Only Me

Last night my kids and I went over to a friend's house. I won't say which friend because I know that she feels TERRIBLE about what I am about to tell you; but it is a crucial part of my story so it must be told.
The other day my girls got these new flip flops at Old Navy. They were on clearance; and I am Queen of Bargains, so we couldn't resist. They were like the platform flip flops and they had a cute jeweled flower thingy by the toe; and my girls just thought they were FABULOUS. I had my reservations, because being MY daughters, they have a proclivity for clumsiness and this just seemed like an accident waiting to happen; but nonetheless we bought the flip flops.

Now back at my friend's house, we all left our shoes by the door as we are accustomed to doing, and we went upstairs; but her dog didn't, and she decided to make a meal out of one of my older daughter's flip flops. As previously stated, my friend could not have felt worse. I assured her several times that it was no big deal, but she insisted on paying me for them so that I could buy a new pair. I waited till after dinner to break the news to my daughter. I tired to be lighthearted and funny about it; but my daughter did not take the news of the demolished flip flop well. She's not usually a crier, but this girl was sobbing and heaving and I don't know if I felt worse for her or my friend because I knew this just added to her unnecessary guilt.
I promised my daughter that even if I had to go to multiple Old Navy's to find her a pair (remember, they were on clearance;) I would. My friend then insisted on paying me almost double what they cost; just in case I needed to drive to more than one Old Navy.

OK, so I am a runner; pick your jaws up off the floor people who know me, I don't mean runner in the sense that would be good for me, like one who runs for exercise, I'm a runner as in I run all over the place for like errands and stuff. I am Queen of Returns; I don't even want to tell you things I have returned because you may have been the unlucky soul to have bought the pair of ballet shoes that my daughter peed on and I took back; but you get the point. Anyway, I like to get as much done in one day as possible; I just Go, Go, Go. My husband hates that by the way; 2 errands a day and he's spent. But I mention this because you need to understand my schedule for today and how it was not unusual for me AT ALL.

So upon leaving the house around 1030 - I think; we headed off (me and my 3 kids) to the first Old Navy stop. Nope, no flip flops in her size. I then offered, "well, how bout if we try Payless; because they may have those Hello Kitty flip flops that you wanted and you could get those instead." She agreed. But alas, no such luck. We then went on to Girly Girlz to buy a present for her classmate whose party was at 2. From there we drove out to Super Target which was a good 15 minutes from where we were (tons of construction too - woohoo!) We went to Super Target because 2 weeks ago I saw these pink and black cleats and I thought they would be adorable for my girls for soccer; but I didn't know if our league was going to let my little one play so I wanted to hold off on buying any until I went to registration. I went to registration on Saturday morning; and so far it seems that they are going to let her play, so I was anxious to buy the cleats before they sold out. OK, so the girls try them on, we're about to put them in the cart; but first I turn one over and look at the bottom and think to myself these don't look the same as the cleats from last year. Then upon looking more closely at the box, I notice that it said "baseball cleats." Way to go Queen!! Now I get to break the news that the cleats I had talked up, and drove out there especially for; could not be purchased. I was batting a thousand - maybe I needed the baseball cleats - da da don ching (that was like the sound of cymbals crshing in case you didn't figure it out.)
Moving right along... So now we are off to Old Navy # 2. Mind you, it was NO WHERE near where I was and I was unaware of a shortcut at the time, so it took me a good 25 minutes to get there; and you got it - no flip flops. There was a Payless in the same plaza so we tried there for Hello Kitty, and she actually found a cute pair of sandal flip flops that were marked down to $4, same price as the ones I was trying to replace - Perfect; but it's BOGO at Payless so of course I wanted to find another item. I knew that I was in need of new flip flops, so I started looking at something for me; which is no easy task with my size 12 feet that actually seemed dare I say it, to have gotten a tad bigger. So I slipped a flip flop off, tried something on, no dice, a little too close for comfort, so I tried again, same deal. I was ready to head off to guy's flip flops when I saw a cute pair on the size 12 women's shelf. I tried one on, then I went to try the other, and OH MY GOD, I looked down and this whole time I had been out running my ass off in 2 different flip flops. Oh my god, who does this? What kind of moron am I? Go ahead, laugh, I did, Rachel did, because I was on the phone with her when I made this discovery. I mean oh my god; this kind of thing is cute when a kid chooses to do it and they maybe have one pink and one blue or something like that, but yah; I had one black sprarkly flip flop (which even my friends dog passed over because it was in such crappy shape) and then my other flip flop was brown and pink with a bit more height to it then my black sparkly one. You get the picture, there was NO WAY that I could pass this off as a fashion statement.
WOW! How embarrassing. SO figure I'd been to Old Navy, Payless, Girly Girls, Target, Old Navy and Payless all with this wonderful shoe situation. How my kids never noticed is beyond me, because they are my biggest critics and notice everything.
So I bought my new flip flops and called my husband on the way to the birthday party; and his words were ones I'm not unfamiliar with; "ONLY YOU."
Once we made it home, I showed him the flip flops and he wanted to make sure that I hadn't worn them to the party. I said "no," but then he needed the run down of where I'd worn them because he thought I should steer clear of those places or at least he wanted to. We were getting ready to go to Sprouts, so he asked, "You didn't wear them to Sprouts did you?" I said "No;" So he agreed to go there with me. My younger daughter asked me to wear the again, but I thought better of it and said "NO."
I'm telling you; I really am my own worst enemy; but really, say it with me "WHO COULD MAKE THIS STUFF UP?"
Till next time...
Queen of EVERYTHING

