The Cream Can

My dad and I ran down to the annual Roosevelt Flea Market to see what kind of junk we could find. Flea market shopping with my dad always reminds me of the time my mom said he came home with a lawn chair for $2 that had a $1 sticker on it. HA

Anyway we made our rounds and all the same vendors were there - people selling vintage stuff, stuff they made, etc. I found a very cool LADIES sign that would have fit perfectly into the cutout above my bathroom on the main floor but was listed for $275 so no thank you. 

We ran into lots of neighbors including Butch and Sandi Fish, and at one point somebody told my dad he better go check out the cream cans the old feller outside the barn had for sale. We had already been by there and nothing grabbed our attention but we went back to see what all the fuss was about. 

AND WOULDJA LOOKEE HERE:

This one used to belong to my Great Grandpa Peter Hexum, Roosevent Minn. The old feller said he wanted $100 but we got it for $60. And THEN we told him it's a family heirloom and we woulda paid $1000. Just kidding but kind of. 

So cool and so exciting and so happy it's back where it belongs on my dad's porch.

Obviously all of us kids are fighting over it. Pete thinks it's rightfully his because his name is right there on it, I think it's rightfully mine because I'm the one who coughed up the sixty bucks and my dad's brother Aaron seems to remember Grandpa whispering something on his death bed about bequeathing the cream can...

I sure hope our family survives this. 

Logic

All my life my parents never locked the doors to their house. I don't think I ever in my life had a key.

One day this summer my dad and I were leaving the house together and he locked up behind us. I looked at him funny and he goes, "when your mom was alive it was only half mine. Now it's ALL mine."

Coffee Talk

My dad's Keurig is on the fritz.

I suggested he might need a new one. He asked how much they are and I said, "I don't know? 30 bucks?"

Hal: "Wanna pay $15 each?"

Me: "no"

Hal: "Well, $15'd be easier for both of us."

Deathiversary

Today was my mom's one year Deathiversary. That is to say she died one year ago today. I haven't said that out loud on this blog yet because I've just had probably the worst year of my life and your mom dying is never funny. And I guess I only like to write about things that are funny. 

Well - I'm back Jerry! Here's something funny:

I woke up at 4am on this, the morning of my dear mother's deathiversary to myself literally crapping the bed. Pooping in the bed. Full-on diarrhea poop. No warning. I wasn't sick. I didn't eat anything weird. Poop.

I knew my siblings might appreciate the irony and also the poop story (we are an intelligent humor bunch, us). So I sent them all a quick text on the old Mass-textomy.

Enjoy!

Continuation of the Mass-Textomy

I met a very important milestone in my old lady life today - I had my first mammogram. Of course I had to text my siblings the joyous news.

Jerks.

Step Kid Pride

You know I'll be honest - when I married Zach and two teenage boys fell into my lap, I was terrified of the homework/attendance/schedule crap that comes along with kids. But through some stroke of luck Zach got them into a fabulous community school where there IS no homework, and the boys actually like going. I'm so thankful for PPL and LNAS.

 

Check out this video, in which Micah (misspelled in the video as "Micha") is interviewed at 3:01 and 4:27!

 

LNAS student film from Project for Pride in Living on Vimeo.

"The View! The View!"

I hope this story is as funny typed out as it was in real life...

My mom's been having a rough week. My dad and I had to get her out of bed together the other morning and help her into her chair. And when she was settled, she used what little breath she had to ask my dad to get her "my-hearing-aid-my-phone-my-whatever-else-is-on-the-nightstand!" 

I knew he could never possibly remember all of that and so I followed him into the bedroom to help. Because of the way my mom said all of that, and because it was almost 10am, I added "The View! The View!" to indicate that in addition to all that stuff we better turn on her show too.

Well my dad didn't get the joke, obviously because he stopped dead in his tracks, squinched his butt and put both of his hands in front of it. 

He thought I was telling him his robe wasn't covering all.

Oh, how we laughed.

