Menopausal Mother

Welcome to another edition of Fly On The Wall group blog postings hosted by Karen of Baking In A Tornado. Today, there a three of us opening our homes to you so that you can see what goes on behind closed doors. 

The fly followed my family to the annual Renaissance Festival again, but this time I think he got a little tipsy on the mead. Hopefully, he didn't see or hear EVERYTHING that went down at the festival (what happens at Ren-Fest, stays at Ren-Fest). I love attending these events with my kids and friends because we always have so much fun and there's lots of laughter involved (with a bit of debauchery tossed in, of course). 

I'm sharing some of my favorite photos from the day in the hopes that it might entice you to attend the Renaissance Festival if it travels to your area. Then again, some of these pics might just scare you off....

***Want more Meno Mama? Check out my latest for AARP---some Superbowl (or anytime) awesome snack foods HERE. And of course, in light of Rhianna's big reveal at the Superbowl, I had to write about surprise celeb pregnancy reveals for Family Minded, which you can read HERE.

Buzz around these other blogs for a peek into some other homes:

 Baking In A Tornado                                https://www.BakingInATornado.com

                                  

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver         https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog

     Welcome to another edition of Fly On The Wall group blog postings, hosted by Karen of Baking In A Tornado. Today, six bloggers are inviting you into their homes for a glimpse at what you might see and hear if you were a fly on their wall.

     We're too hot to do much this month as we deal with the interminable heat of summer. Living in south Florida from June to September is like living in Satan's armpit for four months. Or like experiencing a hot flash that never ends. This is my life. The only way to keep my sense of humor is to stick my head in the freezer every 30 minutes. My husband also has a sense of humor. He bought me a "wearable sports fan." For real. I don't care how dumb it looks on me; it's worth it not to melt into a puddle every time I walk the dogs.

     Anyway, here are some snippets of conversation the fly overheard while he was sweating on the wall:


"I love riding my spin bike at home, blasting tunes and singing along with the music. But this morning, I don't think the dogs appreciated it when I hit that high note on A-ha's 'Take On Me.'"

"I remember in high school when my best friend and I went to this small gas station near her home, there was a big guy who worked there and he had a crush on her. Every time he saw Ginny, he made a point of trying to impress her by telling her that he was a firebug."
"Well, that's not creepy at all..."

"I can't believe that after 15 attempts, I FINALLY got a publication acceptance from McSweeney's on my funny post about those nasty seaweed chips! Do you think this will make me famous for humor writing?"
"No, it'll make you famous for hating seaweed chips."

"I love coming home from work and popping open a few beers."
"Yes, I can tell. You do it every single night."
"Yep. The only difference between me and an alcoholic is that they go to meetings every Tuesday night. "


"You really need to start using a moisturizer on your face."
"Yeah, I know. There isn't enough lotion in the world to smooth out my deep wrinkles. I've got a map of the Grand Canyon on my face."

"I've eaten so much meat tonight that I'm pretty sure I've consumed Noah's entire ark."

"What's taking so long for the waiter to bring out our food? All he has done so far is set our table. I'm so hungry, I might chew on the silverware."
"Maybe that's all he thinks we need for dinner---edible napkins on a plate."

"I don't know why they call this a memory foam mattress. I still don't remember anything after I wake up."

"My mother served us beef tongue when I was a child. She tried to disguise it under layers of ketchup and pass it off as meatloaf. I knew something was wrong when I saw the pointed end of a tongue and taste buds on the surface. This is why I have trust issues today."

     I don't have trust issues, but I DO have fan issues. As in, I need MORE!


***WANT MORE MENO MAMA? I'm thrilled to have a new essay published on the website Human Parts: "The Healing Power Of Ink." You can read it here: https://tinyurl.com/y2oauld5

Buzz around, see what you think, then click on these links for a peek into some other homes:

     You've seen them. The Millennial hipsters who wear t-shirts sporting logos from rock bands you saw in concert during the 70's and 80's. The same people who crowd the check-out lines at Starbucks, Whole Foods, and the free beer-sampling stand at the local arts and crafts festival. Seeing them makes you wistful for your younger days when Mom and Dad paid your car insurance and served free hot meals from the kitchen.

     No need to despair. You too, can become a hipster (like your adult children) despite your advanced age, by following these easy, "I'm-Gonna-Stay-Young-Forever" steps:



Stock up on plaid flannel shirts from Urban Outfitters and a pair of Doc Martens to conceal your rubberized arch support pads.

Learn how to crochet a sweater made from wheat grass and hemp.

