Okay, so remember how I compared myself to a cat trapped in a closed skylight because I had to have surgery and there was no escape? Well, I managed to wiggle my fingers through an opening and hit the remote control to open the skylight just a tiny bit. I've re-scheduled the surgery for January instead of October, so I'm getting a little bit of a reprieve.
While the surgery is necessary and important, if I'm careful, I'll be okay to wait until the first of the year. The doctor agreed that I've had a rough go of it the past couple of years with two scheduled surgeries and one emergency surgery and said I could give myself a little break.
Before I had my first surgery, I always watched shows like Grey's Anatomy and wondered how anyone voluntarily showed up at the hospital to let themselves be cut open. (By the way, although Grey's is one of my favorite shows, I can't watch it for a month or so before a scheduled surgery and right after a surgery, my family doesn't enjoy watching it with me because I tend to yell, "Yeah, right, like it really happens that way," frequently. As the scar and my memories fade, my enjoyment of the show increases to my pre-surgery levels and my family allows me to watch with them again.) I thought if I ever had to have life-saving surgery, my goose was cooked because I wouldn't be able to force myself to show up at the hospital and say, "Cut away." I figured I would be likely to just disappear a few days before the operation, using fake IDs and a stolen license plate so my family couldn't track me down and guilt me into having my life saved.
But for me, once I got the call from the doctor telling me I had to have surgery, instead of going on the run, I went to a spiritual place that can only be achieved by either taking large quantities of drugs, or in my case, being paralyzed with fear. It was as though my brain heard the doctor and sent a message through my body like, "Red Alert! Red Alert! We have a situation that is too intense for subject to handle! Shut down all thought processes immediately and go into default semi-dazed mode!" Some of the thoughts took longer to shut down, as evidenced by my nervous narration to my poor, poor nephew who had the misfortune to catch me in my driveway in those early days after finding out and was treated to a detailed description of why his aunt needed her lady parts cut out. I still cringe for him every time I think about it.
But after that unfortunate encounter, my brain closed the loopholes and I floated from day to day, buying supplies I would need post-surgery, writing letters to my loved ones just in case, doing the chores I would be unable to perform once home from the hospital, and researching every scrap of information about the surgery on the internet. The night beforehand, I was actually able to sleep, even though one of my daughters sat up all night by my side in case company was needed.
The morning of, things moved in a dreamlike state. I dressed without using lotion or deodorant per the rules, brushed my teeth without swallowing any forbidden water, and talked normally on the drive to the hospital with my family. I registered and was led to a private room to change. I re-joined my family and had only moments with them before I was ushered away to the pre-surgery area. I thought there would be heartfelt goodbyes and pledges of undying love before I left (and maybe some prying of my fingers off the doorframe) but it was calm and unremarkable. The worst part was probably lying on the gurney next to other surgical patients waiting for my turn. They took my glasses, which is the same as blinding me, and they didn't give me any good drugs to make my dreamlike state complete. I used the breathing techniques that got me through four labors and deliveries to keep my panic at bay. Funny how the same techniques got me through both the most productive times for my lady parts and now their retirement.
Finally, the doctor with the drugs showed up and although the Valium was just supposed to relax me, I'm a lightweight (not literally, but in the holding-my-drugs sense) and I don't remember anything else until I woke up in Recovery. My parts were out, the verdict was in---ovarian cancer, but a form that is less aggressive than most. It had spread to my lymph nodes, but they thought they got it all and that I would be okay. They cut me from belly button to groin and recovery would take almost a year, but it was over and I hadn't jumped off the gurney on the way to the operating room, used my shoulder to cross-check a few male nurses, and hid behind the dumpster of medical waste with my butt hanging out of my hospital gown for the rats to nibble. I was relieved.
That is until a checkup with my surgeon a year later when he said, "Ut-oh!" You never, ever want to hear a surgeon say ut-oh. Chances are he or she is not going to say, "Ut-oh, I charged you too much for my services and I owe you money," or "Ut-oh, I made a mistake reading the scans and you don't have to have your spleen removed after all." No, mine was ut-oh, your organs are pushing through the muscle we cut open for your surgery and you now have an incisional hernia that needs to be repaired with another surgery. Ut-oh, indeed.
That's exactly the way it would have happened on Grey's, except they would have discovered the hernia after I was hit by a train while running from an abusive boyfriend who they discover has a rare deformity that only they can fix with surgery. Oh, and my surgeon and the boyfriend's surgeon would be involved in an intense on-again off-again affair which they discuss openly across my unconscious body.
Great TV. I'll have to stop watching again until March.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Dropbox, Air Conditioners, Modern Family, And Herbie
One of my favorite TV shows right now is Modern Family. They had an episode in a previous season that really struck a cord with me. It was the one where married couple Claire and Phil have a fight (as regular viewers know, that doesn't narrow it down because they fight in every episode). This particular fight was because she had been recommending wedge salads to him for years and he ignored the suggestion. Then he came home one evening and told Claire that an acquaintance had suggested he try this new thing called a wedge salad, which he loved, and she should really try one sometime, as though he had never heard of it before despite the one hundred and seventeen times she'd mentioned it to him.
Herbie and I have been there, done that. Many times.
Why is it that a suggestion from a co-worker or friend carries so much weight with men while suggestions from their girlfriends, fiancees, or wives are just so much white noise? I don't normally relate to Claire on the show. I usually find her annoying (I hope that isn't because she is too much like me and I just don't recognize it kinda like the way Herbie laughs at Raymond's relationship with Marie without seeing how similar it is to the one he has with his own mother--yikes!) But in that episode, I not only related to Claire's frustration, I wanted her to hit Phil with the vegetables instead of just banging them on the counter for emphasis. They ended up with a broken microwave and their bodies covered in fire extinguisher foam, but I still thought Phil got off too easy.
I can spend days or weeks on the computer researching a product we need for our home (like, let's just say, hmm, an air conditioner, not because that brings up any strong memories or emotions or makes blood shoot from my eyes, but just random like). I can go to Consumer Reports and read their ratings of every air conditioner on the market, then read posts from people who actually own the units listing the pros and cons, then check thirty different stores' websites for the best price on the highly recommended units, and compile it all into a spreadsheet with colored graphs and a sliding scale for Herbie. I can then go over it page by page with him, pointing out why this particular unit is superior to all other units for our needs. He'll nod and ask questions, flip through the pages, and agree that we should schedule time to go pick one out. We'll get to the store and find the unit we've agreed on, call the salesperson over to discuss delivery options and payment plans, and then as I'm pulling out my credit card, Herbie will invariably say, "I'm not quite ready to buy yet. This guy at work was telling me about this unit that is so cold it will freeze a rump roast left in front of it." And we will return home to sit in front of our old unit that wheezes like it has emphysema and blows air that could warm up a can of soup.
I'll do research on the unit that the "friend from work" suggested and find out that it isn't a window unit, would necessitate cutting a hole in the 200 year old stone wall of our house, and that it is a black market product since it is illegal to own in the US of A. And we'll start the dance again, only this time as we stand in the store contemplating the unit I'm suggesting, the holdup will be another friend who knows a guy who knew a guy whose sister's boyfriend owned one and thought he might have heard a strange hum coming from it. Or maybe it'll be a guy Herbie had lunch with who has never owned this air conditioner or anything made by this company, but has a bad feeling about them in general and has been right in the past when he's had bad feelings.
And if this air conditioner story was in fact true and not just a theoretical example of what could serve as evidence in divorce court, it might be three years of sweat and the occasional puff of smoke from the old unit before Herbie says, "Maybe we should buy Model # 39489. Some guy at work just bought one and he loves it," with Model # 39489 being the exact unit I recommended three years ago when it was on sale, which it no longer is. And if this was a real story, I might have said, "Sounds great! Let's go get one right now," waiting until the new unit was safely purchased, installed, and cooling my temper before pointing out that we just suffered through three years of stifling summers because he doesn't listen to me.
But, of course, this is just a made-up example.
The same thing happens with news, politics, and funny stories. Heck, Herbie might come home tonight and say, "Remind me to tell you about this funny blog I read at work today where this wife is complaining about her husband not listening to her as they search for an air conditioner to buy. You're gonna love it!" He often tells me that "a guy at work" told him about this breaking news story or that economic trend or some political folly, not recognizing the twitch over my eye that signals that I was the one who told him just the day before. Is it really so hard to remember the difference between the person who gave birth to his four children and the guy who rotated his tires? Hint--I'm the one who smells like vanilla instead of axle grease. Usually. I have been known to get my hands dirty a time or two, but in general, it should be easy to tell us apart.
The same thing happened recently with Dropbox. I told Herbie all about the service, how it would make it easier to view each others' pictures and videos without trying to fit them into a size suitable for an email, how we could share more as a family if we all had accounts, and offered to set it up on his laptop for him. He nodded in all the right places and then went to bed without granting me access to his computer. Six months later, he was working on that same computer and asked me to help him with something. He handed me a sheet of paper with an email address and password and told me he needed to sign onto something called Dropbox because the techies at his business wanted to use it to share data that was too large to fit in an email. He now has an account with shared access for "the guys at work" but still hasn't set one up to share with his wife and daughters.
I know Herbie thinks that some of what I say is important. I know this because he has come home from work and spent hours discussing an upcoming meeting about a problem and then has gone to the meeting and suggested the very solutions that I offered in our conversation. Of course, he didn't tell them that they were my solutions, since the very important businessmen would bristle at the thought of implementing a strategy devised by a writer/housewife/mother, but still, he heard what I had to say in those situations.
It's kind of strange that he doesn't hold what I say in higher regard considering that for the past thirty years, I have been his main source of information and conversation. The first time I met his family, which was at a family wedding, the number one question they asked me was, "Does Herbie actually talk to you? He barely says a word around us." In fact, they had a family joke about how "it is rumored that there is a son named Herbie, but apart from some of his stuff lying around, no one is really sure he exists." In family newsletters and such, he was described as "a man of few words" which struck me as funny because I could barely get him to stop talking to me. He says it's because once his older brothers left home, anything he had to say had to compete with four chattering younger sisters and he eventually gave up. I guess he stored up all his observations, jokes, and stories until he met me and then they just spewed forth unabated.
Herbie talks with his co-workers and he talks with his friends, but most of his conversations are with me. 98% of what he knows about our daughters' lives is info I pass on to him in the evenings. I keep him up to date on their grades, friendships, disappointments, successes, love-lifes (well, as much as I think his blood pressure can handle), and their careers. When he would ask the girls about their teachers, he would always call them all "Mrs. Snagglepuss" because he couldn't keep track of their real names. I field phone calls from his family and relay pertinent news and gossip. I catch him up on all the news of the world and what's happening in our own little world, like upcoming social events, what the pets have soiled or destroyed, and what absolutely has to be fixed in our home to prevent the township from putting up "Condemned" signs. I stand close to him at family gatherings and tell him what his cousins' names are.
