Kate, you are a hoot....

Just call her the master of information gathering, the grandmother of Google, the innovator of non-computer based data collection, the surveyor of all things obtainable, my inventive mother. There is a new restaurant in our town which is not listed in the phone book yet. To call 411 involves a charge on the phone bill, and my mother has never been one to incur extra charges on her bill. I can remember as a kid her going through the phone bill with a fine toothed comb and a pen, determining which children made what calls and how much they owed. She has a new way to call 411, and it involves calling the establishments surrounding the intended target of her curiosity. Just the other day, she called the busiest submarine sandwich shop in town at high noon. When they asked for her order, she said, in her best Boston accent, "Can ya tell me what tha name of tha new restront is across tha street? I want to go theeh fah dinnah and I don't know what time they open." At which point, the extremely stressed and harried employee screeched, "What? You've got to be kidding!" and promptly hung up. My sister and I laughed so hard we couldn't breathe, because even though we are never surprised by my mother's hijinks, we sometimes just cannot believe what she can get done in the course of a day with her trusty phone.

Cameron, Cameron, this is your mother talking, Are you listening?

As some of my friends know, I have always wished that I was born Jewish. I love the closeness of Jewish families and how they are so demonstrative. Growing up in an Irish family, the only time someone touched us was if we were getting a Cootie shot or playing touch football. (And then there was the old man up the street who wore his wife's pink bathrobe and played with Barbie dolls, but that's a story for another day). Cameron, who is not Jewish, could certainly use a Jewish mother right about now, to help her in the dating department. This is the advice I would give her:

Cameron, are you sure you want to date that Justin fellow? What kind of a Jewish name is Timberlake? His family can't spell, that's not a good sign.

Cameron, why are you in a movie with Tom Cruise again? You better not be hemming his pants in that trailer of his. No daughter of mine is going to hem pants without a ring on her finger.

Cameron, in that Angels movie, can't you put the plumber from down the street in the movie? Maybe I could get him to build me a sukkah with a nice Kohler toilet.

Cameron, I heard that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is going to be at the flea market today. I cannot possibly make my chicken soup without the kreplach. Please, for your mother, please be a dear and get me some. Put on a little mascara, too.

Cameron, how are you ever going to find your bashert? Stop running around in your bikini, show some respect. Or at least if you're gonna wear that thing, put some nice cutlets in the bra, it couldn't hurt. You never know who you might see at the beach. 

And for God's sake, go to Synagogue once in awhile and settle down.

No more expensive comedy clubs for me, I'm going car shopping instead....

Unfortunately, and not by my own doing, I have been propelled into an unknown and very strange place, a third dimension known as the car dealership. Accompanied by my better half instead of the more appropriate professionals of the MenInBlack, we ventured into a very odd part of culture we had not experienced in years. In one dealership, the salesman jumped up and down and walked back and forth to "speak to his manager" so many times that he burned the equivalent of a spin class. My husband believed he was negotiating on our behalf. I, on the other hand, knew the real truth, and that was that he was a fellow sufferer of inflammatory bowel disease and had tied one on the night before, and from my experience and astute analysis, probably in a Mexican restaurant. (I was tempted to offer him some of my anti diarrhea medicine,  but my husband would have none of that.) I'm almost certain that when we left he was wearing different pants. At our next stop, we were there before closing time, and definitely after the start of happy hour. We had loads of fun with that happy fellow, who with geriatric sunglasses glued to his face, proceeded to give us the keys to every car in the lot without once asking for an i.d. or even a name. I asked my husband if he thought the guy could be having some kind of insulin reaction and he looked at me like I was nuts.  Then there was the guy who had a very bad case of nystagmus. I spent so much effort trying not to look at him that I walked into a giant cardboard zero percent financing sign. He asked if he could drive me back to my car and I broke out into a cold sweat. I have finally gotten my new car, but I think I might still go car shopping. Just for fun...

What would my husband be like if he ever had skin to skin as a newborn?

So, lately at work we have been big advocates of a beautiful bonding process called skin to skin. It's a lovely thing, watching those babies snuggle up close to the sweaty, sticky skin of their exhausted mothers chests.  It erases the pain of five days of hard work during which time they've eaten fourteen chicken salad sandwiches and watched countless episodes of Full House. I've started to wonder what it was like for us as newborns back in the 1960's. For example, my husband is one of those amorous guys who loves to snuggle (likely wishing it was not always just with me). You can be sure, that back in 1963, there was no skin to skin being practiced at St. Margaret's Hospital. He was most likely, probably before the umbilical cord was clamped and definitely while it was still pulsating, carted off to a warehouse stuffed with row after row of Catholic infants, who may not have even been wearing id bands. Three days later, when his poor mother came to from her spinal ether succinylcholine coma, she was probably forbidden to hold him because he would become spoiled. He was most likely given evaporated milk mixed with Karo syrup by some frustrated old nun and discharged on day 8 after spending a total of 5 minutes with his new parents. Let me say, it hasn't affected his bonding with her one bit. He checks on her every day, visits three times a week and rarely says no to a Sunday pasta dinner. I'm glad he didn't have skin to skin, or he'd be getting his mail delivered to her house...

