Update: Let's see ... what else ...
Well, there's still no word from BCBS about the hypnotherapy, but we're having a cold spell, so the wasps are laying low. I did hear back from Northwest Airlines about the breast pump that they somehow managed to mangle beyond recognition. My last letter began, "Hello again. Have you ever met someone willing to write 147 letters about a broken breast pump? Well here I am, it's nice to meet you and no I’m not weaning my child for quite a while." OK, so I didn’t really write that. The letter was very professional and thanks to my lawyer friends it used phrases such as "damage to personal property" and "tampered with by agents and/or representatives of Northwest Airlines." I figure if a breast pump can survive what mine went through last Christmas, then it should be able to take a measly little trip from Nashville, TN to Jackson, MS without being destroyed. In an attempt to “pump and dump” after a little too much eggnog, I plugged the pump into the end of our Christmas tree lights and nearly blew out the power in a seven-county radius. It caused more damage than the ice storm. But I do think that the Nashville Electric Service employees could've been a little more understanding about having to come out on Christmas Eve to restore our power. You just can't get good help these days.
On a more positive note, I would like to take back some of my disparaging words about the hairy visitor that I so openly maligned in one of my previous entries. Come to find out, his mother was a Vegas Show Girl who once slept with Elvis. So I'm going to be a good little southern belle and just say, "Bless his heart, that explains it."
Let’s see … what else …
Oh, another favorite topic: my parents. We just returned from another harrowing trip down to their house which ended with my dad asking if we were going to “Come back in a couple weeks for the Pace family reunion at Turkey Creek” and B saying, “Yeah, and pigs will fly out of my ass.” The only good thing about the Pace Family Reunion is the homemade lemonade, fried chicken, and getting to know long lost cousins with names like “Kermit” and “Dorothy Jean.” My dad is the founder, organizer, and lemon squeezer of the annual get-together and I know it hurts his feelings, but there are some events that just don’t justify a potential nervous breakdown on my part. Two years ago my uncle started violently clanging a plastic gravy dipper against a garbage can lid because he thought an African American family was about to “set up camp in our pavilion.” No matter that we didn’t need 45 picnic tables and a stage, he was determined that what we paid for was ours until 4:30 p.m. and that no “confounded blacks were gonna move in on our territory.”
Besides the family reunion though, my dad is just hard to deal with these days. If he’s not trying to start conversations with B about midgets and how they’re comical, then he’s wanting me to show him how to create picture slideshow screensavers on his computer or fix his printer (which has apparently put its foot down and now refuses to print anything related to Ole Miss football recruiting). I'm afraid to turn my back on him when he's holding The Goose because (a) he's not steady on his feet and (b) he does ridiculous things like let him "pet" Clementine the Cat (who promptly reached out and scratched the child, provoking a crying fit). My mom then blamed the cat, who I believe was innocent in the whole matter. Of course I didn’t want the baby to get scratched, but I do see the cat’s point on this one … she was a little bitter about this creature that had invaded her domain and taken everyone’s attention away from her. Then the creature awakened her from a nap by loudly babbling, “BABABABABABA” and pulled her tail as directed by my father, who thought the whole scene was hysterical.
Meanwhile, my mom was on the phone attending to her wifely duties, which apparently include keeping up with who is in the hospital and what procedures they have had done to them and finding out whose “body is out at the funeral home.” I don’t see how my parents have any friends left since every time we’re there, someone has died or is in the hospital. And don’t even get her started about the search for a new preacher since the old people in the church “ran that other one off.” She does all of this on top of working full time, doing EVERYTHING for my dad, and taking care of her 89-year-old father, my Pappaw … a person who my dad would obviously just rather die and quit embarrassing the family with his poor driving habits (“Just because he’s old don’t mean he cain’t stop at the dadblame stop sign.”) And that doesn’t win any points with me, because Pappaw is one of the loves of my life. My son is named after him. I choose to ignore it when Pappaw says, “She sure is a perty baby and I don’t never hear her crying,” rather than repeat ad infinitum that the child is male.
This is a man who has spent 89 years EATING Vicks Vap-o-Rub whenever he has a cold. When he has to be hospitalized for routine tests (he has leukemia) he always asks the nurses if they want to go home with him. He keeps his house heated to approximately 103 degrees throughout the year, and when I was in 2nd grade he let me watch the forbidden shows, “As the World Turns” and “Golden Girls” everyday after school while chowing down on cheese balls and coke (and keeping an ice pack under my butt to prevent heat exhaustion). And the best part of all is that Pappaw thinks that my dad is stealing money from his deep freeze to pay for his shiny new red pickup truck. He thinks my uncle is stealing his butter beans out of there, but he saved the role of money-thief for my dad. Classic.
Let’s see … what else …
I have again started working for the Center for Talented Youth through Johns Hopkins University. This is a distance education program for “gifted” kids who ace the SAT before 5th grade. My job is to teach them grammar and writing, which involves answering their precocious questions such as, “Is ‘air’ a concrete or abstract noun? It’s everywhere, and you can feel it when the wind blows, but you can’t draw a picture of it.” I also have to deal with their obsessive, overbearing parents who are all Ps, VPs, chief anesthesiologists, etc. and live either in the Northeast or California. These people are scary, let me tell you. But the job is great for me since I can work while simultaneously picking small objects out of the baby’s mouth.
