Deuce

So. Guys. We've talked about peeing (here, here, and here), but what about POOPing? Of all bodily functions the General Surgeon should care for, shouldn't pooping come first? I mean, I'm not a urologist! (And come on, with the name of this blog, I don't know why it took so long. Because literally, this is story about... well, sh*t my mom did.)

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Our son was about 4 months old, when in a fit of lunacy, I decided that it would be a splendid idea to rent a condo in Park City for a family vacation. My husband had a conference in Park City, so why not bring my parents, my sister, and our infant son and stay in a condo that is literally 45 minutes away from our son's familiar crib and room??? Like many vacation condos, the space was fairly cramped, but adequate for us all. Downstairs had the living area and kitchen, and behind kitchen was a bedroom that we gave to my parents so they wouldn't have to use the stairs. And then next to the kitchen was a bathroom that they could use.

It was about 8 or 9pm, and we had just finished putting our son to sleep. My husband headed back downstairs and then noticed a terrible smell. What was that? It smelled like... poop? He rounded the corner to see my mom, sitting on the toilet, with the door open. Pooping.

HUSBAND: Mom, why did you leave the door open???
MOM: Oh. Sorry.

Just a foreshadowing: This was not the last time this happened...

Oops! ... She did it again

My mom- and hence, my parents, never can be anywhere on time. So, things like airplane travel can be very difficult for them. It is not uncommon that they will miss flights while traveling. When I was a kid, I remember spending several hours in O'Hare because my mom wanted my sister to see her cousin's bedroom. When we finally arrived to the airport, they wouldn't let us check our luggage because it was too late. I remember my dad trying to bargain with the poor ticket counter guy: "Can we just carry the luggage on?" No, it won't fit into the overhead bins. "If there are empty seats on the flight, we can just put our luggage on the seats." No sir, you are not allowed to do that. Anyways, you won't be able to get those bags past security- they won't fit into the X-ray screening machine.

So that was that, and we got bounced from standby flight to standby flight for several hours. I recall getting mighty bored in that airport, and my sister and I playing games for hours to pass the time.

My parents and I also missed our flight when we were headed to New York in 2002 to drop me off for college.

And my mom just missed a flight this past week heading back from Salt Lake City to LA.

Missing domestic flights is a bit of an annoyance, but imagine the stakes when my parents are traveling internationally. A few years ago, they went to Taiwan with my mom's sister, Chris. (The same aunt mentioned at the end of this story.)

On their return flight, it seemed that they- shockingly, were running behind. My dad texted my sister and I to let us know...

So it seems like my parents made their flight back from Taiwan, but my poor aunt was the sacrificial lamb. (And don't worry, Chris gets back home eventually. And then my parents start leaving her in Salt Lake City randomly. Oh, more stories for later times...)

(*To reference my lack of surprise about their overweight luggage, see this post.)

Peeping Mom

So, I do yoga at CorePower. They have two classes I like to take, CorePower 1 and Hot Power Fusion. I've taken my parents to CorePower 1 before, but never to Hot Power Fusion. Somehow, against my better judgment, I asked my mom if she'd like to go with me to Hot Power Fusion.

ME: Mom, it's a heated class, so don't forget to bring a towel and a water bottle.

MOM: Okay, okay.

ME: Mom, yoga class starts on time. And they lock the door if you aren't there on time. Class is at 9:30am. Can you be there on time?

MOM: Of course, of course.

ME: No, really, Mom. Like you won't be able to get in if you're late.

MOM: Yes, yes, I'll be on time.

ME: They'll lock the door. If you are going to be late, you're better off not showing up at all.

MOM: Yes, yes. Okay.

ME: ...Okaaay....

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The next morning, I text her that I might be late myself, since I'm dropping off the kids. But once I realize that I'll be able to make it, I text her to let her know.

And then, I arrive at class. No Mom. I text her. No response. So finally, I put my phone in my locker and go into class. I lay out my mat on the side of the room furthest from the wall of windows. Class starts, and I'm a little disappointed. To be completely honest, my mom is always bragging at how fit she is, I sort of wanted to see if this class would be hard for her and then I could show off. Not the point of yoga, I am aware. (And also, I'm really not that good at yoga either.)

