Coddiwomple at Walmart

 

So here I am;  wandering about in a purposeful manner toward a vague destination--in Walmart’s parking lot.  If practice makes perfect, I’ve become a professional car searcher.  If you too suffer from chronic coddiwomple, I have a system that I think  can help. 

1:  Be sure to walk In and Out through the same Out and In.  I always come out the same door that I go in so that limits my search field to like, only half of the five-acre lot.

2:: Use a grid pattern to seek.  I’m using my head’s bobble function to seek out the biggest rig in the lot.  Today I’m hunting a truck pulling a trailer so that minimizes the mistakes that can be made. As a warning note, in this day and age, it can be deadly to misidentify your vehicle.  The days are gone when I can be forgiven for loading my groceries into the wrong car.

3::  Stay optimistic. The task is not impossible because my husband came out just ahead of me. And he is fully aware of my concern that I will be left at the store. Ergo, he would never ghost me in the parking lot.  

I don’t know why I have this strange phobia. I’ve never been left behind; though with eight siblings, there was ample opportunity. One of us wandered off nearly every time we ventured out. Number seven absconded the most and it never seemed to bother him. So I must have developed an empathetic phobia for him. But, today, there are not eight of us. There are only two of us, so there is no reason for me to panic.

4: Stay calm.  As I wander, I work on my panic plan. I have a handy list of questions to redirect my thoughts from the reactive brain to the reasoning, cognitive part of my brain. I utilize this mental tool of redirection whenever my husband tries to implement his mental tool of exposure therapy.

I reason, “If I had to bet a million dollars…” That is a strange brain redirect question because any conversation that includes numbers sounds to me like blau-de-blau-de-blau.  But I know deep down in my rational mind that he has not left me, because he is too cheap to pay the extraordinary divorce costs that a judge would grant.

5::  Dress to be noticed—and rescued.  I am a unique dresser. What most people assume is a fashion attempt at boho chic, really isn’t.  It’s an effort to aid in search and rescue, I don outfits that leave lasting impressions and helpful descriptors. Today I’m wearing a red shirt with chartreuse and purple-striped swoosh pants.  It is the very outfit that has impelled people in the past to photograph me for the Walmart People post. On that particular day, I was wearing my tie-dye head buff too, but even without it, I am memorable. Oh, I am aware of how I must look, the kook in the crazy outfit wandering about, “That poor, poor eccentric lady.”

6::  Keep a sense of humor.  Mirth is always preferable to mariticide.  Some may call this a great prank, but my husband is incapable of such creativity.  He is severely left-brained and there is not a joke in his body.  And… I might remind you, he knows how I feel.  Throughout our years of marriage, we have had ample opportunity to discuss my problem. He repeatedly loses me in parking lots, usually with the excuse that he can’t park right where he has dropped me off. And thus, when I come out, he has vanished.

7:   Think Logically.  I must think like him. Did he need gas? Moments ago, I can recall him saying something like, “I cannot buy gas at that price again, and he called our daughter who is driving to meet us and told her where to buy it cheaper. So, obviously, he is not getting gas.

Irrationality creeps back.  Did I really come out that door? When will A.I. come up with a GPS system that is visual?  Did we park by that yappy dog car?  I don’t think so, but walking past it, over and over stirs up the yapper’s agitation and that does wonders for my anxiety. Frenzied panic breeds best when it’s shared.  

8: Take Your Time. I have time, so I ponder an argument that might convince the clerk-less employees who, like me are aimlessly wandering back and forth agitating the frustrated folks in self-check-out.  How can I convince them to leave their sadistic entertainment to come outside and help me find my car?

9: Accept assistance.  One hopeful help is that young guy over there, who is lounging half-in and half-out of his big old pickup apparently waiting for his wife, (who he probably ditched at the other end of the five-acre parking lot.)  I see another helpful lady who has noticed my meandering and has decided to engage in my plight.  She is going to help the crazy, hapless, helpless hippy. She drives closer, but then it happens!  At exactly the same moment, both she and I recognize that someone is yelling my name.

