Thursday, July 28, 2011

pms roller coaster x2

due to my husband getting laid off from his new job this week after only being there for 7 weeks, i'm feeling like i'm on a roller coaster. that made me think of this post from more than a year ago & when i read it, i thought it was still funny, so i'm re-posting it for those of you who haven't read it before. beware to you mens ~ graphic mental pictures ahead.

i have pms today & i'm fluctuating between fury, tears & hysteria that could tip toward funny or mania at any moment. ever since i was 11 i've been ragging & dealing with the drama of hormonal flux at this time of the month & i think i'm ready to order up some menopause.

i wish we could make men understand what it's like to go through this. you seem like a pretty rational human most of the time, but once a month you go through a change that makes you turn into a freaky, irrational version of yourself that even you don't want to be around.

you wake up feeling pretty normal and then you kick your toe into the leg of the bed & stumble backwards into the dresser where you smash your butt into the corner of the top & then proceed to fall on the floor & laugh hysterically. you feel like you've broken 2 toe bones & there's a triangular shaped dent in your ass cheek that feels like it's spurting blood, but all you can do is laugh till tears pour down your face. you realize that it's not actually funny to hurt yourself, especially first thing in the morning, but it's still really funny because you're rolling on the floor w/ a bloody butt & broken toe bones and your eyes still crusted shut from sleep. and then you laugh some more until you can't breathe & your family is standing around you asking why you're in fetal position on the ground in the dark, rocking & making a lot of noise, but you can't answer properly, you can only sputter out things like "broke butt" and "toes... crunched" and when they look at you strangely it just seems funnier.

eventually you compose yourself & make it through an extra large breakfast, but then the cat starts meowing for her food & she keeps it up & keeps it up & keeps it up. you put food in her bowl & show it to her, but she keeps harassing you until you suddenly burst forth with a barbaric yawlp from the pit of your guts. there are no words, just an echoing bellow. the cat races off to safer havens & then you notice your kid's face & it's staring at you with concern & trepidation because apparently mom has been transformed into an unpredictable alien today & can't be trusted to act normally. you want that look to go away & for the kid not to be nervous around you, so you give her a bowl full of marshmallows & honey for breakfast so that she'll like you again.

you go into the bathroom to deal with lady things at some point in the day & you swear that when you sit down, you can hear a gurgle, gurgle, glug coming from your nether regions & then there's a flood where you think your innards are being ripped unceremoniously out through your vagina. you flush quickly because you might need the extra room in the bowl since you're pretty sure you're loosing about 16 lbs of slush as you sit there. then it takes about 5 wet wipes and half a roll of toilet paper to begin to feel reasonably fresh (if such a thing is possible at that stage) and you proceed to wash your hands with a brillo pad & boiling water just to make sure you're adequately sanitary again.

eventually you sit down for some book reading time with your kid because you're still trying to prove that you are a good mommy, in spite of the alien influence that you've been experiencing in spurts throughout the day. you're reading a book about a seeing eye dog puppy in training & suddenly you find yourself crying. tears are flowing & you can't even read aloud anymore because of the sadness that has gripped your heart over the broken hearted child in the book who has to give her puppy away after the first year of training has come to completion. how can anything be more sad in this cruel, cruel world?!

you can't proceed with the book, so you flip on the tv for something funny to brighten your spirits. you come across the "fresh prince of belaire" and feel pretty good because it's just starting and you won't miss anything. you sing along with the intro, getting your groove back & feeling a little cool because you still remember all the words. you're smiling & your heart gets lighter for a few minutes. then will's dad leaves him to go out on the road & lets him down once again and you feel the water works start back up. you sniffle & try to hold back the tears as you gaze into will smith's child-like face as he watches his dad leave. how could anyone be so mean to him? why oh why would a parent ever leave their child? you hug your kid close & snuffle into her neck a little bit & whisper that you'll never leave her, not for anything.

then a commercial comes on for charmin toilet paper & it's those chubby cartoon bears. just looking at the way the mother bear monitors & assists with her baby bears' bathroom habits & teaches them that less is more when you have good toilet tissue in hand, is like balm to your soul. your tears transform from tears of sorrow to tears of joy because you're remembering when your own little one was so small & adorable with her little chunky butt. when she smiled at you like you were the sun and the moon and thought you knew all things. and then you move back into the realm of sorrow again because you feel your kid pulling away from you as you blow snot bubbles into her hair. that kid's not a baby anymore, she's a medium sized person now who's pretty sure you don't know all and that her opinions are way more valuable than yours. and before long she won't need you and she'll leave home & get married and have sex, and that's just more than you can stomach.

