Author: Jen Rios

T-30

When Sean got up for school on October 2nd, I told him that it was T-30. He didn’t know what that meant.   So, as an explanation, I played him this song:

It COMPLETELY blows my mind that my baby is going to be 17! It blows my mind that 17 years ago, I was entering the last month of my only pregnancy.   Sean always makes fun of me that when my birthday comes around, I celebrate for the whole month. I told him that we can celebrate for two months for his 17th birthday!

As it has turned out, lately, Sean has not gotten me out of bed and I go back to sleep when he goes off to school because I’m not sleeping very well through the night. Before he leaves, he comes to tell me he’s leaving and often times he will kiss me on my forehead. I will grab my phone and play this song that I downloaded on Apple Music!   I also will play this song when he gets home from school too!

Since I’ve been doing it for a week now, Sean will roll his eyes  A little, smile, and will dance a little to this song because he sees how excited I am. The other day, I only played it once and I told him that that fact  kind of bummed me out. He said it was OK and I told him that this was the last month of my pregnancy. He asked me if I, “Really was going to make this about me?”

I told him that it was because I birthed him and have the scars to prove it and I grew him so, yes it is about me too!

Since I have played him the song so far about 20 times, he smiles when I know all the words and I will tell him about when my friend turned 17.  I drove her to school and the morning of her birthday, I drove past her house to get to school so Mr. Flint could let me in early and I decorated her locker before I drove back to pick her up.  When she got into the car, I played ABBA for her too!

It wasn’t really T -30 anyway because there’s 31 days in October but he got that his birthday was a month away!   Tomato, tamahto.   He will be 17 soon and until that day, I will play him ABBA every single day!

ALMOST Forgotten Tune #30

I’ve been watching the Hallmark Channel Fall Harvest Movie Countdown this whole weekend  when I was not watching football. Both Michigan and the Lions won!   During the commercials and between the movies, there was an advertisement for the countdown that had this song playing in the background. I haven’t heard this song in a really long time and it’s fitting because it’s October.   It doesn’t really feel like that because I can’t tell being cooped up in my house  since I got my motorized chair.

I have already seen the number one movie in the 15 movie countdown but I really like it! It’s “Falling for Vermont.”  Stacy Hinkhouse, the, “Insane  psycho freak” from Freaky Friday is starring in it.   My Mom was the one who made that connection when I was watching another Hallmark movie she’s in.  She is older  and has darker hair but now I can’t NOT see Stacy Hinkhouse when I watch the movie.

Sight Words

This morning, my Mom and I laughed so much!   Maybe I was just in a good mood because the Lions beat the Packers yesterday. I’m not sure how we started talking about this but as she was putting the  patches on my knee for my tens unit, we started talking about Sean learning sight words when he was five. I lived in my second apartment back then and he was in Kindergarten.  We did flashcards all the time with him and after all the word families were completed, we started using sight words. One of his sight words was , “BUT.”

He would burst out into gales of laughter at that word! I explained to him that it wasn’t that kind of, “butt” but that didn’t matter. He still laughed tremendously!  I remembered that I was in the front office at CCA and was telling my friend and colleague about how he laughed so much at the sight word, “BUT.”

She laughed at that as well and told me that the word she always had trouble keeping a straight face with was, “DUTY.”   I remember that when she told me, we both laughed and laughed!  All subsequent conversations and/or text messages would make a point of using the word, “DUTY.”   I would laugh at the image of her being a small child laughing at that word just like Sean laughed at the word, “BUT.”

I am kind of freaking out that he will be 17 soon and my heart was warmed at the memory of hearing him laugh when he was a small child! I will never forget that sound as long as I live!   I absolutely loved that and when I finally left at the word, “BUT,”  he looked at me with a straight face and said, “Mom,  I’m over it!”   Man, I love that kid!

Yes, Yes, and No.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what my Mom said to me at the post office after my last appointment with Dr. Moore. It’s true! I haven’t sang for a very long time! I wanted to change that and I knew that if I watched the movie, RENT, I could do that because I know all of the words because of singing it over 1 million times with my cousinT Shannon and  by myself in my car and in both of my apartments.

