When I was growing up, I loved Saturday mornings. It meant I could watch cartoons for hours, and my dad was going to make us breakfast. All through the week we ate cereal, oats, mom's breakfasts, etc., before we got ready for school, but every Saturday Dad cooked and we watched cartoons.

Now I look forward to Saturday mornings because it's the one day that I cook breakfast, and my kids love it! Actually maybe it's even more special because they only get this "treat" once every 2 weeks (since they spend every other weekend with their dad while I'm working). I only have every other weekend off from work, so I'm usually struggling to get out the door with them in the morning or ready to fall back asleep because I worked until midnight the night before (when I'm on night shifts). They're lucky if I can pour the cereal and milk for them (and I confess Teenager is often a big help in this area and will make sure ds2 - the 5 year old- gets his cereal too).

But, Saturday mornings that I am off, they KNOW that Mom's getting up and cooking breakfast. Dd is 10, and looooooooves breakfast, and is also is (and always has been) a very early riser. We've gone through stages through the years that alternate between waking me up (at 4:30 a.m.) to learning how to turn on Nickelodeon and NOT wake Mom... but now she *knows* I'm going to cook breakfast on Saturday morning and is a little too smart for my comfort. She also knows that neither Mommy nor her brothers wake up early if left to our own devices (maybe in the neighborhood of 8:30 - 9:00 - not that late, but forever if you wake up hungry at 4:30!). So she has devised a fail-proof scheme for the last few months to get Mom out of bed and cooking breakfast early.

Now Saturday mornings usually greet me with my youngest 2 boys jumping on the bed screaming "Breakfast, breakfast, breakfast!" and Dd standing in the doorway giggling. Yup, she has taken to sending her brothers in to do the dirty work. A few times her plan has backfired and I got both boys to lay back down and go back to sleep with Mommy, but usually I'm feeling too guilty about my (seemingly) starving children and just get up and start cooking.

Other times, I've opened my eyes to see the three of them (Teenager is more excited by sleep than breakfast these days, so he doesn't participate in the "Wake Mommy" shenanigans) lined up in a row beside my bed, apparently just waiting for my eyes to pop open. How they got the 2 year old in there waiting quietly is beyond me, but they've done it.

And so, like my dad did for me, I let them have their bacon and eggs in front of the TV in the living room watching cartoons. Dh somehow manages to sleep until the food is ready (much like my Mom way back when...) but show up in time to claim his share. I hope they'll grow up and have fond memories of their Saturday mornings with Mom, and if nothing else at least they ate one full meal today.

Today I have to vent a little about my job. I worked the ER today. Well, actually it's an Urgent Care Center, but it's part of the ER, so close enough. It's a nice change every once in a while, but today took the cake.

I walk in this morning to start my shift, but can't get through the main door because two women are having a knock-down-drag out fight in the hallway. By the time I walked around (wasn't about to go through that) to the other door, security and the police were there and had broken it up. I should have just given up and gone home, but oh I would have missed out on so much!

The day wore on, and we saw many of the typical runny nose, fever, vomiting, broken bones, and the like (actually more than a normal amount of vomiting today lol). Lunch came and went. And when I got back from lunch and went to register my next patient, I find a 34 year old woman wrapped in a sheet crying her eyes out. Hmmmmm...

So I'm going through the whole registration process and finally I get to the "What brings you here today?", and I have never in my life had to fight so hard to keep my face neutral. Her answer: "I have a turd stuck in my butthole, half in, half out!"

Now, the rule of registration is that we are allowed to list symptoms only in the slot labelled "Diagnosis" and not actual ailments. We have to be very careful about this because we're not RN's or Dr's and could be held liable for a misdiagnosis if we don't follow this rule. So for example, we can put "Headache" but not "migraine"; "Right foot pain" but not "Sprained ankle"; "Nausea and vomiting" but not "Flu" or "Stomach flu", etc. So I'm standing there trying to be all professional and trying to think of something to list for this ailment... I finally came up with "Constipation", although I think that must be the understatement of the century!

