I Present to You – a Bowl of Reading Potpourri

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I just happened to look at when my last blog post was and it was May 11, 2021. And I know what you’re thinking- ‘what have you been doing for a year that you can’t sit down and write a little something to share with your faithful readers?!’ And the answer would be, “uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” because that’s literally what’s been in my brain every time I sit down to write. Completely blank. A veritable black hole of writer’s block. But now, it’s April 2022 and it’s 4:30 AM and my brain just woke me up and said, “here’s a thought,” and so here I am. If I’m being honest with y’all, I was going to go back to sleep, while that writing idea hung over my head like a cloud, but just as I was about to fall back into a deep slumber, I had a spider thought- you know, like, “I wonder if there’s a spider in the bedroom. Or the bed. Or the bathroom.” So now I’m up and drinking a cup of coffee. Actually, it’s what I call a “half and half”- half coffee, half heavy cream. Don’t judge me. It’s delicious.

So, now that I’m here and it’s been a year, not to mention that I gave up Facebook for Lent, I have a few anecdotes for your reading pleasure- a bowl of reading potpourri, if you will. I wish you could hear the snooty voice in which I said that last line out loud.

Phobia Check: Speaking of spiders… I was laying in bed a couple of weeks ago, with the covers pulled up to my chin, enjoying an episode of Dateline before drifting off (to a fitful sleep in between no less than three trips to the bathroom) and right in front of my eyeballs, something crawled across the covers. Now y’all know I have these fake knees. I used to call them “new knees” but they are no longer new, just fake. And I miss the original ones because they were oh, so much better, but then they decided to suck so I had to ditch them. But since I got these fake ones, I don’t move fast. I currently operate at the speed of an 80 year old, so I can honestly say I surprised the hell out of myself in the manner in which I moved when I saw whatever that was crawling right in front of me. I screamed, threw the covers off and jumped out of bed, while simultaneously turning on the light. Then I hopped around because what if I flung it on the floor when I threw off the covers? Can’t go stand on the chair, it might’ve landed over there. I jumped around, uttering non-verbal nonsense while Scott stood there unable to help because he had no idea what was happening. I managed to tell him what happened and then, just as I was about to leave my bedroom and go to sleep, (on the recliner… forever… because I can never go back to our bedroom again) he found it- one of those big, brown stink bugs. He got rid of it for me by abiding by the Deb Rule of “squish with kleenex and flush” and then coaxed me back to bed where I lay for no less than four hours. Without blinking.

Of course, after telling my dad the story later that week, he asked if I actually saw the stink bug. When I said no, he offered the possibility that perhaps Scott said it was a stink bug just so I’d go back to bed. So there’s that now.

I’m so tired.

Husband Shenanigans: If you’ve known Scott and I for a while, you know that he led a very deprived childhood in that he rarely watched certain programming. He never saw one episode of the Muppet Show. Not one. This makes my Statler and Waldorf, Sam the Eagle and the Swedish Chef impressions fruitless and completely unappreciated. But he also rarely watched Looney Tunes, which can be problematic when I make Looney Tunes references in occasional conversation (like when I recommended we name our frog “Kermit”*) and he has no idea who I’m talking about. One thing that has blown my mind right outta my ears though, is that he has no idea who Pepe LePew is. I learned this only a few years ago and for weeks after that, pondered the possibility that our entire marriage is sham. Regardless, we recently had a conversation when I got into the car to go to Mass and it went like this…

Empty Nesting and Upcoming Confessions: So we’re official empty nesters now. My oldest moved out- he got all manly, became a fireman and just moved out. I mean, what in the actual what?! You raise him, you teach him to be an independent, contributing member of society and then he just, you know, LEAVES, like he no longer needs his mama. Just like that. And the other one… don’t even get me started on him. He went to Iowa State, showed off how smart he is and gets some “ideal internship” with a multi-billion dollar company in Des Moines and apparently doesn’t care about his mama either, because he won’t be home this summer at all. It’s fine. Everything is FINE. I’m embracing the empty-nester thing pretty well, for the most part. I clean and it stays clean. I don’t have to cook for four, I cook for two. But I will admit that the additional free time at home has given me the opportunity to overthink everything I have ever done as a mom and question whether I did ok or not. But I won’t bog you down with all those melancholy and self-destructive thoughts and confessions. I’ll wait until a joyous occasion, say, Mother’s Day, to go into that detail. So…watch for that uplifting post.

