Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

One More Party Story

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I did have one more interesting conversation at my neighbor’s birthday party with a fellow guest, who, after she presented our neighbor with his birthday present (a new bathrobe), came and sat down next to me on the couch.

For lack of a better way of starting up a conversation, I complimented her on her choice of gifts.

“Yes,” she said, “I decided to give him a hospital robe.”

I must have looked alarmed, thinking she knew something about his health that I didn’t, so she hastened to explain her remark.

“Well, you know how, when you give an older person a robe or a really nice set of pajamas, they always say, ‘Oh, good, I’m gonna save this just in case I have to go to the hospital?’ ”

Um, no.

But apparently she did. From the way she was talking, it sounded like she pretty much spent all of her time outfitting elderly people for intensive hospital stays.

“As a matter of fact,” she said, “my Uncle Bernie actually set aside a robe to be buried in.”

Aha-now this was something I could relate to.

“Well,” I said, “it might have been that he was just trying to save people from having to make that decision for him after he died.”

She looked unconvinced, which was great for me because it meant that I got to tell this story:

“Ten years ago this summer my family gathered to say goodbye to my grandmother, who was dying of cancer. Her wish was that when she died, she simply be wrapped in a white sheet before she was placed in her coffin. This was simple, and beautiful, and did not at all take into consideration the fact that this would require there to be A Person In Charge Of Sheets. Since my mom is the oldest child in her family, and I am the oldest child in my family, this duty fell to the two of us.

So we headed off to the local Giant Shopping Mart, but unfortunately there was no section labeled, “Linens for the Soon-To-Be-Deceased”, or, “Easy Coffin Accessories”, so we were forced to stand in the middle of the sheet and towel aisle and have the following conversation:

“Do you think a queen sized sheet will be big enough to wrap all the way around the body?”

“I dontt know. I think it depends on whether the body is laid end-to-end or diagonally.

“Will a top sheet be enough to wrap the body in, or do you think we need a fitted sheet too?”

“Why the heck are there so many freaking choices for ‘a white sheet’? I know Grammie’s dying of cancer and all, but I think she could have helped us our here by being a little bit more specific on her particular color preference.”

Now, my mom and I have spent a VERY large portion of our lives being the quintessential “good girls”, but we also watch an inordinate amount of crime and detective shows on television. We’ve never actually been “on the wrong side of the law” ourselves, but we do sort of feel like we are experts on what could take a person there. So as soon as we first uttered the words, “the body”, we felt like it was really only a matter of time until we set of some kind of Crime Alert Sensor and found ourselves face down and handcuffed right there on the floor of KMart.

However, while we were waiting for the S.W.A.T. team to come and take us down, we still had to pick out a sheet for the burial. Which meant that we had to continue pondering questions such as,

“Well, how many times do you think a king size sheet can wrap around a body?”

and,

“How are we going to make sure that the body and the sheet stay together?”

Shockingly, we made it to the checkout counter without any evidence of an increased law enforcement presence, and were able to complete our purchase. At least, I think that’s what we did. Because by this time I had completely left my body, in preparation for enduring my likely prison stay, and was hovering somewhere in the vicinity of my left temple. So the end of this memory is a little fuzzy for me. I do think it involved extremely large amounts of therapeutic chocolate, however.

“So,” I concluded for the benefit of my fellow party guest, “it could be that your Uncle Bernie was just trying to spare you guys from having to go through something like that.”

I don’t think she was convinced. She left me pretty soon after that, and as we were leaving my husband remarked that she was “giving us a really funny look.”

I guess we’re not gonna be BFF’s anytime soon.

Wedding Wrap-Up

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The wedding festivities for my sister-in-law kicked off Friday morning with an event that can best be described as

Pre-Wedding Brunching With Engineers

It all started off innocently enough, with a brunch meant to welcome my husband’s uncle. He had recently arrived in town from Israel, which is the fourteenth country in which he’s lived.

He had called my sister-in-law earlier in the week to discuss his final travel arrangements, and she told him that at first she wasn’t sure she should take his call, since the number was so odd-looking on her caller ID.

Naturally this led right into a competition designed to see who could identify the most country codes, because if there is a better way to get into the mood for a wedding, I surely don’t know about it.

So different people (read: the three engineers) started calling out random questions for the rest of the group.

“What’s Israel’s country code?”

“What’s ours?”

“How about Italy’s?”

“Ah!” shouted The International Uncle, in the tone of someone who has just successfully squared the circle. “What’s Kosovo’s country code?!”

Shockingly, no one knew the answer to this question.

“Ha ha,” revealed The International Uncle, that trickster. “They don’t have one. They have to use Serbia’s. And, boy-are they miffed.”

(Yukking laughter from the three engineers, who frankly, could not possibly imagine anything more humorous than this.)

Me and the bride: (looking desperately at each other to communicate the urgent messages of “Please help me!”, and “How can we STOP THE INSANITY RIGHT NOW?!)

And so that pretty much set the tone for the rest of the weekend.

Eventually we did make it through the rest of that day, until finally it was time for

The Wedding Rehearsal

In the spirit of celebration, as well as the spirit of, “Well, I might have to wear a tux tomorrow, but tonight I can wear whatever I want, mwa ha ha ha ha!” my father-in-law, who plays the bagpipes, decided to adorn himself in full, bag piping attire. When I tell you that he is over six feet tall and was wearing a kilt the color of pumpkins, you will understand why that caused such a big stir.

As the rehearsal was winding down he came over to talk to me and my husband, which gave me the opportunity to ask him why he appeared to have a small purse strapped around his midsection.

