The dentist told me I need to sleep with someone.

Ooookkkay, so he didn’t say that in so many words, but he implied that it would be helpful to know if the pain I was having was from grinding or clenching my teeth while I sleep (a habit I had as a child, which my sister can attest to.)

Without an ear witness to tell me if it’s grinding, it’s too early to see wear on my teeth, so we’ll have to wait and see if it persists or subsides – it might just be stress.

If it persists, they’ll make me a nightguard.

That’ll be sexy.

I forgot to eat breakfast.

Oh bother.

Morning seems so long when all you can think about is lunch.

Quakertown, PA – An innocent woman was struck in the back of the head by a sailing, long, white paper at a local chain restaurant on Monday evening. An eye witness to the crime, a waiter, reports seeing the tubing fly from the near vicinity of a juvenile, reportedly eating dinner with his mother. When questioned, the mother stated, “I was turning my head back to my son, to mock him for missing me yet again, when I saw the look of guilt and horror upon his face. I realized something was terribly wrong.”

Laughter was heard from the booth behind the mother, and the server quickly quipped to the juvenile, “so that was you, huh?” upon arriving at the table with dinner. Witnesses report the juvenile quickly regained a sense of manners and apologized to the innocent woman in the booth behind his mother. All parties were heard chuckling about the incident for the better part of dinner.

The juvenile was reprimanded on the scene for having such horrible aim. The mother vowed he would undergo in-home lessons before trying the art of straw-wrapper shooting in public again. She asked that names be withheld, knowing the child’s grandfather would be greatly disappointed in the miss. He surely taught the boy better.

I have a love/hate relationship with the grocery store. I love the brightly lit aisles. I love the expansive produce section. I love twofer deals at the meat counter. I love an entire row that is filled with nothing but bread. But I hate that I have no use for 95% of the food there. I hate that while I think it’s such an interesting place to meet people, no one talks to each other at the groc. I hate that I can have only a basket full of necessities and it’s still $50.

I’m going over my grocery list so we can get our weekly shop out of the way this evening and enjoy the amazing weather this weekend. My grocery list could serve as an adequate ‘personals’ description. You know everything worth knowing about me from my list.

In its entirety: (italic items added by LM)

Cat litter
Craker cheese
Eggs
Sandwich bags
Freezer bags – gallon and quart size
Folder (for homework)
Index card file
Index cards (100)
Eggs
Lemonade
Cracker
Salad in a bag
Ground beef
Toilet paper
Stamps
Oranges
Calcium supplements (1500)
Milk
Water
String cheese
Green pepper
Breakfast bars
Toothbrush for Bocaj
Tooth paste

What can you tell about me? A) I’m a mom. From a new folder for his homework, to the index cards and file I need for his Latin lessons, I’m a mom. B) I’m getting older. Calcium supplements mandated by the doc reminds me that time isn’t slowing down any. C) Memory is the first thing to go – eggs are on the list twice. D) I’m a pet owner. E) I don’t stop for breakfast. F) I’m unadventurous. There is nothing exotic on the list, nothing even remotely gourmet. Ground beef and green pepper? Yikes. I need some variety! G) I’m lazy. I want dinner to be quick and easy. Salad in a bag? I go for convenience over organic.

If I knew how to cook differently, if I enjoyed preparing more elaborate meals, if I were more focused on the environment, recycling, or organic health, I might have a list that would read:

Tilapia
Fresh dill, basil and thyme, rosemary
Lemons
Roma tomatoes
Mango
Arugola (I don’t even know how to spell it)
Shitake mushrooms
Blue cheese
Veal cutlets
Red potatoes
Olive oil
Asparagus
Whole wheat flour
Seltzer
Humus
Balsamic vinegar
Shallots
Brown rice

I remember years ago, a co-worker asking if I wanted to share a hoagie for lunch. Why not? She asked what kind, and picky-eater me said, “whatever – you pick” and then thought, “Oh my gosh, what did I just do?!” She came back with a turkey and cheddar with sweet and hot peppers, oregano, onion, tomato, and lettuce. My pick would have been ham and American dry/plain. Oh my. But I loved the hoagie and I wasn’t sure why it was that I had never ventured to try anything else. Maybe I should start trying one new recipe a week, or buying one “new” item at the grocery store each week. Maybe I’m just a stick-in-the-mud. Maybe this is what happens when you grow up in the Midwest with farm kids for parents. I have never eaten much seafood at all. The salads I make are either Caesar or tossed. Vegetables come out of a can or the freezer and I do nothing to them except add salt and pepper or sometimes a little butter. While I don’t currently serve them, I would certainly consider applesauce (homemade) and some kind of bread to be suitable side dishes. I even have JELLO in my cabinet!! I’m doomed, I really doomed.

