Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

is it just me?

Is this disturbing?

If not, you can whip one up and dazzle everyone at your next dinner party.

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Give your kid some street credit, wear Appaman

Street credit is extremely important where I'm from, especially if you're born to a mother with inexplicable hair.

(Link via Budget Living Magazine)

Dear God I Love Texas.

This may strike Texans as the lamest thing I could be feeling this much joy about but we had dinner at Pappasito's tonight and I think I would like to bathe in Pappasito's Salsa for the rest of my vacation. I would like to spend the next 4 days soaking in salsa. I would like to take a tub of the stuff home and fill my bathtub up with it and soak in it for a few days once I get back to my own house.

Okay, not just soaking in salsa, I'd also like to have a big fat Pappasito's margarita in my hand while I soak in the salsa.

Eating the salsa reminded me of my first trip to Texas. A trip which involved a visit with my now loathsome sister in law but which also involved lots and lots of Pappasito's salsa. Tonight, even though Pants isn't with me on this trip, the minute I started eating those chips and drinking those magarita's I remembered that trip.

The trip where we woke up at 9 am, had sex, slept until noon then headed out for chips and salsa and margarita's. Then we'd head back to bed for a little more sex and a big fat nap and then we'd get up and repeat the whole process. For 7 whole days.

sigh......

My current trip involves a lot less sleep and a lot less sex but the salsa and margarita's I ate tonight took me right back to that amazing vacation with my favorite person whom I also have sex with. I almost forgot about the fact that I've been sleeping in the same bed as my restless children for the last 5 nights and I'll be sleeping with them for the next 4 nights.

I can't believe we even have restaurants in Michigan that claim to be 'Tex-Mex'. I don't know how I'll ever go there and keep a straight face as I order their version of "Tex-Mex".

It seems a little ridiculous doesn't it?

Next up on the 'Texas Margarita's And Memories Tour': Chuy's

San Antonio Zoo

Two of our favorite things about San Antonio Zoo:

Some feline sort of animal EATING A SQUIRREL and looking very happy to be doing so. Madison was more than horrified....I told her it was a stuffed animal.

Also, a sunbathing monkey with his penis hanging out and then, when he noticed I was looking at him he sat up and began making lewd gestures at me. (I took a picture and when I get home I promise to share this magic moment)

Who knew Texan monkeys were so rude?

Suggestions

May I suggest?

Link via, some kind soul I have forgotten....many apologies

A Senseless Act.

I have done such a horrible thing to my hair.

It started as a mushroom, a horrible mushroom. I knew it was a bad haircut when I left the salon feeling like a PTA mom from hell. My hair was so big, big and mushroom-like. I barely recognized myself and was overcome with a desire to stage a hostile take over of my local chapter.

I lived with it but after a week I still found myself walking around saying to myself: 'I have a mushroom head, I have a mushroom head....' It became fairly unbearable, the desire to take over the PTA, coupled with the constant 'I have a mushroom head' thoughts.

So I decided to have it 'fixed'. This haircut is so horrendous, there is literally no way to describe it. It defies explanation. I think the stylist may have been taking some controlled substance when she did this to me. I've tried to remain calm about it all...not having the energy to commit to a more typical 'Hair Trauma Meltdown'.

Like the one I had in second grade which involved hiding in my room and screaming I would never ever in one million years leave my bedroom again and coming to the dinner table with a grocery bag over my head.

Or the one I had in 10th grade, where the color went so wrong my hair fell off and I was left with a frizzy overprocessed mess. I cried for days and days after that one and probably should have been put on medication at that point when it became so clear my hair was the only thing keeping me stable.

I'm 30, I have two kids and I just don't have the energy to be that devastated by my hair.

However, I have been avoiding looking in mirrors. I have pulled out every single styling product in my linen closet to try and make some sense of this hair I have. There is no sense to be made of this hair. It's over.

Now I have so many different styling aids in this mess that any touching makes it fly out of control. As I type this I have a wing coming out of the eastern side of my hair, the back end is doing something I can't see but I do not like how it feels and the left side is feathering. Let me say that again: My Hair Is Feathering.

I knew it was pretty bad when Madison looked at me while hanging upside down and said,

'You know, your hair looks really nice when I look at it upside down'

Which is probably how the stylist was seeing my hair through her drug induced mania.

