What Two Consenting Adults Do In The Privacy Of An Exam Room...

I keep wondering if it drives some of you batty when I capitalize small words in a title that shouldn't be capitalized, as above.  Maybe that's why I do it? I am admittedly obnoxious that way.

Today was a rough day for me.  I am finally sitting here now, decompressing.

What happened was... (I was always told you shouldn't start a sentence that way, because it usually means the rest is a lie. But I have nothing to lie about, so here I go.)

There's still a mix-up with my meds. Not my Side-Effexor, thank goodness, because I would probably not be here to tell about it if I missed that for so many days. But my other med, of which I take three a night, has been all confused between trying to fill it at the Naval Hospital, or one of the clinics, or Walgreens in the middle of the night, and getting it refilled in the wrong place, and blah blah blah. Suffice it to say, I only had one pill instead of three for last night, which meant today was a really off day.

Not a depression day. Not an 'omg, how am I going to make it through' type of day. Just a withdrawal-y day. When I get the Trileptal withdrawals, I get major tunnel vision, weird throbbing headaches in my temples, and little discomforting shocks whenever I move this way or that.

It was not the sort of day, in a perfect world, when I would have chosen to have all three sick, small, naughty children home with me. But, alas, that is exactly what I had, after deciding to keep both C and J home for one more day. They are damn well going back tomorrow, unless they come down with... well, poo-poo on that, but y'know.

Oh, I missed something: I totally wet the bed this morning!!! WTF is wrong with me?  This is something I always do at least once when I'm pregnant, but I am certainly not with child right now! I have a dream - and almost all my dreams are very realistic, very vivid, and memorable for being so - that I'm peeing on the toilet, but I am actually, in fact, in real life, peeing in my bed!

Normally, I wake up after the first little sensation of making weewees. But no sir, not this time. This time, hoo boy, this time, I let go of a full night's bladder. I soaked the comforter, the sheet, the fitted sheet, the mattress. WET. Very, very wet.  And in my oh-so-tired and wrongly-medicated state, what did I do? I got up, walked around to Robert's side of the bed, and went back to sleep. Ugh!!! 

Just when I thought I had caught up on all the laundry, and I go and do this.  And hello, embarrassing!  (I have always had a policy, btw, that if it may be entertaining to someone else, it's worth humiliating myself to tell it.)  Rob told me I shouldn't get on Jack for constantly wetting the bed when I do it, too! Har!

So, that's how I started my day.

And then I came downstairs and nearly stepped in a giant pile of hot doggie doodie. Lovely.

And then I cleaned that up with paper towels and threw the whole mess into the toilet, and stopped it up.  Great.

And then I couldn't find the plunger. So the downstairs bathroom was out of commission all day. Sweet.

Are you with me?

It pretty much went like that all day long, and don't forget I was in this total withdrawal-y state from several days of messed-up medicating.  It was not a Good Mom Day for me.  It was all I could do to feed the children, get them dressed, and stay awake with them until nap time. (Doesn't that sound familiar? I swear I had a day or three like that recently, from being sick.  Boy, I'm really going to be winning some mommy awards this year.)

Oh, then Rob called and reminded me that he had to stand watch tonight until 2200. That would ordinarily suck enough on its own, but I had to be at the hospital at 2015 for a pelvic ultrasound ordered up by the oncologist. Three kids, small room, transvaginal ultrasound, late at night... I don't think so.

So I called my trusty babysitter, Stephanie, so see if she could babysit. Nope. (No? Wth? Are you not alive simply to serve my needs, my dear?) She had to get ready for her parents' impending visit tomorrow but, she could watch them if I brought the kids to her house, which is less than 20 minutes from the Naval hospital! Alrighty, then, we'll do that.

So I made it through the rest of the day (with the help of my best friend, Mr. Naptime) and jumped into the shower just on time to make it to this appointment. And got everyone ready to go - they insisted on putting their winter coats on, even though it was like 75 degrees outside. Fine, whatever, let's just go - and then

I COULD NOT FIND MY KEYS.

Now, I don't know if you read/remember my whole grocery list organization post a few WFMW's ago, but I like things organized and I have my systems. My key system goes like this: I walk in the door, I immediately hang my keys on the hook to the left that is there expressly for that purpose and yes there is a hook for Rob too although he never uses it, and then they are always ready and waiting for me the next time I have to go out. Simple, elegant, functional. Right?

Wrong.

Not when you live with Mr. Unreliable. I went outside to see if maybe, maybe, I had somehow left them in the van. The doors were all unlocked, but a quick check of the ignition, front floor, back floor, carseats and doors indicated there were no keys in the van. Odd. Very odd. 

I came back in the house and checked the floor and bags of recycling underneath the hook, the shelf and storage box on the opposite side of the hallway and the floor all round that, and the kitchen counters. No keys.

That left one very infuriating conclusion: Rob had done something with them.

Now, you may say that I am too-quickly jumping to conclusions, but in addition to the other two certainties in life, here are two more: (1) I always hang up my keys on that hook and (2) if they're not there, it's Rob's fault.

So I called him up and very unlovingly demanded to know whether he'd driven my car last night. Nope, nope. Well, buddy, my keys are missing, and I want to know where they are right frigging now! (I was so not in the mood to play around, and I was going to be late, and it absolutely ENRAGES me when he takes my keys and does not put them back. Especially when he has his own key to my car!!)

He finally remembered having taken them to get the remaining undelivered boxes of Girl Scout cookies out of the back last night, so I could have the box. And we traced the keys to the pockets of the shorts he was wearing last night, which of course were discarded on his side of the bed and nowhere near the actual laundry.

You can tell my husband isn't getting any tonight, can't you?

I think he tried to apologize, and I think I shouted at him and hung up on him. And I think this was outside where the neighbors were sitting on this porch. Yes, yes, it's all coming back to me. How very quaint.

So by this time, I have the kids bundled into the car and am driving to Stephanie's house almost a half-hour away when I remember two very important facts: (1) (I love enumeration) I am supposed to have a full bladder for this test and (2) I have not fed the kids any dinner.

SUCKNATION!

Eventually Stephanie and I sort it out on the phone that she's going to feed them dinner, so I don't have to stop and get them yucky McDonald's.  That still leaves me, so after I quickly dropped them off at her house, I stopped at Wendy's and got the hugest drink they offer.

Chug-a-lug.

I finally made it to the hospital with six minutes to spare. That only left me time to cast on the second half of the front of my little boy sweater, and do three rows of garter stitch, before I was called in.

And then, let the fun begin.

First, we did the abdominal ultrasound. Only, it was for my pelvis, so I had to pull my pants so far down she might as well have told me to take them off from the very beginning. That part was pretty short and sweet, and I thought I'd be outta there in no time. Then she told me to go empty my bladder for the transvaginal portion of our date.

I came back in, and she had a huge roll for me to rest my butt on, while lying on my back. Oh, yeah. That was a big slice of comfortable.  Then she got the wand. And, I have had vaginal ultrasounds before, plenty of times, for pregnancy.  But that last time I inserted something that big in there, well, let's just say his name was Ben and it was painful.

I can't believe how many foreign things I have had up my hooha for all these cancer shenanigans, and my husband wasn't even in the room. I am a dirty, dirty prom queen.

And that exam lasted a long time. You know those nice pictures they put on the ceiling when you have a dental or medical exam? I was wishing for one. Instead, I twiddled my hair and remembered back to the ultrasounds that would drag on two, sometimes three hours with my twin pregnancy - all while having that mandatory full bladder - and I stopped fussing about how long this was taking tonight.

Eventually it was over, so I left and went upstairs to get an emergency supply of my med for tonight (since he still can't pick it up at the clinic because of standing watch so late). I was in and out of there so quickly, again I didn't get to do any knitting. They didn't even ask me for my ID, just took the bottle back and gave me four nights' worth. Excellent.

So I drove back to Stephanie's and rocked out to Young MC's "Bust a Move" along the way. (If I'm ever on Dancing With the Stars, because I'm so famous, I'm going to have to make sure we dance to that. And Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5." And Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy," of course.")

The kids were so cute when I returned. Sophia had made a mess of her clothes with some chocolate ice cream, so Steph had put her in a really cute outfit her niece used to wear, and she looked adorable! She knew it, too. And Chloë was sporting some cute pigtails. As for Jack, well, he was there, too. Whining and complaining as usual. Sigh.

They wanted more food, so Steph gave them a second helping of dinner while I wrote out her checks (one for tonight, one for watching them during the cruise, whoohoo!)  They had already eaten a whole bunch earlier in the evening, but my Three Little Pigs chowed down for the second time while I waited. And waited. All I wanted to do was go home, but they asked for more of this and more of that, and who is going to deny them? Not I.

Rob was home (thank God) when we returned, and I had already called him and apologized for being nasty, explaining to him what he already knows: how much it pisses me off when he loses my dang keys. And breaks my system, lord have mercy on his soul.

So here I am. Doing the bills. Only I'm not doing the bills, since this is much more productive and necessary. Enjoy!

Fin.