A question for someone who plumbs....

Any other manly types out there, you can feel free to chime in too.... here are my toilet issues:

1. Toilet in downstairs hallway. First, it clogs very easily - this has been a long standing problem that gotten worse over time. Second, starting a few weeks ago, when you flush it, the handle stays in the flush and swirl mode, forcing me to push the handle back so that it doesn't constantly flush and swirl.
2. Toilet in master bedroom. It is leaking. It fills up constantly (and I mean constantly). A few weeks ago, I shut off the water to it because our water bill spiked up by about 25%!! A flapper valve has been suggested as the problem but my dad replaced it awhile back and it actually got worse. Then again, my dad is a really, really crappy plumber.
3. Toilet in Offspring's room. Low suction, you have to hold the handle down for a good 3 seconds (which is a long time if you count it out, try it) to get it to flush. And of course, Offspring never remembers to hold the handle down which means when I go up there, I usually get a big whiff of old rotten disgusting pee. YUCK.
4. Toilet in guest room. It doesn't flush. It won't flush no matter what. We - meaning, I - have toilet snaked and plunged the shit out of it (literally and metaphorically), chemical bombed it, and it will flush after that, if you are lucky, one time and then it craps out (metaphorically) and won't flush anything. Even if you just pee and throw the paper away, it won't even flush down liquid. It has never flushed right, not since the day we bought this place 3 years ago. Of course, it flushed once ... to pass inspection.  
5. Toilet in other guest room: same issue as Offspring's toilet.

So, who do I call (besides Ghost Busters)? They each seem to have slightly different problems so I don't want to waste money calling a plumber to look at all of them if a plumber only fixes problems of a subset of our toilets. Ditto Roto Rooter. Or should I call one or the other first, see what they can do and then call the other for anything that doesn't get fixed? Or is there some other type of handyman I should call?

Thank you in advance to all of you plumbing types for your consideration of my request for information so as to preserve my friggin' SANITY!

Garfield made me do it

Yesterday I asked Offspring to help me clean up. The house was a disaster to say the least and I needed all hands on deck. He groused about for a few minutes, 10%-heartedly picking things up then standing around looking glum. He brightened up though as he came over and told me

I think that whoever makes the mess should have to clean it up

Ohhhh, you do? Well then, I think whoever lives here should have to pay the mortgage. And whoever lives here has to pay for food. And the gas bill. And the electric bill. And the cable bill. And the ....

As I went on and on, he got madder and madder. Then, in a Christmas Story style fudge word sort of way said ....

You shut your big fat mouth lady!

Silence. 

More silence.

At this point, he is lucky to be alive.

Then I sent him to the corner and berated him for a good 5 minutes about how massively unacceptable it was for him to say that to me. While he was there I also decided that he could not have a sleepover with his best buddy that night - something he'd been looking forward to all weekend. I told him that when he got out of the corner and he went ballistic with tears and dramatic moaning about how much he hates the world and hates me, hates me, hates me. 

No matter what mom, from this day forward, I am going to always like you just a little bit less than I did before now. Hrumph! 

With that he turned on his heel and went upstairs. Score one for Offspring cause ok, that one dug in a bit. Sniffle.

Then I sent him upstairs to chill out (and partially so that he would remain alive). He came back down the stairs a few minutes later looking like he had something to say to me. Big round eyes, big pouty lips - he says:

Mom? I think maybe I've been reading a little too much Garfield. 

Huh? 

Well, because that's something that Garfield would say. He's very disrespectful. 

Nice try kid.

Mountain driving

For Thanksgiving this year, we went to the boondocks of Virginia. We had to drive over some small mountains, really just big hills, but for us in flat land, they seemed pretty big. As we approached them, Offspring's eyes got huge and he said 'wowwwww' ... I told him that we were going to drive over them to get to where we were going and he sat in awe for a few minutes. I could see the wheels turning, then he said in a very serious voice "Mom? Do you think we're going to need oxygen masks?"

Incompetent GI guy - para vs quad?!

Offspring got dressed at his dad's this morning. I got dressed here. As it turns out, we are both wearing an orange turtleneck, blue jeans, white socks, tennis shoes. The only difference is that my underwear does not have Spiderman on it. When he came home, we both looked at each other, down at ourselves and burst out laughing.

