My husband and I have been married for eleven years. Eleven years is a long time to do anything. We’ve seen our share of ups and downs, and that is the understatement of the year. I am not the easiest woman to be married to, for any number of reasons. I am grossly insecure and particularly needy and excessively sensitive. He’s got his things, too, but this isn’t about him today, it’s about me. I’ve made him work for this relationship. I change the rules on him constantly and expect him to just keep up. Example: When he met me, I worked three jobs, 19 hours a day, 6 days a week. Now I stay home and let him go to work for at least 12 hours every single day while I fail in every way to so much as wash the dishes. He does this with a smile on his face, or so I assume; it’s not like I ever actually see his face anymore. I’d like to say that he at least gets to come home to a hot little body waiting for him in lingerie, but what he really comes home to is a snoring wife wearing his sweat pants hogging his side of the bed who used to be a size -0 and is now a solid 12.

I make few apologies for this. It’s not like I knocked myself up with a baby that decided to make me gain 105 pounds in nine months, after all.

However misguided my feelings on the subject, I do feel a little bad that the 98 pound girl with a D cup you could stack plates on that he signed up for a life with has now turned into a National Geographic centerfold. I feel bad enough, in fact, that I, on occasion, will buy him pistachios and roses and have them waiting for him when he comes home in the middle of the night after the umpteenth night straight at work.

He reciprocates occasionally, coming home late from work on the nights he’s due in early, bearing gifts for me, too.

That is a gym membership, brought home for me last week, because apparently he wants a divorce. You leave a man enough times and he’ll start double-dog daring you to do it again, all for the low low price of $31/month.

To his credit, he did include all-you-can-eat childcare in the package. So now I can’t bitch about being fat, having no where to go OR having no one to watch my kid while I go there anymore. It’s like he’s robbed me of everything, including my lovely lady lumps. Asshole.

But I’m determined to use it, partly because I do want to get the fuck out of this house occasionally, and I would like to do it sans-four-year-old, but mostly because I’m sick people congratulating me and asking me when the baby is due. The best answer to which is, “Four years, three months and eleven days ago; thanks for asking.” So I went last night to try this thing out. I got the four year old ready to go and the nine year old announced that he’d like to go as well. So I put my gym bag down, huffed a little, and called to see if I had a two-for-one daycare special. Which I do. I grabbed my bag, my two youngest, and headed out the door when my eleven year old ran down the stairs in full gym gear asking if he could come, too. You know, to work out with me.

Seriously, I just started being able to poop without company. Will there never be a moment’s rest from these people?

So I put everything down, again, and called the gym, again, huffed, AGAIN, and lied about his age, again, and found out that I could bring him. So off we all went. 45 minutes after I was planning on getting to the gym, we had two kids checked into daycare and one magically-turned twelve year old on an elliptical next to me. Who beat my fat fucking ass, hard. Every spanking this kid has ever received in his entire life was repaid last night, in full. He pwned me.

Vengeance is a dish best served sweaty, with burning quads.

It’s not like I can let me kid out-work me. If he does 50 crunches on the ab-thingy, I have to do 50, also. If he’s barely broken a sweat after 20 minutes on the elliptical, I have to grin and pray silently for god to strike us all dead and spare me this humiliating torture. If he gets through an entire circuit and asks to do it again, well, I just have to do it all again. Even if I can’t stand upright anymore. Even if I’ve sweated out every drop of moisture in my body and am now replacing that sweat with blood. Even if my legs are jello and I can’t recall where my arms used to be. Even if I just want so scream that THIS WAS MY PRESENT AND YOU ARE RUINING IT, SHORT PERSON. I can’t do that, now can I? We’re having a bonding moment, right? One of those fleeting mother-son moments that will be over the second this kid learns what a Playboy magazine is. Which, thanks to him, I may be able to appear in someday.

I have some back problems. They’re not “end of the world” back problems, but most certainly prone to being “abrupt end of my day” back problems. Basically, the right side of my back has decided to wage global-thermo-nuclear warfare the rest of my body, and it’s gotten the entire right side of my body to join in it’s jihad.

This shit hurts like a motherfucker a good deal of the time.

I’ve tried everything to fix it. I’ve handed thousands of dollars over to a chiropractor in Denver whom, I am pretty sure, used it all on midget porn. I’ve done yoga, but when your stomach hangs the way my stomach hangs, yoga stops being classically graceful and fascinating to watch and becomes something Quentin Tarentino wouldn’t be comfortable putting on screen. I’ve gone to a billion doctors. I’ve cried. I’ve eaten my body weight in ibuprofen. This afternoon. Nothing helps.

