The Grapes of Seth

This son 'o mine never fails to crack me up.

I came home from a night of treadmilling, and Seth came bursting into the kitchen sliding sideways past me. "Do we have any grapes? I need a grape," he said, as he opened the refrigerator door. I told him I was fairly sure that we did not have grapes. I was actually QUITE sure that we didn't have any grapes, but that didn't stop him from frantically rifling the fridge, nonetheless, after which he turned to me and said "do we have a candle? I need a candle."

I reminded him that candles require fire to be of any use, and that Seth and fire stopped being a good idea like..........well, never. He kept badgering me frantically about a candle, and he went gliding -- no joke -- into the living room to get one. He came back into the kitchen asking whether we had a lighter. I pointed out that any lighters we had likely went out the door with his father, and I doubted there was one here. I told him to use a piece of spaghetti, which is the way I always light candles. He asked about that "clicky thing we use to light the fireplace," and I directed him to where it was.

I seemed to be having a problem getting an explanation as to why he needed the non-existent grape and a candle, when he informed me that he'd been watching "really interesting videos" on youtube. I asked if they involved things blowing up. He responded, "not exactly." So far this whole thing has not instilled confidence in my situation, and I barely had my jacket off.

So The Boy finds the candle, then comes in and lights it with said clicky lighter thing. Then blows OUT the candle. And semi-immediately clicks the lighter above the candle. The lighter lit. Like normal. Disappoinment on boy's face. The process was repeated. And repeated again. Each time, a sigh of disappointment. Finally after the fourth time, he pronounced that it didn't work. I asked him if he was supposed to be creating a fireball of death or what, and he responded, that no, the grape was supposed to kind of melt into a ball of protoplasm.

Except that he never found a grape. And I still have no idea where the grape was supposed to be put, since all he was doing was lighting a candle, blowing it out, and then clicking the lighter.

Sometimes I am fairly certain that Seth and I are not in the same orbit, but I want to be in his, because it is a very happy place where people are easily amused. Even without the grapes.

The Manly Man-Boy

So I discovered the other day that despite the fact that only two people live in this house now, there were EIGHT bottles of shampoo or conditioner in our shower. Eight. There are slightly less shower gel bottles -- four, to be exact. And one is a smaller one from a gift set that Thomas gave me, so let's call it 3 1/2.

Seth was a little concerned, however, at his lack of manly options. Apparently, as he says, he just didn't feel right showering with pink girly smelling shower gel. I pointed out that there was one bottle of manly Avon "Oak" that had perhaps an inch of stuff left in it, but he wanted to get something else the next time we went to the store.

So tonight, we went out into the night and went shopping at Kroger. When we got to the skin care aisle, he made a beeline to the manly smelling stuff which was, in typical teenaged boy fashion, Ax. I turned the corner to the next aisle while he was perusing his options, but heard him say something about "attraction." I asked him what the heck he was looking at, and he replied with "Dark Attraction." I pointed out the many ways of wrong that sounded to me. His reply was that "Dark Attraction doesn't exactly sound like something I want to be rubbing all over my body."

The boy has a point. I didn't even look to see what he put in the cart, but I can tell you two things: 1. It wasn't pink. 2. It was not Dark Attraction.

Man's best friend

Boo, our 7 year old mutt on Prozac, loves to eviscerate stuffed animals. Jill used to buy him toys at the DAV, just to let him gut them. He did, within minutes of them entering the house, and leaving the living room looking like a big cloud, with stuffing all over the place. He then carries the floppy carcass all over the house, and plays tug-o-war with anyone who will join in. Jill can even get him to play hide and seek with it. It's hilarious.

He hasn't gotten to do it much since The Brat left for school, but he has a new habit: pulling the batting out of my quilt. I have a quilt, not old, that is getting rather shredded from me bundling up in it. It's not a huge deal. Although I love that quilt, it was bought for cheap at Sears, and has now been relegated to covering the man-cave couch, in a desperate attempt to keep the dog hair at bay. Well, Boo has decided that it is his personal mission to remove the batting from inside every square inch of it with his teeth. It's quite something to watch, and he keeps at it, despite our admonitions to leave the darned thing alone.

