My sister flew in from St. Louis last week-end and I picked her up at the airport. She came because it was her birthday and Southwest had $39 flights! You just had to book them during a certain period of time, fly certain times, wear blue eye shadow when you flew and type with your left hand. Okay, not the eye shadow. But you get the picture. There are great fares out there but you have to be savvy and flexible. And she did miss the $39 window, but she was able to get a flight for $59.
Quite a contrast to last month when we were trying to figure out how we could all fly to New Hampshire to be there for our nephew's memorial service, but given the short lead time, $1600 to $2100 ticket prices for the two of us, and Dennis's physical limitations, it just couldn't seem to be done even though Dennis and Jake spent two whole days online and on the phone trying to make it work
Our son, Josh, was able to go from Oklahoma City, though, and he texted "If you are ever in the Detroit airport at breakfast time, don't eat the food." Yes, he had to get up at five in the morning to have a lay-over in Detroit to get to New England. After seven hours in planes and airports he did make it to Manchester. We flew to San Francisco for our twenty-fifth anniversary--no, it wasn't a bi-plane!!--and had to go from Oklahoma City east to St. Louis before we went west to California. No wonder they complain about the cost of fuel. They add it to the price of a ticket, of course.
Yeah, I know I say this all the time, but things sure have changed since the old days. And, no, we didn't fly with Orville and Wilbur! There was a time when Dennis flew every week. He got a certificate from United Airlines once because he had flown 100,000 miles in one year with them. He looked up his old frequent flyer record to see if the points would still apply for us to fly to Manchester but when he called they said 1984 was a little too far back for them to honor them.
When we lived in California I flew much more often too. There was a "Red-eye" flight between Los Angeles and St. Louis. You left around midnight, flew through the night and arrived the next morning. There was a reason they called it the Red-eye, of course. You just thought you were going to sleep the whole way there and arrive refreshed and ready to go.
It was always exciting arriving back at LAX hoping to see a celebrity or two. We saw Walter Matthau and his wife once. She wore white make-up so pale she kind of glowed, like the moon, and had at least forty-five pieces of luggage. They didn't fly in our part of the plane. And there was a lady on one of our flights who had a role on "Dallas" but I didn't know her name. She didn't seem to know mine either. Can you believe we saw Bob Hope once, talking on a pay phone calling for someone to come pick him up? I wanted to offer him a ride but Dennis didn't think it would be a good idea.
Naturally I always dressed up for flying back then and looked very sophisticated and important. I think people were looking at me wondering what TV show they had seen me on. I just smiled slightly in acknowledgement so they would realize I was flying coach with the "little people" because I was researching a role or something. Of course, that time I was five months pregnant and took my shoes off on the flight but my feet were too swollen to get them back on by the time we arrived and I had to walk through the Los Angeles airport barefoot, the sophistication level may have been a little low.
Children used to get to fly free up until they were two years old, and Josh was always excited to get to go when we flew. He would watch the plane come up to the window and jump up and down with excitement, but by the time we went down the concourse and got on he would say "Where's the plane? Where's the plane?". It doesn't look as big or even much like an airplane from the inside, more like a city bus that has been micro-sized but smells worse.
There were meals served on flights back in the old days. Real china plates and little Barbie-size silverware, People joked about the food being bad but at least they gave you something. Now you are lucky if you get half a can of Coke and a bag with 13 pretzels in it. What's up with that, anyway? You pay hundreds of dollars for a ticket and they can't give you the whole can? Please!
So now American Airlines has filed for bankruptcy reorganization. I think they should take a page from Southwest's book and offer some really good prices and get a lot of people flying. I would even wear blue eye shadow for a $39 ticket.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Sam
I'm not feeling much like blogging today. My heart is too heavy with the loss of our nephew, Sam, who was killed in a car wreck yesterday. Just a few thoughts about his short life.
*********************************************
Sam was a kid that the Lord really wanted to be born.
When I first started "going steady" with Dennis in my senior year of high school people at school would say "You mean OWEN Carey's brother???" My future brother-in-law, was, how shall I say this? A hell-raiser. He was constantly in trouble with some authority or another. Even after he did a tour in Viet Nam and returned, when you thought he might have matured, he finally wound up fleeing to New Hampshire a few steps ahead of the cops.
He got married there, had a couple of kids and then one day we got a phone call from him. "Guess what! I'm a Christian now!"
We turned to each other and said "Sure. Wonder how long that will last."
But we were amazed and thrilled to find that God had done the changing, not Owen, and the guy who never did anything in a small way became an evangelist, a preacher, a church planter and is still, despite our initial doubts, so "Radically Saved" that anyone around him wants what he has.
Along the way there were more kids born, five, in about ten years time. Owen was gone a lot and Esther, his wife, was worn out! In fact, there were difficulties with her fifth pregnancy and she had to be hospitalized for several months. It was time to stop. No more kids. Of course I was very discreet in my suggestions. "Stop!" I said. "You're crazy!" I said. "Owen, you need to take care of this." I said. Not that I ever interfere in anybody's private life.
Owen just smiled and instead of telling me to mind my own business, said "I'm waiting on God." And God wanted Sam to be born.
He was the last, the baby. He had some learning challenges so Esther spent more time with him than she had the others because she both home schooled him and drove him several hours a week to special classes. Owen was able to spend more time with him as Sam's basketball career took off. Did I mention he grew to be six feet, eight inches tall?
Sam was recruited to play basketball for the local college, then he played a season in Uruguay, a season in Germany, and then this year, with the NBA sitting out and Canada still going strong in basketball, Sam was recruited to play there.
In between basketball seasons Sam met Kayte and this summer Brayden was born. I've been following them on Facebook and you've never seen a prouder daddy. Brayden had some severe health problems when he was born, and Sam was constantly with him. When Brayden finally got to go home from the hospital and Kayte went back to work, Sam was a stay-at-home dad. Brayden was no bigger than the palm of Sam's big hand at first, but Sam changed diapers, gave baths, rocked and fed, the whole nine yards. Or is that full-court press?
