Well-Traveled Mom in Scrubs

This last week has been nuts. Sunday I flew to Seattle. I took a driving class called Driving Dynamics. The class is mandatory for my company as I spend about 80% of my time in my Fleet vehicle. The truth is, my job is the most dangerous in the company, simply because of the amount of time I spend on the road. Pretty scary. I think this class should be mandatory for all drivers, especially for teens. What they teach you in driver's ed? 50% crap. Pretty scary since I've been driving for...let's see...20 years (damn, I'm getting old) and operating on the principles that I learned from the poor bastards that got tapped for summer driver's ed duty.

The folks teaching this class are all professional drivers - mostly racers. I got a piece-of-crap rental car that didn't have the required ABS for the class, though the rental agency INSISTED that all their vehicles have ABS (it's actually amazing how many new cars have ABS as an option!). I drove 20 miles in driving rain to get to Tacoma for the class, hydroplaning all the way. I was determined to make it this time, considering my experience in Denver trying to make it to the same class (see "Worst Day Ever"). My hands were numb from my death-grip on the steering wheel, but I made it... then realized that the reason the car probably drove like crap was that the tire was essentially flat.

Thanks Avis!!! So glad you Work Harder....to make sure I die.

Anyhow, the class was so much fun, a few hours of classroom time and a lot of time driving the hell out of our cars. High speed obstacle courses, brake-slamming and steering (hence the required ABS), and a few trips around the course in a "slide car" - mimics driving on ice, useful here in the Midwest - and I figured out I'm a damn good driver. I created not a single orange-cone casualty. Like Mom always said, though: There are a lot of idiots out there. Your best bet is to be prepared, and now I am. 20 years later.

My kids will take this class when they first get their licenses. Guaranteed.

So since I was "in the neighborhood" (ha!) I was asked to stop by Rapid City, South Dakota to cover a case. Another place I've never been.

Now Seattle is breathtaking, when the fog lifts. Vistas galore. Snow-capped mountains, valleys of deep-green Fir sprinkled with all the local exotic (to me) flowering shrubs and spring blooms. A lovely humidity that my hair wasn't fond of, but that my pores breathed in thirstily. I think I heard them sigh. Midwest winter is dry, dry, dry. Seattle is lovely and damp. I could live there. Easily.

Rapid City has it's own beauty. A place that Spring hasn't quite reached, still snuggled in it's golden-brown winter blanket, but with the barest hint of green peeking through. I always wondered how the Black Hills got their name...I saw it first hand. They look very dark, purplish-black. I'm not sure why. The effect of these hills dotting the golden landscape was beautifully alien. Everywhere in Rapid City had a view. I'm not sure how I managed to always be on a hillside, but it happened.

And my Avis injustice was redeemed! All they had for me to rent there was a brand-spankin'-new silver Ford Mustang. 15 miles on the odometer. I was in heaven. Unfortunately I had to work and fly right out, so I only put 30 miles on the thing, but I put some of my Driving Dynamics skills to the test....whee!

One day home doing a case at my old workplace...okay, half a day. At 2pm I was asked to fly to Minneapolis that night to cover a case the next day. Can't really say no, so I did.

Minneapolis has a very nice Vetrans' Hospital, which I was glad to see because I think lots of Vets get crapped on by our government when they need healthcare. Don't get me started!! On the way to the hospital, the cab driver pointed out the Vetrans' Memorial Cemetary, where One-Hundred-Sixty-Five-THOUSAND vets are buried. From 5 wars. Sobering indeed. Too bad it's so close to the hospital; it's not exactly what I would want to see while headed to the hospital if I were sick.

So my morbid mind got to wondering: Do they cremate these heroes? Or bury them vertically? Or maybe it's just an optical illusion and these thousands of white stones aren't as close as they look?

Amazing that this is a dinky cemetary compared to Arlington.

So I got in late last night, and JeepMan left at 3am for Moab, UT. He and some buddies are driving out to go offroading in the Arches National Park area. Lucky SOB!! Well, he certainly deserves it after his 14-week stint as a single dad. And I get to spend a whole day with the kids myself before they are off to Grandma's for the week and I am off again to Parts Unknown for my job.

I am making the most of this time with the kids (can't you tell? I'm blogging!). Seriously though, we made crepes for breakfast - my specialty. The kids helped, which they love. Plato read the recipe and I taught him about measuring. Lulu got to stir and make a big mess. "Who cares?!!" I trilled, as the kids giggled and said Dad would be grumpy about the mess.

Finally, I get to be the "fun one." I've waited for years!!

Wait....hang on a minute...

