Today’s question is: Why does our world have to consist of check drama??

Background: Check drama is the discussing (can lead to arguing) over who’s paying the check at a restaurant.

Last Saturday night PW and I went out on a double date. We were setting up our friends Tam and John. John picked the restaurant, we went to Old Town Brasserie in Chicago. We had an awesome time, laughing constantly.

John dubbed me Tiffany with my new hair and I must say that conjured up a ton of laughs. We’re still laughing about it days latter. You see, the second John laid eyes on me he exclaimed “it’s like your cheating on your wife” to PW. One must have a new name to go with a new look, don’t you think?

Anyway, after a very lovely and fun dinner it was time to pay. Enter Check Drama. John picked the place so he wanted to pay. But, PW, knowing full well that we were the ones to set up John with Tam, felt like he should pay, or at least pay half. In the long run John won but PW felt bad, I could tell.

So, when we entered the car, John’s car, he drove all of us, PW slipped some cash into the center console without notice. PW felt good about this. I told him he shouldn’t have done it.

John leases his cars and gets new ones all the time. Truth be known, there is some real explanation for what kind of lease he has, he told us the other night, but honestly I just didn’t get it. I’ve never heard of this kind of lease, where you turn it in all the time, so it went over my head. I just know there’s a chance that car, with all that cash sitting in the console, might be switched out soon so I had to tell him the cash was in there.

John was pissed.

I don’t blame him. He wanted to treat us. I hope by getting this out there he will forgive us and let us pay next time. PW has learned a lesson and won’t be party to check drama again.

It does make me wonder about check drama and why it happens so often. Why are people so against letting others pay?

Today’s question is: Why is the fun of Christmas over so quickly?

Background: The first little turkey was up at 6:30am and it was killing her to get herself downstairs to see if Santa had come. She knows the drill though, she has to wait for her brother and sister. At 6:50am the second turkey finally woke but to both of their dismay the little buddy was still fast asleep. I took pity on them and let them wake him. By 7:05am we discovered Santa had come and we started opening the gifts. By 7:35am, all finished opening and off to start a day of playing with new stuff (we don’t get a lot, just enough to keep us busy). It’s over and I feel a sense of relief. Thank goodness it’s over.

Traditionally we spend Christmas in our jammies. I feel like it’s a much needed day of rest. We will rest today. We will take it easy. We will have fun. I love Christmas (especially when the fun is over and we can relax).

Merry Christmas

from our home

to yours.

Irish Christmas Blessing
The light of the Christmas star to you
The warmth of home and hearth to you
The cheer and good will of friends to you
The hope of a childlike heart to you
The joy of a thousand angels to you
The love of the Son and God’s peace to you

No matter what you believe, I wish you a day of peace and rest. Happy Day.

Today’s question is: why is it so scary to stick your hand into the garbage disposal?

Background: Ever since I can remember I’ve been kinda afraid to put my hand into the garbage disposal. Whenever I’ve had to do it I approach it slowly, being ever so careful, just in case the thing turns on by itself. I wonder if one has actually ever done that, turned on by itself?

My sister and I were talking about this earlier today. I was telling her that mold grows inside the bottom edge of the garbage disposal and that it’s one of those things you have to remember to clean (for us especially because our little guy is allergic to mold). My sister then told me she was a little bit afraid to put her hand in the disposal. I said, ‘so am I, I wonder if it’s a common thing?” And now you know why it’s my question today.

So really, let me know, does it bother you? Or not?

Today’s question is: Why are changes so difficult?

Background: Perhaps I’ve asked this question before, I don’t know. But for fun I decided to make a little change……….

Before:

After:

For the record this change is a good one for me, I really like it. I’m happy with it. The little turkeys, not so much. My little guy said “it doesn’t look good, mom” when I walked through the door. My middle girl said “No, I don’t like it” and my biggest girl said “well, it’s OK”, which is her trying ever so hard not to hurt my feelings, even though she doesn’t like it. It’s growing on them though, definitely.

However, I went to surprise my sisters last night because it was my oldest sisters 40th birthday (happy birthday Sarah!). I first stopped in to Heather’s house and her daughters looked at me like I was some kind of stranger. Her oldest daughter said “well, I know it’s you because your voice sounds the same” and the little one didn’t say much but she acted like I was someone to be suspicious of. The entire thing was really quite hilarious. Heather, on the other hand, who has been asking me for years to go dark, loved it. (Sarah seemed to love it too.)