There's really nothing to be done about this monstrous hair I have...except wait. Usually I like to tell myself, 'The difference between a good and bad haircut is two weeks'

Two weeks is probably a little optimistic. I might have normal looking hair in about 6 months. For now I will have to endure the confused stares at this head of hair.

At the security checkpoint in the airport I had prepared myself for a full inquiry into the current state of my hair.

I walked through the metal detector and a 'Bad Hair' light went off and I was pulled to the side and questioned about what I had done, about why I had committed such a heinous act on my very own hair.

I was asked many tough questions about my hair. Like, Why? and Can you describe the 'mushroom head' and You thought this was an improvement? and Ma'am, your hair is feathering, did you realize that?

Tough questions I couldn't answer because like I said, it truly defies explanation.

I'm not sure it gets any better than this.

Sushi and Chocolate two of my favorite things combined to make something just slightly disturbing.

link via Not Martha

Contrast

I've decided to make up with Texas.

We had a little disagreement a few months back. But now I've decided I'll get over it.

Where I am.

Where I will be.

Of course I'll have to survive the travel time, alone, with two slightly tempremental children. This may look like no big deal but my children don't see things the way most people do. To them walking through that metal detector is very risky. Being swiped with the metal detecting wand is a dangerous proposition...and PLEASE don't ask my 5 year old to put her teddy bear on that conveyor belt. Tears are guaranteed.

Fun times!

The Starbucks Suggestion

Ive always been a bit of a complainer. I'm not sure I'd know what to talk about if I wasn't complaining about something. Even in the height of my happiness I have to find something to temper all that good feeling so that I'm still 'me'. Cynical.

I had a group of girlfriends, none had children. We'd go out and talk about dating (or relationships, in my case), sex (I was the only one having regular sex....but this was in the year after my son arrived, so not very often), and our work. We'd complain about each of these things on some level.

They complained about bad dates, in a way I'd do the same, but I was trying to date my husband while lugging around two small but demanding children.
They complained about not having sex, in a way I'd do the same, though I wasn't in the mood for a lot of 2001.
They complained about their jobs, in a way I'd do the same, only my job happens to be motherhood.

When someone asks, 'And, what do you do?' I generally prepare for one of the most annoying conversations of my Stay At Home life.

me: 'I'm at home with my kids.'

them: 'Well then you have the hardest job!

Here is where I smile and say:

'You have no idea.'

And this is also where they think:

'I just told her she has the hardest job, only I have no real idea at all what it is she does. But it would be really rude to say what I actually think she does...which involves a lot of nothing.'

I realize people are trying to be supportive but the truth is they really don't have a clue what my day looks like.

I mean sure, I sleep....more than any mother of 2 should reasonably expect to sleep. Sometimes I have playdates that involve bloody marys. Somedays I think how lucky I am to be here watching my kids grow up...how lucky I am I don't have a cubicle. How lucky I am to not have to deal with a boss I have no undying and passionate love for.

But then other days, my stay at home life is like a bad day at the office that never ends. It's relentless and brutal and involves a lot of other people's poop. Somedays I feel like I would rather chisel out my ear drums than listen to another ridiculous and entirely age appropriate set of questions, comments and whining.

Something Pants and I realized about a year ago, and forgive me if this seems far too simplistic an idea for us to have taken 4 years to figure out, but:

Somedays his job is harder and mine is easier, somedays my job is harder and his is easier and in the end it all balances out and they're both real jobs and they both have benefits and drawbacks and we both bring a huge part of the equation to the table.

It took us, parents who are living this dream, four years to realize this. It's really not surprising most people who don't have kids haven't figured it out yet and though they say they really 'admire' my choices and they have such 'respect' for the work I do....in reality they can't respect or admire my job until they are in the position to either do it or make the choice to not do it the same way I have chosen to do it (both equally respectable choices).

My single and childless girlfriends used to tell me all of the usual things about my job as a stay at home mother. They'd say things like, 'Oh, I could never do what you do....' but I came to realize shortly before we parted ways that really, they didn't quite get it and what I realize now is they couldn't really get it.

This moment of clarity came during a particularly hairy part of my job as stay at home mother. I was doing my fair share of complaining. We were all complaining. One was working long hours and not getting ahead, another was facing the constant stress of impending lay offs and the other was a contract worker not being hired and getting very frustrated with the situation.

I was feeling underpaid and overworked and kind of exhausted...just like they were.

The odd part was the helpful suggestion they made to 'fix' my predicament.

Them: 'You should get a job in the evenings and on the weekends working at Starbucks.'

