Mama Sick

A Wardrobe Malfunction

This post was inspired by Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop.

When I saw this prompt…less just say it conjured up some of my “youthful indiscretions”.

These wardrobe malfunctions happened in my early 20s.  Kids, do not try this at home, or anywhere! I was very active in my college plays, doing 16 plays in four years.  After a perfomance , the cast and crew celebrated in which drinking was involved.  (Don’t ever call me a theatre geek, please)

On opening night after the show we would have a wine and cheese party.  The wines were about as cheap and disgusting as you can get.  Being underage, myself and others would down every dixie cup of wine at every chance we could.  We could go out to party with the older kids but wouldn’t be allowed to drink with them, so the aim was to get drunk before we left the theatre.  (Ah, the good old days!)

One one of these nights, we decided to go out to a diner, where alcohol was being served.  It didn’t matter whether I drank or not, as I was so wasted drinking from the wine that came out of a box! I stumbled to the bathroom and afterwards looked in the mirror.  “Looking good!”, I thought.  I was wearing a skirt that night and when I came out of the bathroom a strange woman ran over to me.  “You have tucked the back of your skirt into your panty hose, your entire behind is showing!”

I was scared my friends would find out, plus I didn’t want then to see my butt. But quite a few people got a gander at my gluteus maximasI  I backed up to the bathroom and fixed myself up and they were none the wiser.  So much for “looking good”!

My second wardrobe malfunction happened shortly after graduating.  My long term boyfriend and I moved back into our parents’ homes and realized that “alone time” with each other was going to be very difficult.  We were so used to being together every day and squeezing into his twin bed every night.

One night he came over to take me out to dinner  and we went in my new shiny red Ford Probe.  Feeling pretty amorous that night, but pretty poor, we pulled in to a darkened parking lot.  For the uninitiated, trying to fool around in a car (unless you are in Lincoln Town Car) is pretty difficult.  We made the best of it and then went home.

A week or so later I washed my shiny new red card at the car wash.  The car wash was the kind where you step out of it and the car wash guys swoop in to clean your car inside and out.  After the wash and dry, a lot of the guys seemed to be smiling to me and friendlier than usual.  I didn’t think anything of it until I opened my car door.  There, on the backseat, spread out in all it’s glory, was my white lacey BRA!  How could I have forgotten to put my bra back on that night?!

The car wash guys probably had a good story to tell, only I wouldn’t know because I never used that car wash again!

My four-year-old son asks me from time to time if he could have a “dolly”.  I think he sees the girls in his daycare playing with dolls and doll houses, or perhaps it is because he will never have a brother or sister.  Anyway, despite protests of certain family members, I am getting my child a doll.

It seems to me that most people don’t have a problem with boys playing with “girl toys”…until it’s THEIR KID.  You would think that I told my family that he has asked to dress in my lingerie!

When I was a little girl, my little brother got blocks for Christmas and I started to cry because I wanted blocks too.  My mother said, “But blocks are for boys, you have dolls and lots of other toys.”  I still wanted blocks and when my parents bought them for me I was so happy.  I loved to build with my blocks.  This was back in the early 70s, when boys got doctor’s kits and girls got nurses kits.  Now girls play with blocks just as much as boys.

Now it is 2010 and we are still on this dolls are for girls kick!    What happened to breaking down sexual barriers and letting kids be “Free to be, You and Me” , a television show that starred Marlo Thomas and included  a song about how it’s okay for a boy to have a doll.

Watch this video of A Doll, A Doll, William Wants a Doll.  If you are like me, you will be tearing up!

Does giving a child a doll make them gay, is that what we are worried about?  Why do we even care any more?  Plus if Tyler senses a stigma towards boys playing with dolls and dollhouses, he may start thinking that something is wrong with him.

Tyler at just the age of four has developed a very compassionate, nurturing side to him.  A few weeks ago he asked how babies are born and then asked me when will he be able to be a daddy.  Talk about parenting on the fly!

So, before Christmas, mommy and Tyler are going to a toy store and have him pick out the type of doll he wants, and then we can ask Santa for it.  I don’t care how anyone feels about it, this child shall have his dolly and this mommy will support him in it.

I read Following Polly as a member of the From Left to Write book club.  I was given a free copy as part of the book club.

Most people enjoy a certain genre of books, such as non-fiction, popular fiction, or true crime. Before joining this book club, I was very into cozy mysteries.  These are books that are usually pretty light to read and often are written in series where the main character always stays the same.  They are real curl up books.

