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...
The thing is, there are lots of things to love about Georgia, but it's really far away from our families, which is kind of a drag. I mean, it's not as bad as when I lived in California---we're all in the same time zone, at least---but it still means that visiting is kind of A Production, and there are times when that's difficult. So when we first moved down here, we said hey, we'll come back for Christmas every year. The first year we had a good trip, though I did end up getting an ear infection and calling my doctor back in Georgia to beg for meds and sending Otto out looking for an open...
You get one day to stay home from school when you tell me you don't feel well, even if you don't necessarily have a fever. I'm willing to suspend disbelief for one day. When you refuse to go to school on the second day, I will inform you that in the absence of fever or vomiting a second day home must indicate pernicious, invisible illness which needs to be diagnosed RIGHT AWAY, and therefore I will be scheduling a visit to the doctor. What I may have forgotten to mention until shortly before said appointment is that there are now two options: Either the doctor agrees that you are quite...
(The title of this post is a complete lie. There is no profit in poisoning your child which I can figure out, though if there were, I would be ALL OVER THAT, pronto.) I've been thinking I may need a completely separate space to discuss Chickadee's mystery skin condition---I'll call it As The Rash Spreads, natch---because it occurs to me that normal people may not actually find my (*counting on my fingers*) four years of endless blather about biopsies and medications and sun sensitivity and whatnot all that fascinating. I KNOW, RIGHT? I mean, what's NOT entertaining about a cranky child with...
