Category Archives: life

September 6, 2007 · 12:04 am

Journey Into the Unknown

There are no books, no articles, no manuals, no sage advice from friends or family that can adequately prepare you. No matter how many millions of women have embarked upon this journey before you, no two adventures will ever be alike. It’s a non-stop head long dive into something different every day…

When my son was an infant, motherhood was about crying. His AND mine. His because he was hungry or tired or wanted to be held or put down or had a dirty diaper that needed to be changed or a sock that was too tight or a light that was too bright. Or maybe he just liked the sound. Mine because HE was crying and I worried I’d never figure out the reason and what if I couldn’t stop him and I was so very, very tired and what had I gotten myself into and why didn’t my friends tell me motherhood was so hard and a kind neighbor asked how I was doing, and why wouldn’t he breast feed properly and was he gaining enough weight, and what was that rash on him, and why couldn’t I sleep if I was so tired? Why did I sit instead, anxious and waiting for his next cry and oh by the way, I had post partum depression.

When my son was almost two he threw a mighty tantrum and threw himself to the ground hitting his face on a plastic toy. He cracked his forehead open and for one horrible moment motherhood was all about his disfigurement and the cut that had opened above his eye that looked like another eye oozing blood and OH! MY BABY WAS RUINED! And it happened in the middle of a snow storm and where was the ambulance? Would it ever arrive? It was about the ambulance coming and taking us to the hospital where it was about fear, and would they think this was my fault? It was about stitches and bandages and his smiles and flirtations with the nurses after he was all patched up and then it became about getting home safely through the storm that raged outside.

Last week it was all about starting Kindergarten and what time we would have to leave the house in the mornings to walk to school so we wouldn’t be late and what constituted an appropriate school night bedtime and what to pack for his lunch and what to pack for his afternoon snack and would he make new friends at school and would he measure up to the teacher’s expectations and would he have a lot of homework? It was about filling out paper work and joining the PTA and becoming room mother and reading all of the papers that came home in his backpack each night.

This week it’s about the crayon left in the backseat of my car which melted in the summer heat. It was a red and the color’s soaked in and now it looks like a horrific blood stain and how do I get it out? It’s about his obsession with Star Wars and Harry Potter and LEGOs and fountains. It’s about taking walks and hearing about his day at school, playing on the playground, learning sight words and counting down. It’s about starting soccer on Saturday and taking him to his very first practice and his first time wearing cleats and shin guards and it’s about worrying will he even like soccer, will he get hurt, will he make friends on the team, and will the coach be nice?

Next week will be different yet again. Motherhood cannot be predicted with any certainty beyond knowing it’s about love, it’s about worry, it’s about frustration, and it’s about love again. It’s an over-the-top adventure that cannot be understood until it’s experienced and it’s experienced only as it happens.

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This essay was written as part of the September MommaBlogga Group Writing Project.

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Filed under group writing project, kids, life, MamaBlogga, motherhood, parenting

September 4, 2007 · 12:03 am

Memories of My Grandmother

My Grandmother died yesterday. She was 98 years old. I don’t think many people live to see ninety-eight these days. The average life expectancy in the United States, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, is 77.9 years old. But my grandmother passed 77 right on by. I don’t think she gave it a second glance. I wished, up until a few weeks ago, when it became apparent that her health was deteriorating rather rapidly, that she’d make it to 100. We could send her picture in to Willard Scott, have him wish her a Happy Birthday on The Today Show. Some things just aren’t meant to be, I guess. It was finally her time.

My grandmother was from Pennsylvania, and she could speak Slovak. Still! Even though she had nobody who knew how to speak it back to her for probably the past 50 years. My dad, who doesn’t speak Slovak, learned a holiday song or two in that language when he was a child. Sometimes when the family would gather at Christmas he’d sing it to her, and she’d smile.

I spent a fair amount of time with my grandmother when I was a kid. These are my memories…

She liked to play Bingo. Actually, “like” is too weak a word for what she felt about bingo. She LOVED Bingo. That might be why she died. All those little letters and numbers floating around her bloodstream, one of them just got caught, lodged in a way it couldn’t get loose again…

Actually, the truth is that she had congestive heart failure. It outpaced her body’s ability and the doctor’s efforts to keep her healthy. About a week before she died she became very weak, then mostly unresponsive. She may have suffered a stroke. If she did, I’d like to think it was a tiny clot in the shape of a Bingo number that got her. B98, maybe.

My grandmother went to the Bingo hall as often as she could; not forgoing a night even when she had company in town. She’d invite the company to come along and play with her! I went with her often over years, from the time I was a little kid until I was a teen. At some point, the smoky hall began to bother me and I spent more time in the bathroom trying to breath than I did sitting there marking numbers on my card. But my grandmother could play about 25 bingo cards at once, and still point out the numbers you’d failed to mark on your card, and that the people sitting on her other side and across the table from her had failed to mark. Sometimes she’d win and give some of the money to me, or she’d take me shopping and buy me things with her winnings.

One time she bought me a doll that had a battery compartment in its butt, The doll crawled and rolled over. I think I still have that doll, shoved in a box somewhere. I wonder, if I find her and dig her out, and shove new batteries in her butt, if she’d work again. I might try that some day. I could get back at the dog after she’s peed on my floor again. She’d hate that. Toys that move, seemingly of their own accord, scare her. My grandmother liked animals though, and I think it would give her a laugh to see my dog barking like a fool at that doll.

Another time, my grandmother bought me a globe. I’m not saying she’s responsible, but I did grow up to be a geographer…

She used to cut my bangs, which I hated. She’d tape an IBM card to my forehead and use it as a guide to cut my bangs straight across. Only she’d tape it too high, and so I’d come home from my visits with her practically devoid of hair, my forehead visible like a billboard.

She was always, even until she died, busy crocheting or sewing or quilting. She especially liked to make afghans, usually of two colors and with a zigzag pattern. I still have one that she made me when I was 4 or 5 years old. It’s pink and white, just like the poncho she made me. My son has an afgan that she made for him when he was born. It’s pale blue and white. My son called her “Great Grandma” and has dubbed the afghan his “too nice blanket” because it’s too nice to mess up.

I wish I had asked my grandmother to teach me how to sew. It’s a skill that would come in handy. If I knew how to sew I could hem my son’s pants instead of rolling them up or letting him walk the bottoms off. All of my grandmother’s neighbors, and half the town, would bring her items of clothing to mend and alter. She’d replace buttons, hem pants, repair torn linings inside of jackets. Bring her a pattern and she’d even make you an outfit. She made my First Communion dress. And I remember one green jumpsuit in particular that she made me, and that I favored. I think I wore it everyday of my entire 4th grade year. I felt like a Girl Scout in it, or a jungle explorer. And there then there was the pair of matching mother-daughter vests and skirts that she made, crochet overlaying another material, and which my mother and I wore back in the 1970s.

My grandmother had an old coffee can full of buttons that I used to play with when I visited her. It’s probably more appropriate to say I lusted after that can of buttons. Hundreds upon hundreds of beautiful little buttons of plastic and wood! The colors! The shapes! They were like miniature treasures. I loved to dip my hand in that coffee can and let the buttons run through my fingers before pulling them out and inspecting them, one by one, searching for my favorites. I don’t know whatever happened to that coffee can and all those buttons, it’s been gone for years now, but I would have loved to have had it.

