Family Values

I have officially experienced the brunt of my scathing tell all blog. My mother- in- law was pissed about what I wrote about her mother, then my sister- in- law (and probably brother- in- law) got pissed about what I wrote about their aunt. I must now clear a few things up.

Number 1: Crazy Cat Lady is not a bitch. I was annoyed when I wrote that statement, but she is really a very nice person. There is nothing wrong with being a crazy cat lady. I am a crazy cat lady in training. As I said before, I have all the makings. It is very dramatic the way we react to our pets interactions, and the way we treat the owners as a result.

Number 2: The new family is not the only crazy family I interact with. My own family is super nuts also. This is not a bad thing in either circumstance. I am spending the bulk of my time with the new family right now, so they are who I interact with the most. Of course they end up with starring roles. Later, I will tell a story about my crazy mother so that no one feels left out.

Number 3: All the things I write are caricature's and exaggerations! Hopefully you, my readers, already know that. Hopefully this will give the new family some peace of mind, to know that all those reading this are being informed that not all that is said should be taken literally.

Now, for the smack talking I promised about my own family. Though my family has had a long history of crazy, we'll start with my mom.

My mom has always said that she doesn't believe in punishment, but rather natural consequences of your actions. I will tell the story of the ultimate consequence that I experienced when I was 16.

I snuck a boy into the house at night. He was my boyfriend at the time, and I loved him like no one has loved a man before. (Correction, I loved him like all 16 year olds love boys their parents don't like.) He was supposed to leave before my parents woke up, but we fell asleep. Stupid teenagers!

In the morning, my mother knocked on the door to let me know I had to get ready for school. At the time I was going to a charter school. I took most of my classes at home and met with a teacher periodically to go over my work and get tested. This was going to enable me to graduate early and, I thought, get into college with scholarships.

I took a shower. The plan was for the boy to get out when we left, and stay quiet until that time. Good plan, right? Wrong. While I was in the shower, the boy decided to munch on the chips from the night before. My ever clever mother heard the bag crinkling from outside my bedroom door. But I was in the shower, how could there be a bag crinkling in my room? She caught him! Red handed!

So what, you ask, might the natural consequences be in this matter? Well, first she had him arrested for trespassing. A perfectly natural response. Then she went to my school, without me. I thought maybe she would be picking up my new books for me but was to angry to take me with her. I was terrified of the yelling and screaming that I knew was coming when she got home. So I left. When the cops were done talking to me, I just left. I didn't come back for almost a week. The story of that week is a story for another time.

Upon my return, ready to face the music and get back to my dreary, boyless life, I found out that my mother had not picked up my new books for me. In fact, she had pulled me out of my school! She had taken it upon herself to take me out of my fast track to college school and enroll me in the regular high school, where I'd have to take the whole year at a snails pace!!! Of course, I boycotted and refused to go. I told her I wanted to finish at my own school, It was only going to take the rest of the semester and I'd be graduating more than a year early. My protest was recognized. She pulled me out of the traditional school after not attending a single day. She enrolled me in continuation school!!! Even worse, no one gets into college from a continuation school!!! I went for one week and did so much extra work, they graduated me the following Monday.

So this is the natural consequence of sneaking a boy into your mother's house, apparently. Your educational record smeared and college delayed. Man, I learned my lesson! To this day, my mom will tell you that it was because of my grades she pulled me out. But take a look at my transcript and you will find that I was getting A's and B's.

Of course, there are many more stories about my family that I could tell, but I want to save them for a book about another time. There is the one about how my best friends mom called cps (the public display), a myriad of trials and tribulations arising from her choice in men, the annual beat downs when she 'just couldn't take it anymore', the eating disorders fostered by being her 'chunky buddy' on every diet fad you can imagine. Just a taste so you know to read the next book. That is of course assuming that this ever becomes a book.

Gotta Go

Short Bitch Fest

It is 10:30pm, I just got off an 11 hour shift. I'm tired and I'm sweaty and I don't really feel like writing but I am because I'm also annoyed.

