Gross Stuff and Other Questions

Where does snot come from, anyway?  I've had this upper-respiratory thing going on and I've used up about three boxes of tissues and filled as many trashcans and there is still more.  You blow and blow and think your head is empty (Hey! I heard that!) and then you have to blow again.  How much can there be?  How does your body make that from nothing?  It seems like you would be hollow after awhile.

And where does fat go when people lose it?  This an academic question for me, of course, but in case I ever get there, I've always wondered. What about my grey hair?  I've never seen a hair that was half grey and half colored, except on people who need a touch up really bad.  But for me, since it's  been a decade since I've colored my hair, does one red hair have to fall out before a whole grey hair comes in?  And if not, why do I need to get my hair cut every month?

What about the fact that I am an inch shorter than I used to be?  Is everything just scrunching together and someday my knees and ankles will be on top of each other?  Where did it go?  And my feet are bigger than they were years ago.  Do they just keep growing your whole life?  I've heard ears and noses do, but I'm not sure.  Don't think I want to know about that if it's true.

I don't want to ask my-son-the-scientist, because I'm sure he would tell me in minute detail and, in fact, I think he has but his explanations are beyond me.  Besides, I never know if he's telling the truth or making up gobbledygook.  And how would I know if he was?

And here's another question that I lay awake wondering about.  On an airplane there are, say, a hundred people and they bring on fifty pounds of food (back when they fed you on a plane flight.  I've been thinking of this for a long time). Then they serve the food, fifty pounds of food are gone, how much does the plane plus people plus luggage weigh then?  The same, or fifty pounds lighter?  Surely when somebody eats an eight-ounce steak they don't gain half a pound at one sitting.  Well, I do, but then I gain five pounds just looking at a menu, but I'm talking regular airplane passengers.  Nobody has ever answered that for me.

When someone has amnesia, how is it that they still remember how to talk and even read?  And when birds sleep, why don't they fall off the tree limbs?  If they just have a tight grip with their claws, you would think a good wind would send them swinging upside down like a gong in a bell.

On Facebook the other day someone asked his friends if they dreamed in color.  This is one I think I know. The answer is Yes!  Come on, before black and white television or before that, still cameras, how would some one's brain even know that there was such a thing as black and white?  People dream what they know; the world is in color.  So there.  But why do people keep asking that question?

And one last thing, something that I've wondered about for years and I don't even think my son would have the answer to this one.  Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?

I keep wondering about these things.  Let me know if you come up with any answers.

What's In A Name?

I've always been conflicted about my name.  For the first half of my life I was called Patty, but Patty seems like a little kid's name, so somewhere along the line I changed it to Pat, but that doesn't feel like me because in my mind I am still Patty.

Of course it didn't help that when I was finally settling in to being called Pat I got a job where there was already a Pat so they wanted  me to pick another name and I went back to Patty.  Except at home and at church where I was still Pat.  Unless my mom or my sisters called, then it was Patty.  Are you keeping up?

In junior high my nickname for awhile was "Poundsie", a play on my last name, Pounds.  It's not something I encouraged for long. At the time we all wanted nicknames, but these days it's just a little TOO descriptive, so if I hear it from the mouths of any of my children after they read this, I know plenty of secrets about them too.  Just sayin'.

In high school I spent hours practicing my name-to-be: Mrs. Dennis Carey, Patty Carey, Mrs. D. P. Carey.  I wrote it all over my notebooks and papers.  It was pretty nauseating now that I look back at it but I'm pretty sure you did the same thing.

Then, magically, a couple of years later, that was my name.  We went back to college, Dennis's senior year and my freshman, found a new church in that town and decided to join it.  I was sure they introduced us as Dennis and Patty Carey, but when people came down to welcome us, each one shook my hand and said "We're so glad to have you, Peggy,"  and "Welcome to our Fellowship, Peggy,"  and "Good to meet you, Peggy."  I stood there mute.  (it was a lo-o-o-ng time ago)  For the next nine months people called me Peggy and I answered to it.  You can see why I get confused.

These days I am Mom, and Grandma, and Miss Pat to little kids because we live in the South.  A friend of our granddaughter's wanted my attention once and yelled "Hey, Hayley's Grandma!"   I knew who he meant.  Telemarketers call and want to speak to Mrs. Curry or Mrs. Cory.  I know who they mean too but I don't care because I am planning to hang up on them if they get too pushy.

