I am totes freaking out about the two hours thing. The idea of it just flips me out!!!  I am taking my phone and my headphones and have downloaded an audio book to listen to. I hope it works!

But anyhoo, when I was endlessly waiting for my ultrasound results, I decided to take matters into my own hands and do a natural gallbladder “cleanse”.  I know, I’m totally nuts.  But my crunchy friend Laura kept telling me to do one involving drinking olive oil and grapefruit juice, and I got so desperate from the pain and the waiting that I DID it.

I cannot believe I did it.

Not just because it’s weird, but because I am a total wimp.  And yet, I drank THIS:

8 oz of fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice and olive oil.  It took me about 10 minutes to get it all down! I really cannot believe I did it.  The worst part was drinking two 4-0z glasses of water mixed with Epsom salts before hand.  That stuff was NASTEEEEEEEE.

It definitely cleansed a whoooooole lot of stuff, but unfortunately it was not the cure-all for the ol’ gallbladder.

So it’s off to the hospital I go for the scan.

And hopefully, some answers.  Wish me luck!

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So what are you doing with your Friday?  (If you need something to do, why don’t you go take our survey and enter to win a $25 Lands’ End gift card!?)

Do you know what else I remember about being three?  Nothing.  So I think that one memory of that one year of my life is kind of a cool one.

Joshua and Sophie love it when I tell them stories from my childhood, and I try to think up the really exciting ones, like when my Dad saved an injured bird on a pond one day when he took us kids fishing, or when my brother Andy locked me in the garage (in the dark) when we had a babysitter over.  You know, the epic snapshots of my childhood.  I could tell my kids a couple dozen or so of those stories, but then I’d run out…it’s simply amazing to me how much we can experience and not remember.  How much of my life is lost in this way?

Some of my the childhood memories I savor are of my mom rubbing my back when I was sleepy, playing outside on Silverbell Court with my friend Erin, the sun-warmed pavement so hot beneath our bare feet.  I remember spending the night at Grandma’s with Emily and Anna, making up dances and playing lots of rummy. I remember going fishing with my Dad and “helping” him build a deck on the back of our house.  I remember going to Disney World when I was six, but the only thing I remember about it is that Captain Hook scared the bejeebers out of me and my dad was about to deck him, and that it took forever to wait for my brothers to ride Space Mountain (sorry, Em.)  I remember meeting my friend Sheila on the first day of kindergarten.  I remember being baptized.  I remember my dad returning from a fishing trip and cleaning fish in the garage, GROSS.  I remember always making a huge mess out of the patch of dirt on the edge of our driveway that I’d stir into a giant mud puddle when it rained.

Maybe I remember more than I think.  Maybe I have no idea.

When Bobby and I were first married, for 14 months we lived in an apartment on the 7th floor of a building near downtown Dayton.  I spent my first year of marriage there and yet I remember almost nothing about living there.  It was like a “blip” – it went by so fast.  It’s just so weird to me that I don’t have more specific memories from that time.  I feel the same way about Sophie’s first year of life – really almost her first two years.  I guess I was a little  incredibly overwhelmed by the transition from one kid to two, from working part time to staying at home, and from starting the blog during that time.  I know I was exhausted, as she didn’t sleep well until she was 15 months old.  I look at pictures and they jog memories, but her babyhood is pretty much a blur to me, and it makes me sad.  But she was so crazy and I was so worn out  - all those  months of sleep-deprivation were detrimental to my memory for sure.  Momnesia definitely set in.

Since Jonah’s my last baby, I want to try and re-mem-ber as much as I can about these times.  About us as a family of five.  I want to take the time to recognize a moment and say, “Oh! I have to remember this!”  and then do it.  And I want to give my kids those special memories…will Sophie remember me rubbing her back at night?  Will Joshua remember making fun science crafts with me on spring break? Will they remember seeing their baby brother in the hospital when he was born? I hope so.  I hope that most of all, even if some of the details slip away, they’ll remember what I remember most about my childhood…being happy, loved, and secure.

What’s something you’re so glad you remember, or something you wish you remembered more clearly?

