Sunday, August 9, 2015

Just keep squeezing!

I really hope you said that in the sing-song voice of Dory from Finding Nemo.  If you didn't you might want to go back and have a do-over.  I'll give you a minute...OK, so you are probably thinking to yourself, keep squeezing what?  You are going to have to wait to find out, but, oh my friends it will be SO worth it!!

I have been under an indescribable amount of stress lately.  The intense pressure has been manifesting itself in various ways, one being ocular migraines.   For me the migraines have been coming much more frequently, several a week.  Now, unlike a traditional migraine, I may or may not get the intense headache...each event is different.  What I do get is this strange change in my eyesight.  I get this odd shaped spot in my field of vision that makes everything appear to me as if I am looking through a prism or kaleidoscope.  It can last anywhere from 5 minutes to half an hour.  Most times I get an odd sensation a few minutes before it is going to happen, which is helpful so I can pull over if I am driving or stop doing anything that might not end well with my kaleidoscope eye.  No need to worry, I have been worked up by a top-notch Neuro-Opthamologist at the Brigham.  They are just text book ocular migraines, for whatever that's worth.

So I get on the shuttle for work the other day.  I hate being a shuttle person!  I have been at all 3 hospitals I have worked at, maybe someday I will stay somewhere long enough to earn a spot in the employee garage.  Until then I am a lowly shuttle person!  So back to the story, I take my seat on the shuttle and out of nowhere I get my wanky eye.  This one is a doozy!  It came on so fast and so strong I was hit by an intense wave of nausea.  Awesome!  F*cking awesome!  Not only am I on the smelly, hot, gross shuttle, but seated next to me are the friggin lovebirds...a couple that drive to work together, sit next to each other and hold hands the entire ride...they also come in later in the day so all three of us get to spend 8 minutes in hell together twice a week.  They make me sick.  I want to somehow fast forward their life 10 years and 3 kids later.  Guaranteed they will not be sitting together on the shuttle at that point.  I can, with the utmost certainty, say that one of them will "pretend" to leave something in the car so as to have to take the next shuttle.

But back to my incredible urge to puke.  I REFUSE to get sick on the shuttle.  That will get me remanded to the shuttle forever.  They would never accept me into the employee lot after that.  Puking on the shuttle is just bad form, not at all the behavior one would expect from an elite parker.  So I hold it in.  BAD MOVE.  I should have listened to the warning signs.  My throat tightening, sweat beading on my temples and the little throw up in my mouth that came up by accident.  But, NOOOOO, I ignored all the signs my body was giving me  it needed to purge itself.  BIG MISTAKE!!!  BIG ONE!!  My body shot back with a big ol' F- You Erin!  It was in that moment I learned a valuable life lesson; listen to your body.  My body was pissed at me, in a way I have never seen before.  "Well, Erin", it said, "since you aren't doing this the easy way, I''ll show you who is boss".  It no sooner got through telling me that when my body attempts a coup d'etat, which is the sudden and forced seizure of a state....in this case my bowels...

So my body was going to purge one way or another.  I should have just opened my mouth and let it flow, but, no, I was too good for that.  Well, now I am only 1 minute into an 8 minute ride.  This is perfect.  I am looking through a friggin kaleidoscope, sweating and about to sh*t myself in front of the flippin bobsie twins next to me.  At least it would give them something to talk about on the ride home.  So as I am squeezing my ass cheeks together (see I told you it would be worth the wait) we hit traffic.  Could have predicted that one.  So we are creeping along at about negative zero miles an hour my innards are being twisted all about.  If I had to draw a picture of it, it would look something like a really long Gogurt twisted in loops and with each squeeze the yogurt is getting that much closer to slipping out.  I have no ass to speak of, it is pretty flat, but man even in the throws of this crisis I am pretty impressed with it's ability to hold things in check.

