Random: Garbled Song Lyrics

I was skimming through Alphainventions and saw a blog post written by someone still apparently mourning the death of Michael Jackson.  She said she and some friends were listening to MJ’s song “Belly Jeans.”  I had to giggle thinking about Michael crooning about “Belly Jeans, she’s not my lover…”

Back in the 70’s, a family friend thought the one-hit wonder “My Sharona” was actually “Rice-a-Roni.”  Like an entire song was devoted to the ” San Francisco treat.”  This also brought to mind the episode of “King of Queens” where Doug was insisting that the song “Forever in Blue Jeans” was “Reverend Blue Jeans,” about some really cool preacher that wore blue jeans.  This really cracked me up the first time I saw it because I, too, at one time thought the lyrics were “reverend blue jeans.”

Chemical Dependency ~ The Legal Kind (Part 2)

Last week or so, I read my e-mail newsletter from trainer Jillian Michaels of “The Biggest Loser.”  Much to my chagrin, I read how hormones can affect your weight (I already knew that), but it went on to explain that those hormones could be adversely affected by taking SSRI’s (taken for anxiety and/or depression).  Now, I’m by no means obese, but in the past few years I’ve packed on about 15 to 20 extra pounds despite the fact that I eat less and exercise more than I ever have in my life.  This bit of info really sucks.

When my anxiety peaked about six years ago and I spoke to the doctor, he asked me what had seemed to help my dad’s depression.  He explained that often what worked for a patient’s family member may be likely to work for the patient.  When I told him what seemed to help dad, though, he said he wouldn’t prescribe that for me because it’s been known to cause weight gain.  Bless his soul.  He instead prescribed Lexapro, another SSRI, that he said had few side effects.

I started off on the lower dose of 10 milligrams.  I still went in to talk with the counselor, and I didn’t notice any big changes, although I was crying less and able to sleep again through the night.  After a couple weeks, though, I started noticing very subtle changes in my mood and outlook.  Things didn’t seem that difficult anymore.  Things I had dreaded doing seemed like tiny bumps in the road.  Hubby and the kids noticed changes in me more than I noticed myself.  I seemed calmer and happier, they insisted.  After about a month, they increased my dosage to the current 20 mg.  I actually was looking forward to challenges that months before had seemed like obstacles I could never overcome.  I knew I’d finally become the serene person I was meant to be when I watched Oldest Son scrape Big Daddy’s car right into the side of my van (there was nothing I could do to stop it) and I didn’t freak out.  I didn’t shriek.  I just went over to inspect the damage and find out if he was all right.

Let me assure you, this drug does not produce a high.  It does not mask my emotions.  What it does is allow me to finally be who I really am.  I’m not encased in a web of fear and anxiety.  It’s easier for me to live up to my potential because I don’t feel the need to run away from challenges.  I’m able to meet them head-on.  Had I felt like this twenty years ago, I would have snapped at the kids less.  Hell, I could have become the president of the United States, if I had wanted such a lousy thankless job.

When I mentioned Jillian’s newsletter to Big Daddy, whining about how I was never going to lose weight, Mr. Practicality said “You’ll just have to work harder.  Either try to work harder at managing your moods without the medication, or keep taking them and work out harder.”  Then in a nanosecond he amended that statement by saying I’d better just do some harder workouts.  I think he’s scared of bitchy anxious Mama coming back.  And I think he realizes what other people need to realize.  You just can’t wish away chemical depression or anxiety.  But like many illnesses today, modern medicine has provided treatments.

Chemical Dependency ~ The Legal Kind (Part I)

I’ve always been a worry-wart, high-strung, stressed-out kind of person.  I landed in the hospital for a week of tests toward the end of my Kindergarten year.  Seems the rigors of cutting stiff waxy milk cartons with little rounded-edged scissors (really an impossible task for anyone!) and the stress of trying to figure which hand to put over my heart every morning for the Pledge of Allegiance (I have a curious difficulty telling my left from my right) ended up giving me extreme stomach pains.  They thought I might have ulcers at the ripe old age of five.

I was the queen of angst before angst was a word.  I dreaded new situations, hated being out of my comfort zone.  I quit jobs when they got too scary and left a high school friend roommate-less when I chickened out of going to college the year after high school.  I spent several more times in the hospital, with perplexed doctors trying to figure out what was causing my acute stomach spasms.  I kept plodding on the best I could, not knowing life could be any different.

