Elevator Conversation

This conversation took place in the maybe 60 seconds it took us to get from 1st to 3rd floor of the medical building. You can say a lot in 60 seconds.

So I followed the cute little family with a hyper 5 year old (I'm guessing on the age) and a darling little girl, maybe two, cute little butt in denim shorts, pigtails. She started to grab my hand thinking I was her mom. I was charmed.

A Tom Cruise look-alike pharmacutical salesman jumped on at the last minute and we all looked at each other for a few seconds, then no one could think of anything to say. He looked down.

I spoke quietly: "you guys, just think if this elevator got stuck and we were on here for hours and we told each other all our secrets and got in huge dramatic fights and stuff."

Dead silence.

Then the salesman laughed and said, "that's the strangest thing I've ever heard on an elevator."

Me, thinking ("don't you ever watch TV?")

The young mother said, "I'm claustrophobic, I'd go nuts."

I said, "you guys, just think, she'd go nuts and the elevator would open on the third floor and we'd all be dead because she killed us in her phobic rage."

They all laughed, realizing I was harmless crazy. The young family got off on the second floor, and I traveled on with my new best friend.

I said, "has anybody ever told you you look like Tom Cruise?"

And he said, "All the time."

And I said, "Actually, you look better than Tom Cruise, because you're better dressed and not getting fat and your hairstyle is better."

He held the elevator door for me and laughed and said, "thanks, have a nice day."

And that's the story of my life, how you can get to know people really well, relatively speaking, in 60 seconds. Happens all the time. True story, every word.

Steroids, my new drug of choice

I've lost three teeth in the back of my mouth and OH!

LET ME TELL YOU, THIS IS IMPORTANT, IF YOU LOSE A TOOTH, OR THREE IN THE BACK, DON'T GO FOR CHEAPER, DON'T GET DENTURES. YOU CAN'T EAT ON THEM. DENTURES SHOULD BE OUTLAWED. REALLY. AVOID DENTURES!

Anyway, so now I'm getting implants (very expensive and my insurance doesn't cover. my poor husband) and last week they moved my sinuses and put in bone grafts and I got sick, of course. Well, the first two days I felt great. Did too much.

Then I got sick, long story and the swelling won't go down and my lymph glands are all swollen and I look bruised well i don't look bruised, I AM bruised. On one side, so I look like a bearded lady and people give me weird looks at IHOP, like "that poor girl, why doesn't she leave him?"

Anyway, Dental Surgeon is now in Mexico, Ear Nose and Throat guy out of town, and I started on my second round of antiobiotics and the swelling got worse. So I go to the ER and got a stupid dr. who put me on very dangerous antibiotics--to take with others no less (Not to worry, the pharmacist gave me a heads up and I didn't take them), but he gave me Decadron.

I took two. Which is why I'm awake and mouthy.

But you guys, these make you feel good. All happy and energetic and full of optimism. I'd take those if I played baseball. Or was a movie star or and pretty rich girl who sticks her boobs out artfully and is now wasting away in jail. I would.

I had no idea steroids made you feel good. I thought they messed up your metabolism and made you have muscles or something.

My most embarrassing moment

My daughter, Sarah, has an unusual voice in writing. I love to read what she writes because I know her so well and I can just hear her speaking. She has a radiant and sweet personality and is slightly goofy. Unlike me, I am totally a goofball.

She and Nick have moved to Orem to go to school and I find myself missing her more than I've missed her since she was oh, maybe 12.

I remembered a paper she wrote when she was about 15. A part of it went like "Would you like to know my most embarrassing moment, that didn't even happen to me? I'll tell you! It was in fifth grade. We were all in class and it was very quiet and my best friend, Lisa, farted very loud and everybody laughed. Lisa farting in class was my most embarrassing moment."

She wrote a couple of e-mails to her teacher, one saying: "Mr. E., Instead of passing back our papers from left to right, I would appreciate it if you would now pass them from right to left because I don't want BJ to see what my grades are. Thank you for coperation" (that's how she spelled it.)

The other said: "I have checked my grades on-line and you still haven't given me credit for that assignment I handed in. Please fix this or I will be forced to make a complaint. Thank you."

She was in eighth grade.

My most embarrassing moments are too painful to discuss. I have plenty of funny moments that others might consider humiliating, but the real embarrassments, I don't talk about.