When I moved up here to Ye Ole Canada, I figured that it might take a while but I’d maybe be able to actually get this fixed, what with the social medicine making sure I don’t have to bankrupt myself for help. I went to several different doctors who ran several different tests and all of them were inconclusive at best. My current doctor, whom I am sort of in love with, actually went so far as squeezing me in for a CT scan, which came back normal.

Because guess who’s back didn’t hurt the day of the scan? Go on, I’ll give you three tries.

It’s gotten to the point where I know, without any doubt, exactly what the problem is and I have a general idea of how it would need to be fixed, but my doctor isn’t about to let someone slice me open without an MRI, and that would take no less than a year to get, so he’s told me that yes, I’m probably right about what I think, but just keep taking those Motrin and it’ll go away someday.

Which, in doctor speak, means “when your birth certificate expires.” I’m just not that patient.

He offered to do some nerve conductivity test, but then forgot. He ordered a bunch of bloodwork for me to have drawn, and I lost the forms. I asked him what to do if this continues to get worse, and he told me to get an exercise ball and do these completely pornographic sorts of back-bends and splits and bouncy things on it. I think he has the hots for me. Or wants me to have more children. Either way, I’m not buying my kids an $85 bouncy ball that’s bigger than their head in the name of physical well-being. That’s what I buy Guinness for.

The last time I was in his office, he wrote me a prescription that read, not kidding, “Shannon has monster feet and needs orthotics” and wrote me another one that I thought I was mis-reading. I looked at it. I held it up to a mirror. I turned it upside down. I asked a Ouija board. I kept getting the same answer.

The man prescribed me Birkenstocks.

And I figured that it’s finally happened, that the province has run out of tax money for medical care and they’re throwing any old diagnosis at people just to make them so annoyed, they’ll stop coming to the doctor already. Or drive to Seattle. Which would just make my back hurt worse. So I went to the shoe store and talked to a lady forever and bought my very first pair of tree hugging hippie shoes (with my husbands own money, thankyouverymuch FTC) and you know what?

Those bitches Changed My Life.

My back still hurts, but more in a “I have a really good reason to whine today, and possibly get away with not washing the dishes” way than the “I’m going to give this Playdough Thanksgiving set plastic knife to my daughter and let her dig out a chunk of my spine with it” way. I actually feel better when I wear these shoes. A lot better. Like, I don’t ever want to take them off better. See, my normal flat feet don’t sit properly on the floor, and that throws my entire spine off and makes me stand all funny which throws my back off more, and then everything pinches and tightens up and the entire right side of my body starts talking about seceding from the Nation of Me in revolt. And the Birks? They fix it. They make my feet set properly on the ground. They rotate my arches way the hell up, and keep them there, and they mold to my feet to make sure that everything continues to stay where it belongs. And it makes the pain stop.

They look completely fucking ridiculous with a slinky black cocktail dress on, but I’ve never been one to put fashion over comfort, so there’s that. Don’t like it? Don’t look down. Doctor’s orders, yo.

So I am now officially one of THOSE people who wears brown hippie shoes with woolen socks under them and once I move to Boulder, Colorado and stop shaving my armpits and start humping trees, my transformation will be complete. And I’ll be so close to pain free, I may actually be able to notice the other little pains, like all the crotch splinters. Humping trees ain’t for the faint of heart.

A little more than a week ago, I had a few teeth ripped out of my face.

The thing is that when I was 18, I had xrays done and those xrays indicated that I had, and I quote, “plenty of room for those things to come on out on their own!”  So I let them.  If a dentist ever tells you that, duct tape them to their examination chair and run for it.  It’s a trap.   They’re in it with the pain killer companies building landing strips for gay martians, I swear to god*.

My gums had plentyof room for those teeth.  My jaw had other ideas.  My bologna has a first name, it’s oh-my-god-that-hurts.  I had the two on the right side removed one by one, both fully erupted, both when it became an emergency, both with nothing but local anesthetics, which isn’t fun for you or your dentist or your kids in the waiting room who you have drive home and take care of after they’ve drilled and jack-hammered and raped and pillaged and left you with nothing more than a dry socket and a bottle of motrin.

