Movie Actor Movie

Good morning. If you're not outside enjoying this wonderful (finally!) Spring weather, come and play - just link up the movie to an actor and then to another movie, one comment at a time.

To start things off, I'm going way back to my teen years, when I read the S. E. Hinton book again and again, cried at the ending every single time, and probably had a crush on pretty much everyone in the movie.

The Outsiders

Go.

For Your Viewing Pleasure Horror

In the continuing saga of my foot...

My workout shoes were feeling like they needed to be replaced, plus they were looking kind of dingy after wearing them all winter. They were size 7 Avias. If I'd been smart, I would have bought another pair of size 7 Avias, but I was enticed by a cute pair of New Balance crosstrainers.

In the store they felt fine, very cushion-y and supportive, and they seemed wide enough to not squish the bones in my delicate feet. So I bought 'em.

Within a week or two my foot started hurting. Sigh.

Now I've had New Balance shoes before and didn't have a problem, so maybe it isn't really the shoes. With the warmer weather I've been doing more, walking Oliver, the occasional game of tennis, etc. Maybe it was a combination of the two. Whatever it was, the foot was in bad shape.

Since the past has taught me nothing, I waited a few more weeks just to make sure that it wouldn't go away on its own. Now the nerve was visibly swollen and my toes were spreading worse than ever. I was hobbling around and complaining to my family. I needed another shot.

I made an appointment with a new podiatrist- the last one was so freaked out by me taking the video, I wasn't sure he'd see me again. I sat in the waiting room and visited with a 90 year old World War II vet. He was funny and he kept calling me young lady, while he told me stories about the ships he served on. The waiting room was decorated in a nautical theme and I think that's what got him going.

A white-haired woman moved past with her walker.

More old people, some brought in by their own grey-haired children.

When the nurse took me back I asked her if I was the youngest person she'd seen all day.

"Oh, definitely. But last week we had a fifteen year old in here - he'd been injured."

I have the feet of old people.

The doctor took some x-rays just to see how bad it was. This isn't my x-ray, but it could be - except mine is worse. See all that lovely space between the other bones, where, I don't know, nerves could comfortably rest? And see how the bones are touching inside the circle? That's exactly where my neuroma is, only it looks like my bones are actually chipping away at each other. The doctor asked if I'd had some sort of trauma to my foot. Nope, just me walking on it, hehehe.

The nerve between those bones is so swollen that it pushes the toes apart in a permanent deformity.

So here's the plan:

We're going to manage the pain throughout the summer with the injections. Surgery to remove the nerve rarely works - nerves can grow back, painful scar tissue, bad recovery time - but possibly, if I'm still having the pain coming back in the late fall, the doctor wants to do a nerve decompression. He'll cut down through the top of my foot and clip the ligament that's holding my bones so darn close together. That oughta do the trick.


He'd do the clipping now, except that summer is coming up and he wants me to enjoy it. I can still play tennis. Plus, like all the other doctors, he's hoping that a few more shots will make it go away. I hope so too.


So here's my most recent shot. It hurt so bad - but he wondered if previous injections had not been deep enough and long enough - and he was making sure to go very deep and very long. Whatever that means. All I know is that it hurt worse than any of the other shots I've ever had.

I think I say that every time.


I was bending forward to video it and I had a "birthing a baby" grimace on my face. As he injected the cortisone and alcohol into the nerve, I could see my toes spreading farther and farther apart. They grew longer and it felt like they were going to literally pop off my foot.






When it was over I sat back and exhaled. I must have looked pretty bad - the nurse ran to get me a drink and told me to stay put until I felt better.

I suggest that you do the same.

Movie Actor Movie

Good morning! Get ready to link up all your favorite movies and actors - it's super easy, so everyone come out and play

Starting off with the final movie named last week by Mrs. Sant....

A League of Their Own

Go.

Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? Um...No.

