I’ll start this post by saying that I am having the worst period OF MY LIFE. The only explanation to the amount of blood I’ve lost in the last two days is that I AM DYING.

I woke up Saturday, and about passed out. I normally am not bothered by the site of blood but I guess when it’s your own and THAT much it fucks with your head a little bit. I threw on the nearest clothes I could find and ran downstairs…

Ben: So I figured out how to..
Me: I have to go to Walgreens.
*grab keys, head for door*
Ben: Oookay.

Walgreens is only about two blocks away and I was there and back in about 2.75 minutes.

Purchased:

1 - Box Super Absorbent Tampons
1 - Box Regular Absorbent Tampons
1 - Package Super Absorbent Pads
1 - Box Midol
1 - Massive bar of Hershey’s Chocolate

The cashier was too scared to make eye contact. As she handed me my bag she said “Have a nice weekend?” In question form. Like, “Is it okay for me to say that or should I just shut up?”

The latter. But thanks!

The rest of the day was spent on the couch in labor. That’s the only way I can really explain the cramping. I did manage to catch up on all my DVR’s shows. Small victories.

This morning after breakfast with my mom is when the worst hour of my life took place. Cassidy was finishing up a chore (emptying the dishwasher) when Lydia, a neighbor girl, knocked on the door and asked if she could play so I told Cassidy as soon as she was done she could go.

Now, before I start keep in mind a few things. We live directly next to a cul-de-sac with houses on only one side. There are a TON of kids down there and it’s the only place Cassidy is allowed to go play. Up until today she has always been very good about staying in that cul-de-sac and ASKING BEFORE SHE GOES INTO A HOUSE. Just Friday she asked to go in Lydia’s house to watch a movie after they had already been playing for an hour or so.

So…

Cassidy finishes her dishes and asks to go out. I say GO! BURN ENERGY! GOODBYE!

10 minutes later: Lydia knocks on the door asking for her. I tell her she must have gotten sidetracked at Nathans. Check there.

2 minutes later: Lydia is back. She’s not there. Okay, I’ll go out and look she’s probably wandering and they are missing each other somehow.

5 minutes later: I’m back at the house. I can’t find her. Get Ben, help me look.

5 minutes later: Checked at all the houses I can think of EXCEPT Grace’s because Lydia said she had asked to play there and they were leaving so she’s not home.

2 minutes later: On phone with police giving them Cassidy’s description, address, cops on the way.

2 minutes later: Neighborhood parents and Ben have all headed out in different cars to search.

1 minute later: First two cops show up. Seriously, it was fast. Asking questions, searching neighborhood.

5 minutes later: Worst moment of my life “We are going to need about four recent pictures to identify her.” I almost vomit. I actually have to swallow back breakfast to hold it in. I’m about to lose it.

2 minutes later: Must stop pictures in head. Can’t think about that. Must stop them. Can’t concentrate. There is a picture of her on my desk but it’s over a year old and he said recent. Still can’t think because of the images.

1 minute later: Remember pictures I took this morning. Try to print. Printer won’t work. That’s it, I give up. I can’t do this. I just can’t do this. Brain starts to shut down. Sit in chair, put head between legs, going to vomit, can’t breathe.

Police officer outside: “We found her!!”
Me: “What?! Where?! Where is she?!”

Ben pulls back up at house.

Police officer: “She was in a house down the street.”

The one house I hadn’t checked. Grace’s fucking house. Grace who I thought wasn’t home because I wasn’t thinking with my HEAD and listened to an 8 year old.

The rest is a blur except I remember the officer telling me not to be too hard on her, the good news is we found her and she’s safe. I have a feeling he’s done this a few times.

Grab her, don’t want to let go. Feel like my heart is pumping for the first time in an hour. Still can’t breathe but food is going the correct direction in my esophagus. Ears start to ring. Blood rushing into my head. Adrenaline pumping. Can’t let go of her…

There really are no words to adequately describe the feeling. Those of you who are parents understand. Those who aren’t yet don’t and the words I could type would never be descriptive enough to tell what was going on when I sat in that computer chair. There just aren’t words.

She’s grounded. I’d like to say FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE but I’m trying to be realistic. She knows the rule about asking before going into houses and until today, she had always been very good about doing that. I’m also considering making her carry her cell phone with her from now on so there are no more days like this. I have pretty much every parent’s phone number EXCEPT Grace’s because they haven’t been living there that long.

