Gynecological Disaster!!!

Since I have a lot, and I mean A LOT, of experience at the gynecologists office, you can imagine that I may have a story or two about being there.

There are two types of visits, first, the classic check up visits to the gynecologist, and then the second,  the ever lasting pregnancy visits.  Most of you know that when you go in the office their first request is for a urine sample, then of course "undress from the waist down" so that they can measure and listen to the heartbeat and sometimes maybe an exam is in the works.

So this particular time I was there for an exam and a typical pregnancy checkup!....I needed to offer up my urine....and the ever popular waste down disrobing was in order.  In this office each exam room was equipped with a toilet behind a drape, so that you could easily do your duty before the exam, I was never very comfortable with this set up, but so be it, that's how they worked and I had to accept their idea of comfort.  So as I was doing the sacrificial urine sample, I decided to do the disrobing too, BEFORE I flushed the toilet!  What a big giant mistake!  I took off my maternity pants and hung them on the hook behind the toilet grabbed the sheet that was on the ledge beside the toilet and proceeded to flush.  OMG!!!  to my great surprise instead of "going down" the water began to rise, and not only rise, but rise at GREAT speed!  More like  a water spout than a typical toilet overflow!  I stood there in amazement!  And of course, the thoughts of "WHY ME?"  and  "WHY NOW?".....then I realized "WHY NOT ME? AND WHY NOT NOW?"

So I ran and jumped onto the exam table, so as not to get toilet water all over me, and thought "OK how am I going to get out of this one?"  In the meantime, I saved the pee sample!

I leaned over, because thankfully the door was very close to the exam table, and began beating on the closed door.  All of this time, I am laughing my naked ass off!  I heard someone say, "have patience, the doctor will be in in a minute!"  GREAT!!!  That's not what I want!!!  So I yelled, "please come in here NOW!, your toilet hath runneth over!"  The nurse yells back "WHAT?"......geesh, I can't believe it at this point!  yelling back and forth from a room with an attack toilet, to a nurse that just thinks I'm being "one of those impatient pregnant women"....so again, I yelled, "PLEASE come in here, your toilet is overflowing!"  So finally she walks through the door and to my great surprise SCREAMS!.......REALLY???....a screaming nurse!  I just sat there half robed, laughing, and since I was enormously pregnant, had to pee again!

I looked at her and asked her to please help to "GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE!"  So she started to throw any spare towels and paper towels on the floor to create some sort of bridge for me to walk on to get out of that room and into another!  Surprise, surprise!  All of the rooms were taken at this point and I was still half robed with a plastic bottle of PEE in my hand!

She asked if it would be a bother to wait in the bathroom until she could wade through the toilet water and get my clothes.....UM???  not a bother at all,  standing in the middle of the hallway half naked with pee in my hand was sort of a bother!  So there I stood in the bathroom waiting for my clothes so that I could head to another room to do the same damn thing all over again.  Hopefully this time without an attack toilet!

I know it seems unbelievable that this sort of thing could happen to little old me, but it did, and yes if nothing else the moral of this story is, NEVER TAKE YOUR CLOTHES OFF BEFORE YOU FLUSH THE TOILET!!!!

Ultimate Story of Survival.......

Since I've graced you with a Katrina Poop story, I figured you should know how we got there!

So here's the ultimate story of survival:

On August 29th, 2005 we woke up to a storm of enormous proportions. We were awakened by a phone call at 4:30am by my cousin, our original intentions were to just board up the house and wait it out, we had plenty food, water and a generator so we were ready. But our plans were altered but the shear size of the storm. This was the "big one" , the mother of all storms, our worst fear living on the Gulf Coast. And it proved to be just that.

We packed up 7 kids, 2 dogs, 1 ferret, 1 cat and 3 adults and we were ready to go. We had been given reservations at a hotel in Houston that took animals, so that's where we were headed for the classic three day storm vacation. Once on the road, but not very far out we decided to take the cat and the ferret back to the house and put them upstairs, they would have plenty of water and food and of course the company of each other. They weren't the best of friends, but they weren't the worst either. So off we went, 3 cars and everything else we could possibly fit, bye, bye New Orleans.

