1. I said RETIRE not DIE here

   February 19, 2012 by Marissa

   Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 18, 2012 kicked my ass in every which direc­tion. Maybe the fates decided that since I was so tri­umphant in my equip­ment repair on Tues­day that it was nec­es­sary to prove that Marissa is merely human. Per­haps the sense of fly­ing high needed to be grounded. Then, there is the pos­si­bil­ity that shit just hap­pens and it has noth­ing to do with luck, Lab Gods or lessons to be learned.

   In the height of a busy period of the day we ran out of a vital coat­ing. I could point fin­gers. Blame could be put on ‘the cor­po­ra­tion’ for their esti­ma­tion of sup­plies used guide­line being faulty. I’m one of those peo­ple who typ­i­cally goes with the gut and out right notion that I know what we use and what is nec­es­sary to have on hand for back up. No mat­ter. We ran out because I didn’t order enough sup­plies. Today, an order will be placed for monthly sup­plies. That, how­ever, doesn’t help us YES-TER-DAY!!

   So, we had a major fail­ure and I kept apol­o­giz­ing to my co-workers for not hav­ing the sup­plies on hand. It’s a first in my career as man­ager. With the clos­est loca­tion being about 30 min­utes away, there was a wait­ing period until one asso­ciate could get there and return. Great.

   Then, I get a phone call from Man­cub. He’d gone to Illi­nois Weslyan Uni­ver­sity with a group of kids and teach­ers for a sports expe­ri­ence day. His teacher was bring­ing him home since I was work­ing. He called me when he arrived home, but he wasn’t quite home. He for­got his key and the hid­den key was not in its spot. When we were hav­ing our pipes replaced I had given it to the con­trac­tor and, SURPRISE! failed to return it to the hid­ing place. Man­cub was locked out of the house which meant I had to leave work to let him in.

   Great.

   Bonus on that was get­ting a hug from him after hav­ing such a crappy day.

   I headed back to work and all seemed to be run­ning smoothly again.

   That is until …

   One of the retail asso­ciates dashed into the lab slightly pan­icked. “I need your keys! I have to close the gate .. .some­one has a gun!”

   Wait. What? Where the hell are my keys?

   Appar­ently, there was some­one spot­ted in the mall wield­ing a hand­gun. It wasn’t Paul Blart who told us, mind you. A father with his tod­dler was run­ning out of the mall and gave us warn­ing about the pos­si­ble gun­man. After 20 min­utes of hear­ing noth­ing from the mall secu­rity, and watch­ing peo­ple come in and out of the entrance near our store, the Seg­way cruis­ers finally locked the doors. One of our cus­tomers had returned to pick up her glasses when a loud, ver­bal exchange was heard between secu­rity and the alleged gun carrier. 

   The entire time I had posi­tioned myself out of view in the back of the lab. Our retail asso­ciates and the cus­tomer adjourned to the hall­way out of sight from any activ­ity going on. After about 5 min­utes, the cus­tomer insisted on being let out of the store. Appar­ently being shot was bet­ter than our company.

   The whole time I was com­mu­ni­cat­ing via Face­book and texts. Still, there was no word from secu­rity. Some stores had low­ered their gates, while oth­ers remained open. A friend with a scan­ner said noth­ing was being reported. We never saw police.

   When I saw a lit­tle girl out­side our store win­dow with her mom buy­ing gum­balls from the machines, I fig­ured it was OK to close up shop and get the hell out of Dodge.

   Here’s what I learned from this ter­ri­ble day:

   • When you know you’ll use more sup­plies than the ‘com­pany’ says you will, go ahead and order what your expe­ri­ence says you need
   • Mall secu­rity is about as effec­tive as a posse of tod­dlers on tri-cycles
   • Just when you think your day couldn’t get worse, it can, but at least you weren’t the tar­get of an alleged gunman
   • Be grate­ful when your son for­gets his key and you get an unex­pected hug after a shitty day hasn’t ended. It might very well be the last one you get.

   I joke around that I’ll be work­ing for this com­pany until they put me in the ground, but I never thought I could lit­er­ally DIE there.

