Book 'em, Danno.

So I heard John Fucking Tesh on the radio the other day saying, "You know, buddy, employers check Myspace and stuff when they hire you, so if you have anything BAD on your Myspace or on your blog you should erase it!" I though, "MHMM. Maybe I ought to think about erasing all that stuff about my cocaine use." And I also thought, "Fonk dat." I mean, you know, ahyamwhatahyam. You know?

We went to Nick's graduation from police academy today, and it was fun and interesting and comical and stuff. This one speaker was talking about how he got to "teach" George W. Bush how to yell "War Eagle" when he spoke in Auburn, and I thought, "Now if someone will just teach him how to speak English, he'll be on the road to being an actual human being." But I digress.

It was a lovely day, and I'm so proud of Nick. He looked all handsome and stuff in his uniform, and my sister-in-law Cassie looked so proud and excited. Their son Connor who does not have turrets syndrome but likes to show us how he COULD, in theory, have turrets syndrom had a GREAT time at Ruby Tuesday ("Reed is a baaaaa-by! Reed is a baaaa-by! Ya, ya, weee, weee, eh! I just went and pooped!").

It was a nice afternoon with the fam. And MAN, I have NEVER been in a room with that many loaded fire arms and sets of hand cuffs in my whole life. I can only hope and assume that Nick and Cassie are having some good ol' policeman fun at their house tonight.

If there is no other good reason to go to New Orleans, you should at least go for those largest beers they have.

Okay. OKAY. I've had two forties. Eighty ounces of beer. Yes.

Tomorrow Jason's brother graduates from police academy, making him officially A NARC. I joke. I'm very proud of him. SOMEBODY in our family ought to make good. I'm busy trying to figure out how I can fall down realistically and then sue, so you know. Plus, if Kristi is a lawyer and Nick is a cop and Lindsey works in news media, we're covered on all bases, right?

On reasons to get a Sam's card already.

So we're still in the process of getting back to normal over here. My mom took Reed to the doctor Friday, where they finally FOR THE LOVE OF GOD gave him some antibiotics and a prescription decongestant and expectorant for his nasty cough and snotty nose that he's had for at least a couple of weeks now. He really hasn't ever completely stopped being sick since he got the roseola. It's been a rough few weeks, especially with starting daycare right in the midst of all of it.

Daycare is going fairly well. Some days Reed starts crying when I head for the door in the morning once he realizes where we're going. Those days are very hard. It's indescribably difficult to drag my child, convulsing and screaming, out the door, force him into his car seat, drag him in to the daycare, attempt to pass off his limp, angry body to his teacher, and then just leave him. Kids really know how to work it, too. He reaches his little hands out towards me and cries and cries, and says "Mama!" frantically over and over. I rip myself away, run to the car, and take four or five qualudes to take the edge off. Some days I use water to swallow them, and some days I use gin. It varies. One day last week it was bad enough that, on my lunch break from work, I literally sat in Moe's with Jason and cried. I sat in the middle of the lunch rush at MOE'S, people, and cried in front of everyone through the entire meal, unable to taste my food. When something fucks with my ability to enjoy Moe's, IT IS VERY FUCKING SERIOUS.

On the upside, Reed has inherited his father's ability to sit down and eat an entire bag of tortilla chips. This is annoying to no end because I'm the kind of person who buys things in the grocery store thinking, "Hey, these will be good!" Then I don't necessarily eat them the moment I get home. I'll buy the tortilla chips, for example, and then within 47 seconds of getting them home, Reed and Jason will consume the whole bag, knawing off some of their own fingers in the process. Then two days later I'll think, "I'm going to make myself some tasty nachos!" I'll be doing my happy food dance, excited about the Mexican goodness, when I'll discover the empty, sad little bag in the garbage, and I curse the gods of Fine Sexy Redheads and Genius Perfect Almost Intolerable Smart-Assed Babies for sending those two to my care.

This is made of beer?

Originally uploaded by buffpuff.

What can I say about our trip to New Orleans this weekend?

It was bizarre to see x's spray-painted on the fronts of entire rows and rows of houses. It was sad to see the word "help" on the rooves of buildings. It was scary to see entire neighborhoods that looked like ghost towns, FEMA trailers everywhere, shattered windows and debris and tarps and depression and businesses that have never re-opened.

