Friday, September 28, 2012

Today's Random Thoughts

Today's random thoughts are brought to you by my neuroses, my 4yo, and Facebook comments.
  So  those of you who are just joining us for the first time, welcome!  To catch you all up, I hate spiders.  I am a stay at home mom to the most adorable 4yo, and I have a broken leg at present.
  So my Daddy decided upon returning from our recent trip to Tennessee, that he would stay with us a week to help me out.  The heating element in our dryer was broken, and we were waiting on the new dryer to be delivered later in the week, when it started.  I was one leg balancing, cleaning the bathroom sink, before the strange dryer delivery men had to see my bathroom where the dryer is located.  I was cleaning, and I realized I was not even going to attempt to clean the empty tub.  It has not been used for months due to poor shower pressure, and the new removable shower head in our other full bathroom. Can I digress and just give well deserved props to the inventor of the removable shower head.  Genius right there!  Love! Okay, so back to the shower.  My husband had killed several itsy bitsy spiders in the empty tub.  He just thinks it is enough to smoosh them. He rarely cleans up the carcasses.  So every time I hobble hop into our bathroom(this one is the most crutch friendly), I stare at the dead half carcass and squooshed separated legs of one of my dear old hubs kills. Gross.  So as I lean over the tub to pull the curtain across the length of the tub, I have to look.  I have to peer into the tub, scanning for that ginormous spider that I just know is there.  There have been many giants found in this tub before.  This time, there are two small spiders that have made webs in the bottom corners of the tub that I cannot reach while balancing on one foot.  Okay, life as we know it is not threatened by these two tiny little guys.(BTW, this is definite progress on my part!)  I will have hub kill them when he gets home.
   Every night since that day, when in the dark of the night, I have to go to the bathroom, I hop in fear into the barely lit bathroom on my crutches.  I hop in, turn around, balance, balance my crutches on the wall one at a time, precariously pull down my britches, grab the sink corner, and while still elevating one leg, lower myself onto the toilet.  Then the familiar dread creeps in. I wonder if I pull back the curtain, if there will be a bigolhugeospiderthatwilleat myfaceoffandjumponme spider in that tub again? Most nights I just hurry up and do my business and get the heck out of there.  So every couple of days I feel compelled to pull back the curtain and confront my fears.  I am happy to report that after today's inspection that we are still ginormo-spider free for now! Yay! But I can tell you everywhere in my house that there is a spider.  There is one down the hall, in the corner of the hallway ceiling, across from my daughter's bedroom.  It moved in last night.  There is one, possibly two, that took up residence in the far corner of my bedroom at the beginning of the week.  There are still the two longtime residents in the bathroom tub, and there is the kitchen spider.  He is a slippery little sucker.  I decided to face my fears and let him co-habitate for a small block of time.  I wiped his webs down, when they moved past the corner of the kitchen window.  So he decided to move higher, to the top half of the window, where I cannot reach.  It is like he is laughing at me.  I can hear his tiny little spider voice saying, "Haha lady!  I know your temporarily crippled and too short to get me anyway! Go ahead,try and reach me! I wanna see you knock down my webs now! Nah nah nah, nah nah nah!" So anyway, he is still there, for now, because I cannot reach him.  There are also three outside web spinners.  Two are on and their webs are across my front living room windows.  They only come out at night.  I think they are vampire spiders, because I never see them in the day.  Not pretty and sparkly like Edward, but only come out at night like really big and bad vampires.  Then there is the third one.  I have been battling him since June.  He moved in while we went to the beach.  He first camped out on the back doors.  He spun big, huge web in the night.  He then hides during the day.   i have knocked down his porchwide webs numerous times with the broom, only to wake the next morning to a brand new web in the exact same place as the one I just swept away.  I found him one day earlier in the summer, when I went to turn my daughter's hose on for her sprinkler.  There he was big web under the porch.  Ugh.  I spreyed him and the web with spider killer many times as well.  Aint nothing killing this sucker.  So for now, he is under the porch during the day, and habitates the opposite corner of my porch at night.  Ah well, winter is coming soon! I do not get outside much these days anyway!
  Here is my second randomMy 4yo cracks me up. She is walking stand up comedy I tell you!  She has her own little brand of curse words.  Whenever she is suprised or ticked off, she will say,"Oh Coconuts! or Yeah Hay, no Way!" Thanks Jake and the Neverland Pirates at Disney for those!  Today I hear her exclaiming,"Oh friggle fraggle!" Too funny! She has also said ,"aww wobble!" Another favorite is "Aw, poop a duck!" As any mom will tell you, thay have their own language!
