Good question.

Emma:  (examining the bottom of her foot) Daddy, what's this?

Joe:  Oh..that's just dead skin.  That's what you're skin does.  New skin grows.

Emma: WHY?? I liked the OLD skin!!

LIARS!

I bought a set of books yesterday at the hospital book fair.  I was coming back to the office after seeing a patient in the ER and I walked through the book fair area chanting "I am not buying, I am not buying".

After I lugged my arm load of books to the check out area (I can't help it, I'm weak when it comes to buying books.  It's a sickness, I swear!), one more set of books caught my eye.  "The One Minute Organizer" and "The One Minute Cleaner".  AHA!!!  Thinking of the dresser in the bedroom that has everything on it from Christmas decorations to rocks from Door County, I snatched the set up.

Last night while I watched Michael Phelps narrowly avoid defeat, I sat down with my new books just dying to know the secrets of cleaning and organizing and was disappointed to find out....

It CAN'T BE DONE IN ONE MINUTE.   

Those rocks and Christmas ornaments might be on that dresser for a while longer. Damn the book fair anyway.

Mr Thirsty.

Yesterday was Emma's first dental appointment.  Oh settle down.  Yes she's four and she has the worst diet on the planet and I wrenched the pacifier out of her trembling fingers just this past April (I kept it in a drawer in case I needed to negotiate for something BIG).   But I didn't really HAVE a dentist.   I am an Anti-Dentite (reference: Seinfeld) so I try to avoid the dentist...read as...I don't go unless the pain is severe or I can't chew chocolate or God forbid the cold Diet Pepsi is making me pass out because it hurts my teeth.

Anyway. Found a dentist that was supposed to be good with kids and made the Rat Toothed child an appointment.  She recently lost both bottom front teeth which freaked me out a little.  I thought that maybe I'd harmed her mouth for life with the orthodontically correct pacifier and it was causing all her teeth to fall out.  She had learned all about the dentist at school and she thought it sounded "fun!".....so I just let her think that.

Last night, right before we went to the appointment, I sprung it on her that she was going to the dentist.  "YAY!!!  The DENTIST!!!"  She skipped all the way to the waiting room.  I filled out all the ridiculously repetitive  paper work while she hummed happily on the floor playing with some office toy.  They called her back to the room and she hopped happily up in the chair.  They played her a couple of cute videos about two dogs who go to the dentist and Emma sat in the chair totally nonplussed like this was the best thing she'd done all summer.  The hygienist took her to another room to get her x-rays and I expected some hesitation, but nope...again with the skipping.  Back in the chair, they cleaned her teeth and she giggled the whole time and used the suction herself (aka Mr Thirsty) to suck out the saliva and tooth paste.  At one point she was laughing so hard that the hygienist stopped to ask if she was choking and Emma helplessly shook her head no and went back to giggling hysterically. It all ended with a dentist autographed picture of her x-rays to take to school, a new princess toothbrush and some dinosaur flossers.  She skipped happily back out to the waiting area and called out "I can't WAIT to come back!!"

Let's talk about MY dental experience.  The place LOOKED like we were in the Soviet Union and smelled strongly of fluoride or alcohol or some vile dental product.  My dentist was short, Greek and CRABBY.  There was no cherry toothpaste to clean teeth or smiley blond hygienist, it was funky tasting SPACKLE with extra GRIT and it was applied by said CRABBY GREEK DENTIST.  And AND.... there was NO Mr Thirsty.... it was the dreaded SPIT SINK. EWWWWW.... Okay okay... I have to stop, I'm getting all sweaty and shaky. 

Emma got into the car last night and sighed happily holding her dentist treasures.  I remember stomping to the car, slamming the door and giving my mother the evil hairy eyeball.  Emma may have a permanently damaged mouth, but at least will be well adjusted and won't hate me while she takes care of it.  I'm a good mom after all.

I'll obviously do anything for kettle corn.

Nice day today.  Weather was about perfect.   And of course we couldn't think of anything to do. Did all the usual Sunday morning things like read the paper, Joe mowed the lawn, I made breakfast.  Then I knew that if we didn't do SOMETHING I would spend the entire day staring blankly at Facebook on my Macbook like I did yesterday.  Since I'm starting to resemble some albino bat that lives in a cave and never sees the light of day, I thought I'd better get out of the house.  So I suggested (insert dramatic drum roll here)... The Gladiolus Festival.

Okay..I know...calm down...who plans a whole festival around a flower that's usually only used in funeral pieces.  MOMENCE, ILLINOIS, that's who.  Home of the Johnsonville Sausage by the way and apparently the gladiolus capital of the known world.  Who knew?   Anyway... they were supposed to be having a craft show, flea market, etc etc etc, ad nauseum.  How bad can it be?

Oh it could be bad.  As we walked onto the grounds, Joe SWEARS he heard the banjos from Deliverance playing in the background.   Everywhere I looked, men AND women looked just like Larry the Cable guy.  I kept thinking "I actually changed clothes for this?"  I tried to make the best of it as we went through the flea market/crap...  I mean CRAFT show... Emma found a Beanie Baby she couldn't live without.  There was table after table of empty Avon perfume bottles, cheap pressed glass candy dishes and Campbell's soup mugs all under the premise of being "collectable" or "antique".  Right.    So I think we spent all of 14.6 minutes there and back to the car we went.  

But we did stop at the ubiquitous Kettle Corn stand where I bought a bag of fresh Kettle Corn that was almost as tall as Emma.    Fabulous.

So now we can scratch the Momence Gladiolus Festival off our list of "Local Festivals to Visit". I think that just leaves us with the Hoopeston Sweet Corn Festival.  

I don't like Kettle Corn THAT much.

Happy Meal Hell.

It's no secret that Emma won't eat.  For a kid that won't eat, she looks pretty damn healthy and is her appropriate weight and height for her age.  Don't ask me, I have no idea.   She only has one food group she eats.  Fried.  Make that two food groups.  Fried and Pop Tarts.  I know it's not healthy, but my brother was the same way and lived on the crispy coating off of chicken and grilled cheese for 20 years.  He's fine.  Somehow she's getting what she needs and occasionally I'll actually talk her into a Flintstone vitamin.    I'm such a good Mom.  Unless you talk to the people that work at the McDonald's here in town...who see me almost every day at the drive thru.  I think they might vote me "Worst Mom on the PLANET".   I told Emma that the McDonald's people were going to think I'm a bad mom for feeding her McNuggets so much.  She said "No mom...they all like you.  I KNOW they do....I want an Orange Drink too".

Today I cleaned Emma's room.  The sheer volume of Happy Meal paraphernalia was overwhelming.   Bears, ponies, pandas, cats, dogs, rabbits, surfing roosters, giant eyed pets of all types.  It just didn't STOP!   They were everywhere.  Under the bed, in the bed, in shoes, in the dresser, on the dresser, in the bookcase, in the TV stand, in the closet, in the toy cabinet, behind the closet door.  There were crowns, necklaces, bracelets, tiny guitars that played music, and a lumpy looking guy that farts when you pull his arm down.  What the HELL.  (I do like to call people and just pull that guy's arm down to make him fart in the phone).  Then there are lots of WEIRD dolls.  Pollys, weird looking Japanime purple haired dolls, other dolls that have large heads and lots of red hair.  And the bad part is....there are doubles and triples of some of this weird shit!

So I sorted and categorized and by the end of the day....she'll have it all spread evenly all over the house again like it was this morning.  That farting guy is cool though...and who doesn't love a surfing rooster?  Emma's healthy...I have a farting lumpy guy...the room is clean for 20 minutes.  Life is good.

Strike One Matey!

Joe had free tickets to a Chicago Cubs game this past Friday.  I'm not a huge sports fan, but I'm always up for interesting snacks, so I agreed to go and took the day off. 