It still stuns me to this day that they said this and truly saw no problem with it.

Let's try to reverse the reasoning on them to see exactly what irritated me beyond repair about this helpful suggestion.

Them: 'I am so tired of working so hard and being underpaid and underappreciated. My boss is a tyrant! I'm stressed out and exhausted. At the end of the day I can barely see straight, all I want to do is come home and watch tv and sleep until I have to get up and do it all over again.'

Me: 'Wow, I know how hard your job is. Hey, I have a great idea! How about you get another job you can do when you're done at that other job that has you totally falling apart and unhappy. That way you can race home from your first job to spend the evening doing another job and I'm sure then you'll be happier.'

I don't know...I just don't see it and I guess I felt a little misunderstood. Which really isn't surprising...since my girlfriends have not had kids and have no idea the relentless joys that await them as stay at home parents.

Someday, if they do have children, I hope they remember The Starbucks Suggestion and if they're feeling a little overwhelmed by working their asses off to raise their kids 24 hours a day 7 days a week, I hope they'll consider slinging coffees in their 'downtime'....because really that's the secret to happiness as a stay at home mother.

More work. Well, that and great friends who are always there to help you out!

i need pants.

If God loved me he'd send me these pants.

And if he really liked me he'd send them in a size 6, and he'd shrink my ass so I could actually fit into them.

2004 is about seven weeks old and it's not getting easier to live within my means. I thought it would take about 6 weeks to feel like this new fiscal responsibility was fitting me. I thought it couldn't be harder than taking on motherhood, which took about six weeks to fit.

This new way of life is fitting me about as well as a pair of size 6 pants would.

All Over.

I've decided I'm done being upset about no more babies in this house.

I mean, the desire lives on and no matter how unappealing her writing tries to make it, it's still somehow oddly appealing. Even though it makes no sense, there is still such a pull to create new life. To grow this little family of ours. To see what other amazing little person who swears like a trucker we could grace this world with.

But you know, I'm just going to have to stop thinking about it like that. It's silly to let my mind wander there....to that secret kicking from the little person growing inside...to that lovely newborn baby smell...to that easy to please infant who smiles just because you've miraculously reappeared from behind that blanket....

No, I'm not going to let my mind wander there. It's over. We were rendered 'Sperm Free In 2003' and that is that. I'd have to face this mourning of the 'Baby Years' eventually. I could put it off, I love procrastination, but at some point....after 2 kids or six or, God Help Me, 15....I would have to face this sadness. Right now is as good a time as any.

So what is actually good about that choice?

Well, here's a little list I've been working on.

1) I will never again have to purchase or, more to the point, have reason to use this.

2) I gave away this monster and I will never again have to scream in the mall, 'LOOK OUT! I MAKE WIDE TURNS!!!'

3) I will never again find my breasts attached to heavy machinery, while making appointments in my day planner. I'm all for multi tasking but that just has no appeal to me at all.

4) If I am awake at 2 am and really upset about it, it will probably be because it's last call, not because my child is trying to kill me in a slow and ominous sleep deprivation plot.

5) 'Buh-Bye' Postpartum Hormones!

6) Farewell bottles!!

7) No more 9 month stints as 'Designated Driver'.

8) I never have to try to look 'happy' with a baby strapped to my body.

9) Cocktail hour, every hour!

10) I don't have to leave the house for a few errands with a suitcase. I can now carry my little handbag and there's only a wallet, lipstick and just a couple of toy cars and a container of play-doh for emergency entertainment at restaurants.

11) I've been changing diapers for the last 5 years of my life. The end is not here this minute, but I can see it blazing over the horizon. This summer I will be free of my diaper bondage.

Looking over the list, it logically makes sense. I mean, of course I don't want another baby! For God's Sake, just punch me in the face repeatedly and I'll get the same effect.

But not really.

Odd how all the bad stuff gets balanced by that amazing little person...no sleep, hormones, diaper bondage just doesn't seem to matter as much when faced with this.

I suppose this is easier for me to say since I got 10 hours of sleep last night and I already have two great kids and there's really no physical way I can have another baby. But damn it this is hard.

A few very random thinks for the weekend.

2004 was declared The Year Of Fiscal Responsibility.

It's been going fairly well, I mean as well as it can go for a woman who's gotten quite used to living well above her means. An unfortunate result of all this budget living is my obsession with the grocery store circulars.