Math was never my best subject - I spent much of middle school and the two years of high school math struggling to make it through. My Dad (also known as Mr. Math) would help me with my homework. Bless his heart, he was patient and knowledgeable; I was emotional, dramatic, sarcastic, angry, weepy and frustrated - a teenage girl. I could write the heck out of any English assignment, but when it came to math, my brain just couldn't wrap around the formulas and algebraic functions containing polynomial equations with coefficients and variable x and solution y!

I have no idea what any of that means...I typed math words into a search engine and that's what I came up with.

Now I function just fine in the real world.

I can balance a checkbook - though I don't. It's all online and frankly, I trust the credit union more than I trust myself.

I can figure a tip at a restaurant. I round up, do tithing plus half of tithing at lunch, tithing plus tithing at dinner.

I can figure the sale price at Kohl's. The tithing formula works here as well - or I just look at the little sign...it's already done.

And I can double or halve a recipe.

For over two decades, that's all the math I've needed.

Thanks again, Dad. It wasn't you...it's me. I've accepted my lack of math skills and I'm doing fine.

Until last week with Cameron's irresponsibly handled homework packet. There were a few mathy pages.

Most of them, Cameron did just fine. He's a whiz at math. But as the night got later, he was ready to throw in the towel and I was pushing for completion - remember, this was before I knew who to blame for the pile of homework. He came to a page that initially stumped him, and instead of giving him time to figure it out, I went all "Oh give me that...let's just get through it". Have I mentioned that I get a wee bit cranky past 9 pm?

The problem went something like this:

Tom and Tina opened up ten bags of jelly beans and dumped them into a bowl. They separated the beans by color and counted them.

Who thinks Tom and Tina need to get a life?

Cam added up all the amounts and came up with 1990 jelly beans. The rest of the questions were like this:

There are 57 black jelly beans. What percent of the jelly beans are black?

And on and on through the rest of the colors.

I. Was. Dumbfounded.

I looked through the math book - I couldn't find anything that made sense. We had a calculator, but I didn't know what to do with it. Cameron wanted to go to bed - he just didn't care anymore.

I can do percentages - I swear I can - when it's take 30% off a pair of shoes. Why was this different? We punched numbers into the calculator but it wasn't making any sense.

It was past ten, but I did the only thing I could think of. I called my Dad. Yeah, I'm almost 40, useless to my kid, and seriously math impaired. Daaaaaaaaaad!

I tried not to revert back to the emotional, dramatic teenager that he must remember well.

But Dad wasn't available. Mom was, though, and she knew exactly what to do. Seriously, is everyone smarter than me when it comes to math? Was I dropped on the math part of my brain? Have I had a stroke? How is it possible that my brain can't grasp this?

I told Cam the formula and he was all "Oh yeah, I remember". He whipped through the rest of the colors, found the percentages and added them up to equal 100%. Easy breezy.

Except I'm still scratching my head and my Mom wants me to come over for a little math lesson.

I'm sure my Dad would advise against it.

Anyway...do you know this?

If you have 1990 jellybeans and 57 of them are black, what percentage is that?

At Least He's Honest

The night before the boys tracked off last week, we ran into a glitch in Cam's relatively homework free life. For this whole year, other than his reading and book reports and the occasional project , he just hasn't had any daily work. All of a sudden, he had a freakin' stack of homework. In addition to his regular book report, he had a bunch of math and an alarmingly thick packet of worksheets to complete - all due the next day.

Mama wanted an explanation.

Cam quickly placed blame on the substitute he had nearly the whole week while his teacher was in a training.

"She only gave us like 10 minutes a day to do this packet! It's not fair! She doesn't know how much time our work takes."

I was skeptical - substitute or not, this was a ton of homework. On the other hand, Cam's teacher assured me at the last parent/teacher that he always got his classwork done and he's a good student. So what was up?

