deus ex mama
i’ve been informed by some people that they’d prefer to see more funny. i’m not feeling like miss yuks-a-lot this week, considering there’s been a death in my friend’s family; so here’s some recent funny.
by the time we got to gimme shelter
we’re gonna turn this mother out
one day, i’ll get us kicked out of elementary school
there are loads more in the archives; i just don’t have the chance to scour.
(now get off my back 😉
i’m sitting here with a wee bit of ben and jerry’s light phish food (here’s the phull phat version, my medication of choice during my pregnancy with hellboy), freaking out quietly. while i’m still chagrined that this stuff goes for $4 a pint (MAYBE $2.99 on sale on a cold day in hell), it’s WAAAAY cheaper than what i found out i would be paying for the IVIG if i *didn’t* have health insurance.
see, i got an interesting letter today informing me of my benefits. the IVIG alone — and we’re not talking any of the tubes or IV apparatus, we’re not talking about the nurse who has to hook me up and take me off and monitor me, and we’re not even talking about the freaking doctor visit, which of course, i would get charged above and beyond all of it — would cost a couple thousand. each time. and i have to go every 4-6 weeks. ad infinitem.
now, as my friend suzanne likes to say, we (she and i, not the Royal We) have the mathematical ability of raccoons. (okay, so now she’s in a position of serious responsibility that requires mathematical ability, and i’ve proven that i can make it through graduate level courses which require things like the application of quantitative techniques. but old fears die hard.) but even so. i can do the math and figure out that, at a rate of every 6 weeks, this would cost over $30,000. A YEAR.
i could kiss the feet of the people at my insurance company. i could kiss the cheeks of the people who are coordinating this life-saving stuff for me. and i should probably kiss anything BS wants for having health insurance and for providing this life-saving paper for us all. but it does make me wonder heavily about all the people out there who don’t have good health insurance, or health insurance at all. and it makes me wonder about all the people who don’t seem to want to have any sort of national health program beyond medicaid and medicare.
i may yet become an activist on this frontier. i find it so frightening that i get access to quality care simply because i can afford the insurance, the co-pays, the out-of-pocket expenses. what if i couldn’t? where would i go? should i simply die? i shudder to think about that; i have a feeling that is the case for a lot of people.
jools would like to have a cars-themed birthday party this year. (to be more accurate, he wants a “lightning nu-queen party.”) i recently made an inquiry on DC Urban Moms regarding where to hold a birthday party and whether folks had a better idea of fun, car-themed activities. one mom wrote that she has had it with parties and people upping the ante on “events”.
i totally agree with her in the sense that i see little sense in making a birthday party some elaborate experience with a hired entertainer. as one who is party-planning inept, i even found an old birthday party book i cherished as a child and bought it (online — is this a great country or what?) for ideas. and i’m very grateful for the legions of parents out there who are sharing party ideas with me.
to borrow liberally from my posting, i am interested in places **outside** my home to host the party. last year, we had a simple, traditional party in the house. jools and his buddies tore my house apart and left BC crying for days because several of HER toys ended up broken. maybe we could hold it in my backyard, though it’s is a big hill/luge run (which actually might make it interesting if we try to race cars down it, now that i think of it, though i’ll have to have massive first aid supplies on hand if that happens.) in short, though: my house is a disaster, and i don’t feel like putting it together at the moment and then having it torn asunder. i ain’t doin’ it. i just had knee surgery 🙂 i want the party out of there.
i’m also very grateful that people are sending me ideas for games and such. there are some inexpensive locales (like community centers), and so if we go that route (to get the party out of my house), it’s helpful that people more creative than i’ll ever be can share ideas for simple activities that will be fun for the four-year-old (and under) crew. (i’m definitely enlisting BC to wrangle the kids this year. maybe she can do face painting? a big win-win.)
birthday parties for kids under two are a piece of cake. why people hire entertainment for toddler parties mystifies me when these kids would be entertained playing with a giant cardboard box. i can only guess that there are older children at parties and so the party thrower wants those kids entertained. but i have been to some really over-the-top weddings/bar/bat mitzvahs where the solid gold dancers (as i’ve dubbed them) recruit you to the dance floor, where you have your picture taken and put it keychain frames, where you get glow-in-the-dark necklaces and blinking hats, watching the video montage of the family members play with careful musical editing, etc. etc. ad nauseum. i agree that things have gotten out of hand in partyland. hell, my husband didn’t *have* birthday parties growing up. his mom made his favorite dinner and then cake. the end. and i think my biggest birthday was the time we went to howard johnson’s — i got ice cream with a cookie in it and then my friends and i got to swim in an indoor pool, which was big stuff back then in the 1970s. usually, though, we ate cake and ice cream and ran around the house until we all felt ill. it was great.
