Cold Sores and Dry Shampoo

It began innocently enough.  A minor itch.  A slight twinge.  A little tingle.  I started to fret.  But maybe it wouldn’t happen this time.  After all, I had gotten through other bouts of illness without developing one—maybe this would be one of those times.  

 

Dream on. 

 

It was not to be.  At work, I felt the no-mistaking-it tingle heralding the new arrival, and a look in my compact mirror confirmed what I already knew:  I was witnessing the birth of the world’s worst cold sore.  

 

Fever Blister.  Herpes simplex.  It all sounds different to the ear but in the end, they are all the same—a gigantic cootie cluster on my lower lip, half an inch from dead center.

 

Maybe it wasn’t so much a birth as a coming home, however.  After all, the only place I ever, ever get cold sores is in that very same spot.  Same lip.  Every time.  What skeeves me out even more is the fact that despite my OCD antibacterial hand gel application efforts, despite wiping every touchable hard surface at home and at work with antibacterial wipes, despite bathing in Lysol and gargling with bleach, I got one anyway.  

 

Remembering backward, I realized that I had seen a coworker sporting a fever blister a week or two before.  The "ewww" factor has been racketed up a notch.

 

Typically, the day before the spot actually makes its debut there is also quite a bit of pain, especially on the Chris Cacciatore unique pain scale.  I'm not saying I'm a big baby but even a hangnail will wake me up at night.  Throw a cold sore at me and it’s grounds for calling in sick.

 

The last time I got a massive cold sore was during a…you guessed it…cold.  My defenses were down; I should have seen it coming.  I had felt crappy all day at work, and suddenly, my entire bottom lip looked as if a chorus line of bees had stung it in unison.  That night at home, the pain was so intense that I was forced to start my obituary.  

 

The next morning, surprised to find myself still alive, I realized that due to all the tossing and turning I did the night during the world’s worst night’s sleep, I had overslept.

 

For those who have no time for a quick shower, it’s dry shampoo to the rescue.  Or so I thought.

I had picked it up on a whim, this Tresemme dry shampoo.  I had overheard a conversation while sitting at McDonald's writing one afternoon.  It's normally a great place to write because you can tune everything out except this time, when two young women were talking about their hair, it caught my attention, mostly because they were actually pronouncing it "her".  That word was accompanied by lots of patting of said "her".  The conversation was animated as they discussed hair products but came to a standstill when one told the other she washed her hair daily.

 

The other said back, "You'll dry your "her" out!  Don't do that, girl.  Use some o' that dry shampoo.  You won’t believe how it perks up your hairstyle on days when you are skipping a day, or maybe you're just too lazy to wash your hair.”  

 

What?  A new way to be stylish while still allowing me to be lazy?  Sign me up.  I actually found some at the store on the way home.  Now, normally, I don't take much advice from people sitting in McDonald's but due to the above referenced illness, I’m game...and since I overslept, what better time to try it?

 

Getting ready for work that morning, squinting through the cloud of agony my lip was causing, I read the directions and applied the dry shampoo to my own "her" accordingly, then brushed it out as instructed.

 

This is a product that I will never, ever buy again.  I have a dreadful feeling it had been moved from the Halloween section of Wal-Mart into the hair section, as it obviously was meant to be used to make white stripes in my hair for a Bride of Frankenstein costume.  Despite vigorous brushing, I couldn't brush the white out and ended up with not only white hair but a very pink scalp.

 

not so fast, Romeo.  This chick is taken.

 

Thanks, random strangers at McDonald's.  Moms always said don't eavesdrop and I should have listened.

 

It worked out in the end, however, because coworkers were too busy trying not to stare at my white streaks to even notice I had a cold sore.

Spoiler: It's not Maybelline

The Hair

In October (which seems like a lifetime ago) Joe and I were in our garage, getting it all cleaned out for a party.  We heard one snuffling, leaf rustling sound, then another.  We paused in our sweeping to listen a little harder.  The noise was just outside the garage, coming from the back yard.  Like an animal was back there.

I look at Joe in a panic, thinking our dog was loose. "Is Cooper out?"

His eyebrows come together. "No, he's in the house."

Amongst other things, Cooper is our black lab.  He's definitely blog worthy.  He's also a gigantic pain in our respective butts.  Read about it here.

The reason I asked if it was Cooper back there is because he's been known to take luxurious, albeit unauthorized, field trips around the neighborhood, usually in the early morning hours.  Mostly when I have on only a t shirt and bad hair. (I have run braless down my street, throwing baloney and cheese at him to come back. Asshole dog.)

