So, hey, um, when I started writing here again, I DID mention that since November I have been assuming my former identity of Registered Nurse on a part-time basis, right? What? No? I didn’t mention that?

Ahem.

GUESS WHAT. Last October, once all our kids had been in school for a couple of solid months, I decided that I needed more to do all day every day than watching DVR’d episodes of SVU while blog surfing and Twittering and having pretend conversations with my two dogs and two cats and not surprisingly our bank account and Rob agreed. As did the two dogs and two cats.

I applied for and was awarded a position (I like to say “awarded a position” as if it were winning the lottery. Because to our bank account? Exactly like winning the lottery.) at a hospital literally five minutes from home, in a specialty department that was brand new to me. And it’s been going REALLY WELL. The work is interesting and challenging and I am engaging in this thing we nurses call PATIENT CARE, which may sound strange to point out, but consider that I spent the first ten years of my career in operating rooms with patients who were totally unconscious doing what I liked to call SURGEON CARE. Which kind of sounds dirty but wasn’t.

The best part of my new job is that I have made some friends there. ACTUAL IN-REAL-LIFE HUMAN FRIENDS. Friends who make me laugh almost every day, who text me when I’m at home sick with The Black Lung, who have nicknames for me, and who share their interesting life stories with me. IT IS A CRAZY CONCEPT THIS IN-REAL-LIFE HUMAN FRIEND CONCEPT. But it’s grown on me.

The two main negatives of returning to work I have been dealing with are: 1. Getting reacquainted with the hours in the day that occur before 9am, in light of the fact that I am not now, nor have I EVER been, nor will I EVER be, a morning person, and 2. Feeling pretty tired at the end of the day. But a GOOD tired.

And sadly, I have developed some bad after-work habits that play out over the course of nearly every evening Monday through Thursday nowadays, a few of which I blame on the fact that it has been a VERY LONG WINTER, what with all the below-seventy-degrees-Fahrenheit-weather for the past four months, and a few of which I blame on the fact that I must now restrict my watching DVR’d episodes of SVU while blog surfing and Twittering, not to mention having pretend conversations with my two dogs and two cats, to the hours between 6pm and 2am 10pm.

LIFE IS HARD, Y’ALL.

Anyway, I haven’t left the house in the evening in four months a while. Which is bad.

And while I’ve been enjoying writing again on this here website, something’s gotta give because my kids are all Flowers in the Attic pasty. SERIOUSLY.

I’ve been mulling this over for the past few days and at the same time I discovered that Tulsa now has (or maybe has had all along, hell, what do I know, I haven’t left the house in a year) a very well-organized Digital Photography group, which, hello, I LOVES me some digital photography. Yeehaw. And also my Canon Rebel xT has been sitting neglected on the top shelf of the Closet Under the Stairs. Plus Katelynn is STILL not really sure how to smile for a camera since I pretty much stopped photographing her at age six months.

DON’T GIVE ME THAT LOOK. This website is called CRASH TEST MOMMY for a reason, people.

So I think the compromise here is that a) I start getting out with the kids in the evenings especially since the end of Nucleur Winter appears to be in sight, and b) I take my Canon Rebel xT on these outings and partake of the Digital Photography-ing that I hear is all the rage so that c) I will have something to show my future new friends in the Tulsa Digital Photography group when I d) go to a meeting some time in the near future, meaning e) I will have yet another reason to LEAVE THE HOUSE.

I’m betting that textual updates here will probably start to be limited to one or two a week, so I hope you like to look at pretty pictures of shiny things!

The ramifications of this whole Get-A-Job thing were more far-reaching than any of us could have predicted.

_________

EDITED TO ADD:  Rob read this post and was nice enough to remind me that I didn’t actually spend TEN WHOLE YEARS as an operating room nurse because according to him when you deduct the time off I took to [carry, birth, and raise] Emma and Katelynn, it equals more like five and so I responded that I call it ten years because IT FELT LIKE TEN kind of like how our nine-year marriage has FELT LIKE THIRTY and then he shut up.

