Pee to Be You and Me

The holidays are over and we are trying to get back to normal. After my Daughter in Law Number #1 noted that our place looks like an episode on Hoarders, we have continued our efforts to empty the extra crap we have from trying to meld two houses into one. It is a painstaking job. Especially in getting George to throw stuff out or sell it.
"Well, what is this big black thing under the bed?" I ask.
"Oh that is my guitar."
I stare at him unblinkingly. "Guitar? You have a guitar? I have known you for 15 years and I never knew you had a guitar? Do you think maybe we could find a new home for it?"
No answer, but the guitar is tucked more firmly under the bed where I cannot see it without getting into  one of those pretzel formations with my body.

Fortunately, Jeff, my son, and I believe in improving our minds when we are together. Our catalyst this year was that his wife ordered asparagus for dinner when we went out.  Of course this started the "Why does asparagus make your pee smell funny?" We found out a lot of interesting facts that you will want to know.

1. Post-asparagus odor has been observed for centuries. French novelist Marcel Proust noted that asparagus transformed his chamber-pot into a perfume flask.


2. A British Men's Club also posted a sign that asked members to restrain themselves during the asparagus season and not relieve themselves in the hat stand. Or hats.

3. In 1891 a scientist convinced 4 men to eat 3.5 pounds of asparagus each and measured the smell, determining that there was a chemical that caused the distinct odor.

4. According to WebMD, the issue is not whether your body generates the smell but if you have the special gene that allows you to smell it.

5. Approximately 22% of people have the ability to smell their own asparagus fumes. As stated in nbcnews.com, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in a great work of modern literature, "Love in the Time of Cholera", wrote..."Even when it was not the season for asparagus, it had to be found regardless of cost so that he could take pleasure in the vapors of his own fragrant urine."

Hmm. I wish to thank my daughter-in-law, Shannon, for inspiring me on this journey of pee discovery. I did not ask her if she was a member of the 22% club when she came back from the restroom. But I suspect she may be.

Family Togetherness at Christmas

I love being with my family at Christmas. We truly have time to talk. The last 2 days I have been having my long-missed philosophical discussions with my oldest son, Jeff, who is now 35 years old. He has definite opinions on everything, most of them contrary to mine.

A half hour discussion emerged because I had confessed to him that I have indeed lost our family rubber chicken, which we pass to each other stealthily, each trying not to be the one to end up with R.C. at the end of the visit. Jeff did not believe me that I had misplaced R.C. and thinks it is a red herring to make him feel confident that he will not need to worry about returning to Orlando with a rubber chicken hidden in his underwear.

Substitute Less Desirable Rubber Chicken

Even when I went out and bought a substitute rubber chicken, a less desirable version, at Party City, yesterday he staunchly refused to believe that the other rubber chicken will somehow find its way aboard his vehicle after Christmas.

But that is not all we talked about. When I mentioned that the rubber chicken's feet looked backward, he told me that is what chicken feet look like. We surfed the net for a good 30 minutes looking at real chicken feet and rubber chicken feet. What do you think?

Missing Rubber Chicken (last photo)

Real Chicken Foot

The Last Garage Sale

Today George and I reached a milestone in our marriage. It was the day of our last garage sale...ever. As we trudged around in the afternoon sun, sweating and toiling we became aware that our wages for said garage sale netted us about 5.00 per hour. Plus I had to miss a tutoring session because of utter exhaustion, which would have netted me much more than the garage sale time I put in. 

And the really sad thing is that we appear to have more crap than when we started. We no longer have any pathway in our garage to walk through. So we are starting our process of recycling, giving away, advertising and leaving it on the curb in case someone will come by and take it from our bulk pick-up. 

But here is the good part. The best part of today was the people we met. Neighbors in our community that I now consider as friends. People from the FreeCycle Network online that were just names to me before. And some surprising behavior. 