the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel: BC, who will turn 9 this year, wants a small sleepover party. two or three friends. that’s it. i can hardly wait 🙂
grosse point blank is one of those movies i could watch on a loop. the soundtrack kicks; the plot and dialogue is chockabloc with tight, hysterically-wound moments, and of course, john cusack is in it. fortunately for someone like me, who isn’t doing a whole lot these days thanks to my knee, it’s also played practically weekly, so i TIVO’d it and watched it this afternoon.
watching it of made me think about reunions (since, for the two of you out there who probably never saw it — and that includes you, mom — it involves a 10-year high school reunion.) my own high school class had a five-year reunion which i did not attend (i hadn’t gotten over certain people — or myself — at that point in time); subsequent attempts for a reunion have never materialized, though people talk about it wildly on places like classmates.com. my 20th college reunion this year is happening (insert shock and awe here), and i will also pass on that. i keep in solid touch with my good friends from college (including BS, who i see daily); there are only a few curiousities out there who i will likely never see. compounding the issue is the fact that while officially, i affiliated with douglass college (i got into both rutgers and douglass; douglass had guaranteed housing, so i decided to go there), i was most heavily involved with activities and people at rutgers college. so i would sooner attend a rutgers college reunion, not a douglass college reunion (especially since the university is apparently turning my college into essentially a dormitory choice.)
that being said, there are so many people i miss and who i wish i could see again. what i really wish i could do is have a smallish reunion weekend of sorts, renting a hotel, having a dance party on saturday night, that sort of thing. i guess i ought to organize that in my copious free time. but gosh, at least a girls’ weekend with my friends would be amazing — a slumber party of sorts with my friends.
now i’m getting maudlin. perhaps there are funnier things to read out there in the blogosphere. okay. move along. who knows: maybe dooce is talking about bowel movements or her dog, chuck. it just doesn’t get much better than that, you know.
last night, i couldn’t sleep. again. i think it’s the levaquin.
but in my nonsleep, i devised what i thought to be a hysterical idea for a truly subversive children’s book. see, we in this house love subversive books for kids. i *heart* roald dahl, dr. seuss, and lots of others. a recent discovery is lauren child and her clarice bean books (oh, my holy hell, avoid charlie and lola, the confection she cooked up for disney.) i just like books that say to kids, heheheh, the grownups think they know everything. but here’s the truth, and only we young folks know it. and these authors get it.
[note to self: you’ll probably regret this once the kids are teens.]
anywho, i had an idea for a story that really cracked me up at about 11 p.m. it was rather sordid and probably more appropriate for kids who are, oh, i dunno, 40.
BS has pointed out to me that i’ve sort of re-done Uncle Buck.
perhaps i ought to step away from the computer at such hours until i can actually think.
knee surgery. ah, the fun. it’s astonishing, really, that after a whole day ordeal, i am left with three bandaids. no lie. three. little. bandaids. they had to do general anesthesia on me (a first for me) because they didn’t have an up-to-date platelet count and the gas-passer didn’t want a bleeder on his hands should he have chosen a spinal instead. i woke up poorly from general, very cold and thrashing about. the nurse said she was trying to understand what i was saying; i’m grateful she could not or else they probably would have put some ivory soap in my mouth. i was quite hungry, so i had some crackers and cranberry juice, which now leads me to another first that day: throwing up on my front lawn. thank goodness it was undigested stuff. maybe it will help the plants.
ah, the glamor of being so dependent. i hate it.
i also have the pic-a-nic basket of fun, AKA my magical cooler that keeps my knee from hurting. see, you fill it up with ice and water, wrap the pad around your knee, and VOILA! joy reigneth. skwigg put it best: you feel like a (non)walking aquarium. jools wanted to fill it up with food and toys. that would have been an experience, though while on percocet, i probably wouldn’t have cared. much. (unfortunately, no one checked to see that it was actually ON when they put it on my knee after surgery. i asked BS, “why doesn’t it feel cold?” he said, “well, maybe you’re numb?” three hours later, when they were letting me out, i asked the nurse the same question. she said, “oh, no, it hasn’t been ON?” yep. i missed three hours of chilling goodness post surgery. oh well. spilled milk.
anyway, i can put some weight on my foot now. i am working on bending my knee and not screaming simultaneously. today, i am going to try two very exciting things. one is a shower. (i have not showered since tuesday morning, and, in short, i smell like a bus.) the next thing i’m going to try are STAIRS. yes. i want to see my room, my bathroom, my clean clothes for the first time in days. i can’t wait.