Said robe. Also --- what the heck is he eating for breakfast? A giant chunk of cheese that's what.

The Bathroom Door

Hexums. We don't do doors. We don't shut doors. Everybody who has ever been to my parents' one room shack of a cabin of a home knows you don't go in the bathroom without calling out ahead. And if you're in there and your modesty is compromised and you hear footsteps you call out "I'M IN HERE". That's our "door". Most of you "privacy" people from much smaller families will struggle to understand this.

Anyway, tonight my mom and sister Keri and I were watching a movie while my dad push-mowed his couple-acre yard, me knowing at some point he was going to need my help getting under the pine trees my mom refuses to allow him to cut the branches out of the bottom blah blah blah...anyway, I knew this, and I saw it coming and so I yelled outside to my dad that I fully planned on helping him mow under the pine trees, but not until after our movie was done. So anyway I also, for good measure yelled "your belly is big" (it is) and then I ran to the bathroom for sanctuary, knowing my dad would NEVER NEVER NEVER go into the bathroom if I were in there. So I sat, (peeing, yes) but also afraid to not be peeing because I was in TROUBLE, and then I looked up to see my mom's biggest butcher knife, brandished, around the corner. 

A warning.

Busted...

Left to Right: Kim, Kelly, Keri and Pete

This picture was taken the day my four oldest siblings got rubber band punching balloons. The best day ever, they tell me (I wasn't born yet).

Later Keri's turned up popped. She accused Pete.

My mom took Pete aside.

"Pete: did you pop Keri's balloon?"

"NO. But there's a knife in the sink."

Everybody REEL In

My mom has an old family fishing story starring my Auntie Cheryl.

My mom and Cheryl have five brothers and so anytime they went fishing with their dad there were boys around. And Grandpa Dick is a boy too. So one time Cheryl had to go pee and she refused to use the bucket to pee in and made her dad take her to shore.

"Everybody REEL IN, CHERYL has to go to the BATHROOM!!"

And that's our family quote for anytime you inconvenience others for your convenience.

But that's not the point of my story. 

The point of my story is that I went fishing with my dad and two of his friends the other night and I should have peed before we left the dock because I already had to go. But I didn't. So I suffered and fished for like three hours. Finally I realized I was going to have to pee in the boat and ask three men not to look.

But! We were in my dad's friend's boat! And I didn't even see it but there was a cabin under the deck! With a door that shuts! He let me go in there and pee into his little blue plastic fish rinsing bucket!

And you know how when you have to pee really really bad and so you pee for like 67 seconds and that 67 seconds feels like an eternity? It was one of those. I thought I was going to overflow the bucket - seriously. 

But I didn't. And then I took the walk of shame out of the cabin with my bucket of pee and very carefully and quickly dumped it over the edge and rinsed rinsed rinsed it a million times. I threw the bucket on the floor and resumed fishing.

...and nobody had to reel in.

But I had this to taunt me the rest of the night. The beating of the tell tale pee bucket.

It's lake water!!!! I swear!!!!

The Romper

I feel like the universe really wants me in a romper. They're everywhere. I gotta say, though, I was worried that the idea of it would be so much better than the reality. I'm 39 years old, and I'm not sure they're 'age appropriate'. I decided to go way out of my comfort zone and get one from ASOS. Out of my comfort zone? Am I crazy?! This thing is the most comfortable thing I have placed on my body in a really long time. And, it's cute! I texted the photo below to my boss with the caption: "I HOPE YOU LIKE ROMPERS BECAUSE I WILL BE WEARING THIS UNTIL SEPTEMBER 30TH." 

I call it my 2017 Summer Romper

Versatile!

On a recent trip to my parents' place, there wasn't much to decide in the way of packing:

But that's not the point of my story. The point is that when you go to your parents and basically spend the entire day Saturday and Sunday drinking alcohol (mostly to forget your mom has cancer AGAIN but really just because that's what you do every Saturday and Sunday) and you have all those bathroom breaks --- a romper becomes a somewhat complicated apparatus. I got it down though. I left the straps tied and just shimmied my arms up and out of it to go pee 8.6 million times per day. 

