Tiny Bubbles

I finally went to the hairdresser today. It has been three months since my last haircut and and two months since my disastrous, painful and traumatizing run-in with a home bleaching kit. (Note to my readers - I know the three of you are waaaayyyy too smart to ever assume that because you can read directions and look truly professional in those latex gloves they put in the box of home-haircolor, you are in no way capable of bleaching your own hair bright white. Don't even try.)

After the home bleaching, and the second home bleaching, and the home toning with a darker shade of haircolor to please God make my hair not gold, I had giant, bleeding scabs all over my head. I decided that the color was good enough to live with and besides, if I did anything else to my scalp, I'd probably be bald, so I would let my hair "rest" for as long as possible before going to the salon again. I'm also trying to grow my hair out from the buzzcut I received at a very prestigious and expensive salon in New York City, so I had two motives for running around with two inches of black roots in my mullet. (I looked like a sunflower at one point - black in the middle, yellow on the outside.)

Today, however, Tony and I walked in to a salon just up the road from us to make appointments before we go to Vegas in a week and a half. I didn't feel comfortable rocking the hillbilly sunflower 'do any longer, and Borat needed a trim. We were looking for appointments later this week, but the extremely bored staff (I guess thunderstormy Mondays are the day to go to the salon - free tip of the week!) begged us to stay and get our hair done IMMEDIATELY!

So, we threw caution to the wind and went for it. Tony's stylist Candy trimmed his hair for about three hours, so I'm a little suspicious. Either she was really bored and had no other clients for the day, or she thought my husband was cute, at which point I will cut the bitch. (However, she gave him a very nice haircut, so I'll have to do it anonymously in a dark alley or something. And be sure to leave her hands out of it.)

My hairstylist, Bambi (All the names have been changed to protect identities, mostly mine.) was a perfectly nice 15-year-old who weighed about 12 pounds. She was very pleasant, so I chose to overlook the fact that her hair training must have happened at Boone County Junior High and trusted her with my mess of a hairstyle. Much to my relief, she did not laugh out loud when I showed her my roots OR my mullet, but got right down to work placing 35 million foil strips on my head. I have so much hair that the stylist inevitably has to leave me, mid-foil, to mix up more haircolor. I'm a gorilla.

Now, I trusted Bambi because she had a very nice, very natural style. Her hair was brunette, didn't even look highlighted (her parents probably wouldn't let her color her hair until she was a junior in high school) and was perfectly straight, no crazy spiky stuff, no hairspray. So, I assumed that when she was done cutting and coloring my hair, she would give me something similar, especially because I told her that I like to let my hair air-dry and I don't use any product and I'm low-maintenance, etc.

No such luck. Bambi, just like every other hairstylist in the known world, gave me the bubble. She dried and fluffed and root-lifted and back-combed and ratted and sprayed (and did I mention I told her I was going straight home after I left?) and moussed and picked and placed my hair into a perfect helmet.

Keep in mind, I staggered into this salon with serious two-tone hair that hadn't been washed that day, hooked behind my ears and not even parted straight? What part of that look said that I had a political fundraiser to attend for my husband later that night? Did she really think I was 45 years old and a bank branch manager?

The worst part is, because my hair was colored, I can't wash it until Wednesday (gotta let that new hair color settle over my formerly banana-yellow locks.) So, I'm stuck with bubble hair, slept-on bubble hair or a hat for the next day and a half.

I swear, next time I go to the salon, I'm going to look my stylist in the eye, and say, "Put down that comb, because if it even comes near the crown of my head, I will cut a bitch."

Hyper!

Well, I'm two kinds of hyper today. I had a latte on an empty stomach, so I have caffeine jitters, plus Tony and I tried our hand at hypermiling today. I know, I have to slow down this crazy rock-star life I'm leading before I burn out!

For those of you who don't know, hypermiling is driving in a very specific way to get huge mpg numbers out of regular cars. I learned about it from a Washington Post article many years ago and had never really tried it. For one, you have to drive much more slowly than I normally do - hypermilers recommend staying around 40 miles per hour. I like to drive about 90. For another, you have to accelerate very slowly after braking and Tony likes to red-line the throttle every time. He would hit third gear before he got out of the driveway if I let him.

The hypermiling started innocently enough. We filled up a bone-dry tank at the local Kroger (we got 10 cents off a gallon, in case anyone cares), which is about three miles from our house. Between there and here, we hit four stoplights and some serious hills, all of which are anathema to hypermilers the world over. Any time you have to stop or step on the accelerator, the terrorists win. When we started out from the first stoplight, I reset the miles per gallon counter on the car - the Mini has real-time digital information available. When I saw that we were starting at 66 miles per gallon, I challenged Tony to get to the house with the counter above 50 mpg, a comfortable 16 mile per gallon cushion.

And so it began. Ten tension-filled minutes of Tony driving s-l-o-w-l-y along the highway, cars piling up behind us as we pretended to sight-see. (Who gets mad at tourists?) Every light was against us, though, forcing complete braking and accelerating from a dead stop. We watched the counter slip slowly below 60, then lower, finally dipping below 50 in front of the high school that is still a good mile and a half from our house. Desperation set in and the flop-sweat started. We revised the bet. I told Tony that 40 miles per gallon was still admirable and well above the 26 city we were used to getting.

We shifted to and from neutral, willing the car up steep hills and free-wheeling down the other side, only to inch up the next one. As we finally coasted into the entrance of our neighborhood, we were sitting pretty at 46 mpg. The last hill is a doozy, though, and we nearly stalled in front of a neighbor's house. With the a/c off, and windows down, we cheered the Mini down that final hill, only to roll into the driveway at 43 mpg.

When we pulled into the garage, Tony summed it up quite neatly. "Well, at least that killed the last 10 minutes."

God, we're bored.

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!