Un-freaking-believable

There has been a “Poop Issue” in my house lately, and by “issue” I mean my child won’t do it.  While this sounds fantastic, what with the poopless diapers and all, this is apparently a problem because his stomach gets achy and I become convinced that he has an intestinal obstruction or has somehow managed to swallow a wine cork and will soon either explode from the pressure of the backed up poop or require surgery.

Out of fear for my living room furniture should “poop explosion” be the option we end up having to deal with, I decided to call our pediatrician and figure out how in the hell to get this kid to just shit already.  She gave me several options, starting with prune juice.  A few hours later, prune juice was laughed at for its ineffectiveness, leaving me with only one, completely horrifying, option.  I muster up all the courage I have, left the still poopless Zac with my mother and drove to CVS in search of…..suppositories. 

First of all, I had no idea that our local drugstore had such a vast array of things that could be shoved up ones ass.  Seriously.  There was an entire shelf full of stuff whose sole purpose was to be jammed into a place where things should, as a general rule, only come out of.  After reading the instructions on several packages (and nearly passing out at the thought of doing this to my child), I consulted the pharmacist who showed me which one of these little ass nuggets I needed to purchase.  She also spent ten minutes reassuring me that CPS would not take my child away and force me to register on the sex offender database for using them on Zac.

After confirming with my mom that during my trip to CVS we had not achieved the desired outcome from the prune juice, I wash my hands, get Zac undressed, put on a pair of plastic gloves and place my now screaming child on the changing table.  After a quick prayer to Oprah, Tom Cruise and the Baby Jesus, I take what looks like a small bullet made glycerin and, as gently as possible, insert the suppository.

 Almost instantaneously, the damn thing shot out of Zac’s ass and nearly flew across the room so fast that I had to duck to avoid being hit in the head by the now, slightly gummy, suppository.  There was much screaming (from me and Zac), much hysterical laughter (from my mom) and a re-reading of the instructions before attempt number two.  Attempt number two went pretty much the same as attempt number one, the only exception being that this time the damn suppository didn’t so much fly across the room as it just kept poking its little head out from my son’s butt, until it finally fell all the way out and just lay there half dead on the changing table.

At this point my mother is laughing so hard that she’s literally unable to stand upright.  She finally pulls herself together enough to inform me that once the damn thing is inserted, I’m supposed to hold Zac’s butt cheeks together until the thing melts or whatever the hell it’s supposed to do.  At this point, I’m trying to come up with some kind of mechanism for holding the suppository in place while that scene from The Breakfast Club where Emilio Estevez starts crying because he duct taped the hairy kid’s butt together is running through my mind.

Finally, the suppository is inserted and it stays where it’s supposed to.  I spend a good ten minutes trying to calm Zac down and promising that I will pay for all of his therapy bills once this incident finally unlodges itself from the recesses of his mind and he can no longer block out the voices that are telling him to kill me.  I then, upon recommendation from our pediatrician, draw him a warm bath and set him in there where he happily splashes about for about five minutes.  He then gets this very strange look on his face and about ten seconds later, there is a ringing in my ears, my world seems to have gone black and I’m trying like hell not to vomit.  Why you may ask?  Because there was now about a metric ton of shit floating around the tub and circling my child, who was, alarmingly undisturbed by this.

Do I even need to mention that there was, yet again, much screaming?

At this point, I haul Zac out of the tub, and much to his delight, allow him to run around the house slightly wet and naked (I am totally WINNING at parenthood) while I drain the tub and clean the ever loving hell out of it.  There is only one problem.  The poop seemed to create some kind of a waterproof vacuum seal in the drain an there was no water leaving the bathtub.  Now, not being experienced with plumbing repairs, I did the only logical thing to me at the time, which was to run to the kitchen, grab a plastic knife and try and shove the poop further down the drain.  I didn’t so much care if we could ever use that bathtub again, hell, we have two of them, we don’t really need this one, I was just concerning myself with making sure the poop was far enough down the drain so that I didn’t every have to see it again.

This failed.  Big time. 

The reason it failed is because there was the plastic protector cap thingie from a razor that was also stuck in the drain (and now encrusted with shit).  There was only one option.  I had to use the plastic knife to pry that sucker out of the drain so that the water could drain, thus allowing me to disinfect the bathtub and then disinfect my kid who was sitting in the poop filled bathtub only moments earlier. 

Okay, deep breath…I can totally do this.

