Few things are worse then hearing your name paged over the airport speaker system informing, “Salt Lake City passenger, ‘Loralee Choat-ay’, please come immediately to gate E15. Your flight is holding and is ready for departure.”, when you SWEAR that you have 35 minutes until your flight leaves.

That is, there is nothing worse unless you are hearing aforementioned announcement at the asscrack of dawn after getting zero sleep the night before due to anxiety of dying while flying in a plane the size of a Diet Coke can and/or missing your flight, and you are in the ladies room simultaneously having a panic attack and peeing like a racehorse and realize seconds after the announcer hideously mispronounces your name that THERE IS NO TOILET PAPER IN YOUR STALL.

THAT is much, much worse, my friends. You’ll just have to trust me on this one.

As my flabby ass jiggled and my feet thundered as I ran and panted down the concourse to my gate, I kept cursing my decision to not continue with boot-camp classes because then I might not feel like I was inhaling hydrochloric acid into my lungs. I was still confused about my departure time, so while I was running I pawed through my purse to get out my boarding pass and saw that YES, I was right about the time. I should have still had plenty of time to board my flight.

When I finally got to the gate, I couldn’t even speak to ask, “WTF, yo?!”. I just stood there gasping, sputtering and clutching my pounding chest in a manner that probably looked like I was feeling myself up.
I mean, I love my boobies, but even I have some amount of public restraint.

Sometimes.

Where was I?

Oh, yes. Sputtering, gasping, turning white and purple and spewing ropes of mucous at the gate attendant.

He guessed who I was.

“Oh, we just wanted to leave early. No problem. You’re fine.”

I AM? Try telling that to the very unfortunate guy who had to endure my mucous-infested coughing and wheezing for half of the flight as I tried to get enough oxygen to not pass out on him. Heart rate induced asthma can be a real bitch sometimes. I should have brought my inhaler, dammit.

I lived through the flight and on my way back to Cache Valley, I stopped in Salt Lake and met my beautiful, sassy, blogging friend, Sarah, for lunch at a restaurant that had a dessert case so glorious I considered raping it when I passed by on my way to the ladies room.

There was a lot of peeing going on with me today.

As I said, Sarah is gorgeous. I look like a homeless person (asscrack of dawn flight, remember?) but that is ok. If you look good all the time people expect too much of you. Personally, I am fond of getting a standing ovation for bothering to comb my hair.

The funny coinkidink about having lunch with Sarah is that is pretty much how I kicked off my whirlwind trip over a week ago. And yes, you are going to be subjected to it all. I will try to be brief, but try not to stick a fork in your eye, ok? I’ll sum up into brief paragraphs, if it makes it easier. I’ll even put in pithy little titles so you don’t get board.

“Who the hell knew that Diet Coke isn’t organic???”

As I was saying, I had lunch with Sarah and two fabulous bloggity friends, Jon Deal (Ransom Note Typography) and Brad (That One Guy). I didn’t have my stupid camera charged, so I don’t have a photo of the four of us, but I loved that lunch. We all got along like peas and carrots.I could lunch, talk, laugh and just be totally myself with this group of people until the end of time.

Indeed, the only drawback was when the waitress at the very tasty organic restaurant we dined at informed me that they only served “Organic” drinks and Diet Coke DOES NOT QUALIFY?!

WTF?

I plan on petitioning an organic hippie compound in Berkley to change that. Email me if you want to join in my quest.

“Fat cat in a little coat”

After lunch, I met Mandi and Jen for Jen’s baby shower. I heart them both. Mandi flew in from Georgia to throw the shower and Jen just looked radiant and adorable.

Plus, she has the fattest, most adorable, luscious, fatty fattakins cat on the planet. He is bigger than a huge watermelon and HIS name is “Abby”. Considering my female cat’s name is “Wilbur”, this just makes him rock even more.

The next morning I flew to Minneapolis to be with my brother. I already talked about some of the fun things we did in the previous post and I am going to add photos now that I have access to my photos.

The trip was a blast, even though we had no furniture in the house and I forgot my blowdryer. I guess the trip could have been titled “In which Loralee’s hair perpetually looks like a frizzy crap sandwich”, but I was just so happy to be in Minnesota that I didn’t care. (Too much).

