Where’s Gloria Gaynor when you need her?

Well, it’s all over but the shouting.  I survived the Big Trip to the Dentist, AKA Legally Trippin’ on a Friday.  I had to go back and look at my Twitter home page to see what I had said to help me reconstruct the day.

I’d like to say that I had everything under control, but the text I sent to Kellie at 7:40 belied my outward calm:

Girl, me and Jesus were having some intense negotiations between 2-5 this morning.

I popped the first wonder pill at 7:30 when we dropped the kids off at school and within 15 minutes was waxing rhapsodic about it on Twitter.

They should offer this as an add-in at Starbucks.

I thought I had my eyes open for this picture.  No lie – this was 20 minutes after I popped it.  Good thing my driver was wide awake.

By the time I got to the dentist’s office, Craig had to help me walk in the front door for my legs had forgotten all of their functioning except how to buckle at the knees.  Once inside, I found the nearest wall and propped it up all by myself.  Tried to stop the goofy smile to no avail.

Someone led me to The Room, and the dentist came in holding three pills.  I remember him telling her – two Ativan and one Whateverizampam.  I may or may not have waited for him to get me water to swallow them with.  THEN, the nitrous of love.

Have I told you about the time I got over-nitroused?  It was in college and I had broken a tooth that needed to be crowned (the very one I got recrowned yesterday) and they had jacked me up on nitrous and forgot I was in the room.  Somewhere in the back of my head I started looping “Onward Christian Soldiers” and it managed to loop all the way out my mouth at the loudest end of the decibel range.   At least it wasn’t “Do you really want to hurt me?”

Wouldn’t want them to answer that with an extra jab of the needle, now, would we?

Craig says they placed a call to him saying they had found a large cavity that needed to be fixed next to the broken tooth, so he said okay.  Normally having him authorize an extra round of needles poked in my gums would have sent me straight to divorce court, but I was blissfully floating on Lake Como with George Clooney and could not have cared less.

George says to tell you all hello.

Apparently when all was said and done, I made it out of the chair and home, though I do not recall any of it.  Craig said I walked like Tim Conway on crack.  I tweeted

Pains and bed callww

Can someone tell me what “callww” means?

At 6:00 I found the wherewithal to type

Just a wakened by the warden to drink water. Back to bed. Oh, and OuCH!

Then I woke up this morning at 7:30 – apparently Craig fed me a bowl of black bean chili in bed, because there was some on my shirt this morning.  (Note to husbands reading my blog:  help your wife out of her street clothes when she’s incoherent and needs to be in bed, or at least change them when they get beans on them.  Thank you.)

The children came in the room and said “I’m so glad you’re not dead”.  Me, too.

I tried to eat a cinnamon roll, but decided that food through straws might be the way to go today.   I think everything in general is going to be slowish.

Forgive any nonsensical ramblings – oh wait, every day here at CPQ you find nothing but nonsensical ramblings…you’re used to that.

Thank you for your kind thoughts and prayers yesterday.

I survived.

I’ll wear makeup tomorrow.

Have a nice day.

PS – Normally I would care that I have odd lines/spacing/indentations in my post.  Not today.  It is what it is….

D-Day

Rockin’, Rollin’, and Rulin’

Oh, I’m feeling so much better and I’m glad the seventy-six hours of sleep I’ve had in the last 24 have made me a new woman.  Wednesday’s usually my errand day, and since I was out of commission the better part of Monday and Tuesday, I had to cram a ton in.

I accomplished muchly.  Hence, today’s post title.

Want to ride along with me and see what happened?

This was carpool.

I am the Queen of it.

Did I ever tell you how I got my nickname?  I didn’t make it up just for this blog.  Four years ago we petitioned to enter the year-round magnet school we currently attend and the boys were accepted with one slight hitch.  There wasn’t enough space in the classroom to have them all attending on the same schedule and so for the first year, I’d have to have them on separate tracks.

Dear Reader, for 15 months I drove to school every blessed weekday because at least one of the boys had class.

No vacations.

No trips to the beach.

