Housekeeping 101

Warning: With this post, I reveal the depths of my lameness to you. Read on.

I have been thinking about posting on this topic--housekeeping, that is--for awhile now, but I just haven't been sure how to approach it. I just feel that if I have a diagnosable disorder, my housekeeping is a major player. I don't even really know how to explain this, but I'm going to try.

Prior to giving the finger to the man, my schedule was insane. I worked lots of long hours at a job 80 miles from my front door. I also spent a year going to school at night earning education credits and volunteering at schools as part of the same enterprise. Oh, and I was unsuccessfully trying to conceive a baby for 15 months, so that took 45 seconds out of my schedule every other day, too. (Just kidding, Big K. I couldn't resist.) Whatever. I have been one of the busy people who suck for a long, long time. Despite this, I tried to keep my house clean in between work, homework, and wasting my husband's seed. The way this generally worked is that I would actually sit down every couple weeks, look around, and freak the fuck out that I hadn't vacuumed/dusted/toilet cleansed in way too long, and then I'd spend six hours scrubbing like a freak show. And I'm gonna be honest here, I had (and have) a tendency to clean when I'm feeling stressed out. If everything else is out of control, I can at least control the sparkle in my bathtub. It is mind-numbing, escapist, and productive...quite the trifecta.

Now, I am not a germ freak. Quite the contrary, actually. I've done things with cutting boards that are most definitely considered bad form by fans of food safety. However, I have this thing where it is very, very difficult for me to relax if there is shit to be done in terms of tidying or cleaning. My basic needs are as follows: food, sleep, tidy shelter. If I do not have the "tidy" in there, I kind of feel like things suck. During my busy years, this was a major bone of contention in the K marriage, because I could not keep house to my own standards. So I asked Big K for help regularly. And while he occasionally mopped something 7 weeks after I first asked, the guy just does not give a shit about keeping house. So he tried, sometimes, but it was a disaster. I yelled a lot, as per usual. Things quieted over the years, but overall this has been a bad issue for us.

Fast forward to now. I am home all day. I now ask almost nothing from my husband in terms of dealing with our household. He is working like a dog all day at one of the most stressful jobs known to man and parenting when he is home, whereas I am here and keeping this house is part of my job. You can think your disapproving feminist thoughts about that if you like, but I think it is fair. It has also reduced the amount of conflict in our home by about 90%, which is a nice bonus. The problem is that since I am home all day looking at this 2000+ square feet of homestead, I see everything that could potentially be done. And I try to do it. And, for a really long time, I felt like I couldn't get a handle on it. I know it seems ridiculous that someone who is home all day cannot successfully manage to have a consistently clean house, but it is true. First off, there is the Phook-nado and her unbelievable need for supervision, which really cuts into my light bulb dusting time. And then there is the fact that there was no method to my madness. And I do mean madness. It would start if I noticed filth in the bathtub. I would tell myself I needed to clean the bathtub. But then while I had the stuff out, I cleaned the sink, the toilet, the floor, the mirrors. And as I was walking to get something else I'd notice a speck of something on a cabinet, and start washing down the front of all the kitchen cabinets. And then I'd look in a cabinet and see disorder, and start organizing mixing bowls. And then I'd realize that I had bowls in two different cabinets that should be together and start rearranging the whole kitchen. Do you get what I am saying? Madness. But the thing is, it just wasn't effective. There was always still dirty shit somewhere, and I'd be embarrassed if people stopped by unexpectedly. There was no order to my attempts at order. And I sincerely disliked the snowball effect that would always occur once I started. Basically, I was having cleaning seizures....wild, uncoordinated, exhausting.

And then, I read this post on this blog I lurk around on every now and then. (Perhaps I should comment and tell her she changed my life?) Anyhow, this woman blogged about this Motivated Moms chore planning system, and she sold me. I downloaded this system for a few bucks and I have been following it for several weeks. It may seem like a psycho who has a tendency to do too much should not need someone else to "motivate" her, but what I really needed was an orderly system to get shit done at reasonable intervals. Basically, this thing gives you some things that you do every day, and then specific jobs for each day of the week in addition to that. Now, I admit that some of the daily chores might seem a bit excessive (such as sweeping the kitchen daily), but by and large they are reasonable. (And, for the record, you'd be surprised how many Cheerios I sweep up every day.) There is also a space where you can write in your own daily chores. I added "eat 3 meals" since this is not my strong suit, what with all the manic scrubbing and whatnot. The "big" jobs you do each day then appear at regular, reasonable intervals, with some random shit you would not think of thrown in for shits and giggles. So on Mondays you vacuum your 1st floor (or main rooms), on Thursdays you mop your kitchen, every other week you change your sheets, every couple days you swap the hand towels in your bathroom, etc. This is great for me because the intervals at which you do things are pretty close to perfect. Just the day I notice dust accumulating somewhere is the day I'm scheduled to dust it. And, I hate to admit it, but when they throw one of the random tasks in there like "clean computer screen and mouse" I get kind of excited and think, "Shit, I bet our mouse is disgusting...I never would have thought of that. I will go cleanse it." And then there are things that show up like, "Pick a box or bag of clutter and sort through it." These are kinda my favorites. So, over the course of a couple weeks you have your basic cleansing of things under control, and you have made some progress on the clutter beast. The thing I like the most about it is that I force myself to stop when the things on the day's list are done. And that is it. So if I feel a cleaning seizure coming on, I can calm the fuck down, secure in the knowledge that I will be dusting/vacuuming/polishing that obnoxious surface in a mere 24 hours. And the funny thing is that by calming down about these matters, my house has actually gotten cleaner and neater than it has ever been. Odd, that. (Note to self: Apply this lesson to other arenas of your life, jackass.) I will admit that some of the shit the Motivated Moms tell you to do is borderline ridiculous, but I'm being honest here, so I'm going to admit that that's one of my favorite parts of the whole thing. As I clean the dining room light fixture, I feel strangely nostalgic for a time I never lived in. I feel like I'm doing something nice for my family to make our abode an orderly, comfortable place, and I take pride and pleasure in it. I know, I'm deeply unwell. Once an overachiever, always an overachiever.

