Today I brought home one of these.  Button’s a little young, but she’s been announcing recently when she has to poo, so I thought maybe we’d give the whole potty training thing a try just for the heck of it.

The first two times I had her sit on the potty were entertaining, but less than productive.  Not that I was really expecting anything.  My goal today was really just to get her to SIT on it.

After the third attempt, I left her sitting on the potty and told her to stay there while I grabbed a fresh diaper.  When I returned, she was standing next to the potty, peering into the bowl with utmost curiosity at a small yellow puddle in the basin.

That’s my girl

I didn’t do a Mothers Day post (though I will say that my day was very pleasant) so I’m going to be lame and post an email forward because I think it’s cute and, surprisingly, it’s a forward I’ve never gotten before.

Position Title
Mom, Mama, Mommy, Mother, Ma, Mum

Description
Long term, team players needed, for challenging permanent work in an often chaotic environment. Candidates must possess excellent communication and organizational skills and be willing to work variable hours, which will include evenings and weekends and frequent 24 hour shifts on call. Some overnight travel required, including trips to primitive camping sites on rainy weekends and endless sports tournaments in far away cities. Travel expenses not reimbursed. Extensive courier duties also required.

Responsibilities
The rest of your life. Must be willing to be hated, at least temporarily, until someone needs $5. Must be willing to bite tongue repeatedly. Also, must possess the physical stamina of a pack mule and be able to go from zero to 60 mph in three seconds flat in case, this time, the screams from the backyard are not someone just crying wolf. Must be willing to face stimulating technical challenges, such as small gadget repair, mysteriously sluggish toilets and stuck zippers. Must screen phone calls, maintain calendars and coordinate production of multiple homework projects . Must have ability to plan and organize social gatherings for clients of all ages and mental outlooks. Must be willing to be indispensable one minute, and embarrassed the next. Must handle assembly and product safety testing of a half million cheap, plastic toys, and battery operated devices. Must always hope for the best but be prepared for the worst. Must assume final, complete accountability for the quality of the end product. Responsibilities also include floor maintenance and janitorial work throughout the facility.

Possibilities for Advancement and Promotion
Virtually none. Your job is to remain in the same position for years, without complaining, constantly retraining and updating your skills, so that those in your charge can ultimately surpass you. There is usually one promotion…….. to Grandmother!

Previous Experience
None required unfortunately. On-the-job training offered on a continually exhausting basis.

Wages and Compensation
Get this! You pay them! Offering frequent raises and bonuses. A balloon payment is due when they turn 18 because of the assumption that college will help them become financially independent. When you die, you give them whatever is left. The oddest thing about this reverse-salary scheme is that you actually enjoy it and wish you could only do more.

Benefits
While no health or dental insurance, no pension, no tuition reimbursement, no paid holidays and no stock options are offered; this job supplies limitless opportunities for personal growth and free hugs for life if you play your cards right.

Friday night we had another softball game, in which I became painfully aware that my legs needed another week to heal. Evidently being able to jog is NOT the same as being able to sprint to first base.

I ended up getting that extra week to heal though, on account of the game being called because one of my teammates broke her leg while sliding into third. Oddly enough, the leg that broke was NOT the leg she slid into the base with.

She was in an excruciating amount of pain until the ambulance showed up and started giving her morphine. Then she was concerned about her socks. She didn’t want the paramedics to cut off her socks because they were new. It’s funny what morphine can do to your state of mind.

She spent the night in the hospital and had surgery early the next morning. As it turns out, she broke the lower leg in several places, so they had to go in and put a plate around the bone, screwing it in to all the pieces to hold them together. She can’t put any weight on it for 6 weeks.

Did I mention she has a 3-year-old? The day before his 3rd birthday, and two days before Mothers Day, she’s laid up in the hospital. It’s very fortunate that her husband’s parents are living with them right now, because I don’t know how one would keep up with a 3-year-old in that state.

The worst part is that they don’t have insurance. I don’t know how much ambulances and surgery and hospital stays are without insurance, but I do know that the prescription blood thinner shots she’ll have to take are $700 by themselves. J and I are trying to help them out, but our contributions seem so meager in the grand scheme of the bills they will have to pay.

Oh, and (as a result of all the hospital tests) they also just found out that they are 6 weeks pregnant.

Again, no insurance.

I’m so totally NEVER sliding into a base. And I’m also rethinking our decision to go without insurance.

I’m mostly of the opinion that “if you don’t have anything to say, don’t say anything.”  So my blog gets a bit scarce when things aren’t particularly blog-worthy around here.

The past week has been uneventful except for a freak softball accident on Friday.  I had stretched but not warmed up, as softball isn’t usually a particularly exerting sport.  I was the second batter and when I hit the ball and took off for first base, both my quads immediately and simultaneously wigged out.

Not “wigged out” as in sore from being pulled.  “Wigged out” as in large steak knives stabbing me repeatedly from my hip to my knee every time I took a step.

I ended up hobbling to first base with everybody on the team going “RUN!!! (what is she doing???) RUUUUN!!!”

Evidently the other team wasn’t paying attention to me, as I made it safely.

I didn’t realize I was as injured as badly as I was, and for some reason it didn’t occur to me to get a replacement runner.  So when the next guy made a really solid hit, I took off for second.  About 10 feet into the journey, I realized that was BAD.

Very. Very. BAD.

But I’m stupid so I kept running for fear of interrupting the game.

Ok, running is an overstatement.  A paraplegic without a wheelchair could have made it around the bases faster than I was “running.”

When I made it to second, the ball was still somewhere way out in the field.  So I kept going to third - cursing from the pain, and immediately hoping nobody had heard that.  It was church softball, after all.

Somehow, in an event that defies the laws of physics…or at least softball, I made it all the way to third base without getting out.  J says it’s because the other team’s vision was based on movement, and I wasn’t moving fast enough for them to see me.

At third base I stopped and told the coach I needed a pinch runner because I just couldn’t do it anymore.  He gave me this look that said, “Ya think?”

At that point, the pain was so bad that my vision started going wonky, my hands were shaking, and I was getting that pre-blackout feeling, where the darkness starts coming in from the sides of your eyes.  I sat down in the other team’s dugout for a while before making it to the bleachers, where I sat and drank water until my head wasn’t spinning anymore.

Then I spent the rest of the game cheering our team from the dugout, and trying not to move.

But even without me, our team still won by a landslide (yay!).

Which tells you that I’m probably not contributing all that much to our success.  Which is ok, because I would have felt really bad if they had lost because of me.

LB, after nearly losing her balance in the bathtub:

“Whoa, Dude.  WHOA.”