--------------

Opportunities galore! I just plunger-ed a toilet that Lulu had tried to flush half a roll of TP down because "I hab die-ah-wee-ah." Yippee.

I did take the moment to teach her that girls have to wipe their poopy from front to back, not back-to-front. See, you gotta have moms. I'm pretty sure JeepMan doesn't know that....

Better go before someone sets the house on fire or something.

Happy Weekend!

Worst Day Ever...

I have 3 posts at least running around in my head, but none of them are going to get out until I drano the brain-clog that is keeping everything bottlenecked up in there.

I am currently having one of the worst days ever. For Me. I know things could be worse, and I keep telling myself that, but today has truly sucked.

I am in Denver. I came here because my company requires me to take a driver safety test. It's held at a racetrack and we do a lot of obstacle course driving, skid control, etc skills. We rent a vehicle and basically beat the hell out of it in the name of safety. I had heard it's a really fun course, and I have been looking forward to it for a while now.

On the bright side, being in Denver allowed me to meet and have a lovely evening with my friend SUV Mama. We met at a lovely restaurant and had a fantastic meal. Our meeting exceeded all my expectations. Jess is a beautiful, bright woman with a soul that shines from the inside out. We packed as much conversation into 5 hours as we could, and I was sad when it was time to go. I wish her all the best in her move to WA, and hope maybe I can get out there one day and visit with her again...

So the irony begins right there: I have the worst day after the most lovely evening. And the irony only gets more, well, ....Ironic.

Today I had to get up and get to the local speedway here in Denver. I had about a 12 mile drive in morning traffic. I left my hotel at 7:15, even allowing myself a 3-minute pilgrimmage to Starbucks. I was making fine time, even through rush hour. My lovely GPS, which I have come to rely on heavily with my new travel schedule, informed me that I needed to make a left turn at the upcoming intersection. I was in stop and go traffic and needed to merge from a stopped position into the turn lane, which was a continuous lane that went on and on. I noticed a few people using this lane to zip up to the traffic light and turn, so I was very careful about finding a safe time to merge. I saw an opening, checked, checked again, and pulled out. I had not even gotten halfway into the lane when WHAM!!, I was hit by an suv driving very fast. I had not seen her. AT ALL. Both times I checked! I was not preoccupied. I was not talking on the phone or sipping my coffee or trying to multitask in any way. The woman hit my front left bumper of my (rental) car, and tore it off completely. I stopped and she stopped, and a witness stopped as well, and told me the woman was "flying" and "came out of nowhere."

The police showed up, took our statements and the witness statement, and in the end I was cited with improper merging or some such charge. $86 fine, could have been worse. 1 mark on my driving record. The officer told me that she would have loved to have cited the woman as well because she was in violation by using the turn lane as a driving lane, but the fact was that she had the lane and I merged into her, and the fact that she was speeding could not be proved. So apparently the accident would not have happened had I not merged. The officer also told me that if I appealed in court, the charges would likely be dropped. But it would cost me more to fly to Denver and back to appeal than the $86 fine. So I'll just suck it up and hope my insurance doesn't go up too much.

It just pisses me off. My driving record is spotless. I have had one speeding ticket in my life, and that was when I was 18. Gaaah!

So there I was with no vehicle, needing to get to the speedway, and couldn't get another rental car because of my citation. So the husband of the woman that hit me offered me a ride to the speedway (male stranger #1 that I rode with that day, also a new one on me!). He was very kind and nonchalant about the accident, and I felt at ease with him. He even carried my luggage upstairs at the speedway, nice guy, right? I got to the speedway and they wouldn't let me into the class because I had missed 2 hours of lecture and were getting ready to do track exercises. So I was screwed. I called a cab and started walking to the entrance of the speedway to wait, which is where male stranger #2 (an employee of the track who had helped me find my classroom) offered me a lift to the front gate, which I took because I had about a mile and a half to go lugging a suitcase and a heavy computer bag. Then male stranger #3 showed up in his yellow taxi (Bob, nice guy), and I got a $110 ride to the airport (ack!). Which is where I am now praying I can get on an overbooked flight standby at 3:45pm but most likely will be taking my originally scheduled 8:55pm flight which gets in around midnight.

So basically I made a round-trip flight to Denver to stay in a hotel, wreck a car, and spend my entire day in an airport.