Now, in addition to becoming a Motivated Mom, I read a review for this book, Organic Housekeeping, by Ellen Sandbeck. I asked for it for my birthday and Auntie Hode came through. So the icing on my motivated cake is that I am reading this crazy worm composting wizard's recommendations for not blowing up the planet in pursuit of cleanliness. I'm only about a fifth of the way into the book, but I now have a little stack of rags made out of freshly cut up t-shirts (the one-two punch of the Motivated Moms telling me to declutter something and Sandbeck telling me to re-use something...do you hear the angels singing?) which I will be using to tidy the Phook zone after feeding times at the zoo. Okay, it's not rocket science, but I was using a lot of paper towel and I'm not particularly proud of it. I have all sorts of plans brewing for the transformation away from overcleaning cleaning products. (Throw away your antibacterial shit and do us all a favor, please.) So, yeah, I'm feeling quite smug that I was already composting, but there is more that can be done to crunchify my cleaning, and I'm working on it.

So, there, I had to tell you about it. If housekeeping is not any sort of priority for you, please don't think ill of me, to whatever extent you can restrain yourself. I do feel kind of silly about this whole thing. I question whether or not I'm pathetic, busying myself with this nonsense. Is it a gross misuse of the 57 extra IQ points I've got rattling around upstairs, or is it okay to concern myself with this pursuit? I guess the answer is that it makes me feel content and worthwhile and like I have important things to do. And even after you've flicked off the man, you need at least a little bit of that.

I'm just not very good at being careful

Shit. So I rolled out of bed this morning and bid adieu to a friend who had spent the night. I got dressed, went downstairs with Phook and put her in the high chair. I then went in the bathroom and put away a bunch of gauze pads and other wound dressings - they'd been out for my friend because she had some nasty road rash from a rollerblading incident. I then went into the kitchen, reached into the dish drainer for Phook's cereal bowl, and seriously fucking hurt myself. And I am going to tell you about it. But first, let's discuss the larger problem.

Now, Big W is one of those people who by and large has their shit together. If I need to return something I purchased in 2001, I can find the receipt in 5 minutes. If I need to prepare dinner for unexpected guests, it will happen without incident. I've never overdrawn my checking account. I know what is up. However, I have this raging tendency to injure myself rather stupidly. And spill things. And knock things over. And bulldoze something that really requires a tweezer. I have to admit I was kinda in denial about this until one day a couple years ago after I'd done something ridiculous and Big K said to me, "You're just not very good at being careful." I initially rejected this notion and tried to make the case that I was indeed quite careful. I cited all the things I cited earlier in the paragraph. He countered that I was certainly organized and on top of shit, but not careful. After a couple hours of pondering this, I had to agree. Since then, whenever I turn my mixer on too high and send gelatinous contents all over the kitchen or fall down a flight of stairs or bonk Phook in the head with a blunt object, we smile and Big K says, "You're just not very good at being careful."

Since this is the case, often hilariously, I knew I would eventually blog about it. So I started taking some pictures of things I did to myself and saved them for the right moment to post them, a moment when I had really done it up good. That moment occurred today. So, let us review these images of injuries past.

Here we have a scene I created earlier this year when I was chopping celery. I slipped with the knife and did something heinous to my finger. I then put on a latex glove to contain the biohazard and kept chopping, but not before taking a picture for you:

This Spring, I had my mother-in-law and brother-in-law over for dinner. Mid-meal, I for some reason went upstairs, and decided that I must carry my cat, Uncle Growler, back down with me. I then slipped on about the 2nd step from the top on my sagging pant leg and launched myself, and the cat, down the entire flight of stairs. This was noisy. Everyone was pleased that I had not been carrying Phook. I was not pleased to have done this to myself:

There have been hundreds of incidents like this. Now, let's resume where I left off, which was about 6:30 this morning. I reached into the dish drainer in the sink to retrieve the cereal bowl, forgetting that the slicing and grating blade of my new food processor (a birthday gift from my parents) was also in the sink. I instantly felt horrific pain in my left ring finger. I looked down and saw gushing blood. And then I saw the skin flap. Yeah, um, I sliced a good half inch down into my finger, creating a nice fishtail of flapping flesh about the size of half a sugar cube. (Sorry about that puke on your keyboard.) I grabbed a piece of paper towel to stop the geyser, walked upstairs to a nesting Big K, and calmly informed him he needed to take me to the ER for stitches. He looked at the fillet o' finger and agreed. I called my dad, a longtime EMT and had him come over and confirm that this would not simply heal with a Band-Aid. While I was waiting for him to arrive, I used my new labelmaker to create the following:

Dad indicated it would be prudent to seek medical attention, and bandaged me up. Phook went over to Grandma J's and we were off. We finally arrived and I was promptly escorted to the Big W Suite where the wound was cleaned, I was tetanus shotted, and the doctor informed me that "flap lacerations" do better with surgical glue than with stitches. I was then glued back together and bandaged.

