And then I thought I died.

I got all excited and happy that I was back and then, like all things, fate slapped me around a bit and showed me who's boss.  I'll give you a clue, it's not me.  Gracie came down with the stomach bug.  Now for those of you who have stuck with me for a while, you know how much I absolutely detest puke.  How much it makes me nervous, spin out of control and generally go insane.  And you also know how that is inversely proportional to how much my kids do, in fact, puke.

They puke all the fucking time.

Gracie was so sick, I had to have my neighbor pick up some meds for her to stop hurling, I couldn't get her to the corner Walgreen's without hurling.

It was either that or we were trudging down to the Emergency Department to get an IV.  For seven hours, we'd been sitting next to each other with a bucket so she could spew.  Seven long, horrible, frigging hours.  In that time frame she nailed me in the face and at that point I knew it was over.  My only thought was, "Innoculation complete."

I Cloroxed my face, mouth, neck and even my tongue for good measure.

And she got better.  A day went by and no one got sick.  I didn't get sick.

I was happy, I thought I had beaten it.  And I got cocky.  I was all, "Suck on that norovirus!  You were on my face and I beat you.  I win!  I'm a God."

Only I wasn't.  

I got sick.

One minute I was fine and the next, well, I wasn't.

And for the love of all things good and holy, I wished I was dead.  I have no earthly clue what that child brought into this house but I was sick.  Like, I was sicker than sick.  I threw out my back puking.  I stopped counting the number of times I barfed at sixty one.  My jaw popped out of socket and at no point did I think, "You know what, one day this will be funny and we are going to sit back and laugh and laugh and laugh."

Bait and switch.  Look at the pretty ocean while I talk about puke. 

And I'll just fast forward through all the gruesome details because they were flat out disgusting.  Now I'm up and amongst the living wondering where in the hell two good days went and what in the hell happened to my house.  It was like our toy closet blew up and all the kids were sitting in the middle of it having the times of their lives.  My husband and I clearly have two different views on how to keep the house.

And then I after another day I though I was in the clear.  No one was sick.  I got all cocky.  I thought, "I'm bad ass, I cleaned that norovirus out of this house.  I'm a cleaning God."

But I was wrong, I was so very wrong.

My husband got sick.

Then Alex got sick.

And now I must go and admit my defeat.


As an update, we now have the flu, or a cold that is suspiciously like the flu, in our house.  Alex is home from school telling me all about Minecraft.  Awesome.  

I'm trying to get back to everyone's blog but I'm having a really hard time.  Some of the word verification combinations are killing me!  I know spam is an issue but I can't seem to get past some of them and for that I'm sorry.   

My week off and what I did. And didn't do.

I took all of last week off from blogging so I could wrap my brain around what was going on in this house.  Aside from some personal angst, I've had the pleasure of trying to find a new Speech Language Pathologist and figuring out if we want to continue on with individual treatment or opt for more of a group setting for social skills.  Either way, I was given notice that our insurance has stopped paying and unloaded a $7,000 dollar bill on us as they seem to think all past Speech Therapy was/is unwarranted.

Thank you Cigna for your medical opinion.  And by that I mean Fuck You Dearly.

Yeah, we're fighting it.

Add to it, all the social skills group start at $50 per group.  That turns into $200/month to go weekly, which is recommended by our Child Psychologist, not our insurance company.  And, oh yeah, none of them take insurance because, as one lady said, "We decided it wasn't worth that fight a long time ago.  We take cash or nothing."

Yeah, we're so not going there.

Last I checked, I don't shit $200 dollar bills so I got a little overwhelmed.

And then I got sick.

Let me rephrase that.  Alex got sick and my last coherent thought before I came down with his infectious disease nightmare was, "I hate cleaning grout lines. Christ, is it hot in here???  I'm really hot."

And that is the last thing I really remember for the past six days.

Sure, I remember some things:

• Gracie eating cheese balls, cookies and trying to drink diet soda for lunch.
• Alex puking.  And puking.  And puking.
• Me getting a little jealous my six year old was holding down her diet soda. Note: I normally don't let the kids drink soda.  Ever.
• Laying on the sofa watching something about the American Beaver for about six hours straight and thinking, "Hey, I wonder when the kids are going to figure out there is more than one kind of beaver...."
• Looking at the thermometer thinking, "101.4?  Really??  You can do better than that."
• Realizing that, if I did indeed die, my kids would not notice till we ran out of cheese balls and/or soda.