Since grocery money is the only money I can spend while being fiscally responsible, it's the only shopping related joy left in my life.

Last week I found Campbell's Chunky soup for .99 and I had a coupon, and the store had double coupons...let's just say, I got a bargain. It was a bargain that left me giddy and kept me up later that night thinking about how much I saved on the soup. I told anyone who would listen about the great deal I got on the soup. When Pants ate the soup, I reminded him of that awesome deal I got on the soup.

And I am serious.

Another reason I like saving all the grocery money: all that money I've saved can be repurposed. I get a set amount each week and if I make it stretch I can get really expensive and frivolous shampoo.

So that's a good thing, but I'm still a little scared of my affinity for the grocery store flyers.

Grapes are 84 cents a pound this week, and don't even get me started on the pork tenderloin....

...

I've been thinking a lot about babies lately. My baby boy is going to be three next month and I'm always taken aback when I feel sad to see my kids growing. Because, basically, I suck at raising babies. I'm a lot better with kids who can talk and who don't require a whole lot of paraphenalia to travel.

I also adore sleeping, and babies don't seem to have the same voracious appetite for sleep I do. At least, they don't have the same time frame for sleeping I do. This makes us kind of incompatible.

But still...I'm feeling a little wistful about the passing of babies in my life.

I've decided if I could give birth, spend those first 2 weeks in a blissful 'Baby Honeymoon'. That time period where you are so high from giving birth and seeing that perfect little person you grew and you're just flying high right over your hormones and the not sleeping so well and the adjustment to this new life you have with a new person to accomodate. I love that part of having a baby.

If I could give birth and have the 'Baby Honeymoon' and then sleep for the next 5 months only to wake up when my baby is six months old. At six months when they start to look really chubby and well formed and they smile and laugh with that giggly belly laugh and develop little personalities and they start thinking about crawling, but they'll still sit in your arms and watch the world.

Right around 6 months you can start training them to perform all those silly tricks that make you say to your spouse: 'This Is The Smartest Baby Ever!'

If I could have a baby honeymoon and then sleep until they're six months old, I would have had at least 2 more kids. But as it happens, it really wouldn't work that way.

It's good to have dreams.

...

I'm also knitting a sweater for a friend's new baby. Usually when I knit a sweater for a baby, I am frantically finishing it when the baby arrives, even though I started the sweater when I found out about the pregnancy about six or seven months before delivery. I usually finish the baby sweater at the very last possible moment the baby will be able to wear it before growing right out of the thing. Because, although babies are small they grow very fast. I'm not saying that in a rhetorical sense, I mean they grow so fast that if we kept up that rate of growth throughout our lives we'd all be 6 foot tall five year olds.

I thought I'd outsmart myself this time and decided to knit a sweater for the new baby, I started it about 7 months before the baby was due, but this time I planned ahead and made the 12 month sized sweater rather than the newborn sized sweater.

I'm still struggling to finish the sweater and I'm getting worried my little trick isn't going to work. So next time I'm going to start knitting at the same time but I'll plan on making the sweater large enough for an 11 year old. Well maybe I should just make it adult sized because really my rate of knitting isn't getting any faster and these babies aren't really getting a whole lot smaller.

Or maybe I should just stick to knitting scarves...do babies wear scarves?

It's all about the love

Even though it was a balmy 25 degrees today, it's still pretty cold. Cold enough that there isn't a lot of outdoor playtime going on. It's only February and we have at least another two months of pretty frigid weather ahead and we're all pretty fucking tired of being stuck inside.

We're so desperate that we're taking our children to a dirty and disgusting place tomorrow night....it's called 'Caesarland'. I like what Victor has to say about it, and that's actually what my 5 year old would say about it if she could design a website.

In case you aren't familiar with Caesarland, think Chuck E Cheese only just a little more disgusting.

It's like my daughter's version of a strip club. She gets all crazy in there and like a pathetic middle aged man giving strippers all his money, trying to earn some attention from the naked ladies, she keeps stuffing tokens into machines trying to earn enough tickets to get a prize'...which is always some disappointing piece of crap...never the big stuffed animal they display that requires 4000 tickets. Instead she marches up to the counter and we count her tickets and she realizes her choices are:

a) a sticker stating 'Girlz Rule!'

b) a plastic spider

c) a tootsie roll

It's really kind of heartbreaking to see the letdown on her face. I mean, not heartbreaking enough to make me just buy the stupid 4000 ticket stuffed animal with plain old cash, but still.

