did i mention i broke my camera?

It's been quite the sore subject around here, because I generally like to fancy myself NOT AN ASS.  However, I do have the occasional moment, which this time involved a backpack, my dSLR, and a water bottle I've had for years that had apparently cracked.
 
Twenty ounces did it in.

Because of the health situation around here lately, I have had neither the time nor energy to look into getting the thing fixed.  But yesterday, after HB had not touched me for 48.3 minutes, I decided the time had come.  I called Sony, makers of my beloved.  I told the customer service guy I thought the battery had shorted.  He kept me on the phone for an hour, telling me every third minute that this was going really quickly and we'd be done soon (pointer:  don't do that, customer service guy!  it's really annoying! and you are slower than molasses!), and finally I had all my info.  

But I really didn't want to send my battery and charger in to Sony for a few weeks, and then have them send it back and tell me to send in my beloved for a few weeks...because of this mathematical equation:

FEW WEEKS + FEW WEEKS = NEW BABY IS HERE

And really?  You need to have a camera in the house to capture all the beautiful moments of bringing home a new baby...the dark circles that encompass the entire face, the haven't-showered-in-a-week hair, the sweet pictures of the older children poking the baby's eyes out and jumping on his chest... There's so much you need to preserve for blackmail posterity.

Oh, and Sony needed a copy of the receipt.  And while I thought I had put the receipt in the camera box with all the camera paperwork?  It seems I had not.  No receipt.

So we drove to the big city to the most reliable camera shop EVAH, Continental Camera, and those nice guys put my battery through a battery of tests and determined that it was Beloved Camera with the issues.  The Continental Camera guys offered to send my camera to Sony, but it was going to be crazy expensive... deposits, shipping, cost of repair... it was a little daunting.

Mer.

But then-- in a fit of brilliance-- I called Best Buy to ask if they could reprint a receipt from last May.  And in a fit of brilliance?  The nice Geek Squad Boy said they could!  And they DID!  And in another fit of brilliance?  The Geek asked me why I needed my receipt.  I told him the camera wasn't working, and I needed to send it to Sony.  

THEN THE GEEK TOLD ME I PURCHASED THE GO- AHEAD- ABUSE- THE- CAMERA- WE'LL- FIX- IT- WARRANTY!!!!!!!!

All I had to do was drive over there and drop it off.  

And I will have my beloved returned to me by next weekend.  And it will be repaired.  Or brand new.  And it will be free.

And I have two years and two months left on my amazing $45 warranty.

The End.

awash.

So, in addition to nearly dying at the hands of a light fixture, having two fairly sick children for the last seven days, seeing my husband for a grand total of 59 minutes in the last eight days, with a projected time of 73 minutes in his presence for the coming week (and that's if the weather is good), my nose is running away from me.  And it is disgusting.

Turns out HB's health issue may or may not be RSV.  Because he doesn't have any other health concerns, the doctor decided to not test him.  Also, about half of the kids she's been testing have it, and half don't, and the treatment isn't all that different, so we just hopped on the nebulizer express and were done with it.  Except by done with it, I don't really mean done.  He's not feeling better at all.

The poor kid clings to me constantly.  In the past 24 hours, for example, he wasn't touching me for approximately one hour and 10 minutes.  When we're not camped out on the sofa, he's walking behind me sobbing, MOMMY!!!! MAAAAAAAAAMAAAAAA!!!!  HOLD ME!!!!  Also, he grunts and gestures wildly which makes my head pop and go splat.  Oh, and do not think that the following and crying is limited to one mommy, one maaaaaaamaaaaa, and one hold me.... he carries on, broken-record style until I stop what I'm doing and hold him some more.  BECAUSE THERE IS NO IGNORING THIS.

Last night was superfun, oh no it wasn't.  I gave him a nebulizer treatment hours before bed, because it's my understanding that the albuterol can make the children a little nutso.  Well, hours AFTER bedtime, HB was sitting on my bed, reading books happily (and loudly) to himself and me, and the cats, and his Moosey.  I was trying not to poke my eyes out with the pencil I'd been using to be a Sudoku whiz.  Finally, he climbed up on my head and fell asleep.

No, really.  He climbed up on my head and went to sleep.  And yes, it was very weird.*

When I was sure my neck would break if he stayed there any longer HB was sound asleep, I remedied the situation and put him in his own bed, figuring I could get at least a few hours sleep without his sweaty, germy little body being up in my space.

