For the last few months it’s been bad news, after bad news, after more bad news.
But! I’ve been holding out on you, oh World Wide Web. Lo! I have good news!
After four months of searching, we found a house. (to rent.) (Yes. We’re renting again. But, hopefully not for long.)
And this house is beautiful. And this house is spacious. And this house sits on half an acre of land and is zoned for not one, but TWO horses. And this house is in a very desirable neighborhood. And most importantly? This house does NOT have a kitchen that looks like this.

Oh, no it does not.
This house has a new kitchen, with new cabinets that are made with real wood.
*cue angels singing*
Ok, I suppose that’s not the most important thing about the house. THEE most important thing is that it is the exact amount we can afford (We really lucked out. The prices in the area are MUCH higher than what we’re going to be paying, which is why we JUMPED INTO ACTION when we found this house. And ha! ha! Me + PigHunter + jumping into action = THE CRAZY. I wish you could have been there to watch it.)
At one point during our Home Hunt, we found this tiny little that we both hated, but the rent was very reasonable (for good reason.) As we were walking out of the house, Tony turned to me and said “I know this house is small, and kind of ugly and in a bad neighborhood, but! It’s cheap! And we can save money!”
“HELL NO!” I proclaimed. “We spent 10 years, TEN FREAKING YEARS, in a house that was all of those things and it sucked the life out of me. I’m not doing that again. I’m willing to pay a little more to have a house that I feel comfortable in, a house that I am not ashamed to entertain friends in. I will NOT move into another piece of shit house, I won’t do it.”
Call me a selfish brat if you want to, I don’t care. I am not going to waste another minute of my life hating a house that I live in. I wasn’t looking for a PERFECT house, just a house that I felt comfortable in.
This house isn’t perfect. It’s an older home, the yard –all HALF ACRE OF IT– is nothing but dead weeds (My Mother in Law was all “get a goat! Or some sheep! For they will keep the weeds in check!”) There are broken light fixtures and the front door is hideous. It’s not perfect at all.
But it feels perfect for us and that’s all that I cared about.
Eight more days and we’ll be out of my parents house (and hair) and in our own place.
Who’s coming over to celebrate?

Nothing will make you rethink putting junk food into your body ever again like two sprays of nitro and a ride in the ambulance to the emergency room.
Last night during a late dinner with friends, I started feeling a sharp pain on the left side of my chest. At first, I tried to blow it off. I started stretching and moving my body around in an attempt to make the pain stop.
It got worse.
I didn’t want to ruin dinner, or over react because it was probably nothing, right?
But the sharp pain persisted, the sharp pain got worse and suddenly, a feeling of doom over took my entire body and I blurted out the words “I’m having chest pains.”
As soon as I said those words out loud, I wanted to take them back. I was being ridiculous! It was nothing!
I excused myself and went into the bathroom. As I stood in the stall, I could feel the panic set in because the pain wasn’t right, it wasn’t normal and it scared me. A fear that I don’t know I’ve ever experienced before when it comes to my health.
When I came back to the table, I was shaking and pale and asked Tony to take me to the doctors.
As we were getting in the car, the pain got worse and I asked Tony to call 911 on the way home. (We were only about 3 minutes away from home.)
He did.
They rolled up just as we had made it through the front door.
They asked my symptoms and as I told them, they put an oxygen mask on my face and took my blood pressure.
152/108
They took a reading of my heart.
“I see some abnormalities” I heard one of the medics say to the other.
“We’re going to give you a spray of something, it’s called Nitro.”
I started to shake. I was terrified.
So were my children. I could see them off to the side and they were nervous.
“I’m ok!” I shouted through my oxygen mask. “I’m going to be ok.”
But I wasn’t so sure and they knew it.
“You’re coming with us, right?” the medic asked as he started an IV.
“But what if my insurance doesn’t cover the ambulance ride?”
“Ma’am, any time you have chest pains like this, you need to get to the hospital right away. We need to take you.”
I agreed and asked them to take me to MY hospital. The one that my insurance will cover, but they advised me against that because it was too far. They wanted to take me to the nearest hospital. I put up a bit of a fight, because I don’t want to get stuck with a medical bill that I can pay for, but they insisted I go to the local hospital. They sounded pretty serious about the whole “we need to get you there in 6 minutes, not 18 minutes” thing, so I reluctantly agreed.
(Dear God, please let Kaiser pay the bill because I can’t. Thank you. Amen.)
We arrived at the emergency room and it was packed. Stretchers with sick bodies were crammed in the hallways. A ragged looking nurse took one look at me and said “you can put that one in area 9.”
That one.
“I’m just a number to these people” I thought to myself. I’m just another one of those stupid people who doesn’t take care of themselves and ends up crowding their emergency rooms with chest pains and high blood pressure and strokes.
I started to cry.
Why did I do this to my body? Why did I gain all of this weight back? Why did I stop working out on a regular basis? Why did I put all of those greasy French fries in my body? Why didn’t I think of my children? Why didn’t I think of my husband? They would be devastated if I left them at such an early age. WHY?
EKG’s were given. X-rays were taken. Blood was drawn.
Hours passed and the doctor finally came in to tell me that everything came back normal.
“So what was it?” My husband asked.
“We just don’t know. It could be her gall bladder (wtf?) or it could have been her heart, we’re just not sure. Just have her follow up with her primary doctor tomorrow.”
I felt like a giant asshole. There was nothing wrong with me and I called 911, possibly leaving my family stuck with a bill that is going to kill us.
Tony lectured me not to feel bad. He said he could tell I was in pain, he could see how pale I was, he could see my eyes didn’t “look right” and he said to never second guess my decision to call for help.
I’m going to take his advice. I was in pain, a pain that I’ve never felt before. A pain so sharp—so real, that I honestly thought “this could be a heart attack.”
Not to get all Soap Opera Dramatic on you, but this experience has changed me. I’m not quite sure how just yet, but I can tell you that from this minute forward I will be mindful of what I put into my body and not because I want to look cute in a pair of jeans, but because I don’t want to have a heart attack and die.

