iGiveUp

Lately, I have been the unfortunate target of Well-Meaning People.

One of my students begged to help me after school every day for two weeks.  Once he got all of his late work turned in, I finally accepted his offer.  I needed to update a bunch of iPads, and his help was greatly appreciated.

You can see where this is going, right?

I’ll spare you the excruciating story.  And I will tell you that iPads with cracked screens work surprisingly well – until someone complains about getting glass on her fingertips every time she swipes.  Picky, picky.

Interestingly enough, the next incident also involved iTechnology.  In this second story, my daughter is the well-meaning person.  I’m not sure she was directing her well-meaning toward me or herself, but I guess that is not the point.  Yesterday afternoon, she suddenly felt the extreme urge to clean something out.  Instead of applying this new desire for minimalism to her closet or dresser drawers, she decided that she was going to clean out the Contacts on her iPod Touch.

“I got rid of all the people I don’t know,” she told me proudly.

It took a minute for me to recall that our devices are actually registered to the same account.  And that the reason she had people she didn’t know under her Contacts was because I had added them to my Contacts at some point.  And that the same Cloud that divvies out all of these names and numbers and addresses to all of my various pieces of technology just got a whole lot lighter when my daughter dumped all of the people who mean absolutely nothing to her, completely oblivious to the fact that they were there in the first place because they meant something to me.

And that. was. not. a. good. thing.

So, now, I can FaceTime whenever I like with the girl who sits next to her on the bus.

But I can’t call the doctor whose name I could never remember, which resulted in him being filed under “Stomach Guy.”

I hope the bus girl doesn’t charge for phone consultations about bloating and colonoscopies.

Advertisement

Wonderbutt Gets Ready for Halloween

What does it mean if you promise yourself to blog regularly to hone your writing skills, and then you skip the writing part of the process?  It means Wonderbutt kindly presented some blurry photos right when your week hit its busy peak…

Dimples gives Wonderbutt instructions on choosing decorations from our Halloween storage box.

 

Wonderbutt “chooses” an appropriate holiday adornment for the family room. Of course, he is planning for it to adorn his stomach…

 

Wonderbutt decides that the selection process is much easier if he gets in the box himself.

 

Then Dimples tried to put a Halloween headband on him, and that was the end of Wonderbutt pretending to be helpful.

 

 

 

 

 

But It’s Just the Right Size for Soaking My Feet

I had a choice between spending $50 on a pedicure or a crock pot this weekend.  Guess which one I chose?

If you know me at all, then you probably guessed the pedicure.

But you would be wrong.

I know.  I’m staring at my yucky feet and wondering how I could have possibly made such a ridiculous impulse purchase.

This all comes from being too helpful and having a birthday.

One of the teachers at school needed a bit of technological help, so I came to her aid.  She was beating herself up about her inability to pair her iPad with her computer, so I said, “Well, I’m a horrible cook.”

This gave her the idea of “rewarding” me with 2 slow-cooker recipes that supposedly take absolutely no skill.  And one of them even includes my favorite beverage – Diet Coke.

The problem is that the only slow-cooker we have is a tiny cup-sized one we bought for heating up some special dip for which I’ve long lost the recipe.

I mentioned this to my husband, the long-suffering Cap’n Firepants.  Apparently due to his lack of appropriate nutrients, he cannot  think clearly, and he made the ill-advised suggestion that, “Maybe I should buy you a crock pot for your birthday.”

I informed him that this would be a big mistake.  But I wasn’t sure the message got through.  Kind of like the year I told him 10,000 times that I thought it was dumb to have a T.V. with a built-in DVD player, and he proudly unveiled one for me on my birthday.

So, really, I bought the crock pot to thwart myself from getting thrown in jail for mariticide, resulting in our daughter being brought up by Wonderbutt.

And this is how I ended up with a crock pot sitting in a box on the dining room table and toes that could sharpen a pencil.

I need to stop being so helpful.

The Real Reason People Don’t Like to “Associate” with Me

You say, “Potato.”  I say, “Harriet Tubman.”

Because potatoes are from under the ground and Harriet Tubman conducted the Underground Railroad.

This is why people prefer not to be on my team when we play party games like Catch Phrase.  Supposedly, my word associations are a bit “out there.”  I like to call it, “creative thinking.”  Other people  have less charitable ways of putting it.

This also explains why a conversation between my mother-in-law, who has been having difficulty choosing words lately, and me usually ends up sounding like an exchange between a secretive teenager and Phoebe Buffay.