She drives closer, “Ma’am?”   I continue to walk back and forth past the hysterical dog because now? Now?  NOW!  I am really agitated. Finally, I give in and I stomp back toward her and she says, “Ma’am! Ma’am! I think someone is yelling at you from over there at that gas station.” 

I say to her, “Yes, I know. I hear him.”  At her quizzical look, I try to explain myself. “He leaves me in the parking lot all the time and I have to wander around until he comes back.  So this time, I’m getting him back by ignoring him.”

She interjects quickly because in her mind, I have just slipped from a flaky fruit salad to a full-on serving of nuts and crackers and she explains, “Oh, I thought maybe you couldn’t hear him because of the dog.”   

“Yeah,” I respond, “the dog is going to be my excuse.” 

As she hurriedly pulls away, I yell after her, “After 40 years of marriage, I need to seek entertainment somewhere.”  

10:  Celebrate your victories.  I turn and I saunter out to the pick-up point, right past the young man, who seems to have fallen out of his pick-up truck.  He manages to cough out words past his laughter, “Oh My Gosh. That is Gold.”

I kinda sideways grin at him and walk on with the flush of success.  I still got it!    

A Worrisome Thump

        What is that noise?

         I’m jarred awake by a noise in the dark. Down the hallway—a bump or a thump. My action thriller brain, sharpened by my latest choice of book genre, evaluates and calculates. The thriller part of the brain reaches out and estimates the time as half-past five as I hear the neighbor’s jeep crank to life and head off to work. The action part of the brain halts right before demanding action, so I will not be reaching under the pillow for a weapon. Half an hour from now, what’s left of my brain will still be musing… “What could that noise be?” If there were an actual threat and I had to rely on reflexes. I’d be trussed up like a turkey in no time.  But, my mind is really stretching and it wonders, “Should I wake the husband?” 

        I’ve attempted that before--waking the husband--with poor results. This is not my first experience with a potential home invasion. We were living in our first home—a rambler built in 1977 and it was a Friday night. One remembers all the details like that, (or one’s inventive mind fills it in,) and Mr. Darcey and I were both deep in REM sleep. I was startled out of that dream-state slumber by a crash on our back porch and a scrape as the back door was pushed open. My toned abs jerked me to a sitting position. (My creative mind likes to add fitness to my fantasy whenever possible,) and then another thump in the hallway added to my panic. 

        As most of you know, I belong to that gut reaction group whose immediate response is to fight.  I do not freeze, nor do I flee. Nope, I am a fighter, so immediately I leapt—to the conclusion that we were being invaded. I turned to the deep-sleeper and with my feet in the middle of his back, I pushed while I frantically whispered the details. “Listen! What’s that? Get up and find out!” I shoved him off the far side of the bed. In the fantasies of my youth, the knight still faced evil and ultimately rescued the fair maiden, but the stumbling, bumbler who staggered out into the hall looked more like the court jester. 

        Turns out that I had conveniently forgotten that I told my cousin we’re going to be out of town, so of course he could use the house. We didn’t leave town and I had completely forgotten my promise. I recall that the cousin did mutter something about being grateful for weak pacifists who don’t have guns, as things could have really gotten ugly. Like my choice of nightwear at the time.

        Back to the current noise in the night.  It could be ghosts. Our home is almost a century old and it has a reputation for being haunted. My baby sister from Wyoming,1 is a reluctant medium who attracts unwelcome visitations from the alter-world.  She declares from her vast experience with ethereal companions that, "Yes it is true.  Your house is haunted." 

        I like the idea of a ghost. If the house is haunted, then I can blame all the unexplained phenomena on the haunt. Along with mysterious bumps, thumps and weird smells, there is wallpaper that separates and rolls off the wall in big sheets. I find empty tubes of bath gel and the contents squirted all over the shower. And one winter we were out of town and we were called by the city municipal department who told us that there was water running in our house. A lot of water. About 40,000 gallons of water had run out in the last few days. That’s unusual in the dead of winter unless someone, somewhere is crafting an ice mansion. And we were not. When our neighbor checked, he found the bathtub faucet gushing water down the drain. There could have been some other reason for the outburst, city pressure or some such, but it’s kind of cool to have a specter and so I’m going with it.

