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I've mentioned in a previous entry that I was in a gang. Yeah, you read that right.

Ok, I fess up... it was a gang of 40ish year old women. My gang name was Snoop Lori D., we also had S'mores (long story how she got her name and I'm not sure she'd like the information spread around the internet), RTR (for Ready to Rumble) and Blanca. Our gang name was "chicas de rojo", because we all had red hair (at the time, anyway) except Blanca. She had blond hair, hence the name.

Our gang activities included things like shopping for make-up and going out to lunch. You know; real dangerous stuff. The closest thing we had to a gang symbol was matching lipstick.

So, on to the purpose of this post.

I have a friend who is a bank branch manager. His branch had been robbed three times within a month and I had mentioned that to my dad in one of my letters. His reply?


As for your friend's branch that keeps getting robbed. I have an idea. Why don't you and your gang hang out there and act like customers and then when some robbers come in you can jump them. When word gets out I know they would leave that place alone.

I wrote back,

If you think having the robbers stunned senseless by beauty would be of help, then yeah, maybe we should offer our services.

I mentioned this idea to my friend, but he never took me up on this offer. Hmmmph.

Following in the steps of other bloggers, I've decided to recap the month of February.

Let's talk about what brought people here.

There were almost 20 search strings in regard to how to remove the nose ring in the Tiger Wood golf game. Apparently BJ isn't alone....

I've learned that there are a lot of people who are also obsessed with their skin. Let me assure you, I'm obsessed for NO REASON.
biggest zit popped <-gross! I hope they weren't looking for a picture
blackhead skin obsession
blackhead obsession
bump on my face
biggest zit

Now these search strings are just.plain.weird. :
new years adult diapers
yarn fetish <-was this a cat?
spanking the bride in honeymoon suite
got that spanking
dental receptionist fetish
punished hubby
spanking makes a grown boy cry <- yeah, I just bet...
confirmed bachelor living with mom <- give it up honey...

I'm disturbed that I EVER brought up Barry Manilow (it was a JOKE folks!) Apparently there are a lot of his fans out there. They want pics, they want lyrics to Copa Cabana, and they want his bio. Trust me you Barry Manilow fans, you'll find none of that here. Scoot on down the road.

Lastly, this was my favorite search string:
who said hubba hubba

....ummm... that'd be me. Every time I look at hubby. Or John Travolta, or James Spader, or Robert Downey Jr., or.. well, OK I say it a lot.

I'd like to believe that I raised a couple of fairly normal guys. I mean really, with me as a mom how could they possibly go wrong? OK, scratch that.

My oldest, who is 23, is hopefully learning some great lessons in responsibility since I cut the cord well over a year ago. He's had some bumps along the way, but hubby tells me that he's a normal young adult male. OK, I'll buy that.

My youngest, soon to be 22, had that whole pen cap up the nose incident, but other than that he's a normal (albeit a bit too responsible for his age) guy.

Normal? Hmmm... not so fast...

===Fade in dreamy memory music.....===

I can't recall what exactly made me remember this today, but lucky for him (heh) I did and I'm going to share. A few years back, he used to go swimming in a public pool with his dad. He came home all upset one day, so of course, I had to ask him why.

He was grossed out because he saw a woman in the pool who had hairy arm pits. It get's worse. He was SO grossed out, that he had to immediately get out of the pool and leave. While that's not the prettiest thing to look at, I don't think it's anything to get out of the pool about.

It makes me wonder how he got such a phobia. I've been mentally going through the many pranks I pulled on him as a child and none of them are arm pit related. Frankly, I'm stumped.

Calling Dr. Freud.....

Sidenote: I can't wait to see what this topic does with the google search results... bwa ha ha ha ha

Saturday was my first day to make Hospice calls on my own. Although I wasn't as frightened as I was my first solo volunteer patient care experience, I was nervous. There wouldn't be any counselors in the building, so I was truly alone.

I had two stacks in my box. One was a set of five files that somehow became lost for seven months. Normally, the family receives calls from Hospice 4-6 weeks after the death of the patient. I decided to tackle that set first.

I looked through the first file and took notes of things I found that would help me to have a fairly knowledgeable conversation with the family members. Then, I started dialing. My fingers were literally shaking as I was punching the numbers on the phone.

