I don't know how to put this ...but I'm kind of a big deal.

I know it's hard to believe, but I've never really been all that popular. When tell people I was a cheerleader, I know people instantly think of me like this:



And when I mention that I was student body president, I know for a FACT that people flash upon what that might have been like for me. As crazy as it sounds, it was nothing quite so glamorous as this:

Nope. It was more like this:
I know, I know. I don't mean to make you jealous of all the hotness that is embodied in this one picture, but I'm sorry. I can't help it. You're just going to have to cry yourself to sleep at night, envious of me and all my super-hot friends and our totally rad bangs.

But now my blog has apparently received global attention
...thanks to famous writers like the author of this awesome blog, who lavish me with gifts like this:

Now... I have to tell you, I was initially morally opposed to posting this award simply because it says plainly in my blog description, "anything frou-frou is very out of place in our mostly masculine home." It doesn't get any more frou-frou than dainty pink roses on gingham and a title that Kleverly misspells words in a Kute way. But I figured, "Hey. It's for my peeps." (BTW, Leah #2, you're considered peeps now.) And I think it's kool that somebody I've never met before thinks I'm Kreativ. Thanks Leah! (Apparently, my biggest blogging fans have lately all been named Leah. Who knew I could carve out such a niche in the blogging world.)

I'm soooooo hot right now.

The Shoe Is On the Other Foot

I have never had a cavity in my life. Never, that is, until dental school. Then the Diet Coke started flowing like water and Everlasting Gobstoppers became the mechanism by which I could pull all-nighters. That is when tooth #12 became traitorous on me... Just a little cavity hanging out in the dark little crevice between my two left bicuspids.

So like any responsible dental professional, I waited four years until residency to get it fixed. I knew all the tricks to keep it from progressing rapidly, and kept my eye on it with x-rays and checkups, but I just never trusted any of my colleagues to perform microsurgery on my precious #12.

Well, yesterday I mustered the courage to hop in the chair. A very competent coworker gave me the chance to see first-hand what I do to my patients every day...

HOLY CRAP!!!
I CAN'T BELIEVE I DO THAT TO PEOPLE EVERY DAY...
AND THEY LET ME!!!!!

I didn't mind the shots. We had to practice those on each other multiple times in dental school, so I was somebody's guinea pig on several occasions and I know that after that first little pinch, everything is going to go right to sleep and everything will be just fine.

But the drilling... Oh, the drilling!!! All that noise and vibration!!! It felt like a jack hammer in my skull!!! I thought my brain was going to rattle out of my head at one point! Not painful at all... Just otherworldly and weird!

I do this to young children daily, and most of them don't care!!! HOW?!? How do they sit there so unconcerned? How is it that my singing "The Wheels on the Bus" and "The Little Mermaid" is distraction enough to keep them from shooting out of their chair and clawing me in the face?!? It is a WEIRD sensation!!! ...and I do this to people a l l t h e t i m e. AND THEY LET ME!!!!

And as I watched my co-resident at work, and watched as my saliva and little tooth bits flew up into her face, glistening in the overhead light as they caught flight, I thought "YUCK!!!" That's what's in my hair when I come home from work every day... Spit, blood, plaque, and tooth bits... in my hair and on my face... every day!!! *shudder* This is fair warning to anyone who associates with me on a regular basis: Don't ever touch me again until I've had a shower after work. I am stewing in Au De Gingivitis.

So now I finally understand why dentists are portrayed as such bad guys. Now I understand why people think us sadistic and mean. We do weird things to you in your head with your mouth wedged open and a light shining in your face, and we talk to you while you can't respond, and we stink with spit in our hair.

I get it now.

......

Please don't hate me.

I'm a WINNER!!!

I just won a major award!

No... Not THAT award, silly!
This one....

It's spunky... It's clever... It's mildly inappropriate... Just like ME!!!
Thank you Leah!

I Don't Like-a Mondays

Today couldn't have felt more like a Monday if a piano fell from the sky and landed on my head.

It started with something simple... Just a quiet alarm from the other room at 5:00 am. Nathan started seminary last week. Hence, the world begins before the sun has the nerve to peek over the horizon. For some reason, Nathan had to walk back and forth in the hallway for a full 30 minutes while he waited for his new carpool to arrive, which means the wood floors creaked beneath him for 30 minutes straight just outside my door. Not the most pleasant sound to greet the new day, but I remained cool. Hey! At least he got up and got ready without me having to nag him. But at 5:40 he came into my room and said, "It's 5:50 and my carpool's not here." (Note the time discrepancy here.)

My response: "Whatever. If they're not here by 6:00 then you are missing seminary and we'll find out what's up with the carpool."

...10 minutes elapse...

"Sorry, Mommy. I was wrong about the time last time. NOW it's actually 5:50 and they're still not here."