No trips home to see my folks.

No sleeping in.

For 15 months.

After month 14, one of the crossing guards who was sick of seeing me every.stinking.day bestowed me with the moniker that I now wear so proudly (she said with slightly rolled eyes).

And now you know the rest of the story.

While I was busy making sure I didn’t hit the car in front of me as I inched through the line, the boys were in the backseat oblivious to the mess playing with the toy of the day that gets dragged into the car.

After I dropped them off, I went to Blockbuster to return Bedtime Stories which I thought was cute, but had one too many “passing-gas” jokes for my taste.  Craig thought it was hilarious.

Who’s the adult in the family?  That would be me.

And what, Dear Reader, is conveniently  located three doors down from Blockbuster?

That would be a whole lotta’ love disguised as a Venti Extra-Hot Chai.  Did I mention I was so sick that I had gone TWO DAYS without caffeine?  I seriously needed to make up for lost time.

From there, on to the Post Office with the really bad pavement to mail Elizabeth’s washcloths I knitted for my give-away last month.  It took me a while to finish them what with the cat dying and the angst over the dentist and all, but I finally got them out of the front seat of my car.  From there, it was a left turn and two short miles down the road to the library to return Craig’s overdue book.

As an aside, should I be responsible for paying his overdue fines if HE’S the one who asked me to check it out and then didn’t return it on time?

Discuss.

Speaking of angst, while on my way to my friend Susan’s house, I was suddenly hit with the realization that I have a rather unpleasant date with the dentist on Friday morning.

Oh, great angstyness.  Perhaps even horror.

Let’s not discuss the dentist just yet because I need something to blog about on Friday.  Unlike the prepared ones of you who have plans and themes for every day of the blogging week, I’m more of a fly by the seat of my pants kinda’ girl and I never know what’s going to come out of my mouth.  Oh man, and I just remembered that they told me I’ll probably have amnesia over the whole event, so I won’t even know what to tell you.  This is causing quite a conundrum, though not enough of one to forgo the use of powerful hallucinogenics.

After VBS planning at Susan’s house (where I forgot to take a picture, but trust me, it was loads of fun, and she and I look like sisters, so just imagine another picture of me like the one above except without the shocked look), I went to Kellie’s house for lunch.

I think this could become quite the little habit.

This is her beautiful corn and tomato tart that she made FROM SCRATCH (really, I watched her do it) and served with a salad and a delicious passion fruit and lemon tea.  I have it on good authority that sometime in the next day or so she’s going to post the recipe, so be sure and head over there to get it when she does.  It’s perfect for your next girly brunch – hello, men from Pakistan – or easy summer supper.

Another heartwarming touch was the use of her “I’m special” plate which made me happy because even though I, too, have an “I’m special” plate, I have always used it for the kids or Craig, never for myself.  And don’t we all like to feel special sometimes? As if all of this wasn’t enough, Martha Stewart Kellie made my absolute most favorite cookies in the world for dessert.  A while back she had read in my blog that I loved snickerdoodles, and she made them just because and I have to say it made me misty, misty, misty.

I heart you, Kel.  And your sweet kids who set a beautiful table and cracked me up with their very polite requests for “one OR TWO cookies, please”.

What I also loved is that it was a judgement-free zone when I may have had more cookies than is considered polite, and she even sent some home with me for the children.

Right.

Like they ever saw them.

Like they didn’t disappear in less than three minutes after I left her driveway.

After picking up my charges (I’d insert another picture but it would look exactly like the one on top except the children would be cranky from having to do homework/have outside recess/not having chicken nuggets on the lunch menu/bringing home a note from the teacher),  we went to Food Lion.  I am not a fan of the Lion, but it is conveniently located adjacent to the school, and since I only had to buy milk and eggs, we ducked in.  Of course, since the boys were with me, we slightly went over the grocery list.  This time, however, we managed to only buy two boxes of cereal, and they talked me into buying bread since I was  baking making  a frozen lasagna in celebration of Craig’s return from a business trip.  Did I tell you he was gone while  I was sick? I usually don’t serve bread with dinner, not because I’m stingy, but because it goes straight to my thighs.

