Things That Are Gross*

Ringworm. There it is. I said it. I owned it and acknowledged it. It's out. The shame is made public and I no longer have to live in hiddenness and lies.

A few weeks ago, the hormone fluctuations from my recent hysterectomy overcame me and I suddenly had weird maternal-ish nesting-type impulses and I needed a kitten. Somehow I took a parking lot commission from Josh when he said that a gray one was cuter than an orange one in this totally defrauding picture on the Facebook Classifieds, and so I got both. Both gray and orange kittens, which came complete with ringworm, which now infects officially one third of the elementary school. This is not an exaggeration. Anyone who knew the first name of any of my children contracted ringworm by osmosis. The principle was so grossed out that he sent two whole families home (one of which was mine), until the doctor personally called him to calm him down. (SLIGHT exaggeration). Thanks to my stupid, hormonal cuddling instincts.

SPAWN OF SATAN!!!^^^^

In other disgusting news, I also have a wart on my toe which started long before my hysterectomy or my newest hormonal upheavals. A wart that hurts like someone is drilling into the joint of my left baby toe with an ice auger that is on fire. I didn't know that warts hurt until this one did. I have treated it with everything I can think of, including but not limited to: duct tape, apple cider vinegar, OTC wart remover, colloidal silver, oil of oregano and industrial freezing at the doctors office, and so far, it's only gotten worse. It's almost like God is just saying to me that He wants me to have a disgusting, filthy world full of warts and fungus. He wants me to know that I live in the Dirtiest House That Ever Stood, even though we just cleaned it really well on Sunday. I feel like I should have to shower three times before I am allowed to go to work, and I need to apologize for the wart on my toe to everyone that can't even see it. I blame the frogs I have been kissing. You know who you are. On the positive side of all this, the pain from my warty toe gets so bad sometimes that it distracts me from my post-surgery non-uterine pelvic pain. So that's good.

It's kind of ironic and hilarious (if you have had enough wine to make it so) that before I'd even had those darn kittens for two weeks that I was already disgusted by them. (DO NOT TELL JOSH) I am not convinced that any amount of adorable-hanging-from-the-curtains-and-the-screen-door can make up for ringworm, or the collection of little kitten potties that we found in my canning kettle, which was sitting on the dining room floor for days. Why? You ask? I have no idea. Because sometimes canning kettles just live in the dining room. On the floor. Nor do I know why kittens would poop in a canner when there is a perfectly good litter box nearby. Because kittens are foul, disgusting little entities of horridness that out on a cute disguise and then ruin your life. Our kittens, Whisky and Daisy, now live outside. ENTIRELY outside. Which worked great until they found the dog door. Now the dog door has to be locked, so we come home to the occasional puddle of unclaimed dog pee in the laundry room, near the dog door, with an imaginary note that says "I'm sorry. I tried." Anyway, I no longer drink Whisky Daisies.


*Author's note: This was originally composed in mid January. Being completely overwhelmed and disgusted with everything, I couldn't air it publicly until now. There were many things that I just couldn't choke out in this setting. And then there were so many things that I hadn't said, it was like when you don't do any laundry for SO LONG that it seems like it would just be easier to burn down the house and go shopping for new clothes because you have no idea where to begin. But then you get that first load of disgusting, moldy clothes all fresh and perky from the dryer, and it motivates you to force the kids to do all of the rest of the laundry. Except if I turned kids loose on catching up my blog, I can only imagine... Shudder to think. (so much for transparency and not living in hiddenness.)
But for the record, the ringworm is all but gone, with a few remaining traces that are there just to remind me of HOW GROSS.

Things I am Catching Up On

It's been awhile, y'all. I know that. So much is happening, sometimes I can't keep my mind in one place long enough to commit any thoughts that are connected in any way into writing. My brain is an indoor ping pong game. Like my nephew Judah, I have random floating thoughts and ideas screaming through my head at mach 4, creating a mashup of Special Ed issues and Pinterest Projects and SHOPPING impulses, with an occasional collision of philosophical dreams and physical ailments... It's a danger zone, and I wish that I shared Judah's traffic jam of superheroes and meal combination ideas, musical notes and strange noises, and the totally arbitrary lego piece or toy weapon flying through.  Mine is MUCH too grown up. Sometimes.