You can take the girl out of Illinois, but you can’t take Illinois out of the girl, apparently.

I need help, don’t I? Is there such a thing as a “learning to cook as a grown up” book? Should I just add this ability to the list of must-have’s for a significant other?

There’s nothing quite like it all year long. The first step outside where the rain lingers on the sidewalk, the smell of grass and dirt in the air. The conversation of the birds louder this morning, happy and lyrical.

It’s the sort of day that should only happen on a Saturday. Where you pack up peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, a bag of chips and lemonade and head out on the road to a park you haven’t been to all year. Where you’ll walk through damp paths in the woods, feeling the warmth of the sun on your face, reflections of light on the water. The sort of day where everyone should own a dog. Where frolicking in the fallen leaves from last fall, having shoes and paws full of mud from the damp, warm earth, when you sit on a rock or a bench and feel the cool dampness of spring rising.

It’s the sort of day that makes the winter tolerable. Having memories of days of hope carries you through the cold, bitter, winter months. A day where you take in a deep breath and exhale with the realization that there is life after all. And life is good. Days like today make me appreciate living in a region where there are four seasons. Only with the winter do we truly appreciate the spring.

These are the days when it takes all my willpower to not start planting the flower boxes. Knowing there will be frosts yet to come, it’s still the delicate days, given only here and there, unexpectedly, teasingly. But these days remind us that the planting days are coming, that the deck will soon be colorful and overflowing with draping flowers, singing birds and pollinating bees.

Today we turned the corner into spring. Today is a beautiful day.

My day started with a scale, a speculum and a shot in the ass.

It can only go uphill from here, right?

RIGHT?!?!

I prefer tulips, thanks.

A woman in my office hollered across the hallway yesterday, “I guess I’m not moving to South Dakota anytime soon.”

I am grateful that we live in a country where we have such freedom of opposing viewpoints and yet I am always startled when someone says something with such a presumption that you must certainly agree with them.

Fact is, I don’t. Not on this one.

I believe that as human beings, we have every say so over our own bodies and should not have dictates handed to us from our government over what we can and cannot do with them. If you want to have surgery for bigger boobs, penile implants, to change from a woman to a man, you go right ahead. I do not see in any way, however, how abortion has to do with a choice over a woman’s body. If she wants a choice over being pregnant or not, her choice fell in advance of the sexual act that created the pregnancy, not after. I recognize that in cases of rape, a woman did NOT have a choice over the sexual act. I still believe that child has a choice and there are options for the woman that do not include killing the child.

If a woman wants me to extend to her the right to decide for herself whether or not she should be pregnant than I ask her to extend the right to the child she is carrying. If we all have rights over our own bodies, then let that little child speak as to whether or not it would like to live…it has a right to it’s own life, certainly…

Oh, but it CAN’T speak.

So we allow a pregnant woman to speak FOR it.

I could argue this in a hundred directions with many examples only to be countered with someone saying “it’s a fetus, not a child”. I wonder if that person has ever been pregnant. I wonder if they have ever seen a fetus the size of a grain of rice on an ultrasound monitor, or heard a heartbeat twice as fast as their own, or even before that, just had a gut feeling that something was being created within them. I have a picture of a grain of rice sized fetus from the only ultrasound we ever had. His name is Jacob. I wonder how many women would go through with an abortion if they saw that fetus on an ultrasound first. There is no question that it is alive. There is no question that it is part of you. There is no question that it is your child.

I know women who have gone to great lengths to have a child. I know women who have had babies without issue. I know women who have become pregnant without planning to. I know women who have been pregnant at the wrong time, in the wrong place in life, or with the wrong person and have given the baby up for adoption. I know women who have adopted. Not one of these women that I know would go back in time and choose abortion. Not. One.

I recognize that women do not agree on this issue. I recognize that many women feel it is their unalienable right to choose whether or not to be pregnant. I couldn’t agree more. I simply disagree as to when that choice can be made. Actions have consequences. I do not believe in any situation that murder is excusable for a mistake in judgment.

If you want the right to choose, then allow the baby the right to the same choice. After all, she might be a woman, too.

___________

I welcome all comments to this post, on either side of this issue. I simply ask that you demonstrate respect for the opposing view, that is what makes us Americans.

I am well aware that you don’t get a choice in how you die. While I certainly don’t dwell on the idea of my own demise often, I certainly have given it enough pause to know I’d prefer not to drown, for example. To be stabbed and left to bleed to death doesn’t exactly appeal to me, either. I’m sure that most would agree with “make it quick, make it painless.”

