All The Single Babies...

If you'd like to learn the dance yourself, try this:






And if you think you're a badass, try this:

I want my tonsils back.

Just kidding. I don't, really. I've just been recovering from a tonsilectomy for six days and I'm disappointed in my own lack of resilience. I'm superhuman, dammit!!!

I was warned that it would be a long, difficult recovery. I have friends and family members who weighed in on Facebook telling me of their own experiences and begging me to reconsider my decision to have my tonsils removed. But after having about eight blazing cases of Strep Throat in the last year and a half, I figured it couldn't be a whole lot worse than what I had already endured.

The pain itself really isn't the worst part of it. Yes, there's pain, but there's also being hella tired and not being able to sleep. There's also an inability to taste anything. There's desperately wanting to wake up completely healed and instead waking up feeling noticably worse.

This morning I woke up gasping and choking on what must have been a big funky glob of gunk from my throat and it reminded me of a trailer I remember from an 1981 horror movie starring Sharon Stone called Deadly Blessing. Anybody know what I'm talking about?



These are the things that haunt my subconscious, people.

So with the fear of choking to death in my sleep, I don't think I've slept much in the last week. And my poor beloved R has been a prince. He's been working so hard to get stuff done so I wouldn't have to do it, he's exhausted and my tossing and turning and snoring and gagging isn't helping him at all. I feel really bad about that part, but I'll make it up to him. I'm hoping that removing my tonsils has had a positive effect on my gag reflex. (A-Bow chicka BOW!)

Then, there's the pain. And the incompetence of the genius nurse. And how the two have combined forces to prolong my suffering. I called the office yesterday, saying that I'd been unable to sleep for more than a few hours at a time because the pain meds wear off so quickly. The nurse's solution? Try taking fewer, less strong pain meds. That's what I did last night.

Tonight I'm trying something else. Called TAKE AS MANY DRUGS AS I CAN POSSIBLY CHOKE DOWN.

My sleep schedule is so completely screwed up, I don't even know what day it is. I think it's Tuesday. Tonight the boys have their karate class. They each have a ghi now because Beeb took karate for several years and we saved all of her karate stuff, so yay! That saved me sixty bucks!

And Pie has been riding his two-wheeler without the training wheels, so his elbows and knees are all scuffed up but he's determined as hell to ride like the big kids. So that's what's been going on in the world around me while I'm hiding out in my sickie cocoon.

My neck hurts from trying to sleep in an upright position. My throat hurts, my jaw hurts, my ears hurt, and I'm indescribably tired. R took FMLA so he was home with me Wednesday through Sunday, and now he's had to go back to work. Yesterday Kev came over to sit with me while I slept, but now he's back to work after recovering from his own surgery, so today's really the first day I'm completely on my own. It sucks.

I'm lonely and bored and absolutely no fun to be around. And I'm normally such a charming, effervescent person! I hate being boring.

And oh, I haven't even mentioned the other casualty of my tonsilectomy. Remember my mammogram last year? Click here if you missed it. It's a good read, particularly if you're new to my blog.

Remember how I FREAKED for a whole day about the possibility of having to take my tittie bling out for my mammogram? Well, it didn't even occur to me that I might have to take them out for my tonsilectomy. They weren't going to be cutting anywhere near my boobs, right? Didn't even enter my mind.

Fast forward to 6am last Wednesday when Grouchy Nurse - who, by the way, bruised my hand thusly when administering my IV -



asked me if I'd removed all of my jewelry. Wedding ring, earrings, piercings?

Yup, yup, huh??

Do you have Piercings?

Well, yeah, do I have to take them out, really?

What do you have done, your bellybutton?

(Scoffs)Ha, ha, no... that's so Spring Break... I have both nipples pierced.

They're gonna have to come out, ma'am.

Are ya sure?

Let me put it to you this way - Do you want to be electrocuted?

Not so much.

Then yes, they need to come out.

Shit. SHI-hi-hi-HIT.


So she handed me a plastic cup, drew the curtain, and, within a minute or two, the rings were out. The stainless steel rings that have been a part of me for about five years, symbolizing my ability to summon my inner badass and overcome my fear of needles and pain, were sitting, cold and lifeless, in a cup.




And I was really ok with it.

I hadn't spent the whole day before freaking out about it. I hadn't had a chance to stew or lament or even give it any thought at all. It was done. And there were my nipples; plain, unadorned and lovely.

Maybe I'll put them back, I don't know, but for now, I'm enjoying the novelty of Nips Au Naturale.

** NSFW ** Sometimes I go a long way to connect one thing to another.

Seriously, y'all who have been reading my blog for a while should know that pretty much every post is most likely NSFW.  But anyway...

Yesterday we had waffles for breakfast, and I looked at the label on our Aldi syrup.




Aunt Maple's.  Got that?  Ok. 

It reminded me of one of my all-time favorite bits, which was a major bitch to find on YouTube because the only time I ever heard it was on an LP.  Record.  Album.  Vinyl.  Those things we had before cassettes and CD's and MP3's. 

(I watched the VMA's last night and I felt like I was a hundred. Janet Jackson doing Scream was just incredible. Oh, and P.S. - Kanye, you're a douchenozzle. But that has nothing to do with anything, really.)

To continue. . . Fortunately for us, video footage of Dudley Moore singing House On Fire does exist. I couldn't decide which I liked better. With the first one, it's easier to hear the actual lyrics. But the second one has a much more animated delivery.







Did ya catch the connection? "We have not laughed so much since Grandma died, or Auntie Mabel caught her left tit in the mangle." Who else but your pal PK could relate Dudley Moore to pancake syrup?

