Something new with Mom since our last visit is she is using a walker. I sort of act as if it isn’t there even though it disturbs me to see her use it.

Physically, she doesn’t seem to need it. She’s only in her 60’s and she walks well without it. Hell, she’s just dragging this thing around. Mentally, she is dependent on it. She’s got a weak knee that gives out on her at random and sends her tumbling to the ground. I do remember over the last five years seeing her fall too many times to count. Last year, she fell and hurt her shoulder. Now she is afraid to walk on her own lest she end up with a more serious and crippling injury.

I asked her if she could have her knee rebuilt. Surely someone can do something? Nope.

Then I wonder (to myself) if it would help if she lost some weight? Anything to get rid of this visual that my mom is getting old. But she’s very sensitive about that and it never does any good to go there with her. Anyway, I’ve never seen her overeat and she is brilliant when it comes to nutrition. I have no idea why she is not thin, this never made sense to me.

With this bad knee and walker thing, she can’t get around like I want her to. I want to take her to see a museum. Or shopping to buy her some new clothes for Christmas. Or to the movies, like we used to do.

I got her to go to a couple of stores today. Small ones that she can take a quick walk around and then get back in the car. That is how we shop these days when we are together. I’m in the store and she’s sitting in the car waiting for me.

The last store on our stop has these amazing shoes and purses, so I insisted she come in with me. She cried real tears not to go in there, said her knee was killing her. I told her the knee was going to hurt at home as well and she could at least see some pretty things in the store versus being bored at home.

She came in and I found a place for her to sit in the shoe department. My mom has always had a thing for shoes, so I knew she would be fine there.

There is this thing my daughters and I like to do in shoe departments. We find the sluttiest shoes, try them on, then sashay down the aisle like fools. The higher the heel, the better, because none of us are tall and it’s like walking on stilts. And we laugh like maniacs.

So, while my mom was sitting there, I did my shoe routine. Now these were couture shoes, so I’d tell her the price first. Some of them were $2500. On sale.

Maybe it was these.

And then there are those that look like crap in the box but wowowowow when I put them on.

And it was fun, really fun, because I got to see her smile and laugh.

I found a pretty one for her and got her try it on. She didn’t stand up, only stared at it on her foot for a while with a smile on her face and said, “I used to wear sexy shoes.” For years now she’s been wearing special walking shoes because of that bad knee.

I stood there wishing I could buy it for her and she could walk in it instead of dragging around that walker. For that though, I’d have to turn back the hands of time. She will never be able to wear a shoe like that again. Ever.

You have got to get yourself over to Sulya’s blog and see the Christmas tree she and her son made and read her post about how she feels about Christmas.

I admit, I am a closet Scrooge and a Christmas slacker. I might not even put up a tree at all this year. I have not bought a single gift and i don’t have a list made out yet. I quit sending out cards years ago.

But hey, guess what? I signed up for Holidailies! Yayayayay.

We lived within walking distance of the Health Unit when I was a kid. This was an institutional white-ceramic-tile-everywhere-but-the-ceiling sort of place that always smelled of rubbing alcohol. This was the place for baby shots. Didn’t matter if you were a seven year-old kid, that’s what they called them. Baby shots. Maybe that term was supposed to lessen the fear of them. As an adult, it sounds innocuous, but a shot was a shot back then and I had a raging phobia of needles.

Blane says his mom used to take him to one certain doctor with a child-sized metal airplane in the waiting room. He’d start crying the minute he saw the thing, but he’d tell them, “Okay, put me in there.” He’d be smiling and crying at the same time while he sat in the airplane. (I’m laughing myself to tears at that visual)

Fast forward to present day. I’m working the county H1N1 clinic giving assembly line shots with a few other nurses. We all play our parts differently. Some of us smile and try to be sweet to the kids with a basket of candy in one hand and a needle in the other.  That’s how I do it, although I know kids are just as smart as we are. I’ve been thinking about cutting the act and going with the “mean nurse” look. The happy face thing is a bit deceptive, and if I’m gonna be in some kid’s nightmares, I’d rather not be the smiling villain.

