50 Lashes With A Wet Noodle

Oh my.

I am so delinquent!! My blogging has taken a backseat. Taken a hike. Gone on sabbatical.

I've ignored it horribly.

There are all kinds of excuses: busy with work (extremely), busy with other things (working out - good!) (Facebook - bad!), lack of inspiration.... blah blah blah. But you don't care about the excuses.

Some of you have told me you miss me; that's so sweet and I thank you so much. I've missed me, too. In a twisted way, I've sort of lost part of myself (the part you know here) in a quest to find myself (the thinner, inner me; the professional me).

Nothing radical or wacky has happened in my life, really. And I spend so much time away from my kids that there isn't nearly as much inspiration there, either. I am hoping I'm just in a doldrums stage of my life. The past 9 or 10 months has been one long "transition period;" that is, I'm following my gut instinct and waiting to make a big family decision until it feels right.

No, I'm not divorcing my husband (yet! lol). I'm deciding if, when, and where to relocate our little family for my job. See, I love my job. Really, truly love it. In 13 years as a career woman, I have never been able to say that. So I am loathe to give it up, but I also loathe the travel. The overnight stuff, fly in a plane, rent a car, stay in a hotel stuff. The travel issue is easily resolved: by moving.

Moving, though, isn't such an easy decision as it may seem. I am one of 2 children. JeepMan is an only child. My sister doesn't have children (yet). Therefore, my children are the ONLY grandchildren on both sides of our family. We live, quite literally, in between the grandparents. An hour east or west will land us at their homes. A half hour further west puts us at my sister's front door. It's really ideal.

We love our town. We love the kids' school. We love being able to see family whenever we want. JeepMan has almost 10 years at his job - which is good and bad. He doesn't love his job. He's just comfortable there.

If we move, the obvious location for us would put us 3 1/2 hours from my folks', 5 from my in-laws. It would be a bigger city, but really it wouldn't offer us any great benefit other than the fact that I would be home most nights. No great recreation opportunities, no beautiful scenery, no family, higher cost of living, questionable job for JeepMan...

But oh, the lure of being home most nights.

Other options are hope and pray something amazing happens with my company closer to home, or say heck with it and grab a job with my company somewhere cool, like Colorado. Really, being 8 hours from our family wouldn't be that much different than being 4-5 hours!! And I've always wanted to live near mountains.

*sigh* sorry to be a downer. I suppose this is why I haven't written in so long!!

I'll collect some more kid funnies and be back in a bit. Thanks for sticking with me!! <3

The Pony Eater (My 100th Post!)

Wow. 100 posts. Crazy goodness!

Put on your hard hats, post ideas are falling from the sky today.

First, a confession. I had a major blonde moment today. I was trying to get cash from an ATM at one of my hospitals. The machine looked ancient. I put my card in, entered my PIN, and then couldn't get the thing to give me any money. I couldn't select the options: there were options in green, red, and black, with buttons on the keypad in corresponding colors. I tried pushing every button, then pulled my card out and tried again. Same deal.

I did this 5 times, then tried a different card. Same thing. Disgusted, I headed off to my case with no cash (and no coffee, grrr...). I asked the folks in the lab if they've ever had troubles with the machine. No, no one else ever had that issue. I figured the damn thing was malfunctioning and someone would probably be fixing it.

6 hours later, I tried one more time before I left the hospital. Same thing. As I pulled out my card to leave, a light bulb went on. I swear, there had to be one above my head!!

I put my card back in, entered the PIN, and USED THE TOUCH SCREEN. Voila!! Money!! (giant forehead slap) Some days I'm just so blonde it hurts.

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There I was, commuting (hate it!), warily watching the bumper-riding teenage driver behind me as she held her phone in one hand and twirled her hair with her other. I had my escape route all planned out like a good driver. I pulled up to a stoplight, braced for the impact, and when it didn't come I turned my attention to the car in front of me.

Crud. Why did I do that? I now have one of those brain-eating questions that Lewis Black talks about. The one you will NEVER learn the answer to:

"...when from behind me, a woman of 25 uttered the dumbest thing I'd ever heard in my life ... She said, 'If it weren’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college.'