I finally started to watch it OnDemand yesterday and sang along with the entire show! However, I could only get a little bit past when Roger goes to the life-support meeting.  And then, I began to cry!

At the support group for people living with AIDS, they sing a song.  As I have said, I have listened to the  audio of this play and seen this play  performed once and the movie tons of times butI have never once thought to liken myself to these people singing this song:

I began to cry and paused the movie. For me, the answers to these questions are: yes, yes, and no. For me, living with MS,  I will lose my dignity (I feel it is undignified for my Mom and my 16-year-old son to have to cut up my food before I eat it and pick me up and place me into a car if I want to go anywhere among other things).  I am also BEYOND grateful that my Mom cares for me.   And lastly, even though I pray for it every night before I go to bed, I have yet to wake up from this nightmare.

ALMOST Forgotten Tune #29

I sang A LOT with my cousinT, Shannon, during the last two years of high school.  When this song came out, I remember buying the CD single. My cousinT told me that I sing like her. When I told my brother about it, he agreed that  I sounded like her too.  I didn’t like that because  even though she sings well,  I don’t like her voice.

After my doctor’s appointment where Dr. Moore prescribed my tens unit, my Mom and I stopped at the post office  so she could mail a package that I put together for my niece, Natalie, who is away at college. When my Mom got back into the car, this song was playing  on the radio and I asked her if I sounded like her because Shannon and Jimmy think so. She told me that she hasn’t heard me sing in a VERY long time.

“Both a Yous!”

 My  Mom has ALWAYS thought that I have terrible taste in music! She tells me that I listen to, “Wah, wah.  Cry, cry.” music.   Though I won’t argue with her, she seems to forget that there is a reason I have that taste and it all begins with her!

 From  a very early age, probably about five or six, I can vividly remember sitting on the stool in the corner of my parents’ kitchen as she got something out of the oven )whether it be dinner or something she had baked) and she would sing this song.   She taught me the lyrics and we both would sing in our kitchen at the top of our lungs as she cooked/baked;

I then told her last night about the time where I was probably seven or eight.   My Dad wanted to know the lyrics to this song so my brother Jimmy, my brother Dave, and me laid on the floor in the living room on the green carpet and listened to this record over and over and over as he wrote down the lyrics.

My Mom pulled up the Charley Pride song on her phone and we both began singing.  She didn’t know the words to the second verse but it started playing and I sang right along. She was surprised and I started to laugh! I recalled how I heard this song over and over and over again as my Dad wrote down the lyrics.

When the song was over, I looked at her incredulously and said  accusingly, “It was both a yous!”   I told her that it was no wonder that I listened to, “Wah, Wah. Cry, cry” music.  Look at the two songs that I vividly remember from my childhood! It’s THEIR fault!  From an early age, I knew the words to two of the saddest and most pathetic songs in the world!  THANKS GUYS!!!   And by, “thanks,” I mean NO thanks; but I don’t mind. I like what I like!

 

 

 

 

 

My Beeper

Probably the first time I saw it, I thought my tens unit looks like a beeper. A beeper that I had in high school. However, it is not a Motorola and it is not blue  like mine was. I laughed when I held it in my hand for the first time and told Sean that this is what beepers looked like.

I told him that it had to be an early 90s beeper because when I got mine, probably 1998, it was a little bit smaller.

I used to hook my beeper to the  left front pocket of my jeans.

How I used to check my beeper:

Sean was amused because the concept of a beeper is so foreign to him.

I’m still trying to get used to having the tens unit on. It’s only been a little over a week. Also the electrodes help my knee, but my headache is a lot worse today! A  friend suggested that I take some Tylenol before I turn it on and that seems to help but today it’s hard to handle.

I called my Mom to let her know that my headache was pretty bad today and she asked if I was going to turn it off. It’s the only thing that helps my knee so I am just trying to tolerate my headache with my beeper on  as long as I can handle it.

