I am not going to  complain about the cold.

I am not going to complain because this past summer, back when I was complaining about the heat, I promised that if it ever stopped being  hot I would never complain about the cold again. And I figure the least I can do is honor that promise until I suffer through a week of winter in *Undisclosed Eastern European Country*.

So no, I will not complain. I embrace Winter, in all her splendor.   And to express the depth of my affections toward her icy charms, I give you an homage to a winter’s night….

Crispy, crackly skin
My fingers look like pork skins
Need humidity

Woosh, the heater starts
Sound of money being sucked
From our bank account

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered cold and weary,
Over many a large and sickening volume of Weather Channel lore,
While I shivered, too cold for napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`’Tis my teeth,’ I muttered, `chattering till my jaws are sore-
Only this, and nothing more.’

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
Summer now a dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; – vainly I had sought to borrow
From my Visa, to my sorrow – sorrow for they want some more-
More rare and precious money else we’ll freeze  unto our core-
Propane bills for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of my dried out skin
Thrilled me – filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the chattering of my teeth, I stood repeating
`’Tis some lotion in my cabinet, or maybe in the bathroom drawer -
Some Vaseline, Eucerin, or Aquaphor; -
No, only chapstick, and nothing more,’

Back into the chamber sneezing, all my soul within me freezing,
Soon again my teeth were chattering somewhat louder than before.
`Surely,’ said I, `surely there is someone on the Weather Channel;
Let me see then, what the forecast is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
‘Tis the forecast, nothing more!’

On I turned the television, with stealth and much precision,
And there appeared a portly weatherman of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched beside my chamber door -
Perched upon the 27″ Panasonic  beside my chamber door -
Perched, and smiled, and nothing more.

Then this weatherman beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy face be shorn and shaven, thou,’ I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim  meteorologist wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me  when will pass the Night’s Antarctic shore!’
Quoth the weatherman, `Nevermore.’

`Prophet!’ said I, `thing of evil! – prophet still, if man or devil! -
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this frozen land enchanted -
On this home by coldness haunted – tell me truly, I implore -
Is there – is there warmth in Gilead? – tell me – tell me, I implore!’
Quoth the weatherman, `Nevermore.’

Sirens are generally not a good thing.

Around here, a siren usually means I forgot that I was heating oil on the stove while I ran to put the towels in the dryer…and check facebook…and read a few pages of Good Housekeeping. Luckily, it hasn’t ever gotten further than the smoke alarm sirens– the ones that the mostly-useless-electricians put in that just make a lot of noise, not the ones from the security company that immediately call the fire department. The fact that the immediately-call-the-fire-department ones have never gone off greatly decreases my feeling of fire-safetyishness, truth be told.

But today, the siren meant something different. Today, the siren meant that I had rolled through the stop sign on my little, backwoods, rural, middle-of-nowhere, don’t-nobody-else-stop-neither road, and that said rolling had not gone unnoticed.

Sometimes, a siren going off around here means that the kids, history buffs that they are, have re-enacted the Battle of the Alamo, using bubble wrap to mimic the sound of gunfire. I don’t know about gunfire, but our alarm system thinks bubble wrap sounds an awful lot like breaking glass. And our glass-break detector actually does immediately call the police department.

Of course, because we live in a little, backwoods, rural, middle-of-nowhere kind of place, it takes the police 30 minutes to arrive at our front door to investigate whether we have been chopped up into small, unidentifiable pieces by serial killers. There are never any police cars on patrol where we live (if you happen to be a crazed criminal, you should know that we have two vicious attack dogs and one very aggressive llama, and we are armed with awesome guns, and we are trained in the art of fujitsu. Unless fujitsu is some sort of camera, in which case we are trained in something else that will allow us to separate important parts of your body from one another using only our toes. Who needs police when you can disembowel people with your toes?).

In the entire 6 years I have lived here, I have seen no more 5 police cars. Or maybe I’ve seen one police car, but I’ve seen it 5 different times. In any event, encounters with law enforcement are sufficiently rare as to have instilled a sense of confidence in the denizens of our particular nowheresville: specifically, people don’t stop at stop signs. Some of them don’t even slow down.

Myself, I’m a stopper. Not only that, I have been known to point and wag my finger at the non-stoppers, or at least at the drive-right-through-at-35-mph-ers.  And I can do that in all my well-deserved self-righteousness, because I am a stopper.

Or so I thought….

Yesterday afternoon, any delusions I held regarding my standing as a keeper-of-the-code-as-it-applies-to-stopping-for-a-full-three-second-count-at-all-stop-signs were shattered.

See, when I woke up yesterday, I had every intention of leaving the house to take Mason to go get his bloodwork done first thing in the morning. I don’t know why it takes us 4 hours to get out of the house in the morning. So we left the house on our way to the lab at the crack of 11:20.

At about 11:35, I remembered that the road was under construction. It was the orange-and-white-striped barricades that  jogged my memory. You would think I would have remembered sooner—miles and miles sooner, as in, before-it-was-too-late-to-take-an-alternate-route sooner, especially in light of the fact that these same barricades sucked a sock up my vacuum cleaner on the way to my girls’-night-out viewing of White Christmas on the big screen with one of my besties only a few nights earlier.

Even with the diversion, we arrived at the lab-o-trauma at 11:42, a full 18 minutes before they close for lunch. Which would have been a tremendous victory, had there not been a sign declaring “We’ve Moved!” on the door.

Mason really doesn’t like being strapped into a car seat. And the only thing more injurious to his happy mood than being buckled in is having to be buckled in again after having finally enjoyed a brief taste of freedom.

