clickmom

while his mother gently weeps

I finally convinced Evan to shave off his little speedy gonzalez puberty is here mustache.  Then I realized he has two little sparse facial hair pom poms growing on either side of his chin.  He won't shave them off though.  

Bye bye baby bye bye.

always worrying

Evan and Josh go to camp tomorrow and I am convinced that there is going to be a swine flu outbreak at their camp.  It just seems to me that it is risky to gather kids together from all over the place and then make them live in cabins breathing each other's air.

Did I tell you that my polyp was benign?  That means I have 5 years to find an alternative to the anti-freeze prep.  As Scarlett is my witness, I will never drink anti-freeze again!

The devil is amazingly good about not bothering her stitches but she is licking other places on her feet and I am convinced she has other completely benign fatty tumors, cysts, and hemo-somethings hiding under all that fur.  Let's hope she never goes bald.

As is throughly typical for me, there is a giant pile of clothes at the foot of my bed that I fully intend on labeling for camp (that starts tomorrow!)  as soon as I wake up tomorrow, so I better get to bed so that I can deliver the kids to camp on time, because just because I am the world's most ridiculous procrastinator doesn't mean that they should have to get the bunk under the kid who still pees the bed. We have to get there early for choice bed assignment and not because every second spent with me is a second closer to justifiable child abuse (Evan).

In closing, you should know that Josh somehow decided I should call him Jott (Josh + Matt - but I thought Mash was better, whatever) for the two days Josh is with me and Matt is at his camp for the specific reason of Josh as Jott getting all of his affection from me and mine for Matt's as well.  He needs to stock up before camp.

committed

Psyched!  Did I not just last night say I was considering jumping back into the NABLOGEVERYDAY pool?  I got the monthly NaBlo reminder to day and I immediately signed up for July.  The theme of the month?  ROUTINE.  Which, how perfect for me?  All I have been thinking to myself is that I have to get back into the routine of eating right and exercising.  I wanted to call this "My Summer Of Transformation" or something else equally as corny that denotes me morphing from lackadaisical exerciser (partially due to the never ending saga of my torn ankle tendons) and poor eating over eater to committed fanatical exerciser and pure healthy cleansing eater just so I can emerge from this 2 1/2 year depressing funk as a beautiful butterfly ready to be the strong, healthy person I can be and ignite the art career I so very much want.  Sounds good?  I really feel like I need all the dominoes to line up to get every part of my life just where I want it.

Dropped my beloved Matt off at his camp this afternoon.  I was big mess.  Seriously, I've been crying for days in anticipation of this and I do feel quite guilty about how much I want my kid around me and not out there doing his own thing, but to be honest the boy is my best friend.  I just love chatting with him and spending time with him and listening to his music (which OMG he made me a CD of him playing and singing his own songs and now I have to be the president of the "Matt as soul singer fan club" too!) and I am in mourning over the lack of contact I will have with my sweet baby first born over the next 8 weeks.  All I can say is that the kid better go to college locally.  And damn me for teaching him how to do his own laundry!  Now I most definitely am not going to teach him how to cook.  I have to give him reasons to keep coming home!  

Evan and Josh leave on Tuesday and I am really going to be lost there for at least 8 hours or so with none of my babies around.  Then I am sure that it will down on me that I am not going to be cooking and cleaning for me plus three and I'll get over it.

motionless high intensity cardio

So, Matt completed his 6th hour of driving instructor training last week.  This makes him eligible to drive with me.  

What I would like to say to the administrators who came up with that 6 hour rule is :  WHY?????  Seriously, 6 measly hours!  Not . Not enough.

All these people who must be on drugs jokers out there kept telling me that kids today drive so well because of their video game prowess.  They are supposed to have some kind of ultra supreme hand eye coordination.  

Thanks for nothing Tetris!  Tetris doesn't work!  Matt can rotate those puzzle pieces at the freaking speed of light, but can he drive 25 mph in a 25 mph zone?  NO!  

Matt's driving instructor after Matt's last lesson: Well.  You won't have to worry about him speeding.

me in the car with Matt: Matt, honey,  it's a 25 mph street. Try to at least drive closer to 20 mph okay?  Don't panic sweetie, there are only four cars honking behind you.

Other things I say while seat belted scampering away from the part of the car that is most likely to hit the utility pole, parked car, or mailbox on the side of the road that Matt seems mysteriously vehicularly drawn to.

me:  "Brake. Brake! BRAKE!"

Matt: I braked.

me; Yeah, but you know how we both jerked forward when you finally stopped? ..........

me:   "Go. Go! GO!!  That was a red light you just drove through."

Matt: Ooooh, there was a light there?  I didn't see the light.

me: Turn. Turn!  TURN!

me: Drive around the people. Around the people!  AROUND!

me: Drive around the parked car.  Around the car!  AROUND!

me: MAILBOX!

me: Curb. Curb!  CURB!!!

Then lastly...

me: That was great!  How about we head home now?

