Oh Sweet Humility

A long time ago, I made a post about patients coming to the ER that I can't stand. It was mostly in jest. Okay, I lied. It wasn't in jest at all, those people drive me nuts. I can't stand people that go rushing in to the Emergency (No, it's not just a catchy title - that's what we do there) Room for every little thing.

Well, I have been served a giant slice of Humble Pie.

The other night (I'm just like Aunt Jay, stuff that happened two years ago can still be referred to as "the other day", but this was actually, in fact, Tuesday) Matt and I were watching television when I began getting horribly uncomfortable. I had a little knot of burning pain that settled right between my boobs and would not go away. I thought, oh, it's just heartburn and took some Rolaids. They seemed to ease it just a bit, but I still couldn't move or breathe or be, y'know, comfortable.

I made it through House and Fringe before I started getting really whiny; at this point I tried Tylenol, which didn't do anything at all. Matt wants to know what's wrong by now if only because it'll probably get me to be quiet. He keeps asking me if I need to go in, and I keep crying, "I'm not going to the ER for heartburn!"

Two hours later I have totally changed my tune.

"Oh God, please take me to the hospital! I'm dying! I'm going to blow up! What if my uterus is ruptured!? Oh God!"

For whatever reason, right before I call my doctor, I take a Gas-X on the off chance it might work. At this point I'm sure that I've been cursed and nothing offered over-the-counter will cure the stabbing pain in my belly. Chest. Whatever it is when your belly is shoved up into your chest. A Chelly? Yes, we'll go with that.

The doctor tells me to come on in and go upstairs to Labor and Delivery to make sure it's nothing super-fun, like labor. The nurses up there are sweet as can be, make us comfortable, get us all hooked up for the fetal monitor and away we go. Half-pint is doing great and moving like gangbusters; the nurse can see her flipping around and gets a good kick out of that.

It's about fifteen minutes since we got there, and. . .I feel better. The pain is gone. I have the sinking, sheepish realization that I've come rushing to the hospital in the middle of the night...for gas.

Gas. Flatulence. Farts. Barking Spiders. Butt Trumpets. Whatever you want to call it, it's no emergency. In the exclamations of our friends across the pond, "Bloody Hell."

I am fully aware that if they send me back downstairs to be evaluated in the ER, I will never live this down. The nurses and doctors I work with will tell the tale of the time an ER nurse came rushing in for a bad case of the imprisoned toots.

I realize I have three options.

Option 1: Lie. Fake horrible agony in the hopes they think something's really wrong and they never discover it's just a case of the Air Fairy.

Option 2: Run for it. Once a guy escaped from my ER with nothing but our phone book and a wheelchair. He even left his catheter in. If he could do it, I could totally escape from L&D.

Option 3: Come clean and hope they don't turf me downstairs. Beg if needed.

Since I'm about as mobile as a rhinoceros in high heels, escape was out. Also, escape wouldn't work because Matt would snitch me out in a heartbeat. Lying is out because I'm a horrible liar; when I was ten or eleven I opened all my Christmas presents and then rewrapped them. My master crime was foiled because I left the tape under the tree; somehow, Mom didn't believe me when I professed I had no idea how it got there, or why all the presents looked like they'd been wrapped by a double amputee. I had a feeling that lying about it would not be a performance worthy of an Oscar.

So even though I felt ridiculous, I came clean. The nurse was very understanding and said that it happened all the time, but I still felt so silly. I comfort myself with the fact that it's the first time I've been pregnant so I wouldn't know what various aches and pains are, even if I'm no stranger to gas.

At least I didn't call the ambulance for pinkeye.

I noticed I got a not-so-subtle hint that I missed someone's birthday and didn't give Lisa a pretty page like I gave Rachael. OOPS. I'm sorry Lisa! You're going to have to be more of a whiner than that to get me to pay attention!

I was going to use the defense of "there aren't any pictures up on her blog!" but then I went to look. Crap. I was screwed on that one. So I stole all of her pictures. Her kids are just too cute and there were a lot of pictures so I had a lot to work with.

Gracie inspired me first, so here we go. Happy belated Birthday, Lisa! I can send you the high-res versions for printing if you like. If you utterly hate the pages, feel free to tell me because I'd love to be able to use all your pictures to play with anyway!

Left-hand Side

Right-hand Side

This blog is turning into my scrapbook-whoring blog, but that's okay! It's how I spend a lot of my time lately, I really enjoy it. Things are going well so far with the home stretch. Angie, our friend that works with Matt, is throwing us a baby shower on Saturday and apparently a lot of our friends are coming. I'm really excited about that, and really touched, because they're our "family" down here and they seem to know it, so they're flocking in for support.

Also, if anyone remembers, today is my Grandma's birthday! She's really excited because she gets to come down to California soon and meet her great-granddaughter. I was thinking the other day that soon, four generations of our family will be in one place, and that's mind-boggling to me. We are so blessed. I am also excited because this time, my house will be clean for her visit and I can let her inside.

