Deck the Halls With Colleen Hawley

Maybe I'm over optimistic, but I'm sure that there's some Christmas Angel somewhere up there that's assigned to my house specifically to keep it from imploding over the Holidays. While others get to witness good will towards men, experience the joy from the spirit of giving, and lose themselves in the sounds of the carols....I get to witness my cheap-ass husband doing all his shopping at Good Will, experience him flipping the bird to the Spirit of Christmas Future, and lose my hearing in the wail of the sirens.

Case in point, decorating the house. Although I took some sort of oath as a psychiatric nurse to "only use my powers for good" or something like that, I'm in touch with the fact that I'm married to the genetic composite of the Grinch and Homer Simpson. After two weeks of him faking a seizure every time I mentioned this wondrous chore to him, on Christmas Eve I casually mention that the neighbors' property is looking so festive that they'll probably win the local paper's decorating contest, and won't it be nice to have this pointed out to him every time he goes out to shovel the driveway?

Not appreciating the muttered curse words....I'm relieved to see that glint of "You Ain't Gettin One Up On Me" returning to his eyes...and do a mental cartwheel when I see him digging in the garage for the ladder. Stepping over his blueprints several hours later, I'm pleased to see a delivery truck unloading about 100 000 Christmas lights, complete with one giant electric Santa. Could this be THE year? Could we make the newspaper on a page that doesn't involve pictures of emergency personnel and court notes?

I hold back my tears of pride for my man as I invite my darling little boys to bake cookies with me to reward their Dad for creating such a winter wonderland right on our own roof. Ignoring the occasional loud swearing and the kitchen lights flickering, I'm only slightly prepared to see Tommy flailing helplessly as he drops past the patio doors on to the back lawn. Although grateful that the lawnmower he never bothered to put away broke his fall, he curses the hedging shears that only slightly missed thrusting him into a gender identity crisis.

Rushing outside, and closing the door to hide the gales of laughter coming from the boys, I lean down to hear him whisper what I fear may be his last words....."Do I have more up there than that yahoo next door?". Reassured that the lights are dimming all over the neighborhood and the power meter is spinning so fast I'm fearful it'll take flight, he nods the OK to move him on to the couch.

Unable to move this portable hernia by myself, I strategically place beer cans in between his twisted form and the back door and cheer him on as he follows the beacons and crawls to safety. Encouraging him to just ignore the "6.0" signs that the kids are holding up, I tuck him in on the couch and break in to my reserve of ice packs and Aspirin.

Shooing the kids to bed before the real Santa makes an appearance, I fan the smoke to stop the screeching of the smoke alarms, scrape the black lumps that should have been cookies onto a plate, and present my humble offering to the man who risked his life to shut me up.

Realizing I'd placed three too many beer within reach, I cover his polluted, sleeping body with a blanket, and hunker down in bed by myself to await Christmas morning. As dreams of Visa bills disappearing fill my head, I fail to hear the kids sneaking into the living room in the dark to see if they can catch Santa....and likely mug him.

As they look expectantly out the picture window for that magical sleigh, they hear a rumbling from the roof. Could it be eight tiny reindeer bringing Saint Nick to our home? Or could it be Saint Nick himself being blown off the roof as the screws that were only half nailed in before Tommy came crashing down crumbled under the weight of a 350 pound animatronic fat guy waving his arms and dancing?

Being awoken by the screams of the kids as they watched jolly old Saint Nick swing like a pendulum by a string of lights and blink off and on in front of the picture window, Tommy jumps to his feet and yells in that special way that only someone heavily intoxicated and covered in soft tissue injuries can. Turning their attention from the psychotic Santa to the big lump struggling loudly under a blanket in the dark, the kids abandon their quest for toys and switch to survival mode. Planting one foot squarely in Tommy's man-bits, the oldest leads his brothers to safety under my bed.

Waking to what I believe is the sound of Michael Jackson singing something about a "can of whoop-ass", I stumble in the dark to the living room to see what's the matter. Although I'm sadly not at all surprised to see my new strobe-light-Santa flapping in the wind, I'm puzzled to see Tommy rolling on the floor clutching his privates and sucking his thumb. Hearing the boys warming up their war-cry, I sigh and order Tommy to stop crying, and to disconnect the power to the roof before the insurance guy who's been posted in the van across the street ever since Tommy installed the windows takes a picture.

