Aerogarden Update

Well, it's been a month since I plugged in my--uh--"snowpea" garden, and here are the results!

Week 1, they started to sprout. Except that bugger on front right.

Week 2, they're all growing at a pretty good clip, but that guy on the right never did anything, so I replaced him with some herbs. Chives, that is. ;-)

Week 3, I took some pictures, but they have somehow disappeared. At least I thought I did, but I was sick that week. Maybe I dreamed it.


Week 4---look how huge they've become so far! The snow peas are pretty aggressive and aren't being very nice to the little chive guy. When I wake up in the mornings, there are little tendrils around the chives as if the snow peas are trying to strangle the life out of them.

So far, it's been a pretty painless experience. You can almost sit and watch the stuff grow!

As you can see, the crap on the counter has grown as much as the plants have. I'm off to do some tidying!

Here's my latest faux-pas on Disaboom if you feel like checking it out!

Things That Make You Go AIIIGGGGHHHHH!!!!

Do any of you have a list of things that literally give you nightmares? Not just "ewww" stuff, but things that make you wake up in a cold sweat with a scream stuck in your throat?

Big Kid's list used to just include 2 things---the water pipes in the basement and clowns. He'd wake me up in the middle of the night, "Them pipes is chasing me!". Poor kid.

Maybe it's because I'm more neurotic (I prefer to think it's because I've had more years on the planet), but my list is quite a bit longer.

Eyeballs (that new commercial where the guy gets his car stolen and there's a wall of eyeballs looking at him made me want to poke my own out)

I think that movie they made all the kids watch in the 6th grade here in Colorado where the Eskimo guy cuts out a big-ass caribou eyeball and hands it to his tyke to take a bite out of is responsible for a great deal of eyeball phobia in the Rocky Mountains. I never quite got the vomit stink out of my suede tennis shoes either (courtesy of the kid sitting in front of me).

Spider toes Like the ones attached to my husband's feet.

Dogs licking me Back in junior high, I used to go to my best friend's house after school. Her mother (who would probably be called a MILF today), used to lay out on the back porch in her bikini to soak up the rays. We'd go out and chat with her and tell her about our day.

She'd cover herself in almond oil (this was pre-skin-cancer warning days) and let her five---YES FIVE!---dogs lick it off her. One for each limb, and one on the belly. Bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop. Skeeved the heck out of me. I STILL have nightmares about it from time to time.

Loogies Self-explanatory.

And the list goes on.....

I was catching up on my reading and ran into a few more things I think I can safely add to my list of things I'll probably have nightmares about:

Toofies in my foo foo.

Remember that old bad joke about the mother who wanted her son to stay pure and told him that girls had teeth in their girly parts? Well some guy has made a movie about a teenage girl with that very same condition, called Teeth.

I KNOW I'm going to start having nightmares about this without ever watching it. What if I wake up with toofies? What do I do about dental hygiene? Crotch cavities? What if they were crooked? Would I have to find an orthocologist? Gives new meaning to the term "butt floss". AAIIGHHHH!!!
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Sometimes I dream about people breaking into the house and having to find some place to hide. Recently, a young woman in West Jordan, Utah hid in her closet when three intruders broke in and tried to burgle the place. Luckily, she had her phone and was able to call 911.

The burglars even opened the closet and rummaged through it, but by some stroke of luck didn't see her. Then they heard the sirens and the police at the door.

One of the burglars ACTUALLY GOT IN THE CLOSET WITH HER to hide, not knowing she was there.

"He was just standing right next to me. I could have put my arms around him." Aiiighhhh!!!

The young woman waited until the police were in the room before screaming, "He's in here!"

The burglar was so startled that he crapped himself and ruined her best pair of shoes.

Well no, not really, but that's the part I'd probably have a nightmare about. Trying to replace my nice shoes.
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Big Kid has been feeling pretty lonely. He has a hard time meeting girls, and when he does, he doesn't know whether to run, sh*t or go blind.