What's more heartbreaking to me is all the children in the place, running around like wild animals. All those snotty noses. All that drool. Touching everything...spreading infection everywhere.

As I've said before, I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that kids get sick, but remember I'm still regrouping from my feverish night with my Sinister Right Tonsil. All those infected children could bring my tonsil back up in about 2 seconds, in fact just thinking about it is making the tonsil pulse a little.

I wish we didn't have to go. I really do. I wish we lived somewhere that didn't require us to remain enclosed in our house for a large part of the year. I wish we lived in a climate that allowed play equipment to be outside, where the sun might bake off some of the germs.

Outside where it wouldn't smell like sweaty 8 year old boys. Outside where it wouldn't feel like the walls were closing in around me.

Caesarland would be so much better if it was outside...but then it would be called a park and I wouldn't have anything to complain about.

We're going to celebrate Valentine's Day with our kids. What better way to show our love for them than to endure something we can't stand so they can be happy?

It would be like if I agreed to take a motorcycle trip with my husband...a purely selfless act since I would rather throw myself off a moving motorcycle than ride on a motorcycle for more than 5 miles. It would be like if Pants agreed to buy me this even though driving that kind of vehicle around would make his testicles shrivel up and fall off...he'd do it just to make me happy.

This is the kind of love we give our children by taking them to Caesarland.

Feverish Thoughts About My Sinister Right Tonsil.

Last night I struggled to sleep through the searing pain in my throat and the choking sensation of my Right Tonsil trying to kill me by squeezing my airway closed. While I did all that I had a lot of incoherent thoughts about my Sinister Right Tonsil.

I imagined my Right Tonsil became a guest author at Suburban Bliss. It wrote about all the fun it has making my life a living hell every few months. How it slowly chokes me and makes me feel like vomiting. I imagined it wrote about how I used it's unusual size to my advantage as a child, telling my mother I had a sore throat....even when I didn't. She'd take one look at my throat at my large Right Tonsil and agree to my demand for a day off school. Nevermind, it's always slightly enlarged.

My feverish and Nyquil induced thoughts then moved onto imagining my tonsil as various states. After seriously considering California, I decided Texas is more like my Right Tonsil. Large.

Then I spent a little more time imagining how hard it would be to perform a tonsilectomy in my bathroom. But then I realized the only slightly sharp implement in the bathroom really isn't very sharp. There are the knives in the kitchen, but then I'd have to sharpen them. I did take a seminar in knife sharpening when I worked at Crate and Barrel but it was a fairly complex process and not one that would be wise to undertake after 2.5 full doses of Nyquil. Well, and then if sharpening knives is too complex for a Nyquil dosed person, I'd say a tonsilectomy wouldn't be wise either.

My tonsils are going to have to go. I never want them to look like this, ever again. I've been researching the procedure and I have to say, 'Oliver's Tonsilectomy' looks pretty good to me. He had his own bed and his own tv and they even have video games.

I hope I can sleep a little better tonight because everything I have just written is scaring the shit out of me. Damn You To Hell Right Tonsil.

And then...as though I ordered it...

I boastfully mentioned how we've avoided illness so far this winter.

And I knew it was a bad idea to say it out loud, but I said it anyway.

And God Damn it if my throat isn't on fire and my kids don't have the sniffles.

Thank the Lord in Heaven Above I didn't take the kids to a Moms Group Outing on Monday.

Just imagine the dreadful germs I may have exposed someone else's child to! Imagine the pregnant women I could have infected!

I am not what you call 'Pet Friendly'

Just when I thought the 'Animal Lover' vibe couldn't get more intense at Monday Night Knitting Class, it got so much more bizarre I almost can't believe what I saw and heard this evening.

You may recall this conversation some nice, but insane, ladies in my knitting class had. It was all about how much they love their pets and how their pets seem to control them with their eyes, those eyes that just get you.....Right. Here.

You know?

My answer is, no. I don't.

Tonight this lady comes in and tells us her cats attacked her. Attacked her. One cat got tangled up in a grocery bag handle and while trying to help dislodge the cat from the tangled mess it freaked out and bit her. Right through her ear. She had a big gaping wound.

During this scene the other cat saw it's opportunity and bit right through the skin of her calf. She claims the second cat was defending the first cat....I know better. They smell weakness. There were marks.

I assumed she must have gotten rid of these homicidal cats.

