The Ludicrous Life of a Writer

So, Sunday morning, my husband came in to where I was reading the paper and picked up a different section and started reading alongside me. Co-reading of newspapers is something I highly recommend. You can learn twice as much stuff by listening to the other person's comments as you can when you are reading alone.

The first thing he mentioned was that a woman who had been doing a breast cancer walk had somehow ended up dangling from a bridge that had opened up. "Maybe breast cancer didn't seem like such a threat to her life anymore," I remarked.

He laughed, and then told me that it was Marie Osmond's birthday. "I came face to face with her once outside a restroom," I told him, "but she didn't recognize me."

This sent him into guffaws that lasted intermittently for a half hour.

I was pleased to have tickled his funny bone.

Until I found out why.

"It's just so ludicrous!" he snorted between gasps for air, a half-hour later.

Ludicrous.  Hmmphf!

Well, I'm a writer, and sometimes writers think--and do--funny things.

One night, I woke from an amazing dream that gave me a terrific idea for a blog.  The dream had unfolded in such a superb story-like manner that it would really be a shame to lose it when I fell back to sleep. I didn't trust myself to remember the dream in the morning, so I grabbed the paper nearest to me, which happened to be the newspaper section I had been working a Sudoku in when I fell asleep, and scribbled down the ideas in the margin.

A day or so later, I remembered that I had done this, and I looked for that newspaper.  It didn't take me long to realize that it had been taken out to the recycling bin. I recruited my husband to go out in the cold with me to dig into the four-and-a-half-foot rubber can to find the correct section.

"What are we looking for?" he asked.

"Handwriting in a margin--in the comic section.  It would be folded in quarters with the Sudoku showing."

Well, we pulled out and looked at every piece of newspaper in that can, and didn't find it.I looked a second time, just to be sure. Dismayed, I came back in and hunted through my nightstand again.

And, I found it.

A quarter-size section with handwriting scribbled in the margin next to the half-done Sudoku. Only problem was, the scribbling I'd done was just that--scribbing. I couldn't make anything out of it, and the dream and story and good idea were lost after all.

Fluttering

So, I was at a store, waiting in line for a cashier who kept saying, "I'm not a cashier," which did not much for my confidence in getting back to work before my lunch time ended. She was waiting on a couple--a handsome man leaning on a cane, and a hard-looking woman who clearly loved him.

Or, I should say, they were waiting on her, while she looked something up away from the counter. And waiting, and waiting, and waiting. I thought of giving up, but there wasn't another cash register on that floor, and two of my items did not have price tags, so I thought it would be prudent to be near where I had found them, instead of in a completely different department.

The man told his companion that he was going to finish his waiting in the car. She okayed this, but mentioned that she would like him to be careful on the escalator. She gave him another instruction, too, which I missed.

He smiled faintly and assured her that he would be careful. 

I felt sorry for both of them. More for him, because he was about sixty years too old to be bossed about how to get around, but, also for her, because she was so clearly afraid that he would fall, hurt himself, wrench her heart, and cost them another fortune in medical bills.

"Let me just help you get onto the escalator," she said, taking his arm.

"I'll be okay," he said.

I watched her struggle to accept this. He seemed capable and confident enough to me to find his way onto an escalator without risking life and limb.   Of course, if he fell and hurt himself, it wasn't going to wrench my heart or cost me a fortune.

I tried not to watch this, but I'm a writer.

He turned away to go, and she let him.

At first.

Then, she followed him, caught his arm, and helped him onto the escalator. I watched her watch him start down. She fluttered like a mother bird who'd just pushed out a hatchling. She jumped two seconds later, making me jump a bit, too. I imagine he had had some sort of tiny stumble that he had quickly righted, because she fluttered back to the counter. 

She thought better of that, though, and flew back over to the escalator to peer down it and make sure he got off okay at the bottom.

When she returned, I offered, "It's hard, isn't it?" But she didn't want to make conversation with me. Which was fine. Not about that, anyway.  She was soon complaining about the not-cashier, who had still not returned.

In the meantime, I stood there watching the back of her, wondering how often I flutter and boss and worry unnecessarily. I know I do--every time I ask my grown son to text me when he gets there because I know he is planning to drive across country all night, whenever I repeat to my daughter the rules for being out at night with friends, or when I remind my husband to do something I know darn well he already knows to do and probably didn't forget. 

