Lion and Magic Boy

Let’s just say I have past and leave it at that. Usually it involves Thanksgiving and band-aids and burnt appendages. But not tonight.

So.

Knife + salsa + green onions for salsa + me = experiencing life with part of my finger missing (I saved said part in case anyone is interested in it).  And a surprising amount of blood!  And typing with one finger instead of my customary two.  Amazing how that intensifies the tedium of typing and makes it even less appealing than usual.

Also apparently alcohol does not dull the pain as much as I hoped it might. Not that I would know.

was a complete skin resurfacing treatment. I must have wanted this, because otherwise why would I be having one now? It surely wouldn’t be the constant pain, weird itching in surprising places (hey! did you know you’re completely COVERED with skin? Everywhere?), and eruption of hundreds of thousands of bumpy blotchy rednesses all over me? If in a few days it wasn’t going to start peeling off completely in a slow and unsightly manner?

So am I milking the whole scarlet fever thing?

Um…nah.

Come here, let me breathe on you while I am still contagious so we can share this lovely experience together.

I’m living smack in the middle of the Middle Ages.  Everyone knows that scarlet fever went out of fashion hundreds of years ago.

Except I must have superpowers of bringing back dead diseases.  Things were too boring around here anyway.  Plague, anyone?

My tattooed torso is covered with sunburny redness. Also my neck and earlobes. Arms. Okay, my entire skin hurts and feels two sizes too small. All because Typhoid Eric is a veritable petri dish and likes to get close and breathe streptocacaprophylactic on everyone.

Let me tell you about scarlet fever.  The number one thing to know about it is that it’s highly contagious.  I could breathe near you right now and you would be swallowing shards of glass within 3 days and wondering why your skin hurts within 5.  Guaranteed.  Also.  You need drugs for this.  The kind that kills off those little warring feudal sonsabitches in your throat before they start invading other places like your kidneys.  Scarlet fever is related to strep throat, the thing that the pediatrician sticks a long long q-tip down your kid’s throat for (I seriously want a pack of those q-tips; they look useful).

[was trying to insert a joke having to do with Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter but I couldn't quite put it together, so pretend that I did and you got the joke and now you're laughing companionably, pleased with yourself because of your fondness for jokes made from obscure literary references]

Two comments:

1. Since losing custody of health insurance I have been to the doctor 34 times as frequently as when I actually had health insurance.

2. Ow. Hurty throat hurt. Can’t talk.

I used to get strep on two major holidays a year and while growing up could be counted on to make Easter and Thanksgiving extra special. It became no particular big deal to anyone after awhile (except me) and after doing that for a few years and especially after being confined to the couch for an entire mono-ridden month of my 4th grade year, having nothing to entertain me but Dick Van Dyke and Andy Griffith and a box of Red Vines (plus the whole colored fairy tale book series by Andrew Lang), I suddenly stopped being sick anymore.

So this thing of fever and throat issues and especially antibiotics is a little foreign to me. I wonder if they bled me enough? I was serious about the leeches; it’s hard to get really good quality leeches these days.

My eyelids itch now.

Oh, and I breathed all over my laptop so don’t get too close to your screen there. Sorry!

It’s been, let’s see, 8 minutes so far.

Nathaniel stayed home today. He coughs; it hurts. I would love snapping a photo of him in his pre-cough mode, bracing himself against an inevitable uncomfortable experience, face contorted, tongue out, body held in tense suspension, but he would likely object. I am pretty sure he has tuberculosis/bronchitis/a rampant imagination, one of those.

Nine minutes.

There. I have discovered the speakerphone button on this phone. That helps, since it’s awkward typing (using my 2-3 fingers) while also holding a phone pinned between my ear and shoulder.

Ten.

At least I have Rufus Wainwright to keep me company. Hold-music has improved. It could be worse.

Hey! They picked up! I almost told the nurse I was too busy blogging to talk to her, could she call back at a more convenient time? But no, never mind. I can talk (speakerphone) AND type. They will squeeze us in at 7:10 tonight. Yes! The wonderful U.S. healthcare system. Don’t get me started, but hey, at least we don’t have to wait 6 months like they tell us the Canadians have to do (yes, yes, I know that’s one of the many myths we Americans are subject to about Canadian healthcare, and oh, is this my first foray into anything remotely political on this blog? why yes it is. huh.), so I’d better count my blessings and be grateful.

