And on TOP of THAT!

Yesterday, before the big hail-the-size-of-human-heads tragedy I get a call at work. From the doctor's office that I was supposed to be going to at 3:15. Seems the guy is a COWARD. The receptionist girl says "um...we need to reschedule you to see the nurse practioner because the doctor doesn't deal with menopause issues".

A. WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE DOESN'T DEAL WITH MENOPAUSE ISSUES? IF I HAVE TO SO DOES HE!!! So does everyone for that matter, it seems!

and

2. I don't LIKE the nurse practitioner, she's ICKY.

I bitched about it for a few minutes and she cheerfully said, "so would you like to reschedule for Tuesday then?"

"NO!"

So I called my gynecologist. The last time I went to see him, he decided to take parts out of my body that I was really sort of attached to. I'm not all that thrilled about seeing him again. But if I can get some DRUGS to combat the CRABBINESS, I guess it will be worth it...for everyone involved.

ARGH!

Last night I was emailing a friend and glanced outside and thought "Huh. Dark clouds...sort of green dark clouds.". And I went back to my emailing. For some reason, the green-ness of the clouds didn't really register with me.

Then it started to rain a little and it was sort of thundery and cozy.

And then it started hailing Volkswagons. Actually the hail was golf ball size. It completely TRASHED my garden. It never dawned on me to run outside and save the delicate blue glass gazing ball...but I did send Joe out to save my poor little unplanted baby tomato plant and he slipped on the patio and wrenched his knee..of course the bad knee...and now is parked in the recliner, full of narcotics with a big swollen knee and an equally big dumb smile on his face when the Norco has kicked in. We had no damage to the house, thank goodness. The garden however was a different story....and of course Joe's knee. Who knew hail could cause knee damage?

Lilac-y? Lilacky?

Big Idea #7864

Okay, okay...listen to this....so I'm broke, right? I've been trying to come up with BRILLIANT (insert trumpet fanfare here) ideas to make money. I'm fairly talented artistically, but I'm either A. SLOW B. UNINSPIRED C. BORED. (Are C and B the same?). I used to make polymer beads and sell them on Ebay. They were pretty popular, but you have to make a lot of teeny tiny bears and flowers before you really make any money. The last thing I want to do at the end of a day of brain and back surgery discussions is to come home and make teeny tiny bear eyes.

I also tried colored pencil portraits of children. Never actually sold one...because I could never get past doing my own kids. They take FOREVER to complete and while I'm sort of good at it, they'd be moving my stuff out to the curb while I sharpened pencils and said "WAIT, I think I can finish this and sell it so I can make the house payment!"

Recently, I went and photographed a baseball game for a friend of mine. It was his son's first T-ball game and so I showed up and just took pictures constantly during the game. They turned out pretty good...I have a BEASTY camera (meaning...it's WONDERFUL). I wonder if people would pay...like money....to have events photographed. Not FANCY stuff...like a wedding, but birthday's and ball games and school things. Then parents could actually WATCH the event rather than try to figure out how to get the lens cap off the camera or shoot glares at each other because SOMEONE didn't BRING the camera.

I've always appreciated what I think are good pictures. I would be willing to pay me. Not a lot mind you...but if I spend an hour at a base ball game and each parent pays me 10 dollars to photograph their kid, action shots, stills, etc. and then I put them on a website and charge them PER PICTURE...are you following me? I already have the equipment and a little talent...maybe.

So I thought I'd put together some sort of brochure. I never have the self confidence to actually do this stuff because I'm so sure someone will say "OH THAT'S JUST DUMB". So feel free to make a comment if you want to let me know what you think. Don't be mean or I'll just moderate your comment to that comment trash bin in cyber space.

Maybe I'm back to making little teeny bear eyes.

I think I scared someone.

I called my family physician's office today. I thought that the past weekend had been hormonally alarming enough that perhaps I should seek "better living through chemistry" and get myself on some replacement therapy. I also thought this might be a good idea because I offered to open the mail today at work and they were a little nervous about letting me use the letter opener.

Usually when you call my primary's office they say something like..."mmmm...welll....you could come in Monday at 11:02 in June of 2011...but we'll be working you in so be prepared to wait".

Today I said "Hey...this is Chris... I'm growing hair in places I shouldn't and I want to strangle everyone I see and I think I need some Premarin...do I need to see the doctor or can you just call me some in?"

Dead air. "Actually...I think you better come and see the doctor"

"You know I'm kidding about the strangling people"

"Let me see what I have....really about the hair though?"

"Well...just on my chest...but I really don't want to strangle people. Maybe just kill them"

(Insert weak laugh here) "Ummmmm...."

"No, actually I'm just kidding..except about the hair...and I'm pretty moody...and no one will let me have sharp objects since the weekend"

"okay...I think..."

"NO REALLY...I'm just kidding. Except about the hair part....what do you have available...two, three weeks out?"

"How about this Friday??"

"Like this Friday? Like day after tomorrow? Like I would actually see the doctor that day?"

"Yes."

"Um. Okay. Yeah. Good! GOOD! I'll be there!"

So okay..do you think I scared her with the strangling or the killing part? Or is that sort of the same? Honestly...I didn't mean it.

I think it was the hair...I mean...shit...it scares ME.

When you think that you're in danger....

