Category — Totally Off Topic

Did you know that there’s such a thing as a repeat root canal? As in, the first one didn’t take so they stick needles in your jaw and rip things out of your face all over again while you stay perfectly conscious and white-knuckle it because this time you skipped the Xanax?

Well, it happens — apparently often enough to warrant a brochure and everything.

A couple of weeks ago, I was minding my own business, eating my dinner and dessert. Somewhere between the feta-stuffed chicken breast and the chocolate brownie, the crown on my lower rear molar broke in half. No crack, no crunch, no uncomfortable swallow. It just broke — less than two years after getting it.

Now, if you read anything about my previous issues with this tooth, you won’t be surprised to know that I went to a completely different dentist for treatment. I’m pretty sure that, unlike my previous dentist, this one did not blow his way through dental school. He seemed pretty legit when he referred me for a repeat root canal with a different endodontist.

Because I had to throw out all of my thrush-laden frozen breastmilk, and because I couldn’t realistically have anyone watch all three kids for an entire day so I could pass out while high on sedatives, I decided to brave a root canal with only Novocaine.

Hell, I gave natural childbirth. I can surely survive a root canal without a hammer to the head, right?

Well, the technical answer to that question is yes. Yes, I did survive. But honestly, don’t EVER ask what a root canal consists of , and don’t EVER be a candidate for a second one. And whatever you do, DO NOT LOOK IT UP ON WIKIPEDIA. Because either way, it involves drills that smell like tire fires and the violent wrenching of tender gum tissues and something that looks like this.

Now, I await my replacement crown, which has put us squarely back into credit card debt but will probably actually fit the first time, rather than taking four fittings and three months like my last one.

If there’s a next time, though, fuck bravery. I’ll take an IV of Xanax in my freaking EYE, thank you very much.

I came home from running errands this evening. Pulling into our cookie-cutter subdivision, I saw something out of place: the flashing red lights of two ambulance trucks.

We live in an area of Florida that is rife, replete, overflowing with senior citizens. Many live here full time. Many more are seasonal residents, dubbed “snowbirds,” who filter in around Thanksgiving to clog up the roads, stand in the middle of the grocery aisles, cause accidents, wear loafers without socks, and pump much-needed money into our local economy. They trickle out by Easter, leaving the roads once again navigable for the rest of the blazing-hot summer.

So when I saw the flashing ambulance lights, I was semi-not surprised.

Until I saw who it was. Until I heard what happened.

We met quite a few of our neighbors at Halloween when we took the girls door-to-door. Directly across the street from us is an older couple. The wife works two jobs. The husband helps her walk their three dogs. When we met them at Halloween, she told us to come over for anything at all, including emergency babysitting or a cup of sugar. We returned the invitation.

This evening, I stepped out of the van, tempted to walk across and asked what happened. But then I heard the wife sobbing violently.

“Why did he die? Why did he die?”

He. Died. He. Died.

Her husband. Dead. Dropped dead of a heart attack on the side of the house. His body still lay in the grass, awaiting the coroner. Police cars pulled up, flicking their flashlights around the garden. Other cars pulled up. Grandchildren sobbed. Children wailed. People hugged.

Chris and I watched with morbid curiosity and sadness. We turned to our children. We turned to each other.

Why did he die?

That poor woman. Her husband’s body will be carried away. Her dogs will go to sleep. Her family will go home. And she’ll wake up to an empty house, the shadows of her husband omnipresent in every corner, every scent, every simple action. And yet, she’ll be alone.

I think of Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking.” I think of my mom. I think of my grandma.

I don’t often ponder what would happen if Chris died without warning, but when I do, the lack of ability to process this possibility is overwhelming. What would I do? What would the girls do?

What would we do?

I’m grateful that tonight, my husband is solidly asleep on the couch and my kids are breathing peacefully in their cribs.

My blog was down for I don’t know how long because I haven’t updated in an embarrassingly long time. Sorry ’bout that, folks.

The biggest news I have is that we’re going to spend our first night away from the girls tomorrow. I’m mildly freaking out. We won’t be gone even a full 24 hours, but we’ve never been away from them for that long, and certainly not overnight.

Really, I don’t know what is making me nervous. My in-laws are perfectly capable of taking care of them for that amount of time. Many of those hours, the girls will be sleeping. But still.

:::sob!!!!:::

I won’t get to put my babies to bed and wake up with them in the morning! I won’t get to feed them breakfast and change their diapers and clean up the food they throw on the ground! I won’t have to bend over my gigantic belly to clean up rejected toys and discarded raisins! I won’t have to forcefully pick up flailing children or convince anyone that they really want to go to bed . . .

