to my sweet Sneezer, who turned 42 on May 25.)

...life is good. ~cath
i am @jonesbabie on twitter

friday reflection: the funniest thing I saw this week

This week, the +FridayReflections prompts offered a chance to go back to previous weeks and write about something we had not used as a prompt. Since I missed a few weeks, dealing with other things, I looked back and the prompt I wanted to write about jumped right off the page and into my head:

What was the funniest thing you saw or heard this week?

If you saw what I posted yesterday you will see a photo of a 10 year old boy smiling. If you are very observant, you will notice his tie. His mother noticed it the second she saw him from the other side of the room. Here is the story behind the tie:

Jen called me the other day to share something. I had been feeling a bit overwhelmed, dealing with one thing after another in my life. I was beginning to feel as though a day wasn't going to dawn that didn't bring some major thing to endure with it. So I was half ass listening to what Jen said at first. She told me about Awards Day at school for the twins, and their accomplishments. I was proud of the kids, no doubt about that, but still miserable in my own skin. Then she told me about Duncan. 

This year not only did they receive awards for accomplishments, the twins also graduated from elementary school to middle school. So graduation was a big thing for them. Jen told me she sent a tie, shirt and jacket with Dunc so he could dress properly for such an important occasion. She arrived from work just in time to see the ceremony.

And being a mother, she noticed it right away. Dunc, who didn't hold his bottle until 3 days before Jen weaned him off it, and didn't dress himself until he was well over 5, had dressed himself. Jacket, shirt and tie in place. Except for one thing.

The tie was INSIDE the neck of his shirt. When she saw it, Jen started laughing. Then she fought the urge to do corrective dressing and let him wear it like it was. 

I was laughing as loudly as Jen while she told me this. I could just picture it, and when I did get a picture from Jen, it was exactly as I imagined. And...the tie was RED, which meant it REALLY stood out.

A bit later I was struck by the real lesson. It wasn't the laughter, although that was medicine for my soul. It was the fact that Jen got it. She understood what was important that day. It wasn't the tie. It was the fact that Duncan, the boy with ADD who had been failing the first grade, was graduating on the A/B honor roll.

And THAT is more important than a red tie inside a shirt.

...life is good. ~cath
i am @jonesbabie on twitter

Today is day 23 of NaBloPoMo over at BlogHer and the prompt is OUTSIDE. I was stumped about it until we stopped at a traffic light today. Stevie Wonder said "look what is painted on the outside of that guy's truck!"  I saw it, and as we passed by I shot this photo. Little bit of editing (I couldn't be me without tweaking a photo with an app), a caption, and here is my take on the prompt (and also the funniest thing I saw besides Dunc's tie):

the sugar in my lemonade

I was going to write something pithy and wise today, the day before Mother's Day, about something that would be so important it would change your life forever.

Forget that. I do good to put two sentences together. So I decided to respond to the +FridayReflections prompt of who has impacted my life for the better. I could say something about my mum, because it is almost Mother's Day here in the USA. She and I haven't always seen eye to eye, but she did contribute one important thing to me. She gave me a backbone of steel, and the belief that I could do anything I wanted to do. 

But the people I want to talk about today are two of the most important people in my life. Throughout my whole life, they were there for me. During hard times, lonely times, times when I didn't have an answer, there they were. They didn't always have the answer either, just as I often didn't have it for them. But they loved me unconditionally, and without judgment. Even when we disagreed, it was always with the understanding that it was ok to disagree, and that it would not affect our trust or feelings for each other. I think of them every day, and especially today. 

They are my sisters, Vicky and Debbie. The sugar in my lemonade.

Vicky, Debbie, and Cathy

day2

We have another side too. A raucous, wicked side that lets us make fun of each other, laugh at each other, and gives me a feeling of zest and joy that last for days. Yesterday we were texting each other, asking Vix if mum's gifts we sent had gotten there. I just KNEW I was gonna have the most unique gift. I had thought this through, plotted, and planned it so that I would be mum's favorite daughter by Mother's Day. I sent flowers:

day 1

Vix Gave mother flowers:

We were both texting back and forth, pretty proud that we had made mum happy.  Then Dooj's GIFT arrived and Vix sent me a picture:

that is a balloon on top and chocolates too

Our text chat then proceeded along these lines:

Vix: the #$&%@ has outdone us Cath. LMAO.