you stumble clumsily back into the bathroom for some privacy & to give yourself some time to recuperate from all the chaos inside you. you have a repeat from the last bathroom trip, only this time you realize that you're out of tampons and pads. and you need one really, really badly. so you decide to stick half a roll of toilet paper into your underwear to serve as a blood buffer between yourself & the world & then walk out bow-legged. you go to the store, still with the toilet paper roll in your pants and when someone looks at you oddly because your pants are lumpy & you're walking like you've dropped a load, you start laughing hysterically. uncontrollable laughter that has you doubled up over the orange juice cooler with your legs crossed and a saliva party bubbling from your mouth.

you make it to the register but realize that you left your debit card in your pants from yesterday. you've got a little cash in the bottom of your purse, so you dig around frantically for a couple minutes while the people behind you start making huffing sounds and talking about you amongst themselves. you start crying again when you give up digging and you're still $1.04 short of your total. you ask the cashier if you can open the box & just take out a couple tampons to buy individually. he looks fearful and discombobulated as he calls over a manager on the loud speaker.

the manager is a man too. he eyeballs you nervously as he shuffles over. you ask him weepily if you can please just buy a couple tampons from the box because you don't have enough money & because you can't very well go on with your life with a roll of toilet paper in your underwear because as it turns out, it's not nearly as absorbent as that charmin commercial advertised. the people in line are mumbling more loudly & the manager and 17 yr old cashier look at you like you've gone completely mad. the mgr rips open the box himself & hands you a handful of the things and tells you it'll be no charge and tries to usher you quickly to the door. you're so relieved that you cry tears of joy. you want to hug him, but as you go in for the embrace, he quickly backs away, looking terrified like you have leprosy and aids and ebola and more than a little dose of coo-coo.

so you take your courtesy tampons & vacate the premises quickly and head back home for another round on the pms roller coaster.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

my first kiss

do you guys remember back when you were a tween (though we weren't called that) or early teen and you and your friends talked and thought about kissing all the time? i remember when my friends & i were about 11, the mysterious pull of some lip on lip action became so mesmerizing that it seemed to dominate many of our giggly conversations. most of us hadn't done it yet, but we'd heard about it from older friends or siblings or trashy neighbor girls who we publicly scorned but privately envied just a little.

over the next couple of years, one by one, each of us lost our lip virginity as the opportunities presented themselves for some smooching. i remember waiting anxiously for my moment to come since i knew that it would be a once in a lifetime event. you only get that first kiss one single solitary time & i'd heard stories letting me know that i'd probably remember it forever, so it had to be a good one. it had to be perfect. and yet, that's too much pressure for any kid, especially when it comes to something that's likely to be awkward and messy.

when i was 13, my parents decided that they needed a night away from their 4 kids. my brother is a year older than me & we were both very responsible, as a general rule. we'd been babysitting our younger sibling for a few years by then & had shown ourselves to be trustworthy. i guess they thought that leaving us home overnight wasn't so much different than leaving us home for an extended period during the day, so they went ahead & planned that date.

i thought it was pretty cool to be left home overnight since none of our friends had ever been allowed to do that before. i felt mature and wise and trusted. something that i'm not sure was factored in to the plan when my parents made these arrangements was that my brother's friend from out of town (who i shall call jeff) was staying with our family for several days.

this jeff guy was one of the cutest boys i knew. i didn't see him often since he lived a few hours away, but over the years when i had seen him, i'd always thought that he would make a lovely long-distance boyfriend for me. however, he never paid any attention to me. i was there. i was the little sister. i was flirty, but i was ignorable. he wasn't rude, but he never reciprocated.

that did not dampen my enthusiasm for flirtation in the slightest. maybe if i just tried a little harder or giggled a little more often or followed him around for a bit longer, he'd realize that i was the girl of his dreams & pledge his undying love to me.

that night when we got the little kids put safely to bed, the three responsible teens hung out & played some silly games. i'm sure there was probably some truth or dare or uno played before the evening was over. then the boys went upstairs to go to bed and for some reason, i decided that i was going to sleep downstairs on the couch. i crawled under the holey green and orange afghan on the scratchy plaid sofa only to realize that i'd left a light on in the other room.