It wasn’t until six years ago that I learned how different life could be.  I had reached a stress level so debilitating that I couldn’t function.  Oldest Son had just graduated from high school.  I was trying to plan a nice party for him.  I was secretly worried about him going off to college and probably losing the scholarship that he had been awarded.  But none of these things alone could have accounted for the overwhelming fear I was experiencing.  I was at an age where I could blame hormones,  and assumed I was in the beginning stages of menopause.  Whatever was the cause, I needed help quickly!

Big Daddy made an appointment for me.  He was worried.   After several appointments of talking with a counselor, and them learning of my dad’s family history of depression, I was put on an SSRI.  I was highly skeptical.  There was no way a simple little pill was going to pull me out of this funk.

Facebook Pages and Blogging Friends

A few weeks ago, I was checking out my Facebook home page and noticed a couple of my blogging friends were adding new cool stuff to their Facebook accounts.  These are the same two women who persuaded me to sign up for a Facebook account in the first place.  We use the blog application there to make it easier for Facebook addicts to get updates on their favorite blogs and find them all in one place.  One of the things they were doing that night was adding a new Facebook fan page for their blog.  I had no idea how to do this or why I even should, but I wasn’t about to be left out.  If these smart awesome bloggers were doing it, then it must be worth doing!

First I left a message for Paula asking how the heck did she set up her page.  Then I noticed Cyndi was online and I asked her for some assistance.  Although they were both busy setting up their own pages, they took the time to assist this technologically challenged blogger.  I took their advice, played around a little, and came up with a cute little fan page of my own.  I still wasn’t sure what all I could do with it, but it now exists in all its glory.

Middle Son J has sent us some pictures of his months spent in Europe.  I decided to post them on my Facebook fan page.  It’s so much easier to post pictures here than on my blog.  Oldest Son has some awesome pics from his months in Iraq that I would like to post at some point.  The possibilities are endless.  I could even post naked pics.  Good God!  Not of me!  I wouldn’t do that to you.  You’d vomit!  Maybe of my dog–without her collar on.  She’s so cute!

If you want to see J’s pics, visit my MamaNeeds2Rant Facebook page.  While you’re there, do what the cool kids are doing and become a fan.  You’ll get updates on new posts, pictures, and anything else I can think up.  Visit Cyndi’s and Paula’s FB pages too.  They have links to them from their blogs.

Graduation Never

Okay.  I love my sons.  To pieces.  I’m not trying to kick them out of the house or anything.  But I do want them to finish college someday.  So they can start their grown-up lives.  And then proceed to buy a house say maybe a few doors down from us.

Youngest Son doesn’t seem to be a problem.  He’s already ahead of where he should be.  However, he wants to be a doctor or a dentist and so should be in school for like umpteen more years.

Oldest Son, he is a dilemma.  He’s the smartest person I know.  But he has a lot of trouble with the school thing.  If he doesn’t feel like doing an assignment, he just doesn’t do it.  He can ace just about any test out there, but unfortunately, most of his teachers handed out assignments that needed to be turned in.  I can’t even tell you how many teacher conferences I was called to discuss this mystery.  Was it ADHD, like some counselors diagnosed?  Or was it just boredom, like a few people suggested?  I couldn’t just assume he was lazy and then beat his ass like I felt like doing–maybe he really couldn’t help it.  But we tried everything; even a full scholarship couldn’t change his pattern.  The stupid Army was supposed to send him somewhere that would make full use of his potential but since one hand doesn’t know what the other one is doing, the plan changed.  Next week he is starting his third college, an online school.  He’s a whiz with computers but you pretty much need that piece of paper to get a good job.  I wanted him to go somewhere with hands-on training, like a technical school.  He’s very good with a structured environment, and you can’t really procrastinate in a hands-on type of school.  He’s a great worker and a creative thinker.  Just don’t ask him to write a damn paper.  I’m hoping the third time’s a charm, but he still needs a lot of credits to graduate.

Middle Son J just dropped a bombshell that he might not bother going to school this fall when he gets home from Germany.  I realize that he’s been away from home for a year, but the plan all along was to get back to school ASAP.  I spent a lot of time filling out his financial aid crap and reminding him to do what he needed to get back in there. It was his choice to postpone his education after his very first semester.  For some reason, he was insistent about joining the Army that spring even though we tried to talk him out of it.  J is very stubborn and when he decides to do something, there is no talking him out of it.  He has to learn every lesson the hard way.  After his months of basic training in Georgia and AIT in Texas, he finally finished up his freshman year the next spring.  Everything was in place to go back in the fall until the Army decided to ship him to Germany for a year.  At this point, he has more experience in his major than probably any of his fellow students, even upperclassmen.  But he still needs to finish the education.  And he wants to postpone it another semester.  It’s driving me crazy!

