Time Jump

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I see it has been a while since I have last graced this page. Life has been busy, and well, I haven’t made writing a priority. So many priorities! But…if everything is a priority, then what actually is?

To give a brief rundown of what I have been doing since our last chat (which was during the panini), I have:

  • Quit my job working in oncology, and took a school nurse job
  • Went back to school and finished a bachelor’s degree (finally)
  • Lost a shit load of weight
  • Taken up baking sourdough bread…which is neither sour, nor is it always bread
  • Trying to become a better raised garden bed tender
  • Diagnosed with PTSD and ADHD (this was also fun)

Tiny Tyrant is less tiny, and maybe more tyrant. Which is fine. My husband and I are not raising someone who was meant to be small in life. We are filling her with all good things: like accurate history, the great works of people who not all old white guys, and delicious empanadas.

Since I graduated, it has been pointed out that I don’t really do a lot for myself. I used to write a lot. I haven’t. I have tons of projects/hobbies I have tried to pick up and abandoned because something else seemed more important (thanks, ADHD!) I got stuck mentally, and it seemed next to impossible to get out of. Just goes to show that the unconditional love of an extremely patient spouse and properly dialed in medication can conquer all!

I turn 50 in a couple of weeks, and I find myself going back and forth between excitement and existential dread. We’ll get into that later.

So, I guess this is my opening salvo to try to resurrect this blog. I know no one really blogs anymore, but blogging has been a very important facet in my life. It was a good release of pent-up feelings, but it also gave me my husband, and subsequently Tiny Tyrant. I’m not interested in starting a podcast or being a content creator on TikTok or YouTube.

And away we go!

A Conversation About Masks

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Think about your most favorite person in the whole, wide world. If you are a parent, chances are pretty good that it’s one, if not all, of your kids. For arguments sake, let’s just assume it’s your child.

Best friends, you are. Inseparable. When they were born, it was as if your heart sprung out of your body and grew two little feet. Your world slipped off it’s axis and began to move in a different rotation. You cannot remember how your life was before they arrived.

Now, imagine yourself starting to feel lousy. Really tired. Aches and pains. Things didn’t smell or taste good. Breathing felt sharp, like needles in your lungs. You spend your days resting. Your little BFF is concerned because you can’t play with them like you used to. You tell them you are not feeling well, but promise that you will feel better soon, and you are going to make up for the playtime missed.

One day, you spend most of it in bed, because you are simply too tired to move. Dinner time rolls around, and your partner is making dinner. They send your BFF to wake you up because sick people especially need to eat. BFF goes to wake you up, only they can’t.

BFF goes back to the kitchen to report that you won’t wake up. Parent then rushes to your room to find that you are cold, unresponsive. They call a family member over to take BFF because a child should not have to witness what comes next. They call EMS next. The next events pass in a blur. Time moves very slowly and rapidly at the same time. EMS arrives. They try to revive you, but everyone knows that this attempt will be futile because it has been far too long. EMS loads you up and takes you away to the hospital. Your partner, who is the love of your life, the one you vowed to love until death do you part. The one you shared your DNA with and created the most beautiful creature you have ever laid eyes upon…they cannot come with you. They cannot be there for when the doctors say, “I’m sorry.” They cannot stand at your bedside and hold your hand and try to say good-bye, while trying to wrap their mind around the fact that you will not be coming home ever again.

Instead, you are taken to the ER, where you are pronounced dead. A phone call is made to your partner. You are placed in a thin, white plastic bag with a tag around your toe, bearing your name and birth date. Then, you are taken to a cool room, where you will remain until the funeral home your partner has to select comes to collect you. Because of Covid 19, you won’t get a funeral right away, and you will more than likely be cremated.

Meanwhile, your spouse has to pull themselves together. They call in their own family because this tremendous grief is both terrifying and too much to handle on their own. Your little BFF has been asking questions. Where is Daddy? When do I get to see Mommy again? Are they feeling better?

When your in-laws finally arrive (they have to come from out-of-state), only then is when your BFF is told the truth. They all gather together, your now-widowed spouse holding you BFF in their arms, and together the family delivers the most crushing blow to a child, in the most gentlest way possible.

