Pink Ribbon Overload: The Encore

Yeah, so I was totally done with the pink ribbon overload until my good friend Lynn sent me this, with the comment “I have been wanting to get this picture to you to add to your pink collection.  I thought it was a little ironic!!!”

 Wow, that’s great.  Hubster may kill me for surrendering some of my anonymity, but I just couldn’t keep this one from you.  That’s MY name on that there bag!  Funny stuff.  I also appreciate that they’re “simply naked” and conveniently snuggled right up next to the cookies.  Now the true character of those allegedly healthy pita chips comes out.  Sure, they say they’re healthy, but look at the company they keep!  Sitting around, naked, with a bunch of calorie-laden cookies.  What is this world coming to when pita chips can no longer be trusted?  Next thing you know, the tofu is gonna be cavorting with the Velveeta, and the rice cakes will be frolicking with the Twinkies.  It’ll be grocery anarchy, I tell you.

Retro…or Just Plain Wrong?

Is 80’s hair back in style?  Not late 80’s ginormous hair.  I’m talking about late 70’s, early 80’s hair.  The kind that required a big comb be stationed in the back pocket of your Jordache jeans at all times.  I ask because my hair appears to be regressing, and I’m hoping that its new look will just happen to be coming back in vogue.  Otherwise, I’m going to look like I never left 1983, or at least never wanted to. 

 As we all know, I’ve been through more hairdos in the past year than most people have even had since 1983.  Yet, I’m doomed to look like an outdated dork unless my 7^th grade hairstyle is suddenly somehow trendy again.  Sometimes, I think that bald wasn’t so bad after all.  At least when you’re bald, people usually grab the clue that you didn’t actually choose to be that way.  Even when your hair is first growing in, it’s pretty obvious that you just finished up chemo, so you really don’t feel like a dork. 

 However, once you get a few months down the road, it’s not so obvious anymore.  Makes you feel like you need to wear a sign at all times explaining that your head is a work in progress.  “Please excuse my light bulb hair—6 months ago I was bald.”  I’m way past the light bulb stage now, but my five inch long locks have their own set of issues.  They’re at the place where leaving them curly results in Richard Simmons hair.  Yet, trying to straighten them requires more patience than I would have even if I used my entire life’s allotment.  Besides, I’m a homeschool mom, remember?  I’m running on the half cup of patience I had to borrow from the next door neighbor as it is. 

 Lately, I’ve been trying to use a round brush the approximate diameter of a can of pork and beans to create a sort of in between look.  I’ve found that if I round brush it under while drying, what I end up with after some goop and manipulation is a sort of generic Everymom look.  That’s okay, I guess, but I recently decided to try round brushing it up instead.  In my mind’s eye, I was envisioning some kind of cool retro flip thing.  What I ended up with instead was my 7^th grade hair, except instead of being parted in the middle it’s parted on the side. 

Maybe I should just own my 80’s hair, regardless of whether or not it’s actually back in style.  You know, I could just jump right into that whole look with both feet.  After all, it’s no big deal to starch my shirt collar up, right?  And, I’m sure I can find a pair of penny loafers somewhere.  If only I still had the purple parachute pants that went with that shirt—dang it!  Because, of course, I’d still fit into them, right?  I mean, my driver’s license says I still weigh 118 lbs, and that’s an official government document, so it MUST be right. 

Now, you might be concerned that I’d be an embarrassment to my family, but fear not.  Why, Hubster still has a pair of Eastlands.  He never has quite left the 80’s himself.  And just the other day I taught Mini Me how to peg her jeans.  We’re all set!  Look for us next time you’re out and about….we’ll be the ones drinking New Coke and driving a K car.

Pork Fritter Popularity

It’s always interesting, and sometimes downright disturbing, to me to see the search engine terms folks have used to find this blog.  As I’ve mentioned before, more people have come here after searching for pork fritters than anything else.  In fact, the top three search phrases leading readers here are Pete’s Pride pork fritters (29 hits), pork fritters (14 hits), and pork fritter (9 hits).  There have been a total of 65 hits resulting from pork fritter searchers.  I mentioned this to Hubster the other day, so he googled Pete’s Pride pork fritters.  This blog was the second listing to come up—beaten out only by Sam’s Club, which is probably paying to be number one. 