I’m baaaaack.
Sort of.
Kind of.
Did you enjoy the guest posters as much as I did? I hope so. I throughly enjoy the writers that I asked to keep you entertained while I was “healing.” (I had also asked Rich who may or may not make my mouth water with love and he said yes, but then he got sick and couldn’t do it.)
Thanks for treating them so well.
Now, let me give you a few updates so that I feel like I can start writing again without having to talk about These Things EVER AGAIN.
I still do not know what is wrong with My Neck/Back/Arm as no one has called to tell me the results of the MRI.
Everyone says “It’s a good thing that they haven’t called! It means it’s nothing serious! If it was something serious, someone would have called you by now!”
And I guess that’s supposed to make me feel better, and in a way it does, but—it doesn’t make my neck hurt any less or make it possible for me to do things like “laugh” or “fart” or “cough” or “sneeze” without feeling excruciating pain.
Man, how I wish for the days when farting was a great way to annoy my children and embarrass them in public. Now, when I feel that gas welling up within, I cringe and brace myself for the pain I know I’ll feel when I have to push that mother out.
Farting is NOT funny anymore and that is sad.
Do you know what else is sad?
That my dog could have DIED last week, but because he has a good mommy and daddy who acted quickly on his behalf, he is not dead.
You see, he ate a box of rat poison.
He had been in the garage for about 15 minutes and when Ethan took him out, I noticed a box of rat poison on the ground. It had been torn open and there were just a few pellets left inside. I ran inside and called my dad to ask if he had left a box of rat poison lying on the garage floor, or if it was an empty box that he had thrown away.
It was a full box. (That he completely forgot was lying on the ground when he asked Ethan to put Bandit in the garage while the gardeners mowed the backyard.) And now, it was an empty box, because my pig of a dog ate it.
I called Tony who was 15 minutes from home.
“Bandit ate dog poison! Hurry! We have to take him to the vet RIGHT AWAY!”
He got home, put Bandit in the back of his car and drove to the nearest animal hospital.
They took him in right away, induced vomiting and WHOOMP! There it was. Rat poison.
They told Tony we saved his life because if we had waited, it would have got into his system and he would have bled to death internally.
Lucky dog.

