Category: miracles of science

about last night

about last night

Posted on by wrekehavoc

about last night: i wrote an absolutely out-and-out scathing post, a post about how angry i am. it was so screamingly angry that i deleted it.

days upon days upon days of little sleep are adding up to one major wiped-out woman on the verge of something. i couldn’t even sleep last night, even though the kids were in bed. i am just so wound up. so many people in this house are not sleeping for one reason or another. and when you’re the mom, you end up being the catcher of all this sleep deprivation, by default. even the best dads might sleep through things, but moms never do, unless they have been drugged or killed.

so there i was on the computer, and i was bombarded with messages about mother’s day: buy mom flowers. send mom a card. get mom jewelry. take mom out for a nice meal. now, i have no quarrel with getting my mother or my mother in law some token of appreciation for the day, and i certainly appreciate the cards and sometimes unidentifiable objets d’arte that my children make for me.

but there are times like today, yesterday, the day before, all last week… times when i just feel like everyone is sucking the lifeblood out of me. i work for my family. i work for the house. i work for the fucking WORLD. 24/7, whether it’s doing the dishes, or dealing with illness, or handling my exploding home, or helping my kids navigate through some crisis or another. i don’t get paid for it. i don’t get thanked for it. i sometimes don’t even think people realize what i do. but it’s all down to me. i am in charge of directing my family’s life.

and no one works for me.

in short, i don’t want mother’s day. i don’t need jewelry. i don’t need to go to the International Fucking House Of Putrid Food. and i don’t want any flowers.

what i want is mother’s life.

i don’t want to be appreciated on one day. i want to be appreciated every single day. i want people to notice that i never get a day off, much less a weekend. and i’m glad to do it, even though it wasn’t necessarily my first career choice. i am grateful i get to do it, too, all right? but i wonder sometimes whether it was the right choice for me.

the other day, we were talking about clothing, and BC said oh mama, you don’t need to ever wear suits. you are just not the suit kind. this child has no recollection of a time when i worked outside the home and wore something beyond sweats or jeans. this child thinks i live and breathe for her. and, through the choices i have made, helped along by my health predicament, i guess i do. or have done.and of course, i will continue to do so.

but i often wonder what sort of example i am setting for her. yes, dear: study hard, get a masters degree, and you, too, can become the floor upon which your family walks.

and of course, if i complain, i am ungrateful. ungrateful that there is a roof over my head, food on my table, and IVIG in my veins. what a shallow bitch, one might say. do you know that Susie or Sally have it SO. MUCH. WORSE. THAN. YOU. (yes. i know. thanks.)

but is self-preservation an unworthy goal?

i have just come from BC’s school. their big 5k training run is this morning; and while BS is running with BC on race day, BC asked me if i would run with her this morning. parents are not required this morning, but she wanted me to run with her. let me point out for the record: i hate running. but, i got suited up, rushed my kishkes around, and drove her there at 7:50 in the ayem. we get there — there must be about 50 girls there plus some parents. and there’s a huge circle being formed. girlfriend runs over to one of her friends as they make the circle. i walk over to stand beside her. no, mom, she says. you stand over there, and she points to siberia on the other side of this tremendous circle. no other moms or dads are being banished. they are all standing next to their respective daughters.something inside me just snapped.

nope, i replied. i’ll see you later then. good bye! and i walked away. and i left.

so yes, add that to the collection of why i am a bad mother.i’m not going to be treated like shit by any nine year old. i am not going to be treated like shit by any 40-something year olds, either. in short, i am no longer taking shit from anyone out there, related or not.

i am tired, tired and extremely angry. and appreciating me one day in may, a day where i will have woken up all cranky and cold because i will have slept overnight in a cabin devoid of electricity and indoor plumbing, courtesy of my little Girl Scout, will probably be too little too late. i appreciate every single person around me; at least, i appreciate the ones i’m related to — and certainly quite a few to whom i am not.
appreciate me now.

the letter

the letter

Posted on by wrekehavoc

Dear Fairfax Hospital Administrator:

Today, my child went to INOVA FFX Hospital for Children. She had both a CT scan and an upper GI. We arrived a little early just because as my child could neither eat nor drink, I thought it best that we just get to the hospital. The people in the CT department were stellar: they got my child in and out right away, including her paperwork for the upper GI, which had to be done through pediatric radiology.