Remember this, the next time you rage about how the Covid is a hoax. Or when you bleat about your rights being trampled on because you have to wear a mask to the grocery store. Or when you leer at people who are terrified of catching the virus, because deep down they know they would die if they did. Just imagine your family sitting down with your most favorite person in the whole wide world, and explaining to them:

You are gone.

You died.

You won’t be coming back.

You never got to say good-bye.

Wear your goddamn mask.

Getting Out: The Boots Theory

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I like to waste time on Reddit. It’s like the Walmart of the internet. You can find anything there, even some pretty gross stuff. My favorite subreddits are as follows: Nursing, Funny, Cooking, News, and Am I the Asshole. If you select Popular, you will get a list of all the popular links of the day. Each link usually has a discussion that follows. In some of those discussions, you can find insight, wit, helpful pointers, chuckles, or nothing at all.

Recently, a thread was dedicated to the cost of being poor. Whenever there is a discussion about income equality, or more specifically, what it is to be poor, this quote is inevitably posted.

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

–Terry Prachett : Men At Arms, The Play

Within the confines of the discussion, the phrase Poor Tax was brought up. Much to the chagrin of some who protested that such a tax did not exist. Of course it doesn’t, not in the conventional sense anyway. The idea that someone would have to pay extra money just to be poor is absurd. However, the idea that someone buying cheaper boots with more frequency will end up spending more money than the guy who spent a little more money to buy a higher quality, and longer lasting boot makes sense if you think about it.

Take nursing shoes.

I currently spend, what I feel, is a significant amount of money on shoes for work. Clunky clogs with a thick sole. Just the right amount of heel lift to better alter my posture. Leather and durable, but also comfortable enough to stand in for a solid 8-10 hours with minimal foot and back pain. These shoes typically run anywhere between $100 and $200 a pair and will last for years. The only thing I may need to do is replace the insole periodically because for some reason I wear holes where my big toes are.

When I was a Nursing Assistant, not making nearly as much money as I do as an RN, I couldn’t just drop that kind of coin on quality nursing shoes, even though I stood on my feet just as long, and worked just as hard (and sometimes more so) than my college educated coworkers. Instead, I had to buy shoes at Walmart and K-Mart (RIP), at most spending $30 a pair if they were not on sale. The shoes worked fine, but after a few months, I noticed that they seemed to not be as supportive as they did when they were new. The soles began to soften and break down. The heels would wear down, or sometimes collapse altogether. The leather-ish uppers would separate from the soles. Then, I would have to go back to the store and spend another $30 on a new pair of shoes.

Quality matters, but unfortunately, quality often means you are going to be spending more. For a lot of people, it’s more than they can afford.

Growing up, all my shoes came from Walmart. We only got new shoes before the start of the school year. One pair of sneakers, one pair of “dress shoes”. After the start of the summer, Mom would take us to Walmart, and we would pick out 3-4 pairs of pants, 5-6 new shirts, socks, underwear, and 2 pairs of shoes. They would go into layaway, where Mom and Dad would make small payments on all the stuff, until the new school year would arrive, and everything would be taken out. We would go to school in our new duds, come home in the afternoon and the expectation would be that we would change out of our nicer, newer clothes into our more worn stuff. This kept the newer stuff nicer, and preserve the longevity of the shoe.  Christmas time, you could always count on getting some new clothes, and sometimes, a pair of shoes if you really needed them. Also sprung from the confines of layaway, just in time for the holidays. In between special occasions, you might get lucky and get a pair of hand-me-downs that didn’t look too bad and actually fit.

Usually, by the end of the school year, you would have beat-up shoes because the shoes were cheaply made, and were not made to last.

Admittedly, the part of my childhood where we actually got new stuff was during a more stable period in my life. I understand that we had it better than a lot of people.

But we still had to pay the Poor Tax. Paying more for basic necessities just because you couldn’t afford to pay the top dollar for quality items that lasted longer. Shoes are the biggest one I can think of, but there are tons of different examples out there.

