Should I cue up the Chicken Dance or hit publish?

So as I mentioned in my previous post, something bad did happen while we were on vacation last month.  I've been pondering whether I have the guts to post this, but now that I've actually been called out as a chicken by my friend Andy, who begged me to blog about this once she'd finished laughing her head off at me as I told her the story (really now, I share my deepest, darkest vacation horror story and she just flails about laughing.  Not a dollop of sympathy for my plight), I feel that I have no choice.

I'm warning you up front, any men who might read my blog regularly, occasionally or who accidentally stumble upon this whilst doing some creepo pervy Google search: this is NOT what you want to be reading.  Promise.  If you have never owned your own set of ovaries, do yourself a favor and move on.  Seriously.

Now that it's just us girls in here, I shall begin my Tale of Horror and Woe.

A few days before vacation, Kiddo, her grandma and I hit the outlet mall for some back to school shopping.  This was necessary because Kiddo decided to outgrow the sneakers we'd gotten for her in April, going through just one size in a year apparently not being good enough for her.  Annnnyhow, while we were there, I popped into the Jockey outlet, because I needed new undies and the outlet is my favorite (read: cheapest) place to get them.  I've worn plain, cotton, Jockey for Her undies for years now.  Decades, even.  So, we ducked into the shop, Kiddo on the verge of totally losing her shizzle, all of us low on shopping energy and motivation and hungry for lunch and I just wanted to grab what I needed and go.  I made my way back to the large display area where row after row of multipack Jockey for Hers can be found.  I paused briefly, trying to remember exactly which style it is I prefer.  (I once bought the wrong style and spent the next several months always feeling like the lower-riding-than-my-usual-kind-of-undies were falling down.  Way uncomfortable.)  My eye finally fell upon the kind I prefer, so I grabbed two boxes from the row with my size and headed to the register.  The next day, Hubby did all the pre-trip laundry (yes, I have that awesome a husband, y'all - he does the laundry all the time!) and when I went to pack, I found my new undies (including some colored ones for a change of pace - red!  Blue!  Red and blue paisley!) neatly folded and awaiting me.  I promptly packed those along with a couple other, older pairs out of my drawer and thought that was that.

Then I woke up that first morning of vacation in the hotel and grabbed a pair of my new undies out of the drawer.  "Hmmmmm," I thought to myself, "these seem a big bigger than usual."  I chalked it up to their being new and therefore not shrunken from being washed a thousand and ten times and hopped into the shower.  When it came time to get dressed, I stepped into them.  They were definitely...............roomier than I recalled.  Uh-oh.  I pulled on my shorts and discovered that once I'd fastened them, my new undies were showing above the waistband.  Well, not so much showing as billowing above the waistband of my shorts.  As in a few good inches of underwear material.  Ack.  I found myself tucking my underwear back into my shorts (because what is more comfortable in the heat of late summer Florida, not to mention more slimming, than having a few extra inches of fabric jammed about your midsection?) and trying to get on with my day.

Okay, menfolk, if you ignored me before and are still reading, seriously, you may want to check out for the rest of this.  It's not for you.  This is your last chance to bail out.

So, ladies, it turned out our trip coincided with that certain time of the month and as such, I had to utilize certain items in these voluminous drawers of mine.  Now, I prefer the external, winged variety of such items.  I had attempted to affix one of such items securely to the pertinent section of my, okay, I'm just gonna say it, my granny bloomers.  Off we went to the parks for a day of fun and excitement.  As we were walking from one thing to the next, I felt an odd sensation.  As though something had............. shifted.  Come unstuck, as it were.  And it had.  It had, I mean.  Unfortunately, it only came unstuck for the briefest of moments before resticking itself, backwards.

I'm going to give you a moment here to envision exactly to what the resticking occurred.  You with me?  Yep, I'm going to guess you are.

I shifted about as discreetly as possible, but no amount of shifting was going to help and in fact any and all movement was further complicating the situation.  I told Hubby I had to utilize the facilities, insisted on leaving Kiddo with him (as she normally accompanies me not only into the bathroom whenever we're out someplace in public, but also into the stall with me), and made my way as gingerly and speedily as I could to the nearest ladies' room. Yes, walking was trickier than usual in this situation.  In the stall, I discovered that what I had suspected was correct.  Egads.  I proceeded to cowboy up (no need to put on my big girl panties - already had that taken care of, now didn't I?) and rectify the situation as quickly and quietly as possible.