We arrived at about 9:15 in pediatric radiology. We checked in, and my daughter had the pleasure of overhearing the initial woman who greeted us complain to her coworkers about how much she didn’t like working there. That woman left for parts unknown, and another lady took her place, a lady who apparently didn’t get the message that we were there. We sat. We sat. At 10:30, after watching several people get taken before us, I went up to the desk. The woman had no earthly idea we had been there and were waiting. She called the GI folks and explained what I had told her, although she provided misinformation — making it sound like we had just arrived when we had been there for a long time already — and I had to continue to explain to her that we HAD BEEN THERE for NEARLY 90 MINUTES, waiting. Once the GI tech came out, the tech apologized profusely, stating that they HAD BEEN WAITING FOR US FOR A LONG TIME. They had no idea we were waiting.

I think the best part about the experience was how the receptionist broke out a big tub of spaghetti at about 10:15, which was just near the jar of candy in front her her window. My daughter, who had not eaten since 9 pm last night, nearly burst into tears, she was so hungry. In a room where several children may not eat or drink before their tests, how on earth does that demonstrate any sort of empathy for the children in the waiting room?

I actually chose to bring my daughter to Fairfax Hospital for tests, as I was under the impression that FFX specifically knows how to treat children with respect. It actually costs me more to do so. My child — at AGE 9 — has now asked me: HOW COULD YOU TAKE ME THERE? I NEVER WANT TO GO TO FAIRFAX HOSPITAL AGAIN! This is a child who has been to Arlington Hospital as well as other medical facilities. She is quite upset with me and with the entire experience. Frankly, I cannot blame her.

The doctors and the techs we encountered were professional and kind to my child. Pity your administrative staff cannot act accordingly.

Yours,

Wreke

hanging on the telephone

hanging on the telephone

Posted on by wrekehavoc

dear fairfax inova hospital,

press 1 if you want this in english –>

press 2 if you’re annoyed, press 3 if you’re upset, press 4 if you feel like you want to hurt someone –>

to be sure, it is not your fault that i am having a week from hell. i don’t blame you for my flooded basement, for the response time of the remediation people, or even for my allergies, which seem to have taken on a life of their own.

but i do wonder whether anyone is actually at work there.

my child has some testing to do on monday at your facility. it is difficult enough to face the fact that she is not exactly the happiest person when dealing with any medical procedures whatsoever. (i personally can’t wait ’til i tell her she can’t eat until lunchtime on monday.) in fact, i am specifically taking her to your facility precisely because you deal so well with children during such endeavors. your reputation precedes you.

on wednesday afternoon, someone left a message to preregister my child prior to the procedures. for reasons i do not understand, they left this message on my husband’s voicemail at work. fortunately, my husband, always a guy on-the-job, informed me of this early thursday morning. i called the number and hit someone’s voicemail; only, too bad for me. the voicemail doesn’t identify itself as debra from inova fairfax or even debra, period. it’s just a robo-voicemail-bot. the first three digits of this telephone number don’t even match the numbers of most of the numbers i have since dialed. i could be calling someone at molestors-r-us for all i know with my baby’s info. i think not.

press 5 if you want to leave a helpful, though basic, tip to people who are part of a large corporate entity->

[if it’s a business phone, you ought to leave your name and business info, at the very least, on your voicemail.]

so i went to your website. it should be easy to get a phone number from there, right?

wrong.

basically, i was left with the main hospital number.

press 6 if you are on the verge of volunteering to redesign a corporate entity’s website ->

literally all thursday afternoon, after giving up on hearing from debra, i spent my time bouncing from place to place in your phone system. (though i should say that geraldine, the main operator, is very nice.) so much fun to be had, including being given erroneous information, such as that there’s no way possible my child can be having a procedure, as there’s no pediatric endoscopist available that day. (did anyone HEAR ME? the girl is not getting scoped! she’s getting SCREENED. ARRRRGH.)

lucky for me, of course, i spent the better part of yesterday WAITING FOR THE REMEDIATION GUY, so i had NOTHING BETTER TO DO THAN SIT AND PLAY PHONE TAG!