The French Quarter, the Garden District and Downtown are all relatively untouched, full of tourists and partiers, beer and hand grenades and drunk people, fights and boobs and vomit and piss. IT IS SO AWESOME.

We ate so much good food, shrimp po' boys and red beans and rice and cajun meat pies seafood gumbo. WE DRANK, people, oh boy, yes we did. We spent time with two of my favorite people in the world, one of whom just got a belt buckle that says "MFA", which stands for "Motha Fuckin' Artists". All in all, it was a wonderful trip.

And, hey, our car didn't burst into flames. Score.

Walt freakin' Disney.

Jude
Originally uploaded by Buford Union Davis.

Jude got tested for RLC last week, and we're still waiting to hear the results. I just know he'll get in. He's obviously a genuis- the kid can NOT follow directions. That's how you know if someone is a genius. Jude is planning in his head how to take over the world and simultaneously come into possession of ALL the skateboards and candy in the U.S. It's really unreasonable for me to expect that he can also pick up his socks and flush the toilet. But I am an unreasonable bitch, so really I don't mind filling the role.

My job = I am so very, very tired. THAT'S ALL I'M SAYING.

"Call the poliiiiiiiiice."

John,

Aren't you just excited about this part of your life? I am excited for you. I want all these good things for you, and I know that even if you don't get the specific things that I want for you, your life will still be full, and good, and happy.

I can still remember riding in the back seat of my mother's car, holding hands in the dark, and liking each other so much. We were so young, twelve or thirteen I think, so it was ,like, over fifty years ago, and I can't remember exactly what we said to each other or why we didn't ever "go together". But isn't it wonderful that we didn't? I am a firm believer that every choice you make, from what college to go to or what job to accept, down to where to stop for gas or where to buy your groceries, decides the path your life will travel. And I'm so happy and proud for the path your life has taken. So I've never regretted that I was never your girlfriend, because our lives are so blessed and it is partly because we were such good friends.

Dude, we've done a lot of stuff. We've bowled, we've played Dungeons and Dragons, we've played a LOT of different video games, we've talked on the phone until the absolute wee hours of the morning watching Ren and Stimpy marathons. We took several film classes together in college, and it made class so much more interesting and fun to sit next to you and laugh when other kids would try to see if they could fit their entire bodies into Millard's butt. We have spent a lot of time at bars and at Mason's running our mouths for hours and hours about music, movies, philosophy, politics, love, and life in general. I have actual video tape of you playing a red electric guitar over a tiny amp and singing Nirvana songs, John. You can just send $50 a month to my home address if you don't want those to get out to the general public. I also have video footage of you speaking with a speech impediment and me practically speaking with a speech impediment because that's how bad I am at a British accent, which involved our other friends being hobos, handicapped ballerinas, and drug dealers. WE HAVE A LOT GOING ON IN OUR HEADS, MY FRIEND, and it started at a young age. Don't ever forget that you have the capacity, which you use often, to be bizarre, and funny, and unabashed, and brilliant.

You have done so many good things, and you are such a person, you know? I am incredibly lucky to know you, and I'm even luckier to have known you for this long. A little over twenty years, John, we've been friends. I remember when you were a little boy and I was a little girl. It's a special thing to be able to share someone's whole life this way, this way that I'm getting to share yours with you. And I know it's not your whole life yet, but one day it will be, and I'll still be there. I feel humble to have known the good things that you've been given in life, and even more humbled to have known the bad things that you've endured, because really we don't just let everyone in, do we? And while our friendship has waxed and waned over the years, that doesn't really matter; the important thing is that today, if we want to, we can still call each other and talk about our lives, our days, our accomplishments and our failures.

John, what I'm telling you in my roundabout, physically-cannot-just-get-to-point-already way is congratulations. You have worked really hard to do this. You moved away from a lot of your friends and family and started a life in a city that was exotic, and dangerous, and unpredictable, and unfamiliar and I doubt that I could ever be that strong. Then, when the city fell apart and was nearly wiped clean from the face of this planet, when almost all of your possessions had been drowned in a sea of motor oil and sewage, when your family here was worried about you and concerned for your future, you went back. You went back to a city made up entirely of uncertainty, a city largely without most of the modern conveniences that we take for granted, a city that was increasingly being forgotten by the rest of the country. You went back and finished what you started, finished what you went there for in the first place. You should kiss any nervous problems that you've ever had goodbye, my friend, because no matter how it may feel sometimes you have overcome them.

