Padma Lakshmi and The State of my Panty Drawer

Today a snitch made off with every single pair of earphones in the house.

So, I was forced to make up my own soundtrack on the daily jog. My thoughts were a pitifully sad state of affairs this morning. They went something like this:

"How does Padma Lakshmi look the way that she does?"

"In that butt shot scene in "Fast and Furious" where the woman is wearing satin yellow hot pants, what did she do exactly to make her inner thighs not touch all the way up to her crotch?"

And:

"Exactly how much effort would I have to expend to lose the belly flap that has seemed to form after the birth of this third child ~ the high maintenance nature of it being that it requires applications of cornstarch powder throughout the day to keep it fresh?"

But mostly I thought about the pathetic state of affairs of my underwear drawer.

Some would correct me, saying that I should call it a "lingerie drawer." However, calling the contents of this drawer "lingerie" would sort of like be calling that Malibu Musk aerosol spray I purchased at the dollar store, "eau de parfum."

I first thought about the underwear situation a couple months ago, shortly after our monumental road trip from Iowa to Florida.

The said underpants had been carelessly (on my part) thrown into my friend Kaat's load of laundry and were not given another thought until I saw ~ with a horror that brought a stars into my vision ~ that she had very carefully folded my panties and set them apart from her clothes.

I stared at the neat little pile, speechless and mortified. They were the white, granny, multi-pack fare ~ the kind bought at Target for $4.99. The crotches were  dingy  and some even had holes in unmentionable places.

My panties have not always looked like this.

I remember with a sense of loss and remorse the panties I had purchased when my husband returned from Iraq. I even take them out and look at them every once in a while. I made the mistake once of trying one of them on recently.  It made me throw up in my mouth a little. I took them off immediately.

The year he was gone was spent in the gym. All the lunges, running and weights had improved the general situation going on with my body to the point where I didn't mind the full-length mirror in the bathroom so much anymore. It wasn't a bikini bod, by any means, but it was satisfactory.

I blame the Brazilian butt bikinis for getting me knocked up on the very first day that my husband came home.

That was the end of my adorable Victoria Secret  lingerie stash, because I was immediately green with morning sickness and anything that wasn't waist high wasn't comfortable enough.

The lace, frilly pairs of panties were packed away in a box and were not thought of again until this morning when I was forced to be left alone with my own thoughts on my jog.

The thoughts should have made me go a little bit further or longer, but they didn't. I came back early to make them mercifully stop.

Oh, and I have a lot of laundry to do; I'm out of clean underwear.

Sunshine Cleaning and Hot Movie Stars

Tonight, Chris and I watched "Sunshine Cleaning."

I had watched it earlier today as the baby pulled out all of my Tupperware and tried to climb into the fireplace. Needless to say, I didn't give the movie one hundred percent of my attention.

Later that evening, I informed him that this was a good movie and we were going to watch it again after the kids went to bed.

"What's it about," he asked, distracted by his Facebook chat.

"It has Amy Adams, Emily Blunt and Steve Zahn in it," I said.

Now, that specific answer to this specific question something that drives my husband three kinds of crazy.

Netflix is a hobby for me and the control of the queue/reviews is governed with an iron fist. By me. The problem Chris has with the movies that I order is that 99% of the time I really can't tell him what the plot is.

I can, however, tell him who is in the movie and a laundry list of dirt about them, the specifics of which depend on how long it has been since I logged in to WWTDD.com (as in, "What Would Tyler Durden Do," a reference to "Fight Club," a movie that starred Brad Pitt and Edward Norton), or flipped through an US or People magazine in a checkout line.

"It's a comedy," I say, which is true. That is how it is classified on Netflix.

" It's about a couple of girls who open up a crime scene clean-up business. You'll like it. It's cute," I add hopefully and I fast-forward through the indie previews that I know will be the dead-ringer giveaway that he will, indeed, hate every minute of this movie.

I fill his wine glass up.

The first tear-jerker moment gives me away, and I can feel his eyes boring through me. You see, at a "tear-jerker" moment in t.v. shows, movies, or even commercials he turns to me to observe the reaction. And 99.7% of the time there IS a reaction...because I cry at everything. EVERYTHING.

