Sarah almost dies. But then doesn't. And it's funny.

Hello everyone!

Guess what?  Now that I'm unemployed, my life is funny again because I have to leave my happy little cave in my house and go out and see things and do stuff.

Having a funny life, after what happened to me last night, is way overrated.  I like to call this story:  The time I also died on my Wedding Anniversary.

Hubby and I have a new favorite show on Netflix.  It's "Somebody Feed Phil."  Phil is Phil Rosenthal, the former writer and producer for "Everybody Loves Raymond."  Nowadays Phil takes a camera crew out into the world, headed by his brother Richard, and he eats things and talks to people while the cameras roll.  Phil is awkward and goofy and we just love him, and the show.

Here's the thing:  Whenever we see something in a movie or on TV, we want it.  Well, we do have the money to really travel, and we don't have the money, time, or kitchen tools to cook half the stuff we see Phil eating on the show. However, we DO have the money and access for a very large emporium of spirts and whatnot.  

(And more will now mean "near death" for me.)

Total Wine is generally the place we go after we've watched any cooking or travel show that features local spirits or brew. This is why we have a couple dozen bottles of some very strange stuff in our cabinet.

So on the last episode of Phil, he went to Oaxaca, Mexico. And he ate amazing food made by amazing chefs and saw amazing sites.  Blah, blah, blah.  What caught our eyes, is that Oaxaca is the home for Mezcal, Tequila's smokier cousin.  

We at the Bradley house like tequila.  We really do.  And, I recall having mezcal many years ago, and not hating it, so there's that.  Thus it was that while out and about and doing things, we stopped at Total Wine and picked up a bottle of mezcal produced in Oaxaca.  

Making mezcal...getting ready to kill me.


That was Sunday we picked it up.  Yesterday, Wednesday, was our anniversary.   32 years. Thank you.

Here's our wedding party. That's me in the middle in the white dress. It was 1990, don't judge.

So last night we went out to Bonefish Grill.  It's where we go to celebrate our anniversaries, generally, and my birthday.  They have a cosmo there that's amazing and they only serve it in Winter, starting on my birthday, and, apparently, in July (because Christmas in July or whatever.)  So we had our dinner, and it was a weird dinner because I'm 100% positive our waiter, Todd, was stoned.  The tip offs were subtle: He moved at half the speed everyone in the building did.  He told us it was his first night, which it absolutely wasn't.  He said "That's my favorite" to everything we ordered.  Oh, and he brought us our bill before he brought us our food.  And he brought the other table their food before their appetizer.  And he was going to be the star of this blog...until we got home and I nearly died.

We got home, fired up the latest episode of "Better Call Saul" (Because what else would you watch on your 32nd anniversary?) and we decided to toast each other with a shot of our new mezcal.  Hubby opened the bottle and poured two shots in our special Tequila shot glasses (which, if you don't know, are about double the size of a regular shot glass) and we saluted each other.

I snapped my wrist to fire the mezcal down my throat, a move I've done once or twice, and something...happened.  I don't know if I missed my mouth completely and just poured 1.5 ounces of real Mexican mezcal up my nostrils or if I simply doused my face with it or if I hit my mouth and my taste buds rose up as one and revolted, but suddenly my face was on fire and I was spewing about ten times the amount of mezcal that was in the glass all over the kitchen.

By the time I turned the 90 degrees from the counter to the sink, all of the orifices of my face had swollen and filled with fluid.  My eyes were puffy and running with tears. I had great wads of phlegm in my throat. My lips were numb. And my nose...my poor, poor nose...was filled to swelling with snot.  My throat and nostrils and lips were also on fire.  Like jumping off the diving board at the local pool and hitting the water without plugging you nose and inhaling all the chlorine.  Except the chlorine in this case was ON FIRE and I couldn't get away from it because it was trapped and entombed in my head with gallons and gallons of bodily goo.

I blew my nose to get relief, but when I did that, I'd cough and my nose would fill up again.

Fun fact: I'm claustrophobic to the point that I don't like wearing masks or hoods.  And if I can't breathe through my nose, I tend to panic.  So, I walked up and down the hall gagging out "I can't BREATHE!"

So, there I was, my eyes puffy and red and runny. My face all red.  I'm coughing up gobs of phlegm and every time I cough my nasal passages close up 100% and that makes me panic which makes me pant which stirs up the gunk in my throat which makes me cough which closes up my nasal passages which makes me panic...oh yeah, and my throat is burning with the heat of a 1000 flames and that's making me nauseous which is making me cough which is...you get where I'm going with this.

This went on for over an hour.

