brush

holy.

mother.

of.

socks.

i had to do a double take. then a triple take. i looked around the room. i stared hard into his face to see if i was really seeing this face. he wasn't much taller than me...maybe 5'9". he was wearing the darkened wraparound glasses. his unshaven face and intentionally mussed hair. his casual glance around the room. he was with another dude, well over 6 feet tall, hard edge to his face and wearing a faded blue tee sporting the union jack.

i got three words for you.

larry mullins. bono.

and me without a camera on my fourth day on the job. they noticed that i recognized them. and they noticed that i hadn't started jumping up and down and screaming. they both looked directly into my face as they gathered up their bags, put on their shoes and belts, and walked down the pier to their plane. bono nodded and winked as he turned away.

and me without a camera.

i swore on my grandmother's grave to my supervisor that i had just seen bono. she had a good look at him as he walked away. "a lot of celebrities come through here in early morning, hoping that no one's had enough coffee yet to notice them. it very well could be him. he has a nice face," she added.

and me without a camera. *sob*

un.be.liev.a.ble.

unbelievable.

it started last friday. not a couple of days ago....LAST last friday. yeah. i been busy. from the top, with feeling.

sometimes, the dog doesn't eat her breakfast. for whatever reason, she decides internally that she does not require sustenance at this time and does not eat. inevitably the puking starts about 2 pm. when my oldest had not yet arrived from middle school via her consistently-tardy bus, i tossed the dog in the car for the 1/2 mile trip down the road to the school so i wouldn't have to clean up cold vomit after picking up kids from school. although, in hindsight, as i drove down the road, i really would prefer cold vomit on a hardwood floor than warm sick on the van carpet. oh, yeah, and i forgot a bunch of stuff i needed to give another parent TONIGHT. so i drove around the block to get my stuff and aforementioned daughter had arrived. i dropped off the dog and left to pick up kids. when i returned, a strange woman walked out of my home.

my dog had bolted from the house, had been hit by a car and she and her husband "hoped i didn't mind" that they came in to bring the dog home. holy shit. $450 later, the dog is deemed "sore" by the vet ER doctor and we decline overnight observation (to the tune of an additional $1K.) saturday went a bit better, aside from the fact that the pain meds apparently took away the dog's ability to control her potty functions. we dealt. oh, and my husband bit his tongue. i prescribed a swipe of brandy on a cotton swab.

if you know me even partly well, you might know that i have a little anxiety problem. as in, when i get nervous or upset, my head shuts down everything except the "diarrhea" and "nausea" functions in my body. well, i was nervous AND upset about becoming a member of the working world again, after being barefoot and pregnant for most of the past 10 years. quite nervous.

sunday, i began orientation for my new job with the department of homeland security. please hold your applause until the end of the program. i learned that, not only will my first paycheck not come until 8 november, but i have to shell out money for a parking pass ($33 for the last 2 days of october plus another $33 for november) before i even get that check - oh, and i have to buy clothes too since the uniforms typically take 2 weeks. or longer. and at some point i decided to let a big fat nail puncture one of my tires. joy. now i have to drive the husband's POS car, while he finds someone to repair my tire.

my stomach calmed down by wednesday, but the training is pretty intense. i have been unable to eat breakfast since saturday. i managed to choke something down about lunchtime, to keep from passing out, but it was a rough few days, also taking into consideration that members of this class were subject to the airline restrictions on liquids past the security checkpoint - basically, we had to buy most of our lunches at the airport kiosks...prior to that first paycheck, of course.

we traded cars for a few days to get a check-up for the POS, to discover he has a major transmission leak. yay. meanwhile, my house is deteriorating before my eyes. this must be what it looks like when dh comes home from work and i've been playing on the computer all day. or maybe not. at least he's making dinner from the menu i made, following the recipes and getting the kids to school on time. no one's had a bath all week (because it's not on the list, see) and every night i come home, he tells me more vociferously how much he's glad i've done this part for the past 11 years. he's doing much better than i thought he would. but the fact remains.....he's doing maybe half of what i typically do each day. maybe.