“Loralee was here”

One of my favoritest things about this trip was hanging out with bloggity friends, both new and old. First off, I met Gretchen, who was so fun, vibrant and talented. She mainly blogs about her crafting, which she is ridiculously talented at, but she has the most fabulous personality as well.

We hit it off so well that we set up a second bloggity date where she braved my bad baking gene by teaching me to make rolls. I will post the whole recipe and photos plus directions at a later time, but these are the VERY BEST ROLLS I HAVE EVER SCARFED DOWN.

I want marry them and have little roll babies. Of course, this might be awkward as it would mean that I would totally fall into that category of “Those that eat their young”

I loved them and so did my brother, Brad. He has now commanded that I am in charge of roll making at all family gatherings (even if we’re not eating anything else. I still have to make the rolls.). They were soooo yummy.

And? To illustrate her personality, she posted this blog post with this photo after I left our “Roll Afternoon”. It is simply titled, “Loralee was here”.

You can see WHY I laughed my ass off. I so love the empty Diet Coke cups. HEE!

“Is an Amber Alert needed??”

Speaking of amazing baking and hilarity, I also got to hang out with “The Over Thinker”. OT has such snarky, witty comments on my blog, I love her. She is a million times better in person. Let’s add to the fact that she made me a tub of vanilla cupcakes with vanilla bean buttercream frosting and that she has glasses very similar to mine and that just makes her perfection in my eyes.

Because she is anonymous in her blogging I can’t tell you THE COOLEST THINGS ABOUT HER, but I will say that she is an ordained minister and is going to marry her friend this summer in the Teatons. How awesome is THAT? I could have spent DAYS with her and not gotten board. She rocks the house.

I did force her to stay in my brother’s basement and look for a photo that I had “Somewhere” in the millions of unorganized files splayed across my computer. Her husband didn’t send out a search party, but it was close.

“Deep, lovely waters”
Meeting Tasha and Amber for sushi was also lovely. I love talking to them. They are secure, intelligent, ambitious young women that are going to do some amazing things in their lives. Both of them have been reading me since the first few months of my blog and are Bemidji state alums. They are wicked smart and I love listening to them and their conversation. I am so very fond of everything about them. We had a lovely lunch and whiled away the time walking, shopping and talking. Every minute was relaxed, familiar and much needed moment for my soul.

Here are the lovelies. I would post a picture of all three of us, but I kept cutting off half of Tasha’s head in the photo.

I mentioned that I LOVED hanging out with my brother, Brad, right? He is very similar to me in his sense of humor, as illustrated here:

“The taco champion of Minnehaha*”

“Brad, I cannot eat one more taco. Two is my limit. You’ll have to eat the last one.”
“What? You can’t eat three?”
“No.”
“You’re sure???? Not EVEN if I turn it into a taco eating contest????”

We are the weirdest family I know.

Speaking of Minnehawhaw Falls, they are pretty, are they not?

I ended up seeing Jessie the day before I left.

I love Jessie so much. She is like a sister to me. She is one of my Bemidji readers and she has had the coolest, most varied life, living in India, a lean-to in the woods, hopping freight trains to Alaska and she just successfully defended her thesis. We went to lunch and coffee and talked and talked and talked. One day I hope to have half of the inner-peace that she does. She is amazing.

While I am SO GLAD to be home, I love Minnesota and the people in it. I am sad my brother moved from there, but hope, hope, HOPE that I can get there again.

As long as I don’t have to fly in a freaking tiny plane while needing to pee.

**Ok, this conversation didn’t REALLY occur in Minnehawhaw, but it is just SUCH a great name to say. And it sounds way better than “The taco champion of Apple Valley”, you know?

This was supposed to be Sunday’s post and my fridge and pasta post was supposed to go up Monday. I wrote them at the same time and must have transposed the publish dates.

Boo.

Oh, well. This way I can talk a bit about Easter, so I’ll just do two posts on Sunday. It never killed anyone, right?

Right.

How is your Easter going? Good? Are you having food and fun with family? Awesome.

How is my Easter?

Weeeelllll…

Easter suckasuckaSUCKS.

It just does so far.

It sucks a duck. Or a goose. Or quite possibly even a turkey.

Due to some highly emotional things that occurred last night, I totally made some Easter boo-boos and dropped the ball.

