Then and Now

It is sad and pathetic when your own parents can out-party you.

As Tim and I and my parents rang in the New Year, then toddled off to bed, exhausted, my father reminisced about how they used to spend the holiday, when he and my mother were our age.

Then:  Every year, my parents hosted the same six couples for dinner.  Per our Irish heritage, somewhere in the hour or so before they arrived, there was at least one really loud "discussion" about how much ice we needed for cocktails, whether the roast should be rare or well-done or how many different kinds of bread should be served with dinner.  All vitally important matters upon which the fate of the free world hung.

Now:  We don't eat red meat, we only eat whole grain bread, and the only one using ice is the dog, but she's a mean drunk, so we cut her off after one cocktail.

Then:  After a fairly raucous dinner, the midnight toast, and enough alcohol consumed to keep Charlie Sheen making YouTube videos until his kids are all old enough to collect social security, the real fun would start.  Charades. Boys against the girls.

The guys would stay in the TV room, while the girls retired to the living room to come up with their clues.  Dumb.  Dumb.  Dumb.  What were we girls thinking???  TV room???  Where the TV guide was???  Left to their own devices,  the guy's clues would have been easy to guess.  In those days, there were only three channels plus PBS, so how hard could it have been to guess all the sports shows?

But no, with access to information provided by the guide, they cheated their pants off.

"Oh ho!  You girls couldn't get Two Mules for Sister Sarah?   Starring Shirley MacLaine?  How could you not have come up with that one right away?    It's a classic.  And everyone knows Dora's Dunking Doughnuts featuring the always adorable Shirley Temple.  That one was a gift.   The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse is so a movie.  It stars Edward G. Robinson.  Gheesh.  You girls really should get out more."

We finally figured out how they were able to come up with a movie title besides Planet of the Apes, and began removing the TV guide earlier in the day when we were cleaning.  And that was the end of their vast movie knowledge.  Thank goodness they never tumbled to the fact that there was an entire set of encyclopedia in the room.  They might have actually won a game or two.

At first, we girls were coming up with book titles we were sure they hadn't read like Gone With the Wind, or The Old Man and the Sea, or musical groups like The Beatles or The Rolling Stones, you know, obscure stuff.  After we thwarted their little crime ring however,  they had nowhere to turn but to the world of sports.  They began throwing at us the names of every athlete whose name exceeded eighteen letters, only one of which was a vowel.  In retaliation, we mined  my mother's knowledge of music and began throwing dead Russian composers at them.  That went over well.

As some of the arguments got fairly heated, it was a good thing that my parent's house was bordered on one side by woods and another by a cemetery.  Actually,  in retrospect, it was probably a miracle that on the first of the new year, we didn't have a crime scene unit scouring the woods and excavating a freshly dug grave.  It was also a miracle that the divorce rate among the couples didn't skyrocket.

Somewhere around 4am, after losing five or six games in a row, the sore losers, er I mean guys, would have sobered up enough to drive the girls home, then, we would all tumble into bed, hungover and exhausted.

Now:  Somewhere around 5pm, we began consuming our bodyweight in food, ending around 10pm when we threw ourselves in front of the TV and, realizing that with 800 channels, nothing good was on, flipped back and forth between American Pickers and the food network until 11;30.  At that point, we roused ourselves from our food-induced comas, wiped the sleep from our eyes, the drool from our chins and the crumbs from our sweatshirts and tried to stay awake until midnight.

No sooner had the ball dropped then we all dragged ourselves to the stairs, stumbled up them and tumbled into our beds, totally drained from our rigorous workout.  Fork to mouth.  Wipe mouth with napkin.  Repeat.  Paaaaartay!!! Woo-(four-letter word beginning with f)--hoo!

Yep.  That was a trip down memory lane I could have lived without.

Oh Christmas Gift, Oh Christmas Gift

Where is Santa when you need him?

Instead of sitting his furry red and white self down on an oversized armchair in the center of the mall, he could be making himself useful by helping harried shoppers with their Christmas lists.  Like, oh, say for example, me.

This year, we all decided to chip in and get my sister a new set of pots and pans (do we know how to celebrate or what?  Paaartay!), and since everyone was coming to our house, I volunteered to buy it and wrap it (Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! That's what younger siblings are for!)

And so, on a random Tuesday in December, I found myself at Macy's scoping out the sales without have put the necessary forethought into the whole process.

"Big sale today.  25% off," the saleswoman displayed the cookware sets as though she was a Kringle with a bagful of toys.

"Just looking,"  I resisted the lure of the shiny silver pots and pans with their beautiful, glossy black non-stick cooking surfaces.

"I'm not supposed to do this," she whispered, leaning in and pulling a handful of coupons out of her pocket while looking over her shoulder for the Burgermeister, "but I can give you an additional 20% off."

That was a good deal, but remembering that I was parked at the other end of the mall, one floor down, and this was not a small gift, I played coy.

"I'll also give you a bonus pot and 7-piece set of utensils.  Free," she coaxed.

Who was I kidding?  She had me at 'sale'.  Like a kid in Sombertown who was just offered the toy of her dreams, I plucked the coupon from her fingers and charged toward the register whipping out my credit card before the Winter Warlock could wave his magic wand and make the sale go away.

