Menopausal Mother

     Welcome to a special edition of Fly On The Wall group postings, hosted by Karen of Baking In A Tornado. Nine bloggers are inviting you into their homes today to be a fly on the wall. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I first began writing the FOW's two years ago because I wanted a way to remember all of the crazy stuff that came out of the mouths of my family members. I participate in FOW posts 12 times a year, and enjoy sharing the "best of the best" from each year with you. Today I'm recalling some of my favorite remarks that were shared on the blog in 2014.



"Whenever I take my laptop outside, I can't Wi-Fi.  All I get is the spinning wheel of death on my screen."

"You need to do something about that loose toenail. It looks like a tortilla chip on your foot."

"Why on earth did you buy a red star for the top of the tree? We now have a brothel Christmas tree."

"I hate dieting. My stomach is so hungry, it's eating itself."

"You told me this spray tan in a can stuff works. So how come I look like a patchwork quilt?"
"Didn't you read the directions? You're supposed to spray it from 6 feet away."
"How is that humanly possible? My arms aren't 6 feet long!"
"This house runs on love, laughter and chilled bottles of wine."

" I can't enjoy the Christmas feast this year without feeling guilty. You've demonized all the calories."

"Everyone knows you're the twisted branch in the family tree."

"Do you think the IRS will let us use your food baby as a tax deduction?"

"We need to ask my mom for some parenting advice on our son. He's making me crazy."
"Isn't she the one who tied your brother to a clothesline in the backyard while she did the laundry?"
"Like I said, she has the best advice when it comes to raising boys."

"You're really good at crafting words into stupid."

"Stop rubbing my leg with your wolverine toes."

"Note to self: Just because the zumba teacher is twerking in class does not mean that I have to. My back will never be the same."
"I'm so full, I have belly girth. Do they sell Spanx for men?"

"Oh look! The dog is dragging her butt across the carpet. If she picks up enough dust particles, I won't have to vacuum. She's a pug butt Swifter."

"Hangover is such a harsh word. Let's just say I have the wine flu."

"His snoring is driving me crazy. He sounds like a truffle-sniffing pig when he sleeps."

"You would have made a good pirate."
"Why? Because of my thirst for rum?"
"No---because of the grunting noises you make when you eat meat….and the fact that you haven't showered in three days."

"I think it's time to go shopping. My underwear drawer looks like it has been ravaged by moths."

"My liver better hurry up and regenerate because I've been drinking a lot lately."
"Sprinkle Miracle Grow on it. Better yet, start a liver harvesting farm: cornfed and hormone free."
"If I didn't know any better, I'd swear your mother dropped you on your head when you were born."

"He has an intestine longer than I-95….which explains why his poop is the size of a nuclear sub."

"It's obvious you're a holiday hoarder. You need a decoration intervention."
"You have the memory cells of a gnat."

"Every dinner at the Doyle house is like a Man vs Food episode."

"Mom, can I borrow twenty bucks?"
"I don't have it. I just donated all my money to the alpaca rescue fund."

"I had no idea our granddaughter could scream so loud. She sounds like she needs a priest to come in and perform an exorcism."

"If you eat too much couscous, the grains become time bombs. Once they hit the bottom of your gut, they detonate."

"Why is there a two hour special on TV about A.D.D.? People with the disorder can't sit that long to watch it. They'll lose focus after the first five minutes."

"One of the things on my bucket list is to do the running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain."
"At your age, it will be more like running with the mules."






 

• He doesn't have a problem with hitting the drugstore in his pajamas at 2:00a.m. for a tube of Monostat and a bottle of Pepto Bismol. He'll grab a six pack of beer while he's there and tell the checkout lady that he's hosting a helluva party.
  
  
• He sacrifices watching the big game on TV to attend the neighbor's bris. For their dog.
  
  
• He loves his in-laws despite their quirky habits of being cat whisperers and food addicts.
  
  
• When our children were young and we couldn't afford entertainment for their birthday parties, he would don various costumes and morph into “Sven The Happy Swede” or “Daffy The Dysfunctional Clown.”
  