The basketball season started and Sam left to go play basketball in Canada to support his family. He couldn't be home every day but the communication was constant. They Skyped so Sam could see Brayden and Brayden could see his daddy. Then on Tuesday Sam had a few days available and he was headed home to his family.
We'll never know what happened next. Was he hurrying too much? Probably so. Did he try to make the trip on too little sleep because he was so anxious to see Kayte and Brayden? Maybe. The emergency crew did all they could do. The doctors did all they could do. It wasn't enough. No matter what the cause here on earth, God was ready to take Sam home.
Twenty-six years is such a short time. Sam packed them full of life. Our hearts are breaking here on earth but we are grateful for those twenty-six years. They were exactly the length of time God planned for him.
*********************************************
Sam was a kid that the Lord really wanted to be born.
When I first started "going steady" with Dennis in my senior year of high school people at school would say "You mean OWEN Carey's brother???" My future brother-in-law, was, how shall I say this? A hell-raiser. He was constantly in trouble with some authority or another. Even after he did a tour in Viet Nam and returned, when you thought he might have matured, he finally wound up fleeing to New Hampshire a few steps ahead of the cops.
He got married there, had a couple of kids and then one day we got a phone call from him. "Guess what! I'm a Christian now!"
We turned to each other and said "Sure. Wonder how long that will last."
But we were amazed and thrilled to find that God had done the changing, not Owen, and the guy who never did anything in a small way became an evangelist, a preacher, a church planter and is still, despite our initial doubts, so "Radically Saved" that anyone around him wants what he has.
Along the way there were more kids born, five, in about ten years time. Owen was gone a lot and Esther, his wife, was worn out! In fact, there were difficulties with her fifth pregnancy and she had to be hospitalized for several months. It was time to stop. No more kids. Of course I was very discreet in my suggestions. "Stop!" I said. "You're crazy!" I said. "Owen, you need to take care of this." I said. Not that I ever interfere in anybody's private life.
Owen just smiled and instead of telling me to mind my own business, said "I'm waiting on God." And God wanted Sam to be born.
He was the last, the baby. He had some learning challenges so Esther spent more time with him than she had the others because she both home schooled him and drove him several hours a week to special classes. Owen was able to spend more time with him as Sam's basketball career took off. Did I mention he grew to be six feet, eight inches tall?
Sam was recruited to play basketball for the local college, then he played a season in Uruguay, a season in Germany, and then this year, with the NBA sitting out and Canada still going strong in basketball, Sam was recruited to play there.
In between basketball seasons Sam met Kayte and this summer Brayden was born. I've been following them on Facebook and you've never seen a prouder daddy. Brayden had some severe health problems when he was born, and Sam was constantly with him. When Brayden finally got to go home from the hospital and Kayte went back to work, Sam was a stay-at-home dad. Brayden was no bigger than the palm of Sam's big hand at first, but Sam changed diapers, gave baths, rocked and fed, the whole nine yards. Or is that full-court press?
The basketball season started and Sam left to go play basketball in Canada to support his family. He couldn't be home every day but the communication was constant. They Skyped so Sam could see Brayden and Brayden could see his daddy. Then on Tuesday Sam had a few days available and he was headed home to his family.
We'll never know what happened next. Was he hurrying too much? Probably so. Did he try to make the trip on too little sleep because he was so anxious to see Kayte and Brayden? Maybe. The emergency crew did all they could do. The doctors did all they could do. It wasn't enough. No matter what the cause here on earth, God was ready to take Sam home.
Twenty-six years is such a short time. Sam packed them full of life. Our hearts are breaking here on earth but we are grateful for those twenty-six years. They were exactly the length of time God planned for him.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Wedded Bliss
We went to a wedding last weekend and it was beautiful. The bridesmaids wore pink, the groomsmen even wore pink vests and pink roses and didn't complain, the mother of the bride looked young enough to be the bride herself, the bride was stunning in the dress her mother had worn twenty-five years ago at her own wedding, and the dad had to gulp back tears more than once during the ceremony. He was the preacher, so it was kind of hard for him to get the words out looking at his precious daughter and probably remembering his lovely wife in that same dress and wondering where in the world did the years go. I loved it.
As far as I could tell, there were no glitches. Well, at the end of the ceremony the preacher pretended to have second thoughts about the groom kissing his daughter, so at the last he said "Austin, you may now...keep holding Hayley's hands." Hayley, however, knew just what to do. She grabbed hold of her new husband's shoulders and laid a big kiss on him even without her dad's permission. It was very cute.
Weddings always fill me with nostalgia. You too, I'm guessing. We have been to quite a lot over the years. A few years ago it seemed like we were going to one every weekend. All of our friends' kids and all of our kids' friends were getting married at the same time. Every one was special even though they ran the gamut from very simple to wildly elaborate. I don't even want to know what some of them cost.
There was an old saying that if something went wrong at the wedding it insured that the marriage would go well, and even though we didn't know details, like when you listen to a piano performance and the pianist later says "Oh, I missed so many notes!" and you didn't know the difference, probably there was at least some small thing that happened at each to dispel the hex. The air conditioning went out at the church during our wedding. You can see Dennis kind of dripping in some of the pictures. The florist showed up minus a couple of corsages and look how long we've been married!
At one wedding we went to the bride and groom knocked over the unity candle, there was a small fire and I think the video made it onto America's Funniest Home Videos. How the "disasters" are handled by the bride and groom probably has much to say about how well their marriage will go. (The fire people are still married and it has been about seventeen years, I think)
The way my daughter-in-law, Robyn, responded to what happened at her wedding was one of the things that convinced me she would be great in our family. One of the candle lighters, her small cousin, was having difficulty lighting the last of the candelabras. She tried and tried till finally one of the ushers went up and took the lighter from her and tried to light the candle. He knocked against it. It swayed left. It swayed right. It swayed backwards and forwards and he finally made a heroic grab and caught it at just the moment before it went down. All this time the pianist, who it turned out was mainly fluent in "honky-tonk", kept playing the same song again and again that sounded like it had originated in an Old West saloon. After the wedding when Robyn got someone to confess to why she had been made to stand behind the door to the sanctuary forever hearing the same tinkly song over and over, said "Oh, good! I was hoping something funny would happen."
