Masked

Unless you live under a rock, you probably know that Indiana and Ohio are mandatory mask states.

Ohio is too. If you’re in a public place, you’re supposed to wear a face covering.

My doctor’s office insists on actual masks. Face shields do not count. Those weird scarf thingies that go around your neck and can be pulled up over your face also are not accepted at the doctor’s office.

Labor Day weekend, we did our usual round of lunch, grocery shopping, etc.

While grocery shopping at The Walmarts I will say that more people than not were obeying the face mask ordinance.

But! There’s always a but. There were quite a few people who seemed to think that wearing a mask down around your chin is good enough. Or perhaps if they just wear it over their mouths but leave their noses free to breathe fresh air, that’s okay too, right?

No! Damn it, people, what the actual hell?

Just because the mask is ON your face and attached to your ears but hanging down around your chin, it doesn’t count unless it’s COVERING the places where the air actually leaves your actual body. It is the air that was inside your body that carries the germs that inhabit your body.

So pull the stupid mask up over your stupid face, up to and including your nose, and deal with it.

I know, I know, it’s so much easier to breathe when the mask isn’t covering your nose. Duh. It’s also easier to infect other people with your cooties if your mask is down around your chin.

No one enjoys wearing a mask but we’re wearing them (some of us correctly!) so that our kids can stay in school, so that we can continue to go to work, so that society as a whole doesn’t have to SHUT DOWN again because of the assholes out there who can’t be bothered to wear their masks properly.

But let’s also point out the true creeps who refuse to wear masks at all.

Okay, yes, there are people out there with medical reasons for not masking up. But I’m pretty damned sure that the two men that happened to be in the Edon Family Dollar last weekend who were NOT wearing masks of any kind (not even down around their stupid chins) were part of that small group of people with a medical reason for not wearing face coverings.

I think those two dudes were just assholes who were just WAITING for someone to call them on their selfishness.

They don’t care that there is a sign on the door that says anyone entering must wear a mask. They don’t care that the rest of us who ARE wearing masks are doing so FOR them. They’re just out there with their nose and mouth breath polluting our air.

Ugh!

Alyssa said that even though there are signs on the Arby’s where she works stating that masks are mandatory, so many people come in without them. And, she continued, you can tell by the look on these people’s faces that they are just hoping someone will say something about masks.

No one ever does because creeps like this are looking for a fight.

I am never looking for a fight, so I just mutter under my breath, shoot them dirty looks behind their backs and come here and bitch about them.

That’ll teach them.

Too Much...Too Little

Alyssa has been embracing her curly hair for about six months. You know, since the quarantine started.

She found a few fb groups that talk about how to treat your hair and bring out your curls.

One such group touts the “Curly Girl” method of caring for your hair.

It’s all about getting your hair back to a healthy state.

I was scrolling through Instagram one evening and came across a post about frizz and some of the possible reasons your hair is frizzy.

1. Too much water…or not enough water

2. Too much product…or not enough product

3. You’re washing your hair too much…or not enough

4. You’re using products with silicone

5. You’re having a reaction to the coconut oil in your product…or you need MORE coconut oil. Everyone’s hair is different, don’t you know.

6. You’re not scrunching your hair enough…but you’re also touching your hair too much.

7. You need more mousse and less gel…or less mousse and more gel.

It went on and on like that. It was ridiculous. Because basically, they’d don’t really know why people get frizzy hair. It just happens and you should do HOURS of experimentation to figure it out for yourself but hey, buy our products and they might work for you…or they might not; no refunds!

I haven’t bothered to ask Alyssa how much money she’s spent on this curly hair journey of hers. She makes her own money and well, as long as it’s not outrageous, whatever.

She’s got a t-shirt and several microfiber towels that she uses for ‘plopping’ her hair. This is when she lays her hair into the towel/shirt and then gently wraps it so it can dry. This is very different from what I do with my terrycloth towels when I wrap my hair in them. I’m just trying to get the excess water out, not trying to place my hair into any sort of curl patterns.

And don’t get me started on curl patterns. OMG! The insanity. Are you a 1 or a 2c or a 5? Who the hell knows?