I love you. Thank you for letting me be your friend, and for being mine.

I'm gon' let the sun shine in.

Originally uploaded by buffpuff.

So things are slowly getting better around here. Reed hasn't had fever since Friday night, and I suddenly became able to breathe yesterday. This was some crap, I tell you. Reed had the fever from last Saturday until Friday night. That's a pretty long-lasting virus. Jason witnessed me having a full-blown, gasping, fear-of-dying asthma attack on Friday, which I've never had before. I'm a once-a-month kind of gal with my inhaler, and throughout this sickness I've been using that sucker about eight or ten times a day. It's been really awful.

But, I'm hoping that we're on the other side of it now. Things are getting better for Reed and me, and I'm praying that Jason, Kane and Jude don't get it. Jason's feeling kind of snotty, but hopefully it'll pass. He's got a big honker; it gets the snot sometimes.

This weekend we're taking off for New Orleans with Kristi, Linnea and Lindsey, and I am READY. Our original hotel choice called to say that they were closing for repairs, so we had to find a place at the last minute. The place we're staying now is more expensive but totally sweet. It's on Toulouse Street right in the French Quarter, so I'm pretty sure that we're going to mix it up quite a bit. It will be a short but MUCH NEEDED respite from the past couple of months.

More pissed.

Well, Reed and I are both still grossly sick. And he's learning to aim those snot rockets, so watch out!

When we went to the emergency room, they gave him 6 mL of Motrin to bring down the fever. We had been giving him Tylenol, but the dosage we were giving him was 1.6 mL, so I figured that it was some kind of emergency get-that-fever-down dose. Later I mentioned to the nurse how the "mega-dose" of Motrin they gave him knocked the fever down pretty quickly. She replied, "That's the regular dose. That's the dose you ought to be giving him." So I said, "Wow, we've only been giving him 1.6 mL." She said, "Oh, maybe that's why his fever wouldn't go down, because you weren't giving him enough of it."

The doctor at the emergency room later confirmed that we could give him 6 mL of Tylenol and 6 mL of Motrin in rotating shifts every 4 hours. I kept saying, "Wow, that's just so much. We had been giving him 1.6 mL." As we were leaving the nurse said, "Did they tell you? You can give it to him every 2 hours."

When I took him to his regular doctor, I asked again if 6 mL was really what we should have been giving him. He said yes, that we could give him that much every 3 hours, not 4 or 2. I was starting to feel dizzy at that point, so I got him to tell me "6 mL" one more time. I commented that we had only been giving him 1.6 mL because that's what we thought his correct dosage was. (This story is going somewhere, I promise.)

So yesterday I called the doctor again to say that the fever was still pretty high (staying in the 103 range), and that now he had a wet, hacking cough, and he just didn't seem to be getting any better. The nurse called me back and said, of course, "It's a viral infection. You really just have to wait it out." We were just about to get off the phone when I said, "And we're supposed to be giving him 6 mL of the Tylenol or Motrin, right?" At this point I had been giving him 6 mL doses since Tuesday, so for about 48 hours.

She sat there for a second, and said, "Uh, no, 1.6 mL. He's 15 months, right? And he weighs about 26 pounds? 1.6 mL."

It was about that time that I started weeping and hyperventilating. And yelling.

"Then WHY did DR. NAMEREMOVEDBECAUSEHE'SACOCKSUCKERANYWAY tell me 6 mL? And WHY did they tell me that at the emergency room?"

I could tell that the nurse was getting flustered. There were a lot of "um"s and "uh"s coming from her end of the line. Then she said, "Are you giving him Childrens' Motrin or Infants' Motrin?" I told her Infants' Motrin. She said, "Okay, yeah, the infant stuff is concentrated, so he's only supposed to have 1.6 mL."

So I sobbingly sputtered out, "SO WHAT YOU'RE TELLING ME IS THAT I'VE BEEN POISONING MY CHILD FOR THE PAST TWO DAYS." She said, "He'll be okay. Don't worry; it'll be okay." I replied, "NONONO, I'M ANGRY." Her reply was, "Oh. Hm."

