Sunday Memes

Unconscious Mutterings, the Free Association meme

1. Dream big :: Be disappointed


2. Competition :: Healthy


3. Torn :: Asunder


4. Modeling :: Clay


5. Coaster :: Roller (Coaster of love . . . )
   


6. Slut :: Me!


7. Spread :: Your Legs


8. Amanda :: Bearse


9. Romance :: Bites


10. Paradise :: Lost

BTW Sunday

~January Blues~

By the way...

In general is January a difficult month for you or not?

Yes!! The lack of sun wreaks havoc on my mood and both my kids were born in January so it's a hectic month with b-day parties and such.

Do you tend to lose weight or gain weight in January?

January is usually a "hold steady" month for me.

What do you look forward to in January?

My children's birthdays and our annual ski trip to Boyne Falls (not going this year - sob!)

What positive thing that you're proud of have you accomplished this month?

I finally took the Christmas tree down - woo hoo!

What's your favorite January pastime?

Usually it's our annual trip to Boyne Falls, but we aren't going this year. So I'll have to go with celebrating my kids' birthdays. Boy was born January 12, 2001 and Girl was born January 25, 2005, so we have lots of celebrating to do!

No Score and Seven Years Ago . . .

We had been told before we got married that we would not likely be able to have kids, at least not without medical intervention. We were okay with that and planned our blissfully child-free existence. First anniversary, May 2000, we took a trip to the U.P. and do a whole lot of what people who have only been married a year and don't have any kids do. Within a few weeks, I knew something was different. I took a pregnancy test, just to rule that out. After all, I was on the pill and the doctors said I couldn't get pregnant anyway. When it was positive, I took another. A couple more trips to the drugstore and I had tried every "pee stick" they sell. Holy guacamole - I was gonna be a mom!

Husband took it quite well, shouting the news from the rooftops as soon as the doctor's office confirmed that those E.P.T. people know what they're talking about (and the First Response folks, and the store brand, . . . .) And then I started puking. Many times a day. For 7 months. That's right, SEVEN MONTHS. I barfed from June 2000 through December 2000. I carried a Super Big Gulp cup wherever I went in case there was no other place to, um, you know. I was hospitalized several times for dehydration. Oh, and did I mention that I'm diabetic? Oh yeah, not just gestational, but full-blown 24/7/365 diabetes. Throwing up everything you eat wreaks havoc on the blood sugar, as if pregnancy alone wasn't doing that anyway. Joy. Fortunately, I found a wonderful high-risk OB practice. Husband-and-wife OBs board-certified in maternal-fetal medicine. They took great care of me, harassing me into faxing my blood sugars (taken 7 times per day) 3x per week so they could adjust my insulin accordingly.

By 37 weeks, I was ready for it to be over. I was scheduled for an induction at 38 weeks, 1 day. The induction did not go well. I developed a raging infection (probably started when my water was broken) and the baby kept having problems maintaining his heartbeat. Spousehole remembers very little of this, because he slept almost the entire time in a recliner. The nurse had to wake him up and tell him to pay some attention to his laboring wife. After I had been pushing for 2 hours (19 hours after starting labor), the baby's heart would stop completely during every push or contraction. Time for a c-section!

They wheeled me to an O.R., whacked me open and pulled the baby out. Turned out that the cord was wrapped around his neck. Twice. So every push or contraction pulled it tighter and cut off oxygen to his brain. He was blue, limp as wet spaghetti, and had no heartbeat or respiration. That's an initial Apgar of 0, for those keeping score at home. They bagged him and did chest compressions and he finally pinked up and gave a weak little cry. Off to Neonatal Intensive Care he went! With his Daddy in tow, leaving me alone to cry and vomit as the docs sewed and stapled me back together. It was 5:06 a.m., January 12, 2001.


16 hours elapsed before I saw my baby again. I had that raging infection and was really weak, so they wouldn't let me go to the NICU to see him. And NICU babies can't leave to visit mommy. One nice nurse took Polaroids and gave them to me, but it wasn't the same. Boy had his Daddy, which was good for him, but not so good for me. There was a snowstorm, so my family didn't come to be with me and I was so sick the hospital restricted visitors to family and clergy. It never occurred to Spousehole to walk around the corner and down the hall to visit his wife. Seriously, I saw him ONCE in that 16-hr period. I finally threatened to pull out all the IV tubes and crawl to the NICU, so the nurses relented. They helped me into a wheelchair and hooked my IVs and PCA up for travel. When we got to the NICU, one of the nurses reamed my husband out for leaving me alone and scared all day. Yay nurse!

