Frankengina: Four weeks later

by statia on October 5, 2011

Three years ago, when I had my original consultation and post-op, I came out of the office having a major anxiety attack. I knew that it just wasn’t the time to go through it. The Mini was at the beginning of his journey, and then that fall, I found out that we were expecting LG. I have to think that this timing was cosmic. But at some point, I knew I had to go through with it, or my quality of life, well, there was no quality.

Several people have asked me exactly what the surgery entails, and sometimes, it’s hard to explain to someone that a doctor was taking a knife to my hooha. More women go through this than you can imagine.  My issues don’t define me.  I’m not embarrassed by them, especially since it’s not really my fault.  It’s just the shitty luck of the draw.   So I’m about to go into detail.  If you’re squeamish, avert the eyes.

[click to continue…]

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The Boobiethon has started

by statia on October 1, 2011

Ok everyone.  I don’t mean to be all up in your grill by bombaring you with Boobiethon posts (Oh, yes, I totally do).  But the ‘thon has officially kicked off today.  Submit your rack shots.  Help out.  Do your part.   And if I might so subtly suggest to help one of my best friends, Wendy, by donating to her directly.  She kicked cancer’s ass, and she did it with no job, while on Cobra.  She will literally be paying for cancer for the rest of her life.  I know you’re thinking, “what makes her so special?”  Well you know what?  SHE JUST IS. That’s what.  And I’m going to insert the token mom line “because I told you so!”

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Bare it all for charity

by statia on September 23, 2011

Ahh, fall is in the air (though I’m fighting it.  I’m not ready for fall yet), I see all the accouterments that go with fall: changing leaves, marigolds, pumpkins.  And you know what pumpkins remind me of?  Boobies.  And you know what boobies remind me of? The annual BOOBIETHON.   The annual Boobiethon is a cause near and dear to my heart, because, while I didn’t actually start the Boobiethon, I’m happy to be the reason it started.  If I hadn’t been alone one Thanksgiving, and if I hadn’t had such awesome friends who were so stinking stubborn about getting me to them (being newly single, I had no money at the time) so that I didn’t have to be alone, the Boobiethon wouldn’t have gone on to raise nearly $75,000 towards cancer research.   For a blogger to go on to do that year after year to raise that much, well it’s humbling to say that I was a part of that.

And this past year, I’ve had about five friends diagnosed with cancer.  Four with breast cancer.  Four.  All within weeks of each other.  I can’t tell you how sad and disheartening this is for me. My friend’s are young, healthy, vibrant women, who don’t deserve to get cancer.  No one deserves to get cancer, and this is a disease that should be eradicated.  Thanks to all of the people that have donated over the years, I’m grateful.  Even if it was a small amount.  It’s people like you that have made it possible for my friends to call themselves survivors.  Cancer didn’t beat them.  So this year, I’ll be making an extra special effort to post about the boobiethon.   Over the past few years, becoming a new mother and buying a house and well, life just got in the way. This year, I’m so happy to have my friends.  Cancer isn’t a death sentence anymore.

The annual Boobiethon runs from October 1st to October 7th.  You can donate directly to Komen, submit your “rack shot” or help my friend, Wendy, my hot internet wife, who unfortunately, got laid off right after her diagnosis. Despite her hard knocks, she barely complained and always had a positive attitude. You can also donate your time and help volunteer, or donate goods or services. Mel, a longtime friend, and organizer of the boobiethon is always looking for help in any way.

Please consider helping out, any way you can.   Thanks.

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So that I don’t bore you with my insane DIY addiction any longer

by statia on September 20, 2011

Frankengina is getting better on a daily basis.  I’m (mostly) wearing pants now.  I’m only partially happy about it.  However, it makes it less weird, since my brother and sister-in-law are here for the week, since I’m still moving slowly, and can’t lift anything heavy, or drive the kid’s to school.

I can’t even begin to show my appreciation for them being here this week (and of course my mother last week) to help out.  My kids LOVE their aunt and uncle, who don’t have kids of their own, thereby, my kids are theirs by extension and they love them to bits, and love spending time with them.  My brother and I had a rift a few years back, and given our family’s propensity for stubbornness, I’m  really glad that they’re in our lives and especially in our kid’s lives.  They do so much to help us out, and it’s obvious how much they love The Mini and Little Girl.   Today, I was just so grateful that my kid’s have them and will have these great memories of them doing all the fun “aunt and uncle” things when their older.

End sap.