Now, here's the thing. I couldn't stop gagging and laughing the whole time. On the ten scale, the pain was mysteriously only a one. But I kept thinking about the wound and it was activating my gag reflex because this is the fucking grossest thing ever. Then I'd laugh at my shitty luck until I couldn't breathe. All in all, I was acting crazy. Wouldn't you, though, really?

So, anyhow, here is the hand I can't get wet for a week - I'm sure it will still be a sterile field after 147 diaper changes...

When I returned home from fetching my Phook, I discovered that my husband had made his opinions about the situation known via caution tape:

Charming, to be sure.

So, there you have it. I'm just not very good at being careful.

And I just want to throw it out there that every letter "s" and "w" in this post was brought to you with a great deal of effort. Please appreciate them.

Today is brought to you by the letter "B"

Hello, people. It is Big W's birthday today, so this blog is being sponsored by the letter "B." Phook is on the bandwagon too, saying, "Ba ba ba ba" constantly. So, yeah, I am 28 today. This is the first birthday where I actually stopped and thought, "Hmm, I'm kinda getting old." Now, if you're 42 and you're reading this, you probably just cursed me, but that's okay. You're right, I could be a lot older. But I've never really been much for contemplating age, and this year has given me a bit of pause. I'm not crying myself to sleep or anything, but I feel I may no longer be a child.

To celebrate the day, Big K got up with Phook when she roostered in the new day. They then went downstairs and made me pancakes. 28 of them. They were miniature, but not that miniature. I got through the teen years, with a little assist from Phook. Yum. Then my husband gave me my gift. Before I tell you what it was, let's look at a brief history of Big K's gifts to Big W.

Things started out okay, back in the day. I recall getting a nice heart-shaped necklace once, even though it was gold and he hadn't yet figured out that I preferred white gold or silver. For my 21st birthday, he got me several dozen peach roses (my favorite), and I thought they were beautiful for the split second I saw them before I collapsed on the bathroom floor and spent the evening vomiting from a migraine. (I like to be original and decided that I'd put a twist on the traditional 21st birthday vomit comet.) There were some good Christmases that involved me pointing my fat, greedy finger at jewelry containing sapphires and come Christmas morning, I was not disappointed. My fat, greedy finger was also once adorned with a rather large engagement ring, and that was nice. Those were the good years. Since then, and particularly since moving back to The Woods (and away from retail), Big K has not exactly come through in the gift department on several occasions. He's not much of a planner. And when you live far away from retail establishments, it's kind of hard to come up with a reasonable gift on the day of the event. I distinctly recall a Valentine's Day that snuck up on the man that forced him to go to Kwik Trip (our local convenience store) and attempt to pry a romantic gift from the jaws of the snack cake aisle. The result made me cry. There have been a couple birthdays that just up and smacked him in the face, resulting in no gift or card and a lot of freaking out on my part. A few times I believe he has actually pulled into the driveway on an occasion, realized he doesn't have a gift yet, flown back out of the driveway and to our local jewelry store, and come back six minutes later with a small item still in the store bag and handed it over to me. He also often falls prey to the charms of items with batteries, cords, or other technical nonsense, which of course he would like, but perhaps I would not feel were reasonable expressions of his love for me. Examples include computer speakers, an XBox game, some cord that should allow me to listen to my ipod over my car speakers were I ever able to hook it up, and the like. I also got a box full of kitchen utensils this past Christmas, including a dish scrubbing tool and a can opener. Now, these gifts show that he thought ahead by virtue of the fact that they were actually purchased somewhere at least 24 hours in advance of the holiday, which is positive. But they don't exactly scream "loved and cherished." Oh, there have been flowers on occasion. And for my birthday last year I got a gift certificate for a prenatal massage, which I still haven't used because my ass got thrown on bed rest before I had a chance to get myself to the spa. That was a legitimately sweet gift. But by and large, I am the recipient of can openers, computer speakers, and occasions marked by things that aren't cards.

There have been fights about this in my home, particularly around the missed birthdays. I claim that if he can shop for electronic devices online and have them shipped to our home, he should also be able to figure out that all my favorite shopping locations allow you to purchase gift certificates right over the internets. Furthermore, you can buy a lot of shit from online retailers any minute of any day. Furthermore, you can make cards. Furthermore, you can call my mom or sister and ask them for ideas. His counterargument is that by bringing up the failures of holidays past, I am setting him up to fail. He also argues that I am difficult to shop for (a ridiculous notion). He also cites our totally shared finances and my monitoring of the outgoing cash as a roadblock. (I tell him to withdraw cash from the ATM, but this is generally met with grunts.) So things have gotten a little crazy around here a few times around Big W holidays. There has been anger and stomping.

