Are We Done With Peeps Yet?

How does a month speed by so quickly? We are already halfway through April, and that just doesn't seem possible. The trees are mostly leafed out, flowers are growing strong, it's windy (which I hate but it is, so), days are mostly warm, sometimes rainy, and even when they are chilly, everything is green, so you know it's temporary.
 

Let's get this week's Ten Things of Thankful off and rolling, shall we?

I'm thankful Easter candy is out of the stores and not there to tempt me any more. I am weak.

This week was warm enough to wear flip flops. Ahhhh!

I survived having pink eye this week. 

I did NOT give it to my husband this time (and if you'd like to read about when I DID give him pink eye, check out my A to Z Challenge post "J is for Just A Little Complication".

I found some leftover Easter candy on sale for 80% off at Walgreen's when I went there to pick up my antibiotic eye drops, and they had a couple of packages of Peeps and I TOLD YOU I WAS WEAK.

I had to miss a day of work  because I had gross eyes AND I was contagious, but it was nice to get that unexpected day of rest.

I love the daily memes my friend Manda and I send to each other. I am a purveyor of funny and often highly inappropriate memes, and it's a lot of fun to pick out ones I think are just right for Manda (or just damn funny and need to be sent), and I love reading what she sends to me.

Warned you

I'm thankful I have one more little package of Peeps to enjoy when I REALLLLLLY need them.

My husband and I went to my happy place, Silver Dollar City, for a couple of hours on Saturday. The weather was beautiful and we enjoyed a set of music from the Homestead Pickers.

Outside the Wilderness Church

My dad tore the skin on his arm again, and fortunately, it was while we were visiting. I took him to urgent care and got him fixed up and on an antibiotic, and this should prevent him from getting cellulitis again.

How has your week been? Are you thankful for spring? For things that make you laugh? For candy or for the lack thereof? The Ten Things of Thankful is waiting for you to link up YOUR thankful post. It's fun and easy and you will make friends, because we're fun and friendly and eas--um, yeah, join us!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

M is for Mercury

 

When my mom was young, her brother, my Uncle Bradley, had a little bottle of mercury. My mom always wanted to play with it, but he wouldn't let her touch it (typical big brother; he was 7 years older than she was). 

Somehow, we ended up with a little bottle of mercury (also known as elemental mercury or quicksilver), and I don't know if it was the one my Uncle Bradley once had or was a different little bottle of mercury (I don't know how or why anyone ends up with a little bottle of mercury). My brother claimed it was his, which, again, leads to the issue of why anyone owns mercury and where did they get it and WHO GIVES A KID A BOTTLE OF MERCURY? Anyway, this mercury lived with the various bottles of household medicine in a large, shallow, footed bowl on top of our refrigerator. Every once in awhile, after much begging on my part and only when my brother wasn't home, my mom would let me play with it. 

Okay, this is why some people have little bottles of mercury. It's a liquid, but it isn't. It stays in a puddle in the palm of your hand and even if you poke it with a finger, it only breaks apart for a second before reforming into its original puddle. It's cold and silvery. After rolling it around in my hand for a few minutes, my mom would make me put it back in the bottle and the mercury was returned to the bowl on top of the refrigerator where I couldn't reach it (not that I ever tried **cough cough**).

Mystery question: whatever happened to the little bottle of mercury? I don't remember seeing it since I was maybe 10.

A little Google search has informed me elemental mercury is a liquid metal and is terribly toxic. According to the EPA, at room temperature, it can evaporate into a toxic vapor, and prolonged exposure to it can cause all kinds of horrible neurological damage. The Cleveland Clinic says that while touching it or swallowing it won't hurt you, because it won't absorb into your skin or your intestines (and its slippery texture will cause it to pass right on through those), elemental mercury is extremely dangerous if you breathe it or get it in your lungs, and that often the way it becomes airborne is when someone tries to clean up a spill with a vacuum.

Want to know a secret? If I found that little bottle of mercury, I would be VERY VERY CAREFUL not to spill it, but I most definitely would pour it into my hand in a heartbeat and roll it around and poke it with my finger. #keepthemercuryawayfromme 

L is for Lost

 

I lost my son at a theme park when he was not quite three years old. He and I were at Silver Dollar City, an 1880s theme park near Branson, MO. It was just the two of us, and we had wandered down to a children's area called Tom Sawyer's Landing. I let him go in an area to explore, watching him from just outside, then I gazed away FOR ONLY A MILLISECOND and he was gone. 

