In roughly nine hours my family and I were going to embark on a family vacation.

My kids have had a lot of things happen in their lives that most kids don’t have to deal with, and right now they have an aunt and a grandmother fighting cancer. Things have been kind of heavy around here. We planned a trip around fun life experiences to show them that things don’t always have to be a bummer.

We were going to go to Key Largo with trips to the Everglades and Key West. We were going to go parasailing, swimming with dolphins, and tour the islands on wave-runners. We were going to have a picnic on the beach.

My nine year old son, who has a map of the world on his bedroom wall and who sleeps with an airplane, was so excited for his first plane ride. He has been counting down the days.

But, irony? It bites hard! Because the kid with all of the medical problems is now too sick to go.

Sigh.

This afternoon, I had to make massive, last-minute cancellations through my tears as my son slept fitfully on the couch. I cried for an hour straight. When my son woke and found out we weren’t going, he shed tears of his own.

We may not be headed to the beach, but there is certainly no shortage of salt water around here.

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On the heels of my How Not to Make a Dog Vomit post, I thought I’d go with another “how-to.” This pretty much means I’m an expert…in everything.

My husband and I recently splurged for the cost of a personal trainer. First of all, it’s not as expensive to hire a trainer in Ohio as it is in more metropolitan areas and secondly, I figure the money we spend on it will save us in doctor bills later.

Other than the cost, I can’t say anything negative about this experience thus far. Even the pain feels great. I know I’m getting stronger because of it and the self-torture reminds me that maybe I don’t really want that cookie (oh, okay…or those four beers) (who am I kidding? those eight beers). If there’s been one thing that I have been able to lift while overweight and out of shape, it’s a Corona Light bottle to my mouth.

Without further ado, here are my tips on how to find a personal trainer who’s right for you:

1. Ask for recommendations. Or, better yet, when your friend gets a trainer and promptly loses 20 pounds, follow her to the gym and find out who she’s working with. Try not to get arrested for stalking.

2. Get someone who is flexible. I’m not talking about time or their yoga positions, but rather personality. My husband likes to be pushed around and told he’s weak when he’s working out. I prefer more positive reinforcement. Like, “Gee, your face is really red. It looks like a rose.”

3. Choose a trainer who is strong; the kind who can catch you and your flab when your size 11 feet catch the edge of a step that you’re supposed to be jumping onto, but instead you go flailing and almost break your face. Hypothetically.

4. Preferably, get someone who doesn’t know the word, “Plank.”

5. Also, “Plyometrics.”

6. Your trainer is going to see you at your worst, in order to make you look and feel your best. Don’t hire someone with whom you’ll feel embarrassed. There will be a lot of sweating and, quite possibly, blood, tears and vomit. You have to be able to put your shame aside. Did I mention that you get weighed and measured? Yeah, that.

7. Make sure your PT is bigger than you, so that when you want to punch him in the neck for almost killing you, you’ll think twice about it.

8. Before you sign a contract, find out if your trainer minds the use of bad language and insults; the kind that will come flying out of your mouth like you’re Regan from The Exorcist. Also, he needs to understand that it’s a form of apology when you say, “I know I said I hate you, but you MADE me say it!”

9. Get someone who won’t let you cheat by dropping your knee during a plank or doing half-squats when you should be going low. Actually, this means getting someone who won’t walk away or turn his back for a second.

10. And lastly, choose a trainer who you don’t think will punish you for writing blog posts about them.

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The first time it happened, I had to tackle her. I was pregnant, with bulbous belly, tromping around the back yard with a spoon in one hand and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide in the other. I took her down on the small hill next to our house.

Once I had her trapped underneath me I didn’t really know what to do. How would I remove the bottle cap, pour peroxide into the spoon and shove it into the mouth of a 65 pound, squirming Labrador? I did it, but it wasn’t pretty; nor was what came out of her stomach about 10 minutes later. Have you seen The Exorcist? Yeah, that.

Thirteen years ago this was a frequent occurrence around our house. Our dog, Blue, eating something she shouldn’t (breast pads, underwear, chicken bones, a 25 lb. frozen turkey, etc.) and me, sometimes, having to make her throw it back up before it did any damage.

Like the time my in-laws were coming to town to celebrate their 50th anniversary. About two hours before their arrival, I felt the need to go to the mall and buy a new piece of furniture. I’m rational like that. While I was gone, Blue snatched an enormous, solid-chocolate bunny off the far-reaches of the kitchen counter and ate the entire thing. Happy Easter!

When I discovered this, I did what I was used to doing; I put a piece of cheese in the bottom of a bowl and covered it with peroxide. DO NOT DO THIS! Using a spoon had never worked well, so this had become my altered method. Usually, by getting to the cheese, she would ingest just enough peroxide to make her vomit. It was an extremely scientific measurement, exactly not at all.

Now, we don’t go buying fancy schmancy furniture around here. Oh, no! None of that solid wood stuff for us. If you can’t put it together with an Allen wrench or a Phillips-head screwdriver, well you can just forget it. With, roughly 30 minutes until our family would be here, I left Blue outside with her bowl while I sweat and struggled with a particleboard end table. At the very least, I have my priorities in order.

I went back out 15 minutes later to find Blue had eaten the cheese and finished every last drop of peroxide. Every. Last. Drop.

Remember Willy Wonka’s chocolate river? Yeah, that. Except that after the chocolate stopped, Blue kept retching. I’m not even kidding; I thought I had killed my dog and that she was going to throw up her own stomach. If you ever see one of your neighbors running around her back yard chasing after her dog saying, “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Also, please hurry, because company will be here soon!” then you’ll know just what I looked like.

And, last week, when our young Lab, Daisy, found 1/2 a sheet of chocolate cake in a neighbor’s yard, and ate to her heart’s desire, we got to relive the experience.

Lucky for her, I’ve learned how to use a syringe.

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I can’t believe I’m going to say this…

My husband started doing the laundry.

For the past 16 years, I have been in charge of washing, drying, folding and putting away the mountain of clothing, sheets and towels that our family creates. My husband once calculated, between our two dogs, how many piles of poo he had picked up; just so you know, it was about 12,000. I figure that I have turned, at least, that many socks right-side-out.

But, between work, blogging, cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, my kids’ extra-curricular activities and my over-use of commas, I have been falling behind. My husband could only go out and buy new underwear so many times before he stepped in and took it over.

Yesterday morning, he announced, “There’s a new sheriff in town” and he started sorting clothes.

His first job was to empty the washer of the jeans and sweatshirts which had been rotting in there for a few days. Holla! He took a whiff, deemed them fine, then threw them in the dryer. After which, I opened the dryer door, smelled a pair of my son’s pants, gagged and put them all back in the washing machine to be cleaned again.

So, the start wasn’t smooth, but by the sounds of his yelling at the kids, “I’m emptying your pockets this time, but I won’t be doing it again!” I think he’s getting the hang of it. So far, he’s only shrunk two pairs of my pants.

Sure, they look like capris now, but at least they’re clean.

Speaking of laundry…you have one more day to enter the $50 Visa gift card giveaway from BlogHer and Bounce!

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