He plowed through the homework - reading, report, math, and then he tackled the packet - all 15 pages of it. Some of it was busy work - crossword puzzles and word searches(these were already done), some grammar and sentence correcting and then a few pages heavy on the math. It took him until 11:30 at night to finish everything. I stayed up and offered moral support, encouragement, and agreement that the substitute was lame.

The next day, the last day before tracking off, I popped in to see his teacher and to ask if other kids had trouble finishing their work with the sub. I love that I work at the school. Cam? Probably not loving it so much. He knew the jig was up the second I walked into his classroom.

Cam, it turns out, hadn't been using his time wisely in class. The packet that the sub hadn't given them enough time to work on? Yeah, he'd had that for six weeks. Six. Weeks.

I quietly let Cam know that I was on to him, that I was ticked about staying up late when he'd had weeks to work on it. We'd talk about it after school.

I went home and stewed about it, literally simmering all the facts together and figuring out how to best approach this situation. I told Troy about it, and if I was irritated, Troy was downright angry. We couldn't get over the idea that Cameron has been lying to us. Lying.

Every day, I ask him if he has homework, and everyday he says "nope, just reading".

Lying.

Now Cam has a pretty sweet life, in my opinion. He plays with friends and has numerous late nights (the alternative to sleepovers), he has a cell phone and is starting to enjoy the freedoms that come with being 11. He's happy, helpful, agreeable, and we've never had a reason to worry about him until now.

Lying is huge - if he lies about one thing (um...homework for instance), how will we trust him about anything else?

He says he's going to a friend's house and that the parents are home...what if they aren't?

He says they're going to the park to play football...what if they go someplace else that I wouldn't have allowed?

He says he and his friends jump on trampolines and ride bikes and play xbox...but what if their afternoons are spent with cigarettes, booze and dancing girls who offer them drugs???????????

Okay, so it's easy to get carried away. But still...

I realize that Cam's lie was more of a lie of omission - he simply wasn't telling whole truth. He didn't bring his homework home, therefore he had no homework. The sub probably did only give them a short time to work on it, he just neglected to tell me that he's known about it for weeks. If I hadn't investigated, I would never have known, the homework got done...who was hurt by the little half-truth?

But if he gets away with the half-truths, will he start experimenting with the real deal lies? Like the whopper we admitted to?

Gaaaah -- this parenting thing is HARD!

By the time Cam got home I was ready to rip into him calmly explain how much it bothered his Dad and me...this lie thing. How we have to be able to trust him, to believe him when he tells us something. If we can't do that, we can't trust him with the cell phone, the texting, the Internet, to go to friend's houses...it goes on and on. Honesty and trust are big deals.

So I talked and talked and talked and talked to Cam. He insisted that he wasn't lying, he just kept forgetting to tell us/bring it home.

"So seriously, Cameron," I said, pecking at the subject some more ('cause that's what Mother Hens do), "even when I asked you every single day if you had homework, a lightbulb never went on and you thought "oh yeah, I guess I do!" "

"I just get out of school and talking about other stuff and I get busy and I forget. It wasn't a lie, I promise."

"But you understand how it seems like a lie to your Dad and me, right?"

"I don't lie." He was emphatic, "I'm just...I'm just irresponsible!"

I had to turn away so he wouldn't see me clapping my hand over my mouth. What do you say to that?

He was so sincere, I didn't have the heart to launch into my "you will be responsible" speech.

For what it's worth, I think Cam is responsible, an honest, great kid - we're chalking this up to Spring Fever, being 11 and testing some limits, a little parental freak out, and hey, who doesn't procrastinate or put things on the back burner every once in a while? He just got caught...and mainly because I'm nosy and work at the school. Poor kid.

But back to the lying...

Did you ever lie to your parents or have your kids ever lied to you?

Deal? No Deal.

Who can resist the chance to win a million dollars?

Not Us!!!

Yeah, we went to the open casting call for Deal or No Deal, and yeah, it was CRAZY!