The Mister got home from the show a short time later, and came upstairs which coincided with HB waking up to the realization he was no longer sleeping on my head. So The Mister kindly put him back in our bed, really, it was kind to the sick child, and HB promptly climbed back up on my head and remained there until 7:13 a.m.

It was a long night.

And now I have the respiratory mung. And Wee Man is acting like he's about to get the mung. And Miss O, who missed every day of school last week, is still not feeling well. And if we are unwell, we won't be going to visit Uncle Josh and Auntie Teff and the nephews. And that blows.

Nose. It blows nose, okay?

And as much as I have enjoyed this 30 minutes of sitting in a chair, all alone, with nobody touching me, I really need to go to bed.  

I'll be back around the next time nobody's touching me.

*Clarification:  I was not sitting bolt upright in bed, I was lying down, head and shoulders propped up on two pillows, bathrobe slightly open, revealing my decolletage**

**Okay, not so much with the bathrobe, but the rest is pretty much true.

everybody should get some women like this in their life. but you can't have mine. so back off.

For this whole entire week, my short people have been sick.  And my tall counterpart has been working stupidcrazyinsane hours.  Consequently, I am exhausted and have had it up to here with the needy people in my life.  Also, the cats are living on borrowed time.  I'm not sure who they keep borrowing this time from, but there aren't that many people left in this world who like them, so I'm certain I'll be able to kill them soon.

Today went a little something like this:
7:42 a.m.  Woke up to Wee Man shouting at me that Daddy didn't go to work....HOOWAY!!!!
7:42:03 a.m.  Ran to see what was the matter with The Mister that he didn't go to work.  Turns out?  He actually does need to sleep more then four hours a night, and he is just plain worn out.  He ended up taking the day off (except for the musical), and it all was very nice.

Enough with the time thingy.  I sat on the floor of the boys' room, HB glaring me down in some sort of Diaper Stand Off.  He didn't want me to take his nicey diaper off, and I really did want to take it off because he stunk like yesterday's pee, and eventually the impasse was over and I sat on him and I am the winner nanny-nanny-boo-boo.  Ha.  

HB followed me everywhere I went for the rest of the daylight hours, whining and using his arms to indicate he wanted me to pick him up.  Except I am really not a subscriber to the "pick up the verbal child who is whining and grunting" school of thought, so for the rest of the daylight hours, I said, Use your words, Ork.  Tell me what you want.  No bloody whining.  Ach, that noise...it's making my head explode.  Talk.  Use. Your. Freaking. Words. Already.

Also I said: GO AWAY. And I meant it.

During the times I was not vertical, for example, mealtime, bathroom breaks, sitting on the couch with my other sick short person, and my sadly neglected short person, HB was considerate to climb all over me like a rabid mountain goat.  

And this, people?  Is just today.  This is a tiny little snapshot of my week.  And yes, I know that this is what I signed up for, I really do, because, ummm, hi, this is my life I'm talking about here, and this is only one of the flavours of crazy we serve up here.

But tonight?  The babysitter came.  And even though she made about ninety-five self-depricating comments about being stupid (this is me, suggesting to prospective sitters that this is, in fact, NOT a good choice of topic the second time you are in charge of the lives of my babies), I left my children with her and each other, and went to spend some time with The Natty Moms.

And can I just say?  I love those women.  True, I'm engaged to two of them at the moment, but I love the rest of them.  

We learned about essential oils, which is a whole 'nother topic for a whole 'nother day, but it is fascinating.  And we sat around talking about hilarious conversations our short people have with one another, and about whether or not our boy short people are circumcised or not...and also our husbands...and we share cases of raw honey and talk about disinfecting our cloth diapers in the dishwasher (after they've been washed in the washer, for the record), and our various methods of schooling our babies, and when to talk to our short people about S-E-X (it seems earlier is less, ummm, weird and gross for everyone involved), and about when our newest babies are due, and on and on and on and on.

We are all totally different from each other, we have all different numbers of short people in our houses, some of us really like our husbands, some don't.  We don't all worship the same Fella in the same way.  Some are completely loud and some speak so softly you need to lean in to catch what is being said.  Some of the families are much more well-off than others.  Some of the women seem to really have their stuff together, some of us don't.  Some are crafty and artistic, some are more of the engineer/accountant type.

It just works, all of us, all together, listening and laughing, and, well, sometimes not laughing.  I can't really explain the dynamic.  It just works.

And tonight, it worked its magic on my worn-out, tapped-out, all-done-giving self.  So when I wake up tomorrow with someone shouting at my eyelids and a stinky diapered butt in my right ear?  I will be able to deal.