So, this year, he tells me, "I've been listening and I know what you want. I got it covered this year." So I am freaking pumped. I am thinking that I will be getting something I expressly want that also happens to be personal and thoughtful. I set the bar a bit high, methinks. This morning, I was all excited after the pancake breakfast, which convinced me that I was really in for a treat in the gift department. Personal, thoughtful, the works. I felt the package he handed to me and was dismayed to feel the telltale plastic shell that covers an electronic device. Through the packaging, it felt like a remote control. I steeled myself for the worst, and tore into it hoping for the best.

A label maker.*

I received a label maker. Now, don't get me wrong, I have mentioned on a couple of occasions that I would like a label maker. And I do have a homemade label that simply says "Hosedog" that I had on the window of my old car that is now peeling off the window of my van, because labels aren't really meant to be twice affixed, and he noticed this and thought it would be swell if I could make a new one. But I just wasn't expecting to see a label maker when he'd been saying how he'd been listening and gotten me something I really wanted. Would you have expected it to be a label maker? I mean, I like the label maker. I made a label that says "Circus Animal" and gave it to Uncle Growler. I made a label that says "Phook Rules" and put it on her high chair. I even made a label that says "Most Romantic Gift in the World," complete with the pig face icon, and affixed it to the label maker itself. I mean, I will indeed label things. It's not that. It's just...a label maker.

When I told my sister about my gift she said, "How could he get it so wrong and not be on the autism spectrum?" Given the sweet pancake gesture, my personal reaction hadn't been quite as intense, but the basic sentiment is essentially apt. When I showed it to my mom, she looked like someone had slapped her. When I told Big K's mom, she was like, "Um, okay, a label maker." When our step-niece called to wish me happy birthday and asked what he got me and I told her, she just kinda laughed. What is it about men that makes them think of functionality even when they are trying to do something thoughtful for their wife? Oh, I know there are tons of guys who knock it out of the park for every occasion, but Big K is just not one of them. When it comes to gifts, he's kind of a brickheaded stereotypical lug.

Oh, I don't mean to be petty and shitty and materialistic. And I realize I kind of am. I'm not pissed or wounded or offended or any of that about this particular gift. Basically, I just don't get it. I don't get why after nine years the man still generally has a rough go of it when it comes to putting together something sweet for the wife. Of course, I would rather have a husband who treats me right 365 days per year than some smarmy assface who treats his wife like dogcrap and then buys back her love with a tennis bracelet come Christmas morning. So, I've got that going for me, which is nice. But I remain confused. And so does he. I've been jovially ribbing him about this gift since opening it, and he's taking it really well. But as I report the reactions of others to him, he has become increasingly distraught. When I tried to explain that it just wasn't a very personal gift, he said, "It's very personal. Every label you make with that thing can be personalized." So, there you have it. On this issue, I suspect we have reached an impasse. Therefore, I have told my sister she is to henceforth call Big K several weeks in advance of any occasions necessitating gifts and provide consultation and assistance as needed, billable of course at her standard hourly rates.

All this has made me reflect on what I want in a gift. Am I really hard to shop for or hard to please? I guess the thing is that I want a gift that just shows someone put some thought into it. The more thought the better. Because I want to be thought about, not spent on. So jewelry still in the jewelry store bag is kind of the worst possible gift. Even if was purchased that day, I'd like to be tricked into thinking it wasn't with some gift wrap that I didn't see applied and a card affixed. You know what I mean? Is that psychotic? It's the same damned gift...but do you see what I mean, people? Just at least make it look like you fussed over my ass, even if you didn't.

So, that is it. Let us recall fondly that the day started with 28 pancakes made by my wonderful husband, and delivered to me bedside by one Big K and his charming, syrupy little assistant Phook. It was a nice birthday, yes it was.





*In the interest of full disclosure, I must also admit that we are trying to plan a day trip to Six Flags Great America, which will also be part of my gift should it come to pass. But don't let that distract you.

One of the more profound disappointments of my life

Seriously. Now, I don't know where you are all from, but Big W is from ol' Wisconsin, home of the Milwaukee Brewers. While, with the possible exception of this season, they are one of the more disappointing teams in professional baseball, they do offer one sweetass thing that your team does not bring to the table. The freaking racing sausages. Prior to parenthood and the implosion of my a) personal freedom and b) personal finances, I liked to take in a baseball game on occasion. But I've gotta admit, it was always the sausage race I really got excited about. In case you live in the sad world where you don't know what the hell I'm talking about and you're too lazy to click on my link, I guess I'd better explain. Essentially, humans dressed as various sausages (bratwurst, hot dog, italian sausage, polish sausage, and chorizo, to be precise) run a race during the 7th inning stretch of Brewers' games. There is a lot of hijinks involved in these races. Once, a player on an opposing team even knocked a sausage right in his meaty head with a bat. But generally it is more good natured fun, with sausages tripping over each other as they race and all the children (and me) squealing with delight from the stands. (Or, if you're me, right up as close to the sausage starting block as you can get.) It's just awesome to watch tubular meats race. Don't deny it.