so this morning, because i really love to hear on-hold muzak, i thought i’d try again. (that plus the fact that i have no earthly idea where the hell we are supposed to go.) i tried my new old friend geraldine, who sent me to the wrong place again, only this time, the person on the line gave me a few numbers to try, including a supervisor. amazingly, though, no one is around (only the supervisor gives her name and business on the voicemail, btw). i called the lady back and politely asked her whether anyone besides herself was at work that morning. after our giggles, i got off the phone and wondered what the hell i was going to do.

lightbulb moment: i found the initial scheduling number (thank Dog), and tried there. they don’t preregister there, but maybe, just maybe, they can at least tell me where to show up? of course, there’s more on-hold time:

[we are sorry for the delay. please continue to hold until our next available staff member can be with you.]

press 7 if you are sick of our on-hold muzak->

then finally, after enough time has elapsed for me to clean out the receipts in my wallet and cook a turkey breast, a live human. a live human whom i cannot HEAR. i am not deaf; she just is speaking rather softly.

press 8 if you are on the edge->

so i sit. perfectly still. and i strain to listen to her, best as i can. yes, there’s a record of your daughter’s tests…no, you are already registered; we did that when you set up the appointment. why did that person call you? did they need to verify your insurance?

press nine if you feel your blood about to shoot out the top of your head->

i don’t actually know why the person called. the first three digits of the telephone number are very different from yours.

silence.

uhm. well, let’s hope it was to verify insurance. but here’s where you go on monday…

so administrators at fairfax, i realize there are plenty of insane people out there, and you’re probably reticent to share phone numbers with the public. but people, we need numbers. at least main ones. most businesses have a minimum level of transparency for their customers: you know, so we can actually call you with our business?

and the hours i spent on the phone? i’ll share my hourly rate. you just take that off my bill and we’ll call it even, k?

yours,

wreke

the waiting (is the hardest part)

the waiting (is the hardest part)

Posted on by wrekehavoc

on sunday, the pump that pumps water out of my utility sink in the basement broke. sounds minor except when you stop and realize that this pump pumps the water from the washing machine up and out of the basement. and that would be the only room in the house that actually has professionally installed carpeting.

yeah, you see where this is going.

to make an extraordinary story short, i called a few places to find out estimates for work, as i did laundry and the water is now inhabiting a portion of my basement. (note to self: G-d does NOT want you to do laundry. Ever. Again.) the plumber came out straightaway and installed a new pump so that i am free to do laundry again (yay?). however, i have not yet heard back from one company (chem dry.) and today, a person from service master was supposed to come by and give me an estimate between 11-1. i rushed my kishkes around all morning to make sure i was back by 11. and i have been waiting by the phone, waiting by the door. i wanted to shower, but i was afraid i would not hear the people when they came. i am, to borrow a phrase, a member of the great unwashed.

guess what?

it’s 1:30, and not a peep.

i called service master, and the man who answered the phone will be over my house in 20 minutes. ::fingers crossed:: ::eyes rolling::

maybe i am misguided, but i always believed that when i am about to potentially engage someone in some sort of business experience that will cost me probably a few hundred dollars, the person might actually have the decency to show up when he says he will. if he can’t, i will understand just as long as he calls me and lets me know that he is delayed/can’t make it. it’s called communication.

i still am reeling from the time when i tried to get a plumber to my house. it took three tries…and he never showed. well, i take that back. one time, he showed up … hours past the time when he was supposed to show. at 7pm. PM. as in, Post Mortem.

and this is not the first time something like this has happened.

i am so pissed off that i have wasted the better part of a day. waiting.

on the bright side, one stellar human being, one marvelously amazing lady, brought her dehumidifier over my house last night. this woman is the yin to my yang in hebrew school carpool land; i take her daughter there, she brings my daughter back. she is one of the nicest, kindest, and funniest people i’ve met in the past year. yesterday, she pulled up in her car with her eldest in tow and brought me some yummy chocolate-crunch matza. in passing, i mentioned my basement.

and at 8:30 pm last night, after her various carpooling duties, exercise classes, and mom jobs were through, this saint of a person (who of course is a red sea pedestrian, like i am, so she can’t really be sainted, i think) schlepped over this two billion pound dehumidifier, a machine which as of this cranky typing has already required to be dumped out twice. and things are a bit dryer downstairs.

