Tag Archives: humorous

Feb 17 2013
8 Comments
It Ain't Always Pretty...But It's My Life

Diabetes Isn’t Funny…And Neither Is This Blog

I have been struggling to write lately. I had been blaming it on our busy fall schedule, having the house on the market, the move, the holidays…..

But it seems that those were just excuses.

I think I have identified the problem.

Diabetes isn’t funny.

I am a funny person (people tell me this anyway). And I do know, and fully admit, that I always use humor to diffuse unpleasant situations. So I love to write funny shit. And I was blessed with a personality and perspective to always find the funny shit.

But diabetes isn’t funny.

And this blog is about diabetes and my thoughts, feelings and experiences with having a child diagnosed with diabetes. And I passionately want to educate people about this disease and I want to be a source of information for new families facing this awful diagnosis.

But again, I have to say it. Diabetes isn’t funny.

I mean, it’s not even remotely funny.

There is nothing funny about blood sugars in the 500’s with moderate ketones.

And I assure you that a blood sugar of 31 is not going to get a chuckle from me.

I promise you that worrying about whether my son will loose his eyesight or keep his limbs, is not the least bit whimsical.

Hoping and praying that my son will someday find someone who will love him and be willing to take on the beast that is this disease does not crack me up.

So, all I am left to write about is the sad, scary, lonely, depressing feelings I have about diabetes.

And that sucks.

It bums me out.

I have already written posts about how type 1 has nothing to do with sugar, and that it really is about a confused immune system and bad luck. I have written many times about how tired I am now that I have to set alarms and check blood sugars all night long and how that contributes to anxiety and feelings of depression.

I have written about the “Honeymoon” period and even about diabetes and ADHD.

Sure I have peppered in a few non-diabetes related posts about ants, laundry, computers and make-up (this one is hilarious-if I do say so myself! And totally true!)

I’ve even written more than one post about not having anything to write about!

But this blog is supposed to be a source for others going through the same thing to find valuable information about timely, targeted diabetes information!

Right?

Ok, so I’ve made a decision.

This is my blog and I can do whatever I want. I didn’t sign any contract to ONLY provide diabetes related posts!

And the fact is, that while others that are going through the same thing as me DO need diabetes information, they are still regular people who need to laugh and get AWAY from diabetes sometimes.

Sometimes you need to read about how someone else’s 5 year-old had a MASSIVE code brown in the MEN’S room at a high school during your other son’s basketball tournament and how you had to have your oldest son stand guard outside and not let any men in and how in the end you had to abort the underwear  AND shorts AND shoes and usher the 5 year-old out the side door before you either got chastised by the janitor or arrested for having a half-naked 5 year-old in a public place. (Yeah, pretty sure we are not welcome at Shawnee Mission West High School anymore).

So, my friends, as I am entering the second year of my blog, I am taking it a new direction. If I’m ever going to write again. I’m going to have to start including some non D material.

After all, the name of the blog is WifeMomPancreas, because I am not just a pancreas!

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,
Apr 16 2012
3 Comments
It Ain't Always Pretty...But It's My Life

Am I Weird?

I was talking with a coworker of mine today who is a nurse. She mentioned that when she was 18 her 9 year-old sister was diagnosed with T1D and she talked about helping take care of her. Another coworker asked if that is what made her want to be a nurse. She said that it was part of the reason, the other reason was that her own daughter was diagnosed with Leukemia when she was 7 and that taking care of both her sister and her daughter made her realize that nursing was her calling. And then she said something that struck me as odd. She said that taking care of a chronically ill child changes you, it makes you weird.

