Hellraiser

I found this fantastic helmet cover for Sweet Pea to wear while skiing. 

Cute, right? 

Guess what it’s called?  Mm-hmm.  The hellraiser.

If the shoe fits…

Litigious much?

I’m Ba-ack!

What a trip!  Definitely enough fodder to keep me busy on the blog for the next few days.  But I have to start with this:  Murphy’s Law.  My friend Murph was in full force here the day before we left.  It was not good, my friends.

So you know that Sweet Pea had the flu.  Here’s the rest of the craziness that ensued that fateful day:

Sweet Pea DOES NOT take liquid medicine.  Girlfriend has been swallowing pills since she was four.  I had the foresight to ask the doctor if we could get the Tamiflu in a pill.  (Good thinking, mom!)  However when I arrived at the pharmacy with my prescription I was told that they didn’t carry that strength.  I called 5 other pharmacies trying to find it, but no luck.  And since we were leaving town the next morning I couldn’t order it.  Nice.  So we took the liquid - half of which was covered by insurance, the other half we paid out of pocket.  Gulp.  But who isn’t willing to pay $140 to get their child better for Christmas??  The first dose was bad, the second was worse, and by the time we hit Amarillo we had a full-on battle.  I was afraid someone was going to call the front desk to report all the yelling coming from room 217.  She ended up taking only half of the prescription; I threw away the second bottle.  Bye-bye, hundy!

Back to Thursday.  I buy a bunch of popsicles to try to get some fluids into Pea.  So she’s playing on the computer and leans the frozen lemonade container onto the keyboard.  I tell her in no uncertain terms that this is definitely not a good idea.  Two hours later?  Yep.  Lemonade all over the keyboard.  Not just in one spot, not just on the number pad.  All over.  From qwerty to the space bar.  Hubs unplugs it and takes it out to throw it away.  Later we decide we need to check the weather one more time, so he brings the keyboard back in, but it slides on him and now there’s a trail of lemonade slush all over the carpet.  Just what we needed. 

Finally, I’m in the shower Thursday night.  Totally exhausted.  And the head of my razor detaches from the handle, falls, and cuts me three times on my leg before hitting the shower floor.  Seriously??  Seriously. 

Now some folks might have thought this was all a bad omen, and we shouldn’t take the trip.  Thankfully things got MUCH better once we drove out on Friday morning.  We had a totally uneventful drive, and made it to Breckenridge by about 3:00 Saturday.  Turns out Sweet Pea is a great little traveler!  (Of course, it could be that her fever kept her from using all her powers for evil.  And in that case?  Blessing in disguise.) 

Much more about our trip to come.   Hope you’re all having a great week-after-Christmas!!

Oh No, Mr. Bill!

You’re not going to believe this.  I don’t believe it.

Sweet Pea has the flu.

The ONE YEAR I don’t take her for a flu shot.  Serves me right for being lax.  

So we’ve taken the Tamiflu script to the pharmacy, and she’s layed out on the couch watching movies.  I sent Hubs straight to the doctor for his shot, which may or may not work since he’s already been exposed.  (Of course I got mine in October, but did I make anyone else do it?  No.  Because I’m stupid, that’s why.)  I’ve called all the family to let them know; I certainly don’t want to be responsible for giving everyone the flu for Christmas.  This just stinks!

Stinks bad.  Stinks real bad.

This, that, and the other

This is going to be a “tying up loose ends” post as I begin the final countdown to our trip on Friday.  

First, thank you for all your kind words on Monday.  If you were praying for us, or sending vibes, or lighting candles, or whatever, IT WORKED!!  She had THREE good days in a row.  Hallelujuh!  On Sunday we went to church, then came home to celebrate with Hubs’ parents who drove over from Houston.  She even gave us an impromptu recital of songs from her Christmas Choir concert.  This was one happy mom!  Then we took her and a friend to Incredible Pizza Company to play games and eat a meal that wouldn’t pass muster in the state prison system.  And all for the low, low price of $35 (just to eat!) plus games.  We sucked it up, because they loved it.  Then we Christmas caroled in the car the whole way home, and let them stick their heads out the sunroof in the neighborhood to sing Rudolph at the top of their lungs.  To top it all off, she didn’t have a meltdown before bed.  She just went to sleep.  Hallelujah, indeed!!

So now it’s time to focus on the trip.  Every time I think I’ve finished my shopping I think of one more thing I have to get.  That’s sort of driving me crazy.  And I don’t know how many trips to Academy (Sporting Goods) a person can make before actually turning into some kind of fisherman’s hat-wearing sportsman, but it’s bound to happen to me, because I’m on number three today.  Buy.  Return.  Buy more.  Return more.  Buy even more.  Swear you’re not going back until after the trip.  Return more.  Buy more.  Ugh.

I’ve also got to get organized food-wise.  We always cook when we’re up there because it’s just easier than going out.  So I’ve got to finalize the grocery list for my mother-in-law.  And I’ve got to figure out what baking I’m going to do to bring with us.  I’m DEFINITELY making another batch of the corny snack mix.  Which brings me to this little happy:  Heather of the Extraordinary Ordinary made the snack mix, and is trying to come up with a better name.  I wholly agree!!  So go on over there and give her some ideas.   Be sure to read through the comments to see what all of her readers have come up with…my favorite so far is Christmas Cornaments.  Get it?  Corn-aments?  Bwa ha ha.  

