Wine Please

I almost put “Three Strange Days” like the School of Fish song…but so far it’s only been one strange day. If it continues another two, then we’ll revisit.

Today started like any other day…got up around 6:30am, gave Cooper his cup of formula, let the dogs out, started the coffee, jumped in the shower, and, this is where things got weird: even managed to do a face-mask AND shave while showering. Got out, heard Cooper chirping quietly in his bed, dried my hair and it turned out good right away (what?), could tell that Cooper dozed back off, did my make-up including lipstick (gasp!), got dressed and looked cute with the first items I put on (huh?), and even put on jewelry…and by putting on jewelry I mean more than just my watch and rings. I know I sell jewelry, but in the last 8 or so months it’s been nearly impossible to get up early enough to get ready, let alone coordinate some jewelry with my outfit, even though I have gobs and gobs of Cookie Lee jewelry at my disposal. I put on some cute-but-halfway-sensible heels, grab the baby and head out the door…without having to pull back into the drive to run back in the house for something.

Like I said…strange.

So I drop off Cooper, zoom off to work, get there and while my boss is out the whole week on vacation, one of my co-workers is off today and my other co-worker is there negotiating working from home with our director because something came up at his home. He leaves minutes after I arrive. Since everyone is out, all the weirdos I don’t usually deal with start finding me…of course the company is very large and most of these weirdos are out-of-state. I go to the kitchen and don’t run into anyone. Go to the ladies room and do not see anyone on my trip there or back, or in the restroom.

I go out to McDonald’s to get my supersized extra value meal number one (that would be a Big Mac, Large Fries, and Large Sweet Tea). I was a little stressed with things getting thrown at me in the absence of my team and needed the carbs, fat, and sodium to cope. I run to the bank, then go back to work…neither on my way out or back in did I run into anyone. I went to the kitchen again and didn’t see anyone. There I was, dressed all cute, with nice hair, lipstick, and jewerly, including a necklace that fluttahs…not flutters, mind you, but fluttahs…when you walk (or me, since I was wearing it), and did.not.see.anyone.

I walk out to the lobby and it is POURING! I had no idea it was going to pour so I didn’t bring in my umbrella from the car. And I was parked pretty far from the door. And I was weighed down with my laptop, purse, lunchbag (previously held my snack), travel mug, Sweet Tea cup (rocket fuel for the commute home), and my moster-sized cluster of keychains. I shuffled as fast as I could hobble in wet heels and all my freight…which wasn’t very fast. Seems my cuteness was to be quickly replaced with wet ratness. Especially since by the time I got about 5 miles west, the ground was completely dry. As was the ground at daycare…so I got to look especially strange and wet when it was sunny and not a drop of rain to be found when going in the building to fetch Cooper.

Another strange note? On the radio on the way home, I got to hear “Your Woman” by White Town…haven’t heard that song on a radio since college. And if you know what song I’m talking about, you’ll probably agree because it is quite the odd song…

Back in the car again and I call Justin to walk him through starting dinner. Gavin answers the phone and tells me he had no accidents today (yay!!!…we sometimes have a problem because we wait too long to run for the bathroom…no, I don’t actually have the problem, but it’s a force of habit to talk about my child in the plural nominative case). He also informs me he has a boo-boo on his knee but he’s okay because he got a band-aid. I just started laughing. Then I asked “can I talk to Daddy, please?” and he passes the phone to Justin saying “Mommy wants to talk to you. She say ‘can I talk to Daddy?’” I hear Justin ask, “did she say ‘please’?” and my good boy replied, “yes…she say ‘please’.” I’ve never had that sort of discussion with him over the phone. Usually he loses interest after 10 seconds.

We get home and don’t fight with Gavin to eat his dinner. Cooper only gags once on his dinner. Justin made dinner. Gavin didn’t fight about getting out of the tub. The list of strangeness goes on and on. One of the strangest is that Cooper adopted a 2-inch piece of Take-Along Thomas track off of Gavin’s train table and refused to give it up. Yes. I put my 11-month old to bed with his highly coveted piece of plastic railroad track. Anyone else’s kid have a stranger woobie/lovey than that?

and that someone would be me.

