Whattabooger

Somewhere in Eau Claire Wisconsin, a beautiful young professional woman (me) extends her delicate lady fingers out an open car window, lightly rubbing the middle and thumb together as if sifting through sand. Suddenly the wind picks up and carries her booger right back into the car.

She quickly looks at her husband to make sure he does not see. 

He is already laughing. 

The Unconventional Toilet Strikes Again

A couple of summers ago - I got invited to go on a boat trip with some good pals, their parents and friends - Zach was working in Vermont unfortunately, so I went solo.

It was as epic a day as you can imagine. We zoomed down the St. Croix River, between Minnesota and Wisconsin. The weather was perfect, the conversation dynamic, the drinks were flowing. There were other boats to wave at. I may or may not have mooned them. Anyway, it was SO FUN.

At some point on a boat, as a woman, the question will always be: "where do I pee?" and usually the answer is, "in the River", but I could NOT resist this strange contraption and decided to use it just because I was probably under the influence of alcohol. 

Bathroom?

WHAT?!?

Anyway, I did my thing and it was just as weird and fun as you would think. Then it came time to flush the toilet. 

Even though you can clearly see in these photos that there are instructions on how to do so - I didn't figure that out. At the time. 

I just kept pumping and pumping that pump thing. But nothing happened. 

And so I LIFTED THE LID to investigate, and then found a different lever to pull. Pulled that lever.

Got splashed. In the face. With my own pee. I screamed like I was in the middle of being murdered and the entire boat of people came running to find out what happened. 

"I have my own pee on my face".

And THEN jumped in the River. The end.

The Wooden Part

I had a friend who was begging her Little Turd of a daughter to rub her feet. And then the Little Turd said, "OK. But only the top part. Not the wooden part."



This led to a years-long joke about the wooden part of a person's feet - you know the calloused part that the lady at the pedicure place has to SCRAPE and SCRAPE and you get really embarrassed?

Fast forward to my new life of living in my one room home with my lovely husband his two teenage boys. It's not ideal. If anybody farts the whole house hears it. And smells it too. The place is an open floor plan loft-style home. See what I mean?

(I designed it while I was planning to die alone.)

ANYWAY, Zach has been growing quite a nasty wooden part of his own on his heel all summer from working. He's OBSESSED with it and makes me touch it all the time. 

Well: the other night at bedtime Zach and I were getting ready to fall asleep, whispering and snuggling and otherwise falling in love, the usual. He grabbed my hand and made me touch his nasty wooden heel. I laughed and said, too loud, (in baby talk I might add): 

"ARE YOU MAKING ME TOUCH THE WOODEN PART AGAIN?"

His face dropped.

I gasped.

We died, while hoping beyond hope the kids were already sleeping.

38

Today is the 38th anniversary of my birth. As is my tradition on this day every year, I ask my mom:

"What were you doing xx years ago today?"

And she always says something really cute, like "I had a date with an angel" or "drinking a beer" (she really did -- to induce labor). Usually this is an email exchange, but since she's been living with me for four months getting her cancer under control I just rolled over in bed this morning and asked her.

"Giving suck" she said.

EW! I don't want to think about the fact that she used to breast feed me. EW!

Anyway.

Somehow my coworkers found out the significance of today because they taped this note to my window:

Crap.

New House, Vol. 4

Now, why would I need a husband when all my friends already have one?

True Romance

I wonder if anybody will ever love me like this?

(Play air guitar while I sing my karaoke jams)...

Of course, I would be willing to reciprocate by playing air piano while he sang his karaoke jams...

I'M SO LONELY...

Starbucks Romance

Yesterday I was putting cream in my coffee at the Starbucks and I heard a man's voice over my shoulder say, "I'll be right here beside you", presumably so that I wouldn't turn around too quickly, get scared and spill my coffee. On him.

 

But I was so excited about the nearness of a man and that incredibly romantic thing that he had just said to me and so I accidentally blurted out, "do you PROMISE? FOREVER?"

 

 

 

 



 

image stolen from Pinterest -- I google imaged "Starbucks Romance" like a huge nerd. Hope you can make out the owner's stamp there...

Americans

The only other American I saw in the Seychelles:

(Fold up cane.)

She and I represented our country quite well, don't you think?

USA! USA!

Too Cool for School

In High School, I was very conscious of the fact that riding the school bus with my little sister Kasey was not cool. But we didn't always get the use of my mom's 1986 Chrysler LeBaron either:

The epitome of 'cool'.

And let's just be clear about one thing: in High School, KASEY AND I WERE COOL:

Naturally we wanted to maintain that image. At all costs.

The "Senior Benches" were located by the front entrance and all the hot Senior guys would usually sit there for a while right after school waiting for their respective sports to start. Kasey and I, naturally, could be found flirting with them until it was "time to go".

Anyway, most days when we had to ride the bus, we would flirt and then make an excuse followed by a hasty yet calculated exit out the side door of the school, in the direction of the parking lot to make like we had a car. (As I have explained, I was quite the liar.) Fortunately, our bus driver Delbert always parked Bus # 3 in the front of the waiting bus line and that was near the side door as well. 

Allow me to illustrate:

Flawless plan.

Enter my nerdy-little-middle-school-chubby-space-toothed-cousin-Tony-Joe, who also rode our bus because in addition to being cousins we were also neighbors. Typically nerdy-little-middle-school-chubby-space-toothed-cousin-Tony-Joe would be picked up at his middle school and then wait patiently on the bus in front of the high school for all of us to file out. Tony Joe is a perfectly cool guy now (ice road trucker and everything) -- but I could have died one day when we were standing there flirting with the hot Senior guys sitting on the Senior benches, ready to make our way out the side door, perfectly aware that we were running out of time...when suddenly the front doors of the school burst open, and there stood nerdy-little-middle-school-chubby-space-toothed-cousin-Tony-Joe, screaming  in a panic, 

"KADY!....BUSSSS!!!!!!"

