Vomit

I believe I have had more dealings with vomit than anyone I have ever met. When I was younger, it was due to chemo. I puked so much I developed a bleeding ulcer. This was before the invention of those, literally life saving, anti nausea medications. Then, when I was pregnant with Buttercup, I puked 10-12 times a day. Smells, sounds, nothing would be too insignificant to make me throw up. Every week or so, before hospitalization, I would go to Urgent Care, get some meds and IV fluids and feel a bit better. After a couple of weeks of being in the hospital I snapped out of it.
Later, when pregnant with Fiona, I would throw up 5-6 times a day, but I would never get relief from it or from those great medicines. A nasty kidney infection, a bout with the stomach flu and TD and I calculated that I puked enough in the first 10 years of our marriage to be bulimic after every meal for 2 years! That is a lot.
I never understood why I do this until I went to see my dad last year after his heart surgery. They were moving him from the Cardiac Care Unit to a regular room and he had a huge vomit bowl in his lap in the wheelchair. Apparently it was his lovely genetic contribution that gave me a stomach so easily influenced. I don't think Fiona inherited this gene because she never puked due to chemo during her two years. And she took a lot of serious stuff.
This is why I have come to fear school and the stomach bugs that like to race through them. I do not want to throw up any more than I absolutely have to. But night before last Buttercup woke up at 12:30am and started throwing up. Ugh! There are few things worse than the stomach flu or food poisoning and she had a bad case of the stomach flu.
She kept getting up every hour to vomit and for the most part, I got up to help her out. I do have to say, she did a good job getting it in the bowl or the toilet. There is really nothing worse than digging chunks out of nice carpet. (Sorry for the visual). She continued through the rest of the day, not as often, but still pretty bad.
I kept washing my hands like a crazy person and I took great care not to hand anything to her directly. Lysol became my new best friend, until Buttercup sprayed the faucet herself. Now what was I supposed to do? How do you disinfect the disinfectant?
Luckily, she seems to have turned the corner today. She feels mostly okay and no one seems to have caught it. Poor little girl. It's not easy being the family pariah. Now I just need to go hunt down all of the bedding she touched and clean it. Sigh... a mother's work is never done.

Crack is Back (And Whack)

You know, you try and get rid of your addiction and you get a whole new twist. I took the boxes back to Comcast and thought the days of the girls watching horny teenagers kissing each other was over. I know that's harsh, but Buttercup came home yesterday and wanted to know what horny meant.... Luckily (?) we have already covered a good portion of the sex talk so I was able to explain it fairly easily to her. Ugh.
Anyway, TD figured out today that we still get cable, the same basic cable we were paying $60 a month for before. And he pointed it out to the girls. On the one hand I am happy that we can still support my own personal HGTV habit, but on the other hand, the girls will still be able to access Hannah Montana et al. The nice thing about Netflix is that it's so new that the girls are still very intrigued with all of the shows that they haven't seen before. They spent the morning watching Clash of the Titans with TD, and they watched a sequel to The Swan Princess last night.
Of course I am delighted that I can catch the usual suspects on TV instead of on my computer screen. Or, more accurately, I can watch in real time. Catch the reference? The new season of 24 is starting soon, although, sometimes I think it's better for my blood pressure if I just wait until it comes out on DVD and have a marathon. The whole waiting an entire week to find out what is going to happen is enough to make you crazy.
We'll see how long the free cable lasts.

So Liberating

This was what I was afraid was going to happen. I am not very good at being assertive and I was worried that I would get some sort of pressure tactics. Plus, I had no Ross to back me up. I have been a very long term customer with Comcast. I got it when I moved out of my parents house in 1995 and, with the exception of about 3 years, we have had Comcast since then. Those three years were after Buttercup took to spouting in commercial verse. Instead of a snack, she wanted a "Buzz Like Year Fruit Snack." See, she couldn't even say it properly. She would also say, " It's a natural." That one took me months before I figured out it was the tagline for a Huggies baby wipe commercial. We gave up cable until Fiona got sick. There was no way I was spending a NW winter, in the house, alone with an immuno suppressed 4 year old, nuh, uh, no way!

I packed up all of their gear and took it to our local Comcast office. The worker asked if I had already called to discontinue service. I told him no...isn't that what he was for? He actually handed me his phone and had me call and disconnect. After a few short minutes, it was over. I practically skipped out of the office. I feel so liberated. Clearly I don't get out much.

We'll see how our new way of doing things goes. I am very excited. Oh, and as if it knew what was coming, our HD DVR stopped working three days before I took it back and you know what? We didn't miss it at all.

Finally Kicking Comcast to the Curb!

I have been fighting with Comcast since we moved here. We had it the entire time we were in Oregon and not once did we have to call a service guy out. Since we have lived in this house we have averaged at least, at least!, once a month. That doesn't sound so bad, but when you are stuck waiting in the house for a four hour window, it's pretty painful. Then waiting around for them to decide what is actually wrong and whether or not they need a line guy for outside, or if it's something on their end, etc. I have to say, not once has it been something that was our fault.

This final push to get rid of it coincided with my need to get the girls away from Disney Channel and Nickelodeon. Remember when those were the safe channels, full of nothing but innocent fun? Well the girls got hooked on certain shows, Hannah Montana, iCarly, The Suite Life, back when they were full of tween hijinks. Now there has been way too much focus on boys and kissing and dating,etc. My girls are at the age where they are naturally curious about those things, but they don't need to be thinking about them constantly. I hated that I couldn't let them watch something and have it be safe. And don't get me started on letting them watch stuff on HGTV or the Food Network that is supposed to be safe when they show wildly inappropriate commercials and movie trailers. Ugh! Nothing seems to be off limits any more.