Because I was the preacher's daughter and impossibly cute and red-headed (I'm sure that was why! My daddy said so.) I was the flower girl in a lot of weddings when I was little. It didn't take long till I was an old pro at it and hated to be slowed down by unskilled kids who were poky ring bearers, or extra flower girls who took forever to learn that step-pause-step thing. I knew just how to dole out the petals so I didn't run out before I got to the front of the church and heaven help the other kid who might hesitate in fright when she was supposed to start down the aisle. I could pinch. I think the last wedding I was flower girl in was when the other flower girl made it to the front with me dragging her, then turned and stage-whispered to her mother right in the middle of the ceremony, "I have to go potty!" I gave up the profession; working with amateurs was just too stressful.
The Flower Girl and her Daddy, the preacher.
The preacher who performed his daughter's wedding last weekend has two more daughters to go. You might think he will get tougher as he goes along, but since I remember when my dad performed my wedding (I was the last of four) I kind of doubt it. And that is the way it should be.
As far as I could tell, there were no glitches. Well, at the end of the ceremony the preacher pretended to have second thoughts about the groom kissing his daughter, so at the last he said "Austin, you may now...keep holding Hayley's hands." Hayley, however, knew just what to do. She grabbed hold of her new husband's shoulders and laid a big kiss on him even without her dad's permission. It was very cute.
Weddings always fill me with nostalgia. You too, I'm guessing. We have been to quite a lot over the years. A few years ago it seemed like we were going to one every weekend. All of our friends' kids and all of our kids' friends were getting married at the same time. Every one was special even though they ran the gamut from very simple to wildly elaborate. I don't even want to know what some of them cost.
There was an old saying that if something went wrong at the wedding it insured that the marriage would go well, and even though we didn't know details, like when you listen to a piano performance and the pianist later says "Oh, I missed so many notes!" and you didn't know the difference, probably there was at least some small thing that happened at each to dispel the hex. The air conditioning went out at the church during our wedding. You can see Dennis kind of dripping in some of the pictures. The florist showed up minus a couple of corsages and look how long we've been married!
At one wedding we went to the bride and groom knocked over the unity candle, there was a small fire and I think the video made it onto America's Funniest Home Videos. How the "disasters" are handled by the bride and groom probably has much to say about how well their marriage will go. (The fire people are still married and it has been about seventeen years, I think)
The way my daughter-in-law, Robyn, responded to what happened at her wedding was one of the things that convinced me she would be great in our family. One of the candle lighters, her small cousin, was having difficulty lighting the last of the candelabras. She tried and tried till finally one of the ushers went up and took the lighter from her and tried to light the candle. He knocked against it. It swayed left. It swayed right. It swayed backwards and forwards and he finally made a heroic grab and caught it at just the moment before it went down. All this time the pianist, who it turned out was mainly fluent in "honky-tonk", kept playing the same song again and again that sounded like it had originated in an Old West saloon. After the wedding when Robyn got someone to confess to why she had been made to stand behind the door to the sanctuary forever hearing the same tinkly song over and over, said "Oh, good! I was hoping something funny would happen."
Because I was the preacher's daughter and impossibly cute and red-headed (I'm sure that was why! My daddy said so.) I was the flower girl in a lot of weddings when I was little. It didn't take long till I was an old pro at it and hated to be slowed down by unskilled kids who were poky ring bearers, or extra flower girls who took forever to learn that step-pause-step thing. I knew just how to dole out the petals so I didn't run out before I got to the front of the church and heaven help the other kid who might hesitate in fright when she was supposed to start down the aisle. I could pinch. I think the last wedding I was flower girl in was when the other flower girl made it to the front with me dragging her, then turned and stage-whispered to her mother right in the middle of the ceremony, "I have to go potty!" I gave up the profession; working with amateurs was just too stressful.
The Flower Girl and her Daddy, the preacher.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Travel Bag
I heard Dave Ramsey, the financial guru, say once that men buy cars for transportation (and, I might add, status) but for women a car is a big purse. He is absolutely right. What women, especially if she has kids and drives fourteen million miles a week, well, maybe a little less, like thirteen million, picking kids up from day care and/or school and taking them to music lessons and baseball practice and church and friends' houses in between driving to the grocery store, work, church, the cleaners and countless fast food drive-throughs because she doesn't have time to cook, she is driving for Pete's sake!, what woman has a clean car for more than an hour every six months? That hour courtesy of the husband who sighs loud enough to be heard three states away, shakes his head and heads off to the car-wash. Alone, of course, no kids in the car.
Why is this, you may ask. I'll tell you why. There has never been an art project made from macaroni and nine gallons of glue on a paper plate that has been sent home dry. And there has never been a macaroni/glue/paper plate art project that has made it out of the car and into the house without first lying on the floor of the car, macaroni/glue side down, for about a week until someone misses it and wonders why it is not displayed on the front of the refrigerator. No, it is in the car, glued firmly to the carpet, underneath three lost library books, forty-seven Happy Meal toys, minus the Happy Meal toy that went "Heee-hawww" each time its tail was pulled and the mom said "If I hear that one more time I am throwing that thing out the window!" and she made good on the threat. It's mixed in with ballet shoes, soccer uniforms from last year, folded camp chairs for watching soccer practices, a dozen petrified french fries, a hockey puck that used to be a hamburger patty, empty juice boxes (empty because the juice has oozed out of the cardboard and has pooled into the cup holder in a congealed mass, trapping the juice box like a dinosaur in the La Brea Tar Pits) and backpacks with notes from the teacher that have to be signed right now! If there is a kid in diapers, multiply the quantity of these things by twenty-seven.