...Ahhh, but I got to meet Jess. So it was sooo worth it! =)

JeepMan is quite unhappy with me - he is a "worst-case scenario" kind of guy so he is worried that I am going to lose my job and/or that we will get sued for all we are worth by the people I hit. Ok, For 1), tons of field people with this company get in accidents every year. I am on the road 80% of the time for my job, so my accident risk is waaay up. If they fired everyone who had an accident they would have a lot of problems keeping staff. For 2), I don't think those people are going to sue us. It's just a feeling I have (I accidentally-on-purpose left out the part about strange man #1's giving me a ride to the speedway - no need for JM to have a stroke on the spot...). For 3, even if they did sue "us" I am insured through my company. So I think they would be suing the company, not me personally.

Anyhow, it sucks. I know. And I feel like crap about it. But it's done. It's over with. And all I can do at this point is continue on living my life and use the lesson I learned today.

And pray like hell that I can get out of Denver. Which is beautiful by the way....another positive for the day.

MIL Musings #1

My MIL will never be described as the sharpest knife in the drawer. Most days I believe she isn't in the drawer at all, and the knife part is debatable too.

It makes it hell to watch movies with her, because she can't follow a plot. That in itself is not a crime. The fact that there appears to be no filter between her brain and her mouth is the real problem.

This weekend we brought Knocked Up to christmas. You might think this would be a no-brainer movie...which is what we thought, which is why we chose this particular movie to share.

Five minutes into the movie my MIL plops down on the couch. "What movie is this?"

It's called Knocked Up.

Silence.....

(On the screen are the two main characters, the guy and the girl.)

She opens her mouth: "Who gets knocked up?"

I decide to ignore this comment as I am sure she can't mean what I think she means.

But she won't let it drop. "Does the guy get knocked up or the girl?"

(silent forehead slap and silent Homer Simpson "DOH!")

Well I think generally when someone gets knocked up it's the girl....

"Oh."

Be assured there will be many more posts on this subject. It's an endless resource of blog-fodder.

'Till next time...

Done For Another Whole Year

Every year our little family does the same thing for Christmas: we do Santa at our house, then travel for the day to either my folks' or my in-laws'. I have been married for 11 1/2 years, and we have been doing this routine for 14 1/2 years. We live smack in the middle of either of our families: mine is an hour west, his is an hour east.

14 1/2 years. That's a long time. Apparently it is not enough time, however, for my MIL to figure out that there Might Be some sort of pattern here. Every year (generally the day after Halloween) she calls JeepMan asking if we are going to be at her house for Thanksgiving. Every OTHER year, the answer is, "No, we will be at your place for Christmas; we did Thanksgiving at your house last year," spoken slowly to encourage understanding. And every year, without fail, there is silence on the other end of the phone, then a dramatic sigh, and then a, "Well, I don't know when we will be able to get everyone together, then..."

Let me illuminate what "everyone" means: MIL, FIL, JeepMan's G'ma R (who lives 6 blocks away from the in-laws), Uncle Mike (who scams disability off the government and has no actual job), and us - our family of four. That makes four besides us and two of those four are the host and hostess of the shindig. Now G'ma R is not a traveling motivational speaker or international bonds trader. Her occupation entails sitting in her apartment chain-smoking and wallowing in the despair that she has created for herself through 78 years of her own nastiness. Uncle Mike (who I like to call "UnClue Mike" as that is how he signs his name - oh yes, did I mention that he is an undiscovered candidate for Mensa?) only comes for the free meal, scavenged leftovers, and some doobie if his own drug-dealing son decides to show up....believe me, Unclue Mike will be there whenever.

What it boils down to is that JeepMan is an only child and that after nearly 15 years of us being together it still burns my MIL's biscuits to have to share him or her grandkids with anyone else ("anyone else" being my family).

This year it was Thanksgiving at my folks' and Christmas at the in-laws'. And so it was that yesterday we packed up the posse and headed out. Christmas is never great at their house...we expect that. But this one really took the cake.

We got there and there was the usual: MIL and FIL in the kitchen, cooking. Good smells. The incessant yapping of two ill-behaved Shih-tzu's. The tree so covered with ornaments and tinsel that I couldn't swear that there even IS a tree under all that stuff. No place to put our presents either since each of my kids has between 15 and 20 from the in-laws. The kitchen peninsula covered with appetizers - easily enough for 40 guests. Not sure where the other 32 were coming from but hey, that just means lots of free leftovers for Unclue Mike. The entire buffet table in the adjacent room is always dedicated ONLY to cookies and candy - interestingly it is always placed at a very convenient height and in a relatively secluded location. Perfect for carbo-crazed polysaccharide-plundering 3 and 6 year olds. Unclue Mike with his feet up in the sunroom watching football, snarfing free appetizers and soaking up the free heat.

When what to my wondering eyes did appear? A suprise Christmas guest, holding a beer.

