no horse pucky Archives

Friday Fun and Stickiness

Happy Friday! Happy Friday Favorites!! On Friday, I keep it light and superficial on the blog and I discuss my favorites, such as products, beauty items, books, movies, websites, games, etc. It is the sensual stuff in life which makes it fun, so on Friday, I talk about the stuff that make my senses happy. Please check out previous Friday blog posts, for more favorites.

Before I get to today’s favorite, however, I have “a no horse pucky” story to tell you. Long time followers of the blog, know that I occasionally interject “no horse pucky” stories into the mix. (search up “no horse pucky” for more weird stories on the blog) These are stories that are so ridiculous and incredulous, you might think that I am pulling your tail. But I am not. Everybody has these crazy stories that happen in their lives every once in a while. These unusual events are so much fun to experience, and to retell.

Yesterday, our eldest son sent me a strange text. For background purposes, our eldest son is a tech professional who was attending a conference for his company in Boston earlier this week. My eldest son is a tall, gregarious twenty-six year-old man, who has curly red hair. (I only note his hair color because redheads/gingers can never be anonymous. They are rarely forgotten, primarily because they are so rare. Ask any ginger you know. This is the truth. When we took our son to Puerto Vallarta Mexico, when he was a toddler, the older village folk treated him like he was a god. They kept touching his hair for “good luck.”)

Anyway, the first line of the text said this: “Hey Mom! Random question for you, do you remember that apartment complex we moved into when we first moved to Charlotte (NC)? Was there a Colombian family there you gave a Steelers ornament to?”

Me: “Yes. Wow. Why?”

Our family moved from Pennsylvania to North Carolina in 2002, when our eldest son was six. We stayed in corporate housing apartments for three months that summer, until our house was ready to be moved into. While we were living in those apartments, we befriended a very nice Colombian family. They had just relocated to North Carolina from Columbia, because they wanted a safer place to live. Despite being well-off, educated professionals, and middle-class citizens in Columbia, they lived in constant fear of being kidnapped for ransom. That was a common thing in the early 2000s in Columbia. They said that they lived in terror, if any of the family members were even five minutes late coming home from work and appointments. We had a couple of enjoyable dinners together. I remember that they had lovely heirloom furniture and the wife introduced me to the wonders of cooking with capers. However, when we moved out of the apartment at the end of that summer, we lost touch and we never spoke or contacted each other again. We were never friends on social media.

Bottom line, it turns out that their son holds the same exact tech job, for the same exact company which my son works for, except that their son resides in Washington, D.C. and our son lives in New Jersey. Both young men happened to be at the same conference in Boston. Their son thought that he recognized my son (20 years after seeing each other at the age of six!) after they were talking and they realized that they had both lived in North Carolina as children.

Our son: “He told me his family kept that ornament for like ten years. LOL”

No horse pucky. In my opinion, coincidence is God being anonymous. This story brightened our day.

Okay, on to my favorite for today. It’s been a stressful summer, full of change and trepidation for our family and for our extended family. I have been looking for more items and objects to help me with mindfulness. On a whim, I purchased a Brain Games Sticker By Number book at our local grocery store. This book is like painting by numbers, but easier and less messy. The only skill that it requires is a steady hand. It’s such a satisfying, meditative activity and the end result is always really cute. I’ve already finished putting all of the stickers on that one particular book, and thus I have purchased three more of these Brain Games Sticker By Number books from Amazon. Try it. You’ll like it. You’ll relax doing it.

Have a great Friday! Go discover a new favorite to enjoy!! Don’t be afraid to play with stickers, no matter what your age!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Another NHP

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

I think that the blog could use another light-hearted “no horse pucky” story, so here it is:

Earlier this week, I had my annual OB/GYN appointment. (this is the point where I lose most of my guy readers – I understand) When the nurse took my blood pressure, it turns out that it was slightly elevated. Now typically, I have really good blood pressure. Once, when I was giving blood, my blood pressure was so low that the nurse taking my blood quipped, “Are you dead?” Knowing this about myself, I implored my gynecologist’s nurse to take my blood pressure on my other arm. It still came up a tad high. Now, truthfully, the nurse wasn’t all that concerned, and neither was the doctor. I wish that I could say that this indifference was the same for me. I had just drunk a bucket’s worth of coffee right before the appointment, and I admittedly, was a little nervous about my appointment, in the first place (despite being 50 years old and having given birth to four children, they still have to beg to me “scooch down a little further, come on now, just a little further” to the edge of the table, every single time). Coffee intake and “white coat syndrome” are known to cause elevated blood pressure. I know this. I have experienced this before. But still . . . .

