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.

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?

What Have I Been Doing...

...if not blogging? Heck, I have barely even been reading the blogs lately.

This is what I've been doing.

That's right. I've been spending nearly every waking moment, when not attending to the needs of my children and pets that is (how annoying! Jeez! So needy!), hunting down the elusive cloth diaper icon hidden in various websites. There are 175 websites, to be exact. And though I have the entire month to do this, I have it in my head that I must do it all NOW!

I have stayed up past my already late bedtime every night this month looking. Some icons are easy to find. Others are diabolically hidden by web masters/torturers in such a way that one can spend hours on one site and still not find the icon, even after receiving hints. This one for instance. If you can find the icon here, and tell me where it is, I'll give you one of my kids or pets. Ha. Just kidding. I wouldn't cheat. Um, or give away my kids or pets, for that matter.

So, until I complete my hunt, you may not see me again in the blogosphere. I'm still floating around on the Internet, just in a different world. The world of crazy cloth diaper people. Now you know.