We showed up an hour before the line was closed - some people had been there overnight - and walked about a mile to get to the end of the line. We were carrying lawn chairs.

Now the lawn chairs seemed like a brilliant idea - and they would have been, if we'd been staying in one place for very long. But the line was moving, so if we sat we'd just have to stand up out of the chair every minute or so and move three feet. Hauling ourselves up and out proved to be more tiring than just standing, so in the end we just used the chairs to carry our purses and water bottles. Every time the line moved we dragged our chairs (that's a great noise, by the way) along the sidewalk and then just stood by them.

The people in actual wheelchairs had it made.

Anyway, we did that for the mile that the line snaked around the block and then we gave up and tossed the chairs on a grassy area. It was worth the risk of having them stolen - we just didn't want to carry them any more.

After ditching the chairs, we entered this area:

The far right is where the serpentine lines started. Those are the bathrooms in the upper right corner.

The lines continued on to this area. See the door going into the building...once you got inside, it was going to be another three hour wait.

We passed a sign that marked the 12 hour waiting time. There were people selling water bottles and pizzas. Red Robin burgers had a stand alongside a hot dog place. I think there was some entertainment up near the entrance to the building. People watching was good for us. We were surprised at how many people had their small kids with them - toddlers and babies in strollers.

Susan brought her cute daughter, Becca, along for the wait. I believe there was a promise of a trip to Claires. Becca was a trooper and the only one smart enough to wear a hat! My head is sunburned and sore - soon to be followed by itchy and flaky

Rumor circulating through the crowd was that the 11 page application that we'd spent all night filling out wasn't even being looked at. Instead, we'd have 20 seconds to tell about ourselves. We practiced.

We played name that tune. We played Movie Actor Movie.

We made it 5-turn lines into the big crowd, a total of three hours. But then our feet started hurting. And our backs. We were getting sunburned! We still had like 8 hours to go. Then some yahoo started smoking - and we were already packed, like so much cattle - and that just did us in.

"Why don't we just go to lunch?" someone suggested. Might have been me.

So we left. Badumpbump. End of story.

Cafe Rio never tasted so good.

Sick

Sincere apologies for the following.

The sound is unmistakable - your kid throwing up in the middle of the night. And when it's far away - as in down the hall and in his bedroom, not close by in the bathroom - you just know it's going to be a long night.

There will be laundry. Lots and lots of laundry.

Over the weekend Cam was battling a stomach bug and at 2 am he lost the battle. There was no warning, he insisted, he simply woke up and threw up.

By the time I got to his room, he was standing up on his bed, horrified (and still half asleep), and looking down at the mess that had just come out of him. Cam likes lots of pillows and blankets - he creates a nest of sorts every night - so the damage was pretty big.

There were three pillows and three pillow cases, a blanket and a thick comforter, a fitted sheet, and Cam's boxers, all needing to be washed. That was at least four loads. The mattress needed scrubbing and Cam needed a bath and his hair washed. I wanted a shower too.

But the one who got it the worst, by far, was Oliver. He's been sleeping in Cam's nest for a while now, right up by his head, and trust me when I say that that was the worst place to be at 2 am on Sunday morning. Oliver. Was. Drenched. From head to tail, he was covered!

Now Troy has never been able to handle the cleaning and caring of a vomiting child. He has a sympathy reflex that makes him fairly useless, but that night, he was just going to have to suck it up and help with this. Troy's job was to bathe Oliver and to keep him from cleaning himself. I could hear Troy's faux retching while I tackled the bed and the mattress.

I wiped the bedding, stripped the bed, the washing machine got started, the mattress was scrubbed and sprayed (Febreeze, I love you), and Aaron moved to my bed to escape the smell. After Oliver got his bath (Thanks, Troy...I knew you could do it), Cam got in the tub and cleaned up, and then laid down on the floor on the pallet of blankets that I'd made for him.

