Hello Friday! We love you man......

How good is your memory?

I’ve had people tell me that they can remember things that they did in Kindergarten.

Or from when they were an infant.

I’m lucky to remember to flush the toilet when I leave the bathroom.

When my mother developed dementia after a brutal surgery on her leg at the age of 90, she began to drift in and out of the present day and would speak of her childhood and teenage years as if they were yesterday.

Where were those memories locked away?

What cryptic key opened the door to her past and let those ghosts from long ago come strolling on in?

I sometimes wish we had some sort of Ipod playlist of brain cells which we could dial up and take us back to relive certain moments in time.

I know we would appreciate the good times more than we did when we were living them.

It’s because as we age, we realize how precious and few some of those special times can be.

I also know we would avoid the painful memories which crushed our souls and brought us to our knees.

Even though those life jarring moments helped forge us into the people we are today.

You must take the bitter with the sweet.

It makes the sweet so much more appreciated.

So just remember that you are building memories every day that you are blessed enough to take another breath.

For yourself.

For your children.

And for the planet.

And some day you will look back and say,

“Remember that Friday morning when I woke up and didn’t want to go to work?”

And then I did it anyway just because it was the right thing to do?

And then fretted all day because I couldn’t remember if I flushed the toilet?

Yeah, but it was a good day anyway…..

Happy Friday Everybody!

………I’m just sayin’

Cinnamon and Nutmeg.....A Cautionary Tale of Cheese and Dodgeball

I love stories.

Any kind.

Fiction. Non-fiction. Humorous. Dramatic. Harry Potter. Dr.Suess.

Doesn't matter.

Books are a delight to me and I enjoy immersing my mind into a world that is not my own.

But as my Daddy used to say, "You can't make this stuff up!", and he was referring to true stories that occur in normal, everyday life.

This thought popped into my head the other day when I overheard a co-worker tell someone, "yes, he seems to be okay now."

Considering she has a little boy, I immediately thought the little tike might be the "he" in question, plus basically I am nosey and was buttin' into someone elses conversation....

My mother used to call people that do this, "Butt-in-ski's."

Guilty as charged.

So because I am a curious soul, I chimed in with "Who?"

Now let me just give you a little background info so you can fully appreciate this whimsical tale.

I work in an operating room at a prestigious hospital and am surrounded by amazingly skilled professional nurses.

These are the kind of folks who are quite capable of whipping off their shoelaces and re-attaching your pointy head if you have an unfortunate chainsaw accident.

Good folks to take on a camping trip.

Or to a Lady Gaga concert.

One of these gals has two delightful kidlets, an 18 month old son and a nine year old daughter.

Since she is a wonderful mommy she decided to purchase two fuzzy hamsters by the names of Cinnamon and Nutmeg for them to cuddle and humiliate.

Nutmeg and Cinnamon not only have a cage, but a larger enclosure too, so the kids can play with them and allow them hamster prison yard time.

On one of these fur time furloughs, apparently her 18 month old decided it would be fun to play a rousing game of "Keep Away" with Nutmeg and promptly squished him into the linoleum.

"You're out!".

Or in this case, "you're dead!

As in, finito.

As in, he was a goner.

As in, rodent road kill.

So as he stands there peering into Nutmegs’ lifeless beady eyes, his sister realized what calamity had occurred and began to scream,

“AAAAHHHHH!"

“NUTMEG IS DEAD!!!”

“AAAAAAHHHHH!!!!”

Meanwhile, the girly hamster, Cinnamon is over in the corner thinking, "I told him sports were dangerous!" "He just never listens!" "He knows that Guitar Hero is his best game!"

At this point in time, my friend bounds through the door with her husband in hot pursuit, scoops up the tiny creature, and did what any respectable OR nurse would do......

She started CPR.

On a hamster.....

The scene was something right out of an "I Love Lucy" episode!

Both children were wailing and jumping from one foot to the other trying to view the Mommy in action.

The husband began to scream, "You're breaking his ribs!" "Too hard!!! Too hard!!!".

Meanwhile she continued her one finger chest compressions and tiny breaths into the whiskery little snozola......

"Everybody be quiet! I don't know if he has a pulse!!!!!!"

Priceless....

And lo and behold, Nutmeg slowly opened his minuscule lids and fluttered back to consciousness!

I think they should rename him Lazarus....

Of course my friend was concerned about his pain level and gave him a couple of minute drops of Motrin for his post chest compression aches.

Thoughtful.

At this point, order had been restored, the children had stopped shrieking and all was well with the world.

For everybody but the hamster.

He was gently placed back into his cage where he crawled over into the corner and glared at all the participating parties.

He's thinking, "Here I am minding my own hamster business eating some hamster chow and they pluck me up and sacrifice me to the "Voit Crusher King" for his afternoons entertainment!"

"Then he proceeds to smash the livin' daylights out of me, and they have the nerve to REVIVE MY LIFELESS BODY???"

“REALLY??”

Obviously he was upset because he was a Buddhist hamster and thought he was going on to the next level where he was going to be something really cool.

Like a Puma.

Or Oprah Winfrey.

Now here he was, stuck back in his stupid cage, and doomed to live the rest of his life keeping one eye peeled for the "Dodgeball Destroyer."

Just what he wanted!!!!!

For the next couple of days he sulked around in his cedar shavings haven, shaking his hairy fist at Fate and devising a Shawshank Redemption-type escape plan.

His dream was to meet up with Morgan Freeman on “Babes” farm and drive a tractor all day....

Eventually he climbed back onto his hamster wheel so he could rebuild his post smashmouth body and to give him time to ponder his plan, because everyone knows that exercise helps you think.

Plus he was waiting for his tiny rock hammer to be delivered in the mail.

On day five he peeled back his Farrah Fawcett poster and exited stage right.

This involved making a run for the pantry where there was a sliver of a hole in the baseboards.  He quickly squeezed his body into the crack and found the best vantage point to keep his eye peeled for Junior the Impaler.

Soon my friend discovered the prison break and informed her husband, who created a hamster capture plan which involved cheese on a skewer and a lot of patience.

Because of our heat wave, he donned his best hamster hunter costume which consisted of a pair of his best boxer shorts and nothing else.

Then he hunkered down to smoke out the crafty Nutmeg.

I am told this took five hours……

FIVE HOURS!!!

Guess I am just lazy but in that amount of time I could have watched 10 episodes of “The Big Bang Theory.”

Or driven to Vegas.

By then I would have been thinkin’, “live and let hamster”.

Another funny side note is that in the middle of the great Nutmeg capture he turned around to discover “Baby Voit Crusher” had silently pulled out the skewer trap stick and was casually munching on the cheese cube bait….

Gotta love this kid.

He was wondering why he hadn’t been getting any nibbles.

So long story even longer.

Mr. Boxer Shorts was eventually triumphant in his mission. Nutmeg was hauled out from under the baseboards and placed in solitary confinement.

As he was being returned to the slammer, Cinnamon was overheard saying, “What?  You fell for the old Cheese on a Skewer trick?!”

Bottom line is, if you are a pet who belongs to a nurse, you need to consider what would happen if you bite the big one when they are around.

If you plan on moving on to a higher plane when you leave this place, you better take the time to sign a “Do Not Resuscitate”order or they will plug your mangy hiney into a ventilator in two shakes of a lambs’ tail.

Cuz it doesn't matter whether you are a cat, dog, or possum.
Have hairy nostrils, slobbery lips or little prickly whiskers, they WILL give you CPR.

And a couple drops of Motrin for good measure.....

………I’m just sayin’