Cash in your 401k and travel around the country in a vintage Airstream to sell healing crystals, Buddha bracelets, and your own brand of organic hummus made from cage-free chic peas.

Grow your own cannabis in decoupage milk cartons stored on your back porch.

Carry a ukulele everywhere you go, even if your rendition of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" sounds more like the neighbor's cat in heat.

Call yourself a "craft brew aficionado" and be well versed in the difference between IPAs and Stouts.

Recycle EVERYTHING, including lint from the dryer that can be knitted into socks.

Enroll in yoga classes but make sure you take plenty of Gas-X before you stretch into downward dog position.

Ditch the frozen meatloaf from 2012 in the back of your freezer and become a vegan.

Master Corn Hole and giant Jenga blocks.

Buy a used Prius---or better yet---get a gerbil-powered bike.

Get a Tattoo of your spirit animal inked on your shoulder---even if that animal happens to be a hippopotamus.

Stash some edibles in your faux leather fanny pack before heading out to a tribal funk music concert at the park.

Learn how to pronounce quinoa.

Grow a beard and buy special wax for shaping it into a facial topiary.

Protest against social inequality, corporate greed, and Alpaca farms.

Buy organic, gluten-free, locally grown food at the farmer's market, even if it means you'll have gastrointestinal issues for months to come from the amount of kale you'll consume.

Take a class in latte art.

Leave a final request in your will to be buried in a biodegradable burial pod, or to have your cremated remains turned into family heirloom jewelry.







  

     Welcome to another edition of Fly On The Wall group blog postings, hosted by Karen of Baking In A Tornado. Today, eight bloggers are inviting you into their homes for a glimpse into their private lives.

     Before I get into the humor part of my FOTW post, I'd like to share an important message with you. This week I am honored to have a special article featured on The Mighty, and I'm hoping everyone will take the time to read it. This was a difficult story to share but one that needed to be told in order to help others suffering from Binge Eating and Body Dysmorphic disorders. A help line number is included at the end of the article. You can read the post here:  https://themighty.com/2017/04/being-eating-disorder-body-dysmorphic-disorder-in-children-recovery/  Please help me spread awareness of these forms of mental illness that have robbed so many women and men of living normal, healthy lives.

     Now, onto some humor......This past month, the pesky fly on the wall followed my family to the local renaissance festival, and oh man, the things this fly saw.........

                                   Anyone up for a game of Jumanji?

                                                 
                                           
                     Someone left their food-deprived baby at the circus      

     I featured today's guest blogger awhile ago on my site and she has never failed to make me smile over the shenanigans that occur on her blog. I've been reading the hilarious posts written by Alyson Herzig's of The Shitastrophy for several years now, and I highly recommend her brand of humor to anyone looking for a good belly laugh. Her Facebook fan page is a riot, too---she posts some of the best memes I've ever seen on social media. 

     Please welcome Alyson to Meno Mama's site today with lots of comment love. I think her guest post will resonate with many of us who struggle with dieting (and often fail) but still maintain a sense of humor through it all.   

1. Remember there is a 'healthy' bag of chips in the pantry. Curse whoever beat you to the bag of Apple Chips and ate it without leaving a single trace. I got my eyes on the 10 year old.
2. Find a bag of semi-healthy chips, revel in the happiness it hasn’t been eaten.
3. Get small bowl out and transfer a respectable handful of chips into the bowl.
4. Realize you will not want to get out of your chair to refill the bowl, upgrade to the next size bowl. It’s all about control. I will only eat what is in THIS bowl. I swear.
5. Sit down, eat entire bowl in less than five minutes.
6. Get up, after denying you want any more for three excruciating minutes, and refill the bowl.

• Spend half a second considering downgrading to smaller bowl, laugh at the possibility.

7. Sit with beer and try to ‘pace’ my chip eating. Sip of beer, couple of chips.
8. Move chips from table to arm of chair, the closer the better for non-stop chip ingestion.
9. Realize you’re shoveling Sea Salt Pita Chips at a gold medal clip.
   • Move chips back to table, institute Pintrest distraction technique.
   • Ogle decorations for small front porches. Wonder who these ladies are that can turn that into THAT and why am I not friends with someone who can do THAT for me?
10. Take sip of beer.
11. Realize my chips are sitting just next to my beer.
12. Eat chips, move chips back to armrest, drink beer.
13. Repeat until bowl and beer are empty.
14. Get up for refills, grab bag of chips consider pouring some into bowl but accept that you're going to eat the whole bag of crunchy awesomeness.
15. Grab beer, head back to recliner, sit back with my two vices and think, "tomorrow's another day."