Now, beyond loving the race as a whole, I have a special affinity for a particular sausage. Rather than dicking around, I'm just gonna admit that it's the Polish sausage. I think it's his cute striped shirt, really. Or maybe his crooked grin. I'm not really sure...all I know is that he had me at hello. I always, always root for the Polish. I'd sure like to hug him. And therein lies one of the more profound disappointments of my life. Today, I received our local newspaper, and my eyes landed upon a giant photograph of all five sausages. I thought to myself, "Why on earth would the international superstars that are the sausage racers be on the front page of The Woods' paper?" My eyes then turned into two hot burning coals as I read the caption, which informed me that they had been at my city park to celebrate the 4th of July. I seriously dropped it on the floor and screamed, "Noooooooooooooooooo!!!" Fuck. For real. The fucking sausages were like a quarter mile away from me while I was sitting on my ass at my parents' house, EATING a motherfucking sausage. They posed for photos. They signed autographs. They shared their sausage love with all kinds of idiots. And I, friends, was not one of them. This is just piss in my Cheerios. I called my mom, wailing, to ask her if she'd known the sausages were coming, and she informed me that she had known, and smugly said that I "should read the paper," even though she knows I do (just not very carefully, apparently). She calmly stated she did not know I was a sausage fan. Well, now you all know, and I'd like you to consider yourselves sentinels for upcoming sausage appearances. If the sausages will be appearing at your local Porkfat Days or your annual Pummelo Festival, I want to see it in my comments. This shall not happen again. Pisspants.

Now, friends, this is a multi-purpose post. I'm just full of amusement today, so I'm going to share some more nonsense with you. I would like to tell you about a piece of mail I received today. First, let us go back, way back, to when Big W was in high school. Around about that time, I got on some mailing list with my name spelled incorrectly. For a time, I received copious amounts of mail addressed to "Shitni". (Since I've already revealed it once in the buttcrack of this blog, I will just throw it out there that the first name on my birth certificate is Whitni.) So, yeah, somehow my name was morphed into a vulgarity. Coincidence? I think not. But anyhow, I always thought that there was no way on God's green earth that a name could be more hilariously butchered than that. I was wrong. Today, friends, I received a piece of mail from Hyman's Seafood in Charleston, SC. I had a wondrous meal there on our family vacation, but I unfortunately left my prescription sunglasses behind there. I called and asked them to mail them to me, which they did, almost exactly one month later. I provided them with my name and address. I spelled all parts of the same. And today I received a package addressed to none other than "White Prowl." I am not shitting you. First name "White." Last name "Prowl." Now, I'm not gonna share my last name since then all potential lurkers who hate me could find me and start egging my house, but I will tell you that it shares only two letters with the name "Prowl" and the "P" is not one of them...we all know I am the matriarch of the K Family. It is absolutely not possible to confuse my last name with the word "Prowl," most especially given that it is only 4 letters long and I spelled it for the guy repeatedly. I happened to be painfully, stent-danglingly walking Phook up the block when I saw the mailman, and he personally handed me the package so he could laugh in my face. Dude. White Prowl. White Prowl. White Prowl? I hereby posit that there is no human on earth named White Prowl. If your name is White Prowl, well, God have mercy on your soul. Crazy Hyman did throw a free t-shirt in the box, so no hard feelings.

And, finally, just a tidbit about my root canal today. First off, I painfully pissed my pants before the procedure began. My already temperamental bladder is just bladder infection-esque freaking ungodly horribly terrible given that I have a stent in my urinary tract, and I had just driven an hour, and their bathroom required an actual key to enter. I unleashed piss in my pants, badlike. I sat there for a few minutes wondering if it was worse to wear pissed pants during a 1.5 hour dental procedure, or whether it was worse to have wadded up pissed underwear in your purse for a 1.5 hour dental procedure. I chose the former, and went commando in my less-pissed jean shorts. So it started off in lovely fashion. The actual root canal was not the most horrific dental procedure I have endured, but given that I have had braces twice, had a traumatic procedure called a frenectomy when I was a child, was born without the tooth to the left of my front tooth, sported a retainer that cranked open on a weekly basis, have had two bridges put in, and have 4 existing crowns, that's not saying much. What was absolutely Twilight Zone weird crazy about this dental procedure was the conversation between Captain Endodontist and his assistant, which focused mainly around movies. I really enjoy movies and I think my knowledge of them is probably slightly above average, but I am not a movie fact savant or anything. However, listening to these two clowns discuss who was in various movies was just off the hook. I learned that Jimmy Stewart and Harry Belafonte were the stars of the movie "Look Who's Coming to Dinner." No shit, people. There was also an extended discussion of whether or not "On Golden Pond" actually was a movie. Then there was some discussion about whether or not they could whistle, which somehow descended into a discussion of whether or not they could "make that farting sound with their armpits." Thank heavens that my endodontist does have this capability. I really thought I was gonna freak out. I was trying to go to my happy place so as to focus on something other than the wee files being jammed repeatedly into my tooth roots (which, for the record, involved my cat Uncle Growler frolicking in a field of wildflowers with his imaginary girlfriend who is a furry orange and white striped cat), and these weirdos were seriously talking about armpit farting. Fuck. I paid this guy $820 to violate my tooth pit and just talk fucking nonsense to his fuckwit of an assistant. Again, how do I end up in the presence of these people?

