Ghosts of Christmas Past Except Not About Christmas and Not Involving Ghosts

My brain is doing that periodic thing that it does which is to torment me with things that happened long ago about which I can do nothing. And then dwelling on those things until I cannot think about anything productive. 

HOW do you stop that? I am not even talking about middle-of-the-night perseveration, although that has been happening too. I am talking about straight up driving home from taking Carla to school and then BAM, “Remember when you did this totally awful and stupid thing? No, but do you REALLY remember it? Let’s go through every moment in excruciating detail.”

There WAS a stupid thing I did, last fall, and I’d managed to forget about it. Until my brain slapped me with the memory.

It was one of those horrible errors that is totally preventable and has an actual cost to it. Like forgetting to return a pair of shoes that don’t fit before the 30-day return period ends. Or backing your car into the garage wall. Or leaving your car windows open all night during a rainstorm. Things that could have been prevented had you been slightly less lazy or more proactive. I can feel my face heating up with residual shame. Such a waste! A preventable waste of money! And not a SMALL amount of money, either. We were so fortunate to be able to pay for my mistake, and my husband was extremely kind about it even though he would NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS make that kind of mistake. Why? Why did I let that happen? And why am I thinking about it NOW?

I would say that it’s because I just did another stupid money-wasting thing (My phone has been disconnecting from our wi-fi, and I didn’t notice, and I have just willy nilly been watching Instagram videos and scrolling through apps and downloading – good gourd – a ONE POINT NINE GIGABYTE package of bird sounds from Merlin Bird ID, all while connected to the cellular network. We do not have unlimited data, and in fact only use about 5-6 GB of data per month among the three of us, and I have used NINE GIGABYTES, all by myself, in five days. And we have 25 days left in the month before our data resets. And yet, we can buy more data, a GB at a time, but each GB costs $15 which is not nothing!) but I have been torturing myself with the earlier money-wasting thing for weeks now. So who knows. 

Anyway, it’s good for internal piling on: I am the worst, stupidest person, totally oblivious to important things. I am costing our family money for NO REASON. No one else would make such a dumb mistake! I can see that I’m not connected to wifi just by looking at the top of the phone, and I am on my stupid phone all the damn time! I am a drain on our finances and worthless to boot! 

It’s not even just things I DID, it’s all sorts of things, like how I was going through old yearbooks a few summers ago, and discovered that this boy I’d had a crush on for years had written something filthy in my sixth grade annual. I had no idea what it meant at the time, but I can imagine all the other middle school boys giggling about it. And WHY did he write such a thing? We were friends! I may have had a crush on him, but there was never anything but friendship between us. And I was friends with him for YEARS after he scrawled that crude suggestion in my yearbook. 

Should I throw out my yearbook? Scratch out those awful words with permanent marker? Re-evaluate all my relationships?

Why am I thinking about this? I didn’t even find the yearbook recently; it was AT LEAST two years ago, if not more.

Or the other day, I was out for a lovely walk in the snow and instead of enjoying the feeling of snowflakes kissing my cheeks and the sound of my boots crunching in the snow, I started thinking about another awful boy, this one in high school, who once mentioned he’d seen me outside my music teacher’s house after my lesson, pacing back and forth on the sidewalk, waiting for a parent to pick me up. He told me I looked like a hooker. A HOOKER. We were in high school. Why would his mind go there? And why would he TELL me such a thing? And why am I furious about it NOW, a million years after the fact? 

Why are schoolage boys so awful? Not all of them – not yours, surely. But enough of them to make a difference. Will Carla have to deal with boys like this? Will they write grotesque things in her yearbook? How am I going to protect her heart from being infected by terrible people? I have no idea how to protect her or prepare her. I really have no business being a mother if I can’t help her understand that there are people who are mean and hurtful for no reason… but without crushing her spirit.