I recently saw that Neimen Marcus offered a shoe, a men’s sneaker. “Distressed” is what they call it. For over $1600, and it looks like how our shoes looked after the school year ended, complete with rubber cement holding shit together.

How disgusting.

Don’t Trust the Farts

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(Warning: TMI)

My GI system and I have a love-hate relationship. I love food, my GI system hates me for it. It makes it’s displeasure known by unwelcome diarrhea, and extreme flatulence. One of the first experiences as a dating couple was me accidentally farting in Log’s face. (It was mortifying and it is still brought up in discussion to this day.) The fact that he is still with me after such a heinous act is a true testament of this man’s devotion to me.

Later last year, after a bout of what I can call violent diarrhea after a God knows what, I discovered a pea-sized unwanted guest on my starfish. Small, hard, angry. And because I work in Oncology, and everything is cancer now, I naturally assumed the worst. Flushed and anxious, I went to my husband and announced I may have Farrah Fawcett Ass Cancer.

I immediately made an appointment with my provider, a Nurse Practitioner I have been seeing for years. She took a look at what I now called Bob, and said it was worth following up with a colorectal surgeon type-person.

“Could be nothing, could be something. Could be melanoma.”

Referrals sent, and because the wheels of the American health system turn ever so slowly, someone finally got back to me almost a month later. An appointment made to the doctor of my choosing, because I have worked in this field long enough to know who to seek out and who to avoid like the plague.

Meanwhile, the wheels in my brain are burning rubber. My god, what if I really do have Farrah Fawcett Ass Cancer? I’ll have to have chemo, possibly surgery.ff I will end up with a colostomy bag. Will my husband still find me beautiful if I have a front butt? What about my daughter? Can I live long enough so she will remember me when I pass on? 

It’s but a fraction of a glimpse of what my patients go through. I can’t even imagine what it is like for them.

So, I meet with the doctor, and he sends in his Nurse Practitioner to look in my toot-hole, with him peering over her shoulder. It’s not awkward at all. And also, he has heard every asshole joke known to the universe, so don’t even try to surprise him. Doctor decides that I do have something worth checking out, and as he puts it, “If I get to touch you, I’m doing a colonoscopy.”

You get to have your first colonoscopy when you hit 45, unless there is a problem (like mine) or there’s a colon problem history in your family. Now, I don’t hit 45 for a couple months, so my back-door birthday surprise arrives early.

Worst. Birthday. Present. Ever.

Bowel Prep Day begins, and I am given a list of what to do. Kick off the day chugging back an entire bottle of Mag Citrate. Which is like a really tart, flat, Sprite. But I like salty, tarty things, and it’s not horrible (but it does go down easier with Sonic ice to crunch on while you drink it). Take 4 Ducolax tabs (thank God they didn’t require suppositories). Drink 64 oz of fluid (usually Gatorade) with a metric fuck ton of Miralax in it.

miralax

Drink all of it. And if you are not “clear” (which is to mean you need to be peeing out of your butthole), drink more. If you are still not sure, drink more. Drink more until until you feel like a tick, and the slightest hug is going to cause you to pop. Go to bed, and hope you don’t lose control of you now cleaned out lower GI system and spray your husband, who sleeps innocently by your side.

Wake up! Today is the day!! Shower with Hibicleanse, which will wash every microbe off your body and dry you out. No lotions after. No deodorants. No makeup. No perfumes. Just you and your natural, post-bowel prep smell and itchy skin. Be at the clinic promptly at 8:15am, where you get to wait until your case which is slated for 11am. Meanwhile, you get to talk to everyone who is going to get to look at your butthole, and you hope that you don’t run into anyone you know. There’s a nurse named Bucky who has been there forever. She gets around on a shiny red scooter with a rainbow-colored license plate that says Bucky. Everyone knows Bucky. She’s more than an employee, she’s an institution. You sit on your cart, waiting your turn to get your insides turned out, watching Bucky zoom back and forth. Meanwhile, you are secretly jealous because you don’t have a cool nickname where you work, and you don’t get to race around the clinic on a scooter with your name on a license plate.

