I Got Nommed, Y'all!

U guise!! My friend over at ParenTwin.com nominated me for Funniest Blog.  Check me out, and people--if you've ever laughed at one of my rants, or because of me you've held your breath when walking by someone who sneezed, or thought of me when touching restaurant ketchup bottles and then used some hand sani afterward, and pretty please vote for me! Click like like like! While you're there, have a look at ParenTwin and show her some love too. :)

It's a major award!!

This IS My Beautiful House.

We spent all day scrubbing and scouring and Cloroxing and cleaning the shit out of this house, and we are left with a gleaming, shining, sterile abode, and red, raw hands stinking of bleach.

I am happy as a pig in shit.

Well, this kind of pig in shit, anyway.

Because even he is sensible about bum-bum germs.

Fun Friendly Phobic Fact Friday!

You know those makeup testers they have at Nordstrom, Macy's, Sephora, everywhere you go?

Yeah.

You might want to rethink using those little testers to see how a little NARS Shanghai Express looks on your lips or how some Bare Escentuals Pure Radiance looks on your cheeks. Or God forbid how a little Maybelline Great Lash looks on your eyes.

" 'We went to department stores, specialty stores, drugstores — everywhere,' she says. Her researchers found staph, strep and even E. coli bacteria on makeup testers. 'Wherever you see E. coli, you should just think "E. coli equals feces," ' Brooks says. 'That means someone went to the bathroom, didn't wash their hands and then stuck their fingers in that moisturizer.' Brooks says that when they tested the makeup on Saturdays — the day with the most traffic at cosmetic counters — the percentage of tainted makeup was 100%."

So if you want the Herp or a raging case of pinkeye, go ahead. Else, let's put down those tiny brushes and wee dipsticks and step away from the makeup counter, shall we?

Jesus Take the Wheel.

--------------------------------------------


THE WAITRESS


AT OUR LOCAL IRISH RESTAURANT


PUT 
HER
MOTHER
FUCKING
FINGER


IN MY BABY'S MOUTH.


IN HER MOUTH.


My baby's mouth. The waitress's finger. The waitress's finger IN my baby's mouth. In.

---

We all know the stages of grief. Denial; anger; bargaining; depression; acceptance. Allow me to demonstrate for you the Stages of Rage I went through after witnessing this utter atrocity.

At first, pure and utter SHOCK.

Then...AAAUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!!!! OH NO YOU FUCKING DIDN'T!

SWEET JESUS MOTHER OF MARY GOD IN HEAVEN NOOOOO

What she said.

HUUURRRGLE

BUUURRRGLE

YOU! YOUR FINGER! YOU PUT IT IN MY BABY'S MOUTH!!

YOUR FINGER IN HER MOUTH

What's on your hands? WHAT'S ON YOUR HAAAANDS??

FUUUUUUU...

Wait, ma'am. I don't believe you did.

Who the motherfuck DOES that? Who??

I. CAN'T. EVEN.

THAT JUST HAPPENED.

Even Einstein agrees. WHO DOES THAT.

Flames. On the side of my face.

Rage.

Rage.

RAGE.

Devastatingly sad. FML forever. This may actually kill me. I may actually die over this. I give up. I give up.

I concede defeat.

BRB gonna go take a rape shower.

On second thought....

BITCH I WILL CUT YOU

Bitch I will CUT you.

BITCH I WILL CUT YOU!!!

---

In her mouth. Her finger. In her mouth. I just. I can't. I can't.

Monday Musings. Plus Lots of Other Random All-Consuming Fears, Unfounded or Otherwise.

This is rather a grim Monday Musing, and it has nothing to do with germs whatever, but who said I have to muse about germs? I have a lot of phobias and fears and it's my blog and I can muse about whatever I want to JEEZE. 

Today, I was musing about eyeglasses. Specifically, what happens if you're wearing eyeglasses in the car and you are in a horrible, tragic car accident? And even more specifically, if the airbag goes off and bashes you about the face? Do your eyeglasses shatter into pieces or crack in half, the force of impact shoving them into your poor innocent unsuspecting eyeballs, giving your gruesome and devastating ocular injuries?

One wonders.

This is the kind of thing my brain things about constantly. 

While we're at it and a bit off topic, let me list for you the other things I'm terrified of that don't have to do with my germ phobia:

Other things I'm freaked about:

• Driving over a cigarette that someone flicks out of their car while driving--I'm afraid it will get caught in the underworkings of my car and it will explode my ride.

• We have ancient and very very not-up-to-code springs in the garage door and every time I press the button to open the garage door I am afraid they will spring loose and I and my children will be decapitated.