Unlike dozens of snickerdoodles consumed in my car.

Apparently I’m not feeding Travis enough vegetables.

And then I went home, did laundry, cleaned bathrooms, straightened pictures, dusted my nightstand, tweeted with the real Martha Stewart and an astronaut orbiting in space fixing the Hubble telescope, and made dinner.

And I did all of this with a rather large hole in the back of my pants.

Which I did not discover until bedtime.

Have a nice day.

Brother, can you spare a dime?

“Mom, I need $25,000.”

Oh, me too.

“Whatcha’ need it for, Squash?”

“There’s a hotel in the Bahamas that has a room for $25,000 a night.  If I had $100,000, we could stay there for four whole nights.”

So glad that he’s mastered some basic mathematical calculations. Now if only he could master keeping track of his nineteen million lunchboxes I’ve had to replace to the tune of $25,000, we’d be in business.

But I digress…

“What’s so special about this hotel that it costs so much to stay there?”

“They have a butler, Mom, and marble bathtubs.”

No one in this family enjoys soaking for hours in a tub more than he.  Except for maybe me.  How I love this wrinkled, pruney, water-logged child o’ mine.

“If you could tell the butler to get anything in this world for you, punkin’, what would it be?

“A cherry soda.”

I think he’s adopted.

Have a nice day.

Did you get the license plate?

You know it’s going to be a long day if you find yourself hitting the banana mayonnaise comfort sandwiches before 8 a.m.  Either I’ve been hit by a truck or I’m the next  confirmed case of the swine flu.  (Sorry, I know you’re sick of hearing about swine flu, but I wanted to be culturally relevant and mention it at least once in my blog.  For I am hip and happening that way.)

I do not enjoy being sick and fortunately it’s a rare occasion around here when I am.  I’d like to think it’s all that healthy eating I do, but having just copped to eating mayonnaise and sugar on white bread in the previous paragraph kinda’ shoots that theory out of the water.  A more plausible explanation would be that not cleaning my house has helped build my immune system to levels previously unseen outside a Marvel comic book.

At least the kids are safely away from me in their pristine germ free school environment.  I have no idea what they packed for their snacks, but judging from the serious dent in the brownie pan, their teachers will be pulling them off the ceiling tiles by 10:00.

I’m going to go make a serious dent in my pillow.

Have a nice day.

Closet confessions

The thing I love about blogging is that I air all my dirty laundry for men in Pakistan to read about and then it starts to gnaw at me that I should probably do something about the real laundry.  I mean, if my mom ever does start reading my blog, she’s going to call me on the carpet for some recent housekeeping confessions I’ve made to random strangers, so I thought it best to go ahead and start tackling the old “to do” list so that when she does call to fuss at me, I can tell her I’ve mended my ways.

No, I didn’t straighten the pictures.  Or dust.  I’m waiting for a rainy fifth Tuesday of a month that ends in X to do those tasks.  Yesterday I decided the time had come to disassemble rearrange torch everything and start all over again with my closet.  Remember I said that it was in a bad way?

It was “Late to church because I can’t find the matching shoe” bad way.

“Winter coats and sweaters when it’s 90 degree shorts weather outside” bad way.

“Husband threatening to never buy another pair of shoes or new clothes until it was cleaned out” bad way.

Okay, the “no new shoes” comment is what it took to light the fire under me. Summer’s comin’ and Mama needs new shoes.

So I pulled every last item of clothing out of my closet, (and why do I have this obsession with showing you every bad habit of mine?) and this is the conclusion to which I arrived.

Hello, my name is Susan, and I clearly have a bit of a shoe problem.

It was oh-so-painful, but I had part with some of them.  I only had the emotional fortitude to toss three very-past-their-prime pairs, and I had Craig help me decide by giving him a vote on his choice for the first in line for the trashcan.  These are the shoes he chose.

Yes, they are cracked and completely worn out, but they are so very comfortable.  And they have the added honor of being the pair that have logged more carpool miles than all the other pairs combined.   Funny how when I asked if I should get rid of the ones pictured below, he said “Absolutely not”.