But I digress.  Our dog wasn't out there, but there were two new dogs running around in our back yard; smallish beagles, belonging to the neighbors across the street.  We round them up, slap leashes on their collars, and deliver them back to their owners.

Back at home, in preparation for costumes, we got out the bag o' wigs, one of which Joe slapped on his head and promptly forgot about.  The wig was cut into a bob of longish red hair and looked like something Annabelle might have worn in her movies.

The Wigged One was happily grilling hot dogs for our guests when again the leaf rustling took up but this time, there was only a thin screen door between Cooper and the interlopers and our dog saw them and desperately wanted to play.  Still in the garage, I turned to yell at Joe that the little beagles had once again escaped and were back in our yard, but he was one step ahead of me.

Joe spied the two doggie trespassers and in full red-headed, wigged glory dramatically ran toward them in the back yard, while his hair flowed in the breeze.  It was practically in slow motion.  But his hair.  Oh, my holy goodness.  But it wasn't his hair, as he keeps it to a respectable 1/8" cut year round...it was the hair of this silly wig, which had slipped down and wasn't even on right.

Watching him sprint heroically, grilling tongs waving in the air, to the back to rescue the two beagles, with his hair-not-his-hair flowing in the breeze, I could no longer keep my laughter in and I absolutely lost it.  I dissolved.  My knees went weak.  I could not catch my breath for anything in the world and in fact, couldn't even walk up the back steps into the house because I was laughing so hard at the picture he made in the back yard.  I think I peed my pants a little (who am I kidding, I had to run in and change) and the funniest part of all?

Joe had no idea what I was laughing at because that wig on his head had somehow, in his mind, morphed into just a hat keeping his head warm.  He wasn't even wearing a wig anymore, in his mind, just a toasty head warmer.  He stood there, shaking his wigged head at me, like I was the one who was nuts.

But I knew better.



My handsome Bear, in his "hat", and a sample bite of hot dog in his mouth

 

Snarky McSnarkster. A/k/a I'm Grateful.

(our last prompt in Prompt Club was to write 1000 words starting with the words, "I'm grateful.")

I’m grateful, truly I am.  Roof over our heads, food on the table, money to pay the bills and from time to time visit a fancy restaurant like Chipotle or Granite City.  I have three healthy kids, a beautiful granddaughter and a husband who still wants to hold my hand all the time.  I have been on the opposite end of the financial and romantic spectrum, so suffice it to say I know whereof I speak.

I’m also grateful for things other people might not think of as worthy of appreciation—for instance, my gift of sarcasm.  So when we drew the prompt where you had to start a story with the words “I’m grateful”, I immediately snarked it up.

I’m grateful that years ago before a doctor’s appointment, I was able to help my middle daughter learn to pronounce “vaginal” correctly without laughing. 

I like to think I spared her the embarrassment I endured when my 7^th grade science teacher asked our class what the hangy thing in the back of the throat is called. 

Turns out “vulva” was not the answer he was searching for.  That day, I comforted my 12 year old self with the thought that I didn’t need social acceptance and popularity anyway. 

Fast forward 35 years, and guess what…that social acceptance and popularity thing is on its way because my youngest daughter just told me that in another week or so her six new puppies will be winged.  If that’s the case we’ll all be so popular we’ll have to move.  I’m grateful I have days off coming because puppies are a lot of work to begin with, but flying puppies and a nine month old—that’s a recipe for disaster. 

I’m grateful for the fact that I got shingles right before my daughter’s 21^st birthday, so that I was forced to cancel plans to take my granddaughter for the weekend like I had promised months prior so she could celebrate.  I’m also grateful that I didn’t have to worry about sleeping while I was suffering with that wretched condition, because that gave me plenty of time to worry about a worrisome secondary rash and the mushroom of a cold sore on my lip.  It also gave me extra time to drunk-google late at night terms like “duration of shingles” or “shingles rash” or “should you drink when you have shingles” or my personal favorite, “how many people die per year from shingles”. 

Actual shingles that were on my back.
ps. Good news.  I didn't die.  But it sure did burn. 

 

I’m also really, truly grateful that when I finally was able to give my husband the seductive come-hither green light after the whole shingles/cold sore fiasco, Aunt Flo decided to come for an extended visit.  She didn’t just bring an overnight bag like she normally did but in fact the biggest, bulkiest suitcases she owned and jammed them in my uterus but good.  I’m plotting her demise and she will be grateful when her death finally arrives.

I’m grateful for the snowfall that prevented our family from a 2 hour drive into Plainfield on New Year’s Day for a delayed Christmas celebration to see family I don’t see often.  I hadn’t gone grocery shopping because I knew we’d be in Plainfield, so there was hardly anything edible in the house.  However, it’s good to experience true hunger once in a while.  Thankfully we were able to gag down all of those old, questionable leftovers and dry Christmas cookies whilst face-timing with the Plainfield crowd, watching everyone eat spinach dip and cheese potatoes.

