Wading in Self-Pity

I've decided that monthly blogging is the future! Or at least, that's how it's going to be as long as I'm addicted to facebook, and it keeps me away.

So, as this week starts, I'm wading in self-pity. Not wallowing. Not yet. Today, in fact, it's quite mild -- more guilt associated with the feelings of uselessness and helplessness. Yesterday was worse, in which I almost cried.

Why the drama? Last Tuesday night, I injured my ankle playing soccer. I knew instantly that it was worse than when I sprained my other ankle last February. (Which begs the question, why do I keep playing soccer when I injure myself once a year? Do I believe I'll suddenly become skilled and lose my innate klutziness?) Two of my teammates took me to the ER, where an x-ray revealed a fracture. For some reason, this made me feel a bit better. That my intense pain was from a "real" injury perhaps, not just another sprain. However, this feeling of almost relief was short-lived. Pretty much as soon as the fiberglass splint hardened on my leg. The Vicodin helped me feel a bit calmer, though.

Pulling out the old crutches didn't help. I've had them for twelve years now; I got them when I tore my ACL in my left knee skiing in 1997. A year and two surgeries later, I put them away. But they came out again last February, and again on Wednesday morning, when I returned home from the ER.

I was doing OK, though. The boys and Hubby were helping me around the house. It was mid-winter break, so the boys were out of school, and we didn't have anything we needed to do. Of course, I might have done more exciting things than hang out around the house had I not injured myself, but whatever. And then, Friday I went to the orthopedist. I was fitted with a cast. No weight-bearing on my right leg. For six weeks. It finally hit me. This was not going to be fun. Not that I thought I'd be having fun, but still.

And yesterday the impact of not being able to use my right leg for six weeks really hit home when Harrison mentioned his soccer class on Wednesday. Hubby and I were discussing what we were going to do about Harrison's preschool, since I can't drive. (I don't know if driving with my left leg instead of my right is: a. doable b. legal c. a good idea or d. none of the above. I decided to err and the side of caution.) Hubby said he's just work from home on the mornings of preschool days so he could drive Harrison and pick him up. Then Harrison piped in with, "And soccer on Wednesday morning!" I told Harrison soccer class was going to have to wait for a month, since Daddy couldn't take that much time off of work to take him to soccer. I think he took it better than I did. No soccer for Hutton on Monday afternoons, either. No chiropractor for me. I am already feeling completely out of alignment from walking on crutches and lying on my left side so much. Wah.

What snaps me out of the pity and back to reality is when I get annoyed by others not doing things up to my high expectations. OK, I'm not really that much of a perfectionist, but the house is slowly falling apart into chaotic mess, and I am not able to stop it. I had Hubby bring down a wheeled office chair from upstairs so I could do things in the kitchen -- most importantly, making my coffee. Coffee is so, so important. Imperative. Of course, getting the coffee into the living room so I can enjoy it while lounging on the couch still involves someone's help.

The thing that does not get done at all: pooper scooping. Hubby has been great, helping with the laundry, cooking most of the food, doing the dishes...but he doesn't do pooper scooping. And when the boys are outside playing, they don't notice the mine field of dog poops. Thus, they step in it, and I have to clean their shoes. My philosophy has always been to clean the poop up before you step in it. Better to have an unsoiled shoe from the beginning than to have to scrub poop off of it later because you couldn't take the five minutes to clean up before. I'd much rather deal with poop outside, at the end of a two foot long scoop, than inches from my fingers in the laundry room. But, apparently, Hubby doesn't see this. And did I mention we have a new doggy soiling our yard?

Yes, with my perfect timing, we adopted our new dog, Ruffy, on Monday, and a day later, I was unable to walk this giant, energetic dog. We have an invisible fence, which works fine with Sally our older dog who knows the boundaries, but the fence is broken, so Ruffy can't learn the boundaries until it's fixed. Hubby attempted to fix it Saturday, but gave up; the fence people come out on Wednesday to fix it, I hope. Fortunately, Tuesday, before the dreaded soccer game, I took the dogs to the dog park and they ran around for an hour, and Hutton has been running around with Ruffy in the yard (though I imagine him running into dog poop every time he goes outside).