I managed to get the plastic knife wedged between the side of the drain and the plastic razor cover and proceeded to try and pry the cover out of the drain.  For a brief second the plastic razor cover started to move slowly from the clogged drain….and then it flipped out with a shocking amount of velocity and hit me square in the face.  At this point, I have a naked child running around the living room while chasing the dog, a still poop covered bathtub and a still hysterically laughing mother and now I have to contend with the realization that I HAVE POOP ON MY FACE!

Yeah…I have no words either.

Undeniable Proof the Universe Has Gone Batshit Crazy

Recent “signs” have led me to the very scientific conclusion that the universe has gone and spun right the fuck of its axis and we’re now living in a world of chaos, insanity and general batshit craziness. I present to you the following undeniable proof:

 Exhibit One: I had a conversation with a new employee yesterday regarding his insurance coverage that went a little something like this:

 New Employee: I’m calling about coverage for my child

 Me: Okay, what’s your child’s name?

NE: Michael Cervantes

Me: Oh, kind of like Don Quixote

NE: No, his name is Michael, not Don. It’s Miiiichaaael (said extremely slowly because apparently I’m an idiot and couldn’t understand him the first time)

Me: No, I understand that, it’s just that….never mind. 

I put phone on mute and beat my head against my desk for a few minutes, and then we continued the conversation and got his enrollment issues resolved. Fifteen minutes later I get an email from him stating that he “just wanted to reiterate that his son’s name is MICHAEL, not DON”. I died a little inside that I live in a world where this conversation is possible and then had a ten minute dialogue with myself about the pros and cons of changing both his and his son’s name to Don with our insurance carrier. (Hint: the cons won, but only because I like being able to afford shoes and wine).

Exhibit Two: A midget porn star that apparently looked alarmingly like Gordon Ramsey was eaten by Badgers. Yes, you heard me correctly…EATEN by freaking BADGERS. I would love to go into more elaborate details about this, but really? What else needs to be said other than a MIDGET PORN STAR WAS EATEN BY BADGERS? Here, go see for yourself. 

Okay, there may possibly be one other thing to mention and that is that the midget’s friends were apparently concerned for his well being because the porn industry is filled with all sorts of pressure (which is what the midget’s ass was probably saying as well…ya know, because…never mind, I’m only funny in my own brain), and they were concerned that he may be suicidal. So not only do we have a dead midget to deal with, there is the very real possibility that this may be a case of Suicide by Badger.

Exhibit Three: The husband of Michael Salahi of “Real Housewives of Whatever Dipshit County Happens to Be Popular at the Moment” and White House Party Crashing “fame” called authorities to report that his wife had been kidnapped. Turns out that she wasn’t kidnapped…..she had ran away, not to join the circus as would have been befitting, but had ran away with the guitarist from Journey.

 Now, I really could care less that this woman left her husband, but who in their right minds would leave their husbands to run away with ANY member of Journey? Run away to be with Trent Reznor? I’m totally on board. Run away to be with Rob Zombie? I will probably beat you to that one. Hell, even running away with Lou Reed who’s older than dirt makes more sense because he’s Lou Fucking Reed and is, therefore, cooler than you will ever be.  All of those (highly improbable) scenarios make far more sense to me than leaving your husband for the guitar player for Journey.

 Now, because I must do this, I wonder if the reason she left her husband and fled into the “Open Arms” of Mr. Journey is because she finally DID “Stop Believing” that her husband had been behaving “Faithfully”. I apologize…that simply had to be done.

Thus concludes my presentation to you, dear internets, of the very scientific findings that prove, beyond a reasonable doubt that the universe has lost its damn mind.

..and this is why this day can just suck it.

Things I Need to Accomplish Today:

• Report for VP of Department
• Updating various HRIM systems
• Call multitude of insurance carriers about plethora of issues
• Sort through 2586 emails
• Bullshit committee meeting (the committee is bullshit…we don’t meet to discuss actual bovine feces)
• 3 Conference Calls
• General work related nonsense
• 7PM Yoga class
• Clean my house

Things I Have Actually Accomplished Today:

• Woke up exactly 7 minutes before I was supposed to be out the door and on my way to work.
• Managed to pin back unwashed bangs in a way that makes me look like a Klingon, but at least keeps unwashed/unstyled bangs out of my face.
• Spilled copious amounts of coffee onto my notes for the report I’m working on rendering them totally unusable. 
• Lost my car keys (later located in copy room because I apparently think I can drive the Xerox machine).
• Ate an avocado
• Realized that I had also spilled coffee all over my shirt.  It only took me 2 hours after the coffee spillage to notice this.
• Laughed for 10 minutes at an email requesting that we recruit and hire someone with experience with the American Burying Beatle
• Spent 20 minutes on the internet figuring out what the hell an American Burying Beatle is.
• Googled “Holy hell my child will not stop screaming because he has the Teeth of Satan and they are trying to kill him”.
• Learned “Scotch” is not an approved teething remedy.
• Fell down the stairs because our elevators are not working and my shoes are pointy.
• Ate some flaxseed crackers.
• Responded to approximately 6 of the 2586 emails in my inbox.
• Typed up terribly witty and hilarious yet thought provoking blog entry.
• Accidently deleted terribly witty and hilarious yet thought provoking blog entry.
• Quickly typed up total bullshit blog entry.

I think it’s fairly safe to assume that 7PM yoga class will be happening without me and that my house will likely be condemned before I actually get around to cleaning it.

Send help/maids/vodka/teething remedy that actually works, STAT, please.

Bye Bye Baby

I don’t have a baby anymore.  Now, before everyone gets all worked up and starts calling Child Protective Services or FOX News or very possibly, my father…Zac is totally fine!  What I mean is that he’s not a “baby” anymore who needs me for every little thing.  He’s a “kid” who is perfectly capable of shoveling food into his mouth all by himself, thank you very, so stop waving that tiny spoon in front of him and expecting him to eat off of it, you crazy woman with attachment issues.  Or at least, I think that’s what he was trying to tell me.  Truthfully it sounded a lot like “Goddamn it” or very possibly “Gold Nugget”.  Enunciation is not Zac’s strong suit, but by god, volume and vehemence most certainly are.

While I was pregnant, I spent so much time reading, researching and trying to suck every last bit of information out of the internet, on how to be pregnant and not royally fuck it up (hint: vodka and downhill skiing are generally frowned upon).  After Zac was born I spent an equally insane amount of time looking up milestone charts and feeding schedules and sleep schedules and all this crap the mother of a newborn is supposed to know.  Other that actually caring for my new child, this “research” was basically all I did (at least judging by my browser history), so much so that I didn’t give a thought as to what would come next.  What would come after the tummy time, and the head lifting and the sleep training?  Nope.  Somehow my OCD addled brain allowed me to completely skip over thinking about that part.

The thing is this….for the first year of Zac’s life I lived in terror, every single day, that he was going to die and it would be because I screwed up this whole motherhood thing.  I never mentioned this to anyone, not even Nick because I felt like if I even dared speak about it that the unthinkable would become reality.  I had it in my head that if I could make it past the one year mark and he didn’t succumb to SIDS or some kind of rare disease, if he wasn’t kidnapped, or just “failed to thrive” that we’d be fine.  I would wake up in the middle of the night panicking that I was going to go in his room to check on him and find him not breathing.  More than once I stood outside of his bedroom door terrified of going in because of what I might find and yet unable to stop myself from going in to check on him just one more time. More than once, I poked a soundly sleeping little boy just to make him move because I thought he was being too still.

It’s ridiculous, I know.  He was born perfectly healthy, albeit a little early, and has never had any serious health problems, but I was convinced that I was fundamentally incapable of keeping him safe and healthy for that all important (at least to me) first year.  I cannot tell you how good it feels to say that I was wrong.

Zac is healthy, he’s happy, he’s getting more independent every day and has the most awesome personality and sense of humor.  I loved him from the second he was placed in my arms, but I was scared of him (and for him) as well.  We’re a couple weeks past that one year mark and while I still feel like I’m going to somehow screw this parenting thing up, I also feel like I can finally relax a bit, enjoy my son and just….breathe.

That desire to Google (because the internet knows all), to WebMd, to read articles in arcane magazines dedicated to Aboriginal Parenting Styles has once again firmly taken hold of my brain (and common sense) and I’m overwhelmed with urge to stuff my brain with information so that I don’t screw up Year 2, but I’m resisting.  I’m not going to drive myself to that level of crazy again.  I’m going to try and trust my instincts and focus on how my child is growing and learning and most definitely thriving and not compare him to random charts and graphs that say he should be memorizing the periodic table by 14 months.  I’m going to laugh at how he loves to “pet” the dog (really, it’s more of a mild beating that actual petting) or how he will always giggle when you make raspberry noises on his belly or how he always has to carry his blanket around with him.  I’m going to focus on Zac and not on the “what if’s”.  I’m going to calm the hell down.