   Category Angels on My Side, freaky shit, I cuss like a sailor, Rissues, work | Tags: | 1 Comment

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2. Don’t Stop Playing

   January 14, 2012 by Marissa

   George Bernard Shaw once said, “We don’t stop play­ing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

   I took that to heart with the first snow­fall of 2012. A friend asked me to make a snow angel since he is with­out snow where he lives. A promise made is a promise kept!

   

   Category Angels on My Side, funny, Just goofing off, take a look at me now | Tags: | No Comments

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3. Christmas Surprises

   December 19, 2011 by Marissa

   Hey there! Be cau­tioned as this will be a touch­ing, heart­warm­ing blog post. I’m relin­quish­ing the snark for a few min­utes to share what an amaz­ing son I have.

   If you’ve been read­ing my blog for some time then this won’t come as much of a sur­prise. He isn’t the typ­i­cal teen ager who always asks for more more more. He does his home­work with­out prod­ding and is respect­ful and respected by his teach­ers. To top it all off, he’s com­pas­sion­ate. He’s a hoot with a tweaked sense of humor. Did I men­tion how smart he is, too?

   So, my son and I have a very hon­est rela­tion­ship. While I don’t bur­den him (always) with the cost of liv­ing, I do make him aware that times are tough and mama doesn’t pull in a lot of Gs per pay­check. Bud­get­ing to the best of my abil­ity is shared so he knows that there isn’t a money tree hid­den away behind the house. Because of my open­ness, he is fully con­scious of Christ­mas being light… not as in airy and free of stress. Light, as in, there might not be more than a small gift or two under the Christ­mas gar­land (No tree since the cats just destroy it when they are bored in the mid­dle of the night.)

   His response was, “you give me a lot dur­ing the year for no rea­son. I’m OK, with that.”

   My credit union sent me an invi­ta­tion to defer a loan pay­ment which would free up some funds for the month of Decem­ber. With­out telling Man­cub, I seized the oppor­tu­nity. That loan amount would per­mit me to give my amaz­ing child more than a lit­tle some­thing on Christ­mas morn­ing. This week­end we hit the gro­cery store to stock up on food before any­thing else was pur­chased (in secret). With a cart full of gro­ceries and the cashier at the store con­vers­ing with me about how she liked this prod­uct or that, I swiped my debit card and she handed me my receipt and kind of pushed my cart along as she began ring­ing up the next cus­tomer. That ‘push­ing my cart along’ didn’t give me time to go through my usual rit­ual of return­ing my debit card to the slot in my wal­let, dou­ble check posi­tion­ing, zip up the purse and head off. Instead, I … well, I don’t know what I did because at some point my debit card was dropped with­out me real­iz­ing it. Man­cub and I bagged up our goods and headed to Wal­mart to get items Aldi doesn’t carry. Once at the Wal­mart check-out, I real­ized the mis­place­ment of my debit card.

   PANIC!!!!!

   We raced back to Aldi to search and inquire about my card. No one had turned it in. DAMN! Imme­di­ately, I called to can­cel the card to pre­vent fraud­u­lent usage. The bank wasn’t open until Mon­day morn­ing. I couldn’t request a new card. It’s been AGES since I wrote a check for pur­chases in a store. It didn’t even faze me to make such a trans­ac­tion in my pan­icked state at Wal­mart. Do I even carry my checkbook?

   Any­who, hav­ing wit­nessed my emo­tional state, my phe­nom­e­nal child informs me that he is will­ing to wait for Christ­mas gifts. “In fact, I’d be happy just to spend the day with you … and if you only have a few bucks to spend, I’d love a cou­ple packs of new cards.” (YuGiOh!).

   Christ­mas gifts don’t always come wrapped up in pretty pack­ages with over-sized bows.

   By the way, I AM giv­ing my son gifts as I can make cash with­drawals by writ­ing a check at the bank. Holy dol­lar bills, Bat­man! Who­dathunkit? hahaha

   It’s going to be so awe­some to see the sur­prise on his face when I’m able to hand him presents!!

