And the livin' is easy...

Summertime...ah, such a blissful word. It conjures up thoughts of freedom (road trip!) and simple joys, like running after the ice cream truck or scampering through the sprinklers. Backyard BBQs with friends, beach excursions, camping under the stars, trips to the amusement park and the waterslides...yep, we've pretty much got all that covered.

The kids have been enjoying our season passes to the nearby water park, and have also made good use of the new paver patio by "camping out" on it (with an air mattress and sleeping bags, naturally) occasionally. We have an end-of-summer BBQ planned in about 3 weeks, and are hoping to have a good turnout.

But this summer has also been punctuated by doctor's visits: I'm still having dizzy spells, and the doctors are still not sure what the cause is, although it seems to be a rare form of migraines. I should have more information later this week, after my visit to the Neurologist to talk about last week's MRI (!!!). I'm not very concerned though; I don't have any other indicators of a brain tumor, and I do have a history of strange migraines (ocular migraines, without accompanying pain), so that is the likeliest explanation. God knows, I'm as Type-A as they come, so stress is a big part of my life.

In order to combat the stress, I've been doing quite a lot of knitting. An online friend recently lost her baby less than an hour after she was born (no warning at all, very tragic) and a group of us Ravelers are making her an afghan. I knitted up a couple of squares and mailed them off to the person who's coordinating the whole thing last week. Now I'm hard at work on Mr Wonderful's Bad-Ass Cabled Hoodie. I just realized that we've got only 10 weeks until we go on our very belated honeymoon, and if I want to get it done in time I really need to hustle, because it's a huge project. I'm nearly done with the body of it, and will begin the saddle shoulders & arms shortly, so I think I'm in pretty good shape.

The kids have also made some requests: both of them would like a hoodie sweater this fall, and I'm planning on knitting them up in cotton, so they'll be machine washable. Rugrat, of course, would like his in solid black with some white (ok, ivory) skulls along the hem and sleeves. Tomboy has requested a green hoodie, with stripes of brown and aqua. I'm hoping to finish them both up before Christmas; shouldn't be a big problem but I'm worried about those skulls. I'm not very good at colorwork.

Oh, and one more thing: we ordered a new couch! We're getting a small sectional from Crate & Barrel; it should be here in about 8-10 weeks. Our current couch is nearly 10 years old, has all the structure of a partially melted marshmallow, and has definitely seen better days. I bought it when Rugrat was a baby, so it's seen more than its fair share of bodily fluids over the years. Mr Wonderful can't sit on it for more than 5 minutes; it just makes his back ache too much. So, it was definitely time.

What have you been up to this summer? Anything fun?

The final countdown

We're in the home stretch...and we now have about a hundred people coming! Oh. My. God. And weather.com is predicting rain on my wedding day. One hundred people standing around in the rain. Great.

Guess what I did last week? I caved. I bought a veil. I was absolutely positive that I did not want a veil but then I changed my mind and bought a veil from a very nice seller on Etsy. So I'll look like a very traditional bride with my flowy white veil, my hair in an updo, my big white dress, and my white bouquet of tulips. I'm even wearing pearls. Can't get much more traditional than pearls on your wedding day.

Final to-do's include:

• finish up the shawl
• practice dancing! (He's great, but I suck.)
• make, frost & decorate the cupcakes on Thursday & Friday
• finalize wedding ceremony details with officiant (tonight)
• clean the house! (We've got family coming into town on Thursday, including my future MIL, so the house has to look good.)
• get nails done on Friday afternoon
• pick Sister & baby nephew up at the airport on Friday night
• pick up last minute items: more bottled water, plates & silverware (plenty of napkins & cups, I think), special cupcake ingredients, burger & hot dog condiments (tomatoes, onions, lettuce, cheese - already have mustard, ketchup & relish)
  

In fact, what the heck am I doing blogging? I need to finish up that shawl post-haste!

Post-panic

OK, so things aren't quite as dire as they seemed last Saturday. Mr Wonderful chatted with his supervisor at work on Monday and discovered that I could be added to his insurance as a "domestic partner." It won't be free, but it will be MUCH cheaper than COBRA and it doesn't require us getting married immediately.

