Trust me, it’s safe.

When I was little, from 4th to 9th grade, I did taekwondo. As I remember it, I was pretty good. But you know, I was a child, so maybe I just thought I was good. I even used to compete in tournaments. I went to nationals twice.  See, I was good….

So what better way to get in shape and lose the rest of my baby weight? I thought martial arts would be fantastic for me. On Monday, I tried out Muay Thai. It was fun, but I prefer kicking. Plus, I have wonky double jointed elbows that sometimes make my punches a little bit special.

Double jointed elbows, you ask? Just picture this: I can put my hand on a table facing forward and then turn it 360 degrees to face forward again.  I can move my elbows 180 degrees without moving my hands.  It freaks people out, so I tend not to do it in public unless I want some kicks, giggles, and disgust.

My next trial was a Taekwondo place.

“I don’t want you to get hurt.” Aaron told me.

“I did Taekwondo for 4 years. Never once did I get hurt. You wear all sorts of pads.  Pads on your arms, hands, legs, chest and stomach, head… It’s fine.”

Class went was going great.  I was having a ball. At the end came a little non-contact sparring. The first round I was with a young black belt. She couldn’t really get a kick in.  I like to push like that.  Like a little firecracker.

Second round.  I fought the teacher. Funny, he didn’t fight anyone else.  I accidentally got him in the balls. Oops. But, since it was non-contact, it was very light and didn’t actually hurt him at all.

Third round. I was up against the tallest guy in class. I have no idea what rank he even was since he forgot his belt at home (and we all had to do extra push ups for it). He threw a kick, I blocked. He got me in the wrist.  Not very hard, so I kept going.

“Are you ok?” he asked me.

“yeah, fine.” I kept kicking

Fourth round. I was gassed (tired).  That’s the problem with a firecracker. It doesn’t last long.

Then there were sit ups. And more sit ups. And leg lifts. And jumping jacks. Oh gosh, I can’t do those. Better work on those pesky pelvic floor muscles….  I must have looked rather silly standing there as everyone else jumped around me.  Well, they haven’t recently had a baby.

I drove home. Made dinner. My wrist was pretty sore, so I was doing things with my left hand.  I did the dishes.

“Maybe you should go to the e.r.” Aaron told me.

“No, I’d be there all night, and what if Danny wakes up hungry?” He won’t take a bottle.  It’s all booby, all the time.

I picked Daniel up, and he’s a little chubba, so that’s harder than it sounds.  At last check a couple weeks ago, he was 7.9kg, and only 5 months old. That really made my wrist hurt.

I took my watch off before bed.  There were marks where my watch had been. Like it was too small for me even though it usually slides around. There were angry red spotty bruises at the beginning of my wrist.  As soon as i took my watch off, the pain worstened.

“maybe you should go to the hospital.” Aaron told me again.

“Meh. I’ll go to the doctor tomorrow if it still hurts.”

I fed Daniel over night, picking his chubby self up again.  The pain was getting worse.

At some point I told Aaron he’d have to stay home and help so I could see a doctor. It was too painful to sleep anymore, so I got up and had a one handed shower.  I tried to do my hair, but how do you do that when you’re right handed and your right wrist hurts when you so much as twitch? I looked like some cats had a fight on my head, but that would have to do.

I called my doctors office. They weren’t open yet, but it seems my incessant ringing prompted the receptionists to pick up anyway.

“Hi, I hurt my wrist. I’m not sure if it’s broken. Should I go see my doctor, or do I have to go to the hospital?”

“It’s up to you, it may be quicker coming in and getting a referral for an x-ray then waiting in the e.r.”

So I went in.  I didn’t wait too long, I went to the ultrasound place and was seen straight away. I had to wait a couple hours for the results, so we went home and put Daniel down for his nap.

When we went back in, my doctor had gone home.  I saw his mom.

“Oh, I’m afraid it’s fractured.” She told me. Crap. ” How did you do it?”

“Blocking a kick at taekwondo.”