So Thomas was over the other day, to watch football with Dan. Dan wasn't home yet, so the Heir to the Throne was sitting in the King's chair. Weird noises were coming from the couch, and we looked over to see Boo chewing on a piece of batting that he had stuck in his mouth. "What are you doing," said The Heir. Boo just looked at him and kept trying to get the stuff loose. It wasn't looking good. It was, as a matter of fact, looking more like he might barf on the couch, cause he just could not get it loose. "Not going too good for you, is it, Boo," said Thomas. Boo sat up and stuck his head near Thomas, with a look that said "I'm not too sure about this, dude." Thomas started laughing.

It was at that moment that Boo, formerly so terrified of him that he'd pee on the floor if Thomas even looked at him, gave him the ultimate gift: he dropped the whole slimy mess on Thomas' shirt. I swear he looked proud when he laid back down.

Warning: potentiall offensive to non-medical people

I will just say, nurses have an odd sense of humor. Be forewarned.

So, in my "new" job of 2 months, I am a systems analyst, working in our electronic medical record department. I'm quickly gaining a rep as the housekeeper of the system, because I've been fixing all of the typographical errors, punctuation gone awry, and lists that aren't alphabetized. Typos make me crazy, so maybe we can say that after 2 months, I'm almost sane. Not.

One of the nurses put in a Help Desk ticket to get a bunch of old diabetic monitors taken off of the list, so that the docs don't have to wade through a bazillion listings that aren't usable. It started with a list of about 50 things to do, maybe more, and now it's morphed into a huge project. Keep in mind that the majority of our patients are on Medicaid, and Medicaid won't pay for everything. add to that that the list of a bazillion things has listings for brands like Albertson's and Giant Eagle that do not operate anywhere near central Indiana. So yeah, I've been weeding those out.

I also took out the listings for the Land Before Time diapers, which I'm sure Jill wishes were still made, since it's one of her favorite movies. It gave me a real visual, remembering how many times the kids watched that movie. A visual that wasn't nearly so profound as when I came across the listing for a Vaginal Dispenser.

What the heck is that?

I thought at first that maybe it was one of those things you use to put Monistat in, but we call those applicators. So yeah, I have no idea, but I can't get the picture of a vajayjay spewing out M&Ms out of my head. I think I'll stop cleaning now.

Never can say goodbye.....

So I went to lunch with the girls yesterday, and when I left, I got a true shocker. Now, I work in da 'hood, and I'm not easily surprised by much of anything that happens there. We share our side of the building with a bunch of social services. We get propositioned regularly by the prisoners. We ladies consider it to be a good week when we have toilet paper, because it's stolen on a pretty regular basis. And let's just say, you could get higher than a kite walking in the front door most days. It keeps the workday interesting.

So I went out to my car and put it in reverse. Started backing out really slowly, and suddenly the door on the car next to me flew open. The back door, that is. So now, I'm not only watching out for stoned drivers in the parking lot, I was worried about that door hitting my mirror as I tried to get out. I slowed down even more. I realized that the door wasn't closing, so then I was worried -- does this dude know that my car is moving, and is he gonna back into me. That was when I got an eyeful.

Dude was doing a furious booty shake, droopy pants and all, right in my passenger's window. WOW.

I thought that was strange enough, and was wondering if it was a private dance, till I backed up far enough to turn the wheel to get out. That's when I saw that he had moved to the back of his car, accompanied by his lady friend, and now BOTH of them were going at it with booty shakes the speed of lightening. They were still at it when I exited the parking lot. It was like having two butts waving goodbye.

That was a first. And that alone is something I never thought I'd say about my place of employment.

So enjoy this video, and if you don't know what a booty shake is, wait till 3:00 on the video, then imagine this being done practically in your face by a total stranger. I know I'll never forget it.

A sad moment in the house of Utter Chaos

It finally happened. Dan retired his coffee pot.

