Life Since March

Well it has been an awfully long time since I wrote. Life has intervened in many unfortunate ways for my progress as a blogger. On May 14th, I managed to take a header at work and fall face down onto a sidewalk for no apparent reason. I landed pretty much looking like  a road kill. 

 The left half of my face was pretty bad, my glasses broke. The good news was no concussion, no broken bones or teeth. A miracle actually considering the major "Thunk" my head made as it hit the pavement. That part has cleared up pretty well for the most part. The worse part was my right leg. I managed to fracture my femur quite badly.

Take Care When Peeing

I was not quite sure that it was a problem break until all my doctors looked at the x-ray shaking their heads. Evidently it is a bad thing. So now I am in an immobilizer (the opposite of a mobilizer) and cannot put weight on my right leg for 3-4 months.
Workmen's Comp sent me back to work after 2 weeks. I still had a black eye and colorful face and was in a lot of pain. When I asked for an extension to stay home longer, the doctor told me I should "Suck it up!"

Suck it up!

So I have been sucking it up at home. It is pretty hard. To add to the general mix, my husband has two invalids he is caring for. Me, and his mother, at two different houses. He stays over there because she cannot be alone. Then he comes over here when he gets relief from our care giver. He helps me with what I need to be independent until the next time he comes over.

He is amazing. But enough is enough. I think we will probably move his mom here and sell her house. Visions of the the mother in law on "Everybody Loves Raymond" pepper my thinking.

 I don't think it will be an easy transition but at least all of the wounded will be under one roof. Just as long as George stays healthy....

Post Wedding Events

     You may not know this but some post wedding events are almost as good as the pre-wedding events. OK, not too many but there are some worth noting. The night after the wedding, George and I were invited to dinner with the bride's entire family who was still in St. Augustine. We met at a lovely restaurant on the top floor. Definitely classy. I sat near my two boys (men) and looked at them with their lovely wives. It was quite a moment as I contemplated how they had matured into wonderful men right before my eyes. 

Of course, there is one person that has not matured as fast as they have, and that, naturally, would be me. I had pre-arranged with the server to bring Jeff a special dish of his very own. Our Kraus traditional dish of rubber chicken. Here is Jeff contemplating that Mom has once again passed off the rubber chicken to him without him suspecting it in advance. Notice Ashlee wants to get away from the rubber chicken in the picture. But wait...this is a different rubber chicken.

R.C. hanging on a straw

 It is smaller, it squeaks and it lays an egg out of its bottom. This causes great merriment for about 15 minutes at the table as the rubber chicken is posed in many pretty disgusting ways and the papparazzi snap every picture for posterity (no pun intended).

Very unattractive pose

HELP!

 Guess they are not as grown up as I feared. Well at the end of the dinner and the rubber chicken was hoping his time was up, Jeff kept trying to sneak him in my purse without me knowing. (He gets extra points if I go home with the chicken).  Time to involve the Srednick's in the rubber chicken tradition. 

Here are the Chicken Relocators now. Rich and Deb.

Debbie was thrilled to be the Carrier of the Chicken and a clandestine e-mail that night certified that the "Chicken has been placed under Jeff's pillow, where he will locate it's rather slimy essence when he puts his hand under his pillow. Wow! Great partners in crime!

The Wedding

   

The Happy Couple!

     Well, the wedding is over. The memories will last a lifetime. The groom was handsome, the bride was beautiful and all was right with the world. But if you think it was all about them, well, think again.

    As the mother of the groom, I played a most important role in the festivities. I think that I surprised both my “boys” with the cleaned up version of Mom, complete with professionally applied make-up and a coordinated outfit. And panty hose.

       Here is how I looked in case you are wondering. I'm the one on the right. The other one is my handsome hubby, George, who also cleans up pretty nice.

   Jeff and Cory were wondering. “When did Mom get cleavage?” This is what I get for shopping for a push-up bra and putting on that excess weight so that it would migrate to my boobs. No respect.

