Frenchy's Follies... Crazy kids! Out of the mouths of babes...

As a mom, I can tell you that I have been absolutely stunned silent by some of the crazy and outlandish questions my two boys have asked me. I mean, where do they come up with this stuff? No worries! From now on you will never be put on the spot by those little rascals again!

"Mommy, why don't you stand up to pee like I do?"

This one *may* call for a live, peeing-standing-up demo, momma. Trust me, no matter what their age, they will instantly understand why we sit down to pee.

"Who is God? Why can't we see him? Where does God live? What is heaven?"

Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Go directly to the nearest church, drop off the brats and pick them back up in a few days. Viola! Problem solved!



"Why does my pee pee get big sometimes?"

Ummmmm, parents beware! There is no good answer to this question. Just make up some crazy ass reason so they won't want to touch it again until puberty.

"Do you have to pay to go to work?"

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!?! Next question....

"Why is there hair growing on your privates?"

Duh! So it makes them harder to find. Kinda like an adult version of hide and seek, kiddo.

(Usually yelled loudly in public) "Why is that person so oldfatshortugly?"

DO NOT ANSWER THIS QUESTION! Just slowly walk away and whisper to the person "Whose kid is that anyway? He's a rude little bastard isn't he?"

"Why are you my mom?"

Because I pushed your 10 pound chunky little crying ass out of my teeny tiny vagina, that's why!

"Why don't girls have a pee pee?"

Your instinct tells you to make up some kind of scary shit... go with it! Tell them you had one and you cut it off and fed it to the dog. The look on their little face... PRICELESS!


"Why do we always pee when we poop, but we don't poop every time we pee?"

Go ahead and pre-print  the diagram of the sphincter muscle that I have provided. This question comes from left field and will totally catch you off guard. Afterwards, be prepared for a nasty-gram from the teacher who is wondering why the hell you taught your child the word "sphincter". It's such a fun little word for a first grader to say, isn't it?



When in church, during the offering, as you are putting your money into the basket.... "Why do we have to pay to see God?"

Good fucking question kid! <---- Am I right?!?! These kids are smarter than we think, I tell ya!

Whether you think I'm an idiot or a total genius for providing you with these very useful answers to you child's burning questions, I'm a total fucking genius. Hopefully you have realized that I'm joking and that I would never say these things to a kid. Under the age of 2, at least. I was going to write about something serious, but there are too many bad things going on in this world and it's depressing all of us. It was time for a break from all of that.

You're welcome.

A kindergarten student told his teacher he'd found a cat, but it was dead. "How do you know that the cat was dead?" she asked her student. "Because I pissed in its ear and it didn't move," answered the child innocently. "You did WHAT?!?!?!" the teacher yelled in shock. "You know," explained the boy, "I leaned over and went 'Pssst!' and it didn't move." (courtesy of stargazersrealm.com)

Frenchy's Follies... Battle of the Buldge

 I’ve always been heavy set. Even as a young girl I had chubby cheeks and a thick waist. My mom never really cooked too much and had absolutely no problem feeding me and my little sister fast food for every meal. She never ever monitored any of the food that we ate and always had kitchen cabinets FULL of junk food. I grew ginormous boobs at age 8, got my period at 9, and bad acne at 12. I was being joked for all of those things at school. As I became a teenager and my parents split up, I really started packing on the pounds.  I was becoming paranoid about it and had an especially hard time when we ate at my grandparents’ house every Sunday. My grandpa would make fat puffs-of-air-in-the-cheek faces and hold his arms out wide joking me behind everyone’s back. He would analyze every single bite of food I would put in my mouth, and talk about it in front of my whole family. It was embarrassing to say the least.  No one dared to tell him to stop because he was the “head of the family”. It made me feel like shit. There were a couple of times I called him out on what he was doing when he made those gestures and thankfully he stopped doing it. I managed to wean myself from junk food one year when I was in high school but I became so obsessed with losing weight that I was only eating saltines and I was down to 5 saltines a day. I was severely malnourished and when my friends realized what I was doing they threatened to tell my mom and they bought me lunch at school and forced me to eat it. I know what my problem was/is and I gained control over it (for the most part) about 9 years ago.

  I am a food addict.