I went inside the structure. Not Kyle. I ran from one part to another, my panic increasing exponentially, and still no sign of him. I found an employee and told him my son was lost, and he said something helpful like, Oh, you'll find him. I was convinced someone had kidnapped my baby, and I headed back to the walkway outside where he disappeared, my heart pounding in my chest, my inner voice trying to figure out how I was going to tell my husband, when Kyle walked out of the attraction ON THE COMPLETE OTHER SIDE OF WHERE HE WENT IN. It was at that moment that I discovered that the two sides of the play area were connected by bridges, and he had climbed up one side, went across the bridge, and down the other in the blink of an eye. My heart still pounding, I gathered him up and got out of there. To this day, I never told him OR my husband that I lost him, because (a) I found him (or he found me), (b) Kyle never knew he was lost, so why tell him and scare him, and (c) I'm not positive what the statute of limitations is for losing your kid (who is now 27), but I'm fairly confident it has not yet run.

I will go on record stating this was NOTHING compared to what Mary and Joseph did to Jesus. They left him in Jerusalem at the age of 12. Left. Him. Traveled for AN ENTIRE DAY without seeing him, assuming he was with other members of their family or with friends. Who has ever traveled with a 12 year old boy that didn't constantly bug you for food or a drink or tp say they were borrrrrred and how much longerrrrrrrr? And entire day to miss him? REALLY miss him? And after finally coming to the conclusion that Jesus wasn't with their entourage, they spent another whole day traveling BACK to Jerusalem, and then THREE MORE DAYS searching for him before finding him in the temple among the teachers, listening to them and asking questions. 

I'm willing to bet that, in spite of all the religious teachers being so impressed with all the intelligence and understanding that Jesus had, and after they got over being worried and afraid, Joseph and Mary wanted to yank a knot in their son's tail when they finally found him. Boys - the same for the past 2000+ years!

K is for Kiss

 

My very, very first concert was John Denver. My second one was Kiss.

It was in the fall of 1977, and my best friend Jane and I bought tickets, along with what seemed like half of our high school. We decided Jane would drive (her hot ride was a 1965 Nova) and I would navigate.

The concert was held at the relatively new Kemper Arena, which had been built on the site of the former stockyards in the West Bottoms area of Kansas City. My dad, who had been a meter reader for the gas company and knew pretty much every inch of the city, gave the girls from the suburbs directions for getting there.

We had to take three different freeways to get there, but we made it. As previously noted, we saw many, many friends from school there as well, one of whom was wearing a wineskin under his jacket. We may or may not have had contraband of our own in hidden in our socks. It was a fabulous concert, we found our car in the massive parking lot after it was over, and we headed back to the 'burbs.

This could be the end of a nice little story, but how memorable would it make that concert if it were?

As we were driving on surface streets out of the parking lot, we realized that, while my dad told us how to GET to Kemper Arena, he didn't tell us how to get back HOME. I believe that HE believed we would have enough sense to reverse what we did, but he was quite wrong about that. We made it onto one highway, then I saw a sign for 71 highway.

"Take this!" I said, because we actually lived right off of 71, so obviously, this was the way to go. But when we took the exit, we were not on a highway after all but on a surface street called Prospect. And it was going through an area with bars on the windows and men lurking around in groups and abandoned buildings and we knew we had done something terribly wrong when we saw the name of the street, but we didn't know how to fix it.

We had enough sense to make sure the doors were locked, which meant I climbed over the backseat to check the backdoors, because this was WAYYY before power locks (hell, the car didn't even have power steering) while Jane drove, and we whimpered and cried at every stop light.

"If anyone comes up to us, we run the light," I said, and Jane agreed, but no one did and we kept driving and driving and driving until finally, FINALLY, we started seeing street names that were familiar and we found our way back to our neighborhood.

My parents were in bed when Jane dropped me off at home, but they were still awake and listening to the police scanner that they had on every night (because my dad liked to listen to it as he fell asleep).

"What took you so long?" they exclaimed, and I told them we may have accidentally gone down Prospect as we tried to find our way back home.

"PROSPECT?!" they cried out. "How did you do THAT? Didn't you follow the directions we gave you? There was a SHOOTING on Prospect, probably just as you were driving down it!"