We got Ruffy from one of Hutton's classmates. His family was worried they weren't giving Ruffy enough time, attention, and most importantly, exercise. He's a tall, leggy, goldendoodle (the lame name for Golden Retriever/Poodle mixes - someone out there come up with a better name for these kick-ass dogs!) who is not quite two years old, so very energetic. "Oh, no problem!" thinks Laura, "I can walk Ruffy daily! I'll start jogging again and take him on long runs on the trail at the end of our street." Or, I'll break my leg the very next night and not be able to walk him for six weeks. So, I feel a bit guilty about that, too.

Ruffy is a sweetheart of a dog, and I hope when our invisible fence is repaired, he'll learn the boundaries quickly (his first owners had an invisible fence, too) and I can at least throw a ball around for him in the yard, if not walk him daily. The few times I've been out on my crutches with him, with Hutton holding his leash, I've been deathly afraid of being clotheslined - having the leash wrap around my crutches and pull me down. I fell inside the other day, landing on my butt and smacking my cast on the floor, which was painful, and not something I want to repeat.

Blah blah blah. Whine whine whine. Time to go reheat my coffee and use the bathroom. Easy things to do without crutches.

I'll leave you with some pictures.

Obligations, or Why I Need to Screen All Phone Calls

I have this friend. I use the term loosely, as I only see her a couple of times a year. She's nice and all, but she's not someone I'm terribly close to. I met her in a local online group I joined years ago. This group would get together to exercise and do outdoor activities.

At the beginning, our little group would get together for hikes, bike rides, roller blading, snowshoeing, etc. Four of us trained for our first triathlon together, and two went on to do longer triathlons, but I was content to rest of my laurels and not have to run anything longer than a 10K, ever. (I really don't like running anymore, which I reinforce anytime I go to the gym and struggle to get myself to just do the elliptical for 25 minutes. I ran cross country and distance events in track in high school, so I think I got it out of my system then. I will grant you that it's great exercise, but I can't do the whole mind over matter thing anymore!)

This was the group that introduced me to my good friend Amy, who also has a son with Autism, born a month before Hutton. We got together two or three times a week when we were pregnant to do water aerobics at the local pool, then to eat lunch at a Chinese restaurant. After both of our sons were diagnosed, I thought a lot about our pool sessions and lunches, and wonder if they had something to do with it. The heavily chlorinated public pool? The possibly MSG-laced food? Who knows! Anything is possible. Of course, I also think my eight mercury-laden fillings had a lot to do with it, and Amy has a lot of tattoos, and who knows what is in those. Amy was the one who helped me figure out where to go to get a diagnosis, as the wait lists to just get a diagnosis were months long, and when you're trying to get started helping treat Autism, having to wait six months to just be told, "Yep, your son does have Autism. We don't have anything we can do about it. You can sign up for our ABA treatment, but there's a year-long wait for that. Buh-bye." Anyway, Amy found a neurologist in Tacoma, about an hour and half south of here, who didn't have a wait list and was willing to provide a piece of paper saying, "This child may or may not have Autism, but here's a piece of paper that says he does so he can get on some wait lists for treatment." Actually, the piece of paper got Hutton into the early intervention program and speech therapy, so that was nice to have as we waited on ABA treatment.

Back to my other friend. She joined this group a few years ago, when the group had moved to meeting mostly for social reasons a few times a year, rather than for exercise a few times a month. Yes, we've evolved. Every once in a while, someone new will join and realize we're not really an exercise group anymore. They either get annoyed and leave, and, as one person did, rate us as an abysmal exercise group when posting for the last time, or say, "Fine, I like social stuff. I'm in!" We email regularly, and keep up with each other's lives, and some of us do still exercise, but that's not really our focus anymore. So, this friend recently emailed all of us some information about this program she and her husband were involved in. It has something to do with "excellence" and I don't think it's in the Bill and Ted sense. Needless to say, I don't want to have anything to do with excellence. I'm fine with mediocrity. Really, I've come to terms with that. I'm 34, I have two kids, some pets, get on to blog about my life a couple of times a week, and make extra money mystery shopping. I don't think any of that needs to moved to the next level. I did all of my excellence in school, and by the time I got to college, I started focusing on procrastination, which led me to mediocrity.

