Elaine Ambrose

Bestselling Author, Ventriloquist, & Humorist

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#midlife

A Love Note to my Internet Trolls

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internet troll crop (2)

As a syndicated blogger, I’m accustomed to receiving unsolicited remarks about my posts on various social media websites. Regular readers know I write humor targeted to middle-aged women, and they anticipate a certain level of sassy irreverence. It’s a role I enjoy, mainly because I can write from home while wearing pajamas and sipping wine.

The last few days, however, brought new extremes of praise and punishment for my writing skills. The copious compliments were tempered with caustic criticism, almost enough to crush my delicate soul.

Four of my essays were published last week on the Huffington Post. My only serious piece was about my ailing mother and titled “If My Mother Died Today.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elaine-ambrose/caring-for-elderly-parents_b_5979904.html

The post received almost 1,000 favorable likes on Facebook and many middle-aged caregivers wrote to thank me for giving a voice to their feelings.

In the essay, I wrote about playing Tennessee Ernie Ford’s spiritual music for my mother when she was in critical condition in the hospital. I ended the piece with Ford’s familiar saying, “Bless your pea pickin’ heart.” The next day I received a touching email from Ford’s daughter-in-law. She loved the blog and offered to send me some of Ford’s spiritual music. I requested “His Eye is on the Sparrow,” one of my favorites. She responded that she was sending a 40-song collection. I am honored and humbled.

The next day, Huffington Post featured my humorous post titled “Why Small Print Makes us See Red.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elaine-ambrose/small-print_b_5989416.html

The message was an exasperated, satirical plea for manufacturers to increase the size of print on products so middle-aged women wouldn’t need to wear eyeglasses in the shower to decipher the shampoo from the conditioner. The responses came immediately. One person offered to send me a free pair of “Thinoptics” – a pair of reader glasses in a cell phone case. I accepted. Another offered me a deal on Lasik eye surgery. I declined.

The essay received more than 2,600 likes on Facebook, 344 shares and 160 comments. I’ve only been blogging on HuffPo for a month, so the response was exciting. But I was unprepared for the vitriolic assaults. Here are some of the published comments:

“This was supposed to be humorous? Well, keep on trying.”

“”Another female problem to kvetch about.”

“We already cater too much to Boomers.”

“This was humor?”

Additional comments deteriorated into attacks about misplaced priorities, gay rights, and trolls living in basements. I answered a few but then stopped because I didn’t want to get down to their level. I peeked back the next day and found more than 100 positive comments, so I felt better. Still, I wondered what possessed a man (yes, most of the mean comments were from men) to make nasty comments on a humor column targeted to middle-aged women. With all due respect, bless your pea pickin’ hearts but take your sorry asses and go troll somewhere else.

 

 

How Blended Families Can Survive the Holidays (without Calling the Cops)

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crazy santa

The holiday season is only weeks away! If you’re in a blended family, that fact could cause your eyes to twitch and your beleaguered intestines to threaten explosive diarrhea because you barely got over the stress from last year’s drama. But with coordinated logistics and bribes, combined families can learn how to survive without a food fight, bloodletting, or lawsuits. Just keep the wine and the children breathing.

Even with careful preparation, sometimes the best plans get burned along with the roast. It’s tempting to go over the river and through the woods to Grandma’s house and then keep on going just to avoid all the trite platitudes and impossible expectations about the holidays. Forget Rockwell’s famous portrait because most grandmothers don’t wear white aprons after fixing a messy meal, and there’s a good chance that this year they’ll introduce their new boyfriends instead of picture-perfect platters of browned Butterballs. And Martha Stewart is not coming over, so forget the hand-painted placemats and pilgrim-shaped gelatin molds.

Blended families add chaos to the holidays, and designing a stress-free schedule requires maximum organizational skills, saintly tolerance, and nimble flexibility so plan now for the possible scenarios. You could be standing in the buffet line next to your ex-spouse, your stepson may demand to bring his mother and her new boyfriend to your home for brunch, or your son’s stepdaughters might want to stay at their father’s place because you don’t have cable television. You may accidentally call your son’s new girlfriend by his ex-wife’s name as you see someone’s boisterous toddler climbing onto the fireplace mantel.

It’s all fun and games until Grandma throws down her cane and demands to know who all the people are coming and going.