Heading anywhere in Chicago is never "easy".  We made the woeful decision to follow MapQuest's directions and I think it took us through seven small Chicago suburbs before we finally found ourselves in Wrigleyville.  Wrigley Field is an interesting place.  There is NO parking facility.  It's all street parking and the driveways and alleyways of wily Wrigleyville residents.  As we got closer to the field, we noticed that there were people with home made poster board signs that advertised PARKING $30.  

WHAT?????  Oh that must be three dollars...no, no, I'm pretty sure that was a THIRTY.  Like, Three Zero.  We drove closer and finally were across the street from the field.  By this time we're running late for the game...according to Joe.....it's still 40 minutes before game time but he has to get the scorecard and program and rev up his testosterone level.  It's a baseball game after all!   

So Joe pulls into a driveway and this swarthy, pirate looking guy says "Pull in pull in pull in!!" Joe asks how much and the guy says "$40 dollars....you leave your keys and you leave anytime.  $50 dollars and you take your keys".  Joe nods and the guy jumps on a BIKE and yells "FOLLOW ME!!". 

I said "what was that part about keys???"  Joe is all intent on following Bob the Bicycle Boy down a side alley next to the ball park.  There are three guys standing in a small area with two driveways on either side of the alley.  They have the area stuffed with CARS.  One of the guys comes up to the window and says "Let your passenger out and back it in".  So I get out and Joe backs MY car in and the guy says "You leave keys...40 dollars...you leave whenever you want".  I stood there slack jawed.  We're in Chicago and Joe just handed the keys to my NOT PAID FOR SUV to a band of swarthy pirate guys in a back alley.  What about this doesn't seem right to YOU?  

We're walking to the ball field and I kept saying "you left the keys".  Joe says "I know".  I say "you left MY car keys with a guy we don't know".  "I know, it's fine".  "WE'RE IN CHICAGO".

"I KNOW IT'S FINE".  I think we had the same conversation about 269 times on the way to the ball field.  I wasn't feeling any better about it by the time we got to our seats, but our seats were pretty good.  I talked myself into the idea that THIS IS WHY WE HAVE CAR INSURANCE.  It took me awhile.  I was pretty sure there was a no pay clause if you HAND the thief your CAR KEYS.  Especially if he looks like a pirate.

The game itself was a SNOOZE.  The crowd however was very entertaining.  Especially as the $6.25 beers seemed to become more popular as the temperature went up and the innings went by.  Hotdogs...$4.00.  Bottle of diet pepsi $4.00 and so on.  I busied myself with a $3.00 dollar bag of peanuts in the shell and thought about what kind of car I'd buy with the insurance money after the pirates stripped my Equinox to the bare chassis.

The game mercifully ended three hours after it started, but not until after the crowd danced to YMCA.  I might add the guy in the red, white and blue clown afro was pretty good. We went back to the spooky alley inhabited by the creepy, swarthy, pirates (did I mention they were wearing alot of gold chains?).  And there they were...the pirate guys...and there it was!!  My CAR!!!!!!  I almost hugged it.  Joe and I got in and as we drove away I said "SEE, I told you it would be fine."  

And then because MapQuest gives such stupid directions, I decided I would get us home an infinitely shorter and more direct way.  

And I got us lost.  The end.

Ting CLINK Ting CLINK!

My husband is hot...no, I mean SWEATY.   All the time.  If he thinks about hot, he sweats.  When I first met him  he had several fans in his bedroom and I don't mean the kind with pom poms or that want autographs.  I'm talking oscillating, humming, fans on poles.  It was like the fan display aisle at Wal-Mart. 

So when we moved into this house he was MORTIFIED to learn there wasn't a ceiling fan in the bedroom.  We had one put up and for the last several years it's been just fine.  Always on HIGH, but just fine.  Every once in a while when the build up of dust on the blades gets to critical mass, I make him clean it off.  He's always turning it on, I'm always turning it off.  It's just a little fan dance we do.....(AHAHAHAHAHA....okay that wasn't that funny...)

Anyway. Recently, something happened to the fan.  In the middle of the night it started to go tink-tink-tink-tink.  The little pully chain that can be used to switch speeds or turn the lights on or off suddenly  started hitting the light fixture.  TINK TINK TINK TINK.  That will PISS YOU OFF in the middle of the night.  Okay...a little aside here...I'm one of those people who can't stand repeated noises.  If it's a rhythmic repeated noise I don't find it soothing, I want to smash it with a ROCK.  So TINK TINK TINK at two am am am pisses me off off off.  What did I do?  I woke up Joe and made him stand up and fix it.

I'm not sure what he did, but it seemed to work until the middle of the night just the night before last when it started to ting CLINK ting CLINK in the night.  DAMN pully chain thing!  Only louder and with a new CLINK added just for rhythmic fun.  It was like sleeping with the percussion section from the Miami Sound Machine in the room.  I woke up Joe to make him FIX IT (I'm not going to stand up and fix it for Pete's sake...that fan will whack my hand off in the dark).  And this time...no fixy.  It just wouldn't stop!  It was maddening.  I finally made him turn the fan off and then he laid there and griped because he thought the bedroom instantly became a sweat lodge.

My question is this.  What makes a fan go bad?  We had no earthquakes, house shifts or otherwise fan unbalancing events!  All of a sudden it's got more sway than a hula girl convention.  What the hell is that?  I even thought about taking off the pully chain things (source of the damned clinking) but then Joe will somehow get it on HIGH and I won't be able to turn it down and it will be like a wind tunnel in there.  And you know what's as bad as ting CLINK?  FREEZING TO DEATH.

I have to kind of laugh because he actually gets up to fix it when I wake him up.  Either I've got him really well trained or he knows that if I had to get up to fix it, the thing would get yanked out of the ceiling and tossed through the window like a propeller.

I'm not friendly in the middle of the night.

Crickets. Nothing but crickets....

So I was all excited about the job thing.  To the point that I was actually DANCING after the phone interview!  I sent a cheery little thank you email and got a cheery positive response back.  I had been told that I would be contacted again at the end of last week...which obviously has come and gone.  

I sent another happy little email and this time...no response.  I thought...well...maybe they're busy.  Waited a couple of days...nuthin.  Sent a second inquiry email.  Again...not a PEEP.  WTF? They had even gone so far as to give me their cell phone number and had encouraged me to call with any questions.  So today, I called and of course they didn't pick up the phone.  I left a happy message, give me call, blah blah, looking forward to hearing from you, blah blah. And...NOTHING.  No return call.  

I do believe I've received the blow off.  Could they have possibly found out that I feed my daughter chicken nuggets most nights of the week and have even on one occasion given her a bowl of Oreos for breakfast?  Did she really HAVE one of those George Jetson phones and could see that I wasn't quite the model of health and fitness?  It was such a GREAT interview I thought!!  I can't quite figure this out.  There's got to be more to it. (I'm trying to make myself feel better). I mean, it's not like I'm a brain dead three toed sloth.  If they've changed their mind, aren't hiring, don't have a position, just CALL ME.  I'm reasonable.  

Most of the time.

Unless you don't return my emails and phone calls and then I can get down right hormonal, bitchy and way past unreasonable.  I think I might even border on being an asshole if this goes on too long. 

Yeah.   Pretty sure of that, actually.

Sister Nancy Negative.

I have nothing positive to say today.  Stay tuned for a better mood when I no longer feel like I've been beaten to death by my job. 

Heheheh....

I also like these.   Some of them are rated PG14 and maybe even R.

I SO need one of these!!!!

