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Author: wrekehavoc

keeping your solar plexus happy

Posted on June 21, 2006 by wrekehavoc

back in march, when i was in the throes of battling ITP, BS gave me a wonderful birthday present: a gift certificate for the “a day in paris” spa package at Fountains Day Spa. it was a hopeful gift, one that i knew i would one day be able to use when i was feeling better. and today was that day 🙂 i spent 4.5 hours at this sweet little rowhouse south of old town, mostly in the company of the owner, a lady named suzanne. i was lined up for an aromatherapy massage, a facial, lunch, and a pedicure/reflexology session.

suzanne knows feet. (and no, i am not a foot fetishist.) she specializes in reflexology. it all started when she was a child in south africa and she rubbed her pregnant mother’s feet. during my 80 minute aromatherapy massage, she helped me understand places on the feet and their correlation with the rest of the body. you should know that my feet show that i am a very powerful person (but rest assured – the way that my big toes point indicate that i wield my power with compassion. i bet in DC, she sees an abundance of obnoxious feet.) i’m also apparently a very artistic person, but with a certain shyness about it (probably the reason why i rarely show anything i write to anyone for years 😉

since my right side and left side have been rendered weak since my hospital stay, i have had meds, i have had PT, i have had MRIs, and nothing is providing lasting strength. suzanne did a lot of work on my medians, and i actually feel pretty good (even though some of the work hurt like hell.) in doing her work, she was a little astonished that one side of my back was extremely warm (right) and one cold (left.) apparently, i have plenty of toxins in me that need to be released; toxins hang out on the right side and exit on the left.

my first bit of homework: ditch the antiperspirant. apparently, deodorant is no biggie, but we need to sweat to release the toxins. if we don’t release them through our pits, then the body finds other ways and places — some people sweat in their faces, some in other skin folds, etc. and when it gets backed up in you, havoc is wreaked. (i had to say that.) i’m supposed to massage my armpits and my groin in the shower to keep the toxins moving.

(if my mother is reading this, don’t worry, mom, i am not massaging my groin 😉

when she worked on my front (that sounds sordid, i realize), suzanne first went and put her arms under my shoulders. “you have the weight of the world on your shoulders, don’t you?” she said. she could feel my stress, and that energy made her momentarily ill. (yes. i have the energy to poison a very happy healer.) but then, she got to my solar plexus. “Wow! you have a very, very joyous solar plexus. you must be a very joyful person, a person who feels very lucky.” boy, did she ever hit that on the money. BS and my friend jax both are of the opinion that if i fall in a vat of shit, i come up with flowers. (i don’t think either realizes how many times i come up with just shit.) neither realizes that i have always had a carpe diem attitude since i was 15 and nearly lost my mom to cancer. anyway, it was really neat to be someone so connected to touch. despite my health problems, she said that i actually felt like a very healthy person, a person whose body is just trying to right itself after some major illness. i’ve got a great pair of lungs (think that’s the first time a woman ever told me that), a back that is a little too curved for its own good (“but strong!”), and the ability to actually breathe properly (thanks to years of breathing training when i played flute.)

basically, all systems are go 🙂

a guy named francis did my facial. he is also a movie fan, so we traded quotes from “fast times at ridgemont high.” after the fairly ethereal conversations i had before this, it was pretty funny to be laying on a chair, face covered with goo, imitating jeff spicoli (sean penn) saying, “no shirt. no shoes? no dice!”

[fret not, gentle reader. i refrained from saying “lighten up, francis.”]

mysteries of life, part 2

Posted on June 20, 2006 by wrekehavoc

i’ve always considered myself to be fairly bougie (as i think those young hipsters call us folks who are upper-middle-class). but even so, i am perplexed and puzzled by this single thought:

how can younger women (who are probably most of the folks who can fit into these things) actually be able to afford items from BlueFly, ShopBop, and the like? they certainly cannot be earning the kind of money to buy these things regularly, unless, of course, they either a: don’t eat, or b: are gold-digging ladies who have their fair share of sugardaddies.

i can’t believe they all are beneficiaries of the dot.com boom.

