Warning: You may want to get 2 beverages first.

The reality is that I started doing a lot of the following a long time ago. But perhaps the contemplative point is that we parents often don’t have time to realize just how much we change our previous lives when little ones enter our lives. Why don’t we have time? Just read below and you’ll probably figure it out. Here’s what I either am doing now that the kids are all out living their own lives or plan to do in the next few years:

1. Use up all the hot water for my shower.
2. Take fewer cold showers, thanks to # 1.
3. Quit doing a 1 am check of the living room for bodies playing Xbox Live after bedtime. And people wonder why I’m an insomniac.
4. Stop turning off all the lights in their end of the house.
5. Pet the dog.
6. Sip coffee on my back porch and do more of # 5.
7. Have a 2^nd cup of coffee on the back porch.
8. Actually water my plants.
9. Put photos in a photo album and actually use the hope chest for hope.
10. Talk to my husband about something other than what part of the house now needs to be repaired and which kid needs some “active parenting,” thanks to their latest “issues”.
11. Remind myself why I married the hubby…besides the fact that he makes a pretty good dad.
12. Spend all day in the Container store.
13. Actually go in an IKEA store. Hey, I live in a small town.
14. Go to Toys R Us and play with the toys instead of telling someone not to play with the toys.
15. While at Toys R Us, laugh wickedly at the moms telling their kids not to play with the toys.
16. Quit saving Limited, Too and Delia’s coupons.
17. Shop in stores filled with expensive, breakable items.
18. Actually venture into the china department at Macy’s.
19. Sit in a fast food restaurant, away from the Playland.
20. Go to matinees of non-animated movies on a weekday.
21. Make an exception to # 20 for movies with “minions” in them.
22. Have leisurely meals out with friends without worrying about having to pick up a kid from an extracurricular activity or put one to bed.
23. Quit instinctively putting my arm across the passenger seat when having to stop quickly in the car.
24. Put things in the back seat without worrying about which car seat it’s closest to.
25. Buy a sports car again (Yes, once upon a time MaryAnn owned something other than a mini-van and an SUV. Hard to believe, hunh?)…after the college moving years.
26. Have a Bachelor/Bachelorette watch party with my BFFs. Don’t hate.
27. Travel half as much as my hubby…buy a bigger suitcase.
28. Haunt Sam Moon to buy the bigger suitcase…on a weekday.
29. Stop closing down all the stores that stay “open late” during Christmas season because the hubby can only watch the kids for 1 long Saturday each December.
30. Stop listening for the “silence.” Revel in it, instead.
31. Stop lecturing and replace that with pointed, “open-ended” questions.
32. Read a book all in one sitting, like Hop on Pop.
33. Put treats in children’s hands instead of smacking them for reaching for the cookie jar right before dinner.
34. Yank out those infernal safety plugs in my outlets.
35. Take the safety latches off the cabinets with dangerous substances in them, like chocolate.
36. Organize the Tupperware cabinet and pots and pans cabinet and marvel at how it stays that way for a whole day.
37. Read the owner’s manual for my new cell phone.
38. Beam that my car interior no longer contains science experiments gone awry in the back seat, random cheerios, and the missing puzzle pieces.
39. Take the parental controls off the TV and home computer (They turned out to be a complete waste of time anyway with kids who were weaned on computers, etc.) Heck, throw the home computer out, since we all have smart phones, iPads, iPods, Xboxes, and laptops.
40. Use the wedding china and wash it by hand.
41. Buy necklaces that actually could be destroyed by chubby hands yanking a little too hard.
42. Wear dangly and hoop earrings again.
43. Leave the door open without expecting company in the bathroom at the most inappropriate times imaginable, like when I’m reading Hop on Pop.
44. Take showers without toddlers to save time on Sunday mornings.
45. Stop cutting up everyone else’s food while mine gets cold.
46. Stop evaluating furniture based on child-friendly features such as being indestructible during a nuclear bomb attack.
47. Use cloth diapers for dust rags instead of burping cloths.
48. Save money for retirement.
49. Pay off the mortgage.
50. Buy a dress when it’s at full retail price…in white.
51. Quit buying spray ‘n wash, bleach, sunscreen, aloe vera gel, Benadryl cream and bug repellant in 5 gallon drums.