OVER AN HOUR.

I caught a look at myself in the mirror at one point and thought, "Wow...this is sexy at its best."

To his credit, Hubby did not laugh, although he told me later it all started out funny when I was initially spewing mezcal out, because it looked funny. And also to his credit, he mopped up much of whatever viscousness came out of me that didn't hit the sink.  So that was nice.

The hellacious burning in my throat and nostrils didn't go away for more than 3 hours.  And, honestly, I still have flaming snot (band name?) clogging my nose and throat now, more than 12 hours later. My throat is scalded, my nose burns, my eyes are bugged out and painful and I have a raging headache. Oh, and I'm fairly certain my snot is corrosive.

AND I DIDN'T SWALLOW ONE DROP OF THE STUFF!

There's no wisdom anyone can glean from this, except maybe, if you're doing shots of anything...DON'T MISS!

A Story from my childhood: Fartloaf

Good morning my friends!

Continuing my trip down memory lane this week, I started thinking about my mom's cooking.  If you've read this blog for a while, you know that wasn't exactly a happy, misty nostalgic moment.

My mother is not a good cook.  To be fair, her mother before her was not a good cook.  It wasn't a lack of talent, for I can recall meals at my grandmother's home that were tasty, and I know my mother can whip up a fairy decent lasagna when called upon.  And, to be very fair to my mother's side of the family, my paternal grandmother did not enjoy cooking, and therefore did not do it terribly often.  She preferred going out to dinner, a recessive trait I've inherited.  No, the women in my family were not bad cooks because they had no talent.  They were bad cooks because they just didn't care about cooking all that much. 

Case in point, my mother's meatloaf.  There are many jokes about meatloaf, but when it comes down to it, there's a reason everyone knows about meatloaf.  It's because, even the lamest cook can make a meatloaf that people will enjoy.  I do.  It's one of the few things my kids eat that I make.  My mother's meatloaf was, when first out of the oven, a delight.  It was hot, bubbly, just crusty enough on the outside and sweet from the ketchup glaze. 

When it cooled off, however, it became something else entirely.  My brother has some very colorful names for it, but I like to call it FARTLOAF.

Yes, when my mother's meatloaf cooled, it smelled like farts.  I'm not sure why.  Perhaps it was the green peppers she stuck in there  "for color."  (Is there anyone out there who's on the fence about eating meatloaf and then sees a touch of green and says, "Yes, that is the loaf of meat I'm going to eat!"  No, I didn't think so.)  I'm not a scientist, I cannot say what happened chemically speaking during the cooling process.

Since eating farts is not appetizing, there were always leftovers of the Loaf of Fart.  Which was perfect for my mother, who used said fartful meat for lunches the following day.

I'll give you a moment to wrap your head around the image of an inch thick slab of cold meatloaf nestled on two pieces of whole wheat bread.  And not the soft, mouth friendly whole wheat we have today, no, no;  the twigs and bark type of whole wheat that crumbled in your hands.  Now, put that sandwich in a fourth grader's lunch.

A meatloaf sandwich in a child's lunch?  Why ever would you do that, Dear?

So you can see why I , the fourth grader, threw those chunky, crumbly, fart tasting sandwiches away.  See, the worst crime you could commit in my family back then, besides lying, was throwing away food.  It was the 70's, we were the lower lower lower middle class, and wasting food was wrong.  Also, we lived under the iron clad rule that you had to eat your main course before dessert.  Generally this rule was moot since my mother, on an eternal quest to get my father to lose weight, rarely provided a dessert of any kind. 

It's completely logical, then, that I would have to dispose of the the sandwich if for no other reason than I wanted to eat whatever "dessert" sort of thing was in my lunch.  (Generally a home made marshmallow rice cereal treat with as little marshmallow as possible.  It really was like eating mildly sticky cereal.)  And I had  a sweet set up.  I couldn't toss it at school, no.  You can't throw out food at a parochial school...that's sinful.  But, on the walk home there was a vacant house.  And in front of that vacant house there was a ditch and in that ditch was a culvert.  And in that culvert were the remains of about six months' worth of my sandwiches.

Yep, it was fool proof.  I walked home alone, I ditched whatever lunch remains I had, and I moved on.  Given how perfect this was, I still scratch my head over the rest of this story.

One day, like any other, I had a fartloaf and wheat sandwich to dispose of.  Why I didn't go straight home from school that day, and send the sandwich to the culvert, I will never know, but on that day I threw the sandwich away at school and a classmate, I'd like to use her real name because it's one of those names you never forget, but let's call her Dora Donaldson, saw me and instantly told the teacher.

