Living It With Lisa

Rose are red;
Violets are blue,
Forget about tomorrow,
And your name is doo-doo!

Are you stuck?  Here are some touching Valentine tips:

• A romantic note asking him/her to be your valentine.
• A simple ‘I Love You’ with a kiss can set an awesome mood for a Valentine’s Day.
• A CD of his/her favorite songs.
• Decorate his/her house with hearts, bows and ribbons
• Cook a dinner for two and decorate the room with heart-shaped candles.
• Make your own Valentine’s Day card which expresses your feelings.
• Create a scrapbook ‘recollection collection’ and fill it with love letters, photographs, cherished mementos, etc.
• Plan a special dinner for him/her either in a garden or a boat. A candle light dinner is just unforgettable.
• Pamper your sweetheart by gifting her a spa session.
• Dance with your valentine on Martina McBride’s ‘Valentine’.
• Include a chocolate dessert in your romantic dinner.
• Create a love song CD full of Valentine’s Day songs.
• Give your Valentine Love Coupons … make them yourself.   Good for a chores, cooking cleaning, back rubs, time with each other without the kids.

Whatever you do, it can be absolutely anything that means something to YOU and YOUR Valentine.

Here are some sites that might help you get creative … even at the last minute!  If not, save them for ANY day of the year.

Lee Hansen Printables:   http://bit.ly/a3jdv0

Idea Art:  http://bit.ly/9xiIXQ

The Romantic:  http://www.theromantic.com/

Family Fun:  http://familyfun.go.com/valentines-day/

Holiday Ideas:  http://holidays.lovingyou.com/valentine/

Suite 101.com   For the man in your life: http://bit.ly/b7JMEV

Coolest Dates: http://bit.ly/a1RdF2

Romance Stuck:  http://bit.ly/ccwCH1

Have fun & Happy Valentines Day!

A little humor, a little truth and some that don’t apply in my case … but I am sure you will get a chuckle or two as you too remember!  Happy Mother’s Day!

Mother and her darling daughters

1.   My mother taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE.
“If you’re going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning.”

2.  My mother taught me RELIGION.
“You better pray that will come out of the carpet.”

3.  My mother taught me about TIME TRAVEL.
“If you don’t straighten up, I’m going to knock you into the middle of next week!”

4.  My mother taught me LOGIC.
“Because I said so, that’s why.”

5.  My mother taught me MORE LOGIC.
“If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you’re not going to the store with me.”

6.  My mother taught me FORESIGHT.
“Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you’re in an accident.”

7.  My mother taught me IRONY.
“Keep crying, and I’ll give you something to cry about.”

8.  My mother taught me about the science of OSMOSIS.
“Shut your mouth and eat your supper.”

9. My mother taught me about CONTORTIONISM.
“Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck!”

10. My mother taught me about STAMINA.
“You’ll sit there until all that spinach is gone.”

11. My mother taught me about WEATHER.
“This room of yours looks as if a tornado went through it.”

12. My mother taught me about HYPOCRISY.
“If I told you once, I’ve told you a million times. Don’t exaggerate!”

13. My mother taught me the CIRCLE OF LIFE.
“I brought you into this world, and I can take you out.”

14. My mother taught me about BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION.
“Stop acting like your father!”

15. My mother taught me about ENVY.
“There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don’t have    wonderful parents like you do.”

16. My mother taught me about ANTICIPATION.
“Just wait until we get home.”

17. My mother taught me about RECEIVING.
“You are going to get it when you get home!”

18. My mother taught me MEDICAL SCIENCE.
“If you don’t stop crossing your eyes, they are going to freeze that way.”

19. My mother taught me ESP.
“Put your sweater on; don’t you think I know when you are cold?”

20. My mother taught me HUMOR.
“When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don’t come running to me.”

21. My mother taught me HOW TO BECOME AN ADULT.
“If you don’t eat your vegetables, you’ll never grow up.”

22. My mother taught me GENETICS.
“You’re just like your father.”

23. My mother taught me about my ROOTS.
“Shut that door behind you. Do you think you were born in a barn?”

24. My mother taught me WISDOM.
“When you get to be my age, you’ll understand.”

25. And my favorite: My mother taught me about JUSTICE.
“One day you’ll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you.”

