Like Christmas, except in January and just for me.

I have no shame. We've all seen it before, and the following will be another example.

I wish to tell you of my three purchases tonight. They are three things that I have been waiting to buy for longer than any normal person would wait.

A bra.

A baby gate.

A vacuum.

I think they all warrant their own story.

Once upon a time, like back in 2000, I had a respectable amount of breast tissue. Nothing to brag about, but enough that no one questioned my gender. Then I had Cameron and lost a little. Then I had Ethan and lost a little more. Then I had Drew and lost the little bit that I had left. Then I had Trent and became concave.

Padded bras have been my curse for going on nine years now, and not just a little padding. There's enough there to unroll and sleep on when I go camping. And under wire is an absolute must - without it, there's no point.

And speaking of no point, I decided several weeks ago that there was no reason for me to strap on an ill-fitting, sweat producing padded bra, when I could just go without. My chest looks like that of a pre-pubescent girl, so why bother?

I know that a lot of you are thinking at this point that I just need to go get a professional bra fitting. You're wrong. I measured myself, and the measurement of my bust at the fullest point is actually only a little less than an inch bigger than my measurement just below the bust. I am officially a double A. 34AA. (I apologize to all the men who are reading this and cringing at my "overshare".) But I just don't care anymore. There are worse things than being flat-chested.

So I've known for a while now that I really need to find myself a training bra. (You know - for the cold days.) Because no one actually makes AA bras.

Tonight I was at Target, crossing from one end of the store to the other, and I happened to wind my way through the little girl's department. I walked straight into the bra section, saw a ridiculously multi-colored thing that looked like it belonged on a Miley Cyrus fan, and what do you know - it was on clearance for a buck seventy-five. I grabbed the thing and headed for the front of the store with my head held high. It is a lucky girl who gets to buy her non-padded, (finally!), under wire bra for less than two dollars. Take that you voluptuous vixens!

Cameron and Ethan happened to be with me, and were not quite as thrilled as I was. They asked me who it was for, as though they knew that such a silly thing could not be for a grown woman, and I told them it was for them. They both flushed red and sweat bullets all the way to the car.

So there you have it, I am a nearly thirty-year-old woman in a training bra. At least I won't have to worry about being saggy.


So, the baby gate. I have safety locks on all of my cabinet doors, except for two. Those are the two that Drew broke about a year ago when he learned that if he just yanked hard enough over and over, the lock would eventually snap and the cabinet door would open. He got away with that twice, and then he got what was coming to him and never did it again.

Enter Trent and Bryan.

Trent and Bryan have two things, and only two things, that they like to do during the day. The first is to follow me around and cry/whine/unfold the clothes I just folded. The second is to empty all the drawers and cupboards in the kitchen. There are child-proof latches on them, again, except for the two that Drew got to, but their arms are just flexible enough to reach into the little space provided before the lock kicks in, and pull out anything that their chubby hands can grab at that weird angle. I have spent a lot of time re-washing measuring cups and bottle nipples and cooking utensils that were clean before they were sucked on by drooling toddlers. And then there is the cereal cabinet. Lots and lots of cereal scattered on the floor. And finally, today, the container of cookies dumped and tediously sampled, one by one.

I'd had my fill after the loss of all those chocolate chip cookies. So tonight, I bought a baby gate and giggled and grinned while I installed it. Then Andrew and I took turns impersonating the reactions we are expecting from Drew, Trent, and Bryan in the morning when they find that they can no longer watch me splutter and turn purple in the face after they finish dismantling the order of the kitchen. I can't wait. I'm going to stand in the kitchen, stick out my tongue and give them the world's most grown-up "nee-ner, nee-ner, neeeee-ner!"

Lastly, this might shock you all, but our vacuum broke over three months ago, and I just replaced it tonight. When it broke, I thought, ah, well....I'll get a new one next time we have an extra fifty bucks. And in the mean time, we can play Redneck and use the shop-vac.

So I've been crawling around on my hands and knees for three months now, vacuuming the rug in the living room with the stupid little hose of the shop-vac, and completely ignoring the bedrooms because the three-pronged plug of the shop-vac didn't fit in the two-pronged outlet of the bedrooms. Sure, we have an extension cord, but that seemed like too much work to then have to crawl around with the hose and pretend that I was making a difference in the cleanliness of the carpet.

In case anyone didn't know, a vacuum hose does not do much for carpet. You really need that spinning brush to lift the fibers and comb out all the junk that 5 kids and one husband can make. (I counted Drew twice, because he's just that messy.) Also, our shop-vac is rather noisy. The first time I plugged it in to give the living room a crawl-over, all the residents of the cemetery down the street came knocking at my door to ask what the horrible noise was.