Anyway,  because I’ve been on bed rest and light duty, I figured it was no time like the present to finally start a DIY/home decorating type blog to chronicle what I’ve done, and what I’ve learned.   I needed to split up the two spaces.  So if you’re interested in what I’m doing around my house, you can always visit me over at my new space, DIY Learning Curve.  It’s still a work in progress, and two of the three posts are repeat content from my two previous summer projects, but I’ve got a few pages of post ideas written down, and I’m adding every day.  Guess how many pages of ideas I have for over here?  Zilch.  But that doesn’t mean I won’t be updating here. Personal blog, I can’t quit you!!  And besides, most of the stuff I write here is on the fly.  Usually from the shitter.   Although, not from the shitter right now, because that whole surgery thing has caused major constipation and with constipation comes rhoids.  And well, you know what they say about extended periods on the toilet.

What, like you thought I’d be all sappy and NOT end this post without talking about poop?  You people will never learn.

P.S.  And yes, the website kiss of death.  The other site went down last night.  We’re working on it.  Stupid servers.

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Frankengina!

by statia on September 14, 2011

All last week, I walked around on edge.  I was flippant and short with people.  My last days being able to walk for awhile were going fast.

On Thursday night, the hubs and I drove in silence to Manhattan in order to get a decent night’s sleep in preparation for the big vagina surgery the next morning.  After years of pain and talking about this “miracle surgery” for so long, the day was finally here.

When we first went in for a consult three years ago to set this surgery up,  The Mini was in the throes of developmental delays and I remember so vividly, walking out of the doctors office and having a full blown panic attack.   “They’re going to do what WHERE?” Vulvar vestibulectomy isn’t exactly the type of surgery that women are lining up to get.  Even if it’s going to improve your life.  The recovery is long, and did I mention, they cut a chunk of FLESH out of your bits?  My bits are now a byte.  Or a bite, or just a bit?  I don’t even know.

The recovery instructions basically say: Take a lot of baths, don’t look, have an ice pack on your vagina constantly, and FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON’T LOOK.   And really, I can’t even move to see, or bend in that position, but I couldn’t see even if I wanted to, it’s like someone took a bicycle pump to my undercarriage.

The surgery itself, wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.   It was done right in an OBGYN’s office, under conscious sedation, which I wasn’t exactly fond of at first, because I prefer to be unconscious during my surgeries.  But they assured me that I wouldn’t be awake, even if I did hear something, and they were going to make sure that the area was numb.  Doing the surgery in an office had a definite advantage.  There was no waiting around in a pre-op veal pen all day.  I wasn’t bugged by a bunch of nurses in a recovery room, rather a very cozy setting of two recovery chairs.  I was home by mid afternoon, and in my own bed, something that I appreciated greatly.  I hate being in a big hospital for outpatient surgery.  You spend more time waiting than anything else.

There is pain, but it’s completely not what I thought it would be.  For years, I was so used to this burning feeling, and there’s no burning.  It’s pain where the stitches are.  It’s cramping, swelling, but not burning.  I can’t really sit, and I have to walk like my legs are bound together.  The healing process is slow, and having to lay in bed all day is taking its toll on me, and also disrupting to the kids, which we knew would be the case, but hopefully in another week and a half, I’ll be able to get out of the house, at least a little bit.

For now, I’m enjoying not having to wear pants.   Because you have to celebrate the little things.

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Happy thoughts and pepto pink.

by statia on September 2, 2011

I’m trying not to make this all DIY all the time, but seriously, cancer and social awkwardness needs to be moved down a bit.  It’s depressing.

I’ve been thrifting and hitting up flea markets this summer.  I’ve always had a fondness for vintage stuff.  And not just of the home decorating variety.  Toys especially.   Vintage “stickas” (remember these bad boys?  I spent hundreds on that one page alone), Rainbow Brite, Strawberry Shortcake, all the stuff I had as a kid, and even boys toys.  I managed to find the first season of He-Man on DVD earlier this year, and both of the kids LOVE it.  LG runs around the house with a light saber in her hand screaming “I HAVE THE POWERRRRRR!”  And if that isn’t seriously cool, I don’t know what is.

We were “junking” as I call it, on Monday, and LG came across a tiny rocking chair.  She sat in it and one of the vendors said “it was made for her.”  I really didn’t want to buy it.  We have enough crap in the house.

“I was going to sell it for $35,” said the man, “but I’ll give it to you for $20.  It’s been in my neighbor’s family for years.”

I stood there for a moment, eyeing it.  He probably thought I was trying to haggle (and maybe silently I was), but I was really hoping she would just grow tired of it and move on.   She looked up at him and batted her eyes and smiled.

“Man, this is cruel.” He said, “bringing your cute kids here to do your dirty work!  I’ll tell you what, you can have it for $15.  Nice trick.”

As we were walking away with the rocking chair in hand, my daughter said “Mama, I want to paint it pink AND purple.