52. Quit buying the 21 pack of lunch box sized chips.
53. Snuggle with my hubby on the couch in the living room and watch the Cosby show without having to move game controllers first.
54. Still laugh at # 53.
55. Make a real pizza.
56. Stop closing drawers…everywhere.
57. Marvel at the balance in the checkbook.
58. Marvel that the checkbook is actually balanced.
59. Marvel that you can now balance the checkbook online. This happened while I wasn’t sleeping at night, right?
60. Talk to my girlfriends on the phone without having to say, “Just a minute…” and then putting my hand over the receiver while I berate some errant child.
61. Quit giving the “look” to my children from across a crowded room. Instead, give the “smile” to my hubby across a crowded room.
62. Move the beer and the wine into the main refrigerator.
63. Make room for # 62 by getting rid of lunchables, juice boxes, juice, Gatorade, and the Pedialyte.
64. Get rid of the freezer and the side of beef and whole hog that used to inhabit it on a regular basis.
65. Start stocking up on the “noisy” toys to give my future grandchildren. Laugh wickedly when their parents realize  that these toys don’t come with an optional ear bud plug-in.
66. Add on to my Christmas village collection and put it on a really low table.
67. Use tweezers to actually tweeze something, as opposed to pulling out splinters.
68. Quit explaining what plethora means.
69. Marvel at how trash cans can stay empty for an entire week.
70. Marvel at how the bathroom sink can stay clean for longer than 5 minutes.
71. Marvel at the difference in color of the floor when it doesn’t have ketchup on it.
72. Marvel at how the former boys’ bedrooms no longer smell like a gym locker.
73. Marvel at how bathroom towels remain on the towel bar, neatly folded.
74. Stop banning permanent markers and sharp scissors from the house.
75. Give away the “Sex Talk” books.
76. Stop saying, “We only talk about that at home.”
77. Stop having a panic attack when I hear a school bus approach.
78. Actually leave the house without having to return to the house 5 times for the favorite blankie, teddy bear, cheerios snack container, extra diapers and stray church shoe.
79. Use the oven for something other than a frozen pizza or frozen cookie dough.
80. Let my hair grow longer than my chin and refuse to put it up in a ponytail.
81. Contemplate my navel.
82. Stop eating food that’s “cute” or smiling back at me with a fruity set of lips.
83. Stop evaluating restaurants based on whether they have a drive-thru lane, happy meals, a kids menu or a Rooty-Tooty Fresh ‘n Fruity option.
84. Go back to “school” shopping for me. I plan to buy books with $ 20 words in them, try on oodles of cute blazers, vests and blouses that actually require ironing, and get myself a really, really tiny purse.
85. Use the Irish linen tablecloth my dad gave my mother after returning from being stationed in Scotland without being concerned for its permanent demise.
86. Use my grandmother’s hand-tatted lace placemats more than once a year.
87. Listen to my music in my car.
88. Be thankful I no longer know all the words to the songs on Barney, whether I wanted to know them or not.
89. Take a trip without the children and not write a novel for the person responsible for caring or checking on our children/teens.
90. Arrive somewhere on time or maybe…wait…can it be…5 minutes early. Be still my heart.
91. Stop bribing the dentist’s receptionist to watch my kids while I’m in “the chair.” She now drives a Mercedes. Must have a wealthy spouse.
92. Stop paying babysitters Steve Jobs’ last annual salary for 1 hour of babysitting because your children are that “challenging.” I heard, last week, that those sitters now own JC Penney.
93. Start investing in Apple instead of paying them.
94. Observe my children, not to correct or praise their behavior, but to notice which up and coming companies are worthy of my e-trade money.
95. Sleep in without worrying about whether a kid got up for school on time.
96. Stop buzzing through the living room every 15 minutes when the boyfriend or girlfriend is over for the evening.
97. When I stub my toe, stop exclaiming “Sheee’s a really nice person” or “Dammmmmmmmmmms are places where beavers live.”
98. Stop looking around before I open my lingerie drawer.
99. Be a little wistful that one era of my life has passed and…
100. Admire the adults I now refer to as my offspring because they stopped being kids a long, long time ago, in spite of their flawed parenting. 