Hmmm. And I’m freaking out why???

So, until I’m back from my overnight trip with some thrilling update or something, here’s a cute photo to tide you over.

If you are pregnant, or plan to get pregnant, and have any plans for moving at any point during your fertile years, I will give you this general warning now:

DON’T.

Thank me later.

My god. Moving while pregnant is pretty much the worst invention ever. It has been awful. My uterus is violently protesting my every movement. My ankles are telling me to just sit the eff down already. I wake up feeling drugged, I’m so tired.

But enough of my bitching.

The general house update is this:

In mid-July, we/the bank got a cash offer on our house, which we’ve had on the market as a short sale. The bank came back asking for more money. The buyer agreed. Everything seemed good, but I was secretly dreading the house inspection — and for good reason, it turns out. Our roof started leaking shortly before the inspection and got worse with every rain. During the inspection, the inspector told me that he suspected the roof was original to the house.

Our house was built in 1959. It is 2010. You do the math.

(Though you do have to hand it to good old-fashioned construction. A 51-year-old roof? Not bad.)

In addition to the roof situation, we found out our shower pan has been leaking for years — there was visible water damage that showed water has been seeping through the wall into our closet for a long time.

(Side note: With such major issues, we’re curious how the hell the house passed inspection five years ago when we bought it. The inspector was frank with me and said he feels we were really taken advantage of.)

Surprisingly, the buyer came back a couple of days later, still willing to buy the house cash if the bank would accept a slightly lower offer. Nearly one agonizing week later, the bank accepted the offer. Chris and I got the hell out of Dodge and signed a lease on a house.

Emotionally, it’s been a much more difficult adjustment than I expected. Going through all of our stuff at the old house stirred up a lot of memories — friends, parties, children, family. Moments of love and conflict. Gain and loss. All of the hopes and dreams we had when we bought the house five-and-a-half years ago, all being wrapped up in boxes and moved to another place that is not our own, a place we’re just borrowing. The reality of the financial and personal impact of a short sale and all it entails hit me too. It feels such like a failure, like we’ve lost something, like something was taken away from us. It’s a violent and humiliating feeling. A lot of emotions I didn’t think I had.

Of course, logically I realize that it’s not the end of the world, that we’re among millions of others in the same situation, that we’ll be fine and recover and life is all flowers and rainbows. The house was a huge weight on my shoulders that I can now let go of. I know all of this and, luckily, I think about the positive stuff more often than the shitty stuff.

I’ve heard that home has more to do with the people around you than with the walls you stare at. I guess, sure. But there is something to be said for the memories that walls hold.

There’s also something to be said for having all my Tupperware available for food storage rather than catching rain from a leaking roof, so…

I have this thing with my mouth.

No, not herpes. And get your mind out of the gutter. Jesus.

I’m a chewer. A chomper. I destroy pens, chomp endlessly on ice cubes, chew gum. I smoked for 15 years.

Point is, I release stress by chomping on things — including food. Sadly, I’m not one of those people that gets all sick to my stomach, loses my appetite and upchucks when I get stressed. Oh no, I run straight for the fridge. I think I’m the only bride that got fat before my wedding.

Right now, I’m experiencing some epic stress. We got the final approval papers from the bank on our short sale. The buyer has already put money into escrow. We have a closing date.

But…

But it’s all still pending the home inspection, which happens tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. Until we’re assured that the buyer still wants the place once he gets written proof of all the things wrong with the house, we can’t put down a deposit on a rental house.

NOT that we’ve had any luck finding anything we can afford that we would actually live in. We’ve looked at probably eight houses and so far, we’ve seen some crack dens and a couple of shoe boxes.

Basically, I have no fucking clue what’s going to happen with our house or where we’re going to live and it is driving. me. MAD.

Will we have to put the house back on the market? Foreclose? Will we end up moving when I’m gigantically pregnant? Will we be forced to move into a shitbox because we can’t find some place safe that also includes an intact roof and floor?

I don’t know.

So yeah. Stress. Want to eat. A lot. Can’t sleep. Going insane. Praying to a little plastic statue of St. Joseph that I buried upside down in my backyard.

This is not a rational person speaking here.

Luckily, there’s banana bread and M&Ms and Heath ice cream.

I don’t know about you, but nothing puts me in a more festive mood than making some hot, thick bean soup in the middle of August in Florida.