"Sunshine Cleaning" had a few deaths, sad kids and lost, desolate spouses. So I was, predictably, a mess.

"You said this was a comedy," he said, staring bullets through me.

"The little boy is cute," I weeped. "And you have to admit, this is a good movie," I say as I blow my nose and wipe my eyes.

"It's good," he says, but he judges. I know he does.

"Who is that guy," he asks me.

"Steve Zahn," I tell him.

"What has he been in," he inquires.

"Oh, honey," I sniffle. "He's been in tons of stuff you have seen," I say.

"And her," he points at Amy Adams. "She looks familiar, what has she been in?"

"She was in that Disney movie, honey. The one where she is a cartoon and falls into the well, but crawls through the manhole and ends up in New York City with Patrick Dempsey? He's the guy from Grey's Anatomy, you know." He knows Grey's Anatomy ~ I KNOW he does.

"Oh," he says as the lights come on. "I remember that. Okay."

He settles in and continues to watch as I weep, notice the development and the impressive growth of each character.

"Those sisters," he observes, "are pretty cute."

Emily Blunt, Amy Adams ~ they are movie stars. With this observation, I would have to concur.

Bite Me and Anal Explosions

I am going to forgo my morning venture out today.

I don't need much of a reason to skip my jogs, but today's excuse is legitimate and stems from the fact that I have visited the bathroom on three separate occasions in about one hour. All visits begin with a sense of puckering urgency and end in me screaming at Chris.

"Watch the baby," I shriek, panicked and doubled-over, as I careen into the master bath.

I hope she gives him hell because I'm pretty certain that this issue is directly caused by his suggestion to buy cheap boxed wine last night to go along with the insipid "Fast and Furious" DVD we watched.

I can't think of a worse situation on a jog than an impending bowel emergency. Really. Although, as I think about it, there would be plenty of places to hide in our immediate neighborhood if the urgency became such that I needed to do something about it.

But...the baby in the gigantic stroller would cause a discretionary problem and I think, if push came to shove, I don't know if I could put my bare ass so close to the ground in Florida.

I am a regular viewer of "Bite Me with Dr. Mike" on the Travel Channel and his recent episode on Florida made me view sewers in a completely different light. There are so many things that could kill or maim you here. And let's face it, if one pulls down her pants and exposes her bare ass to the creepy crawlies on the ground, she is basically begging for it ~ exposing a great, big, irresitable target for all that is deadly and stings in central Florida.

(Bite Me is, by the way, a fantastic if you want to be completely freaked out by anywhere you would like to vacation and want to see a grown man with his pants around his ankles [conspicuously missing underwear] trying to crap out a kazillion foot long tapeworm from a pill he swallowed in a third-world country.)

Actually, there is no good place to have an "anal explosion" as Chris calls them. This happened a lot to me when I was younger, and I probably could have been diagnosed with IBS if such a thing existed 25-30 years ago.

Any new or different situation would cause diahhrea for me, perhaps because I was a very, very nervous child. Early memories for me are of those in the bathroom, crying with stomach cramps, most notably leading up to (including the morning of) the first day of school. This occurred every single year until, I believe, I graduated from high school.

The fact that I suffered nervous craps every year before school makes the idea that my two children, who just started brand new schools this fall, produced neither a tear nor a foul smell from their butts at any point leading up to their first days. This is profoundly, deeply impressive to me. I would have been a train wreck, crying and sick every day through at LEAST the first week.

So, alas, I'm sitting today out.

I have some Bravo programming to catch up on and some toilets to clean.

Sweet Ninja Moves and the Sexy B-Word

I know this is shocking, so hold onto your granny panties ~ two posts in two days!

"What could she possibly have to say," you ask. "She stays at home, avoids housework and watches reality show marathons on the Bravo channel all day!"

That may be true, but my venture out into the Florida sunshine today for my semi-daily **cough** "jog" proved to be especially fruitful for blog fodder.

There were hoards of people out this morning, all of whom seemed to be in fantastic moods. And why wouldn't they be in good moods, with the children back in school, the sun shining and the palm trees swaying gently in the breeze?

