The Milk Bet

Oh, the milk bet… where do I begin?

For as long as I can remember, I have always loved milk. I would call myself an extreme milk lover. Some people may claim they drink milk with everything but I really do. Pizza? Yes. Hot dogs? Sure. Funyuns? Absolutely, wouldn’t have anything else. I guess it was during high school when a fellow camper at Sugarloaf Christian summer camp told me about – drumroll, please – The Milk Bet. Rumor has it that it’s physically impossible to drink one gallon of milk in one hour and keep it down without vomiting for another hour. I always thought I’d be like the Golden Child, the Chosen One… so after much discussion with my husband and several friends I decided to go all mythbusters and give it a shot. This is my story in pictures and commentary.

Here we go. I have a fresh gallon of milk and a jar of peanut butter to snack on. I’m just full of good ideas today. I’m all smiles during glass one (which is huge) and it goes down almost as smoothly as the first frozen margarita on a restaurant patio on a hot, summer night. Sweet.

Glass #2 – Still feeling good. Milk is tasty and it’s my friend. Nothing could possibly go wrong because we’ve had a long, fulfilling love affair since before I could talk.

Glass #3 – I’m feeling arrogant now. I’m halfway through the gallon and we are only 12 minutes in. I’ve got this in the bag. My husband is going to miss that $20 he bet me (yes, I’m a cheap date). I just might make him take me for ice cream after I’m done because I’m that sure of myself right now. I can almost taste the chocolate hard shell. Yum.

Glass #4 – At this point, I’m thinking of ways to make some more room in my stomach. The milk still tastes good but I’m starting to feel full and developing a bit of a headache. I pop two Aleve and excuse myself to go to the restroom. My husband follows me like he feels the need to watch me sit on the toilet. I assure him I won’t covertly vomit, then I pee and get back to the table to polish off the fourth glass.

Glass #5 – Let me start off with a story. When I was a teenager – probably 15 or 16 – I was very moody. Of course, I’m a woman and a redhead and I was going through my angsty years. As I’ve said before, I take my milk very seriously. One morning after my dad yelled at me for 30 minutes to wake up, I finally got up and prepared for school. I went to the refrigerator armed with a glass so I could have my morning drink. I stood there for a second puzzled. Is there no milk? Really? Has this man been raising me since I was 10 months old? Did my mother not remind him to stop at the store? I turned and calmly told him he needed to either go buy a gallon of milk or drive up the road and find a cow. He said no and I transformed into the Incredible Hulk with the intention of letting him know he wouldn’t like me when I’m angry. I screamed, stomped and slammed the refrigerator door so hard that I broke it. Yep. I’m not proud of this, but it’s a true story. Dad reminds me all the time. I broke our refrigerator door and he had to order a part to fix it all because we were out of milk… blah, blah, blah... So as I start glass five, I’m wondering why anyone would throw such a tantrum over a liquid that is so clearly sent from the devil himself. What is this foreign substance in front of me and why am I forcing myself to drink it in such mass amounts?

Glass #6 – I’m pretty sure my eyeballs are floating, aren’t they? I feel like I am having an out of body experience as I sit and look at what’s left of this gallon. I have 15 minutes left. So I try. I’m giving this a valiant effort. That feeling you get when you’re so full you can’t physically swallow another bite? Yeah, I had that to an unbelievable level and still somehow managed to get almost half the glass down. At this point I feel like I’m wearing a fat suit and begging my husband to let me take a Phenergan and I realize… I surrender. Yep. I’m waving the big, proverbial, white (ironic) flag. Can’t do it. I quit.

This is my “sad/I hate you for letting me do this to myself” face. I decide the best thing for me would be to retire to a warm bath with a trash can pulled to the side of the tub. I lay down in the water and call my friend, Amy, who tells me how mad she is at me for not just finishing the last half of a glass. I’ve let down everyone who had faith in me. I fail. J So I soak for a few minutes and meditate and repent for all of my misplaced arrogance and beg for mercy before retreating downstairs for one last picture.

Everyone say hello to my “milk baby”. He/she isn’t the cutest baby in the world but I love it nonetheless. Now I’m going to go make my husband nurture it with some lotion and a massage and go to bed with my fingers crossed that it will be gone and my flat belly will be back by tomorrow.

Hello, darlin'...

It's been a long time...

