Of Embarrassment

Written by Chelise from Whispered Like Prayers

Nothing can ever be simple in my life. If paperwork has to be filled out, it is pages long and includes questions that can’t possibly answered without a family historian nearby. If it’s a special recipe I am cooking with, it includes product that even Martha Stewart wouldn’t know how to find. What is Vietnamese sassafras and where in the world do you get it in the U.S.? Somehow, in my life, whereas others avoid these situations like the plague – I manage to find the complex and the complicated, the drama wrought and the ripe with confusion – and they make up my every day life.

Luckily, unless you have to explain to someone the process you are going through to file the loan papers, or make the macaroons, or get from point a-to-b – unless you have to explain - then all this confusion is between you, and your own little private life. No one need know the weeks and tears and shouts spent searching for that one strain of sassafras for your macaroon. This is key. No one need know.

However, in the case of medical maladies – everything changes. Something about having a confusing and complex symptom or syndrome – makes utter strangers feel that they have a right to stare, ogle, and question. Nurses and doctors seem to lose their bedside manner when something strange occurs. And of course, it is impossible for me to remain on the side of the road which includes cut and dry colds and sprained ankles. Oh no, everything must be complicated. This is, after all, my life.

Case in point, when my son was born, he was just under twelve pounds. To put this in perspective, he was the size of large basketball with little limbs and a head sticking out. He was an adorable basketball, but huge none the less. The morning after my son was born nurses paraded into my hospital room to… well… stare at me. Finally, one of them spoke.

“Umm… was your son the biggest baby ever born here?”

For goodness sakes, how was I supposed to know the answer to that question? I didn’t know the birth weight of every child ever born there. I could barely remember my own child’s birth weight, and he’d been born the night before!

Several years later, I took a short flight in order to go and visit a friend. We met for lunch, and suddenly my stomach started hurting. Terrible cramps. Pains radiating up through my chest and arms. It was horrible. I was only 32, but I knew that the heart attack I had miraculously avoided had finally found me. My friend rushed me to the nearest emergency room as I clutched at my stomach and chest. Oh the pain.

After many hours, I was admitted and given an x-ray. My friend sat with me, arm around me, lending me support – when the doctor returned, with my x-ray film. He slapped it up onto one of those wall mounted light boards, and began to point out an odd grey color, an anomaly – all along my intestines.

“This would be the cause of your discomfort,” he explained.

“But, what is it!? What do I do??” I pleaded, still clutching at my aching heart.

“Take a laxative. It’s impacted fecal matter.”

And with that, the doctor pulled the films from the light board, turned to me and smiled, and patted me on the shoulder. “I think you’ll live.”

My friend offered this:

“Well, let’s skip dinner at Red Lobster and go get you some prune juice instead. Eh?”

Sigh.

More recently, I’ve had a breast cancer scare. Could it be a nice small innocuous lump? No. Certainly not. No run of the mill breast cancer scare for me. Instead, it’s blood. That’s right blood. Leaking from my nipple.

So far, everything looks good. I’ve had blood tests (though, my cholesterol is a bit high), and mammograms, (no impacted fecal matter causing this, thank you very much) and clinical exams (no lumps, bumps, or babies the size of basketballs, to be found, anywhere). One would think this would be the end of it, but no – the bleeding continues. Did I mention yet, it is coming from my nipple?

Do you know what it is like to have to tell every doctor, nurse and technician that you are there because there is blood coming from your nipple?

For your sake, I hope not.

As for me – things are always complicated, and nothing is ever simple. We still don’t know what is causing the bleeding in my nipple, and a surgical procedure to further investigate will be next. Is there a possibility that they will find that a Vietnamese boll weevil (the kind found only in rare Vietnamese sassafras) has burrowed its way into my breast? Of course there is a possibility. Its’ downright likely. Because this is my life. Some complications are nice and quiet and private. Some, I can ignore and allow myself to believe that everyone else can ignore as well.

Others though, are just a wee bit embarrassing.

Chelise Stroud Hery is a writer and artist. You can find her at her writing blog, Whispered Liked Prayers.

I Think I Preferred the Writers Block

Written by Sara from Suburban Oblivion

A funny thing happened on the way to writing my TopBlogMag post this week- I got a little stumped. We were given the theme of “How Embarrassing”, and while I’ve had WAY more than my share of minorly embarrassing moments, nothing noteworthy stands out. So I decided to give it a day or two and mull it over; something would pop into my head.

Ask, and ye shall receive. Only instead of popping into my head, it came straight to my inbox.

I have been playing around on Facebook recently, and figured out I could stream my RSS feed from my blog there. Great way to reach new readers, right? Great until I get a message this past Wednesday from my husband’s 18 year old nephew-

“hey hey hey... well its always nice to look under ur news feed and have one of the first things u see is sumthin ur aunt posted about orgasms... nice...lol”

Oh. My. God. Can I die now, please?

