I Had No Idea That The Gout Could Still Be Got

Gilberto's gout is acting up again.

Yes, you read that right.  Gilberto has THE GOUT. 

When the doctor diagnosed him last month, I thought she was joking and started laughing out loud.  And then accidentally snorted, which caused me to laugh more.  She shot me a Disapproving Doctor Look before stepping away to answer a page. 

Gilberto: What's so funny?  What's gout?

Me: I'm so sorry!  I just seriously doubt you have GOUT.  You're too young and healthy. 

Gilberto: Why?  What is it?  You're freaking me out!

Me: Honey, gout is a disease from the RENAISSANCE.  Old, lazy, rich people got it from eating too much meat, or overindulging in wine, or something.  It's a totally outdated disease.  Like scurvy!  I think both even involve wooden legs, or at least amputation.

Gilberto: AMPUTATION?!

Me: Don't worry!  Hon, you do NOT have gout.  This doctor is crazy.  You aren't going to end up with a fake leg.  And even so, they're made out of metal now, not wood.  I think you need to be more concerned about all the looks you're getting because you wore my mom's crocs, which are obviously for a woman and way too small for you.   

It turns out Gilberto does indeed have The Gout, and I probably set ourselves up nicely for fate to give him The Scurvy as well, with my big fat arrogant mouth.   

You better believe I headed straight for my trusty friend Google as soon as we got home, and was shocked to find out how many people in the 21st century have The Gout!  Some sort of uric acid build up in the toe joints, and not necessarily a result of a bad diet.  Which was a relief, 'cause I was getting some serious attitude from Gilberto on the car ride home about my cooking.      

 One fabulous thing to come out of all of this is NO MORE SPINACH, which is high in uric acid.  I'm so excited about that.  I hate spinach, and now I don't have to feel guilty about not serving it. 

Also?  I don't feel so bad about having fibromyalgia now.  He's kind of evened things out.

Introducing The Kidlets

I used to be all wary of putting pictures of the family up on the interweb world.  But now I'm over it. 

So without further ado, let me introduce Gabi and Mason...

Even though Gilberto is Brazilian, you wouldn't know it by looking at these kids.  They really pulled the Polish out of his genes! 

I'll be updating the sidebar with pictures of the whole family, but not until I can find a decent one of myself.  I've just gone back through the last two years, and every single picture shows me in my pajamas or sick with the flu.    

The Underwear Wars

Stupid, effin Days Of The Week Underwear. 

I HATE YOU.  You make my life miserable.

Gabi will only wear the Wednesday underwear on Wednesday.  And Sunday on Sunday.  And when it's Tuesday and the only underwear left says Friday, getting her little tush into Friday brings on World War III.    

Me: FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, God will not strike you dead for wearing Friday on Tuesday!

Gabi: FINE!  I just won't wear any!

Me: Oh, HECK no.  When I was in the 3rd grade one of my classmates didn't wear underwear and forgot and hung upside down on the monkey bars!  Do you want that to happen to YOU?  HUH?  You will wear Friday, right now!

Gabi: You are torturing me!  Why do you have to be my mommy?  I WANT A NEW MOMMY!  AND DON'T COME NEAR ME WITH FRIDAY!

How about some new friggin underwear instead, some that don't make me want to stab myself.  As soon as I can get to Target, I'm changing them out.  So long, Days Of The Week Underwear, I can't wait until you are gone from my life!  

On The Way Down

You know what’s really embarrassing?

Going to get a pedicure and not remembering you haven’t shaved your legs until after you pull your jeans up to your knees and stick your feet in the spa tub. Because at that point there's no turning back.

Even worse? Looking down and seeing massive scratch marks covering every inch of your dry, hairy legs.

Even worse? The poor girl that’s been assigned to you may say it’s all okay, but you catch her making a disgusted face in the direction of her co-workers, who are all thanking God that THEY aren't the one sitting at your feet.

The untended leg hair has no other excuse than that I’ve been lazy in that area this winter. (I had to shave every frickin day in Brazil, so I've been taking a break.)

The scratches have a much better excuse. Vicodin! 

When I get embarrassed, it inevitably happens that I try to make things better by explaining. It never works out in my favor, but I just can’t help myself.

Me: Oh, man, I’m so sorry about the hair! Will it be too prickly for you to massage my legs? No? Okay. And don’t worry about all the scratches, those are just from all the Vicodin I took earlier! I mean, I’m allergic to Vicodin, so it makes me itch. Like when you get an epidural! You know? Maybe you’ve never had one before? Anyway, I probably shouldn’t take it, but it’s the only thing that takes the pain away. Physical pain, not mental. Ha ha ha. Ha?  And so today I decided it was worth the itching to be pain free for a bit. I just had no idea it was leaving marks!  I think it looks much worse than it is. Okay, um, I'll just shut up now.  Wanna get started?