And now I’m going to go help her build a fort in her room to sleep in tonight. And hug her. A lot. A week of being stuck in the house with me hugging her every 15 minutes so I can smell the top of her head and feel the warmth of her body ought to be enough to teach her a lesson since she turned 9 last month and suddenly hugging is SO NOT COOL.

Next time I mention in my blog that I’m taking Cassidy to Chuck E Cheese, I expect all of you to virtually back hand me. Repeatedly. With a hammer. I love my daughter, dearly. And that’s the only reason I can come up with for voluntarily putting up with 500 screaming, misbehaving, sugared up kids and cheese covered cardboard passed off as “pizza”.

Usually at some point I try and break away from hosting duty (because I paid $20 a kid for SOMEBODY ELSE TO DO THAT) and go throw some balls. Skeeball. Sometimes I think about throwing the balls at the kids but I’ve always managed to control myself. Mostly. When the two year old wearing nothing but a diaper started running across all the lanes, I came pretty close to throwing a ball directly at the parent’s head. Except there WERE NO PARENTS. WHERE WERE THE PARENTS?!

I just threw up my hands and headed back to the table to continue playing hostess since the 16 year old in charge of running the party only actually showed up about three times and one of them was to hand me the bill. I think the rest of the time she was hunched over the toilet puking up whatever it was that kept her out till 5AM and at work looking like DEATH.

The only redeeming value of the trip is that Cassidy and her schoolmates had a blast eating cardboard, drinking liquid uppers and using tickets to buy crappy toys that will get stuck in the vacuum in a week. An absolute blast.

Seriously, hammer to the head. It would be a welcome alternative. Repeatedly.

Last year aflux went pink for the month of October to help promote Breast Cancer Awareness Month and I will be doing it again this year. Today I cruised on over to Steen’s and saw that she’s going to participate this year also. And you should to! So get to it, you have 10 days to come up with a cute theme and the crew over at Pink For October even have a few premade for you if you want to use them.

Its a worthy cause for our most body part!

I wanted to leave you tonight with some Haiku that Cassidy wrote tonight for her homework:

Dragonflies are best friends
Dragonflies drinking nectar
Playing a happy song

and

Best friends with people
Never running away when life gets bad
Don’t always close your mind

Yes, I realize they aren’t exaclty 5,7,5 but her teacher said they had to be 5 or more, 7 or more, 5 or more. *shurg* I don’t teach the class!

Saturday Cassidy, my mom and I spent the day running around to get some last minute school shopping done. She grew like 4 feet over the summer and all the skirts she put on had her looking like Cynthia. Target had all the uniforms on sale (YAY FOR LASTMINUTNESS) and we picked up a few skirts, shirts, capri’s and all that jazz. I didn’t get TOO much there because at The Great Mall there is store that sells uniforms but cut in all the hip new styles. So they are the fabric the school requires but she won’t be twinsies with Laura Ingalls Wilder on the first day of school. Cassidy is all about the fashion. This is her big fashion secret. She gets to wear uniforms that are different than the normal Lands End, Target, WalMart fair that you see and she thinks it’s the coolest thing EVER because they look great with her hot pink and purple striped tights, red knee high socks, and green and yellow hair bow. I’m telling you, she’s ALL ABOUT THE FASHION.

Only the store is closed and Cassidy is BESIDE HERSELF because HOW is she going to FACE the people at school if she has to wear the SAME uniform they do?! So before she could die right there in the mall in typical melodramatic girl fashion, we rushed her into Limited Too to see if we could find anything there. We did. ONE pair of capri’s and two bralette’s: $85.00!!!

Me: I certainly hope you include lube with that.
Clerk: Huh?

On the way out as I was mentioning to Cassidy that we’d have to go back to target the next day to get a backpack we passed Tilly’s and they seemed to have a pretty good selection of them so my mom went in. Cassidy ended up picking this Roxy backpack… after staring at two for about 30 minutes trying to decide which one she liked better. I could see the gears turning, ticking off the pros and cons of each. Hmmm, this one has wheels, but THIS one has a matching detachable LUNCHBOX!

When she finally decided on the backpack and we were paying, another clerk decided to SPEAK and please, clerks, COULD YOU STOP DOING THAT, and mentioned they had a MATCHING BINDER. My mom, of course in full on grandma mode, said, “YES! Lets see it!” So the guy brought it over and a short 40 minutes after Cassidy was ready to completely give up on life and die right there in front of a closed down Voga, she proclaimed this “THE VERY BEST DAY OF MY LIFE!!!!”

