You Learn Something New Every (Thurs)Day

I'm starting a new Green Room tradition. It's called You Learn Something New Every (Thurs)day.

I'm kicking off You Learn Something New Every (Thurs)day with something short and sweet that will probably make your day.

You how it's annoying when someone asks you a question that they could just as easily Google themselves? Like the other day, this guy at work asked me, hey E. Peevie, what league are the Chicago Wolves in? And I'm all like, I don't know, dude, probably the AHL (American Hockey League)--but I can't swear to it.

And during this conversation, he's sitting in front of his Dell computer, which I'm pretty sure has a keyboard and Internet access and the capacity for Googling--maybe even an actual Google button.

Well, I discovered the perfect way to respond to said annoying questions (props to my colleague, The Psychiatrist's Daughter): Let Me Google That for You.

If you are the one (ahem, Mr. Peevie) who gets the stupid, eminently google-able questions from lazy family members (ahem, me) or colleagues, you will find this site to be the answer to your unspoken prayers. 


You're welcome.

The Things Kids Worry About, and Why I Can't Stop Laughing

"Mom!" said C. Peevie, charging into the bedroom. "Mom! I need to check something!"

He's always charging around in his half-man, half-boy body; that's nothing new. But his voice held a teeny bit of urgency, as though he had grown an extra nipple or accidentally shaved off an eyebrow.

He ran over to me, leaned in until his nose was thisclose to mine, and stared into my eyes for four seconds. I stared back.

"Phew," he said, letting out his breath. "You have hair under your eyes. It's normal."

I blinked. "Yes, C. Peevie," I said. "They're called eyelashes." I was confused, because he is normally quite bright.

"I thought eyelashes were only on the top of your eyes," he said.

"No, C.," I reassured him. "Eyelashes are on both the top and the bottom."

"Well, I didn't know that until just now," he said, with no trace of self-consciousness. Sweet, funny, occasionally-feeble-minded child. Adorable, no?

"What did you think was going on?" I asked, remembering his anxiety.

"I don't know," he said. "It might have been hair cancer."

Maybe I'm a bad parent, but this made me laugh so hard I peed a little in my underwear. I love being a parent. I especially love being a parent of this particular man-child, who never stops bringing the funny. Inadvertently.

Assault With A Deadly Cheeto

This might be a sign of the Apocalypse: A couple in Tennessee was arrested yesterday for assaulting each other with Cheetos. I can understand arguing, and I can understand assault; but wasting a perfectly good supply of Cheetos? That's just wrong.

It's not the first time Cheetos have been used as a weapon. People, listen: keep your Cheetos locked up so the kids cannot get to them. That way they won't be used as weapons, and also, they'll be there when you want to eat them yourselves. The kids can fill up on apples and grapes.

Although, grapes might be just as dangerous as Cheetos. In my house growing up, we used grapes as missiles, flinging them at each other when my parents were out of the room. This was when we were old enough to know better (in college.) Months later, we'd find them, only by this time they were raisins.

You just know that those pansy liberals in Congress will start passing laws against Cheetos now. And when Cheetos are outlawed, only outlaws will have Cheetos. Do not allow them to infringe the rights of Citizens to keep and bear Cheetos.

Please send $10 to the Save Our Puffy Orange Snacks (care of this blog) and keep Cheetos legal.

Seriously?

The most hilarious consumer item since The Clapper is the Chia Obama.

Every time I hear the radio ad it cracks me up--and then I click on the web-site and find out I can order a "Happy Chia Obama" or a "Determined Chia Obama"--or BOTH! I could watch Determined Chia Obama's hair grow over and over on the Chia landing page for hours.

In a ludicrous development, Walgreens decided that it would be inappropriate to sell Chia Obamas because some customers complained that they are offensive. Do they not hear the patriotic music playing in the background of the ads? This is not a product that mocks our president; it is a product that celebrates the fact that we finally have a president with curly hair. Duh.

I must have one. The only question is: Determined, or Happy?

My Downward Spiral Into Probably Fatal Lung Disease, or Maybe Just Self-Pity

I learned a new word today: spirometer. Those of you with lung disease or asthma will know what I'm talking about. It's a device to measure the amount of air you can push out of your lungs in one deep breath.

As you may be tired of hearing, I have been having a little trouble in the lung department ever since my overly generous son A. Peevie shared his flu with me three weeks ago. My illness developed into bronchitis that makes my chest feel like a prop on Million Dollar Baby. You know, a punching bag. Did I really need to explain that?