I'll repeat that.

I'll repeat that because that's the kind of sentence that when you hear it, your brain comes to a screeching halt. And the left hand side of the brain looks at the right hand side and goes, 'It's dark in here. And we may die.'

She said, 'If it weren't for my horse...' as in, giddy up, giddy up, let's go -

'I wouldn't have spent that year in college...' a degree-granting institution.

Don't! Don't think about that sentence for more than three minutes, or blood'll shoot out your nose. The American medical profession doesn't know why we get an aneurysm. It's when a blood vessel bursts in our head for no apparent reason.

There's a reason.

You're at the mall one day, and somebody over there says the dumbest thing you've ever heard and it goes in your ear. So you turn around to see if your friends heard it, 'cause if your friends heard it, and you can talk about what the jackass said, then it'll be gone. But your friends are over here, pretending they're gonna buy a cellular phone, and they're not gonna buy a cellular phone, because they don't even understand how the rate structure works.

So you turn back, to find the person who said it, because if you can ask 'em a question like, 'WHAT THE F**K ARE YOU TALKIN' ABOUT?!' ...then it'll go away. But they're gone.

And now those words are in your head. And those words don't go away.

'Cause the way I see it, 7% of our brains functions all the time, because 99% of everything that happens is the same old stuff. We get it. All right. Move on. Get it. Right.

But every so often, somethin' like that happens:

'If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college.'

So your brain goes, 'LET'S FIGURE IT OUT! Son of a Bitch! I wonder what that's about?!!'

I wonder, was she riding the horse to school? No, she wouldn't be riding the horse to school.

Maybe it was a polo pony? She had a Polo Pony Scholarship.

Maybe she sold the horse and that's how she...?

....She was betting on the horse!

WHAT THE F**K!!!!

And then you realize that anybody who went to college would never SAY anything that stupid in public...and as soon as you have that thought, your eyes close...

And the next morning they find you dead in your bathroom."

(The White Album, 2000)

Pardon Lewis' language, he claims that F**K is his "thinking word;" you know, instead of "like...uhm..." Much more colorful.

Anywho, back to my own personal brain-eating question. The license plate in front of me reads:

PONYETR

No, I did not type that incorrectly. That's what it read. Phonetically, that would be "poh-nee-eet-uhr"

I'll let that eat your brain for a moment.

U crazy yet?

Because I'm going freakin' NUTS.

So my brain is running wild. The car is a recent model Buick LeSabre - and the guy driving is about 75 years old (I can see his white combover through the rear windshield). He's turning into Wal-Mart. So what's with PONYETR? Is it his last name? Unlikely. Is it some kind of vulgarity? That's a long shot.

So does he, literally, eat ponies? Like horse meat? Doesn't seem likely that its something a person would feel the need to advertise on a license plate.

Gathering speed, my mind downshifts and hits the accelerator. Now it's spewing other license plates that follow this theme (for my non-US readers: the standard US license plate is 7 letters and/or numbers):

Jeffrey Dahmer's plate: MANEATR (would also work for Hall & Oates)

Drunken Sot: BEEFETR (or a rampant carnivore)

Lord Voldemort: DETHETR

Dementor: MINDETR

Hunger Striker: NONEATR

Vegan: VEGEATR

Insert your favorite food here: PIG- COW- CHIK- FISH- ETR

Deity on earth: SUNEATR, MOONETR, STARETR,

Vampire: BLUDETR

Anorexic: UNDRETR

Demon: SOULETR

Foot Fanatic: ODORETR

Obese Driver: UBERETR

Always Wrong: CROWETR

STOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOP!!!!! GAAAAAHHH!!!

I finally got the brakes applied and my brain skidded to a screeching halt. I had to find something that I could accept as reasonable so I could sweep this issue under my mental rug and move on.

So here it is: my backstory to the shiny black LeSabre with grandpa behind the wheel and the license plate proclaiming: PONYETR.

So this old guy saved all his money when he was a young man to buy a muscle car, say a Dodge Charger. He used to drag race the thing, and his biggest competition was a guy driving a Ford Mustang. As a cocky gesture, he went out and got himself a license plate that read PONYETR, and he's never been able to let it go since it makes him feel young.