Okay! On to more important things…

Someone (Eric, the self-appointed door-closer) closed Nathaniel’s bedroom door yesterday morning at some point. Early in the afternoon I heard faint muffled meowing and realized I hadn’t seen the cat in awhile. I could see black feet through the space between the bottom of the door and the floor. When I let him out, he was incredibly friendly and almost seemed…grateful. Gratitude is not a normal state for cats. Ego told me that not only was he grateful but that he missed us! Look at him! He’s purring and rubbing himself all over; he definitely loves me!

Yeah. Well. He’s also a cat. I should not forget that. Cats are in it for the cats, and that’s all. Everything else is an illusion. Remember this.

At 10 pm Nathaniel dragged himself to bed after finishing his homework (which had been pushed back in the schedule due to some important computer-game-playing and blog-reading), trying not to cough. Shortly he was back down. That’s when we found out the True Nature of Cat Behind Closed Door.

“Shadow pooped on my bed.”

At 10 pm, all I could do was suggest a different blanket, throw a sheet over everything, and wonder why Nathaniel never noticed it all afternoon/evening when he was resting, sick, on his bed and playing said computer games/reading. And I could make this helpful observation:

“At least it’s a dry poop.”

Eric is a climber. It’s kind of amazing, actually, considering that a year ago he was scooting around the house on his butt and could barely stand. And now he piles pillows up and jumps on them, face first and with gleeful abandon. Or grabs the big pile and rolls on the floor with them, ending up at the bottom of a heap of pillows.

And from time to time he misjudges things, falls off the couch maybe, or bumps his head on the floor or on a table leg. We say, “head bump!” and he shakes it off. No big deal. This is one tough little boy despite all his frailties.

Last night he was building a bridge of pillows across the gap between the couch and the coffee table, the same table where he often perches to consume a snack, and he made a construction error. The pillows fell and Eric became the bridge, suspended across the gap using his lower lip as a pivot point.

I immediately scooped him up and cradled him, calming him quickly. Nathaniel, who usually runs the other way when someone is hurt, grabbed the homeopathic remedy that works wonders for bumps and bruises. Meanwhile, Serena had begun screaming, looking at Eric with horror.

It was then I noticed the blood.

On Eric’s face, pooling in his mouth, all over his shirt front, the sleeves, his hands, on me. It hadn’t been there just a moment before. Huh. I’ve never seen so much blood come out of one child before.

He wasn’t crying at this point and seemed to be enjoying being covered with this red stuff. And we’re talking covered.

So, today, we have one small cut below his lower lip and zero mentions of it. One day he’ll learn to milk this stuff. It totally would have been good for special treatment, but no, we were back wrestling with pillows and large stuffed bears today.

This morning I slept in. While usually “sleeping in” means maybe until 8 am, a time that I used to regard as exceedingly early, painfully so, and usually is accompanied to nearly 2 hours of Eric’s climbing on my bed and then sliding off, chortling, removing the covers from me (chortling), and wrestling with a variety of stuffed animals larger than he is (chortling), today it meant eleven. O’clock. Eleven of the clock. And alll for me, all spent in sleep.

And! I just finished cleaning the sofa with a steam-producing machine and a white towel that is no longer white! Said machine used to be my cleaning method of choice to create eatable-offable hardwood floors, but I gave up custody of said machine when I moved to the Land of Carpeting, where it would have little use. But I borrowed said machine for the holiday to remove the various accumulated bodily fluids from said couch.

Which means it’s okay to come and visit me now. I will even show you where you may sit.

(However please don’t ask me if I also cleaned The Green Chair, which incidentally I did not, which needs it and because of that rarely is occupied by me, a person who knows better and remembers which bodily fluids have come in contact with it, whose fluids they were and when this occurred, and let’s just say that some things are better left unsaid, shall we?)

And! More writing! And let’s just pretend that’s an accomplishent, shall we?

And! Breathing! Likewise on the accomplishment thing.

And! Maybe cooking a couple things ahead for tomorrow’s dinner, which YOU SO CAN’T FOOL ME I know it will no longer be Thanksgiving, but for purposes of this house, child-free as they are this day, will be our Thanksgiving.