Forgetting the likelihood that Tommy will electrocute himself digging for an electrical cord in the snow, I turn my attention to the boys' snarling threats from my room at the boogeyman who dared to invade their loot-fest. I wish I would have had the patience to calmly explore solutions to this skirmish....I wish I would have sent someone sober to do the unplugging... and I wish I would have known that the boys closed and locked my bedroom door!

Bouncing face-first off the door I thought was left open, I'm trying to deduce whether my head injury or the fact that the transformers all blew when Tommy stuck the cord into the snowbank is responsible for the complete blackness I find myself plunged into. Feeling my way down the hall following the sounds of Tommy's moans, I have only the occasional flash of the insurance guy's camera to guide me to the spot on the front lawn where Tommy lays.

Again unable to lift him, and out of beer cans, I ease myself into a sitting position beside my broken-up, charred man and look alarmingly at the kids in the window brandishing spears that they fashioned out of coat hangers and my curling iron. Ignoring Tommy's pleas to find a sharp piece of ice and give him a vasectomy for Christmas, I give him the one Christmas present that will restore his faith in this glorious season....I grab hold of the electrical cord coming from our neighbor's roof, and yank every freaking one of his lights onto a broken heap on his lawn.

As Tommy professes his love for me while one single tear courses down his singed and swollen face, I comfort myself with the knowledge that I've brought unity to my neighborhood...by evoking the largest mass-911 call in our town's history.

Hope Santa brings me a new lawyer......

They're Not Wrinkles...You're Just Hallucinating

There comes a time in every middle-aged woman's life when she has to surrender her loyalty for "going natural" to the makers of Crack-Fill-For-Your-Face and other such wonders. Having been offered the chance to ring in the New Year surrounded by intoxicated people in a dance hall in lieu of peeling cheese nachos off the sofa after the kids fell asleep seemed like one of those "good idea at the time" kind of deals.

The first order of business was a new dress. Not just any new dress....one that had to make my husband weak in the knees (and not from the price tag), and bring the room to total silence when I crossed the dance floor, and make the band immediately stop what they're playing and break into "You Look Wonderful Tonight". *sigh*...

Flying to the mall to begin this magical adventure armed to the teeth with my husband's credit cards, I find myself in a clothing store heavily populated and staffed by young women who look like the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders' evil twins. Ignoring the "What the hell are you doing in here?" looks dripping from the faces of the masses, I grab an armload of fabric from the counter and defiantly march to the dressing room.

Not having had the opportunity to try on new clothes that didn't have holes for breastfeeding in them for quite some time, I'm a little surprised at the firm hug the fabric is giving me once I squeeze into it. Ignoring the snickers from the staff on the other side of the curtain, I suck my gut in 'till my spine cracks and saunter out to gaze at my newest frock in the full length mirror.

Congratulating myself for maintaining my figure after three kids and 20-odd years of reality TV and Doritos, I pretend I'm deaf when the salesclerk announces "That's the drycleaning bag for our Big and Tall Menswear section".

Enjoying the sounds of the cheerleaders coughing on the vapor trail I left running out of the store, I head to the nearest outlet that sells clothes from the line of whatever used-to-be-skinny celebrity who's cashing in on every housewife's cross to bear.

Now that I've found suitable couture that doesn't involve a hunting shirt, I decide that maybe updating my look wouldn't hurt. Surely there's someone in this mall that can undo this mullet-married-to-a-beehive hairdo that I've been sporting in order to use up all those hairspray samples that keep coming in the mail.

Sliding into the beautician's chair at our local Cut and Curl, I fail to see the humor in the hairdressers doing "Rock, Paper, Scissors" right in front of me to see who has to earn their paycheck today. With a sickening sweet smile, this bimbo with a name tag reading "Feather" (can't possibly be her real name), directs me to "the back room"....both for privacy and so that no one else in the mall sees me sitting there in a drycleaning bag.