Gosh, I don't know what has happened between my last post and now. It's been a big blur. Where do I start? Since November, I have quit my job at the hospital and started a new one. I now work as an MDS Coordinator at the nursing home I started at years ago as a CNA. I LOVE it. I can't even explain how nice it is to not have a problem waking up every morning to go to work. I get to go in and work with people I really enjoy and sit and talk to residents and hear their stories. I learn something new every day and I have a lot of fun.

My kids are growing like weeds. Next month, Katelyn will turn seven and Hunter will turn six. Where did the time go? I feel like I had them yesterday. I looked back through some old pictures this afternoon and it made me so sad. Hunter tells me he will always be my baby, so that helps... Katelyn looks at me and rolls her eyes like I'm a crazy old person.

Speaking of the kiddos, I got a call from their school today and the secretary told me that Hunter wasn't feeling well and needed me to come get him. So I left work in a hurry and went to pick him up. I stood otuside the office waiting for him and he came running up the hallway with a huge smile on his face. I knew that very second that he had been faking sick but I played along and we went back to my office for a little bit. He proceeded to jump on my lap, shove a truffle in his mouth and ask me if he could play games on Nick Jr.'s website. We walked around the facility looking at all of the cats, dogs, birds and fish and then my friend Megan asked Hunter if she could be his girlfriend. He said yes, of course. A few hours later, he proceeded to confess his love for her over and over until finally he broke the news to me that I've officially been demoted to the #2 spot... replaced by my friend. Ahh... I guess I better get used to that since it will inevitably only get worse as he gets older.

Anway, I promise to get better at posting on here. My kids are a laugh a minute and people ask me all the time why I don't blog more. I get so busy with working full time, going to school full time and having two kids, a husband and a dog that sometimes I forget. :-) I'll try, though!

The Nail Polish Fiasco (circa 2006)

I found several old blogs containing funny stories about the kids on my old hard drive and have decided to post a series of them on here. I am starting with a story from summer 2006 when Katelyn was 3 and Hunter was 2... complete with pictures. Enjoy!

The Nail Polish Fiasco

I work nights. Working nights doesn’t mix well with having two toddlers at home… so if you’ve been thinking about it and you have kids at home, just say no. Patrick left for work this morning and the kids were still asleep so he left us alone. Since I didn’t get to sleep until 7:30am, I guess I must have went into a semi-coma because I didn’t hear the kids get out of bed.

Something finally stirred me awake around 10am, it must have been the sense of impending doom that was hanging there in the complete silence of my bedroom. The kids were in the bathroom whispering. Whispering isn’t ever a good thing in my house. So I crept out of bed and stood outside the door listening.

“Hunter, give me more toilet paper, momma’s going to be mad!”

Shit.

I pushed open the door and what do I see? Rainbows. A rainbow on my bathtub, a rainbow on my floor and a rainbow on my toilet. Oh, and the rug and the sink. What made these beautiful rainbows, you ask? Nail polish. Bottles and bottles of nail polish. I immediately regret the fact that I took Katelyn to the store for ten colors of it a couple days ago. She’s only three, what was I thinking?

So what do I do? I cry a little. Yes, that’s the only reaction I could muster because after 3 years of motherhood I am completely convinced my children truly hate me. I called my husband and told him he had to come home. He had no choice in the situation, but he had to come home right now before I completely lose my mind. He tells me to come pick him up so I pick both kids up and, for the first time, I actually get to take a good look at them since I am no longer focused on the mess in the bathroom…
Katelyn clearly also got into my makeup. She has painted on Groucho Marx style eyebrows with my mascara and has pink lipstick all over any area within 3 inches of her lips. Her body, as well as her little brother’s, is completely covered in every shade of nail polish I own. Hunter is crying. It may be because he has eyeshadow all over his face or maybe the nail polish that got inside his diaper is a bit uncomfortable, I don’t know.
My bathroom is clean now. I cleaned out Walgreen’s entire stock of nail polish remover and ruined six toothbrushes, but it’s clean. Social services will probably be knocking on my door soon considering I had to call the doctor to ask how to safely get nail polish off my children’s skin (baby oil, fyi). Oh well. Everyone’s kids do things like this to them… right?

Tamiflu or Crack? You decide.

So... let's start this post off with a funny quote from Hunter and a quick apology from me for slacking so much on my blogging. Exciting things are happening for me, namely a new PRN job at the nursine home that I LOVE just in time for Christmas so I'm going to have tons of extra cash rolling in until something more permanent for me opens up there. I love, love, love working with patients with dementia. They're my favorite. So, yay for me. On top of that, I volunteered to coach Katelyn's cheerleading squad so I've been really busy. Anyway, on to the Hunter quote. Many of you probably saw this on facebook but it's just too good not to post again. This came out of his mouth - word for word - at the bus stop one morning:

"Mommy... I don't like being so handsome. It's hard for a man like me. Too many girls... it's just not fair to the other mans." Does he act like his daddy much? I think so.