More unintended hours of sanding later, we have this, at the Diva’s request:

She picked out the colors all on her own.  Benjamin Moore’s “Spring Azalea,” and “Crocus Petal Purple,” respectively.   The stenciling was an afterthought.  I’m not really great at stenciling, but she’s happy, and really, that’s all that matters.

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Social Awkwardness

by statia on September 2, 2011

First things first, Gromit is getting his “toeectomy” on Tuesday.  He’ll most likely be fine.  I have my surgery four days later, so what’s cool, is that we’ll be all down for the count together.  And hopefully high as kites together too.  I can’t think of a better, squishier companion for that part.

Ok, so.

I struggle when talking about the Mini and his delays anymore.  He’s getting older now.  I try to respect his privacy.   I want to chronicle his life, and I want to help others, and find a common ground.   Hell, I can’t even talk to his therapists in front of him.  I won’t, unless he’s distracted by his girlfriend/future wife du jour, or is out of hearing range.   He’s way too perceptive.  He knows we’re discussing him, and his issues, and I’m getting to that point now, where he realizes his own awkwardness, and while he hasn’t questioned it yet, I can see it coming.

He wants so badly to have friends now.  He starts pre-K next week.  It’s nearly a full day, and he knows all of the kids.  He’ll say hi to them, and have very short brief conversations with them, but his conversational skills with kids his age are just…painful to watch.  He’s better with us, but I’m not going to lie, it’s still a bit tedious.  With kids his own age, unless he’s very very comfortable with them  (Such as my children from another mother, the BFF), he’s not there yet.  He wants to be.  He wants friends now.  He wants to be out in the neighborhood, playing with the other kids, but he can’t get past “hi.”  He’ll say hi, and then launch into some diatribe about something that makes absolutely no sense.  And when he realizes this, he’ll say he played with so and so, but what he really did was watch from afar, and make nervous conversation with himself.  Echoing rote phrases or a coping gibberish.   The kids will go off and play with each other.   I realize that boys tend to develop their interactive playing later than girls.  The girls in his class were already excited to see their friends at orientation, already cliquey and going off, leaving a trail of high pitched squeals in their wake.  The boys?  All parallel playing.  I think it’s a dude thing.  But the Mini is a little different. He’s absorbed in his own  little world of cars.   Perhaps this is because he’s so comfortable with his classmates.

At home, it’s such a different story.   There’s a family with a gaggle of kids down the street.  The kids are all kind of dicks.   I hate to say it.   They range in age from 11-ish, to the youngest being four.  The two younger kids, four and five, walk past our house a lot, to go pick the older ones up from the bus stop.   The Mini will always say hi, and ALL of the kids just stare at him.  I don’t think they’ve ever once said hi to him.  The five year old now whizzes by on his bike multiple times a day while we play out front, and I want to throw a stick in front of his bike and scream “WOULD IT FUCKING KILL YOU TO SAY HI TO THE KID, JUST ONCE?”  But I can’t do that.  The Mini hasn’t asked.  He doesn’t feel personally offended by it (yet), but I told him, if you’ve said hi to the kids repeatedly, and they ignore you, they’re just not nice kids and there are probably plenty of kids your age in the ‘hood, we just need to take more walks during the day.

I know he’s getting bored with his built in playmates.   He idolizes this dick kid now, to the point of trying really hard to learn to ride his bike, just so that he can go over there and they can ride together.  And I see that rejection coming.   It’s like watching your own childhood all over again.  And I can’t intervene, or try to dissuade him from going over there.  It would go against everything we’re trying to do to help his social skills develop.   I just don’t want to watch him come home in tears, or feel that pain.  I have to let him experience it, but I don’t want to.  He’s such a cautious kid.  It takes him forever to do anything.  He’s had his bike since Christmas, and it’s sat in the garage, largely unused, because he’s so anxiety riddled of falling or careening out of control.   But that kid, the one kid who will reject him is his incentive for practicing on his bike.

And the only thing I can do is encourage him to keep practicing.  To tell him how proud I am of him for trying so hard to ride his bike with confidence.

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This little piggy went to market…and came home with cancer.

by statia on August 31, 2011

Gromit has always had issues with his dew claws.   They get snagged on every possible surface and rip off, and then he whines and we have to baby him, and put neosporin on it, and bactine, and watch him limp around pathetically wounded. But it would always heal and life goes on.   Until a few weeks ago.   He ripped it off, and it was bad, so we took him to the vet, for the third time in a month (“he’s SUPER healthy, and we’ll take that 2 grand from your bank account now for the suggested yearly geriatric blood work, thanks.”).  They put him on antibiotics and the swelling continued, and his dew claw started to look like something you’d see in a fun house mirror.