        Back to that strange noise in my hallway? I lay there and wonder. “Should I panic? Why am I not more concerned?” I have found that worry is a very effective deterrent because nothing I worry about ever happens.²  But to make worry a really impelling force, you’ve got to do the work. You must make the sacrifice and put in the time. So in the depths of night, I worry and I rationalize and I reason most of the world’s problems away. You can thank me later.

The short skid down memory lane has brought my brain to a sharper wakefulness but if I don’t resolve this soon, I’ll never be able to get back to sleep!  I have done the work, imagined the worst and look. I am still alive. I survived. So, now that I've worried about worry, I can slide down deep under the warm comforter and remind myself that there are better ways to die than trying to rouse the deep sleeper again--that guy who would only stumble groggily down the hallway and frighten the visitor with his choice of sleepwear.

I hope that whatever or whomever has bumped and thumped in the night will find themselves an empty bed and if I’m lucky, maybe they will also drink the rest of the milk before it goes out of date.

______________________________________________________________________

1. I have to identify my sisters like this. There are five of us. Stick with me and you’ll see.

2Great meme, huh?  

That’s my Reality and Sometimes It Bites. And When it Does, I Write.

Accidental Niceness

The nicest thing I ever did in high school was accidental.

I had a pretty great high school experience.  I was not one of those timid, uncomfortable girls in high school.  Instead, I was the quintessential be all, do all, not-a-cheerleader-as-that-was-beneath-me, kind of girl. I was quick with a comeback--pithy, witty, saucy, and that made me look like the smartest girl in the class.  At least I thought so.  

I thought I was pretty cute, but I wore thick, coke bottle glasses and it turns out that an accurate vision of my own appearance wasn't the only part of my teen view that was wildly distorted.

What I was really best at was being a fraud. You know who I mean, that girl who managed to get through school with all the same insecurities as everyone else, but whose greatest talent was acting confident. Yup, that was me.

But I could pirouette. My momma was one of the only dance teachers in my little town. She would clear out the kitchen in the mornings all summer long and teach us ballet. First position, second position, third position, plie. She taught me as long as she could stand me and I took it from there. I practiced all the time and I could perform a tight pirouette down in the aisles of our crowded little grocery store.

My nemesis through high school, (everybody has one, otherwise it wouldn’t be a good story)--my arch-rival was Sandra J.  She and I had an unspoken competition going—one I didn’t learn all the details of until much later. (The coke bottles distorted most things that were right in front of my face.)

What I perceived from my altered perspective was that she was spoiled rotten. She had her own car with personalized license plates. I had my parent’s 20 yr old clunker, when they didn’t have it, which was always. Her family was rich—appeared to be anyway--again from my teen-altered perspective.

From my cock-eyed view, it seemed that anything I wanted she got, so consequently anything she got, I wanted. President of Speech and Forensics, she got it. President of Drama Club, me.  Choir, her. Valedictorian – I got it, but no, when the numbers were re-tallied, she won by 1/100^th of a point. But I was the best dancer. I could pirouette!

It was Spring Prom time and it was my Junior prom. In those days, the Senior Ball was kinda low key because the Seniors were all focused on graduating. So the Junior Prom was the big thing. Juniors got to date (usually for the first time) since everybody was turning 16 about then. We got days off to decorate the gymnasium, and spent the big bucks on the plastic to encase it.  We strung colored lights, and painted murals--the whole hullabaloo. The Juniors got dates, got group pictures, and most important, the Juniors got to promenade. That means we paraded down the middle of the gym to be introduced, in our first formals/tuxedos and then the whole Junior class danced during intermission.

