Say WHAT?

I swear, these menfolk have conspired to make me crazy.  We all know about Sethanese, and the twists and turns it takes.  Well, the boy is safely esconced at Butler, having a fine time -- and some Viking funerals, I'm told.  I thought Sethanese was something of the past, but noooooooooooooo.  Jim has taken it over.

Entered into evidence, tonight's discussion.  To set the scene, we were watching Terminator: Salvation.

Him:  "Who is that guy?"
Me: "Who?"
Him:  "That guy.  I don't think that's Christian Bale, is it?"  (guy was covered in muck)
Me:  "No, I think that is Sam what's his name, from Avatar."
Him:  "Who?"
Me: "Him."
Him: "THAT guy?" (different guy was now on the screen)
Me: "No, that's Christian Bale.  THAT guy."  (pointing to the original guy)
Him:  How do you know that's Christian Bale?"
Me:  "Because it IS."
Him:  "What's that guy's name?"  (pointing to the same guy)
Me:  "CHRISTIAN BALE."
Him:  "But I thought you said it was the guy from Avatar."
Me:  "Oh, never mind."

They are conspiring to make me crazy.  And truly guys, it's not that much of a stretch, on a good day.  Seriously.

The Three Things

Yesterday, The Spare to the Throne left the nest, complete with a computer that lacked some screws, a flat screen TV that lacked a power cord, and a tea kettle without a whistle.  But yep, he's livin the dream, because he's wanted to go to Butler  for pretty much all of his vertical life.  Heck, he's not even worried about the air-condition-less dorm.  He's pretty happy.

One of his roommates was already there when we arrived.  His mom was chatty, and his dad was on the floor on a beanbag chair.  The boys wandered off to unload and the parents chatted about the boys.  We found that both boys are pretty quiet, have a small group of close friends but know and get along with everyone, and both are messy (read:  pigs).  Roomie's mom mentioned that they've talked a lot about time management.  Hmmm.......I had a talk with Seth, but not about time management.  We talked about The Three Things.  "What three things," asked the mom.  "Drinking?"  "Nope, he knows my stance on that."  "Drugs?"  "Nope, if he doesn't know my stance on that by now, then he hasn't listened at all."  "Sex?"  "Nope, not exactly."

The three things are as follows, and in this order:

"1.  If you think that you want to change or deface this body of yours that I have looked at for 18 years, you need to call me first.  If you feel the need to get a piercing or tattoo, then fine.  I'm not going to try to talk you out of it.  I just want to be sure that you go somewhere reputable and that you aren't going to come home with a disease that you can't get rid of.

2.  If someone is pregnant, I do not want to hear about it through the grapevine.  This includes after you are married.  I need to be the first to know, or it could get ugly.  That being said, there are condoms in your first aid kit.  Use them.

3.  If you are calling me from jail, it had better be to tell me that you are getting comfortable for the night.  I will NOT bail you out.  You can, however, call Jim.  He might give you bail money.  I won't.  Call him, because I don't want to hear about jail after the fact.  And you know me.  I will find out.

All three kids met #3 with the same argument:  "what if it was something our friend did, and we just were in the wrong place at the wrong time?  Because then it's not my fault, so you'd bail me out, right?  WRONG.  I did not raise you to have stupid friends, so if you choose to hang with stupid people, call someone else.  "Geez Mom, that's cold."   I don't think so.  At least, not if I warned you ahead of time.

My mom is a little shocked that I tell them these things.  She says that I must think the worst of my kids.  I say nope.  If, by the time they go to college, they haven't figured out how I feel about smoking, drinking, drugs, and doing their schoolwork, then they haven't paid any attention for the past 18 years, and they should reconsider their plans, because they apparently aren't smart enough for college.  My Three Things are the three permanent game changers for a young person's life, and they are most likely to happen during the college years.

And that being said, none of them have ever cashed in on any of them.  And I'd call that a win for the mom.

The Beginning and The End

Once upon a time, in 1987, a couple went to Paris and bought some champagne.  Two bottles, to be exact.  Two bottles of fine champagne, purchased to be drunk, the first, on their first anniversary, and the second to be drunk, in Paris, on their 25th.  That couple was the ex and me, and we carried it back, walking through the airport with the bottles clinking in my carryon bag (along with the two free bottles the flight attendant had given us on the plane).

