clickmom

This is disgusting

We ended up at Foxwoods for a one night stay with two other couples.  Me and the ladies all went for pedicures.  I got taken in first and then my other friends.  My one friend had terrible deformed ingrown toe nails and her pedicurist didn't think she should touch them.  My pedicurist leans over with the tool she using on me, takes a few snips off of the corner of my friend's deformed nails to show the other pedicurist what she needs to do and then starts in again on my feet without sterilizing the clipper.  I was shocked.  I didn't speak up, didn't want to embarrass my friend, and I am telling you right now that if I end up with a nail fungus I am suing.

My eating this weekend was a total death wish, I am filled with regret and pain and suffering.  First there was unintentional gluten, and then I figured I was already in pain so I'd have at it while we were at a buffet, and now I'd like to slap myself across the face.  I'm hoping I have reached bottom, so that I can pull myself together and eat healthy again, but suspect that part of my crappy eating is due to my thyroid being on one if it's vacations.  

I have no energy again.  My thinking is fuzzy.  I was walking around telling myself that while the skies have been beautiful as can be this summer, the temperatures have been very cool to moderate, but all over the news they are announcing this the hottest July since they started keeping records.  Seriously?  I'm wearing a sweat suit! Also, I have been battling it out with the husband over the setting on the thermostat and for the first time in my life I seem to think that for ultimate comfort the air conditioner should be set to cool at 76.  My other fear because of the fuzzy thinking is that my heavy metal levels are up again. I would be devastated to find that the heavy metals are coming from utopia.  DEVASTATED.

And while devastations is on my mind, I'll tell you that these clear cloudless blue skies are actually starting to get on my nerve.  Devastation might be a little strong, maybe it's more like big disappointment or constant frustration.  I can't tell just anyone this, but one of my photographer friends gave me a call the other day and as soon as I mentioned that the weather was almost too good, she completely understood.  Give me fog!  Give me haze!  Overcast skies!  Cloud dotted sunsets!  Anything but cloudless skies!!  

okay photo rant over.

jailbait (no longer) save

I can still him call him jailbait even if he is of legal age - right??

Anyway, jailbait swaggered into my house yesterday afternoon, doing his cool dude walk, talk and schmoozing with me all in order to ask me if he and some bikini clad friends that he left loitering on my dock could use my boat for some wake boarding. I mentioned that the squirrel had not taken advantage of the open doors to exit the house (yet every fly and mosquito within a 3 mile radius had taken advantage of our open doors and entered!) and because the squirrel had decided to spend the day avoiding us by climbing up and down the two story stone fireplace, and was visible, jailbait grabbed a broom and began chasing the squirrel around in an attempt to get the squirrel to run out the open doors, which he almost did, except the squirrel chose the one door whose screen had slipped closed, but clever jailbait took advantage and locked the squirrel between the screen and the glass and ran outside and opened the screen releasing the squirrel back into the wilds of utopia.  Hurray for jailbait!

Here is a shot of the squirrel hanging out on my fireplace mantel (which will be vacuumed and scrubbed today even though my stepford friend told me that squirrels are not the germ infested critters I imagine they are but are in fact quite clean) and looking directly at the wide open double doors and being too dumb to make a break for it.  I had offered to buy Evan a BB gun.

 

kindness and consideration

Last night there was a company dinner that the husband had to attend.  The Boss's wife decided to organize a wive's dinner for the left out wives. (Note to readers: I have no issue about being left out of company dinners.  The less picky eaters I have to feed the happier I am.  Non family inviting company dinners can very happily happen every day in my book)   

My reaction to the invite:  WHAT?  THEY WANT TO FORCE ME TO LEAVE UTOPIA????  THE SUNSET!  THEY WANT ME TO MISS THE SUNSET?????  NOOO!!!!   Which pretty much means, I put on some make up and my monkey suit, pasted a smile to my face, and drove an hour and half to have dinner with the Boss's wife and two other wives.  One weird thing that happened was an email the day before changing the venue, which didn't matter to me at all since I have no opinion or experience about the restaurants in this unknown to me town we were going to eat in,  The husband thought it may have been because the Boss didn't like the first restaurant, where they had recently neglected to treat him like the King of The World, a treatment the Boss has come to expect from the service industry in general.  

During the wives dinner, the subject of my dietary needs came up.  The husband had mentioned "The Big Four" (gluten, dairy, corn and tomatoes) to the Boss's wife.  In an unprecedented move of total and complete thoughtfulness the Boss's wife had, upon hearing of my dietary restrictions,  called the first restaurant to make sure they could safely accommodate me, and when the first restaurant had not politely reassured her that I would be walking out of their place unscathed, she called her second choice place, which seemed much more well educated in the world of "there are certain things I can't eatedness" so the Boss's wife changed the venue for the wives dinner.

And that my internet friends, is one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.  I am humbled by the Boss's wife's kindness and consideration.

And now for a completely unrelated story:  Yesterday I woke up, stumbled bleary eyed downstairs to release the devil from her nightly night time jail sentence crate confinement and turned towards the kitchen to feed her bottomless hungry retriever soul, when I heard a strange scrambling sound to my left.  I turned to see a squirrel silhouette splayed out across the window.  I instantly prayed to any and every evil and pure power thought  "let the squirrel be on the outside of that window", but my prayers were not answered when the squirrel then twisted around and ran across all three of the windows, down to the floor and right past me into the basement.  The devil took chase, there was some chaos, and ultimately I lost sight of the quick little critter and decided that the way to go was to open all the doors and the little grey nut thief (who incidentally, ate one thing in my kitchen- some gluten free bread!) would make a run for it.  So I opened all of the doors, propped open the screens, and took the devil over to the neighbor's for an hour or so.  When I got back Josh and Evan were staring mindlessly at the damned TV screen and had no idea if the rodent du jour had left or not.  I decided to be optimistic about it and enjoy a day of swimming and play with the kids.  We didn't see the squirrel again yesterday.

This morning, however, much to my deep sleeping shock, Josh woke up, saw the squirrel make a dash across our living room and high tailed it into my bed for safety.  Right now, at this very second the squirrel is sitting on our fireplace ledge, a mere 20 feet from the wide open double doors, not moving an inch.  At least he had the common courtesy to allow me to get off a couple of shots of him (photos people!  put your guns away!) before he exits for good.  Which could be on his terms or mine, either way works for me, because his stay at the utopian hotel is over.  Guess who is on her way to the hardware store for a squirrel trap?

More or less unrelated to the rest of this post:  I told this story to the other wives last night:  A million years ago, when Josh was a baby our congregation had a visiting cantor for the high holidays.  Since we were one of two families which lived within reasonable walking distance the synagogue we were asked if we would put the visiting cantor up in our house.  I'm pretty sure she didn't eat with us because she keeps kosher.  She was super observant and needed to walk to services.  We said YES.  And naturally, one of the first things I did was back into her (beat up ancient) mini van because I forgot there was an extra vehicle in our driveway.  And naturally again, we offered to pay for the damages.  And naturally (recalling there is a great big "sucker" sign illuminated across my forehead) the visiting cantor went home and began sending us bills and more bills.  Not only was it astonishingly pricey to repair an ancient mini van, but this was an orthodox lesbian cantor with a long term life partner, and they happened to have a handful of disabled adopted children, so they had to rent a full sized van while their clunker mini van was languishing/sitting around not getting more mileage put on it being repaired.  We just wrote the check.

Also, I once backed into the husband's brand spanking 2 weeks old still completely new Benz causing 10G worth of damage at driveway speed.  The husband was in his car at the moment of collision, but I swear it was an accident!   When the insurance dude came to verify the claim he couldn't figure out why the claim said Our Name vs Our Name.  He thought what I did was knee slappingly hilarious.

in the moment

I feel awful again, except this time I am quite sure it is a combination of utter exhaustion and eating junkie food, in a world where      have very high standards for my food and eating out is rough at best.

After Joan Baez on Thursday night, I didn't get to bed until midnight.  That was not the smartest move considering I was up at 4:15 and on the road by 5 Friday.  We got to Matt around 9:30 (4 1/2 hours of driving time), picked him up and headed to Philly.  (Total driving 5.25 hours) We hung around Philly, for two days, I won't count cab rides because it was too hot to move in Philly let alone walk anywhere, and drove Matt back towards the town here his camp is Saturday night. (6 hours) We caught dinner and a movie, and took Matt back to camp.  (6.5 hours) then we kissed our baby goodbye, wished him a good second session and drove back to spend the night in stepford.  (8 hours drive time) In the morning we woke up, threw on our clothes, shoveled in some food at the diner, and headed towards Evan's camp.  (10 hours drive time)  I was so happy to see my middle baby, looking so much taller (illusion) and thinner (reality) and happy and healthy.  Evan said to me "Why are you smiling so much?"  We tossed Evan's stuff into the truck and hit the highway again.  Now we are back in utopia.  (total drive time 13 hours)  We pulled in yesterday afternoon around 3:30.  Josh wanted to visit a utopian friend.  I decided to drive him because it looked like thunder showers were heading our way.  I dropped Josh off and chatted with a utopian friend. So as not to idle and pollute I turned the key and chatted for 1/2 an hour with the radio playing softly in the background.  Dead battery.  I got a jump from another neighbor/friend and then I had to TAKE A RIDE to recharge my battery. 