Last time we stayed with New Grandma, New Aunt had already moved in with her. (This is not the aunt previously mentioned in other blogs. I still love that woman.) Anyways, New Grandma found the most non- confrontational way to make my time there miserable. She moved the furniture around when New Aunt moved in with her (all names will be inserted when I think of fake ones I can stick with) so that both guest beds were in one room and New Aunt's bed is in the other. She put New Aunt in the room with two beds so that in order to be in the same room as my husband, I have to sleep on the floor!

New Aunt can be classified as the crazy cat lady. I've always joked that I would end up the crazy cat lady. I love cats and I hate men, I want a new kitten every six months like my biological clock doesn't recognize my species. I'm the perfect candidate, but this woman takes the cake.

My cat, Anastasia (real name here) got into a scuffle with her cat, fluffy pussy (not real name). When I say scuffle, I mean scuffle. Not a fight, not a knock down, drag out brawl, just a scuffle. It is very common for cats that are new to each other. This woman is no longer speaking to me because my cat was mean to her cat. Of course, I can't say I'm surprised. We are, after all, talking about a woman that keeps cats in her freezer when they die. Not beloved pets that are being preserved until their final resting place is determined. I'm talking about cats no one else has ever seen before, 'preserving' them for months at a time.

My mother in law read the blog about her mother. She told me she understood the nature of the blog and that in order to make it interesting, I needed to talk some shit. After all, her mother is crazy anyway. Come to find out, she's just started talking shit behind my back now. I just changed the URL of my blog so that she can't read it.

Crazy cat lady is here now with her sister, the aunt I love, where we are staying. They are watching the tony awards and she is glaring at my cats. Bitch.

I'm going to go take a damn shower.

Oh! And Bobby fell down, and sprained his ankle, slammed his hand in the hood of his new crappy car and went to the hospital while I was at work. None of this is going to postpone his surgery, but you would think that now is the time to be paranoid about hurting himself. When I say his new crappy car, I'm talking about the Catalina he traded his Honda for. It is a classic, but it is a hunk of junk. Just like a little child he is with his cars.

I love my husband, I love my husband, I love my husband.

I just keep repeating it to myself.

I love my husband enough to put up with his family.

You know, if I wrote a bunch of crap about my mom she'd just laugh and say, "If I were normal, I'd be boring."

Stay tuned for next post when I talk shit about my mom.

Purely Selfish

I know that in this time where my husband is having such difficulty it is incredibly selfish to think much about myself, but sometimes I can't help it.

You see, last night I noticed that somehow I've gotten fat again. What is this shit all about?! I thought that I was having no time to eat with all the crap I've been doing, but apparently that doesn't make a difference.

My thighs have been filled with cottage cheese without my knowledge or consent. (gnomes?) That cute, sexy little crease where your butt cheek meets the back of your leg could now hold a pencil.

My husband just walked in and told me that I'm not fat. He's a super good lier, you know, coming from the family that talks about nothing.

Back to me, this is the purely selfish blog.

Anyways, so now I'm fat. Maybe not quite fat, but well on the way. I suppose it shouldn't matter now that I'm married. I mean, who am I trying to impress?

Here's the real concern. With Bobby about to have open heart surgery, we are going to have a period of a few months with no sex. This will be a huge strain. Even as sick as he is, he's always able to muster up the energy for that particular activity.

With the decreased activity (not doin' it) plus the extra chocolate cravings from not getting any, I can only expect to get fatter. I'm really not that superficial, If I get fat it isn't the end of the world.

But what if I get big enough so that I break the fragile little post- op body of my husband?! All the bouncing around will be hard enough without a 700 pound woman on top of a cracked sternum.

And forget about him being on top. That will just be to much work for him.

Maybe with my newly emerging creases and folds we can play a new game, hide the pencil. I'm sure I could get a whole box under my bosom. What do you think, America?