Fast forward a year, and that first bottle was drunk at a picnic table at Myakka State Park, whilst eating our cake (yummy) and feeding some to the squirrels.  The champagne was strictly for us, because OH MY was it the best I've ever had.

Many years passed, but the bottle remained.  I was never sure how it would taste, given its travels, and most probably improper storage, as well as the time passing -- champagne does have a shelf life, after all.  It just sat there, starting at me, through years of sobriety as the ex tried to maintain his, and even through the divorce, ironically, the year before our 25th.  What to do, what to do............

I put a lot of thought into what to do with that champagne.  We had discussed having it on December 21, 2012, since the world was supposed to end and all, but it was Jill's birthday, and I didn't want it to be a specific person's thing.  It was ours.  Seth also whined that he would only be 18, so he couldn't have any, to which I philosophically said "if it's the end of the world, who cares what you're drinking."  But I just left it alone.  The boys said to have it at Jill's wedding, but again, that is HER celebration, not quite what I was looking for.

And so it was that I decided to have it at our last gathering before everyone spreads to the four corners of the earth.  We had to have it at Jim's, since he was still recovering from his knee surgery, so the kids came over for pizza and when we were done, I proposed a toast.

"Twenty six years ago, we bought this champagne at the beginning of an adventure that created our family, and although it's not exactly the same family as it was, you guys are all....."

Jill:  "You're not going to cry, are you?  Because I don't want you to cry."

Me (absolutely dry-eyed):  "No.  I'm fine."

Jill:  "OK, I just wanted to be sure.  Sorry."

Me:  "...you guys are all beginning adventures of your own now, and ........"

Jill:  "Did you plan this?  I mean, did you memorize it?"

Me: "No."

Jill:  "Well, it's going very well."

Me:  "....I want to say how proud I am of you, how I hope the best for you, and how very, very much I love you.  Cheers!"

And with that, went 26 years of history.  I did really well, and didn't get teary till after those goobs left.  Teary doesn't count as crying, especially when it lasts less than 30 seconds, right?

They're BAAAAACK.

Seth and Chris are back from Colorado.  They did a bro-trip to help Thomas move, and it basically went off without a hitch.  Or three.  They were due to fly back on Monday -- or so I thought.  I texted them all of the flight information.  Thomas had already printed it,so they confirmed that they had it.  Monday afternoon, I got three phone calls, in rapid succession, from Seth's phone.  I was working, so I couldn't get the phone, but called him back a couple of minutes later.  "Yeah, Mom?  Uh......that flight for today?  Yeah, it's for tomorrow."  ::sigh::  Turned out that we had all missed the little detail of what day the flight was, so off they went, back to explore more trails for one more day.

Jim and I drove to the airport to get them at 11pm last night.  That man is so sweet, he wouldn't let me go alone.  So we drive up, and the boys are sitting on concrete poles with their backpacks, looking like the fairly seasoned (goobs) travellers that they are.  Non-stop babbling later, we had gotten most of the highlights of the trip.

So tonight, we decided to take them to Ponderosa for dinner.  (It was liver and onions night. WOOHOO!)  We drove through a roundabout, and saw an Asian couple jogging in place, waiting for us to pass.  Jim said "Asians jogging.  Everybody Wang Chung tonight."  Seth responded, "That's WONG."

Man, I missed that boy.

Chicken Update

Some people asked me what ever happened to Shawna the bad girl chicken.  Well, it's like this.  I was awfully sick and tired of her putting her beak into everyone's business and eating up the eggs.  She also led more than her share of girlies astray, so yep, girlfriend had to go.  The problem is, I live with a bunch of wimps.

I finally got the nerve up to do it.  I researched how to butcher her.  Let me tell you something about butchering a chicken:  you don't want to do it.  It's a messy, messy process, and that's not even talking about the defeathering, which is a nightmare of its own.  I'm pretty sure, after researching it, that I never lived in a third world country in a former life.  So yeah, I was killing her for the sake of knocking her off, cause she was, quite frankly, pissing me off.

So I researched ways to do it.  Broomstick method seemed the easiest way, but then again, I have a helluva stun gun, and why not put it to good use?  I was concerned, however, that the million volts (I'm not joking -- I asked for one that was big enough to put a crazy person on their ass) might just be too much.  I mean, I might find myself wracked with guilt if she exploded.  And I sure as heck didn't want to end up power spraying her off the house, or worse yet, me.  But I slept on it and decided to do it anyway.