I'm an impulse buyer.  And not of things that are useful like chapstick or on-sale spaghetti sauce. I like  to buy things that are completely not useful.  There was this one time (don't you hate stories that start that way?) my cousin and I were in like 8th grade and we were at "The Mall" and we bought these DOG puppets that we thought were hysterical.    Completely an impulse buy that at the time my mother thought was HORRIBLE.  It was a dog puppet.  Come on.  

Any way.  I am a big fan of another blogger and it turns out she makes a unique product that I'm just drooling over.  Sock Zombies.  I am completely enamored with these things.  What would I do with it?  What WOULDN'T I do with it?  Zombies eat brains and my desk in a neurosurgery office would be the PERFECT location for a Sock Zombie to live!  I just get so much of a kick out of the detail and the fake blood.  The person that makes them writes very funny descriptions that make me want one even more!

And now...there are Sock Zombie Cozies.  I can just SEE one of these babies on the gear shift of my Equinox!!!!  How GREAT would that be?  His little red eyes beaming in the sun...sparkly red blood twinkling by the dash board lights.  I totally don't need one...MUST STAY AWAY FROM ETSY!!!!!!  You know I'll be hitting that "Shopping Cart" button in a moment of total weakness! Sock Zombies!   MUST.....HAVE....ZOMBIE......

Sizzle.

Tuesday at the big pool, I learned a valuable lesson about SPF values.  Like, SPF zero does not protect you from the sun at all.  I came home with a sunburn that was quite impressive.  Not just red. REDREDRED.   I thought I needed a little color...fire engine red wasn't what I had in mind.

When we got to the big pool, I sprayed the child down with sunscreen and added a little bug spray just for chemical fun.  (There are some big ass bugs out in the country)   My cousin swears she doesn't have stock in a company called "Banana Boat" yet she took almost 20 minutes to slather her children with sunscreen from the parts in their hair to between their toes and I think she might have done their nostrils but I couldn't swear to it.

Anyway, I have been dealing with the sunburn (self inflicted) for the past couple of days and it's been (gulp) painful but the worst has come on day three.  ITCHING.   I think as the top layer of skin, which is most assuredly DEAD, detaches from the new red, raw, new skin underneath it must create this itching, prickling, there-are-fireants-on--my-back feeling. I'd like to take one of those wire brushes on a handle that is used to clean grills and just go to TOWN on my back.  I don't know if  I'd pass out from the pain or the relief from the itching!!

You know what's next?  PEELING.  Did you ever see the episode of Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe where he's in an attic with an exterminator looking for a snake...and all they find is the SKIN the snake has shed.  That's what is going to happen with me.  Joe is going to walk through the living room and I'll have left for work, but there is going to be a pile of skin shaped like me.  

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That'll freak him out.  

I hate Frosty and other rants

This morning Joe had to leave early for work, so I planned to take Emma to day care. No problem. She's pretty good in the morning.

So I got up my usual time and staggered around the house for a while, checked my email, made sure nothing earth shattering had changed on Facebook (it COULD, you never know) and thought "huh...those plants on the front porch look a little wilty. Think I'll go water them."

As I opened the front door, I swear it wasn't even open a CRACK, Frosty (the doofus pictured above) shot through the crack and out into the front yard. Now this should not be an issue right? Because the dog should obey the mistress, right? Well, Frosty didn't get that memo. She shot across the street and into a thigh high field of soy beans where I could only see the tip of her fluffy tail from time to time.

I was so pissed.

A. I haven't had any coffee yet and 2. I have on men's pajama pants that are two sizes too big and no bra. And no SHOES. And no CONTACTS. I yelled at Frosty (or at least the blurry cream colored thing I thought was Frosty) and she completely ignored me, so engrossed was she in her soybean field heaven.

So I went and put on scuffy slippers and my contacts (oh that looks better)..and went back out. Now she's gone...the little *&^%$&($$#@. I CROSS the road and start looking through the bean field to find her thinking of all the nasty things I'm going to do to her when I catch her (back down PETA people...I was only going to do it in my head...not really to her). I can't find her. It's now getting closer to time to be out of the house. I'm still in jammies in a bean field. Emma is still asleep across the street in the house. Then I saw a flash of white. It was HER. I crept up to her murmuring all kinds of sweet puppy love talk and when she wagged her tail and stood still I grabbed her and she knew she'd been really really bad. I stopped murmuring sweet puppy talk and told her that she'd make a nice sandwich for the German shepherd down the street. She's muddy, I'm muddy and we head for the house.

Needless to say, she got put right in her crate with no ceremony or treats. Peaches watched the whole thing with mild amusement.

The morning went down hill from there. I ran out of eye liner, my pants had slipped on the hanger so that they were all crunched up on one end so I had the most lovely accordion wrinkles at the knees.

Got Emma to school on time, I got to work on time. You can hardly see my eyes due to lack of liner and I look like an unmade bed because of wrinkles, had no time for a shower, so it's yesterday's hair (isn't that supposed to be cool?). On the way out the door Emma said "maybe we should get rid of the dogs, they are too much WORK". I told her that sounded like a really GOOD idea. Frosty is lucky she's not in a box addressed to Zimbabwe right NOW.

What a four year old thinks about...

Emma:  Mommy?

me:  Yeah?

Emma:  How come hands are the same color as bologna?

And no day is complete at the big pool....

Without one of these.....nothing says  non stop fun like a lobster chair.  Cheap popsicles, an acre of water surrounded by 6 foot tall corn,  and a lobster chair.  America is wonderful.

The big pool

Out in the middle of nowhere and I mean NOWHERE, there is a pool.   Well actually not really a pool, but more like an ACRE of water in a big concrete square  It's jaw dropping when you first see it.  Massive.  Surrounded by cornfields.  Holds 3500 people according to the "Capacity" sign. That number...by the way...is more people than live in the small town where this pool is located. No one can really explain to me why it's there.  "Some guy built it".   It's the last of it's kind, I assure you.  I paid THREE dollars for my daughter and I to get in.  Popsicles are a quarter.  Candy is 75 cents.  Where can you find values like that?  Better yet, how do they keep this place open?  I'll bet there were maybe 50 people there.  and 12 were life guards.

I took the day off (read as got told that I had to take the day off because the doctors were off) and took Emma to the pool with my best friend and her kids.  Emma was so excited.  She fairly danced with excitement all morning until we finally started on the hour drive to the pool town.  As we drove deeper and deeper into the corn country she became more and more discouraged when we didn't arrive at the much touted pool.  At one point she said "I don't think there IS a big pool!".  Like I'd lie about something like that.

We had a great time at the pool, weather was perfect.  But poor Emma.  We were there for six hours and the following happened:

1.  She fell and skinned both knees

2. Went down the slide and lost a tooth when she hit the water

3. Jumped off the play gym and twisted her ankle

4. Got a chafed bottom from going down the slide so many times

5. Scraped the skin off the pads of her toes from the concrete bottom of the pool and was     leaving little bloody toe prints.

I SWEAR I was watching her every second!!  She played so hard and had so much fun, I had to DRAG her out of the water every time the life guards blew the whistle for a break.  The minute the whistle blew again she was back in the water.  She was completely pruney.  

At the end of the day (SIX HOURS LATER) I was getting her dry clothes on and she looked at me with glazed eyes and said "I had so much fun...thank you  for bringing me mommy". 

I almost cried.  I nearly WRECKED her by letting her play so long and so hard and she loved every minute of it.  She fell asleep after eating 6 chocolate chip cookies in the backseat, face smeared with chocolate, hair still damp from the big pool, mouth agape with a new gap-toothed grin, tan from the sun, completely and utterly spent.  

I love the big pool.

Well well wellness

So I've got this job possibility that I can't say too much about, but suffice it to say it concerns teaching people about how to lead a healthy life style and thus...be healthy.  Sounds good, huh? Insurance rates go down, health care costs go down,  I get a new job, everybody wins.