She looked at me like I was the crazy one. As though I was the one who decided to keep a pair of homicidal cats in my home.

The thought of what those cats did to her, makes me want to set my cats free. Ever since I walked in the door I feel like they're watching me. Waiting for the moment I let my guard down.

There is no fucking way in this lifetime I will keep any animal that turns on me for no good reason.

Granted, someday my children will be teenagers and I won't be able to set them free when they turn on me...but cats? Oh yes, I will.

No Jury Would Convict Me

If at 10:35 this morning I had removed my latex cleaning gloves and killed my darling husband with my bare hands...no one would have blamed me.

While busily scrubbing sink with Soft Scrub, after scrubbing the toilet with bleach and scrubbing the bathtub with a variety of products, my husband...the man I've chosen to spend the rest of my life with, opened the bathroom door, saw my hands covered with water and Soft Scrub and proceeded to say this:

"Uh...the cat really smells like shit, do you think you can, you know, clean his ass off?"

He let the cat into the bathroom, implying I should drop everything to perform my Cinderella-like task of wiping my cat's ass.

Because my life isn't focused around shit enough. I wipe child asses, I monitor the poop coming from my son and I clean litter boxes...and I also have to wipe my stupid cat's ass because he doesn't understand how cats are actually clean animals. He missed that news somewhere.

When I held up my rubber gloves coated with Soft Scrub and asked why, just this once, my darling husband couldn't perform the task...he actually said:

"I don't know how."

As though this is some skill I've been carefully trained to perform. As though it isn't simply that it's a disgusting task, it's that he hasn't had the proper training to perform such a specialized task.

Funny because I don't remember going to school or even a day long seminar and somehow this task and all shit related tasks in this house have fallen on my shoulders. I don't know when or how it happened, but I definitely do not like it.

Challenge Accepted.

The Blurb/Doocery family has welcomed a baby frog into their family.

Blurbomat claims to have posted the 'most unflattering photo of a newborn ever'

I beg to differ.

I think you'd be hard pressed to convince me there is a worse photo of a newborn in this world after looking at this picture of my little girl just moments after a violent delivery following about 30 hours of birth trauma.

Dooce claims her baby looks remarkably like a frog, I think my adorable baby looked a lot like a Sumo Wrestler covered in various bodily fluids.

Funny thing was, after 30 hours of labor, a pair of forceps and about 249 stiches in my vagina, I really truly thought she was the most well formed newborn I had ever seen...until I saw the pictures. I also thought I looked pretty good for a woman who just gave birth...until I saw the pictures.

In fairness, after the physical trauma of birth healed on my poor baby, she actually was kind of cute and also really hairy.

In other exciting news, the first of our close friends to have children delivered a little girl yesterday at 10am. She was born after a quick labor and has a coating of bright red hair on her little head. I hope she's just a little more photogenic as a newborn than my own little girl was.

**Update: So far, she's off to a great start!

A 20 Year Old German Shepherd

My 5 year old likes to play this game. It's an imagination type of game and I really suck at those types of games.

Our attempts at Barbie have gone quite horribly.

Her: You be Mermaid Barbie.

Me: Okay.

pause...

Her: Make her talk Mom!

Me: Okay. 'Hello, how are you?'

Her: 'I'm fine.'

Me: ....

Her: Mom, you have to say more!!

Me: I'm totally out of ideas here.

In this newest game, the 5 year old is a dog...however there's a very long set up and it's all said in a very rushed and excited tone as though each of these details is of extreme importance to the success of this game.

Her: Okay, pretend I'm a dog. A german shepherd. Okay?...and my name is Lisa. And I'm 20. And I wear a red collar. Okay and it has a heart on it. Okay?

Victim of Game, Pants or myself: Uhm...okay.

What happens next is the part that makes it my 'Favorite' game. The victim of this game is either forced to be the 'Mean Owner' and yell at 'Lisa, the 20 year old german shepherd with a red collar with a heart on it' for a variety of bizarre offenses I can't imagine I'd ever yell at a dog for. OR the victim is forced to be barked and whined at for the next 20 minutes, ensuring my children will never, ever have a dog while living in my home.

Sick Policy

Every year we go through this in my little mother's group. The 'friendly' reminders:

"If your child is sick, feverish, lethargic, seeping fluids-nasal or otherwise, please do not come to events. It is dangerous for our young babies and pregnant mothers to contract some of the illnesses floating around."