After all, how bad of a job can I be doing if we’ve gone from this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To This:

The Etiquette Files

Here’s the deal, people….civilized society has basic rules which one follows to ensure society stays, well, civilized.  These rules are not to be ignored.  Seriously. The rules get mightily pissed off when you ignore them, kind of like a drunk girl in a bar who’s talking just a tad too loudly and has an inappropriate amount of cleavage showing.   That girl hates being ignored and so do the rules of etiquette.  If you choose to ignore these rules, chances are pretty good that you’re going to make yourself look like an ass (again, much like the drunken girl) and your mother and very possibly your grandmother are going to beat at their chests, pull at their hair and wail loudly “Oh, where did I go wrong?!?!”.  You really don’t want to be responsible for that kind of trauma to the women who made you chocolate chip cookies and took care of you when you were sick, do you?

Since society at large apparently needs a reminder of the basic rules of etiquette, we’re going to cover just a couple of the basics here.  Okay, we’re really doing this because these are things that annoy the ever loving hell out of me, but really, there are people out there that need to know this stuff.

Wedding Invitations:

Before I even get started on this please note: This is in no way triggered by the wedding invitations I’ve received recently. You are all lovely and your wedding is going to be awesome.  That being said, please, for the love of all that is holy, stop enclosing your wedding registry or requests for cash instead of gifts along with your invitation!!!  It is wrong.  It is inappropriate.  It is one of those things that are “just not done”.

You are, presumably, inviting someone to your wedding because you want them to share this very important event with you.  You are not inviting them to your wedding for the sole purpose of having them bring a gift.  I know that this may shock some of you, but wedding guests are not actually obligated to give you a gift (although, unless they are incredibly rude themselves, they will give you something).  It’s tacky as hell to send someone an invitation and then give them the message that “you are dumb as a bowl of pudding and I don’t think you know that you need to show up with a gift.  Furthermore, I’m fairly convinced that you’ll get me something I don’t want and rather than be gracious and pleased that you were kind enough to think of me and go out of your way to purchase something you think I may like/want/need, I’m going to give you a list of shit to buy me, kind of like I did when I was 5 and made out a Christmas list for Santa”.  No.  It’s just wrong, so stop doing it.

While on the subject of wedding invitations, (and I know you’re going to disagree with me, here), you need to know that wedding invitations should be plain.  This is not the place to have clipart of little doves holding hands or midgets fornicating or lime green ink.  Wedding invitations should be on good quality card stock in white or ivory with black ink.  If you want to get all crazy and fancy, navy blue ink is okay, as are embossed edges, but stop it with these brown and teal wedding invitations with pictures of yourselves or cutesy poems. 

I could go on for 23 days about wedding invitations, but since there is more stuff you need to know, we’ll move on.

Baby Showers:

The entire purpose of a baby shower is to help the new mother prepare for the birth of her FIRST child by supplying her/the baby with things they will need.  You get ONE baby shower.  Period.  If you have more kids, tough shit, you already have stuff from your first child and don’t need another bouncy chair, 3007 bibs and 400 receiving blankets.  If you do need that stuff, you get to go and buy it your damn self and not ask your friends for it. 

As for baby shower invitations…this is the ONLY time it’s appropriate to include registry information in an invitation.  That’s it.  Never again.  No, not even for your one year olds birthday party (although, truth be told, you shouldn’t be registering for gifts for any event other than your wedding or baby shower).

Thank You Notes:

Send them.  For everything.  You already know that you send a thank you note for wedding and bridal or baby shower gifts, but you also need to send them for birthday gifts, letters of recommendation, and your neighbor taking care of your dogs while you’re in Cabo for the weekend.  Basically, if someone has purchased something for you, assist you in any way or just went out of their way to be kind to you, you send them a thank you note, preferably within a week or two of whatever event took place that caused them to deserve the thank you note in the first place.

As with wedding invitations, thank you notes should be plan.  Traditionally, they shouldn’t even include the words “Thank You” on them, but this isn’t 1882, so I’m not going to insist on that.  However, stop it with the ridiculous colors and fonts and for the love of all that is holy, they’d better not have a picture on them.  If you want to come across as classy and having impeccable manners, go to Crane’s and order yourself some personalized stationary. 

