Best Blog Challenge

The lovely Gwen Bell has issued a challenge about a challenge: write about something that challenged you this year and how you overcame it and why it was a good challenge.

Ok.
Ok.
Here I go.
No really.
I'm doing it any minute.
Hm.

I don't like to think about challenges. I just want them to go away tra la. I am lazy like that.

I don't know if I have overcome this one yet or not.

Ok, I haven't. It is my continuing challenge, one that I deal with every single day.

I am challenged by not having my parents' precipitous decline into old age taint my world view. The pain and suffering and helplessness they face every day as their bodies and minds wear our are almost more than I can bear at times.

Their existential crisis has become my existential crisis. What's it all about, Alfie?

I try to keep my eyes wide open. To be helpful and kind and to not minimize or ignore their suffering because I hate seeing it so much.

Sometimes I pass and on many days I fail. I forget that they aren't who they used to be.

I snap at them, I'm sarcastic, I'm impatient, I run out of there just to get away for a while.

The temptation is to put up a wall - not against them so much but against feeling what is happening to them and letting the full horror wash over me. Because it is horrifying, it is scary, it is painful.

It is only when I can gather my inner strength, my hidden Toltec warrior, and just be there that it is all ok. If I can just breathe through it, remember to be right there, right then - that's when I can feel all the feelings and let the power of love tie us together instead of let the misunderstandings, pains and fear tear us apart.

So. That's not the most cheerful challenge on earth, but there it is. There is no tidy ending, no Oprah-episode "Aha" moment. Just life. I hope that's enough.

Fun Poinsettia Facts

I know that you think this is a poinsettia:


But I live in The Poinsettia City, where we have poinsettias like this:


Close up, they look like this:


If you like the white kind, you can go over to my neighbor's house:



Random Poinsettia Facts:

• Those big pointy colorful things on poinsettias are not the flower. Those are bracts.


• The flower is that weird little thing in the middle. If you want a long-lasting poinsettia, pick one where there is no yellow pollen showing on the flower.


• Poinsettias are from the genus Euphorbia. There are some very weird-looking Euphorbias.


• This may be why the Poinsettia's botanic name is Euphoribia pulcherrima, pulcherrima having the same root as "pulchritude" or beauty.
  
• Many people think that Poinsettias are toxic, but you would probably have to eat a giant Poinsettia salad to make yourself sick. The sap of Euphorbias is known to be irritating to the skin, though, so wash thoroughly if you get the sap on yourself. And just to be safe, do not eat the leaves.


• The world's biggest grower and breeder of Poinsettias is Paul Ecke Ranch in Encinitas, California. They are responsible for all those cool curly, spotty and multicolored Poinsettias that come out each year.


• Poinsettias are one of the most difficult holiday plants to grow. They need to be tricked into blooming precisely at Christmastime, which means providing them with exactly the right day length. Growers cover the little plants with blackout cloth or give them extra light at night to make them think the nights are just the right length for them to set flowers.


• I was a horticulture major in college. Does it show?

Enjoy your holiday season. And buy some Poinsettias.

Your correspondent from The Poinsettia City,
Suebob

The list

My friends Spike, Lucky Spud and Doodle went to Vegas on an ill-fated trip and had so many bad things happen that they finally started a bulleted list, just so they could remember them all, lest they leave anything out of the tale of woe.

It is in this spirit of marinating in the badness that I bring you: My Week, The List of Horror

1. Mom got chest pains


2. Poor Swine Flu baby spewing germs all over ER waiting room


3. Blessedly short Swine Flu emergency waiting room wait


4. Followed by all-day in Swine Flu Emergency Room


5. Noisy, horrible, uncomfortable ER packed to capacity


6. Dad such a mess he didn't recognize a restaurant where he had eaten literally hundreds of times


7. No water or bedpan for mom for hours at a time


8. No food offered for mom from 7 am to 9 pm


9. Angioplasty


10. My last day at work cut to 2 hours squeezed in


11. Cleaning my cubicle


12. Saying goodbye to beloved co-workers in a rush


13. 3 day old dishes rotting at home


14. Not able to spend any time at home because landlord was sealing driveway and Goldie was trapped in hot car


15. Standing in hospital hallway for 90 minutes with 91-year-old dad and sis because no one knew where mom was


16. 3 nights on my folks' "block of cement" guest room bed


17. Return of sciatic pain in my legs due to #16


18. Saturday spent at medical labs, with Medicare nurse and doing a freelance job


19. Sunday morning flat tire


20. Tire store closed on Sunday

Ok, it wasn't ALL bad.

1. Mom made a good recovery. They caught it just in time.


2. My sis PK came far to rescue us when I was freaking out because the angioplasty fell on my last day at work and I needed to go clean out my cubicle and say goodbye. She really, really saved the day.


3. A nice hospital employee named Devin very kindly walked me and my lost dad around the hospital when we couldn't find mom, and his sweet gesture swept the rest of the staff's cluelessness and rudeness right away.