I always thought that a mangle was a garbage disposal, which is why I always mind my tits when leaning over the sink. But further research showed me that I've been wrong all these years.

From Wisegeek.com:

"In the 18th century, the first form of the modern laundry mangle emerged. A mangle has two large rollers which are turned by hand with a crank or by an engine, while laundry is passed between the rollers. Historically, such mangles were often powered with steam engines, once the steam engine was invented, and they would have been noisy, hot, and quite dangerous for their users; most modern mangles are electric, a significant improvement.

When used to process wet laundry, a mangle can cut down on drying time significantly by squeezing out as much excess water as possible. For pressing things flat, mangles may be heated so that they will create crisp, smooth creases, and it is not uncommon to see a pressing mangle with a steam attachment for setting pressed seams and creases. In many cases, a pressing mangle is used with a clean sheet to wrap the object being pressed, to ensure that it stays clean.

Modern mangles are much safer than their historical counterparts, but it is still a good idea to be careful, especially around an industrial mangle. These machines can easily severely damage extremities, and users have been severely injured when their hair has been caught up in the workings of the mangle; in some cases, a mangle can actually pull someone's scalp right off, which would not be a pleasant state of affairs."

I'll say.





The ending is my favorite part: "We are miserable sinners. Filthy fuckers. Arseholes." I like to sing that line quietly to myself when I do something blantantly snarky or snicker at someone else's misfortune.

Bad blogger. Bad.

Sometimes the reason why I haven't updated in a while is because I don't have anything interesting to write about. Other times it's because I've been so insanely busy I haven't had time to sit down and write about all the wacky things I've been doing.

This time, I had nothing interesting to say for a while, and then suddenly things started happening, none of it particularly gripping blog material but still, enough to prevent me from blogging.

To follow up on my most recent post, the people across the street left their trash cans out for four days, and left the fridge there for two days after that. Why that was of such interest to me, I really don't know, but it was neighborhood scandal material for me.  I wrote about it on Facebook. Oh, by the way, I've now been de-friended NINE TIMES (you can't hear me, but I'm saying it in the voice of Principal Edward Rooney).

I must be doing something right. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

Hmmmm... what else can I tell you?

I was sick last week. I had an icky cold and a fever for a couple of days. The worst part of it was that I had offered to go and sit with Mrs. Speed Racer while Speed had his tonsils out last Thursday morning, and I was too sick to go. I knew nobody was mad at me or anything, but I was still bummed out because I really wanted to be helpful.

Fortunately for me (not so much for him), he got seriously dehydrated Wednesday night and Mrs. Racer took him to the ER for fluids and better pain meds, so I got another chance to step in and be a pal. I sat with Speed at the hospital all day on Thursday.




Seeing Kev like this was a bit freaky, when I remembered that I'm having my tonsils out on Wednesday, but he had significantly more done than I'm going to have done. He also had his soft palette tightened and his uvula removed. I thought about asking to have my unruly uvula taken out, but I'd have to give up any endorsement potential as the Swollen Uvula Poster Child, so I'm just going for the Basic Tonsilectomy instead of the Deluxe Package.

We made light of the situation. I tried to throw wadded up paper towels into the plastic thing on his face, until Margaret the nurse told me I had no game. So then we thought of movie quotes that would be funny to say, like, "LUKE, I AM YOUR FATHER!"  and from Top Gun, "Ok, Mav, let's turn and burn!!"

Genius had eaten hardly anything in a week. My extensive experience with Strep has taught me that even when it hurts, you still need to suck something down. And I'm pretty sure that's what she said.

But he's much better now. He's home, he's got some better meds and he's well on the road to recovery, which is good, so he can help take care of me next week. I'm starting to get really super nervous about the whole tonsilectomy thing. I bought myself a 2lb tin of Gooey Butter Pop from Poptions to calm my nerves.

In other news, the kids are doing great in school. Beeb's still hanging out with her buddy Elle and, now that Princeton's moved to From Whence He Came, Beeb has a new love interest that I'm going to call Tuck. He's a sweet guy. His mom, however, has some strange fashion sense.




That's a full-on denim suit - the jacket's not like a jean jacket, it's a fitted blazer. Gih. But she's a nice person and Tuck's a good kid, so I support this relationship. For now.

Ooooh! I need to announce the newest addition to the Karma Clan!




This is Dexter. Not named for the serial killer, but for the mad scientist cartoon kid with his own Laboratory. Our Dexter has his own pimped-out 40-gallon tank. The kids love him. We're training him for the Hamster Ball Races on October 3rd.

Come to think of it, we've got stuff going on for the next several weekends. Today R and Mrs. Racer are taking Pie to see that new Tim Burton movie "9" (Kev and the rest of us thought it looked too creepy), and tomorrow we're talking about going out to Pirate Fest.

Next weekend I'll be taking it easy. The Racers are taking the Apes off of our hands for a bit so R can take care of me after my surgery.

The following weekend the Karmas and the Racers are going to Strange Folk. I'm really looking forward to that. We missed it last year.

Then, on October 1st, R will finally - FINALLY - move up to a better job on The Death Star.  For the last six years R has been screamed at eight hours a day by crabby people who can't figure out their communication devices or the system through which The Evil Empire receives payment for the communication services they graciously provide to the inhabitants of a galaxy far, far away.

His hard work, dependability, patience and mad skillz have been recognized and rewarded, and we are absolutely overjoyed. It's a pay increase, and, hopefully, a stress decrease.

So, as I mentioned, we're racing Dexter on the 3rd. We have the annual Hayride out at Chez Inlaw on the 10th, and the weekend after that...


My 20-year High School Reunion.




Shut up.