dehydration + maggie moos - gallbladder = hospital

well, i was back at saint anthony's hospital saturday night. apparently after having my gallbladder removed i was supposed to stop eating anything that tastes good. i'm not supposed to eat dairy, fried foods, processed foods, or sugar. they did say, though, that i'm allowed to have water, lettuce, and tree bark.

i woke up thinking i was dying. i woke t.j. up and told him my thoughts (that i was dying) and he said, "give me a minute - it's 12:30 am." i waited and then at 12:31 i reminded him of my impending death. because of my fake medical degree i have granted myself after obsessively surfing babycenter.com, google, and webMD, i had diagnosed myself with pre-eclampsia. i had severe upper abdominal pain, 2 days of headaches, and i'm in my third trimester: clearly i was dying from pre-eclampsia. while t.j. was trying to figure out if i was really in enough pain to warrant yet another medical bill, i'm explaining to him that not only was i pre-eclamptic, but that i was going to have to deliver a 34 week old baby via c-section within the next couple of hours and that he never did get that damn closet organizer put up in the nursery; something he would surely regret because when i'm dead and gone i won't be able to help him find where the diapers are 5x a day for 18 months. (ON THE FREAKING TOP LEFT SHELF, DAMMIT!)

t.j. called our neighbor to come stay with rozlyn (even though i was approaching the pearly gates, i still had enough sense to know not to wake that monster up.) the neighbor arrived and after reminding t.j. that i was dying, he finally started hauling ass to the hospital - at one point he even reached 2 miles above the posted speed limit.

pregnancy has wreaked havoc on me. i have been pregnant - at some point - in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 with only one kid (currently) to show for it. i'm also down 2 organs, one tooth, lots of hair and 4,756 cans of miller lite. just when i think it cannot get worse they say i have to collect my piss in a gas tank for 24 hours and then bring it back the following day. easy enough, right? well after finding out i was dehydrated, they rehydrated me with enough water to fill the atlantic and then tell me that every time i pee that i have to pee in a cup and then transfer that pee into the mouth of a gas tank. i said, "look lady - i cannot even see my vagina and i'm a horrible shot - is there a certain amount i can shoot for, or do i really have to collect every ounce of piss over the next 24 hours?" she informs me if it's easier, i can just piss directly into the gas tank. riiiiiiiight.

i would really love to just have a normal pregnancy and be one of those women who are all about feeling like maternal goddesses; however, after being admitted to the hospital with dehydration issues all the while missing a tooth, sporting both a chipped manicure and a tramp stamp, flashing my crotch on accident, and spending the weekend pissing all over myself i have come to the following conclusion: i'm the lindsey lohan of pregnancy.

is that your lawn or are you just happy to see me?

i have 3 proposals due in the next 2 weeks. i have guests coming over the holiday weekend. i have meal planning to do, groceries to buy, floors to clean, nails to paint, a pregnant belly to get spray tanned and a toddler putting "fish ba" (goldfish in my bra.)

meanwhile, t.j. is in the front yard manicuring his penis.

you see, t.j. has this obsession with doing stuff. it doesn't matter what kind of stuff, t.j. just loves to do stuff. well, this week his stuff includes pointless landscaping. it started with the idea of making roz a play area. sounds nice, right? well, after digging up the sod and placing the pavers he all of a sudden became a landscape aficionado. since saturday he has built a play area, removed a pine tree out of the front yard, dug up all the grass around the mailbox area (apparently he's been meaning to do this for a while - why, i have no clue) and dug this giant cock out of my precious lawn:

i'm supposed to calm down and trust him. according to t.j. this is going to look real nice after he puts a bunch of mulch in there and plants a maple tree. at the end of the day, however, the truth remains: our yard has now been forever tainted.

(i just ended that blog with a taint joke, FYI.)

expecting #2

as i approach the last trimester of this pregnancy, i am purposely reminding myself of the hell that childbirth is. how do i do this? i youtube videos of women in third world countries who give birth on floors of cow dung huts who receive their episiotomies via machete. in reality, my own baby story will be nothing like this. truly, the only thing i have in common with those ladies is the fact that our nipples are the size of dinner plates and i may have been speaking in zulu when roz started crowning.

by nature, i'm a worrier. this is how t.j. and i really differ: although i worry about anything and everything that could happen, when catastrophe strikes, I'm cool as a cucumber. t.j., on the other hand, worries about NOTHING then drops f-bombs over spilled milk. this is why i am constantly struggling to educate him on the ins and outs of bringing a human into this world without terrifying him. my somewhat limited experience in the health care industry - combined with my addiction to google - has enlightened me to the many things that can go awry during labor and delivery. i do not torture him with the childbirthing classes offered by the hospital; i feel like these classes are more for women who choose to feel childbirth. people like me who would prefer a horse tranquilizer from the neck down do not benefit from lamaze. i like to enjoy bringing my girls into this world the same way i enjoyed my 20's: intoxicated.

