Anne Nahm

My parents started the long trip back to their home this morning. After three months of being here. They left with these words:

DAD: “You are a very funny girl, Anne. Even as a little kid, you had a great sense of humor. Nobody taught you that. That kind of talent is not something that can be learned, or given, or taught –”

MOM: “Or even beaten out of you. Lord knows we tried.”

So I’m Momming solo. Be impressed world! Shield your eyes lest you be burned by the glory that is my Solo Mommying!**

…At least until tomorrow night, when we pack up the kids and go on vacation with my husband’s family. He is taking me to the Great Uninhabited Green North. I know, I know -Set your banjo’s for Deliverance.
Not for his family, who are very urban and sophisticated, but for the location, which is delightfully… Rustic.

I was very moped out to be disconnected from you all, even though I suspect most of you will be scattered about in your own family get togethers. Because the husband loves me (as much as he loves to tinker with computers), he set me up with some patchwork dial-up scenario and a lap top. The only trouble now is that there may or may not actually be a phone where we are going.

So if I don’t see you before, have a happy holiday! I will miss you! If they allow contact with the outside world? I will be bothering you incessantly.

Anne

** It’s 9:03 in the morning and no one’s lost an eye or currently drunk. Although I must say I’m eyeing the Albertson’s coupon for $7.99 for a 20 pack of bottled beer. Because my gosh people, it’s already been like… 3 minutes since my Mom would regularly be here.

So who would it be? Jack, Sawyer or Sayid? And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, drop everything you are doing, go to the video store, and rent the first season of Lost. Then cry because you missed Season 2. Then come back here and answer the freakin’ question. And tell me what the hell you think is even happening with that story line, because I am completely baffled. Purgatory? It’s got to be purgatory, right?

(I thought about framing it up, “If you were stranded on a desert island, who would you…?” But aside from being very marginally funny… Well, I don’t know how to finish that sentence.)

But also, maybe I am not casting a wide enough net (enough, Anne! Enough with the ocean related commentary. I feel like I’m in a Red Lobster or something). Ahem. What I started to say is, are there any takers for Locke? Eko? Charlie? My God people, seriously? Any Charlie fetishes out there?

**crickets chirping**

I thought not. Hobbits be damned. No fair choosing Jin. As he doesn’t speak English, he is obviously any English-speaking woman’s first choice.

Today’s embarrassing confession? This video combines my newfound love of Brokeback Mountain and my inability to decide between Sawyer and Jack. Don’t tell me I don’t have to chose, because A) I am just a little too uptight to consider that and B) if I opened that door, I’d have to invite the whole cast and crew. And eww. You know what? This blog is having definite OCD related hand washing side effects. Must. Get. Clean. From. Dirty, Dirty. Thoughts.

But before I go? Sawyer. Oh yeah.

No wait. Jack!

Just kidding. Sawyer.

Today’s embarrassing confession: My inner DJ keeps spinning “I am stretched on your grave” by Sinead O’Connor. My God, people. Inner DJ is whiny old school EMO. Shut up, brain, or I’ll drown you with Black & Tan. I’ll shave you bald as a cue ball. Then the ‘90’s will call and say they want their dated bitchitude back.

Whew! That was close, but now I am safely ensconced in my Nano, listening to Johnny Cash singing “Hurt”. And yet? Can already hear distant cringing of Future Self that I admitted to having that song on catalogue.

Speaking of bald freaks, I have been sitting back this morning like Dr. Evil, pinky finger doing its evil salute, all the while looking at stats.

That I look at stats is an even more embarrassing confession. Whee! It’s Twofer Tuesday! But yeah, I do look at them because I am totally insecure.

Usually stats say nothing except “don’t quit your day job, honey” and the occasional porn related Google search that leads here. Nothing makes you want to crawl inside your own brain with a bucket of bleach and an S.O.S. pad like realizing something you wrote came up when someone Googled “tempt my mom” or “shit sausage blow job”. Ewww.. . And, hold on for a second, K? Must go wash hands with elaborate purification ritual.

Ok, better now. Lately, there has been a strange multiplicity in the searches for “Dooce sucks.” I tell you, it is like heresy. By light of day, she is honored and revered. You link to the Dooce like you pay up in a pyramid scheme. And yet? Googling aimlessly around Drunk O’clock? Lots of people evidently surfing with some aggression towards the Mommy Blog Madre.

The ‘Is blogging really a circle of Hell where you voluntarily go back to high school with all its backstabbing and two-facedness?’ question seems to come up every now and then.

I’ve also noticed suddenly a lot of people my friends list are experiencing ‘burn out’ and drama that has them considering whether or not the public diary is valuable or if it is just a magnet for drama and trolls.

I am no cooler now than I was in high school – I’d have to ask the cooler people to explain it to me.

Ahem… Hey you cool bastards! What is your experience with your journal and with reading other people’s journal? What is the best and what is the worst?

I’m going to screen comment on LJ if you want to vent one way or the other. I’ll leave comments open here if you are feeling like telling the world. Enjoy!

Today’s embarrassing confession: My ear that ruptured? It smells like ass. Oh the glory of the anonymous journal! I would not be caught dead telling you this in real life.

It is a secondary infection that should be wiped right the eff out with the dreaded amoxicillin. I guess it is annoying only to me – the smell does not waft around me to disgust others (or so they say). But still… It is hella annoying. Everywhere I go, every time I turn my head – ass, ass, ass. I truly understand the insult ‘butthead’ now. Work your magic antibiotic. Or as the husband has been saying lately in his Forrest Gump voice, anti-buttock.