Okay. I don't think I have anymore really ridiculous things to say. So that's it.

Kid Rock tour ends abruptly

Well, people, kid rock has been jettisoned. Not by the power of my bladder, but by the tools of a hot chick urologist who went spelunking in my urinary tract yesterday and surgically removed it. Yeah, cats, after nearly two months it became clear that I was not passing ol' kid of my own accord.

We got up at the crack of dawn, 5 a.m. (which is approximately 9 minutes earlier than our rooster daughter alerts us to the new day on a regular morning). We rolled up at the hospital and were promptly directed to the wrong surgery area, where I was informed I was not on the schedule and proceeded to freak out just a wee bit for a few minutes. My husband took time to snag a cup of coffee in the waiting area and pronounce it free and say it was worth the walk. I informed him that it was not free...it was indirectly paid for by our health insurance. He assured me that if his employer paid him an extra grand per month, he would not spend it on insurance. No, he said, he would spend it on candy. This made me laugh like a hyena and scare all the old people in the waiting room.

Anyhow, after finding the correct location, things went smoothly in terms of being hung up on a meat scale and weighed for anesthetic calculation purposes. I was then x-rayed and hauled to the pre-op area, where my nurse, a very kind lady named Verne, proceeded to miss my veins on 4 separate occasions and dig around in each for about 10 minutes in the hopes of securing an IV line. After her 4th attempt, she asked an anesthesiologist in the room to start my IV, which he did successfully with a smaller needle. Woof. I then caught sight of the neurosurgeon who did my back surgery a few years back, as he was going to be removing a brain tumor for the patient in the pre-op bay next to me, and the flames of my sweet love for him were briefly reignited as our eyes met. I was then pumped full of "relaxation" meds, which put me in a raging pre-coma. I have vague recollections of being wheeled into the operating room and told to breath deeply from a face mask, but the next thing I knew I was talking to a recovery room nurse about, of all things, canning. I probably told her I can raccoon, given my level of consciousness, which could be called incomplete at best.

I was then wheeled into my own room where Big K informed me that kid rock had been removed without incident in one piece. (This is preferably to having it blasted into a million pieces, because then I'd still be pissing on my hand and straining my urine.) So kid is in an undisclosed lab right now being analyzed. I then ordered a ginger ale from the food service people at the hospital and passed out for several more hours.

The staff who helped me was all very kind and professional, until I got Nurse Crazy at shift change. I don't know what I do to attract nutters, but this woman was out of it. In the context of my joy over taking a nap, I mentioned having a 9-month-old child, and she, like many other people, said, "Oh, you never sleep the same again after you become a parent. No matter how old they get." This is a common sentiment that has been expressed to me several times, and I thought I was talking to someone sane. However, she then began to tell me horror stories about the things she endured with her children as they grew up. It started with still-normal things like teenage boys and cars, but it progressed to her telling me that she instructed her daughters' doctor to put them on birth control at age 14, and her husband almost divorced her over it. It then proceeded on to her finding out about the abortions her children had during their teen years and the abortions her sons' girlfriends had, so it turned out her first grandchild was technically her 4th grandchild. I'm in a post-anesthetic haze here, people, but I wouldn't have known what to say had I been fully cogent. And she told me the grand stories of how these horrors were unveiled to her as well. And many other great tales of parenting in the trenches. I'm just like, "Um, yeah, I sure like ginger ale. My 9-month-old is cute." Dude. Isn't there some nursing code of ethics that binds nurses to conduct themselves professionally with patients that excludes the sharing of this kind of personal information? There has to be. Woof. It was crazy weird. I got the fuck out of there.

Now, Nurse Crazy had instructed me to start with some dry toast and progress to other foods if that stayed down. Since I had been fasting since midnight and it was now after 2 p.m., I took her instructions quite seriously, and then promptly ignored them. Big K and I went straight to one of these "gourmet burger" chains and I housed a Blue Ribbon burger (burger, blue cheese, other fixings, etc.) and fries. Halfway home in the town where I had to pick up my prescriptions, we got ice cream. My stomach didn't stammer, stutter, or otherwise protest...just as I predicted. It was mighty tasty.

We got home and I passed out some more, and then the Grandparents J brought ol' Phook over for bed, as they'd watched her for the day. Not to toot my own horn, but that kid was SO happy to see me. She saw me and she stuck her tongue out between her lips and blew these excited, juicy bubbles of joy. She then powered around the living room floor with glee for an hour past her bedtime and before cashing out. It was nice, and made me glad I had survived the anesthesia.