And don't forget the car seats. There are scary treasures under the car seats that will never be unearthed until the kids are studying for their own drivers' licenses. And don't worry about making sure the car seats are installed correctly. They are held to the upholstery with something like Super Glue that probably came from one of those juice boxes before the rest of it was left in the cup holder. All of these things are in the back seats.
The front seat has Bibles, Bible study notebooks, grocery lists, re-usable grocery bags, cardboard coffee cups, change, hand sanitizer, movies, both the kind that were supposed to go back to the RedBox two days ago and the ones that you keep in the car if you are lucky enough to have a DVD player for the kids to watch for part of the thirteen million mile journey. And a purse.
Now that I am a grandma my car is not as full as it used to be but there are certain things that I do keep there. There is a plastic bin between the two back seats that is supposed to hold the Happy Meal toys and markers and color books for the grandkids. Even though I also have a trash can in the front, the toy bin may occasionally get cookie crumbs and wrappers and gooey stuff, or so I have been told by someone who had to stick his hand down in there looking for the car keys once (Oh, just do your big sigh and go on to the car wash with the car if you're going to be that way).
I also have a built-in bin that has scissors and scotch tape (you never know when you might need to wrap a present on the way somewhere) post-it notes, extra ink pens, fabric samples from all my upholstered furniture in case I need to match something, the DVDs we keep in the car for the kids, and a bunch of change. And an afghan and a small pillow in case someone needs to take a nap while waiting for someone else to come out of work but he is still in a meeting and it's getting dark! Or the cat can curl up on the blanket if he is thrown into the garage in the middle of the night for dancing a tarantella up and down the halls while decent people try to get some sleep. And the aforementioned trash can, usually full of used coffee cups. Somehow, though, I tend to get a call every week or so saying "Grandma, is my lunchbox in your car?" It usually is.
I rode in my son Josh's car a few weeks ago. It was so clean I might have been taking a test drive at a car dealer's. The kids were nowhere around, though. I'm pretty sure they were in his wife's car.
Why is this, you may ask. I'll tell you why. There has never been an art project made from macaroni and nine gallons of glue on a paper plate that has been sent home dry. And there has never been a macaroni/glue/paper plate art project that has made it out of the car and into the house without first lying on the floor of the car, macaroni/glue side down, for about a week until someone misses it and wonders why it is not displayed on the front of the refrigerator. No, it is in the car, glued firmly to the carpet, underneath three lost library books, forty-seven Happy Meal toys, minus the Happy Meal toy that went "Heee-hawww" each time its tail was pulled and the mom said "If I hear that one more time I am throwing that thing out the window!" and she made good on the threat. It's mixed in with ballet shoes, soccer uniforms from last year, folded camp chairs for watching soccer practices, a dozen petrified french fries, a hockey puck that used to be a hamburger patty, empty juice boxes (empty because the juice has oozed out of the cardboard and has pooled into the cup holder in a congealed mass, trapping the juice box like a dinosaur in the La Brea Tar Pits) and backpacks with notes from the teacher that have to be signed right now! If there is a kid in diapers, multiply the quantity of these things by twenty-seven.
And don't forget the car seats. There are scary treasures under the car seats that will never be unearthed until the kids are studying for their own drivers' licenses. And don't worry about making sure the car seats are installed correctly. They are held to the upholstery with something like Super Glue that probably came from one of those juice boxes before the rest of it was left in the cup holder. All of these things are in the back seats.
The front seat has Bibles, Bible study notebooks, grocery lists, re-usable grocery bags, cardboard coffee cups, change, hand sanitizer, movies, both the kind that were supposed to go back to the RedBox two days ago and the ones that you keep in the car if you are lucky enough to have a DVD player for the kids to watch for part of the thirteen million mile journey. And a purse.
Now that I am a grandma my car is not as full as it used to be but there are certain things that I do keep there. There is a plastic bin between the two back seats that is supposed to hold the Happy Meal toys and markers and color books for the grandkids. Even though I also have a trash can in the front, the toy bin may occasionally get cookie crumbs and wrappers and gooey stuff, or so I have been told by someone who had to stick his hand down in there looking for the car keys once (Oh, just do your big sigh and go on to the car wash with the car if you're going to be that way).
I also have a built-in bin that has scissors and scotch tape (you never know when you might need to wrap a present on the way somewhere) post-it notes, extra ink pens, fabric samples from all my upholstered furniture in case I need to match something, the DVDs we keep in the car for the kids, and a bunch of change. And an afghan and a small pillow in case someone needs to take a nap while waiting for someone else to come out of work but he is still in a meeting and it's getting dark! Or the cat can curl up on the blanket if he is thrown into the garage in the middle of the night for dancing a tarantella up and down the halls while decent people try to get some sleep. And the aforementioned trash can, usually full of used coffee cups. Somehow, though, I tend to get a call every week or so saying "Grandma, is my lunchbox in your car?" It usually is.
I rode in my son Josh's car a few weeks ago. It was so clean I might have been taking a test drive at a car dealer's. The kids were nowhere around, though. I'm pretty sure they were in his wife's car.
Watch My Purse For Me, Will Ya,?
I don't know how men get by carrying just what is in their pockets. Where do they keep their little packages of tissues or their used tissues or notebooks or extra pens or crayons for the kids or sunglasses? Oh, that's right. They hand their sunglasses and anything extra they have to their wives to put in their purses.