People smiled and said "hello" and made comments about the baby, not all of which I caught as my Ipod was turned up full blast to the tune of "Sexy Bitch" (whatever it takes to motivate me...whatever it takes, folks). I enjoy pretending that I am, indeed, a sexy bitch.

I like to imagine myself as the "real jogger" you may have seen in the picture I posted in one of my previous posts ~ the one in the spandex and sports bra who is effortlessly bouncing and looking impossibly fresh while doing so. I try to imagine this instead of the reality: the chubby girl visibly melting and tugging at the crotch of her shorts because they have already ridden up five minutes into the jog.

I passed a runner. You may notice that I said "runner," not jogger, because he reminded me of my husband who is, in fact, a runner. A runner, in my definition, is someone who appears to be actively keeping track of his/her time as the miles pass.

It is all I can do to endure my husband's babbling on about his frustrating seven-point-five minute miles.

"I would like to get my runs down to six minute miles," he says, as he puts another potato chip in his mouth. I try to ignore him as I am fairly certain that I am trudging fourteen minute miles. I remain quiet, but execute the vacant nod he gets from me that gives him the illusion that I'm "tracking him."

It is always an interesting thing when I pass a Runner. I speed up a little bit and brightly hold my hand up and wave. I could see the look in his eyes as he passed ~ I should just have a tee shirt that says "POSER" on it.

As I turned a corner I passed a walker. At the inception of my excercise journey six years ago, I was a walker who pumped my arms because I wanted to appear to be a "power walker," just because I liked the term "power walker." It indicates you are more than a walker, and the word "power" adds so much. Don't you think?

However, this was a power-walker of the likes I had never seen before. Instead of pumping her arms side to side, she was doing a ninja kickboxing speed bag move with her arms. It is not surprising that this was new to me and I tried not to be so obvious with my "what the hell" look. My one year old even gave a quizzical turn of her head as we passed. This woman was gravely sober, apparently because she took her ninja walking over-the-top seriously, and she vaguely acknowledged my "good morning."

We continued on and I got to the point where I do in each of my jogs. The point in which I think of how nice it would be to take a nap under that palm tree immediately in front of me, and cursing myself that I didn't bring a bottle of water because I have certainly lost five pounds in water weight considering the perspiration that is saturating my shirt, hat, and general crotch area. You know how it is.

It was at this point when I saw her again, turning the corner towards me. I'm sure that even the baby produced a gasp. She was walking, doing the same ninja move with her arms but was doing this backwards.

I vowed to go home and look up the benefits of walking backwards because I cannot think of someone who would make such a spectacle out of herself for any other reason in that it does something fabulous for the body. I couldn't help it, I very rudely stared. My eyes slowly moved to my camera phone, but I immediately dismissed this thought as it would be too obvious.

I thought of calling my husband and telling him what I had just witnessed, but I remembered he was in a meeting. Then I thought of you, my dear blog readers and literally ran home to write about it.

Perhaps I should take that route more often, at that time of the morning. Next time, I think I will take a picture. It's sort of like she is begging for it.

Oh, and if she is coming at me while walking backwards, hell, she won't even notice if I snap off a couple shots.

Chinese Water Torture and Fine Wine

Today was a great day.

The culmination of the Chinese water torture phenomena that I call "summer vacation" came to a head this morning. My morning was spent partially hung-over from the "back to school" celebration bottle of Shiraz I shared (I use that term loosely) with my husband the night before, and urging my apparently half-deaf children to get dressed, eat and brush their teeth.

The urgings were gentle at first, but as the directions (orders) went unheeded, the urgings morphed into a full-blown freak-out where I threatened bodily harm and drop-kicked the said children out the door.

The uber parents walked with their children, hand in hand, to the bus stop and waited by their little sides until the bus arrived; my children walked, shell shocked and confused as to what exactly happened to their mother. I let out a whoop that probably was heard within a five-mile radius.

More caring individuals might have thought longingly of their children a bit during the day, concerned that they were indeed new students in new schools and that one of the said children was beginning his first year of high school. Alas, I thought about what I was going to have for lunch and decided that a strong margarita would really hit the spot.

I believe the problem with the summer was that it was jam-packed full of changes and wackiness for the adults, which unfortunately trickles down in such a way that often produces whiny, demanding children.

