Just cause you're on a diet...........

I had a nice day off today, getting tons of work done on piddly tasks that needed to be done, then going to the movies with the hubby and the two eldest in the afternoon. Not bad for a nasty, precipitous, gray Indiana day where your best bet is probably just to roll over and go back to sleep for the day.

As usual, we were running late to the movie, because it takes time to get two teenagers rousted about and ready. We were met at the door by a couple who said that if we were trying to see "Four Christmases," we were out of luck, because something had gone wrong, and they weren't showing it. Walked up to the counter annoyed, because I hate being late to the movies -- it takes time to get tickets and snacks, get settled, make sure the cell phone is off, then lean back and get ready for the show. It's a process. A process which was being interrupted by a guy who was so upset that he wasn't getting to see his movie of choice that he was yelling at the manager, despite the free passes he'd already been given, while his wife and daughter stood there looking mortified. I jumped right in and asked if we could get tickets for Australia, which broke up the argument. I went ahead and got the seats, while Dan got the snacks. Of course, with four of us there, the first bucket of popcorn is done before the opening credits, so Dan took off for a refill, and a command to let him know what he misses when he gets back.

The only thing he missed is seeing that Nicole Kidman will be a sure bet for scariest thin actress of the year. I failed to mention that we were seeing "Australia," but if you decide to see it, look at her arm when they are rowing her to the island, when she arrives from Britain. Her forearm is SCARY.

The movie was a compilation of paradoxes -- beautiful scenery, then suddenly awful, cheesy backdrops. Great horseback riding, then amateurish special effects. Acting that was all over the place. Jill and I spent a good portion of the film trying to figure out if the bad guy really WAS the actor who played Faramir in the Lord of the Rings series, which Thomas adamantly refused to believe but, when the credit ran, turned out to be true.

The one constant in the film was Hugh Jackman, who is nothing short of hot. Jill, of course, refused to allow me to acknowledge this saying that she had already laid claim to him. I pointed out that she already at her four husband limit, but she was having none of that. "You are MARRIED. And I don't want to hear you say....." she said. "What? Just because I'm on a diet doesn't mean I can't look at the menu." "THAT!" she proclaimed. "I don't want to hear THAT." Oh well, it's the truth. I'm married, not dead, for heaven's sake.

Jill's rules for "old people" are multitudinous. I'm not allowed to acknowledge hotness when I see it. Certain music is off limits -- even though it's mandatory to listen to it when she's in the car. I'm most definitely not allowed to text, because "when old people text, it just means they're trying to be young." And on and on and on. The girl forgets that her parents don't generally live within the rules, but we just smile and move along. Some day, she'll get it, but no time soon.
Meantime, enjoy Hugh, the dessert on the menu that we grownups aren't supposed to have.

There and back again

Dan and I went to my parents' house this weekend, so he could paint their condo. Went up on Friday, got to experience lots of snow on Saturday, and came back today. Quick trip, but that's fine. I like to drive.

I like to drive in silence. I generally don't have the radio on, and am known to play the same CD in the car for weeks at a time, because I just forget to take it out. Dan, on the other hand, must have music at all times. Drives me crazy, but at least we like the same kind of music, most days. Imagine my surprise when this man, the one who doesn't rake leaves without music, went all the way to Michigan without the radio on. That's like a nine hour drive, and he didn't turn it on once. I figured he'd go to sleep, so I turned on the MP3 player on my phone and listened to some tunes there.

He painted the condo, and informed me that night that he thought that maybe his good deed for the day was worth a little payback. No, not THAT kind of payback. Payback meaning he wanted to listen to football the whole way home which, depending upon the drive, is about 7 hours. SEVEN HOURS of listening to football. That's one heck of a paint job he did.

So we took off in the car around 11. Coast was clear, because football doesn't start till later. I took my normal detour in Zilwaukee, went to the antiques store, and got very little complaint. Dan does love to shop, though, so I figured the coast was clear. Took off again, and informed him that yes, we would make another stop along the way, but he was fine for now. Got through Flint, still no football. Things were going great.