Dipping my head into a vat of water that's one degree shy of lava in order to melt the hairspray, "Feather" tells me that she needs to "take a few stray hairs" from my eyebrows..and upper lip..and chin. Pouring hot wax in copious amounts on my tender skin, I am sorely unprepared for the first four layers of my head being ripped off while "Feather" calls me Hagrid under her breath. Although horrified to see the wooly mammoth that used to be my right eyebrow stuck to the little strip of cloth on the counter, I cooly excuse myself from the back room. OK...maybe it was more like "Touch me again and I'll pluck you"...but I manage to gingerly feel my way out of the door as my right eye swells shut.

Perched on a stool in front of a mirror with enough lights on it to signal the mother ship, I let "Feather"s assistant assess what's left of the skin on my face and start erasing the years. Pressed for time, I ask her to please stop whimpering, and reassure her she can go ahead and quit right after we're done.

Spinning me around to face a mirror that magnifies my face until it looks like a Google Earth close up of Death Valley, I hear her ask "Feather" to "Find some drywall compound while I distract her with shiny objects". Mesmerized by the paper clips and keys, I hardly notice as she pastes my face with the cosmetic equivalent of Spackle.

Snapped out of my reverie by the wail of the fire alarm, I'm knocked to the floor by the wind shear left by "Feather" and her friend as they abandon ship. Staggering to the hallway, I realize I can't ask for directions to the nearest exit as my face has turned into a concrete block as it dried.

I'm only vaguely aware of the horrified stares from the other shoppers as I stumble to the parking lot with my face cemented into a one-eyed, (and one-eye browed) grimace, with my wet, sticky hair plastered to my face, and "Big and Tall...We Fit Them All" plastered across my ass...and search in vain for car keys in an empty drycleaning bag.

Lurching to a group of teenagers who are eyeing me like all those warnings about marijuana have finally come true, I ask to use a cell phone in a voice that sounds like a muffled scream because my lips are encased in asphalt. Snatching a phone from the hands of one of the teens taking pictures that will surely make me an internet sensation by dinnertime, I dial the number for Roadside Assitance and make muffled screaming noises at the man on the other end of the line until he hangs up on me.

Whirled around by a big police officer who watched me "acquire" a phone, I squawk muffled protests and feel both relieved and alarmed as he gets a good look at me and takes a few steps backwards. Cuffed and in the back of the police cruiser, I'm grieving the loss of what would have been my shining moment on the dance floor...and dreading explaining this one to the hubby.

As the police officer speaks right into my face in a very loud and deliberately slow manner to explain the fingerprinting process, I make a mental note to get in on the bets I'm hearing that my mugshot will make YouTube history. Handing me a phone, he dials the number for a government issed lawyer and gives it to me.

Making muffled noises into the mouthpiece until the lawyer growls about the cops prank calling him again, I hang my head as the "on hold" music begins......"You look wonderful tonight....."

The Mammogram

Turning 40 is not without its pratfalls. Couple the constant vigil to slather every inch of my skin with SPF 250 to prevent being cast as a "Warrior Extra" in "The Mummy Returns" with the horrible realization that cheesecake is fleeting...but cellulite lives forever, and it becomes obvious how ill-prepared I was to enter my twilight years.

With the new quadruple assault on the decades behind me, I was also hit with the realization that my body could just up and quit at any time. And has threatened to during many exercise regimes. So, enter the "Preventative Health Phase".

Yes, I know that regular check ups are important....and doing the yearly "woman things" at the doctor's office is a fact of life.....but is it really necessary to try and mimic childbirth from the waist up to remind us that we're too old now for anyone to care what our girls look like?

Not knowing what to expect, I piled myself into the car...sans deodorant as per the info sheet my doctor gave me....and prepared to look some x-ray technician in the eye and pretend he/she wasn't man-handling my boobs.

Arriving at the hospital, I instantly knew where the mammogram department was by watching the hordes of women running for the parking lot clutching their chests and begging for ice packs. Not one to be easily intimidated, I looked the receptionist square in the eye and said, "I'm Colleen Hawley and I'm here for an x-ray of my foot".

Cursing the hospital policy that gives the receptionist access to what the doctor ordered, I sulk around back and wait for my turn in the masher. Ignoring the yelping of the woman ahead of me, I convince myself that they couldn't possibly be filming a slasher movie in there and bravely take my johnny shirt and psych myself up for game day.

