The Miserable Bucket aka Miss V Rides Again aka We Are Eggs

       Recently, I was given the opportunity to check off one of the many items on my bucket list. Without going into very much detail, this opportunity came via my daughter who invited me to join her choir which was planning to do a production of one of my all-time favorite musicals, Les Miserables. Long story short, I did, and I have been very much enjoying it. Enter Miss V. Yep, Miss V rides again. Miss V is also a member of the choir. Last night, auditions were being held for various solos in the upcoming production. Those of us who were not auditioning (myself and Miss V included among them), were just standing around chatting, waiting for the audition process to be over and choir practice to begin.
I'm not really certain how the conversation began, but at some point, a question was directed at Miss V.
     UP (Unknown Person): "Did you already audition?"
     Miss V: "No. I'm not auditioning."
     UP: "Why not?"
     Helpful Mother (aka Me): "But, you have a beautiful voice."
     Miss V: "Oh, I can sing. I just don't have a soloist type of voice."
     Helpful Mother: "I know what you mean. That's me."
     Miss V: "Yeah, I have a choir voice. I'm good at blending. I'm like-"
     Suddenly, she seemed to be at a loss for words, as if she weren't quite sure how to describe what she meant.
     And I knew. I knew that I completely understood where she was coming from, and being the ever helpful mother that I am, I quickly jumped in to save her, throwing her the life preserver I was so certain she was searching for. Giving her the gift of my wisdom. And my strangely offbeat analogy.
     Helpful Mother: "We're eggs."
     Dead silence reigned. Followed by a burst of laughter. Thanks Miss V. Appreciate the support.
     Miss V: "That sooo has to go on your blog."
     Uh huh. So here I am putting it on my blog.
     Helpful Mother: "No, what I mean is, we're like eggs. We're good at making puddings, and cakes, and cookies. But, on our own, we're kind of bland. We need ketchup or Tabasco sauce, or something."
     Miss V: "A little salt and pepper to give us flavor. 'Cause we are so bland."
     Yep. We're bland. Sorry Miss V, didn't mean to call you bland.
     But she got even.
     Minutes later, she was playing with my hair, which, for once, wasn't all bound up in a pony tail.
     Miss V: "Your hair is so soft."
     Helpful Mother: "Thank-"
     Miss V: "And I love the gray. It's makes you look so distinguished."
     Re-enter dead silence, followed by more laughter.
     My Daughter: "Oh, that's great, Miss V! That's just like saying, 'I love those wrinkles. They make you look so experienced.' "
     Miss V: "No, no! That's not what I meant!"
     It's okay Miss V. You are an egg. You are bland. I am an egg. A gray, wrinkled, shriveled up, bland, bland egg. Good thing I'm working on fulfilling that bucket list. That damn bucket's getting closer and closer by the minute. I will now have nightmares of giant buckets chasing me with eggbeaters and screaming with little French accents, "Non! Non! You must be een the omelette!! Een the omelette!!!"