They were endearing occasionally, generally in sleep, as I gazed down upon them and felt a little guilty about the several times that day that my shrieks scared not only them, but our poor little dog, a scrappy Cairn Terrier, who had begun to skulk away from me with his tail between his legs whenever I entered the room.

I've always been a bit sensitive to stressful situations and it might be an understatement to say that I don't deal with stress very well. My husband loves me in spite of this wee character flaw and has only had to take drastic measures when, for several weeks straight, I laid in bed and set an acoustic Counting Crows CD on repeat. Looking back, I can understand his concern.

I think with age I have mellowed out, like a fine wine. Or a Golden Retreiver.

The freak out events occur on a less regular basis these days, and although I would love to have my children speak of me as my husband speaks of his mother (his exact words: "I never remember my mother ever yelling at us...") my personality is such that those will never be words my children utter.

It will more likely be, "I remember that first day of school when we were living in Florida...her head almost exploded, it was the weirdest thing. The dog was hiding under the bed and the neighborhood kids were kinda scared of her."

That will most likely be my legacy. And I think I will be okay with that because my eight year old told my husband he missed his mom today.

I think I probably missed him a little bit, too.

SPF 50 and Sweat-Soaked Shorts

To say that I let myself go is really an understatement. But I did.

I have viewed my move to a new state/city/climate as a new start. Also, I wholly admit that my copious use of powder to alleviate chaffing is quite gross. It isn't quite as effective in a climate in which the minute I step outside the combination of cornstarch and sweat causes a type of paste to develop and fall out of places that are a little embarrassing.

So, adequately lubed up with sunblock, I began taking the kids out in the morning before the sun got hot enough to cause too much of a heat rash or sunstroke. I would push the baby in the stroller and the 8 year old would ride his bike. "This will be a fantastic family activity," I thought as I mentally patted myself on the back. W likes to ride his bike, M likes to watch the animals/birds/cars from her stroller. I'm sweating the poundage off. Win, win, win.

Surprisingly, it was fun for the 1 year old. In our neighborhood, there are many dog walkers, bunnies, stray cats and interesting garbage lying along side the street (the garbage pick up day is interesting; they'll pick up anything. ANYTHING. This is a story for later).

The one who had the problem with the entire situation was the 8 year old who immediately turned into a whiny baby on his bicycle. Following are some of his protestations that I listened to for about two weeks before, armed with instructions, a phone, an open Facebook page (to talk to Dad) and a questionable guard dog, I finally left him at home as I trudged off on my twenty minute walk around our neighborhood.

"My helmet is too tight." He unstraps the helmet. I yell. He cries, then straps the helmet back up.

"I need a new bike!" Upon which I explain there are many other things that will be purchased before he gets a new bicycle.

"I'm hoooooooottttttttt!" Upon which I tell him to ride a bit faster to catch a breeze.

"Why do I have to wear a helmet?" I explain the reason, which seems to be a waste of my breath as he has surely heard this hundreds of times. Also, I am panting and uncomfortably sweating my fat ass off.

"How much longer?" Upon which I explain that we are out for at least twenty minutes, and that we have only been going at this for five minutes; therefore, he must endure fifteen more, so shut the hell up and keep going (I didn't really say that).

Tears were a daily occurrence, and I pondered ways to toughen this kid up all of which surely would have elicited calls to Department of Human Services.

So, my jogs began occurring a little earlier when the husband could be with him. Or the precautions were repeated and the warnings were were laid out as he plopped down in front of the Drake and Josh episode he had seen four hundred times before.

Because, as you notice as you read the verbage, the walk had turned into a jog. I dare to call it a jog, as it is more like a slow, laborious shuffle. My husband went out for a "run" with me exactly one time and I could see him silently mocking me as I shuffled and he walked just a little bit faster.

The pounds haven't come off as fast as they did when I stopped eating a bag of chips every night, but the endurance has gotten better and I am continuing to push the wee one around our neighborhood in her regular stroller ~I am holding out on the jog stroller thing until I can look the part of a real jogger and wear actual shorts without having them ride up in between my thighs.