Today is her fist day of 4th grade. Excuse me while I go cry…

When I was 14 I demanded a pager from my mother. I told her if I didn’t get one I’d run away to my boyfriend’s house. AGAIN. I’d done this once before and it was a disaster that ended with me being Grounded For Life after the police had to come get me. But that’s a story for a different day…

The pager. Yes. Every cool kid had a pager and how was I supposed to know that a party location had changed or been busted last minute without this trusty devise to keep me connected!? My very EXISTENCE ON THE PLANET EARTH rode on whether or not I had that clear devise sticking out of my tight Calvin Klein jeans (clip out thank you very much, I totally wasn’t a belt loop clipper. Eww.) and I was not at all ashamed to remind my mother incessantly by yelling, slamming my door and telling her I hated her.

FINALLY I got one.

Mom: This pager is for ME to get ahold of you. I don’t care who you give the number to, who pages you, how many times a day it goes off. If I page you, you better call me back in 5 minutes OR BE DEAD.
Me: What?! The field party I’m going to tonight is AT LEAST 20 minutes from a phone. And first I have to find somebody sober enough to drive me there and hope we don’t get lost in the desert on the way.
Mom: *blink*
Me: I’m kidding. Kind of. 10 minutes?
Mom: There is nowhere in this city, county OR STATE that is more than 5 minutes from a phone. And if there is, YOU DON’T NEED TO BE THERE.
Me: But…
Mom: *glare that was so hot it melted icebergs on other continents*
Me: Five minutes. Got it.

I can’t tell you the number of times that Stephanie and I snuck out and I’d get The Page a 2AM and I’d completely ignore it and sneak back in the house around 4ish and hope that she’d taken enough Klonopin to forget she had ever paged me. It really is a miracle that my mother even TALKS to me today. Let alone, be one of my best friends who I confide so much in. Because if I were her, I’d totally hate my guts.

We bought Cassidy a cell phone today. She’ll be 9 in 3 months and is not the first kid in her class to get one. Or even the second or third of fourth. She was “so happy I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight”. We have a list of rules a mile long and she’s perfectly happy to just HAVE the phone.

Me: So we understand? The phone is to call Ben, myself and in an emergency, Nana. If you want to call anybody else, you MUST ask for permission first.
Cassidy: I know. But I can still hold it and play with it and look at it though. IT’S SO COOL, MOM!!!

Every once in awhile I call my mom out of the blue and apologize.

“I’m so sorry about that time that the police brought us home and Stephanie was arrested and I had to wake you up in the middle of the night so the cops could explain to you that we were pulled over in the WORST PART OF TOWN. I think I understand how you felt now.”

“I’m SO SORRY about that time I lied to you about the smell in the house when you came home that Sunday. I didn’t realize that 300 drunk people in the house could SMELL SO BAD and I scrubbed for 24 straight hours and the smell, it just WOULDN’T LEAVE.”

Tommorrow it will be:

“You know all those times I didn’t call you and you sat up and wondered where I was and if I was alive and when you’d ask me about it I’d just yell at you and slam the door in your face? I’M SO SORRY!! Let me buy you lunch and we’ll go shopping for shoes we don’t need and I can grovel all day and tell you over and over again how wonderful you are.”

*Bonus points to those of you old enough to understand the title.

Dear Hollywood Starlets,

Please eat.

I have an almost 9 year old daughter and it kills me every time we see you on the TV and you look emaciated and high. I want to invite you to dinner and cook you a big steak and feed it to you and pat your head and tell you it’s going to be okay. It’s OKAY to eat.

Cassidy has friends at school who already count calories and skip lunch. This started LAST YEAR in THIRD GRADE. These girls worship you. And I know that your first response to this is going to be “I didn’t ASK to be a role model” but please kindly shove those words up your ass. I’m sure they’ll come out during your next colon cleansing and I swear, words are very low cal/low carb.

So you didn’t VERBALLY ask to be a role model. You DID ask me to go see your last movie, buy your posters, your music, your entire clothing line, your perfume, your book, your dolls, your energy drink, your makeup line, and whatever other products you’re being paid to push this week. Little girls like my daughter pay for the alcohol, cocaine and laxatives you swallowed for dinner last night so please, for me, just take a few minutes tomorrow and squeeze a meal in between cigarette breaks and flashing your vagina to cameras. And I don’t mean four grapes. I mean A MEAL, something that contains all the food groups. And no, Redbull is not on any part of the triangle.

A concerned mother,
-Antigone

P.S. - I’d like point out that Miley Cyrus is excluded from this letter. AT LAST, a role model I can stand behind! The music makes me somewhat homicidal when I’m forced to listen to it in the car but still, HOW FREAKING CUTE IS MILEY!?