the end of his tongue is now a gargantuan pus-filled glob and he insists that if he puts brandy on it (like i told him to do days ago) it will hurt. well, no shit, sherlock. it hurts because it's killing the germ-nest built there when you bit it and didn't immediately put a cotton swab of brandy over the cut. fucking duh. he walks around the house, acting like he's been hit by a car, taking frequent naps and complaining of the noise. dude has had the house to himself for 4 days, doing next to nothing and he's acting like he's been this powerhouse of activity and just can't stand the thought of one more domestic chore. matter of fact, friday's dishes are still stacked on the counter because i put my ass to bed early last night. and he did too. lightweight.

i am now a bundle of nerves. i am hemorrhaging money this week. and although i have put in 54 hours, we won't see the results of those hours for weeks. today is testing day. tomorrow is my first day "on the job." i went to bed earlier than i had the rest of the week (before 10:00, ladies...) and i woke at 2:30am. and 3:30am. and 4:30am. and 5:22am. the alarm was set to go off at 5:25 so i sat and stretched for a moment, deep calming breaths against the nauseous waves of panic rising in my gut. odd. the radio wasn't on yet. upon closer inspection, the alarm light was blinking. and no sound was coming out. i walked over and checked the volume and got the quiet "shhhhhhhhhhhhh" of radio static. the radio station was off-air. holy mother of socks. if i hadn't awoken 3 minutes early in a panic, i'd have slept late. yay stupid stomach, i guess.

on my way in to my last class today, the check engine light comes on in the POS car. i am only a few miles from my destination and i soldier on, praying that what ever is wrong, the car won't die on me before i hit the employee lot. it didn't. i nervoused my way through three bathroom trips (in three different bathrooms, even!) before the test began at 9am. i later found out that i aced both written portions and scored a 90 on the visual portion. please hold your applause until the end. our class had to finish up some mandatory updates to the curriculum we just passed and in the middle of it all, the entire system crashed. so now we get to come in, on our own time, off the clock, and finish it. more joy.

when i got home early, due to the system crash, i found out that the minivan (which i hadn't gotten to drive all week...i miss my van!!) has a busted rim. yes, i said busted. as in irreparable. tad was driving down the freeway and there was a manhole cover missing (on a highway???) and the tire busted and the rim is bent all to hell. yes, in fact, it was the tire we just paid to repair.

so now i have two shit-cars to choose to attempt to get my ass to work by no later than 4 am tomorrow morning. not one place would help us out. no one could help us find a rim, let alone install it, before close of business saturday. and no one is open on sunday.

i think i am going to cry. because hopefully, when i arrive home after my shift around 10am on sunday (and wash the one pair of black pants and one white shirt i own to take the place of the uniform that i won't have for two+ weeks), this ten-day-long-week-from-hell will be over. then we can start creating a new schedule to call "normal."

you can applaud now if you feel the need, or even remember what there was to clap about. i forgot.

Hercules

God help me, the child was sitting on my sciatic nerve. Again. I stood up, shook my leg and walked in a small circle around the waiting room to increase the circulation and tried to perch on the edge of the uncomfortable chair. That hurt worse and made the baby shift. It beat its head into my bladder and stuck one stubborn baby foot under my ribcage and pushed. I waddled up to the nurses station, kicking my leg out to one side again, thinking that I must look like some kind of deranged, plucked and stuffed Thanksgiving turkey.

"Hi, I'm going to pee on the floor here. Can I just pee in the cup and write on it with a Sharpie? Better yet, just look at the records from the past 8 months and the two previous normal pregnancies. Nothing is going on in there that shouldn't. Just write 'ditto'. Trust me. I just need to go. Now."

She took a blank label off of a stack, glaring at the printer out of one eye and me out of the other. I snatched the label out of her hand, as well as the pen, and ran at top speed for a 38-week pregnant woman with one leg. Well, one working leg. I sat down on the toilet, peed in the cup, sealed the jar and for the next five minutes, wrote my entire life history onto a military-issue one-inch by three-inch envelope address label. And then I took another five minutes to finish peeing. I told her I had to go. She was standing there waiting with my label stuck to the edge of her index finger when I got back, almost triumphantly. Whatever.

The appointment went like all appointments did. I peed. They stabbed my arm and wrapped number tapes around my girth. They had no idea when I was due and I had already used my one allowed ultrasound. One week the child was measuring big, the next week they said I had gained too much weight. (Way to go doc, I'm already feeling like a pregnant elephant. Let's play "Make the Hormonal Preggo Lady Cry.") We're all winging it here. Every single one of the doctors who had been assigned to me over the past 8 months had been deployed. I had no idea who was going to deliver this baby. The thought occurred that it might even be me.