There are reasons my husband and family don’t read my blog, and this would be one of them. I don’t use my blog to rant about my in-laws, I am lucky enough to have great ones, but I do use it to talk about everything else. Everything else. Including things like orgasms and husband rants and any number of things I wouldn’t normally bring up at visits with my in-laws.

I gained my composure quickly and sent him a message saying that having 3 kids I’m pretty sure we all knew I have orgasms, at least we’d hope I do, and if he couldn’t handle it he certainly didn’t have to read my feed updates. He laughed and agreed, and that’s where we left it.

The next family dinner should be fun.

Sara is a 28 year old stay at home mom to 3 kids living in the Redneck Riviera, aka Lower Alabama. When she is not taming the trio of Satan’s spawn, she works part time, hides out from her playgroup, serves on the PTA, and tries to avoid being detected by the neighborhood Gapmoms.

Embarrassing

Written by J from Thinking About

Growing up, my mom was always the kind of parent that we could talk to about anything…at least, she wanted to be. But me? I was too embarrassed. I was embarrassed to tell her when I had my period for the first time, when I had my first kiss, when I had problems with my first boyfriend, all of these things. I’m not sure WHY I was so embarrassed to talk about these things, but perhaps I was afraid that she would think less of me, that she wouldn’t understand, that she would know that I wasn’t perfect, etc. Strange the kind of pressure that kids can put upon themselves. I hated puberty…hated that people knew my breasts were developing, hated that I couldn’t hide it anywhere. (And believe me, I pretty much developed between Thanksgiving and Christmas one year…there was no hiding it.)

One nice thing about being a mom myself is seeing how my daughter is different than I am. Sure, she gets embarrassed by things…she doesn’t really WANT to wear a bra, she argues with me when I tell her it’s time (and believe me, it’s time) that she start wearing it every day. I’m not sure if that’s embarrassment, though, or that she says it feels funny, and she doesn’t like it. Luckily, her best friend wears a bra every day, so at least she has support from her.

From time to time, though, I find myself wondering about nudity…we’re not a household of nudists or anything, but we used to shower with Maya, and she grew up with seeing us naked when we changed our clothes, etc. So she has never been embarrassed to be naked in front of us. I wonder when that will change? I thought it would change when she started to develop, that she would be embarrassed to have us see her changing body…because that’s how I felt. Nope. Not one bit. She just goes along like always, and we don’t mention it, and neither does she, and in some ways it’s handy…if she’s been camping or something, it’s easy to look for ticks, for example. ;)

Honestly, as long as it doesn’t bother her, it doesn’t bother me. I hope she’ll be that forthright when talking to me about boys and so on. I would love to be there for her in a way I didn’t allow my mom to be. I’m not going to hold my breath though. Just in case.

J

www.jellyjules.com

Work Full of Jerks

Written by Keta from Story Book

I used to work for a government agency of the highest bureaucratic order; in the print shop, which was removed from the rest of the stale, bland institution in a separate building across the street. Most of the staff, as 'lifers', were pretty complacent. Just going through their days as if in a daze, counting the time until their next extensive holiday. Which is not to say they were ALL boring, just the vast majority.

A few of us would sometimes go to a cool nearby pub on Friday's. We would take over the deck -heated in winter- just for ourselves, to drink our beer in comfort and privacy.

This deck had those standard cheap plastic chairs and tables. My closest co-workers and I circled one together. Fiona was like me; small and full of energy, loud and obnoxious when she wanted to be, and with a good sense of humour. Gladys was the complete opposite; quite overweight, slow and pedantic, unadventurous in the extreme . . . the very embodiment of the bland bureaucrats that filled the institution.

We were having a joke with some of the boys; they were planning a trip to Vegas and wanted to cram all six of them into one room. Gladys and Fiona cooked up a scheme that we would invite ourselves along, as Gladys had a coupon for that same hotel. We really had the boys going! At first they didn't want us along, then the most ribald one, Adam, thought a better plan would be to get all raunchy so we would bow out. He demanded that, since it would be a Print Shop trip, we would ALL have to stay in the same room.

As Fiona and Gladys had carried the game so far I decided it was time for me to step in. "Sure! That's no problem. How much time do you actually spend in the room anyways? Right girls?", I winked. They caught on right away and agreed whole-heartedly.

That threw off Adam quite a bit. He was expecting us to squeal our objections! He gave me his best attempt at a smouldering look and asked, "Well, we have to sleep sometime in three days. How are we going to do that?" The other boys muttered agreement, beginning to feel themselves in over their heads. Boldly I stated, "That's easy. The whole room will be bed." I opened my arms wide, indicating that whatever blankets, bedspreads, towels etc. we could find would surely be comfortable enough.