I asked him if he was hungry, because the man generally eats by the clock. I was surprised that he declined food, but we'd had a huge breakfast, and he had a stash of M&Ms, so I figured that he'd be ok for a short while. That was before the thought came to me that he was probably waiting to eat till 4, when the Broncos game started, so that he could sit and watch the beginning in Applebees or something -- even though we were in Michigan, and the odds of the Broncos playing on TV there were pretty slim. Nonetheless, I prepared myself, and was again surprised when he suggested that we just go through drive-through at Wendy's.

Now I was on to the game. He wanted to get home as fast as possible, so that he could WATCH the game, if it was being televised. By now we had the radio going with the Detroit Lions game, but as I do when the kids have the radio on, I just tuned it out. Hit the Indiana border and just kept going, till I found the antiques place I was looking for. I was surprised that he only let out a little moan of agony, but didn't argue that we WERE going there. He declined to come in, however, because he was going to try to find the game. Ended up coming in shortly afterward, but he was happy to find a sports booth that kept him busy whilst I shopped.

Took off again with the homing beacon on full tilt. He started picking up the game on 1260AM, and was concerned that the Broncos were behind in the second quarter. "This could get ugly," I thought, "if I get trapped in the car when they lose." Oh well, we had chocolate, so I just kept driving. Round about Huntington, the game was tied up, but the signal was spotty. Now we were listening to post-game reports from Cincinnati, where the Colts had beaten them rather handily, I believe. Every now and again, they'd come in with another report of the game being tied.

The signal kept fading in and out, and at about Pendleton, they started doing the rundown of the day's scores, but the signal was really bad (probably something to do with the prisoners at the reformatory, or maybe the license plates they are making, I don't know). I kept hearing "why, why, why does the signal not come in? This is a national broadcast." And right about the time I heard Denver, he gave it a couple of swift WHACKS on the dashboard.

Yes, folks, hitting the dashboard will help your radio signal. Only it didn't, and it was so staticy that I turned it off, then immediately back on, lest the man get the shakes. Amazingly, turning it back on helped, and the signal was suddenly as clear as a bell, but they'd already run down the scores, and weren't going to repeat themselves any time soon.

Did I mention that both cell phones were dead? Well, mine was, but Dan called the boys and they wouldn't answer the phone, so his may've well have been dead.

Now he was getting pretty riled up, and about the time we took the exit toward 70, they started talking results, and the minute Denver came up, he put his hands on his head and bent over, practically with this head between his knees, until he heard the word won. At that point he shot up like he'd seen Jesus himself, and let out a huge whoop that probably caused non-migratory birds within a ten mile radius to reconsider their winter plans. This man, who had been relatively quiet for the entire trip, let forth with a soliloquy de futbol so long and so loud that when I got off the exit, he had me so rattled, forgot I was driving a stick shift, and promptly killed it when I tried to turn right on red.

I don't think the man took a breath until he'd been in the house for at least ten minutes -- five of which was spent booting his computer up and checking the fantasy league he's playing in.

Needless to say, I'm glad to be home. Even more glad that the Broncos won. But one thing I won't forget -- if I let him listen to football, I can shop as much as I want. I'll just bring ear plugs next time.

I whistle a happy tune

I worked today, then came home to The Brat's retelling of the Great Camping Adventure, which was a great success. Dan's not home yet from Cleveland, so I plopped on the couch, with full intention of listing some patterns on the website. Several hours later, I've still not listed one.
Why, you ask? It's because Jill had The Two Towers on the TV.