Entering the room to meet the technician who will be my tour guide to old-womanhood, I stop and swoon at what I'm seeing. Imagine if Brad Pitt and George Clooney were blended in to one man...with the physique of Mr. Universe.....and the hair of a Greek God....and you have the perfect man to help someone as shy as me get through this rite of passage. I feel like I'm in a dream state as he gently puts his hand under my chin, expecting him to remark something like "My God, you're magnificent!".....only to have him push my mouth closed and mutter "You're drooling on my lab coat".

Painfully aware of how many children I breastfed...and how many times I went bra-less doing housework...I curse the cruelty of the earth's gravitational field and follow Mr. Perfect to his contraption. Passing me two metal BB pellets, he instructs me to tape them to my nipples while he warms up the machine that will know me in ways only my husband did after our fourth date.

Giggling as I coyly give him the "This is not a date" joke, I'm instantly shut up as he shoves me chest-first into a plastic vice that was surely invented by some one-eyed sociopath who locked himself in a laboratory with a three-headed assistant for a hundred years. Gauging the severity of my whiplash injury, I'm hardly aware that Mr. Perfect has grabbed one of my girls and laid it on an ice cold slab of some material that must have been pirated from Area 57.

Giving me his generic "This won't hurt" spiel as he dives for cover behind a lead wall, I notice that something is happening....the walls are closing in! Escape is futile as those metal BB pellets seem to be attracted to the magnets in the MRI lab next door, and I'm cemented to the masher. Still trying to maintain some composure and appear like a voluptuous-if-not-aging dignitary, I break out in a sweat that would shame a lava flow as my boob is compressed into a diamond...but I do not cry out...I do not show fear....I do not BELIEVE that I wasn't allowed to wear deodorant!

Hearing Mr. Perfect rounding the corner again, I try to fan and dry my upper body with my good arm and put on a "That didn't hurt a bit, you silly" kind of face. Watching Mr. Perfect grimace and smear menthol under his nose, I switch instead to Plan B...beg for morphine or a nerve block.

The relief I felt as the masher surrendered its death grip on me was instantly replaced with the awful realization that God gave me two boobs. Sensing my intent to bolt for the parking lot and beg for an ice-pack, Mr. Perfect whipped out a magnet and cemented me to the masher again. Bracing for the pending alteration in my cellular carbon, I pray that Mr. Perfect reaches the age where he'll need a prostate exam real soon.

Not caring anymore that I smell like a dead goat's ass, or that my hair resembles Phyllis Diller in her drinking days, I use the scoop provided by Mr. Perfect to scrape my boobs off the masher and rearrange them into a bra that will never fit right again.

Giving me his most professional "Now that wasn't so bad, was it?" smile, I ask for my clothes with a voice usually reserved for frightening ghosts away and actually enjoy his startled expression as he realizes I'm calculating my odds with a jury of my peers.

Throwing my clothes back on, I ignore his "But Mrs. Hawley"s and storm out of the room and head for the parking lot to stick my chest into a snowbank. Marching by the MRI lab, I instantly regret not waiting for his final instructions as the machine whirs to life and drags me to the door by the BB pellets that I neglected to remove before storming out.

Ripping the tape that was surely originally marketed to keep the space arm attached to the latest Nassau shuttle, I am pleasantly surprised by the amount of Gaelic curse words I remember from my high school days. Throwing Mr. Perfect one more "Get a Colonoscopy" look, I abandon my quest to find one last shred of dignity as I stagger to the parking lot.

Can't wait to turn 50........

Even the Cryptkeeper is Supposed to Retire

OK, so here' s my theory on humankind's evolutionary ability to manipulate a mother's wallet.



Cavemen started the whole thing. Gorg's luring the triceratops to distract his mother while he raided the bonepile was just the beginning.



Point in case....my 8 year old son. Never one to be outdone by a dramatic reaction (I could charge admission to the living room whenever he's told to do homework), even I was impressed by his "Gimme a New Bike" performance. Now I thought he looked really cute riding around on his old bike....maybe bore a striking resemblance to the Shriners, but still cheek-pinchable.