 I laughed pretty hard when I heard that. How on earth did I get so high on the list?  Is it perhaps because of posts like this where I mention pork fritters, like, seven times in the first paragraph?  Because, hey, I’m all attention starved, you know, and once I find out pork fritters are a portal to internet popularity, well, there’s just no telling how many times I’ll talk about Pete’s Pride pork fritters. 

 Interestingly, almost no one gets here by searching for breast cancer.  Seriously. Like three people have found me that way.  Do I just not talk about it enough to rank high on google?  Or is it just that there’s way more info out there about breast cancer than there is about pork fritters?  Or maybe it’s both.

 Still, sometimes people do find me by searching for things like “breast cancer bald school”.  Shoot!  I didn’t know there was a school for learning to be bald and cancery!  Why didn’t I think of that?  I can just picture those late-night commercials with Sally Struthers saying, “At In The Pink Breast Cancer Bald School, you can get your degree in TV/VCR repair, chemotherapy, basket weaving, radiation burns, ditto machine operations, or breast cancer baldness.” 

 And other times, I get hits from searches like “high waist open bottom girdle”.  Now, I’m not really sure why that brought up my blog, but even more confusing to me is that the person felt like they needed to specify that the girdle be open at the bottom.  Presumably, a girdle would at the very least be open at the leg holes.  Unless you’re needing a girdle for your weeble, which might even be more of a specialty item than the “aunt girdle swimsuit” that someone else was apparently looking for. 

 Not sure how I feel about people googling girdles and having my blog come up as a possible place to find them.  There are no girdles here.  Only pork fritters.  Lots and lots of pork fritters.

She Gave Me Woht-tah

As you all know, on August 14^th I had surgery to place the tissue expander under my pectoral muscles.  I’ve been asked by some folks what the expander is like.  They want to know if it’s like an implant.  The answer is no.  It is not like an implant.  It is like a man’s wallet.  Seriously.  It has approximately the same size and rigidity as a wallet.  An angry, painful wallet. 

The angry boob wallet will gradually be filled with saline in order to stretch out a place for an implant to go.  No, this is not the same procedure that is used for the standard breast augmentation.  In that case, the implant is stuffed under the breast tissue, but on top of the muscle.  Remember, I have no breast tissue on that side.  The remaining skin does not have an adequate blood supply unless it’s attached to the muscle.  So, the implant needs to go underneath. 

Dr Grasee added some saline when she placed the expander, and because of that, and well, the fact that there’s a wallet in there, I had a little mini-boob immediately.  It’s kind of cool, except that now I really can’t wear The Foob.  This wasn’t a big deal when I came home from the hospital, because when I went out, I simply tucked my drain up in my bra to fill out that side.

That’s how it was when I went a couple of weeks ago for my post-op appointment.  It didn’t even occur to me until Hubster mentioned it that once the drain was out, I’d be pretty flat on that side.  “Did you bring anything to put in there?” he asked.  Oops.  Hmmm…What can I make a mini foob out of?

Fortunately, we had a few minutes before my appointment, and there was a Meijer nearby.  Gettin’ my Macgyver on, I said, “Let’s swing through Meijer, and get some cotton balls and one of those shoe try-on footies.”  The result looks less like our friend The Foob, and more like a prosthetic Quasimodo.  But, it serves its purpose nonetheless.

Yesterday I went back to Dr Grasee’s office for my first fill.  I had read that she would use a magnet to locate the port on my expander, but my attempts to find it using refrigerator magnets had failed.  (Yes, I did try to stick refrigerator magnets to my chest.  This was Angie’s idea, and would have been stinkin’ hilarious had it worked.)  So, I asked Dr G how she would locate the port, and she confirmed that she’d be using a magnet.  I then proceeded to tell her how I’d tried to find it with a refrigerator magnet—I like to establish my reputation early, and reinforce it often.  She chuckled and asked me why I wanted to find it.  No reason, I told her, I just wanted to see if I could get a magnet to stick.