so, what is the biggest fear i have? birth defects? pulmonary embolism? toxemia? shoulder dystocia? hemorrhaging out and dying leaving t.j. to raise our precious girls all alone? although these things do cross my mind, they don't come near my deepest, darkest fear of completely shitting all over the table while pushing a human out of my vagina.

yep - pooping. pooping myself is what i fear. many of you cannot believe i'm saying this out loud. i, however, know for a fact after talking to my girlfriends that i'm simply doing the world a favor by bringing this to light. think of it as the kony 2012 for expecting moms. did we know pooping during childbirth was possible? sure - anything is possible. but did you know that this phenomenon strikes around 65% of us?

bam! now you do.

so what do you do with this information? if you are an expecting mom you might be comforted by the fact that someone has finally verbalized your biggest fear. if you are an expecting mom who has never thought about this, you are cussing me out. and, if you are an expecting dad - well, chances are you just shit yourself after learning that this even happens, so we'll just call it even now and go on with our day.

another hair raising pregnancy

the immediate onset of unwanted body hair occurs simultaneously as i’m peeing on my pregnancy tests. as soon as the “PREGNANT” appears on the stick, i sprout a black nipple hair. about 2 weeks after the positive test my “happy trail” arrives - and boy is that an appropriate term; nothing makes me happier than dozens of long black hairs marching down my pale, irish, pregnant navel with the sole intent of ruining my life. i’ve learned to just deal with it, as i know it is a temporary affliction. for 9 months i have to add in new body parts to graze with my venus goddess razor - and boy is that an appropriate name; nothing makes me feel more like a goddess than swiping blades across my jaw line to keep pubes from invading my cheekbones.

keep in mind that my one true obsession in life is the need to shave DAILY; this means during pregnancy i spend approximately 78% of my day shaving. this morning was no different than any other: i had just nabbed the unibrow, the pits, and the chin when i started heading towards the oh-so-happy trail... and then it happened: i sliced myself - bad. i started bleeding - a lot. as happiness and blood filled the tub i realized that i could very well be the first person to bleed out from trying to hack down their happy trail. and then that realization led to another realization: i would probably be the smoothest cadaver the morgue has ever detained.

after putting a band-aid the size of a small child on my stomach i made the decision (for the first time in my life)to actually not tell t.j. something. i would like for him to continue thinking that behind the shower curtain i’m a naturally hairless wonder frolicking in the warm water as opposed to edward scissorhands chopping up limbs and nipples. however, my secret was not so safe after roz delivered a swift kick to my wound area making me screech in pain. i tried to lightly explain my hair issue to t.j. (by “lightly” i mean i may have withheld the fact that i become an armenian sloth and have to nair my earlobes before listening to my ipod.)

i go on to explain to t.j. the story, and here is how that conversation went:

lars: “...so next thing you know, i’ve hit right by my scar on my belly button and i’m bleeding like a stuck pig. i mean, i really cut myself, t.j.... really bad. and i cannot believe it hurts this much. i have never had a cut before that hurt so bad. and it’s deep, too. .. a really deep cut.”
tj: *in a dead serious tone* “did you think you cut down to the baby?”
lars: *also in a dead serious tone* “yes, t.j. - i gave myself a c-section.”
tj: “did she try to stick her hand out?”
lars: “yes, t.j. - our baby tried to come out of a razor nick and i had to shove her back down and tell her it wasn’t time yet.”

because of this conversation and the laughter that ensued, i will continue to call it my happy trail.

nuevo amigo

meeting a new friend for roz means running at someone under 4 ft. tall, smacking them somewhere on their body and then begin to talk their little ears off. she screams, points, laughs, hits again (lovingly), and then follows them around as they try to escape her. she is very aggressive and in-your-face and i've seen more than one kid look at her like she was crazy. (trust me - i know the look.)

the other day there was one little girl that seemed to be overwhelmed by all the kids running around at the park. she was very reserved and standing alone off to the side. in other words: she was easy prey for roz. i swooped in right as roz was about to face-palm her and said, "rozzy, can you say hiiiiiiiiiiiiiii?" the little girl just stared blankly at me, then turned her attention to roz. i said, "rozlyn, let's see if your friend wants to go over to the slide with you." just then the little girl's mom walked up to us. we did the whole "how-old-is-she-oh-wow-she-is-so-cute" introduction that all moms have to endure - even when you have to lie right through your teeth because their child has a face that only they could love. the mom then explained to me that her daughter didn't speak english.

