Valium, Vicodin and Ativan, OH MY!

It seems that lately (maybe because I hovered around and then became 40) a lot of my post have to do with ailments, health scares and other fun issues. Well, in keeping with that theme, I've been absent from blogging, tweeting, Facebooking, and all things computer (more or less) for the past week because of a weird headache/neckache hoo-ha. And while I may jokingly call it "hoo-ha", it has been no laughing matter. First we thought it was a bad glasses prescription. Nope. Had it checked, and double checked by an opthamologist. He also ruled out the possibility of brain tumors. Gee thanks, I hadn't even gone down that path! But drugging up and laying in bed for two days (over the weekend, so Drew could take over the little thing we like to call parenting) should have done the trick, right? Wrong. I woke up Monday morning as if a ton of bricks had come crashing on the back of my skull, and I couldn't move my neck as if I'd been in a serious car wreck. I also felt dizzy, nauseous and was breaking out in a cold sweat. So, Drew took the day off of work and, luckily, my doctor decided to see me instead of sending me to the ER. The four advil I took in the morning was making my head feel better. The doc is an osteopath and she did some adjustments on me, which helped (at least while in the office) and recommended an icy hot patch for the back of my neck. Amazing... that actually helped too (well, that and some ativan). So yesterday, after all that, and getting the girls home for naps (with Drew's help), I rested in bed for a while. And while I could have stayed in bed all afternoon (AGAIN), I opted to get up and start organizing our piece of crap, shame of the household home office. And I worked on this for three hours! Feeling a little pain, but keeping moving and staying hydrated really helped. Drew had taken the girls to a friend's house and they all went out for pizza, so it was really quiet here (which helped the headache) and I didn't need to take anything stronger than that ativan (for muscle tension relief) until bedtime. And at bedtime, it was back to the strong stuff and the heating pad...
This morning I had the luxury of taking my time getting out of bed. I took it very easy. No sudden movements. I still ended up with the same scenario, but after so many days of it, maybe I'm just handling it better. Plus, I had the girls do a big project with me which kept us all busy. After naps, if it's not too miserable out (who knows?), I'll take them out for some fresh air.
The real drag of this whole ordeal (besides the constant excruciating pain) is the fact that I can't exercise. I mean, I've already fucked up my neck, I can't risk it getting worse. I was all excited to get my exercise bumped up into high gear (we've kept it at third gear during the winter!) and enjoy the exhiliration that a good run/walk/ride can bring. But it'll have to wait.
And then, I promise. No more inneroldlady posts! I'm sick of them too.

A Fleeting Moment

I've had some difficulty swallowing all that is Facebook for the last week or so. Just fed up, I guess. I'm OH SO MUCH MORE enthralled with Twitter. A place I don't have to block anyone (but I do anyway, those Christian pro-life right-wingers, who, for some reason, want to follow me). A place I can just be me.

But then something happened on Facebook that made it all worth it.

My "lil' sis" from cheerleading friended me. Only her info said "male". WTF?!!! Did she have a sex change? Was she a transgender? So, of COURSE I ADDED HER! And looking into her profile further, I discovered that she was living with a woman, and under her interests was "poop". Ok, this is weird.

So I stewed on that for a few hours (no pun intended) and messaged a friend who is also Facebook friends with him/her/whatever. Then I went back and looked at the profile.

Nothing to see here, folks. The woman she was living with? Her. The "male" is the character she is posing as on her Facebook page, either fictional or her pet (I don't want to put it exactly, because I don't want all my reader(s) to Google her.) I figured this out because the female she was "living with" had a photo of her and her dad. And while I might not recognize her after 20 years, her dad looks almost the same, just more grey hair.

So, for a brief instance, Facebook was good again. The excitement of finding out that a girl you once knew was a boy would have made it ALL WORTH IT!!! But no, it's still the same ol', same ol'... Me posting my oh-so-interesting observation about a flock of Canadian geese. Bonnie M.O.T. noticing some red shit over Detroit. People finding out what kind of stripper-mom they are, or what their real age is.

I'm not saying that I'm not going to continue to DO IT, I'm just saying...

Recurring Dreams

So, I've been having a couple of recurring dreams for years now. One much more than the other. In the more recurring of the two, I am in Madrid, Spain. On holiday, not living there (as I REALLY did for three years after university). And it is time to return to the states. So I must get to the airport. Immediately. Only something always happens. Either I've left my passport back at my flat, or I must make a stop at El Corte Ingles to pick up that soap I liked (and some marzipan), or I have to pick up something from a store I can't find and I find myself wandering the narrow, winding cobblestone streets and alleys near the Plaza Mayor. Usually, I have called for the cab too late, or I'm in the cab but it's taking too long to get me to the airport, or I'm wasting time trying to get in one last "copa" before I hit the road. Typical. Nevertheless, I DO make it to the airport and then it's never REALLY the Barajas airport, but slightly more confusing. Often I am left at the wrong door, just as my plane is set to depart, and I have to run through the airport (a la O.J.), navigating various airlines, passport and ticket checks (oh, did I mention that I never have my ticket in these dreams) and practically running onto the runway to catch my flight... whew... back home to America.