I'm very excited...but now the 20 pounds I've put on since January is feeling like 400!!  I've had a phone interview that went very positively.  PHONE INTERVIEW.  Just a regular phone, not one of those George Jetson TV phones.  So the people haven't actually SEEN me yet.  I'm about a size 14...last year this time I was a size 10...(falls face down onto Macbook in horror).  I'm not sure what happened other than 1. I stopped taking the stairs at work and B. I started eating fried food again.  I'm tellin ya, they could fry GRAVEL and I'd eat it if it were breaded and dipped in ketchup.  So I'm trying to figure out how to lose 30 pounds and get the flab tightened up before the person who wants to to interview me returns from the east coast next week.  Short of sawing off a limb...it ain't gonna happen.  So I'm going to have to distract them with my incredible wit and maybe dazzle them with a new pair of shoes.  I can imagine it now after the interview.  Funny girl, kinda cute, nice shoes...but did you see the size of her ASS????

I'm also the worst parent of the millennium because my child exists almost solely on chicken nuggets and Pop-tarts...no...actually she DOES exist on that with the occasional pancake thrown in and on a really good day, a grilled cheese.  I'm the biggest hypocrite of the century!  Um...oh yes, I'm your wellness specialist and you need to be trim, fit and healthy...unless you're my five year old and then you can have fatty streaks in your liver and a cholesterol level of 1209.  I guess that's really not that funny. (is that DCFS at the door?)

I also have no patience because I think after one phone call and not actually MEETING me they should hire me and pay me more money than I'm making now...what?  Is that weird? I don't think so. Let's save everyone a little time.  Cut to the chase.   Give me what I want and everyone will be happy.

So, I can either eat that left over spaghetti in the fridge for dinner, or I can start this whole healthy thing right now and try to find something a little less...mmmmm...pasta-y.  Kraft Macaroni and Cheese?  No?  

AM I NOT GOING TO GET THIS JOB?????  I promise to eat a whole head of lettuce and maybe some broccoli if I get the job.  Now I have to go...someone wants to show a movie on my ass.

AUNTIE EM! It's a TWISTER!

So the Humidity Festival has been going on lately. Gets to be about 90 degrees with 200% humidity. Everybodies hair gets funky and then we have storm warnings. The village tornado siren goes off and we all go and stand in our driveways which is just the opposite of what the siren is telling you to do. I guess the term village idiots is rather accurate.

Anyway. Saturday night we had one of these (see picture...which I can't take credit for) come spinning through. It really didn't look that bad by us. I know that for a fact because when the siren went off I went out side and stood on the wet sidewalk in my barefeet and assessed the situation. I deemed it safe. I've always been terrified of storms every since my French-Canadian grandmother (who was a bit of a mental case) made us lie on the bed with our shoes on while she raced around the house throwing holy water on the windows and lighting candles. Wouldn't that scare the shit out of YOU? But I digress...as usual...So I returned to the living room sofa to finish eating dinner (yes the living room sofa...you know you do it too) and watch the storm warnings crawl across the bottom of the screen. The big guy in the picture above, came within a short distance of where my teenagers were making pizzas at a restaurant where they work. The power and phones went out but no damage to the pizza kingdom. Lots of damage however to very tall scary powerful high tension lines, trees, vehicles and other stuff that isn't made to fly through the air, but actually did a pretty good job of it Saturday night. Major expressway near us is closed due to teeny bits of semi truck that the tornado pretty much ground up as it went through. I can't remember the last time we've had so many severe storms. Makes me want to stop all those cows from farting and melting the polar ice caps...you know that methane from cows is causing all this, right? Google it. I swear.

You'll be sorry you read this one

It's another installment of "Meet Frosty's Friends". When we got her from the breeder, she came with a cute little stuffed bear that they had let her mama and siblings sleep with so that she wouldn't miss them. She still YIPED like she was being skewered the whole first night despite said cuddly bear friend.

We threw the bear in the cage with her every time we put her in her crate. The bear was pretty much bigger than she was for a really long time. Not being completely "potty trained", Frosty had a bad habit of...'wetting' in her cage. I washed blankets and bedding constantly and noticed the cage still had an odor. I washed out the whole bottom and still...bad funky smell. It was the BEAR. Who now no longer smelled like baby pomeranian and mommy pomeranian. No..the bear had earned a new name. Pissy.


So this is Pissy. OH CALM DOWN, I WASHED IT. Frosty ADORES Pissy in a sort of unnatural way. She hauls this damn bear all over the hose and bangs it on the floor so it will squeak like that freaking CARROT, Fourteen. She also...and this is the scary, disturbing part...sucks on Pissy's nose...until she falls asleep...like it's some sort of WEIRD dog pacifier. Oh man. I always get the FREAK dogs!! You know what else is fun? Throwing Pissy against the wall and Frosty dashes after her, can't stop on that shiny wood floor and CRASH! (heheh) . COME ON...the dog TORTURES ME with barking and chewing and general constant mayhem! She doesn't even FLINCH when she skitters into the wall...which probably says even more about her. I always pick the freaks.

And on TOP of THAT!

Yesterday, before the big hail-the-size-of-human-heads tragedy I get a call at work. From the doctor's office that I was supposed to be going to at 3:15. Seems the guy is a COWARD. The receptionist girl says "um...we need to reschedule you to see the nurse practioner because the doctor doesn't deal with menopause issues".

A. WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE DOESN'T DEAL WITH MENOPAUSE ISSUES? IF I HAVE TO SO DOES HE!!! So does everyone for that matter, it seems!

and

2. I don't LIKE the nurse practitioner, she's ICKY.

I bitched about it for a few minutes and she cheerfully said, "so would you like to reschedule for Tuesday then?"

"NO!"

So I called my gynecologist. The last time I went to see him, he decided to take parts out of my body that I was really sort of attached to. I'm not all that thrilled about seeing him again. But if I can get some DRUGS to combat the CRABBINESS, I guess it will be worth it...for everyone involved.

ARGH!

Last night I was emailing a friend and glanced outside and thought "Huh. Dark clouds...sort of green dark clouds.". And I went back to my emailing. For some reason, the green-ness of the clouds didn't really register with me.

Then it started to rain a little and it was sort of thundery and cozy.

And then it started hailing Volkswagons. Actually the hail was golf ball size. It completely TRASHED my garden. It never dawned on me to run outside and save the delicate blue glass gazing ball...but I did send Joe out to save my poor little unplanted baby tomato plant and he slipped on the patio and wrenched his knee..of course the bad knee...and now is parked in the recliner, full of narcotics with a big swollen knee and an equally big dumb smile on his face when the Norco has kicked in. We had no damage to the house, thank goodness. The garden however was a different story....and of course Joe's knee. Who knew hail could cause knee damage?

Lilac-y? Lilacky?

Big Idea #7864

Okay, okay...listen to this....so I'm broke, right? I've been trying to come up with BRILLIANT (insert trumpet fanfare here) ideas to make money. I'm fairly talented artistically, but I'm either A. SLOW B. UNINSPIRED C. BORED. (Are C and B the same?). I used to make polymer beads and sell them on Ebay. They were pretty popular, but you have to make a lot of teeny tiny bears and flowers before you really make any money. The last thing I want to do at the end of a day of brain and back surgery discussions is to come home and make teeny tiny bear eyes.

I also tried colored pencil portraits of children. Never actually sold one...because I could never get past doing my own kids. They take FOREVER to complete and while I'm sort of good at it, they'd be moving my stuff out to the curb while I sharpened pencils and said "WAIT, I think I can finish this and sell it so I can make the house payment!"

