Bad: Sad Swimmy

Good: Chinese take-out

Bad: Getting fucking SOAKED picking up the Chinese take out

Real bad: Having to wash AND DRY hair again. Christ.

Good: No punk-ass, annoying, expectant, way-to-old-to-be-trick-or-treating teenagers knocking on the door.

Bad: Two tons of candy sitting in the house.

Good: Not ODing on said candy.

Bad: Knowing that tomorrow everyone will bring said candy to the office and it will be inescapable.

Good: Dog will not go batshit every time the door bell rings

Bad: Mommy and Daddy don’t get to rake through the Swimmy’s candy haul picking out the primo candy to keep for themselves.

Good: Still get quality Swimmy time together.

Bad: It includes watching 4 hours of Dora the Explorer.

Good: Still can re-use the Nancy the Naughty Night Nurse and Doctor Dudley Do-Me costumes for other amusement.

Bad: Sprained ankle running in Nurse Nancy’s FuckMe pumps through rain puddle.

Happy Halloween, Internets! Get your Boo on!

Well, folks, it’s Halloween and the freaky IT spooky goblins are at it again. It appears a server has crashed at my hosting company and they lost several files… ain’t life grand.

So, as I search through files, I’ll repost the entries, but I’ve lost all your wonderful comments. But, you’re still wonderful!

Thanks for hanging in there with me… and if you’d like to send a collective EVIL HEX to my hosting company, there’s a mini-Twix in it for ya.

while waiting for the Swimmy at gymnastics. A mother on her cell phone (natch):

“Yes, I’d like to make a grooming appointment for my dog.”

“What kind? Well, she’s a Poodle, Yorkie, Lab mix.”

I just keep thinking that one of the dogs in that mix must have exploded in progress.

Hello! And welcome to this episode of Pammer Humiliates Herself. We’re glad you could join us!

In today’s episode, Pammer is waiting for the ADT guy to show up because her house alarm system has been spontaneously sounding like doors and windows are opening when they clearly are not.

Okay, so I’ve already lost interest in the whole 3rd person thing. Anyhoo.

It’s 8:15am and I’m in the kitchen putting away the dishes from the dishwasher when my stomach alerts me to the fact that there will, indeed, be “an Episode” a-comin’ and YouHaveBeenWarned.

Ruh roh.

*Thinking…** The ADT guy is supposed to come between 8 – 10am. What are the chances he will come and knock on the door while I’m in the bathroom? About 100%. In fact! I’m so good at predicting these situations, I’m gonna look out my window NOW, while I have 2.5 minutes before said Episode hits, and, OH, LOOK! There he is.

Sitting in his van. SITTING!

Dude, I don’t think you understand… if you don’t get your ass out of that van and start walking up here to enter my house, I WILL be in the bathroom when you knock on the door and bad things will happen.

And so, I open the door, hoping he will see me. He doesn’t. I go out to the middle of my yard to pick up the 3 community newspapers. Ah, HA! Success. I wave and say, “Good morning” and he follows me into the house. (I’m wondering if he notices the clenching of the cheeks? Please, G-d, no. I beg you.)

I QUICKLY point him to the offending door / contact point, the master brain / control box in the hall closet and two keypads for his engineering pleasure and then excuse myself to the ladies room.

Twelve lovely minutes later I come back to see what Mr. FixIT has found, and I find him standing in my kitchen, where I left him, hands crossed in front of him in fig-leaf position.

“Uh, could you tell me what the problem has been?”

“Uh, well, um, my stomach is a bit squirrly sometimes and today happens to be one of those times…”

“Ma’am, I meant with the system.”

“Oh, (shit!), right. It thinks the door is opening when it isn’t. Please excuse me.”

[crawls under a rock and hides]

So off he goes to test and beep and open and close doors and whatnot. In the meantime, Episode #2 is about to occur and I’m off to the bathroom again. I’ll spare you these details, but what is important for you to know is that the master bathroom shares a wall with the hall closet that the master brain / control panel is in.

I’m sure you can guess what happens next, right?

I come to check on Mr. FixIt again and he gives me the “raised-eyebrow-I-have-GOT-to-get-out-of-here” face and says he hasn’t found anything yet. Oh, goodie.

