We have been the Sneezy McSickersons at our house today, thanks to a monster of a cold / sinus infection that Mama was kind enough to pass along to all of us when she was visiting for Christmas.

It’s the gift that keeps on giving!

Unfortunately, Alex is about two days ahead of D. and me in the recovery process, which means that the youngster has a major case of cabin fever and two parents who don’t much want to venture outside the “cabin,” as it were. To add insult to injury, Alex ripped up a DVD case (why? I have no idea, but the people at Blockbuster will be none too pleased with his handiwork), lost his TV privileges for the day, and do y’all have any idea how it’s taking every ounce of strength I have not to cave and let my child watch “Max and Ruby,” for pete’s sake?

You see, the problem with punishment is that you have to enforce it. Which totally stinks. Especially when your head is swollen to twice its normal size and stuffed with cotton.

So, to entertain himself, Alex has been removing the attachments from the vacuum cleaner and using them as microphones, mostly saying, “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, it’s MAAAAAAH-MAAAAAAAH!” And then I take the stage, sneeze, and blow my nose. Tickets are going for upwards of a penny, so you’d better order yours quickly because there’s no question that the show is going to be a sell-out.

We have also made pretend phone calls to Mickey Mouse, Batman, Superman, Donald Duck, Goofy, the grandparents, and all the aunts and uncles. And do y’all know what’s CRAZY? According to the information that Alex says they’re giving him, they all got Criss Cross Crash for Christmas. ISN’T THAT UNCANNY? Alex has also called Mickey Mouse to tell him that we’re going to make some chocolate chip cookies and to ask him to excuse him because he “pooted and had gas,” and if y’all would just remind me that the next time I have some sort of cold and Alex misbehaves, I need to come up with an alternate form of punishment that does not involve taking away the television.

(By the way, right now D. and Alex are playing Criss Cross Crash, and it’s so loud that I feel like I need to TYPE IN ALL CAPS JUST SO YOU CAN HEAR ME.)

So here’s our plan for the evening, once we get the child into bed:

1) Sneeze
2) Wipe nose
3) Repeat

If we get really wild and crazy I guess we’ll wipe each other’s noses, but maybe not, because, well, EWWWW.

I actually did get my Christmas decorations put away today, and that was a huge accomplishment because I kept breaking out in a cold sweat and having to sit down and fan myself (in a word: ATTRACTIVE), and I found myself getting a little reflective about 2006. I don’t know if that was because I was running a touch of fever or because I was actually examining my life thoughtfully (stranger things have happened), but I think I’ll probably write some of that stuff down and post it tomorrow when everyone’s too tired from their New Year’s Eve festivities to care. Because I like to bury the thoughtful stuff in places where no one can find it, you see.

So now it’s almost 10, and Alex is asleep, and the dogs are all snug in their beds (it took some doing because Maggie the lab is terrified of the sound of fireworks and had a full fledged anxiety attack about 7, right around the time when Alex was calling Mickey Mouse and telling him all about his gastric woes), and I think I’m going to watch a movie.

I know! A movie!

I think it’s pretty clear that I’m planning to LIVE ON THE EDGE in 2007.

Happy New Year, everybody.

When D’s mother Martha was in college, some of her sorority sisters gave her the nickname “Martie.” They’ve continued to call her “Martie” over the years, and the reason why I keep putting the word “Martie” in quotation marks is because that’s exactly how Martha writes it. Every card, every letter, every note that we get from her is signed like this:

Love,
Mother
“Martie”

Personally, I like to think of “Martie” as Martha’s rap alter-ego, someone who would be featured on a hot new single called “Mother’s Got A Bell (A Ring-A-Ding Bell)” by Jay Z. featuring “Martie,” Ludacris and Justin Timberlake. As far as I know neither Martha nor “Martie” has any plans to enter the hip-hop scene, but I’ll be sure to let you know if that changes.

Anyway, Martha is as proud of her nickname as she can be; I think it makes her feel all young and fun and devil-may-care-ish. Many times when we have been out shopping I have overheard her talking to complete strangers about the texture of a bath towel or the cut of a jacket or the length of a strap on a purse, and inevitably, after she mentions that her son and daughter-in-law just love this town, just love it!, and then gives them a brief overview of our college days, early married years, and our current obligations and responsibilities with work and parenthood and whatnot, she’ll mention that her grandchildren call her “Martie” because that was her nickname in college and she always knew that she wanted her grandchildren to call her “Martie” because she was afraid if she didn’t ask to be called “Martie” they would end up calling her something like “Big Maw” or “Mar Mar.”

So after we wrapped up the festivities at Martha’s house on Wednesday night, after Martha apologized for the amount of food on her dinner plate because all she’d had to eat that day was a piece of caramel cake and certainly those four tablespoons of squash, two tablespoons of turkey and the half a roll were Terribly Excessive, we knew we had another big day-o-fun in store because D’s best friend, Todd - who also happens to be Alex’s godfather - was coming to town on Thursday so that we could meet his girlfriend, whose name just happens to be - can you guess it? - Marti.

