Theracane

A few years ago, my husband came home telling me about a self-massage tool that he prescribes for his patients: the Theracane.

Theracane. Available at amazon.com

He prescribes it for trigger point therapy for headaches with any sort of tension component, but given the $30 price point, he thought the thing was awesome, but not worth the price. I looked into it, and saw that the self-massage possibilities were endless!

A snippet from the owner's manual

So, I bought B a Theracane for Christmas. Except I couldn't keep it secret until Christmas, so he received his Theracane in November. Both of us enjoyed using it so much- and knowing that my parents also enjoy self-massage (my mom is constantly telling me to lie on top of and roll on tennis balls for my back because she does it and it feels "so good!"), we decided to buy my parents a Theracane also for Christmas that year.

Now, I don't know if it's a cultural thing, but sometimes I feel like my parents don't "get" presents. After we gave them the Theracane, they offered it back to us, saying that if we wanted two Theracanes at home, they'd be willing to let us keep the one that we had bought for them. Confused, but wanting them to enjoy the Theracane as much as we had, we refused.

My husband and I still occasionally use our Theracane- especially when we get wicked knots in our shoulders or necks from all the computer work we have to do as physicians. (Honestly, a greater proportion of time spent in front of computers than with patients- while they're awake anyways, but that's not really what this blog is about...) But I had forgotten about the Theracane we had bought for my parents until B went on his early morning walk around my parent's house and spotted this:

Theracane... holding back some old fencing???

B was so angry- we bought them a $30 gift, and it's in the yard holding some old rusty fencing in place?! He went to my mom and told her that we had given her the Theracane as a gift, and if she wasn't using it, he would take it back and use it in his clinic to show patients how it's used.

Expecting some sort of remorse or apology (or embarrassment???) for blatantly misusing a gift, my husband was surprised (or maybe- not surprised?) when my mom replied without any sort of remorse or guilt: "Oh sure, of course. I'll clean it off for you."

Tent Person gets a promotion

My husband and I were in LA for Memorial Day weekend to attend a friend's wedding. Since my parents live literally 10 minutes from the ceremony and reception, we really had no excuse to stay anywhere else but with my parents.

One morning, B (my husband) let me sleep in a little bit and took the kiddo on a walk around the grounds. He had a very interesting talk with my parent's housekeeper/cook/maid, but I'll save that for another post. B went to the RV to try to take some more photos for this blog. He opened the door, and... woke up the Tent Person, who was sleeping in the RV- on the floor. Surprised, B apologized for disturbing the Tent Person. Seeing that B had our little kiddo with him, Tent Person went on to warn B that there had been a bobcat sighted nearby, so not to take the kid out in the backyard past the pool.

And bobcats, oh my!!!

A little disturbed by this encounter, B returned and told me what had happened.

"What?! You didn't take a selfie with the Tent Person?!" I asked.

I asked my parents later if they knew that Tent Person was now RV Person, and indeed, they had given him permission to sleep in the RV. I suppose, a better use of the space than for storage.

Later on that weekend, I saw RV Person exiting the RV and heading toward the pool house with a large plastic bottle filled with a yellow liquid that I was quite certain was urine.

Well, hey- at least he's not peeing in the bushes.

Flossing

My mom is obsessed with flossing. She has a history of gum disease, so now she obsessively flosses after every meal, no matter where she is. There have been multiple dinners out at nice restaurants, where we've finished the meal and are sitting around enjoying each others' company... and then she pulls out her floss and starts going at it. There have been the same number of hisses under my breath at her admonishing her to go to the bathroom and floss if she absolutely needs to.

For some reason, my parents also seem to believe that using a piece of floss only once is a waste. It must have to do with their history of relative impoverishment in Taiwan before emigrating to the United States. So, my parents save their floss. Not kidding. When they come and visit, we will randomly find pieces of floss here and there. The car is another place where they enjoy flossing- and my mom in particular has been known (and seen) to be driving while flossing.

So, when we visited LA a few weekends ago, my husband and I couldn't help noticing in the car they let us borrow...

Floss???

Floss?!?!

And more floss!

Honestly, I was more surprised to see only three pieces of floss in the car! My husband and I even tried to search for more floss to take photos of.

So, imagine my delight when I saw this billboard in Utah:

DON'T Floss and Drive

I immediately took a photo of it (yes, I was driving, don't kill me- but it was just way too good to pass up) and sent it to my sister. The humor would have been lost on my mom.

Asian women can't drive

My mom claims that she is the best driver in the family, which is far from true. However, when we challenge her on this, she points out that she is the only person who has not yet crashed a car... which very unfortunately, is true. That is, it is true that she has never crashed a car into another car. She has crashed into plenty of inanimate objects.

Case in point: here's a photo of the side of her Prius.

Poor Prius...

When I moved to Utah, my parents kindly let me trade my car with my mom's 4Runner. However, there are dents on literally every corner of the car. Whenever I drive a new friend around, I always make sure to tell them that all of them were from when my mom owned the car- not from my own driving. I don't want people to think I'm a terrible driver too!

Mt. Whitney, part 3

This is the post in which my mom finally gets to the top! After 2 nights on the trail of bumming food and water off other hikers and hiking in the dark, she made it to the top. She ran into some guy with a nice camera, made conversation with him, and got him to take photos of her at the summit. She then forwarded me the email he had sent her with her photos.

The photos were named ASIAN155-ASIAN165.

I have to say that I was super impressed at the fact that my mom managed to summit Mt. Whitney. She kept telling us stories about how people were trying to climb too quickly and ended up getting altitude sickness so she'd see them charging up, and then coming back down. Slow and steady wins the race, she said. Slow and steady... and not having the appropriate permits for a multi-night hike up Mt. Whitney, but pooh on the rules- as I would say!

So she summited, came back down and picked up my dad where he was further down the trail, and sent me these photos a few weeks later, after the random stranger who had taken them had uploaded them onto his computer.

The end. Now onto the next saga...

Mt. Whitney, part 2

I did get these two videos, which hinted that my mom was indeed still alive.

Speaking of water... my mom told me afterwards that she didn't have enough water for the hike. So she ended up taking water from some other hikers on the trail. Fortunately, the trail is very well traveled, so she was able to bum water off plenty of other people. (And also food, because she didn't bring enough food either...)

I was confused, because my parents had told me before they left on the hike that they had gone to Sport Chalet and spent several hundred dollars on hiking supplies- including a water purification system. Didn't she bring that along?

Yes, apparently she had. But she had neglected to bring an appropriate container to use the water purification system in. D'oh!

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day, Mommy. No matter how many times you get lost while skiing, we will always go pick you up.