My husband, the Fart Tracker

I know I’ve been gone for, well, FOREVER, so I will leave you with this tidbit until I can get back to writing in the future.

Mike: “That felt warm.  That SMELLS warm.”
Me: “OH MY GOD.”
Mike: “Yep, that’s a horrible smell.”
Me: “QUIT SNIFFING!  I can hear you sniffing behind me.  Quit trying to taste your fart.”
Mike: “I’m just tracking its movements through the room.”

The one with the toilet plunger

It’s Valentine’s Day!

I was gonna crack jokes about all the dry-humping on Facebook amongst couples today, but then I found out that my long-time (is 8 years long?) long-distance long-deserving fake internet friend Tammie ELOPED today!

So instead, since I’m feeling a bit sunshiney, I’ll tell you about my Toilet Plunger in the Kitchen Sink incident last night.

It all started about a week ago.  Or a year.  It feels more like a decade.

I hurt my back doing nothing significant, I’m sure.

Now, now, before all my friends rush in to tell me about their chiropractors, I should point out my aversion to being touched when it’s not gonna lead to an orgasm.  I also fear that a gypsy doctor is going to break my back or wear away the cartilage or some other horrible accident that’ll leave me doing Mr. Roboto Stephen Hawking-style into my wheelchair keyboard.  That’s a real phobia.  Plus I am saving back surgery for my 40s.

So it hurt a little. No biggie.

Then Mike pulled the Slow-Motion Train Wreck.

That’s when he pretends like he’s gonna give me a hug, but he really just pins my arms to my sides, says, Uh oh what’s this? and lets his weight hang from my torso.  Then we both crumble to the ground.

I have nothing to break my fall except my face.

This is a monthly event at our house.

At least that’s what we wager screwed my back up, or maybe it was the scissor ninja move where he took out my ankles and twisted me down to the bed.

Are we sensing a theme here? Jesus is a bit rough-and-tumble.

The next day, I was immobile.  Could not walk, could not roll out of bed.  Could not sit, could not stand.  Could not lie down.

I was breaking into cold sweats from the pain.

So what does that mean?

OBVIOUSLY that is when you dope up on the maximum dosage of Ibuprofen and go to Target to do your shopping!

Mike encouraged me to push the cart so he could make fun of my tortured facial expressions.

He said I looked like Stevie Wonder.

Then he asked me to clap my hands and move from side to side while grimacing.

I told him to stop making me laugh because laughter is only good in relationships when the wife HASN’T said STOP MAKING ME LAUGH – IT’S EXCRUCIATING.

Anyway, over the course of three (or two? I’ve lost track) days, the house has fallen into shambles.  I managed to finish the game closet I’d started organizing, but everything else looked like it’d been shot out of a t-shirt gun rather than put away.

I tried to pick up, but the body contortions to reach the floor or anything under-knee were ridiculous.

So I left it.

I laid down on the couch and watched everything fall apart around me.  The kids were fed Ramen noodles and leftovers.  I had pretty much hit rock bottom physically, sweating until I shivered and asking the internet nurses how much Advil is too much.

Mike laughed, And you’re just in your EARLY THIRTIES!

On a massive overdose of Ibuprofen, I managed to finally get into the kitchen to do the dishes at just after midnight last night.

I was so excited.  I was being productive!

I’d just written Mike a Valentine anagram and stuck it to the front door, and I thought, How WONDERFUL that the kitchen will be clean when he wakes up!  What EVERY MAN DREAMS OF!!!

The last thing I had to do was to run the garbage disposal and clean out the kitchen sink.

Remember that toilet plunger?  Yeah.

The disposal ran, but the water and gunk started backing up into the other sink.  What. The. Heck.

I tried again.

There was something wedged in the pipe.  At some point in the past three days, someone had poured something gelatinous or solid down the drain.

It was then I realized that I had about ten minutes before the dishwasher would pump scalding hot muck water into the pipe, which NOW would end up coming up into the sink.

I did what every crippled, on-her-last-nerve woman would do.

I shuffled off to get the plunger.

And I ignored the obvious when I plunged.  And PLUNGED.  And PLUNGED!