I've been calling my doctor about every four or five days, complaining about the cough and the chest pain, and she keeps telling me it's a virus, it's going to take time, chillax, mon. I bullied her into giving me some prescription cough medicine the first week, and the second week she finally gave up some antibiotics.

(BTW, this is my normal MO with doctors. You can't just take their word for stuff, and wait for them to give you what you think you need. You need to be proactive and assertive. Essentially, you need to manage your own health care--and, IMHO, a good doctor will listen to you, and encourage this kind of participation in your own health care management. Sermon over.)

But four days after starting the antibiotics, I was still feeling the hurt, still making myself puke with coughing fits that made people in the grocery store herd their children away from me because I was probably contaminated with an airborne bio-agent that would soon be sweeping the country.

I called her AGAIN, thinking maybe this time, she'd take pity on me and pull the plug. But no. "More waiting" was her prescription, although she did offer to write me an order for a chest X-ray if I wanted one.

"If I want one?" I said. "What does that mean, if I want one? I'm not the doctor here. What I want is to know what's going on. What I want is to get better. Are you recommending that I get a chest X-ray? Do you think I need one?"

No, she said, your lungs sound clear and I don't think you have pneumonia. But if you want a chest X-ray to rule it out, I'll give it to you. Well, I didn't want to pay the co-pay for an unnecessary chest X-ray, so I said I'd wait it out.

But a few days later my friend Roseanne gets on my case, along with a bunch of my other friends, telling me stories about people dying from not taking care of their coughs, and she made me promise that I'd get an X-ray Monday if my chest still hurt and I was still coughing.

So, still coughing, still clutching my achy-breaky chest like Jack Bauer after dying from too much torture and being brought back to life with an adrenaline shot and electric heart-starting paddles (24: Season 1), I called my doc, but ended up seeing her on-call colleague, Dr. Kim. She listened to my lungs from about 25 different spots on my chest, sides, back, thighs and butt, and said they sounded clear.

Then she pulled out the magical measurer of lung function, the spirometer. "Take a deep breath, put your lips around the tube, and breathe out as much as you can," she said. I did so, and the little red marker on the spirograph barely moved.

I looked guiltily at Dr. Kim. Dr. Kim looked at the red marker, looked at me, and looked back at the red marker. "Are you even alive?" she said, hilariously. "Try again." The marker had gone up to about 200, and according to Dr. Kim, a woman of my age and height should easily push that marker up to 450 or 500.

The next time it hit 280, and then 230. "Let me try again," I said, feeling my competitive spirit kick in, "This feels like a test I'm flunking." This time it was 220. There is no fooling the spirometer.

What does it all mean? I've been doing research on spirometry, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, and bronchitis, but I'm not ready to propose a firm diagnosis. No one really knows what's going on, but before I go for the promised chest X-ray, I'm starting a week of tapering steroids to chase the suspected inflammation away.

Oh, goodie: steroids. Those immuno-suppressing, face-puffing-up, rage-inducing clever little pills. Everybody better stay the hell out of my way.

Oh, and happy Holy Week!

Oxtail Soup

We were sitting at the dinner table yesterday, and C. Peevie mentioned that he had the opportunity to taste the famous oxtail soup created by the many-talented dad of his classmate, G-Man.

"It was so delicious, Dad," C. Peevie said. "J. Cub was crazy for it, too." We were interested to hear more about it, because it sounds kind of exotic, and none of the rest of us had ever tried it. Later on, after the conversation had turned to a new topic, M. Peevie brought up the soup again.

"Maybe we could try to make our own coxtail soup!" she suggested, offering an amusing variation on the name, which we all repeated with much hilarity. And then C. Peevie suggested that there might be such a thing in real life as coxtail soup--or perhaps it would be spelled "cockstail" soup.

"Because," he started to point out, "Cock is another word for..."

It was like he was talking in slow motion. I was standing across the room, and my head swung around and I made eye contact with Mr. Peevie. Later he told me they were big like saucers. Really, really big saucers. I think some suspenseful music started playing, like we were in a movie. Mr. Peevie and I both stopped breathing.

"...chicken!" he finished. "A cock is a male chicken. So the soup would be made from, well, from chicken tails."

Phew. Mr. P and I started breathing again, and we all laughed at the idea of chicken-butt soup. Later I told Mr. Peevie that I thought it was totally possible that C. Peevie had done that little verbal game of chicken (pun intended) on purpose--that he knew what we'd be thinking, and that he may have even included a dramatic pause just to increase our silent panic. He can be brilliantly evil that way, like Darth Vader or Hannibal Lecter or Ann Coulter.