So yesterday Wheeler had an appointment with a new GI guy, who turned out to be an idiot too. However, after we both hammered away at his history of four perforated ulcers, his near death (not hyperbole) and the similarity of the symptoms then and now ... over and over and OVER again ... and more and less said we wouldn't settle for not having an endoscopy, he then told us straight out that he wasn't familiar with paraplegia and maybe his spinal cord doctor should treat his GI issues. Ummmmm, hello? The last time I checked, the stomach looks the same in a QUADriplegia and an ambulatory person. I cannot believe this dude is a licensed physician - not even knowing para from quad. Good grief.

Anyway, I think he finally realized that if Wheeler walked out of there then perfed last night, I would sue his ass off. After that seemed to dawn on him, and the fact that we were adamant about having an endo, he suddenly "remembered" that one of his colleagues had time on his schedule tomorrow morning (today). He implied that something had fallen through or that his schedule was free, but of course, the other guy had to squeeze him in, and to his credit, he did. So the endoscopy was scheduled for this AM and we had to be there at 6:30 am ..... torture for poor me. Of course, I couldn't get to sleep until about 1 am since since I had to get up at 5 am meant I had sleep-stage fright, and then I woke up about every 30 minutes freaked out that I missed the alarm and we'd missed the appt (that we fought so hard to get!). I set two alarms but I am notoriously alarm clock impaired, so my paranoia was not totally unfounded. I woke up 5 minutes before the alarms though and got up and got us both ready. Wearing the identical outfit as my son.

Although I have just put on my favorite pink cashmere sweater because its cold in here and I'm too cheap to turn up the heat. Trying to heat this house higher than 70 degrees is futile because the windows are so drafty. We need double paned windows, but they would be a significant expense right now that we can't afford at the moment. I am annoyed however to have found my favorite pink cashmere sweater has holes in it, presumably from moths, after being stored in the attic all summer without being inside of a bag of some sort. Drat. Oh well, I'll wear it anyway, I like it and its warm.

Anyway, back to the endoscopy. The doc was great. Not to mention hottttttt. Smokin' hot. However, he was wearing a gaudy thick gold necklace that says "I'm not from around here" despite his discernable absence of a Joysee accent. And guess what, he found not only evidence of ulcers, but other stuff too. He appears to have gastroparesis, abnormally slow stomach emptying. That can cause all of the symptoms he is having, but he also has quite significant irritation all throughout the stomach and esophagus. He biopsied all over, including doing a biopsy for celiac - without prompting, wow! no one ever thinks of celiac - and so we'll know the results of the biopsies in about a week. It may be a yeast infection, it may be bacterial, it may be a number of other things, and they all are bundled up together, so separating cause and effect may be difficult. However, I am sure this guy will figure it out. Thank heavens. We sure drew a crappy hand in the poker game of GI docs. We were dealt a better hand this time. Hmmm, I think that was a crappy analogy (so punny I am), but hey, I am operating on about 3 hours of sleep.

Dog

However it is said....

Offsprint tonight was trying to say synthesizer. And it came out like this "Synthesahmatorsizer". Then he looked puzzled and said "Synthemator". His fact then said, no, no, that's not it. Then he said "I mean synthesizer". It was very funny!

Nothing quite says Christmas quite like....

Too Many Questions

Me at the gas station pump. 

Pay inside or outside?  

Outside.

Cash or credit?  

Credit.

(insert visa card here)

Credit or debit?

Debit.

PIN number?

XXXX

Do want a car wash today?  

Ummmmm, no. My van is 9 feet tall (there wasn't a key for this, so I just hit 'no')

Do you want a receipt?

No.

Do you find your life to be fulfilling? 

Coke or Pepsi? ...

