I am shocked and honored to know each and every one of you.

Maybe we’d never recognize each other on the street (well, you’ve all seen what I look like), and maybe I’ll never meet any of you face to face (also doubtful because I have high plans to meet most of you. Sorry, preemptively for my crashing on your couch. Oh, and I like orange juice for breakfast–freshly squeezed), but I consider you all to be my friends.

You’ve proved it to me before, and you’ve solidified it with this most recent miscarriage. I’d love to thank you all and give you big sloppy kisses and hugs, but it wouldn’t be enough.

It just wouldn’t.

Nothing will ever say thank you quite the way I want it to, so I’ll try and tell you how much each and every comment that you made, every email and IM that I got lifted my burden. Things are lighter now.

It reminded me of how fortunate I really am to have people prop me up, dust me off, and remind me that I’m going to be just fine. That past sentence is precisely what I’ve used in the past to describe what I feel is true friendship, and I think it fits here, as well.

Cornball as it may sound, you are my friends, and if you know me at all, you’d know how strongly a bond I consider that to be. Thank you for reminding me of all the good that has sprung up around me (even during a time of garbage and crap) and how blessed I am to have each and every one of you in my life.

I’m not implying in any way that I’m completely recovered from this miscarriage, nor will I always be peeing roses and sunshine, but you’ve shown me that it doesn’t matter one bit if I’m being funny and self-deprecating or honest and true. That somehow you like me anyway WITHOUT BRIBERY.

I don’t think that there is anything I can ever do to truly show my appreciation to all of you for listening to me whine about this latest miscarriage, and believe me, I will be wracking my brain to try and do something nice for you all. If any of you were local (I’m looking at YOU, LAS) I’d invite you over for cookies that I MIGHT EVEN COOK MYSELF and Diet Coke. The offer stands for anyone willing to swing by. I WILL COOK FOR YOU (maybe not very well, but I will do it anyway).

As for the Uterus Monologues, I ended up with my ass in the ER today and was diagnosed with…wait for it, wait for it, A BLADDER INFECTION TOO! Wonders never cease to amaze me. I’m following up with my OB on Wednesday and hopefully he’ll have some insight into what the hell is wrong with me. Or not.

And as for my mental health, I’m pretty sure I’ll be fine. I’m just going to channel all of my energy into my due date buddies: Doc Grumbles and Niobe. If my critters won’t grow properly, well, then Universe, you’d better make DAMN sure that theirs do or You are going to have an appointment with my fists of fury.

Thank you all for everything. Thank you so very much.

In a stunning fit of personal irony, The Daver and I were called upon to serve on a jury of our peers on the same day.

That day is tomorrow.

One of us is going to perform his civic duty, while I have to call in sick so that I can go back to the doctor. Again. And trust me when I tell you that I wish like hell that I was going with him.

Going to the doctor for this latest miscarriage is only going to dig the old nail in a little deeper and remind me that hells yes, my body is expelling yet another ickle and well-wanted critter. And then I have to suffer the indignity of another ass shot performed with the sterile equivalent of a ball-point pen. It’s going to be AWESOME.

It’s weird, I never really knew how I would react to having a miscarriage. On the logical side of my brain, I am pleased that it didn’t happen any later than it did: having it happen at all is sad, but having it happen at 4 months, 7 weeks, or 9 months is far worse. The emotional side of my body is telling me that this is yet another loss of something I really had wanted. I would have loved the wee critter as much as I love my not-so-wee critters and I wish this had a different outcome.

The hormones aren’t helping matters one tiny bit, but I think ultimately I will decide that this is neither here nor there. In the end, I suppose it all comes down to the idea of luck. I hate the concept of luck. If I am lucky because I have a truly wonderful husband and 2 hilarious kidlets, that makes someone who doesn’t have these things unlucky.

But what did I do to deserve these wonderful things that I do have? And what did someone who doesn’t have these things do to not deserve them? Should I feel lucky to not be those people, or should I have survivor’s guilt and feel terribly for them? (I’ll let you guess which one I feel, and it’s not the first option). I’d love for The Universe to shower good fortune and luck onto everyone in the world, but it’s just not the way it works, and I don’t know why.