It was at 4am, though, when Rowdy woke me up to be let out of the house that I sleepily untied my romper (YES I SLEEP IN IT TOO) and used the toilet. When I went to retie it, the strap in the back was WET. 

It FELL IN THE TOILET. Determined not to let the romper-toilet-strap incident get me down, I rinsed it, did my best to get the bar soap involved, tied it up and went back to sleep. 

Later that morning, I needed to use the toilet urgently, but my dad was in there (13 people, one bathroom) and so I was forced to use the outhouse, except for the fact that I hadn't yet gotten to  item number clean out the outhouse on my chores list. I opened the door, frantic, only to find 432 spider webs and the world's most giant spider covering the outhouse seat hole. I swiped it with some toilet paper but had no time to clean it properly and so I disrompered and did my thing, naked and standing up. 

Of course I hadn't shut the outhouse door, one because it was too spidery in there and two because I never shut a bathroom door. I looked up at some point to see both my sister Kasey and my Mom waving to me from the kitchen window.

Cancer

Well, it's back again. The lung cancer, I mean. That lump in her leg turned out to be lung cancer as we know, but it never really went away and plus she had been having major pain in her chest so she went in for her three-month checkup and they took a scan. Lung cancer. In lots of spots. 

That's the bad news.

The good news is we have been hanging out a TON lately. I'm typing this up from my old loft bedroom in tiny Roosevelt MN with a vodka squirt in my hand. 

Sylvia

Kelly's Yorkie Sylvia is 832 years old. She has zero teeth and it's sort of my fault. You see, Sylvia's breath stunk so bad that I refused to hold her or pet her or babysit her and then finally Kelly took her to the vet and every single one of her teeth was rotted out of her head and so they pulled them. I'm not suggesting it was 100% my doing, but I definitely was a huge hag about it. Kelly was probably sick of hearing me crab.

Anyway, now Sylvia has a stuck out tongue all the time. There's no teeth to hold them in. 

She pees everywhere and she loves to ride in my pocket on a bike ride. 

Living with Teenage Boys, Vol. 1

A surprise around every corner.

The Worst Kind of Turd is an Honest One, Volume: Step Mom

One of the first bike rides we went on as a step-family happened to be a 68-mile round trip from our house to Wisconsin and back. Which of course took hours. And made for a nice opportunity for conversation. 

The 14-year-old and I were riding side-by-side at one point, and he said to me: "Out of all the girls in my life I've ever met you're the only one who doesn't complain about her weight."

<Insert AWWWWWWWWWWWW here>

My heart got so warm. My head got so big it almost exploded. Every feminist bone in my body shone brightly --- finally! Somebody noticed and appreciated my "realness". I thanked him for noticing and responded by saying that it's important to be healthy and riding bikes is one way that I try to stay healthy, and blah blah blah....but then my mind retraced his comment..."complain about her weight" 

I asked, "wait. are you saying that it's surprising because I'm also like the one girl in your life who's not skinny?"

"Well. Yah," he said, "you're actually kind of fat."

Gonna be a long ride.

Thanks, Dad

My dad gets very offended, or maybe not offended, but definitely offput if you ask him for something extra he has. 

For example, my mom makes him a giant bowl of popcorn almost every night. So, naturally, when I'm visiting, I want some of that popcorn too. I have tried so many times in vain to go up to the giant bowl in my dad's lap with a tiny cereal bowl to get a small portion of his bounty. He looks at me like I'm asking him for a kidney, and my mom ends up making more popcorn so I can have some. He will not share. 

And then, when it's time to go home, I ask if I can take a couple pounds of venison. (Their deep freeze has enough venison to feed a family of four every night for a year.) You can't believe his shocked face. 

Anyway, when my sisters and I took him and my mom out for their 50th Anniversary dinner, we encouraged him to order the most expensive steak on the menu, and he did. It was pretty big, and I was drinking, so I asked him if I could have a tiny bite, to taste the yumminess. Just a bite. He shook his head yes. I couldn't believe it!