  
• He'll eat my Velveeta surprise casserole without complaint even though it tastes like wallpaper paste and looks like a science experiment gone wrong.
  
  
• Whenever we share a double decker fudge sundae, he sacrifices a few calories by saving the last bite for me.
  
  
• He has plunged our temperamental, overflowing toilet more times than I can count and chased the kids through the house with the dirty, dripping plunger.
  
  
• He doesn't mind being called on in the middle of the night to rescue his teenage daughter when the police detain her for sitting in her friend's car in a baby booster seat without a seatbelt. Yes, she really pulled this stunt.
• He's patient with me when he's feeling amorous and I'm hotflashing like a mofo. Sex is not an option when my lady parts feel like an Easy Bake Oven.
  
  
• He's always ready to protect me from a cockroach invasion. His holster is loaded at all times with a can of Raid on one side and a shoe on the other.

 I was just a little girl in the sixties, so my memories from the "groovy" era are sketchy at best. I have a vague recollection of black lights, station wagons, white GoGo boots and psychedelic Jimi Hendrix posters on the wall. There were only a handful of channels on the TV, and afternoons were spent playing kick the can or riding our Schwinn Sting-Rays until our mothers called us in for dinner once the street lights came on.

I do remember my older sister wearing bell bottom jeans, love beads and a peace sign necklace. Her bedroom was adorned in rock band and anti-war posters, the lingering scent of sandalwood incense permeating the air. Those were the flower power years, and although my memories are cloudy, it's pretty cool to say that I was alive when Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

By the time the seventies hit, I was happy to shed my adolescence to step into my teen years. It was the "far out" era of CB radios, waterbeds, muscle cars, 8 track tapes, lumpy bean bag chairs and STAR WARS. My biggest problems in life were wondering if the cute boy in B lunch would wave to me or how I was going to memorize all those formulas for my geometry test.

Here's a glimpse of what it was like growing up groovy in the 70s:

 The median household income was $11,800; a gallon of gas was .57 cents; a dozen eggs cost .77 cents, and a gallon of milk was $1.57. The average home cost $22,000 in the early seventies and rose to $62,000 at decade's end.  The U.S. population in 1975 was 216 million and the life expectancy was between 68-76 years of age.

POPULAR TV SHOWS:  I loved racing home from school to watch reruns of oldies such as Twilight Zone, Outer Limits and Dark Shadows. But the popular shows of the decade included M*A*S*H, The Brady Bunch, All In The Family, Laugh-In, Happy Days, Three's Company, Marcus Welby M.D., Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, American Bandstand, The Carol Burnett Show, Johnny Carson, and  Saturday Night Live.

BOX OFFICE HITS: I'll never forget catching a taxi to downtown Ft. Lauderdale with my boyfriend to attend the premiere of Jaws. Movies cost $2.00 back then, and the theatre was packed. Needless to say, our beaches were a little less crowded after Jaws made a splash on the screen. Other big hits included The Exorcist, Rocky, American Graffiti, Blazing Saddles, The Deer Hunter, Saturday Night Fever, Animal House, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Grease, The Godfather, Deliverance, and the mega hit STAR WARS.

FASHION: The early 70s clung to the hippie mindset of the 60s, so people were still rocking mini skirts, afros, flared bottom jeans, big belts, peasant blouses, smock tops, afghan coats, rock t-shirts and granny dresses. Women wore their tresses long and straight while men kept their sideburns thick and their hair well past their collar. Once disco was ushered into the mid 70s, polyester, platform shoes and shiny, metallic   clothing became popular. Men wore leisure suits, wide lapels, and painter's pants while sporting mustaches the size of giant caterpillars above their lips. Women gravitated toward wedge shoes, halter tops, hip huggers, tube tops, satin pants and big hair.

IN THE NEWS: We started out the decade with Richard Nixon as our president until the Watergate scandal occurred, placing Gerald Ford in the oval office after Nixon's resignation. Next came Jimmy Carter, and we never looked at peanuts the same way again. As a family, we gathered each night around our Zenith TV and watched the news unfold.  In the 70s, the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam, Roe v.s. Wade legalized abortion, terrorists attacked the Olympic games in Munich, Elvis died, Jimmy Hoffa went missing, Patty Hearst was kidnapped, Mikhail Baryshnikov defected, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System was finished, Iran took American hostages in Tehran, the first test tube baby was born, Nadia Comaneci scored seven perfect tens, the Jonestown massacre shocked the nation and the Three Mile Island catastrophe left America in fear of a nuclear holocaust.