Thanks for saving my life, Pa.
Let’s play a game. I’m going to tell you a number. Then, I want you to guess what that number represents.
Ready?
Seven thousand.
Did you guess “How much it’s going to cost to fix the TV that your son accidentally broke?”
Because that would be correct!
But, let’s not talk about that, because I don’t want to throw up again. (And no, they have not asked us to pay up, but we found out that’s how much it’s going to cost and OH THE GUILT.)
In other less traumatic (but only slightly less traumatic) news
This weekend I did something that I haven’t done in years.
I bought a pair of jeans.
And I feel compelled to tell you that they are indeed a size 18.
And, because that’s not bad enough, I also feel compelled to tell you that I bought them at Kohls–And they are of The Daisy Fuentes variety
When I held them up in the store and my eyes beheld just how W-I-D-E the ass spread of denim was, I couldn’t help but scream on the inside.
“My ass is not that wide! IT IS NOT THAT WIDE!”
But, I put those jeans on, and my ass is that wide.

Lucky Jeans.
You know that game that people play at baby showers, where they guess how many squares of toilet paper=the size of the pregnant woman’s belly?
I think we should play that with My Ass at BlogHer.
The winner gets an autographed can of Bean Dip!
But seriously, folks.
I’m actually proud of myself for buying the jeans.
You can’t hide your ass in jeans and my MAIN GOAL in dressing myself is hiding my ass. Buying these jeans was a huge step for me. In wearing these jeans, I’m making a statement.
“Hi! I’m fat and yet, I’m putting it all out there for you to stare at, to be in awe of, because I’m really fucking tired of trying to hide it and cover it up.”
Large and in charge, bitches.
I’m heading out to Old Navy as soon as Tony gets home from work and I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my new found Plus Sized Confidence. Maybe I’ll do something really CERAAAAZY, like, buy me a sleeveless top.
The last thing that I think you really need to know is that My Period is still hiding.
However, an additional THREE pregnancy tests (for a grand total of 6!) say that I am not pregnant. Everyone’s all “it’s stress! It’s the medication!” But I’m all “Oh my GOD, I have two months worth of bleeding all up in my Women Parts! AAAAHHHHH!”
Luckily, they can get me in to see a GYNO at the end of August! So, I have an entire month to google “POSSIBLE REASONS FOR A MISSED PERIOD.”
Lucky everyone in my life.

I was thinking of renaming this blog to www.the-car-accident-blog.com. But, I think it would be easier and less annoying if I just stopped talking about the freaking accident.
HOWEVER.
There were two very Exciting! Updates! that I must write about. And then, I will never speak of it again, for it will be dead to me and alive to God, because I am giving The Accident to God.
Exciting! Update! #1. We got our deductible back.
Exciting! Update! #2. It is now an uninsured motorist claim. The other driver (who was at fault, and who I will now refer to as The Perp, as in The Perpetrator.) is no where to be found and someone who lives at her house told our adjuster that she is “out of town” until “sometime late July.”
How precious. She causes a major accident, avoids the law and flees town. I really hope God blesses her life in a beautiful way. (Pray for your enemies! Treat them with kindness! Do not be bitter! Blessings and love to all, even uninsured assholes!)
Moving on.
I recently made the decision to switch up my workout schedule. Rather than going to the gym in the evenings, I decided that I’d start hitting that bitch early in the A.M. So, yesterday morning I arose at 5:30 and made my way to the All Wimmins Gym.
Whoa.
I was NOT prepared for Early Rising Worker Outters.
I’m used to going to the gym after 7pm. The people who are at the gym when I get there are tired, quiet and somewhat grumpy. They don’t want to talk about their day and they don’t care about how you’re doing or what your plans are for the weekend. They just want to do their curls and squats and get the hell out of there.
But the Morning Worker Outters are a completely different kind of people.
They are happy! And perky! And glad to be alive! And coated in a thick, vanilla scent! And generally annoying!
They’re all “Good morning!” “How are you?” “Ready to burn some of that oh so abundant fat?” “Jesus loves you and so does the treadmill!”
There were a couple of women on the treadmill going on and on about how great they felt and how happy they were to be there on the treadmill burning the calories and how they were planning a bridal shower for their best friend and how fucking HAPPY they were to be doing it.
Here I was, ready to roundhouse kick any vanilla scented vagina that came within 10 feet of my personal space and these women were like “omygod, I’m so glad you’re here… GROUP HUG AND THEN HOWZA’BOUT WE DO SOME CRUNCHES, GOD’S CHILDREN!”
I wasn’t prepared for such love and friendliness so damn early in the morning.
I was genuinely in awe of these women who purposely get up early to go to the gym and are so gosh darn happy and excited to be there.
Fah-reaks.
I plan on becoming an Early Worker Outter, because I absolutely loved not having “I have to go to the gym” hanging over my head all day long, but I can promise you that I will never be one of those vanilla scented freaks who sports a smile on my face and radiates Gods Love from my overweight soul while doing bicep curls before 7 in the morning.

