Hair talks to Me...

It's no secret that I'm a woman over forty. Forty-three, to be exact (had a birthday 28 days ago). I started having issues with menopause when I was thirty-four. Yeah, sounds fun, doesn't it?

Well, it isn't. But, that's not what I'm here to share. You see, I sleep with a fan blowing on me. I have the fan directed at my head. Mostly because that's where the bedside table is, partly because when you get hot flashes at night, they're called night sweats and they aren't very fun. When I started doing this, my hair was a lot shorter. (by "a lot shorter", I mean I had really short hair, almost a pixie cut). Now my hair almost reaches my waist. So, after I settle into bed, I lift my hair and move it over to the opposite side of my head from the fan. If I choose to lay on my stomach, I do this by flipping my hair to the fan side, then flipping it back the other way quickly.

That's when the fun began last night...

I did the hair flip and DG said: "Whoa! It's a good thing your hair didn't hit me!"

I flipped it again and said, "Did it hit you that time?"

DG: "Almost. I could feel the breeze as it went past my face. Whoooooshhhhhh..."

There was a pause.

Then he said: "Your hair is a part of you and it don't want you no more. It escapes in the shower."

Me: "What?" (I was laying on my good ear)

DG: "Your hair is tired of the abuse. It told me."

Me: "What abuse?"

DG: "The shampooing, the blow dryer. I heard it talking."

Me: "Why can't I hear it talking? It's on my head."

DG: "Because. You can't. It's talking about you behind your head."

That phrase sent him into a giggling fit that he actually "oohed" at because he couldn't stop.

DG: "They whisper. Like the hair whisperer. So quiet you can't hear it. It's a hair thing."

After a short pause he asked: "Am I drinking?"

Me: "I don't know."

DG: "Only drunk people think that. [scoffing noise] Good thing I'm not drunk!"

Me: "Are you talking to yourself?"

DG: "Are you listening? Then NO! You're hair is like a big whip... [he made a whip-crack noise]."

Me: "If I didn't know you, I would think you were drunk."

DG: "You don't know me."

Me: "Yes, I do."

DG: "You just think that, don't you? With your whip hair [whip-crack noise] and your talking head."

Me: "What does that even mean?"

DG: [whispering] "I don't know. Help me... help me! Hhheeellllp meeeeee!"

Me: "Good night, dear."

DG: [heavy sigh] "Good night."

Ducks in Disguise

We had some errands to run on Monday and I had to drive. Even though DG wanted to drive, his truck was blocked in by our son's car. Our son works nights and sleeps in the daytime (you know, because that's what night-shift workers do). DG can't get into the boy's car, its too small and low to the ground for him. And I have difficulty getting into the car for similar reasons, but in his case, its because of his right-side paralysis. In my case, its because I'm overweight and my legs don't enjoy the contortionist act I have to do to get behind the wheel of a small car. At any rate, I was driving my truck and he was looking out the window.

You know what's weird? My parents had two cars for most of my life. My dad had a truck (we used to go camping every weekend from April till October when I was a kid) and my mom had the car. But if we went anywhere, Dad drove. Even if we were in the car. And DG has his full-size pickup truck (because its the only type of vehicle he can drive where he has the room to move his paralyzed leg out of the way). And we have the four-door, mid-size pickup truck. It was always "HIS truck" and "the truck" when we referred to the separate vehicles. But, when we go somewhere in my truck, I'm driving. Even if he's with me. (he CAN drive my truck, but not as comfortably as he can his full-size pickup truck).

Weird.

But back to the conversation. We stopped at stoplight and it turned green almost immediately. DG exclaimed: "Oh, look at that sad tree!"

I just caught a glimpse of a small pine tree that was all drooped over and quite Charlie Brown-esque. I agreed, it was indeed a sad tree.

DG: "It looks like Charlie Brown's tree."

Me: "It sure does."

DG: "Sad, sad tree..."

Me: "You keep saying I'm the weird one and yet you come up with things like 'sad tree'."

DG: "You ARE weird." and without taking a breath he exclaimed: "Look at all those ducks!"

Me: "Those are geese."

DG: "No, they're not."

Me: "Yes, they are! Those are Canadian geese."

DG: "They're ducks. They're just wearing disguises."

Me: "They're ducks? Dressed like geese?"