Either that, or that was his nickname in WWII.

Any thoughts on this one?

My All-Nighter

Now before you get all excited, this isn't a post about some raunchy adulterous escapade. Damn (I know!). But after 12 years of wedded bliss life, I'm not about to screw things up in that department!! No, this post is about my recent dream.

I dream a lot. I remember many of my dreams. Mostly I dream in vignettes. Several dreams in a night, but I don't usually remember the stories behind most of them: most often the ones right before I wake.

Occasionally, however, I have one of those marathon dreams...do you have these? It's like I have the same dream ALL NIGHT LONG. Vivid detail, complicated scenes, and seemingly authentic sensory stimulation. I wake up exhausted from processing (manufacturing?), all this information.
Whenever I have one of these dreams, I think about it obsessively. There is so much to consider, I feel like there must be a deeper meaning. The theory that the dream is simply a massive dump of my brain cheapens the experience. So I analyze, ponder, dissect...and frequently don't come up with much. Some things are just destined to remain mysterious.

So the dream: I am leaving out a lot of the detail since this isn't a novel. I'll try to hit the highlights.

I'm in a floating restaurant with my in-laws, but not my husband (?). We are having a nice dinner, when all of a sudden the restaurant starts pitching and rolling like a yacht. MIL says we have to leave, and quick.

Cut to the escape: we're in a car speeding over a long low bridge. To the left is a low-profile steel-domed building hugging the bank of the river. My MIL is bitching a blue streak about how she has joined a group that's been trying to sue the "nuc-u-ler guy" because his plant is interfering with the environment...blah, blah, blah...and all I'm thinking is: "Nuc-le-ar. Nuclear physicist. GAH!"

The building sends out a large sonic-boom type sound and the bridge starts shaking. I look behind and there is a wall of water rushing at us. The bridge ends on an uphill. FIL floors it, and as we crest the hill the wall of water engulfs the restaurant, bridge, and building below us. We are safe.

Cut to the park. My in-laws are gone, and now I am in a Jeep Cherokee with JeepMan driving. We are cruising through a sodden basin-shaped park, trying to find a way out. There are other vehicles all around us stuck in the mire. JeepMan decides to drive up an incredibly steep hill. I am telling him, then screaming to him, that we can't make it, it's too steep and the grass is too slippery but he floors it and we almost make it...then we are sliding backwards and the Jeep slams sideway against a tree growing out of the hillside, wedging itself there. I'm pissed!! I get out and start stomping away as JeepMan is trying to justify his risky, stupid action. Whatever. I squish through the slippery grass as a group of hippie-kids at the bottom of the hill trying to unstick their van start yelling at me about how cool that was, rock on, far out dude...

Cut to downtown, dusk. Nondescript city, I am walking in a herd of people that I don't know, together but anonymous. We are all heading somewhere, but I don't know where. The concrete is slathered with a thin layer of river mud that sucks weakly at my shoes as I walk. I look down and can hardly believe it but there's a soggy bill. I pick it up, and it's a $20. Sweet. I keep walking, and there's another. And another. Now I'm looking ahead and seeing them scattered all over the place. Others are noticing, so I start scrambling. One of them is a $50. I'm starting to get a stack. The money is soggy but, hey,it'll dry. A money truck must have gotten caught up in the wave or something. More bills. I'm scrapping with the frantic crowd. There's a $100 bill. And holy crap, a $200 bill...

My consciousness comes up for a gasp of air and I think, "Hey. I don't think there's any such thing as a $200 bill. Is this a dream?"

Then I'm pulled back under and I'm in a house with a bunch of people I don't know. I'm going up the stairs with my wad of soggy bills and I overhear someone downstairs say the cops are out on the streets stopping people to recover the money that is all over the street. I can't believe they didn't stop me but here I am with a giant wad of bills, and I'm in a house, and they can't come in here, right? A second disembodied voice says it doesn't matter, the money's worthless, they have the serial numbers and if anyone spends the money they'll be busted anyhow.

