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.

My Brother’s Wedding, Part 2

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There were many fun and “bloggable” moments from the wedding this past weekend, and in order to tell you about one of my favorites, I must first give you a little background from my own wedding.

When my husband and I got married 10 years ago, we lit a Unity candle as part of our ceremony. We asked his parents and my parents to light the side candles, to represent our two families coming together. What we said was, “Hey, would you guys light the candles for us to use in the ceremony?”, but what they heard was apparently something more along the lines of, “You must be in charge of FIRE, and if you make one single misstep you will ruin the wedding, and your families will shun you, and the church will burn down, and the city will be set aflame, and people will die!!” [Read more…] about My Brother’s Wedding, Part 2

My Brother’s Wedding

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So after sleeping for 16 hours, and then laying on the couch for the rest of the day after I got up and staring at the ceiling, I think I have finally recovered from the wedding. I know that as Americans we like to think we are on the leading edge of everything. But speaking as someone whose brother just married into a Polish family, when it comes to wedding receptions, we Americans have NOTHING on the rest of the world!

That was absolutely The Most Fun I have ever had at a wedding reception, and I only wish I had known just how much physical endurance it was going to require of me, so that I could have been preparing for it with a very strict training regimen over the past year.

By Hour Four of the reception the Americans had started to drop like flies. (This was also the time that the bride’s family announced that they were bringing in more food, and now I know why-they were only just getting started on their celebrating!) By Hour Five you could find us draped over various comfortable pieces of furniture in the lobby, or “The Recovery Room”, as we were then calling it.

me whooped

By Hour Seven And A Half (which, incidentally, is longer than I stayed at my own wedding reception) almost the only representatives left on the groom’s side were me, my husband, my mom, and my dad. At this point the bride came out to The Recovery Room to find us, because her new groom was out there recovering with us. As we watched in near-catatonic awe as the DJ cranked up the music and all the remaining guests began some seriously high-energy dancing, she began telling us about her cousin’s wedding reception, which apparently lasted for 12 hours and included breakfast at 4 am.

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that,” said my brother, massaging his temples. (He was already having to ice his knee, an injury sustained when he and my dad leaped into action to put out The Centerpiece Fire.)  Apparently there is a special name for the second day of a Polish wedding reception, and while no one could give us an exact translation, the general gist of it is something like, “Even better!”

The reception itself went well past Hour Eight (and that was after a 1 hour Blessing of the Couple ceremony, 1 hour of pictures at the church, and 1 hour of the actual wedding itself), but by that time my husband and I had reached The End Of Our Celebrating Abilities and were asleep. I’m not entirely sure just exactly how long the festivities lasted, but I do know that they had concluded by the time we all met for breakfast the next day at 8:30 am.

So we all went and had our own “Even Better” celebration at the Cracker Barrel. And while we were probably unsettling the balance of the Universe by having so many of our own manically-energized family members together in one physical location, that’s a story for another blog post.

It’s So Not A Party Until I Get There

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Today my husband and I drove from Atlanta up to Raleigh because my brother is getting married tomorrow (YAY!) We both have parts to play in the wedding, so we had to make sure we arrived in time to attend the rehearsal.

We had not been at the church for more than 10 or 15 minutes when I horrified my mother with the following exchange:

My grandfather: “So, how long did it take you to drive here?”
Me: ” A little under 6 hours.”
My grandfather: “And how many miles is that?”
Me: (not realizing that I hadn’t taken the time to switch over into Pretending I Know How To Act Like A Grownup Mode)  “An ass-load!”

Missed Communication

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Sometimes I think it would be nice if all personal interactions were as easily understood as those between me and my cats.

When they are happy they rub their head against my leg. When they are put out or indignant they poo in the tub. When they want attention they insert themselves in between me and whatever else I’m doing, and stick their furry little hiney right in my face to make sure that I inhale the maximum amount of fur possible and am unable to focus on anything but them. When they’re really angry they come and sit on my desk while I’m working, but facing away from me with their tail switching back and forth angrily, while aiming a malevolent glare in my direction. (Well, as malevolent as a 6 pound ball of grey fluff can be).

But when humans get involved, communication gets a lot more complicated.

I was thinking about that earlier this week as I was having lunch with my husband. He was upset about a news story he’d recently heard. It involved a “hot button” issue, the kind that causes all connections to the rational, logical part of your brain to shut down and instead leads you directly into highly charged, emotional (over)reacting. Which then leads to conversations where the people around you, who are not directly involved in your conversation, could accidentally overhear certain words or phrases and give you concerned looks as they begin to edge cautiously toward the door.

About six years ago I found myself in a similar situation, but due to the extremely different emotional climate in which we were all living back then, this time it was really funny rather than a cause for concern. But it won’t seem so at first, so just bear with me.

Six 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 her?”

“I don’t 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?”

Are you imagining what you would be thinking if you overheard this conversation? Because my mom and I sure were. As if the situation weren’t stressful enough already, we decided to go ahead and come up with a list of all the ways someone could misinterpret what they were hearing and decide to report us to the authorities. (Sometimes being an avid reader with a powerful imagination can actually be a disadvantage).

I’m happy to say that we did survive that shopping trip, but maybe you can see why I sometimes envy cats their simple, direct method of communication. Although I somehow doubt that coughing up a hairball and then rolling over to lick my private parts would really have been an appropriate response to this situation.