After the appointment, I headed to the grocery store. I had tried to put my “higher than usual blood pressure” out of my mind, but the truth is, I was sitting in the meat department, staring at my phone, and “telemedicine-ing” with Dr. Google. I once had an employer who was a neurotic, blood pressure fanatic. “I can’t let myself stroke out!” she would emphatically shriek on a weekly basis, putting her hands up to her neck and sticking her tongue out of the side of her mouth (this is completely true – no horse pucky). Truth be told, standing in the grocery store, I was starting to freak out, that I was in fact, “stroking out”, with the visual of my previous boss growing exponentially in my mind. This is when I decided to calm down and to sing along with the grocery store music, and to focus my mind on the seven or eight items that I needed for dinner. I didn’t even grab a shopping cart. I just winded around the grocery store, juggling bread, and fish, and a bag of salad and few other items. Then, I passed the pharmacy department. This is when I got an “aha” moment or perhaps divine intervention, when I laid eyes on their glorious blood pressure monitoring machine.

There was a woman sitting by the machine, and there were two empty seats on the opposite side of the blood pressure monitoring machine. “Oh wow, are we still allowed to use this?” I asked the woman who was sitting by the machine and who must have been waiting for a prescription. I was concerned that Covid may have rendered the machine untouchable, but I didn’t see any yellow tape or Mr. Yuk stickers on the machine.

“I think that you can use it,” the lady by the machine said. (not that she really had any kind of authority on this, but I was happy to take her word for it.)

I was thrilled. I dumped my pile of groceries on the empty chairs on the opposite side of the machine, and I sat myself decidedly and comfortably, in the plastic throne of the blood pressure monitor. It is then that I decided to close my eyes, and I took five long, deep breaths to center myself. I put my arm in the cuff, and I put my mind in Nirvana. When I opened my eyes, I was delighted to see that my blood pressure was 117/73. It was such a gratifying, comforting relief to see those numbers on the screen. I turned to the woman waiting for her prescription and I smiled and I bragged. She nodded kindly (we both had masks on, but I am pretty sure that she was smiling and happy for me). Then I turned to the chairs, in order to grab my groceries, but alas, they were gone. The chairs were empty. No groceries. Nada.

“My groceries are gone! Where are my groceries?!” I asked the lady waiting by the machine.

“Oh yeah, a worker did come by and pick those up,” the lady said, non-chalantly.

“What?!” I looked at her astonished and perplexed. I could feel my blood pressure rising exponentially, at that very moment. But then, I decided it just wasn’t worth my health and my sanity to pursue any further conversation with this woman. I went around the store and I grabbed some more groceries. I did end up tweaking what I decided to purchase, though. I substituted a bag of chocolate chips for the fish. If I am going to stroke-out anytime soon, I want to make sure that I really enjoy every last bit of my life. My prescription for myself: More chocolate, less panic. (but wait, chocolate has caffeine in it, too, right?!)

Happy 16th birthday, to my beautiful daughter! This isn’t quite the plans at Disney which we had made, but at least we (your parents and your brothers and your doggies) are your captive audience, and your dutiful servants for the day. xoxo Disney is just delayed.

I think that in a time of uncertainty, fear, and boredom, another one of my “no horse pucky” stories is called for, to lighten the mood. The other day (I can’t remember which day; they are all melting into each other. Quarantine days look remarkably the same around here.) I went into my garage and started poking through the storage boxes. Back in the year 2000, I had belonged to an online pregnancy chat group. I was pregnant with our third son, during that time. Our other two boys were ages four and two, and our daughter was not even yet, a glimmer in our eyes. It turns out that I printed out every single post that I had made on the chat group, and I kept the printed sheets, as sort of a pregnancy journal. The other night, when I rediscovered the “journal”, I delighted myself and my captive audience family, with various anecdotes that I talked about in the journal, including the time my 4-year-old son said that my new haircut made me look like “a monster” and he meant it sincerely, as a major compliment. Anyway, Tuesday, November 7th, 2000’s entry is absolutely “no horse pucky” worthy and reading the entry, brings me back to the sheer horror of that day, like it was just yesterday. Keep in mind, my third son was born in early December of 2000, so I was very, very, very pregnant that infamous day, with a 4 year-old son and a 2-year-old son (who had the nickname “Road Rage” at that time period; his temper was legendary) in tow. Here is the journal entry (Tuesday, November 7th, 2000):

“I just got back from voting and running a few errands. The boys and I enter Eckerd Drug Store, and we are no sooner in the door, when my four-year-old announces that he has to “go potty real bad,” (number two, mind you) and starts groaning and grunting loudly. I ask the clerk where the bathroom is, only to be told that they had no public bathrooms. I announce that it is an emergency and the clerk, noticing my obviously huge pregnant belly ushers us through the store, through the warehouse into this skanky bathroom where my son “blows it out.” (sorry to be gross, but it was GROSS)