The first call out of the gate was complicated on many levels and lasted about 45 minutes. The call was to the daughter of the patient. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was told that most calls would be 5-10 minutes. But my two practice calls were about 30 minutes, so 45 minutes didn't seem out of the ordinary to me. What was unsettling was what I heard this woman's husband say as he was handing her the phone; "It's Hospice calling. Why would they be calling you NOW?". That made me nervous, and I didn't know what to expect.

It turned out to be OK, and after hanging up I felt that it was almost a blessing that she was receiving the call now, rather than when she should have received the call. Her life was completely upside-down right now, and I also heard signs of complicated grieving, so I left a note to one of the counselors to give her a call.

Another call, also over a half an hour, had interesting timing as well. This woman had just come home after visiting her mother's house for the last time. She had to sell the family home- the home she grew up in- and had just come back from her final visit there. She seemed relieved to have someone to talk to about the experience, and I was glad that I so happened to call her on that day.

We've been given the guideline of only making calls for two hours and that was my intent. However, I just kept thinking, "one more". 'One more' turned into just over four hours by the time I was done. By this time, I understood the reason for limiting ourselves to two hours at a time. Talking to so many people in various degrees and stages of grief can be emotionally draining; especially when your intent is to give them 100% of yourself.

I really connected with some of the people that I talked to and I know without a doubt that they could feel that I cared about them, even though I'd never met them. I had five calls that lasted for more than 1/2 hour and those calls were very meaningful to me. There is something really cool about connecting with someone on that level, and I am really looking forward to going back next weekend.

I am not someone who believes in coincidence; I believe that many things happen because that's the way they're supposed to happen. The following story is a perfect example. I didn't post it at the time because I was keeping my father-in-law's illness out of my blog. He read my blog when he was alive and I didn't want him to have to face my thoughts about it.

I have a set of friends ("Bob" and "Ann", and now, their partners) that I've known for almost 20 years. They were my lifeline's when I was going through my divorce 15 years ago, and we've all been there for each other through things that life hands out. We don't see each other now more than once a year, because we are all just so busy. We keep in contact via email for the most part. They hadn't yet met BJ so we decided it was time. We started planning this dinner about four months ago, but had to keep canceling due to one circumstance or another. Finally the date was set for this past January 30th.

On the way to dinner I shared with BJ the fact that Bob lost his dad to emphysema on 12/26, just three weeks prior. I assured him that they knew nothing about his father, so this is not a topic that he needed to worry about talking about if he didn't want to.

We all got caught up and I asked Bob how he was doing after the loss of his dad. He shared the up's and down's and brought up Hospice and said how important it was that Hospice was there. He shared how it went at the end, and it was almost identical to BJ's dad. The family had NO idea how sick Bob's dad was until the very very end. Bob shared that he and his brother were holding their dad's hand when he passed on, and it was a really beautiful thing for them.

Ann, my other friend, then shared that her dad was just put into Hospice and shared the circumstances behind that. BJ put his hand on my knee and I knew right then, that this was going to be good for him.

To my surprise (because he's such a private person), BJ brought up his dad. He shared what had been happening, and my friends just listened. BJ asked questions of Bob because his story was so similar to what BJ was going through at that time. There were a few tears at the table that night, but surprisingly, the tears were tears of empathy from those listening to the stories of others. Not from the person telling their story.

On the way home, BJ kept saying how he couldn't get over the timing of all of this and how important it was to hear all of this. We'd planned this dinner before Bob's dad died, and certainly before BJ's dad got the prognosis. We didn't know anything about Ann and her dad. This was just the exact right time.

In addition to the sharing such personal emotional things, we laughed. We sometimes laughed so loud that people looked at us but we didn't care!

In the end, BJ told my friends that he felt that he'd made some really good friends, and they all said that they all now had a built in support system. They decided to call themselves the "Hospice club" and planned our next get together for April, and will be getting together bi-monthly from now on.

In this past month, BJ lost his dad and I got word today that Ann, the remaining member of the "Hospice club" lost her dad this weekend.

I have a feeling that the next time we get together, all of the dads will be 'with' us and laughing right along side of us. We may not hear that laughter, but it'll be there.