When I read Following Polly by Karen Bergreen, I found myself back in my comfort zone  again, which isn’t the worst zone to be in!

Thirty-something Alice has been a follower much of her life, passively going along.  Like the time at Harvard when she was in love with a student.  She didn’t even know his name, so she made one up for him. Polly also lives under the shadow of her famous actress mother.

When Alice loses her job she catches sight of Polly Linley Dawson, former Harvard alumna and the bane of  her existence.  She’s beautiful, she sells high end fashion, she’s rich. In short, she is practically the opposite of Alice.

Who wouldn’t want to follow Polly?* Okay maybe you wouldn’t, but since she doesn’t have a job any more Alice decides to follow Polly.  Unfortunately she is a little too good at this and ends up as a suspect in Polly’s murder.

And that’s as far as the book jacket summary will take you!  I would describe this book as a mystery wrapped up in a comedy wrapped up in a dialog.  The kind of book you could finish in a day or two, if you didn’t have kids.

Following Polly is funny, has great conversation and a good mystery.  Some people think any mystery is supposed to be is suspenseful and graphic.  This is not that kind of book and if you are looking for that in this book you may not want to pick it up.

But there is a murder, there is mystery, there is adventure;  done in a comedic way that I found very enjoyable and fun.

Karen Bergreen is a stand-up comedian and this is her first book.  I had the opportunity to ask her if  Alice was going to turn into a mystery series.  She said that she is now working on a book in the mystery genre but would love to turn Alice Teakle in to a series at some point.

I, for one, would be very happy to cozy up with Alice again.

On Sunday Christine Miserandino along with thousands of others will Walk for The Cure for Lupus.  For those of you who do not know Christine or have ever heard of The Spoon Theory, she has had Lupus for more than half of her life.  She is married and has a three-year-old daughter, Olivia.  In her own words:

“This past year I was hit hard with Lupus and got so sick that I was in and out of hospitals 3 times, and lost feeling in my legs. I was in a wheelchair. I could not walk. It was very scary. After trying every other option (I have now been on every lupus drug) They were forced to start Cytoxin (chemotherapy) treatments. Once a month, I still do receive these treatments. I am so thankful that with a lot of hard work, and dealing with some nasty side effects from poison medicine I am doing much better and walking and feeling good. I could not have gotten through this ordeal without the support of the Lupus Alliance of Long Island and this is my way of giving back.

I crawled, I used a wheelchair. I hobbled, I used crutches. I had too  much pride, I tried to use a cane… I fell. I went to physical therapy, I got stronger, I cried. The medicine started to work… I walked, I jumped, I danced… and then yes, The Big Question “what are you gonna do now?”  I went with my family to Disney.  By no means am I in remission. I am just very good, compared to very bad. I have bad days, and even bad weeks. I am still doing my chemo treatments. I get very tired. I LOVE my husband, my daughter, our family and I die just a little each time I can’t do what  I want, and can’t take care of them the way I know I could.”

Some of you may know there have been no new drugs for Lupus in fifty years.  THIS YEAR WILL be different as a new Drug called Benlysta should be for use this coming year. It looks very promising. There are other new drugs in trial phases for Lupus too, finally.

What if you don’t have Lupus?  What if you are not even sick?  How does Lupus touch you?

According to the Lupus Foundation of America, every 30 MINUTES someone is diagnosed with Lupus. In the two and a half years that I have been blogging, two bloggers I know have been diagnosed with Lupus, one of them Erin Kotecki Vest or the Queen of Spain.

Approximately 1.5 million men, women and children have Lupus in the United States and 90% of them are WOMEN.  Most women develop Lupus during their childbearing years.

Lupus can be a life-threatening disease that can cause damage to any vital organ of the body, including the heart, kidney, lungs and brain, as well as skin and joints.

So the one favor I ask of you is to donate any amount of money you can, even if it just a dollar, to my friend Christine’s team.  And I would appreciate it if you would mention me as Emily or my site, Mama Sick.  The best gift I could give Christine is to show her that my followers care.

And maybe some day, a normal life will be possible for both of us.

Thank you for reading this, we now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Love,

Emily

Share a photo that represents how you see yourself.

This post was inspired by Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop.

When I saw this prompt from Mama Kat’s I was drawn to it because this has been a post that has been in my mind and wanting to come out in writing form for some time.