Toilets and he's just so damned agreeable

I am really really REALLY tired of dysfunctional toilets. Any regular reader of my blog, or visitor to our house knows that we have serious toilet issues in this house, to say the least (and at least 4 people who read my blog on a regular basis have experienced this). Currently only two (of 5) toilets actually work. One is in Offspring's room upstairs, but you have to hold the handle down for a long time to get it to flush. The other is in the upstairs apartment area, and the same caveat about holding the handle down applies. Plus is really, really cold up there right now. Poor CountryGrrrrl had to sneak into Offspring's room at night to use the bathroom since the one in the guest room doesn't work and the apartment was too cold to sleep in. The one in our bedroom has a big drip in it such that it runs all the time. So I shut the water off until I can fix it. The one in the guest room has never worked (despite Daniel's best efforts, thank you) so I shut the water off there too. The one in the downstairs hallway regularly overflows. It has overflowed at least 10 times in the last week and its making me crazy. 

You know what makes me crazy about Wheeler? He has a habit of answering questions I don't ask. I like to ask yes/no questions. He likes to answer with anything but a yes or no. 

Are you hungry? 
I could eat. 
Yes, but ARE YOU HUNGRY??

His favorite response is 'that would be fine'. 

Do you want a blanket on you? 
That would be fine. 
But do you WANT a blanket on you? 

Do you want me to shower you now or later? 
That would be fine. 
Uhhhhh, which one, now or later? 

Should I turn on the humidifier? 
That would be fine. 
Yes or no my man, YES or NO!! 

I really should be grateful he is so agreeable, for he is above all else agreeable. But I am well known to be cranky, easily irritated and downright annoying*. So even agreeableness annoys me. I need to work on that. Maybe on a day the friggin' toilet doesn't overflow.

UTIs R Us

Poor Wheeler. If its not one thing, its another. He felt really awful this morning and his urine looked awful, massively cloudy, so gukky that I wasn't sure it was even able to run down the catheter into the bag. Then he got a horrendous pounding headache, which signals autonomic dysreflexia.

AD is a result of the nervous system going berserk because there is some kind of noxious stimuli causing distress in one's body below the level of the injury. So due to paralysis and impaired sensation, the person cannot identify the source of the noxious stimuli. It's sorta like if you or I sat on a tack but couldn't move to get off of it, the pain would increase and increase and put you into quite alot of distress to say the least. But a para or quad can't necessarily tell you what is bothering them, or if they can, often cannot do anything about it for a variety of reasons (such as in Wheeler's case, uhhh, he can't move at all). Common reasons for AD are a too full bladder (kinked catheter if indwelling, not cathed frequently enough if intermittent), full bowel (imagine if you ever really, really had to go but not be near a bathroom (or the woods if you're a bear), that's what its like), a urinary track infection (pain from the UTI alone or the resulting gunk stops up the catheter or slows the drainage, or both), skin pinched (e.g. sheet or pants bungled up underneath one), or, some other injury like breaking a bone in the foot or leg, a burn, etc etc... the list goes on and on. If the cause cannot be identified, a stroke can result, so it is NOT a matter to take lightly. If AD is really bad, the bad boy of fixing AD in a hurry is nitroglycerin. It lowers BP in a hurry, precipitously, but that can give the opposite problem of too low BP, which can cause fainting and other bad stuff. So nitro is a last resort if you cannot get the problem figured out.

Keeping in mind that Wheeler is extremely stoic - he asked me for nitro today. He was having a horrible horrible pounding headache, and I couldn't identify anything obvious that was bothering him other than really awful looking urine. So I gave him the nitro and his BP went down. We were 90% sure it was his bladder giving him problems, so I needed to irrigate him, switch out the SP cath and put on a new bag. The key to all of this is the new bag, its the last step. There's no sense in irrigating if you're going to be an old bag back on, the germs will crawl back up it. If you put in a new cath without a bag, it will run all over the floor, so that's not an option. But of course, I didn't have a new bed bag to put on. ARGH. I knew we were low, in fact, I knew we were on the last one, and I kept meaning to buy more, but I just never got to it. Actually, that's not true. I drove all the way to Raleigh, to the only place that carries them in stock, but they closed at 7 pm and I arrived at 7:20. What drug store closes at 7 pm?? So anyway, we didn't have a new bag.

I waited a bit to make sure he wasn't going to pass out, nor that his BP would pop back up, then I hustled Offspring into the car and off we went to get a bag. Got the bag, came back and irrigated, changed the supra, hooked up a new bag. This is alot more complicated than it sounds. Here it is, in approximate order, although its not completely this process every time.

