Hey, it’s Friday. And that means today The King is in charge of the post. This week he wasn’t sure what to write about. I hinted that he might have a few bridges to mend after last week’s post. (Especially towards Liberal Banana, who left him a comment totally calling him on his “nap issue”.)
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You can’t really sell AIDS medication in Africa… hello? Just kidding. I’ve done some volunteer work. I worked in the ER at the local children’s hospital. I went there to just be a normal volunteer, working with kids in the hospital, playing around with them if they had to stay overnight alone. You know, run of the mill stuff. You go through some background checks and a little informational meeting, then they put you on a list of volunteers and you wait to see when they have a place for you. They called me and I ended up in the ER.

The first few weeks it was mostly just taking bottles of pee up to the lab, or cleaning up rooms after people left. Once in a while they asked me to take a kid to a room, or the OR, or just hang out with all the pukers in the waiting room, swabbing the books and toys off after they put them down. It was kinda interesting to maintain the schedule board which details who is in what room and what their issue is. There were codes for everything from foreign object in body cavity (at a children’s hospital, this is mostly just curiosity based accidents) to psycho.

Then it kinda amped up some in the summer. Broken arms, gushing head wounds. The job changed from menial tasks to holding a bleeding, screaming kid down while they put 40 stitches into him. It really made me stretch on occasion. I don’t really like needles or blood or even hospitals to be honest with you. I always cringed when they announced that the chopper or the ambulance was bringing in a child. Mostly it was just parents bringing in their kid. But when they came in with lights and sirens, most of the time they didn’t make it. I’m not fond of seeing dead people either, especially not little kids.

One night I took a little Hispanic kid to the big CAT scan room. (I’m sure it has a technical name, but we’re not all doctors and nurses here, so I’ll try to keep it simple… plus, I don’t know it.) His folks didn’t know what was wrong with him, and he wouldn’t quit crying. They taped him to the table, and I watched in the other room as the tech brought up his scan. Half of his head cavity was a tumor, causing extreme pressure on his brain. The family waited as the hospital struggled to find someone that could speak Spanish and explain that their boy was in dire need of emergency care.

I think that was my last night. I’m not sure why I didn’t go back. It was rewarding and I really felt good about what I was doing. I guess I had Levi’s to sell.

Today is my older brother’s birthday. I can’t remember how old he is. This is horrible. Even more horrible because he’s the same age as The King. Crap. I don’t remember how old my own husband is.

That being said, please revisit this post that has all sorts of fabulous pictures of my brother (and some of me). Aw, childhood. Good times.

Today I ordered my groceries online for the first time. It only took me 1.5 hours to figure out. I feel so urban.

The groceries should arrive sometime between rightthissecond and 3pm on Saturday.

Shipping only cost me $10.00, which I think is a lot. Especially since the grocery store is less than a mile from my apartment. But when am I going to find the time to go to the grocery store? A time when The King doesn’t have our one car over at the new house?

I wasn’t able to use my almost expired coupons for baby formula and baby food? I can’t use coupons for online orders? And I can’t buy the deli meat in quantities less than a pound? But I don’t need an entire pound of Black Forest Ham.

Looks like we’ll be inviting friends over for ham sandwiches this weekend. Just so we can use up the meat before it goes bad. I wish I wouldn’t have forgotten to buy soda. I guess we’ll serve the sandwiches with water. Or milk. Um, I hope I remembered to buy milk.

I also forgot to buy honey. I bought the bagels, which I love to eat with honey. I think I pass a bakery on the way home from work that has handy little honey packets. Maybe they won’t notice when I start to shovel the honey packs into my backpack. If I get busted, I can always offer a trade for deli meat.

I am such a bad grocery shopper. I always forget something very important (like the honey, duh!), or I buy a fresh can of broth when I have 8 at home. Or I buy more canned beans but no toilet paper.

I’m so terrible at grocery shopping that I’ve looked into taking a college class on it. They have one, they really do. I think it’s called it really is embarrassing that you don’t know how to do this one simple task. Or maybe it’s called you should just put yourself out of your misery. I can’t remember what it’s called, but I need to just pay my $80 and sign up for it. $80 is a small price to pay for never having to wonder the grocery store looking for the damn razors and batteries again, while missing the dairy department all together.

I’m not sure where I get lost. Is it the list writing that gets me, or the preparing a menu for the week part? Is it the fact that I can’t seem to maneuver the shopping cart or could it be the fact that I get all confused once I’m inside the grocery store?

