RIP D A D

I've been thinking about resurrecting the old Cud for a while now but finally everything came to a head.

My dad died January 9, 2019.

A couple of years ago he slipped stepping off the curb at a restaurant and fell and broke his hip. At least everybody said he broke his hip. It was really his femur, but way up his leg where it might as well be his hip. After that he alternated periods at home with periods in a nursing home.

It didn't help that during his first stay in a nursing home, when he was just about well enough to go home, he ended up spending a short stay in the hospital. Where the nurses tried to weigh him in the middle of the night and ended up dropping him, breaking his leg again just a little farther down from where the femur broke the first time.

Oops.

I think after that he felt like he was safer if he just stayed in his wheelchair and didn't try walking. His balance wasn't very good, I think he broke his glasses so his vision wasn't very good, and he was having problems with his legs. His lower legs and feet swelled up like water balloons due to a combination of sitting in his wheelchair all day and a side effect of congestive heart failure. Plus I think he had nerve problems in his legs and feet that affected his ability to tell if he was stable or tipping over so why take a chance? Just stay in his wheelchair and scoot around the house and only take a risk standing up when he had to go to the bathroom.

It didn't help that Mom has medical problems of her own. A couple of years ago she started having back pain. She went to several doctors looking for relief. Finally a doctor found out what was causing her back pain.

Breast cancer.

10 or 20 years ago she had breast cancer and ended up getting a mastectomy. As far as I can remember she had some form of chemo but not radiation, but I could be wrong. They warned her that it could come back.

Metastatic breast cancer.

Nobody mentioned that one of the prime spots for breast cancer to metastasize is your back. I mean, you would think the other breast would be the logical spot, or maybe up in your armpit.

Not your back.

But yeah, my mom has titty cancer in her back.

Top that internet.

Considering both my mom and grandmother had breast cancer my sister and I have been checking up on the twins on a regular basis. I have to admit, I haven't been as regular with my breast exams as I should be. It's just nice to pretend it won't ever happen to me.

But of course it could.

Luckily, both of us have been cancer free so far, but it's always there in the back of my mind.

Maybe.

Maybe next time I get checked the doctor will call and tell me I have to come in. She has something to tell me. Something she doesn't want to tell me over the phone.

Or maybe my sister will call me.

I honestly don't know which would be worse.

The Man saw something about breast exams on the news one night. It showed the basics of how they smash your boobs in a big x-ray machine. He said if anybody every did that to his junk he'd punch them right in the face.

Maybe after he finished rolling around on the ground crying like a little baby.

Anyway, my dad was a pretty big man, and my mom is a short little gnome of a lady, so even if her back was in perfect shape she couldn't lift him up if he needed help getting out of his chair, or heaven forbid fell again. She stressed about him day and night. Afraid he'd fall down when she was home alone with him. Afraid to go to the store or the doctor and leave him alone. Afraid he'd get up while she was sleeping and fall down and she wouldn't know anything about it until she woke up.

Surprise!

She even got him one of those devices that sets off an alarm if you fall, but she worried about him forgetting to put it on, or the battery dying, or a thousand other things going wrong.

A couple of weeks ago he ended up going back to the nursing home because he was really weak and had a hard time getting out of his chair. He didn't seem to mind being there very much. He'd been there several times so it wasn't exactly a shock to his system. I'm sure he didn't like being there, but he accepted the fact that he was there and if he wanted to go back home he had to get with the program. They were giving him physical therapy and he was showing intermittent progress, between days when he just didn't have the energy to do anything but lay in bed or sit in his chair and nap or watch TV.

But then they started having trouble keeping his oxygen level up, so Tuesday he ended up going back to the hospital. My nephew Dan called to let us know what was up. Nothing big, same old same old.

It seemed like just another trip to the hospital.

Where they decided he had pneumonia. And sepsis. And his oxygen was too low and his carbon dioxide was too high.

Other than that everything was fine.

Mom and Dan left the hospital and barely got back home when the hospital called. Dad was unresponsive and having trouble breathing. Did Mom want them to put him on a ventilator? If they didn't he might not make it through the night, but if they did he might not be able to get off it. Trapped in the hospital, hooked up to a bunch of machines.

No.

Nobody wanted that. Not me, not Mom, definitely not Dad.

So we all rushed back to the hospital. By the time we got there he had stabilized. Mom said when she got there he was awake and recognized her, but by the time I got there he was out of it. 

A Helpful Little Lie

I'm generally a pretty nice person. I wait patiently in lines, I don't gobble up the last cookie (usually), and I even say thank you to the people working the drive-thru at Burger King (delicious fries). I also try to be as honest as I need to be.