FIVE WEEKS after some woman (whose insurance information we still do not have) thought it was ok to NOT look both ways before she pulled out into on coming traffic causing my husband to hit her and total The Van, our insurance finally gave us a settlement on The Van (but withheld the deductible, even though the police report states very clearly that the other driver was at fault.)
When we first found out they had totaled our van, we were mad because we didn’t want to get a new car. We were only a year away from paying our van off, OH! THE UNFAIRNESS!
But then, I was all “you know what? We do not have to buy a new car! We can just buy a used Ass-tro van (because I have Deep Love for Ass-tro vans) so that we can be in the same position that we were before the accident! Surely, we can find an old Ass-tro van for less than 9,000!”
Ha! Ha! Haaaaa!
Did you know they stopped making Ass-tro vans in 2005? And did you know that people who bought Ass-tro vans before 2005 NEVER TRADE THEM IN? Because they run forever! And because they hold 8 passengers! And are built on a truck chasy!
I was not alone in my Ass-tro love. The world loves Ass-tros.
We did find a couple that were in our price range, but the mileage was outrageous and they were thrashed on the inside. And I wasn’t being picky, either. I was willing to accept a few dings and scratches, but I was not willing to drive around in a car that had chunks of plastic missing and holes in the carpet.
I spent hours on Autotrader and looking through newspapers and calling dealerships and visiting dealerships and telling car salesman to STEP OFF.
We were getting desperate, because we’ve been renting a car since the accident happened and did I mention that we’re paying for that out of our pocket because we still don’t have the other person’s insurance information? (And we’re not allowed to knock on her door and ask her for it, because that would be a “violation of her civil rights”?! HAaaaajajaAAsasaa2!@!!441!!)
Last night Tony stopped by a dealership to check out a non-ass-tro van.
He liked it.
He liked it SO much, that he spent 7 hours at the dealership, trying to work out a price/payment we could live with.
At 10 pm last night, he rolled up to the house with the salesman in the van.
“If you like it, we’ve worked out all of the financing and it’s yours. BUT THERE’S NO PRESSURE TO BUY IT, even though the sales guys drove it all the way from another city that is 45 minutes away! Seriously! No pressure at ALL!”
The good news for everyone was that I loved the van. Not as much as I loved The Ass-tro. (Ok, maybe I do love it more than the Ass-tro, because it is luxurious and it has a center console! And a cd player that works! And the front bumper that isn’t tore in half! But, I am not ready to admit it yet, because, like Lena said, I am not ready to let go of the “Let’s go for a ride in Mah’ Big Ass Bumperless Ass-tro Van!” joke just yet.)
I took it for a spin around the block and loved the way it felt to drive. I loved the way the dash looked; I loved that the payments will be cheaper than my van and not for SEVEN YEARS. I loved everything about it.
Well, everything except the smell. Thank you, dear smokers, for ruining The New Car Smell for me. I really appreciate that, asshole/s.
The papers were all written up and ready to go, all I had to do was say “Yes!” and write the check for the down payment.
Oh, the power!
I said yes, whipped out the checkbook and in less than 5 minutes, I was the proud owner of This Van.