So I pretty much can’t ever go back to that salon again. And I really hope that none of the other customers who were listening in are parents at my daughter’s school.

The reason for taking the Vicodin was true. After several months of feeling relatively normal, I've plummeted back into a sea of pain.

Fibromyalgia is funny that way. You have your ups, you have your downs, and you never know when you're going to move from one to the other.

Hopefully this down phase will pass quickly.  In the meantime I'll cling to the joy of being able to laugh at myself when I find myself in embarrassing situations, and the fact that SoCal has enough nail salons that I can continue to embarrass myself for years to come and never hit the same place twice.

A First Birthday

You know how sometimes you find yourself playing that game where you have to provide random, unknown facts about yourself so people can guess who those facts belong to?  No?  Welcome to the corporate world.  It's an All Time Ice Breaker Favorite.   

I used to have three things at the ready for just such a situation, because try and come up with three random things about yourself on the spot and see how you do.  I'd normally keep my list under lock and key, but if I ever find myself in the corporate world again, enough crazy things have happened to me the last few years that I can come up with a new one.  My old list:

1) I've flown a plane
2) I wet my pants during an intramural basketball game
3) I once had the guys from the band Linkin Park in my apartment and DIDN'T KNOW WHO THEY WERE

Well, if Mason ever needs a random, unknown fact about himself, I think we just gave him a pretty good one.   

We had his one year old birthday party last weekend, and served LEG OF GOAT and a WHOLE BABY PIG.  Who, in this country, gets to say that?  He'd be one of a million in Brazil, but here goat and a whole roasted pig aren't the usual fare. 

The leg of goat is a usual attender at our Brazilian BBQs, and always turns out amazingly, but it was Gilberto's first time roasting a whole pig.  We didn't know any better and put it in the pan laying on its side, instead of resting on its belly.  We had to keep flipping the darn thing over so it would brown evenly, and when he pulled it out of the oven for the final time, all four legs had fallen off and were floating in the juice. 

It was not the most appetizing roasted whole baby pig, but I'm glad we tried it.  And now Mason can lay claim to having had goat and a whole pig served at his first birthday party. 


What he might NOT want to mention about his first birthday? 


That we had a dead mouse in the kitchen, and COULD NOT FIND IT.  We could smell it, but no matter how many cupboards we emptied or appliances we pulled out (and looked under and IN), we could not find the smelly bugger.  We thought that all the cooking we were doing might cover up the smell and fool our guests, but you could still smell that sickly sweet odor tinging the air. 

Or that the house was being invaded by ants due to a recent deluge.  They were crawling all over the walls and counters.  They descended on my pantry because they could smell the sugar inside the zip lock bag we keep it in, and apparently they like potatoes.  I found ants on the toilet paper, the water cooler and the pillows on the couch.  There's only so much spraying you can do before giving up, since I couldn't find where they were coming in, and I didn't want the toxins to poison our guests. 

(Let me just say that the ants won that battle, little bastards, but sorely lost the next.)

He probably won't mention that since it was the middle of winter, all of his guests were freezing.  Though they were all very polite about it and didn't say a thing as they huddled together for warmth.  Or that all the rain we had saturated the ground and the water from the leak on the back patio water spout couldn't get down the drain and backed up, creating a lake right where the party was going to be, and I had to scoop up every bit of water with a cup.  Actually, he might mention that because it was pretty funny, my ass up in the air, as I panted and swore with each scoop.  I had to keep coming up for breaks and to wipe the sweat away from my eyes.  Only I could turn water scooping into a physical activity.

To top it all off, Mason got gum in his hair after everyone left, and we were just so into cleaning up that we forgot about it.  And then every day for the next week we would say, "We really need to get that gum out of his hair!"  And then forget again.  We finally got out the canola oil and de-gummed him yesterday.

We did learn one very interesting fact about leaving gum in hair for such a long period of time, which I'm assuming most people don't know because they're better parents than we are- it's a great dread facilitator.  The right side of Mason's head was really rockin' the Rasta look.          

We didn't intend to throw Mason a shindig with enough fodder for him to make several random, unknown facts lists about himself, but that just seems to be the way we roll. 

Next year we're going the bouncy warehouse route, where it is warm, ant free and our guests aren't subjected to the open belly of a legless pig staring at them when they go for more potato salad.
   

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