Recently, I went and photographed a baseball game for a friend of mine. It was his son's first T-ball game and so I showed up and just took pictures constantly during the game. They turned out pretty good...I have a BEASTY camera (meaning...it's WONDERFUL). I wonder if people would pay...like money....to have events photographed. Not FANCY stuff...like a wedding, but birthday's and ball games and school things. Then parents could actually WATCH the event rather than try to figure out how to get the lens cap off the camera or shoot glares at each other because SOMEONE didn't BRING the camera.

I've always appreciated what I think are good pictures. I would be willing to pay me. Not a lot mind you...but if I spend an hour at a base ball game and each parent pays me 10 dollars to photograph their kid, action shots, stills, etc. and then I put them on a website and charge them PER PICTURE...are you following me? I already have the equipment and a little talent...maybe.

So I thought I'd put together some sort of brochure. I never have the self confidence to actually do this stuff because I'm so sure someone will say "OH THAT'S JUST DUMB". So feel free to make a comment if you want to let me know what you think. Don't be mean or I'll just moderate your comment to that comment trash bin in cyber space.

Maybe I'm back to making little teeny bear eyes.

I think I scared someone.

I called my family physician's office today. I thought that the past weekend had been hormonally alarming enough that perhaps I should seek "better living through chemistry" and get myself on some replacement therapy. I also thought this might be a good idea because I offered to open the mail today at work and they were a little nervous about letting me use the letter opener.

Usually when you call my primary's office they say something like..."mmmm...welll....you could come in Monday at 11:02 in June of 2011...but we'll be working you in so be prepared to wait".

Today I said "Hey...this is Chris... I'm growing hair in places I shouldn't and I want to strangle everyone I see and I think I need some Premarin...do I need to see the doctor or can you just call me some in?"

Dead air. "Actually...I think you better come and see the doctor"

"You know I'm kidding about the strangling people"

"Let me see what I have....really about the hair though?"

"Well...just on my chest...but I really don't want to strangle people. Maybe just kill them"

(Insert weak laugh here) "Ummmmm...."

"No, actually I'm just kidding..except about the hair...and I'm pretty moody...and no one will let me have sharp objects since the weekend"

"okay...I think..."

"NO REALLY...I'm just kidding. Except about the hair part....what do you have available...two, three weeks out?"

"How about this Friday??"

"Like this Friday? Like day after tomorrow? Like I would actually see the doctor that day?"

"Yes."

"Um. Okay. Yeah. Good! GOOD! I'll be there!"

So okay..do you think I scared her with the strangling or the killing part? Or is that sort of the same? Honestly...I didn't mean it.

I think it was the hair...I mean...shit...it scares ME.

When you think that you're in danger....

So..this one time...I went to a bar with some friends. (This is going NOWHERE good.) I wasn't going to go and then my cousin called and talked me into it (read as...told me I was going...). So I got "dressed up" and headed down to the teeny tiny bar in the teeny tiny town where we were to meet. I changed clothes and tried to do something with my hair and when I left I thought I looked ACCEPTABLE...at least not SCARY or anything. I cranked up the Maroon 5 CD and off I went.

Okay..the bar was really really small in a really really really small rural town. One side is a restaurant, the other is a bar. Did I mention how small it is? Everyone starts showing up and having drinks. Drinks of course lead to more drinks and the next thing you know, several of us are singing the theme to "Super Chicken" and yelling "Hey bring that whole box of wine to the table!". And I don't mean a box of wine bottles...I mean the kind of wine that comes in cardboard.

After a few glasses of Chardonnay from a box...I started thinking that I looked pretty good! We were having a great time, talking, laughing and then...the dancing started. Pretty soon people were standing on chairs and taking pictures of each other's feet. We moved from the restaurant side to the bar side and three of us set up shop behind the bar that was being tended by a guy named...Fuzzy..or Frizzy...or something. So..music is louder...I'm dancing like an idiot but think I look like Brittney Spears (also an idiot it turns out). I've got my hair in my face, drinking wine, laughing too loud and then someone gets out a camera. The night of the party I told someone " I can't WAIT to see those pictures!". Well, she never sent them and never sent them. We nagged her for a while and then just gave up.

She finally sent them. This past week. We went out last JULY. Anyway, GOOD GOD. I have arms the size of HAMS. I am never going out in public again unless I'm draped in a FULL SIZE BED SHEET. I don't think I'll even be able to get THAT around these freaky upper arms! And I'm not talking muscle...because God know's I wouldn't work out...I'm talking freakishly large upper arms that are just...FREAKISHLY LARGE!
So here's one of the pictures. We're on the wrong side of the bar here. We'd pretty much taken over the place by this point. The bar tender just kept serving up the drinks. That's me making the strange "jazz hands" pose. What the HELL??

Well, we had fun anyway. Who wouldn't have fun in bar that has a white ceramic Buddha on the popcorn popper? That just screams "FUN" right there.

Hairspray...and not the musical

Two words. Ballet recital. I actually had to go and buy HAIR. Who buys hair for a four year old...ME...and about 20 of my fellow moms at the ballet studio, that's who. The Hair Club for Four Year Olds.

If you've ever tried to put a four year old girl's hair up in a proper ballet "bun" you'll know that it's like putting smoke in your pocket. It just doesn't stay IN. We had recital pictures last week and my daughter had to have her hair up for pictures. Pictures were at 2:35. I set up in the kitchen with a 55 gallon drum of the strongest hair spray I could find, pony tail holders, hair pins and other miscellaneous brick-a-brack at 1:30. She started out skipping into the kitchen singing "we're gonna do my HA-AIR!" and ended up screaming "STOP I CAN'T BREATHE!!!!" I could have stood the kid out in Hurricane Katrina and only her bangs would have stirred...and just SLIGHTLY. I had the ring of curls all twisty-spray-clipped in and by the time she was done the effect wasn't too bad.

I'm still chipping the hairspray off the kitchen counter...as well as her forehead.

Harietta Hormone

Yes. That's me. The hormone train has hit me full force and left me lying in a spitting, angry, clawing heap in it's wake. Perimenopausal I'm told. I can rip your kidney out through your nostril is what I FEEL.

I had a hysterectomy a couple of years ago and they left the egg factories behind assuring me that I would have a more natural approach to menopause. RIGHT. The guys down there in the ovaries who work on the egg production lines caught on very quickly when the shipments of eggs starting stacking up.

Ovary Foreman: "Why are we NOT sending these shipments to the uterus????"

Egg Peon: "Cap'n! I've been sendin um full pow'r! Seem's to be a problem in the tubes, sir!" (read that like Scotty on Star Trek would say it)

Ovary Foreman: "That's IT! Shut this place DOWN. Every body is LAID OFF!" (stomps into spleen and slams the pancreas)

Egg Peon: "Huh." (Pulls some lever and there's a horrible screeching sound as the ovaries come to a slamming stop...somewhere upstairs in my brain...I begin to hate everyone I see)

So I'm working the other day and all of a sudden I've got a sweat mustache....then I began to wonder how I could eliminate human life on the planet....OH MY GOD. A hot flash. I turned the air conditioner in the office to "hang a carcass in the room" and took off my consultation coat and fanned my self. Still sweating. RUNNING down my temples. I should have known this was coming because I had been noticing that I had been plucking chin hairs daily to avoid looking like the lead singer of ZZ Top. I ran it by a co-worker...she confirmed my fears and gleefully said "you know..this can last for up to TEN years". I ripped off her head and stuffed it in her lab coat pocket.

I'm going to have to take some sort of hormone replacement, because otherwise I'll end up on the evening news. "ILLINOIS WOMAN FOUND CHEWING ON A HUMAN LEG...SAYS HAIR TURNED OUT BAD TODAY". What do you take for this? Isn't there some non FDA approved herb grown in the wilds of Venezuela that interestingly enough is also an ingredient in Easy Off?

