Vacation.  HA!  That is hilarious.

So I’ve been missing again.  I received an awesome reminder via my email that it has been FOUR MONTHS since my last blog post.  Which just sounds wrong.  I refuse to believe it’s been that long.  But I digress.

We have less than two weeks until school starts here and I’m having conflicted emotions because this is the first time BOTH of my kids will be in school full time.  I want to be sad about it, but I’m ecstatic.  Maybe that makes me a bad person.  But whatever.

So what, you might ask, has been taking up all my time this summer?  Well the vast majority of it has been trying to keep my children alive.  You would be surprised how hard that is.  It requires feeding them, breaking up ridiculous fights, and trying not to murder them.  If you murder them, then honestly why did you bother doing all of those other things?  It would just be silly.   So I find that I’ve been saying “Just go away!”  a lot.  Because I can’t murder you if we aren’t in the same room.  I’m not Carrie.

So the keeping alive of the children was especially difficult this summer because the hubs and I decided we each needed our own vacation.  In the hospital.  A month apart.

I have to say, that my husband was at least courteous enough to wait until baseball season had ended.  The night of Slugger’s last game, he started to complain about a pain in his knee.  He hadn’t done anything to it, but he’s notorious for having horrible joints and being that he spends the entire day on his feet, we didn’t think a whole lot of it at first.  But then he went into work the next morning and couldn’t even stand.  He had to come home and tried to convince me that his giant, red hot knee wasn’t that serious.  I wasn’t convinced and long story short, he ended up hospitalized with an infection under his knee cap.  There were lots of antibiotics involved and a surgery to drain it.  After a little less than a week, he came home.  It was weird and scary.  I didn’t like it.  Not a highlight of my summer.

While this was going down, Pixie decided she wanted to participate in the Little Miss “Insert name of our town here” pageant this year.  So, while her father was in surgery, we were standing around in a super hot field, waiting to see what tiny person would be crowned.  My daughter had NO CLUE what any of this entailed, but was super excited because she knew she got to wear a dress and stand on a stage.  Which is more or less all she did, along with flashing the judges her underpants randomly whenever she felt nervous.  She didn’t win, but now we know for sure she’s my kid.Even though she didn’t win, she received prizes for being a runner-up.  Prizes = Winning.  So she promptly left there telling everyone she met that she was the winner and the new Little Miss.  Eh.  Whatever.  You do you, Boo.

So this brings us to July.  My hubs was recovered and back to work.  He stubbornly went back before being cleared by the surgeon and then rubbed it in my exasperated face when the surgeon agreed with him at his next follow up.  Men.

July started out as a pretty magical time.  Our school does a summer enrichment program for all grades INCLUDING the kids going into Kindergarten.  So both of my snowflakes were signed up faster than you can say “BYE KIDS!”.  It was about three hours a day/four days a week.  Which is perfect for both of us to get used to the idea.  I would love to say that I was productive during this time, but seriously it was only three hours.  You can’t do anything in three hours, so I didn’t even try.  I caught up on some reading.  Because then I was learning things too and everyone was better educated after those three hours.  At least that’s what I tell myself.  Notice Slugger’s completely mismatched socks.  This kid.  He’s going to be the death of me.

Speaking of Slugger, he turned ten at the end of July.  I’m still in denial.  I’ve covered the many things I’m not qualified for and having a ten year old is just another thing to add to that ever-growing list.  I mean, I was ten not that long ago.  I don’t know what I’m doing here.  I have no idea.  Soon we’re going to be having THE TALK and seriously, I’m not qualified to lead THE TALK.  And my husband won’t have THE TALK, because he, well, doesn’t talk.  WHAT THE HELL!?  I can’t do this.  I need to huff some Stress Away.  I’ll be back.

Ok.  Let’s not talk about that again.

Here’s the part where we get to my tale of misery and woe.  Let me preface this by saying: the only time I’ve been hospitalized was when I was birthing my children and though I didn’t enjoy it, at least I went home with a prize.  Like, “Sorry that was painful!  Here, have a baby!”  I can deal with that.  This wasn’t like that.

Things are about to get gross.  You’ve been warned.

I woke up one morning with weird stomach pain.  Now, this isn’t THAT unusual for me because I’ve had weird stomach pain for a good portion of my life.  The fact that I HAVEN’T had any pains in a while was more unusual.  But any way…

So I think that these are the pains I used to get and I bust out my Digize.  Then I ate some yogurt, because in my head I was all “Yogurt has probiotics”.  I ended up regretting that, because only a few moments later, I ended up seeing that yogurt again.  Gross.  So I call the hubs and really at this point, my main concern is that the kids want lunch and I can’t stand long enough to make lunch, so for the love of all things holy can he please come home and make them lunch?  He comes home, makes them lunch, and proceeds to tell me that I probably shouldn’t feel like I’m in labor and that maybe we need to go to the ER.