I realize I owe y'all a few stories. Or endings. Or explanations.

First of all, Josh went to boot camp and came home. That was 2 months of holidays and single parenting that went a lot better than I had anticipated, except for Josh, who was being screamed at while folding t-shirts with tweezers. I definitely had the better end of that whole deal, even though the  pellet stove kept breaking and I had some flat tires and surgery and blah, blah, blah.

Which leads beautifully into #2 catchup item: My surgery(s). I have had two. They were both WONDERFUL. In case you were curious about what or why I actually had these surgeries, the first was to remove my uterus which was badly engorged with Adenomyosis, and the doc (and me) sincerely hoped that yanking it out would take away the aforementioned pain. It did. For a month or so, except when I wasn't taking it easy, which was all of the time, so really, it didn't help. The doc mentioned that I had some ugly varicose veins on my left ovary which MIGHT be part of that left sided pain problem, or it MIGHT subside once the pressure from my swollen uterus was removed. It didn't subside, but it was definitely part of the problem, so two months after surgery number one, the doc went in and yanked out the left ovary. God willing, this is the fix. And if I would stop getting in car wrecks and going on hikes, twerking on the dance floor and showing Peter Pan (see item #7) how to dive off of marooners rock, or shadow how to collapse to flat and disappear on the stage, I will finally be pain free. It's just over two weeks since surgery and all of those things have inhibited my healing so I am still in pain. But after the car accident (see item #6), both the chiropractor AND the doctor told me to stay home from work, which I still didn't do, until the lawyer said that we wouldn't get any kind of sympathy from insurance if I was disobeying doctors. RARRRR. So now I am homebound. A little. Almost. Except for the Irish Dance show which is tonight and I made 6000 cookies for (with help) and Peter Pan next week, which I have replaced myself as Nana with a small, non-hurting child. I don't have time to stay.still. But I can't afford to destroy my body anymore. But back to surgery: I have decided that if I could have a surgery every week I would, for several reasons:

•  they MIGHT take away the pain that has become a routine part of my life {parenthetical pause: this pain that has lasted for 3+ years is something I am so used to that when the doc asks me to rate my pain on a scale of one to 10, I say about a 6-7 (using childbirth as the litmus) and then tell a joke, because a 6-7 is WAY better than the 8-9 I was in before I took the drugs that made me nauseous and crabby. end parenthetical pause} 
• they give me REALLY good drugs that make everything in the world seem AWESOME (cue Lego Movie Song) 
• I get to be lazy and do nothing for at least a couple of days and people do stuff for me, like make Chicken Kiev (I love you Em), and Tater Tot Casserole (I love you Andrea) and get me water. And wine. And roses. And chocolate. And take me shopping right after I get out of surgery so I can spend money at Victoria's Secret in a glorious drugged stupor, and I am so cute, nobody argues with me (thanks Josh). Or at least that's how it feels - the cute part.

• if I work it REAL GOOD, or say, get in a car accident, or tackled by a flying 18 year old partridge with Cerebral Palsy, I get to take some MORE time off because I can't walk and stuff. 

EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!!!!

Which is a beautiful transition into number #3 catch up item: The Lego Movie. Go see it. #SPACESHIP!!!!!

