7 Random Things About Me

I've been tagged by Cecily R to write 7 random things about myself.

I feel it necessary to make a disclaimer that mine was not as short and concise as hers. Sorry about the excess verbiage.

Enjoy!

1. When I was what felt like 2 months overdue with our firstborn (really just two weeks) and as big as a house, I went to the hospital three times before finally being allowed to check in as a patient 'officially' in labor. Apparently the labor pains I'd been experiencing in the previous couple of days and during the previous 2 visits to the maternity ward had been fake labor. The second time, the nurse in triage told me, "It's not actual labor honey, it just feels like it is. They're Braxton-Hicks contractions. You go on home and take a nice long walk, and with any luck you'll be back in here tonight with the real thing."

I was already so exhausted and cranky and miserably overdue, that I felt like snapping, "Great idea, lady...I'll go home right now and walk until I'm dog tired so that I can come in and relax in the maternity ward this evening with the real thing!" Riiiiiight.

2.You know how you feel when you stub your toe, and you know that if you walk it off, it'll feel better quicker, but inevitably someone just has to ask, "Are you okay?" which makes it hurt even worse?

Well, that's pretty much how I felt on the labor table with our older son. What I wanted to do was to get down on a clean floor there in the hospital (on a large, thick blanket because of the germs), and writhe around in my agony without hospital people asking me anything or even being in the same room. I just wanted them to leave me to suffer in privacy.

The problem was, the doctors in that hospital insisted I be up on that stupid table for their convenience, though they are only in the room for the last 5 minutes before the baby is born!! Meanwhile I'm in there suffering for 8 hours on a table approximately the size of a 5 gallon bucket, feeling much like a circus elephant gingerly trying to find a place to put my feet on that tiny little surface so that I could keep my balance without falling off!

As my husband recounted for the entire family later (complete with a re-enactment on the floor), though my pregnant girth was considerable, I changed positions so rapidly and so many times, that it appeared to him that I was breakdancing.

I don't consider myself a feminist, but I'd like to know why male doctors, male specialists and male hospital board members have made these types of executive decisions (like the elevated birthing table created and meant for their convenience) for untold millions of women for decades now, having never personally experienced labor and delivery themselves...and nobody says a thing about it? We just continue to go into hospitals equipped with these hideous devices of torture and endure it!

I'd like to see what these same men would do if they were suddenly informed by a board of women from the plumbers union that for ease of toilet cleaning for women across the land, it had been unanimously decided that men's toilets everywhere would now be mounted midway up the walls in the bathrooms, at an angle so that housewives and custodians would no longer need to crouch down to scrub them, but for the man's convenience, stirrups would be mounted just below the toilet on the wall to hold their feet (while in a position that was not at all conducive to keeping their butts on the toilet) and there would be handholds from the ceiling so they could hang on for dear life in said acrobatic position while doing their business?

For some reason, I don't think such a decision would fly, because men everywhere would revolt in mass numbers. How are they to read, after all, when suspended in such ungainly positions without their hands free?

Grrrr.

3. For some unknown reason, that hospital didn't "do" epidurals. Which should have been my first warning sign, but being that I had naively gone into that first birthing situation thinking that I would not be taking any drugs of any kind, I didn't pay much attention to that unit in my (required by the hospital) pre-birth class, confident that since my mom and both grandmothers hadn't used drugs with any of their babies (17 total between them, and one was 11 lbs 3 oz), then I shouldn't have any problem at all.

Unfortunately, I'd not counted on back labor. Which is typically defined as a baby in utero being in such a position as to have his spine positioned against your own, which makes wiggling down the birth canal nearly impossible, and excruciatingly painful to the mom. So after crying and pleading, they gave me a morphine block (instead of an epidural like all other hospitals in the area did).

Yes, morphine. To have a baby.

Apparently seeing that I didn't already have enough on my plate at the moment, what with trying to balance on the bucket and push the baby they were certain (based on several ultrasounds and a freaked out man-doctor's assumption having heard about my 11 lb 3 oz sister) would be upwards of 11 pounds, out an opening that was far too small for the predicted ginormous baby...they were now going to add narcotics to the mix.

I was pretty much locked in by this time, being a little too late in the game to ask for a second opinion or to transfer to another hospital to give birth.

Worried, I sat on the table, and in between contractions, the anesthesiologist delicately inserted the needle into my spine. Which hurt, but nothing like the back labor.

An amazingly peaceful warmth spread through my entire body...for about 10 seconds. After which I immediately became hyper-ticklish and itchy all at the same time. All over my body. I mean, inside and outside and everywhere in between, including under my toenails and my gums. Did you know it was possible to itch there? I did not know that either, but I was itching there like crazy!

Anytime I scratched anything, however, it tickled, due to morhine-whacked out nerve endings. Being ticklish made me giggle moreso than my usual. As in incessantly. Which probably really freaked out the other birthing women in that hallway, because I sounded a like a cross between a hyena and Flipper the dolphin. These itchy-ticklish-giggles also made it kind of tricky for the nurse and physician's assistant to put the catheter and baby monitor in as the time to deliver drew closer.

