I would like to start this post by proclaiming I am not a sadist.  Pain of any sort is not something that brings me pleasure.   With that being said, there have been several circumstances that, when given a choice between pain and no pain, I chose pain.  When considering the warped reasons behind these decisions, I have narrowed it down to two:  1. I have control issues    2. I am a sloppy conglomeration of a broke-ass, tight-ass, and dumb-ass.

Perhaps the earliest sign that when given the choice of the lesser of two evils, I was more prone to pick the one which usually ended with me thinking,  “that’s going to hurt in the morning”, occurred when I was around 9 or 10 years old.  My sister and I were brought up in the 70’s and 80’s and back then it was totally cool for parents to spank their offspring.  It was expected.  In my case, it was necessary.   We would get the occasional swat from mom with the fly swatter or hairbrush for a variety of childhood mischiefs.  She was harmless.  The major infractions were dealt with by my dad and his belt and were avoided at all costs.   The times Dad actually called his belt into duty were far and few between, but they were effective.  Just seeing my dad’s hand graze his belt buckle made my knees weak and my brain would automatically initiate a quick conduct review.  I don’t think I even comprehended that his belt had a functional purpose other than keeping me in check.

As I approached the preteen years, I became increasingly sassy (I know it is hard to believe), but I had never pushed things very far with Dad.  One evening we had just finished dinner and my dad instructed my sister and me to clear the table and clean up the kitchen.   The daylight was dwindling and I wanted to go back out and play and so I balked at helping.  My balking could have been interpreted as whining, especially to a man who had just put in a full day as an overhead lineman.  He reiterated the instructions, which should have been my cue to shut the hell up.  Instead, I silently weighed my options.  I could shut my mouth and clean the kitchen or I could show him how I really felt, get my ass beat and then clean the kitchen.   I looked right at him, cocked my head to the side and stuck my tongue out at him.  I got my ass beat.  It hurt.

My teeth and pain have had a long tumultuous relationship.  I managed to fall out of swimming pool when I was ten and broke off my two front teeth.  A year or so later I was preparing to get what would be the first of my three sets of braces on my teeth and the orthodontist says I need to have two teeth extracted.  After clarifying that ‘extracted’ was a fancy word for ‘pulled’, I asked him to show me the teeth that needed to go.  That evening I helped myself to a few of my dad’s tools and locked myself in the upstairs bathroom.  After a lengthy, grueling, and bloody tug-of-war, I emerged with the teeth I had mined out of my own head.  My mother was appalled and I was relieved that I didn’t have to be subjected to the dentist pulling my teeth.   I pulled my own teeth that weren’t even loose.  It hurt.

                It is logical to assume that after becoming a nurse and experiencing natural childbirth, as an adult I would fully embrace the wonders of anesthesia and as a rule, I do.  In my mid-twenties I had to have my four wisdom teeth cut out (those dental folks can use all the fancy words they want, but you can’t dress up torture with fancy terminology).  My dentist was giving me a referral to an oral surgeon and since we still had hospital bills from my son being born earlier that year, the amount not covered by my insurance looked MASSIVE.  According to my calculations, having the procedure while awake and under a local anesthetic was going to save me five-hundred dollars.  Having my dentist do the procedure in lieu of an oral surgeon was going to be another huge savings.  I got exactly what I paid for.  The sound of my teeth being cracked out of their little sockets was horrible, but when he got to my bottom right wisdom tooth, the experience went from horrible to completely horrific.  Evidently, the nerves in my mouth are not wired evenly and I wasn’t completely numb. Reacting to the unexpected searing pain, I flew out of the chair, swearing (inaudibly because my mouth was still propped open with the mouth speculum thingy) and spewing blood and saliva like a rabid wild cat.  I had my wisdom teeth cut out while I was awake.  I saved a bunch of money.  It hurt.