Let me tell you about Dora Donaldson.  Ours was a tiny school and there were only three girls in my class.  Dora, Kayla, the super cool girl who had horses, and me.  We were friends because there simply was no one else.  But Dora was one of those girls the teachers all like, but the kids can't stand because they constantly wreck whatever game you're playing at recess with things like, "Well, it just doesn't make any sense.  I'm left handed, so if I get a hit in softball, I should run to the left."  (No worries, Dora wasn't any good at sports, so the actuality of her getting a hit was non existent.)

Dora had lunch issues of her own.  She hated all things fruit.  But Dora was clever.  She would tell Teacher she was going to eat her fruit on the playground at lunch recess.  Then she'd go out, put the fruit in her special spot  (35 years later, I bet I can go to that playground and there will be a grove of apple trees there.) and "forget it."

Yeah, so Dora tattled.  That meant a note from the Teacher, who made me gather up as many of the pieces of the sandwich  (which had all but disintegrated in the garbage can by this point.) and put them back in my lunch box  (Emergency! with the Thermos!)  I had to take note and lunch home.

Now, a normal child with a normal childhood would have tossed the note.  Not me.  I wasn't living a normal childhood.  See, my DAD was the OTHER teacher in this two room school.  So I was smart enough to know that my teacher and he had conversations, and undoubtedly, the subject of a note would show up.  So I couldn't throw out the note.  I had to come up with a plan.

And I still had to ditch the sandwich. 

Hey, rule number one in the house:  Don't eat dessert before your main meal.  Since dessert was long digested, I had to do something with the chunks of farty wheaty goodness in my lunchbox. So, passing by my favorite culvert, I dumped the sandwich and cooked up a foolproof plan.

I got in trouble because Dora Donaldson lied.

Yep, that and some real tears was going to get me out of this.  Never mind that there were countless witnesses to me picking the sandwich out of the trash.  This was the gold star story that was going to save me from a week of no TV. (No Emergency?  No Johnny and Roy? Horrors!)

I'm not going to bore you with the court room drama, or lack thereof, that followed.  My parents were fooled by this story for about six seconds, which is how long it took my father to ask where the sandwich was now.  Knowing I couldn't tell the truth, I said, "I ate it."

Yeah, I'm not what you'd call a criminal mastermind.

Well, I didn't lose a week of TV.  No, I lost a month of desserts.  (Sort of like getting Al Capone on tax evasion.  Without the evidence, they couldn't really prove I'd thrown out the sandwich.  So, they nailed me for eating dessert before the main meal.)  The worst of it was my darling Aunt Carol  (her real name) was coming for a long weekend.  Aunt Carol, unlike my mother, was a BRILLIANT cook, and her speciallty was dessert.  So, in the final review, it was a painful punishment.

Did that stop me from throwing sandwiches in the culvert?  Nope. 

Know what did?  Two things:

1)  Shortly after this, someone actually bought the vacant house. Food dumping became trespassing and littering pretty quickly.

2)  We moved.  My walk to school got shorter, and there was no place to hide food.  I wound up having to actually eat it.

I shared this story with my parents about ten years ago, at Thanksgiving.  (Now you understand why I try to avoid Thanksgiving?)  I figured that, at age 42, I was safe from further punishment.  Besides, confession is good for the soul.

It wasn't, not really.  My mother glared at me over a platter of dried out turkey and muttered something about being poor and being grateful for having any food. My father slapped a spatula of pasty, unbuttered, dry mashed potatoes onto his plate (They only parted from the spatula if you gave it a really good whip of the wrist.) and said nothing.  Which really doesn't mean he disagreed with me or anything, it's just a funny mental image of him smacking mashed potatoes onto his plate.

Woodman's and my favorite episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond." Can you see all the similarities?

Good morning!

It isn't often that I write a Tuesday blog, mostly because Tuesdays are not historically good for me and I try to stay out of the way of pretty much everything that could hurt me:  pointy things, cars, computers, socks...

Anyway, yesterday something happened and I have to rant about it because even now, the next day, I'm still furious.  But here's the "Todd and Tom" warning:  This is going to deal with certain female issues and if you're going to be offended by that...or if you're going to just say, "Oh it's because she's PMS-ing" then stop reading now and never speak to me again.

Okay, let's begin.

I like grocery shopping.  I especially enjoy it at Woodman's where the aisles are wide and the selection is always surprising.  The produce is not great...I go to Sam's Club or Brennan's for that most of the time, but otherwise, Woodman's is a great grocery store where I can find everything I need at a good price.

Until yesterday.