You’re Welcome:

When someone says “Thank you”, the only acceptable response is “You’re welcome”.  The following words/phrases are not to be used as a response: Sure, No big deal, Yeah, Okay, No problem, Kiss my ass.  Especially that last one.  Definitely don’t use that last one unless the person thanking you is being a sarcastic jerk and then you can tell them to kiss your ass.  Of course, you may want to evaluate who you’re talking to before you use that one, because I can personally attest to the fact that bosses HATE when you tell them to kiss your ass.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

 

I could literally write a book on this kind of stuff, but, unfortunately, I have to go work.  Not the write-y kind of work, but the kind that allows me to purchase personalized stationary from Cranes.  I do, however, feel that there will definitely be a part two to this whole “Stuff You Need to Know: The Etiquette Edition”. 

So what Etiquette infractions bother you the most?  Comment and let me know and perhaps they will work their way into volume two of my etiquette/manners diatribe.

Sick Kiddo 101

Zac has been sick for about 5 days now with infections in both of his ears, a bacterial throat infection and an upper respiratory thing (yes, “thing” is actual medical terminology). Let’s not even get started on the terrifyingly high fevers or I may have to start drinking in order to calm the hell down and that would be bad considering I have a meeting in 20 minutes. All that being said, I have learned some very interesting/mildly important things while the Zac-Bug has been sick:

 • The pediatrician who prescribed a liquid antibiotic apparently doesn’t like me or she would know that I need for her to prescribe a pill that I can shove into a piece of cheese and cram down my child’s throat just like I do with the dog.

 • If you make me wait 2 hours to see the doctor, you’d better come into the exam room covered with blood and tell me that you just had to reattach a limb. DO NOT say “sorry you had to wait a bit”. If you choose to ignore this piece of advice then you don’t get to get an attitude with me when I tell you that your time management skills leave something to be desired.

 • If you tell me I have to give my child 6 ml of this medication, then it should come with a medication delivery system that actually holds 6 ml of medicine, rather than the 5 ml syringe thingy that CVS gave me.

 • Do not use the world “flaming pustules” in relation to my child’s throat and expect me not to freak the hell out and become convinced that the Zombie Apocalypse is upon us and my child is Patient Zero. Dr. Unintelligible Last Name, MD, our conversation will go much more smoothly if you don’t use the words “flaming pustules” in reference to any part of my child.

• All medication for small children should come with a restraint system much like what they used on Hannibal Lector because there is no way to hold his arms still, keep his head from moving and get the medicine into his mouth at the same time. (Again…give me something I can disguise in a piece of cheese!!).

 • Nothing in the universe can make you feel more helpless than a sick little boy snuggling up next to you, while he looks up at you with big gooey eyes and whimpers “Mamma” with an expression that clearly says “Goddamn it woman, make me feel better, it’s your job and you’re failing miserably”.

• Apparently no, the thermometer is not lying when it says 103.7.

• Despite what the 24 hour nurse at my pediatrician’s office says, yes, this is the time to internally freak the fuck out.

 • Waking the sleeping child who has the 103.7 temperature to give him a cool bath in the hopes of bringing down his fever will make you feel like Dick Cheney at a live demonstration on torture delivery methods.

 • I am considering suing the makers of Amoxicillin because NOWHERE on the list of side effects does it say that “Copious amounts of horrific poop that looks and smells like rancid curry” is to be expected.

• There will be screaming. Lots and lots of screaming and crying. Only a small percentage of the screaming and crying was coming from me.

Some Nicknames will Never Die

Everyone has a thing, a memory, or a moment from their childhood that they work their entire life to forget.  I’m not talking about something truly horrible like the death of a loved one, or the horrors of childhood abuse, no, I’m talking about something so truly humiliating that their insides get all twisty just thinking about it.  For me, that moment came in a swamp.  Now, you wouldn’t think that Middle of Nowhere, Ohio would have such things as swamps, but I assure you there was at least one…..and it tried to kill me. 

When I was eight years old, my parents had the brilliant idea to move us from Chicago to Ohio (thankfully, they later saw the errors of their ways and this was soon corrected) where they purchased a big house whose property line backed up to a soybean farm.  Past the soybean farm was a forest where my sister, friends and I used to play.  I can’t imagine it was a very large piece of land, probably about 20 acres or so, but to us it seemed to go on infinitely.  Not wanting to get lost in the woods and be abducted by the hermit who was rumored to live there, we always played in the same area and never dared to venture past our designated area, that is, until the day I got the brilliant idea to find the shed or hut or cave where the hermit lived.