And here we have the too much information paragraph, which you should skip if you don't want to read anything gross:

Now, the crappy thing about this whole procedure is that they left a stent in my kidney to relieve pressure in the ureter or whatever, since ureters tend to get pissed after they have been violated by surgical instruments and they can swell up and fuck up your shit. So I have a string that is attached to this stent dangling out of my person via my pee-er. It is rather disgusting. The whole bit is rather uncomfortable. Pottying feels like that special burn of a bladder infection. And the stent jabs and jousts and makes me feel bloated and crappy. And I am pissing 98% blood. And my discharge instructions say "no bending or lifting." Oh, hilarity. And I'm in a post-anesthetic state of narcolepsy. So, yeah, I officially feel like certified dogshit until this thing gets pulled out of me on Friday morning.

Big K was home most of today and my mother-in-law is coming over to chase Phook for part of the day tomorrow. Thursday I have to go in for a root canal in the afternoon, so at least I'll be lying down for part of that day as well. (How disturbing is it that a root canal seems vaguely appealing in these conditions?) So I should make it until Friday morning, although not without some discomfort. Poop. I hate to say it, but I am really missing my walks. I don't think it would be a good idea go to kid rockin' up and down the block dangling stent, but it's not out of the question.

So, there you have it.

This is empty

This is possibly the most pathetic thing that has ever activated my nostalgia reflex, but I'm going to tell you about it anyhow, because that's what I do. The above phooksoap dispenser is empty. Perhaps this is indicative of spotty bathing habits or underutilization of product, but it took over 9 months to use this vat o' babywash. Discovering that it is finally empty has made me reflect, just as a dead bug or a blade of grass or a bottle of ketchup occasionally makes me do. Let's discuss.

For some highly unusual reason, I had been watching this bottle of phooksoap, and thinking, "When that phooksoap is gone, this will really be real. I will really be a mom, and I will feel like a mom." Alas, I still don't feel that it is real. Oh, I know that Phook is real. It's the fact that I am a mom that is not real to me. I've thought about why this might be. I think it is rooted in my childhood perception of my parents. They were infallible, unbeatable, fearless, and perfect. They were gods. I had no inkling that they might be people who were afraid of something or bad at something. They were just my parents and they were unshakable. When you're a little kid, I think that's just the way it is. These people can do anything.

Now, me, I am all messed up. I'm afraid of several things, most notably clowns and being stalked and killed by a madman. I suck at a lot of things, most notably relaxing and apologizing. I don't know how to do a lot of stuff, like drywall and sewing. I am an ass a lot. In short, I'm not qualified to be one of these mythical creatures, a parent. I'm just me. Still me. Everyone yaps at your pregnant grill, "Having a baby changes everything." "Your life will never be the same." "Enjoy movie theaters/dining with cutlery/sleeping in now, because you're never going to do it again." While those things are fundamentally true, I expected some change within the core of myself that I have not experienced. Sure, I'm a little more inclined to give up my $7 bars of soap in order to buy diapers, and a lot happier because now I have a Phook to love, but the actual infrastructure of Big W remains unchanged. I still feel just like me. Still scared, still messed up, still all those things that you think parents aren't until you are one.

I don't know why I find that so odd. It's not like I expected to morph into a superhuman when I became a parent, but I guess I did expect to feel like someone different. Someone on the level with who my parents were in 1979. But I'm still just me. And an empty bottle of phooksoap is probably not going to change that.

I think it's possible that I will be staying me. And I think it's possible that Phook will see me the way I saw my parents when I was a child, which is just absolutely mind boggling to me. That is an awesome responsibility.

And now that I have exposed some intense inner weirdness to you, allow me to expose my nakey (although tastefully camouflaged) daughter to you in all her rad cuteness:

Other than that, I got nothin'.

Operation Strawberry

While I am tempted to woefully blog at you about the four-figure dental bills I am in the process of amassing as a result of a seriously fucked tooth, I'm not gonna do that. Nor am I going to bitch about the unhealth of my urinary tract and the fact that I'm having surgery next Monday to fetch out kid rock, although that is also an option. No, no, no. My glass is half fucking full even if it is cracked and leaking kidney stones and decaying tooth pulp, so I am going to share with you some sweet, sweet information about the preserving of foodstuffs. Strawberries are the subject at hand. Prepare yourselves to feel hunger.

Now, what we have here is my weird hobby/obsession. I like to take fresh food, do stuff to it, and then put it in jars and seal 'em up all prettylike, enabling myself or a lucky recipient to enjoy the gifts of our earth on some unspecified rainy day in the future. I like to can food like it's 1959. (In general, I like to pretend it's 1959, with the exception of house dresses.) But anyhow, yeah, I can. I also freeze and otherwise preserve, but I really like to can. In my first outing of the season, I attacked strawberries.

Now, last June I had a Phook in the hopper, but I was one tough pregnant broad, so I took Auntie Hode and went to a "U-Pick" strawberry farm and I rooted around in the dirt and picked 59 pounds of strawberries with my sister. I wanted to do the same this year with Phook on my back in her phook-toter, but being laden with a pregnant ureter in the form of kid rock*, I thought it unwise to go sweat in a field with a baby on my back, further dehydrating and taxing my sorry kidneys. (Actually, I would totally have done this without batting an eye, but my mom was policing my ass and pretty much threatened to end me if I went and played farmhand 3 days after my latest E.R. visit. And I still listen to my mom whenever humanly possible. She is formidable when it comes to protecting her young.) So, I called the the old "U-Pick" and ordered some 20 pounds of strawberries pre-picked. (I had to pay $2 per pound instead of the $1 per pound I would have had to pay if I'd picked my own. Sheesh.) We went and collected our goods and returned home and I killed those strawberries. And then I went to work on them.