I am his own personal Dropbox where he can access all the stored data he needs to get by.
Ahhhh. That's why he doesn't feel an urgency to sign up on his laptop. He has me. Well, Herbie, my "hard drive" is getting corrupted by age and there are definite signs that data is being fragmented in a way that even the Geek Squad can't recover, so until they find a way to download my entire brain onto something that is Bluetooth compatible with your earpiece, your best bet is to access my Dropbox. (As I typed that last line, I could hear Joey Tribbiani or Howard Wolowitz saying it, and it definitely had a whole other meaning.)
Herbie and I have been there, done that. Many times.
Why is it that a suggestion from a co-worker or friend carries so much weight with men while suggestions from their girlfriends, fiancees, or wives are just so much white noise? I don't normally relate to Claire on the show. I usually find her annoying (I hope that isn't because she is too much like me and I just don't recognize it kinda like the way Herbie laughs at Raymond's relationship with Marie without seeing how similar it is to the one he has with his own mother--yikes!) But in that episode, I not only related to Claire's frustration, I wanted her to hit Phil with the vegetables instead of just banging them on the counter for emphasis. They ended up with a broken microwave and their bodies covered in fire extinguisher foam, but I still thought Phil got off too easy.
I can spend days or weeks on the computer researching a product we need for our home (like, let's just say, hmm, an air conditioner, not because that brings up any strong memories or emotions or makes blood shoot from my eyes, but just random like). I can go to Consumer Reports and read their ratings of every air conditioner on the market, then read posts from people who actually own the units listing the pros and cons, then check thirty different stores' websites for the best price on the highly recommended units, and compile it all into a spreadsheet with colored graphs and a sliding scale for Herbie. I can then go over it page by page with him, pointing out why this particular unit is superior to all other units for our needs. He'll nod and ask questions, flip through the pages, and agree that we should schedule time to go pick one out. We'll get to the store and find the unit we've agreed on, call the salesperson over to discuss delivery options and payment plans, and then as I'm pulling out my credit card, Herbie will invariably say, "I'm not quite ready to buy yet. This guy at work was telling me about this unit that is so cold it will freeze a rump roast left in front of it." And we will return home to sit in front of our old unit that wheezes like it has emphysema and blows air that could warm up a can of soup.
I'll do research on the unit that the "friend from work" suggested and find out that it isn't a window unit, would necessitate cutting a hole in the 200 year old stone wall of our house, and that it is a black market product since it is illegal to own in the US of A. And we'll start the dance again, only this time as we stand in the store contemplating the unit I'm suggesting, the holdup will be another friend who knows a guy who knew a guy whose sister's boyfriend owned one and thought he might have heard a strange hum coming from it. Or maybe it'll be a guy Herbie had lunch with who has never owned this air conditioner or anything made by this company, but has a bad feeling about them in general and has been right in the past when he's had bad feelings.
And if this air conditioner story was in fact true and not just a theoretical example of what could serve as evidence in divorce court, it might be three years of sweat and the occasional puff of smoke from the old unit before Herbie says, "Maybe we should buy Model # 39489. Some guy at work just bought one and he loves it," with Model # 39489 being the exact unit I recommended three years ago when it was on sale, which it no longer is. And if this was a real story, I might have said, "Sounds great! Let's go get one right now," waiting until the new unit was safely purchased, installed, and cooling my temper before pointing out that we just suffered through three years of stifling summers because he doesn't listen to me.
But, of course, this is just a made-up example.
The same thing happens with news, politics, and funny stories. Heck, Herbie might come home tonight and say, "Remind me to tell you about this funny blog I read at work today where this wife is complaining about her husband not listening to her as they search for an air conditioner to buy. You're gonna love it!" He often tells me that "a guy at work" told him about this breaking news story or that economic trend or some political folly, not recognizing the twitch over my eye that signals that I was the one who told him just the day before. Is it really so hard to remember the difference between the person who gave birth to his four children and the guy who rotated his tires? Hint--I'm the one who smells like vanilla instead of axle grease. Usually. I have been known to get my hands dirty a time or two, but in general, it should be easy to tell us apart.
The same thing happened recently with Dropbox. I told Herbie all about the service, how it would make it easier to view each others' pictures and videos without trying to fit them into a size suitable for an email, how we could share more as a family if we all had accounts, and offered to set it up on his laptop for him. He nodded in all the right places and then went to bed without granting me access to his computer. Six months later, he was working on that same computer and asked me to help him with something. He handed me a sheet of paper with an email address and password and told me he needed to sign onto something called Dropbox because the techies at his business wanted to use it to share data that was too large to fit in an email. He now has an account with shared access for "the guys at work" but still hasn't set one up to share with his wife and daughters.
I know Herbie thinks that some of what I say is important. I know this because he has come home from work and spent hours discussing an upcoming meeting about a problem and then has gone to the meeting and suggested the very solutions that I offered in our conversation. Of course, he didn't tell them that they were my solutions, since the very important businessmen would bristle at the thought of implementing a strategy devised by a writer/housewife/mother, but still, he heard what I had to say in those situations.
It's kind of strange that he doesn't hold what I say in higher regard considering that for the past thirty years, I have been his main source of information and conversation. The first time I met his family, which was at a family wedding, the number one question they asked me was, "Does Herbie actually talk to you? He barely says a word around us." In fact, they had a family joke about how "it is rumored that there is a son named Herbie, but apart from some of his stuff lying around, no one is really sure he exists." In family newsletters and such, he was described as "a man of few words" which struck me as funny because I could barely get him to stop talking to me. He says it's because once his older brothers left home, anything he had to say had to compete with four chattering younger sisters and he eventually gave up. I guess he stored up all his observations, jokes, and stories until he met me and then they just spewed forth unabated.
Herbie talks with his co-workers and he talks with his friends, but most of his conversations are with me. 98% of what he knows about our daughters' lives is info I pass on to him in the evenings. I keep him up to date on their grades, friendships, disappointments, successes, love-lifes (well, as much as I think his blood pressure can handle), and their careers. When he would ask the girls about their teachers, he would always call them all "Mrs. Snagglepuss" because he couldn't keep track of their real names. I field phone calls from his family and relay pertinent news and gossip. I catch him up on all the news of the world and what's happening in our own little world, like upcoming social events, what the pets have soiled or destroyed, and what absolutely has to be fixed in our home to prevent the township from putting up "Condemned" signs. I stand close to him at family gatherings and tell him what his cousins' names are.
I am his own personal Dropbox where he can access all the stored data he needs to get by.
Ahhhh. That's why he doesn't feel an urgency to sign up on his laptop. He has me. Well, Herbie, my "hard drive" is getting corrupted by age and there are definite signs that data is being fragmented in a way that even the Geek Squad can't recover, so until they find a way to download my entire brain onto something that is Bluetooth compatible with your earpiece, your best bet is to access my Dropbox. (As I typed that last line, I could hear Joey Tribbiani or Howard Wolowitz saying it, and it definitely had a whole other meaning.)
Monday, October 10, 2011
Tambourines, Sausage, Mardi Gras, and Rugby
People have this idealized image of my family that is comical. Yes, my four daughters are good students and good people who have never broken the law (or at least haven't been caught yet) (or if they have been caught, they haven't called me for bail money), and I'm very proud of them, but we are also very, very human and we do stupid things all the time. We fight, we get on each other's nerves, we let each other down, we can be selfish, and we tease each other mercilessly.
But for some reason, there are people who look at us and think we are The Brady Bunch and that we spend Friday nights doing family sing-alongs with the biggest argument being who gets to shake the tambourine (if that were the case, I would definitely call dibs on the tambourine). I am exceptionally lucky that my daughters enjoy spending time with each other and with Herbie and me. We are a close family and I talk to each of them several times a week. We spend major holidays together and try to schedule a fun family vacation every year. But all of that takes a lot of work and compromise, some mild cursing and hair-pulling, and usually some hurt feelings thrown into the mix. It's like sausage-making---if you only see the end result, it looks tasty, but the process to get there is anything but pretty. And more often than not, I'm the one squishing the meat into the machine.
I called my sister-in-law N to tell her we would all be at my mother-in-law's party this weekend, including fiance E and longtime boyfriend T. She was thrilled to hear the news (No, really, she was.) She commented on what a fun, special couple C and E are and how excited she is about their wedding next year. I found myself wondering how she knew they were a fun, special couple since she has only met E once. N answered the question I hadn't asked.
"I follow C and E on Facebook and they are so cute together! I love reading the banter they have with their friends. So cute!"
I'm a firm believer that Facebook is a wonderful tool for high school and college kids to share info and keep in touch. I know that all four of my daughters love Facebook. I reluctantly signed up myself, but only because the oldest one was trying to win a grant and the rules allowed you to cast an extra vote if you did it from your Facebook account. Since I signed up, several people from high school and college have contacted me through the account and that's fun. Others have contacted me because they like my books and that is fun, too. But other than that, I don't participate in Facebook. Sorry to those who I am friends with on there, but you already know I seldom update my status and am much better at answering emails or texts.
If someone sends me a message, I answer it, and if every couple of months I have some news about the girls to share, I share it. That's all. I'm not friends with my daughters or their friends or my nieces and nephews. I don't want to read ramblings they have written after coming home from a party where "friend X" danced with "boy Y" and will forever after be known as "ex-friend who is the *&^%#$%^ skank of the dorm" or anything even close to that. I don't want to know that the sweet niece who helped me bake cookies when she was ten now swears like a trucker and has stacks of bead necklaces "earned" at Mardi Gras by flashing her boobs. The next time I hug my nephew at a family party, I don't want to remember that he "liked" a nude picture of some celebrity or bragged about chugging ten beers before vomiting in his mother's flower bed. Maybe my young family members are writing about joining the Peace Corps and ending world hunger, but I don't want to take any chances. By not reading their pages, I can continue to cling to the illusion (delusion?) that they are.
So when my sister-in-law said she was reading C and E's conversations with their friends on Facebook, my first thought was, "Creeper!" As if again reading my mind, she said, "My kids tell me not to be a creeper, but I tell them that I'm not, C and E accepted my invitation to be friends so they must want me to know what's happening in their lives." Here's a quandary for you: Your aunt or uncle or neighbor makes a request to be added as a friend on Facebook or MySpace or whatever. Do you ignore the request so they can ask you in person why you haven't added them yet, or do you deny the request and face the awkwardness, or do you accept the request and then censor your page? C & E didn't want to be rude, so they accepted her request. And now she's creeping on them. And by extension, she's creeping on the rest of us.
