Monday, April 30, 2012

Getting stabbed.

I am the biggest wimp you will ever meet in your entire life.

Seriously.  My tolerance for pain is non-existent.  7 months pregnant with my daughter, I remember waddling out of a prenatal class during which we had watched a birthing video, and proclaiming matter-of-factly to my husband, "I am not doing that."  To which he pointed to my giant belly and replied, "uh, yes you are."  And I said, "No.  I don't think you understand.  I'm not doing that.  I am NOT going to have contractions, and I will NOT be pushing 7+ pounds of baby out of my V.  Sorry."  Thankfully, Mackenzie turned herself around into the breech position at the beginning of the 8th month, so I got to have a nice, happy, contraction-free, drug-filled, planned c-section.  Not that it was without it's wimpy moments - I bitched and whined my way through all of my prenatal blood work appointments; I refused to cooperate with the anesthetist, and cried and screamed when they did the spinal before my c-section; I had an epic meltdown over the catheter; I even cried when they made me drink that gross salty shit to help "open my spine."  And on it goes.

Two years later, when I was in the same hospital getting ready to have my son, I was in the throes of having a giant, dramatic fit about getting the IV put in my arm.  I noticed a flash of recognition cross the nurse's face, and she suddenly said, "HEY!  I remember YOU!"

(This was in Nelson.  I know it was a small hospital, but really.  Two years later?  They STILL remembered me?  That's a little embarrassing.)

Anyway, today I had to go down to the public health unit to get immunized for the program I am planning on taking at TRU in the fall.  When the program paperwork came in the mail a couple months ago, and I saw that I would need immunizations, I honestly considered NOT taking the program after all.  Today, I needed two needles in my left arm (with more where that came from, in 30 days' time), and a Tuberculosis skin test on the inside of my right forearm.  I mistakenly believed that a "skin test" meant a sweet little gentle swab with a soft fuzzy Q-Tip.  But guess what?

I WAS WRONG.

It was TOTALLY NOT a frickin' Q-Tip, and let me tell you, it hurt like a bitch!!!  I was OK with the two needles in my arm - I was kind of shaking and I did get a little sweaty and nervous but overall I think I did OK.  The nurse then told me that was the worst part, that it would be worse than the TB skin test.

But when she stuck the needle in my forearm, (NOT A Q-TIP, PEOPLE, A BIG FAT GODDAMN NEEDLE!!!!!!), I yelled "JESUS CHRIST, THAT FRICKIN' HURTS!"  Then, there's a chance I might have called her a giant liar for saying the other part hurt more.

She informed me that it's been awhile since someone swore at her.

You're welcome, Nurse.


Friday, April 27, 2012

Five Things Friday.

It's been a great week.  Lots of things, big and little, have happened to make me happy this week.

Which leads me to my latest blogging plan - FIVE THINGS FRIDAY.

Every Friday, I'm going to post a list of five things.  Could be positive, negative, weird, crazy...whatever strikes my fancy.  Just five things.

This week, it's FIVE REASONS WHY THIS WEEK WAS AWESOME.

Ready??

1. The birth of S and C's son.  Cutest, sweetest, most wonderful little baby ever.  I spent an hour and a half just holding him yesterday.  I cannot wait to spend more time with him.

2. $1 pop is back at McDonald's.  I am ridiculously happy about this.  It starts every April, around this time, and goes all the way until September.  You can get ANY SIZE DRINK from McDonald's for just ONE DOLLAR.  Everything is truly right with the world when I am cruising through the drive-thru, and my friend Val* hands me my daily $1 large diet coke.  It makes me so, so, so, happy. (*At the risk of sounding like I'm nuts, this is the part where I have to admit that Val is not really my friend.  She's an older lady, almost old enough to be my grandma, and she's been working at McD's for, like, ever.  She is always working the drive-thru when I go, and I've always thought of how fun it would be if I could work at McDonald's with Val and we would be great buddies and we'd laugh at all the young whippersnappers who work there while chatting about the good ol' days.)