Headache and Anxiousness

Yesterday, Sean had a doctor’s appointment and I needed to accompany him as his sole legal guardian.   The appointment was set for late morning so I did not have the  45 minutes to an hour to attach the tens unit to my knee.  We also had cleaning appointments yesterday at our dentist where I was pretty sure that I was going to need to get x-rays of my teeth done.  I didn’t want to have electric stimulation on my knee as an x-ray was being taken of my head.

Because of the appointments, I was unable to wear my tens unit yesterday. My knee hurt so much! It was a pain I was familiar with and that really stunk! Even though my knee was hurting so badly, I did not have a headache nor did I feel anxious.

Today, I was able to put my tens unit on so my knee is feeling a little bit better.   I take Tylenol just as I turn it on but I’m just waiting for the headache that comes after I’ve had the tens unit on for a while and the anxiousness that will accompany me having the tens unit on for multiple hours.

I keep my tens unit on until the headache becomes too much to bare.  Then, I turn a tens unit off so my knee will start to hurt and my head stops hurting so much. Why is it a trade-off that some part of my body has to be in pain?!

Peanut M&Ms

I’ve been missing my Dad A LOT lately! It’s coming up on my parents’ anniversary soon and I just miss him with all of the challenges I’ve been facing!  My knee is killing me still and a couple Thursdays ago, my roof leaked. I called Tallon roofing because they put my parents’ roof on when I was 16.

I remember hearing the roofers bang on my parents’ roof at 8 o’clock in the morning in the summer. I jumped out of bed and went to the dining room table because my Dad was sitting there eating breakfast. I was irate! I told him that it was crazy that they were working so early and that I am trying to sleep;

But then I saw one of the shirtless roofers walk by the dining room window. I told my parents that I was going outside to water the flowers. That was the ONLY time  that summer that I watered the flowers because I wanted to watch the young, shirtless roofers work!

A memory I have had for a long time was when me and my Dad drove somewhere. I don’t know where we went and I don’t know how old I was but I know I was young and we stopped to get gas. I sat in the car as he went in to pay.   When he came back to the car to pump the gas, he opened the passenger side door and handed me a bag of peanut M&Ms.  That was the only time he did that.

Sean was driving his car  yesterday to the dentist and we stopped at the gas station to get gas. He kept the car running as hr went to pay for the gas  so I would be warm and he told me he would turn it off before he started to pump. He came back to turn the car off and placed a bag of  peanut M&Ms next to me the armrest.

I was touched! I didn’t open the bag until he came back into the car. I had already eaten Popeye’s and my knee was really hurting. I ate the peanut M&Ms and thought  of my Dad.

When the Tallon roofing guy came for an estimate for my roof that Thursday after my roof leaked, I told him the story about watering the flowers and the hot, shirtless workers.  He laughed and believed it. The day my roof leaked, he patched it and that should hold for a little while. If anybody has 10 Grand in their back pocket, that would be cool!

I love peanut M&Ms because I rarely eat them now and when I do, I think of my Dad and the gas station and now I will think of Sean and that gas station too!

“Dip It in the Honey!”

I scheduled cleaning appointments for Sean and me six months ago at the dentist I have been going to for over 30 years and I’ve taken Sean there for his entire life. Today was the first cleaning he had with his hygienist since he’s gotten his braces off. My hygienist who has been  my hygienist for about 20 years and who Sean used to call his, “Tooth Fairy” when she cleaned his teeth when he was young marveled at his teeth. They all did.   That fact made me really happy!

Sean nor I had any cavities and I made our return appointment for May.  After Sean got me into the car, I told him he could choose where we ate.  He wanted to go to Popeye’s. He really likes it but I remember having gone there with him once before awhile ago and not being impressed.

I still let him decide. As we were driving to Popeye’s on our way home from the dentist, I reminded him of the Jimmy Kimmel interview of Damson Idris.  He remembered the interview and we both started to laugh and quote Damson Idris quoting Dub C.

We sat in the parking lot next to Popeye’s, ate our food, and talked. We both got the five dollar combos and I thought it was all right.  Sean paid for it and the fries were good. We didn’t get honey for the biscuits though…  something to look forward to for next time, I suppose.