My grandmother’s attic floor was forever covered in bits of thread and scraps of material, small squares cut out for whatever quilt she was working on. Sometimes she’d forget a straight pin or two that she’d inadvertently left in a quilt. You’d cover yourself up only to get stuck by a pin hidden in a seam. It’s funny how I remember the scraps of material, but I don’t remember seeing her sewing the quilts. She probably put them away when she knew the grandchildren would be over, getting into everything. But I still have the quilt she made for me when I was a child. It too is pink and white on one side, but it has a fabulously ugly pattern of odd twisted shapes made up of pink and brown circles that I used to look at and see things in — animals, monsters, birds. I can pick out shapes from the back of the quilt like you might pick shapes out of the clouds in the sky. The quilt is warm and weighty, heavy enough to pin you to the mattress when you try and sleep under it. It’s old now, and some stitches have popped, and so I’ve stored it away for safekeeping. It’s one of those things that can’t be replaced.

My grandmother loved to listen to baseball games on the radio or watch them on TV. She always rooted for the Pirates and she always watched The Price is Right.

She kept a pot holder I’d woven for her when I was a kid on her refrigerator for years. I don’t think it was replaced until I was in my 20’s and another granddaughter, one of my younger cousins, had made her one. I admit I was a little bit jealous to see that mine had been replaced.

Her kitchen was filled with delicious snacks. In her cupboards she had cans of Pringles which we never had at home. She had the fun sugary cereals like Peanut Butter Captain Crunch and Applejacks, whereas at my house, we had only Kix and Cheerios. Dishtowel covered loaves of Kolache filled her countertop, and plates of it, sliced, appeared at breakfast. The kind with the apricot filling was, and still is, my favorite.

Once in a while my grandmother would come to visit us. She’d spend her days watching my brother and me, while my parents were at work. She’d do some mending and cooking for us, cleaning, and ironing. Once, she even saved me from what I envisioned was to be supreme wrath and certain punishment, if not death, for ruining my parents bathtub! I was in 5th grade, and one of my chores was cleaning the bathrooms. I hated that job to no end and so I’d often try to make it more entertaining by pretending that I was actually starring in a commercial for tub and tile cleaner. On that particular day, I remember I’d been pouring everything I found under the bathroom sink into the tub and pretending I was comparing the ability of the various substances to clean the tub. Only there must have been some type of chemical reaction that occurred, because the white porcelain of the tub turned a bright yellow of which my 5th grade elbow grease could not remove! My grandmother found me crying in despair and without asking for explanation, she took the scrubby sponge from my hand, got down on her hands and knees, and scoured that yellow stain away. I don’t think my parents ever knew about it.

My grandmother was fond of playing cards and taught me how to play her favorite games: Gin Rummy and War. I remember many, many, many late nights at her house, sitting at her kitchen table and playing War, willing my eyes not to close, my head not to smack the table as I fought off sleep at 1:00 a.m., trying to stay awake while wishing desperately for a game of war to end so I could crawl into bed.

Two weeks ago I took my son to visit my grandmother. She was in an assisted living facility and she was hooked up to oxygen to help her breath better. Something, most likely the oxygen, had energized her. She was out of her wheelchair. She was walking unassisted, her cane and walker shoved in a corner. There wasn’t a whole lot to do there in her room so we pulled out her deck of playing cards. She taught my son, her five year old great-grandson, how to play a card game called Piggy. We played several rounds of the game with her. When we tired of that we talked. But since her hearing was poor, even with her hearing aid, I wrote her notes so I wouldn’t have to shout at her. She read them and responded. I told her we had been to Disney World. When she remarked that she had never been there, my son decided that he would build Disney World in our back yard for her and she could come to our house to see it. Later, he insisted on telling her about a Starship he was building, how he would bring it back and show it to her one day. She couldn’t really hear what he was saying, so I wrote the words “He’s building a Starship, like a space ship…” on my pad of paper. I think I rolled my eyes a bit, to let her know “Hey, he’s a kid, it’s unlikely his Starship will even fly.” But she shared his enthusiasm. “Ah! A Starship!” she said and she nodded at him, vigorously. Like that was right up her alley. As if she’d won one playing Bingo before, sewed one from a pattern, or crocheted one perhaps. Her eyes twinkled and she smiled.

That’s the last time I saw my Grandmother. But I think, perhaps, it’s my best memory of her. A 98 year old woman teaching a five year old how to play cards, and smiling about his plans to construct Disney World and a Starship in his own backyard.

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Filed under death, grandmother, life, memories, tribute

September 3, 2007 · 10:15 am

This Thing Called Kindergarten

And here we are. The first week of Kindergarten has drawn to a close and the second week is about to start. Snags seems to be enjoying his new elementary school and his life as a Kindergarten student. It’s different than preschool in a number of ways, but one difference in particular has Snags especially impressed. Witness the conversation we had at breakfast this morning:

Snags: “Know what I’m surprised about in elementary school? That the toilet paper dispenser, if you’re running out of toilet paper, will just drop down a new roll that was up there, already unwrapped, that nobody’s used before!”

Me: “It wasn’t like that at preschool?”

Snags: “No.”

Me: “What did you do if you ran out of toilet paper at preschool?”

Snags: “Called the teacher. And you know what they gave you? Tissues!” (and here you should note that the word “Tissues!” is said with disdain).

In the evenings, my husband and I ask Snags about his day while we all eat dinner together. Over the past week, we’ve interrogated Snags enough to find out that the Kindergarteners practiced what to do for a fire drill. They had a fire drill. They drew pictures. They participated in a scavenger hunt. They played a copy cat game.

Snags offered to teach me a new song he had learned in music class, but he claimed to need “those little Hawaiian drums that are stuck together” to do so. “Bongos?” I inquired. But he didn’t know what they were called. Whatever they are, we don’t have any, so he retracted his offer. I’m a little sad that he refuses to sing me the song until I get a hold of the proper kind of drums. But in the back of my mind I wonder if this isn’t all just a ploy on his part to get me to buy him some drums.

In gym class they tossed beanbags in the air, “no higher than your nose or they’d blow the whistle at you.” And finally, Snags walked another child to the nurse’s office. “Why?” I asked. “What happened? Why did he need to go to the nurse?” I don’t know,” Snags said. “I think his lip was bleeding.” I’m still not clear if this incident was in any way related to the beanbag tossing.

Who do you sit with at lunch?” I asked one evening.

“My friends,” Snags replied.

“Yes,” I said. “But what are their names?”

“I don’t know.” He said with a shrug. “I have to ask them.”

And later:

“Who did you play with on the playground?” I asked. But Snags wasn’t telling. “James?” I prodded. “Did you play with James?” Finally, he said yes, he had played with James. “And guess who I saw?” He demanded. “Who?” I asked. “Megan? No? Okay, Andrew!” I guessed. But no. It wasn’t Andrew. I couldn’t think of any other neighborhood children he might have seen on the playground. But I didn’t have to keep guessing for long…

“I saw three bounty hunters, two people from the dark side, and a person with 100 light sabers!” Snags proclaimed.

And that’s when I choked on my mac-n-cheese.

This school… I don’t know. I thought it was a good place, but bounty hunters on the playground? Here? In suburbia?

Still, I was feeling pretty proud of Snags, so I thought it would be nice if, to celebrate the end of a successful first week of school, I made his favorite dinner of barbeque brisket and gave him a small gift.

I settled on buying him a Star Wars action figure. He was happy with the special dinner and even more delighted with his gift, but the delight soon turned into something else altogether. Because before I knew it, he was arguing with me. Snags wanted to use the action figure to build a Star Wars model. And not only that, he wanted the model to be permanent, the figure forever frozen in place with glue!

His model parts included a toy bug habitat that he had busted the insides out of, and his brand new Boba Fet action figure. Only Snags calls him Bobo Fat, like he’s some kind of overweight circus clown. But I wasn’t agreeable to letting Boba Fet, only 3 days old in our house now, get ruined by a five year old with a bottle of Elmer’s.