So now our plan is to wait three weeks and if I don't have a new job by then, we will schedule the wedding for sometime in May. My dress is coming in within the next few weeks, but Mr Wonderful wants to wait until he's able to get the rest of his outfit (sporran, jacket, dagger, what-have-you) at the Scottish Games in Woodland in late April. We won't be getting married at a winery with fancy catering, of course, but we can get married in a park on a sunny Saturday and have all of our friends and family there. And we can have a potluck BBQ "reception" at the house afterwards (probably on Sunday).

And of course, if I get a new job within the next couple of weeks, we can still have the wedding in October as planned. But this way we've got an alternative solution that we can pull together quickly, while still preserving some of the things that were most important to us.

In the meantime, be sure to let me know if you hear of any available web developer positions! I'm scouring the interwebs, but the more eyes & ears on the lookout, the better. :)

Life, rescheduled

Yesterday morning I met with Boss and was laid off from the job I've been at for the past five years. Of course he said he was all broken up about it and felt terrible, blah blah blah. But I'm pretty bent that he's keeping our SysAd on staff. SysAd left the company to work for someone else and was doing "on call" occasional work for my company for about a year. Then a month or so ago he got laid off from that job and he's been essentially working full time at our company again. So I feel like I got dumped so that my boss could keep paying the SysAd -- you know, the one who hasn't been working loyally for the company for FIVE YEARS straight. Am I pissed off? Hell yes.

And of course, looking back over the course of the past week I can see how they were trying to finish up outstanding issues in which my expertise was required. And it really pisses me off that I got ONE day of notice before the end of the month, which is effectively the end of my health insurance. Meaning, if I want uninterrupted health insurance, I have to do COBRA for at least a month. I cannot be without health insurance; I have too many issues, between the high blood pressure and the cholesterol and the skin cancer and everything. I also can't get individual health insurance; I've been denied coverage before, and that was even before I got diagnosed with the skin cancer.

And this brings us to the rescheduling portion of our program. Because Mr Wonderful works at a hospital, he has excellent health benefits, and I will be covered by those same excellent health benefits as soon as we're married. So we're moving up the wedding; we're getting married this week, at the county courthouse. This is not the way I pictured my wedding. This is pretty much the OPPOSITE of what I wanted - although we'll be keeping it very small, I wanted something that was more personal and meaningful. And now we are having this rushed wedding, done as cheaply as possible, with possibly NO family there (my father might be able to make it, but that's it). This is not what I wanted, and it's definitely not what Mr Wonderful wanted. I am pretty depressed about it, actually. I've got this beautiful dress that hasn't arrived yet, but is totally paid for, and I won't get to wear it to my wedding. We were going to get married at a beautiful winery, with amazing food and flowers and our family surrounding us. And we may still have some kind of ceremony and reception later, after I get a new job and we can afford it, but it's not going to be on the day we get married. And that just makes me want to curl up and cry.

The sky is falling

Am I the only one totally freaking out about California's complete inability to pass a fucking budget? I'm not sure I'll ever see the $1300 that California owes me as a tax refund this year. And frankly, if it means keeping the schools open, and police and firefighters working in our communities, that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

But I'm starting to think California is going to declare bankruptcy before this mess is over. And THAT scares the hell out of me.

All you need is love

If you haven't seen Across the Universe yet, you really should. Beautifully made, with AMAZING covers of Beatles songs that are integrated seamlessly into the story. I just bought this movie on Blu-Ray; I had already rented it twice from Blockbuster and just had to have it.

In other news, we opened up savings accounts for the kids this weekend. They will be able to deposit & withdraw money using their very own ATM cards and we can automatically deposit their allowance into the account. How easy is that? :) Plus they love the idea of having their own ATM cards (even if they won't have the Visa logo and therefore cannot be used for point-of-sale purchases).

Mr Wonderful and I also opened up a joint checking account. This will be used for wedding purchases at first, and then will be our joint household account afterwards. I deposited the unexpected escrow rebate check I got from my mortgage company last week. The good news is that my mortgage is going down. The bad news is that my house value has dropped so far that I'm now upside down in my mortgage by about $100K (including home equity line). Stupid economy.