Boys, you don’t even have to move out once you graduate.  We kind of like having you around.  Just please freakin’ graduate!!!

On Health Care: Run It Like A Business

On June 15, I got my Extended Benefits Unemployment Compensation forms in the mail.  These come from the state; unlike the regular state unemployment which can be filed online, these forms must be filled out and sent in by a specific date or “you may be ineligible for benefits for the week you are claiming.”  I looked at the claim forms and these are the dates I had to sign, date, and mail on:  5/24/09, 5/31/09, 6/7/09, and the last one 6/14/09.  Did I mention I got the thing in my mailbox on 6/15/09??

We’re all aware of the many Federal government clusterfu**s, one of the worst being the handling of Hurricane Katrina.  Almost everything the government does is done wrong.  I’m not sure if it’s the endless paper-pushing bureaucracy, an I-don’t-care attitude as long as I get my paycheck thing, or the fact that do-nothing politicians have a habit of rewarding their do-nothing supporters and friends with government jobs.  They also don’t have to worry about the bottom-line, or showing a profit like real organizations.  They just find something new to tax.  American taxpayers are the collapsing banks; government bureaucrats and politicians are the thieves robbing them blind.

My two hard-working older sons have to deal with mind-numbing military bureaucracy.  They’ve had to fight for every benefit they were promised when signing up to help defend their country. Oldest Son has had educational loans they promised to pay from 2003.  A mountain of paperwork resulted in one small payment being made; the last effort produced no results, and by now, the loan is probably accruing more interest than it was originally worth.  He has also had almost his entire reserve paycheck deducted erroneously for months due to some SNAFU someone made–and finally acknowledged–since quite a few in his unit were affected.  How long until they fix it?  Only God knows.  It’s just a good thing my son doesn’t have a family to support right now.

Everything the government touches becomes either corrupt or bankrupt.  Why did our banks fail?  Government mandates that forced banks to make loans to people that were poor risks had way more to do with the meltdown than corporate greed.  Business executives don’t take stupid risks like this if they want to make a profit.  They don’t have the luxury of being able to pick the pockets of the middle class to bail themselves out of their poor decisions.  Endless government regulations (beyond the necessary ones to ensure a safe workplace) and kowtowing to excessive union demands have caused our products to be overpriced and out of demand in the global economy.

Lee Iacocca, a business whiz who pretty much successfully raised Chrysler from the dead back in the early 1980’s using a government loan worth more than $1 billion, told The Associated Press that government intervention was strong motivation to repay the loan early.  “Their oversight is just too extreme,” said Iacocca, which was why “our 10 year loan, we paid it back in three years.  We couldn’t stand the government.  The bureaucracy kills you.”

Do you think it’s going to be any different when they take over our health care?  A very few people may be slightly better off at the expense of the rest of the nation.  Can you imagine the Federal government getting their greedy hands on all the health care dollars spent with their reputation for no accountability?  Do you want those amoral pinheads deciding whether your illness is one of the ones they deem worthy of being cured?  Can you even imagine the paperwork and time lag that every little procedure will entail?

The bottom line is, people are worried about government-run health care.  If they could find an intelligent business executive like Mr. Iacocca to run it, and have the checks and balances provided by a free-market system rather than oversight by government drones, it might not be so scary.  It’s frustrating when government bureaucracy doesn’t repay the loans they promised to pay or denies you the unemployment benefits you could use.  It’s a matter of life and death, however, when you put them in charge of your health care.

This Wasn’t The Post I’d Planned

I’ve been falling a little behind in writing so I actually wrote down on my to-do list for today to write about some little topic I’d been thinking about for the past few days.  It was the last thing left for me to do on my list.  Just then, a little before 5:00pm, Youngest Son said he just got a text saying Michael Jackson was dead.  I thought someone had made a mistake.I had just heard a couple hours earlier that Farrah Fawcett had passed away.  I thought that maybe someone got their facts mixed up.

There’s the old saying that deaths come in threes.  Ed McMahon just died the other day, but he was pretty old.  Farrah’s death wasn’t unexpected because she was very sick.  But Michael Jackson’s death was out of the blue.  He was a year younger than me.  There were no reports about him suffering from any physical ailments.  I looked at my Comcast homepage, and at the time, it just mentioned that Michael Jackson had suffered from a heart attack.  Then it hit me that he actually could have died.