So he's done some stupid stuff, like signing up for the trial period of dating sites and using the debit card to an account that probably has $25.00 in it. Then he forgets to cancel before the trial period and the card gets billed $59.99, prompting letters from the bank and nasty emails from the dating sites. And a kick in the pants with a bunny slipper, because I have to go down to the bank and cover the shortage.

But when a friend sent me this site, I realized that yes, it could be worse. He could find one of these "hotties" and give me nightmares forever. AAAIIGHHHHH!!

What's on your scary list?

Asshat of the Week----2-for-1!

I couldn't decide between these two Asshats, so this week I decided to do a twofer!

Trees messing up your view?

Just hire a crew to come and cut them down!

That's what Lake Tahoe resident Patricia Vincent did. The Asshat hired a professional crew to cut down 3 ponderosa pines---estimated to be 80 to 100 years old---to enhance her scenic view.

Except that it was on someone else's property.

Whose property, you my ask?

Well OUR property. Yours and mine (and well, I guess, theoretically as a taxpayer, hers too). The trees were a part of a special lot of national forest designated by the Forest Service as environmentally sensitive.

She faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. And I hope a good public shunning from her neighbors as well.

I think the second Asshat deserves an extra-special Richard Cranium award.

Water board member Xavier Alvarez bragged at a public meeting that he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor while serving as a Marine, which is the military's highest honor.

I don't know who keeps track of that stuff, but apparently it's a pretty serious offense if you lie about it. Especially if you're an elected official.

Alvarez was later charged with the Stolen Valor Act of 2005 after admitting that he not only didn't win the medal, but had never served at all.

You'd think that after getting caught with his pants down, the doofus would just take his lumps like a big boy.

But no.

His defense?

The Stolen Valor Act "violates" his right to be a lying douchebag. It's a free speech thing, you know.

So in Alvarez's mind, the soldiers who risk life and limb to protect his First Amendment rights are doing it so that he can benefit from the respect and reflected glory by claiming the award if he damn well feels like it.

"...But government prosecutors said in their opposition submitted Wednesday that the First Amendment does not protect deliberate falsehoods."

And I bet there are a few soldiers who'd like a private word with you too, Mr. Alvarez.

As an afterthought, my campus bookstore deserves an honorable mention for some Asshattery as well. I wrote about it over here on Disaboom.

Naughty, Naughty!!

Well, I've gotten a couple of days of sunshine, even though it's been cold has heck. Gotta shake myself out of the apathy because school started this week for both Big Kid and I.

In honor of Little Guy's favorite TV show coming back after hiatus---Super Nanny, which features the "naughty corner"---I've saved a couple of eye-rolling "naughty bits" to comment on.

The first is from the UK, where some whiny boob is complaining about his chesticles, and the refusal of Britain's national (socialistic) medical system to give him a free breast reduction. It's not that they're actually telling him to take a hike, mind you---they told him to drop a bunch of stones before they would consider him (I think that's some weird British term for pounds---not the money pounds, I think it's fat pounds---but I don't have a lard conversion table on hand).

So this young guy, who is 23, claims he can't leave his house and work because he's afraid that people will look at him and say, "Yo! You need a 'bro'! (a man-bra)"

He's not willing to do what it takes for his medical system to consider him for surgery (laying off the mac and cheese), because he doesn't feel like he has too many stones (translated as pounds, but that's confusing to me) to lose.

He asked for the surgery back in 2005, but those unreasonable doctors told him to lose weight. Now he's so depressed he has to take anti-depressants. And of course, he can't work.

Well he could get the surgery if he was willing to go private and pay between 5 and 9000 pounds (this is the British money pounds, not the stone to lard pounds and converts to about 12 to 22, 000 dollars).

To be honest? After looking at his pic (he's so ashamed that he posed with his miniscule hooters for the rag), I have half a mind to invite him here to the lake for the 4th of July. I know of at least 6 guys who proudly strip down and display their big ole titties on a regular basis. UK guy should just get over himself.

But you know, then he'd probably want a pension for being awarded 1st place on the "Itty Bitty Titty Committee".