the mad tea party

Posted on June 17, 2006 by wrekehavoc

we’ve been reading the american girls felicity series, BC and i; and in the last one we read, felicity learns how to serve tea. (or something like that.) rather than picking up on the message that little girls in 1774 weren’t allowed to go to school, BC grabbed hold of the idea that it would be lovely to learn how to serve tea.

so much for feminism 😉

anyway, jools, BC and i went to the farmer’s market this morning. besides the temper tantrums, the need to find a bathroom where there wasn’t one in a 2 mile radius (unless you purchased food, which i ultimately did at what turned out to be a very nice little coffee shop), and the “mama, it’s hot, i want to go home”s, we ended up with some lovely basil, some chocolate mint, fresh tomatoes, apples, mozzarella, and beef.

if i were one of those bloggers who obsesses about photographing food, then i would show a picture of the lovely tea i brewed with the mint and some honey. but i’m not. i’m one of those bloggers who chooses, instead, to obsess over my kids.

so there.

and there.

and you musn’t forget that, too.

once we broke out of our diabetic comas (thanks to all that sugar that jools poured into tea already sweetened with honey), we decided it was a lot of fun. and BC loved cleaning her little tea pot and accoutrements.

okay, okay. so feminism took one for the team. tomorrow, i’ll teach her how to burn bras, despite the fact that she doesn’t wear one. yet.

stick up for yourself.

Posted on June 13, 2006 by wrekehavoc

i’m absolutely distressed reading this story.

it raises a certain point that absolutely hit home with me. i spent two weeks in the hospital in february (sadly, not for something as happy as a birth), and it taught me one thing: you have to be a VERY strong advocate for yourself or, if you aren’t in any condition to advocate for yourself, you really need someone there to be it, whether it is a partner, a relative, a very good friend — someone who isn’t shy and isn’t afraid to hunt down people and tell them when things are needed. after going into serious convulsions because the nurse on duty wouldn’t give me benadryl before giving my an IV full of blood products (and i was too weak to argue and it was midnight, so no one was there with me), i am absolutely convinced of that. i was supposed to have tests that never happened; i was supposed to get meds i never got. and since my husband was trying his best to keep it together with the kids, i just couldn’t ask him to do more. between the IVs in my arms and the awful way i felt, i just didn’t have it in me to speak up.

believe me when i say that i am probably one of the last people to criticize the medical establishment; i have been spoiled for many years by having both good doctors as well as a family member who is a physician who i think the world of and a close friend who is a kick-butt nurse. but after being in the hospital for a bit of time, i feel very downhearted about the way people are treated there. it can be a demeaning, disabling experience. you w a i t a thousand years for anything. i was so frustrated waiting one day i tried to do something for myself and ended up hitting myself in the head on the bedside table (which ultimately resulted in my needing a scan.) i felt like people patronized me. (G-d only knows how elderly people are treated.) i could go on, but i am sure no one wants to hear me whine a lot. suffice to say, i have gone from someone who used to not fear hospital treatment to someone who would definitely hesitate before going in.

just thinking about how this poor man and woman were ignored brings me to tears. i know it’s easy to fall into a routine with our jobs but there are some jobs where nothing should ever be treated as routine. when you are working in a hospital, you deal with people who don’t have routine medical situations. having a baby = not routine. yes, people do it every day, some with and some without medical intervention. but during the process, whether we like to think of it or not, your life is imperiled somewhat. there’s a reason some women died in childbirth in the old days — sometimes, things go awry. i like to think that far fewer women (and children) die now in childbirth because we are prepared for these possibilities. but the preparation requires that no one takes for granted the safeguards necessary in the process. when washing your hands, or wearing a mask, or actually l i s t e n i n g to a patient in peril is taken for granted, then people are not taking their jobs seriously, patients are not safe.

every interaction in a hospital requires care, imho.

america's favorite pasttime

Posted on June 12, 2006 by wrekehavoc

no, i’m not exactly talking about baseball (though it does figure in here). i’m talking about the american assumption that the world ought to bend for you, that rules apply to everyone but yourself. this is not criticizing folks who really deserve a leg up – i fully support every effort made to level the playing field so that they get the same opportunity as everyone else.

no, i’m talking about all those people who get annoyed because they are in a particular stage of life (for example, parenthood) and feel their needs ought to always come first.