All three of these celebrities were a peripheral part of my youth.  I remember them back in the 70’s when I still lived at home:  Farrah’s shining face smiling from the poster on my younger brother’s bedroom wall, Ed McMahon sucking up to Johnny every night with his booming laugh and later hosting Star Search, and Michael Jackson’s teen-aged voice singing from my old transistor radio.  And through all these decades, they’ve changed yet still stayed in the public eye.  Each in their own way left their mark on pop culture.  And while their contributions were not life-altering, they each added color and texture to the background of our lives.

Make A Change Challenge Finale

Yesterday was the final weigh-in for Tammy’s Make A Change Challenge.  I didn’t win the challenge.  I didn’t even end up with a net loss.  But I did learn that I can still eat a decent amount of food and not really gain if I do the higher intensity workout on my treadmill.  So that will be the plan.  At least two good treadmill workouts a week, and I may even be inspired to do another 5K.  The kids have been nagging me about it, and I’ve actually been thinking about it.  The last 5K Youngest Son ran, they had pizza and beer for the runners!  The one before, they had these yummy fat breakfast rolls stuffed with chicken or beef.  The races I ran, all they usually had was water and fruit!

Food!  My major motivator.  I’ll be sure to fill you all in on the details if I do run another race, or if my high-intensity workouts ever do result in an actual weight loss.  Stay tuned!

Bigger Damage Control

I hesitate to write this post for many reasons.  I want to entertain, inform, and express myself through this little blog of mine.  Sometimes I need to comment on the idiotic things going on in the larger world around me.  I try not to get too personal.

If you’ve read my blog for a while, you may have caught some comments that hinted that my mom gets on my nerves.  I feel bad about that, but that’s the way it is.  I love her but I can’t relate to her.  What’s worse, I know that what she does, and what she’s done, is not intentional.  It’s just the way she is.  So of course I feel even worse, because I know some people have terribly abusive parents.  And some people have no parents.  And I feel like I have no right to feel annoyed.

The big storm we had the other night caused a lot of damage in these parts.  Many local homes and businesses were flooded by the nearly 4 inches of rain that fell.  I found out late the following day that my mom’s basement had flooded, ruining her dryer, hot water heater, and all her Christmas decorations.  This is how she broke the news to me:

“Your brother and sister-in-law just left.  I don’t know what I would have done without them.  They’re angels.”  I asked what happened.  She told me how water had started seeping into her basement up to the second or third step.  She told me how the fire company had ended up at her house and how her hot water tank was damaged.  “I just don’t know what I would have done without[L] and [S],” she mentioned again.  “Who would I have called?  What would I have done without them?” she mentioned about three more times, just in case I hadn’t heard her the times before.  Ummm, of course, she could have called us.  She knows she could have called us.  We’ve never refused to help her.  We’ve shoveled her walks in the winter. We’ve changed our Friday night plans when she insisted her pine tree branches had to be cut down that night. But we’re not psychic.

My jaw tightened, like it often does when I talk to her.  But I wasn’t going to play into this little game.  “Just who would I have called if they weren’t around,” she said, yet again, and I said, perhaps a bit icily, “Gee, I can’t imagine.  Good thing you got a hold of them.  How did they find out about the flood?”  She informed me that she had called them because they had some of their stuff stored down there.  No one ever called us to ask for help or tell us there was a problem.  And I can’t stress enough that we’re always willing to help.  In fact, my husband is a saint like that.

She does stuff like this all the time.  When my late uncle was very sick and his daughter-in-law took care of him, we all heard over and over how she didn’t know what would happen to her if she ever became sick.  Who would take care of her?  She had nobody to depend on to do all that stuff for her.  It was a slap in the face to me and my sister-in-law, who had in fact, done everything possible for her several years ago when she had major heart surgery.  We visited her every day in the hospital and stayed with her when she came home.  Even though we each had three boys in school, we spent a lot of time with her at home just to keep her company.  We did her laundry, talked to her doctors, made sure she took the many pills she had to take at the various times of the day.  We got her groceries and cooked her meals.  We checked on her wounds and tried to make her comfortable.  My sister also did what she could after work and taking care of her two young daughters.