This dance, was choreographed every year by Sandra's aunt, a school teacher and the only other dance teacher in town. The first day of promenade practice, the girls all lined up and set out to pirouette. The teacher had to know which ones of us could pirouette the furthest because in her plan, at least two of us had to do it without barfing or slamming into anyone else. The best ones would dance to the center with their assigned partners.

Partners… that was a problem. Picking partners is like picking teams in P.E. You just know it’s going to get really ugly for some people, so they used the luck-of-the-draw-from-a-hat trick. My dream dance partner was Dean—as in James Dean! He was handsome in that famous, unassuming, yet brooding way. I would have died to dance with Dean. Thank goodness I was sick the day everyone hat-picked partners. When I got back the next day and walked into the after school promenade rehearsal, I found out that Sandra had lucked out with Dean and I was dancing with the reject guy—Judd.

Now, being a high school reject is a regional concept. In the state of Oklahoma, Judd would have been no reject—the boy was a giant! He would have been the star fullback and loved by everyone, coach and cheerleaders alike, but in my home state, he was just big, and… no dancer.

How my Momma got through my stuck-up, thick skull that I should pretend to be a nice person, I don’t know. I was not naturally a nice person; I have this ongoing fear that I’ll go to a high school reunion and someone will walk up to me and smack me right across the face and I will have to say, “I deserved that,” because I did. But this time, I shut my mouth and just danced. Sandra and I danced the best pirouettes, so we took the middle positions.

The prom that year could have been titled the Year of the Loser Prom. It was this same dance when I first said yes to a pity date. I had avoided saying yes to a certain boy in town, but he was determined. He suffered the ignominy of being told over and over that I could not go out, that I had to spend that evening washing my hair.  Yes, that excuse really works!  Or that I was grounded.  And I should have been—for lying.  I just couldn’t go out as I had to babysit.  That was true, but my baby sister had doubled with me before—often, on many of my dates.

But this other boy caught me at my lowest, two weeks before prom with no date! In my little town, that was not done. In fact, at the prom two years before, the boys had arranged for all the girls to have dates. They even pooled money and paid out cold hard cash for dates—just to make sure no one was humiliated--completely missing the irony. I tell you, dates were important.

So this boy caught me at a low point and I said I would go, but I told my Mom, "No pictures, take no photos. I will never date this person ever again!" and off I went to prom.

I pirouetted beautifully and I’m pretty sure I wowed the audience. I really don’t know how it looked, because at that time I spurned wearing my coke bottles glasses to important functions like that so I really couldn’t see how it went, because of course I couldn’t see anything. But I was certain, I was beautiful.

Skip ahead three years, I was now married to my “never-date-again prom date.” And I was working full time, team-cleaning condominiums for the ski season in the tourist town next door.

I loved my cleaning team. Those women ranged in age from 15 to 50 and they taught me so much. They taught me to work, and what "clean" really looked like.  They humbled me and my uppity attitude and they helped me discover that age was only a number—that hilarity is ageless and that girls will be girls no matter how old.

I benefited so much from their training and on my last day, I mentioned how much the friendships meant to me and my cleaning partner that day responded, “You’ve always meant a lot to me too… ever since you danced with my son.”

I didn’t want to say, “I had to,” so I wisely shut up. That was one of best things these women tried to teach me—to Shut Up!

She went on as if reading my mind, “I know you didn’t have to. He told me that that day at the gym when everyone was picking partners—another girl pulled his name out of the hat, and she threw such a fit, that they let her put his name back and she took your intended partner, Dean.”

“You danced with my son. And you will never know until you have children of your own what that means to a mom.”

And she’s right. I never really understood until I had boys of my own.

So really, at that loser prom, two of the nicest things I ever did in high school happened accidentally.

And that boy just might be the only guy at the reunion that I don’t have to duck.

That's My Reality and Sometimes It Bites.  But When It Does, I Write.

  Mar, 24, 2014

Valentine Sonata

Valentine Sonata '95

I spent the day in paper chaos

Searching for the perfect card

Striving for that phrase immortal

to impress you like The Bard.

My mind was tumbling with verses

Roses Are Red, or I Love You Because,

But nothing seemed to fit you perfect;

So unique—you grant me pause.