I'm Collecting Lisa's...

Disclaimer: I know that it has been FOREVER since I wrote a blog, and now that my kids are back to school and I’m working from home at least 3 days a week; I am dedicating myself to more blog, more blog, more blog. I do have LOTS and LOTS in store for you so PLEASE stay tuned; but for today, I’m going to ease you back into the ride slowly, with this little anecdote…

Back in the day, the day being when I was single and dating; almost every guy I met seemed to be named Rob. It was kinda nice when dating more than one guy because this way I didn't stand the risk of calling a guy by the wrong name; but it did get a little confusing when they called. Well, now that I have no Rob's in my life, it seems that I am collecting friends named Lisa.
On Saturday night I was going scrapbooking and my husband asked me who was going to be there. I replied, “Michelle, Jenny, Mari, Lori, Lisa, Lisa and Lesa.” Believe it or not I have one more friend named Lisa, but she wasn’t there that night. Currently we refer to the Lisa’s by their last Initials, so at least for scrapbooking purposes we have Lisa B, Lisa D and Lesa G of course all the last initials have to rhyme as well, it’s not like we could have Lisa R, Lisa S and Lisa B. No, that just wouldn't do.

Lisa B works for Honeywell and she has an ebay jewelry business called Fancy Treasures you should check it out.
Lisa D is an HR Manager for Bashas and she is the author of the Quest books. Visit Questbooks.com for more info if you are interested in fantasy fiction – not just any type of fantasy you perverts, it’s like other dimension kinda fantasy.
Lesa G is the team services Manager for the Phoenix Coyotes and the local lacrosse team as well but good friend that I am I forget the name of the team.
Lisa M, I know from when my son went to Gymboree and currently she is a student.
Like the nice, shameless plugs for my friends? Now, back to my story...

Well, I was talking to Tiffany the other day and she asked me who had been at scrapbooking. I ran down the list and identified each Lisa for her, as she also has a hard time keeping them straight. Most people do. I told her that I was thinking of just giving them other names, like the Vietnamese nail ladies do. It seems that they have all chosen to call themselves Tina or Tammy or Kim. But alas, we have a Tina in our group as well; so I can’t go that route. But then it dawned on me, I think we should call the Lisa’s by the Vietnamese names that the nail ladies aren’t using. So the next time anyone asks who was at scrapbooking I can just say, Michelle, Jenny, Mari, Tiffany, Lam, Mai, Nam Ha and Tuyen. Yes, I did my research and those are actual Vietnamese names. I thought of calling one Phuo.ng because it means Phoenix, but it would just be too hard to pronounce and we’d wind up having to refer to that one as Tina.
Till next time…
Queen of EVERYTHING

My Disorder...