I had to go outside for a break after that one, and just say a little prayer: "Please God let me never have to go to the ER for anything even REMOTELY similar to this poor woman's situation!"

Well, I came back in from my mini-break, and lo and behold there is butt case #2! I go in to register my next patient, and this time it's a 37 year old guy who is laying on his stomach on a gurney (he came via ambulance). I go through all his registration with dread, just *knowing* I was going to hear something strange...

Me: "What brings you here today?"
Buttcase: "Well, I sort of fell down my stairs and I had just gotten out of the shower"
Me: (thinking maybe he hurt his back or something, dodged a bullet!)"Uh-huh"
Buttcase: "And well, at the bottom of my stairs I had this bottle..."
Me: (thinking oh jeesh no!)
Buttcase: "So anyway I sort of fell on it and somehow" (magic?) "it went in my anus and is stuck there"
Me: Okay, thank you (running from room)

Turns out this was one of those old-time Avon cologne bottles, and it was too deep in to get ahold of. I mean, really, did he think anyone was going to believe that he fell down the stairs naked and LANDED on it and it just *happened* to get shoved up his ass? Come on, it's glass for crying out loud! We have one triage nurse there who will just tell it like it is (or how she sees it anyway) and oh how I wish she'd been working today! They wound up getting a set of forceps from OB and were able to fish the bottle out that way (luckily for him because although I'm sure it was quite painful it *did* save him a major surgery). I'll never look at an Avon bottle collection the same.

So that's my work. If you're ever going to the ER with one of these or similar problems, rest assured that we *are* laughing at you as soon as you're out of earshot. Tomorrow I'm back to typing in a nice, quiet, boring office by myself. Looking forward to it!

Yesterday ds3 poo-pooed in the potty for the very first time! It was hilarious though. I was letting him run around nekky since it was very warm here, and saw him standing in the corner of the living room doing his poo poo squat. So I told him to go on the potty and he came running, but a turd hit the floor before he hit the potty. I told him nevermind, and went to clean it while he finished pooing on the potty. So he made a BIG turd in the potty and then got up and was so excited about it. And he went back over to the TV (I was still cleaning the carpet). Pretty soon I look up and see ANOTHER turd coming out, so I tell him get back on the potty. Well he goes to the potty, but he won't get on it because there's already a turd in it so he tries to sit on the back of the potty but he's got poo on his butt and it just squashes it in all over the seat. Now he's freaking out going "ewwww eeeeew poooooop!" and I'm trying so hard not to die laughing. I wound up with poo all over the place and had to put him in the tub, but he was very proud of that one turd he got in the pot and had to go show it to his bubby (ds1 aka the teenager). Bubby was very pleased with ds3 for bringing a potty pot full of poo into his bedroom to show it off, but he was a good sport and just said "Good job!" lol.

So, on to last night. I was home alone with ds3, talking on the phone to my sister and folding laundry. And maybe I should preface this by saying that I have an honest to goodness real life PHOBIA of spiders. Well, we have living in our basement these giant 8-legged-FREAKS which are huge (google wolf spider if you really want to know) and scare the holy crap out of me. But I've only ever seen them in the basement and I don't need to go down there (ever) for anything lol. So lo and behold I'm folding away and there on top of the clothes I've just folded is one of these suckers! He was bigger than the diameter of a pop can, to give you an idea.

I start screaming bloody murder into the phone (sis thought the baby was dying or something) and freaking out, searching frantically for bug spray or *something*. Sprayed the whole can on it, and didn't hurt it one bit, it just kept running up and down my clothes. I was up on the table screaming, and ds3 is behind the baby gate in the next room just dying laughing at me (thanks kid) and probably trying to figure out what the heck mommy was doing. I got so bad I hyperventilated and almost passed out

In the midst of all this I guess I must have let something slip, because I hear my precious 2 year old over there laughing and saying "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit" :oops: (he hasn't said it again since so I'm hoping he forgot). I called my teenager on his cell (from my cell, still had sister on the other line) and told him to come home immediately, he thought it was a prank and hung up on me! So anyway, the freak finally ran behind the dryer and I was able to come down from the table but I was in shambles lol. And all my clean laundry was covered in bug spray and dh had to rewash it all because I wasn't going anywhere NEAR any of those piles.