I have spent three days wondering what, if any, good fluttering does. Did it keep the man safer? Probably not. Did it make her feel better? Probably not. Did it prove her love? Maybe. But, maybe the message he got from it was negative.Maybe, instead of thinking, "Oh, good, she loves me so much," he thought he wished she would stop fussing, would treat him like an adult, or something else.

Does my own type of fluttering do any good? I'm coming down on the side of: probably not.

The Colorblind Test

Okay. I have to start this article by stating upfront that a man who can cook like the man who cooked what I'm eating today can basically do no wrong.

But, he is slightly colorblind. The first time I noticed was shortly after our wedding. We were on a trip to see another wedding, and one of us mentioned something about a backpack worn by a person ahead of us in line. I called it dark green. He said it was black. I clarified that I meant that dark green one. "It's black," he told me.

"I mean that really, really dark green one." Then, I blurted out, "You really can't see that that's green!?"

The look on his face told me I'd pushed a sensitive subject too far. I soon learned that he wasn't colorblind.

But his mother was. He told me a story about how she had worn a certain outfit for years. She said it was blue, but it was actually periwinkle. So, he really wondered about her ability to see color.

Then came the day when I discovered that Paul couldn't tell the difference between my lavender scrubbie and his light blue scrubbie hanging in the shower. "Yours is on the left," I made sure he knew.

Other blue/lavender situations arose. Sometimes, he would take the objects in question over to look at them closely in better light. Sometimes, he would say, "Okay, I can see now that that's a little bit blue." Often, though, we just had to agree to disagree. He was so confident in his ability to see color well that he sometimes made me wonder about mine.

But, as a firstborn and an only son, he came by some measure of arrogance naturally.

After all, I couldn't see that band of green above the horizon that he often talked about. Nor could I see green in the gray and pink tiles in our bathroom. He once bought a gray shirt on sale, thinking it was green, and was disappointed when I told him it was gray. Later on, he would mystify the children by sending them around and around the house, looking for the "green recycling bin."

"What are you doing?" I would finally ask.

"Dad said to put this in the green bin."

I pointed to the gray one, and they would look at me, puzzled. "Don't worry about it," I'd say.

The clincher was when he took the main bathroom toilet outside in the sunlight to prove to the children that it was pink.

It wasn't, but we're still fighting about that one. We did used to have a pink toilet in that bathroom that matched the pink tub and pink sink. Hey, this house was built in the sixties--what can I say? But we replaced the toilet years ago. He doesn't remember that. Or, sometimes, he remembers that we replaced it with another pink toilet.

There was one time, when colorblindness charts were present at a doctor's office, when his confidence cracked a bit and he admitted he couldn't see all of the numbers in the bubbles.

But, overall, he's continued to insist that he can see colors correctly, and it was years before I could convince him to stop wearing a red and green floral tie with a blue and yellow striped shirt. "The tans match," he'd say.

Sometimes, he will ask me for help in choosing a tie. We usually get through this by my suggesting good, better, best.  Or telling him, "There's nothing in that tie that matches the blue of your shirt." Sometimes he takes my advice, and sometimes he doesn't. The subject has been pretty much closed--from both sides--for some time.

So, last weekend, I was slightly amazed when he wanted to take a colorblindness test he'd seen on Facebook.  Honestly, I just stayed out of it.  The task was to line up four rows of colors as they went through very slight variations from red to green, from green to blue, from blue to lavender, and from lavender to green.  I looked at those rows and thought, "Good luck."

He reported his score, in the low 100's, a few minutes later.  Zero was perfect, he explained, and the worst score was something in the mid-1500's.  "So, a slight problem," I assessed.

"I can't wait for you take this test!" he exclaimed, to my surprise.  "And the kids!"

"You think the kids have a problem with colorblindness?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I'm just curious to see how they do." 

He asked me again the next morning, so I took the test.  I knew in the back of my mind that if I didn't get a zero, my credibility would be on the line in all future tie conversations.  Even if I got a two, I thought, when I told him a tie didn't have purple, he would be thinking, "But maybe it's that two percent she can't see!"

So, after I got my rows lined up, I went over the test again. Was this red rosier than the one next to it? Was this greener than that one? All the way through. After I pushed the SUBMIT button, I called out to Paul. "Do you want to come and see my score?" I thought it would be very prudent of me to be sure he saw it himself, with his own perfect eyes.

