I took the week of our move off work. I was floating on fumes and nary a wisp of patience or kindness when it finally arrived. Months of living out of boxes after a year of living in suburban hell, movers that were four hours late, cable guys that were two hours early, boxes and kittens and fur balls like tumbleweeds dancing across concrete had taken their toll. The Mc didn’t have enough PTO saved up to unpack with me and wow, what a blessing. I needed time to nest, recharge, reacclimate and reengage, Mr. Sulu! Preferably solo Sulu.

After threve bijillion trips from the apartment to the condo to the apartment to the condo with my not-as-much-cargo-space-as-you’d-think filled to the gills with plants, shoes, and piles of items I failed to pack for the movers in what I can only describe as stress induced delusions of “I can get that-itis”, I decided I’d stop. I’d stop on the way to the condo and treat myself to a little mani-pedi action at a place I’d just been introduced to to a few months before.

After a delicious soak and with warmed silk eye pillow and buckwheat neck pillows in place, I was reclined in an anti-gravity chair and starting to check out. My technician and I chatted while she massaged and trimmed, then she fell silent.

“Huh.”
“What is it?” I whipped my eye pillow off as she lifted my foot this way and that, angling it in the light, sqinting her eyes and saying “huh” again.
“I’ll be right back.”

She gets up and scurries off, leaving me to lift my foot to my face, mortified, blushing wildly and counting my blessings that it’s 2pm on a weekday and I’m the only one in the salon.

A few moments later she returns with reinforcements. An attractive blond, presumably the salon manager hmmmed and grunted while examining my feet. The concensus: some sort of fungus and it wasn’t athletes foot.

I yelped and whimpered and whines the likes of Nellie on Little House on the Prarie seeped out of my lips with words like “I’m the cootie customer!” and “I have funky feet!”

I was horrified. I’m still horrified. You’re probably horrified. The next time you see me you’ll stare at my feet, unable to think of anything else. It’s happening to me every morning.

Luckily I have an awesome GP about my age who also grew up in Anchorage, and my visit started off with a good ten minutes of Palin mocking. Ahhhh a slice of home right here in the hot hot.

Short story far longer than it should be, whatever it is isn’t anything special or that scary. I have a fancy lotion to make the dead skin on my feet slough off and I need to stay hydrated, and maybe not wear flip flops in the rain in Atlanta anymore…though he tried to convince me that didn’t have anything to do with it. Psha. Like he’s a doctor or something.

I’m not a huge fan of the fact that my skincare “regimen” involves prescription topicals for both acne and aging.

We’re all raised with an understanding that our blue haired loved ones say whatever they feel like. Right? I’ve always attributed it to — and perhaps you have too — being old. Living so long and experiencing so much that you have the knowledge and the right to say what you want when you want to whoever you want. I’ve also always run on a belief that my parents forced into my brain with a ball pin hammer: older folks are always right.

Recently I’ve been exposed to behavior that uncovers another theory - albeit second hand.

The Mc’s mother had surgery last week for an aneurysm in her abdomen, and in the days that followed as he and his sister doted on her and did their best to make her comfortable, they were routinely assaulted.

Now I don’t mean to imply that she was outright mean, but rather that she’d forgotten how to say “please”, “thank you” or anything in between that resembled what we were all taught in our youth via glares and embarrassing corrections in front of friends.

A good chunk of this - in my eyes - is attributable to the fact that these were her children. Right? I mean, if I shoved something over 5lbs out of my vagina and sent it to college, I’d feel entitled to having them do chores without any niceties.

That said, another part of the program is this: she (they) is (are) no longer in a situation where pleasantries are relevant. She lives with her sister on an expanse of acreage in the house their daddy built. If I lived with my siblings, I’d probably stop being polite after a while, too. And add to that I’m 70 years old and don’t have time or breath for please and thank you’s? Yeah, they’d go the way of Palin’s credibility once she opened her mouth.

There’s also the caveat that she’s medicated. I’ll give ya that.

Big picture: your thoughts?

Do we slowly loose things we learned when we don’t have an opportunity to use the “skills” every day? If I don’t ride a bike for twenty years, am I going to forget how? Or is it more like the three years of Spanish you took in high school - and all you need to get by is “dos cervesas por favor” or “los banyos?”. If you don’t use “please” and “thank-you”, will they just plum fall out of your head?

The Mc is in south Georgia with his momanem which means that if I don’t want Grayson and Monty pooping on my head in the middle of the night, I have to clean the crapomatic.

My least favorite chore ever.

It occurred to me this morning somewhere deep in my hazmat/archeologist suit that I was extracting out formations that resembled other things and I quickly found myself playing the cloud game: “that one looks like Mickey Mouse! That one looks like a chicken drumstick!”

I need help.

Lately I’ve felt like the cherubs in this picture: full of life but trapped in stone. Not unlike Han Solo and the carbon freeze…but with a marginally better outfit and less chest hair.

Tomorrow I’ll be home all day while our closets are being installed, and I’ll have a chance to write. To sit and doddle and think and regroup and assess and make new.

I can’t wait.

Pardon the mess. Everything will be normalish in a while.

We’re still unpacking. Related: anyone have tips for removing entirely too much drywall dust from a hardwood floor?

In other potentially even less interesting news, we finally named the kitten. Everyone, I’d like to officially introduce you to Monty, seen here snuggling with his older brother Grayson.