Elaine Ambrose

Bestselling Author, Ventriloquist, & Humorist

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Midlife Cabernet: My Mother’s Keeper

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My mother became a widow at age 62, and so for the last 25 years I have lovingly included her in my family’s Christmas activities. Until this year. I didn’t bring her here, and I want to stop feeling bad about that. Guilt is totally overrated.

Mom suffers from dementia and gets nervous in crowds. She also is confined to a wheelchair after numerous falls and car accidents. I’ve taken her to countless doctors appointments, lifted her in and out of my car, pushed her wheelchair through snow, and changed her adult diapers in cramped public restrooms. Through these experiences, I’ve watched helplessly as her dignity eroded and the positive spark left her eyes. Eventually even my jokes couldn’t make her laugh.

Many middle-aged women understand the responsibilities of caring for aging parents. I see other women pushing wheelchairs, and we nod to each other in a silent sisterhood. My brothers and their wives have absolved themselves from any involvement, and I resent their easy detachment. My children know I will haunt them if they forget about me. Fear is an excellent motivator.

Mom now lives in a small room in a nursing home. The walls are covered with family photographs with labels because she can’t remember our names. Years ago her calendar was full of important engagements and now the only entries are for a weekly hair appointment and a twice-weekly shower. The staff tells me she sits by the window waiting for Elaine to visit. Sometimes she grabs my hand and asks me when Elaine will come. I tell her she’ll be here soon.

My mother was a child during the Great Depression, and her yearly Christmas gift was a fresh orange in a pair of new wool stockings. But before she could open her present, she hand-milked cows in the barn and fed the horses. Her difficult childhood instilled a fierce grit that has sustained her for 86 years, and sometimes I wish she weren’t so tough. I also wish she hadn’t driven her car through the back of her garage because I had to take the car away. And I wish she hadn’t burned up my microwave using it as a timer. And I wish she could remember how to work the television remote to watch Lawrence Welk. She claims he hasn’t aged a bit.

To compensate for not bringing her here this Christmas, we took the holiday to her. On the Saturday before Christmas my two adult children and their families drove with us in three vehicles on a 250-mile round trip to see her. We brought simple gifts of lotion and Christmas sweatshirts. She seemed confused but pleased.

When we prepared to leave my six-year-old granddaughter leaned forward and gave Mom a hug. I captured a photograph that showed her pure joy. Dementia has robbed her of mental clarity, but she continues to crave human touch. To my mother this Christmas, a hug from her great-grandchild was the perfect gift. That might even be better than an orange in a wool stocking.

Today’s blog is fueled by a TNT signature red blend from Twigs Bistro and Martini Bar at The Village in Meridian. It’s $10 a glass, but doesn’t need any silly olives like those boring martinis. Merry Christmas, Mom.

Lighten the Load with Laughter

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My distinguished school career as the class clown began in the fourth grade when I told a joke and everyone laughed, except the teacher, of course. Through the years, I continued to annoy my teachers, irritate my parents, and delight my friends with irreverent comments and rebellious actions that resulted in many trips to the principal’s office. Only my good grades saved me from being sent off to some reform school in the wilderness.Actually, I grew up in the wilderness. Anyone ever heard of Wendell, Idaho? I didn’t think so. It’s a small farming community in southern Idaho where you can get to Clell and Mabel’s home by turning left at the brown house with the wooden deck, just past the hill by Chandler’s dairy barn. During the sixties, as I was honing my humorous and rewarding talents in the classroom, the town had 1,000 inhabitants. I knew just about every one of them. My parents had attended the same schools I attended, and I had some of their same teachers. These teachers were OLD!As a child, I relied on my wits to survive. I was the only girl in a hard-working farm family and my importance fell way below that of my brothers, my mother, the hired hands, the dog and the cats. The dog was useful for barking at strangers and the cats were necessary to control the mice. The hired hands worked hard on my father’s farms from sunrise until sunset. My mother, bless her heart, dutifully had dinner on the table every night at six o’clock, whether or not my father came in from work. If he were late, she silently added more milk to the gravy and kept the pork chops in the oven until they became hard enough to use as door stops. But, just smother them chops with globs of reheated gravy and you could choke ’em down with a few glasses of dairy-fresh milk. My brothers were important, well, because they were male and I wasn’t. It all seemed so unfair.Every day my father would play John Philip Souza records on high volumn and pound on our bedroom doors, hollering “Get up! Get up! Time’s money!” To this day, I cringe and get a twitch every time I hear “Stars and Stripes Forever,” even though I’m very patriotic and continue to get out of bed and get to work because I couldn’t possibly waste time or money by lolling around in my big, comfortable bed with the Italian sheets and the coordinated bedding.Anyhow, that’s Part One of my grand adventure into the safety of humor. I find it so much more enjoyable to laugh about this crazy world than to fuss about all the crap. I recently had an article printed in several national magazines. It’s titled “Toss Out Some Humor to Lighten the Work Load.” In case you’re interested, here’s a link to one of those articles. Toss out some humor to lighten the workload

Midlife Cabernet: If We Could Turn Back Time, We Wouldn’t

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Today I read an online article that declared women over 45 shouldn’t wear bling jewelry or jeans with decorated pockets. I read these silly rules while wearing my brilliant, dangling earrings with my favorite fancy jeans. I can only conclude that middle-aged women have earned the right to wear whatever they choose, and advice columnists under 45 should remember that.

After several decades of being told what to do, what to wear, what not to eat, and how to behave, I join a growing group of proud and loud women over 50 who gleefully proclaim: I can do what I want to do. (We can’t scream our independence because that would be perceived as being bitchy and obnoxious.) We acknowledge that lolling around in jammies isn’t appropriate all the time, but there are glorious days when we pull on the sweat pants and mismatched sweaters, curl up with good books, and revel in our ability to say “Bite me” to every young, skinny critic wobbling past on five-inch heels and toting exaggerated self-importance.

If a mysterious tornado suddenly swooped us to an alien land and some powerful wizard offered us the power to turn back time, we’d probably decline. Given the choice of being 30 and reliving the demands of young children, new careers, weak relationships, and financial problems, we’d take the chance to be our age and continue living in our sweats and enjoying a glass of good Cabernet. Really.

I do miss the energy of my youth, and there are countless times I wish I could rock my sweet babies one more time. But, now I get to spoil my grandkids. And, they love my bling.

How Women can Avoid Conniving Con Artists

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Call it a case of sour grapes. More like 45 cases. I was bamboozled for booze by a former friend who solicited money for an exclusive wine club. Red flags were slapping me in the face but I couldn’t see beyond my rosé-colored glasses.

I don’t enjoy broadcasting my stupidity but I hope my mistake can prevent other women from being swindled by shady shysters. The guy sold a snake oil deal disguised in a wine bottle, so of course I willingly imbibed in his exciting new venture known as Vinemakers LLC. (Note: In this case, Limited Liability means the managing partner didn’t need to honor the contract.)

The result of being a sucker: I lost more than $30,000 and now have 540 bottles of unlabeled wine without foil over the corks. My house resembles a moonshine shack.

The wine is good – it received a 90 point rating from Wine Spectator – but not worth $56 a bottle. I can’t sell the wine because I’m not a distributor and it’s not labeled. My only options are to give it away at charity functions and to throw raucous parties. So come on over and step through the boxes and bottles. I’ll be in the corner wearing a dunce hat.

As a sobering public service, I now am qualified to offer my top five ways for women to avoid bad investments:

  1. Be skeptical. Most middle-aged women would have a tendency to believe and trust a friend whose LinkedIn profile virtually claims he is the smartest man in the entire business world. Big mistake.
  2. Ask to see financial statements and details about other investors. I learned too late that I invested three times more money than the others. Most of the victims were women, but there was one man who doesn’t want to be identified because he is a local financial advisor. Every investor lost at least $10,000, and the winemaker eventually lost her house.
  3. Have a non-related lawyer review any contract. For my $30,000 investment, I was given a document that “guaranteed” a return of capital participation, an additional 15% profit sharing on all the wine sold, and six cases of wine annually. The club went out of business and there was no legal recourse to enforce the bogus claims. We were offered cases of wine, and that’s all. My 45 cases were delivered from the back of a pickup truck on a 100 degree day, and the “Seasoned Senior Executive with Global Marketing Experience” was nowhere in sight to help unload. His subsequent emails promising to “make all of you whole” only succeeded in making all of us a whole lot angrier.
  4. Know your legal options. You can’t squeeze dollars from a barrel of fermented grapes, so don’t try to sue. The winery doesn’t have the money to pay the debts, so all you get are legal bills which could lead you to drink. Again. It’s also illegal to physically harm the guy who cheated you. I already researched that option.
  5. Appreciate your own ethics. If most women asked our friends, associates, and their parents for investment money and then the project failed, we would work multiple jobs to pay back the investors. But slimy skunks don’t agree with that philosophy. They could, however, be ridiculed someday in a national blog.

My final words of advice: Don’t avoid future risks but research any financial venture and know that if it’s too good to be true, it’s a lie. Finally, keep a sense of humor when faced with negative situations. For my pending party, I will have an altered game of Pin the Tale on the Donkey. Guess whose photograph is strategically placed?

Today’s blog is fueled by a 2008 Syrah. The grapes were from Columbia Valley in Washington, and the wine was bottled by the talented winemaker at Periple Winery in Garden City, Idaho. One down, 539 to go…

Today’s Cabernet

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My post today was fueled by a glass of Clos Du Val Merlot 2004 from Napa Valley. It’s a bold blend of 96% Merlot and 4% Cabernet Sauvignon and 100% delightful.

Choosing Sassy over Sissie

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Welcome to my new blog! If you’re a young, beautiful woman with a flat stomach, perky boobs and big hair, this is not the blog for you. Go away. However, if you’re a feisty female over forty, pull up a chair and join me with a glass of cabernet. Let’s celebrate our survival to and through this exciting new adventure to midlife and beyond.This is not our mother’s midlife world. We refuse to go quietly into the parlor and knit aphgans while watching reruns of the Lawrence Welk Show. (However, I still can name every one of the Lennon Sisters and that Norma Zimmer was one classy lady.) I grew up on a farm in southern Idaho and we only received one television station. The only TV progams we were allowed to watch were Lawrence Welk, Father Knows Best, and Leave It To Beaver (which is a cause for therapy right there.)Now our bodies are going to hell, the boobs are swinging like tube socks, hair is falling off our heads and growing on our toes, we carry a sqeegee to blot the sweat from our brow, and we need reading glasses just to see our new age spots. Yes, this is our reward for not dying young. Let’s go together and review all kinds of fun topics: jobs, wine, men, wine, children, wine, health, wine, aging parents, wine, chocolate, and throw in some great recipes to go with the wine.We’ll also review the many wonderful realities of life during the second half. In my humble opinion, one of the truly fabulous facts of getting to be this old is that we get to enjoy our grandchildren. That gorgeous baby in the photo is my precious, precocious Luciya, born in April of 2007. I just love that baby.