ammogirl

Since my daughters have been back (Friday afternoon - that’s three days. THREE.) I have replaced the toilet paper in the upstairs bathroom twice, and the downstairs bathroom once. Two of those replacements happened before 4am Saturday morning, i.e. less than 24 hours after they got home. We had a bit of a talk on Saturday about the importance of using exactly the right amount of toilet paper, which, for the record, is not half a roll every time you pee.

The current roll, on it’s last legs, managed to last nearly two days. If things continue on in this manner, I might not be able to send them to college. However, we are virtually guaranteed to never be able to provide enough material to TP houses, so that’s good.

Remember how I talked about how if I had gone to the airport on the wrong day, that when the girls failed to get off the plane I would’ve freaked out? Well. WELL.

I got to the airport at 9:30 am on Friday, well ahead of their 10:18 am arrival. I located their gate, and settled in directly in front of it with a book, and when their flight landed, I positioned myself dead center at the door. And then I waited. And waited and waited and waited, and after an hour, I began saying this in my head: pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease. At one hour 15 minutes, I went to information, and while switching between long stares of terror at the gate and quick stabs at eye contact with the info guy, I loudly (and panic-ly) said “mydaughters! 10:15! the flight has dropped off the screen! unaccompanied!!!!” Info guy calmly told me the baggage was still arriving, and to be patient. Right. So impatiently faking patience, I walked back over to the gate and slowly began to…freak the fuck out.

Seriously, you guys. I couldn’t leave, because what if they came out? And where would I go? Where else could they be? Horrible scenarios started flashing through my mind: they were lost in the airport (it’s confusing, the ol’ Frankfurt International), they had been stolen, they had fallen out of the airplane…it was getting bad in my mind. And then, all of a sudden, I caught a glimpse of Lindsey through the doors. Well, I tell you, I have never been so relieved in my entire life.

Apparently, when kids fly unaccompanied on that particular airline, upon arrival they are escorted to a special holding area for parental collection, and THEN you take them yourself to baggage and customs. The thing is, I didn’t know. Now I do, but holy crap what a way to learn. I don’t think I have ever cried out of sheer relief.

Whatever, they’re home now, and toilet paper usage has increased dramatically, and there is no such thing as a silent moment, and I have to make dinner every night again. And…it’s pretty fabulous.

Tschuss!!

Note to self: two people departing via airplane from Fairbanks, Alaska at 3:40 pm on Thursday, 23 August, will not be arriving in Frankfurt, Germany at 10:20 am that very same day. And it’s a good thing I realized that before I left for the Frankfurt Airport to pick up my daughters. Can you imagine the level of freak-out that would have ensued? Friday…they get home Friday.

The doctor called me today, and the official results are…”benign breast tissue with fibrocystic changes, microcalcifications present”. That’s a lot of words right now but really, the most important one is “benign”, so who cares about the other ones? What a relief. Thanks for listening to me ramble on about this for the past week or so, you guys. I think it’s taken us to a whole new level, don’t you?

In fact, being faced with a horrible disease has made me take stock and want to change a few things. Not really. I wish I could be inspiring and say that after this little scare I will never again take life for granted and I’ll live each day to the fullest and never look back…spend each moment appreciating my family and not get irritated at the clothes on the floor or the mess in the bathroom…but let’s be honest. This is not going to change me. I will still take life for granted and I will still be too afraid to jump out of an airplane or ride a roller coaster, and almost having a disease does not make it less annoying when people don’t put their stuff away. So.

No, what I think I’m going to change is my website. Yes, again. Not the address, just the page…I am getting a little tired of seeing Posh over there in the left hand corner. Also, my archives are out of control, and I don’t know how to make my links roll up into a tidy little drop-down box. And…there is still the fact that at least some users of Internet Explorer can’t get my site to load correctly, which sort of spoils the fun, as well as the point of coming here.

So there you have it. My life-changing brush with death* has resulted in a desire for regular website make-overs. I feel proud.