I see some young women carrying purses that aren't much bigger than my wallet, and I don't know how they do that either, but then they're probably single and don't have to carry the sunglasses for their husbands. Here is what is in my purse right now: wallet, of course, containing my driver's license, voter ID, three credit cards, cards for movies, cards for discounts at grocery stores, cards for CVS and Toys R Us and Sam's, and memberships to a bunch of places and so on. And a little bit of money. There is also lipstick, a pill case, a comb, (yeah, I know you think I never use it, but it's there if I decide to) hand cream, eye-drops, a datebook, (I know, I know, but even if I could get the information into my phone I would never remember how to access it when I need it.) another card case with more cards including my library card, keys, extra garage door opener in case someone is giving me a ride, coupon envelope, notebook for blog ideas, a bunch of extra pens, old receipts, crayons in little boxes you get in restaurants, pages of stickers and pipe cleaners for twisting into really cool shapes when kids have to wait a long time and be quiet, like in church, a package of Splenda in case they don't put enough in Dennis's coffee at McDonald's.
There is more but I am getting tired of listing things. How would I get all that into a fashionable purse the size of a pack of cards? I'm pretty sure my shoulder problem stems from the weight of all that stuff hanging there when I sling my purse across my shoulder.
Remember Art Linkletter? (He was on television about a hundred and fifty years ago) He opened an audience member's purse and pulled out a breast pump once. I don't have one of those in there. And I leave my sunglasses in the car and tend to keep my cell phone in my pocket now.
While I can't figure out how those teeny purses work, I can't figure out how women use those giant purses, the ones like big duffel bags, either. Everything just falls to the bottom and it is like an archaeological expedition to find anything. (Oh, please! I've seen you dumping everything out onto the floor trying to find your keys.) I have to have purses with very specific configurations. The right amount of pockets in the right places. I know they look like old lady purses, but hey, I AM an old lady. I try to put the same things in the same pockets all the times and once when I lost my keys while we were on a trip and called back, my sister looked everywhere in St. Louis for them and I finally had a whole new set of keys made. It turned out later that they were in the bottom of my purse instead of the pocket where I ALWAYS put them. Except that time.
When it comes time that I am forced to buy a new purse, usually because holes have worn into the lining and essential things creep in there and hide from me, taunting me with their jingling, eluding my grasp, I have a dichotomy of feelings. I hate looking for a purse that fits my very exact needs because I look and look and cannot find one. On the other hand, there is always the excitement of the hunt, the absolutely, fantastically perfect one may be out there; I just haven't found it yet. I have several in my closet that I thought might be IT but they weren't and I had to start again. What I really wish is that I could design my own, have somebody make it out of industrial strength materials, and keep it forever.
Then there is the issue of the cost, of course. On "Price Is Right" they often give away purses that they say are worth (a relative term) more than a thousand dollars. Please! I worked with a lady who said she paid $300 for a purse once but she was still carrying it seventeen years later. I guess at $17.64 a year it was not a bad deal but I'd still have a hard time laying out the initial cash. My favorite purse so far, and I'm carrying it for the second year, is one I paid two dollars for at Goodwill.
I just read about the world's most expensive purse that is on display in Dubai. It is made of 18 caret gold, encrusted with 4,517 diamonds and the price tag is $3.8 million dollars. I don't think it's for me though. It doesn't have the right pockets. I think it might just be better to get my husband one of those "man bags". (Men call them Messenger Bags but we really know what they are) Then I can hand him things to carry for me instead of the other way around.
I see some young women carrying purses that aren't much bigger than my wallet, and I don't know how they do that either, but then they're probably single and don't have to carry the sunglasses for their husbands. Here is what is in my purse right now: wallet, of course, containing my driver's license, voter ID, three credit cards, cards for movies, cards for discounts at grocery stores, cards for CVS and Toys R Us and Sam's, and memberships to a bunch of places and so on. And a little bit of money. There is also lipstick, a pill case, a comb, (yeah, I know you think I never use it, but it's there if I decide to) hand cream, eye-drops, a datebook, (I know, I know, but even if I could get the information into my phone I would never remember how to access it when I need it.) another card case with more cards including my library card, keys, extra garage door opener in case someone is giving me a ride, coupon envelope, notebook for blog ideas, a bunch of extra pens, old receipts, crayons in little boxes you get in restaurants, pages of stickers and pipe cleaners for twisting into really cool shapes when kids have to wait a long time and be quiet, like in church, a package of Splenda in case they don't put enough in Dennis's coffee at McDonald's.
There is more but I am getting tired of listing things. How would I get all that into a fashionable purse the size of a pack of cards? I'm pretty sure my shoulder problem stems from the weight of all that stuff hanging there when I sling my purse across my shoulder.
Remember Art Linkletter? (He was on television about a hundred and fifty years ago) He opened an audience member's purse and pulled out a breast pump once. I don't have one of those in there. And I leave my sunglasses in the car and tend to keep my cell phone in my pocket now.
While I can't figure out how those teeny purses work, I can't figure out how women use those giant purses, the ones like big duffel bags, either. Everything just falls to the bottom and it is like an archaeological expedition to find anything. (Oh, please! I've seen you dumping everything out onto the floor trying to find your keys.) I have to have purses with very specific configurations. The right amount of pockets in the right places. I know they look like old lady purses, but hey, I AM an old lady. I try to put the same things in the same pockets all the times and once when I lost my keys while we were on a trip and called back, my sister looked everywhere in St. Louis for them and I finally had a whole new set of keys made. It turned out later that they were in the bottom of my purse instead of the pocket where I ALWAYS put them. Except that time.
When it comes time that I am forced to buy a new purse, usually because holes have worn into the lining and essential things creep in there and hide from me, taunting me with their jingling, eluding my grasp, I have a dichotomy of feelings. I hate looking for a purse that fits my very exact needs because I look and look and cannot find one. On the other hand, there is always the excitement of the hunt, the absolutely, fantastically perfect one may be out there; I just haven't found it yet. I have several in my closet that I thought might be IT but they weren't and I had to start again. What I really wish is that I could design my own, have somebody make it out of industrial strength materials, and keep it forever.