The best situations involve divorced parents who can cooperate and negotiate holiday schedules as they decide custody issues involving their children. We all know mean-spirited, immature parents who refuse to compromise, and that only hurts their children. These parents should receive nothing but coal in their stockings, and they should start saving money for their children’s future therapy sessions.

My husband and I each have two adult children from previous marriages. My daughter married a man who already had a daughter, and then they had two more daughters. My son married a woman with two girls, and they had another baby. My ex-husband lives in the area and is included in family birthdays and other events. Somehow it all works, and no one has threatened anyone with a weapon, so far.

Our family tree could be in danger of falling over because the branches are laden with sporadic offshoots, new in-laws, old stepparents, and assorted children who share multiple homes. But because of extra care, these roots are strong, and our tree can hold the chaotic collection of yours, mine, ours, various ex-spouses, and a few confused grandparents.

During the holiday season, we welcome everyone into the family, and for a splendid moment in time we’re all singing Fa La La before someone falls into the Christmas tree, a kid rips off the head of a cousin’s new Barbie, or the dog barfs in the kitchen.

There are 14 Christmas stockings hanging over the mantel, and we’ll need to build another one if any more members join the family. I’m uncomfortable with the label “step-grandchild” so I’ll just call all of them my grandkids. They don’t mind, and some of those lucky kids have four sets of doting grandparents. Score!

Here are four final suggestions for surviving the holidays with a blended family:

  • Have a sense of humor because it’s better to laugh at the commotion instead of breaking something.
  • Take plenty of photographs to identify everyone because Grandma is still baffled.
  • Assign responsibilities and anticipate problems when Uncle Bud gets drunk, the baby swallows a turkey leg, or Grandpa starts snoring during dinner.
  • Make time to appreciate the creative collection of characters in your unique family, believing that each one adds a definite spice. In the spirit of the holidays, choose to make it work.

Finally, reduce the stressful requirements and use prepared gravy mixes, boxed stuffing, and leftover Halloween napkins. If people object, they can host next year.

If My Mother Died Today

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elaine leona 1951

I love my mother. But if she passed away today I would be thankful. That doesn’t make me a heartless, horrible daughter; I only want her to be free from earthly constraints and permanent disability.

She has lived in a nursing home for more than five years. After suffering from serious car wrecks, numerous falls that broke her back, hip, and knee, and injured her head, she is confined to a wheelchair. Dementia has robbed her of cognitive ability, and even though we wrote family names on all the photographs that line the walls of her tiny room, she can’t remember who we are. When I visit, she mutters incoherently but cries when I leave.

Mom would want to be remembered for her energetic, positive accomplishments, not for how she is existing now. Decades ago, she helped my father create and run several successful businesses in southern Idaho. She owned Farmhouse Restaurant near Wendell and the eatery beside the freeway was voted “Best Road Food in America” in a 1996 nationwide survey of truck stops. Major media carried the story and NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw vowed to stop by during an Idaho vacation. The media referred to Mom as “jolly.”

She also served on the local school board, organized the community blood drive, and volunteered at the polling place during political elections. She adored her grandchildren and made the world’s best chocolate chip cookies. She was widowed 25 years ago at age 61 and never considered dating so lived alone for twenty years. We moved her to an assisted living facility and then into a nursing home as her mind and body continued to deteriorate. This resilient child of the Great Depression who reluctantly spent any money on herself has now depleted her assets paying for the increasing costs of her high level of care.

I recently met with the medical staff at the nursing home. They wanted to increase Mom’s medications for diabetes and high blood pressure and I rejected the diagnosis. What’s the purpose? It’s not as if she will take some magic pills and suddenly stand up, dance, and laugh again. They have the professional obligation to prescribe medication, but I have the bloodline, empathy, and legal authority to say no more.

For the past 25 years, I have been her designated Power of Attorney. I carry the DNR File that contains the “Do Not Resuscitate” instructions. Last year she was hospitalized again, and the doctor told me she had 72 hours to live, so she was given morphine but not any water or food. I met with kind Hospice workers who advised me to make funeral arrangements, so I did. I sat by her bed and played her favorite Tennessee Ernie Ford spiritual music to accompany her on the transition. The next morning, she opened her eyes and said, “Hi!” Since then, she has endured three more ambulance trips and hospital stays.