And then there are more examples of me being a terrible person and parent. Like how last summer, there was a mortifying incident involving another mom and her kids of the sort that makes me a) wonder how, when a child knows The Rules and has shown that they know them and can follow them, they can occasionally not just forget The Rules but flaunt them? And b) how am I possibly equipped to be a parent if I can’t convey the importance of The Rules and how they are meant to be followed always, not just on a whim? I’ve been going over and over that event (which turned out fine! everyone is fine!) and coming up with The Exact Perfect Thing that I should have said or did at the time, instead of saying and doing what I did say and do, which was nothing is except standing in gape-mouthed mortification and letting the other mother take the disciplinary lead. How is this helping anyone, to go over and over it? 

Oh, lord, and there was that other time? With this same mom? When I saw her kid on the sidewalk, by himself, two blocks from home. I was in my car and stopped and asked him if he was okay and if his mom knew where he was, and he said yes and yes. So we kept driving. I pulled up my phone so I call his mother but before I could do so, we saw her on the sidewalk. She was frantic with worry, because she’d lost him. I was able to tell her where he was, but I keep kicking myself for not STAYING WITH HIM and calling her. I could have just stayed right there in my car! But I didn’t! I kept driving! Why? Why did I do that? It all worked out okay, but WHY DID I DO THAT?

You see? It’s not enough that my brain torment me with one thing. It’s got to get right in there with hit after hit after hit. Why can’t it just leave the past in the past and focus on doing the best job possible NOW?

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Grumble Grumble, Various Forms of Torture, Dinners This Week

We have reached another low point in the energy and cheer I have available to devote to meal planning. Sometimes I just viciously hate everything to do with meal planning and preparing food, and this is one of those times. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that today is YET ANOTHER day off from school. We haven’t even had any snow days, just pre-planned days off. Eight, since the beginning of January. She’s had only three weeks of school with no days off. I don’t know why this is making me so cranky today. Usually, I kind of like a day off from school. We get to sleep in a bit, Carla and I get to chill together or run errands, sometimes there’s a playdate. Today she gets to accompany me to acupuncture though, which sounds like torture for everyone involved. And then we will go to the grocery store, which is agony for Carla. (At least, until we get there. She’s very cheerful about helping and asking to buy a million things; it’s just the anticipation of grocery shopping that makes her wail as though I threatened to incinerate all her toys.) Maybe, to balance out all the suffering, we will make brownies. (Yes, I am still trying to get protein into Carla at every turn – as well as calcium, but that is not going well – and also I am still trying to like baked oatmeal. We WILL be adding chocolate chips to this recipe.)

Anyway, day off or no, meal planning grumble or no, we must eat. I think I will do the thing where I pick maybe three meals and then make black bean tacos the other days. My husband will eat a ham sandwich on black bean taco days. Carla, as you know, eats a stunning variety of foods including and pretty much limited to chicken nuggets, salmon, ground beef tacos, steak, and two very specific types of lunch meat, so she will eat one of those things while my husband and I eat whatever it is I decide on.

For lunches, I can drum up slightly more enthusiasm. I have recently rediscovered how delicious artichokes are. They are currently plentiful and also a whopping $3.99 each, but they are enormous and I find them to be such a delicious and satisfying lunch. I will see if I can buy two this week, and then maybe make a batch of Hungarian mushroom soup to eat on the other days.

Dinners for the Week of February 20-26

• Chicken Tikka Masala with Cauliflower and Peas (inspired by Lisa): This sounds really tasty and warming. Probably my husband will require an added chicken breast, but I can certainly do that for him.

• Miso Ginger Soy Salmon Rice Bowls: For awhile, I felt like I kept coming across yummy sounding meals with miso as an ingredient, so when I saw some miso paste at Trader Joe’s I snapped it up. And then of course I couldn’t find any meals that featured miso. But this recipe does feature miso and it sounds really good. 