I've also been hemming and hawing over posting this here for a few weeks, but I feel it's a good thing to mention. Jesus and I have made up and we're trying this relationship thing again. So far it's going pretty good. I've been doing an independent Bible study and looking, really looking, at this doctrine and what it says to me. I've been chewing on the idea of starting a blog just to record my thoughts, mostly because I can type faster than I write, but we shall see. I just wanted to share.

Little Bean

Today we went to the Perinatologist for another ultrasound, just to monitor the baby's growth because of the GD. Things looked good; her organs are developed nicely, everything is perfusing well, and the tech advised me to buy hair barrettes, because she's got hair!

On the down side...Hadley is really tiny. She's only four pounds, nine ounces, and her abdomen is only in the 10th percentile for growth for her age. The rest of her is in the 20th percentile, which is okay, I guess. The Doctor - who I really trust to tell me if it were a serious problem - didn't seem terribly worried, citing that some babies are just small and that's how it is, and they're perfectly fine after.

Still, I can't help but feel guilty. I didn't eat a lot, and I still don't eat much because I'm scared of my blood sugars getting too high and causing her complications. I have an appointment with my Endocrinologist tomorrow to discuss how things are going, and we're going to have to figure out a plan for me to gain weight so she can gain weight.

I was doing okay with this; Matt is not concerned at all and my Mom reminded me that I was a tiny bean as well and I was a very healthy baby. At one point I felt a lot better, and told Matt "Well, maybe God just wants her to be an Olympic gymnast so she needs to be petite. That certainly would explain all the gymnastics currently going on."

The mistake I made was looking up "low birth weight" on the Internet. WHAT WAS I THINKING. I often scold people for looking up medical things on the internet; I remind them that the Internet is not a licensed professional and will gladly report to you every drastic, critical, and devastating thing that can go on. By the time I'd finished reading the March of Dimes website, I was in tears. Very, very, bad idea.

So, while I know that she's probably going to be just fine - only two weeks to go and she'll be considered "full term" anyway - I've been praying about it and if anyone else remembers to drop God a line, I would gladly appreciate it. I count myself lucky that this is the worst of my problems, compared to what other people have dealt with, but this is my blog, I can cry about whatever I want.

At least now we get a little more mileage out of all those 0-3 months clothes, right?

Another Quick Post!

I don't have Rachel's email, so I figured I would just post the link to her gift here. It's true, I stole pictures of her daughter off her blog, but if she really wants to sue me over it then she can't have her present.

I made this for you, I hope that you like it. If you want something different, like different colors or what-have-you, just tell me; I was inspired by this entry you made about Aubrey being a popmonster and it all went downhill from there. If you want to keep it I have a print resolution one I can send you to get it printed. Anyway, happy birthday, buddy.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3104/2831782975_c8c4b8975c_b.jpg

Quick Note!

Please bear with me while I'm in the process of recoding my blog template; green is out, pink is in! Many thanks to my cousin Amy, who introduced me to the new obsession of digital scrapbooking. Here is the first page I made:

http://flickr.com/photos/geribartz/2820094561/



More to come on my new addiction, as well as my other new addiction: Coupons.

There and Back Again

Home again, home again. Now that I'm done traveling the United States and waddling through a myriad of airports, I can sit and collect my thoughts. There's not a whole lot going on upstairs - I sort of feel like I'm getting really dumb, I can't even finish sentences anymore - but I did keep track of interesting moments during my trip to Minnesota for Jake's wedding. Jake is my brother in law; Danielle is my new sister in law. Hooray!

So, the list of Great Moments:

• When we arrived, we couldn't get our rental car because they did a credit check. Even though we had oodles of money in our account, our credit is about the same as an illegal immigrant from Panama that used his last rental car to transport drugs across the border. Budget not only wouldn't rent to us, I swear that the woman was searching beneath the counter for a gun. As a result of not getting a car and needing to travel the four hours to Bemidji, Chris (Matt's college roomate and our former groomsman) promptly hopped in his Kia, stocked up on Diet Coke, and we road-tripped it to Bemidji. His reasoning? "I didn't have anything to do today, and who wouldn't want to spend more time with Matt?"

• Tom. Tom gets to be a moment in himself because Tom is easily one of the coolest people I've ever met. He's a goofy dork that's utterly hilarious without even trying. All of Jake's groomsmen were really cool, but none of them captured Matt's heart quite like Tom. I never thought I'd see Matt have a man crush on a guy, but I was wrong. One of the many nights where Matt was blitzed off his little butt, he was rambling on and on in his drunken state when he cuddled up next to me in bed, kissed my cheek, and whispered, "Don't feel threatened by Tom. You're the only one for me." How reassuring.

