Excuse me while I rant.  This isn’t just a rant, this is a Rantasaurus Rex.

I’ve been taking my kids to the same Children’s Medical place since we arrived in the States.  I REALLY like the doctors.  But the nurses are horrid.  Last year I took Siggy in for one illness or another.  He was going through a little panic-phase so I wasn’t super-stoked about taking him in.  But he had a fever and bla bla bla.

So we got The Nurse.  She is young.  Under 25.  And you could tell by looking at her face that she loathed having to deal with children.

Dude, I get it!   I don’t like kids either.  AND THAT’S WHY I’M NOT A NURSE IN A PEDIATRICIANS OFFICE.

It was cold in there and Siggy was already a little shaky. I knew by the time we got to the scale, that he was going to lose it if I tried to put him down.

She wanted to bludgeon me with her clip-board.

It wasn’t so much that she was all about procedure, she was just going to show this little brat that he needed to grow up right then and there.

And so she clamped down on him and forced him to sit on that scale.

I was shocked at the sheer anger on her face.  It would have been different if she was some old squishy granny nurse who was all…

But she wasn’t.  She was physically taking out her frustrations on a kid.

Aaaaaand then he started flipping out…..

…which led to the yakking…..

You have never seen a nurse angrier than she was right then.

But she wasn’t nearly as angry as I was….

So then yesterday Siegfried woke up with a fever and lots of crying. I got him in to the doctor as soon as I could.  Took him in his jammies with a big fat blanky.

He did a lot of squirming….

Which is not a good sign if you’re hoping to avoid barf.

Anyway, they called us back and we sat in the tiny waiting room.

And sure enough, during the 47 million years that we had to wait, Siggy puked.

All. Over. The. Place.

I finally got him to the trash can and then set him up against the wall while I went all nuts with the paper-towels. Scrubbed everything down.

And finally the doctor came in, figured out his problem, etc etc.  She saw his nasty blanky on the floor, drenched in yak, and said she would have the nurse bring me a trash bag to carry it out in.

We waited for another 47 million years and the new nurse finally showed up with a tiny little doggy-poop bag.

She left again, and when Siggy finally turned 5 she came back. With nothing.

Her passive-aggressive apathy was enough to make me break out in hives.

Really girlfriend?  You made it through nursing school but you can’t figure out how to acquire a trash bag in an office that produces an awful lot of waste?

UNBELIEVABLE!!!

So I have this brother…..

Actually, I have brothers coming out my ears, but theres always ONE, you know?

Several things this week have been direct reminders of what it was like to grow up with a boy of his type.

For the sake of privacy we’ll call him Joust.

Actually, that is innaccurate.

We’ll call him JOUSTY MC’JOUSTYPANTS.  He was so intense about that word for a short period of time that it has been forever branded into the fiber of my psyche.

Siegfried got a Playmobil set this week, which is a more modern version of one that JOUSTY MC’JOUSTYPANTS and I shared growing up.  So there was that reminder.

And then Boy has started getting up in my face and cramming his finger down his throat.

I think the first time he did it he actually had an itch in there somewhere, but after my ridiculously dramatic reaction, he now likes to do it just to make me mad.  Its like he’s coming in for a kiss and all of a sudden he’s poking his tonsils and gagging  an inch from my mouth.

Now, my brother never endulged in this type of behavior just to gross me out, but I guarantee that if he was choking on something, he was making direct eye-contact with yours truly.

We were usually at the table.  I remember the orage slice. I could see it all hitched up on his dangly thing.

Apparently both hands were necessarry to get it out.

And auk!  The sounds!  Why didn’t I look away??  Why didn’t I plug my ears???

And there was bacon….

You know, he blames me for his irrational fear of barfing (because of my barfing/passing out phase), but I think its because he always waited until he was in public to toss his cookies.  Like that junior high swim party where he chugged a whole hamburger and immediately jumped into a pool full of thrashing 14-year-old  who were playing sharks and minnows.  After swallowing like 5 gallons of water, it all came back up.  All the water, all the food.  And he was in the deep end flailing violently in order to stay high enough above the water to puke downwards.

And he watched and barfed helplessly as the puke was splashed around in the pool with nobody noticing.

…except the one girl who hadn’t gotten back in yet…..

But the big reminder of JOUSTY MC’JOUSTYPANTS came when I was at the beach house (not mine). I was cleaning the deck and came across a lone, soggy piece of bread.

It reminded me of him.

And I was bitter all over again.

I can’t even eat stuffing anymore, people!

And then tonight, as if it were meant to be, I walked out onto our porch and someone had returned a couple of action figures my boys had left out in the grass.

Seeing their names brought it all back, once again.  And thank you, patient stranger, for taking the time to TOTALLY MAKE MY WEEK! How awesome is that to find on your porch?!?!  I might have to go out and buy a frame for that…….

My Immune System is an idiot.

In the past two years I’ve been all over the place with the afflictions.