Ok, here's the link with the pic. I know you've been dying to see it. LOL

The second "Naughty Bit" eyeball roll goes to Virginia State delegate Lionel Spruill who introduced a bill to ban "trailer testicles" in the State of Virginia.

Let's see. Osama is still on the loose. Inner city schools need up-to-date textbooks, not to mention plumbing that's been updated since 1940, and roofs that don't leak. People are homeless. Families can't afford adequate health insurance or health care. Cancer and AIDS haven't been cured and are still killing folks right and left.

And Lionel thinks it's crucial to spend tax-payer time and money on some doofusy Larry-the-Cable-Guy's fans having rubber gonads swinging off their trailer hitches?

Who are the idjits who voted this POS into office? I mean seriously!

Dulldroms

Thanks everybody for all your kind wishes for healing. I'm definitely feeling much better now!

I got a heckofa cold which settled into my sinuses and both ears. But as most Mom's know, you can't EVAH be sick on your own. The creeping crud goes round and round. Usually.

You got to weed out the--uh--fakers--or more kindly, those struck with "mental colds by association which renders them completely helpless so they expect to be waited on hand and foot".

In other words, the men in my house. I'll give them a foot.

With a bad cold, for the most part, on day one, you start feeling a little punky. Day two, you realize you got issues, but you hope that popping 12 vitamin C tablets will ward it off (too little, too late, and then you get acid burny butt on top of it).

Day three is when it really kicks in and makes you feel like death on a platter. Day four and five---if it's a really bad cold---is when you might end up with bronchitis, an ear or sinus infection.

So those of you who are familiar with the characters in my family might think this is pretty amusing. Yes, I exaggerated a bit. Maybe. A little. But in my feverish state, I swear this is a true happening. ;-)

Day three into my cold, Little Guy came home from school. He asked if he could take a nap. This is the kid who NEVER tells you he's sick until he's got a 104 fever.

"You ok?" I croaked.

My throat is a little sore. Can you ask Dad to bring home orange juice?

I call Hubby and tell him that I think Little Guy is sick. Could he bring home orange juice? Me? Still in the throes of heinie of fire, not going to touch anything citrus with a 10-foot-pole.

I'm feeling a little sniffly too. I think I have what you have. I can't be sick now. I have too much stuff to do!!

An hour or so later, Big Kid emerges from his cave, where over the last 3 weeks, with birthday and Xmas money, he's upgraded his Xbox 360 so he can play online with people all over the world who are a lot better at the games than he is.

Is Little Guy home from school?

"He's sick and he's taking a nap."

I sneezed a couple of hours ago. Do you think I might have pneumonia? Can I wake Little Guy up to go out to the garage to bring me in some soda? I'd feel better with soda, and if I expose my frail pneumatic body to the cold it would make it worse. Some guy said so on his MySpace page. And you know that everything you read on the Internet is true!

I didn't have enough energy to respond verbally, but he ran off back to his room after I bounced a hairbrush off his head.

Curled up next to the woodstove, wrapped in a blanket and reading a book (just couldn't seem to keep warm), the phone rang. It was Hubby.

I had to blow my nose, so I'm leaving the office. I know I caught what you have! I can't be sick now! I have too much work to do! Do we need anything besides orange juice from the store? Do we have Nyquil? Do we have cough drops? I can't believe I'm sick! &*^%$$!!

I said I didn't know and I'd be damned if I was going to go and hunt it all out. I'm wrapped up, I'm finally warm, and I ain't moving an inch. Might as well buy it at the store, we'd probably use it at some point during the cold and flu season.

Big Kid comes back out of the Bat Cave. Was that Dad? Is he coming home? Could you ask him to pick me up some cigarettes?

"WTF? You had a new pack this morning? You smoked a whole freaking pack in 9 hours?"

I've been feeling stressed out! And my chest feels really heavy. Do you think I might have a lung tumor? Since I probably have pneumonia, can I smoke INSIDE the house because it's really cold outside and as you know, experts say that cold temperatures can make pneumonia worse! I probably got pneumonia because I have to smoke outside in the freezing cold!