Eventually Snags dropped his insistence on the need for glue and decided that tape! Scotch tape! Could be used to secure “Bobo Fat” into his model like he wanted. I consented to the tape, since it’s a much less permanent method, and I handed over the dispenser. I watched for a while as Snags proceeded to cover up all of the vent holes on top of the bug habitat.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m killing him!” Snags said.

“What?!” I shrieked, horrified. “Don’t talk like that!” I said. “That’s not nice at all.”

“I have to kill him,” he replied calmly. “He tried to kill Luke! I have to cover up all the air holes so he can’t breathe and he’ll die.”

I looked at my husband. What should we do? I pleaded with my eyes. Who should we call? The police? A shrink? I don’t think this is right, I tried to say.

But my husband, nonplussed about it all, just shrugged.

So I gave in. “Fine!” I said. “But don’t use all the tape trying to kill something that’s not even alive in the first place,” I added. And then I left the room. I could hear Snags’ laughter in the background.

Later, Snags brought his Star Wars model to me. It was all sealed up with every possible crack covered. Entrapped in the model without air Bobo Fat doesn’t stand a chance. And since there’s no way to slip him any food, Bobo Fat might lose a bit of weight in there too. I’ll check after Snags get’s home from Kindergarten tomorrow.

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Filed under Boba Fet, humor, Kindergarten, life, Snags, Star Wars

August 28, 2007 · 12:17 am

Backseat Driver

My husband and I are both Geographers. By schooling and by hobby. We both have undergraduate and graduate degrees in Geography. We like maps, especially old maps, and we have framed maps hanging on many of the walls in our home. We have more than one globe, and issues of National Geographic abound. We have road atlases in our car, and folded up maps in the glove compartment. And the irony of this is that none of those things, of course, ever stop us from getting lost.

And our son seems to be following, to some degree, in our footsteps. Or in this case, our tire tracks…

You see, I was driving Snags to preschool one recent morning when he pulled one of our many road atlases out from the door compartment in the car where we store them. From his position in the backseat of the car he asked, “Mom, what does ‘S’ stand for?” I had to think about this for a moment. Then I realized that he must be looking at the north arrow in the atlas so I responded, “Um…South.” To which my backseat driver announced, “Okay. We’re going to go south out of the garage and down the driveway. Then we are going to turn west up the street.”

And now you must be wondering, if I just taught him ‘S’ stood for south, where did he learn about west? Well, from Curtis, Kimee, Karla, Shaun, and Jenn on Hi-5, of course! You don’t think professional geographers like my husband and I would teach this kind stuff to a child do you? Because we didn’t. We don’t have the time. North, south, east and west are on a whole other directional plane from “Go UP to your room!” or “Sit DOWN, you know better than to stand on the table!”

Anyway, think about this… Snags was holding that atlas flat on his lap. In that position, the north arrow on the page would point straight ahead and north would always be in front of us. If we back up, go in reverse to get out of the garage and down the driveway, we must be headed south. Because as he sees it, the north arrow is pointing forward, and south is pointing behind us.

And so naturally, if we turn left off of our street we will be heading west, and conversely, if we turn right, we’ll be headed east. And mostly this is correct. But kids don’t understand that you need to take into account your current position when you are reading a map, and THAT makes all the difference.

As I continued driving toward preschool my son announced, roughly every 7 seconds, that we were “…going north… still going north… still going north… still. going. north. Still going north, mom…”

I found myself driving a little faster, trying to get to the place where we had to turn. Because, I figured, at least then he could stop saying “still going north…”

I mean, I felt like I was stuck in that orange-banana knock knock joke. You know it right?

Knock. Knock.
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?
Knock. Knock.
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?
Knock. Knock.
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?

And just when you are about to take out your own eardrums with the stiff end of a banana peel after saying “Banana who?” for the 432nd time, the joke changes and they say “Orange” and you say, “Orange who?” and the joke teller says: “Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?” Yes, I know… Ha. Ha. Very funny. Not.

Finally, we had a turn approaching and the voice from the back seat declared “We’re going to turn east.” I thought then I would just test my theory about my son’s directional competency and so I asked him, “How do you know that?” and he replied, pointing out the window, “Because my school is over there; see EAST!”

“Okay,” I said. “Is that right or left?” I asked him.

“Right!” he said. And he was correct, he was pointing to the right.

Except… right wasn’t east. On that point he was wrong. And backing down our driveway isn’t south. But he’s only 5. I think this method of learning about direction is just fine for right now. My husband tends to disagree and thinks I should correct Snags, tell him the actual direction we are traveling. But understanding that takes more skill than I think a five year old possesses. It requires the ability to read a map for one. It requires the ability to READ as another.

Besides, even possessing those very important skills of literacy and map reading, my husband still manages to get us lost when he’s driving somewhere.

So for now anyway, I’m content to keep on heading north. You know, as long as I can turn once in a while.

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Filed under direction, driving, geography, humor, life, maps

August 26, 2007 · 12:39 am

Little Slice of Hell

So here’s a little slice of hell. Our air conditioner is broken down and it’s 98’ out with a heat index of 105’. Minus the visible flames licking at my heels, I’m sure this is the full on heat of hell and I vow here on out to live a better life if only to avoid having to spend eternity in that great inferno. I mean, I’ve only been dripping sweat miserable in this for about a day, but I already can’t stand it.

My husband discovered the problem with our air conditioner late yesterday afternoon. I guess he thought the house felt too warm and he went outside to check the unit. He came back in saying the little red light was on indicating that the power company had assumed control of the unit, cycling it off to conserve energy in a period of peak demand. But that didn’t sound right to me. Peak demand? Up until about 3:00 yesterday afternoon we’d had rain and clouds for an entire week. Temperatures most days hadn’t made their way out of the 60s. So how there could be such a huge demand causing the electric company to turn off our air conditioner was beyond me. I could understand if temperatures had been high for days on end, but not when they’d only been elevated for some three hours.

I urged my husband to call the power company. He did and came back to report that they had not, in fact, turned anyone’s AC unit off, not even ours. And they were not experiencing a peak demand.

So it was our problem. The utility company wouldn’t be turning our AC back on because they weren’t the ones who had turned it off. Next, my husband shut the whole unit off and then back on from the thermostat inside the house. Maybe it would work then, like how you sometimes have to shut the #%$&%@! computer off and turn it back on again to get it to work right.

But that didn’t help at all. My husband came back in and shut the AC down for the evening. He said that when he’d restarted it, the unit outside was making a horrible grinding noise and it was blowing hot air from its sides. Worried it would get hotter and hotter and hotter until it would self combust, we had to leave it off. He called the service company who said they would come out and take a look sometime after noon today. When it’s supposed to be even hotter outside. The thought alone was enough to get me all hot and bothered. But not in an Ellen Barkin – Dennis Quaid Big Easy kind of way. More like a red faced and sweaty after a 13 mile run, and pissed off that the air conditioner isn’t working bothered kind of way. Not sexy at all, that.

As the sun set, we opened windows around the house. A hot breeze, we thought, might be better than no breeze at all. No? I’d say it was a draw except for the animal outside that was croaking-chirping in the backyard. Was it a frog? Was it a bird? It wasn’t Superman, that’s for sure. Whatever it was, it croak-chirped outside the bedroom window all night long while the ceiling fan swirled hot and humid air around the room. I imagined this must be what it feels like to sleep in a rain forest. The carpeting in our hallway felt damp.

The service guy showed up at 4:00 in the afternoon today and determined that our air conditioner’s fan had burnt up. As luck would have it, he doesn’t carry fans on his truck. He also declined to rig up our table top fan to work the AC for us. I thought that would be a good stop-gap measure but apparently service guy is just a mean and lazy bastard. He insisted that he has to order the part and it should be in Monday, maybe Tuesday. Which means they can install it on Tuesday, maybe Wednesday.

