At the risk of revealing myself as a freak of nature, I admit, I hate…no, wait, I DESPISE shopping. I’ve been this way since birth when I first flinched at the doctor fanning himself with the bill for his services, but it’s gotten a lot worse for many reasons. Like those marathon back-to-school shopping sessions with my mother who, bless her, had to clothe four little girls in something other than burlap or broiler foil. The waiting, the fighting, the threats of decade long punishments all took their toll. Having kids of my own sealed the deal. Sequential and relentless gimmes can wear a person down like a Makita industrial belt sander. Should be a New UN sanctioned form of torture. Unfortunately, my kids, especially my 13 year-old daughter, hold my disgust for shopping over my head with,” Why can’t you be like the other moms and go shopping with me?” and “You never like to do the things I like to do!” (Exits, stage left, Stomps to room, slams door.) Obviously she forgot our recent shopping spree at Charming Charlie’s where a tiny basket of “cheap” costume jewelry can break a bank account. Obviously, she forgot about our trip to the nail salon where I treated her to a mani-pedi (just learned that whole terminology, aren’t you proud?) Obviously, she forgot how intimidating a trip to the mall can be. And we’re not talking about the infamous Galleria here in Houston, which so happens to be WAY outside my comfortable one-square mile driving area. We’re talking about Memorial City Mall, just a couple of minutes from my front door. Just finding someone who speaks English is a challenge. There are probably more foreign immigrants per square inch there than in Ellis Island in the 1900s. Plus, you have to coordinate your shopping perfectly. If you get a couple of carts full at Target first and want to go to Abercrombie next, you can’t wheel the Target carts out into the mall. At a certain point, the chart won’t budge. I think they have that mutant Magneto buried under the flooring there. So you have to save Target for last or load your car with the Target purchases and drive to the other side of the mall for the rest of the shopping. Walking past kiosks can be a little tricky. Pushy salespeople (yes, all foreigners) thrust slices of soap in your face, ask to see your nails, try to squirt lotions on your hands and nosily inquire about your cell phone plan. But no worries, because I’ve devised a plan to circumvent their attack. First, put a determined look on your face and walk with hurried yet confident steps that say, “Piss off, peon, I’m important.” Never, and I mean NEVER make eye contact, because that’s just an invitation to seep into your personal space and latch on like fungus on a week-old slice of bread. Every once in a while, look at your watch because this tells them, “Back off, Jack. I’m late for the G-5 Summit.” This only backfires when you look at your bare wrist, which I’ve done. If you don’t wear a watch, fake a heated conversation on your cell phone about the benefits of sealed borders and deportation. Hmm. maybe this whole strategy will work when you come home after work only to find the kids are lined up at the door with every conceivable inconvenient or expensive request.

I don’t completely get the whole Christmas card tradition. It’s gotten to be more of a compulsion based on shame more than anything else. First of all, how many of them do you read and think, “OMG, how awesome is this artistic masterpiece! I’m saving it forever in my special box of treasures.” Yeah, I didn’t think so. Hell, I don’t even recognize some of the people’s names on hte return address! Even when the card has a picture, it’s like, “nope, haven’t a clue.” Then there are the pangs of guilt when you throw them away, so I have 213 of them on my mantel for a few weeks. Trying to get them to stand up is a booger. One falls and it’s the hole house of cards stunt. I always enjoy the cards that are letters bringing me up to date on the family gossip, but the two-pagers describing everything from the new dishwasher they bought and Johnny’s 12 year-old molars finally coming in are tedious. Christmas is way to busy for me to read a letter that will be published in paperback soon. Those photo Christmas cards are cool, but I don’t like it when the photo is of the kids only. I’m like, “Are these the kids I sponsor from Children International?” “Are they orphans dropping a hint?” “Did their parents flee from home? They look like little devil.” But those pets-only pictures are the worse. I picture the sender dying at the age of 95 in a room with 5,000 cats, some of who are nibbling at fingers and toes. My biggest fear is sending a Merry Christmas card to non-Christians but I don’t keep tabs of my friends’ religion and I’m not about to buy Happy Hanukkah, Happy Jihad, Happy Hinduism, Happy Buddha, Happy Winter Solstice and Happy Kwanzaa cards too. I say we scrap the whole thing. You can always given them a Christmas Superpoke on their Facebook page.

Well I’m officially part of the sandwich generation, meaning I’ve lost my appetite permanently. My kids are still, well, kids, but my mother is suffering from dementia. I won’t go into the complex medical issues but basically her mind is suffering from years of an elevated calcium from hyperparathyroidism. The parathyroid glands, located underneath the thyroid, control calcium/phosphorus metabolism and too much calcium is neurotoxic. For weeks, she refused to go to the hospital. It took a broken ankle to get her there. Her ankle and the hyperparathyroidism was surgically cured, but the cognitive effects of the hypercalcemia may take three months to reverse. The bad news is that she may have Alzheimers underneath it all, but hopefully not. We don’t know how long she’s had the disease, but looking back at her old records, her doctor neglected the3 elevated serum calciums for at least two years. Kinda slipped under the radar. Anyway, my 87 year-old dad and I have been at the hospital every day (minus two mental holidays off) bathing her, urging her to eat, brushing her hair and teeth, and disimpacting her at times. (Oh, you might not know what that last one is and you’re probably better off enjoying that blissful ignorance. If you’re the curious type and you haven’t just eaten breakfast, it’ll be safe to read on: Fecal dismpaction is the procedure of digging out the poop that has stubbornly impacted itself in the rectum. High calcium levels cause constipation so you can imagine what can accumulate over a few years. I basically had to mine her rectum with my spelunker’s helmet, a feces-proof flashlight, and a big stick to beat off any wild animals that crawl out to attack me.) She does seem to get better, but sometimes she thinks she’s at the mall. The other day, she kept asking anyone who came into her room if they were there to fill up her car with gas. She called to tell me she was butt naked in a gas station waiting for her Mercedes to finish getting detailed. Before that, when she was at her worst, she was seeing little men in the corner with peacocks and cocktails on their heads. She warned me that soon there’d be bodies floating in the street, reeking of rotting flesh, then she’d have me check the toilet for floating bodies. It’d be entertaining if it weren’t alittle sad. Of course, if she does have Alzheimers, I’ll have to be aware of signs in my own future. I’m batty enough as it is now. These past several months have been a physical, emotional and mental drain on my dad and I. As a new card-carrying member of the sandwich generation, I started out a robust meatball sub with melted mozzarella and have turned into a moldy egg salad sandwich with wilted lettuce and soggy tomatoes. Pray for my mom’s full recovery. We’ll know in a couple more months if she’ll get all or part of her brain back. If anyone has any advice, I’m all ears.