I’ve been saving this recipe for a Spanish-style bean soup for a while. The craving finally hit and I made it, using Spanish chorizo instead of andouille sausage. But that’s beside the point.

The point is this:

I’ve never used great northern beans as called for in the recipe. Neither have I ever worked with kale, a collard-like green, leafy vegetable.

Turns out that these items are pretty potent. The soup was delicious. Deee-li-shus. But I’m estimating that, between the kale and beans, there were approximately 18 grams of fiber per spoonful of my soup.

We ate the soup on Sunday evening. Within a couple of hours, it hit us. A little cheek lift here. A walking rat-a-tat-tat fart there. A poof of wind on the way to the kitchen.

Soon, these innocent gastrointestinal gusts started getting more dangerous. Throughout the night, Chris and I lifted the bed sheets — and not in a kinky sort of way, either.

Monday morning, Chris emerged from his daily visit to the throne, complaining of some minor intestinal upset. Specifically, his insides had liquefied and he was concerned that he would die of dehydration or an evaporated bowel.

Lucky for me, I have a stronger stomach. Gas, yes. Pee shits, no. Monday afternoon, I dared to have a bowl of the tasty soup for lunch. Again, within an hour or so, I was doing the one-cheek salute to expel the increasingly toxic fumes.

The problem wasn’t the farting in itself. Around here, we enjoy, announce and even celebrate our gas. It was the intensity, the frequency and the duration of the gaseous episodes that ended up posing an issue.

Eight hours after consuming my bean soup for lunch, I was still farting like a geriatric. Even Elise and Althea were noticing, imitating a farting sound every time Chris or I would pass gas. At one point, I went to the bathroom and Althea pointed at the bathroom door and said, “Ama! PPBBBLBLLLBBBP!”

I knew things were out of control when I let a silent-but-deadly one fly and saw the cat lift his head, take a sniff and — I shit you not — move to the other couch.

If you’ve ever owned a cat, you know that it takes a lot for a sleeping cat to get up and move from a comfortable couch.

Monday night, I decided to freeze the remainder of the soup. Tasty as the soup was, Chris’ tender stomach and my sulfuric intestinal juices couldn’t handle any more.

We chuckled at the whole experience — haha, crazy pregnancy cravings; haha fiber soup; haha our colons are gone.

At about 6 o’clock this morning, I wasn’t laughing anymore. There was no mirth or merriment when Chris threw back the sheets, jumped out of bed and screamed “AWWWWWWWWW SHIT!”

I flailed awake in a panic. “What?? What the fuck is going on?”

“God damn that bean soup! I just shit the bed!”

“…….Are you serious?”

“I dreamt I was taking a shit and I shit the bed. Mark your calendar. I’m 36 years old and I just . . . Oh JESUS CHRIST!” he screamed, holding his butt cheeks together as he ran off to the bathroom.

From behind the closed bathroom door, sitting on the toilet, shitting his brains out at 6 a.m.: “GOD DAMN THAT BEAN SOUP!!”

When my husband and I bought our house five and a half years ago, we were, like many first-time home buyers, horribly clueless.

Oh sure, I’d spent three months glued to HGTV. But back then, I wasn’t paying attention to (or they didn’t even have) shows like “House Hunters,” “Property Virgins,” “Holmes on Homes” or “My First Place.” Nooooo. I was watching useless crap like “Divine Design” and “Color Splash” — shows that provided approximately zero help in the home-buying process.

But I learned oh-so-much about faux finishes for bathroom walls!

We felt a tremendous amount of pressure to buy immediately. We were moving for our jobs and it was the peak of the housing market. It was the era of multiple bids and pending contracts within hours of a house being listed. Our boss had us convinced that we needed to BUY BUY BUY or we’d be living in a VAN down by the RIVER.

And of course, we knew everything so we didn’t dare ask our elders their opinions.

Our Realtor was of no help, either. She was acting as the agent for a bunch of us at the same company and was just raking in the commissions. She didn’t give a shit what we bought — we were just a guaranteed check in her bank.

Anyhow, the  house we bought was the last of eight we viewed. We kind of had an idea that it needed some upgrades, but weren’t too concerned because we loved the location: close to downtown and our jobs, 15-minutes to the beach, quiet street in an established neighborhood. We figured you can always change the kitchen, but you can’t change the location.

Boy oh boy, were we clueless. Because a new roof is fucking expensive, yo.