all because of her.

when passover is done, i am SO baking them a cake. or two.

i just won’t start now, though, cos as i start mixing, i’m sure the service master guy will show.

of course.

building the perfect beast

building the perfect beast

Posted on by wrekehavoc

kids ask questions. lots of questions. perennial favorites include:

  • where do babies come from?
  • why do i have to go to school?
  • where is jimmy hoffa?

add a new one to the list: why are your boobs bigger/tummy flatter/nose smaller?

lucky for our children, there is a new book by plastic surgeon michael a. salzhauer called my beautiful mommy. this book will explain why mommy has bandages and why, for a little while, can’t pick up her cosmopolitan without help.

what it doesn’t explain: how mommy will have any credibility once her child grows into puberty and doesn’t like what she sees looking back at her in the mirror: well mommy, you changed your [enter body part/s of choice here] in order to look like Barbie; why can’t i?

fix you

fix you

Posted on by wrekehavoc

just because i don’t post about my health every blessed day doesn’t mean it doesn’t loom in my little bear brain every blessed day. everyone needs a hobby in life; and it has become abundantly clear that mine is a career as a professional patient.

thanks to my CVID, i get to do the following at a minimum:

  • hook up to an IV for a few hours every four weeks for my yummy IVIG treatments;
  • visit the hematologist/oncologist every two months and have a look at my platelets – and only if i am well. we get to see each other more frequently if my platelets tank;
  • visit the infectious diseases doctor every six months and find out how i am progressing (and now that mine has changed practices, i get to meet a new infectious diseases doctor — hooray!);
  • get a lung and sinus scan annually, which means i will glow in the dark forever;
  • experience an endoscopy and colonoscopy on a fairly early and often basis; and
  • occasionally visit a pulmonary doctor to ask whether my lungs are getting bad.

(did i mention i pay a zillion copays and thank my lucky stars that i have health insurance?)

lest i forget, there’s my beloved regular plain old doctor, who sees me every time i end up with an infection i can’t lick on my own. that poor guy. i walk in with the weirdest illnesses. i can’t believe he doesn’t run away when he hears i’m on the schedule.

all this gives me little time to think about other health issues that a woman of my age needs. like high cholesterol. heart disease. weight. my vision. that sort of thing. i suppose i could make it my full-time job to obsess, but i prefer to place my obsession with my children. their health concerns are so much more interesting to me than are my own.

but, as being in the hospital so powerfully reminded me, if i don’t take care of me, then i’m not there to take care of them.

so i do.

monday, i went to the hematologist/oncologist office, where i had blood drawn for a platelet check and visited the very wonderful nurse practitioner, who has seen me through negligible platelets, a major steroid hump, and all the joy that comes with it. she is so upbeat, so cheery, and yet so genuine. and she leaves no stone unturned.

however, on monday, one stone was slightly off the beaten path. normal platelet counts start at 150k and work up to 450k. (memorize that in case you end up on medical jeopardy.) depending on which part of my IVIG cycle i’m on, my platelets usually are anywhere between 175 and 200. but too bad for me: i got my little yellow paper from the lab, and it said i was at 155. yes, still above normal, but not by much.

in short, i freaked.

when you have some sort of weird illness or condition, you try so hard to reach for a sense of normalcy in your life. it’s something that having a life-threatening condition strips from you, along with complete peace of mind, as you know what it’s like to have a body that is completely in revolt. mental tranquility is simply not there anymore, although when you’re a parent, you fight hard to fake it, especially in front of your children. they deserve peace all the time. but yet you have these periods of time when denial is as close as you will come to that peace. you embrace it because you want life to always be like this.

but on this monday, denial was peeled away like onion skin, leaving my fear completely exposed. what the hell is happening to me? i thought i had things under control. i thought they had fixed me as much as they could. am i broken again?

i shivered when the nurse practitioner came in the room to see me. how are you doin? she asked, ever perky.

well, i replied, i thought i was ok. but then i saw this paper, and now, i’m not so sure.

she took a look at it. oh, i see. her eyes looked at me apologetically. the platelet number isn’t what you want, huh.