Once on the road, we realized that this was going to be the longest trip of our lives. We stopped as little as possible, sang, laughed, listened to the radio as much as possible and laughed at the radio announcers as they chronicled each and every minute as the storm started to bear down on New Orleans. The analogies they used were getting to be a form of entertainment for us. "Storm of biblical proportions", "on the razors edge", "catastrophic event" and the list goes on and on. I know that doesn't seem funny right now, but while driving with 7 kids, 2 dogs, 3 adults, and 3 cars for 18 hours it was hilarious. We laughed so hard at times we could hardly breathe. But on we went, for miles and miles and miles at the break neck speed of 15 mph on the highway. At one point I had to go to the bathroom, so I told my cousin to drive and I jumped out of the car, ran to the mini-mart alongside the road, went to the bathroom and ran back to the car, they had only passed up the store by about 20 or 30 feet. Since that seemed to work, that was how we all went to the bathroom, because we didn't want to loose our place in the car line.

We finally arrived in Houston at 5 am on the morning of the 30th, checked into our rooms and immediately started to watch the television to see what was happening to our city. Wow it was beyond imagination, the wind and rain were terrible, but most of all the people that had stayed were in great danger. We felt very blessed at that moment to have had the greater sense to leave.

We tried to make this a vacation for our kids and not let them know how very worried we were, so we started to look around to see what there was to do, and we found tons of stuff.

But in the meantime, we figured out our sleeping arrangements. Since there were so many of us they put us in 2 separate rooms, but also on 2 separate floors! John and I and some of the younger kids were on the 3rd floor and the older boys were on the 2nd floor. Ouch, I knew this was going to be trouble. On the first night I got a phone call at around 2am from my oldest son, one of his brothers threw up on him, I ran down the stairs, the dog following, and tried to clean up the mess. I called down to room service, and they pretty much laughed at me, extra sheets? clean up? What? There were so many people in the hotel there were no extra sheets, so being a mom of 7 at the time, that was no problem, we made a new bed out of the bedspreads. This is an easy task for a busy mom, I have to do this all of the time at home, sheets are not washed and an accident occurs, mom has to get creative and make a new bed. So that's just what we did, made a new bed. After the major clean up, I had to take the dog downstairs to the bathroom, why not right? We finished the dog potty time and went back up the stairs to the third floor and tried to go back to sleep. TV on all of the time, trying to figure out what was going on.

As I laid in bed and started to drift back off to sleep, another dreaded phone call, another throw up!!! ARGH! So I went prepared, I took our bedspreads, and anything else I could find to make yet another bed. Ran down the stairs again, dog followed again, cleaned up the mess, made a new bed, the hallway looked like a dump in the inner city, but I just could not run around the hotel with the dog and sheets full of vomit. So I left them in the hall for the cleaning service, why should I have all the fun! This I believe was the last throw up session, but the dog had to go out again, so down we ran, made doggy poop, ran back up the stairs and this time got to sleep, for about 2 hours before it was time to get up and try to eat some breakfast.

This is how we got started on our very long journey home post-Katrina.

A Katrina Poop!

I was reliving a Katrina moment just the other day, and one of our most memorable instances came to mind, so I, of course, have to place it here in my memory bank I.E. "my blog"!

We left our home on August 28th, 2005 with Katrina right behind us...there were 10 of us, and 3 dogs.  We left our cat behind with tons of water, and equal tons of food thinking we would be home in three days (as usual).  If any of you have ever evacuated for a hurricane, three days is the norm.  We also left a ferret in the house to keep the cat company!

Well, without going into too much detail, since most of America knows what happened in the Katrina aftermath, we did manage to get our cat from the house 11 days later!  All I could do what thank our Good Lord that he was alive, not very well, but alive!  I brought him to the nearest Veterinarians office in New Iberia close to where we were staying.  They cleaned him up, and put him on an IV to rehydrate him and get him back to his good old self.  He was a bit weak, but made a fantastic recovery.

We continued to live in New Iberia for a time, and Coco became more and more like himself, grouchy, fat, and making sure we still knew that HE owned US!

But as time went on with the cat I came to realize that as I was cleaning out his litter each and every day there was NO poo in there, the vet did tell me that it might take a while before his body went back to normal, since he had been without food and water for such a very long time.  Not a problem!  I was willing to do what I needed to get him back on his 4 little feet.