"What'd you get--a two?" he scoffed.

He stood over me, looking at the screen where my score, zero, stood.  I didn't say a word.

But, he did, throughout the day. "It's a mourning process," he said. I looked at him incredulously. I wonder what it would be like to go through life honestly, truly believing you had no natural flaws. Mere mortals like myself will never know.

"Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses," I said. I really couldn't see why that particular test was such a revelation to him. But, apparently, it was. "It's not like it's a character flaw," I pointed out. "It's not something you can help. You just don't have as many cones in your eyes as you should. What's to be ashamed of? It's not a sin."

So, he posted his score with the words, "Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born colorblind?" That was cute, and I took heart.

At bedtime, he was saying, "I know I can see colors. See? That's a blue, and. . ."

"Paul," I said, gently. "Your diminishment is less than ten percent on that scale."

Then, he took heart. "Thanks for putting it that way," he said, and we smiled at each other.

He knows very well I can't sing.

For Thomas

The other day, I remembered that it was the birthday of an old friend. Not that he was old--not even close! But, that he was my friend over twenty years ago.  It must be that long since I last heard from him, but I've been catching up with old friends lately, so I decided to try to find him again.  I've looked for him, briefly, before, from time to time, with no results.  He wasn't a high-tech type of guy. I've never found him on Facebook.

But this time, when I Googled his full name, I found him right away.  Full name, right age, along with the city we'd both lived in at the time.  I recognized the names of his mother and brother, which were listed there, too.  It was definitely my Thomas.  He went by Thomas, not Tom.  He nicknamed me Jelly Bean, and I called him Teddy Bear a few times.

And, I saw something else there, with his full name and right age and city and his mom and brother.  I saw the year of his death.

I wasn't entirely surprised by this.  I've wondered sometimes if he were still around.  When I knew him, he had already overcome cancer. Twice.  

I wondered if that had been what had happened to him, or something else.  Had he ever married? Was he alone when he died? I wanted to know more.

And, I realized when I looked back on it that, for several years, he was the best friend I'd had. He was always there for me.  He would come over and hang out, listen to me complain about my ex-husband or help me take my young children to the state fair, tell me which boyfriends were psycho, help me clean out my storage room.  He fit himself neatly into my plans or my time.  He listened to and became whatever I needed him to hear or be.  Being a single mom can be lonely, and he got that.  Maybe I was his best friend at that time, too. I think so.

He had wanted our relationship to be more than it was.  And he was so good to me, so generous and patient, so kind and constant, he really deserved that.  But I didn't see him as a potential partner. From the start, he had not seemed to me like my type.  I'm short--and he was not shorter, but I'm pretty sure he weighed less.  He was younger.  I was married and divorced, with children. He'd had a hard-knock life, while I'd been very sheltered.   I had a college degree and a career.  He had not finished high school, and went from job to job, and apartment to apartment. He wasn't as stable in his personal life as he was as my friend.  I had to consider what bringing him fully into my life would be like for my kids.

I had understood and accepted his need to move on and out of my life. From time to time, I've missed him, in a wistful, he-would-understand way.  But I've understood that our parting was for both of our own good.

Even though decades have passed and I never really expected to see him again, and even though I had rejected him for what I'd thought were good reasons, after seeing a "year of death," I cried.

I cried from knowing that he is really gone, but I think more from seeing how scant is anything that is left of him.  He lived, he breathed, he walked and worked and socialized and laughed.  He had a crazy, cackly laugh that makes me smile as I recall it.  He loved greatly.  He was kind and constant and wise.  Gentle and unassuming.  He lived a simple life and didn't impose his needs, thoughts, or ways on anyone.

One site said he was dead; another gave a phone number.  After hesitating for a while, I called the phone number.  When we had been friends, his phone number had changed almost as often as his address had, and, when I would find it again, I would call him up and ask him, "What's your phone number?" and smile at his great, cackly laugh.  

So, I dialed the phone number and waited to hear his voice again.  I planned to ask, "What's your phone number?" and see if I could hear that same great laugh.

But the number had been disconnected.

The next day, I tried again to find out more.  From what I knew of him and his family, I supposed there might have been no one who had paid for an obituary to be printed.  But I found an obituary that was exactly 1.5 lines long in a newspaper in a state I'd never known he lived in.  I found out where his body had been disposed of.  I supposed he had probably been, for lack of funds, cremated and released to family.   Even though I anticipated these details, as each was confirmed to me I cried again. 

He was here on earth for a few decades, but there seems to be hardly anything left of him.

And so, I cried.  And I prayed for him--that he can know that I remember him, that he mattered to me, that he did make an impact.  That I appreciate all he did, and was, and gave, and taught.

I can do nothing to ease whatever he went through in his short life, or to help him now.  All I can do is remember him and write something down about him that is longer than 1.5 lines.  

Because every person is worth more than that.

And, even if it cannot be fully returned, a gift of love is something to appreciate.

Rosh Hashanah Dinner

I have to tell you about our Rosh Hashanah dinner.  No, we're not Jewish, but our cook celebrates all the holidays around the world that he wants to celebrate.  At any given moment, I can come home from work to find out that it is Bastille Day or Bolivian Independence Day. Makes for an exciting life.

The dinner?  Well, the dinner was marvelous.  Juicy chicken breasts with orange-honey glaze; challa bread; roasted potatoes, fresh kale, pear, and feta cheese salad.  Bienenstich cake.

It was the timing that was tricky.  

I had spent my third day in a row in abject misery.  Our new air conditioning unit at work was fried, and inside temperatures had climbed to above ninety degrees.  (Yes, I did actually bring a thermometer from home, and I did actually check.)  After sauteeing in that for nine hours a day, three days in a row, I was not at my most patient self.  It took about six hours at home before the sound of the electric fan that had been set up next to my cubicle stopped rattling my brain.

I felt ready for bed the minute I got home.  I peeled off my sticky top and skirt and got right into my nightgown.  Then, I ran into a little naked person in the hall.  "You're naked," I pointed out, rather brilliantly.  

This set him off in peals of laughter.  "I just had a bath," he said.  My husband had my kids bathing before dinner, which is not the usual schedule but turned out to be ingenious, as we had dessert after bedtime.

My husband apologized that he was behind schedule.  He'd had to stop everything, he said, to help a daughter with her homework.  "Her geography teacher told her false information," he said, "and I had to get her to unbelieve it."

Her assignment was to make a map of our capital city.  "Her teacher told her to make the city center the east doors of the temple," he explained. "So, everything she was doing was like a half-block off on her grid and she couldn't make it work right."  City center is actually in the middle of an intersection.  Everyone knows that, we thought.

"And he told her," he said with some disgust, as he whipped up an egg-white coating for the challa bread, "that the Mormons made that the city center because they believe when Jesus comes back, that will be the spot on which he will stand." 

"I've never heard that before in my life," I said.

"I know!" he agreed.  "It seems like if people hear something once, they perpetuate it whether it's true or not." 

"It's easy for people to believe whatever they hear about a minority group," I agreed.

Dinner seemed hours away, and I went to settle down with the newspaper and de-stress.

My little boy reminded me that it was Back-to-School Night.

Yippee.  My favorite.

"Will you go and see our art project?" he asked, hopefully.  "It's really neat."

So, before dinner was ready, I was pulling my clothes back on and heading back to the school. We ate hurriedly during the half-hour between sessions--when they're trying to force you to go to a PTA meeting. Then we hurried back again for the presentations in the other kids' classes.

I had told my husband that I wanted to lose a few pounds before my upcoming surgery, as I anticipate that it might make me gain weight, and I would hate to go up from here.  But it seemed every single menu item had sugar in it.  Even the meat and vegetables.  

"You have to eat sweet things at the beginning of the year so that you will have a sweet year," he explained.

We're not Jewish!  It's not our new year!

By the time I was cramming the almond-studded cake into my mouth an hour after my preferred bedtime, I felt soggy with fatigue.  Paul was also tired, but triumphant in his accomplishment. "You know you do this for yourself, don't you?" I ventured to ask.

"Yes," he admitted.  "And I had a lot of fun doing it.  I just got behind because she needed help with her homework."

As worthwhile a facet of parenting as making a fancy dinner, I would say.

Romance Meets Reality

When a friend of mine got flowers at work, everyone, of course, admired them.

This put her in an awkward position.

It is nice to receive flowers at work when it's your birthday, anniversary, or Valentine's Day.  I have been such a recipient, and it can be fun to be all, "Yes, there is someone who cares about me enough to do this."