Yes, Grandma R had decided to fly her other son from Phoenix to Iowa for Christmas. Yippy. Skippy.

This is Unclue Tim. He is referred to in a previous post: Quiet House/MIL Rant #2 as the father of LT. He is still a drug dealer, though obviously out of jail. Turns out his parole officer had to be petitioned to get him up here for the holidays (call me discriminatory, I take this as a bad sign).

He and Unclue Mike are still embroiled in a mostly passive family feud stemming from at least 20 years ago when allegedly someone sold someone else's trailer out from under someone and didn't give someone the money.

LT is doing as well as can be expected up here in Iowa. He hates his dad. I can't blame him when I hear about his sucky childhood.

MIL hates Unclue Tim because he is steadily sponging "her" inheritance money away through loans from Grandma R.

So here he shows up and all of a sudden a tolerably crappy Christmas just morphed into a Jerry Springer Christmas. No there were no fistfights - although the day might have been more entertaining for it. We got stuck at the loser table (which one you might ask? - the one with Unclue Tim and G'ma) listening to G'ma R regale us with, no, not "tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago." We got to hear how many of her friends have died or are dying, and how she fell off a chair onto her butt bone whilst trying to reach something heavy from a high shelf.

Why do old people do that? Remind me when I am old not to climb on anything higher than my floor. My grandpa was seventy-something years old and my Grandma came home one day to find him on the second-to-top rung of an extension ladder that was leaned up against a flagpole. On a hill. Well, the flag was wrapped around the pole and not displayed properly! What was any self-respecting WWII vetran expected to do? Mayhap 'tis honorable to die adjusting a flag...

While you're at it, remind me to not talk constantly about who died and how. But I digress.

LT got the honor of sitting across from his beloved father while G'ma R badgered him about how many times he was going to be able to come visit before his dad left in a week. The rest of us ate in silence. My kids didn't eat squat. Just bounced around uncontrollably having binged on the refined sugar extravaganza on the buffet table in the next room.

In the end, gifts were exchanged and my kids reaped a sickening amount of Crap-They-Will-Never-Miss-If-We-Can-Get-It-Straight-To-Goodwill. My MIL has been aforementioned as a compulsive shopper; Christmas is the ultimate showcase of her...ah, disability.

We had planned to do a White Elephant gift exchange, but as only 4 of the 8 people participating had gifts (me, JeepMan, MIL, FIL), and as we KNEW what we had brought and what my MIL probably wrapped up, we decided to skip it. So we are a $25 gift card to Buffalo Wild Wings and a $25 gift card to Menards richer, when we could have been a pair of earrings and a pair of pajama pants poorer.

After Unclue Mike scrounged all his leftovers and Unclue Tim slithered silently out the door to G'ma R's, we said our goodbyes. We forced the trunk of the Focus down on that great pile o' crap, and hit the road.

JeepMan headed straight to the fridge for a beer when we got home and flopped exhausted into his recliner. "Well, my white-trash Christmas is over for another year, thank God."

Note to self: Next year is Thanksgiving with the MIL, Christmas at my Folks'. Don't know when we are going to get "everyone" together for Christmas....but I am sure we'll figure it out.

Fair Fun and a New High Score on the Grossness Scale

I've been going to the State Fair in my home state for my entire life....really, I have only missed maybe one year of my 34 years on this planet. It's a HUGE fair, and we always have a great time. I now live an extra hour and fifteen minutes from the fair, and have two young kids to tote around, so the motivation to attend each year drops a bit...and this year it was going to be hotter than snot (does snot qualify as hot?, it's really more body-temperature...but I digress). 96 degrees with 96% humidity is not my idea of fun, and I actually was planning to just skip it this year.

Funny thing is, JeepMan loves to go. Of all the things I would think he wouldn't want to do...but sometimes he surprises me. So we went.

We got there when the gates opened and took advantage of the cooler morning temps. We walked through all the animal barns first: cows, pigs, sheep, horses. Lulu loves animals and would have stayed in the barns all day long. Plato had lots of questions about the animals, mostly concerning their oversized genitalia. We then had an Elephant Ear (huge piece of fried dough with butter, cinnamon and sugar all over it) and a smoked turkey leg for breakfast. Ahhh, eating at the fair. Where anything and everything goes.

We then went to the Ag building and stood in a long line to see the Butter Harry Potter and the Butter Cow. The kids loved it! We perused the exhibits and scored free samples consisting of a hard-boiled egg on a stick and Soy Chocolate Chip Cookies . Then it was back to the pig barn to see the Farrowing exhibit: that's where the newborn baby piglets can be observed, and petted if you are lucky. Lulu was lucky, and now she wants a "pig-o-let" for Christmas!

