Oh Happy Day!

Me shaking hands with the man who will today become our President!

(Not) My Old Kentucky Home

Since the last post seems to be raising a lot of questions, let me see what I can do to clarify:

They were chicken eggs.

I don't know how they got there, but my recollection is that that they weren't down in a pit, but on some sort of nest on boards at floor level. Which is weird, but it's what I remember. And once I'd been sent out to the chicken house to snatch eggs from underneath the chicken’s butt, a task with which the chickens were NOT on board, and then ridiculed for being too much of a city-girl-scairdy-cat to bring back any eggs for breakfast (because I’m terrified of birds), anything seemed possible. Heck, for all I knew, the outhouse was an annex to the chicken house. They appeared to be of the same architecture and vintage.

It was on that trip that we also established that my wimpy nine-year-old hands could not wring milk from a cow’s teat. Which may be why, even though Grandma and Aunt Ease just went on and on about how great the fresh country butter tasted, I thought it tasted like sour milk.

Unfortunately, all the folks in this story except me have passed on, so there's no one I can even ask. I suppose I could send a note to my second-cousin, Janie, who now lives in that house, but she was grown and married and away when this happened, and I doubt if she'd know.

In her later years Aunt Bertha moved into a trailer with indoor plumbing and her son, George, inherited the house, which eventually passed on to his daughter after he died, in his early 50's, of a heart attack, just like my mom. (The Porters always did have bum tickers.) Which is also kind of interesting because everyone in Rockcastle County would have bet money that somebody's husband would have killed George long before that heart attack took him, because the Porter men are just dogs. (Seriously – years before, someone took a pot shot at him one morning when he was dropping his son off at school.) Which is probably why the Porter women have no truck that foolishness, after watching their brothers and daddies cat around the whole time they’re growing up.)

As far as it being a horror movie, except for being razzed about my city ways, and the outhouse, of course, I loved going down there. I got to ride around on the tractor with George (who always smiled right into my eyes and called me “little one”). I got to look for geodes in the creek, and then crack them open and marvel at the crystals inside. One time Uncle Casper took me up the hill behind the tobacco patch and let me dig up a little evergreen and take it home. The last time I passed our old house, it was still growing between the front windows.

Don’t know if this makes anything any clearer, but it was fun to recall.

Eggcentricity

Thanks to Ella for dredging up this old memory with her post on the secret egg cache….

When I was nine years old, Grandma and Aunt Ease took me to visit Great-Aunt Bertha, who lived in Kentucky on a farm. Compared to my house, hers was a mansion, except for one thing.

Her toilet was outdoors.

I hated the outhouse because a) it smelled bad, b) it was a two-seater, which opened up the opportunity for communal pottying and c) it was in the middle of a cow pasture, surrounded by an electric fence.

As a city kid, I was afraid of the cows.

As a neat freak, I was worried about stepping in a cow patty.

As a rational person, I was scared to death of the electric fence.

And, to top it off, there were eggs in one of the holes, which raised an etiquette issue: is it okay to pee on eggs? And if you do, and you don’t say anything to anyone, will you wind up eating your own pee for breakfast the next morning?

With all these neuroses whirling around in my brain, it’s no surprise that I put off urinating for as long as possible. I mean till the last, Hindenburg-bladdered, about-to- explode minute.

Which is why, when I finally made a run for it, I forgot about the fence.

For the sake of clarity, let me just say this: there is nothing about peeing that is enhanced by having 11 volts of electricity coursing down your body.

And vice versa.

Just How Stupid Do I Look?

(Don’t answer that, please.)

I use a sinus rinse to keep my allergies under control (along with a daily dose of Zyrtec-D and two shots in the heinie every couple of weeks). It’s a great idea and if you have sinus problems (i.e. if you live anywhere with grass, dust, trees, pollen, mold or pets) I highly recommend it.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept, here’s how it works:

1) There’s a plastic bottle
2) With a black, dome-shaped lid
3) Which has a straw kind of thing that goes to the bottom of the bottle
4) You fill the bottle with distilled water
5) Warm it for a few seconds in the microwave
6) Add some saline from a packet
7) Screw on the lid
8) Then squeeze the bottle to squirt the solution up one nostril
9) And it exits via your other nostril
10) And then you repeat with the alternate nostril

(Okay, that’s kind of gross -- hope you weren’t snacking at the computer.)

Anyway, the instructions recommend heating the water 5 seconds at a time and checking the temp before heating further.

Which makes sense. It generally takes about 25 seconds, but that can vary by 5 or 10 seconds, depending on how cool the water is. (Which in turn is controlled by the Thermostat Nazi.)

So I’m good with that. It’s the next section of the instructions that bugs me, where it says, in large type: DO NOT SQUIRT BOILING WATER UP YOUR NOSE!

Because I find myself thinking that if anyone is actually stupid enough to do that, maybe, for the good of mankind, we should just let them.

PMS Meets MCP

Just got back from Anna’s, where I was reading about PMS. This got me to thinking about a far worse syndrome, one that science has for too long ignored: Monthly Cowardice Pattern (MCP).

Affecting primarily adult males, although children and teenagers are sometimes also afflicted, the impacts of MCP on our society and our economy cannot be overstated. Let me share one example:

Earlier in my life, when my body’s tides were still controlled by the moon, my skin would, at monthly intervals, become very sensitive to the touch. Anything brushing against the down on my arms would set my teeth on edge, and it was worth my husband’s life to attempt a back rub.