Nachos grande was the real inspiration for the movie, "The Exorcist"...

When you're used to eating very healthy, there are many reasons to continue eating very healthy. 

Nachos grande with beans, cheese, chili, guacamole, sour cream and salsa looks so beautiful on the plate. The cheese is a beautiful sunset orange color, the guacamole brilliant pea green, flecked with red hints of the freshest garden tomatoes. The tricolor chips are so pretty, like a beautiful fourth of July pennant strung from your front porch. The bright white sour cream is almost angelic in appearance again the chunks of pungent chili. Have this feast on top of a couple of glasses of white zinfandel and magically, two hours later it all turns to hell...

You've transformed into Linda Blair, as you crawl upside down with your head spinning to the toilet. Your husband mistakes your moaning and groaning for affection, forgetting that the real reason you're saying "Oh God" is because you think you might just be on your deathbed. You're hoping that the priest that shows up at your bedside can give the last rites super fast because you've got to get to the hopper stat. That beautiful green guacamole pretty much comes up looking like it did going down. 

There's no horror movie based on a mesclun salad, and that's what I'm ordering next time...

Some signs that you're not a young lady anymore...

Gray hair...This year I can play George Washington on Halloween without buying a powdered wig
Dryness...The other night I caught two men trying to cross my body to get into Arizona
Wrinkles...I've spent more on Oil of Olay than most people have spent on their house
Thinning hair...at least I'm saving money on razors
Magazines...Cosmopolitan is to me what Highlights is to my 17 year old daughter
Fashions...I asked some salesgirl where she got her tube top and she told me it was a dress
Movies...they ask for your i.d. at an NC-17 movie and it's because they want to give you the senior discount

How going back to get your bachelor's degree is not at all like being on "The Bachelor"....

Okay, so I have only really watched the Bachelor a few times, but this is what I have taken from it...

1. There is a lot, lot, lot of sleeping around
2. There is a lot of kissing
3. There is gorgeous man constantly saying, "you're amazing"
4. Contestants are slowly eliminated and it's done very gently
5. When you are booted off the show, you have the chance to get your own show, "the Bachelorette"

Getting your bachelor's degree online at the age of 47 involves:

1. Absolutely not an ounce of sleep, because you're up all night trying to figure out the difference between a WIKI page and a WIMBA room
2. Your family telling you to kiss off because they're tired of eating frozen fish sticks with moldy tartar sauce
3. There is a very flirtatious yet inappropriate man with no teeth telling you that he's amazed you found your way to the campus bookstore at your age
4. Your professor sends you a 40 page syllabus and tells you to memorize it in 24 hours or you're out of the program
5. If you flunk out of the course, you still get the bill and the chance to become a divorcee when your husband finds out

Dr. Sea Dog, calling Dr. Sea Dog...

There are many many ways to slip antioxidants into your lifestyle. I've read that blueberries, green tea, moderate alcohol consumption, eating fish and exercising are a great way to ramp up your diet. But just because some things are good for you, doesn't mean they can't be fun.

FUN

Blueberry beer, Blueberry pancakes, blueberry schnapps, blueberry pie, having a best friend named Violet Beauregarde, chasing after Ryan Gosling while he's wearing bike shorts and has liberally applied oil to his amazing upper body...sorry, getting off track here....fishing for salmon off the back of the Queen Mary, and hiring Jillian Michaels as your personal trainer.

NOT FUN

Avoiding saturated fats (onion rings), taking statin drugs (side effects include memory loss which can make it difficult to find blueberry beer in the liquor store), balloon angioplasty (anything to do with balloons reminds me of clowns), nitroglycerin (I don't think I could be trusted with anything that sounds like TNT), bypass surgery (the only time I want my heart stopped is when I run into Ryan Gosling getting out of my shower).

I can do this, high cholesterol, see you later...

If only my paycheck multiplied like my dog's fur....

How is it that dogs came to be called dogs. If I was God, and I was naming the animals, I would have called dogs "furs". I'm certainly not second guessing God's skills, but that one could have taken a few more minutes to finalize.