Now, I agree with the first part of that statement. It has not even been three full months since Medium was diagnosed, but I am definitely a different person. Most notably, I am exhausted. Actually, I am beyond exhausted. I am exhausted on steroids. I am almost non-functioning exhausted. I keep dragging my butt in to work every morning and saying, out loud, as if anyone really cares, “I don’t know how much longer I can keep up this pace”. I sit at my desk and think about whether I think I can make it through the whole day without going to the parking lot on my lunch break and taking a nap in my car. I pump myself full of caffeine and I trudge through the day. It feels like I am walking through quick-sand, like I am in slow motion. Somehow I am making it work, keeping up with my responsibilities at work and, for the most part, I feel I am pulling my weight. I know that I am capable of doing more, being sharper, going above and beyond. But I don’t even feel bad that I’m not because I am giving all I can right now. I am all tapped out. That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger–if that is true, I am IRON WOMAN. But I still don’t get what she means by the “it makes you weird” part.

I don’t say these things so I can get sympathy. I am not the only tired woman in the world, not by a long shot. And I am keenly aware of how, even though things are pretty rough right now, they could be so much worse. On my daily prayer list are so many other families that are going through far worse. But the fact remains, that right now, life is hard. And I am trying my best to get through with my sanity and dignity in tact (incidentally,bursting into your bosses office and announcing that you have to leave because you forgot to pick up one of your children does not help this plight).

Besides being beyond exhausted, I have changed in other ways, too. I carry needles and glucose tabs everywhere I go, I can divide by 30 in the blink of an eye, I know the carb count of a plethora of foods, I stab my child with needles frequently, I no longer make jokes about being in a diabetic coma, I buy home hemoglobin A1C tests, I have insulin pens in my butter dish in the fridge, I know what basal and bolus mean, I regularly inspect my son’s feet, I stab my non-diabetic children with needles on occasion, I have Skittles and Kool-Aid in my underwear drawer, there are smears of blood all over my son’s sheets and some other random places around my house……

Huh, I think I know what my coworker meant now.

At least I don’t have a zipper on my tongue.

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Mar 19 2012
2 Comments
It Ain't Always Pretty...But It's My Life

Rants About Ants

I seriously hate ants.  I know they are tiny and relatively harmless.  But I hate them……H-A-T-E them.  And we get them every year now.  And really bad when it rains.  And it rained today. A lot.  A lot of rain=a lot of ants.  YUCK!  We found some really great ant traps that usually work really well.  But even those aren’t working this time.  There are still several stray ants crawling around my computer desk.  This is where I spend most of my time at home.  I am either checking email, paying bills, researching diabetes, Facebooking, blogging, etc., etc., etc., so it is especially annoying.  It’s like they are taunting me.  Running around my desk, across the keyboard (pretty sure there is a family of ants camped out between the “w” and the “e” key), across the screen of the laptop  and I am sure in my diet Coke.  I can only imagine how many of the tiny buggers I have consumed.  And even when I’m not sitting at the computer desk I feel like they are crawling on me, probably because the other night I got into bed and there was one crawling on my arm.  BARF!  And if those aren’t enough reasons to hate them, I have one more reason….. they sent me to Wal-Mart.  And there is only one thing I hate more than ants and that is going to Wal-Mart. (Okay there are lots of things I hate more than ants, like racism and bullying and diabetes, but you get my point.)  And my friends and family know this.  My sister called me one time and when I answered she asked me where I was.  I replied, “hell”, and she said, “oh, Wal-Mart”.

Yes, I am pretty sure Wal-Mart is a form of hell.  Or at least it is a stop on the way to hell.  But at least you can get everything you ever wanted there on your way to hell.  This is one of the things that annoys me about Wal-Mart.  Most people think it is convenient that you can get anything from shampoo to shotguns at Wal-Mart, I find it obnoxious.  Because they sell so much stuff, the store is huge.  There is no quick trip in and out of Wal-Mart.  And if you get to the register and then remember that you forgot to get milk, well forget it. The next ferry to Milkland doesn’t leave for 30 minutes and you’re going to need one as far away as they put the milk from the check-out registers.  And it’s like nothing is sacred anymore.  I mean seriously, you can get anything there. Salon-only hair products, specialty sports equipment, I swear I saw a pair of Manolo Blahnik’s in the shoe department!  They have a whole section of “As Seen On TV” crap.  Well I guess it’s not just seen on TV when you pimp all your stuff out to Wal-Mart now is it?  And yet, with all this stuff, (stuff I never knew existed, therefore I didn’t need it or want it until I got to hell), ends up in my cart.  Today I had to physically restrain myself from putting a Baby Bullet into my cart. (It’s the smaller brother to the Magic Bullet-which I already have- that you use to make your own baby food!  So cute!)  And when you have this much crap in your store, you are going to attract a lot of people….and not all of them good.  (May I refer you to exhibit A, www.peopleofwalmart.com )  There are other people there, too, like 2 year-olds at midnight and my kids’ teacher when I am yelling at them, and my neighbor whom I told I couldn’t play BUNCO because I had a terrible headache.  Ugh. I just want to go in to the store, get what I need and get out.  I don’t have the tolerance or self-control for Wal-Mart.  Which is why I usually make my husband go.  But I was fed up with the ants.  Me and the ants needed to have a “coming to Jesus” talk.  So I ventured out, in the rain, to hell because come hell or high water, I was getting rid of those ants!  And now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go evict a family of ants from my keyboard with a can of air….that I bought at Wal-Mart.