I’m also really grateful they didn’t let me know ahead of time they were going to call, because it’s good for my family to see what I look like with no makeup, glasses on, and hair scraped into a brutally oily ponytail.  In case they weren’t buying all those gorgeous selfies I post online.   

I’m grateful for the guy who maintained a 4 inch distance between the front of his vehicle and the rear of mine the other night as we drove through blinding snow during rush hour.  Your thoughtlessness kept my mind off of how slick the roads were that night.  Especially helpful was the rage that kept me warm all the way home.

And speaking of slick, I’m grateful for the Kenyan sprinter masquerading as our black lab.  It’s good to test my own speed slalom skills in the back yard from time to time while being dragged behind a speedboat of a dog.  It keeps me limber.  He also helps me keep the ligaments in my shoulders stretched as he sprints off the icy back porch, yanking me with him.

And with all the things I have to be grateful for, I need to stay in the best shape possible.

Sandman! Oh, Sandman!

For a while, I wasn't sleeping at all at night.  Total insomnia.  To the point that I started worrying a little bit after oh, say 9:00 p.m.  I built it up in my head.  I know I won't be able to sleep.  I know it.  I'll get into bed and lay there for hours.  I was tired, exhausted even; but the minute my head hit the pillow I laid there, wide awake. 

here's me.  not sleeping.

Things got better for a while, thanks to my good friend Southern Comfort.  I was able to break through whatever it was keeping me awake and actually get some real rest at night.  Whatever cycle I had been experiencing was over, apparently.  
 

At least, that's what I thought. 

 

It was a Sunday like many other Sundays.  The cars started. It rained but we didn't get water in our basement.  The dog didn’t run away.  Dinner was good.  Nothing earth shattering.   
 

However, Sunday night around 10:30 p.m., my husband and I kissed each other good night, as we always do, cuddled for approximately 10.7 seconds until it got wayyyy too hot, and then turned over to our respective spots.  I hadn't even given my sleeplessness a thought.  I burrowed further into the covers.   

And laid there.  A half hour went by.  I knew my husband was awake.  He knew I was awake too because he says my eyes make a sound when I blink.   

We laid there some more.  And laid there.  Another half hour went by and…  

…we’re still awake.  And I’m thinking, what the hell?  

I get up and pee to break the monotony.  I am quiet and careful, reluctant to jostle my husband or bounce the bed.  I know where the squeaky floorboards are and avoid them, drawing on years of experience with fretful babies and a father who worked midnights.  I don't use any lights, even in the bathroom.  I climb back into bed with the stealth of a ninja. 

Having taken care of that, I snuggle back down.  I think, any time now I’ll fall fast asleep.  I close my eyes and try to count sheep but end up mentally composing a story about them instead. 

I hear my son come in at midnight.  He doesn't wake me up because I'm not asleep.  He knows after years of sneaking in how to hold the bells on the door so they don't make a noise when he opens it.  He too is familiar with the floorboards and is able to avoid the squeaky ones.  He pees and goes to bed.   

Now my husband gets up to pee.  He is not silent and careful like I am.  He was a bachelor for 45 years and never had to be quiet for a sleeping wife or child.  Everyone knows he's up because he uses every light he can on the endless ten foot trip to the bathroom.  He has owned the home longer than my children have drawn breath and yet doesn't know the path to take on the wooden boards to avoid making excess noise. 

He stomps back to our room and swings himself back into bed like an orangutan, then proceeds to thrash around on the bed trying to get comfortable.  Good God, I think.  He moves more than a kid in a bouncy house. 

Unbelievable.  I wait until he is settled and I blink several times in a row, loudly, in retaliation. 

Shortly after he gets back to bed, my daughter is up.  She has inherited her mother's ability to walk catlike in a sleeping household.  She also has inherited her mother's sneakiness and I know she's going outside to have a cigarette.  She is fooling no one.    She too knows to hold the bells on the door as she comes back in and creeps back to her room, stopping in the bathroom, also to pee. 

Ok, I think.  Now that we’ve all ensured there would be no bedwetting, we’ll all get to sleep. 

Husband whispers to me.  "Are you awake?"

 

I whisper back. "Yes, what’s the deal with this?  I’m so tired and I just can’t fall asleep!  Is there some giant geometry test I didn’t study for?  A project I didn’t turn in?  Because the only time I can’t sleep is when I’m fretting.  And for the life of me, I don’t have anything to really fret about."