The elastic waist capri workout pants gradually were phased out in lieu of longish shorts technically should be called bermudas. The following picture is what I envision a "real jogger" to look like; I am definitely not there.

Yesterday, I tentitively tried out the shorts ~ really cute hot pink ones that were too big pre-pregnancy, but at this time had to be stretched in several different places to acheive the illusion that they actually fit.

The husband assured me that my butt wasn't hanging out the back several times before I set out. However, I realized very quickly that I would be digging them out of my crotch for my entire two mile loop.

The two miles has turned into 2.5, although the whole process is slow, sweaty and elicits stares at the dripping fat girl from the lawn maitenance people every morning. I know that they are wondering, "does she need help?" But I force a smile, wave and keep on going.

I shuffle on, toward a 5K, 150 pounds, a half marathon....or whatever comes first.

Diet Pills and Roadkill

Due to a monumental, cross-country job change, we have found ourselves residents Florida.

Specifically, "I" have found myself in Florida for now~ unpacking, arranging, weeding, mopping, cleaning and pretty much everything that goes along with occupying a house that has been vacant for who-knows-how-long. Two-thirds of my children have joined me, making the afore-mentioned tasks just that much more difficult, seeing as one of them has to be watched constantly because, unsupervised, she is two minutes away from electrocution, drowning or falling into the freshwater canal that is our backyard. The other one, although seven years older, has regressed to wetting the bed, dragging his blankey around the house 24/7 and flopping over in tantrum-like rages when told "no," he can't purchase the entire DVD series of ICarly at Target for $24.99.

I made it to Florida, the Tallahassee area specifically, in less than 24 hours thanks to my two wonderful friends (the Katy's) and a blatant abuse of diet pills prescribed just before my departure from Iowa. I lured the younger Kaat into accompanying me to Florida with flowery promises of the Great Smokey Mountains, beautiful scenery and Asheville, home of the Biltmore Estate. A recent high school graduate, a road trip that included all of this, plus some time on the beach in Florida, must have been pretty alluring.

She saw little of the beauty promised due to a monumental change of driving plans that occurred in the general vicinity of ~ I don't know ~ Indiana. I blame this on the diet pills and my brother, who downright begged me to stop by his home south of Tallahassee, in a place so remote I didn't have cell phone service 3/4 of the time. This was also where the other "Katy" and I gleefully stomped on a furry, red ant the size of my big toe. It didn't die easily, mind you ~ it obviously had a great will to live. Upon further future investigation , this critter was called a cow-killer. We probably shouldn't have trifled with a critter with a nickname of "cow-killer," but we are from the midwest. We didn't know any better.

Due to financial reasons, my other half convinced me to drive our pint-sized Toyota Corolla. I swapped the use of my SUV because at the time, 38 miles per gallon sounded pretty damn good.

It wasn't so good when the Corolla was loaded with three grown women, a one year old, and our dog, the Cairn Terrier named Sven. It was possibly some of the hottest weather of the year in the south, further complicating our close quarters. I watched as the thermometer on the car reached 102 and 103 degrees, and we practically puddled the second we stepped outside the air conditioning of the car.

The dog innocently put a wrench in our breaks and we stopped and ate at only one restaurant, because even with the windows wide open, one can't possibly leave a dog in a car in 103 degree weather. We chanced it at a Chick-Fil-A in Alabama. We circled the parking lot until a spot with partial shade opened up and periodically checked on him from inside the restaurant ~ his leash hooked to the door handle of the car with a bowl of water next to him. His woeful eyes never left the entrance of the restaurant and was probably wondering what he had done to endure such cruelty.

I feel immensely guilty about the drive, as I didn't let anyone else behind the wheel. I have a thing about driving that is a little manic and nutso, understood only by my husband who is the same way. When setting forth upon the open road with a destination in mind, we will practically kill ourselves to get there in record time. There are so many stories, but I won't bore you with the lurid details. Just trust me on this one.

This trip, I was proud to say, was definitely made in record time; I don't think that I have made it to Florida that quickly. Ever. My passengers are still probably rueing the day that they agreed to make the trip with me, as one didn't make it out of the backseat ONCE, but I couldn't have done it without them.