That's all for now. I have to go try to haggle with a man who barely speaks English to try to trade Bobby's car for a crappy but classic car that he's in love with. The things we do for love.

Comment if you know anything about car restoration.

What It's Really Like to Die

Bobby died.

Don't worry, though, it didn't stick. When he first got sick 11 years ago, Bobby died for about 3 minutes. I asked him the other day what it's like to die. When you hear about these experiences, often times you also hear about someone's personal belief system and how their theology was confirmed whilst choosing between life of death. I've always thought it was interesting that no matter the religion's stance on life after death, it happens exactly the way the 'book' says it will for that person. It is interesting to find out what happened for an atheist.

Nothing!

During the actual 3 minutes of death, nothing at all happened. Not even a dark sense of oblivion. Literally an absence of time and awareness- nothing. Doctors were doing stuff, then they were doing other stuff.

But that doesn't mean the experience doesn't make for a good story. I will tell it to you now.

They were just figuring out that it was the heat that was causing all the health problems my Bobby was suffering from. They decided they needed to do a biopsy. When going into the heart with the needle, they nicked a nerve which ultimately caused the temporary death of my baby.

First there was extreme, excruciating pain. Nothing else existed except this white hot compression of the chest that hurt more than a thousand paper cuts in a lemonade pool.

Then the heat set in. Hot like the sun only two feet away all over his body. He thought maybe he was going to be one of those cases of spontaneous combustion. It seemed to fit, him being part of a mysterious phenomenon, after all the time it took to figure out his heart was causing symptoms of heart failure.

Then the heat went away and in came the cold. It started inside and worked it's way out to the skin, like he'd eaten a popsicle way to fast but magnified times a million. He shivered and his teeth chattered and he could barely complain. But, because he's a pro, complain he did.

Then he had to go potty, and he told the doctors as much.

They asked, "Which one? Number one or number two?"

Bobby said, "Both."

And then he flatlined!!!! That was going to be the last word out of his mouth!! "Both"! Can you imagine?! The last words ever spoken by such a smart and loved person being to inform hospital personnel that he had to shit and pee at the same time!

Thank goodness he didn't die for good, he'll be around a bit longer to say more things.

Now he knows, and he's making a list even, that he needs to think carefully about all things he says before and during any medical procedure.

I think he's settled on his last words being, "Make sure you eat my brains to gain my knowledge."

Bad Ass

I've been thinking a lot about Bobby's surgery and how our lives will change afterwards. He's going to have an external pacemaker for a while, and then he will have a giant scar. The scar might even poke up through t- shirts. I know that when people see it who don't know him, at the beach, at a pool or water park, they are going to ask what happened. I thought maybe this will be a good opportunity to mess with people. Here are some things I came up with to make him seem like a bad ass when someone asks the question: What happened to your chest?

I got stung by a stingray, just like the crocodile hunter.

I was guest starring on an episode of 'Deadliest Catch', those swordfish are bad asses.

You know that scene in 'Alien'? It can really happen!

I wanted to see if it really looked like the hearts on a valentine's day card. I was the only person who would give consent.

This is what really happens when you masturbate to much.

I got the five point heart exploding technique from 'Kill Bill', but the guy messed it up.

I had a box put in for my weed, the cops will never find it now.

Chocolate

Doctors are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get. And, you always feel a little guilty but happy none the less after you eat them.

Forgive me for lagging a bit on my blogging duties, I've been stuck without Internet since my last entry.

I believe I last told you of the great foot problem of 2009. Bobby was going to have surgery on the 28th, but then he hurt his foot. When he went to the ER because the swelling was unbearable, they told him it was cellulitis, an infection of the skin. They admitted him with IV antibiotics.

After a day or so, the swelling went down a bit but not much. The redness was subsiding to a purpely color. Bobby had extreme diarrhea and stomach cramping, common if you are killing all the good bacteria in your digestive system with antibiotics. Not as common if there is a lot of bad bacteria for your body to focus on.