 And I’m serious when I call myself an addict. I literally crave food like a drug. I get a “high” off of sweet and sugary things just like a coke-head gets off on snorting cocaine. When I’m sad, I want food for comfort. When I’m happy I want it for celebration. If there is any kind of pie, cake, donut, ice cream I binge and eat every bite of it in one sitting. It usually starts with me telling myself “I’ll just have a bite”. That very quickly turns into four of five more bites and then it gets to be more and more until it’s all gone. I mean like a dozen doughnuts gone. Or like an ENTIRE CAKE gone. It’s a weird vicious cycle of going in and out of the kitchen over and over. It’s like it calls my name! I cannot STOP once I start. I don’t purge, because thankfully I HATE to throw up. But I get very pissed at myself for binging and obsess about it for days and sometimes even weeks after I do it!

  My highest weight was 225 lbs. (I’m 5’8”), and I was a size 20! That was right before I turned 21 and the new weight loss drugs Fen-Phen and Redux were FDA approved. I asked my family doctor if he would prescribe me one of the drugs and he decided Redux would be the best fit for me. I dropped tons of weight and was really happy with the way I looked for the first time in my life! The drugs made me full of energy and never hungry.  A year later they pulled the drug off of the market because people were dying from taking it. They also found out that the drug could cause irreversible heart damage. I was more upset that I couldn’t take it anymore than worried about dying from it. I was involved in the Class Action Lawsuit for both of the drugs and was sent to a Cardiologist to see if it had affected my heart and I was in the clear, thankfully. After stopping the drug, I steadily gained all of the weight that I had lost back. I stayed heavy for about 8 years after that. About a year before I got pregnant with my first born, I knew that if I wanted to start a family I needed to lose weight. I was starting to cook for myself and my husband and was having luck with some of the healthier recipes. I knew that if I put on 40 pregnancy pounds ON TOP of how heavy I already was that I would be miserable and never lose the baby weight. So I set a goal for myself and started a weight loss program to get my eating and portion sizes under control. I did that for about 9 weeks and lost 20 pounds! I then started cooking healthy transitioning to regular food and continued to set small goals for myself. I made Sundays a “cheat day” so I wouldn’t feel completely deprived of the things I loved. I realized this couldn’t be called a “diet” very early on. I had to start a new way of “life”. This was the only way I could ever take the weight off and keep it off for good. I then had my two baby boys and both times managed to slowly lose the pregnancy weight and get back into my “skinny” clothes (size 12, which isn’t even considered skinny in this day and age!)

 Currently I am having a new battle with my food addiction. I have moved into a new home that needed a major kitchen renovation and I am just now unpacking my dishes and pots and pans. For almost two months I have been living off of frozen meals and fast food. Although my choices have been smart, like grilled chicken sandwiches and side salads instead of fries, I have still cheated more in these couple months than ever and I have gained 7 pounds because of it. Just last night we had our first healthy meal at the new house and I’m trying to get back on track. But I’m having a REALLY hard time. The sad thing for me is that I gain weight very quickly and it’s really hard for me to lose it once I gain it. I can’t really do a lot of exercising because of my back being so messed up (you can read about my back problem here) I’m honestly scared to exercise and screw something up in there with all of that metal holding me together! Walking is about the only form of exercise that doesn’t end up causing my back to lock up.

 Whenever I run into people that I haven’t seen in a long time they always make such a big deal over how much better I look (which actually makes me feel like shit, I mean, I guess I looked pretty fucking awful for all of those “fat” years!) and they want to know my secret. So I thought I would share it with you guys.

 The secret is to treat it like any other addiction. You are constantly fighting the battle. Every day. Every meal. You have to consciously say NO to the bad for you foods and YES to the healthy ones. And you have to stick to that every single day for the rest of your life. You have to be really careful not to fall off the wagon, so to speak. Just like with alcoholics, it can only take one bite of something to send me spiraling back into my crazy food addiction. A “diet” means that you get onto a program that you will eventually get back off of. This is no DIET. This is a new way of life for me that I will have to consciously live, forever thinking about what food I put into my mouth. A great support system or a friend wanting to make this life changing decision with you is a great way to keep on track. And no matter how many times you cheat, don’t give up! You can always start fresh the next day eating your regular healthy foods. If you choose to change your life you may not see results for weeks and no one may even notice your weight loss for months, but KEEP THAT LIFESTYLE CHANGE UP! You won’t regret it when you see what an impact it will make on your life for the better. I’m glad I changed my life and I’m back on track now and I WILL LOSE THOSE 7 POUNDS DAMN IT!