On Friday night I was talking to my brother on the phone and he asked me if I had blogged about my disorder yet. I laughed and replied, "I don't know that I plan to - it's embarrassing." Then I thought to myself, well, perhaps I will; I mean it's not like I don't write about embarrassing stuff (about myself) all the time. I mean if I can tell you about being a lazy ass and getting a check stub caught in my teeth, I can tell you that 2 weeks ago I had a double skin infection on my abdomen (so to speak) that was both fungal and bacterial; it was painful as hell, required 2 excruciatingly embarrassing Dr's appointments which resulted in me being given 2 different creams, strong antibiotics and instructions to let it air in the air as much as possible. Translation: sit naked under the fan as much as possible, and with that; the Dr. wrote me out of work for a week. OK so I freely admit, this WAS NOT a pretty sight; and I just thank god that my children aren't old enough yet to be completely horrified by the spectacle of their mom sitting half and sometimes totally naked on the couch for a friggin week - OY! One of my worst nightmares. Have I previously mentioned that I DO NOT know how to relax? I am constantly on the go and just don't seem capable of actually relaxing. Don't get me wrong; I often do things that I love and make me happy, it just never seems that I am relaxed while doing them. I love to scrapbook, but then I agonize over how long it takes me to come up with the perfect layout. If I'm sitting on my couch watching TV it's usually because I am folding laundry or paying my bills; so being told to take care of my "disorder" in the manner that it needed to be taken care of, was quite contrary to how I live my life - but I did it, and of course I went back to work earlier than I was supposed to because I am the Queen of Responsibility and I knew that I had too much work to do to be at home. My "disorder" had completely cleared up (which my 5 year old daughter told me was because of her. When I asked how it got better because of her, she explained that she asked God to come and make my "douchie" better. Douchie has evolved into our family word for VaJJ; ) so I went back to work. Well kinda. I worked from home on Monday, went in Tuesday, worked from home on Wed which was the 4th and right before we left for our friend's house, I started to get a wicked sore throat. My sore throat woke me up at 215am at which point I considered going to my office but I thought my bosses would freak when they saw my time clock, so I toughed it out and went in at my customary 530 am. Then, on Thursday night I was giving my daughters a bath and when I went to dry my older daughter off, I noticed that she had a bad rash and dare I say it, a yeast infection? She's five. No five year old should have to endure the agony that is a yeast infection. I called the pediatrician in the morning and she assured me that this was quite common in the summer w/ swimsuits and all and she told me how to help my daughter. Well, I don't know if it was the power of suggestion, or dealing with all of the yeast, but all of a sudden I found myself feeling itchy. It was at this point that I feared I was a hypochondriac and asked my daughter to talk to God about making her douchie better. I told her that God must be wondering what was going on with the Douchies in our house. When the sore throat woke me up at 630 am, I knew I would be paying yet another visit to my Dr's office though I was totally embarrassed to have to be seen again so shortly after my "disorder." I attempted to swallow my pride - but god my throat hurt. I packed up the kids and went in for my appointment. The nurse or assistant or whatever you call them, went to do a throat culture. I panicked for a moment remembering my childhood when it took 3 nurses to hold me down for a throat culture; but as my kids were in the room, I suddenly put my fear aside and became Super Mommy, UNTIL the nurse took so damn long to get the culture that I was kicking and gagging and reached for her arm to stop her. She pulled out (not something you hear often - ha) and informed me that she had to get the culture from my tonsils. I then informed her "I don't have any." OK my confidence in her was a little shaken. She attempted the culture again, which culminated in me gagging like my 8 year old would. I composed myself and asked if they were going to want a urine sample because I NEEDED to go give one. She said "OK, leave it just in case." When my PA - Susie came in; she told me that I didn't have strep; which I thought was a good thing, but she explained "not really; because if it was strep I could give you an antibiotic and for a virus I can't." She then proceeded to look at my throat and I kid you not she