I had the kid’s baskets (full of candies they like, and these books, which I was excited about getting for them.) hidden on the lower shelf of our mobile island. You can see it next to the fridge in the post below. I was up crying a lot of the night and so I forgot to move all the Easter stuff to the table before I curled up in the fetal position in my bed around daybreak. (Can we please just ignore this part in all ways, shapes, and forms? Thanks. I appreciate it. It’s only applicable because there was a major reason I forgot to actually put the baskets out on the table.)

Jon and I don’t get a lot of Easter stuff. I splurge on REALLY high quality chocolate bunnies that I look forward to all year, some Russell Stover’s marshmallow chocolate eggs for me and some peanut butter eggs for Jon.

That’s it.

I stacked them on top of the island and because they are big, we but the boys “Carrot baseball bats” next to them.

My kids came running in to our bedroom and I was curled into a ball in the fetal position (yup. Still crying.) and I told them I forgot to put the stuff out and that it was in the island.

They were thrilled and ate it all up.

Problem?

They ate up the wrong pile.

So, I had no Easter candy. Not a big deal, it’s just a small example of the suck of the day that I feel like talking about. We aren’t even having Easter dinner with anyone. Jon and I thought the other was making arrangements and I didn’t get any fixings to make an Easter dinner.

So, anyway….The day just blows thus far.

Now that this cheeriness is all done, let’s move on to awarding the Peep of the Week.

The award goes to….

ADAM from the blog, Shadowy Figures.

Holy cow, this former lurker is comment gold!! Try clicking over to his blog and seeing the post about selling a saltine that looks like the state of Wyoming or how his dog, Floyd, should be cast as Tzeitel in an upcoming production of Fiddler on the Roof. It’s a crack up. He’s hilarious, yo.

Adam immediately caught my eye with his first-ever comment on my blog when he was commenting about my kitty, Wilbur and her whorish ways.

“Wow. Hey Loralee. Long time lurker, first time commenter. I was coming here to comment on yesterday’s post, which I may still do. But I just had to say, holy jeez! Our cats must be doppelgangers. Mine looks EXACTLY like yours.

And another freakish coincidence, HER name is Otis! (Thankfully, she is not the trollop yours seems to be. I chalk that up to my raising her Catholic. The whole “fear of God” stuff we lay on the kiddies (see what I did there? kiddies kitties. ).

Just wanted to say. Great blog. I’m working my way through the early archives, even though you’ve expressly wished that we not. Nyah! (You’d have to look very hard to see it, but I’m sticking my tongue out at you right now.)”

Then today he cracked me up with his commentary about my fridge.

“You just couldn’t resist bragging about your incredible fridge, eh? Now how am I going to go on, knowing that my fridge could be measuring out for my water bottle?

And I stand there eyeballing it, like an IDIOT!”

Thanks for the smile, Adam. It was appreciated.

If you want to give a commenter a shout on your blog, feel free to post a link to it below:

James, I am so glad that you talked to me tonight, but so sad that you are hurting. I want you to look at me and really listen to what I am saying and trust me, ok?

Ok.

You just told me that you think that I don’t understand how you’re feeling because I have ‘Lots and lots of friends’, right? I want you to know that I absolutely understand how you are feeling. You are heartbroken because after struggling so hard with not having any friends at school, the one and only friend you finally made ditched you for someone he thought was better, right?

Right.

Honey, I do have friends now. Lots and lots of friends that I cannot even say how grateful I am to have in my life.

Do you know a big reason WHY I am so grateful for my friends?

I am grateful because I didn’t have many friends at all when I was growing up. I could count them on one or two fingers most of the time. People not only made fun of me every single day of my life. It was so painful and hurt me so much that sometimes I can still feel exactly what it felt like all these years later. It hurt me for a lot longer than it should and made me think less of myself because I thought something must be wrong with me because I didn’t have friends.

I know that you don’t understand why kid A, B, C & D are so mean to you. I know you don’t understand why no one will stick up for you when people are teasing you, even though you stand up for them when they are being teased.Do you want to know something?

Most of them don’t understand why they do it, either.

You know better than anyone how mean kids can be to other kids just in order to fit in, not stick out, to be accepted. To stand up and face a crowd that is picking on someone takes an awful lot of courage. It’s one reason I am SO proud of you. But…a lot of kids just don’t have that at this stage in their lives.