I knew that I would never find

A card to express what’s on my mind.

It seemed so hopeless. I felt despair.

At once I thought, “Buy underwear!”

I rebuked myself, “Concede defeat?”

Not me! You know, I’ve such conceit!

A thought then struck. “A poem attempt.

I’ll write and express the evident!”

I struggled and suffered the lines to rhyme,

but was suddenly, rudely reminded, “The time!”

The children were starved. Dr. Seuss had ended.

The dinner uncooked, the laundry resplendent.

The moment was lost; could not be recaptured.

My desolation complete; you would not be enraptured.

When suddenly, wonderfully, it came so inspired,

Personally, to angels, my life must be wired.

A revelation! An answer! A thought so sincere

I’ll give you the card you gave me from last year!

That's my Reality and Sometimes It Bites     2/2016

The Pluck for a Pardon

The Pluck for a Pardon

Thanksgiving is a three-ring circus in our family.  The fun begins when the troop arrives--eight siblings with children and grandchildren bursting from a myriad of vehicles, tumbling out the side doors and cascading out the back hatches.  The great-grandparents serve as ringmasters who oversee the big top; we unfold tables and set-up chairs for a hundred in our community hall. Everyone is welcome and this year we invited an expansion pack of in-laws that added even more clowns to the crush.

With a group that big, there can be no sit-down dinner with elegant china, lacy tablecloths and a succulent, bronzed fowl.  It’s a challenge to grab a paper plate and a plastic fork as the group swings past the main table scooping from industrial-sized vats of mashed potatoes, gravy and corn.  Then they flip back to the platters of turkey and stuffing.  Back and forth from a side-table of salads to another filled with drinks.  The meal culminates with a heart-stopping landing in front of the dessert table laden with a nearly two-pies-per-person ratio. 

Our family dinner traditions include a freak show of vegetarians and gluten-free-ers.  The great-grand parents were charter members of those food groups long before food became fad.  Those epicureans have been joined the past couple years by new foodies that eat paleo, keto and whole.  These odd-balls wander past dishes marked clearly with labels like vegetarian, g/f, c/f, and sugar-free.  Our family’s food habits may seem finicky at first, but if you take the time to get the whole backstory of their medical odyssey, then empathy spills forth and the bullying and snark fade away.  The odd-balls are embraced because the goal is to have no medical reactions served up with dessert. Insight creates understanding and that is a laudable life goal.   

After dinner half of our group disperse to their second-meal destinations and a collective sigh releases from the gaffers and grips who have juggled the seamless presentation of the food-free-for-all.   The rest of the clan sit down to some serious board gaming and govern-mental problem-solving. 

Tempers flare in the after-meal conversations, but conflict is one of the standard side shows of most close relationships.  Humans have an inborn yearning to connect and through each one of us runs a streak of unique that is seeking its place in the crush.  Rejection by those who matter the most is humanity’s greatest fear.  Throughout my own personal journey, I have come to learn firsthand how the prickly Me, Me, Me Monster--that bullying narcissist—can learn to pull in its quills and lower its defenses when offered acceptance and love unfeigned.     

Soon, we welcomed the occupants of the second chorus of clown cars and their contribution to the table of diverse desserts.  Amidst the carnival chaos, two of the grand-nieces flee the brouhaha to take a refreshing stroll outdoors.  They wander a block or two away to visit a friend who is also visiting relatives in our little town from their own little town.

When the girls return they corner me, and they made an intriguing comment, “Auntie, we just visited a friend whose Dad said he knew you years ago, from high-school.”

That innocuous phrase is one I dread.  “I knew you from high school,” is anathema for me because I know that if I hear it in person, I should probably duck.  More than likely, those words will be followed by a slap on the cheek, or a sock on the chin.  And I when I come-to from the knock-out, I will have to shrug and admit, “I deserved that.”  Angst and regret fill the painful anecdotes from my high school memories.  