“I usually deal with ladies problems, so I’ll just go speak to Dr. Looi (aka, her husband) about this one.” I’m not gonna lie, I stifled a giggle there.

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“So you fell on your wrist?” She said when she came back.

Ummm….

I think I had to tell her 3 times what happened.

I called the hospital to make an appointment to get a cast. “Our first free time is Tuesday.” Yeah, great, that’s helpful.

Eventually, I found a GP clinic that does casts.

20 hours, and no pain killers after the “taekwondo is safe,” eat-my-words accident, I got my cast.

Now I just have to figure out how to take care of 2 kids with one hand for 6 weeks. And get Hannah to decorate it for me.

Unfortunately, it’s the height of summer, so no swimming for me. Fast forward 6 weeks and oh goodness, without being washed that whole time and sweating in 30-40c heat, my arm is going to reek. Ew.

Yep, taekwondo is perfectly safe. Humph

Things I’ve learned so far:

1. Husband is always right

2. It is entirely possible to drive a manual car with only my left hand.

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Is it me?

This post has lots of cartoons.  You will laugh.  It’s about 7 months old, but since many of you are new, you probably haven’t read it.  So head on over to Mom Illustrated , whose blog you will love if you like mine at all.  It’s a lot like mine, only she can actually draw. Anyway, check out my guest post ‘Am I hard to live with?’ Click here.

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“What’s this Mommy?”

Last week it was really hot.  Like 35 degrees (95f).  And humid. Ick.  Did I mention we don’t have any airconditioning?  Anyway, the kids and I were disgustingly hot and sticky, so we got the pedestal fan out of Aaron and my bedroom and planted it in the playroom (aka the living room…).  I stripped Daniel down to his nappy and Hannah went one step further, choosing to be completely starkers.  We laid on the living room floor, arms out wide, relishing the kinda cool air from the fan.

A little while later, Hannah held something up. It was small, about the size of a pinky fingernail. And dark.

“What’s this Mommy?” She asked me, inspecting it.

She didn’t really let me answer. “It’s a poo nugget,” she stated.

I laughed.  How could I not laugh? “It’s not a poo nugget sweetie!  Maybe it’s a raisin?”

I went over to investigate anyway.  I didn’t want her eating random raisins off the floor.

Then I saw it.  Next to her foot there was indeed a poo nugget. It must have fallen off the tiny piece in her hand when she picked it up. Oh my gosh, my daughter was holding up a piece of poo.  In her hand. EEEEEWWWWWW!

“Oh, it is a poo nugget!”

I got some toilet paper from the bathroom and picked up the nugget and the disgusting nuggety fragment from her grubby little hand and flushed it down the toilet, washing our hands vigorously afterwards.

A bit later she was next to the couch.”Oh, there’s another poo nugget.” She told me.

I didn’t doubt her for a second this time.  I looked all around, but all I found was a piece of fluff.

“Do you mean this?”  I asked her.

“Yeah, it’s a poo nugget.”

Thank goodness it wasn’t.  I threw the fluff away.

The next day I was sitting on the couch.  Something icky kept filling my nose.  Something poopy.  I sniffed around like a dog on the scent of a rabbit.  I got down on all fours, nose to the ground and moved forward toward the scent as it got stronger.  Finally I came to the edge of the couch.  The smell was strong there.  I looked all around, but couldn’t see anything.  It didn’t help that our carpet is a disgusting 80s brown, shaggy thing.

But there it was, under the couch.  Under the couch?  How in the world does a poo nugget get under the couch?  I’m not sure I want to know.  But I was in the playroom/living room with them when Hannah had her nappy off, and I certainly didn’t see her pooping.  Nor did I see her putting anything under the couch.  Not to mention that poo nugget was about 10 feet away from the other poo nugget.  WTF? I’m not sure I want to know….

On the plus side, ever since that day, Hannah wants to wear underpants. But, she doesn’t actually want to sit on the potty, so I’ve been spending a lot of time with a towel and the carpet cleaner.  Sigh.

