That title references Kody, Kyleigh, and I taking a trip into Fairbanks yesterday for some more last-minute items. (Also, an appointment with the ENT doc. More on that later. Aren’t you excited about reading about my snot?)

First, we had the mad house that was Barnes and Noble. Under normal circumstances this is one of my favorite places to visit. “Normal” being, “Not full of rabid last-minute shoppers”. Kody and Kyleigh received gift cards for their birthdays last month, and their entire reason for coming on this trip was to spend their $25 each at B&N.

I revert to my most recent holiday post, where I chronicled the Diet Dr. Pepper Lady Experience (basically, Maurice almost got his head eaten by a crazy lady at the checkout line in Fred Meyer who thought the weekend before Christmas was the perfect time to shop at a huge department store for ONE CASE OF DIET DR PEPPER.) Yeah, that lady was me. I feel like I got some good karma dosage yesterday afternoon, and it came in the form of my oldest child, Kody.

It began with an exhaustive search for just the right item. Frigging Barnes and Noble with their holiday options made that a near-impossibility. Kyleigh was fairly quick about it. Kody….not so much. When selections were made, we ventured to the line that wrapped around the music aisle. Twice. After standing there for a few minutes, Kody decided to use his time wisely by shopping for a Christmas gift for his brother, whose name he drew for the kid gift exchange. I told him I’d hold his place; “be back in ten”.

I am doing that thing where I pretend to be surfing through a Time magazine and really I’m reading the front covers of all the trash mags I am too proud to buy, when I hear the cashier call me to the register. Except there is no Kody because Kody is alllllll the way on the other side of the store. None of those cracked-out Christmas shoppers were waiting for me to fetch my child, and I was again too proud to yell at the top of my lungs (like I would at home); alas, I ventured out of line.

After fighting the urge to drag him back to the line by the ear (aided by the fact that he picked out the sweetest gift for his litltle brother), we took our places back at the end of the Line That Rivals That of a Six Flags Ride. Another ten minutes passed. (This time I was shamelessly flipping through the pages of a table-top book with hundreds of the world’s best pin-up girls. And wishing that it was still okay to have thighs like that.)

We make our way to the front again and guess what. Kody has lost his gift card. He has lost his gift card in Barnes and Noble. In Barnes and Noble where there are presently ONE MILLION SLIGHTLY EDGY SHOPPERS HIGH ON SEATTLE’S BEST COFFEE AND CRANBERRY MUFFINS AND LOOKING AT ME SIDE-EYED.

We left. He cried. He moped. He whined. I felt guilty for not simply paying for his items myself, but this is recurring with Kody and I thought it was a good time to teach him a lesson. Except guess what else I did. I got so sick of the moping that I gave in and let him go back to the store later and buy the stupid book with his own damn money. And then he forgot to pick up Joshua’s present.

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I’m verging on headache now, so we will move on to my snot.

My sinus cavities hate me. Every six months or so, they swell shut with polyps the size of Texas and inherently, I lose my senses of smell and taste (olfactory nerve gets blocked). I can usually cope with the loss of quality of life, but once I start feeling fuzzy-headed and dizzy, I know it’s time for the ENT doc.

Their temporary remedy is the dreaded prednisone. Usually by the time I need it again (which is about every six months), I am in love with whoever figured out that steroids make sinus polyps shrink. What they do not do, however, is make them go away. Sometime in the next year, it appears I will be back in surgery for the second time to remove the polyps and retain my sense of smell….for at least six months, anyway.

Conversely, I am allergic to EVERYTHING. If anyone knows what else I could possibly be allergic to besides pollen, dust, dander, smoke, trees, grasses, fresh fruit, gluten, dairy, and/or about ten other things, please let me know so I that I can avoid it in yet another attempt to further prevent my sinus cavities from filling up with pod-like growths. (Side note: I have a phobia of pods. Beehives, patterned holes in things…all of these make me shudder. The realization that I have described something inside of my own body as pod-like is likely going to cause me to seek psychiatric help. Or hyperventilate.)

So anyway. Now I am back on prednisone. A 4 day dose of 40 mg a day. Since I’m down to a scrawny 112 lbs., I am not forced to take the former 80 mg a day. Which is good, because this stuff turns me into quite the ‘roid whore. It’s like energy without the endorphins. Like a triple shot of espresso, every three hours. On the plus side, I am looking forward to smelling and tasting again…and to being able to get up at the buttcrack of dawn all sprite with the kids on Christmas morning.

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And finally, here are some randoms from yesterday.

*Lately my kids have been astounding me with their ultra modern adaptations to childhood. For example, Kody’s marathon hide-and-seek session with a friend last weekend during which they utilized the chat option on their Nintendo DS’s to give each other hints as to their whereabouts. Yesterday, Kyleigh asked how old I was when I got my first cell phone. She seemed shocked when I told her I was 20. I explained to her that the right of passage in my day was getting a pager. Mine was purple, and it hung on a sterling silver chain. It went off several times a day with random numeric messages and I thought I was so cool. Kyleigh, however, absorbed all of this information and after a puzzling silence, said that she didn’t understand the point of having a communication tool that doesn’t have GPS tracking. She actually asked me what a pager is.

*My stupid reverse signal was blocked with snow for most of the day, and since it was nearly 30 below zero for the duration of our trip, I was entirely uninspired to perform the act of wiping the sensors off. This caused many a near-heart attack, until I turned off the sensor. Then, naturally, I backed into a shopping cart.

*Maurice has just informed me that he is buying stuff for a margarita night. He has not consumed tequila (or, as my mom refers to it, “tokillya”) since high school. This could be epic. Stay tuned.