“He said that we shouldn’t mention to you that he said hi, because you guys didn’t get along all that well.”  Their comment didn’t completely drain the pool of candidates, but it helped.   A hammer slammed down and rang a bell in my memory, and I knew of whom they had spoken.  

I may not have been the nice one at school, but back then, I felt I was equally matched in offensive talent by only one guy.   While I was adept at tossing a verbal dagger, he had the deadliest knife-toss in the school and he could set his target spinning in circles with a cascade of verbal jabs. 

He was the subject of my decade-long retribution nightmares until I finally woke up and learned to embrace the bully creed, “The best bullies are those built by bullies.”  I evolved and in our last years of high school, when the two of us would meet at each end of the hallway, we'd duel and sling an arsenal of steel-tipped barbs with deadly accuracy and heaven help the innocent victims in our way. 

So now, thirty-five years later and eons wiser, I thought I would take the opportunity to walk over and face him.  I would look in his eyes with forgiveness and say, “Hey, I imagine that being the youngest of seven brothers couldn’t have been easy.  I’m sorry for sending you that Valentine cookie in our Senior year that said, ‘Drop Dead,’ and I’d like to ask for your forgiveness.” 

Yeah, I wish I’d done it.  But in life’s freak show, there lingers in me that porcupine girl who has become comfortable with the pain from her prickles. 

Maybe I’ll get up the pluck next year, when the traveling circus returns.

This is My Reality, and Sometimes it Bites.  And When It Does, I Write.  

Final Eng 101 - Yeah, I'm finally starting College. Jan 3, 2018

The New Brother

A New Egg Joins the Family Scramble  

How do you test the fitness of a new in-law?   With FOOD of course.  

Half a year ago, I acquired a new brother-in-law—an uncommon event, as we siblings have reached the age where our children are beginning to marry. 

It’s hard to imagine an interloper fitting in like the other seven in-laws, each of whom has melded seamlessly over the years and whom I regard as a divine sister or brother from another mother.

With this later-in-life acquisition to the family, my maturity (audacity) and experience (senility) support my thinking that I merit some opinion as to his marriage suitability. I have watched and listened as the love-struck sister extolls his merits: Turns out that he’s musical ( a definite +), a fun hog (absolute+) and witty (double ++). His green hair stunt on St. Patty’s certainly marked him as a possible candidate for the lunacy of the clan, though sources report he has shown liberal leanings (slight –).

Only time and close proximity could provide a true test.  HEY!  A family reunion would be perfect. The other sisters and I hatched the covert plan involving many tents and a myriad of  travails--where his suitability as an in-law would be tested to the extreme by us--a plethora of quirky relatives. 

The day dawns and the newlywed couple pulled up in a rig that rivaled Jezabel and Ahab crossing the desert, and it unfolded like an origami box revealing each and every luxury.  

That made me, with my liquid gas coleman stacked on my truck bed, look like a camping neophyte (uh oh, huge –).

The big weight that tilted the balance came at breakfast—eggs for all, cooked in that luxurious caravan—and made to order (+++). Sunny side up? Over easy, scrambled? Could eggs in the RV be better than those fried in the great outdoors in cast iron over pump propane?

Yeeayah, Doggie!  

After what seemed like a fraction of a moment, I am savoring light, fluffy, cooked to perfection, scrambled deliciousness. 

Then the chef poked his head out and asked, “Do you taste mango?”

"In scrambled eggs?" I thought, but then replied quickly, “No.”

“Oh.” His head withdrew.

Puzzled, I keep eating. I am a purist and prefer nothing to dilute the natural flavor of farm-fresh, free-range eggs. Or plain old, store bought, whatever. Anyway…

The head reappeared, “No papaya?”

I slid my tongue over my teeth . “Nope,” I reassured him. I ate faster, spent less time dabbling and more time gobbling.  Now I'm afraid he’d admit that I had gotten the wrong order. In my experience, a family group this size dictates that you “eat what you get and don’t pitch a fit and you do it QUICK!”

