My First Mammo-Cram- Pancakes, Anyone?

A couple of months ago, I noticed I had an extra little lumpy thing on my left mam. I hadn't noticed it before, and I couldn't duplicate it on the other side (you always figure if the same thing's on both sides,it's normal), so it concerned me a little. Then it was breast cancer awareness month, THEN a very good friend of mine's mother died of cancer, SO I scheduled an appointment with my vaginacologist to check it out. She didn't think it was anything, which made me feel about 98% better about it, but she set me up a mammogram appointment to be on the safe side. I didn't tell anyone about any of it, including Aaron, I figured "Why cause anyone else worry and have it turn out to be nothing?" However, he must have listened to a reminder message on the machine. "Do you have a doctor's appointment Monday?" Pause. "Yeah." "What's it for?" "A mammogram." Pause. "Do you want me to meet you there?" "Why?" "I don't know, for moral support." How thoughtful! "No, I think I'll be fine." Pause. "Is a man or woman going to be doing it?" AAHHAAA! So THAT'S why he wanted to come! I love my husband, because even though I'm a haggard, scraggly haired mother of two, he still thinks every man wants me for some reason. "I don't know." I said. It hadn't occurred to me to wonder, but now I had that to worry about too! You see, I do not nor have I ever been to a male OB/GYN. And I would never go to one, even if they are one of the best doctors in the world because A) the idea of a man I'm not in a committed relationship with looking at my junk freaks me out and B) he HAS to be a pervert to some degree. I mean, WHY would a man choose that particular field of medicine? A woman may do it because of her own experiences with her doctor and her body, you know, wanting to help her fellow lady, but a guy? Nothing you can say could convince me he's like "I value women and think they are the most important members of our society, and I have dedicated my life to keeping them healthy- inside and out." HA! They want to look at trim and honk hooters all day! And then go home and tell their buddies aaallll about it.
Well, the mammojammer turned out to be a woman, which was a relief. She was nice, and explained everything to me as we went along, and warned me ahead of time when she was moving in to make adjustments. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I actually went for a run before my appointment, because I figured my jugs would be too sore to cram into two sport bras and tolerate any movement. But I actually suffered no ill side effects.
The machine has these two sides that you put your boobs between, they look like the clear, plastic refrigerator drawers. She puts you in some awkward position and tosses your tit in like pizza dough, then she hits a peddle that smashes it between the bottoms of the two refrigerator drawers. THEN you turn a knob yourself to tighten it even more, as "much as you can tolerate" she tells me. So I cranked. And cranked. And cranked. Until she became concerned. "Don't hurt yourself." she says. "Trust me, I'm not. There's hardly any boob left in my boobs" I reply. They are crraazzy looking in that thing, it's hard to believe they're attached to me. About 6 views later, I'm done. The doctor is in house, so he looks at them and he can't see anything suspicious- WOOHOO- but he wants to feel the area of my concern. Yikes. So she takes me in a room to wait, and in walks a man who is about 5 feet tall, and AT LEAST 80 years old. I'm feeling much better about having his liver spotted gropers on my girls. This doctor, who actually looked like he could use his OWN doctor, was officially the third guy to ever cop a bra-less feel of my double Ds. I was tempted to tell him this...but I didn't.
He actually determined it was an inflamed tendon. "Do you do anything that might cause strain in that area?" Um, let's see, I run, wrestle and lift animals at work, wrestle and lift kids at home...nope, nothing comes to mind.
When I left, they let me pick a carnation out of a vase that they had by the changing rooms, which was sorta nice but mostly creepy. It actually makes one feel more taken advantage of and violated, like I let them romance me into getting to second base or something. But I figured the girls would like it.
Speaking of the girls, we designated Monday nights as game night! It's actually been a lot of fun family time for the most part with the exception of A) Reese is four. It can be a challenge to get her to adhere to the rules, and she sometimes has a cow if she loses- but she's getting better about it. and B) I didn't realize how many games require color recognition until I started playing them with someone who's color blind. That would be Aaron. I bought Guess Who? a couple weeks ago. In this game, you ask your opponent questions to narrow down who their mystery person is until there's only one left. The first person to get to that one card and guess the other's mystery person wins. You ask questions like "Is your person wearing glasses?" "Does your person have brown hair?" etc. Aaron's team (which included him and one of the girls) almost always got to the last card first. He'd say (smug and grinning) "Is your person Justin?" "Um, no. It's Brandon." "WHAT?!!? Let me see that!!" "You asked if my person had brown hair, I said no. Justin there clearly has brown hair. Brandon's is black. " We ended up giving up and moving on to Candy Land, where we had to move Aaron's Diego gamepiece for him- another color driven game. Poor Meaty Bones.
Reese lost her first baby tooth!!! Literally. At the YMCA. "I'm sure the tooth fairy will take something else instead." I spent the evening trying to come up with what exactly, when the lightbulb appeared while I was trimming Reese's nails. "I bet the tooth fairy would love to get a fingernail! All she ever gets is teeth! And baby's need fingernails too!" I tell my kids their teeth go to new babies that need them. So we slipped one of her clippings into a sandwich bag with a note of explanation, and tucked it under her pillow. Reese ran out of her room brimming with excitement the next morning! The tooth fairy had left her a pretty ribbon for her hair, and gave her one of her own personal necklaces, because she was so happy to get something other than a tooth for a change.