                When I was old enough to know better, but young enough not to care, I got a tattoo.  It was cool for about five minutes.  Regret usually takes at least a little while to catch up with me, but the tattoo regret was almost instant.  For several years I detested this mark of temporary madness and I started investigating removal options.  I soon came to the realization that being a dumbass is expensive to the tune of about $1300.00-$2500.00.  Evidently the cut-rate wisdom teeth adventure didn’t do enough damage to steer me away from seeking out cheaper alternatives for tattoo removal.  During my research, I discovered that dermabrasion was a surgical method used to remove tattoos.  Basically, sanding or scraping the skin, beyond the point of ‘road-rash’; Seemed simple enough.  Armed with several different grits of sandpaper, rubbing alcohol, gauze, and a tiny welding cone I retreated into the bathroom and embarked on my DIY tattoo removal.  I required several ‘timeouts’, nearly hyperventilated more than once, and I am certain God and Jesus had to hit the mute button due to the numerous times I yelled out to them during the sanding of my own flesh.  I can imagine the scene from heaven:

Me:                        Oh, Holy God!  Jesus, I can’t do this.

Me:                        God have mercy!  Jesus!  Jesus!  Jesus!

Me:                        For the love of GOD, Christ in Heaven, I am going to pass out.

God:                      What is she doing?

Jesus:                    It would appear she is trying to remove her tattoo with sandpaper.

God:                      Hit the mute button, Son.  I can create a universe, but I can’t fix stupid.

I removed my own tattoo with sandpaper.  I have no scars and no evidence it was ever there.  It cost a little over $15.00.  It hurt.

I was sixteen when my baby sister, Emily was born.  Twenty-five years ago a child born to a woman 40 or older was commonly referred to as a ‘change of life’ baby.  Nothing simultaneously contradicts and supports the arrival of Emily more accurately.  She was not the result of my mother mistakenly thinking she was in menopause and failing to take the necessary precautions.   With that being said, Emily’s arrival changed our lives!!!  Emily was the sun and the rest of us revolved around her.

As we doted, cooed and bounced Emily seemed bored with the entire baby stage of her life.  She never crawled, choosing to just take off walking instead.  She skipped baby-talk altogether, always talking plainly and used vocabulary far beyond her current developmental stage.   While an articulate and often demanding toddler at home, in public she became a wide-eyed mute.   She was quirky, rotten and when it came to laughs, she had impeccable timing.

Christmas the year Emily was two, my sister Kim (she was 15) and I decided to have a photograph made of us sisters as a surprise gift for mom.  The photographer acted like a complete nut trying to coax a smile out of Emily.  Most children would have at least giggled at his ridiculous antics.  Emily remained straight-faced (her mouth was literally a straight line that never wavered) and she uttered not a word in his presence.   He was growing frustrated as each of his carefully crafted antics fell to Em’s somber stance.  He excused himself to get more film and just has he stepped outside the doorway Emily proclaimed loudly in her clearly enunciated un-baby-talk voice, “What a dork!”  He turned around and looked back at us accusingly and Kim and I both pointed to Emily, who had instantaneously returned to her Mt. Rushmore impersonation.   Needless to say our session was over and mom received a very nice photograph of two smiling teens and one very subdued tot.

Emily was like a little sponge and occasionally I used this fact for my own entertainment purposes, which usually ended up coming back and biting me squarely in the ass.  As our family was eating dinner one evening, Emily started reciting a nursery rhyme and all attention shifted to her impromptu performance:

Emily:   Little Miss Muffet

Inside My Head:    Oh, shit.

Emily:    Sat on her tuffet.

Inside My Head:    Please, please, shut up.

Emily:    Eating her curds and whey.

Inside My Head:    Dear God, please strike her mute.

Emily:    Along Came a Spider and sat down beside her and said……

Inside My Head:    Dear God, please help me out.  I promise to never teach the kid bad things ever again.

Emily:  What’s in the bowl, Bitch

In my defense, Emily’s delivery was a million times funnier than Andrew Dice Clay’s.  Unfortunately for me, the parental figures failed to see any comedic value.

Emily had no trouble creating tons of laughter at the high school student council meeting I was hosting at our house.  While the council members hashed out plans for some long forgotten school event, Emily was perfecting her newly acquired potty training skills.  As a family, we regularly celebrated her toileting achievements by clapping, cheering and giving her candy.  Emily has always been shrewd in recognizing opportunities and the group of teens seemed like a sure thing for a multitude of positive rewards!  After producing a respectable poop in her pint-sized potty-chair, she proceeded to carry the entire potty-chair into the living room and presented it with pride to the members of the student council.    While trying to remove both of the little turds from the amused group of my peers, I calmly explained to Emily that it is not okay to share your poop with others.  Emily turned to me matter-of-factly, stuck out her little hand and demanded, “Where is my treat?”

