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Our dear friends, Mark and Alice, are moving.  Mark has just retired from a long, adventurous, glory-filled career in the United States Coast Guard.  I won’t tell you his exact rank when he retired, but I will tell you that he wore the ‘Big Hat’.  He made a lot of decisions.  Some he was loved for, some…not so much.  But the point was that he had the courage to make them.  He’s done everything from fighting drug runners on the high seas, to saving cuban refugees from certain drowning.  He did it all for his love of country and family.

And now, he has earned his time to rest.

Alice is a woman of MANY talents.  Not only did she birth two ginormous sons who are now in the Coast Guard and Air Force, respectively, not only did she put up with being moved all over the country because of Mark’s Coast Guard career, but she is also as smart as a whip, a mean scuba-diver, a textile artist (she has woven me some beautiful scarves over the years), and organizer extraordinaire!  Add to that her remarkable natural blonde beauty, and I have to really TRY not to hate her.

I love this picture of them.  We took it when we went out for a final dinner together before they move to Louisiana.  (Where is that, you ask?  I have no idea.  I THINK it is somewhere north of Mexico.)

It’s a terrific photo of them.  I’m particularly proud of it, because to GET to this photo, I had to put up with this:

and this:

and this:

It wasn’t just the four of us (Mark, Alice, My Captain and Me) at dinner.  We also had our dear friends Joe and Eleny with us.  You might remember Eleny from the previous post: ~ Recruits ~.  Eleny and Joe are the proud, tired, wupped parents of 2-year-old twins.

And Mark and Joe are cousins.

Joe is a Captain in the Navy.  He went to the United States Naval Academy with one of my brothers, and that is how I met him.

And, of course, his beautiful wife, Eleny, who is not only the mother of Zach and Vincent, but also is a Medical Doctor.

Who is beautiful to boot.  Brains, beauty…and a delicious lemon drop martini.  Joe never had it so good!

I know Eleny  from college…and you know who put her and Joe together???   You guessed it.  MOI.  I’m like a little Scottish/Italian “Yente”.  (of course, I used the word ‘little’ with some creative license….)

So picture this table: Mark and Joe are Military…both leaders.  Alice is the strong back-boned organizer and drill sergeant of their constantly moving household. My Captain is in the Fire Rescue Service, Urban Search And Rescue Special Ops unit, and is also a leader.  Eleny is a scarily-intelligent Medical Doctor and mother of twins…also a leader.  And then… there is me.

***sigh***  And they wonder why I drink.

Anyways…

I love these people.  I really do.  They are movers and shakers, driven, leaders, honorable, heroic, humble, everything I am not.  Really, if anything, they need me to be their foil.

Just look at this handsome couple.

Hey!  Wait a minute!  That’s MY guy!  You go back to your Navy Captain.  You can’t have MY Captain!!!

I swear, you have to watch these people EVERY minute.

We had a wonderful, bittersweet dinner, laughing while the men told stories about their adventures in the Coast Guard, the Navy, and the Fire Service, and the women mocked them lovingly.  We knew it would be the last such dinner for a long long time, if not forever.

Mark and Alice leave this weekend to this strange and unknown territory known as “Louisiana.”  We have no idea what new fate awaits them.  But we will think of them, and miss them and love them anyways.

***Sniffle****

We took Varmint and Critter to Hershey Park last weekend because:

1) We are the BEST parents in the whole world.

2) It’s better than staying home and doing laundry.

3) Apparently we have no idea what “Save your money” means.

and

4) Because we like to eat foods that are unnatural colors.

HUH?

My friends, I give you exhibit A:

What natural food would cause these discolorations?  None, I tell you.  Absolutely none.  And what chemicals would cause these discolorations?  Plenty.  And most likely they will be linked to cancer,  if they haven’t already.

Does that stop my children from taking a moment to honor our country?  Heck no.

Exhibit B:

Varmint grabs a napkin….”Look mom!  Red, White, and Blue!”

Brings a tear to my eye, really.

Ok, so, true story…..I planned this trip to Hershey Park on that particular weekend because they have a brand spankin’ new rollercoaster, called ‘Skyrush’,  that is the mother of all rollercoasters (at least, at HERSHEY) and I wanted my kids to get a chance to ride it before the hordes came when school was out next month.

I made them get up early on a Sunday (blasphemy), I made them sit in the car for 2.5 hours.  I made My Captain pay the crazy expensive entrance fee to Hershey.

Only to find out that the ride does not open until after Memorial Day.

Attention to details…apparently not my strong suit.

But it’s ok!  Varmint and Critter had other kiddie rides to distract them, in addition to the painfully-colored, chemically-created foods.

I call this one, “THE PUKER”.

It looks sedate in this picture, but this was the only time it was still enough to get a shot.  The rest of the time it spun around violently, and flung their little ‘plane’s up and down and all around.

Money well spent.

It takes an innate ability to read an audience to be a decent classroom instructor.  Especially when your students are:

1) Adults,

2) Very Bright,

3) In your class mandatorily to maintain their certification, and,

4) Medics.

I don’t know that I would have the courage to lecture such a roughened, seasoned, bunch of extreme, living-on-the-edge-for-a-career kind of people.

(Heck I’m amazed I have the courage to show up at all, even just to sit in the back.)

But these guys do:

Joe, Adam, and Ty….Decades of experience between them.  Hundreds of lives saved or healed for the better because of them, personally.  Thousands of lives affected positively because of the medics they teach and train.

To be able to teach a subject is to have mastered it.  To be able to teach it in a way that keeps the student not only interested, but also entertained, is a talent.