So on days when I feel like (and smell like) a bag of ass, I am reticent to make dinner. Mostly, I just want to go a little OCD** with the repetitive hand washing because every few minutes? Ohmigodwhatisthatsmell???….Oh yeah. My freakin’ head.

So I bought crab legs for dinner. I am a great fan of the crab legs for dinner. I do not particularly like eating them, but there is virtually no preparation involved and the kids keep quiet and occupied at the dinner table – is challenging food for a three year old.

Anyway, our marriage works for oh so many reasons, but I sometimes fear it is mostly because the husband and I share similar freak tendencies. No one else would live with us if they really knew what goes on behind our closed doors.

The husband, for example, thinks that after eating crab with his hands? That his fingers smell like crab… For the next 7 days or so. Ok. Maybe he only thinks it for 24 hours following crab feasting. But still, that is a quite a while to be sniffing one’s fingers. This weekend, our marriage could have been called Rainman II.

Guess which one is me.

HUSBAND: Smell my fingers. They smell like crab. Can you smell –
ME: Can you smell my ear from there?
HUSBAND: — the crab? I’ve washed my hands, taken a shower, and washed my hands again. They still smell like crab. Smell them. Smell them!
ME: No! I put my finger in my ear. Smell my finger. It smells like ass. Ewww! It is sooo gross. Smell it!
HUSBAND: No! Get away from me with that finger…. Hey, together our fingers are ‘crab-ass’.
BOTH: Heh…heh-heh-heh. Crab-ass.
HUSBAND (Obsessively sniffing own fingers): Seriously! Why do they still smell like crab? Smell them.
ME: No! Hey. You stick your finger in my ear. I bet they won’t smell like crab anymore.
HUSBAND: Honey, if I wanted my finger to smell like ass, I could probably find a hole on my own body.

** Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Last Thursday, I ruptured my eardrum.

I thought for a while about tucking that bit of information in between some warnings for the squeamish, but then I figured that I am quite squeamish and I got no warning. So I pass the suffering on to you. Enjoy!

Since I try to tell you everything when not prohibited by law, boredom, or marital privilege, I will tell you I broke it myself. By doing something I guess was stupid. Or at least that’s what the Physician’s Assistant strongly implied after she gasped, yanked her odoscope out of my head and informed me I had a big old hole in my eardrum.

I broke it by squirting water into it with one of those physician recommended water squeegees. They look suspiciously like those snot suckers for babies. For reasons that have been deleted because they are BORING, I will only tell you that whilst I sqouge one ear with religious conviction, I never sqouge the other one. But Thursday, I looked at my squeegee and figured, ‘why not?’

Why not indeed, as I lay whimpering on the floor 20 seconds later and Oh. My. Gosh. OUCH. And a lot of curse words also edited because BORING.

But then everyone, Internet included, told me that you cannot rupture your healthy eardrum with a water squeegee. So I went on my merry way. I even had another impulsive fit of ‘why not’ later that weekend when I made Experimental Cake, the ingredients of which involved Lemon Cake Mix, Cheesecake flavored pudding and… oh what the hell? Cottage cheese.

Don’t even ask. Except, yes, I was sober. Sadly.

As all of you who have ever had middle ear problems know, I spent the next four days feeling dizzy, slightly nauseous, and hearing nothing out of one ear but a thundering WHOOSH-WHOOSH that pretty much blocked out my ability to think coherently. Also? I began to suspect a tiny faery creature living inside my head, intermittently puking up a thimbleful of flat 7-Up out of my ear.

By Monday, with my face swollen like a troll and my head aching, the P.A. told me – in a voice that says, “I’m trying my hardest to sound gentle and concerned while I also let you know you are a fucking dimwit for doing this”, that I must take a 10 day dose of amoxicillin as penance and go yea verily and sin no more with the water squeegee.

Naturally, I took my mom and my two kids to the doctors. I did this so the three year old could see me not freak out when the doctor inspected me. Yeah, look at me role modeling like a bad ass. This means I also took them to the grocery store to fill my prescription. Which means I got to be embarrassed in the time honored tradition of the Drug Interaction Warning.

Yeah, that’s the one where the pharmacist yells loudly (because you can’t hear and you are talking too loud yourself when you say, “what? I’m sorry, but…  What?”):

THIS AMOICILLIN WILL MAKE YOUR MINI-PILL INNEFFECTIVE. USE A BACK UP FORM OF BIRTH CONTROL FOR TWO WEEKS.

I will skip past the “mommy what’s birth control?” discussion, because BORING. I will tell you I already lived through (that very shopping trip) picking up a pregnancy test while my mother was watching.*** and I steadfastly refused to go back and pick up anything else from that particular grocery isle. Although I do kind of enjoy scaring off some green and sweatily nervous teenager loitering by either the condoms, the KY Jelly, or the pregnancy tests.

My husband, who was in none too fine a mood when I told him about the two weeks, did ask me how I was able to pick up a pregnancy test in front of my mom but not some birth control.

To me, it makes perfect sense: Pregnancy test is about prior bad acts, and while embarrassing, is already done. Birth control is all about premeditation for future crimes.

And not that he was grouchy this morning (after day 4 of the Amoxicillin), and not that I am still slightly stupid and blah from meds and ear infection, but we did have this conversation:

Husband: America is out of the World Cup.
ME: What’s the World Cup?
Husband: Only the most popular sporting event of mankind.

But on the plus side? I made it into veritable immortality with this. Who-hoo!
*** I did this to be sure before starting up medication that might affect a fetus. You know, better safe than sorry.