The tale of a mother and her dentures...

I just went to help my mother at the dentist. She wants to get new dentures. There are many things a good daughter must endure in this life, and one of them is the aging parent, but did I ever think it would include this adventure in denture world? I did not. Silly me. I have been through lung cancer with my father, which at one point he had a huge sore (sorry, it's gross - I know) on his tail bone and as he sat on the toilet I had to put some numbing creme on it for him. He said that this is one of those moments he never thought he ever have to ask me to help him with - I said, "neither did I Dad, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do..."

So now we are at the dentists with Mother while he gropes inside her mouth as I stand and watch. He talks about how her gums have this strange dent in them on the lower front to which she explains that when she had her extractions, they took out some of the bone so they could make her dentures fit better. My mind wonders why they just didn't make the dentures fit to the mouth the way it was? I don't know - I'm just sayin... At any rate, he says that we can go to this other dentist (with a huge specialty title type of name of which I've never heard) and we can pay him upwards of $4 to $5,000 dollars to make it all right! Seriously dude - she's 84, almost 85! Who the hell has that kind of money for freakin dentures???

So then we determine that maybe that since the uppers don't really bother her that much that we look into just getting new lower dentures - which he announces will cost around $1,100 if we go with him. I tell him that she and I will talk about it and make a decision. As we wheel out of there shaking our heads at the cost for lower plate dentures - she says that when she got her current pair 10 YEARS AGO, they were $800 for both sets. "That was ten years ago mother, I'm sure costs have gone up since then..."

"well I can't imagine that they've gone up that much..."

"I can't imagine that they haven't mom, it's been ten years..."

"I'd really like to check back with that lab I went to in Lansing..."

"okay, why don't you call them..."

"I don't know if I have their number..."

"Look it up on line..."

"oh, you can do that...?"

silence

"I think I have an old phone book"

"okay - use that then..."

"that's a lot of money"

"yes, it is, but if it makes things better for you....just give the one in Lansing a call."

"that would be a long way for you to take me.."

"mom, its not like I never go out that way"

"well..."

"I'll talk to you later..."

I've included some lovely photos of the flowers that are in my backyard this summer. I don't spend enough time out there and I should. Especially after conversations or visits with my Mom. I need reminders of the beauty of summer and how much we take things for granted. Even mothers and their dentures....

A long time...

I haven't been on here for quite some time as I've been pretty busy in my fairly new job of six months. I am currently working for a small regional theater as their Director of Education. I just completed three weeks of Summer Kids Camp where we rehearsed and eventually performed Seussical Jr. with twenty-two amazingly talented young performers! I had an amazing team of people to make this happen and can't wait to work with them again.

So, life lately....hmmm, where do I begin. It's been a whirlwind of job, mother, children, dogs and cats and wedding. Erin is getting married next month and the festivities have already begun! We went to Brooklyn mid-July to assist Megan in throwing a fabulous shower for Erin at her apartment. It was a lovely day and she received many wonderful gifts. It was a quick trip but enjoyable. Now we are preparing for a shower here in Chicago. Another crazy, wacky weekend of family and friends. I'm a lucky woman.

Last week we had a very sad thing happen to our family. My grand-dog Hudson went to visit my Dad in heaven. It happened on the same day that my father passed away which made it even harder. Megan and Chris left the city and the state to grieve and get away from the house where Hudson ruled. I will miss our boy very much, but we all know that he'll have more fun with Snickers and Chloe and Patches and Taffy and Grandpa in heaven. Even typing this I'm having a hard time keeping it together.

Well, I best end for now - I have to attempt to draw a turtle for a meeting tomorrow!

Sweet!

Today I managed to pull myself together and brave the arctic cold to have brunch with my friends and former co-workers Kelly and Laura. We had actually planned to meet a week ago but we were in the middle of a huge snow storm on that day! SO - instead we reschedule for one of the coldest days of the century! We venture out anyway because we wanted some Anne Sathers Cinnamon Rolls dammit! 

Laura picked me up in her cute little mini-cooper, I love that car! It's is so adorable and it has the best butt warmers. Off we went down the street to look for parking. Around and around we went until we found a perfect spot right in front of Cheetah Gym. Yippee. I gotta say, one of the bright spots about these frigid days is that there seem to be plenty of parking spots around. We started walking over to the restaurant saying, "hey it's not that cold"....continue walking - three feet from the restaurant...."god, that hurts" Yeah, our faces hurt already. It was that cold. I looked on my iPhone and it said the temperature was -3 degrees. Ouch. 