Now, while the guy in the red suit has eight big, strong reindeer pulling his rather sizable self in a sleigh, I didn't even have a misfit toy to help me schlepp my cookware to the car.  Undaunted, because, after all, this was the season of miracles, I piled bags and boxes into my arms until I resembled Max, the Grinch's dog after their midnight trip to Whoville, and started off.

Stopping every five minutes to rearrange bags and boxes as though there was a good way to carry eighty-six items through a crowded mall, I made my snail-like progress toward where my car was parked.  Where was Hermey, the elf, when you needed him?

I suppose it was because I was moving so slowly and therefore made an easy target, that the Abominable Kiosk People attacked.

"Would you like a free sample of our product?" one guy called out to me cheerily, obviously mistaking my Scrooge-like scowl as a positive sign of interest in the snake-oil he was hustling.

"Seriously?  Do you not see the eight tons of crap I am carrying?  Where would you suggest I put it?  Oh.  Wait. I have the perfect place.  Just let me wiggle my middle finger free and I'll show you."

He scuttled out of my way faster than Bob Cratchet after asking for a raise.

"Can I ask you a question?" another guy planted himself in my path, obviously believing I had goodwill toward my fellow man.

"You just did,"  I bared my teeth at him in Grinchy fashion, and tried to sidestep.

"No.  Really.  I just want to know....."  the rest of his infomercial pitch died on his lips as I narrowed my eyes and channelled Ebenezer once more.

"Seriously?  Do you really expect me to stop, put down all eighty kajillion Christmas gifts that I have strapped, tied and piled onto every part of myself and talk to you about...what is it you're selling?  add more that I can't carry and try to make it to the car without killing myself or someone else?  Really?"

His self-preservation instinct finally kicked in and he backed away as though he had just seen the open grave from the ghost of Christmas future.

Fortunately for them, the next two kioskers took one look at my less than holly jolly face and decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and melted away like Frosty on a hot July day.

Finally though, I made it to the car with the gifts, my back and most of my sanity intact.  I have, however, decided  that next year, should I be stupid enough to go in on a group gift again, I am going to have Rudolph with his nose so bright run interference for me.

Mr. Sandman, Bring Me a Gun (With One Bullet)

Why is it that with all their knowledge and experience, doctors and nurses have failed to learn the most important thing of all:  patients need sleep!!!

During Tim's recent hospital stay for knee surgery, we probably got a combined total of fifteen minutes sleep, and only because we took turns distracting the staff.  At one point, I seriously considered trying to find a nice, quiet slab in the morgue for a quick catnap, but figured the autopsy would probably only wake me anyway.

All night long it was a constant procession of people in and out of the room, unless Tim needed something.  Then, they became as hard to find as a Khardahsian at an Amish convention.

Every five minutes, someone was parading through the room like a Miss America contestant working the main runway.

Hi!  I'm Becky/Mary/Julie/BettyJo/BobbyJo/BillyJo/John Boy/Jim Bob.  I'll be your nurse/nurse's assistant/nurse's aid/nurse's mechanic/nurse's accountant/nurse's hairdresser.  My job is to keep you up all day and night until you're so sleep deprived you'll confess to having aided and abetted Benedict Arnold, John Wilkes Booth and Tony Soprano just so you can be executed and get some rest.

I will also wait until you are delirious with pain before bringing you drugs, then demanding you tell me your name, rank, serial number, shoe size, favorite teacher and earliest childhood memory before letting you  have them.

If you can answer all of the questions successfully, I will then ask you to rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10, bearing in mind that 10 is an unacceptable answer and I will continue to harass and browbeat you until you either cry or give up.  One is also unacceptable because we don't actually want you to be pain free since that would diminish our control over you.  Three is the magic answer, but only after the meds have actually kicked in.  If you say it now, it means you don't really need the drugs and are just being a whiny cry-baby.

Even after Tim was sufficiently medicated and possibly drifting off into a restful, healing slumber, the procession continued.

Okay!  It's me again, Nurse NoDoze.  Just wanted you to know that I will be taking your pulse and blood pressure every fifteen minutes.  I am going to leave the monitor clipped to you, so all I have to do is tiptoe in and read the results on the machine without disturbing you, but instead I will wake you up out of a peaceful slumber to share the results and reassure you that you are neither dead nor in a coma.  It is crucial that you know what your vitals are, since, if there is a problem, we may need you to scrub in on your own operation.

Oh, and every seven minutes, I will either want to discuss your physical therapy schedule, lunch menu for tomorrow, urine output, Super Bowl team stats, what's new at the box office and whether Brad and Angelina should have more children.

And, every three and a half minutes, I will be in here haranguing you about the need to keep your knee from stiffening up.  I will take away the machine that they gave you after surgery which moves it for you, thereby letting you get some rest, and insist that you sit, stand, walk, enter a three-legged race and perform three triple-toe loops in a row.

If you complain about the pain and/or crumple into a broken heap at my feet, I will once again demand that you rate your pain, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Finally, around 3am, after forcing Tim to do laps around the nurse's station, Nurse Red Bull turned off the overhead fluorescent lights with their 2,000,000 watt bulbs and announced that he should really try to get a little sleep.

And she really did mean little, since at 5am, she was back flipping on the lights with a cherry, "Good Morning! Let's get started on a new day!"

And by new day, I mean a repeat of yesterday for you with the new shift while I go home and get some much needed sleep.