Dad & Stepmom visited yesterday. I made them watch the movie. :) I also made a healthier version of the Yum Yum Chicken Enchilada Casserole which was quite tasty, although it needed more kick. And cilantro. I was out of cilantro.

Aaaaand lastly, I started on my wedding shawl (stole? scarf? I never know what the proper terminology is) on Valentine's Day. I thought that was fitting. :) Mr Wonderful's Bad-Ass Cabled Hoodie is not yet finished but I'm getting worried about time now, with only 7 1/2 months left before the wedding. I don't want to be rushing to finish my scarf in the last week before the wedding. The pattern I'm using is Canterbury Bells, and I'm knitting it with Malabrigo Lace in Vaa (a dark green/blue color).

Lost & found

I was convinced that the car had a black hole which had consumed not only my ATM card (lost immediately after renting movies) but my camera, as well. Turns out the ATM card was stuck between the driver's seat and the center console. Which would have been good to figure out before I called my bank and told them the card was lost and to please send me a new one.

The camera was a little tougher, but I finally found it in a Target shopping bag near the front door, mere moments before Mr Wonderful & I took off for the annual very-belated "Christmas" retreat with my company. The bag also contained my amazing, scary longline bra that I bought to wear with my wedding dress. This bra is unbelievable. It looks like it could safely corral a couple of watermelons. Are my boobs really that big? Jesus.

So I finally have my camera back, and can start foodblogging again. I even have the pictures of the yummy lentil soup on the flash card.

Sobbing

Stupid PMS. I get hit pretty hard with it about every three months or so. This was apparently my month to come up against it hard, and of course it hit just as I was coming home from visiting my sister and her brand new baby (born last Tuesday!). I was there Wednesday - Sunday, helping out while she was supposedly resting and recovering from pre-eclampsia and giving birth. I say supposedly, because she didn't do near enough resting. She took only one nap! Sheesh. Anyway, so I came home last night and when we went to bed, I completely melted down. Sobbing my eyes out over the baby. I miss him so much! But I don't WANT another baby! But it didn't stop me from crying like a brokenhearted teenage girl who just got dissed by her first major crush. I cried so hard I looked like a puffer fish, and I had to take Afrin so I could breathe through my nose again and go to sleep.

Mr Wonderful is a SAINT to put up with me, I swear.

But damn, that baby was cute. I got used to hearing his little mewling cries and changing his poopy diapers and having him fall asleep on my chest, feeling his little warm body snuggled up against my heart. Doesn't mean I want another baby, though, Mom. I just need to borrow other peoples' babies occasionally.

Meltdown

WTF is going on with the country this week? Did somebody slip LSD into the coffee at the Capitol?

I am referring, of course, to the Wall Street bail-out, also known as: "OMFG, we gotta give $700B to the Treasury Secretary RIGHT NOW! And never, ever ask him what he does with it." What the hell? Has our president finally gone completely insane?

Look folks, first of all: why the hurry? What's going to happen on Monday that is so freaking dire that you have to clean up the financial devastation this week? What will happen if the deal doesn't get signed by Friday afternoon? Will Wall Street implode on Monday morning? Will all the banks refuse to open their doors? Is Manhattan going to fall into the East River? Seriously, WTF?

And who in their right mind (Paulson, I'm looking at you) would ever think that Congress would agree to hand over $700 BILLION without any accountability at all. No oversight and no investigation into his methods, now or in the future, by any court or group or committe or organization whatsoever. Really? So Paulson could actually just take the $700B and run off to the Bahamas and we'd have no recourse? It would actually be perfectly legal, under the terms of that original plan.

And now we have McCain wanting to postpone the first Presidential Debate. Ah yes, of course he had to finagle something out of this. What does he get? Well, his idea is to cancel Friday's debate, and have it next week, instead of the Vice Presidential debate. Will the Vice Presidential debate be rescheduled as well? Ah...no. He wants to cancel that one permanently.

A couple of things come to mind:

• OMGWTFBBQ
  
  
• McCain wants more time to prepare for his debate against Obama


• McCain really really doesn't want Palin to speak any more than is absolutely necessary and most certainly doesn't want her matched up against Biden, who is articulate and intelligent.

