Dazed

I'm feeling like a bit of a lazy failure today.  A few days ago I decided that I was healed enough after the dreaded wisdom tooth surgery to stop taking Vicodin.  I told myself I would alternate between heavy doses of ibuprofen and Tylenol because honestly, it didn't really hurt all that bad.  This morning I got up, the swelling is almost gone and the bruising is surprisingly faded but WOW does it hurt today.  It's like the worst jaw ache I've ever had.  Really tight and sore so I caved and took one of the Vicodin.

I know, I know, you're saying, "So what!  Why feel bad!  That's what it's for!"  The reason I feel bad about this (besides the fact that every one I take is one less to be hoarded)  is because Mitch is out of town for work and it's just Kira and me home.  She is such a terror and today I realized that during her entire life I've been constantly prepared to whisk her off to the emergency room at a moment's notice.  She's either climbing 50 feet up a tree, or doing a double flip on the trampoline, or bringing home her "new friend" who turns out to be a strange 150 pound rottweiler wearing a barbed choke collar.  I can't do much whisking when I'm stoned out of my gourd on narcotics.  (For all the dangerous stuff she does, we haven't had to take her to the emergency room for a few years.  Knock on wood.)

So this afternoon I couldn't stand the pain anymore and I took a pill.  Thankfully I've kept her busy since she got home from school with making muffins, playing with the dog (our dog, not the rottweiler) and I even took out my precious Dr. Quinn DVDs and I'm letting her watch those.  Good parenting?  I don't know.  In one scene of Dr. Quinn, a man was wanting to spend some time with a saloon hooker and the bar owner said, "She's five dollars!" and Kira said, "Hey!  I could afford to buy her!"  Cringe. 

Tonight we are going to watch 20,000 leagues Under the Sea, and then it should be bedtime.  Then I can relax.  Mitch is on his way home and should be here later tonight.  Whew. 

Last Will and Testament

Tomorrow I am having the most difficult and traumatic root canal anyone in the history of the world ever had, and I feel I should be prepared, so I am writing my will here for all to see, in the likely event that I die of dental-phobia.

1. To Mom and Dad - you can have my bird. Be nice to her. (Mom, that means DON'T let her free in the woods behind your house.) You can also have my dog. She's very sweet. She also gets worms a lot. Watch out for that.

2. To my sister Amy - You can have my Dr. Quinn memorabilia which includes my autographed picture of Dr. Quinn, Sully and John Schneider, and my DVD collection of every single Dr. Quinn episode and movie, and all the Dr. Quinn paperback books.

3. To my sister Beth - You can have my floppy straw sun hat and Kiwi scented sunscreen dauber. Both are good for the prevention of the dreaded "freckle 'stache. You can also have everything I've ever crocheted and all my yarn. Rent a U-haul.

4. To Grandma Zetta - You can have the teacup that you stole from Worcester College for me. I will no longer have to blackmail you for stealing it, because I'll be dead.

5. To Kira, you can have my iPod which I know you love so much that it will do much to ease the distress of losing your mother. Please, make sure I'm dead before you get too excited though, because if I pull through somehow, you do not get it.

6. To Sam, you can have my computer. Again, don't get too excited until you're sure I'm dead.

7. To my friend and fellow blogger, Anne - You can have my blog if you will agree to write a comprehensive and glowing obituary for me when you get over the initial shock of my passing. The username and password are in an email draft that Mitch will send you when he is able to pull himself together enough to crawl out of bed and continue with the business of living (probably several months). Feel free to use the outline of the obituary I wrote for myself (included in the email). Of course it's up to you, since I'll be dead and won't know the difference, but you could make it into a dental-phobia-awareness blog.

8. And finally, to my loving husband, Mitch - you can have all the candy I've hidden throughout the house. I'm not going to write down where it all is because in case I pull through, I don't want to have to find all new hiding spots. You'll just have to find it. Good luck, and look diligently because some of it is perishable. You can also have everything else of mine not on this list to give away or keep at your discretion. Oh, and you are to NEVER remarry, or I will haunt you ("till death do you part" means your death.) And make the west wall of the living room into a shrine for me, complete with altar and candles. Also, make sure that "Ballroom Blitz" is played at my funeral.

Goodbye all, and thanks for the memories!

Ugh blah yuck

I have the swine flu. Nah, probably not, but I don't feel good. I might have gotten food poisoning from the tator tot hotdish I made last night, although nobody else seems to be sick, but with my cooking my family have probably developed stomachs of iron. Why am I such a delicate flower?

It's a bad time to be sick with all this wonderful Halloween candy around. This is prime candy time. In a few days the kids will have eaten all the premium stuff and I'll be left with nothing but Almond Joy and one crushed Butterfinger, along with crappy Sweet Tarts. I might have to raid their stash and hide some good stuff for myself for later. I already had to hide the half a bag of Three Musketeers I had left over from giving treats at school. THEY'RE NOT IN THE BUNT CAKE PAN, MITCH! HA! KEEP LOOKING!