"You didn't tell us how to get home," I said in a small, frightened voice. 

"You two are ninnies," my mom said, and she was right, but we made it and it certainly made for a night I've never forgotten.

J is for Just A Little Complication

 

When my son was around 8 months old, I got a whopper of a sinus infection. It was the end of the quarter at work, so instead of staying home and recuperating, I was at the office, eyes streaming tears and constantly blowing my nose, and I worked that way for about a week. I did go to the doctor and get an antibiotic, but the eye drops I got didn't help a bit. As soon as I had completed whatever it was I had to get done (quite honestly, I don't even remember what it was, but it had to do with money and that's all I know), I went to a different doctor, got a different prescription for eyedrops (that started to work almost immediately), and was finally able to stay home from work. By this time, my eyes were bright red, painful, and gooey (yes, completely gross, I know, I KNOW). 

In the meantime, I was still nursing a baby and caring for him, but miracle of miracles, he did not get pink eye, but my husband did. While I continued to work for a week until I could take the time off to take care of myself, he immediately went all man flu (IYKYK). The baby obviously was rocking a terrific immune system, because he still didn't get pink eye from either of us. That was 27 years ago.

Guess who woke up today with weepy eyes? And whose eyes have gotten progressively worse throughout the day to now, at 8:00 at night, when they are not only weepy but are gooey and itchy and blurry and
sore? That's right, me.

Guess who is already sure his eyes are getting itchy even though I haven't been within 6 feet of him all evening? We all know the answer to that.

I'll be taking off work tomorrow and going to the doctor for meds. And I'll ask for extra for the paranoid hypochondriac my husband, just in case. 

And then I'll be able to write a proper post for the Challenge*, but this one's the best I can do through my blurry, gooey, itchy eyes. 

Happy Spring, y'all!

me, but a few years ago and clearly not infected with pink eye

*one that has been proofread, because this one has not been since I CAN'T SEE WHAT I'M DOING.

I is for International

 

A lifetime ago, I worked at a record company in a division that made compilation albums (think the infomercials that used to come on during late night tv). The company had outgrown its space, and about half a dozen of us shared a large, open area, surrounded by smaller offices. One day, a young woman who worked in the International department stuck her head out of her office door and addressed the group of us.

"Is Mexico in Europe?"

After a moment of stunned silence, someone answered, "Nooooo."

"Okay, that's what I thought," she said and disappeared back into her office.

The end.

H is for Hairdo

 

My mom did not wear her hair in a big bubble 'do in the 60s, but it was certainly teased and poofy. She washed her hair with Prell on Saturdays, bent over the kitchen sink, and she set it with wire mesh brush rollers, each one pierced with a pink, three inch plastic spike to hold it in place. I would sometimes sit on the lid of the toilet and watch in fascination as she sectioned her wet hair and wound each piece around a roller, sometimes exclaiming when a pink spike scraped her scalp as it pierced the roller.

After each roller was precisely placed, my mom would wash MY hair in the kitchen sink, me kneeling in a chair and holding a dish towel over my eyes to keep the shampoo out. Then I got the roller treatment, only they were yellow plastic snap on rollers that were much kinder and gentler than her brush rollers and were mostly confined to the bottom half of my hair.

Next came my favorite part of Saturdays. Better, even, than Saturday morning cartoons. 

My mom set her hair dryer on the living room floor, plugged it in, and tucked all of her rollers inside the plastic cap, I loved the sound it made as the bonnet filled up with warm air, the cap crackling and popping as it inflated. Then I would sit on the floor across from her, and we would play games while her hair dried. Aggravation. Memory. Crazy 8. Go Fish. Wide World of Sports or Big 8 basketball would be playing on the tv in the background.

When her hair was dry, my mom would take out the rollers (with some ouches and an occasional swear word when she dropped one on the bathroom floor), tease her hair with a rat tail comb (a comb she loved more than her family, I firmly believe, and we were never allowed to touch it, let alone use it), carefully arrange her hair, then lacquer it with Final Net hairspray (that would be the point when I would quit watching and vacate the room). Her hair was ready for church the next morning, and with a little refreshing each morning, also for the rest of the week.

I don't remember how long she used the old hair dryer, but in the early 1980s, she graduated to going to the hairdresser once a week for a wash and set and did that for the rest of her life. And rain, hail, sleet, or snow, she never missed her weekly appointment!