But how does one use a stun gun on a chicken without hanging onto them?  Cause yeah, holding onto anything you are stunning with a million volts would not be advised.  I ended up in the garage, found some weedwhacker string, and made myself a chicken noose.  Not for her neck, mind you, but to hang her from.  Because hey, did you know that if you hang a chicken upside down, they chill out?  I had it all figured out.  So then I snuck into my bedroom where Jim was sleeping.  He's a Marine, remember, so although he was snoring when I went in, he popped wide awake within literally two seconds, and said "what are you doing?" in a rather firm voice.  "Nothing, boo.  Go to sleep."  "No.  What are you doing?"  "I'm gonna kill Shawna."  "What?  How're you gonna do that?"   "I'm getting my stun gun."  

The voice got noticeably louder as he said "don't you kill that chicken while I'm here."

It was at that point that I realized that you can be trained to kill someone in 72 different ways, but still be a softie when it comes to a troublesome chicken.  And so it is that Shawna The Problem Chicken was donated, still kicking to the Poultry Project.  And dontcha know, I took two more chickens there two weeks later, and darned if that stupid bird didn't run right up to me from amongst a crowd of about thirty chickens.  That darned bird never could mind her own business. But oh well, she's someone else's problem now.

And that's the way it is.

This Is His Brain on Drugs

So, my boo had a knee replacement done recently.  Now he has a matched set, as the doctor said.  We had a fine time of it, spending three days at Community North recovering.  We found that the food is good there (who knew?), the couch is comfy to sleep on, and the staff was a lot of fun.  They hung out in our room a lot, cause we are a fun little duo to hang out with.

Especially when Jim's on drugs.  Ya know, the man is a connoisseur of all things beer, but the man sure can't handle his Percocet.  He knew going into this, since he had experience with it, that there are two important things, when it comes to knee replacements:  1) do your exercises and 2) take your pain medicine.  If you skip either of these, life goes to hell in a handbasket pretty quickly.  And so it was that "Ron, that crazy Phillipino" physical therapist entered our lives as a little guy with a big wallop.  His suggestion, "every time a commercial comes on, do some of your exercises," was outmatched by the Marine who simply turned the channel more frequently.  He learned his lesson after about twenty minutes of that nonsense, and went right back to bending and stretching.

He did fine the first couple of days, but then they changed him to Percocet, and it REALLY got interesting.  At that point, he saw faucets marching down the hall, started singing, and even yelled "Shagalicious!" so loudly that the people in the nurses' station started laughing.  A friend of ours came to visit, and my boo sat there conversing, then turning into a blathering idiot mid-sentence.  I found he could handle 1 1/2 pills, but two made him nutsy cuckoo.  As in, when we got home, he took two and then told me to bring him "a tampon and some of that clusterf*** ice cream from the kitchen."

Gotta admit, I laughed.

Funny thing is, he would say these things, and then his face would go blank and he would say "I don't think that came out right, did it?"  "No, boo, it sure didn't."

So when we got home, I actually cooked.  I know, but miracles do happen.  I had to think about what he could eat, cause his tummy was still a bit upset.  I decided to make him some tuna casserole, because he loves the stuff.  It turned out really well, I must admit, and he cleaned his plate.  A day or two later, he asked what kind of leftovers we had.  Not much, I said, because Thomas had been over the let the dogs out while we were at the hospital, and he had cleaned us out (thankfully).  I mentioned the tuna casserole.  ::blank look::  "What the hell are you talking about?  Who made tuna casserole?"  "I did.  And you cleaned your plate.  It was on Monday."  "WHAT?  I thought that was chicken."  "Well, boo, you were on drugs.  But it was Chicken of the SEA."

::sigh::  My boo is morphing into Jessica Simpson.

Heavy Thoughts from a Skinny Girl

Jill has been working out and mindfully eating lately, and the results show, cause the girl is looking wonderful.  She and Michael popped in this weekend to keep a couple of wedding related appointments (and to see a movie with her mother.  Yippee!  Popcorn!)

She said on the way to the movies that she didn't intend to eat any popcorn.  I, however, skip meals for movie popcorn, so I hadn't eaten since breakfast.  It was not after 7pm, so I was hungry.  After Jill mentioned that she has "been bad" lately and needed to get back in line, she explained.  "It wasn't when I went to McDonald's that I realized that I'd messed up my diet.  It was when I found myself eating cold macaroni and cheese with my bare hands, because I was too lazy to get a fork.  That's when I realized that the diet was toast."