• I am afraid of spiderwebs everywhere and I walk around waving my arms wildly and bowing with my arms straight out as if praising the doorstep or giving worship to the gateway. If I do walk through a spiderweb, I panic and shriek and shriek and do a manic shaking flapping jumping flailing dance to try to rid myself of a spider that may or may not be on me, including flipping my hair upside down and raking my fingers through it and tousling it and shaking it all about. The I do the hokey pokey and I turn myself around. That's what it's all about.

That's really me. I guess I was embracing my fear that Halloween.

• I'm afraid of anything pressing on my temples. No massage, no sleeping with my hand under the side of my face, etc. Because when I was little, my mom told me that pressing on my temples could cause me to die. True? False? WHO CARES. It's ingrained in my psyche.

• I'm afraid of touching lunch meat and then not washing, because I'm afraid of getting listeria on my hands and giving it to my baby from touching said lunch meat and not washing thoroughly afterward. Even though listeria is really only an issue when you consume it while pregnant.

• Every since I read about two boys who dropped a rock from an overpass, and it killed a pregnant woman driving underneath, I constantly envision people dropping rocks from overpasses and one falling through my car window and smashing me to smithereens.

• We have huge old trees in our backyard and every time there's wind, I'm afraid one will crash through our bedroom window and, yes, smash us to smithereens.

• When driving on the freeway, I'm afraid of ladders or lumber or pipes or things falling off trucks in front of me and impaling me--I will switch lanes if I am driving behind a truck carrying lumber or other metal poles or such.

• If I am driving in a two-lane road, I am terrified, TERRIFIED, BEYOND TERRIFIED, that the other car will cross the center line and, you got it, smash me to smithereens. If it's a four-lane road, I will always drive in the far right lane. If my husband is driving, I announce, "DANGER LANE!" until he moves over.

• I worry about getting stuck in traffic under an overpass and that there will be an earthquake at that very moment and I will be, um, smashed to smithereens by falling overpass.

• I an obsessed with the terribly, horrible, gut-churning idea of my babies choking. Maya likes to eat gummy fruit, which are about yay big, the size of a small marble, and yet do you know what I do? I CUT THEM. I cut them until they are the size of a huckleberry.

Behold, gummies pre-cut. Note the ring for comparison.

Perfect choking size, am I right?

Well here's what I do. I slice those fuckers until they are half or a quarter of that size:

And often, even smaller. I am so, so afraid of my babies choking. 

Even gummy bites cut in half seem too scary for me.

More things I am terrified of:

• Getting papercuts on my tongue when licking envelopes.

• Unloading the knives out of the dishwasher--I'm convinced I will get a huge gash or a cut from reaching in to take out the cutlery.

• When driving right beside a semi-truck on the freeway, I'm afraid it will blow a tire and the tire will explode out and will hit me and I will either swerve out of my lane to my doom or be forcibly thrown over a lane by the exploding tire, again, to my doom.

• I'm terrified of driving and parking in downtown Seattle. The one-way streets throw me for a loop, and the brazen pedestrians cross the street at will without having the right of way so I'm always afraid I will hit someone, and the only parking available is parallel parking, and even though I technically know how to parallel park and fucking aced my fucking driver's test, I get sick to my stomach having to do it in live traffic, stopping right there in the lane, putting on my signal, and hoping people will give me enough room to back into my spot. Then I always mess it up the first time and my blood pressure goes through the roof and I have to try again, and meanwhile angry Seattle drivers are fed up with me, and I just want to crawl into my glove compartment and hide forever. So basically, if I can help it, I never, EVER drive downtown.

• I lock the car doors if I'm at a stoplight and I see someone on the sidewalk who I fear will try to enter my car and accost me.

• I always fear that waitresses bringing over a tray of several refilled drinks for several different customers will mix them up and give me some herpiatic cold-ridden nasty stranger's Sprite or mixed drink.

Which one's which? Whose is whose???

• I'm afraid of catching blood-borne diseases or a raging fungal infection while getting a manicure.

• I'm afraid of re-breaking my nose, and because my baby tends to bash her head into mine as I hold her. I never look at her straight on as I hold her close. I keep my head turned. I'm afraid she'll slam her head right into my poor damaged nose.

Happy on drugs:

Hours later, miserable, hotpacked with terrible nose and ear pain:

DO NOT WANT TO HAPPEN AGAIN.

• I'm afraid that my husband will keep forgetting to clean the dryer lint trap and it will cause a fire (it really can!). So I check it obsessively. 

• I actually spend a great deal of time worrying about having a brain aneurysm or choking to death while I'm at home alone and leaving my babies unattended and thus very unsafe.

• Every. Single. Time I step down the two steps into the baby's room, I'm afraid I will trip and fall on her and crush her.