She also has a hair dryer with a diffuser. Damn, that thing takes FOREVER. I am not willing to put that much time and effort into my hair. I’m sorry. No. I have five minutes each morning after my shower to comb my wet hair and then it’s time to wake Olivia and braid her glorious hair. I don’t want to carve out three more hours so that I can dry my hair with a diffuser.

I will scrunch some mornings. I will use mousse (but not gel) and I try not to touch my hair much as it drying but even that takes a lot of mental effort and I don’t really have the fortitude to follow through.

So…my girls get to have the awesome hair and I’ll be over here with my frizzy ponytail. After being bald for eight months (or so, because really, when does bald turn into fuzz turn into actual hair?) I’m kind of happy with my frizzy ponytail.

A Very Brady Rant

I had to get blood drawn for labs. I went to the hospital at 9:30 one weekday morning. My thought was that it shouldn’t be all that busy at that time. I mean, people work, right?

Apparently not around here, they don’t because that hospital was crawling with people. Okay, so the people weren’t actually crawling but they were everywhere.

One dude in particular was especially antsy about the wait.

After I’d checked in with the receptionists and got my pager for registration, I sat down to wait.

This dude was sitting in a chair about ten feet from my little couch. His chair faced the registration doors. My couch faced him and the television that was mounted above and to his left.

The television was tuned to HGTV and they were showing episodes of A Very Brady Renovation. Yay! Except freaking Marcia Brady kept crying every time a new room was revealed. Chill the fuck out, Marcia!

This dude, though, damn he was irritating. He sat slumped in his chair for a few minutes, then he’d sit up straight and look at his beeper. Then he’d stand up and stretch, which always let to him clutching his right shoulder.

I was about to ask him if maybe he should be in line in the emergency room when he’d sit back down again, glance around to see if anyone was looking at him and then grumble under his breath.

I wanted to tell him to relax, watch a bit of A Very Brady Renovation and stop fidgeting. Obviously all the fidgeting was bothering his stupid right shoulder.

What was most irritating for me was that I had to look past him to watch A Very Brady Renovation, which meant that every time he looked my way, I knew it. I was never actually looking at him, because, duh, A Very Brady Renovation was on, why would I look anywhere else? But I knew he was looking and it was creepy as hell.

Thank Pete, (not Pete Brady, who used to be my favorite Brady brother until I watched Christopher Knight on his stupid reality TV show where he married America’s Next Top Model season cycle 1 winner Adrienne Curry. I think the show was called My Fair Brady, which, can we all agree is a REALLY stupid title for a REALLY stupid show? I only watched a partial episode on the Youtubes once but during that episode Chris was a raging dick to Adrienne and that made me detest him. And now, damn it, I guess I have to pick stupid Greg as my favorite Brady brother even though I can barely stand him because Bobby aka Mike Lookinland is just gross. That dude has NOT aged well at all. Oh, and by the way, Cindy Brady? The eighties called and they want their hair back.)

Ahem, where was I?

Oh yes, thank Pete that fidgety, creepy dude was called before I was and he left my line of vision. I was able to watch Marcia cry a few more times before my beeper went off and I got to go back and have a needle stuck in my arm. Good times; takes me back to my chemo days when I got stuck weekly. Ahh, memories. But wait, this time was actually different. This was the first time in all the times someone has stuck a needle in my arm that the person doing the sticking told me I have tiny veins. What? I have given blood my entire adult life, well, until I was diagnosed with cancer and had to be pumped full of chemotherapy, thank you so much. Now they don’t want my precious AB+ blood. So have my veins shrunk in the last two years? Is that even a thing?

Umm…I have no idea where I was going with any of this. Maybe there was no actual story here, except that the hospital was crazy busy and it wasn’t even because of Covid because if you suspected you had Covid-19, you weren’t even supposed to go into the hospital. There were signs all over the freaking place declaring that.

Alas, perhaps these days there is no ‘good’ time to go have blood drawn, unless you figure that anytime HGTV is airing A Very Brady Renovation is a good time to go so you have something to watch while you wait eleven hours from registration to blood draw is a good time to go. Then, well, check your local listing.

I don’t even know.

Relatively Speaking

At work one recent Friday, a co-worker came in from being outside and declared, “It’s really nice out there.”

