The Runaway Wheelchair Incident

I have recently been visiting my father. He is a senior citizen. I would call him elderly but he would probably object to that and hit me with his cane.

Upon my arrival here I found out that he had managed to twist his knee and injure the artificial contraption that was implanted in his knee about two years ago when he had partial knee replacement.  Way to go Dad!  Don't think I've ever known anyone who could damage an artificial knee. We are very talented in my family (and not too graceful).

Unfortunately he was in a lot of pain so the day after my arrival I helped take him to the ortho's office where an x-ray confirmed that the plate attached to the upper leg area had indeed come loose.  The doctor explained that the only way to fix it would be to perform surgery and re-connect the plate to the bone.  Hope he has some gorilla glue! Surgery was scheduled and we proceeded to make numerous trips to the lab/doctors/radiation facilities for various pre-op tests and procedures.  Due to the injury my dad has only been able to get around on a walker or with a wheelchair. And while I am no spring chicken myself,  I have been providing assistance in taking him to his appointments as I can put the wheelchair into the trunk of the car and get it back out.  Hey, in life with the seniors the able bodied one rules!

So far I have been doing pretty good driving the chair (well except those few times I hit a wall trying to navigate a tight turn) but today things got, well got away from me.  We had an early morning appointment for more lab work at the hospital.  I parked the car, got the wheelchair out of the trunk and helped my dad into the chair.  I then turned around to close the trunk and when I turned back noticed that my dad had taken off down the slope of the parking lot.  At first I wondered where he was going.  I could see his feet dancing at the front of the chair and I thought that perhaps he had scooted himself along in an effort to move the chair.  Then I realized, with horror, that he was in a runaway chair!  I had forgotten to put the brake on!  Oh, crap, crap, crap!  I took off running after him but did not catch him before he hit the curb. Yikes! Luckily he didn't fly out of the chair and land on the ground.  Whew!  I grabbed the chair, got it turned around and headed in the right direction. And luckily we had a good laugh over it because in my family we have a strange sense of humor. In fact by the time we got to the lobby of the hospital we were laughing so hard we must have looked like a couple of idiots! His surgery is scheduled for tomorrow so, hopefully, I will master this wheelchair driving before I have to wheel him around with a leg full of stitches!

Wish me luck!

What's a Rose by any other name?

                                                                

I was just reading the lists of the a) most popular baby names and, b) most hated baby names.  Seems this year's top names include:  Jacob, Ethan, Michael, Jaden and Isabella, Sophia, Emma and Oliva.  On the most "hated" names list we had:  Hayden, Jayden, Kayden, Braden and Aiden (ok no one likes these rhyming names).  Girls names included:  Nevaeh ("Heaven" spelled backwards), Destiny (People dislike names that confer a virtue onto a child and many associated this name with exotic dancers.), Madison, Gertrude and Bertha (which are on the 'most hated' list).  OK, I am in agreement on the Gertrude and Bertha (who the heck names kids these any more? Other than Julia Roberts who named her daughter Hazel-ugh). It seems that "Elvis" has also left the building when it comes to baby names. "Elvis" has resided in the top 1,000 names for the past 55 years. Time for it to retire.

It seems that there is also now a backlash against "unusual" spellings for names and I am totally in agreement with that thought!  I grew up with a name that, while not so very unusual, no one ever seemed to get right. I hated it all through school and am still not fond of that name. I remember telling my mother one day that I disliked my name and she got highly offended as she thought it was a nice name!  Well, she didn't have to live with it!  I remember my daughter going through school with kids who had names like:  LeRoi (I thought this was just a weird spelling of Leroy but was told it was pronounced "Le" as in french "Le Baguette" and "Roye".  There was another kid whose name was "Nickalai" who the kids thought was named "Nickle Eye". They thought it was a strange name and envisioned a kid with a nickle in his eye.

I also hate it when folks get "cute" with names. I went to school with a kid named "Merry" because she was born on Christmas.  Just recently Bryan Adams named his new baby girl "Mirabella Bunny" because she was born near Easter.  Really???  Somehow I bet that she will not think that name is cute when she gets older, unless of course the Playboy empire is still around and ole' Hugh hasn't managed to die off yet.  Maybe he can marry her and make her a 'real' bunny! Ugh.

The article also mentioned that some people felt names like "Destiny" had a feel of a stripper name. Yeah, I think giving your kid a stripper name is a bad idea.  I worked with a guy once who named his kid "Misty Dawn". Talk about a stripper name! Either that or she was named for a race horse!

I understand that parents want to be "original" and provide their child with a name that is unique, but some common sense is needed!  So, here are my suggestions on thoughts to consider when naming your child:

1 - No weird spellings!  Most likely your ancestors came here from another country and altered the spelling of their names to blend in with the melting pot of America. Give them some respect and stick with that idea.

2 - No names that other kids will make fun of.  (This means you who named their kid "Floyd")

3 - Do not name your kid after a place! ie: Dallas, Brooklyn, Toledo, I don't care if they were conceived there! And believe me THEY won't want to know it either!

4 - No suffixes or prefixes to regular names (X-Shane-A)

5 - Probably not a good idea to name your kid after a celebrity that is popular now.  Things change with time and who would want to name their kid after Mel Gibson now??

6 - Cute names are not so cute when these children become adults.  So unless you are raising a stripper or future centerfold, no "Candy", "Brandy" or other names after food or booze.

7 - I am hopeful we have passed the era of "Moon Unit", "Dweezil" (Frank Zappa's kids) and names like "Tree", "River", "Rainbow". Children with these names will be clogging up the courts in the future petitioning to change their names to John and Mary.