• Chicken and Broccoli Stir Fry: This is technically called “skinny chicken and broccoli stir fry” but that makes me think of anorexic roosters, so I deleted the “skinny.” Despite the ridiculous name, this sounds really delicious and fuels my recent obsession with broccoli slaw. I think I will also throw in a handful of water chestnuts, which I LOVE. (My husband does not love them, so his portion will be water chestnut free.)

Wow, just deciding on those three recipes felt like removing my own fingernails with pliers. Hopefully I will feel more invigorated for meal planning next week. 

Have you tried miso before? What about broccoli slaw? Does meal planning also currently feel like torture for you?

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Shoes in the House

For the entirety of my adult life, I have been a No Shoes in the House person. And yet I have been wearing shoes (sneakers) (sneakers that have never once been outside) in the house since Thanksgiving. I thought I would report on how that’s going. 

Pros: 

• My feet seem to hurt less when I wear shoes than when I go barefoot. 
• I have new empathy for my in-laws, who keep slippers at our house so they can wear them when they visit, and for my mother, who also needs to wear shoes in the house to prevent foot agony. 

Cons: 

• I hate wearing shoes. 
• I keep forgetting to put my shoes on, and have yet to develop a good spot to keep them so that when I inevitably forget to put them on, and then find myself in agony, I don’t have to go traipsing all over the house to find them. 
• I am less aware of the crud on our floors, which seems like a pro but is not. 
• I keep catching the heel of my shoe on the bottom rung (?) of the kitchen table chairs, and knocking the chair over onto the floor, which makes a horrific banging noise and also cannot be good for the health of the chair or my floor. 
• When people come over, I still want THEM to not wear shoes, but it feels a) as though I am cheating or stingy when I get to wear shoes but no one else does or b) ridiculous and princessy. 
• Lying on the couch to watch TV or in bed with my daughter while I read to her feels so clunky and dumb and just wrong with shoes on. 
• My laces come untied ALL the time. All the time. Even when I double knot them. 
• When I go to friends’ houses (all our friends have shoe-free homes), I am not sure if I need to bring my only-in-the-house shoes or if I should just suck it up and go barefoot, and I have defaulted to the latter so far but then my feet are in agony. Good thing I don’t socialize much.
• My husband and child seem to be slightly more relaxed about taking off their own shoes at the door, even though there is a clear! difference! between wearing shoes that have literally never been outside and wearing shoes that are both outdoors and inside public spaces every day. 

Conclusions:

• I need to continue wearing shoes.
• I should get over myself and order some easy-to-put-on orthotic sandals or Crocs or whatever; I have a whole list of recommendations and just haven’t bought any yet (which is because I have already committed to buying a new pair of snow boots, which is expensive, and I have also needed to replace two coats this winter, so I feel like I’ve already crossed the threshold of buying things for myself). 
• I remain, crankily, but perhaps more staunchly than ever, Team No Shoes In The House.

Do you wear shoes in your house?

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Growing Pains, Recurring Fraud, Dinners This Week, Incredulous Screeching

For some reason, I woke up at 1:27 this morning and could NOT fall asleep. I don’t recall dwelling on anything specific, or being worried or anxious about anything, I just couldn’t sleep. 

This was good (????) because I heard Carla get up at 4:00 and then I heard her sweet little voice call out, “Hello?” (Does she do this on nights when I’m not awake? Breaks my heart a little to think of that.) I went into her room and she was in tears because her leg was hurting so! much! I rubbed her leg for awhile and then she tearfully informed me that it wasn’t helping, so I gave her Tylenol and offered an ice pack. She declined the ice pack because the pain was in her entire leg, not in one specific spot. 

Poor kiddo. My diagnosis is growing pains (after shooing some very unpleasant frets about blood clots – why does my brain hate me?). Did you ever have growing pains? I remember getting them, that awful deep ache in both legs. The medical sites say that the pain is largely muscular, and that doctors don’t think growing hurts – despite the fact that the pains occur largely in growing children and tend to stop when the children stop growing. But whatever, nameless heartless overly literal doctors. 

