Hope4Peyton

I don’t do a LOT of pop culture-y type posts here, but occasionally I’ll throw my hat in the ring and let you know when something is awesome (Like “Up”, go see it now, I don’t care if you have kids or not, it is an AMAZing movie…SQUIRREL!) or sucks beyond all realms of suckdom.

I consider you guys my friends and I’m going to tell you when you have toilet paper on your shoe or lettuce stuck between your teeth after I have have a good laugh, so OF COURSE, I will share with you when I come across something great.

Sometimes the stars align and I get asked to do both: review something I already wanted to tell you about AND get something fantasteriffic in the process!

What did I get?

DUDE.

FOR real.

TNT sent me a copy of the season opening episode of “The Closer” and said “Hey, tell your readers what you think about this show” and I may or may not have said I HAVE to stop packing to watch this DVD because the future reputations of my blog and this show depend on ME!

Because Kyra Sedgwick always asks my opinion before she makes any big career moves and she couldn’t possibly let this new season start on Monday without knowing that I’m giving the big THUMBS UP!

{WHOA, who knew delusions of grandeur could cause you to get dizzy!}

You may be thinking to yourself “aren’t you a little crazy to be THIS excited about a stinking dvd?…of a show that you’re going to be seeing in a few days anyways?”

And I would say “Killjoy”.

Seriously, we have faithfully followed this outstanding police drama for the past four seasons and I will tell you it’s one of the FEW shows out there that has gotten better with time *cough*NO Dead Denny stories *cough*. The stories remain gripping and (GRAPHICALLY) original, the entire cast is captivating and so very talented, and the writing is OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD.

The one thing that truly pulled me in from the first episode is the character of Brenda Lee Johnson, a strong, competent, knowledgeable and intelligent woman….not totally obsessed with finding the right man…a rarity on TV these days.  She’s an incredible character and Kyra Sedgwick eats up her role with a passion that sets my TV on fire….her southern belle with a spine of titanium is a a woman to be admired for her conviction and strength.

I want to be Brenda Lee Johnson when I grow up!

If you’re a fan of “The Closer”, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know…but don’t forget to see the season opener on TNT, Monday, June 8th! (<–you can click here and find out when it’s on in your time zone and what local channel)

If you’re not a fan of “The Closer”…well, I think you’re missing out and as you can’t possibly have anything better to do with your summer Monday nights, you should TOTALLY tune in and at least check it out.

*You can totally catch past episodes of “The Closer” on TNT.com to get you up to speed*

I’ve already voiced my issues with driving a mini-van and have come to terms with it.

And THEN.

My husband opens his mouth and jams his foot SO deep there are tread marks on his liver.

“You are so much hotter in the Suburban.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“So, what you’re saying is that I’m ugly in the minivan.”

“…..NO…I didn’t say that…YOU said that…I just said you were hotter in the Suburban.”

“Oh yes, I got that part, but what you’re saying is that I’m not as hot in the van.”

“…..uh….NO, those are YOUR words…you’re reading into it things I didn’t say.”

“So, set me straight.  If I am ‘hotter’ in the Suburban, you’re in essence saying that I am ‘less hot’ in the minivan.”

“….errr…no? I’m just saying that I’m going to buy you a Suburban again.”

“Because you can’t stand to be seen with your ugly wife in the minivan?”

“I didn’t say that! Now you’re just making stuff up, you know I think you’re hot all the time, I was just….”

“Well, let’s just make sure I have this straight then…I wouldn’t want there to be ANY miscommunication on my part…if I am ‘hotter’ in the Suburban, what DOES that make me in the minivan? You tell me, in your own words, WHAT I am in the minivan.”

*crickets chirp*

“You’re always hot! You’re just hottER in the suburban.”

“Sooooo, what you’re saying is that I am in some way less attractive because I’m in a minivan.”

*damn those noisy crickets*

“I see you and I think ‘movie star goddess’…I see you in a minivan and I think ‘movie star really pretty woman’.”

*sigh*

I’ll bet you’re thinking there’s some exquisite inside joke in that title.

And there probably is.

But that’s not what this post is about.

This is about the most infuriating bowl of rice I’ve ever encountered.

I’ve mentioned before that I had a stroke in July 2005.  The months that followed were filled with physical therapy.

Lift these weights.

Walk those stairs.

Balance this ball.

Touch the target.

Stand on one foot.

Ride a bicycle.

Write your ABC’s. <—yeah, that was actually one of the exercises and I sucked at it. If blogs had to be handwritten, I can guarantee you I wouldn’t be writing this one right now.

And at the end of every session I faced down the bowl of rice.

An enormous bowl of uncooked rice would become my greatest nemesis.

It was full of small random objects….paper clips, rubber bands, safety pins, dimes, marbles, and buttons…lots and lots of buttons of all sizes and textures.

Blindfolded, I fished in the bowl to find all the non-rice objects.

With my left hand I could find and identify each and every one.

With my right hand, I could not.

The damage to my brain and my right side left me unable to feel the differences in textures or sizes or temperatures of the objects with my fingertips.

After weeks of walking away from the bowl in tears, I started to see progress.  I was teaching my brain to recognize the shape and FINALLY I could feel of the physical manifestations of my greatest frustration.

Over and over again my right hand would pass through the rice and I would start to pull out the paper clips and marbles…the rubber bands and the dimes…the large buttons…but NEVER the small buttons.

I KNEW my fingers were brushing over the buttons.

The therapist told me when I was nearing them and I would try so hard to MAKE my hands feel the buttons.  Just once I wanted to run my fingers over the buttons and feel the elation of my nerves telling my brain it was there.

They never did.

My stupid broken brain.

