I have to update on my adventures with my chiroquactor (who called him that, in comments? I love that term, and have decided to hug it and squeeze it and call it George and use it always), but first I have to fill you in on the kids and the holidays and the BAKING. Oh my lord, the baking is taking over. I don’t know what is wrong with me.

Actually, I lie. I know exactly what’s wrong with me. I thought I was doing one thing for teacher gifts and then it turned out that even in trying to overestimate everyone we need to gift, there were more people than I’d planned for and my original idea was no longer doable because I didn’t have enough stuff to do it. Plus my original idea sucked. But now there’s only 2 more days of school before break and I refuse to shop at this point. REFUSE. So I went into the kitchen and the next thing I knew, it was carnage. Sticky, gooey, sweet-smelling carnage.

Be nice to me and I might even let you lick the beaters. (I lie, again. I already licked the beaters. Mmmmm… salmonella!)

Frankly, I blame the children. I blame the children for ‘most everything, anyway, but I blame this recent spate of goodwill towards man and baked goods on the kids for sure. It started yesterday, when Chickadee and I went and manned one of those Salvation Army collection buckets for an hour.

I signed Chickadee up to be a bell-ringer a few weeks ago, when she’d gotten in trouble at school and I felt like there really hadn’t been enough in the way of discipline to accompany the problem. At home, we had a long talk about the difference between right and wrong and helping others rather than making things difficult and I could actually see her eyes losing focus as she glazed over and retreated into a world in her head where Charlie Brown’s teacher isn’t her mother (“WAH WAH WAH WAH!”). I was afraid that the time between the signing up and the actual day would be too long, and it wouldn’t make an impression on her, but she was a champ.

It was COLD yesterday. And we bundled up and stood out there and she rang that bell for an entire hour. And only asked me what time it was (and, by inference, how much longer) about 8 times. In fairness, I called her a ding-a-ling about 20 times. (She was ringing a BELL… get it… ding-a-ling… bell… oh, nevermind.) She wore her Santa hat and was adorable and people stuffed all manner of money into the bucket, powerless in the wake of her elfin charm.

This would’ve been enough to make me melt, regardless; but it turned out that she wasn’t feeling very well last night, and knowing that she’d done such a great job when she probably wasn’t feeling her best caused me to promise her a pony. And then this morning she was still sort of off, and after some back and forth (mainly consisting of me listing the various things I needed to do today, and how she would have to stay in bed with no TV, if she stayed home, inbetween me dragging her all over town) she did go to school. I fully expected a call from the nurse, but she made it through and was fine by this afternoon.

Meanwhile, Monkey had his Christmas program today. I believe that kindergarteners should get up and perform as often as possible. They’re old enough that no one is full-out wandering off or anything, but young enough that it’s still pretty entertaining just to watch the variations in behavior. As they were all standing in a line, singing, Monkey (who is generally all smiles) was serious with the effort of doing what he was supposed to do. One little girl screeched the words so loudly that it didn’t much matter if anyone else was singing, anyway. Two little boys poked at each other instead of singing, and a trio of girls kept bursting into giggles for no apparent reason.

It was awesome.

We parents also got to spend some time going around to project stations with the kids, making various ornaments to take home. Several stations had kits with two dozen pieces and 20-step directions. Monkey would tell me to read him the next step so he could do it, then he’d get his fingers all stuck together with glue and demand that I do it for him. Lather, rinse, repeat. We ended up with 3 lovely ornaments that I he made. The really nice thing about the projects is that sitting in a tiny chair at a round table and deciphering a challenging craft tends to distract one from the fact that there are 18 excited kids and about 30 adults crammed into a small room with lots of antlers and cake.

That totally would’ve been enough excitement for me, for the day. Really. But after all of that, it was time for me to head back over to see… the chiroquactor!

After my initial consultation on Saturday, I went back yesterday to hear what Dr. Chirowitz had to say. He was just as earnest, yesterday, as he was at my first appointment. He was wearing another–but different–tacky Christmas tie. But the best news of all is that he was wearing real shoes. I know you’re relieved.