First, the irrigation tray - container, plunger, must supply distilled water + boil the water to purify it before instilling into bladder. One should not irrigate routinely, but when the urine looks like it did, one should irrigate with sterile, distilled water that you remember to buy at the store and to boil and allow to cool down beforehand.
Insertion kit, including drapes, synringe with sterile water, sterile gloves, surgical jelly, antiseptic swabs. First you have to suck the water out of the balloon with a syringe (that you remembered to save from the last time you did this because the new one in the kit is for inflating the balloon; I can't tell you how many times I got part way through and realized I didn't have a non-sterile syringe to deflate the balloon). Drape the belly, swab to sterilize, put on sterile gloves, put up catheter, coat with jelly. After this point, DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING you don't intend to go directly into his body (e.g. don't scratch your nose, skin has nasty germs on it).


This is the indwelling catheter (same used for foley as suprapubic), it goes into a hole in his belly below the belly button but above the pubic bone. This goes directly into this bladder then you have to inflate that balloon to ensure it doesn't fall back out of the hole. If you don't put the catheter in within 20-30 seconds of taking the old one out, the hole on the outside of the boday closes up for good and you need surgery again to put it in again. Nothing like a little pressure eh? The syringe above is used to inflate the balloon, which is inflated in this picture. It goes in deflated and you push water through the thingy with the white tip.



Connectors between tubing and bags/catheter tip, mostly for leg bags, but sometimes for bed bags if the catheter and bed bag brand don't match.


Insert the catheter tubing into this strap that goes around top of thigh to anchor catheter to body:


This is then bag into which urine drains when in bed:

And just FYI, this is a leg bag, for wearing with clothing in wheelchair:


Extension tubing that goes from catheter to leg bag or catheter to the bed bag if the bed bag doesn't come with tubing (it usually does):

Straps that anchor leg bag to shins (you need two, one by knee, one by ankle):
As I've mentioned here many times: don't break your neck.

Caring for the caregiver

As you may have figured out by now, I am an avid New York Times reader. A number of recent articles piqued my attention because of their particular relevance to our lives.

About caregivers, as the Well Spouse website/foundation says, that when one is sick, two need help. That is astonishingly true but yet it is not recognized. At least never once in my experience. I have to reach out to others in my situation. This is discussed here: Who Cares for Caregivers?.

This article talks about how its really hard in actual life for a caregiver to 'take care of herself' It's Hard to Stop Being a Caregiver

I've been asked so many times why what I do for Wheeler isn't covered by insurance. Because anything deemed 'custodial care' is not reimbursed. From Medicare Doesn't Pay for Jack (ok, that's not really the title), the author writes

"Nothing shocked me more in the early days of caring for my elderly mother than the discovery that Medicare, the U.S.’s universal health coverage for those ages 65 and older, does not pay for so many of the things the frail elderly require. Not home health aides for those who can’t get out of bed, bathe, dress or feed themselves. Not an assisted-living facility, with handicap-accessible apartments, congregate meals and transportation services. Not nursing homes where the most helpless of the elderly live out their days with round-the-clock supervision." 

And private insurance is no better; Wheeler is not on Medicare but insurance companies use Medicare standards typically as the basis for their care guidelines in situations of the elderly and disabled. So I get no help with anything for Wheeler. When we do have a caregiver, we pay an hourly wage out of pocket entirely, so we have to always weigh the benefit versus the substantial hit on our finances.

This next article Don't Call Me Sweetie resonated because I read it while Wheeler was in the hospital, right after he had been dismissively addressed as "sweetie" by the hospitalist and not in a nice way, something I think I mentioned in a previous post. I'd remember, but my mind is addled, and I'm lazy to go look and see if I mentioned it or just wrote it in an email to CherkyB's wife, who is marvelous by the way, she was my link to sanity last week as I furiously texted emails to her as I cleaned up Wheeler over and over again all night long (that two hour time difference was a life saver, lol).

