Ode to Eww

If you just want to read the "how's the family doing" part of this blog post, or if you really aren't interested in the more subtle grossness of my life in general, skip down further and start reading after the line. Got that, Mom? Love you.


I recently took a 16-day hiatus from the gym. There are a lot of lame excuses to explain my absence (work, school, carbs, apps...carbs), and I have since returned. But I think I had a great reason for my lengthy nonworkoutiness. I had just finished a good swim and decided to take an early break by resting in the nearby hot tub. There's even a waterfall, so I let the warm waters caress my head, face, and shoulders. I lounged, I stretched, and I floated. That's when I noticed a leaf in front of my face, so instinctively, I tried to quickly push it out of the way.

It wasn't a leaf. It was poo. And I'm not nearly as tough as I thought I was.

I launched out of the hot tub, and in between dry heaves, told the terribly unfortunate nearby worker about the bobbing bonus awaiting him. He lowered his head, paused, then "thanked" me for letting him know. I then spent the next 20 minutes trying to scrub off the memories in the shower.

Someone told me "at least it was in the hot tub, I'm sure the chlorine took care of any germs or diseases." O ye of little empathy and understanding, it wasn't the germs and diseases I was worried about. It was the floating prize. The one that I touched. The one that I wish had been a leaf.

It brought me back to the time on the Vernal Vipers swim team—pause for laughter—when we had to wait after public hours for the pool attendant to dump a giant scoop of white powder on a sunken brown treasure that was resting precariously on the pool floor. We watched as the disgusting deuce disappeared to the worker's glee: "see, it's all gone!" No, it wasn't all gone, it just turned into a billion microscopic fecal fragments that I ingested for the next two hours. Eww.

So I've started going to the gym again (I will forgive, but I won't forget!), and I intend to add an extra day or two to the weekly workout schedule. You know, so I can hang out more with gym guy:

• Sailor shanty shower singing with the scratchy pirate growl gym guy
• Drip dry locker room gym guy
• Rolling around on the carpet doing "exercises" that look like steamrollers gym guy
• No need to close the curtain when showering gym guy
• Hey that's a cool heart monitor wait a second that's a house arrest ankle monitor gym guy

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Whew, I'm glad I got that off my chest.

Now... How are the kids and me lady? Great. Really! The exhaustion Liz feels is more because of the "normal" stresses and joys of rearing three young and active boys, managing the household and all of the associated baggage, the boys' school and activity schedules, and her own health and church activities schedules. She keeps getting stronger each day. During difficult days I get a text or email from her with an escapist picture of the dock in St. John, USVI, or a link to a travel review. But she somehow finds the strength and resiliency to keep us all moving forward. What an amazing woman and inspiration to me.

The boys are doing well. Cohen told me last week what he wants to do for a job when he grows up: "Army, marines, navy, PetSmart, Good Will worker, Air Force, jollygist, paleontologist, and scientist math guy." Sounds like he'll be really busy.

Jensen (or "Jenshen" as he prefers to refer to himself) woke up a couple of weeks ago with a night terror, sobbing in his room at 2am. It took a while and a few extra visits for him to calm down, but he finally fell back to sleep. The next morning he told Liz, "Mom, I  have a really really bad dream. It's a Jenshen lobster monster. Every time I close my eyes I see a lobster there." My bad I guess: I took him and Cohen to the grocery store and decided to show them the lobster tank. The nice lady took one out to show the boys. Cohen loved it, but Jensen took off down the frozen foods aisle as fast as his little legs could carry him. I chased him down, but he refused to move within a five-foot radius of the horrific creature. Terrified. Then bad dreams. Whoops.

The good news is that the lobster incident encouraged Jensen to start saying his own bedtime prayers each night. He used to just listen and throw in an "Amen!" at the end. The nightmare got him started: "Heavenly Father, please bless that Jenshen not have bad dreams about lobsters." Amen.

In addition to sea creatures, he is also terrified of fake mustaches. Cohen puts one on and tries to give Jensen kisses while he runs away screaming. Ah, brothers. Cohen also "accidentally" left the mustache stuck to the middle step on the basement stairs, which Jensen unfortunately only noticed on his way up the other night. I had to convince him to close his eyes and run upstairs as fast as he could. Probably not the smartest idea, but that's the best I could think of in the moment. Jensen then comforted himself by hugging Busterd (rhymes with mustard, but used to be Buster), his Fisher Price pull-along puppy. Boys are fun.

Eli is our sweet baby, such a funny boy. He scrunches his face any time we eat or say cheese. His brothers adore him, and nothing makes us happier than when they all play nicely together (usually some form of chase, tag, wrestling, or generally sitting on one another). He's 16 months old already, babbling up a storm, and still enough of a baby that Liz gets her cuddles in.

We're only two weeks away from the one-year anniversary of Liz's diagnosis. And we're 3 1/2 weeks away from the 5K we're doing to celebrate her continued triumph over cancer. Here's to continuing to kick cancer in the face.

Go Team Liz!