I’m happy that we were able to put an end to THAT portion of a Car Accident Nightmare, but man, we still have a lot of crap to settle. Like, you know, getting the other drivers insurance information so we can get our money back for the rental car and getting our deductible back from our insurance company who really had no right to withhold it in the first place.
I never imagined we’d still be dealing with this shit FIVE WEEKS LATER.
Anyway.
Did I just write an entire post about buying a van? I did, didn’t I?

Hi! How are you?
Good?
I hope so.
Me? I’m “fine!”
Thanks to some of you, I’m SO fine, that I’m using Gun Fingers everywhere I go.
Someone will ask me “How you holding up?” And I’ll go “just great!”

Pow! Pow!
Thanks a lot for that, Internet.
Oh, Thumbs Up, how I miss you.
Today I called a friend who I haven’t talked to in about 7 days, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but the speed at which crazy things are happening in my life, 7 days in my life is like an entire year in the life of someone whose life does not suck.
Or something like that.
When my friend answered the phone, I was all “Oh, I have something hilarious to tell you! Tony was in a car accident and totaled The Van! Ha! Ha! Ha!”
She was very quiet and said “Y, that’s not funny. It’s not funny at all.”
And I was all “I know it’s not, but! It’s either cry or laugh and I think it would be uncomfortable for both of us if I started to cry, so, Ha! Ha! Ha! Haaaaaaa!”
Yesterday we had to go get all of our personal belongings out of the van and release it to our insurance company so that they can take it to Van Heaven. ( I refuse to believe that my van is going to the junk yard. Van Heaven, people, it’s in Van Heaven.) As I was pulling things out, I started to cry, because for as ugly as that van was, I freaking LOVED that van.
Can I tell you the story of my van? Please? Because talking about it makes me feel better.
A few years back, my sister left her van with me when she went to NY. I fell in love with it. Sure, they’re ugly and people make fun of them, but dudes, you can open that side door up and let the kids pile in and to me? That was awesome.
When we decided that it was time to get a new car a few years back, I immediately made it known that I wanted an Ass-tro van.
“Really?” Tony asked, in a very disturbed tone.
“Yes, really.”
“What about a Suburban?”
“No. I want an Ass-tro van!”
“What about a, um, anything other than that big ugly van?!”
“No. I want an Ass-tro van!”
He did manage me to get me to agree to test drive a few suburban’s and other cars that I do not remember because I was obsessed with the dream of owning my very own van and therefore did not really pay attention to the stupid other cars that were not Ass-tro vans. However, none of those stupid other cars impressed me and so I was all “Let’s go back to the Chevy dealer and pick out ma’van!”
And it just so happened that they had the Perfect Van there waiting for me. White, with running boards, ski racks, power everything, privacy glass, etc and it was in perfect condition (only one year old.)
I’ll admit that at the time we bought that car, we were the worst negotiators in the history of negotiations and we did not get a good deal on the car (something that has haunted me for the past 6 years. Yes, SIX YEARS and we still had 13 payments left. See? I am not lying, we got screwed.) But, we were able to get the monthly payment that we wanted and so we signed the papers and drove off with Ma’Van that night.
And oh, how I loved that van.
In the 6 years that we’ve had it, I’ve not complained about it even once. I had nothing but pure love for that van. People find that hard to believe, because “it’s a van! And it’s ugly! Surely, you can’t love a giant, ugly van!”
But I did. I still do.
It was perfect for us. My boy’s needed me to pick up their friends from school? HOP RIGHT IN! Tony wanted to take the boys camping? Just pull out the back seat and everything fit! Unexpectedly pregnant with our third child? Not a problem! There’s room for 8 of us!
You wouldn’t believe the ridicule that I took for that van, and you would not believe how little I cared because screw you all, I chose it and I love it and you can all suck it hard.
I know that I sound like the biggest asshole in the world going on and on about a stupid van, but like I’ve said at least 2069 times in this post alone, I loved that van and was looking forward to hauling buttloads of kids around in it for at least another 5 years.
But now, it’s gone. Forever. And in just a few short days the insurance will offer us a settlement for it that will probably be just enough to pay it off and we will have to start all over with a car that I will hate with a passion because it is NOT MY VAN and it will NEVER BE MY VAN.
Now, if you don’t mind, would you please bow your head in a moment of silence for The Van?