Thankfully all of you lovely readers are nice enough to not point out to me yesterday that my title indicated that there might be updates and/or addendums. And really, there weren’t any. But I had every intention, but was dumb and hit “Publish” instead of “Save” and ran out the door to bring the car into the shop. By the time I came back I was so tired, hot (holy crap it was still 90 degrees at 6:30pm!), hungry, and stunned from a near-miss with a potential car repair, that I had forgotten that I didn’t actually finish the post and just went about the rest of my evening. Read comments from folks, replied to some of those comments, all the while completely oblivious of my error. I wasn’t aware until my internet service came back up this afternoon and saw my article on my reader (hatred from Comcast’s ineptitude may or may not be forthcoming. You know, if I remember).

So, now will be your REAL updates and addendums:

First off, I came back from getting the car checked and it is the catalytic converter. Good news is that the issue won’t affect the actual runability of the car…it will keep running. The bad part is that I won’t be able to pass the emissions because the catalytic converter is not getting the correct ration of oxygen to fuel or some mess like that, and is polluting a little more. The worse part is that my emissions is due later this summer and failure to pass means the state won’t renew my plates unless I pay to repair it. The worsest part is that the estimate I got was $700 for repair, which even if it didn’t fully fix the issue, I’d at least get a waiver on my emissions because I spent over $600. Yeah.

So do I get a “pass” now for writing like an idiot? I mean, most of you would probably have a little heart failure, or at least would bat an eyelash at a potential $700 car repair, right?

Well, the garage cleared the error (check-engine light) and did some other diagnostics to make sure there weren’t any other underlying issues. This just seems to be an issue of a 7-1/2 year old car with nearly 100,000 miles on it. He also told me that if the light stays off to still go ahead and try to see if I’d pass the emissions…because if I do, I don’t need to worry about the catalytic converter again for 2 more years. By then we’re hoping to replace it.

More updates….This morning I get up, start getting ready for work, check on Cooper and he still feels feverish. Crap. He had a low temp, but was physically warm enough to alert the teachers in his class if I was so rotten as to bring him in. Crap-crap.

I get out the Elmo videos and some of Cooper’s favorite toys and some of Gavin’s most coveted-from-Cooper toys, start up my work lap-top and can’t.get.on.the.VPN. What? I putz around with a few settings and try again. No dice. Just as I’m about to get beligerant, Justin calls asking if the internet is down because he can’t hit the server. One check of the modem validates our suspicions. Two power-cycles assures us I need to call Comcast. Thirty minutes on hold to talk to one underinformed Comcast rep (albeit he was very nice), two more power-cycles, and a reset confirm that there is an outage in our area. Crap-crap-crap.
However, my rep tells me “for some reason a lot of modems in {my town, my zipcode} are just going ‘offline’.”
Me: “A lot of offline modems in one area sounds like an outage to me.”
Rep: “well, that’s not really an outage.”
Me: “huh. That’s funny. The telecom company I work for usually considers this same sort of situation an outage. Why else would a bunch of random modems in a concentrated area go offline?”
Rep: “well, it’s still not an ‘outage’.”
Me: “ok, whatever. How soon till it’s back up?”
Rep: “we need to dispatch a technician…soonest we can get is Tuesday morning.”
Me: “what? You know it’s Friday, right? I have blogging work to do.”
Rep: “yeah, I know. I’m sorry. You could try calling tomorrow to get an earlier date.”
Me: “why can’t you give it to me now?”
Rep: “well, I just mean there might be an earlier one available tomorrow.”
Me: “that makes no sense. Okay. I’ll call back tomorrow.”

But it came up on it’s own later in the day. Like it has a hundred other times. Stupid Comcast.

On a much more fun update, Marmarbug over at My Life as Momma, gave me this lovely award!!!

Isn’t it cute??? I think I’m going to pass it along to a few folks who I don’t think have gotten it yet…so to Tootsie Farklepants and Precarious Tomato because they both make me laugh till I scream, to Caramama because she’s so open-minded and doesn’t mind my rather conservative leanings in our email discussions, to Burgh for letting me be a PITA and harrass her all the time (or rather, she tolerates me), and to Karen for propositioning me last week…that totally made my summer, lady! Oh, and also to Justin, and not because he’s my husband. But because he found a petition community group on Facebook that is trying to get Facebook to adjust their rules on considering photographs of breastfeeding to be offensive. Apparently 26,000 people have joined. And I might just join Facebook so I can join the petition as well. We’ll see.