WHAT WE DROVE: The cool kids in school drove the Trans Ams, Corvettes or Mustangs. Dodge Chargers and Challengers were also popular, but most of the kids I knew drove explodable Ford Pintos. If those were out of their price range, they borrowed the family Pacer or Gremlin. Which makes me wonder what the people at AMC were smoking when they designed those cars.

CELEBRITIES: I kept up with celebrity news through a subscription to Tiger Beat and 16 Magazine. While sipping Tab soda, sucking on Blow Pops and making gum chains, my girlfriends and I poured over glossy photos of David Cassidy, Bobby Sherman, the Bee Gees, Andy Gibb and The Osmonds. Other celebs in the news that caught our attention were John Travolta, Farrah Fawcett, Mr.T, Burt Reynolds, Olivia Newton-John, Tom Selleck, Gilda Radner, Cybil Shepard, Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Chevy Chase,  Cher, Jack Nicholson, Jodie Foster, Barbra Streisand, Woody Allen, Susan Sarandon, Jim Belushi, Robin Williams, Bill Murray, Henry Winkler, Raquel Welch, Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Jane Curtain, Sylvester Stallone, Marlin Brando, and Steve Martin.

PARTYING IN THE 70s:  When I was a teenager, the drink of choice to smuggle into a party was Boones Farm Strawberry Hill Wine. We chugged it right out of the bottle in many a driveway before entering a house party. If we were lucky, someone would have a flask of Bacardi in their pocket that we could add to our colas before a rousing game of ping pong or pool. We snacked on deviled eggs, potato chips and onion dip, rumaki, Jiffy Pop, cocktail wieners and deviled ham on toast points. We lined up on the dance floor for The Hustle, The Bump, The Bus Stop, Pogo dancing and The Latin Hustle, while the adults sipped on Harvey Wallbangers, Manhattans and vodka screwdrivers.

BIG NAMES IN SPORTS: I was never one to follow sports, but I do remember being caught up in our town's frenzy after The Miami Dolphins went undefeated in 1972. Popular sports icons of that time period include John McEnroe, Larry Bird, Bobby Riggs, O.J. Simpson, Bruce Jenner, Billy Jean King, Muhammed Ali, Jack Nicholas, Hank Aaron, Joe Frazier, Bob Gibson, Dorothy Hamill, Arthur Ashe Jr., Mark Spitz, Roger Stauback and Pete Rose.

THE SOUNDS OF THE SEVENTIES: Music is what put the 70s on the map. I had a round transistor radio that hung from a chain in my bedroom, and I kept it playing for hours. When my friends came over, we brought out the vinyl records to spin on a portable turntable. I had hundreds of albums, which I'm convinced is where the majority of my allowance went when I was a teenager. I could never get enough of The Partridge Family, Abba, Donna Summers, Elton John, Michael Jackson, The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Rod Stewart, Gladys Knight, The Eagles, John Denver, Queen, Pink Floyd, The Beach Boys, Foreigner, James Taylor, Led Zepplin, The Bee Gees, Chicago, Frank Zappa, Linda Ronstadt, Harry Chapin, Creedance Clearwater Revival, The Rolling Stones, Peter Frampton, Simon & Garfunkle, Journey, The Grateful Dead, Genesis, Meatloaf, The Guess Who, KC & The Sunshine Band, Styx, Supertramp, Carole King, The Carpenters, Earth Wind & Fire, YES and Eric Clapton.

The seventies were a magical time to be a teenager; a decade of simplicity, change, and the freedom of expression. People were kinder, less self-absorbed, respectful of others and worked hard for what they earned. Families shared dinners around the table, watched g-rated TV programs together, and made each other a priority. We didn't have cell phones, iPods, computers or social media.

And we grew up just fine.