You know how painful it is to wax your eyebrows, or perhaps your upper lip?  This?  A thousand times worse.  If ever I had contemplated waxing anything below my chin (which I haven't, for the record), I am now soundly convinced not to, ever ever ever.  

When we got home, I pulled out a pair of the same style undies and checked the tags.  Turned out the granny bloomers I'd inadvertently bought were three sizes larger than my normal size.

(The black pair actually fit me.  The paisleys?  Not so much.)

Of course now that they'd been opened, washed and some worn, I can't exactly return them.  So now I know I'll be all set if I ever want to, say, go hang gliding or parasailing or if Kiddo wants a new swing for the backyard... and thus concludes my Tale of Vacation Woe, also known as How to Achieve a Partial Brazilian While Wearing a Ginormous Pair of Drawers. 

Wipe Out!

Hubby and I took a break from Paintathon 2010 this afternoon to go outside with Kiddo and do a little bike ride practicing.

I present to you Before...

and After...

 

Yep, Kiddo got going good and fast heading down our street (she's still a little wobbly, so until she's mastered a more steady balance as well as the whole concept of "braking" so she's not doing a Fred Flintstone and stopping by dragging her feet on the ground, she's limited to biking in our driveway and on our street only) and she experienced her first major Wipe Out.  (For the record, she was totally Meryl Streeping up that pout up there, and it took four separate tries before she could maintain the "sad" face long enough for me to capture it.  Still, though, ouch to the large, skinned and bruised area on her forearm.)

I'm a little nervous because Kiddo has swimming lessons tomorrow after school, and in the past, boo-boos of any significance + pool water = MAJOR freak outs.  And this?  Definitely qualifies as a boo-boo of significance.  We've had freak outs over microscopic paper cuts in the past, so there's a precedent here.  I spoke to Kiddo about this tonight, because frankly, if she's going to get to the side of the pool and lose her shizzle, I'd rather not even go.  We decided that I will buy some large, waterproof bandaids tomorrow and she'll go to swimming.  We'll see how that works out........

Speaking of Paintathon 2010, here's a summary of what we've done in the past 10 days:

2 coats of primer for the downstairs bathroom
2 coats of primer for the living room
2 coats of primer for the front hall closet
3 coats of primer for the foyer
2 coats of primer for the dining room
2 coats of primer for the upstairs hall and downstairs stairwell
2 coats of primer for the trim for all the above rooms
2 coats of primer for the railings
1 coat of ceiling paint for the living room
1 coat of ceiling paint for the dining room
1 coat of ceiling paint for the upstairs hall and downstairs stairwell

1 coat of ceiling paint for the foyer
1 coat of ceiling paint for the front hall closet
1 coat of ceiling paint for the downstairs bathroom
1 coat of ceiling paint for the dining room and 3/4 of the living room
replace the light fixture in the dining room

As of the end of today, Hubby's got a Perma Claw thing going on with his right hand from so many hours wielding the paint brush, while I am a solid three inches shorter from multiple neck vertebrae getting compressed from rolling out the ceilings.  Also, we're tired!  The good news is we are pretty much right on schedule with our rather ambitious To Do list for this round of home renovations.  We've got two more weekends to get everything else done before the big Secret Agent themed birthday party (aka "Operation 7 Candles") and I'm thinking we'll get there.  The day *after* Operation 7 Candles?  We will be napping.  Majorly, majorly napping.

Hope your weekend was full of sunshine and paint- and boo-boo free!

Call me Marcia Brady

I know all you moms out there are hoping for something fantastic for Mother's Day this weekend (at least all you moms who live here in the US where Mother's Day is being celebrated this weekend).

Well, you'll never guess what my kid gave me for Mother's Day on Thursday.  Yes, it was a few days early so I'd have that much more time to enjoy it...............

She gave me this - a possibly broken nose.  I know I definitely heard a crunching sound as she tripped while climbing into my lap on the couch to read her homework book to me and her rock-hard skull came crashing down into my nose.


To quote the ever-groovy Marcia Brady: "OH MY NOSE!"





