So that is what the inside of your toe smells like if it is on fire..

My life is uneventful and fantastically mundane with the exception of my one arch enemy, my right big toenail. I know it does not seem like a formidable foe, but it certainly has been a challenge to the kingdom of "WorkoutLand"...Good god. Anyway, it was time for what has become my annual ingrown toenail surgery when I suggested to my trusty doctor that maybe we just remove the WHOLE toenail just to avoid doing this yearly song and dance. He said "we can if you want to, but look at mine first". He then produced the world's ugliest non-toe nailed toe I have ever seen. Most of the toenail was gone, but two little nubbin toenails were growing on either side of a gigantic crater where the rest of the toenail once was...I actually gasped out loud. Holy Crap. I have seen "nursing home toenail" and this was 15 times worse. He then qualified it by saying, "well he didn't do the best job, but it won't leave much for you to paint". I then pictured seeing my sisters' faces when I show up in the summer wearing sandals (which are really the only shoes I can wear since they don't make size 11.5 in "cute" closed toed shoes) and either A.) painting the crater where the toenail used to reside or B.) wearing a press on toenail..never would work, or C.) saying forget it and going Au Natural with my nasty bi-coastal evil nubbin toenail(S)..they would all freak. I did actually picture their faces and laughed out loud. I don't think the toe-nailless one would look okay even if you airbrushed the Mona Lisa on it and be-dazzled it.

So we carried on with the next best thing. Ablation of the nail bed. Yikes. I have had this freaking menace toenail gouged out of my foot repeatedly and the nail bed scorched with q-tips covered in Phenol that should have killed the entire nail but didn't even phase my prolifically growing toenail. Nothing has worked, so it was time to break out the big guns. No more screwing around. Oh no, this time we were going to cut out the offending party and then stick a electric cauterizing tip down the hole in my foot and actually burn up the nail bed. The nuttiest part is that this was the "better option" and I thanked him for it. All I could envision was my sisters' faces of despair if I went the nubbin toenail route...so I had to try.

I love this doctor. He gets totally excited about anything and will do anything for you. You can show up at his house at midnight if your nose gets broken (it must be set in a hour to avoid surgery..geez), page him in the middle of a run and he will turn right around in his tracks to go back to the hospital, he will do your yearly gynecological visit, burn off a wart or spay your cat...maybe not in that order, but totally not kidding. He apologized during the worst part which were the one million (or two) shots I got in my big toe and complimented me about how tough I must be to have tolerated my terribly evil toenail. He even save the piece he pulled out of my foot. I think it looks a little like Abe Lincoln as it sits on my coffee table ready to gross out my co-workers in the morning. Then he slapped a giant pad on the outside of my leg (ground for the electricity it turns out) and turned up the voltage on some sort of machine and went to work "ablating" my toenail bed.

"Ablating" must come from the French word for "on fire from the inside" because I knew my toe was numb, but it was definitely HOT inside my skin, and I could smell my toe burning..but it didn't really hurt in a normal way. I will tell you that it is not for the faint at heart. Now, I did watch the whole thing with morbid curiosity so that might have helped if I hadn't watched the smoke pour out of my toe....hehehe, there wasn't actual smoke. Meanwhile the good doctor is telling me some story about the time he was doing a vasectomy with the same sort of a tool...and ...I didn't hear the rest because that sounds like a worse idea that sticking the super-electric needle into an open toe nail wound.

So here I sit at home feeling pathetic with my big toe all wrapped up, no exercise for this week and a husband with a boarding pass for a 7 a.m flight tomorrow who is no Florence Nightingale because he just got home from China... and the smell of my burning toenail singed in my nostrils..

So there you go...

Jake has been traveling quite a bit lately so there have been funny things I have noticed:

1. Jake makes a lot of laundry- I need to buy more underpants and work shirts so that I can have enough to make a full load. I did 2 loads that were 1/3 full. No good...although now that I think of it, less folding and I actually know where everything goes...hmmm

2. Jake makes a lot of dishes- I have had to run a half load lately because I used up all my cereal bowls and coffee mugs. But, Jake is also in charge of putting away the dishes and is quite good at it.

3. Jake eats a lot of food- I made entirely too much spaghetti...like I used up all my Tupperware to store it. There is usually only one little tub of leftovers. I will never eat all of this. What is the mailing address for the starving African children?

4. Jake is great with the remote- Unless there is actually nothing on for real all of the sudden. He always finds something good...or at least watch-able.

4b. Jake is the only one who knows how all of our remote controls work- Criminy. Seriously? I am staring at 5 remotes. Not one of them makes someone come and bring me a snack.

5. I am a terrible relaxer..or Jake is an excellent relaxer- He is the only reason I relax. He is the Master Relaxer, and it is contagious. I am a total nutcase by myself. I will make dust on concrete. I plan how to relax....

This is all probably why I miss him so much when he is gone. Not enough dishes or laundry, nothing on TV (not that I can run the clicker anyway), and I just run around like an idiot until I fall over.

So there you go.

Christmas Fun

So pretty much this is a great big THANK YOU to everyone who fed us, let us sleep at their house, adjusted their schedules, and went out of their way in any way to make our trip so great! I loved seeing all of you that I spent time with, and am sad that I missed the rest of you that I didn't get to see. We are back to Kansas in June of 2009 for a triathlon in Lawrence so I plan on catching the Eastern part of the state then since we were primarily in the middle to western part of the state this time.

We spent most of our time in Lindsborg and Hill City with a quick stop over in Manhattan overnight for New Years Eve. I hate being this far away from everyone especially around the holidays, but I realized this last time home that I would never normally get to spend that many consecutive days with everyone if we still lived in KS. It would have been a bunch of quick little trips or broken up in some way because of work. Interesting.

Things that made me giggle:
1. Officiating- Jake and his dad got to officiate some basketball games together. I think Jake really enjoyed it. If you happen to get the Hill City paper there is a nearly life sized picture of him and his dad in their referee gear ready to get to work. It was fun to watch them work together as Jake's dad is a very laid back official and Jake is a crazy high strung one. Hysterical. I also got to eat the world's most delicious yet bizarre beef jerky from the concession stand. It was actually the size of my head and got dug out of a box and handed to me with a little sheet of waxed paper. Very lady like and fantastic.

2. Windmills- If you don't ever drive out on I-70 past Salina you won't have any idea what I am talking about. I will do my best to explain it. Envision GIANT windmills stretched as far as the eye can see over the windy pasture land. There. Hard to explain why it is so amazing unless you see it. If you haven't seen it get out there and take a look. It's probably one of the coolest things I have ever seen...and confirms that Kansas is STUPID windy.

3. M&M butt- I was rearranging some things in my back pack on the way to the airport when we were leaving and decided to eat some chex mix. Apparently at some point between Abilene and Gypsum I dropped a M&M onto the car seat. So I spent the next 100 miles warming up the M&M with my rear end and smearing it into my seat and my "seat". I got out at the airport and found the train wreck on the rental car seat. Folks in Wichita, Memphis and Greenville airports got to try and solve the mystery of "what is on that lady's rear end?"

Anyway, I left out a million stories and fun moments but I am tired and those are the ones that stick out tonight! Hope you all had an excellent holiday season and are doing well in this first week of 2009. Again I want to thank each of you for everything!