But, what if the flowers are an apology for bad behavior?  A make-up request after a fight?  A ploy to manipulate?  What is a girl to do?  Say, "No, it's not my birthday--my boyfriend cheated on me and thinks this will fix everything"?

I think not.

My friend and I agreed that there should be some rules established about when it's okay to send flowers to work.  Mostly, we decided, it should be when the occasion is positive, or at least neutral.

I once rejected flowers delivered to my home because they had been sent by a psycho who was trying to get me back.  He had tried to control what I wore and read.  He had tried to isolate me from my friends.  In casting aspersions upon my faultless father, he had tried to isolate me from my family. In casting aspersions upon my spiritual leader, he had tried to isolate me from my support system.  He was moving in psychologically on taking over my home and my children.

It was over, in no uncertain terms, and he had been clearly told that.  Gifts had been returned. Conversation had ended. 

I am glad that big box of flowers had not been delivered to my place of employment, because I did not feel just throwing them away would suffice, although that, in and of itself, would surely have made a scene memorable to co-workers.

No.  I called the company and asked them to pick up the flowers and notify the sender that they had been rejected.  He had started following me, and I wanted him, not just my wastebasket, to know that his advances were not at all welcome.  That I was not going to be bought. That my head was never going to turn in his direction again.

Another time, I received apology flowers from someone who had called me a bad name.  Although the roses were firm and fragrant--lovely in every way, every one of them repeated that word to me whenever I looked at them.  So, they probably did not have their intended effect.

It can be tricky, knowing when to send and when to receive.  A friend once talked me into giving a man another chance based on the expense of the two dozen long-stemmed red roses he'd sent from a high-end florist one Valentine's Day.  The second chance, it turned out, was a bad idea.

My favorite time receiving flowers was when we had just moved to a new house we could barely afford and, on top of that, I had just had a baby.  My husband brought me an armful of lovely white flowers while saying these words: "Don't worry--they were really cheap."  That sums up both halves of marriage, doesn't it? Romance meets Reality.

Spring Cleaning My Body

So, I finally, finally, finally scheduled that one doctor's visit that I was supposed to have, and didn't cancel it.  You know--that yearly checkup everyone's supposed to have.  I'd rescheduled it a few times in the winter time, because we were dealing with transportation issues that you do not want to know about.

Those issues were so bad I couldn't rely on myself to get anywhere extra, which meant anything besides work or church was probably out.  So, the doctor's visit came and went, came and went.  I called to cancel and reschedule, of course, until I was too embarrassed to reschedule.

Well, let me tell you, aging is not for the faint of heart either.  First of all, I went into that one appointment thinking I would get an A and left feeling like I had an F.  I exercise, quite a lot, and I eat pretty healthy, too, and get my sleep.  I'm counting on all of that effort to keep me healthy for decades to come.  Just look into the faces of my darling children, and you'll see one of my best reasons for this desire to live, and live well.

But, my discussion with my doctor left me cold--even though she admitted, "Your exercise is what's saving you."  She wanted me to change my healthy diet to a super healthy diet.  And she became quite grave over my family history.  Yes, my parents and two much older sisters have died, but I don't share their health issues.  Yes, there have been a few minor cases--and one major case--of cancer among my siblings. 

"It's a big family," I tried.  "When there are more people, more problems probably show up, because there are more people to get them."

"I have eleven siblings," my doctor countered, "and a huge extended family.  There's only been one case of cancer among all those people."

Well, that shut me up pretty good--thinking that in her opinion, my siblings are killing me.

So, secondly, that one appointment?  It's turned into twelve doctor appointments.  I kid you not.

Some of this, I expected.  I'm old enough to take part in the joy of some regular screenings, so that added two.  I had to come back for a blood test, so that made four.  My doctor wanted to biopsy something she saw.  And then, I got a call from the hospital letting me know I had apparently failed the mammo.

That's how I took it, anyway.  "Please call us to schedule more views."

More views?

Sounded like real estate, or a modeling position.  More views of . . .that?  Why?

 That's a fail, right?

I called right back.  "I'll come in today," I offered.

"Oh, no," they said, "We can't fit you in until. . ." and they gave me a date two weeks from then.  Two.  Whole.  Weeks.  In which to wonder why they needed more views.  Failing the mammo did not seem like it could be good.