3. I got an A in my writing class.  A frickin' A!!!!!!!!!!!!!

4. My kids are just the best (well, except for the fact that AJ lost his Wii privileges for the weekend thanks to the fact that I am pretty sure he is physically incapable of listening to a word I say...but BESIDES that...they rock pretty hard!)  AJ scored another soccer goal; Mackenzie is kicking ass at the piano piece she's working on for her recital; and after school on Wednesday, we got rubber gloves and a garbage bag from the office and picked up all the garbage on the hill beside the school field - and not a complaint out of either of them.  They did this task with great pride, which made Momma very proud!

5. I've been in one of my famous eat-everything-in-sight moods since Tuesday, and guess how much weight I've gained?  NOTHING.  Not a damn pound.  I think I'll have hot dogs, nachos, fries and beer for supper tonight!!

So yeah.  This week?  Awesome.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Oh, Baby.

Our great friends S and C had their first baby late last night.

(Well, let's be honest, S didn't do much.  C actually did all the work.  But anyway.)

We knew she went in to labour late Sunday night.  We knew she was still labouring first thing Monday morning, and still early Monday afternoon.  I tried my hardest not to bother them with texts, but all day, I was dying to hear what was going on.  DYING TO.  And even though I knew I should leave them alone, let them do this without my constant texting, I just couldn't help but sneak a few messages here and there... "hope everything's going well!  Thinking of you!" etc.  (And frankly, now that I think about it, with the anticipation I was feeling yesterday, it's kind of a miracle that I didn't, like, fake an injury or something, just to be able to go to the hospital to see them.  "Oh, hey, guys, what's up?  Fancy meeting you here...I had NO IDEA you'd be here!  I just, uh, sprained my...wrist?  I, uh, fell out of, um, a...tree...?  But never mind that!  How are YOU??")  At 11:14 last night, just before we went to bed, I sent one final text: "It's late, hope things are going well, hopefully we'll chat tomorrow."  I woke up shortly after 6 to the news that he was born at 11:31 Monday night.

I cried. He's absolutely perfect and beautiful.

Now, I am dying to go see them.  I want to meet the baby, hold him, to see S and C and hug them and talk to them and hear how everything went down, to see them as parents for the very first time.  And because they aren't quite ready for visitors yet, I have to wait.  Which is kind of killing me.  That fake injury idea just to get me to the hospital is now super tempting.  It is hard to describe what I'm feeling, but it's sort of a mixture of anxiety and anticipation...and I am just not sure what to do with myself!  My house needs vacuuming, don't even get me started on how filthy my windows are, and I have a book I want to finish; but so far today I've accomplished none of those things.  I've been puttering around the house, eating my feelings, wandering aimlessly, and generally feeling...just...weird!!  She had the baby...I didn't...so what the hell is going on?

I guess it's just the excitement of a friend I've known for more than 20 years, becoming a mommy for the very first time, and the anticipation of meeting their beautiful baby boy.

Congratulations, S and C, and welcome, Baby.  We love you!


Saturday, April 21, 2012

Un-fair.

The fair is in town this weekend.

I HATE the fair.

I have convinced myself of a lot of things when it comes to the fair: I am convinced they don't put the rides together properly and that one day something's going to break with my kid on it.  I am convinced that nothing ever gets cleaned properly and that there is hepatitis just crawling all over everything and we're all going to get some awful disease from the filth.  I'm even convinced that those disgusting stuffed animals you win after playing the games are filled with, like, asbestos or some shit like that.  I hate the carnies buckling my kids into the rides.  I REALLY hate how filthy it is.  I hate the disgusting smell of that awful grease that they cook everything in.  I hate how expensive it is, and that we're in for a good fifty bucks just to take the kids for an hour.  But try as I might to convince the kids otherwise - "We could go out for dinner instead!  Or we could go spend $50 at Toys R Us!  Or go to the Wildlife Park for the day, come on, that would be so fun!  WE COULD DO ANYTHING YOU WANT THAT COSTS $50 JUST PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DON'T CHOOSE THE FAIR, I WILL DO ANYTHING, SERIOUSLY, I HATE THAT PLACE!!!!!!"