I think I need to get my cat a prescription for Xanax. He’s driving me insane, insane enough to actually write about it here in my blog. He’s scared of the dark or something, and if the lights are out and I am not there, he meows in panic until I call his name, at which point he’ll bolt to wherever I am. If I am sitting on the couch, and he is next to me, and I happen to reposition my leg very slightly, he jumps up as if an airhorn went off in his ear and tears off through the house. If he is walking and sees something from the corner of his eye he freezes, all tensed up and ready to flee if need be. You get the picture, he’s a highly anxious cat, and I think it’s about time I do something about it. Suggestions are welcome, if you have one. However, if you are a person who absolutely hates cats and laughs at the stories of cat-torture cat haters always seem to have, please keep your opinions to yourself. I mean, that’s fine if you hate cats, it’s just that I don’t.

Anyway, the girls come home Friday, and it’s been a long but surprisingly quick nine weeks that they’ve been gone, and I’m super excited to see them. I doubt I’ll be posting the next few days, so have a fabulous weekend!

Tschuss!!

* I’m not poking fun at breast cancer, or people that actually ARE diagnosed with it, in any way, shape or form. It scared me, though, the fact that I might have it, and for me, making fun of the situation–of myself–is the easiest way to deal with stuff like that. So please don’t get offended if it seems I am making light of such a horrible thing.

First of all, I never got a phone call from anyone concerning anything yesterday, so I think that it’s okay to cautiously assume nothing is the matter with me, which: phew. I mean, enough talk of the boob already!

Because I’m still having a hard time running without pain (in fact, my boob is actually more tender and sore now than it was last week) (that’s the last mention, I promise!) I hopped on the elliptical at the gym yesterday afternoon. My iPod was already on, not blaring or anything, but loud enough to block out all extraneous gym noise. I was about five minutes into my own little world when two guys walked right up to my machine. One was in workout stuff, one with regular clothes, and they just stood there looking at me, then at the machine, then back at me while I got a puzzled look on my face. I started slowing down a bit, because, hi, what the hell are you doing? The first thing to go through my head was I somehow had stolen this guys machine while he, I don’t know, went pee or for a smoke, and he had notified the gym police on me, and I was about to get the throw down. But no, they merely looked at me and gave head shakes and gestured me to carry on. So I did, ellip-ellip-ellip, and then one of the guys walked to the BACK of the machine. I turned around, because again, HI, WHAT THE HELL, and he had bent wayyyyy down close to those massive piston-y things ellipticals have. Seriously, I thought I was going to hit him.

Now, because I had instinctively slowed down AGAIN, he did the “keep going” hand signal but THIS time I thought he was giving me the sign-language for “go backwards”, only now I was sort of confused and I started pushing forward with both my feet AND my arms at the same time. Making me look completely idiotic, I will point out, because this is NOT how ellipticals work. The guy at the front of the machine actually reached over and started doing the handles for me. I looked at with an expression that clearly said, “dude, c’mon. I know what I’m doing, however, I know not what you WANT. So.” and upon seeing it, he quickly dropped the handles and waved his hands around in circles by his head. Not in the “this bitch is crazy” way, either. No, it was more like an “roaming satellite dishes are orbiting around my head” thing. By this point, though, I was like, either be clear with your needs or carry on, and he was NOT, so I carried on.

However, as I got going again, I realized that not only was there a guy in front of me and a guy in back of me staring at my machine, but the people in my immediate vicinity were ALSO staring at machine. And me. So I yanked out my right earphone, and instantly, I heard it. An ear-splitting “screeech screeech sreechhhhhhhhh” my machine was producing with every move. It was SO LOUD. “Is that me?” I said to the person next to me, and she said, “Yes. It’s not that bad though! Really!” and then she rubbed her ear.

Okay, I am NOT going to be the noisy-machine person at the gym. I HATE noisy machine person. I know it’s not the actual person’s fault, but seriously. Find another machine. Incredibly and fortunately, the guy two machines over had just finished his workout (or got driven away by the deafening screeches), and after he cleaned it off I moved. The two guys said thanks, and I said no problem, annndd…there’s no good way to end this story, really. So, that’s it! End of story.

Tschuss!!