For awhile I was really debating what to do come July 20th. I mean, it’s the last book. This is the last time that Cassidy will have the chance to wow her grandkids someday with, “I waited all night in line for that book.” So in the end, I’ve decided that doing it for her alone is worth it.

But I swear to God, if somebody decides to drive through the crowd yelling out who is killed, it will become that time where, “Your great-grandma finally crossed the line to Crazyville and killed somebody over that book. True story. She grabbed him by the neck and actually shoved his own head into his own asshole. Up until then it was just a figure of speech that nobody ever really thought was possible. Not your great-grandma though… she proved them all wrong.”

Plus, I totally bet Ben $10 that I’d make it to midnight.

1) I have some more pownce invites if anybody wants one. Just comment with a valid email address (won’t be shown) or email me one.

2) Cassidy didn’t have pink eye. If her biological sperm donor had ACTUALLY taken her to a doctor like he told me he had (he didn’t), he’d have know that it was, in fact, viral conjunctivitis and the medicine he gave her (which his doctor gave to him to treat his eye God only knows how long ago for a scratch he got when he got SAND in his eye) didn’t help, it just masked the symptoms and now it’s not only in her EYES, but also spread to her EARS.

I was so pissed off about it when we left the doctor yesterday I had trouble focusing enough to just drive home. Then on my way into work I realized that, why am I so surprised by this? I should have assumed he was clueless and taken her to the doctor Sunday when he dropped her off. Especially given his track record and the time he had me freaked out because he said she had a yeast infection and how could I let her walk around like that scratching and WHAT WAS GOING ON IN MY HOUSE that caused her to get it?! So as soon as we picked her up we drove her to the doctor and:

Doctor: Hello. Here’s your Overbearing Freaked Out Parent Awardâ„¢. She has a bug bite by her vagina, fools. Next time LOOK down there before you come in.
Me: Her father told us it was a yeast infection, I put her in the car and drove her here. I didn’t have time to look.
Doctor: He was wrong. It’s a bug bite. Sorry you just wasted 1.5 hours in a room full of sick people for nothing.
Me: Can I please get that in writing so I can mail it to him with a pipe bomb?
Doctor: SURE!

Lesson learned: Assume nothing. Expect to have to clear things up on my own. Every time.

I’m not that bent anymore. In the end, it’s treatable, it only cost me $24 to diagnose and treat, and she’s home with me and far, far away from him and since he probably won’t bother to call her till sometime around Thanksgiving, meh.

3) Her arms are “very, very, very, very, very, very” sore. We are trying out gymnastics classes at different gyms and yesterday was her first ‘tryout’ and not only did she do about 30 hand stands, she climbed about half way up a 20 foot tall rope. This morning:

Cassidy: Mommy?
Me: Yes?
Cassidy: When I move my arms up and down, they hurt.
Me: You are sore from gymnastics yesterday.
Cassidy: It sucks.
Me: Yep, but the next time you go the pain will be less and then less the time after that and it will just get better. And! You’ll be able to flex and have UberMuscles so don’t get discouraged okay?
Cassidy: I’m still going! It hurts but I still REALLY want to do gymnastics.

The class yesterday was more “fun” than structure, which is what Ben and I want for her. Something that focuses on discipline, form and is pretty structured. So! I need to call a few more places and hopefully we’ll find a winner soon.

4) This turned out to be a little longer than I had planned and I should really get back to doing actual work.

YAY!

Only, not really.

Saturday Ben asked if I wanted to go look at some new stereo stuffs for my car. My M3 still has the stock head unit in it but I took the six disc changer out awhile ago because it wasn’t working for some reason which, whatever, I used the Ipod with tape adapter all the time anyway.

He warned me in advance, ‘We are just looking today. Pricing. Okay?’ as if I’m some impatient impulse buyer that doesn’t have any control. And I am. That is me in the relationship.

Ben: Do you really need more makeup?
Me: But I didn’t have this color!
Ben: Purple?
Me: It’s not PURPLE, it’s TRAX. That is other one is Violet. Plus it’s pigment, not eyeshadow.
Ben: You wear it on your eye.
Me: I JUST NEED IT, I HAVE TO BUY IT, IT’S A NEW COLOR AND SO PRETTY AND I JUST HAVE TO.

Or something.

