HalfAsstic.com

I’m sorry.

Why do I always feel the need to apologize when I do bullet posts.

Well, I guess you’ll find out.

• The next time I see a man describe himself as “babysitting” when he is taking care of his own child or children, I think I’m gonna lose it.
• I am so depressed about John’s health, or lack thereof, that I find it hard to think of anything else.  We know that he will have been out of work for three months at the first of the new year.  That’s the extent that the company will let you have a paid leave of absence. (Which is what this has been.)  After that?  Either just “absent” or “laid off”, I’m guessing.  And he is so very far from able to go back to work yet…
• Mither and Pop have been at my brother and sister-in-law’s  new house in New Mexico helping them get all painted, decorated and moved in.  This is a very welcome change from Italy, well, for the rest of the family anyway.  Moving my nephew much closer.  They are very conscientious like that.
• Henrietta has decided that I am the devil and has been telling everyone that will listen that I am mean to her and rude and disrespectful and deprive her of liquor.  Well, maybe not the last one… she doesn’t drink.  But, don’t you think she should?  That has the potential to solve many of my bigger problems…
• I am going to write my own dickionary and YOU are invited to submit suggestions.  I am the perfect candidate for a dickionary author.  Just ask Mither.  To this day I call her and say, “How do you spell______?”, if I’m not on the computer where it’s easy to find out. OK, Mom!  Sheesh!  Sometimes even if I am on the computer…
• I want a Nook for Christmas.  Really, really bad.  At $9.99 per download for most new releases I figure it will pay for itself in days.   Plus I am blind as a bat and the fact that I can make any book be in extra large print will be wonnerful.
• “Wonnerful” is going to be in my new dickionary.
• I saw an interview with Martha Stewart the other night on Primetime and she just left me cold.  Again.  When talking about her incarceration she referred to herself as “hurt and sad-but never broken”.  She was certainly not contrite.  She never once said anything about being sorry for what she did, or acted remotely shamed for it.  She did throw a lot of blame around, however.  She said that the feds should have been spending the time they worked on her case working on Bernie Madoff.  Perhaps.  But it doesn’t make what she did any less wrong.  She’s a sanctimonious bitch.

Can you tell I don’t like her?

• As a teenager I was continually getting the words “deprived” and depraved” mixed up.  I think you can see how well swell good an author I would make for a dickionary.

• My house is the dirtiest it has been in years. (I am only doing this as a protest against Martha.  Yeah. That’s my story.)
• Keelan is sitting on the couch, drinking Sprite, holding a stainless steel bowl in which to throw up.  Great.  Flu?  Who knows?
• Grand total of hospital bill for John’s stay there? $85,403.00.  Thank you, God, for insurance.  However, with it we still owe $2470.00.  Shit.  And that’s just the hospital bill.  Stand by for lab bills and assorted doctor bills.
• This post needs a picture.  What shall it be…..?

I don’t know what this is called. It is at my aunti-poo’s house and I took a shot of it the last time I was there.  Until someone tells me differently we’ll just call it “Beautiful flower”, m’kay?

• ATTENTION: I believe that I may have sunk to a new cooking low.  I have now browned ground beef with onion and put it in the bottom of a cake pan and dumped a mixture of Bisquick, milk, cream of chicken soup, and frozen vegetables on top of it.  It is cooking… we will see.  I will feed it to Henrietta first. *evil laughter*
• Everytime.  It should be one word.  I will fix that in my dickionary.  I’m not kidding you!  You will also be able to wear white after labor day, and name your child “Christian” even if you’re not. (Though people will still think it’s stupid.)

• The… “Beef Bake”  is actually a huge success.  All the crossing of fingers and fervent praying has yielded a winner.  Whew! Until tomorrow, when the “what’s for dinner” crisis starts again.  Cause planning it NOW, is just not the HalfAsstic way.  I know you understand where I’m coming from. You did read this post, right?
• Free Toes everybody!

Today John had an appointment with his general practitioner.  He went totally prepared with a list of things to talk to him about.