My Daughter Helps Me Find A New Blog Subject A.K.A. Spa Day Gone Bad

 I was drawing a blank as to what to write about for my new blog when I went to the spa for a facial. Now I have to preface this by saying, this is a first time experience. Having never been what you could call a "girly-girl," I have never had spa days. I've never had facials, nail appointments, massages, or any of the other spa services. I am lucky to get my hair cut once or twice a year, and only that because eventually the ponytail gets too heavy and starts to pull on my brain. For whatever reason, I am the mother to a girly-girl. She loves spas and all they entail. For that reason she became an esthetician. And I have to say she loves her profession and is exceedingly good at it. I arrived at the spa and had a short wait before being led back into a room that told me rather quickly that I was WAY out of my league here. A tomboy should never enter such a frou-frou space. But, fully intending to enjoy the experience (no matter how much every nerve in me screamed the opposite) and also to support my daughter's chosen profession, I was determined to stick it out. She came into the room and explained to me that I was to disrobe as much as I was comfortable with. I was wearing sweats and a long sleeved T-shirt, feeling pretty comfy already, no need to remove anything- and besides, am I getting an examination here, too??? What the heck did I sign up for??? I mean, I didn't remember checking the box for breast exam or scoliosis testing.... Okay, my heart rate was now double time.
 "Take off my clothes?" I squawked. She proceeded to explain that most clients disrobed and wore a robe, but if I was more comfortable I could wear my sweats and maybe remove my shoes and disrobe from the waist up.
I needed further explanation. (I wonder if she's ever had a client so difficult before me?) "I'm getting a facial," I explained. "I thought that took place in kind of the face area. Already undressed. Ready to go. No false beard. No sunglasses. Let's get to it."
 She took a deep breath, (I'm fairly certain it's the same one I used when she was a child and I was trying not to lose my temper with her. I wonder where she learned it from?) She explained part of the procedure was a shoulder rub (I'm in!) and something about the décolletage.
 She left the room while I prepared myself, climbed into the pre-warmed table/bed, and awaited the fabulousness I was about to receive. She returned, dimmed the lights, and what followed was one of the most gloriously relaxing half hours I have EVER in my life experienced. I can tell you that I NEVER expected it to be so wonderful. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
I laid there, cocooned in the wonderfully warm blankets while she applied various creams and cleansers (all for sensitive skin and hypo-allergenic since I have very sensitive skin). They felt amazing. We chatted a bit about the subject for my blog, and I told her that I was very much stuck for ideas and that I was leaning on her heavily for some new ones. She mentioned that she had several, and the conversation just sort of died off as I fell into the coma of relaxation she was providing. Before I knew it, it was over. And I was disappointed.
 I dressed, somewhat dejectedly. And my daughter had to have noticed that dejection when I exited the room because she said, "So maybe for Mother's Day I could give you a one hour facial as a present." I couldn't say yes fast enough.
I returned home and went to bed early since I wasn't feeling altogether well, fighting off a cold as I was. Somewhere around three in the morning, I remember waking up because I was scratching my jaw and something wet was coming off under my nails. I was tired so I stayed in bed and continued to sleep. Repeatedly, through out the night, I woke up scratching various parts of my face and neck. Finally, morning came and I dragged myself out of bed and headed for the bathroom. The face I met in the mirror was not the one I remembered seeing the night before. It was more like a cross between Quasimoto and the Phantom of the Opera. The right side of my face was swollen and pulling down the corner of my eye and mouth. My entire face was a plethora of pus seeping sores mixed with a red bumpy rash, which led down my neck and into my décolletage. OMG! Did this really just happen??? I went for pampering and got a diaper rash.
My daughter, who had spent the night, was in the kitchen. I hurried to her to show her what had happened, after which I headed to the doctor's office to load up on steroids and anti-histamines.
 Needless to say, I will NOT be getting a one hour facial for Mother's Day.

Emoti-Confusion A.K.A. Potty-Con

    So this may be a little off topic, but I thought it was necessary to give you a broader idea of just what my family has to tolerate. And I guess, you could say these are some of their Did this really just happen? moments when dealing with me.
Let me start by explaining that I have not been caught up in the world of smart phones. (Surprised by this aren't you? I can tell.) I have no desire to own a phone that is smarter than I am. So, by comparison, my phone is pretty much the same one you see on the soup commercials. Now, I have to say, there are several advantages to such backward technology. Say my car breaks down and I get stranded out in the middle of nowhere and have to wait say three or four hours for a tow. Not only can I use my phone to call for help, but I can always just lick the residual soup gerb out of the inside of the can to sustain myself. "Woman Survives On Pea Soup Gerb, Film at Eleven!" (I would personally like to thank my husband for making my brain think this way.)
    Anyway, my point is, in my world, blackberries are delicious on cereal, androids are a kind of robot, and iphone is just a typo in which you meant to say my phone. My Soup Phone has everything I need. I can make calls and receive them. I have five numbers on my speed dial, one of which is my Voicemail and came pre-programmed that way, but I'm counting it anyway. I can even text. But there's no sense in that since I text like someone has taped all my fingers together with duct tape and then stabbed me in the eyes with a sharp stick. For a long time I really wasn't aware how bad my texting was. Whenever I texted my kids, they seemed to take just as long, if not longer, to respond to me. However, I have since discovered, that they are something of savants when it comes to texting. I have personally witnessed them send out full paragraphs, utilizing proper punctuation, spelling, and zero shorthand, in the time it takes me to pull up my text function. So why is it taking so long for them to respond to me? Are they just putting me on the backburner because I am just the mother, and therefore, not nearly as important as, say, their friends?
   As it turns out, no. That is not the reason. Apparently, the hold up is entirely my fault, as it takes them several minutes and usually some evaluation from innocent bystanders to decipher what I am saying. Now I get texts like, "Wtf Mom? What the heck is mmmbergorphgrl?"
   Naturally, I call them back. It's easier than the ten to fifteen texts it will require to explain what I meant the first time, and then explain all my explaining. It's like the mirror trick. You know, the one where you look at yourself in a mirror with a mirror and it goes on forever? That's me and texting. So a quick phone call (which I should have done in the first place) saying, "I wanted to know if you wanted to come for dinner. Burgers. On the grill," is really the better way to go.
   My son's response is usually something like, "Wow." My daughter's is usually less gracious.
   But, once again, I am going off on a tangent. My point is, my own texting is so profoundly miserable, that is it any wonder when I start seeing all these strange little additives in my family's texting to me, that I at first mistake them for typos? I wasn't sure whether to think they were making fun of me, or I had finally rubbed off on all of them, but honestly, when you text someone real words, heavily sprinkled with various letter and symbol combinations, what's a girl to think? Text Tourettes?
   So I ignored them. For some time. At least until my husband started sending me, what I like to call, the Potty-con. The first two or three times I ignored it, as I had so many other strange text garbles. After awhile though, it became apparent that this particular combination was repeating itself, and therefore, not unlike euphemisms such as lol and wtf, must mean something. (I may have a Soup Phone, but I am not completely ignorant.) Try as I might, to gather the meaning of this little oddity, I always came back to the same thing. A message he couldn't possibly be sending me. Unless he was wanting to know if I was suddenly suffering from incontinence.... I was confused to say the least. But honestly, you tell me what it looks like------ (y) -------- because to me, to put this delicately, it looks like a nude feminine form depicted from waist to knee in the act of crossing one leg over the other- the universal signal for, "Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go, right now!" Tell me someone sees this besides me? Anyone????
   So, finally, one day he sends not one, but two of these confusing messages. Does he want to know if I really, REALLY, have to go?? So I call him, and I'm pretty much like, "Okay, buddy. What's up with the pee pee messages??"
   Naturally he is confused. And flabbergasted. And slightly amused.
   Turns out his phone (and apparently all Smart Phones) have these little things called Emoticons. So, in his non-Soup Phone world, that is a little picture of a thumbs up. It means, Woohoo! Great job! Not, Potty time! as I had been suspecting. Unless of course you are two, in which case the two are synonymous.
   So while he was having his Did this really just happen? moment, I was shrugging and thinking, to me it will always mean Potty time. And thus the Potty-con was born. And now I gotta go.
   No really. Too much coffee.  (y)