I was fine ignoring the email, thinking, "No thanks. Delete." Then, it happened. The phone call. A week ago, on Super Bowl Sunday, The Friend called. Fortunately, our phone wasn't working for some reason, because if I had had to answer the phone during the game to listen to her talk about the Conference for Excellence or whatever it's called, I might have been pissed. (She's Canadian, which is why she thought it was OK to call a person on Super Bowl Sunday.) After the game, I went upstairs and noticed a voice mail message, then figured out our phone wasn't working. I listened to the voice mail. It sounded ominous: "Laura this is The Friend. Can you please call me?" What is going on? The Friend never calls me. We communicate solely by email. Something must have happened! I didn't even think about Excellence. I went out to the car to get my cell phone, and called her back.

She told me about The Conference. There was a free introductory session at a hotel downtown on Wednesday night. Amy was going. I wondered if Amy really wanted to go, or if she was suckered in out of niceness. Amy has more backbone than I, so she might have actually wanted to go. I listened politely, then came up with my ace, "That sounds good. I have to check my calendar to see when my book club meeting is. I'm out in the car right now, but I'll go check it later." The next couple of days, I wondered if I should lie about my book club meeting being the same night as the conference, or if I should actually go. I did the classic Laura: I lied. But hey, that was night of the Duke-Carolina game, and I'd much rather watch that on TV than go to some conference!

I thought I was free. And then...another phone call! This one even worse than a call on Super Bowl Sunday. She called at 9 a.m. this morning. Friday morning. The one weekday morning I get to sleep in, as the boys don't have school and will usually keep themselves entertained until at least 9:30 before they start demanding food. I answered in my sleepy voice, but apparently The Friend, who is a psychologist, doesn't know when she's woken someone up. We made small talk for a minute, then she told me about ANOTHER introductory session. How was Tuesday the xth? Phew! Soccer night! "Oh, no, that's my soccer night." Hallelujah! Saved by soccer. Wait, she's countering. "How's Wednesday the xth?" Damn! Damn! "Hold on. I have to go check my calendar." I walked into the office, trying not to audibly sigh to let her know how damn annoying this was, to be awakened by a phone call pertaining to something I have absolutely no interest in. I looked at my calendar. Nothing. I was thinking, "That's probably actually going to be a book club night, as they're usually the second Wednesday of the month, but I already used that excuse, and it was the first Wednesday of the month. Would she buy it?" Sigh. I said, "My calendar is free. That will work for me!" faking enthusiasm. The Friend asked if I wanted to meet her and Amy beforehand for dinner. Sure, sounds great. Then she sealed my doom: "I'm glad that you're interested in doing this, since it's something I'm very involved in!" or something like that.

I really don't know anything about this stuff, but I feel like I'm about to step into a pyramid scheme or religious cult or something. Oh well, I have a month and a half to come up with an excuse. I don't think I'll use appendicitis, since I still have my appendix, and if I lied about that, I would probably be stricken with real appendicitis on the night of the next introductory meeting.

Important Note to Remember

Note to Self:

The next time your younger son wants to climb up on your desk to pick out a DVD to watch, using your leg and office chair to climb onto the desk, please ascertain that there is no dog poop on son's shoes. Because you will forget this, I'll remind you here that this caused your "oddly cheery for afternoon" spirits to go down instantly. In fact, high spirits plummeted instantly back to normal "bitchy mom in the afternoon" levels.

Please make certain to have both children remove their shoes at the door when entering the house. I know you try to do this, but Harrison, AKA the poop smearer, isn't good at doing it on his own, so you'll need to remind him from now on.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Sincerely,
The Smart Half of the Brain (yeah, I know. I'm on vacation a lot. Sue me. Wait, you're too stupid to do that, Stupid Half! Ha!)

Get the Lead Out!

Hmm. Actually, hunters, go ahead and keep it in, if you're using the gun on yourselves, that is.

I was listening to NPR this afternoon on the way home from Toys R Us with the boys (note to other parents: don't go to Toys R Us before lunchtime with a three-year-old who will refuse to leave until he is hungry and cranky. Then again, if you do, he may pass out in the car on the way home!) when this story came on.

