Barnmaven

Limping down the aisle

So.

There's been a lot going on around here.  The stuff in my life and the stuff in my head have resisted my best attempts to write about them, and its frustrating.  Hopefully this post breaks the dam and I can wax eloquent more frequently about things that I often think really mean little to anyone but me - but you keep showing up to read, so what do I know?  I'm just an old broad.

Before SG hit the road in September we talked about our future together and the obvious answer was some planning towards wedding bells the following summer.  Then his start/end/start/end dates for the jobs he was going to do changed - more than once - and planning something became rather problematic.  Then he suggesting meeting in Vegas over the winter, which frankly when you're my age and haven't been qualified to wear a white wedding dress in quite some time seemed like a perfectly reasonable option.  Then the discussion of how to include loved ones came up, and then we started talking about a quick affair in between the September and November jobs.  That's where we were when he left, and I was keeping myself occupied in his absence by thinking of wedding plans, then calling him to see what he thought of this idea or that.

At some point in October, I honestly can't remember when, things got a little haywire.  Distance, weariness, job stress and myriad other things put downward pressure on us.  Someone might have gotten grumpy and uncommunicative.  Of course, that someone might not also have been feeling his best, working 12 hour days and living off restaurant and microwave food.  Seasonal depression, which is a guaranteed annual event, had its way with both of us.  Trying to plan became a chore, a point of contention, an added stress.  We wobbled.   Wedding plans were put on hold - not cancelled, but definitely not on the plate for this year -  we agreed to just table the discussion until he was home.  

We spent the rest of our daily conversations being loving and supportive and counting the days until we could be in the same zip code.

He got back last Tuesday.  We spent two days remembering the thousand things that are so amazing about being together - the ease of things, the chemistry, the deep discussions and the delight of companionship.  We cooked and ate and held hands and smelled each other's skin.  We touched and hugged and crawled under the covers, emerging for water and air now and again.  Thursday we took the lid off the marriage discussion.  We talked and talked about where we are and where we want to go and what we might want to do about that.  And then we drove down to the courthouse and got ourselves a marriage license. 

It will be a small, casual affair with a few family members and friends.  But even so, its amazing all the things that need to be done if you are doing more than eloping over the border to the Chapel of Love in Couer d'Alene.  Most of that is my mother at work, insisting there be flowers and hors d'ouvres and proper champagne glasses.  Hell, I just wanted to find a dress I liked.  I did, too -- and when the final choice fell between "bridal" and "hot" - trust me, I chose HOT.  When you're 45 years old and you find a dress that makes you look hot, you buy it. 

So I'm all set with a beautiful blue dress and a kickass pair of low black pumps.  But you know, me being me, things just can't go that smoothly.

With someone warming the other side of the bed, getting up to run has felt like less and less a priority the last week.  I managed to run on Wednesday and meant to do it on Friday and then on Sunday, but it just didn't happen.  So this morning, I doggedly set the alarm for black-as-night-thirty and dutifully put on my running shoes and vest and threw a leash on T-Bone when it blasted me out of a lovely dream.

We hadn't gone very far when I realized my selected route was much darker than I had anticipated.  I thought there were more street lights along that way, but clearly I have questionable accuracy when it comes to memory.  And about a half mile in as I was considering the need to turn around and find a more well-lit path, it happened.  I tripped over the concrete edge of a square manhole cover and fell, wrenching the holy living crap out of my left ankle in the process.  I managed to crawl up onto the curb and suppress my moans so as not to wake people in nearby houses.  T-Bone, bless his heart, sat as close to me as he could, then curled up on the ground, watching every car that passed with a concerned glare.  When I could talk without sobbing I called SG (always, always always take a phone with you when you run) and asked him to come get me.  Then I passed the time until he got there mentally beating myself up for being so damn stupid and possibly ruining my ability to even walk on our wedding day, much less finish my C25K training plans.

Fortunately its just a bad sprain.  My plan is to keep it elevated and iced until about 2:45PM on Wednesday so I can put a flesh-colored elastic brace on it under an opaque pair of panty hose and actually wear my new black pumps and walk on the damn thing.  I have every confidence that this plan will work and I will not hear a word to the contrary. 

We can have the sidebar discussion on just how much crutches suck later.  If I have to talk about it now I may just weep, and that's not in the cards today.  I refuse to be down about this.  It hurts and it looks like hell, but its a small radar blip in what is otherwise a joyous and bliss-filled week. 

So if you have positive thoughts, prayers or energy to send our way, we'll take all of them you can spare. 

Mommy doesn't do blood

Cuts, scrapes, stubbed toes - these I can handle.  I handle them well, in fact.  I am the Empress of Band-aids.  In my house, Band-Aids are the placebo for everything that goes wrong.  I mop up the blood, apply a little sticky-backed patch of Doctor Mommy Goodness and off they scamper, back outside to bust something else.  This blood is no problem.