it’s a little lower than my usual, i replied.

you know, she said, our machine is on the fritz and keeps spitting out the wrong numbers. doctor has been on the phone with the hospital and the company – he is furious that no one has given us a new machine yet, what with all the blood we draw. in the meantime, we let the blood sit for 15 minutes and read it again. we’ve been getting better results this way. let’s do that and see, okay?

was this going to be my hematological deus ex machina? i sure hoped so.

the lab rechecked my blood while i went through my personal checkup with the nurse practitioner. and lo and behold, my numbers were delivered: 176. much, much better.

i don’t know how reliable those numbers are versus the first ones. but as far as i’m concerned, i am fixed again for another day.

in your eyes

in your eyes

Posted on by wrekehavoc

i’m writing this today because i have to. see, it’s my dad’s birthday, and i have to acknowledge this in print, as he is my most loyal reader. ever.

(hi, dad!)

i’ve written lots about my dad in this thing over the years, enough to make all his poker friends probably needle him if they ever saw this. in short, my dad has given me many, many things over the course of my life. three particular contributions, evident in this blog, are:

1) my love of music;

2) my occasional lefty windmill tilts; and,

3) my eyes.

yes, my eyes. those things you see at the top of the page. dad was probably wearing glasses in utero, (just kidding!) and by third grade, i was wearing them, too for my nearsightedness. i hated my glasses. i hated my glasses SO VERY MUCH. by eighth grade, i beggedbeggedBEGGED to wear contacts, and i did. i never looked back.

…until recently. jools has been digging spiderman comics; only, too bad for me: i can’t decipher the itty-bitty type. sorry, dude, i’d tell him, you’ll have to ask daddy to read tonight.

(actually, this was not necessarily a bad thing. you moms out there understand.)

lately, i’ve noticed that objects seem closer than they really are, and i’m not looking in a side-mirror, either. i’m hating the way BS drives, thinking he’s driving up the ass of the car in front of our’s. how on earth could this be happening to me! i’m only… er… a little over 29 35 39 the rainbow.

so today, i’ve gone and visited the eye doctor. and lookee, lookee:

i need reading glasses.

i can hardly wait to visit whole foods with jools so that he can help me pick out a pair. he’s an expert, as he tried on a zillion pairs of them one time when we were there. mommy, he asked with a rainbow pair perched atop his nose precariously, can i buy this pair?

honey, i replied, you have to be able to read to wear reading glasses.

truth be told, i can barely read a thing at the moment, as my eyes are dilated. (i can barely even see as i type this. i suspect it’s riddled with typos.) i’m awfully proud to tell you that i drove this way. i shopped in trader joe’s this way. i made another lands end return at sear’s this way. and i picked up my clean comforter at la lavanderia this way. i would tell you that i drove the speed limit, but i couldn’t read the sign so well. so i just tried to drive s l o w l y and with traffic.

in short: i can’t see a fucking thing at the moment, and it’s all thanks to you, daddy! so happy birthday!!!

driver 8

driver 8

Posted on by wrekehavoc

driver 8, take a break. we’ve been on this shift too long.

i’ve been single-parenting it since sunday morning. and i love my kids. but i’m so very, very glad that BS just called and said he’s on an earlier flight home today, possibly home by dinnertime.

the nice thing about single-parenting it is that the rules are all mine. if we want to eat chocolate for dinner, we can. (fret not. we didn’t.) if we want to make a tent and sleep in it, we can. if we want to sleep a little later, or wear crazy clothes, we can. dance party with the clash? sure. cos i’m the mom, and i say so.

the bad thing, of course, is that the kids cry for their daddy. they miss him and his regulated schedule, his soft laugh, his scratchy beard, his crankiness. every bit of him, they miss.

i do, too.

(here’s the visual: i am self-medicating. it’s mid-morning, and i’m eating two squares of dark chocolate. it will make me happy. don’t tell me it won’t.)

single-parenting has brought me some stellar experiences over the past few days.

1) the aforementioned dead bat who, by the way, is still very much dead. and still on the lawn, waiting for BS’s special way with a shovel.