I can accept having one early miscarriage, hell I can accept having two, although it seems a bit careless. In the grand scheme of things, I’m still pretty blessed and I don’t forget it for a moment. Honestly, I never do. But to have two of these miscarriages/chemical pregnancies within 30 days just seems cruel and unusual to me. I comforted myself by telling myself that I cannot be so unlucky so as to have two in a row, but it seems that my luck has changed. And I am beyond devastated.

Despite my devastation, I refuse to subscribe to fear, though, and let that overrun my life. I’ll have another baby, or I won’t. I’ll go back to school or I won’t. I’ll paint the kitchen or I won’t. But I won’t not do something (hello double negative!) because I am afraid of a bad outcome. That’s a stupid way to live my life, and I refuse to do it.

Maybe I’ll never get to the truly peaceful place again, and maybe I’ll always be a little afraid of things outside of my control, but that’s okay. It’s what makes life interesting and us humans.

It happened, I’m suitably wrecked, and I’ll survive. It’s what we all do.

I’m not a huge believer in signs, nor am I a fan of using magical thinking (although there was a time when I used it frequently and with gusto. Before you judge, I was a teenager, and I think this is a pretty common teenage thing). I don’t tend to look below the surface for much at all, instead I try and understand what is in front of me.

But I can’t help but feel like maybe this is just sign that I don’t need to have more children. The quest for Baby #3 isn’t something either of us are pursuing with as much vigor as we had with the creation of Baby #2. I like having 2 kids, and I think I’d like to have 3, but maybe 2 is enough. Maybe I should just focus on the 2 that I have, assume that they are more than enough and move the hell on with my life.

A life that doesn’t include midnight feedings, more stretch marks, chapped nipples and the avoidance of lunch meats. The 2 I have came fairly painlessly, I had no known miscarriages before I had either of them and I love them fiercely. Maybe that should be enough for me.

Maybe I should just quit while I’m ahead and save myself any future hopes and subsequent heartaches. Having another child would just be the icing on an already iced cake, and although it might taste good, it’s not completely necessary for my continued happiness.

When I look around at my blog friends, I’m constantly reminded that the Universe is simply not a fair place, and that maybe I should just be grateful for what I do have and stop trying to pursue a dream that may not end in a happy way for me. Why push the envelope for something I don’t know that I really want?

The one stipulation that I had for my “last” pregnancy was that I try to relax, let go and let God and enjoy my last chance at gestation. I spent so many days and nights worrying with the other two (especially Alex) that I made myself ill and I didn’t want to do that to myself or my family again. But now I don’t see anyway that I won’t worry should I get knocked up again.

And I have to ask myself, is it all worth it? Sure it’s just a blip on the radar as far as Very Bad Things go, but it’s my second blip in 2 months, and the hormones are certainly going to kill me again.

Is any of this worth going through again?

I guess I just don’t know anymore.

So, I was trying to think of the best way to tell The Internet that I seemed to have succeeded in getting pregnant again. I took about 4,000 tests this week and all of them were slightly positive (this was after making sure that the last miscarriage/chemical pregnancy had successfully cleared the pipes), and I wanted to wait to make sure that I was able to tell my real life readers before I informed The Internet.

I know a lot of people stay mum about pregnancy in it’s earliest form, so as not to have to retract the statement later on, should something go wrong. I don’t generally subscribe to this philosophy as the people that I would typically inform would be the very same people I would lean on should something go wrong.

And by the fact that this is the first that many of my real friends are reading this should tell you that I no longer have good news to tell you any longer.

It looks like the critter formerly occupying my uterus is flying the coop. The spotting began shortly after returning home with the elder sausages from a matinee (it was Iron Man, and it was phenomenal) and although it was the very palest of pink, it was there when I wiped.

I suppose that the dream was fun while it lasted.

You’ll have to excuse my absence from your blogs; I don’t seem to have a whole lot good to say right now.

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

-Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah”

Now, although I’ve been a mother for nearly 7 years (holy shit) I’m completely clueless about this whole “toddler-thing.” As previous exhaustibly documented, Ben was a pretty odd duck when it came to toddler-dom, so I can’t use my vast knowledge of how to treat BEN as a toddler on Alex. It just wouldn’t apply.

So this whole mimicking what I say stuff that toddlers apparently do is totally foreign to me, but is making me rethink taping my damn mouth shut for the next 4 or 5 years (somewhere Dave is frantically nodding his head “yes”) so as not to teach my kid more stuff he doesn’t need to learn yet.

