The best bad day ever.

So now that he's gone, it's O.K. for me to tell you (and the terrorists) that Will left last night. When I heard from him this afternoon he was in Ireland waiting for the plane to be refueled.

I really expected today to suck. I fully intended to stay in my pajamas all day, watch Battlestar Galactica, cry and maybe eat some sugar free brownies.

But when I woke up, it wasn't so bad. I exercised, I showered, I actually got dressed in something other than yoga pants, I didn't cry much, and when I checked my e-mail I had a message from Emily Friedman, who is a reporter for ABCNews.com.

It turns out that Ms. Friedman saw my post about the Great OB Tampon Shortage of 2011. She herself is writing an article about that very topic and wanted to interview me for it.

Let me repeat: A reporter, from a legitimate and esteemed news organization, wanted to interview me. About my tampons.

Well hell yes, I'll do your interview!

So, she called me. And talked to me about my tampons.

She was very professional, and she did a great job, but it was really hard to answer questions about what emotions I felt when I discovered my beloved OBs were nowhere to be found with a straight face. I suspect that it was just as hard for her to ask them while remaining professional. At one point I believe I said that I felt "panicked", because "I don't want to walk around bleeding all over the place." Yes, internets. I really said that in an interview for an article that will be seen by possibly a million people.

And as she finished up the interview she mentioned that my blog would be named, quoted and linked in the article.

Sweet baby Brangelina in a manger, my blog is going to be posted on ABCNews dot freaking com.

I always wanted to be famous. I never imagined it would be because I couldn't find my tampons.

I'm trying not to let it go to my head, but when I was at the grocery store today a woman cut me off in the parking lot. I really wanted to get all up in her face and ask her, "Do you know who I am?"

So, anyway, today didn't suck.

And the icing on the cake? I logged on to find that someone had sent me this little gem. Not only did it make my day, but it made my kids' day as well.

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Maybe this year won't be so bad after all.

*Update*
Dammit. I got cut!! I didn't make it into the article. I take it all back. Today sucks. Click HERE for the article. Ms. Friedman, don't screw with me like that!

Just in case they really DO read my blog.

(So, internets, Will is leaving really soon. I can't say exactly when because as we all know, the terrorists read my blog and they might use the information against us. Lets just say we're down to counting hours. Anyway, I don't know if you've ever felt like you were suppressing a complete and total emotional breakdown 24/7, but that's kind of what it's like here right now. So, I probably won't be posting for a bit.
As always, if any of you would like to guest post, send it to me at the address over there--->.)

Dear Al-Qaeda Insurgents,

First, thanks for stopping by the blog! Welcome! Take a few minutes to look around and read some old posts. Just maybe avoid that one about the YMCA pool. It might upset you and I don't need my minivan blown up in parking lot of Wal-Mart.

Anyway, the main reason I'm writing is because pretty soon my husband will be visiting your lovely country, and I was wondering if maybe you could not kill him? I know that technically he's going there to help people obliterate you from the face of the Earth, but it's nothing personal. Honestly. We just needed the health care coverage. He's just the guy keeping the communication systems working. You know, "don't kill the messenger" and all that.

As an added incentive, upon his safe return in one year I will send you a basket of homemade mini muffins. I mean, who can resist a muffin basket? They're really good. Lemon-poppy seed is my specialty. Poppy seeds are a big thing in your country! See? I totally embrace your culture. Well, minus the whole wiping your butt with your hand thing. I'm not down with that. But you know, baby steps.

So, anyway, if you could maybe lay off the rockets, improvised explosive devices and suicide bombers for the next year, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks a bunch!

~Brandi

730 days ago

This was me.


Over the course of two years I've lost 155 pounds, had pounds and pounds of hanging skin removed from my abdomen, and then gained 17 pounds back.

I've gone from needing cholesterol medication, two blood pressure medications and an obscene amount of insulin daily to needing nothing. Nothing. Just my vitamins.

I've gone from being a professional couch potato to someone who genuinely enjoys exercise.

I used to be The Dorito Queen. Now, I haven't eaten them in years. (But we're not going to discuss jalapeno chips, O.K.?)

But most importantly, I kind of like my body now. It's far from perfect. I'll never wear a bikini. I'll be saggy and I'll have scars for the rest of my life. But I'm O.K. with that now. And I think that that's the biggest success of these two years.

If my uterus had a face, it would be a frowny face.