He didn't run fast enough out of the room. I'm sure my book left a good dent on his head next to the one left by the hairbrush. If he'd even GOTTEN the irony over that exchange, I might have just thrown my slipper from hell. The entire stupidity of it deserved the force of a big hard-backed book.

I'd stuck a huge pork roast in the oven that morning to slow cook over the day without anybody having to watch over it. Like I could. Saute a little peppers and onions, throw on some sauce, BBQ sandwiches for everybody who is up to eating.

Hubby came home loaded for bear. Bottles of Nyquil. Several bags of cough drops. Gallons of orange juice. Lubricated kleenex for his sensitive widdle nose.

I can't believe I'm sick! I can't afford to catch this crap right now! I've got too much work to do! I'm really starting to feel like sh*t! I know I'm on the verge of being horribly sick, and I just don't have the time for it!

Oh....do I smell BBQ?

Big Kid came out of the Bat Cave again and forgot to mention that he couldn't breathe any more.

MMMMmmmm!

Little Guy woke up, and I asked him how he was feeling. His throat was a "little sore", but he had bright red cheeks and Charles Manson crazy eyes. Would he like some soup? Some jello maybe?

Did you make BBQ?

Hubby and Big Kid chowed down. Little Guy had a bit. Then he started walking into walls.

"Honey, can I make you a cup of Theraflu?"

In a little bit, Mom. As soon as my dinner taste goes away.

Snarf.

Got him dosed, and I fell into bed without dinner. Woke up the next morning to unopened Nyquil and bags of cough drops on the counter. My "sick"--ha--and noisy guys hadn't even touched them. And they were both fine when they woke up.

Little Guy had the full whammy though.

I don't know if it's been the gray and freezing days, or trying to bounce back from my cold, but I've just been suffering from a really crushing depression, in which I feel almost paralyzed.

I haven't felt like writing. I haven't felt like reading. I don't want to get out of bed at all.

I have a mountain of paperwork to do, which I wrote about here in Disaboom a week or so ago. It's partially done, which is a good thing.

I truly thank you Friends, for all your lovely comments. You really are the best!

Love,

ATM

Pfffft!

I godda bat code. Be back soon. Achoo!

ATM

The Good, the Bad and the Fugly

Now that the holidays are over, I can take a breath and catch up on the silliness in the news.

Peeps. They just boggle the mind, don't they?

The Good:

Woman Finds Skaters Scott Hamilton and Kristi Yamaguchi Trapped in a Potato.

Well, not really. She thought she found Jesus. But since I don't think anybody really knows what Jesus looks like, it's just as likely to be Scott Hamilton and Kristi Yamaguchi, isn't it?

The Bad:

This woman is my kind of bad.

She and her boyfriend are about to take a shower together.

Except that he wants to include his dog in the bathroom for some reason (my mind doesn't EVEN want to go to some of those places). She says no. He insists.

She says, "I don't think I want to be your girlfriend if we have to have your dog in the bathroom while we're taking a shower together."

He says, "I think my next girlfriend will appreciate my dog more." And calls her a name.

So she punches him in the mouth. He gets hurt in the ensuing melee.

She ends up with a second-degree assault charge.

He ends up being known as the creepy guy who got his ass kicked by a naked girl.

I'm sure he and his dog will be very happy together.

The Fugly:

Geraldine Magda went to the nursing home to say goodbye to her terminally ill sister.

After she left, other relatives noticed that the dying woman's wedding ring was gone from her left hand---the hand that Magda had been holding shortly before. So they called the police.

Later that day, the police confronted Magda, asked to search her purse, and found the ring inside an empty prescription bottle.

"I have no idea how that got there!" she exclaimed. She's been charged with two felonies.

Fugly is probably the kindest word I could use. Sheesh!

My Green-eyed Boy...

Arrrgghhhh. A new rite of passage that makes me feel 100 years old.

My oldest turned 21 today.

The first thing Big Kid said to me when I woke up this morning was..."can I finally have a beer?"

No, just kidding. But this post is going to be long and probably boring, so get out while you can! It's pretty self-indulgent.