Me: how dare she do that! I think that $(#*#@$ balloon is a $%*#&@$ bit over the top. 

Dooj: LMAO

Vix: is that the one you wanted Dooj, or is this arrangement too small?

Dooj: lolololol

Me: you sure you didn't tell them that was for a funeral Dooj? It's big enough to cover a casket.

Dooj: lololololol...I did tell them no lilies but I'm not going to tell Mother that.

Vix: Momma is getting a kick out of these comments. She did say it was big enough for a funeral. I told her if she kicked the bucket before Sunday (Mother's Day) we would use it.

Me: lololol.

Me:(to Vix) I hope Dooj's flowers die first....

Vix: lolololol....

I have a secret weapon though...today mum got these:

Score one for the big sis...

NaBloPoMo photo prompt day 9 is: Light

...be positive...the best is yet to come... ~cath
find me @jonesbabie on Twitter

throwback thursday

way back in about 1986

Maddie was looking through some photos I had posted online and found one of my kids and me in about 1986.  She identified everyone in the photo but one person, and asked me "Grammy, who is that?"  I told her it was me, and she repeated her question two more times in disbelief.

She finally said:  You're as little as your kids!
I said: well Maddie I was a lot younger then, and the kids had mostly gotten as big as me (with the exception of Wretch, who was about Maddie's age).  (No way was I going to comment on what she obviously meant, which was that I was THINNER.)

Then Duncan started in: that's you?  that's YOU?  THAT'S YOU???
*sigh*
Me: Yes Duncan it is me.
Duncan: You look like you need to be married.
Me: I was Duncan, to Gramps.  That's why I was as LITTLE AS THE KIDS...I got married when I was a kid...(sort of...I was 17).  :)

Gramps, me and some of the kids and grandkids in fall 2014

Link up any Throwback Thursday photos you would like to share, in the comments below.

...laugh, life is good! ~cath
find me @jonesbabie on Twitter

epic fail, with joy

Last August I decided I needed to go back to school.  More specifically, I decided to take a class in wound/ostomy/continence care, to pursue certification as a WOC nurse.  The program I chose was a graduate level class with a year of knowledge crammed into a semester.  Online.

I almost hyperventilated as I sank more money than I could imagine on something I would only experience through the computer.  I am comfortable with a computer.  That wasn't the issue.  It was that I spent the better part of 9 years without much time off, and working 2 jobs (or more) while attending classes.  I survived, swearing I would never go back to school.  EVER.

Then I did this.  I struggled with a new set of rules and regs, screwed up a few times, had a hard time focusing to study (recommendation was 2 hours a day...I think I might have studied 2 hours a week). I felt like any minute I would fail.

But I didn't.  I made it through lectures.  Made it through proctored finals (3 times) when some kid would ask me for my ID, and search my room (using MY webcam) for any lurking cheat sheets or dust bunnies that looked suspiciously like cheat sheets.  The first time I went through the process, I felt violated.  By the third time. I was ready to take the test naked if I could just GET FINISHED.

I also foolishly signed on to the NaBloPoMo December daily blogging challenge TWO DAYS BEFORE MY FINAL FINAL.  The thing I neglected to think through was that if I didn't pass that last test, the whole semester was shot.  That's right.  It was all or nothing.  So I wrote and posted on my blog those first two days.  By the 3rd day, the day of my final, I had been without sleep for long enough that I was delusional and thought I didn't have to study much.  Translate that to mean that I procrastinated... painting my nails, coloring my hair, and waxing parts of my body I had no business waxing, until 2 hours before the test, when panic finally set in and I studied.

And passed.  And crashed after it all.  For days afterward I was a zombie, until I woke up one day and realized several things.

1. I was finished with class.  I HAD PASSED.
2. I was going to miss being able to fart out loud and drink a glass of wine while taking a live class.  
3. I had failed at the NaBloPoMo daily blogging challenge.  (Again.)
4. I still had clinical practicum to complete before the class was truly, really completed.

Clinicals in January and February.  Jacksonville, here I come.  Brace yourself.

EPIC FAIL, with joy.  The best is yet to come.

...life is good. find your joy.  ~cath
find me @jonesbabie on Twitter

the saromony

It's been an eventful year for our family so far.  That is one reason I haven't posted anything in the past month.  Events in my life have had me so busy I just couldn't focus on writing a single post.  Then the desire to write began to go (similar to exercise, if you don't do it consistently the interest and routine begins to fade.) I was beginning to worry about ever feeling that push in my gut to put my thoughts down again, and then something happened to light me up again.  It was something big in our family, but not important to anyone else, and I thought to myself "I'll post this, so I won't forget it."

