The mama llama went to Idaho for Thanksgiving and, since I had to work this weekend, the boys went to stay with my niece.  The lack of children running around, combined with me leaving the house at 0600 and not returning until 2030 or there about, not to mention my overwhelming fatigue from being extremely busy and my normal status insomnia, has resulted in household goods not being put back where they normally would be.  There is clean laundry all over the coffee table, mail stacked on the kitchen table, and cedar chips from the dog houses on the deck all over the floor by the back door.  I didn't realize how far I had let things go, however, until FB came into my bathroom to say goodnight after the boys got back home tonight.  It wasn't until after he left that I hoped he's either really oblivious and/or extremely tired, because otherwise he couldn't have missed the fairly large purple penis sitting front and center on my vanity between the sinks.  Poor kid is going to have scars if he survives being raised by me.

Awesome. Awesome Day.

You ever have one of those days where your brain just can't connect the dots?  Where tasks that should be mere muscle memory become like a monkey doing a math puzzle and even those that know and love you want to call you Blonde?  Everything I did today had me feeling like a complete airhead.  I was near to asking someone to blow in my ear so I could get a fill up.  I don't know if I am more sleep deprived than usual, suffering from the effects of sunspots or incipient senility, but I had problems today. 

One of the nurses came and asked me to evaluate her patient who was a post-op C-section with calf pain.  I went to the bedside, queried where the pain was, what it felt like, if she had been wearing her TED hose and SCDs, felt for heat, unequal swelling and checked for Homan's sign.  All were negative except for pain with gentle palpation.  I looked at both of her calves and they didn't appear to be any different in size/swelling, but, being the experienced high risk obstetric inpatient nurse I am (with the certification to prove it...HA!), I measured both calves.  And I measured them again.  And then a third time.  Then I did equal measurements on both legs from ankles to knees.  Now this was a large woman.  Her calves were nearly the size of my thighs, but I knew, just KNEW she couldn't be measuring 460cm on her right leg and 420cm on her left.  They didn't look that big or that different.  So I measured again.  And got the same result.  The clinical picture didn't fit the imperial evidence.  Hmmm.  Nonetheless, I paged her physician and told him of my findings.  He said, "There is how much difference between the two?"  I repeated my findings, adding, "I measured three times.  But she has no, and I mean NO symptoms other than the slight pain. "  He said he would be down in a few minutes.  I hung up and my synapse fired. I realized that since this tape measure was different from the one I'd used for the last 12 years, something was amiss. Back I went to the room and re-measured, this time looking closely at the numbers and realizing the line for the centimeters is where the decimal point would go.  So what I was reading as 46(line)0 cm would actually be 46(point)0 cm.  Could I be a bigger asshole?  Or a bigger airhead!  I knew what I was seeing and what my brain was perceiving could not be accurate.  (lets not get into me not saying, "gee, this doesn't look like an abnormally long tape measure...say one 4 meters long.").  Holy crap.  I'm retarded.  I beat cheeks out to the phone, re-page the doc and clarify my findings.  He replied, "I was hoping you read that wrong."  He proceeded to call me "460" for the rest of the night.  There are worse nicknames, I guess.  And at least it wasn't the middle of the night that I unleashed my stupidity on him.  I still can't wait until his ass graduates in July though.

Then, I came home to find my flag wrapped around the outdoor light fixture and the pole bent, tinfoil that the dogs got out of the recycle bin in the pantry chewed up all over the carpet, and a house at 53 degrees and a non functioning furnace.  So here I sit, blogging in a house only 10 degrees warmer than the November night with the gas fireplace trying to warm my children as the emergency furnace fixer guy tries to get me heat so at least my pipes won't freeze.  Again, awesome.  Awesome day.


ADDENDUM:  That no good, lousy, waste-of-space, ain't-worth-the-powder-it-would-take-to-blow-him-to-hell, motherfucking contractor of mine screwed me over AGAIN!  There is water in the bottom of my furnace from his half assed fitting job on the vent pipes.  There's not supposed to be water in the bottom of my gas heated, electronic ignition furnace you fuckstick!!  Yet again, I have been Corey'd!  That's what I'm going to use in place of the f-bomb from now on: "Oh, Corey!"  or "mother-corey-er!"  If it wasn't worth dragging his ass to court and the ensuing fees after 8 years in this house, I'd have to do it.  Shitballs.