Me: Babe, PLEASE call the vet and get that thing taken care of, he’s been on antibiotics for two weeks and that thing grosses me out.  It looks like there’s a balloon hanging off his paw.

Him: And you can’t, because…?

Me:  I pay the bills, and take care of the kids, and sort of do the laundry, and uh, yeah, I’m not good for much else.  Just call them already.

Him: Fine.

So the hubs takes him in today, while I drop toys off to goodwill and consignment.  And I wasn’t prepared for “the call”

Him:  Babe, he has cancer.

$400 in x-rays later, it’s operable.  It’s TOE CANCER.   We lob off the offending toe, and hopefully, that’s pretty much the end of it.   And of course, the vet was non-judgemental, and like, “if you can’t or don’t want to, it’s now about making him comfortable… blah blah blah.”

And how do I justify my own selfishness to not have to sweep up dog hair every day, or deal with his festering garbage breath,  by just letting the cancer spread and cause him pain?   He’s 12 years old.  He’s had a good life, but I would be a total asshole if I just said, “we’re going to just ride this one out and let him die.”  I can’t do that.    Part of me wanted that decision to be made for me today, no matter how hard it was.   I wanted it cut and dry.   It’s a hard decision to decide to put your dog down, but I feel like, it’s almost a harder decision to let your old, decrepit, and otherwise healthy dog live.

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Radio Silence

by statia on August 23, 2011

This has been a really crazy summer for us.   I’ve wanted to get a lot of stuff done around the house, and we’ve managed to tackle some stuff, but not everything panned out.  We also managed to squeeze in quite a few trips to the beach (A.K.A “down the shore” as the locals like to call it).

And I feel like I’ve been rushing against the clock all summer.  The surgery clock.

In a few weeks, I’ll be having surgery to fix my busted vagine.  I’ve spent the entire summer burying myself in one project after another.  Half of the time having more than one project going on at a time.  An idea pops into my brain and I feel compelled to act on it.  It’s escapism at its finest.  But its been a learning experience, and plan on working on anything I can get my hands on up until my surgery date, as I’ll be down for the count for a good month.   Currently I’m working on making my basement into a craft space.  This makes me laugh, because never in my life have I ever felt the need to do anything crafty, let alone create an entire space dedicated to such a thing.   The progress is slow, but so far, here’s what I’ve accomplished:

This is the before before.  The previous owners were really into wallpaper and primitive furniture.  Also?  Hotel carpeting.

This is what we sort of started out with.   When we first moved in, we made it our adult entertainment area, where we could watch TV at loud decibels with surround sound, and eat chinese takeout, and not have to worry about waking up the Mini.   We eventually moved the TV into the family room, and the basement basically sat unused, so we turned it into the playroom, where it still sat largely unused.

I decided I had to go all agro on the poorly assembled faux built in that the previous owners had built.  It really opened up the space.

Then I decided that my ugly old (but very comfortable) office chair just wasn’t going to fit in with my style.  Rather than fork over the money for a new one,  I painted it, and recovered it with some more attractive fabric:

cute no?

There’s still a lot I want to do.  Like replace the curtains, build a reading bench, add some lighting, among other ideas.   So far it’s a great space, but it just feels like it’s lacking pizazz.   Ideas?

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Not the post I wanted to follow the last one up with, but it has to be said.

by statia on August 11, 2011

So, a lot of you come here for poop talk, right?   I mean, I’ve never been one to disappoint you when it comes to discussing bodily functions.   Oddly, I wasn’t raised in a house where we readily and frequently discussed poop.  I don’t think my mother ever farted, and my father, was the type to let them rip in the comfort of his own home. But it wasn’t something that was brought attention to.

I suppose growing up around a lot of boy cousins had a lot to do with it.   But anyway…

I have this issue with my colon.   It hates me.   I don’t know how to describe it, except to call it, maybe, the shopping effect.  It started out with just Hallmark.  I’m not sure why, but Hallmark has always been my poop button.  Maybe it’s the smells, causing my colon to march forth with needing that exact moment to expel waste, but it’s annoying, because who goes to Hallmark to browse?  I’m usually there on an important card buying mission.

Lately, though, it’s been extended to Target.  It never fails.  No matter how empty I am, if I go to Target (specifically by myself, which is a rarity), I will inevitably have to go so badly, that I either have to leave (what, like you don’t have going home issues?), or will have to walk like I have a giant stick up my ass, which isn’t enjoyable.   And now it’s starting to happen at more stores.  Toys R Us, Costco, the ENTIRE MALL.   I can’t have a pleasant shopping experience anymore.

I’ve discussed this issue with various friends, and most of them have a “poop store.”    And I have to wonder if everyone has a poop store.    Discuss.

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