I confess I yowled in pain, which was a lot better than the word that popped, unbidden, into my head at the moment of impact.  *That* word would have caused a lot of trouble, so hallelujah that my record of Not Swearing in Front of the Kid remains intact.  Let's just say that the word I'd been thinking has been redubbed as "Monkey Fighting" or "Monday to Friday" in the broadcast TV version of that piece of cinematic dreck Snakes on a Plane...







So, I managed to only scream "OWWWWWWWWWW!" as my eyes began tearing of their own accord.  Of course it was entirely accidental and Kiddo felt *terrible* about it.  (She actually asked me specifically to please tell Hubby that she "felt really, really terrible about it" when I related the story to him when he got home later that night.)  I immediately went for an ice pack and after a few moments, returned to the couch where Kiddo quite gingerly set herself down next to me and proceeded to read me another scintillating book full of facts about the life cycle of a frog.


I kept icing it and took some ibuprofen for good measure, and by three hours later, it looked like this:

It was hard to tell if I was going to wind up with black eyes, but I took the lack of a nosebleed as a good sign and went off to bed.  Sleep was not restful for me, though, because I am a habitual stomach-sleeper, face down on my pillows, so although I carefully arranged myself on my side with my nose well clear of the pillows, as soon as I was deeply asleep enough, I'd automatically roll over and then OW OW OW wake myself up, wait for my eyes to stop watering, carefully rearrange myself on my side and repeat until morning.  A few times, I felt my nose running and though "Oh crap, now I do have a nosebleed" but it was just a plain, old, garden-variety runny nose, likely due to all the tears that my rolling onto my face was causing.


When daylight arrived, I did a quick survey - nothing seemed to have fallen off or swelled up to any grotesque proportions, and my pillowcase was delightfully clear of any bloody nose type stains.  I went into the bathroom to observe what time had wrought -

Whew, no black eyes and the bruising and swelling weren't too bad, either.

So yes, for Mother's Day, I get to channel my inner Marcia Brady.  She was so pretty and cool and popular - who wouldn't want to be Marcia, Marcia, Marcia? She did get to hang out with Davy Jones and have him sing to her, after all...

Now, while you're doubtless sitting there wishing your kid could accidentally be so thoughtful for you, let me wow you further - do you know what I'm going to be doing tomorrow?  What my big plans are for Mother's Day?  Well, hang on to your hats, because I'm going to be................ painting!  (Are you jealous yet?)  I'm actually rather excited about it, just because it means we're making progress on our renovation project list.  Our current To Do List has a deadline on it - we want to have everything completed before Kiddo's seventh birthday party, which we're having here at the house (eep!) and to which Kiddo's inviting her whole class, Daisy troop and a few other friends (I believe we have 30 kids total who will be invited - double eep!) and which will have a Secret Agent theme.  Speaking of the theme, I'm a bit miffed because I entered a contest to win food and beverages for a kid's birthday party through a group of organic food companies, and while I didn't win, they still posted my idea as one of their top "ideas we love" - what's up with that?  You loved my idea but don't want to give me a few cases of organic snacks?  Grrrr.  (You can find their list here, and my idea is #3 - the Kim Possible Secret Agent theme. THIRD on the list, but I didn't win.  There were multiple winners, btw.  No, I'm not bitter.  Okay, yes, I am a little bitter.  I was so hoping to win!!)  Anyway, we want to have the foyer, living room, dining room, hallway, stairways and downstairs bathroom done by then - we've got 3 more weekends before the party.  Then there's the actual party, which is going to take some planning and preparation.  There's also a bunch of school/PTSA and Girl Scout stuff going on in the next three weeks and the yard which won't stop needing mowing, just in case I thought I was going to be relaxing any time soon.

So, tomorrow when all you other moms out there are having mani/pedis or champagne brunches with George Clooney or hot stone massages or just sleeping in until noon and then watching whatever you want on TV completely undisturbed with snacks and beverages brought to you on demand, think of me, Marcia Brady with a paint roller.  I'll raise a gallon of primer in a toast to you and wish you a very happy Mother's Day!

(Okay, I should mention in all seriousness and officially for the record that Hubby has said we will be going out for breakfast tomorrow morning, after Kiddo lobbied hard for "going out to eat for all three meals" for Mother's Day.  I also know that Kiddo has a Mother's Day present for me hidden in her closet, as I've been expressly forbidden from looking in her closet before tomorrow.  So, I don't mean to imply that they're not planning on doing anything in terms of celebrating tomorrow, just that once we're done with the celebrating, lots of painting type stuff will be taking place.)

