Dr. Feelgood

by | Mar 3, 2020 | Life, Parenting, Punk Rock

My daughter had her first wellness checkup in two years last week. We had switched pediatricians a few years ago after I got fed up with the snarky receptionist at the office we had been going to for the first seven years of my daughter’s life. We made it to her seven year wellness visit at the new office and haven’t gone back since. I’m not anti-doctor, but I view them the same way I view the police, only contact them when necessary. Since my kiddo has remained relatively healthy over the past few years, we really had no reason to visit our new doctor.

I was feeling pretty proud of myself for getting my daughter to her nine year visit an entire month before her ninth birthday. This would have been impossible if she had gone to her eight year visit, especially since insurance will only cover one visit in a twelve month period so we keep getting one more month behind. At some point I’m pretty sure our health insurance company will require that the doctor be seen at the hour of your birth annually to be covered. We pay a small fortune for coverage and they cover virtually nothing. My health insurance company has single-handedly made me defend socialism on more than one occasion. I am fairly certain I could break a bone per month and still not break even.

To the new pediatrician’s credit, she didn’t even mention that we skipped over a year of office visits. Instead, she asked my daughter a whole slew of questions about her lifestyle. Not surprisingly, my daughter revealed that she listens to a lot of punk rock music in the car and hears all kinds of swearing and that her mom lets her do unlimited dangerous things. When asked if she enjoyed her hip-hop dance class she actually went into a 10 minute dissertation about how the other girls wanted to hear terrible music like “dance monkey” (whatever the hell that is) and she would prefer to hear some heavier music for warm-up. My child is an almost nine year old music snob. Part of me was incredibly proud while part of me was horrified knowing I would be on the receiving end of this filibuster in the not too distant future. She talked about her friends and how she really likes the new girl because “she lets her freak flag fly” and explained a game they play at recess in great detail. Her doctor listened to every word and took notes. I can only imagine what she was writing but “call Social Services” or “send referral for therapist” were probably just a few of the pieces of chicken scratch. My kid had this entire conversation while sitting casually on a leather couch. I watched as she became more comfortable and her feet spread further apart. At one point she had her elbows on her knees, leaning completely in to the conversation. It was like watching a mini Hunter S. Thompson talking about politics, simultaneously relaxed and intense.

The pediatrician ended the visit by asking my daughter if she had any questions. I’m surprised my inquisitive and thorough child didn’t ask to make another appointment just to gather her list. Instead she asked a series of questions all about the doctor’s family. Within 5 minutes my daughter learned more about her pediatrician than I know about most of my friends. Before leaving my daughter requested that on her next visit she be placed in the Harry Potter themed room. She actually asked if we could move the exam into that room about halfway through the appointment and was told that she could be there next time, so apparently it was a high priority. In the car on the ride home my daughter said “that was fun. Why don’t we do that more often?” I think I am going to have her call the insurance company to have this conversation. If I can’t get my money’s worth out of them through services, I can certainly get it through time and entertainment.

*I wrote this blog while listening to The Misfits. It has been a nice change of pace since the wee one has been blaring the Zombies 2 soundtrack for the last three weeks…

Down in a Hole

by | Feb 1, 2020 | Lemonade out of Lemons, Life

My mom fell in a hole last week. To be more specific, she fell in a hole that my dad put in the floor, while she was trying to help him. So, he pretty much pushed her into a hole. Actually, it’s not that surprising. My dad is consistently creating hazardous situations and my mom is pretty consistently falling down. The fact that my mom hasn’t fallen halfway into the basement due to a giant hole in the floor before this time is pretty impressive.

I remember most of my dad’s home improvements based on how someone was injured by them. I have incurred scratches, bruises, burns and punctures to pretty much every extremity. I know now that when I see a piece of loose moulding on the floor that at least a few dozen nails are waiting to bore into the soles of my feet. While fetching my dad a tool one year during the closing of the pool I stepped on the diving board that had been unhinged and was catapulted into the half empty pool. The diving board followed me, whacking me in the head on the way. During my thirteenth birthday party the doorwall in the family room fell on top of a few party guests when a breeze blew it in. My dad was in the middle of a build out and the doorwall was free standing. It had literally been that way for at least a month prior to the party. I remember this because my mom was hoping to have just one home improvement completed within a calendar year. One of the constants in my life has been part of my parents’ house being a construction zone.