So here I am, typing away again on the computer, putting down another memory and laughing about it while I do.  It started with the marriage of my daughter and new son in law.  A second marriage for both, they had been hemming and hawing about getting married for a while now.  Jen, being the planner she is, had planned and postponed their wedding a couple times.  First the mountains, then the beach, no back to the mountains, no, let's go to the beach. That sort of thing.  Then she decided she needed to plan it far enough in advance she could lose some weight...

Then cancer struck.  Several months and three surgeries ago, Jen was diagnosed with cancer on her vocal chord.  The left vocal chord to be specific.  I know where it is because I saw an endoscopic photo of the monster in my baby's throat.  Every three months, a trip to the outpatient surgery.  She would be put to sleep and her vocal chord stripped.  Over and over until I began to despair.  Then, after the last surgery the surgeon gave us wonderful news.  It had been downgraded from cancer to dysplasia.  That means abnormal cells, NOT cancer.  We celebrated and took a deep breath.  And said a prayer that the surgery in May will be the last.

So the wedding plans were on again...this time it was the beach...no it was too cold in spring for the beach...it was going to be in the beautiful yard of a coworker and friend of Jennifer's, in May.  The race was on and shopping trips and online browsing ensued to find the perfect wedding dress and clothes for the kids and Michael (the quietly suffering uncomplaining groom).  Texts were passed back and forth, and photos of dresses, discussions about how to add red to the black and white theme Jen had decided on.  I was stoic, and promised to help with the alterations and anything else I was assigned to.

Then a week or so ago, on the 28th day of March, while I was in another state on business, Jen did something that made me proud of her.  It was totally out of character for my superplanner accountant daughter.

Jennifer and Michael slipped off to the county courthouse and got married.  When I got out of my meeting and turned my phone back on at the airport, I was hit with a barrage of texts.  The first I saw was Steve saying we have a new son in law.  I kind of disregarded it, because this is the same man who told me his parents had an outhouse right before he put me on a plane (2 weeks before I gave birth) to Alabama to stay with his parents until he was mustered out of the Air Force.  (There was no outhouse.)  Other texts confirmed it, including the one from Jen to us all, announcing what she had done, after the fact.

What Jen didn't count on was the disappointment of one of the kids.  She said Michael's daughters were ok with it, and Duncan could care less.  But Maddie was disappointed.  Steve confirmed it when he said she looked crestfallen when Jen told her on the phone what had happened.  Maddie had looked forward to being part of her mommy's wedding and told me later "you won't have to make my dress fit now, Grammy, since Mommy and Michael got married."

I figured that was the end of it, and Maddie would get past it and move on.  Then last weekend I got a bizarre text from Maddie.  This was the text I got (remember she is 8 years old):

I thought they were on their way to the wedding of a friend and just laughed at Maddie's spelling and telling me Dunc was the "ring guy".  Then I got this from Jen a while later:

THAT was what Maddie was alluding to in her convoluted way!  It touched me that Jen would make the extra effort to include the kids (as many as she could get together at one time anyway) and try to make them feel part of this marriage.  And if it took a little time to put something together, then it was all worth it.  I sent Jen the text Maddie had sent to me, and this is how that went:

So now I have a son in law and three beautiful new granddaughters.  I see the happiness in my daughter's eyes and it warms me to know she is happy.  

Congratulations Michael and Jennifer.  Sometimes it is the little saromonies that mean the most, and have the most significance.

...life is good. ~cath 

find me @jonesbabie on Twitter

of minion bondage

I have a new man in my life.  I think Stevie Wonder may be upset when he realizes that he has been usurped in my heart by a short, jaundiced looking man who laughs too much, and has a weird sense of humor.  (Sounds a lot like a description of me.)






His vision is poor, so he wears a thick spectacle.  He is overweight, and his IQ may not be the highest, but I am in love with him.





Phil vaporizes my tea with a fart dart launcher every morning and serves me faithfully, waiting on me hand and foot.

He has a beautiful brown eye and it is always focused on me.

I am smitten, and fear I will end up throwing away a 43 year marriage for a....

minion...



