Coming Out the Other Side

March 6…not only is this Tom’s oldest daughter’s (the girls older sister? My step-daughter? Jessica? After all these years, what’s the best way to refer to her?) birthday it’s also the anniversary of my last chemotherapy infusion. Go me.

Let’s be honest. Do I miss it?

No, I do not. I don’t miss the smell that invaded my head the moment the nurse started the infusion. I don’t miss the Benedryl grogginess or the steroid insomnia. I don’t miss the baldness.

But…I miss knowing we were actively fighting cancer. I don’t miss the appointments but I do miss knowing that if I had a concern, I’d been seeing a medical professional in a matter of days.

And this is all at a time when I’m feeling pretty good. Please, God/Universe/karma don’t take this as a challenge. I don’t want to make any statements that might come back and bite me in the ass. But I also want to celebrate these moments when I’m not actively worried about my health.

I mean, duh, I still need to lose an enormous amount of weight but my aches and pains have lessened, my fears are subsiding. Of course, those fears reserve the right to rear their ugly heads at a moment’s notice any time they want.

I recently went to the visitation for the mother of a friend from high school. This woman was lovely. She was always so kind whenever her daughter, C, had friends over. She doted on her husband, who I’m thinking was a pain in the ass kind of husband.

While she was 78 years old, these days, that doesn’t seem all that old to me. She died from lung cancer. She was diagnosed two months ago and chose not to seek treatment.

I get it.

She’d lived with a smoker her entire life. Both of her brothers died from cancer. I know one of them had stomach cancer and I’m not sure about the other.

Sigh.

Cancer sucks so much.

But here I am. Telling my tale. Actually, I’m telling the tales of so many more people than myself. I tell tales that aren’t mine to tell. I apologize in advance as well as for past transgressions of telling stories that aren’t mine to tell.

I’m an over-sharer, it’s been an established trait. The problem, I don’t just over-share about myself. You come into contact with me and I’ll probably over-share about you to someone else.

Sorry.

Seriously.

Just Another Day

You know the day before was a rough one when your first thought upon waking to a new day is, “Please don’t let me yell at her like a crazy person again today.”

But damn it.

I guess I just wish my youngest child could step outside her own head for a few minutes and see what her actions affect others.

But even if she could do this (she’s thirteen, even if she were typical, I think this would be hard for her) I don’t think it would apply to me. I’m mom. In her eyes, I’m really only there to serve her needs. I’m pretty sure she feels the same about her dad but he’s infinitely more patient than I am.

Or, maybe he’s just not as tired as I always am. See, he deals with the after school demands. I deal with nighttime and first thing in the morning demands.

And you know? She’s not that bad. It’s just…I get so beyond tired and frustrated and I just want things to be easier than they are. I wish things weren’t such a production sometimes.

I’ll announced, “We’re going to bed in five minutes.”

Five minutes later, I turn off the television and get up, stating, “I’m going to bed.”

Then the drama begins. “Wait!” she shriek, rushing to plug in her tablet, gather the crap she sleeps with (all kinds of insane, pointy shit that can’t possibly be comfortable to have in bed with you, but whatever, it’s her bed so…)

Then we brush her teeth and then we go upstairs and she has to pee and make sure the stupid toilet lid is closed.

Finally, she makes her way to her bed fifteen minutes after I’d turned off the television.

Then she has to move her pillows around and get situation. But last night, before she could get into bed, she had to run back downstairs to ‘look for something.’

She didn’t tell me what she was looking for. If she had, I’d have been able to save her ten minutes of searching and three minutes of yelling on my part. Sigh.

She finally came back upstairs empty handed after I’d yelled down that I was going to bed without her and she could tuck her own self in.

She screamed from the bottom of the stairs, “Mom! Wait!”

I was in my bed and she came in and stared at me. No words, just staring because obviously, I wasn’t going by the script.

I asked her what she’d been looking for downstairs.

“My sunglasses,” she confessed.

I rolled my eyes (because I’m a bitch) and said in stilted tones, “Go down the hall to your room, look in the purple bag that’s on the trunk at the end of the bed.”

She skedaddled down the hall and what do you know? She came back less than a minute later with two pairs of sunglasses to add to the pile of toys in her bed.

I asked her why she needed sunglasses since she was going to sleep. She shrugged because, duh, don’t ask stupid questions, Mom.

I got out of bed, made the turtles and Gub kiss her goodnight and then told her that Barbie was too tired to sing that night and to just go to sleep.

Yes, please do be polishing up my Mother of the Year award. I’ll collect it next week.

I sulked for a few minutes and then apologized to her. I told her I hoped tomorrow night would be smoother and that I hoped Barbie would feel like singing to her.