Four kids back in the car, buckled, one frustrated round of, “What do you mean, you’re not buckled? What have you been doing for the last 3 minutes?”, and we’re on our way to the lab-o-trauma’s new location, which happens to be smack-dab in the middle of the construction zone we’d just detoured around. Which probably explains why I drove right by it, then had to make a rather awkward T-intersection U-turn. It might also explain why we found ourselves driving on the wrong side of the pylons, into the path of an oncoming 18-wheeler. Luckily, Riley notices things like oncoming 18-wheelers that might escape the notice of someone who’s squinting out the window, mumbling “Where is it? It’s gotta be one of these buildings….”

In spite of our little unscheduled adventure, we arrived at 11:54, a full 6 minutes before they close for lunch. I’m not sure what time the other 15 people who were already in the waiting room arrived, but they did not look amused to see our rowdy party-of-five enter.

That place should really hire a second phlebotomist.

Mason doesn’t sit. Did you know that? It’s probably pretty apparent from most of my posts.

So, for the next hour-and-five-minutes, I did my best to keep the 35-pound-ferret corralled on a 2-person bench. I read magazines (Luckily, Better Homes and Gardens has lots of pictures of dogs and cats this month), I played several hundred rounds of “Kiss-me-right-here….you missed! Again?”, and sang Somewhere over the Rainbow, Fly Me To The Moon, and the ABC song…repeatedly. I let Mason practice his hairdressing skills (until he attempted to remove large sections of hair using his thumb and forefinger), and offered my body up as a giant jungle-gym. And I did it with a smile on my face, and while admonishing certain other family members to keep the peace, stop kicking each other, and get their own gum.

Finally, at 1:00, the poor-phlebotomist-who-worked-through-her-entire-lunch-hour called us back to the torture chamber. Now, Mason has an uncanny memory, but maybe the new office threw him. He recognized her as someone he liked, and he immediately turned on the charm. Even as she tied the blue-rubber band around his upper arm, he smiled and flirted. It wasn’t until the needle physically pierced his skin that the look of recognition swept across his face.  But he’s a tough one, and even as she was putting on the bandage and apologizing profusely, he was doing his best to smile at her through his tears.

By the time we stepped across the lab threshold, Mason was fully recovered. Mommy, on the other hand, could think of little other than a session with Dr. Merl Ot. And I still had Wail-Mart, SuperTorture, and KroGrrr on my to-do list.

Every once in a while, a rare glimmer of sanity peeks through the otherwise impenetrable wall of my incompetence. This was such a time. Rather than drag all four children around town to run errands, I drove 20 minutes home and dropped them off to The Hubby, armed with all the sympathy-rousing-patheticatude I could muster, then proceeded to make the 20 minute drive back to town.

It was shortly into my proceeding that I heard the siren.

Now, if you know me, you no doubt know that I can’t do things in any way that could be deemed ordinary. It’s not that I don’t, as if I’m striving for some sort of zenith (or nadir– depends on your perspective I guess…) of eccentricity. It’s that I can’t.

So it may come as no surprise to you to hear that I was pulled over not by a police car, or a sherriff, or even a county constable…but, by a Texas Wildlife Officer.

The answer to your question is, “Yes, evidently they can.”

Since it is already November twenty-somethingth and I have yet to do an “I’m thankful for” post, let me take this opportunity to say that I am thankful that the Texas Wildlife Officer let me go with a verbal warning.

I will close with a dramatic re-enactment of the incident, which may or may not offer a glimpse of why the Officer didn’t detain me to write a ticket:

Me: Hello, Officer.

Texas Wildlife Officer: Ma’am, I stopped you today because you ran that stop sign back there. And you didn’t just run it, you ran it fast. Is there any particular reason you did that, ma’am? Anything going on that would have caused you to not just run that stop sign, but to run it as fast as you did?”

Me: Well, officer, it all started because I had to take my 5-year old to get bloodwork done….

You would think that by the ripe-old-age of 42, you would have learned most everything. Not so. I find that every day offers myriad opportunities for the acquisition of new and profound knowledge.

Why, take the amazing collection of wisdom I collected today, for example:

1. When you’re kneeling on the back-seat platform of a Suburban to buckle the back seat passengers into their carseats, if you sit back on your feet you might find that your Croc flip-flops are full of evil demon stickers.
2. It is hard to pull evil demon stickers from your hindquarters by yourself.
3. When you’re sitting outside in the complete darkness, enjoying the chill air, enthralled by the music of the crickets and frogs, the sound of a bedroom window being slid shut sounds exactly like the hiss of a deadly, venomous pit viper.
4. I run fast.
5. I am suprisingly agile for a 42 year old.
6. Husbands will laugh at you while you’re recovering from thinking you were about to be attacked by a deadly, venomous pit viper.
7. Mason would like you to know that he, too, learned something new today, having picked up a new vocabulary from Mommy over dinner preparations.
8. And lastly, I also learned that my pasta strainer is much too small for an entire pot of spaghetti, which results in boiling water overflowing the sides and removing the skin from any appendages that might be, say, holding on to said strainer.

Those last two might seem to be unrelated, but if you read through them again….

It’s been a long time since I last blogged. I know this because my last post was about my near-death experience giving birth to Mason, which was in honor of his birthday…seven weeks ago….

If I hadn’t remembered that fact, my absence still would have been apparent by the fact that I couldn’t remember my username. Or my password . Okay, I admit it: I couldn’t remember my blog URL. Happy now?

And why do I even bother to check the little box that says “Remember me”? It never does.

                  Blog: Password? 
                  Me: Hi, remember me? I made you? 
                  Blog: Password?
                  Me: Blog, I am your mother.
                  Blog: Password?

