Monday Musings: Praising Jesus Edition.

Do they chlorinate baptismal pools in which people are immersed body and soul? Because, I mean, Holy bum-bum germs! (If you will pardon the pun.)

Do they ever clean out the inside of decorative baptismal fonts from which they scoop and pour water? All those priestly hand bacteria and cradle-cap crap and Protestant sneezes.

Is it OK to be pissed off in church when the person behind you is sniffling and sneezing and coughing their brains out? Does it make the baby Jesus cry when you think angrily, "Couldn't they have praised the Lord from HOME today?" Does He command you, "But I say, do not rise up against an evildoer! If someone sneezes upon your right cheek, turn and offer the other cheek also"?

Do you ever think about how many germs are passed betwixt people when sharing the Peace of the Lord following the sermon?

Influenza be with you. 

"--And also with you."

And on the eighth day God created hand sani. 

Thanks be to God.

Fun Friendly Phobic Fact Friday!

/end trans

Are You There, God? It's Me, Jo.

Now while I'm a big believer in God, and I feel His work must be perfect and holy and righteous and all that nonsense, I can't help but sometimes think, "You know what, Pal? I could have planned this shit a hell of a lot better than You. No offense, Jesus."

Let's think this through for a second.

SEX. 

For example. First and foremost, the nasty. As I've heard it so crudely explained, who runs a sewage pipe through a recreational area? Sorry, but who wants to get all playful and lovely dovey and disover a BUTTHOLE in the way? Nothxyouvmuch. Butts are off limits. If it were up to me, I'd plan the fun and naughty bits as far away from the excretory system as I could. Maybe we'd poop out our toes or pee out our elbows. I don't know. But anything is better than a pee hole one centimeter away from the female pleasure bits, or pissing directly out one's supposed-to-be-sexy manhood. And butts? Don't even get me started. Why are they RIGHT THERE? Why right there? Why is the taint (a.k.a. the watch-your-step zone) only one inch big? So wretchedly unsexy. I want nothing to do with this butt of yours kind sir. I could have designed it better, Jesus.

BOOBS. 

Second, for all your nursing mothers out there, don't your beautiful and glorious and full and perky breasts lose some of their magic when they are scabbed over, bleeding, leaking, aching like the bejeezus, and you cringe if your husband gets withing six American inches of them or if he accidentally brushes by them or you god forbid, have to shower and the water pelts down upon your glorious aching bosoms? Oh I remember the agony like it was yesterday. The last thing you want is sexytime when he's all over those puppies. Not only because you'll soak and spray the bed with your milky milky goodness, but because there is a switch that has been flipped in your head that says, "These are for baby. They are no long for sexytime, at least for 9-1/2 months or more." And if you are anything like me, "I don't want your slobbery lips and/or beard all over my pristine baby feeders. Who know where those lips have been? Sorry honey, just wait a year and we'll be back to normal and you can smother my glorious creamy white mounds of love of with smooches. No big, right?" I could have designed it better, Jesus.

BIRTH. 

Business in the front, party in the back.                

Speaking of bringing forth young, I would have liked things to go the way for humans that they do for kangaroos, for example. A kangaroo gives birth to a very tiny, very immature joey, 2 cm long and weighing less than a gram. I could get used to that. This Joey gave birth to a seven-pound, ten-ounce Noey.  Screw this linebacker, I want a gram-size baby. The baby roo wriggles out of the mother's vajayjay, with the mother's lady bits totally intact, no harm done, no tears, no stitches, no repair, and weasels its way to a pouch where it spends 7-1/2 months attached to a teat. I could deal with that. Rather than a ravaged, savaged, torn-to hell perineum and 19-1/2 hours of hard labor with pitocin and all that shit, followed by a broken tailbone, a second-degree tear, and urinary incontinence that lasted for like 18 months. Bygones.

I mean, joeys are fucking hideous to behold, unless you're its roo mama in which case your fetal joey is the most glorious thing you've ever laid eyes on, but still, I'd rather squirt out a 2-centimeter baby than a 21-inch fucker. I could have designed it better, Jesus.

