Time for a Shortie

You must visit this new-to-me blog, Muskrat (sometimes I say things that are inappropriate), and read his post for today. It is so funny that I laughed hysterically. Loud enough to gain the 'beasts attention - which is close to impossible. I shouldn't say that. The boys perk up pretty easily if they hear/smell food.

You've got to read the post - which can be found here. Properly entitled, "Convevniently Omitted from the "What to Expect" Books: The Daughter Who Sings to Her Vagina". Maybe I found this post so funny because I can relate - both as a child whose mother could not keep clothes on her, and as a mother who has a child who strips the minute she walks in the door from school. (I thought that would end...but she still does it at 9 1/2.)

This post reminded me of something I've had on my computer for a long time. I received it as an email attachment, so some of you may have seen it. Even if you have, it's totally worth another look. I don't normally save email attachments...but some defy "normality". You'll understand when you watch it.

I will warn you, THIS IS AN ADULT VIDEO. You probably shouldn't watch it in front of your boss. Unless said boss is very understanding - and has a great sense of humor. And you definitely shouldn't watch it in front of your five year-old. Unless you're prepared for some very "uncomfortable" questions. Otherwise, watch and enjoy.

Enjoy your day off, America. (And everyone else, as well.)

It's Not MY Fault, JD Made Me Do It

Yes, I know I said I would finish my last post. And I'm aware I should be finishing that post now. However, through no fault of my own (I'm totally blaming JD), a topic was mentioned that I want to address.

As I was blog surfing, I came to JD's blog, "I Do Things So You Don't Have To". In case you haven't read her blog before, this woman is hi-LAR-ious. Seriously. She is at the top of her comic game, one of my very favorite funny people. I look forward to her posts almost as much as I look forward to the day I can go to the bathroom without an entourage.

Before going any further, you have to read JD's post, "I Get Zapped So You Don't Have To". Personally, I think she should have named the post, "I Found a Fool-Proof Way to Get Any Cat to Pack It's Bags & Hit the Door, So You Don't Have To" - but as usual, I wasn't consulted before publication. (At some point, people will come to realize they should consult me before doing anything...but that hasn't happened just yet. Maybe it's because people see just how awesome my life is - and they just don't want to take away any of my fun and joy.)

The "fun and joy" that is my life.

Go ahead and read it...I'll wait.

Back? Ok, good. I told you she's a total riot.

Reading her post brought up a memory I couldn't help but share with you, which is why I'm delaying part two of my last post, "I Hope I Don't Hack Off Too Many People...". As promised, it will be posted. It's just going to be an extra day. I can't be responsible for the riot that may break out if the kingdom was privy to two juicy posts from the Queen in one day.

Know what I mean, Vern?

I HOWLED at this post...I have mucho experience with portable TENS units...and the fun they can be. However, you have not experienced TRUE fun until you've had a central stim unit implanted.

Basically it's the same premise - only it's a unit that is implanted under your skin, with a rather large wire and sixteen electrodes which they "install" in your spinal column.

An example of the sixteen electrodes I have implanted.

Ahhh yes. As if staying awake for that surgery isn't fun enough, the first time you turn it on - which is at home, when you're alone - is even better.

I AM a Bionic Woman

You see, they implant the antennae part under your skin, right at the top of your butt.

You are given a large pager-type device that controls this implanted unit that has now made you the Bionic Woman, and coming off this pager-like unit, is a wire with a flat donut-looking thing that attaches over the antennae with some super-sticky tape.

You put the flat donut-looking thing over the antennae, and away you go. Intense and powerful stimulation occurs in the legs, helping to control pain. (It actually just works to confuse the nerves in your spinal column, so you feel "electric" sensations instead of pain.) Ya with me so far?

Could this post be turning into any more of a medical class??

They temporarily program this thing while you're in the hospital, recovering from the surgery you got to witness, firsthand. You're on some pretty good drugs, your body is swollen where they put this "device", as is your spinal column. If you have as much scar tissue in your spine as I do, the surgery - which is supposed to last 60 to 90 minutes, if I remember correctly - can last up to 6 1/2 HOURS, while they try everything to tunnel through the scar tissue...while not paralyzing you.

Fast forward a few weeks...the surgeon gives me the "go ahead" to turn the stimulator on. I'm a little nervous and put off turning it on. Ok, I admit it. I'm outright scared. What if I turn it on wrong and I electrocute myself to death? I do not want the headline in the paper to read,

"Woman Survives Amazing 6 1/2 Hour Bionic Surgery -
Only to Electrocute Herself with Completely Safe Device".