Pantyhose From Hell

    And let me tell you about the panty hose. I have not worn them for probably about 10 years at least. I bought control top ones for…well, you know why. They looked like the width of a yardstick when I took them out of the package. George and I had to team up to hitch them up to my waist, they were so tight. He reminded me to take care to pull them all the way up after going to the bathroom. I didn’t.

   So during the mother and son dance to Rascal Flatt’s song, My Wish, my panty hose started to roll down off my rear. As Jeff is telling me how nice I look, I am afraid that the darn things will roll all the way down and fall in  a pool around my ankles by the end of the song. But we made it. They rolled themselves down to the tops of my legs and clung precariously there till I could get to the bathroom.

  But pantyhose and cleavage issues paled in comparison to the looks on the newlywed faces. Priceless.

Oh Rhett, you take mah breath away!

Random Thoughts

    In 5 days I will be a mother-in-law again. Happy times for our family again. 

 Of course, true to form, I am struggling with laryngitis and what appears to be bad allergies or a cold. In addition, my cracked tooth and possibly broken baby toe are giving me some pain but what would be a wedding without some pain? 

After all, Cory's wedding was right after my kidney stone attack and a fall I had the morning of the wedding, causing me to limp in pain most of the night. The groom's father, too, was ill, as a matter of fact, in the hospital where he missed the wedding. So this is nothing new but really. 

No drama please

Can't we just have a wedding without all the drama?



 Is this because my kids decided to wait and get married in their 30s and their parents just got worn away in the meantime? It's a lesson to young people everywhere. 


In the meantime, luck has been shining in other arenas of my life. 1. My new book, written for ADHD girls, is coming along beautifully. It is so cute, the sample pages I have seen, and I cannot wait for it to come out. 

2. More good luck. I called the IRS office today and was only on hold for 13 minutes. I think that is some kind of a record. 

3. The horrible tornadoes that have devastated the United States came very close to my loved ones, Cory and Ashlee, but left them okay and unscathed in Louisville. So I think I have had more than my share of luck as of late. Except for my toe, my tooth, and my cold thingy. The bigger picture looks wonderful!   

Out On The Town (Take 1, 2, and 3...)

     Well with three weeks left to go before the wedding, George and I made plans to have dinner with my almost-daughter-in-law's parents. We had a great time, but part of my evening was devoted to creating a photographic memory of our time together. 

     My idea was to put a picture on Facebook with a message to our kids from us old fogies. It turned out to be more of a project than I expected, but twice as fun.

Fountain

     After dinner we thought we might take a picture with a backdrop of a fountain behind us. Here is the fountain. Pretty huh? Well, we decided to do a test shot with my model, George.

Take 1
 George did not look so good. As he had
already predicted, we could not stand in front
of the fountain with my point and shoot camera. So we moved.


Take 2
We turned George around to face the other way. Still a bit dark. But at least he was smiling.

 Take 3
George lost his smile right about here. We had
moved down the street a bit to the front of the restaurant.


Take 4 Who is that bearded man?

A little farther on. 

 

 

Take 5  This will never do.








Take 6

Rich and Deb have lost interest in the project. They are wondering what
kind of family they are getting into. George, well, you can see how George feels. 
We are actually inside a mattress store, where we have asked permission to take a picture. We all promise faithfully to buy a mattress there some day in the future.


Take 7 Score!

Not only have we taken over a mattress shop, we have asked the sales man to take our picture. It's a wrap!

The Wedding

     In 5 weeks from today I will be a mother-in-law for the second time. We are inheriting not only a wonderful daughter, but also her extended family, which we love so much already. Wow! Add to that the fact that my sister, Diana, has recovered successfully from the cancer in her leg and will be at the wedding and well...life is pretty good. I even have my MOG dress (mother of the groom). As you may recall I made the fatal error of ordering one online. It was lovely. I looked like a stuffed sausage in it. But that is all over. I have a new dress and I am ready. Well almost.
      Since I rarely learn from my mistakes I ordered shoes online and returned them, then we headed out to DSW and got some comfortable shoes that will allow for standing, walking, and dancing. 