By the way…tonight is the last night for the silent auction and fundraiser to support the Victims of the Midwest Floods.

Cooper came home yesterday with a low-grade fever. He seemed alright, if a little fussy. His cold seemed to have taken a turn for the worse because he was coughing more, his nose was running more, and he had goop coming from his eyes. Not pretty.

Around 3am-ish, he got up crying and was sitting up in his crib when I walked in, so I knew he was gonna be up a while. Thankfully he calmed down right away, though he did not go back to sleep quickly. I rocked him for about a half hour and wrapped him up tight in one of his blankets to keep him warm since he still seemed to have the fever (too tired to fight him to check his temp…he was warm but not blazing enough to cause alarm). In the morning I heard him talking in his bed, Justin gave him his cup of milk and told me while I was still half asleep that Cooper had lost of poop in his eye. What? I asked Justin alarmed, “he had poop in his eye?” Now it was Justin’s turn to look alarmed, then corrected my groggy hearing, “no, he had GOOP in his eyes”. Not much better, but at least goop is less smelly than poop. I mean, I remember reading horror stories of people’s children figuring out how to take off their diapers and playing in their poop. That alone makes me consider using duct tape on diapers.

So I get up and get ready for work. I get Cooper and he feels warm still. Take his temp and it’s 100 degrees. Not high, but at 8am, it could really only go up. Argh! I call and leave a message for my boss and jump in the car to run up to the office to pick up my laptop (cuz dude! if daycare had called me when they took his temp yesterday, I would’ve brought it home. Yoiu know, so that Cooper wouldn’t be sick). While in the car I call the pediatrician to get an appointment, wondering if this is going to be another one of those visits where they proclaim it a mere cold, stamp his butt with “fine, grade A Baby”, and take my co-pay. But I figure better safe than sorry since I’m suffering from a sinus infection (brought on by a cold) and hey, since I failed with the laptop, I’d better try my other “insurance”.

When I’m about 25 miles into my 30 mile trip to work, my check engine light goes on. NO EFFING WAY!!! Yeah, I try to keep it clean, but folks, I got ticked. Thankfully it seemed to be running alright, no weird noises, no chugging or rough-running, no smoke, and no visible demons flying out of the engine compartment. I call Justin all mad and annoyed but continue on to work. I get there, greet my officemates, grab my laptop, and head back to the pediatrician’s office.

For the first time in a long time, I didn’t have to wait very long, which was nice (and what sucked me into going there in the first place!). Coop’s temp was down to about 99 (but I had him lightly dressed and the AC on full blast), and his lungs were clear. However, his left ear is infected, his right one has a lot of fluid behind it, and he’s got a ton o’ mucous running down his throat (hey, sounds like my diagnosis on Tuesday!). Cooper only cried when she was checking his ears…and understandable since they probably hurt.

Off we went to The Best Target in the World with Rx in hand. Considering how tired and miserable he was probably feeling, Cooper was good while we walked around waiting for his antibiotics. Twenty minutes later we were home. I stuffed some lunch and strawberry gunk antibiotics in him, and layed him down for his nap.

So I got some work stuff done and I searched for “dang car” with little luck. Justin’s on his way home early so that I can bring my car to the shop to figure out it’s main malfunction. Or to see if it just missed the shop, because it’s been a good 8 or 9 weeks since the last time it was there!!! Wish me luck. Or wish me a newish car. Or wish me a good tornado to pick that bad-boy up and rid me of it.

In other news, don’t forget that the fundraiser and silent auction end at 11:59pm tomorrow (Friday)…so go put in your bids or email me your jewelry orders! And thanks to all of you who have helped out so far…I appreciate it so much.

or your norgestrel, for that matter!

Men, that’s your cue to go somewhere else. Might I suggest my husband’s site? K. Thanks. Buh-Bye.

Yes, I am talking about birth control pills. I’m not a huge fan of them. At least not in the past 4 or so years. I took them for some 8 years prior to us starting a family because while I had very regular periods that I could set my watch to, I also had ridiculously heavy periods and cramps that put me in bed for 2-3 days a month, writhing in pain, getting very little pain relief from over-the-counter drugs (Tylenol, Aspirin, Ibuprofen, Midol, or Pamprin). My doctor started me on a low-low-dose pill and it was great for a good three years or so before I changed them up because I could get them through the school (college) health center cheaper than at the pharmacy with my mom’s Rx coverage…the only caveat was that the health center didn’t carry a huge variety of pills, but carried several of the more well-known brands/formulations (otherwise I would’ve stayed with my original brand).