Now we’ve got the shades drawn, the lights off, and fans circulating wherever we can. We’ve spent the better part of the day in the basement where it’s at least 5 degrees cooler than anywhere else in the house. But I’m not sure how much longer we can stay here. The chocolate in my cupboards is melting, which means it’s officially time to do something. First, I think I’ll eat the chocolate. Then, I think I’ll take a look at the list I made last night. The list of places I know of that do have air conditioning: the mall, the bookstore, the frozen food section of the grocery store, the video arcade, the movie theater, friends and relative’s houses, the interior of my car until it runs out of gas… We might pack up and go to one of them. Any place cooler than this house will be a little slice of Heaven.

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Filed under air conditioner, heat, hell, hot, humor, life

August 25, 2007 · 1:30 am

The Most Magical Place on Earth

“Really? A whole week at Disney World? Are you sure? I mean, what will we DO there for a whole entire week?” I asked.

But my husband was sure this was a good idea. Our first official family vacation, just the three of us, where we would go someplace where we weren’t simply visiting family, should be to Disney World in Florida. After all, Snags was five, a good age for this kind of thing.

I conceded, but I still wasn’t sure I actually agreed. It’s not that I didn’t want to go to Disney World, it’s just that well, when I was a kid, Disney World meant the Magic Kingdom and we could do that in a day. And we did. Nearly every summer from the time I was born until I was in my early teens, my family piled in the car and we drove to Florida for our summer vacation. We had family there, a grandmother and aunts and uncles and cousins. And some of them lived in Orlando. And some of them worked at Disney World. One of my cousins was Pinocchio! Well, she wore the Pinocchio costume. She wasn’t made out of wood or anything.

So every year, we went to Florida to visit the relatives and we’d take one day and go to Disney. To the Magic Kingdom. Because at that point in time, there wasn’t anything else. There was Sea World, but that’s not Disney. Epcot, MGM, and the Animal Kingdom, they didn’t exist yet. So I was used to seeing Disney in a single fun filled day, but I had trouble comprehending how we could spend an entire week there.

Still we purchased the tickets. Way ahead of time — we had almost an entire year to plan our trip. Getting there would be the easy part. We’d take the Auto Train! Because who doesn’t like trains? Yes, it was more expensive than flying, but it would be an adventure, right? I’ve flown before, too many times to count. It’s boring. All that waiting around in the airport, and then the delays and flight cancellations, and getting frisked at the security checks. Been there, done that. What I hadn’t ever done before was take a long train ride. I’d ridden the subway before, but I had a feeling that just wasn’t the same. So we’d board the Auto Train in the afternoon, sleep peacefully in our little compartment over night and when we awoke the next morning, we’d be in Florida. And we’d have our own car with us!

Our car was key. My son has food allergies so we don’t travel lightly. We carry boxes of food with us, and because my son is also five, we carry the requisite entertainment items: portable DVD player and movies, books, markers, drawing pads, toys, favorite pillow and blanket, etc… In other words, enough baggage to weigh down a plane so its underbelly can’t raise more than an inch off the ground. Something I imagine other airline passengers wouldn’t like very much – driving a plane along the highway to Florida…

In planning our trip we also purchased the dining plan. It allowed for more than enough food for each person each day, but I needed to arrange our meals. My friend, a travel agent who specializes in all things Disney, suggested I make all of our dining reservations six months in advance, because you can. Only, I couldn’t. With my son’s food allergies we don’t eat out. The thought of letting someone else prepare my son’s meals, of putting my son’s life in the hands of a stranger, it paralyzed me. I kept promising my husband that I’d do something about the dinner reservations, and then I kept putting it off, even though I had only ever heard great and wonderful things about how Disney handles food allergies. In a word, I was terrified.

With about six weeks to go I finally got up my nerve, called Disney’s dining number, and got us all set with reservations. We were officially on their records as a family with allergies. At each restaurant the chef would come to our table and meet with us, tell us what they could safely prepare. I was encouraged, but still, I packed some food to take with us. I had to bring allergen free food for my son to eat on the train, and then I needed to pack extra food in case I chickened out at dinner. I packed enough food to get by for at least a few days. We could always go to a grocery store if we ran out. We had our car with us, after all.

The Auto Train WAS an adventure. As we lined up on the platform to board the train, an old woman positioned herself in front of the train’s door, determined that she would be the first to board. At first glance, other than the fact that she seemed to be in an awful hurry, she looked harmless enough. But it wasn’t long before she revealed herself to be the crabbiest witch in the land. Any time my son whispered or even blinked, as we stood out there on the platform she’d turn toward him and say “Shhhhh!” very fast and very loud, like an angry hissing snake about to attack. My husband and I looked at each other in surprise and disbelief, and then in dread as we boarded the train and found that her sleeping compartment was next door to ours!

Old Crabby rang the porter every ten minutes the entire way to Florida. I am not exaggerating when I say she did this all night long. I know this because I heard her, and I heard her because it is hard to sleep on the Auto Train. Around midnight, Old Crabby rang the porter and kept pushing the call button even as he appeared in front of her. She didn’t stop, even as he stood there and said, “Ma’am! Please stop ringing the button, I am right here!”

Ring…ring…ring…

I listened to all of this though closed eyes as I pondered how I had thought the ride would be smooth, not unlike a ride on the subway. I envisioned a peaceful night’s sleep where we would wake in the morning fully refreshed and not even an hour from our destination. Travel while you sleep, leave your worries behind… But oh, how wrong I was!

It turns out that the Auto Train rides on freight rails because well, all the autos it’s carrying are freight. Therefore, the ride is not exactly as smooth and light as I’d imagined it would be. It’s rickety, crickety, loud, and screechy and the train shakes, at times, rather violently from side to side. Neither the wine I drank at dinner nor the Benadryl I downed in desperation in the middle of the night helped to lure me into sleep. At one point, the ride was so violent I was certain we’d left the tracks and were hurtling through the woods to our death. You can imagine my surprise then, when I opened my eyes a few hours later to find it was morning and that we had survived the great train derailment that never was. We’d made it to Florida!

And Disney! Well that is a magical place! They don’t lie about that. But my son had never actually shown an interest in anything Disney prior to our trip. Not even once. We borrowed and read travel books about Disney from the library, we watched a DVD on loan from a friend. My husband and I started to get more and more excited. But Snags, he didn’t seem to care one way or another. And as we walked about the Magic Kingdom that first day he looked around a bit and smiled as he rode a few rides, but he didn’t seem terribly impressed. He complained about having to wait in line!

That’s when I started to get irritated. Where was his excitement? We’d come all this way for complaining? We’d spent thousands of dollars and endured Old Crabby and the shaky train for this? And we had to stay an entire week? What had we gotten ourselves into? I wondered.

Later though, near the end of that first day, as we were heading to dinner, my son turned and saw all the Disney characters on stage at Cinderella’s castle. And that’s when the magic hit him. He screamed at the top of his five year old lungs, “MICKEY! MICKEEEEY! I HAVEN’T SEEN YOU ALL DAY!” Had he been looking for Mickey? How odd. He’d never mentioned it. Yet if excitement was a firecracker, my son’s head was exploding right there. Maybe, I thought, this would all turn out okay after all. Then again, we still needed to eat dinner… Dinner that someone else had prepared. For my son with life threatening food allergies.

I held my breath through dinner and tried to hold back tears as I watched my son eat his first restaurant meal ever. Was his meal actually free of milk, eggs, peanuts, and tree nuts? The chef assured us that it was. But if he was wrong, we’d likely spend the rest of our vacation in the hospital. I insisted that my husband try the Tofutti sundae the chef brought my son for dessert. “Taste his dessert!” I hissed. “Make sure it’s safe for him to eat!” Tofutti, a soy based “ice cream” looks exactly like vanilla ice cream and it tastes so much like it that I have trouble telling the difference. My husband though, he can tell the difference if he tastes it. So he did. And it was fine and my son was thrilled. Not only did he get to eat prime rib for dinner, he got a giant sundae too! And because it was a character meal, he got his picture taken with the characters and he got autographs from Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, Piglet and Eeyore, and best of all, from Mickey Mouse himself!