During Episode #3 it occurs to me that this man could rob me blind and I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. While I’m stuck in the loo, he could just walk about my house and pick up any and all items he wished to have, place them in his van and drive away. And, quite frankly, I wouldn’t even call the cops. I’d be too damned embarrassed.

And, so, thank you, Mr. FixIt ADT Guy. Thank you for not robbing me. Or stealing my dog. And thank you for not finding me the least bit attractive with my raging head-cold and stomach issues. Thank you for just fixing my alarm system and getting the hell out of dodge.

Because? Really? I think Episode #4 is uponst us.

I am about to do the unspeakable. The unimaginable. Almost the most frightening thing I’ve ever had to do.

I am changing my Ob-Gyn.

(I can feel all you men going, “Oh, come on! Who gives a shit? Gimme a break?!” while all the women are simultaneously saying, “No! Oh, my G-d! WHY?!”)

The reasons why I’m changing are not as important as the fact that I have to change. And we women know that there are two Very Crucial People in our lives that we never, NEVER want to leave us: our Ob-Gyn and our hairdresser. (And, yes, our husbands, but many will say it’s easier to find a husband than a good hairdresser or FAST ob-gyn.)

And? To make this even harder? I’ll be changing to a MAN for the first time ever. I get all freaked out just thinking about it.

If you ever want to hear what could be the most enlightening conversation women ever engage in, sit in a room while women discuss men vs. women gynecologists – and why they could NEVER EVER go to a (insert gender here).

Understand, there’s a lot that goes into an ob-gyn appointment. There’s the bathing and the shaving and / or waxing and the drinking to sum up the courage to sit half-naked in socks on a cold table and be told to, “Scoot that sweet, fine ass to the end of the table, BabyGurl.” This ensures your knees will be as far apart as possible thereby putting you in the preferred upside-down whore-frog position and The Violating can begin.

Before I was pregnant with The Swimmy, I would cancel and reschedule ob-gyn appointments at least twice before actually making one. (I dropped that routine while pregnant – I had a whole different kind of anxiety that pushed me not only to make every single appointment, but get there early.)

And so, in a few weeks, I will go on the First Date with my new, male Ob-Gyn. It will not have drinks and dinner so much as it will have cold, metal instruments and a really long middle finger. And this guy better be fast.

Like lightning, cheetah, F-16 going Mach3 with your hair on fire fast. I’m just sayin’.

You know what happens when you mix a lovely muscle relaxer with two Ghiradelli chocolate brownies?

NOT A G-DDAMN THING.

That’s right. The chocolate totally counteracts the potency of the narcotic and instead of drifting off into dreamy-dreamy land (pain free thankyouverymuch), you get to lay in bed wide the fuck awake and feel tired but not be able to sleep.

And then? The next morning? You get to realize that you have (a) not slept, (b) oddly seem to feel a little bit better in the hurty-back parts, but (c) have now caught The Swimmy’s very phlegmy “welcome to fall” cold.

Good times.

(And have I mentioned that The Swimmy has been home with me the past two days feeling puny? And that while she looks very princess-y delicious in her Disney princess dresses, I am sick and fucking tired of watching Cinderella!? However, watching her imitate the movie and act it out is tremendously amusing.)

Cough. Sniff. Siiiiiiiigggggh.

I was sending an email to a colleague who had just returned from a seminar where one of the courses she sat through was one about blogging. She told me of some statistics which were a little odd, like:

57% of all bloggers are male

40% are under the age of 30

39% have college degrees, and

42% are “well off” (whatever that means)

The “57% are male” one was interesting to me because I see and read a preponderance of chick bloggers. Most of them are of the “I’m single in the city” or “I’m pregnant” or “I’m a mom”. And, yes, I read some DaddyBlogs as well.

Then it occurred to me how many of us ChickBloggers talk openly about our children. We post pictures, chronicle their lives, write “milestone letters” to them, laugh, cry and freak the fuck out about them.

They are growing up not only WITH the Internet, but ON the Internet. It’s amazing how many of these kids I follow. Leta, LilZ (and now NikkiZ!), Noah, LilMiss and Boots, Mia Bean, Donovan, Chickadee and Monkey, Jackson and, of course, Barney’s Biggest Fan.

I can only imagine what these kids will think when they go back and read some of the things their parents have written about them. Will they feel like Internet Rockstars? Will they feel as if their privacy has been invaded? Will they have a greater understanding of their parents?

