Where is the off switch?

I'm always on.  I'm never off.

I've always been this way.  I'm certain it is the reason why I am a life-long insomniac.

Sadly, people expect me to be on.  And when I'm off?  The world crumbles around me and everyone is looking at me, with hands in the air, going "What happened here?"

I've come to the stark realization that I cannot even take a quiet shower without having to be on!  I am now expected to check all of the shampoo bottles in the shower to see if there is enough left before everyone begins using mine (we all use different shampoo).

Now where do I escape to for 10 minutes?

This Is How It All Went Down

Wednesday, April 13 - 7 pm-ish:  M smells rain in the air.  I agree and am not surprised when it does indeed start to drizzle a short while later.

Thursday, April 14 - 1:30 am:  Power goes out.  H wakes up because her sound/light machine goes off and she's plunged into darkness.  I go into her room with my little lantern and comfort her.  M gets the battery box and plugs in her sound/light machine and baby monitor.  M informs me that pancake-sized snow flakes are falling. I'm flabbergasted!  I feed H a bottle and she goes back to sleep.

Thursday, April 14 - 2 am: Back in bed.  Lay down for no longer than 16 seconds when I realize that I did not put my dog-in-law inside the house.  My in-laws live down the street, and had asked that I put the dog in sometime in the evening, while they were out of town.

I get dressed, put on my toque, winter jacket and M's boots.  I trudge down the road.  The snow is already up past my ankles.  It's snowing so fast that the snow builds up on my shoulders and head and occasionally sloughs off, although I'm walking.

Dog-in-law is huddled under the low branches of a tree in her front yard.  This is the one time that my in-laws decide to lock up their house and car.  I un-chain the dog and we walk back to my house so that I can get the car key.  Dog and I walk back to her house.  Snow is getting worse.  I'm cold and wet and can barely see out my glasses.  It's friggin' dark, too; my flashlight lights the path in front of me for about 5 feet.

I unlock in-laws' car and push the garage door opener, only to realize in my half-asleep stupor that (DUH!) the power is out and I cannot open the garage door.  Walk back to my house with the dog.

Set up a make-shift dog bed in the kitchen, give her a bowl of water and a bowl of dog treats (the only dog food that we have).

Thursday, April 14 - 2:30 am: Go back to bed.  I'm cold.  Wet. Exhausted.

Thursday, April 14 - 2:30 - 3:30 am: Toss and turn in bed.  Can't sleep, despite exhaustion.

Thursday, April 14 - 3:30 am: Power goes back on.  Dog proceeds to bark.  Don't want her to wake up baby, so I get out of bed, get dressed, and walk her back to her house.  Use car key to gain access through garage door.  Trudge back home.  Snow has lessened.  Lights are on, but I'm more freaked out because I can see the shadows now.  I'm convinced that a bear or a demon is following me as I walk home.

Thursday, April 14 - 4:30 am:  Finally back in bed.  Cannot sleep.

Thursday, April 14 - Afternoon: take a shitty nap.

Note: I completed this adventure with a brain-splitting migraine.

MY DOG-IN-LAW.  

My Knee facking HURTS!

I hate my knee.  The left one is pretty cool, but my right one is a piece of crap.

Sometime during Christmas week, I had to lunge to reach H.  She had just learned to climb, and had gotten onto the love seat and was scaling the back.  She was one step away from going over the ledge (she was lightening quick!) and I lunged.  Mid-lunge, all I could hear was ::snap:: ::crackle:: ::pop::  There went my knee.

I've had knee pain all my life, so it didn't bother me too much.  Over the next few weeks, the swelling in my knee would come and go.  Nothing new.  Sometimes it would pop and crack again, but it wasn't overly unusual for my knee to sound like bubble wrap being joyfully snapped one bubble at a time.

In recent weeks, my knee has started to feel like I was tearing every ligament in my knee (I've done this before) whenever I straightened it out.  This was particularly bothersome whilst sleeping.  The searing, burning flames in my knee was not a very pleasant way to wake up.

Last Friday, I knew it was finally time to call the doctor when I tried to straighten out my leg and my knee cap stayed in place.  It's quite nauseating to have to push my own knee cap back into place.  It was about a million times worse than seeing your nail bent backwards at a 90-degree angle after you've knocked it, and having to push it back.

After I pushed my knee cap back in place, I promised myself that I would call the doctor first thing Monday.  Last weekend was survived by copious amounts of Robaxecet and Advil.

Monday, I went to the doctor.  She thankfully gave me some Tramacet (sp?) for the pain, and scheduled me for a CT scan in a town 2.5 hours away (the joys of small-town life).   So, in 4-6 weeks I'll be in a hospital in the next big town having a massive needle jammed into my knee injecting me with radio-active crap, so that they can see my glow-in-the-dark soft tissue, muscles, ligaments and cartilage.

Something to look forward to???

My Mission Tomorrow...

My life has just been shattered.  I just found out that Shamrock Shakes are not minty.  They are in fact just green-dyed vanilla shakes.  WTF?!!?!  How many years have I been jaded?
M says that there's a placebo effect from Shamrock Shakes.  People, like myself, assume that it is minty flavoured, so when consuming said Shamrock Shake, they taste mint.

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See!  There's even mint leaves in the picture!!!

So, tomorrow, I shall procure a Shamrock Shake from our little bitty McDonalds, and test the placebo mint theory.