...life is good. ~cath
find me @jonesbabie on Twitter

concoction

Last night I cooked supper for Steve.  I had been trying a recipe I didn't have time for during the holidays, so I decided since I had dessert, I would really shock the s**t out of him and cook a main course.  I am a simple person when it comes to cooking.  I believe in using the fewest pots possible to make a meal.  I measure my success in cooking in the amount of dishes I DON'T dirty...weird I know but since I have never had a dishwasher, there is a method to my madness.

I looked in the fridge and saw some leftover cheese dip I had made.  Aha! I thought to myself, I'll make a concoction and save pots and be thrifty at the same time (i.e., using leftovers and not throwing them away), in effect killing two birds with one stone.

con·coc·tion

kənˈkäkSHən/

noun

1. 1.

   a mixture of various ingredients or elements.

   "a concoction of gables, shingles, stained glass, and towers inspired by English medieval houses"

   synonyms:

   mixture, brew, preparation, potion "a concoction containing gin and vodka" blend, mixture, mix, combination, hybrid "a strange concoction of folk pop and Gregorian chant"

So I took the cheese dip out (it had ground beef in it, always a starting point for any concoction), boiled some noodles (it was either noodles or spaghetti pasta, and I felt egg noodles would be more aesthetically pleasing).  Then I tossed them all together in the same pot I had boiled the noodles in (after draining off the noodle water of course).  Voila, dinner and dessert and I didn't even break a sweat.

As I made the concoction, I thought about how the word came into being in our family.  It is a word my sisters will understand the moment they see this post.  What does this word mean to me?

It is how I learned to cook.  When I was about 13 or 14, my mother was on a journey of self discovery.  She was a good cook, but never wanted anyone helping her in the kitchen, and so I knew nothing about cooking.  Somehow, when mom and dad divorced and mother went to work, I chose the task of cooking for my sisters and I.  Don't ask me why, because it was long before I knew about Julia Child.  In fact, I didn't even know how to boil water.  That was the first thing I learned to do, and it was about that time I started drinking tea.  I had tried coffee with milk and sugar but mom had told me that if I was going to drink coffee, I had to drink it black.  So that stopped my coffee drinking cold, and I fell in love with tea.  Milk and sugar of course, which for some reason didn't offend mom's sensibilities.  It's a habit I still have.  

After I learned to boil water, I began to think of ways to cook something we could actually eat.  I decided to started with ground beef.  That was almost always the base for my concoctions.  After that I tossed in whatever we had in the pantry.  But the magic began the first time I spotted the spice rack and decided to "spice" it up.  I knew spaghetti had spices, and so did a lot of other recipes.  I wasn't working with a recipe, so I decided to just let my imagination guide me.

My sisters will say straight up that my imagination caused epic failures much of the time. There were times what I cooked was delicious, or at least palatable.  Then there were the times the girls thought I was trying to poison them. 

I can hear them laughing as they read this.  What started out as an experiment in learning for me, brought us all closer.  Along the way, we learned to rely on ourselves, and that we could do anything we set our minds to.  An attitude that persists to this day in all three of us.

What a memory.  What marvelous times we had, and we didn't even realize it at the time.

See you soon Vix and Dooj...and I'll make you a concoction while I am there.  I've improved just a bit over the years. xo  

...life is so very good. ~cath 
find me @jonesbabie on Twitter

funny moments

Maddie and Jack age 4

There is enough in life to frustrate and aggravate you on a daily basis when you are an adult.  When I feel like I am about to hit the boiling point, I try to let go and think like a child.  I have four children in my life that help me to keep this perspective.  And the laughter and joy they bring me is what helps me keep a positive attitude, or correct my attitude or mood when I feel as though I am about to take a negative turn.

Steve shared a story about Jack yesterday with me that made us both laugh.  Children are the most guileless people on the planet when they are small.  They can try to put one over on you, but they trip themselves up every single time.  That was what Jack encountered the day he told Gramps he wanted a glass of milk.  Gramps told him that there wasn't any milk, all we had was buttermilk.  That was when the fun began.

Jack: I'll take buttermilk, I like buttermilk.
Gramps: I am not sure you will like it Jack, it tastes different.  It doesn't taste like milk.
Jack: Sure I like it.  I LOVE buttermilk.
Gramps: I don't think you do Jack.
Jack: (Even more insistently now) I LOVE BUTTERMILK.  My Mom gives me BUTTERMILK all the time, and I love it!
Gramps: OK Jack.