• Cough- STILL.  All the freakin’ time.

• Sinus drainage that just. won’t. stop.

• Bottoms of feet burning-(Apparently this is a diabetes thing that we are just becoming acquainted with.)

• Swings in blood sugar levels

• Still off of Lisinopril and blood pressure remains low. (Yea!)

• Xanax is doing absolutely nothing and want off of it.

• Depression.

So he whipps out the list and covers everything in short order.  We really like his doctor and he is always comforting to visit.  We walk away feeling like there is someone on this earth that is caught up to speed with all the shit going down besides us.  There were answers for some of the problems and suggestions and samples to get started on for others.

So John came home and was telling me all about the appointment and what all the doctor said and we were looking at his list and glad that it was all crossed off.  We had answers for everything we needed so far.

Then my man that I have seen cry less than a handful of times in the past 20+ years, teared up a little and I was truly a bit terrified.  He told me the rest of the story like this:

He made his way to the front window to settle up before his visit and was presented with a bill for this particular doctor from all the visits while he was in hospital for those two weeks.  It was what was left after the insurance has paid it’s portion.

It was a lot.

It was also unexpected right at that moment.

They asked if John could make a payment plan.

He said yes, he’d be happy to do that.

How much?

……..$20.00 a month?

Is that the most you can do right now?

He said, yes, because right now he’s employed and he doesn’t know if he’s going to be released to go back to work before the “paid leave of absence” is up. – He may not be employed after that.

There was a older lady standing behind John waiting to pay and overhearing this whole conversation and she quietly slid an arm past him and laid a twenty dollar bill on the counter, saying, “This is for his December payment.”.

I think John was mortified at first.  He insisted he was fine to pay it and tried to give it back to her.  She took it and handed it directly back to the receptionist and told her to apply it to his bill.  He was so very touched.  I am wondering how long he stood there and thanked her. She said to consider it a Christmas present.

I wish so much he had gotten your name.  I would have done everything I could to look you up and you would have a thank you card out to  you first thing tomorrow.

Whoever you are, where ever you are, thank you, merry Christmas and God bless you.

So Lisa and I were shopping for new furniture for her because she knows there is nothing I like to do more than spend her money.  Her husband is a bit of a… dick when it comes to doing things like this with her and I am happy to step up.  Fun, fun, fun.  She doesn’t know it but I have been sneaking into her house and slowly destroying the couch and chairs that we went out and purchased YEEEEEEEARS ago so that we could do this again.

Boredom is a dangerous thing for me.

There have been many more purchases in those years.  We have a history of making some major purchases together and she and her husband and John and I also have a history of getting a bit sloppy from margaritas and ending up going shopping for computers and another time for new cars.  The scary thing is, purchases were made both times.

So we hit the bars furniture stores and it all started innocently enough.  First stop, Bel Furniture and we took a gander at all the wild, ostentatious, only to be seen in the playboy mansion, flashy-trashy furniture to be had.  We had quite a time.  There was much giggling and squealing to be had.  Lisa posed for a few pics with her new… friend.

There was a lot of glancing around for anyone watching us…  We thought we were sneaky… We noticed the security cameras as we were leaving…

Somebody got to watch that, (if they were smart), and we probably made their day.

You can’t really tell in the picture, but I was tossing around my patented “come hither” look, terrified an innocent bystander would see it and jump me.

Er, innocent bystander…. yeah, now I feel the need to apologize to you.

After making complaints about the mattress, we moved on.

Needless to say, we purchased nothing here.  But we had a high time “shopping”!  On to Dillard’s, The Room Store, and Lazyboy Furniture.

Lisa ended up getting a black leather couch that has recliners built in and she says is perfect.  Along with a new chair for the husband.  I wouldn’t know if it’s perfect or not because for the first time EVER she chose to purchase something hideous and I, like a good friend(?), stood there and let her, (EVEN THOUGH I TOLD HER IT WAS BUTT UGLY), and then when she went back with her man, she changed her mind and told me she didn’t get the “80’s looking couch” even though it was sooooo comfortable.