   My third random thought for the day is for my dear friend M.  She is currently going through the ex headache.  Yes, almost half of all of us wives out there, have had to deal with at least one if not more ex wives.  She is now first hand experiencing the aggravation.  If you have a husband or boyfriend that shares a child or children with another woman, then you know the headache I speak of.  The one that we never talk about, because that would make us the 'bitchy' ones.  The best way I have found from personal experience, is to be the better, and bigger person.  Kill 'em with kindness.  I know this entails biting you tongue harder than you ever though possible, drilling your freshly manicured fingernails into bloody half moons in your palms in order to hold your tongue and smile, or taking a deep breath and counting to at least 10,000.  It envolves the patience of a saint, and believe me, by the end of the next up to 18 years, you will have earned that title.  It involves watching broken promises eat away at your kids, having the kids exposed to things that kids should never be exposed to, it envolves putting the kids in the middle, and lots of tears from big and little broken hearts.  Your heart will break for them a thousand times, and there is not a thing you can do but hold them and rock them to sleep. It envolves watching the birth mother hurt YOUR child time and time again, while you are raising and loving them.  It entails watching the birth mothers intentionally hurting their child, to hurt your spouse and to make the child hate or think less of you.  Your heart will break for your spouse and or signifigant other, as the other ex half tries to keep the children from you, because they do not like you.  You will see the ex's trying to still control their former husbands and boyfriends in a myriad of ways.  They will try to rip his heart out, ie through his kids.  The hardest thing to do, is to stand by his side and hold him as he cries, yells, or plots their death(just kidding on that last one!)  All you can do is be there for the kids, as their safe haven, their shelter from the storm(ie their mother), and love them unconditionally.  Your heart will break as your shared kids see the truth about their biological parent(if they were unlucky enough to get a bad one). You will wish you could smack some sense into a woman who calls herself mother, that only spends time with her child, when she wants to play mommy, or needs a babysitter for her current brood, not a real relationship with her firstborn.  You shake your head at horrific stories that your other half's family tell you, of things that she did to hurt the kids. You are the one who has to deal with the counseling, the acting out in school, and the terror stricken habits the kids developed because of nightmare exes.  You are the fall out girl.  Ms Make Everything Okay.  And you are glad to be, because you are full of love not hatred. You will pray to God to answer the question for you,of how could a mother treat her children this way.  You will also have to deal with late night or always during your family dinner kid time calls from intoxicated ex-spouses begging to know why, oh why didn't we work out, and the patience it requires to deal with it, so sthe ex dosen't yank visitation from your significant other? What was wrong with me and or our relationship, and what does she have that I didn't.  You will find that eventually as they grow older, that the what seems like the exes hold on your life loosens and goes away.(How boring their lives must be now that they cannot mess with you and yours, and now that they have alienated their kids!!!) But then you have the emails from the exes, asking marital advice in their current disfunctional marriage.  Trying to get to know your man again on the sly.  Stating that it scares them, that they might still have feelings for him, and they miss his family.  You will find yourself still getting posessive, and wanting to go at it, but your better than that.  As a grown up, you have all the exes secrets!  So instead of being all like,"Bitch, you wanna piece o me? Now it's like,"Bitch please, I been around for almost 14 years, and I know ALL your secrets.  Ones that even your kids don't know, so back off bitch and leave me and mine alone! Boom!"  You don't even have to say it aloud, just the knowledge of the power you hold is satisfaction enough!  You are the nice one, the kind one, the one who listens to everybody else bitch, but never says a word.  Knowledge is satisfaction enough! Plus I don't think the current hubbie would like the fact that you were trying to creep on your ex, ya know?  So when the child and her father are having a FB comment dialog, ex, please do not comment.  There is plenty I could throw out there here and now, but I have edited and am keeping it clean. Stay out of it, it's none of your business.  These are kinds of things that will happen to you.  These are all real situations that have happened to real people I know.  I have always said, don't ever talk bad about the other motha's, the kids will one day see for theirselves!   Every girl who has the potential to be soon dating someone with kids needs to read this.   I luvya Miss M! You have a heart of gold!  Hang in there, because it takes special people to be step mothers, and you are one special person!  ***EDITED with adult children in mind***  Random thought #3 was not intended to offend or hurt anyone, I was simply stating facts and my observations.  If you have taken offense to this post, it was not my intent to upset anyone.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Even More Things I Have learned From Breaking My Leg