My Ego is Bruised

H said her first word when she was 5 months old.  "DADA".  It was all she said for the next 3 months.  Naturally, I was a wee bit upset, considering that I was the one who carried her for 40 weeks.  It was cute though, that H would sing-song "dada", she'd squeal it, laugh it, cry it, and say it over and over while playing.

FINALLY, at nearly 8 months old, she said "mama".  I'd left the room for a second, and came back in and she said "mama" like 'hey, you're back!'.  It was sweet.  I even cried a little.

Now, the only time H says "mama" is when she's sad, mad, upset, pissed off, hungry, hurt or tired.  Sometimes she'll say it when she's eating, but it will come out "mum mum mum mum mum".  I'm completely okay with the "mum" because that's what I call my mum.  And she doesn't really say "mama", it's more like "mem mem".  Which is fine also.

Lately, though, it's all about "dad" "dada" or "daddy".  If she doesn't see him, she says his name non-stop.  She'll crane her neck to see him.  She'll push me aside to get to him.  She'll step on my face to get closer to him.  I'm happy that she loves her daddy, but where's my props?  I'm the one who carried her for 40 weeks, I'm the one who hasn't slept in a year and a half, I'm the one with the stretch marks, I'm the one with the flabby belly, I'm the one who had Post-partum Depression, I'm the one who laboured for 31 hours, I'm the one who pushed her out my vag in 20 minutes and got a 3rd degree tear...  I'm the one.  But she only has eyes for daddy.

Jealous much?!

Yes.

Parenting FAIL!

I am having a real hard time being responsible and being the parent right now.

Yesterday, I took E to get a haircut.  About 1/2 way through her haircut, the stylist stopped.  She and E rounded the corner -- E completely embarrassed and close to tears, the stylist giving me the most degrading stink eye.  The stylist informed me that E had lice... "like bad".  She showed me, and indeed, there was a large infestation.  I was utterly mortified.  I have no idea where she got it from!  But the look that stylist's face!  She looked at me like I was the lowest form of trash that crawled out of the trailer park to get my kid's "herrr did".

I immediately started panicking inside.  That musical movie montage from the movie "The Switch", where Jason Bateman has to delouse his son flashed through my mind.  I started praying for a musical movie montage instead of facing the weeks of crap ahead of me.  E thought it was a simple as taking a shower.  ::facepalm::

I went to the pharmacy and asked the lovely pharmacist to school me and to hook me up.  With $37.00 lice shampoo in hand, I drove home, calling M on the way.  By the time I got home with E, M had started putting E's things in garbage bags and was Googling how to get rid of these tiny fuckers.

So, here comes my fail.  I couldn't do the combing thing.  I had to call my MIL in to pinch hit.  She's dealt with it before.  I applied the shampoo and rinsed, but MIL had to re-rinse and pick.  She made me touch one, just so I knew how it felt on the hair.  She really had to convince me to touch it.  I nearly crapped myself, which did exactly instil any confidence in E.  I flipped after I left the bathroom.  I confided in M that I just couldn't do it.  I cannot pick.

I have about 16 years of laundry ahead of me, which I'm really not relishing.  The house has been vacuumed and cleaned top to bottom, and our main bathroom smells like an indoor pool, because M cleaned it "hospital clean" with bleach.

Here's some more parenting fail.  I cannot handle the stress that this is bringing on.  I had a stress-induced migraine all weekend long.  It keeps coming back every time my stress level skyrockets.  I just want to check out.  If the house fell down around me, I'd cry tears of joy!  I just wouldn't give a FUCK.

AAAAAANNNNDDDDD... to top it all off... E has an epic cold!  She is, as M lovingly put it, our little germ bomb.

Luckily, M, H nor I seem to have lice.  The pharmacist told me that since H has so little hair, that if she got lice, the best thing for her, treatment-wise, would be to shave her head.  I nearly burst into tears on the spot!

Yesterday, after we were able to "call it a day" all I wanted to know was if it was possible to shoot myself in the head without dying.  My migraine was epic, my stress was palpable, and my limit had been reached.  I wasn't sure I'd had a limit; yesterday I found out that I did.

Where I found this hilarious Sims pic

I am CRAZY!

Oh my god!  PMS and anxiety just do not mix!

Yesterday I literally felt crazy.  Every fibre of me was nutso!  On top of my daily 40mg of Celexa, I had to take a Clonazepam.  I was shaking, irrational, crazy, manic, all over the page, sensory overload... bonkers.  Thank goodness for prescription drugs!

I suffered from Post-partum depression.  At 2 months post-partum, I finally went to my doctor for help.  He started me off on 10mg of Celexa.  We eventually worked our way up to 40mg.  It was a long road to find a happy medium.  I would still have some situational anxiety, so he prescribed me some Clonazepam.  Some days Celexa is just not enough.  Some times I will take 2 Clonazepam.  I get totally fucked up for about an hour and then I crash.  The high is awesome... the come-down, not so much.

My doctor, whom I generally dislike professionally, told me that he would put me on Celexa longer than the generally prescribed 2 months for post-partum depression.  Yeah, he knew I was nuts and should have been on it way prior to having a baby.

I was on Celexa once around 2005-2007.  I was experiencing major anxiety and depression over WhoreFace!  She was ruining my life (but that's a whole other post).  I decided to go off of it, because I hated being numb.  Now... I welcome the numbness!

All I wanted yesterday to be numb!  I could feel the craziness in every cell of my body.  I just did not know how to deal.  Finally, sometime after a 1 am bottle feeding, I calmed down.

Today was a new day.