Oh and I had to go get take out for dinner because the washer/dryer is in the kitchen and no way was I going in there to cook anything.

So that was my yesterday. I'm hoping for a little more uneventful today.

My teenager has decided that he needs to break up with his long term (6 months lol - forever in teenage time!) girlfriend. They have been friends since they were 5, though, and he's trying to figure out how to do it without hurting her, or with the minimal amount of discomfort possible. There is another girl involved, but teenager has said that he wanted to break up with his gf anyway because he doesn't like some serious things about her. For example, he reports that she is not such a nice person sometimes, and makes fun of people because they talk with an accent or whatever (this is likely an issue for him since dh - his stepdad - is from Greece and has a definite accent lol). He said he told her it wasn't nice and they couldn't help it, but she proceeded anyway. And he said "You know, I just can't respect that, mom!" He is so deep sometimes. Anyway, I hope it works out okay and he comes through it okay (and the gf too, she's a sweet girl for the most part), those teenage break ups are brutal sometimes.

I was glad he was with her and hanging out at home with her every night, she kept him out of trouble! Before they got together, he was kind of running with a rough crowd and while I hated to not let him do *anything*, I wouldn't let him go anywhere with the kids he wanted to go with. So I hope we won't have to go back to fighting about that. She also kept him on task with his homework when no one else could - I'd tell her she wouldn't see him the next day if he didn't get his homework finished, and she'd make sure it got done. So yeah, I'm gonna miss her lol.

In other news we're on to cd7 and gearing up for the big bdfest! I'm really hopeful (as always). I don't know if I've been depressed or sick or what, but I definitely haven't been myself lately. For example, last night I went to sleep at 7:30 with the baby and neither of us woke until 7:30 this morning. Then I had a nap at 11! I'm at work now til 11:30 tonight, so I probably needed it. I haven't been able to force myself to eat much either, just feel like I want to throw up. Well, whatever it is I hope it passes. I'm just not *me* right now, and I don't like it one bit.

I work day shifts all next week, so will have to get myself back into an early to bed, early to rise mindset for that. I don't care for day shift at all, have the hardest time waking up in the morning. Even if it's not that much earlier than I usually get up (if left to my own devices) it just seems like such an intrusion when that alarm goes off! Tonight I get to leave 40 minutes early thanks to a meeting on my day off last week (we're not allowed any OT).

Well, need to go work for a while and maybe actually get something done around here...

That darn ole hag showed this morning. I had myself convinced too. Now I'm trying to take comfort in the fact that at least I had a normal cycle and it's not taking months to get back to that point like the last m/c I suffered through. I did at least ovulate, and she did show on time, so I guess those are both positive things. Cramps came on with a vengeance, though, not so positive!

Ds3 has his schedule all messed up, likely from the time change. He decided it was time to wake up around 4 this morning. Thankfully I did get to bed pretty early last night, so I'm not completely falling over. Still, when dh gets up Mom is going back to bed!

The other 2 are sleeping peacefully still. They were both coughing all night. Somehow Dh manages to sleep through it all. Don't know how he does that.

Well, in spite of my disappointment I'm glad I allowed myself those few days to be hopeful and optimistic. I'm not sure I want to ttc this month... I already have one December baby, and it's NOT the optimal time for a birthday. Can't imagine trying to plan 2 birthdays and Christmas. Then again, we'll probably go ahead and leave it to higher powers. I'm in a horrible mood today and don't feel like trying again at all lol.

Tomorrow it's back to work for me and back to school for the kiddies. Dh starts his new job this afternoon, and he is very happy about that. It will be a rough month since he won't get paid until the first of April. But we'll make it one way or the other, things just might be a few weeks late.