Barbarian Head Bashing

8 years ago, I was pregnant with WildBoy.  Barbarian pregnancies are a little more... um, volatile... than usual pregnancies.  Or, at least mine was.  At this time, I decided to conduct a rage experiment, where I would test my ability to punch, kick, and headbutt the walls of a house.

Just kidding.  I didn't consciously decide anything.  But, it did end up being an experiment.

(Hmmmm.... this experiment is pure folly.)

You see, I was very angry at VikingDad.  In my pregnant Barbarian mind, he was being a royal asshole.  And this had been building for some time.  Before I got pregnant, I was working a very physically demanding job at a local dairy farm.  I would carry bales of hay, climb ladders into hay lofts, operate the straw chopper, and herd the cattle both into and from the milking area.  In order to herd the cattle, I would have to prod them through tight chutes (called traffic lanes, appropriately enough).  In order to do that, I would have to be in the lane with the cattle.  They would often step on my feet (I wore thick boots so it wasn't too big of a deal), but they would also barge past me, oftentimes pinning me between their giant bulk and the wall of the lane.  I could avoid this, but I would basically have to crawl partially up the walls of the lane in order to maneuver, and my balance was getting a bit off, so that was a precarious thing to do at the time.

(It looked a little like this except the lane was made out of steel gates and there were two lanes with cattle going either way and walls on the outside, so I couldn't just stand outside the lane and move the cattle.)

I was a bit concerned with all of that, being pregnant and all.  The other concern I had at that job was the bull.

(Moo, bitch)

Bulls are really fucking dangerous.  They don't want you to take their cows, even just to get milked, so they will often charge you when you try.  And how do you defend against a charging bull?  Well, I had a pitchfork.  I didn't like my chances.

(Bring it on.  Oh yeah, I have a baby in my tummy.  Fuck.)

So one day, I had enough.  I told the owner that I had to quit- I thought the job was getting too dangerous to do while pregnant.  And I didn't tell VikingDad about it until after I quit.

He wasn't mad at me for quitting, but VikingDad is on the Autism spectrum... we didn't know this at the time, so I didn't understand what the big deal was.  I was getting unemployment benefits since I had to quit due to a medical safety related thing.  So, what's the big deal, right?  Well, people on the Autism spectrum need advance notice of any change that's happening, if at all possible.  They don't deal with sudden changes well.  So VikingDad was being particularly surly to me, and I was a raging ball of hormonal chaos.

(A fair representation of how I looked and felt when I was pregnant on a good day.)
A surly, Autistic Viking, and an angry, pregnant Barbarian.  Sounds like peace and harmony, right?

(Peace out, man)

Well, the end result of that was, one day when we were visiting VikingDad's parents, he did something I thought was douche-y, and I went berserk.

(First, I was thinking, "You did not seriously do that, bitch!")

(Then I yelled, "Fuck you!")

(Then I threw whatever was in my hands at him.  I think it was a pen.)

(Then I started punching and kicking the wall.)

I stormed off, and punched the wall.  Then I went downstairs and kicked the wall.

(I was really quite angry)

Then I bashed my head against the wall.  Over and over and over.  Until I calmed down.

(It's quite therapeutic.)

Everyone else was sitting upstairs going, "What the fuck?"

(Bitches be crazy.)

So, after I calmed down a bit, I apologized to VikingDad's parents.  (They eventually patched up their walls.)  VikingDad and I made amends, and I fell into an exhausted sleep.

The next day, I surveyed the damage.  The punches went through the drywall.  The kick was against a door frame, if I remember correctly.  And my head bashing was against a post, so it didn't go through the wall, but made a sizeable head-shaped dent in it.  And the damage to myself?  My knuckles and hands were sore, my foot was all bruised up.  But my head?  Fit as a fiddle.

(I'm a motherfucking pachycephalosaur.)

I was a little bit surprised at this.  I had less resistance with my punches, due to having punched through flimsy drywall and not a friggin wall post.  I probably kicked a corner in the door frame, so I'm not surprised that hurt in the morning.  But I was super surprised that, despite repeatedly bashing a bowl shaped dent into a wall post, my head didn't even feel sore.  Huh.  That's useful information.

So remember, kids: if you ever want to do a hell of a lot of damage to other things but don't want to get hurt yourself, use your head to bash it to a pulp.

Snow and Ice Days (dun dun dunnn)

So, by now I have some readers spread out all over the U.S. and at least a handful in Australia and Europe too (hi, guys!).  Most of my readers are in Minnesota, so you all understand snow and winter and how stupid it can be.  There are a couple readers from Alaska, and you guys are probably going to laugh at this post because you live in an even more frozen place, and I can't even comprehend what you go through... so, hats off to you for having to deal with way worse shit than I do.  (But not literally "hats off" because then my ears would get cold.)  At any rate, winter is something we all have to deal with here in rural Wisconsin. 