!!!

Now see! Isn’t that more fun! We were going to have “Martie” and Marti! In the same place! Can you even imagine?!

Todd works in Los Angeles as a sound editor, and because of that we don’t get to see him nearly enough - what with the thousands of miles in between us and all. But he and D have talked almost every single day for the last fifteen years, so we don’t notice the distance as much as other people might. By the way, Martha always tells people that Todd “does the sound on the movies,” and it never fails to make me laugh because it implies that he is singlehandedly responsible for the fact that the world’s moviegoers can hear anything at all when we sit down to watch a show at the local cineplex or enjoy a DVD in the comfort of our homes. So thank you, Todd, for taking care of that for us. It must be a whale of a job.

So by the time Todd and Marti got to town, Alex was thoroughly confused about who was going to be with Todd. D and I tried to explain that Marti is a different person than the grandmother he knows as “Martie.” And when he finally met Todd’s Marti, Alex rectified the problem in a way that only a three year old could: he immediately called Todd’s girlfriend “New Marti.” And he called his grandmother, at least for the purposes of clarity, “Old ‘Martie.’”

At which point Martha no doubt wished that she’d just gone with “Big Maw” or “Mar Mar” when it came to her mamaw moniker.

From here on out I’m going to mostly let the pictures do the talking, but I have to say that Todd’s Marti, aka “New Marti,” is a total doll. She had been at Martha and Sissie’s house all of eight minutes when we started taking pictures, and I’m here to tell you that she just jumped right in and loved on them like she’d known them all of her life. D and I both hope that Thursday was just the beginning of many, many afternoons with New Marti. She’s warm, genuine, and real - LOVE HER.

Now around the sixth time that “Martie” said, “Oh, this is just more fun! I’m not used to having another person named Marti around! It’s so much fun! Isn’t this more fun?,” Todd got a little tickled, and it snowballed into one of those wheezing laughs that results in tears. And the more Todd laughed, the more Martha grinned and giggled.

Todd absolutely adores Martha and Sissie, as evidenced by the fact that he wanted his girlfriend to meet them. And with everything they’ve been through lately - Sissie’s broken hip, extended hospital stay, doctor’s visits, ongoing therapy, etc. - I think Todd and New Marti’s visit meant more than Todd and New Marti will ever know. “Martie” and Sissie were tickled to death, no doubt about it.

Sissie even had her picture made with them in spite of the fact that she wasn’t wearing make-up, even though Martha asked her several times if she wanted “a little lipstick? Do you want just a touch of lipstick, Mother? Just a little bit? Before you get your picture made?”

I do hope all of you noticed that Sissie has her bathrobe cinched at the waist with a black belt, because really, even at 96, there’s just no excuse for wearing a shapeless garment, girls. And there are no words to articulate how much I love the fact that she didn’t have her make-up on yet, but BY JEHOSEPHAT SHE TOOK THE TIME TO PUT ON THAT BELT. Yes ma’am she did.

And finally. This next picture sums up why the visit would have been worth it even if we hadn’t enjoyed our time with New Marti and “Old ‘Martie’” and Sissie (not to mention the delicious lunch that my mama cooked):

The whole day just made me happy.

And I’m all done now.

Veronica at Toddled Dredge is, in my humble opinion, one of the most gifted writers in all the blogosphere. And she is currently writing an incredibly beautiful series of posts about the Twelve Days of Christmas.

My link is to Day One. You can start there and play catch-up.

You’ll be so glad you did.

Wednesday night we went over to Martha and Sissie’s to exchange Christmas gifts. Sissie has been in the hospital for several weeks so that she could go through some intensive occupational and physical therapy on her hip (she had a bad fall back in September), and now that she’s home, she and Martha are dealing with ’round-the-clock sitters, all manner of medical equipment, and a whole new definition of “normal.”

The worst thing about this change in their living arrangements is that they don’t have the freedom that they once did. Everything that they do is dictated by waiting on therapists, waiting on nurses, making sure sitters show up, making phone calls when they don’t, and trying to sleep when they can.

So when we got to their house Wednesday night, Martha couldn’t wait to start telling me the stories of what life has been like since Sissie came home from the hospital. Sissie is now staying in the guest room because that bed is lower, and Martha has provided her with a little bell to ring when she needs something. Personally I feel that the bell is somewhat unnecessary since Sissie screams, “MAH-THA! MAHHHHHHHH-THA!” when she rings it, but I think it makes Martha feel good to tell her friends that she’s “gotten Mother this darling little bell,” and hey, I’m all for whatever gets you through the tough times.

More about all that after a bit of background information.