I'm a Brand New Chick!

     Speaking of dancing, my son and I have planned our mother/son dance, which just blows me away, the thought of it. He asked me for my input. I had two ideas, neither of which were chosen.  One was "I'm a Brand New Chick!" and the other was "Detachable Penis!" 

Not even Rosie the Riveter could get that bra on.

     We settled for a more motherly love song, which I will not reveal at this time. But today was the piece de resistance! I had to go shopping for a strapless bra. Big deal you say. Yeah! I have never got one before and I hope to never have to get one again. It was torture. 
     Since my midsection has expanded much larger in later years, I was about 4 inches off in my estimate of what size I would need. It took a while to get to where I could pull the darn thing up without choking. Strapless bras, it turns out, have that rubbery stuff on them to stick to your torso better and it makes them really hard to put on. I was wishing my first daughter in law, Ashlee was there to help. 

Results of Bra Shopping

I knew my waist was too big!

In the olden days, making your waist smaller.

     I also picked up a thing that makes your waist smaller and makes you look like Scarlett O'Hara. Did not try it on, I was too exhausted from the bras. I met my husband at the entrance of the store, sweaty, glassy-eyed with wild hair, and he thought I had gotten into some kind of a bra brawl. I expect to have to start dressing the day before in order to get it on. Stay tuned for more wedding stories.

You Can't Take the Teacher out of the Person...

I am teacher! Hear me roar!

     Definitely, in my case, I am a teacher first and a woman second. I have that Teacher Look, the one that can freeze a culprit in 3 seconds flat. Add to that the Teacher Voice, the one that can carry across a crowded room, or the one that sinks to a whisper to add extra emphasis. Whatever the tone, the statements have  periods on the end of them so that there is no question that I am a teacher. Occasionally I surprise culprits with it.

Freshly hatched!

     Years ago, my sister and I took the kids to the Museum of Science and Industry, (Chicago) which has changed a good deal since I went there as a child. I love that museum, not because of all the wonderful scientific hands-on gadgets. Not because of all the scientific knowledge that you can glean from the experiments you perform. No, it was because of the baby chicks who were hatching from their eggs in the giant incubator.  But I digress. Those baby chicks were so cute. 

There were many exhibits!

     Anyway,when we returned there as adults, I was a little disappointed in one thing. It seemed as though working adults had discovered the value of dropping off their children there, going to work, and coming back to pick them up later. This resulted in children running around and hogging the exhibits. This did not sit well with the teacher in me. 
     We were standing in line quite a while while one little boy played with a race car exhibit. A Japanese family stood in front of us and Cory and I were next in line. The Japanese family had waited quietly and patiently for quite a while, when the 7-8 year old boy decided to play again and not leave the line. 
     I tapped him on the back. "Excuse me, but it is time for someone else to play. You need to go to the back of the line." He gave me the I-can't believe-you-are-talking-to-me-get-out-of-my-face-look and returned to the game. 
     I said "Excuse me!" to the still-patient Japanese family and reached around to grab him by the shirt collar. "Move, it, Bub!" I ordered. "There are other kids here." 
     He left, my sister couldn't believe it and for the rest of the time she checked the area to make sure some gang was not going to jump on me. 

Mailbox Misery

     Yesterday I had an opportunity to use my powers again. We have had complaints of kids vandalizing areas of my neighborhood. One complaint was that a child was flinging open all the mailboxes on our street as he went down the street. 

     So I hid behind a tree till the bus came. 4 Children came off the bus. Sure enough, the cute little guy in the navy backpack started backhanding all the mailboxes. I stepped out, and said, "Leave those mailboxes alone. They are personal property." He seemed stunned at seeing me materialize from the tree. "Now go back and close those mailboxes." He did, and got out of Dodge fast. 
Haven't lost my touch.