Then there is the issue of the cost, of course. On "Price Is Right" they often give away purses that they say are worth (a relative term) more than a thousand dollars. Please! I worked with a lady who said she paid $300 for a purse once but she was still carrying it seventeen years later. I guess at $17.64 a year it was not a bad deal but I'd still have a hard time laying out the initial cash. My favorite purse so far, and I'm carrying it for the second year, is one I paid two dollars for at Goodwill.
I just read about the world's most expensive purse that is on display in Dubai. It is made of 18 caret gold, encrusted with 4,517 diamonds and the price tag is $3.8 million dollars. I don't think it's for me though. It doesn't have the right pockets. I think it might just be better to get my husband one of those "man bags". (Men call them Messenger Bags but we really know what they are) Then I can hand him things to carry for me instead of the other way around.
Friday, November 11, 2011
How Pink Became My New Favorite Color
I have a terrible confession to make, one that I would not have been able to make before my mom passed away last year: back in the early '70s I went braless. I wasn't a Radical Feminist or anything, not a Bra Burner. But they had not invented sports bras back then and bras are not that comfortable and, well, just because I could.
There was certain criteria that had to be met unless you were doing it to make a political statement: if you could put a pencil under your breasts and it stayed there, you were too big and had to wear a bra. Hard as it is to imagine today, I was a little slip of a thing back then, I passed the pencil test and I was bra-free for a couple of years. (I did wear band-aids under anything thinner than a sweatshirt; I wasn't completely clueless!) Then I got pregnant and went from braless freedom to maternity bras to nursing bras and the next thing I knew, I was in my sixties, gravity had done it's thing and not only could I have held a pencil under there, I could have held a rolled up newspaper....the Sunday Times. (Stay with me. This is going to figure into the story.)
Thinking of that reminded me of a book written in the seventies, "All Things Wise And Wonderful" by a country veterinarian from Scotland named James Herriot and set in the time before World War II. Just the other day I found a copy. The vet wrote," 'This is the third time I've had to stitch Daisy up and I'm afraid it is just going to go on happening'....That was the worst of very old cows. Their udders dropped so that when they lay down in their stalls the vital milk-producing organ was pushed to one side into the path of the neighboring animals....There was a long silence as Dodson and I looked at the cow, her broken down udder almost brushing the cobblestones."
So the last few years, boy did I identify with poor Daisy! Oh, don't sit there looking so smug. It happens to everybody if you live long enough, maybe not to that degree if you stay skinny and look like two fried eggs on a plate now, but Newton's law is always in effect, honey.
As you know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and since next month is the three year anniversary of my story's beginning, I decided to nag you along with everybody else. "Let me tell you about my operation," as my grandma used to say.
Here is a tip: If you ever notice certain changes, and you want to ask somebody about them but you really don't want to know, but your son is a doctor, and you kind of want to ask him but you don't want him to know it's you, don't go looking them up on his computer at his house when he can come up behind you and see what you are looking at and make you tell him. Your whole denial thing doesn't have a chance after that. I think maybe there was something to the "wanting to get caught theory", although I didn't realize it at the time.
So he made me go to my doctor and she sent me for a "diagnostic mammogram". That office had a pink Christmas tree decorated with pink ribbons, pink chairs, pink scrubs for the techs and a little pink cape for me to wear while I waited for them to tell me I needed to come back for a needle biopsy. More pink. Then onto a surgeon with a nice beige office, who said "I really don't think this is going to be anything. I see calcium deposits and that doesn't always mean cancer but let's go in and take a look just to be safe."
They would do a lumpectomy to test it. There wasn't any lump but I guess he meant they just wanted to take a chunk of something and get it under a microscope. The surgeon assured me more than once that he almost never saw cancer in these kind of things. I had had lumpectomies twice before when there were actual lumps and they were benign. Out-patient surgery, in and out the same day, and he would call us. The surgery was on Friday and by Wednesday he still had not called. It was a little disconcerting not to hear from him but then, late on Wednesday evening the phone rang. He had been surprised. He gave me lots of details with words I didn't understand. I took notes that I didn't understand. Then I had enough presence of mind to ask him if he would call our son, Josh, who made me go to him in the first place and who spoke his language.
Here's where the eleven hours of labor and natural childbirth paid off: Josh called back and explained everything in words I recognized: I had breast cancer. It was not confined to a tumor but in the milk ducts. The margins of the sample they took still had cancer cells to the edges so they needed to take a larger sample, another surgery.
Long story a little less long, after two more surgeries getting more samples that never got clear edges, I finally had a full mastectomy and they did whatever they do so I could have reconstruction of that breast. There was a year of painful treatments for that (if you have to make a decision about reconstruction, message me. We'll talk) but, praise the Lord, I did not need chemotherapy or even radiation. And here's the silver lining: A year after the mastectomy I had another surgery to reduce the size of the other breast so there would be some sort of matching. (The law requires that insurance pays for this, also.) And voila! I could probably hold a pencil under there but not one of those fat crayons little kids use in kindergarten. Not even a toothpick under the reconstructed one. No parts of me any longer brush the cobblestones.
I read that Liz Higgins says to practice for a mammogram you should take two glass cutting boards, put them in the freezer, then put one on the floor of the garage and lie down with your breast on it. Put the other on top and have someone run the car over them.
I promise you it is not as bad as all that. By this time I have had maybe two thousand and forty-three mammograms, okay, maybe a two thousand twenty-three....they do a lot when you are having breast surgeries, and I have never had one that was really painful. I already have mine scheduled for next month. (Dennis thinks they should give it to me for half price but I already tried and they didn't go for it.)
So do it. Chances are that there will be nothing there, but if you catch something before there are any symptoms, how much easier will it be to fix? And maybe in a year or two you, who knows? It might not be fashionable to go braless any more but you could if you wanted to. And the only confession you will have to make is that you were smart enough to catch things early. And you might get a free pink t-shirt. It will be your favorite color too.