I eventually demanded to speak to the doctor, and of course the doctor wasn't there. So then I hung up on her, which I realize isn't necessarily the BEST reaction, but I was gasping for air by that point and I just couldn't make any more words come except for "FUCK" and "BITCHES" and "AX" and "MOTHERBASTARD".

So later we talked to poison control and they said that the amount he took isn't toxic, so he'll be fine. Which is great, and that's the bottom line.

BUT THE NEXT LINE UP FROM THAT BOTTOM ONE IS THIS ONE WHERE I AM ON FIRE INSIDE, so mad that I can hardly comprehend it, so mad that I can barely form sentences about it (my Crazy Speak interpreter Juan is typing this right now, say hello Juan- Hola!). I cannot be the only person in America who didn't realize that there was a difference between Infants' and Childrens' Motrin, and I know the whole time that I was saying "Motrin" and "Tylenol", NO ONE ever said, "Now that's CHILDRENS' Motrin, not INFANTS'." And shouldn't someone make that distinction? Really? Especially when I kept saying "We've only been giving him 1.6 mL." Shouldn't that have rung a bell in someone's air-filled head?

I am Reed's mother, and believe me when I say that I take some responsibility here. I have felt more guilt over the past twelve hours than I thought possible. I have pictured, over and over, forcing Reed to take all that medicine, nearly FOUR TIMES what he should have been given, and wept because I know now that my initial instincts- that it was too much medicine- were right. I think, I could have killed him. I could have killed him myself. I could have ruined his liver entirely, and he deserves the opportunity to do that himself with beer and painkillers in his college years AND I ALMOST TOOK THAT AWAY FROM HIM.

But I also feel like those people, those people who go through years of schooling to learn how to take care of my child, and who I now pay large sums of money to take care of my child AND to tell me how to take care of him when I don't know, they have some responsibility here, too. I questioned that dosage over and over again, and I told them how much we had been giving him. It would have taken one breath and three seconds to tell me that I needed to be using Children's Motrin instead of Infant's Motrin.

So, here we are, alive but barely. I don't know what's going to happen from here. The nurses supposedly left word for the doctor to call me today, but I'm not sure what I might say. I KNOW that we're finding another pediatrician, because there have just been too many problems over the past week that could have been avoided.

Thank the good lord that MY doctor believes in Medication, and I have a nice bottle of codeine to get through this, because I would be setting buildings on fire by now if I didn't.

Pissed.

Pissed.
Originally uploaded by buffpuff.

So you know before how I wasn't cool enough to say that I had ever been to the emergency room? Well I'm cool now!

Reed has been sick since Saturday with a fever and a runny nose, and on Monday I spoke to the nurse at his doctor's office twice. Both times she said that his 102.7 degree fever wasn't any reason for him to come in, as well as the fact that he wasn't eating, as well as the fact that he wasn't drinking as much as he usually does.

As the afternoon wore on, his fever stopped responding to the Tylenol, and he stopped drinking altogether, and he stopped responding to us when we talked to him. It took THREE PHONECALLS to the after hours service and an hour-and-a-half later they finally called back and said we should PROBABLY take him to the emergency room.

When we left the house his temperature was 103.7. When we got the emercency room it was 105. They gave him some Motrin, took a chest x-ray and told us it was just a viral infection and sent us home (after only five hours).

We took him to his regular doctor and he did more tests and said that it is a viral infection. The exciting part is that now I have it, so Reed and I are both writhing about the house in perpetual pain, high fevers and snot rockets to boot. This is the sickest I've ever been, the absolute worst that I've ever felt, and I feel so awful that my baby has to be feeling the same thing that I'm feeling. There were moments on the car ride to the emergency room when I feared that something really bad might happend to him, and it made me feel like my life was over, that I was a total failure and nothing else I had ever done mattered.

But then I got the anger, so it's okay now.

The phlegm icing on this snotty cake is that we currently don't have health insurance. Mine lapsed at the end of February, and Jason's won't pick up until he's worked 800 hours. So we get the added joy of owing a hundred million dollars to the emergency room.

I'm just glad that he's okay and that he's recovering. Now if I can just get better, all will be right with the world again.

I haven't ever thought to, you know, BREATHE AIR before.