I'll try anything! Blue co hash? Black primrose? What the hell is it? Do I smoke it? Shoot it up? Sniff it? TELL ME AND NO ONE GETS HURT!!!!

All right, I think I'm better...

I seem to be able to sit up and not have everything around me move on it's own today. Progress. I think drinking two bottles of water helped today. I can go for days on end and drink nothing but diet pepsi and coffee. I'm told this is bad.

So I see the surgeon tomorrow and I'll get to see "THE PICTURES" of the inside of my shoulder. They'll proudly point at what they took out and pat themselves on the back because I'm going to feel so much better now. Only I don't yet. I still have "RESTRICTIONS" too, which get me out of alot of housework so they are almost as good a perk as the drugs. Whenever there is something I have to do like ironing my white coats, I point sadly at my shoulder and Joe does the ironing. Ahhhh. Restrictions! I also can't lift heavy pots (so I say they are all heavy), do the laundry or pretty much any of the other things I don't like to do (insert sad face here....) Restrictions, ya know. The first few days of having "restrictions" was the best because my arm was still in a sling and everybody brought me things and felt sorry for me. I was done with the sling last Friday....so, now I have to get my own stuff. Unless I say it's too heavy...which of course it all is. My official restrictions are a three pound weight limit which narrows down what I can pick up to Diet Pepsi, my iTouch and the telephone. God, if I didn't feel so crappy all the time, this would be heaven!

I got nuthin.

I returned to work today after being off for a week and I had no idea how hard it would be. Since this is my THIRD surgery (I'm not bitter) I thought for some reason that I would bounce right back and be ready to return in seven days. Big surgery on a bad shoulder. Seven days. Sounded good at the time..which was before surgery...while I was feeling ten foot tall and bulletproof.

I discovered that soon after getting to work this morning that I could hardly hold my head up let alone take a breath at the same time and blink. I think the anesthesia hit my brain a little bit hard this time. I don't seem to be firing on all cylinders. I have to think a little bit too long about things like...oh, say...picking up a pen or answering a telephone. Add a couple doses of narcotic pain medication to that and I become the worlds largest paperweight. I could never get hooked on narcotics. Constipation and confusion...how is that fun? "Dude...remember that time we took all that Norco and then couldn't poop and couldn't figure out how to use the TV controller? Man, dude...that was intense."

I'm regretting going back so early. (Insert chorus of "I TOLD YOU SO" here from my friends). Just prop me up at my desk and stick the pen in my hand...I'll try to take it from there.

Meet Frosty's Friends #3

Lucky you. So far you've met Fourteen (the carrot) and DB (Disemboweled Bunny). Today Frosty would like to introduce you to...(drumroll)....

Weird-Happy-Meal-Squirrel!! Who is now limbless. Oh the carnage. Actually, I think this is the perfect use for Happy Meal toys which otherwise end up as toy box rubble. Very early in her stay here at Chez Lewis, Frosty chose Weird-Happy-Meal-Squirrel!! as her very own. I think she found the googly eyes very similar to hers. She didn't bother any of the other 345,062 Happy Meal toys that are in our house. No matter how many times I tried to give them to her. Did I say that? No Emma! I would never PURPOSEFULLY give the Shredder, I mean the DOG your Happy Meal toys! (Damn...almost busted).

Backyard.

Temple Bells

Meet Frosty's Friends #2

This is Disemboweled Bunny. Supposed to be a cute pink bunny puppy toy but we thought that the "tug rope" looked alarmingly like intestines. Frosty likes to shake DB (Disemboweled Bunny) REALLY, REALLY hard. I'm not sure why that's fun, but if you add growling and flipping around like she's having a seizure, it's fun for us. Disemboweled Bunny is also known as "No Body Bunny". Stay tuned for more of Frosty's Friends. I've got a lot of time on my hands this week.

So I called my cousin...

Me: Hey! A couple of ducks laid an egg in the rocks outside and then just LEFT it!!!!

Kathleen: Bastards.

Um....we have ducks.

Two ducks have decided that our yard is now their yard. We don't live near water. The closest thing is a drainage area just north of our yard which is currently dry. The ducks have been hanging out and sleeping in the yard, and were on the patio yesterday just waddling around and quacking to themselves. I took the dogs out this morning and there was this egg. Just sitting there. No nest. Just.....sitting there....no ducks around anywhere. It's all alone sitting there in the rocks. Do eggs just fall out of ducks? I mean the mother duck must of put some effort into this egg, but no nest?? Ducks are dumb.

Day four of captivity

All right, I've had it. I've been sitting around since the surgery and I'm officially climbing the walls. I ate POP TARTS for breakfast!! I never eat pop tarts! I've got to get back to work before before I start eyeing up the Lucky Charms. The dogs were really disappointed by the whole Pop Tart incident. When Emma eats them, she won't eat the "crust" so she is constantly flipping bits of "pastry" to the poms. Well I ate those babies CRUST AND ALL. Very disappointed dogs.

I'm watching too much day time television too...which is like Pop Tarts for your brain. I can find almost nothing of redeeming value on daytime TV. Occasionally, I can find something nerdy on Discovery, but it doesn't get much better than maybe....mmm...chocolate chip granola bars for the brain.

You know I dream of days like this when I'm at work. No responsibility of cleaning or cooking. I thought that maybe I'd teach Frosty some tricks, but there is some sort of Pomeranian Sleep Law that says that no one must disturb said Pomeranians unless there is food or possibly something to bark at. So Frosty is passed out in the big puffy chair with just her tail showing from under a pillow. I predict no big obedience breakthroughs today.

I guess I could take a nap, but I've always been one of those people that feels that they are going to miss something really important if I take a nap. I don't know what that really important thing would be. I caught sight of myself in mirror a little bit ago (shudder). It's pretty horrifying. Very high on the "hag-o-meter". Almost off the chart. I think that will be a project for the afternoon. I can get all cleaned up and get dinner going and be all perky for when my hubby gets home from work. Isn't that the way that women did it in the 60's? Have a nice meal ready, take off his shoes, give him the newspaper, keep the kids quiet?

Right...I'll be lying on the sofa with a pomeranian on me, watching Hollywood Insider and eating Ho-Ho's.

Sweet moments.

When I arrived home from the hospital after surgery on Monday. I was completely miserable. I was not digging the side effects of anesthesia. Emma came and sat next to me and read me "The Very Hungry Caterpillar". She said "I'll read you a few pages, Mommy...my favorites ones and I know you'll feel better."

Sweet girl.

While watching coverage of the Pope's visit

Greg: Why did the Pope come to the United States for his birthday?

Me: I don't know. I would have gone to Chuck E. Cheese...I guess it's sort of the same.

Stick me with a fork, I'm DONE.

Had shoulder surgery number three yesterday. I think on the shoulder surgery rating scale, this one was the worst so far (that rating scale begins with "not so bad" to "well that sucked" to "worst so far"). It was essentially the same procedure I'd had in the SECOND surgery of this shoulder epic, but now with more inflammation and assorted scarring and adhesions! Bonus!

It's over now and I've spent the last 24 hours sampling the drug buffet that comes with surgery. Start with a nice Versed, add a little morphine and finish off with an aged Fentanyl with a little Norco for an apertif. I have been whacked out the whole time. I've also learned that Norco makes me itch all over. So I've added a little Benadryl to the mix just for fun. This is one of my lucid moments, so I thought I'd take advantage of it before the next brick wall of drugs fell onto my brain. If I wasn't such a sissy about pain, I'd take less, but DAMN...some dude CUT into my shoulder! Not only does it hurt, but it's the principle of the thing! I deserve some drugs for that!