My failure to compose hasn’t been for lack of chaos. There’s been lots of chaos. Abundant chaos. Chaos overflowing like 6-people’s worth of laundry out of a pitiful wicker laundry basket. The problem is that either A) I get sidetracked by more chaos on my way to document the chaos that already happened, B) I compose a pithy blogpost in my mind, somebody interrupts my train of thought by asking why I’m talking to myself, and I forget that I was even thinking, or C)…um… I’m pretty sure I had a “C” when I started this list, but I have no idea what it was….

The other major stumbling block has been the fact that my blog and I have this agreement that I won’t turn it into a forum for pointless ravings and rantings, and it will remember me if I check the box that says, “Remember me”. Only one of us is keeping our end of the bargain. But if you nice people are going to spend ten minutes of your time vicariously experiencing gross ineptitude  through my leopard-spotted reading glasses, then I feel I should at least thank you by wrapping it up into a neat little package and tie it with a bow.  If you’re going to be so kind as to hop on my train, I should get you somewhere, right? But making sense out of chaos is no easy task, and so I’ve chosen the path of avoidance.

Now, it’s probably obvious by now that I’m back on track, sitting at my computer typing, and ready to share with you a glimpse of the chaos. Obvious, yes, but also dead wrong. When I sat down, I had high hopes of telling you how the two older kids and I spent our day walking up and down one of the busiest-yet-least-interesting streets in town while my Suburban was having the a/c replaced, and how we ate Sno Cones at Bahama Bucks and the toilet is so high off the ground that our feet dangled (one of us who is not me actually had to get off the toilet by falling into a fake plant). But for the life of me, I can’t think of any way to make a freakishly-high commode relevant.

But I did get this really funny email today, courtesy of my writing buddy Helen Hanson (HelenHanson.com), to whom I owe an email regarding her generous offer for me to participate in a new blogging endeavor. See? I’m not even composing email these days. Anyway, for lack of anything better to share with you, I’m going to share half of this funny email with you. I’m saving the other half in case I’m still deep in avoidance next week.

You probably shouldn’t drink anything hot and/or fizzy while you read this, unless you enjoy having hot and/or fizzy liquid come out your nose.

A paraprosdokian (from the Greek meaning “beyond” and “expectation”) is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax . For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and satirists. Some paraprosdokians not only change the meaning of an early phrase, but also play on the double meaning of a particular word, creating a syllepsis.

I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.

Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.

Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it’s still on the list.

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

If I agreed with you we’d both be wrong.

We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

Evening news is where they begin with ‘Good evening’, and then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.

To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station.

How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?

Some people are like Slinkies … not really good for anything, but you can’t help smiling when you see one tumble down the stairs.

Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish.

I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted pay checks.

A bank is a place that will lend you money, if you can prove that you don’t need it.

Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says “If an emergency, notify:” I put “DOCTOR”.

You know it’s been a long time since your last blog post when you can’t even remember your own blog address. Sheesh!  My life has not been devoid of the usual chaos; in fact, I think the problem is that the chaos has come so rapid-fire that I’ve already forgotten the last chaotic episode by the time the next one has hit me upside the head.  I really need to do a better job of writing things down to jog my memory, but it probably wouldn’t do any good, because I’d just lose the notebook.

So today, rather than write about yesterday’s mystery spider incident (if you remind me, I’ll tell you about it later), or give you the rundown of Mason’s latest come-to-the-garden-hose meeting,  I’m going to wax a little nostalgic. See, today is Mason’s 5th birthday. (Everybody on three: one…two…three—).  People always ask how old he is, and lately when I’ve been responding, “He turns 5 on the 3rd,”  I’ve noticed that does-not-compute look in their eyes. They think I must be confused—I mean, I’ve got an awful lot of kids with me, maybe I’ve mixed him up with one of the others. Not that farfetched, really. But it’s true. Five years old.

Mason enjoying his corn-free, Mason-safe birthday cake

Which is pretty incredible, seeing as how nobody thought the two of us were going to make it out of labor & delivery alive.

Oh—I should warn you: I’m not sure how funny this is going to be. It might not be funny at all. And another thing—if you know me in real life, you’ve probably heard this story before. If you have, feel free to skip it—you’ve heard it all, plus you’ve had the benefit of watching me make wild gestures while telling it. So you’ve had the experience already, feel free to pass this time around. Only don’t tell me—you know I’m really sensitive about these things.

So…five years ago today at this time I was hooked up to a pitocin drip, arguing with my OB about the fact that I didn’t want my water broken, because this would probably be my last time to experience labor (at which point she glared at The Hubby and made a snipping motion with her fingers, which he pretended not to see), and I was certain I could do it without having my water broken, and did she have ANY IDEA how painful it was to have somebody shove a crochet hook up your crotch when you were only dilated to 1/2cm?  To which she replied that my track record of dilating on my own was none-too-stellar, and she had a full day of appointments back at the office so she wouldn’t be able to come back and break my water later if my labor followed same pattern of my other three labors and refused to progress, and wouldn’t I rather have my water broken now than end up with a C-section later?

Now, I know my midwife & midwifery fan friends are horrified at that whole interchange. I really like my doctor, but she’s still a medical doctor: pretty traditional, willing to humor me most of the time, but still pretty enslaved to the whole inorganic medical way of doing things. I mean, she didn’t roll her eyes to my face when I said this was the time I was going to deliver without an epidural, but I’m pretty sure when she turned around to face my hubby, there was some behind-my-back eye-rollin’ going on.

I should also mention that my OB is a little wary of breaking my water. See, back with my first delivery 15 years ago (15 years ago next week, to be exact), while she was working her crochet-hook-torture on my undilated cervix, the following interchange took place:

ME (through clenched teeth): Has anyone ever kicked you in the face while you were doing that?
DR (somewhat worried): No….are you planning to?
ME (teeth still clenched):  No, but thinking about it is making me feel a little better….

