Thanks to Diane for passing this on...

Happy Mother's Day
By Lori Borgman (Lori Borgman is a syndicated columnist and author of All Stressed Up and No Place To Go, her latest humor book now available wherever books are sold.)

Expectant mothers waiting for a newborn's arrival say they don't care what sex the baby is. They just want to have ten fingers and ten toes. Mothers lie. Every mother wants so much more. She wants a perfectly healthy baby with a round head, rosebud lips, button nose, beautiful eyes and satin skin. She wants a baby so gorgeous that people will pity the Gerber baby for being flat-out ugly. She wants a baby that will roll over, sit up and take those first steps right on schedule (according to the baby development chart on page 57, column two). Every mother wants a baby that can see, hear, run, jump and fire neurons by the billions. She wants a kid that can smack the ball out of the park and do toe points that are the envy of the entire ballet class. Call it greed if you want, but a mother wants what a mother wants. Some mothers get babies with something more. Maybe you're one who got a baby with a condition you couldn't pronounce, a spine that didn't fuse, a missing chromosome or a palate that didn't close. The doctor's words took your breath away. It was just like the time at recess in the fourth grade when you didn't see the kick ball coming, and it knocked the wind right out of you. Some of you left the hospital with a healthy bundle, then, months, even years later, took him in for a routine visit, or scheduled him for a checkup, and crashed head first into a brick wall as you bore the brunt of devastating news. It didn't seem possible. That didn't run in your family. Could this really be happening in your lifetime? There' s no such thing as a perfect body. Everybody will bear something at some time or another. Maybe the affliction will be apparent to curious eyes, or maybe it will be unseen, quietly treated with trips to the doctor, therapy or surgery. Mothers of children with disabilities live the limitations with them. Frankly, I don't know how you do it. Sometimes you mothers scare me. How you lift that kid in and out of the wheelchair twenty times a day. How you monitor tests, track medications, and serve as the gatekeeper to a hundred specialists yammering in your ear. I wonder how you endure the cliches and the platitudes, the well-intentioned souls explaining how God is at work when you've occasionally questioned if God is on strike. I even wonder how you endure schmaltzy essays like this one - saluting you, painting you as hero and saint, when you know you're ordinary. You snap, you bark, you bite. You didn't volunteer for this, you didn't jump up and down in the motherhood line yelling, "Choose me, God. Choose me! I've got what it takes." You're a woman who doesn't have time to step back and put things in perspective, so let me do it for you. From where I sit, you're way ahead of the pack. You've developed the strength of the draft horse while holding on to the delicacy of a daffodil. You have a heart that melts like chocolate in a glove box in July, counter- balanced against the stubbornness of an Ozark mule. You are the mother, advocate and protector of a child with a disability. You're a neighbor, a friend, a woman I pass at church: You're a wonder.

New Fridge + Chaos = Anxiety galore

The deep and thoughtful topic I promised has gone down the toilet..I may resuscitate it at a later date. But for now, it is swirling among the fishies.
Did you ever have a day where every damn thing just went south..ticketedy-boo? One damn irritation after another..I had that day yesterday.
We had my new shiny, sparkly fridge delivered..we took weeks to find the perfect fridge. We measured the space where the fridge was to go..but we neglected to measure door ways. So the guys in the truck..tell us there's no damn way the fridge is gonna fit..I thought they were just being lazy asses. But Nope..out comes the measuring tape and it will NOT fit. We also discovered the door leading to our kitchen measures different at the top..at the middle ..and at the bottom. It is not uniform..the guy must have been hepped up on schnapps when the doorway was made. So, the guys wanna take the fridge back to Sears, so we can go pick out a fridge that fits. I had tears in my eyes even pondering this...it was a difficult decision buying the damn fridge. We didn't agree on anything..doors, colour, size..but when presented with this fridge..we both loved it from first look...yup..love at first sight. You know you are a freaking adult when you get excited about appliances!!!
So, Abe took a look at my tearful countenance and said "Leave it in the living room..we'll get it into the kitchen" and then the adventure began. We put an emergency call into my Stepdad, the complete and ultimate handyman. He tore the trim and lintel off the door, which gave us enough room to move the fridge into the kitchen. So we try to fit the fridge into the spot, and it is a fraction of an inch too small. No problem..Abe decides to empty the cupboard that sits next to the fridge, unscrew it from the wall, move it over and rescrew it. This just adds more chaos to a kitchen that was already in Chaos. In case you don't know..I don't do chaos very well these days..I get anxious..I get panicked..I get bitchy..and then it usually ends in a complete meltdown..for me.
I took a deep breath, exited stage left, closed the kitchen door and left Abe to the chaos. All the while he was working in there, I tried to distract myself with Indiana Jones. Honestly, all I could think about was the nails, the wood, the saw dust, the concrete dust, the mess, the crap on the counter, table, and floor. Anal..simply anal retentive.
Finally, he was done. The fridge was plugged in and cool. It fit and looked incredible. I loaded everything back in, and it was so clean and so organized. I was happy as a pig in a pile of shit. I slowly cleaned up a great deal of the mess, and finished most of it today. The chaos has dissipated, and so has my anxiety.
So what the heck am I gonna do when we totally redo the kitchen in five years time??? I'll need a godamn shitload of xanax!!
Oh well, at least I got my fridge- shiny, sparkly, pretty with an ice maker to boot.