So my recommendation that he wait until Spring to trade up to a model that doesn't drive his knees in to his chin sounded reasonable, right? WRONG!



I was instantly met with a face that looked like it was being sucked in to a black hole while some pyrotechnic artist set a fireworks display to the music of him wailing about how he's going to sic Dr. Phil on me.



I decided he was old enough for the "You have to contribute in your way to this family" speech, which was met by a resounding "Pffft..." as he was already tipped off by his brothers that this essentially means giving up anything not sold at the Dollarama so Mom can afford the unleaded gasoline and brand-name ketchup.



Any event resulting in a school-aged child accompanying their mother to a toy store never ends well. For the mother. Or the guy that has to put everything in the aisles away at the end of the day. Or the janitor who forgot his gum-melter stuff.



So, armed with a credit card and a written list of punishments for various predicted crimes against adults, we hit the local bike-o-rama, and are met by a well-meaning salesman, Arnold. (Insert terminator jokes here....).



Now Arnold, being a seasoned kid-toy relationship builder, is confident in his ability to find any boy the perfect bicycle to launch him from boyhood into adolescence. Poor Arnold. Poor, poor Arnold. Little did he know he was dealing with the love child of Mothra and a poltergeist.



Following his well-honed homing device that gravitates children to the most expensive things in the store to break, my little ray of sunshine managed to find a bike that converts into a daybed or a lawnmower, and cleared his throat for his "I WANNNIT" rant. Noticing the glint of hope in the eyes of an I-Get-Commission style Arnold, I immediately position myself so he can't miss the fact that I'm dressed in dress pants and my husband's hunting shirt.



Sighing that "You're gonna make me earn my paycheck" sigh, Arnold points us to the discount section. Which just happens to look like an apocolyptic version of Wall-E. Ignoring the "You can't expect someone of my stature to ride one of THOSE" look oozing from my boy's face, I drag him to a bike that doesn't require me to mortgage the camper to buy.



Now begins the "I'll do extra chores around the house to pay for (insert unattainable toy here) .... I promise!". Having had goats invade my garage to forage in all the garbage that never made it to the curb, and having had shooed reporters off my lawn wanting to photograph the crop circles that formed because the grass was so high....I gave him the "Never-Gonna-Happen-And-Drop-It-Before-I-Trade-You-In-For-A-Dog" look. (Seldom used, very effective).



So Arnold sets about sorting through the jumbled mass of cheap bikes with the same amount of enthusiasm I suspect he reserves for root canals. All of which are met with a look from my son that would curdle milk. After about an hour, Arnold starts to show signs of fatigue while my son and I both maintain our "Never Surrender" demeanors. So something's gotta give soon.



And then it happens.....Arnold magically pulls out a shiny red contraption that instantly illuminates the room with its magnificence while a chorus of Angels sings in the background. Wiping the tears from his eyes, my son whispers "We'll take it." Smiling his most professional "Pay, Get Out, and Never Return" smile, Arnold gives a pathetic "I'll be back" as he leaves a vapor trail to get the credit card swiper thingie.



Patting myself on my proverbial back for sticking to my guns and teaching my son the value of bargain shopping, I realize with horror that something's amiss. There's a pricetag on the bike that surely blew across the street from the car dealership across the way. How did one of the daybed/lawnmower bikes crawl over here?



Enter Arnold, the sweat mopped from his brow and the linament applied to all the necessary muscle groups, ready to add to my growing list of creditors. Gesticulating wildly to him before he swipes that card, I realize with horror that he's intentionally avoiding eye contact with me. As my son strokes the tires and mumbles something about "My Precious", I snap my fingers in front of his face and firmly explain that unless Alan Funt is hiding in the back room, this bike stays with Arnold.



I'm not sure about you, but I have no defences against a sad little face. A trembling chin, a pained look in the eyes, and big shiny tears make me forget all the inimportant stuff like food and heat and a roof over our heads. So when Arnold gave me just such a look, I scribbled my name on the "Sign Here" line, and exited the store with my new liability, being comforted by the "Woo Hoo"s of joy I heard. Also from Arnold.