   

   Category All You Need Is Love, Angels on My Side, christmas, Insane in the membrane, Love You Forever, Mancub, Proud Mom Alert | Tags: | No Comments

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4. Change For a Dollar

   December 11, 2011 by Marissa

   Change For A Dollar

   The link for this video was sent to me (and my sib­lings) via my sis­ter, Karen. The email was sim­ple with a direc­tion to scroll down the page and watch the video. It cap­ti­vated me. Call me a sucker for a touch­ing story,but I’ve been blessed through kind­ness and gen­eros­ity on var­i­ous lev­els. I believe. Small changes can lead to big­ger changes if we just keep the faith.

   Category All You Need Is Love, Angels on My Side, I get by with a little help | Tags: | No Comments

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5. Mom’s Birthday

   December 10, 2011 by Marissa

   I am ter­ri­ble with dates. If it wasn’t for mod­ern tech­nol­ogy birth­days, anniver­saries, hol­i­days would be for­got­ten. How­ever, there are cer­tain spe­cial occa­sions that are never shoved into the recesses of my mind. One being today: My mother’s birthday.

   My beau­ti­ful, curly haired, red-headed mom passed away when she was only 5 years older than I am now. With fair cer­tainty, I can say that each of my four older sis­ters have met age 50 with great trep­i­da­tion. My viva­cious mother with the gre­gar­i­ous and infec­tious laugh was taken quickly and too soon by the rav­ages of can­cer. You’d think after wit­ness­ing that at the age of 15 I would’ve taken my own health more seri­ously. Instead, for a long time, I accepted that my fate would be the same. It took me a long time to real­ize that I could fight what I had once assumed to be genet­ics. If you won­der why my verve for being health­ier and wish­ing to help oth­ers take charge of their health, just know that my mother’s death is at the core of my mis­sion. She lived on a steady diet of Pepsi and cig­a­rettes, but always fret­ted over her weight. She defined van­ity. Now you know where I got it, but I also gained a great sense of humil­ity from her. Mary Car­o­line Rapier taught me many amaz­ing lessons in our short 15 years together. Not through preach­ing but lead­ing by example.

   I miss my mother as much today as I did when she last held me in her arms and said “I love you.” The pain is man­age­able and it doesn’t crip­ple me. I spent many years liv­ing in anger toward her pass­ing. Envy for my older sib­lings was enor­mous as they got more time with her than I did. A day doesn’t go by that I do not feel her guid­ing me, rejoic­ing in my accom­plish­ments and embrac­ing me when low times strike. She’s the voice telling me,“you can do this.” I have no doubts that she looks after my beau­ti­ful, amaz­ing son.

   As a mother of EIGHT chil­dren — 3 boys and 5 girls — I can tell you she has had a hand in mak­ing this Earth a bet­ter place. Not to sound boast­ful, but my sib­lings are phe­nom­e­nal peo­ple and have left her legacy on their own children.

   I’d like to share a story my father wrote to honor my mom. Every year, regard­less of lack of money, Christ­mas arrived with joy and presents. This magic touch got the wheels turn­ing in my dad’s head and he sub­mit­ted it to our local news­pa­per, The Daily Jour­nal, where he was a fre­quent con­trib­u­tor to their Voice of the Peo­ple column.

   
   

   
   Will the Real Santa Claus Stand Up

   By Harold L. Rapier

   While watch­ing my beloved wife being trans­formed from a lovely bride to a lov­ing mother to a lov­able grand­mother as she went about doing her thing year-after-year and Christmas-after-Christmas, I became increas­ingly sus­pi­cious as to the true gen­der of Santa Claus.  Now, after exten­sive obser­va­tion, inves­ti­ga­tion and con­tem­pla­tion, I believe I can prove beyond a rea­son­able doubt that Jolly Ole Saint Nick is a Grand­mother in disguise.

   First, who is it – as soon as Christ­mas is passed – begins all over again, going on count­less sprees, tak­ing in every sale and com­ing home with hoards of pur­chases only to have them mys­te­ri­ously dis­ap­pear and never seen again until Christ­mas Eve?