looked in, and jumped back (just picture Kramer from Seinfeld in this role;) she said "Oh my god! I don't know how that culture came back negative, but I'm treating you for strep." She said that the rapid test was negative but she was sure that if it was sent to a lab it would come back positive. She then diagnosed a lovely sinus infection in addition to the strep?, and checked the urine screen to confirm a urinary tract infection as well. Although I was dismayed at my luck, I was actually relieved to find out that I in fact was NOT a hypochondriac and I had legitimate, founded ailments. So I won myself a big ole shot in the tush and 2 weeks worth of antibiotics. See what happens when you stay home for a week and do nothing. My body obviously didn't know what to do with itself so it manifested all 3 illnesses. Well since I can't relax, there was no way I was going to let strep?, a sinus infection or UTI stop me; and we kept to our schedule as if nothing had happened. Saturday night we went to my friend Lisa D's and then Sunday, since my husband had taken a rare day off from work,we went up North with our friends David, Jenny and their 3 kids; to beat the heat and spend the day outdoors. Can you say Bumpy Ride? For as long as I can remember, I have held the VERY strong conviction that Jews don't camp. I believe that we probably spent so much time crossing the desert from Egypt to Israel, that an aversion to camping is something that is now passed down in each Jews genes. If any of you are Jews who camp; feel free to contradict me; but I will say that my theory has also been supported by my husband's boss; who is also Jewish. My husband was at work one day and a conversation about camping ensued. My husband said "my wife says Jews don't camp;" to which his boss replied "she's right." Well about a year ago we went up to the lake for my son's Boyscout cookout. Really it was a Boyscout overnight camping trip, but I told the scout leader that my husband would have to work during the day (true) and that we didn't have any camping equipment (true) and that I really didn't consider myself a camper (Damn straight!) I had proposed that we come up for dinner and she said this would be just fine; and that she wished she could just go for dinner too because she didn't really like camping. Well, when we got there, I was truly amazed at what I saw. Tents, nice tents with air mattresses and many comforts of home. There was no sleeping on dirt with bugs crawling on you as I had previously imagined. This actually looked OK. And to my disbelief I found myself saying to my husband "Now, if we could go camping like this - tent, air mattress etc. I think I'd camp." Oh my god - is this the first step to conversion or what? OK, be calm, be calm. That was over a year ago and we have yet to invest in as much as a lantern. Though we have thought about it; especially because we now know a few families who like to camp; and we have said that we would be interested in trying it out. In August we're planning to go to Disneyland with David and Jenny's family; and we were hoping to spend a night or 2 in San Diego while David and Jenny stay there in their camper. They said that they have all kinds of tents and stuff that we could borrow, so I called the campground to find out how much it would be to get a space for a tent, and suffice it to say that $236 is a little too much for me; when I was only thinking of camping as a cheaper alternative to a hotel. Hell no, for $236 I'll take a real bed, a shower, cable and some little shampoos that I can steal from the hotel - thank you. But I digress (back to Sunday...) We took a scenic drive to Prescott, then Williams, had lunch at a really good pizza place worthy of my NY pizza snob palette and headed on to Flagstaff. We had planned to take the sky ride, which is really the ski lift at Snowbowl in the winter. Our destination was what my husband told me was the highest point in Arizona; 11,000 feet above sea level. I was all for it - UNTIL I saw the sign warning that if you were pregnant (not) or had a heart condition (not to my knowledge) you may want to reconsider taking the ride. OK, so I didn't have either of these things to worry about but that didn't stop me from panicking. I almost backed out, using my sinus infection as my excuse - don't ask me what I was thinking. Did I think my nose was going to explode - I dunno, I just know that I got nervous and I had left my asthma inhaler and my Xanax in the car and there was not enough time to go get them because the ride was going to be closing in a few minutes - of course. I agreed to be a trooper instead of Queen of the Wusses, and got on the ride with my 3 year old daughter and proceeded to have a full blown anxiety attack. I remember thinking; I