I think it’s that I always seem to get stuck in the bakery department. They make the best M&M cookies in the world. So good that I forget all about the flour and yeast I need to make calzones for dinner.

Please tell me I’m not the only one that is grocery shopping challenged.

Please.

I didn’t post yesterday. It wasn’t because Durga killed me. Or tried to run away with Babboo.

Phew.

Durga and her lovely husband Michael were in town from Australia on Monday. And we got to meet. In real life. (Did I mention that they are from Australia? And that we got to meet them?)

I admit to being very nervous about meeting a fellow blogger in real life. Very nervous. I was shaking the entire walk from my work to our meeting point on Monday. Once I saw them waiting on the bench, I got excited. We hugged. I instantly felt all warm and fuzzy inside.

We only were able to spend the evening together before they had to fly out again. It went by fast, but it was still nice. I was excited to hear all about their time in Sri Lanka helping with the tsunami relief efforts. Of course still like that just reminds me how I need to give more.

We even felt safe enough to take them back to our apartment so we could pose for pictures in front of our lamp. (Doh!) Mostly it was because I was bigger than Durga and knew I could take her. Babboo was in love with Durga from the second he heard her enchanting accent and he couldn’t take his eyes off of her perfect skin.

Seriously, the woman is gorgeous.

At the end of the evening Durga told me (and I quote), “you are much livelier in person than on your blog!” I took that as a compliment. Maybe I not as big of a nerd as I think.

In other, very exciting new, I was out of the office yesterday doing inspections at different facilities. Facilities with security measures and inspection escorts. Thus taking “pumping on job” to a whole other level. Gone was my (semi) private closet to pump at. Nope, I had to pump in the middle of the bathroom at said facility. With my inspection escort waiting outside the door for me to finish up. One woman even walked in and said, “It sounds like its milking time!”

This was a complete stranger saying this to me. While I’m just standing there pumping my breast milk for the world to see.

It was not one of my more shinning moments.

(I’m dying to hear if any of you have met internet friends in real life. And how that went for you.)

Let’s just say that I went out to dinner with two of my girlfriends this weekend. Sans kids. And let’s pretend that one of them, Smelly (not her real name, nor does she smell) met me at the door to the restaurant with a very large and very pink photo album of her latest trip back east to visit family.

And then let’s pretend Smelly made us look at all of the pictures of her 2 year old and her sister’s 2 year old on said trip. For instance, pictures of them at the beach. And pictures of them at the petting zoo. And pictures of them on the carousel at the petting zoo prior to going to the beach.

It sounds exciting right? I mean, if this really happened.

Who am I fooling, of course this happened. And it was fine until I got to the pictures of them in New York and Smelly proceeded to tell me how cool they were and how much fun they had in New York, blah, blah, blah.

I saw a picture of them in Times Square and I told Smelly about when we were in Times Square last summer and how cool we thought it was to just be there.

And then it hit me; Smelly doesn’t even realize that we were in NYC last summer. Or Mexico for that matter. Or Europe. And it wasn’t because I hadn’t told her. She knew we went. She just didn’t know we went. (Does that make any sense at all?)

I know I’ve talked about this before, but it’s just was so bothersome to me that here I was looking through her million of pictures and she has never once asked me about any of my trips. I even mentioned how we had just been in LA a few weeks ago and she didn’t say anything about it. Not a simple, “how was the weather?” or “how did Babboo like the beach?” NOTHING. But here I was saying things like, “you guys look like you had fun at the petting zoo.”

Kill me now.

I hate to even bring this up here. It makes me look like such a shallow person. But I’m not. I promise. I’m just hurt that Smelly really doesn’t want to be a part of my life. And that to her, everything is a competition.

A competition that I am (clearly) not winning.

Welcome to the second week of posts by my husband, The King. If you missed last week’s installment, I suggest you read it first.

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Okay, first of all, I should clear a few things up.

1) I’m not a model. I worked in a photo studio for a while where we shot Home Depot products for their advertising. I stood in on many occasions for shots that required a strapping, handsome, handy-man type, when no strapping, handsome handy-man could be found.

2) Jennifer, a power paint roller is not worth buying. Unless you are disabled, or have limited motor skills, you can just as easily use a regular paint roller, with no power assist. The power models are a pain in the ass to clean up, and besides, hard work is sexy. Don’t be afraid to get some paint on your hands.

