I Feel Young - Muddy Creek Cafe

I had the pleasure of attending a music show at Muddy Creek Cafe tonight.  Granted it was billed as "Old Time Music" so I was thinking blue grass maybe a little folk.  This was "Old Timer" music.

I show up and immediately felt like that first day of High School.  Everyone sitting had already been at the rodeo of life for quite some time and most were looking at me saying, "Well, lookee here what's she doing at our party?  Should we stuff her in the trash can??"

The audience of this party was beyond the start of AARP and well into the Reverse Mortgage kind of time.  There were blue hairs, there were white hairs, then there were the covered up hairs - me!  They watched as I decided against the prune juice and went for a bottle of beer.  Not only was I totally out of my element, but my two boys I brought with me were looking at me like, "IS IT TIME TO LEAVE?"

But we sat and got an education on the music of the night.  All three muscians were over 70 years old and decided to form a band.  My decision to take up twerking at my 21 years of age means I've got plenty of time to perfect it.  We had the banjo, guitar player, the singer and the harmonica player.  We sat and sang with them to The Circle Be UnBroken, Folsom Prison Blues and These Boots are Made for Walking.  We got the feeling that they had groupies - and that most came aboard that Countrywide Retirement bus sitting in the parking lot.

The kids hid inside playing video games knowing that this was their invisible shield against old folks, do something they wouldn't understand and they will leave you alone.  When they finished with God Bless America, everyone stood and put their hand on their heart and we all sang it together.  What started as "this is strange" to "oh my goodness, this is why I love where I live, where we can all stand and sing this and enjoy it."

Of course, I yelled "one more song" and they looked at me like I commanded them, simply saying "OK."  When the last song was done, I thought again of the Who Concert, the exodus was so quick and deliberate that I had to jump out of the way of Sylvia and her walker.


I left with a new realization, and I'm sorry my friends this means you, I'm dumping my friends for this crew.  Not only will they make me feel better about my age, but they make me want to stand up and sing and not care what anyone else thinks!

The old songs group will be back at Muddy Creek on Thursdays - if you want to expand your minds and your vocal cords stop by and experience.

Welcome to the new Health Care, pull up a seat!

I'm not bashing any of the left or right ways of doing healthcare, I'm just documenting my experience today for a good laugh.

Bless me father, for I have sinned.  It has been 2 years since my last physical.  No, let me tell the truth the reason I scheduled this one was I was losing my mind and gaining around my midsection - alot.




It had to be my thyroid.

So I scheduled my appointment 1 month in advance, because that's how busy my doctor is, or is it how busy he wants me to see?  I arrive, ON TIME, and check in for my appointment.

I think that all doctors set up waiting rooms to scare patients away so they don't have to treat them.  They stick you in a tiny room with a bunch of sick people, hidden cameras, laughing wondering when you are going to crack and just leave.

Me?  I was a trooper.  I'd made the appointment in advance, so I was going to keep it - no matter what. I quickly sidestepped the person coming up the stairs trying desperately to sneeze in my face.  I felt the mist of their germs go by my face as I tucked and rolled over to my area of the waiting room.

In the doctor's waiting room there are two types of people.  The ones that want to be there and spend that quality time with the doctor (hypochondriac) and those that are just freaky.  You know them, the little kids that sit across from you in the waiting room and stare at you.  Until finally you can't take it and look at them and say, "WHAT?"  It is a given that nobody talks in the waiting room because if you tell someone your illness, ThEY MAY ACTUALLY GET IT!  Then out of all the available seats in the waiting room, the really sick person comes to sit right next to you, trying to make you feel better by looking at you with sad eyes, the mask on them covering their welcoming smile.  Yes, no one, not a single person understands personal space.

If you don't feel strange in a doctor's office, then the questions on the "get to know you" form should help.

Do you have loose bowels?
Is some one hitting you now?
Do you feel uncomfortable at home?
What are you allergic to?

It's easy to answer those:

Do you have loose bowels?  Loose vowels - yes, but loose bowels - no.
Is some one hitting you now?  Uh, hitting on me or hitting me because to both - no.
Do you feel uncomfortable at home?  Have you seen my home?  Uh, yes so send the housekeeper over.
What are you allergic to?  Dust but it hasn't made me clean yet!

So after 45 minutes of keeping myself out of Ebola woman's way, I am finally called back for my examination.  Or so I thought.