It’s very different and very cool at the same time. I really, really like it and it may just stick. I’ve never had hair this dark in my life, but I’ve always been a lover of dark hair. Changes are good, even if difficult at onset, don’t you think?

Today’s question is: Why is it such a relief to mark something off the to do list?

Background: Of course this could apply to many, many things. I seem to frequently have that little black cloud hanging over my head, of things I should be getting completed but am not. Like how I should be doing any number of things right this moment, instead of screwing around on the computer or talking to my brother, sister and friend on the phone. But I digress…..

Last night, I finally finished off the bulk of my Christmas cards. I told myself for the last time that I was not going to bed until they were in the mail. I’ve been working on them for a good week and a half, but I’ve constantly had wrenches thrown into my finishing plans.

Like last Friday when I was picking up something from a friends house on the way to my trainer when I slipped on some black ice and severely bruised my wrist/arm. That certainly didn’t help my completion of the Christmas cards. Or the two brownie meetings I had after the kids school last week. I could have been working during those hours, but no, more important tasks were at hand.

The thing about this year is that I normally like to make the cards myself, from scratch, all 200 of them. I love planning out the cards every year. I love doing something different. I love being unique. However this year, it became apparent, even before Thanksgiving that I was absolutely not going to be doing them myself. I hadn’t even planned the card at all by the beginning of November, which is very much unlike me. I ended up hiring a friend to do them and she let me give my design opinion, thank goodness. She finished them up for me at least 2 weeks ago and I’ve had that black cloud hanging there ever since, until today. Boy does it feel good.

So finally and gloriously I am finished (OK, I have a couple of stragglers). At 11:00 last night I drove to the post office and shoved those babies into the mailboxes!

Let the fun begin!

Today’s question is: Why, oh why, would anyone totally forget they were filling a sink with water and let it overflow?

Background: As embarrassing as this is to admit, I did this once. It’s really much worse than it even sounds. Let me explain.

For years I have had help around the house. I hired a gal when my second daughter was 1 month old and she worked for us up until a couple of months ago when I decided I needed to get back in the saddle and be in charge around here (what was I thinking?). I had only barely done laundry in 7 years. But I was determined to save some money and get back into the laundry thing. My children are older now and I knew I could handle the extra work.

Several months ago I was starting the laundry in the morning and I decided some of the girls clothes needed to soak. So i put the items in the sink in the laundry room and turned the water on and poured in some stain remover and walked out of the room to get something. At the same time I started the washing machine. This is important to note, because with the washer running you can not actually hear the sink running simultaneously.

I left the room to do something else and upon leaving completely forgot I ever started the sink. I did whatever it was that I left the room to do and went downstairs to my office to check email and read my favorite blogs. A little while into reading I heard this dripping noise in the hallway. I got up from my desk, walked into the hall, stood there looking up at the ceiling trying to figure out what could be making that noise, never once remembering I had started the fill the sink upstairs. I decided it was a normal noise made from the washing machine and shrugged off the feeling I had when I couldn’t remember ever hearing it before. The computer is much more important that the dripping sound coming from my hallway. I went back to my reading.

About a minute later there was no doubting the sound of serious dripping. I went back into the hall to find the door jam to the dining room dripping water. My immediate thought was that the washer had malfunctioned and for some reason it was leaking water. I ran upstairs only to find my sink OVERFLOWING with water. I quickly turned it off, ran to the linen closet and grabbed as many towels as I could and started soaking it up. I was so pissed at myself, how could I have been so forgetful (or stupid if you may)? How does that happen?

As I’ve said before, I think there is something up with my memory, don’t ya think?

Today’s question is: Why do little kids insist on smearing their hands all over the walls?

Background: To add to my list of super freak tendencies I thought I’d bring into the light my distaste for my kids hands all over the walls. I’m not sure what gene it is that causes children to do this but it makes me crazy. Being the clean freak that I am (except the refrigerator, just ask my sister), I can not stand when the kids smear their dirty ass hands all over the walls. I’ve found that some kids are definitely worse than others. I’ve also found that you can train them not to do it, just not all of them.

For years I had a babysitter/helper around this house. She ended up having a baby a year after my little guy was born and he came along with her for 4.5 years up until I let her go in September this year. He was a wall smearer, in the worst way. No amount of training could get that kid to stop rubbing his hands along my walls every single chance he got. To say his isn’t missed is an understatement. Although he’s left his mark and I’m sure over the years I will be able to paint away all the traces.

The thing is, I’d take a wall smearer as my child over not having a child any day. I can always curb my freakishness to make way for what’s important.