So, three days on the road means my stomach is in an uproar.  I foolishly left the house with lots of gluten free substitutes even though I don't do well with the substitutes.  Never again.  I am going to set some eating out rules for myself.  Like NO SAUCES EVER.  I'm pretty sure that the sauces are what get me in trouble.  It started on Thursday when we ate out before the Joan Baez concert.  (Poor Joan, couldn't hit the high notes)  We had a real bitch for a waitress and she was annoyed by my ingredient questions and then at the very end of my meal I found two small strands of linguine at the bottom of my food.  I'm pretty sure she did that on purpose.  I'm also pretty sure I will never darken the doorway of that restaurant again.  I will probably also put in a  call to the manager this week.  

I decided that I'm okay with spotty posting this summer.  Some days I am too in the moment of being in this glorious place to find any time to post.  It's probably a good sign.  In the mean time, I have to figure out why I am more tired than I should be, not sleeping well this summer, or feeling my usual energetic self.

Philadelphia museum faves and a huh?

My trip to Philly

Twilight

twenty

I woke up at 2AM thinking I was having a dream about having leg spasms in my abdomen.  Only, it wasn't a dream, it was real and the pain?  At first I thought it might be food poisoning because I had thrown away a smelly rotten raw chicken.  But then as I lied there writhing and moaning in pain reviewing everything I had put in my mouth all day long I realized that I had eaten a hefty sum of goat cheese.  Damn cheese!  As soon I recognized my over abundant day of cheese indulgence I had my answer.  I was having a gall bladder attack and it hurt so much I thought I was going to die.   

Seriously.  

It lasted two hours.  If I wasn't alone in the house with Josh I would have called 911 so I could have gotten painkillers at the emergency room.  I really really wanted pain killers.  I thought about calling a neighbor, but the one neighbor who works nights and is usually awake at 2AM didn't answer her cell and the truth is that I really didn't want to go to the ER because it's July and that is when the new guys start and the last person I want looking at me in the ER is the new guy.  Believe me folks, I am a magnet for the new guy (aka; the guy who doesn't have a clue what he is doing)  so I have to avoid the new guy if at all possible, especially since in the ER a new guy could be hiding a scalpel behind his back.  I am not a fan of the scalpel.

I googled the situation, and found out that an episode typically lasts between 15 minutes and 15 hours.  I would have gone to the ER if I was still in pain when the sun came up.  The pain lasted for about 2 hours.  It faded enough for me to go to sleep just before the sun came up.

There was no run for me this morning.  Instead I rolled my post gall bladder episode self out of bed, into the shower and into my truck so I could  spend the next 11 hours driving around a new neighborhood because we are moving on up, and out of stepford.  But not for another year so Matt can graduate from stepford HS first, so this whole searching might be totally premature.   Unless we find a house that needs lots and lots of renovations, in which case we can get that done before we move in, but I am WAY more enthusiastic about renovating than the husband is, which is weird, because my whole thing is that I want to buy something cheap that needs TLC, but he wants to buy something that is move in condition, except the truth of the matter is that we are TOTALLY spoiled between our stepford house and utopia and we are never going to find a house that measures up.  And I should know because I trekked through TWENTY houses today.

I am exhausted.

aftermath

OMG.   My knees.  OMG. 

I am totally going to run around the lake again this summer, (who are you calling an addict?) but in the mean time, OMG, my knees, OMG.

Luckily I had a wicked headache today and took some pain killer.  Sweet sweet pain killer.  Next time I do a 7.2 mile run I'm not waiting until a headache to take some sweet sweet pain killer.

Yesterday's award for best husband goes to my husband who brought me a stick.  Oh, that sweet sweet stick.  Yeah baby.

Last night every time I stopped moving for more than 30 seconds I completely stiffened up.  It was comical to watch me after I suffered through watched I Love You Beth Cooper and I had to get off the couch and limp to bed.  Even my hips stiffened up last night.  

I had doubts about my ability to get out of the tub.  I cried trying to imagine stepping in.  I passed on the tub.

I never sleep late.   I'm an 8 hour girl.  To me, anything past 7 is wasting the day.  This morning?  8:40.  I managed to sleep for 9 1/2 hours last night.  Very odd.