The last several weeks I've been retaining a bit of water weight.  How else would you explain four to five workouts a week, walking 12000 steps a day, drinking 64 plus ounces of water, and still gaining 7 pounds in the last two weeks?  Water weight. So I decided that yesterday while at the grocery store, I'd get some water pills along with other female punctuation items.

I should also mention that my right hip has been giving me grief, partially due to the increased difficulty I set for myself in weight training and treadmill work. I find if I walk on solid ground for an extended period of time, I get a pretty severe pain in my upper back hip and along the side of my thigh.  But no worries yesterday...I was just going grocery shopping for a few things.

Right.  We wouldn't be here if I found everything and went home with no pain and all was well.

I filled my cart with the food items I needed except for the produce, (I needed small green onions for a recipe), and I headed over to health and beauty to find my water pills and other female punctuation items.

Water pills are typically found with other diet pills and diet foods, so that's where I started. Here's what I found:

4 different kinds of protein "MUSCLE MILK" powder.
Slim quick for men.  (Wasn't this supposed to be the breakthrough diet thing for women?)
80 square feet of protein bars with male hikers on the wrapper.

No water pills.

Okay, I thought, no worry. I'll just go over to "Feminine Care" and they'll be there. That makes sense, after all, to put all the feminine items in the feminine care aisle.

Ya know what's in the Feminine Care aisle at Woodmans?  Adult diapers for men.  Also, condoms and pleasure gels "FOR HIM."  Ya know what's not there?  WATER PILLS!

Well there's one more place they "could be."  They could be with the Midol, Pamparin and other female punctuation symptom relievers in the pain relief aisle.  I mean, it's a stretch, but it's not unheard of.  So, my hip starting to pound because now I've been hiking through Woodman's expanses for forty minutes, I head to the pain relief aisle. 

Know what's there?  

Six kinds of pills expressly for migraine sufferers, fourteen kinds of PM pain relievers, three different brands of pills for urinary pain and FOUR.....count then FOUR kinds of pain pills for restless leg syndrome.  

Know what's NOT THERE?  

No Pamparin. No Midol. NO WATER PILLS!

Not a one.  None. No female punctuation fain relievers AT ALL.

Well, this can't be, I tell myself. So, my hip and lower back now on fire because I'm dragging a full grocery cart around the store, and my skin is on fire because I'm in the middle of an allergy issue and if I sweat it makes the itching and burning worse, I retrace my steps.  Diet aisle:  No, nothing.

Feminine care aisle: Nothing.

Pain reliever:  nothing.

I look at the big Woodman's clock and realize I've been on this quest for more than an hour at this point. I've put on 2500 steps in the store (good) and I'm limping to the point where people are starting to stare. (Not so good.)  I'm also, I think, talking out loud, hence more staring, because...yes...I could do with a good dose of the punctuation symptom reliever and the rage is building.

I should mention, I don't PMS like most women. I have that high powered "I'm going to kill someone if I don't get chocolate and an episode of 'Grey's Anatomy' RIGHT NOW" PMS.  And I never seem to remember that I get it because it's a surprise when it hits.  Like when I'm standing in the pain reliever aisle at Woodman's muttering "You have GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!  WHAT KIND OF SEXIST OPERATION IS THIS PLACE?"

Okay, maybe I wasn't muttering. Maybe I was talking out loud...maybe I was talking a little louder than just 'out loud.'

I did a third lap around the football field that is the health and beauty department in Woodman's and came up with nothing.   At this point I was sweating, my skin was burning, my hip and thigh were crippled, and I was full on into PMS rage.  I approach the checkout, which thankfully isn't loaded with other customers, and I have a little bit of an out of body experience.  Here's how it goes:

"Hi, did you find everything okay?"  This is the chirpy check out girl.

"No, I did not."  This is me.

"Oh what didn't you find?"

"I didn't find any water pills, Midol or Pamparin."

This is where the clerk's eyes would glaze over and he, because it's a he I'm waiting for in line, would assume it's all because I'm a woman...and I have PMS.  And that's why I'm in a rage.

No, I think, returning to my body after these thoughts, I'm in a rage because what I'm looking for are basic things that should be in a grocery store.  

And then I was reminded of my favorite "Everybody Loves Raymond" episode. (Go ahead, watch the clip.)  I realized that no matter how I explained to the clerk, he'd just look at me like I'd lost my mind, I was a nutty female.  If I told him what I couldn't find, he'd go back to the break room and say, "Oh wow, you would NOT believe the woman who came through my line today. Couldn't find water pills and midol and lost her mind!"

Because...as Debra points out to Ray...there's nothing in this store for BITCHY.