Then he slowly and deliberately, lovingly almost, cut me a piece and sent it down the table, passing it between four people to get it down to me. 

Below is the bite he let me have. He was staring at me receiving it with the most sarcastic sh*t-eating grin you have ever seen. 

JERK

Happy 50th Anniversary, Mom and Dad!

Stop ruining my moment, KASEY!

My parents celebrate their 50th Anniversary on October 15, 2016.

50 YEARS!!

It's hard to believe that only 50 years ago my mom was a 17-year-old blushing bride, holding her bouquet of flowers in front of her middle to hide my sister Kim, living inside. Back in the day when a man was expected to make good on a mistake. And more mistakes they would make, yessirreeee, 6 more to be exact, one of them being me!

I asked them both what they love about each other, after all this time. Their faces looked not unlike Hillary's and Donald's when asked to say "one positive" thing about the other.

They thought about it for a while and here were their responses:

MOM:

He takes care of everything that needs taking care of

He keeps the wolves away

He jiggles the toilet handle

He gets the spiders out of the bathrub

He changes the light bulbs

He went to work every day

DAD:

(...and he had to think about this for a long, long time)

After a snowstorm and I shoveled us all out, she'd make me a hot drink

I LOVE YOU GUYS --- CONGRATULATIONS!

The Wooden Part

I had a friend who was begging her Little Turd of a daughter to rub her feet. And then the Little Turd said, "OK. But only the top part. Not the wooden part."



This led to a years-long joke about the wooden part of a person's feet - you know the calloused part that the lady at the pedicure place has to SCRAPE and SCRAPE and you get really embarrassed?

Fast forward to my new life of living in my one room home with my lovely husband his two teenage boys. It's not ideal. If anybody farts the whole house hears it. And smells it too. The place is an open floor plan loft-style home. See what I mean?

(I designed it while I was planning to die alone.)

ANYWAY, Zach has been growing quite a nasty wooden part of his own on his heel all summer from working. He's OBSESSED with it and makes me touch it all the time. 

Well: the other night at bedtime Zach and I were getting ready to fall asleep, whispering and snuggling and otherwise falling in love, the usual. He grabbed my hand and made me touch his nasty wooden heel. I laughed and said, too loud, (in baby talk I might add): 

"ARE YOU MAKING ME TOUCH THE WOODEN PART AGAIN?"

His face dropped.

I gasped.

We died, while hoping beyond hope the kids were already sleeping.

Kasey 'n' Kids

My sister Kasey has been driving the same crappy van for about 27 years. She loads up her three kids and all their crap and drives them around and it keeps on running and so she keeps on driving it. She found some letter stickers and instead of saying Ford Van or Chevy Van or whatever it is, now it says:

 "KASEY             'N'                 KIDS"

Kasey's not the best driver. She got her license later than most small-town teens, and then only out of necessity because I moved out of the house. 

Anyway -- the other day I met up with her for dinner and the two of us ended the night at our other sister Kelly's condo in a downtown St. Paul neighborhood, whose scant parking leaves visitors only a few options, one of which is using the assigned parking garage: an insanely difficult to navigate web of tight turns and concrete pillars.

I was following Kasey in my car. When it was her turn to enter the garage, I and another stranger in a different car watched in horror as Kasey's van jammed itself inexplicably into the wall to the right-hand side of the garage opening. 

...and we continued watching as Kasey simply shrugged her shoulders, punched and held the gas, forcing the van ever further into the garage -- taking the entire side of her van with it.

...leaving this beautiful heart-shaped mark. 

Pedicure?

My sisters texted to see if I wanted to get pedicures -- I had just gotten one so I declined, but sent them this picture to be hilarious -- with the caption -- "Nope. I'm good."

Kasey goes, "gorgeous, what color is that? Broken Robin's Egg?"

hahahahahahahahaHAAHAHAAAAA