Family

I'm exhausted.

My cousins Susan and Dinah just left with their families, and I'm pooped! We had a very quick visit, only an hour and a half, but I was cooking furiously the whole time and trying to entertain and make sure everyone had fun. I loved it.

We live about four hours away from our closest family members, and sometimes it can get pretty lonely. Every holiday except the biggies (Thanksgiving and Christmas) we are here and they are having get-togethers up home. We could travel up there, but the drive is hard with the (snarling pile of) dogs and expensive with gas prices the way they are. So, we spend most holidays watching movies and going places only to realize that they are closed or insane because it's a holiday.

Susan and Dinah surprised me yesterday by calling and saying they would be driving past on their way to a family reunion in Nashville, and could they stop by and we could have lunch? Frankly, I was thrilled. (And I made the insane decision to cook for 10 people, who can't have chicken - Dinah - or beef or dairy - Tony.) That made things a little more challenging, so we had spaghetti with meatballs, garlic bread, salad and chocolate chip cookies for dessert.

None of my family outside of my mom and Jack have seen my house, either, so I had to give the big tour before we could eat, which is always a balancing act - how can I seem proud of what I have without seeming snotty? I hope I pulled it off. I guess my family knows how I've struggled in the past, so they don't think I've just landed in the lap of semi-luxury here. Or maybe they do, but at least I make a mean pasta sauce. It'll smack the grin right off your face.

So now, I'm headed upstairs for a nap, much needed after last night, when I couldn't sleep because I was planning menus and stressing over laundry piles in every corner of the house and when I finally did get to sleep, being rudely awakened at 5:30 by the freaking carbon monoxide detector blaring. (We had a guy come and re-finish a spot on the steps yesterday and apparently, the carbon monoxide detector also detects varnish.)

Plus, I'm super excited for my fasting glucose test in the morning, which I'm sure will be helped by the giant plate of pasta I had, followed by two chocolate chip cookies. It's beans and lettuce for dinner!

Betrayed by my own body....

I'm so mad at my body right now. By extension, of course, that means I'm mad at myself, but I like to pass the buck. So, body, you are on my list.

I've been pretty healthy all my life, at least physically. (Mental health is whole 'nother blog.) And I thought I still was, until Tony and I started trying to get pregnant. Nine months ago.

I stopped taking my birth control pills the second week of December, fully convinced that I would get pregnant the minute I missed one pill, let alone two weeks of them. (Isn't that the fear that all women have who are trying to prevent pregnancy? Miss one pill and BLAM! you're pregnant! I had enough stupid OH MY GOD MY PERIOD IS 10 MINUTES LATE, CRAP CRAP CRAP moments in my early marriages that I should have bought stock in the pregnancy test companies. Little did I know.)

My mother always joked that she missed one evening of some kind of one-shot birth control in the sixties and ended up with my oldest brother and then went off the pill and had my middle brother three days later. I was the only one she had to work for and I was born a whole 18 months after Levi. So, she tried for about ten minutes on that one. My cousins on her side, despite copping to issues, all average three children. My dad's family is Catholic, so I have about 8,000 first cousins on that side, and they have started the process over again, popping out kids like Pez dispensers. I coasted into the whole conception thing thinking I had it in the bag.

January was an interesting month. I spent the first two weeks nauseated, with tender breasts and emotional outbursts. I had my yearly exam with my OB-GYN in those two weeks and we all thought for sure I'd done it, going so far as to order a blood test when the urine test came back negative. I even skipped riding a mechanical bull in Phoenix because I was so sure I was pregnant. My period started the next morning. I was crushed, but figured we'd get it on the next go 'round.

February was a mess. We were both sick and I think we had sex all of two and half times that month. March, I came off my anti-depressants (didn't want to have a kid with deformities if I could help it). That was a HOT mess.

The following months weren't much different. We'd figure out when ovulation was *supposed* to occur, then studiously avoid having sex. Tony has always been hit-or-miss in this department, working long hours and feeling icky 90% of the time, so I'd have to remind him every so often that it had been three weeks since we'd tried and we should probably at least pretend we were interested in getting pregnant. Forget having sex every other day - we were lucky to have it every other week.

