'Twas the Night Before the Night Before Bunion Surgery

Twas the night before the night
Before bunion surgery
When all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring
Not even a mouse

The children were nestled
All safe in their bed
While visions of pretty feet
Danced in my head.

Me and my bunion,
With the rest of my foot,
Had just settled down,
But sleeping was moot.

When out of the blue
My brain started to clatter.
I sprang from my bed
To see what was the matter.

Away to the bathroom
I ran like a pro
Tore off my slippers
And stared at my toe.

My bunion was huge
And angry at me.
I glared at it and...
I swear it starred back at me!

When what to my wandering eyes
Should appear
But a bottle of Ambien
To help me, my dear!

With a twist of the cap
And a swig full of water,
I knew I would sleep
I could not falter.

More rapid than eagles
The sandman did come.
I greeted him warmly
And then I went numb.

Zzzzz

The Day Santa Died

Don't panic.  There will be Christmas this year, but Christmas won't be the same.

My children understand Santa has a HUGE job to do every year.
Managing the elves, keeping the "Naughty & Nice" list up to date, and delivering all those presents is a full-time job.

Add to it the obscene number of public appearances Santa needs to make this time of year, and it's a wonder he can be available to do much else.  This is why there are some who volunteer this time of year to be his assistants.

One year, many years ago, my daughter pointed out the obvious while getting her picture taken at the mall with Santa.

"Mom, that is not the REAL Santa!"

I'm sure my response was along the lines of, "Nope, he's not.  The Real Santa is in Albuquerque  today.  There is no way he can be everywhere.  That's why he has helpers. His helpers are his eyes and ears. They'll get your wish list to the real Santa."

What parent hasn't had a very similar conversation with their child?

The real thrill for my kids wasn't seeing Santa in the mall.  No, the real thrill was when he would arrive at my mom's annual Christmas party.  Halfway through the festivities, Santa always arrived with a few presents and candy canes for all the little ones.

Ohhhh, the squeals of joy!
Ohhhh, the shrieks of horror! (Yeah, some of those little ones are totally chicken shit when it comes to big men in red suits.)

My children would size up Santa and later report they didn't think he was the REAL one.  But..... they were never quite sure, and they always made sure they told Santa exactly which outrageously priced toy they wanted him to deliver on Christmas.

The truth is that Santa wasn't the real Santa, but he was the best!

Of course, he was jolly, and friendly.  Of course, he was dressed in a dazzling red suit.

He also had a heart of gold.  He understood the true meaning of Christmas, and he delighted in the joy of children.  He always had a joke to tell, and he always laughed the hardest after telling it.  His laugh was contagious!  When I close my eyes I can still here it.

Santa won't be joining our family celebration this year.

God bless his soul.

7 Words Not Typically Said During Thanksgiving Dinner

I love my family.
They truly put "fun" in "dysFUNctional."

This Thanksgiving was spent gathered around a table with my husband, my parents, sister, brother-in-law, aunt, cousin, cousin-in-law, and a gaggle of children sequestered at the infamous children's table.

Arguably, the children's table was more civilized than the adult table. This is saying something because the children's table was total mayhem.

You may find this difficult to believe, but the following words were uttered AT THE ADULT TABLE during Thanksgiving:

Clot
Fescue
Mucinex
Table saw
Tourniquet
Vaginia
Vaginal disease

Somewhere there is a pilgrim rolling over in his grave.

I double-dog dare you to try to use the above words during your next dinner party without having at least one person groan in apparent pain.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my friends and family!  Whether you are fun, dysfunctional, or a little of both, I hope you have a turkey-filled holiday surrounded by those for which you are most thankful.

Adventures in Abercrombie & F#@%!

'Tis the season to grab your holiday shopping list and venture into huge, enormous shopping centers luring you with large, red signs promising "Sales, Sales, Sales!"

My tween wants a hoodie for Christmas.  A very specific hoodie.  I could describe this hoodie for you but why bother?  Just trust me when I say this particular hoodie is seemingly extinct.  Exactly one exists in this entire world, and it happens to belong to my tween.  Since she wears it day and night it is starting to look...well...like an ugly, filthy hoodie.  Now she wants another.

Hours of shopping, and I cannot find a hoodie matching my tween's specific requirements.  Where could such a hoodie exist?

I venture into Abercrombie & Fitch despite the little voice in my head telling me to run away.  Have you been in Abercrombie & Fitch recently?