So, we are switching to At&T internet, hopefully there will be a lot less hiccuping in the line. It's so annoying not to get a full signal all over our house or have something pause for no apparent reason. We are also switching over to their $13 a month metered phone service. We hardly ever use our phone and I would get rid of it entirely if TD wasn't worried about 911 service. We have 3 cell phone lines with hundreds of minutes that roll over every month. The girls can share Moe's old phone. We do get 25 calls out and every call after that is 8 cents. I don't know if we will even use all of those calls.

Then, since AT&T U-verse isn't available in our neighborhood, we bought a PS3 for it's blu-ray and Netflix streaming capabilities. I know a lot of people complain that the stuff they stream is the old stuff, but that's exactly what we like. The girls can watch favorites, like Kim Possible, SpongeBob, Fairly Oddparents, you know, the things they used to watch before everything got weird. Plus, we don't have to deal with commercials and they don't know how to use it, so I can control how much they watch. Oh! And there's this service called Playon, where you can watch Hulu and other internet channels on your actual TV. More bonus for TD is very few commercials.

Probably the most exciting thing? We are saving $80 a month. Seriously, $80 a month! Now I am just waiting for AT&T guy to show up for hopefully our only interaction ever! I don't want to be on a first name basis with him like I was with the Comcast guy. They even gave me a supervisor's direct line, if that tells you anything.

So, we'll see how everything goes, but I am really excited about this.

Conflicted

So, you know how I wax on about the joys I find in working out, especially at my local Y. I feel like everyone should have an exercise that makes them happy and gives them an outlet. I just have one question, " Why does it have to start January 1st and be at my Y?" Seriously. Of course, it's not just this YMCA, we noticed it back in Portland. What happens is that people get their New Years resolutions going and join the Y in early January. Then they clog up my usual haunts. They go strong through the middle of February and then disappear until the last weeks of March. Then they go for a couple of weeks, only to disappear for the rest of the year and have it start all over again in January.
It's much worse this year because our Y has been doing some renovations and if you build it, they will come. They had an open house the Saturday and it was insane! Of course, it's good for my dues that a lot of people join and then don't actually use the facility.
I went to Zumba on Friday and there were twice as many people as usual and it's a crowded class to begin with. It's not as much fun for me to go to a class and trip over a ton of people who have no idea what they are doing.
So... this is where I'm conflicted. I love exercising, I love that it keeps my chronic pain and illness in check and helps me not to gain weight, even while I enjoy my Christmas goodies. I want everyone to be healthy and enjoy getting there. Plus, you have to start somewhere and I didn't know what I was doing when I first started my classes.
I guess my thoughts are that you should exercise and find something you enjoy doing, but start when you feel unhealthy, not with the hordes in January. I think that might have something to do with people stopping. It's hard to figure things out when no one else knows what they are doing and people are taking up the trainers time. I think September is a much better time, especially for Moms because it's easier to start a routine in September when your kids go back to school and you don't have to figure out childcare for the school aged kids.
Oh and don't come to my Y. I hate starting out my workout with a 1/2 mile jog to the front door from my car.

I Hate My Neighbors

Okay, maybe hate is a strong word. Although, if you would've asked me last night I would've said I hated their guts, reverting back to childhood.
See, here in Texas, celebration of certain holidays seem to require fireworks, and not the little sparkler, popper, snappers that we were used to back in Oregon. In Oregon it is against the law to light anything that goes into the air and from my 31 years there, I don't think I ever saw it violated. Maybe once, my little brother Bubba, got something that we fired off as the very last thing before we ran into the house.
Last night was like nothing I have ever seen before. I made the mistake of thinking I could fall asleep before midnight. The celebration started around nightfall, maybe 7pm. It didn't seem to be too out of hand, which was probably how I fell asleep. I even put my cats out, which is not something I would do if I was worried they were going to be traumatized, especially Tessa, she is such a chicken.
So, I wake up around 11:30 because the people across the street in four directions had turned our quiet little neighborhood into a war zone. I would say that I was exaggerating a bit.... except I am not at all. The people, who were the worst, had a rocket launcher. They would set the rockets in it and then light them on fire, directly aimed at our house. Our bedroom faces their house.
Everyone, everywhere, was setting off fireworks that would make professional pyrotechnics proud. It was insane. I finally went out back, to observe what they were doing from the pool deck and I was almost bowled over by Tessa racing to get back into the house. They must've thought I was there to admire their massive purchase, because apparently, my glare was a bit hard to see. They went on and on, until about 1am. I was worried that they were going to set our house on fire. They did set a patch of our grass alight.
I had plenty of time to research that they were violating several different laws, including setting fireworks off within 600 feet of a school. At what point should I let my irritation take over? And would the police actually come out? I spent enough time to wander through the local police department. I was relieved that there were only 22 registered sex offenders in our zip code, but horrified that one of the 27 in the next zip code over is in our church's congregation. Clearly I should not be up after a certain hour. Thank heavens TD and I were able to go to sleep around 1am, but we woke up at the usual time. Ugh, I guess that's probably why I am not a big fan of New Year's Eve.