Then Gramps poured Jack a big glass of buttermilk.  Jack took a big swig of it, and ran for the sink.  He spewed the buttermilk out of his mouth like a geyser, and into the sink.  Gramps said (with a smirk on his face) "I thought you liked buttermilk Jack?"

Jack said:
I THOUGHT I DID TOO BUT THAT STUFF TASTES CRAPPY!

The whole time Jack was talking, he was scraping his tongue, trying to get every last drop of buttermilk out of his mouth.

Jack has never asked for buttermilk since that day.


...life is good. ~cath
find me @jonesbabie on Twitter

silly stuff

And sometimes it's the stupid stuff that gets you through each day...

Because laughter doesn't have any thing to do with intelligence, but is all about sharing a connection...

Copy and paste this in your browser (it's a safe link even though it looks like junk):

http://www.jibjab.com/view/fr9xTZLhR7uB5LOMoSKIpA?utm_campaign=URL+Copy&utm_content=elf_dance_app_5&utm_medium=Share&utm_source=JibJab&cmpid=jj_url

Or you might try this one (the only thing on my Facebook that I have posted public):

http://www.jibjab.com/view/NN_CU82tS2q4dXX9jgoXiw?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Share&utm_campaign=ElfDance&utm_content=elf_dance_app_5

and if those links didn't work, then you'll have to wonder what I was doing. :)

I call this the grandkid shuffle (I threw the dog in so they would have an extra dancer...it was either that or put Gramps in and he is the brunt of my jokes often enough.  I figured it was time to give Gramps a break and humiliate the dog.  The grandkids?  By the time they are old enough to be embarrassed by this, I'll be dead anyway...soooo.....

Grammy strikes again. :)

...life is good. ~cath
find me @jonesbabie on Twitter

lessons i have (recently) learned

The grandkids and granddog are here this weekend, and as usual, they are teaching me some important life lessons:

1. No matter how fast I work, two hands and a container of Clorox Clean-Ups cannot keep up with the drips and messes that three 8 year olds, a 3 year old, a 66 year old, and one 6 month old Golden Retriever can make.  The math simply doesn't compute.  I was outnumbered before I picked up the container.

2. Lucy the Golden Retriever holds a grudge.  No matter how lovely her bath experience is, complete with mood lighting and incense, said dog will still get up in the middle of the night and urinate in the carpet to show who has the last word (or pee).  Then she will smile about it.

3. Gramps will cook breakfast for the kids, but he won't clean up the dog's urine.  But he will be considerate enough to wake me up at 6 AM on my day off to tell me the the dog peed the carpet. AFTER I clean up the pee spot, Gramps will tell me it probably happened because he closed the bedroom door during the night.  Too many night lights (read every lamp in the house on) disturbed his sleep, and he forgot that the dog would need to be able to get to ME to let me know she had to go out.  So peeing on the carpet was all my fault.

4. Telling the grands they stink is not an effective way to shame them into taking a bath.  They take pride in stinking.  The only effective tool is withholding cookies until they do get up and hit the shower.

5. Kids riding 4 wheelers in the yard is an effective way to exercise Lucy the dog.  It also keeps Lucy's attention and prevents wandering.  Until you want her to come in.  Then she turns into a greased pig and you can't lay a finger on her.

6. Guilt over forgetting your granddaughter's antibiotic will cause a return trip a day later to pick up the medicine for the cure.  Seventy miles of guilty road trip.  Although I still have to bear the burden of missing a couple doses.  (The bonus: all 4 kids get to stay with son and drive him crazy for a few hours.)  

7. Grandchildren will never spare your feelings if it means lying.  Maddie yesterday: "Grammy I hate to tell you this but this gravy doesn't taste good and I can't eat it."  I made that gravy from scratch, rather than the packaged crap Gramps fixes.  Maddie prefers the packaged crap powdered gravy.

8. It never pays to clean up my house before the grands arrive.  Five minutes after they get here, it looks like it did five minutes after they arrived for their LAST visit.  Which actually adds some symmetry to my life.

9.  I am the only one who can hear in this family.  The grands, Steve, Jim, and the granddog are all deaf to the sound of my voice.  But their noses all work fine.  They can smell a meal cooking from a mile away.

10. Maddie makes awesome meatballs.  Especially when I remember to tell her to go wash the dog hair off her hands before she gets too far into rolling them.  (We only had a few fuzzy meatballs in the pot, not even enough to cause a hairball in the throat.)