(See?  Winter in the country.  It's kind of a pain.)

And, lately, we've been having to do a whole of asinine stuff just to accommodate the various ways in which winter fucks with our lives.

Last week, it was the snow.

We got lots of it.

VikingDad couldn't drive to work.  The rest of us were driving through snow half as high as our tires.  And, because of VikingDad's bad back, I am usually the one doing the shoveling.  Now, they never ever ever plow our country roads.  I shoveled the driveway and unintentionally shoveled a bit of the road too because it wasn't readily apparent where the driveway ended and the road began.  Oh well.  I spent 2 hours shoveling, but it was still snowing, so I figured I would have to do it again in a few hours.

I was right.

I ended up shoveling the driveway (and a path to our house) 3 times in 2 days, and VikingDad also did some shoveling.

My back hurt by the end of it.  I don't care how perfect your form is, when you're shoveling you still have to bend down a bit, even if you are bending at the knees for the most part.  Also, I had to miss Jujitsu a couple of times.  

 (Waaaaaah!)

Also, VikingDad got reprimanded at work for having to work from home too many days in a row.  But, he has a tiny little hybrid car so all we can really do is wait for the plows to eventually realize there's a road way out here.

 
At 4 PM on the second Day Of Snow (dun dun dunnnn), the plow finally came and we could stop driving 5mph while trying to discern where the road is versus the ditch.  (Seriously, it all looked the same.)  On the third day, some of it melted and the rest got kind of packed down, so life could resume as usual.

(Not so much snow as before.  Anya the Newfoundland loves snow.  Probably because she has lots and lots of hair to keep her warm.  Plus she's weird.)

...Until it decided to snow overnight.

(I'm going to kill winter!  Be right back.)

It wasn't all bad, though!  I got to take WildBoy snow tubing with his Boy Scout pack.  We both had a lot of fun careening down snowy hills, getting slammed into by other tubes, and riding the rope pull to the tops of the hills.

(It was also kind of sunny.)


You might think that I would be happy when it finally warmed up yesterday, but that would be a mistake.  Because instead of snowing, it rained.  And then froze on the road.  Thus, it became... an Ice Day (dun dun dunnnn).  Since I missed so much Jujitsu during the Snow Days, I really, really wanted to go to class yesterday.  And I did, and it was amazing.

(Jujitsu is always amazing)

But, the problem was driving home.  You see, on the interstate I really didn't have a problem driving.  Sure, I had to go 20 miles under the speed limit and crawl around corners, but whatever.  That's driving in the Midwest in winter, no big deal.  The problem came when I turned off the interstate to go the last 6 miles to get home.  On a road that has not seen any plows, or salt, after an ice storm.

I knew it was a baaaaad idea as soon as I turned onto the road and my car started sliding.  "Ok then," I thought, "let's take these roads at 5 mph".  I turned my music up really loud to help me concentrate (it works, don't question it) and started forward.  On the flat road, it was do-able.  The problem came when I had to go downhill.  I didn't want to go fast, but I found myself not being able to control my speed, or my direction, or basically anything.  I counter steered too late, braked a little too much, and found myself spinning in my car on the way to the ditch.  "Yep, I'm going in the ditch," I thought, because my brain likes to state the obvious when its headed for disaster.

(I ended up like this.  Except I wore real winter clothes and snow/work boots that I got from Fleet Farm so I was way more prepared than this chick.)

I tried to drive out, no luck.  You need traction to be able to drive.  Go figure.  So I tried to dig my front wheel out with my big-ass snow boots.  Nope.  Ok, then.  Time to call VikingDad.  The phone rang.  VikingDad picked up.  "What ditch are you in?" was his opening line.  Good call, VikingDad.  Good.  Call.

So, off went VikingDad (with an unenthusiastic VikingLad) in the Highlander with the tow chain to rescue my poor, sad, stuck little Subaru.  I waited.  Would he make it on these roads that were pure ice?  I didn't know.  I waited.  For a freakishly long time.  I didn't get any phone calls, which meant that either the Highlander was still on the road or that everyone was dead. 

(Probably dead.)

Finally, I saw them come over the hill.  ("They're alive!")  I quickly sat back down in the seat and buckled up, as my back wheel was still on the road and they could very well start sliding down the hill and run into my car.  And I wanted to be buckled if that happened.  Thankfully, it didn't happen.

(The roads looked like this, by the way.)