I will leave you with a short video clip that has had all three of us Smiths cracking up this weekend - 





Hee!

Not with a bang, but a whimper. Well, actually, with kind of a rather resounding bang, now that I think about it...

Today is my last day of being 37, or being in my "mid-thirties" as I've been saying for the past 364 days. Let me just say that if today is indicative of how 38 is going to go down, I'm in trouble.

The day started out well enough. We've been checking out different churches in our new town, trying to find one that feels right for us. We weren't overly enamored of the United Methodist church we attended last week, so we'd decided to try the Presbyterian church right in the middle of town. We all were fed, showered and dressed appropriately with plenty of time to make the five minute drive over to the church. Hubby and Kiddo were waiting in the minivan, which Hubby had already backed out into the driveway, when I headed out the door.

And here is where things started going south in a hurry. I was putting the bag with our shoes in it (as we were wearing our sensible winter boots due to the weather) in the back next to Kiddo when Hubby, noting the freezing rain pelting down, suggested I grab the large umbrella out of the back seat of his car so we'd have enough coverage for the walk to church (Kiddo is a bit of an umbrella hog). We'd read about the parking situation at this particular church - that being that they don't really have any - and knew we were in for a bit of a walk. I turned around and started back into the garage to grab that umbrella.

The next thing I knew, I was sprawled on the icy, icy driveway. Did I mention it was icy? It wasn't actually the "next thing" I knew, for as always seems to happen when I fall, time freezes into super-slow-motion and it feels like it is taking an eternity for my body to meet the ground. (Hubby disputed this over lunch, saying that no, one second I was standing by the front of the van and the next I wasn't. He swears it was a "blink of an eye" sort of thing.)

Now, traditionally I have One Big Fall each winter season. (The length of said season depends on where we're living - sometimes it is just January-March, nowadays it's more November-April.) It is an accepted fact among those who know me that I will fall, spectacularly, once each year. I generally breathe a sigh of relief once the One Big Fall has happened, as I know I'll be safe from there on out, and I dread those years when the OBF doesn't occur until March or April. Now, there has been the occasional season when I do fall more than once, and there is even the rare year that I don't fall at all. But generally speaking, there's One Big Fall each winter.

So, it was today. I landed rather heavily on my left hand/arm. Not in any conscious "I shall stop myself from falling by breaking said fall with my left hand" sort of way, because my Spectacular Falling Method does not employ any such choreography. It's much more pratfall than graceful sinking to the ground. My best OBF ever occurred back in 1997, when I was working at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH - aka The Land of Neverending Winter (followed by the Inexplicable yet Quite Accurately Named "Mud Season"). One February morning that year, as I was heading in from the parking lot to the building that housed my office along a very slippery sidewalk, I did one of those both-feet-out-from-under-me moves typified by the expression "ass over teakettle" (though Dame Helen Mirren used a more colorful, British variant of the same euphemism quite famously at the Emmy Awards a few years back). My bagged lunch and bag of shoes, which I had in my right hand, and my purse, which I had on my left shoulder, went sailing off into the bushes and snow all around me and I even managed to lose one of my gloves (which I'd been, you know, wearing) in what Dane Cook would call a fit of joy. Of course there were several witnesses of the Snooty Ivy League Graduate Student variety, which meant far more in the way of pointing and snickering in my general direction than any offers of help or inquiries as to the state of my extremely prone body. That added note of humiliation, coupled with the incredible amount of hangtime my suddenly horizontal body had whilst in midair, definitely qualified that as the Best. OBF. Ever.

But I digress. Back to this year's edition of my OBF. There I was, sprawled upon the icy, icy driveway. I managed to get up without falling again and limped into the house for a wound check. Hubby and Kiddo were quite concerned, but I determined I was all right once I'd washed the grit and stones out of my palm and wrist. (Kiddo did pipe up with the helpful tip that if I'd been wearing my gloves when I fell, my hand would've been protected. Thanks.) I grabbed an icepack for the road and away we headed to church.