DG: "Don't you know? They're spies. Nobody will suspect the ducks."

Me: "Not when they're dressed like geese."

DG: "Of course not. Halloween is coming. They're ready."

I brought up the fact that he avoided the "I'm weird, but you say..." topic again. I said: "You say shit like blankets attacked you in your sleep and then you tell me I'm weird."

DG: "Hey, that actually happened. And I taught them a lesson."

Me: "Rats with little Nike shoes."

DG: "THAT is an actual historical fact! They teach that in SCHOOLS!"

Me: "Of course they do."

DG: "Rat schools."

We reached our destination and he went in to do what he had to do and I sent myself an email text with the key parts of this conversation in it. Because, well, Ducks wearing Geese disguises. Because Halloween is coming.

And something completely unrelated- a few weeks ago, my dad asked for a photo of me with DG so he could put it in a frame. The most recent one he had was over ten years old. So, for three weeks, I reminded DG that my dad wanted a photo of the two of us together. He whined about it, made a fuss, and decided that since he needs a haircut, he wouldn't let me give him one, because then I wouldn't want to do the photo. On Monday, October 8th, I gave him no choice. "That's it, we're doing the photo today. I don't care that you need a haircut." DG was uncooperative and it took almost two dozen attempts to get this one photo to turn out. So here you go- a photo of me with the Disabled Guy where neither of us is pulling a face.

My dad liked it, by the way. And the first thing he said was: "Jerry needs a haircut." (because he doesn't call him "the Disabled Guy").

The Absurdity that is US.

It's no secret, I'm not "normal". I like to laugh, I (quite obviously) use humor to help deal with things. When I get together with my daughters (Kat, 23; Christine, 19), we usually end up cackle-laughing like big, goofy doofuses. Even with my son (Jason, 20)- we go off on bizarre tangents that make no sense to other people. He does voices, I do voices back. He has this one voice that I find hilarious and never get tired of hearing.
This was done in one take and completely off-the-cuff.

And my mom was the same way. When she was with her sisters, nobody was safe. The laughter always killed us and we always loved it.

A couple years ago, my mom was on IV antibiotics following a surgery and three times a week, a homecare nurse came over twice a day to give her those antibiotics. And the rest of the time, my dad did it. I was the backup-backup person (being that my dad was the "backup person"), so I had to learn how to do it. I seriously took notes because I didn't want to screw up the steps. One of the steps was to swab one of the doo-hickey thingies with an alcohol pad for a certain amount of time (don't worry yourself, those are technical terms). Anyway, we're sitting there, Mom is looking at me, because where the hell else is she going to look? I was sitting right in front of her. So, I started up with: "So I says to Mable, Mable, I says..." and that was it, we were off... we did an entire conversation about Mable, her husband, some other woman that I think was Mable's sister and "the ladies group from church" (I don't go to church and at that time, Mom wasn't either). We were even doing it in our best Midwestern "Fargo"-esque accents.

The nurse was aghast that we were having such a conversation in front of her. She thought it was real. Of course, soon she was taking part in the absurdity, because what else can you do?

So, today, among other things, I picked up a pair of slipper socks. It turned out to be two pairs of slipper socks, one pair is red, one black. Well, of course I'm wearing one red sock and one black one.

Upon seeing the state of my footwear, DG said in a scoffing way: "Gawd, you're weird."

Me: "You married me, what does that make you?"

DG: "I dunno, but I'm not weird!"

Me: "It makes you lucky. Do you know how BORING 'normal' people are? Yeah, think about THAT!"

Just before I started to type this up, I said: "Hey, you told me I was weird, right?"

DG: "Yeah, you are."

Me: "I'm weird... but you're the one who came up with rats and their little Nike shoes."

DG: "Hey! That's a true story!"

Well, it must be, because you read about it on the Internet.

By the way, wearing one red sock and one black sock isn't even the weirdest thing we've done today. We did the heavy-metal headbanging to a song while driving around and doing our usual payday errands.

Big deal, you say? The song in question was "99 Luftballons". Yeah, the German version. And to prove that we were indeed being badass heavy metal beasts, I texted this photo to my friend, Erik. We were already having a text-conversation, so it wasn't quite as random as it seems. Don't worry about Erik, he gets us. He's pretty much one of us.