by Kathy Brasby | Oct 10, 2022 | Hope, Humor
Although we assume we only need hope when horrific things happen in our lives, we’re wrong. We need hope every day because things go wrong. Not always horrible things but wrong things can be enough to derail our goals or dump us into a “why bother?” mood. Part of the daily grind.
Photo by Ryan Franco on Unsplash
You know the daily grind. Maybe the car sounds sick and your budget can’t stretch. Or maybe the kids are sick—on the day of your big meeting. Maybe traffic is like driving in mud and you need to get to that appointment. Maybe your food order got lost or a now -former friend just blasted you on social media.
These are the sorts of things that can steal away our hope for the day. But we can turn our day around. We can decide if the wrong thing sends us into the pits of doom or if we can send that wrong thing into the a holding tank to become a story.
As I’ve told my kids more than once, “Either this is going to work out or we’ll have a great story to tell later.”
Humor helps us find hope in the daily grind because it turns the wrong thing into something that we can laugh at.
Maybe my stories will make you chuckle and help you look at troubles differently. Because, sometimes, things aren’t as bad as they seem. They’re just on their way to becoming a great story.
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by Kathy Brasby | Sep 24, 2022 | Family, Humor
I didn’t know I was a contrarian until I bought that mouth guard set.
I had noticed in the last few months that my teeth were tired every morning. I had never been a teeth grinder before, so I resisted the idea for a while.
But I finally buckled and ordered in a mouthpiece kit. It came with four gummy pieces that looked like what the dentist used to fill with some goopy paste and then stick in your mouth to get an impression of your teeth. The goop tasted okay but sometimes persisted.
So that, maybe you went out to eat after the dentist appointment and discovered, after smiling brightly at the waiter, that paste crumbs were hanging from your lips like miniature stalactites. Theoretically.
Well, this kit didn’t have any goopy paste.
No goopy paste but stern instructions, though, for molding the mouthpiece.
So, I quote:
Immerse mouth guard in hot water 175 to 180 degrees.
Where was my candy thermometer again?
Oh, yeah, my daughter had borrowed the thermometer. So I would not know exactly what the water was.
I guessed. I still wasn’t in contrarian stage. Just practical, although that might be the precursor to contrarian. Still puzzling that idea.
Next instruction: Soak for ten to fifteen seconds. Must be less than twenty seconds.
Wait, what?
Must be less than twenty seconds?
I’m pretty sure this is when the contrarian started to lift its head. Just what would happen if I left the mouth guard in the water for, say, twenty-one seconds?
Maybe at twenty-three seconds, the mouth guard turned into a gelatinous mass like a jellyfish floating in the water. Or like a glass octopus. Or a transparent sea cucumber. (Who came up with that creative name? Probably the same scientist who named his dog Dog.)
So theoretically, there was a jellyfish floating in the water after my temperature guess.
Since there were four mouth pieces in the kit, I wondered if they assumed somebody might test their instructions?
After the fifteen seconds heating-up period comes the next order. I mean, instruction.
Use a wooden spoon and wooden chopsticks to fish the mouthpiece out of the hot water.
I double checked.
Yep, it said AND. And wooden chopsticks.
I don’t have any wooden chopsticks. Whelp, time to just figure it out myself. I used a wooden spoon and then plopped the piece on a dish towel. I didn’t need another jellyfish if this mouthpiece was allergic to metal spoons.
Oops. I didn’t read ahead. I was supposed to lower the mouth guard onto a paper.
A paper.
Sure.
This was getting dumb.
Then the instructions said to let the mouth guard cool for three to five seconds.
I didn’t know I’d need a stopwatch when I started this process.
Well, I lowered nothing onto a paper.
I plopped the piece onto the dish towel and then shoved it over my teeth. I had watched the dentist do that, so I knew how.
I bit down into something slightly firmer than Jello at a church potluck.
By now, I was in full rebel mode.
Fifteen seconds here. A paper there. And then the last instruction.
Leave the piece in mouth for exactly ten seconds.
Uh-huh. Exactly ten seconds. I’d have chastised the instructions, except it was hard to talk with that piece of old Jello in my mouth.
Just to show them, I pulled the mouth guard out when I felt like it. I wasn’t timing that.
Good grief. I can count one-Mississippi as well as anybody, but there was a principle here. The principle of “don’t be ridiculous.”
Then….
No more instructions.
What do I do next?
Well, at that point, I did what any contrarian would do. I figured it out. Included in the kit was a little blue plastic case for the mouthpiece so it’s resting there until it cools into something stiffer than melted gelatin.
