Tag Archives: Facebook

Secret Santa Millennials…….

Humor, Uncategorized, , , , , , , ,

There’s a post going around Facebook that basically says when my grown kids ask me what I want for Christmas, let them know I just want TIME with them.

This is the mantra of all the empty-nesters out there. So I have a proposition. Instead of a cookie exchange, or a Secret Santa gift exchange, I propose we do a kid exchange.

My kids live in cities far away from me. I can’t go Christmas shopping with them. We don’t have time to bake cookies together. We don’t go to the local Christmas Symphony concert anymore. We can’t play that game at the Mall where we would watch the young mothers gingerly place their toddlers and infants, all dressed up in their Christmas finery, onto the lap of a big scary guy with a white beard and a crimson red suit and guess which child is going to be delighted or scream their bloody head off. Good times.  My husband and I don’t listen to missed notes of flute practice for the school concert, wondering how it will all come together to actually sound like Christmas carols.

So enough with the melancholy. Let’s put all our millennials’ names and addresses out there to each other! Let’s find out where they live and whoever lives the closest to you, you get to have them for the Advent Season.

You can bake those cookies now! You stopped baking because all you were doing was eating them for breakfast. Now….you can get rid of them. Take them to your Secret Santa Millennial. Better yet, take them to their job! Everyone at their workplace will be thrilled to see you, especially with those home-baked cookies.

You can make plans to take your borrowed millennial ice-skating, Christmas shopping for their Mom (who knows better what their Mom would like than another Mom?). Your millennial will come to your house for hot chocolate and help you with the Christmas decorations! You can take selfies and send them to their real Mom and post them on Facebook, so everyone knows you have a Secret Santa Millennial. Think of all the other Millennials who will be so jealous when they see your “Insta” postings.

Your Secret Santa Millennial will probably teach you how to Snapchat! Then, everyone can  see all the fun you’re having, like you used to with your own kids…but only for 10 seconds!!! How cGIPHY Studios Originals nice santa santa claus naughtyomforting is that? In case, you do something naughty instead of nice!

And I feel very certain the millennials will love this. We all know they are hungering for another Mom to send them texts, call them, Facebook comment, and show up at their work and apartments with Christmas cheer, suggestions, plans for their weekends. It will be like they never left home! What could be a better Christmas present than that?

Since I just saw that Facebook post and came up with this idea, I’m going to have to concede that it’s too late for this Christmas. But don’t worry, I never forget any of my amazing ideas, so I’ll be contacting all of you for your Millennial’s “deets” next year!

Can’t wait for my kids to read this and comment!!

Merry Christmas and all the Best in the New Year to each and every one of you!

“You Just have to Laugh……”

©Cathy Sikorski 2016

A Rose by Any Other Name………..

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One can never have too many friends, or that ‘s what I used to think.

I was lucky enough to spend the weekend in New York City with my great husband and dear friends. We took full advantage of our time there. We made plans to have dinner, see an intimate venue magic show at the Waldorf Astoria, spend the next day at the Chelsea High Line, Chelsea Market, have dinner yet again at a great restaurant and see the IMG_4139Broadway show, An American in Paris.

Sounds great, right? And it was, but logistics had to be implemented every few hours.

These particular friends are great for lots of reasons, not the least of which is that down time and private time is always built into our joint ventures. So, we are glad to have cell phones and texting at our fingertips to make plans to meet up after we go our separate ways.

Just to make sure everyone was on board, I sent a group text to each of our friends with our meet up place and time in a few hours after breakfast. Weirdly, I kept getting a text from the gal asking me things like:

“Who is this?”

“Am I supposed to be somewhere?”

“I don’t know, what this is about?”

Since her guy was the typical texter, I thought, “well, maybe she doesn’t have my cell phone number in her phone.”

So I’m texting her back with polite messages like:

“it ‘s me, Cathy. ”

“We already made plans, I’m just giving you the time.”

“Just meet us in the hotel lobby.”

But I’m thinking, “geez what the hell is wrong with her? Obviously, it’s me and where and when we are meeting should make perfect sense to her.”

I keep reading  these messages from her and it hits me.  Her name is Terri. I have three friends in my phone named Terri. Terri K, Terri N and Terry R.

Terri K. was not the one I was in New York with. Terri K was at least two hours away in Pennsylvania losing her mind wondering why I was insisting she get her ass to New York City in half an hour.

