Long Time No Talk -- A Very Random Blog (Seriously, Don't Expect A Theme)

Sorry I have been absent for a while. I have been studying my pants off! It's kind of fun. I always liked studying -- reminds me of college, well the parts of college that I remember, anyways. You know, I can't think of the last time I went to a party that had a keg, but for four years that was the absolute standard. Getting old I guess. Of course, we are wine drinkers now so a keg wouldn't really make sense.

Speaking of wine, if anyone else out there has a wine cellar, you should check out cellartracker.com. It is badass. You can enter all of your wines and where they are located in your cellar, and it tells you what they are rated, who else drank it on the website, and all kinds of cool stuff. One user's name on the site is "callmeacab." That is freakin' hilarious!

Now a bit about my health. I couldn't breathe for the last several days. Every time I tried to get a deep breath, I struggled. Like the paranoid freak that I am, I got on the internet and starting looking for what disease I had. This made my breathing even worse, especially since things like "congestive heart failure" kept popping up. So I finally went to the doctor, and they did an asthma test and an EKG (the heart test where they stick a bunch of wires on you with little stickers). Guess what fatal disease I have? None. I am instead having a 24 hour a day anxiety attack. Of course the doctor told me that that's what it was at the beginnning of the visit, but he had to do the other tests just to rule things out. So there it is. With the combo of me being nervous about my new job starting Tuesday, our contractor bailing on us with 98% of the remodel done, my husband's job being potentially on the line, not to mention raising my crazy kiddos, I was over the edge. Man, I always knew I was not good at dealing with stress, but an anxiety attack? I am way worse off than I thought. I told my mom about it and she said that when she was my age, the EXACT same thing happened to her, EKG and all. Of course, that would have been useful information if I had found that out BEFORE I made them test me for cardiomyopathy. So assuming I have my mom's chemical composition, I am so screwed when I go through menopause. She was a wreck for a solid decade. Then again, she doesn't drink. I think alcohol will be my ally in my war against hormones come menopause time.

But back to the present. The doctor gave me some little happy pills to take for a few days. Generally I am opposed to such things, but did I mention that I can't breathe? For instance, right now just sitting at the computer typing, I am making huge efforts to get deep breaths. So I opted in favor of supplying my lungs with refreshing oxygen and decided to take the pills. Hope I don't get addicted. It all seems very Hollywood to me. I am crossing my fingers that I don't find myself sitting in rehab with Matthew Perry. Or Rush Limbaugh -- that would be like my own personal hell.

Now, another topic (I told you this blog was random). There's a mouse in our house. Hey, that sounds like a children's book, doesn't it? I have not seen the mouse but he leaves evidence behind in the form of mouse poop. We found little poo-poo pellets in the kitchen, the pantry, under the couch, and in the sofa sleeper in the guest room. Blech. Honestly, I don't mind having a little mouse around if it would just stop pooping all the time. Come to think of it, that is exactly how I feel about Quinn. Man that kid can fill some diapers. We were just at Grandma and Grandpa's house when he filled his second diaper, and Grandma said, "But he just pooped an hour ago!" I looked at her like she was nuts. The boy goes at least 5 times a day. So does Henry but thankfully he is potty-trained. People constantly ask me when I am going to potty-train Quinn. He is 2 1/2 so I guess I could try, but Henry was such a defiant pain in the ass about the whole potty-training thing that it burned me out. He fought it and fought it and finally after he turned three I basically yelled at him (yes, I know I am not getting any Mother of the Year Award) and told him that that was IT, that he WOULD use the potty form now on. He said, "Gee, fiiiine Mom" in a very adolescent kind of way and used the potty from then on. So in other words, 6 months of being sweet and supportive like all of the parenting books said to do didn't work at all, but 10 minutes of him getting reamed by a mother who was fed up with getting kicked in the stomach during diaper changes (he was also the most defiant little diaper changer ever) worked like a charm. Anyways, when people ask when I am going to train Quinn, I politely say, "when he looks at me and says, 'Mommy I want to use the potty. I am ready for big boy pants.'" See, with Henry I felt so much pressure to do what all of the books said to do and please all of the grandparents and other moms. With Quinn I am MUCH smarter and give roughly a rat's ass if people think he should be out of diapers. Oh -- "rat's ass". That reminds me, I was suppposed to be talking about the mouse.

So back to the mouse. Being the little problem solver that I am, one night I closed all of the doors in the house and blocked the space under each one. I figured that that way whichever room I found mouse poop in had to be the point of entry. And I found it. BIG problem. It is in the guest room. Why is this a problem? Because that is where my stepdaughters' sleep and they are coming over tonight. And they will FREAK out if they know a mouse is coming into their room. We are going to board up the hole where it is coming in, but of course this will prompt questions from them about why there is plywood on the wall, and when they hear why I have no doubt that they are going to FREAK out. Tween girls tend to not like rodents, you know? Hmmmm, maybe I can slip them some of my happy pills.