image from healthclub.info-ebazaar.com

It’s interesting being on the other side of this “baby shot” thing. Notably the different ways families handle the situation. Some parents haven’t told their kids what they are doing there. Those are the cheerful but skeptical ones. Like I said, kids aren’t stupid. We have our syringes concealed under a cloth and when the time is right, Ta-Da! So it is wise to choose the most needle-phobic kid to go first because once the cat is out of the bag, kids start scrambling, bargaining, or putting up a pretty damn good fight.

Most families do tell their kids what is about to happen. It’s fascinating, the children are consistent. Either the entire family is crying, or they are courageous and ready to get the thing over with.

Teenaged boys provide the comic relief. They laugh at and taunt each other, “You want me to hold your hand?” Oh, and giving a shot in a tattoo can be fun, like the wildcat I shot right between the eyes last night.

You know what shot behavior I like best of all? When it’s all over with, the part where I offer a kid some candy and they shove it back at me as if to say, “I don’t want your damn candy.”

If you live in Collin County, you can get your FREE H1N1 flu shot on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays from 4PM to 8PM and Saturdays from 9AM to 5PM until December 23rd, while supplies last. This is at the free clinic which has been temporarily converted to a flu clinic and is open to everyone (rich, poor, pretty, ugly…) in the county, click here for the location. (also, the more shots we give, the more grant money we receive to treat the poor, so come to us if you’re getting the shot… It will cost you nothing and I’ll hold your hand.)

As I was walking out to the trash with the turkey carcass, I got to thinking about an English wedding I attended. How did I get from turkey to wedding?

Well, at the wedding I noticed there was a tiny wedding cake, not nearly large enough to feed even a tenth of the people there. It seemed like a disaster waiting to happen. I could see that cake running out by the time the bridesmaids got their cut. That’s how small it was.

Then something peculiar happened. The newlyweds cut the cake, each had their ceremonial bite and put the rest on the table. Then. No one ate any more cake.

So I had to ask someone. What is the deal with the cake? Is a fake or something?

I was told it was indeed a real cake and I was very welcome to have some but I would likely spit it out, that’s how bad this cake was.

I went over and took a closer look. It was a freaky color, burnt orange or something like that. A rich fruit cake. Rich! They told me it was a tradition to serve it at weddings in England and no one ever eats it, but they do it because that is how it has always been done.

What a murder of cake.

Tradition sometimes just doesn’t make sense. And that brings us back to the turkey.

I hate turkey. The taste, the smell, and then the leftover meat that is wasted. I have decided I will never cook another one again. If someone insists on having it, I’ll cook a turkey breast. But no more full birds.

As for the English, what I find really funny is how beautiful their cakes are. Look at these I photographed through a bake shop window in York in 2005. I apologize for the quality of the photos.

I love that castle cake.

And the cute bears in a tub.

Oh, what a murder of cake photos…

The journey begins with a black ink footprint on a white sheet of paper.

This first signature declares “I am here.”

Teenaged aunts stare and touch those tiny toes in pure wonder. Hypnotized or mesmerized or both. They compare the tiny hand to theirs. How could it have ever been that small? Ever?

I’m feeling crappy today because of a dream I had last night that I just can’t shake. It’s one of my best dreams, cinematically. Character is what I have a problem with.

It starts out with me climbing hundreds of steps up a mountain. It’s a setting that looks like a mashup of The Temple of Doom and the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse. Rope footbridges overlooking lush jungle growth around a marble cliffside. Beneath the foilage, five stories of heiroglyphs stamped into white marble.

There are other people like me with their cameras, but no one I know. It must be some sort of remote tourist attraction because there is a stand selling bottled water on the flat and dry mountaintop.