   Sec­ond, who is it in every house­hold her­alds in the new Christ­mas Sea­son by going about in a state of eupho­ria, tire­lessly fill­ing every room with the sights and sounds and smells that are com­mon to this hol­i­day sea­son until it ignites the Christ­mas spirit in every mem­ber of the household?

   Third, Santa is com­monly described as being “small, round, warm, and jolly”.  Now, tell me, how many fathers and grand­fa­thers you know can fit that descrip­tion?  How­ever, it is my con­tention that, if you were to dress the typ­i­cal Grand­mother in a Santa cos­tume with padding, whiskers and all, you would pro­duce a sto­ry­book fac­sim­ile of Jolly Ole Saint Nick every time!

   Fur­ther­more, even though I have no tan­gi­ble proof nev­er­the­less, I believe that the Moth­ers and Grand­moth­ers pur­posely con­trived this Christ­mas Myth to mask their own self­less and undy­ing love for chil­dren, and to set a shin­ing exam­ple for we fathers and grand­fa­thers in hopes that we will endeavor to imi­tate it in the com­ing years.

   Now, if this be so, then we all owe a deep debt of grat­i­tude to that spe­cial woman in our lives who, every year, shares her joy­ful love with us man­i­fested in the image of Santa Claus to make our homes a blessed and happy place each and every Christmas!

   In con­clu­sion, I pray that God has reserved a spe­cial place in His King­dom for His Mis­sion­ar­ies of peace and love: Our Brides, Our Moth­ers, and Grandmothers.

   Merry Christ­mas,
   Harold L. Rapier                

   

   Me with mom at my 8th Grade Grad­u­a­tion — ’79

   

   Proof that Christ­mas was a happy time and, as you can see behind me, we weren’t aching for presents. I was 11 or 12 years old here. This also proves why I was mis­taken for a boy on more than a few occasions.

   Category Angels on My Side, childhood, christmas, Happy Birthday, Love You Forever, Mama Said, memories, mother, take a look at me now, We Are Family | Tags: | No Comments

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6. Gratitude is Attitude

   November 23, 2011 by Marissa

   OKAY, you know me and I am a snarky, sar­cas­tic chick. I find a lit­tle plea­sure in play­ing devil’s advo­cate from time to time. How­ever, on the whole I am happy. Con­tent, if you will. While i do have dreams of build­ing a bet­ter life by way of higher income that affords me my own house and vaca­tions to des­ti­na­tions that aren’t fam­ily mem­bers addresses, on the whole I am HAPPY.

   You might ask how that is pos­si­ble when there are so many things hap­pen­ing in the world that are dread­ful. Dark­ness is spread­ing. Hate is more and more evi­dent. Sure. It is. But in my world, where I have con­trol, I find rea­sons to negate all the hor­ren­dous events that are not in my con­trol. Do you dig? I’m con­trol­ling my per­sonal state of mind.

   

   Grat­i­tude is Attitude.

   Tomor­row is Thanks­giv­ing. For Amer­i­cans it begins the hol­i­day sea­son. Our hearts are more open; pock­ets more empty. It also makes peo­ple make delib­er­ate attempts to find things in their lives to be grate­ful for. My sug­ges­tion is not to let it just be a sea­sonal duty or chore. Do it daily. No need to write about it but if it helps you to do so, then do it. There is a bounty of social net­work­ing sights for you to share it on. The first one is your own fam­ily. Write a note on a Post-It to your hus­band or child for why you’re grate­ful. Share the pos­i­tive. Make use of the front of your refrig­er­a­tor. Dry erase boards are for more than gro­cery lists. Make your grat­i­tude list.

   Start a move­ment and make it begin under your own roof. A doc­tor I once worked with, Dr. William Grant, was noto­ri­ous for hand­ing a per­son a piece of paper with the alpha­bet writ­ten ver­ti­cally in the mar­gin when­ever he’d hear some­one com­plain­ing inces­santly. He’d instruct them to start with A and work down to Z list­ing things that per­son is grate­ful for. Sure, X and Z often stump folks, but you get the gen­eral idea of the task. Some days we have to stop and smell the roses and appre­ci­ate that we can see and smell their aroma.

