Dawn
We all have a ton of pet peeves.  It doesn't matter if it's simple stuff, like I hate it when the kids leave the top off the toothpaste.  Maybe it's more complex things like how it really rubs me the wrong way when you're expected to be at a doctor appointment at a specific time, but your provider doesn't have to follow the same rules.  They can be hours late without so much as an apology.  But what I think I hate the most is when pieces of your life that are painful, are dragged out, tossed in your face rather unexpectedly, and you're left wondering what just happened and how it triggered a PTSD issue.
That escalated quickly, didn't it?  Yeah, that's how I felt too.
I had a simple followup appointment scheduled with a provider.  After going through the usual, height (I haven't grown - surprise!), weight (yep, same there too) and bp (mostly dead all day) check, the medical assistant flipped through my chart and asked if I had 2 live births and a miscarriage, abortion, whatever.
Sorry Skippy
The King and I sat there looking at each other in absolute, stunned silence.  It was that scene out of Boondock Saints, the one with the cat.  We couldn't believe that just f***ing happened.
She wandered out of the room, and the King asked if that was the way it was usually asked - or if it even was.  It typically isn't brought up, certainly not in the manner and tone that it was (especially not lumped together as though losing a child at enough weeks you start having OB appointments and an abortion are interchangeable), and never by a medical assistant.  By this time the PTSD was starting to catch up with me.  The shakes were starting, the sights, smells, and sounds were coming back in all their detailed glory and it was getting hard to not cry.  The urge to flee and get out of a medical environment was overwhelming.  We left the provider's office without staying for the actual appointment and made it back to the relative safety of the car before the tears were starting.
Complaints were made to the practice, the doc was supposed to call me about the info, etc.  She did after four days and only spirals down from there, and it was left at transfer my records, I'll find a second opinion, since theirs wasn't an option and grossly inappropriate.
It's been years since an episode like that has hit me out of the blue.  I hate that I don't get to control how my brain gets to deal with things sometimes, and that's a pet peeve too.  Stupid brain, thinking it knows what it should be doing.  It's a jerk and really shouldn't be in charge of things like that.
It took at day out with the girls to just put it aside for a bit and a long weekend to work myself through the process of dealing with the loss all over again, making sense of it, sorting though how I felt then and now and separating them.  It's a difficult and painful process and it's not something I've shared before, or talked about in a way that has any meaning to anyone but me.  I'm still not sure about pressing the little orange button that says publish on it, or just leave this as some sort of therapeutic journal entry.
Part of me says maybe someone else needs to hear they aren't alone in their pain and how they feel and deal with their loss.  I'm right there with you sister, you're not alone.  I'd say trying talking to a professional who deals with PTSD, or another woman who's been in your shoes.  This walk is like wearing a pair of Louboutin's on a cobbled sidewalk for five miles and you've already broken a heel.  It sucks ass on so many levels.



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Dawn

When we bought our house it came with some really awesome features.  Some of those marvelous features were 70's wood-like paneling and wallpaper the likes of which powder scented grannies everywhere would kill for.
Granted, the wallpaper nearly killed me on multiple occasions, but I just hadn't gotten around to doing anything with it yet.  I mean, have you ever tried taking off 40 year old wallpaper?  It's not fun.  It's also not fun to nearly blind yourself from it every time you walk in there either.


This little slice of heaven is what I started with.  Jealous, aren't you?  I knew you would be.  Do you see the duct tape on that soap dish?  Yeah, minion #2 has a matching scar on the top of his head from taking that sucker off when he was 2.  That towel rack that's IN the shower.  It bit me once.  I have the scar to prove it.  This bathroom had it in for all of us at one time or another.


Isn't the lighting awesome?  I'm pretty sure those were cool, never.  The funny part is that the glass part wasn't even stationary.  I think they were builders special outdoor lights.  


If all of that wasn't special enough, we have the best tile on the planet for the floor.  I'm not sure who thought dog poo brown was a great idea for tile floors, but they lived here at one time.  Even better, they left this legacy for us to enjoy.

Wallpaper is not fun to remove.  It took days to peel it, then steam and scrape it off.  Once I had it scraped, then I had to wash the walls to get all the old glue off.  Oh, and I'm allergic to adhesives.  Yeah, I forgot about that until I was washing the walls and wondering why my hands were stinging, itchy and all red.  Yeah, I know.  I'm an idiot.  But I did get rid of the wallpaper.


After much contemplation, and running into a 75% off sale somewhere.  I found a few things I liked and picked a palette and theme.  The paint went on and the minions started to get excited.  Ok, maybe not excited, but they were happy their bathroom was no longer a grandmothers dreamland.  For spite, I ripped off that towel bar and because I didn't want another trip to the ER regrading that soap dish the tiles were taken out and later replaced.  Those same jerks with the dog poo tile...yeah they left a treasure trove of those and the off white tiles in the attic.



Even the window got in on being a jerk during this remodel.  We have wooden Andersen windows with the old style balances in with the strings... Yep, those broke as well so the whole window needed to come out, have those replaced, and 'convinced' to go back in.


The rug hides the tile pretty well, I think.  If I close my eyes I can pretend it's just dark sand.


Slightly more manly than the awesome flowery wallpaper we were rocking previously.


New faucets and rope mirrors.  The mirrors were just some Salvation Army finds, hot glue, rope and twine.  Not too shabby.

The linen closet previously have shelves that were twice that deep, and fairly unusable.  I took them out, repainted the shelves and took the door off.  It was making opening the actual bathroom door difficult and having it open makes the small space airy.  

So that's it.  I have happier minions and grannies everywhere are cursing me for getting rid of the awesomeness that was the flowery wallpaper.