In this particular case, everybody wins.  The teachers, for the mastery… the students, to grow their skills and knowledge… and the citizens they serve, for they will get better care for it.

Most people don’t realize how much work goes into and behind each and every 911 call that goes out.  It’s not as simple as getting into an ambulance and picking the patient or victim up.  Hours and hours of training go into it.

Why?

Because the medics want to do a good job?

Because the medics don’t want to be caught with their pants down?

Because the medics are afraid of litigation?

Because the medics have some kind of ‘Hero’ or ‘God’ complex?

No.

It’s simply because they care.

The school my kids go to, Monocacy Elementary School, is in the midst of its 50th Anniversary.  We’ve been having little celebrations for it throughout the year in one form or another.

Tomorrow night we are having an Old-fashioned Strawberry Festival.  It was something that the school used to have, back in the day, and they are bringing it back to life.

I am so stinkin excited, I can’t stand it!  Why?  I love tradition!  I love small town, old-fashioned.  I love strawberries and sugar and children laughing and playing and people in straw hats and ….  you know, CAMPY.

The school lies at the foot of our county’s only ‘mountain’ named Sugarloaf.  It is beautiful and surrounded by farms and orchards and vineyards.  Idyllic doesn’t begin to describe it.

And I’m psyched because it is supposed to be not nice weather, but holy-crap-beeeauuutiful weather.

And check it out:  I was put in charge of the bake sale!  Why?  Because, DUH!, I’m the fat chick, and fat chicks know how to sell food!  Who would you rather buy cookies from: A skin and bones, I-eat-salad-all-day soccer mom, or a squishy, cushiony, jolly Mrs. Claus type of soccer mom?

Exactly.  Mrs. Claus wins.

But the bake sale is not the only thing we’re doing!  There will be a moon bounce, and strawberries and ice cream, and dinner food, and family games, and cake walks…and a ton more!  Of COURSE there will be a strawberry recipe contest and you KNOW I have to enter.  It’s a pride thing.  I just haven’t decided which recipe I am going to steal and call my own make yet.

I’ll be sure to take pictures.

If you are in the area, it starts at 6pm tomorrow night (Friday, May 18) at Monocacy Elementary School in Barnesville, Maryland.    Come and join us!

My Dad had both knees replaced.  My Mom had both knees replaced. My Grandmother had both knees replaced.  All four of us children have had ACL Knee Repairs.

Was God smoking dope when he designed the chromosomes for my family’s knees?  More importantly, am I going to hell for asking that question?

So I went back to Orthopedic Surgeon Dr. Raffo today because:

1) I’m working on becoming a professional hypochondriac,

2) I’m trying to get all my medical needs taken care of before our nation’s medicine gets socialized,

3) All of the people in that office are beautiful, and sometimes I just like to surround myself with the beautiful people in this world,

4) My knee still hurts like hell, despite the cortisone shot, and I’m no hero and don’t like to suffer.

So off I went.  I’d had an MRI done earlier this week and the pretty young tech, Kate, who prepped me for the doc had given me a printout of the results. It read:  Effusion (swelling).  Possible meniscus degeneration.  ACL might still be intact.  OsteoArthritis.

No surprises there.  Seemed pretty dry reading, really.  I feared it would not be enough to adequately describe my pain and deterioration of quality of life so I added in letters similar to the typeset:  Hurts like a bitch.

(It’s ok to use the word ‘bitch’ as a medical descriptor.  On the pain scale of 1-10, it’s around 11 or 12.)

I’ll give you a short version of the visit, because I know you care:

1) His intern, Kelly, is still cute as a button.

2) His X-ray tech, John, is Italian and was teaching me romantic words and cuss words.  Because in Italy, those two are often in the same sentence.

3) Dr Raffo gave me my options.  Then he sucked around 25cc’s of fluid that had chunks of osteoarthritic materials (otherwise known as ‘gunk’) floating around in it, out of my knee.

4) He injected 6 cc’s of Chicken Comb into my knee.

Wait, WHAT?

Well, not exactly chicken comb.  Just a compound from the Chicken Comb.

Oh.  That makes so much more sense.

You see, there is this medicine called Synvisc that mimics the Synovial Fluid that we naturally have in our knees.  It acts as a cushion for the bone on bone situation going on in there. And when you have osteoarthritis, that cushion gets broken down and goes away.  The theory with the Synvisc aka Chicken-Comb-Crap is that it replaces our Synovial Fluid Cushion, and bada bing, bada boom, we’re back in ambulatory business.

So let me paint this picture for you.  Picture a needle.  A Big Honkin’ Needle.  Oh sure, there are bigger ones out there, but for the sake of good story telling, go with the Big Honkin’ picture.  He violently stabbed that thing in my knee about a dozen times like I was in the shower in Norman Bate’s Motel or something.

No?

Oh, all right, it was only once and he was fairly gentle.  But it might as well as been a dozen.  I’m such a wuss.

And then he jammed roughly 2 gallons of the chicken goop into my knee.

No?

Ok. It was only 6 cc’s, or, a teaspoon and a half.  But it was the biggest teaspoon and a half I’ve ever had stuck into my knee.

I whimpered.  I may have yelled ‘SON OF A BISCUIT!’ out loud, because I vaguely remember Kate shutting the door quickly and saying something about young kids in the next room.

So now we wait and see.  He said we’d know in two weeks.   If nothing gets better…it’s….it’s…. it’s….

THE KNIFE.

(Dun Dun DUN!)