I AM sure that at least ONE person has wanted to stick up for you in their heart and hated what was happening, but they were too afraid of everyone turning on them if they stood up and said ‘Stop’.

At some point in their lives, they will grow up, be stronger, be less afraid to stand alone. They will also regret the way that they treated you. They WILL. They will wish that day in the cafeteria had gone differently.

You and I are so much alike. I so wish you didn’t have to go through this, but if I could undo anything about my past it would be to change how hard I was on myself. I would want to see me like people who loved and cared about me see me.

How I see YOU.

You are a wonderful, wonderful person. You have such a fun personality, so much energy and kindness. You DO know how to be a friend, you are just in a tough place. This age is so hard on most people, son. Everyone else needs to catch up to YOU. You will see. For some it happens in High School, but it didn’t happen for me until college.

Suddenly, people got to college and everyone was on a level playing field. People were less worried about what the kid sitting next to them would think of their friends and more about how much they actually liked being around the person in question.

And guess what? I was a person people wanted to be around. I looked around a room full of fellow Choir-geeks and realized that every single person in that room LIKED ME.

They liked me because I was funny, smart, talented and kind.

JUST LIKE YOU ARE.

It was a wonderful, wonderful moment, James and I know you will have something similar if not better.

I can see it, son. I can see what you can be. I absolutely know without a shadow of a doubt that your life will be blessed with friends that love and care about you just the way you are.

You have to trust me that I KNOW IT.

You are an excellent brother and I couldn’t ask for a better son.

Now it’s time to try and get some sleep.

Hopefully, things will be better tomorrow.

I love you with all my heart.

Goodnight.

Remember how I was spectacularly sick about a month ago?

When I was so sick I couldn’t even talk? When I was so sick I couldn’t even talk and that sickness lasted FOREVER?

Yah, that time.

Guess what?

I am sick.

AGAIN.

This sucks a duck. Or a goose. Or quite possibly a turkey.

The bad part of all this is that it has all the makings of being a repeat of spectacularly sick.

I have felt this coming for a few days and have been trying to cut it off at the pass with Airborne and sucking on zinc lozenges that my awesome friend Chelle brought me, to no avail.

I have a sore throat, infected sinus mucous and a fever.

I have FIVE MORE performances to do, people.

FIVE and I feel like complete crap.

Missing a show when you don’t have an understudy is not an option. IS NOT. It puts a huge number of people in a shitty situation. I am also responsible for herding five kids around the stage and it would be a huge problem to stay home sick. You just DON’T miss a performance unless you are dead or hospitalized.

They aren’t kidding when they say,”The show must go on”.

So now I have to take Mucinex and Nyquil and a million liquids and vitamins to try to feel better as soon as possible. I don’t have a show until Thursday night. I will handle feeling like a millions shades of suck if only, only I can still sing. It’s a crapshoot; Sometimes I keep my voice through sickness like this, sometimes not.

Last month when I was sick I couldn’t even SPEAK.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, people.

SuckasuckasuckaSUCK.

My body hurts.

This isn’t a new experience for me. I have several back and neck herniations from a bad car crash and being thrown and trampled by a horse. One leg is also shorter than the other due to some curvature of my spine.

(Totally sexy imagry, no?)

It exacerbates matters that I have a bed that sucks. We are going to replace it this year, but I’ve been suffering with it for the last 6 years.

I never wake up feeling refreshed. I usually start feeling like knives are being stuck in various body parts before my eyelids flutter open. I imagine it is similar to what one would feel like if thrown out of a moving train. Then run over by a tractor. Then peed on by the guy driving the tractor.

Point is, I hurt most of the time that I am conscious.

Aleve is my friend and for the most part I just suck it up and deal. You get used to it after awhile.

Right now, my body hurts more than the same-old, same-old.

Why, you ask?

See this fuzzy, poorly lit photo?

Yah, sorry about that. It’s the best I could do under the circumstances.

This gem of a theater will be my home for the next three weeks. I will spend more time there than in my own bed. (Again-given the extreme hideousness of it, I’m not sure that this is a bad thing.)

I am in the final weeks of appearing in a little musical called “The King & I“.