Warning: You may want to get 2 beverages first. 

For a little background on why someone like me would wind up in the hospital with heart attacks last Monday, please go here.

The very last thing a cardiologist should do to a writer is strap her down to a hospital bed for 8 days with medical “leashes”, put her on morphine and Xanax, and then think that she won’t use this “quality creative time” to her full advantage. I hope you’re up for a little gallows humor, because I’m about to explode with what I learned.

1. Two sips of Merlot and I’m in the ER. I always knew I hated red wine.
2. I think I now have a phobia about Merlot/red wine.
3. Nurses have amnesia, particularly when it comes to remembering my birthdate. Thanks to them, I can’t seem to forget it. As a token of my gratitude for helping my memory, I’m sending them Merlot wine.
4. My scooter still works. I didn’t even know I had one.
5. Don’t hug and kiss the Careflite nurse.
6. I got to cross off “Ride in a helicopter” from my Bucket List, but I don’t remember putting it on my List twice. Maybe it’s the morphine.
7. I also got to cross off “Travel down the main thoroughfare of our fair town with police permission while wearing nothing but a hospital gown on a gurney accompanied by 2 guys who aren’t my husband at 1 am in the morning.” Yeah, I was surprised that was on my Bucket List, too. The hubby was even more surprised.
8. We need to repave the main thoroughfare of our fair town. Remind me to vote for local road improvement at the next election.
9. If you’re claustrophobic, don’t ride in a Careflite helicopter. If you’re bigger than me, you may need to become a Cirque du Soleil contortionist to fit.
10. I have an alter ego. Her name is Mrs. Hook.  And apparently, my alter ego has a different address. She’s smarter—she decided to live closer to our local schools and my church. I wonder what illnesses she has. I hope she is okay.
11. While attaining my counseling degree, I studied nonverbal client behavior. That is not a good skill to have when watching your catheterization team look at your coronary arteries.
12. My nurses loved my mani/pedi. Note to self: Always schedule a mani/pedi 3 days prior to your next heart attack.
13. I have “young skin.” This gives me a new reason to stock up on my favorite Bath & Body Works products, right? Think I could be their “Jared”?
14. I baffle doctors and nurses because I don’t smoke, drink, eat too much, and exercise too little. They aren’t used to patients who follow their instructions?
15. I now know why I’ve been reading all these books on Heaven and death. God’s sick sense of humor just moved to a whole new level of twisted. Where were the books on resurrection????
16. Since I had symptoms prior to the gurney ride, my doctor ordered a nuclear stress test, in which they shoot dye into your coronary arteries prior to making you run on a hamster wheel until you fall off. Thanks to the Merlot, that was cancelled. I consider this a good thing since I only want dye applied to one part of my body—the part with the gray hair.
17. While scheduling the stress test, the receptionist gave me the following instruction: “No funny stuff between now and then!” I guess heart attacks are serious???
18. Always chew the chicken in your mouth prior to the next morphine drip.
19. I neglected my children’s musical education—they didn’t understand my Carly Simon reference when I uttered: “I haven’t got time for the pain.” Of course, it could be that I was morphine mumbling it and trying to chew my chicken at the same time.
20. I can recite the Lord’s Prayer in my sleep, unless the sleep is induced by morphine. Did you know Carly Simon lyrics are part of the Lord’s Prayer? Me neither.
21. I know night nurses can get bored so I like to keep them entertained with projectile vomiting every so often just to break up the monotony. Let’s just say my capacity to do this means I coat walls better than industrial spray paint equipment. Guess that will teach them to put that little plastic tub too far from my hospital bed, hunh?
22. My aforementioned little skill requires the contractor size of a Hefty bag to contain the clean-up materials. Maybe I can be Jared for Hefty??? Okay, so that would be awkward, too.
23. The hubby can conduct business from anywhere. For his next magic trick, he plans to take conference calls on Mars.
24. The hubby has an interesting career. You have no idea what Morphine MaryAnn does with the conference call term, “cows in heat.”