At some point in my fever induced haze, He Who Shall Remain Nameless thought it was a good idea to download Plants Versus Zombies for the kid's i-Touches.  Now Lizzy has established Base Camp next to our bed because she's afraid, "Zombies are going to cut open mommy's head and drink her brains like soda....with a straw."  Her words, not mine.    

Base Camp.

At some other point, Lizzy graduated from Base Camp and move permanently into Camp I.  Camp I is my bed.  It was formerly known as mom and dad's den of occasional sex but now its become the catchall for anyone and everyone who wonders in at night.

While the love's not dead the sex certainly is.    

At some other point during some other night, I told the kids to go puke in their buckets and leave me sleep.  I don't actually remember this, but He Who Shall Remain Nameless tells me it happened.  He swears by it.  I'd swear he was lying but then the kids started telling each other, "Oh, bloody hell, go away and leave me be," and I knew right then and there he was telling the truth.

And I'm not endorsing Tylenol PM here but man, that shit really works. 

Anyway, right when I started feeling better I took Alex's i-Touch down the hallway to be charged but I lost hold of it.  

I LOST HOLD OF IT.  

Now this is where I have to back the story up a bit.  See, Alex is a biter.  He bites things and likes to chew on things.  Anything he can get into his mouth, he'll chew.  At one point in my delirium I thought he'd make a perfect beaver the way he chews things.  Yes, my mind is that fucked up.  Hey, I was sick, remember?

Anyway, he chews his clothes, pencils, pens, erasers, box tops, whatever he can get, he'll chew it.  That includes, but is not limited to, his i-Touch case.  So when I lost hold of his i-Touch, it had a good portion of the case chewed off.  

Shirt sleeve, chewed.

And that little i-Touch in a half mangled case didn't stand a chance against the tile floor.  It hit in the bottom corner and the glass shattered into a million little pieces.

Cue impending horror and panic attack. 

Remember how I said Alex was sick?  Well, he was.  And you all know how our kids can get when they're sick.  Alex was really quite subdued, probably because he had his i-Touch.  That is, until I dropped that damnable, infernal, horrible, fucking little i-Touch. 

i-Touch, 0.  Tile floor, 1.

Then he became the devil incarnate.  I have not been forgiven.  He has not forgotten.  He will not forgive or forget.  The devil incarnate I tell you.

He's gone on a rampage that makes all others pale in comparison.  I'd swear the paint actually went a shade lighter when that damn thing hit the floor and shattered.  He morphed into his evil little twin, damning me straight to hell with every glance, every look and every move.  Every pore of his little body has been seething anger and venom at my lack of fine motor skills.

I'm thanking my lucky stars he's not yet built a ray gun out of Lego's because if he had, he certainly would have blasted my ass into dust without thinking twice.  I suspect this will not stop till I fix that damn thing and even then the residual, I-hate-you-for-dropping-my-i-Touch, effect will be felt for some time.  

And I can't say that I blame him.  I feel for him.  I broke his Holy Grail and now we're all suffering.

And then, because I've not yet had enough drama in the last week my uterus decided to get in on all the action and I started my period.

And that, right there, is how I took a week off, only to get further behind than ever before.


Note:  Yes, you are supposed to be laughing with me at this.  Through it all, I've managed to get some of "me" back, if that makes any sense.  I'm not as worn out and exhausted as I was.  I don't really understand it, but there it is.  I'm feeling better and I'm running with it.   

Mom Fail

Just as a warning this is a little ranty today.  Shocking.  I know.

Its amazing how things can go along just great one minute and the next its all just blowing up in your face.  Blamo.  Lets just say I got mine yesterday.

Anyway, I'll get right down to business.

If another person asks me when "we're going for that forth child" I'm going to punch them in the throat.  Hard.

First off, it's none of your business.

Second off, as I told the lady who would not crawl out of my ass-hole about it yesterday that I did in fact have four children.  Since she clearly could not count to three and subtract one, she kept persisting.  So I got sick of it and blew a fuse.  After repeated attempts to change the subject and when she would not stop pressing the issue I told her again that I did have four children and, "my third one was up in my closet...in an urn."

Nothing kills a conversation like bringing up your dead baby.

And third, I don't want any more children.  Just the thought of another baby makes my ovaries shrivel up, my fallopian tubes close in on themselves and I spontaneously start cramping.  I am done with kids.  I am beyond done with kids.  I do not want any more.  Every night as I pop my pill I secretly thank those evil geniuses who found it their life ambition to mess around with hormones.

Furthermore, I do not feel the need to speak about this with random strangers at the pool.

I swear sometimes people are stupid.