My driver's license says I am Patricia Pounds Carey.  (Pounds is my maiden name which I took for my middle name when I got married so as not to have my past completely disappear)  but Patricia is more dignified than I will ever be.  Sometimes they call me that at doctor's offices and I just sit there and almost miss my turn after being in the waiting room for half the morning.

So you can call me what you want, I guess. If it starts with a P I'll probably answer to it. Just call me.  I'd love to hear from you.

Hair Today--Gone Tomorrow

This morning I got a text from my granddaughter: "I dyed my hair purple!"  I texted back:  "Cool. Can't wait to see it."

Things have changed since I was a teen-ager in the sixties.  Hair wars were almost as volatile as the war in Southeast Asia back then.  Parents would insist on teen-age boys getting their hair cut in the old buzz cut that they had worn in grade school;  boys wanted to wear their hair longer, touching their collars was pretty daring. 

I never did really see the point of that fight, other than parents asserting their authority and kids rebelling against it.  I always secretly admire parents who let their kids do weird things with their hair because it shows me they get it: these things pass and you need to save your big guns for the fights that really matter. Besides, when  your kids look back years from now and see their high school yearbook pictures and everybody howls with laughter, there ya' go!  And their children will probably be wanting to do even stranger things.

I suppose the intent is to shock. I'm sorry, most of the time I just laugh.  Of course, in the beginning when I saw some of the current hair-styles I admit I was a bit taken aback. The first time I saw a girl with one side of her hair shaved and the other long I felt so sorry for her!  I was sure she had just had brain surgery and was very brave to be coming out in public.

Mohawks never cease to amaze me, although they are so prevalent now they are almost passe'.  The first real mohawk I saw was on a guy in London and it was about eight inches high and spiked with different colors on each spike. I was fascinated. How long does it take to do that?  And what do you do when it rains?  Does the color run down your face like a rainbow? I guess I stared and that was the point for this particular kid.

It seems like the hair wars kind of faded out when the real war was over.  Hair was just hair and when our youngest son, Jake, grew a mullet (you should hear how his kids roar when they look at old pictures) we didn't mind.  Sometimes he wanted it straightened, sometimes curly.  Not having a daughter I had never thought I'd be giving home permanents to my kid, but I did.  By the time he was sixteen and looking for a part-time job, the longish hair had lost some of its allure.  It was amazing how quickly he got a job when he admitted people were stupid and prejudiced about long hair but "He who has the gold makes the rules".  As soon as he got his hair cut, he got a job.

When Jake was in college he decided to make a different kind of statement with his hair.  He shaved it all off.  I'm not sure it had exactly the kind of effect he intended.  He wore a "do-rag" on his bald head and when he went he out looked pretty much like a cancer patient undergoing chemo and people felt sorry for him. Didn't last long.

And that's my point.  Hair will grow back, ( well, at least it will when you're a teen-ager) or it can be cut.  It can say "Hey, I'm too cool to look like my dad."  or "I've got hours and hours to spend on getting this spike to stand up exactly where I want it," or "Purple is my favorite color this week!"   If kids are looking for ways to shock there are way worse things. 

Now, adults,  that's a different story.  Yes, I'm talking to you, Mr. Long-Grey-Pony-Tail.  We all know that you are growing the tail because you can't grow it on top.  And if you have one or two hairs longer than your arm that you have wound round and round your bald head until you are in real danger of a bird making a nest up there, no matter how many millions of dollars or television shows you have, please stop!

Through the years I have gone from my natural red hair color, to five years of being blond, back to red and now this grey.  I've resisted the Senior Citizen blue rinse special so far but the purple is intriguing me.  I'll have to talk to my granddaughter about it.

 For now I'm just trying  to remember to comb it when I get ready to leave the house.  I don't feel the need to make a statement but, nevertheless, nothing says "Old Lady" like recliner hair.

Doctors

When I was a little girl our doctor's name was Dr. Payne.  You can already see the problem.  I don't think people had health insurance back then and my mom's rule of thumb was that you didn't go to the doctor until you had been sick for three days to make sure you were really sick, by which time you probably were on the mend and didn't need to go to the doctor.  I fell off the back porch and broke my arm when I was three years old and, not knowing the severity of it, my dad had me exercise it to try to get over the discomfort. After three days I went in for X-rays and got a cast on it.