• We found that Jake can finally say "Hadley" right, but only when he's drunk. It'll be fun explaining to her why Uncle Jake is always so happy. He got so drunk at Bar Night that I went from being introduced as "This is my sister-in-law Geri" to "That's my baby" while pointing at my belly.
  

• Danielle's bridesmaids were a study in cultural anthropology. These were the most immature, fake, plastic-ish twentysomethings I'd ever met in my whole life. Makeup always had to be perfect and they were amazingly selfish. Some of the gems they came up with:
• "I'm not ugly, but I'm cute at least."
• "When I get married I'll just marry for money, then looks. Definitely money first."
• "Danielle, this wedding better not take very long. Keep it quick."
• "I never want to go to the Emergency Room. It's all violent and icky and the workers there are so rude." (Yes. She said this to an ER nurse.)
• When we went out for the Bar Night, they couldn't hang out with the rest of us because we weren't cool enough. Tom couldn't get into a couple bars because of his license status, and they bitched about that nonstop until the rest of us gravitated as far away as we could. One of them tried to ignore me while standing next to me at the bar, as if she didn't know me...so I made sure to exclaim loudly about how happy I was to see her, touch her, and rub my big pregnant body all over her.

• My husband got so drunk at the reception he danced with people waiting for the bride during the dollar dance, pretended to make out with his own brother, tried forcing his sister into marrying Tom - "since that was the only chance of getting Tom into the family" , broke a candleholder by landing on it, and did his first shot of tequila only to promptly puke on the floor and all over the front of his tux. I think he realized I was upset when we got home and he asked, "When we go to sleep, do I get to sleep downstairs with you or do I have to sleep upstairs...?"
  

• As I was hugging my brother in law after the wedding, he whispered, "I'm so glad you came. It made it way more special."

• As I was leaving, Matt's Grandma told me that I was a very pretty pregnant lady.

• Hugging my Mother-in-law goodbye, she told me she loved me for the first time.
  

The Showdown

Some people "play" fantasy football. Some people play fantasy roleplaying games, like Dungeons and Dragons. Some people engage in fantasies that are not meant for a pg-13 blog such as this.

And some people, like me, take too much pleasure in what I call Fantasy Arguments.

My day started like this: Wake up way too early, drive Matt to Best Buy so he can carpool with Angie, and then drive halfway to Ojai (Ojai is the town back in the mountains that's right out of a Stephen King novel. I'm seriously not going to be surprised at all when the Ojai High Prom Queen goes on a killing rampage with nothing but her fundmentalist-soaked brain.) to drop Moxie off at the dog boarder's.

Now, none of this seemed to me that it was going to be stressful or life-altering in any way at the time. Moxie is a good dog and loves to ride in the car, especially because 99% of the time, that means she's going to her favorite place on earth.

The kennel.

I wish I was being sarcastic, but it's true; from the minute I turn into their driveway, Moxie forgets that I even exist. I am relegated to the back part of her brain as "that bitch that tells me to knock it off all the time but shares her apples with me anyway". Her little canine brain has already sped ahead to the fact that soon, she will be basking in the attention of a number of other little dogs, all of whom - or so we've been told - instantly begin following her around the minute she arrives.

That's right. My dog immediately becomes the Alpha at Dog Disneyland.

She also this quaint habit of taking a shit on their pristine tile floor that's just inside the reception office. The kennel is on this huge farm where basically, it's like Lord of the Flies and the dogs get to run wild, with plenty of teenagers to wrestle and fetch with. How they have a pristine anything is beyond me, but leave it to Moxie Bartz to find it and promptly drop a load on it.

When I showed up today, the lady was on the phone. Understandable; she was clearly handling business and seemed a little harried, but she also was surrounded by a handful of yipping, barking dogs. She waved at me a little and I waved back, but I wasn't going to go about talking to her as it was clear she was busy and I wasn't in a hurry.

I was surprised, then, when she started talking to me. She recognized Moxie on sight (always a parent's pride, when your dog is recognized immediately. "Oh, my...it's Moxie.") and chatted at me a minute about her, and then went back to the phone. Okay, I think to myself. She must be on hold or something.

It was right about then that I looked down at my precious companion and notice that she's about to drop her precious load all over the precious floor. I immediately freak out because hey, even at a dog kennel, it's embarrassing when your dog shits on the floor. It's like being the parent of the kid in the Christmas Pageant who screams that he likes poopie in the middle of the Nativity and proceeds to fling boogers at the audience. So needless to say, I was in an urgent state to clean it up while apologizing profusely.

Now, back to my friend. (Up until now, I still consider her my friend.) I thought she was off the phone, or at the very least, able to talk - as she had talked to me not five minutes before. So I frantically ask, "Oh jeez! I'm so sorry, do you have any tissues!?" So that I can clean up.