I might take tomorrow off and try to recover. I think I could make it if I could be wrapped in my electric blanket for the whole day. (I wonder if they'd let me do that? I'll have to look for an extension cord.) In the meantime I'll rest and relax with my Facebook farm and Dr. Quinn. I'm on season 5 of 6. When it's over I will be MAJORLY DEPRESSED.

Yikes

The kids have been bothering me for years to take them to the haunted ship downtown. The William A. Irvin/William H. Macy gets "haunted" every year for Halloween, but I didn't think the kids could handle having the bejesus scared out of them from a haunted anything. Also, going out at night really cuts into my Dr. Quinn time.

But this year we finally relented and brought them on the tour. Sam is a big tough twelve year old, so I knew he could handle it, but I was still worried about Kira because, after all, she is a nine year old girl, she should be able to be frightened, right? Wrong. The kids weren't even a little bit scared, hardly even startled. Kira was startled by the first ghoul that jumped out at us at the beginning of the tour, but she didn't scream, she just said, "crap," and the ghoul, expecting I'm sure that he was dealing with a normal person, started laughing at her when he realized he wasn't dealing with anything close to normal.

After that, she was expecting people to jump out at us and wasn't scared at all. She just antagonized the people playing the ghouls, and then they would take it out on me just to prove that they really were scary. Who wouldn't be freaked out to have some teenager in stage makeup sneak up on you and invade your personal space? Toward the end, when people would jump out at us, Kira would say, "Get my mom, she's the one who's really scared," and then they would. My throat was sore from screaming.

On the ride home Mitch asked the kids what their favorite part of the tour was and they both said, "How scared Mom was."

To say this was a lazy Sunday would be a total understatement

I woke up this morning and after getting out of bed, decided it was too cold and rainy to not be under covers, so I went back to bed and read my book. Mitch came up to check on me about 10:30 and told me to get up. I told him the only thing that would get me out of bed was a breakfast that I don't make myself. So he made me eggs.

Fish shaped eggs. He got a cast iron fish shaped muffin pan a while ago and he keeps finding it despite my attempts to hide it long enough for him to forget about it so I can get rid of it. He is trying to prove it's utility. They were pretty good eggs.

Then Kira and Sam and I watched about 12 hours of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. You'd think a person would get sick of Dr. Quinn after 100 hours, but we aren't. It's THAT good! I'm not being sarcastic either. It's a really good show. Now Mitch and I are going to watch Slumdog Millionaire.

I might have developed bed sores today. I'll check later and let you know.

I love you, Cloud Dancing

Last night I was watching disk 16 of 42 of my complete set of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and one of the series regulars, Cloud Dancing, a Cherokee medicine man and also a good friend of Dr. Quinn and Sully, was on the show. That reminded me of a funny story from a different episode of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and I related it to Mitch:

Me: I love Cloud Dancing.

Mitch: Oh?

Me: Yeah, a few episodes back he and Dr. Quinn and Sully went to Washington DC to testify before congress about the treatment of the Indians,

Mitch: ..... okay...

Me: And when they were checking in to their fancy schmancy hotel, -only the best for Dr. Quinn- the hotel clerk saw Cloud Dancing and told Sully to tell his friend; NO COOK IN ROOM! and Cloud Dancing said, "Tell him that if the room service is good, I will not have to cook." Ha ha! That crazy Cloud Dancing, gotta love him....

Mitch: (silence)

Me: (smiling and nodding; pleased with my funny anecdote about Cloud Dancing)

Mitch: (getting the saddest look of pity I have ever seen on a human and directing it at ME!)

Me: What? Why are you looking at me like that?

Mitch: Like what? I'm not looking at you like anything!

Me: Yes you are. You are looking at me like you feel sorry for me.

Mitch: No I'm not! I'm just listening to your wonderful story! Please, go on!

Me: No, forget it.

Just for the record; Cloud Dancing is a great character and the actor, Larry Sellers, is a great actor. Nobody needs to feel sorry for me about that.

Things I'm learning from Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman

I got the box set of every single second of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman for my birthday. This is what I've learned so far.

1. Every medicine cabinet should be stocked with plenty of laudanum, quinine, and willow-bark tea.

2. Frontier people were hot-heads.

3. Dr. Quinn's mother is actually the person she thinks is her sister who is 15 years older than her. (This has not been substantiated by the show, it's just my own personal theory.)

4. Don't ever let a barber pull out your tooth.

5. Haho means "thank you" in Cheyenne. And also "hello" and also "goodbye."  Kind of like Aloha!

6. Being a whore in a frontier saloon in the 1870s wasn't that great a job after all.

7. Hawks listen to what you say, and if you say something profound, they caw. Every time.

8. If you want to dress up as Dr. Quinn and her children for Halloween, your 12 year old son will ruin it by refusing to have anything to do with your plan.

9. When you eat a bowl of candy corn, what's left after you eat the big parts is just a mess of white tips, and they look like baby teeth, and it's really fun to pretend you are eating baby teeth. (I actually learned this from eating candy corn WHILE watching Dr. Quinn, not from Dr. Quinn herself.)

