How Someone Else Crapped On Emily’s Pants

I left her with the baby so I could drive half a mile to pick up her sister after track practice.  She runs in circles, but asking her to walk home is just too much.  I guess.

Five minutes later I open the door to a horrible scene.  Emily has the baby on the floor with his pants off and is yelling “He shit on my pants!”

And the couch.

And the floor in front of the television.

And his own pants.

And sweatshirt.

How did all this happen?

She was holding him when she felt something warm running down her leg, ran to the living room, sat him on the floor so she could find a blanket to put him on, and was trying to figure out how to change him without spreading it further.  This explains everything EXCEPT the couch.  My only guess is that while running by, somehow the poop shot out and landed on the couch.

Centrifugal force?

Why my Favorite Sweater Smells like an Ashtray: Wyoming needs some smoking laws

and I don’t mean to protect the right to fill any room with noxious clouds of smoke.  Everywhere I go it’s hard to see through the haze.  My office.  Any bar.  The smoke clings to peoples’ clothes and then to me.  Have they not heard that smoking causes death?  I am surprised there are any people over 55 left in this state!  I think there’s two:  Al Simpson and Harrison Ford, but both of them travel often to less smoky climates to breathe in some oxygen.

I’m serious.  I threw on my favorite sweater this morning, sat down to blog, and EWWWW, what’s that smell?  It’s ME!  At least it cured my withdrawal symptoms from a couple of hours out sucking in the nicotine in the air at Whisky River on Saturday.  I’m seriously thinking about getting a portable air cleaner for my head.  Wait, that hasn’t been invented yet.  I’ve just given you a billion dollar idea Folks.  All I ask in return is a free one for me to use.  Just don’t make it look like a helmet I’d have to wear if I fell down alot.  I wouldn’t want people to wonder why I’m wearing it, although with all the coughing fits I’m having these days I might need one of those too, just to protect myself when I finally do pass out on the floor from lung cancer.

Sniffle.  Hack.  Hack.

I’m also thinking about setting up an oxygen booth in the garage like the ones they have in Mexico City.  Then I can get up in the morning, go out to get some air, and be thinner and happier.  Yes, that would solve ALL my problems.  Although smoking is supposed to keep you thin, if you’re not the one actually holding the cigarette and you’re just breathing in everyone else’s smoke, then you have your hands free to shovel food into your face in the hope that something might actually taste like something other than an old ashtray.

Well, at least I won’t be able to smell the kitty litter box that I’m about to go clean out.  Yes, I’m going to stop whining now and go do something.

My Other Worst Nightmare: Being Stuck in the Same Room with a Stranger Getting a Rectal Exam

Yesterday I was laying on one couch and Nick was resting in his recliner and I turned to him and said “Our life has become boring.  I have nothing to blog about.”

Today I was holding his hand in a room in the E.R., waiting for the results of his bloodwork and for them to bring us to radiology for an ultrasound.   The patient in the bed on the other side of the curtain started to grunt and pant uncomfortably.  I thought he was just being impatient until the nurse said

The bowel movement is close. 

 More grunting.  The doctor came in and said

We’re going to do a rectal exam.  You might feel some pressure.  I’m going to scoop some of it out. 

And the nurse asked

Do you need to keep some to test it?

And the doctor replied

Yes, it’s crumbly.  Only a trace of blood.  You should be able to push the rest of it out soon.

So there we were, holding hands, and trying not to laugh or puke.  Did they forget that it was a shared room?  I can’t believe it’s good policy to share rooms while scooping poop.  That seems a little personal.

We didn’t notice the smell until we came back from the ultrasound.  I know this conversation is burned into my memory and will be replaying itself for days in my dreams.

At least it will fit in nicely with that dream I had last night about a global disaster and decided to hide in the hills of West Virginia amongst the hillbillies.

The First Week of Being Married, Eyeliner in the Carpet, and What do they do with those Washcloths?

I have today off.  From paid work.  The kids are at school.  He’s at work.  And I am alone for the first time since . . . since June or May.  So I’m alternating cleaning the house and playing.  And I feel anxious only I don’t know why.  Just a general feeling of impending doom. 

I took away all the eyeliner I could find in the house yesterday.  The screaming fits of “You can’t do that!” only served to support my decision.  I didn’t do it because I can’t handle the inch thick schmere on their faces or because I’m a big old meanie.

There are black marks all over the carpets, the bathroom sink, the hand soap dispenser, the basement floor, the bottoms of my shoes, and the cat.  I didn’t know what it was they were doing to create this black greasy mess.  Does the oldest fall down alot on her face?  Does her eyeliner clump off and fall onto the floor? 

Then this morning after she’d left for school, with her blonde bangs hanging over (GASP) thickly lined eyes, I figured it out.  There was debris on the bathroom floor from a freshly sharpened and now hidden eyeliner pencil.  Flakes of soft blackened shavings tracked through to the living room. 

