We finally got the drain rock today for the leach field. Little things can mean so much! Unfortunately, our driveway is pretty well covered and there's no way the work is getting complete before the inlaws get here. Gah.

I was thinking it would be fun to invite them here, but I think 2 gaping pits, one of which smells like ass, is just bound to make a bad impression.

Mike got a belated birthday card from his oldest brother, Chris. He read it blithely and said,"So, does Chris have a girlfriend or something?" I said,"Yeah, why?" Mike replies,"Because he sent me this sparkly-assed card." I said,"So, henceforth, we will refer to this as the 'ass' card?" Mike snickers and says,"Yep,I guess so."

The card had the number on it of the date of Mike's birthday (18) and confetti in the card. If you know anything about Chris, he's about the least likely to put confetti into anything.

Thus, the ass card is born.

It's been a long time since I've had the quiet of being able to listen to rain -- usually, it's just some pain in the ass thing to drive in. Of course, it's this particular weather which is making the digging of my septic a pain, but I know the septic will go in at some point, so I'm done worrying.

I fell asleep at about 9pm, so woke up about 3am, opened the window and played computer games because I couldn't fall back asleep.

Then, the rain started to fall lightly, as indicated by the patter on sand outside my window. Now, the eaves are starting to shed water, so there's that drip, too, and it sounds like a bubbly brook outside my window, warbling the tales of water from round the world.

I forgot how lovely rain can smell -- like a newborn baby's breath. I forgot how peaceful I feel when I can actually stop to listen to it.

My shoulders have stopped hurting and my hips aren't so sore.

I can sleep now.

I swear, I had all kinds of good intentions, but Thursday was Mike's birthday. He's 30, finally! Yesterday, I ran around a lot and then just came home and fell asleep on the couch for the evening.

The In-Laws are coming next weekend. And good intentions aside, I have to clean my house spotlessly.

Don't be mad. I'll be back. You can always email me. :)

Is it some level or heretofore undocumented domestic bliss when your husband asks, nay begs you for a waffle iron for his birthday?

The standard rule as far as I know is do not do tools or appliances for gifts. I guess the generic alteration to that applies...unless they ask for 'em.

I got Mike a waffle iron, a couple t-shirts, a Beavis and Butthead video set, and a set of headphones with a microphone.

He's such a geek!

But thankfully, he is no longer in his 20's -- he's officially 30 tomorrow. When I met him, it was two weeks shy of him turning 21. My baby has grown up. What the hell happened to me, we will never know, because I seem like I'll be immature forever or at least 29. :)

Russell has had asthma stuff for a couple weeks, but tonight, it got worse, so we rushed him to urgent care and he's got an ear infection and bronchitis. Nonetheless, he's staying home from school and moaning a lot. I also have the thrill of an ear infection. I asked the urgent care doctor and apparently the stuff I'm taking for my infected toe won't solve it, so I need to call my doctor tomorrow and get some levaquin.

I'd rather crawl into bed and die. I'm tired, I hurt, and the tummy bug crud has not left my body, or has been leaving my body in increasing amounts. Gah.

Big fun at our house. Genny had the coughing crud last week. Mike has a cold. i've got stomach flu and an ear infection and Russell has coughing crud and an ear infection. If there's any virus of the moment you'd like to contract, we can probably arrange it here. Just call us and make an appointment for the virus of the moment. For a nominal sneeze, it can be yours.

You know how in college, if you were the designated driver, your biggest fear was that your friends would get so sauced that they'd puke in your car? And that your karmic award for driving their sorry drunken butts around would be that you'd be stuck hosing out your car in the morning?

I nearly had to hose out my car for myself today.

As I'm driving down the freeway, I suddenly felt ill with little to warn me about it. I popped a piece of mint gum and the intense taste made it worse, so I, thanking my lucky stars for a filthy car, find a macho size plastic cup from Del Taco. (Thank the lord, I like my diet coke by the liter!) I rip off the straw and lid, pull the car to the side of the road, and proceed to be quite ill.

Fortunately, I manage not to hit anything inside my car except the cup and a little bit on my clothes. (Score one for a momma brain, because I knew damned well who'd have to clean out the car, if I got sick, and who'd have to smell the reek for a week.)

I then drove home, brushed my teeth, cancelled my appointments, and crawled into bed and slept for hours. I've been experiencing the other "end" of the spectrum in stomach flu this evening,which in conjunction with cramps has made me feel like a miserable piece of shi-shi.

Every time I lay down, I feel like something vile is occurring with my digestive system, so I'm sort of teetering while sitting up, which is a whole new experience in nausea.

Illnesses like this make me yearn for morning sickness. And then I think to myself, what woman in her right mind, would wish for morning sickness? Then I remember the macho cup and I recall...it's me, dammit. Me.

Well, after my trip to the orthopedist, I'm still losing weight. I don't think I've lost much total, but I've lost some. I know in the hospital, I lost quite a bit and I've lost 9lbs since March 28, which was 10 days after that, so I think overall, I've lost about 15-20lbs.