Even before crossing the threshold of the store, Abercrombie & Fitch immediately assaults my nostrils with the potent smell of cologne. I don't actually have words to describe this smell.  It's as if Abercrombie & Fitch took a nice smell, multiplied it so many times it then miraculously turns toxic. Although I think the intent is for the smell to travel from nostril to groin, instead I feel it go from my nostril to my head immediately.  I am morphed from professional, organized shopper to dizzy, snotty, out-of-place fool.

As I try to clear my head, I realize this is a futile endeavor given the "music."  The music is blaring.  BLARING.  I don't know who is "singing," but it isn't my beloved Rick Springfield or U2. No, this is a very angry singer who is yelling at me.  He is screaming at me while the drum beat goes like this, "BAM, BAM, BAM, BA, BA, BAM, BAM BAM."  I have no idea why he is so angry nor do I actually know what he is saying, but he is not a happy guy.

Although the smell and sounds are distracting, I try to focus. After all, I am a mother.  I've perfected blocking out loud, obnoxious sounds. Any mom knows it's the quiet that is scary.

I try to continue shopping, but Abercrombie & Fitch thinks I should shop in the dark. I cannot see a gosh darn thing.  It's so dark that when I run into a table, suck in a large amount of poisoned air, and cry out in pain, no one in the store takes notice.  How can they?  It's pitch black and too loud to hear anything above the sound of that angry, screaming "singer."

By now I am too far into the store to easily escape.  I've completely forgotten why I have ventured into this funhouse, and I start to think I'll never find my way out.  I look around frantically for an exit sign.  All around me I see young, skinny people.  Although my pupils are undoubtably dilated to the size of golf balls, these young people look calm and unaffected by the sensory overload. I'm reminded of Children of the Corn.

Why is Abercrombie & Fitch torturing me?

Perhaps I'm drunk on the smell of overpowering cologne or perhaps my brain is bleeding.  I don't really know.  However, once I finally escape the store, I realize Abercrombie & Fitch's master plan...

Abercrombie & Fitch wants me dizzy, deaf, and blind so I won't care or notice that they sell ugly t-shirts for $40.  If only they had hoodies!


Tony Hawk Painted Plaid Hoodie (Google Affiliate Ad)

The Ghost of Bunions Past

My grandmother had the ugliest feet on the planet. She was a lovely woman, but her feet!  

I would secretly sneak horrified glances at her feet.  While at home, she often just wore stockings on her feet since her bunions were the size of European cars. Its hard to find comfortable shoes that can fit a small automobile.  Her big toes never pointed forwarded and seemed to be red and angry all the time.

When my grandmother passed away, I thought I would never see her on earth again.  One day while showering, I looked down and saw her feet.

EEEK!  Her feet are now MY feet.
Honestly, some people inherit money, homes, china, or silver.
I inherited bunions the size of a small condo complex.  Lucky me!

Driven by guilt over never buying me quality shoes as a child, my mother insists I've had bunions since birth. I won't dispute this, although it's hard to fathom how I made it through the birth canal with these enormous bunions.

I don't recall ever having attractive feet. That's one of the reasons I like hiding them in cute shoes.  Now in addition to being hideous, they hurt. They hurt all the time.  They especially hurt in cute shoes.  This fact alone was enough for me to seek the help of a professional.

I finally dragged my unsightly bunions to a podiatrist for a little conversation.

The podiatrist, to his credit, did not shriek when I revealed my hideous feet. He examined the X-rays, rubbed my feet (which I secretly loved!), and then recommended that one of my bunions be removed.

This news really ticked off my soon-to-be-gone bunion who seems to be getting redder and angrier as the surgery date approaches.

On the plus side, I will be confined to my bed for 1-2 weeks while taking prescribed narcotics.  On the down-side, when I come out of my narcotic haze, my family may be buried under a mountain of dirty clothes and dirty dishes.

To be continued...

Cozy Feet Heated Shoe Inserts - Heaters (Google Affiliate Ad)

5 Essentials for a Bug Out Bag

That bitch Sandy got me thinking about the time my family was without power for all eternity countless days. (Check out Sociology Experiment Gone Bad if you want to glimpse that madness.)

This then got me thinking about survivalists and other people with whom I have nothing in common.

According to my research, a "Bug Out Bag" is a backpack filled with items you will need when you come face to face with Armageddon.  Survivalist seemingly love their BOBs (Bug Out Bags).Bug-Out Bag (Google Affiliate Ad)

As I understand it, rational people put things like bottled water, canned meat, weapons and a variety of seeds (since, of course, planting a garden following Armageddon is necessary.  Duh!).