Short story long, Boy recovered but had some developmental delays. By 13 months, I suspected he was autistic. (He had begun speaking, then just stopped. Classic.) He didn't walk until 19 months and was absolutely fascinated with wheels, fans, or anything else that spins. He was in special ed by 17 months and "officially" diagnosed at 22 months.

Today my little boy is 7 years old. He attends mainstream kindergarten part of the day and is in an autism classroom the rest of the day. He reads and writes well above kindergarten level, but is hampered socially by his autism. He is obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine and Polar Express. He's a funny, goofy kid. Happy Birthday, baby boy!

My latest favorite video

There are other videos for Buckcherry's Sorry, but this one is my favorite. Josh Todd looks amazing in this one. I think the woman in the video is his real-life wife, Mitzi Martin.

So the drama . . .

Things were getting better around here. Spousehole has been in a pretty good mood and treating everyone fairly nicely. He was understanding about housework not getting done when I was sick last weekend. He was content to play his new video game obsession (Half-Life 2; thanks, Mom) and pretty much let us be.

But not any more.

I was out Wednesday night and he was in charge of the kids. Apparently Boy had a "toileting accident." His autism has made it tough for him to totally "get" potty-training. He pees in the toilet just fine, but still has problems sometimes with bowel movements. Boy was not cooperative about going upstairs to get cleaned up. Spousehole told me Thursday morning that he had spanked Boy.

Now, I'm not a big fan of spanking. But I wasn't going to have a major fit about it.

Until now. When Boy got home from school on Thursday, I was helping him in the bathroom and saw his bottom. It's bruised. Purple bruises on the surface of his tiny little bum. Not deep, can't-sit-down-comfortably bruises, but bruises nonetheless.

There's spanking and there's beating; I would classify this as beating. I was spanked a lot as a kid and I NEVER had bruises.

I warned Spousehole that if he ever hurts my son again, I will have his ass thrown out of here and get a restraining order to keep him away from me and the kids. He took that pretty well, actually. He apologized to Boy, but still made it all Boy's fault.

I've told Spousehole that he has to get some help for his anger problems. I know he's not having an easy time at work right now, but he cannot take out his anger on the children or me. He needs to learn to vent it another way. He agrees, but we'll see what happens.

In other parenting news, did you read about the little girl who was left at Chuck E. Cheese's and her family only realized she was missing when they saw her picture in the paper two days later? I can see how different people each thought the other had taken the child home, but to not notice for TWO DAYS? At least these people realized the NEXT day that they had left their child at Chuck E. Cheese.

And for REALLY bad parenting, there's the guy who threw his kids off a bridge to spite their mother and the mom who killed her four daughters and kept their bodies in the apartment to the point that the neighbors could smell them and the authorities found the girls when they came to serve an eviction notice. And the one that upset me greatly when it happened, the mother who suffocated her autistic daughter because she just couldn't handle the autism anymore. Her trial started this week.

HNT!

My kids got me this cute cami for Christmas*

Aren't they great little shoppers?


They even got me the matching panties.
I'm sure if you look hard you can find them
(clickety-click, as Vixen would say)

*i.e., I bought them for myself and had the kids give them to me

Why do we get half-nekkid? Want to join the fun? See Os at

Tagged!

I've been tagged by Kiki for the seven random thangs meme! I did it once before, so go read here if you want even more randomness!

Here's how it works:

Link to the person that tagged you, post the rules on your blog. Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog.

Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

7 Random or Weird facts about Bunny:

1. My eyes are not completely the same color. That is, my right is eye is 100% blue. My left eye, however, is only about 85% blue. There is a chunk, approximately 6:30 to 8:00, that is greenish-brownish-hazel, like my eye is a weird little pie chart. It's not a big deal, but you wouldn't have known that at my last ophthalmologist appointment. The assistant putting the dilating drops in my eyes, who looks at people's eyes ALL DAY, acted like it was the strangest thing she had ever seen. That didn't make me feel like a freakazoid; no, not at all.

2. While I am generally tolerant and accepting of all kinds of people, I have no patience for smelly inconsiderate smokers. Smokers who are considerate and take steps to ensure they don't reek of their nasty habit I can handle. But the ones who smell bad, who you can smell coming a mile away -- I have no tolerance for these people. There was a guy in my house the other night that smelled so horribly of stale & fresh cigarette smoke that I nearly threw him out of my house. I seriously considered spraying him down with Lysol. The kicker - dude was here to give Spousehole estimates on new windows; he is trying to sell something and comes to my house smelling like he marinated in cigarette smoke! Here's a tip: if you are trying to sell something, SMELL GOOD. Bathe, wash your hair, put on fresh, clean, non-smoke-smelling clothes, brush your teeth and pop in a breath mint. To prevent smelling like an ashtray, only smoke outdoors - never, ever EVER in an enclosed area - not your house, not your car, no where indoors. Spray yourself with a little Oust or Febreze or something when you come inside and brush your teeth or use a breath mint.