It totally didn't help that Gracie has skipped her afternoon nap and instead went for a round of:  Lets-take-a-dump-and-smear-it-all-over-the-bedding-stuffed animals-blankets-crib-and-walls, cuz you know, mom'd like that.

So after I Cloroxed Gracie's ass and her room and anything else within a two foot arm span, I decided a change of scenery was in order.  Off to the pool we went.

As a side note, I really hope the chlorine level was up cuz I just couldn't bet the farm I got all that shit wiped off her.  What's that phrase, "you're never as clean as you think you are?"  Yeah, that came to mind.

As another side note, take a look at this plant.  Nothing gets your attention faster than your five year old daughter screaming at the top of her lungs at the park, "Hey Mom, I found a purple penis plant!!!"  

Ok, I'll cut her some slack on this one...

Anyway, I suppose I was itching to unload on someone and when this woman would not stop she got the brunt of it.

Add to it the kids have been biting at each other.  I left them alone for a few minutes in the basement and they were actually slapping the shit out of each other when I came back.  They were downright nasty with each other.  All of this in the time it took for me to use the facilities.

They were driving each other insane for the pure joy of it.

I went for almost the whole day trying to figure out why in the hell they were we having such a bad day and I couldn't figure it out.  And that in turn was pissing me off.

And then it hit me:  Alex caught the tail end of my conversation with the school nurse that I would drop off his asthma supplies and Lizzy's immunization record.

I dared utter the six letter word, school, in our house and he FLIPPED OUT.

Flipped his shit.  And you all know how that goes.  The rest of our day circled the drain.

Such a shame it took me till now to figure it all out.  I guess it falls under the category of Mom Fail.

My beautiful summer has been flushed down the toilet in under twenty seconds and my son's already twitching.

Damn it.

I've decided to link this to Shell's Pour Your Heart Out as I just posted on Monday with Shell about how great our summer has been going.  Amazing how quickly things change...

My daughter has crabs and I gave them to her.

What happens when you take your daughter to the beach last November and then again in June?  She becomes obsessed with crabs, that's what.  Lizzy's been begging me since last year to buy some crabs.  Last year, people, last year.

I may have stretched the truth an told her they were not the kind of animals that can be bought at the store.  I may, or may not, have further stretched the truth and stated, "They are sea creatures and we just can't get them here in Kansas."

So when we were talking about crabs again at lunch I had my old lines ready to go and was all set for the assault.  I was all ready with the standard, "You know baby, we'll see them the next time we go to Sanibel.  Crabs just don't do well here in the Midwest."  Or in my kitchen.   Eww Gawd, please not in the kitchen.  

This time however my mom was at the table.

But before I could get any of that out my mom answers Lizzy, "Oh, you're interested in Hermit Crabs?  Do you want to go and see some?  I didn't know that!  We can run down to PetSmart real quick.  Wanna come with Grandma?"

This is the time where we take a magical little interlude because all the neurons in my brain simultaneously stopped firing.  Call it shock, numb silence, whatever you will.  I stood there slack jaw just watching life move on around me.  And now we're back.....

Acckkk!  Wait.  Stop.  Shut up.

SHUT UP.  SHUT UP,  NOWWW.

I almost dive-bombed my mom from across the kitchen.

I had visions of tackling her football style.  Knocking her down and pounding her head into the ceramic floor for good measure.  Watching the fork pop out of her hand from the impact and making a perfect arc as it went sailing and then bouncing across the floor.  Anything just to get her to shut up about Hermit Crabs.

But it was too late.  

The damage was done.

I looked over at Lizzie.  I have never seen a smile so big.

"Hermit Crabs???  We can get some Hermit Crabs???"  Her smile lit up my night for three whole days.

The crabitat.  

So that is why I am now the proud owner of three Hermit Crabs.  One of which I know is going to die in the next forty-eight to seventy two hours and has a shell like a cow's head.  I know.  A cow head.  First off, how on earth am I going to replace that?!?  And second, who does that to a shell?  Turns it into a cow's head.  I feel sorry for the crab having to schlep that thing around.

I'm gonna bite ya.

And I'll let you in on a little secret about me.  Crabs scare me.  They freak me out.  Give me the hee-bee-jee-bies, the willies, whatever you call them.  They're like hard shelled spiders.  Tarantulas with shells.  Look at that thing up there.  It has claws, long spider-like legs and little beady eyes.  They scratch the sides of the aquarium going, "I'm a gonna get outta here and when I do I'm gonna bite ya.  Your food sucks and I'm gonna pinch you for it.  And tell that baby to quit banging on our house."