Dennis's childhood doctor was named Dr. Mullarky.  He lived up to his name also.  On our honeymoon Dennis had a relapse of an inner-ear infection, Labrinthitis, that had put him in the hospital about a year before. He called Dr. Mullarky, told him we were on our honeymoon and he was so dizzy he couldn't sit up. Dr. Mullarky laughed for five minutes before he prescribed some medicine that made Dennis sleep for almost twenty-four hours of our three day vacation.  I didn't think it was that funny.

When we lived in Oklahoma City our neighbor was a veterinarian.  He was very accommodating when we needed minor procedures, and handy, to boot.  Dennis was getting allergy shots at the time and Tom would come by on his way home from work and give them to him.  Dennis said it was fine except for Tom holding him by the scruff of the neck to keep him still.  (Just kidding!)

It was great to have Tom close by when we really had a minor, but painful, emergency on a Sunday morning.  Jake, our youngest son, and I had been making snowmen out of marshmallows the day before and I guess we didn't clean up very well.  We had used toothpicks for the arms and one was on the floor and when Dennis walked through the kitchen he got to a toothpick jammed under his toenail. Needless to say, he was not amused. Or quiet. Or able to walk.  Dr. Tom to the rescue.  I guess he had had a lot of experience getting thorns and things out of paws in the past.

The kids' pediatrician, Dr. B., was a friend of ours and went to our church.  On Sundays and Wednesday nights there was usually a line of patients after the service waiting to have stitches removed or questions answered.  If I had had any illusions left of doctors being "holier than thou", Dr. B. quickly dispelled them.  He was always joking and when Jake needed tubes in his ears for ear infections but I was resisting, Dr. B. said "Oh, lets forget about it, then.  We'll get him the best hearing aids they make."  And when Josh needed stitches in his lip when he was nine, Dr. B. said "Josh, do you know any cuss words?"

I don't think doctors get to do that kind of thing anymore, with lawsuits and all.  I'm not sure any doctors want to, anyway.  It is nicer for the doctor if he gets to have an evening out or a day at church without people trying to make him work.  I heard one doctor got around that by asking people who wanted his medical opinion in a social situation to disrobe so he could examine them.

There was a time that it seemed to me that doctors were somehow "more" than the rest of us; not quite real. The first time I went to a doctor and he was younger than me I was appalled, and of course now that I have given birth to one and broken a bread board on his behind when he was about eight when he sassed me (Oh, please! It was a little bread board and had a crack in it already from being in the dishwasher and he was wearing heavy jeans anyway and he deserved it!) I don't have that awe of doctors that I used to.

It's not that I don't have respect for doctors any more.  I probably respect them more now that I know more of what they have to go through to get to be doctors and how much work they do to keep up their skills and how often they go in at three in the morning to do emergency surgery and stay all day for the rest of their patients.  It's just that when I am arguing with my son about something or other and he says "Mom, who has the M.D.?"  I say, "Josh, who has decades more experience than you do?  Besides", I tell him, "You're not too big to spank, you know!" 

There has to be a bread board around here somewhere.