And you'll note that these articles are all geared towards those who care for older people, either spouses or adult children. However, all of these things apply to younger caregivers of those with younger spouses who are disabled. I'd put forth that we younger caregivers face all of the hardships faced by caregivers of the elderly plus more challenges.

Facebook

I just discovered it.

Rut-roh. 

This could be exceptionally bad for my productivity levels. 

Double rut-roh.

Us versus the ballet

Well, that was interesting. 

We went to the ballet yesterday; it started at 2 pm. As always, we were running a bit late. Its a long way to downtown Raleigh, I always misjudge how long it takes to get there and how long it takes to get all of us in the van. I forgot ten things and had to keep running back in the house to get or do things - the tickets, shut the bedroom door, fill up the dog's water, get gloves, get a pillow for Offspring (the temporary ramps are temporarily (hee hee) tied down under his seat and cut into his legs without padding there), get Offspring from his dad's. Also, neither Wheeler nor I had eaten at all yet - we woke up at noon and I had to hustle to get him vertical and presentable in his chair. Thankfully I had showered him the night before or there would have been no way I could have gotten him up even remotely on time.

We didn't have time to stop for anything to eat because a) we were running late; b) Wheeler can't feed himself on fast food on the way there since he has that minor problem called paralysis and c) Wheeler eats soooooooooooo slowly that at times I've been convinced he'll turn to stone if he chews any more slowly. So we decided to get snacky stuff at the ballet, they usually have a few things, cheese and stuff.

By the time we got there at 1:45, I decided to drop Wheeler off by the front door since the parking lots generally don't have enough space to bring the ramp down, and being that late they were probably full, so I figured it would save time to drop him off first. I stopped the van in the unloading zone, turned on the flashers, unhooked his chair from the van floor, let the ramp out and he tried to roll out. Tried is the operative word here. 

He was stuck on something, his chair just wouldn't come out. Offspring looked and saw his wheels were all bungled up on the extra strap that my dad made for use on long trips to extra anchor down his chair. We had just came back from a trip to the true boondocks of southern VA and the roads to get there were unbelievably tiny, winding and scary in a big tall van, so we used that strap. However, I didn't take the extra strap out after we got back on Friday, so it was still there on Sunday. Offspring tried valiantly to untangle it but couldn't. So I hopped in and tried to do it. No luck. It was truly and completely stuck. Luckily, my dad long ago put a razor blade in the van console (deeply hidden and covered) for occasions such as this. I ended up cutting him out of the strap. So ten minutes after pulling up, he was finally on his way in. I found a spot nearby, booked it (in heels mind you) and we all went in. 

All in total, we got in there just a hair before 2 pm. Phew!

At the bar area, I grabbed a couple of cookies, a soda and some chex mix type stuff, then found out you can't take it inside. So I stuffed it under Wheeler's poncho and figured no one would strip search a quad at the ballet for contraband chex mix. We then searched for our section, and was told it was upstairs. 

Ruuuuh? (here, imagine me squinting my eyes, tilting my head and looking between confused and skeptical)

I pointed at Wheeler in his ginormous wheelchair and the guy said - those seats are not accessible. I was uber annoyed because when I bought the series, I spent a long, long time on the phone with the sales person to ensure we had accessible seats, and on the end, so we had room for his chair and Service Dog. And me. And a kid. The sales guy assured me we had those seats, and he even called me back to confirm after we got them. I never checked against the actual seating chart though; I believed him. Note to self: always check.

So I asked what we should do. He tells us to go ask at the box office. OK fine. Stood in a long line, with the bell dinging to signify the ballet was about to start. Lady at box office says sorry, no accessible seats are available. 

Ruuuuh? (here, imagine me squinting my eyes, tilting my head and looking between confused and skeptical)

I found it hard to believe that there were no, none, nada, zip, zero wheelchair seats free - unless of course a bunch of people WHO DON'T NEED ACCESSIBLE SEATS were sitting in them. <-- my major pet peeve when accessible seats are limited. I wanted to go in and see if anyone would switch with us, which most people have no problem with when they get a look at Wheeler, but the ballet had now just started so that was out as an option. Went back to the house manager guy, who incidentally was a para, although that's really neither here nor there, other than I expected himn to have a bit more sympathy for our situation as a result. We asked what to do now. He was very annoyed at us (grrrr) and told us we'd have to sit in the "house seats". He said to go to the very front, in front of the very first row, go up the first aisle to the back of the first section and sit there. 