So I get my act together enough to roll out of bed and put shoes on.  I did not care that I was wearing little sail boats on my pajama pants.  Didn’t care.  But I did put a bra on, because wearing pajamas while needing a shower and not brushing your hair is a lot to deal with on top of free swinging boobs.  Yeah.  I said it.

If all this wasn’t enough, I hobble myself to the door just to open it up to a BEAR on my deck, hanging out.  In the middle of the afternoon.  This is my life.  Thankfully the bears around here don’t know they’re vicious and can be scared senseless just by whispering aggressively at them.  Which is precisely what I did.  I angrily whispered “What are you doing!?  Get out of there!” and the bear looked at me like I was the scariest whispering person ever and took off.

I learned a super important lesson this day.  If you want to get through the ER quickly, just start vomiting.  No sooner did I start, a nurse rushed in with an IV full of anti-nausea meds.  Which was helpful.  Especially since it was slightly humiliating that every time I threw up, the elderly lady next to me would yell “GOD BLESS YOU!”  She was hard of hearing and I’m pretty sure ended up being my neighbor once I got moved to a permanent room.  Unless I was just blessed with two different deaf old ladies during my stay.  I mean, anything is possible.

I really didn’t think any of this could get worse.  I mean, I was already puking into a bucket and groaning with my eyes half closed for all of the Emergency Room to see while receiving numerous blessings.  That’s an all time low for me.  But then, I went in for a CT scan.  Which was fine.  I mean, whatever.  But after the CT scan, I started to feel very hot.  And queasy.  And the poor, distinguished looking gentleman in a lab coat had to rip me out of the machine so that I could once again resume vomiting.  However, at this point, my stomach was empty.  So instead of vomiting, just made awful noises while retching into a bucket and proceeded to PEE ALL OVER THE TABLE I WAS SITTING ON.  Yes.  I peed.  On the CT scan table.  So then I was groaning, and apologizing, and kind of hoping I would magically lose conciousness.  I didn’t.  But at least the lady next to us couldn’t hear the story when I had to repeat it to my husband upon returning to my assigned cubicle.

So skipping lots of other barbaric stuff, I ended up admitted with what they THINK was an infection in my large intestine.  We are really good at weird mystery infections around here.  So I basically had to lay in a bed with an IV and starve for a few days.  Which was ok, because I was in so much pain that eating wasn’t even a thing I wanted to think about.  THAT’S A BIG DEAL.  I LOVE EATING.  AND THINKING ABOUT EATING.  But anyway…

Things were running smoothly until the antibiotics really started to kick in.  Because the side effects of the antibiotics?  Stomach pain and diarrhea.  The irony was not lost on me.  And I was kind of ok with this anyway because I hate vomiting and would much rather sit on the pot than kneel in front of it.  Everything would have been roses.  Except, that morning, they moved my IV to my right hand.  I’m right handed.  You would think that wiping your butt with the wrong hand would be as easy as just visualizing what the dominant hand does and then, you know, doing that.  BUT NO.  My left hand is for aesthetics only.  It can’t follow directions.  I sat there longer than I’d like to admit just willing it to do my bidding.  It.  Was.  Terrible.  At one point, I missed my target completely and ended up sticking my hand in the toilet water.  I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.   Don’t try it.

I’m feeling much better now.  I still can’t eat quite like I used to and still have random pains, but I’m off all meds and am alive and can wipe my butt.  So it’s all gravy.

WHILE ALL THAT WAS HAPPENING, Pixie started cheerleading.  Which has been a fascinating experience.  I missed her first couple of practices because I was busy sticking my hand in toilets, but for the last two weeks I’ve been taking her and goodness, my kid is going to be a star.

She’s not interested in what the other girls are doing.  Oh no, not my child.  She’s putting her own twist on EVERYTHING.  A lot of it involves jumping.  She jumps.  A lot.  Which is cool because if I jumped, I’d pee, just like I did on the CT scan.  Have kids, they said.  It’s fun.

Anyway, cheerleading has been 2-3 nights a week.  Pixie still really doesn’t understand why they have to show up and do the same things over and over, even though I’ve explained that’s what PRACTICE means.  So it’s been challenging.  Tomorrow is their pep rally, and I’m sure it’s going to be a big, adorable mess.  I’m excited.

AND THIS HAS BEEN MY SUMMER.  If this was being graded, I’m sure the teacher wouldn’t have bothered and probably just would have called my parents to make sure I’m not on drugs or something.  But I’m not anymore.  I finished them, remember?

And though I’d like to say this has been a great summer, it really hasn’t.  I’m glad it’s almost over.  Bring on the school year.  BRING IT ON.