Early in the fall before Emily was born, I was mowing the lawn and my mom came out into the yard with tears streaming down her face.  I immediately stopped what I was doing to find out what was wrong.  Through her tears my mom said, “I am worried I am too old to have a baby.  If something happens to me, please promise me that you will always love her and take good care of her.”   A few weeks ago I received the following text message from Emily, now 24, and can find no better way to wrap up this post:

Although the majority of my childhood I resided within the city limits of our small town, my dad had a farm about 20 minutes outside of town and I LOVED it!  There he maintained about 30 head of cattle (they had bodies too, but for some reason cattle farmers only count the heads) and I had a small pony named, Black Beauty (she already had this name when I acquired her, otherwise it would have been a way more original name).  The thing I loved most about the farm is that I got to be Dad’s little farmhand.  No matter what I saw or experienced, I made every effort not to show an ounce of repulsion (take my word for it, there are MANY opportunities for being repulsed on a farm).  I watched unflinching as the horn buds were burnt off a baby calves.  As a witness to calf castration, I didn’t waiver as my dad cut into the ball-sacks, removed the testicles with his hands and flung the bloody stringy mess into a bucket.    It would take a lot more than a bucket of bloody cow balls to turn this tough tomboy into a sniffling sissy.   However, if I thought I couldn’t be broken, I was as wrong as any six-year old farmhand had ever been.

Dad received a phone call one evening that one of his cows had gotten out and had been hit by a car.  As he pulled on his boots, I started pleading to go along.  He reluctantly agreed, probably more out of desperation to shut me up rather than him recognizing me as a valuable sidekick.  Regardless, I climbed in his truck and buckled up for the ride-Note: I didn’t really buckle up.  Nobody buckled up back then.  I am pretty sure that I never saw anyone actually use a seatbelt until I was in middle school and I am certain I thought it to be complete overkill in the safety department. 

We arrived at scene of the accident and Dad pulled to the side of the road, as I started to follow him, he stopped me and said those dreaded words, “You need to stay in the truck,” and he shut the door.  I couldn’t believe he was leaving me out of all the excitement.  There was little time to sulk; I had to survey the scene.  From my vantage point in the truck I could see a small white car on the opposite side of the road and a man walking toward my dad.  I didn’t see a cow.  My only experience with road-kill had been seeing small critters flattened in the streets or bloated like furry balloons on the side of the highway.  My dad and the man had moved to the side of the road and as Dad knelt down, I could see that there was a cow lying in the ditch.  I couldn’t tell if it was moving or not, but I knew it was bad.

Dad made his way back to the truck and opened the door and I started firing off questions about the condition of the cow, which went unanswered.  Oblivious to my escalating irritation, Dad reached behind the seat of his truck and pulled out his gun.  I shut up.  I watched as he pulled out a box of ammunition and reinstructed me to, “Stay in the truck.”   I watched eagerly out the window.  I chided an unheard warning to the stranger, “My dad is going to shoot you for hurting his cow. “ Then I watched and waited.

I screamed in horror as I realized that my dad’s gun wasn’t trained on the cow mangler.  This could not be happening!  He should totally be helping the cow and shooting the dumb guy who wasn’t smart enough to stop for a giant farm animal in the middle of the road!! Nothing was making sense to me.  WHY WAS HE SHOOTING THE COW???  Dad seemed to be confused about why I was upset and tried to comfort me by explaining how he couldn’t allow the cow to suffer (like jerking their balls out  wasn’t a form of suffering).  Dad wasn’t used to his trusty farm buddy to be sniffling and snotting like a little girl.  My tears were making me even more flustered and I eventually gave up trying to make him understand that I was sad that the cow had to die but I was furious that he had not avenged the cow by shooting the man!

My life has come full circle and I now live in close proximity to a variety of farm animals.  Should you happen out my way, please drive carefully and watch out for cows!  There is a chance that I could have long suppressed dose of bovine justice just waiting to be served.