Problems started before we even moved in. The house was tented for termites. They said something about some damage to the doors and shed. A leak in the patio that never quite stopped. A pool pump that blew out before our first year was up. A roof that, we realized too late, was horribly outdated and very expensive to upgrade. Kitchen cabinets that fell off the hinges. A pool screen that tore at the slightest breeze. Plumbing issues. Terrible energy efficiency. Damp closets. Dented gutters.

The list goes on.

Over the years, our house has fallen into a state of . . . well, shit. Less than a year after moving in, we lost our high-paying jobs that got us into this mess in the first place. We really started living leaner and couldn’t scrape up money to do renovations as we’d hoped. We did what we could, but the toilet wouldn’t fill back up. The sink constantly clogged. The windows wouldn’t lock. The kitchen sink drained into the dishwasher. And was that Styrofoam acting as a shade on the hall lights???

Why hadn’t we noticed this stuff when we bought the place? And, more disturbingly, why hadn’t this come up in the home inspection? Why hadn’t the Realtor clued us in on these very expensive house repairs and upgrades?

Then I got pregnant. With twins. I went on maternity leave at 28 weeks. I didn’t deliver until 38 weeks and stayed home for nine weeks after that. We forged by on my disability pay.

We’ll make it, we thought. The cars are just about paid off. We have no credit card debt. We’ll budget.

Then my job was downsized and we couldn’t afford full-time daycare on a part-time salary. I was basically forced to quit and stay home with the kids, instantly bringing our income down by almost half.

Oh yeah, and the market and economy took a gigantic dump and our house lost about 70% of its inflated value.

So here we sit, with our house on the market as a short sale and an ever-growing list of things wrong with it.

For example, on a single day this week, the following happened:

• The kitchen sink clogged, backed up into itself and overflowed the dishwasher, spilling sulphuric swamp stench all over the kitchen floor and forcing me to call a plumber.
• The roof started leaking in the middle of the house. During rainy hurricane season. In Florida.
• A large chunk of one of our trees blew off during a storm and landed just feet from our new minivan.

Sometimes, I’m convinced we have some kind of hex on us. Back in 2004, Hurricane Frances hit our rental house in Gainesville, downing a tree onto the back part of the house and flooding the entire place. The house was declared uninhabitable. We lived in a hotel for a week and had to find a new place to live.

Oh, and I drove Chris’ new car into a pseudo-lake-thing that had formed as a result of the hurricane flooding.

It was epic.

Anyhow, I’m freaking out that this house won’t sell. I mean, who the hell buys a house that has rain dripping onto the sofa and a front door that barely opens because of termite damage?

And if the house doesn’t sell soon, that means serious upheaval when I’m either massively pregnant or horomonally unstable after birth.

Either that or foreclosure. Which would be a real blast!

So yeah. I hate bringing this stuff up because it just is what it is. We made a pricey mistake, we learned a lot and we’ll hopefully do better next time. Nothing we can do now but hope and wait and clean the house when someone wants to see it — which is a pretty hilarious concept when you have twin toddlers destroying everything in their path.

But in the meantime, can someone figure out what the hell this curse is that we’re carrying around and let me know what kind of chicken semen I need to eat to get rid of it?

Short post.

1) I’m going to say this quietly so as not to jinx it.

(I think the nausea is gone. It’s been a good 4 1/2 days. I’ve been eating regularly and going back to the gym. I feel pretty decent. Shhhhh! Don’t tell!)

2) We are getting the hell out of here for some much-needed vacation time. It’ll be our first and only, purely-for-pleasure vacation as a family of four. There will be hammocks involved. I may or may not get around to updating from the field.

So go ahead and rob my house. Just try it. There’s a half-wild rabid dog just waiting for your arrival.

I took a few days off of the Internet and lost all shreds of creative momentum I may or may not have had. I need to shake it off, get to writing again. Hence, the completely random post to follow.

South Beach, with Fetus

Before I got pregnant, I had a weekend to South Beach planned with some mom friends. (As opposed to non-mom friends, because boy is there a difference.) Then I found myself in a family way but couldn’t, in good conscience, back out. So I went.

South Beach when you’re pregnant and sober is just another overcrowded beach city. Let me tell you, I saved a shitload of money by not buying booze. On Saturday morning, my friends went to a pool and sipped mimosas in the water. I ventured off to the Wolfsonian Museum (by far my FAVORITE museum I’ve ever been in). My museum admission? $7.49. Their mimosas? $20. EACH. And they didn’t even come in a pitcher.