They were able to stop the Highlander, and VikingDad got out the tow chain.  As soon as he stepped onto the road, he began to slide downhill.  Walking was problematic.  He slid around on the ice in the general direction of the car, and had to kneel down in order to keep himself from sliding away as he hooked the chain to the Subaru.  He made VikingLad tow me out of my predicament ("it's a learning experience"), while he pushed.  Without VikingDad pushing, it would have never gotten out, as there was no traction at all on the road.  But, finally, my Subaru was free!  But free to do what, exactly?  We couldn't tow it back home on the ice.  It was facing the direction from which I came, which was uphill, so I couldn't get the wheels to grip enough to drive that way.  After some frustration, VikingDad got in the car and slowly maneuvered it enough to turn it around.  Then he drove it home (during which he had to countersteer like a motherfucker to get it to stay on the road, and still ended up spinning out once) and VikingLad drove the Highlander home.

After we all got out of the car, VikingDad slipped and fell on the ice.  "You just had to go to Jujitsu!"  He said.  Yep.  Yes, I did.

(Kind of.)

After that, I warmed up under a blanket and ate some pumpkin pie.  Because pumpkin pie is a good reward after an adventure.

(And also, because I was hungry.)

The next morning, the roads had a thin layer of snow on them and were still icy (and yet, the bus still came to pick up VikingLad and VikingPrincess.  Will they ever get a snow day?  Who knows!), but later in the day the roads melted and became this:

(So I was able to drive again!  Yippee!)

And thus ended the Snow Days and the Ice Days (dun dun dunnnnn).  (Hopefully.  I mean, I hope they are done.  It would be kind of sucky if there were more snow and ice later in the week, so just cross your fingers that it stays nice!)

New Car and No Teeth

It's been an eventful week.  Let me catch you up.

Last week's Friday, VikingPrincess got her wisdom teeth out.  I spent the morning slightly concerned, and she spent the morning very anxious.  She texted me saying how she hated needles and how hungry she was (She was not allowed to eat or drink for 6 hours before the procedure.  Supposedly it's so she doesn't throw up under anesthesia and die, but we all know it's because doctors and dentists are sadists).  To be honest, I don't really know how to handle anxiety.  VikingPrincess has anxiety, and sometime panic attacks.  To be fair, we all freak out.  Every one of us on earth has probably had a freak-out at some point in our lives.  Mine are usually because I have to do too many things at once, so the anxiety doesn't go away until I stop having too many things to do at once.  But I've never been doing a relaxing thing and suddenly had an anxiety attack, save the summer after WildGirl drowned and was revived, and I got through that by first distracting myself, then going through the memory gently until it just became a regular memory and not a flashback.  But I don't really know how to handle regular anxiety, because I just don't feel that anxious on a regular basis- I don't intuitively know anything that works for a problem I don't really have.  So I told her everything will be OK, it won't be that bad, etc...

 (Is that even helpful?  I don't really know!)

I recently read that controlling your heartbeat is key, so I gave her some suggestions on how to do that.  Not in a "I know what I'm doing" way, because I don't.  I don't know what I'm doing.  Ever.

Anyway, the procedure went fine, and VikingPrincess came home blurry and in pain and ended up sleeping and wandering around and eating soft things for the better part of the week.

(This was her expression the whole week.)

I made her soft things to eat (like kitten hearts and puree'd puppies) for a couple days after, because I'm a good step-mom like that.

On Saturday, VikingLad and I went down to Southern MN to buy a car from my parents.  VikingLad has been bothering me about a car ever since he got his driver's license.  Since I'll be going back to college (yikes!) in the fall, I figured I would need a driving-around-campus car, instead of the driving-around-the-farm car that I have now.  So, we came up with the arrangement that I would buy my parent's Subaru and VikingLad would drive the Highlander.  So, I got a new (used) car!  It has a laundry list of things that need fixing, but I bought it for $500 so what can you expect?  The rear wheel bearing needs to be replaced, so it makes a scratchy "wubba wubba" sound.  My sister thought it sounded like Sebulba's podracer, so it has been affectionately dubbed the "Sebulba car".

(Sebulba, from Star Wars Episode I)

It's green, and it runs, and it has better gas mileage than the Highlander, so I'm happy with it.

(The Sebulba Car)

So, Monday we got a lot of snow.  VikingDad took a day off work because I accidentally forgot to put the chain in the Sebulba car, VikingLad took the Highlander, and VikingDad's car needs to be pull-started in the winter.  So, I had no way to pull-start his car, so he had no way to get to work.  Ooops.  This is the crux of my life: trying to anticipate all 6 people's needs and organize our lives in order to meet those needs.  This is a great job to give to someone who has ADHD.

(Sarcasm!)

Despite this fuck up, my day was a hugely productive one.  I went to the DMV...

(Which we all know is run by sloths)

Got my title, license plates, transferred the Sebulba car to my insurance, called the car repair place to confirm appointments for both stepkids to get new tires on their cars, picked up the new Dropkick Murphys CD...

(Swoon!)
Dropped the library books off at the library, and then came home.  THEN, I uploaded the new CD (and some of my old ones) onto iTunes, and then filled out my motherfucking FAFSA.  Then, it was lunch time.

Oh yeah.  Adulting.