Prior to heading out on our hermit hunt, my sister and two of our friends all gathered into my bedroom and made a list on my sketch pad (using my easel to hold it up, making it look very official and presentation like) and made some bizarre map of the woods, which I am sure was in no way accurate, and brainstormed the most logical place to start searching for the hermit’s abode.

I don’t think we ever came to a consensus on where we thought the hermit lived.  If I remember correctly we said whatever the eight year old’s equivalent of “Fuck it” is and just head out to randomly walk around the woods until we found the hermit.  I’m still not sure what we were going to do if we actually found the hermit, but I do distinctly remember advising everyone to find a big stick once we got to the forest so that we could beat the hermit about the head should he try to attack us. 

After what seemed like an eternity of wondering around the woods (which, in reality was probably only about 20 minutes) we came up to something that looked like a lake, albeit a scummy, slimy lake, and all thoughts of finding the hermit were abandoned for capturing frogs instead.  Don’t ask me what we were going to do with the frogs once we caught them, because much like our idea for the hermit hunt, we never actually got far enough in our planning to actually decide that  little issue.

Capturing frogs was far more difficult that we had anticipated, because oddly enough, those damn little frogs didn’t just stand still and let us capture them.  They actually had the audacity to run away from us!   An impromptu meeting was held and it was decided that someone would just have to go into the water after them, and apparently, that person was going to be me.

Here’s the thing about swamps, which never having seen one before I had no way of knowing….the bottom of the swamp is extremely squishy and you kind of sink down into the squishiness.  When I had gotten about waist deep into the swamp I realized that we had a serious problem.  I was stuck.  The squishiness had overtaken me and I was totally unable to move.  Worse yet, I think the frogs were mocking me.

My friends got a large tree branch and tried to pull me out using that with absolutely no luck.  I was as stuck as a person could possibly be.  This left us with only one option, other than leaving me there to die, and it was not a pleasant option.  My sister did the only thing she could…..she ran home to get my mother.  I can only imagine what mom’s response was when my sister ran into the house to announce that I was being eaten by a lake.

An eternity later, I see my sister running back towards us followed by my mother.  Upon seeing her child waist deep in disgusting slime, moms only response was “Claudia Michele, get your ass out of that water right NOW”.  I tried explaining to her that I was stuck; however, she demanded that my ass be removed from the disgusting water immediately.  Once she figured out that I really was well and truly stuck, she tried several methods of child removal on the swamp all to no avail.  Knowing that she couldn’t go into the water after me for fear of being stuck herself, my mother ended up having to climb a tree, crawl out onto a branch that was hanging over the approximate area of my entrapment, and pull me out using the fallen tree branch that my friends were trying to use earlier.  She managed to remove me from the squishiness, but my shoes, unfortunately were lost forever.

I can’t even begin to explain the amount of disgustingness that clung to the lower half of my body, but holy god was it gross and it smelled like rotten eggs.  Obviously, there was no way my mother was letting me into the house and onto her pristine floors in that condition, so she ordered me into the back yard where she was going to attempt to hose me off before I would be allowed to enter the house.  I assume that she had planned on bathing me in bleach and Lysol after the swamp was removed from me.  There was only one problem….some of the larger clumps of swampy disgustingness were most definitely not coming off of me.  Oddly enough, these same clumps appeared to be pulsating and growing larger by the second.  I wasn’t entirely sure what was happening, but I distinctly remember my mother screaming “Holy mother of god, you’re covered in LEACHES”! 

Remember that scene in the movie Stand By Me?  Yeah….it was like that only without that horrible Corey Feldman and, well, obviously, I didn’t have a leach stuck on my junk since as a girl, I’m most definitely junk-less. 

Mom ran into the house for tweezers and a cordless phone and busied herself by simultaneously plucking the leaches from my body and phoning her best friend (who was a nurse)so that they could try to decide what kind of disease I was going to get as a result of this fiasco.  I don’t know what disease they finally decided upon, because I passed right the hell out after the first leach was removed.

One trip to the doctor later for a tetanus shot, we were sitting in our living room with my mom’s best friend and her husband who had taken to calling me “Swamp Thing”.  This is not the kind of nickname you can outlive as evidenced by the fact that this man, who I adore, was at my wedding 20 years later and upon seeing me for the first time in years all dressed up for my wedding, gives me a big hug and whispers into my ear “You look beautiful, Swamp Thing”.