In June, we were both done working, so we figured it would happen, no problem. Not so much, although we did have to wait 42 whole days to find out, well in to July. This month was the piece de resistance, though, with my ovaries deciding to cripple me with cysts the size of golf balls over the weekend. (That's where I got the vicodin, not from a street dealer.) I ended up having to have the worst kind of ultrasound, the one where they jam what looks like a miniature baseball bat INTO your body and then whirl it around like Jr. warming up at home plate.

After a conversation with my doctor about my mood swings, hideous adult acne, cysts and wacky irregular cycles (which I think would be a great band name), we decided on blood work. So, Saturday morning, I'm headed back to the office for fasting blood work to see if I have thyroid issues, hormone issues, or whatever other issues there could be to make it freaking impossible for me to have children.

I know what part of the problem is, though, and it seriously pisses me off. Like, makes my head want to explode with anger and hurt and embarrassment and disappointment.

Last year, I got fat.

I ate a lot of fast food, which Morgan Spurlock has shown can have a somewhat negative effect on your body. I didn't work out. And I have Type II diabetes in my family, which means that I'm prone to insulin resistance even under the best circumstances. So, add some weight, and my body stops processing insulin. Then, take away the hormones in birth control and you have the perfect storm - whacked out insulin combined with irregular hormones making it impossible for me to lose weight, no matter how many times Tony Horton and I go toe-to-toe and I eat low-glycemic-index food at every meal.

The ironic thing is that the best thing for my fertility would be to lose weight, which is the one thing I can't seem to do. So, I'm hoping there is some magical solution in the bloodwork this weekend.

Barring that, I'm going to decide I don't want children after all, eat whatever I want and buy fabulous larger-sized clothing. Screw it.

I love Vicodin!

Seriously. Vicodin is an awesome, awesome drug. (Not that I advocate drug abuse or anything, but, man, if I did, Vicodin would be my drug of choice.)

I just got a mini-prescription from my OB-GYN - 10 pills to help deal with a ruptured ovarian cyst (now all the guys are covering their eyes and going "LALALALALA") - and I have realized how they help pass the time. Frankly, I don't remember anything about the last two days, but that doesn't bother me at all.

Monday, I went to the doctor and she said the only thing I could do for the screaming pain in my abdomen was "wait it out," so she gave me the scrip. I ate lunch, did a little Target shopping, rode around in the car for a while and finally took a pill at about 3 in the afternoon. The rest of the day is a soft, floaty haze. I know I slept and then had some egg salad and then took another pill before I went to bed, but beyond that, pfffft!

Tuesday I got up in much less pain and decided that I didn't need any more pain pills! I had a semi-productive morning (okay, I made breakfast, but that counts for productive, right?) and then took a nap with Tony, who is having his own medication issues. When I woke up, I was feeling icky and achy, so we went to lunch, thinking Chinese food would help. It didn't. I came home, took a pill and slept for three glorious hours straight. (At this point, I think I've slept away 10 of the last 12 waking hours...whee!) I don't remember the rest of the night, except I got hooked on Mafia Wars and ate some more egg salad and I think baked some cookies. Yep, a quick survey of the kitchen reveals chocolate chip cookies were baked last night. Breakfast!

The moral of the story is...if you don't have to work and the house is pretty clean and the dogs still get fed, take your vicodin. If you are like I have been most of my adult life, and you have to work ridiculous hours, the house is a mess and the dogs are savaging your leg because they are so hungry when you finally get home, look wistfully at the bottle of vicodin (or tramadol, or tylenol 3, or whatever pain killer you've been lucky enough to get) and tuck it into the back of your medicine cabinet, because you certainly don't have time to get high right now.

My mother is the perfect example of this. Not for herself, but for her children. Whenever my brother or I would receive pain killers, whether for wisdom tooth removal, surgeries, broken bones, whatever, she would remove enough for one day from the bottle "for us" and keep the rest "for mama." I swear to God. Her favorite line always was "you don't want to get hooked on this stuff." Like taking two days of pills for a broken nose was going to make me a junkie or something.