No dice.  We're off to the fair this afternoon.  Sigh.

I will have a giant bottle of hand sanitizer with me.  And maybe a squirt bottle full of bleach.  And I might be wearing gloves and a mask.  Or a hazmat suit.

Too much?

I don't think so.



Saturday, April 14, 2012

Laughing at my kids.

Conversations with the kids while in the van, en route to birthday parties:

AJ: "Me, Dad, Kai, and his dad (ed note: these are all Flames fans) should all have a night of watching the Calgary Flames while we wear our Flames jerseys."

Me: "Well, you're going to have to wait til September.  The Flames are done for the season.  They didn't make the playoffs."

Mackenzie: "They NEVER make the playoffs."

Me: "Well, they need to win a few more games and then maybe they'd make it!"

AJ: "Hey!  There was that one time they won a game!  Remember?  It was a loooooong time ago!  Like, a very, very, very, VERY long time ago!!  Actually, I'm pretty sure it was in the olden days."

****

AJ: "I wish I was a bird.  If I was, I'd fly to Arizona ALL the time."

Mackenzie: "Well, if you were a bird, there's also a good chance you'd fly straight into a window and die."

Friday, April 13, 2012

Class dismissed.

So, it's over.

My writing class is done.

I finished my final project and displayed it last night, and now, after 13 weeks, it's over.  And frankly, the professor could fail me and I wouldn't even care - I'm just really, really happy that I did it.  I did it!!  I walked into a 3rd-year University class, for the first time in 13 years, with a bunch of 21-year-olds, and I held my own.  I finished the class pretty proud of what I'd put forth.  And as I was leaving last night's final class, the instructor stopped me and told me that she hopes I continue with writing, because she thinks I am "very good" at it.  Even if I never take another writing course ever in my entire life, and the only thing I ever write again are these blog posts, I will never forget that comment.  She liked what I did.  A published writer thought I was good!

Since last night was the final presentation portion of the class, we were encouraged to bring people along to the class to view everyone's projects.  My kids were pretty excited to see TRU and "go to college", so they (and Shawn) joined me.  The kids were very well-behaved - shockingly so, if I'm being honest!  I expected some fighting, a little yelling, constantly needing to go to the bathroom, whining about wanting to leave, and so on.  But there was none of that.  They were quiet and respectful when a few people got up to read parts of their stories out loud, (which is more than I can say for some of the ADULT students, who spent a lot of time dicking around with their phones and laughing and showing their friends some stupid text or picture or whatever was on it, rather than putting the friggin' things away and giving the reader 5 minutes of their precious time and attention.  Seriously, as much as I love my iPhone, sometimes I want to grab peoples' cel phones out of their hands and stomp on them til they're in pieces and then throw them out the window and drive over them with my minivan.)

Sorry.  Too much??

Anyway, before we went to my class, the kids were packing a bunch of stuff into their backpacks to bring with them to help keep them occupied.  AJ had his red Spiderman backpack filled with pencil crayons and Star Wars coloring pages and a few little Bakugon toys and a Kinder Surprise egg and some gummy fruity snacks and a Five Alive juice box, and he slings it over his shoulder and says to me, in this super cool tone:

"Oh, mom.  People are TOTALLY going to think I go to this school."


Sunday, April 8, 2012

Yay, me!

I did something today that I have NEVER done before.

I've always wanted to.  Just never have.  Always been too afraid to try.

Tonight, though?  I DID IT.

ALL BY MYSELF.*

I am so frickin' proud of this.


*OK, so I didn't pull out the giblets and the neck.  That part literally makes me throw up in my mouth.  So I made Shawn do it.  But the rest?  ALL ME, BABY.


Saturday, April 7, 2012

Stinky and dumb.