In the second dream, I am in Santa Monica, California. I am breaking and entering in the home of my ex-boyfriend. It is an apartment. Not the same one he lived in when we dated, but somehow, after all these years, I know where it is. And even though we haven't spoken in years, I know that he has purposely left the sliding door on his balcony cracked so that I can let myself in. And I do. And I am able to snoop around a bit and get a sense of his life. Why I want to do this, I don't know. But I feel some sort of upper hand, some sort of advantage over his current wife or girlfriend. That I know she exists, but she doesn't know I exist. Nothing much else happens in these dreams. I usually just leave after a bit and go do something else. Return to my life. Wake up. Something.

Present day. Reality. Not a dream. Said ex-boyfriend messages me on Facebook. Doesn't friend me. Just messages me. My response is, "Why are you looking for me?" (I know he's married with a kid, thank you very much Google, but I still have no idea why, the minute I put my maiden name on my Facebook, he of 300 friends needs to message me.) His response is, of course, just curious, and how are you and yada yada yada. I messaged back to say that it was ironic that he wrote me on the very day we left L.A. And he messaged back again, "Married? Kids?" To which, I did not respond. At this point, I'm pretty sure, once you message someone on Facebook, you allow them to see the basics of your profile. So he must have peeked, right? He knew I was married and probably saw my profile picture, too.

A week or so goes by and now he requests to ADD ME AS A FRIEND on FACEBOOK. Oh, joy. So, I figure, I'll add him, but I'm BLOCKING him from almost everything on there. No need to get back in touch, but I don't want to be the bitter ex-girlfriend either (and lord knows I should, I got treated badly enough...).

So that night I had one of my recurring dreams. The Spain one. But this time, there's a twist. And I promise you that I am not even clever enough to make this up. I really dreamt it. HE is with me in Spain, and we have to travel back together. We are a couple and we might even be travelling with his family. (His mother was evil personified, btw.) So all the usual travel nightmares ensue, and I wake up more confused than ever.

A couple of days go by.

Ex-boyfriend now messages me on Facebook to say that "he was thinking of me the other day, and he wanted to apologize for how he treated me when we were dating (not that it matters now), and he was so happy to see my beautiful daughters and was my life fulfilling and wasn't Facebook a trip, XOXO... " I kid you not. I couldn't have made that up either. Shit. This blog post was practically writing itself! (Incidentally, he also put an apology letter on my car, oh, about ten years ago. I got it. I read it. But I never contacted him about it. So this was a little deja vu-ish.)

Well reflecting over all of this (and stewing over it a bit too, I might add), made me have an ever-so-tiny epiphany. I think I know what it all means! (You, my brilliant reader, may have known this already, but I am a bit slow, so this revelation is new to ME, anyway...) I think it means that, if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't delay my departure. Both from Spain and from that SoCal relationship. I stayed in Madrid too long. I made a HUGE mistake at the end, and if I had left earlier, or not made so many damn side trips on the way to the airport, I would have made a cleaner break from Spain and the whole experience. Same with SoCal. I was in and out of that relationship so many times it would have made your head spin. Because I was determined to make something out of nothing. And in both scenarios, I had little self-confidence. I wasn't as sure of myself as I am now. I let a lot of people get the better of me. But worst of all, I didn't give myself any credit. I was never the prize. Or so I let myself believe.

But there's one more revelation that came out of all that. As I contemplated what to say back (if anything, as of this moment I have stayed silent), I realized something pretty valuable. One of my friends recently asked me, upon my relaying the "ex-boyfriend is messaging me on Facebook" part of the story (the friending hadn't happened yet), if he was "the one who got away". To which, of course, I replied "no!" I've always felt like my husband, Drew, was the one I was meant to be with (in Jewish, we say "Beshert") and I look back on the ex-boyfriend with more bitterness. Maybe because I let him be an asshole to me for so much longer than I should have. But he was definitely NOT "the one who got away."

But it occurred to me. There's a damn good possibility that I'm his "one who got away"... And that? Is an ending I can live with.

Irony is a Whore

I finally have a really decent idea for a post, I mean, ideas are FLYING around in my head. Stuff has happened and I need to share. It involves a recurring dream, an ex-boyfriend, and the realization that I know what it all means.