So finally the traffic breaks up and we are cruising along at about 5 miles an hour....for the love of all that is Holy, why is this 8 minute ride turning into a 20 minute test of my ass's endurance?  I swear I can never catch a break!!  OK, so we are one street away from the hospital.  It has to be the most narrow street in all of the city.  Cars are parked on both sides of the street so in essence only one can get through at a time.  At this point I am doing all I can not to scream out in pain, despair and utter contempt for what the world has been throwing at me lately.  So wouldn't you know some country bumpkin decides at this exact moment, at this exact time to perfect her parallel parking skills.  For the love of God lady, just let the shuttle bus go by first.  Nope...at this point her attempt at parking in a spot that is about 4 feet too short for her station wagon, took a good 6 attempts.  Oh and her and the other old bittie in the car were laughing with each bad attempt.  I had a good mind to jump off the shuttle, open her car door and lay into her with a primal scream releasing all of the built up stress and then dropping trow and full on sh*t on her face.  I guarantee it would wipe that stupid smile off their faces right quick.  But, alas, I did not because I knew the second I stood up I would channel my inner Uta Pippig, you know that lady that won the Boston Marathon multiple times, but is only remembered for pooping herself on live TV?  That would be me.  The big take away from this is; if you don't know how to parallel park, then DON"T!!!!  You're welcome!

So after what feels like an eternity we arrive at the hospital.  I somehow make it off the shuttle, up the stairs, into the hospital and end up at the elevator bank.  I say somehow because I am not entirely sure how I managed to get there.  I don't know if my body was shutting down and natural endorphins kicked in while I transitioned, because I was almost certain I was going to die and that is how I made it to the elevators.  Or maybe, my primal brain took over and was on a mission to get me to the bathroom.  I guess I will never know.  So as I am hunched over with intense stomach cramps, sweat now dripping off my face, my ass cheeks clenched and my kaleidoscope eyes an old lady comes over to me with tears in her eyes asking where the ER is. ARE. YOU.  F*CKING. KIDDING. ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (I scream really loudly in my head).  Now I like to consider myself a genuinely nice person and I always, always go out of my way to help lost visitors in the hospital.  This one time though I really didn't have it in me, OK, well I did have it in me and it was trying it's best to get out.  I did end up taking her because, although I consider myself a nice person there is that small percentage of me that is cynical.  Was she really looking for the ER?  Or was she sent there by the administration to see how well the employees are with customer service.  So I tell her through my clenched teeth that I would take her.  So I am hobbling around hunched over, shuffling along so as not to give any leeway in my butt, lest I have an accident right there in the hallway.  Oh, and with my wanky eyesight, I have to really try hard to focus my vision on the object I am looking at.  So I have to cock my head in weird positions, close each eyelid to differing lengths and get really close to it.  So considering that, my posture and the sweat at this point pouring off of me I looked like a crazed heroin addict.  Remember all the druggies in the old movie New Jack City?  Yeah, I could have been a stand in.

Finally get on the elevator, get to work, avoid all eye contact with anyone in my way and shuffled my clenched ass down to the good bathroom, the single bathroom right before the locker room.  I can not thank the walking upright Gods enough for getting me here without an accident.  I no sooner sit my ass on the toilet and, drum roll please.....NOTHING!!!!  NADA! NYET!  The urge to go to the bathroom went away like it was never even there.    I sh*t you not!!  Pun intended!  The ass that got me this far, holding itself together for a good 18 minutes was betraying me?  Son of a f-ing bitch!!!  I went to hell and back for nothing?  No reward.  No closure.  Not even a nugget.  I have never been so disappointed yet so relieved all at the same time.  So I guess the take away from this is; my ass really came through in the clench!!

Saturday, August 1, 2015

Meet Mee-Ree Asses...

So have been neglecting my blog lately.  Life has been pretty hectic.  The girls were really busy with their year end school activities, work, I signed on for another year as the assistant Troop Leader for Sara's Girl Scout troop, oh, and I have joined the board of the PTA as the secretary.  Couple all of that with the fact two out of our three children believe the concept of sleeping through the night is junk science and you have two completely exhausted parents.  So in talking with Chuck we thought, you know what's missing in this equation?  A dog!!  More specifically a puppy!  It's not like things could get worse...

We were kind of on track to get one early next year.  Remember that whole fiasco?  In a fit of desperation Chuck promised Sara a dog if she could go one year without crying.  She was about 117 days in when a situation presented itself.  Turns out it wasn't the dog for us, but now the girls were not going to back down.  Sara is oh so amenable to life lessons.  You really think she was going to let this go?  So a few days later we were at the shelter picking out a dog.  We were hoping to get one with a few years under its belt, I know it sounds awful when said out loud, but I really wasn't into the whole crate/potty training crap.  Oh, and we didn't want a big dog.  So long story short, we ended up with an 11 week old lab/retriever mix.  Her name is Mary Alice, she is a Southern Belle all the way from Georgia.  She had been dumped with her siblings in a ditch at a construction site.  The poor little bugga was all skin and bones until she was rescued.  She was nursed back to health and made her way to the Northeast Animal Shelter in Salem, MA.  A wonderful place to adopt a pet by the way.