When George and I have a garage sale, we truly want to get rid of the stuff. We don't want to haggle, we want it out of there, causing us to put some pretty low prices on stuff, even a free section for our fellow FreeCyclers. That was difficult for people. I would say about 5-7 people refused our low prices and insisted on giving us more. We were giving away a little old table that was scarred and of no use to us. Shopper: How much is this table? George: It is one of our free items. Feel free to take it. Shopper: No, really. How much? George: Please take it. You are doing us a favor. Shopper: I am not doing that. Here's 5.00 for the table. And this happened several more times. It was way cool that people wanted to be fair.

But we still don't want any more garage sales!

Deception

     Now that we have my mother-in-law (MIL) safe and sound we find that we are having to resort to deception more than is comfortable. It is almost as though the crafty lady is finding ways to test our loyalty. Examples of our conversations will show you what I am talking about.
     MIL: "You know those white slippers I have with the leather soles? Bring them next time."
     I assume a look of desperation that I share with George. We just threw these slippers out. They were in disgusting shape and we wanted to get rid of them before they walked out on their own. My response:
     Me: "Oh, I am so sorry. I had to throw them out. The cat peed on them and they were no good. Your cat."

     Then there was... "I will be coming home for Christmas. I have been working hard to eat well and gain weight. I will be fine to come home. I can stay at the house and we will have Christmas dinner together."
     Of course we were planning to come and pick her up for Christmas dinner but we are also planning to bring her back to her new home that evening. After all, we have had to totally redo her bedroom, replacing the carpet with tile and we boxed up her things as best we could.  I am sure she thinks it still has the hospital bed and the potty in the corner.
     When we go visit we are treated to a litany of negative comments, most of which are untrue. 
     Her roommate has a man come in and sleep with her in her bed.
     One of the residents sleeps with a different man each night.

     The nurses are too busy.
     We don't visit enough. Some families come every hour.
     The nurses should do everything for free. It would be right.
     All of the patients speak Latvian (her native language.)
       Last time I was there, I told her that if we were going to come and visit, that she needed to find some positive things to say. This is what she came up with:
     Someone did her hair and nails for her (for free!) Lol.
     She is eating well. She gets to the bathroom herself without needing help.
     Everything is clean there.

     Things are looking up!
        

A New Me!

    For the 5-6 of you who were avidly following my blog, you may have had to hypothesize what happened to me since my last entry? As you may/may not recall, I had a nasty fall on May 15th, resulting in a very bruised face, sore body and badly broken femur. 4 months in an immobilizer and I was ready to climb the walls. At the same time, my mother-in-law (hereafter referred to as MIL) developed a painful case of shingles. 
     George, my husband, heroically tended to both of us, aided by a caregiver who came almost every day for a while. I moved into her house to make things easier for him. 

     It did not help. He developed a bad case of pneumonia which required 2 hospitalizations and surgery. Once he was hospitalized, my 90 year old MIL started acting up for attention. (Picture the mom on Everyone Loves Raymond). 

At one point I had her in one hospital and George in another. The difference was that there was nothing wrong with her. Unfortunately, I was still walking with a cane, walker, whatever. On one of my trips to visit George I fell again in the hospital driveway, because of the tropical storm we had attracted to South Florida. 
     By this time the MIL had moved in with us and was creating all kinds of difficulties for me. She could not be left alone so that limited my time away to when the care giver was there. Several times she ran out of the house, yelling for help and that she was being kept in a dungeon. She even called the police.
 We put alarms on the doors. We lasted for about 3-4 months and then selected an assisted living facility for her.

      We are now back to the normal everyday worries of paying for everything. We think she will engineer an escape eventually from the nursing home, but they will handle it. Of course, we are caring for her cat, a black cat who is not adjusting well. We have 2 cats of our own and of course, our wiener dog. Her cat has developed some hair thinning probably due to stress. He also is very offended that my cats find his litter box to be the  Toilette Extraordinaire!
  Everyone wants to use it, so he poops right in front of it on the tile floor. There is a bit of hissing and growling going on, reminiscent of MIL herself. 

      In the meantime, my third children's book, Get Ready for Jetty! came out in September. It is a journal style book about a young girl with ADD and her struggles to be accepted and feel good about herself. I think I need to write a book about my struggles over this last year. Both George and I are doing much better now. I am very careful walking and take no chances, hoping no more falls.

 

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!