She went on to warn all the nurses to watch out for me, that I’d threatened to kick her in the face. Which turned out not to be a bad thing—you’d be surprised how much more considerate a nurse can be when she’s trying to avoid a black eye….

So anyway, back to Mason’s birth. I caved and let her break my water, and the pitocin started doing it’s voodoo, and the pain began.

Now, if you’ve never experienced pitocin, let me scoop you (WARNING: If you’ve never given birth, just skip this paragraph. In fact, skip the whole post. I mean, not if you’re a guy. But if you’re a female of the species and have never given birth but plan to, just go have some Starbucks, really. You don’t want to read this.): Pitocin is evil. See, God designed labor so that contractions would start out gentle and progress to the whole giving birth in pain point along the way. Pitocin pretty much starts you out at if-I-meet-Eve-in-heaven-I’m-going-to-punch-her-in-the-face-for-eating-that-stupid-apple right from the starting block. About 20 minutes into it, you’re telling the nurses that your husband’s legitimacy is dubious at best, and after an hour you’re asking if they have a divorce lawyer on staff.

And I asked for this stuff. Not only that, I assured the nurse that I was a warrior, and she didn’t need to ask permission to crank it up: just go for it. Why? I’m not really sure, except to say that three previous labors had taught me that my body takes about 8 hours of hard labor to progress to 3 cm. Now, once I hit 3cm, I’m pushing within a half hour. 3cm is the transition between school bus and NASCAR. Once I hit 3cm, you’d better call the doctor, because we are passing out the cigars.

Now, the really funny thing about my desire to be at the mercy of evil pitocin is that I had also decided that this would finally be the time that I delivered without an epidural. Stop laughing. Don’t you know I’m a superhero? But the truth is, that had always been my dream. Not only that, but having read every labor & delivery how-to book on the market with my previous three pregnancies, my search for new reading material resulted in my finding a whole category of books on the dangers of epidurals. Knowing that The Hubby is a big fan of epidurals (I’ll share that story next week, for Riley’s birthday), I read him all the risks outlined in the books. It was like talking to your dog. His head kind of tilted to one side, then the other, and I’m pretty sure he was hearing “blah-blah-blah-blah-epidural.”

But I was determined not to have an epidural.

Having given birth three times already, I was pretty familiar with pitocin-induced labor pains. Pretty soon, I started realizing that this was no ordinary pitocin-induced labor. With every contraction, my eyes were threatening to leave my face, and The Hubby started pushing that epidural like a dealer from some after school special. You know you want it…it’ll make you feel goooood.…

The nurse explained that what I was feeling was back labor—Mason was face up, so instead of his nice squishy face being all nuzzled up against my tailbone, his hard bony skull was grinding against my spine. It was somewhere around this time that I got really angry at The Hubby for talking me out of spending $400 to hire a doula to come help with my labor. “You’ve had three kids—you could BE a doula, why do you need to hire one?”  Grrrrr….

But I am nothing if not a stoic. I kept moving, trying to find a position that would offer some relief from the pain. But every time I moved, the monitor would slip, and the nurse would come in to reposition it. I knew this drill—once they get tired of your monitor slipping, they screw the internal monitor to the baby’s scalp, and then you have no choice but to lay in bed. I didn’t want that to happen, so I tried not to move around too much. Finally, the pain became too unbearable. The nurse checked and explained that he was coming out face first—meaning that instead of the little round crown of his head presenting first, he was looking straight down and was trying to get the entire length of his face from chin to forehead out through a space that just 6 hours ago wasn’t even big enough for a crochet hook.

I caved.

Now, usually when I give in and things go wrong, proving that my original position was right all along, I can take solace in the fact that there will be some gloating involved, and that I will get to sport that ha-ha-I-was-right grin for at least a few hours. Notsomuch this time. As the nurse anesthetist slid the catheter in my spine, I felt a shock all the way down to the toes on my left foot. I said, “Wow—I felt  a shock all the way down to the toes on my left foot.”

It was at this point that pretty much everything went completely, horribly wrong….

She explained that the shock was a result of her puncturing my dura—which is not a good thing. She repositioned the catheter while the L&D nurse turned white and started chewing on her nails.

I was not encouraged.

It was explained to me as follows: the nurse anesthetist had misplaced the needle, puncturing my dura. With proper placement of the needle, the medicine is contained to an area that only affects the lower half of the body. However, once the dura is punctured, the medicine leaks out and has the potential to affect the upper half of the body as well.  The upper half of your body houses some pretty vital organs—specifically, your heart and lungs. I have experienced an epidural’s effects on the legs; I was fairly certain having the same thing happen to my heart and lungs would be less than good.

The process of positioning the angle of my bed took on a bizarre significance, as the nurse anesthetist measured the effect of the angle on my heart rate and blood pressure. If the angle was too flat, the medicine would travel up to my heart and lungs (told ya’—pretty vital organs) and send me into cardio-pulmonary arrest (no pumpy, no breathy). Too steep, and my blood pressure would bottom out. Either way, death was a pretty real possibility.

So they played with the angle of the bed until they found a position that the anesthetist felt wouldn’t hasten my demise. The only problem was that the little guy who caused all this chaos in the first place was not liking it at all. The nurse had turned his monitor away from us, so we couldn’t see the reading, but while she stood in the corner whispering back and forth with the anesthetist, The Hubby and I counted the beats. They were farther than a second apart. Even in my surreal stupor, I could do that math: Mason’s heartrate had been in the 150s before. Now it was somewhere below 60 beats per minute.

They didn’t share the content of their private conversations with us. They even covered their mouths with their hands as they whispered, afraid that I’d muster the focus to read their lips, I guess. I’m sure there were bigger concerns going on, but whatever those concerns were, they weren’t telling me.