Want more Meno Mama? This week you can find me on The Huffington Post dishing on being "Over The Hill." You can read it here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marcia-kester-doyle-/over-the-hill-and-away-we_b_5788378.html And you can also find another featured post of mine this week on BA50: http://betterafter50.com/2014/09/the-seven-deadly-sins-of-menopause/

 
    With Father's day just weeks away, I found myself wondering what to do for my husband on his special day. An early Oktoberfest in the backyard? A competitive spot next to Adam Richman on Man vs Food at an all-you-can-eat-ribs diner? Probably not a good idea since our toilet is temperamental.
   
     When I was finally able to grab my husband's attention from the NBA playoffs for a nanosecond, I asked him what it would take to make him happy on Father's Day----other than the obvious. I'm talking BEER, people! Get your minds out of the gutter.

     After out little chat during the five minute commercial break, I came to the conclusion that my husband's needs go far beyond a single day of recognition. He deserves to be happy all year 'round and to feel appreciated on a daily basis.

     Actions speak louder than words, so I've come up with a wish list of things I think wives should do that would make most husbands happy:


*  Let him eat all the burgers, pizza and chicken wings he wants. Just remind him you've already set up his doctor's appointment for a new heart stent.

*  Give him the badabing manual on "How To Help Your partner Reach The Big O in 2 Minutes Or Less When The Playoffs Are On."

*  Install a mini fridge full of beer next to his La-Z-Boy recliner. Add a portable catheter so he never has to get out of his chair.

*  Let him take a nap for an hour every day. Longer if he's hooked up to the catheter.

*  Convince him he needs a night out with his buddies Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble at the Water Buffalo Lodge. This is especially important if your husband is the Grand Poo Ba of the man cave.

*  Tell him not to strain and push so hard at the gym. Working toward a six pack just to be a trophy husband isn't worth popping out a hemorrhoid.

*  Let him sit on the couch, scratch his crotch and channel surf all weekend long.

*  Keep the sex life interesting, even if it requires a nightly Viagra cocktail and a wife dressed in an Oscar Mayer Wiener costume.

*  Surprise him with VIP tickets to his favorite sporting event that include seats in the sky lounge, unlimited steak, beer and an adult diaper changing station.

*  Give him an HD television the size of a movie theatre screen. The picture should be clear enough that he can tell whether or not the ball players have been circumcised.

*  Let him spend a weekend at a testosterone infused camp where men are men and sheep are nervous. Hopefully he won't have a b-a-a-a-a-d experience.

*  Buy him a large gift certificate to a hardware store. This allows him all the time necessary to roam the aisles for stupid trinkets. Don't be surprised if he comes home with a paint sprayer that doubles as a margarita dispenser or a yard hose with a special, suction extension attached for those lonely nights in the garden.

*  Tell him it's perfectly acceptable to show off his talent of burping the alphabet for your guests. Farting the alphabet, not so much.


     If none of these suggestions work to keep your husband happy, I have a Plan B. Send him off to a one room cabin in the woods for a year where he can grow a long beard and commune with the tree frogs.

     Just don't forget to pack the suction hose.


***I was thrilled to take part in a podcast on Friday 5/16 hosted by Wendy Hernandez of Family Law Insider. We talked about "mating, marriage and making it all work." You can watch the interview here:  https://plus.google.com/events/c16ceku58ng29v805mp5icva3fo  If you're unable to see it on Google Plus you can see it anytime on YouTube Here:     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBFNhv_yRf4

***Want more Meno Mother? This week my feature on Humor Outcasts was about The 7 Deadly Sins Of Menopause, which you can read here: http://humoroutcasts.com/2014/the-7-deadly-sins-of-menopause/

****I wasn't aware that a few weeks ago I was also featured on Better After Fifty, where I'm discussing the humorous symptoms of menopausal men. You can catch that post here: http://betterafter50.com/2014/04/my-husband-totally-gets-the-menopause-thing/

****Last but not least, I was also featured this week on Midlife Boulevard talking about my first period. Don't say. "EWWWWW!" This is FUNNY, people! Check it out here: http://midlifeboulevard.com/her-first-period