The day before, he asked what time he had been born. It was about 1:35pm on January 2.

I was 19 years old.

Back then, I felt kind of ashamed of admitting it, because I was a teenaged mother. I always had to qualify it by explaining that I'd already been married to his dad for 6 months before I got pregnant, because I thought people would assume that we "had" to get married.

My oh my how things have changed.

Now I hang on to the "teenaged-mother" thing. I mean, how could I have a son this old? I just don't tell everybody that I was only a teenager for one more month, because my birthday is one month and one day after his. :-)

When I first found my birthmother, one of the things I really needed to hear was the story of my birth. For 35 years, all I ever knew was the story about when my parents brought me home from the adoption agency.

I was 3 months old. I left my first mother when I was 3 days old, and was fostered for a few months. She thought I went directly to a waiting family, but those agencies are/were often pretty cagey when dealing with birthmothers when it comes to "getting" the kid. My folks were waiting for a boy when they got the call a few days before they took me home.

Interested in a girl? the agency asked.

My dad said, "hell yes!"

I don't think my mother has ever forgiven him.

Just kidding. Sort of. Family lore says she planned on adopting 3 boys.

So although the Big Kid has heard "his" story quite a few times over the years, I understand the need to hear it all again. Where did I come from? Where did it begin?

I told him, but as always, I left stuff out. This is HIS day.

But I can't stop thinking about it. The "not said" stuff.

Since we were newlyweds, his dad and I boinked like rabbits, so we were never sure about what the due date would be. Sometime within a month, obviously.

In the wee hours of the morning of Wednesday, December 31st, I thought I was in labor. So we made the trip to the hospital and were there about 7 hours before it was determined that no, I wasn't actually in labor. We got home around 8am, and I had an OB appointment at 9am.

Although I was absolutely freaking enormous, the young doctor on call in the practice for the holiday season (not the older, fatherly one I'd been seeing) said that well, yeah, he could admit me and induce labor, but he'd rather wait until I went into it on my own.

I was on board. I was exhausted, and in pain. Men won't ever get this, unless you liken it to getting kicked in the nuts, and then they just won't believe it.

Because giving birth is "natural" and getting kicked in the nuts isn't. Unless he's a total asshat, and try getting a guy to admit that he is and it's natural for him to get kicked in the nuts.

When a women's body gets ready for giving birth, the hard cartilage crap that's separating all the little pelvic bones gets soft and everything grinds together when you move, like somebody trying out a stick shift for the first time or twelve. If a woman listens, she can actually hear it when it happens. It hurts like hell.

I just wanted to sleep. So we went home.

Of course, my now ex-mother-in-law was there waiting (she'd flown in a couple of days before from Hawaii and had taken 10 days from her job---and really I promise, she's a nice woman in real life), and so was my ex-father-in law. He'd called, found out that we were at the hospital, and invited himself over. They hadn't been married for a number of years, and got along like two cats tied in a sack.

So by the time we got home, they were ready to unload on someone. And it turned out to be me.

When they heard that the doctor had offered to induce and I refused, they kicked me around like a can.

"I only have 10 days off from my job!" my mother-in-law moaned. "I've already been here for 3! If you wait, I might not get to spend any time with my new grandchild! How could you be so selfish?"

"How could you be so fiscally irresponsible?", my father-in-law shouted. "If they induce you and you have the baby before midnight, you can claim it as a deductible for the whole entire year!"

No shit. I am NOT kidding you. And my now-ex just sat there and let them smack me around.

Where were MY parents?, you might ask. They both lived a couple of hours away and were just waiting to get the call that I was going in to the hospital like normal people.

I went into our bedroom and called my dad. I just wept. I was so damn tired and sore. And tired. Did I say that already? He demanded that I put my husband on the phone.

"If you can't protect my daughter, I'm going to come down there and rip your GD head off!" Then-hubby assured him that he would, and went out to "deal" with his parents. Dad asked me if I wanted him to drive down, and I told him that I thought everything would be ok. I went to sleep.

A couple of hours later, then-hubby shook me awake.