All mommies are Superwoman.  And with few exceptions, all mommies have their kryptonite.

Mine?

Needles.

I am squirming in my seat just typing the damn word.  Needles give me heebie-jeebies of EPIC proportions.  But only medical needles.  Not tattoo needles.  Not sewing needles.  Just the kind of needles that the doctor or dentist uses to put UNDER YOUR SKIN or IN YOUR VEINS.  Omigod, I almost just passed out.

It started at a very tender age.  My childhood pediatrician hated me.  Poor Dr. Tucker, if I so much as thoughtI was going to get a shot or have my finger poked for blood, it took five people to hold me down.  By the time I was in my twenties, I had to caution every doctor I had to put me horizontal for bloodwork.  More than one doctor or phlebotomist insisted "Oh, no, its just a little draw, you'll be fine."  They found out the hard way that I was going horizontal, one way or the other.  Involuntarily works just as well, folks, except you risk injuring your patient.  I've fallen off more than one exam table.  Once I tried to donate blood, because my fireman father - who, incidentally has some kind of kooky award from the blood bank for donating something like 1,000 gallons in his lifetime - insisted that I was not a true American or a patriot or even a human being if I didn't donate blood.  So I donated once when the building I worked in was doing a blood drive.  I made it all the way through the procedure, then passed out in the elevator on the way back to my office, scaring the shit out of some poor man who was riding with me.  He thought I'd died.  (Dude, my fingers are going numb right now.  I can't even THINK about that day without my eyesight fading to black)

I thought pregnancy would cure me of my aversion.  Remarkably, for both of my pregnancies, I did OK with the blood draws and the IV's.  Anything for the baby, I supposed.  But the postpartum surgery I had after A was born quickly proved that my pregnancy-induced-tolerance was only a temporary phenomenon.  Remember how I posted a little bit ago about how its not really funny if the doctor gives you too many stitches in your perineal tear?  Yeah.  So I had to have surgery to correct that.  So I could, you know, GET LAID AGAIN SOMETIME IN MY LIFE.  And I went in, got all dressed for the prom in my open-backed butt-hanging-out hospital gown, reclined on the preop bed, and promptly passed out when they put in my IV.   Oh how I miss the days when anesthesia just meant they put a big mask on your face, you breathed in a few times, and you went down for a nice long nap.  No.  Now they want to stick needles in you.  JUST MY LUCK.

So the whole point of this post, the reason I'm telling you all about how big, tough, me is a total weenie when it comes to needles and blood, is that C had to have a blood test.  My secret, shameful parenting fail is that neither of my children has had basic bloodwork done.  EVER.  I can't do it.  I can't take them.  But C needed to have some blood tests done - long story short, it is likely that C has a double-gene mutation that, if he has it, would cause his body not only to not uptake Folic Acid but also not to process it into the end product that the body needs.  This condition also has some indications for people with anxiety disorders.  For those who take meds for their anxiety disorder, it can cause the meds to make them very nauseated, and mostly rendered them ineffective.   My poor little C has pretty bad anxiety disorder - likely genetic.  He's been having a very hard time lately.  Our pediatrician doesn't think he's going to survive kindergarten very well in his current state, and I concur.  So we want to try some low-level medication to see if he has good results.  Except if he has the gene mutation, medication won't really help.  So he needed a blood test to help find out if that's the case.

I just couldn't.  Could. Not. 

All the credit for getting that done goes to his dad.  And when he called me to let me know it had been done, I almost passed out in my chair as he described the event.  (I think he did it on purpose.  There has to be some way to get me back for the Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts that was our marriage). 

I won't be able to look at the band-aid on his arm without my knees going week and my stomach doing a little flip.  That's how bad I am.

My name is Mary and I'm a Weenie.

Roscoe Update, Wednesday

   I brought Roscoe home last night.  The day vet wanted me to have him at the emergency vet overnight for observation, but I took him over there to get the opinion of Dr. Pilgrum, the vet who had treated him in the morning.  Dr. P listened to his heart and lungs, read the discharge papers from the day vet, and agreed with me that he would probably be just as fine at home as he would in the hospital.  He thinks that many animals, just like humans, recuperate better at home than they do in hospitals.  Personally, whether its a vet or a human hospital, my opinion is that's where all the bad germs are, since that's where everyone goes when they're really really sick.  Our biggest concern is keeping him free of infection, so logically I'd think that he'd be safer in that regard being at home.  While the environment is *ahem* far from sterile, at least there's a lesser chance of some mutant strain of staph or ebola lurking in the corner. 