Just so you know, I’m that freak-a-leak at the store that holds a one sided conversation with the baby, not because I really can’t shut up for that long (okay, maybe that’s part of it) but because it was one of those things that we were taught to do to teach Ben to speak. This means that although Alex’s issues are not the same as Ben’s, I still have it engrained in my mind to obsessively explain to Alex whatever it is that I’m doing at any given time.

I probably look insane, but I really don’t care.

But this is how I taught Alex to say “penis.”

In my house we have “penises” and “vaginas” and “uteruses,” but we also take dumps, lest you worry that I passed on my parents insistence that we call taking a dump a “bowel movement” and in the past tense a “defecation,” or the ever-popular “urinating.” I did, however, have to stop myself from calling testicles “balls” when explaining it to Ben. I guess that’s just what I think that those dangly sacs SHOULD be called.

So during diaper changes, Alex would grab his penis, giggle and I’d say “That’s your penis, Alex.” And he’d squeeze it and poke it and laugh (just like a real man) and I would repeat myself. Rather than learn “that” “your” or “Alex” he picked up the most hilarious of them all: penis.

Last night, we threw the kids in the bathtub together and they had a blast, splashing the shit out of me, playing with each other and generally being mischevious. Once Alex realized that his weenier was out of it’s diaper, he became very, very excited and began delicately poking it with one finger:

“Penis,” he’d say happily.

“Yes, Alex. Penis,” we’d all echo.

“Penis!” he’d say.

“I have a penis, too!” Ben told his brother. “And so does Daddy! But Mommy doesn’t.”

“You’re right Ben, I don’t have a penis.” I choked out between laughs.

“Mommy has a uterus. See?” he gestured to my left boob. “It’s right there.”

If you look closely, you can see the water droplets making a shadow on his back. It’s really, really weird.

Trying (and succeeding) in soaking me.

Before I get into the post, I gotta tell you all that you’re gonna give me a big head with all of your compliments! All I can say is that I’m not worthy of all of you. I see other people and their blog rolls and I know that my blog readers can beat THEIR blog readers in a fight, and that makes me proud to know you all. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

————-

When I was a grade-schooler, the playground for my school (well, one of the playgrounds) had this gigantic wooden bridge leading to the metal equipment. I can’t remember what we called it exactly, but it was a deliberately wobbly bridge, flanked on either side by rusty (probably lead) chains that made the pattern of squares. I suppose the squares were there to hold kids back from falling down below, probably a 5 or 6 foot drop.

A forbidden game for us was “Bridge Tag” and as such, at every possible opportunity whenever the playground supervisor had her back turned, we played it. The rules were simple: two teams, one on either entrance to the bridge, and a fraction of those on either team would gravitate towards the middle. The object of the game was to get from one side of the bridge to the other.

One day when we were furtively playing this game, on my way across the wobbly bridge, I got seriously denied by another kid and ended up falling between the rusty chains onto the ground below. Square on my head.

This knocked the wind out of me, which frightened me enough to go and seek the playground monitor so that I could go to the nurse. When I found her, glowering and smoking a cigarette in front of the school, yelling insults to the kids in her physical proximity, I told her in deep hiccupy sentence fragments what had happened. Instead of whisking me off to the nurse, she put me in the penalty box for playing Forbidden Bridge Tag, and I stood there, still trying to catch my breath while my head throbbed uncomfortably.

Obviously, save for a few missing brain cells (probably the one’s responsible for spelling words properly and knowing when NOT to use a comma) I was fine. I’m here today, have no neurological issues (shut UP!) and had forgotten about it until I was talking to my friend KC last night.

But can you IMAGINE what would happen if this happened today, 20 years later?

That monitor would have been fired well before she didn’t send me to the nurse and instead punished me for my misdeeds, if not for the smoking in front of kids (oh the HUMANITY!) but for the fact that she routinely insulted us about nothing. She was not, as the French say, a Kid-Lover.

The school would have been sued for having such a dangerous playground, and the principal would probably have been sent to prison for…something.

I mean, I’m all for keeping my kids safe, really I am, but I tend to think that this whole safety thing has just gone too far. There’s a point somewhere where you really need to allow your kids to be kids and not be mini-adults.

