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.

The Shape of My Fears

Last night when I got home I was alone and so I checked all the usual places for monsters in my house. The basement, the main floor shower, the upstairs shower, etc.

I found nothing, and so I crawled into bed with my dog and drifted off to ... and right before sleeping I realized that I didn't look under the bed.

OH GOD.

So I started thinking "what should I be scared of?" and the only thing that came up was the fish/guy from the movie the Shape of Water.

And then I laughed because that is not even sort of scary! And then I went to sleep.

And it's a good gosh darn thing my brain didn't go here:

Just One of Many Times I Was Feeling Really Beautiful, BUT...

I've been using a Corporate plane to get up to see my Dad. Not my Corporate plane, mind you, but the Corporate plane of a well-known Minnesota Company that flies it's muckety-mucks from Warroad MN to Minneapolis MN and back on the daily and Lucky Me! They let any-old-Joe ride on this plane for a mere $100 donation to a local Warroad charity. (Bless 'em). My parents live 11 miles from the Warroad International Airport and I live 5 miles from the MSP. Only, these planes fly out of a tiny little airport located between MSP Airport Terminals 1 and 2 (otherwise known as Lindbergh and Hubert Humphrey). This little bitsy in-between airport is called "Signature Flights" and you have to call on a little phone from your car to get into a parking lot which leads to a smallish building but then after the building you can literally walk right onto your tiny little plane. There's no removal of liquids there's no taking off your shoes there's no seeing if there is liquid "medical marijuana" in your purse (even if you are a totally type A good girl who would never use such an  "illicit drug" but only secured it clandestinely from your hairdresser because she seemed like somebody who would know something about such things and also because your mom has cancer and she's dying and you will do anything including committing what you're pretty sure is a felony to ease her pain).

ANYWAY:

It feels so FANCY!

Imagine during the Super Bowl (!) - all those famous people (!) flying to this exact airport (!)- and though I've never seen a famous person there, I'm sure they have been and that makes me feel...really...really...famous myself. 

So, every time I go through there I sort of hold my head higher than I normally would (because normally I'm just a girl, picking a booger with her thumb). One particular time, however, and this time is the subject of this particular story, it was a Monday morning and it was 5:30 and I was the ONLY. PERSON. ON. THE. PLANE. 

FANCY!!!

So - imagine how I felt. Walking in to this exclusive airport - just having gotten off a PRIVATE. PLANE. Just me (!) and the pilots (!) 

And I was wearing my cute jeans and my cute down jacket that's only 18 years old but I bought it in Austria so, you know, it's pretty cute, and my slouchy beanie hat that all the cool girls wear and here I am, and people are LOOKING. 

They are flipping their heads around to see WHO IS THAT GIRL? and I feel so gorgeous and rich! and exclusive!

And then I went into the bathroom (the one with really really thick napkin-y hand towels in a basket). And:

It's no wonder they were staring.

The Unconventional Toilet Strikes Again

A couple of summers ago - I got invited to go on a boat trip with some good pals, their parents and friends - Zach was working in Vermont unfortunately, so I went solo.

It was as epic a day as you can imagine. We zoomed down the St. Croix River, between Minnesota and Wisconsin. The weather was perfect, the conversation dynamic, the drinks were flowing. There were other boats to wave at. I may or may not have mooned them. Anyway, it was SO FUN.

At some point on a boat, as a woman, the question will always be: "where do I pee?" and usually the answer is, "in the River", but I could NOT resist this strange contraption and decided to use it just because I was probably under the influence of alcohol. 

Bathroom?

WHAT?!?

Anyway, I did my thing and it was just as weird and fun as you would think. Then it came time to flush the toilet. 

Even though you can clearly see in these photos that there are instructions on how to do so - I didn't figure that out. At the time. 

I just kept pumping and pumping that pump thing. But nothing happened. 

And so I LIFTED THE LID to investigate, and then found a different lever to pull. Pulled that lever.

Got splashed. In the face. With my own pee. I screamed like I was in the middle of being murdered and the entire boat of people came running to find out what happened. 

"I have my own pee on my face".

And THEN jumped in the River. The end.

You Can't Take Me Anywhere

I've been flying back-and-forth to Warroad MN to visit my parents on the Marvin Windows corporate propeller plane since May. It's fun and I feel fancy every time and I love getting there in an hour and 15 minutes vs driving 6.5 hours.

Last month and for the first time I got to ride their jet. No propellers. Leather buttery seats. Fancy fancy. Oh man it goes fast! The same exact trip takes 45 minutes. But let me tell you the take off is terrifying. I have never felt such speed in my entire life and I have ridden the fastest train on earth (Shanghai Maglev China). Anyway it goes one million miles an hour and you go straight up. STRAIGHT up. Seriously. When we got up to cruising altitude I turned to the woman next to me and asked her "are we in space?". I was seated across from her children (this jet had a four-seat-face-each-other-thing) and they giggled the entire time and that was the only reason I didn't bawl my eyes out from sheer terror.

But that's not the point of my story. The point of my story is that when I first got in the jet I noticed that same woman in the very very back of the plane with one of her kids. She looked like she was confused and didn't know if she wanted to sit way back there with him and I am nosey and so I already knew from eavesdropping that she was traveling with her husband, two little boys and giant pregnant belly (which was filled with twins as I was to find out later). So I stuck my nose in even further and offered to take the way back so she could sit in the four seat thing with her whole family. I smugly went to take my hero's position all the way in the back. (Seat change explained below). I am SUCH a good person. Ask anyone. I couldn't find the seat belt though? I searched and searched.