yesterday, we took BS out to the ballgame at RFK to see his beloved Phillies play against the Nationals as an early Father’s Day present. we bought one of those Family Four Pack thingies that includes tix, a drink, a hotdog, and chips for 4 and sat up in heaven. when you have fidgety kids, it’s a pretty good thing to sit way high up, as they spend more time looking for the cotton candy man and watching peanut shells sail down, down, down. if it hadn’t been so chilly; and if the Phillies hadn’t played like a bunch of geriatrics, it would have been perfect.

well, nearly, anyway.

we watched as a younger man dressed in a NY Yankees shirt pushed a stroller below us, folding it up and attempting to shove it between himself and the seat in front of him, then to the side of him, then the other side, and so on. i was waiting for the people around him to do more than just look on in annoyance, but i was also glad that there seemed to be no bloodshed around this event. “figures it’s a Yankee fan that brought a stroller to the ballpark,” BS groused. i mean, where the hell are you gonna park that thing once you’re there? they don’t have a special place for strollers at the stadium.

so i ask: what sort of person is either so stupid or so selfish that they wheel in a stroller to an arena? i have brought toddlers and babies into stadiums successfully — we’ve even taken public transport to the event — without a stroller. yes, it takes a little forethought. i have to pack diapers carefully so that i can balance them and the children, but i do it. rocket science it ain’t. ok, if it was a performance of the Vile purple Jurassic Entity or some Disney character, sure, I’d figure the place would have some designated place for strollers. but they don’t have that for baseball. should they? i guess they could. but knowing that they don’t, where do these genuises think they’ll stow these behemoths? in front of others who are trying to watch the game, of course. their needs are simply not as critical.

it’s as american as bush’s tax refund scheme.

next year in jerusalem. or the Y. i care not.

Posted on June 7, 2006 by wrekehavoc

jools’ birthday party was sunday. i don’t which was the greater challenge: handling several three year olds in my home, or handling one 40-something-grouch who wanted to apparently clean the house so well prior to the blessed event that he nearly went apoplectic in the process.

but i’ll stick to the party. for now.

six friends ultimately showed up for joolsfest 2006. the theme: firetrucks. i made a big firetruck poster and BC made little wheels for a “pin the wheels on the firetruck game.” i borrowed a few really terrific firetruck-related books from the library to read to the tots. jools, BC, and i painted giant cardboard boxes so that kids might climb in and out of them. too unsure of my baking skills, i bought a fancy cake at el Gigante – no firetrucks, but plenty of regular Tonka trucks on top of the cake. in short, you’d think i was somewhat prepared, in spite of what my husband believed. but for all that effort, i could have simply sat on my ass and picked my nose, for all the kids cared.

newsflash: three year olds are perfectly happy to run around and play with someone else’s toys.

it does make me wonder about all the parents who are hiring birthday party entertainers for the pre-preschooler set.

anywho, the kids had a good time. i only wish that I took pictures! i was so crazed and involved that i neglected that critical duty. (one more reason I will be in the particular circle of hell reserved for bad moms.) i think its safe to say, though, that jools had a wonderful day. i hope the other kids had fun, too, despite the abandonment of formal party games.

meanwhile, BC is distressed because one of the boys demolished a baby toy of her’s. Mind you, she hasn’t played with that thing in, oh, five years at least; but when she discovered dinosaur heads missing, she wailed for a half hour. (no exaggeration. sadly.) yep. it isn’t a party until something has been broken. i’m not bothered by it, but i’m trying
to frame this episode as a teachable moment for her – “things are replaceable, people aren’t.”

the YMCA is looking real good for next year’s fete.

::phew::

Posted on May 25, 2006 by wrekehavoc

BC is feeling under the weather today and is home from school. my work from home today is punctuated by a slew of doctors’ visits. BC has been joining me for each one. one was a visit to the gynecologist (I’m OKAY!) to check out some pain i am having in my lower abdomen. most likely, these are caused by, you guessed it, muscles loosened by that wonder drug, prednisone. but just to be safe, the gyn is doing a sonogram of my abdomen.

the staff all fawned over BC, which she lurved. she had fun playing with the stirrups while we waited for the doctor (who was 1.25 hours behind schedule, i would add) to arrive. i saw her peeking up on the wall, where there was a poster with female internal organs (shall we say) for all the world to see. i was waiting for the inevitable questions to happen. they didn’t. but in the end, the word “sonogram” stuck in our collective heads.

so we’re driving home and talking about the visit. we’re so late that we also laugh at the fact that we will have to turn right around and go to my physical therapy appointment. “do you have any questions about all of this?” i asked, praying we weren’t going to revisit the poster from the gyn’s wall.