Wonderland

     I don't know if they still have Bookmobiles but one may have been my first real contact with the library. It was also the reason for the only time I ever went to the principal's office in elementary school. I was never one to get in trouble at school. I figured out early on about that honey and vinegar thing, and it was more fun to be the teacher's pet anyway.
     The Bookmobile came to our grade school once a month and if you have never been in one you have missed a wonderful capsule of time. It was kind of like an early RV, was probably a bus at one time, but all the seats had been removed and shelves of books added. Only the driver's seat was left. I never figured out how they kept the books from falling out when they went around a corner. I loved it.
     The library lady (I never saw a man in one in spite of the huge vehicle with the equally huge steering wheel) would take her metal stool, set it up with a little table at the foot of the bus steps, ready to check out the books with her rubber date stamp, and open the door to Wonderland. Classes took turns going in and I think there were times for individuals because the aisles were so small. My mom didn't want me to get a regular library card because she was convinced the books would get lost or at the very least be kept out too long and she had heard there were fines involved. But you didn't have to have a regular library card to use the Bookmobile at school.
     I think I was in sixth grade and I had read all the books in the Bookmobile that were classified "Juvenile". I don't know how old you had to be before you got an "Adult" card but grade school age was not it. There were some books in there, though, that I had not read. They were in the "Adult" section. It only made sense that I should start on those.
     I honestly don't know how "Adult" the books were that I wanted. They may have been near pornographic or they may have just been boring grown-up subject matter, but either way, that librarian was not going to let me check them out. And this is where I got myself in trouble: I argued with her.
     It was the fifties. You probably can't even imagine it now, but back then, kids DID NOT argue with adults. I told her that if a book was so unsuitable that it should not be read by kids it should not be read by grown-ups either. I wasn't going to leave till she let me have my books. I didn't win, of course, but I didn't give up easily and somehow the principal wound up dragging me out of there.  You know what? I still believe I was right.
     There was no Bookmobile when school was out, of course, but the public library was within walking distance of our house so that summer I found a way around the system. I went to the library early in the morning, got books I wanted from whatever section I chose, Adult or not, and sat there in their comfy chairs and read all day. No need to check them out. Nobody came to see what I was reading. The summer between sixth grade and Junior High I read all of Ernest Hemingway and all of F. Scott Fitzgerald and some others I can't remember. It was a remarkable time.
     I still find libraries the most magical of places. You can go in a library in California, or Kansas or anywhere and they are pretty much alike in all the ways that matter. They still  have that special book smell, like paste and printing ink and number two pencils. And though the big cabinets with their deep little drawers and thousands of little cards have been replaced by computers and there are racks of videos and audios that were never heard of by the bookmobile lady, there are still comfy chairs and you could stay all day and never be bored.
     I took my kids there when they were little, and my grandchildren too. We went to Story Time and sometimes we lay on the floor in the aisles and read to each other. I let them get their own library cards as soon as they could write their names on the signature line. They loved that there were sections of books just for them. I don't think they ever ran out of  books of their own so that they needed to go into the "Adult" section, but if they had wanted to, I would have gone there and read the books they wanted and maybe gotten them for them if they were suitable for both kids and grown-ups.
     These days you can get online, access the library catalogue, even read a synopsis of the book you're interested in. You request the book, and when it gets to your local library branch a robot of some kinds calls and leaves a message on your answering machine, or sends you an e-mail. If you need to,  you just can run in, grab the book with your name on it, check it out by running a bar code over an automated electronic check-out machine and never speak to a real person if you don't have the time. Or you can get a book on your I-pad or your phone or you can listen to one while you are doing other things.
    For me, I've got to have that book in my hand. I want to feel the binding, turn the pages, keep my place with a rubber band holding down the part that I've read. I want the smell and the experience of touching history or what may become history. I've finally reached an age where if a book is boring I can stop and get another  (I used to think I had to finish it if I started it, but there aren't enough years left for that.) But the books are still the same. They give you knowledge, take you to far away places, comfort you, make you think or let you escape from thinking.
     And  you can go in any library and nobody argues about whether you are allowed to check out any book you want.

Happy Valentine's Day

I have a confession to make.  I'm not a big  (Quit laughing. I'm gonna have to come over there and smack you!) Valentine's Day kind of gal.  I've been putting up a front all these years. 

Even my mom, who never was really into celebrating minor holidays, used to put something red on our breakfast plates each Valentine's Day.  I especially remember the year that we three sisters all got red bras at breakfast.  (Mom was always practical.)  You would have thought that a memory that vivid would spur me on, but I had to be pushed into it.

Probably because my birthday is mid-January and Dennis's the first of February and we had already spent way too much on Christmas, we just never did do anything big on Valentine's Day when the boys were little. A babysitter fixed that for us. We came home after an evening out on February thirteenth only to be informed that she had told the kids that the Valentine Fairy would be leaving candy under their pillows that night.

Since we had recently had to disappoint Josh by telling him that no, there is no Fingernail Fairy, when he wanted to put his fingernail clippings under his pillow in hopes of reaping a cash reward, I gave in and headed for an all-night drugstore.  You can't go back after that.

Of course our boys got those little packets of Valentines to give to all the kids in their classes at school and brought home theirs in shoe boxes that we had decorated with red paper hearts and markers, but I never remembered to mail any Valentines to my mom out-of-town and then I would get one from her, "To A Special Daughter and Her Husband On Valentine's Day", and it was too late to send her one and I felt guilty.

Apparently the Valentine Fairy was at it again, though, because one year a huge box of Valentine's was literally dropped at my feet. No, really. I was driving down the road and there it was in front of me. Evidently a truck carrying greeting cards from a Hallmark store had hit a bump on the road by our neighborhood and the box fell off.  Of course I retrieved it and went to a lot of trouble to locate the company and called them to explain I had their merchandise. They said they would send somebody to come get it. They never did.