I've been hanging out in the recliner with books, blankies, pillows, ice bags, diet pepsi and raging case of bedhead. I've got dark circles under my eyes that would make Estee Lauder run for her life. I dabbed some Oil of Olay eye stuff on them earlier...it's some new stuff that's supposed to brighten dark circles with just a "dab". I think I needed dabs the size of ice cream scoops.

Joe has been home trying to work in the kitchen from his computer while he indulges my every whim. Put the foot of the chair up...no down...I'm hot...I'm hungry...did you see that 30 legged pink and purple bug on the wall? (just a few hallucinations). Poor guy. He just keeps saying "I love you." I don't know if he's telling me, or trying to convince himself as I holler from the living room...HEY I'VE GOT THE MUNCHIES!!!

Spring time in Door County

Sun dappled forget-me-nots - Sevastopol, WI

Update on Stunt Boy (aka Greg)

Lots of people are asking how Greg is doing, so I thought I'd do a small update...which always ends up being a long update and what the hell, I might has well just say I'm gonna write a book. Greg is doing really well. He's gone back to school and the girls' of course are all over him. A friend of ours told him to look at each of them sadly and say "And while I was flying through the air towards certain death...all I could think about was you". That's it....ride this pony as long as you can.

Anyway...his wounds have healed quite quickly. We're constantly smearing him with some sort of cream or another and wrapping him in gauze. Daily the amount of smearing has decrease as has the mummified areas. A good sign.

The ATV he was riding was owned by a friend's father. I'm told that after the accident...it was a perfect square...if you have seen a four wheeler before...they usually have a little more shape than that. The friend and his father have been working on it to restore it to it's former shape and function even though my father has promised to beat it flat with a sledge hammer if they get it anywhere close to running again. Several of Greg's friends used to keep their ATV's at Greg's dad's house and my older son Eric (the one killing Greg in the picture below) has encouraged them strongly ("get them the hell out of here!") to take their stuff home. He also brought a shiny new helmet to the hospital and put it on Greg's bed and said "You're an idiot! Wear one of these!" Greg giggled being under the influence of strong narcotics. Eric shook his head and then asked if I thought his grandfather would be mad if he bought a motorcycle. (Yes he was serious)

I've not gone to the accident site. I'm told there are 20 feet of skid marks before apparently Greg and ATV became airborne.

So, we're all hopelessly grateful to God and whatever angel was assigned to Greg last Saturday. The two boys that were with Greg when it happened and saw the whole thing remain a little freaked out. The story going around school started out with Greg tumbling around with a four wheeler to Greg, tumbling on a four wheeler, while on fire, being chased by lions while he juggled knives and fought off gang members like a Ninja while escaping from the cops and singing America the Beautiful. Because he lived through this event...Greg has become almost holy at school. Guys think he's superman....girls think he's the wounded hero.

I'm still going to kick his ass once he is better.

Okay just one more....

Waiting for spring...

And by the way....

Those of you keeping score will be glad to know that I now have a valid license plate sticker, driver's license and social security card....but my insurance expires next week. Damn.

Brothers.

The first time Greg's life was in danger.

The Healing Power of Chocolate Pie

Check out the hair-do.

I swear I'm not doing this again...after this last time.

I'm having shoulder surgery again on Monday. Some of you know that I've already done this a couple of times and then spent over a year in physical therapy. There seems to be some sort of "thing" in there catching when I move my shoulder certain ways and it definitely makes life less pleasant. So...under the care of a world class orthopedic surgeon at Rush Medical Center in Chicago, we're going to do this one more time.

Last time is when I started doing this blog...and it may make some interesting reading because I was PRETTY WHACKED OUT on the "purple sticky punch" which I know really means marijuana but I think it's a funny Pauly Shore phrase, so I'm using it to describe Norco and Toradol...which makes me giggly and delerious intermittently...sort of like pot without the munchies. So now that I've written the longest run on sentence in the world, I'll move on.

Joe is taking me up to Rush Oak Park, which didn't impress me a lot last time. Of course it takes alot to impress me because I'm the neurosurgery queen of all things and of course no one can do anything right as far as I'm concerned. I waited a long time before surgery last time and no one came and said "I'm sorry" so I was all pissy about it. I also had to sit around in a gown and bad slippers with no-slip bottoms and that made me generally pissed off too.

Last time the anesthesia people (never piss off the anesthesia people...THEY ARE YOUR FRIEND), did something called an interscalene block. Long story short, they gave me the equivalent of a marguerita in my IV line and then poked me in the neck with a needle until they were able to hit a group of nerves and deaden the entire right arm. Not fun...but worth the drugs, I personally think. Versed makes you not care at all. I could have been being dragged away by a lion to be eaten in it's cave and I would have sleepily said "nice kitty!! hheeheheeh". When you wake up...you have NO ARM. Can't feel it at all. Later it wakes up and the feeling is something between grabbing an electrical line and being eaten by fireants.

The good drugs have worn off by then. Can't wait.

Why was this a good idea again?

Frosty is insufferable. I recently cleaned out a coat closet to reorganize my craft supplies (addicted to craft supplies...there must be a twelve step program for this). Of course all the coats had to find a new home, so I did what I always do with things that have no home...I dumped them in a pile on the bed. They have since made their way to a pile on the floor at the foot of the bed. I guess this all is my fault....

Frosty...with her killer instinct that won't be domesticated....found that one of the coats had REAL FUR (some unfortunate raccoon no doubt) and has, at sometime when we're not paying attention (read as...all the time), completely destroyed said piece of fur. When I say destroy, I want to make sure you understand...there is raccoon fur from one end of this house to another. It looks like a raccoon exploded. It's everywhere; bathroom, hallway, garage, bedrooms, kitchen...I can't even sufficiently describe our bedroom to you. It's the center of the carnage though.

I went to work the other day and hanging from the back of my very professional doctor white coat...a big chunk of dead raccoon. Nothing says professional like that.

Look Mommy! Pretty Rocks!

Emma-isms

Emma and I were frantically trying to get out of the house last night to meet Greg at up at my parent's house. Well....I was frantic....she was walking around in her Sponge Bob Crocs and generally making me more frantic. I finally got her into the garage...I hadn't eaten all day so I had grabbed a piece of cold smoked sausage left over from the night before and was snarfing it down while I buckled her into the car. She said " Mommy...don't you wish sometimes that you could be the little kid and I could drive YOU around?" (AWWWWWWWWWWW)

Greg is home from the hospital.

Greg came home last night. We decided to have him stay at my Mom and Dad's so that they can keep an eye on him while his father and I are work. (That was my idea...aren't I smart?) So his dad delivered him straight from the hospital to their home last night. They have a small mother in law's residence attached to their home and my Dad had it all decked out for Greg. Dad is so excited. He loves taking care of people and everyone is darn grateful that Greg is alive. I've been told over and over again that this accident could have easily killed him. I can't go there. Too scary to think about.

So I went up to my parent's last night and got him all tucked in. Showered, dressings changed, TV clicker in hand, cell phone charging. Emma was not as freaked out as I thought she'd be when she saw all of his wounds. Most of them are covered with gauze wrap, so he looks a little mummy-like. She checked him out from top to bottom and was fascinated with his crutches. Then she drew a picture of a bowl of soup for him.....she said soup makes it all better.

Heard in our kitchen recently:

Joe: Why is there a picture of our garbage on the computer?

Chris: (blink blink) Um...I don't know?

Okay...one small lecture...

SEE!!! YOUR SISTER WEARS HER HELMET!!!!

ok. I'm done. Love you Greg.

If I hadn't been so damn scared I'd have been pissed off.