i got up & walked over to turn it off & there was jeff. he was just coming around the corner dressed in those heather grey elastic-bottomed sweatpants. he was looking so fine i just stared at him before realizing that i was only wearing my big minnie mouse t-shirt and undies and nothing else. i froze for a moment & then reached out & slapped off the light, hoping he hadn't noticed my lack of pants. neither of us said anything. we just stood there for several seconds in the dark.

then he slowly walked toward me until i was backed up into a wall. i couldn't back away from him anymore and i realized that i didn't want to. i put one hand up and barely touched his chest. i tipped my chin up to see his shadowed face to figure out what was happening. my heart was pounding and i was holding my breath. i was sure that he was going to laugh and then walk back upstairs. but he didn't.

he gently slid his hands around my waist and pulled me tight up against him. he leaned down and put his lips against mine and every ounce of myself melted into that kiss. it was exactly as wonderful as i'd been hoping. i was weak in the knees as i stood up against that wall with so much warm, male contact pressed up against me. i'd never felt anything like that before. i didn't know those feelings existed.
after a couple of minutes, he pulled back, looked me in the eyes and then without a word, he went back upstairs.
i floated over to the couch where i laid awake for hours wondering how i'd gotten so lucky. i replayed every wet moment of that kiss in my mind over and over until i was sure that i'd never forget how perfect it was. i couldn't wait til morning so that i could see jeff again and spend the next few days trying to steal him from my brother for more smooching adventures. i wanted to call all my friends and tell them that my kiss had arrived and it was delivered by a boy who was sure to make them all jealous.

the next morning, jeff acted like it never happened. he treated me exactly the same as he always had, not rude, but a little bit dismissive. i cried for days when he wasn't around, trying to figure out what i'd done wrong. and when he was around, i tried to show him as much adoration as i possibly could through eye contact only, in hopes that he would pay even a moments attention to me again.

i never did talk to him about it. but i never forgot it either. and i'll always have the memory of that one night when i got my first kiss and it was magical in every way.

Monday, July 18, 2011

date bag

a couple nights ago i was out with chris, celebrating my birthday & feeling pretty cute for a change. i may have just turned 36, but with proper makeup application & kind lighting, my face isn't so bad. you may have noticed my new picture there on the right & it's one i took of myself while we were in the car on the way out to eat. i had to get it before my makeup started to melt off or my hair had a chance to go flat or i was in the vicinity of food which would, no doubt, be spilled on my ample bosom. i've concluded that if you don't take your own picture on those days when you feel kinda pretty, then all the pictures you'll have of yourself will be stupid ones from too far away or too close up or from a down-low kid view that gets way too many of the neck rolls.

but maybe i should confess that i've just learned how to use the "re-touch" tool on picasa (free photo editing program) and i kinda did a touch up on my face in a few spots. ever since i learned how to use it, i've been removing zits, weird tooth color, neck fat, chest wrinkles, shiny face spots, my neck mole. the list of ways that i can improve myself in pictures is endless & i have great fun seeing the years, fat & ugly melt away with a few clicks in the right places.

i'm having an internal debate with myself as to whether i should post the before & the after to let you see the magic that is photo editing and re-touching. hmmm....

oh heck, now that i've admitted to doing it, of course i have to show both pictures.




saturday, chris & i left brooke with my parents overnight so that we could have whatever kind of date night we wanted & we went a bunch of different places, eating, drinking, movie watching, shopping. we had a good time & i decided after we were mostly done going & doing that i wanted to see if i could find a little pouch sort of thing to go in the new purse my sister just gave me. the only thing still open was walmart and there was one close by (aren't they always nearby? they're everywhere now.) so away we sauntered to wallie world.

i found the perfect little bag that would fit just the few little things i needed to contain, like tums, tylenol and toothpaste. i got it to the register & the young cashier girl rang it up & said, "ooo, this came up as a 'date bag', for when you go on your dates." i glanced quickly at chris and then said to her, "don't tell my husband, but i need it for when i'm going out. it's the perfect size for my lip gloss, rubbers and some fresh panties." 

that girl's mouth dropped open and she stared at me like great scandal had just been committed. it was awesome.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

cat crazy

our house is filled with kitty drama. actually, ever since that dang stray showed up last april i've had far more cat shenanigans than i ever planned or really wanted. the stray had a litter of 4 in brooke's playhouse last may and of course we eventually had to let brooke bring one inside to keep for her very own. that fluffy grey ball of cuteness is nim. or as we often refer to her, nimcompoop.