At this point, I began voicing concern to the doctor. She had not contacted the cardiac team that Bobby works with (located at a different hospital). They didn't even know he wasn't coming in for surgery. Bobby had not had a fever once since the whole thing started. The doctor assured me that the antibiotics were working because the swelling was going down.

I began to think, the swelling could have gone down just as a function of being in bed with his foot elevated. I did some research and his foot didn't look like any of the pictures I found of cellulitis. I began to wonder if there was ever any infection at all.

We told the doctor that we wanted a transfer to the hospital where his cardiac team was to get a second opinion. She said no.

She told us that she was working with other doctors in the infectious disease department and was sure, absolutely positive, that she was doing the right thing. None of these doctors had actually been in to see the foot. At this point, his heart surgery, a potentially life saving treatment, was being delayed indefinitely until an incompetent doctor who didn't know his case said it was safe.

We told her we wanted a second opinion regardless of what she thought, and she said no! I happen to know it is our right to get second, third and fourth opinions if we want them. She was not informing us of why she thought it was an infection, not giving the names of other doctors supposedly working on the case, and not treating him as a whole person. She had tunnel vision on the foot and was not making a point to monitor all the other parts of his body that might be affected by his heart.

We just left. We walked out of the hospital and it is in his chart forever that he went against medical advice and refused treatment.

We went to the good hospital the next day and guess what. There was never an infection!!! The doctor there said she didn't know why anyone would have thought there was!!! He could have had the surgery on time!!! Now it has been rescheduled twice already. Three times really. Once they told him there were no openings until July. We were able to get on calender for the 6th of this month, tomorrow, but found out today that the nurse who booked us made a mistake. Now it is on for a week from Thursday and I have had to call my bosses over and over to request time off and on and off again.

How unlucky can this guy get? I mean, this is enough for me to deal with, but how about him? You're going to live, nope die, wait we can fix you, but not for a few weeks. All I have to say is that after that much college, people should know how to organize a bit better.

Bright side: We have an extra week to get in some extra sex before the surgery.

Damn Sickies

I know a recurring theme of my writings has been the upcoming surgery of my husband. It was to be on Thursday, the day after tomorrow. I had finally resigned myself to this fact and come to accept that it was for the best. I arranged time off work, his mom and dad arranged time off work. Now it is to be delayed by some bullshit infection that isn't even life threatening.

Isn't it funny how when someone is in the hospital for a dire illness, something that is potentially life threatening and very severe, you are consumed with nothing but good thoughts for them, worry, love and a somehow frantic sense of helplessness? But when someone is in the hospital for something minor, something that requires inpatient treatment but is in no way life threatening, doesn't even threaten long term symptoms or recover, you're just annoyed.

It started on Friday morning. Bobby said his ankle was a little sore. We thought nothing of it, he's a fragile guy and joint pain is nothing out of the ordinary. When I came home from work that night, he said is was worse. Again, no big deal. He had driven to a friends house that day in a car with a manual transmission and then spent the afternoon working on a different car. Of course if you spend an hour pushing in a clutch and then don't rest even when you're done driving it will worsen joint pain.

On Saturday morning swelling commenced with a bruise. Still not to concerned. It looked like maybe he had banged it on something, he should keep it elevated and ice it. His aunt offered to drive him to the doctor before she went to visit her mother (an hour away) just to make sure everything was ok. The reason he didn't have his surgery last month was, after all, because of a sprained ankle. (You can't be on crutches after heart surgery because they crack your sternum open.) He turned her down, thought it wasn't necessary.

By Saturday night the swelling had migrated down to his foot and we thought maybe, when he banged it, it had broken a bone. Those bones in your feet are tiny and easily fractured. He couldn't walk and we were concerned that if he needed crutches, we'd have to delay the surgery.