    

    

    

   Category All You Need Is Love, America the Beautiful, Angels on My Side, cool like that, deep thoughts with Miss Riss, dream a little dream, For The Greater Good, getting better all the time, I get by with a little help, kindness | Tags: | No Comments

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7. Wordless — My Heart

   November 2, 2011 by Marissa

   

   Category All You Need Is Love, Angels on My Side, Love You Forever, photo shop, silence is golden | Tags: | 1 Comment

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8. Sickening

   October 6, 2011 by Marissa

   

   **This post is graphic and may be offen­sive to those of you with weak stom­achs**

   Mon­day evening brought a stom­ach ache that I thought was due to over indulging in home made Chi­nese food. I took a Tums and went to bed after watch­ing Castle.

   Around 4 AM a seri­ous abdom­i­nal grum­bling accom­pa­nied with dis­com­fort woke me. Doing what one would do in such an obvi­ous sit­u­a­tion, I returned to bed with hopes of sleep­ing until my son’s alarm went off at 6 AM.

   Wrong!

   The dis­com­fort was too intense for me to remain in bed. Toss­ing and turn­ing made return­ing to the land of slum­ber impos­si­ble. Rather than fight it, I got up and began my usual morn­ing rou­tine of mak­ing cof­fee, turn­ing on the news and check­ing what was new on Facebook.

   By the time my junior in high school lum­bered down the stairs, full force nau­sea and other stuff had kicked in. It was imme­di­ately clear that my 9:30 AM clock in time at work would not occur. A cup of cof­fee wasted. Two sips and it was clear it was a bad choice.

   Blurgh.

   

   Fast for­ward to the present. Day three and I’m weak and woozy, but no longer pro­jec­tile vom­it­ing air. Air? Yes, air. Until last night (Wednes­day), I wasn’t able to keep any­thing in my stom­ach. After tex­ting my niece who is a nurse, she told me I had to get Gatorade or ice chips in small amounts to stay down or she’d come get me to go to the emer­gency room.

   NO!!!!

   It’s not that I don’t have insur­ance or a fear of doc­tors or nee­dles. It’s just that  … I have no real idea why. Pos­si­bly the loom­ing debt that would come with an ER visit regard­less of insur­ance. It isn’t 100% cov­er­age, after all.

   So, my son brought me a bot­tle of Gatorade — Pow­er­ade, actu­ally– I sipped and sipped until it was gone. Along with each sip I prayed and prayed that it would remain in my system.

   Call it luck or the power of prayer, it stayed in my stom­ach and my headache sub­sided until 2:30 AM. I awoke aston­ished that there wasn’t dis­com­fort any­where but my back which I fig­ured was due to the effects of the intense power of throw­ing up. Seri­ously, that does a num­ber on the entire body. Plus, I’d slept away two days of my life. Another thing, because I’m a weirdo and based on curios­ity, I weighed myself Tues­day morn­ing prior to hack­ing up my guts numer­ous times (and other stuff). This morn­ing (Thurs­day), I stepped on the scale again. Ten pounds. TEN POUNDS in two days. Of course, it is not fat. Hon­estly, by the looks of my ankles, I think it all came from there. I’d been bloated and sport­ing some lovely can­kles since hav­ing not worked out much since my dancing-fool recep­tion knee injury. For what it is worth, my knee no longer hurts nor does it have lim­ited movement.

   Oops, sorry. I was side tracked.

   Now, let us come to the cur­rent day. It’s Thurs­day and I feel about 50%. Show­er­ing was risky.At the time I was about to get in the shower I’d texted a friend to ask that if he didn’t hear from me in 30 min­utes to call 911 because I passed out; hit my head and may be uncon­scious and dying in my tub. For­tu­nately, only a bout of dizzi­ness occurred and I held my footing.

   A lit­tle before noon today my phone rang. Being nearly asleep on the couch, I con­sid­ered ignor­ing it, but some­thing told me not to. Good thing I hadn’t dis­missed the call. It was my son’s school call­ing to tell me that my child who hasn’t missed a day of school since fifth grade was com­plain­ing of feel­ing sick to his stom­ach and a headache.