25. Morphine confuses my sense of direction. I thought my room was in the corner. That may be because I spent a good portion of my childhood there.
26. Doctors and nurses don’t believe me when I tell them the truth about my medical history. Of course, I’ve always thought my life story would make a good musical comedy. At least it would be more believable than “Cats.” My theory? “Cats” was dreamed up during “quality creative time” while on morphine.
27. Doctors are finding more Prinzmetal patients these days. Dang. I liked being unique.
28. However, few Prinzmetal patients actually produce heart attacks from their vasospasms without other heart disease risks. Guess my over-achiever/perfectionistic tendencies apply to my insides, too. Probably need to work on that sometime, hunh?
29. If you’re “tied to your hospital bed,” you go to bathroom by “committee.”
30. I never liked committee meetings.
31. I missed my treadmill. Yes, I missed my treadmill. Maybe I need to check into Bellevue next.
32. Last time they put me on Demerol. This time they said I would become too addicted to Demerol. (So, you can get addicted with a 14 year absence of Demerol in your system???? That’s impressive. Must add this to my things to do as an over-achiever.)
33. They injected morphine ad nauseam (literally) and then told me to get off the morphine because I might get addicted. This little “lecture” came 24 hours after the first injection. You can get addicted to morphine within 24 hours of the first injection? Yay—another way to be unique! And I have so much access to morphine living in small town suburbia. And my favorite way to entertain myself on the weekends is to stick needles into my veins.
34. Does morphine come in Merlot flavor? If so, I’m sending a case to my new favorite doctor, along with a 6 month supply of needles I found at Wally World on sale. I think they were on sale because they were “reconditioned.”
35. While attaining the master’s in counseling, we talked a lot about projection. See # 33. Dr. Freud would be so proud.
36. I’m supposed to endure torturous pain without morphine or Demerol. But, Xanax is fine? They didn’t study the same textbooks I studied. Uh, Doc? Xanax comes in pill form, thus eliminating the inconvenient need for needles from Wally World. (It’s so inconvenient to run there when you’re in withdrawal.) I guess morphine/Demerol addicts never take pills too often.
37. I think I’m beginning to understand why addiction is such a problem in the U.S.  And why counselors (who generally try to help addicts) so commonly abuse drugs.
38. A heart attack will bring a couple together more than a marriage retreat. Unfortunately, they’re usually more expensive than a marriage retreat. I personally think the reason why heart attacks bring couples closer together is because heart monitoring electrodes look so alluring by candlelight. They complement the IVs  quite nicely.
39. A heart attack is not enough for me. I like to throw in migraines, anaphylaxis, non-stop nausea and pericarditis just for grins. You know how I hate boring. My doctors and nurses were not amused.
40. Want to clear your busy schedule for a while? Have a heart attack. BOOM! Schedule cleared. Even your demanding writing schedule lightens up.
41. In a unit where you’re encouraged to rest, the nurses and patients are pretty deaf. At least that’s my conclusion after hearing them yell at each other. Either that or morphine and Xanax improve my hearing.
42. To deal with # 41, ask the youngest to fill up your iPod with inspiring songs.
43. The same child informed me, after heart attack # 3, that I have now had as many heart attacks as children. He said, “No more children, Mom.”
44. After heart attack # 4, I started looking around for my 4^th child. The daughter always wanted a little sister. #4 is my “favorite” since she never required diaper changes, potty training, “the talk”, adolescent tantrums or enormous college tuition bills. She has good skin like her mother.
45. It really hurts when you fall out of your hospital bed after hearing the Newsboys lyric: “They Don’t Serve Breakfast in Hell.” What?! No IHOP in Hell???? Geez. I guess I really will have to believe in the Big Guy now. I don’t want to miss breakfast.
46. The youngest apparently has the same twisted sense of humor as God.
47. I am blessed to have the best prayer warriors on the planet in “my corner” to make sure I don’t miss breakfast—ever. No Merlot necessary.

Next Post: Lessons Learned from Recuperation…

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