I have seen this movie at least 20 times. No joke, except for the fact that saying I've "seen" it may be a stretch. We bought the DVD shortly before Dan went on his first mission trip to Mexico. That was the week I opened my ebay store, which entailed a lot of sitting around figuring out HTML code, IM'ing a friend of Thomas' when I got stuck, counting pattern pieces, taking pictures (yeah, we didn't have a scanner yet). When one is spending so much concentrated time on the computer, one needs something on either the radio or the TV, so I chose The Two Towers. The kids think it's because of my fascination with Legolas (not Orlando Bloom. Legolas), but it was really because the music in that movie is simply so beautiful that you can listen to it over and over again. I've never bought the soundtrack, but I listened to the movie at least ten times in that week alone. So when Jill had it on today, I couldn't resist, and sat and listened while catching up on email and editing the website.

Jill got irritated when I mentioned, for probably the bazillionth time, how much I love the music in the Lord of the Rings series. Oh well. It was no more irritating to her, than the fact that when Titanic came out, I purchased the soundtrack, but never once was able to listen to it in its entirety with Jill around. Jill, who had never seen the movie, would begin freaking out midway through, running through the house, hands over her ears, screaming "they're in the water, they're all dying! Turn it OOOOOOOOOOOOFFFFFFFFFFFF!" And I'll be double dipped, but she always did it in the part of the soundtrack where the people really WERE in the water, dying. She had some kind of Music Whisperer gene that told her when the life jackets were donned.

One time, Thomas, who loved Titanic, said to me "Mom, she's in the tub. She won't hear it. Can we please listen to it now?" I figured he was right, and put it on pretty softly on the CD player. I'll be darned, right about the time that things went south in the movie, The Brat jumped outta the tub, grabbed a towel, and came outta the bathroom screaming about the carnage and that we HAD to turn it off.

To this day, she has never seen that movie, and she's never heard the whole soundtrack.

So if you want some more uplifting music, listen to one of these: any of the Lord of the Rings movies, The Wedding Singer (his song to Linda is hilarious, and the song at the end requires a hankie, it's so precious), Moulin Rouge (listen to the soundtrack unless you want your heart ripped out by the movie), The Sound of Music (the hills are alive........), Gladiator (gruesome, but GREAT music), White Christmas (watched it last night, for the second time in my life -- yeah, I don't understand how that happened either), O Brother Where Art Though (nothing short of hysterically funny, now matter how many times you see it), Walk the Line (I love Joaquin Phoenix, and the clothes are just plain eye candy), The King and I, et cetera, et cetera......

I just love music, which was a seed planted early on by our parents in all of the Mitchell kids. Same goes for the movies. And yeah, I can't resist great fashion either, which is what this little velvet number from Fuzzie Lizzie is. It's yours, for a song.

Bowling for cab fare

Since everyone (aka Dan, Jill, and Thomas) are all gone tonight, I took Seth out to dinner, just the two of us. Being Saturday night, the parking lot was pretty full, and after I parked, Seth told me that the car next to us had a keypad on it like Dan's baby, the 1990 Towncar he bought from a customer of his. Keypad entry. Yep.

We had a van with keyless entry once. It was, as I remember, a red Mercury Villager, I think, and was really pretty. (We all know how I love red.) One night, we went up to the northside to do an American Heart Association Bowl-a-thon -- nerdy, but for a good cause and, being run by one of Dan's charge nurses, it was kind of a must-do. We picked up some good friends of ours and went up for a leisurely night of us against the pins.

When we got in there, we found out that they had a 50/50 pot going, as well as some door prizes. I, of course, never ever carry cash, so I looked at Dan for the bucks. He took off to the car, because he'd left his wallet there. Not the smartest move, but YOU try telling him not to do it. He came back in, we bought tickets, and I ended up winning a healthy heart cookbook. I love winning things. W

We had a nice evening of bowling, and when we went to go home later, Dan went out to warm up the car. It was probably 20 below -- one of the coldest nights in memory, so warming the car up was a great idea. He ended up coming back in, announcing that he couldn't get in the car. What in the world? How can you not get in the car, when the car has keyless entry?