I think it was gracious of me (because if I was by myself, I would have sped by the following) that we stopped at a small peninsula called Alligator Point on the Gulf of Mexico in which we, including the dog, about died of heatstroke walking from the car to the beach and back to the car again.

I also turned around and retraced our tracks at one point to stop to gawk at roadkill. Alligator roadkill, to be exact. I still feel as if we should have poked it with a stick to get a better lookey-loo, but the others were much wiser and more cautious when they pointed out the gator could have just been "stunned" and lying there on its back for a short spell, only to wake up and scurry off once it regained consciousness . We also did the touristy thing in Daytona Beach and walked the pier in which a shark was held by Kaat, providing a fabulous non-Iowalike photo opportunity.

Alas, the friends are gone and the kids aren't. There is cleaning and babyproofing to be done in our new home. The road trip is over and reality has set in.

Although it is crazy and my passengers most likely wouldn't agree, I wouldn't mind doing it again. There was more laughter experienced for me during this short time than the entire past year. I have come to the conclusion that I am much too serious ~ perhaps this should be something I should work on now that I live in Florida. Pastel houses, flamingos and the ocean three miles from my house might help me lighten up a wee bit.

Potato Bars and Skinny Little Imps

I sat across from a skinny chick at church dinner tonight.

I watched her, venomously, as she ate her baked potato covered in chili. I observed her two small children and her tiny, size zero pants and her flat stomach. I had never met her before and I am certain the vibe that she got from me was "psycho, psycho, psycho."

Every Wednesday we have dinner at our church. This is very welcome to me, as I don't have to plan a dinner for my children and my husband, who annoyingly prefers a meat and some sort of noodle/potato/bread with each of his meals.

I anticipate these meals. Freakishly so, I'm afraid. I experience glee when I find out what they are serving and revel in happiness if it is something I think is particularly tasty. Like tonight's potato bar.

What a wonderful thing: One starts off with a plain baked potato and if the heart delights so, s/he may add chili, sour cream, cheese whiz, bacon bits and other fantastic variations of "foods-that-make-a-plain-baked-potato-completely-kick-ass."

I try to hide the said glee, as I am horribly fearful of judgment by others as being the "fat girl that is enthusiastically piling her plate high full of food" and "oh, wow...she looks unnaturally excited standing in line at a potato bar."

I have a picture saved on my computer with a girl looking at a piece of cake with a psychotic look on her face, the caption reads "True Happiness: Easier for Fat People." I totally get this. And sadly, it is true.

This said glee was not hidden well several weeks ago. We had arrived at church after a long day of flying back from Florida ~ my only thing to eat since breakfast had been a package of Jack Link's which I paid, like, six bucks for on the airplane.

I bounded out of the car and into the church, excited to see what was for dinner...which happened to be tater tot casserole. My heart leapt with joy at the anticipation. I think back to the aftermath of my eating this casserole and I am shameful. I vaguely remembered the little boy sitting next to me looking at me with awed fascination as I shoveled it in. I'm sure I was a sight.

So, tonight as I sat across from this adorable, tiny little IMP, I couldn't help it: I was green with envy. She didn't look like a crazed maniac as she ate and I longed.....LONGED, I tell you....to ask her if I could accompany her home to see what was in her refrigerator. Or at the very least, if the refrigerator thing was too nutty, to come with her to grocery store and see what she puts in her cart.

Because I am SURE it isn't chips, French onion dip and frozen eggrolls to eat at 9pm at night.

Damn the super taste buds...they are making me fat.

Super Taste Buds and the Renal Artery

I haven't blogged in a long time, I know. I have a belief that if I truly have nothing to say, I should just not speak; therefore, I go long periods without writing. That goes for my everyday life, too...sometimes I just don't have too much to say and would prefer not to say anything.

This is unlike my husband who is uncomfortable with silence and who prattles on and on. This is useful when I don't feel like talking..because it is a sheer certainty that he will. All that it takes to encourage him are grunts and appropriate noises. We could go on for hours this way. It works for us.

I have been spending a lot of the time at the gym. We joined a new one and it has free child care, so I am all over it. The free child care comes with a catch though...the catch being that I have to work out. I wish I had free child care that I could drop the baby off and do something that doesn't require sweating and exertion. I want to drop her off and go get a pedicure, or my hair done, or watch a movie by myself.