Twenty minutes into class, out of the corner of my eye, I see somebody scurrying by to the door. Mom. Of course, the door is locked. I see her scurry back and forth a few times, and then she's gone. I go back to my breathing and following the calm voice of the yoga instructor.

And then I see her again. She is standing at the window, face and hands pressed against the glass, peering inside.

I feel my blood begin to boil. And not because it's a million degrees in yoga class, which it is. I keep telling myself to ignore her, breathe, and don't let her destroy my zen.

I'd also like to point out that a google search of "face pressed against glass" brings up lots of great finds...

We are at least 5 poses away from the end of class. Breathe, Alice, in... out... don't look at the window... 

We finally settle into the final shavasana (corpse pose) and I'm so glad I get to close my eyes for the rest of class and not see what I know is over at the window...

What I'm seeing on the backs of my eyelids during shavasana...

My body is still, but my mind begins to race. What do I say to her now? I am so angry and annoyed, but I don't want to let her actions affect the usual peace and focus that follows my yoga practice.

So I channel my inner Elsa. I emerge from shavasana, roll up my mat, fold up my towel, and head to the locker room. I see Mom coming into the studio, brushing brusquely by the yoga instructor, who while she passes, tells her, "You know, what you were doing was very distracting..."

My mom interrupts, "I'm here to see my daughter!"

Sh*t. Cover blown. I walk into the locker room, and my mom follows me. I remove my belongings from my locker and walk out to my car, and my mom catches up to me there.

"Mom, I can't deal with this right now, " I tell her. Then I get into my car and leave. 😳

Where did Mom go?

(Relevant backstory: Recently, we moved to a new house. Due to construction issues, we have one usable bathroom upstairs, and another downstairs. The one upstairs is sort of the master and also shared with the kids, so it's sort of a mess and disaster. So often when we have company, we ask them to use the downstairs bathroom.)

My parents were visiting soon after our second child was born. It was a great blessing to be able to have them come help us out- especially with caring for our first child, E, while we were busy with the second. It was dinner time, so we asked my parents to help E wash his hands downstairs. Ah-gong (maternal grandpa), Ah-ma (maternal grandma), and E all went downstairs, and then only Ah-gong and E returned.

And then 15 minutes passed.

"Where's Mom," I asked. Nobody knew. I nudged Lee, "Hey, maybe you should check downstairs. She likes to go through people's papers and things- maybe she's in your office." And yes- true story, my sister's boyfriend has found her rifling through his mail and bills. Lee bolted downstairs and then returned to report:

"So I went downstairs, and I didn't see your mom. And then I heard this splashing sound and the door to the bathroom was open. So I go up to the door, and go, 'Mom?' And then a hand comes out of the tub and pulls the curtain shut."

"WHAT?! She was taking a bath?!" She had not asked us if she could take a bath.

"Yeah! And I asked her if she had fresh clothes. She did not. I asked her if she had a towel. And she said she was just going to use one of the ones hanging on the rack. And I was like, E wipes his hands on those towels! You were going to wipe your genitals on that towel and then put it back without telling us?!" (Yes, she was. Since you are completely clean after you come out of the bath, this is okay.)

Some people are unusually sensitive about where their towels have been. Some... are not.

I spent the remainder of my mom's unauthorized random bath trying to be calm and rational when she reappeared. I'll spare you the entire conversation, but here are some of her choice justifications:

"If you hadn't found out, you wouldn't have cared."
"If I had asked, you would have said no."

The Grandeur Residence for the Elderly

Sadly, I have to change the name of my parent's business for the sake of keeping an eye out for my parents' business interests. But these stories are just way too good not to share.

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There comes a point in every parent's life when all the kids have finally moved out of the house and the house becomes full of unused rooms. Some parents downsize, and some parents repurpose and create a new office or workout room. Still others just leave everything just as is and freeze the room in time. Not my mother. She started an assisted living facility.

I can't even begin to imagine where to start when telling you all about this. So let's just start with the cars. In order to advertise, they put large decal stickers on my dad's minivan and also their extra car- a blue Camry.

Even better was when I visited LA and got to drive around in this blue Camry. I had been ignoring the stickers until I pulled up to pick up some friends and noticed the puzzled looks on their faces. Yeah... this is our ride. And they even got somebody trendy to name their different assisted living sites: The La Canada. The Glendora. Those were on the stickers too.