It turns out that more than our driveway was really, really icy. Our neighborhood is in a very hilly area, and the main road into the village is in and of itself a large, large hill. The road out of our subdivision empties out about 2/3 of the way up one side of this hill, and the most direct way to the church means turning onto and going up the rest of the way and then down again. Well, the minivan wasn't so sure about the whole "going up" bit, and when we'd gotten to the top, we came upon an accident involving at least two cars and a street sign, along with a fireman who was waving us off to turn around. So, we did, opting to carefully make our way down the hill the other way and take the other route into the village. (Kiddo: "Is this a shortcut?" Hubby: "No, this is actually a longcut.")

So now we're pushing it in terms of getting to church on time. (Oooh, brief musical interlude here.....) We carefully make our way to the church without further incident and Hubby lets Kiddo and me out right in front before driving off to find parking. By the time he finds a spot and makes his way back to the church, the service is well underway. I think we were about 12 minutes late by the time we walked into the sanctuary, though we were not, I'd like to note, the latest people to arrive.

No, we weren't the latest but still, turning up late at a new church doesn't make a very good impression. In my haste to get Kiddo to pipe down as we entered the sanctuary, I completely missed the usher who was attempting to hand me a bulletin, so that plus the distraction of being late, keeping Kiddo in line (she's had serious ants in the pants going on all day) and the relatively searing pain that occurred every time I tried to straighten out my left arm, it didn't make for a peaceful and satisfying worship experience. Add to that the fact that this was a Presbyterian church so there were bits of it that differed from the UM service we are used to, and bleargh. (Case in point: The Lord's Prayer found Hubby and I saying, as we are accustomed, "forgive us our TRESPASSES as we forgive those who TRESPASS against us" while the rest of the congregation all was saying "Forgive us our DEBTS as we forgive our DEBTORS" and let me tell you, of all the things to be saying fervently yet incorrectly aloud, something chock full of sibilance is really going to stand out.)

So, the service concluded and we went off to collect Kiddo from Sunday School, to which she'd happily gone off with a girl she knew from school who'd also gone up front for the Children's Moment. We arrived at the classroom to find Kiddo wearing an angel's costume, having secured herself a part in their upcoming Christmas pageant. We were introduced to and spoke at length with the Director of Christian Education, who assured us Kiddo was most welcome to be in their pageant and that they'd be rehearsing from 11 until 12:30 today so we could come back and pick her up then. We talked it over with Kiddo and she assured us she really, really wanted to be in the pageant and off she skipped with nary a backward glance to the sanctuary to rehearse with the rest of the children.

We wandered about the very crowded Fellowship Hall for coffee hour for a bit, then headed past the sanctuary and went home to change and for me to strap an ice wrap on my now throbbing and swollen left elbow. I took a few Advil for good measure, since I'm certainly not getting any younger so I don't bounce back as quickly as I might've from my OBFs of years past. When we returned to the church around 12:20, one of the Sunday School teachers was sitting with a de-costumed Kiddo in the front pew. Uh-oh. She then explained to us that Kiddo had changed her mind about being in the pageant as the rehearsal got underway and had proceeded instead to sit in the front pew, crying. Not crying about the pageant, mind you, but because she'd eaten a doughnut with the other Sunday School children right before the practice started and, having eaten a doughnut at home for breakfast, was suddenly stricken with remorse that Mommy might not have wanted her to eat a second doughnut and that she might get in trouble for eating too much sugar. (Which: did I mention the ants in the pants? Sigh.) She had explained all of this at length to the Sunday School teacher, about how Mommy would be so, so mad about her eating that doughnut and how that was why she was crying, because she knew that Mommy would be so, so mad.

Ugh. To sum up the first impression this church has of us: We arrive late, foist our child upon them and then leave (though, as Hubby rightly pointed out, the other parents all left as well) so that our child could whip herself up into a hissy fit about having eaten a doughnut (um, guilty conscience there much, Kiddo? Getting that general sense of "knowing better" and the subsequent guilt that comes with doing it anyway? Fanfreakingtastic, but next time, let's try to keep the histrionics display for family only, mmmkay?), turn on the waterworks and quit the pageant, while also demonstrating what appeared to be a significant amount of fear at the pending Wrath of her Wacko Mother over the minor transgression of eating a doughnut. I mean, Kiddo turned it on as she is wont to do, being a junior Meryl Streep and all. I'm sure they were expecting me to whip out a switch and flay her alive right there in the sanctuary or something. Yeesh.