The Sleep Saga

Like any first time parent, I make mistakes, LOTS of them, but one particular mistake has come back to bite me in the ass with such ferocity, that I’ve taken to calling it the Great White Shark of mistakes.  When Zac was about 6 or 7 months old, he decided that he was never sleeping again…ever.  I would put him in his crib, he would sleep for maybe 30 minutes and then the seemingly endless rounds of screaming would start.  I’d go into his room and do all the things you’re supposed to do, like make sure he hadn’t fashioned a weapon out of his mobile with which to further torment the dog.  I’d rock him, I’d feed him, I’d make sure he wasn’t wet, or injured or possessed by demons, and eventually he’d go back to sleep, for about 15 minutes.  Repeat process.

We tried everything.  Cry it out?  Yeah, that probably works if your child isn’t the most stubborn human being on earth (well…the SECOND most stubborn, according to my husband).  Zac will scream and cry at the top of his lungs until he literally makes himself sick.  Go in and reassure him and let him fall back to sleep? This only works if you can stay awake all night for many, many consecutive nights, because he will literally wake up screaming every 20 minutes.  Baby Benedryl?  Believe me, I’m tempted, but I just can’t bring myself to drug him without having an actual medical purpose behind it.  I have literally read every damn baby “sleep” book on the market and all I can say is that while they may work for some, I haven’t found ANYTHING that works with Zac.

I can only explain what happened next by blaming it on a hallucination brought on by sleep deprivation, but after about months of this nightly torment and after endless rounds of trying to get this kid to “Go the Fuck to Sleep”, I caved.  I woke to some seriously unholy screaming coming through the baby monitor, stumbled all bleary eyed down the hallway, picked him up and brought him into bed with me, and miracle of miracles…..he slept. 

The next night I decided to just let him sleep in my bed because I desperately needed one night of uninterrupted sleep (or at least a night of minimal interruptions rather than the usual 20 per night).  It was amazing.  I slept, Zac slept, every now and then he’d wake up, snuggle himself closer to me and go directly back to sleep.  It was the first night since his birth that I hadn’t woken up so exhausted that I wanted to die.

You can see where this is going, can’t you?  Yeah…no way in hell is this kid sleeping anywhere other than my bed.  There’s a part of me that’s totally okay with him sleeping in my bed.  I leave my house at 6:00AM, I don’t get home until at least 5:45PM, then there’s dinner to be cooked, eating, bath time, time to walk Max, all that necessary stuff, and then the next thing you know…bedtime.  So I sort of feel like letting him sleep with me is giving us at least a little more time together, which I need, because I feel like I’m missing so much during the day since I have to work.  On the other hand, he’s almost a year old and I don’t want him to be unable to go to his first slumber party when he’s eight or whatever, because he can’t sleep unless he’s with his mommy!

Plus, what started out as a way for both of us to get some sleep has turned into a nightly battle for blankets and bed space usually leaving Nick, Zac and Max sleeping peacefully and me with a tiny corner of the bed and a square inch of covers, trying to remove a foot from my spleen, a paw from my spine and drown out the snoring of both husband and dog.  Once again, I’m completely and totally sleep deprived, and once again, I have no idea how to fix it.

To make matters worse?  Better?  I’m not sure….but I do know that there are very few things in this world that make me happier than rolling over onto my right side and curling up under the tiny bit of blanket that I’ve managed to wrestle away and snuggling up with my gorgeous boy.  That baby smell, that peaceful expression and the knowledge that at that particular moment, I’m all he needs in the world are enough to make me want to keep him curled up next to me as long as humanly possible.

Apparently My Toes Need to Be “Did”

Well, I’ve finally done it.  I have finally managed to do the stupidest thing I have ever done in my life. “But Wait!!” I can hear you all collectively saying, “What about that time you got drunk and fell down in the sushi restaurant?  Or the time you accidently knocked over that midget?  What about the time you made that typo out of the words “Kind Regards” in an email and signed off with “Kind Retards”?  Yep…this was stupider.

This comes as a shock to no one, but just in case you missed it somehow…I love shoes.  The higher the heel the happier I am, and the fact that I’m somewhat of a klutz does not deter me as it probably should from purchasing many pairs of ridiculous shoes.  The other day I was wearing some really cute Steve Madden platforms shoes when what shall now be referred to of as “the Incident” happened.  I was walking back from the restroom to my office when all of the sudden I started hobbling as though someone had cut my right foot off and now my legs were two different lengths.  Obviously, this concerned me greatly, so I looked down only to discover the top half of my shoe had come separated from the platform wedge part of my shoe. 