• I'm afraid, no matter how many times I check (and I check 479 times a day), that our back sliding glass door will be unlocked and an intruder will come in. I yank on that sucker every time I pass it, even when I know that it was locked three motherfucking minutes ago and nothing's changed since.

I don't know. There's so many more. I guess that's enough for today. 

Fun Phobic Friday: Sleepvover addition

Today I had the strangest thought.

I actually entertained the idea of having a sleepover with Maya's good friend X. For a second it sounded nice and fun.

I don't know what came over me.

Now, Maya's friend X is a typical child who catches sick pretty often, like so many kids do. Without meaning to hurt X's feelings or that of her [acid test] mom, I'm actually always a dry-heaving wretching sweaty ball of angst a little afraid to see them, because  is seemingly always sick (we're talking coughing, congested, runny nose, and FEVERISH) when we get together. I mean, hey, it happens. Kids get sick a lot. But it's terrifying to me.

But suddenly I thought, "Hey, Maya's about that old. She's about old enough for her first sleepover. It could be fun, right? Fun by my standards? First we'd have her over and she's wander the house, checking out Maya's cool toys and putting her unwashed hands over EVERYTHING including the baby's toys that go straight in her mouth, and then we might mosey to the kitchen for a snack as long as they don't share food or touch hands,  then we could play with Maya's dollhouse for quite awhile followed by a trip outside to play in the mucky wet piles of leaves after which we'd have to scrub decaying foliage and squirrel poop off their hands, then we might do some arts and crafts and make noodle necklaces, followed by watching the movie Tangled, and for dinner I was thinking we could make pizza then purell the shit out their hands and then and cut out their pizza pieces with a star-shaped cookie cutter. Fun right? THen they'd play awhile longer, I imagine doing hand clapping games OH GOD, Finally popcorn before bed because what sleepover is complete without grimy, licked, bum-scratching, nose-picking fingers reaching into a communal bowl of popped corn, then bedtime.

We don't have a second room or bed so X could either share the bed oh God the chance of lice or we could put X on the floor on some big couch cushions covered by 15 fitted sheets and a washable pillow. The next morning we could have pancakes after washing last night's booger picking off their hands, and play some dress up or board games after which I'll sanitize every last piece, and wait until X's aid-test mommy picks her up. WHAT COULD BE MORE FUN.

After all is said and done, hopefully X won't tell her mommy, "Mom, Jo used hand sani 27 times on my hand we washed our hand a really lot, and she got really upset when I double-dipple my carrot sticks into the ranch dressing."

This was my actual train of thought:

Hey! A sleepover sounds fun. Just one extra kid. I can't deal. Woo hoo! I could do this. No big. I'll put on my big-girl panties and stock up on Purell and it will be grand.

Hmm. On second thought, it's the Acid Test kid. I love her to bits, but....

OSHITZ. The panic is starting to creep in. How am I supposed to do this?

Yeah. Pretty much fuggeddaboudit. God I suck as a mother.

Sounds like an absolutely dreadful lovely time.

What was I thinking?

At least if I ever did this I'm be somewhat in control of cleaning their hands and cooking foods to safe temperatures and not tainting the with dirty fingers as I served them.

If I switched things up and let Maya stay overnight at Acid Test's house, this is what would take place.

First, the girls would run up stairs to play in M's room. Then they'd immediately play with the turtle. The MOTHERFUCKING TURTLE OF ALL THINGS. The harbinger of salmonella. Without washing afterward, naturally.

They they'd probably go on with their bad selves to go eat a snack, a nice juicy wet sticky snack or oranges or apples, with salmonella hands, and if Maya had to go potty after this, no one would remind her or help her to wash or at least use hand sani. Then, they'd play with the computer, because they'd both very adept at navigating the computer. It's not a kids' computer, it's the real thing, where Acid Test's husband, one of the grimier people on earth, uses the mouse and keyboard. GERMIEST PART OF AN OFFICE OR A HOME OFFICE. Awesome. They they would play outside ad get grubby, the only saving grace here would be that they'd surely take a bath, because my kids gives her kid a bath most nights but see, my friend is a big, big fan of the friends taking a bath together. That's how Acid Test family rolls. I've seen her post Facebook pictures of her taking care of like four kids, all of whom are in the rub together. Fun for the kids, a damn near brain thrombosis for me. ALL. THOSE. BUM-BUM GERMS. *hyperventilates*

So maybe a sleepover was not the best idea. Sounds fun in theory, and someday my child will do it, but right now, you couldn't get me drunk enough or ply me with enough Xanax to allow it. Sigh.

I'm feeling panicky just typing this. BRB. Gonna guzzle some Purell.

I just can't win.