Today’s question is: Why is it important to get with the program?

Background: I just couldn’t resist when I saw this. Have a good laugh…..

Happy Holidays!

Today’s question is: Why would anyone stand on their bath mat with their shoes on??

Background: I’m sure I’ve alluded to the fact that I’m semi anal before, right? Or as my sister calls it, I’m a super freak, super freak.

Well, here’s the thing, I don’t wear shoes in my house or let anyone else because I don’t like cleaning so much. Not only that, outdoor shoes walk in all kinds of crap. The mere thought of all that stuff being smeared all over the floors and rugs in my house is enough to push me over the edge. Really. Maybe I have problems, I don’ t know. But what I do know is that while the thought of walking around in shoes in my house grosses me out, a whole new level of grossness comes from the thought of standing on the bath mat in shoes.

The bath mat is the first place you step with your clean feet when you exit the shower/bath. Who wants to step in who knows what has been smeared in from the outside by shoes? Not me that’s for sure.

A couple of months ago I had my paint contractor in my house looking at some stuff I wanted painted. The bead board in my bathroom needed to be re sanded and painted because the guys who originally painted it did a poor job. Anyway, the contractor was standing on my bath mats, in his shoes. (which is proof that I don’t technically make everyone take off their shoes, just those that live here and the little friends.) I made some joke about how I was going to have to put those rugs in the wash now because he had stepped all over them with his shoes.

He chuckled, kind of nervously.

He thought I was kidding. I wasn’t. The second he left I put those babies in the wash and put out some clean ones.

Then yesterday, my girlfriend posted a picture on a site I read of her 1 year old son standing nekkid (picture from behind) on the scale in her bathroom. In the background I could see someone standing on the bath mat in shoes. I had to bring it up because she knows my feelings on standing on bath mats in shoes. I made her chuckle (and I think she promptly threw them in the wash).

I think all of this proves that I’m a super freak, super freak. Anyone else??

Today’s question is: Why do people think it’s OK to tell you how you should feel?

Background: The other day I posted a comment on a blog I like to read. The comment was directly related to something the blogger wrote. She was answering a question someone asked her about whether or not she had natural child birth with all of her children. She said she didn’t and that she felt robbed of her last pregnancy/child birth because the baby was 5 weeks early and arrived via c-section. I commented that I could relate to feeling robbed of my last pregnancy also and that 6 years later I’m still trying to get over it (it’s that or have another baby, LOL).

A reader of that blog read my comment and felt compelled to come here and tell me how she felt about it. She commented about my feeling robbed. It got me thinking. This commenter, not having the slightest idea why I felt robbed, basically told me that I shouldn’t feel robbed of my experience because there are plenty of people in the world that can’t get pregnant and have to adopt and I’m lucky to even have had a baby. OK, I’ll give her that, I am lucky, but you know what? It doesn’t change the fact that I still feel robbed of something I love very much. I was robbed. It doesn’t matter that people can’t have babies, many of which are my friends. I still feel robbed.

Here’s the story, you can decide if it’s OK to feel robbed (not that it’s going to change my feelings though).

A little over 6 years ago, in September 2001, I was about 24 weeks pregnant, I had 2 daughters, one almost 3 years old (34 months) and one 15 months. September 2001 was the year of 911. I’m sure everyone remembers that terrible event. Well, two days after that whole nightmare, when I was questioning why we were bringing a baby into this horrible world, PW calls from the doctors office to tell me they’ve found a mass in his lung. He had been coughing a lot at night. He had been run down. I thought it was his asthma acting up after all these years and I told him I didn’t think I could handle an asthma attack at night, pregnant, with 2 very little girls, so he needed to get to the doctor to get an inhaler. Obviously, it wasn’t asthma.

Within a couple of weeks it was determined that the mass was metastatic germ cell cancer (also known as embryonal carcinoma). 9 years earlier, just a year before I met him, he had had testicular cancer. I pretty much had figured he was completely cured of that. He did do his yearly follow-ups but that summer, the summer of 2001, he had his internist, instead of his urologist, run his follow up blood test and they skipped the annual chest x-ray (not that it would have made a huge difference to find the mass in June instead of September, the course of action would have been the same at least). The plan of action was 4 rounds of chemo and then possibly a resection of his lung after chemo.

I remember when we discovered it was the cancer again I begged the surgeon to just take it out. I begged and begged. I played my pregnancy and very small children card and I lost. It was too radical, they wouldn’t do it. Chemo was the only way, unfortunately.