 So I was stuck with a couple hundred Valentines, still in plastic wrappers.  Some were the enormous, I'm not kidding, a foot-and-a-half tall that would cost a week's salary to mail, kind.  There were some "To My Sweetheart", some "To The One Who Is Like A Mother To Me," some  "Baby's First Valentine", and more.  You get the picture.  I couldn't waste them, could I?   All but the huge ones were in packages of three so that when I started sending them I had to remember to whom I had sent what so they didn't get duplicates the next year.  It was exhausting!

I mailed out those cards for probably ten years but they are gone now and I guess I have to find a new way of  sending my Valentine's greetings.  I noticed in our little local paper last week that some people were putting ads in the classified section.  I'm thinking about that.

Here are a couple of the ones that were printed.  I swear I am not making these up.

"Thank you for all you have done for me while I have been incompasitated. (my italics) Happy Valentines Day.  Love, John."  (I know how that feels, my income has been pretty low lately too.)

"Happy VD to the staff at Neighborhood Newspaper.  Love, Moe"  (I'm not sure if this would do double duty and also qualify for the notices that the Health Department makes people send out in certain instances or not.)

It's probably too late to get anything published in the classifieds anyway.  I guess I'll just take the opportunity here to say to all of you:  HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY.  I hope you feel lots of love today.

How Can You Stop Holding Tight?

A few years ago, okay it may have been more than a decade, we went to Ohio to have Thanksgiving with our kids, Josh and Jerilyn, when they lived in Dayton. My nephew, Jack lives near Cincinnati and he came over with his son, Shane.  Shane was nine, just the age to appreciate Dennis's jokes, not that Dennis's sense of humor is juvenile, but then, if you've ever met him, you understand. 

Dennis: If it takes two-and-a-half chickens to lay two-and-a-half eggs, how many pancakes does it take to shingle a dog house?

Shane:  Huh?

Dennis: Thirteen because bananas don't have bones!

Shane:  Ha!

Dennis: What has four wheels and flies?

Shane:  Don't know.

Dennis:  A garbage truck.

Shane:  Snorting and laughing.

Dennis:  Mary, Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow?  With silver bells and cockle shells and one stupid petunia.

Shane:  Can't answer because he is rolling on the floor laughing.

It went on like this the whole day and into the evening.  Shane thought Dennis was a rock star.  None of our grandkids were born yet and Dennis was drinking in the adoration.  It was a great week-end for all of us.

We went home, Jack and his family went back to Cincinnati, and the years went on during which Jack made Shane wear his helmet when he rode his bike, come inside when it got dark, look both ways before he crossed the street, brush his teeth, wash behind his ears, get to school on time, do his homework, ask before he petted a strange dog, never talk to strangers, get his Halloween candy checked by an adult before he ate it, and walk on the side of the street facing the traffic.  He ran behind Shane's bike holding onto the seat till the wheels stopped wobbling, sat in the passenger seat with his right foot practically through the floorboard on the phantom brake when he taught Shane to drive, made Shane wear his seat belt, call when he was going to be late and promise not to text while he was driving,

We didn't see Shane again until last year when the skinny little kid I had been remembering had turned into a tall, rock-hard, muscular young man on leave from the Army for my mom's funeral.  The grin was the same, though, and I enjoyed lots of hugs before he left to go back.  If the pattern holds, I guess it will be another ten years or so before I see him again.

Last week my sister, Shane's grandmother, came through Tulsa on her way to see Shane graduate from Army Ranger school.  He was one of only fifty who finished in the class that started with one hundred forty-one. The Ranger site on the internet says "Rangers are a special operation force, lethal, trained to carry out assaults deep inside enemy held territory.  They seize, destroy or capture enemy held facilities, overcome impossible odds". It said "Surrender is not a Ranger word." Soon Shane will be deployed to places his family will not know about. Rangers don't get that send-off from the local airport with the media covering the tearful good-byes.

My nephew, Jack, messaged me on Facebook awhile back when Shane started Ranger school.  He had been thinking, no doubt, of nights walking the floor with Shane when he had fever from baby vaccinations, and grabbing him before he toddled into traffic when he ran down the sidewalk after the dog, and holding tight to his hand on his first day of school.  He said, "How do you spend more than twenty years doing everything you can to protect them from danger, coming between them and anything that might hurt them, holding them tight when they have nightmares or real-world scares, and then just stand there and let them go?"