So I bit my lip. I didn't wig out on the clerk, because I'm sure he's a nice guy.  I should also point out that Woodman's clerks aren't chirpy. They're too busy for that nonsense.  I got through the line I got home and I slumped in a chair watching "House MD" on Netflix because I've seen all the 'Grey's Anatomy' and everyone on House is way sicker than I could ever feel, which made me feel a bit better.

Oh, and you know where there is plenty of stuff for bitchy?  Walgreens.  Yeah, two brands of water pills. Almost sold out  (they are now!) but they're there.

FLASHBACK FIVE FOR FRIDAY! 5 reasons I won't be a TV mom.

Good afternoon everyone!  I'm running way behind in my day thanks to some self inflicted drama at work. and yes, it is not a work day for me, but hey, why wouldn't we just call Sarah at home and bring the drama to her?

Anyway, below is a five for Friday I wrote in the early days of the blog. Enjoy!




My mother often tells the story of the very first TV they ever got.  They put the the TV on the table, turned it on, and waited for it to warm up.  As the tubes warmed and began to lighten the black screen, the black, gray, and white image of a cartoon pig putting on a girdle opened up before them.  My grandmother, shocked at the image, immediately turned off the TV and said, "If that's the sort of rubbish that's going to be, we don't need a TV."

I often wonder what my grandmother would make of Cialis commercials...much less shows like Teen Mom.

The one constant, I think, over the decades since TV first entered our living rooms, is the TV mom.  Each generation of viewers had their own TV interpretation of a mom.  Some generations had several, conflicting images.  TV moms have varied wildly from each other over the decades, but even as they vary, one thing remains constant for each of them:  I will probably never measure up to TV moms.

So today I give you five reasons why I am not TV mom material.

5)  Claire Huxtable

Raising five children, spanning in age nearly 20 years, and four of them girls?  Being a lawyer is just a survival tactic, given the borderline illegal activity some of those kids dabbled in.  (Vanessa and her trip to see "The Wretched" goes down as my all time favorite TV parenting moment, bar none.)  I am not a lawyer, so I can clearly not manage a household of that many girls.  Although, being married to the Jell-o pudding pop guy would have its benefits.

4)  June Cleaver

Dresses, stockings, and pearls every day?  Not even on a Sunday when I have to stand in front of church and sing.

The only mom of two on this list, June seemed to be perfect.  Perfect house, perfect clothes, semi perfect kids...who made terrible choices when it came to friends.  Seriously, was peer pressure not a thing in the 50's?  If my kids brought home someone named Stinky...or Eddie Haskel...I would sit them down and discuss the wisdom of choosing good friends.  June, however, was a head of her time when it came to the time honored mothering tradition of taking pills to get through the day.  Don't believe me?  Okay, how do you explain the fact that she NEVER RAISED HER VOICE?  Valium is the only answer possible.  She wore stockings every day and never raised her voice.  Yep, Valium.

3)  Shirley Partridge.

As much as I would LOVE to add "Rock Star Matriarch"  to my resume, it's highly unlikely.  Rock star stuff aside, Shirley might have been the closest to REAL a TV mom was going to get in the late 60's and early 70's.  She was often frazzled, raising multiple teens on her own, so who could blame her for putting out once in a while for Reuben Kinkaid, just so they could get a better gig?  (What...she didn't?  Are you sure?)  I do have to take points off, however, for the child switching incident that she didn't seem to notice.  I mean, sure, babies get switched all the time.  But someone stole Chris, her original drummer, and replaced him with some other kid...and she never seemed to notice!

2)  Carole Brady

Often spoken of in the same breath as Shirley Partridge, Carole Brady is more original than we might think.  Sure, she's the epic picture of motherhood from the 70's.  How cool was she, mothering a blended family of six kids?  Very ahead of her time, right?  Oh sure, and she married a gay guy, VERY hip.  She ruled the roost of six kid and a dog in a house that had, for all we know, one bathroom and no working toilet.  How did she do it and still look so great?  One word:  Alice.

1)  Marie Barone

It's a nosy mother, it's an overbearing wife, it's MARIE.  Able to leap all the boundaries of etiquette in a single meal, nosier than a speeding gossip columnist, it's MARIE  Well...while I have a feeling I'd fall into Marie's pattern of smothering love all too easily, two things keep me from it:  I can't abide large amounts of opera, and I do not cook.  (Oh, and yes, she's the other mom of two on the list...but she managed 3 grandchildren...and let's be honest...Frank was a bigger child than all of them.)

So there...five reasons I'll never be a TV mom.