We lived 79 miles from the nearest American base with maternity hospital facilities in the United Queendom. That is a two-hour drive on a good day with clear weather and little traffic, meaning NO farm equipment on the roads, and no lorries (tractor trailers) blocking all lanes of traffic going 10 kph to protest the staggering rise in the cost of petrol gasoline. We had used the nearest A&E hospital before, which certainly had a maternity ward and it was a mere 14 miles away. However, since we, and everyone else we knew, left the Accident & Emergency Centre in much worse condition than we arrived, we opted out of the National Health System. We decided that the risks were about equal in delivering a child in the car on the side of the road and delivering a child in a hospital that did not use an autoclave or any other sterilization equipment and had a blood poisoning record that would shock the settlers of this fine country.

So I packed my baby bag. I had the diapers and wipes. I had the gender-neutral homecoming outfits - two of them in fact. I had the freshly laundered baby seat, a new backpack diaper bag, and the receiving blankets that were just for this new little bundle. I packed my overnight bag. I had warm socks, jammies, a stress ball, toiletries, my teddy bear ready at the last instant and sweats for the grueling two-hour ride home. I had my kids go-bags ready. I had some favorite books and toys, a gift for each of them from their new sibling, and a pair of jammies and change of clothes each, in case of a middle-of-the-night or mid-afternoon run. And then I had the delivery bag.

An ER nurse friend of mine helped me assemble what I would need in case of an emergency delivery. I had an ironed sheet, folded and sealed into a zipper bag, likewise a few receiving blankets washed, dried, ironed and zipped up for sterilization. I had a pair of extremely strong scissors that could cut through denim and seatbelts. I had a big silver mixing bowl for fluid capture, washed and placed in a fresh plastic garbage bag. I had an umbilical cord clip for the baby. I had extra blankets and a freshly laundered stock of donated black towels (so they wouldn't stain.) I had flares and a gallon jug of water that had been boiled. I had a book on emergency deliveries with the chapter clearly marked and accessible with a binder clip. All this was carefully packed into a large paper bag and stowed in the trunk, "just in case." On the outside of the paper bag, I had written the on-call OB pager, the American military hospital OB line, and the base police, in case we decided we wanted an escort. I diligently kept my phone charged.

After one exhausting false alarm that began at 3 am in my 38th week, I got sick. Monkey-bad sick. I could not breathe for coughing. I could not cough without peeing. So I basically just walked around wearing wet pads. I kept a change of underwear and pants in the diaper bag, it was that bad. Exactly one week later, I timed the very strong contractions at seven minutes apart when I called the OB ward to tell them we were two hours out. We drove through the fine mist and gathering fog for 2 hours and 20 minutes. I was timing at four minutes by the time we arrived at almost 7 pm and there was a wheelchair waiting for me at the door. I mostly wheezed through my breathing, trying hard not to cough on anyone, but I was surrounded by hospital personnel. I had a temperature of 102 degrees, and I was already exhausted. I don't know what they put into the cocktail flowing into my arm, but the pain started to go away, and my breathing eased for the first time in days. They brought in a nice man with a long name who told me about a fabulous place called "Intrathecal." If I wasn't already married, he'd have been mine.

At 9:50 pm, there was an audible *pop* and the air pressure in the hospital decreased somewhat when I delivered a 9 pound 15 and 3/4 oz baby boy with blond peach fuzz and bright blue eyes. He wanted nothing more than to climb back into that nice warm place away from all the bright lights and cold February fog, and he screamed loud enough to tell the whole base. He was the only blond and by far the biggest baby of the five on the ward, so he quickly earned the nicknames "Hercules" and "Peach Fuzz." He knew my voice from the start. He screamed while they weighed him and I sang his name over the cacophony of instruments and vitals stats being flung about the room. He calmed immediately, but only when he could hear my voice; which prompted me to shush everyone in the room, so I could sing. Hey, I was high. Step off.

My little Hercules is now six and a half, and he is well on his way to success in first grade. He is still blond and his eyes have stayed the same remarkable icy-blue, unlike the other three kids, whose eyes changed before they hit one year. He is still louder than he really needs to be at times. But he is sweet, funny, smelly, handsome, quick to laugh, hard to please, and most of all, he's mine.



inspiration by mommymatter. verbiage by kater.