Smart man.

After everyone was happily and perfectly matched (unlike  He Who Must Never Be Named in My Blog Again and Molly), they were put back into the closet along with the summer clothes while the winter clothes were relegated to the hall closet.

I’d show you a picture of my summer clothes hanging in the closet, but really, how many white t-shirts can a person stand to look at?

And in other news -

I went to Sonic on Saturday to spend the gift card that I won from Amber’s giveaway several weeks back.  She’s been yapping about this Pineapple Diet Dr. Pepper thing for so long that I just had to go try it.  And since it was her dime, I ordered a backup of my favorite drink (Vanilla Diet Dr. Pepper) just in case her concoction was gag-inducing.

I know you’re all waiting with bated breath to find out what it tasted like.  I’ll have you know that it was oddly delightful.  The first sip was “Huh?” but the subsequent thirty were very satisfying.

Hope Mom and Amber are happy now.

And the men in Pakistan.

Have a nice day.

Somewhere my mom is hanging her head in shame

Welcome, fellow Meredith linkers to this month’s 10 on the 10th.  I thought I’d let you sneak a peek at….

10 Things I Need to Do

1.  I need to release the dead sunflowers that have sat on my fireplace mantel for a week.  They were on their last legs when I bought them, and it’s really time to go.  I hold on too tightly to flowers in my house.  They are always way past cute before they hit the compost heap.

2. Hmmm…does the fact that you can READ the word “dust” hint that I might need to dust my nightstand?

3. Mt. Washmore still exists in the laundry room.  I think I have six more loads of laundry to go… I need to get crackin’.

4. I could start my own science experiment with the fruit flies buzzing around my brown bananas.  I need to make banana bread muffins for school snacks next week.  Or for myself snacks.

5. I need to straighten some pictures.

6. I need to transplant J’s cabbage plant into the ground.  He’s competing for a $20,000 college scholarship from Burpee. He doesn’t understand that they hold it in escrow until he’s 18.  He thinks he’s going to get a big fat check and head straight to the LEGO store.

7. Craig brought these home from flag football practice this morning.  I really need to avoid them.

8. I need to use these lest I give the ladies at my nail/wax salon something to snicker about.

9. I need to clean this.

10.  I need to close the lid on these.  I think 10 days is long enough to release those cleaning vapors.  I’m sure the powder room is spotless by now.

Have a nice day.

Gladi-CPQ-d

Once again, very late for Gretchen’s Monday Gladitude party…or very early for next week….either way, I’m just happy to be here.

_______

1.  I am glad for people who snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.  I was at the dentist’s office yesterday signing consent forms, signing away my first born, turning over the contents of my bank account, etc. in preparation for my big appointment next week.  On my way out, I stopped at the front desk to chat with the receptionist who happens to be my neighbor.  As we were visiting, my neighbor mentioned to the hygienist standing nearby that I was a “nervous patient”.  I thought that was kind of her. “Psychotic nutjob” can be off-putting.

The hygienist said she would try to be on schedule next week when I was in.  Turns out she was abused as a child by her dentist .  As a result, she was a high fear patient until she had gone to my dentist, had a good experience, and was liberated from that stronghold.  She subsequently went to dental hygiene school for the specific purpose of working with high fear patients so that she could help them as well.  While we were talking, she numerous times praised God for the redemptive work He had done in her life, turning something that had been so traumatic for her into her life calling.

2.  I am glad for Ativan.  For previous story notwithstanding, that redemptive work has not yet occurred in me.  “Better living through chemistry” has always been my motto.

3.  I am glad the boys still get excited about stuff.  I never want them to lose their wonder and delight in new experiences.  Today Tommy was beside himself with joy because he addressed (by himself) and mailed off the entry form for a LEGO building contest.  Here’s his creation.  He would want you to know it’s called a Terabird.