Anyway, Ben drove my car a few weeks ago and when he put the tape in it made a sound like 500 gears being forced in the wrong direction. And that’s all it’s done since then. It. Has. Been. Rough. Mornings aren’t so bad because I listen to NPR and traffic updates but the afternoons, or anytime Cassidy is in the car, it kills me. Do you know how many times you have to search the entire FM band to find ONE good song? Well, in a three hour drive from here to Bakersfield, I managed to find ONE song. Seriously. One. Not that I even listen to good songs all the time. I mean, I have an 8 year old girl and there’s a lot of Fergie and Gewn Stefani goin’ on. Which I guess isn’t THAT bad. It could be worse. Like the Hanna Montana crap she’s suddenly OMG SO IN LOVE WITH BECAUSE SHE’S SO KEWL!

Ben: I’m thinking a nice head unit, an amp and some front speakers and you’ll be set.
Me: Whatever. As long as I can listen to my Ipod, I’m fine.

We ended up getting an Alpine iDA-X001 head unit built in collaboration with Apple for use with the Ipod. It even shows album art. TeeHee. Small pleasures. We also got some bad ass six inch Alumapro speakers for the front which will require some modification of the kick panel but these speakers almost caused me to have a spontaneous orgasm right there in the sound booth so I’M OKAY WITH THAT. Then Ben made the mistake of asking to listen to them WITH an Alumapro subwoofer and ‘almost’ turned into ‘real’ and we got it too and two Alpine amps to power them all. And they are really cute amps. That was one of them. I’m not sure which speakers that powers. I didn’t even know there were TWO until Ben just told me after laughing at me for not knowing. And blue cabling for all of it. And a capacitor, also Alumapro.

I drop the car off Friday night and can hopefully pick it up Saturday evening. *giddy*

The other big news?! Cassidy is home. Love. I was REALLY missing her the last week or so. That’s partly the reason I hadn’t blogged most of last week. All the posts turned into whiny sob stories of WHAAAA I miss my little 8 year old mouthy BFF/daughter/MiniMe! That lasted a whole 24 hours. Because she came home with pink eye (which they took her to the doctor and ‘treated’ her for so how the fuck does that happen?) and an over sized, incredibly skanky, Bratz Doll she named Cynthia. Cassidy even called her a Hoochie Momma. Thanks for teacheing her that term and letting her think it’s okay to use it in public conversation, ass fuckers.

Anyway, it’s good to have my sidekick home. And I better get to bed because I need to get up, get her to the doctor, then to work before 11:30 when we have a going away lunch for a co-worker.

Night, All!

I grew tomatoes!!! TADA!

I know, I know. Big deal right? Well, YES! It is a big deal! Because I’ve been trying to grow them for THREE SEASONS and this is the first time I’ve had a plant ACTUALLY produce a tomato.

In the past everybody told me to use Miracle Grow but I kinda feel like that’s cheating. I mean, do they genetically alter these fuckers to ONLY produce fruit if you chemically force them to? Maybe it’s some conspiracy that Miracle Grow has going on to up sales. But I dunno, I can see using it on flowering plants to balloon the bloom size to unnatural proportions but not something I’m going to eventually let Cassidy eat. I don’t need whatever chemical it is that causes the monster blooms to get into her system and somehow make her feet grow any bigger than they already are because they are already pushing the ‘unnatural’ envelope as it is.

I got some great news about a friend yesterday. And even though it wasn’t MY news I was so excited for them because I remember what it felt like to be in the spot they are in now and how wonderful it can feel and hearing THEIR good news actually put ME in a great mood! Funny how that can happen. Anyway, you know who you are and, YAY! Happy for your great news!

Ben was supposed to go to the track this weekend but money (it would be over $500 MORE then the $300+ he’s already spent on it AND he was at the track last week anyway which was probably another $500) and his head has started being a bastard again. He gets these headaches that come on randomly and literally floor him. He instantly gets hot (I’m sure his temperature goes up because he actually feels hot to the touch), feels nauseated, lays down and tries to sleep it off. He lays there and moans. That kills me. Two weeks ago when he was helping me with my exhaust he practically drove a screwdriver THROUGH his hand, washed it off and kept working like it was no big deal. So when he’s in so much pain that he’s on the couch groaning, I get worried. Really worried.

They have given him migraine medicine and so far it’s basically done: NOTHING. They are still coming and the medicine doesn’t seem to help AT ALL to get rid of them, or even help with the symptoms. Then for the entire following day he has what he describes as a ‘headache hangover’. Anybody else have these? Idea’s what it might be? I’m wondering if maybe some more drastic testing should be done…

Anyway, that was my Full of Randomness post for the week!