After that episode, I decide to buy some sodas that are on sale and I pick up a 12 pack, only to have the bottom give out on me and all twelve cans roll all over the floor. Both sons think that this is great fun and once again, we are the spectacle of the day, at the store. The sweet clerk comes over a with a calm smile on his face and cleans it all up. I then go over to another aisle and I pick up two plastic, one gallon jugs filled with grape juice. As I am walking to the cashier, one of these bottles hit one of those giant steel poles that support the ceiling of the store. The whole plastic top is ripped off and the juice sprays all over us, and the floor. At this point, I was seriously considering running out of the store, but I notice that the puddle of juice is gaining momentum towards the “too-nice-of-a-guy” clerk, busy cleaning up our other mess. He once again, just smiles and says, “Not your day, huh?” and proceeds to clean up the new mess.

Well, you would think that this story would be over, but no. Now, the entirely frazzled me, goes to pay for the juice, and the gallon jug that is now broken, is still filled a quarter of the way, so I decide to set it on the counter. In my utter frustration, I set the jug down too hard and a geyser of grape juice lands all over the completely shocked cashier.

I won’t be frequenting that store any time in the near future or maybe even, ever again. I bet the store personnel started thinking that they were all victims of Candid Camera!”

No horse pucky, true story. I found this true account, in the printed pages of my online pregnancy journal, found in a Mattel’s Hot Wheels paper folder; the folder having a copyright date of 1997.

I think that it is great when you can still laugh at yourself, twenty years later. I can’t wait for the time when we can all look at this coronavirus situation in the rear view mirror, and perhaps even get a couple of chuckles out of what is otherwise, a horrific ordeal.

Stay well, my friends.

Fortune for the day – “Just remain in the center, watching, and then forget that you are there.” – Lao Tzu

From the “No Horse Pucky” Archives

Fortune for the day – “Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.”- Albert Einstein

The time has come for another “No Horse Pucky” story. I haven’t recounted one of these types of stories, on the blog, in a long, long time. This story is from long ago. I wasn’t even married when it happened. I was engaged to be married, though.

It all happened in an ugly, green minivan. That particular minivan ruined minivans for me, for the rest of my life, despite a minivan’s convenient nature, which would have come in quite in handy, for a mother of a large brood like mine. You see, I was 23 years old and the ugly minivan, was an all expense paid company car. I had inherited the minivan from the previous textbook sales representative, a middle-aged family man, whose position I had taken over, after he left to go to a different company. I had sold my Barbie car (as my Dad liked to call it), a bright red, zippy Miata convertible, and I was now sporting around town in an unsightly, lumbering hunter green minivan. Blech!

Anyway, one evening on the commute home, being stuck at a long traffic light, I got distracted. I got distracted by my new, shiny, lovely engagement ring. I am, admittedly, a highly distractible driver. (My sister once said that I drive like it is an afterthought to everything else that I am doing.) I decided to take my engagement ring off, to admire it from all different angles, while waiting at the stoplight. While I was gazing adoringly at my new bauble, the light changed, and the rightfully irritated driver behind me, blew his horn loudly and long-ly. It startled me and I jumped, which made my engagement ring fall out of my hands, slide down the steering wheel column, down into a crack where the steering wheel connects into the dashboard.

At the next traffic light, I decided to use a pen to try to pry the crack open a little bit, so that I could slide my ring back up into my hands, to put it back onto its rightful finger. I pried the crack open so wide that the force of gravity swiftly swooped in, to teach me a lesson and the ring fell down into the crack, now disappearing from my sight. I started panicking, imagining that perhaps the ring had fallen out on to the road, as if the minivan was a bottomless car, the type driven by Fred Flintstone or Barney Rubble. (the van was pretty bad but not THAT bad) In my hysterical state, I cut off three lanes of traffic to take a sharp right turn into the nearest service station that happened to be right there, like a lighthouse, a great beacon of hope, in the desert of my despair.

“Help me! Help me, please. My engagement ring fell behind my steering column!” I shouted out to the man in the back corner of the garage. The man, covered in grease, eyed me up and down, suspiciously and motioned for me to pull the minivan into a stall of his garage. He dismissed my silly fears of the ring falling onto the highway and told me to go calm myself down, in his small, dumpy waiting room.

About a half hour later, the man sauntered into the waiting room, holding my engagement ring. He informed me that he had to remove the steering wheel, to retrieve my poor ring, which had been like a small, innocent, pretty animal, waiting patiently, yet desperately, at the bottom of a dark, smelly well.

“Ma’am”, he addressed me with a stern scowl on his grease-marked face. “Let this be a lesson to you. This is why we DON’T take these things off.”

No horse pucky.