We snuck down to the front. The orchestra was playing and the flying leaping tight panted naked appearing guys were prancing around already. Great. I took Offspring by the hand, ducked our heads, walked right to the very center of the auditorium and headed up the middle aisle. Conspiciously. Wheeler had it worse. He is VERY conspicious no matter what, but particularly so in this situation. He can't duck, his chair makes noise (not much, but some), it was almost too wide for the aisle so he brushed against coats and legs, and his computer is lit up so he can see what mode he is in at all times. Normally it doesn't look like a beacon for ships in the night, but here it did. Oh yeah, and Dog was trailing behind him.

As we got to the top of the aisle, I turned left and walked alllll the way down to the house seats at the far end. That is when I discovered there was another aisle that led directly to those seats that was on the far side of the auditorium, which would have negated the need to waltz down the center aisle, then go across half the way again. Remember when I said my eyes don't adjust quickly to the dark? That's why I didn't see that aisle. Wheeler saw it, but he was following me and figured I knew what I was doing. I didn't.

Fine. We get to our seats - there are two regular seats free and one empty space where a wheelchair can fit. He turned around and backed into the space. But, he misjudged how far he could go back because the wall behind us had a lip on the top the stuck out and he got completely wedged under the lip, somewhere between the headgear and the top of his backrest. His chair lurched heavily and he was desperately trying to tell me of his conundrum. Quietly. I kept telling him to stop backing up, that he was too far already, but I couldn't tell that he was telling me he was stuck. He tried to manuveur a bit and then all hell broke loose. 

You see, there are 'attendant controls' on the back of his chair. They are physical buttons that someone not in the chair can use to manually control the chair, everything other than drive. The attendant controls can raise and lower the seat, lean the backrest up and down, and best of all, raise the chair to a standing position and back down. 

So guess which button got pushed. 

Yes, his chair started to STAND UP. Oh my god. All the while I'm telling him to STOP and he is trying to tell me he's STUCK, and his chair is making very loud clicking NOISES as it cycles its way upwards. And the wood is being gouged and making noises behind him because he is wedged. I finally, belatedly realized what was going on and turned his chair off manually. That at least stopped the chair from trying to stand him up. But now he's half up, half down, wedged completely stuck, there are people behind us, and the ballet is ongoing. In the dark. And my friggin' eyes have still not adjusted so I can barely see. 

At this point, I crawled onto the floor, under his chair and disengaged his chair, which allows me to move it manually. Meaning I have to pull it by brute force, all 500 pounds of it (the chair is unbelievably heavy as there is a 250 pound counter weight in the back for (get this) when he stands up (oh, the irony), plus its heavy beyond that plus Wheeler).

On the floor, under his chair, I pulled with all of my might. 

Still stuck. 

Pulled some mo'. 

Stuck. 

Pulled again .... chair rushes at me, I fall backwards onto my ass on the floor. 

Meanwhile, ballet still is ongoing. Offspring is sitting quietly on his chair staring at us with idle curiousity. Nothing is weird in our family, this was quite par for the course for him to observe a disaster such as this. Of course, I feel like every eye in a 50 yard radius is on us. Service Dog is thankfully very obedient and was just sitting a few feet away, unleashed, as I had to unleash him to pull his chair. That was just about the only thing going right at that point. 

I turned the chair back on, Wheeler goes backwards again (as I'd pulled him out quite a ways) - creeeeaak! Stuck again. I turn it off, I pulled it again - on the floor of course - and finally got it to heave ho out and I pushed it back to the right spot myself. At this point, I just sat on my butt on the floor and recovered for a moment. Got up, sat in my chair, and took a deep breath. 