Carla agreed to try some stretches, so I led her through a few knee bends and some downward dog. She had to show me child’s pose and cobra as well, even though I doubt those did anything for her pain and she ran through her “flow” at such lightning speed I don’t see how it could have been at all relaxing. At 4:37 she was still Wide Awake. I suggested she try one of my getting-to-sleep strategies (I have taught her getting-to-sleep strategies multiple times, but she never remembers them and has, until last night, mainly refused to try them), which was retracing the steps of a favorite walk. I suggested she think about going over to our neighbor-with-a-puppy’s house, and think about each step she takes to get there in as great detail as possible. She closed her eyes and was quite still for awhile. At 4:52 I whispered that I was going back to bed, and she told me that she was at the point in the walk where she was putting on her shoes. Great. 

“If I’m not asleep by 5:30, can I come get you?” she asked. She was so pathetic, and her leg still hurt. Against my better judgment, I said, “Do you want to come sleep in my room?”

Surprisingly, she declined. (Actually, what she said was, “I don’t think that would have any effect” which was a very surprising sentence to hear from a sleepy nine-year-old.)

I went back to bed and lay there, awake, waiting for her to come get me. (She never did!) I finally fell asleep shortly after my husband’s alarm went off at 6:00, only to have a nightmare that my mother-in-law, who is supposed to arrive next weekend, had instead arrived today. It was extremely stressful, as though the worst possible thing would be for my mother-in-law to show up when I had some clutter in the kitchen or had not yet washed her bed linens. She would be fine and cheerful about the whole thing, honestly. But in the dream, it was A HORROR.

Somehow Carla and I made it out the door to school, and then I went for a four-mile walk with a friend I haven’t seen in weeks, which was a very good second start to the day. Then I went to Trader Joe’s and then to the library, where I picked up my copy of The Accomplice, on hold after Birchie spoke so highly of it. (I know literally nothing about it, except that Birchie recommended it. It’s quite fun to dive into a book that you know nothing about, except when your husband asks you what it’s about and then screws his face up into perplexed concern when you say you don’t know.) 

But when I got home, things took A Turn: I had six emails from my bank, all saying in their typical panicked way, “You recently made a large transaction” followed immediately by “Card Alert – Review This Transaction.” The bank does this – sends two apprehensive emails – for every transaction, and I have learned not to get terribly stressed. But this time, I had NOT made any transactions, especially not with the M*** Store in Washington State. 

The thing is, I had also not made any transactions with the M*** Store in the first week of November, when two charges of $.99 each hit my account. After scrutinizing both my memory and my account at the M*** Store (from which I cannot recall ever having purchased anything, although perhaps I did once a million years ago since I do have an account), I called my bank and they cancelled my card and sent me a new one.

So the card that was charged today was a BRAND NEW CARD. And I know for a fact that I have only used it at two places, one that rhymes with GayGal and the other that rhymes with Glamazon. 

I have cancelled this brand new card – and disputed the three charges of $.99, $.99, and $9.99 respectively – and I guess now I wait for the new card. Hopefully the holiday gifts that I charged to it this weekend will go through. SIGH AND ARGH. And also, HOW? How is someone accessing my card? How did they get it so soon after I cancelled the previous one? Why are they so hell bent on buying things from the M*** Store?!? My husband suggested that the fraudster had put some sort of recurring charge on my previous card, and that the card company automatically updated the number once I got the new one. So I have talked with my bank about THAT. I hope we communicated clearly about the possibility, but honestly I’m not sure. Fortunately, it is my personal account and has only a little bit of money in there, and fortunately I check my email way too frequently, so I caught the unauthorized charges early both times. But it sure is ANNOYING.

On to dinners.

December starts this week, people! It’s happening! 