Because the next thing she said was, "I was looking through C's pictures and I saw that you guys went on a vacation to the Florida Keys this past June." Oh, yay. Now I'm wondering what pictures C put up of me in a bathing suit or scarfing seafood at some restaurant. Just as I'm wondering this, N says, "You guys are the perfect family. You and Herbie are such good parents and you all always look like you are having such fun together." I don't know about the "good parents" part, since I mostly think God took pity on Herbie and me when he saw how totally clueless we were and just gave us really, really easy kids, but the always having fun part is pretty true. We do manage to have fun wherever we go, even when things go majorly wrong, just because we are used to things going majorly wrong and we learned early on to find a way to laugh about it so we wouldn't go for each other's throats.
N told me that she noticed pictures of us on a "nature walk" and how happy we all looked. Nature walk, nature walk, hmmm . . . I guess she was talking about the trek through the Everglades we took. It was about 97 degrees, but according to The Weather Channel, with the humidity added in, it felt like 105. We were all dripping with sweat, the bugs were eating us alive, some of us (and by that I mean mostly me) were terrified of the alligators along the trail, but of course when we stopped for pictures, we all smiled. Doesn't everyone do that? That doesn't mean that when the camera wasn't aimed at us, we weren't pushing each other to fight for the minuscule sections of shade to be found or hogging the coldest water bottle for ourself, or hoping the endless bugs were more attracted to the scent of someone else's blood supply than our own. I didn't hear any one of us say, "Here, I'll spray my body with sugar water so all the bugs will feast on me and you guys won't have to suffer a single itch."
After seeing the pictures, N said, she woke her family up early on a Saturday morning and ordered them all into the car so they could take a "nature walk" in a nearby park and follow our example of being a happy family. Yikes. That's one sure way to make her family hate us. It didn't work out, though, she told me. Her family just wouldn't cooperate and complained the whole time--it was hot, they were tired, the bugs were biting them--and she finally gave up and let them escape back to the car where they apologized for being uncooperative. Really? That sounds exactly like our nature walk through the Everglades only no one apologized for complaining. Who would they apologize to since we were all complaining equally? I'm sure that if N had stopped her family on their walk to take some pictures, they would have all wiped the sweat and squished bugs from their faces and smiled broadly for the camera the same way we did. Viola! Happy family on nature walk.
When the camera is back in the case, we are just like any other family I know. We laugh, we fight, we annoy each other, we take care of each other, and we share memories that no one else has. Anyone who is planning to wiggle their way into our close-knit bunch needs to understand that while we never hesitate to insult each other's hair or breath or intelligence, it is done with love. When I tease one of my daughters about being a bad driver or burning the macaroni and cheese, I'm really saying, "You are the light of my life," and when they make fun of me for using the wrong word or calling them by the wrong name, they aren't actually accusing me of being senile, they are saying, "I know there is nothing I can say or do that will make you stop loving me." Really.
So for those foolish few who ignore all the warning signs and become one of us in the eyes of God and the legal system, you'll know that you've made it to the inner circle when we ask you to put your shoes back on because we'd rather smell the wet dogs. If we let you go first in the dinner line or smile politely when you lick your fingers and then reach back into the Doritos bag for more, you are still part of the viewing audience who only sees the 22 minutes-with-commercials, happy-endings-for-all, sitcom version of our family (yes, I'm talking about you, T. You are part of the family now, so I can tell you if that behavior continues, your snacking supplies and fingers are in danger of being cut off).
You'll see the version where Marcia gets hit in the face with a football but ends up learning a lesson about vanity and inner beauty and the whole family shares a group hug before jumping in the station wagon for a trip to the green stamps store and maybe you prefer that, the way I prefer the blissful ignorance of reality that I enjoy by not friending nieces and nephews on Facebook. But if you want to see the behind-the-scenes version where Marcia tackles Jan to the floor over the last Oreo, Peter plays home videos of Greg on a potty chair for Greg's new girlfriend, and paper towels serve as markers for the cat vomit everyone claims to have not seen, you have work to do. Deliver a couple of clever insults that leave us with our mouths hanging open, then turn our tentative shots at you back on us without hesitation and you'll get your foot in the door. But once your foot's in, avoid the paper towels strewn about. Just pretend you don't see them like everyone else.
P.S. Mike Brady is trapped in a collapsed building on Christmas Eve. Carol Brady stands outside the police barricade and worries. Suddenly, she lifts her voice (and the building, apparently) with a stirring Christmas carol and Mike stumbles out to freedom. Christmas and Mike are saved by the power of her voice. She'd be a handy chick to have around for say, mine collapses, earthquakes, and rugby scrums.
But for some reason, there are people who look at us and think we are The Brady Bunch and that we spend Friday nights doing family sing-alongs with the biggest argument being who gets to shake the tambourine (if that were the case, I would definitely call dibs on the tambourine). I am exceptionally lucky that my daughters enjoy spending time with each other and with Herbie and me. We are a close family and I talk to each of them several times a week. We spend major holidays together and try to schedule a fun family vacation every year. But all of that takes a lot of work and compromise, some mild cursing and hair-pulling, and usually some hurt feelings thrown into the mix. It's like sausage-making---if you only see the end result, it looks tasty, but the process to get there is anything but pretty. And more often than not, I'm the one squishing the meat into the machine.
I called my sister-in-law N to tell her we would all be at my mother-in-law's party this weekend, including fiance E and longtime boyfriend T. She was thrilled to hear the news (No, really, she was.) She commented on what a fun, special couple C and E are and how excited she is about their wedding next year. I found myself wondering how she knew they were a fun, special couple since she has only met E once. N answered the question I hadn't asked.
"I follow C and E on Facebook and they are so cute together! I love reading the banter they have with their friends. So cute!"
I'm a firm believer that Facebook is a wonderful tool for high school and college kids to share info and keep in touch. I know that all four of my daughters love Facebook. I reluctantly signed up myself, but only because the oldest one was trying to win a grant and the rules allowed you to cast an extra vote if you did it from your Facebook account. Since I signed up, several people from high school and college have contacted me through the account and that's fun. Others have contacted me because they like my books and that is fun, too. But other than that, I don't participate in Facebook. Sorry to those who I am friends with on there, but you already know I seldom update my status and am much better at answering emails or texts.
If someone sends me a message, I answer it, and if every couple of months I have some news about the girls to share, I share it. That's all. I'm not friends with my daughters or their friends or my nieces and nephews. I don't want to read ramblings they have written after coming home from a party where "friend X" danced with "boy Y" and will forever after be known as "ex-friend who is the *&^%#$%^ skank of the dorm" or anything even close to that. I don't want to know that the sweet niece who helped me bake cookies when she was ten now swears like a trucker and has stacks of bead necklaces "earned" at Mardi Gras by flashing her boobs. The next time I hug my nephew at a family party, I don't want to remember that he "liked" a nude picture of some celebrity or bragged about chugging ten beers before vomiting in his mother's flower bed. Maybe my young family members are writing about joining the Peace Corps and ending world hunger, but I don't want to take any chances. By not reading their pages, I can continue to cling to the illusion (delusion?) that they are.
So when my sister-in-law said she was reading C and E's conversations with their friends on Facebook, my first thought was, "Creeper!" As if again reading my mind, she said, "My kids tell me not to be a creeper, but I tell them that I'm not, C and E accepted my invitation to be friends so they must want me to know what's happening in their lives." Here's a quandary for you: Your aunt or uncle or neighbor makes a request to be added as a friend on Facebook or MySpace or whatever. Do you ignore the request so they can ask you in person why you haven't added them yet, or do you deny the request and face the awkwardness, or do you accept the request and then censor your page? C & E didn't want to be rude, so they accepted her request. And now she's creeping on them. And by extension, she's creeping on the rest of us.
Because the next thing she said was, "I was looking through C's pictures and I saw that you guys went on a vacation to the Florida Keys this past June." Oh, yay. Now I'm wondering what pictures C put up of me in a bathing suit or scarfing seafood at some restaurant. Just as I'm wondering this, N says, "You guys are the perfect family. You and Herbie are such good parents and you all always look like you are having such fun together." I don't know about the "good parents" part, since I mostly think God took pity on Herbie and me when he saw how totally clueless we were and just gave us really, really easy kids, but the always having fun part is pretty true. We do manage to have fun wherever we go, even when things go majorly wrong, just because we are used to things going majorly wrong and we learned early on to find a way to laugh about it so we wouldn't go for each other's throats.
N told me that she noticed pictures of us on a "nature walk" and how happy we all looked. Nature walk, nature walk, hmmm . . . I guess she was talking about the trek through the Everglades we took. It was about 97 degrees, but according to The Weather Channel, with the humidity added in, it felt like 105. We were all dripping with sweat, the bugs were eating us alive, some of us (and by that I mean mostly me) were terrified of the alligators along the trail, but of course when we stopped for pictures, we all smiled. Doesn't everyone do that? That doesn't mean that when the camera wasn't aimed at us, we weren't pushing each other to fight for the minuscule sections of shade to be found or hogging the coldest water bottle for ourself, or hoping the endless bugs were more attracted to the scent of someone else's blood supply than our own. I didn't hear any one of us say, "Here, I'll spray my body with sugar water so all the bugs will feast on me and you guys won't have to suffer a single itch."
After seeing the pictures, N said, she woke her family up early on a Saturday morning and ordered them all into the car so they could take a "nature walk" in a nearby park and follow our example of being a happy family. Yikes. That's one sure way to make her family hate us. It didn't work out, though, she told me. Her family just wouldn't cooperate and complained the whole time--it was hot, they were tired, the bugs were biting them--and she finally gave up and let them escape back to the car where they apologized for being uncooperative. Really? That sounds exactly like our nature walk through the Everglades only no one apologized for complaining. Who would they apologize to since we were all complaining equally? I'm sure that if N had stopped her family on their walk to take some pictures, they would have all wiped the sweat and squished bugs from their faces and smiled broadly for the camera the same way we did. Viola! Happy family on nature walk.
When the camera is back in the case, we are just like any other family I know. We laugh, we fight, we annoy each other, we take care of each other, and we share memories that no one else has. Anyone who is planning to wiggle their way into our close-knit bunch needs to understand that while we never hesitate to insult each other's hair or breath or intelligence, it is done with love. When I tease one of my daughters about being a bad driver or burning the macaroni and cheese, I'm really saying, "You are the light of my life," and when they make fun of me for using the wrong word or calling them by the wrong name, they aren't actually accusing me of being senile, they are saying, "I know there is nothing I can say or do that will make you stop loving me." Really.
So for those foolish few who ignore all the warning signs and become one of us in the eyes of God and the legal system, you'll know that you've made it to the inner circle when we ask you to put your shoes back on because we'd rather smell the wet dogs. If we let you go first in the dinner line or smile politely when you lick your fingers and then reach back into the Doritos bag for more, you are still part of the viewing audience who only sees the 22 minutes-with-commercials, happy-endings-for-all, sitcom version of our family (yes, I'm talking about you, T. You are part of the family now, so I can tell you if that behavior continues, your snacking supplies and fingers are in danger of being cut off).