And in case you're interested, here's a recipe for Oxtail Soup from one of my favorite online recipe sources, epicurious.com.

Monument to Ego

Mr. Peevie recently brought this to my attention: Roland Burris' headstone, a monument to an enormous ego.


On the right side, Mr. Burris has listed his Major Accomplishments, and on the left, hilariously, his Other Major Accomplishments. (I borrowed the photo from the Politico.com blog The Crypt, which offers commentary on breaking news in Capitol Hill.)

Two additional, carbon-based monuments to his own Goliath ego: Roland Burris' two children are named Roland and Rolanda. Seriously. He even uses the Royal We to refer to Himself. Mmmmmkay.

Roland Burris, like most of us, wants to know that his life had meaning and significance. That he wasn't just another blip on the timeline of humanity--but that his existence added value, so to speak. I get that; I really do. Sometimes, when I'm wiping the smell of pee from my bathroom floor (why can't those boys aim better?!), I wonder about the meaning of life, and in particular, the significance and value of my own life. When I'm folding underwear, or scraping crusty batches of nature from various surfaces in my house, I wonder what people will say at my funeral.

"She was a lousy housekeeper, but she sure had a good throwing arm."

"She really didn't have much of an edit function in her brain, but she was mostly not a horrible person."

"She sure did watch a lot of television."

But anyway, to get back on point, Mr. Burris has written the script, basically, for his eulogy, and had it engraved on his stone crypt, which he sensitively endowed with a comfortable bench for those of you who would like to rest in the shade while you visit with the Spirit of the Trailblazer and ponder his Major Accomplishments and his Other Major Accomplishments.

Seriously.

Does he really not understand that by accepting this contaminated appointment from our legally plagued, morally ambiguous, allegedly sociopathic governor that he is causing his own reputation to depreciate rather than to appreciate?

Or is he so blinded by his own ambition that his brain keeps blocking out messages about integrity, process, and character, and the only ones getting through are the ones that say, "Fuck 'em. Fuck 'em all. I'm getting this title because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me."

Not that he'd use language like that. He's not the governor, after all. He's a church-going man, causing some of the rest of us church-going folks to wince mightily. Burris even boldly, if not sacrilegiously asserted that his Senate appointment was ordained by the Big Guy.

I'm sure Mr. B has his headstone engraver on speed dial.

Meanwhile, my brother Deedee, who lives in Argentina, accurately and a tad meanly pointed out that Illinois is a lot like a third world country, with its political scandal and pervasive corruption. It's nice to know that our state is the source of so much entertainment to the rest of the country, even the world.

Step away from the Senate seat, Mr. Burris. Drop the weapons (supporters who play the race card, blind ambition, ethical ambiguity), and step slowly away. There you go. Now you can salvage what's left of your reputation.

Apocalypse Hilarity

We were driving, driving, driving. The dentist. The coumadin clinic. The pharmacy. The store. The kids were chattering and bickering and singing. And then we had a story moment, one of those perfect moments of bonding and hilarity that will live on in our family lore, being told and re-told, and the punch line will be repeated ad nauseum--except we will never get sick of it.

A. Peevie was telling a story about his friend BiF. Apparently BiF has been doing some serious thinking about eschatology, because he confidently told his fifth-grade pals that they didn't need to worry about the depletion of the ozone layer and global warming.

"I don't think the ozone layer will break before the apocalypse," he said optimistically. That's good news, right? I think? Except for that whole apocalypse thing. But then I was thinking, what does this little boy really know about end of the world? And why does he know about it? So I asked.

"A. Peevie," I asked, "What do you think BiF means by 'apocalypse'? Does he even know what it means?"

There was a pause, while A. Peevie thought this over. He's never one to answer quickly, unless it's a question about Pokemon. And suddenly the answer came from a different source.

"It's the end of the world as we know it," M. Peevie started singing, "It is the end of the world as we know it!"

C. Peevie and I looked at each other and roared. Then we joined in, at the top of our lungs, "IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT, AND I FEEL FINE!"

Where would my angelic eight-year-old learn this R.E.M. classic from the 80's? And where did she learn how to slip it so appropriately into a conversation about the apocalypse? One possible source is the movie Chicken Little (appropriately enough), which includes this song in its soundtrack.

But still: what perfect timing. The girl has a future in stand-up. Or something.

And now I can't get that song out of my head.