MILlie was trying to tell me about a friend of hers who visited this morning, and another mutual friend of theirs.  I think they went to college together but I’m not actually sure.

“She, you know, does things,” MILlie said.

“Things?” I asked.

She moved her hands back and forth together like she was weaving.

“Knitting?  Quilting?” I guessed.

“An artist,” my mother-in-law finally said after shaking her head at my guesses.

“Oh, okay, that’s interesting.”  I prepared to move on in the conversation, but “artist” was not specific enough for my mother-in-law.  She still had not gotten her message across.

“Rap,” she said.

And that’s where our conversation kind of went off the rails.

“Your friend was a rap artist?!!!” I asked.  I tried to picture an 84-year-old former rap artist.  Then I tried to figure out how old she would have been when the term “rap artist” was even coined.  Then I tried to picture a 60-year-old rapping on stage with Snoop Dogg.

MILlie shook her head, but didn’t seem offended by this suggestion.  It’s possible, of course, that my mother-in-law is not exactly familiar with the term, “rap artist.”

I tried to think of another job that would combine art with “rap” and moving your hands in and out.

“A professional gift wrapper!” I yelled, triumphantly.

“No.”  Now MILlie was beginning to look frustrated – probably with both of us at this point.

“Sushi chef?”

“No.”

After several more increasingly off-the-mark guesses, it turned out this talented friend played the accordion.

I never did figure out how that related to the word, “rap.”

But if you’re on my team some day, and we are playing Catch Phrase, and there are seconds to go before the beep, all you have to do is say, “accordion” and I will guess “rap artist”, and then you can leap up and say, “YES!!!!!”

And everyone will be too busy wondering how those two things could possibly go together while we nonchalantly hide the real catch-phrase and celebrate our victory with as much enthusiasm as Harriet Tubman probably felt any time she got the chance to eat a hot, buttery baked potato.

…and then there’s always the rapping potato
from: http://drawception.com/

Maybe Your Husband Just Needs a Good Plunge

I must admit when I started blogging that I never would have predicted the paths that would lead to my site…

Well, I might have predicted the “rubber room” one…

 

 

Working Out with Wonderbutt

You’re not supposed to play tug-of-war with your dog.  Don’t ask me why.  I heard someone say it once – probably the Dog Whisperer.  Or maybe it was a nun.  They tend to give frequent mandates on avoiding any type of fun.

Other than snoring and farting, tug-of-war is the only thing Wonderbutt loves to do for an extended period of time.  Since he needs to lose 1/3 of his body weight just to be considered “slightly rotund,” I feel like the least we can do is let him spend twenty minutes a day on his favorite form of exercise.

Lately, Wonderbutt has begun to confuse my exercise time with his exercise time.  Now, as soon as I am five minutes into doing Tae Bo, Wonderbutt wakes up from a heavy snore, and races into the bedroom, completely ready to exercise too.  His way of communicating that he is eager for action is to try to hump my leg as soon as I fling it out for a Tae Bo side-kick.  When I finally shake him off,  he looks momentarily confused, then leaps onto his rope toy and pitches it into my face just in case I have any doubts as to his intentions.  (Which I kind of do, since he was just trying to hump me.)

Wonderbutt is not a fetch dog.   He wants to be chased, and if you don’t feel like playing that game, then he wants nothing to do with you; he will forlornly drag his rope toy back to his bed, and put his head on his paws, sighing in disappointment at your laziness.  Or,  you can get down on the floor and start growling at him.  Then he is more than happy to prance over to you with his toy, dangling it in your face, leaping backwards every time you reach for the rope, and growling viciously.  So, by now, you’ve broken about 100 Dog Whisperer rules, including putting yourself on the same level as the dog, sticking your face in his, and encouraging him to growl at you.

But the dog is exercising.

For the most part.

The only part of Wonderbutt’s body that never gets fatigued is his jaw.  After about three minutes of tug-of-war, the rest of his body gives out.  Then, he clamps down on that rope for dear life while I drag him throughout the house, which is a bit rough on the carpeting, but works quite well on the concrete floors in the living room.  (I am seriously considering attaching Swiffer Dusters to his sides.)

After being dragged for a couple of minutes, Wonderbutt gets his second wind (after releasing four or five of his own), and leaps back to his feet to resume play.

I started to complain about Wonderbutt regularly interrupting my Tae Bo – until I realized that I couldn’t catch my breath the last time I played tug-of-war with him.

I thought I was doing him a favor, but wouldn’t it be funny if he thinks he’s the one helping me out?