3) The 2004 VW Jetty Wagon came equipped with a standard tape deck and CD player. It even has a Dolby button to reduce that nasty hiss that the tape makes when you turn it up really loud.

There are a few things that The King believes very firmly. In an effort to help you understand what Isabel puts up with, you should know a little more about what The King is all about.

First, time is the most valuable thing we have in life. It’s the only thing that no matter how much money or power you have, you can never get more. I absolutely hate waste, and wasting time is just horrible. I once saw Dana Carve do his stand up act with my friend Sam. The only thing I remember him saying (besides The Church Lady bit) was, “you only live once. Twice max.” Get out there and live a little. Enjoy it while you can. Which brings us to #2.

Naps. Okay, if you are in infant, or confined to a bed due to some illness, I feel for you and you probably need a good nap. If you’ve worked 6, 12+ hour days, and you’re bored on a Sunday afternoon, it’s probably okay for you to take a nap too. All other naps basically fall under the time wasting category. Snap out of it you wuss. Listen to a couple of tracks from Ride the Lightning, run around the block, have a cold shower… and get back to productivity. (You can probably see at this point why I don’t have a career in management.)

And lastly, you are only as good as your stories. Life is about the stuff you’ve done, not the stuff you have. I’d much rather compare notes on near successful attempts on our lives, or tell you about the first time I got naked in public, than watch your fancy TV, or look at your expensive car. While you were napping, I was selling Levi’s in Europe. What’s more interesting?

So if you can deal with what I’ve said so far, then tune in next week and we’ll tone it down a bit and tell some stories. Where would you like to start?

What in the poop was up with no new Project Runway last night? I feel cheated. Lied to. I feel like I was let down.

But I’m sort of over it since they played most of season II yesterday. I had only seen a few of season II, so it was so awesome to be able to watch them. When The King saw me setting up the TiVo to tape them, he was like “Dude, when will you get time to watch 6 hours of Project Runway?”

I guess he forgets that while he’s over working at the new house every night, I’m stuck in our apartment with Babboo. We have nothing else to do besides watch TV and more TV. Plus, it’s raining outside, so we really aren’t leaving for a walk. So bring it on.

I’m going with some (male) coworkers next week to do some inspections. We’ll be out of the office all day. Cool. Except that I need to pump every 3 hours. I turned bright red yesterday when I told my boss that I’d be happy to go, but that I’d need to “take my breaks” during the day. I hoped he would just know what I was talking about with out me having to mention the words; breast, pump, electric cord, or boobies.

He said that he was fine with it and to not be embarrassed about it.

Easier said then done.

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Can you believe we are down to the final questions? That took almost 2 weeks and has been a ton of fun. It’s forced me to think about things that I wouldn’t normally think about.

SilyHily asked the most personal questions and I love that she did. I was hoping I would get more personal questions. I’m surprised that nobody asked me about my divorce from my first husband or more about my crazy older brother. Or even about my siblings working for that store that rhymes with Tal-Fart.

Maybe I’ll blog about those things later.

Hilary wrote:

Wow, you’ve got some really, really good questions. I’ll let them have the deep ones and I’ll take the “slumber party with margaritas” ones. Feel free to not answer any of these. It won’t hurt my feelings. But if I don’t ask, then I’m not giving you a chance to answer.

We’ll see how much info I give. I’ll try to be as honest as I can.

At what age did you cancel your membership in the “V club?”

“V” club? What in the crap does that even mean? I don’t know. So I can’t answer.

Just kidding.

Let’s remember back years and years ago. I must have been 12 or 13.

Again, just kidding.

Okay-I got married to my first husband back in 1997. I was 22 years old. So, I was 22 when I cancelled my membership to the “V” club.

How many hands and/or feet would you need to count your “number?”

One hand. Two fingers to be more specific.

Tell us about your first kiss.

This is such a sad story. I wish it would have been so lovely and exciting. Instead it was a complete let down.

It was with a boy from Church. He had bright red hair and was not cute. Or cool. Or nice. But he seemed to like me, and that is what important to a 16 year old girl.

His name was LD and he invited me on a date to the Chicago concert. I have never been a fan of Chicago, but I wanted to go on date. I laughed about Chicago behind LD’s back to my girl friends. But I still was excited to go.

We went with another couple from school. I didn’t know them very well. They had been dating for years and were really into each other. Meaning he was feeling her up during the car ride to the show. I was uncomfortable, and it only got worse.