2) jools. home. every. single. day. i know many of you do this voluntarily, but i am unused to a very active child, 24/7. we’ve been having a lot of fun together, making hummus and guacamole and such, but i haven’t been getting as much done as i need to do. still, no one is dying because my house is a mess, so i’ll lighten up.

3) BC’s cough. BC has had a cough since sometime last year. (when the pediatrician asked her last week how long she’s been coughing, she answered: since first grade. and she was dead serious.) nothing has stopped it; not inhalers, not singulair; not voodoo dolls. (heh. just kidding. i think.) it’s really beginning to bug her; sunday night, it took her quite awhile to settle down to sleep because of it. i finally put my foot down and told the pediatrician that we need to visit a pulmonary person.

but then, we had to do the medical limbo. for some reason, the pulmonologist can only accomodate people with our stellar insurance (and that’s not sarcastic talk — it is the insurance gold standard around here, and a PPO to boot) in their leesburg office. huh? so i have to pull madam out of school and go through rush hour traffic to get her to the doctor’s office in about two week’s time. yay.

but wait, there’s more: oh, can we add sinus waters study to our pediatrician’s chest x-ray order? a wha?

but dutifully, i get the pediatrician’s office to fax it. i call to check it has made it. apparently, the pediatrician checked the wrong box — it’s an x-ray, not a CT scan. (oh really? you’d think the doctor would know that, the receptionist said. i guess he’d know that before i did, being a real doctor, unlike me.) and around and around we go again.

all the while, jools is glued to nick jr. because i suck as a mom.

so today, for fun (and before the wednesday afternoon carpooling duties hit me), we will go for the aforementioned x-rays.

i can hardly wait.

4) yesterday, a magical experience where a friend of BC’s insisted that she had cleared an afterschool playdate with her babysitter. pleasepleaseplease let BC take the bus home with me. pulllllease!!! i said i would drive BC over and just check with the babysitter, since we had not yet met, much less cleared anything. the babysitter was rather surprised at the idea of a playdate; we apologized and moved on.

5) while driving home from said non-playdate, lecturing BC about why i don’t just send her on the bus with any friend who insists that a playdate is ok with the adult-on-duty, i saw a police officer with a laser, and it was pointed at ME. and whoomp: there it was. 37 in a school zone. i have actually made it to my advanced age having never gotten pulled over for speeding. i’m an excellent driver, you know. and now, i’m speeding, albeit not wildly, but technically speeding nonetheless. don’t cry, mama, BC said. you can’t cry in front of a police officer.

oh girl. yes. you. can.

the officer took my license and registration and went back to his motorcycle to call it in. julian kept asking me what was going on. i muttered and muttered. leave mama alone, i heard BC bark at jools. i muttered that my husband and his brother, a police officer, were probably going to laugh at me over this one day. i pictured it in my mind’s eye: yeah, my wife is such an idiot, she doesn’t know what to do when she’s pulled over for a ticket. i muttered because it kept me from crying over my very first traffic infraction at age 40+.

the officer returned and started telling me about prepaying the ticket versus the court date, etc. etc. suddenly, a voice shrilly commanded from the backseat:

exCUSE MEEEEEEEEEE!

it was jools. oh shit. now i’ll get ticketed for some parenting violation, too: this woman has rude children. lock her up.

please officer: i’ve been home alone with two kids for a few days, and i’m a little wound. can you take pity on me and just ticket me over the car and ignore the fact that my young son doesn’t grasp the concept of decorum? pleaseohpleaseohplease?

excuse me, i said to the officer. okay, jools, what do you want?

no, i want to talk to the policeman.

doubleshitdoubleshitdoubleshit. i peered at the officer through my window. is it ok, sir?

sure. what can i do for you? he asked jools.

my uncle mikey is a police officer! he announced to the officer.

is he really? the officer asked. where is he a police officer?

in new jersey, i replied.

