Bob, my mother's kidney and her divorce.

This is Bob.

Bob, a kidney. I don't know why I've decided to call it Bob.

Bob, is my mother's kidney. Bob is sick and needs to be removed. Actually this is just a representation of Bob. It's not a picture of her actual kidney. Although I do have the CT scan if anyone is interested or is that a violation of HIPAA? Okay, on second thought just imagine that this is a representation of a representation of my mother's kidney that needs to be removed from her body.

Remember when she spent the week in the hospital a few weeks ago? This was why. Apparently her kidney is 'blown' and needs to be removed. Fortunately it's a relatively quick and easy procedure that can be done laparoscopically greatly reducing the recovery time.

Since I'm not going to England now (Thanks for that. I'm still bitter and less hurt than yesterday but still considerably bummed.) we can schedule her nephrectomy for the near future. I guess this is the upside of me remaining in the country; I can attend to my mother's semi-urgent medical needs. Don't get me wrong, we had moved all of the procedures back so that I could have went to England for that week. I even had made arrangements with her on which friend of mine to call in case of medical emergency and my roommate was going to call her several times throughout the week while I was gone to check on her. Luckily for them fate intervened and they're saved the joy of having to deal with my mother and her irrefutable stubbornness where her health is concerned. It's just one more example of how I uprooted my entire life to have a vacation which I'm clearly not allowed to have. All I wanted was one week, just one week where I didn't have to fret over her physiological homeostasis and whether or not she was taking of herself and which doctor I was supposed to call and who I was waiting on return calls from. It was going to be a glorious week because to be frank, it was going to be someone else's problem. Now I'll get to spend that week arguing with my mother over whether or not Bob will be removed.  Because goodness knows we haven't covered every aspect of the surgery etc. over the last 2 weeks. I'm being sarcastic. If I have to say 'There is a giant bag of urine just sitting in your gut!' one more time I may puke.  (Sorry about that.)

I now understand why she stayed in a dysfunctional marriage for so long. I thought I was stubborn; she is a god-bless-ed stone wall. She will not give. She is also wily and nimble and can come up with an excuse for ANYTHING. Her latest excuse: 'If I do the surgery I won't be able to buy a car.' Nevermind that the woman could finance a small house on her credit card alone, I don't believe that it is requirement to have two kidneys to purchase a car in the US. I could be wrong about that but I'm reasonably sure that I'm not. Her willingness to hang onto sick, necrotic things is mind-numbing. You can make the connection about my father. I love him but he's a mess too.

The point of all this being is that I am currently not in the proper state of mind to deal with my mother and argue with her for the 42nd time about whether or not she wants/needs her kidney to be removed.  I just want to scream 'FINE KEEP THE FUCKING THING! SEE IF I CARE! IT'S NOT MY KIDNEY.' but instead I just say 'Let's go over the details again. What don't you understand?' At least if I'm talking her down off the kidney ledge I'm not thinking about the utter futility of my life.

No matter how hard you try, you cannot wiggle back onto your tampon after you've sneezed.

You've seen it happen in action but maybe you just didn't notice it. But you've seen it. Every woman, or at least every woman who wears tampons during allergy season, has done it.

There is a particularly violent sneeze, a pause, a face-scrunch to one particular side, a odd wiggle-type shimmy and a groan. Yes, you've just witnessed a woman with good kegel control push her tampon halfway out.

I'm here to inform you, the public, that it is impossible to wiggle back onto your tampon. Goodness knows I've tried. Of course with me this always happens when I'm out in public without a spare on me, or heaven forbid I have a spare but it's one of those God-awful Ob tampons that don't have applicators. My mom bought me an economy size case of them from Walmart one time because they were on 'Sale.' One fine spring day she calls to tell me she's bought me tampons and is so proud of herself; she's finally accepted her only daughter wearing tampons.(She's always thought I was trashy because I refuse to walk around in what amounts to the 'Juniors' section of adult diapers. You get comfortable in a maxi pad and it's a slippery slope from there to urinating in your undergarments because you cannot miss a single episode of the Nanny marathon. Because you haven't seen them all.) I go to pick up said tampons and immediately shriek in terror and loathing. She hands me some line about looking a gift horse in the mouth and I explain that they don't have applicators. She processes that and then says 'I wondered how there were able to fit 500 of them in a Kleenex box.'

Ever observant she is. Ever observant and facetious. I still maintain it was her way of sticking it to me for being a skanky modern woman who doesn't relegate herself to a dark corner of her basement room if there is a pool party while on the rag. By the way, the code word for the string hanging out of your bathing suit is 'Ice Cream.' Next time you're at a public pool and an adult woman screams 'Ice Cream,' she's not trying to incite a riot among the 10 and younger crowd. She's informing her friend that her tampon string has become the newest accessory to her bathing ensemble. It doesn't hurt that screaming 'Ice Cream' normally distracts every child and adult male long enough for the affected party to recover the rogue pull-cord. Anyways the point being is that my mother associates my usage of tampons with the lack of a hymen. Which may or may not be true.