4.  I’m glad I got to meet my friend Michelle for lunch today.  And doubly glad that she brought her daughter Lyla.  She truly delights me every time I see her.  I probably ignored Michelle half the time we were there because I couldn’t take my eyes off this bundle of pink cuteness.

Isn’t she the cutest thing?  I just love this little girl. So very much.  Oh, and her parents, too.

5.  I’m glad End of Grade testing has begun.  Now the boys can stop obsessing over it.  It’s only been the entire focus of their 3rd grade.  Sigh.

6.  I’m glad that I was honest this week about life stuff.

7.  I’m glad that little things crack me up.  Like following this truck that reminded me of Mater from Cars.

8.  Glad that what I thought was a tumor on my arm turned out to be the baby beginnings of a muscle.  I think the Shred is starting to work!

9.  Glad that my husband was out of town so that I could eat more of the fried okra we had for supper last night.  All’s fair in love and fried okra.  I can get pretty territorial about it.

10. Glad that the boys are planning on serving me breakfast in bed for Mother’s Day (and glad that they’ll gang up on Dad and pester the ever living daylights out of him to make sure it happens).

Have a nice day.

Oh, grow up already

I have a warning.

Today’s post is not for a male audience.

If you are in fact a) male, b) a male related to me, or c) an ex-boyfriend, please just hit the back button on your browser, because this will in no way, shape or form hold any interest for you.

If you are indeed a male and choose to continue, don’t come crying to me and sue for psychological damage for you are about to enter the very warped and twisted mind of the Carpool Queen.

(And by the way and totally unrelated, you should have seen the traffic spike from Muslim countries on my post yesterday about getting your girly on.  I kid you not – Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia..there are some lonely boys over there…I hope that open bottle of Clorox did it for them.)

I will now get to the point.

I have a confession to make .

I cannot enter a store, buy a box of tampons, and walk out.

Hello, my name is Susan, and I am clearly not an adult.

Just.

Cannot.

Do.

It.

Am I the only one that must put seventeen thousand other items into the basket that I do not need just to avoid walking through the store with a box in my hand?  Because of course I’ll run into a male friend of mine while I’m at the store.  Never fails.  And can’t you see the flashing neon signs and arrows pointing to the lonely pink box, slowly making its way up the scanner belt towards the checkout clerk?  And then to have to stand there and make chitchat over the weather?  Nope.  There’s just no way for me to feel unmortified.

So what did I add to my basket today? Judging by your comments yesterday, something of which you’ll all approve.

New flip-flops.

Because I can distract anyone with a good conversation about shoes.

So I guess it’s official.

I may be able to get my girly on, but when it comes to shopping for personal products, I clearly have not found my big girl britches.

Have a nice day.

Getting my girly on…

I had an appointment to meet a friend for lunch yesterday.  She always dresses cute, so I had to step up and wear something other than hole-y yoga pants and a charity giveaway t-shirt. (By the way, I never attend the charity fundraiser races in person.  I love that most of them have a “sleep-in” option that still lets you get the t-shirt and look like you’re not a slacker. Which I’m not.  I’m just making room for others.  I’m kind and giving that way.)

Don’t believe me about the pants/t-shirt?  Here’s proof.  JJ was playing with my camera while I was exercising the other day.  I’d like to say these are my exercise-only clothes, but sadly, no.

I bought some fun jeans a few weeks ago and wanted to wear them to lunch, but they’re super long and require me to wear heels with them.  So I dug into the closet for some shoes.  And when I say “dug”, I mean literally.  I cleaned out the boys’ closet on Saturday but mine falls in the same category as the car and is going to require more effort than I care to exert at this time.

I will also need another adult in the house who can dial search and rescue if I don’t emerge in a timely manner.

I pulled out these.

Then, my favorite shirt that I love to wear even though I don’t have a purse that coordinates with it in any way, shape or form.

Oh, and I obviously did NOT pick up the powder room before I walked out the door.

Nor did I find a handtowel that remotely matched the wall color.

That’s my kitchen dishcloth.

And the Clorox wipes that have sat there for a week.

With the lid open.

For.

One.

Week.

Don’t judge.

Have a nice day.