Saturday, my 15 year old rolled like a tumbleweed on a four wheeler. Those "fun" death machines that kids seem to be enthralled with. No helmet, no pads, no gloves, no kidding. Our rule is helmets. Being 10 foot tall and bullet proof, Greg didn't seem to think that rule applied to him on Saturday. He is simply alive because it's a miracle. He is covered with road rash and looks like he's been dragged behind a car and feels like it for that matter. He's had a ton of morphine, Vicodin and Norco over the last two days. I've been running on adrenaline, sugar and Diet Pepsi most of the time. I've had way too little sleep. I'd love to kick his ass if I wasn't so grateful that he still has one. There will be no lectures though...no long diatribes...no threats and no punishments. He's had a enough pain that no words will be needed. I've always heard that things will be repeated until the lesson is learned. Not in this case. I think he got it.

Olympic Trash Stacking

My husband and I have this thing going at our house. He refuses to take out the trash and I refuse to take it out for him. So I've become extremely talented at precariously balancing trash on the top of the trash can in the kitchen. When it gets really tall, I refer to it as "Mount Trashmore" and point out that I think I can see his face sculpted in the trash. We've come to think of it as sort of a competition at this point. He waits to see how long it will be before he has to take it out and I see just how high I can stack it before there's a trashvalanche ( I can't believe that word isn't in the spellchecker. Huh.). I also like to booby trap the whole deal by adding coffee grounds to an empty Happy Meal container or cover the top of the inside layer with old spaghetti so that he can't push it down with his hand (heh heh heh). I can stack it higher than he can stand it and the fear of the booby traps (or maybe it's just my constant BITCHING) always seems to win the contest.

Check out that Happy Meal container....how did I miss a Jolly Roger Eye Patch! I could have used that this week!

Meet Frosty's friends...

This will be a series of Frosty's (remember her? The gangly n'ere do well doofus pomeranian aka goat/wood chipper?) friends. She has many "friends" scattered all over the house and they all have names.

Meet Fourteen. He's a carrot. (get it? Fourteen carrot? Oh come ON, that's FUNNY!) He used to have two green leaves on top and a FACE but Frosty has beaten the living daylights out of this guy and now he's got a hole where his leaf used to be and a missing face. He has a squeaker inside and sometimes Frosty will hold him in her mouth and will bang poor Fourteen on the floor to make him squeak. Over and over again...and usually in the middle of LOST during the most important part where they are going to reveal what the HELL is really happening on that show and all I hear is SQUEAK-----SQUEAKSQUEAK----SQUEAK! Until one of us yells "gimme that damn carrot you freak!!" and by then...we've missed the whole thing. We hate Fourteen.

Solution?

Meet my best friends for the last few days. I've become a connoisseur of fine eye care products. Today I stayed home from work. Why? Because A. I can't see and driving has become more than an adventure, and 2. Because I've come down with a cold on top of everything else. Have I somehow pissed of Karma? Because I'm getting an awful lot of attention from Karma...and it's time to KNOCK IT OFF.

Anyway. Back to me (it's all about me). I'm dead asleep in bed this morning with a boogery nose and a there's-a-horse-on-my-head type of headache. Phone rings (never fails). It's the optometrist office...do you think you could come down to have your eye checked? I blather something almost unintelligible about staying home and a head cold and then say I'll be down later.

I drove to the office with no glasses on or contacts in. Which means I sort of aimed the car in the direction of their office and hoped for the best. My eye is healing...the right eye is getting better too. So now, no contacts until Monday and then a recheck in about a week and we'll start all over again. Maybe I'll just get some glasses.

Neyetmare

I've struggled with finding good contact prescriptions for the last several years. I blamed it on childbirth, weight loss, weight gain, barometric pressure, alien spacecraft...you know all those things that make you lose your sight. Turns out I have something called Pellucid Marginal Degeneration which is actually quite rare...and actually quite a pain in the ass. Long story short, I have goofy shaped eyes that no contact will fit on correctly thus I have distortion, blurring, and double vision...which are also the after effects of a bad bottle or come to think of it, even a good bottle of Chardonnay.

I finally went to a new eye doctor who had the answer to the problem! A new hybrid lens! HOORAY (confetti confetti confetti). I received the new lenses yesterday. Everyone at the eye doctor's office was quite excited because this was a (trumpet salute) NEW PRODUCT! So it was with some celebrity status (at least in the eye doctor's office...I'm big in Japan too) I left the office.

TWO HOURS LATER: Hey...the left contact feels a little funny...and not in a haha way. So I tried to take it out. Not working. Getting panicky...keep trying...will NOT budge.

FOUR HOURS LATER: Um...HELLO...it still won't come out! Now I'm stringing together swear words that don't usually go together. I'm also doing a little dance because my EYE HURTS. I'm home by now and my eye looks like I've been punched. My right eye is doing quite well thank you very much! I'm down right scared by now and finally I get the sucker...and I mean that in the truest sense of the word...off of my eye. PAIN!! Screaming yellow PAIN!!! I'm clutching my eye and hopping around the house trying not to scare my four year old who is looking at my quizzically by now. "Mama? Are you okay?" HOP HOP HOP "MMMYEP...UMMM...MMMM....I'MMMMMMGOOD". My husband arrives home and I'm still staggering around, now with a cold cloth on my eye which is now watering in constant streams down my face. "HRRTTTEYEYYEYEYEYEYE!" I mumble as a lurch past him towards the phone to call the eye doctor's office. They pick up...THANK GOD...and they say to come right down. Some IDIOT in my brain says...'well my daughter has a hair appointment' and the part of the brain that feels eye pain yells "PRIORITIZE YOU MORON!!". Joe drives me down the eye doctor's office while Emma asks 435,763 questions about eye doctors in the back seat.

The eye doctor informs me that I've lost a layer of epithelial tissue from my cornea (read as "ripped a big chunk out of your eyeball"...that sounds more impressive too). I get numbing drops (make you lose control of your eyelids too!), artificial tears (despite my eye watering like crazy) and a contact lens band aid which consists of a soft lens to go over the big scrapie on my eye. The new hybrid lens had apparently SUCKED itself onto my eye and was not interested at all in coming off...so it took a piece of me with it for a souvenir. He prescribed some pain drops and sent me off to the pharmacy. The pharmacist said..."Holy cow..what happened to YOU?"

Today I went to work and got the pity vote from my coworkers. I had the right lens in and the damn thing did the same thing to right eye! I'm now totally unable to see. My glasses prescription is wrong, I've got abrasions on both eyes. I didn't take out the lens today by myself, I let the doctor do it when I went back to see him this afternoon. He said it's the DAMNDEST thing he's ever seen. Yeah....me too.

I love being special. Now I can't see while I'm driving which makes driving with an expired sticker all that much more of an adventure.

Pure Joy.

Sometimes I post things just because they make me happy.

Illegal again

Well...what was it...4 days? I'm driving illegally again. My license sticker expired yesterday. In Illinois, we used to be able to buy a license sticker at a bank or credit union. Well, because it was apparently too convenient, you can't do that anymore. I can either get a sticker on-line (which I asked my husband to do on SUNDAY....today is TUESDAY...oh don't look at me that way...everyone knows that husbands take out the garbage and are in charge of everything in the garage...which includes the cars...which means he had to get the license stickers...follow my logic?) OR I can go to the (insert ominous chord of music here).....DMV....yes...the DMV...where I spent the better part of my day off LAST FRIDAY. I could have gotten the sticker that day! I even had the form with me. This morning my husband was ripping the bedroom apart looking for the renewal form....I slunk (slinked?) into the kitchen where I keep the leather binder I carry with my calendar in it and guiltily pulled out the form. "You could have gotten this on FRIDAY" he says "you had it WITH you!". I just looked at him, thought for a minute and said "I got nuthin."