The morphine also did strange things to my vision. One minute, I could see just fine, the next it would be double and blurry, and then I'd be so tired I would take a nap, only to be rudely wakened by another contraction a minute later. And between puking and sleeping due to the drugs, this strange cycle was repeated for what felt like hours until my beautiful baby boy was finally born. Well, what I could see of him when my eyes would focus properly, that is. My husband stayed with him as planned, and was there for his first bath, which I have only vague memories of watching from a wheelchair outside the window in double-vision. If only I'd remembered to pack my 3-d glasses in my luggage.

That experience convinced me that drugs and me didn't mix, and that I would make the world's worst drug addict. Not that I ever had any aspirations of going that route or anything, but I would be the one maniac in the squat giggling my fool head off, and even in my normal state of mind that's downright embarrassing!

4. I've never broken a bone.

5.My very first car was a 1975 Buick LeSabre. I got it for high school graduation. It was a big old bomber of a car of a brilliant metallic Teal color. 18 1/2 feet of pure, driving luxury. My first night as the proud new owner, my friends and I christened it by taking our entire youth group from church to go see a movie in it. All 10 of us. Nobody even had to sit on laps, because that car was so wide.

Before me, the only other owner had been an old guy from somewhere else in Washington State who had kept the car in the garage and babied it for years, keeping it nicely waxed, washed, and like new inside. He apparently only took the car out for Sunday drives and a few business trips, because when I became the owner in 1989, it only had 75,000 miles on it, and everything from the wheels up was like new, including the tires. It was a real steal as used cars went. He'd kept meticulous records of every fill-up, oil change and repair ever made on that car (in a special book for such purposes) which was in the glove box.

Not long after graduation, I moved to Minnesota. Somewhere just before my first winter there, I got the brilliant idea to wax my car to 'protect' the paint from the elements, as it was no longer a garaged car. After buying a tub of turtle wax, my dad's preferred brand, I did it all by myself, following the directions I learned in Karate Kid. After a considerable amount of time working at this task, something went terribly wrong, and I saw that the pad was picking up the color of the car, so I gave up. The beautiful shiny turquoise paint was forever dingy from that point on, and had circles all over it if the lighting was just so.

While I managed to keep the interior of that car neat as a pin, I soon fell behind on keeping track of each and every fill-up, oil change and tune-up, and finally gave up and threw the record book out to try not feel as guilty.

A year after moving to Minnesota, I began college, and was too poor to do much of anything except only the very basic, necessary maintenance to keep it running so as to get to and from work.

Needless to say, over the next couple of years, things began to wear out and fall apart. Not just because of my ineptitude with proper maintenance, but because being subjected to the elements year round and being driven in Minnesota winters is very hard on a car. By the time my husband and I got married, the car was beginning to show signs of wear and tear on the outside and under the hood, though the interior still looked like new.

Our first married winter, the heater in the car gave up the ghost. Which made for some defrosting challenges. One person's breath with the heater hadn't been much of a problem, but two people's breath without, while driving in 25-below-zero cold, accumulates quite rapidly on the windows. Being poor newlywed college kids, we couldn't get the heater fixed, and made do without. It was not uncommon for my husband or I to drive while the other of us furiously scraped the ice off the inside of the windshield with a long ice scraper, and then wiped the new steam like mad with an old flannel shirt. We were busier than one-armed paper-hangers in that car and were worn out by the time we ever got to work. And dropping him off for his job early in the morning and going solo to college afterward was what taught me the valuable skill of multi-tasking.

That same winter, my husband had to replace the alternator, in 45 below weather, while lying on a black plastic garbage bag on the snowy pavement underneath the car. He reported to me later that his hands stuck to the cold metal like tongues sometimes do to popsicles (or metal flagpoles).

6.We later sold "old Bessie" to a guy who ran her in a demolition derby. We got $50 for her. Which paid for our second vehicle. A really, really old Toyota pickup truck (the super small trucks you don't see much of anymore) that was so rusted out, the bed had a piece of plywood in it to prevent things from falling out the bottom. Once, on the way home from the grocery store, we lost a couple of cans of food that had fallen through a rotten spot in that plywood, so we eventually put an old laundry basket in the back to hold our groceries. The cab also had holes where the salty-road slush from the front tires hit the underbody of the car. We had to fill these holes with old socks and duct tape them up really good to keep slush off our clothes in the winter, but boy were we thankful for the heater in that little truck cab. Compared to our old method of drive-scrape-wipe all winter long, we were really riding in style! In the summer, it was actually quite nice to unplug those holes, as it added a little extra air conditioning.

7. Sloths are my least favorite animal.

Whew!

Okay, I guess here is where I get to tag 7 others for this game...so I tag
Brooke
Yette
Kellan
Katybug
Shauna
Deb
and Jenster

No rules....just whatever 7 random things you feel compelled to share about yourself. Have fun!