Long Time Coming

So I've been lazy about this whole blogging thing for the past month. Or maybe just busy with life. We made it to Arizona. Settled into the outlaws, or as settled as we can be here. It's been crazy. Crazy. Crazy.

Big J spent a good deal of time with us for the 2 1/2 weeks Tim was here. So that made for 5 kids at any given time. I've also had H all summer. We had only been here for about a week when we made our very first ever 'accident' trip to the ER. Tim and I were putting together a trampoline and left my mother-in-law to watch the kids. Big huge colossal effing mistake. From the backyard, Tim and I could hear I screaming. Bloody murder, somebody is injured, screaming. We were kinda at a point where we couldn't very well stop, so Tim calls HIS mom and tells her to bring I outside to us. She brings I out, and Tim notices right away she has blood on her shirt. So we wrestle her down (at this point she forgot about her booboo and wanted to bounce-bounce) and try to locate the source. She had a small, but deep, cut to the underside of her chin. It was deep enough that the fatty tissue was poking out. I was freaking livid. I was even more freaking livid when TIM'S mother had no clue she was hurt, even though she had I's blood on her own damn shirt. Real freaking observant. Anyway, I refused to let her watch J while we went to the ER. Dropped J off with my Dad's wife, and took I to the ER. My little girl is a trooper. She did so good while they were checking her out. It took two stitches to close her chin. She cried. Tim cried. I cried. I'm pretty sure the male nurse holding her head cried. At least he was doing an awful lot of sniffling. Anyway, she cried, but she held perfectly still. Such a sweet girl. We took her back 5 days later to get the stitches out, and that was worse than getting them put in. Both times she got little bears to keep. The second time she refused to take the bear home with us. The first bear is sitting abandoned on the floor. It's the owie bear. She doesn't care for him much.

Ahhhh so much is going on. Tim left on June 16 and it's just been madness since then. 4 kids, 2 inlaws, and me. I've barely had time to think, let alone sit down and think out loud. I'm buried in mounds of dirty laundry, dirty dishes, and just dirty house it seems like. It's been a huge adjustment. A difficult adjustment. I hate it here.

Smoosh & Sniff, Diagnoses, Day Spa & Shattered Pieces

It has been the craziest few days. By crazy I mean I'd pay someone to do this all for me. That kind of crazy. It rained for almost 4 days straight. That means, the little critters that belong outside we're looking for somewhere dry to hide out, and my house is all of a sudden the safe haven for a bazillion little tiny ants. ANTS! Creepy crawly things. Nasty critters. Yuck.

So we figured the best way to get rid of these ants is to figure out what they are first, and go from there. It turns out there is a very odd way to identify these little bastards. Smoosh em and sniff em. I am not kidding. There is such a thing as an Odorous House Ant. So anyway, you smoosh the ant and sniff it. If it smells like coconut, it's an odorous house ant. Picture me and Tim, smooshing these ants and then smelling them. They smell like coconut. So at this point we really have 2 options. We can either bait the little fawkers and hope they take the poisons back to wherever their home station is, or we can start smooshing em up, get the house smelling nice and coconutty, then start drinking umbrella drinks.

Then I got a new diagnosis. Not only do I have FMS, but I also have RLS. My legs can be fine all. day. long. But as soon as I lay down to go to sleep, they hurt. They feel like little bugs are crawling on them. (Yes, I know this could be happening with my little coconut ant infestation.) They feel like they have run a marathon, with that achy, jumpy feeling. It SUCKS! So I get a new medication for that. The bad news is it makes me high. The good news is, I'm very happy when I'm high.

Changing topics, try to keep up. I've been telling Tim for the past couple months I need a break. I need a break from kids, from housework, from responsibility. The big problem was, I didn't know what to do with myself. It's been so long since I had purely 'me' time, that I didn't know what to do, where to go, who to talk to. Nothing. I was drawing a complete blank. All I could say, was that I needed to get away. Just for a few hours.

So Tim, being the resourceful and incredibly sweet (loving, thoughtful, creative) man that he is, booked me a 3 hour appointment at a day spa. 3 WHOLE HOURS. 3 hours where it really was all about me. No kids. No cell phone. No responsibility. Nothing for 3 whole hours! It was absolutely amazing. He promises me that I get a trip to the day spa when he gets home from any trip that we net family sep pay on. Major bonus for me.

So I got there and they had me change into a robe. Let me just hang out and relax for a few minutes. The lights were very low everywhere in the place and the music was something so subtle that most of the time I was hardly aware it was there. Purely awesome. Anyway, I got this mud rubdown that felt incredible. Followed by a very long massage. The masseuse was familiar with FMS, so she recommended something between deep tissue and Swedish. All I know was it felt incredible. I can't even begin to explain the state of relaxation and total unawareness I was in. I was able to forget every single problem I had for a few hours and it was absolutely phenomenal.

We went to dinner at Chow Baby for the second time in 2 days. Because it really is that awesome.

We got home, Tim was taking his Statistics midterm and I was feeling up for some new bodily mutilation. So I send a text to my girl Dena to ask her where a good place to get inked or pierced is. She calls me back from the hospital. She fell and broke both her ankles. Her right ankle was a clean break and they may not even have to cast it. Her left ankle is in really bad shape though. 3 bones are completely shattered. As I type this, she should be in surgery to get things put back together with plates, pins and screws. It figures, the one time I ever shut my cell off (for the day spa) all hell broke loose. She tried to call but only got voicemail. She did find another neighbor to watch her kids and dogs though.

So I went over to the house to ask the boys what they wanted to do. They both wanted come to my house, so I loaded up kids, the kennel and one dog. The other dog refused to come inside and we couldn't catch her, so she stayed outside at Dena's all night. One on of the boys was finally able to catch her this morning, so now I have 2 extra boys and 2 extra dogs. Talk about a crazy, full house.

On a side note, Tim bought a trailer yesterday for his motorcycle. Then today he found the exact same trailer somewhere else for almost $200 less. So he's on the phone now to see if he can either return it or if they will price match it. Fun times.

It's been a long and crazy couple days. I'm having a hard time being patient waiting to hear from Dena. We all (her boys and I) just need to know she's okay. That she's going to be okay. She has to be okay. She's all those boys have. Their closest family is their dad in NC. Grandma is undergoing chemo in NY, and their uncle is with Grandma. So D has to be okay.