Yesterday I got to look at all of my x-rays and hear his ideas on what he can do (fix not only my injuries from the car accident, but also rebuild me faster, strong, and better than before!) and how long it will take to do it (thrice weekly visits for two weeks, then cutting back for the next month or two). The x-rays were interesting, I have to say. For one thing, it’s good to know I don’t have a slipped disc or anything before someone starts messing with my spine. For another thing, my pelvis is crooked, which, okay, I don’t see as any big deal other than that it lends credence to that whole thing where I yell at Chickadee that her big head totally broke me. BUT. The good, earnest doctor then launched into a story about another patient with pervasive urinary incontinence ever since her last baby and it was all due to pelvic misalignment and it wasn’t until she came to him for a neck injury that he cured her of years of problems and her sex life improved and also she found a cure for cancer!

Again, he was looking at me triumphantly, expectantly, like I should now be sharing with him that I, too, pee my pants regularly and haven’t had an orgasm since the Reagan administration, and could he please fix me just like he fixed her. It was with great effort and restraint that I managed to keep my response to, “Oh.”

And so it was that I headed into my first official adjustment.

Dr. Chirowitz has astronaut tables! They pivot all the way from the horizontal to pure vertical. Rather than hopping up on the table, it’s standing straight up there and you just go stand in front of it and he pushes the button and you are lowered to a recline. The ride is worth the price of admission.

Once the table is down, it took about 3 minutes for him to check whatever it is he’s checking and shoot me a bunch of times with his little pogo stick. It didn’t feel like much of anything. But after he finished and put the table back up, he asked me how I felt. And… I felt about the same. So I said, “Well the table is pretty cool.” Because I am smooth.

Okay. So. That was yesterday, and I went back again today. Normally I won’t go 2 days in a row, but it’s a holiday week and he’s closed on Friday and this is just how it worked out. I realized as I was sitting there filling out the little sheet of what hurts where that my head was killing me. Which was fairly unpleasant, and also new. But it wasn’t until I was back in the little room that I realized that my left knee (which has been all screwed up since the accident) didn’t hurt at all. Huh.

Coincidence? Maybe. Yesterday I got a bunch of CH-CHKs in the hip/ass area, and today I got a bunch in the neck. My headache went away about half an hour after I left, though it came back tonight. I’m not quite a convert, yet, but I’ll keep going. Especially since he’s worn normal shoes two days in a row now. Which almost made up for the fact that his secretary was going ON AND ON about how her kids were up all night barfing and she’d felt a little iffy this morning but she came in and got adjusted and now she feels FINE! (I bet her pelvis isn’t crooked at all.)

So that was most of the day, and then this evening I decided maybe I’d just bake for teachers, so while the kids were having dinner with their dad I whipped up dough for them to make cookies with me tomorrow. They came home and demanded I help them with an “I Spy” book Monkey had borrowed from school, so took a break from baking and we cuddled up on the couch and searched through the book until both children were laughing hysterically while doing thing like saying “Oh! I found the star!” and then pointing at a sheep. Hilarious! Me, I was going blind by that point, anyway, so I shooed them off to bed.

And that’s when I lost all contact with sanity.

Dough in the fridge, ready for tomorrow. Well, I should make something else, too. Hmmmm. How about Kira‘s molasses cookies? Okay! Well, that’s easy, maybe I should make something else, too. Oh, I know! Lemon cream cheese bars! And then once those were in the oven, suddenly I was spreading pans of bark, too. It’s all the kids’ fault. Or maybe Dr. Chirowitz neglected to tell me that he was freeing up my pinched Martha nerve.

I know some teachers don’t eat any homemade gifts; that whole “you just don’t know what’s in it or where it came from” sort of mentality. I’m thinking maybe I should make up labels for the buckets of confections we’ll be assembling. “I promise that I washed my hands frequently while preparing these goodies for you. All items contain only the finest ingredients; pure vanilla extract, sifted flour, and just a pinch of soylent green.”

Of course, after a couple of more adjustments, I just might be making ice sculptures for teacher gifts.

The kids are going to wake up tomorrow and see all the stuff I baked and wonder if I was abducted by aliens from the Betty Crocker planet. But it may distract them from demanding that I play I Spy with them some more.