There was certain criteria that had to be met unless you were doing it to make a political statement: if you could put a pencil under your breasts and it stayed there, you were too big and had to wear a bra. Hard as it is to imagine today, I was a little slip of a thing back then, I passed the pencil test and I was bra-free for a couple of years. (I did wear band-aids under anything thinner than a sweatshirt; I wasn't completely clueless!) Then I got pregnant and went from braless freedom to maternity bras to nursing bras and the next thing I knew, I was in my sixties, gravity had done it's thing and not only could I have held a pencil under there, I could have held a rolled up newspaper....the Sunday Times. (Stay with me. This is going to figure into the story.)
Thinking of that reminded me of a book written in the seventies, "All Things Wise And Wonderful" by a country veterinarian from Scotland named James Herriot and set in the time before World War II. Just the other day I found a copy. The vet wrote," 'This is the third time I've had to stitch Daisy up and I'm afraid it is just going to go on happening'....That was the worst of very old cows. Their udders dropped so that when they lay down in their stalls the vital milk-producing organ was pushed to one side into the path of the neighboring animals....There was a long silence as Dodson and I looked at the cow, her broken down udder almost brushing the cobblestones."
So the last few years, boy did I identify with poor Daisy! Oh, don't sit there looking so smug. It happens to everybody if you live long enough, maybe not to that degree if you stay skinny and look like two fried eggs on a plate now, but Newton's law is always in effect, honey.
As you know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and since next month is the three year anniversary of my story's beginning, I decided to nag you along with everybody else. "Let me tell you about my operation," as my grandma used to say.
Here is a tip: If you ever notice certain changes, and you want to ask somebody about them but you really don't want to know, but your son is a doctor, and you kind of want to ask him but you don't want him to know it's you, don't go looking them up on his computer at his house when he can come up behind you and see what you are looking at and make you tell him. Your whole denial thing doesn't have a chance after that. I think maybe there was something to the "wanting to get caught theory", although I didn't realize it at the time.
So he made me go to my doctor and she sent me for a "diagnostic mammogram". That office had a pink Christmas tree decorated with pink ribbons, pink chairs, pink scrubs for the techs and a little pink cape for me to wear while I waited for them to tell me I needed to come back for a needle biopsy. More pink. Then onto a surgeon with a nice beige office, who said "I really don't think this is going to be anything. I see calcium deposits and that doesn't always mean cancer but let's go in and take a look just to be safe."
They would do a lumpectomy to test it. There wasn't any lump but I guess he meant they just wanted to take a chunk of something and get it under a microscope. The surgeon assured me more than once that he almost never saw cancer in these kind of things. I had had lumpectomies twice before when there were actual lumps and they were benign. Out-patient surgery, in and out the same day, and he would call us. The surgery was on Friday and by Wednesday he still had not called. It was a little disconcerting not to hear from him but then, late on Wednesday evening the phone rang. He had been surprised. He gave me lots of details with words I didn't understand. I took notes that I didn't understand. Then I had enough presence of mind to ask him if he would call our son, Josh, who made me go to him in the first place and who spoke his language.
Here's where the eleven hours of labor and natural childbirth paid off: Josh called back and explained everything in words I recognized: I had breast cancer. It was not confined to a tumor but in the milk ducts. The margins of the sample they took still had cancer cells to the edges so they needed to take a larger sample, another surgery.
Long story a little less long, after two more surgeries getting more samples that never got clear edges, I finally had a full mastectomy and they did whatever they do so I could have reconstruction of that breast. There was a year of painful treatments for that (if you have to make a decision about reconstruction, message me. We'll talk) but, praise the Lord, I did not need chemotherapy or even radiation. And here's the silver lining: A year after the mastectomy I had another surgery to reduce the size of the other breast so there would be some sort of matching. (The law requires that insurance pays for this, also.) And voila! I could probably hold a pencil under there but not one of those fat crayons little kids use in kindergarten. Not even a toothpick under the reconstructed one. No parts of me any longer brush the cobblestones.
I read that Liz Higgins says to practice for a mammogram you should take two glass cutting boards, put them in the freezer, then put one on the floor of the garage and lie down with your breast on it. Put the other on top and have someone run the car over them.
I promise you it is not as bad as all that. By this time I have had maybe two thousand and forty-three mammograms, okay, maybe a two thousand twenty-three....they do a lot when you are having breast surgeries, and I have never had one that was really painful. I already have mine scheduled for next month. (Dennis thinks they should give it to me for half price but I already tried and they didn't go for it.)
So do it. Chances are that there will be nothing there, but if you catch something before there are any symptoms, how much easier will it be to fix? And maybe in a year or two you, who knows? It might not be fashionable to go braless any more but you could if you wanted to. And the only confession you will have to make is that you were smart enough to catch things early. And you might get a free pink t-shirt. It will be your favorite color too.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
The Long and the Short of It
I guess my boys were in Junior High when they first started standing next to me to see who was taller. We would stand back to back and someone would measure and I tried to stand as straight as I could and my hair was puffed up but they would put their hands up there and hold my hair down and before you knew it I was the shortest one in the family. One Spring Break I had to work and Dennis took the boys with him to St. Louis where he was on a consulting job. They were only gone a week but before they left Jake measured against me, nothing new, and when they got back he was taller than me.
And now it's happening with my grandkids. The oldest ones are eyeing me, pushing down my hair, sidling up next to me to see if it would be worth measuring. I think they are going to be having the advantage though, because it seems I'm shrinking. Ever since I was a grown-up I have been five feet, three and three-quarters inches tall. Then someone said, "Enough with the quarter inch, it is five-three and a half." Now at the doctor's I'm suddenly just five-three!
It was inevitable, I guess. I got my mom's short genes and when she and I stood together we were the same height. Then one time some years ago I noticed I could look over the top of her and by the time she died last year she was more than a head shorter than me. What's up with that? Is gravity just pulling us down toward the earth, trying to suck us into the ground? I have to admit there are certain parts of me that started heading south sooner than the rest but I guess if you live long enough you wind up looking puppies in the eye!