And that is what it's all about.

what's up, pussycat?

What's up?  The price of gas is up, as is the acid that used to hang out peacefully in my stomach, except now it's almost in my mouth.  YUM-O!  The short people's fevers are not up, they have gone back to the nearly normal range.  The cats are not up, they are snoring and farting themselves into oblivion on the sofa.  Oh, and that pesky light fixture which used to reside above my kitchen table, that's totally not up.

In one of the most spectacular cases of PAMELA, IT'S YOUR LUCKY DAY, REALLY IT IS, the heavy-as-a-lead-balloon glass globe on our ancient kitchen fixture crashed at my place on the kitchen table just seconds after I got up from dinner and walked (or waddled, possibly I waddled) into the living room.

There was an amazingly loud crash, the sound of breaking glass splintered the short people's fighting into a deafening silence.  I ran to the kitchen.  (Yes, ran.  And yes, it probably was funny to watch.)

I looked around.  The stove was as I left it.  The counters were as I left them.  The kitchen table was littered with dinner dishes.  The only noticeable thing out of place?  A spatula was on the floor.  

I took a stocking-footed step forward.   WHATTHE?????  It was as if I had stepped on a bazillion tiny pieces of broken glass.  Oh wait.  That's exactly what I had done.

I looked around again.  It. Was. Ev.Ree.Whar.  Not only had the sky fallen and broken into a bazillion pieces, it landed on drinking glasses, and plates, and bowls, and serving dishes.    I will be honest with you, as I always am, my first thought after Oh Lord MY FOOT IS BLEEDING, was, THE FRENCH PRESS WAS ON THE TABLE!!!!  NO!!!! NOT THE FRENCH PRESS!!!!

The Mister had brewed some lovely coffee before he left me for Mel Brooks.  Was it?  Could it have fallen on my beloved?  Tears came to my eyes as I scanned the carnage for a sign of my lover, my friend, my French press coffee pot.   I gasped....there it was, a fraction of an inch from where the largest piece of the light sat.  

Unscathed.

Thank.God.

I caught my breath, and began to clean up.  Half a set of dishes in the trash can.  At least four glasses.  One soup bowl?  Broken into many pieces, the largest of which was resting comfortably on a high chair.   There was a quarter-sized chunk taken out of my oak table.  Millions, and I do mean millions, of tiny shards of glass stood upright in the table.  And equal number were all over the floor.

I called in the cavalry (my mother-in-law, of course) because the short people refused to stay out of the freaking kitchen whilst I cleaned.  I figured if there were another adult in the house, they would be rendered totally disinterested in rolling around in shards of glass...you know, Murphy's Law.  And also if the shorties left me (us) alone, maybe she'd help me clean up.

And she did.

We scrubbed and swept and mopped and threw away broken glass for over an hour.

Just as I was having a vague memory of a tall man with a beard *cough*The Mister *cough* adjusting the glass light fixture right before dinner, my phone beeped a text message alert.  Oddly enough, it was a text message from a tall man with a beard.  Big Boss just called.  Sounds like he wants me to be in charge of a project for the next 4-6 months.
 
My reply?  Hope he doesn't want you to hang light fixtures. *, **

This stuff doesn't happen to the Duggars.

*In his defense, he had worked the previous day from 6 am until midnight, and that day he was called to work at 4 am to pretend to plow snow, and had just completed that twelve hour shift on less than 4 hours sleep.

**In my defense, I had worked the previous day from 7 am until 10 pm, with three highly annoying short people, who, if I had been paying attention, were showing signs of being sick.  And that day, I was called to work an additional three hours in the middle of the night (probably the ones he slept) dealing with high fevers and the relentless coughing up of lungs.  Said fevers and coughing up of lungs continued for the remainder of the day, with the addition of interminable whining and refusal to a) drink anything, b) eat anything, and c) take any tylenol or motrin; also the addition of one thirty-pound two year-old to my person, a child who does not yet grasp the concept of pregnant women needing to use the potty every fifteen minutes.

even my conservative crunchy friends can get behind this

The Washington Post printed an article this morning referencing an interview of President Obama by Matt Lauer regarding the Food and Drug Administration.  President Obama was quite critical of the FDA's total miss on the recent Salmonella In The Peanut Butter Event based in a Georgia processing plant...also the Great Spinach Crisis of '08, as well as the Poison The Babies With Nasty Formula Campaign, and Oh Wait, Let's Kill Puppies, Too, While We're At It.