Thank God.

So she went ahead and picked out something different while she was there with her husband, of all people, and I have no idea if this is going to turn out to be an acceptable piece of furniture or not.  And I bet she’s not even sleeping nights knowing she made a major furniture purchase without me.

Last night Keelan decided she was going to sleep downstairs on the rug in the living room.

No one knows why and this is good with us.

So she is lying there reading on the rug that was vacuumed two days ago and she announces that she is going to vacuum it if she is going to sleep down here.

I certainly am not going to complain.

So she goes to the broom closet that doubles as a coat closet in the foyer, (Have I ever mentioned that my house was designed by a man?), and stands there for a minute looking in.  She then reaches in and grabs something and pulls it out.

HalfAsstic Daughter: “Is this the vacuum?”

Me… dying laughing and a tad distressed at the question, “YES!” I mean how bad is THAT?  Of course it’s not the upstairs vacuum and it is also in there with a steam mop and carpet sweeper but, DAY-UM!  “IS THIS THE VACUUM?” is NOT something you want to hear your 18 year old daughter ask you.

So shoving the feelings of inadequate parenting aside, I ribbed her unmercifully for a moment or two and she giggled good naturedly.

She also picked up her cell phone immediately and began texting what had happened to J, her new boyfriend.  I told her not to let him know she can’t identify a vacuum cleaner and she promptly replied, “As long as HE knows what a vacuum looks like, we’re golden.”

I take it he will be doing the vacuuming in her daydreams of the future.

Hello, people!  It is a GORGEOUS day here in HalfAsstic land!  The sun is shining bright and the breeze is light with a perfect robin’s egg blue sky.  The flags have been put out on our street for Veteran’s Day, tomorrow and it is also Kessa’s birthday!  The girl is now 20 years old… or as The Boyfriend says, “in her terrible two’s”. Heh!

She made quite a haul with all the loot she got.  She liked everything I got for her except one sleep-shirt that has a V-neck instead of a higher collar.  It is NOT cut low!  I mean she’s my daughter for heaven’s sake! Why on earth would I be buying her low cut, smutty things?

Whatever!  This does not stop her from announcing to everybody that I got her skanky lingerie.  Heh.  Lil brat.  She gots the huge bewbs, (they both do), and is very careful to wear higher necked things.  Still… she needs to try it on.  I don’t think it’s low cut at all.

Yesterday I wandered into HACK and John had gotten up early and made his little self busy.  Oh, yeah… he had quite a time.  Let’s take a look at some of the necessities of corporate digs at The World According to Garp John.

First of all I was greeted with signage.  One on the doorway in the foyer and another one, behind it back there, on the doorway from the kitchen.  BWAHAHAHAHA!  That boy does love to play with Print Artist!

Next, I wandered over to the table and found my name plate.  And I know what you’re thinking, (Yes, again!…Sheesh!). “Krissa, why do you have two printers that obviously aren’t even hooked up on the desk at HACK? This seems rather unprofessional, and we all know you to be the epitome of professionalism.  Someone who would never, for instance, clutter up their work area with useless electronics or any kind of yard care equipment, OR talk about huge bewbs on your blog.”

Yeah. Well you were ALMOST right.

We’ve got to get those printers on Craigslist, pronto.  They both work fine, but need ink, so who would buy them if we can’t prove they work?  Ink is freakin’ expensive, hense the reason for the nifty newish Canon printer.  We got it on sale and had a 20% off coupon to boot and the other two both needed a million (or two) dollar’s worth of ink to make them work.  The Cannon ink is much less expensive AND we can replace individual colors as they run out instead of buying a whole new color cartridge.

The different colors are about $13.00 each.  There are four different colors, including a black for photos and then a large black one that is for text.  It was $15.00.

AND, it’s cordless.  WINNER!

Moving right along.