People will judge and criticize me for wanting her to pass away. But I’m the one who has changed her adult diapers, wiped her tears, decorated her rooms, held her hand, organized medical bills, and made excuses for why her first-born son hasn’t visited in 15 years. In the nursing home, I see other adult children assisting their ailing parents. We pass in the hallways and nod to each other as colleagues in a role we didn’t choose but lovingly accept. Critics shouldn’t condemn us until they have walked down similar halls for several years.

Death without dignity diminishes the memories and light of an abundant life. When the sweet chariot finally swings low enough to carry her home, I’ll play Tennessee Ernie Ford singing about peace in the valley. Bless her peapickin’ heart.

Copied from my essay published on the Huffington Post.

Midlife Cabernet: Don’t Fart during an MRI

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fart

I share this true but pathetic story to commiserate with other tortured souls who relentlessly endure and survive extreme humiliation. We’re a group of accident-prone fools who regularly trigger embarrassing situations that would permanently traumatize a normal person. My experience this week will be difficult to surpass: I farted inside an MRI machine.

In medical terms, I had torn the meniscus cartilage that acts as a shock absorber between my shinbone and thighbone. In middle-age woman terms, two demons from hell invaded my body and lit fires in my knee and then danced around poking the raw nerves with electric forks. The pain was beyond intense, and the accident severely damaged my body so I couldn’t stand, walk, or even crawl to the wine bar.

Five drug-induced days later, I finally saw an orthopedic surgeon. He manipulated my knee until tears streamed down my cheeks and I threatened to tear off his arms. It should have been obvious that I was injured by the way I was ripping off chunks from the sides of the examination table. I silently vowed to add him as a nasty character in my next short story.  Finally, some lovely angel gave me legal narcotics. Soon my ravaged leg was a big, bandaged joke, and I laughed and laughed.

A few days later I experienced the MRI – a magnetic resonance imaging procedure that uses a magnetic field and pulses of radio waves to make images of damaged ligaments and joints. A handsome young technician helped me into the tube of terror and strapped down my leg. I nervously remarked that a first name usually was required before I allowed anyone to tie me in a bed. He didn’t laugh but ordered me to hold still for 45 minutes. So there I was, in pain, suffering from claustrophobia, moving on a conveyor belt into the white torture chamber, and I didn’t have a clue how to remain motionless. And, to complete the distress, my only audience wasn’t amused by my jokes.

After about 20 minutes, I started to get anxious. I was tied down in a tunnel and could only hear strange beeping noises and grinding sounds. For all I knew, they were deciding which body parts to extract and sell on the black market. Then a queasy feeling predicted a pending passing of gas. I bit my tongue, pinched my side, and tried to focus on a pastoral scene in a green meadow beside a babbling brook. I could hear my mother’s advice: “Squeeze the dime.” I fidgeted.

“Please hold still,” came a voice from outside the shaft of shame.

I watched as the lights and numbers revealed how much time remained. Three minutes. I could do it! No! My body betrayed me at the one-minute mark. I was trapped and helpless so my nervous body did what it does best: it farted.  I released gas with the intensity and conviction of a team of sumo wrestlers after a chili-eating contest. And the confined space caused the sound to be amplified as if a dozen foghorns had simultaneously activated. I didn’t know whether to cry, giggle, or call my son and brag.

“Well now, I think we have enough images,” the handsome technician said, suppressing a  laugh.

The magic bed moved backwards into freedom, bringing along the putrid stench of decay. I was mortified as my imaginary meadow became a ravaged pasture full of rotting manure. What in the hell had I eaten? I avoided eye contact with the timid technician and hobbled back to the dressing room. Once again, I accepted my fate of being the perpetual, reluctant clown, the oddball, the one who farts during a complicated medical procedure.

If I ever need another MRI, I’ll request a facility in Texas. Everyone farts there.

 

The Bad Knee Need for Speed

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military jet

After suffering a serious knee injury, I numbed the pain through the wonders of legal narcotics. Then the doctor upgraded my drugs to a more potent dosage because my eyes kept rolling back in my head as I bit through broom handles. This new potent medication had the power to turn me into a fierce fighter pilot.

Soon after gulping the pills, I magically appeared at the controls of an F-14A Tomcat jet careening into the Danger Zone as Kenny Loggins sang in the background. It was quite the rush. After performing several death-defying maneuvers, nose-bleed-causing spirals, and winning a dog fight with several Russian MiGs, I sent a sassy radio message to Top Gun Headquarters:

“Tower, this is Ambrose requesting permission for a flyby.”