Dr G put 80cc of saline into the expander, which is roughly a 1/3 of a cup.  Hubster got to literally watch the new boob grow before his very eyes.  It has been a little sore, but it’s really nothing compared to the pain I had from surgery.  It is not, however, comparable to the muscle pain one might have from a hard workout, which is what Dr G and Tricia the nurse said it would be like.  It’s more comparable to how I felt after some really bad bike wrecks as a kid, where parts of me were bruised and scraped and hurt to move. 

 ***

Now that you’re all up-to-date, I’d like to announce a new contest.  Or, maybe not a contest so much as an opportunity for some audience participation.  As we ALL know, October is breast cancer awareness month.  If you’ve read me for a while, you know that in the past I’ve poked fun at all of the pink ribbon hype that October brings.  So, I thought it might be amusing to see what kind of ridiculous pink ribbon infested products everyone can find.  I’d love to be able to post one each day in October.  Witty commentary is encouraged.  Email your photos to me at themoodyfoodie@gmail.com

Back Home Again

I suppose I should have posted before now to let you all know that I was finally able to stop puking and go home.  It’s pretty bad when my dad’s calling and saying, “Hey, how are you doing?  I haven’t seen any new posts.” 

 During the 14 hours post-op that I spent throwing up, I managed to puke everything from my anti-nausea meds (they don’t work so well if you can’t keep ‘em down) to the small amount of water and 7-Up I ingested, to the whopping two saltine crackers I’d eaten, before erupting into my grand finale which involved the aforementioned beverages, and approximately 1 teaspoon worth of cinnamon crunch bagel. Oh yeah, and because I’m such an overachiever I did this while simultaneously shuffling back from the bathroom and pointing mutely to the puke pan. 

 It was great. 

 Nothing says, “See how cool I am” like tossing your cookies (or bagel as the case may be) between your fingers and all over the floor because your Hubster and nurse aren’t quite speedy enough at charades.  They’re over there guessing, “Uh…George Washington crossing the Delaware?….No, no, I’ve got it, you’re Michael Jackson in the Thriller video!” And I’m all: Must. reach. puke. pan. *bleechhrrghh*  

 I eventually managed to stop throwing up, but not until the night shift nurse offered me the option of taking my anti-nausea meds intravenously.  What a concept!  After that, and a change in my pain meds, I was actually able to stop throwing up and go to sleep.  When I woke up the next morning, I was no longer nauseous, and very much ready to go home.

 And, so here I’ve been, because I’m not allowed to drive yet.  You’d think I’d have been writing since it’s one of the few things that fall within my current restrictions, but being an invalid makes me pretty doggone crotchety, and I just haven’t been in the mood. 

 Now, there are parts about this can’t-do-anything-for-myself gig that I don’t mind so much, like not doing laundry or dishes.  On the other hand, there are many more things that are just a pain in the bum. One of the most annoying things to me is that I can’t hold the phone to my ear with my left hand.  At least not without causing my pectoral muscles to completely spazz out.  I know, you’re wondering what the big deal is.  You’re thinking, “So hold it with your right hand.”  Well, this is one of those quirky little Rainman sort of things that I can’t explain—I cannot stand to hold a phone to my right ear.  Don’t ask me why—I told you, I don’t know.  It’s like the telecommunications equivalent of wrong side up saltines, I guess. 

But, I’m able to do a little more each day, despite the fact that I’ve shunned all of the narcotics Dr Grasee prescribed in favor of extra strength tylenol.  You may think I’m crazy, but all those pain meds make me nauseous, and there ain’t no way I’m goin’ back to that summer camp, Skippy.

Holy Scare-Hair, Batman!

Went to see Dr Birhiray yesterday—that’s pronounced Beer-Hurray, in case this is your first visit here.  The appointment was pretty uneventful, except that I had Hubster take a new picture of me and Dr B, since in the old one I’m bald.  Unfortunately, I forgot the camera, so Hubster used his cell phone to take the picture, and doesn’t know how to get it off of there.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to post it sometime in the near future.