10. General Custer was very vain, and a real bastard.

11. Dr. Quinn is a naturally talented trapeze artist. Who knew?

12. Wolves make great pets until they get rabies, which they will.

13. Mine cave-ins = no joke

14. You know how you thought that 1870s frontier doctors couldn't perform plastic surgery? Well, you were wrong.

Little Tip

If your husband is ever annoyed/disgusted/sick of you, repeatedly saying the word "poontang" will eventually make him smile, even if he's fighting hard not to. Say it with a little flourish.

Mitch is trying to watch a cooking show (booorrriiinnnggg) and he's annoyed because I keep talking to him, but maybe if he would have SHUT UP while I was trying to watch Dr. Quinn earlier, I wouldn't be so compelled to be irritating during America's Test Kitchen ..zzzzzzzz....

OMG!!!!!!!!!

OH MY GOD! Look what I got for my birthday!!!! In case you don't immediately recognize it because you've only ever seen it in a thumbnail picture on your Amazon wishlist, it is the entire series of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman. Over 120 hours. All six seasons. Two RARE feature-length movies and exclusive bonuses with cast interviews, commentaries AND MORE! And it comes in this beautiful case.

In case you didn't already know this about me, Dr. Quinn is my favorite show EVER. Amy and I were obsessed with it. We taped it and meticulously labeled each tape with the name of each episode, and watched them over and over until we practically had complete psychological profiles on every character. If you ever want to know something about Dr. Quinn, I'm your woman. "Okay, Sarah," you say, "Which Colleen was better?" I say, hands down, the first one. They replaced her because she got too booby. Hard to stuff double D's into a prairie dress. The second Colleen was okay, but her head was distractingly gigantic.

Our favorite things about the show (besides Jane Seymour and all her wonderfulness) was that the Brian character was a little perv; every time someone said something to make a point you'd hear a hawk quietly punctuate the moment with a mournful "Caw...."; and when Dr. Quinn got mad she never yelled, she only whisper yelled, and then dramatically stormed out of the room. Oh, and Sully, hot hot Sully.

Thank you Amy, from the bottom of my heart. I love it and I have already told the kids that this is what we will be watching on movie night for the next two years. They're.... excited?

My summer bedroom

I cleaned my room really well today and put up new valances. I had beige flouncy valences before and they were so ugly. I made these valences. (valence valence valence... Sounds weird after you say it a few times... valence valence valence. Am I spelling it right? Looks weird.) I also made the roman shades underneath a few years ago and they are nice but they are about an inch or two too narrow. It still bugs me. I love my new blanket. It is going to be perfect when it gets warmer.

I threw away a number of home-made gifts from the kids. There was the tissue-and-duct-tape flag Kira made, and the styrofoam dartboard with sharpened popsicle sticks for darts that Sam made me. Those are down deep in the garbage can outside right now. I wonder if the kids will notice. I also put away my autographed picture of Jane Seymour, John Schneider, and Joe Lando (Dr. Quinn, and Sully and guest star). Sorry Amy. I'm keeping it safe though, don't worry. It's probably worth a fortune.

I'm not entertaining any offers for it so don't bother, all you jealous people!
It's our retirement.

Northfield and Barbie

I spent the last couple days visiting my Grandma in Northfield. I also saw a cousin I haven't seen in a really long time, and met some new friends. Did I take any pictures of people? No. Would a picture of my Grandma laughing her ass off at Twilight have been a keeper? Definitely. Would it have been nice to have a picture of me together with Grandma, aunts and cousins? Sure! Did I remember that my camera was in my purse when I had an opportunity to take these pictures? NO!

But I did happen to remember it when my aunt and I were playing with her barbie clothes. I thought it was a little strange when she sent me an email that said only, "Bring your barbie." But I went with it. She has a friend who sews barbie clothes and they were absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. My barbie was in heaven. Here's how she looked:

This is an evening gown that barbie might wear to the Oscars or some other equally important actor award program. Stunning! It was lined and all the little tiny seams were perfect.

This is a gorgeous old-timey Dr. Quinn dress. It has a removable bustle for when Dr. Quinn's clinic gets really busy and she has to race around saving lives giving out laudenum. You go, Dr. Quinn! You can't see it in the picture, but the blouse has little tiny pearl buttons going down the front.

This is another evening dress, but instead of wearing it to an awards show, she would probably wear this singing Ella Fitzgerald songs at a jazz club. Notice the tiny pearl necklace, bracelet and earrings. Barbie wasn't crazy about the earrings because they are sharp and I had to jab them into her head. And the gloves, my god, the gloves!

I have saved the best for last. This is a replica of the wedding dress that Jackie O. wore in her wedding to JFK. It looks JUST like it! The veil has a long lace train. Barbie was really excited about the dress and was pushing Ken into setting a date, but Ken wasn't all that excited about "making it legal" so Barbie did a little accesorizing that would help convince him.

That's a gun in her cleavage. My contribution to the barbie playtime. Barbie belongs to the NRA, did you know that?

So anyway, we had a great time with the Barbie clothes. Thank you so much to Sarah's friend Vicki for making the clothes and more importantly, for letting us play with them. Vicki even sent her Barbie along because she said "Barbie has cabin fever and would love a trip to Minnesota." and dressed her in traveling clothes for the trip. Hilarious!