Good question.  I don't think there is an answer to that one.

Wearing the Memories

When my nephew was two or so he hated to get new clothes. He would cry like he was broken-hearted if he thought you were trying to put something new on him. Of course he was growing and needed new things so his mom would have to sneak anything she bought into his drawer and put it on him without mentioning that it was new. I thought it was pretty funny at the time but he may have come into it more honestly than I knew.

My sister was here visiting this week and she brought a DVD that she had recently had transferred from some video that we shot at her house in 1998 during Thanksgiving weekend.  It was wonderful to watch everybody talking and laughing and playing games. We almost all had a lot more hair and a few less pounds. It was interesting to see how much everyone had changed. Then, all of a sudden, I noticed something that was exactly then as it is now.  I was wearing a sweatshirt, the one with the cat on it, that is still hanging in my closet and I wore just this week. In 2012.

It was the second jolt about my wardrobe I had had in a few days.  Hayley, our ten year old granddaughter,  just asked me about the loafers I was wearing last week-end.  "Not new," I told her. "These are actually older than Miranda (she's seven)  I bought them in St. Louis about the time you were born."  It is hard for me to find shoes I like so when I purchased these I got them in black, brown, navy and burgundy. They can last four times as long that way, although I admit that the black ones are looking a little bit worse for wear, and maybe the brown ones too.  But the navy and burgundy, you would hardly know came along not too long after we were celebrating that we survived Y2K.

I know admitting it puts my Girl Card in jeopardy, but I just really don't like to shop for new clothes. For one thing if I do I have to admit that I'm still buying the size I swore I would never be in again every New Year's resolution for the last twenty years.  Besides, there is history in some of these things.  Another of my favorite shirts that I still wear (cats are on it too, come to think of it.  There may be a theme here) is one that our kids bought me for Mother's Day when they lived in Wichita. It was the late nineties. Speaking of Wichita, I bought one of the few dresses I own, a red one, there when we were visiting them for a week-end and the temperature got up to 108 degrees and none of the clothes I had packed were even still dry.

I have one more dress, a yellow one. We refer to it as my "wedding dress" because I have worn it to all the family weddings since I got it when Josh & Jerilyn first moved to Kansas City.  That was right after college graduation so it must have been 1996 or so.  I bought it to wear to the symphony there but since then it has only gone to weddings and church on Easter.  Every year. You will probably recognize it this Easter. Naturally it is still in good shape. It has only been worn twice a year, well, yeah, for sixteen years, but still...

My favorite red sweater, and I will admit it is beginning to look a little bit too loved, I got when I was selling furniture in Oklahoma City.  There was a kind of quirky store around the corner and you had to dig through a lot to get to the good stuff.  You could spend your lunch hour there, not that I often got one.  I think of that store each time I wear it.  I still have two pants suits that I wore when I worked at the furniture store, they have good pockets to hold tape measures and pens and stuff.  I left there in '95, so you can do the math. There are the pants I bought when we first moved to St. Louis because somebody thought I needed to look more like a "Corporate Wife."  (It didn't help)

Goodwill buying doesn't count, of course.  It is cool to shop there because they have out of date things to go with the out of date stuff I already have in my closet. They probably have great epics to go with them and then they were abandoned, so I rescue them and start new memories with them.

Okay, every thing I own is older than Miranda, except the pajamas I was forced to buy a couple of years ago when I was going to be in the hospital all those times. They got their history pretty fast, kind of the Reader's Digest version.

I think I'm going to clean out my closet soon and donate a lot of clothes that I haven't worn in a couple of years.  It will be hard because most of them are like old friends.   See, if you just go out and buy clothes when the seasons change or because you have the money in the budget, you miss out on all the nostalgia each time you wear them. I think I'm with my nephew, Jack.  New clothes just don't have the history that old ones do

At least I'm not still wearing my maternity clothes. Now, there were some memories!

I'll Take Door Number One!

Yesterday we went to a new (to us) restaurant in Oklahoma City and when I went back to the restroom I was so excited to be able to tell which door I was supposed to go into.  The signs said "Men" and "Women".  I could do that.