I’m just in the chorus. Specifically, I’m one of “The Royal Wives”. (The King of Siam was into polygamy. And yes, I find the irony that I’m doing this in Utah amusing.)

Normally, being in a choral role isn’t that difficult. Usually the toughest thing about it is the hours you have to wait around the theater doing nothing and wishing you could go home already.

Musically and character-wise, this is a VERY easy show but this choral role IS ABOUT TO KILL ME.

Apparently, the King is married to nine submissive women that drop to their knees and put their foreheads on the floor whenever he enters the room and freeze in that position until he finishes talking and says we can get up.

Before the bitchfest gets out of control I will say that this is turning into a great little production. I had such huge reservations at first, but it is going to be great. The orchestra is excellent, they flew in a great conductor from Florida and the costuming is as good, if not better than many of the professional productions I’ve been in. Because this is the debut musical for this theater company, they are investing thousands and thousands of dollars into it. Even the scene I LOATHE in musical theater (Uncle Tom’s Cabin) is good because they brought in an excellent choreographer and ballet company to perform it.

I am very happy and non-embarrassed to be a part of it.

THAT SAID…

Do you know how freaking long you have to be on your knees as a Royal Siamese Wife?

A FREAKING LONG TIME would be the answer. (The King enters the room a lot. He is also very long-winded.)

You would think that with that many wives we could rotate and schedule to keep it down to a minimum. (Was that inappropriate? Probably.)

Up! Down! Up! Down! Put your forehead on the ground!

For hours, and hours, and HOURS A DAY.

All of the bending and contorting into such extreme angles is taking its toll on my body. The other wives are even feeling it and I have EIGHT YEARS on the next oldest wife.

During the long-ass scenes where the King delivers amusing, pithy and long-winded dialog, etc. etc. etc., I am kneeling on the very hard stage floor feeling the blood pool and swell in my already damaged leg.

What? You mean you didn’t know that my 33-year-old body is totally falling apart? There’s more wrong with me than just back suck?

Yup.

Eight years ago, three weeks after my son, Christopher was born, I developed a massive blood clot in my abdomen that went down the length of my entire leg. I have a clotting disorder (Leiden V Factor) that means I am much more susceptible to blood clots than normal people. Since I have already thrown a clot, my chances of reclotting are even higher. It damn near killed me and left me with a damaged circulatory system and perpetually swollen leg.

My.legs.suck.

They suck.

(Oh, and did I mention that they SUCK?)
Don’t believe me? Here. Some honest photography for you.

You can see the size difference and the bluish, purple tone to my damaged leg.

You can see the pressure that is put on my left leg by how much the veins in my left foot “Pop” compared to my right foot.

I already struggle with poorly shaped legs. I am a bit bow-legged, I have a really hard time gaining muscle mass and have big feet and cankles. The blood clot just makes it all so much more attractive. Yippee.

It is why I always wear long pants and skirts. I never show my legs unless it is absolutely necessary. It isn’t just a vanity issue. I have been approached more times than I care to remember by well-meaning medical people who tell me that I may have a blood clot and should go to the nearest ER.

In their defense, it is a life-threatening condition. Plus, my leg looks like I could be in serious trouble; Most clots resolve where the leg returns to normal size. My clot was GINORMOUS. When It first happened my leg the size of both my legs put together and was dark purple.

I was in the hospital for a month. They told me to “Make arrangements” and prepare. They didn’t even dare put a filter in there were that scared that it would cause a piece to break off and go to my heart or brain and kill me. I was on Oxycontin for 8 months (It was rather new at the time. My doctors had no idea the hell it would be to get off of it after that long. Post for another day but lets just say that I understand why people hold up liquor stores and drive to Tijuana!)

This condition is permanent and painful. It sucks.

As much as I have enjoyed aspects of this musical and know that I auditioned willingly, I can’t wait for it to be over. It will be quite the effort to sit up there hurting and swelling and stay perfectly still and serene-looking.

There is zero point to this post. I have no “How I conquered my pain” or management tips or motivational tales about how I reached deep inside of myself and started wearing skirts to show that I love my body just as it is.

Nah.

I just wanted to bitch and whine about unattractive legs, crappy medical conditions and back pain. (And my piece of crap bed. We can’t forget about that.)

Thanks for listening. You all deserve a cookie for making it to the end of such long-winded, self-serving drivel.