Once again, working in the medical field gleans a cornucopia of unusable knowledge.  We nurses were sitting around in the nurses station during a brief lull; the flurry of brand new dependents had ceased, charting was caught up, and no corpsmen had to be severely beaten around the head and neck just for the hell of it.  In short, a peaceful moment.  I was contemplating my next course of action with my patients, including how to keep a wonderful woman with a repeat c-section without Duramorph because of a "soft" morphine allergy and only marcaine and fentanyl spinal, and without a post-op PCA, from climbing the walls all night as she had to deal with that major abdominal surgery without long acting narcotics in her spinal or a button of love to push as needed when I heard, "How the hell would anyone know it was JESUS' foreskin?"  As you could imagine, my head broke the sound barrier swiveling on my neck to see just from whence came such a query.  A colleague is finishing her degree and one class, apparently, required her to investigate religious artifacts and relics and their meaning to the flock.  Why this is important in a nursing degree, I have no idea.  It seems that the Latern Basilica in Rome has the Holy Foreskin as one of its relics. During the Middle Ages there were reports of up to 18 different foreskin relics around Europe. That seems a bit much for an eight day old infant, even if he is the Son of God.  Apparently, various miraculous powers have been attributed to the Holy Prepuce including it rising into the heavens and becoming the rings of Saturn.  Also, it expands when held near a virgin.  We all began to make comments sacrilegious, blasphemous and all manner of other ous-es, until it was decided that we were getting a little off the chain.  Although, we all agreed that "hey, I have a miraculous foreskin." is the pick up line of the century, hands down.  There are pages and pages of Google results on this particular subject, so even though I haven't given the Savior's foreskin any thought at all, many people throughout history have.

In keeping with the strangeness of the topic, another colleague informed us that there is a Museum of Menstruation in Washington, DC.  The website claims, "discover the rich history of menstruation and women's health!"  No thanks, my history is more than enough.

There Aren't Enough Drugs In The World

FB's bed is a wooden captain's bed.  Loft type bed with drawers underneath; you get the picture.  Being made of wood, it squeaks with every movement and it is very apparent when the boy is restless and having difficulty settling to sleep.  The other night I was downstairs and I became aware of squeaking above me.  The squeaking had a pattern...it was rhythmic, if you will.  RHYTHMIC SQUEAKING COMING FROM MY SON"S BED.  I began to hyperventilate and turned up the volume to drown out the sound of my worst nightmare. 

A few days later my mom dropped them off and said, "I walked into the bedroom last night and I don't know what FB was doing, but he was acting awful guilty." 

I will now go to my happy place and live in a state of denial for the next 10 years.

Wowzers. I Don't Need To Think I'm Pretty That Badly....

The thing about working in labor and delivery is that we are extremely open to talking about lady parts.  And where I am now at Small Military Hospital, we talk openly about lady parts even when the poor 19 year old corpsman are around.  Hey, this openess will more than likely make them more sensitive to their future significant others' needs, so really, we are performing a community service.  Don't ask me how this came about, but one slow day we were talking and someone asked, "Well, have you seen that vulva jewelry?"   I thought she was talking about Vajazzling, which has been around for awhile, but I think is kinda dumb.  And ouchy.  But no, she was talking about this on Etsy.  Holy crap. 

From the page:

Celebrate your own beauty.  Each piece is an original, one of a kind,  hand sculpted image of its owner to remind her that regardless of what the world and the people in it may tell her: she is beautiful.

So, apparently you send this person a picture of your vulva and she makes a 1.6"x1" pendant that you can wear for a night on the town or cleaning stalls, the choice is yours.  My favorite part is where she says that if you are not comfortable sending a picture, you can just describe it.  I'm thinking anyone who is buying this hand sculpted image of their vulva to wear, isn't going to have a problem sending a picture.  And if you don't send a picture or a description "you will receive one of our beautiful flesh-toned Vulva pendants."  So you could just be walking around with some anonymous vag around your neck.  I guess that could be less embarrassing for some.  

"Is that an original, one of a kind, hand sculpted image of your vulva on a chain????" 

"Well, no, it's not my vulva.  I actually don't know to whom it belongs.  I'm just wearing it  "

One would think this page was one of those freaky one-offs that show up on Etsy every once in awhile, but as I was searching for the page to make this post I found a plethora of Etsy vulva art, arranged on one page for your convenience.

So, I survived my great Middle Eastern adventure. Not that I had concerns regarding my destination, it was more that I wondered if I could survive 18 hours in the air without hurting myself.  Or my fellow travelers for that matter.  Why do some women dress for air travel as if they are running a special on massage services at at "gentleman's club"?  I can think of nothing more uncomfortable than being wedged into a coach seat  next Skippy The Incredible Snoring Fat Man unless it was being wedged there in a micro mini, 4 inch stilettos and showing off the twins to the extent everyone knows them on a first name basis.  But that's just me.  Personally, I had on a pair of capris, a lightweight shirt, a hoodie, and a pair of Keens.  Given a chance I probably would have worn my damn jammies, but contrarty to popular belief, I do have some social graces.  The hoodie happened to be FB's because as I was scurrying around trying to get out of the house and to the hotel before the airporter left my ass (and I made it by *that* much only because I pulled in front of him and frantically waved, refusing to let him leave without me), I could not seem to locate my dignified, adultish hoodie.  I grabbed FB's and spent my trip hunkered in this thing with the punk ass graphics.  Ah well, at least I was warm on the plane.