nim has been a trouble maker ever since she came into our house. she harasses our older cat, sophie to no end and now that we've moved, she has a new cat buddy to pester. meet mooch. he belongs to my in-laws and is a very good natured, even keel kind of guy. he used to be a fighter back when he was younger, but he seems to have retired in his old age and now he lives for tuna and naps.


from their very first meeting back 5 weeks ago, nim has been in mooch's face, chasing him and annoying him to no end. he usually just runs away from her and cowers, but this week i've seen the tables turn. you've got to understand ~ mooch weighs 21 pounds and nim weighs 7, but she has clearly been the bully in this scenario. i've been wishing that mooch would give rotten lil nim the beatin' of the week and show her that this was his house first & he is not to be trifled with.

finally it seems like moochy is coming out of retirement and he's been putting her in her place with a speed slap here and a chase there. and now that he's been fighting back rather than running off, i've seen them start to hang out and play together. i wonder if he'll lose some weight now that he's got a sneaky nimburger chasing around with him all the time. maybe i should hire someone to chase me around in the hopes of reducing my waistline.

there's no snuggling amongst our three kitties, but they are learning to share space and co-habitate peaceably most of the time now.

sophie tries to stay out of the fray & naps upstairs in the window seat on a giant pillow. yes, she looks just like mooch, only about half his size.


nim rips and romps around the house, looking for fun in all the wrong places.



and mooch sits by the door, begging to go out.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

hoots ahoy

we're living back in the city where we lived when brooke was born, nearly 9 years ago now & we've been wandering around, seeing the sites & reacquainting ourselves with the lay of the land. today as we drove up to a huge outlet mall, i had a flashback to a trip we made there when brooke was only a couple weeks old and we were taking her to the mall for the first time.

it was a weekend and the mall was crowded, like it always is. i was on a mission to find a couple more nursing bras because i only had two & neither of them fit well.

*note to my male readers: i realize you are of the wiener persuasion, so i ran this story past my husband first to see if it was too gross or TMI (who am i kidding, i still would have posted it, but i just wanted to see if the mens would likely be distressed by it.) and he told me it was okay & not too icky or sexy for my manly readers. let's carry on now, shall we?

i tried to wake my sleepy little dumpling head baby up so that she'd chow down on my feed bags before i went bra shopping. for any of you who haven't nursed kids, you might not realize that nursing boobs are similar to water balloons and when the baby eats, they deflate somewhat & get softer. when some time has passed since a feeding, they get very full & hard and often painful because they're containing a few ounces of milk that's just waiting for a hungry baby to gobble it up.

i knew that brooke should eat before we went into the mall so that i'd be able to shrink the breasticles down a bit before i started trying on bras. alas, brooke had other ideas. she was a hardcore fan of napping back then & there wasn't much i could do to wake her up when she was in one of her serious comas of slumber. i stripped her down to her diaper and held her in front of the A/C vents, but still no luck. no amount of jiggling, tickling or noise could rouse her, not even when i aimed my teat & shot her in the face with a stream of milk like a dairy bazooka.

i didn't have all day to mess with the babe, so i tucked my milk balloon back into my crappy nursing bra & headed into the mall. i hunted around for a while before locating the little boutique where they sold a decent selection of bras, including those of the nursing flap variety. i selected a couple different styles in a couple different sizes, left brooke in the stroller with her daddy & headed into the dressing room in hopes of finding something that would fit.

it wasn't until i got into the fitting room and stripped off my shirt that i realized just how full my jugs were. this did not bode well for trying on bras since the lady lumps were already in pain. but i had a task to be completed & not being one to shirk my responsibilities, i proceeded as planned.

i quickly peeled off my uncomfortable bra, but no sooner did i get it off than my cans exploded like a double headed sprinkler. liquid was shooting in all directions, coating the mirror, walls and carpet with hot milk. nips are tricky little buggers because they don't have just one exit hole for all that dairy delight, they have lots of holes coming from the various milk ducts within the breast, so it was completely out of control for a couple seconds before i figured out what i could use to clamp them down and absorb that excess milk.

i was still an inexperienced first time mommy, so i didn't have enough supplies with me in my purse and i'd left the diaper bag with chris & brooke who had left the store. once i'd filled up the little breast pads i was wearing & the couple stray tissues i dredged up from the depths of my purse, i was at a loss for what to do next. i stood there with my hands clamped over my boobs, milk running down my stomach almost in a panic trying to figure out what my next move should be.