After the concert (which sucked, sorry) we got stuck in the traffic trying to get out of the parking lot. LD and I ended up going to the back of his station wagon to pass the time until we could get on the road. (Typing this out now makes me feel so silly for getting in the back of his station wagon, but at the time I was too naive to know what was up.) LD leaned into me and kissed me on the lips. Just a kiss. No tongue. And I know I pulled away as soon as I could. I didn’t like it. I wasn’t into him. I didn’t want to kiss him again. And I was immediately nervous that he would want to kiss me again.

We finally got on the road and headed home. Once we got to my house, LD walked me to the door and I knew that I was going to have to kiss him again. Sure enough, he kissed me. I think he used tongue this time. It was even worse. I got out of there as fast as I could.

I went inside and called my friend Jamie. I said “this is what I’ve waiting 16 years for?” She just laughed at me and assured me it would get better.

But I wasn’t willing to give it time to get better. I spent the next few weeks doing everything I could to not be left alone with LD again. I didn’t want to have to deal with telling him that I didn’t want to kiss him. Gag.

I don’t think I ever kissed LD again. And Jamie was right, it did get better. Much better. (Good thing Hilary didn’t ask how many people I’ve kissed. That number is much higher. Remember, I was trying to kiss a boy with a name with every letter in the alphabet.)

Do you remember when you got your period for the first time? Or do you have any horrible period stories? (We all do.)

I was 12. Which is pretty early, right? I was way too young to deal with this.

My Mom was out of town when I got my first period. I would have died before talking to my Dad about it, so I just got one of my Mom’s pads from under the bathroom sink. I was so upset when the pad didn’t work. Yeah, it was a panty liner and not a regular pad. Duh. Fortunately my Mom came home soon and showed me what pad I should be using. Actually, she told me to not waste my time with pads and gave me a box of tampons. Praise my Mom.

I had a very weird relationship with my period. I was never comfortable talking about it. Heck, I would hide my tampon wrappers in the garbage so my Dad and brothers wouldn’t know about it. I swore my Mom to secrecy.

It wasn’t until I was in my 20’s that I just accepted my period and the fact that every women goes through the same thing. Duh.

Since I was pregnant for like 2 years and am now breastfeeding, I can’t even remember the last time I had my period. And I love it. LOVE IT.

How do you feel about your body now that it has been through a pregnancy and delivery?

I received an e-mail today from my pregnant friend Aly. She is in her second trimester and said that she’s so amazed at her body and that is just knows how to be pregnant.

I know exactly what she talking about. The human body is amazing. I love that it made a baby, carried a baby and is now taking care of a baby. There is no denying that it’s amazing.

But how do I feel about my body? I appreciate it. It’s been through a lot, and it keeps on keepin’ on.

Have you lost all your pregnancy weight? If so, how? If not, how much more do you have to go?

I had a doctor’s appointment a few weeks ago. They weighed me, and since I don’t own a scale of my own, I wasn’t sure what it was going to say.

I’ve lost it. It’s gone. Bye, bye.

Well, I guess not all of it is gone. I think there was still something like 3 pounds left. But what’s 3 pounds, right? It’s gone.

How did I do it? I hate to say it, but I didn’t do anything. I didn’t watch what I ate, I didn’t work out. I just lived my life.

I walk to work. I walk to and from Babboo’s school. I eat Lean Pockets for lunch every day. I like treats, but I tend to like treats that are super fattening. This is just luck. My body has pretty much gone back to normal. I know I’m lucky and I apprecaite it.

I’m totally afraid what will happen to me if I happen to have another baby. I can’t imagine being this lucky again.

How long do you plan to breastfeed Babboo?

Since I hadn’t really planned on breastfeeding him, I don’t really know when I’ll stop. I don’t even know how to stop.

I can’t imagine that I can do this much longer though. Pumping at work sucks. So maybe just a few more months.

Della asked the all important question of all time:

Toilet paper off the front of the roll or off the back of the roll where it can touch the wall? ….ewwwww. You know which way mine rolls!!!

I had to look in my bathroom to see which way it goes. Sorry Della, but I do prefer it with the front to the wall. But don’t worry, it doesn’t touch the wall. I promise, I just checked it out. (And I washed my hands when I was done in the bathroom. Don’t worry.)

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That’s all of the questions. We’re done. Finished. No more.

Tomorrow The King will be posting again. Make sure to come back to hear what he has to say this week.

(He told me he e-mailed me the post yesterday. I didn’t get it. Crap. I hope it’s not lost.)