They bought a lake house 8 years ago and it took my dad an hour to start renovating. He may have actually brought a hammer to the closing, ready to get started. One part or another of that property has been under construction for the last 8 years. This bathroom renovation began last spring. I spent days swinging a sledge hammer at a shower wall for the better part of April. My mom spent that time following us all around with a broom and putting tools back in the toolbox (sometimes while still in use). I’m sure she tripped and fell at least three times back then too. That is why I was not at all surprised to hear about her tumble last week. She stepped directly into a hole my dad cut in the floor to accommodate the plumbing for the shower. There was a big hole in the floor right in front of her and she stepped directly into it.

My mom is spatially challenged. She falls often and sometimes even takes someone with her. When I was about 7 she was walking on ice and quickly grabbed me to use as a human pillow as she fell. She still somehow ended up more injured than me. I have seen her trip over her own feet and end up sprawled out on the floor on more than one occasion. You would think after living in a construction zone for the last 50 years that she would occasionally look down before taking a step, but no.

The combination of Mr. Fix-it and Mrs. Bumbles living in the same house is akin to a 24 hour version of American Ninja Warrior. He sets up the obstacle course every day and she tries to run it. I think she is just happy that this game has moved from their main home out to the lake where she can escape. When I heard about her fall I decided to do what all good daughters would do, I found a way to tease her about it. Then, feeling guilty about this I ran right out and bought her some flowers. Strangely, there are no greeting cards for such an occasion. Apparently the greeting card companies have never met my parents. I may be their only customer, but I would certainly buy in bulk a card that read “Sorry Dad tried to kill you. Get well soon!” or “Seriously, don’t break a leg. Sorry to hear about your fall.”

**I listened to the Beatles when writing this because they are my Mom’s favorite.

Pretty Woman

by | Jan 4, 2020 | Being Awesome, Life

There are few things I enjoy more than watching people feel uncomfortable. Strangely, I am often somehow connected to their uneasiness. So imagine my delight when I got to experience an old guy feeling very uncomfortable by my presence walking through a casino at 8 am! I don’t know how anyone can feel completely comfortable in a casino at that hour but when you think you are being propositioned by a woman in pajamas it’s probably super awkward.

I was walking back to our room through the casino after dropping off our towels at the pool this morning when I heard one of the interactive tables talking. “Come hither” it called. I had walked by earlier so I knew this little hussy’s sweet talk. The machine straight up flirts as guests pass by.As I was approaching the machine I heard it start in with its sweet talk. “Wanna play with me?” she called. I kept walking as the old dude in front of me turned around and eyed me suspiciously. Apparently he had not passed this talking electronic pickpocket and thought the voice was coming from an actual human near him. Unfortunately the woman in a skull and crossbones sweatshirt and flip flops was the only human nearby. I kept moving as the machine beckoned again “come sit with me.” Once again, the old guy in front of me turned around looking first at me and then all around him trying to decipher who was propositioning him. This time I kind of smiled and then looked away, increasing his uneasiness. I could have pointed at the machine he was standing in front of but that would have cleared everything up, ruining my amusement.

Finally, as the man passed, the machine whine yelled “SIT DOWN AND PLAY WITH ME!!” He finally realized the voice had been coming from the machine all along. He quickly put his head down and skittered away leaving me wondering who actually responds to being scolded by a talking slot machine. Then I remembered where I was.

I can only imagine the story he told his family when he got back to his room. It probably started “So, this hooker in pajamas propositioned me at the casino…”

Elf on a Shelf

by | Nov 15, 2019 | Chick Stuff, Life, Parenting

It snowed a few days ago, and buckets of that white stuffed poured on us for a full day. While my daughter was home for a snow day, she decided that it was the perfect time to decorate for Christmas. In theory, it wasn’t a horrible time, but I had literally just taken down our Halloween decorations the day before and we still have pumpkins and cobwebs on the porch. My house is like a holiday mullet with pumpkins in the front and santa in the back. Plus, all day I had been laughing at memes on social media saying things like “Snow in November happens because people decorate for Christmas prematurely. You know who you are. Stop it.” Now all I can think is clearly these people are spying on me. Somehow I don’t think I’ll get any credit for hot days in April when I decorate early for the Fourth of July. Then again, my Christmas decorations may very well still be up well into spring.