I would describe myself as a very attractive woman, almost 41 years old, who does not look her age.  Other people tell me this as well so it’s not just me!  But here’s the caveat:  I am a very attractive woman when I have the energy to do my hair and makeup which is almost never. Being chronically ill, my energy must go towards things like doing laundry, taking care of my son, and, when I do go out, taking a shower.  I haven’t even blown my hair dry the whole summer but am going to have to start doing that soon.

This picture* was taken nearly two years ago, at a party for the now defunct New Jersey Moms Blog.  I am the one in the dark red top.  It is the last time I have put on makeup or done my hair, or even really put on nice clothes.  I like to think of myself looking like this, not just put together but happy and having a night out with friends.   I was sick then, I am leaning on my cane if you cannot tell, but the fact that I was even able to pull this off says a lot about where my health and energy used to be.

It makes me sad that I can no longer go out and look like this.  Sometimes I think I am throwing my “pretty years” away and I will really regret that I didn’t exhaust myself trying to look nice like I used to, the way I did every day before I was sick.  Will I some day be in my sixties or seventies and think, “I used to be pretty but now my looks are gone”, and it doesn’t matter how much make-up I put on any more.

This is me with my son over the summer, pretty much the best I can look.  I’ve got my contact lenses in, which is rare for me now, but no make-up and my hair is thrown back in a head band.  I know some people may comment that I still look beautiful, but not to me, not compared to the way I was once capable of looking.  Even my husband still says I am beautiful but I no longer turn any heads.

Of the many things being sick has taken from me, the ability to be able to do my hair and makeup and look pretty is just one more thing, and it hurts.

Thank you to Monica Brand of Paper Bridges for providing me with the NJMB party picture.

Due to economic reasons, my son and I don’t get to eat lunch out very often, so perhaps this is why I view our lunches together as special.

If I am taking him to get his haircut, right afterwards I take my happy child with a lollipop in his mouth and a prize in his hand to Panera Bread.  He always gets the mac and cheese, I get some sort of soup or salad with a half of sandwich.

If it is nice out, we love to sit outside under their umbrellas, watching the fountains, birds, or even people.  As he gets older, it seems like our lunches get  better as he gets more verbal and I can have a real conversation with my four-year-old.

We sit under the umbrella and eat and talk.  Afterwards we will walk around the area a little.  A couple of months ago I felt pretty good and I walked with him to overlook a man-made pond. What I at first thought were big fish were actually turtles!

“Look, Tyler, the turtles are coming towards us to say hello!”  And they were.

This weekend I ate with my son again at “our spot”.  It was one of those gorgeous last sunny, warm days in October.  After our lunch I took Tyler away from the eating area to feed the birds.  We were right next to a water fountain, one of those that shoots out one “geyser” at a time until it shoots at full force, and then turns off completely to start all over again.

“What happened to the water fountain?”  “It will come on again, baby, it’s a Surprise Water fountain.”

Tyler laughed as they started to come back on.  “It’s giggling water!”, he shouted.

When the fountain turned off again he said, “Come on water fountains, giggle!”

Soon after we went home to tell Daddy about our day.  Here’s to more wonderful lunches with my treasured son.

I read The Kids Are All Right as a member of the From Left to Write book club.  I was given a free copy as part of the book club.  This post was inspired by this book.

“The Kids Are All Right” is the true story of what happens to four siblings when they lose both of their parents.  As a parent, I don’t think you could read this book without wondering if something like that could happen in your own family and what would happen to your children, not just physically but emotionally.

As a person with chronic diseases and illnesses married to another person with chronic diseases and illnesses, I probably wonder about this more than most people.  Living in debt and under the poverty line, we do not have any kind of trust set up for our child, but besides this, we are not sure who we would even want our four-year-old son, Tyler, to be with, or who would even want him. For sure he would go to Grant’s parents but they are getting up in years and handling an active little boy would be hard on them, even though they have agreed to do it.

But after that we come up empty.  I do not wish to have my son live with my mother and my step-family. My brother is developmentally challenged.  Grant’s brother is a bachelor who knows nothing about kids.  We don’t see any friends or family enough where Tyler has made a close connection to anyone, and who is to say whether they would even want him?

The kids’ mom and her prolonged fight with cancer really disturbed me too.  In the last few months she just was too debilitated to have any impact on her kids’ lives.  They were on their own and, not that you could blame them, or her, but they ran around like a pack of wolves.  As a sick mom, it was hard to see what it would be like to be alive but to lose all control and influence over your children.

Perhaps it was because I have a son, but I really read with interest how the only boy in the family, Dan, dealt with his mom’s fight against cancer and her death.  He really acted out, becoming a troublemaker and was bounced around from place to place.  He became a kid no one wanted to deal with.