And, finally, it doesn't matter so much what you name your kid.  Somewhere along the way they will either acquire a nickname ("Junior", "Bubba", "Chip", "Miley") or will create a new name for themselves to go with their chosen profession ("JayZ", "Lil Wayne", "Ludachris", "W") and that name you so carefully selected will be left in the dust like the '91 Geo Tracker they were conceived in.

Losing It

I am visiting my sister. She is just slightly younger than I and we are both over 50 at this point.  We are not quite as old as the ladies in the photo above, but we sometimes think we are.  Lately we have been having problems with communication.  The words just don't come out right.  For instance, the other day I was complaining that my "eggs were lakey". What I meant was "My legs are achy".  Of course that made much more sense than having my eggs be lakey. After all at our ages we have no more eggs!  My sister has also suffered from similar problems with word formation and was trying to say "dislexic" the other day and managed to say "lixdicksia". After I went and changed my underwear, as I had soiled it laughing at this strange turn of a phrase, I told her we really needed to see about this problem we were having. She agreed and we decided to drive to the store to buy some Ginko. Not sure that it would help, but it could't hurt.  When we came back home I exclaimed "Someone is here" as there was a car in the driveway. She looked at me like I had grown a second head and asked what I meant. I said "There's a car in the driveway". She said "Where?"  I said "right there" and pointed to the white sedan parked by the house. She turned to me and said "That is YOUR car!"  Suddenly I realized she was right, it was my car. But to be fair, I had a rental that week so I didn't immediately recognize it.  That's my excuse any way. Not sure what HER excuse was several days later when, once again we had been out to the store, and arrived home when she said "Someone is here".  I then looked at her like SHE had grown and extra head and informed her that was MY car parked in the driveway.

We are now religiously taking our Ginko. At all not sure it helping is.  Cripes now I sound like Yoda!

Easter is coming! Annual Peeps Contest!

That's right folks!  It's time once again for the annual Peeps Contest!  With Easter fast approaching The Washington Post is sponsoring its' annual contest asking entrants to provide a diorama featuring the popular and dare I say it? delicious marshmallow Peeps.  I am always amazed by what people come up with for these contests and this year was no exception.

I particularly love the one above with the cast of the Muppet Show although it was not the winner of last year's contest. I'm sure the entries for this year's contest will be just as creative. I would love to enter, but am just to lazy to put one together, although I am tempted to create a "Scandal" themed one featuring, of course, Olivia Peep.

I can remember getting Peeps in my Easter basket and that was back when they only came in one color and shape.  Yellow and shaped like little chicks.  Ah, yes! Those wonderful peeps who managed to get stuck to all the plastic grass in the basket rendering them pretty much inedible. Still we managed to peel the grass off and shove them in our mouths.  What better breakfast than sugar covered marshmallow and chocolate bunnies?

Evidently, Peeps are made of stuff that lasts forever.  Hmmmm, makes you wonder about eating them though.

It was a dark and stormy night

                               
There was a huge storm all over the south last night. I managed to drive through it. Over and over.
The storm had come through over night Sunday into Monday, When I left yesterday I thought I had it in front of me and, that it would move out before I got to it.  Unfortunately, I managed to catch up to it last night and ended up travelling into driving rain and huge lightning strikes.

The radio kept issuing storm warnings including tornado watches, flood warnings, power outages and trees down in the road.  My car was buffeted by the wind and it was hard to keep the wheels from moving all over the road.

I was headed east along with the storm and knew that I was due to make a turn to the south within an hour of the 6:00 PM report last evening.  As I approached the intersection where I was due to start driving south, the storm had started to let up and I breathed a sigh of relief that I could leave the storm behind.  I turned south and drove for about thirty minutes when signs of the storm reared their heads again.  The rain increased along with huge streaks of lightning which lit up the entire sky.  New reports on the radio indicated that I had somehow managed to turn back into the storm.  New reports of tornado watches and flood warnings were being issued from the radio.  Crap! This storm was sticking to me like a three year old hanging on his mother's leg on the first day of pre-school.

I decided to stop and eat dinner hoping the storm would blow out by the time I was done.  A Shoney's appeared up ahead and I stopped to satisfy a craving I had been having for pancakes and bacon. Nothing like comfort food after a few hours of tense driving.

By the time dinner was done the storm had moved on and I gingerly stepped over puddles in the parking lot to get to my car.  Aha, I thought, now I can drive a few more hours to make it to the half-way point in my trip. I hopped in the car and proceeded to drive south again. About an hour into the drive, the rain started up once more along with the lightning.  Renewed radio reports now indicated that the storm had tracked south and I was going to drive right into it-again!  The wind picked up and the rain began to really come down hard.  I gave up and decided to call it a night with a plan to stop at the very next decent hotel to come along.

This morning's news reports showed the devastation caused by the storm and made me glad I had stopped. The sun is now shining and today's drive should be fine.

Wiki Wacky

It's amazing what you can find when you have unlimited amount of time and a computer.  I recently discovered that there are just a ton of sites inspired by "Wikipedia".  Of course, due to the many recent news broadcasts, we are all probably aware of "Wikileaks", but did you know that there is a whole website devoted to the multitude of Star Wars fans known as "Wookieepedia"? 

Or how about a site devoted to the nerdy fans of the now defunct television show "Lost"?  Yep, you got it there is "Lostpedia".

And speaking of lost, if you happen to get lost there is "Wikimapia" to help you find your way.  If you have trouble figuring out how to do things you can always visit "Wikihow" which in case you don't find what you are looking for there, you can visit "Wikianswers".

Maybe you might want to visit Weeki Wachee Springs, Florida where I went one summer to see the mermaid show. Ok, that might be a stretch but I am getting a Wikiheadache.