You'll see the version where Marcia gets hit in the face with a football but ends up learning a lesson about vanity and inner beauty and the whole family shares a group hug before jumping in the station wagon for a trip to the green stamps store and maybe you prefer that, the way I prefer the blissful ignorance of reality that I enjoy by not friending nieces and nephews on Facebook. But if you want to see the behind-the-scenes version where Marcia tackles Jan to the floor over the last Oreo, Peter plays home videos of Greg on a potty chair for Greg's new girlfriend, and paper towels serve as markers for the cat vomit everyone claims to have not seen, you have work to do. Deliver a couple of clever insults that leave us with our mouths hanging open, then turn our tentative shots at you back on us without hesitation and you'll get your foot in the door. But once your foot's in, avoid the paper towels strewn about. Just pretend you don't see them like everyone else.
P.S. Mike Brady is trapped in a collapsed building on Christmas Eve. Carol Brady stands outside the police barricade and worries. Suddenly, she lifts her voice (and the building, apparently) with a stirring Christmas carol and Mike stumbles out to freedom. Christmas and Mike are saved by the power of her voice. She'd be a handy chick to have around for say, mine collapses, earthquakes, and rugby scrums.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Bunny-Hopping to the Finish Line
At about 4 o'clock this morning, I heard a cat crying. This isn't unusual since I have four cats and I'm used to their cries. They cry when they first come in from outdoors and they jump on my lap to tell me about their exciting adventures. I know the difference between the meow that means they are about to throw up in my shoe and the one that means they are bragging about bringing me the insect/mouse they have killed (or at least captured alive before letting it loose in my house). There is the, "I'm bored so you'd better entertain me before I find a way to entertain myself" cry and the "How could you leave me on this side of the door when it's warm and cozy in there with you" cry.
But this was a new cry. I got up and opened the door to let in whichever cat was lonely, but no one waited there. And the meowing continued. I stepped out on the porch to call, "Here, kitty, kitty," but not one furry soul came running. And I still heard meowing. Having been woken from a sound sleep, I was stumbling around with my eyes half-open and my brain on auto-pilot trying to locate the sad kitty. I looked up on the roof, since I have a skylight and cats have been known to stand over the open skylight and cry through the screen to get my attention, but the skylight was closed and no cats were on the roof. I also checked the air conditioning unit sticking out from my upstairs window because one particular cat, PJ, has the unfortunate habit of jumping six feet from a second floor porch railing onto the AC unit (without a safety net) to peer in the window and freak me out with her glowing yellow eyes. She is a black cat, so all you see in the darkness is those eyes. No PJ on the AC.
I walked back into the house, ready to stumble off to bed and try to sleep through the noise, when I noticed the cries were louder in one area. I looked up at the skylight and felt my heart jump in my chest. I was no longer semi-conscious. I was fully awake. There, framed in the moonlight, was my precious PJ, the sweetest cat I've ever met, sprawled like one of those stuffed cats you see on the rear windows of cars, trapped between the skylight glass and the screen. The space had to be about three inches thick. PJ's mother had climbed onto the screen once or twice, but her weight had always caused the screen to fall and she had safely landed on the table below. The skylight is set up to automatically close when it starts to rain or if anything bumps it, like a branch from a tree. PJ must have climbed onto the screen to let me know she wanted in and caused the window to close, not realizing it was closing until it was too late to crawl out.
I'm not sure whose face showed more panic, hers or mine, but I know my cries were louder. I grabbed one of the pins in the screen to try to pop it out, then stopped because I was worried she would get hurt when she fell if she couldn't get her feet under her in time. Deciding to use the remote to open the window instead, I pushed the button, then watched as it slowly, slowly lifted off of her. Luckily, the screen had some give in it, so she wasn't crushed, just scared and miserable. She scampered off the screen onto the solid roof, but as I turned to run to the door to let her in, I saw her stick her head back between the window and screen to look at me. I guess she didn't spend quite enough time trapped in there to learn her lesson.
I've been feeling a little like PJ trapped in that skylight lately. I recently found out that I have to have major abdominal surgery again in October. This will be my fourth time in five years. My choices are either have the surgery with all its pain and long recovery or risk waiting until it is a dangerous emergency that could involve more extensive surgery and an even longer recovery. Some choice. I keep hoping for another option, but unlike PJ's predicament, there is no one who will come along and push a magic button and give me a way out no matter how long or hard I howl.
At least I can prepare this time. Last time, it was emergency surgery and I had to spend ten days in the hospital with hairy legs and toenails that were only half covered in polish. Do you know how embarrassing that is when nurses are putting socks on you every day? Plus, I was due for a shower when I was rushed to the hospital, so in desperation, I washed my hair in the sink in Intensive Care.
You would think that I would enjoy a long recovery on the couch, a time of feeling no guilt about laundry or dishes or other household chores. After all, three of my favorite things are writing, reading, and watching movies which are couch-based activities. Unfortunately, general anesthesia and pain medication have a way of clouding your brain for weeks, if not months, after surgery and I always find it hard to concentrate on anything while recovering. My level of concentration just barely rises to watching re-runs of Everybody Loves Raymond episodes that I have seen countless times before. My family has also seen them countless times before which makes my recovery almost as painful for them as it is for me.
Speaking of my family, they are fantastic about taking care of me while in the hospital and once I am home. They buy groceries, attempting to find little treats that will appeal to me, they cook and clean, they change my sheets and help me walk to the bathroom, and they put up with the Raymond re-runs without too much complaint. The only time the ball was dropped was when my husband showed up in my hospital room with a big platter of strong-smelling Italian takeout at a time when I had just spent several days vomiting and was lying with a tube running up my nose and into my stomach. But considering everything else he puts up with and does for me, it was a minor misstep.
One of my family members is with me round-the-clock for those first few weeks and that is a blessing. I realize this next statement shows just what a small, petty person I am, but it is also incredibly hard to lie on the couch, bored and in pain, and watch the family members who aren't on duty get ready for lunch with friends or to go to a movie or even to run to the store, all clean and shiny and wearing real clothes instead of the pajamas or drawstring pants I'm stuck in, with their legs shaved and their toes perfectly painted because they can bend over to accomplish the job. Given the choice between going through the recovery myself or watching one of my loved ones suffer through it, it's a no-brainer---I would choose the surgery for myself and the healthy, fun times for them---but even knowing that, I'll admit to getting cranky around week three on the couch and maybe, just maybe putting on another episode of Raymond out of spite instead of a genuine desire to watch Marie get her way once again.
Well, I'm sure I'll have plenty more thoughts to share with you about this over the next couple of weeks, including sharing some of the "you just gotta laugh" moments from my previous adventures in the hospital, so I'll end this for now. Besides, PJ just jumped on the AC unit again and I have to go save her. Maybe there's a lesson in that for me--she could have spent the day playing it safe, napping, and being fussed over, but she shook off her bad experience and leapt right back into the action. I should be recovered enough by January to at least bunny-hop, if not leap. Maybe my recovery period spent watching my family living life and having fun will go quicker if I plan big things for myself to do post-recovery. Bungie jumping? Sky diving? Maybe not, but a trip to someplace warm where I can lay on a chaise on the beach and watch the waves roll in isn't out of the question. I can always pack my portable DVD player and my Raymond discs, just in case.
But this was a new cry. I got up and opened the door to let in whichever cat was lonely, but no one waited there. And the meowing continued. I stepped out on the porch to call, "Here, kitty, kitty," but not one furry soul came running. And I still heard meowing. Having been woken from a sound sleep, I was stumbling around with my eyes half-open and my brain on auto-pilot trying to locate the sad kitty. I looked up on the roof, since I have a skylight and cats have been known to stand over the open skylight and cry through the screen to get my attention, but the skylight was closed and no cats were on the roof. I also checked the air conditioning unit sticking out from my upstairs window because one particular cat, PJ, has the unfortunate habit of jumping six feet from a second floor porch railing onto the AC unit (without a safety net) to peer in the window and freak me out with her glowing yellow eyes. She is a black cat, so all you see in the darkness is those eyes. No PJ on the AC.
I walked back into the house, ready to stumble off to bed and try to sleep through the noise, when I noticed the cries were louder in one area. I looked up at the skylight and felt my heart jump in my chest. I was no longer semi-conscious. I was fully awake. There, framed in the moonlight, was my precious PJ, the sweetest cat I've ever met, sprawled like one of those stuffed cats you see on the rear windows of cars, trapped between the skylight glass and the screen. The space had to be about three inches thick. PJ's mother had climbed onto the screen once or twice, but her weight had always caused the screen to fall and she had safely landed on the table below. The skylight is set up to automatically close when it starts to rain or if anything bumps it, like a branch from a tree. PJ must have climbed onto the screen to let me know she wanted in and caused the window to close, not realizing it was closing until it was too late to crawl out.
I'm not sure whose face showed more panic, hers or mine, but I know my cries were louder. I grabbed one of the pins in the screen to try to pop it out, then stopped because I was worried she would get hurt when she fell if she couldn't get her feet under her in time. Deciding to use the remote to open the window instead, I pushed the button, then watched as it slowly, slowly lifted off of her. Luckily, the screen had some give in it, so she wasn't crushed, just scared and miserable. She scampered off the screen onto the solid roof, but as I turned to run to the door to let her in, I saw her stick her head back between the window and screen to look at me. I guess she didn't spend quite enough time trapped in there to learn her lesson.
I've been feeling a little like PJ trapped in that skylight lately. I recently found out that I have to have major abdominal surgery again in October. This will be my fourth time in five years. My choices are either have the surgery with all its pain and long recovery or risk waiting until it is a dangerous emergency that could involve more extensive surgery and an even longer recovery. Some choice. I keep hoping for another option, but unlike PJ's predicament, there is no one who will come along and push a magic button and give me a way out no matter how long or hard I howl.
At least I can prepare this time. Last time, it was emergency surgery and I had to spend ten days in the hospital with hairy legs and toenails that were only half covered in polish. Do you know how embarrassing that is when nurses are putting socks on you every day? Plus, I was due for a shower when I was rushed to the hospital, so in desperation, I washed my hair in the sink in Intensive Care.
You would think that I would enjoy a long recovery on the couch, a time of feeling no guilt about laundry or dishes or other household chores. After all, three of my favorite things are writing, reading, and watching movies which are couch-based activities. Unfortunately, general anesthesia and pain medication have a way of clouding your brain for weeks, if not months, after surgery and I always find it hard to concentrate on anything while recovering. My level of concentration just barely rises to watching re-runs of Everybody Loves Raymond episodes that I have seen countless times before. My family has also seen them countless times before which makes my recovery almost as painful for them as it is for me.