Today I felt like I had the world's hardest thigh muscles.  That was nice.  I am totally going to run around the lake again.  Some day.

freaked and victorius

Yesterday I watched the husband pull out of the driveway and then pull back in about 90 seconds later.  I said "Did you forget something?"  No, he said he had a flat.  They seem to follow him around, the flats, he gets more than his fair share.  A spare tire change later and he heads off to work, dropping the vehicle off on the way and calls me later on in the afternoon to let me know that the tire could not be saved.  Despite the fact it had a mere 1,900 miles on it, it also had some kind of slash to the side.  I told the husband that if he were more pleasant to sleep with then I would not have to sleep walk out side at night and slash his tires.  hahahaha.  Right?

Later yesterday evening our kid utopian neighbor told me how when he woke up this morning there was a mysterious hole in his ground floor window screen.  They were concerned because this was the window that they kept their lap top near.

I, eventually, in retelling these stories to another neighbor, I got myself totally freaked out and I started to imagine some kind of deliverance character putting down his banjo and sneaking onto our properties under the cloak of darkness with a knife (!!!) to cut the husband's tire and to mess up my neighbor's window screen.

Unfortunately Josh witnessed me putting two and two together and he got a little freaky as well.  So I said that since last night it was just me and him he could bunk with me.  I kind of wanted him close by.  I blocked the driveway with my truck, locked every door, put every out side light on, and called the husband who admitted to me that the CHECK TIRE PRESSURE light had been on in the vehicle when he left work the night before and he had ignored it.  I hoped he was telling the truth, because of his story I scrapped the idea of sliding a kitchen knife between my mattress and box spring.  

I didn't sleep so well.  Josh kept brushing his leg up against my leg every so slightly and I kept having to climb back down from the ceiling every time he did that.  (Okay, so I can be on the jumpy side)  Also, Josh possesses the magic ability to always turn in the one direction which pulls the covers off of me and never in the direction that leaves an inch or two of extra covers on my side of the bed.  Also, I am not 100% sure the husband wasn't just saying that to make me feel better and I did not have a knife.  Only a signal-less iphone, wicker laundry basket, hair dryer and a toothbrush.  MacGyver I am not.

I gave up on trying to sleep around 5:30.  Which was kind of okay with me because today was my RUN AROUND THE LAKE DAY!  And I figured I could do something to get ready for my run with the extra hour of not being asleep.  Like poop maybe, because, as usual, I fear a few things about running.  I fear cracking my ankle in a pot hole and having to lie on the side of the road helpless and hoping I don't get run over. I fear having to pee while out there and also I fear needing to poop.  Today I got to have a brand spanking new fear, and that is the knife wielding deliverance guy.  But I couldn't do anything about him.  I could however maximize my chances of not needing a potty.

Originally I was going to run out of here at 7:30.  Jailbait, however, had a car door malfunction and was late.  I hit the driveway at 8:03, it was already hazy, hot and humid,  and set out for my record breaking 6 1/2 mile run.  

I did not run for 6 1/2 miles folks.  When I got home I checked the map because in a couple of spots that I am not quite so familiar with I had the choice of roads to take and in both instances I unintentionally chose the longer route.  I ran for 7.2 miles today.  Oh yes I did.  Now where is my parade?

It was rough though.  Once I got past four miles, my previous record, I was feeling tired. so I drank some juice I had with me (because I forgot to buy a sports drink).  I also drank the bottle of water I had clipped to my dorky runners belt, but man was I loving that beverage holding belt today!  Right at the four mile mark, when all I wanted to see was the levelness of the last 2 miles, came a looooong steady incline and I thought it might just do me in.  By the time I got to the top I cold only look straight down at the ground ahead of me and tell myself "Just keep falling forward" over and over again,  as a matter of fact, that was my mantra for the whole climb.  Once I got to the last 2 miles, not realizing I had gone almost a whole extra mile, I had to do a lot of pep talking, and I did.  I couldn't distract myself from the tiredness anymore, what was tired, interestingly enough was not my legs or hips, they felt strong, what was tired was my back.  I felt like I wanted to slump over, like I couldn't hold myself up anymore, so I focused on having good form despite the tiredness.  I hoped my neighbors were outside as I ran the last 1/4 mile but they weren't.  I was all prepared to give them a big smile and tell them I couldn't stop yet!  So I had to call everyone and tell them what I did when I got home.  

I'm sore and stiff, I've been stretching and stretching my legs, but every time I sit still they knot right back up.  Then I look like I'm 98 when I try to walk again. There is a mineral salt bath in my very immediate future, and also a self inflicted deep tissue thigh massage.  I'm really glad that I did it and that I did it so early in the summer.  Depending on how I recover form this, I just might do it another time or two before the end of the summer.  

Yay me!