Real Estate Update: Ok, truth be told, real estate is probably the reason why I haven’t written anything in a while. Last year was, in a word, chaos. Not bad chaos, necessarily. It was like this… imagine you’re a sweet, soft, furry rabbit. You’re hopping gracefully in a beautiful, green field, full of clover, looking for a rabbit hole to make your home. There’s a few rabbit holes that have piqued your interest and you’re trying to decide which hole you want, but strangely, all the little rabbit hole doors are closed and you can’t get inside to look around. And a pack of pumas show up. And the pumas all have cash. And none of them want inspections.

It was a tough year for buyers because the market made for lots of competition and some buyers lost their minds and wrote crazy offers to get what they wanted. And the sellers? Well, they had to look at all those crazy offers. All I can say is, thank heavens for my cool, calm ability to stay level-headed and navigate all of them through it with ease! Well, that and a steady diet of Tums and Alka-Seltzer and a lot of swearing. All in all, it ended on a really positive note and I proved to myself that I am capable of far more than I ever thought possible. The truth is, my life has a lot of Divine Intervention and last year was no exception. I lead a very grateful and joyful life and I find that in doing so, I get through the toughest of times feeling secure and confident.

Turning 50: August will hold a milestone event in my life. I don’t think it’s going to be a huge problem for me- I seem to be already settling into middle age without a problem. I’ve got the fake knees, I’m impatient, our lawn is near perfect, and lately, I find myself saying things like,

“Hey! It’s 8:45! We could justifiably go to bed now!”

“Turn around and go back home. I forgot my readers. I can’t see my phone.”

“Where are they getting these newscasters now? Are they recruiting at the junior high? None of these news people look like they’re over 12.”

“If we go to dinner now, the music won’t be as loud and I can hear.”

“I’ll have the fries. Wait,” (reconsiders the pending heartburn or a diabetic coma) “I’ll have a side salad, please.”

“Those kids are going to blow out their eardrums playing their music that loud.” (I mean, I’m in bed. It’s 11 PM. Our house is vibrating from the bass in their car. Playing music that loud has to have to medical consequences.)

Bring on the middle age, I guess. Sounds like I’m ready.

Lastly, I’d like to close with a little segment I like to call…

Funny Things I’ve Seen: While at my Mom-In-Law’s house this past weekend, Scott happened to notice two golfers on the course that borders Mom’s backyard and pointed them out to Mom and me. A young woman, probably in her late 30’s, dressed in a tiny skirt and tight tank top to match, managed to hit a ball past the hole and was getting ready to try to putt it in. Scott had been watching them for longer than Mom and I and commented, “she is struggling and this guy is doing his best to be patient.” We watched as she took some practice swings, shifted a few times, backed up from the ball, shifted again and then waited. “Come on. Just hit the ball,” Scott says, as the three of us watch her, anticipating a miss. To our surprise, and obviously hers as well, she managed to tap the ball right into the hole. She raised both arms and the putter into the air in an exhibition of glorious victory and then did a little happy dance. The guy with her seemed to be tolerating her behavior at best and went over to his putt his ball. She dramatically walked towards their cart, while he misses his putt in the background. But the pièce de résistance was her next move as she walked down the little hill to the cart, giving us a perfect view… she raised both arms and did a shoulder and chest shimmy all the way down the hill, putter still in hand, while in the background, he misses the second shot with his putter. Sometimes, I think life hands us these little tidbits of comedy, just to keep us laughing, because you know, life…ugh. Thank you, chest-shimmying female and her less-than-amused, bad-putting guy friend. Good show! Bravo! Or should I say, Brava!

Well, Readers, time to wrap it up. But until the next entry, which I can tell you will be all about God’s greatest invention (the cow, obviously), I wish you all sunshine, joy and whole lotta funny.