Kane really digs origami. I've given him a couple of books and packs of paper over the years to help him in his pursuits, and we usually all get into it at some point.

Over the last few days, Jude has taken a great interest in origami, but he's hit a few speed bumps along the way. Jason has tried to show him a few times how to make a couple of things. He said the other night that he spent quite a while trying to show Jude how to make a swan using the instruction book, and Jude just kept saying, "No, I want you to show me how to DO origami." Jason kept saying, "I'm TRYING to show you how to DO origami." They never really reached a point of understanding with each other, and they both gave up after a while.

Tonight Jude came in while I was dressing Reed and said, "You know, I really like origami. But I just can't seem to really GET IT." So I said, "Well, it's pretty hard, but you just have to read the instructions and fold where they say to fold."

He replied, "OH. Hm. That's interesting. I haven't ever thought to READ the book before."

Can anybody see how I might want to SPOON my eyeballs right out of my head and then throw them out the window?

It's yo' thang; do what you wanna do.

So today was Reed's very first day at daycare. TODAY WAS THE DAY I LEFT MY SON WITH PEOPLE I HAD SPENT ABOUT THIRTY MINUTES IN MY WHOLE LIFE WITH. Needless to say, I was a little high-strung.

When we took him in, the other kids were eating breakfast. His teacher put Reed in a highchair to let him have some; when she gave him the bowl of waffles and sausage, he looked at her like she was crazy and pushed the bowl away. Then he looked at us like, "Um, NO." We started saying "bye-bye" and waving at him and he totally didn't cry. He just looked at me like, "You are abandoning me now, you heartless wench, and I will never forgive you." I heard it in my head, so it's pointless to try and convince me that he didn't say it to me in my head.

When we picked him up his teacher said that he cried some after we left once he realized that we were gone, which made me feel like I might throw up right there on the spot. She showed us the cloud he made out of blue construction paper and cotton balls, and I felt a little better.

All in all, it's the only choice we have, so we're going with it, but THIS MIGHT BE THE THING THAT FINALLY DOES ME IN. The women's rights movement gave us so many choices that we wouldn't have had without it, but because the cost of living has risen so drastically in comparison with average wages a lot of us have one fewer choice than our parents and our parents' parents had.

I'll get over it eventually, but not too soon so really don't go expecting me to be all NORMAL any time in the near future. Normal is just not my thing.

Baby step to the elevator. Baby step to the elevator. Baby step, get on the elevator.

So today I had Reed in our bedroom with me while I dried my hair. He is absolutely fascinated with the blow drier, so he's actually pretty easy to deal with when I fix my 'do. Today, for some reason, he wanted to spend the entire time with his head buried in my ass. I kept stopping and saying, "Dude, what are you doing? Come around here." But every time I flipped my head over to start drying again, I would see his little face peering up at me as he planted his head firmly against the back of my ass. I don't know why- that's just where he wanted to be. Kids are weird, I tell you.

Then we went and TOURED A DAYCARE. Baby steps, people. It's close to where my mom works, and the price is reasonable, and all the teachers and kids were nice, so I'm pretty sure that we're going for it. The thing that cracks me up about it is that Reed will be, literally, the only white kid there. Actually I'm pretty sure he'll be the only white PERSON there, period. Jason and I are both pretty excited about it. I know when Jason was little he went to a GHETTO daycare in a predominantly black neighborhood, and he seems to look back on it fondly. And don't anybody try to get on my case- Jason showed me the daycare he went to, and it is in the ghetto. That's what I mean when I say that he went to a ghetto daycare.

A couple of people have expressed, to me and to my family, concerns about Reed going to a daycare with all "black kids" and "inner city" kids, and frankly I'm a little appalled. Look, I realize that racism exists, but it's just so odd when it pops up right in front of you. At least to me it is. I just find it surprising when a person who seems intelligent and genial enough is suddenly pale and tight-lipped in my presence because I've decided to send my son to daycare with black kids. For me, that doesn't make any sense, and it bothers me quite a bit. But you know, they'll get over it. Either that or I'll have to go all crazy on them, like I do on Jason when I haven't had a beer in a while. THAT is scary, and he can tell you that the only way to calm me down at that point is to wave a burrito in my face until it gets the better of me and I sit down and order some cheese dip. And why would a racist person be carrying a MEXICAN food item in his pocket?