The doctor says that I'm making great progress. He says I'm not the only one to be frustrated -- that many of his patients say that, but that he really understood how hard it was as young as I am and with kids and house responsibilities. He also mentioned how frustrating the constant pain could be. I told him, I'd just like to be able to work and I'd like to be able to be up and around without my knee exploding into a whole new size. I told him the only way I could stop my knee from swelling like a balloon was to do little for 2 days. He said,"Well, i don't want you to do that." I said, "Me either!"

He nodded in sympathy then asked how my pain management was going. I told him that I try not to take anything during the day and generally, take a bit of something at night.

The physical pain has been so constant for so long that in an odd way I'm accustomed to it. It's the emotional pain that I am not used to. It makes me sad and angry to have to fight to do day-to-day stuff. I feel frustrated -- like punch the snot out of one of those stupid Bozo the clown bop dolls. I feel like stomping about and screaming and rending clothes frustrated. And I'm always always trying to control that and balance it against how much I love my family and kids.

For the most part, I'm pretty good about giving them fair warning. Like,"Do that again and you mom is going to lose her mind." My kids have seen me lose my shit and have decided it's not pretty and they do not want to be on the receiving end of it, so usually back off. Hubby is less well-trained, thinking he's funny to make smartass remarks designed to push me over the edge.

Ultimately, though the new antidepressant is keeping me organized, it's not keeping me from dissolving into a puddle at every happy or sad thing that enters my radar. I cry myself through TV shows, driving home, writing emails to my son's special ed teacher, and I don't know why. I keep thinking it will get better, but it has not and I feel like my heart is broken for no apparent reason.

I feel like I'm in a constant state of breakup with myself and all I want to do is cry and cry and cry some more.

And while I'm going through all this stuff, I've got a friend who I've come to think is just plain mentally ill.

I've done a lot to include her -- invited her to holidays and meals, but she accused me of stealing the dog and then accused me of violating her confidence because she thought I'd called the church where she is getting confirmed and asked when she was getting confirmed. And I guess, even if I had done that, how is it a violation of confidence to call a church and say,"Hey, you holding confirmations this weekend?" So she flipped out, called it "our" disagreement and then never apologized for being a total asshole, when she discovered how far off base she'd been.

Suffice it to say, I have little interest in such a person sucking my energy away from me and am just planning on putting as much distance between me and her as possible without sending her over the edge because at this point, I'm not clear about her mental stability. I don't want to deal with another flip out of this nature and I don't think I need to.

I promised that if I couldn't get up and do everything I want to do immediately, I'd at least post here.

I'm bummed out. I'm doing a lot of what I should and need to, in order to move forward, but my progress is so frickin' slow. It's depressing and frustrating to me.

I did get a brain henna tattooed on my knee this weekend while wandering about a festival, where I impulsively purchased a lot of tie dyes, neat earrings and other stuff. The kids played with a giant earth ball and listened through a seminar on the importance of using red worms in your garden.

I poked around booths. I found the Quail Ridge land conservancy. He's been doing it for as long as I can remember. I've given him dribs and drabs of money, too, over the years, too.

I got my aura read...Apparently, my crown aura was bright pink with a gold streak through it. Of course, I am currently a blond and was wearing a huge cotton comfortable dress, so I laughed about that one. I had really wanted a card reading. Those have been so dead on before, so I guess I felt like I needed a sense of my future because it's so unclear to me. I usually always have a sense of my own direction and right now, aside from the physicality of feeling like a floundering whale, I have the emotional feeling of that, too.

My spirit seems strong and quiet right now, as if it's waiting for something.

So Sandy is still here. His scabs are healing. I forgot to mention those here...he had scabs on him from itching from all the icky stuff on him. We put neosporin on them and he stopped scratching quite so much, though he still gives himself a scritch in those two spots every so often. More often than not, he's hurled himself at someone's feet feet up, looking for belly rubs. His favorite thing is to sit on Mike's lap and get loved up. We bought him chew treats and dog jerky and organic dog food. (I couldn't help my hippie self with the organic dog food.)

My allergies are hard around him, but I still pet the snot out of him and just go wash my hands. I'm vacuuming every other day and it seems to be going ok.

The only thing that was annoying is that he found the old squirrel hole out back and dug out the planter pretty well trying to get to that squirrel. If the squirrel plans on returning, I think Sandy will kill his furry rodent butt.

You may ask, Why would I think that of such a sweet little furry critter? I have my reasons.

Yesterday, he played soccer with the kids outside and some of the chickens that got out earlier in the day were scratching around near the corral where they were playing.

Yeah. He chased the chickens. However, not only did he chase them, but he also managed to scare one into the sheep fencing. (Sheep fencing for the farming-impaired is fencing with big squares in it about 4 inches by 4 inches.) The kids come in hollering that "there's a chicken stuck in the fence." Stupid me, I say,"How the heck did that happen?" "Sandy chased it!"