Same answer given... just as there is a knock at the door and he's off to seminary. Crisis averted.

So now I am super-chipper and LOVING the new day, because I am SUCH a morning person, she said in a manner dripping with sarcasm. Tossing and turning ensues until the next alarm sounds at 6:20. I then get up and rouse Hayden, who has missed two days of school from a nasty cold. Today was to be his triumphal return to the classroom.

NOT TODAY IT ISN'T!!!

-----------------

Let me back up to Saturday afternoon. Wayne and I had decided to take a walk to the Santa Monica Promenade and enjoy a little alone time. Nathan and Hayden stayed home with simple instructions: they were allowed to play on the X-Box, provided they completed their chores by the time we returned home. We checked up on them periodically and all seemed great. Then as we walk in the door, I notice the game console and T.V. are off (which is really weird, given their free pass from both parents), and Hayden is sobbing on the couch, nursing a puncture wound in his armpit which he sustained (get this...) by doing laundry!!! (Ah, the cruel irony!) Apparently, while sorting the laundry, he slipped and fell into the hamper, which has a wire frame scaffold supporting a cloth exterior. So one of the vertical components of the frame had protruded from the framework and wound up in Hayden's armpit meat. OUCH!!! So we cleaned out the wound with peroxide and dressed it with Neosporin and kept our eye on it throughout the weekend.

------------------

Back to the Monday morning o' fun... Now Hayden's wound is infected and oozing pus, despite our best efforts to prevent such things. Super. And now Wayne is mad, because he wishes I had taken him to the E.R. on Saturday, which I refused to do because they would have made me wait 6 hours for a tetanus booster and a band-aid and charged me the $150 copay to do so.

So while he's upset, he goes to move the clothes iron, which he failed to notice is scorching hot, and attempts to pick it up with his only opposable thumb, which makes a sizzling noise and blisters almost instantaneously from tip to palm. (I'll leave out the dialog that ensued, as it was understandably a bit colorful.)

So while I try to nurse Hayden's wounds and dress Wayne's wounds, I am still trying to get ready for work. So I go to get in the shower and there is no hot water. Which is super-fun for me, because I usually run the water so hot that I walk out of my showers with a red streak down my back. Not today! It's shivering and yipping and pulling out my hair as I rush to wash my unmanageable locks before I suffer hypothermia.

As my teeth chatter away, it is decided that Hayden will miss another day of school so that he may go to the doctor, and Wayne will take him and try to maneuver the steering wheel with his eight intact fingertips.

I leave as things finally seem to be resolving and normalcy can return. I sit pensively on the bus, trying to distract myself with a book, only to find I am rereading the same words over and over without comprehension. I get to the clinic, put my game face on, and pretend everything is hunky dory. After all that rushing around, a quick look at my schedule reveals that my first patient has canceled, and the rest of my day is bound to be more of the same.

The cool, professional exterior melts away, and I confide in the secretary of the morning's events ...and I went home. Thank you, Esme for your sympathetic suggestion to do so!

Here's to Tuesdays. May they be gloriously uneventful!!!!

Intruders... BEWARE!!!

If you are breaking into my apartment and you happen to wander into my home while I'm sleepwalking...

Particularly on a night when I'm wielding a clothes iron
to attack you...

You might wind up with your face looking like this:

Somnambulism:
Always funny for a good post, but seriously...
I think I have a problem!

It's a Bird... It's a Plane... What the Freak WAS That?!?

Friday afternoon, we were all sitting around the house preparing for a leisurely weekend. An unexpected sound shook the very foundation of our apartment. It was unlike anything I had ever heard before. It sounded sort of like an explosion, but was more of a concussive force... Not really a KABOOM! But more of a giant POP!!! And I mean GIANT pop! So then my mind went reeling... What could that possibly be? Hayden came running into the room with a concerned/ terrified look on his face. "What... was... that?!?" I had no answer.

My concern was heightened by the realization that it was 9/11. Was there a new terrorist attack in Los Angeles? Had Jack Bauer failed to thwart another enemy plot? I started scouring the internet for breaking news, but to no avail.

Then this came up on the L.A. Times:


With its signature sonic boom, shuttle lands at Edwards

September 11, 2009 | 5:56 pm

The space shuttle Discovery landed this afternoon at Edwards Air Force Base, complete with its signature sonic boom heard across Southern California.

The shuttle glided down over Los Angeles and landed on the runway without incident.

Unstable weather on the East Coast forced Discovery to land at Edwards instead of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The so-called de-orbit burn began shortly before 5 p.m., with landing about 5:50 p.m.

“The burn lasts three to four minutes, slowing Discovery enough to begin its descent,” according to information published by NASA.