Everything else passes in a blur because you get the fun drugs and get carted back into OR with your own little entourage of nurses and residents, and thankfully, you are not awake while your doctor boldly goes where no man has gone before. My biggest fear, aside from dying on the table (because anesthesia terrifies me), was shitting on the doctor while I was out. I mean, I did the prep and was basically peeing chicken broth out of my butthole like I was supposed to, but you never know. There could be a pocket up in there, housing some horrible secret, waiting for the right man with a scope to come and poke at it, causing a torrent of foulness to stream out and splash on his shoes. Then, you have to quit your job at the Cancer Center because you can never face him again, knowing that he will never get that smell out of his Nikes. I’ve heard the stories.

In the end (heh), doc cuts out three unwelcome squatters in No Man’s Land. I come home with feeling like someone shoved a hot curling iron in my butt. (Not that I have experience with such things, but I can only imagine.) Sitting is uncomfortable, standing is uncomfortable, walking in uncomfortable. I made the mistake of bending over while getting a glass out of the dishwasher and a small fart came out. Only it wasn’t a fart. And it kept coming. I scurried to the bathroom thinking I was hemorrhaging , only to find that my chocolate starfish was putting it’s final punctuation on the day. Blurp!

I don’t trust farts anymore. From here to the day I die, I will always assume that there is more than just air waiting to come out.

Doc doesn’t think it’s Farrah Fawcett Ass Cancer, but he sent the pieces to pathology anyway because you double check at shit. I’m allowing myself to breathe a little easier now. Even if it does come back as something bad, I, with the support of my amazing husband, family and friends, will just deal with it. You just can sit and wait for The Bad to happen.

Life is what is happening meanwhile. Live it. Get your colons checked!

Just don’t trust those farts.

 

Getting Out: Waiting for Danger

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I remember back in my church-going days, we were having a lesson in Sunday school. The subject got on the pyramids in central America, and how people would pack their families and travel to these pyramids to hear their leaders speak. A sort of Mayan General Conference, if you will. People would pitch their tents towards the pyramids, the leaders would speak from atop the pyramids, and their voices to would carry to the people surrounding.

Now, I don’t know if this is actually true, or just another historical inaccuracy that the church pulled out of their ass, but that is beside the point of this story.

So, the Sunday School person posed the question, “Do you pitch your tent facing the pyramid, or away?’

Naturally, everyone said towards. I, being the typical lone dissenter, said away. My reasoning was that if danger was coming, I wanted to see it, and be prepared to fight it.

This story best sums up my life.

Growing up, I remember many of the times Dad came home drunk. He was seldom a happy drunk. He was mean and nasty. My earliest memory was around the age of five, and he had pulled a gun on my mother and punched out a window. He passed out on my parents’ bed, and the thing I most remember is standing in the doorway, staring at his battered hand. Blood trickling from his knuckles and dripping onto the blue blanket.

Every single time he came home, or I saw him crack open his first beer of the latest bender,  I could feel body clench. My heart rate would speed up, the adrenaline would begin. I felt a heightened sense of alertness. And, I swear, time would slow down.

Every. Single. Time.

It wouldn’t be until much later in my adult life that I learned that this reaction was my autonomic and sympathetic nervous systems working in tandem in what is called an Acute Stress Response. Most people know it by “Fight or Flight”.

terrorism-threat-levels

Because I spent my formative years in a constant state of orange to red levels of threat, I still struggle, as a grown-up, to “come down”. It is why I have anxiety over tiny things. It is always why I am the epitome of stone cold calmness in emergent situations…which is great in code situations at work, not so much when you have a great life, but obsess over the ways you’re going to lose it all because something bad is going to happen and take it all away.

I do have a great life. I have a job I enjoy, and I work at my pleasure, not because I have to. I have the house I always wanted. A husband that is crazy about me. A beautiful daughter that adores me. A new car. Cute dog. I don’t ever have to worry about money, or being homeless, or being able to take care of my child. From all appearances, I have a perfect life.

But it’s not perfect, because I’m always scared some unseen boogie man is going to come and rip it all from me. My life would be perfect if I allowed it to be. It’s difficult for me to just be happy because I have my tent pitched away from my amazing life, just waiting for The Bad Thing to happen.