On that note, we made our way back out into the sleety rain and headed off to my birthday lunch, with a now sulky and petulant Kiddo in the back seat. Happy, happy, joy, joy. We arrive at the restaurant, Macaroni Grill, where we've gone to eat for my birthday for the last several years (um, okay, over a decade). I do adore their food and they make a "dessert ravioli" that is to die for.

Well, they *used* to make a dessert ravioli that is to die for, anyhow. Turns out they changed the menu since last December and the dessert ravioli is gone. Bummer. The rest of our lunch was fairly delightful and the chocolate cake covered with chocolate ganache and crumbled pecans, surrounded by dollops of fresh whipped cream was almost an acceptable substitute for the dessert ravioli. It would've been better if Kiddo, aka Ants in the Pants Annie, hadn't decided to end her two year aversion to all things chocolate (which yes, I never fully understood, or even partially understood. I mean, to suddenly go from loving to refusing CHOCOLATE? What the heck?!) and grabbed a fork to join in on the piece Hubby and I were sharing. In doing so, she managed to scoop up all the dollops of fresh whipped cream, which took the delightfulness factor down a notch or two.

On that note, we headed home again, home again, jiggety jig. I went upstairs to change out of Clothes That Require Things Like Zippers and Brassieres and into Comfy Clothes, aka my jammies. In the bathroom, I was taking out my earrings when my left arm - you know, the one I landed on mere hours ago? - decided to suddenly send a searing pain up to my left hand and kerplink, kerplank, kerplunk, I dropped the earring I was holding. The toilet lid was down and I wasn't right over the sink (which, granted, pretty much anywhere in our master bath is basically "right over the sink" unless you're in the Pepto-Bismol stall shower), so I didn't fret about it too much. However, I couldn't find it anywhere, which befuddled me and led me to believe that it must've fallen into the mostly full garbage can that sits between the toilet and sink (because the dang bathroom's too small to put it anywhere else, including under the ridonkulously small vanity). Now, this wasn't an expensive earring, just a $5 faux-diamond stud, so I decided that I was not about to go dumpster diving in my own bathroom just to retrieve it. With my luck, it didn't fall in there anyhow and I'll find it by stepping on it in the middle of the night when I get up for a drink of water without putting my glasses on...........

So, there you have me today. Bruised, swollen, probably banned from the new church, unstuffed by dessert ravioli and missing an earring. The cat is presently perched in the windowsill just behind my computer monitor, and I'm fully expecting her little, kitty head to whip around a la Linda Blair in The Exorcist and spew forth furballs upon me and/or my computer. (No, I'm not linking to that particular film clip. You're welcome.) Ants in her Pants Annie is whinging away in the next room wanting me to play with her, and at my refusals (because, ahem, I'm working on the Christmas presents for the grandparents right now...) is whinily asking the Magic 8 Ball "Oh Magic 8 Ball, tell me true, will Mommy finish doing her boring work and play with her kid?" And I do have to finish the project, which I can't get into as certain of the grandparents have been known to read my blog and I can't spill the beans, but let's just say there is a lot of creative input and uploading type work involved as well as completion deadlines for shipping in time for Christmas and if my kid is Ants in her Pants Annie, well I might as well confess that my own mother has called me Last Minute Annie for the past 37 years and 364 days... so I'd better get to it.

At least tomorrow I have this to look forward to...

Maybe hitting my late thirties won't be so bad after all...

Think good thoughts

Okay gang, please think good thoughts for me today. The interviews for the four candidates interested in being Kiddo's sensory diet aide are this morning starting at 8:30, and then we have our first kindergarten parent-teacher conference tonight at 6:00. The headache that was at Level 4: Mildly Annoying when I went to bed at 9:30 last night, chock full o' drugs to kill it, instead morphed into Level 10: Major Migraine this morning. (If it goes to Level 11: a Spinal Tap Would be Preferable, I'm in serious trouble.) I've downed another handful of meds and ingested some caffeine for good measure. I'm a little shaky and the screen is seeming really bright (I know, WTH am I doing blogging then?) but I'm not feeling nauseous anymore and I can open both eyes at the same time without keeling over, so that's an improvement.