Sigh…

“So, how are things with you and Jon?”

“Eh. We are both crazy with our schedules. He works eleventyhundred hours a day and I have rehearsals and performances out the yin-yang for the next two weeks.We hardly see each other and it just puts me in a bad mood a lot of the time. ”

“How is he?”

“He is being great about the kids and house but our relationship is pretty “EH” right now. There are things that I am upset about and we suck at working through things, so they just fester. Mainly, we just walk around being pissy or avoidant with each other. ”

“He’s probably just wants to see you naked more. At least, that’s usually why men get “Pissy”. If men can see a naked woman on a regular basis they’re right as rain.”

“Yah, well, I guess he can just put the scale in the bedroom then, because I pretty much weigh myself naked every day.”

“Touche.”

“Jon? Honey? Did you remember to take Wednesday off as a personal day?”

“Uh…No. Why? What’s Wednesday?”

Stunned silence.

“It. is. our. ANNIVERSARY.”

“Oh.”

“Our NINTH anniversary. We have been talking about this for a couple of weeks, remember? We were going to have time together instead of gifts? I got the kids taken care of? We are going to spend the day together in bed watching tons of movies and ordering in food and having lots of awesome “Relations” any and everywhere in the house? REMEMBER?

“Yes, but, um…”

“Um, WHAT?”

“Well, there’s a reason I didn’t ask for it off.”

“Yes?”

“The kids will be off of school after a half day. We can hardly relax around the house with them running everywhere.”

“I told you, I already arranged for them to play at my sisters after school and then they are spending the night with grandparents. So that isn’t a problem.”

“Um…”

“Um, WHAT?”

“Well, it’s…um…Our department Christmas Lunch…and…It was supposed to be last week, but they, um, changed it…”

“You mean a separate from the company Christmas party that we just attended on Saturday? You know, the one where I quelled my massive anxiety to perform with you for the people YOU work with?”

“Um…Yes?”

“But we had plans. I went over it and over it with you to see if you were happy with the arrangements. You have been coming home so late with all your consulting work that instead of gifts we were just going to spend time together. It’s not just some “Thing” or appointment, it’s our anniversary…”

“And it will still be our anniversary when I’m off of work.”

Silence. Horrible. Awkward, silence.

“I’m going to bed. Goodnight.”

I know, I know. I hate it when people drone on and on about being Sick! Or Hacking Up Mucous!! Or having Leprosy of the Vocal Folds!!!

It doesn’t spare you. Nope, I’m a hater today. A hater of those who don’t struggle to breathe and phonate and who haven’t been sick for going on TWO WEEKS. At least I don’t have Whooping Cough. They called me today with the negative results. Still, whatever the freak it is that I am infected with is pretty freaking horrid.

I sound like a freaking dying emu. Ok, I’ve never actually heard a dying emu, (Or a healthy one, for that matter) but I’m sure that I am doing a freaking good imitation of one right now. I’m also sure that dying emu’s also use the word “Freak” a lot.

**Don’t we make a lovely pair?  Thanks, Photoshop Dave!

I.sound.terrible.

Don’t believe me?

CLICK HERE. I’ll sing you a little lullaby…

See? That was a GOOD TAKE! Aren’t you totally glad you clicked on that link to hear my sexy, infected tones? You can totally sound like me if you want too. Let’s make out later in the parking lot. You’ll be sounding like a two-penny whore in no.time.flat.

I even look like a two-penny whore lately. One of the few times I have been out of the house was an adventure to the grocery store. I was really too sick to be there. I.looked.horrible. However, I was so dehydrated and kept throwing up and the only thing in the world that sounded good was Dole Bottled Peaches.

I had no makeup on, two days of bed head, and was wearing pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt hoodie. Plus, I was pissed off that Jon wouldn’t go get them for me, so I was wandering the aisles having an argument with my husband. OUT LOUD. BY MYSELF.

The gaggle of teenage boys who were laughing their asses off at the crazy homeless woman talking to herself and pushing a grocery cart can hardly be blamed.

Oh, well. At least I got my damn peaches. And they are awesome. I have to go participate in their golden loveliness now and hack up my remaining lung.

Mmmm…Peaches…

Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, <Hack! Hack! Hack!> Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom

Mmmm….