Action/Reaction

I have realized that an unintended consequence of playing piano, sometimes competitively, for 12 years, is that when I fall, I go down like a tree. Usually, I don’t fall often enough to think about this, but I have had a few clumsy weeks – sober, entirely sober, weeks.I don’t need any external help in tripping over cords, doorstops, and myself (one time, I fell down because the heel of my shoe got stuck in the hem of my pant leg. Oh my god, why can’t I stop talking about pant hems? It’s like a sickness. I don’t even talk about them anywhere else).

Anyway, I noticed that during the fall, my arms, which are supposed to be used for balance and swinging to and from branches, hang limply at my sides, and it confused me every time. Why am I not supporting myself? What’s wrong with me? And then I realized – I’m protecting my hands. Because you know, in case anyone asks me to bang out Fantasie Impromptu…impromptu, I wouldn’t want to have an excuse of a bruised pinky.

Major abdominal surgery

For my dog. Not for me. I mean, I’ve had major abdominal surgery, which produced a lovely human baby and the knowledge, per my husband, who observed the whole thing, that I “have a lot of fat in there”. Whatever. This isn’t about me, this is about our puppy, who recently had the ability to make babies taken away from her by major abdominal surgery. Here are the differences between us:

1) Dog is told to rest. Dog spends one day recuperating, and the rest of the days sailing of couches, beds, and chairs like she is auditioning for Swan Lake. Humans spend the weeks before the removal of switches ineffectively trying to get Dog to relax. Dog gets so bored she starts playing fetch with herself and walking on hind legs while waving her front paws around.

2) Human is told to rest. Human spends two weeks lying in bed and worrying that she will never walk again because abdominal muscles apparently do a lot of things that humans do not appreciate until they have had them separated.

My son is my favorite person probably on the whole planet. Granted, I did cart him around everywhere for at least 9 months, and I was also pregnant with him, so yes, okay, I’m biased.  Aside from that biologically-mandated response, I have stories. Stories that I try to permanently save in my brain and which will keep me warm when I am 90 and in a nursing home all alone.

1. In an effort to endear our dog to Son, Son was asked to pick out a dog toy to buy for Dog. After carefully squeezing each stuffed toy, he settled on a duck because “his squeaker sounds like somebody is tooting!”

2. Upon drinking gatorade for the first time, he exclaimed, “WHAT IS THIS DELICIOUS DRINK! IT TASTES LIKE CHERRIES!” In explaining Gatorade to him, I mentioned that scientists created Gatorade in the lab. Even though he was, at the time, in the emergency room for a gushing & bleeding head wound sustained in his unauthorized horsing around on his bunk bed, he turned to me, mouth stained by red gatorade, forehead still bleeding slightly,  smiled, and said, “If this was created by scientists, then I want to be a scientist one day, too.”

Love.

Poison Tree

Everyone has a favorite poem, and I’m pretty sure that the choice says something about the person.  This is my favorite poem ever, as much as I don’t want it to be.

Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears
Night and morning with my tears,
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine –

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

– William Blake

It’s not that I want those that I am angry with to be poisoned, but I do like reading about grudges.

 

When I was younger, I wanted to write a book, and who hasn’t? You sit there, type furiously, and then you get millions of dollars. It’s a perfect get-rich-quick scheme.  Except.  I go through something I like to call the Cycle of Lazy. Here is how it goes:

Stage 1: “You know, I could totally write a book. Maybe about a kid. No, I know, about hearbreak. And science. And ROBOTS, definitely robots.”

Stage 2: “Ugh, I have been working on this for TWO WHOLE DAYS, and everything about it is the WORST.”

Stage 3: “I’m going to delete the whole thing just in case my grandchildren, while going through my belongings after dumping me in a nursing home, find the file and upload it on their holographic internal brain-meld computer screen and then laugh at me. I don’t want to be an embarrassing grandma!”

Then I return to my first passion: reading somebody else’s writing and eating truffles.

This is how I feel about blogging.  Before I created this, I had 10,000 things that I could write about IF,  to the tune of the Scarecrow’s Lament, I only had a blog. And now, I could write about a lot of things! And yet. Reading other blogs and eating truffles seems like a much better pursuit.

 

Oops

Each time I check the blog stats, I see people arriving here by googling “hem pants fix”. I’m sorry. I don’t know how to fix pant hems. I wish I did. Then you’d find something useful on this blog, instead of a dumb story about confusion and miscommunication.