We have three measly weeks left of school until a two-week winter break. Three weeks of all the activities. One week of my mother-in-law visiting. One call week. We’re going to POWER THROUGH.

Dinners for the Week of November 28-December 4

• Mulligatawny Soup: Per my mother’s suggestion, I am going to make this with leftover turkey instead of chicken. Even if I don’t like the result (I hate turkey), my husband will eat it.
• Spicy Chickpea Bowls: I have some chicken breasts I can chop up for my husband. I do need to whip up a batch of the ginger garlic sauce that this recipe calls for, which is a pain. But it is SO NICE to have a bag full of ginger-garlic sauce cubes in my freezer, and they last quite a while. 
• Slow Cooker Lemon Garlic Chicken with Steamed Broccoli: We haven’t had this in a very long time and it’s good and it’s a slow cooker meal. Enough said.

I am also going to make another batch of butternut squash soup because it is easy and delicious and I am in a Soup Mood. Plus, Trader Joe’s had a lot of very nice looking, pre-cubed butternut squash at a very good price. 

Trader Joe’s also had a big container of cubed sweet potatoes, which I bought on a whim… but now I don’t know what to do with them! Roast them? But then… do what with them? I have tried roasted sweet potatoes on salad before and I do not care for it. What would YOU do with a huge container of cubed sweet potatoes? (I am not adding them to my butternut squash soup – I prefer my soup to be pure.) 

Also: I forgot to buy iceberg lettuce until the last possible second. (This was at the other grocery store I went to, specifically to buy bell peppers for the chickpea bowls. I cannot eat the chickpea bowls without bell peppers. And Trader Joe’s peppers were all soft and wrinkly. Ew. I need a nice crisp, unwrinkled pepper.) All my stuff (more than just bell peppers, I’M SORRY I HAVE A PROBLEM) was already on the belt; there was a woman behind me in line. I did the thing where I speed-walked over to the produce section and grabbed the first head of lettuce I saw so I could get back without anyone feeling like I was abusing the checkout section. But then I put the lettuce down, because it was very light, and grabbed another. ALSO very light, but now I was panicking, imagining the woman in line behind me tapping her foot and sighing in my general direction. I should have just put it down and survived ONE SINGLE WEEK without iceberg lettuce (I have baby spinach! I have green leaf lettuce!) but I didn’t; I ran back to the checkout line and paid for my groceries and only then did I discover that my very small head of iceberg, which will probably turn out to be three or four outer leaves and nothing else, was THREE DOLLARS AND FIFTY CENTS. That is ridiculous. That is a ridiculous price for a giant heavy head of iceberg! That is a ridiculous price for a plastic clamshell of pre-washed, pre-cut gourmet lettuces! Ridiculous! And yet I paid it! Maybe this is why I am a target of fraud; clearly I am not all that careful with my money. SIGH.

This is my present and my future, folks. Screeching in disbelief about the absurd pricing of lettuce.

Okay. That was a much complainy-er post than I intended, but there you have it. It’s a post-holiday Monday, after all.

It seems as though I am doing NaBloPoMo this month, which is 30 blog posts in 30 days. (Will I make it??? Only time will tell.) Details at San’s blog here.

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Frazz!

My mind is such a jumble right now. Picture a tiny spare room into which you keep shoving old rocking chairs and boxes of books and a pile of ancient coats alongside a bigger pile of plastic and wire hangers and a music stand and a dusty couch and something covered in a tarp that looks vaguely threatening and some scarves and a stack of binders that keep sliding all over, spilling paper this way and that, and some dumbbells and a bunch of puzzle pieces and board game accessories that have come loose from their homes and a few pairs of stinky sneakers and hell, throw in a tuba and a bunch of bananas and maybe a volleyball net. You know. That’s what’s happening in my brain right now. 