Even better - quit smoking!

Growing up with asthma and allergies exacerbated by second-hand smoke made me a really intolerant bitch on this score.

3. I'm an obsessive recycler. I recycle every scrap of paper, every bit of metal, glass, or plastic, batteries, EVERY DAMN THING I CAN. I do whatever I can to keep stuff out of landfills or our local trash incinerator. My newspapers and phone books go to a company that makes them into insulation for Habitat for Humanity, everything else goes into our municipal curbside recycling bins. They don't take styrofoam egg cartons though, so I try to donate those to schools or child care centers that will use them for crafts. I would compost if I had a use for the compost :-(

4. I enjoy popping my spouse's zits. It borders on an obsession. Fortunately, he is totally into it. He will take off his shirt and ask me to inspect his back. If he has no zits, he just wants me to scratch his back. Back when we used to have sex, a long, long time ago, this served as foreplay. Seriously. (For more on primate grooming rituals and sex, see FADKOG)

5. It is January 9 and my GDMF Christmas tree is STILL UP. I'm such a lazy b!tch.

6. One of my cats lives in a 5' x 7' pen in the basement. The top is totally open, so she can get out any time she wants. She chooses to not leave her pen. She is very paranoid and seems to think that she is safe in her chicken wire pen (designed for a rabbit). She has a bed, a litter box, and food and water. The children rarely venture downstairs, so she doesn't have to see them (she HATES the children) and she doesn't have to interact with the other cats. I take her out sometimes to play fetch (she LOVES fetch), so she gets some exercise. She seems quite happy with this arrangement.

7. While I am generally a very good cook, I can't cook rice. I'm like Keith Famie on Survivor: Outback. Remember him? A professional chef and Detroit-area restaurateur, but the other contestants ripped him a new one when he couldn't cook rice. If I try to cook rice on the stove it just comes out awful. This is why God made rice steamers. I adore the Hitachi rice steamer I got in 1999. Brown or white, jasmine or basmati, the rice comes out perfect every single time. I will never cook rice on the stove again.

I'm supposed to tag 7 people now to do the meme. I'll update later with those names. If you want to play, feel free to do so and let me know!

TMI Tuesday!

It's TMI Tuesday! Click the "I kiss and tell" icon to come play with us!!


1) Do you have/ever had any dating or sex superstitions? (Wear 'lucky jeans' on first date, always light a vanilla candle, etc.) If so, what are they?

No, nothing


2) If you were stranded on the old deserted island, and a genie appeared who could only grant you one wish -- to bring one of the following people to join you, who would it be?

- your spouse/significant other
- an unrequited love or some person you've had a crush on
- an old/past love
- your best friend

An old love with whom I had amazing sex, K

3) Tell us "weather or not" you're in the mood -- how does rain, snow, sleet, scorching heat, sweltering humidity etc. affect your libido.

Humidity and rain don't do much for me. The rest of the time I am as horny as ever!

4) Are you a crying drunk, an angry drunk, a 'I'm drunk, let's screw' sort of a drinker? (And, if you do not drink -- which one of those things is the reason?)

Yes to all of the above, depending on who I am with and my mood to begin with. That's why I try to not get drunk very often.

5) Who turns you on the most & why:

the activist
the author
the care-giver/healer (nurse, doctor, masseuse, herbalist, chiropractor etc.)
the comedian
the educator (professor, teacher, mentor etc.)
the model
the musician
the politician
the scientist

Educators, authors, scientists - probably because they tend to be cerebral and I like a thinking lover.

Bonus (as in optional): Looking back, what's the one thing you've done which was supposed to be erotic, but didn't quite work out?

A mud bath for two at a spa. Just not that sexy, really, at least not at that time with that person (Spousehole).

Mute Monday - Year in Review

Year in Review

In March, both kids and I had strep throat. Spousehole was in California for work and missed out on all the fun of going to repeated doctor visits and having cranky, tired kids. And wife.

Summer brought bouts of mono for both kids.

All they did was lay on the couch and drink juice for quite some time.

Fall brought us a wonderful stomach bug that affected both kids,
but really brought the Boy down

He had to be hospitalized for dehydration

But there was fun too:

Boyne Falls, MI

Hanging at the splash park

At the zoo

Camping

On the shores of Lake Michigan


At the cottage


Halloween

Sleepover at Grandma's

Xmas