I walk back and they start with the army's way of breaking us down.

"Let's get your weight."  I step on the scale, she yells the weight out, I follow her yelling by yelling, "This is with my shoes on!"

Then she takes my height, looks at my chart, then at me and mutters, "Well we seem to be shrinking."  I look at her, "Well you could have let me keep my heels on!"

Then they take a note from Disney.  They take you to a room, make you feel that the doctor will be there any minute, give you the see through pieces of paper to wear as gowns and take a few vital signs.

"Blood pressure looks good."
"Heart rate is excellent."
"Do you smoke?  No!  Good."
"Do you drink alcohol?"  Very long pause.  "Ok, let me note that down.
"Do you take illegal drugs?  what?  Oh the alcohol takes care of that?  Let me note that down."
"Do you have to go to the bathroom?  No, not to flush your illegal drugs?  Because we need a urine sample."

She then leaves me in the room.  So how does the doctor think like Disney?  They make you wait in a room with people you don't know.  Then they give you the false hope that you are going back and actually getting you somewhere.  Then they put in a place you can't get out of - like a snaking line that you didn't realize continued around the corner, in this case it is the paper gown lying naked on the table.  So you are stuck.

Naked.

Wondering how long you will wait.

In my case another 45 minutes.  I fell asleep on the table, in the PAPER GOWN, that's how long I waited.  I woke up drooling on the paper table, the paper gown open all my paper insides in the glorious to see, but alas, no doctor.

When he finally came in, he didn't look like Prince Charming, he didn't even look like Johnny Depp, just my doctor going through the motions.

"Well at your age these types of changes in your body are normal."
"Oh, these are the beginnings of those black spots you see on old people, don't worry they are hereditary."
*chuckle* "Yes, let me order some bloodwork for your thyroid, but at your age you may want to think about cutting back on the carbohydrates." (was he making a drinking symbol with his hand?)

My visit with the doctor lasts 20 minutes.  The passing out when they took the blood for tests another 30 minutes, but once I got out of there I felt like a million bucks.

There is no way that anyone sick could last that long in a doctor's office.  No way.

Get up!

With the start of school, we mother's cherish the non pitter patter of little feet around the house.  So to be sure they make it to school on time, here's a way to make it through the first week of school, heck, the entire school year.



Day One - they usually get up on time, so set the alarm for yourself.  Because you will over sleep and then come down asking them why they didn't wake you, they will look back with a dazed expression, "I was supposed to wake you up?"  The best alarm for parents is the start of the coffee maker, makes getting out of bed that much easier.

Day Two - They have now realized that they do not want to get up early and go to school.  Setup the Karaoke machine the night before and have them running from their room for the shower or listen to your rendition of "Over the Rainbow."

Day Three - They have now turned off their hearing in the morning, evident by the alarm going by their head and they are still not moving.  Check for a pulse, if there is one, then turn the air conditioner down to 37 degrees, once the house is chilled enough, pull the blankets and sheets off of them and announce you are putting them in the laundry.  Hypothermia will get them moving.

Day Four - they wore flannels to bed.  Light a match, blow it out, then run into the room waving it screaming, "The house is on fire.  Get out!  Get out!"  Have their clothes waiting for them in the "safe spot" of your front yard.

Day Five - none of the above is going to work.  Time to pull out the big guns.  Smear their face with beef paste, put the dog in the room and shut the door.  Enough said.

Getting them out the door on time means more quiet time for your cup of coffee, your facebooking and god forbid - a little bit of cleaning.

What are your ways to get kids up and ready for school?

Don't worry about me, I'm at the bar

Being down South, we know how to play with our children.  Not only does our Chuck E Cheese serve beer but our Great Wolf Lodge does also.  Why?

Because parents want to bring their children there and create the memory for THE KIDS, not for us.  If we are in a slight brain fog most of the time, that's a good thing.

We can listen to that bell dinging for two straight days, and laugh each and every time the kids, like little Pavlovian dogs run over to get doused by water - laughing a little harder and the little kid that busts it before he makes it over to X marks the spot.

We can smile and smell out 20 bucks per kid for the arcade and smile even bigger when they come back with a bag of 73 tootsie rolls as the reward for all their "work" in the arcade.  Especially with this proud owner of the pucker powder and tootsie rolls is the kid you are taking to the dentist the next day.