wish that she and I weren't in the last lift of our group. I wish that I was in front of my husband so that if my head blew up or I collapsed, he'd know about it; but unless he was secretly Spiderman and going to be able to throw a web and make it over to my lift - really, what would it matter? I kept telling myself, "relax, take in the beauty "- yah right. My 3 year old wanted to know why there were so many fallen trees. She told me that she thought evil witches had made them fall down. I think it was my sheer delight in having such rare, private moments with her that actually wound up calming me down. All of a sudden I gave in to my fear and relented. I thought if I am going to die here and now, it's God's will. Pretty heavy for a simple ski lift, but alas this is my busy mind at work. My husband kept looking back to check on us and more than 3/4 of the way up he shouted "we're almost there." I sighed with relief as we continued to climb the mountain and then - WE MADE IT!! I was alive! I did it! I was proud and able to really enjoy the beautiful view. I knew that the ride down would be MUCH better than the ride up because I now had nothing to fear and I was riding with my 8 year old son and 5 year old daughter who were not going to shake the lift or climb around as my 3 year old had tried to. I took in the beauty,the quiet and revelled in the sound of the wind blowing. It was a good day; but it wasn't over yet... After we got off the mountain, we headed over to a lake (as if I hadn't had enough outdoors for one day.) My husband had remembered to bring fishing poles for the kids, but forgot to get some hooks. Oh well, I thought, I guess we'll just have to enjoy another beautiful view for a few minutes and get the hell outta Dodge; BUT NOOOO, my resourceful man went scavenging by the lake and found some hooks that people had dropped. Next thing I knew he was digging for some worms so the kids would have bait. There was no turning back now. I knew it was going to be a while so we got out the folding chairs and tried to make ourselves comfortable. My son had made his way onto a rock and was sitting peacefully enjoying the view. He asked if her could take his flip flops off so he could put his feet in the water and I said "OK." Jenny's girls (also 3 and 5 like mine) then asked if they could put their feet in the water, but Jenny said "No." Her 5 year old seemed to take it well, and walked away and got her new shoes caught in the mud. She wanted to rinse off, but it just didn't seem possible. I suggested "in my infinite outdoors/camping wisdom" that she just have her daughter put her foot in the water shoe and all. I guess Jenny didn't think that my idea was so bad because she proceeded to climb out onto the rock that my son had been on, lifted her daughter over, and rinsed off her shoe. Well, I guess it didn't matter to the 3 year olds how or why Jenny's 5 year old got to put her foot in the water, just that she did; and with that, my 3 year old, got herself stuck, and I mean stuck in the mud. Devoted mom that I am; I immediately tried to get over to help her because she had now announced that she had to pee and my husband was convinced that she WOULD NOT make it to the bathroom. In rushing over to my daughter's aide, I too got STUCK in the mud. Now picture this, I'm stuck, can't move and I'm trying to get her underwear off, and help her pee in the water. I think this is when David started taking video on his cell phone. My daughter peed, and I rinsed her off, but I then wanted to rinse myself off; so I dislodged my foot and attempted to climb out onto a rock and ALMOST fell right in - I am NOT the Queen of Balance. I realized that this wasn't a good plan, and stepped back out of the water INTO the mud. I thought I'd give it the old college try one more time and repeated my effort to climb out to the rock and dip me foot in the water; but I still wasn't feeling confident and climbed back out into the mud again. OK say it with me "Jews don't camp." I'm not even convinced that we (I ) shouldn't be banned from outdoor activity altogether. I made it out of the mud and my prince of a husband let me sit in my chair and he took my flip flops into the water and cleaned them off for me; as well as my feet - god do I love that man. Then the man that I love told me that he was surprised that I didn't fall right into the lake and that if that would have happened he would have laughed his ass off. I had to agree, I thought I was going in, and I would have laughed too. I think that David and Jenny might want to reconsider any future outdoor activities with me; as when it comes to "disorders," my dual skin infection may just have been the tip of the iceberg - but hey, I am good for a laugh.
Till next time...
Queen of EVERYTHING