Next we see my brand new laptop!  “What’s that?”, you say… “A new Apple laptop? Why, Krissa you must be doing extremely well at HACK to have proven worthiness enough to get yourself a pretty pink laptop that looks so much like the old Dell, yet has the Apple on it to PROVE BEYOND ANY DOUBT that it’s an Apple!…Waaaaaait a minute! Krissa!  Did you…..?”

” AH HA!  A SHAM in soooo many more ways than one!”

Yup.  It’s just a sticker I got from Kessa that was supposed to go on a teeny tiny ipod shuffle that she and The Boyfriend got for his niece.

But what else would you expect from the Head SHAM working at HACK?  

Clearly, I cannot be trusted.

*Amended to add that John pointed out that the printer is not “cordless” it’s wireless!  Whatever.

All right.  Here I am, good as my word.  I’ve been thinking a lot about how to explain how things were after the head injury I had at 15.  I really can’t come close.

Suffice it to say I was a fun loving, popular teenager that had tons of friends and a happin’ social agenda.  I was voted Miss Favorite by my 8th grade class and was a maid on homecoming court my freshman year a couple of months before this whole thing happened.  I was extremely active with all my friends and had plenty of them.  We had swimming parties at my house all the time and spent countless hours riding horseback all over the countryside. Attended all the high school basketball games and played tennis.

Truly, my childhood was something that I was enjoying with all my heart.  I was extraordinarily blessed and I knew it.

When my hospitalization was over and I returned home not only in a  wheelchair, but with many of the serious mental and emotional problems that go hand in hand with head injuries, my friends rallied around me.  The people in that teeny, tiny, podunk, little, hick town in rural Louisiana were as sweet and kind as they could be.

Slowly, as the weeks progressed, I made it out of the wheelchair and was able to wield a pen and pencil again.  I was DYING to go back to school.  So I finally got the OK.

I showed up in my wig, (I had had my head shaved for the surgery.), and tried to fit in.

I just didn’t.  I tried so very hard to remember how to be my old self. But I wasn’t.  I was, according to my mother, abrasive and… “too outgoing” would be a nice way to put it.  “Loud and off-putting” would be more accurate.

I don’t remember very much of it all.  I remember being repeatedly snubbed by every single friend I had.

I remember getting ready to go out on the weekend and waiting for my girlfriends to come by and pick me up and them never showing.

I remember sitting alone in the cafeteria trying SO hard not to cry as some of the boys in my class sat nearby and said ugly things about me just loud enough for me to hear.

I remember one girl in particular in my class that I had never really known very well or had that much to do with in past years, deciding that she hated me with a vengeance and her walking in the class before it started and shoving my desk across the floor, as I sat behind it.  Or had been sitting behind it.

And then the friend that I had been closest to over the past years snubbing me and letting me know that she was now best friends with that girl.

I remember that there is nothing in the world as mean as one child to another child.  But I cannot for the life of me imagine being that way to anyone or how they could have acted that way to me.  I wanted to die, quite literally, on a daily basis.

I had absolutely no one.

Of course I had my parents, I know that and actually, I knew that then.  But, remember what it was like to be 15?  How dependent you were on friends?  How important they were to you?

Now, imagine yourself 15, unimaginably skinny, (as though you had spent a long time in the hospital), bald, unable to walk gracefully, stay awake for more than a few hours at a time initially, have a memory no longer than your arm, and the charm of a three year old.

OK, maybe not a three year old, but I know my personality hadn’t… “grown back” yet.  As a matter of fact… maybe it’s still not… NO! THERE IT IS! Heh.

My memory, as is usual with head injuries, was HORRIBLE.  I mean as the years went on it got better and better, until it plateaued out about 6 or 7 years later.  It still ain’t all that great, but hey, I only went home from the grocery without the kids 8 or 9 times…

I’M JOKING!  Jeeze!