The Evolution of an Appendectomy, Volume 6

...So maybe I did, and maybe I did not shove a Vicodin pill up my butt somewhere near the border of Wisconsin and Minnesota -- and maybe my butt did and maybe it did not basically grab that Vicodin pill out of my trembling hand and suck it up into oblivion. Maybe I was and maybe I wasn't fascinated by how well my body seemed to accept and in fact welcome it. I'll never tell. Because I'm a lady. Who reveals nothing.

What I will tell you is that Beata drove like a madwoman from Tiny Town Wisconsin to Minneapolis on a straight shot up the I-94 and we made it there in no time. I slept for most of it. My appendix did not burst, thanks goodness and when we peeled into the ER at Abbott Hospital they were primed and ready for us. All credit to the nice folks at the Tiny Town ER, who called ahead and let Abbott know all the details and that I was on my way.

I was admitted immediately into room 12, I believe, but how can one be sure of such minute details when one is under the influence of a Vicodin one may or may not have shoved up their butt?

Everybody at Abbott was great. They agreed with my decision to come back to Minneapolis and almost everybody I spoke with wondered why a relatively young Wisconsin surgeon "didn't do laparoscopic" "appies". The fact that they called it an "appy" made me feel at ease almost immediately. If you know me well you know I like abbreves and especially ones that end in a "y" sound. Also you don't give a pet name to a surgery you're not performing on a daily basis. At least I don't think you do. 

From here things moved pretty quickly and I think basically I just had to sign a bunch of stuff and then my sister Kasey and niece Miyo arrived and Summer's brother Justin and his wife Kassie got there and we all sat around joking while I tried not to think about what was going to happen to me.

One time my gown feel completely off when I tried to get up from my bed to go pee, and the door was open to the whole ER:

OOH, and I always love it when they ask me if I'm married! Rita, the Nurse Anesthesiologist seemed very surprised that nobody loves me and then when I asked her to "find me a good one" she confessed that there weren't that many single people around Abbott. Which is bull crap because Dr. Mumm was pretty adorable and I might have even told him so. I can't remember.

The Evolution of an Appendectomy, Volume 5

Where were we?

Yah. Escaping the confusing Emergency Room in Tiny Town Wisconsin and speeding back to Minneapolis without hitting a deer.

I was worried about the three-hour trip. When my morphine ran out a few times in the ER, it was painful. Bad. So I asked the nurse to shoot me up the minute before we left and asked what I should do if I started to feel pain in the car.

"Well, you're not allowed to eat or drink anything before surgery, so I can give you a Vicodin...but..."

"But what?"

"You can't eat or drink anything."

"So how am I gonna?...Where does it...?"

Her face got serious. She handed me a glove, the pill and some lubricant.

"...OH."

Never forget. 

"For all the good it did me, I coulda shoved it up my hind-end." -Hal

First of Many Posts About my Emergency Appendectomy

An email I just sent to my entire office:

My surgeons injected my stomach with a bunch of C02 so they could laproscopically get that appendix out of there (I guess it makes it easier for them to see things and isolate others). They didn't pop me like a balloon though when they were done, so at the moment I definitely look pregnant.

Apparently, some of the gas will re-absorb into my body. But then some of it has to come out (if you know what I mean). I have been instructed by Medical Professionals that I need to be farting as much as possible.

Anywho, I have decided to embrace my gassiness. I’m home alone working right now and every time the good lord blesses me with a nice round trumpet fart, though very painful, I throw up my hands (to no one) and exclaim, “Doctor’s Orders!”


You can expect this as normal office behavior from now on. 

More Personal Ad

Twitter Fail

Sometimes I post my hilarious, yet under-favorited and under-retweeted tweets here on my blog in hopes that somebody will appreciate them. 

More Personal Ad

Personal Ad

Doing a little research...

Twitter Fail

Here's another in a new series I like to call "Tweets I wrote that should have been retweeted a million times but weren't because I don't think I'm doing Twitter right and not because they weren't wildly hilarious".

Follow my tweets here. 

Personal Ad

I decided it's about dang time I landed a man. Here are a series of videos I plan to use on several popular dating websites to help in this endeavor. Your feedback is appreciated (too pretty?) 

Thanks!

Move Over Bette Midler, I've Seen Beaches One Million TIMES

Move over Bette Midler!

Literally. Move over. You're in my scene.

Elevators, Again

These are the elevators in the P2 parking level of my building. As you can see the flooring has a repeating pattern of "granite-carpet-granite-carpet".

The other day I came into the building to hear the elevator ding and so I began to run so that I could catch it. I came around that corner and my boots must still have been a little bit wet from the snow and so I SLIPPED! on the granite, but caught myself on the carpet before I fell down and also before the attractive business-y type man who was getting onto the elevator saw me. I slowed my pace but still briskly walked toward the elevator so he wouldn't have to wait long.

And then I SLIPPED! again on the next set of granite. This time I let out a loud "WHOOP!" and now the attracitve business-y type man saw everything and I still didn't fall down but it was a whole body slip and a loud "WHOOP!" so naturally I was very embarrassed.

And so.

I spent the entire 10-floor ride up the elevator explaining loudly and out-of-breath-style that I had "ALREADY SLIPPED BUT YOU DIDN'T SEE ME AAHAHAHAHAHA I THOUGHT I GOT AWAY WITH IT AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA AND THEN I SLIPPED AGAIN!!! HAHA!!!!! AHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA"