A Career Change?

Yesterday, as I was revealing yet another aspect of my life to my partner and he started squirting coffee out of his nose from laughing, I wondered if it was time for a career change. I mean, really. My life has been one funny event after another and it seems I never run out of material when we are sitting around at the station and chewing the fat with each other. Sometimes I test that theory and I tell them to give me a topic and I inevitably will find a story that will fit right into the given theme. It helps that I have spent my life trying to experience anything and everything which has developed enough fodder to keep people laughing for a while. I wish I had a nickle (too cheap for pennies these days) for every time I've heard someone say, "Hey, you need to write a book!" Probably so, but I can't seem to get past the 'Once Upon a Time' part. I am better in person because I like to use my hands and expressions to emphasis a point. It might require a bit of ducking on the listener's part which might be why they appear to be so attentive during my ramblings.

They always say that entertainers usually starve for a bit while they are trying to make a name for themselves, but I have been starving for the past 55 years, so it certainly can't be any worse. I have a wealth of topics to talk about. Family, career, adventures, growths that have suddenly appeared or other shifting body parts, classroom follies, money pit woes, animal dysfunctions, or my inability to operate anything that is remotely electronic/digital/battery operated or requires more involvement than an ON button.

I truly believe that our destiny or Karma as some people may call it, is not a series of random events. I've come to accept the things that happen to me because they were meant to turn out that way. There is a bigger picture of which I am not privy to and as they say, all things happen for a reason. Some of those dramas I may never understand , but I accept them nonetheless. So if I am meant to do just a tad bit more before I move on to some other plane of existence, then I better get busy.

One of the younger ones at work made a comment about an old man who worked out at his gym and he couldn't believe that he was in there lifting weights like the rest of them because he was an ancient 62 years of age. I made sure he understood that 60 was not standing with one foot in the grave. There is a stigma associated with anyone over the age of say, 40, that our lives are nearly over and we are not allowed to do anything exciting anymore for fear of breaking a hip. Not to say that I don't worry about it some days, but every time the doc tells me to give up my strenuous lifestyle, I take up another hobby such as skydiving. Don't tell me I can't do something.

Before I am thrown into another phase of my life, I better make sure the current one is on steady ground. I've made it a point to not make any major life changes until warm weather, so I'll know that I am in the best frame of mind for looking at something from every angle. In the colder months, I just want to crawl up inside a big pair of fuzzy slippers and hibernate until I can go outside without wearing at least six layers of clothing. As soon as Spring hits, I'll be looking for a new adventure anyway. I'm making a bet with myself that I can get through an entire year without losing anymore body parts. Or at least prevent my waist from finally reaching my boobs.

The Babies are Coming!

My daughter and her family are coming to visit for a few days. For some reason, Mom's house is now the new vacation spot. Not that I am complaining, mind you. Just getting to see them other than on a special occasion is always a treat. They always come with a load of energy and then the adults leave dragging babies, suitcases and ornery animals out to the car at the end of the visit. After the tail lights have receded, Grandma goes around the house doing an inspection of the contents. Will always find things missing, misplaced, or broken. I'm still trying to figure out what happened to a lid on a glass jar in the kitchen.

I find things in the most unusual places. Living room knickknacks on top of the frig, portable telephones in laundry baskets, books in the dryer, and gummy bears in the planter. My house is not baby-proof, so I know that when something is taken away from the youngest one, it is thrown wherever they happen to be standing at the time. Tampons are much better placed on the hutch in the dining room than up the child's nose during experimentation.

Why couldn't we have had our grandchildren first? There is no pressure to turn them into functional human beings, and if they are screwed up as adults we can blame someone else. All I have to do with them is play and then let someone else be the bad guy. I can get out there and jump in a pile of leaves or roll around in a mud puddle and not be called senile because I am doing a childish thing, with a child. Silly rule if you ask me. This last year, I bought the 9 year old a pocket knife. You would have thought that I had given him an AK47 and told him to get on the roof. My daughter protested that he was too young and I told her that if someone showed him how to use it properly, then he was more than old enough. It wasn't a Bowie knife for goodness sake. When she continued to protest, I told her that a grandma trumped a momma and he was keeping it. We then got out a watermelon and he practiced cutting up the watermelon. {"It's dirty!" "Hey, the acids in your stomach will get rid of anything icky and I cleaned it off, child. Go change a diaper or something"}

My son had invented the word 'no' as a child and it was easier wrestling a herd of turkeys than it was to get him to wash his hair. "Stop running in the house!" he hollers at the grandkids. I tell him to leave them alone. As long as they are not running with pencils and scissors we are fine. "Get off the railing!" as they attempt to climb up there on the front porch. "Leave them alone, they are exercising" I tell him. "Well, if they fall off and get hurt, it will be your fault." he advises me. "I bet they won't do it again, though." I tell him. He doesn't understand my logic. I've learned that children do not easily break and dirt isn't necessarily going to disintegrate little hands like battery acid. The joy of sitting up in a tree and looking down at the world is worth the risk of skinned up knees trying to get back down again.

When one of the grandkids was doing something that had the potential to harm him, I told him that if he got hurt, I was going to have to get a big knife out of the kitchen and chop off the body part that would be injured since I didn't have any other medicine for it. Sure enough a short time later, I hear a loud thump and then a squeal in the dining room. He only had time for a couple sniffles before I hollered, "Get the knife!" He jumped up as if he had been bitten and screamed back, "I'm okay, Grandma!" Works every time.

I can hardly wait until I can sneak off into the corner and start whispering with one of them, so my daughter can say, "What are you two talking about?!" We always smile and say. "Nuttin', Honey", then giggle because we aren't saying anything at all. Or maybe we'll go make something very messy in the kitchen that is full of sugar and goo and watch as the parents roll their eyes because they know that it may be midnight before the sugar high wears off enough for sleep. One particular afternoon of making cookies, the grandson was sitting at the breakfast nook eating one of those cookies and he says, "Hey Grandma, how come I am sitting here eating a cookie and you are over there cleaning up the mess?" I said, "Yeah, how did it work out that way?" "I don't know," he says, taking another big bite. "But I like it" Don't tell him, but I like it too.

Back in the Saddle Again

Back at work again after a much needed week's vacation. Wasn't a planned vacation, but one that the doctor ordered. Every so often, we hit that proverbial wall and this last week it was my turn. I finally ventured out yesterday to see how I would do under a little bit of body stress and I'll have to admit it was a tad difficult. But what a great day to be out and about. I went down to my favorite hang out to do a bit of hiking and with the recent rains, the creek was indeed rising. I normally do a couple miles of billy goat climbing out there with little strain, but it took nearly an hour to do 2 miles, so I knew today would be something of a challenge. It started out pretty rough with back to back calls until early afternoon, but it has been quiet for the past hour or so. Yippee. We always pray for sleep, but I know that is an unrealistic dream around here anymore.

I love being out in the woods. I discovered the joy of hiking a few years ago and try to get out whenever the opportunities are available. This last summer, I headed up into the north Tennessee mountains to see how I would do with the elevations and a heavy pack. My goal is to do part of the Appalachian Trail this next summer and I did a few trial runs this last year. Bay Mountain up near Bristol, TN is absolutely beautiful. I tend to go by myself on these adventures and have learned how to take pictures of myself with the camera phone propped up on logs or rocks. The kids keep asking me who is taking the pictures and I tell them it is a secret. Learning how to set the timer and then where to stand has been fun. Especially since I am half blind and have trouble seeing the little screen to start with.

The last time I was up on the ridge, I had a deer literally run out in front of me on the trail and I had to laugh to think that the darn things are going to run out in front of me even when I am on foot. Most of the time I am dodging turtles and lizards. This past summer has been bad for snakes on the trails and up on Pine Mountain here close to home, I had a nice discussion with one for a good 20 minutes before he agreed to get off the trail and let me pass. I looked him up later because he was a nasty looking one, and lucky for me, he was not poisonous. Certainly not an ideal situation to figure out what it is after the fact.

I went up to Cumberland Gap, having heard so much about it in history class at some point in my past, and that was pretty anticlimatic. I stood on the spot that was so famous and for the life of me, couldn't see the attraction. Nearly fell off the side of the overlook trying to take a picture of myself, but other than that it wasn't too exciting. I had forgotten to bring my walking stick, so I found one in the woods and broke the end of the stick off so it would be more manageable. The problem was, the pointed end kept working its way towards my eyeballs, so I grabbed one of my UGA stuffed dogs off the dash of the car and tied him on with a piece of plastic I had torn from a WalMart bag. We have to improvise occasionally. He was a hit with everyone I passed on the trail, and at least two rangers told me that they would have to report a 'bear' sighting. I had to explain that it was a DAWG for goodness sake, woof, woof.

Well, duty calls once again and I am off with another chance encounter with the sick and injured. Let the mantra begin......{please be under 300 pounds.....please be under 300 pounds.....please be under 300 pounds...........}

Is the Doctor In?

There is nothing worse than the 'doctor' being the patient. I'm a long stretch from being a doctor, but everyone thinks that if you know more than how to open an aspirin bottle, then you must be a doctor. Out here, they call the paramedics ditch doctors, which isn't too far from the truth. I started out the day looking like this. Just a tad tired and attempting to recover from a particularly long and draining shift. The ones that never allow for rest, let alone sleep.

By late afternoon, I was looking like this. Except I was green and not orange. After an evening of that, I finally broke down around 11p and called the station for the guys to come pick me up. When the legs are cramping, it is time to call in the experts for a bit of IV fluids. I had already passed out twice and hit my head and various other parts, so I figured it was time to seek professional help. Not that I'll find that in most EDs these days, but desperation calls for desperate measures.

I have great veins, but there is something about dehydration that tends to make them run for the hills, never to be seen again. Was starting to look like a porcupine before a line was started. All I wanted at that point was something to stop the nausea because everything I had tried to take at the house came back up. But a few bags of IV fluids later and some mind altering drugs, I finally made it home this morning for a nice nap until this evening. Time is certainly not being kind to me these days.

My daughter called and asked if I wanted her to come over to look after me. I'll take any excuse I can get to see her or the babies. They live 3.5 hours away and I miss them something awful some days. So she is on her way over with the youngest one. I better hurry up and get well before they get here if he is coming. The baby takes all of your parenting skills to handle. He has learned how to manipulate his parents very well and they do not have the patience to outlast him the way Grandma does.

For some reason, the child did not like his Grandma much during the first year. He tolerated me, but wasn't very thrilled to see me like the older ones were. All that changed when I finally lost my own patience with his parents and stepped in to teach them discipline. After a particularly stressful day of listening to his screaming and their loose threats, I finally took matters in hand.

Scooped him up under my arms and put him in the 'naughty chair'. Then I stood there arms crossed with 'the look' my own mother always used on me, burning holes into his brain. The original naughty chair was a large recliner in the living room. He screamed, flip flopped, rolled all over the thing, but only stuck his leg over the edge once to climb down. I made a noise similar to the Dog Whisperer and he pulled his leg back as if I had hit him with a cattle prod.

Eventually, he got the message and when I stuck him in the chair, he'd only sniffle for a few seconds and then sit there quietly until punishment was over. My daughter and her husband were amazed at the results. I don't repeat myself, and they only get one soft spoken warning before being scooped up and deposited in the chair. So now I am the baby's favorite Grandma like the rest of them and he follows me everywhere I go.

It had been a good month since I had seen them the last time they visited. I'm not sure what they had been doing with the child, but an alien came with them in the car. He screamed at decibels that are not humanly possible and then threw himself down onto the floor with an intent to harm himself. As anticipated, this resulted in hugs and kisses on the boo-boos and then he'd get what he wanted in the first place. I stood there watching these antics as long as I could and then told my daughter and her husband to go for a ride. She says, "Why, Momma?" and I replied "You don't want to know. Just get out for a couple hours and spend money or something."

It took about 10 minutes after their departure for him start the temper tantrum. Instead of the regular naughty chair, we graduated to the real one. I stuck a small folding stool in the middle of my bedroom away from all distractions and then stood there in the usual fashion. He'd scream, fall out of the chair and when I silently picked him up to put him back in the chair, he'd stiffen up so that I couldn't get him in it. My response was to give him a gentle karate chop to the belly, which would bend him over enough to get his butt in the chair. When that didn't work, he'd stomp his feet on the floor and then try to turn around so that he couldn't see me. I'd flip him back. Not a word on my part being said, mind you.

When that didn't work, he'd try to stick his fingers down his throat to vomit. I'd pull them down. Back up. OK, fine with me. Took a towel and wiped it off his face and still no change in my demeanor. Covered his hands with his face and when he pulled them back, he'd scream hysterically because of the snot on his hands. It was all I could do not to laugh at him. This went on for over an hour, but finally, that little colt was broken and he sat there quietly sniffling at me. "Well, now that you are done with all that, lets have a hug and you go be a good boy". Off he ran-into the living room to pick up a football and throw it square at his brother's head. We were only in the naughty chair about half an hour that time. Eventually, he learned that his way of handling the situation wasn't working at Grandma's house so we had a pleasant visit for the rest of their time here. When my daughter told him he was going to Grandma's today, he did his little happy dance and ran for the door. Guess that means we are in for more entertainment.