“No Mom, it wasn’t me!  No, Mom I always sharpen things over a trash can.  No, Mom that isn’t black on your face where you accidentally petted the cat who had rolled in my shavings.”

I can just hear it now.

Days off are great as long as I leave the house, but I’m afraid to because I don’t know where I’ll find the next black streak.

I think I’ll save the discussion of wet, crumpled, mysterious washcloths for later.  One thing at a time.

Flatulence Etiquette

We all know my life revolves around GAS and trying to eat things that make me less gassy or at least timing my gassiness for those moments when I am alone or sitting next to one of my children.  I am like a gassy ninja, sneaking behind one of them so that if anyone smells it they’ll think it isn’t me, or waiting until the wind blows when I’m taking a walk so that it doesn’t waft around me like a toxic green cloud, timing my footsteps to cover the noise.

Living with someone else makes this all the more difficult.  So I was very entertained last night, when I was climbing the stairs from our room in the basement to go to the bathroom, and I heard a very loud long rumble.   He was not very ninja-like in waiting only until the second I left the room.  I would have waited until I heard the bathroom door shut, stood next to the wide open window and slowly let it out while waving a magazine, lit a candle, and practiced my best innocent look.

I mentioned this when I got back downstairs and then to soften his embarrassment I confessed that a couple of days ago when he found me lying on my bed with the door shut and said it smelled like Taco Bell and I had no idea what he was talking about–that was actually me enjoying a moment of privacy.

Day 4

Doing a liver cleanse while packing is not such a bad idea after all.  At least I don’t have to buy much food or cook.  I am not hungry. 

Nick has become a part of this family already.  Not because he’s working on his house to make us comfortable.  Not because we’re getting married in the fall.  Not because one of my children once peed all over him at a BBQ. 

Nick created the first inside family joke with his boxes half full comment of last week.  We keep throwing that comment at each other and laughing as we fill up boxes.  Inside jokes bond people together in a way that words and promises can’t. 

The weird thing though is that dumb comments by other people have always made me want to do the opposite.  My ex husband once asked if I had washed the potatoes.  He said it in a critical way.  It wasn’t a moment of stupidity.  He meant it.  Of course I washed the potatoes that day as I was making dinner.  And I NEVER DID AGAIN.

And then the guy I dated briefly last year asked if I washed mushrooms before I ate them.   He was all kinds of disturbed about what mushrooms are and the conditions in which they are raised.  But he didn’t eat them at all anyway.  He was concerned that he would be near me and I would have eaten a dirty mushroom and I would somehow contaminate him. 

I didn’t wash another mushroom until I ditched him.  Mushrooms are pretty dirty and even I am not passive-aggressive enough to eat that dirt for very long.

Those stupid comments didn’t become family jokes because they irritated me.  What I love about Nick is that he isn’t afraid to back up when he makes a mistake and laugh at himself.  Not very many men can do that.  I’ve finally found a good one.

Recurrent Vaginitis

How gross can my blog get?  What happened to all the funny days?  It seems like now it’s all about my health problems.  But I can’t think of anything else when my vajayjay aches all the time.

Antibiotics only cured it while I was taking them.  They killed off anything good in there as well, anything that would help to lower my already high pH level.  The pain came back 24 hours after I ended the antibiotics.  So I’m still hitting it up with anything that might acidify things.

Cranberry tablets, folic acid, acidophilus, various methods of reintroducing some good bacteria in ways I just can’t bring myself to talk about. So much yogurt I might as well buy my own cow.  Hydrogen peroxide, Candidate, and now my absolute new favorite:

Tea Tree Oil

It is strangely cooling, kind of like a menthol cough drop, only in my hoohang.  Ahhhhhhhh, soothing.

I have never smelled my pee so often, or at all really.  And I have never been so concerned about my hoochiewanger as often as I am now.  My entire life revolves around fixing it before I get into a car for 4 days.

I have post-it notes all over my desk about everything I’ve heard might fix this.  I have become good friends with my hair drier.  I WILL NOT go back to the doctor. 

There is only one good thing that has come of this debacle:  I smell like a TREE.

And everyone in my family laughs when I say “YOGURT.”

I don’t know why.  You would think they could lend a little sympathy.

ACK! My tongue is WHITE. And why Jon and Kate are in my bathroom

This is so nasty I just had to share it with everyone so that you can be sympathetic to my horror.

I took my last antibiotic this morning.  19 days of antibiotics in the last month will do this to a person!  I know, you’re all saying That can’t be good.  Well, it’s not.  So here’s what I’m doing about it:

Kefir once a day, probiotics, probiotic yogurt, and Candidate from the native remedies store.  Oh, and a low carb, no sugar at all diet until the beasties die off from starvation.