I recently had to sign a waiver allowing my big son to attend a school birthday party at which some dude brought in a number of reptiles. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want the kid to get salmonella or something, but I am pretty sure that this is the awesomest idea for a birthday party ever (hint, hint, The Daver) and that I trust that my son will wash his hands after handling it.

When I scoffed at The Daver’s insistence that Ben get a helmet for riding his bike, I was promptly rebuked by him for ignoring obvious safety issues. While I have any number of scars on my body from falling off bikes and such, I am pretty fond of them overall. They each tell a story. And Ben’s head? On his peewee bike? Not very far from the ground. I’ve watched as both of my macrocephalic children use their heads as battering rams and frankly, I’m not too worried about Ben on a bike. Especially since he’s going 3 feet/hour.

Not exactly a cyclist, right?

I don’t know, but I think I’m in the minority here: day to day, I’m not overly concerned for my son’s safety. He’s bright enough to look both ways before he crosses the street, he knows not to go anywhere with strangers, and if he breaks his arm falling off a trampoline?

That’ll make a kick-ass story for him to tell later in life.

April is Autism Awareness month, and I have a vested interest in researching this disorder. Meet my first son Benjamin.

No parent ever wants to hear that something is wrong with their child; that their offspring is not completely perfect.

Realizing the magnitude of being entrusted to care for, nurture, raise and eventually let go of a new life is both mind-boggling and awe-inspiring as well as terrifying. Before my first was born, I could barely be considered responsible to care for an aquarium, and rightly so: I am an idiot.

Having had no experience with babies, I had no idea that mine was abnormal. He hated human touch, he preferred to watch his mobile spin around to looking at faces. His first word was not ‘œMama’ or ‘œDada’ or even ‘œBaba:’ it was ‘œtock-tock.’ His phrase for ‘œtick-tock’ referring to the grandfather clock in the hallway which he adored. I’d be lying if I claimed that I wasn’t devastated by his total lack of interest in me and his distain for my touch, but I assumed that this was just the way he was.

Different strokes for different folks and all that happy horseshit.

Shortly after his first birthday, he was introduced to the planets through a Baby Einstein video. Before he could recognize emotions, he knew 4 of the moons of Jupiter and could identify them from different angles. *I* couldn’t even do that.

Rather than wanting to read Goodnight Moon, I took him to Borders and he picked out an encyclopedia of the solar system intended for adults, which he memorized cover to cover. He could spend hours at the Planetarium but screamed bloody murder at the zoo. I’d come home from class to several different ‘œsolar systems’ he’d created out of balls, each true to form. His depth of knowledge was amazing and freakish and I have no real way to illustrate that to you here.

This was all before his second birthday.

I had realized, of course, that he wasn’t speaking as much as What To Expect During The First Year said that he should, but considering the authors militant stand about their stupid pregnancy diet in their stupid pregnancy book, I wasn’t too worried. I just assumed that he was developing at a different rate than others his age. I mean, what 17-month old can tell you what Pluto’s moon is? (mine could). I had also figured that no one had really encouraged his speaking abilities, being the only child/grandchild, we all spoke for him.

At his 2 year check-up, his regular pediatrician was out and his partner told me in no uncertain terms that not only could he not understand him, but that he would be writing a referral out for an evaluation from Early Interventions. I left that appointment not only upset with the manner in which the doctor had spoken to me (‘How dare he talk to me like that?’) but by the fact that I hadn’t even thought anything was wrong.

Several times, different evaluators came out to our house to observe him and speak with me about his behaviors. Many of the questions provoked light bulbs in my head, a ‘œso THAT’S why he does _____! (only eats 3 things, becomes so overwhelmed by touch that he screams inconsolably, lines up his toys by color on the stairs, has an insane fascination with spinning things, knows WAAAAAYYY too much about the solar system, flaps his arms whenever he’s excited”) which really only made me feel worse about the things I had never noticed, or had noticed but considered quirks.

I drew the line at receiving a formal medical diagnosis however, because as a nurse and the daughter of a mentally ill mother, I am completely aware how these things follow you for the rest of your life until you can only define yourself by them. Does that make sense to you?