(remember that post where i do awkward things in uncomfortable moments... ok,...)

after i quickly profiled the toddler to determine her ethnicity, i decided she was spanish speaking. scrambling to remember what dora the explorer has taught us, i bent over and grabbed rozzy's hand, moved right down into the girl's face and... here's where i evidently lost my mind... began saying (way too loudly) the following words in an odd repetitive sequence:

CALIENTE, BUENO, AMIGO. CALIENTE, BUENO, AMIGO.

the moral of this story: if roz has to live the rest of her life with people looking at her like she is nuts, she at least gets it honestly from her loco mother.

no longer pinterested

"Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows you to organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and share their favorite recipes." - pinterest.com

"pinterest is a virtual shit show of do-it-yourself fails and redneck crafts beautifully photographed to make one feel that they are making classy shit for their home. pinterest results in hours of letting fat accumulate on your ass while you "pin" weight watchers recipes and toddlers walking around tarred and feathered with glue and glitter." - me

there is one pin that when i saw it i immediately "repinned" it with a smile from ear-to-ear wondering in the back of my head (as i do with everything i see on pinterest) "why didn't i think of that?!"  this pin actually evoked raw emotion from me - i immediately yearned for warm weather and shishkabobs marinating in the refrigerator. i imagined all of my friends and family gathered in a nantucket-ish backyard barbeque and we are all wearing crisp white linens, just standing around shitting out rainbows and unicorns. at one point, paula deen joins us with a robust "hey ya'll!" as her two flaming gay sons walk in with mouth-watering layered salads. here is the "pin" that made me title a money-saving envelope as "summer 2012":

You take a picnic table, remove one of the boards in the middle of the table and replace it with a gutter.  Fill the gutter with ice, and you’ve got yourself a beverage cooler extraordinaire!  Brilliant!

later that evening on the way back from dinner i'm explaining to tj this brilliance i have stumbled upon. as i viewed this pin online, i was daydreaming about social elegance and food network stars. when tj clarified what i was asking his assistance for, the more realistic picture of this project dawned on me: there i am 7 months pregnant sweating my ass off holding a kid on my hip and filling our brand new beer-gutter up with some miller lite bottles while people look out their windows explaining to their children what a hillbilly is.

i took my earnest savings from the summer 2012 envelope and transferred it to the baby 2012 envelope and vowed to stop the pinsanity.

i'm a dirty, dirty girl

last october i started researching a new way to eat called "clean eating." the gist of it is basically only eating foods that are from the ground, from a tree, or from a vine. i would only buy my meat from a butcher that sells meat from grain-fed, hormone-free cows. (if you aren't drinking organic milk, you are drinking cancer. true story.) this is a lifestyle change and it definitely ups the ante on my current organic-only produce and dairy rule. they say a great way to start making the positive changes slowly is to not ingest anything containing an ingredient you cannot pronounce fluently. changes like this are actually easy in my house - if i told tj toilet water warded of cancer he would make our coffee with it. so that was it: we were going "clean."

then the dumbasses at meijers put oatmeal cream pies on sale for 3 boxes at $5.

i've had 3 oatmeal cream pies today and it's not even 2:00. i started feeling really guilty after the third one and decided to check out the dreaded ingredient list of what my new favorite addiction is made of. the following is a list of things i have ingested not once, not twice, but three times today:

Corn Syrup, Flour Enriched Bleached, Barley Malt, Niacin, Iron Reduced, Wheat Flour, Folic Acid (Vitamin aB), Oat(s), Cottonseed Oil Partially Hydrogenated, Soybean(s) Oil Partially Hydrogenated, Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Sugar, Thiamine Mononitrate (Vitamin B1), Vegetable(s) Shortening, Ammonium Bicarbonate, Baking Soda, Dextrose, Emulsifier(s), Contains 22% or less Leavening, Milk, Molasses, Polysorbate 60, Raisin(s), Salt, Sorbitan Monostearate, Soy Lecithin, Water, Whey, Mono and Diglycerides, Corn Starch, Caramel Color, Carrageenan, Cocoa, Coconut, Color(s), Egg(s), Egg(s) Whites, Apple(s) Evaporated, Milk Non-Fat Dry, Red 40, Sorbic Acid Freshness Preserved By Spice(s), Yellow 5, Flavor(s) Natural & Artificial, Sulfite Treated

what the hell is thiamine mononitrate? i don't know either - but lucky for me i can pronounce it fluently.