Being with someone who is always “switched on” is challenging. I know that it frustrates my husband sometimes. We know where it comes from, but what we don’t know is how to fix it. I’ve tried meds, but that worked a little too well and I was stripped of all feelings and just went through life like a robot. Which was really weird when you cannot feel anything. My husband bought me a new car, and the best I could work up was, “Meh.”

Now, one could argue that these feelings, behaviors or are no mutually exclusive to poverty. Even people who are not poor experience childhood trauma and experience it’s lasting effects. But I would be curious to see studies that show the correlation between living in poverty and childhood trauma. Being poor and having a parent who is an addict are not mutually exclusive either. Again, this has just been my experience….and this is me, trying to piece is all together in an effort to explain why my brain processes information that way it does.

In talking with a therapist, and largely my husband, I have been able to recognize behaviors, cycles, triggers that send me into that feeling of anxiety of losing what I value the most. With their help, I am picking up my tent, and re-positioning it to face all that is good in my life.

The Boogie Man is still out there, but living your life preparing to war against him is no way to live. It’s simply existing for the next big fight, and there is a huge difference between living and existing.

 

Introducing: The Getting Out Series

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In today’s climate, there’s a lot of talk tossed around about poverty, and what it means to be poor. Usually, by those who know the least about what being poor is like.

What is poverty? Is it something as simple as having no money? Is it a label we automatically give people just because they make below a certain amount? Is it a state of mind? A way of looking at the world? A perception? A system to keep rich people in power and poor people at their feet?

Yes.

Do a Google search of being poor, and you are likely to find tons of accounts of what it is like. Or, you can listen to a candidate recall the tale of some unfortunate soul who has fallen on unfortunate times. You can read every first-person account, hear every second-person account, and even listen to the experts tell you all about it, but you will never come close to knowing unless you have experienced it first hand.

It’s something I speak with my husband about regularly. He immigrated here when he was a teenager. Where he comes from, poverty means something completely different than it does here.

I know I have mentioned it in the past, but it is not something that I have spent a lot of time on. I have a ton of experience to draw from, but quite frankly, it can be traumatic for me to revisit. I used to think that PTSD only applied to veterans who came home from war, or someone who had been assaulted. It never occurred to me that not having money growing up would have such an impact on me, even as an adult. But it’s more than simply not having money. It’s not having security. It’s going to bed hungry because there wasn’t enough food for dinner. It’s wearing layers and layers of clothes in your house because the heat has been turned off. It’s the shame. It’s the uncertainty. It’s the fear. It’s the despair. It’s the hopelessness. It’s the system that is designed to keep you there.

I’ve decided to put these discussions and thoughts to words on paper (so to speak). There’s too much information about it to simply put in one blog post. So, it’s going to go here. Along with my usual observations of daily life.

At some point, I would like to open up for outside submissions on this topic. For everyone’s experience is unique, as is the perceptions surrounding them. I am curious to know, what does poverty mean to you? If you did, how did you get out? What are some of your observations surrounding it? What do you wish other people could understand about what it means to be poor?

Into the rabbit hole we go…

There’s Something About Mary

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When I was in my early-to-mid twenties, I was pretty entrenched in Mormon culture. I went to church in a singles branch, held various callings, church every Sunday, Family Home Evening on Mondays. Within our singles group, I was part of a smaller friend group. Just a group of early 20-somethings, going to college (or not), living on their own (or not), and trying to make the transition from teenage know-it-alls to adults: Mormon Edition

Kant, Hair, Line, Young Matthew, myself, and Mary.

Mary was an interesting sort. A few years younger than myself. Grew up the second child of 12. She was even my roommate for a spell. Mary and myself were as different as two people could be. She grew up in an intact family in church, my family was broken with just a whiff of Mormonism. My greatest drive was to go to college to get an education and not repeat the same trajectory as my parents. Hers was to find a nice priesthood holder to marry (in the temple) and have a big family much like what she grew up it.