 

 

Rizzo's Ramblings...My adventures in Redneckistan

As promised, here is a look into my life in a small town filled with ignorant people. As some of you who read the blog know, my daughter was diagnosed a type 1 diabetic a few years ago. (If you are not familiar with that story, you can play catch up here.) Last Thursday I received a letter in the mail recalling her insulin pump. On Friday morning I called her doctor's office to let them know her pump had been recalled, and to request a prescription for syringes as well as the information needed to calculate and give her the correct does of insulin. Taking care of type 1 diabetes is detail oriented and involves quite a bit of math. I will try to explain it as best I can so that you can understand the story I am about to tell. When a diabetic (please keep in mind that I am referring to type 1. I have no experience with type 2, and it is a whole different ballgame) wakes up the first thing they have to do is check their blood sugar. Normal range varies for everyone, but for my daughter anything between 70 and 150 means she does not need any insulin. If she decides to eat, however, then she has to count the number of carbs she will be consuming and calculate how many units of insulin she will need to "cover" those carbs. Her carb to insulin ratio is 7 grams of carbohydrates to 1 unit of insulin. So, if my daughter were to eat 14 grams of carbs, then she would have to inject 2 units of insulin. That is, as long as her blood sugar was somewhere between 70 and 150. If, for some reason, her blood sugar is higher than 150, then she has to inject extra insulin to bring her blood sugar down to within the "normal" range. This is calculated by a sliding scale. All sliding scales are based on each individual. When a diabetic is on an insulin pump the doctor programs the pump with all this information and all the diabetic has to do is put in the number of carbs they will be consuming along with their blood sugar and the pump will calculate it all for them and give the correct amount of insulin. So, on Friday morning when I called the doctor for syringes, I also had to ask for a sliding scale. I called the doctor at 10AM. By 3PM I had not received a phone call back from the doctor, and the pharmacy had not received a prescription for syringes. I called the doctor's office back. I was assured that the message had been passed on to the nurse practitioner and that all would be taken care of before the end of the day. AT 4:57PM I still had not heard anything and so I called once again. This time I was on hold for a few minutes when a nurse (I have never spoken to before) came on the line and informed me that the nurse practitioner who was supposed to be taking care of this for me had went home for the weekend! Keep in mind that I had received a letter in the mail recalling my daughters insulin pump because it could, at any time, give her a dose of insulin that could cause serious injury or death. The nurse that I was speaking with saw the importance of getting my daughter off the pump and was happy to call in the syringes, but could not tell me what sliding scale to use because she was not familiar with my daughters case. I still had the sliding scale that we were given three years ago when my daughter was diagnosed and so the nurse and I agreed that anything would be better than risking keeping her on the pump. The sliding scale that I have is in increments of 60. So if my daughters sugar is between 150 and 210 she gets an extra unit of insulin on top of what she eats. If it is from 211 to 270 then she gets 2 units. This continues to increase by 60 with each added 60 being another 1 unit of insulin until she reaches 5 units. On Monday I kept my daughter home from school just to make sure that she was going to continue to do well on the shots. I also wanted to hear from the doctor's office to see if they were going to make any changes. I did receive a call from them, but it was only to ask me what scale I was using and to ask me when we would be getting the pump back. I didn't really understand that question because I am not the pump manufacturer and I do not repair them. Tuesday morning I went with my daughter to the school to explain to the school nurse what had happened and to give her the syringes and dosing information she would need to make sure that my daughter got the insulin required. At this point, the school nurse informed me that without written and signed doctors orders she could not allow my daughter to have insulin injections. This school nurse is well aware that my daughter is a diabetic. She has seen my daughter everyday at lunchtime and insists on helping her to program her pump even though my daughter is 14 and has been on a pump for 2 and a half years. This nurse is well aware that the only thing keeping my daughter alive is insulin. So, I told the nurse that I would not be able to leave my daughter at school knowing that they would not allow her to have insulin. I then asked if it would be an excused absence since the school was the one with holding my daughters medication. The nurse told me I would have to speak with the principal about that. So, I went to the principal and asked her if it would be an excused absence and the principal told me that I would need a doctor's excuse because I had failed to get the doctor to fax in the proper paperwork to the school in a timely fashion. SO, I took my daughter home and immediately called the doctor's office and requested that they fax in the orders to the school as well as doctor's excuses for Monday and Tuesday. Yesterday afternoon at 3:15PM the school nurse called me to say that the doctor's office had, in fact, faxed in the orders but that instead of writing out a detailed sliding scale they wrote 1 unit/60 >150. That means 1 unit for every 60 points greater than 150, which is the sliding scale that I had written out in detail for the nurse and given to her just that very same morning. The nurse informed me that she could not accept that from the doctor and until she got a detailed scale faxed into her office she could still not give my child her insulin. She then went on to say that if I chose not to send my daughter in to school on Wednesday (today) I would have to talk to the school principal about getting it excused. That is when I informed the school nurse that I really didn't care if the absence was excused or not. I really had no choice in the matter because if they were not going to allow her insulin then I was not going to allow her to attend. I made it clear to that nurse that as far as I was concerned she had a doctors order and with holding my daughters insulin, should I choose to send her, would be a crime.  THAT is what I have been dealing with the past few days! So, you will have to understand when I rant and rave about people's ignorance and having to live in Redneckistan.