Preparing for his Drag Technique – completely oblivious to the effects of carpet burn

If You Hear I Got Arrested for Stalking Martha Stewart, You’ll Know Why

We made the difficult decision this week to move my mother-in-law into a Memory Care unit.  None of us are happy about it.  But when someone insists on going to bed in a room that isn’t hers and starts storing her socks in the freezer, it’s pretty clear that independent living no longer suits her.

At least it’s clear to the supposed “experts.”  I’m not so sure.

The thing is, my mother-in-law discovered, several years ago, a curling iron that I had put in the freezer.  So, I feel like I’m one bed hop away from my own memory care incarceration and I certainly don’t have room to judge.  However, the place where she is living administered a quiz to my mother-in-law that apparently assesses one’s need for more assistance and it, surprisingly, did not include any questions about the proper place to store your socks or your hair appliances.

“What did they ask her?” I asked my husband.

“The date.  She didn’t know.”

Oh geez.  Half the time I don’t know the date either.  I have to ask my students or the lady at the dry cleaners when I’m writing a check at 4:00 in the afternoon.

“What city she lives in.  She knew the state, but not the city.”

Well, I do know that.  But I’ve lived here for 25 years (she’s only been here 2 years).  And if you ask my Kindergartners what city they live in, they will tell you anything from Canada to Paris.  I don’t see any of them getting stuck in a memory care unit.

“They asked her to fold a piece of paper a certain way and she did that perfectly.”

Oh. My. God.  I’ve watched videos on how to fold a fitted bed sheet 10000 times and I still can’t do it right.  And now they want me to do origami?

That’s 2 out of 3 questions I would have bombed.  So, basically, I would have scored the same on the quiz as my mother-in-law.

Please don’t tell these people I lost my wedding rings last week, then found them on the floor by my feet,  or that I punched the play button on our home answering machine this afternoon and did not recognize my own voice leaving  a message that I thought I was leaving on my husband’s cell phone voice mail until I replayed the stupid thing twice.

As long as I refuse to answer any questions and stay out of the freezer, I think I’m good for another couple of years.

But I’m going to learn how to fold a fitted bed sheet if it’s the last thing I do before my dementia diagnosis.  And I know exactly the person who can teach me…

The Etiquette of Social Tedia

“And don’t tell anyone I’m in the bathroom,” I told my ten year old daughter.  This was part of the litany of admonishments about things to not do while she is texting, Facetiming, or (god-forbid) actually answering the ancient phone sitting on our kitchen counter.

“Just tell them I’m busy,” I reminded her.  Even though everyone my age knows that’s a euphemism for “she’s in the bathroom,” I was determined to pass on that specific phrase since I had learned it the hard way when I answered the phone as a child and was a bit too honest about the whereabouts of my own mother.

Not that anyone she speaks to even cares what I am doing.

So, the phone rang yesterday. I was (shocker, I know) cooking, so Dimples ran to answer.

“Hello?”  Pause.  “Hello-o-o?” A bit more insistent this time.

Telemarketer, I thought.

“Speaking,” Dimples said, a bit forcefully.

Why would a telemarketer be calling her?  Or was Dimples just pretending to be me?

She listened for a moment.

Then she hung up.

“Um.  Did they ask for you?” I asked.

“No.”

“Okay.  Did they ask for me?”

“No.  They didn’t say anything.”

“Then, why did you say, ‘Speaking’?”

“Well, that’s what I always hear you say,” she said, shrugging.

After I stopped laughing, I explained that I only said that when someone asked for me by name – not as some kind of angry rebuke to the person on the other end of the phone for not bothering to respond when I answered.

“This is going on your blog, isn’t it?” she asked, as I continued to smile at the thought of her listening to my end of the conversation all of the years, and assuming I had to deal with stubborn silence every time I answered the phone.

“Only if you say it’s okay,” I grinned.

And she did.

SPEAKING!
from: http://aradialecrawe.wordpress.com

I Know EXACTLY How Miley Cyrus Feels

So, you know how you’re looking for your wedding rings in your dog’s poop pen, and you’re thinking, “Gosh, I hope I find them!”  But then you’re also thinking, “Gosh, I hope I don’t.”  Not only because of the grossness factor, but also because finding them in there means that you were dumb enough to set them down somewhere that your bulldog, Wonderbutt, would eat them, which means you are losing it even more than usual, and also because of the medical implications it might have for Wonderbutt after ingesting a solitaire cut diamond ring which could technically etch glass so probably did not slide through his intestines without causing some kind of damage that would require you to finance the yacht your veterinarian has had his eye on ever since you brought Wonderbutt in for his first checkup.