And strangely, the name of the facility was different almost everywhere it was written. On the cars: The Grandeur Residence for the Elderly. On the letterhead: The Grand Residence for the Elderly. On the website: The Grandeur Residence for Elders. It was a wonder that anybody could ever figure it out.

For the years that my parents were running this business, when I visited home, there would be a different random stranger in our large echoey living room, sitting on a strangely distant couch, watching Golden Girl reruns all day with the volume turned all the way up. She would ignore us, and I would generally ignore her except for the polite smile and nod- if she even glanced away from the TV when I walked in. But there she would be, day after day, as I came and went from the house. And then on another visit, another year, there would be nobody.

Dishwasher is broken

Tons of family crammed into our small space for Thanksgiving

After nearly 5 years of blissful marital living in the small condo we bought when we moved out to Salt Lake City, and 1.5 years of cramped family living in the same small condo, my husband and I finally moved to a larger space. We ended up deciding to sell our condo to my parents, so they could have a place to stay when they visited. This was an idea that I was pretty okay with, but my husband was very apprehensive about.

There is a ton more backstory that I'll address at another time (once I can think about it calmly without experiencing sudden tachycardia...) but I should have anticipated that they would ask us about everything going wrong in the condo.

For instance, this cryptic text message:
MOM: Dad said the upstairs one window can't open , who you use to help . First day OK

And then later on my husband told me that my dad had said the dishwasher was broken. There were bubbles coming out from the bottom of the dishwasher onto the floor.

"Oh," I told him, "I've made that mistake before. They just used dish soap instead of dishwasher detergent."

"No," He replied, "Your dad said that they definitely bought dishwasher detergent, and didn't use the dish soap. He said that it came in a ball, maybe one of those power ball things. I asked him to send me a picture of it, but he hasn't yet."

"Was it a lot of bubbles? Or just a little?"

"He said just a little."

"Oh, it's probably fine. Maybe it was just a one time thing. Doesn't make sense though, the dishwasher was working just fine when we left."

So I forgot about it until my husband went back to the condo to pick something up. That night I was exhausted from a long day at work and was still doing work at home, when he sat down across from me on the couch: "Come here come here, I want to show you these photos."

This was the dishwasher detergent they had been using. Good for use in high efficiency washers, I suppose. Because just like clothes, who doesn't want their dishes pro-whitened to a dazzling white?

And to be fair, there's nothing on the bottle that says it's meant for clothes washing machines, versus dish washing machines.
I mean- "regular loads"? Of what? Dishes? Or clothes?
"As with all colored loads"? I have white dishes and colored dishes. I don't usually separate them for washing, but I suppose my colored dishes could run into the whites and make them less "dazzling white."

TT;CB (Too tight; couldn't breathe)

Recently, my parents were visiting town. It was cold enough that I was wearing a Mountain Hardware down micro puff jacket that I've owned for a while, and my mom was admiring it. She was asking where she could get one too, so we took her to the Patagonia Outlet Store to see if we could find her something at a good price. She had just come from playing tennis, and was wearing a jacket over her tennis dress. I thought nothing of it until she started removing her jacket in order to try on new jackets, and I saw this:

And then I started chasing her around the store, giving her jacket back so it didn't look like she was wearing a tennis dress with no bra and gashes cut into it.

"Moooommm," I hissed at her, "What happened to your dress???"

"Oh," she replied, "It was too tight, I can't breathe."

Green Juice

Not my mom's green juice. 

Oh, lordy, how have I not written about the green juice yet? Everybody seem to be green juicing now; it's an easy way to get your greens and all the nutritious goodness that comes with that. But you see, my mom is the ultimate hipster, because she does all of these things way before everybody else is. She's been green juicing before all the cold-press juiceries started popping up in SF and raising chickens in her back yard long before it was a thing.

The thing about my mom's green juice is that... well, 1. it has lots of particulates in it, but really, 2. it tastes awful. My mom will claim that it tastes good, but unlike many juiceries who will add some fruit to make the juice taste good, this juice is just vegetables. And more vegetables. And maybe they'll throw in half a lemon too. And here's the other thing- my parents won't travel anywhere (read: my mom won't let my parents travel anywhere) without bringing green juice. So they will fly to Utah with bottles of frozen green juice to keep the rest of their groceries from California cool. They freeze it in recycled Pepsi bottles, random Nalgenes that I've left at home over the years, empty old water bottles... I had sort of gotten used to the idea, since it's been happening since I was in high school, but something about getting married gives you a second set of eyes to re-see all the things you've been seeing for years.

So this video was taken years ago, but for some reason, only now have I come across it to share with you. The beginning, you will note that my parents also brought along multiple ziplock bags full of raw veggies to cook. They have their maid/housekeeper/helper wash, dry, cut, and package it all before they travel. And then at the end, I now remember that they were visiting for the holidays, so all the junk food is being re-gifted to us from my parents. And of course, in the middle, the real star of the show:

VIVA GREEN JUICE!!!

(P.S. I make my own green smoothies now, but I like to think mine taste better than hers. Which goes to show that really, I am slowly becoming my mother.)

Getting what you paid for

The Monterey Bay Aquarium

Since my mom is a physician, as a child, many of our family trips were scheduled around her Continuing Medical Education, or CME. I remember many of these trips fondly, especially because it usually meant that we got to stay at a fancy hotel, like a Hilton, or a Hyatt. This was super cool for my sister and me, since usually on family vacations, we were sleeping either in a tent or the more run-down version of a Motel 6. One of the first of these CME trips that I remember as a child was to Monterey Bay.

It was a terrific trip. We went to the aquarium, made new friends, and my parents let my sister and I run wild in the vendor exhibit area, where we would grab free tote bags and tear around collecting as much free swag and candy as we could. Free pens? Branded post-its? Magic folding cubes? Standing desktop calendars? This was before the moratorium on pharmaceutical branded swag, so there was so much of it. It was like trick-or-treating!

Free pharma swag!!!

Our trip to Monterey Bay was also the first time I remember staying at such a nice hotel. When we entered the room, we were amazed that there were glass cups next to the sink. Not only were they glass, but they were square glass cups. We had never seen square glasses before. The towels were thick and fluffy, and there were bathrobes in the closet! It was a sort of luxury that my sister and I had never seen before.

So it was with great reluctance that we packed up all of our things in the van at the end of the trip and started the long drive back home to LA. About an hour into the drive home, I turned around the try to get something out of the back of the car. I noticed a plastic bag stuffed with square glasses, fluffy towels, and bathrobes.

"Mom...?" I yelled, "Is this from the hotel? How come it's here? We have to turn around and give them back because they'll notice that we're stealing!"

My mom paused. And then told me, "Don't worry about it. It's not stealing. That hotel was very expensive, so it's okay."

That's right, Mom. Way to stick it to the man.

Probably TMI - Underthings

One of my first memories is of when my sister and I accompanied my mom up to a lingerie counter when we were little girls. I remember her asking for a C cup, and then for bra extenders. Back then I didn't know what any of that was, but I remember asking my mom why she wore a bra. "To give clothes a nice shape," I remember her telling me.

Fast forward a decade or so, and I finally learned about bra cup sizes. First of all, most of women in my family are not very well... ahem... endowed. And there was no way in hell that my mom was a C cup. My sister and I quickly learned that my mom wore a C cup bra solely to "give her clothes a nice shape" in place of wearing a padded bra. As we got older and started wearing bras ourselves, we kept learning more things about my mom's strange undergarment habits- none illustrated so clearly as the time we all went shopping together in Taiwan.

First off, please reference these posts for examples of my mother's poor fashion choices. So one of the activities my sister and I enjoy is taking my mom shopping. We were in Taiwan when sister spotted a beautiful blue floral patterned V-necked dress. It was not a super deep V, more on the conservative side, and we knew that the belted waist would look nice on our mother. We got her in it and zipped it up, but in order to get the dress to look right, we had to tighten up her bra. Why? Because it was hanging loosely on her, riding up in the front, and peeking out the front of the V-neck. Mom- we told her, we'll buy this dress for you, but when you wear it, you HAVE to tighten up your bra or else it'll show in the front. Fine, fine, she agreed. So my sister bought her the dress. Since it was sleeveless, we even bought her a matching cardigan.

Not the actual dress, but this one is similar.

That evening, we went out to dinner at a nice restaurant with some of our relatives. Excited for our mom to wear her new outfit, we tightened up her bra and zipped her into her new dress. We did her hair and my sister put makeup on her. I probably have photos somewhere, but she looked nice. We were talking to our cousins, and when we turned around, she had her new cardigan wrapped around her neck, covering the front of her dress. Turned out that she had undone her bra, and in order to hide the fact that it was riding up her chest, draped her cardigan around her neck to hide it.

After we left the restaurant, we were like, Mooooooommm, you said you weren't going to loosen up your bra!!! That was part of the deal!

Her reply? "It was so tight! I just can't think because it's so tight!" 

Compost

About 5 years ago, my mom got really into composting. Like really into composting.

In March of 2011, my parents had just bought a condo in Mammoth Lakes. The whole family headed up there for a weekend to check out the place, and I came along to help pick out furniture, give my parents suggestions about what renovations needed to be done, and of course, to get a little skiing in. That year was an epic season, and this is what the walkways in the condo complex looked like:

So much snow!!!

My mom and I were in the kitchen when I noticed her putting uneaten egg yolks from hardboiled eggs into a Ziploc bag containing some other trash- vegetable peelings and coffee grounds that we had thrown away earlier. She then placed the bag into the refrigerator.

"What are you doing...???" I demanded of my mother.

"Oh, I am saving for the compost."

"You are not saving trash and bringing it back home."

"Why not?"

"Mom, that's just gross. Where are you going to put it? Is there not enough trash at home that you have to bring trash home from vacation?!?!"

"Oh the car is so large. We have extra room in the coolers because we eat the food."

"Mom, have you been digging in the trash to get this stuff???" I knew she had been, I had thrown those vegetable peeling in last night, and the coffee grounds that morning.

"Oh the coffee grounds are so good for compost."

"Mom, you can't do this. There is trash at home. You don't need to bring it back all the way from Mammoth!" I grabbed the bag from her and threw it in the trash.

She then ran off to the bathroom and when she didn't reappear after a few minutes, I began feeling guilty. I went to find her, and found her crying in front of the sink. I awkwardly put a hand on her shoulder.

"Since I hurt my knee skiing, I haven't been able to exercise," she sobbed, "I have been gardening and it has become very important to me."

In my mind, I sighed deeply. I was going to have to lose this one. I let her take home her bag of trash. And since then, I've let her take home many bags of trash. Whenever she comes to visit, she digs around for compost in my kitchen wastebasket and puts it in a Ziploc bag that she stores in my freezer until they go home. She especially likes to save egg shells and egg yolks- she tells me that they grind these up and feed it to the chickens. Lots of protein and calcium to make strong egg shells! I try to ignore the obvious weirdness of feeding hens parts of the eggs that they had just laid.

The last time my parents came into town, I tried to get my dad to take a photo of my mom's compost bag since they were staying in a nearby hotel. When I mentioned it, he started huffing about how she made him carry back trash from Europe when they visited Barcelona. "I refused! I throw the bag out at customs!"

The Tennis Ball Can, Part 2

Again, another story that I never thought would have a part two... (See Part 1)

I mentioned to my dad that once we had seen my mom pee into a tennis ball can. He was not really surprised. In fact, he told me about the time when it had gotten really warm in LA, and he started to notice an awful smell in his car. Given that the car is a disastrous mess, he went on a full scale search to find the source. Was it some food that had been left and spoiled? Some green juice that had spilled and was now molding over?

Nope! After an hour of searching, he finally found a tennis ball can in the side cup holder... full of urine.

Homeless van

So I know that this blog is about my mom, but both of my parents have really messy cars. The last time I went home, I got a few shots of the inside of my mom's car:

Cardboard boxes. Good organizational tools.

Woe to anybody who wishes to sit in the back seat

I've gotten on my parents' cases before about how messy their cars are. My mom's reply is always that it is the most convenient for her to have everything in her car because she can never forget anything! My dad says that they are rarely home, so they basically have everything they need to live out of their cars.

So when I got this text from my dad... well- I had to share.

On the loose!

I received this amazing photo from my friend the other day. Apparently she and her husband were walking around LA and ran across this...

Is it the same RV??? No... it couldn't be!

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!