Then a man came and sat right across from me and we were sitting so close to each other that our knees were intertwined. Face-to-face. I was like, "oh man I hope I like this guy because this is AWK.WARD." He had a book which was a good sign just in case. But his seat for sure had a seat belt. I stood to look better for my seat belt, which meant he had to stand too to let me look and turn around and stuff. Finally it dawned on me that the seat was probably flipped down and I needed to flip it up to find the seat belt.

NOPE. TOILET.

The Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day

Occasionally, at my fancy lady business job, I am asked to speak to prospective recruits to convince them that our Company is the best, and the way we do things is the best, and they should really, really come and work here!

 

A few months ago, I had an appointment with one such man, and might I add he was very sharply dressed and even maybe a little bit on the handsome side. Of course I was embarrassed of my outfit, but that's not the point of my story. The point of my story is that during the appointment, he and I sat across from one another, with no desk in between us and we chatted and chatted and I crossed and uncrossed my legs eight hundred times and this went on for about 30 minutes. And then he left, and I considered the meeting a success.

 

Later, and I don't remember why (I probably dropped an M&M) I saw/felt in my crotchal area and was horrified to discover a two-inch GIANT hole at my upper upper thigh.

 

 

(*&*&^$&^%$&^%$(&^%^)(&)(*&

 

 

 

 

 

Later still, I was running late for softball, and so I quick quick quick changed from the above outfit into my softball outfit really fast, and that included an underwear change. I threw the above outfit plus underwear into my gym bag which is just an old tote bag and RAN into my boss' office for a quick commiseration about the hole in the crotch story and then off to softball.

 

While I was in there, the cleaning gal for our office approached me with her gloved hand outstretched. "I think these are yours", she said and instinctively I put out my hand, into which she dropped my DIRTY UNDERWEAR which must have fallen out of the tote in my haste. In the middle of the office hallway.

 

**What a nice human. I was glad for two things: 1) she was a woman and 2) she had gloves on.

 

And then at softball later my windshield got smashed by a softball. The End.

Telecommuting, Redneck Style

My mom is in hospice, and so I have spent most of this summer at my parents' place up in Roosevelt MN. My company has been wonderful - they're allowing me to work remotely so that I can be with her. I brought my home office computer and two monitors and set them up in my old loft bedroom. I love it! I wear my overalls every day (and to bed) and work work work and sometimes I go down the ladder and vacuum, or do laundry, or get pills or make meals and it's been working really well.

Today I was on the phone with an insurance agent following up on a binder that I had ordered. My mom was downstairs with HER NURSE, talking about vitals and pain management and this weird pain in her head and could that be another tumor?

...when all of the sudden BANG!!!

My dad shot a squirrel. From inside the house.

I pretended nothing happened

Solar Eclipse......cont

Solar Eclipse

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.

The Half Moon Treatment

Zach and I just got back from Oahu. While there, we walked about a mile to get from our hotel to our favorite beach spot. The quickest way was to walk along the beach but at some points the water line was right up against a hotel and so part of the way we had to walk along a pretty narrow sidewalk (pictured here). 

We walked with tubes and so it was a little awkward to traverse, and in some places it jams up with people cuz a giant turtle appears in the water below - anyway it's mostly single file. One day I was ahead of Zach in the single file walking, and we are in love, so I lowered my pants enough to give him the half moon treatment. 

When I turned around to laugh about it with him, he wasn't there. He's so sweet he let a tiny little demure Japanese woman and her husband pass him.

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.

My Coat

We had been having some yo-yo weather in Minnesota and one day I grabbed a wool jacket to wear to work. Of course it warmed up mid-afternoon and so I forgot the jacket in the conference room (I had a very important business lady meeting there and I was running fashionably late so I didn't stop by my office prior to). 

The next day I asked the receptionist if anybody saw my jacket. Nope.

"Oh well, it will turn up."

Several days and maybe even a couple weeks went by. My friend Tara came into my office to tell me the story of how "somebody" had dropped a coat off in my other friend Alayet's cube. She was excited that somebody was giving her an article of clothing. She went on to tell Tara, though, that the coat had hairs on it and therefore was "dirty and disgusting" and "why would somebody give me this filthy coat?" Turns out somebody assumed since it was an XS that it was Alayet's (which is a compliment to me since she weighs about 87 pounds).

I told Tara that I forgot the jacket in the conference room and we laughed for 27 minutes.

I mean, "filthy"?

"Dirty"?

"Disgusting"?

Look how she drowns in it.

Misunderstanding

I got this text from my friend Laurissa who was vacationing in Greece:

Trendsetting

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

Prince, Vol. 2

My mom informed all of us kids of Prince's 9:30am death.

At 5:30pm.

Prince

Prince died yesterday. I got a call from a co-worker who told me the news. So, I yelled out, "PRINCE DIED!" to my office (similar to how on February 8, 2007 I yelled out "ANNA NICOLE SMITH IS DEAD!" to my office (they rely on me for celebrity news).

Anyway everybody in Minnesota is grieving in one way or another. We've lit up our Capitol building and many bridges with purple lights. A free block party and a free dance party at First Avenue was organized. About a bajillion people showed up and danced all night. They were still lining up to get in at 3:30am.

A facebook friend of mine posted that she called her dad after hearing the news and this was their conversation:

"Dad!"
"I know. I just heard."
"Heard what?"
"Prince is dead."
"Oh no - it IS real."
Moment of silence...


How sweet. They shared something together. A love of Prince and his music.

Curious, I called my own dad. This was our conversation:

"Dad! Prince is dead!"

"WELL WHAT THE HELL DO I CARE?"

I guess we share something else.