And I roll out of the passenger side, clutching my heart, feeling the panic induced adrenaline rush sending gallons of blood to my muscles in a fight or fight response to the sheer terror of the whole mother son bonding experience.

clean bill of devil health

The 5 lumps that were removed from the devil can all be out into one of the following three categories:

benign fatty tumor-not life threatening

cyst- not life threatening

or hemo-something that means a raised mole or something completely not life threatening.

So, all my (genuine) despondency was for NOTHING.  That big furry pain in my butt isn't going anywhere.  Just typing the words "big furry ..... butt" makes me need to mention to you that it is now illegal to get a Brazilian wax in the garden state. I think that is hilarious because now the hairy butted women of Jersey will have slip down dark alleys to get their hiney's waxed.  

Speaking of HINEY (H1N1), my school district was entirely in denial over the whole pig flu thing and did not inform parents about anything.  DENIAL DENIAL DENIAL.  SO pretty much you had to know the sick kid to know that someone was sick.  

But back to the devil, she's fine, I got to remove her bandages this morning and even though between the two spots where they removed lumps and the one spot they mowed off to put the IV in she pretty much like she battled it out with a pair of demonically possessed hair clippers, (the clippers won) before we know it that lush shiny vacuum clogging hair will all grow back and this little blip of utter panic will all be but a memory.

If you can believe this one, I am sitting around kind of thinking that I miss NaBloEVERYSINGLEDAY.  Seriously, 6 months out of it and I am realizing how incredibly therapeutic the year long daily writing ritual ordeal was.  Maybe I'll sign up for the monthly gigs this summer.

godspeed Farrah

I can't believe Michael Jackson had the nerve to die on the same day as Farrah Fawcett.  Here is a picture of Farrah's youthful cuteness.

Adorable.  

Also, she was an artist! I saw the documentary.  Farrah painted a giant eye!  

I think The world should agree not to discuss the King of Creepiness for a week because a class act like Farrah should at least have a week all to her own.

(No offense to Ed McMahon) 

not the devil too! UPDATED

Possible bad news about the devil dog.  I took her in just for some shots this AM and they found an infected little tumor (I know!) on the back of her ankle. So I ended up leaving her there with the vet so she could surgically remove it, and now the vet just called and said they did some pre-surgical blood tests and the devil had elevated kidney enzymes.  It could possibly mean that she is dehydrated, but the truth is that I did notice that she was drinking an awful lot of water lately.  They are keeping her there over night to get her hydrated on an IV so they can do that tumor removing surgery tomorrow.  They want to retake the blood test in a month.  All I can think about is that the devil's breed (flat coated retriever) gets a lot of cancer and many of the cutie dogs only make it to 6.  The devil is 5.

Here she is sitting all lady like waiting patiently for her birthday bone last March.

Update:  When they shaved her scrawny devil leg to remove the bleeding and infected tumor they found there were two more tumors over there.  They removed all the tumors in addition to two fatty bumps she had on her ribs since puppyhood (just in case) and checked out her other legs.  She is up from the anesthesia and looking good so far.

ahh anesthesia

I completely get why some people in the medical field might dip into the anesthesia every now and then.  When I wake up from a good anesthetic sleep all I want to do is laugh and make out.  Which would have made for an enjoyable ride home had I not been driven to my appointment this afternoon by my 60 year old neighbor/friend.  She just isn't my type.

There was a polyp.  It isn't in there anymore!  And also, I'll have you know that according to the butt doc I have a very muscular colon, and I was all like, "Well, I work out!" but it turns out that having a muscular colon means that I am likely to have diverticulosis later in life. Boo.  Grandma had that, and she ate Goldberg's peanut chews until the very end, so I'm gonna tell myself that future diverticulosis is not going to slow me down either.

One half day of school left!  Woo Hoo!!  I might stay in bed until 9 on Wednesday.

I am NEVER taking MiraLAX again.

OMG

Just so you know

clean as a whistle

I drank an entire bottle of antifreeze today.  Some people call it this.

Even wikipedia has some kind of written by a lobbyist benign sounding page on the poison.

I am drinking the poison as a prep for tomorrow's purely maintenance, no need to worry about anything, colonoscopy.  I decided to have a check up for everything under the sun that can be checked up on.  I'm a worrier! 

Anyway, back to the MiraLAX.  So, it's made of anti freeze and causes both kidney and liver failure.  I knew what MiraLAX was because some other patient (or was it nurse?) told mom it would help her with the severe constipation that comes hand in hand with the peritoneal mesothelioma she had.  But, as long time readers already know, mom eventually went into total kidney failure and required dialysis the last 4 or 5 months of her MiraLAX taking life.  And now I see that there was a chance that it wasn't really the chemo that killed mom's kidneys.  It may have been the miraLAX.  Jeezus.   I wonder if any of mom's doctors knew she was taking that crap every day.  I can't believe she may have contributed to her own demise.  heavy.

Anyway, I can't to wake up from that very awesome anesthesia tomorrow.  You know, once the camera has been removed from my normally exit only butt hole.  I look forward to the first three minutes of consciousness after.  I always wake up laughing and I'm pretty sure that means it's a good thing that my new new undead therapist isn't a psycho analyst.