When you are short you learn to compensate pretty early. One of my prized possessions is a rolling stool, the kind they have in libraries, which I keep in the kitchen. I went to Office Depot looking for one a few years (OK, decades!) ago and it was $50 so of course I didn't get it. That week-end, though, I found one at a garage sale for ---I'm not making this up---forty-five cents. I roll it all over the kitchen and laundry room when I need anything above the second shelves and carry it into the rest of the house frequently.
When I stay at Josh and Jerilyn's I can't take my stool so if I'm there with just the grandkids I'm in trouble. I used to pick up one of the kids and stand him or her on the kitchen counter so they could hand me things but at seven and eleven they are a little too big to lift up there now. Last week I finally found the stool that Jerilyn had gotten for the kids when they were toddlers so they could reach the bathroom sink and I carried that around the kitchen. They have those fashionably high ceilings with cabinets to match so I can hardly reach beyond the first shelf. So the toddler stool is mine at their house now. There's something wrong with this picture!!!
They say that the average height of women in the United States is five feet four inches. Where are they? And since every one I know is, like, a foot taller than me, wouldn't there have to be a lot of pygmy-size women running around to make the average work? And do they design things to fit this mythical "average" size woman? No way. I have to wear a seat belt extender in my car to keep the seat belt from strangling me since my neck is apparently where everybody else's shoulders are. One of the good things about our current car is that there is a button on the steering column to raise the pedals so my feet can reach them, but the default setting, of course, is for someone at least six inches taller than me.
When you are short you have to be inventive. I have two sets of barbecue tongs in my kitchen. I use them to grab things that are too high for me and pull them down. And at Wal Mart the other day I was trying to reach a package of diapers (they were for Gus, our Yorkie---another blog some day) and they were at the back of the top shelf. There was absolutely no way. I only even spotted them because the shelf looked empty and I had backed way far away to try to look in. I tried stepping on the bottom shelf to boost myself up but that didn't work. While looking for someone tall enough to reach in I found a broom, took it back to the shelf, stood on my tiptoes and swept the diapers to the front of the shelf.
I do know a few women who are shorter than me. My friend, Pam and my niece, Christina are both about five-two I think. I like being around them but here's the deal. They are teeny all over. I don't know this for a fact but I'm pretty sure that neither of them would be able to give blood according to the Red Cross. There is a minimum that you have to weigh before they will let you give.
It is clear that there has been a mix-up somehow. Those kids never should have gotten taller than me. It's very simple really. I have checked the guidelines and according to the height/weight charts, for my weight I should be six feet-three.
And now it's happening with my grandkids. The oldest ones are eyeing me, pushing down my hair, sidling up next to me to see if it would be worth measuring. I think they are going to be having the advantage though, because it seems I'm shrinking. Ever since I was a grown-up I have been five feet, three and three-quarters inches tall. Then someone said, "Enough with the quarter inch, it is five-three and a half." Now at the doctor's I'm suddenly just five-three!
It was inevitable, I guess. I got my mom's short genes and when she and I stood together we were the same height. Then one time some years ago I noticed I could look over the top of her and by the time she died last year she was more than a head shorter than me. What's up with that? Is gravity just pulling us down toward the earth, trying to suck us into the ground? I have to admit there are certain parts of me that started heading south sooner than the rest but I guess if you live long enough you wind up looking puppies in the eye!
When you are short you learn to compensate pretty early. One of my prized possessions is a rolling stool, the kind they have in libraries, which I keep in the kitchen. I went to Office Depot looking for one a few years (OK, decades!) ago and it was $50 so of course I didn't get it. That week-end, though, I found one at a garage sale for ---I'm not making this up---forty-five cents. I roll it all over the kitchen and laundry room when I need anything above the second shelves and carry it into the rest of the house frequently.
When I stay at Josh and Jerilyn's I can't take my stool so if I'm there with just the grandkids I'm in trouble. I used to pick up one of the kids and stand him or her on the kitchen counter so they could hand me things but at seven and eleven they are a little too big to lift up there now. Last week I finally found the stool that Jerilyn had gotten for the kids when they were toddlers so they could reach the bathroom sink and I carried that around the kitchen. They have those fashionably high ceilings with cabinets to match so I can hardly reach beyond the first shelf. So the toddler stool is mine at their house now. There's something wrong with this picture!!!
They say that the average height of women in the United States is five feet four inches. Where are they? And since every one I know is, like, a foot taller than me, wouldn't there have to be a lot of pygmy-size women running around to make the average work? And do they design things to fit this mythical "average" size woman? No way. I have to wear a seat belt extender in my car to keep the seat belt from strangling me since my neck is apparently where everybody else's shoulders are. One of the good things about our current car is that there is a button on the steering column to raise the pedals so my feet can reach them, but the default setting, of course, is for someone at least six inches taller than me.
When you are short you have to be inventive. I have two sets of barbecue tongs in my kitchen. I use them to grab things that are too high for me and pull them down. And at Wal Mart the other day I was trying to reach a package of diapers (they were for Gus, our Yorkie---another blog some day) and they were at the back of the top shelf. There was absolutely no way. I only even spotted them because the shelf looked empty and I had backed way far away to try to look in. I tried stepping on the bottom shelf to boost myself up but that didn't work. While looking for someone tall enough to reach in I found a broom, took it back to the shelf, stood on my tiptoes and swept the diapers to the front of the shelf.
I do know a few women who are shorter than me. My friend, Pam and my niece, Christina are both about five-two I think. I like being around them but here's the deal. They are teeny all over. I don't know this for a fact but I'm pretty sure that neither of them would be able to give blood according to the Red Cross. There is a minimum that you have to weigh before they will let you give.
It is clear that there has been a mix-up somehow. Those kids never should have gotten taller than me. It's very simple really. I have checked the guidelines and according to the height/weight charts, for my weight I should be six feet-three.
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