We can also think it's pretty funny watching our kids stalk the person walking around in dry clothes, waiting until that perfect moment when they turn their bucked and douse them.  Then wonder why in the world would the person walk under that gauntlet of kids with buckets of water.  I mean, really?

We can relax in a chaise and watch a full parade of people in bathing suits, who shouldn't be in THOSE SMALL bathing suits run by you with little Arnold hoping to make it to the infernal dinging bucket - especially when they both bust it and Mom pops out of her bathing suit while little Arnold is crying that he missed that dousing (not to mention, there's another 1,564 douses during his stay at the Great Wolf Lodge)

We can sit and not feel comfortable in our bathing suit, or find it funny trying to keep everything in place as you ride down the Howling Tornado with your kids.  Better yet we think it's a good idea after some time at the Lodge (bar) that we'll ride down the rides with our kids and then run with them to bust it in front of the dousing bucket.

We can sit through story time with all the freaky looking characters, some mechanical some real, and it's the real ones that have probably been to the bar too because they seem to really enjoy sneaking up on you and scaring the hell out of you (insert freaky looking fox here)

We can go to the buffet and argue that they really don't need the prime rib from the menu, and no everyone is not getting the $16.99 Dippin Dots.

We can go to a small hotel room and watch the kids jumping from bed to bed, finding tootsie roll wrappers in our sheets and stepping in wet puddles of carpet for a night.

Yes, there is a reason we pay 4.99 a beer at the Great Wolf Lodge.  It's to preserve that memory for our little kids, and to create the fuzzy one for us, otherwise we wouldn't go back.  Some say that friends don't let friends drink alone, the same is true for the Great Wolf Lodge, why suffer by yourself when you can bring a friend to suffer with you.  Or at least talk about the one lone guy walking by you in a Speedo - now I want to see him go down the Howling Tornado.

Drill Baby Drill

Recently I've taken to Almond Trail Mix but my back molar did not.  After eating some I felt something moving in the back of my mouth, reached back and pulled out part of my tooth.  My significant other and the two spawns all recoiled in horror as I presented my prize to them, "Oh look, here's a piece of my tooth."

I called the dentist the next morning and was casually informed that the only open appointment was in two and a half weeks.

"What?  I've got the Grand Canyon in the back of my mouth.  Do you want me to take a picture of it and send it to you?"

"No Mrs. Melang, does it hurt?"

"No?"

"Then keep it especially clean and we'll see you in two weeks."

I hung up mad at myself for not saying, "Oh it's killing me, there's a river of blood running out my mouth and down the floor!"

But I waited the two weeks, driving everyone crazy because anyone with a broken tooth knows that if something is missing in your mouth, your tongue has to go and check every 6 seconds that it is actually missing.

"Will you stop it, you look like a bad porn flick," my sweet husband told me as I sat next to him in a restaurant, my tongue moving around the open gap in my teeth.

"I can't help it," I replied and made sure, yep the part of the tooth was still missing.

Much to everyone's relief I finally made it to the dentist for my crown. The family dentist for years, he took one look in my mouth and asked, "What did you do there?"

"Uh doc, isn't it a little obvious, here let my tongue show you where the gaping hole is."

We started the crown procedure with a set of impressions.  This is where the assistant takes some purple silly putty, puts it in a metal container and pushes it into your mouth.  You have to wait there for 5 minutes desperately trying not to gag while she tells you some story about a sale currently at Bed, Bath and Beyond.

Then the dentist is ready to start his little horror show.  "Here's some sun glasses."

"Oh Doc, can't you just knock me out rather than dimming the room?  Really there is no ambiance here even with rose colored glasses."

"Now close your eyes, there's going to be a little pinch," he says.  A few minutes go by, "Um Kelly, you are going to have to open your mouth.

"Oh!"  I close my eyes and much to my dismay, my mind goes directly to the biggest nastiest looking needle I've ever seen as I feel alittle movement around my gum.  I will myself to Shavasana as I feel some of the blood drain from my face.  There's more movement around my gum then he sits back, "Are you OK?"


"Namaste," I reply.

He laughed, "You did great, we'll have to wait a few minutes for that to take effect."

I am left in the room with my own thoughts.  They move from, God, I hate being here, to, that stupid popcorn kernel, to, I don't even want to think about how much this will cost.  When the dentist comes back in I'm grateful to see him, let his horror show drown out the horror show in my head.