So..this one time...I went to a bar with some friends. (This is going NOWHERE good.) I wasn't going to go and then my cousin called and talked me into it (read as...told me I was going...). So I got "dressed up" and headed down to the teeny tiny bar in the teeny tiny town where we were to meet. I changed clothes and tried to do something with my hair and when I left I thought I looked ACCEPTABLE...at least not SCARY or anything. I cranked up the Maroon 5 CD and off I went.

Okay..the bar was really really small in a really really really small rural town. One side is a restaurant, the other is a bar. Did I mention how small it is? Everyone starts showing up and having drinks. Drinks of course lead to more drinks and the next thing you know, several of us are singing the theme to "Super Chicken" and yelling "Hey bring that whole box of wine to the table!". And I don't mean a box of wine bottles...I mean the kind of wine that comes in cardboard.

After a few glasses of Chardonnay from a box...I started thinking that I looked pretty good! We were having a great time, talking, laughing and then...the dancing started. Pretty soon people were standing on chairs and taking pictures of each other's feet. We moved from the restaurant side to the bar side and three of us set up shop behind the bar that was being tended by a guy named...Fuzzy..or Frizzy...or something. So..music is louder...I'm dancing like an idiot but think I look like Brittney Spears (also an idiot it turns out). I've got my hair in my face, drinking wine, laughing too loud and then someone gets out a camera. The night of the party I told someone " I can't WAIT to see those pictures!". Well, she never sent them and never sent them. We nagged her for a while and then just gave up.

She finally sent them. This past week. We went out last JULY. Anyway, GOOD GOD. I have arms the size of HAMS. I am never going out in public again unless I'm draped in a FULL SIZE BED SHEET. I don't think I'll even be able to get THAT around these freaky upper arms! And I'm not talking muscle...because God know's I wouldn't work out...I'm talking freakishly large upper arms that are just...FREAKISHLY LARGE!
So here's one of the pictures. We're on the wrong side of the bar here. We'd pretty much taken over the place by this point. The bar tender just kept serving up the drinks. That's me making the strange "jazz hands" pose. What the HELL??

Well, we had fun anyway. Who wouldn't have fun in bar that has a white ceramic Buddha on the popcorn popper? That just screams "FUN" right there.

Hairspray...and not the musical

Two words. Ballet recital. I actually had to go and buy HAIR. Who buys hair for a four year old...ME...and about 20 of my fellow moms at the ballet studio, that's who. The Hair Club for Four Year Olds.

If you've ever tried to put a four year old girl's hair up in a proper ballet "bun" you'll know that it's like putting smoke in your pocket. It just doesn't stay IN. We had recital pictures last week and my daughter had to have her hair up for pictures. Pictures were at 2:35. I set up in the kitchen with a 55 gallon drum of the strongest hair spray I could find, pony tail holders, hair pins and other miscellaneous brick-a-brack at 1:30. She started out skipping into the kitchen singing "we're gonna do my HA-AIR!" and ended up screaming "STOP I CAN'T BREATHE!!!!" I could have stood the kid out in Hurricane Katrina and only her bangs would have stirred...and just SLIGHTLY. I had the ring of curls all twisty-spray-clipped in and by the time she was done the effect wasn't too bad.

I'm still chipping the hairspray off the kitchen counter...as well as her forehead.

Harietta Hormone

Yes. That's me. The hormone train has hit me full force and left me lying in a spitting, angry, clawing heap in it's wake. Perimenopausal I'm told. I can rip your kidney out through your nostril is what I FEEL.

I had a hysterectomy a couple of years ago and they left the egg factories behind assuring me that I would have a more natural approach to menopause. RIGHT. The guys down there in the ovaries who work on the egg production lines caught on very quickly when the shipments of eggs starting stacking up.

Ovary Foreman: "Why are we NOT sending these shipments to the uterus????"

Egg Peon: "Cap'n! I've been sendin um full pow'r! Seem's to be a problem in the tubes, sir!" (read that like Scotty on Star Trek would say it)

Ovary Foreman: "That's IT! Shut this place DOWN. Every body is LAID OFF!" (stomps into spleen and slams the pancreas)

Egg Peon: "Huh." (Pulls some lever and there's a horrible screeching sound as the ovaries come to a slamming stop...somewhere upstairs in my brain...I begin to hate everyone I see)

So I'm working the other day and all of a sudden I've got a sweat mustache....then I began to wonder how I could eliminate human life on the planet....OH MY GOD. A hot flash. I turned the air conditioner in the office to "hang a carcass in the room" and took off my consultation coat and fanned my self. Still sweating. RUNNING down my temples. I should have known this was coming because I had been noticing that I had been plucking chin hairs daily to avoid looking like the lead singer of ZZ Top. I ran it by a co-worker...she confirmed my fears and gleefully said "you know..this can last for up to TEN years". I ripped off her head and stuffed it in her lab coat pocket.

I'm going to have to take some sort of hormone replacement, because otherwise I'll end up on the evening news. "ILLINOIS WOMAN FOUND CHEWING ON A HUMAN LEG...SAYS HAIR TURNED OUT BAD TODAY". What do you take for this? Isn't there some non FDA approved herb grown in the wilds of Venezuela that interestingly enough is also an ingredient in Easy Off?

I'll try anything! Blue co hash? Black primrose? What the hell is it? Do I smoke it? Shoot it up? Sniff it? TELL ME AND NO ONE GETS HURT!!!!