I've been doing this whole parenting thing long enough to know the number one rule: Do NOT put a vomiting child into your bed after his bed has been ruined. You will end up with another ruined bed, and this time, it will be yours. Vomiting children sleep on the floor...or even better, in the bathtub.

I started another load of laundry.

We gave Cam some chewable Pepto Bismol, which he promptly threw up - made it to the bathroom this time. Oliver still smelled funky and Cam was crying over his stomach pain. Troy gave Oliver another bath and I headed to Walmart for the good stuff - liquid Pepto. It was close to 3 am.

Now Walmart at 3 am is...interesting. I didn't see any other shoppers, but the place was packed with people stocking the shelves. And anything that's said over the intercom (calling team meetings, etc.) is done in Spanish.

I got the Sick Kid Trifecta: Pepto Bismol, Sprite and Saltines and went through the one open checkout.

"How are you tonight?" asked the checker.

"Well, I'm on a Pepto run at 3 am - I've had better nights."

"Debit? Here's your receipt. Enjoy the rest of your night."

She recited her script, oblivious to my meager attempt at humor. Buenos Noches.

Home again, Cameron swallowed and kept down the medicine. He drank some Sprite and fell asleep, a large bowl by his head. I switched the laundry and started another load. Troy had opened a window in the boys' room to air it out and we so moved Aaron back to his bed.

Oliver slept in our bed, leery of being by Cameron again. Can you imagine the horror of his night? First, being awakened like he was, then two baths. Poor puppy. He needs a breath mint.

And definitely another bath.

Movie Actor Movie

Good morning.

Come and play - starting with:

Forrest Gump

Go.

All Better

I picked up my laptop from the laptop hospital today!!! It boots up, nothing is lost (that's an answered prayer right there, I'm tellin' ya), and the screen is quite a bit cleaner than when I last saw it.

Hallelujah and praise the PCLaptop man!!!!

Thoughts of the PCLaptop Man as he's wiping down the screen:

"What's this...oatmeal? Did she seriously eat her breakfast over her laptop? She must've sneezed...good grief...did she lick the screen? Why is there salt down in the keypad? Dang housewives."

I really can't even tell you what was wrong with it. One minute it was working - the next minute it wasn't. Troy (Mr. Gloom and Doom) went on about crashed hard drives, losing everything, compromised data, and whole "we should have been backing up" song and dance.

Thoughts of the PCLaptop Man after Troy admitted that we "don't back up".

"You know, we tell 'em and tell 'em that they need to back up, that the hard drive can crash at any moment and that they will lose EVERYTHING, but do they listen? No. So I gotta tell 'em again today. Will they spend the money to get a backup system? No. I wanna put a virus on their computer - if they don't start backing up within thirty days, the whole thing goes up in smoke. Dang guy that's married to the housewife that eats over her laptop."

We dodged a bullet - everything is still here. For $168.74, they cleaned it up, tuned it up, gave it some updates, checked a disk, and gave it a registry restore. And then gave me a good talking to about backing up. I said my husband would handle it and then I walked out to my car, cradling my laptop, almost giddy with relief and joy (that's right, it was joy. absolute joy over having my computer back. go ahead and judge me).

Thoughts of the PCLaptop Man as I walked out of his store:

"They won't back up. They never do. Look at her...did she just skip? She's happy now, but just wait until it really crashes. She'll be all "Oh, Mr. PCLaptop Man, my whole life is on this computer...help me, help meeeeeeeeee!" And I'll act like I feel sorry for her, but inside I'll be all "Told you so". Yeah, we'll see who has the last laugh. Dang housewives."

It just hasn't been the same without my laptop. Sure there were other computers that I could have used - and I did, a little bit. But my heart wasn't in it, between listening to "are you done yet?" and just missing my computer, I hardly got on at all. Now there are blogs to catch up on, banking to do, emails to send and pictures to upload. It feels good to have it home. All is well and right with my world.

And somewhere, the PCLaptop Man is laughing...