Today I got this email from my girlfriend Stacy which included this poem about friendship.  It really put a smile on my face because some of this is more true than we may want to think … and that is a good thing. 

So read it, smile and pass it on … 

1. The roundest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference.   He
acquired his size from too much pi.

2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to
be an optical Aleutian.

3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.

4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a
weapon of math disruption.

5. The butcher backed into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his
work.

6. No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.

7. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

8. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum
Blownapart.

9. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

11. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking
into it.

12. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

13. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the
other: ‘You stay here; I’ll go on a head.’

14. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

15. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: ‘Keep off the Grass.’

16. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital.  When his
grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said ‘No change yet.’

17. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

18. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at
large.

19. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned
veteran

20. A backward poet writes inverse.

21. In a democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism it’s your count
that votes.

22. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.

23. Don’t join dangerous cults: Practice safe sects!

I got this story recount in my email this week and I don’t remember when I laughed so hard that tears came.  If you have had this very special procedure or not, you will definitely experience a unique viewpoint from Dave Berry.  

COLONOSCOPY JOURNAL

I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy.  

A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through   Minneapolis.  Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring, and patient manner.  I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn’t really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, quote, ‘HE’S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!’

I left Andy’ s office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called ‘MoviPrep,’ which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven.  

I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America ‘s enemies.

I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous.   Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation.   In accordance with my instructions, I didn’t eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor.

Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep.  You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, and then you fill it with lukewarm water.  (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons). Then you have to drink the whole jug.  This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes – and here I am being kind – like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, ‘a loose, watery bowel movement may result.’  

This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative.  I don’t want to be too graphic, here, but:  have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch?  This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt.  You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently.  You eliminate everything.  And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep.  

The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic.  I was very nervous.  Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage.  I was thinking, ‘What if I spurt on Andy?’  How do you apologize to a friend for something like that?  Flowers would not be enough.

At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said.  Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked.

Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand.  Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down.  Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep.  At first I was ticked off that I hadn’t thought of this is, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode.  You would have no choice but to burn your house.

When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist.  I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere.  I was seriously nervous at this point.

Andy had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand.

There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was ‘Dancing Queen’ by ABBA.  I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, ‘Dancing Queen’ had to be the least appropriate.

‘You want me to turn it up?’ said Andy, from somewhere behind me.

‘Ha ha,’ I said.  And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade.  If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like.

I have no idea.  Really.  I slept through it.  One moment, ABBA was yelling ‘Dancing Queen, feel the beat of the tambourine,’ and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood.  

Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt.  I felt excellent.  I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that It was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colors.  I have never been prouder of an internal organ.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for the Miami Herald.

On the subject of Colonoscopies…

Colonoscopies are no joke, but these comments during the exam were quite humorous….. A physician claimed that the following are actual comments made by his patients (predominately male) while he was performing their colonoscopies:

1. ‘Take it easy, Doc.  You’re boldly going where no man has gone before!

2. ‘Find Amelia Earhart yet?’

3. ‘Can you hear me NOW?’

4. ‘Are we there yet?  Are we there yet?  Are we there yet?’

5. ‘You know, in Arkansas, we’re now legally married.’

6. ‘Any sign of the trapped miners, Chief?’

7. ‘You put your left hand in, you take your left hand out…’

8. ‘Hey! Now I know how a Muppet feels!’

9. ‘If your hand doesn’t fit, you must quit!

10. ‘Hey Doc, let me know if you find my dignity.’

11. ‘You used to be an executive at Enron, didn’t you?’

12. ‘God, now I know why I am not gay.’

           And the best one of all.

13. ‘Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is not up there?’