She asked me if I was still mad at her.

I sighed and told her I wasn’t.

She deserves so much better.

So today and tonight, I’m going to pretend to be better. Fake it till you make it, dude.

Scrabble

Olivia and I recently joined my mom for a quick jaunt to Battle Creek. By quick jaunt, I mean, we left home at 10:30 on a Saturday morning and were home at 3:15 that next Sunday afternoon.

Grammy Dotty lives in Battle Creek with my Auntie Laura. Auntie Laura also cares for her husband, who is not well. Her son, Aidan, lives with them as well and helped care for Grammy Dotty and Bill, Laura’s husband.

But wait, that’s not the entire cast of characters.

After my mom picked up me and Olivia, we drove to Angola where we picked up my mom’s two older sisters, Aunties Judith and Kathy.

And once we got to Auntie Laura’s house, my mom’s youngest sister, Auntie Nora arrived. Got it?

So, in order of age, here were the sisters in attendance:

Judith, Kathy, my mom (Gram or, Thea if you will) Laura and Nora.

First we made lunch, which was lovely.

Then Aiden set up the Scrabble board.

My mom and her sisters, as well as Aidan, are cut-throat Scrabble players.

I enjoy a game of Scrabble but I don’t feel the need to sabotage the board in order to keep others from making decent words.

We sat down to play the first game which included me, Aidan, my mom and Auntie Judith.

The house rules for this Scrabble game are:

Everyone draws one tile to see who goes first. The person with the letter closest to A goes first, then the person to that person’s left and so on.

Then, everyone draws another six tiles to bring them up to seven. After each turn, you reach in, get your allotted tiles and move on.

The problem is, Auntie Judith cheats and it makes my mom, Auntie Laura and Aidan crazy.

How does she cheat, you ask? Well, the very first part of the game, pulling one letter out of the bag, is hard for her. She’ll reach in, pull out three tiles, look at them and then pick the one she wants, putting the other two back.

Then, she does that same little act every single turn. Even if she only played two tiles, she’ll reach in, take out a handful, sort through them, choosing the tiles she wants and then put the extras back in the bag.

My mom calls her on this every single turn and Auntie Judith gets snippy, insisting she didn’t do that when everyone at the table saw her do it. Or, she’ll play dumb and ask, “How else am I supposed to get more letters?”

To which my mom replies, “By reaching in and pulling out one at a time, if necessary. Only take as many as you need. You don’t get to pick and choose from a handful!”

The very first time my mom called her out about it, she took one too many tiles and so said all innocently as she put one back, after looking at them all, “Ooops, took one to many.”

And you know what? It’s actually not even any fun to play with someone who plays like that.

She ended up pulling ahead and winning by a single point in that first game.

The second game, though, Aidan won by a landslide.

I knew from the start that it wasn’t going to be my game so instead of playing defensively for myself, I played for assist points (which obviously don’t get counted on my scoreboard but they sure as hell made me feel better when he beat Auntie Judith by a t least 50 points.) by strategically playing words that would help him play even better words.

And the thing is, Auntie Judith is so wrapped in her own little game, her own world that she didn’t even realize we’d ganged up on her. Which maybe wasn’t fair but it sure was fun.

This was the first gathering of the sisters since Auntie Nell (her real name) died. It was sweet and sad and everyone missed her so very, very much. She loved Scrabble too and she was NOT willing to let Judith get away with anything either.

Job Hunting Etiquette

So I worked in HR for almost 18 years.

These days, I’m on the periphery of HR. And honestly, I’m okay with that. I have no desire to be back in the conference room conducting interviews and filling out reviews and sitting in on meetings issuing warnings or even, heaven forbid, terminations.

No thank you.

But since I’m still here, on the edges of it all, I have a bit of advice for anyone out there on the job hunt.

First, an interview is your chance to make a first impression. So…maybe shower the day of your interview and wear clean clothes. I know, this seems so obvious. You’d be surprised by how many people don’t do these things. I’ve had to spray the area around my desk more times than I can count in an effort to mask body odor and/or cigarette smoke.

That brings me to the second hint. If you smoke, well, obviously, you should quit but I get that it’s harder than I think. But, um, maybe don’t sit in an enclose car and puff away at that last cigarette right before entering the building where you interview is taking place. The haze of smoke is blinding and it causes more gagging than you may realize. Ick.

I mean, okay. I get that maybe you’re nervous and so you need that last cigarette. But perhaps you could finish it a few minutes early and get out of the car and let the wind blow the stink off for a bit before heading inside the building.

Third, let’s say you decide to apply for a job at the same place your significant other is applying. Good for you two for wanting to work. That’s awesome. And hey, if your interviews are back to back on the same day, I get needing to bring your kids with you. No big deal there.