There seems to be 'some people' (I would call it one person in particular who is almost as anally retentive as I am) who complain about this issue fairly often since every single newsletter and meeting is punctuated by this reminder.

The last reminder included some added information...things like, 'if you suspect your child has possibly come in contact with any illness, but is not showing symptoms, please do not attend functions'.

(This is amusing since this would mean no one ever attends another event. Ever.)

I'm waiting for the next 'friendly' reminder outlining protocol for attending events: "If your child has ever been around any other child and may possibly be carrying any virus at all, please put your child in a plastic bubble, or consider liberally coating your child in Purell before attending one of our events."

Perhaps I only feel this way because my kids haven't gotten sick yet this year (knock on wood). Maybe I feel this way because I've never been able to muster up the strength to disinfect everything my children come in contact with. Maybe I just thought I'd build up my kid's immune systems so they don't catch every single virus they ever come in contact with from now until forever. Maybe I'm just one lazy half assed mother, but I know one thing for sure:

Kids Get Sick

They get sick if you put them in a bubble and spray them in the eyeballs with Lysol. They get sick if you send out notice after notice to your mother's club reminding them about keeping their germs away from your child. They get sick if you let them gnaw on the handle of the shopping cart and play in the nasty ball pit at the McDonald's Playland.

Kids get sick if you simply live your life.

It's the nature of the beast. Every single day your child comes in contact with illness, and either their little bodies fight it off, or they get another flu or cold or whatever. It happens if you attend your mother's club or Gymboree classes or you go to the grocery store. Sometimes kids are carrying germs and they don't show a single symptom and they play with other kids who pick up those same germs. Sometimes kids touch a door handle and someone has just sneezed into their hand and touched that same door handle and there is not a single fucking thing you can do about it.

No one is purposely getting your child sick...it's just that germs are around and you're around too. If you're that worried about staying healthy....stay home and never ever leave, because that is the only way you're going to avoid any and all germs.

Although, if your spouse works outside the home, you might need to ask him to move out....or at least send him a 'friendly reminder' about not bringing illness into the home.

"Dear Spouse, please help us protect the health and wellness of our young child and me, a pregnant mother. If you feel lethargic or have a fever or if there is any possibility whatsoever you have come in contact with any illness at all, please do not enter this home."

Chatter

I saw the doctor today for a little physical and a 'schmear. It's one of my favorite times of year....getting a Pap Smear is really close to the top of my short list of Things I Like To Pay A Babysitter For So I Can Have Time For Myself.

I love when the doctor says those four special words: 'Scoot Down A Bit'.

Actually, I'm being sarcastic. I don't like getting a Pap Smear and I simply endure it because cervical cancer is pretty close to the top of my short list of Things I'd Like To Avoid At All Costs.

While I'm enduring a pap smear, I really, really don't want to talk. Especially not about Janet Jackson's boob.

The nurse and the doctor just kept talking as though my vagina had become a 'water cooler' of sorts and they'd gathered around to shoot the breeze.

It was unnerving.

I didn't know exactly how to tell them their chatter was making it very hard for me to leave my body and go to my happy place.

I've decided I like my gynecology a lot like my Nicer, Funnier Sister In Law likes her religion.

Quiet, dry and impersonal.

How to tell if someone really doesn't like you.

If someone sends your child a lovely gift and the box comes filled with festive paper shreds, the only explanation is they hate you and want to drive you into the depths of insanity as you find paper shreds throughout your house for several days.

You pick them up, there's more. You vaccum, there's more. You go to bed and they've copulated and multiplied under your covers. You hear your cats making that annoying sound they do when they're chewing something they shouldn't....and it's the God Damn Paper Shreds.

Indeed, someone really doesn't like me.

Uh, oops?

In the last 2 days my search hits have increased by 50%. Someone had suggested that the writing 'playing bongo drums on another woman's ass' was going to get me Google hits.

It wasn't that term that has given me all these hits. Instead it's something I'd never even heard of...until yesterday when I started to wonder why on earth 50 people were landing at my site after searching for 'Sexual Snowblowing'.

You can research for yourself....but it has nothing to do with offering sexual favors in exchange for clearing a sidewalk with a snowblower.

I do still have one question. Why the sudden interest? Was it mentioned on 'Jerry Springer' last week or 'The Real World'? Are people just really bored as winter has set in...looking for new uses for that brand new snowblower they picked up at Sears last week?

I'm confused and just a little bit disturbed.