Only in the land of Utter chaos could events unfold like this: he had left his wallet and keys in the car. Left the keys in the ignition. Left the ignition on, in the accessory position, so when he went out there to warm the car up, the battery was dead, rendering the keyless entry useless, while the only set of keys we had were in the car. In the ignition. Worst part was, when I asked him, he said he'd left them in the ignition on purpose, because he'd know where they were, wouldn't lose them, and "I knew I could use the keyless entry to get in."

That's the fireworks started.

Suffice it to say that 24 hour locksmiths lie -- they work banker's hours. We ended up having to call a cab to take us home which, by now, was probably 1 or 2 in the morning. Next thing you know, Dan was talking to his buddy about splitting the fare, since we had to all ride to their house to drop them off first, before going to our house which, of course, added to our fare. I made no bones about the fact that no way was Biggie gonna pay half for a cab that he hadn't needed till Dan left the keys in the car with the car still on. When it finally arrived, we piled into the cab, and when Dan mentioned that someone would have to sit up front with the driver, the looks he got from us were enough to tell him that that person would happen to be him.

He sat there, repeating the night's events to the driver, who I'm not even sure spoke English. Dan said "you don't think it's my fault, right" and was met with a rather blank stare that either said "stupid American," or "I'm gonna keep my mouth shut, cause the wife is obviously the one paying the tip." Dan looked at Biggie for help. Biggie just looked at him as only a best friend can, and said "face it, Dan, you f***** up."

Silence for the entire rest of the ride home.

Next day, Dan had to get a ride up to the bowling alley, as the van was our only car at the time. He waited for the locksmith, apparently telling the whole sordid story to him, in search of someone to back him up. When I asked him what the locksmith said about the whole thing, he shot me a furtive look and skulked out of the room.

We've never had keyless entry since. Never done a bowl-a-thon since, either. And I don't think Biggie and his wife have rode anywhere with us since -- they meet us on location. Me, I just make sure that a) I drive whenever we go out and b) I carry the keys, hopefully while wearing this fabulous poodle vintage bowling shirt, available now from Fast Eddie's Retro Rags. Sure, the name says Lillian, but one more incident of craziness like that and I'm going into Witness Protection anyway, so this will give me head start.

Happy Turkey Day!

We're having Thanksgiving today, two days ahead of the curve. The Brat is going camping this week with the crew from her place of employ, so we're having the turkey dinner whilst we're all together, and before she freezes to death in the great outdoors.

I'm not the best grocery shopper in the world. Personally, I hate grocery shopping, so sent Daniel out with a list. Twice, because of course a) I forgot a few things the first time, b) The Brat added a few of her own choices, and c) I was working, and one of my co-workers felt she might die without Diet Pepsi. Off to Meijer he went -- against his better judgement, but it was close to where he'd dropped Seth at drumming, and amongs the Stepford Wives of Carmel. I don't think he'll be going there again any time soon.

This morning, I got up and got the turkey in the oven, after stuffing it with yummy sage dressing. Getting that crazy bird ready reminded me of a Thanksgiving, about ten years ago, when Jill had just become a vegetarian. She walked in as I was pulling the baggies of innards out of the bird. Her eyes were wide when she asked me what the heck I was doing. "What the heck is that," she said. "The neck," I said. She gasped. "You chopped its head off," she said. "No, honey, it was already cut off before I got it at the store." "Oh." That seemed to give her some sense of relief, because she relaxed a little. "Well, what's that? she said, pointing to the other little baggie in my hand. "This? Oh, it's the heart and the liver," I said.

You ripped its HEART out, she said, then tore out of the room. Oh good heavens, can't a woman even fix a turkey in peace around here? She showed back up shortly, looking as pale as a ghost. "did you get sick," I asked her. "No," she said. "What're the dogs eating?"

I didn't answer.

So today, when I opened up the baggies and pulled out that liver and heart, with three dogs standing around me just waiting for a treat, they went away hungry. No meaty treats for them as long as Jill's around. Poor babies! So when I went checking around, looking for a dog treat, I found this cute dog print shirt, from Lynn's Rags, on ebay.