I should turn it in, but I can't, just can't. It's so much money!

So I go into a bedroom and there's Leonardo DiCaprio and I'm unfazed, like I expect him to be there. I show him the money and he says we have to hide it, somewhere safe. There is a young woman on the bed, sleeping, and her face is covered with the dew of fever. He glances at her with indifference, saying, "...she's sick. I don't know what's wrong with her." Then we head to the bathroom and he takes the money and melts it down, then pours it, drop by drop, into a big jug of water. Each drop hardens into a sphere of platinum and sinks quickly to the bottom. I am left with a bag of platinum marbles. There. The police can't track the money now.

We head back to the bedroom and the girl looks bad, real bad. In fact, upon closer inspection, she's dead. He face is covered with open seeping wounds and Leo says it was leprosy. Suddenly he's scared; he thinks he gave it to her. He gets twitchy and says we need to hide the body. I tell him no way, I'm in enough trouble already what with the money thing and all. He's wrapped the body in a sheet and is ordering me to help him lift it when I hear the cops break down the door and start raiding the house.

Cut to me running down the stairs, three at a time, four, until I'm leaping from landing to landing. There must be a dozen flights, I don't remember there being that many. I end up in a basement crouching behind a pool table. Others are clamoring in, and I can hear the approaching bootfalls and shouts of the police. Suddenly the room is full and there are dozens of people and the cops are pulling their guns and shouting. It's mass chaos but I stick to the wall and manage to sidle along until I join up with a group of people heading up the stairs and we're moving as one creature up the stairs as cops continue to stream down one by one, ignoring us in favor of the cacophony downstairs.

Then I'm outside in the dark and trying to sneak away. The air is cool and fresh and I inhale deeply before I realize that people are running everywhere. I watch police chase them down one by one, tackling them and cuffing them. I just want to hide. I crouch in the shadowy lee of a garage and try to be small. I'm alone, in the dark, on the lam with no one to reach out to. I know they're going to catch me - it's only a matter of time.

I wake up with my heart pounding and the lingering panic sensation of hiding in the dark being hunted during a police raid.

What the heck?

Analyze that, Jung. Freud. Dr. Phil.

'Cause I don't get it.

***no sleeping drugs were involved in the making of this dream. or bedtime snacks. nope, this is pure, unadulterated brain droppings***

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.

The Brazilian Wax Incident

I haven't blogged in a few days because I really didn't want to blog about what happened Saturday. I have tried to sit at this keyboard every day since then, and the only thing that wants to come out is this story. I can't blog about anything else until this speed bump, nay, gymongous pot-hole of a post is published. It's an embarassing tale. It's got waaaay to much information. It gratuitously uses the S-word. And it involves my cootchie. So if any of this offends you, just skip this post. Move along.

The only function this story serves is that it is drian-o for my brain-o. And it's funny, in a sick-and-twisted sort of way.

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So last Saturday JeepMan took Plato to the local Collegeville basketball game. That left me with Lulu for some girl bonding time. As it turned out, she wasn't in the mood to bond, so she ended up in bed rather early. I decided to make myself useful, so I tackled the under-sink cupboard in the bathroom. I'm a product-junkie (in denial), and at least once a year I need to get rid of as many partially used, dust-encrusted products as I can convince myself to throw away.

As luck (read: misfortune) would have it I ran across a tub of wax and waxing accessories in the bottom of one of my storage bins. I used the stuff like once, a loooong time ago, in a botched attempt to wax my legs (a misadventure that, had I recalled of it, might have saved me from having to write this post at all!).

Idea! The oft-unlit lightbulb over my head glowed brightly and somewhere in my mind trumpets were playing fanfare. Why let the wax go to waste? Here in my hands was a lavender tub of opportunity. I could even score a two-fer: I could try something I have always been curious about AND shake things up in the bedroom, hurrah! And so it happened that I entered into the Brazilian Wax Debacle.

For those of you who don't know what a Brazilian Wax is, check it out here real quick. It's necessary for the full appreciation of the story to follow.