Basically, it is about how condors are still endangered because of lead poisoning, from eating carcasses that had been shot with lead ammo. Hunters go out shooting things with toxic ammunition, and the "gut piles" (carcasses hunters leave behind) that the condors eat are poisoned with lead.

There was an NRA cuntspokesperson on talking about how there was no proof that the lead ammo was responsible for hurting anything, so they weren't doing anything about the lead issue, but to that I say a big, "DUH!" Rather, I yell at the radio about stupid bitches who should be shot, as I wonder how anyone can deny that lead is toxic. Oh sure, it's toxic in paint, but really, it's perfectly fine to use in your ammo when you go out killing Bambi's family, and leave their poisoned carcasses behind to kill endangered species. Fortunately, they had a decent human being on after the evil cunt who said when he heard that ammo had lead in it, he started buying lead-free steel ammo, and it seemed to work just as well, if not better, than the toxic stuff.

I just don't understand how in this day and age people still don't understanding that fucking up the planet with toxic materials just because it's "what we've always done" is wrong. Yes, this goes for mercury as well. Just because it's been used since the beginning in vaccines, doesn't make it safe to use it today, now that we know mercury is a potent neurotoxin! The same goes for putting it in your teeth via "silver" amalgam fillings. And while we're at it, why are they using mercury in compact fluorescent lights? GAIOIGOIURT! This stuff makes me so freaking angry. The environmentalists are all so excited about saving electricity with these things, but if one breaks in your home, you have a biohazard on your hands. Not to mention nobody is going to properly dispose of these toxin-filled shitshards when they eventually burn out. Right now, you have to pay to recycle them at select stores (there's one light store in the area I live in that takes them). Yeah, that's going to go over well. Most people do not know that these shouldn't go straight in the garbage, and that's exactly where they'll end up, ensuring the future destruction of our already toxic world.

Sigh. Where's my gun?

Thomas, How Could You?!

Theme of the Week - RECALL!

I saw a recall notice on Thomas the Tank Engine toys listed on several of my email lists over the past few days, and finally got around to clicking on the link to see what was recalled. I guess I had "recall" on the brain, since the lovely Jetta is also due for a service appointment to fix a safety recall. I had received the letter a month ago and filed in away in the "maybe I'll see this again this year" pile of papers in a basket on the kitchen counter. A friend pointed out that my rear tail light was out Wednesday night, which is exactly what the recall was for, so that spurred me right into action...two days later.

Back to the Thomas issue. I entered the link - click here!- and feasted me eyes. Thinking this would be some obscure toy I didn't have, I was a bit surprised. Hmm. I have that one. (Well, Hutton and Harrison have it.) Then another, and another. Out of the twenty-three toys recalled, we own fourteen of them. Twenty if you could the three James engines we have (don't know why we have so many Jameses - he's a prick if you ask me!), and the many stop signs and railroad crossing signs. They were recalled because, "Surface paints on the recalled products contain lead. Lead is toxic if ingested by young children and can cause adverse health effects." (from RC2 Corp. press release). Oh, joy. Just what I need, more toxic metals in my home. Well, I wasn't so much concerned about the ones in my home as I was about the ones already in Hutton's brain and other internal organs. Now, I'm concerned about the metals in my home. Every one of those toys has been played with, tough boy style, and have paint chips. Again, just great. I'm seeing a big cleaning session in my future, when I clean up the train table and wipe everything down and vacuum obsessively. Sigh.

So, others of you out there with Thomas-obsessed youngsters, please check around and see if you have any to return. As a Thomas video would say, "Calling all red engines! And some other red and yellow stuff, too. This has caused much confusion and delay!" Not to mention Harrison is not taking too well to seeing the fire station and ice cream factory toys boxed up. Think I'll have to distract him with a movie downstairs.

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UPDATE: After sorting all the leaden trains from the pack, boxing them up and taking them to the post office, I read this on a list: "I checked the numbers on the bottom of each engine listed that we had. It is nearly impossible to see. Black paint on black paint, I think...but it's there." D'oh! After I picked up a Percy lying at my feet and squinting in the light, I saw it. Tiny dark gray letters and numbers on a black background. Crap! So, some of the toys I returned were probably fine after all. Oh well.