However, if you are reading this and have found other, more useful discussions on pant hems, please let me know. I still haven’t fixed mine.

Once upon a time, my husband was bitten by a tick and became a superhero and developed an allergy to red meat.  I know it sounds ridiculous, but apparently, certain people from the south develop an immune response to tick bites and react to a protein found in red meat. We have not eaten beef forEVER and it’s terrible, but it appears that pork is also now forbidden.

Last night, he woke up at 2 am with an allergic reaction and drove himself to the drug store to get non-drowsy allergy medication. Then he went to work at 4 am.

But the real tragedy here is that I can’t eat steak.

New

We got a dog. A cute, abandoned, 5 month old lab/boxer/terrier mix, which, given the shelter and vet track records of labeling all breeds as lab/boxers to avoid anti-pitbull feelings, it’s probably a pitbull. Don’t tell my HOA.

She is sweet and it’s hard to talk about her without reverting into baby talk (look at her widdle face with all those widdle wrinkles, who’s the cute girl? is it you? YES IT IS! YES YOU ARE THE CUTEST WIDDLE GIRL!) but needs attention and reassurance every 3 seconds. And that’s hard, because I myself need attention and reassurance every 3 seconds, and competing with a dog with cute wrinkles for attention and reassurance sends us both into a neurotic spiral. I have a couple of wrinkles on my own, probably, but they’re not as cute or fuzzy ( I should hope).

Dog stories incoming.

 

 

I hate your blog.

Target Audience. I recently ran across a blog written by a dad, wherein he bemoaned not becoming popular and earning millions of dollars from his blog. I mean, he’s  a DAD, you guys. And he WRITES. ON THE INTERNET. What else do people even want from him? Why is nobody reading his stuff? Did he mention that he is a DAD? D-A-D. I mean, it’s right in the blog title, readers.

I loathe blogs that are clearly written to earn money, for the same reason that I fast-forward through advertisements. I don’t need Happy Napper.com telling my child that he absolutely needs a stuffed dragon that either transforms into, or fits into, a stuffed castle, and I don’t need to read your stupid blog to find out that women, like the ravenous pig-beasts that we are, need to snack in the middle of the day, but only on low-calorie granola bars which you will personally put into your purse every day, because you got a freebie from Nestle.

And it’s a whole network of bloggers, constantly linking to each other, reading each other, and pushing each other to buy unnecessary products, because they get compensated a whole dollar per entry, and plus, did they MENTION the free compact and mirror that you will get if you leave a comment, link to the post on twitter, and like them on facebook? Because get it? Ladies! Granola bars! It’s like dads and writing on the internet. Instant success formula.

But nobody is going to know, because nobody cares about my blog. Maybe I should do a give away of granola bars or make-up or whatever it is that women bloggers’ target audience wants.

Excuse me, I have a happy napper to buy. For 19.99 plus 5.99 shipping & handling (that’s really expensive handling, is it done with kid gloves)?

I don’t even have twitter

Speaking of twitter, I accidentally referred to twitter as “tweeter” in front of younger family members, who promptly laughed at me.  I may officially be too old for the new social networks, and this makes me sad. I don’t use twitter, because I can either think of none, or too many, 150-character messages that I could publish, and I would prefer not to address those scenarios.  I understand the point of tumblr even less than I understand the point of twitter.

However, this post isn’t really about my inability to evolve with the social networks. No, this post is about empty twitter threats. I need a room table, and World Market desperately does not want to SELL it to me. I have placed an order three times so far – once online, and twice over the phone, and yet, AND YET, the order is not placed.  The online order disappeared into the nether, which I may have referred to as “shitty service” while on the phone with customer service. MAY HAVE. Okay, I totally did. Then I hung up. MATURE.

By evening, I calmed down and placed the order over the phone, except my 10% discount did not work. I got free shipping, and along with that, a liberal misspelling of my easy-to-spell, common last name, that is spelled just like it’s pronounced. So, naturally, the website does not reflect an order. Correcting my last name has not produced a viable result of SENDING OUT A TABLE.

This morning, I called even more enraged – and, what is surely the sign of the times, threatened to tell EVERYONE I KNOW on Twitter about it. As soon as that threat left my mouth, I cringed. I don’t HAVE a Twitter account, awkward. I also, as of now, do not have a dining room table. Fix your shitty service, World Market. GOD. Or I will establish a Twitter account for the sole purpose of TELLING EVERYONE about how you can’t send me a dining room table. I know, sing with me, ~~first world problems~~.