I checked the pipes to make sure I hadn’t caused a leak and PLUNGED SOME MORE.

Ten minutes.

But I did it.

And I was exhausted, and heaped over in a pile.

So instead of a clean kitchen, Mike awoke to a toilet plunger in the sink.

Happy Valentine’s Day, honey… would you expect any less?

The culmination of deprivation

I’ve quit on sleep.

I don’t even know if it’s still considered “insomnia” if you’re not even TRYING to fall asleep at night.

I blame Netflix.  And Downton Abbey-slash-Breaking Bad-slash Wentworth Miller.

Oh, my dear dear Wentworth / Matthew / Jessie Pinkman…  I love you all.

For years and years and years, Mike and I were broke.  Like: paying utilities every-other-month broke.  Or: It’s a fancy night in when we add broccoli to the generic Mac-N-Cheese broke.

So we CLEARLY did not have cable.  Because we are not “those people” who have no money for rent but find the $80 each month to watch marathons of America’s Next Top Model.

(We went to my parents’ house for that.  Ask Mike how many afternoons he sat, huddled on the couch, devastated when yet another meth-head lookalike won.)

The one year we did have cable was when we had terrible mold in our basement apartment.  It started in the bathroom and crept through the wall to our bedroom closet.  It was so bad at the end of our four months there that we couldn’t even use the bathroom.  It burned our eyes to open the door. 

Don’t ask me where we peed because I don’t even remember.

Mold in our refrigerator drawers and water in the veggie bins.  Cracks in our walls.  Mold on my shoes and any poor piece of clothing that happened to fall to the ground.  We’ll probably die of some mold-related lung illness because of it.

When we were shuttled out of the apartment one weekend after a complaint with pictures finally lit a fire under management’s ass, we moved up three floors to a lovely apartment with (*gasp*) FREE CABLE.

This is one time in my life that I did NOT report myself for unintentionally stealing something.

Oh, the desperation that we had to watch the TV to store as much cable programming in our heads as was possible before they caught on!

The previous tenants left and the cable company didn’t turn off the feed.

The nights we spent there – sitting on the floor playing Scrabble, me cussing Mike out for using yet another 3-letter word, eating our cheese product meal – were some of my favorite memories in our relationship.

Then we got married, moved into a townhouse, and started being responsible.

No cable for our broke asses from then on out.

Just a few weeks ago, Netflix came onto our radar.  Out of crazed mania in watching either Downton Abbey or Breaking Bad (I lose track), I finally justified the $8 every month to have this service.

And my, oh my, has it changed our lives.

I am currently hooked on Prison Break.  Before that, I watched 130+ episodes of Weeds.  Mike has been using it to watch every crappy John Travolta/Matt Damon movie made in the last two decades.

But I don’t feel right spending all my days and nights doing nothing but parking on the couch, so I spend my days cleaning, my nights playing with the kids, and my LATE nights watching Netflix into the wee hours.

I am earning the privilege by suffering through such events as Makeover Night, Just Dance Night, and Family Game Night, and I figure that excuses as much TV viewing as I see fit.



And since Mike is trying to set a record for most consecutive nights worked, “Family” means “me and the three 8-year-olds.”  That alone should warrant at least one season of watching Wentworth Miller break free from yet another prison.

At least I grew some brains and downgraded to Trouble during game nights.  Emma has been begging to play Monopoly.  I can’t even stand to play Monopoly with ADULTS.  While drunk.

So judge me all you want.  I know I’m cutting years off my life by not sleeping, but this is hard earned time from years of being deprived of good television.

And if someone tries to take away my newfound best friend Netflix, I will cut them.  Wentworth makes me want to commit a felony.

I can use sleep deprivation in my defense, right?

On to the next one.

I hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving!

I would like to share with you a little Thanksgiving history… a little write-up on Pilgrims by Kristin Varney.

They have vegtabales and friut.  They sailed like over a week or two.  They went to Hollend.  The Mayflower was so different than the one that was old.  132 were on the Mayflower.

And there you have it.

Thanksgiving is over, and Christmas is coming.

In like over a week or two.