I think eyebrow width gets a bad rap. Lips and eyes get all the attention as a message board that says, “I’m pissed, happy, adorable, hard-ass, sour, sweet, bitter, or yes, horny. Even our wrinkles receive more notice! They say, “I’m distinguished, I have character, I’ve had a full life, I don’t believe in wearing sunglasses, I have a frequent buyer card for Darque Tan, or I’m old as dirt.” But how thin our brows are, for instance, can speak volumes. You know those women who pluck their brows to a 1-micrometer thickness? Stay away from them. They’re usually hard-ass bitches with a set of brass knuckles in their Coach purses. And you’ve seen guys and girls with the whole mono-brow thing going on? Stay away from them because they probably smell. If they don’t have the time and awareness level to mow that strip once in a while, they probably don’t have the time and awareness to take a shower every day. OK, I know some cultures find that bushy one-piece desirable, but those people usually stink anyway. There’s an interesting brow characteristic that, I’m proud to say, I’ve standardized into a marker for dementia (loony-tunes crazy, for those of you who don’t watch doctor shows on TV.) I’ve coined this marker the “Epstein Dementia Scale” after one of my old patients. Several years ago, I admitted her to the hospital for an evaluation of an abrupt onset of dementia (see above is you suffer from short-term memory loss.) Every day on hospital rounds I noticed that she painted “eyebrows” on at varying distances from her real (albeit scanty) ones. The more out of it she was, the higher the painted ones were. Eventually, they migrated north all the way to her hairline. That was the day she was double-parked in the Twilight Zone. Some cultures, for reasons that escape me, have the custom of actually shaving their brows only to apply a strip of eyebrow pencil to replace them. My daughter, Michelle, has more than once fantasized about attaching alcohol swaps to her thumbs, running up to one of them, vigorously rubbing the swabs on those pencil strips, then running away. Given the neighborhoods where she’d find her prey, I fear for her safety. Notice that no mention of specific cultures have been made here, so those who wish to protest this blog, take you little PC-tree-hugging ass, sit it in a corner, and think about how overly serious you take life.

Yup, I’ve been sucked in. Avoided it for the first 4 seasons, but couldn’t escape this time. Now, I panic at the thought that something might interfere with that magic hour on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday when American Idol comes on. Last night, we had report card pickup at the middle school. Technically, we’re supposed to get the kid’s report card and meet each teacher to discuss how things are going, etc. But I snatched the report card from the counselor’s hands, went to the cafeteria where the teachers were sitting a tables arranged in a circle, and executed the 500 m sprint easily rivaling Apollo Ohno’s gold medal run. And the frenetic wave of my hand didn’t seem to slow me down, either. Let’s see ya manage that Apollo! I actually hate meeting teachers because I feel compelled to throw myself at their feet and beg for mercy, especially those who’ve had the older siblings too. Bless the poor souls. Then again, part of me wants to show up and put on the “see, I’m an intelligent, responsible, tough love parent doing the right thing. Ain’t my fault. Just a quirky gene (from my husband’s side.) Anyway, back to American Idol. I just love playing the part of the judge, slashing contestants to ribbons though my voice sounds like a pig in the throes of an imminent slaughter. Even in the shower. So now it’s “Hmm, she’s a bit pitchy,” or “Wow, that was the bomb!” or “Where’s the stage presence? Where’s the X factor?” The other day, Lukas stalled (as usual) on doing his homework and each stab he made at it was woefully incomplete. At first, he’d hide worksheets just to get out to doing it, “I can’t find it! Oh well,” only I’d “find it” conveniently hidden in the kitchen trash. He’d sometimes tell me his teacher told gave him express instructions not to do the assignment, and that if he failed to comply and actually did complete it, he’d be penalized severely. Talk about a lame liar! But when he finally got ‘er done, I praised him as Randy would, “Dawg, I think you did good, man. Alittle shaky at first, but you hung in and worked it out. Dawg, it was okay for me.” And I think a few of the male contestants are really hot for juveniles!” Too bad one of the best singers looks like he belongs in the foothills of the Appalachians sitting in the back of a Ford pickup wearing overalls on his shirtless body, sucking on a piece of straw, lovingly holding his Remington 357 Bolt Action Rifle in one hand and a dead possum in the other. I mean seriously! What are they going to do about those teeth if he wins? Whatever mule kicked him in the mouth needs to kick the other side to put things right again. But despite his looks, his voice makes him sexy.