Normally when I decorate, I put the same pieces in the same places, but apparently I am getting senile as well as acquiring more decor because I stood there looking at half empty bins strewn across my house, unable to remember where anything went. Meanwhile, mini me ran through the house randomly placing ornament stands and two foot tall sparkly trees on the piano bench and next to the toilets. Apparently she likes to feel festive when she pees. I found her and a half decorated tree by following the trail of glitter. At one point I even joined in, trying to set up a snowman in our guest bathroom, but my husband promptly put a stop to that by reminding me that my mother has literally close to 50 snowmen in her guest bathroom. It is so packed in there that it’s hard to even find the toilet, let alone the sink. I don’t know if it was my fear of becoming a hoarder or the idea that someone could potentially pee all over Frosty, but I cleared out the bathroom pretty quickly.

I eventually figured out what normally goes where and then moved things around for another two hours before I finally gave up and started dragging empty bins downstairs. When my little elf pranced in suggesting we get started on the tree I laughed right out loud. Magically, I have two shelves with no decorations and I somehow acquired a bag containing 150 ornaments that had a $4 price tag on it. Apparently I couldn’t pass up an after Christmas sale even though our tree is already at maximum ornament capacity. Luckily we just bought a new coffee table with a glass top and a shelf below that holds exactly 150 sparkly globes. I would normally try to convince my husband I had bought the bag of bulbs for this exact spot and I am clearly a genius, but he had just redirected me from placing a fluffy white snowman six inches from the urine zone, so I kept my mouth closed.

So once again, it looks like someone ran through my house with a fire hose shooting glitter, and I am in heaven. Everything is sparkly and shiny and I even found spaces for hundreds of ornaments. It’s finally time to light the balsam scented candles, although I feel like fall lasted about three and a half minutes. Maybe I’ll keep the multi-holiday theme going and light some leaves scented candles in the front rooms and balsam in the back. Tis the season!

*I wrote this while listening to The Interrupters

 

Driving Miss Daisy

by | Oct 30, 2019 | Life

There are few things I enjoy talking about more than traffic. I would be a great traffic reporter with my added commentary on how badly people are driving all over the city.  I think a lot of people would be interested to hear about the asshole driving too slow in the left lane of the freeway or the guy who ran the red light in front of Starbucks and almost took out a gaggle of teenage girls in the crosswalk. When I talk to my husband on the phone while I am driving he often has to tell me to shut my pie hole about all of the horrific drivers surrounding me.

I am by nature a people watcher and I am fascinated by how much people struggle with simple things like spacial relations. In my mind, this kind of stuff is interesting to other people as well. I know I am mistaken, but I keep sharing my observations. Unfortunately, when I am not providing commentary on the highway happenings to my husband, I am sending him photos of cars parked askew as if they let their dogs attempt to drive. He gets pictures of the old men parked at the gym halfway between a handicap parking place and the sidewalk and the soccer moms at Target with their minivans overlapping two spots. The best photo I even sent him was a car on the front lawn of a home near my parents’ house. It looked as if the car was dropped from the sky or rolled into the yard. I had all kinds of crazy stories going in my mind to account for how this little blue car came to rest in the middle of a front yard.