During those intervals, I hated fans. The feel of that unrelenting breeze was enough send me over the edge.

One day, while living in Minnesota, I was talking with a group of all-male programmers. Our office was set up as a typical prairie dog village of shoulder-height cubicles. We were standing in the doorways of our burrows, trying to resolve some deep technical issue (that, or discussing the most recent episode of The X-Files). Against the back wall, a standing fan kept the air moving in our little cinder block complex.

As we stood there, talking and laughing, the air began to chafe my skin. Each oscillation was like sandpaper, abrading my last nerve. Finally, I could stand it no longer. I lunged toward the switch.

“This fan is driving me crazy!”

It slowed to a stop and I instantly felt better. I turned around to resume our discussion just in time to see the last guy shrink back into his cube. The place was a ghost town.

Due to the effects of MCP, whatever deep issue we were discussing was left unresolved. With this sudden and shocking onset of Male Monthly Cowardice Pattern, the company’s operational efficiency, and, ultimately, profitability, suffered.

This syndrome wreaks millions, possibly billions, of dollars in untold havoc on the worldwide (yes, this is a global issue) economy, and yet no one has had the vision or perhaps the courage, to take on this scourge.

And the economy is not the only thing to suffer. All around the world, every month, families are put at risk, and the lives of future generations in jeopardy, because men do not have the guts to deal with the monthly flux of their wives and teenage daughters.

But with proper research, a cure could be found. The slinking weasels we see cowering in garages and basement workshops one week out of every month could become full-time men again, husbands and fathers every day, instead of just 75% of the time. The timid mice, whimpering, “Yes, dear,” one-fourth of the time could stand up strong and tall and utter the commanding phrase, “I just want what you want, darling” every single day of every year.

And the pharmaceuticals already exist, it’s just a matter of running clinical trials until the right cocktail, the right dosage, is discovered to put an end to this horrific disease.

Won’t you please give?

Oversharing - Part 3

I once worked with a guy who was concerned that, if he became rich and famous, women would accuse him of fathering their children and want a share of his wealth.

He waffled for a while about having a vasectomy, because he also worried that having all those sperm resorbed into his body would teach his system to cannibalize itself. In the end, his paternity-suit phobia won out over his self-initiated-immune-disorder fears and he made an appointment with a local urologist.

He told us later that he should have gotten up and left the minute the doctor pushed his way through the curtains surrounding the operating table. At first he thought the booze smell was just rubbing alcohol, until the doctor kind of staggered and grabbed onto the curtains to steady himself. But, for whatever reasons (I’m thinking pre-surgery anti-anxiety drugs), my co-worker’s self-preservation instincts failed to function.

Said co-worker left the doctor’s office with his parts intact (except for the planned snip), but over the weekend the site became infected. And extremely swollen.

I know this because when he returned to the office late the next week he brought in Polaroids that he’d taken with the aid of a mirror. I caught a glimpse of hairy buttocks and equally hairy legs raised in the air before I said, “Whoa! No, thank you!” and backed away.

There are just some things you’re better off not knowing about workplace acquaintances.

Later that day the women in the payroll office asked me about the pictures.

“I didn’t see them,” I said.

“We heard he showed them to you.”

“He tried to show them to me, but I said ‘no, thanks.’”

“Pam said you saw them.”

“I don’t look at pictures of men’s testicles,” I said firmly. “It’s one of my rules.”

I shared what he’d told me, all the gory details, but they still seemed disappointed.

I guess a picture really is worth a thousand words.

Oversharing - Part 2

Today, inspired by K’s post on Facebook’s stance on breastfeeding as a photo op, I promised to share another example of too-much-information from the dusty archives of my work past.

(Okay, I promised two examples, but I try to keep these posts under 500 words, so I’m saving one for tomorrow. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I spend upwards of two hours a day perusing blogs. Since I returned to work, crispness is something I’ve learned to appreciate.)

In the late 70’s, a girl in our office attended sex therapy classes with her husband. After every class she’d come in the next morning and give us a play-by-play of what they’d learned.

This was the group that included Stan, who, predictably, made it a point to be out of earshot when the update occurred, and Tom, who, equally predictably, made it a point to listen and poke fun. Not the least because half-a-dozen classes cost something like $1500 (adjusted for inflation, $5000 today).

The content was mostly what you’d think of as common sense – spending more time on foreplay, dealing with ticklishness, getting to know each other’s preferences. What made the whole thing so funny was the innocent zest with which she approached the experience.

“They said to put pillows on the floor and try doing it right in your living room!”

“They said we can take turns controlling how fast or how slow we want to go!”

One day she came in and enumerated the erogenous zones for us. (Had all the erogenous zones even been discovered by the late 1970’s? I know they hadn’t been in my house.)

My favorite recollection is the day she came in, wide-eyed, and told us about a film they’d seen the previous evening on masturbation.

“I think it was Dr. Perkins’ hands in the film,” she said. “I recognized his freckles!”

The hilarious thing was that she completely didn’t seem to absorb the fact that, by extension, this meant that it was also Dr. P’s penis in the film.

I don’t recall what wisecracks Tom made at the time, but I do recall what he had to say three months later, when she announced that she was pregnant.

“Well, looks like it was worth the money,” he said. “At least they know what they’re doing now.”

Tomorrow: A Vasectomy Gone Awry.