California!

So...
Cali was an adventure.

For starters, there was something in the air there and it really stunk. Farm animals. Cows. Cow crap. MMMOOOOO!! That stuff that gets into your nostrils and hangs around in there, until you think you would rather die than actually inhale one more time! My body agreed with my brain - so much so that my throat and chest refused oxygen, which led to a fun trip in a hospital on wheels, getting stuck in the hand with an IV on the way, and waiting around on an emergency room gurney after taking breathing treatments and steroid meds that left me so shaky I thought the Earth was quaking, not just me!

Meanwhile, my kids remained back at my brother's house.  But neither my brother or sister in law had ever fed Cohen. Not that I didn't think they could handle it.  I talked sister in law through it over the phone and it worked out fine.  It couldn't have been easy, but they didn't complain. I worry too much.

Then I get back to my brother's house, chest aching, jittery, and tired, with the depressing guarantee of yet more medical bills, and my poor little guy is so constipated he's grunting and grunting and screaming.  He can't get comfortable. So off I go to the grocery store for some suppositories, thinking is this really happening? Am I making something outta nothing? Or...?

Two days later, after three suppositories and some prune juice (does that ever really work?), he still won't go poo and refuses to eat - every time I try to hook up his feeding tube, he writhes and cries. So, off to the ER, where they x-ray his belly and find he had lots of stopped-up poo in his intestines. It's this liquid treatment first, and if that doesn't work, surgery. So we began the treatment to wash it all out, putting liquid into his tube every hour.  We didn't leave the hospital until 1am, with a jug of the stuff to continue every hour until 5am. I missed my hubs more than ever at this point. Help!  But he was halfway across the country.

Good news:  poo!  And lots of it!  Bad news:  mommy is so freakin tired!

**

During this trip, I learned an important lesson from my three year old.

It all started when I almost got in a head-on collision leaving a friend's house. A car heading towards me in the opposite lane suddenly veered off the road, spewing up dirt as its tires spun off the side of the road, then lurched back onto the road and into my lane, narrowly missing me as I watched its brake lights directly behind me in my rear view mirror. This was such a close call I could see the faces of the two people in the front seats. The driver, a male, then over corrected and lurched back into the other lane before ending up back in my lane again. I don't know what happened after that, but I do know that I saw all of the cars in the opposite lane come to a dead stop behind me. Hope he didn't hit someone. I was a little shaken by the close call, so when I got back to my parents' house, I explained - calmly - what happened and how crazy it was, not really paying attention, as I told my story, to my three year old, who was leaning her elbows on the back of the couch and hanging onto every word I said.

All of a sudden I hear a little whimper and I glance her way as she wails, Moooommmmmy!Her mouth quivers. Mommy, don't do that, mommy... I don't want you to do that!
She swallows and waves her pointer finger back and forth, whispering once more, Don't do that, Mommy. Her eyes fill with tears and one actually slips down her cheek.

She understood what I was talking about and it seemed as if she believed I would willingly have an accident that would take me from her. So, with that said, I definitely won't be throwing my vehicle in front of oncoming traffic anytime soon - for her sake!  :)

The next day, Hannah was talking to her cousin on the phone and she began to tell him, "My Mommy went this way, and he went that way, and then my Mommy went the 'nother way, and he went that way..." criss-crossing her hands, one over the other, as she explained like I had the night before.

I guess it's a good idea to be really careful what you say in front of your kids.  Note to self: No more discussing serious crises in front of little pint-sized ears!

***

And I'll finish with a lighter subject:  Everyone in California kept jokin' around, askin' me where I left my cowgirl hat and what hitchin' post I tied my horse up to, cuz now I live in Texas, Y'ALL. And I have some news for you.  Crazy but true: Central Valley, Cali is WAY MORE HICK than my new neck o' the woods out in Texas. Some reasons why I know this:

• We drove out to see our old house by the lake. As we were driving, my silly little Jenna-bug starts shouting something. Takes me a coupla seconds to figure out what in the heck she's sayin. Then I laugh. Cows are blanketing the countryside we're driving through, horses are scattered here and there, and she's yellin YEE-HAW! over and over again as she watches the animals pass by out her window. 
• My friend is moving to what is deemed the cowboy capital of the area. I went to see her new house in progress and guess what I saw out my window...

Bar for those rough-and-tumble, beer-guzzling hicks who don't know how to play nice.

Saddles! Tack! Yee-Haw!



Cowboy Museum.  Yes.

I love it. I love boots and wranglers and I still blare country music from time to time, just like in high school.

Seriously, though, I was soooo glad that I could share my friend's excitement about her new house. I'm happy I got to see it before she moved in and I'm looking forward to visiting again when she's all settled.

Alright, I'm just about finished!

Thought I would leave ya with two pics of our trip en route to my hubby's grandparents' house on my birthday. F-U-N! A two lane desert highway in the middle of nowhere, but at least on the WAY to somewhere...

Totally worth it to see Craig's grandparents, although I'm not so sure what kind of company I was, since I was so darn tired from all the driving!

But I did have these guys to keep me ENTERTAINED, which is one way to look at it ;)

Nine hours into our trip and in surprisingly good spirits.

Jenna was very grateful for the DVD player (and so was mommy, I might add - how in the world did we survive without it?)..Cohen's on the other side of Hannah, but I couldn't fit him in.

Wanna guess how many times you can sing the ABC song; Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star; or Hey, Hey, There Playmate, while simultaneously watching Strawberry Shortcake or Care Bears over a 12 hour trip? A gazillion. Or so it seemed. :) Straw-ba-ba-ba-ba-berry, Extraor-di-di-dinary... In the Land of Joke-A-Lot, everyone laughs a lot... Memories of a time when I used to watch this stuff as a kid. Crazy.