I hate it when restaurants get cute with their bathroom signs.  Some I can decipher, like "Senors and Senoritas" or "Lads and Lassies" but at Outback it is "Blokes" and "Sheilas" (my name is not Sheila, how was I supposed to figure that one out?)  Or you follow the horse shoes embedded into the floor until you come upon two doors labeled  "Does and Bucks". There are the aptly named "Gulls and Buoys" at a seafood restaurant.  I have even heard of  "Elvis and Priscilla"---please!  And the ever popular "Dukes and Duchesses", "Adams and Eves",  and the absurdly politically incorrect "Braves and Squaws." Come on!  I may be in a hurry here.

My favorite high school English teacher named----wait for it---- Mr. John, was quite adamant that we not call a rest room a "John".  Who could blame him?  They didn't have these cute names back then anyway and we only had ten minutes between classes so we weren't likely to even get to one.

When my youngest son was little he knew all the restrooms in all the grocery stores or fast food places we frequented and he wanted to go all by himself (you could do that back then).  He always seemed to find the right one, even before he could read.  Once at the library, though, he came back to me quite upset "There are girls in the boys' bathroom," he said.  When I went to investigate I finally found the secret to his success. He had figured out that the door to the room he wanted was the one with the shortest word: Men. The library had foiled him by labeling their bathroom doors "Gentlemen and Ladies."

Now, of course, most places have little pictures to go with the signs:  little stick figures, one in pants and one in a skirt. I guess it could still be confusing in Scotland where men wear kilts, but they probably have that worked out somehow. And I have not worn anything but pants in I don't know how long, but I usually get it right.

Okay, there have been a couple of times when I was kind of not paying attention or was in a great big hurry and wound up in the wrong place.  I did notice once I got in there, though, and got out quick. Well, except for that time that there was an enormous line at the ladies room and no men around and it was just ridiculous to leave that other room empty and I led the charge and a group of us used the other room.  It was a Women's Conference, after all. We hollered loudly first to make sure we weren't interrupting anybody.

I guess I shouldn't complain as long as there are public restrooms that are clean and contain the usual facilities, once I find my way into the right one.  I have been in foreign countries where the bathroom accommodation is a hole in the floor with pictures of shoe soles on either side to show you where you are supposed to put your feet. You may think I'm kidding, but I swear I'm not.

At my age I am very thankful for Quik Trip, on almost every corner and with bathroom doors labeled in words I can understand.

Just don't make me choose between "Setters and Pointers"!

What Was I Saying?

I had a really great name for this particular blog.  I thought of it in the night, but now I've forgotten it. There is a notepad on my night table and even a flashlight so I can sit up and write something down as soon as I think of it without even turning on the light. But somehow, whenever I think of things in the night, they are so profound and impressed on my brain so strongly that I know I will remember them without even bothering to write them down. Except for in the morning, of course, when the only thing I can remember is that I am trying to remember something.

I know that other people forget things all the time and it's not just age related. I'm not the only person who went out to eat at a really great restaurant when her children were little and remembered during the salad that she had forgotten to feed the kids before she left. I was in my thirties when I did that. I mean, every body does those kinds of things, don't they?  Everybody forgets an appointment now and again, or that she bought groceries three days ago and some of them are still in the trunk, right?

What I'm frustrated about are the things I do on a daily basis, like, okay, this is kind of gross, but you know how when you are trying to go to sleep and your sinuses fill up on one side of your head so you have to turn over so they will drain to the other side?  I always forget which side I'm supposed to lay my head to get it to drain right: the side where I can breathe so it drains away, or the side that is stuffed up?  Not only every single night when I go to bed but even if I get up in the night for one reason or another, I have to stop and think before I lay back down.  Ridiculous!

And every day when we watch Jeopardy, (We're mostly retired.  It's a law, I think, for old people to watch Jeopardy) they introduce the contestants and say what their occupations are. I like to remember what that is because sometimes you can predict how well they will do on specific categories. These kind of things are important to old people, you'll see when you get there. Anyway, not one day goes by that I can remember what the doggone occupation is of any of them----including the dude that has been winning for four days and they have said it every day at the beginning of the show----past the first three questions!  I tell myself as they are saying their names. "This time I am going to remember." But I don't. Do you know how aggravating this is?  Every single day!