Terry R was wondering why her boyfriend’s cell phone was texting incessantly with a group text message from someone neither of them knew.

I still think I could always use more friends, but Terry R’s boyfriend said I’m not allowed to add any more people named Terri  or Terry to my catalogue.

IMG_4138When Terri K saw my Facebook pics from the NYC trip, she was disappointed she didn’t make it on time, but hey, I gave her plenty of  notice.

“You Just have to Laugh…..”

©2016 Cathy Sikorski

 

Don’t Worry…..We Will Take Care of You……

Caregivers, Humor, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Last Friday my Mom called me, practically in tears.

“Roberta was so mean to me,” she said.

I’m thinking, “who the hell is Roberta?”.

“She’s from my medical insurance carrier. I called to ask her why a bill wasn’t paid and she said I should never have been given this insurance and I’m going to have to pay back every penny from the last 15 years.”

“And,” she went on with a worried tone, “you told me to NEVER pay a medical bill. So I don’t know what to do.”

“Calm down, Mom. We will get this worked out. It will be okay.”

My first reaction was this:

I did tell my Mom never t pay a medical bill because her insurance covers everything.

My mom has Tricare For Life Medical Insurance. This insurance is for Veterans and their families, spouses, widows, children. My Dad died in a helicopter crash as an Army pilot on October 10, 1961. My mother had five children all under the age of 10 and was pregnant with her sixth child. So I kind of think my Mom is entitled to this insurance.

The thing is, Mom never claimed this insurance until my step-father passed away in 1998. She didn’t even ask for it. She already had Medicare and AARP. But when she applied for her widows benefits after my step-father passed away, the Veteran’s Administration made her jump through all kinds of hoops with documentation and then gave her this insurance.

My mom is a Virgo.

Why does that matter? She has kept every single piece of paper that has ever come into her life. So she has every piece of documentation that transpired fifteen years ago with the Veteran’s Administration. She sent them her marriage certificate to my step-father and his death certificate.

Then, they put her on the wrong insurance.

And now they are threatening an 87 year-old widow, who raised her family of six children without a father, who never even made it to 30 years old.

After talking to seven different people at seven different government administrative places which most people never even heard of, we refiled all the documentation from 15 years ago.

Now we wait.

I know from the last 25 years of caregiving and jumping through administrative hoops that this story will not have an easy ending. There’s going to be reams of paperwork. There will likely be boatloads of nastiness. There may be a lawsuit. But in my best, Scarlett O’Hara voice: “As God is my witness….my mother will never pay one dime to fix this problem.”

It helps that I’m a lawyer.

I know you don’t think there could possibly be a laugh in here in any way. But as I was looking at some of the documents from her insurance company, I saw this:

Fun things to do while fighting with Insurance
Fun things to do while fighting with Insurance

Really?

Hmmmm…..

“You Just have to Laugh…..”

©2016 Cathy Sikorski

Meeeooowwww…………!!!!

Caregivers, Humor, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

Don’t ever think you have your elders figured out……..they will surprise you, I promise.

Sometimes my Mom comes up with things that I cannot comprehend where she learned it. She’s not on Facebook or Instagram or god-forbid, Snapchat. She has a cell phone that we lovingly refer to as an Amish phone.  It’s an old flip phone. Lately she has discovered texting but she often texts back a cat for some reason and often words that no one can translate.

But all that being said, she does use a computer and and iPad and tries valiantly to stay in the 21st century.

So we were out for lunch today and she told me this story:

“So your sister called me for her weekly check-in,” she said nonchalantly

“Oh that’s nice.” I mumbled through my vegetarian chili. “What’s new with her?”

“Nothing much,” my mom said as she stabbed her salad with enthusiasm. “But when she called, my tenant, Mark was just coming in the door to help me move a table.”

My Mom has a small apartment in the back of her house. Right now she has a lovely couple, Mark and Cindy who have adopted her as their Mom.  They do things like sweep up the pine cones off her driveway, watch out for her when she comes home late at night and exchange treats. Mark is probably around 40-something. Mark and Cindy are moving soon and my Mom is going to miss them.

So when Mark walked in to my Mom’s kitchen and she was on the phone with my sister this is what transpired:

“Oh, Caren  (that’s my sister), my sweetheart just walked in!”,my Mom said in her most girlish voice.