The woman has to have 10 years worth of vicodin in her cabinet. Whenever we go somewhere, she has it out, offering it to any family member with a bruise. She'll open this old tin pill box and announce, "I've got vicodin, tramadol, what's this little one? Oh, yeah, valium! And, if you are really feeling hinky, here's some estrogen - takes the edge right off!"

You want to see her get really sweaty, just take what she deems to be too many of her painkillers. This past weekend Jack hurt his back and was dipping into the collection in order to be able to stand upright without shrieking in pain. My mom was on the phone with me, whispering, "If he doesn't stop, I'm going to be completely out, Lacy. Then what will I do?"

Well, her solution presented itself in a mass on MY ovary. I called her on the way home from the doctor and made the mistake of mentioning my new prescription.

"Well, you get that filled, but don't take any. You give that to me - you don't want to get hooked on that stuff!"

Mafia Wars

Well, I've found a totally new time-suck. As if Facebook weren't bad enough, I'm now wasting every spare moment I have (and there are many) playing Mafia Wars, this silly little game inside Facebook.

I blame Tony. He had some "friends" on Facebook who got him involved and then he was having such a great time that I decided I'd play, too.

That was six hours ago. I have left my computer exactly twice since then, once to scarf an egg-salad sandwich and once to speed-bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies. And I wouldn't get up until I was completely out of energy points to do jobs. Jobs like robbing pimps and knocking over convenience stores, mind you, but jobs nonetheless.

To give you an idea of what this has done to my marriage, Tony just asked me, and I'm not kidding here, "Do you have a 9mm?" We share an office and all of our communication this afternoon has consisted of of absurd questions like that. Do I have a 9mm, indeed. (Actually, I don't, so he sent me one as a gift. Isn't he sweet?)

As we were driving back from the grocery store this evening (we were out of eggs and needed a fresh dozen for the cookies), he said, "Hey, at least this gives some purpose to our days!"

Sigh. This is what my life has come to. The only purpose in my life, at the age of 28, is to rush home to play Mafia Wars against my husband. I knew that MBA would come in handy someday!

Hibernation

So I kind of feel as though I've been in hibernation for a few months here. The short reason is that we moved and Tony quit his job and we've been bouncing around our new house, but the longer version is that we moved and Tony quit his job and things have been painfully dull.

It is truly amazing how the days blend together when neither of you has a job to get up and go to every day. Most days, we wake up and one of us asks, "What is it today?" And the other will scramble to remember how long it has been since grocery day (now Wednesday) or Formula One race day (always Sunday.) Keeping appointments has become even trickier - yes, we have a calendar, but do either of us look at it on a regular basis? No.

Most people, when they hear that we are both off work for the time being, remark that it must be like being retired. All I can say is that I hope retirement is more exciting than the past three months have been for us. If not, viva la not knowing what day it is!

Sorry it's been so long....moving!

I'm sitting in the library of my new, ridiculously large home right now, basking in the sunshine and the piped-in music, wondering why my life is suddenly going so well. I'm happy, healthy (if a bit chubby), secure and in a stable relationship. At some point in the next two weeks, it will all implode, I'm sure. But for now, I'm enjoying every minute of it! 

Today, however, I want to talk about classism. I went shopping for house stuff today - trash cans, bath mats, etc. Normally, before I go shopping, I'll make a detailed list of what stores I'm headed to and what I need to get at each one. Today, however, I was feeling frisky, so I just trotted out the front door without a list. Mistake. As soon as I pulled in to the parking lot at Wal-mart, my mind wiped itself clean. I stood in the front of the store, thinking REALLY HARD and not remembering a damn thing I wanted when I made my mental list last night. So I left with razors, haircutting scissors (Tony needs a cheap trim - God help him.) a trash can and some lemon cake mix. At Staples, I actually got what I needed (hanging file folder frames) and at HomeGoods, I tried to fill in the gaps I'd left at Wal-mart with a crate, an ice-cube tray and some window cleaner. I am truly hopeless at remembering things. 

But the most striking part of the day (beyond my completely random disregard for practical things in favor of ice-cube trays and lemon cake mix) was the difference in shoppers at Wal-mart and Home Goods. 