The shocked silence was enough to send us girls into peels of laughter, pleased that for once we had 'got one over' on the boys. The evening progressed, the conversation moved to other subjects and a few of the staff
started to leave. The rest of us remained in a comfortable haze of alcohol. Suddenly Gladys let out a yelp, quickly putting her wine glass on the table. Everyone looked over, surprised.

Her chair had literally started to crumble below her! As she sank further and further into it, as if in slow motion, I had to stifle a laugh with some difficulty. I heard a few chuckles emitting from some of the less sensitive staff, then "shushes" from others. I was thinking of what to do; Gladys' butt was now almost touching the ground, the disintegrated frame of the chair locking her into a fully curled up position. Her arms were waving slightly, as she looked back at us helplessly. Really, it was not easy keeping that laugh inside!

That's when Fiona -never one to miss a chance to embarrass someone to the fullest extent- made a great show of jumping up to 'help' Gladys. Now these two had worked together for many years, been through a lot of the standard political nonsense, and knew each other really very well. Before I grasped the significance, Gladys was already voicing her objections to Fiona 'helping' her. Not really sure why, I stayed in my seat.

Fiona, who is only about five feet tall and couldn't have wieghed more than 110 pounds, stood before Gladys, planted her feet firmly, grasped both of Gladys' hands and HEAVED with a great demonstration of effort. All the while Gladys kept saying, "No, no it's Ok. I can get out myself", but Fiona would have none of it! At this point I realized what was happening; Fiona was playing it up as much as possible so they could all have something delicious to talk about at work for the next week or two.

By now Gladys was standing, but the troublesome chair was still attached to her behind. Everyone stood transfixed at the unfolding scene, the boys weren't even really trying to hide their chuckles anymore. Fiona took
several seconds to inquire if Gladys was OK before, very dramatically, circling around her and 'popping' the chair off her backside. Gladys turned around to thank Fiona, but I knew it was more to take a second to regain her composure.

I took the opportunity myself, to put my hand over my mouth and indulge in a smile because . . . really, I'm only human!

Another chair was brought for Gladys, who made some comment about how flimsy these plastic lawn chairs are, and everyone resumed their former seats.

Later in the evening the conversation returned to the Vegas trip, with Adam making some comment about how us girls would not be able to handle sharing a room with them. Gladys, unfortunately, chose this moment to try to get a little of her own back and said to him, "I broke that chair, I think I could break you." To which he just scoffed loudly and the rest of us exchanged glances of what an unsuccessful move that was for her.

Keta Kosman is Editor and Production Manager of Madison's Canadian Lumber Directory, in North Vancouver BC, Canada.
When not mired down with the intricate workings of the lumber industry, she
escapes to the beach to capture images of wild bald eagles in their daily
lives.

Voices To Hear

Today’s voice to hear may be the most obscure of all the singers I have talked about so far. Her name is Maggie Brownand she was born in the same small Louisiana town as Jerry Lee Lewis and Mickey Gilley, Ferriday. She has one album out and lives in a small town in Mississippi and bartends to add income to her life as a musician. She is also an English teacher with two kids.

She owes the start of her singing career to her Mom, who was quite a character in her own right. To read more of her early life and her Mom go to her webpage and read her bio. It’s a fascinating story.

Anyone who has a MySpace page knows what a pain it is to get dozens of “friend” requests from people who are really just trying to sell you something, the porn sites and the thousand-and-one musicians that you’ve never heard of and never want to hear of. That’s how I first learned of Maggie Brown. I got a “friend” request from her MySpace page and decided to check it out. She has made it worth all the other worthless friend requests I have had to plod through. I couldn’t believe how good she is.

I dare anyone to listen to “Forty Dollars” and not be instantly hooked. Her voice carries such a lived in, been there, done that, but I’ve survived and can sing about it sound that it just reaches out and grabs ahold of me. Her music has an edge of country with enough guitars in it to slide into that rock category.

To get her CD you’ll have to go to her site and order it. But you’ll be glad you did. She sings stories of life and living, hope and despair. I haven’t been this excited about a new singer in a long time. She’s that good.

I haven’t had a chance to see her live yet, though she performs not far from where I live in Mandeville quite often. So far her scheduled dates have always been bad for me, but I plan to change that soon and check her out live. I just have this feeling that she’ll be just as good in person as she is on vinyl. (Well, actually not on vinyl anymore, but I’m not sure what those cds are made out of.)

I’m hoping that she’s working on a new album, it’s been at least a year since her first one. I want to hear more music from this woman.

Back from our nation’s capital John from altjiranga mitjina is once more on the road. Unfortunately his trip to Tennessee is due to his Father’s sickness. All kind thoughts for his Dad would be greatly appreciated.