He looked HORRIBLE when I picked him up.  He was clearly in pain, and they had given him extra fluids, so he had this huge ball of fluid over his shoulders.  He was walking, which was encouraging, but walking across the parking lot from the day vet to the emergency clinic was about all he could handle, he crumpled down in on the floor panting as soon as we got into the exam room.  After conferring with Dr. Pilgrum and deciding on him going home as the best solution, we carried him to the car.  J was at the house with the kids and helped me carry him in.  He'd moved Roscoe's crate into my bedroom for me, so after a trip to the backyard for a potty break and a drink of water, he went in his crate and promptly went flat for a nap.

This morning he looks a ton better.  He's gone outside and gone potty and had more water, and I've given him his pain medication. His eyes look brighter and though I know it didn't cause him pain, that horrid lump on his shoulders from the fluids is down. You can tell he is hurting; Dr. Pilgrum said that from the placement of the wound in his side, he probably feels like someone who has had a broken or cracked rib.  He's certainly not his usual bouncy self, but he wags his tail like crazy whenever I look at or talk to him. The only thing that's really concerning to me is that he still doesn't have an appetite.  I offered him his antibiotics wrapped in cheese and he didn't even sniff at it...poor boy is definitely not himself.

Light candles, say prayers (if that's your thing) or whatever you can, that he makes it through the next couple of critical days. 

In other news, I braved the thorns last night and stuck one of the pallets from the hay room up behind the rose bushes to provide a temporary block in the fence.  I also went to see my neighbor Larry, who lives on the street where I think Roscoe was shot.  He was outraged that anyone would do that, since so many of us have dogs and its not uncommon for the neighborhood dogs to occasionally get loose.  He promised he would talk to some of the other neighbors - we have three law enforcement personnel in a two block radius and Larry's friends with them.  If anyone heard anything or talks about it chances are Larry will find out.  Not sure if we have any leverage to prosecute, since we are technically outside of city limits, annexed to the city.  I'll have to check the county's enforcement code to see what the penalties are for discharging a firearm and shooting an animal.  In the city those are both gross misdemeanors.

To everyone who asked about me setting up a pay pal link:  Thank you from the bottom of my grinchy heart for your kindness.  I will be OK.  If things get desperate I can always hit up my parents for assistance.  They're pretty good that way. 

Updated with pictures:

Here's a picture of the wound.  So small...so much trouble.  The goopy look is not infection, I just cleaned it and put some Bacitracin on it.

Little Man is happy to have his buddy home.

He's Five!

Today my baby, my gorgeous wee Little Man, is five years old.  He is insisting that no, he is still four, having had it explained to him that five year old boys are perfectly able to put on their own shoes.  I suppose he thinks that if he insists that he is still four, refusing to do so is perfectly acceptable.  Child logic is an oxymoron.

We had a small birthday party yesterday, just another couple and their two kids plus my mom and the kids' dad.  It was ok as birthday parties go, short and sweet with an emphasis on buttercream frosting and presents.  I don't believe in large parties for children so itwas, in my estimation, perfect.  The kids were reasonably well behaved, my daughter didn't boss her brother around excessively, no one got hurt and no one threw up.  Little Man didn't like having us sign "Happy Birthday" to him, oddly enough.  He's really averse to being the center of attention, a personality trait I simply am unable to identify with!  I know, go figure.

The joy of the day (yes, this is sarcasm) was enhanced immeasurably by what I can only guess is my karmic comeback for some incredibly shitty behavior throughout my life.  It started before the party when I was taking the garbage out to the big can.  I walked through my mudroom tying up the garbage bag, not even looking where I was going, and WHOMP!  Walked right into the open pantry cupboard door with my forehead and almost fell down.  Its a pretty sturdy door so it was a decently sturdy whack.  Ever since Natasha Richardson's untimely death from a seemingly innocuous head injury, I've been convinced that every time I bang my head on something (and I'm clumsy, this happens a lot) that I'm going to die.  Considering it was a child's birthday party on the agenda, I tried to tone down the fear of death and simply informed my mother in a suitably serious manner that should I experience blinding headaches, blurry vision or nausea to immediately call 911. I was at some point composing my own obituary in my head.  I should write that down.  Somehow I managed to avoid dying from my head injury long enough to sustain further injury later in the day. 

After the party guests had dispersed and I was attacking the inevitable post-party cleanup, the kids were watching TV when Child A decided that the ribbon from her brother's present was so pretty that it simply must belong to her.  Little Man didn't think this was so fair, and I agreed.  While we tried to discuss this she started to tantrum a little and refused to return the bow, so I shut the TV off to allow her some time in quiet to consider the consequences of her actions.  Apparently this was not a welcome action, and the resulting temper tantrum was monumental in its intensity.  She's been having a hard time since the separation, we've been making progress with her behavior, but its just a slow haul.  Without going into too many details, suffice it to say that at a certain point it was required to restrain her from harming self or others, during which point what *did* get harmed was my right shin.  Note to self:  At outset of tantrum, REMOVE CHILD'S SHOES.  Eventually Hurricane A ran out of steam and life resumed somewhat normally.