The Hubby asked the nurse to call the doctor. She checked me, and said she couldn’t call because I wasn’t anywhere near a 10 yet, then went back to whispering. We should have picked up the phone and called her ourselves, but in our defense, reality was a tenous concept in the midst of the confusion. Over the course of the next hour, he asked her two more times to call. Finally, she agreed.

Less than 10 minutes after she called, my OB entered the room calmly. She’s a calm person. She looks like someone you could have been best friends with in high-school—in fact, despite the fact that she’s my age, she doesn’t look much older than a high-schooler, and she speaks in this soft, almost-hushed southern drawl. She has been with me for each of my births, and she knows my heart.

My OB sat on the edge of my bed, held my hand, and put her face close to mine. “I know you don’t want a c-section,” she said gently. “But I’m telling you, we don’t have 5 minutes to get this baby out. We have to get him out right now. They’re prepping the OR for us, but I’m going to give you one contraction to push while they’re getting it ready, okay? You think you can push real hard and get him out for us in one contraction?”

I was shaking. The epidural hadn’t had time to get out of my system—what if I couldn’t push?

She assumed her position at the end of the bed, and informed me that I was still only at a 9, but if I promised not to kick her in the face, she’d get me to a 1o.

The next contraction came, and she said “PUSH!”

And I pushed. Count of 10, deep breath. Another count of 10, another breath. Another count of 10. I could still feel the contraction, hard and tight. She said, “I can’t believe it, but you got him into the birth canal. No C-section for you, he’ll be out on the next contraction. Take a rest.”

I shook my head no and pushed again. I started out at 9 cm, pushed for about a minute, and out came Mason. Face first, even. I think I must have broken some kind of World Pushing Record.

But I didn’t get to celebrate very long.

See, I thought once he was out, everything would be fine. I was laying back on the pillow, relief washing over me. I asked, “Where’s my husband?” and one of the nurses said he’d gone out in the hall. I thought that was odd, but maybe the relief had made him emotional, too. So I looked toward the door. It was only then that I noticed that Mason’s bassinet was surrounded by a whole crew of people. They weren’t wearing the pretty, cartoon-ish scrubs that L&D or postpartum nurses wear. And they were saying things like cyanotic, and “c’mon baby, breathe….”

Finally, a woman who introduced herself as a NICU specialist of some sort brought me my baby. She said they were taking him downstairs, and that a nurse would bring me down to see him later. I asked if I could nurse him first. She looked at me as if I were crazy and said, “No.”

And then they were gone.

Mason spent the next 4 days in the NICU, during which time I cried 24 hours a day.

One of the NICU nurses told me that the mothers whose babies are really sick and who knew before hand that they would be in NICU for a while are usually much stronger; it was the mothers like me whose babies just need a little extra TLC, who expected to have their babies by their side up in postpartum—those were the mothers who had a hard time coping. The other mothers, they were celebrating the fact that their babies had already overcome a huge hurdle by surviving birth, surviving their first night, their first week. They were grateful for every scrubbing in, every 30-minute visitation. Those of us who felt slapped upside the head by the whole process walked around in a funk of tears and hormones, reliving our labor, wondering what we did wrong to land our baby here.

After I was settled in on the postpartum floor–where I could watch the nurses wheeling the other mommies’ babies down the hall—a friend of mine who just happened to be a postpartum nurse on duty, who also just happened to work for my OB back when I was pregnant with Riley—came to visit me. She told me that the entire postpartum floor had been watching our monitor feed, and that when the nurse had finally called my OB, the staff back at the doctor’s office had huddled around the monitor there as well,  and had followed Mason’s heartbeat and my vital signs remotely. She said they’d talked to each other by phone. The situation had been dire, and they had watched in horror, sharing their fears at the outcome.  The very best they had hoped for is that the anesthetist would be able to keep the epidural away from my heart & lungs, and that they could get the baby out in time to save me. Hopefully.

She said that nobody expected both of us to make it out of that room alive.

And yet here we are—here HE is, my sweet Mason. He came into the world upside-down and face-first, because that was the best way to observe all the chaos he caused…

…and in 5 years, not much has changed.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOOCHIE!!! You are my unexpected journey, my undeserved blessing. I love you!!!  XOXOXOXOX

I am all about traditions.

Take Thanksgiving, for instance. I mean, is there any other holiday so steeped in tradition as Turkey Day? I have eaten the same thing every Thanksgiving since 1968. Well, maybe since 1969. I don’t think I had teeth yet that first Thanksgiving. Although I did find a doctors note in my baby book where he recommended bacon as an appropriate first food for a 4 month old. I think it was on the same page that recommended Crisco as a sunblock. Ah, the good ol’ days….

Anyway, every Thanksgiving we have the same menu. The Hubby once asked me if I got bored eating the same meal every year. Yes, because having the same meal ONE TIME A YEAR is oh-such-a-rut….

One year I got really crazy, and changed things up by making mashed sweet potatoes instead of canned. Not only that—instead of topping them with mini-marshamallows—-I made a custard topping. I know, I am a rebel.

Since moving into the Halfway-finished House, we have developed new holiday traditions. Every year, we celebrate 4th of July at Rancho de la Roca. We spread our blanket on the lawn, I take the kids canoeing, they do some bounce-house-jumping and some snow-cone-eating, and then when darkness falls we settle back and watch the fabulous fireworks show. Afterwards, we head home for another Moreno 4th of July tradition: Daddy’s Backyard Firework Extravaganzza.

It’s generally a pretty low-key event, just me and the kids on the back porch while The Hubby sets off his wares in the pasture. There was that one last year that exploded too violently, throwing itself off The Hubby’s homemade launch stand and sending giant purple fireballs at his head. But other than that one incident, it’s pretty tame.