#4 catchup item: Hotpants. I know. I told you all about these awesome hot pants that cost a bunch of money but were going to make me skinnyrealfast. So, what happened is this: I ordered the Zagorra Hotpants, and they never came. It was only like $100 of getting nothing, so I didn't really care at first. I finally cared, when I remembered not getting them, and turns out, they got sent to my old house in Bend. Which is weird. Luckily the people in our old house are friends, so when I went down there to pick up or drop off Halle (don't remember which), I picked them up, along with some free PINK! headphones from Victoria's Secret PINK!, for being one of their best customers ever (and Josh thought all of that PINK! stuff was a waste of money. HA.) (EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!!) And some other random things that we had either left or received after we left Bend. So I got the pants sometime around Thanksgiving. The first thing I noticed was that they fit. This was very important since I measured myself repeatedly (mostly because I kept getting dizzy from sucking everything in and couldn't remember the measurements) and was right between a small and a medium. But I followed Josh's continuing advice: "get the smaller one. you don't want to get any bigger.", "don't give yourself permission to gain any weight." "in 6 months it will fit. you just have to work at it.". And so I ordered the smalls. And they fit. With a little bit of sucking in. The next thing I noticed. RIGHT AWAY, is that they are noisy. Very noisy. To the point that they made an excellent source of embarrassment for my high school junior daughter - I would rub my legs together intentionally when I passed her in the hallway, just to make her groan. I know, I wasn't wearing them to "work out", which is what they are designed for, but right after surgery, just going to work feels remarkably like a workout. So I wore them to work. And I wore them on a fun little hike in the snow that I shouldn't have gone on so soon after surgery. So my impression of them, other than the noise, is that they are very painful, but probably it wasn't the pants' fault. I am not sure if I lost any inches when I wore them, because when I peeled them off, all sweaty and dripping, I was too tired to measure myself. which is ok because I forgot to measure myself before I shimmied awkwardly into them. Shimmy sounds more cute and attractive than what I actually did to get them on. It was more like a seizure crossed with jumping jacks. And weird grunting sounds to mix with the swishing pant sounds. But they're cool, and most importantly - THE SMALLS FIT. 

Catch up item #5: The kids. 

1. Halle just swept state Nordic Ski competitions, applied for summer fire jobs and is accepted to any of the community colleges she wants to go to. 
2. MacKenzie has had a major attitude transformation, thank the Lord, and has been very sweet, but not precluding the occasional run in with, ahem, some storytelling and fudging the facts here and there. Her grades have come up considerably since Bend and she has had a lot of boyfriends. 
3. Nattie's best bunny rascal died. We were all very sad. But I think you already knew that. Her grades are awesome, her room is clean, she's playing cello again, and she's just the all around Nattie. 
4. Aspen has a big Irish Dance show tonight and then plays Tinkerbell next weekend in the school production of Peter Pan. I would like to tell you that all of this positive attention isn't going to her head, but listening to her withhold her puffy Cheetos from friends and throw little tantrums when she doesn't get her way, tells a different story. 

And about Peter Pan (catch up item #6): I voluntarily placed myself as a helper in the highschool drama class with one of our SPED students, which was probably a little selfish on my part, but somehow, and honestly completely without my interference but with my full support, they decided that they wanted to do Peter Pan. Obviously I moved in and sort of took over... Because, well, Peter Pan is my THING. I hope Mrs. Wilson doesn't hate me. But I am kind of a soldier in the defense of not destroying the IDEA of Peter Pan, so I am a little picky. Also uninfluenced by me (seriously), they held auditions and cast Aspen as Tinkerbell. I was surprised and somewhat skeptical. But she's pulling it off in true, adorable, Aspen style. I was relegated to play the dog Nana because none of the kids would, and according to the resident-15-year-old-type-A-controller of all things drama, I make a really good dog. Turns out the doctor thinks otherwise, and the really awesome costume I got didn't fit (clearly I am not a small in dog costumes), so I have replaced myself. I think it will be a very good show, even if I am not playing Peter Pan, which is a source of much bereavement to me. Not only did the kids not CLAMOR to make me The Pan, they relegated me to the nursemaid dog. Woe is me and the end of my youth! OLD! ALONE! AND DONE FOR!

Catch up item #7: The crash. Milepost 91, six miles south of Ritzville on HWY 395, in a frozen slush blizzard, a lady passed us going 80, lost control, and we played bumper cars down the road for a few hundred yards. Our car was totaled, and we didn't break any bones or tear any skin, but we're both a tied up wreck of ribs out of place and textbook whiplash injury - me to my lumbar spine and josh to his upper back. We were the only two in the rig, thank goodness, except Dagny, but I grabbed her and was probably more concerned with her not flying through the air than I was with guarding my own recent surgery sites. Poor me. I am sore. 

I know there are a lot of other things to catch up on, but I have exhausted my mental resources for today and am highly distracted by the freshly baked Gingersnaps in the kitchen. I think I will go see if I can eat myself out of those size smalls and leave you with this amazingness...