Speaking of my family, they are fantastic about taking care of me while in the hospital and once I am home. They buy groceries, attempting to find little treats that will appeal to me, they cook and clean, they change my sheets and help me walk to the bathroom, and they put up with the Raymond re-runs without too much complaint. The only time the ball was dropped was when my husband showed up in my hospital room with a big platter of strong-smelling Italian takeout at a time when I had just spent several days vomiting and was lying with a tube running up my nose and into my stomach. But considering everything else he puts up with and does for me, it was a minor misstep.
One of my family members is with me round-the-clock for those first few weeks and that is a blessing. I realize this next statement shows just what a small, petty person I am, but it is also incredibly hard to lie on the couch, bored and in pain, and watch the family members who aren't on duty get ready for lunch with friends or to go to a movie or even to run to the store, all clean and shiny and wearing real clothes instead of the pajamas or drawstring pants I'm stuck in, with their legs shaved and their toes perfectly painted because they can bend over to accomplish the job. Given the choice between going through the recovery myself or watching one of my loved ones suffer through it, it's a no-brainer---I would choose the surgery for myself and the healthy, fun times for them---but even knowing that, I'll admit to getting cranky around week three on the couch and maybe, just maybe putting on another episode of Raymond out of spite instead of a genuine desire to watch Marie get her way once again.
Well, I'm sure I'll have plenty more thoughts to share with you about this over the next couple of weeks, including sharing some of the "you just gotta laugh" moments from my previous adventures in the hospital, so I'll end this for now. Besides, PJ just jumped on the AC unit again and I have to go save her. Maybe there's a lesson in that for me--she could have spent the day playing it safe, napping, and being fussed over, but she shook off her bad experience and leapt right back into the action. I should be recovered enough by January to at least bunny-hop, if not leap. Maybe my recovery period spent watching my family living life and having fun will go quicker if I plan big things for myself to do post-recovery. Bungie jumping? Sky diving? Maybe not, but a trip to someplace warm where I can lay on a chaise on the beach and watch the waves roll in isn't out of the question. I can always pack my portable DVD player and my Raymond discs, just in case.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
I Swear I Didn't Hit Him With A Frying Pan!
There are many ways to celebrate a birthday---cake, a party, nice dinner out, having family and friends come over---and then there is my husband's way.
This past Sunday was Herbie's birthday and he wanted to spend it at our cabin in the mountains with my youngest daughter and me. We drove up on Friday with plans to spend Saturday and Sunday hiking through the woods and paddling around in canoes, then have a yummy dinner, a cake, and presents on Sunday afternoon before driving back home. A nice relaxing, outdoorsy weekend, right?
But Saturday morning my husband woke up before M and I did and since Herbie can't sit still for more than a minute, he headed out to the woods for some manly brush-hogging. The property that we own was left to us by Herbie's uncle and it consists of 127 acres. Herbie likes to use the tractor to cut trails for family and guests to walk through the woods.
I got up and had my coffee and M had just come downstairs when I heard a squawk on the walkie-talkie that was sitting on the kitchen counter. I answered it, figuring it was Herbie calling to see if we were up and ready for some fun. It was Herbie and he said, "I got the tractor stuck in the swamp." I replied, "You wouldn't be Herbie if you hadn't," since getting things stuck in mud is a common occurrence for my husband. Then he said, "I tried to pull it out with a winch. It snapped and the metal hook hit me in the back of the head. I'm bleeding and I need you to come get me." Who needs coffee to get your heart pumping when you have news like this?
He gave me directions as to where to find him and M and I jumped on the four-wheeler and took off, our two little white dogs following on foot since we didn't want to take the time to chase them down and stick them in the house. M and I drove back along an old logging road until I could see him coming up a trail to meet us. I jumped off and ran down the trail (and I don't run often) to where he was, but long before I reached him, I could see massive quantities of blood on his shirt and neck. We got him on the back of the four-wheeler and took him back to the cabin. While I assessed the situation, M drove back and picked up the weary dogs on the four-wheeler and brought them inside.
It was obvious that we were going to be making a trip to the emergency room of the local hospital. Problem is, the local hospital is an hour away. There are small clinics that are closer, but for a real hospital, you need to drive for an hour. Herbie jumped in the shower for a quick rinse off because he said he would be miserable riding in the truck and then sitting in the waiting room covered in sweat and blood. I told him to leave the bloody (not like Ron Weasley bloody, but actually bloody) clothes on so they would take him back to see the doctor more quickly, but he ignored my sage advice.
When he finished showering, I took my first good look at the damage and saw a two inch gash near the top of his head. He kept pointing to a spot lower on his head and when I parted the hair, I saw another gash there as well. M and I put several sterile gauze pads over the injury and then wrapped an Ace bandage around his head to hold them in place.
Herbie was pretty quiet on the ride, only answering my questions (Dizzy? Nauseated? Blurry vision? Any loss of consciousness? Was he knocked to the ground? That's right, I know these things. I raised four kids). I asked about pain and he said it wasn't too bad. I tried to get him to the hospital as fast as possible, but the drive involved a half hour on winding country roads before we reached the highway and both Herbie and M get carsick easily, so I drove just fast enough to imply a sense of urgency, but not fast enough to induce vomiting. It was a tricky balance.
Once at the hospital, he was evaluated. That is the nice thing about country hospitals--if I walked into a hospital at home and said I got hit in the head by a snapped winch cable while pulling my tractor out of the swamp, they would direct me to the psychiatric ward for further evaluation, but up there, they nodded their heads and the male intern said, "Yup, the same thing happened to my dad a few years ago." After looking at the cuts, they put fresh gauze on it and re-wrapped the Ace bandage around his head. They asked the same questions I had already asked him, and I was feeling smugly smart about that until I accidentally answered one of the questions by referring to his injury as his boo-boo.
They asked him what his pain level was and he said a three, which isn't too bad considering. Then they decided to put a neck brace on him "just in case" and that's when the fun began for real. If most husbands are potato heads, mine is a coconut head. There is no polite way to say this--his head is huge. It is perfectly proportioned to the rest of him, but compared to other heads, it's gigantic. He had to have a specially ordered helmet when he played high school football and he can never find a baseball cap that fits. He passed this huge noggin on to our girls so you can imagine how delightful it was to give birth to them. Not one had a pointy head, all hard and perfectly round at birth.
I think the hook on the winch cable would have missed a normal man's head by a mile, but Herbie presented too big of a target to miss. So the neck brace was waaaaay too small. They put it on anyway. Now the pain and discomfort level shot up to about a six, because the collar was tight on his throat and he had to hold his head at an odd angle to keep the back of the collar from digging into the lower cut. Blood started to pour down the back of his neck and I had to stuff tissues in there to sop it up. The collar was put on in case of whiplash, but Herbie hadn't had any neck pain before the collar was put on, only after from straining to hold his boo-boo (that's right, I said it) away from the hard plastic.
We walked from the waiting room back into the triage area and asked for it to be loosened. They did, but it didn't help much. When they weren't looking, I loosened it even more because the blood was still pouring out and Herbie had gone from mildly uncomfortable to downright miserable. Maybe twenty minutes later, they took us to an examining room and we told the nurse that the collar was a problem. She said she couldn't take it off until the doctor had examined him. After another half hour of sitting there with dripping blood and cranky husband, I took it off myself. Herbie was much happier and when the doctor finally came in, she didn't even mention it, so I wasted twenty minutes mentally plotting how I would defend my actions when questioned (Stiff breeze blew it off? Rabid raccoon chewed through the velcro? Hard sneeze by my husband shot it across the room and I was too stupid to figure out how to put it back on? Okay, maybe I needed more than twenty minutes to come up with a plausible answer.)
The doctor suspected a mild concussion and ordered a CT scan to check for skull fracture or blood clots on the brain. Herbie asked if he would need stitches and the doctor replied that they don't do stitches anymore and staples would be used instead. I flinched, but Herbie took it quite calmly. It was only later that he admitted that he hadn't fully taken in that she meant she would be stapling the back of his head. He just heard, "No stitches."
We accompanied Herbie down to the CT machine and were allowed to stand in the screening room where we could not only see him rolled into the machine, but could watch the scans as they appeared on the computer screen. On occasion, when my husband swears I didn't tell him something that I've actually told him repeatedly and only remembers being told after I repeat the whole conversation to him word for word, I've wondered about his brain. He's a little too young to be having senior moments like that and while I've presumed that stress from work overload is the culprit, there is a little voice in the back of my mind saying, "Take him to Dr. McDreamy!" At last, I had a chance to see his brain in all it's glory and the experts tell me everything is A-okay. No skull fracture, no hematoma, nothing out of the ordinary at all, just a typical husband who doesn't listen to his wife. Great news all around. Plus, my worries that his head wouldn't even fit in the machine were groundless--they managed to squeeze it in.
Back in the examining room, the doctor asked Herbie to lay on his stomach so she could clean and close the wound. That's when the word "staples" actually penetrated Herbie's brain (That may be a bad way to put it. The staples didn't penetrate his brain, thank goodness. He just figured out exactly what was about to happen.) First, she had to clean the wound and she wasn't shy about it. She poured antiseptic into both wounds and wiped repeatedly. M and I squeezed Herbie's calf and murmured words of encouragement while we blinked back tears. We had joked with him while waiting for the doctor and we had taken lots of pictures of the wound at his request, but watching someone you love in extreme pain is a sobering experience and it takes a lot to get me sober.
As if the cleaning hadn't been bad enough, now the doctor had to numb the area so she could insert the staples and there is only one way to do it---big shiny needles stuck right into the cut. I could have gotten every secret Herbie ever kept out of him at that moment, but I refrained. It didn't seem like the appropriate time, plus I'm kinda scared to know what he's keeping secret.
After the area was pretty numb, she took out a tool no bigger than an electric toothbrush and started stapling. He got six staples in the top cut and five in the bottom. You really have to go to your happy place and ignore what is happening right in front of you when someone is stapling your husband's head like his skin flaps are the pages of a high school book report.
Once the stapling was finished, the doctor had Herbie sit up so she could bandage the wound. He had been laying on a plastic pillow and there was a lovely pool of blood filling it's indents. There was blood splashed all over the floor, on the sheets, all over Herbie's arms and hands--it was like a slaughterhouse in there. She told him to have the staples removed in a week, gave him a prescription for antibiotics, and sent him on his way.
I'm happy to say that Herbie is making a full recovery. He ate a good dinner that evening and slept like a baby. We Skyped with my other daughters so he could hold the computer up to his head and show them the gory details. The next day, his actual birthday, I made sure to grab the phone every time it rang so I could "encourage" all his loved ones to give him a lecture about the perils of wandering off into the woods on his own to pursue dangerous tasks. I can't stop thinking, "What if he'd been knocked unconscious?" I wouldn't have even started worrying about him for hours. I would have been blissfully reading or puttering around the cabin thinking he was happily tromping through the woods when in reality he would have been laying on the ground bleeding. And when I did start to worry--where would I begin my search of the 127 acres? I love my dogs, but trackers they are not. They wouldn't be able to pull a Lassie and help me find where Timmy fell down the well.