But…see, if your significant other is called and invited back for a second interview, maybe DON’T send the hiring manager a snippy little email that says, “Guess I didn’t make the cut.”

Yes, that happened. Talk about burning bridges.

Why would you do that?

You don’t know if maybe the significant other was just a better fit for the position the hiring manager happened to have open at that moment. You could very well be the next on the list for the very next job opening but if you’re going to show that kind of attitude before you’re even on the payroll…guess who isn’t going to end up on the payroll at all.

Another suggestion is to maybe take your facial piercings out before the interview. I know that these days these things are much more acceptable than they were even ten years ago, but damn. When you’re face has more holes than…something with a lot of holes, maybe don’t wear the three lip rings, the tongue stud and the eyebrow ring for that first interview. The green hair probably can’t be changed as easily but the piercings…they just kind of put some people off.

I know I’m showing my age here. I am very much a member of Generation X and it shows. But damn, people.

Stage Mom

Another year, another musical. This year’s musical is The Addam’s Family. Alyssa is in the chorus.

Because I’m That Mom, I’ve helped with costumes and hair and makeup. I also made food for the evening of the last performance.

It’s what I do.

But you know what? I’m willing to be That Mom but I really don’t want to be THAT MOM.

And yet, they almost made me do it.

The first full dress rehearsal with hair and makeup was the Sunday before the actual performances which were the following Friday and Saturday.

Oh my goodness, let me tell you, that show was rough that Sunday night. Yikes.

But what made me almost turn into THAT MOM was the fact that during an ensemble scene there are two duets. One is sung by two girls on the left side of the stage. The other is sung by my own darling Alyssa and a fellow ancestor (what they call the chorus in The Addams Family.) That Sunday evening the two girls on the left side of the stage both had microphones (these are worn on the head with the mike wrapping around their face toward their mouth) and neither Alyssa nor her duet partner had one.

Obviously, this meant that you couldn’t hear Lyss’s voice (or her male partner’s) over the pit band. But you heard A and J loud and clear.

I made up my mind that the next day, which was also a full hair and makeup dress rehearsal, I would speak to one of the directors and gently suggest that perhaps one of the two mikes on the girls across the stage from Lyss should give up her microphone to Alyssa or the dude who was ‘singing’ along with her (for what it’s worth, he doesn’t actually sing, so it’s kind of a solo – Oh, hello, my name is Marie Nordoff and I am THAT MOM.)

I worked myself into quite the tizzy that night, worrying over the ‘confrontation’ I’d have to have with the directors.

Yes, it was as ridiculous as it sounds. I kept telling my stupid brain to call the hell down. It wasn’t that big a deal. I mean, seriously.

But my mind would not stop. I ran scenarios in my head, thought about how I’d make the suggestion gently, not so much as a stage mom but as a concerned audience member who wants everyone to hear everything that’s going on in the play.

And guess what? All that angst was for naught. The directors watched the same rehearsal I’d watched and told Alyssa the very next night that she needed to wear one of the mikes so we could hear her.

Hear that brain? We didn’t have to be THAT MOM. It’s okay and all that worry was completely unnecessary.

[Side story to this whole thing: I stupidly mentioned the mike thing to the real Marie Nordoff. Guess which role her daughter, Harmony, is playing? Why yes, she is a member of the Addams Family, however did you guess? No, I’m not going to say which member of the family. I’m pretending to maintain the slightest bit of anonymity here. Anyway, when I mentioned not being able to hear Alyssa’s and her duet partner’s voices, Marie was quick to tell me that the school has a limited number of microphones and they have to give them out in order of who has the most lines/songs.

Duh.

I managed to not roll my eyes at her or tell her, “Yeah, I know. It’s not like I was going to suggest they take Harmony’s microphone away from her to give to my kid and her one small solo. Though, let’s all be honest here, Harmony’s got a voice on her that carries pretty darned well without a mike. Just saying.]

*Please note that the musical was a couple of weeks ago but I wrote this and scheduled it to post at a later date. I know, I should probably be better at posting more current stuff but hey, I'm doing the best I can here.*

She Comes By It Naturally

The week before the school musical was rough.

I don’t know why the slightest adjustment to our schedule messes me up so much but damn.

A Tuesday (big shocker) evening was stressful from beginning to end. O and I spent about 45 minutes at my mom’s which was the least stressful part of the day. Rain fell and we watched a rainbow appear. It was lovely.

Then…we went home and it all fell apart. We got home around 6:15. Guess who had homework. If you guessed that I was the one who had homework, you’d be right because obviously if O brings home work that has to be turned in the next day, I am basically the one who does it. I’m so over that shit. I actually wrote question marks on two of the questions because they were stupid and I couldn’t figure out how, from the boring-ass article sent home, one would figure out the answer. One such question was something like, “How could the original settles of the near the Indus river have avoided the flooding of their area?”