As our second morning in Disney World dawned my son turned to me and said “Mom, I thought this was going to be a BORING vacation, but I’m having fun!”

And the week I had been so worried about? It flew by but it was MAGICAL!

*************************************************************

This post was written for the Family Vacation Group Writing Project over at Babylune.

12 Comments

Filed under Disney, food allergies, GWp, life, Mickey Mouse, vacation

August 17, 2007 · 10:37 am

Hell on Wheels

If you can believe Wikipedia, the term “Hell on Wheels” was “…used to describe the itinerant collection of flimsily assembled gambling houses, dance halls, saloons, and brothels that sprung up as Union Pacific railroad workers… constructed the American transcontinental railroad back in the 1860s.” I am not sure I believe this. I think the term was coined by a mother like me who got roped into chaperoning a preschool class on a trip to a roller skating rink.

And take my advice, if you too get roped into something like this, by all means bring your video camera. I wish I had remembered to bring mine.

I could have, and probably should have, driven my son to the roller rink myself, in my own car and with relative peace and quiet, but it turned out that one of the preschool vans (we needed three vans to transport all of the children) had an extra seat available and my son wanted us to “ride with his friends.” The extra seat turned out to be the one spot where only an adult could sit because the teachers couldn’t put a booster seat there as the seatbelt in that spot was broken. And that wouldn’t be safe for a child, but the teachers thought it was perfectly fine for a grown up like me. Although my son was certain we should ride in the van he wasn’t entirely convinced of the safety of me being without a seatbelt and insisted on holding my hand the entire way there. If we crashed, he was going to hold me in place. I imagine his reasoning was not unlike that of my mother’s long ago and how she used to throw her arm out across my chest when she was driving and had to slam on the brakes. When I was a kid, mothers’ arms were the precursor to today’s air bags and my mom’s right arm kept me, (yes I was sitting in the front seat, but hey, we didn’t know any better back then) from hitting the windshield when she had to brake suddenly. Or at least it did most of the time. And so I found myself relying upon my son to keep me secure and in place if the van crashed and rolled. But luckily, it didn’t.

Have you ever ridden in a van with 13 five year olds? Thirteen 5 year olds who won’t shut up? (“Awwww,” I can hear my son saying. “You said shut up. That’s a bad word…”)

Preschool has a system for this. The kids in the van are allowed to talk for five minutes to get the talking “out of their system,” then the teacher (in this case, Ms. K!) who is driving the van, turns on the radio. When the music plays, the kids are supposed to “make a bubble” which is code for “shut your mouth.” Only on this particular day, the kids weren’t exactly following this rule, and the teacher wasn’t exactly enforcing it. And I didn’t have any Tylenol or earplugs with me.

If you haven’t ~~enjoyed~~ suffered the privilege of riding in a van with 13 children at once, I will tell you it was like traveling back in time to witness a dozen times over the bickering of my brother and I in our youth as we ~~sat~~ fought in the back seat of the car for 17 hours straight on our summer vacations to Florida.

Conversations in the van swirled in the air like smoky complaints and accusations (because they were) and they sounded like this:

“Ms. K! Derek touched me!”
“I did not!”
“Yes you did!”
“Ms. K! Victoria is looking out the back window! She’s not looking forward!”
“Stop!”
“No, you stop!”
“Hey Snags’ Mom! Josh stuck his tongue out at me!”
“I said stop it!”
“Ms. K! Jenny is looking at me!”
“Snags’ Mom! Paul put his shoe on me!”
“Ouch!”
“Ms. K! Victoria poked me!”
“Did not! Did so!”
“Ow! Stop!”
“Stop touching me!”

But unlike my parents all those years ago, Ms. K! did not threaten to turn the van around and go back home. She just kept sighing and driving while I sat hostage in the broken seat belt spot half hoping the van would roll so I could be thrown out a window to somewhere quiet.

Eventually, even the children got tired of their bickering and they decided to play a rousing game called “Yellow Car” of which the sole object was to scream “YELLOW CAR!” any time they spotted a yellow car. And here I’d just like to say “Thank you, Jesus!” and “Praise the Lord!” to all of the car makers who rightly decided yellow wasn’t that great a color for cars and for only making a few of them at best. But woe to you Ford with your Mustangs… This could be worse, I kept telling myself. We could be playing “blue car” or “red car” or simply “CAR!”

Somewhere in the middle of Yellow Car the children got bored and decided the road was hilly enough to remind them of roller coasters and all at once (as a collective!) they all threw their hands into the air and yelled “Hands Up!” before leaning rapidly and swaying violently from side to side, as if attempting to tip the van. Then, as the road began a descent they’d scream, “Hands Down!” and put their hands down. Only this, in my mind, was reverse of what you might actually do on a roller coaster. I thought anyone who’d actually been on a roller coaster would keep their hands up on the descent, because that’s where the thrill is. But I didn’t argue the point because I was starting to feel a bit sick from the small space and the yelling and the hands flying everywhere.

After what seemed like years off my life, but was probably only 30 minutes or so, we arrived at the skating rink.

As we entered the building each child was handed a little blue ticket, the kind of ticket you might be given at a carnival and that you’d turn over to the ride attendant as you got on the tilt-a-whirl, perhaps. Immediately, the teacher took the tickets from the children and traded them (the tickets, not the children, but imagine how different this story would be if that were the case…) in for pairs of roller skates at the rental desk. I stayed with the children and helped them put on their skates and tie their laces.

Tying laces… whoever planned this field trip must have forgotten that five year olds today don’t know how to tie laces because they don’t wear shoes that have laces. Their shoes have Velcro. But roller skates don’t have Velcro. They have laces. And I had to tie them. All um… let’s see… 3 vans with 13 kids each… that’s yes, 39 pairs of skates or 78 individual roller skates (one for each foot) to tie… Make that 76. Sydney brought her own skates. She could work them herself, because they didn’t have laces. They had buckles.

I went down the row and tied the laces. And then the children stood up.

And then they fell down.

And then they stood up again and somehow maneuvered their way onto the rink. Where they fell down…. again. SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!

It was surreal. If I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn there was a sniper hiding behind one of the trashcans in the snack bar. A sniper with rubber bullets, taking out each child, one by one as soon as they stepped off the carpeting and onto the smooth polished floor of the rink. Because they ALL WENT DOWN. Each and every one of them. Except Sydney. Her skates, the ones with the buckles, also had wheels that could be locked in one direction. She could only march forward, but that was good because she didn’t fall. It was like watching cartoon characters slip on a banana peel, over and over and over and over again. And again.

At one point I surveyed the rink and saw a sea of splayed bodies down for the count. A few lone survivors, mostly teachers, myself, and Sydney, were left skating around the fallen.

Whose idea was this? I wondered. And why isn’t anybody filming this? I should have brought my video camera. At the very least, this scene, this giant accident of roller skating crashes needed to be investigated by Eye Team on our News at Eleven. They needed to uncover the truth behind the trip. Who was responsible? Shouldn’t someone have inquired if the children knew how to skate before turning them loose on a slippery floor without proper medical supervision?

But we were lucky. There were a few scrapes, a few bruises, a few kisses and band aids needed, but nothing broken. It could have been worse. I could have been on this trip with the senior citizens from the retirement home down the street. There would have been broken hips with that crowd for sure.