Anyhow, I have a friend who told me she does Brazilians (the procedure, not the people) and her man loves it... so does she for that matter. Says it makes her feel sexy all the time. She does it at home, and has done so for years. Interestingly, she always has her eyebrows waxed at the salon, as she is afraid to screw them up.

Heeeeey...I wax my own eyebrows! I also have a relatively high tolerance for pain. So it stands to reason that doing my own Brazilian at home should not be a problem, right? Right?

You bet! I ain't a-scared!

Tragic flaw #1: attitude is everything. And mine was waaaaay too cavalier.

Tragic flaw #2: research is everything else. And I didn't do any.

So I forged ahead, enchanted completely with this idea and the sexy romantic surprise that JeepMan would get later - woo hoo!

I quickly gathered up my supplies and dropped my drawers. Putting on the bikini wax wasn't quite as ergonomically easy as doing eyebrows, but fortunately precision is not key. One foot up on the sink and a carefully placed mirror, and I was moving right along. The wax is supposed to be put on, then covered with a cloth strip; the premise being that the wax will want to stick to the cloth more than you, so when the cloth is ripped off the wax and everything embedded in it (i.e. hair) will come with it. It seemed to make sense to get the most bang for my waxing buck, so I slathered the sticky stuff from all the way back to all the way front and carefully applied the 10-inch cloth strip.

Took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and YANKED for all I was worth.

Then soundlessely screamed obscenities as I fought the growing black spots and tried to stay upright, what with my eyes rolled back in my head and one foot up on the sink and all.

As I was slowly sucked back into the here and now, my first thought (after "HolyShitThatHurt!!"), was that I still had the other side to do (shitshitshit), followed by the incremental comprehension of a steady "drip, drip, drip" sound...

I looked down in that slo-mo state that often accompanies shock and trauma, and after a few seconds realized that the "drip, drip, drip" was synchronous with the red spattery droplets appearing on my white linoleum floor. It took a few seconds to process, but the end result was a simultaneous realization that I was bleeding and vague recollection of a secondary (decidedly more fleshy) ripping sensation during the wax removal.

Oh my god, I ripped a genital artery!!

Exacerbated by the final, horrifying realization that the cloth strip had very little wax and absolutely no hair on it.

For anyone who has tried waxing of any nature, you might see where this is going. For wax virgins, here's the deal: wax does not come off easily. Soap and water? No way. Washcloth and friction? Mmmm - nope. Repeated attempts to remove wax with cloth strips and further rippage may work but I wasn't about to go there. That left solvent. I used the entire bottle of wax solvent that came with that stupid kit. It worked but whoa-momma-yeowza!! Burn baby burn!

As I was rubbing the stinging solvent into the obstinant wax, the nurse in me was pondering: how many morons present to ERs every day with stories like this or worse?

"Hi, I just tried to wax my vagina at home? By myself? Yeah, anyway I think I ripped out a vulvar artery or something. Well...my labia are waxed together, so it's hard to tell...the point is, is there anything you can do about it? Oh, you have a waiting list...okay, I'll just penguin-walk over to this chair and try not to hemorrhage to death while the ingrown toenail patient goes ahead of me...No, no, it's my own stupid fault. Just make sure they bring out some kind of spatula or wax solvent when they're ready for me to come back, 'cause I'll bet you dollars to donuts I'm gonna end up stuck to your nice waiting room chair..."

After I was cleaned and bandaged (Hell's Angels couldn't have dragged me to the ER for something this asinine!), I got this brilliant idea to RESEARCH brazilian waxing, how to do at home (hindsight being 20/20 and all that). After I sorted through the porno results of Googling "Brazilian Wax" and found some educational stuff I found that every single website said the same thing: "This shoud be done by a trained professional!! Don't try this at home!!"

Okay! I get it, I get it. The hard way, but I get it.

I even came across this powerful video. It's a must-see.

And No, JeepMan didn't get any that night, or the next, or the next.

Maybe I can talk him into a Men's Brazilian sometime though.

It's called a "Back, Sack, and Crack." No Shit.

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Ok, so that is out. I feel like I just popped a monster brain zit and it splatted all over this page.
Gross, but man does that feel better.

Thanks for tuning in...until next time.




"It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others."