BC pulled the facts together: my uncle mikey is a police officer in NEW JERSEY!

well then, he replied, i’m going to give you a warning, thanks to uncle mikey. he crossed out my court date and wrote W A R N I N G over it. slow down, okay?

yes, sir. i took a deep breath as he walked away from my car. karma pulled through for me. all those times i let people in instead of cutting them off; all those times as a patient and courteous driver — it all came back to me in the guise of a kind police officer.

and it also made me thankful for my brother-in-law. my husband has only one brother. lucky for me, he happens to be a terrific person who happens to be a police officer. he risks his life daily, and he’s a person we are all very proud of in this family. and i bet he has been in this situation before and he has been kind. i just know it. he has a good heart.

i waved at the police officer as we drove past; he waved back in that serious, Adam-12 sort of way. i bet he has an insane sister-in-law, too.

last night, jools got a honkin’ big bowl of his favorite ice cream. and BC finished her solid chocolate easter bunny.

my rules, cos i’m the adult-on-duty. and i think that’s fair.

DIY

DIY

Posted on by wrekehavoc

you can pick your friends.

you can pick your nose.

but you can’t pick your friend’s nose.

–anonymous

maybe you can’t pick your friend’s nose, but you can hire people to pick the lice out of your kid’s head. in fact, you can outsource all sorts of parenting challenges, from toilet training to saying no. some of the things you can get someone else to do for you, quoting NY Magazine:

  1. … TEACH HIM HOW TO RIDE A BIKE
  2. … TAKE HIM FISHING
  3. … TALK TO HIM
  4. … IMPART GOOD BREEDING
  5. … TEACH HIM THE BIRDS AND THE BEES
  6. … GO ON COLLEGE TOURS
  7. … DRIVE HIM EVERYWHERE

understand that i’m not completely innocent here. when BC was young, we had a hell of a time teaching her how to sleep, compounded by a never-ending ear infection, reflux, and an inability to gain weight, which meant she needed to be fed around the clock. i read books, i tried a zillion things. the girl wouldn’t sleep. it caused problems in our health, our family life, our work and everything else.

to make a long story short, when jools was beginning to exhibit serious sleep issues, i heard of a magical person who would help us teach hellboy how to sleep. it was a good thing, too, because BS and i could not agree how to handle the problem. i probably would have never let jools sleep anywere except in our bed or in my arms until he was 40; BS would have simply closed the door and walked off into the sunset, leaving the boy to scream. all. night. long.

(when you’re sleep-deprived, few ideas seem insane.)

this was nearly five years ago, but for $300, this person performed nothing short of a miracle. she taught us how to teach our son to sleep. her sleep solution, somewhere between my and BS’s ideas about sleep training, put us dazed parents on the same page, allowed us to continue dream feeds for a time (jools, too, was underweight), and get the boy to sleep through the night pretty rapidly. the dude is still the best sleeper in the house, and it’s all thanks to the extremely wonderful magical sleep person. if i ever see her again, i will hug her endlessly.

by teaching us, she saved my family.

i often wonder about why some people have children. i think kids are just sort of part of an expected tradition in our society: get married, get a house, have kids. but some people simply should not breed. maybe they simply aren’t ready; maybe they’ll never be ready; maybe other things are more important to them. get a cat; don’t make a baby. unlike any other relationship in your life, the parent-child bond cannot be broken. you can divorce your spouse, ignore your siblings, end friendships.

but your child will always be your child. not an accessory. a living person who requires your involvement and your guidance. it doesn’t matter whether both parents work inside or outside of the home. it’s not the quantity of the time you spend — it’s the quality. and while every single solitary moment does not need to be a Mr. Rogers moment, there are certain things that a parent ought to do. and there are certain things a parent should want to do.

i wonder why parents outsource certain activities. teaching your kid to ride a bike and taking them fishing (or shopping or whatever your recreational activity of choice) — these are fun times not to be missed. and what parent doesn’t want to be there to ask and/or field questions when touring a college? (you can bet your ass i am going to make sure i find out about the party situation on campus and be as involved as the kids will let me when the time comes.)

and simply talking to your child? discussing sex? teaching him/her how to be a decent person? hello??? this is why you’re here. to share your ideas about how to be a kind and contributing member of society. it’s one thing if you need guidance on how to do any of these things; as the cliché goes, kids don’t come with a manual. so seek out help if you need it with some of the thornier parts of parenthood. read books. talk to clergy or professionals. ask friends or relatives.

but when the actual doing needs to get done, do it yourself.

Theme: Overlay by Kaira.  Extra Text
Cape Town, South Africa