About Face

Yesterday was One Of Those Days.  It began slightly after midnight.  My kid woke up screaming and crying and refusing to go back to bed.  It took me 30 minutes to coax him out of whatever dream/night terror state he was in and convince him to get into bed with me.  At last he fell back asleep- but guess what?  I was wide. awake.  And just laying there, my brain swirling around in my head, digging up the dregs of old to-do's and worries.

I decided to get up and go do something else for a bit- maybe reset my brain back into sleepy time mode.  For some reason, I grabbed our little Flip video camera and decided that I would get the baby videos off of it that have been on there for, say, 3 years.  So, at 1:00am, I plug it into my computer and attempt a download.  YOU NEED AN UPDATE it says.  THIS CAN BE DONE WITH A CAMERA WITH VIDEOS ON IT, BUT IT WILL TAKE LONGER it says.  This is fine.  I have all night!

I begin the update and everything seems to be going fine.  I feel sleep creeping back up and go to bed.

Fast forward 4 hours or so and I'm up, checking on the camera.  CAMERA HAS BEEN UPDATED. Goody!  I check the camera after I (safely) remove it from the computer and...(I'm sure you can see where this is going) the videos are gone.  The thing is wiped.  Empty.  Ready to Record!  What. the. fuck. 

I have what basically amounts to a very ungraceful panic attack, searching my hard drive, the camera, for the missing baby videos.  I download and run recovery software, to no avail.  I'm crying, remembering the precious footage of Otto's first day crawling, his first steps, singing Twinkle Twinkle.   Otto's looking at me, confused.  "We're sad about baby movies, Mama?  But I'm a big boy!"

I go to work upset and sad.

Work is work, only times a MILLION because shit is hitting the fan and we're super busy and I have, like, 87 meetings scheduled and everyone is pissy and etc. etc.  And the entire time, I'm on the edge of a melt down, thinking about the fucking baby videos.

Finally, the day is over and I get home.  The Husband, bless him, has carnitas in the crock pot and a six-pack waiting for me.  It is at this point that the day begins to slowly turn back towards the light.  We have an amazing dinner, I do the (minimal) dishes and decide to call a good friend for a little venting session. 

We have a good talk about woes, parenting, books, work (love you, L!) and I hang up feeling more centered than I have all day.

At this point, I get a text from the Husband, who is downstairs with the kiddo that says, "You can't find us.  Hahahahahahahaha!- the Potzula Gang."

Laughing, I go downstairs to see that an elaborate fort has been constructed with an old quilt and two pairs of shoes are poking out, one little, one large.  Copious amounts of giggling emanate from under the fort.  "FEE FIE FO FUM, I SMELL THE BLOOD OF AN ENGLISHMAN"  I boom, as I thump down the stairs.  The giggling intensifies.

After playing a bit, while the Husband is doing jammies/brushing teeth/reading stories duties, I turn once more to my computer.  Sighing, I log in to check my email, resisting the urge to throw the stupid Flip camera across the room but also realizing that its not the end of the world.  While videos, pictures and keepsakes are nice, I have awesome friends, an amazing family and I get to LIVE in these moments. 

Suddenly, on my desktop, I notice a folder way down in the lower left corner that I haven't noticed before.  Flip Video Backup, it says.  I click.

And yeah, you guessed it.  The missing baby videos.  All there.  All beautiful.  All not lost.

I go to bed happy, loved, realizing that losing those little movies wasn't the end of the world.  But I'm glad I have them back.  We all sleep through the night, waking up to a new day to cherish and new memories to record. 

My mama said there'd be days like this

Saturday was just ill-fated from the beginning**.  After a kind of shitty night's sleep, I really wanted to run.  So after a bowl of oatmeal and some snuggle time with the kid, Ruby and I headed a ways out of town.  I wanted to run this road that goes past the old cement factory and turns into a wildlife refuge.  Supposedly great views of our surrounding mountain ranges and all that.  Unfortunately, while in town it had seemed relatively calm, if cold, out on the high plains there were hurricane force winds whipping snow and tumleweeds around willy-nilly. 

But, being the stubborn idiot I can be sometimes, we set out anyway.  It was awful.  A facebook friend commented that my particular locale is known for its "free microdermabrasions" and holy shit she's not kidding.  3 miles and 30 horrible minutes later, I had grit in my eyes, nose, and mouth and was half wondering if there was any skin left on my face.

We finally made it back to town, and I decided to drive through for a pumpkin pie latte as a consolation prize.  As we pulled into the coffee hut, Ruby puked all over the passenger seat of my husband's car.  Sigh.  I thought puppies grew out of car sickness...?

Finally, we made it home and as I pulled into the driveway, I saw the husband and the kiddo standing on the stoop.

The kid's face looked like this:

He'd lept off the coffee table and directly into a wooden cabinet.  This picture was the day of.  You should see it now- he looks like a prize fighter with lots of purple and blue around that pretty eye.


Thank goodness this is a 2-day week for me with a 5-day holiday weekend because fuck.