I would argue that truly rational people don't even pack a "Bug Out Bag," but what do I know?

All of this to say, either way you look at it, I am not a rational person.

I now want to make a "Bug Out Bag," but mine will not contain water and canned meat.

After giving this a considerable amount of thought, and by that I mean a solid five minutes, I've come up with the 5 essential items to place in my "Bug Out Bag."

1.  Multiple bottles of wine
There's water in wine and it's also sort of like fruit.  I'm not packing a corkscrew so the wine will be in screw top bottles. Notice I am also not packing any cups. Cups would take up much needed space.

2.  Razors
Yes, a zombie might eat my face during a zombie apocalypse, but I refuse to die with hairy armpits.  Simply Venus Disposable Razor - 16 ct. - Shaving & Hair Removal (Google Affiliate Ad)

3.  Cheez Whiz 
I hate to admit it during non-Armageddon times, but when face to face with the end of times, I will totally own up to the fact that I'm a huge fan of processed cheese.  All cheese is good, of course, but it's hard to beat the goodness of a rich, thick processed cheese product... especially while drinking cheep wine right from the bottle.  Cheez Whiz (White) T-Shirt (Google Affiliate Ad)

4.  Aspirin
Wine can give me a headache. I can only assume that wine plus trying to survive the end of times will also give me a headache.

5.  Multiple bottles of wine
Seriously, can you ever have enough wine during an apocalypse?

For scarier other ideas about what to pack, google "Bug Out Bag" bag.

Don't say I didn't warn you!

Democracy Unglued

I love voting.
I love, love, love, love it!

I love it so much I wish I could vote twice, but those darn polling people are pretty sharp. I'm 92% sure I would never get past them twice.  As it is, I have a hard enough time getting through the process one time.  This is because I am nearly incompetent.

I wake up excited to vote.  Yes, I'm that person.

I race out the door and down the block to my polling place.  Ironically enough, I vote in a church. Please don't tell Mike Huckabee this or I'm pretty sure he would damn me to hell twice.  Once for voting "incorrectly" and another time for voting "incorrectly" in a church. But I digress...

I race into the polling place with my very fat wallet that contains no actual money, but every receipt or scrap of paper I've ever been handed in the last 31 days which is somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 slips of paper.

I know the nice polling people will need to see my ID.  I know this.

None-the-less, when asked to produce it, I cannot free it from my wallet's plastic cover.  While trying to free my ID from the wallet that binds it, half of those nearly 5,000 slips of paper decide to take flight.  They float around me like large confetti while I continue to dig and scratch at my ID.  Since I am no longer in my early 30s, no one ever asks to see my ID when I'm trying to buy my boxed wine.  For this reason, my ID is permanently glued inside my wallet.

The nice polling man says I can stop my epic battle to free my ID and just show it to him through the crusty plastic.  Brilliant!  So I do this while simultaneously trying to clean up all the scraps of paper that litter the area.

The nice polling man points out to me that my license has expired.  Whaaaat?

Yep.  Two weeks prior to voting I had the audacity to turn a year older and my license expired.  Apparently this explains why my ID could not be extracted from my wallet.  It has been nesting there undisturbed since the last time I voted.

The good news is I am still able to vote.  I just need to provide a bunch of other information including my social security number which is always a fun memory game for me to play at 6:30 in the morning.

After all of that, my moment to actually vote comes.  I love it!
Absolutely my favorite part of the entire adventure!  Uncle Sam wants MY opinion!  Boy, do I have opinions!

My polling place is "old school."  No, there's no hanging chads to worry about.
Just me, my lady parts, my ballot, and a black pen.  I carefully color in the oval spaces next to the candidates I support.

Then it happens.  Why does it always happen?
I start to have flashbacks to all the standardized tests I've failed as a youth.  I mean, come on people, there is a reason I have a liberal (no pun intended) arts education.  It's not because I nailed the math section of the SAT.

Suddenly, I am not 100% sure if I want to vote yes on Issue One or not.

Yes.  No.  No.  Yes.  Crap.

Now I'm forced to read the fine print.  Did I mention how much I hate story problems?  I look around incase my neighbor's ballot will offer me a clue it will come to me.  As I look around the polling place I realize, not for the first time, what a great country this is.