He picks up an instrument and I immediately close my eyes.  It is one thing to hear the drill, it is another to see it as it is making its unearthly noise.  He goes to work on my tooth.

"So have you been running lately," he asks while drilling my tooth.

How am I supposed to answer that, "uggg, muyah, mousch."  Have you ever had the dentist ask you a question while knee deep in your mouth?

The drill is going to town and soon I see and smell smoke.  Is my mouth on fire?  Is that tooth tough enough that even a drill can't go through it.  How old is his equipment, is it shorting out.  Man, that smells nasty.

"Don't worry, the smell is some old filling made of acrylic we are clearing out, there's a little more here," he says looking intently into my mouth.  I feel a little more tugging at my tooth and after 20 agonizing minutes he's finished with the drilling.

"How does that feel," he asked.

"muthouch, beveth," I explain the left side of my mouth refusing to cooperate.

They put the temporary crown in, and then send me on my way.  I feel like elephant woman, the entire lower left half of my face is without feeling, when i stop to order coffee I sound like her too, "uph snoch lought pthewth."

Most of the people in the shop look at me like I am crazy, the same look I got from my family when probing the gaping hole in my mouth with my tongue.

What's the whole lesson learned in any of this?

Even with a broken tooth, you will not lose weight.
If someone wants to understand you, they will.
There's nothing sexy about rolling your tongue around in your mouth.
Don't worry if you see and smell smoke while a dentist is at work.
And we a nonprejudice society - everyone, even elephant woman is dealt with compassion.

oh, and the important one I learned the hard way.

Don't eat Laffy Taffy after your mouth finally gets feeling back.

Uphth a figthly wanhtght!

Sometimes Life is Crap!

Do you deal with a lot of shit in your life?  Do you have stories like these?

I am born with the Irish gene, named Crapish.  This means that whenever I walk into any type of shopping situation, I get excited and have to go to the bathroom.  Really, I'm pushing the wenches out of the way in Target to get to the stall in time.  Oh and the bookstore?  I can't go in there until 3 cups of coffee later, I've done my duty.

I also holding the lucky name of Deer in the Headlights, that's because I've been caught more times than Bambi hiding behind a tree on a morning run.  One poor lady didn't believe my, "I'm putting human scent here to scare the deer away from the hunters," the third morning in a row.


I also have Shitraction, that means that any bathroom I visit when traveling has to be the worst bathroom in the country.  I've seen plastic lawn chairs with a hole cut in the middle of them over a 5 gallon bucket in Mexico,  a hole in the floor with two "put your feet here" stones so you can squat and aim (I finally understood why every woman in Japan always has tissue on them).  One of my favorites was a statue of a nekkid man in the bathroom at a bar, with a fig leaf over his Hahoo.  Of course, when I lifted the leaf to have a peek, I did not know that a light was going off in the bar telling everyone.  The applause I received when coming out of the bathroom was knowledge enough that I'd been busted.

I've broken up with port a Johns during my running races.  The worst bathroom I've ever seen is a port a john during a marathon in Virginia Beach.  I swear someone must have opened the door to the toilet, stuck their butt in and went.  Shut the door and kept on running.  One of those, '"how did it get there," type moments. Scarred for life on that one, scarred for life.  I'd rather dive into the woods than risk seeing that again.

I have the nickname of Crapola when it comes to luck.  When I am trying to have a "private" moment to myself, that's usually when the Mom walks in with the small child who promptly wails, "Mom, it STINKS in here.  OH GOD, what is that smell."  Better yet, the only bathroom that had a working lock at an airport was the handicap stall, the problem, I found out a few minutes later was the lock worked but the toilet didn't.  Looking down and watching the wheels roll up to the stall just made a shitty situation turn worse.

My handyman calls me the Craplord rather than a Landlord, I had a tenant call and say that there was a "slight" smell in their home.  I went over to find that the main sewer pipe broke and there was 3 feet of crap in the crawl space under their home.  I asked them if they didn't "SMELL" anything?  They said a slight sulfer smell, a slight sulfer smell?  Slight?  After 400 to Forsyth Rooter to pump out the crap, then another 3K to hazmat out my handyman, crawl under there, lay down lime, plastic, lime, plastic and fix the pipe - for some reason he's not answering my calls right now.

So there you see, I've become a strong woman because I can take a lot of crap - literally and figuratively.  So don't give me any of your shit, because you don't know what I will do with it.