Everybody I know goes into a room and forgets what they went there for. That's no big deal.  It's the going into the room, getting what I came for, then going back, sitting down and forgetting to use whatever it is that I got that really annoys me. The grand kids were watching "Finding Nemo" again the other day (see, I can remember that!) and I could identify more and more with Dorie, the fish that has short-term memory loss.  I'm beginning to think that I may need to pare my vocabulary down, so that I don't start using a compound word like, say, loincloth or stouthearted and forget what I was saying half way through and leave someone with the wrong impression.

About a year ago Dennis was after me to get a CAT scan of my brain because he thought I was getting Alzheimer's or something. I mean, please!  This is the guy who says to me, "Who is Judi Dench?"  And I immediately remember that she is that British gal who has a really short hair-cut and played "M" in the last few James Bond movies. Can he remember why he wanted to know who Judi Dench was, anyway?  Of course not. Besides, I read that with Alzheimer's it's not that you can't find your keys, it's if you forget what you are supposed to do with your keys when you find them.  I'm not there yet. I don't even usually lose my keys now. The car, that's another story, (There are so darn many white mini-vans out there these days!) but I do know what to do with it when I find it.

I can remember lots of details about when I was a kid and who was in my class and how I was the teacher's pet and one time some kid took my test paper and put his name on it and the teacher recognized my printing anyway, stupid kid, and his name was Allen and.....Well, anyway, that was then this is now.

What I'm trying to remember today is: didn't I write a blog on this subject already?

Dennis's Birthday Cake

Today is Dennis's birthday and I will be making chocolate cake with butter cream icing and coconut on it for the forty-sixth time. He is a few years older than that but someone else was making the coconut cakes before I came along.  Sometimes I wonder if the coconut is a ploy because he knows that very few other people  like it and he doesn't want to share.  This year I have purchased some six inch cake pans to make him a little cake and I'm using the rest of the batter for cupcakes with no coconut. He can have the other all to himself.

Our neighbors in Oklahoma City (the ones who so kindly made me the bowling ball lamp for my birthday) may have been trying to give us a hint on one of Dennis's birthdays.  We woke up that morning to find the yard full of plastic forks that they had stuck in the lawn overnight for a birthday surprise. I think they used one of those jumbo packages of two-hundred and fifty. They still had to eat the cake with the coconut on it but I let them have real forks.

Other people have made him cakes too, on occasion, like the time he was teaching a Young Married Sunday School department when we were at Putnam City Baptist Church. There was often a theme. Our family always sat in the balcony with a good view of the platform where the choir sat. There were a lot of people from our class in the choir and Dennis always sat in the same place, on the end of the front pew where the people in the choir had a good view of us too, even though they were supposed to be paying attention to the preacher, of course.

Dennis, who has never been a light-weight, had a habit of getting about eight inches from the seat when he sat down, then instead of gently sitting, he kind of plopped.  On this particular Sunday when he came back from taking the offering and plopped instead of sitting on the pew, there was a very loud cracking sound, the bench was a goner, and Dennis shot up instead of sitting the rest of the way down. He moved to another pew for the rest of the service. In his defense, the pews were very old and he had been doing his plopping thing, loosening it up, for years. For some odd reason all the sheet music in the choir suddenly came up at once to make a shield in front of faces and the music was bouncing up and down in unison. Not that anybody was laughing, of course.

The next Sunday happened to be Dennis's birthday and the class graciously brought him a cake.  It was decorated with a bench made from tongue depressors, the seat of which was broken in two, and it said "Happy Birthday Captain Crunch."

We loved leading that class. We started out with a small group of newlyweds, none of whom had babies yet, and stayed until it was a large group and almost everybody had at least two kids. Last month we got an invitation to the wedding of one of those "babies".  It seems like only yesterday that we were having class fellowships at our house that lasted until late at night and it was not unusual to have two or three babies sleeping on pallets under our pool table where they were safe from being stepped on.  Dennis (but not me!) has gone through a lot of birthdays since that time.

The same people gave him probably his most defining birthday gift, ever, the year he had been broadly hinting--- okay, asking---for his weight in gold for his birthday.  That Sunday, with several guys pushing and pulling, they rolled in a pallet piled high with bricks that they had painstakingly painted gold.  I'm not sure if it was quite his weight, but close.

So, I'm off to make the cake.  Given my track record with cakes, we'll see how it turns out.  I've had plenty of practice with this one, but the new cake pans may change the equation.  Well, he needs some kind of surprise on his birthday, so we'll see.  I don't think the little cake will hold all the candles, though.