And then you think how you can blame your husband for the loss of such rings by saying, “Well, this wouldn’t have happened if you would hire a maid like I asked – or at least invest in a water softener.”  Because you wouldn’t have to take off your rings so often if you didn’t have to spend all of your time cleaning the toilet with Lime Away.  And then you remember that you’ve been meaning to Google Lime Away to see if it damages rings or just makes them look cleaner, too.

While in the midst of the Lime Away Google, you get somewhat sidetracked, and learn that Miley Cyrus recently suffered from a bad case of twerking, which, of course, compels you to learn what twerking is in case you need to add it to one of your Pathophobic Pinterest boards and then you wonder how you have gone this long without noticing that twerking is a thing, but it is not a disease or even a symptom of one.  And, speaking of being oblivious about stuff,  you wonder how long it would take your husband to notice you aren’t wearing the rings because it’s already been three days and he hasn’t said anything.  And you resolve to make this into a psychological experiment as well as a metaphor for your marriage.  But then you blurt it out during dinner that you can’t find them because you suck at keeping secrets and, besides, your husband is the Finder in the family – as long as the thing you are trying to find is not a place on a map.

And he gets worried, and you remind him of all of the other things you’ve lost that eventually turned up and even the things other people have lost that eventually turned up – like the wedding band that was wrapped around a carrot.  And that does not really comfort him for some reason.  Mostly because he has been trying to grow carrots in your backyard ever since you moved into this house, and the squirrels keep eating them.

And because your husband is not really full of sympathy, you seek comfort in typing your frustrations into a blog post on your computer, and you glance down at the floor when you can’t think of anythingelse2say.

And. You. See. Your. Rings.

And you pick them up and do the best twerking exhibition ever – with only Wonderbutt there to appreciate your rhythmic perfection.

And he doesn’t.

 

Now We Just Need to Save Up for the Water Feature

“So I can get a locker chandelier.”

That was my daughter’s response to, “Why do we need to go there?”

Which was my response to, “Okay, let’s go to the Container Store.”

Which was her response to, “Let’s take care of your school supply list today.”

My daughter, Dimples, is starting middle school.  I was only slightly reassured to see that the middle school supply list is shorter than the elementary one  (and, apparently, Trapper Keepers do not pose the same threat to 6th graders that looms over elementary school students).  The reason for the tempered relief was that I have already been notified by parents of older kids that the middle school supply list means diddly squat.  Dimples’ teachers will give her completely different demands as soon as she hits class, so I will most likely exceed last year’s national defense budget by the end of the first week of school.

I don’t expect any of her teachers will require a locker chandelier (fully equipped with a motion sensor), however.

I used my standard test to see how desperate Dimples was for this item, “You will have to spend your own money, then.”

“Okay,” she replied without hestitation.

So, I begrudgingly made the trek to the Container Store so I could watch my daughter spend her Life Savings on a light fixture for her locker.

Alas, to Dimples’ great consternation, there were no white ones left on the shelf.  According to the helpful salesperson, those always sell out right away.

This concerns me a bit, about the fate of humanity, that it is such a priority to purchase white locker chandeliers each summer.  But not as much as I am bothered by the next statement.

“Oh, look, I can get this rug for my locker, instead!”

The rug, which is plusher than my bath mat, and a lovely hot pink color, is apparently just the thing for the trendy locker floor.

I try to imagine the purpose of a rug in one’s locker.  Will her textbooks be doing yoga as they await their turn in class?  Does her P.E. uniform need a companion with which to exchange fungus and odors?  Is this the reason I did not get asked to the 6th grade dance – because I did not have a plush, pink rug in my locker?

And, even more importantly, will the next purchase be a tiny locker vacuum for the tiny locker rug?

It turned out that Dimples decided the rug did not fit with her vision for the interior design of her locker.  She settled for a moderately priced, hot pink magnetic organizer to dress the space up.

But her disappointment was palpable.

The next day, I was at Target by myself, and I meandered over to the school supply section.  Buried under some packs of college-ruled looseleaf, I found one white locker chandelier.  Of course.  And, it was less than half the price of the one Dimples had planned to obtain.

Should I surprise her with the decor she coveted?  Or should I remain loyal to the voice in my head that declares the ridiculous impracticality of  installing a motion-detecting light fixture in a space only slightly larger than my glove compartment, which she will visit for approximately 5 minutes each day?

I think you know the decision I made.

You know you want one.