“Really?” replied the surprised Caren, as my 87 year-old Mom has made it very clear she likes living the Carmelite existence. “who’s your sweethearr?”

Another unsuspecting prey!
Another unsuspecting prey!

Caren, I’m sure, was thinking it was one of the grandchildren or even a son-in-law coming to do some chore or other that couldn’t wait…like bringing up the Christmas tree on October 29th.

“It’s my tenant, Mark!” my mom replied.

Then….with Mark right there in her kitchen and Caren listening intently on the phone, my Mom said, with a twinkle in her eye (I know this because she related the story with just that verve);

“I’m a cougar!”

“You Just have to Laugh…………..”

©2015 Cathy Sikorski

”

 

Stay tuned for an important message…..

Brain Injury, Caregivers, Humor, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

My friend. Lisa sent me a Facebook message this morning before 8:00 A.M. I happened to be up and reading the newspaper (yes, I still have an actual newspaper delivered). It was a bit odd, both for the time and the message as it was one of those ridiculous cat videos. Neither Lisa nor I have a cat, nor do we share any cat videos, as a rule.

But okay.

I responded with something like: “Hahah. Oh that’s cute.”

To which she responded: “Fuck. that was a mistake and I sent it to someone so wrong. HELP!”

I said, helpfully: “Haha. You and technology. You do have a brain injury, you know.”

She messaged back: ” I meant to send something else, this video is STUPID. Help me delete it.”

I gave her instructions on Messenger how to delete the message that went like this:

“In the messenger box at the top is a circle that looks like a sunburst and it says “options”

and then if you click on it it says delete conversation.”

 

To which Lisa replied:

“What’s the Messenger Box?”

 

Now, I’m thinking: “Oh, boy, we are in trouble” Since we are typing in the Messenger Box.

So I reply:

“When your are on your iPad in Facebook and you send a message to someone it comes up in a box. The message box to send a message is next to the word HOME after the silhouettes of the people…its like a bubble of conversation.”

To which Lisa replies by calling me on my cell phone so we can have an actual conversation…much like an actual newspaper.

“Help me get rid of this stupid video!”

“Okay,” I say, “get off your android phone and go to your iPad, it will be easier there, because I have an iPhone and the screen isn’t the same.”

After a minute or two as two middle-aged incompetent Facebook users try to communicate about things that look like bubbles and sunbursts and silhouettes of people and gear-thingies and where to click on them and see what it says, I finally get off my computer and revert to my iPad so we can be looking at the same screen.

We somehow manage to both get into the Messenger app and find a screen that had options on my computer but doesn’t come up with options when you click it on the iPad. Ugh. How can this be? Why oh why do they keep changing the options?!?!  And then I see and owl icon and it says “help”. So I type in:

How do I delete a message?

Up comes an FAQ:

 How do I delete a message?

Put your cursor on the message and hold it down and the message will be deleted.

All of that took 45 minutes and a lot of swearing. I never did get to finish “Dear Abby” in my

actual newspaper.

“You Just Have to Laugh…..”

©Cathy Sikorski 2015

Here’s the “stupid” video for your viewing pleasure:

A Vogue Valentine…

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The day of love has arrived,

It couldn’t be sweeter

If you were a poster, a blogger or merely a Tweeter.

 

But you, even you, must acknowledge the One

Who has made your life

Happy and Special and Fun.

 

So buy him a card or a shirt or a bottle,

Buy her some candy or shoes or a bauble,

But buy it you must

Or your love will not show.

 

Unless you get them star-billing

On your blog on HuffPo

 

You can show them your love

When you make them a star,

When you scribe all their beauty

From near and afar.

 

Your grand gesture will take them

To Facebook and Pinterest,

Your schmoopie will be known from

Paris to Minsk.

 

So use your skill on the Internet and over the Web

It’s cheaper than chocolate

And will get you in bed.

 

Shout it from Instagram, Tumblr and Snapchat

Your special one is nothing to sneeze at,

She’s grand and he’s fine and totally the best

She’s better than Kim and Beyonce and

Screw you, Kanye West.

 

Your love is abounding

So text it and wait

Read your comments and endorsements

Of how it’s so great

To love and to cherish all over the web

Happy Valentine’s Day, you’re now a celeb.