What the hell is that?  you say.  That, my friends is an overabundance of yeast, which grew because antibiotics kill off bad bacteria and good bacteria, leaving a whole new world for the yeast to explore and take over.  On my tongue.  Yay. 

Speaking of taking over, I should mention that Jon and Kate cheer for me everytime I use my downstairs toilet.  You see, I found this picture of my favorite vampires (except for Edward) in a magazine:

And I hung it on the bathroom mirror.  Well, on the light above the mirror.  I didn’t realize until the first time I used the toilet that this is what I would see:

because of the reflection in the mirror.  They are saying “Yay, Kristi!!!  Yay kids!!! You can do it!  Woooohoooooo!”

I didn’t take it down because I thought maybe it was fitting that Jon and Kate were in my bathroom cheering me on.  That’s where they belong.  Not on television or on msn’s news.  In my downstairs bathroom with the geyser toilet.

Bladder Pain, no UTI, and my relationship with my Vagina

My posts are half whining about relationships, half stupid things my kids to do entertain me and half ewwwwwwwwwwy things that happen to my body.  And yes, on this blog it’s my world and so there are three halves!

In honor of Mother’s Day, I will give you one part of each.  (hmmmmmm, deciding which relationship to whine about.)  Oh, let’s pick my relationship with my vagina.  This has been a lifelong relationship that I’ve pretty much ignored.  It’s down there somewhere.  It’s useful for certain things.  Sometimes I take care of it, a little landscaping, a little vacation time, some entertainment.

I’m usually more concerned about my constant battle with IBS, which is a different body system, but the older I get the more I realize how much everything is connected.  Take my recent “UTI” for example.  Bladder pain, pressure, need to pee 56 times a day.  I got treated for a UTI.  It came back.  Then I spent 2 1/2 hours in the ER yesterday having people guess what was wrong with me since my urine was awesomely clean.  Bladder pain can be nasty evil bacteria infecting the vagina and pushing on the bladder.  It’s all connected.  I’ve got bacterial vaginosis.  And on top of that one of the people I work with was on duty in the ER and looked at my hoochie-wanger so it’s probably a good idea that I just move because I will think of that everytime I pass her in the hall at work.

You might be wondering why I’m writing this.  Let me get back to the ewwwwwwwwwy half of this post in a minute and hit on the stupid things my kids to do entertain me first.  I took my oldest daughter (15 now!) over to visit my best friend with me for the night.  I hadn’t planned on it, but she hid under the desk in her room until I decided to just throw her in my car instead of leaving her with someone else.  After a couple of hours chatting with my best friend about my evil bacteria problem, I realized that it was late and I should call my fiance in Wyoming to say good night.  I asked my daughter to dial his number on my cell phone and just leave it on speaker phone.  Little did I know that my daughter would describe my problem by saying “she has bacteria in her va-gi-na.”  on the phone with him.

But then I suppose he’ll have to get used to constant information overload as soon as we all move in with him.  He’ll be an expert on vaginas pretty soon.  Poor boy.

So that brings me to the ewwwwwwwwwy part of this post.  Bacterial vaginosis is a very common problem which is not really as STD, but can come on because of sex.  We all carry many different kinds of bacteria all the times, but certain circumstances can affect the pH, making it alkali and a place where harmful bacteria can grow, multiply, and form their own colony.  It’s the opposite of a yeast infection.  Either way the body is out of balance. 

So the fourth half of my post is somewhat educational, only warped by my point of view.  If you have bladder pressure and all the symptoms of a UTI except for the burning urination AND you test clean, ask your doctor to test for evil bacteria.  I read online that it’s more common than yeast infections and that at any one time 1/3 of all women have it, but most don’t have symptoms.  Why don’t we know these things?

Back to that relationship whining.  I’m getting a little tired of all the demanding behavior going on with my vagina.  It’s more work than is worth it.  It needs a good training program to keep it in line, or a shock collar, or something.

Happy Mother’s Day!

I’m sure I’ve had many thoughts about things I should post

and they’ve all flown from my head faster than I could write them down on post-it notes and leave them lying around so that I could run across them three months from now and say “watermelon scarecrow identity crisis”  and wonder if that is my handwriting and what exactly I was drinking at the moment I thought that made any kind of sense.

Seriously, 4 more days of antibiotics for the bladder infection which have screwed my immunity up so that I’m not fighting off this flu thing at all.  The only thing my head can hold is snot at this time.  And it’s supposed to snow up to a foot tonight, according to my father, which has nothing to do with my inability to form rational thoughts, but does have me wondering WHY.  I’m sure I’m going to read this in a couple of days and wonder what was wrong with me, but honestly I haven’t had a drink in 16 days. 

Maybe that’s what I’m doing wrong!  Where’s the vodka? 

3 more weeks of work.  2 weeks of high school.  2 weeks of elementary school.  And then onto My Life Part II.