Speaking of dogs, I hear you can buy a collar with a GPS locating chip in it in case they wander off. I'm thinking of getting one for Herbie. Unfortunately, I'm almost positive they won't have one big enough. Perhaps we'll have to go old school and have Herbie leave a trail of bread crumbs instead. Or meat chunks. Even my fluffy white puppies could follow that trail.
This past Sunday was Herbie's birthday and he wanted to spend it at our cabin in the mountains with my youngest daughter and me. We drove up on Friday with plans to spend Saturday and Sunday hiking through the woods and paddling around in canoes, then have a yummy dinner, a cake, and presents on Sunday afternoon before driving back home. A nice relaxing, outdoorsy weekend, right?
But Saturday morning my husband woke up before M and I did and since Herbie can't sit still for more than a minute, he headed out to the woods for some manly brush-hogging. The property that we own was left to us by Herbie's uncle and it consists of 127 acres. Herbie likes to use the tractor to cut trails for family and guests to walk through the woods.
I got up and had my coffee and M had just come downstairs when I heard a squawk on the walkie-talkie that was sitting on the kitchen counter. I answered it, figuring it was Herbie calling to see if we were up and ready for some fun. It was Herbie and he said, "I got the tractor stuck in the swamp." I replied, "You wouldn't be Herbie if you hadn't," since getting things stuck in mud is a common occurrence for my husband. Then he said, "I tried to pull it out with a winch. It snapped and the metal hook hit me in the back of the head. I'm bleeding and I need you to come get me." Who needs coffee to get your heart pumping when you have news like this?
He gave me directions as to where to find him and M and I jumped on the four-wheeler and took off, our two little white dogs following on foot since we didn't want to take the time to chase them down and stick them in the house. M and I drove back along an old logging road until I could see him coming up a trail to meet us. I jumped off and ran down the trail (and I don't run often) to where he was, but long before I reached him, I could see massive quantities of blood on his shirt and neck. We got him on the back of the four-wheeler and took him back to the cabin. While I assessed the situation, M drove back and picked up the weary dogs on the four-wheeler and brought them inside.
It was obvious that we were going to be making a trip to the emergency room of the local hospital. Problem is, the local hospital is an hour away. There are small clinics that are closer, but for a real hospital, you need to drive for an hour. Herbie jumped in the shower for a quick rinse off because he said he would be miserable riding in the truck and then sitting in the waiting room covered in sweat and blood. I told him to leave the bloody (not like Ron Weasley bloody, but actually bloody) clothes on so they would take him back to see the doctor more quickly, but he ignored my sage advice.
When he finished showering, I took my first good look at the damage and saw a two inch gash near the top of his head. He kept pointing to a spot lower on his head and when I parted the hair, I saw another gash there as well. M and I put several sterile gauze pads over the injury and then wrapped an Ace bandage around his head to hold them in place.
Herbie was pretty quiet on the ride, only answering my questions (Dizzy? Nauseated? Blurry vision? Any loss of consciousness? Was he knocked to the ground? That's right, I know these things. I raised four kids). I asked about pain and he said it wasn't too bad. I tried to get him to the hospital as fast as possible, but the drive involved a half hour on winding country roads before we reached the highway and both Herbie and M get carsick easily, so I drove just fast enough to imply a sense of urgency, but not fast enough to induce vomiting. It was a tricky balance.
Once at the hospital, he was evaluated. That is the nice thing about country hospitals--if I walked into a hospital at home and said I got hit in the head by a snapped winch cable while pulling my tractor out of the swamp, they would direct me to the psychiatric ward for further evaluation, but up there, they nodded their heads and the male intern said, "Yup, the same thing happened to my dad a few years ago." After looking at the cuts, they put fresh gauze on it and re-wrapped the Ace bandage around his head. They asked the same questions I had already asked him, and I was feeling smugly smart about that until I accidentally answered one of the questions by referring to his injury as his boo-boo.
They asked him what his pain level was and he said a three, which isn't too bad considering. Then they decided to put a neck brace on him "just in case" and that's when the fun began for real. If most husbands are potato heads, mine is a coconut head. There is no polite way to say this--his head is huge. It is perfectly proportioned to the rest of him, but compared to other heads, it's gigantic. He had to have a specially ordered helmet when he played high school football and he can never find a baseball cap that fits. He passed this huge noggin on to our girls so you can imagine how delightful it was to give birth to them. Not one had a pointy head, all hard and perfectly round at birth.
I think the hook on the winch cable would have missed a normal man's head by a mile, but Herbie presented too big of a target to miss. So the neck brace was waaaaay too small. They put it on anyway. Now the pain and discomfort level shot up to about a six, because the collar was tight on his throat and he had to hold his head at an odd angle to keep the back of the collar from digging into the lower cut. Blood started to pour down the back of his neck and I had to stuff tissues in there to sop it up. The collar was put on in case of whiplash, but Herbie hadn't had any neck pain before the collar was put on, only after from straining to hold his boo-boo (that's right, I said it) away from the hard plastic.
We walked from the waiting room back into the triage area and asked for it to be loosened. They did, but it didn't help much. When they weren't looking, I loosened it even more because the blood was still pouring out and Herbie had gone from mildly uncomfortable to downright miserable. Maybe twenty minutes later, they took us to an examining room and we told the nurse that the collar was a problem. She said she couldn't take it off until the doctor had examined him. After another half hour of sitting there with dripping blood and cranky husband, I took it off myself. Herbie was much happier and when the doctor finally came in, she didn't even mention it, so I wasted twenty minutes mentally plotting how I would defend my actions when questioned (Stiff breeze blew it off? Rabid raccoon chewed through the velcro? Hard sneeze by my husband shot it across the room and I was too stupid to figure out how to put it back on? Okay, maybe I needed more than twenty minutes to come up with a plausible answer.)
The doctor suspected a mild concussion and ordered a CT scan to check for skull fracture or blood clots on the brain. Herbie asked if he would need stitches and the doctor replied that they don't do stitches anymore and staples would be used instead. I flinched, but Herbie took it quite calmly. It was only later that he admitted that he hadn't fully taken in that she meant she would be stapling the back of his head. He just heard, "No stitches."
We accompanied Herbie down to the CT machine and were allowed to stand in the screening room where we could not only see him rolled into the machine, but could watch the scans as they appeared on the computer screen. On occasion, when my husband swears I didn't tell him something that I've actually told him repeatedly and only remembers being told after I repeat the whole conversation to him word for word, I've wondered about his brain. He's a little too young to be having senior moments like that and while I've presumed that stress from work overload is the culprit, there is a little voice in the back of my mind saying, "Take him to Dr. McDreamy!" At last, I had a chance to see his brain in all it's glory and the experts tell me everything is A-okay. No skull fracture, no hematoma, nothing out of the ordinary at all, just a typical husband who doesn't listen to his wife. Great news all around. Plus, my worries that his head wouldn't even fit in the machine were groundless--they managed to squeeze it in.
Back in the examining room, the doctor asked Herbie to lay on his stomach so she could clean and close the wound. That's when the word "staples" actually penetrated Herbie's brain (That may be a bad way to put it. The staples didn't penetrate his brain, thank goodness. He just figured out exactly what was about to happen.) First, she had to clean the wound and she wasn't shy about it. She poured antiseptic into both wounds and wiped repeatedly. M and I squeezed Herbie's calf and murmured words of encouragement while we blinked back tears. We had joked with him while waiting for the doctor and we had taken lots of pictures of the wound at his request, but watching someone you love in extreme pain is a sobering experience and it takes a lot to get me sober.
As if the cleaning hadn't been bad enough, now the doctor had to numb the area so she could insert the staples and there is only one way to do it---big shiny needles stuck right into the cut. I could have gotten every secret Herbie ever kept out of him at that moment, but I refrained. It didn't seem like the appropriate time, plus I'm kinda scared to know what he's keeping secret.
After the area was pretty numb, she took out a tool no bigger than an electric toothbrush and started stapling. He got six staples in the top cut and five in the bottom. You really have to go to your happy place and ignore what is happening right in front of you when someone is stapling your husband's head like his skin flaps are the pages of a high school book report.
Once the stapling was finished, the doctor had Herbie sit up so she could bandage the wound. He had been laying on a plastic pillow and there was a lovely pool of blood filling it's indents. There was blood splashed all over the floor, on the sheets, all over Herbie's arms and hands--it was like a slaughterhouse in there. She told him to have the staples removed in a week, gave him a prescription for antibiotics, and sent him on his way.
I'm happy to say that Herbie is making a full recovery. He ate a good dinner that evening and slept like a baby. We Skyped with my other daughters so he could hold the computer up to his head and show them the gory details. The next day, his actual birthday, I made sure to grab the phone every time it rang so I could "encourage" all his loved ones to give him a lecture about the perils of wandering off into the woods on his own to pursue dangerous tasks. I can't stop thinking, "What if he'd been knocked unconscious?" I wouldn't have even started worrying about him for hours. I would have been blissfully reading or puttering around the cabin thinking he was happily tromping through the woods when in reality he would have been laying on the ground bleeding. And when I did start to worry--where would I begin my search of the 127 acres? I love my dogs, but trackers they are not. They wouldn't be able to pull a Lassie and help me find where Timmy fell down the well.
Speaking of dogs, I hear you can buy a collar with a GPS locating chip in it in case they wander off. I'm thinking of getting one for Herbie. Unfortunately, I'm almost positive they won't have one big enough. Perhaps we'll have to go old school and have Herbie leave a trail of bread crumbs instead. Or meat chunks. Even my fluffy white puppies could follow that trail.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Empty Nests, Torn Underwear, and the Stirrings of a Rebellion
I'm thinking about getting a tattoo. Or shaving my head. Or maybe getting something pierced.
I've always been dutiful.
A dutiful student who didn't cheat, didn't sleep during even the most boring classes, didn't play hooky, and got the grades to get into and graduate from college.
A dutiful daughter who respected her parents and tried to make their lives easier as they advanced in years, and who took their advice about not giving away the milk for free or nobody will buy the cow (Who exactly came up with that flattering piece of advice? Couldn't they have said something more like if a man can find enough wildflowers, he won't need to plant a garden? Or if he can get free honey, he won't need a queen bee? Why did women have to be the cow in this scenario?) I also did things in the order they preferred--dating, engagement, wedding, moving in together, and then children.
A dutiful wife who has never even thought of straying in 29 years of marriage. Who packed her husbands bags and sent him off with a smile on business trips, adventure excursions with his buddies, and weekends in the mountains while I stayed home with four small children. Who has turned the other cheek to his families' behavior so many times I can now do a full 360 degrees with my head like Linda Blair in The Exorcist.