Let me give you an example: I (myself here) am dyslexic, have Crohn’s disease, and have a latex/iodine/shellfish allergy. But does that make me who I am? Not one bit, but not only do I catch myself excusing away things based on this, it has become a teeny tiny but integral part of my self image. And I do not have any behavioral problems to excuse away (i.e. ‘œI’ll never be able to sit still because I have ADD, therefore I won’t even try.’)

Without a totally formal diagnosis, he was explained to be on the autistic spectrum and speech and occupational therapies began immediately. For almost two years, he recieved both therapies and began to make strides toward more normal behavior. He began to speak more frequently and clearly in addition to being able to deal with more and more textures, consistencies, and tastes. His more interesting quirks remain to this day, thankfully, as they are part of what makes him who he is.

My soon-to-be husband and I enrolled him into private school when he turned three to enrich his social skills, as he had no children his own age to play with at home. I’m not sure that these social skills will ever be what is considered totally normal, but they have improved by leaps and bounds, possibly to the point that an innocent bystander would not realize how much he had once struggled to do something as simple as recognize basic emotions.

I have still struggled through numerous thoughtless comments from both parents and non-parents alike (‘why won’t he eat anything but junk food?’) who have somehow gotten it in their head that his problems are little more than an issue of bad parenting. I have suffered through years of guilt and regret (had *I* done something to cause this?) I have spent cold meal after cold meal coaxing him to eat something that looks different or *is* different.

I continue to worry about what his life will be like as he grows older and begins to interact more with the general population: will they be gentle and understanding of his uniqueness or will they tease and mock him mercilessly?

Have we done enough to prepare him for the world?

I have spent hours upon hours reassuring him that completing a ritual out of order was just fine, and comforting him from afar while wanting nothing more than to sweep him in my arms and kiss his tears away.

I have had to accept that my child is not perfect in any text book sense.

Is this the worst thing that could happen to a mother? Certainly not; he’s happy, he’s healthy, and above all else he is loved unconditionally. Having seen babies born without brains and hearing them cry (possibly the worst sound in the world), I am aware that I got off pretty easy here. But competing in the Pain Olympics isn’t why I wrote this post.

As you all know, I am not one to use this blog as a political forum, nor am I likely to spend time talking about my feelings here, or elsewhere. But this is an issue incredibly close to my heart: he’s part of my heart, he’s my son.

We all have hopes for our children.

As for me, I just hope that he knows how much I have loved him.

When I got pregnant with Ben, I used it as an excuse to indulge in all of my favorite crappy foods. Cheese sticks, pizza, Steak -n- Shake, ice cream, McDonald’s, you name it, I ate it. And loved it.

In my defense, I was 20 and able to eat pretty much whatever I wanted anyway, so it wasn’t a stretch for me. What was a big surprise (to me anyway) was that I then gained about 70 odd pounds. I don’t really know the precise number because I eventually stopped looking at the scale go up when I’d go in for my weekly weigh-in’s torture sessions.

10 pounds of that was water weight (I was swollen like my pre-eclampsia sisters) because it was damn hot that summer, and 8 lbs was baby, but the rest? Fat. All fat.

For the first couple of months, I tried desperately to lose the weight: I joined a gym, ate better, you name it, I tried it. And the scale moved upwards again by about a pound. This was enough to throw me over the edge and I gave up. Eventually, my metabolism kicked in and I lost most of the pounds, and dieted away the rest of them.

Then my thyroid went wacky, but was undiagnosed, and again, I couldn’t lose the weight no matter how many hours I spent at the gym. In fact, the scale moved up again and I was beating my head against the wall trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Despite both of my parents having thyroid issues, it never dawned on me that I could have the same problem. Because I am brilliant.

By the time I got pregnant with Alex, several years later, my thyroid issues had been diagnosed (thank GOD I was suffering from an inability to get pregnant, or it would never have been picked up. Doctor’s don’t seem to be overly trusting of women who are “tired all the time” and “gain weight easily.” I’m altogether certain that my own doctor would have told me to “eat less” and “exercise more”–not bad advice, medically speaking, but I already WAS doing this) and I was down to what I weighed when I got pregnant with Ben.

Because I am (as previously mentioned) an idiot, I never thought to get an endocrinologist at this juncture, assuming that my OB would monitor this closely. Oh! how wrong I was, and Oh! how the pounds packed on no matter how often I was christening the porcelain god.