One of the first things I learned when D and I got married is that in his family you take turns opening Christmas gifts. In my family it’s a big free-for-all, with everyone opening presents at once, but in D’s family the tradition has been for each person to take turns opening one gift at a time, with everyone watching the person who is opening the gift. I’m fairly certain that I had nightmares about this tradition after my first Christmas with his family, because I hate and despise and abhor and loathe being the center of attention. However, now that Alex is at an age where he loves to open presents, he has turned the whole tradition on its head. And as a mother, I’ve never been more proud.

We hadn’t been in Martha and Sissie’s house for five minutes before Alex started handing presents to his grandmother and his great-grandmother, and it became very clear very quickly that there would be no taking turns, that the new tradition was going to be a three year-old screaming “OPEN IT! OPEN IT!” to anyone holding a present.

While the three year-old’s mama smiled like a cheshire cat in the background.

Anyway, here are Alex and Sissie after she opened one of her presents at the same time that Martha opened one of hers, and yet the sun still came up the next morning:

He was a little excited.

Here’s another picture of Sissie. Look carefully at her ensemble:

As far as I’m concerned, when you have a 96 year old woman who still takes time to sport a little animal print sweater and wear a belt that cinches her waist even when she’s recovering from a broken hip and can barely walk - well, what’s not to love?

The whole time that Alex was running the present-giving show, Martha was trying to tell me about the problems she’s had with some of the home health workers, which brings us back to where I left off in the third paragraph. I would really like to recount this story in direct quotes, telling it in the style that’s unique to Martha and Martha alone, but I think I would be typing from now until next Monday, and quite frankly I just don’t have the strength.

The gist of it is that Martha left Sissie with one of the sitters while she went to her Sunday School party, and when Martha got home “a little before nine, I was home before nine! I wasn’t even out that late!” she found the sitter sound asleep in the recliner.

Now I think that if I had been in Martha’s position at this juncture, I probably would’ve walked over to the recliner and very gently said something like, “WAKE UP WAKE UP YOU’RE ON THE CLOCK AND I’M NOT PAYING YOU TO SLEEP.” But Martha avoids confrontation of any sort, so here is what she did in an attempt to wake up the sleeping sitter:

1. walked in her bedroom and shut the door
2. opened the door
3. walked in the bathroom and shut the door
4. flushed the commode
5. opened the bathroom door
6. walked in the kitchen where she repeatedly opened and shut the door to the microwave because, according to Martha, “my microwave door is really loud, it’s terribly loud! and I don’t see how anybody could sleep through me shutting it, especially not over and over again!”

At this point Sissie woke up (no doubt because of that microwave door opening and shutting), so she started ringing her bell and yelling “MAH-THA! MAHHHHHH-THA!” The sitter still didn’t hear anything (”she didn’t even hear Mother’s bell! she didn’t hear the bell! and I had been at the Sunday School party and what if Mother had rang the bell and that woman wouldn’t have heard her! and, I mean, you see what I’m dealing with. you see what I’m dealing with!”).

So Martha took care of whatever Sissie needed and then went and stood in front of the recliner and loudly cleared her throat four or eleventy hundred times until the sitter finally stirred. And instead of asking the sitter what in the sam holy hill she was thinking, Martha simply said, “I couldn’t get you to wake up. And Mother even rang her bell!”

The sleeping sitter confessed that she had been a bit nauseated earlier in the evening, taken a Phenagren or two, and much to her surprise she became incredibly drowsy and dozed off into what might be classified as a light coma. Martha told her that it probably wasn’t a good idea to take medication like Phenagren when she had a job that required staying awake in order to care for the elderly, but the sitter was nonplussed and asked Martha if she could have her check seeing as how she had some Christmas shopping to do the next day.

At that point Martha (very politely, of course) told the woman that it probably wasn’t going to work out, what with her demanding payment for sleeping on the job and all. And what with her not being able to hear Sissie’s bell. Or, you know, Sissie’s shouting.

I’m sure at this point y’all think that I’m at least four, maybe five hours into our Christmas celebration with Martha and Sissie, but honestly I think that all of this had transpired by the 30 to 45 minute mark. Next up was the segment of the evening where Martha couldn’t decide if I would want a new set of pots and pans that she was giving me to be blue or red, so she confessed that she bought both and then she brought both sets into the living room and unpacked both boxes and had me make a decision right then and there after she offered an extensive comparison of the features of each and told me the story about how she found them and who helped her in the respective stores.

In the interest of tying up all the loose narrative ends, you should know that I chose the red pots and pans.

Martha was, quite simply, delighted with my choice.

So I will bring this portion of our Christmas tale to a close by offering you some adorable pictures of Alex and his cousin Melissa.

I have absolutely no idea what they did for the four hours we spent at Martha’s house that night, as I was so busy listening to Martha’s stories and making life-altering decisions about pots and pans that I only saw them when they ran through the living room.

And just think: I haven’t even gotten to the part where Martha tried to watch a DVD on her new DVD player.

It’s a marathon, people. Not a sprint. I’m pacing myself accordingly.

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