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Embarrassing mommy moments

1. You forget to wear breast pads and your baby cries in public (or you think about your baby, etc.).

My graphics tablet is broken, so I had to do this the old school way: with the mouse part of the macbook. Yeah, not easy.

2. You are in the bathroom with your toddler and she announces to the world that you are doing a poo.

3. You’re heavily pregnant and at the shops when you get a bit gassy. And you can’t hold it in….

4. You’re on the bus and your toddler declares that “that guy is funny looking.”

5. You smell like baby vomit, but you’re so used to it that you don’t even notice. Until a someone points it out.

6. You forget that you wrapped a nappy in a towel to carry it back to the car after a morning at the beach. Then you take the towel load out of the washing machine and discover little gelatinous balls all over everything.

7. You keep smelling poop, but all nappy checks come up clean. You follow your nose and discover a poo nugget under the couch. How in the world did a poo nugget get under the couch????????

8. Your toddler has just started potty training and you’re at the shops.  You notice that she’s wet herself but you don’t know exactly when or where. There might be a puddle of piddle somewhere in the store, but you’re not really sure, and too embarrassed to go tell someone anyway.  So you hope there is no puddle, and if there is that no one slips in it, and go in search of the nearest bathroom.

9. You are teaching your toddler the proper names for body parts, and she likes to point males out and say “Mommy, that is a boy, he has a penis and testicles,” and for girls “mommy, that is a girl, she has a vagina.” Loudly. In public.

10. You are wearing a dress, or skirt when your child decides it’s time for hide and seek.  The only place to hide is under Mommy’s skirt.  She pulls it right up as she giggles madly and puts it over her head.

I know there are way more embarrassing mommy moments, so please do share….

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Drew Carey needs a bath

“Mommy, Drew Carey needs a bath.” Hannah told me. Aaron laughed hysterically in the background.

“We’re going out right now, but Drew Carey can have a bath with you when we get home.” I told her.

What the #$*%?

I know that’s what you’re thinking.

Don’t worry, we haven’t kidnapped a formerly tubby comedian.  It all started before Hannah and I went to the U.S. last March so Hannah could meet my parents for the very first time.  I’d read a blog that suggested going to the cheap shop and buying lots of little cheap toys for toddlers to play with on a long flight.  Wrap each one up and give her a new toy every hour or so to avoid painful ear-piercing screams from your child, and death stares from fellow passengers.

I went around to all the cheap shops plus Target and Kmart to find suitable in-flight toys.  I wanted a little doll, but most of them were either a) really creepy looking, b) expensive, or c) both.  But then I found a little girl (I think it’s a girl, it has a pink shirt) baby doll for 5 bucks. Yeah, she’s kinda creepy looking, but in a hilarious way.  She looks just like Drew Carey.  If Drew Carey suddenly became a tiny girl child.

“This doll looks just like Drew Carey!” I laughed to Aaron.  Hannah was right there, and she has a memory like an elephant (they have really good memories FYI). And that, people, is why Hannah bathes with Drew Carey.

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Flashback Friday: Legend of the leg lamp. I mean fish.

I haven’t done Flashback Friday in a while.  What can I say, I have an infant and a toddler, so going to the bathroom without anyone with me is hard, let alone keeping up my blog.

This weeks post is by Lois, from My Cruise Stories, AKA, my mom.  I was supposed to put it up for Christmas, but I didn’t have the time…. P.S. A while back, I wrote a post featuring the very same fish.

The Perfect Christmas Tree Ornament

I found the perfect Christmas tree ornament for Sheri this year.  OK, it’s not a leg lamp, but close.  In case anyone wonders why a leg lamp would make a great ornament, I’ll have to go back in history a bit to the point where this story begins.

