The Mrs. Yoy Blog: The Quarantine Coronacles

Big E turns seven in November. While many of his friends have jacked up, adorable, toothless grins, my kid hasn't arrived there yet.  Part of me wishes it would never happen.  You see, I have this thing with blood. Poop, vomit, even urine, doesn't affect me. But blood. Blood is my kryptonite. I fainted into a wall at a movie theatre the first time I got my period. Gave myself a really good shiner. Clearly, I would have made a horrendous doctor. And I know for a fact a tooth doesn't just gently fall out. There's the empty tooth pocket that fills up with blood. It makes my stomach turn. So tonight Big E said the words I've been fearing. MOM, THIS THING IS COMING OUT! The tooth is leaning on its neighbor.  I could barely take this picture without vomiting in my mouth. My dad wanted to investigate, naturally. Dr. Poppy decided the best thing to do was to yank it out. AW, HELLZ NO! I put an end to this nonsense.  This tooth will fal

After a good old fashioned Florida thunderstorm, the temperature outside had cooled to an almost bearable degree. I decided to take the boys out on the golf cart path and burn through the remainder of their boy energy.  My dad joined us and we were off. My parents' neighborhood is so far West, they basically live in the Everglades. There is such an amazing array of wildlife that a simple walk can turn into an adventure. This evening, we encountered not one, but two alligators on our walk.  The first one wasn't very big, but I'd recognize those creepy eyes anywhere.  As a University of Florida alumni, I learned to be very alert on campus.  Forget about the drunk fraternity boys, it was one of these suckers you really had to worry about.  You never knew when a hungry gator would come ashore and attempt to eat your Birkenstock-clad foot for lunch. I'm talking to you, Lake Alice. I kept my distance. My dad, on the other hand, gave zero f*cks.  He wal

Poppy picked the boys up from summer camp this afternoon while I was driving my mom home from a two hour eye doctor appointment. The teenage counselors told my dad a brief story regarding Little E falling off his pool noodle in a deeper area of the pool, but they insisted he was fine. My dad relayed the story to me via phone and when I arrived home, I began the FBI questioning. On Little E's camp registration, we had classified Little E as a non-swimmer. A more accurate classification would be a partial swimmer. He can swim, really swim, he just can't (or won't) lift his head out of the water to breathe. So he can only swim as far as he can hold his breath. Then he just starts drinking dirty pool water. I was a little concerned that he was floating around in the deep end of the pool. I was even more concerned when Big E began telling me how everyone within a two mile radius jumped into the pool to save him, including the lifeguard. It was like some bad 80

Dear Mindy Kaling, I haven't written a piece of fan mail since the 1980s when David Hasselhoff and KITT ruled TV, but I'm feeling very inspired.  I'm sure you get loads of fan mail from girls proposing best friendship. I am not one of them. I had a best friend and she was the bee's knees. She wore funky glasses and kicked ass as an architect.  She passed away last week at the age of 39 after a two year battle with a very aggressive form of brain cancer.  I'm not trying to bum you out.  I just wanted to thank you. You see, me and my best friend would cuddle up on our couches to watch The Mindy Project together. And even though we were separated by over 600 miles, it was like she was right there with me.  I'd pick up the phone and call her to repeat some insane Dr. Lahiri line. (We especially enjoyed the Jewish summer camp intro, as two former campers.) And later, when she lost the ability to talk, I'd text her. And I'd get an LOL right

On Friday, I eulogized my best friend at her memorial service. It was both the hardest and the most important thing I've done in a long time.  I was scared sh*tless to get up there and pour my heart out and cry in front of everyone.  But my fear was no match for the urge I had to tell everyone how awesome she was. With the help of another close friend, xanax, I pushed the grief and the fear and the anger and the tears down long enough to get through most of my speech. I've known for awhile that this day would come.  And when it did, all the emotions I had tried exhaustingly to keep at bay, washed over me like a tsunami. And I welcomed them.  I needed to feel the cracks in my heart break wide open. The morning after she passed, I took Poodle Yoy for a walk.  The sky was a brilliant blue.  I couldn't believe that the world appeared just as it did the morning before.  Except now one very important person was missing.  I walked with a pit of grief in my stomach t

Picture it: Miami Beach 2050. Four old ladies all living together in a lovely Mid-Century Modern home. This is how I envisioned my golden years.  Leah and I and Beth and possibly Liza would all be living together.  We would have nagged our husbands to death by then and we'd be eating cheesecake in our moo-moos and playing an obscene amount of mah-jong. Never in my wildest nightmare did I see our story ending like it did.  I'm going to skip all of the potentially incriminating college stories and instead tell you a story of love. Picture it: Gainesville 1994. Leah and I began our journey at the University of Florida. My major was undecided as I am terrible at making timely life decisions.  Leah was interested in majoring in psychology and had signed up for the intro class.  Leah had many wonderful traits, but patience was never her strong suit.  When I think of her becoming a psychologist, I laugh.  And then thank god she found her way to the career resource

We are talking advantage of all Florida as to offer, including kids eat free night on Wednesdays at Duffy's.  To our surprise, there was a young girl there making balloon animals for all the kids. The Yoys were ecstatic.  And because they are ultra creative, out of all the animals in the world, they both picked dogs.  Yawn. And Little E asked for a Poodle Yoy Doppelgänger. Balloon dogs in hand, I escorted the Yoys outside as my dad settled up the bill. They were getting antsy and our well behaved time had sadly come to an end. Except Little E's poodle untwisted itself and he now possessed a deformed snake. He shrieked in agony. All the old people slowly turned their heads and gave me and my misfit gang dirty looks. SWEET LORD, LITTLE E.  THE BALLOON GIRL IS RIGHT THERE, SHE'LL FIX IT. And she did, thankfully. But because I'm nothing, if not realistic, I knew this would not be the last time we had a balloon animal malfunction and began to steel my nerves for it

Last week, my parents and I took the Yoysers to the bowling alley to get their strikes on.  When it rains in Florida, which is almost every day, you have to have a go-to list of indoor activities.  Bowling is numero uno for my boys. After we wrapped up our two hour, yet only ten frames of bowling, the boys made a beeline for the arcade. This is not the arcade of our youth.  There is no Pac-Man.  Or Space Invaders.  Or anything you remotely know how to play.  And everything spits out tickets. Except you need an obscene amount of tickets to win anything noteworthy and each game costs like 75 cents to play. For only 80,000 tickets you can buy a low-end iPad.  We spent about $10 and earned approximately 50 tickets.  Based on these numbers, this iPad costs (hold on...let me do the algebra) ~$16,000.  Basically a bargain by my kids' standards. They had their eyes on that prize. We all tried valiantly to earn the Yoysers as many tickets as possible.  We so wanted them to win a $