I mean, holy crap, have y'all seen this??? (If you can put up with the 30 second ad at the beginning I promise you this is worth your time.)



This woman just scares the living daylights out of me. She's no more intelligent than Shrub is (and we are all seeing how well THAT's worked out for the past eight years, especially now). Do we really want this imbecile to be a 72-yr-old heartbeat away from being president of our country? God, people, wake up! How can you choose your president based on how much you want to hang out & drink beer with them (or their running mate)? I don't know about you, but I want a president that is really freaking smart. So smart it's scary. Someone who, if I was in their presence, I would feel completely inadequate. I want someone in the Oval Office that I can trust to make well-reasoned, logical decisions based on intellect, facts, and excellent foresight and judgment. Someone who doesn't just react to a crisis, but actually takes steps to avert crisis in the first place by having a PLAN for direction the country needs to go in.

Please, people. THINK. And register to vote, if you haven't done so already.

South Beach update

So I'm nearly three weeks into the South Beach diet and man, week two was a killer. I got progressively more pissed off as the second week went on (PMS doesn't help, y'all) and finally I just made an executive decision to end Phase 1 early. My weight loss had stalled and I was getting extremely frustrated with the lack of starchy foods. So I started small, with whole wheat english muffins, and it really saved things for me. I was ready to dump the diet altogether, I was just getting so angry. But now things have lightened up - we're eating whole grain breads (and whole wheat pasta once...more on that in a sec) and fruit now, and I've lost a total of nine pounds in nineteen days. Yay, me! Only nine more to go...well, fourteen if I really want to push it, but I'd be happy with just nine.

Anyway, the whole wheat pasta: eww. It was okay, I guess, but it was grainy and just not fabulous. I can't remember what brand it was but it was something I hadn't tried before. I'll stick with the Barilla "Plus" brand - that one's whole grain and they still managed to get the pasta smooth and tasty. So do yourself a favor, if you're looking at the whole wheat pasta option, stick with the Barilla brand. And no, they didn't pay me to say that.

I'm happy that the weather's turned cooler (although looking at the forecast, it seems like it may have been a fluke). I love cooking soup, and you just don't feel like eating soup when it's 90 degrees outside, yanno? So far I've made Black Bean Soup, Tom Yum (Thai shrimp soup), Roasted Tomato Soup and Smoky-Sweet Butternut Squash Soup. I'll get a recipe up for that last one in a few days; I just made it tonight and let me give you a little hint: Bacon. Apples. Sage. Yum! So far I'd have to say my favorite was the Roasted Tomato soup though; we got a bunch of tomatoes in our CSA box yesterday morning, and still had some vine-ripened ones too, so it was the perfect dinner last night. With a couple of pork chops topped with a little Dijon mustard pan sauce, it was just a little bit of heaven.

As you can see, I'm definitely not eating the carbs at every meal. I'm trying to eat my starchy foods early in the day and then have a dinner without any bread or pasta. It keeps me full in the evening and I'm not snacking as much in front of the TV. Knitting helps with that too...you should see the progress I'm making on projects these days! I designed a baby sweater for a friend's baby shower and knitted it up in less than a week, and I've got all but one sleeve done now on my cushy green Mmmmmmalabrigo v-neck sweater. I've got lots of projects to get moving on though, starting with Dad's socks (about 2/3 of a sock to go!) and Sister's sweater (a gift that I'm hoping will be nursing-friendly, since she's due in early December).

And finally, in apparently unrelated (but not really) news, I've found quite a few old friends on Facebook. I was even contacted by an old high school boyfriend (one that I certainly never thought I'd speak to again...he went a little wackadoo there for a while). And this old HS boyfriend? Just had a quadruple bypass 2 weeks ago! OMFG!! How does a guy in his mid-thirties gets QUADRUPLE fucking BYPASS surgery??? That is some scary shit right there. Makes me even more thankful that I'm doing something good for my body now - losing weight, eating healthier, exercising a bit.

Olympics

Am I the only person in the world who really doesn't give a rat's ripe ass about the Olympics? Seriously, I could care less, but it seems like every blogger I follow must make some mention of the swimming or the diving or the gymnastics, and how it goes on and on until 2 AM, and yet they can't tear themselves away.

