Near Death Experiences and A Giveaway!

Hi! I cleaned my toilet 4 times last night! Another 6 times this morning! I am a toilet-cleaning goddess!

That's what happens, you know, when you have the stomach virus from hell that keeps coming back. Friday, Sunday, and again today! New and improved! In between toilet cleanings, I lay curled up on the couch in a fetal position. And decided that I was suffering from nothing less than end stage colon cancer. Isn't that fun? My only hope was to get well enough to go to the endodontist for my root canal appointment at 12:30. Why I was bothering to take care of my teeth when I was obviously not long for this world is beyond me.

So it wasn't shaping up to be a great day.

But now it is almost dinner time, my stomach seems to have jelled back into one solid mass, and the root canal didn't hurt! I am the world's biggest dental wimp, so that is saying a lot. Of course, the novocaine hasn't totally worn off yet. But have no fear - I have some prescription codeine tablets just in case. Because I cannot afford to lose another night's sleep.

Larry hasn't even called to ask how I am. He's in such trouble.

Since I was spending so much time in the bathroom, I grabbed a book from the stack on my nightstand to read in there. It just so happened that it was Jen Singer's You're A Good Mom. Jen is the blogger behind MommaSaid.net, where, if you will recall, I won the (ahem) prestigious Housewife of the Week award last December. So, naturally, I like Jen. And when she sent me her new book (complete with a very cute promo package) over a month ago, I had every intention of reading it right away and telling people about it (because I'm easy like that).

Well, here we are, many weeks later, and the only reason I didn't finish the book sooner was because I was too busy blogging. Also, I couldn't find the book for a while. And...and...the dog ate it. Anyway, I finished it last night; and, um, Jen? I don't really know how to review a book. I'll just give it the old college try, all right?

Essentially, it is a humorous book about "14 Secrets to Finding Happiness Between Super Mom and Slacker Mom." (I stole that from the cover.) Jen writes about what I and many other moms have discovered - good enough is good enough. Don't center your whole life on the kids. Don't overload them with activities. You don't have to amuse them all the time.

Only, she says it way funnier.

I particularly enjoyed her diatribe against specialized kid soccer leagues and extended soccer schedules. You see, I think soccer should be played in a local league for 8 weeks and no more, fall and maybe spring. Because I am sort of lazy about getting my kids to these things and I don't like kids' activities taking over our lives. But, where I live (and, apparently, where Jen lives, too) the season can stretch into overtime (I had a friend whose son was playing on Thanksgiving Day) and parents travel all over the place to allow their kids to play in a "better" league. I hate that. But, then, I know nothing about sports. Jen, however, lends credibility to my anti-elite-soccer stance; she actually played college soccer and coaches in her local kid leagues. And she feels the same way I do! So there! You can read all about it in her chapter titled, "Don't Let the Youth Sports Cartel Run Your Life."

Thank you, Jen. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.

This is a good book for moms with kids no older than 12. Because, if you haven't figured out this stuff by then, you probably are the Super Mom type she warns us about. I'm thinking I would like to give this book away to one lucky commenter; I just have to figure out how to mail it without y'all figuring out where I live. (Wow! I'm doing a giveaway! Just like the real bloggers!)

So comment on this post and let me know if you would like to be entered in the contest. I don't know how to do those random number generator thingies, so I will probably have one of the kids pick a name out of a hat. We'll try to be fair, I promise.

Some Things Bug Me

Well, I certainly wasn't in a very good mood last night, was I? Chronic pain will do that to a person. And the threat of impending death. Things haven't improved much here today, healthwise - I just keep popping those little magic pills the doctor gave me, which might as well be placebos for all the good they are doing me.

Someone came over to visit with her kids this afternoon, which provided me a little distraction from my medical woes; but, unaware of my tenuous grasp on my Weight Watchers' resolution, she brought a container of chocolate chip cookies to share. They were good cookies. Not quite as good as Trefoils, but beggars can't be choosers. Luckily, the cellulitis seems to be affecting my jaw, so it's been harder to chew; maybe that will all balance out for me, diet-wise.

Oh, dear - now my hypochondriacal brain is whispering the words "gangrene of the jaw" to me. Is that a disease? Should I Google it? Can I live with half a jaw? I don't know. One of you look it up for me, okay? And my left ear is still swollen up like a cauliflower. I was thinking about that last night when I couldn't sleep, and I remembered that I had once read about a medical case in Boston where the doctors couldn't get rid of the infection in some guy's earlobe no matter what, until some genius decided to use live maggots to clean the bacteria out of it. It being the middle of the night and all, I decided that that was no doubt going to happen to me; so then I started wondering if they would administer some sort of general anaesthetic for the procedure or if I was just going to have to kill myself.

Would you believe, Larry was sort of confused when woken up by my 3 AM panic attack? Even after I managed to explain to him my dire maggot-ridden situation?

Oh, look, I found a picture of maggot therapy; but, for some reason, I can't load it onto my blog . Consider yourselves lucky, okay? If you really want to see it, just go here.

Lovely, isn't it? Whatever happened to "First, do no harm"?

Starvation, American Style

Had a slight crisis with Brian last night - he came down after bedtime, crying that he was hungry, but he was too full to eat. Go figure, right? It took me a while, but I finally realized that he had noticed as he was lying in bed that he could feel his ribs. From that, he deduced that he must not be eating enough. And if he wasn't eating enough, he must be hungry. Got it?

And believe me, this kid eats enough.

I think he's going into an anxiety stage here - today he came up to me (with that scared, worried look kids get when they think they have something fatal) and told me he could feel something, right here, in his chest. I explained to him that that was his heart beating and that that particular symptom had been going on since before he was born. He looked only partly relieved. I don't think he trusts me. Maybe because I laughed at him about the starvation thing. Poor guy.