But, noooooo.... I can't write it because I can barely see due to excruciatingly dry eyes. I can't explain it. Something is amiss with my eyes though, and all I've been told to do is administer drops (five or six times a day). It doesn't help. What? Did I turn 40 and my eyes decided to say, "Fuck you! You're old now!"

Anyway, gotta go apply a warm compress (or a hot poker...); be back soon.

Fear, Modesty and the Vajayjay

The other day we took the kids sledding. Well, Drew took the Diva sledding with some friends and their boys, and I came later to take pictures and keep the Li'l Rascal happy (tough job some days). Anyway, when Rascal and I got there, we joined in the fun, I videotaped Drew going down QUITE a big hill with my fearless Diva daughter, and they even convinced ME to take a turn down the hill. Again. Let me reiterate. BIG HILL. I haven't been sledding in... hmmm. That got me thinking of my own childhood. The only time I ever went sledding? We lived in Atlanta, and my brother and I took a cardboard box down the (very steep) driveway. But by that time, I was old enough for the fear to have set in. The fear I speak of is the fear that was drilled into my brain my whole life. My mother will say it was all my father, but she must have had a modicum of control over our upbringing, so I blame her just as much. Here is the short list of the things I was programmed to be afraid of:
heights
roller coasters
moving fast doing anything (skiing- NEVER, sledding- only as previously described, skateboarding- we got them, and then my dad sold them out from under us)
raw fish
smoked fish
not wearing your seat belt (this one I'm ok with)
bugs
water sports
boating
motorcycles
riding a bicycle in the street
I could go on. But do I really need to? You get the idea. So thinking of this paranoid upbringing, I know I'm doing way better by my kids. After all, I let the Diva go sledding with Drew, didn't ask questions or show any freakish concern when visiting the sledding hill. I just cheered her on and took a turn myself. I did SCREAM LIKE A BABY the whole way down the hill, but I WAS going pretty fast...

Anyway, thinking about my "fear factor" upbringing led me to thinking about another aspect of my upbringing. Prudishness. Is that even a word? My parents kissed in front of us. A lot. And believe you me, I didn't want to see any more than that, but I was raised by two pretty prudish people. And it probably turned me into at least a self-conscious person, if nothing else. Put it this way (and I hope this is not TMI), I never saw my parents unclothed. I don't know if I ever even saw my mom in her bra until I was much older (like out of college), and we were in a situation where we had to change in front of each other. With my own children, however, this is not the case. I mean, they follow us into the bathroom. (What did my parents do? They must have stuck me in a playpen!) I'm not going to live my life hiding myself. The human body is natural, and I think my daughters will benefit from my husband and I not shying away from the inevitable. They will see us nekked. And it's no big deal. There's no shame in that.

Which brings me to... tonight's conversation with the Diva as I'm putting her to bed. So, I tuck her in, and she looks up at me and smiles.
"Guess where my hand is?!"
She pulls down the covers and shows me. Hand in underpants. Yikes! What do I do or say now that won't traumatize her?!
"Oh, ok, Div, take your hand out of there?..."
She giggles, holds her hand up to my face. Says something about how she had her finger in her vagina.
"Um, do you want to wash your hand before bed? I know that might feel good, but since you peepee out of your vagina, you might want to wash your hands. (WTF?!!! I have NO IDEA what to say here.)
So we go to the bathroom, because she DOES want to wash her hands (after sniffing it a few times) and she looks at herself in the mirror and says (I shit you not), "Finger in the vagina. It feels GOOOOOOD!"
I had to smile and laugh with her, because what else could I say?!
Then, on the way back to bed, she has me smell her hand, which now smelled like soap. And I gave my THREE YEAR OLD night-nights and prayed she would sleep well.
Of course I waited too long to get the full story down verbatim, but you get the gist.
Boy, my parents would have had a heart attack. Or something. Still, how to handle these situations? No matter what kind of parent you are, there are clearly no clear answers. Or are there?

WHEW!!

I can breathe now. Two mammograms and an ultrasound later. It's just a cyst. I feel like I dodged a bullet. Now I need to get off my ass and start helping those I know who weren't as lucky.

WTF?!

Apparently I have flagged my own blog as having objectionable content. And I don't know how to unflag it. So I have to ask my reader(s), are you seeing some f**d up garbelty-gook at the top of the page too?

I am adding a new blog to the blogroll. I follow her on Twitter, but now I read her blog too. Barefoot Foodie... she is too funny! And expecting a baby girl next month (which she will be posting the birth on YouTube). Despite my new found love for Facebook, I am getting back into Twitter too, because there is some funny shit out there, and I have OH SO MUCH TIME on my hands...