WHAT? MONDAY HALLOWEEN

Gentle Readers . . .  and Maxwell,

I'm concerned that some of you might feel left out today because perhaps you don't celebrate Halloween in your country. So if your country isn't involved in this strange business of begging for candy, then please feel free to write about a holiday in your country that we don't have in the U.S. -- like Christmas.

So anyhoo, today's What? Monday question is

What is your favorite Halloween memory or what's the best costume you've ever seen?
  
When I was but a wee child in Haven, Kansas, before we moved to the great city of Topeka, Halloween was a totally different animal than it was in a city.
 In Haven, my sister who was a few years older than I was, trick or treated with me, and we were perfectly safe. It never occurred to people that candy had to be wrapped. There were two elderly sisters who lived together and when we knocked on their door, they answered holding a tray of freshly baked and decorated homemade sugar cookies. At another house, we got caramel apples. Everyone knew who we were, but pretended not to.

So Halloween in Haven is a happy memory for me.

I also have a story my sister (the one who is recovering from a stroke) told me about Halloween in Haven. When she was a teenager, she and her friends went out egging cars. Not cars parked in driveways or along the street. Oh no. They egged cars people were actually driving.

So a car came along and they made a direct hit to the driver's side of the windshield. The car stopped. They were frightened and prepared to flee, but waited briefly to see if the driver would actually get out.

He did.
It was our brother and he descended on the group like Satan seeking virgins.

My sister said she never ran so fast in her life. He didn't see her, and she never told him she was part of the group.

I love that story.

Infinities of love my weenies,

Lola




I got out one of my old uniforms to wear tonight when I give candy to the adorable children. If they're as grabby as they were the last time I handed out goodies, I'll threaten to take their temperatures -- rectally.

TAKE TWO ASPIRIN

Gentle Readers,

Long, long ago, when I became pregnant with Someone I Love, a lovely woman at church whispered a joke to me that she thought was quite naughty: You know how to keep from getting pregnant again? Take two aspirin and clamp them together between your knees.

I guess it worked because I never had another baby, thank you Jesus.

But man, my legs got tired.

I'm telling you this silly story because also a long time ago in another city in a different state, I worked in a nursing home. I'm sure everyone I took care of there has been dead and gone for a good long time now, and not because I killed them. Time has done its work on them.

Anyhoo, we had this patient who kept her thighs clamped together so tightly all the time that we couldn't even wash her yoohoo in the shower. We had to cath her one night and getting her legs apart was a nightmare for all of us. She was screaming as we slowly pried her open, feeling that our hands and arms might break before her legs did.

Other women we had to cath, no prob. Women are accustomed to spreading them. Most women have had sex and had babies, and it's pretty difficult to engage in either one of those activities with your thighs clamped together.

This patient had been married and had a child; thus, I'm pretty sure her legs weren't always closed like that. So I asked her why she held her thighs together.

She said, I don't know. Just habit, I guess.

What did you do when you went to the gynecologist? I then queried.

She said, What's a guy . . .  What?

I looked at an older nurse and she told me that most of the women we had in our care had never seen a gynecologist, never had a pap test, never a mammogram, never any specialized care that many of us women now take for granted.

So I write this to you now because the thought of keeping your legs closed that tightly if you want to avoid sex might never have occurred to you and perhaps the idea will be of some assistance to you and will greatly strengthen your thigh muscles I want to remind you to be grateful when you get your boobs smooshed and find out you don't have cancer or should you have it, grateful you found out before you had a tumor the size of a third boob. When you spread your legs, sometimes you can do it for a really good reason, like making sure you don't have cervical cancer.

And please be sure to prepare your daughters for their first experience with the gyno. A speculum can be quite a shock even if you have some idea of what to expect. When I saw my OB/GYN the first time I was pregnant, oi! was I dumb! It's too embarrassing to share that I took off my clothes as commanded and sat in a chair instead of getting up on the table and covering myself with the sheet because I didn't know what in the heck was going on what happened that day, but I'm sure all the nurses were laughing at me.

Another important something that our ladies in the nursing home didn't know: Wipe your butt from front to back. Older people tend to wipe from back to front, pushing feces into the yoohoo, and risking an unpleasant and uncomfortable infection. Many of our ladies had UTIs constantly, even though we tried to keep them clean and we poured cranberry juice down them.

O.K. Now you can go off and make sure you wipe your butt correctly -- everybody except Sandra at Absolutely Narcissism, who is the most constipated person on Earth and loves to write about it. She has no need to wipe.

Poor, poor Sandra, whose constipation issues give her more readers than God has.

Infinities of love,

Lola

DID YOU WEAR YOUR REFORMATION RED THIS MORNING?

Gentle Readers,

If you wore your Reformation red to church this morning, then you must be a Lutheran.

And I think all us Lutherans should dress as Martin Luther for trick-or-treating and we can nail 95 feces  theses on 95 neighbors' doors. One per neighbor. I hope you don't have to travel too far to find 95 neighbors, but I suppose you could give extras to your favorite neighbors and cut down on the total number of neighbors required.

With all the dogs I have I don't think I'll have any trouble finding theses in my back yard.

I remember one Reformation when my Favorite Young Woman was the acolyte at church. A teacher from a private school, not the school F.Y.W. attended, gave the sermon. It was on the history of Reformation and it lasted at least an hour and felt like four.

If you're a Lutheran or if you listen to A Prairie Home Companion on NPR, then you know Lutherans don't go for hour-long sermons. We like our sermons quick and snappy. Get to the point, Pastor Inqvist.

F.Y.W. was sitting next to our young assistant pastor, who kept nudging her and teasing, Isn't this the most interesting sermon you've ever heard? Don't you just love this sermon?

She managed not to break out laughing. Shame on that naughty pastor, trying to corrupt an innocent young girl. You woulda thought he was a Catholic priest.

Oh, no, excuse me, they go for corrupting innocent young boys.

Lutherans, in general, have a pretty darn good sense of humor considering we eat mournful oatmeal and always expect the worst.

So, if you don't have a Martin Luther costume for tonight, borrow an acolyte's robe from your church and glue on a little beard and you're pretty much set.

Happy Halloween, you Reformationers!

Infinities of love,

Lola