Why?

Anyhoo, I made it through the first week back at work post-vacation, and I'm barely hanging in there. It's been a crazy busy week, with Boss & Boss's Wife gone (Boss's Wife is our receptionist/designer/HR guru/fill-in-the-cracks person). Of COURSE the servers had to go down. Multiple times. Multiple servers, including our mail server, which went down twice. Le *sigh*. Not to mention the backlog of emails and work that piled up while I was gone. Why is it that you go away for only a week, and yet you have something like three weeks' worth of work backlogged when you return? It's like some weird axiom of vacation.

The vacation itself was lovely, quite relaxing except for the nine-hour drives that bookended it and the hellacious heat. I got a bit of a sunburn when we went to the waterpark one day (for FIVE AND A HALF HOURS OMG I thought I was gonna die it was about 1000 degrees y'all!), despite spraying on the SPF multiple times. My side-boobs are peeling now. (Lovely. And probably TMI, huh?) That'll teach me to wear a bikini to a waterpark in Palm Springs.

I also got a Baby Surprise Jacket (tm Elizabeth Zimmermann) done while on vacation, from cast-on to buttons. An old friend of mine is having a baby shower this weekend. I've known her since Jr High, so I wanted to give her something a little more special than just a store-bought package of onesies. This is the fastest I think I've ever done a project (except maybe for the Easy Flame Lace Hankie, which is normally a shawl, but I just made a little square out of the lace Malabrigo sample I got at Stitches West). I'm very proud of it and can't wait to give it to her tomorrow. :) This is also the first non-family gift I've knitted.

Hmmm...let's see, what else. Oh yeah, Rugrat has anosmia, which is the clinical name for not being able to smell a damn thing. FMIL did a little research when I told her about it, and sent me an email with her findings. Turns out that it can be caused by all kinds of scary things, like a tumor (eek!) and some weird disease that would mean he wouldn't go through puberty (double eek!). So I took him to the doctor post-haste, in an effort to get a referral to an ENT. His regular doc was on vacation, and the substitute doc did not want to do the referral (WTF? It's all Kaiser, I don't see what difference it really makes) but she did send him for an x-ray and gave him allergy medication because she thinks it might be due to "inflammation." Which, no. Because it doesn't come & go with the seasons, y'all. And lest you think I'm overreacting and that he really can smell, I tested him (with his eyes closed) on: coffee beans, ground cinnamon, and white vinegar. Not a damn thing. He said they all smelled like "air."

Mr Wonderful and I are planning on doing the South Beach Diet once the kids get back in school. It's time to lose the thirty pounds I've packed on in the past year or so. Not a moment too soon. Mr Wonderful got food poisoning yesterday, and was up half the night, throwing up. And they wouldn't let him leave work early - they told him to "sip water every fifteen minutes and if you need to, get an anti-nausea shot. Then you can work through your shift." WTF?? He works in a hospital. Does it not occur to these folks that perhaps it would be good to keep the vomiting person away from patients? He might actually be contagious; they don't know. Of course, I think he was being a dumbass for not just calling in sick to begin with. When you hurl half a dozen times before your shift even starts, it might be time to call in sick. And to top it off, he's going to the Aikido class tonight. He says he has to, because it's so-n-so's last day, and so-n-so's parents are coming and everything. Whatever, dude. You can take a night off and let the other black belt guy take over, when you're busy vomiting your guts out all damn day and getting no fucking sleep the night before. I do NOT understand that man sometimes.

Unbelievable

The gas prices around here are soaring. One day, I left home at about 5 PM and the gas station on the corner near the freeway said 4.17/gal. I came home about four hours later and it said 4.27/gal. Ten cents! It jumped TEN CENTS in four hours. And the Shell station across the street was even worse! It was marked 4.15/gal when I left (although it was cordoned off at the time) and when I came home the pumps were open...for 4.29/gal. That's a jump of fourteen cents in four hours!

Un-freaking-believable.

Moping

I try to put the best spin on things, especially for this blog, but sometimes I just get down, yanno?

