Credentials

I've always been put off by professionals that pile up all the abbreviatons for their credentials behind their name. I guess I can tolerate MD and Esquire..even CSW...or PhD in the right setting..What bothers me is when they use them for other than professional use. Like on personal correspondence . Okay...Dr. Welby, you're off the clock.. can you just be Marcus for the next 5 hours..?
There is an awsome guitar player named Tommy Emmanuel.. after his signature he always puts CGP ( certified guitar player ). For some reason I love that. It gives me pause. Should I do the same ? And if so ..what initials would follow my name? Wendy Lopez-Swiatek CMC ( certified mail carrier) ...Wendy Lopez-Swiatek ABB ( aging baby boomer)..Wendy Lopez-Swiatek PGM (pretty good Mom)? These thoughts came to me just before waking up this morning.. when my mind was still fuzzy enough to be spacey and creative and not make too much sense.
I think I'll change my credentials at will ..but from now on my goal is to always put some kind of arbitrary abbreviation after my name. I'll sign off now. Wendy Lopez-Swiatek GHF ( glass half full).

Repressed memory syndrome/ In your ear

I asked my sister Tracey if she knew any more details about the pearl-up-my-nose incident. She's several years older than me and has much better recall of our early years . She couldn't remember anything other than the fact that it did indeed happen the way I wrote about in my blog. Last night I got a phone message from her . She wondered if I remembered the time I stuck a pencil in my ear and the pink eraser tip broke off and was lodged inside . What was my problem ? Are there other childhood memories involving objects and bodily orifices that I've repressed? I'm afraid to find out.

Up your nose

I'm reading a wonderful memoir ( She Got Up Off the Couch by Haven Kimmel) and in it the author recounts a childhood incident where she got an object lodged up her nostril. Her mother only had three rules of conduct for her to follow. One of them was " Never put anything up your nose". As a parent , I love hearing about things that people remember from childhood regarding parental advice.
What will my kids remember about my words of wisdom? Am I falling down on the job because I never included the nose warning in their set of life instructions?
I don't remember what, if anything, my parents said on that topic..but I do remember getting something seriously stuck in my shnoz.
Back in the 60's there was a commercial for Prell shampoo. Remember Prell ?..it was a really thick and emerald green. I still remember, the smell, the texture.. the shape of the bottle...
In the commercial a woman drops a pearl into the shampoo bottle . The pearl barely moves at all because the stuff is so unbelievably dense. My mom had one of those snap-together pearl necklaces. It was like they specifically designed them so kids could pull them apart and start dropping them into shampoo bottles. Of course, that's what we did. After a while, that got boring so I must've thought it would be interesting to see what would happen if I crammed one up my nose ( gives new meaning to "Pearl Jam" ).
Don't remember much of what happened next.. ( repressed memory syndrome).. except for throbbing pain, intense fear, and the fact that Mom or Dad somehow miraculously retreived the sucker . Maybe using the nose Heimlich manuever? My adult nose is kind of odd looking...wonder if this unfortunate childhood stunt has anything to do with my current dissatisfaction with my nasal appearance?

How far exactly does the apple fall from the tree?

I was looking at some pictures taken during my first hospital stay back in 1994.
Never having had surgery before and fearing hospitals in general i was scared shitless.( so shitless in fact, that i had no need for an enema.)
To cope with the fear of surgery I decided to try and make my hospital stay as fun as possible. I had no bathrobe ( what person under 35 owns a bathrobe ) so when i bought one I went full tilt and bought one that had big old markings on it like a cow costume.
I don't know if most people photo-document their surgical hospital stays ,but I did. In the photos most of my visitors donned the cow bathrobe and posed with me.( I even have a photo of my surgeon wearing it!) My very favorite photograph is the one of my dad wearing the bathrobe but with a bent-up hanger coming out of one of the sleeves where his arm should have been.
He felt I was getting all together too much attention so he decided to get some himself by walking with me around the nurses' station (in the aforementioned outfit)pretending that he was an injured vet that lost a limb in Korea. ( he really was in Korea). I guess i know at least to some degree where my need for attention comes from. Plant corn, get corn...as my friend the school psychologist says.
Two days away from the 11th anniversary of my dad's death and I miss him more than ever.

Random Acts of Immaturity/Spite Singing

OK..so what exactly is Spite Singing, and who invented it?
Contrary to what you might think..it was NOT invented by Sanjaya, although he seems to be a marvelous practioner without even knowing it.
My personal history with S.S. goes back to the early 1960's. I practiced it mostly while doing the dishes with my sister. She'd wash and I'd dry, so she couldn't escape my singing without getting in trouble for not doing her chores. ( A captive audience is a MUST to make this effective...cars are obviously another great venue for S.S.)
There are two strategies that I follow:
1) Pick a song that the person loves and destroy it by singing it as an operetta or lounge act style
2) Pick a song that they find particularily annoying and just sing it ( repeat if necessary).
Here are two real life examples that I love:
1) Someone I know, after having a fight with his wife,goes into another room and whistles the theme from The Loveboat.
2) Some guys that I used to work with used to sing One Million Bottles of Beer on the Wall....." take on down..pass it around..999,999,999 bottles of beer on the wall"..you get the idea.
Some recent examples are singing the Office Depot theme song ad nauseum at work
and a woman I heard of who sings the song from " Annie " ( ' tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you tomorrow" when turning her husband down for sex. There are no rules. Be creative!