Until now….

Back when The Hubby and I got married—which is coming up on 20 years this September—I promised I would never let him get bored. At the time, he thought that was a good thing. He has since reminded me that there is no physical, binding document to force my compliance, and has graciously agreed to let me out of the terms of that particular arrangement. Nice try….

But really, it wasn’t my fault. I mean, it wasn’t precipitated by one of my infamous ideas or anything. The story goes like this:

We got home from Rancho de la Roca a little before 10. For some reason, Mason was scared of the fireworks this year, so rather than put him through the trauma of even more loud noises and bright lights, I went ahead and put him to bed.

I came out of his room to sheer chaos. I know—you’re shocked.

I could hear the screams of the children coming from the backyard. All three older kids were down at the chicken coop in hysterics. Ethan and Ramie were outside the coop, and Riley was inside yelling—–

—if you have a teenage daughter, you are familiar with melodrama. Now imagine a teenage girl with MY genes. Oh yeah, now you’re getting the picture….

Where was I? Oh, yeah—so, Riley is in the chicken coop, and she’s screaming, “It’s got Ethel!!! A snake has Ethel!!! It’s killing her!!! She’s not moving!!! She’s dead!!!”  Meanwhile, I come to the back door and scream back, something along the lines of, “Ethan! Get your sister OUT OF THE CHICKEN COOP NOW!!!”

Now, can I just say that if you had told me 20 years ago—10 years, even—that I would ever in my life be screaming any sentence that included the words “chicken coop,” I would have thought you were crazy. Yet, there I was, screaming for Ethan to convince Riley to get the heck out of the chicken coop.

I ran down to the coop, passing a sobbing Ramie and an exhilarated Ethan on their way up to the house. That boy thrives on some chaos. Don’t know where he gets it. Riley, meanwhile, has finally come out of the coop. She’s sobbing, too, but she’s composed enough to shine the flashlight on the far side of the chicken coop to show me where, indeed, a snake has climbed up the chicken wire among the roosting hens. And Yeti, who is decidedly not a hen, but that fact was only discovered after we’d paid for him and brought him home.

Some panic ensued here for a while. I’m not clear on all the details, but there was some confused running up and down the hill between the house and the coop, some “WHERE IS YOUR FATHER?” being shouted back and forth, some “GO TELL YOUR FATHER TO BRING THE SHOVEL,” and some ear piercing wailing courtesy of the 6 year old, who was sure Ethel was that snake’s belated 4th of July chicken picnic dinner.

I do remember grabbing the flashlight from Riley, and showing The Hubby where the snake had cozied up to the sleeping chickens. I found the snake’s head, and because I like to think myself some sort of pit viper expert (mostly just because I really like saying the words, “pit viper”), determined that he was not, in fact, a venomous snake. At least, he wasn’t a Texas venomous snake. You know, you can never really be sure that someone didn’t buy one of those exotic ultra-deadly imports, get tired of supplying it with live rats, and release it into the wild. But in the heat of the moment, I was comfortable with my assessment.

Besides, it bore an uncanny resemblance to the snake that only a few weeks before had leapt out at me as I tried to determine whether itwas venomous. If you heard that story, you will remember that the hubby didn’t wait for my answer before severing the beasts head from its body.

Now, I am not a snake hater. In fact, I really like snakes. They eat nasty rodents. Nasty rodents that invade your garage and make nests in boxes of wedding keepsakes that you have no choice but to throw away because there is no amount of sanitizing that is going to take “rodent” out of a bouquet of silk flowers. I have coffee mugs that I’ve bleached, scalded, and run through the dishwasher ten times, and I still can’t bring myself to drink out of them. I save them for company.

But a snake’s gotta know his place. Me, human. Dominion over all the animals. You, snake. Crawl on your belly on the dust of the earth. And leave my chickens alone. Genesis, right?

So I have my flashlight expertly trained (it’s an art) on the snake’s head, while The Hubby deftly pins him to the chicken wire with the shovel. Now, chicken wire isn’t really the firmest of surfaces. The snake is pinned, but The Hubby can’t really do any severing, because there’s too much give. The snake isn’t really contemplating the give factor of chicken wire; he’s just looking for something to hold on to. And it just so happens that the closest thing to him is…Ethel.

Before I knew what was happening, the wily serpent had his body wound around Ethel’s body. Ramie is watching out the back door in tears. I’m still feeling mommyguiltfrom having to put the cat down last month; no way am I going to be able to face the 6 year-old and tell her the snake killed her chicken.

So I did the only thing I could do. I grabbed the snake. Of course I did. Doesn’t that sound just like the kind of idiot thing I would do? “How’d ya get those two holes in your arm, Ashley?” “Oh…see there was this snake…” So I have a hold of the snake, and he’s coiling tighter around the chicken, and I’m worrying that my pit viper identification skills far outweigh my constrictor identification skills, and it hits me that I’m not sure which way to pull the snake. I mean, there aren’t really any directional markers on a snake, no easy way to tell “front” from “back”. Wrong way, and I’ve tightened the noose.

Now, the chickens have evidently been to the Jurassic Park T-Rex school of Snake Avoidance, because during this whole time, Ethel does…not…move. None of them do. They are still as bricks. Puffy feathered bricks. Kind of like the squirrel scene in Christmas Vacation, where Diane Ladd is laying unconscious on the floor, and Chevy Chase whispers, “Mom—don’t move!”  (Yes, I just fit two completely different movie references into one paragraph. My blog, my rules to break…).

So as I’m trying to solve the Chinese rope puzzle that is the snake, I say to The Hubby, “Whatever you do, don’t let it get away.”  To which he replies—

“TOO LATE!”