The first two nights we had these things I didn't sleep.  I'm still having a hard time sleeping.

Lizbeth, you're mine.

Someone please tell me how to kill these things and make it look like an accident.  I don't care if it's humane or not.  I love my daughter but these things are seriously crimping my style.

They have to go.



Update: So we've had these things for six days now and its official.  They're staying.  None have died (dam-it) and she's named all three of them.  


Oh yeah, and they're in the kitchen, in the dining area.  

Things I will never understand but I'm going to blog about anyway.

Here are some things that I just don't get and the more I try to wrap my brain around it the more confused I get.  I have a small brain like that.

Here ya go:

• When my dental hygienist talks to me while I'm getting my teeth cleaned.  Now I'm not opposed to the talking bit, it's the part where she asks me questions and expects me to answer with her hands all in my mouth while wielding her sonic dental tool of death that has me miffed.  No, I can not answer you with a mouth full of spit and your hands and tools all jammed up and in there.  Stop getting mad at me for gurgling and not saying anything.  Seriously, I'm trying to concentrate on not licking you, like last time.  Now that would be embarrassing.    
• Wearing Spanx at the pool.  And a bra.  And nothing else.  Who does this??? Apparently this woman at our pool does.  She had on one of those Bali cross your heart's and, I shit you not, white Spanx.  Who in their right mind goes out in public like that?!?  I get that it's a squillion degrees, plus humidity, but for the love of Pete quit raping my eyes.  

• Listening to my daughter sweet talk the baby and it goes a little something like this: "Awww, who's got a pussy face, huh???  You have a pussy face, that's who!  Awww.  Pussy, pussy, pussy.  Do you have a pussy face?  Awww, you have such a sweet pussy face!" 
• The fact The Association got all pissy, pissed-off when the high schoolers foamed the fountain.  It's an annual right of passage ya old farts.  Lighten up.  And the fact that it needed it.  Last I walked by, there was a dead animal of some sort floating around in there.  You aught to be thanking them for cleaning it out.  

• The fact my husband wants Gracie to be potty trained at nineteen months.  I will not be a party to this.  She is not ready and I'm not going to be cleaning up pee and poo from the far corners of the house when she tries to hide her mess.  I already did this with my long dead cat and I have no wish to repeat it.  I stand firm on this and she will remain in diapers for the time being.  
• My remote.  We just had the whole house wired for audio and, for my convenience, we paid $300 for each "smart remote" so I could use it without getting pissed, throwing it and breaking it.  This may, or may not have happened in the past with previous remote controls.  So when I went downstairs to watch TV and was able to turn on the TV but not hear anything I frigging saw stars.  I was pissed enough to call Audio Guy Owner on Sunday morning because now I had a $300 remote and I couldn't even get the satisfaction of throwing something because $300 was just too much money to be chucking against the wall for my total lack of anger management skills. 
• To question the NO means NO policy.  You know, the one where a girl says "NO" it means NO, I'd rather not but thank you anyway.  It doesn't mean she really wanted it and was just mistaken.  I believe the theory is fundamentally flawed as my 18 month old does not listen to me at all when I say "NO."  Matter of fact, she went out of her way just today to do exactly what I didn't want her to do so that I was screaming, "NO, NO, NO!!!" at the top of my lungs and she looked me square in the face, said eff you, and still did it anyway.  Maybe it's not flawed, and maybe she didn't really say eff you, but every time she does something like that, after I say NO a zillion times, the thought that we expect someone to understand and respect the word NO makes me want to cut someone as my own eighteen month old doesn't even respect it.  Maybe she just doesn't respect me.  I don't know.  But that thought runs fleetingly through my mind as she's in the midst of her defiance.   

And now I leave you with one final conversation we had sitting round the table last night. My mom mentioned something about seeing a container full of cables and/or wires in the garage.  When she asked my husband what it was for and "Why on earth do we need a container full of wires and cables that were sitting out in the garage for over a year?"  My husband replied that, "No it could not go to Goodwill.  We may need them in the future" or some other load of crap that makes me fear for us being on the next episode of Hoarders.  I don't know.  I stopped listening as I knew how the conversation was going to end.  I kept sucking down my drink for fear of saying something I'd later regret.  I looked at my mom and may have mumbled a little too coherently, cue the regret part, "Welcome to my world" with a bonus eye roll to which my son replies, "Mom how many people are in your world?  One?"

Yes, my little boy, one very happy old lady getting drunker by the minute.  

