Wednesday, March 31, 2010

March 31, 2010

In like a lamb, roared through like a lion, out like a lamb.  That was our March.

Observations:

Don’t think you can remember the color of your last post.  That is true if you don’t post regularly.  That is especially true if your memory is going away.  That might of bothered me a while back and could bother me tomorrow being kind of obsessive-compulsive, but today, it doesn’t bother me.  I might go back and fix it, but I might not.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.  Well, that is something I have always heard anyway.  When I started my blog my intention was to write daily, kind of like a diary.  Got really ill when I had surgery and then it was once in a while.  Looking at my posts it seems now I am doing well if I post once a month.  I will try to do better, but being kind of ADD, things get in my way and I wander off and forget the way back.

 

Birthdays for one year olds.  Give them a fake cake made of just icing.  Make sure there is a plastic tablecloth underneath.  Preferably they need to be buck naked when you turn them a loose on their private cake, but I think there is a law against that and if there isn’t, then give Congress a few minutes and they will pass a law as such.  I digress.  Turn the child a loose and since this is their first encounter with a cake, they will test the waters and stick their finger into the icing and bring the finger to the mouth – like they do the dog food, scraps of paper on the floor, and everything they find – hand to mouth syndrome.  Next, put the entire hand into the icing and bring that to the mouth since that first taste was so good.  Enough sugar now to keep said child fueled for all day long.  Let’s see what can be done with two hands.  Pat, pat, pat.  Slide hands back and forth on the table cloth.  If the cake happens to be a Strawberry Shortcake cake, then the colors are pink and green which equal brown when mixed.

Cake hand

Before the party can continue, the child has to be whisked away to be hosed down washed up and redressed and the table has to be cleaned up.  Now it is time to open presents.  I am guilty!!!  Yes, I am.  I brought multiple presents to the party along with the multiple presents that everyone else brought.  What in the world were we thinking.  Apparently we forgot that a one year old child has the attention span of a gnat.  With that being said, just two, hear me, TWO presents total would have been more than enough.

After opening two presents, it was just a blur of paper and ribbons so carefully tied being jammed into a garbage sack to go off to the landfill.  I will say that whatever season the child was born in surely makes it nice for the parents.  They won’t have to buy any clothes at all until the next season rolls around.  Just think of the money they can save to go to the movies and to eat out.  My, oh, my.  Well, that is what I would have done with the money.  Just saying.

Would you believe it if I told you that this adorable child opened  one of my gifts and that was the end of the gift opening.  God bless her.  Took that mop and broom and you would have thought her mama had made her Susie Homemaker since birth.  Went straight to the kitchen and started using them both at the same time.  She needs a few lessons and then I think her mother can just point her in the direction of the kitchen and never have to clean a floor again.  (I did hear that she had stepped on the broom – one of those straight kinds like janitors use – and it came up and bopped her in the head which caused a torrent of tears – just has to learn how to use the thing properly)  Never did go hack to opening the presents.

My own mop and broom

We all had a good time visiting with the other grand parents, great-grandparents, and even great-great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins who we don’t get to see but on rare occasions.  The real cake and ice cream were good too.

 

Getting elderly – When does that time come?  I thought it might be with age, but decided that wasn’t it.  My dad is 90 and plays golf three days a week.  My mom is 85 and knits up a storm and you are lucky of you call and she is at home.  I guess if it were age, then they would qualify as elderly.

Health – This past year has proven that health can certainly age you, but if you erase the year and pretend it never happened, then maybe it didn’t.

Gait – Bad knees give you a bad gait like you have glass between the cushions in your knees.  Get new knees and your gait changes.  Now you totter along scared to death you will fall down and tear loose something that will damage those new knees.  I think sometime I look elderly by the way I walk, but I hope not.

Hair color – I choose not to color my hair.  Could be that I am following in my mother’s footsteps and “aging gracefully” as she likes to say.  I think it is because I am lazy and don’t want to spend my money at the beauty shop but would rather spend it on crafting things.  I had my hair streaked when I was younger and you had to go when the root line started growing out.  Yep, I think it is more lazy than anything else.

Teeth or the lack or – This, right now, is definitely my current definition of elderly.  Recently I broke a tooth and went to see my least favorite, but sweetest doctor, my dentist.  I complained of the tooth next to it hurting up in the gumline.  He x-rayed and came back in with worry written on his face.  I have seen his face a lot since he began his practice probably 30 years ago and can read it like a book.  I have teeth that my mother blessed me with and they are made of chalk.  Not worth a damn.  You can floss, see the hygienist twice yearly, brush 50 times a day, but you are eventually going to have root canals, crowns, bridges, and assorted other hurtful things going on in your mouth.

Did I say I still, sometime, cry in the dentist chair?  Well, I do.  Comes from pure terror as a child and a terrible dentist whose breath would have slayed a dragon.  I love my dentist because he has learned over the years to gas me up and that it takes a long time and lots of juice to deaden my mouth, unlike the dragon slayer dentist.

Well, he comes back in and says that the root on the eye tooth, which is next to the chipped tooth, has to come out as it has a split root and the chipped tooth is so badly chipped, like in half, that it can’t be saved either.  He says there are two ways to go and it is my choice.  Pull them all and get upper dentures – I completely came unglued and wept.  The other choice was to make a bridge that you have to put in and take out daily and that would buy me a few years.  I chose the latter one.

I will be 65 next week and in my mind that is too young to have to have real false teeth.  LOL  Vanity is what it is, pure and simple.  Here is where elderly comes to play.  At this time in my life, elderly is when you have a plastic box on your bathroom sink that you wash each day, fill with water at night, pour in some Scope, and deposit brushed teeth into at night.  That is elderly.  What do you do if you go and visit someone.  Where do you put these things?  In your suitcase?  On their sink?  Under the bed, which makes me think of something funny I will share in a moment.  What do you do with these awful things?  I do know you have a bad time trying to eat a Snicker bar with them in your mouth.  Seems the caramel wants to pull them right out of your mouth.  I have to remember not to hear sticky anything out in public, ever!!!

That funny story and I will leave the elderly scene.   My daughter’s youngest son is a hoot.  When he was about two years old, his great-grandmother came to spend the night with them.  She lives in East Texas so her visits always included at least one night at their house.  When they got up the next morning, she went to put her false teeth in and they weren’t in the box on the bathroom sink.  They looked high and low.  The children were asked if they had seen them and this grandchild sheepishly hung his head and said, “Yes, I know where they are.”  “Well, where are they?”  “They are under my pillow.  I looked in the box and they scared me so I put them under my pillow.”  Thus, the case of the missing teeth was solved.

Until the next time…..