Speaking of which...the phone rang a couple days ago. It was a telemarketer. I don't mind talking with telemarketers. After all, I am one. So I let him yap away at me for a while. Let him talk with somebody that isn't screaming and cussing, or just being generally hateful. I was going over in my head a polite way of letting him know whatever he was selling I wasn't buying when he told me what he was selling.

Life insurance.

Then he asked me how old I was. That's when I figured out how to get rid of him.

'I'm 71,' I said.

Suddenly he wasn't interested in talking with my any more. Who wants to sell life insurance to someone with one foot in the grave? In seconds he'd thanked me and hung up.

Mission accomplished.

Drip, Drip

I like to take a lazy few minutes just lying in bed when I wake up in the morning.  This particular morning, I was mulling over the day ahead when I became conscious of a faint but ominous sound--"Drip! (pause)  Drip!  (pause) Drip!"

 OMG!  Where was this drip coming from?  What was leaking?  A pipe?  A faucet?  The water heater?  Visions of plumbers and their bills filled my head. 

Oddly, the faint sound seemed to be coming from outside, through a window.  But how could this be?  Panic set in. Something big time. The water main!  The sewer line!

I got up to investigate.  Of course, once I did, the sound receded, drowned out by the cat at the back door meowing to be let in.  But when I opened that door, there the sound was again, even louder.  But hosanna!  NOT "Drip!" but something entirely different--"Yip! (pause) Yip!  (pause) Yip!"  It was the neighbor's little dog barking wildly at something--a squirrel, a sparrow, a leaf--over in their backyard on Walnut Street.  Jasper, the tiny Shih Tsu, known far and wide in the neighborhood as "that little shit."  I could have kissed his ugly little face.  No more leak!  No more plumber's bills!  It was JUST JASPER!

May all my worries turn out like this.  Not a drip.  Just a yip.

Cursed

I ordered two items online on Black Friday. A TV antenna and a set of sheets. Finally got the antenna yesterday but I'm still waiting for the sheets.

Let me tell you the whole sad story.

The antenna went on a grand tour. It started out in Tracy, CA. It jumped all the way across the country to Ny, NY, then came back to Sparks, NV. After that it hopped over Salt Lake City, UT then spent a day in Commerce City, CO. Finally it made it to Lenexa, KS, just a hop skip and a jump from it's destination. Got a little closer when it got to Earth City, MO. I could practically see the box when it got to Bowling Green, MO but then they sent it back to Earth City. We finally picked it up at the post office 11 days after we ordered it.

The sheets took longer to get started on their journey. They didn't leave the warehouse in Bound Brook, NJ until 7 days after I ordered them, then they spent a couple days in Secaucus, NJ. Finally, on Monday they hit Hodgkins, IL. 'Getting close,' I thought.

But no.

Now they're in Elm Grove, WI and the tracking page says 'Possible delay in delivery due to arrival at incorrect carrier facility.'

Gee, ya think?

Good God No

I was at the store this afternoon and saw the most repulsive sounding snack. Chocolate covered potato chips.

With almond sprinkles.

At first I thought it was a bag of chocolate cookies. Maybe some kind of brownie cookie. "Ooh, those look pretty good," I thought. Then I picked the bag up and got a good look at what it said was inside.

What kind of evil monster thinks up things like that? I'm willing to admit some things that I think sound repulsive other people might find appetizing. Ketchup on eggs. Sauerkraut on a hotdog.

On the other hand, I have to draw the line at chocolate covered potato chips. That is just wrong and should not exist.

Neither Holly Nor Jolly

This morning when the alarm went off I thought the song sounding familiar, but I knew it couldn't be what it sounded like.

It couldn't be a Christmas song.

Not a week before Thanksgiving.

When the alarm went off it was just the first couple of musical bars, that's why I wasn't sure, but then BAM! Next thing I know the radio's belting out 'Have a holly, jolly Christmas.'

I know some radio stations wouldn't have a problem playing Christmas songs so early, but this was a rock station.

Not exactly Santa material.

Come on now people. Give me a little time to digest the turkey before you stuff a candy cane down my throat.

And you know the worst part? All day I had that song stuck in my head. I turned the radio off as fast as I could, and I can only remember a couple of lines of that old song, so basically all day it was just 'Have a holly, jolly Christmas' over and over.

It put me in a mood, all right, and it ain't festive.

It's All In The Wrist

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

You come home, your dog's overjoyed to see you. She runs, jumps up on you, trying to give you as much doggie loving as possible without physically splitting in two. You pet her, tell her what a Good Girl she is, and go on about your day.

Then you do something...pick up a cell phone, take a drink...and smell something horrible. 'Oh, my God, what is that?" you think, and then realized the stench in question is coming from your hand. That's when it hits you.

The dog.

You petted the dog, and now your hand smells 'like a dead man's ass' as The Man says.