The stores themselves sell remarkably similar things. Of course, HomeGoods doesn't sell tires, but in the areas of inventory overlap, the products are the same, at least on the surface. Glasses, plates, pots, pans, trash cans, sheets, towels, etc.  And HomeGoods ain't exactly Nordstrom - the products are overstock leftovers from other stores, for pete's sake. But in the line at Wal-mart, I stood behind a older gentleman arguing vehemently with the checkout lady (who was, herself, old enough to resemble a dried apricot) about a $.25 coupon for his Chock Full O'Nuts coffee, while the escaped mental patient behind me breathed moistly on the nape of my neck. The store was packed to the gills with the elderly, the oppressed and the harried mothers of 12 seeking discount diapers. 

At HomeGoods, though, I stood sedately in line with other women who looked remarkably like me. I was probably the youngest one there, but not by much. Women in flats, jeans and hooded sweaters bought their deeply discounted trash cans with credit cards fished from the bottom of designer handbags. After we'd checked out, we pushed our carts (or in my case, hauled my crate) out to our new cars, headed off to lunches at home. 

Which brings me to my question - why do we sort ourselves so efficiently into class levels? I paid less at HomeGoods for products that I could have gotten at Wal-mart, so it can't be pricing that keeps us apart. The HomeGoods was half a mile down the road from the Wal-mart, and on the bus line, so it can't be access. Maybe folks like Senior Crazypants the Neck Breather aren't comfortable hanging with my homies - short-haired housewives and stay-at-home moms in their sensible flats and trouser-leg jeans. Maybe my homies don't like Chock Full O'Nuts coffee? All I know is that I continue to feel uncomfortable no matter where I shop and without my list, I'm hopeless. 

Exercise by osmosis

Okay, so it's no secret that I'm trying to lose weight. Or, at least, that I want to lose weight and don't try hard enough to accomplish that. 

So now that I've failed at the last three diets I tried, I'm just bumping along, pretending to be happy that I weigh what I do. And watching a LOT of The Biggest Loser. Who knew it was such riveting television?

Did you know that, like, five channels show The Biggest Loser? I had no idea. When I pulled up my channel guide on the DVR to see how many I could record, I was astounded. (And I recorded all of them, of course.) Yesterday, I watched most of Season 1 - having a DVR means I can condense one hour of television into 15 crackling, suspense-filled minutes - and today, I saw an episode from a more recent season. (I have no idea which one AND they totally ended it in a cliffhanger, damn them!)

I've never been into The Biggest Loser before. I'd heard of it, of course, but never watched an episode. I'd read a couple of breathless "They Lost Half Their Body Weight!" articles in People about it, and I own a Jillian Michaels game for my Wii, but never really got interested in the series. Now I'm hooked. I love watching the transformations - the people shrinking before your very eyes. I love when Jillian gets all excited and her voice starts squeaking and Bob gets mad at someone and then has to have 20 minutes of zen-time to pull himself together while his students console him. What I don't love are man-boobs and big ol' man nipples. There are more man-nipples per minute on that show than on any other, including COPS. And we all know it is a requirement for men being arrested on COPS that you have to be shirtless. Bleah. Seriously, would it add that much weight to have them get on that scale in their little tank tops? The ladies do. 

But now that I weigh more than I ever have and am really struggling with my weight, it gives me an even better reason to watch the show. It doesn't help me lose weight, but watching them work out is strenuous! The sweating, the grunting, Jillian screaming, Bob hugging - I feel like I'm the one at the gym. I can burn vicarious calories without ever leaving the couch! Yay! 

And don't even get me started on Oprah yesterday - Kirstie Alley was on and she's gained back all the weight she lost on Jenny Craig, plus 10 more just to keep the original 75 pounds company. Talk about making me feel better about myself. She was honest, funny and self-deprecating and it made me realize that we all slip up and we just have to keep trying. If only she hadn't done that horrible white manicure that reminded me of all the girls in junior high who painted their nails with White-Out. Bleah times two. 

I think my DVR just clicked into record mode, though, so I'm off to feel the burn. Hug me, Bob.