Warning: I am about to talk about my period. And tampons. And other things used to deal with the flow of menstrual blood. And I possibly might even mention vaginas. And conspiracy theories about tampons and/or vaginas and/or Johnson & Johnson. If you don't want to read about these things, or if reading the phrase "menstrual blood" has already made you uncomfortable, you should probably leave now.

So, I have mentioned before that I have horrible, horrible periods (I believe I've described them as "crotch massacres"). My whole reproductive tract is like a carnival freak show. Years of infertility, eight pound, bowling ball sized ovarian cysts, endometriosis all over the place, three incidences of biopsies because they thought I had cancer...It's just a mess up in there.

But really, the worst are my periods. Two days a month I can't even leave the house. I'm not exaggerating, I'm not being melodramatic. The bleeding is so heavy I cannot go anywhere or do anything other than sit as still as possible so as not to bleed all over everything. And then for five to seven days after that, it's still pretty bad, but at least I can function.

So I, and people like me, try to find ways to deal with it. And I had finally found something that worked. About eight years ago, OB started making Ultraplus absorbency tampons. These suckers were the highest absorbency tampon you could buy. They claimed to hold, like, a gallon of blood before they started leaking. And for the most part they did. Between those and enormous, overnight length incontinence pads, I was able to get through the two worst days a month with minimal spillage from my hemorrhaging lady bits.

But then they started to get hard to find. And in November when we were vacationing in Hillbilly Country and my uterus decided to ruin the trip, I searched numerous stores and pharmacies and couldn't find them anywhere. I couldn't find them when we got home, either.

Turns out that they discontinued that absorbency level. Forever. For a while there if you went to OB's website and clicked on the Ultraplus tampons, you got taken to a page that tells you to see a doctor because you probably have cancer and need a hysterectomy. Terrific.

And then last month I couldn't find any OB tampons of any absorbency level. Anywhere. I finally found some Superplus absorbency ones and bought several boxes.

I didn't think anything of it until last night. Tex mentioned on her blog that she couldn't find OB anywhere either, and she's several states away.

And that's when we both did a little Googling and discovered the Johnson & Johnson conspiracy. You see, apparently Johnson & Johnson, the maker of OB Tampons, hates vaginas. Babies? They love them. Vaginas? Not so much. That's the only reason I can come up with to explain the "supply interruption" they are blaming for the shortage. I mean really, they're cotton and string. Are we now out of cotton and string?

I know right about now some of you are wondering why I don't just buy a different brand and quit whining. I'll tell you why, and you'll probably be sorry you asked when I'm done.

The unique thing about OB is that they have no applicator. (If you don't know what a tampon applicator is you are probably either male or too young to be reading my blog). I have tried tampons with applicators and I cannot use them. They don't go where they're supposed to go. They fall out. I'm sure it's just another facet to my reproductive side show, but whatever the reason, I just can't use them.

Anyway, I posted my discovery of The Great OB Tampon Shortage of 2011 on Facebook this morning, which has resulted in an impromptu OB black market covering 2 continents and multiple states. Tex just spent her kids' college funds buying what her Rite-Aid had left in stock. So, if you need OBs, I have connections. Let me know. But it will cost you. (You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. Two boxes of the discontinued Ultraplus variety are going for $100 on Ebay, and that's just the starting bid. And someone will buy them. I watched two boxes go for $142.00 last night. Vaginas are serious business.)

Funnily, just recently I had three different friends e-mail me about Diva Menstrual Cups (as one told me, I'm the only one who talks about periods so maybe I could spread the word). I have avoided them because taking them out seems so...incredibly messy. But maybe Johnson & Johnson's hatred of our bleeding uteri is going to force me to give them a try.

(And for the record it's not just me who is in a panic over the lack of OB tampons. Read this.)

Send help.

The Army threw up all over my living room.

And all over my husband.

I'm a planner.

It's no secret that I need order and rigid structure to function. Disorder makes me crazy. Literally.

An extension of that is my need to have a plan. I get very anxious when I don't have a plan. Having a plan for everything makes me feel like there is order in my life.

That's not to say that I don't welcome some spontaneity. If we go on vacation, I don't have every minute of every day mapped out and scheduled. I'm O.K. with doing whatever we feel like doing when we wake up that day. But you can bet that I'd planned out exactly where we would stay and how we would get there and what we would do while we were there--just not specifically what day we'd do them.

As soon as we find out that the Army is moving us yet again, I immediately start looking at houses, schools, neighborhoods, etc... in the new area.