because i believe in maximizing my angst, i visited the hematologist as well as the physical therapist yesterday. my platelets are down a little (185) but not in a scary place. the problem is, now that i need IVIG, they can’t seem to find any. if anyone out there knows where i might start scoring some IVIG, let me know. apparently, area hospitals have none 🙁
the physical therapist is a hoot. she put me in something called GAME READY that essentially squeezed the living shit out of my entire leg while cooling it down. the PT told me that it was a very expensive treatment. i wonder if they have these sorts of things in S&M parlors. i like the fact that there’s a version for horses as well, although it does seem crueler than just shooting the nags. nay.
anyway, thanks for the well wishes, the cookies, the flowers, the fruit, and all the kindness. i appreciate it more than my percocet-addled mind can express.
(and today — i am off percocet. really.)
BC’s friend told her last night at a slumber party that her mother was the tooth fairy. so now, BC has shared with me that she knows i am the tooth fairy.
i knew it wouldn’t last forever, but i’m so bummed.
—postscript—
at about 8:30pm, BC came out and said she couldn’t sleep. she looked over to find BS filling the easter baskets. i walked her back to her room.
“mama,” BC said, “daddy lied to me. he told me he wasn’t the easter bunny.”
i thought for a second. “no, honey,” i said. “daddy didn’t lie. daddy is helping out this year because my knee is messed up. he isn’t usually the easter bunny.
i am.”
on friday, BS was home, as he was feeling a little under the weather. by lunchtime, we thought we would go out to lunch, especially since shortly, my diet will be limited by the joys of passover. we settled on an old standby, santa fe cafe, in rosslyn. of course, we’ve always been there at dinner and never at lunch, so it was a bit of a shock to see that the restaurant is mostly a carry-out operation at that hour. nevertheless, we figured we’d stay and eat. after all, they had fish tacos as a special (something BS adores), and i can get a bean and cheese burrito anywhere.
i sat, waiting for our number to be called. i stared at the military plaques that adorn part of the wall. i didn’t notice them the last time we ate there. we sat under a piece of the flag that apparently flew over the US embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan during Operation Something-Or-Another. wow. i knew they gave out ones that flew over the Capitol; i guess giving official flags away is now a cottage industry for the military. it made me a bit queasy.
finally, our food was ready. i opened the foil up, and my burrito completely came undone. it was literally the same refried beans they serve as a side dish. if there was any cheese on it, i was not aware of any. so i wrestled with this really nondescript bean burrito. meanwhile, i looked up to see my husband’s puzzled face. apparently, a fish taco at santa fe cafe is actually a taco filled with fish sticks, lettuce, tomatoes, a little cheese. oh, and a side of tartar sauce.
maybe they make such fare for the troops in Kabul?
NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, and nice red uniforms… — Monty Python skit
a long winded way to note how this day simply didn’t go off without a single hitch. i mean, it just simply wasn’t possible to write this day as a scene from a movie. every critic would point and note how contrived it all would sound.
it started with a promise to a little boy. see, tuesdays are the days when jools and i hang out. when i worked, i always had a schedule where i could take tuesdays off and hang with BC, so it stood to reason that hellboy and i should have some quality time together, too. and we do. he loves gardening and playing and basically anything that doesn’t involve getting his hair washed. realizing that i will be unable to trot around for a few weeks after surgery, i figured the time was now to visit the zoo. nevermind the fact that my leg is generally held together these days with a massive leg brace and some chewing gum; a promise is a promise and we were going to the zoo, come hell or massive diplomatic traffic snarl.
so we dropped off a very bitter BC (who, ear still hurting, went to school to deliver her science fair project, a teddybear sunflower seed that is growing like crazy and a display board that includes a really lovely painting of said sunflower) and joined the legions fighting their way onto the roosevelt bridge. only, too bad for me (as junie b. jones would say), as i forgot that the independence avenue exit closes off the wonderful, magical rock creek parkway entrance on weekday mornings. so jools and i took a wild ride around the tidal basin, making our way up toward the south side of the washington monument, then tearing our way up 14th street, sneering in the general direction of the white house, and making an insane left above farragut square to get to 15th — only to realize that i need to be over a lot more to get to connecticut ave. i found my beloved m street, travelled a few blocks, and did what any self-respecting jerseygirl driver would do: i made a right onto connecticut from m. only, apparently, that’s verboten. nowhere did i see a sign that said no right turn; but apparently, i scared the bejeezus out of the person making a right off this tiny little road that fell into m street.