 

It all started one dark foggy morning driving across the trestle on my way to work.  The trestle is a raised road passing over a couple miles of floodlands and sloughs (slow moving waterways).  Everything seemed fine until I spotted a dark car with no lights stopped dead in the road ahead.  Just ahead, in the dark and the fog by the time I saw this car I could not stop in time to avoid hitting it.  Luckily this road has two lanes.  However the car in the other lane prevented me from moving straight over.

 

I hit the brakes and hoped the other car would hurry up and get by.  At the last minute I dived over to the other lane. I just about made it, but the front corner of my pick-up truck barely clipped the mirror hanging out of the side of the car.  Not hard enough to break it off or anything, but it did leave a little dent in my truck.

 

After driving past the dark dead car, I saw some cops stopped in front of it.  Not right in front of it where their lights would have showed through the fog, but close enough to know it was why they were there.  Knowing the law frowns upon those who leave the scene of an accident, I pulled back over to the other lane after I got around them and stopped.

 

Busy apprehending car thieves, the cops pretty much just said go away, we don’t care when I tried to tell them I had hit the mirror on that car.  Perhaps they realized they should have parked behind it where people would see their lights and not hit the car and didn’t want to get in trouble for their negligence.  Or else they were just busy and didn’t want to be bothered.  Either way, I went on.

 

About this time my husband proudly came home from the taxidermist with a giant salmon ready to mount on the wall.  I thought it should go downstairs in his office where nobody else would have to look at it.  He thought it should go in the living room where everyone could see it.  We pretty much agreed he wouldn’t say anything about the dent in the truck if I wouldn’t say anything about the fish on the living room wall, which he hung opposite the front window.

Sheri hated the fish.  In spite of the fact that her dad always insisted people couldn’t see it from the road, when she had a substitute school bus driver and tried to explain where to stop, the driver piped up with “Oh, the house with the fish.”

 

Over the years, we took in a few strays.  Never official foster kids, just people who needed a place to stay for awhile.  Relatives or kids from the 4-H club.  One of the 4-H kids was Maria, whom I mentioned briefly in one of myblogs.

 

Around Christmastime, Maria started comparing the fish to the leg lamp in the move A Christmas Story.  Problem was, none of us had ever seen it.  I don’t think we had actually ever even heard of it.  One day Maria rented the movie and the kids and I watched it with her, anxiously waiting for a leg lamp to appear and laughing hilariously while comparing it to the fish when it did.

Maria moved on, but it became a family tradition to watch A Christmas Story every year.  One year Sheri’s dad even watched it with us.  When the father on the movie put his new leg lamp in the window, her dad looked at the rest of us quite seriously and said, ”Don’t even compare that to my fish.”

 

At which we all burst out laughing, having compared that leg lamp to his fish for years.

 

While out shopping for Christmas gifts this year, I looked at some Christmas tree ornaments.  There, dangling from a peg in between Sponge Bob and the Grinch, hung a row of little boys in glasses wearing pink bunny suits.  Ralphie, the main character of A Christmas Story in the much-hated fluffy pink bunny suit his aunt made him for Christmas. One of those had Sheri’s name written all over it.

If you don’t know what a leg lamp is, or find yourself wondering what this blog is about, just watch A Christmas Story. Everything will come to light.

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Boogers are yummy

Me: “Are you picking your nose?”

Hannah: “I have a booger.”  Fair enough, I mean it’s hard to get those hard crusty ones out.  It’s not like you can just grab a tissue and blow.  That won’t help at all.  And admit it or not, but everyone picks their nose sometimes.

She looked at the booger on her finger. I thought maybe she’d try to hand it to me.  She’s done that before (“here Mommy,” as she puts something in my hand.  I have a look and discover, to my horror, that it’s a booger).  No, it wasn’t being thrust towards my hand at all.  Her index finger moved swiftly, purposefully down to her mouth.

Me: “We don’t eat boogers Hannah.”

Hannah: “Boogers are yummy.”

Me (trying not to laugh, but disgusted at the same time): “Boogers are not yummy, boogers are icky.”

Hannah: “Boogers are yummy.”

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