11. If you take a nap at my house when Sunday
dinner is ready, be prepared to eat tuna fish out of the package and gingerbread cookies.  Gramps might cook enough to feed us all, but when the spoon starts dipping servings, it is every woman for herself.  Even if the only reason you had to have the nap was because the dog kept licking your arm all night because she was lonely. 

12. Lucy can outrun us all.  So Steve doesn't even try.  He lets her in, waits until she's run mud all over the house, then wipes her paws off.

I give up.  I'm outnumbered.   I have medication somewhere to help me get through this. :)


...life is good. ~cath
 @jonesbabie on Twitter

ormigami yoga yoda

I had to travel to Birmingham twice this week, after work.  Not an easy thing to do when you are tired at the end of a work day.  One trip was to show Maddie's Girl Scout troop a little bit about yoga.  What I know about yoga could fit on the head of a pin.  But I figured 8 and 9 yr old girls couldn't be too tough to stand in front of for 20 minutes.  And I could bluff my way through anything with kids.  I have with the grands many  times, and managed to keep a straight face.

This time my karma held and I was right.  Of course, to earn the fitness badge the Brownies were working on took more than just yoga.  They had done 20 minutes of Zumba before they got to me.  There was a bit of a problem right away though.

Yoga requires a focused mind, deep breathing techniques and the ability to hold a pose.  You can't take 10 little girls and wind them up in a Zumba class and expect they will be able to lay on a mat and do yoga poses after jumping around like grasshoppers.

tree pose

We actually fared well together though.  I told them a little about the history of yoga, then we sat and did some deep breathing.  Then we went through some poses.  They loved the poses.  My mistake was in giving them handouts.  The more daring of the bunch wanted to try something called the birthday candle.  (You raise your back and legs off the mat, and balance your body on
your shoulders and head.  I took one look and told them no way could I do that pose.  Then I showed them a Sun Salutation, and made them do that one twice.  After that I took them through Warrior I and Warrior II, and most of them snickered, thinking I was an old lady and was doing the easy stuff.  Then I put them in a Reverse Warrior pose, and heard the groans I was waiting for.  I smiled secretly to myself then put them through some more poses.  At the end of 20 minutes, they were done.  Like a well cooked roast beef.

And so was I.  I'd been sick the week before and hadn't practiced yoga in days, and could feel it in the quivering muscles in my legs and back.  Right before I collapsed in an ignominious heap on the floor in front of them, I took them through the meditation/relaxation.

Namaste

Try getting 10 little girls to keep their eyes closed and relax, when they are full of energy from all the exercise they have done.  It just isn't possible.  I had them all together for about 3 seconds.  Then eyes started popping open, and heads twisting.  They were afraid they were missing something, so they kept peeking.  The only thing they were missing was me laughing.  No one noticed that.

Namaste.

...life is good. ~cath 

find me @jonesbabie on Twitter

and your bird can sing

We have a new family member.  Steve got Cheep for his birthday Sunday.  Wretch thought it would be the perfect pet.  One that wouldn't consume food in one end and digest it out the other.  No water, no cage, just a bird on a perch.

Until John decided it belonged to him.  "MINE" he said, "MINE!!!".  Of course he lost that argument and Cheep ended up on the mantel, 6 feet hight and out of reach.  And oddly quiet (he is activated by motion).  He sat and stared.  Until Wretch walked by.

CHEEP! CHEEEEEP!! cHEeP, chEEp, ChEEp he sang.

Then Stevie Wonder walked by. CheeP! cHEEp, CHEeP, ChEEEEppp he sang.

I just loved it.  What a fun little critter.  I decided it was time to make him sing for me.  So I walked by him, grinning with anticipation.

Nothing.  Dead silence.  Not the tiniest cheep or peep out of him.  I stood and stared at him.  Then I muttered some really ugly words only he could hear me say...

Well ok, Wretch and Steve heard me too.  Involved the F bomb somewhere in the string of ugly words out of my mouth.

Nothing.

I decided I needed to wave my arm.  So I waved my arm in a huge arc in front of the bird.

Silence.

I jumped up and down.  Silence.  The bird just sat and stared at me.

I jumped AND waved my arms.

Not a cheep, not even a peep.  Disgustedly, I walked away across the room and turned around to sit down on the couch.  Just as I turned my back and bent over to move a cushion, I heard him cheeping loudly.