For those of you, who have no idea what I’m talking about, allow me to explain:

The little strappy part became detached from the part that looks like it’s made out of cork and this resulted in my being approximately 5 inches shorter on my right side.  As an aside though…how freaking cute are these shoes?!?!

I limp back to my office and do the only thing that I could possibly do and used SuperGlue to put my shoe back together.  Now, obviously I really wanted this shoe to hold together, so to make sure that it was really stuck on there, I used about 11 times more glue than I probably should have, and just to make sure that the shoe and the glue formed a nice, strong, little bond (or possibly because I am a dumbass) I put my foot into the shoe and then proceeded to stand on one foot, hopping up and down for about 2 minutes so that  I was sure that it was stuck together.

Oh, it was stuck together alright.  I HAD GLUED MY FOOT INTO MY SHOE!!  It took me, our receptionist, one of the girls in our billing department and a bottle of nail polish remover and to get my foot out of the shoe and even after my foot was removed from my shoe…. my hand was still glued to the strappy part of my shoe.

As if this wasn’t embarrassing enough, once my foot was freed and I was standing in our reception area barefooted, the lady who waters all the plants in our building walked by and said “Girl, you need to get your toes did”.  Um….Excuse me?!?  Just water the goddamned plants, lady, and stop commenting on the fact that I need a pedicure.  You have split ends and need to wax your upper lip, but do I comment on that when you’re standing uncomfortably close to me in the elevator?  No, I do not, because it’s RUDE!  Oh, and speak proper goddamn English, you horrible, mustachioed, plant lady.

Once again….this kind of shit only happens to me.

The Mom Purse

Silly me!  Thinking I could actually find the time to blog, much less do cool things like bathe or even breathe with a newborn…what the hell was I thinking?!?!  Now that Zac is a bit older (10 months), I actually have one or two spare seconds with which to fill the internet with all the random craziness that floats around in my head as well as tales of bizarre incidents that happen only to me.  I know, I know, this is the news you’ve been waiting for all month. 

Oh….and having an office with a door and a bit of privacy helps, too.

I made a semi horrifying discovery recently.  In addition to turning my brain into a substance that upon viewing with an MRI has an uncanny resemblances to a half melted Jello Pudding Pop, motherhood has done something equally scary to my handbag.

While digging through my purse, trying to find my wallet, and give the nice man at Starbucks money in return for the life giving iced coffee he was about to hand me, I pulled out (in no particular order), two pacifiers, one stuffed penguin head on a stick that squeaks (and is the only thing that keeps Zac from flinging tortillas in Mexican restaurants), one emergency diaper kit thingie, a package of antibacterial hand wipes and a few stray cereal puff snack things.  Somewhere between handing Mr. Starbucks my credit card and getting into my car, it dawned on me…..I have a mom purse.

Gone are the days where my handbag was cute, and little, and held cigarettes, 32 totally unnecessary lip glosses, 14 lighters and very possibly, my underwear.

Don’t get me wrong….I wouldn’t change being a mom, and particularly Zac’s mom, for anything in the world.  It just got me thinking about how much my life has changed in ways that I never even considered.  Sure, I figured, I would be a mom…but I would be a “cool mom”; one of those people who still remain edgy and cool and seemingly have it all together.  Instead I’m the person, standing in a Starbucks at 6AM, holding a stuffed penguin head on a stick trying to remember if I fed the dog before I left for work. 

I feel like I have two existences and I don’t really fit into either of them totally.  I have the suburban mom thing and then I have the fun, spontaneous, stay out all damn night and come to work smelling slightly of vodka thing.  Neither one of those existences are happening fully.  Maybe it’s more accurate to say one has been phased out and the other hasn’t been fully embraced yet?

I think it’s the concept of being a “suburban mom” that freaks me out the most.  This was definitely NOT part of the plan.  Suburban mom’s are supposed to drive BMW’s or mini-vans and have boring haircuts and wear flats and horrific outfits bought at places like Chico’s and vote Republican.  They are definitely not supposed to be tattooed liberals, who have a stiletto obsession and tend to run around town in a Jeep, blasting Social Distortion while wearing a Suicide Girls tshirt. 

But then I get home from work and see that happy little grin on my gorgeous son, and it makes having a mom purse and not quite knowing where I fit in the world totally worth it.