Normally, at least, until it was time to feed the dogs.  As a rule my dogs are mild and well-behaved, even when they're being silly big lugs.  We don't have any issues with food in terms of people - you can stick your hand in the bowl when my dogs are eating and they won't bother you.  My gentlemanly old boxer, however, is anything *but* mild if one of the other dogs or cats comes near his bowl when he is eating.  We typically avoid any sort of disagreements at mealtime by placing the bowls fairly far apart while they're eating.  However, as I they were slogging through their dinner, Birthday Boy came running into the kitchen to show me something and stepped on the edge of Hercules' bowl, scattering dog food everywhere.  Hercules chased down his wayward food at the same time the bullmastiff noticed flying dog food and thought "Hey!  More Food"  Hercules snapped at Lady, which wasn't a suprise.  Lady, however, decided for whatever reason not to be the beta in the dog food chain, which was an enormous and unhappy surprise, and suddenly I had 95 pounds of big dopey mastiff trying to kill 60 pounds of boxer.  Uh oh.  Now, what I know about separating fighting dogs is that you are supposed to grab the dog by the hind legs and pull them apart.  What my instincts made me do, however, was totally wrong and the best way to get hurt in a dog fight - I got between them.  KIDS:  DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.  It seemed like it was hours, but it was likely only a few seconds, but I did manage to separate them.  My right forearm is a mass of bruises as is one of my fingers, but I was extremely lucky to escape without punctures.  My boxer was not so lucky, he's got gashes above and below his eye, on his cheek, and the gum over his left canine has a big laceration.   Poor old boy.

We were all unsettled after that, and the rest of the day passed in somewhat of a blur.  I've never had to pull apart my dogs like that and it was not an experience I ever want to repeat.  The important take-away from all of this is twofold.  One, even the nicest and most well-behaved dogs can, for whatever reason, take umbrage and get violent with each other or with a human being.  There is NO SUCH THING as a bite-proof dog.  Two, there is only one right way to separate fighting dogs, and that is to pull them apart by their hind legs.  Never EVER insert yourself between the business end of two dogs who are fighting.  You *will* get hurt.

'Nuff said.

The Rheumatiz

That's what they called it when I was a kid, back when sabre-toothed tigers and mastadons roamed the earth.  The Rheumatiz.  Now its simply known as arthritis.  I prefer thinking of it as The Rheumatiz, since that sounds vaguely sinister and possibly even deadly, and plain old 'arthritis' sounds so, I don't know, commonplace.

I can't even remember when it started wrapping its creeping tendrils around my knee, hip and back.  One day I was young and whole and suddenly I was not, it was as simple as that.  Some days its no big deal, just a little creaky in the morning when I get out of bed and maybe need to support my back when I bend over to pull the bag out of the garbage pail under the sink.  Other days, it has me scrambling through the medicine cabinet to find something, ANYTHING to MAKE IT STOP. 

Last spring I got tossed off of a horse I was working on, nothing big but it did rock my noggin a little.  I went to the chiropractor the next day, since I had done a nice twisty number on my back as I fell.  He was concerned and ordered x-rays.  His old crappy x-ray machine (hey, fancy chiropractor?  You can afford better equipment!) showed a couple of lines on one of the lumbar vertebrae that he was afraid looked like hairline fractures, so he sent me to the hospital's x-ray group to get the digital pictures.  As it turns out, they were only scleroidal tissue, but the scans did show an amazing amount of that all over the lumbar region.  As if I needed a picture to tell me what my body's been saying for YEARS.  The Rheumatiz.

So today is a bad day, as it turns out, for the old arthritis.  Which has me feeling cranky and mean.  And wanting to scramble through the medicine cabinet.  But its too early for drugs, I don't want to fall asleep at seven freaking oh clock in the evening.  Then I'll have more in common with grandma than just the bad hips.  I'd just like say, though, if I seem a little bit crabby?  I am.  Painfully so.

Red is the color of my true love's hair...

..and purple and black are the colors of my poor little piggy.

Seriously, I broke my toe at the grocery store yesterday.  It was already the shopping trip from hell, husband got sick and couldn't go with me, the kids were whining and fighting and being generally impossible.  It happened in the dairy section, I stepped out from behind the cart to go get some yogurt.  I don't know how I hit it so hard, but I mashed my toes against the cart wheel.  Oy vey.   Reminder to self:  no more Birkenstocks at Safeway. 

At least I only broke my toe, unlike my poor Mojo kitty.  I think the dogs were playing too rough with him, and as it turns out, his poor leg is broken.  He spent Saturday at the vet's and now he is home with his rear leg all splinted up.  Amazing how fast they learn to navigate on three legs.  He was even using the litter box today.  I have a call in to the orthopedic surgeon to get an appointment for him.  I just have no idea how we're going to afford it.