Great Ideas!

I am in SO, SO much trouble!!!

When Joshua was little he used to get “great ideas.”

Seriously! Ask anyone in our extended family - the sound of Josh’s overly-excited, little-boy voice saying, “Hey! I got a great idea!” could literally raise the hair on the back of all our collective necks!

As near as I can tell, the main difference between my great ideas, and Josh’s great ideas, are that mine don’t usually end up in a hospital emergency room! (And now that I’ve SAID that, the next one will!!!) Knock on wood!

Well, yesterday while shopping, I had my own “great idea.”

“Let’s make some homemade salsa!” I enthusiastically said to Jamee, all the while ignoring her knowing look which clearly was saying, “Who’s gonna be makin’ this salsa, ‘cuz lately your ‘we’ usually means ‘me’!”

Sometimes having children who are capable of communicating volumes, non-verbally, isn’t such a great blessing.

I’m pretty sure Jamee was also thinking about the fact that my salsa recipe usually makes enough salsa to fill about 5 or 6 wide-mouth, quart-sized, glass canning jars – after we’ve all sampled half the batch! She may have also been contemplating that lately, most of MY “great ideas,” usually mean that she’s going to be spending the rest of HER day cleaning up one of my most fantastic messes, after I poop out on her. Poor Jamee! Sigh!!

Personally, I believe that she has begun mentally tabulating all the parts of my body that are no longer functioning correctly. Katie says it would probably be a shorter list if she just kept track of the parts that still DID do their job the way they were intended too!

I still haven’t figured out how I hurt my left shoulder. I am a total klutz, so bruises of unknown-origins are fairly common, but this is WAY more than just a bruise! I can move it forward and backward without any problems, just not straight up. At all! Not even a little! When I forget that it’s damaged (which occurs about a million times an hour) and try to move it up, I am immediately rewarded with what feels like a bolt of lightning hitting my shoulder and an instant dead arm! And believe me, with four older brothers – I know all about dead arms!

Jared’s oh-so-helpful opinion that I “slept on it funny,” is plausible, only I can’t sleep on my left side anymore because it causes chest pains. I also can’t sleep on the right side because that’s the thigh with the hamburger sized angiolipoma – which is the fancy medical term for a fatty-tissue tumor that burns like the dickens if I lay on it. I’m pretty sure somebody, somewhere has conducted a study which proved that feeling like you’ve taken a lump of red-hot coal to bed with you isn’t very conducive to restful slumber! Laying flat on my back only results in lower back muscle spasms, which are REALLY enjoyable when you’re having bi-annual CT scans for about an hour or more! Sigh!

Jared also mentioned something about rotator-cuffs, which apparently is a hot topic of discussion amongst 17-year-old high school jocks, but I’m only assuming that a rotator-cuff is a part of the human body and not a car part because it was Jared, and not Jake, making the suggestion. Jake would have been talking automotively.

So, in the midst of all my maladies, did it ever occur to me -for even a millisecond - that my “great idea” of chopping up a ton of veggies for salsa might be a tad difficult with a dead left arm? Not even!

And while I’m on a roll here, whoever put the pop can in the freezer to cool - long enough that it burst all over the inside of the freezer – is just gonna have to fess up, ‘cuz I’m using left-arm incapacitation as my excuse for not cleaning it up, and I’m pretty certain-sure that Jamee is NOT going to willingly clean up THAT particular “great idea!”

In SO many ways – and on SO many levels - I am in SO, SO much trouble!