Tagged , , , ,
Mar 11 2012
9 Comments
It Ain't Always Pretty...But It's My Life

Golden-Haired Make-Up Maidens

I don’t wear make-up.  Well, I wear a little bit, out of necessity, because I am getting old.  I wear a light coat of mineral foundation (probably too light to even make a difference) and a smidge of bronzer across my checks and nose, and some kind of lip tint or gloss.  That’s it.  I never have liked wearing make-up, (although I was that teenager who fought my parents tooth and nail to wear it, and then never did.  I did that with a lot of things.  What a pain in the ass I was!)

So if I barely wear any make-up, you can guess how quickly I go through it.  Not very.  Did you know that make-up has an expiration date?  It does, and I had exceeded mine so I stopped by Ulta the other day to replace it.  I naively thought this would be a simple task, an in-and-out kind of trip.  I was wrong.

First of all, it has been so long since I bought foundation that the brand I use doesn’t name the colors the same anymore so I was at a loss as to which is the color that I need. So I asked a sales girl for a little guidance.  An innocent enough request, right?  Wrong again.  The golden-haired make-up maidens that work at these places take their work very seriously and they don’t take kindly to us “occasional users”.  Crystal was on to me right away.  She knew that if it had been that long since I bought new foundation, what kind of shape must my brushes be in?  Her suspicions were validated when she asked me how often I clean my brushes, and I replied, “Clean them?”  New brushes in hand, I blindly followed her to another isle while she asked me what I use for a primer.  Primer?  Are we talking about my make-up habits or painting a house?  The look on my face gave Crystal the answer she needed and the next thing I know I have a $40 bottle of un-wrinkle primer in my hand.  Feeling very out of my element here and trying desperately to dig out of the hole of shame I have dug for myself, I did what I always do when I am uncomfortable, turn to humor.  I joked with Crystal that the only reason I even use the mineral foundation that I use is that the infomercial said it was so natural you could sleep in it.  Well, that did it.  Not only was Crystal horrified (I thought I was going to have to start CPR on her), now I have caught the attention of another sales girl nearby whose eyes grew as big as saucers when I said that.  Crystal takes a deep breath and says to me, with one hand over her heart, “Are you telling me you don’t take your make-up off at night?”   I am thinking in my head, “lady, I barely get the stuff on my face everyday, I sure as hell don’t have time to take it off, too!” I just smile at her and pray that a huge hole opens up beneath me and sucks me under or that some other poor woman is having an eye shadow emergency in the next isle over, or, at the very least, my cell phone rings.  Something to get me out of here.  Nothing.  So Crystal hands me a $17 tube of waterless cleanser that my lazy-ass can put on my night stand and says to me, and I kid you not, “My heart hurts to hear that you don’t take your make-up off.”  Honest to God, she said that.