After two years I started to get break-through bleeding so my dosage was upped. And I was good up until I went off of them to get pregnant. Was off them for about 3 months, got pregnant, and had monstrous baby Gavin.

After 6 weeks of pathetic milk production for a large and constantly hungry baby, I gave up and put him on formula and me back on birth control, hoping it would stem the still heavy post-partum bleeding. Boy was I wrong! I bled for 3-1/2 more weeks, regardless of the birth control. And for the next two years I would have my period, then would bleed heavily on and off during the month, usually totalling about 3 weeks each month. You can imagine what that did to my sanity (since I never knew when it would stop or start up again), my tampon budget, and my relationship with Justin. Every three or four months I’d try a new pill, hoping that this one would work and get things under control, and each time it didn’t.

So a few months before Gavin’s 2nd birthday we decided we’d start trying again for our second baby…I was more than happy to toss lousy non-workin’ pills in the trash. And wouldn’t you know, my body went straight back to it’s super-regular 30-day cycle with not a single mid-cycle breathrough incident for the six or so months before I got pregnant with Cooper.

Had Cooper and breastfed him with much better results than Gavin. Post-partum bleeding stopped around the much-more-normal 4-week mark. Didn’t see Aunt Flo again I weaned Cooper down to just morning and bedtime nursings at about 6 months. And man, was she mad! She hung around for about 3 weeks. Not long afterwards Cooper got the flu and weaned himself entirely and it started again. I called my doctor to start back on the pill since my insurance sucks and thinks that birth control can only be pills or permanent surgical methods (especially frustrating after I won this debate). And so we started the three weeks of bleeding each month again.

Then in mid-May I got fed-up and got all crazy googling things like “too much woman for my birth control” and didn’t really get any answers. So I started just researching types and dosages, then called my doctor to complain again about those sucky little pills. She put me on a much larger dose of birth control because obviously I was more woman than those little doses could handle. And more woman than 4 of the 6 types of faux progesterone.

The best part was when I researched the drug. Found about 300 women complaining about it, though from their style of writing “OMG! THIS BC SUX! TEXTING BFF NOW!”, it seemed a good majority of them were fairly young…like between 18-23. All of their complaints sounded like some of the side effects of pregnancy: enlarged breasts (oh please! let it be me!), gas discomfort, moodiness, nausea, and missing periods (again! please! let it be me!). I’m now on my second month of these pills and no nausea, no missing periods (but hey, now they only show up when they’re supposed to…hallelujah!), a bit of gas discomfort the first month, no additional moodiness (I’m already incredibly moody), and no enlarged breasts…much to my disappointment. I guess we’ll see how long these babies last…they need to last for at least a year before I start brow-beating Justin into that third baby.

So am I the only one with this issue?

I know you are probably tired of hearing me go on and on about this, but it’s important and I feel it’s worth repeating a hundred times. Folks out in the Midwest who were affected by the catastrophic flooding are in dire straights. Many were told that since their town was protected by levees rated to withstand “100 Year Floods” that they were not required to purchase flood insurance. This year’s flooding has surpassed any “100 Year Flood” that we’ve experienced. Yet it seems like the media is just pretty much ignoring this, which is truly truly sad because these folks need our help just as much as people affected by Katrina three years ago. While the loss of life was considerably less (because more of these folks heeded evacuation orders and ran for higher ground), the extent of damage and cleanup will probably be the same, or more, than Katrina because a much larger area is affected. And instead of local tourism being the hardest hit, our nation’s food source is affected.

So to show that I am really really serious about this, I have lowered the starting bids on the silent auctions I am hosting. Previously I stood to gain a few dollars per item in order to cover business expenses but now I am eliminating that in order to help encourage some bids, and ultimately, some money for the Red Cross to benefit these flood victims. So go look at the silent auctions, look at the catalog fundraiser, and email me with your order. Or if you hate wearing or sharing fine fashion jewelry with a lifetime guarantee on it, then by all means, send a donation to the Red Cross.