I like to be in control, and having a plan in place makes me feel like I have some shred of control over the situation. I may not get to choose where the Army sends us, or when they send us, but I get some comfort out of having a plan in place for when we get there.

As anyone in the military knows, plans are often thwarted. "What's that? You've made full preparations to move to Tacoma? Too bad. You're going to rural Georgia instead." And then I start the planning phase all over again.

Deep down, I know my planning is futile. More often than not, something changes that makes my plans obsolete. But making the plan helps, so I keep doing it.

Will leaves for a year in Afghanistan soon. It's stressful and scary. We've done it before. I know that I'll be fine. I already have many, many plans in place to get through the year.

But the scariest and most stressful part of the deployment for me is that slightly increased chance that he could be killed. Logically I know that he could die on the way home from work today, or have an aneurysm in his sleep. There's a chance for death for all of us every single minute of every single day. I get that. But when your husband heads off to a place rife with insurgents, a place that 104 soldiers from this very Army post have already died this year, a place where military analysts predict a Spring that will be far deadlier than the past several months have already been, you can't help but worry.

And so I plan.

I can't control what happens there. I can't keep him from dying there. So all I can do is plan for the worst case scenario. I can control what happens after.

(Umm, hi sweetie! You know how you think I spend all day playing on the internet and spending all the money? Yeah, actually I spend it planning out my life in the event of your untimely death. Love you!)

It's not fun. I like browsing houses for sale, but not when part of me is wondering if we'll need less square footage with one less person in the house.

But I have my plan in place. I'm pretty sure I know where I would go and what I would do if the worst were to happen. I hope it's a plan I never have to use, but I get a tiny bit of comfort knowing that it's there.

Skiing is for people with a death wish.

So, did you guys read the story last week about the ski lift in Maine that came off the track and a bunch of people fell twenty-five feet to the ground (which, luckily, was covered in 2 feet of new snow that softened the landing)?

You know what was most shocking to me about this story? That I wasn't on the lift when it happened. Because I'm pretty much convinced that if I get on a ski lift (or anything remotely like it) that it will break, or I will slip off, and I will plummet to my death. And if somehow I manage to make it to the top of the mountain, I will surely die while skiing down it.

My first time skiing was in 6th grade. We had a class ski trip. I took the free lesson and reluctantly got on the lift with my friend. I white knuckled it all the way to the top, convinced I was going to die. Then, when it reached the top, I had no idea how to get off. I proceeded to fall on my face and get knocked in the head by the seat as it passed over me. They had to stop the lift while they helped me up.

And then? Then I was too chicken to actually ski down the hill. I took off my skis and walked down the mountain.

I decided I'd be better off sticking to the bunny hill. I did just fine for about 10 minutes, but then I fell. And I could not get up. And I couldn't get the skis to release so I could take them off. So, there I was--an eleven year old fat kid stuck on the ground begging the people who walked by to help me up. No one would, the bastards. I was stuck on the ground for close to an hour. An hour! I finally managed to get one of the skis off and got up. I spent the rest of the day in the lodge.

My second experience with skiing was many years later when I was a nanny during college in Utah. The woman I worked for invited me to join the family at a night-skiing event hosted by her employer. For some reason, I accepted. Because, you know, skiing in the dark is so much safer than in broad daylight.

This time I opted for a much more in-depth lesson, and I told the instructor that I was pretty sure that I was going to die. He was really nice, and he rode up on the lift with me and helped me get off it without causing them to stop the lift or giving myself a concussion.

But then I had a panic attack when he suggested I ski down the hill. What? Look, getting me up here was a major feat, buddy, and now you want me to ski down? No thanks.

But he was persistent and got me to try. And this is how it went down: I screamed and cried and hyperventilated. He ended up going down the entire mountain backwards while holding on to me, all while moving maybe a foot per minute.

Right now some of you might be thinking, "Brandi! You should totally try cross country skiing! No mountains!"

Yeah, I tried that too. Admittedly it wasn't bad. I may have even enjoyed it a little. However, 15 minutes into it, we started seeing blood on the trail. And the further we went, the more blood there was. By the time we reached the end of the trail, someone had clearly lost enough blood that it's doubtful they walked out on their own two feet. So, obviously even cross country skiing can be deadly.

So, in conclusion, skiing is evil. It killed Sonny Bono and Natasha Richardon, and it's been gunning for me since 1986.

Just say no.