That being said, my sweet angel of a little boy has turned into the devil reincarnate the past few days. He started getting sick on Wednesday night so I kept him home from school on Thursday and took him to the doctor. They did a strep test - what a racket... just a way for the office to make money, in my opinion - just so everyone knows, those things are only accurate 50% of the time!! But anyway, I digress and step off my nurse soapbox... they also did a flu swab on him and the doctor said he was going to go ahead and treat it like H1N1 and give him Tamiflu. Great. That will make him feel better in no time, right? Sure. He seemed to feel better on Friday. All was well so we packed up and went to Newport on Saturday morning to go to the aquarium. He seemed a little moody and whiny but it went okay. We decided to go to dinner at Boston Market before the baseball game and that's where all hell broke loose...

Almost immediately upon entering the place, he started screaming at us at the top of his lungs. He couldn't decide on food, he didn't like what we picked him, he didn't want a drink, he didn't want to pick up his fork and eat. He was screaming and making a scene so Patrick took him to the bathroom. That did NO good, so he continued with his tantrum until Patrick took him outside. He was being SO nasty. That's just not like him. Hunter is very chill and complacent most of the time. He was having sobbing fits and when we would tell him to stop he would simply shake his head and say "I can't"... this continued for the rest of the night. He continued to be very disobedient (again, not typical of him) and when we got home, he threw himself onto the kitchen floor and started kicking and yelling and sobbing about how no one cared about him and he wanted to die. It was ridiculous.

His mood continued through the next day and my joking comments about it being the Tamiflu grew into concern so I googled it. Apparently, this medicine has had this effect on a lot of kids. There have been three documented cases of teenagers on the medication killing themselves and several of smaller children having hallucinations and psychotic episodes. So there you go. I'm convinced it really was the medicine so I immediately stopped it and since he stopped taking it, he's back to normal. He's my happy-go-lucky boy again. Ludicrous. Just wanted to get that out there... there's clearly something in it that doesn't react well with children in some cases. I wouldn't suggest anyone give it to their kids.

I start my new cheerleading coach gig on Monday. I'm excited and completely terrified. All the girls are very young and there's only 12 of them but I feel totally outnumbered. I don't know how to even start. I guess we will figure it out together. So with that, two jobs and three online classes this semester, I feel like I have a lot - maybe too much - on my plate. Hopefully I can handle it all... grace under pressure, right?

Back to reality...

Ahhhh... and I'm back to work. I've been snapped back into the real world, unfortunately. I worked a grand total of four days between July 22 and September 9 but now I'm getting back into the swing of things. I've recovered fully from my surgery and I feel great. We went to the beach last weekend and it was amazing. I always have such a fun, relaxing time at Tybee. It might have something to do with all the margaritas but I'd like to think it's just the island in general.
So picture this: Patrick has had two (yes, I said only two) rum runners on the beach and he's what I would call pretty inebriated. He tried to warn us. He told us if he had two of them, he'd be "belligerent" (his words, not mine). He was SOOOO funny the whole afternoon. He lost a lense on his sunglasses in the ocean but continued to wear them anyway. We finally decided to pack up our stuff and head back to the beach house and Patrick takes off way ahead of us. I probably should have been concerned but I felt sure he'd make it back to the house at some point. As we approach a cross walk, Lacey elbows me and says "Hey Manda, do you see Patrick anywhere?" I thought "oh shit, he's gone... we'll never find him" so I start looking around frantically and - out of the corner of my eye - I see the top of a head in a hotel swimming pool. I think I should stop here and say it was a hotel swimming pool that was fenced in and behind a gate that was clearly for guests only. I look closer and who is it? Why, it's Patrick of course. The second I lock eyes with him, he slowly raises his index finger over his mouth and says "Shhhhhhhhhh!" It was hilarious. So hilarious that I was laughing too hard to even think to take a picture. Man, he thought he was SO sneaky. He talked about it the rest of the night.

We had a really great time. Now we're home and I have tons of stuff coming up over the next several weeks to look forward to. My sister will be here in a bit so we can have some quality sister time. Next weekend, I get to be the maid of honor in my best friend's wedding. The weekend after that, I get to go to New York City. I love always having something coming up. It makes the work week not seem so bad. :-)