i'm embarrassed to admit that i decided the best course of action at that juncture was for me to just lean forward and let them spray until the pressure decreased enough that they weren't free flowing any more. so there they hung, like 2 punching bags with multiple little jets leaving warm milky puddles in the carpet. i was sick with the shame of my act and at the same time tremendously relieved to get some of that irritating liquid out of there. i was bent at the waste, hair hanging down, my cheeks flushed red, but a little smile on my face at the relief i felt to have the pressure in my chest relieved.

i didn't know how to apologize to the sales staff or explain what had happened in that dressing room. i also didn't know how to get out of the store without potential leakage all over my shirt even after i thought my nips were mostly done leaking. so i stuffed my old, wet bra into my purse & then put on 2 of the bras that i'd brought in to try on. i ripped off the tags and took them to the counter to pay for them and didn't provide the woman with any information as to why i was at the register with 2 tags, but no bras in sight.

after that, i hightailed it out of the store, collected my little family & went home. i never told that whole story to anybody before today, but sometimes it's good to come clean. and if you were one of the employees of that store, i'm very, very sorry for my actions that day. and i hope you were able to get the smell out of that rug eventually.


Photobucket

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

catch up and poo

for those of you who may be wondering, i did get pablo back whole & pointy. i had to demand proof of life before i paid the ransom & since i was pretty sure that the picnapper wasn't much of a newspaper reader, i requested that i get a photo of pablo with a fresh vegetable. this is what i got on my phone. doesn't that file look deadly?


after that, of course i had to rush in to rescue the little guy, but i was barely in the nick of time as you can see here.


i think some of us were just glad to have something other than funeral arrangements to think about & laugh over that day. and pablo was returned to my purse pocket with a smile on his face.



our trip up north was actually really great. i got a chance to see & visit with so many of my relatives who i rarely get to see or enjoy and if you were a neighbor who didn't know better, you might have thought we were all gathered for a party rather than a funeral because of how much laughing and story telling we did out in front of grandma's house. there were certainly plenty of sad moments, but we all seemed to agree that we should focus on the good rather than the sad.

brooke came down with strep while we were up there & spent the last 3 days feeling really bad most of the time. she slept a lot & barely ate anything. i'm not sure if you know this or not, but strep often comes with stomach problems as well as throat pain & fever.

having stomach problems while traveling in a car for 14 hrs really isn't a great way to spend the day. yesterday morning started out rough with some distressing belly behavior on brooke's part while we were still at the house. then we got everything loaded into the car, including our cranky selves at 8am and went straight to a grocery store to buy some special hot dogs for my sister back home. i'm not sure what's special about them, but it was important enough that we carried a cooler with us just to be able to cart them home again.

mom & i ran in the front door of the store ready to grab up the dogs & hit the road. we asked the employee at the front door to direct us to the biggest packs of hot dogs the store carried. we bought up 10 lbs of them & scooted back out the door again, feeling good that we hadn't wasted much time. when my dad drove around to pick us up he told me that brooke had unfortunately had a little accident while we were in the store. ooookaaay. so much for making this a quick stop.

i dug through the trunk in an effort to locate some clean shorts & undies for my poor sick girl & then ran back into the store, pulling her by the hand. i asked the same employee for directions to the bathroom and then we marched our smelly parade over to the ladies room.

i was in the process of cleaning and bagging things up in the stall when i talked to my mom on her phone & decided that things would be easier if we had some moist, flushable butt wipes. i didn't want to leave brooke alone, so mom came back into the store & asked that same friendly employee for directions to the booty wipe aisle. she went through the line with her second purchase in 5 minutes, told the cashier she wouldn't need a bag & then walked straight past her & into the bathroom.

while we were hanging around the ladies room, we discussed what we were going to do to prevent the whole trip from becoming a day-long car pooping bonanza. she's too big for diapers or pull-ups. too small for depends. oh wait, there's a type of pull-ups now available in bigger kid sizes for those who still have bed wetting issues. that sounded like the perfect plan that would give us all peace of mind & butt and hopefully enable our trip to be less stressful for all involved.

so mom ran back out to the lady by the door & asked for directions to the diaper aisle. of course she then toted her $15 pack of giant pull-ups into the bathroom right away, no doubt leaving the helper & the cashier wondering and concerned about what the heck was happening in their bathroom. in the span of 10 minutes we went through that front door 4 times, each time needing something very specific and progressively alarming.

in the end the pull ups weren't needed, but at least we had that peace of mind knowing we were covered just in case. and we all had a really good laugh in the car, telling our sharting stories and imagining what the grocery store employees were telling their friends later that day.