I go out and find a chicken stuck three squares up into the fencing, so it had had a little air behind it, only my stomach decides that at that instant I should go demonstrate my recent inability to retain digestive health and I realize that I should hobble as fast as I can to the nearest bathroom because if I bend over to help a chicken, it'd get ugly.

And clearly, because it was on the far end of the property, the dog was in his yard, and the chicken wasn't going anywhere (hadn't moved out of its predicament for a good 5-10 minutes), I had time to run in and beg Mike to save the chicken, whilest I released blessings upon the porcelain goddess.

The neighbors heard the noise and came out to see the spectacle of the chicken stuck in the fence, as Mike rescued it. Apparently, one wing had got caught on the wrong side and it had to be fed back through, in order to free the hen. She ran for the safety of the coop looking a little ragged and cranky.

How do I know Ms. Henny Penny was cranky? How'd I gain such insight into the psyche of chickens? She fluffed up her feathers and I swear, she huffed and clucked a bit pissily, and then trotted over near the coop. The most tell-tale sign? She herded easily into the coop. And lemme tell you...when it's nice weather, you can't get a chicken easily into the coop because they have lots of ground to scratch and peck at.

I can't believe that I've got a BA and half a master's degree and I'm an expert on chicken psychology.

--

How's the knee?

I've just cried all week about it -- I'm just way depressed. It's frustrating and with the weather heating up, I've been getting my ass kicked every time I try to get anything done. That and I just hate that I'm always so freaking tired and that getting a job would mean nights of excrutiating pain and even a little walking, still means so much pain and swelling. I swear if one more person tells me I should take it easy, I'll punch them in the nose and stomp off.

And add that to the fact that my knee has a brain.

When I am very very swollen, I have cro-mag knee. When I am less swollen, my knee is more of a serious tool user, with less ridge -- a homo habilis knee. I look forward to the day when my knee becomes a modern day sapiens knee, which I am told is a good 4-5 months off yet. (I also got the impression from my therapist that it's possible it'll stay like this, though she knew I was teary and didn't say it outright.)

I was talking with Mike and we were talking about how I could get a picture of a brain tattooed on my knee. I figure when the swelling goes down, I can let Genny draw on the maze. And should I ever pursue a career in neurology, I could use it midway through brain surgery to make sure I wasn't lost. In the interim, I figure it answers a question my dad used to ask me when I was a kid, if I did something stupid that thinking through would have solved,"Why don't you use your head?"

Because I can use my knee, Dad!

Oh, dear. If I only had a brain....

On the weekend, a neighbor stopped by as a dog ran into LaDawn's yard and the neighbor said,"Oh, he's yours?" LaDawn said that no, it wasn't, but she'd keep track of him and put signs up at the grain store and 7-11 in town, which she did on Saturday. In a town as small as this, those are the places you go to look for lost and found items.

On Tuesday, her husband told her to either find the dog a home or put it at the shelter by Wednesday because he did not get along with her 4 dogs at all. I met the dog and fell madly in love with him. He kind of looked like the shag dog in Beauty and the Beast. Only this dog, while friendly as heck, wonderful with kids, with an unstoppable licker, was dirty with heavily matted fur, that no one had bothered to take the time or money to care for.

Ladawn and I took him to get groomed (read: heavily shaved to remove the matting that was down to his skin). He looked like a different dog and I swear he was wiggling all over like a giddy puppy, though everyone estimates his true age is around 2. The groomer felt so bad for him that she tossed in a free medicated bath for the animal to remove any mites or fleas and at the end tied a little bandana around his neck.

He was three shades lighter, though we still call him Sandy because he responds to the "ee" sound. He's a beautiful buff colored terrier mix and he's the best foot warmer I've ever had. He loves jumping in the van and going with me. When Genny's not in the car, he jumps in her car seat and looks out the window.

So, here we are 6 days later -- and LaDawn receives a phone call from some guy claiming that the dog is his. And she gives him my number, but not before telling him that she doubts I'll give the dog up because I've already spent a fortune getting it groomed, dipped, and am getting it its shots, and that clearly, no one had done that before for the animal. He's got a small scab on his side where he scratched at this enormous mat til he bled.

I fully expect that I'm going to get another call on the other line, as I'm talking to her, from someone asking about the dog because he's a sweetheart animal. Only, I don't. I check caller ID later, and no one ever did call regarding him.

It makes me sad to think that such a sweet animal is so disposable and so easily dismissed. I'm glad we found each other and I hope I never get the call because I would have a hard time biting my tongue about how neglected the poor animal looked.

For the dog to be so sweet, someone had to have loved him. But they didn't miss him and they didn't track him down right away and they didn't brush him or walk him because he doesn't know how to walk with a lead and matting like that doesn't just show up.

Ladawns says she doubts I'll ever hear anything.

I sure hope she's right. Sandy is one sweet pooch.