So that’s how I’m doing on the diet, you can relate...right?

      Whenever our funds get low, my husband suggests I look for part-time work to supplement my measly writer's income. The problem is that my skills are sorely lacking when it comes to career opportunities. I can cook, clean, and herd toddlers to the dinner table, but that's about it. In a land far, far away known as MY YOUTH, I worked all sorts of jobs----dental assistant, secretary, waitress, telephone operator, babysitter, cleaning woman, Avon sales representative.....and none of them thrilled me. I'd be hard pressed to find something at my age that I think I'd be good at (and actually enjoy doing). I'm a writer, and that's all I've ever wanted to be. But if I need to find additional employment, it'll have to be something unique.....something that I can do with confidence and pride in my work. Here are 20 weird jobs I'd be happy to try:

*Test pilot at a witch's broom factory

*Goose down feather pillow inspector

*Teacher at the School Of Hard Knocks

*Food critic for every five star restaurant in the U.S.

*Senior Beer Sampler at a brewery

*Golf ball dimple examiner

*Pogo stick tester

*Creative Director at the School of Mixology

*Ninja leaf blower

*Bounce inspector at a trampoline factory

*Panda bear babysitter at the zoo

*Yard gnome height verifier

*Underwater landscaper at Sea World

*Taste tester at the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory.

*Cork sniffer at a winery


*Elastic snapper at a rubber band factory

*Drone sniper at an airport

*Bubble counter at a champagne bottling company

*Conch shell tuner

*Wrinkle straightener at a farm for Shar-Peis

     I'd be thrilled to do any one of these jobs. It certainly beats cleaning lint out of dryers at the local laundromat, or buffing caskets at a funeral home. I wouldn't mind trying my hand at being a fire starter at a smoke signal school, or being an artist at a tattoo parlor. How cool would it be to put my artwork permanently on someone's butt cheek? I hope they like stick figures, because that's pretty much all that I can draw.

     See? I told you my skills are limited. Looks like I'll have to stick with being a writer, after all.


***Want more Meno Mama? I'm thrilled to have my first featured post on RawrWords this week! Check out my post, "A Letter To My Younger Self." You can read it here: http://rawrwords.com/2016/02/24/a-letter-to-my-younger-self/

   
     Smart teenagers know that the way to a parent's heart is through obedience, love and respect for the people who raised them (plus offering to do a few loads of laundry will go a long way). But smarter teens know when to keep their mouths shut, even though chances are they disagree with most of what their parents tell them. They have their own agendas, but the clever ones know how to distract their parents long enough to cloud their judgment. They'll push the limits to borrow the family car or extend a curfew, all the while swearing that they'll be careful.

      As parents, we want to trust our little beastlings, so we give them the benefit of the doubt. But sometimes it backfires…..

1. I'll co-sign on their student loans because I know they'll never be late on a payment.  
    Yes they will. And when it happens, you'll be inundated with robo calls from collection agencies          because your college-age teen chose to buy the latest iPhone, stereo system, or big screen TV rather than make a monthly loan payment.

2. Sure, my kids will help me mow the lawn this weekend, fold the laundry and dust all 90 squirrel figurines in my curio cabinet. 
     For real? What planet are you from? First off, no teen wakes before noon. After that, you'll be lucky if they brush their teeth and put on deodorant. In other words, you'll be cleaning out the A/C grate and weeding the garden by yourself.

3. My kids won't remember family night at the sports bar/restaurant when I had one too many beers. 
       Yes. Yes they will. And they will remind you until your 80th birthday about the time you entered a punching bag contest after nine beers and the punching bag won. Nor will they let you forget what you looked like after you swung, missed the bag, and ended up on the floor curled up like a cocktail shrimp.

4. My teen just got his driver's license. He'll do fine since I taught him how to be a consciencious driver and to always obey the speed limit.  
     What you don't know won't hurt you….until your child hands you a $150 speeding ticket from going 65 in a 25 mile-per-hour school zone. This same teen still believes that his 1991 Dodge Caravan can outrun a 2015 Mustang GT.

5. Of course my kids know better than to break their curfew. 
     Uh-huh. That's why they leave their bedroom window unlocked and oil the hinges on the front door with W-40 while you're sound asleep in Never Never Land.

6. I know my kids enjoy spending time with the family, especially when it's Monopoly night.
     Wrong. They would rather scrub grout from their shower tile or babysit the neighbor's toddler who has a bad case of diarrhea than spend an evening with dear old BORING mom and dad.