Six days later, on a Sunday, I decided to go to Urgent Care because a) Bobby was home with the kids and b) the pain was so persistent I had really psyched myself out that a terminal diagnosis was forthcoming.  So off I went, with super-high nervous blood pressure brought on by my wild imagination as well as my symptoms.

At Urgent Care, the doctor asked me a few questions, pressed around my abdomen, assured me I did NOT have a tumor, and upon learning I also did NOT have an appendix, told me I most likely was experiencing a gallbladder attack. I was relieved and not really surprised. I had expected that, if I wasn’t to soon me on my deathbed, it was probably my gallbladder.  My mom had hers out when she was younger than I am now, and my BFF Luanne just gave hers up in December.  My friend Lori had hers out just after having a baby (or were you pregnant, Lori?)

The good doctor told me (in heavily accented English and using the phrase, “ok, cool” a lot) that I could go get a liver function blood test and an ultrasound at the nearest hospital if I wished.

I thought about it and decided to pass.  That sounded expensive!  The past two weeks I’ve been treating my symptoms  by drinking ridiculous amounts of water (previously unheard of for me) and taking herbal supplements to promote gallbladder health.  And, it’s really helping.  I can still feel that gallbladder telling me it’s there sometimes, but not nearly as much as before, and it really is not painful, it’s more of a nag.  I’d really like to try to avoid surgery, because who has TIME for surgery, I’ve got a fabulous trip to Miami to plan for! (However, see above, I AM A WIMP – if it gets excruciating, I will head to the nearest hospital and demand they operate.)

But then.  This week, for some reason the gallbladder PLAGUE has hit all of my Facebook friends!  THREE, count’ em THREE people I know (two I actually KNOW, like, in real life) have gotten their gall bladders removed THIS WEEK!!  One is only 21 years old, the other two both have babies that are less than two months old.

What’s the deal, gallbladders of the world?  Is there like a general uprising going on?

So, have any of you dealt with this?  Any exciting remedies I should know about?  I am using one that has like, a million fab herbs for liver & gall bladder function in it.  I got it from Health Foods Unlimited, so you know it has to be the cure-all. Ha.

Give me your best advice or gallbladder stories!  Save the gallbladders!

When I stress myself to death, when I DIE of a stress attack, keel over from a stress-induced aneurysm, here are the possible straws that broke the camel’s carotid artery:

• not being able to open a jar
• not being able to open the frozen doors of my vehicle
• banging my shoulder on a door frame
• banging my head on a car door whilst trying to buckle a child in their car seat
• folding up my very expensive supposed-to-be-easy-to-fold-up stroller
• when the tab rips off a brand new diaper
• biting my tongue (literally)
• grocery cart wheels not turning
• grocery carts in which the baby seat belt does not work
• a wrong order at the fast food drive thru
• people who don’t DRIVE when the light turns green
• people who DO drive when the light turns red
• parents who let 11-year-olds terrorize the mall play place
• My children asking “WHY?” to something I’ve told them to do
• when I can’t get something to work and then my husband makes it work with no trouble whatsoever even though I am glad he fixed it I hate it that EVERYTHING IS SO EASY FOR HIM!

Steam is coming from my ears just after writing that list!

While I go try to avoid a fatal meltdown, tell me – what makes your blood pressure skyrocket?

click for image credit

I’ve never been one to make New Year’s Resolutions. This is mostly because I have zero faith in my ability to keep them! So, I’m not making any this year either. But there are some things I want to, how shall I say, adjust for 2012.

You see, I didn’t enjoy 2011 all that much on the whole. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great, either. Just writing that makes me feel horrible ungrateful and sinful, because I have SO MUCH to be thankful for and so many blessings in my life. Seriously. My un-enjoyment of 2011 had nothing to do with what I didn’t have. It had to do with what I had on my plate, and with how I handled it.