His coffeepot is an OLD Mr Coffee, hang from the kitchen cabinet Spacemaker model that he inherited when his grandma passed away in 1995. I remember the day they went through her apartment and divvied up all her belongings. I didn't feel it was my place to go, so I stayed home, asking Dan to just get one family picture -- of his great grandparents' wedding -- if no one else wanted it. He came home with that picture, a brass bookshelf, and the coffeepot.

Gram was one of those old school grandmas who was forever cooking. She'd fix a huge spread for breakfast then, while complaining that I ate like a bird (I remember those days!), she'd be asking what we wanted to have for dinner. You never left Gram's house hungry, and somewhere between arriving and leaving, you'd perhaps play some poker and hear her say "Herb, fix me a highball" right before dinner.

Gram had three husbands: Dan's grandpa, who died in his fifties, Kenny, who died of cancer, and Herb, who died a couple of years before she did. As Dan said, she married 'em and buried 'em. And the funny thing was that she never let them see her without her wig. Now, I'm sure that Grandpa Utter did at some point -- maybe -- but when I met her, she was married to Herb, and trust me, he NEVER saw her without her wig. Grandma had open heart surgery, and when they wheeled her away wearing her blue cap on her head, Herb chuckled. He had been given her suitcase, and remarked that her wig was in there, and he'd finally see her without it. He was wrong.

When we went to see her after surgery, there she was in ICU, on a ventilator, with chest tubes and tubes everywhere. There she lay, and we didn't even have a moment to get worried, because we were too busy laughing, because there she was, out like a light, with her wig on her head! I looked on the wall, and there was her list of orders. Written in big red letters it said "Patient's husband has never seen her without her wig. Please put her wig on ASAP."

Score one for Gram.

She went to our wedding two months later, and we have her on video asking the cameraman "ya wanna see my zipper" while she put her leg up a little, to show off her scar from the surgery. Gram was a hoot.

And so it is that she has made Dan a cup of coffee every day since 1995. That coffeepot leaked sometimes, and would subsequently ruin things if we forgot and put them on the counter underneath it, but Dan persisted. The one day a week or so ago, he forgot and left his phone under it. Fortunately, we caught it before it ruined the phone, but the writing was on the wall. He hung on for a week or so, but after finding a new coffee pot in the basement, he took the old Mr. Coffee down and now uses the new Krups coffee maker.

I wanted to cry, watching that coffee pot come down.

But that was before we started discussing where the heck that Krups coffeemaker came from. After some discussion, we decided that his mom had bought it for him, and that brought some comfort. Dan's mom has been gone for three years now, but now SHE is making Dan coffee every day. And trust me, you can't get that kind of service at Starbucks.

Six degrees

Tonight after dinner, Dan asked Seth to grab his bottle of vitamins from the bin that was on the counter nearby. Seth looked at him rather blankly and said "which bottle is it," at which point both of us said "it's the one that says Vitamins." ::sigh::

So he starts going through the bin and pulls out a bottle. "Anti-diarrhea," said he. Then he pulled out a big bottle of Ibuprofen, read the label silently, then tossed it back into the bin. "It's a white bottle," said Dan. Seth promptly pulled up a prescription bottle -- orange -- to which Dan said "It says VITAMINS on it." "I don't know which one it is. None of them say Vitamins." ::sigh:: I said "it might say One a Day or something on it." He responded, "none of them say Vitamins. " He then starting clicking off the bottles he found: "Ibuprofen." "Anti-diarrhea." "Menstrual Relief," said with a particularly sassy tone that promptly caused Dan to hop up from his chair, grab the right bottle and hold it up triumphantly in front of the boy. The boy responded, equally triumphantly "It says Central-Rite! Not Vitamins." Dan's response was a Father Knows Best "well, it starts with a V."

And that's when it started.

Seth: "Well, so does Ventricle."
Dan: "Ventilate."
Seth: "Vitreum. Yeah, I know chemistry stuff."

Dan didn't have a chance to regroup before Seth burst out with a loud "Ven-testicle." Proving that age old law of teenagedom: there are no more than six degrees of separation between a teenaged boy and a dirty, or pseudo-dirty, thought.