GOING BANANAS

 Grocery shopping should not be this stressful.   When it takes two Valium and a pint of Vodka to give me enough "calm" to shop for groceries then I know I have a problem !  

I used to enjoy going to the grocery store and wandering up and down the aisles checking out new products and goodies. I always have my list and I usually manage to find everything that is on the list.  But then there are the other 30 things that I decide we REALLY need to buy.  My grocery bills are never under $100 and now-a-days I am happy if the bill is less than $200.   I am pretty good with checking prices and buying that which is not necessarily cheaper but is a better deal.  I enjoy the challenge. 

The Man has not been in a grocery store since the year 1200 BC.  He still thinks that a dozen eggs cost thirty five cents and a quart of milk is still twenty five cents.  He is shocked at the price of ice cream . . . EIGHT DOLLARS for a half gallon of ice cream ??????  This is one product that he cares about the price. Not that he is paying for the groceries but he likes to think he knows a bargain and a rip off when he sees one.  

Every time I go shopping, (which is at least once a week), The Man sits at the kitchen table waiting for my return.  (I love it when I can sneak in while he is napping) But usually he is sitting at the kitchen table waiting for me to unload the bags.  With each bag I bring in I have to listen to him saying things like, "I thought you only had to get a FEW things", or, "Why did you get two of those? We'll never use two of those before we leave!"  or my all time favorite, "You do realize we are leaving here in . . . weeks".  It NEVER fails.  I have gotten really good at tuning him out and leaving things in the car until he is in bed or the bathroom before sneaking things in.  It's either that or a full blown war and I don't feel. like fighting over something as silly as groceries. 

But what really makes me crazy are the times when The Man asks me to pick up something for him.  Donuts are at the top of that list. I have no issue buying donuts because that is what he eats for breakfast every morning. morning, a Nutrition drink and 2 donuts.   Whatever !  But then there are times when he asks me to buy something and it sits here for 2 weeks before we throw it out.  BANANAS !!!!  That is at the top of that list.  Today as I was leaving You Know Who asked me to stop and pick up some bananas for him.  OK, No biggie.  I was going to the store anyway so picking up some bananas is no problem.  I bought Green bananas because I know they will sit in the kitchen on the counter top for the next two weeks until they turn brown.  We will be sitting in the kitchen and The Man will start flailing his arms around like a windmill gone wild.  "Damn Fruit Flies" he will start yelling. "Where are they coming from?  Do we have any fruit out?"  I will casually point to the now brown and rotting bananas.  

For some reason he finds it totally unrelated to the fact that these are the bananas that HE requested I buy. They have been staring at him for 2 full weeks and he has made no attempt to eat them. 

This drives me BANANAS !!!!! 

THINGS THAT GO BEEP BEEP BEEP IN THE NIGHT

 I LOVE my bed !   I LOVE to sleep !  I LOVE to snuggle down under the covers and dream my dreams !   I do NOT love being woken up in the middle of the night by "friends" texting me at 3:15 AM because they can't sleep.  And that is why we have silence mode on our cell phones !   Feel free to text me at any hour of the day or night because my phone will be turned off from the time I turn out my light until I decide to wake up and face a new day.  Occasionally I will forget to turn off the ringer but that doesn't happen often. And if it does it is my fault if I am woken up so no harm, no foul.  

What I can NOT control is the assortment of sounds that come from my partners various machines that are stuffed in the bedroom along side the bed.  The Man has no less than 5 different machines that have alarms and all of them seem to prefer to go off in the middle of the night.  Granted they are all attached to him so if the oxygen stops, or his heart stops there is an alarm to wake ME.  

Last night was one of those nights. The Man uses a Bi Pap machine at night. It is similar to a C pap machine, just more powerful. The problem is that because he needs to have a constant flow of oxygen so the machine needs to be connected to an oxygen concentrator. If the concentrator fails to work then the alarm on the concentrator goes off.  BEEP BEEP BEEP !!!  If the concentrator is not delivering oxygen to the Bi Pap machine then the Bi Pap machine's alarm goes off.  BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP !!!! If the concentrator AND the Bi Pap machine are both failing then his heart monitor goes off BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP !!!!!!!!!!!!!   

You know that these things never occur at 11 PM while we are still awake.  NO . . . .  it always waits until 2 or 3 AM when we are in a dead sleep.  It is like the fire drills they had when I was in college living in the dorm.  You had just fallen asleep when the alarm would start blaring.  With luck you were not hung over, just exhausted but you had to get out of bed and out of the dorm until the drill was over.  