"WIFE!" says Wheeler in a loud stage whisper since I couldn't hear him over the music and my chair was much lower than his seat, making it even harder to hear him. "My blood sugar is through the floor, I'm light headed, I need some food!". I fish out the food from under his poncho, and while I'm at it, surreptiously take his poncho off, which after all of that was practically unnoticeable as I'm good at taking that off in stealth mode. But to get to the food, I have to open the plastic take out type box. I tried and tried and tried to do it silently. Finally 'pop'! it opened. Heads turn again. And we're not supposed to even have food in there. I feed it to him slowly. He muches werry werry quietly - remember that crunch crunch business in the movie theatre? Yeah, that's what it was like, I could hear him crunching - I can only imagine what it must have sounded like in his head. Finished feeding him. 

Suddenly Offspring appears beside me, standing behind Wheeler's chair. I'm hungry mom! I fish out the cookie, unwrap it from saran wrap, which was easier to open silently. He eats it quietly. Wheeler notices that Offspring can't really see the ballet too well as Offspring has been standing up throughout, so he asks if the doomahickies-thingies down the stairs in the hallway are booster seats. Yes, they are. OK, so I crouch down, walk out, go get one, put it in Offspring's seat, place him on it and sit back down. 

By this point, I have spent at least 25% of the performance standing up, sitting down, feeding people, undressing Wheeler, pulling chairs, fetching booster seats, and surely annoyoing people around us. Once I finally sat down, I was mentally calculating what part of my ticket I had used in monetary terms and the reduction in enjoyment we'd caused for those around us. During the intermission, I walked around to everyone around us and profusely apologized. The really lovely part of the day came when everyone I spoke to assured us that it was not a problem, and that they were glad we were finally able to get into our seats to enjoy the ballet as well. People were so kind, it made our experience go from a total frickin' disaster to a rather funny total frickin' disaster that I'm posting on my blog. 

But I shoulda known it was gonna be a disaster when I had to cut him out of the van with a razor blade. Just sayin'.

Fishin'

Offspring has been after me to go fishing for quite awhile now. Being too cheap to buy a rod & reel (as I know he would lose interest after 1-2 trips), I signed up for a local park's free tackle gear program. Two months later, they finally mailed me my card so off we went to go fishing on Saturday. 



We bought nightcrawlers, 12 for $3.50 and the teenage clerk said "you know you have to put them on the hook, right?". Uh yes, what do you take me for? A GIRL? With that, duly went down to the dock to catch our dinner. 



We pulled the worms out and they were absolutely enormous. 



Offspring promptly chickened out of putting them on the hook because they were so, well, alive. Muttering "circle of life, circle of life" to myself, I stabbed the hook through him. He bled. As in red blood! Ok, so maybe I am a girl. That kinda squeamed me out. Being my first time, I just stuck the hook through the worm in one place, threw it in .... oh wait, back up. Once it was hooked on, I stared at the reel trying to figure out what to do next. There was a button and a reel. Figured that I should push the button to get it to cast out. Tried that, didn't work. Tried throwing it really hard, nothing. Eventually I had to give up and ask a guy down the dock how to cast. He looked at me as if I were from the planet Mars, but he showed us how to use the reel. After which I cast it with our worm dangling down in the water.

Reeled it back in shortly after and the worm was gone .... but no fish. Hrumph. Repeated this several times, never catching a fish but feeling all the tugs when the fish ate the (dangling down) worm but not the hook. In the meantime, we also had to change out our rod and reel 2 times because it didn't work. Eventually I gave up and the guy down the dock fixed it for us, the something or other inside, a bell maybe? wasn't tightened properly or some such thing. After he fixed it, it worked just fine. Except we didn't catch any fish. Then I figured out that I should probably hook up the worm several times so that a fish would have to eat the hook to eat the worm. Viola - I then caught a fish! I'm a genuis. My fish: 



Shortly after, Offspring caught a fish too and he was so tickled. His fish:



As it was his first fish ever (actually, mine too), he named it "First Caught". I had suggested we call it Dinner, but he demurred. I threw mine back, which irritated him to no end but he kept his and we brought it home in the worm box. I let him keep it in the box for a few hours, after which I threw it in the trash. However, he made me take pictures of it from every angle before I did. He was so sad that I was throwing it out, I swear, it made me almost tear up - he was so sad. (circle of life, circle of life, ....). I must be losing it - crying over a dead 3 inch fish?!?! Kids do that to ya.