“wow, mommy,” peeped little jools. “are we going in the right direction yet? why is that man beeping at us?”
i assured little ‘do we were on our way; and we were. we drove right up to the zoo, parked in the A section, and made our way out of the parking lot. jools started to bark loudly, “i stamp on cigarettes. i stamp on them; they’re bad!”
hoping i’ve discovered a teachable moment, i start to say, ” yes, jools, cigarettes are bad. you smoke them and then you die! don’t ever start smoking cigarettes; they will kill you.” and then i look over to see why this all started; there is a woman standing by the entrance, smoking away and shooting eye-daggers at me and my child. oops. after taking a shaky breath, i decide that the teachable lesson is more important than being polite to a stranger who will likely die soon due to her drug habit, and off we go.
we visited the pandas, who were quite frisky today. (the big news today was that zoofolks are planning to artificially inseminate Mei Xiang with semen from Gao Gao, San Diego Zoo’s adult male panda. i decided to postpone that teachable lesson for now.) jools fell while walking near the salamander non-exhibit near the pandas. i walked him through the panda indoor exhibit and asked one of the people standing in the panda cam booth where the nearest first aid place was. they kindly got him ice, a band aid, and let him sit in the panda cam booth while he convalesced. (lucky dude. i’ve never gotten in there before.)
but, to borrow from monty python again, it was only a flesh wound, so off we went soon thereafter. of course, jools wanted to go to the furthest end of the zoo to play at the pizza play area. not so bad walking downhill; but the trip uphill was not exactly a joy. a woman sitting on a bench with her family stopped me as i slowly made my way. she asked me why i was doing this, seeing that i wasn’t exactly in fighting form. i explained that a promise is a promise. she told me i should take a picture of jools and me and show it to him when he’s 21 so that he remembers that his mom keeps her word. i think he’ll know that by then, but it made me laugh all the same.
and watching jools watch the prairie dogs was priceless. he loved them so much that we visited them twice. take that, you poxy pandas!
we went home, ate lunch, relaxed a little, and then decided that we had some seeds to plant in the garden. gardening with a torn meniscus and pcl isn’t actually a cakewalk, but it was doable (when my helper wasn’t squirting me with the water in a spray bottle, that is.) i maniacally checked the door each time i was sent in to fill up said spray bottle, making sure that the door stayed unlocked. jools has a habit of playing with doors and locks, you see. so of course, the one time i didn’t check — we ended up locked out. fortunately, a neighbor let us hang out in her house for awhile, use her phone, and play with her dog; and a dear friend picked up BC at school and brought her home. BS, bless his pointed little head, came home from work a little early to rescue us. so it all ended well, i suppose.
of course, now BC wants to visit the zoo next week.
my dear friend jax, who i don’t see as often as i’d like, cooked an amazing dinner in honor of my birthday. (for those of you new here, jax is a friend who works at the same place as BS and who was assigned to be our “daycare buddy” when her DD, a few months younger than BC, started at daycare. over the years, we’ve realized that we are basically the same person; she is the long island italian version, and i am the new jersey jewish version.) what’s especially amazing is that she did this after being on travel for work last week out on the west coast and had just returned on friday. while she knew that chocolate is the flavor i favor in cake, she psychically knew i especially love a chocolate cake with gushy pudding in the middle.
i cannot say thank you enough about that.
i must say, though, that the show that came just before dinner, though, was priceless. earlier, BS and jax’s DH took the kids for a walk to the nearby river, where they collected shells and even found a horseshoe crab shell. you know, it was almost the stuff of norman rockwell. (jax and i sat and drank wine. oh yeah, she cooked. i did nothing.) our four kids were playing together in the house — BC and anya (8, 7.5), jools (3.5) and katie (just turned three — happy birthday fellow march b-day girl!), and we thought they were happily doing something harmless. i’m not quite sure when we realized it, but someone went downstairs to check on the quiet kids. in short, they were covered in paint. jools and katie both had purple paint in their hair (jools had a purple mohawk); anya and BC were also covered. although none of us were particularly happy about the situation, it was incredibly difficult not to laugh. we swooped up the kids, washed everyone off, and jax threw their clothes in the laundry. the paint won’t come off the clothes, and we didn’t take pictures (!), but who cares. at least no one ate the paint.
so a big shout out to my lungisland friend who busted her butt last night and who i suspect is busting it even more, now that there’s a ton of paint on her basement floor. i wish i could help you clean up.
smiling jools said to jax as we were leaving: “next time, you can come over and destroy OUR house!”
that’s assuming our house isn’t already close to being condemned, dude 😉