Having a new baby (third child), and having a child who had turned up developmentally delayed was way too much for me. 2011 was pretty much all about workworkworkworkwork for me. Take care of the constant needs of an infant while working on and being hypervigilant about getting Sophie over her delays. Also I spent the first several month of Jonah’s life battling the postpartum injury to my left hand which slowed me down and left me in constant pain. Add to this financial stress that accompanied the therapies and evaluations for Sophie (co-pays are a b!tch when you have weekly appointments. Especially when you have more than one weekly appointment. And don’tgetmestarted on our insurance only covering 20 visits of therapy per year for a child who needs 50 visits per year…) and the fact that we spent our life savings on our van…by the time summer came around and I had all three kids underfoot all day, still running around to appointments all the time, I was living my life in a constant state of anxiety and panic.

And I was doing my best. I handled it. I don’t think, all that well. And yet. We made it through. Jonah is a thriving one-year-old, Sophie is about all caught up and is kicking butt in school, in therapy, and on all her testing, and Joshua is doing awesome in 2nd grade, and swimming lessons, and it seems so far has retained only *slight* emotional scarring from having an angry mommy all summer.

So 2011. You kicked my butt. I was not even close to being a worthy opponent for you. I am not sad to see you go!

2012:It’s nice to meet you. I am already looking forward to how much better I am going to handle you than I did your predecessor! Mostly because my known circumstances are just plain going to be easier this year, but hopefully because I’ve grown and learned some things in the past year as well. I am not dumb enough to assume you won’t throw me any curveballs, but I’m optimistic enough to think I can knock them out of the park this time.

Happy New Year everyone! What are your hopes for 2012?

And then, there’s my “off” times.  When I work as hard as I can during the 6- 8 hours or so a week that I have two kids at school and one kid napping so I can keep the house organized, and I can never get it all finished. ( Not that I can’t do housework when they’re all home, but…let’s just say when they are all home and awake I get adult ADD from the constant “MomMomMomMomMomMomMom” and the “waaaaaaaaaah” and my productivity plummets.)  These are the times when getting Sophie and Jonah ready and out the door for morning preK drop off either has me on the verge of tears or screaming by 8:30 a.m.  When I can’t do anything but the bare-bones, basic stuff my family needs to survive.  When I don’t even have two seconds to text, email, or call a friend in need.  Those times, I’ve got nuttin’.

There really seems to be no in-between. I can say, that always, I am doing my best. It’s just that sometimes my best is super-great and sometimes it totally sucks.  This week, and last week, too, I am totally sucking.  I kind of have a bad feeling that it is going to be this way through the fa-la-la-lidays.  As a matter of fact, I am already looking forward to the week after Christmas because Bobby has that week off  and the kids will of course be off school and Jonah’s 1st birthday and Christmas will be over and I think, oh, Bobby will be here, maybe I can breathe that week. Maybe I will get caught up on the housework.  Maybe I will even get an hour or two to myself.  Maybe I can flip the switch back to “on”.

Or maybe, the switch will be flipped before that.  I sure hope so.  At this point, I’m longing for a switch to mediocre.

{sidebar, was that not the LONGEST run-on sentence/paragraph EVAH? I know you loved it, Berry.}

Like last week’s attempt to make coffee that failed thrice, many things I do or don’t do, or can’t do, make me crraaazy.  Like two days later I banged my other knee on something else and got a matching bruise, but now I can’t even remember what that something else was, which also makes me craaaazy. I JUST.WANT.TO REMEMBER THINGS.  And also not bruise myself all the time.

For the past couple days, I haven’t been able to get this Pink song out of my head…

I’m a hazard to myself

Don’t let me get me

I’m my own worst enemy

It’s bad when you annoy yourself

So irritating

Don’t wanna be my friend no more

I wanna be somebody else

More often than not, I find myself in a state of annoyance…with myself.

Good times.  Anyone else?

And when I did see it, I screamed bloody murder and jumped back four feet, even though I was inside the house and it was out. Because THIS is my newest tenant:

(Sorry, due to the fact that it’s sitting on it’s web on clear glass, I cannot seem to get my camera to focus on it. And if I get too close, it moves and when it moves I WET MY PANTS IN FEAR BECAUSE OH EM GEE IT’S FRICKING HUGE AND TERRIFYING!)