Husband whispers again. "I can’t sleep either!  And I think Annie is smoking!"

No shit, Sherlock, I think.  Only for like six months now.  Out loud, I say, "Gosh, I hope not."  And then I think, why are we whispering, anyway?  We're all awake.

During the course of the sleepless night from hell, husband ends up sleeping in the living room on his chair.  I must be experiencing some sort of menopausal symptoms, as I am either freezing or too hot, and eventually make my own way out to the living room as well where I lay wide eyed on the couch for two hours, with a floor fan three inches from my face.

4:41 a.m.  I haven’t slept at all.  I briefly drift off and dream I'm in a wind tunnel.

4:42 a.m.  Husband turns on a new age music channel on cable.  It reminds me of the nightmare that was his deviated septum surgical recovery and I fight the urge to throw up.

5:00 a.m.  We should probably just stay up.  However, I don't come from a family of quitters.  I get up and stumble down the hallway to the much more comfortable bed and that's all I remember, because I sink into the most blissful sleep anyone has ever experienced. 

For about one hour.  It's not enough.  I'm so tired and frustrated I want to punch someone.  However, it is at this time I smell fresh coffee. 

One thing my husband manages to do quite well is the coffee.  And I firmly believe that today, it's probably saving his life.

 

What not to say to your wife, a/k/a "The List"

My husband is one of the most wonderful people you'll ever meet, truly.  Everyone loves him.  He's friendly.  He's handsome.  He's loyal.  He's thoughtful.  He's a great husband, a great son, a great (read:  patient) father and now, a grandfather.  

He also is a name-maker-upper for us at home.  For instance, if I'm ironing a shirt, he'll find me down in the basement.  "Hi, Iron-y!"  If I'm cleaning the bathroom, he stands behind me, "Hi, cleany!"  (All the time.  He does this all the time.)  If I get home from shopping, "Hey, shoppy!"  Cooking:  "Hey, cooky!"  I think you see the pattern. 

While silly and goofy, those names aren't harmful in any way.  They don't hurt my feelings.  Silly and goofy were two of my "husband" requirements, as a matter of fact.  He has those two qualities in spades, people.  In spades.    He just comes up with something on the fly.   

He's really creative like that. 

The birth of "the list" list was created several years ago out of necessity.  We were newlyweds, and ever mindful of developing FWS (fat wife syndrome) I was standing in the kitchen having a low carb snack after work while I waited for the coffee to get done.  He came in the door from work, big, happy smile on his face, and the first words out of his mouth were, "Hi, porky!"  

No.  I am not kidding.

This isn't me but it sure is cute.

I was eating low carb pork rinds, not twinkies.  And he saw me eating pork rinds, and in typical creative fashion, said that unfortunate word.  In quiet protest, I did not make dinner that night, and in addition (just in case he didn't get the hint) maintained a stone cold, icy silence for the rest of the evening, which is my preferred method of communication when I am upset.  (Who's with me?)   

"The list" was born.  There have been remarkably few additions here and there, because ol' what's his name has learned his lesson.

 

Or has he? 

This morning I was getting ready for work, hurrying as usual, running around our bedroom slapping on deodorant and finding my shoes.  I grabbed my body spray (what I call smellgood) from Victoria's Secret and was spritzing it on.  I always try to arch my back and shake my hair as I do this, like the VS models do, but even the dog doesn't take me seriously.  My husband wandered in the bedroom to grab his gym bag, saw me spraying, and says cheerfully, "Hi, smelly!"   

He realized right away what he had said and looked like a rabbit with his back foot caught in a trap, trying to get away.  Fortunately, my steely gaze pinned him to the spot. 

"LIST." 

It must be time for a refresher course.

 

 

 

 

Whichever one is Number Two.

When I got home from work last night, I made some coffee.  My darling husband came home about the same time.  The following is a true and accurate representation of the conversation we had while I made coffee and talked to him.


Me:  How was your day?

Joe:  It was good, how about yours?

Me:  Busy.

(Small break here for a welcome-home kiss.)

Joe:  I had an interesting start to the morning, though.

Me:  Why?

Joe:  Well, I went downstairs to go to the bathroom but someone forgot to flush the toilet.

(I'm safe, I think to myself.  It wasn't me.  I'm not naming names but I have a pretty good idea who it was.)



Could we clear the room?  Not you, Frau.  Not you, Scott.  Not you, henchman arbitrarily turning knobs. 

 Me:  That's just gross.  Was it Number One or Number Two?

Joe:  Whichever one poop is.


He wasn't even trying to make me laugh, but somehow watching the absolute outrage on his face was enough to make me laugh pretty much all night long.