The Walgreens near my house has an aisle with a whole section dedicated to selling “As Seen On TV” products. Which, awesome, since I tend to be susceptible to the charismatic marketing tactics of the likes of one Billy Mays, but am also an unabashed impulse shopper which means four to six weeks shipping and handling time totally kills my instant gratification buzz. And my Walgreens is open 24 hours. Awe-some.

I went to the As Seen On aisle a couple of weeks ago looking for a bottle of Orange Glo, as my hardwoods are due for their yearly bimonthly weekly cleaning, and I have yet to find a cleaning product that doesn’t leave them a dull, streaky mess but Billy Mays promised me a brilliant luster that fills the air with the natural scent of a thousand bushels of ripe Florida oranges and a chorus of angels singing Hallelujah. Or some such.

That darned Billy Mays. He had me at hello.

Anyway, no Orange Glo was to be found on the shelf, which was okay since history had shown that if I actually BOUGHT the Orange Glo then at some point a certain spouse of mine was probably going to expect me to actually USE the Orange Glo. And I’m sort of allergic to activities in the Housework category. Also the Yardwork category. And Cooking.

Undeterred by my (good) luck, I scanned the neatly faced rows of brightly colored boxes, each one imploring me to TRY! the NEW! LATEST! GREATEST! this or that. Just TRY! it for 30! DAYS! MONEY! BACK! GUARANTEED! and not surprisingly, something caught my eye. Behold:

Porta-Book, $19.95 at Walgreens, $14.95 plus shipping after mail-in rebate from website. Chorus of angels not included.

Granted, no endorsement by Billy Mays, but hold the phone Myrtle, will you look at the faces of those shiny, happy people using the Porta-Book? Do you know what that means Myrtle? Let me spell it out for you. BUYING PORTA-BOOK WILL MAKE US ALL SHINY, HAPPY PEOPLE. SHINY HAPPY PORTA-PEOPLE. HOLDING HANDS.

So I bought one. Because I am all about the shinyhappiness.

Unfortunately, after having tried out Porta-Book for approximately 33.7 minutes, I am sad to report that I must fess up and burst your bubble. Look at the advertisement again. See the five Porta-People and the pair of Severed Porta-Arms using the Porta-Book as a laptop stand? It is my belief that those are ACTORS who were PAID to REPRESENT shiny, happy Porta-People (and/or Porta-Arms). I have come to this conclusion based on my personal experience that using the Porta-Book as a Porta-Laptop does NOT make a person shiny nor happy. Based on my personal experience, it makes a person a Porta-BITCH. Especially if a person is me.

Because laptops and Porta-Book do not play well together. Some combination of the laptop’s size and weight and the shape of the Porta-Book’s front raised edge cause the laptop to slide off the Porta-Book while it is in use. Repeatly. At any one of the five adjustable positions.

Now I know what you’re thinking and I completely agree. I pledge NEVER AGAIN to buy an As Seen On TV product that does not carry the Billy Mays stamp of approval. NEVER EVER.

Unless that product is called a Snuggie.

———-
UPDATED TO ADD: I was not pitched, paid, or promo’d to write this post. I wrote it because I like to buy things and sometimes the things I buy are fabulawesome and sometimes they suck. And I like to tell you which things do which. You’re welcome.

Dear Micky D’s,

Forget the fact that every trip through your drive through is a migraine-inducing exercise in determining which food, condiment, and/or utensil item was left out of one of my bags (Straws. Lately it’s always STRAWS).

Also, forget that unless I patronize your establishment at precisely the lunch or dinner hour then I can bet Oprah’s net worth my room-temperature French Fries will taste like stale canola oil.

Forget that the teenage boy with the fauxhawk and braces on only his top teeth argued heatedly with me during an unfortunate shortchanging incident involving a brand new twenty dollar bill I had just taken out of the Chase Bank ATM directly across the parking lot from your establishment. THE ATM THAT DOES NOT DISPENSE BILLS SMALLER THAN A TWENTY.