It’s big fat body that you see there, is about the size of my thumb. Ugh. I just shivered in fear while I was typing that.

So what is this thing?  A heartless human-killer, or just the kind that kills other icky bugs that I should welcome to my window, or is it the kind you put a leash on and take for a walk around the block?

I wish it was the kind that LIVED SOMEWHERE ELSE.

Cause it is freaking this little wimpy girl OUT fer realz.  Who wants to come over and capture it for me??

But anyhoo, it was REALLY hot.  And my new van wasn’t shifting right.  It’s an automatic transmission, and it was having a lot of trouble shifting. This wasn’t too surprising, because it had been giving me a wee bit of trouble previously, but my hubby the mechanic did a transmission flush and ran some conditioner through it or some crap like that, and it had been a bit better. (Though not totally.)

We went to the pool, Murrin was a huge help, we went home, and then we took Murrin home.  She lives about 20 minutes away, and the van actually ran a bit better on the way to her house.

But on the way home? It hardly ran at all.  I barely made it.  I had to put my flashers on a couple times.  Every time I hit a stoplight, I was afraid it wouldn’t go again when the light turned green.  The last block to my house, the transmission was making both a really loud revving “I won’t shift” noise and a terrible high-pitched squeal. AND it smelled AWFUL.

Did I mention this was the FIRST DAY of summer break?  And I had been dying to get a van before summer break?  And was so excited that I got it 8 weeks before? Plenty of time!

Oh, the irony. (Makes me want to slit my wrists.)

Luckily, we still had my old car, so I was able to get the kids to meet my mother-in-law for dinner before Sophie’s gymnastics class.  Bobby met us also, and was going to drive his mom and the boys over to watch Sophie – she and I planned to leave a few minutes early while they finished up dinner.

So, Sophie and I headed out to get in my old car.  Which I had just driven there.

Which WOULD NOT EVEN TURN OVER when I put the key in.

Clearly, I am the problem.  I killed two cars in one day! One that we’d only had for 8 weeks and one that I’d happily driven for 8 years.

It’s a good thing I’m married to a mechanic!  Maybe not so good for him, though!

The problem with my old car was merely the battery, sadly my van needs a new transmission – which is on order.  I’ve been hauling the kids around in Bobby’s station wagon for our two weeks of summer, and I haven’t killed it yet!  We’ll see what I can accomplish before I get my van back next week.  Watch out, Camry Station Wagon!  I’m a KILLA!

I’m in the kitchen with two steaming pots on the stove, and Jonah is in his swing in the living room, snoozing peacefully, while the big kids are playing legos.

Until the big kids start screaming at each other over who can touch which legos when, and the baby wakes up and then also starts screaming, because REALLY, apparently that is the thing to do at this moment if you are the spawn of Jenny and Bobby Rapson.

So then I of course, scream at the big kids to JUST.BE.NICE!  All I’m asking you to do here is play, people. PLAY. Is that so bad???

Then I pick Jonah up and get him calmed down.

Finally, I return to my steaming pots and fortunately neither of them have boiled over or caught fire.  Yay!  And the dinner turned out pretty good I thought! (It was a recipe I am reviewing for ReadySetEat.  Cheesy Chili Mac – yum!)

I got dinner together and the kids and I ran it over to E’s.  Which is really no problem at all, as she lives really close.  *BUT* Sophie was heartbroken when told that we were only dropping dinner off and weren’t going in to play with Olivia, E’s daughter.  (Olivia, could you be less fun and charming, please?  Geez!  Your allure is really inconveniencing me here.)  As soon as I pulled away from their house, she yelled “Wait! Go back!  You have to go back!” and proceeded to SOB all the way home. Dra-MA!  I assured her we’d have Olivia over soon but since it wasn’t right-this-second, it was not good enough.  I dragged her into the house and mopped the tears and snot from her face.

Then I pleaded aloud for the Calgon people to come take me away and plunge me into a warm, idyllic bubble bath.

No one showed up.

But, no one showed up with a straitjacket, either.

So there’s that.