So please feel free to call me if you need your lawn mowed....or need to rent a place to sleep for a night....or a hunting shirt....



To be continued......

How to Kill a Cake

Little girls are supposed to know how to bake by the time they grow up, right? Well what if one of them happens to be infected with the Anti-Martha Gene? I happen to come from a long line of bad cooks, as evidenced by my scarred fingertips and outrageous insurance rates.

So....I'm supposed to make a cake for a "cake walk" for my youngest to take to school. The first order of business, is to ask "What the hell are you doing walking if you're gonna pound down a cake?". Just give up the day to the Plus-Size-Gods and be done with it.

Soooo...I troddle off (I walk like that now that I'm on the wrong side of 40) to the grocery store to see if I can find a cake mix that doesn't require a separate grocery order or a degree in interpretive language arts to put together. Simple task, right? WRONG! Add the blonde haircolor to the equation and watch the show....

The mix doesn't seem too intimidating...just add milk, eggs, oil, sugar, and flour (what exactly did I get for my $3?) and throw it in the oven for 45 minutes. In my defence.....NOWHERE on the box does it say to add the cake mix to the concoction. Luckily for me the dog I had on a trade knocked it over into the bowl just in time.

So now I have to "grease a 9"9 pan". What the hell is a "9"9 pan"? There's a roasting pan drying in the rack, so I count my lucky stars. Fill the pan up with this gooey, (oddly appealing), bruise-colored caloric bomb, and put it in the oven. Simple, right? WRONG!

The new oven I bought is so shiny and pretty...and matches the countertop so perfectly....and the girl on the commercial looked all happy and competent making a turkey dinner with all the trimmings all without dirtying her apron or mussing her hair. *sigh* But then it did what all applicances do when they smell my DNA...it morphed itself into The Starship Enterprise...and that smart Asian guy is nowhere on the bridge.

But all I need to do is preheat it to 350 degrees. Simple, right? (Fill in the blank here).

Soooo...I start randomly hitting buttons looking for a glimmer of preheatedness.....and voila! A red light comes on, and there's a reassuring hum eminating from the oven's core. In my defense, the button causing it to clean itself SHOULD BE CLEARLY MARKED. But alas, instead of getting warm, it just makes noises and spits at itself. Plus it locked me out of the oven, and I can't figure out how to turn it off.

But luckily for me...someone long ago figured out that shooting stuff full of microwaves changes its atomic matter into something edible. (Yay!). Pouring the goo out of the roasting pan and into a plastic bowl (I'm not completely daft, ya know), I'm congratulating myself on my sudden burst of smarts. And although I recycled the cakemix box...I clearly remember that it said to cook it for 45 minutes. (No flies on me baby!).

Sooo...I load the soon-to-be-masterpiece into the microwave, set it to annihilate the stuff, and walk away. And wonder why the dog is all of a sudden yelping and pawing at the door to get outside.

Ever notice how when you're waiting for something to happen (a pot to boil, perhaps) that it seems to take forever? Well apparently that guy who invented the microwave didn't. Because before the dog could make it to cover, I had one hell of a volcanic eruption right beside the breadbox that would impress any National Geographic subscriber.

Sooo...I troddle off (I walk like that now that I'm on the wrong side of 40 and have burns on the bottom of my feet from the eruption) to the grocery store and look for someone in the bakery I can either bribe or muscle to sell me a cake that looks homemade.

Ahhh...the things we do for our kids. To be continued......

Allrighty then, let's develop a sitemap of sorts for this blog thingie. This is the perfect place for me to dump all my weird-ass happenings due to the fact that I married the lovechild of Homer Simpson and Tim the Toolman Taylor, and neglected to chlorinate the gene pool. (Yeah, I said it).

It should be crystal clear to the reader why I subconsciously chose to specialize in Mental Health Nursing (not just for the access to the cookies), and how to safely bring this band of brothers into the 21st century. (Wait now...we're already in the 21st century now...aren't we? You should also have figured out my haircolor by now).

Rest assured that no animals were harmed in the making of this blog. Unless you count me threatening to trade a couple of the kids in for a dog...(legal, right?)....in which case you should fear for the dog. Or moreso the dog's previous owner.