It also occurred to me the other day that I haven’t uploaded a picture of myself recently.  After several months of attempting to straighten my hair, it’s finally gotten to the point that I think I can walk around with it curly without looking too scary.  Or maybe it’s just that my slothful nature got the best of me and I couldn’t handle having a hairdo that was so doggone involved for crying out loud.  And besides, I’ve always thought it would be fun to have an afro, so why not? 

At any rate, my ‘do these days is kind of a cross between Mickey Dolenz from The Monkees, and Richard Simmons.  Like, you know, old school Richard Simmons, not middle aged Richard Simmons with the ‘fro over thing.  (Though he’s got a mighty impressive fork, dontcha think?) 

 Think Whitney Houston, from about 1986, before Bobby Brown slapped the curl out of her hair-except white, and with no talent. 

That’s the look I’ve got going. 

 

 

Hubster keeps saying things like, “Your hair’s kinda crazy.”  (He doesn’t adjust very quickly to change, you know.)  And I’m all like, “Yeah, I just made it that way—I like it!”  But, otherwise, I’ve gotten lots of compliments on it.  I think it’s just too large and in charge to ignore, and really, what kind of jerk is going to be hatin’ on a cancer girl’s 1 year post-chemo hair growth?  So, pretty much anything anybody says is going to be positive.

My curly hair and I will be reporting for surgery tomorrow morning at 6:30 AM.  Ugh.  6:30.  Without the benefit of coffee.  That’s just wrong.  I certainly hope Dr Grasee is a morning person.  I’m sure not—I can’t even complete a sentence first thing in the morning, let alone perform surgery.  Add that to my top ten list of reasons I’m not a doctor.  Right alongside the fact that I’m the absolute least sympathetic person you know.  Really.  Most of my appointments would consist of me telling my patients to suck it up.  “What?  Your arm hurts?  Well, it’s not bleeding, so suck it up.”

Fortunately for me, my doctors are all way nicer than I am.

Anniversary

This past weekend, Hubster and I celebrated our anniversary.  Now the funny thing about this is that we almost missed it.  Indeed, we’d both forgotten about it when a card arrived in Saturday’s mail from Hubster’s aunt wishing us a happy anniversary.  When he told me we’d gotten an anniversary reminder in the mail I had to think, “What IS today’s date, anyway?  The 12^th…oh hey, it’s tomorrow!”  Of course the next question was, “So, what are we going to do?” 

Over the years, Hubster and I have done a variety of things to celebrate our anniversary.  Some things were glamorous, or romantic, like going to a bed and breakfast or Symphony on the Prairie, and some things not so much.  Like, say, the year we spent our anniversary butchering chickens.  This year, we were blessed with a beautiful, sparkling day, so we decided that the first thing we’d do after church was take the canoe out and go fishing.  With Mini Me off to my friend Angie’s house for the night, it was just the two of us.  Now you may not think of fishing as a great anniversary activity, but to this canoe girl, being out on the water was like deep fried, chocolate covered heaven on a stick. 

Later, we got cleaned up and went into the Haute, planning to take in a movie.  We almost never actually go to the movies, primarily because it’s stinkin’ expensive and there usually isn’t anything we want to see bad enough to take out a second mortgage.  True to form, once we got in town we decided that there wasn’t really anything playing that was worth the investment.  So, we did something even better: went to Steak & Shake for dinner.  Mmmm….cheese fries.  After all, why go to a movie that’s over in a couple of hours, when I can add cheese fries to my thighs and keep them with me for years to come? 

Then, as we were tooling through town I said, “Hey, let’s go to Fairbanks Park.”  So we went and walked along the river, swung on the swings, and enjoyed the evening.  As I was swinging side-by-side with Hubster, I thought, “Gee, I hope we don’t break the swing set.”   Then I thought, “You know, this is one of the best anniversaries we’ve had.”