After the farrowing display, the kids wanted a snack. Here's a picture of them:








It must be noted that the time of the cotton-candy chowdown was approximately 9:30 am. JeepMan and I had a little corn-dog fix at the same time (we shared).

The rest of the day was filled with excitement, sweat, and a gradual degradation of Lulu's mood to whining and cranky. We stopped for lunch, and as we waited for our food to be procured (a-la JeepMan), Lulu was getting restless. She kept putting her feet up on my (bare) leg, and I told her to stop it, that was gross. I said there was poop and pee on her shoes from cows, sheep, horses, and pigs.

Next thing I know I look over and she is LICKING the bottom of her shoes, looking at me out of the corner of her eye the the whole time to see what my reaction would be! UGH! This kid!!

A quick stop at the cake display, the kids getting soaked running through the water fountains, temper-tantrums in stereo about not getting to go on the oh-so-safe-looking midway rides, and it was off to home.

They were both asleep before we left the parking lot.

We did it, another year of the Fair!

Oh, and JeepMan is thinking he wants to go back next weekend......ugh.

SOO Not In Colorado....

Here I sit. There are no snow-capped mountain vistas out my window. There is no cool, crisp, mountain air refreshing my lungs. I have no vague sensation whatsoever of being in a higher altitude than my midwest plains brain is accustomed to.

Crap, I am still in Iowa. Where the air is humid, the temps are brutal, and there is a lingering under-scent of corn everywhere you go.

Despite all my brash talk of not being a slave to a little bit of a fast heart rhythm, I ended up in the emergency room again last Tuesday night (that's five days after the first ER visit). I had massive recurrence of palpitations, accompanied by profuse sensations of total-body flushing and impending doom. At first I thought, "Great! I can get this taken care of before we go to Colorado!" Alas, it was not to be.

Right off the bat I found out that my palpitations are not abnormal beats. They are just my normal heart beat speeding up. This leads them to believe there is another cause for my tachycardia. As a cardiac electrophysiology nurse I heartily agree with the diagnosis and mutter a simultaneous, "rats!" as I know this leads to much more testing, etc. Well, there goes the trip to Colorado. Some of the tests they are running can take up to 2 weeks to result. TWO WEEKS. That is a long damn time to wait when you are wondering if you might end up with a very bad diagnosis.

In the mean time I was sent home with a couple of different drugs to help my tachycardia and flushing symptoms. They worked ok, but I still had breakthrough symptoms. I finally saw my doctor yesterday and after talking to her I felt much better. She has me on a prescription that seems to be doing the trick, until I find out what the tests show.

Now here's the interesting part: one of the "differential diagnoses" that she is working with is panic attack or panic disorder. Now I had to scoff at this. Anyone who knows me knows I am Type B personality....with a few type A traits. But really, I am as mellow and even-tempered as they come. JeepMan actually complains sometimes that I don't get worked up about ANYTHING, that I am too laid back and it sometimes seems like I don't even care about some things. Which doesn't fit into the panic-attack stereotype to me.

Until I started reading about it. Apparently people who are otherwise "normal" can have panic attacks. Out of the Blue. Unprovoked. They are called unanticipated panic attacks. But still.....can you have a panic attack without panicking? Well, it appears that many symptoms of panic attack are overwhelmingly physical!!

Which just totally goes against everything I thought I knew. So you can be just a regular, mellow, person and WHAM!!, get socked by a panic attack when you weren't even anxious about anything, and then not realize it was a panic attack.

Uhmmmmm.....ok?

Hell, it's a better diagnosis than the two tumors that they are working me up for (shudddddddder).

The most interesting thing is that today is the second day on the depression/anxiety/panic medication that she put me on...and I feel almost NORMAL again. Let me tell you, I was wondering if I would EVER feel normal again for a couple of weeks there.

JeepMan said it's been like living with a stranger or a cardboard cutout of me, until today.

So here's to hoping the tests for the bad things come back ok, and that I am just psychotic. At least there's a pill for that right?

So how's about it? List a few things that make YOU panic, no matter how silly they might be!

Here's mine:
Death - anyone that I love but especially a child
Dying and leaving my children without a mother
Flying in airplanes (small spaces and fear of heights)
Heights, especially if I feel I could fall (no kidding, even a 3-step ladder makes me queasy)
Small spaces
Crowds, even in elevators
On a boat, the stomach-turning awareness of how deep the water underneath you is
Trying to comprehend enormous things like millions/billions of years, the vastness of space, eternity - I try not to think about them because I do get a little panicky
Losing track of my child even for a second in a crowded area (not weird, just mom-ish)

I'll try to make the next post not so morbid, but this is a litte snapshot of my life right now and I gotta put it out there for what it is...

