The trucker says, “Come on man, I was joking. Here, I’ll buy you another drink. I just can’t stand to see a man cry.”

  “No, its not that. This day is the worst day of my life. First, I fall asleep and go late to my office. My boss, outrageous about how late I am fires me. When I leave the building to my car, I found out it was stolen. The police said that they can do nothing. I get a cab to return home and when I leave it, I remember I left my wallet and credit cards there. The cab driver just drives away.”

The Big-Bad Trucker looks down and bellows, “That’s bad.”

  “Nope, that’s not all, I go home and when I get there I find my wife in bed with the gardener. I leave home and come to this bar. And, just when I was thinking about putting an end to my life, you show up and drink my poison.”

Submitted by Jock, Airdrie.

One Sunday last month, I got all six kids out to the car for church at the crack of dawn (<<exaggeration), only to discover I had a mega flat tire. Air pressure *zero.* Although my husband does work Sundays, it’s the only day he doesn’t have to get out of bed before the sun comes up (<<not an exaggeration) so you can imagine how thrilled he was to plug my tire when he could have been in bed. On second thought, he was probably about as thrilled as I was dubious to ride on a tire that needed three plugs to fill one hole. He assured me it was fine and he’d patch it when I got home. (I countered with some mumbling about how I shouldn’t have told him how much my life insurance was worth.)

A week or two after that, hurricane Irene hit. We got the worst of it on Saturday, but it was Sunday morning—bright and far too early—we found ourselves driving around looking for a convenience store with electricity and hot coffee as we left my mom’s to go home through a maze of downed trees and flooded roads. (We have huge trees over our house and worried one might fall on it, so we weathered the storm at her house.) Good times.

Then there was Sunday before last. Once again, I round up the kids and get them in the car. Turn the key, and there’s noise, but not the engine-starting variety. My oldest son (who turns 11 this week) said it was the battery and went to get my husband. He jump started the car. I asked what felt like a logical question: what happens when I have to start the car to go home? He said it should start, but if not, we’d know the battery was bad. Uh, lovely. And of course it did NOT start, but I had the foresight to park at the very back of the lot so he could get to me easily with his service truck. (We had to get a new battery, but the first one lasted over nine years. Hard to complain.)

This was all fresh in my mind when my mother-in-law asked if I was going to church last Sunday, so I had a disclaimer associated with my “yes.” And naturally when the phone rang early Sunday morning, I was not shocked. It was my mom. Her car wouldn’t start.

Now, for reasons I’ve yet to understand, when my husband offered to go get my mom’s car started or give her a ride to work, she said not to worry about it. This was a good three hours before I’m accustomed to getting out of bed, so it took a minute to register. Then I was kind of ticked with both of them. She has to go to work. She’s not even supposed to be late. He knows she needs her car or I have to run back and forth all day. Needless to say, I was not my usual cheerful predawn self (<<not exaggerating) when I got in my car and drove to her house, then her to work, then back home only to have to get the kids in the car so we could get to church. By some miracle, we were only five minutes late.

Then my husband goes to fix her car, but first he’s got to come all the way to church to get her keys from me. Then he goes to her house, and about the time I needed to get the kids from Sunday school, he got it started. (Moisture in the distributor cap … oh, did I forget to mention it was pouring rain?) So the logical plan is for him to take it to her work and for me to pick him up and take him back to his truck … only the car I was driving only holds seven people. That means I couldn’t pick him up because the car was full.  Greaaat.

Believe it or not, I’d planned ahead a little. I asked my mother-in-law if my oldest could stay with her for about twenty minutes while we did the exchange. She said of course, just to call her. So I did. Twice. (It’s now Wednesday and she has yet to call me back.) Now I’m scrambling. Finally the H and I decided we’d leave the two oldest at church to go to the 11:00 service while we took care of the car issue. (Safe place, we know everyone, they had a cell phone, etc. It was fine.)

So I head to the store to pick up my husband. I called my mom to say we were dropping the car off and asked if she could come get the keys. She could not—she was in the office counting money, and the door has to stay locked. She told me who I could leave the keys with, which was fine, only I’m limping. My foot is killing me. My husband offered to take the keys in, but he was driving (because my foot hurts) and I didn’t want to have to switch seats so we could sit in the fire lane. So I hobbled into the store. In the rain. (Up hill both ways.) Her employee, by the way, was not available. Le sigh.

My mom’s car issues settled, I dropped off the H and picked up the kids. That, at least, was uneventful. But did I mention it’s all of noon? (Long, long day.) And the H and I had a couple of pieces of real estate to look at, so we left two of the kids at home (the oldest is of babysitting age) to check them out. In the rain. With the three kids in the back seat trying to kill each other. And the baby crying.

Sigh.

Then it happened. What you ask? The baby started coughing and ended with throwing up. And not just any throw up … milk. Chunks and gobs and gallons of sour, stinky, cottage-cheesy milk.