But the preschoolers, they were pretty game. They fell down or got knocked down or skated down and they got back up again and again. It was like hanging out with Chumbawamba, except the only thing around to drink was bottled water.

And then there was my son. He, along with one or two other children, found it much easier to simply crawl around the rink on their hands and knees. My son chased after Sydney this way. It was pathetic. It was like watching a legless stalker drag himself thru the weeds after a pretty woman walking a dog. “Get up!” I told him whenever I skated past. But he would have none of it.

After a time, Sydney took pity on him. She offered to teach him how to skate. And somehow she’d managed to retain her blue ticket, probably because she brought her own skates. She told my son if he did as she instructed and learned to skate, she’d give him the blue ticket. She convinced him the ticket had value. It was, she told him, a ticket that would enable him to play the video games in the rink’s arcade. And ALL the children wanted to play the video games. Only none of them had quarters. Many of them took to moping and frowning. They couldn’t skate well, and now they couldn’t play video games either. But for Snags, there was the promise of Sydney and that blue ticket…

So my son bravely stood up and readied himself for Sydney’s skating lessons. From what I could tell, the lessons required that Snags follow Sydney around the carpeted area that surrounded the rink floor and then across the slick divide of linoleum by the snack bar before the carpeting began again.

“Help me, mom!” Snags cried. “Sydney said I have to do this FIVE times before she’ll give me the ticket. I’m tired!”

“So stop,” I said.

“Can’t. Must. Have. That. Ticket!” he spluttered, somewhat out of breath as he desperately tried to keep up with his instructor.

I tried to convince him that he didn’t need the ticket, that it was not the key to the video games, and that he needed quarters for those, but he wouldn’t listen.

After their third time around like this, Sydney marched up to me and announced, pointedly, “He’s a Level One!” and then, over her shoulder to Snags she demanded, “Come ON!”

Another child on the field trip thought it important to come and tell me whenever a song had a dirty word in it. Hollaback Girl he told me, had a “bad word with the letter H in it.” He claimed to know all of the bad words in each song that played through the rink’s sound system, but he said he wasn’t going to tell me what they were. I guess he didn’t want to get in trouble. “Sometimes they beep the word out,” he explained. “And sometimes,” he continued “my dad sings the bad words in the car when they play the songs on the radio. That’s how I know what all the bad words are.”

We spent four hours at the rink during which time I too learned all the songs that had bad words in them. Those words came in handy later because I needed something to mutter under my breath when nearly all 39 children decided they needed to use the bathroom. Have you ever helped a child who cannot skate, no let me clarify that, who cannot even stand on skates, make their way to the bathroom while they (and you) are wearing skates? It’s not an easy task, and it’s not a pretty sight. Especially the puddle of pee that covered the floor inside one stall of the ladies room. I’m not sure how it got there. But boys were using the ladies room too, so that might explain it. I imagine more than a few of them rolled backwards while urinating. I don’t really know. I also don’t know why we didn’t think to have them remove their skates before using the bathroom. Probably we didn’t want their socks to get wet with pee.

What I do know is once the kids made their way out of the stalls I had to hold their hands and help them skate to the sinks and OMG! YUCK! YUCK! YUCK! I was touching hands of children who had just used the bathroom and most likely had peed upon themselves. And it turned out there wasn’t any soap. And only one sink worked, and on that, only the HOT water worked. So the children cried about the hot water. And then there weren’t any paper towels. So I had dirty hot little wet pee germy hands on roller skates gripping my highly superior germ phobic hands as I helped navigate them out of the bathroom and back onto the carpeted floor so they could go back out onto the rink and fall down again.

In the end, Snags got that blue ticket. He managed to complete his “skating lessons” per Sydney’s approval and she did as she had promised: she gave him the coveted ticket. It was wrinkled and wet and she handed it over along with a broken rubber band that I fear she might have found on the floor of the bathroom. I shuddered to think that’s why the ticket was wet. I have to say though, Snags was very proud of himself as he climbed into the van for the ride back to preschool. And my hands were itching furiously with some kind of skating rink dirty bathroom germs. But the return trip was quiet. All 13 children fell blessedly asleep. Until the van pulled into the preschool’s parking lot…

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Filed under germ phobia, humor, life, preschooler's, roller skating

August 8, 2007 · 12:55 am

Please Check Your Calendars

Please check your calendar. Somebody, no… EVERYBODY, please check your calendars.

Can you confirm to me that today’s date is, in fact, August 8, 2007?

And that means it is still summer, right? At least, technically?

I mean, I seem to recall that the official start of summer falls somewhere around June 21st on what’s known as the summer solstice. And then fall doesn’t officially start until September 23rd or so, the date of the autumnal equinox. And all the days in between… summer. Summer, summer, summer. At least, that’s the way it is here in the Northern Hemisphere.

More so than the dates on the calendar, I have this other evidence to present in the hopes of proving it is still summer…

It’s 100 degrees outside. It feels, when you walk out the door, like that Jaws ride at Universal Studios in Florida where you’re in the boat and there’s a big fiery explosion and the searing heat is more than a touch alarming and you check to see if your skin might be blistering before your eyes. In the end, it’s really not, it’s just hot. HOT LIKE FIRE.

Also, there’s baseball. As far as I know, the major leagues are still in action. Then again, baseball season is so damn long that it might not be an actual indicator of anything anymore. Still, I’m claiming it. Baseball equals summer.

School hasn’t started yet either. It’s still, for better or worse, summer vacation. At least for a few more weeks. And I know this counts because there’s that song with the lyrics, “School’s out for the summer!” I think Alice Cooper sang it. And I think, if it’s in a song, then it must be true.

So to recap the evidence:

a. the calendar says it’s August and August equals summer
b. It’s hot out, and HOT LIKE FIRE usually only happens in the summer (well, unless there’s an actual fire)
c. Baseball equals summer
d. Alice Cooper said so

So, if all evidence points to the fact that it’s still summer, then WHY, pray tell, is my local grocery store already pushing HALLOWEEN CANDY?

Why did I get this fall catalog in the mail today?

And most worrisome of all, why today when I bought some LEGOs for my son from Target, did the cashier put them in this large CHRISTMAS bag?

O Holy Night!

Give me some time to buy school supplies first, won’t you?

I don’t know. Maybe the cashier thought I was buying the LEGOs as a Christmas gift since I was shopping alone and when she asked, I told her that I didn’t need a gift slip for them. That must mean I’m keeping them, right? But I’m a grown woman, and grown women don’t usually play with Star Wars LEGO sets, ergo, Christmas gift!

When she handed over my bags, all of my other purchases, like disposable razors and shampoo and Burt’s Beeswax (incredible deal on a 3-pack!) and gauze for wrapping up my husband’s mangled foot, were in regular Target bags. You know, the white ones with the red Target symbol on them? She handed over the LEGOs and said “And here is your toy.” And she kind of winked and nodded at the bag which was not see through. So I think she was suggesting that the LEGOs should be a Christmas gift and that I shouldn’t hand them over to Snags to play with the moment I walk through my front door. Perhaps she thinks that giving children toys for no reason, in the middle of summer no less, is akin to spoiling them.

But I like to think I’m fostering his creativity because he got a mini-set of LEGOs and has been spending hours upon hours making things with them and entertaining himself for hours more. And I was thinking that more LEGOs would allow him to make more things and be more creative and entertain himself for even MORE hours. And more is better, right? When you are talking about five year olds playing quietly with LEGOs for hours, more is better. Just… trust me on this.

But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m used to seeing Christmas stuff go up early. It takes a lot of time to set up 20 trees with ornaments and lights and tinsel. I start the day after Thanksgiving at my house, and I only put up one tree, some stockings, and a wreath. So stores, with all their twinkling lights and snow globes and dancing Santa’s have to start early.