It must be nice to be able to find something that smells so amazing you want to roll all over it so later on you could sniff your shoulder or paw or whatever and smell it all over again.

It's just a shame that what they think smells so amazing really smells like a dead man's ass.

I would roll in chocolate chip cookies or drier sheets, not unidentified biological waste.

But I have a technique to deal with my dog's irrational desire to roll in stanky stains.

It's all in the wrist. If you watch your dog you can watch him or her sniff everything that catches it's attention. If you watch closely enough you can tell when mild interest turns into "Oh, my God, I have to roll in this!" If you time it just right, when the dog starts to fall over and roll in whatever it is, you can give the leash a little pull.

I'm not saying yank the dog off it's feet, just pull enough so the dog falls a foot or so away from whatever stinky thing it wants to enjoy smelling later.

Time it just right, and pull it just right, and I can let Leeloo roll to her heart's content and not be anywhere near the actual source of the stink. Usually it's Leeloo, not Snoopy, wanting to roll around like she's having a seizure so she can smell something again later on. She squirms around, kicking her back feet like a can-can dancer on crack. You can tell she's having a blast, loving every minute of it.

What she doesn't realize is later on when she wants to relive that stinky spot next to the bush on the corner all that stink is still down next to that bush, not smeared into her fur. I can just see her, sniffing her shoulder and wondering what went wrong. "Where is that adorable scent?"

That's just the cost you have to pay for being a Good Girl.

Not Exactly Johnny Appleseed

TRIGGER WARNING: If you are one of the 50% of the population equipped with a penis, you should probably stop reading right now. Trust me.

Okay, now that they're gone here goes.

When I cleaned out the bathroom closet an assortment of hand lotions wasn't the only thing I uncovered. I also found boxes and boxes of tampons. Most of them were almost empty, so it's not like I found thousands of tampons. Once I consolidated them it turned out to only be three boxes full.

The thing is, I didn't know what to do with them.

I mean, yeah, I know what to do with them, I just don't need to do that any more.

Thank God.

I don't know how many women root for menopause, but I did. I never understood the fixation with youth. Why is it better to be 20 than 40? What is wrong with being 50? Or 60? Why should I want to look like I'm waiting for somebody to ask me to prom until I die quietly surrounded by cats and empty butter tubs containing my collection of hair balls that look like celebrities?

So I had to figure out what to do with 3 boxes of mix-matched tampons. I didn't want to bug my family and friends about, shall we say, their personal business, and I didn't want to go door-to-door asking my neighbors if they're on the rag, to be a little more blunt.

With Halloween coming up I thought about covering them with spooky stickers and sneaking them out with the candy, but The Man said no. Something about holding his head up at the grocery store and the gas station. I mean, it's not like I would be passing out tooth brushes and travel sized toothpaste.

And those kids would be so hyped up on sugar they'd never remember where the tampons came from.

So, like the good, obedient wife I am, I came up with a Plan B.

I remembered how sweet it was when somebody busted into the tampon dispenser at work and the company where I worked at the time was too cheap to buy a new one. You could just reach in and grab whatever you needed whenever you needed it.

At least until the machine ran out.

So that's what I did.

No, I didn't break into the tampon dispenser and stuff mine inside it. As tempting as that idea was. What I did was bring a box in every week and leave it on top of the machine for any unfortunate employee that still experiences the Curse of Eve or whatever those religious nut-jobs call it. When the first one ran out I brought in the next one, and now they're all gone.

Of course, there were also some pads in with all the tampons, but I kept them. I read somewhere that they're good to keep in emergency kits. After all, their entire purpose in life is soaking up blood. Kind of a handy item to have in an emergency kit.

Plus, one of the exciting side-effects of menopause is enjoying a little unexpected tinkle. It's not like I pee my pants every time I turn around. I'm not quite ready for Depends yet, but sometimes I do get a little surprise if I sneeze or cough. It's nice to have some pads around in case I have the flu and know a coughing fit is on it's way.

The Little Engine That Could

I saw a train on the way home from work tonight. Usually that wouldn't be blog-worthy, but this one was different. It was the shortest train ever. Just an engine, one boxcar, and an old passenger car. All it was missing was a caboose. I don't think they even make cabooses (cabeese?) anymore.

When I say old I don't mean black and white Humphrey Bogart movie old. It wasn't something a robber baron would have ridden in to go swindle some homesteader or gold miner. It was more like something from the 60s, all dull grey aluminum and absolutely no style.

I have to admit, the passenger car was old but it wasn't beat up and it was clean. Not covered with graffiti like so many other railroad cars. Of course, some graffiti is pretty artistic and would have improved the looks of the car. Give it a little personality.

Cookie 911

As many of you here at the Cud know, there is this thing called chocolate.

A very delicious thing.

Especially when chopped up into little pieces, lets call them chips, and stuffed into cookies.