EXCRETIONS.

Also, as long as we're talking about what we would have changed about the childbirth process if we were Jehovah, I would have made the digestive systen 100% efficient. Like, you take food in, you use it all, there is no need for excretory bidness. Why can't we use every bit of the food we take in with complete efficiency? What's with the having to shit like once or twice a day? Totally unacceptable, Savior Lord God in heaven, Totally unacceptable.

I think You know best about most things, but poop, genitals, birth, and the like, You should have consulted me on. I'm just saying. You should have consulted me.

So dear Jesus, if you're listening, just know that I could have done better than You with re to all things excretory, reproductive, and sexual.

Love, 
Evermore,
Yours, 
In faithful service,
Jo

Pediculus Humanus Capitis. *scritch scritch scritch*

OK. So. Lice.

I think the first time we got lice--and you know this is gonna be a good story if it starts with "and the FIRST time we got [a plague]"--was when I was about seven and I went to after-school daycare at the Young Men's Christian Association.

We suddenly had a mandatory "lice check" one day, and lo and frickin behold, I "tested positive." I was stunned. Lice? What? Me? I got sent home. We treated the situation the best we could. It was all new to us, but my poor single mother dealt with it in between working 8 billion jobs and shit.

I remember that the YMCA had a couple more random checks as well, and I got sent home another time too. Talk about humiliation. You go into the nurse's office and you don't return. HMMM. WONDER WHY. WHERE'S JO? LICE MUCH?

When I caught The Lice (and I will forever blame this one girl Gwen and her licey ways), my family did everything that we should have done. We repeatedly shampooed our hair with Rid, we sprayed the carseats, the hairbrushes, and combs, we froze the cloze, we bugbombed the house while we stayed in a Travelodge motel (forever after referred to as The Lice Motel). But if you recall, our house was the Pit of Despair, and we had clothes and laundry and mess and junk and crap and bullshit everywhere; i.e., plenty of places for those crafty lice to hide.

At some point, through heroic efforts, we kept the lice at bay, but only temporarily. It seemed a battle we were always...er, battling.

The next major lice war I remember, it was when I was in 5th grade. I had newly discovered boys, a certain boy in particular. I was in love with one Mitchell Marchant. Love, I tell you. Young young love.

I had also discovered the phone. (This was before my phone phobia.) I was on the phone all the time with Mitchell. I would hide in my mom's room for some semblance of privacy, since that was the farthest that the phone cord would stretch. This was before cordless phones, child, and long, long, long before cell phones. We would talk until the wee hours. And by that I mean 8 pm.

Well, one day at school, the nurse was doing her rounds, and it was time for one of her mandatory lice checks. Got-damn those mandatory lice checks. One by one, she took everyone into the back of the room and carefully combed through their hair with a pick and a magnifying glass.

My turn came.

LICE!! FUUUUUUUUUCK!!!

I was sent home in the middle of the school day. I was mortified. Because that only meant one thing. And worse, Mitchell knew it only meant one thing: His 5th grade telephone girlfriend had lice.

Well, my family did the old routine lice treatment: shampoo, spray, bugbomb, Lice Motel. Rinse, repeat. RINSE, REPEAT. After a few bouts of it, we were done. Again.

Then came 7th grade. And gym class. After (sooooo not) sweating it up during gym, all the girls wanted to share my awesome Sassy hairbrush, since I was the only one who ever thought to bring one. I obliged, wanting desperately to be cool. And like Gwen in those YMCA days of yore, Megan Hughes proved to be my downfall. One day, I noticed how good it felt to deeply brush my hair. I kept brushing. And brushing. Scratching, if you will. And the next day, Megan Fucking Hughes was sent home with lice. And guess who had shared my brush the week before, in gym class? Megan F. Hughes.

That day I went home and looked at my scalp up-close-like in the vanity mirror.

Wham. Lice.

SHITBALLS AND A HALF.  Would it ever end? Fuck you forever, Megan Fucking Hughes.