And then there’s the whole thing where they start selling bathing suits in January. Now that totally pisses me off because if I wait the 6 months it will take me to lose enough weight ~~to look good~~ so people won’t vomit when they see me in a bathing suit, it would be June before I could buy one. Only by then there won’t be any bathing suits left except for those on clearance, and those are all in a size 2 and I couldn’t pull one of those up past my ankles even with a weight loss.

But really, I don’t recall seeing Halloween Candy out THIS early before. I’m especially perturbed at this because it means I have two additional months where I can stock up for trick-or-treaters only to say “Oh, what the hell, just one piece” and then before you know it, I’ve not only opened the bag, I’ve eaten the entire contents, all 240 pieces. And then I have to go buy MORE. This is bad enough when I do it through the entire month of October, because after that, I’ve still got Thanksgiving and Christmas goodies I can’t keep myself away from. So come January and bathing suit sales, I’m in trouble. Only now I’ve got August and September stretching before me with Halloween candy on the shelves, and with those two extra months, I can do some serious damage. I might have to tape 20 large Target Christmas bags together just to make myself a bathing suit come January.

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Filed under Bathing Suits, Calendars, Candy, Christmas, Halloween, humor, LEGOs, life, Weight Loss

August 4, 2007 · 5:40 pm

Karma Strikes Back

My husband ran over his foot with the lawn mower.

Yes, you read that right. My husband ran over his foot with the lawn mower. I cut the back of our yard on Thursday night, and my husband went out about 7:00 on Friday night to cut the front and the sides. He was out there about 5 or 10 minutes when I heard the mower stop and I thought to go out there and tell him something I’d been meaning to talk to him about, but before I could, he was lurching toward our sliding glass door. He didn’t look well so I opened the door and he said “My Foot!” and pointed down at his foot where the front of his shoe was missing. In the tangle of sock threads and blood I couldn’t tell about his toes, if they were still there or not, but by then I’d sort of closed my eyes anyway.

I asked if he wanted me to call an ambulance but he said he wanted me to drive him to the hospital. I parked the car in a handicapped spot, because hey, that was indeed the case, even if we didn’t have the sticker, and I ran and found a wheelchair and brought it back for him.

Now you might think that when you walk in to a hospital and scream “LAWN MOWER RAN OVER FOOT” that it would spring people into action, but that’s apparently only the case on television.

The emergency room did full triage which really, I think, could have waited considering there weren’t many people there and certainly none besides my husband that looked like they’d run over themselves with a lawn mower. Someone bandaged my husband’s foot which I think was only so they wouldn’t get blood on the floor, and then someone else asked if he’d lost any toes and when we said we didn’t know she un-bandaged it to take a look. Then she wrapped it up again. I kept my back turned the entire time. After that we had the requisite stay in the E.R. waiting room where my husband was in obvious pain and I tried to call his family on my cell phone.

Word to the wise: put every phone number of everyone you’ve ever known into your cell phone. I had my sister-in-law’s home number which she wasn’t answering. I had my husband’s parent’s home number which is presently not working because stupid VOIP phone company went out of business and left all of their customers without phone service. Until they get it restored by a real phone company, perhaps one that’s been in business since, oh, I don’t know, Alexander Graham Bell invented the phone, they can only be reached on their cell phones. Only I didn’t have their cell phone numbers. Nor did I have phone numbers for brother number 1 or brother number 2. And my husband, who was preoccupied with his pain, couldn’t seem to remember any of these missing numbers.

After 50,000 tries, my sister-in-law’s answering machine finally picked up and I left a message saying “You’re brother is in the E.R. He RAN OVER HIS FOOT WITH THE LAWN MOWER. Call me back!” She called back 20 minutes later and said, I kid you not, “Awww! How is he? Is he in pain? Awww! Poor thing!” before hanging up. At which point I stared at the phone in my hand and thought WTF? WTF? WTF?!

Because it seems to me a more appropriate response would have been “OMG! OMG! OMG! What hospital? Will he ever walk again? I’m on my way!” But apparently, “Awww!. Poor thing!” is the correct response when it’s your own brother who’s possibly lost an appendage.

Eventually the hospital workers called our turn and put my husband up in a little curtained area and a Physician’s Assistant came by and said he’d order an X ray to see if any bones were cut off and then he’d clean and suture him up, if you know, there was anything left to suture.

Then he went to the next curtain over to help the man who had some dread skin infection and start him on three different types of antibiotics. While listening to all this I wanted to scream “Holy Hell! Treat us first! Don’t get that nasty bacteria on your hands and transfer it to us! The mower nearly took my husband’s toe, don’t let some flesh eating bacteria finish the work!”

Because hospitals, it turns out, are a perfect place to feed my neurosis. My teeny tiny itty bitty germ phobia went into major overdrive and I tried to stand in the middle of the room holding my breath in case any of Bacteria Man’s germs should float over and down into my lungs. And I tried not to touch anything, but damn it gets tiring standing for four hours straight.

The x-ray, according to the PA showed the bones were okay, but he said he might have to cut what was left of my husband’s toenail away. They gave my husband a Loratab and some Novocain shots in his toe and set to work. The PA cut away half of the toenail and then sat there contemplating that he might remove the rest of it to because “the last thing you want as it grows in is to get an ingrown toenail” and because also, the more work he did, the more he could bill us. So he took the entire toenail off. If you think you’ve seen that in a movie somewhere, I think you’re right, only I believe it was finger nails and the victim wasn’t given any Novocain. All I can say is that it’s bloody work and horrid to watch. I asked the PA how far into medical school do you start having to do things like that, because I was wondering how much money one might have invested before they realize they just can’t stomach the work. He said that was okay, you don’t quit, you just change specialties.

While this was happening my son and I played tic-tac-toe and hangman where my son had to guess the letters to the words “lawn mower” and the PA thought that was hilariously funny for some reason I still can’t understand.

Now, when he was finished removing my husband’s toe nail, he set about sewing up the end of his toe. Some of the stitches will dissolve on their own and some of them will have to be removed at a later date.

After that he started trimming the toenail he had removed and then he shoved it back onto my husband’s toe! Now personally, I believe that’s very much like getting your hair cut too short and then scotch taping strands of it back together because you’ve changed your mind about the whole thing. But the PA said it was so the nail bed would remain open and hopefully a new toenail would grow back. Without any nail there, the nail bed might close up and quit. Or so he said. I thought about this a lot and came to the conclusion that I think he’s wrong and I think he made a mistake. Runners lose toenails all the time, and I’m a runner and I should know, and I’ve never heard of us shoving the lost toenail back into place, but then I thought, well…. I’m not a doctor so what do I know? But then I realized the guy was only a PA and that means HE WASN’T A DOCTOR EITHER! Holy shit!

The nurse who bandaged my husband’s foot before we left asked ”How big was the tractor? and my husband said “It wasn’t a tractor, it was a lawn mower.” So she asked how far it fell and he said, “What? It didn’t fall on me; I was cutting the grass and ran over my foot!” And only then did she look properly horrified about the whole damned thing.

Which now in hindsight makes me wonder if the PA thought a lawn mower had fallen on his foot and perhaps the whole toe nail would die anyway, sort of how when you hit your thumb with a hammer, and perhaps that’s why he removed it. Or maybe he just always wanted to be able to say he once removed a toe nail and now he can.

I don’t know how it goes where you live but from this incident I’ve determined that here, Karma doesn’t put up with much shit. A friend of ours is a “safety officer” for his job and for some reason, we find this exceptionally funny. He was once hit by a car as he was crossing the street to his job and so it came somewhat as a surprise when he was actually promoted to the position of “Safety Officer” while still on crutches and in a neck brace. Part of his job apparently entails sending out daily emails to the company’s staff with little pithy sayings like “Look both ways before you cross the street or you might not live to look at all” or “Wear eye protection so you’ll continue to have eyes” and one of my personal favorites that I asked him to forward to me because I just couldn’t believe he’d actually sent such a message was, “Anger is only one letter away from Danger”.