              It has been over sixteen years since I held my only son, Evan, for the very first time.  After all his toes and fingers were accounted for, I relaxed and anticipated the adventures this new life would bring to mine.  Right out of the shoot with this little scallywag I had already fumbled the rules of being Evan’s mom.  Rule number one: If you relax you are in trouble.  Rule number two:  You must never under-estimate the adventures of Evan.

               One of the roles that Evan didn’t enthusiastically embrace was that of a big brother.  He was three when his sister, Sophi, was born and he never passed up an opportunity to remind anyone gushing over the new arrival that, “It’s just a baby.  It’s no big deal.”   The only aspect of the new addition that seemed to intrigue him in the least was the mystery of breastfeeding.  He would often be playing or watching TV and hunt me down and ask, “So, there’s milk in those boobs?”  It was like this little three-year-old person was trying to wrap his mind around the whole concept.  He would playing with his toy trucks in the floor and then all of a sudden his little brain would take a detour, “Good God, is that possible?  I better just check with mom one more time.  That doesn’t seem right.”

               One afternoon my good sense was overruled by my need to go to the store, so I ventured out to Wal-Mart, with baby on board and toddler in tow.  I was standing in the checkout line and Sophi began to fuss.  As the line crept slowly, Sophi’s fussiness began to escalate.  I was trying to quickly unload my items onto the cashier’s conveyer belt so I could get out of the store before she reached the point of royally pissed.  Evan was calmly repeating, “Mom, hey, Mom,” over and over.  Impatiently I finally responded, “WHAT, Evan?”   I saw his dimple twitch (the untrained eye would have missed it) and I knew it was coming.  Loudly he yells, “WHY DON’T YOU LET HER CHEW ON YOUR BOOB??!!”

               The man in line behind our little circus was trying hard not to laugh, which Evan must have interpreted as disbelief in the lactating capabilities of his mother and fervently jumped to my defense and yells,  “Don’t laugh; there is really milk in there.  There is MILK in my MOM’s BOOBS!!!!”   I think Evan was expecting me to give him a high-five for setting the skeptical stranger straight.  I just wanted to get the hell out of the store, but by the time I pulled out of the parking lot, I was laughing so hard I was almost crying. 

               Thank you, Evan, for bringing so much laughter into my life, then and now.

            I am no stranger to bad habits, but today I am keenly aware of the side-effects of one of my mindless quirks.  My left earlobe is red, slightly swollen and throbbing.   Evidently, when my internal worry alarm is activated, it automatically triggers my left arm to pull, pick, and twist my left earlobe. 

            Usually, my oldest daughter, Riley, is around to gently remind me not to desecrate my ear, but she is away at college and my left earlobe has been left unprotected.  This week has been an especially trying week, as I have been plagued with worry about one of my children (not the earlobe protector).   It seems that worry over one’s child can launch quite an assault on a vulnerable defenseless earlobe!

            Checking the mirror this morning, much to my dismay I discovered that my left earlobe is quite noticeably longer than my right earlobe!!!  Dear God!!  I am going to have to tie my left arm down until I get these kids raised!   This thing is going to be flapping in the wind, before Riley gets home for Christmas break.  It’s bad enough that these kids have given me stretch marks, grey hair and tension headaches and now I have to deal with this elongated mismatched lobe!!! 

            So, I guess I am destined to a life with my head tilted slightly right to offset the result of my nervous ritual, which actually is fitting since I have always had a catawampus view of the world anyway. Note: Catawampus is one of my favorite words in the universe.  In order to get the full effect of this fun word, it is imperative that you read it how I say it and not the way it is correctly pronounced.  My pronunciation is-CATTY-WAMPUS.  Also, I tend to frequently play on this word, making it a proper noun.  If I am particularly out of sorts or have screwed something up, I use the term “Karriwampus”.  If my dog, Cooper can’t jump on the bed because his pillows aren’t stacked right, it is because they are “Cooperwampus”.     They say the eyes are the window to the soul, but in my case it is the left ear that tells the secrets of a worried heart.  I love being a mom, but sometimes it is exhausting carrying the weight of the world on my earlobe.