And this was particularly bad timing. My brother was being baptized that very night. We had found out like two hours before that we had lice. That's right, he was about to become a CHILD OF GOD and here I was, realizing we had a PARASITE OF SATAN on our very scalps. And I was the one who had to tell him. I have to say, he took the news graciously. You can't very well accept the bread of life and the salvation of God and the peace of the Lord and then flip the fuck out on your little sister for catching lice for the 84936584378th time. We treated our hair, prayed to the Patron Saint of Bloodsuckers that headlice couldn't be transmitted via baptismal font, and hoped that we were done with this shit.

Thank you sweet tiny God, we were.

It never happened again.


Finally, victory. Headlice? GTFO!!

Anyway, it may have taken 84936584378 times, but it was at this moment at the age of 12 that a phobia was born. From this point on out, every request to borrow my hairbrush was denied. DE-MOTHERFUCKING-NIED.

People hated and resented me because of it. I was a veritable gym class pariah. It was mortifying at such a tender age. But I stood my ground and said no, you may NOT borrow my hairbrush. I was as afraid of lice as I was of someone vomiting. If I saw someone scratch their head, I was instantly on red alert. But because of that, we never caught lice again.

But that doesn't mean I am not still paranoid to within an inch of my life, especially now that Maya's in school.

And no. You may not borrow my hairbrush, EVER.



I leave you with this:

Poop on a Hot Tin Slide Park, Revisited. Also, Some Other Bullcrap.

So today my mom called up and said that she had a break from work from 11 am - 2:30 pm, and would I like to meet her at the park.

The park. THEE park. The one, the only, Poop on a Hot Tin Slide Park.

I said OK, because I am batshit crazy a masochist a fun-lovin' gal, and parks, ain't they just the funnest.

So first of all, just getting out of the house was bananas. Feed the baby burp the baby wipe up puke feed the kid put kid into play clothes change the baby's diaper put the baby in suitable clothes help my older daughter wipe her bum-bum and dump the poo-poo and MF sterilize the potty chair change baby's clothes again because she puked again and give older kid a snack get my own clothes on pack snack and juicebox and baby's bottle and sunscreen and hand sani but baby's hungry again so feed her, and on and on. Oh, and at one point, during one of the multiple diaper changes, Naomi decided to have a massive blowout...out both ends. Diarrhea shot out her bum-bum just as huge quantities of milk gushed out her mouth AND NOSE. And she was choking, but how was I supposed to turn her on her side with poop everywhere? Oh my God why.

THEN, when we were finally set, I couldn't find the Got. Damn. Baby Bjorn. Which I need, when we are at the park. I'm not going to lug around my huge heavy hulk baby all day, nor am I going to tote her about in her 289347-pound Graco seat. So I needed the Got. Damn. Baby Bjorn. And I knew my husband had something to do with the fact that I couldn't find it.

---

Let us pause for this interlude. My husband, he is a purger. And I don't mean he's got an eating disorder. He can't stand things lying about the house, so he "gets rid" of things, and by things I mean clutter, and by clutter I mean objects that I STILL OMFG USE!! JC FUUUUCCKKK!!!*

*Sorry, I'm still a little upset [raging] over the time five or six years ago that he "donated" a bag of clothing to charity, without even looking inside. Had he looked inside, he would have seen that it contained all my most lovely, and very expensive, clothes. Beautiful dresses, including the one I wore to my brother's wedding. All kinds of other dresses, fancy skirts, gorgeous sweaters, etc. All my best things, hundreds and hundreds of dollars' worth of fancies. They were in the bag because we had only recently married, and thus I had only recently moved in, and I hadn't had the need to wear anything fancy since then, so hey, "my bad," they were still left in a bag in the garage. But come on. You don't expect your husband to look at a Mystery Hefty Sack and think, "I think I'll put that there bag of unknown origins containing unknown contents on the curbside during donation pickups, without even looking inside, because why the shit not?" /rage

---

So OK. This morning after all the nonsense of trying to get both kids ready to go at the same time, then at the last minute not being able to find the Bjorn, I tore apart the house, trying to find where my saintly husband might have stored it, thinking it was just clutter lying about. I called his cell phone no fewer than 344 times, and of course it went to voicemail every time (like it always does when I need him, but I'm not bitter), and I left messages saying "WHERE. ARE. YOU. I. NEED. YOU."