So there you have it, things that I just don't understand or want to try to understand anymore.  Watch for me on an upcoming episode of Hoarders.  I have a feeling you'll know me when you see me.

The tale of the two robins

We have a bird problem at this house. 

On the one had, we have this little robin that keeps bashing it's brains out on our front dining room window.  Every day.  For the past two months.  This horrible little thing is crapping all over my window sills and is making a gawd awful mess.  Its disgusting and slightly painful to watch.

It was even bashing it's head in when we sat down to Easter dinner. The thing is relentless.

The other bird is dead. 

Here's its story.

We were on our way out to I don't know where and I had Lizzy and Alex in the car with me.  I was rambling on about something, probably how it was nice to finally see the sun and then I see this bird come flying at us.  I'm thinking surely to God it's going to swerve down and right up and over.  Right?  Right?? 

I mean, it can't be aiming for us, can it?  They miss cars all the time.  Right?  Right??

BAM. 

On The Windshield.

A small poof of feathers get swooshed up and over the top of the car, along with the bird. 

All in slow motion.

I sat clutching the steering wheel praying the kids didn't see it. 

There's silence.  I think I'm in the clear.

Please, please, please.... 

Then, out of the bowels of the minivan: 

AAAAACCCCKKKK!!!!!!  MOM  YOU JUST HIT THAT BIRD.  YOU KILLED IT!  ACCCCKKKK.  You killed it, mom!  You killed it!  Aaaaaahhhhh.....que heavy sobbing and heaving from Lizzy.

Now I just going to take a little moment here to tell you this:  That Godammed bird flew into my car.  It was aiming for us.  Jonesing.  It committed suicide.  It flew into us.  I did not drive into it.

Lizzy's sobbing and blubbering.  She's ramping up for a good one. 

I'm wondering if we still have puke buckets back there she's going at it that hard.

Without looking up from his I-touch Alex says, "Mom can you make it stop crying.  It makes my ears hurt."  He proceeds to turn up the volume on his I-touch to block out the screaming.

And that, my friends, was our drive to I don't know where. 

And no, the irony did not go past me that this was not the bird shitting all over my windows. 

Damn.

A whole lotta love at Speech Therapy

I got called on the carpet by my kid's Speech Therapist today.  We were supposed to do some homework and I forgot.  For two weeks in a row.  So this time she told me that in order for us to succeed we needed to be on the same page.  

BITE ME.

Now that I got that out of my system, I get it.  Really I do.  I know I'm an integral part of this whole gig.  She actually gave us a little booklet at our first meeting and it says: YOU.  It is up to YOU to implement your child's Speech Therapy services."

No, we didn't get a booklet, I just made that up.  But it felt like we should have gotten one as she seemed to be quoting some Holy Grail of Speech Therapy that I was missing.

We were supposed to be working on his R's.  He says them incorrectly and you can't understand him.  I get that.  Thing is, he wasn't associating the exercises with articulating the appropriate sound and he was getting frustrated and embarrassed.  I put a limit on what we were doing at home since it was turning into a negative association. 

And the other things, yeah, I dropped the ball.  The two girls have been sick as dogs, producing more mucous than I ever dreamed possible.  I've been relegated to mopping up puke for the past week, doling out Tylenol and Ibuprofen like a Pez dispenser and running to the Pediatrician's office since the sweet little shit of a baby seems to think it's much more interesting to fight like a feral cat and see mommy wipe up antibiotic off the ceiling, walls, microwave and any other inanimate object within a ten foot range.  And since she's got more fight in her than Rocky Balboa she crossed the line and puked all over the other half of the kitchen.  Again.

I even have puke buckets in the car.  Yeah, it's that bad. 

So NO I've not yet used our conversation starter at the dinner table asking who did what, when and why.  Been a little busy.

And NO I've not used our Emotions and Facial Expressions Chart.  I think its still in the car from last week under a puke bucket.  If I did you can bet I'd have had a witty comeback like:

I'm a little irritated at what's going on at my house right now.  I'm terrified of getting dinner launched at me.  Pick an orifice.  I'm enraged and disgusted with the prospect of cleaning up more puke.  I'm exhausted, nauseated and sick to death of hearing my own children whine and beg.  And if I hear that God forsaken Lelli Kelly shoe commercial one more time I'm beyond confident I'm going to burst a vessel. 

But I am ecstatic that you are concerned with our progress and amused by your disapproving and indifferent attitude and I'm optimistic that smug grin has been wiped off your sorry little face.

But alas I had no witty comeback except for BITE ME and even that was only in my head.  That should count for something, right?  Right??