[No, not mine!]

Ahem. Now why is it I can’t even bring myself to say, “diarrhea” in a post title? I have no idea, because over at Strollerderby I do all kinds of things I would never do at home. Swearing! Improper grammar! Use of words like “Brangelina”!

[Side note: My most popular Strollerderby post to date, in terms of sheer numbers anyway, is this one <--caution: swearing!, which if you haven't seen it yet you really should, though don't expect a dissertaion on, well, anything; whereas this one, while it did pretty well in terms of numbers and certainly received accolades, didn't receive anywhere near the same kind of attention. I'm not sure what kind of conclusion, if any, to draw from that.]

Back to diarrhea! I know, you were hoping I had forgotten about it and moved on. Sadly, no.

I think you need some background, though, to examine this more closely. Not that you want to. But I got a call from Serena’s school yesterday while I was procrastinating about taking Eric for a walk. She had thrown up on the playground. And going back even further, all last school year she had throat-stomach issues seemingly constantly. So I am no stranger to a little whining about someone’s tummy hurting. I even began to suspect [shh! bad mommy!] that it was largely psychosomatic.

However, we have a fairly definitive answer now (the answer after you vote):

Read the rest of this entry »

And may it please the gods that this pass quickly.

Um, maybe not THAT quickly.

Gotta run, bye!

The other day I was doing some routine admin work here on the blog and noticed a category or two that didn’t contain very many posts.

Bodily Functions, I mused. Haven’t had a post in that category in while. Hmm.

Sunday the children came home from nearly a week with their dad. Naturally they are all taller now. Plus, apparently tennis is the new passion over there at the House of Ex, as Nathaniel couldn’t seem to talk of anything else. He was “pretty good”, he said, and was a “finesse player” who could put the ball pretty much “anywhere he wants,” although he “wasn’t playing as well” as he had in the beginning.

Nearly every hour there was a plea that we all go out and play tennis.

Of course, we have no rackets. And I haven’t played since about high school. For good reason: I’m pretty bad at it.

Still, far be it from me to deny the Wimbledon Champion of 2021, so obviously we had to go out and buy tennis rackets.

Which we did. Yesterday. There was Nathaniel, expertly testing rackets at various price points there in the aisle at the sporting goods store. The more he tested and swung there in the store, the better player I assumed he was.

We got back home mere seconds before Eric’s bus pulled up.

Not long after, everybody had eaten lunch and Nathaniel asked me to install his miniblinds. The blinds that have sat, still in the boxes they came in, in the computer room since about January. I mean April. Whatever. Those blinds.

So I struck a deal with Nathaniel: two blinds installed in exchange for him watching Eric. Makes sense, right?

I got my power tools ready and carted the blinds upstairs and got to work. It had been so long since I did the first-floor blinds that I sort of forgot how they were installed. No matter, I can just look at the ones I did downstairs and see how I did it. No problem. So I took a look and went back upstairs, my iPod draining brain cells out through my ears via the insidious white cord, and began drilling and screwing.

Um.

Too bad I installed it wrong, the things that you screw in that hold the blinds in place. Oops. I came downstairs to check to see what I did wrong. Oh. I see now. I’m heading back up when one of the children announces to no one in particular:

“Eric has poop.”

Inhale. Ah yes, so he does.

I approach Eric. There’s a sort of….brown clayish substance on his hands, both of them.

Except it’s…not clay. Not clay at all.

I whisk him to the sink to wash his hands (poop! I am touching poop! is the refrain I am trying to suppress in my head) while asking, um, yelling at, the children to get me wipes, a diaper, etc.

Nathaniel can’t help at all because he is dancing around holding his nose and gagging.

How anyone could miss the sight of Eric digging both hands into the back of his diaper is beyond me. Seriously, 11-year olds can take responsibility, can’t they? Grr.

I went up to finish the installation and decided it was the day to put the blinds up in my own room as well, but I knew better than to leave the three of them alone any longer so I coaxed them all upstairs into my room and closed the door so no one would escape and announced that Nathaniel would be installing the blinds.