And forget that time the vertically-challenged elderly gray-haired senior-ly female order-taker condescendingly scolded me for ordering my daughter’s Happy Meal in a “main course-drink-side dish” fashion instead of the McDonald’s preferred “main course-side dish-drink” fashion (i.e. “I need a Chicken Nuggets Happy Meal with a Root Beer and Apple Dippers,” instead of “I need a Chicken Nuggets Happy Meal with Apple Dippers and a Root Beer.”) Who knew it took so little to ruin her five hours on the clock?

FORGET ALL THAT.

Today you reached an all-time low level of customer (dis)service.

Because you know those tan-colored four-cup drink holders you use? The ones that don’t really hold the Happy Meal-sized cups very snugly and permit actual teetering and wobbling of said cups, inducing heart palpitations occurring at periodic intervals that approximate the distance between stop lights from your restaurant’s location to my home? The ones that are now apparently fabricated from recycled dirty diapers since instead of holding beverages firmly in place they BEND? IN HALF? STRAIGHT DOWN THE CENTER? Those drink holders?

Yeah, they SUCK.

And, thanks to said drink holders, I have the Root Beer colored/flavored/scented automobile carpeting and floor mats to prove it.

BA-DA-BA-BA-BA. I’m NOT lovin’ it.
Jenny

I’ve been playing a really aggravating fun new game with the four-year-old since she got home from school this afternoon. It starts out with her asking for something, like maybe another snack when she’s already had two string cheeses and a Key Lime Yoplait, or asking to do something, like ride her bike around our cul-de-sac without supervision or a helmet. Anyway, she asks for these things in a calm, rational, matter-of-fact tone, all smiles and using her best indoor voice and run-on sentences and she finishes off each query with a disclaimer that it’s okay with her if I say no, which ends up being a total lie because it’s so obviously only okay to say no as long as I DO NOT ACTUALLY SAY NO, lest she be instantly transformed into the supervillian known as Mini Screaming Mimi.

Take about ten minutes ago for example. She comes to me and she says, “Mommy can I have some microwave popcorn and it’s okay if you say no because I already had two string cheeses and a yogurt but I’m still hungry and I know you’ll probably say no and it’s okay if you say no but can I?”

Being a Good Mother, I gave it about twopointsix seconds thought before I replied, “No.”

So then she, in WAY LESS THAN TWOPOINTSIX SECONDS starts screaming and jumping up and down like I doused her with kerosene and lit a match to her, “BUT WHY!!!!????? WHHHHHHYYYYYYYYY???!!!! ALL I HAD WAS TWO STRING CHEESES AND A YOGURT AND I’M SOOOOOOO HUNGRY!!!!!!! MOMMY PLEEEEEASE!!!!???? PLEEEEEASE!!!!???? PRETTY PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE!!!!!!???????”

I was a little in shock from the Jekyll and Hyde-ness of her, but I held my ground and repeated my answer, only louder and through gritted teeth for effect. She took the hint and bansheed up to her room.

But then, not five microwave popcorn-less minutes later, she returns and, again with the calmness of a thousand Tibetan monks, says, “Mommy is it okay if I go ride my bike by myself not in the driveway or the garage but in the street but not past the end of the street and if I can is it okay if I don’t wear my helmet because it makes my head all itchy and it’s okay if you say no since it’s almost dinner time but I just want to ride it for thirty minutes but you’ll probably say no but can I?” (Okay, maybe like a thousand Tibetan monks on The Crack.)

And once again, I gave her a quick “no.”

And once again she came UN-GLUED.

She howled “AWWWWW!!! WHYYYYY NOOOOOOTTTT????!!!”  while dancing around with much flailing of the arms and such intensity that my first instinct was to call for an old priest and a young priest, but before I could, I got distracted by trying to wrap my brain around the sheer quantum energy it must be taking her to dissociate so rapidly like that. Her shift was mesmerizing to witness.

Then I did the only thing I could reasonably do at a moment like that.

I laughed out loud at her.

She took off screeching down the hall at eighty miles an hour, but so far no head spinning or projectile vomiting so we should be good.