After a couple of more weeks in New Iberia, we had to move on to yet another location....our time on the road consisted of 9 moves with 7 kids, a cat, a dog, and a ferret that we rescued along with the cat.  Most of this I did by myself, since my hubby was back in New Orleans already working on Katrina damage.  So I loaded the car, with kids, our "stuff" and a litter pan for the cat, just in case, and got ready to leave to head to the Northshore (Lacombe, Louisiana) to live in a convent!  Yep you read that right, A CONVENT!, with nuns, with 7 kids, a cat, a dog, and a ferret!

As we drove out of the driveway to head to the "convent" my kids asked if we could stop to pick up some drinks and snacks to make the drive, so of course, I told them yes!  We made the stop at a local drug store, I left the kids and the animals in the car and ran inside to get some incidentals for the trip.  When I walked out of the store, I noticed all of the kids had jumped out of the van and were screaming and dancing around holding their noses....YOU GUESSED IT!....Coco had decided at that point it was time to get rid of 3 weeks of food, and water stored in his little body....the stench was overwhelming!  So there I was in the parking lot of the drug store with a bag and a pooper scooper, scooping out the first of many more poops to come!  I drew quite a crowd!  People asking if they could help!  I just thanked them, scooped out the poop, jumped in the smelly van and we drove for miles with the windows down just so that we could breathe!...It was not one of our better trips, but we did manage to make it to the convent and unload before the cat unloaded again!!!!

I Still Buy Hello Kitty Band Aids!

Most women my age are winding down with their "children" lives...maybe still working, maybe able to go to the gym, maybe even able to get their nails done on occasion.  And then there are women like me!  Still running toward projectile vomit, still smelling underwear, because you would rather smell them and take your chances than wash them AGAIN, still trying to get knots out of hair, still explaining why you need to eat your spinach...trying the very old explanation of "How do you think Popeye got strong?"  and they look at me like "who the heck is Popeye?"

Then there is the fact that owning a business that deals with kids is yet another notch in my belt of why I am still such a child myself!  I can't stop buying Hello Kitty Band Aids, or ones with Superhero's for the guys....I still wear Spongebob, Hello Kitty, and Disney Princess Band Aids, even to formal functions if I have a boo-boo!  Oh well!  I would rather a character Band Aid than one of those stuffy flex, flesh colored ones anyway!

So much for the Band Aid stories, just yesterday I was at my Gymnastics business (which is another reason why I still buy character band aids), when my little one ran in to the office to tell me about a verbal argument that was going on in the play room upstairs!  Apparently two children got into an argument over some building blocks, and one hurled a perfectly grand zinger at the other!  He called the other little girl "TOE FUNGUS".  Quite frankly I was impressed!  I mean "toe fungus"  what a great zinger!  I honestly wish I had thought of that one myself!  Just giving someone the "look" and then hurling "you are such TOE FUNGUS!" Humf!  So because I am still considered the adult in this situation, which is why they told me I'm guessing, I had to run upstairs just to make sure that this zinger didn't lead to a wrestling match!  To my great surprise it had not!  Thank the good Lord!  It did end up in a lesson on Toe Fungus though!  I asked, "OK who's hurling insults in here?"  and my little brilliant insulter raised his hand and honestly said, "it was me!  I'm sorry, I was just so angry that she kicked my blocks over!"  I told him thanks for being honest and that it was not nice to call her "toe fungus" and to please tell her that he was sorry!  She looked at me and said, "oh he said he was sorry, everything is OK now!"  I said that that was great and I was happy that they were such big boys and girls to apologize and then continue playing.  Then I got the best answer yet!  The little insultee was actually excited with the outcome of the insult from the insulter.  He had explained to her that "toe fungus" was actually mushrooms growing from her toes!  She took to that very kindly!  She thought that was the funniest thing she had ever heard and then ran out of the room to call everyone in the area "TOE FUNGUS"!  ACK this led to me explaining to all of the sitting parents the entire story which lead to a fungus discussion, which actually lead to someone saying in the end that all of the mushroom talk made her think of a salad that she was now craving.