Oh how I hope these interviews go well and we find someone who will be a GREAT fit for the position. The school year is almost halfway over and we're still not where we should've been back on September 4th, and that probably isn't helping my headache any.

I'll let you know what happens later, if my skull hasn't exploded.

How not to get the Angelina Jolie look

At 12:04 this morning, when the house was dark and quiet, I heard the kiddo's door open. As usual, I went from soundly asleep to wiiiiide awake (the kiddo rarely gets up in the middle of the night) and bolted into the hall to see why she was up. Turns out she was thirsty, so I sent her back to bed and fetched her a cup of water from the bathroom. When she finished it, she asked me to snuggle her, so I climbed in bed with her to cuddle until she fell back asleep.

I love cuddling the kiddo, especially now that she's too big to hold the way I could when she was a baby. I was dozing off to sleep again myself when BAM! Kiddo's head jerked back all of a sudden, catching me right smack-dab in the upper lip.

OWWWWWWWWWWWW!!! I screamed (on the inside - it was the middle of the night, after all). Aloud, I just whispered quietly to the kiddo that I had to go. She was mostly asleep again by that point, so there were no objections. I stumbled (without my glasses and with the nightlight in the bathroom burnt out, so in much darker dark than usual) into the bathroom to survey the damage. Squinting at myself in the mirror, the injury didn't look too bad. I opted to skip going downstairs for ice and instead rinsed out my mouth with water (my lip got cut a bit on my teeth - Kiddo has one hard skull!) and went back to sleep.

When I woke up this morning, I could see the damage much more clearly (having my glasses on also helped). Besides the fact that it was hurting, I had a sort of Angelina Jolie thing going on in my upper lip region. I tried ice and Advil - which did bring the swelling down - and then I tried Listerine to cauterize and numb the cut area on the inside. For the record, you should NEVER try to swish with Listerine when you have an open mouth wound. OWWWWWWWWWW!!! I yelped once more - again inside my head, because I didn't want Hubby to know the brilliance of my Listerine plan. (Hey, it seemed like a good theory at the time - kind of like using peroxide on a cut, you know? I figured it would sting a bit, as Listerine does because, you know, it's Listerine..., but then it would feel better. Um, no.)

My upper lip injury wouldn't have been quite as big a deal if I hadn't been signed up to sing a solo in church this morning. I was a little worried that the cut would really bother me when I was trying to sing. I also wound up serving as worship leader this morning, which meant reading a nice, long passage from the Bible immediately before singing. (It also meant doing the opening prayer, which I did off the top of my head and which I fear may've sounded a bit like Ben Stiller saying grace in Meet the Parents...



Okay, it wasn't quite that awkward, but it sure wasn't eloquent!)

At any rate, the song went okay. (Once again, I was glad that our choir director/accompanist is one of those people who is able to transpose keys in his head and whip up an accompaniment out of thin air, because that meant I could sing the song - Through it All, an oldie but goodie - without having to go into my head voice once. I definitely prefer taking the easy way out and staying down in alto-tenor range whenever I can!) By the time church was over, my lip was really hurting, so I'm going to hit the Advil bottle again shortly.

By the by, this is not the first time I've been conked in the face by the kiddo's skull. This wasn't even my first fat lip caused in this manner. (The worst Kiddo-Noggin-Conking injury I incurred sent me to the urgent care clinic to check for a broken nose. It wasn't broken, but it did re-deviate my septum, which has led to fewer sinus infections in the winter ever since, so: woo!) Hubby thinks it is all my own fault because I will roughhouse with the kiddo (SPD major sensory seeker = a kid who loves to play rough) and nine times out of ten, this is how my skull-on-face injuries occur. (Okay, I'll further 'fess up that at bedtime last night, the kiddo also bonked me in the face, but that wasn't nearly as bad as the middle-of-the-night hit - more of an "ow" than an "OWWWW" type bump. So, yeah, it actually was a two-fer that gave me my aching, Angelina lip by morning.)

I think I need some ice cream. For medicinal purposes, of course - to help relieve the pain and swelling. Yep, definitely LOTS of ice cream, and no more Listerine...