Now, I ask you: does the snake go for the guy who’s been trying to separate his spine at the base of his skull? No. He goes for the crazy woman who has ahold of the rest of his body. So the snake makes a go at me, I throw him to the ground and grab a rake—which The Hubby commandeers, because evidently my rake handling skills don’t live up to my snake handling skills—and The Hubby chops his head of with the shovel. I like to think he put extra vengeance into the act; you know, like “Take THAT, you vile viper. Try to bite my wife, will you?”

I have no pictures of the snake. So I can’t disprove The Hubby’s claim that the snake was only 4 feet long, not 6. And there is no video of the event, either, so The Hubby can’t prove I said anything stronger than, “Oh my goodness.” His word against mine….

I am directing today’s message directly to the male of the species, specifically to those who inhabit a dwelling shared with one or more females of the species.

It may have thus far escaped your notice that we women are plumbed differently than men. This difference in equipment dictates that we do not have regular occasion to lift that ring of contention known as “the toilet seat.” That’s not to say that there aren’t those among us who, at some point during our formative years, didn’t experiment just to revel in the liberation of  carrying out certain necessities of nature while standing upright. But such attempts are generally one-time occurrences, being met with varying degrees of failure  and subsequent clean-up efforts.

And coincidentally, it is the very topic of “clean-up efforts” that concerns us today. For you see, having but rare motivation to lift the seat, those of us who lack a Y chromosome are ignorant—perhaps blissfully so—of the ecosystem which from time to time lays claim to the territory below. In fact, it is generally a great shock when we do find ourselves exploring the porcelain realm of man and discover the proliferation of flora and fauna establishing their colonies like coral along the Great Barrier Reef.

While diversity of life is to be celebrated in the ocean or the rainforest, the underside of the toilet seat is a different matter entirely.

It’s called a Clorox wipe. Would it kill you to use it?

I am running away from home. Don’t try and stop me.

As far as my destination is concerned, I’m not all that picky. Some less-traveled European berg along the Normandy coast, some as-yet-undiscovered-by-tourists island where locals sit at brightly-painted cantina tables swapping stories. Or Morocco. Would I have to wear a burqha in Morocco? Just someplace where the passage of time is unimportant. Somewhere without schedules. And without laundry.

I’m not sure exactly which straw broke the proverbial camel’s back. Maybe it was the child who swore that he’d already unloaded the dishwasher, despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary.

Or maybe it was the shopping cart that rolled off the curb while I was putting groceries in the car, tipping over on its side, leaving two dozen eggs to hemorrage slowly on the blacktop…

…or the myriad cross-county trips in a vehicle with a broken air conditioner…

…or the fact that after an entire winter of complaining about the fact that the cold weather had rendered my garage-door opener  just that—an OPENER, and not a CLOSER, which meant that I had to get out of the truck, pull the release cord, jump up and grab the door and pull it down by hand (no small feat since there isn’t a handle on the outside of the door), and then upon returning home had to squeeze my fingers underneath the closed door and lift it all the way up, then fight to get it back on track so it would stay open for me to back the truck in (inhale)—after all these months, the release cord BROKE, so now the garage door opener is just a big black box o’nothin’ hanging from the ceiling…

…or the dog who managed to wrap her chain around me before bounding toward the yard, nearly severing my leg at the ankle, or the senile cat who’s taken to jumping up on the kitchen counter and drinking out of my water cup, knocking it over in the process.

Or maybe—just maybe—it was the fact that Mason not only learned to say “SHUT UP!” this week, but also how to turn doorknobs, which is oh-so-convenient since I didn’t realize when we built the house that we were going to have another child so I picked the interesting, egg-shaped doorknobs that don’t fit inside the plastic keep-your-child-from-opening-doors covers; OR the fact that I have had it UP TO HERE with packing a school lunch every morning for the 6 year-old who is neither a sandwich person nor a macaroni-&-cheese person, nor a—well, you can pretty much just fill in that blank with anything other than candy, because I have yet to find out what kind of person she is; OR the fact that the 14 year-old has tricked-out her trademark eye-roll by adding a Clint Eastwood-style upper-lip sneer; OR the 10 year-old who agreed to play with the 6 year-old on the condition that she pay him in Easter candy….

You know I could go on….

In the tumultuous years between junior high and high school, I planned to run away several times. We had a heavy, solid wood double garage door that sounded like a freight train when it opened, so I’d prop a tire underneath it before I’d go to bed, thinking I could just slide underneath unnoticed. I always changed my mind. But once I was so mad at my father that I actually snuck down to the garage with my packed duffle bag, only to find the door closed and locked, the tire propped up against the wall. That was the end of my runaway aspirations.

During a summer trip to Europe, I ditched my school group and hopped the train across Germany to visit the blond Bavarian guy I’d fallen in love with in West Berlin. There was something so liberating about being on my own at that point in my life. The next morning, my roommate called to tell me I’d better get my butt back to the hotel, because she was running out of things to tell the chaperone about where I was.

I read a short story once. I mean, I’ve read more than one short story, of course. I’m just referring to one in particular. I think it was in my Good Housekeeping magazine. My mother keeps renewing my subscription. I guess she’s hoping one day maybe it will elevate my housekeeping to the realm of “good,” or at least, “okay.” So far…notsomuch. But I really love the magazine, so I hope she doesn’t give up on me just yet.

I was going somewhere with that…Oh, yeah—short story. Got it. Anyway, it was about this woman who runs away from home. She checks into a hotel, orders room service, goes to the spa, watches whatever the heck she wants on tv without anyone complaining that Suite Life on Deck is on and it’s an episode they’ve only seen 17 times. She actually—get this—puts her dishes out in the hallway for someone else to wash when she’s through with them. And she gets to eat her own dill pickle spear without three sets of forlorn eyes begging her for it. And she can have a glass of wine at lunchtime because she’s not going to have to drive to pick anyone up from school. Her family calls to ask when she’s coming home…and she tells them she doesn’t know.