You’ll thank me later aside: Clove Oil.  Best thing in the galaxy for tooth pain.  Babies, idiots who let their wisdom teeth come out on their own, anyone.  You can buy it anywhere like this.

None of this has anything to do with this post.  Maybe I should start over.

A little more than a week ago, I had a few teeth ripped out of my face.  A little more than three decades ago, I was born with two holes in my heart.  What these two things have in common with each other is amoxicillin.

Because I have these errant holes laying around in my heart, I have to eat a bazillion grams of amox before a dentist can even breath on me to prevent endocarditis, which is a fancy word for Death By Dentist.  The American Heart Association has recently said that some of us don’t need to “premed” anymore because the big, scary, evil antibiotics are going to kill us.  I had a lively chat with my dentist about this very subject and when he said that I was going to build up a resistance to antibiotics I said I hadn’t yet built up a resistance to death and until he had two holes in his heart, he could refrain from judging my choices.

I got the prescription.  I took it.

This is where I get to my point.

I picked up the prescription and the pharmacist says, “You know that’s going to interfere with your birth control, right?”  And I said, “Thank you, but I’m really a man.”  Then I read the little pamphlet that comes with it about the 18 thousand ways it’s probably going to kill me and of course, in big yellow highlighted letters, it cautioned, “Antibiotics might decrease the effectiveness of birth control pills.”  And I told that pamphlet, “Thanks for the heads up, but I’m celibate.”  And then I got to the dentist and the receptionist asked, “Did you premed” and I said that I had and she asks, “You know that will interfere with your birth control?” and I said, “Are you hitting on me?”

I have never had anyone inquire so much about my birth control.  Which actually explains a lot about where I am in life right now.

Anyway, I was called back to the Chair Of Doom and the dentist looked over my xrays, stuck the iv thingy in my arm, took a call from his wife in which I could hear her screaming at him and see him blushing from embarrassment, and as he injected whatever that totally awesome stuff that knocks you out is into my iv line, he shoved my chart in my face and pointed at the word, “PREMED.”  I nodded.  I think I may have said, “snarfblastaschmurna” which of course means, “Dude, I so totally took it” and as the world began to grow dark and cozy, he pointed and the line below and with a quizzical look on his face, he violently shook that chart in front of my completely stoned eyes.

“MAY INTERFERE WITH BIRTH CONTROL”  *stage black*

Here’s the thing.  I don’t take birth control, and you’d have to do a hell of a lot more than hand me a bottle or come at my head with sharp instruments to get me to tell you what I do use.  (Like by me shots.)  This, however, is not really my issue.

This is.

Either this is a really, really cruel joke, or these people are idiots.  Have they never pulled a wisdom tooth wrapped around a nerve before?  Are they unaware that the one and only thing I will most certainly not be doing for several days, if not a week, will be it?  I was sexier 5 minutes post-partum than I was until about a day ago. 

They may as well have sent me home with a paper bag for my head, a ruffie, bottle of KY and a note for the Donor that read, “Enjoy the silence, yo!”  because, really.  The smell?  Dear god.  The pain?  Sweet Baby Jesus.  The swelling?

Yeah.  But thanks for the warning.

*Please, someone get that.

You know when you go to a blog you love and you are totally excited to see what little wordy gems they have strung together for your reading pleasure only to get there and realize that you were basically rickrolled? As you scan the computer screen you realize the blog author has left the keys to the coop to another blogger.

A guest poster. Which leads you with a dilemma. Do you read the guest poster’s drivel and pretend to like it out of courtesy, or do you just click away in a huff while muttering to yourself about twatty bloggers?

You should think about that.

Cuz you’ve been rickrolled (with out the Rick, or really the roll) as Mr. Lady has stamped my bloggy passport to play in her wonderland as much as I want to.

Being the humble and vacation starved chick I am, I’ve taken her up on her desperate pleas offer and have started rooting through her unmentionables. I’m totally sitting on her couch naked.

It feels good.

I’m totally staring at you from inside her box.

(Which sounds waaay dirtier on paper than it did in my head.)

It’s not that Mr. Lady needs a blogging break or anything. Let’s face it, she doesn’t really do anything other than parent three kids. She spends most of her day time hours in a certain online foot fetish chat room, talking about arches and stilettos, while getting off on bunyon talk.

This is a woman who needs to blog just to remember how to talk to people without asking about their shoe size and inquiring if they’ve recently painted their toe nails.