Nearly everyone I know has been making fun of my friend and his daily notices. Earlier in the week I had been about to cross the street with him and another friend, and I was going to cross against the light because it’s the city and everyone does it, and because there weren’t any cars coming. I stepped off the curb and my other friend did too, but our pal the safety officer, did not. My friend then stepped back onto the curb and said “If the safety officer isn’t crossing then neither am I!” So then I stayed back too because, I don’t know, maybe he was allowed, like Bobby Brady, to hand out violation notices of some sort and I didn’t want to get in trouble.

My friend the safety officer stood there and simply said “It hurts.” And I thought he was commenting on our teasing, like maybe we’d hurt his feelings but then he pointed at the approaching car and said, “If you get hit by a car, it hurts.” Which, of course, he knows all about.

The next day, he sent out this notice: “If you think these daily notes are a pain….try a leg fracture or a head injury.” My husband and I had a really good laugh over that one and then BAM! LAWN MOWER OVER FOOT! So it seems Karma had had quite enough. Either that or our friend the safety officer has a extraordinary hearing and a voodoo doll.

Four hours after our arrival, my husband was discharged from the hospital. As we were leaving, there was a man in a wheelchair with his foot wrapped in the same manner my husband’s had been wrapped, and he too had blood seeping through the bandages in the place where his big toe should be. I said to him, “Oh my God! Were you using our lawn mower too?” because although I’d pulled the mower back behind our fence (because for some reason, I didn’t want anyone to steal the cursed thing), I hadn’t actually locked the gate and here was a guy who looked suspiciously like he’d had the exact same accident. He swore he hadn’t been messing with our mower. Rather, he claimed to have dropped some sort of cabinet upon his foot. So I figured that explains how the nurses had gotten confused about whether my husband had mowed his own foot off or merely dropped something on it.

This morning, while my husband sat in bed with his foot bandaged and elevated, I went out to finish cutting the rest of the lawn. I was going to say I went out to finish what he started but then I though that might be tempting fate again so I decided against that. I’m not sure why I even bothered with the lawn because with this dry spell, it’s hard to tell which of the grass is growing and which is merely pretending to grow.

Also, it was hard not to stare at the scene of the accident, the place where he backed into the fence and his body stopped, but the mower did not. I found myself looking about for bits of chewed up shoe and slivers of toe, but that was like looking for a needle in a haystack, and it was nearly one-hundred degrees out, so I gave up and set about cutting the grass.

It’s kind of hard to believe the mower got my husband’s foot like that because I have to say it does a rather shitty job on the lawn. You have to go at certain blades of grass and clover 6 ways to Sunday to mow them down, yet it ripped up his sneaker like it was a necktie in a paper shredder. All I can figure is our mower has a hankering for old pairs of New Balances and that’s why I wore my big fat hiking boots today.

The moral of the story is thus: Don’t mock safety officers and wear steel toed boots when you cut the grass.

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Filed under accident, hospital, karma, lawn mower, life, safety

August 2, 2007 · 12:08 am

My New White Skirt

I bought this new skirt. It’s white, it’s bright, it’s summery. It falls just above my knees. The perfect length, I think, for a summer skirt. It’s not too long and not too short. Too long and I’d look like a grandmother. Too short, I’d look like a hooker. I can even do cartwheels in it if I want. If I could. Well, you know, if I could do a cartwheel without ending up on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance being hauled off to the ER for breaking my spine. Because I’m not that limber. I’m gymnastically challenged. And almost 40. So I don’t do cartwheels. But if I did, nobody would see my underwear because technically, my white skirt is a skort; it has shorts sewn in underneath, but it looks like a skirt on the outside. So I don’t need to wear a slip and I don’t have sit with my knees pressed together (nothing to see there folks, shorts in the way, sorry). It also lays well, has a flat front, and so far, I haven’t stained it. Best of all, it looks good on me!

There’s just one… tiny little… totally irritating problem. What’s the problem, you ask? This skort has a side zipper. And 3 buttons, on the side, over the zipper. Two of the buttons are the hidden kind, hidden under the waistband on the inside of the skort. Under the best of circumstances hidden buttons like these can be a little… tricky. Move them to the side of the skirt and they may as well be a combination lock of some sort. The third button is your run-of-the-mill “button on the outside” kind of button. Still, it’s on the side of the skort as well.

The side zipper is a great design feature in that it doesn’t interfere with the lines of the skirt. But it’s awful when you have to use the bathroom. It’s even worse when you (and by you I mean me) have to go really, really, really badly. Like when you’ve sat at your desk working and pretending you don’t have to pee so you can finish this one thing and then that one thing and just one more phone call and that other little thing… Only THEN it’s suddenly an EMERGENCY not unlike those commercials where they sing… “gotta go gotta go gotta go right now…”

I mean, really! Have you ever tried to unzip a side zipper when you are doubled over with your legs crossed trying not to wet yourself as you hop up and down? It’s much easier to undo entrapments like side zippers and hidden buttons when you are standing still, standing calmly, and standing erect. That is to say, when you are not doubled over in an attempt to kink your urinary hose so it won’t spill the contents of your bladder all over the floor.

If this was a skirt, I’d be able to yank the whole thing up with one hand, shove down my undies with my other hand, and just… pee. Ah, the relief, you know?

But nooooo. Since there are shorts here, the only way out is down, and the only way down is to undo the multitude of buttons and then the zipper on the side. But I’m short and maybe a few pounds too wide, and not so limber (can’t do cartwheels, remember?). I’ve found that turning to the side to unzip and unbutton this pretty little skort really seems to require the skills of a circus performer, or a magician. A contortionist, perhaps.

I’m kicking myself now for not getting in on the yoga craze. It might have helped. I could start now, I suppose, but I imagine by the time I got limber enough to twist my upper torso sideways and undo this skort in a jiffy, Fall would be upon us, or maybe even Winter, and well, I can’t wear a white skort then, can I? That would be a clear and utter violation of the fashion rules and I certainly don’t want to be fined.

So imagine, there I was, having waited so long to use the facilities that I was desperate. I bolted down the hall, praying not to run into anybody looking to stop me with a question. Yet at the same time, praying I would run into someone I could accost and demand they undo the buttons and the zipper for me. I wouldn’t have asked them to pull the skort down, mind you, just unhook all the fastenings. Similar to how you might have someone help you unzip the back of a dress, you know? But I was at work, and that wouldn’t have been appropriate.

Still as I half walked, half ran down the hallway I envisioned the whole scene in my mind: barking to someone “Help! Unzip me now! FAST. Come on, come on… Hurry up, Franklin! If you don’t make it snappy I’m going to pee right here, right now, and the puddle will be so large it will seep onto your shoes!” Only there was nobody there. The hallway was deserted.

Too bad for me, the bathroom stalls weren’t. There are three of them and like some cosmic joke they were all taken! So I stood there, cross legged, hopping ever so slightly, bent nearly in half hoping and praying and muttering to myself as I unfastened and unzipped and very nearly removed the entire skort “hold it… hold it… I told you that you should have gone an hour ago…” And then, at the last second, a stall opened and I dashed inside and vowed to never again buy something with a side zipper and hidden buttons. Or, given the clothing designs these days, if that’s not possible, I’ll look for a skort with depends sewn in, rather than shorts. Too bad that still won’t enable me to do a cartwheel.

4 Comments

Filed under bathroom, buttons, gymnastics, humor, life, skirt, skort, summer clothing, white skirt, zippers