Dana Delaney, when she was filming China Beach went to Viet Nam for a visit and said the heat "just hit you in the crotch and all you could think about was sex."  Obviously a different heat from Bahrain because that heat hit me with a full body slam and all I could think about was air conditioning.  Of which there was plenty.  Usually set at 45 degrees below the coldest place on Earth.  So, despite being in the Middle East with temperatures in the high 90s to low 100s, my punk ass hoodie and I spent some quality time together.

About a week before I came home we had gone to bed and my cell phone rang.  What?  I looked at the display and it read "FB's Middle School."  What, what what???  Answering cautiously, the man on the other end introduced himself as the 6th grade counselor and he would like to speak with me regarding FB.  I informed him of where I was and he replied, "Oh, then I will send you and email; would that be okay?" Yes, please, because this short minute is going to cost me $300 dollars.  I got up the next morning, wrestled the Nav away from the Drudge report, and logged on to my email.  6th Grade Counselor had done what he said and so I opened said email and read, "I would like to talk to you regarding FB."  That was his message in its entirety.  Unfortunately, I had gotten that much from the 14 seconds on the phone the night before.  And it's not as if I thought he wanted to discuss some other 6th grader.  I took a cleansing breath and sent a reply requesting a little more detail, if it wasn't too much trouble.  Apparently, the school was concerned regarding FB's academic progress.  When I got home this is the conversation FB and I had:

Me:  "So, how is school going since I was gone?"
FB:  "Great!"
Me:  "Good, good.  So getting your homework done?'
FB:  "Yep!"
Me:  "Getting good grades on it?"
FB:  "Yep!"
Me:  "So, no problems then?"
FB:  "Nope!"
Me:  "Your guidance counselor called me while I was gone.  Why do you think that was?"
FB:  *crickets* "I don't know."

Luckily, there is this wonderful thing in our school district called Parent Portal where you can log on to the school website and, not only see your child's assignments, but their grades as well.  And his were, in a word, DEPLORABLE!  He was getting A's in Global Adventures (sounds like something in special ed) and PE.  The rest were Cs and below including, (are you ready?  because I wasn't) an F in Language Arts.  Do you want to know how bad it chaps the ass of a mother with an English degree for her kid to get an F in Language Arts?  There isn't enough Boudreaux's Butt Paste on the planet!  Now all of these grades are the result of his lazy ass not doing, or not turning in, his homework.  His in class classwork show As; he's just being a turd.  So we had a fulfilling discussion about grades and his future (including such inspiring phrases as "I don't even care that you're crying!  You SHOULD be crying!") and he and his phone have parted ways until I see some serious improvement on them thar grades.  Jeez. 

This working thing is really puting a wrinkle in the ol' bloggin'. There are a few posts that have been running around in my head for a while, and if I don't get them down, they will just float off into the dark, cobwebby corners of my mind, and then forget it! No way I'm going over there without a MLB regulation sized bat! I went to get the Glittery Hoohah electrocuted the other day. I just realized I shouldn't call it the Glittery Hoohah, lest readers, all 2 of you, think that I've been engaging in some Vagazzling.   Fear not, friends! My September issues have not grown to such proportions that I would stick crystals on my girly parts, thereby rendering the Glittery Hoohah a GLITTERY Hoohah. I can't see where there is anything comfortable, or aesthetic really, about this for anyone. They have to get in the way. Although the dragonfly was cute. But if they are going to post pics, they might want to stick to chicks without razor burn and stubble. That's all I'm saying. Anyway, back to the electrocution.... We were well into said torture(that I willingly pay for. I know: shut up whiner), when I felt a rumbly in my tumbly. Oh, this can't be good. Really, can there be a less opportune or socially acceptable place to float an air biscuit? I think you would be more readily forgiven for cutting one loose on a first date in an enclose car, or ripping a loud one in the middle of your wedding vows than during an aesthetic procedure such as this. And due to the nature of said procedure, there is no way to tighten your cheeks to keep it in until the feeling passes. No, you lay there, praying and sweating like a supplicant in front of the volcano, promising all manner of behavioral and lifestyle changes that you don't intend to keep, if this moment will just faaaaaaddddddeeeee awaaaaaaaayyyyyy.

You may remember this post I wrote a year and a half ago. Well, look what happens afterwards:

 I was born where?!?  Yer kiddin'!

 Mr. and Mrs. Hardy were naughty, but the results are cute.

 Look at that face!  Although, that's the same look his dad gives me when he calls me a "retarded jackass."