But no, I take her and leave her in the nursery, her face beet red from panic and seperation anxiety , to go do my time on the elliptical machine and treadmill.

Which, in all honesty I don't mind. I don't mind the exercise. It is the deprivation of food that I have the problem with. Once I heard of a phenomenon of "super taste buds." People with "super taste buds" taste things more acutely, thus they enjoy food so much more than those without "super taste buds." That is totally me. Damn my super taste buds, they are making me fat.

But I have to get serious now that apparently my life depends on it...which sucks. I mean this quite literally.

This week I started my third blood pressure medication ~ the heavy duty one (apparently) that slows the heart rate down. I have given up on the optimism I once felt that this will work, so perhaps my attitude is self-fulfilling. The doctor is talking about renal artery disease and wants to do a doppler procedure on my renal artery to see if there is some blockage that is causing my blood pressure to stay high and to be unresponsive to medication.

Reading up on renal arterial disease is a little bit horrifying (words like congenital heart failure, death) and the treatment is difficult. It leads me to believe there will be pain involved, something I desperately try to avoid. After 10 months, I still am supremely bitter towards the anesthesiologist who administered my epidural that stopped working at 9 centimeters. Damn him.

So, the realization of this has made my quest of diet and exercise take on a different tone ~ a much more serious tone. Salads are no longer an option; exercise is no longer a novelty. They have morphed into necessity and reality.

It is a reality that I will grudgingly have to accept...after I eat my birthday cake tomorrow.

ChaChee and the Grinch

While waiting for my tardy husband to return from work today, Wesley and I have been watching Man Vs. Wild on the Discovery Channel.

Wesley has also been trying to engage me in a conversation about how we would, if necessary, decapitate a snake. He said that, as Bear Grylls did, he would bite the head off. I told him that there would be no way in HELL I would get my ass into a situation where decapitating a snake would be something I would HAVE to do. Okay, so I didn't use those exact words, but it was what I was thinking..

I have also been singing "My Dreidel" to myself. It has been stuck in my head for TWO days now. I only know the first line of the chorus which goes like this: "Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel. I made it out of clay. Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, with my dreidel I will play." I think. I guess I have not had a good reason to learn the remainder of the song as I am a Lutheran, but geez. It would be handy to know it at this moment because it is driving me bananas.

Our holidays were nice...although I am not a holiday person. They require too much planning, preparation and decorating; all activities at which I am inept. The decorating part is the worst for me, though, as it all needs to be taken down and put away...and "putting things away" is a sub-category of "cleaning." Something I really detest. Go ahead...call me a Grinch. I know it; I own it.

We spent a week with my family in Florida. Each time I visit, I wonder why I live somewhere that it snows and is cold and I cry when I have to come home. I just love palm trees too much...oh, and of course I love my family.

The week worked well for me: Chris and I took walks twice a day and my blood pressure returned (pretty much) to normal after nine months of stage two hypertension. Another reason Florida is good for me.

The "highlight" of our daily walks wasn't really a highlight at all. As we were walking up to the entrance of my parents' neighborhood, we saw a little animal lying on the street. "Oh," Chris said. "A opossum!" But no...it was a dog. A little dog. I could tell it was a Pomeranian mix as it looked like my mother-in-law's deceased dog, Biscuit. I thought of all the times that Sven, our Cairn Terrier, had gotten out and how I would want to know if something happened to him. After pestering Chris, he got the nametag off and called the owners, who didn't take the news well at all. We got a towel and got "Chachee" off the road and waited for the owners to arrive. It was on New Year's Eve and I kept thinking that having your dog tragically run over was a lousy way to ring in the new year.

So, upon returning to Iowa, we have been welcomed by and ice storm, a snow storm and now a blizzard is being predicted for tomorrow. We have been home a whole week already. I wonder if it too presumptuous to look into Florida real estate when one doesn't have a job there? But now, as I think of the topography and the critters native to tropical regions, I think the odds would be better there to find myself in a position where I would need to decapitate, or at least dispose of, a snake.

Perhaps the upper Midwest is the place for me.