A dutiful mother who always, always, always put her children's wants and needs in front of her own. Who diapered and nursed, wiped and powdered, carried and rocked, punished and rewarded, listened and learned for the last twenty-six years. Who did homeroom mom, fund-raising, crafts, CCD meetings, sleepovers, treasure hunts, Back-to-School nights, party treats, costumes, car pools, designated driver for the of age drinkers, luaus, field-trips, chaperoning, and homework-checking.
Dutiful, dutiful, dutiful.
Now, I am 51 years old, my children are grown with lives of their own, my parents have both died, I've lost touch with most friends over the years as I concentrated on my husband and children, and my husband has spent the past 29 years out in the world, building relationships, friendships, and businesses that keep him fully occupied.
What I wanted more than anything in life was for my husband to be successful and my daughters to grow into independent, happy adults and it has happened. Unfortunately, I forgot to include myself in those goals and now that the nest is almost empty, I can't figure out who I am if I'm not the one gathering twigs for shelter and chewing up worms to nourish someone.
I shall have to drop the unneeded twigs and spit out the unwanted worms and re-invent myself.
The question is--into what?
I don't have the answer to that, but one thing I know is I am tired of caring what other people think, of following written and unwritten rules that make sense only to the people who made them up, and mostly, of being dutiful.
I want to be baaaaaaad.
I feel like putting leftovers into Tupperware and not burping the air out. I feel like throwing an aluminum can into the regular trash instead of the recycling--on purpose. I want to let the grass in the yard grow knee high just to see the neighbors' dirty looks. Check underneath the table of the next restaurant I go to and you might find my chewed gum or you might see me order a banana split and when the skinny people eating leaves and twigs at the nearby tables look down their noses' at my gluttony, I'll slowly and deliberately lick the bowl. I want to wear white before Memorial Day and show up at a funeral in red. Dare me to swim immediately after eating and run around the house holding scissors and just watch me go.
I want to shock my friends by showing up at their house without bringing a bottle of wine or a baked good. Shock my family by taking the last piece of pie without asking if anyone else wants it. I may even stop putting the parking brake on when parked in my own driveway. The next time someone asks if I mind without really caring if I do, instead of saying, "No, of course not," I'll answer, "Yes, I bloody well do mind!" even if I don't (Forgive me, I've been obsessed with watching British miniseries on Netflix lately--Cranford, Upstairs Downstairs, Downton Abbey--and now everything in my head comes with a British accent. As for "bloody" Ron Weasley uses it in Harry Potter, so it can't be too vulgar a curse word, can it? Ooooh, I can add use the word "bloody" in my blog to my list of shocking behaviors!) .
I want to leave dishes in the sink and clothes in the washer. Drink regular coffee after five p.m. Bend the corner of a page down on the book I'm reading to mark my place. Wink at the butcher when he hands me my pork chops. Leave empty rolls on the toilet paper holders. Ruffle up the hand towels and then walk away. Feed stray cats. Pet stray dogs. Write a picture book in bad rhyme. Eat the collection of chemicals known as a Twinkie. Wear torn underwear even though I know I might get in an accident.
I can feel this rebellious spirit rising up in me and it scares me. I don't know where it might lead. Is it possible that if I surrender to it, one day I might find myself truly crossing the line and wearing socks with sandals?
Only time will tell.
Let's just keep my rebellious stirrings our little secret for now. Wouldn't want to create widespread panic.
I've always been dutiful.
A dutiful student who didn't cheat, didn't sleep during even the most boring classes, didn't play hooky, and got the grades to get into and graduate from college.
A dutiful daughter who respected her parents and tried to make their lives easier as they advanced in years, and who took their advice about not giving away the milk for free or nobody will buy the cow (Who exactly came up with that flattering piece of advice? Couldn't they have said something more like if a man can find enough wildflowers, he won't need to plant a garden? Or if he can get free honey, he won't need a queen bee? Why did women have to be the cow in this scenario?) I also did things in the order they preferred--dating, engagement, wedding, moving in together, and then children.
A dutiful wife who has never even thought of straying in 29 years of marriage. Who packed her husbands bags and sent him off with a smile on business trips, adventure excursions with his buddies, and weekends in the mountains while I stayed home with four small children. Who has turned the other cheek to his families' behavior so many times I can now do a full 360 degrees with my head like Linda Blair in The Exorcist.
A dutiful mother who always, always, always put her children's wants and needs in front of her own. Who diapered and nursed, wiped and powdered, carried and rocked, punished and rewarded, listened and learned for the last twenty-six years. Who did homeroom mom, fund-raising, crafts, CCD meetings, sleepovers, treasure hunts, Back-to-School nights, party treats, costumes, car pools, designated driver for the of age drinkers, luaus, field-trips, chaperoning, and homework-checking.
Dutiful, dutiful, dutiful.
Now, I am 51 years old, my children are grown with lives of their own, my parents have both died, I've lost touch with most friends over the years as I concentrated on my husband and children, and my husband has spent the past 29 years out in the world, building relationships, friendships, and businesses that keep him fully occupied.
What I wanted more than anything in life was for my husband to be successful and my daughters to grow into independent, happy adults and it has happened. Unfortunately, I forgot to include myself in those goals and now that the nest is almost empty, I can't figure out who I am if I'm not the one gathering twigs for shelter and chewing up worms to nourish someone.
I shall have to drop the unneeded twigs and spit out the unwanted worms and re-invent myself.
The question is--into what?
I don't have the answer to that, but one thing I know is I am tired of caring what other people think, of following written and unwritten rules that make sense only to the people who made them up, and mostly, of being dutiful.
I want to be baaaaaaad.
I feel like putting leftovers into Tupperware and not burping the air out. I feel like throwing an aluminum can into the regular trash instead of the recycling--on purpose. I want to let the grass in the yard grow knee high just to see the neighbors' dirty looks. Check underneath the table of the next restaurant I go to and you might find my chewed gum or you might see me order a banana split and when the skinny people eating leaves and twigs at the nearby tables look down their noses' at my gluttony, I'll slowly and deliberately lick the bowl. I want to wear white before Memorial Day and show up at a funeral in red. Dare me to swim immediately after eating and run around the house holding scissors and just watch me go.
I want to shock my friends by showing up at their house without bringing a bottle of wine or a baked good. Shock my family by taking the last piece of pie without asking if anyone else wants it. I may even stop putting the parking brake on when parked in my own driveway. The next time someone asks if I mind without really caring if I do, instead of saying, "No, of course not," I'll answer, "Yes, I bloody well do mind!" even if I don't (Forgive me, I've been obsessed with watching British miniseries on Netflix lately--Cranford, Upstairs Downstairs, Downton Abbey--and now everything in my head comes with a British accent. As for "bloody" Ron Weasley uses it in Harry Potter, so it can't be too vulgar a curse word, can it? Ooooh, I can add use the word "bloody" in my blog to my list of shocking behaviors!) .
I want to leave dishes in the sink and clothes in the washer. Drink regular coffee after five p.m. Bend the corner of a page down on the book I'm reading to mark my place. Wink at the butcher when he hands me my pork chops. Leave empty rolls on the toilet paper holders. Ruffle up the hand towels and then walk away. Feed stray cats. Pet stray dogs. Write a picture book in bad rhyme. Eat the collection of chemicals known as a Twinkie. Wear torn underwear even though I know I might get in an accident.
I can feel this rebellious spirit rising up in me and it scares me. I don't know where it might lead. Is it possible that if I surrender to it, one day I might find myself truly crossing the line and wearing socks with sandals?
Only time will tell.
Let's just keep my rebellious stirrings our little secret for now. Wouldn't want to create widespread panic.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Do Baby Zombies Eat Your Face Or Can They Only Reach Your Ankles?
I live in perhaps the oddest house I personally have ever seen. It's a farmhouse and the original rooms were built over two hundred years ago. Bits and pieces have been added throughout the years and sometimes I feel like I'm living in The Burrow--the Weasley's tottering home in Harry Potter.
The house has four floors. Let's start in the basement, shall we? The original basement was an approximately 15 by 10 foot room with beams running through the very low ceiling and a walk-in fireplace. Previous owners added a large cinderblock room under an addition which we finished to make a large rec room. Unfortunately, to get to this carpeted, paneled, rec room with it's pool table, sofa beds, and TV, you have to pass through the creepy old basement with it's rickety stairs, cement walls and floor, and exposed wires and pipes running the length of the ceiling. There isn't much we can do about it because we can't cover up these pipes and wires in case we need access. Feeling that this root cellar like atmosphere wasn't deterrent enough for our guests, we added a frequently used litter box to the mix. I have no idea how our daughters convinced any of their friends to venture down into this area to reach the playroom when they were little, but they did, and the basement has been the site of more parties, play-dates, and sleepovers than I can count. When you consider the fact that any little girl who had to use the bathroom in the middle of the night had to pass through here alone on her way, I'd say the Catholic Church should add this to it's list of miracles.
On the main floor, you have the dining room and living room, which made up the original house. A previous owner added a kitchen, family room and laundry room off the dining room and added a powder room under the stairs, which puts it right in the dining room. It's always a nice touch to be able to hear the sound of urination and a toilet flushing at your dinner parties. This powder room was the site of the unmentionable spinning party guest incident. Another nice touch to have that story in the back of your mind during meals around the dining room table.
Open a closet door in the dining room and you will find not a storage place for linens, but a spiral staircase leading to the master bedroom. The staircase is narrow and is unused because the same previous owner built a closet in the master bedroom that required lowering the ceiling in the staircase. A normal staircase was also built between the living room and dining room and I'm guessing that took place after the owners tried to pivot a dresser or headboard up the spiral one and got it stuck. There used to be a window in the wall of the now powder room, so they just put hinges on it and made it into a small storage cabinet.
On what we call the second floor (even though technically, it's the third) is the master bedroom, the master bath, and another bedroom. When you come up the stairs from the first floor, you are presented with the choice of three doors (It's just like Let's Make a Deal!). To your left, is the door to the master bedroom, immediately to your right is the door to the master bath, and slightly down the hall to the right is the door to the second bedroom. How is this possible when the house has four bedrooms? Well, someone throughout the years designed the layout of the house so that to get to the two bedrooms and bath on the third floor, you have to either go through the master bedroom or master bathroom. You can imagine the complications of that. If someone is taking a shower in that bathroom and someone else is asleep or changing in the master bedroom, you are stuck in the hall waiting for entry. This also means the master bath not only has the door to this hallway, but has a second door leading to the stairs to the top floor. I can't tell you how many guests have shared that they sat down on the toilet only to look up and realize there was a door wide open right in front of them.