Saturday mornings, the kids have swimming lessons at 9:30 - which is SO friggin' early - they like to sleep in and I usually end up having to haul them out of bed and shove their breakfast down their throats so we can get there on time.  This morning was no different; I'm running around trying to feed people and find towels and the swim bag and making sure they remember to pack their underwear and that Mackenzie has BOTH pieces of her bathing suit on, etc etc etc...all the while, the kids are talking nonstop, and as we're getting into the van, AJ was blabbing on and on about dinosaurs.  I was sort of listening, but really not - you know how it goes, you're busy and trying to remember if you've got everything, and your kids are yapping and they're talking over each other and you kind of go, "oh, yeah, uh-huh, sure..."  Anyway, at one point AJ says, "you know mom, the dinosaurs really stinked."

This caught my attention because a) his speech is very good, and he doesn't use words like "stinked"; and b) um, what???  Which is, incidentally, what I said out loud.

"Sorry, they WHAT?"

AJ: "They stinked."

Mom: "I don't understand, why do you say that?  I mean I guess they probably did stink, they were big and ugly and, you know, I don't think they had like soap or shampoo or anything..."

AJ: "Yep.  They sure STINKED!"

Insert Mackenzie now, with a giant roll of her eyes: ""Oh, AJ.  You mean they are EXTINCT."

Ah.  Well, that makes a lot more sense!!

****

On the way home from swimming lessons today, we had the pleasure of following some old guy in a Ford Focus who couldn't drive to save his life.  I was getting a little (OK, a lot) frustrated.

AJ: "Why are you getting mad, Mom?  Is that guy a bad driver?"

Me: "YES!  Yes, he is a terrible driver."

AJ: "But he doesn't have an "N", so he isn't a new driver."

Me: "No, he's definitely not a new driver, I just think he's not a very smart driver."

AJ: "Well, if they need to have an "N" for a new driver, I think they should need to have a "D" for a dum-dum driver!"

An excellent suggestion, I thought!!

(Oh, and also, I clearly need to start being nicer to new drivers.)


Monday, April 2, 2012

The height of fashion.

For the most part, I have fairly well-dressed children.  I go to the States often, the deals down there are insane, and I have a ridiculous shopping addiction, so the kids have more clothes than they could ever possibly wear.  Truly.  I just took a giant garbage bag full to the local consignment store, because it was a little out of control.

Normally, I don't let my son wear sweatpants to school.  Today, though, he was just getting over a bit of a cold, plus it's his "special helper" day, so I gave in.  I made sure they were nice, plain black ones, with a grey Kamloops Blazers t-shirt, his little Skechers runners, and his fleecy Under Armour spring jacket.  He left for school looking quite cute.

At noon, I had a lunch-hour supervision shift at the kids' school.  Imagine my surprise when I turned around to see my son heading down the stairs to the playground, looking like THIS.


Bright red "Angry Birds" toque, pushed back on his forehead.  Brown and white striped hoodie.  Grey shirt.  Navy gloves with a skeleton design.  And, the grand finale - his sweatpants TUCKED IN TO his lizard-shaped, bright green and blue rubber boots.

He gets his fashion sense from his dad!

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Can't wait to show her an 8-track.

We love music.

Love it, love it, love it.

All kinds, all genres, all decades - all of it.

Our music collection is enormous.  When we moved in together 9 (!) years ago, we probably had over 1000 CD's between the two of us.  Our collection is now on our computer, obviously, and I'm pretty sure that if the house was ever on fire, Shawn would risk coming back inside to save it.  Our kids have also inherited our love of music; they both have their own iPods, and I am thankful that we never had to listen to those stupid kids' CD's - they've preferred "real" music from the get-go, and we've always encouraged it.  We don't censor much - they can listen to what they want, but we do find radio edits for the really bad ones (Cee Lo and Travie McCoy come to mind!)  We've had to answer a few questions about certain song lyrics (my favorite being Zac Brown Band, "Toes" - the lyric is "I'm gonna lay in the hot sun, and roll a big fat one..." well, of course they had to know what that meant...so I told them that it means to roll a big fat guy down the beach.  They accepted that as an explanation.  Yes.  I lie to my kids.  Don't judge.)

Anyhow, I digress.  Hey, I warned you I'd ramble.  Don't act surprised.