I snorted in disgust and flipped the bird the bird.

Steve and Wretch were doubled over in laughter.  Steve hollered out "it needed a bigger target to set it off!"

The laughing got louder.

Damn bird.

...life is good. ~cath
find me @jonesbabie on Twitter

you CAN have your cake and eat it too

Today is Stevie Wonder's birthday.  We don't normally make a big deal out of birthdays, and never really have.  Well except for the Wilton Cake Decorating Course I took at home when the kids were little.  And all that really meant was that they didn't have a whole lot of say about the type of cake they got, because it was whatever I was practicing at the time (poor Jim got a cake that looked like someone had puked a bouquet of flowers all over it because I was learning how to make flowers).  We make sure there is still cake (that I DO NOT decorate) and make contact with the person on their birthday to send them wishes and love.

So yesterday Steve got an ice cream cake created at the Dairy Queen and served up by Jen after the kids' soccer games were over and we were back at her house.  Steve is the kind of Gramps that believes in equality between the grand kids, so he bought a birthday cake at Wal Mart today and brought it home. So Jack and John could have cake of course....

Except that I know the truth...we couldn't bring that other cake home from Jen's like she wanted us to (it would have been a puddle in the back seat before we got here), and it's been burning a hole in Steve's brain since we left her house.  And today is the OFFICIAL day after all.  Stevie Wonder is 66.  So he will have cake to eat after all...which is what he really wanted...after all. :-D

Gratitudes:
I am thankful that back in February, when his heart rate was 27, Steve got a pacemaker and a new lease on life, and the chance to spend many more birthdays with us.

I am thankful for our years together, our children and grandchildren, and the love we all share.

I am thankful Steve wears bifocals.  (So that when he told me to toss him the remote today, arrogantly telling me that he was the only one who could correctly fast forward past the commercials, I was fortunate enough to see him miss an easy catch and watch it hit his crotch and double him over groaning for a few minutes.)  He blamed the bifocals of course.

The laugh I had that lasted way too long, was MY cake for the day.

Wretch and Steve at Point Arena Lighthouse, California 

...life is good. ~cath
find me @jonesbabie on Twitter

generations

...life is good. ~cath
find me @jonesbabie on Twitter

on pain, sorrow and laughter

It's August again.  That time of year when I have an emotional meltdown, sort of.  Some years are better than others.  This year isn't one of them.  So, I'm going to whine a little bit.  I'm not going to whine...these are just my thoughts, after all...

Pain...has become my constant companion.  I have a high pain tolerance, and have endured varying amounts of pain for varying lengths of time, as most people have during their lives.  I have discovered a new empathy for people with "chronic pain".  I don't know when acute pain becomes chronic, but I feel like I am approaching that threshold.  I have discovered on my odyssey of pain, that constant pain can wear you down mentally, and cause even the most optimistic person (that would be me) to become bitchy and mean at times.  There are days I feel like I am living someone else's life.  I literally am a pain in the neck...my neck.  You wouldn't think it is that big a deal, but as the pain gets worse, the muscles of my neck and shoulders tighten up, increasing the pain, and it becomes a vicious circle I can't seem to escape.  Steroid injections help for a bit, but yoga has been my salvation, so much so that when I skip 2 or 3 days (like I have now) my shoulders and neck remind me to return to my yoga.  Yoga has increased my flexibility, and keeps the pain at a bearable level.  I don't do well with pain killers, and would rather have the pain than to have my consciousness altered on a daily basis by a narcotic.  I do take ibuprofen and a mild muscle relaxer (nothing strong for me there either), and indulge in a glass of wine and a spell in the hot tub on some evenings.  All this helps.  But nothing cures it.
 
Sorrow...August is the month I was born in, and that my father died in.  It's been 61 years for me now, and I celebrate every year (ok, most of the time I do), and since 2000 I grieve for my father at the same time.  I celebrate my years, not the month.  August to me has become only a reminder of how much I wish I could talk to Dad one more time, laugh with him, hear his voice.  I miss all the loved ones who have died, but August seems to bring it into a fine focus, like looking at your grief under a microscope.  I can't bear to look too long, because the more I look, the sadder I become.  I am not a weeper (my mum can attest to this) but I seem to do a good bit of it in August.  I guess Dad wouldn't mind too much, although I only saw him cry twice my whole life.  (He wasn't a weeper either.)  From Dad comes my airhead behavior, that ability to be among people physically and be thousands of miles away lost in thought.  I also got my sense of humor from him, and my love of books and learning.  He also sent me Maddie Kate.  She has our forehead, ears, and looks at the world like we do...sometimes I swear I look into Dad's eyes when I am looking at her.  This gives me comfort and more joy than I can even describe.