So I go up there for some water and while waiting in line, I spot this colossal vortex on the horizon. It appears as if half the world has folded into it already and it heads straight for us. Everyone scrams for cover except for me. I gotta get some video of this. The wind around me strengthens and I decide to go for cover. I run and run and look for a ditch but find an overpass looking thing. I hide until I hear the earth tremble and no longer feel safe.

More running.

I keep running until I get to a parked SUV. I open the door and get in with a car load of strangers. My heart is pounding, the tornado is almost upon us now, I feel safe, and the car starts when the driver turns the key.

I’ve saved myself AND I have some of the best storm footage ever recorded.

And then…

A little boy comes to the window and asks to come in. I’m about to let him in when, behind him, a crowd of people rush up, all wanting to get in. The others warn if I open the door they’ll mob handle the car and we will all die.

I can see it so clearly right now, my finger pushing down the lock of that door. Through the window I see the boy’s face pressed against the glass. I tell myself he is dead already.

Our car speeds off to safety.

Through the back window, I see the tornado suck up everything. First the boy and the people behind him, then the overpass, the wall of heiroglyphs, the water stand…

When the storm is gone and the sun is back out, we drive back to the scene which now looks like a landfill. News crews begin to pour in and one of the reporters asks if anyone has video of the tornado. I say I do, click some buttons on my camera, and guess what?

No tornado footage. Just video of people waiting in line for water.

Anticlimactic, yes?

I have dreams like this all the time where some big catastrophic event is coming. If there is an ending, I’m always the hero. But not this time. What a nightmare and I feel like such a coward even though it is just a dream.

I’ve been seeing people with looooong loooooong eyelashes. Ridiculously long. So long I saw a lady getting hers cut at the salon next to me. I asked the hairdresser if something was wrong with her to have all this overgrowth.

Nothing wrong, she’s using one of those new lash products that grows them thicker and longer. I thought I might invest $150 bucks and do a special here, a product demonstration with some before and after pics.

Sound fun?

Okay, so I’m cheap. I couldn’t part with the hundred and fifty clams. I saw somewhere on facebook that a mom discovered how to mix two household ingredients to get longer lashes. Free. F-R-E-E free. So I clicked that link.

And I tried it.

Here’s the before shot:

After just one night, voila! Here is the after shot:

The unibrow (or eyesbrow, as Spanky calls it) is an unintended side effect. Must have smeared this stuff all over while sleeping.

So I shaved it all off and started fresh.

Wait, what the hell? My eyes turned brown? I’d better put some more of this stuff on and grow an eye fro before anyone notices…

That’s better.

But seriously. Ladies. Those ridiculously long freak lashes are horrible. I can understand if someone has short and thin lashes and wants to improve a little on Mother Nature. A little. But not eyelashes that keep knocking you in the eyebrows. It’s just too much.

It certainly isn’t worth a change in eye color, which is a real side effect of the prescription formula Latisse.  Actually, it can cause patchy brown spots on light eyes, so not even a uniform color change.

What do you think?

You know all that pink stuff they sell to raise money for breast cancer awareness and research? I buy that stuff. I have pink everywhere. A pink jacket. Pink socks. The t-shirt. Pink kitchen scissors, two of them. I even have pink baking cups for cupcakes.

I’ve also eaten quite a few too many of the pink M&Ms.

So I wondered all this time what are the dudes going to come up with to raise money for their issues?

They chose the mustache. This month is Movemeber and the bros are going to grow them to raise money for prostate and testicular cancer research and awareness. Friends, family, coworkers, etc. sponsor them to grow it for the entire month and pay up if the participant went through Movember without shaving.

And just as dudes might not feel too welcome to support our cause by wearing pink ribbon things, dudettes might not feel too comfortable growing a ’stache. Nope, I’m not growing mine out, no way.

But my son Blane has joined, Yay! I’ve never seen him wear anything other than a fake mustache as a gag. I have no idea how bushy this thing could become, but I want to see it. I even bought him a present to encourage him. A fifteen inch long gummy snake. And a cat that craps jelly beans. He loves that sort of thing.