Oh, really?

About a half hour, I went out to check our company mailbox.

I decided that, sure, it was lovely out there, if one was simply walking to one’s car after a leisurely lunch. But being outside for hours at a track meet? Not so much. And guess who was going to be attending a track meet that afternoon/evening.

This spring has been…wet…and cold; oh wait, and windy…so very windy.

Of course, there have also been some very lovely days.

These opinions are all based on track meets, don’t you know?

And back in the days of junior high track we had a couple of MISERABLE springs.

So, relatively speaking, this has been a decent spring.

Seventh grade was awful. So cold; windy and cold and snowy! That first meet was just amazingly terrible. It was held in Pettysville, Ohio. Go ahead and look it up on Google Maps.

I’ll wait.

.

.

.

See how it’s there in the middle of freaking nowhere? Yes, there are flat open fields around the track. No windbreaks what so ever. It was so awful and because I was a novice track parent, I hadn’t gotten Alyssa any of the necessary garments that track athletes wear under their uniforms on cold days.

So there she was in a tank top and shorts and it was all of 45 degrees Fahrenheit with a horrible wind blowing from the west.

We remedied the lack of running pants and long-sleeved shirt the very next weekend but I confess to still, four years later, feeling a bit of maternal guilt over that one.

I don’t really remember eight grade meets all that much except the one at my high school where it rained the entire meet. My mom and I both had umbrellas and yet, because of the way the rain was falling, we ended up soaked. I don’t think the temperature was much above 50 that day.

Last year, the weather was so crappy in the beginning of the season that they cancelled/postponed at least three meets.

I was glad for this…cancer treatments, bald heads and cold track meets do not mix well. But I wasn’t working and so I couldn’t justify not going to any meet that was actually happening.

They did postpone one meet so far this year. It was due to cold temps and rain. I think the high that day was 42. I greatly appreciate not having to sit out in that kind of weather for hours on end.

But on the other hand, we’ve had some amazing weather for a couple of track meets too.

The very first one was so nice that we all ended up sunburned because we weren’t used to 62 degree weather and sunny skies.

Basically, spring in the Midwest is a crap shoot. One day it’s 65, sunny and low winds and the next day it could be 40 degrees with 20 MPH winds and rain/sleet.

Tell me why we live in this area again.

Advocate

Okay, my grievances with my dad are well documented. His refusal to accept the boundaries of school/work nights, his passive-aggressive nature, blah blah blah.

He showed up at my house one day last week (it was a Thursday) at 8:15…pm. Yes.

When I opened the door with a look that had to say, “What the ever loving hell?” he greeted me with, “It’s not 8:30 yet.”

Where did that come from? I never set the boundary that if he was going to come over on a school night, it had to be before 8:30. The actual boundary I set was, “Don’t come over on a school night!” We have too much to do. I’m too tired. I do not want to entertain anyone on a school night, not at 5pm, not at 7 and sure as hell not at 8:15.

What I actually said to him, quite evenly, was, “It’s 8:15.”

He walked himself right into the living room and said, “Well, I won’t stay long.”

Ugh.

He was there because he wanted to tell me he’d finally gotten a replacement hearing aide.

Yay?

He said some other things I didn’t care about…(yes, I’m a bitch. Yes, someday I’ll feel terrible for having said all this stuff because he’ll be gone…)

As he was leaving, right at 8:30 (which, again, what is this new rule I never set about 8:30? I mean, I’m glad he left before 9:00 but still.) he mentioned that the Mormon church has recently lifted the ban on baptizing the children of homosexual couples.

Okay.

Then he said…wait for it…

“I don’t even know how homosexual couples have children.”

I deadpanned, “Science? Adoption? Donation?”

He could tell he was on thin ice with me at that point. He backpedaled a little, “Well, yes, of course.”

But he just couldn’t let it go, could he? Of course he couldn’t.

He had to say, “Well, I just can’t think of those children as natural.”

What the hell?

Seriously?

OMG!

Now, let me say, he doesn’t know that Alyssa has a girlfriend.

It’s none of his business.

And honestly, it is not Alyssa’s and/or Naomi’s job to educate the older generation on life and love and for fuck’s sake, why can’t people get that love is love is love?