In general it sucks being on the rag. Gone are the days when the men shut the women up in a tent with one another and let them sit for the better part of a week giggling and carrying on.

I figure this is why whenever you get 3 or more us together at a time in a space sans men we always have period talk. This is quickly followed by a close comparison of the member of the person with which we had out last sexual encounter with, as we're wont to do. Complete with diagrams, gestures and comparisons to random food items. Cucumber good, cinnamon stick bad.

So the next time you see a girl sneeze, stop and psuedo-break-it-down to the 'muzak' in the department store you'll know she's on the rag and just partially shat out her tampon. Or she's clearly psycho because she appreciates the muzak. In which case, take that girl out and introduce her to some applicator-less tampons. She can waste some time figuring out how that works and maybe become less socially awkward.

The Beach: The Hurricane Can't Stop the Critic.

I thought it would be fun to title this post like a bad B-movie horror flick.

I went to the beach this past weekend with my mother and dog. I was going to do a daily blogging from the beach as the ocean normally makes me feel all introspective and thoughtful and stuff. But the before we managed to even leave my mother had smashed my phone in the trunk.

Not that my phone was inside the trunk and she shut it, sealing it away in the trunk for a length of time--that she shut the trunk on my phone, my phone was physically in between the trunk and the body of the car and she closed the trunk onto my phone. Multiple times. Because it wouldn't close and what do you do when something doesn't close? Try, try again.

Hence busted phone screen. Hence weekend at beach without external communication. Hence hysteria.

But here are a few gem's of my mother's conversations over the course of the weekend:

'He's nothing but an old fucking shithead.' - Obviously  some random old guy.

'They gave us a free order of hushpuppies for our trouble'. . .'No it wasn't nice of them. I told them to do it.' - Because the people at the BBQ place didn't assume that she wanted french fries with the sandwiches and she had to go back in and order them which is their fault, thus they owed her some hushpuppies. Hell, she got away with it.

'I wonder why no one else is parked here. Why are they all parked over there?'. . .'That no parking sign doesn't mean me, does it?' - No Mother, it doesn't.


It was a bad trip for babies, as she yelled at two different women. One for bringing her infant on the beach and the other was in the seafood restaurant. This woman was incapable of taking her child outside to cry. She felt it would be resolved more quickly if she merely asked the child to be quiet, which it wasn't. But I'm sure she wishes she would have taken him outside as my mother berated her in front of her whole family for being an idiot. To Mom's credit not one of her family members came to this woman's aid to defend her or anything. Maybe they think she's an idiot too?

Straight from the Horse's Mouth

I'm starting a new segment on the blog called Straight from the Horse's Mouth. it will consist of things my mother has said verbatim via text or what I've actually heard her say. It may or may not include the context in which it was said, mostly because I may or may not have gotten the context in which it was said. She has a tendency to start thinking aloud mid-diatribe. Fair warning. Some colorful language is ahead.

Actual statement to me #1:
I'm reading this book; it's all right, but talk about some low-rent mother-fuckers.

We had been conversing about degenerate peoples.

Overheard statement #1: (Speaking to Sara - who is a dog, mind you.)
I know it's hot but the air is going to come on any minute now, just lay down in front of the vent over there.


This next one requires a little back story. I'm staying @ Mom's because I'm in housing limbo and I texted her one evening, 6/11, to inform her I was staying at a friend's:

Text message #1 - verbatim:
Be careful come on home been watching drug deals across the street all day

Now I'll grant her that her neighborhood is declining quickly, but after speaking with her I found out that she had been talking to the neighborhood schizophrenic who told her the house across the street is a drug house, that morning. Convenient how she notices the drug deals after that? And nevermind the fact that there was really only one instance of activity that she considered to be a drug deal, it only lasted 5 minutes.

I probably texted her something generic back that reiterated what I said about not coming home and told her I loved her. She then responded with,

Text message #2 - verbatim:
Be very careful danger comes in many forms uo me 25 bucks i love u

Are you kidding me? My mother texted me to say that danger comes in many forms? Who says that? Who texts that? Come on Mom! It seems like she feels the need to impart pearls and gems of wisdom on me through texts because, Hell, I don't why she does it but she does. And it's wierd. This is almost as bad as the time she texted me to wear my bike helmet to protect against injury out of the blue. (I really wish I had kept that conversation.) For serious though, they have got to quit showing those PSA commercials; she'll run out of material sooner without those. I can't wait until I get the ones about how meth rots your teeth. She is also charging me rent to stay with her. That's what the 25 bucks is about.