I was jaded, and sarcastic, and fiercely independent. Mary was naive, soft, and hinging her whole life upon having a husband.

Living together only magnified our differences. As much as we got along like vinegar and baking soda, we both brought something to our small friend group. Despite her weaknesses, she had good qualities too. She liked to have fun. She had a smile for everyone. She was always the “young one” in the group, always careful about how she looked. The insufferable flirt, she would go through Peter Priesthoods like water through a sieve. One week, she would meet a guy and fall in love, the next week, she would have prayed about it and learned he was “the One”, and following week, it would be over because he “was a jerk.”

This pattern went on for so long, we started calling her Baskin Robbins with her Flavor of the Week. We didn’t hate her. We just wanted her to realize that she was more than whatever a life of Mormon culture honed her to be. A lot of her behaviors, we surmised, was her need for attention. I imagine that being in a family that large, attention can come in short supply.

Earlier this week, Kant sent me a message that Mary had passed away in her sleep earlier in the week. I had to pull the car over and re-read the message three times so I could understand just what she was saying. Mary dead? She can’t be! For starters, she’s too stubborn. Secondly, she’s too young.

She leaves behind four kids and a husband. My heart breaks for them. Mary may have been a pain in the ass, no one deserves to grow up without their Mommy or their spouse.

After the singles branch was disbanded, people moved away, went on missions, went on in their lives. Kant and I remained close, everyone just sort of drifted away. Mary seemed to be happy, but I don’t know for sure. She married and had kids. Her facebook page is full of “look how charmed my life is” posts. I really hope her life was amazing as she made it sound. I really do.

Her funeral is next week. Hair and I were going to go as we are the only ones left in town of our original group. True, neither of us had talked to her in 15 years or so, but she still belonged to an important part of our lives, however small it was compared the larger picture of our lives.

And we can at least honor that.

Like I said, she was a pain the ass. She liked to push my buttons (and knew exactly which ones to push), but at the end of the day, there was no one quite like her. My memories will always be of her when she was younger. Her on my family canoe trip sampling Rocky Road (i.e. my brother), her cleaning the apartment only when she was expecting a Flavor of the Week over for a visit. Her “Sausage Fondue” that was not fondue…it was a goddamn breakfast casserole. Her oh-so-delicious homemade banana cream pie (I have the recipe). Her almost burning down the apartment building because she didn’t know how a fireplace worked. Her shitty camp outs that I missed but had to hear about from everyone else. Her beautiful red hair, her sparkling blue eyes, and my jealousy because I thought she had it all.

I’ll carry you with me, Mary. You will not be forgotten.

 

 

TTT: Di$ney on Ice

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Every year, Tiny Tyrant’s daycare has a field trip to see Disney on Ice.

This year was the first year that TT could actually go.

Oh sure, I could have taken her before. On our own, but I wondered how much she would get out of it. Even more to the point, would she get bored and have a meltdown because she didn’t want to stay in the same place for that long?

I just decided to wait until she could go and experience it with her classmates. As fortune would have it, I was off that day. So, I could go as well.

Tickets for the show were $20 per person. This is pretty reasonable, I thought, considering that tickets to anything don’t really cost under $20.

The day of, TT is all excited. She knows she is going to go see Disney on Ice. She knows she is going to ride the school bus. Whether or not she understands what that all means, is a different story entirely.

We get to the school. Other parents who are also going are milling around, waiting to ride the school bus. Kids are excited to ride the school bus. The adults are quiet, perhaps having horrible flashbacks of when they rode the school bus.

We all load upon the bus and away we go to the Sprint Center, where there is a shitload of children and parents milling about. Some wearing costumes. I immediately feel points deducted because as a nerd, I should know better to send a child into an environment like this without appropriate cosplay. I vow to do better.

I end up with TT and one of her little friends, who’s mother is my friend, who was unable to make it to the showing due to work. (And she is now known as Dainty Dictator…or DD for short) And also, another of TT’s friends, whom she says is her best friend (Who will now be referred to as Mini Monarch). And her mom. I just go with it because two moms and three kids seem like pretty good odds.