I was breaking a sweat and I hadn't even gone out into the hot sunshine yet. Running so late, I had to sprint to my neighbor's house and say, "Can I borrow your Baby Bjorn?" Bless her heart, she let me use it. But holy crap MY heart[palpitations], because her Bjorn carrier was covered in a largely bit of baby pukage. OK. OK. I'll be OK. I can deal with this. She's doing me a favor. I love her. We'll just hang blankets over the Bjorn. OK. Let's get this show on the road.

Finally we arrived at Poop Slide Park and found my mom. Well, see, actually, I don't even know how I managed to find her, because there were approximately exactly 654,992,001 kids there. At noon-thirty on a weekday. Apparently, unbeknownst to me, it was "Take Your Entire Fucking Daycare/Summer Camp/Cub Scouts/Village/Bridge Club/Junior AA Meeting/Soccer Camp/Crocheting Camp/Fat Camp/Preschool Reunion To Poop-Park Day," and the place was positively swarming. It's a huuuuuge park, but it was full to the brim, and mostly of exceptionally rowdy, filthy boys age 8-11. The worst kind. I nearly perished.

So not only was it difficult for me to get out of the house, and obviously difficult for me to even agree to take the kids to Germville Happy Shiny Playland in the first place, but I'd had no idea what I was getting into and was just shocked and horrified and the sheer numbers of kids, surely carrying everything from malaria to mad cow disease to the black lung. And with so many kids covering every inch of the play toys at every second, there was no time for God's Disinfectant (sunshine) to do its job.

And the kids were all being so rough. They were practically knocking down my wee girl, and they were shoving ahead of her just as she'd get ready to slide (down a hopefully non-pooped-on slide), and they'd ram past me and knock into little Naomi, and they'd climb up the slides just as Maya was going down. I have no problem being THAT MOM who says, "Hey, take it easy, pal!" or "Slow down, dude, there's little ones here," or, "EVERYONE OUT OF THE SLIDE NOW, SOMEONE'S COMING DOWN." I am usually an extremely reserved person, and don't talk to people I don't know, and don't parent other people's kids, but when some 11-year-old monster is knocking down my kid, I will be that mom, because I am sick of kids that act like bullies at parks. So, just more stress on an already ridiculous day.

Also, I was a little pissed at my mom, who had been at the park long before I got there, and she didn't call to warn me and say, "Um, you might want to take a raincheck. This park is standing room only today, and veins will pop out on the side of your head and you will hyperventilate when you see this place."

Oh, and the borrowed Bjorn was still freaking me out, just a little, in the back of my brain.

But we played. My daughter had a great time, climbing and swinging and balance-beaming and sliding, though not sliding over any fossilized phantom dukes this time, praise Jesus hisownelf. But of course Maya kept touching her face and pushing wisps of hair out of her eyes and sticking her pinkie in her mouth (I swear as if to mock me), yea though I screamed as quietly as I could, "HANDS OUT!"

Then my mom brought up the idea of snack time. I'd brought some just in case, in the car, but my mom had them there at the ready, and they were the juicy sticky kind, like apple slices. (My snacks were dry and in wrappers you could hold as you ate them.) So I cleaned off Maya's hands (and, um, arms and elbows) with Kids' Sani-Hands the best I could--twice--then let her have some apples and carrots and such. My tension was so high it was ridiculous. Normally I'd never let her eat after playing at the park until we'd come home, washed, and then used hand sanitizer (unless it was Emergency Hunger, in which case I'd use 8 mile of hand-sani GEL and then give her a NutriGrain to hold by the wrapper).