I haven’t taken a road trip in YEARS.  Hubs and I took a trip to Florida our first year of marriage, and that’s the last time I went on a cross-country trip.  Now we both grew up doing these trips, but we sort of made a deal after we got married that we were going to fly, because we had really moved up in the world.  Ha!  We’re sort of looking forward to the trip, but with an appropriate amount of fear and trepidation, as being trapped with Sweet Pea for 18 hours might not be the MOST fun we’ve ever had.  We’re driving to Amarillo on Friday night (about 8 hours) then on to Breckenridge on Saturday (another 8 – 9 hours).   I’ve got four books-on-cd, plus dvds, nintendo ds games, books, markers, paper…the kitchen sink.  I’m also going to download some NPR shows for Hubs and me to listen to (This American Life and Car Talk…so good!)  And of course I’ll have my trusty pillow, so there’ll definitely be some napping going on.  One good thing about a car trip – napping is allowed, and you know I love me some napping!!  With any luck we’ll have a safe trip, and make some happy memories along the way.  Or we could run out of gas, overheat, get a new rent-car without a roof rack, strap the cartop carrier onto the roof rack using a random array of bungee cords, nearly lose said cartop carrier in the strong crosswinds of New Mexico, smash a thumb in the window of the old-fashioned train, and get a piece of metal stuck in an eye.  (Oh wait.  That was the Stafford Family Vacation of 1983.  My bad.)  See why I’m so excited?  I have nothing but good memories when it comes to family road trips.

I might get one more post in this week, but if I don’t, have a FABULOUS holiday.  Enjoy your family and friends, and stay warm!!

Ten Years Ago…

Dear Sweet Pea,

Ten years ago today you came into the world.  Ten whole years!  It doesn’t even seem possible.

You spent your first nine months in the womb of a girl who will always love you dearly.  I’m sorry you couldn’t stay with her; I know that leaving her was hard, even at two days old.  She was all you knew…her smell, her sound, her very self surrounding you.  You were so small and innocent, and you didn’t deserve that kind of separation.  No baby does.

We held you in our arms and introduced you to our smell, our sound.  We surrounded you with love and family and friends, but you didn’t know us.  We were strangers to you.  You must have been so scared.

And now ten years have gone by.  You are ours, and you are hers.  You know I’m your mom, but you want to know her too. 

I understand. 

I hope she writes you back.  I hope she sends more pictures.  I hope you can meet her someday, so that empty place in your precious heart can be filled with the only person on earth who can fill it.

I wish I was your birthmother.  I would’ve loved to know you that extra nine months.  I would’ve been honored to keep you in a place so close only the two of us would know it.  I would gladly have been sick and tired for you every day of that journey.

But that’s not our reality.  Ours is the reality of a family made by love, not blood.  But that doesn’t make us any less a family.  Will you remember that, sweet child?   No matter what comes in your life, we are your family. 

We won’t leave you.  We won’t ever decide that you’re too much for us, or that we don’t want you anymore.  There’s nothing you can do to break this family apart. 

We are unbreakable.

We love you.

Mommy

All Done!

Thanks so much for your thoughts and prayers on Thursday and Friday.  All in all the procedure went well.  I had some problems with my blood pressure and blood sugar beforehand (not eating and drinking for two days will do that to you) but they were able to straighten me out.  As expected, I slept right through and woke up in the recovery room telling the nurse I had dreamed about Christmas shopping.  Apparently you can’t turn off THAT part of my brain.

My GI doc took lots of pictures which he happily handed to my hubs.  Hubs was thrilled. 

Now he really knows me inside and out. 

(That one’s for you, Dad!)

I’ll meet back with my doctor in early January to discuss the lab results and treatment options for what he found.  (I’m not going to go into detail here, but if you have stomach problems and are looking for answers, send me an email and we’ll talk.)

In the meantime, life is back on track.  Which mean’s Sweet Pea’s tenth(!) birthday on Monday, packing and shopping for the ski trip and Christmas, cleaning house, wrapping gifts, mailing gifts, baking, etc., etc., etc.

Soundtrack for today:  Handel’s Messiah.

Hallelujah!

Let it Flow, Let it Flow, Let it Flow

Tomorrow’s the big day.  The old colonoscopy.  Oh that is good times, my friends.  And if you haven’t had the pleasure, I’m going to give you a little taste of the bliss that is a giant scope shoved up your ***.

Kidding, only kidding. 

The truth is I’ve been there, done that.  I’ll be sound asleep thanks to better living through chemistry (aka DRUGS) and I’m not worried at all.

The worst part is NOT what they do at the hospital.  The worst part is the day before.  And that, my dear sweet friends, is where you find me now.  Waiting on the storm to hit.  I thought about trying to blog the experience (if I had a laptop it would be more doable) but Dave Barry recently wrote a piece that really captures the sheer joy that is a bowel prep.  You can read the whole article here (believe me, you’ll want to!) but here is a little excerpt.  *WARNING:  Put down the Diet Coke before reading.*

I left Andy’s office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called ”MoviPrep,” which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America’s enemies.