Hell Spots

After last night's post about how I've become a twice-weekly blogger, I throw a third blog post in today to mess with everyone's minds!

Today I took Hutton to speech therapy. (We were ten minutes late, but left the house on time, or what I thought was on time. Apparently the 50 cars piled up at the light ahead of me this morning thought the same thing!) After we dropped him off, Harrison and I headed out to "run errands". I headed down the street to a certain green mermaid coffee joint and played my mystery woman game.

Afterwards, with a hot coffee in one hand, and a sweaty toddler palm in the other, I headed to my car to take some notes. Then I headed to the other green mermaid coffee joint, diagonally across from the first store, in the same strip mall, mind you, to do my second shop. (It would have been really cool if there were another of the same store inside of the QFC grocery store, next to one of the green mermaid stores, but alas, the Seattle's Best got that spot. Oh, and by cool, I mean insane. But hey, these stores all seem to stay in business, so more power to 'em!)

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After all the coffee shopping, followed by a brief run into the QFC grocery store, which ended in a screaming Harrison being dragged out yelling, "More shopping!" (yeah, that's exactly what I love to do with screaming toddlers - grocery shopping!), I headed to pick Hutton up from speech therapy. When we got to the car, I stepped in some very well camouflaged chewing gum -- white spearmint gum stuck on the white parking stripe. As I attempted to scrape my now minty sandal on the pavement while getting Harrison in his car seat, I cursed the flibberty-gibbet smurf-tail who left the smurfing gum there.

I continued to stew on this when I got into my own seat and tried to wipe off the gum with a baby wipe. Why do people (or smurfs, in this case) put their nasty used gum in places where other people will encounter it? What is so hard about finding a scrap of paper, wrapping your used gum in it, and throwing it away? Did these people not realize that used gum is considered litter? Yeah, it is in my book! Now, I compost lots of stuff at home -- I just got a free worm bin, so I can do food scraps and dog poop now! Yippee! -- but I don't throw crap on the pavement in parking lots, knowing it will decompose eventually. Yeah, it does, but in the meantime, nobody wants to step in it. Same thing with dog poop. It will decompose eventually, but when you leave it by the side of the road, even on rural suburban ones like the one my family lives on, someone may still step in it. And stepping in dog poop sucks. I know. I've done it, the boys do it a lot, and I've cleaned up lots of shoes.

Anyway, back to the gum. When I was little, I would often just swallow my gum if I didn't want to chew it anymore. And believe it or not, it doesn't take seven years to digest. It doesn't digest at all, just goes through your system and come out later on. I'm sure it can cause some people problems to swallow gum, but, even if you can't swallow gum, please don't leave it on the pavement, or underneath a table or desk somewhere. That's just nasty. And I think there's a special spot in Hell for people who leave gum around for others to step in. Hmm. Maybe I should move to Singapore, where gum it outlawed. Nah, I actually like chewing Big Red after coffee. I just take it out and throw it in the trash afterwards. Yeah, can you believe I go to all that trouble?

Well, That Was Sorta Fun

I finished the Great Cloth Diaper Hunt last night. Well, except for one, which is on a website that is currently being moved.

WAHMies was my nemesis until the bitter end. I used the clues from the hint forum, clicked about 1 million different combinations, and still don't really know how I found it. I figured out that something was different in the browser when I clicked in a certain combo, then finally found the elusive icon. I didn't feel like I'd accomplished something great afterward. No, I just felt annoyed that I'd spent so much time on one silly site that hid the clue in an entirely convoluted way. You shouldn't have to click just the right combination of things to find the clue. It should be readily clickable within 4 clicks of the home page. And I never saw anything that looked backward, which is what the clue hinted at. If I hadn't noticed something different in my browser - though, not backward, mind you - I wouldn't have found it, and I'd still be crazy searching girl today.

One of the last icons I found last night made up for the pain of the WAHMies hunt, though. It had great clues, and I was able to find the icon using the clues only, without further hints. Plus the products on the site were cool - handpainted shirts, knitting, and cool photography. Here's the link to that site, if anyone is actually reading this!

Off to knit and watch TV, which I've been neglecting of late. Coming, my darlings!