Laughter...this is what keeps me going.  When things seem dark and gloomy, and I feel like I am sunk into a hole and can't see my way out, something happens to make me laugh.  Most often it is family, and the family creating the most humor right now are my grand kids.  Jen called the other night to relate her trip to church with the twins.  (The twins were recently baptized and all three of them joined a local church.)  This past Sunday they had their first Lord's Supper (communion).  In a southern Baptist church, this means you get a tiny hard crust of bread, and a plastic thimble of grape juice.  Jen called to tell us some of the things the kids did and said during the service:

Maddie: Where's supper?  I thought we were going to eat supper, a REAL supper?

Duncan: We're going BACK to church tonight? Why do we have to go so much?  We just went this morning!

Maddie: This isn't bread...it's a CRACKER.  It tastes awful.  (Jen had cautioned them not to crunch it, to let it soften in their mouths before they chewed it up.)

At some point Jen looked around and noticed Maddie had taken her empty thimble of grape juice and was running her tongue to the bottom of it, licking it clean.  I think she forgot to teach the kids their communion manners.

The twins last statement on the way out of church was:
"That was Jesus' blood?  It didn't taste like blood."

So yes, in the midst of pain and sorrow, there is also joy and laughter.  And this always brings me out of the valley.

...life is truly good. ~cath
find me @jonesbabie on Twitter

smokin!

Stevie Wonder announced to me a couple days ago we were getting a good gas grill.  A REALLY good gas grill.  Using my sister's huge gas grill while we were in California put the fever in him to replace the cheap tabletop grills we had been buying.  There were times when he didn't want to build a wood or charcoal fire for a couple burgers for us, and gas was the solution.

(Did I mention we live in the south where barbeque reigns and there are about as many places to buy barbeque as there are churches to sing hymns in?  So that is why we have a humongous brick pit [which  smokes up the house when the windows are open and the wind blows the wrong way], and also a small gas grill.  Southerners believe in barbeque like they do guns; you can never have enough.)

That is why we added the purchase of a grill to our list of things to do on our trip to Birmingham.  We already had plans to replace the couch that is shedding like a snake after only about 3 years of use.  I had some personal stuff to pick up too.  At the top on my list was something to get rid of the fuzz on my face I have begun sprouting...before the grandkids began to think Santa Claus had moved in with Gramps.  

Our last stop of the day was for the grill.  After walking and shopping my way through a half dozen stops, and purchasing what turned out to be a living room full of furniture (because the new couch would make the rest of the stuff I had in there blush with shame), the last thing I wanted to do was shop outside, in the rain, for a grill.  I stood back under the eave of the Lowe's building and watched Stevie Wonder lift the lids on each grill and examine them.  After he finished, I suggested we go in and see what else they had.  Inside he found the grill of his dreams.

The grill was actually about $120 cheaper because he took a model that was almost exactly like last year's, and also brand new, with a tiny dent in it.  What a bargain!  A store employee and Steve shoved it in the back of the truck for the ride home.

The fun began the next morning.  The very first thing the god of fire did was to fire that sucker up...with the instructions still inside...which is why you see him vacuuming in the photo.  After running inside to find his asbestos gloves, he grabbed the burning booklet out of the grill, along with the cleaning tool (which was also stored inside) and threw them out in the middle of the back yard, leaving shreds of charred paper everywhere.  The dogs were hanging close, because the smell of burning paper was similar to the smell of burning meat, and they just knew something good was coming.

I won't tell you what happened next...the video below says it better.  

While the meat was burning cooking, Stevie Wonder got Jim to help him move the grill to the other side of the deck, hoping the smoke would head out into the yard, with a little help from the box fan he set up in front of it.  I guess the ceiling fans above his head, pushing the smoke air down, didn't help to expel the smoke as much as he thought they would.  The air circulation problem was the topic for some lively discussion between Jim and SW, while we waited for the meat to char to cook.  I kept my mouth shut.

I was too busy choking on smoke and peeing my pants laughing.

...life is good. ~cath
find me @jonesbabie on Twitter