So the moral of this story is............well I'm not sure if there is a moral, but at least there was a lesson in fungus, and a recipe for a great mushroom salad!!!

Guinea Pigs Galore

Yes I said Guinea Pigs!  Tommy wanted ONE guinea pig, just one little, teeny, tiny, baby guinea pig, just a cute little guinea pig!  So we got him one.....HE was a HE, his name was Kevin, HE was cute and sweet and made cute little guinea pig squeals....he loved carrots, and celery, and his little pellet food!  Then one day it happened....Tommy came running down the stairs after taking a shower yelling, "MOM....MOM....Kevin!  It's Kevin!!!"  I asked him what was wrong with Kevin?  FYI in the past we have had several guinea pigs, some were just great others were so lovable, they were loved to death!  So my first fear was that Kevin was our latest victim.  NO!!  not this time!  Tommy: "MOM!  Kevin just had babies!"  I looked at him like he had just swallowed a bird!  WHAT?  Yes mom, Kevin just had babies!"  So I ran upstairs only to find 2 "big" babies in Kevin's cage.  I asked Tommy how long they had been in there, since there was no way that Kevin could have possibly produced two babies of "that" size.  He told me that he had just gone in to take a shower, and Kevin was jumping all over his cage, and when he got out of the shower there they were, two babies the size of adult hamsters.  So, of course, I ran to the computer to google what baby guinea pigs look like, and sure enough they come out the size of a fat hamster, all haired up, eyes wide open, and to my great surprise, ready to eat.  This is what started a large snowballing effect of guinea pig-mania!

Trying to tell the sex of a guinea pig is more like trying to tell a child why algebra will be important in their life one day.  It's almost IMPOSSIBLE!!!!  The boys and girls each have a small Y "down there" but the boy "Y" has a dot the size of a microscopic amoeba!  And that's the tell tail sign of "yes I'm a boy!"  But the logical way to find out which one is a boy, is to figure out which one never gets pregnant....or at least that was our way to find out!  So 19 baby guinea pigs later.....we singled out the gigolos'!

Many days we would be in the room with the guinea's spreading open their little legs with a magnifying   glass trying to see the "dot".....and many times we thought we saw it and would separate that one out, only to find out 3 weeks later, yes this is yet another lady!  One had 4 babies, one had 3, one had 2 and so on and so forth!  It was like a guinea a day was having babies!  Don't get me wrong, they are adorable and so much fun to play with, and more than that so much fun watching mother nature take it's course....but somewhere out in the wild I would have enjoyed Mother Nature to take this course!  Guinea's can produce up to 5 litters per year and ours seemed to be following that rule well!

We have been able to sell some, adopt some out, and keep some....we are down to 4 ladies and 2 men!  One of my guinea's is a "special needs" piggy!  One day Snowball was standing in the corner of her cage looking out....I thought "oh how cute!" and walked away.  A couple of hours later my daughter came in and said "Mom did you see Snowball standing in the corner of the cage?  Isn't she cute?"  I realized it had been a lot of time since I first saw her there, so I went to her cage only to find out that she was STUCK in the corner, HOOKED to the bar of the cage by her tooth!  Yes, she is a half blind, half deaf, albino, hooked tooth guinea pig!!!!  Only in my family would we be blessed with a Half Blind, Half Deaf, Albino, Special Needs Guinea Pig!  So I unhooked her from the corner of the cage, looked at her tooth and realized that it was almost an inch long and turned up like a fish hook!  So I called the vet, and asked, what I thought was a ridiculous question!  "So does anyone over there take Guinea Pigs on as patients?"  And they said "YES of course we do!"  Sure why not I thought!  So I dragged Snowball over to the vet to see about this tooth!  Apparently this is not an uncommon event with some Guinea's.  Since Snowball is "special" her teeth do not touch so it allows for the top tooth to grow uncontrollably!  And being the mom that I am, I just can't let her go on like this, so we now have a standing appointment to trim down the tooth about once every three months or so!

Yep!!!  This is my life in a "nutt"shell!  I'm a mom of 8, with a St. Bernard, 2 Cats, several fish, turtles, lizards, and more guinea pigs than a normal person would put up with....but who ever said I was normal?  