Rizzo's Ramblings... The wonders (and horrors) of Facebook and other social media

I have had a Facebook account for years. I have had an account since the people who made it were automatically your friends; when Myspace was THE place to be. In the beginning, it seemed like Facebook was being used for people to connect with (or stay connected to) family and friends who were far away or whom they had not seen since high school. That is still what I primarily use it for to this day. Over the years it seems like it has become a place for society to judge people. Rather harshly, I might add. People put a lot of private information or pictures on Facebook for their friends and relatives to see.If they don't have privacy settings set a certain way all that information becomes public. There are a lot of teenagers (mine included) using social media today. Some of these kids have no qualms about posting embarrassing pictures or videos of themselves or others because they think it is funny. They don't mind posting that they got suspended from school for fighting or cursing at a teacher. They don't mind going on someone's wall and telling them what an awful person they are, or that they don't have any friends, or enough money. There have been a lot of reports of children harming or killing themselves due to bullying that has happened on social media sites. There is a name who comes to mind when I say this. Amanda Todd. She posted a video on YouTube telling about how she posted nude pictures of herself to someone and they were leaked to her family and friends. Then the kids at school started bullying her. She tried to move. She tried counseling. She tried a number of things (including this video) to get help. She ended up killing herself. At some point she drank bleach. I, personally, have seen children (who go to school with MY children) tell people to "go drink bleach". I always wonder what their parents think. I know their parents have a Facebook account, because they are my "Facebook friends". I wonder if they are "friends" with their children on Facebook  I wonder if they even go look at their kids' walls. I always want to make a comment on those kids' pages or their parents pages saying "Are you kidding me?", but I don't. Mostly because I am a coward. I am not a very social person, and I don't hide the fact that I don't go along with the crowd, so many of the moms around here do not have a very high opinion of me. Which transfers to my children. Especially my daughter because she is just like me. She stands up for the underdog and she is not afraid to tell someone they are being an ass even if the person she is telling is the most popular kid at school. I am proud of my daughter for standing up for people, but I constantly worry about how she is treated by these kids. If their parents allow them to say things like "go drink bleach" on Facebook  can you imagine what they say at school when their parents aren't around? Some of you will say that there are teachers and faculty at the school to handle things, but we live in a small town and the adults have the same mentality as the middle schoolers as far as friends and cliques and popularity goes. It is kind of disturbing. The whole point of this blog is to discuss what I saw on Facebook this morning There is a new page. "Tag Someone Who" is the name of the page. They post a meme and in the comments they want you to tag some who relates to the meme. Here are a few of the ones I saw this morning. "Tag someone who will never get laid". "Tag someone who eats like this" (With a picture of someone shoveling food into their mouth)  "Tag someone who thinks they got swag" "Tag someone who has been raped by a sloth". SO on and so on. I am REALLY disturbed by this. Being a teenager was so hard without all the social media, internets, etc, I cannot imagine what it is like for kids today. Why is it necessary for them to make it so much harder? What happened to building each other up and helping each other out? What happened to being there for one another? Thankfully, I have made some REAL "Facebook friends" whom I have never met, but feel a kinship to. These women are funny and kind and empathetic and sympathetic and honest about their struggles. They are non judgmental. They have a kind word for everyone. They try to help people. They use what they have been through in their lives to lead the way. They are a light shining in the darkness. THAT is what social media should be used for. THAT is what we need to be teaching our children! SO, with that being said I am going to ask YOU, as responsible adults, to REPORT these pages that promote bullying and judging of others. It is OUR job to protect our children. It is OUR job to police the social media they are using. I am not asking you to scold the children that are using these pages to be mean to others. That is for their parents to do. I am asking you to help take down the pages that promote such things. If we take a stand against it, then maybe we can make a difference. I am sure Facebook is not the only place where it is possible. However, I do not use any other social media sites and have no idea how they work. I DO promise that, if you tell me what to do, I will sign up for them all and help take a stand on them as well. It is time that we try to create a place of peace for our children. It is time that we begin teaching love and acceptance again.. It is time that we take the power away from those who would wield it to hurt others, and put it in the hands of those who would use it to help. It is time for a Facebook revolution. Who is with me?

                                                                  This is what MY daughter posts... What about yours?