Here’s the dealy-o.  Apparently there was this girl that regarded me as a friend.  I mean right up there at the end.  And by “end”, I mean before I left school for the last time and never saw any of them again.  I got a facebook lookup from her the other day and we talked a good deal via email.  Or wall writing or whatever you do on that thing.  One of the first things she told me was that she was so proud of me the day I got up and walked out of class and went home.  It’s so weird, cause I remember leaving school and walking home and knowing there was no way I could go back.

She told me that she really “told off” the boys in the class that were being so mean, after I left.  I don’t really doubt it, but it’s just that, really, I don’t remember her that much at all.  She was a year older than me and I was new to high school and don’t remember so very much of it.  I feel horrible that I don’t really remember her and of course I didn’t tell her.  Her name was certainly familiar, but I just don’t really remember her, as an individual.

Anyway, this was all very strange to me, the whole “blast from the past” bit.  I mean it’s been 31 years.  As soon as she and I “friended” each other I looked around for some other people that I had spent years growing up with.  Other people from my class.  I located a couple and they were quick to “friend” me.  One of the boys that I located I knew had married the girl that I had thought was such a good friend until she wasn’t.  She didn’t have a facebook account apparently.  He wrote back to me and asked about my family and me, told me that his wife would love to talk to me and she didn’t have a facebook page and just used his.   He then gave me her home and cell phone numbers.

I sometimes think I’d like to talk to her and then again I am terrified to.  I just know all those feelings are going to resurface and I’ll start crying and getting all emotional.  I absolutely DO NOT want to do that. It’s now been over a week since I talked to him via facebook and I never heard anything else and really I feel kind of relieved.  heh

What would you do if you were me?

A couple of weeks ago I got a look up on facebook.  Someone from my looooong ago past popped up in my email and said, “Hi, Krissa!”  She, apparently, was a dear friend long ago when I was a teeny teenager.  I don’t remember.

See, there’s quite a good chunk of my childhood that I don’t remember, and I have a good reason for it.  I was in a really bad auto accident a couple of weeks before I turned 15 and I suffered a head injury that was quite a doozie.   (Spell check does not recognize “doozie”, nor does it offer an alternative.)

Long story, short….ish. I had an acute subdural hematoma.  The ambulances came and got us all, (My cousin’s friend that was driving and my current boyfriend that I wasn’t that crazy over and had stashed in the backseat by himself.), and hauled us to the hospital.  I got carted to another, larger hospital after that when my ER doc assessed that I had a head injury.  My heart stopped a couple of times on the way there and all kinds of high drama stuff ensued.

Upon arriving in Lafayette, La. I was taken to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital and Dr. Stephen Goldware was my neurosurgeon.   He jumped right in there and cranked out a blood clot.  Replaced the bit’s of skull he had cut away and stitched me up.

Before surgery he told my Mom that I had about a 5% chance to make it.  Now keep in mind that this was 1978 people.  I’m pretty sure that long ago they had just determined that the brain was located in the head.  Well, in women, anyway.

No, seriously, there was a very small life expectancy for me.  So, I slipped into a coma for a couple of days after the surgery and then came awake and was paralyzed on my right side, and had lost half of my vision.  The paralysis was temporary and I recovered function slowly but surely.  The hardest thing was fine motor skills.  Eating, brushing my teeth, holding a pen and writing, etc.  This all slowly came back and a couple of years later I was only limping a tiny bit when I got really tired.

The vision loss, however, was permanent and to this day I can see exactly half of everything I look at.  It’s not exactly like being blind in one eye, because you would still have all the peripheral vision in the remaining eye.  While my eyes see fine, my brain only gets the “signal” from the right side of both of my eyes.  So, working together, my eyes only see the right half of everything I look at.  Everything.  Right down to the head of a pin.  It is very exacting.  If I look at your face, well, your nose, I only see the half of your face to my right. Your left.

This is a long, long, story and I have gone on for what seems to me EVER.  Talking about this kind of effects my mood and I don’t wanna do it anymore right now.  However, I do want to get it out cause I want to ask your opinion about something.  I will continue this, (I want to say tomorrow, but it may be later in the week… I dunno.), later.