We were shown our table towards the back where our hostess was busy with an elderly woman who clearly was unhappy with whatever table they showed them. I hope I never get to the point where I have to argue about everything just because I can. If I turn into an annoying old lady, my children will surely call me on it! Anyway, we watched as the famous cinnamon rolls "rolled" past us coming out of the kitchen door towards other tables. Mmmmmm. Piping hot cinnamon rolls were soon going to be ours as well! We discussed whether we wanted breakfast or not - but clearly we did because that was the only menu's placed in front of us - so breakfast it was. 

Kelly walked in and we had a lovely moment of reunion for the three of us. It was good to see my right hand people. The ones I counted on to keep everything going smoothly at the theater. It didn't seem right that we didn't work together anymore. We traded some stories of what was going on in our lives. Showed some pictures and waited....for the cinnamon rolls. I ordered the eggs, sausage patties and hash browns and the cinnamon rolls. Laura got oatmeal and a side of eggs. We decided to share my cinnamon rolls. Kelly got the breakfast burrito and cinnamon rolls. As we sipped our coffee and continued to tell our stories and show our pictures, the beautiful rolls were suddenly sitting in front of us! Wheee. Just what the Doctor ordered for our frozen toes and fingers and noses and to cheer us up from our employment woes.

Wait! Mine weren't piping hot! The frosting wasn't exactly melting off the plate! What the crap? In fact, when I put my fork in and pulled the roll away, it was kind of hard to pull away. Aren't they suppose to be so fresh that it just falls into my fork? As I put the cinnamon roll into my eager mouth, it became apparent to me that it was kinda cold! Huh. The cinnamon rolls we had talked about and dreamed about and braved the weather to have WERE COLD? How could it be? We braved forward and continued to eat our cold cinnamon rolls. We didn't speak of it, no one mentioned it. We just picked and poked at the rolls because that's why we came here. 

I'm going to Florida on Monday. Visiting the mouse and hoping to do some much needed relaxing. I'm now afraid to hope too much for this vacation because if I do I'm sure to be sorely disappointed - much like the cinnamon rolls. So instead, I will approach my time away as just another trip - no expectations - no hopes for warm weather and quiet time, because then I'll be pleasantly surprised when I do get those things - or not. I just don't want a repeat of the cinnamon roll expectation. But then again, it's Disney - and they would never DARE to disappoint...would they?

Ridiculous!

It seems as if all of the titles of my postings are negative - well being unemployed ain't no picnic my friends. But, here's the real thing here. I'm unemployed and yet there are those who are employed that aren't properly trained for their jobs. This makes my head go - Whaaaaaaaaaaat?

Let's look for example at the young boys and girls that are employed at McDonald's. 

McDonald's has a new experience (an AG term, sorry) added to their line-up of goods called McCafe. The fast food, drive-up window version of Starbucks, of which I am already having an affair with. I loves me Starbucks - whether it's a Mocha or a Soy Chai Tea Latte....mmmmm, I loves 'em.  Now, McDonald's makes it a little bit easier to obtain some yummy goodness in the form of their Mocha.

However, it is confusing to me in this day and age how the teens they train (or not train as I'm finding out) have no idea what Sweet-N-Low is. WHAT? The pink packet has been around FOREVER! I can remember it being a part of my days in the small town of Eldorado,Illinois with my Grandparents. My Pappaw would put tons of it in his ice tea every single day. So I know its been around and available for mankind at least since the 60's. Since then, there have been many other artificial sweeteners that have have been introduced to society. There's Equal, which according to my friend Miles, kills your brain cells. He said, "after you use some in your coffee, don't you feel a little bit of a headache? Those are your brain cells dying." So, I've always avoided using Equal - plus there are other things they've discovered about it that are apparently worse than your brain cells dying - which I can't remember now because of the loss of my brain cells. Then they came out with Splenda, the yellow packet. Splenda is much better for you apparently but my daughter Megan says that it gives her the poops. I'll use Splenda, but I have to be very careful where and when I use it so that I'm near a bathroom - just it case. So now we are back to Sweet-N-Low, which causes cancer in laboratory animals. I have been a long time user as my grandfather - who died of some form of cancer, but none of us remember. I hope it wasn't because he used too much Sweet-N-Low! 