I mean…? What? They could have maybe, I don’t know, not settled there? What a stupid question.

Ahem.

Part of what annoys the shit out of me during ‘our’ homework time is that the more frustrated I get, the more Olivia acts out. I know she’s responding to me. I know if I’d just calm myself down it would go much more smoothly but the more she acts out, the more irritated I get and it’s just builds until I want to scream.

After the homework fiasco, it was time for Olivia to eat dinner.

You guys….I just don’t know. This child asks for snacks every ten minutes all freaking day long. But the minutes you put food in front of her that is an actually meal, she acts like she’s three years old. She reads and writes and plays with whatever is in front of her but she doesn’t actually EAT HER FREAKING FOOD. She screws around and then complains that the food is cold.

It’s infuriating. She is thirteen years old and has hands that work, why will she NOT pick up a fucking fork and feed herself?

Finally, she was done eating (sort of but whatever) and she and I could go upstairs so she could take a bath.

Please note that nowhere in the above paragraphs do I mentioned eating dinner myself. Oh hell no. I had to pack lunches (mine and Alyssa’s because she’s decided that when she was in fifth grade and wanted so desperately to pack her own lunch that this independence as premature and these days she’s simply too busy and put-upon to pack her own lunch.) while Liv was eating.

The bath took FOREVER but at last, she was clean and hey, would you look at that, she hadn’t flooded the bathroom. I’m calling it a win.

That was our Tuesday evening.

Then...Wednesday at work…OMG.

I go to the post office every single day at 10am.

Except on this day, at 9:22, the owner of the company brought an envelope down to be mailed and mentioned having more and confirming that I usually go at 10am.

I confirmed that I do go at 10 but said (stupidly) that if he needed me to wait a few minutes, I could go a little later than 10.

At 9:57, he came down with one more envelope (how freaking long does it take to write checks is what I want to know?) and said that if I could give him five to ten more minutes he'd have more. Obviously, I said sure because, hello, owner of the company.

I went into the restroom at 10ish.

I came out at a few minutes after 10ish. Still no more mail.

I waited.

And waited.

Suddenly, I realized I’d heard his voice in the conference room, which is around the corner from my desk.

It was 10:15 at this point, almost twenty minutes after he’d asked me if I could give him five or ten more minutes.

I was twiddling my stupid thumbs waiting for mail that obviously wasn’t coming any time soon.

Damn it!

I had a project that I needed to start at 10:30.

I know the post office isn’t going anywhere and it’s open all day but I have a schedule and a routine and I HATE it when it gets messed up.

Obviously, Olivia comes by this naturally.

I finally left for the post office at 10:23, having confirmed that the owner was not, in fact, going to be giving anything else that needed to go out. Actually, though, could you maybe just take these three letters/checks later in the day?

Sure, why not? It’s not like I need to rush home each evening and do homework or anything.

Gah, I’m such a bitch these days.

The One Where I Talk about My Favorite Chris aka You Can Skip this One if You want

The One Where I Talk about My Favorite Chris

Everyone has a favorite Chris, right? I mean, how can you not? Sure, they’ve all got their strengths but obviously one is far and away the best Chris.

Can you guess my favorite Chris?

But wait, is it hurtful for me to have a least favorite Chris? It’s not like Chris Evans is ever going to read this, right? So yes, there it is. He’s my least favorite Chris. Though to be fair to him, I haven’t actually ever seen any of the movies he’s been in. I know, *gasp* I’ve never seen Captain America. Nerd that I am, I’ve never really been into the Marvel superheroes. It’s not that I dislike the Marvel universe, in fact, I do so love the X-men but I’ve always just been more of a DC fan when it comes to the movies, X-Men not included. OMG, this is getting REALLY nerdy. Sorry.

Pratt and Hemsworth are tied for second place. I mean, neither is awful or anything, they just aren’t Chris Pine.

Ahhh, Chris Pine.

Have you seen him in Finest Hours? That man is so amazing. He captures the character of Bernie Webber so beautifully. I just can’t even stand it. I think I’ve watched that movie at least four times and now, just thinking about it, I want to watch it again.

And then there’s his portrayal of Captain James T. Kirk. I love him so much (both Kirk and Pine.) He manages to bring Kirk to life without making him a caricature. He doesn’t do ‘William Shatner as Kirk.’ He’s managed to breathe life into a character that could very much be cartoonish.

But wait, that’s not all. His role as Steve Travers in Wonder Woman…I mean, damn. He’s just so pretty.