  1. How not to bruise your hands when navigating through doorways.
  2. How to balance breakfast and lunch on your elevated and braced leg while in a wheelchair.                                                                                                                             
  3. This broken leg thing sucks!                                     
  4. How to calculate the exact angles and distance required to open the refrigerator door.
  5. How to balance the 4yo on your lap while in the wheelchair, without touching the broken leg.
  6. How to get ones purse or bag off of the back of the wheelchair.
  7. How to hold ones phone and walk on crutches at the same time.
  8. How to successfully get in and out of he front door, and navigate the step with a crutch /chair combo.
  9. That there is no charge for a wheelchair hanger.  However there is a charge for replacements.  Like these are hot ticket theft items? Who knew?                                      
  10. That even if one possesses a wheelchair hanger, that there will never be a handicap spot open.
  11. How to run over one's own foot(the good one) while in the wheelchair.
  12. To never wait until the last minute to go to the bathroom, there is no hurrying with crutches or a wheelchair.
  13. That when you do postpone the ordeal of going to the bathroom, there will inevitably be a down lid, the lifted seat, or pee on the seat, that will require the extra three seconds, that would have allowed you to just make it in time. Need I say more?
  14. That on one side of the street is a wheelchair ramp, and when one gets across the crosswalk, there are stairs...wtf? Seriously?
  15. That the people  who design handicap bathrooms have NEVER spent time in a wheelchair.  I mean seriously, how am I suppose to turn around, hop out, navigate , hop, get over the foot and leg rests, and how is my 4yo suppose to have room to  trade me sides? Further more, in accessible stalls, when on crutches, a fold down seat would be nice for the mommas precariously balancing on one foot, who have to wait 20 minutes on their darling child's stories , singing , etc to poop. Mommas break bones too, and it doesn't get us out of poop duty!
  16. How very much I value my removable shower head and shower chair(that my darling father figured out how to adjust, so it would fit facing forward)!
  17. That people will, rather conspicuously I might add,circle you in your wheelchair or on crutches three times, just to get a good look at what is wrong with you. Outright gawking. Just ask and I will be happy to tell you what happened, but stop already with the staring, your starting To freak me out that your a pedophile,  and serial killer or rapist that preys on the disabled, and small children(cause it's not like I could chase you).
  18. That all doors(without the handicap electronic button)are a pain in the ass.
  19. That it is impossible to reach the back half of the bottom dishwasher rack while seated in a wheelchair with your broken leg elevated.
  20. That climbing is impossible, especially into your 4yo's princess bunk bed.
  21. That I hate missing Fall, going outside everyday, and all the activities in that season(ie pumpkin Patch, corn maze, trick or treating, the Pumpkin House, etc)that are not conducive to crutches or wheelchairs.
  22. Running over my toe again this morning with my own wheelchair, yes, while seated in it! Ouch!                                  
  23. That the wheelchair has become a new toy tunnel for the 4yo to crawl under, when it"s blocking her path.
  24. Still working on the how to navigate without hitting the doors, molding, walls, and not leaving black wheel rub marks everywhere.
  25. That spiders on the wheelchair freak me out.
  26. That the Titanic may not have been 'unsinkable' but the Titanic Museum broke my wheelchair.
  27. That cable ties fix anything, even the wheelchair that the Titanic broke.
  28. That old time photo places are experts at knowing how to dress up your wheelchair.                          
  29. That driving is an impossibility when your right leg is broken.
  30. That balancing your crutches on you and your wheelchair can be done when the footrest is broken off(from your darling hubbie playing in it), however difficult, while rolling yourself around. (Normally one balances the crutches on the footrest and opposite shoulder, while rolling, or has family member who broke the footrest off carry said crutches.)
  31. That my next million dollar idea will be a crutch cup holder, and velcro on crutch bag for carrying things. Because lets be honest, other than stuffing things in your bra, there is no good way to carry things while on crutches.
  32. That your insurance carrier will always wait until something catastrophic happens to request a certificate for proof of coverage from your previous carrier, no matter how long it has been!(a year and a half) They will try to get out of paying for anything!
  33. That I love being able to bend my brace, knee and leg again!  Even if it's only forty degrees, some semblance of semi-normal sex is possible again! That's what I'm talking about! Whoo Hoo! And no, there will be no accompanying photo for that one!
  34. The WalMart electric buggies are the bomb!