Also, nightclubs. We went to a club on Friday night. Yes, even I went. It was smoky, people were burning doobs on the dance floor and I saw no less than five bare vaginas at the strategically placed stripper pole in the middle of the club. There was house music. I left less than an hour after getting there.

I actually did have a good time, though. And side note of awesomeness? We stayed in the condo building where the chainsaw/drug-deal-gone-bad scene of “Scarface” was filmed. RAD.

Friends

Do you guys have friends? Like, real-life, in-the-flesh, live-near-you-and-see-on-a-regular-basis, call-whenever-you-need-them, spill-secrets-to friends? Specifically, if you’re a mom, do you have other mom friends that fit that bill?

I don’t think I do. I mean, I have some friends. I have some acquaintances. I have one or two mom friends that I hang out with on a semi-regular basis. Maybe I’ve even shared some secrets with them.

But I don’t have any near-me best friends. You know, like the best friend you can say “Your three o’clock!” to and they know that you’re talking trash on that skanky teenager wearing camel-toe booty shorts. The BFFs that I do have live far away and we talk so infrequently that I may even be unknowingly relegated to “good friend” status by virtue of that distance.

This seems to be a common issue with folks my age who have young kids. I get out quite a bit and mingle in all sorts of social/parent circles, so it’s not like I’m complaining without trying. Are there dating sites for people like me? You know, because being pregnant and a mom makes me totally desirable as a friend?

Emotionz

I don’t know where I’m at emotionally.

I’m down, that’s for certain. Part of it is “just me” as usual, but part is circumstance. We’re short selling the house and it sucks. Mentally, I’m so OVER this house and I just want to get the place sold and move on with my life.

I have a strong need to get the fuck out of Dodge, to travel, to live somewhere else, to meet new people. I’m antsy. I feel stuck. Lonely. Unfulfilled and unsatisfied. Mentally stagnant. Unchallenged.

Being pregnant is obviously tripping things up. It’s kind of stressful to be expecting a miracle when your financial/housing/emotional world smells like testicles.

And while the girls are just as awesome as ever, the whole twin toddlers thing can be pretty taxing. Oh, and I’m still nauseous 70% of the time, which means eating is spotty and exercise is currently non-existent.

I guess it’s a mish-mash of shit. A big, steaming pile of mish-mashed shit. Know what I mean?

Better things

I hate ending posts all pissy-pity, so here’s good stuff.

Some friends had a long-awaited and MUCH deserved adoption go through. I am in-tears-thrilled for them.

I think I out-drank my Starbucks cravings. (In case you haven’t, keep in mind that those frappes at McDonald’s are pretty comparable, seem to have more caffeine and cost half as much.)

Ironically…? I ended up passing my glucose tolerance test. Blood sugar was 111 after an hour, so I’m in the clear for at least the next 13 weeks.

The girls have learned to say “I know, I know,” arriba (up), Snow White (Elise’s favorite), thank you, bebida (drink), pee pee and caca. Obviously, we’re most proud of the last two.

Two years ago today, I drove up to the mall and, before walking into Dillard’s, threw out my last half-pack of cigarettes. I’ve been smoke-free ever since.

I loved smoking. I loved the taste, the break, the relief, the habit. I loved my brand (Parliament Light 100′s). I loved the instant friends I could make just by virtue of being a smoker. I loved sitting out on the back patio during hot, humid summer nights, smoking and drinking and talking to friends.

But I got pregnant. I had to quit.

Being pregnant made quitting smoking considerably easier than I think it would have been otherwise. I felt sick all the time and the taste of a cigarette was the last thing I could handle. I relied on Commit lozenges for the worst cravings for the first couple of weeks, but mostly I would just chew 18 pieces of gum or take a short walk when I wanted to smoke.

Though I smoked for more than 15 years, it feels so foreign to me now. Sometimes I’ll get a random craving, but in general, I don’t miss smoking at all.

Part of it is health, sure. That and my kids. But another big part is just the convenience of being a non-smoker. I don’t have to panic before a plane trip or have second thoughts about seeing a long movie in the theater. I can do intense cardio exercise without getting winded. I don’t have to constantly chew gum to mask the smell. I’ve even been able to downsize my purse now that I don’t have to carry a pack of cigarettes and a lighter everywhere.

The fact that a carton would now cost me about $60 pretty much seals the deal for me. At that price, I’d be spending about $3,100 a year.

Anyhow, congratulations to me, dammit. This is one thing I’m pretty proud of.