Just what the dr ordered

I night out all dolled up with lots of free alcohol. We went to Red Ball at the Sprint Center on Friday night. It's a benefit for the American Red Cross. Then we headed across the street to Raglan Road where there was an eighties band complete with mullets playing madonna.


left to right: me, coworkers Andrea and Lauren, Emily (coworker Kevin's girlfriend), coworker Julie






The night ended with a trip through the Taco Bell drive thru where we learned they were out of beans and it would take 20 minutes to make more. Really? 1. How does Taco Bell run out of beans and 2. Why does it take 20 minutes to heat them up? They must come frozen or something. We had a good laugh because Kevin had ordered a bean burrito and when forced to change is order he froze.

I had actually eaten chicken fingers at the bar before we left so I wasn't really hungry. Then Taco Hell. The next morning Kevin and I went to IHOP and I had a ham and cheese sandwich, then I ate some leftover pizza late in the afternoon and laid down for a nap.

Needless to say when we woke up my stomach did not feel right. Lots of tums.

I spent yesterday all day with the kids at Paradise Park and that felt good to spend some time with them.

Today I took a five mile run with Tassie outside. That felt really good too.

And I haven't opened my work email all weekend. It's going to suck tomorrow but it has helped clear my mind.

Mini meltdown

I had a mini meltdown today. My team has been working really hard, myself included, and we've only had complaints this week. It's very unmotivating. unrewarding. worked 50+ hours each of the last two weeks and i'd ideally work 32 hours a week. nothing like an extra 20 hours a week with a few mean remarks to make you want to go to work. makes you think you have your priorities out of whack. that i should just spend more time with my kids. close the laptop. if you work hard and you get negative feedback then maybe you can just work regular and get the same feedback. it doesn't seem to be benefiting me to work extra hard.

Then i got home and the toilet overflowed so much it rained in the basement and made a huge puddle. nothing like cleaning toilet water. we're still not sure if carter put something in the toilet or just flushed the handle so many times that the toilet got mad.

i ordered pizza cause i had no energy to cook. one of the pizzas they brought was wrong. i called them and made them bring the right one.

i'm sort of wallowing in self misery. after two vodka red bulls and trying on every dress in the house to find one to wear tomorrow to red ball i feel a little better.

i'm contemplating wearing a red dress i wore as a bridesmaid in one of my bff's weddings nine years ago. i can't decide if that's cool i can still wear that dress or wrong that i'm seriously considering it.

We are getting an ice storm

It started icing yesterday and we're expected to get five more inches of ice/sleet/snow today.

It has snowed every day for quite awhile.

I am so over winter. and seriously if I was not married I would move somewhere warmer. seriously. up and go. I hate this stuff so much. It isn't good for anything.

When I retire I will have a winter house that is somewhere warm.

We booked a trip to Vegas but it can't come soon enough.

So another day cooped up in the house. I am glad I went to the grocery store yesterday instead of my usual Sunday because everything is a sheet of ice. We are going to get wind today so all of the trees will probably start breaking.

We had to have the heating people come again yesterday because the furnace wasn't working again. Some board is tripping the breakers on the furnace continually now. They made a temporary switch and will have to come later to fix it.

Trip to the Dentist

I took both kids to the dentist today. Anna received her second clean report in a row! Hooray! She did awesome. She even got to push the buttons to move the chair up and down and back and all over again.

Carter, however... Did not want anything to do with anyone. He hid behind me and refused to sit in the chair. They gave him a toy because he had given up his binky since his last visit. He played with some stuffed dinosaurs. He watched Anna in the room next to him. But he would not sit in that chair.

When it finally came down to it (after 30 minutes of warming up) he cried as hard as he could and yelled while I held him in my lap and laid him back so his head was in the dentist's lap and she brushed his teeth with a normal toothbrush and painted flouride on. He has a cavity in the back most molar on the left. After his second experience with such a tantrum (he threw his popsicle on the floor and spit all over my shirt afterwards to get the flouride out. I was so proud) the dentist looked and me and said I have two options: we can do sedation or we can try the gas. I think she and I were on the same page: sedation.

It will basically take up an entire day for me because I will want to get it scheduled in the morning if possible since he can't eat or drink before. Then it takes awhile to prep (hopefully he will drink the sedation but if not - and I'm guessing not - he will get a nasal spray). Then there is a 70% chance it will have a good effect and they will do the filling and also take x-rays. Then he has to be in recovery and then there are supposed to be two adults so one of us can help him in the car and the other can drive. I was told he would be very loopy and I immediately thought of that youtube video of that kid high after dental work.

Each dentist in the group only does these sedation treatments one day a month because it requires a nurse from Children's Mercy to help administer the sedation adn monitoring. So it won't be until May probably.

Sedation is not covered by insurance. And you have to pay for everything when you SCHEDULE the appointment, not when you go and have it done. Good times.

Another first for me...

So a few weeks ago I had my first experience of leaving a full cart of groceries to take a screaming child home.

This week I took Anna to Target on Wednesday night to buy Valentine's for her party on Thursday. We got there and she said she wanted to ride in a cart because she didn't feel well. I actually tried to talk her out of it because I thought we could just get one of the baskets you carry. But we got a cart and we got the Valentines plus a gift for a birthday party on Saturday and a card for that. She complained her stomach hurt and I just thought she probably had to poop.

I had just checked out and paid for the Valentines and was digging for my keys near the cart-park area and looked down to see her laying in the cart covered in puke.

Uh. Oh. Gross. What to do. What to do.

I pushed the cart into the bathroom which for the first time I was thankful are at the front of the store and took her out and did some damage control. I took the stuff we bought out of one of the plastic Target bags and was thankful I hadn't brought a reusable bag on this trip. I put her puke covered coat in the plastic bag and tried to wipe it out of her hair and off her face and pants and shoes. It got on my coat. Yuck yuck yuck.

We left and I grabbed another plastic bag on the way out of the store. She threw up more in the car on the way home and I was so thankful she could get it in the bag and not ruin my new car although I was thinking that the environmental package treatment to the seats was about to be tested to its limit.

I had called Kevin on the way home and he had covered her bed and floor in towels (a lesson we have learned over the years to avoid washing so many sheets and trying to get puke out of carpet). She was really sick until about midnight. So that's the first time I've had a child throw up in a public place.

She got up the next day and was fine. Ate three meals. Went back to school on Friday. But we didn't get to use those Valentines we bought.

Carter was also sick and stayed home Thursday and Friday. But he has something different. He had a fever with cough. It reached 103.2 on Thursday night so I worked from home on Friday.

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I have not been doing well at running during the week. But I have been running on Saturday mornings. Candi has joined me so that is helping to force me to go. We have made a new commitment to run twice together during the week. I'm ready for it to get a little warmer and daylight sooner.

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Historically work is slowest in February but that couldn't be farther from the truth right now. Not to mention I'm covering for Andrea whose on vacation in Hawaii and Jeff who is on vacation next week too. So I have a few extra meetings on my already insane calendar.

Four of my new hires have started and one more starts tomorrow. I'm actually thinking I need one or two more if February's schedule is going to continue and it just might cause I think we've signed three more accounts. Crazy! I'm too busy doing too many other jobs to do my actual job. Working too much overtime. Ready for a vacation!

Let's go to Vegas! Ok. And so we are planning it. Ching ching ching ching ching ching ching.