Thursday

Last Thursday began and proceeded like any other day. Lauren had stayed home "sick" Wednesday, though she wasn't really sick. Her daycare sent her home Tuesday with a fever and the policy is that she can't return for 24 hours after her last fever episode. She was perfectly fine Weds but I couldn't take her back.

So Thursday felt kind of like a Monday since I had been off the day before. I had a long day at work, lots of stuff waiting when I got home, and I had bought 3 lbs of blueberries from a lady I work with who has a berry farm. I planned to make some blueberry pies after dinner.

For dinner we had shish-kebabs (yum!), and then I set about making the pies. They took a while, and after I put them in I cleaned up the dinner and pie-making mess. By the time that was done the pies were ready to come out. I pulled them out and sat them on the stove to cool...man did they smell good!

I was feeling pretty content: my house was semi-clean and smelled like fresh-baked pie, and I had done it all in time to sit down and catch my current favorite TV show. "World Series of Pop Culture." I sat down on the couch, started to relax, and then it happened.

I suddenly felt a strange heat spreading from my belly out to the rest of my body. Simultaneously, I felt like my heart wasn't beating and I couldn't breathe. Some of my patients tell me that they feel a strong feeling that they are going to die. We call this "impending doom." You can't imagine what impending doom feels like unless you actually experience it. I truly felt in that few seconds like I was going to die. I sat straight up, coughed, and it went away. I laid back down and it happened again. It happened 4 times in a row, and I finally sat up on the edge of the couch, looked at JeepMan, and told him, "If I pass out, you need to call 911."

Poor guy, I probably scared the crap out of him. He asked me what was going on and I told him I didn't know; I just didn't feel right and my heart was doing something weird. He had me lay on the floor and he got me a cool washcloth for my forehead. Oh, if we only lived in a world where a cool washcloth can still make things better.

It should be noted that a few years ago I had a rapid abnormal heartbeat. My symptoms were totally different though: I would feel my heart beating too hard and too fast for just a few beats (10 or so), I would nearly faint, and then it would go away. It happened usually when I was exerting myself. I had a procedure to burn the area (ablation), and I haven't had any problems since. And ironically, the area where I work is the area where we do these ablation procedures...

So back to me lying on the floor. After a couple minutes with no symptoms, I got up and returned to the couch. A few seconds later, I got the same feeling, sat up, and it didn't go away. I was sure I was going to pass out and/or die. I told my husband, "Call 911, NOW!" and I got down on the floor. I couldn't feel a heartbeat at all. Everything was swimming and I was trying my hardest not to pass out. JeepMan was on the phone with 911 and asking me, "What am I supposed to tell them?" At this point I started to feel my pulse coming back but it was going very, very fast. I was trying all the things that we have our patients do to get this heart rate to stop: coughing, holding my breath, pushing with my belly muscles like I was trying to poop... Nothing was working.

The fire station is about 5 blocks from our house, and I heard the sirens start up. JeepMan came to my side and I started telling him how to check my pulse and how to do CPR if I "went out" - that's hospital-speak for your heart stops and you stop breathing. I heard the fire truck pull up and, wouldn't you know it, my heart started slowing down. Good for me but bad for trying to make a diagnosis later. The guys came up and started asking me all kinds of questions. It quickly became apparent to me that these guys were mostly just there in case I was actually dying when they came in...God love them, but they weren't really equipped to do much care between the extremes of CPR or holding my hand. Still it was very reassuring to have them there and they were very kind. The ambulance guys arrived moments later and did their thing. I was feeling pretty good by then but they thought I should probably go to the ER (I heartily agreed), so I walked downstairs and outside with all my wires and oxygen attached. My house is a split foyer (a mistake I will not make again) and it just made sense for me to walk down rather than have them try to negotiate my stairs and corners with a stretcher and me on it!

I got outside, and soon realized that I have waaaay more neighbors than I knew about. They were standing in groups of about 10, in several yards, all slack-jawed. I was SO embarassed, and all I could think of to do was give them a little, "I'm OK, you can all go back to whatever you were doing..." kind of wave. JeepMan told me later that he was really, really tempted to stand at the door and shake his fist while yelling, "...AND IF YOU BRING HER BACK, I'LL BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF HER AGAIN!!!" but he restrained himself. Actually a few neighbors came by later to see if we needed any help with the kids (who slept through the whole thing, thankfully), but I am sure they were being nosy, too.