Give it to Mikey

The Heir to the Throne works with me, doing data entry. He likes it, because it's the perfect job: get paid to have essential no human interaction. It's perfect for him.

He enters all of our pages into our software, so the nurses can stay busy doing nursey stuff. Put your aces in their places, as McDonald's teaches. Essentially, he gets to see all the topics of the pages as they come in, but never really hears too much about the end result. He looked forward to starting there, because he knows about all of the weird things people call us for. Sadly, it's been pretty quiet there since he started, but I think yesterday took the proverbial cake.

I was over checking out the situation with another nurse. The boss had shown up on a weekend, which is unusual, but we were trying to solve a software issue someone was having, so she dropped in to play tech support and see some staff who normally don't see her. I walked over to see if they'd resolved the software issue that had plagued my co-worker for weeks, when over walked Thomas.

"I want to know how this call ends," he said. "Why," I asked, because he rarely expresses much interest in the calls. "You'll have to read it yourself," he said, so I headed over to read the incoming email, which read

"thinks the babey ait the cat"

Granted, this particular answering service is not known for its accuracy. They do give us some amusements, like paging a name as Yoda instead of Yoder. They drive us nuts with the misspellings and, when we call to have the doctor paged, they page the nurse sitting in the next cubicle instead. One of my co-workers calls them The River People, because she's sure that they are a by-product of some Deliverance-like environment. Either way, I'd never seen anything like this, and we all started arguing over who was going to take this call.

I had a trainee who was asking how they wouldn't know if the baby ate the cat, but how would the baby do that anywhere, when the call disappeared from the screen. Suddenly everyone started pointing fingers at each other, griping that they never get the good stuff. When I looked it up, I realized that my friend Ann had snagged it from home, where she works, complete with lap dog and bunny slippers. Man, the home agents are not supposed to get these calls, because we miss all the fun discussion afterward if no one in the office gets it.

I watched for a while, wondering how a mom wouldn't know if a kid had swallowed the cat. Wouldn't the tail be hanging out? Would he yack up a hairball? Ann hung up the phone, and I promptly called her to get the scoop, and read her the riot act for taking the most interesting call of the day. She answered with her typically angelic voice that meant that she hadn't looked at the caller id to see that it was me, which always then turns into giggles when she realizes it's me.

Turned out the cat was safe when mom found the kid sitting in the litter box, and thought that he might've eaten cat POOP. This, for those who are less informed, is not a big deal, and you just need to watch the kiddo for any GI signs like vomiting and diarrhea, which rarely show up. But, jaded as we are, we got some leverage from this discussion, which meant that Ann had to go into a description of where the cat poop was smeared on the child's body (basically head to toe), what kind of cat it was, the consistency of the poo, etc. At this point, my trainee probably started reconsidering her new career, but we had fun with it for the rest of the day. Amongst all the vomiting that seems to be taking over our city, the labor patients who all were delivering yesterday, and the stray "I have to go on a job interview, does alcohol/marijuana/insert drug of choice show up on a urine test", you gotta admit, the possibility of a baby eating a cat seems fodder for some pretty interesting discussions.

Discussions which, of course, made me think of Mikey, the Life Cereal kid back in the day, whose cat disappeared shortly after his brothers agreed "give it to Mikey, he'll eat anything." Click to see the video.

Elizabeth Taylor Calling

The craziest thing happened at work tonight. I was sitting there, plugged into my phone like a good little triage nurse, waiting for the next crazy person to call, accompanied by my obedient little trainee, when my private line rang. Now, I use the word "private" line loosely, because it's recorded too, which means that my reviewer can hear me griping at the hubby and kids every time they call me, but oh well. Everyone needs a little drama in their life.

First thing I notice is that I don't recognize the area code on the caller id, so I go to the all-knowing Google, and find that it's in Kentucky, whilst I am picking up the line. I'm met with a female voice who informs me of a very personal problem that happened while, shall I say, she was doing Number Two. It sounded like my friend Steph, who is insane, but definitely doesn't live in Kentucky -- though Greenfield, Indiana it does have its similarities. Trying to figure out who it is, I asked "how did you get our number tonight" and was promptly told, "from your husband."