Now I am flying out of the bed, grabbing my hearing aids because I know The Man will be talking to me so I need to hear him.  Besides the hearing aids I have to grab the flash light so I can find my way to the light switch in order to see what the hell is going on.  All this time The Man is still asleep.  How this is possible I have no idea but it's true.  By the time I have ears in and can see where I am going The Man is now waking up and asking, "What's going on?".   My reply in my head is, "How the "F" do I know" but my mouth says, "I have no idea what's happening",  Now comes the fun part.   Trying to figure out at two in the morning where is the problem.  My brain has woken up immediately, The Man is still trying to figure out where he is, who he is and what is this strange woman doing in his room. As he begins to focus and realize where the noise is coming from he starts pulling plugs, adjusting wires, reading display screens, and throwing orders to me to get this, that and the other thing.  Now I am REALLY awake because I am roaming through the house searching for things he wants.  I get orders like, "get me the thing from the cabinet" . . .   Seriously !   When I question, "What Thing" and "What cabinet" I get a look that says I must be an idiot for not being able to KNOW exactly what it is he is talking about.  I am used to this by now and it doesn't bother me at all because I KNOW EXACTLY WHO the idiot is.  I patiently ask questions until I figure out what I am looking for and where I will find it. It's a great game but not at 2 AM. 

Needless to say I manage to keep it all under control, fix the problem and go back to sleep.  Knowing full well that in the morning when I get up I will get to relive the entire episode with The Man.  It will be the topic for the day, phone calls will be made to different companies to complain about their machines and The Man will be thinking about the problem all day trying to come up with ideas to help avoid this happening again.   I am the listener . . .  I will say nothing, I will not offer suggestions and I will write a blog about it because it really is pretty funny.   

OH,   and I will also take a nap.  

THE BAND - AID

 If ever you were to see the true nature of a man just watch what happens when he get a small cut. I'm not talking about loosing a leg or breaking every bone in his body, I'm talking about a paper cut or a bruise caused by bumping into something that breaks the skin ever so slightly so as to cause blood to appear.  Should this happen the world will come to a complete halt while medical attention is given to the injured.

This past week The Man bumped into something and broke the skin on his arm.  There was no GUSHING blood, only a small cut that, once he held a tissue on it for 3 seconds, it stopped bleeding.    There were no stitches or cast required but you would think he was in imminent danger of bleeding out.  Quite a fuss was being made on the part of The Man so I suggested he put a band-aid on it to protect it from getting opened up again.  The huge surprise to me was that he actually DID put a band-aid on and he did it himself.  Usually I would be called to administer aid but he handled it himself. Go Figure !   Fast forward to that evening . . .  I was sitting on the bed reading when YKW (You know who) came in needing medical advice.  Should he shower with the band-aid on or take it off.  (Big decisions like this usually  require us to call all of our acquaintances and get their thoughts but I figured we could handle this one alone.). I suggested he leave the band-aid on until after his shower and then put a clean, dry bandage on.  That seemed to make him happy so off he went to shower.   When he came out of the bathroom he had a new band-aid in his hand and asked me to put it on for him.  (I didn't bother to ask why he couldn't do this himself since he had put the first bandage on his own, I just said "Sure!").  I had my glasses on and the lights were on in the bedroom but in spite of all this I could not see where I should put the band-aid.  Aside from a large bruise on his arm I could not tell where the cut was.  My indecision caused The Man to get all excited because I could NOT see where to put the band-aid so he started pointing to where it should go.  I really didn't think he had the right spot but hey, his arm not mine so I'll do what he wants.  Band-aid was on, it was time to go to sleep.

The following day we had to go to a hospital for The Man's monthly infusion of gamma globulin to boost his immune system.  We arrived at the hospital infusion center, got settled in, connected to the IV and ready to spend the next 2 hours relaxing.  As I was sitting next to YKW I see him picking at the band-aid on his arm.  He was attempting to get the band-aid unstuck from the hair on his arm without opening up the cut.  As I'm watching this I notice that there is a scab just above where the bandage is.  It is totally healed up so I'm thinking maybe he had 2 cuts on his arm?  With that one of the nurses comes over to ask if YKW would like her to get some ointment to help get the band-aid off painlessly. Of Course we do !!!  Within two minutes she has applied the magic cream and painlessly pealed of the stupid bandaid much to the joy of The Man.  I'm sitting watching this and as the band-aid finally lets go it reveals the un broken skin of The Man's arm with a scabbed over cut just above where the bandage was.  The whole time "Dr. Kildare" was worrying about his cut getting covered so it wouldn't bleed he had the band-aid on the wrong spot !!!!!

I did NOT mention this to him !   It is better to just shake my head and think about the blog I will write about this.