I heard the Man rattling around some pans and things in the kitchen the other night. I knew chocolate chip cookies were on the way, so I joined him to see if he needed any help.

He did.

Just in case you don't know, you make chocolate chip cookies by mixing together flour, salt, and baking soda in a bowl. Then mixing butter, sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, and eggs in a different bowl. After that you add the flour to the delicious, buttery, sugary batter and then mix in the chocolate chips.

So imagine my surprise when I walked in the kitchen and saw him dumping the sugar in the same bowl as the flour. I asked him what he was doing. I mean, maybe he wasn't making the cookies. Maybe he was making something else.

No, he was making the chocolate chip cookies.

He had the bag of chocolate chips on the counter right in front of him. He read the ingredient list, but didn't think reading the instructions was that important. Surely you make chocolate chip cookies just like you make a cake. Mix all the dry stuff together, then add the milk or eggs or whatever, dump it in a pan and cook it.

I took over production. Turns out you can make chocolate chip cookies just like you make a cake. At least sort of. I mixed in the butter until it was all finely crumbled, then mixed in the eggs and vanilla. It wasn't easy and seemed to take forever to finish mixing together, but eventually it turned into cookie dough.

But the story doesn't end there. We like to make big batches of food so we have some to save for later. I started mixing up a second batch of cookies to freeze when the Man asked me what I was doing. Our little scoop measuring cups are made of old blue plastic. On the handles there used to be labels- 1 cup, half cup, third cup, and quarter cup, but they're so old most of the labels have worn off. The Man asked me why I wasn't using the three quarter cup measuring cup when I was measuring the sugar.

I told him because there was no such thing as a three quarter cup measuring cup. He thought the half cup was three quarters. That's the one he used to measure 'three quarters' of a cup of sugar and brown sugar, so the first batch was missing a lot of sugar. Not too much, mind you. They were still tasty. It might actually have been an improvement. They're not like eating a mouthful of sugar.

There was a similar mix-up with the flour and the measuring cups, but instead of too little flour there was too much flour. They were extra puffy. The Man called them chocolate chip biscuits.

The Eyes Have It

The lady that sits next to me at work is being held hostage. That's the only thing that makes sense. When she talks to me her eyes blink like crazy. Like she's a malfunctioning robot at Disneyland.

Or a hostage trying to spell out an escape plan in Morse code.

It's very distracting.

Fibber McGee's Bathroom Closet

Once upon a time I decided it was time to clean out the bathroom closet. There were four shelves overflowing with tubs full of cough medicine, sample bottles of who knows what, various ointments and lotions, all mixed together so you could never find whatever you were looking for, plus hair driers, curling irons, and straighteners, soap dispensers and air freshener dispensers, wrist braces, knee braces, etc., all held in place by an assortment of washcloths and towels stuffed strategically here and there.

One day I just had enough and attacked that closet like a Marine at Iwo Jima. It looked like the closet exploded. Lotions and potions and notions were all over the floor, the sink, the toilet, the edge of the tub. I separated things into His, Mine, Colds & Flu, 1st Aid, and General Bathroom Items. I'm sure you wouldn't be surprised to learn I ended up with a trash bag full of outdated medicine, random curlers, dried up fingernail polish, and other assorted bathroom crap. Then there was the bag of hair dye, curling irons, manicure sets, etc. on it's way to a re-sale shop. I put the neatly organized tubs back on the shelves, arranged the newly sorted and re-folded the towels and washcloths next to them, and even had enough room to store the food dehydrator, pressure cooker, crock pots, and other little-used kitchen gadgets in there, too.

I'm just awesome like that.

One of the unexpected discoveries was an assortment of lotions. All different brands, scents, and sizes. Little tiny sample sizes. Perfumed lotions that must have come with gift-boxed Christmas presents. Medicated lotion, organic lotion, herbal lotion, baby lotion. Since I'm not a big lotion user I'm not sure where it all came from. Well, I have a pretty good idea where the smelly perfume-y lotions came from, but since I don't remember ever going to Bath & Body Works I'm not sure how I ended up with 3 full-sized tubes of their hand lotion. 2 of them are even the exact same scent.

I don't think Goodwill accepts donations of half-used hand lotions, so I had 2 choices: actually use them or just toss them directly in the trash. I decided what the hell. I have them, I might as well use them. In order to get rid of them as fast as possible I started with the tiny samplers. An ounce and a half of Herbal Papaya-Orange Blossom lotion was the first to go. Then there was one with Tea Tree Oil that was like rubbing Absorbine Jr. on my hands. I'm not sure how many I've used up so far, 4 or 5. I'm on a medium sized bottle of peach scented lotion right now. At the rate I'm using them I'll probably still have a couple tubes this time next year.

Maybe even the year after that.

Or the year after that.