Not only do I not want that legacy, but having been a paramedic, I know what my own reaction would have been had I shown up on a call to find a patient twitching uncontrollably from something implanted inside them.

The doctor calls to see how turning it on went. I admit to being a chicken. In fact, I'm reveling in my chicken status, totally happy to be ignorant of this experience. I'll take chicken over fried chicken any day.

My kids, always wanting what's in my best interest (aka - always wanting to help me to make a fool out of myself as often as possible - as if I can't manage that totally on my own), keep begging me to turn it on. After several rounds of my polite declining, the oldest tells me that if I don't turn it on myself, he'll just wait til I'm asleep...and turn it on for me. This threat actually scared me. Petrified me. Why? Because there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that, not only would he actually do it, but he would really enjoy it.

Oldest 'beast

Me

So I mustered up my courage (unlike JD, who mustered up her cat), stood up next to my bed, made a stack of pillows to hold on to, and told the oldest 'beast to go ahead and turn it on.

I braced myself, knowing the swelling had gone down significantly since they had programmed the unit. I listened intently for him to turn it on, almost having a coronary when the unit began making a high pitched beeping noise. I had forgotten it did this in order to signal it's on and searching for a signal. After pulling my heart out of my mouth, I relaxed - because I felt nothing. Nadda. Ahhh! The unit was on - and I didn't die of electrocution. My overly-exposed nerves could stop freaking out...and I could stop producing buckets of adrenaline! Phew!

I stopped holding onto the pillows and stood upright. The high pitched beeping stopped, and I was still conscious. I had been chicken for nothing! What was the big deal, anyway? I turned around to tell the oldest 'beast I had been chicken for nothing - that I was totally fine...

Too bad I wasn't real familiar with the unit - or the fact that the beeping only signaled the power and correct placement of the unit. I had forgotten that the user still had to push another button to actually get the stimulation going...

So as I turned to tell him I wasn't going to die, he hit the "right" button. The gal who programmed the stimulator had left the stimulation level on "high"...

More than the reaction of JD's (now permanently nervous) cat, have you ever seen a fish out of water? How they flop around tirelessly, trying to find water? Imagine a 5'11" woman doing that. Just as uncontrollably as the fish. Body jerking this way and that, after going from a fully standing position - to flat-on-the-ground-flopping, in less than one second. The power to this thing was crazy. Crazy intense. It caused my body to immediately, intensely SEIZE. But it also caused another issue...

As I'm flopping around on the floor, flopping uncontrollably, I realize I can't take this amount of stimulation. It's painful. V-v-very p-p-painful. So I begin laughing. Hysterically. Like pee-in-my-pants laughing. And altho the stimulation is intense - and it hurts like *ell, I can't tell him. I'm being obnoxiously tickled to death in the most painful way possible. Thoughts of ripping open my incision are interrupted only with thoughts of trying not to literally wet my pants.

And since he can't see my face, he thinks I'm loving this. He starts laughing - so hard, he can't hear me when I finally get, "s-s-s-s-s-ssss-STOP!!!" out.

Ah yes, the memories. I don't share his opinion of wishing we had gotten the whole thing on video - whether we could have won some serious dough or not.

Just wait til I tell you about all the experiences I've had going into/coming out of stores with those security systems you have to walk through...I've been "dropped" - without warning, all the way to the ground - by several of those in town.

So I'll take JD's TENS unit. I already know how her cat feels.

I Hope I Don't Hack Off Too Many People...

(This began as one post, but even I can't stand to listen to myself drone on for too long...so I broke this up into two posts. The totally random background is today...tomorrow I'll post the question I'm really curious about. Back to regular programming.)

But since it's Tuesday, I'm going to vent. You thought I reserved that only for Fridays during the "Friday Frustrations"? Oh no, dear reader. You are sorely mistaken...and should know me better than that.