I am promptly greeted with the announcement, "I am on the phone."

I hope the significance of both italics and bold is not lost on you, dear reader. I am not exaggerating when I say that she was using italics and bold in her very SPEECH. It was not the gentle "Oh dearie, I'm on the phone. I'm so sorry faithful customer, I'll be right with you so I can take your enormous amount of money for letting your dog run around on my farm for a week." It wasn't even the "I'm a little busy, customer. I promise I'll get right with you, if I can ever get off this gosh-darned phone!"

No. It was the nurse-sick-of-stupid-questions (I know that one really well, being a master of it), on the line with the police to get her drunk husband hauled to jail trailer trash, mother who has been pushed to the edge and is about to introduce her children to a bedtime story called "Bathtime with Andrea Yates." She was snapping at me.

In the spirit of that great nineties musical classic, Hold up. Wait a minute. Don't go there, 'cuz I ain't with it.

Some of you may remember my Grandpa. My Papa Loiacono didn't take any shit from anybody, and he had what you might call a temper. Aside from inheriting his dashing good looks, his giggle, and his penchant for lifesavers, I also inherited the Loiacono Temper. Seven months pregnant and wrestling with a Schnauzer that's ready to tear across the open plains, this woman did not just snap at me for wanting to clean up her floor.

In the words of Dane Cook, it was on.

Okay, flash back in: She's glaring me down. She is clearly very, very upset that I spoke to her while she's jawing on the phone. I am very, very, upset that she thinks it's okay to snap at me when all I'm asking for is some tissue or a little baggie. So I reply - and yes, I was snarky - "Oh gosh, I'm sorry. I just wanted to clean up your FLOOR that my dog was trying to POOP on."

Phone Nazi (we are no longer friends) gives me a look so harsh I'm pretty sure my baby can feel it. She goes on to berate me about how she's on the phone, she's really busy, and can't I just WAIT. By this time I'm ready to jump across her counter and beat her with her own cordless phone. There's plenty of witnesses, sure, but there's also a farm full of dogs that are probably hungry. After she mutters at me for a few moments, all while searching out some wipes, she snaps, "Maybe you could just take your doggie outside to go poopie." Only she says it in the condescending way you'd tell someone, "Maybe you could try NOT being a douchebag for a little while."

I yank the wipes off the counter and reply, as cool as I can manage (At least as coolly as they would've done on Knots Landing, but maybe not as cool as Dynasty), "Yeah, maybe I just will." And Moxie and I go outside, where she poops and I clean up.

While I'm outside, I seethe. I want to take my dog and my money and leave, but I also know that I'm stuck leaving Moxie there. It's the day we're leaving and I have no other arrangements for her (Our friends won't take her anymore. See above, where she shits on floors). So I'm stuck leaving her there, which I know is a good place for her and she loves it, but at the same time, I now no longer trust this woman any more than I'd trust Britney Spears as my nanny.

I go through a moment where I want to march back in and give her what for. Tell her I don't deserve being spoken to like that and who does she think she is? She watches dogs. That does not mean you're the humanitarian of the year. You sell your back yard to people to let their dogs run around. You're a backyard pimp! That's what you are, lady! And I would haughtily pick Moxie up and walk out, head held high.

When I got back inside, working up the guts to say something about how she'd upset me, I find a strange thing. The woman is off the phone and when she talks to me, acts like nothing ever happened. Our little D-Day battle didn't just occur. She never snapped at a guest for wanting to clean up her floor. She's nice and pleasant and ready to take Moxie, and all is well with the world.
For some reason, this just angers me even more. I want to shout, listen here, Sybil. I know you probably forgot your meds today, but don't take it out on me - I'm pregnant, I've got a lot of shit to do today, and to top it off, I have to get on a plane at midnight and fly to Minnesota. What've you got to do today? Watch dogs run around and hope they don't kill each other? Now apologize for snapping at me, take good care of my dog, and don't ever talk to me like that again!"

But I know, as I'm writing the check, that I won't say anything. I just mumble answers and avoid her gaze, and reluctantly pass over my dog. Moxie jumps into the backyard without a backwards glance.

Maybe she realized when I went outside (and slammed her stupid door) that she'd been rude. Maybe she realized that we use her kennel at least twice a year for a large amount of time and that we're virtually a promised meal ticket. Maybe she really was sorry for sounding so bitchy and thought that by being super-sweet, it'd make it up to me. An apology would've gone a lot further.

In any case, I left, deflated and impotent in my anger. I still wanted to do something, but I was already gone and I knew I was going to seethe over it. I was halfway home when I realized there was something I could do. I was empowered to teach her a lesson, by God! I knew what I had to do to feel better about the argument - in other words, what I had to do to win! It was all so clear.

I gripped my steering wheel and hissed into the rearview mirror, "That's right, lady. I'm going to blog about you."

I sure showed her.