Last year I actually had SHINGLES.  Who has that???  Isn’t that some kind of disease sailors get from witch doctors in Indonesia?  Or is that Scury..or Scabies…?  I’m not sure, but I DO know that you DON’T want to get shillings.  Scalies.  SHINGLES!

And ever since then my Immune system has been sleeping on the job.  I hadn’t had the stomach flu in 23 years and then BAM!

Twice in a row!

And then when I came back from Chicago my kids were sick and by Wednesday I was all…

But then by Friday I was suddenly….

…and my face experienced a vast range of undesirable cooties.

I’ve about had it with all that nonsense.

We’ve had a rough week around here.  And because of that, this post will include more words than pictures.  Something I try to avoid.  I get into less trouble that way….

I always hem and haw anytime something real happens.  Do I write about it?  Do I just skip on over it?  I guess if it concerns me and it wont hurt anyone else, I can talk about it if I want to. I like talking to this blog.  Its a form of processing.  I used to plan out my blogs, but I haven’t done that in a long long time.  Sometimes its more fun to just let it fall out of my head.

So I had a miscarriage this week.

Taking a positive pregnancy test was a much bigger shock than the loss was.  When its such a huge surprise, you almost expect it to go wrong.  So, I did some crying and I did some alone time.  The usual stuff.  But like I told The Dark Knight, in some ways, pregnancy is like a death sentence in that “Heather, you only have 2 months to function as a human being before you’re walking on crutches and sleeping in a recliner.”

And thats about what my pregnancies look like.  So after I did the crying, the other side of my brain was suddenly totally ready to weed out our entire house and clean up all the messes that just about throw me over the edge when preggers.  But then Siggy started writhing in his blanket on the floor.

I sat there and watched him.  Wondering what on earth he was doing.

And then boom.

And then at a later time, Boy was sitting on the bed in silence….

When suddenly he announced…

Proceeded by….

And of course later on that night I was doing my thing….

And as some of you might remember, I pass out when I throw up.  It is so very fetching.

At one point I woke up with my cheek smashed up against the baseboard between the toilet and the cabinet wall.  I was having some sort of dream that involved a vague figure trying his darndest to explain to me the intricacies of that jump-heel-kick thing.  

And I wasn’t listening to him at all.  I was going at it based solely on my own knowledge and strength.

Then I woke up and it took me close to 5 seconds to figure out where I was.  Coming out of that unconsciousness is like pulling gum off the bottom of your shoe.  It doesn’t want to let go.

And then of course The Dark Knight was all….

And let me tell you what.  Our little house is too stinking small for so much illness.

But there was one day in there when I wasn’t violently hurling, and I had a few hours to watch some TV.

Something I haven’t done in almost 2 years.  (Ok it was netflix).

I started watching Mad Men.

I couldn’t believe how perfect everything was.  Its like, anytime someone walked in the door they actually had a clean surface to put their keys on.

All the women in the grocery store were well-coiffed and wearing dresses.  Even the “single mother”.

Everyone drank and smoked and looked perfect and beautiful while doing it.  It was amazing.

And it made me want to clean my house and buy a dress….and take up smoking?……and always act like everything was just lovely????

Na.  I’m a mess this week and so willing to admit it.  Next week, I’ll be much, much better.

Thank you for listening, blogworld.

Let me introduce you to my little friends.

You have not slept in luxury until you’ve slept in these pants.

Nor have you painted in luxury.

Nor have you eaten cheese at midnight.

In luxury.

(unless you’ve eaten cheese at midnight in these pants…..)

They are so so so comfy.

When we were in Africa, and I “fell pregnant”, Cathy sent me these maternity jammy pants.  And apparently, once a woman conceives, she also grows approximately 2 feet.

These things were huge, even for me and my sasquatchdom!

In fact, an ACTUAL SASQUATCH could wear these comfortably and without busting seams.

And so, 4-and-a-half years later, I’m still wearing them.

Only now their not so sparkly.  Even though I have to roll up the waist-band 4 times,  I’ve still done some painting in them.

Ebony and Ivory live together in perfect harmony side-by-side on my worn-out kneecaps oh Lord, why can we?

And then a couple of months ago I was rooting them off the floor late at night before bed and I found this.

Gum!!!

IN MY PANTS!!!

I guess I could have looked up how to get it out, but man I was tired and I wanted my jammy pants.  So I got some scissors and cut all the gum out and went to bed.

Sexy, no?

So I just now walked into the living room and asked The Dark Knight to take a picture of me and he said “In your frumperalls?”  and we both laughed hard.  Or maybe it was just me….

Thats me.  Standing on the coffee table.  And OH YIKES!  As I’m posting this picture I’m seeing something scary!

Ooo! This will be a fun game.  I’m not even going back into the living room to see what that is until after I post this.

It could be a sock.

I could be a bag.

It could be an enormous pile of poop.

….we shall see…….

Fun for me!