I had some art that I was going to post today - but I'm not on my own computer. That (the computer) takes about a gazillion years to load anything (which is why I haven't been doing Entrecard drops like I had been...my apologies to everyone I've ticked off) - so I'm borrowing my son's computer. It belongs to the oldest beast. He had such a "stellar" year last year...Ok, I can't even say that with a straight face. He failed his sophomore year. Miserably. It wasn't because he's dumb. (Well, other than in that "I'm-a-16-year-old-boy-and-you-can-only-get-my-attention-by-mentioning-boobies" sense.) He just refused to go to school. Something about 5:30 being too early to get up. I will take responsibility for my male 'beasts being spoiled - at 13 and 16, neither of them can get up with an alarm clock. Nope. Neither of them hear it. (Or so they say.) I have to go in and physically wake them up. Although my 13 year old - who could sleep all day - doesn't particularly like getting up, he does it. And without too much grumbling. Said 16 year old, however, won't. He does not like getting up if it isn't in his plan. It usually starts with me gently rubbing his shoulder, but ends up with me throwing the covers off him, threatening to squirt him with the water bottle we use for the cats, and promising to take away ALL his privileges. (He only cares about that now because he's found a very cute little 17 year old who can stand to be around his pubescent self.)

Usually, the first words out of his mouth are too offensive to print here - but let's just say the phrase ends in "you". Not good when your mother's biggest pet peeve is hearing her children talk like a toilet. (Which is probably why he says it!) It takes me a good 20 min of standing in his room, kicking his bed, taking all his covers, listening to his sewer-like language, getting the squirt bottle and aiming it at him, and promising to take away all privileges, before he finally gets out of bed. You can see why I love getting him up...but this went on every single school day last year. I would start at 5, hoping to have him out of bed by 5:30 to catch the 6 am school bus. Not a pleasant way to start the day.

A lot of times I couldn't even get him out of bed. He began missing more and more school, simply refusing to get out of bed. Now I realize getting out of bed that early stinks...but really. Put on your big boy boxers and deal with it. I had to get up earlier than that in order to wake him up. But I digress...his absences got so bad that his teacher began calling over here when she would get up (yes, from home), and have me put the phone by his ear. I would put it on speakerphone for the entire house to enjoy, and she'd let him have it. That worked twice - then he used his infamous phrase (the one ending in "you") with her. We soon had the police (or the "po-po" as my kids call them) over here, trying to sternly get him out of bed. They threatened him with truancy proceedings. He didn't care. Since the police obviously have better things to do, I gave up on that after 3-4 calls. It wasn't having any effect either. So at the end of the school year, I got the chance to go in to the high school for a truancy meeting - where they explained that even though the school district, his teacher, the local sheriff's dept, and probably my neighbors were all aware that I was doing everything possible to get him to go to school, the punishment for truancy was to begin fining the parent. If that didn't work, the judge would order the parent to go to school with the teenager...and eventually the judge would put the parent in jail. How fair is all this?

After that meeting, but before receiving his grades in the mail, I told him we had to do something different. He's a special ed kid - and our school district, although it's one of the best in the country, quit offering special education services to students after 10th grade. Instead, they transfer kids like my son to this other school, where kids who struggle with drugs, are on the edge of being expelled by the district, are just coming back into the district after expulsion, or similar issues, can all be schooled together. There is no school bus to this school - the kids ride the city bus. Apparently I'm the only person in the district who sees an issue with putting kids like my son (who struggles with ADHD and bipolar, but can be a great student if he's got a good teacher and is not distracted by other kids, say, offering him drugs)...anyway, I'm apparently the only person in the district who sees an issue with putting kids like my son together with kids who have behavioral issues. (It should be noted that my son hasn't had behavioral issues in school for several years. Not that we haven't been there/done that - but we haven't in a long time. And I'd like to keep it this way thankyouverymuch.)

This school didn't start until noon - and it's over at 3. Not bad...but I knew my son would never make it to school if he were to ride the city bus. Are you kidding? I never would have made it to school if I'd gotten to ride the city bus when I was in high school. Too many other fun places to go! Besides, I knew putting my son in school with a bunch of "troubled" kids would just cause him to become "troubled"...and I've just had enough of that. He was like that for the first 15 1/2 years of his life - and I don't want any regression going on. Which meant we had to look at other education alternatives. (He thought dropping out was an "alternative"....bahahaha! The stupidity of youth!)

We settled on him attending an online school. Which is why he has his own computer. It's on loan to him for the school year - but it's a nice computer. And the grooviest part? It has Windows - so I'm not spending hours trying to figure out how to tame Linux. I began "borrowing" it from him yesterday so I could do my EC drops.

Check back tomorrow for the reason I'm really annoyed...and see if you have an answer to the question I'll pose.

xx