I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous. Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn’t eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor. Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons.) Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes — and here I am being kind — like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, ”a loose watery bowel movement may result.” This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don’t want to be too graphic, here, but: Have you ever seen a space shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep. The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, ”What if I spurt on Andy?” How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.

At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the hell the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked.

Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep. At first I was ticked off that I hadn’t thought of this, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house.

I know what you’re thinking.  That sounds so fun!  Why don’t I ever get to do really cool stuff like that?  I wish I was Funny Girl, if only for today. 

Sorry kids.  This one’s all me.  I’ve gathered my reading materials, and I’ve moved the dvd/karaoke player into the bathroom.  (Because I might want to grab the mic later for a little 2am I Will Survive.)  It’s all good.

In true Funny Girl style, I leave you with a song.  And since it’s going to be stuck in your head for the rest of the day, do me a favor and send me little happy vibes everytime you find yourself humming a line.

Oh the rumbling in there is starting

And I find that I am farting 

 I really do need to go (NOW!)

 Let it flow, Let it flow, Let it flow.

Trust me, you’ll love it.

I was reading some back issues of Rocks in my Dryer the other day when I came upon this recipe for a new snack mix.  I have to admit, it didn’t sound very good, but she insisted that it was amazing.  I’m always  looking for a new mix (who isn’t?) so I decided to give it a try.

The recipe says it makes 7 1/2 quarts.  For those of you who, like me, have no idea how to estimate the true amount of 7 1/2 quarts, let me break it down for you:  There was snack mix coming out our ears.   It filled two gargantuan bowls, and those were overflowing as I stirred.  Then came the true challenge:  the recipe calls for spreading the mix out to cool.  My girlfriend and I thought we were going to have to clear the piano top to make room for all the goodness, but we managed to finagle  enough space on my countertops to do the job.  (ps…Finagle?  Great word, but I’ll admit I had to look up the spelling.  That’s correct, for all you spelling bee champs out there.)

So we cool the treats, and scoop them into gift boxes lined with a festive Christmas napkin.  (Truth be told I really wanted to use those Christmas tins that grandmas always have just so I could feel all Mrs. Claus-y, but the already-in-my-pantry boxes were a much more economical option.)  At this point my girlfriend had already tried the mix and whole-heartedly approved, but I still couldn’t stomach it.

We passed out the goodies to our neighbors on the street (aka The Buck Creek Dorm) and everyone ooh-ed and ah-ed over it.  I thought about trying it; everyone else seemed to love it.

Nope.  Couldn’t do it. 

For two days everyone else went bananas about the silly snack mix, while I tried to get up the nerve to try a bite.

And then last night, I finally did it.

WHY DIDN’T SOMEONE TELL ME HOW GOOD IT WAS???????

Not kind of good.  Really good.  Slap-your-mama good.  Died-and-gone-to-heaven good.  DAMN good.  (Sorry Dad.)

So now, without further ado, I give you the recipe for Corny Snack Mix.  Trust me, you’ll love it.

Ingredients:

• 3 quarts popped popcorn
• 1 package (15 ounces) Corn Pops
• 1 package (15 ounces) corn chips
• 2 packages (10 to 12 ounces each) vanilla or white chips

Directions:

In several large bowls, combine the popcorn, Corn Pops and corn chips.
    In a large saucepan, over medium-low heat, melt chips; stir until smooth. Pour over popcorn mixture and toss to coat.
    Spread onto two 15-in. x 10-in. x 1-in. baking pans. Cool. Store in airtight containers. Yield: 7-1/2 quarts.

NOTE:  I couldn’t find the popcorn, Corn Pops, or Fritos in the exact amounts given, so I eyeballed it to make it 1:1:1.

ENJOY!!

Sunday Seven

I woke up this morning with an irresistable urge to be thankful. Of course, the house is still quiet, so it’s easy right now. In a few minutes, when Sweet Pea gets up and refuses to get dressed for church and all Hell breaks loose…then it won’t be so easy. I’d better hurry.

1. San Antonio. This is a great place to live. It took me awhile to get over my sadness at leaving all my peeps in Houston, but now that I’ve made it my home, I love it.

2. Christmas. When I hear the carols, or see the lights, or fight the mad crowds I am grateful for the gift of God’s son. And a season to celebrate peace and love.

3. Gas is only $1.65!!

4. My fabulous neighbors on Buck Creek (aka Butt Crack). We’ve dubbed our little section “the dorm”. We’re in and out of each other’s houses (and business) as much as any bunch of freshmen. Love it!

5. My brother. I heart my brother SO much. He lives in Houston and I miss him terribly. But talking on the phone everyday makes it a little bit better. We’ve been through some really tough moments together, and I’m very grateful to have such a phenomenal best friend.

6. Blue Bell Peppermint Ice Cream. There are no words…

7. My Hubs, who gives me the night off so I can get a breather. And who knows what a mess I am and keeps loving me anyway. And who takes apart the toilet when a baby bottle accidently gets flushed. What a man.