I wish I had something funny to leave you with that is actually related to the topic of this blog, but I’m proud to say that I’ve been doing better in the HE department and so there are no stories to be told. I finally confessed to Husband about this little project. I believe I said something like, “I have a blog,” and his response was, “Are you going to be OK?” He thought it was some combination of a “blockage” and a “clog.” After he discovered that I’m fit as a fiddle (and in no danger of dying and leaving him alone to take care of the Tiddy Rat), the idea of me airing our dirty laundry on the Internet didn’t seem that bad, and he rolled over and went to sleep, which is what I need to do instead of going on and on about my boring life. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
On a more positive note, I would like to take back some of my disparaging words about the hairy visitor that I so openly maligned in one of my previous entries. Come to find out, his mother was a Vegas Show Girl who once slept with Elvis. So I'm going to be a good little southern belle and just say, "Bless his heart, that explains it."
Let’s see … what else …
Oh, another favorite topic: my parents. We just returned from another harrowing trip down to their house which ended with my dad asking if we were going to “Come back in a couple weeks for the Pace family reunion at Turkey Creek” and B saying, “Yeah, and pigs will fly out of my ass.” The only good thing about the Pace Family Reunion is the homemade lemonade, fried chicken, and getting to know long lost cousins with names like “Kermit” and “Dorothy Jean.” My dad is the founder, organizer, and lemon squeezer of the annual get-together and I know it hurts his feelings, but there are some events that just don’t justify a potential nervous breakdown on my part. Two years ago my uncle started violently clanging a plastic gravy dipper against a garbage can lid because he thought an African American family was about to “set up camp in our pavilion.” No matter that we didn’t need 45 picnic tables and a stage, he was determined that what we paid for was ours until 4:30 p.m. and that no “confounded blacks were gonna move in on our territory.”
Besides the family reunion though, my dad is just hard to deal with these days. If he’s not trying to start conversations with B about midgets and how they’re comical, then he’s wanting me to show him how to create picture slideshow screensavers on his computer or fix his printer (which has apparently put its foot down and now refuses to print anything related to Ole Miss football recruiting). I'm afraid to turn my back on him when he's holding The Goose because (a) he's not steady on his feet and (b) he does ridiculous things like let him "pet" Clementine the Cat (who promptly reached out and scratched the child, provoking a crying fit). My mom then blamed the cat, who I believe was innocent in the whole matter. Of course I didn’t want the baby to get scratched, but I do see the cat’s point on this one … she was a little bitter about this creature that had invaded her domain and taken everyone’s attention away from her. Then the creature awakened her from a nap by loudly babbling, “BABABABABABA” and pulled her tail as directed by my father, who thought the whole scene was hysterical.
Meanwhile, my mom was on the phone attending to her wifely duties, which apparently include keeping up with who is in the hospital and what procedures they have had done to them and finding out whose “body is out at the funeral home.” I don’t see how my parents have any friends left since every time we’re there, someone has died or is in the hospital. And don’t even get her started about the search for a new preacher since the old people in the church “ran that other one off.” She does all of this on top of working full time, doing EVERYTHING for my dad, and taking care of her 89-year-old father, my Pappaw … a person who my dad would obviously just rather die and quit embarrassing the family with his poor driving habits (“Just because he’s old don’t mean he cain’t stop at the dadblame stop sign.”) And that doesn’t win any points with me, because Pappaw is one of the loves of my life. My son is named after him. I choose to ignore it when Pappaw says, “She sure is a perty baby and I don’t never hear her crying,” rather than repeat ad infinitum that the child is male.
This is a man who has spent 89 years EATING Vicks Vap-o-Rub whenever he has a cold. When he has to be hospitalized for routine tests (he has leukemia) he always asks the nurses if they want to go home with him. He keeps his house heated to approximately 103 degrees throughout the year, and when I was in 2nd grade he let me watch the forbidden shows, “As the World Turns” and “Golden Girls” everyday after school while chowing down on cheese balls and coke (and keeping an ice pack under my butt to prevent heat exhaustion). And the best part of all is that Pappaw thinks that my dad is stealing money from his deep freeze to pay for his shiny new red pickup truck. He thinks my uncle is stealing his butter beans out of there, but he saved the role of money-thief for my dad. Classic.
Let’s see … what else …
I have again started working for the Center for Talented Youth through Johns Hopkins University. This is a distance education program for “gifted” kids who ace the SAT before 5th grade. My job is to teach them grammar and writing, which involves answering their precocious questions such as, “Is ‘air’ a concrete or abstract noun? It’s everywhere, and you can feel it when the wind blows, but you can’t draw a picture of it.” I also have to deal with their obsessive, overbearing parents who are all Ps, VPs, chief anesthesiologists, etc. and live either in the Northeast or California. These people are scary, let me tell you. But the job is great for me since I can work while simultaneously picking small objects out of the baby’s mouth.
I wish I had something funny to leave you with that is actually related to the topic of this blog, but I’m proud to say that I’ve been doing better in the HE department and so there are no stories to be told. I finally confessed to Husband about this little project. I believe I said something like, “I have a blog,” and his response was, “Are you going to be OK?” He thought it was some combination of a “blockage” and a “clog.” After he discovered that I’m fit as a fiddle (and in no danger of dying and leaving him alone to take care of the Tiddy Rat), the idea of me airing our dirty laundry on the Internet didn’t seem that bad, and he rolled over and went to sleep, which is what I need to do instead of going on and on about my boring life. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
posted by Kimpossible @ 4/24/2005 08:24:00 PM
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