In the continuing saga of My Oh My What Exactly IS Wrong With This Chickadee Kid, Anyway... a while back one of her doctors sent us to another doctor who sent us to a third doctor. And she told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on, and... oh, wait. That's a shampoo commercial, not what happened to us with the doctor. My mistake. (But your hair really DOES smell terrific.) Anyway, we met with this new doctor---we'll call him Dr. Zebra, for reasons which will make no sense to anyone but me and Chickie, who leaned over to me the moment we left his office that first time...
I used to pray for patience, you know, because I figured that was what I needed. But it turns out that if you pray for patience you get a whole lot of "character building" experiences wherein your patience is "tested" and you want to say "lots of blasphemous and profane things" to whoever's in charge. Go figure. (I swear to you I just typed "Fo gigure," and almost left it like that, but after admitting to such poor behavior, I reasoned it was best not to further tempt fate just now.) But hey, sometimes I learn things! Slowly, sure---always pretty slowly---but I am capable of learning and...
Oh, hey. Sorry to leave you hanging for a week. I didn't mean to, it just sort of... happened. It turns out that when my kid is in the hospital my level of functioning reverts to "barely alive" and I am a total delight to be around. Like, Otto will come home from work and say, "How was your day?" and I'll blink at him and say, "I'm not sure." Then he'll say, "What's for dinner?" and I'll say, "Dinner?" Actual conversation we had this week: Me: Why did you marry me? Our life is a mess. I'm a mess. Otto: Well you weren't ALWAYS a mess. I assume eventually you'll not be a mess again. Me:...
I hate the word "miasma," which is meant to describe something unpleasant, so I guess it's just doing its job. Still. Hate it. I also hate the word "torsion," which comes from having once had an ovarian torsion. (Pro tip: That really hurts.) I have issues with the word "pretty," even though I use it all the time. I just don't think a single word that sounds so darn perky should be so loaded. And it is, in our society. I wrote about that today for Off Our Chests, as I'm seeing the legacy of female teenage inability to see clearly unfold in front of me. But mostly, I hate the word "relapse."...
It seems like we were just out in the wilderness with Hippie School, doing important things like licking slugs, but today it's time to go do it again. (I am hoping we're exploring a slug-free zone, today.) The last time I wrote about going on one of these adventures with Hippie School, Chickadee was freshly home from the hospital, and I was sure we were finally coming out the end of a long, dark tunnel. It was the beginning of Better; it had to be. I guess I can't say it's NOT Better. Frankly, hot sauce to the eyeballs is probably better than having a kid in the hospital. So yes, sure, it's...
Chickadee's been home for a week and a half, has successfully managed two half-days at school (and is attempting the whole day today), and while life stubbornly refuses to stop or even slow down while we find our new normal, over here, I am rediscovering the healing power of frozen dairy confections. The list of things I can control at this point would probably fit on a post-it, with room to spare. The list of things I CAN'T control (but desperately wish I could) is a lot longer. Go figure! On any given day, I sandwich small stints of actual work between doctors' appointments and carpool and...
The first thing I need to do is offer up a great big group hug to all of you ravishingly pretty people who commented and emailed and kept my little family in your thoughts when I so rudely up and announced I needed to go silent for a while. I'm not sure what I thought was going to happen when I did that---I wasn't really thinking about the possible reaction, only that I needed to get away from the computer---but I was pleasantly overwhelmed by how kind and patient you've all been. So thank you for that, so much. The second thing I need to do is explain that I am often guilty of what we refer...
Oh, hello. You know what's awesome? Being the sort of person who is prone to psychosomatic illness. Now, a lot of people think that "psychosomatic" means "faked," but in fact it means real physical illness that just happens to be caused or aggravated by mental factors such as stress. If they gave grades in psychosomatic maladies, I would get an A+, as well as comments like, "Really gives it her all!" and "Rarely do I see this sort of dedication." When I made it through our two-week-long tour of illness, stress, and family dysfunction over the holidays with nary a sniffle, I was set to...
Thank you all for the well-wishes for my mother-in-law. She had surgery and they were able to insert a rod into the bone to repair it, and it is around about this point in the story when Monkey puts his hands over his ears and says "YOU CAN STOP TALKING ABOUT THIS NOW" because it weirds him out to think about operations and people being fitted with rods. Because we are excellent parents, we assured him that Grammy is just fine, and we will all love her just as much now that she's a cyborg as we did before. In the meantime, my poor brother-in-law Nearly Nickless wasn't feeling so hot, and the...