The thing is, when you’re either a) getting fatter or b) pregnant, people always assume it’s because you’re eating like a teenage boy. No matter how much you don’t eat or how well you do eat when you’re able to hold it down, people don’t believe you when you tell them what’s going on. They think you’re hitting up Krispy Kreme’s all day, every day. For example, when I was at one of my sicker points from about 6 to 9 weeks (I heart you hyperemesis! Can we be BFF?) I gained 11 pounds in 3 weeks.

Seriously.

I’m pretty sure that the only person who believed me was The Daver, because he knows that I wouldn’t lie about that stuff. If I was eating garbage, I’d have owned it. I have no reason to deny it to anyone else. I heart junk food, and would eat it more often if I could get away with it and still fit into my size 8’s. I loved him for that.

So again, after making a huge effort to eat well (although exercising was out of the question because at about week 10 into Alex’s pregnancy, my hips stopped, well, working and walking became excruciating) I found myself at the time of delivery at about exactly what I weighed with Ben, minus 10 or so pounds of water weight.

I resolved to breast feed those pounds off, just like La Leche League said I could! And nurse I did: 10, 12, 17, 20 hours a day, all while eating about 900 calories a day FROM DAY 1 POSTPARTUM. I joined a gym 6 weeks after he was born and went for at LEAST an hour a day 5 days a week. I wasn’t hungry, so I didn’t force myself to eat, and you can guess what happened to the scale, right? I gained 4 pounds.

I gained 4 pounds and my heart was shattered (to be fair, I had a bout of PPD issues that I was dealing with too and was sleeping very, very little.) I felt like a failure, like I was destined to be a fat chick for the rest of my life, and ended up crying my eyes out in the Gap when I went to buy non-elastic pants: I’d gone up 4 sizes since I last wore real pants.

All I wanted was some external validation from someone outside of my head to tell me that yeah, dude, this isn’t your fault, and I couldn’t seem to get anyone to tell me that.

My validation came many months later, in October of last year when I went into my OB’s office to have the PA look at my boob (not mastitis, it turns out, but a spider bite.) and she drew some labs to check my thyroid. Turns out where normal range is something like 0.4-2.0 (for people with previously diagnosed thyroid issues) and mine was….

….19.85

Um….yeah. No wonder I wasn’t doing well, even though I was on Weight Watchers.

Since then, I have been in titrated treatments and have finally found a decent dose for me (although I need a repeat blood draw soon) and have lost 21 of the pounds I’d gained, and that coupled with a 16 pound loss after Alex was born, means I’ve lost….simple math, Becky, you can DO it, 37 pounds since last March.

I hit a plateau in Weight Watchers in November, so I went off it in January (because why fucking bother?) and lost a couple more pounds.

Last week, after 2 weeks of going to the gym 3-4 times a week, I started back on Weight Watchers, telling myself that if I didn’t lose even a pound in 3 weeks, that I wasn’t going to bother. The scale had to move in the right direction if I was going to measure every damn thing I put in my mouth, right?

Today was the first day that I had to weigh in, and I wasn’t expecting much to happen. I’d been working so damn hard for so damn long to see results go in the wrong direction, and that’s just so fucking discouraging.

After months of no real progress, I have now lost 2 pounds. In a week.

What’s interesting to me right now is how much better that makes me feel. It’s such a minor change, really, in the grand scheme of things. It’s not like I lost 20 pounds in a week (although that might be cool, too) and it’s not like I’m not aware that the first weigh-in is typically the one where you lose the most.

It’d be one thing if I’d gained the weight the old fashioned way (eating my brains out) and I would say things like I did after I had Ben, “Damn those cheese fries we’re easier to put down than to take off!” and feel like at least I enjoyed the hell out of eating like shit.

Remember how fun it was, Ashley?

Maybe I can get the rest of this weight off before Alex’s 15th birthday, right?

37 lbs down, 17 to go.

Now if I could only tell my body to remove some of this booby fat, I’d be thrilled. My enormous breasticles seem to be my children’s gift to me, but I want to exchange them for a slightly smaller size now. They’re ridiculous.

————–

So what can buoy you out of the depths of despair and give you a sense that the Universe sometimes does really like you?

I’m suffering from a major bout of The Crankies and every time I go to write a post, it sounds like I’m just being a whiny damn bitch. Mainly because that’s exactly what how I’m behaving. Rather than bore you with the things that are annoying me (the oatmeal took too long to cook, the cats are following me around, people who stand over me waiting for my machine at the gym make me want to bash their heads in) I am going to post some damn pictures.