This morning, while meandering through the news of the world, I stumbled across this article. In addition to drowning, bleeding to death or even being on fire, I think I’ll have to add this to my list of “Ways I Do Not Want to Die”:

GRANGEVILLE, Calif. – A dairy worker and his 8-year-old son died in a manure pit on the farm where they lived, authorities said Tuesday.

Luis Gutierrez, 27, and Luis Armando Gutierrez went to feed calves Saturday night and apparently stumbled upon the manure pit in the dark, investigators said.
Footsteps near the edge of the 10-foot deep pit seem to suggest one of them fell in, said Kings County Sheriff Allan McClain.

“We could see the dad seemed to be doing what he could to reach his son,” McClain said. “But this stuff … if you step in, it sucks you in.”

When Gutierrez and his son didn’t return, family members called the dairy’s owners and the sheriff’s department for help.

Investigators found Luis Gutierrez’s stalled pickup with its hood up. They said the Gutierrezes probably got out of the truck and tried to take a shortcut home.
The dairy’s owners dredged the cement-lined holding pond that collects rainwater and manure running from the farm, and the bodies were pulled from it early Sunday, McClain said.

The 9-year-old was the oldest of four children Luis Gutierrez had with his 22-year-old wife, Maria.

The county coroner is still working on the autopsy, but investigators don’t suspect foul play. McClain said the pair may have drowned in the thick, foul-smelling sludge. It’s also possible they were overwhelmed with noxious gases emanating from the mixture.

I couldn’t fall asleep last night. Pair that with being on a diet and you might understand why I laid in bed dreaming about food. What seemed so strange was for the first time in my entire life, I dreamt of my mom’s fried chicken. It was an experience not at all unlike when I was pregnant (which I can assure you, I am not) when I craved thousand island dressing. On anything. Just get.me.the.dressing.NOW.

It took me well into my adult years to realize that my mother wasn’t a particularly good cook. Not in the sense that she cooked anything gourmet or complicated, anyway. She was a farmer’s daughter and she married a farmer’s son and in that regard, she cooked meat and potatoes just fine. A complete list of spices in her cabinet would probably not exceed ten items and that’s including salt and pepper. I never had a complaint about her cooking growing up, but I learned shortly after I was married that dicing up an onion or a green pepper or even using an actual real clove of garlic wasn’t something reserved for Julia Child.

While I tend to cook with a few more spices and occasionally producing something not served in a small-town diner, I am still a far cry from a “good cook”. LM would strongly disagree, but his only comparison is his father, who never cooks. (As a side note: I am firmly convinced that to impress ANY male with your cooking ability, simply make deviled eggs. Men cannot get deviled eggs from a diner, a chain restaurant or the local convenience store. But they LOVE them! If you can master this simple side dish, you’ll have him in the palm of your hand!) I can cook well enough that LM and I eat a variety of dishes, but when I think about having guests over for dinner I honestly have nothing in my own repertoire worth cooking for company.

All of this is to say that to be lying awake in bed dreaming of my mother’s fried chicken is like Lance Armstrong saying he’s thinking of taking a bike ride down to his local library or an opera enthusiast saying he was moved by his three year old’s school play performance.

There was nothing remarkable about her fried chicken. I don’t think a single spice was used, it was simply chicken coated with flour, fried in vegetable oil in her electric skillet. But then she made mashed potatoes. Again, nothing added, no sour cream, no cream cheese, no cream even, just potatoes and milk with maybe a dab of butter. Most of all, I could nearly taste the white gravy. Chunks of chicken from the bottom of the skillet still floating around in the gravy. She would always ask me to taste and I never refused! A dash of salt and a sprinkle of pepper and it was perfect. Last night I could envision a cob of Midwest yellow sweet corn, smothered in butter, salt and pepper. If I had to top the meal off, I would have the cheesecake she used to make for my birthday. Or maybe the spice cake she made on a regular basis, 2/3 covered with icing, the last third left plain or sprinkled with powered sugar, just the way she liked it. Or perhaps the French cookies that she made. Mmmm….

Thinking about her chicken, I could nearly taste it. I could picture the table full of my family. I could see the plates, see the glass of milk at the top of my setting. I could even hear the phone ring in the middle of the meal like it always seemed to do.

And then I fell asleep. With a little piece of home stuck in my head.

I believe…..

Blue Collar Comedy Tour Rides Again is as funny as the first.

I don’t care who you are….that there’s funny.

Here’s your sign….

Tater…

(Forgive me, God, I’m real sorry for that, bless the pygmies… Amen.)