Monday I went to the doctor to have my stitches removed. They pulled out the ones near my ear (and it was heavenly not to have that maddening itch there anymore!) and removed the "bolster" (stinky gross wad of gauze that had been stitched onto my nose to protect the graft) and stitches from my graft. My ear looks great; there's a tiny little red line between my face and my ear but it is no big deal. But my nose...my nose is disgusting. I mean, absolutely foul, y'all. The doctor was thrilled with it though - she said it's "beautiful!" and was amazed at how fast I heal (um, that's because I'm about 35 years younger than her average patient). But...it is gross. Bloody and oozy and lumpy and all different colors, from white to yellow to red to lavender...it's like roadkill on my face.

I know that it's healing and will look better and better as the days go by, but right now I feel like a freak. Add to that the fact that I'm about 5 pounds shy of the weight I was when I went in to give birth to Rugrat (NINE years ago), and you can see that maybe I'm not feeling all that sexy and beautiful these days. Mr Wonderful works in a hospital, and each day he looks at my nose and tells me it's looking great, but do I feel like I look great? No. No, I do not. Because I am not a medical professional and I don't see past the mess to what it will look like, eventually. I just see what's there now, and I've seen chopped liver that looked more appetizing, frankly. So for the first time I pushed Mr Wonderful away last night and told him that I am just not feeling it, sorry. Because I am big fat slob with a nose like uncooked hamburger and how could anyone possibly want to get close to that? I don't even want to be close to that.

I know I will have to get over this and get on with living but right now I think I'm entitled to a little pity party.

Requiem for a Funyun

I am horribly disappointed in the Frito-Lay company. Of all the products they make, they had to discontinue the Wasabi Funyuns? WHYYYYYY??? The Wasabi Funyuns were the epitome of snackage. They were the perfect delivery system for wasabi powder -- no overwhelming flavor of anything else (I'm looking at you, crappy wasabi potato chips), just crunchy fried wasabi goodness.

I first discovered the Wasabi Funyuns last July. I was visiting my sister up in Portland with Mr Wonderful and attending the drunktastic Oregon Brewers Festival ("Drink it, bitch!"). Mr Wonderful and I took a drive one day, crossing the Columbia river into Washington state. We stopped at a 7-Eleven and Mr Wonderful spied the acid green bag and thought he'd give it a try. Well, we couldn't shovel them down our throats fast enough.

Try though we might, we very rarely came across them again. At every convenience store, we'd check for the little bags of joy. Every grocery store, every drugstore, every place that might conceivably have them. Nothing. No love. Until last November, when Mr Wonderful and I were again on vacation, this time in SoCal. Down the street from my Mom's house, the local 7-Eleven had them. I grabbed half a dozen bags and would have cleaned them out totally, but Mr Wonderful convinced me that now they'd be showing up all over the place.

Back home in the bay area, we still couldn't find them. I found a stray bag once on while a trip up to the mountains to visit Mr Wonderful's sister, but nothing where we lived. (Why could we only get them while on vacation??) In desperation, I checked the Frito-Lay website, thinking that maybe I could email them to ask when they'd be in mass circulation. Turns out, Frito-Lay has a "snack finder" that will tell you the closest retail outlet that sells your preferred FL snack. The website claimed that Wasabi Funyuns were available in several convenience stores near Mr Wonderful's job, but he visited each one and could never find a bag. There were no listings in our town or closely neighboring towns.

And now...well, they're nowhere to be found. A phone call to the company confirms that Frito-Lay has stopped producing Wasabi Funyuns. And all I have to say to that is: OMGWTF??? Seriously? Wasabi Funyuns were the greatest snack evah! Y'all are evil and I am boycotting your crappy company until you bring them back.

BRING BACK THE WASABI FUNYUUUUUUNNNNNSS!!

Neighborly

Mr Wonderful has made friends with the neighbors. You know, the ones who nearly drove me outta my skull with the Goddamned Rooster™ last spring? Well, Mr Wonderful and Neighbor Guy have shared a couple of beers, and we've loaned him our BBQ, and he's let the kids hold his bunnies (this is not a euphemism; the guy has a couple of long-eared floppy rabbits as housepets). So I guess we're sorta friends now. And recently Neighbor Guy brought home a newborn lamb whose mommy had died during or shortly after the birth. Awww! Lambikins! Anyway, this sparked a conversation between Mr Wonderful and Neighbor Guy, about all the animals they have at their house, and apparently, Neighbor Guy has a ranch. And the Goddamned Rooster™? Was a fighting rooster (hah! I thought so!!) worth $25,000. Totally illegal. But as long as it's not in their backyard anymore, driving me completely bonkers? Not. My. Problem.