Then the sister (acting as the sous chef) pokes her head out. “Are you sure? No mango, no papaya, no tropical sunset?”

I again said, “Nope, just delicious eggs.”

The sister then rolled her eyes and announced, “I guess it’s my fault for placing the air freshener right next to the cooking spray on the counter,” and she disappeared back into the RV.

My last bite of egg slipped down the wrong way as the statement registered!

But I’m not gagging, just giggling. I start to guffaw—and choke—as I realize, HE IS ME!!

AND that, being as cracked as I am, that makes him a keeper!!!

But I am left with one question?  Is Air Wick gluten-free? 

It's My Reality:  And Sometimes It Bites. And When It Does, I Write              2009

I Could've Killed My Husband!

Today, I coulda killed my husband. 

I know most of us have said that about our spouses at one time or another in our lives, but today was my day.

Let me start with a little back story, Mr. Darcey has waged an ongoing battle with digger wasps in our front yard for months. They do not like the vibration of the lawn mower and yet he feels an ongoing urge for the rumble.  Ergo, let the battle begin.

In the past he’s been stung on his ankle tendon and it truly does debilitate a man, even one who seems invulnerable like unto Achilles. I don’t worry too much because the effects haven't moved beyond extreme pain and localized swelling--of the entire affected extremity.

Last week, he and I were just getting over the dreaded grandkid gom-booee, which is whatever the two darlings have picked up by lapping up the virus of the month from the bacterial regions of the earth.  And Mr. Darcey had just been given a steroid shot to curtail the left-over racking cough.  So he could go out and mow! 

This time he got bit/stung atop his right hand.  There was an identical response, pain and swelling, but this time Dr. Me was in the vicinity!  So I doped him up with a couple of Benadryl and a good experimental rub of whatever essential oil was the stink-de-jour. His body’s response was typical, four or five days of swelling resulting in an arm that from wrist to elbow resembled a spinach-loaded Popeye’s.  Remember, this response happened was while he was still on steroids. Sheesh.

Jump ahead.  This morning,  again while mowing, he comes racing in the house swatting wasps and when the panic and killing stops, we count four sting/bites. One on the chest, one on each ankle and one on the thumb joint. Dang. Here we go again! And most allergies intensify with added exposure, right?  This time I consolidate all the thought into one plan, “I gotta up the Benadryl to avoid another steroid shot.”  So my brain counts four bites and multiplies that by the two Benadryl, (those which were ineffective last time,) and I gave him six of the innocuous little pink pills. He’s in pain and he's listened to my hypebolic imagining of an entire body swollen, so he pops them down. I can tell he’s out of his mind in pain because he doesn’t stop to correct my math.  And it's a good thing that he doesn't. 

Now, women are not the only gender whose depths are totally unfathomable to the opposite genus of the species. While in pain, the husband heads back outside to move the mower in from the north forty and again, in he races--and again, he is swatting wasps and has been bitten/stung on his eyelid!

I coulda killed him!!!

But no worries, the Benadryl will probably kick in at anytime and it will do it for me.

When I read the bottle to see if we could up the dosage even more, I find the answer is NO.

Not just No, but,

OH NO!

Not to exceed six pills in a 24 hour period. What?

Hmmmm, I wonder what happens if you do?

He goes to shower and lie down and I get in the car to go off to church, only to discover the day-before-yesterday’s groceries sitting forgotten in the back seat and I discover that the fish has gone-off. Bad fish. Yeech. Such is the bite of reality that is my life.  

So I clean that up and head off to church where the first medical professional I meet advises me to go home and monitor the patient since, “that’s a boatload of Benadryl.”  "Just make sure he's still breathing."  He was joking, right?  

Turns out that Benadryl is a really bad high.  All the google comments are warnings that suggest that this is not the party drug of choice because the side-effects are "a real downer, dude."   

Yeah. I really coulda killed him.

After this experience, there is one thing I have learned for certain.  

Probably 12 hours is the upper safety limit for the left-in-the-car fish.

That's My Reality, and Sometimes It Bites.  

Sept. 2016