The landing completes a trip to deliver supplies and equipment to the International Space Station. The mission lasted 14 days and covered 5.7 million miles.

--Ann M. Simmons

No terrorist plot... We had just heard the space shuttle!!!

How cool is that?!?

Top 10 Random Things You Couldn't Pay Me Enough To Do:

We all have our breaking points. I will do a lot of things on a dare, but I have to draw the line somewhere. Here's my line. Don't ever make me cross it.

1. Eat Menudo. I don't know what's grosser... That there exists a spicy soup made of poop organs or that somebody named a pop band after it. (They should call it "Poop Pop.")
   
2. Pick up a banana slug with my bare hands... Though, if you think about it, they would probably just feel like somebody's mouth (but I use gloves for that.)
3. Give anybody a foot massage... Not EVER in a million years (sorry, Wayne.)
4. Watch any of the following movies again: "The Perfect Storm," "A.I.," "Cold Mountain," or "The Invisible." (That's about 10 hours of my life completely wasted.)
   
5. Go on any game show which would require me to have any sort of insect or arachnid crawl on me. (Especially cockroaches.)
6. Kiss any of my old boyfriends again. (And I'm not saying that just to make Wayne happy.)
   
7. Dissect a human cadaver and extract boogers from the sinus cavities... Oh wait! I've already done that one! (One of the nastiest days of my life, I tell ya.)
8. Douche mice... Hey! I've done that one too! (It was all in the name of science, rest assured.)
9. Wallpaper any room in my house with little pink roses. (Perhaps it's a phobia brought on by my decor as a youth.)
10. Go to school for another 10 years. (MAN! I am getting trunky!)

What would you resist doing no matter what?

A Fitting Celebration to Mark the End of Thirty-Something

Tickets to see John Williams conduct the L.A. Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl: $19

One of my favorite parts of the night: Superman Theme Song while the dome gets lit up like the Hall of Justice. AWESOME!!!


There's our good buddy John, and the lady in the black dress is Lynn Redgrave. This was the Harry Potter section.

Yoda Birthday Badge: $3


Birthday Cake with Darth Vader Candle: $18



Novelty Light Sabers: $3



Shuttle Ride from Westwood to Hollywood: $8


Watching grown men and women relive their childhood fantasies:

PRICELESS!

Happy Birthday, Wayno!

I hope this made your 1st annual 39th birthday a memorable one!
Love you!

~~~~~
Other wonderful memories to add to the night:

• Sitting in the R2 section
• Lynn Redgrave narrating Harry Potter
  
• "Not only am I a pack mule, but I double as a napkin!"
• "There are brownies in my cleavage."
• Cold, grouchy little-old-ladies worried about their hair-dos on the bus
  
• Heading down the hill behind fully loaded Depends undergarments
• Trying to figure out the time signature(s) on "The Knight Bus"
• The tuneless wonder-drunk and her lovely rendition of "As Time Goes By"

As the Summer Fades

So now that my tan is fading (can you really call it a tan if it started out as a crispy fried red burn and then faded to something with some vague semblance of tan lines?), I figure I should wade through all the pictures I been accumulating on my camera card over the summer. Here's what we've been up to lately...

There have been lots of parties...
This is what all the kids are wearing these days...
At least that's what Nathan tells me.

Hayden helped vanquish the "Swine Flu" pig-shaped pinata.

At Wayne's cousin Hayley's wedding.

And reunions...
An impromptu 19 year cheerleader reunion in Manhattan Beach.

Dad came down to the annual UCLA Pedo Alumni Day.
After battling parallel universe Ruby's Diners, we finally met up with Amy, Jeff and Caleb for a fun dinner in Orange County.

And sendoffs...
My baby brother Scott shipped out to Iraq for his first tour in the Marines.
We miss you!

Family Love Fests...
The boys at a resident picnic in Mar Vista park. They couldn't contain the love!

Bergers are in the HOUSE!


Maiko and Scott Brower (showing his good side),
and my Sisters Remy and Amy, plus a sulking Caleb.

Jeanette and Jan... Always making me see double.

My beautiful niece Ellie at Hayley's wedding.


And Family brawls...
A fictitious, but very plausible explanation for Brower's mangled face
(which he scraped up the night before by missing a step.)

Work...

It has been Hayden's duty to do the dishes every night this summer.
This is how he stays motivated.

How I spend most of my days, whether the weather is nice or not.

Play...
The pool in Santa Rosa...I took about 60 pictures,
and believe it or not THIS is the most normal looking one!

Scofield lake. That's Wayne on the right. Hee hee hee!

Baseball on the beach in Malibu.

Speed wobbles in Huntington Beach with Caleb and Jeff.

Relaxation...
Chillaxin' in Manhattan.



And being ridiculously good looking.




Summer 2009 was a great one!
Now go back to school, kids!!!