In the ambulance, I had to answer more questions, then they had to hook me up to a heart monitor that has a lot more wires. The paramedic had me lean forward so he could reach around and undo my bra so he didn't have to cut it. I know it is business; heck, I shave groins and handle genitalia all day, but still it felt strangely intimate - I was tempted to tell him I could get it myself, but the other paramedic was putting an IV in my arm. Then the guy had to pick up my left breast and put these monitor leads, five of them, under there. Yeah, I know it's legit because that's where they are supposed to go, but it's still awkward, especially since I have really hefty, rather saggy boobs.

I am telling you all these embarassing details for a very good reason, which I am getting to.

So all the embarassing stuff was out of the way and I was on the road to the ER. Time for some polite conversation. I told him the timing of all this was bad as I am leaving for vacation in a week. He asked where I was going, and I said Colorado. He asked what we were going to do out there and I told him we offroad a Jeep and that we were planning to rent a Jeep out there for a couple of days and do some scenic easy trails. He looked at me for a few seconds, then said:

"Is your husband JeepMan?"

I finally looked at the guy; REALLY looked at him, and realized I knew him. He offroads a Jeep, too, and we had gone on a couple of trips with him and a group. My jaw surely dropped, and I said, "BRENT?!? You're Brent!! Holy Cow!"

He smiled and said, "Red TJ, right?" (That's Jeep-talk for the kind of Jeep we drive) I said, "Blue CJ, right?"

Yeah. I knew him. I SO knew him. And I am so glad I didn't know that I knew him when he had to grope me. Later I found out JeepMan knew him the minute he came into the house, and he recognized JeepMan instantly as well. Kudos to him for keeping the patient at the focus in the face of strong temptation to engage in JeepTalk. Poor guy: he knew he knew me when he had to do all that awkward stuff!

The rest of the evening was rather uneventful. I got a liter of IV fluid, had to use a bedside commode (portable toilet - yippee), and then got an ambulance escort home - free of charge - because I knew the crew. In retrospect, it was poetic compensation for having had to be felt up by someone I knew, all in the name of medicine.

I have been wearing a heart monitor ever since so that I can catch something if it happens. I had a few fleeting episodes over the weekend, but it turns out the monitor wasn't working so I got a new one today with no documentation of what happened this weekend. Ugh. I imagine that this new monitor pretty much guarantees that nothing more will happen until I am on some remote mountainside in Colorado.

In case you are wondering, no, I will NOT cancel my vacation because of this. I am so excited to be going on a family vacation: this is the first real vacation we have had since Plato was born 6 years ago, and we have been planning it for 6 months. I am going to live my life and not be a slave to this.

I told JeepMan my sentiments and he will do whatever I want. I can tell he really, really wants to go to Colorado, and he's more excited than I have seen him in a long time. I can tell he is thinking about what could happen, though, because out of the blue this weekend he said, "I suppose a helicoptor rescue from a mountainside wouldn't be too cheap, would it?"

Ugh. Dangling from a helicopter basket flying through the mountains is one of my ultimate nightmares, but it's not going to happen...it's not.

Week from...

This week has been rotten. All because of work, which tends to spoil the rest of my life. Now I am not a person who, as a rule, has difficulty separating my work life from my home life. That's not it at all. What happened was that all the overtime I worked severely limited my time with my kids and JeepMan.

My kids go to bed at 7pm, 7:30 if they are "up late." This rule is somewhat flexible on the weekends, but carved in stone for "school nights." If they don't get enough sleep, they are MONSTERS in the morning (they take after me...).

We leave the house at 7am, sometimes 6:45. All week my kids have been late to bed. The mornings have been...difficult. Last nite I did not get back home until 8:15. The kids did not get to bed until 8:45. This morning stunk. The thing is, I cannot blame the kids (no matter how easy it would be to do that) for their rotten morning behavior. They are not getting enough sleep because of me!

Even if the stress of working late hours doesn't necessarily follow me home, the exhaustion does. I go home, put the kids in bed, and then myself. I am certainly neglecting my "wifely duties." Not one load of laundry has been done this week. The dishes are piling up - JeepMan cooks, but I think he believes in the dishwashing fairy. We are going to be out of town both days this weekend, so I really hope she exists. It's going to be freaking cold and my kids will be wearing their Christmas outfits, not their Easter ones. Yeah, I am stressed out. Oh, and did I mention that I will most likely be here late tonight too?