Movie Actor Movie

My beloved laptop, just over a year old, is in the laptop hospital. There are very few material things that I would call beloved, but dangit, my laptop is one of 'em. If you know of any prayers for computers, please send them my way.

But even that won't stop me from starting off today with the Movie Actor Movie game. You know how it goes...I name a movie, you name an actor from that movie, next person names a different movie that that actor was in, and so on and so on.

Steel Magnolias

Go.

The Suit

A couple of weeks ago, Cameron announced that he needed a suit. We couldn't have been more surprised - this is the kid who hates to wear his church clothes, needs special socks to function, removes all tags, and can hardly stand to have anything other than the softest, smoothest fabric touch his skin. A suit? Really?

Yes, really.

Apparently there were some big events coming up in his 11 year old world, and he felt like a suit was called for. I knew we'd be buying one when he turned 12 (sacrament passing and all), and I was expecting a fair amount of complaining over that - yet here he was, asking for one.

"Why do you need a suit?"

"For Junior Achievement Biz Town...I'm the CEO of the restaurant. I have to dress up. And after that we're going to the symphony."

I must have looked skeptical because he quickly added,

"And Easter. You always want me to dress up. I just need a suit."

"Well, okay."

Then I made him promise a thousand times that he would actually wear the suit and that it wouldn't go the way of every pair of jeans I've tried to buy him. 'Cause I don't think they make suits out of stretchy cotton jersey or the silky polyester track pants material that he loves.

The whole family was going along for The Buying of the Suit. We kind of had to see it to believe it. But as we were walking out the door, my friends came by with an invitation to go on a walk - how could I resist? So Aaron and Oliver went with the walking women and Troy and Cameron set off to buy the suit. Troy assured me that he could handle this. Mmmmkay.

Later that night, it was suit modeling time. Cam was so pleased and excited to show me. He had the tie, the white shirt, black suit...I waited in the front room while he changed and Troy fixed his tie. He walked out to show me.

At first sight, I sucked in a breath and let it out with a loud "aaawwwwwwwwww". He looked so good, so fine, so, so grown up. I oohed and aahed and spun him around, wiped a tear, and just stared at him. He knew he looked sharp, all dressed up, ready to be the CEO of a fictional restaurant, attend the symphony and dazzle on Easter morning.

But then...

As I looked a little closer, something wasn't quite right. The jacket was too big. Huge, even. It did not fit. At all.

Still smiling and not wanting to ever cast a doubt in Cam's mind that he looked awesome, I whispered to Troy,

"What's up with the jacket...it's kinda big."

"Yeah, they didn't have a jacket in his size. I didn't think the store would let me, but I found another suit and just took the jacket from that one. It matches."

"Not size-wise. It's huge!"

Then to Cameron,

"You look so good...did you cut the tags off already?"

They were in the wastebasket.

Size 10 pants...a perfect fit.

The jacket? Size 12, Husky.

Cameron could fit three of himself in there. He is nowhere near a size twelve and he's the opposite of husky. He looks like he's wearing a Zoot Suit. Hard to tell, but his knees are about 4 inches from the bottom of the jacket. He needs a fedora hat and a machine gun.

I pulled Troy into the bedroom with me, where I could hiss at him properly.

"What were you thinking? It doesn't fit!"

"It fits good enough."

"Why didn't you try another store?"

"'Cause this one's fine. The store didn't care."

"It was Sears. Of course they didn't care - they were just happy to have someone in their store!"

"He'll grow into it."

"Yeah, if he triples in size!"

Cam walked in and we sang out,

"You look soooooo handsome!!!!!"

He beamed.

"I know the jacket's big, Mom, but I like things loose. It's comfortable."

Troy still hasn't lost the smug look on his face.

So here's Cam - future CEO of Comfortable Clothing, Inc., selling mismatched suits to "I'm only going into one store" Dads. When not quite right is good enough.

Still looks pretty handsome, though, don't you think?