The first thing I made was a frozen treat known as Lunchbox Strawberries. Essentially you hull and half them and then mix them with a little sugar and pectin and freeze. And then it is winter in Wisconsin and you have eaten enough root vegetables to fill a small shipyard and you go to your freezer and you grab a container of Lunchbox Strawberries and you eat them and you actually believe, if only for a moment, that you will see summer again. So that was my first at bat. Nice.

Next up, I ventured into some personally uncharted territory. I opted to make some Strawberry Lemonade Concentrate and can it. Basically, I bought a ton of lemons and robbed them of their juices. Then added some strawberries and sugar. Then heated it. Then canned it. Now, when I want to drink it (again, in the dead of Wisconsin's winter) I will mix it up with either water, tonic water, ginger ale, or some other liquid that is marriageable with fruity lemonade, and enjoy. Doesn't that sound like it would refresh your balls off?

It occurs to me that when I say "can" you may not know what the hell I am talking about. So I will explain. Essentially, you can preserve food like they did back in the day by tampering with it (heating it, adding appropriate amounts of acid or other agents to get the correct chemistry for not giving yourself botulism, etc.) and then putting it into glass jars with a special lid and then heating the jars in a canner (which is basically a giant pot of boiling water with a rack in it) until the lid forms a tight seal. Technically the food is good for one year from the date of canning but I've been known to eat stuff two or even three seasons later and I have yet to die and I think this is common practice. You take fruits or veggies or whatever at their peak of freshness and you capture it...only to release their magic on some special day in the future.

Okay, so after the lemonade concentrate was made, I decided to get a little gourmet on myself and I made strawberry dessert sauce. This is the kind of shit you see in specialty food stores in a fancy jar selling for about $11 for a very small quantity of product. This involved strawberries, some orange zest, some orange juice, the ubiquitous sugar, and possibly a couple other minor things I am forgetting at this juncture. People, can I tell you that I have communed with the gods in the production of this treat? I had a little of this left over that did not fit into a jar and I ate it over angel food cake. Holy balls, we are talking good. This little number will be enjoyed over breakfast foods such as waffles and pancakes, over ice cream, over fresh fruit, and over various dessert options. The light orange flavor creeping through those strawberries is a beautiful, beautiful thing. Ah. I almost want to sneak down to my canning stash in my basement and crack a jar and drink it. Perhaps even bong it through a funnel. But I won't. No. I will save it, like all things life-affirming, for January.

Next I made the old standby of strawberry freezer jam. If you're interested in making your own jams or jellys but are a bit nervous of the whole canning thing, I highly recommend you dabble in freezer jams. A centaur could make this shit. Buy yourself a package of Sure-Jell and pull out the insert. Select one of the 9 million recipes listed on there and go to town. This is seriously not difficult and it is a good way to get into the world of preserving if you ask me. You may be horrified by the amount of sugar required in the basic recipes but there is a variety of Sure-Jell for no sugar needed recipes if you want to go that route. I personally don't eat jam all that often so it is a real treat for me so I do generally go the sugar route and make it worth my while. But I have made no sugar versions for my dad who is diabetic and they turn out quite well too. Now, being a big old loser who likes to make bonbons at Christmastime, I usually use my homemade freezer jam inside my berry bonbons and let me tell you that very few things are as tasty as a homemade bonbon full of homemade jam. (It occurs to me that perhaps I am a loser for going to these lengths. Please don't tell anyone.)

Finally, we were down to the last 6 or so cups of berries so we decided to make a nice strawberry pie. Now, my guy, as much of an alpha-male as he is, enjoys baking. So I enlisted Big K in the pie project. He made the crust, from scratch, all by himself while I prepared the berries. And then we made us a strawberry pie, which really needs no explanation, and then we ate that bi-atch. Yum.

I will now present to you some photographic evidence of these labors (sans the Lunchbox Strawberries, which were already tucked in their little freezer bed when I busted out the camera):

Doesn't it just make you feel warm and cozy to look at those jars? Probably not, actually, but I derive immense pleasure from nice sealed canning jars full of goodness. It is fertilizer for the Big W soul, right there. Something about taking something the day it leaves the earth and transforming it into awesomeness that will last well into the future makes me feel like I am communing with my foremothers or something. I don't know. When canning jars seal they make a distinct popping sound and I do a little dance and Shakespeare's fairies are involved in some way. I think messing with food is my true calling in life, other than Phook-momming of course.

My batch of berries definitely yielded goodness this year. Here is an omen to prove it, the Big K and Big W love strawberry:


Next up, friends, I have a 25-pound box of peaches on order from South Carolina from my local farm bureau (don't ask me what this is, because I'm not sure) so that is probably my next adventure in the canning department. Peach salsa, homies. I can hear the jars popping already.




*Perhaps you are wondering why I am talking about kid rock again when I thought he had left the building. Turns out that Joe C was a red herring and I actually passed some amorphous non-stone, and it is still kid rock that is fucking up my shit. Go figure.