“yes, i do, mama.”

“what?”

“is it a boy or a girl?” she asked.

“WHAT???” i nearly drove off the road. “i mean, what do you mean, honey?” i asked, gulping.

“your next doctor at PT – is it a boy or a girl?” she asked again.

talk about your saving graces.

giving a wide berth to birth

Posted on May 23, 2006 by wrekehavoc

i continue to read the back-and-forth on local womens’ birth experiences at a variety of local hospitals. for every person who has had a positive experience at hospital A, there is someone who has apparently had a near-death experience there. while it is safe to say that there are certain hospitals i would avoid, either due to inconvenient locale or political policies which i oppose (i read somewhere that a local catholic hospital refuses to terminate pregnancies, regardless of the circumstances, which (of course) is its right but not something i would want to support), in general, if you are having a baby, you will need some sort of help. as one who spent two weeks getting treated for a freakish illness recently, i can tell you that there are worse places to be than in a hospital.

while i appreciate the whole birth movement and respect women’s decisions to use midwives, or have babies underwater, or experience the blessed event while skydiving (ok, so i made that last one up), i often wonder about women who obsess over the whole birth planning process. they make lists about what interventions they will or will not accept; they take classes on how to give birth and hypnotise themselves into a calm state; they psyche themselves into planning the perfect birth. they are usually first-time moms-to-be. (these are probably the same women who spent forever planning the perfect wedding.)

you really can’t plan the birth. sure, those women who plan a birth that happens perfectly, trouble-free, they’ll think they made it happen that way. but honestly, they merely lucked out. the truth is that birth is messy, scary, excruciating, and wonderful, all at once. and you really cannot predict how it will all go until the baby comes out and cries and passes his apgar screen and all is (hopefully) well. i cringe when i hear a mom tell me how depressed she is because, after all this planning, she had a c-section, as if somehow, she failed in the big birthing competition. what is wrong with a c-section, i wonder, if that is what you needed to keep yourself and your child alive? (and don’t even get me started on how i feel about the term natural childbirth.)

suffice it to say that these same women who try to plan their birthing experiences down to the last second will be very distressed to discover that they cannot plan their child’s life down to the second.

…and i thought jesus saved.

Posted on May 21, 2006 by wrekehavoc

…so we’re driving BC to hebrew school this morning, BS, jools, and i; and we pass a church sign outside a church, only of course we whizz by so quickly, i cannot read the entire cutesy slogan. (these days, i think houses of worship seem to be competing with each other for those snappy slogans. wonder if it packs in the cheap seats?) all i can read is: “jesus came back to take away.”

gee, i said to BS, he came back for subtraction? good thing he didn’t come back for multiplication.

and at the same time, BS and i both said, “he may have come back to take away, but the result at times is some serious division.”

::drums:: ba DUM dum

just goes to show you that you’re married a certain number of years and you can actually come up with the same punch line. of course, i don’t blame jesus for dividing the world’s peoples. there are plenty of others who have done their fair share from a multitude of theologies and ideologies.

one more sign that i'm a working mother

Posted on May 16, 2006 by wrekehavoc

thanks to my never-ending juggling act (at which i apparently suck), there are many casualties in my refrigerator. exhibit a: several different reusable tubs (actually, reused takeaway containers) of leftovers which have seen better days. there are carrots returning to the earth. there is even a jar of mango chutney which i think has been around longer than Hellboy, who will turn three the end of this month.

but here’s my biggest contribution to food science:

drum roll, please…

i’ve found two unopened containers of breakstone sour cream. both expired about two months ago. now, if sour cream already starts out sour, what happens when it goes past it’s expiration date? does it get sour-er?

[Note to self: no one will ever confuse you with a domestic goddess.]