But now that I know I am a rule breaker, I suppose I’ll find out at bedtime if I will even use this gummy thing.
I’ll let you know later. Or maybe I won’t.
This contrarian stuff is pretty fun.
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by Kathy Brasby | Aug 26, 2022 | Family, Humor, Stories
I didn’t notice the rug burn on my knee until I was ready for bed. Hmmm.
Couch potatoes don’t have these issues.
Couch Potatoes Don’t Have Those
I have old scars on my knees from that cruel and ancient practice of requiring girls to wear dresses to school. I may still be bitter about that rule.
This elementary girl couldn’t stop running and somehow my feet didn’t cooperate all the time. Crash. Another scraped knee. Another scar.
Couch potatoes don’t have those.
My high school hosted a girls’ football game to raise funds for something that I’ve forgotten. We played flag football. No tackling. Just powder puff style.
I remember running with the football tucked under my arm and getting hit so hard that my breath flew away as I hit the ground. I fumbled the ball too. So much for the flag.
I could barely walk at school the next day, what with the sore muscles and bruises.
Speaking of barely walking, I was tossed over the head of my horse one weekend when I was home from college. Gypsy was galloping, and I asked her to slow down. She stopped. Dime kind of stop.
And I went over her head. I was nineteen, but I walked around like a ninety-year-old for a few days.
As an adult, I mellowed into more gentle sports. Like softball. Cycling. Skiing.
Speaking of Softball
Speaking of softball, I once found my left foot trapped under the fence behind home plate. As the catcher, I had to retrieve any balls that got past me and went to the fence. I knew the opponent was steaming home from third base, so I hustled to the fence, planted my foot, and went under.
It took both coaches and an umpire to lift the stiff fence off my ankle. My team didn’t have another catcher, so I limped back to my position.
Couch potatoes don’t have to put up with that.
Memories of softball games came up recently over lunch with a friend. She perked up. She’d played softball, too.
“Do you still have your softball glove?”
“Of course. You?”
We planned to play catch just because we miss throwing a ball around. Feeling a little nostalgic and unfulfilled, maybe.
Couch potatoes don’t get those urges.
I was five months pregnant, downhill skis strapped to my feet and our four-year-old sitting on the chairlift seat beside me, when the lift died.
We had hoped for one more run down the slope. Instead, we hung for an hour before the crew started lowering people to the ground on ropes. I never told them I was pregnant. I didn’t have time for the panic.
Couch potatoes don’t have to swing on a chairlift with a little boy for an hour, keeping him calm and warm.
Why do I complicate my life so?
The Watch Panic
Recently I crawled inside an enclosed cage retrieving young roosters. I had to roll onto my side to turn around so I could crawl out. No problem. I dropped onto an elbow, scotched around, and headed for the cage door.
And I heard a wild beeping. Was someone calling me?
I glanced at my watch, affectionately called “Dick Tracy” by my sister. Well, maybe not affectionately, now that I think about it. My watch sometimes poaches calls from my phone, which she thinks is goofy.
This watch plays music, tracks my steps, and alerts me to texts and calls. It ought to cook meals too.
Back to my story. My watch was shrieking, gaining volume with the second. Almost the shaking in terror. I looked closer. It hovered over the 9-1-1 call, assuming I had fallen. I punched a button. No, I didn’t need 9-1-1.
My watch was stubborn. Was I sure I hadn’t fallen? Yeah, pretty sure.
Can you imagine explaining that to the deputies who would have had to respond? No, officer, really, I’m fine. I just planted my elbow in the rooster pen.
Yeah, rooster pen.
My watch panicked last winter when I had to knock the ice out of a rubber pan so I could put out more water for my ducks. I slammed the pan on the frozen ground and my watch immediately leaped to alert mode, ready to call the deputies again.
“I didn’t fall,” I told the Dick Tracy. “I didn’t even leave my feet.” So why I was talking to my watch? My sister hadn’t even called.
Couch potatoes don’t have these problems.
New Plan
I have a new plan for this year. I’m slowing down. It’s time.
But I have to run a 5K with my grandson. It’s his first and he’s only nine. How could I refuse?
I’m riding my bike five or six—OK, sometimes ten miles a day—because it’s a new bike and I have a new helmet. Can’t let those go to waste.
I’ve started lifting weights, too, to keep the kids happy. And those extra muscles handle the feed bags a lot better.
So you can see that I’ve slowed down. No more skinned knees or planted elbows.
My watch doesn’t hover in ready mode anymore. It probably thinks I’ve retired into couch potato mode.
Well, yeah, I did shut off its fall alarm.
Out of concern for the deputies.
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