**There was ONE fun thing on Saturday- I caught a showing of that one big movie about the boy wizard that night with friends.  Loved it.  RIP Dobby the Elf!!

Its a Bummer

We took a couple days off this past weekend to spend some time with the in-laws in the wilds of central Wyoming, otherwise known as the small town my husband grew up in and in which I lived for a very short time. (Long enough to meet him, anyhow. )

It was relaxing and badly needed- a long, quiet car trip though beautiful frozen vistas of partially snow covered sagebrush, deep ravines and craggy rock paired with an icy, crystal blue sky... a couple days of sledding, food, and reading (yay Kindle!) and then a day at home to catch up on shopping, laundry and rest. And some more reading. Heh. I should make a note to always take a President's Day/Valentines Day break because it restored some sanity I wasn't even aware was missing.

After 4 days off the grid, however, its good to be back, catching up on blogs, twitter, news...I love reconnecting with my internet buddies. And the best part? Its Wednesday already! :-)

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In other news this awards season, I am apparently up for the Worst Mother Ever award (yet again). The little guy has had a nasty red bum for the past week and a half or so. We tried everything that usually works on diaper rash: blow drying/air drying, keeping it super clean, good cream, even cutting out acidic foods for a couple days...NOTHING worked. If anything it kept getting steadily worse.

Finally, yesterday, I broke down and took him into the pediatrician. $80 later and we have a diagnosis of Strep. In his butt. The Dr. said its super painful and not very common although he does see it a couple times a month (that's not common?) where the strep bug bypasses the tonsils and settles in the, uh, other end.

Of course, I felt horrible that I hadn't immediately noticed that something was really wrong but he reassured me that we did everything right and yada yada yada...Still, mom-guilt has set in and Little O can pretty much get away with murder at the moment because I feel so bad about abusing his poor, sore behind with creams and blowdryers all week.

Live and learn, I s'pose.

They should try this as an Enhanced Interrogation Technique. Seriously.

Breaking news:

I had surgery on my left leg for varicose veins. I KNOW, RIGHT!?!!? I am TRULY an 80 year old woman in a 32 (gulp) year old body. Want the deets? Of COURSE you do. (Stop reading if you are easily disgusted, have a weak stomach or are generally a pansy.)

I went in last Thursday to have a "procedure" done that I have been agonizing about for the last month. My argument with myself went something like this: "Do I? Don't I?..... Yes my veins cause me daily pain, yes I've had blood clots in them...and yeah, they are super ugly and make me feel like an old lady...But... Even though I've met my deductible, it will be expensive as shit..... and not to mention the greater question of the PAIN?!?!"

Needless to say, the vain (haha! I am so funny) part of me and the part that was tired of the first step out of bed every morning hurting like a mothereffer won out. The doctor's office, so bright and clean and shiny and billed as a 'medical spa' lured me in with their promises of 'minimally invasive' and 'very cosmetic results' and boy I was a sucker. I was told that most people just relax and "go to sleep" during the "procedure." THESE WERE THEIR EXACT WORDS.

The thing was outpatient, and done under local anesthetic. WHY this is, I have no farking idea because I was about to embark upon one of, if not THE most awful medical/bodily experience of my life and this is coming from a person who had an ENTIRE HUMAN BABY WITH (ALMOST) NO PAIN MEDS OF ANY KIND. AND many tattoos. Let me tell you- varicose vein surgery is worse.

It started innocently enough- they gave me an Rx for a Xan@x and some cream to numb up my leg (only the upper thigh and in retrospect, it didn't really seem to work. Like, at all.) No problem. Makes sense. This, however, lured me into a false sense of calm and well being that flew out the window once the NUMEROUS injections to supposedly numb my leg began. I'm talking many, many injections. Each one hurt like hell. And the whole time, I am basically blindfolded because they are using a laser on my thigh so I have no earthly idea what the fuck is going on because I can't see for shit and all I hear is the FASCINATING discussion of what dog foods are best for freaking Portuguese water dogs and they are going on as if I'm not even in the room wondering what the HELL THEY ARE DOING TO MY LEG!

Then the tugging began. As in they were literally cutting my leg open and tugging the vein out. They did this in about 12 different spots up and down my leg. It was disgusting and horrible and I am Never. Doing. That. Again. The only thing that got me through with any shred of sanity still intact was that I had the presence of mind to bring my Zune along and had KaiserCartel cranked after I realized that they weren't going to tell me what was going on.

And now, I'm left with a poor, bruised, cut up appendage that Dr. Frankenstein would be quite proud of and instructions to wear compression stockings for two weeks and not do anything that will break a sweat a solid inner conviction that freedom from varicose veins cannot POSSIBLY be worth what I just put myself through.

I think the lesson here is, to paraphrase a favorite film: Beauty is PAIN. Anyone who says differently is selling something. Like stupid varicose vein surgery.

The end.



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Oh, and President Obama gave a speech for schoolkids and the world did NOT come to a screeching, zombie-ridden halt? WHAT ARE THE ODDS?!?!?!