A Simple Story Remembered!

My Mom was diagnosed with kidney cancer and 4 months later passed away.  She fought a great fight and with a very faithful spirit passed away on January 2, 2000....My Dad was a very stubborn Sicilian Italian, that my Mom took great care of all of the time.

After my Mom passed away, my Dad created a memorial of her with pictures everywhere!  When you walked in the door there she was, she was in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in the bedroom and not just once but several times.  His heart was broken, the love of his life was gone.  They were married for 53 years when my Mom passed.

There were several moments when I realized all that my Mom had done for my Dad....and most of them funny!  He would call to tell me things like he couldn't find the soap!  I would tell him to look in the cabinet in his bathroom and he still couldn't find it, then I realized I had not bought soap lately and I'm sure he hadn't, so of course there was no soap! I'm guessing that he thought there was an endless supply of soap, since my Mom would never let it run out!   I would have to run to the store for him, and believe me I had no problem with this at all, but he would tell me to get 3 pieces of bologna, and I would buy 6 he would ask why and I told him that with 6 kids it was hard to get to the grocery every 2 days like my mom would to get 3 pieces of bologna.  He just didn't get it, I was an only child, so he had no idea of what it took to have 6 kids.

But one day, I got this very very excited phone call from my Dad....he had boiled an egg and completely beside himself!  He just could not believe that he was able to do that.  So I congratulated him, and cheered him on, and told him I was so very proud of him.  About a half hour later he called me back and told me he thought he had done something wrong to the egg.  I asked him what he thought the problem was, he said it was with the yolk!  I again asked him, what was the problem with the yolk?  He said that it was yellow all around!  I said that that was PERFECT!!!  He said no!  That every egg my Mom had ever boiled had green around the yolk, so there was definitely something wrong with his!  I could not stop laughing.....I told him that Mom had ALWAYS over cooked the eggs and that's why the greenish color to the yolk....I told him that what he had done was perfect and I had wished I could cook them that perfect!  His answer was:  "Well, I think I'm going to put this back in the pot and let it cook some more, I certainly don't want to eat an egg different from how your Mom cooked it!!"...... I.....LMBO!!!!

IF YOU DON'T HAVE IT....Improvise!!!

We were all in church on a Sunday a while back, at this particular time in my life I ONLY had 7 kids, but we were sitting right behind a family that also had 7 children.  This mom and I had grown up together and we had mirror image families.   So as most mommies know, you're supposed to go to public places prepared for anything that may happen while traveling with children.  Well, if you are a mom of 7, you can only hope you get all 7 kids out of the house without forgetting a shoe, a sock, a pair of pants, or worst yet, one of them!  So things like tissue, baby diapers, diaper bags, etc, usually don't make it for the ride.  On this Sunday, I did manage to drag a diaper bag with me, but only God knew what was in it....

As Mass went on, I noticed that the mom in front of me was searching around frantically for something/anything because one of her kids had just announced that she may throw up.  Rather than running frantically to the back of Church, because we all know what would happen then, running and vomiting is not very attractive, she was trying to find something for her to throw up in.  She looked at me to see if I, the other mom of 7, may have something to catch the mornings breakfast!  But of course I didn't!  So we were looking around at anyone near us with kids to see if they had something!  One mom looked at me like, "vomit in MY stuff, I don't think so!"  Then another elderly lady handed me a tissue!  I thanked her but thought "yeah right!" All of this frantic searching took less time than the stomach to travel breakfast up the food pipe and reach the mouth!

So in a panic, I dumped out my diaper bag, super balls went flying, old stale cheerios hit the floor, several Tonka Trucks made loud dings as they hit the pew, a pack of "women's paraphernalia" dropped on one of my sons foot,  there was nothing useful in it for a vomit moment other than the bag itself, and gave it to her for the catch!  She didn't even bat an eye, she grabbed the bag, held it in front of her daughter's face, continued to participate in Mass and let her daughter toss her cookies in it!!

After Mass was over, she looked at me and said "Thanks so much!  I hope next time we sit together I have something to help you out with!"   I told her "No problem".....Then we both laughed our butts off, because before we walked out of Church she asked if I wanted the bag back!?!  "Nah!!!  You can keep it!"