7. Their first love will be the school valedictorian who has a full scholarship to an ivy league school where they'll earn their doctorate in nuerosurgery. 
      Dream on. Every teen goes through their "I-wanna-bad boy/bad girl-phase." Grit your teeth and gnaw on a leather strap until they outgrow this nail-biting phase of life.

8. I don't need to spend more than $200 a week on groceries for a family of four. 
     There's a little known fact that teens, especially boys, consume a gallon of milk a day washed down with an entire package of cookies and chips. You might as well buy a few chickens while you're shopping because you can never have enough eggs in the house when there are one or more teenagers living under the same roof.

9. My teen hates the smell of cigarette smoke and the taste of alcohol, plus she hates taking any form of medication. Chances are she'll never drink, smoke, or try drugs.
     Sadly, this is wrong. Chances are your teen WILL try one or all of these things at some point because peer pressure is mightier than you can imagine. Brace yourself for a bumpy ride…"Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore."
   
10. My kids will never get a tattoo or body piercing. 
     You wanna make a bet? The good news is that some of those things will be in areas on their body that you will never see, so don't worry about it. If you can't see it, it doesn't exist, right?
   
     The only lie you're allowed to believe is the one that really isn't a lie, even though at the time (while raising teens) it might feel like one. They love you. They really do. And one day when they're old enough to understand all that you've done for them, they'll appreciate you.

     But don't forget to hide the WD-40, just in case….
   



       
     

    Welcome to another edition of Fly On The Wall, hosted by Karen of Baking In A Tornado. Fourteen bloggers are participating in today's group posting with their tell-all accounts of what really goes on behind the closed doors of their homes.

     This past month, the Doyle house has been in the party zone….because that's just how my crazy family rolls. There's something to be said about sharing new and embarrassing experiences with the ones you love.

     First up was a "Bicycle Pub Crawl" in downtown Ft. Lauderdale. You might be thinking of a group of people on bikes, pedaling from one pub to the next. Not quite. This was one GIANT bike that held twelve riders (six on each side with a bar in the middle). Our seats faced one another across the bar and our tour guide sat up front to steer the bike.  Each seat had its own set of pedals and a cup holder so that we could pedal our way downtown at three miles per hour while drinking libations.  Loud music was pumped out of speakers attached to the bike's roof as we pedaled from pub to pub.

     After two hours, I understood what the "crawl" portion of the tour meant. No one wanted to pedal on the bike once the beer kicked in. I sat back and let the minions do all the work. Isn't that what adult children are for? A few, unfortunate family members were left to do all the pedaling (which explains why we stalled on the railroad tracks and held up traffic). I haven't laughed that hard in a long time, and I look forward to doing another Bicycle Pub Crawl in the VERY near future.

     Our next family fun adventure took place at the annual Florida Renaissance Festival. We've been attending these events for more than fifteen years, and my grown kids are now relieved that I no longer badger them to squeeze into Robin Hood tights or fairy costumes. Where else but a renaissance festival can you find vampires, zombies, wenches and royalty sitting side by side at a lunch table? "Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore!!"

     There was nothing more enchanting for us than watching a jousting match while a nearby vendor shouted, "Booze on a stick!" "Fried Twinkies!" "Get your hot turkey legs right here!" (obviously they didn't have Jenny Craig back in the Renaissance days). My family decided that calories didn't count at the festival, and we didn't feel an ounce of guilt for scarfing down large quantities of kettle corn, fried fish and onion rings.



    A few weeks ago, we attended a celebration dinner at the local Lebanese restaurant. The lamb kabobs were outstanding, but once the belly dancer started circulating the room, I knew we'd come to the right place for a party. And it turned out to be the BEST place for some embarrassing photos to be taken.  The men were pulled from their seats by the belly dancer and they tried in vain to keep up with the woman's hip gyrations. Even funnier was watching my husband do his best belly dancing imitation and getting stuck on the floor when his knees refused to cooperate.

     Last but not least, the month rounded out with a special visit from one of my favorite blogger friends, Lisa Newlin, who writes the hilarious blog, Lisa Newlin Seriously? We enjoyed a wonderful dinner in the backyard garden and chatted for hours. Lisa is one of the funniest writers I know, and needless to say, there was a lot of laughter around the fire pit that night. Best of all---she witnessed my husband's awesome dance moves….and I doubt she will ever be the same.

     What will the next month bring us? Who knows…but I'm betting it will all be fun…. Doyle style.