My brother called me the following day.  We need to coordinate our schedules to take care of things mom needs done around the house.  I talk to mom several times a week on the phone, but they visit her more so he has a better idea of what needs to be done.  I ask him how he can put up with her constant negativity.  He said she’s done the same thing to him many times when my husband has done some heavy work for her, commenting about how she doesn’t know what she’d do if she didn’t have Big Daddy to depend on.

This isn’t the effects of aging.  If anything, mom’s mellowed out.  We were never good enough, popular enough or quite what she wanted.  I don’t know how many times I was compared with some random acquaintance and asked why I couldn’t be more like her.  So, yeah, I don’t visit so much.  We’re like day and night.  We have nothing in common.  And when the conversation turns negative, it’s easier to say, “Gotta go.”  And then hang up the phone.

Damage Control

We got up early today to see what needed done after the horrendous storms we had last night.  The whole tri-state region was under a tornado watch, and then later a flood watch for most of last evening.  All the local TV stations suspended their usual programming for the hour after the 6:30 national news to alert, inform, and rehash, over and over, every little detail of the storm as it passed through the area.  BEEP…BEEP…BEEP..the weather alert warning sounded over and over.  The weather map showed an almost solid area of storm passing through — and not in the usual everyday rainstorm green color — this map was a moving ocean of bright red and yellow mega-storm danger, with two circles (indicating actual tornados) to the southeast of us.

I don’t know how it is in most areas, but our local forecasters LOVE their storms.  Maybe nothing too exciting happens in these parts, because when we get any kind of  inclement weather around here, whether it’s a couple inches of snow in the winter, or a big thunderstorm in the spring, they’ll interrupt the show you’re in the middle of watching to bring the “breaking” news.  Then, they’ll keep reporting on it, snowflake by snowflake, raindrop by raindrop, until you miss the entire ending to the show you were watching and have to turn off the TV in disgust.  Big Daddy says they dare not show the forecasters from the waist down or you’d see their weather-induced woodies.  Yep, that’s how excited they get.

I have to admit, this storm was a little scarier than most.  I jumped up out of my chair when the skylights over my head sounded like they might crack from the hail hitting them.  I ran upstairs to close the windows and the lights flickered once or twice.  Oldest Son was visiting a young woman north of Pittsburgh, and I was hoping he wasn’t on the road somewhere attempting to drive through the buckets of rain pouring down.  Youngest Son and I kept exchanging wide-eyed looks when we’d hear a particularly threatening rumble.  And where was Big Daddy?  Somewhere out on his bicycle, with his bicycle-riding friend.

You see, last night was Wednesday.  And Wednesday is their biking night.  This year, Mother Nature hasn’t been too kind to our bikers.  It’s either rained or threatened to rain almost every single Wednesday.  One night they stayed home and it ended up not raining.  Another night, they took a chance and ended up getting soaked.  They usually ride a good 30 miles, up huge hills and on narrow back roads.  Big Daddy checked the radar map when he got home from work and even though he noticed that storms were moving into the area, they made the executive decision to go for that ride.  He said it would probably be a shorter ride than usual.

Even on their usual 30-mile ride, they’re normally back here by 7:00 pm.  BEEP…BEEP…BEEP…the TV kept warning.  It was raining like a bi-atch,  it was after seven-o’-clock, and there was still no sign of our cycling die-hards.  Youngest Son asked a couple of times if I thought they were OK.  “Dumb asses,” I grumbled.  I couldn’t decide if I was more pissed or worried.

Big Daddy normally carries his cell phone with him.  I couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t calling me to pick them up.  I’d done it before, one time when his chain broke, and he’d ended up eating some pavement.  I finally broke down and called him, leaving a voice mail that asked them where the hell they were, and that there were tornado warnings everywhere and I would be happy to come and get them.  Then, of course, I started worrying that maybe they couldn’t call me because they’d both been hit by a car and were lying in some flooded out ditch.

Eventually, they straggled in the front door, sheepish grins on their faces.  “We saw some tornados,” Friend joked.  “We got your message, haha,” they chuckled.  And they insisted they didn’t hit any rain at all until they were right at the bottom of the hill to our plan.  I pretty much called them liars, because this storm was everywhere.  They finally were able to convince me when I realized their clothes were only slightly wet.  Seems somehow they’d managed to ride in the only sliver of clearing in the whole tri-state area, and when they saw the storm approaching in the distance near the end of their ride, they poured on the speed and made it home in the nick of time.

I guess it’s true that God takes care of the most clueless of creatures.