Caution: Objects Look Smaller Than They Actually Are

    Some of my all time favorite "Did This Really Just Happen?" moments have been while working as a customer service representative. I have been the recipient of countless veiled insults (though to be fair, a good amount of them were never meant to be). Over that time, I have been informed that my head was too large for my neck, (honestly), my feet- most specifically my toes- were too large for my body, and that I had, and I quote, "... a beautiful smile. Are they all yours?" It took me a minute to realize he was talking about my teeth. No joke.
   One of my favorites was a repeat customer, who spent fifteen to twenty minutes explaining to me that my body structure was all wrong. My arms, she said, were much too large for my torso. She went on to explain, "You're so thin, but you have the arms of a much bigger girl. Really, if someone just looked at your arms, they would think you were fat."
Really?? REALLY??
   She continued on in this vein, explaining her theory in frank and complete thoroughness. I guess she thought I really cared. At one point, she actually encircled her thumb and middle finger (or attempted to anyway) around my bicep while pointing at my waist with her other hand, in order to drive her point home. And the whole time I just stood there thinking, Is this really happening??? I didn't know what to say. My brain was going about a mile a minute. Sentences like, "I'm so sorry I offend you with my Frankensteinian proportions. The old doc was a having a bad day I guess," and "I'll try to keep my gargantuan arms in mind when I dress myself in the future," kept forming and re-forming themselves inside my brain. I was desperately attempting to find just the right scathing retort to shock her into silence. But, then I realized that, being the repeat customer that she was, she had chatted with me on several occasions, (always tackling such deep topics as the weather and sports, but sometimes even bravely delving into the unknown jungles of, gasp, television shows or books). She thought she was my friend. And as such, she had a right to dissect me. Really??
   She babbled on long enough that I was beginning to wonder if she was ever going to stop. I was thinking, "Yep, I got it. Arms too big, body too small. No need to go on. Speaka de English here and we are all picking up what you are putting down. Walking freak-show right here folks. Come and take a gander while the show's still free."
   For weeks, I wandered around feeling a bit self-conscious. Uncomfortable. Embarrassed. Awkward. Here I was, some kind of mish-mashed freak. My head, arms, and toes were all much too big for the rest of my body! What about my hands? My legs? How did they rate in comparison? And, oh my God! What about my butt? Was I sporting some colossal shelf butt without even realizing it? I had to keep checking the mirror. Was I completely blind to what everyone else was so obviously noticing? I mean, all my life I had taken for granted that my body was just all one size. One package. Large or small, everything sort of went together. Now, it had been (abruptly) brought to my attention that this was simply not the case. I was some kind of walking mix and match. Kind of like that game you find in coloring books, where you have five or six creatures that you color then cut into strips and then add the head of one creature, to the body of another, to the legs of yet another. Yep, that's me. One Great Big Mix And Match! Whoopee!!
   So how to go about fixing this funhouse mirror of a body? At first I thought, a hat for my giant head. Then I realized, that would just make it proportionally larger. No go. A scarf! That was the answer. It would make the tottering precipice of my neck look like a much stronger foothold for my massive head. How I was gonna pull this off in the summer was another question, but I wasn't worrying about that right then. The only problem was, with my newly over-sized neck, my shoulders looked too narrow. I was just going to have to wait for the huge shoulder pads so trendy in the eighties to come back in style. Until then, a couple of throw pillows would have to do.
   On to the arms. That was a little tougher. They make girdles and Spanx for tummies and thighs, but not so much for the arms. But quickly, I learned that these items are even sold to the tiny people. (Seriously, if you are already a size two, exactly what do you need a girdle for?) However, the extra small just suited my purpose. I cut off the legs, attaching the thigh end to my bra straps. I was in business. At least until it started rolling up my wrists. Once again I turned to my scissors. I snipped a hole in each knee end and anchored it over my thumbs. Voila!
   Now my feet. Out go the flip flops. Out go the open-toed sandals. Can't be unleashing these bad boys on the unsuspecting public, no sirree bob. Combat boots. That should hide any errant over-sized toe and/or foot flab.
I whirled around and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked like a mixture of Madonna meets Cyndi Lauper in the Thunderdome. Way less cool though.
   Tearing off all the bad style choices not to be repeated since the eighties, I glared at myself in the mirror, gritting my teeth.
  Then I smile. Widely. They're all mine. Thank God, I still have all my own teeth.
   I gotta go floss....