I'm just happy not to have to hear the thing crow all friggin' day anymore.

Busy month

Stupid hectic month. I just got an email from a friend wondering if I'd up & died because she hadn't heard from me in a while and I realized that this month has been a complete ball of crazy:

• Mr Wonderful's uncle died and we had to go to Red Bluff for the funeral a few weeks ago; one hour before the actual funeral we found out that his COUSIN just died and Mr Wonderful's mom and sister totally lost their shit - two deaths within a week.
  
  
• I went in for my consult with the surgeon last week; surgery for my skin cancer is scheduled for 2 weeks from now (May 12) and I am going to have a scar but hopefully it will look much better than it does now.
  
  
• Mr Wonderful went on his trip to Pahrump with friends for some gun class for five days and I was stuck here alone with the kids all weekend, which sucked. We painted 3/4 of Tomboy's bedroom that weekend (three walls LIME GREEN - ugh, but she loves it). I got a cold and was not only grumpy but sick as well.
  
  
• I found out my sister's pregnant again. Also, we're going camping up in Humboldt Redwoods State Park at the end of June: Mr Wonderful & I & the kids, plus my sister & her family, plus my cousin & HER son, plus Mr Wonderful's sister & HER family. 7 adults, 8 kids. Gonna be fun!
  
  
• My mom called when she found out about my sister being knocked up and tried to get me to tell her I'm getting married, and I told her she'd be the first to know, he hasn't asked me yet, GOD, Mom! Chillax! Once the ring is paid off, he'll propose, and THEN I will tell you I'm getting married. We all know I'm marrying this guy, it's not going to be a huge surprise or anything. But I'm not making any plans, setting any dates, or officially saying "I'm engaged" until I he actually pops the question, mmkay? Smooches!
  
  
• I had a couple of stupid PMS breakdowns and took off for a while by myself this past weekend. I was going to stay overnight somewhere but instead just ended up driving for 9 hours and making a big loop through the north bay area and then came home. I just needed to get my head back on straight because I felt like I was getting a little nutso, and a road trip was just the ticket. I ended up finding mecca: the Cowgirl Creamery in Pt Reyes, where they actually MAKE the cheese! It was awesome, and totally coincidental. I parked less than half a block from the place; I was just looking to get out of the car, stretch, maybe get some coffee or something & take a piss, and lo & behold -- the home of the best cheese ever!
  

I'm ready for May to be a nice calm relaxing month. Can we do that? Please?

A little frustrated

OK, when I talked to the lady from the dermatologist's office yesterday, she said that someone from the Mohs clinic would call me to set up an appointment for the surgery.

But nobody called.

Instead, I logged on to the Kaiser website yesterday afternoon and found that they had indeed scheduled an appointment with me, without even checking to see if the date/time would be okay (what if I was going to be in London or something that week?), and that appointment is...SEVEN WEEKS in the future. April 23, to be exact. What the fuck? I mean, I'm not going in for a routine pimple extraction here, this is CANCER, y'all. Let's not fuck around with it, mmkay? I just want it over and done with so I can move on with my life.

So I called the Mohs clinic and was all, WTF? And the lady I talked to said, yeah, that's the earliest appointment. Not only that, but the appointment? Is NOT for surgery. It's for a CONSULT with the surgeon. Seriously? What's to consult about? It's not like I have much choice in the matter: I can either get the cancer cut out of my face or I can wait for it to rot my nose off and eat into my brain. THAT sounds like fun, I think I'll go for Option B. Not.

So I can only assume that it will be at least the middle of the summer before I get this damn thing taken care of.

Dude! I have cancer!

Turns out that weird scar thing on the side of my nose is not a weird scar thing at all - it's basal-cell skin cancer. I finally, finally went to the doctor to get it checked out and he took one look and said, "That's not a scar, that's cancer." Dude!