Since my sister commented on her lack of thankfulness regarding the odds of her becoming the subject of one of my blog posts, I felt obliged to move her to the head of the line.  She probably should have stayed quiet, because if there is one thing I have plenty of, it is funny-ass stories about my sister.  Most of them are equally embarrassing to me, so I chose to start with one with her in the starring role. 

My sister is a nurse by vocation (she is the best damn nurse I know) and spent the first decade of her career working night shift weekend option in the ICU.  This required her to work 7pm to 7am every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  She only got a couple of weekends off during the year.  It is entirely reasonable that she wanted to take full advantage of those rare weekends.  It also left her husband and kiddos (my nieces, Lilly and Olivia) alone to their own devices.  It sounds innocent enough, a man and his two very young girl bonding on the weekends, but then one must consider the boat.

With my sister at work on the weekends, it made it difficult for my brother-in-law to take two preschool girls out on the boat.  So, there were many weekends when my husband, our kids and I would accompany them for a day on the lake.  I soon learned that it is a lot of work to have two tots on a boat for an entire day and I quickly learned that I was not cutout to be a boat person.  While my husband and brother-in-law were busy floating in the lake partaking in adult beverages and fraternizing with the other boat people, here is what I was doing:  zipping life jackets, unzipping life jackets, putting the girls in the water, taking the girls out of the water, making peanut butter sandwiches, applying sunscreen, fishing things out of the water that had gone ‘overboard’, applying more sunscreen…let’s face it, boating is exhausting. 

The lone summer weekend my sister had off finally arrives and I was elated that I would not be the lone crew member attending to the little ones.  However, my sister is elated because she finally gets a weekend away from work and she is ready for some serious R & R. The visions of floating peacefully on the lake were quickly replaced by little life jackets, peanut butter sandwiches and applying sunscreen to fat little cheeks (my nieces’ cheeks, not mine). 

As the sun climbed higher and higher, my sister’s jug of apple martinis dwindled.  There were about seven boats tied together side-by-side and anchored in the lake.  Rubber bumpers  were placed over the sides of the boats to prevent them from smacking together leaving a narrow space of about 18 inches or so between the boats.  It is an easy hop from one boat to the next, if the boats weren’t rocking on the waves or if one is as agile as a cat.  My sister is not as agile as a cat.  I can only assume that apple martinis create a false sense of feline superpowers in my sister, because she truly believed that she was capable of making it over to the next boat.  She was wrong.

One second she is teetering on the side of the boat and the next thing I know she loses her footing trying to cross over and falls down between the boats and into the lake.  I am yelling her name over and over into the small gap that had claimed her.  The music is loud and everyone is floating around in the water and it seems that I am the only one who had even noticed my non-cat-like intoxicated sister  had toppled between the two vessels.  I had already decided that she had hit her head during the fall and was knocked out cold and was probably already moving toward the light, because I imagine even God understands the need to get rip-shitty when one works every weekend.  Just as I was preparing to launch operation ‘rescue drowning drunk sister’ she surfaces about 15 yards behind the boat laughing her fool head off.

I am relieved and furious at the same time and I yell to her, “Kim!  I can’t believe you are alive!!” 

She yells back, “I can’t believe I fit through that little crack

I learned a lot from my sister that day on the lake.  I now know that perspective must be much sweeter after a jug of apple martinis and a slight head injury.  She also has shown me that if you slather on enough suntan oil, it may be just the thing that gets you through some really tight spots! 

The past year or so has been filled with a plethora of changes and challenges for our family.  In the midst of all the perceived heartache and heartbreak, we have found ourselves wanting less, laughing more, and learning true value of friends and family.  Along this transformational journey, we have encountered new adventures, explored new ways of approaching life and above all, we have discovered that laughing at ourselves is an untapped source of joy.

It is my hope to one day whittle down the magnitude of our misadventures and write a book.  This blog is the first baby step in making that happen.  This blog will serve as a forum to share the antics of our family and to gain valuable feedback from family and friends, which I can use to hone my writing skills.   I cannot guarantee you will find the blog interesting or the stories amusing, but I can almost guarantee that you will be thankful that your family is not quite as quirky as ours!