Speaking of births...

This is OUR new baby.  I guess we're not too old to give birth.

My sister and I recently finished, proofread, edited, revised, polished, (and every other word you can think of) our manuscript Baylyn, Bewitched, a whimsical story about a quirky witch with a big secret.  We had a lot of fun writing it. 

Well, that's not exactly true.  It's hard work.  It's blood, sweat, and tears.  It's late nights after your husband has gone to bed.  It's saying, "I can't go, I'm working" and not feeling bad that others might say, "writing?  that's not working."   It's early mornings and lunch hours in coffee shops.  It's taking a notebook and pen every single place you go, just in case you have a wonderful idea for your masterpiece...it's there, so you can jot it down.  It's Saturdays and Sunday's chores being done early so that you can sit down and write in the evening.  It's staying accountable.  It's hard.

Like I said, we had a lot of fun writing it.  And despite all that "fun", we're already knee deep in the writing of the next book in the series: Cat, Charmed.  That one should be out by the end of the summer.

For now, you can find our book at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords.

Happy reading!

Time is a fickle thing...

Why is it that time seems to go so fast? 

I find there are just not enough hours in the day to get everything I need to get done...done.

Sometimes when I am planning to sit down and write after work or on the weekend, I notice the bathroom needs to be cleaned.  A co-worker mentions a clothing drive at Hilander.  Our black lab is shedding the equivalent of one dog per day; I see black tufts of it floating into the corner.

While I do like to "keep house", it is not my passion.

Writing is my passion.

Finding quality time to write is hard.  That's what I say.

I believe everyone would agree with me when I also say that if I were to have an entire Sunday alone to write, I wouldn't. 

I'm being honest.

I would clean the bathroom.  Sort the clothes.  Vacuum.  Talk on the phone.

When only an hour or two is left until dinner, and my house is satisfactorily clean, I suddenly find the "zone", where everything I put on paper is golden. 

Time flies during those moments until I realize I can hear everyone's stomach growling, including mine, and off I go to the kitchen to make dinner.

I am upset with myself because I had the entire day to write and I only used a portion of it.  No one really cares if the bathroom goes one more day or if they have to reuse their last bath towel.  It's just my excuse. 

Why is that?  Do other writers do that?  Why am I compelled to, say, clean the microwave when I get a big chunk of time to write?

I tell myself sometimes, I'm brainstorming.  I'm developing my characters.  I'm plotting out the next great American novel.  I'm not, though. 

I am procrastinating.  I'm being lazy. 

I'm afraid.

I'm futzing away my time, only to get aggravated later when I have to rejoin the real world and put the computer away.  I think, bitterly, I never get time to write.

The honest truth is, I have plenty of time to write.  Yes, I work full time.  Yes, I have a family, a house to clean, laundry to do, a husband whose hand I love to hold.

I also have best sellers floating around in my brain.  Great characters that are just clamoring for attention; funny characters jockeying for the same thing.  Plot lines that would delight, amaze, and thrill you.  Amazing screenplays that would have theater lines out the door, should they ever come to light.

Don't I owe it to myself to let that creativity come out? 

It doesn't matter whether or not anyone likes it.  I write for me; I write to please myself.

I do have time to write.  I just need to be disciplined enough to take it.

I need to face my fear of failing.  I also need to face my fear of success.

I think I need to quit standing in my own way.

What's up with that NICKNAME???

Poopwa Foley.

I imagine that some of you have wondered, where in the hell did that nickname come from?  And if you didn't wonder, you should have.

Listen up.  “Poopwa” is derived from the word “poopwahhhrg”, which is Irish for “cooking class”, and as we all know, “Foley” is derived from the word “der foler”, which is German for “dog paws.”

Just kidding.  My DAD made it up.  Isn't it great?  (phony smile)

My father, Mr-I-think-I’m-So-Funny, has been calling me Poopwa Foley since I was a tiny little girl.  That, and “Monk”, but Poopwa was the one that really stuck to me like, well, you know, poopwa.

Growing up, I was mortified and red-faced if he ever called me that in front of people.  The more embarrassed I got, the harder he wheezed with laughter

Flash forward a few decades.  I have now actually developed a sense of humor (and a thicker skin, to be sure) and find those nonsense words hysterical instead of embarrassing.  

However, using this IN PUBLIC as a writer’s name, if you will, was a leap of faith for me.  I kind of grew into it over the years and now, claim it.

Who else would want this name?  Who else would stand with pride as the name Poopwa Foley was called?  Who has the steel cajones?

A writer calling herself Poopwa Foley, that's who.

There can be only Poopwa Foley...and it's me.

Thanks, Dad!