Sometimes a blogger gets busy. Sometimes it’s best for all concerned to look at funny dog pictures instead of reading any words at all.
Thanks to fellow blogger Tom Rupe for this dogalicious photo array. Which is your favorite?
writer, blogger, crafty woman
Sometimes a blogger gets busy. Sometimes it’s best for all concerned to look at funny dog pictures instead of reading any words at all.
Thanks to fellow blogger Tom Rupe for this dogalicious photo array. Which is your favorite?
I love my neighborhood. We have a clubhouse that is divided into three rooms: An exercise room, where I go several mornings a week so that I can say “I already go to a gym,” whenever a Florida woman tells me I should join her gym and go to a boot camp exercise class. (For just four walls and a collection of chrome and rubber, the exercise room takes a big burden off of my shoulders, let me tell you.) A meeting room where no one ever goes except if you’re attending a homeowners’ association board meeting, which no one ever has done in the history of the room. And the mail room.
The mail room makes me feel old, because I didn’t think I’d live in a place where I’d have to go to a separate room down the street to pick up my mail. The mail room is giving me a taste of living in a retirement community, and it’s as weird as you imagine it’s going to be. I never see our mailman, because he puts mail in our boxes behind a wall. I hear him shuffling around back there, but it’s awkward to not say anything, but it would be even more awkward to speak to him. Not being able to see your own mailman makes you feel like you’re a little cog in a large wheel and not like a real homeowner at all.
In the mailroom there are two nice things: a book shelf where people donate their old books and you can look through and take whatever books you want, and a bulletin board where people in the neighborhood can post things. The bulletin board is like the wild, wild west of bulletin boards, though, because there are no rules and there is no sheriff to police it. You can put anything you want up there and no one is in charge of tearing it down if it’s inappropriate or in bad taste.
I suspected that there were some neighborhood do-gooders who took it upon themselves to remove things from the bulletin board that they didn’t want to see any more. Maybe because they had been up there too long or maybe because they didn’t want to look at the print-out of the big oak entertainment center that someone is trying to sell For A Good Price, or maybe because they think it’s up to them to remove anything tacky. I tested the theory by posting a flier for a group I volunteer for and the following day just happened to be the day the bulletin board was wiped clean. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
So I was thrilled when I saw this notice up on the bulletin board about a month ago:
Ashley, I don’t know who you are, but you are definitely the coolest 11-12-year-old in our neighborhood or possibly in any neighborhood ever. A defense club is by far the best idea for a summer project that I’ve seen yet. I imagine Ashley’s mother, on about the second day of summer vacation, told Ashley she should decide to do something with herself for the summer. Something that involves playing with others, building something, and getting the hell out of the house.
Not sure mom meant that she should teach other 11-12-year-olds how to make weapons, use those weapons, and more! but that right there is an 11-12-year-old entrepreneurial spirit.
I like that she is having try-outs and is limiting the club to only three people. Make people put a fire under it and join before they can think better of studying weapons training for the summer. It gives it that elite, Navy Seal, Green Beret vibe.
And I love the Good Luck! at the end. Ashley is like the guy on the tape in Mission Impossible. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to make weapons out of your dad’s lawn implements, whatever a $10 gift card to Office Depot can buy you, and that wrench that the plumber left under your bathroom sink.
Unfortunately, Ashley’s Defense Club flier was taken down by the neighborhood Tight Ass Club the day after it was posted.
I hope Ashley got some response, though. As I drive through the neighborhood, I’m on the lookout for 11-12-year-old girls sharpening shivs on the clubhouse green. Ashley, if you’re out there, I would hire you to build my website or design my backyard landscaping or housesit or walk my imaginary dog or whatever other tasks I might dream up. The more I think about you, the more I think you’re one badass 11-12-year-old girl who will one day take over the mailroom bulletin board and beyond. Our neighborhood needs more kids like you. And less like your male contemporaries who ding-dong-dash and run their skateboards in front of my car, those futureless D-bags. I will not be surprised at all if one day I’m reading about U.S. President-elect Ashley, who reminisces about the day she formed her first Defense Club.
It’s normally October when I post about my one-and-only trip to the doctor for the year. But here it is, only June. I had to have a spur-of-the-moment, unscheduled physical because I got a new doctor. I separated from my old doctor, who, while she did read my blog and I’ll give her credit for that, kept telling me I was fine. Cholesterol is 249? No problem! You’re great! That blip on your EKG that keeps getting rounder and uglier every year? Don’t sweat it. Old Doctor unwittingly encouraged me to keep doing whatever I was doing.
“I don’t have a single health problem and I’m not on any medications!” I would brag at parties, with cheese log stuffed in my cheeks and a tumbler full of wine in my hand.
Then I switched doctors. Happy hour is officially over. So is going to the gym without a half-gallon of water. And bring on the maxi-sized pill case, because I’ll now be on all those supplements that are so popular with people my age.
New Doctor is not about to take all the blame for this drastic change in my lifestyle. He got all of my medical records from Old Doctor and then he copied them and emailed them to me. And that was the first time I ever saw with my own eyes all of my test results and all the things the doctor wrote down during my exams.
Holy crap. I had been careening toward an early death and had no idea. Eating out, drinking every day, eating cupcake frosting out of the bowl with a spoon, cracking jokes throughout my physicals with Old Doctor, and all the while my “numbers” were going up (or down, whichever is the bad way) and nobody thought to tell me. It’s all fun and games until someone has to have a colonoscopy.
Most of what she wrote down was positive. She said I was age appropriate, well nourished, and my mood was appropriate to the situation. I’m taking that all as a compliment and not that I was dressing like a slut.
I was oriented to person, place and time with no confusion noted. Seeing as I am often running late and forget what pharmacy I use, I’m pretty proud of that one. They made no mention in my records of the fact that when I exit the examining room, I never know which way to turn to get back to reception. Bad sense of direction and faulty short-term memory were not recorded.
But even some of the good things sounded pretty horrid. The picture of health isn’t a pretty picture when you’re forced to use medical jargon. I was shocked at how aged, puffy and diseased my internal organs sounded. Her report went through my whole body and made it sound like a lumpy, pulsating hunk of lard.
My head was normocephalic, atraumatic, without any gross head or neck masses.
My turbinates revealed no abnormalities, but my oropharynx and posterior pharynx revealed pink, moist, patent tissues without mass or erythema. (That just sounds like borderline porn.)
No bruits were anscultated.
She felt no murmurs, gallop, rubs or clicks.
No clubbing. (I don’t think I’m supposed to take that as an order.)
Bowel sounds present x4. (Times 4? Doesn’t that seem loud? That can’t be good.)
On my blood work, I was negative on occult (which I think is good. You never want the occult in your bod) and and no squamous were seen (also good . . . yeah, let’s just say that’s good).
I’m third generation on my TSH, which is probably more evolved and hipper than first generation.
None of these things were the problem, though. Old Doctor didn’t write down anything bad, she just let the lab results tell the story . . . to no one. And New Doctor is quite the man of action, because he read those results and started making lists of things for me to do. And unfortunately, none of my newly revealed health issues have anything to do with inherited tendencies. It’s all stuff that I can, should and must (New Doctor says) work to improve. Damnit.
I promised him that I had already started to make some changes. He said he would run another set of labs and then he’d let me know if I can still have my one precious glass of wine every night. But the cereal bowl of frosting is out.