So half of your face is paralyzed...

     Okay so this is me, I blurred out my eyes in the hopes that no one recognizes me.  Pardon the hair it was windy.  Look at the crooked nose and stupid leer.  This is my attempt at smiling.  The nice part is that I have no wrinkles on the right side of my forehead.  I can now twitch the corner of my mouth, and weakly close my eye, but my lips and eyebrow still won't move.  Oh and did I mention I can barely taste my food?
     I notice I'm getting that extra polite look when I have to talk with strangers.  I notice that I'm covering my mouth and nose with my hand when I laugh.  I notice I am not wanting to eat in public.
     I once knew a wonderful woman who was everything kind and caring, who had had a brain tumor.  The operation left her with nerve damage that screwed up her mouth.  She said she would love to have her smile back.  She would pull on the other side of her mouth to try and even it out a bit and would cover her face when she laughed.  I never viewed her as anything but wonderful and I felt that all those cover ups were not necessary.  Now that I am in a similar position, well, I understand better.

The week my body went apeshit crazy.

Not much of a costume, and the pic doesn't show the blue hair and bling on the mumu, but it was quick and easy.  

   
     I had a blast on Mardi Gras.  Too much of a blast.  It seems that my legs aren't twenty-something any longer and object to twelve hours of walking and dancing.  To make a long story short I'll just say that for two days I could not bend my knees.  Really.

    Valentines day the dog we've been watching escapes (I was at Mom's house), and began playing that age old idiot dog game of chase me.  There we all were, me, Sis  #1, Sis #2, Nieces #4 & 5, and Mom, running about in the street in our jammies and of course I can't bend my knees.  Sis #1 turns to Sis #2 and says, "there goes Frankenstein."  Okay yeah, so Frankenstein, (me because I can't bend my knees), is out in the middle of the street in cow slippers when a cop shows up to serve papers to one of the neighbors.  Now we've got a cop watching all this go on and he, bless his heart, jumps into the fray.  Sis #2 is in the car driving along side the dog, and I'm doing my best to just walk thinking Miss J. is going to be beside herself if I lose her dog.  Niece #5 caught the dog with bacon and the cop left laughing at either the chase, my walk or the slippers; not sure which.

Fast foreword a few days...

     Life has gotten back into a routine after Mardi Gras and I'm painting a bedroom at the condo when suddenly my eye tears excessively.  I wipe it away and go on with my day.  I get back to Mom's and make kisses at the cat when I notice half my lips don't work.  I check it in the mirror and one half of my lips look skinny and the other half looks swollen.  WTH?  The next day Sis # 2 and I are shopping at Goodwill and laughing over some silly something or another when she starts laughing even harder.  Half of my face isn't working and when I grin, it pulls my nose to the left.  I go look in the mirror and holy Gotham Batman, I look like a stroke patient.

     It took a couple of days, but they managed to talk me into a doctor.  J, bless his heart, has been so good to me.  He has laughed his ass off at my stupid looking face, and we came up with all kinds of different ways to prank people.  I don't want someone getting all serious and worried when I'm like this.  The more inappropriate the better.  I've got Bell's Palsy so pretty much I look like this guy...

     Oh well I'm going to look at it like this, people pay for Botox right?  I have the right side of my face paralysed for free.  BTW the eye patch I have to wear at night, (my eye won't close all the way), will definitely lure in all the local pirates.

When cat people have to care for a dog.

     Our dear neighbor Miss J. has had an attack of appendicitis and has to have surgery.  We have been charged with the care of her dog Sadie.  The only problem is that we are cat people.  I know you have to let dogs out to go make poop, but how do you know when they need to go out?  How often do they need to go out?  These are questions that we just can't answer.  So far we've cleaned up one poop mess.  So we decided to let the dog out for a couple of hours to ensure no further poop mess.  When we went next door to let her back in, we found this:

Sadie getting an unwanted bath.

Sigh.  I don't know how dog people do this dog thing.