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.