The chemo went like this; he’d get infusions every single day for 5 days, then he’d get a two week break and start over again, for 4 rounds or 12 weeks. The chemo days consisted of going to the doctors infusion center and being infused with extremely powerful drugs for 8 hours a day. This kind of cancer is extremely aggressive, which in the cancer world is sort of a good thing because it reacts better to chemo, so they try to kill you with it and it works (thank goodness).

PW was great, although very sick. Because of my pregnant state and having the two very little girls, he would get up in the morning and walk himself down to the train to make it into the infusions first thing in the morning. I know it killed him to walk that far (.9 mile, which he has been walking every single work day for years and years) but living in Chicago in the fall/winter requires a lot of clothes to get out the door (and our garage is 100 feet from the house). Getting the girls up and dressed to get PW to the train was more than I could manage. Since he said he didn’t mind walking I let him, even if I did feel a tad bit guilty. I did pick him up at the end of the infusions, he couldn’t have managed the train ride home. Usually he was too sick.

Every night he had chemo we had a home health care nurse, Martha, come and give him a drip for an hour or so at home. The drip sometimes consisted of fluids and always consisted of a bladder medicine that saved PW’s bladder from irreparable damage.

The girls loved Martha, and I had a love/hate relationship with her. Mostly I loved her too, she was helping us. But some days I just could barely work up any words for her. Those were the days I just hated our situation. I hated that she even had to be there. I was pretty moody sometimes, but then again, I was very pregnant.

Normally, one of the things I really liked about being pregnant was that I was relieved of bath duty. Bathing small children with a pregnant belly isn’t much fun. Not sure if all of you are aware of this or not, but you can’t exactly bend over when pregnant. You can tilt, you can squat, you can crouch, but you can not bend or fold in half in any way. The baby blocks that from happening. During this pregnancy, because PW was so sick, I bathed the girls by myself. Some days I was pretty sad doing it. I think I even cried sometimes. It stunk. (dare I say I was robbed of my experience??)

Two weeks before our little guy was born, I went in for an induction. PW wanted to push off a week of the chemo because of Thanksgiving. He would have had to do his infusions in the hospital, which would have taken even longer on Thanksgiving day and the day after, so it was decided to push it off a week. This is when we decided to induce to avoid the possibility of my going into labor while PW was at a chemo infusion.

Needless to say, after 14 hours the induction didn’t work. I wasn’t willing to go the extra mile to ensure the arrival of our little guy so we packed it up and went home. I decided at that point the baby wasn’t allowed to come out until at least 2 days after his next round of chemo. It worked.

My labor started on December 4th 2001 and our little buddy was born very early in the morning on December 5th. He came via face presentation, which is when a baby comes out face first instead of top of head first. Aside from being very, very bruised he was perfect. It wasn’t the experience I had hoped for, at all, or thought I deserved but he is very much a great little guy. I don’t discount that. I do, however, feel robbed of an easier childbirth experience.

PW’s last round of chemo was when the little buddy was 1.5 weeks old. I was on duty with the kids 24/7 because PW’s energy levels really plummeted as more chemo entered his body. To say having 3 kids under three and no help from your spouse isn’t easy is an understatement. It was torture in many ways, especially when the baby started to cry every single night. But we all managed and when Christmas rolled around that year we were just happy to have the chemo under our belt. Our only obstacle left was the possible lung resection to remove any possible residual mass.

When the little buddy was 5 weeks old, the same week our then 19 month old suffered a green stick fracture to her leg, PW underwent a lobectomy at a hospital in Chicago. After a 5 night stay in the hospital, one night of which every single child in this house woke 3 times, PW came home with the news that the residual mass was strictly scar tissue, the best case scenario.

We are blessed with a happy and healthy family. We appreciate what we have. We value our days because we realize that at the drop of a hat everything can change. All of these good things somehow do not eliminate the feeling I have about those last couple of months of my pregnancy and the couple of months following. Some days (especially in the fall when I have thoughts of our experience right at hand because I’m a date person) I can’t get my oldest daughters words out of my head from that time. She used to refer to PW bald head, “bare hair”. Toward the end of the ordeal I was telling the girls that daddy’s hair would be back soon and my oldest (3 at the time) said, “he’ll be our daddy again when he doesn’t have bare hair”. That still brings tears to my eyes.

I was robbed, not doubt about it. But as I clearly know, it could have been worse. And let me tell you that those words and that belief is what got me through every single day, robbed or not.