Hmmm… have to think about that last one a bit. What would The Swimmy learn by reading this site? Well, some tremendously useful vocabulary (for later in life)… that her Mommy is more of a “guy’s girl” than a “girl’s girl”… how much I love her Daddy… and, hopefully, how much she has added to my life.

Maybe one day these kids will be on some BlogHer panel discussing what it was like for them to grow up with a MommyBlogger. And maybe that will be okay, as long as the moderator isn’t Danny Bonaduce or some other Child Star Gone Bad mascot. And if I’m lucky, I’ll get to meet Dooce and Jon, Zoot, RockStarMommy, the Cactus and the Fish, Mir, Martha and Danny. And we’ll beam from the audience, so proud of our kids and who they’ve become.

And then we’ll head to the bar and give these kids reasons to start their OWN blogs. From generation to generation – hallelujah!

Tonight we attended an event for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Tonight Husband got a glimpse into why I chose a career in philanthropy.

Tonight I didn’t have gift envy. Tonight I was a donor.

Tonight it was announced that a little boy we know beat insurmountable odds to rid his little body of a deadly bacteria.

Tonight we witnessed the powerful combination of love, faith and science.

Tonight we gave freely.

Tonight we made a difference.

Tonight we heard a story of a mother who received a diagnosis for her son of Cystic Fibrosis. Mary G. Weiss became a volunteer for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in 1965 after learning that her three little boys had CF. Her duty was to call every civic club, social and service organization seeking financial support for CF research.

Mary’s 4-year old son, Richard, listened closely to his mother as she made each call. After several calls, Richard came into the room and told his Mom, “I know what you are working for.”

Mary was dumbstruck because Richard did not know what she was doing, nor did he know that he had cystic fibrosis. With some trepidation, Mary posed the question, “What am I working for, Richard?”

“You are working for 65 Roses,” he answered so sweetly. Mary was speechless. She went over to him and tenderly pressed his body to hers. He could not see the tears running down Mary’s cheeks as she stammered, “Yes Richard, I’m working for 65 Roses.”

Since 1965, the term “65 Roses” has been used by children of all ages to describe their disease. But, making it easier to say, does not make CF any easier to live with. The “65 Roses” story has captured the hearts and emotions of all who have heard it. The rose, appropriately the ancient symbol of love, has become a symbol of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Tonight the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation brought 65 roses to auction off to raise money to fight this disease with medicine and research.

Tonight Husband bought me the most beautiful rose I have ever received.

Money leads to science. Science leads to cures.

There is nothing (NOTHING!) more mystical and completely fucking frustrating than this wireless router that I now both love and hate with the fire of 1000 suns.

In case you are a bit slow today, my tabletPC just up and stopped recognizing the wireless network last night. As I am the network administrator in my house, and I am the only one who could come close to fixing this issue. This issue occurred last night whilst I was getting some much needed beauty sleep and Husband wisely didn’t wake me up to fix it.

Ya know what’s usually pretty helpful when you’re the network administrator? ACTUALLY FUCKING KNOWING SOMETHING ABOUT WIRELESS NETWORKS. Ya think?!

Well, I don’t…much. So these little setbacks always escalate to scales of monumental proportions and bring me to the brink of tears. But, you little LinkSys fucker, I have NOT cried yet and I HAVE fixed you twice and I do rock.

And if you keep fucking with me I’m gonna take that ethernet cable and your super-squirrel-secret network key and shove them somewhere that doesn’t require an IP address. Bitch.

There are many things you shouldn’t do while on muscle relaxers. I’m thinking blogging is one of them.

But I thought I’d give it a try.

So far, so good. I’ve only had to retype the first sentence 3 times due to mis-mousing and general haziness of the brain.

You know what else you shouldn’t attempt to do? Create your own performance goals for the next fiscal year for your boss to review. I’m fairly certain I just sent him an email that said I would raise a gagillion dollars while having very few meetings and all within 8 months.

So when we talk tomorrow and he jokingly says, “You must have been high to think you could do this,” I can respond, “Yep! Am high! Wacked the fuck out, my brother. What would you like to negotiate?”

Okay. I’m out. Eyelids heavy. Fingers fuzzzzzy and there’s that delicious feeling of complete serenity – and without the pilates! No more coherent thoughts for this piece of electronic paper.

I hope you all sleep HALF as well as I’m about to. Cheers.