There I stand.
I'm with my lady parts, a wallet containing no money and a plethora of recyclable confetti, an expired license, and a nearly unglued state of mind.  All I have are my opinions and a desire for this country to do well in the next four years and beyond.

Despite all of my obvious inadequacies, I have a voice. I have the right and the privilege to vote.

God Bless America!

Shame on You, Mr. Huckabee!

Sometimes while surfing the Internet I think how smart Al Gore is for inventing the dang thing.  I mean, really, the Internet is the bomb!  If it weren't for the Internet, imagine how much quality time I would be forced to spend with my family.

Other times while surfing the Internet I get confused about the news.  For example, while reading a legitimate news article I start to think I'm reading fiction.  'Tis the season to read and hear dumb shit  stupid stuff.

Well, imagine my confusion when I watched this dark, threatening video starring Fire and the scary voice of Mike Huckabee.  I really wanted to believe this was a joke or a new skit from Saturday Night Live.

Instead, I learned this is no joke.  At least not to Mike Huckabee.
Apparently, he thinks I may go to go hell after voting or at least as a result of my voting.

The Bully Huckabee wants me to believe that my vote could lead me to the depths of hell.  If I were a better Christian,  I would vote the way the bully wants me to vote and thereby skirt going to the bowels of hell.

Anyone else sense the irony?

Certainly Mr. Holier-than-thou is familiar with the following verses:

"Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?"    Matthew 7:3

"Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven;"  Luke 6:37

"Only, let every one lead the life which the Lord has assigned to him, and in which God has called him." 1 Corinthians 7:17

"Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor." 1 Corinthians 10:24

I know we are all (especially those of us in swing states) immensely tired of political commercials. ALL political commercials.

I just think its sad morally wrong to resort to bully tactics and question a person's Christianity as a result of political views the person may or may not have.

Shame on you, Mr. Huckabee.

Happy Adoption Month ~ My Best Decision

November is National Adoption Month.  How appropriate for it to share the month with Thanksgiving!

Despite how effortless Madonna and Angelina Jolie make it appear, adoption is its own form of labor. It comes in the form of countless paperwork, a home study that questions one's ability to parent, a trip in front of an actual real-life judge, and sometimes adoption even includes a trip or two halfway around the world...

My Best Decision

I wonder how many decisions an average person makes in a lifetime?  It must be shocking. Everything from the little decisions like whether to have a bagel or cereal for breakfast to the big decisions like choosing a President.

Having a child was a big decision for me. A huge decision. ENORMOUS.

That wasn't the case for the majority of my friends.  Their life seemingly followed the children's song "Cindy & Johnny sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g.  First came love, then came marriage, then came Cindy with a baby carriage."

Stupid Cindy.

Didn't she realize how totally off track her life could have gone?  I was sitting in that damn tree, too.  I even got married, but no amount of k-i-s-s-i-n-g was leading to that elusive baby carriage. Where in the name of everything good was my baby carriage?

Babies literally seemed to be falling effortlessly into my friends' laps via their vi-jay-jays while I looked on helplessly.  In desperation, I started taking my basal temperature daily before my feet left my bed.  My hubby and I started religiously tracking our intimate moments, and soon our bedroom behavior became something I could have displayed on a line graph or colorful pie chart.

All that tracking, led to medicines, which led to stronger medicines, which led to intimate moments when my hubby's sperm was washed, and counted.  Eggs were plucked from my ovaries and introduced to hubby's sperm.  They got along well and several lovely embryos were created.

Oh the joy!  The excitement!

The crushing heartbreak.

Who knew that within my seemingly pleasant self lived a uterus who was a serial killer. Seriously, my uterus is a total bitch.

During one of several invasive procedures, I had what I can call nothing short of an epiphany.  
I was miserable because I wanted to be a mom.  I saw pregnancy as the means to becoming a mom, but what I really wanted more than anything in the whole wide world was to be a mom.  In that instant, I knew there were children who wanted a mom more than anything else in that whole wide world.  I was busy trying to make something that was already made.

In the midst of what would be another failed attempt to pro-create, we made a life-changing decision. We made the best decision of our lives.  I picked up the phone and started calling adoption agencies.

I knew my body would fail me again, and I knew what I wanted to do.
I wanted to leave the quest for pregnancy behind and begin the journey to parenthood.

Some decisions really are HUGE. I love being able to very clearly recall and reflect on the best decision of my life.

I chose adoption.

Happy Adoption Month to all of my fellow friends whose lives have been blessed by adoption.