In which Heather's thumb boo-boo has a "Revolutionary Bandage Experience"

One morning last week, I injured my right thumb. It was a stupid, stupid injury and I will not explain how it occurred. Suffice it to say a Barbra Streisand gospel CD case was involved and that I was driving on a 65 mph expressway at the time. Anyhow, the gouge on my thumb was pretty deep and immediately began bleeding profusely. Fortunately for me, I carry a fully stocked first aid kit in my minivan. (Seriously, this thing is just shy of a portable defibrillator.) Unfortunately, the first aid kit is in the way back, behind the kiddo's seat. I made do with a kleenex and applying pressure until I pulled in at farm school (aka Kiddo's summer camp), whereupon I did some first aid and bandaged it up.

It didn't stop bleeding for a good, long while. It bled through three bandages before it finally stopped, and that was with the aid of my trusty styptic pencil. (Which, by the way, OUCH!) I quickly learned that this particular wound is in a rather bad spot. It turns out that part of my thumb comes into contact with things all the time, so without being covered, it was getting repeatedly reopened and hurting like heck. (I like to let wounds breathe if at all possible, buying into the "fresh air" healing theory vs. the "covered up to avoid germies" theory.) This meant that I had to avail myself of our rather extensive collection of bandages. We have 'em all, from cheapo base models to waterproof, "tattoo" style bandages. We've got rainbow colored ones, bandages shaped like hearts and stars (also in rainbow colors!), clear ones (Mommy's standby, as the ones that are ostensibly "flesh" colored are actually only the color of my flesh when I'm sporting a deep - for me - tan), character ones (like the Princesses), ones meant for knuckles or knees, for wounds large and small - you name it, we have it. For my thumb, I tried an assortment of different bandages over the next two days. Nothing worked that well - apparently I make good use of my opposable digits because I was constantly catching the bandage on something and pulling it off/tearing it or soaking it off in water, etc. My boo-boo was not getting the protection or coverage it needed, and it hurt.

Three days after my wounding, I opened up our mailbox to discover a free sample of a new Band-Aid product. It seemed as though Fate had smiled upon me and my wounded thumb and sent me the answer! I began to read the accompanying literature..... This new Band-Aid Ultra-Strip is billed as "The Healing Hug" - that sounds good. Who doesn't like a hug? It claims to be superior protection to help you heal, well that sounds pretty good too! Inside, just next to the free sample was large, boldfaced type proclaiming this Band-Aid to be a revolutionary bandage experience! Wow! My thumb injury was obviously in dire need of a revolutionary bandage experience! The sample closed by inviting me to "Put it to the Test!," so I did. I stuck that Healing Hug right on my thumb first thing the next morning and took it for a test drive. To be fair to it, I didn't apply it until after I'd showered. Okay thumb boo-boo, time to start the test!

I suppose it says something for the Band-Aid that it lasted almost 5 hours on my thumb (I'm right handed, too, so this was my dominant hand), during a typical day. It snagged a bit and developed a wrinkle after about hour 2, but didn't give up the ghost completely until around hour 5. It lasted through such activities as emptying and reloading the dishwasher, feeding the cat, watering the plants, weeding the garden, picking berries, lots of typing and mousing at the computer (okay, so Thumb only really comes into play occasionally on the space bar for that) and applying sunscreen to the kiddo - twice. I also wash my hands a LOT, so it was subjected to many dousings of water. It did not, however, survive the pool. It was pretty comfortable, certainly more comfortable than the generic, base model bandages in our collection, and it stayed on better than the tattoo-style, waterproof ones. (Which, incidentally, also don't survive a trip to the pool with the kiddo. She and I both lose those types all the time in the pool. Humph.) When it finally gave up the ghost, I noticed my skin underneath it wasn't all shriveled and white the way it sometimes gets under other "heavy duty" bandages. So, I guess that says something for it.

Do I think my thumb had a revolutionary bandage experience? Hmmm, well, not exactly. Was my thumb a little let down after the hype of the Healing Hug? For sure. Will I buy a box of these? Probably at least once - there was a coupon with the free sample, after all. Have I learned never to mess with the CD holder in my dashboard while driving? Oh yeah. That, I know for certain.

(By the way - I tried to photograph my thumb wound, before and after testing out the free sample bandage, as a means of documenting it for this post. Alas, I was unable to get a good picture using my left hand on the camera, and I felt just a wee bit silly asking someone else to photograph it for me.)