Now here’s the trouble. His baby is due November 30th. He says he is shaving it off when the baby is born, so if it’s born early, he’s going to have to pull out that stick-on mustache or do something to convince his sponsors that he really made it.

If you want to know more about this project go to  Movember’s website which is partnering with Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong campaign. There is a cool video on there that lists the statistics for both cancers and other valuable information about the diseases.

You can watch that here:

For all you bros out there growing a flavor savor, this sista supports this important cause. Govember!

Blane says I’m going to be murdering a whole bunch of innocent people because I’ll be giving out H1N1 flu shots the first week of November.

I don’t know how he got into reading all these paranoia spreading conspiracy theory sites, he’s a liberal, sometimes a bit more than I am. Apparently the idea that this flu shot is unsafe is widespread. But hell, if the government is going to wholesale kill people, the first in line would not be children, pregnant women and health care workers.

I’ve spent enough time in after-school detention to know that those two groups are on the priority list to get into the life raft.

It’s your granny Obama wants dead, correct? There aren’t enough shots to go around and those over 65 aren’t on The List (they have been exposed to something similar in their childhood, so they are less likely to contract H1N1).

Maybe we’re being immunized with some top secret serum for the germ warfare they are going to release after all the desirables get their shots?

I hope you know I’m just kidding, I believe the H1N1 flu shot is safe and I’ll be getting mine as soon as we open the shipment. If I don’t return by Thanksgiving, run for the border, the goverment is going to kill every last one of us.

Test your H1N1 knowledge with these ten easy questions.

For more information on the safety of the H1N1 vaccine and other facts about the flu, the CDCs website is :::here:::

I’ve been watching the fascinating clips by Dr. Sanjay Gupta this past week on his “Cheating Death” series that he’s using to promote his book, “Cheating Death: The Doctors and Medical Miracles that Are Saving Lives Against All Odds.”

The clip from last night showed how a woman trapped in cold water without air for over two hours was brought back to life (she is currently a radiologist in a hospital in Norway, so brain function must be pretty good). Her core body temp was 56 degree F when she was rescued, so that makes her the coldest person on record to survive. You can find that article :::here::: on CNN.

It made me think for just a moment, wow, people who’ve lost loved ones in cold drowning accidents must be having some serious “what if” moments right now.

Then it hit me. My niece, Candace was a cold water drowning (December ‘06). In fact, it was so cold, I wondered if that was why the policeman who came upon the accident just minutes after she crashed didn’t go in to save her.

Here’s what happened to her.

Candace was driving home on a mostly empty road. A policeman on patrol who knew her passed her going the opposite direction. He went a mile further and did a u-turn to go back in Candace’s direction. Routine patrol. When he got to a bridge, he noticed her car was upside-down and underwater. He had just seen her about 5 minutes previously.

The back window was blown out and the officer could see part of a baby seat in the back. He assumed Candace got out of the car and took her baby with her. He did not go into the water to check and make sure. He called for backup and then called her grandparents to ask if she had walked home. All this time Candace was drowning right there in the car, she tried desperately to kick in the front windshield, her legs were found up on the dashboard and there was a spot where she had managed to crack the window with her feet.

Let me back up to the part just before the cop got there. A farmer who lived near the bridge heard the accident and went to see what all the noise was. At this time, he saw the car upside-down, but on the side of the ditch. It had not gone in the water yet. He went back home to call the police and get his tractor to pull the car out.

While he was gone, the car slid into the water.

So by the time the backup came and the place was swarming with police, not a single person thought to check the car. They were stunned when they pulled the car out and found her seat-belted in it. That was about an hour after the accident and there were no efforts to resuscitate her.

I’m not angry about this anymore, she’s gone and isn’t coming back. I’ve accepted this. Two chances for rescue were missed, farmers and cops are human, not superheroes. They have moments of stupidity just like the rest of us. (I understand the cop suffered greatly over this matter)

For some good news, over the summer, Candace’s brother and his wife had a baby girl and named her Candace.

You can read about my niece, Candace :::here:::