4. Mom promised to go back on her heart meds.


5. If nothing else, it kept me from thinking about my last week at work


6. I had an understanding manager who said "Of course family comes first" when I needed to take time off

Tell me about the FUN thing you did this week.

My most embarrassing life

My Most Embarrassing Moment by Suebob, Mrs. Flinger's Period 3 English*

*Explanation at bottom of post

Most embarrassing moments are usually just that: a moment, a brief time of realization and blushing, followed by the blissful softening of time's passing.

But what happens when your embarrassing moment happens and you don't even know about it until long after everyone else has heard about it, when, years later, the realization comes crashing down on you like an emotional pile of bricks?

That's what happened to me.

When I was in my junior year of high school, I awoke one day with terrible back pain. I was in ballet at the time, so I thought I had strained a muscle.

I iced, I used a heating pad, but nothing helped. My mom took me over to the chiropractor and I almost passed out from the pain.

I remember standing at the counter and having my vision disappear down to pinpoints and the noises around me get farther and farther away until someone grabbed me just as I collapsed.

Someone took my temperature and found I had a 104 degree fever. My doctor ordered me admitted to the hospital. Our family doctor at the time was this harsh skinny old guy with a thick German accent. I always suspected that he was a retired Nazi but I'm sure that is just speculation...mmmmaybe.

They put me on the pediatrics ward at the hospital. The doctor came to visit me there and took me into a broom closet and did my first, and by far the worst, pelvic exam of my life.

Between the pain and the fever and the broom closet and a strange man rooting around in my privates with the grace of a ham-handed plumber, I was a mess. During the exam, Dr. Mengele asked me "Are you sexually emancipated?"

This was 1977 and I had no idea what he was talking about. I assumed he was asking me if I was a feminist. After all, the debate over the Equal Rights Amendment was raging at the time. So I said yes.

After that, things get a little fuzzy. My fever went up even higher and I ended up spending six weeks on that peds ward, receiving massive doses of erythromycin for a staph infection that had settled in the bones of my lower spine. Except for developing a permanent hatred for runny food served on plastic plates, I recovered fully.

Fast forward 25 years. My sister Laura and I were talking about the time I had spent in the hospital. She said, laughing, "And that old German doctor told mom and dad you had gonorrhea."

"WHAT?" I yelled.

"You didn't know? He said he had asked you if you were having sex with a lot of people and, with your symptoms, he suspected gonorrhea."

"Doctor Mengele told mom and dad I was having sex with a lot of people and had gonorrhea?? That isn't what he asked me. He said 'sexually emancipated.' I thought he meant if I approved of women being firefighters and judges!"

So my most embarrassing moment lasted 25 years, the years when my parents thought I was a total slut.

**********
Explanation:
Mrs. Flinger has a new project: trying to help bloggers become better writers. Thank God. Somebody has to!

The idea is that we will do weekly writing assignments and give each other gentle and helpful criticism. Week one's topic: My Most Embarrassing Moment. Ok!

Helter skelter

How often do you think to yourself "There is something seriously wrong with me?"

Often? Please say often. That way I won't feel so alone.

Today I was walked Goldie at my old community college and parked over by the swimming pool. I used to spend an hour a day there doing laps, back and forth in the glassy blue water, composing poetry as I listened to the bubbles in my ears.

I walked up to the fence and looked in and suddenly felt like I had been dropped down an elevator shaft. Darkness zoomed up around me.

I was instantly nauseous and reeling. I grabbed the chain link fence to keep from toppling over.

The pool was empty. It wasn't the sight of my beloved swimming pool empty that got to me. It was just...oh, here it goes - empty swimming pools horrify me in a way that I can't even explain.

It is not rational. It is blown out of proportion. It is more than a bit ridiculous. And it happens every single time.

I staggered back from the fence and kept walking Goldie around the campus for about half an hour, but I couldn't get that gaping empty swimming pool out of my mind.

I felt sick and weak and bad. I just limped on, propelled by the force of a determined 65-pound mutt on a squirrel hunt.

Toward the end of the walk, Goldie sat down suddenly and began madly licking a back foot. I looked at her paw and saw what looked like a moderate gash, like she had stepped on something.

I urged her on because there was nothing I could do to help her. In the middle of the street, she sat down and began licking and chewing and would not move. Fortunately, it wasn't a busy street, but finally a car came along and I kind of dragged her over to the edge.

"Is he ok?" the man in the car asked.

God bless him. I told him she was ok, just had a little cut. I really appreciated him asking - just one human letting another know that they cared. I love people like that.

I sat down on the sidewalk and inspected Goldie's paw more closely and found a big thorn. I pulled it out and we waited a bit and she recovered enough to start rooting in the bushes again.

Then I realized my fear and nausea was all gone. Funny how sometimes a small crisis can return our focus, bring us back into ourselves and make everything ok again.

So make me feel better and tell me about your irrational weirdnesses. Come on. You know you want to.