In the end, of course, she packs her bags and catches a cab to the airport, where I’m certain she must have had a few lemondrop martinis before boarding. She probably convinced herself that her family would have a renewed sense of appreciation for her when she returned, that they would start putting their own dishes in the dishwasher and feeding the dogs without having to be repeatedly reminded over the course of 3 hours.

And I’m pretty sure she was right…for a day or two.

Up until last June,  I hadn’t spent a night away from my kiddos in nearly 14 years. Hadn’t woken up to a child-free house, hadn’t gone a day without somebody calling me from across the house to come wipe at least one body part. So when one of my writing buddies asked if I was going to the Writers’ League of Texas annual Writers and Agents Conference, I couldn’t help but feel that twinge of exhilaration at the thought of going off on my own for a few days. A hotel room. Alone. No noise. Nobody calling me to come wipe anything.

So I went. And it was wonderful. So wonderful, in fact, that when it came time to pack my bags on Saturday night, I was a little sad. I missed my family terribly—I called home several times a day just to hear their voices. But I could have used one more day—just one more day of quiet. I spent a few hours that last night just sitting on the bed doing nothing. It was blissful.

Back at home the next day, I was greeted by an offensive-line worthy rush at the door. There were some shouts of “MOMMY!!!” and “yea!!!” and “I missed you so much!” There were eight arms wrapped around me and a couple of sets of feet trying to climb up me. And somehow I managed to hug all four of them at the same time while dragging them to the couch for some much-needed snuggle time. It’s amazing how much you can miss somebody—a bunch of somebodies. And we haven’t even gotten to the ‘welcome home’ I got from The Hubby yet. And we’re not going to, either.

So maybe I don’t want to run away. I mean, these people might drive me crazy at times, but I love them. Fiercely. I’ve got a pretty sweet gig. Not a day goes by that they don’t prove once again how much God must love me to have planted me squarely in their midst. And while I realize I need some alone time now and then, for the most part, whatever I do is better when I do it with them.

But if I suddenly turn up missing, you might want to check Starbucks….

I read a book last week.

Seriously–I did. Cover to cover. Including the prologuey-intro part. I had to lock myself in the bathroom to do it, but I read it.

No doubt you are asking yourself, what book could be so riveting that Ashley finally broke her longstanding record of not managing to read anything longer than SkippyJon Jones? Well, I’ll tell you, because I hate to keep you in unnecessary suspense.

The book is My Bangs Look Good…And Other Lies I Tell Myself: A Tired Supergirl’s Search for Truth, by Susanna Foth Aughtmon.

Right off the bat the title had me hooked, because there is a reason why I don’t wear bangs. Just sayin’.

Now, I have to tell you—this woman is my soul sistah. Case in point: in relating a story of an unfortunate laundry injury, Aughtmon writes, “I always knew the laundry was a tool of Satan.” OHMYGOSH—ME TOO!!! Can I get a “AMEN,” fellow soul sistahs?

Aughtmon’s writing is fresh and conversational. Her anecdotes are you’d-better-read-this-with-your-legs-crossed-if-you’ve-given-birth-more-than-once funny. But it’s not just a collection of funny stories. See, each chapter addresses a different lie the Liar (that would be Satan) uses to defeat us Tired Supergirls (oh— when you read the book, you get to be a member of the Tired Supergirl club. I mean, there’s not like a form to fill out, or an official membership card stuck between page 12 and 13 or anything like that. It’s like a secret sistahood of superness. And tiredness…).

On the subject of whether God really cares about each of us as individuals (because you know the Liar would love to have us believe that He doesn’t), Aughtmon uses the example of  her love for her own children:

“I am surrounded by three small people almost all day long…they still tend to cling to my legs or lie on me or breath very near to my face almost every day. Every once in a while I just yell out, ‘Everybody give me some room!’ This works for about 3.7 seconds, and then I am back to being swarmed. But the thing is, I would do anything for these three little people. I think about them almost all the time. I will do kung fu on anyone who tries to harm them. (I don’t even know kung fu, but I’m sure it will come to me if and when I need it.)”

 I personally like the image of Jesus breaking out the spiritual kung fu on my behalf.

One of my constant struggles is hearing God’s voice. Sometimes I think that because it took me so long to finally submit to listening to Him (okay, in the interest of truth and accountability and stuff, the whole submitting thing is still a work in progress. Don’t judge.), that my ears aren’t tuned in to Him like they should be. I am easy pray for the Liar when he says (in Susanna’s words): “Obviously, God has someone else he would rather talk to. There are certain people that he talks to, like pastors and small group leaders and Beth Moore, and then there is you. You? Not so much.”

Of course, God has given us the truth in His word. In each chapter, Susanna cites applicable scripture that speaks to the tired supergirl’s heart to confront the lies.

Many of my friends—not just my real life, hug you on the way out of church friends, but those sweet cyber-friends that I am so blessed to have met through the blog and the FB Down syndrome community—have told me, “You need to take everything you blog about and put it into a book.” I love when people say that, because it makes me feel all loved and validated and stuff. And I’d love to write a book like that, if I ever finish the novel I’m {THIS CLOSE} to finishing.

But while you’re waiting (and knowing me, it could be a long wait), you should totally check out My Bangs Look Good. Just don’t forget to cross your legs….

Seriously, go get the book. It’s available NOW at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group. Oh, and from Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/goodbangs  And in the meantime, you can check out Susanna’s blog, Confessions of a Tired Supergirl. It’s on my blogroll, over ———-> there.