Anyway - I digress. So, I pull up to McDonald's one afternoon to order me a medium Mocha and I asked the faceless girl at the intercom if she could put in a packet of Sweet-N-Low.

"I'm sorry, what?" - she responds

"Sweet-N-Low - you know the pink packet?"

I hear her struggling for words through the intercom.

"Um, we don't have anything pink."

"you know, the sweetener, in the pink packet..."

"I don't know...." (her voice trails off into the abyss of McDonald's busyness)

"NEVER MIND - I'LL TELL YOU AT THE WINDOW"

I pull up to the payment window and this young lady with overly bleached hair and what looks like pulled up corn rows looks at me as if I had asked her for a bag of cocaine with that - "we don't serve that here" kind of look.

"Sweet-N-Low" the sweetener that you add to your coffee?" 

She shrugs at me.

"I'll get it at the next window then."

OH MY LORD! Johnny sits there sniggering as I pull forward. I say sniggering because what he wasn't doing was laughing out loud or even snickering - there was a sniggering quality of which I'd never experienced before. I liked it.

"So, can I get some Sweet-N-Low and a stirrer thing?" I said as they handed me the mocha.

The person at the food retrieval window gets me "something" - right now I don't remember if it was a pink packet - a blue packet or a yellow packet...but I had to ask for the stirrer again and off the sniggering Johnny and I went - questioning kids these days and how could they not know about the "pink packet" and why aren't they being trained properly to serve customers at McCafe?

Fast forward to a month later. We are heading to Indiana again for a rehearsal for previews of the upcoming season. I mention that I'd like to stop and get a Mocha from McCafe to which my passenger says - "well this should be fun." My thought is that I won't ask the faceless girl taking my order this time because of the communication breakdown that occurred last time. I blame it on the fact that she can't see my face and therefore has no vision for my needs. I'll wait until they hand me my yummy mocha and then I'll ask. I'm a planner - you see. I plan these things out in my head prior to them happening. I also plan my route of walking when I go down the street in my head. I look ahead at the sidewalks and decide where I'm going to cross the street. Weird huh? I know.

I order my Mocha from the faceless girl, who sounds like she is a very nice young woman and pull forward to pay her. When I think back now, she gave me a look as I gave her my money that now makes me think that she recognized me from the "incident" a month earlier. She was coy and could barely speak. I'm sure she knew who I was.

I pull forward to the window and plan HOW I'm going to ask for the sweetener AND the stirrer. It will work perfectly! I'll get what I want and everyone will be so happy to have had the pleasure to have waited on me! This was going to be so satisfying (insert sigh here)

He hands me my long awaited mocha.

"thank you - can I get a Sweet-N-Low?"

"I'm sorry - what"

"A Sweet-N-Low - you know the pink packet?"

My car partner begins to snigger - see there it is again!

My voice begins to have this incredibly irritated sound to it as I blurt out...

"SWEETENER - PINK PACKET - BLUE PACKET - SWEETENER!"

The kid looks at me with the "I don't speak your language" kind of look.

"hold on..." he says.

I watch as he walks over to a fellow Luddite and talks to her with his back to me - she looks over his shoulder to me with this grin on her face like I'm the crazy McDonald's lady who is requesting something of which they know it not! I look right at her and mouth - "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?"

I discover that I'm thisclose to pounding on the drive-up window but then that would be crazy of me wouldn't it? I could be taken away in handcuffs or something and the thought of my loved ones having to bail me out in what will be become known as "The Pink Packet Incident", just isn't worth it.

He walks away from the girl and goes to the "back" - probably to check the picture they have posted to see if it is really me - the one they've heard of but never have seen. He walks back up to me with yellow packets - Splenda, and says,

"are five of them enough?"

"yes, thank GOD!", I state, "thank you."

He starts to close the window because I'm sure he wanted to run as far as he could...

"hold on" I say with pointed emphasis - "can I have a stirrer to stir it with?"

He hands me the stirrer and apologies with a "sorry about that"

Yeah...right, I think in my head. The sniggering is continues as I drive away with yellow packets and stirrer and mocha in hand, wondering where the world has gone wrong and why it is so hard to get what you need when you need it. Even at McDonald's...I'm not loving it.