We find our way to our seats, and I see vendors a long the way, selling pretty much everything Disney-related. After the kids are settled, I haul ass to find a bubble wand TT was pining for since we hit the front door. And because I am a softy, and DD didn’t bring extra spending money, I decide I’m going to get her one as well. And because I would look like a dick if I bought for two girls and left one out, I decide to buy three, because they can’t be that expensive, right???? RIGHT????

Sweet baby Jesus. $100.

For plastic wands that light up and blow bubbles. I look at them closely. They don’t vibrate (you know, for the mommies). They come with a 2 year warranty, which I am sure doesn’t cover the cost of your child slamming it on the floor when it runs out of bubbles.

I go back to our seats, clutching these fucking wands as if they were forged in the blood of virgins (because they very well may considering how much they cost) dole them out to the three girls (and thankfully, they are grateful). The show starts, and I spend the majority of it with bubbles in my face. There’s smoke and fireworks, and I swear I’m going to have an asthma attack there in row 8.

Pretty soon our adorable little band of despots start complaining about being hungry and thirsty. The other mommy and I buy snacks. Cotton Candy, popcorn, and a plastic sippy cup with lemonade. $45. DD insists that she gets her own cup of lemonade, and I put my foot down because $15 is too much to pay for shitty lemonade in a cup you can’t put in the dishwasher because it will melt.

The show goes on, and somehow I end up with lemonade all down the front of my shirt. It’s sticky everywhere and I only have so many wet wipes. Here comes the guy with coloring books. $5 each. I get two because the asshole is taking too long to give me my change. DD gets a book. I figure if MM wanted one, her mom could spring for it. She was sitting right there.

You could easily pick out the noob parents from the ones who had been there before. They brought their own wands. And snacks. At one point, the daycare director chucked a Costco-sized bag of Goldfish into the crowd. TT found a bag of Veggie Straws and happily munched on them. All out of cash, and my debit card could be heard sobbing from my wallet, The Bank of GB was officially closed.

After the show, I perused Amazon and found the same wand for less than $10 (and my butthole clenched even tighter), and I told TT that she should plan on taking her bubble wand to college. She patted my arm gently because even she knew I was an idiot for shelling out $150 for one show. To her credit, she sat and watched the whole thing. DD, however, was like a blender with the lid off, and I am pretty confident she will not be able to recall one thing from the show, except the bus ride.

There was a point TT experienced some butthurt because they pulled some lucky kids from the audience and they got to ride around the rink in some sort of submarine looking thing. TT demanded a ride. I didn’t know what to tell her. Was there some sort of VIP experience that you had to take out a second mortgage on your house for? Was it random?? Were these children sold to go work in the sweat mines of Orlando to pay for their privilege of being part of the show??

Dick move, Disney. Dick. Move.

I am told, by persons with knowledge in such matters, is that this is just a taste of the Disney experience. Go to the House of Mouse on either coast, and you can expect have money slip through you fingers like water. Everything costs a premium, even the smallest, most simplest of things. You know, I’ve heard of families saving up money just to go to Worlds of Fun once during the summer. That might sound amusing to some (bordering on condescending for others), but that’s the reality for many. This Disney level of spending goes way beyond. Thousands of dollars. Because much like the ice skating program, you don’t just pay for the ticket, you pay for the experience…and that includes the $12 snow cone.

I don’t know when Disney became of rite of passage for children. The brass ring of childhood experiences. I never entertained the idea when I was a kid because I knew we could never afford it.

My family was one of those saving pennies to go to Worlds of Fun.

 

We All Float Down Here

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A friend of ours did a float experience about a year or so ago, and I was interested. We got our own float center in Cowtown shortly after, and I just never got around to investigating further. It wasn’t until I was killing time and looking at day spas closer to home that I found one that offered a float tank.

For those who don’t know, a float tank is usually a big, uh, tank, and it’s filled with water (roughly the same temperature as your own) and it is filled with a buttload of Epsom salts. So much, that you cannot sink. You lay in this tank for an hour or so, sensory deprived or relaxing music piped in, and it’s supposed to relax you, clear your mind, etc. There’s supposed to be all these benefits associated with it.