On the upside, this put a quick end to the fighting in the back seat—apparently there is bonding to be done over disgusting body fluid incidents. The baby is rear facing in the middle row, so all three boys in the back had a great view of the spewed chunks … all the way home. The smell was so bad my H put the window down and let the rain pelt him, which got the inside of the car wet and made the boys yell something fierce about the smell blowing back on them. (Um, sorry kids, but we don’t care!) Me, all I could think was how it was a brand new car seat I’d only installed two days prior. Seriously?

Sigh.

When we got home, I spent a long few minutes cleaning that disgusting stuff out of the car in the rain while my oldest daughter gave the baby a bath. Then I went to renew our truck license plates online. We were taking my oldest son on his “birthday shopping trip” that evening, which is something we do for each kid on his or her birthday: dinner at the restaurant of their choice, plus a shopping trip and cash to spend. Thank goodness my son wanted to take the big truck, because it did not smell like sour milk. But did you really expect the simple, routine act of renewing tags online to go well? Of course not.

The DMV website was down.

We drove it anyway. (After the way the day went, that was a huge tempt of fate.) I won’t complain too much about having to spend two hours touring Bass Pro Shops—it was part of my son’s birthday present, and I was glad to be down to just one kid, even if I was also down to one foot. (The foot I kept my weight on protested mightily by this point.) Dinner was fantastic, and when my husband tore out of the parking lot sliding sideways on the wet road in a jacked up four door red truck (yeah, that won’t draw attention) with a super loud exhaust and expired tags, I didn’t even yell. I just merely pointed out he’s freaking insane, at which point he and my son had a good laugh. Yeah. Sure.

But we survived. I was exhausted, but you know how it goes. “Tomorrow” was a new day, yada yada. Only optimism took a great big shot in the kazoo because that particular “tomorrow” was … Monday. EFF ME. (And if you don’t know what that was all about, click here.)

SIGH.

Think this true stuff is bad? You should see what I make up! Check out my books, available in the electronic format of your choice by clicking here, or grab ‘em for Kindle here.

I think my problem is I feel things a little too much. I try a little too hard and when I fail, I feel like I have let down myself and everybody else. I sometimes wish I could just switch off my emotions and just exist. Cos, if I have to be honest with myself, what have I done? If I die now, what would I be remembered for? People would go; “C? Who the hell is that?” And those that knew me would probably go “Finally!” And then life goes on.

I know I should try and make my own way or destiny or make sickly sweet lemonade with those damn lemons life keeps throwing at me, but I’m so fucking sick and tired. Why couldn’t I be bitchy or selfish and self-centred? Instead I’m this person who is terrified of confrontation, scared of being herself and the only way I cope is to create alter egos…people go about saying they are crazy or what not. They know nothing. I have been to the edge and there is nothing funny about it.

What brought this on? I tried to be brave and I let my guard down…and let’s just say I wouldn’t be doing that anytime soon, if at all.

If there is a God, He needs to help me because it’s only a matter of time before I run out of excuses for why I should be here…

All those days that were good, well yesterday was the worst day I’ve had in over a year. The muscle pain, it was exquisite. If it had been during the work week, I would not have been able to go to work. I was barely able to walk to the kitchen, the bedroom, the spa. The pain pills, they did not a single thing for the pain. I was just going to have to deal with it.

I own, I took a sleeping pill so that I could just go to bed and get the day over with. I didn’t want any part of any more of what my body was giving me. My hope was that today I would feel better.

I did feel a bit better today, but I’m still not as good as I have been of late. I’ve been rotating the heating pad from my legs to my neck to my arms, trying to patch myself together the best that I can. I’ll be soaking in the hot tub tonight before bed… that seems to be the best cure for what has ailed me with this bit of muscle pain.

I’ve been thinking back to what could have brought this on… I’m not sure. I did the ball game and that’s what’s been different than normal. I’ve been feeling so good, that I may have just over did it and pushed myself too hard. That’s the only thing I can think of… I got to confident that I was feeling too well.

One thing for sure that I can say is this… after a month of feeling very good, this weekend was hard to cope with mentally.  I can handle feeling really bad all the time, but feeling really good and then dropping to really bad, I’m not at all as well equipped to deal with.

For this week, I will be taking it very slow and will be resting at lunch time. I don’t want this to happen in the future… I have learned my lesson for now, tho surely I will forget. That’s the beauty of pain, it’s easily forgotten and the human mind surges forward putting it behind them.

So… from this point I move forward. With luck and diligence, I won’t have a weekend like this again for a very long time…

sometimes, the only thing that makes it better is french vanilla flavored coffee.

LD: hello.

He’s shy. But if you are in need of cash, a new identity or a Palm Pre, he’s your man – er, demon. The point is, he can take care of it for you.

In exchange for your soul, of course.

Thanks, Little Demon.

LD: Fuck off, loser.

Like I said, he’s shy.

Mug Shot Karma – September 12, 2008

It feels like I’m still in the hospital, only now it’s just who I am and what I do. It’s a part of me. A part of me I didn’t ask for, and a part of me that won’t go away. It feels like a part of me is stuck there still.