Oh, and Emily, my almost 2 year old can not say Mary Alice.  She calls her Mee-Ree Asses.  I can NOT get enough of it.  If I ask her once a day, I ask her 100 times a day to say it.  I am a 12 year old boy at heart because I giggle every time she says Mee-Ree Asses!  Doesn't get old!

So leading up to the big day Sara and Anna were so excited!  They couldn't stop talking about it, counting down the hours until we were going to the shelter.  They were making plans on how they were going to divide the labor.  They were so on board and thought that we were the BEST. PARENTS. EVER!  We could have asked them to scrub the toilets with their toothbrushes....they were doing anything we asked of them.  They promised up and down they were going to take care of the dog.  Shockingly, that lasted about 3 days.  1.5 days longer than I had expected.  The one child to really take ownership of Miss Mary Alice is Emily, our 20 month old!  She is forever playing with her, taking her for walks and is a superstar when it comes to potty training the dog.  She will take her out, tell her, "A business" (we use the phrase 'do your business' to prompt her to use the bathroom) and she praises her, "a good girl doggie" when she does her business.  It is the cutest thing ever.    Emily is an awesome potty trainer for the dog, yet, she will walk around in a diaper filled with her own excrement for hours on end because she hates to be changed.  Every time we are out there I hear Alanis Morrisette singing in my head, "isn't it ironic, don't you think".  Fortunately Anna has come around and spends a lot of time patting and play with the puppy.  Poor thing was either being neglect by the older two or tormented by the baby.

Emily's  involvement doesn't end there, oh no my friends...she is gung-ho about training her.  Sadly, she is not very good at this.  I have been taking Mary to puppy training classes and she was doing great!  That is until Emily decided she was a full time dog trainer herself.  She has totally undone all our progress.  She will say, "MaryAlicesitgoodgirl"  all one word and hand her a treat at the same time.  There is no sitting being done.  She does this with "paw", "take it", "drop it", leave it" etc.  So now Mare just refuses to train with me because in her eyes I am the jerk that makes her earn her treats.  She just waits for Em to come in the room and cozies up to her.  Oh, and Emmie has taken to training our cat Lucy.  She will say, "MaryalicesitgoodgirlLucy".  The cat just stares up at her with utter contempt.

One day the dog was in the living room and really fussy and just walking in a tiny circle.  It took me a while to figure out what was wrong.  We have an electric fence, it is a wi-fi kind that you can set the perimeter.  We keep her fence collar on during the day so we can just let her in and out.  Well, turns out, Emily got her hands on the fence base and dialed in the perimeter so Mary Alice was confined to about a 3 foot circle in our living room.  Poor baby!!!  Now before someone calls PETA on us, we have industrial strength tape covering the dials so Emily has no access to it anymore.


I have to say we are so lucky, Mary Alice is a really good puppy.  It took her one night to be crate trained and she hasn't had an accident in the house after the 3rd day.  She sleeps all night without making a peep.  Truth be told she is way easier than the kids.  I am so in love with her already!  That being said, I will never be one of those people that lets their dog tongue kiss them.  In the span of no longer than 5 minutes I witnessed Mary licking her ass, eat some animal's poop she found outside.  I instantly puked after seeing that, she came right over and licked up my puke took off in the brush and came back with a freshly dead mouse.  There is NO WAY dogs mouths are cleaner than humans!!  I don't buy it for a second!! Oh and I will love with all my heart, but, if she ever comes around with a snake in her mouth the love dies right then and there!  The other day she was hanging around a snake hot bed (hot bed meaning I saw one snake there a few years ago) she turned around and had this long dark thing in her mouth...I was already formulating in my head what to tell the girls about why Mary Alice is no longer allowed in the house!  Thank God it was just a stick!! 

The thing I like the best about her is that Mary Alice loves me.  Really, she does.  She is so happy to see me, she follows me around and I swear she looks like she is smiling when she looks at me.  This is in sharp contrast to the attitudes I have been encountering around here lately.