Maybe I’ll get over myself this afternoon and put something real up later.

Here is my bomb-diggity wedding cake, which happened to be the only successful battle that I won over The Wedding That Ate My Life.

These are my Metal Heads, and some of my oldest friends. And interestingly, although this was obviously at my wedding, my husband is nowhere in sight. Maybe he was fixing his makeup.

While it looks like a) I’m pregnant and b) that we’re having a moment, what The Daver is doing right now is reminding me that I cannot leave my own wedding. Pretty much most of the wedding I spent begging The Daver to let me go. Oh, and I’m not pregnant, it’s the pouffy thing under my dress making me appear this way.

(see Benner in the background?)

I know you’re probably all “what the hell is up with this chick and the pictures of her wedding?” And I would be too. It’s not like this was the best day of my life or anything (it wasn’t. Seriously.) and I want to relive it over and over.

It’s a matter of being Cranky AND Lazy. The rest of our pictures are on the computer downstairs (my house has about 4,874 computers. Seriously.

Aunt Becky done graduated.

Isn’t my face sexxy? I wish that were my driver’s license photo. Then I’d be beating dudes off with a stick. Both the kids are in this photo, but one of them is quite invisible.

Alex says “Get me away from all of these 6 year olds. They scare me!”

Thank you to everyone who complimented my site design! It was done by a special ickle guy I call “The Daver.” Honestly, it was a template that he set up for me, not a design I paid someone for. I’m not opposed to that, and Dave swears that he can do it for me, but I am not smart enough to know WHAT I’d like to do with it. I have no mental picture about what would be flippin’ sweet, so I go with pre-made templates.

That may have been the most boring paragraph I have ever typed. Well, aside from when I had to write research papers on research methods. That was far more boring, as I’m sure you can imagine.

————-

What the fcuk is the deal with the whole Hannah Montana thing? I saw what’s-her-face on Idol Gives Back, but I just didn’t quite get the appeal. It’s not as bad as the Bratz dolls or anything equally hootchie, but I don’t see why kids go insane for her.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

————

All last week I’d been looking forward to getting down and dirrrty in my garden over the weekend when I have another parent to watch the wee one, lest he climb into a bees nest or something thinking that it was A Ball! In typical form, it was either rainy or cold both days.

And it’s supposed to freeze tonight.

*headdesk*

I am so totally moving somewhere else.

————-

The Mommy Wants Vodka request line is open and ready for business.

Want me to tell you the story of…something? Give me a holler and I’ll do what I can. The only stipulation is that it has to be the story of something that actually happened, not some elaborate fantasy. My fantasy story would involve lots of prescription pills and naps. Not very exciting stuff, indeed.

————

Is the prospect of taking 2 kids to Disney World while The Daver is in meetings all day totally brilliant or totally stupid? Oh, those 2 kids are MY 2 kids, not random kids.

Anyone want to come with and help?

————

All of you lurkers who have come out from the shadows and said ‘Howdy’ to me have totally made my week. You people rock.

————

After a couple month hiatus from The Diet, I am back on the wagon and hungry as hell. Without those 10 extra nursing points, I’m damn hungry. Suddenly all of the foods that I cannot eat sound positively lovely because, well, I can’t eat them anymore. I’ve got about 20 lbs to lose before October, when my best friend gets married (Hi Ashley! Want to bring some stuff over for me to take to the Salvation Army? I could use a good pee-stained mattress or some cans of paint! It would make my garage sexy!).

Before you tell me that I can DO IT! Let me remind you that my thyroid hates me with a vengeance and would prefer that I were about 10 pounds overweight at all points in time. It’s like an insecure lover, trying to fatten me up to keep me all to itself.

I’m gonna try, but I can’t promise that I will be able to do it. Sorry, Ashley, I may be your pudgy bridesmaid after all. I’ll try to get some acne in the meantime so I’ll be the ugliest bridesmaid ever. You’ll be apologizing for me for YEARS to come!

————

After making a huge fuss over how stupid I thought Twitter was, I’m considering signing up. It will either be a glorious mistake or a great idea.

What do you think of Twitter?

———–

I hate rainy days.