The master bath had the only shower with the third floor bath containing only a claw foot tub, so you can imagine life with six people (four of them being teenage girls) and only one shower. Our stubborn insistence on keeping parts of history plus the herculean effort involved in carrying a cast iron tub down two flights of stairs kept us from putting a shower in even though it was greatly needed. Now, that three of the girls have moved out and are only occasional visitors, we, of course, came to our senses and we are in the process of installing a shower in that bathroom. It only took us twenty-two years of no one using the tub to realize, hey, maybe a second shower would be a good idea. It's no wonder our daughters know every spot on the ceiling when they spend so much time rolling their eyes at my husband and me for our inability to see the obvious.
The master bedroom has a closet with another spiral staircase leading to . . . nowhere. Previous occupants eliminated the exit at the top of the stairs by putting in a hardwood floor in the bedroom. The third floor used to be an attic, but was made into two bedrooms and a shared bath when the roof was raised by dormers.
In the long history of the occupants of our house, one thing was constant until we moved in---each family who lived here had five children. We, alas, broke the tradition by stopping at four. But even so, there have been many, many babies and young children living here throughout the centuries.
I personally am an open-minded person and don't believe in nor negate the possibility of ghosts walking among us, aliens flying above us, or intelligent life existing in Hollywood. I don't pretend to have absolute knowledge of whether these things are real or not. I can say that, despite living in this old house for twenty-two years, I have never felt an evil presence (other than my in-laws) nor have I seen anything out of the ordinary (well, I have, but I'm speaking in paranormal terms here, not my everyday abnormal living, breathing human sightings).
But others claim that they have experienced things while in our humble home. One case was of a couple who came to feed our cats while we were away. As the wife was opening cat food cans, the husband picked up the baby monitor from the kitchen counter and flicked it on. He casually mentioned to his wife that the kids sounded like they were having a good time upstairs. She froze and reminded him that the reason they were there in the first place was because no one was home. They listened to the sound of children's voices and he suggested that perhaps the part of the monitor that picks up sound was turned off and the receiving part, which he held in his hands, was picking up a signal from a neighbor's monitor. That can happen only if the transmitting part is turned off. She begged him to go upstairs and see if it was turned off. He refused and they dumped cat food onto plates and got out of there. They called us to tell us what happened and when we got home, we checked the monitor. It was turned on upstairs. We also reminded our friends that there were no other children living within the monitor's range. Many times over the years, we turned on the monitor to hear the same lullaby playing. It wasn't playing in our house and it was always the same one.
But baby monitors aren't reliable and there could be any number of explanations. So let's share our next story.
We asked two construction worker friends of ours to do some remodeling in our bedroom closet while we were away on vacation. These are tough, burly, hockey fan kind of guys. When we arrived home from vacation, excited to see the finished closet, we were shocked to see the work half done and tools lying abandoned on the floor, paint cans left open and drying, and general disarray. We'd had these guys do work for us before and knew that they were reliable about cleaning up after themselves.
A call to one of the workers resulted in an explanation of sorts. He said they had been making good progress on the closet when he casually mentioned to his co-worker that he wished I would pick up the baby because the crying was giving him a headache. His co-worker agreed before they both froze at the realization that I wasn't going to be picking up any baby since I and my babies were in another state. They stepped out into the bedroom and both were absolutely positive that the source of the crying was within the house and right up the stairs. They dropped their tools and pushed and shoved each other to be the first down the stairs and out of the house. Both refused to return until we were at home and could assure them that they weren't about to be slimed or have their faces eaten off by a zombie toddler.
I will say that when they did come back, the job was finished in no time. It's the fastest I've ever seen construction workers move.
Perhaps I should share this story with all future workers I hire. I could even rig a tape recorder to play a tape of a baby occasionally crying in case they are tempted to slack off a bit. I could program the lights to go on and off by themselves, have doors slowly creaking open . . .
Well, if it doesn't get my new wallpaper hung faster, it might at least discourage the in-laws from dropping by.
Of course, if there really were ghostly presences in my house, the time that my in-laws have already spent here probably convinced them to move to the light and cross over. Whatever unfinished business was keeping them here was probably forgotten as they came to the same conclusion I have--moving to the light is preferable than living in the hell of having my in-laws in the same house.
The house has four floors. Let's start in the basement, shall we? The original basement was an approximately 15 by 10 foot room with beams running through the very low ceiling and a walk-in fireplace. Previous owners added a large cinderblock room under an addition which we finished to make a large rec room. Unfortunately, to get to this carpeted, paneled, rec room with it's pool table, sofa beds, and TV, you have to pass through the creepy old basement with it's rickety stairs, cement walls and floor, and exposed wires and pipes running the length of the ceiling. There isn't much we can do about it because we can't cover up these pipes and wires in case we need access. Feeling that this root cellar like atmosphere wasn't deterrent enough for our guests, we added a frequently used litter box to the mix. I have no idea how our daughters convinced any of their friends to venture down into this area to reach the playroom when they were little, but they did, and the basement has been the site of more parties, play-dates, and sleepovers than I can count. When you consider the fact that any little girl who had to use the bathroom in the middle of the night had to pass through here alone on her way, I'd say the Catholic Church should add this to it's list of miracles.
On the main floor, you have the dining room and living room, which made up the original house. A previous owner added a kitchen, family room and laundry room off the dining room and added a powder room under the stairs, which puts it right in the dining room. It's always a nice touch to be able to hear the sound of urination and a toilet flushing at your dinner parties. This powder room was the site of the unmentionable spinning party guest incident. Another nice touch to have that story in the back of your mind during meals around the dining room table.
Open a closet door in the dining room and you will find not a storage place for linens, but a spiral staircase leading to the master bedroom. The staircase is narrow and is unused because the same previous owner built a closet in the master bedroom that required lowering the ceiling in the staircase. A normal staircase was also built between the living room and dining room and I'm guessing that took place after the owners tried to pivot a dresser or headboard up the spiral one and got it stuck. There used to be a window in the wall of the now powder room, so they just put hinges on it and made it into a small storage cabinet.
On what we call the second floor (even though technically, it's the third) is the master bedroom, the master bath, and another bedroom. When you come up the stairs from the first floor, you are presented with the choice of three doors (It's just like Let's Make a Deal!). To your left, is the door to the master bedroom, immediately to your right is the door to the master bath, and slightly down the hall to the right is the door to the second bedroom. How is this possible when the house has four bedrooms? Well, someone throughout the years designed the layout of the house so that to get to the two bedrooms and bath on the third floor, you have to either go through the master bedroom or master bathroom. You can imagine the complications of that. If someone is taking a shower in that bathroom and someone else is asleep or changing in the master bedroom, you are stuck in the hall waiting for entry. This also means the master bath not only has the door to this hallway, but has a second door leading to the stairs to the top floor. I can't tell you how many guests have shared that they sat down on the toilet only to look up and realize there was a door wide open right in front of them.
The master bath had the only shower with the third floor bath containing only a claw foot tub, so you can imagine life with six people (four of them being teenage girls) and only one shower. Our stubborn insistence on keeping parts of history plus the herculean effort involved in carrying a cast iron tub down two flights of stairs kept us from putting a shower in even though it was greatly needed. Now, that three of the girls have moved out and are only occasional visitors, we, of course, came to our senses and we are in the process of installing a shower in that bathroom. It only took us twenty-two years of no one using the tub to realize, hey, maybe a second shower would be a good idea. It's no wonder our daughters know every spot on the ceiling when they spend so much time rolling their eyes at my husband and me for our inability to see the obvious.
The master bedroom has a closet with another spiral staircase leading to . . . nowhere. Previous occupants eliminated the exit at the top of the stairs by putting in a hardwood floor in the bedroom. The third floor used to be an attic, but was made into two bedrooms and a shared bath when the roof was raised by dormers.
In the long history of the occupants of our house, one thing was constant until we moved in---each family who lived here had five children. We, alas, broke the tradition by stopping at four. But even so, there have been many, many babies and young children living here throughout the centuries.
I personally am an open-minded person and don't believe in nor negate the possibility of ghosts walking among us, aliens flying above us, or intelligent life existing in Hollywood. I don't pretend to have absolute knowledge of whether these things are real or not. I can say that, despite living in this old house for twenty-two years, I have never felt an evil presence (other than my in-laws) nor have I seen anything out of the ordinary (well, I have, but I'm speaking in paranormal terms here, not my everyday abnormal living, breathing human sightings).
But others claim that they have experienced things while in our humble home. One case was of a couple who came to feed our cats while we were away. As the wife was opening cat food cans, the husband picked up the baby monitor from the kitchen counter and flicked it on. He casually mentioned to his wife that the kids sounded like they were having a good time upstairs. She froze and reminded him that the reason they were there in the first place was because no one was home. They listened to the sound of children's voices and he suggested that perhaps the part of the monitor that picks up sound was turned off and the receiving part, which he held in his hands, was picking up a signal from a neighbor's monitor. That can happen only if the transmitting part is turned off. She begged him to go upstairs and see if it was turned off. He refused and they dumped cat food onto plates and got out of there. They called us to tell us what happened and when we got home, we checked the monitor. It was turned on upstairs. We also reminded our friends that there were no other children living within the monitor's range. Many times over the years, we turned on the monitor to hear the same lullaby playing. It wasn't playing in our house and it was always the same one.
But baby monitors aren't reliable and there could be any number of explanations. So let's share our next story.
We asked two construction worker friends of ours to do some remodeling in our bedroom closet while we were away on vacation. These are tough, burly, hockey fan kind of guys. When we arrived home from vacation, excited to see the finished closet, we were shocked to see the work half done and tools lying abandoned on the floor, paint cans left open and drying, and general disarray. We'd had these guys do work for us before and knew that they were reliable about cleaning up after themselves.
A call to one of the workers resulted in an explanation of sorts. He said they had been making good progress on the closet when he casually mentioned to his co-worker that he wished I would pick up the baby because the crying was giving him a headache. His co-worker agreed before they both froze at the realization that I wasn't going to be picking up any baby since I and my babies were in another state. They stepped out into the bedroom and both were absolutely positive that the source of the crying was within the house and right up the stairs. They dropped their tools and pushed and shoved each other to be the first down the stairs and out of the house. Both refused to return until we were at home and could assure them that they weren't about to be slimed or have their faces eaten off by a zombie toddler.
I will say that when they did come back, the job was finished in no time. It's the fastest I've ever seen construction workers move.
Perhaps I should share this story with all future workers I hire. I could even rig a tape recorder to play a tape of a baby occasionally crying in case they are tempted to slack off a bit. I could program the lights to go on and off by themselves, have doors slowly creaking open . . .
Well, if it doesn't get my new wallpaper hung faster, it might at least discourage the in-laws from dropping by.
Of course, if there really were ghostly presences in my house, the time that my in-laws have already spent here probably convinced them to move to the light and cross over. Whatever unfinished business was keeping them here was probably forgotten as they came to the same conclusion I have--moving to the light is preferable than living in the hell of having my in-laws in the same house.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)