The saving grace for all of the kids is that they are a family of four siblings, but my child is and will be an only child.  Who would be his “memory” for him about us?  With whom could he really share his pain who would understand?

Grant and I dying while Tyler is still a child is still probably a one in a million chance, but a little higher than your average parents’ chances.  Still, this true story made me think about it and will keep me thinking for a while.

Okay so this whole post is mostly embarrassing and gross so if you don’t want to read it I don’t blame you.  Due to all of the meds I take along with sometimes being just too fatigued, I often have constipation. It had been three or four days and so I took a couple of Dulcolax.  At around 4:30 this morning the cramps started.  I got up to go to the bathroom but nothing was happening except more and more pain.  The kind of pain where you pray for death pain.

I woke up Grant and curled into the fetal position letting the cool air from the night wash over me.  I then started to dry heave heavily and couldn’t even tell Grant to get something for me to throw up in, but he was on the ball and I made it into a bucket.  By then he is telling me no ifs, ands, or buts, that he is calling 9-1-1.

I have a strict no E.R. rule unless death is imminent because it usually winds up being a waste of time, but this pain was pretty bad.

There were three fabulous volunteer EMTs.  I can’t believe that people would get up in the middle of the night and take drunks, miscreants, or me to the hospital and not get paid for it. My hat goes off to them.  While I we were driving the woman took my hands and started to talk to me about Jesus.  Normally this makes me uncomfortable, but she said that she sensed I was having a battle with my faith, which is true.  I told her that I felt like God and Jesus don’t hear me any more and she said They still do, they always hear me and not to give up.  Perhaps she was my EMT for a reason.  When she left me she said she would be praying for me.

As I was being wheeled around the E.R. to my cell block, one woman looked at me and said, “Call 9-1-1 for me when you get out of here.  You’ve got to help me, these people are sadists!” Then they wheeled me in to my cubicle where I was directly looking at a man who seemed to be getting a bullet taken out of him.  There was blood EVERYWHERE and I wondered why his curtain was open.

But I watched fascinated as it distracted me from my pain, not just from my stomach but from my joints and rib cage.  I couldn’t get comfortable.  Finally the doctor came over to me and said, “Every medicine that you are on causes constipation!” and prescribed some gentle medications for me to stay on permanently, adding “Dulcolax sucks!”

They wouldn’t give me anything for the pain, because everything would make me even more constipated, and they gave me no cat scan or X-rays.  The “treatment” basically was non-existent.

My joints and rib cage really started to hurt and I do thank God and Jesus that I had an emergency Percocet in my purse.

When I got discharged, I had no shoes and no jacket.  They gave me heavy socks and let me take a blanket home.  I looked like an escaped patient.   $28 of cab fare later and I was home.

Thus ends another pointless trip to the E.R.

Describe a job you would absolutely never want to do.

This post was inspired by Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop.

When I saw this prompt I smiled because about a week and a half ago I wouldn’t have been sure what I would say.  But I was in the Cleveland airport bathroom the other day, waiting to fly back home.  As I washed my hands, I saw the cleaning woman.

“Thank you for cleaning the bathrooms,” I said.

“I don’t know why I bother”, she said.  “They’re only going to be dirty again in a few minutes”.

“Well…”

“You don’t even know.  The women are worse than the men!”  And she proceeded to tell me about what was left in the toilets after some people used them.

“Well…I think some people don’t understand the flushers.  How they work automatically.”

“I’m not talking about what’s inside the toilet, I’m talking about what they leave on the floor!  Women leave their sh*t and their p*ss and their monthly business all over the floor, it’s disgusting, you just don’t know!”

By this time my jaw had dropped to the ground.  Should I say, “I’m sorry?”

Instead I just said, “God bless you”, and walked out of the restroom.

Last month I was contacted by the website Fashion to Figure, a site that carries very trendy and fashionable clothes for the plus size woman at great prices.

Do you see what I mean?  The sizes run from 12-26.  And you have a chance to win one of the outfits pictured here.  Entering is easy peasy:

1.  You will get one entry by letting me know which outfit you would like if you were to win.

2.  Tweet out the contest, let me know by making another comment.

So that is two ways to win!  The contest will run until Tuesday, October 12th at 11:59 p.m. EST.

Good luck, and I hope you will give Fashion to Figure a browse for some of the other great clothes that they have!

Congratulations to Monica on winning the outfit of her choice!  Monica’s entry, #17, was chosen by random.org.  Thank you so much to all who entered!