Now of course, part of that is because of the cheese fries, but it’s mostly because after all these years, I’m still madly in love with him. And after spending my summer vacation doing chemo last year, I’ve come to appreciate normal a whole lot more.  Sure, I still like the fancy anniversary-type stuff, but man, after last summer, I’m just so doggone glad I can actually TASTE the cheese fries!   

I am crazy blessed.

Corncorncorncorn Part 2

You know, perhaps I was wrong about corn being boring, after all.  The Corncorncorn post has generated an amazing amount of traffic.  Apparently corn is more interesting than I first thought.  Or perhaps it’s just irresistible to all those folks who googled “Pete’s Pride Pork Fritters” which, much to my amusement, is the most common search engine term that brings folks here. 

Okay, so about cornin’.  As I’m sure is common throughout the country, in Indiana late October is the time of year when younger kids go trick-or-treating, and older kids run amok and pull pranks on the neighbors.  You’ve got your universal pranks, like soaping windows and toilet papering trees, or even the sinister egging.  But here in corn country, you have something else:  Cornin’. 

Now the uninitiated may think of sweet corn, or maybe even hominy when they hear of cornin’.  But we’re not talking about those things.  We’re talking about field corn.  The type that’s left on the stalk until fully mature and dry, and then used as feed for livestock.  The kernels are big and hard—Like candy corn’s roughneck cousin who just got out on parole.  Removing this stuff from the cob after having stolen it from the neighbor’s field involves thumbs and blisters.  Piled in ice cream buckets, it’s agricultural ammo for the night’s events.

First you need to choose a target.  If you choose a house, there needs to be someone home. Unoccupied houses are not acceptable because the possibility of getting in trouble is what makes cornin’ fun.   It’s best if you can find a house with a big picture window, and a curmudgeon with no sense of humor sitting right on the other side of the glass watching Jeopardy.  Sneaking in close not only makes for better contact, but also enhances the adrenaline rush.  Then on the count of three you and your friends—because NOBODY corns alone—jump up and throw the biggest handful of corn you can manage as hard as you can at that picture window.  Let me tell ya, that stuff is LOUD.  At this point you have two options, although you should have decided before you threw the corn, either to run or try to hide.  Either way, your curmudgeon will likely come out and yell threats and obscenities at you.  Mission accomplished.

Or, you can choose to corn cars.  This works best in dark areas where you have a ditch or a hill to corn from.   The victim will likely stop and once again you’ll need to choose whether to run or hide.  However, if you choose to run, it’s not a good idea to run down the road, especially if you’ve just corned Hubster who WILL chase you down the road with the car.  Also, it can be advantageous to corn in areas with lots of trees, which will decrease the likelihood that you’ll be chased cross country by that 4 wheel drive pickup with the redneck sticker and the rebel flag.

Of course, creative corners will also come up with variations on the theme.  One year someone threw corn in the open window of my dad’s Plymouth Duster.  We cleaned it out, but later when the car got rained in—apparently Dad left the window open on a regular basis—a few kernels which had remained hidden in the groovy shag carpet sprouted and we had little corn stalks in the back seat.  Or there was the time when someone dumped buckets or corn on our front porch.  So much that we had to shovel it out.  No one ever fessed up to it, but they should have because it was mighty impressive. 

I haven’t actually been corned in a really long time.  Maybe kids aren’t doing it anymore, or maybe they’re home cornin’ on the Wii instead.

Easy Cheese: Public Enemy Number One

Today was the day that Mini Me left for her mission trip to Jamaica.  Preparing for this trip has made me realize just how involved the whole air travel process has become since 9/11.  Aside from the standard stuff, like making sure your suitcase stuffed with over 2400 crayons, 100+ dum-dums, and other miscellaneous VBS supplies doesn’t exceed the 50 pound weight limit, there’s the maze of items you can and cannot take in your carry-on.  Prohibited items include such seemingly innocuous things as Easy Cheese and hand sanitzer—or any liquid, gel or aerosol–in larger than a 3oz container.  It’s good to have a list of stuff like that, because I never would have suspected that Easy Cheese was an Al Qaeda approved terror device.  Perhaps they’ve planned to coerce the pilot into submission by threatening to put cheese on the wrong side of his saltines.