If my dog's name was fur, first of all, we would never lose him. Because all I'd have to say is, "has anyone seen the fur?", and the answer would be yes. No matter where you look in my house, there is fur. There is fur in the coffee grinder, in the crock pot, in the nail polish, in the clean laundry, in the toilet brush and on the bananas. If my husband asks me, "do I have something on my tooth?", you can bet dollars to donuts there is an stray wisp hanging out there for inspection. I have thought of collecting the fur from the vacuum cleaner and making a little wig for "he who shall not be named's" expanding bald spot, but unfortunately it's the wrong color, not to mention a little off kilter in the texture department. There is nothing worse than getting out of the shower and drying off with a 50% cotton/50% fur bath towel. And forget about the corners of my living room. I just vacuumed up a fur clump that a baby squirrel could probably breastfeed from. It's time again to go and brush the fur's dog...

Things you never want to overhear your kids saying....

To their girlfriend, "when were you supposed to get it?"

To their doctor, "what's is called again, A-cyclo-what?"

To their high school guidance counselor, "My mom said if I can get in, I can go wherever I want. It doesn't matter what it costs".

To their best friend, "Sure, you can stay as long as you want. My mom doesn't mind big dogs".

To their 4th year college roommate, "It's awesome we get along so good. Maybe we can be roommates again next year".

To your husband, "Dad, that car was a piece of crap anyway. Now we can go get a new one".

To your parish priest, "Wow, jeez, that's seems like a lot. Have you ever told anyone else they had to say 500 Hail Mary's?"

"Hey Mom, can you look at this? I think it's broken!"

Why this year I won't be called the Little Red Hen....

So, every spring comes my annual quest for a beautiful vegetable garden. It starts with tilling the heavy soil, adding compost bag by aching bag, pulling pesky weeds while pulling my hamstrings, selecting seeds and tending to my seedlings like they were the infant of Prague, digging holes with a shovel whose time is long overdue for the shovel graveyard, fiddling with my husband's watering hose and timer system that makes me wish for a old fashioned well and bucket, thinning the carrots hour after hour, all the while under the watchful eye of not a hawk, not quite a vulture, not Jim Crockett or Martha Stewart, but the nemesis of all little red hens everywhere, Nana. She watches and waits with joyful glee through her back window as I "harvest, thresh, mill and bake". This year will be different though, as I have made a plan of action with my therapist to stop her in her tracks as she unselfishly proffers up my harvest to her friends and relatives while I am off somewhere slaving through a 12 hour shift. Wish me well, and godspeed, my fellow little red hens....

My husband's metabolism should be part of a study

So we just came back from vacation, which for me, is like being lost in a corn maze of calories. At every turn is a temptation. Each day, we would trek off to the beach with a cooler that weighed as much as my kitchen refrigerator. I would say, "Do we need all this food?" and my husband would say, "we should bring enough for everyone". Does he mean everyone on the other side of the Sagamore Bridge? He would cap off each night with "It's time for ice cream", which is a particular weakness for me. But for him, he gets a hot fudge sundae with any food item that can be dumped in it. I love vacation, but if I hung around with him too much I'd be blowing out of my bathing suit in no time at all. After only six days away, I put on 3 pounds. I asked him what he gained, and he looked at me like I was insane. He said "what do you mean by gained, like knowledge, nothing, I was on vacation, I was giving my brain a rest". Jerk...

Is that a love bite on your neck?

So I finally reached the 25 pound mark. It's taken since October 1st, but I have to say it hasn't been very painful at all. I've gone on a cruise, two trips to New York, Aruba, California, skiing with the Wild Women of Winter, and weekly trips to Salsa's Mexican restaurant. How exciting to finally have reached my goal. And what do I get for it? A round piece of metal that looks like it was manufactured under the wheels of a locomotive. I wonder which employee gets to stand at the train station and place the slugs on the tracks. Do they get extra pay for that? Nonetheless, I put it on and raced home to show everyone. My husband said, what's that on your neck? I run in the bathroom and find a black mark that if I squint, looks a little like the full body profile of Winston Churchill. Maybe they should rethink the shape into an oval, so at least when it leaves it's imprint on your skin, it comes out looking like Giselle Bundchen.

Mom, what's that on your thigh?

Immediately, I think I have a wasp on my leg (even though I'm in my bedroom with all the windows closed). I thought I heard buzzing. 

Mom, hello? ...Oh God, where do I have to inject my epipen again? Where's the Benadryl?

Mom, can you hear me?.... I hope my underwear are clean because some of the firefighters in our town are pretty cute. 

Mom, are you ok?...Where's my health insurance card? Do you think they are going to ask me what I weigh for the steroid drip? 

Mom, Dude, hello?...Is it going to take more than two paramedics to lift my gurney into the ambulance?

Mom, mom, what's that on your leg?...Oh, for God's sake Mia, that's just some extra padding that's been there since birth...

Hula hooping my way to a waistline...