And any child born, no matter how they are conceived, to whom they are born or how they are born, is natural. What the actual hell?

I didn’t reply because what could I say? He’s an ignorant old man. I get that.

But I kind of wanted to slap him.

I want to remind every person out there that they need to be careful what they say, because someone they love is probably part of the LGBTQ community. They may not be out to you because they don’t feel safe being out to you. But they are there, taking in all your ignorant, asshole comments and it’s hurtful, not to just them but to those of us who love them with everything that we are.

Stop being ignorant assholes. Educate yourselves and learn that love is love is love.

Bless Her Heart

You know what’s funny. I get more parenting advice from people who have never raised children than anyone else in the world.

At my old job there were two women who never had children, never lived full time with children, never got up several times a night for YEARS with a child and these two women gave me more advice than all the people we worked with who were actual parents put together.

Last week, Tom got some advice about parenting Alyssa from someone who has never raised a child. Okay, let’s not be vague, it was Tom’s oldest daughter. She did give birth to a child and I do consider her his mother but she isn’t raising him. So…yeah.

Apparently, J follows Alyssa on several social media sites and is worried about the intensity of A’s relationship with N.

Tom was the one who talked to J. He reminded her that Lyss is almost sixteen, which means she feels things intensely. She’s fine. She and N are fine. We’re all fine.

And please, let’s remember that J might not be the most reliable person to be giving relationship advise.

My eyes have rolled right out of my head and are halfway to Indianapolis. Julie, please catch them and return them to me when we see you in Bloomington in a few weeks.

That’s how I feel about J’s parenting advice.

See, let’s remember that I also followed A on social media. I happen to live with her too. I see her and N together. I know they’d like to spend every waking hour together if it were possible/allowed. However, I also know that Alyssa has a very busy life, as does N. They make time for each other because they want to but other parts of their lives are not suffering because of their relationship. They maintain other friendships, they do their homework. N works. They’re both in the upcoming musical. They do a boatload of band things, both together and separately.

They’re fine.

They’re young and in love and that’s fine.

After he’d hung up with J Tom relayed her suggestion to me that perhaps Lyss should go spend a few weeks with her (J) to get her ‘out of N’s sphere’ for a while. OMG. Please. As freaking if.

I told Tom that J was the last person we’d want to send Alyssa away to spend time with if we wanted to get her out of Edon. J suggested that perhaps the only reason A and N are together is because there are only eleven other people in our town. Okay. Sure.

J has never raised a child. She was not the most trustworthy teenager. She probably remembers making REALLY BAD decisions as a teenager.

I reminded Tom that hey, at least neither N or A can get the other pregnant. So there’s that.

For the record, Alyssa will not be heading off to New Jersey to spend time with her sister. I feel no need to get her away from N. N is great. A is great. We’re all great, except maybe those people who have never raised kids who insist on giving the rest of us advice. They’re not so great.

Taking Up Space

My mom went with me on Saturday afternoon/evening to watch Alyssa and her bandmates perform. There were four other high school marching bands as well as a college marching band. It was fun.

Except…

There’s always an ‘except.’

Except the woman in front of me had no idea who much space she actually took up. She was so excited to be there and I was happy for her that shew as there to watch whatever kid/grandkid/great niece/nephew was performing.

She was wearing bright green (including her nails, which were FIERCE) so it wasn’t hard to figure out which school she was there for.

But she was so very there, in that space.

She’d brought one of those stadium chair that clip in the bleachers and give her some back support.

Good for her.

Unfortunately for me, the chair wasn’t all that substantial and each time she leaned back in it, she was basically in my lap.

And she appeared to be completely unaware of this fact.

She leaned back often and smashed into my knees, which should have been in the middle of her back, jabbing away at her, but her chair cushioned her (but not my knees) enough that she simply had no clue that she was encroaching on my space.

Because I’m a wuss and never one to rock the boat, I never said a word. But I did glare a few times and I positioned my knees in the best way possible to give her a start if she felt them at all.

Alas, she didn’t feel them and I was smushed by her above average weight on several occasions.

The bands were amazing. The fans…not so much.