I need to know these things, because I might not figure out that something like that was contraband.  However, there are other items on the list.  Items that made me chuckle, because I thought, “Does anybody really need to be told that it’s not cool to pack that in their carry-on?”  Seriously.  Um, does anybody not know that their can of gasoline is NOT going to make it past security?  Or that dynamite and hand grenades are not okay—even in your checked luggage?  Or that meat cleavers, ice picks, and sabers may not be stashed in the overhead compartment?  Do they have a lot of trouble with people wanting to carry their axes and cattle prods onto the plane these days?  Sheesh!

But the worst part about this whole security business these days is that no long can you see someone all the way to the gate and watch them take-off.  So, there we were, saying goodbye in the security line.  It went something like this:

Me: “It says your hand sanitizer has to be in a Ziploc—did you put it in a Ziploc?” 

Mini Me: “I don’t know.” 

Me: “Okay, where is it?” 

Mini Me: “In the last zipper in my backpack.” 

Me (trying to dig through a wad of smashed granola bars in an overstuffed backpack pocket): “I can’t find it…which zipper?” 

Mini Me: (exasperated sigh as she takes off her backpack) “Here, let me look.  Here it is, in a Ziploc.” 

Me: “Okay good.  Well, it’s your turn.  Be good.  I love you.” 

Hubster: “I love you..See ya in two weeks.”

 

I waited to cry until we got to the parking garage.

 

 

 

Saltines & Marital Strife

You know, Hubster and I don’t argue much.  Most of the time, we’re a whole lot like two peas in a pod.  But sometimes, we nearly come to blows over the most basic matters of right and wrong. 

Why can’t he understand that the proper way to eat a saltine is with the salt side down, and the flat side up?  He says that the salt side is the “top” and should face up. Therefore anything you put on it (in this case mayo & cheese) should go on the salty side. 

Clearly, he couldn’t be more wrong. 

I tried to make him see the error of his ways.  “It’s like a hamburger bun,” I said, “the rounded part is the top and the flat part is where you put the food.”  Unmoved, he replied, “A bun is cut in half—that’s why it has a flat part.  You can’t cut a cracker in half, so the stuff should go on top.”

Not that it makes any difference to me if he wants to make all his cheese and crackers upside down, but he was making mine, too.  And having all my crackers wrong side up is disturbing to me in a way that few things are.  The only thing that bugs me as much is the way he folds towels (also wrong) crosswise instead of lengthwise.  When it’s lengthwise, it’s ready to hang on a towel bar.  When it’s crosswise (WRONG) it has to be refolded to hang on the towel bar.  Need I even state that is grossly inefficient?  (And wrong.)

And as if to prove just how doggone belligerent he is (and believe it or not, as I’m typing this he’s telling me that I’ve spelled belligerent wrong in spite of the fact that spell check is happy as a clam) he came up here, plopped down and proceeded to correct my translation of his argument.  Then he decided he’d show me how to spell belligerent, and looked it up in the dictionary.  I’ll give you one guess who was WRONG.

So, I’ve decided to let him have this next paragraph to make his case for the upside down cracker configuration:

The cracker, like the bun, has a flat bottom because it is baked on a flat surface with the rounded (top) side up.  The bun, when used as intended, has an exposed rounded side not because it is turned upside down, but because it is sliced through the middle and the contents are placed in the center leaving the rounded top up and exposed.  For the bun/cracker comparison to be valid, the cracker would need to be sliced through the middle and have the mayo and cheese placed between the halves.

Is anybody still reading?  Helllooo…it’s me again.  Yeah, I know.  See what I live with?  Every day.  For-ev-er. 

So now that we’ve both said our respective piece, it’s your turn.  Should the saltine go salt side up, or salt side down?  Which of us is right, and which of us, despite our fancy-pants argument, is yet again wrong?