Here is a clue. The sports bra that actually doesn't squish your boobs down to look like lumpy pancakes, is not the best thing to wear over your severe sunburn. Especially at work when you are on camera and in public so every person within a 50 yd radius is wondering why you are squirming so much.

I know that I have not posted for a while....so, um sorry.

The teenager is doing much better, and gaining weight at a steady clip. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers.

This morning I approached my desk ready to open email and what not and it became apparent that it was not going to happen anytime soon. No Internet. None. Nada. I thought I was going to start hyperventilating.

At first I tried all the cords. Everything seemed fine. We have Qwest Internet, so I wanted to check the phone jack. In order to do that the simplest way, I had to hook up our spare phone.

In order to do that, I had to get it out of the deep recesses of my husband's "man room". Sigh... As I mentally psyched myself up for that challenge I put on the garden gloves and grabbed a wooden spoon to use as a possible weapon for anything that might be alive in the shadows of the unknown. I slowly creaked open the door, swatting at the dusty Tibetan Prayer Flags he has hanging over the doorway. (Did I mention my hubby is somewhat of a hippy?) After peering around the door, I inched my way inside, leaving the door open for a possible avenue of escape. Stretching out my arm, my grip on the wooden spoon tight, I prodded at the stack of newspapers piled high on his desk. Nothing that might of been nesting in there rushed out at me gnashing it's teeth to protect it's young, so I took a deep breath, grabbed the phone, rushed out and slammed the door behind me. Whew. I hate that room.

Suffice it to say, I do not make it a habit to enter this domain. This is where he reads his periodicals (Discover Mag., National Geographic, The daily newspaper). This is where he smokes his nasty cigarettes and the occasional cigar. This is where he sprays his anti-fungal foot spray after every shower, before he puts his shoes on and goes to work. This is not a place I voluntarily hang out in. The Man Room.

This is our emergency phone. In case the power goes out and our cordless won't work. It is a vintage Baltimore Colts football helmet, mounted on a trophy-like plaque and made into a phone. You now know why it is stored where it is. When he first got this as a gift he wanted to (gasp) put it in the kitchen. Ugh.

I then had to crawl underneath the kitchen table to get to the phone jack. Lovely. Did I mention this is my dog Daisy's favorite place to sleep? I'm not the best house keeper in the world, so it was kinda fuzzy down there. Anyhoo, it's clean now. And the line was fine.

I just had to do it though. I had to do the dreaded. Call Qwest. Or should I just say India? I have nothing against Indians. Let me just get that said right now. What I hate is when I call a technical help line, and I am already irritated or annoyed because I have tried every avenue I can think of to fix whatever problem I have, I then have to speak with a person I have a hard time understanding. Beyond frustrating.

But I was pleased to speak with someone who spoke slow enough that I could understand. And even though the woman's tone was robotic in the beginning (everyone reading this knows what I am talking about if you have ever called a tech support line), apparently my Prozac must of kicked in somewhere between the Muzak renditions of "Born in The U.S.A." and "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" while I was on hold, because towards the end of the call we were joking around about how she makes her son do all the crawling-around-under-the-table-cord-plugging-in-stuff.

Obviously my Internet has been fixed or you wouldn't be reading this. I won't go into the longer story of all the troubleshooting I had to do, but let's just say it was a lot. I'm just glad it's done and the helmet phone can go back to it's rightful place...buried underneath piles of junk on my husbands desk.

Is that my kid?

Here I am finally. It's been a harrowing few weeks. And there is much to tell, spew forth yada yada yada.

My son, was admitted to the hospital on May 6 with his case of mono. Interestingly not the first hospital where we went to the ER the day before, (the place where they gave him IV fluids, and 4 Ibuprofen and sent him on his way), but the other smaller hospital across the river. After 4.5 days on IV fluids, and other meds, we brought him home on the afternoon of the 10Th. He is finally able to eat solid foods, and believe me, we are shoveling it into him. Having a six foot tall kid go from 140lbs. to 110lbs. is scary.

He is feeling much better, and actually went to school yesterday on his own accord. But here comes some of the interesting stuff.

His grandmother (IO) and I have both noted a difference in him. For the better. Not that he was bad before.....but, well you know what I mean.

She thinks maybe he had a "near death experience" or something. Why? Well, he actually talks to her now. No longer is he the master of grunting one syllable responses in person and on the phone. He does have a vocabulary after all. And it includes the words thank you and please. What happened to my boy?!?

Where he used to assume that his parents were dorks and he knew it all, now he thinks...well, um OK, he still thinks that we are dorks and he knows everything, but he no longer lords it over us. He now just quietly accepts his superiority without rubbing our faces in it. He's actually generous. Wow. I had to sit down for a minute there.

Anyone who has a teenage boy or even just a teenager knows what I'm getting at here. I'm not complaining either. But I am just going to enjoy it while it lasts, because somehow I don't think it will. Oh well.

Oh and he decided to cut his hair. YAY! My son has eyes again!!