You know how people get awards and thank their publicists, managers, posse, husbands, etc, etc. Well, when you have all of $19.00 to spend on your "team", you choose them wisely. For me, it meant walking into Walmart and buying the Danskin Fitness Hoop. Yesterday, when I received a medallion for losing 25 pounds, I wanted to stand up and thank my purple and green friend for inspiring me to hula hoop through the entire stanley cup playoffs. She stood by me as I squeezed into my pants week after miserable week. When my husband goes out for ice cream, she yells at me from the corner of the living room to pick her up and keep forget about that butter crunch. My daughter told me to wear a belt with a pair of jeans and I had to admit I don't own one. Next up on the bucket list: belt shopping, thank you Hula!

My IBS can trump even Jimmy Kimmel...

So one of the things we were really looking forward to in California was going to the Jimmy Kimmel show. He is my favorite nighttime talk show host. The three of us were dressed in bright colors with nice scarves so that we would get picked to sit down in front. We had everything planned out, we had our tickets, our outfits, our hair and makeup, you name it, nothing could get screwed up. Except of course, my secret internal archenemy, my intestinal tract. It always seems to know just when to start acting up. I think it's been having a discussion with my teenage daughter on how to make my life miserable. Like clockwork, the rumbling started when we were waiting to go through the first security check. I tried to convince the skeptical lady that the fog horn she heard was my new cellphone ring tone, but she definitely wasn't buying it. When we were seated in the row right behind the cameraman, it was just so exciting I thought I would explode, and so did my descending colon. I think I must have burned a Zumba class worth of calories just squirming in my seat. I'm sure the guy sitting next to me thought I had some kind of undiagnosed central nervous system problem. It really was fun, and we made it through the 90 minute taping unscathed.  Next time we go I plan to sit closer to the band because maybe they'll think it's the trumpet they hear instead of my stomach.

Really, it's not that hard to imagine driving off Mulholland Drive...

So, one of the many things you must do when in California (or so we were told), is to take a drive down Mulholland Drive. 

The following are words I'd use to describe this road:

winding (whose idea was it to put a road on top of a mountain) 
scenic (I'm assuming; the only thing I ever saw were the floor mats)
breathtaking (don't forget your nebulizer)
awe inspiring (how did the contractors ever get building permits )
fast paced (the guy driving behind us might as well have been sitting in my lap, or at least have put a dollar tip in my underwear)
glamorous (it definitely pays to go to acting school)
hair-raising (never have I seen such a large percentage of toupees in convertibles in one place)
untamed (the rattlesnake and mountain lion warning signs were a little unnerving)

It was fun, and challenging, and oh so memorable, and next time I promise I'll open my eyes!

Smackdown: Sensible Moms vs Sexy Nightclub...

So, when we got to California, we had all kinds of plans to see famous people. After reading People magazine, it occurred to us that the best place to do this would be at the infamous Chateau Marmont. We were hoping to see all the most famous starlets and their hunks engaging in debauchery and shenanigans. After circling three times, we pulled up in our totally unsexy mom mobile and rolled down the back window. My friend, in her best Irish whisper, yelled out "where are the clubs, the clubs? You know, the clubs where all the stars go?". The extremely uninterested and super sexy valet sauntered slowly over and took a long look inside our rental and was like "you've got to be kidding me, you're a car full of old chicks". Not to be dissuaded, and after much convincing, he parked our car and sent us to the bar. Well, we were ushered to a lovely table where a girl in a satin nightie and garter belt took our order. She was so young and sweet, I wanted to give her a bathrobe to wear and sign her up for night classes. We ordered a sexy cheese platter and some exotic sounding cocktails and waited for Prince and the Revolution to show up. Let me tell you, the only shenanigans we had were our own, because our drinks were so stiff we were laughing our asses off  after just a few sips. It just goes to show you don't have to wear your lingerie out in public to have a hot tootin' good time.

Fly me to the moon, cuz it would be a hell of a lot easier....

So I have taken a little break from the blog because I was trying to do some Cameron stuff. I took a trip to California with two of my fellow WWCD ladies from work. Flying anywhere used to have such a great meaning to it. You just got on a plane and took off. Now, you go to the airport and proceed to take everything off, your jacket, belt, shoes, pedometer, Teds stockings, Depends brief, corset, neck wrap, knee brace, spanx, and hair net. In the old days, you didn't worry about bringing anything on the plane. You just needed your alcohol nips, cigarette lighter, two packs of Marlboros and a deck of cards. Now you can't bring anything over 3 ounces, so you pre-hydrate be drinking 20 gallons of water every day starting two weeks before your flight. It would be so great if they sold a seat located in the bathroom, because that's where I spent the entire flight.   When I actually took birth control pills, I didn't even know what a DVT was. On the plane I looked like I was practicing for the Indy 500 by the amount of times I flexed my foot to keep the blood flowing. We arrived intact, and what happened to us next is worth another entry tomorrow....