So they gave me a novocaine shot right there and sliced off a piece of my nose to send to the lab for a biopsy. I was in & out of the Dermatologist's office in 15 minutes flat. In two weeks when it comes back, they'll ship me off to get it removed and patch up my nose with a graft or something.

Damn, y'all. I sure wish I hadn't waited so long to get it checked out; I've had it for YEARS. Lesson learned: when you have a weird scar that keeps bleeding and then healing over, get it checked out. Even if you think it might be just an irritated scar because you blow your nose all the time. Get it checked out anyway.

Playing catch-up

It's been a busy week, what with Thanksgiving and all. The holiday was nice; it was just Mr Wonderful and I with the kids, but the food was delish (even if the kids didn't appreciate it). I spent all day cooking, but it was worth it.

Unfortunately, I've been slacking on the Spider-Man sweater. I haven't touched it since Thanksgiving and I really need to get back in the saddle if I'm going to have it finished in (eek!) less than a month. I did find a knitting group that meets at the local bookstore on Tuesday evenings, so that may help me get motivated, if I can ever get to a meeting! I wanted to go this week, but had to take Mr Wonderful out to pick up his car at the shop (again...*sigh*); that was the only night we'd be able to do it this week.

Current pet peeve: people who give out the wrong phone number. Some woman named Karen must have accidentally put my cell phone number on her business cards or something, because I keep getting calls for her. Just about every day I get a call for her. I may just stop answering my phone if this continues.

This weekend, we're taking the kids up to the mountains, where Mr Wonderful's sister & her family live. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like there will be snow (now THAT would be a treat for the kids!) but I'll finally get to meet her.

Last but not least, there's been a little change on my blogs. Maybe you've noticed the Google ads in the right column? Well, I finally set up Google Analytics (stats, to tell me how many people visit my blog each day) and Google AdSense (the ads you see in the columns). I'm not really expecting to make much money out of it; anything I earned would just be icing on the cake, frankly. But I am quite interested in the stats. I looked this morning and there were visitors from Thailand and Ireland! How cool is that?

Vacillating

I was absolutely positive that I didn't want any more children after I had Rugrat. Rugrat is more than enough for me to handle, thankyouverymuch. And I have an almost-stepdaughter now, who is a wonderful new part of my family. But when Mr Wonderful offered to have a vasectomy, I told him to wait. Why? I don't know. Because I'm still in my early thirties (OK, mid-thirties) and there is plenty of time for me to change my mind. But I was still sure that I didn't really want to have one...I just wanted to have the option available. Does that make sense?

And then the other day, at Mr Wonderful's parents' house, he was joking with me, trying to cheer me up about some little thing that I was in a funk about (probably work calling me and needing something while I was ON VACATION). And he lay down next to me and talked into my belly. And I felt something like a cramp of desire to be pregnant. Because when I was pregnant last time I didn't have that, that supportive loving dad who was all excited about the baby. It almost made me cry, when he did that, and to be honest I'm crying on my couch right now, just thinking about it. Of course that's mostly because I am hormonal and on my period, but...still. It was hard, not to just tell him right then and there that I wanted this more than anything else in the world. But I had to wait, I had to really think about it, and I know that really, I don't want another child. I don't. Being a parent is a huge responsibility, and we're halfway to having the kids out of the house at this point. Getting pregnant again would mean starting all over. And with the sleep deprivation and the dirty diapers and the miserable pregnancy shit...no. I don't really want it.

But it's all I can think about right now. So let's just fucking get past this stupid hormone surge, shall we? I don't want any more kids. I told Mr Wonderful that he can't do that belly-talking thing any more, because it makes me wish I was pregnant. And part of me was really, really sad at having to tell him that. And part of me wants to tell him that we should just throw out the birth control pills when we get married. But another part of me, the larger, saner part, knows that I will get past this weird baby fever and that I really, really DON'T want another baby. Even though he said he would totally talk into my belly if I were pregnant, and put headphones on my belly to play cool music for the baby, and all that supportive daddy-to-be stuff. Oh god, I don't really want another baby. I don't.