This is going to hurt you more than it hurts me.

Cooper had his surgery today. Surgery on the whole doesn't freak me out anymore, after spending a number of years working in anesthesiology. I understand the process, I know the drugs they're giving him and how he's going to feel (or not feel). I'm not scared about the actual process.

Still. It's my little boy, and he's little. And now he's missing his tonsils and adenoids and has two shiny new ear tubes to help him hear again. And he's hurting.

Not in pain, per se. No, for some reason he is in no pain, but he can't swallow. I literally saw him hold a sipful of water in his mouth for ten minutes so he wouldn't have to swallow it.


I am confident the new tubes will help him hear again. In fact, he's been holding his hands over his ears pretty regularly today, which tells me the real world is a whole lot louder than he was used to.

I'm sure he'll improve as the week moves on. I just wish there was more I could do for him than popsicles and Tylenol.

- H

I've survived but the downside is I created a monster.

Three. straight. weeks. It is not even March yet and I've been away for three separate weeklong meetings. The good news is the meeting season is OVER. The bad news is I can't feel my fingertips and I have a strange pain in my lungs. I swear I caught some sort of African flu at the Opryland hotel last week. It was under water six months ago, and my room was on the ground level. Can you say mold?

Never fear, I will survive as we all do, right?

On one of the sixteen flights home, I sat next to a techno geek. I wouldn't have called him that myself, he used that phrase to describe himself. So I'm not being catty, I'm merely quoting.

Anyway, he was showing me how to work my new iPhone (thank you, company, for making me turn in my beloved Blackberry and learn this dagnabbit* contraption) and some fun apps to put on it. I sheepishly pulled out my iPad, a Christmas gift from my husband, and confessed I've done nothing with it other than surf the net.

So when I got home last night, and the dust had settled, I set about loading up that iPad with games for the kids. It is now 5:15 p.m. Less than 24 hours later, and one of my sons will cry giant crocodile tears if he can't play his "games."

I have created a monster.

Sadly, this monster does not yet know how to fold laundry. Apparently his father doesn't, either, as this is the scene I returned home to. I had washed and dried all of this loveliness before leaving.


That's ok! I love folding laundry! Doesn't bother me a bit! I have a whole second weekend day I can devote to it.

- H

*I was in Nashville. What do you expect?

Evil, you have met your match

After getting the shock of my life and realizing that I'm fat and ugly right now (at least to me I am), I made an emergency call to my pilates studio. I haven't taken a class since last June when my husband got sick and all hell broke loose. I figured maybe it would help me tighten up a little and then feel a little better about myself.

I booked my lesson on Friday with a girl I took lessons from last spring. She was a little hard core last year, but not too bad. In order to protect her privacy, I'll give her an alias. Let's call her Evil Personified, kay?

So we met at the studio, and instead of doing the typical pilates thing where they ask what your body has been doing and what level of fitness you're at, have you do some cleansing breathing, you know, all that safety stuff, Miss Evil threw me on the Reformer right away. When she said "send the carriage out" and I could barely get it pushed all the way out, she admitted to me, "yeah, I pumped up your springs a little."

Many of you may have no idea what I'm talking about right now. I will give you an analogy. It's a bit like a personal trainer meeting a client who hasn't stepped foot in the gym in 8 months and then loading up their benchpress bar with an extra 100 pounds.

Things with Miss Evil went downhill from there. Was she mad that I'd disappeared for eight months? Did she think I'd been cheating and taking classes at a different studio? I'll never know. What I do know is that she actually had me doing things like one-armed pushups when my form was so bad I had to tilt my body towards the ceiling just to keep from falling down. Did she correct my form? No.

I could barely walk yesterday. One of my boobs actually hurt. Boobs typically do not hurt after exercise. The muscles underneath them, yes, but this was the actual boob. My husband and I went out to dinner last night to celebrate his new job (yay!) and while walking to the restaurant I lost control of my leg muscles for a second. I didn't fall, don't worry.

Today, the legs are a little better. I can pick up my son again today, that's a plus. My left boob no longer hurts. I'm supposed to go back into the studio tomorrow for a chair class. My options are 1) Call the owner of the studio and threaten to sue them for hurting me and employing a dangerous teacher, or 2) Go to the chair class because my butt is in horrible shape and the chair really whips it into shape and I'm superficial enough to only care about my looks.

I've got a feeling I know which way this is going.

- H

Note to self: plastic surgery is your friend.

I got a new iPhone yesterday. I had a Blackberry that I loved dearly, and then my company decided we were all joining the Applevolution and we'd all be hooking up to white cords.

So they sent me the iPhone, and I cursed my way through the first day, accidentally making phone calls I didn't want to make and whatnot.

Then I remembered something. My friends with iPhones love the cameras! So I whipped that baby out, ready to snap some super cute shots of my brood. I was looking for a zoom feature, when I clicked a little button in the top righthand corner, and BAM. My life changed. That button wasn't a zoom. It was this freaky ability to flip the lens facing towards you!

Now, I know what you're going to say. Duh! What did you think? But honestly, it was a shock to see it in such black and white terms.

I look like hell. That's it in a nutshell. I am haggard. Aged.



Two years ago I didn't look like this. In no other two years of my life have I aged this quickly except maybe when I was four.



Look at the annotated pictures. The primary creases. The jowls. The bag under my right eye.

I am seriously distressed. I knew the last two years had been rough on me, but I had no idea just exactly how rough until tonight. I guess I should probably never touch that button again, eh? And I'm going to book a vacation. I can't breathe right now from all the fun goings on. I need to take a breath.

- H

Half a month? Yeah, that's about right.

Maybe later today I'll have a very witty retrospective on Valentine's Day to share with you. Probably not, considering how my month of February has gone so far (where has it gone?!).

Instead, I will leave you with a flashback of sorts. This post that I wrote last Valentine's Day. Which could easily be this Valentine's Day, because we still live in this godforsaken HOT HOUSE.

Happy day of luuurv, everyone.

- H