I prayed that God would please help me heal, help me be able to be a mother again, to be a wife, to let me have another chance.

I was slowly regaining strength, I could finally walk a decent distance, I stopped mentally checking out during the day…but the rice bowl continued to elude me.

Peyton was a baby at the time and I could only hold her for short periods of time before she became too heavy for me to feel safe carrying.

You could tell when I was tired at the end of the day from the way my right foot would start to drag a bit and I shuffled through the house.

I would stare at my signature on a check and realize that I didn’t know that handwriting anymore.

I would look at something or someone and know in my heart that I knew the word, the name, I KNEW what it was, I had said it a thousand times before…but I couldn’t make the word form and come out of my mouth…I cried more than once at not being able to force my own children’s names to come out.

None of that bothered me the way the rice bowl did.

I would actually have nightmares about that rice bowl.  I was drowning in it. My kids being in the rice bowl and I couldn’t feel them to get them out. The rice bowl became the epitome of everything that was wrong with me.

I would love to tell you that I overcame it and had this awesome Rocky moment where I  triumphantly pulled a button from the bowl on my last day of PT…but I didn’t.

It won.

It beat me.

I never did feel the buttons.

And I had to accept that I would probably never find a button in a bowl of rice.

I recently felt this urge to just see if I could do it.  Just wanted to know if there had been any improvement.  So, I bought a huge bag of rice.  I purchased a package of small white buttons, identical to the ones that haunted my dreams all those years ago.

I sat blindfolded in my kitchen and went to work with the bowl.

I didn’t find even one of the twelve buttons in the bowl.

Not ONE.DAMN.BUTTON.

Still broken.

You know what?

I didn’t care.  I sat there and laughed at myself for worrying about whether I could feel a button in a bowl of rice.

I didn’t plan to have any career that required me to do it.

I really haven’t been in one situations since PT that I felt “OMG, I need to get a button out of the rice! WHAT will I do?”

It just didn’t matter anymore.

Because if there’s one thing the past years have taught me…recovering from a stroke, having a child diagnosed with cancer, chasing a dream, being a family apart for seventeen months…true strength doesn’t come from the body.

It comes from faith, soul, heart and love.

I waved my hand.

“You will go to the grocery store and buy me some laundry detergent.”

Nothing.

“You WILL go to the grocery store and buy me some laundry detergent.”

One eye blinked open at me disdainfully.

“This is not the husband you are looking for.”

OHMYGODHOLDITINDONOTSAYITDONOTSAYIT!!!!

Snarky comments you will not make to your husband, even when wide open he does leave himself.

I am SUCH a good wife.

But I totally thought it!

Ok, something very good happened in Anissa-land yesterday.

I mean GOOD! Like ice cream for breakfast good…finding out napping is actually the highest calorie burning activity good…I can only imagine licking the sweat from Hugh Jackman’s belly button good…sponsored trips to Chicago for BlogHer good.

And guess which one actually happened?

Bingo! You’re totally right!

Me and Hugh are running away together. Sorry, Pete, I love you dearly, but I know you’d totally respect that I’m leaving you for the dude that plays Wolverine.  <–Trust me, if I were to leave him for Hugh EVER, being able to tell people his wife ditched him for Wolverine would probably be the highlight of the whole thing.

In fact, I can almost hear the conversation in my head, “I was such a paragon of manhood she had to find a guy who heals himself and shoots claws out of his fists to top me. I hope he accidentally stabs her in the face.”

He can’t even deny that’s how he’d tell the story.

Where was I?

I was going somewhere with this.

OH! Right! Good things! Happy things! Things that make me go SQUEEEEEE!

So, I got a sponsorship from a company whose very name makes me tingle.

And you want to know my trick? My secret mojo? My master plan?

I am going to share with you HOW TO GET A COMPANY TO SPONSOR YOU FOR A BLOGGING CONFERENCE IN 25 VERY CONFUSING STEPS.

For free, yo.

Went something like this:

On Twitter one day I sent out a message

@awesomeperson Hey, awesomeperson, soooo who’s your company sending to BlogHer?  I haz need of teh sponsor  { <–please note the use of mangled English, companies love it when they know you’re a completely illiterate spaz…that writes…as a job. }

She responds

@AnissaMayhew I don’t know yet, I’ll find out and you should wait patiently and be a nice NOT-obnoxious person and I’m sure I can find out for you

So, I spend many days bugging the crap out of her and then decide to leave her alone (she might have thrown out the words “restraining order” but I know she only meant it in a joking way, a LOT of my friends are in on that same gag, they use it all the time…like Oprah).

After which I made the awesome-TASTIC move of twittering her a totally inappropriate joke {which I almost NEVER do on Twitter} RIGHT in the MIDDLE of a webinar she was hosting for a bunch of big shot people who hang out with other big shot people and make with the large amount of moneys and decision-making of what to do with that money….and those people? All got to see my snarky tweet to her.

While.She.Was.Working.

At her job.

That people pay her to do.

Stellar!

Are you taking notes? These are pearls of networking wisdom I’m throwing out here, people!  You can learn from my genius.

And this, my friends, is how I managed to convince someone at HP to give me money to go on a trip to Chicago this summer. I may not have included all 25 steps, but I’m leaving you room to improvise.  Two-headed kittens somewhere around step 16 is a GREAT idea.

I’m sure HP is feeling very proud of their decision right now.

But I totally recorded the phone conversation, so I’m pretty sure that’s considered legally binding.

AND?? There may be some bonus benefits for those of you trying to get to BlogHer yourselves, but are finding the $$$ hard to come by.  However, I am just the kind of person that will throw that bone out there and then tell you I don’t have any details to share with you yet.