My daughter is also a driving critic. She was backseat driving before she could talk. She has called out things like “green means go buddy” and “that lady can’t stay in her own lane” more than I would like to admit. She notices the same kinds of things I do and has almost as much commentary on it. One day a few months ago we witnessed one of the funniest driving incidents ever. We were at the library where they held a farmer’s market every friday sitting on a bench sharing some grapes as a car pulled into the lot and attempted to park about 20 yards from us. We watched as the female driver pulled into a handicap spot but instead of parking she drove directly over the sign standing at the front of the spot. Strangely, the sign sprung back up after she flattened it down into the pavement. The base of the sign was literally a spring so when the car passed over it, it flattened out and popped back into place. This was accompanied by a screeching sound as the metal sign scraped the bottom of the car. The woman proceeded through the parking lot and into another space as if nothing had happened. The only evidence that she was aware of what she had done was the flush of her cheeks as she walked past us into the farmer’s market. She looked around her as she got out of her car and saw about 50 people staring at her. I think I would have had to say something like “did you see that sign jump right out in front of me?” or something similar, but this lady just went about her business which leads me to believe it was not an unusual occurrence for her.

The best part about seeing this incident with my daughter was that she could go home and tell her dad all about it. She bounced in and giggled her way through the whole story. Not once did he tell her that he didn’t want to hear the traffic report like he does to me. He laughed along with her. I think we have a new traffic reporter in the house.

 

Adventures on the High Seas (or something like that…)

by | Oct 5, 2019 | Life, Screwing Things Up, Uncategorized

It’s been awhile since I have written about our lake experiences. This isn’t because we haven’t had any, I have just been giving my dad a little break from the abuse I dish out when it comes to boat stories. But alas, there are too many stories to share about the captain and his high seas adventures, so my hiatus is over. If you are reading this, Old Man, just turn off the computer now and go back to watching ESPN or Sherlock Holmes, or anything else. Just avert your eyes from the screen if you can’t figure out how to turn off the computer. For future reference, you can just close the lid and this will all go away.

The first time I saw the boat this past summer it was being towed in by the neighbors. The same neighbors who come to the rescue every time we experience water related ineptness were pulling my dad’s boat as he sat on the bow. When they got close to shore the boat was cut loose and smoke billowed out behind it as my dad cranked on the engine to pull into the boat slip. The best part of this was that the lift sits too high in the water so he has to pull the boat in kind of fast or it doesn’t make it far enough onto the lift. It’s always an awkward maneuver the first few times each year and the smoking engine did not help matters. It literally looked like he was trying to jump the boat right over the dock as he pulled in. It was like a giant smoking cannon ball headed toward shore.

After the boat was successfully docked we realized that the company that had stored it all winter had either left it outside uncovered or had been allowing homeless people to sleep in it because the interior was filthy. Apparently “Skipper Bud” was smoking a lot of bud while caring for my dad’s boat. We had been informed that we couldn’t pick it up the week prior because they hadn’t done a final check on it yet. I guess they never got around to the final check or an initial check for that matter. Or maybe they were just too stoned to notice the smoke pouring out of the engine. It’s possible that they left the boat parked right in their driveway where we left it last fall, cashed my Dad’s check and immediately closed for the winter. Needless to say, we were all pretty annoyed as well as perplexed.

It took a few weeks to get someone to repair the boat properly and get us back on the water. But we finally did get back on the water, and every time out I looked forward to pulling back in to shore. This is because during every ride my jokes about my dad’s parking skills got better. I would like to say his parking skills got better as well, but they still remain questionable. Some of my better comments included:

“Maybe the 8 year old should give it a try. She can’t be much worse.”
“At least you didn’t hit the neighbors dock!”
“Maybe we should just leave it out here and swim back.”
“Your eyes are closed, aren’t they?”

It should be obvious to me by now why he tortures me with the work he asks for help with. I guess I would do the same if some little asshole kept terrorizing me. The difference is I would let that person know I was torturing them. He keeps trying to pass off all the work we do at the lake as bonding time. He says things like “if we didn’t have all this work to do, when would we spend this kind of time together?” I remind him that I’ll visit him plenty in the nursing home.

We took the boat back out of the water a few weeks ago along with the wave runners, the dock and the lifts. It was a two weekend process as usual and after doing the math, my husband and I discovered that we actually spent more time getting the boat in and out of the water than we did on the water this summer. This is not including the many joyous minutes of parking time spent drafting new material to poke at the Old Man. I would complain more but, but what can I say, I enjoy the bonding time.

I wrote this while listening to one of my all time favs!