However, tragedy has hit Mr. Lady’s household.

Her computer bit the biscuit, kicked the bucket, bought the farm, went tits up…I could continue this but I’m sure we all get my point.

Her computer died.

One minute she was happily downloading porn from the net and the next minute she was weeping at the blue screen of doom.

Take a moment to hug your own computers, lest you find yourself staring at the same screen.

Until Mr. Lady and the Donor waltz back into the 21st century with a freshly repaired computer and come back on line, I will be your host.

Floor is open people.

The call is yours. Do we take this time to write odes of love to Shannon?

Do we trash the joint?

Post naked pictures of ourselves er, her for all to ogle?

It’s no secret. I’m easy. I just do what I’m told to do.

Keep that in mind.

Oh, and Shannon? Don’t worry. I wouldn’t do anything you yourself wouldn’t do.

Snicker.

(My fingers were totally crossed behind my back. Neener, neener.)

So, yeah, my kid has shingles. And why do I love you all? Because you’ve been trying to help me figure out what ELSE it is. Y’all? Sweet as sugah. Sadly enough, it really is shingles, and since I now know every single thing there will ever be to know about shingles*, and therefore have an excuse to be an over-bearing know-it-all in yet another field of medicine, I thought I’d tell you how you can know if your kid gets it, too. Which they won’t. Because almost no kids do. Because only my freakazoid family gets these stupid, weird illnesses.

Really. How many kids do you know with conjoined toes? How many people do you know with two holes in their heart (who are still alive?) Horseshoe kidneys? Tumors on their brains and their thyroids? DOGS WITH LYME’S DISEASE? Bungholes in the middle of booty cheeks? It’s a good thing we’re witty.

Shingles: A kid has to have had the Chicken Pox first. Now, if you’ve vaccinated your kid for the CP, chances are they’re never going to see the shingles in their childhood. Chances, mind you. It’s extremely rare for a kid with the Chicken Pox vaccine to get shingles. Apparently, it’s not rare enough. (Side note: I fought that damn vaccine tooth and nail, got bullied into giving it to her, and am now violently spitting at that moron.)

Exposure to a virus causes it. The odds are stacked really high in favour of that virus needing to be the Chicken Pox virus, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be that. It can be any old virus that really gets their immune system distressed. That virus courses itself through their little body and low-and-behold! What does it find? It finds some lingering Chicken Pox anti-body (immunization or just residual from actually having the disease.) The anti-body and the virus meet. They woo. They make exchange of vow. And then, once they’re all confortable and start farting in front of each other, BAM. The virus cheats on the anti-body with the neighboring nerve. She’s way more edgy, and closes the door when she pees and stuff.

You can tell it’s shingles and not, say, the Hand Foot Mouth thingy that a lot of you guessed 3of3 has by this: H/F/M produced little rashes around the, you guessed it, hands and mouth. And sometimes on the booty. Shingles, however, are isolated and don’t seem to spread very far. They follow a nerve. They tell me it’s commonly found on the chest. 3of3 has it it a nerve of her left arm. What we saw was a rash in her fingers (nerve endings, yo) that then appeared in her palm, around her elbow, and more or less in a straight line up her arm (following the path of the nerve it hit). They are large clusters of rashes that have lots of small, fluid filled blisters in them. It kind of looks like a bunch of little spider eyes looking back at you. For us, it looked like a contact burn at first, and then an allergic reaction, and then an insect bite, and then I noticed that it was hanging out around her joints. That was my first BIG clue.

The pain comes from the pressure on the nerves. The pain is quite intense.

The good news is that when children get it, the duration isn’t as long and the pain is not anywhere near as intense as when an adult gets it. It still hurts, but $5 and one box of Dora band-aids plastered up her arm, and she’s hangin’ tough.

The other good news when kids have it is that no medications really do a dang bit of good, so unless it’s in the nerves of the face or eye, they are going to send you home with a prescription for lollipops. You can give Tylenol if the pain is really bugging them, but you will NOT have to force anti-virals down their throat. Also nice is that it’s not horribly contagious. If it can be covered with clothing, it’s not considered non-communicable. Unless you’ve got a thing for licking rashes. Which, if you do, could you maybe not read my blog anymore, okay?

Oh, and one other bit of good news? The kid slept until ELEVEN today. That? Like heaven.

*You know I’m kidding, right? Because, yeah, I’m totally kidding.