Miss V says, Did this REALLY just happen?

     Okay, so the first thing I want to say is when you are my age, and haven't been raised in the technological advances of the kids these days, Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Tumblr; these are all things that are more than a little intimidating. So naturally, when I got the bright idea to start a blog, the first person I thought of to assist me in this (to her, easy, to me, monumental) undertaking, was my daughter. So I begin by finding the appropriate website, hey GI Joe, getting there is half the battle. I managed all right through the first three lines of the Sign Up page, then I was stuck. It wanted a "Display Name." I had no idea what a Display Name was. I mean, maiden name I got. Surname, yup, under control. Pet name, nickname, married name, pen name, you name it, I got it. But Display name??? Hmmm.... Had to think that one out. That's when I realized, hey, I have an assistant (unpaid though she might be), it's time to put her to work. So quickly, I whipped out my cell, and gave my only daughter a call. No answer. Voice mail. Great. Now what?
      Obviously, she was at work. I am far too impatient to wait. When I start something, I want to finish it now, because let's be real, if I set it aside and wait for later, later is never, not ever, gonna come. I know that about myself. Why put off what you can do today, most especially since tomorrow you are going to be too darn lazy to do it.
      So I mentally flipped through the old rolladex trying to figure out who might be of some assistance. Son, at work. Husband, at work. And most of my friends would have been just as stumped as I was. That leaves my friends' kids, or I suddenly realized, my kids' friends. I am in business.
      Quickly, I dialed my daughter's best friend. She has dealt with me more than enough times to know where my talents lie, and she knows technology ain't one of them. Miss V (as I will call her in this blog), was kind enough to answer her phone, even though her screen was probably displaying a "Don't answer this, it is a parent call, never, never a good thing," message. I made fast work catching her up on what I was trying to do and where I got stuck.
        Let me just add this quick aside before I go on: 1) God love her, she never laughed at me. Though she SHOULD have. And 2) she had a new blog up and running before I even got off the first screen. Absolutely true. Up and running, and here I was, still on page one, trying to figure out what a Display name was.
       Okay, back to the action. I had luckily caught Miss V between her hectic school/work/life schedule, and had her in a moment of downtime, for which I was extremely grateful. She explained what a Display Name was without recommending any not so nice (but well deserved) ones like Stupid Mom's Blog. Somehow we managed to navigate through the second page (templates, etc.), where I learned NOT to touch the Advanced button. (WHAT was I thinking??? Really??)
      Somewhere in the midst of all this migraine inspiring (for her as well as me, no doubt) workup, I had to come up with a Title, for which I was completely unprepared. (Really??? WHAT was I thinking?) The conversation went something like this:
Miss V: So that's where you put the title you want to call your Blog.
Stupid Mom: Uh-huh....
Miss V: Soooo....
Stupid Mom: I don't know. I'm kinda unprepared for this. (No kidding...)
Miss V: Okay.... (I can hear her taking a breath- she may be counting to ten, possibly twenty.) Okay. So what do you want to talk about on this blog?
Stupid Mom: Well, I don't know. Just the kind of stuff we talk about you know? The things that happen to us that we just can't really believe are happening, and we sort of vent on Facebook, or texting, or whatever. You know, the things that make us go, "Did this REALLY just happen??"
Miss V: That's good. That's what you should call it.
Stupid Mom: What?
Miss V: Did this really just happen? That's a good name.
        That's when I realized two things. 1) Miss V was having that moment right then. And 2) My Blog was born, at its right moment, in its right time. Thank you Miss V For making it REALLY happen!