Tag route 22

Naughty girl buys an Apple Watch, series eight (and there will be fun stuff and medical stuff)

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

If you visited the Parisian Phoenix blog yesterday, you know I had a busy day and really my weekend has been a buzz of activity. The Teenager cleaned the house in hoping not to kill her cat-allergic Uncle Tom when he came to visit today and help her with her many projects she has planned: a catio, fixing the door, and improving some other animal conditions. Plus, he wanted to meet the ratty rats as his wife had rats while they lived in their apartment.

This morning, I was lying in bed, thinking more and more about the possibility of POTS. It makes sense, but at this point I don’t want to get my hopes up on a diagnosis. I’ve been tracking my eating habits, my symptoms, my heart rate, my sleep, my blood pressure and it’s exhausting.

And I’m on a beta blocker now, so what if the doctors are struggling to diagnose me because they don’t have conclusive data.

I wrote a long email to two of my friends and bared my soul amount my medical concerns and how I felt about this current journey I am on.

And then I found myself on Apple.com, looking at the Apple Watch I picked out for myself to buy as soon as I paid off the computer on which I am typing. And then the Teenager’s car insurance doubled. And I ended up in the hospital. And we had the plumber visit. And a fuel oil delivery. And in the last six weeks every dime of my savings has left.

But I need answers.

And with the new Apple Card, the Apple Watch is only $17/month for a series eight.

I texted Southern Candy. “I’m about to do something impulsive and I need to talk through it.”

We did.

“I think it would be a good investment if it could help you with all of this,” she said.

So I ordered one.

And said I would pick it up at my local Apple Store.

And when I told Gayle she agreed.

I walked down to Big Papas to meet the girls for breakfast– and this time the girls included one of the guys. It was a group of us from the Bizzy Hizzy and we had a great time laughing and eating the entire place including the biggest pancakes I ever saw in my life.

In the afternoon, the teen and I embarked on our adventures. We put gas in the car at the Penn Jersey Mart which finally has gas again after months of needing new tanks. They have an amazing selection of candy, so of course the Teenager went in and bought candy and sodas, because after those massive pancakes I obviously needed more sugar.

We got stuck in a laborious traffic jam on the highway, so we ate candy and chatted. We picked up my watch and headed to Grocery Outlet because The Teen has restricted grocery budget for this week and I got her so much food last time for $80 she wanted me in charge again. This time I came in at $41. And she added on a handful of items (a cake, a meat and cheese platter, and some meat sticks from Tillamook) that added on another $15.

She’s delighted with the results. Especially since she’s never seen a Pepperidge Farm cake and they had several. And I hate to tell her for the 1800th time that her great-grandmother used to always keep one in the freezer and she never quite managed to thaw it all the way, so frozen cake was common.

So we took it home, invited her father and had partially frozen cake in honor of his grandmother.

“Frozen cake is kind of good,” the Teenager decided.

Daily journalism: Brush with celebrity, Mitchel Musso (2007)

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

 

 

 

 

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The holiday season, 2007. My daughter was a week shy of three-and-a-half years old. I recall having plans this night. Grown-up plans. My editor from the Morning Call telephoned and asked me to do this quick assignment. Famous last words.

I am not a fan of Disney. I like the classic Disney films like Mary Poppins, Pete’s Dragon and maybe a Bambi or Lady and the Tramp. (Okay, maybe not Lady because I get really upset when Lady gets thrown out of the house.) Blame Hunchback of Notre Dame. I went to go see it with the man I later married. I did a “May term” in college where I traveled to Paris for three-plus weeks to study the influence of politics on the art and architecture of various periods and Hunchback/the cathedral Notre Dame de Paris were on the list. When we returned to the States, we read the various literary works in the original French. Except for Hunchback because we had worn our poor professor thin and he asked us to please read it in English over the weekend. His plan was to meet with us Monday and be done with us so he could continue with his summer.

And it would have taken us too long to read the book in French. This is my back story. It frames my anticipation for the Disney film.

I arrive in the theater. I am watching. The cathedral is on fire. Esmerelda crawls into her cot where in the book she dies. I am crying. In the book, everyone dies. Tragedy is a French necessity.

She wakes up and lives happily-ever-after.

I was very angry.

Flash forward about ten years and I’m sitting in the Crayola Factory in downtown Easton with a thousand other people waiting for a star of the Hannah Montana TV series who, like everyone else in the Lehigh Valley, got caught in traffic on our infamous highway Route 22.

And I’m waiting for a much needed date night after I file. I barely met my deadline this night, and instead of date night I treated myself to an album of French Christmas carols I downloaded from iTunes. And, to further frame the way my life often works, the album turned out to be instrumental with some children singing “La la la” where the words should be.

My husband claimed they were French “la’s.”

I have been teased mercilessly about this album.

To return to the story for one last moment, I tried to inflect some humor into it. And Mitchel Musso was a really nice guy. Not that I know/knew who he is. I barely knew the name Hannah Montana.