Every time an extra fifty dollars became available, (which I think happened just twice in those three months), it sounded like a lot more fun to go out to dinner or to a movie instead of buying a vacuum. So once we ate at Wingers - no regrets - and the other time... I don't remember what we did. But it was surely more exciting than a vacuum. This is called being poor and making choices.

Tonight, I buckled down and spent the stupid fifty dollars for a vacuum that will get the job done. My carpet is no longer matted, but back to being slightly shag-ish and soft. It was like all the strands stood up and said, "Well, hello again! It's nice to see you! Won't you please walk on us?" And I can't see anymore flecks of crushed Goldfish crackers scattered about the floor.

So excited was I by the clean living room floor, that at 11 PM I took the vacuum back to my bedroom, where two nights ago Drew ate microwave popcorn. The remnants of that popcorn are actually what put me over the edge and made me go get the vacuum. So I started vacuuming away, humming a happy tune, ducking under Andrew's video game controller cord as I tried not to get in the way of his game, and ran over the vacuum's cord. The stinking overzealous vacuum sucked up it's own cord and the motor instantly smelled like the aftermath of an atom bomb.

I have never, in all my years of vacuuming, seen a machine suck up it's own cord. All my previous models have been smart enough to know to stick to food particles and hair, and to leave the cord alone, should I happen to run over it.

Enough of the plastic coating was chewed off the cord that I now have to patch my new toy with electrical tape.

Or, I could use the cord to zap the first kid who decides to climb over the baby gate.

That strange new feeling.

Of late, I have been experiencing a foreign phenomenon where my abdomen causes me much discomfort and pain.  I, admittedly, have hypochondriasis tenancies, and was originally convinced that a tumor was growing on my ovary, probably the left one, and that I surely had no more than a year to live.  Then I realized that I needed to change my bathroom reading.  The only options in the drawer next to the toilet were some book on the Navajo, a VW Club newsletter, (which I have already read several times), or The Christmas Shoes, which is a book based on the depressing country song where a kid buys a pair of shoes for his dying mother on Christmas Eve so that she'll look beautiful if she were to meet Jesus that night.  The mother in the book is dying of ovarian cancer, or uterine cancer, I don't remember which, but apparently it made an impression.  I am now considering seeking professional help, but not for my imagined tumor. 


So it hits me one day that maybe I conjured up my terminal disease because I had been spending too much time in the bathroom reading that stupid book.  When was the last time that I produced anything during my visits to the toilet, anyway?  Am I supposed to be keeping track of how many bowel movements I have in, say, a week?  I thought that was something that you only did with infants?  I feel certain that I've made a deposit during each trip, but does it matter how much you give, or just how often?  Can you be constipated if you've been going regularly?  (Yes, Heidi and Kitti, I am talking to you because there is no way I'm calling a doctor to ask!)  I've always been the type who could just let the fruit ripen and fall from the tree.  Thirty seconds, in and out, no effort required.  That's why I think that my self-diagnosis of constipation must be accurate because yesterday I found myself using birthing techniques to eliminate the brick that was lodged somewhere in my lower intestine.  Pull knees up to chest, tuck chin and push like hell for the count of ten.  Take breath, resume pushing.  And so on and so forth.  I was pleased to find that when it was all over and done with, I did not require stitches, but was disgusted that for all my hard work, I had passed a pitiful excuse for a bowel movement, (although I swear it had corners), and that I had earned a hemorrhoid.  At least, I think that's what it was, and if not, then the hypochondriasis is about to take over again.  I stood there in the bathroom wondering what it would feel like to ride in a car for twelve hours next week with an mn'm type thing resting on the edge of my sphincter.  Thankfully, I will not have to find out, because the bulge has since disappeared. 


I am a notorius hater of water.  It doesn't taste like Dr. Pepper or Cherry Coke, therefore, it must be bad.  I drink mostly soda, a little milk, and occasionally some juice or Crystal Lite.  But when I really think about it, I don't drink a lot of those either.  I am not an idiot, so I know that my poor hydration habits are not helping with my dry skin or migraines, and that is probably the exact cause of my constipation.  When I was younger, my body probably dealt with it just fine, and with age comes a realization that I have turned my digestive system into a sewer treatment plant. 


So what do I do?  Do any of you have tips?  Let me tell you right now that I'm not ready to give up the soda or the pop, (both being the same thing - but I wanted to make sure that everyone from every U.S. geographical region knew to what I was referring), because I'm just not there.  Might not ever be.  But I need some good ways to make sure I drink a lot of water along with my Dr. Pepper.  Water alone is gross, especially our city water.  Does it count as drinking water if you add something to it?  And what do you add that won't give you cancer?  (Again with the hypochondriasis.)  Aspartame is bad, right?  Help me out here, people, my body is begging you!