"My parents decided that we're going to go ahead and induce labor. They're calling the doctor now to set it up so we can have the baby before midnight".

We? What's with this "we" shit? When did my personal sprog plopping become a group decision?

Yes. Yes. This is what happened! They decided I wasn't fit to make the choice and to take matters into their own hands. They got the doc on the phone, made demands, and he insisted on speaking with me.

I know the doc didn't want to mess up his own holiday weekend plans and was trying to put me off from ruining them.

"If you want to come in now and be induced, it's your decision!" I was too tired, but I didn't think I could wait another 4 or 5 days. I decided to come in the next day, January 1st. And I did.

I called my folks first. My mom met us down there. She was a little late, and got there while the tech had stabbed me like 6 times trying to get an IV going. My mother-in-law was marching around yapping her head off, making the tech nervous, so he kept stabbing me randomly. We were both almost hysterical.

Mom sweet talked my in law out of there, calmed both the tech and I down, he found a vein, and we were good to go.

Basically, after 12 hours of induced labor, I didn't get dilated beyond 3 centimeters. And believe me, if you're in a teaching hospital, the number of people who come by to stick their hands up your Miss Daisy equal the number of people who actually walk past your room. I felt like my crotch was the No Tell Motel on East Colfax that rents rooms by the hour. I think even the janitor copped a feel at least once.

My now-ex never even noticed. He was too busy listening to his Walkman and reading some stupid W.E.B Griffin novel. My mom was busy keeping the marching and ranting in-laws out of my room.

Finally, they decided to do an ultrasound to actually see where the Big Kid was positioned, since although I was in pretty active and painful labor, nothing seemed to be happening.

Doh! He was so big, he was positioned diagonally, with his shoulder pushing in the birth canal. So at about 11pm they unhooked me and planned for a c-section the next morning and told everybody to go home. Except for me, of course.

I was so restless that I NEEDED to get up and walk in the middle of the night. My back ached. I'd been on one of those hard damn beds all day and I needed to MOVE. The nurse on shift was like a freaking drill sergeant and kept barking at me. "Stay where you are unless you need to go to the bathroom!"

In the morning she stomped in and ordered me to go take a shower before surgery. I shuffled out of the room (the labor and delivery section is like a big circle with rooms all around the nursing station, and the shower facilities were on the other side) and stopped.

Some woman who was in labor in another room had invited her 12 brothers and all her friends and neighbors to watch her writhe and moan. Only two were allowed in the room at a time, so the rest of them were congregated in the common area. I was expected to walk through the throng with my heinie hanging out of my hospital gown to get to the showers.

Nurse Nazi actually POKED me to get going. I refused until she gave me another hospital gown to wear backwards. I mean, what was she going to do, say "No birth for you?"

Sheesh. But she scared the crap outta me anyway.

If any men have survived the saga for this long without running away screaming and stabbing themselves in the privates with a sharpened pencil, I suggest you now run like hell.

After my shower, while I was waiting, I got out of bed to go to the bathroom and felt/heard a big-ass plop. I looked down at the floor and saw this thing that looked like a part of a strawberry jello-cup. I'd read the baby books. I knew this was the uh "mucus plug".

I kicked that f*cker under the bed so Nurse Nazi wouldn't see it and make me get hooked up to that pitocin drip again!

Ultimately, my original OB came in to do the surgery, and my actual pediatrician---I mean MY pediatrician, who was close to retirement, attended as well.

I felt so comforted to have two such old and distinguished "hands" taking care of business!

Although I had an epidural, I had to be gassed a little bit at the end because I kept saying---"you know, I can feel that, and it kind of hurts!"

When I sort of came out of it, and was told that the Big Kid was 12.5 pounds and 23 and 3/4 inches tall, I made myself proud amongst these eminent doctors who had taken time away from their holiday weekend to deliver my son.

"You're shitting me! No way!"

Happy Birthday, my beautiful green-eyed boy.

You'll always be my baby.

P.S. When I went to the same hospital 3 1/2 years later to have Little Guy, the maternity ward still had Big Kid's picture up as the biggest baby ever delivered there!