I decided to go after a particular intense chiropractor visit where my spine and pelvis was trying to do some strange, and painful, circus act. It didn’t hurt that the first float at one particular spa was half off.

Not really knowing what I was getting myself into, I drove to the spa. After completing required paperwork, I was escorted to the pod room. A large, white egg shaped thing dominated the room and an equally large shower was in the corner. I was instructed to shower first to remove any lotions, hair product, etc. Then, get into the tank.

On a normal day, my mind races. I’m always obsessing over dumb stuff. Over stuff I need to do. Stuff I didn’t get done. My family. My friends. My job. My past. My future. What I am going to make for dinner that night.

Once in the water, your brain just slows down. Then, you realize that you forgot to put the ear plugs in. So, you get out, getting salty water everywhere, find the damn ear plugs and shove them into your ear holes and return to the water.

So, you are floating there, with the little purple light on because you like purple and it’s pretty, listening to the sound of your own breathing, until you reach up to scratch your nose and get salty water in your eyes and JESUS, MARY, AND JOSEPH…THAT SHIT BURNS!!! So, you blindly wiggle out of the tank, splashing salty water everywhere, trying not to slip and fall and bust your ass because salty water is very, very slippery. Stagger to the shower to splash clean water into your eyes. Verify that you are not blind, then return to the confines of the float pod.

All is quiet back in the tank and I turn off the purple light and just float in darkness. I let go of conscious thought and just let my mind wander, and it doesn’t wander very far, content to just be still and think of nothing. I’m just floating in 10 inches of warm salty water, drifting in and out of that place between sleep and awake. Time stretches forever until a voice comes over the speaker in the pod to let me know that my float is over.

I gingerly get out of the tub and shuffle to the shower. My back, my hips and knees. Everything feels great. I feel rested. Relaxed. Quiet and content. I shower the salt off and my skin feels amazing. My hair is a hot mess because I forgot to bring a comb. Overall, I feel improved. I’m not worried about anything. I could just sit in a chair and think about nothing until I have to collect Tiny Tyrant from daycare.

I vow to do this once a month. It will be added to my “Living My Best Life” resolution for the new year, which I totally just thought of 5 minutes ago. My actual resolution is more along the lines of “Work on Being My Best Self”.  It’s more than getting a manicure, it’s about enriching relationships that matter and pruning the ones that don’t. It’s about talking about how you think or feel instead of holding it all inside until it explodes later. Taking time to yourself to clear your head and approach life with a clean slate. Even it is means doing it in saltwater for an hour.

Just don’t get it in your eye.

TTT*: The Makings of a Troll

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*Tiny Tyrant Tales

By nature, my husband and I possess a decent trolling abilities. Forged in uniquely different fires, and each with our own unique delivery. It also appears genetic. I’m pretty sure I got it from my aunt, who could slyly insult you, only you didn’t figure it out until hours later.

Tiny Tyrant goes to daycare during the week. This affords her the opportunity to play and develop relationships. She learns all kinds of crap she’s supposed to know by the time she reaches kindergarten. (Even though this totally wasn’t a thing when I was her age. You just turned five, and into half-day kindergarten you went. But I digress.)

Now, Tiny Tyrant has gained a reputation of being very bright, very funny, and very very stubborn. Only recently did I have to report to the director’s office because she got mad and head-butted the assistant director.

Mr. Jake is her teacher, or at least he was until this past Friday, which was his last day. No, TT didn’t drive him away. Not that I am aware of.

Mr. Jake works from 8am-5pm. On. The. Dot. As his last day was winding down, he tells his kids that he’s going bye-bye. He will miss them all. And he will pop in once in a while and say hello (he’s engaged to one of the teachers there). The kids all line up to give hugs and tell Mr. Jake good-bye.

Finally, it’s my daughter’s turn.

Mr. Jake beckons to TT, she approaches him quietly. Cautiously. Never breaking eye contact. She stands before Mr. Jake, as he holds out his arms for his hug. This tender moment that teachers look back and remember fondly.

“I pooped.”

The time is 4:59 pm.