   Oh, no! What had I done? I infected my own child.

   With­out hes­i­ta­tion I grabbed my keys and dashed to the high school. About a block from my house it dawned on me I prob­a­bly had no busi­ness dri­ving in my state, but my son needed me. Dri­ving with delib­er­a­tion that an over­tired trucker might have, I made it to and from the school with­out incident.

   Within 3.5 hours of my son com­ing home, he was spew­ing into a bucket that I’d put next to the couch. The poor kid doesn’t know what to do! He doesn’t get sick. He may get a snif­fle now and then. How­ever, it is gone within a mat­ter of 24 hours. Let me repeat: HE DOES NOT GET SICK! That is until today.

   I made my child sick.

   If you’re a par­ent you know exactly what I mean when I say that it seems impos­si­ble to ever do enough for your kids. It’s such a help­less feel­ing that we can’t wave our magic parental hand over them and make it all bet­ter … or give a kiss on the boo boo.

   My son is amaz­ing and I have never been shy about brag­ging about him. He and I have had impen­e­tra­ble immune sys­tem until recently. It makes sense, per­haps, that we’d both get sick together. Here’s what is TRULY astound­ing about my kiddo: Before he departed for the day, he picked up his assign­ments from the classes he missed today and is cur­rently doing his homework.

   Go ahead and read that sen­tence again. It’s high­lighted for your view­ing pleasure.

   He vio­lently threw up less than an hour ago and he is now tak­ing care of home­work. It is appar­ent that he has full inten­tions of attend­ing school tomor­row. He doesn’t even know how to play it up (as I did). Egads, how did I get so lucky?

   Now, I’m going to com­mence to pray­ing that my son has expe­ri­enced the last of toss­ing his Gatorade into a garbage pail.

   Category All You Need Is Love, Angels on My Side, freaky shit, Love You Forever, Mama Said, Mancub, Rissues, That's Life, That's Scary, toss your cookies | Tags: | No Comments

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9. Indelible marks

   September 11, 2011 by Marissa

   For days I have been con­tem­plat­ing today. If you’re look­ing at the date as you begin to read this, you real­ize it is Sep­tem­ber 11. Mark­ing the tenth anniver­sary of tragedy on United States’ soil.

   It is always my effort to write some­thing that is poignant and mean­ing­ful regard­ing sig­nif­i­cant dates in our his­tory. Today isn’t just about the ter­ror that struck our nation in its heart, but how such an act brought our hearts together.

   I’m not one to spew pol­i­tics or the­o­ries. Remem­brance of my own range of emo­tions and how it affected my, then, 7 year old son. How would I explain what it all meant? Could he pos­si­bly man­age to grasp the con­cept that a group of peo­ple could hold such con­tempt and loathing toward our “Land of the Free; Home of the Brave” or would it go over his head?

   Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001. The morn­ing I sat in hor­ror as I watched the events unfold live on tele­vi­sion. Sob­bing, I called work to inform them I’d be late. My man­agers at the time hadn’t heard of the tragedy. It was all just begin­ning when they received my call. As a result, they thought some­thing hor­ren­dous had hap­pened to me, or worse, Man­cub. Through the pan­icked voice I told them what was hap­pen­ing in New York. With­out hes­i­ta­tion I was told to take my time and to keep them informed as the radio wasn’t able to give extended coverage.

   Schools didn’t offi­cially let the kids out early, but they wel­comed par­ents if they chose to pick up their child. There was a def­i­nite need to pull each other closer. There was such a sense of fear and recog­ni­tion that dur­ing this cri­sis, peo­ple wanted to hud­dle close and mourn the loss of so much: Lives, sense of secu­rity and free­dom.  All that we’d grown to expect was sud­denly ripped away.

   A group of cowork­ers decided to meet up at a local eatery. Again, we just didn’t want to be alone. Prior to that I did go to the school to pick up Man­cub. On our short drive from to the school to our home, I asked my lit­tle man if his teach­ers had talked about what was going on in Amer­ica. While not going into detail, the teach­ers were instructed to use their best judg­ment and dis­cre­tion based on the age of their stu­dents. At age 7, Mancub’s teacher sim­ply told the chil­dren that some­thing fright­en­ing was going on, but they were safe at school. She added that par­ents would fur­ther explain … or some­thing of that nature.