“Is that where you keep your flask in case all of this wedding stuff gets to be too much?” I joked.

It turns out that it is something called a “sporran”, and while I suppose you could use it to store your flask, he was using his to store his wallet and his keys.

“Now there are some sporrans that are encrusted with gems, or that are covered in goat hair,” my father-in-law informed us. “So technically, mine is not actually an evening sporran.”

I’m pretty sure he was able to slide by on that one.

Failure To Communicate

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My husband and I are both very much word people. We love to read, and we often make up our own words and phrases when we talk to each other. And now that he is having to learn Spanish for his job, we often throw in some foreign words to give our conversation a little international flair.

But sometimes I forget this fact, like today when we were opening Christmas gifts with his family.

It is their tradition that we all sit in a circle and open gifts one person at a time, so everyone can admire what everyone else receives. This means that before each round of gift opening, one person is assigned to retrieve gifts from under the tree, making sure that everyone has something to open.

This time it was my mother-in-law’s turn to play Santa, and she was having trouble finding a present for me.

“Oh wait,” she said finally, “this one might be for you, Jenny.”

She held the gift out at arm’s length, squinted at the tag, and then asked, “Are you…’queasy’?”

“Um, no,” I replied, thinking that she was asking about my illness. Then I had an idea.

“Do you mean ‘queso’?” I asked.

“Oh yes, ‘queso’,” agreed my mother-in-law.

“Yep,” I said, holding out my hand. “That one is definitely for me.”

Why My Parents Can Never Claim To Be Surprised At The Way My Brother And I Have Turned Out

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top gear

This weekend my parents were down here for a visit, and I decided to introduce them to the magical world of the car show “Top Gear”, which airs on the BBC America network.

On this particular episode the three hosts were each required to acquire a car, saw it in half, and then transform it into their own, unique version of a limousine.

As we watched the men gleefully cut into their cars with varying degrees of success and the occasional electrical fire my dad said, “You know, my cousin and I did that once when we were growing up.”

My mom: “You sawed a car in half?”

My dad: “Yes. We did it to my grandfather’s old car after he died.”

My mom: “And how did you get permission to do something like that?”

My dad: “Well, he and I never really went the route of asking for permission.”

Me: “As in, it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission?”

My dad: “Exactly. My grandmother was not pleased.”

Well That’s Not Something You Hear Every Day

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Last weekend my husband and I went to visit my brother and sister-in-law as part of the official start of our summer vacation. They both have their own laptops, but apparently my brother insists on keeping his in its virginal, pristine condition by refusing to allow anyone to download anything onto it from the Internet. So anytime this need appears, my sister-in-law’s computer is pressed into service.

It’s a good thing they’d told me about this on an earlier visit. Because otherwise, the conversation I overheard between them would’ve been even more disconcerting than it already was:

My sister-in-law: “So, where’s ‘The Whore’?”

My brother (looking around, completely unconcerned): “Um, I think she’s in the bedroom.”

Memorial Day With Engineers

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My Father-In-Law: “You know how optimists say the glass is half empty, and pessimists say the glass is half full?”

My Husband: “Yeah.”

My Father-In-Law: “Do you know what engineers say?”

My Husband: “They say that the glass is too big.”

My Father-In-Law: “Exactly. The glass is twice as big as it needs to be.”

Can You Feel The Love Tonight?

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Yesterday after the wedding we all went back to the hotel to change clothes before heading over to a post-wedding party at my aunt and uncle’s house. As we were waiting for our group to gather in the lobby we started talking about some of the cousins who weren’t able to attend the wedding, and my 13-year-old cousin asked how much older they are than she is.

“Oh, I know,” I said, and then proceeded to list off the birth years of the cousins in question. “I know when everyone was born. [First cousin] was 1971, then me in 1972,…” and then continued through cousin #12 who was born in 2001.”

“Hm,” replied my aunt. I thought at first that she was impressed by my vast repository of family knowledge until she turned to my husband and asked, “So, what’s it like being married to Monk?”

You Know You’re a Grownup

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when this story that you’ve heard for years from a relative around the holiday dinner table

“…So they were sitting on the couch, smoking, and then they would turn around and blow smoke at the cat who was sitting on the back of the couch, and then eventually the cat just fell on the floor…”

is finally told in its “adult” version in front of you at Christmas dinner.

“…So they were sitting on the couch rolling joints, and then they would turn around and blow the smoke at the cat who was sitting on the back of the couch, and then eventually the cat fell off the couch because it was stoned.”

How Many Mathematicians Does It Take To Cook A Turkey?

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Image courtesy of FreeDigital Photos.net.

My husband and I are in charge of cooking the turkey this year for Christmas. We brine it before we bake it, so I emailed the recipe to my mom so that she could buy the brine ingredients ahead of time.

When we arrived at my parents’ house yesterday they took us out to lunch, and in the car on the way home the talk turned to turkey.

“I got a 10-pound bag of ice. Is that enough?” asked my mom.

“Well let’s see. It’s a math problem,” responded my husband.

“Aaarrrggghhh!!!” I yelled, grabbing my head in agony.

“A pint’s a pound the word around,” began my husband.

“Yep, there went my frontal lobe,” I announced.

Eventually-and a long and painful eventually it was-they reached the point in their conversions that they’d been aiming for all along: how many ounces are in a gallon?

“I thought there were 16 ounces in a gallon,” said the accountant.

“No, there are 64 ounces in a gallon,” said the math teacher.

“No-oo,” there are 128 ounces in a gallon,” said the engineer.

“And there goes the temporal lobe. Damn math!”