Now I have never been good at math, but a quick calculation tells me that the cost of the arsenal of gear I now have in my arms is going to send my husband into orbit, but what was I supposed to do?  Crystal’s heart hurts.  I don’t want to go through life knowing that someone’s heart hurts because of me.  So I thank her for setting me straight and getting me on the path to cleaner, healthier skin and I run to the check-out counter.  And I can rest easier knowing that one less make-up maiden has a wounded heart.  Because what she doesn’t know, won’t hurt her.  (Come on, you don’t really think I am going to start taking my make-up off, do you?)

Tagged , , ,
Mar 06 2012
3 Comments
It Ain't Always Pretty...But It's My Life

Ground Rules and Disclaimers

Ok, so I have posted 3 entries and have discovered a few things that are nagging at me to get out.  My writing has gotten me into trouble in the past and that makes me sad and unhappy because my intention is to entertain people while releasing some stress of my own.  And we have all heard the saying, “if mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy” so I need to set some blogging ground rules (plus, I just like rules, ask my kids).

First of all, it gets really old typing “type1 diabetes” all the time, so I will abbreviate it to T1D.  Also, it has been brought to my attention that in the interest of privacy, it might be best to not put the full identity of my children on this blog.  So when I write about them I will refer to them as “Small”, “Medium” and “Large” because that’s what I call them at home since I can’t ever get their names straight.  Small is my 5 year-old, Medium is my 10 year-old and Large is my 12 year-old.

Second, I want to make sure I am not misunderstood.  I am a person who uses humor to express herself.  Sometimes people misunderstand my humor.  Let me set the record straight.  I do not think diabetes is funny, at all.  I do not take my responsibilities as a mother of a diabetic child lightly, and I don’t ever want anyone to take the flip comments I might make from time to time about diabetes, or the medical community as the law.  Sometimes I get irritated and writing is my outlet.  Let me vent.

Thirdly, I often talk about my kids in a way which some people might think I don’t even like them.  Rest assured, I love my children, but they irritate me sometimes (as does my husband, but that is another post all together)!  But I will let you in on a little secret….come closer….closer….closer, ok……I am human and I have flaws, GASP! Yeah, that’s right, I get irritated, a lot actually.  By my kids, my husband, my mother, my sisters and brother, my coworkers, the mailman, the lady in front of me in the check-out line at the grocery store who has 17 million coupons and a Zip-loc baggie full of coins, people who park so crappy in their parking spot that no one can park next to them, people who yell at their kids in public, (oh wait, I do that),  people who litter, people who try to talk to me in public restrooms (hello people, I am urinating here! This  is not Tammy’s Tea Time!  Stop talking to me while I am wiping!) oh the list goes on and on and on….but, in the words of  beloved golden girl, Sophia Petrillo, I digress.  Truth be told, I have to keep myself in check because I worry that I will come off as an annoying bragger of my brilliant, amazingly talented, gorgeous children, so I pick on them sometimes to offset the bragging.  (Smile)  But I promise you, I would step in front of a speeding bus for them, so don’t get too worked up about the way I blog about them.

Forthly, sometimes I write words or phrases that are not grammatically correct, again, this is for humor.  I promise you, I did graduate high school (college too)!

While this is mainly a blog about my life as a mother of a child with T1D (if you didn’t skip ahead to the end you know what that stands for), sometimes I will post things that have nothing to do with diabetes.  Because even though we have only been dealing with this for a short time, I can tell you I already know how important it will be to my sanity to take a break from diabetes from time to time (ha, that’s funny, because there is no break from diabetes, EVER.  That’s one of the things that sucks the most about it).  But I have 2 other kids and other interesting and funny things to talk about, so I will.

Sometimes I will talk about escaping the stresses of my life through drugs and alcohol (nothing major, just like beer and Xanax).  Again, this is for humor, I am not an alcoholic or a drug addict (not that there is anything wrong with that….)

Okay, I think I am getting sidetracked again.  I guess what I am trying to say here is, this is my blog and I can say whatever I want. No, wait. Let me try that again.  I am just a woman who is doing the best I can at managing my crazy, busy life.  It ain’t perfect, and it ain’t pretty, but it is the best I can do.  And if anything that I write in this blog, in an effort to vent my feelings, offends you, then stop reading my blog!

Tagged , , , , , ,