"Well, can you tell me why?" They were vague.  Didn't shed any light on the subject at all.  This happened on a Thursday.

My husband tried to reassure me it was nothing.  "They wouldn't put you off for two weeks if it were serious," he reasoned.

"They deal with this all the time," I countered, panicking.  "They just can't care enough about one case to chase me down."

Friday, I was at home for an unrelated reason.  Even though all of us--five children and I, were near my cell phone all day, I somehow missed two calls from my doctor's office. "Please call back to discuss your blood work," the voice mail message said  Two.  Calls.  That day.  Two.  I also received a letter in the mail from the hospital, even though they'd reached me, telling me again to call and schedule "more views." 

Well, of course, I got those messages in the evening, after hours.  I started getting worried.  I've honestly been expecting three to five more decades out of this world, and I'd like to keep it that way.

So, I had the weekend to wait for any news, and it made me feel miserable.  Especially since I got another letter asking for more views the very next day.  "See? They are chasing me down--it is serious," I said.  That day found me at a funeral, and, as I listened to details about how another woman, about my age, had dwindled down to nothing in her living room, I glanced at my watch and saw it say quarter to twelve.  I thought, "I bet my doctor has Saturday hours until twelve."

The deceased's brother was detailing the deceased's life with a story representing each four-year period--and hadn't gotten very far.  I was sitting near a door.  I took a chance and made the call.  I was able to reach my doctor's nurse, and she told me about my blood work, which was all excellent, except for one vitamin deficiency.  She told me to pick up a vitamin supplement.  That, I felt I could do. Easy peasy.

I asked her about the failed mammo report, and she was able to put my fears on that point largely to rest with a couple of details that it seemed like the person on the phone could have supplied.  Or the writer of the two identical letters.  Don't they know any mystery in this kind of thing is going to scare people?

Because I lost my glasses walking between home and next door and could never find them, I added in an eye doctor appointment, and my dental cleaning came due, too.  I started feeling like all these doctors were spring cleaning my body, looking anywhere for some dust.

As one sibling had surgery to remove an organ that I'd also had screened in the past, that I ought to get that same thing checked out.  What sense would it make to check everything but that?  I looked up just exactly how far in the past, and it was 4.5 years.  I made the call to schedule yet another appointment.  "How often am I supposed to be getting this checked?" I asked, innocently.

"Every six to twelve months," the young, fresh voice on the phone said.

So, that turned into a need for another biopsy, too.

I'm mostly through this spring cleaning now, and, through all this dusting, sweeping, mopping, and flushing of the insides of my body, nothing too serious has been found, although I've still got two or three procedures coming up.

One of my biopsies was scheduled for the doctor's convenience at the fancy cancer center, which I've luckily never been to.  The receptionist asked me for a twenty-five dollar co-pay, but I told her I'd pay thirty, because I think the insurance card she was reading was old.  "Well, if not, it will go on the balance."

"There shouldn't be a balance," I said.

"For the future."

"I won't be here in the future," I said confidently.

She misunderstood.  "Oh, don't say that," she said, her voice shaking with sympathy.

"I mean I'm not planning to get cancer," I said, then realized, in a place like that, I'd probably just committed a huge faux pas.  But, what other point could there be to my submission to all this searching for dust in my insides than to not need to come back?

I had my yuckiest procedure yesterday, and I realized I don't think my parents ever went through this. They never scheduled tests just to make sure they were okay.  If they didn't have a symptom they couldn't handle at home, that was the only time they saw a doctor.  Sitting there freezing in a hospital gown with my stomach roiling, I thought maybe all of this isn't necessary.  Then I remembered, oh, yeah--my parents aren't here anymore.

On the "someday wish list" my doctor handed me, just to be thorough, are a trip to a dermatologist for a complete skin cancer scan, a consult with a podiatrist, and a possible heart scan which is supposed to tell me my risk of heart disease in the next ten years.  I can tell you that right now for free.  With my cholesterol and blood pressure at excellent levels and my heart getting as much cardio as it does, my risk for the next ten years is pretty much zero.  So, I'll be skipping that non-covered-by-insurance study.  And I had to almost laugh when my doctor suggested I pay $9000 for a genetic study to be done.  She may have that kind of extra cash, but, yeah, not I.  I'm not having any more children.

My children will have to schedule their own spring cleaning sessions when they hit a certain age.  I'll be here, so I'll remind them.