I snapped this morning and told the kids I was going to call the Easter bunny and tell him to skip our house because he didn't need to bring any goodies to whiny kids.

Oops. There goes my mom-of-the-year award.

Funny car conversation last night:

We pulled into a parking lot so JeepMan could go find a new mower blade. Don't ask me why we needed a new mower blade at 8:30 pm, but I was too tired to argue. We pulled into the front space of the parking lot. Right next to us was a handicapped space, with a sign. Plato is learning to read:

Plato: Mom? I wish we could park in that spot.

Why Plato? We are right up front, here.

Plato: Well, if you park there, they give you $100.

I looked at the sign, it says "$100 FINE." I asked him what he thought it said.

Plato: One-hundred-dollars, fun-ne.

Yeah, funny. Until you get the ticket.

M-I-L Rant #1

We were riding in the car last night after eating out (which we do too much). It was pretty quiet, then Plato dropped this bomb:

Plato: Mom? I've had a shot drink before.

I looked at JeepMan, who was driving. He frequently tunes out the kids when driving. He didn't offer any explanation.

What is a shot drink, Plato?

Plato: Well, you drink it from a little glass and you chug it.

We often have chugging contests at the dinner table to see who can finish their milk first...MILK. It's a fun way to encourage dairy intake.

Where did you have this shot drink?

Plato: At Grandma's.

I could feel the heat rising to my face. I forced my voice to stay calm. Of course I knew which Grandma. My mother would never think to give my kids shots of any kind. I looked at JeepMan: blank expression.

Are you listening to this?

JeepMan: Yeah, my mom had us all do shots for St. Patty's.

That's it, no elaboration. I could see that I would have to pry it out of him.

Shots of WHAT?

JeepMan: Well, Mom and I had Bailey's and the kids had chocolate milk.

Plato: Yeah, Mom, I CHUGGED it!

The Boss: ME TOO MOM!!

Somehow the fact that it was "only" chocolate milk didn't make it that much better. I have an issue with the fact that the kids are even being exposed to this kind of behavior. Now I know I was a relatively naive kid, but I truly didn't know what a shot was until I was about 18. I guess I believe in keeping my kids oblivious to things like this as long as possible. It's not like naughty words and sexual innuendo, which kids are just going to be exposed to on some level by their peers at a relatively young age whether you like it or not. Things like shots are things you can choose to deny or severely limit exposure to until they are quite a bit older.

Rational as that may sound, try explaining this concept to my mother-in-law. The fact that she was such a great mother to my husband (choke) doesn't help much; the fact that she could never comprehend that something she did was wrong renders it impossible.

Final example: her idea of funny is taking pictures of my children wearing beer caps and putting empty beer bottles up to their lips.

Call me crazy - I don't see the humor in it.

Work vs. Life

A coworker of mine made an observation yesterday about Americans and work. She said, "You know, in Europe they have a saying: Americans live to work, while Europeans work to live." Not an hour later this same coworker was trying to guilt trip me into staying for an extra 1-2 hours to do another case.

Guess she sides with the Americans.

While in most scenarios I agree with Americans and their values, I heartily side with the Europeans on this one. I have spent 11 years in the work force, 9 of those years searching for a job that fits my specific needs. See, I have this ethical flaw...I want to spend time with my family. Unfortunately, our budget doesn't allow for me to be a stay-at-home mom. I have often said that being a stay-at-home mom would drive me crazy, that I wouldn't be as good a parent because I would be terminally stressed. I was kidding myself; creating justification for the choices I have made. I have come to the realization that stay-at-home moms find things to do. They also find other stay-at-home moms.

But I digress. The point of this rant is that I have chosen my current job primarily because I can leave it at work. I can work a normal workday (I worked night shift for 6 years...blech!). When the workday is done, I can go home. I don't have homeowork. I don't have to plan for the next day. I do not have to carry a pager and be preoccupied that it might go off and I have to drop everything and go save a life. I don't need the overtime pay, and it doesn't compensate for my time away from my family anyway.

After 10 hours away from my kids, is it wrong to be possessive of those precious 2 hours I get before they need to be in bed? My coworkers without children seem to think so...even some who HAVE children seem to think so. THEY live to work. I work to live.

I didn't fall for the guilt trip, by the way. I went home, had dinner with my kids, tucked them into bed, and got to hear both my kids tell me they love me and I am the best. $60 in overtime couldn't compensate for that, baby.

And hey, if I hadn't been home, I would have missed this:

Dinner Table Conversation 3/26/07

Plato is thinking.

Uh oh...Wait for it...wait for it...

He swallows his meatloaf and says "Mom?..."

"What's Uranus?"