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.