So I'm sitting there, sweating from stress and from holding a hot Naomi in a borrowed barfy Bjorn, praying to the Patron Saint of Poop-Parks to just get me out of there. At last my mom had to return to work, and I had to get to work too, sterilizing the kids.

All told, and I'm sorry Mom, but I had an absolutely positively terrifically bad time.  Fuckin OCD. So unfair.

We got home, we stripped nekked, we washed, we hand sanied. Fed the kids, put them down for naps, and then got on my elliptical to manically burn off some of the intense, agonizing anxiety I had felt for the last couple of hours.

So that was the "Poop on a Hot Tin Slide Park, Revisited" part. 

What follows is the "Other Bullcrap" section.

Instead of trying to kill my fear with exercise, I would have just taken some of my prescription Xanax, but guess what? They don't work for me. Nothing does. Medications do not work in my body like they work in yours. Vicodin? Pssh. Percocet? I laugh in its face. Codeine? Nothing I've ever taken has ever touched my pain. Valium?

...Klonopin?? Let me tell you a tale about Klonopin.

Back when I was seeing the shrink, he thought Klonopin was just the thing I needed. I said, "Well shit, that's kind of rad!" I had told him of how prescription narcotics have no effect on me (NONE WHATEVER), and he said, "All right, now, I usually start my patients off with one-quarter of one pill. But with your history, I'm going to let you start with one full pill, and we'll go from there."

Throughout my time seeing him, I rapidly had increased my dose to six. Bish I said six. Six motherfucking Klonopin. Six, all at once. Do you understand the words that are coming outta my mouf?

And do you think they had any effect on me?

Because we were increasing my dose so immensely (he had only ever had one patient take this much Klonopin, in all his years of being a Mr. Dr. PhD Shrinkydink), Mr. Dr. had me go in for a blood test, just to make sure we weren't about to kill me. When the results came back, he said, with a bit of confusion and hesitation in his voice, "For patients taking Klonopin, the range of the amount of medicine in their bodies should be between 20 and 90. I like to see them at the upper end. Your results...well...they came back at 21."

AND THAT WAS AFTER TAKING SIX OF THEM. Six. Not one-quarter of one tablet.

I felt kind of vindicated. All my life I've been saying, "Pharmaceutical shit don't work for me, son." Not ibuprofen, not harder stuff. Percocet not only doesn't touch the pain, but it doesn't give me "a good time," either. Just zero effect. Alcohol doesn't affect me. (Well, I'm either unaffected, or puking, nothing in between. No fun stuff.) Caffeine doesn't affect me. Sleep aids don't affect me, whether OTC or prescription (and that sucks, because I've had terrible insomnia for 10 years).

I've always said that painkillers don't work and that surely there's got to be something more, and I've always felt like people think I'm just drug-seeking and that I want to get my hands on some oxycontin or something, but I'm so serious about meds not working that when I go see the doctor for something painful and they offer me percocet, I say no thank you. I say don't even bother. I don't want them. They don't work. So doctors can take their vicodin and just place it up their bum-bum for all I care.

Years ago, after having my tonsils out and my broken nose surgically repaired simultaneously, and the pain was so immense, my mom finally got my doctor to try something else. It was an intramuscular injection.* I was to take it alongside two percocets, AND two prescription strength Motrin.

*I can't remember the name of it, but it's the kind that is supposedly so strong and gives you a "spectacular sense of euphoria" (according to the doc) that addicts all across the land go to the ER and feign headaches or something, just to get this shit. And here my doctor prescribed it, ALONG with percs and huge amounts of Motrin. And do you think it did anything to touch the pain? Do you think it even gave me this highly-desired and highly-sought-after sense of eufrickinphoria?

So anyway, back to my Klonopin tale. After this very vindicating blood test, my doctor said, "Your levels of Klonopin are nowhere near I'd like them, and nowhere near where they should be. Your body obviously just metabolizes meds at an incredible rate."  No shit doc, I knew that ten years ago, now here's $300 for your time.