I really SHOULD buy a fire extinguisher.

Well, I am once again employed and my new job really doesn't involve the internet in any fashion, thank the good lord Jesus because we all know what happens when I'm on the internet- I encourage anarchy, lawlessness, left-wingism and heavy drinking. I am very dangerous. I am single-handedly erroding America's good, wholesome family values as we speak.

I have to say again that I feel very... constipated and uncomfortable to have this entire section of my life that I can't write about. I'm thinking of writing to Oprah about it. Oprah, if you're reading this, maybe you should do a show on bloggers who get fired because of their writing and still think that they ought to be able to write whatever they damn well please! Good idea!

So Jason, in all his glory as The Most Distractable Man In America, managed to leave his car running, unlocked, for nine hours yesterday. He has to park and ride a shuttle to his work, and the shuttle was leaving and he was trying to get all his stuff out of the car quickly so he could run to meet it. When the shuttle dropped him off that evening he said he thought, "Man, whose car is running?" As he approached his, he saw the keys in the ignition and the lights on and realized, "Hey! Woops! MY car is running!"

It makes me think of the time that Kristi and I almost burnt down my mom's house trying to re-heat soup. Yes, friends, you can start a fire with cold soup. IT CAN BE DONE. My mom had done the unthinkable and left us alone in the house, and we decided to heat up some beef stew for lunch. We put it on stove and turned it on and then thought, "Hey, we should really leave this red-hot unit and head back to the very back of the house to play Barbies with the bedroom door closed so that we won't know if anything ODD is going on up here in the kitchen!" My dog Poochie came back with us, and about an hour later she was shuffling in circles and looking at us as if to say, "You fucking idiots! We're about to die in an inferno if you don't get us the hell out of here! Do you have any treats?" That's when we noticed the smell of smoke, so we opened the door and the house was indeed totally filled with smoke. We got out fine, and no real damage was done to the house besides a couple of burnt spots on the countertops, but it just goes to show you how stupid smart people really are.

Sopping it up.

DSC_0268.JPG
Originally uploaded by buffpuff.

Well, the worst of the weather missed us. It got pretty green and still outside for a while, which was nerve-wracking, but every time I looked at the news the funnel clouds were north and south of us. We got some rain, wind, thunder, and lightning, but that's about the long and short of it. It makes me feel so lucky, especially with all the damage in Enterprise, Alabama. A lot of people died down there, and all that's been on the news since is the really heart breaking eyewitness testimony of teenagers and teachers and other people who experienced the tornadoes firsthand. I hope everyone down there is able to move on and recover from this terrible tragedy, a tragedy that Alabamians deal with almost every year.

I found out yesterday that one of my close friends had a house fire earlier this week. WHAT THE HELL, PEOPLE? My grandparents AND one of my friends, two days apart from each other? What are the odds? It's just so random and bizarro. I can't even really come up with any sort of commentary on the subject because it boggles the mind so.

So for now I'm going to change the batteries in our smoke detector and buy a fire extinguisher. You best do it, too, because it's going around.

Batten down the hatches, folks; a storm's a comin'.

Well, there's weather in Alabama, which means most people around here are taking cover in their storm shelters after buying out every loaf of bread and every gallon of milk in the tri-county area. This happens three or four times a year- some massive storm system will head our way, and every news anchor and weather person around will start talking about all the devastation and destruction it's going to cause, then all the schools will close, then everyone will go temporarily insane and start driving really badly and buying lanterns, and then we'll get some rain, and then life will go back to normal. Except everyone will be trying to decide what to do with all those bulk packages of peanut butter and batteries they bought.

I don't want to tempt fate here- sometimes we do get some really awful weather that does some really awful damage. But that tends to happen about one out of eight or ten times that we go through all this, so most times it's easier just to assume that it won't be that bad, because it's usually not.

My grandparents' house caught on fire yesterday. I'm not entirely sure about the story, but my dad said that the kitchen will probably have to be completely remodeled. They're both fine, thank goodness, but a little shaken up. They've gone to stay at my dad's house, I guess until their house is fixed, which means dad and Wanda's lives are going to be enriched by the sweet sounds of the woes of constant ailments, and they might want to see if they can fireproof... well, everything.