The answer was succinct.

“Dammit, Ambrose, get down off the counter.”

The voice sounded like Studley but I knew it couldn’t be him because I was flying at Mach 2 – almost 1,550 miles per hour – twice the speed of sound. And he was back home making dinner because I was too helpless to assist. Unless, of course, I became a fierce fighter pilot. Then I had a good excuse to heed the call of duty because I felt the need for speed.

“Ambrose, get down!” The voice was more persistent so I put the jet on cruise control and lifted the visor on my helmet. I saw the blurry image of Studley helping me sit down in my recliner. Suddenly the jet vaporized in a puff of steam.

“Where did you go this time?” he asked, almost afraid of the answer.

“Just playing with the boys,” I answered. I heard Kenny Loggins again but I think he had moved to the back yard.

Studley sat down beside me and shook his head.

“I made spicy meatballs for dinner,” he said.

“Great balls of fire,” I sang as I pounded on an imaginary piano. Then, sensing his annoyance, I broke into a dramatic and romantic rendition of “Take my Breath Away.”

At this point, he muttered about buying a motorcycle so he could ride away beside a distant ocean. So I searched for the pill bottle because I wasn’t finished with the volleyball game.

 

 

 

 

Hallucinating with Storybook Friends

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alice tea party

I recently experienced a knee injury so painful that I sobbed until tears and snot covered my face, and I ignored my mother’s admonishment to wear fancy underwear before going to the hospital. After x-rays confirmed damaged ligaments, a doctor who appeared to be 12-years-old prescribed an assortment of painkilling medicines. I wanted to adopt him because the wonder drugs were magnificent.

I had been proud of my ability to avoid illegal drugs, even while growing up during the sixties and seventies, but after experiencing the magical pills I wondered if my pious virtue and self-discipline had been overrated. As Studley drove us home from the hospital, I enjoyed my own private trip.

I noticed a large white rabbit sitting in the back seat and recognized him as one of the characters in the book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a childhood favorite.

“Hi, White Rabbit!” I said and waved. Studley kept driving.

Then I looked out the window and saw the Cheshire Cat grinning in the night sky. His head turned all the way around and I laughed with delight.

“Look! The cat is winking at me!” Studley kept driving.

We arrived home and Studley wrestled my incapacitated body out of the car, into the house, and onto the bed. By then, there was an entire tea party floating around the room. Alice looked at me with a sigh of boredom and begged me to get up and play. The Dormouse scolded Alice for being bossy so the Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit pushed his head into the tea pot. I laughed and laughed.

hooka final

I noticed the Caterpillar sitting on a pillow smoking a hookah. He offered me a toke but I told him I’d never inhaled. That statement caused guests at the party to spit out their tea, and I felt silly. Just then the Queen of Hearts ran into the bedroom waving a big ax.

“Off with her head!” she screamed.

I jerked, and the involuntary movement caused a shooting fireball of pain to rip through my bandaged knee and ignite the nerve endings in my leg. I hollered for Studley, and he came running so fast he almost spilled his gin and tonic.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Do you need more pain pills?”

“Yes, yes,” I gasped. “And paint the white roses red so the queen won’t cut off my head!”

Studley patiently read the instructions on the pill bottle and considered gulping a few but decided I needed them more.

“You should wait two more hours,” he said.

I clenched my fists and snarled. Studley feared for his life.

“I need. Another. Pill,” I growled with the intensity of the possessed girl in the movie “The Exorcist.”

By then Studley was reminiscing about his single life, just a short five years ago. Nothing had prepared him for life with a writer whose imagination was prone to hallucinations and fantasies, even while sober. The pain meds introduced a whole new level of crazy.

He gulped his gin and bravely offered three ibuprofen tablets.

“Take these,” he suggested. “They’ll help until it’s time for the hydrocodone. Remember, this prescription is a narcotic related to opium.”

“But look at the Caterpillar,” I wailed. “He’s smoking a hookah on your pillow!”

alice flamingo

Studley nodded and left to fix another cocktail. That’s when a pink flamingo peeked from underneath the sheet. He whispered that he needed to hide because Alice wanted to use him as a croquet mallet. I promised and pulled up the sheet.

I vaguely remember falling down a hole lined with red roses. The queen should be happy with that, I thought. Then everything went black. I know that the flamingo stayed underneath the sheet because I could hear him snoring and moaning all night.