   First up in our con­ver­sa­tion was explain­ing the mean­ing of ter­ror­ist. I strug­gled to find an age appro­pri­ate anal­ogy. In his infi­nite wis­dom, Man­cub gath­ered that Bin Laden was like Darth Vader and his min­ions were Stormtroop­ers sim­ply doing his bid­ding. Even­tu­ally, he’d make fur­ther com­par­isons to bad guys vs. good guy sce­nar­ios he’d seen in movies. Mind you, these com­par­isons were on a much smaller scale, but if it helped him under­stand the dire sit­u­a­tion a bit bet­ter, I was OK with it. It seemed to me that he needed to com­pre­hend the cir­cum­stances, but not with attach­ing fear that would keep him up at night.

   The most shock­ing aspect of our talk was when Man­cub sat for a bit watch­ing tele­vi­sion. Then, he turned to me and asked how I would feel if some­one I loved was respon­si­ble for such an act of hor­ror. “Do you think Bin Laden’s mom would be sad for what he has done?” It left me speech­less. And then, he asked if the Pres­i­dent was OK. We hadn’t talked about that.

   On Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 it was my duty to pro­tect my son and help him under­stand what trav­esty had hap­pened to our broth­ers and sis­ters in patri­o­tism. But what hap­pened on that date was that a seven year old boy helped me see beyond the scope of what I had wit­nessed … to look beyond my imme­di­ate anger.

   Category America the Beautiful, Angels on My Side, deep thoughts with Miss Riss, family, I get by with a little help, Love You Forever, Mama Said, Mancub, Never surrender, Proud Mom Alert, Uncategorized | Tags: | 12 Comments

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10. The Pursuit is over

    July 22, 2011 by Marissa

    Lane Bryant saved my boobalas from fur­ther torture!

    Did you hear the choir of angels sing ear­lier Fri­day evening? July 22, 2011! Mark it on your cal­en­dar. For the first time two decades I was able to take a bra off a rack (heh…I said rack) in a STORE; try it on and it FIT! I lit­er­ally let out a squeal of delight when the hot pink, under­wired, smooth cov­er­age bra fit.

    Glory, glory hal­lelu­jah! It felt so comfy that I bought four. I almost kissed the sales con­sul­tant, Mary, who mea­sured me. “You’re a per­fect #^ HOLY FUNBAGS!” (She did not say fun bags, but I’m not reveal­ing my actual size) With that infor­ma­tion, she showed me to the selec­tion of bras not just in white or black, either. Each style has a dif­fer­ent pur­pose and amount of cov­er­age. She went on to inform me that there are more selec­tions online. Since I know my size for their brand (Cacique) I should have no issues in the future. Mary not only helped me find proper fit­ting bras, but she made sure I was able to save money in the process. Thank you text mes­sage instant coupons!

    

    Another thing. A bonus for order­ing online is that ship­ping to the store is free and returns are no has­sle even if I pur­chase online.

    As Mary put my pur­chase in the bag I thanked her for her help and asked if there was any way I could get word of her excel­lent ser­vice to the pow­ers that be. I walked out with a lilt in my step and declared, “My spir­its AND my boobs are lifted — a two for one deal!”

    I must give props to my sis­ter Mau­reen and my co-worker Sarah for telling me about their expe­ri­ences shop­ping for bras at Lane Bryant. I’d shopped at the store in the past, but never for over the shoul­der boul­der hold­ers as cup sizes never went high enough to suit Thelma and Louise. So, with that I thank both ladies for help­ing a sis­ter out when her cups run­neth over.

    With my quest to find the per­fect bra now real­ized, it’s time to find the per­fect for me man … OK, let’s not get car­ried away!

    Category 99 names for boobs, Angels on My Side, bawdy little monkey, be still my beating heart, bra shopping, closeted vixen, Hooters, I hate shopping | Tags: | 4 Comments

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