I don’t expect anyone to understand, but I still feel isolated and disconnected from my life outside my little nest- not just from the people in my life, though I do feel that way too. Every thing outside of my little family, except for a few major things of course like God, my country, and trying to stay abreast of the latest fashion trends (kidding on that last one), seems way less important to me than it ever has before.

I’d say that’s pretty healthy. Right? I mean, it’s probably because I had this huge thing to deal with that caught me way off-guard and it’s going to take some time for me to readjust, right? Things were put into perspective for me, and the things I used to care about don’t even come close to being in the same realm of importance anymore. I mean, realistically my kid could have died. Surgery, and anesthesia especially, is scary and dangerous. It was a pretty big deal! So of course I feel like nothing else in this world matters anymore. That’s normal, eh? No biggie.

Only it is sort of big, because I can’t get this off my mind. My kid didn’t die. I need to snap out of this sort of mental lock-down I’ve got going on, and I know this. I am blessed, thoroughly, and some people would give everything they have to be in my shoes. I understand this, I really and truly do. And I know that I’m in serious danger of losing control because every single day I have to keep myself from writing off friends and loved ones, and, you know, isolating myself from everything and everyone I used to love. And that is, by my calculations, absolutely not normal.

I just don’t know where or how to start in snapping out of this little mental breakdown I’m having.

It’s like I’m struggling to find my normal self in all this. I know that it’s super important that I get back to business, that I get back to being me again and doing everything that I do that well, makes me me. Only that all seems so unfamiliar now. People I love seem unfamilar to me. Even the ones who were with me every day in the hospital seem to be suspiciously new to me, as if everyone except for me, Mike, and Nicholas has changed all of the sudden and now I don’t recognize anyone.

The probability though of the world around me changing and leaving me in the dust is highly unlikely. Of course it is more likely that I’ve changed; I’m just not sure how I’ve changed. If I knew that, then I could un-change it and go back to being me, right? It would be so simple if only I could make sense of it.

All I can say about it is that it’s happened and I can’t go back to being that old me. I’m not even sure I know who that is anymore. Srsly.

He is 7 lbs 5 oz of preciousness. Normally babies hate me, but this one actually tolerated me for more than five seconds, therefore he is my favorite baby EVER (other than my own.)

And as far as my own bebe is concerned, he is very happy to be home and free of the hospital.

That makes three of us.

Camera emptied of its 304 pictures: check.

Off to see my sister in law and my newest little nephew. And to take more pictures! I can’t wait to hold him and snuggle him! Yay babies.

Just a little note so that you know I’m not ignoring you if you’ve requested me to let you know when I’m home, or for me to call you or whatever. It’s just that life didn’t stop, and now I’m playing catch-up So I will have to see you all later!

And if you could please let people know that we’re home for me, that would be great. Then I wouldn’t have to tell everyone individually that we were released and such. Plus, I don’t want people calling the hospital looking for us! We’re not there… we’re um, at a different hospital loving on a different child At least for tonight.

One day at a time.

No? Hm, maybe it’s just me.

Actually I’m not sure if it was the kid at Discovery Center who shoved my child at the train table and said, “MOVE!” as if quietly and politely going around Nick were too much for him to bear– or if it is just Mike being here, constantly sighing whenever Nick speaks to him or repeatedly touching me in some way. You know, were it an occasional thing, perhaps I’d be okay. But he has kissed me like 18 times in the last hour. I’m not accustomed to kisses throughout the day, and quite frankly I don’t like them, especially from someone who has yet to brush his teeth at 1:25 in the afternoon. There should be some laws regarding people who work at home and their hygienic upkeep if you ask me.

I think he constantly picked on his coworkers cause he’s doing really dumb “I’m picking on you” stuff, like standing in the door way and kicking the carpet at me. I don’t really know what that was about, but when I slowly turned around and saw him there, kicking at me like some wild animal about to charge, I gave my “I don’t fully comprehend you, and what I do comprehend disgusts me” look. He laughed and then when I turned back to my PC, he started sneaking up behind me and acting ridiculous, until I complained.

He threatened to pick on me every single day. Lucky me.

Yes, I’m having an off day in case you’re not quick enough to get the point.

Here are some more things that piss me off:
- Nick has not had a single potty accident in several weeks and then at naptime today (because this is NOT the week to give up naptime), he purposely waited until he laid down to go poop in THE LAST PULL-UP I HAVE.
- Mike farts all the time. All day long even. Seriously, I’m so sick of hearing what sounds like someone blowing up a balloon and not tying it off and then letting it go. I hate farting, I dislike how men think it’s cool to just let it go wherever, regardless of whether or not you’re right beside them, and I hate it more when people are entertained enough by their farts that they laugh at them. Farts are not funny, people, unless they come from little kids and you can’t help but giggle at the child’s surprise/glee at his own bodily functions. I mean, I fart too, you know. I just don’t think it’s hilarious.

And I always say excuse me. Except in Wal-Mart. I don’t own up to them there.