While I do love all kinds of music, country is my number 1.  I have been a huge country music fan for as long as I can remember.  I even got the chance to go to Nashville with my dad a few years ago for the Country Radio Seminar, and it was absolutely, far and away, the best four days of my entire life.  I always feel bad saying that, because my husband didn't come with me, so the greatest four days of my entire life did not include him.  That said, if I ever had the chance to go back again, and he couldn't come?  Well, I'd ditch him in a minute just to be able to experience it again.  (Sorry, honey.  Truth hurts.)

Tonight, the 47th Academy of Country Music Awards were on TV.  My daughter Mackenzie decided a few months ago that unless it was Taylor Swift, all country music needed to be removed from her iPod right away.  Broke my heart into a million pieces, but I obliged.  Tonight, though, I convinced her to watch the show with me - she likes awards shows, and the lure of brightly lit, loud performances and fancy glittery clothes was enough to entice her.  While we were watching Miranda Lambert accept the award for best album, our conversation went like this:

Mackenzie: "What song did she have to sing, to win that award?"

Me: "No song in particular, the whole album had to be good."

Mackenzie: "...um.  OK."

Me: "The album, Mackenzie.  The whole thing had to be good to win that prize.  Better than anyone else's album."

Mackenzie: "Uh-huh.  Sure, Mom."

At this point, she's looking at me like I am clearly an idiot and have no idea what I'm talking about, and it finally occurs to me.

SHE HAS NO FREAKING CLUE WHAT AN ALBUM IS.

I had to EXPLAIN to my kid what an ALBUM is.

Holy crap.

Is that sad, or what?!

*****

Now, I need to put my two cents in here about the awards show.  I'm sorry, I have to.  I'll keep it brief.

-I hate the Band Perry.  HATE.  That stupid "If I Die Young" song is the dumbest song ever.  They performed with Keith Urban when my friend J and I went to see him in September, and they did a cover of  "Teenage Dream", and it was screeching and awful.  I wanted to rip my own ears off so that a) I didn't have to listen to it anymore, and b) so I'd have something to throw at them.  Cannot.  Stand.  Them.

-Eric Church just rocks my world.  I love that man.  I don't love his favorite pastime of smoking pot, or his need to wear sunglasses indoors, ALL THE TIME, but man, his music is just the best.  Download his latest album, "Chief".  Learn it.  Love it.  He's amazing.  Now, go back and get the rest of his albums too.  There.  I just made your life better.  No need to thank me.

-How hot is Carrie Underwood?  I might have a girl crush.

-Toby Keith's performance of "Red Solo Cup" was the best of the night.  It was just so casual and fun, and he just seems like the kind of arrogant dude who knows he's awesome and if you don't agree, well, he'll just tell you to suck it and that'll be that.  That said, I am certain he feels like a bloody fool every time he performs that song.  It's fun, it's catchy, but let's call a spade a spade here - it's ridiculous.  (Side note, my friend C has a super low tolerance for country music, and the fact that she's currently almost 9 months pregnant makes her tolerance pretty much non-existent.  She had the pleasure of hearing "Red Solo Cup" for the first time ever just a couple of weeks ago, and the string of texts I got when she heard it went something like, "Does Toby Keith really do a song about a PARTY CUP???  HOW is this a song????  This is the stupidest song EVER.  Is this a JOKE??  Seriously??  Does he ACTUALLY sing this song?  It's STUPID."  I'm paraphrasing here, but you get the idea.  I blame the pregnancy.)

*****

And to finish off the longest post ever, here are some great lines from Mackenzie during the show.

-(after the camera panned to an older woman wearing a sparkly top): "Well, I think that's just a little too much glitter for a GRANDMA."

-(to Dierks Bentley): "Oh, THANK YOU, for finally cutting your hair!!"

-(about the many male artists with their big belt buckles): "I think it would look a lot better if they put their shirts OVER TOP OF their belts."

-(about Zac Brown's weird skull-cap thing): "I hate that hat." (Brad Paisley then comes on stage wearing the same hat.) "Oh!  Well it looks a lot better on HIM!"

-(about host Reba McEntire): "I hope she knows, we can see her boobs."