Menopausal Mother

Welcome to another edition of Fly On The Wall hosted by Karen of Baking In A Tornado. Today six bloggers are bravely inviting you into their homes for a sneak peek at what you might find if you were a nosy fly buzzing around their house.

Things have finally quieted down since my son's wedding last month (You can read all about it here) but what a crazy month and a half it has been! My husband and I celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary together, and then one of my closest friends flew in from Louisiana to visit for a few days. To give you an idea of how things went when we spent some much-needed girl time together, we ended up closing down a bar. I'd forgotten what it was like to be 25 (but my body felt like it was 75 in the morning). The hangover struggle is REAL.

The wedding came and went (far too fast!!) on April 20th, and then two days later SURPRISE!! I ended up having emergency eye surgery for a torn retina. Actually, it was torn in three places and before you ask, no, I didn't have any kind of head trauma. My condition started as Posterior Vitreous Detachment, which is common when you get OLDER. Yeah, something else we get to look forward to as we age (as if wrinkles, menopause and weight gain wasn't enough). The surgery to cauterize the retinal tears felt like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vadar battling it out with their laser wands in my eyeball. But things are much better now, and I CAN SEE!!

Despite the crazy few weeks we had here, my husband was never short on humor....


"Why do I keep getting cobwebs all over me?"
"Because you're old."

"I don't feel good."
"Eat a cheese stick."
"That's your solution to everything! Got a stomach ache? Eat a cheese stick. Depressed? Eat a cheese stick. Sleepy? Eat a cheese stick. Enough with the cheese sticks! It's pissing me off."
"Well then....eat a cheese stick."

"Why is our pug humping a pillow?"
"She has an innate need to dominate all the pillows in the house."

"You just had the laser surgery. Be careful---don't cough too hard---your eye might pop out."
"THAT IS NOT WHAT THE DOCTOR SAID."

"If I keep dancing like this, I'm not gonna just throw my back out; I'm gonna lose a few vertebrae and be three inches shorter by the end of the evening."

"You must like Spandex---you wear it all the time."
"Oh sure, I love having my internal organs pushed up into my throat."

"Game of Thrones is over and my life will never be the same."
"That's because you never had much of a life to begin with...."
"Be careful what you say; I'll pull a Daenerys Targaryen on you if you don't stop."
"Not unless you hatch a few baby dragons first."

"Why does our toilet make that weird, high-pitched sound whenever we flush it?"
"It's screaming in horror."

"I noticed that you never use your expensive gravity blanket in bed anymore."
"It weighs too much. If a burglar broke in, I wouldn't be able to get up to stop him. But the real reason is that I'm afraid of being trapped underneath it when I need to pee at 3:00 a.m."


     I'm glad my eyeball is better now. I'd hate to have missed out on all the fun around here.



***WANT MORE MENO MAMA? Last week I was featured on Indelible Ink with a humor essay on clothes shopping. You can read it here: https://medium.com/indelible-ink/one-size-fits-none-c6157e38fcf2.  PSSSSSS! If you like what you read, click on the clapping hands in the left margin of the article---I actually get paid for readership! Thanks!


Click on these links for a peek into some other homes:

     Welcome to another edition of Fly On The Wall group blog postings hosted by Karen of Baking In A Tornado. Today, seven bloggers are inviting you to catch a glimpse of what you'd see if you were a fly on the wall in their homes.

     It has been a fun (but hot) month for us here in Florida. We hosted a bridal shower for my son's fiancée (plenty of shenanigans going on there!) and then spent the other weekends at the local Renaissance Festival where we donned costumes and ate giant turkey legs while watching a few comedy shows. I had a wonderful surprise when one of my blogger pals came into town and spent an evening with me in the tiki hut. Parri is a hilarious comedian and we laughed well into the night.


     I am fortunate enough to be married to a man who has made it his life's goal to make me laugh every single day, and so far, he has. Our conversations are never dull, and that pesky fly buzzing around my house can verify it by what he overheard this month:



"This candle is supposed to smell really good. The scent is called, 'Best Friends'."
"I don't know who you're hanging around with, but your best friends smell like lavender and kitty litter."

"I can't wait until the new season of Game Of Thrones begins!"
"Yeah, I'm getting a little tired of watching those tear-jerking episodes of This Is us. I'd much rather move onto decapitations, fire-breathing dragons, and sword fighting with White Walkers."


"How's the memoir writing coming along?"
"Not good---I have writer's block. The creative flow is not something I can control."
"Neither are my bowels after eating too much of your cabbage soup."


"I've been having weird dreams lately about alligators and cockroaches giving birth to millions of little babies. But I think I've dreamt this stuff before."
"Yeah, when you were pregnant."
"I'm way too old to get pregnant, but I'm not too old to carry a food baby."
"I'd have nightmares too if I ate a diet of chocolate raisins and avocado toast every day."

"We need to do the stool sample kits for our doctor so he can check us for cancer."
"Cancer doesn't run in my family."
"How do you know? You're adopted."
"I have my DNA results from Ancestory.com"
"We all know that your DNA test confirmed that you're related to a ferret, and ferrets can get cancer."
"They also smell bad. At least I didn't inherit that problem."
"Well, that's certainly debatable...."

 
    There's nothing worse than a writer with a blank brain, or a blank computer screen, for that matter. Right now, I'm suffering from both. Short of caving in to the advertisements for online courses that promise to restore my forgotten muse (or spending $100 an hour with Cleo the psychic to find out what evil spirit has inhabited my laptop and stolen my creativity), I've been living a double life as a sloth. Yes, that's right. I'm slothing all over the place---on the couch, in my car, on the living room floor.....wherever I can park my butt and do absolutely nothing. I know I need to snap out of this funk, but my inner kindergartner is screaming for a nap and a bag of Oreos.

     I want to get back into the writing game--I really do--but words fail me as I sit here, fingers poised over the keyboard. The good news is that I'm learning to adjust to the sloth life. My computer screen may be blank, but I've found creative ways to stay busy (and still remain sloth-like) while waiting for inspiration to strike. And my day usually starts like this:


*Drink a cup of coffee.

*Drink another cup of coffee.

*Organize papers on desk and make a to-do list that will most likely not get done.

*Join Farmville and learn how to manage imaginary livestock.

*Pluck stray nose hairs.

*Check refrigerator for snack even though there's only healthy crap in there (rubbery carrot sticks and bruised apples are NOT food for the muse).

*Experiment with different ring tones on my cell.

*Search desk drawer for hidden Easter candy that may or may not have been eaten five months ago.

*Trim toenails and make smiley faces out of the clippings.

*Check refrigerator again in the hopes that fresh pastries from the bakery have magically appeared.

*Frown at bag of rubbery carrots. Feed a few to the dog.


*Play tug of war with the dog.

*Check online farm to cultivate imaginary corn crops.

*Pick lint out of belly button. Contemplate knitting it into sweater for pet hamster.

*Scroll through old photos on cell phone and think about the good ol' days when there was plenty of inspiration for writing.

*Eat remaining rubbery carrots.

*Attempt a two-minute plank on living room carpet. Wake up one hour later.

*Take selfie next to blank computer screen.

*Pick two-week-old blue polish off fingernails.

* Investigate strange sounds in the kitchen. Clean up dog's carrot barf.

*Make three-story house and detached garage out of Post-it Notes.

*Close laptop for the day and dig through pantry for something to eat other than a potato and a can of tuna.

*Yell at television when Game Of Thrones ends.

*Set alarm and pull bed covers up over head.

*Tell self not to give up on writing career. Remember that tomorrow is new day for a fresh start.

     And for fresh pastries in the fridge.