The New York Times also had some great articles about the whole Salmonella In The Peanut Butter Event, but for some reason freaking Firefox hates me this morning. If it starts playing nice, I'll update later.

One of the NYT articles was about how federal regulators had to ask the peanut plant's permission before declaring a recall on the tainted products. Are these people kidding us? Kids are very sick and dying and the PEANUT PEOPLE GET TO DECIDE IF THERE'S A RECALL????? I don't think so, Tim.  Why should a federal agency, charged with policing the safety of food (and drugs, but that's a whole 'nother kettle for a whole 'nother day) have to NEGOTIATE RECALLS WITH MANUFACTURERS?  It's wrong.  

Hopefully this will start a "from the top" look into the non-credibility of the FDA and also re-evaluate the function and capacity in which the FDA operates...less lobbying, more usefulness.  We can only hope.

subs and waving where no one has waved before

First of all?  I was completely unaware that Sunday was *THAT* Sunday, you know, the one where the pigskin worship occurs?   The Youth Group at church had their annual Super Bowl Sunday Sub Sale (points for the mad alliteration, yo), and even when filling out the form last week, I didn't make the connection.  And then, when the teen boy stood up to announce the subs were ready and good and there were extras to be bought, and that, for the record, the Cardinals were going to win the big game, I wasn't even all Big game?  Huh-Whaaa?  What is this child speaking of?  I was all, Mmmmmm, SUBS!!!!!

Excuse me while I head back to the rock under which I live.

What?  I LIKE IT THERE.

We came home from church, heavy laden with yummy subby goodness, and sat down to eat, but the thing is, I am so tired all the way inside my bones, it wore me out to put the mayo on my sub.  Actually, it was the Miracle Whip Replacement from Aldi, because I was too tired to get up to get the mayo and mustard out of the fridge.  But the point is, it was all I could do to slap a little of that stuff on the bread, and then I went above and beyond my capabilities to cut the sub in half and pick it up and take a bite and I had to go take a nap.  

Really.

A little later, The Mister left me alone with the rambunctious faction that is our boy shorties, and went to load in the show.  Sometime later than that, I dragged myself up to put them down for a nap.  Then there was some sort of a time warp, and then I made soup and we had dinner.

And then Sweets, the currently unnamed shortest person of them all, decided he was bored and needed to cause a ruckus.  So he did a handstand and tried to cram his wee pattys through my cervix.  I am not kidding, I think I could have shaken his hand if I  a)  tried; or b) was interested in touching myveryown cervix.  Seriously Sweets?  Waving at me from my own vagina is NOT CUTE.  Nor is it in any way, shape, or form, an appropriate method of getting your mother's attention.  I would never wave at my mother in such a fashion.

He's since decided not to climb out hands first (thanks for that, little fella!).  But the rest of my bits are still a little upset from the, umm, disruption he was attempting earlier, so it's been a fun couple of hours of wickedevilpainful contractions every five minutes.  RAWK!!!!  I know!!!

I remarked to The Mister that I was checking myself out in the mirror today, and from the front I hardly look pregnant at all, and that from the back, I look only slightly more bootylicious than I used to be.  But I walked past the television today, and I looked like I was wearing a beach ball under my sweatshirt.  It was then that he laughed at me and told me I looked good (he's really no fool, that one), and informed me that the television had a roundish screen which would make me seem way rounder.  Awesome.  I'm faux round and stupid.

I am sort of feeling like I should warn you that I might just end up bitching about being pregnant for the next nine to eleven weeks. Unless, you know, Sweets decides to pull some more of those vajayjay waving shenanigans and arrives much sooner, thereby ending everyone's misery.  

a few things for a sunday

You may have seen Brother Snipes Mama hanging out in the comment section every now and again. She's one of the irl peeps I know who swings by to have a chuckle every now and again. She's also Jill's and twentysomething's auntie. Also? She's in the hospital. They're trying to figure out what her deal is, and the doctors are leaning toward some sort of cardiac issue. And people, if we know anything, we know we need to have a functional heart. So send some prayers up for her today and, well, until further notice.

Brother Snipes Mama's nephew, who is twentysomething's little brother, Justin, has pneumonia. And that is in addition to four arms-lengths of medical problems he was born with. You can pray for him, too.

And the gal I wrote about in this here post is going through some major transition. She and her daughter are moved in with her parents, and there are lots of doctors appointments happening. I know there are a lot of you who are praying for her already, so keep it up.