On Sunday, his aunt came back from her mom's house and took him to the ER. (I was working during all this time like a good wife.) Unfortunately, Bobby has a tendency to get sick on the weekends so that he has to go to the ER because it can't wait until Monday even when it isn't an emergency.

Guess what it turned out to be. An Infection! Can you believe it?! It wasn't even an injury. He has celulitis, some weird flesh eating bacterial infection! What the *&^% is this about? This guy should be in the Guinness book for unluckiest man ever. So now he has to be in the hospital for several days getting IV antibiotics even though he feels fine. (It sucks even more to be stuck in the hospital when you feel fine.) And he has to reschedule his surgery, all the family has to rework their schedules. So lame.

Ever the optimist, I have found the silver lining in this situation though. (Aside from the super cool pics I got of his foot looking like a poorly preserved ham, you know, the kind that's been cooked, ground, pressed into what the manufacturer thinks is the right shape for a ham and then packed in water.) That silver lining is the show we got in the ER.

I was still at work when I got the call that he was being admitted. My boss was kind enough to let me go early to be there with him. He was still in the ER when I got to the hospital, so that's where I went. At first security wouldn't let me go back because they were having 'an issue' in 'A' unit. This means that someone is going crazy and they can't take the risk of letting people not covered by worker's comp back there.

I was so curious I just had to get back there! Luckily, the security man had already made me my badge (they give you a sticker with your picture on it before you go back). When someone came out of the buzzing doors, I just went in. (I'm pretty familiar with how to get around an ER at this point.) I first went to C unit, where Bobby was, to check on him and bring him his blanket from home. (Again, like a good wife.) The crazy lady had wandered over to his unit, what luck!

Let me just say before going on that the humanitarian in me feels bad about making fun of this woman. Clearly she was in a tragic and desperate situation, from her point of view, and needed psychiatric attention which was not being made available to her. Were I a politician, this would be an issue that would sit on the forefront of my platform.

That being said, we already know that I'm a huge supporter of inappropriate humor. Even the humanitarian in me is crass, rude, and can find the funny in all crappy situations.

This woman was short and round with thinning curls shooting out of her head like snakes. We'll call her Medusa. She had a full smile with at least a piece of each tooth left, leather like olive skin eyes so wide I thought they might fall out of her face. Her expression reminiscent of the one's on horses face when there is a fight scene in an old fashioned movie- teeth bared and eyes rolling with violent fear and rage. All this with a Hawaiian shirt and cute little capri pants!

There was nothing obviously wrong with Medusa's physical health. I couldn't figure out if she was there for herself of someone else accept that staff kept telling her to go back to her own room. She was wandering around screaming in a language I could not decipher (I'm not confident it was a language that anyone but her speaks.) She was clearly pleading with the people in charge for help but could not form words. After a bit of being ignored, she started to make herself at home. She layed down in the middle of the hallway and was almost run over by a crash cart. She sat down in a vacant chair in the nurse's station and started playing with the computer. She walked up to a patient waiting in the hallway, sleeping, and began braiding the woman's hair. This went on for well over an hour, probably the reason that it took so long to get Bobby admitted into the hospital.

Eventually, they got the woman out of the ER. I spoke to a nurse who told me that they just discharged her back onto the street. They couldn't find anything wrong with her and she wasn't a kaiser member, so they let her loose. Now the story gets sad again. Her actions were funny while I watched them, but couldn't they at least call the police? She was clearly chargeable for disturbing the peace. This would put her 'in the system', making it possible for the state to pick up the tab for at least a 72 hour watch in a mental facility.

You know, I always just ramble on in these things (blogs). Everything goes straight from my head to the computer. I really thought at the beginning of this that it was going to be about my frustration with the delay of Bobby's surgery for something much less worrisome than his heart problem. Then I thought I would lighten it up a bit with the funny crazy lady. It ended up being a social commentary about a very real problem in this country with the way the medical industry (and it is an industry) is run. Funny how the mind works.

Maybe I should get in touch with Michael Moore