As for Xanax...I almost fear even admitting this. (Will the Feds lock me away?) But I have tried taking seven of them at once. SEVEN! And do you think I felt anything? Calmer, happier, more content, less anxiety, even just plain old sleepiness?

If I were the criminal type, I should just be selling this shit. Instead of swallowing millions of percs, vics, klons, and xans, in the hopes that they will somehow MAGICALLY work this time, I should just be selling this nonsense and making thousands of dollars off it. But of course I am not the criminal type. lol.

But on that note, and I'm just curious...see, I'm not exactly street-drug-savvy, but what the hell do hardened drug criminals take? Like, how much do they buy on the street? What is a typical "fix" for someone who wants some Xanax? Because surely they're not out there popping seven. Are they??

I have a couple friends who, every now and again, post on Facebook, "Ugh, worst day EVER. So stressed. I just had to take half a Xanax." And my only reply to that:

It's just unreal. I have severe anxiety, and the best anxiety meds out there don't do anything for me. What am I to do?

Oh, and my antidepressant? I literally don't absorb it. I won't tell you how I know, but I think you can figure it out. Oh don't give me that look, come on. This is a blog about poop.

So no small fucking wonder I'm not "better" yet. Meds slide through me like a greased hog through Farmer Jedediah's eager hands, and my Super Liver processes things out so quickly that there's not a chance anything could work.



---



Sooooooooooo...I'm not entirely sure what the point of this post was. I just kinda sat here and vented about my day, my purge-happy husband, and the crappy way my body doesn't respond to meds. Today sucked, and while there was no Raw Chicken a la King, I was paralyzed by fear at times.

All because I was at a park. :(

...Well, but I mean, it was the Poop on a Hot Tin Slide Park.

'Least my kid had a good time.

Passing the Torch.

For my daughter's third birthday, I could have gotten her anything. A tricycle, a scooter, some dress-up clothes, whatever.

Instead, this is what she got:*

At first she was all, "WTF is this shit, Mom? I wanted a giant creepy decapitated Barbie head where you can curl her hair and put clips in it and scrub blue eyeshadow on her face and stuff."

But then she cheered up as she remembered, "Oh yeah, germs really aren't for sharing, and everyone needs a little reminder every now and then. Hey thanks Mom."

*Well, I mean she got other shit too. But this was clearly the most important present.

I think the author (Elizabeth Verdick) did a mostly great job with this book. My only complaint is in this passage:

"When do you wash your hands? Before it's time to eat. When things get messy. When you sneeze or cough or go potty--or anytime you need to." 

What she forgot was, "And when you touch handrails on the escalator, which you should know better than to do anyway; after you hold menus at restaurants, because, gross; when you pump gas; when you change a diaper (even just the pee-pee ones), since OMFG no mother ever seems to wash her hands after changing her precious precious darling's diaper, because after all it's "just" a little BABY'S poop, which must either be (1) because baby poop somehow differs inherently germwise from adult poop, or (2) because baby poop is darling; after you touch a doorknob of any kind; after you dig for gold; after you flush a recently murdered spider down the toilet (because you touched the flusher); after you touch raw meat (in fact, please use rubber gloves before doing so); after you adjust your wedgie; after you handle cash or your credit cards; after using your cell phone; after you go grocery shopping; after you go to the mall; after you go anywhere; after you share the peace of the Lord at church (all that shaking of hands?? I mean, I love you, brethren, but it doesn't mean I don't secretly rub in some Purell after greeting one another while the pastor prepares us for Holy Communion. Please, by all means, share the peace of the Lord, but not your bum-bum germs); and so forth. So needless to say, I'm a little disappointed in Elizabeth Verdick for not adding in the line, "and also, every time you go anywhere, do something, or touch anything. Because germs are everydamnwhere, and they are most assuredly not for sharing."

At church, our departing remarks are, "Go in peace, serve the Lord." Instead, I like to quote this book by chanting, " 'Go and wash your hands, because germs are not for sharing.' Oh and plus Praise Jesus."

Just doing my best to raise tiny germaphobes.