She gave me a few clues, but the definite Kentuckiness of her accent threw me, till she confessed that it was Mel, a friend who was a bridesmaid in our wedding. Mel, who I had misplaced the contact info for after her third wedding, back when Jill was a baby. She said she's on hubby #4 now - "just call me Elizabeth Taylor" she said -- so I think I will.

It was Mel who drug me out on that fateful night that I met Dan -- something that I can alternately thank her for, and curse her for, depending upon the day. Mel, who was working with me in ICU on the night that someone -- maybe her -- found the "kiss me" tattoo in a very intimate part of a comatose motorcycle accident victim's anatomy. OUCH! And speaking of accidents, Mel was the one who got a concussion in my car accident, the day before our wedding. She walked down the aisle with ammonia capsules tucked into her flowers. Yeah, there's a few memories there.

It was always Mel who Dan always worried about, because of his weird idea that all divorced women are nymphomaniacs -- who on the rare night that we both got off from work at the same time, went to dinner with me at the Kapok Tree Inn in Clearwater, and helped me devise the plan that probably embedded in Dan's head forever that divorced women will lead the innocent down the path of unrighteousness, if you turn your back on them for even a second.

Mel and I went out to dinner that night, then came back to Bradenton and drove out to Anna Maria Island. Sat in the bar at, I believe, The Sandbar restaurant -- might've been somewhere else -- and had one single strawberry daiquiri, while we sat and talked. For a long, long time. I don't remember what else we did, but I know that we got home around 11:30 or so, stone cold sober from a night of Cokes and yacking about work and all that rot. I got home to a note on the table saying "call me when you get in. I can't find my keys."

Now, the man was working nights at the time, but how does one get to work without car keys, when work is several miles away, and there is no bus? Now, Mama didn't raise no dumbie. I knew that he just wanted to know 1) what time I got in and 2) what shape I was in when I got there. I found his keys, of course, in the first place I looked. So, me being me, knowing Dan and his lack of subtlety, and with some help from Mel, we devised a plan. We sat and talked till about 3:30a.m., when I called Dan to announce that yes, I was home. Did my best drunken voice. "HONEY! You're drunk" he said. "What did you have to drink?" "Six Singapore Slings," said I, whilst Mel is stifling a chortle from the couch. Dan's response was nothing but an asthmatic wheeze, because he knew that one or two of these was well enough to knock my sorry butt into lala land.

Now remember, I had had only one strawberry daiquiri, almost 8 hours earlier. Nothing else but Coke after that.

Dan was appalled, and a wee bit unforgiving. He said "well, you're going to have to come pick me up at 7, when I get off, cause I got a ride here, but I don't have a ride home." I mumbled back that he had to find his own ride home, cause I was drunk, slammed the phone down, and died laughing with Mel. We trashed the apartment, leaving a lamp by the door askew, clothes lying on the floor in the living room, and generally just making a mess. Mel went home, and I went to bed. Woke up the next morning -- over twelve hours now since my single daiquiri the night before -- to Dan climbing into bed. I rolled over and gave him a big "Hi," with emphasis on the H. "Oh my God, Lisa," he said. "You smell like a distillery."

Apparently, a wild imagination negates any sign of morning breath.

It took several years for Mel and me to tell him the truth about that night, and to this day, I'm sure he still thinks that we were sleazing around, like divorced nymphomaniacs do. It still makes me laugh, just remembering how appalled he was at his floozy wife and her nympho friend, out for a night on the town. And so in memory of that wonderful night out with Elizabeth Taylor, I went looking for the bridesmaid's dress that Mel wore in our wedding, which seems to pop up at every thrift store I visit. Alas, tonight, it eludes me, so I found a reasonable facsimile on ebay, offered by Rainydaycloset. Ammonia capsules not included.