And I taught him how to use a drill and electric screwdriver, mark his spots, put the blind together, the whole thing. He did it all while I read a book to Eric three times. Some things I learned about Nathaniel:

1. He is much more of a perfectionist than I am. I didn’t know that was possible. I kept explaining that blind installation wasn’t an exact science, but he wasn’t buying it. I’m sure the one he did is installed more securely than the ones I did, though.

2. He gets frustrated easily. One blind was enough; never mind that there were two windows.

After that, flush with our power-tool euphoria, we decided to put together the something-in-an-IKEA-box that’s also been in the computer room since about last November, maybe. Don’t know, it’s been so long, and no one could actually remember what the item is.

So we assembled our tools and opened the box to reveal…lots of little pieces of woodish stuff and metal. And a multi-page instruction book. The kind that causes my eyeballs to roll up inside my head.

But apparently Nathaniel has patience for this stuff and he took over. Eric helped a lot, too. Later I found important pieces upstairs, while meanwhile he had found the shoes I didn’t wear at BlogHer which I have thus far refused to put away as that would admit Final Defeat, which he brought down and placed neatly on the kitchen table.

So there’s Nathaniel, patiently going through the steps to assemble the IKEA thing, and I am helping and Serena is helping; plenty of screwdrivers for all!

I decided to clean up the boxes from the blinds and the box from the IKEA item and take them out to the trash.

It’s great they can assemble this themselves, I thought. They’re really growing up. I was proud.

It took a couple of minutes to smash the boxes enough so that they’d fit in the trash container.

When I got back in the house, two of the three children were crying. Screaming, really.

It took about 4.5 seconds to assess the situation and send someone to his room. After that I spent 5 minutes getting the details and threatening death if ever again “unkind hands” were used in response to frustration arising from unkind words. Then they switched places and I was able to speak of the evils of little-sister taunting and arrogance, as well as the even larger evil of retaliation.

Apparently they each got pretty much what they deserved, however.

Today was the day to try out the new tennis rackets. Nathaniel was immensely kind, patient, and helpful as he waited for me to write two posts over at Babble, but we finally made it over to the courts. I was a little nervous about playing since it’s been quite a long time, and Nathaniel sounded pretty good.

He’s not.

Neither is Serena.

But we hit balls to one another and chased an awful lot of them. After about 30 minutes Nathaniel was able to maintain a short volley, and I remembered how to serve. Serena was able to hit one over the net with fair consistency.

And we finally played a game and Nathaniel won.

So we’ll do it again.

But I still have some furniture to finish assembling.
[tags]Ikea, sibling rivalry, tennis, poop [/tags]

Although I didn’t write this post up at Strollerderby about carsick kids, reading it reminded me of something.

[Excuse me a sec.]

There. All better.

Now, where were we?

Oh yes. I was telling you about my brother’s wedding! That’s right, my brother got married in September 2000 when Nathaniel was four and a half and Serena was about nine months and Eric was still very far away indeed. We all flew to California for the momentous occasion, knowing that if my brother had waited 40 years to get married it was unlikely to occur more than once so I’d better be on hand.

The flight was unremarkable besides being Serena’s first one, and the trip was good, the weather nice, and the wedding, held in their back yard atop a mountain on the high side of Santa Cruz, was perfect.

We arose early to depart our hotel and drive to the airport to return home. I drove, of course. I always drove.

Naturally, this being California, our experience would not be complete without a few hours of rush-hour traffic, and the San Jose Airport area was jammed. It looked like we might be late for our flight. Damn.

I’m in the right lane, thinking about getting off somewhere, anywhere, to find another route to the airport, when all of a sudden Nathaniel yells, “Pull over!”

“What?” I ask. “We can’t pull over, we’re in traffic, there’s nowhere to stop. We’ll be there soon,” I soothed.

“PULL OVER!!!”

“I. Can’t. Pull. Over.” Lips tight over teeth. Who does that four-year old think he is, dictating to me? Telling me to pull over? (Where did he learn that phrase?) I’ll show him—-

~~~~~~~~~~bleeeaaaaagggghhhhhh~~~~~~~~~~

Nathaniel had thrown up all over himself, the rented car seat, and the rented minivan.

I pulled over.

[tags]throwing up, car sickness, children, barf[/tags]