It feels full. Not just metaphorically so, but physically. I can feel all those brain furnishings jabbing against the corners of my mind. It may thus come as no surprise that I cannot focus on anything lately. Nothing. I start to do one thing and then another thought intrudes – maybe, “oh! you must write this email before you forget!” – but before I can get through that entire thought, something else has jumped in, waving its arms to be seen, and I can’t remember what I was supposed to be doing in the first, second, or third place. 

I am in full frazz. FULL. FRAZZ.

“What can I do to help?” asked my sweet husband, fresh off call week and just wanting to Not Do Things for awhile. And he CAN help with some things, but only a few right now and a few more but not until the weekend.

“Make a list!” he suggested, which is always smart. Except once I made the list, I kept thinking of more things to ADD to the list. I’ll be (supposedly) doing something, and think of something to add to the list, and then by the time I get TO the list, I’ve forgotten it and ruined my concentration on the thing I was already doing. Plus, the list is a nice handy way to keep everything together, but the items are not at all equivalent, and there are some items that have a bunch of sub-steps to be completed and I didn’t list those out. Should I list those out? The other problem is that, now I’m in List Mode, I’ll think of something beyond the immediate needs bulleted on the list – you know, like Christmas shopping or dealing with the annual grief bomb of the anniversary of my friend’s death or summer camp (which I am ALREADY getting emails about WHY). And I’ll get very stressed out thinking about those not-at-all-priorities-right-now because I know they are lurking in the near distance, waiting for me. I have stopped short of putting them on the list, but they are still there. The list is out of control. Everything is out of control.

The only thing that is getting me to complete ANYTHING is adrenaline and a mortal fear of missing deadlines. This is not a healthy way to operate. 

I have added so many more items to this list since I photographed it. Deeply depressing.

(And again! It is mainly good stuff! I should not be complaining! My list does not include things like “find potable water” or “seek shelter” because my home has been ravaged by a hurricane! Life is good! I am lucky!)

Strategies I am testing out, with little to no success:

• Making a list. This did not cure all my problems in the LEAST, but at least I no longer have to frantically catalog everything I have to do in my mind. 
• Doing ANYTHING ON THE LIST AT ALL. Even if it’s small, even if it’s the lowest priority thing. Let’s get some momentum going. (The momentum is not interested in joining me.)
• Getting extra sleep. I have been heading to bed at 9:30 lately. I do feel rested, I think? Or, as rested as I ever feel?
• Getting up early. I am not good at this at all. I still feel frazzled but also resentful about being awake?
• Doing something that is not on the list at all. Something that is OPPOSITE of the list, like reading or going for a walk or writing a blog post. 
• Procrastinating until the literal last second. 
• Buying things. To be fair, a lot of these things are on the list. But some are not. Like the therapeutic pair of pants I ordered from Loft yesterday. 
• Complaining to my husband. And now to you. 

Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s any actual solution to this current spate of frazz. I just need to grit my teeth and chip away at the list and hope my brain fullness subsides as I complete things. 

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Dinners This Week, Keto Update

I mentioned in my Road Trip! Round Up that I weighed exactly the same amount when I got home as I had when I’d embarked on the trip. Even though I’d gone completely off Keto for the duration of the trip, and even though our dinners consisted of many burgers and beers, and even though I ate many many bags of chips. 

This was so disheartening, Internet. I cannot express how my heart dropped when I saw that number on the scale. I mean, on the one hand, it was pleasant to not have that grit-teethed feeling of needing to start over from scratch. But on the other, more emotional hand, I felt like, “WHAT THE HELL HAVE I BEEN DOING ALL THIS TIME?”

It was already pretty clear that Keto – or my specific brand of low-carb eating – wasn’t working for me anymore. I’d been stalled at the same not-quite-ten-percent-of-my-body-weight weight loss since May, after all. I probably would have done Something about it earlier if we hadn’t been planning this Road Trip. But I have to admit I was hoping that a) things would correct themselves or b) I could buckle down after the Road Trip.

And then when it turned out I didn’t have to be on Keto to maintain my current weight… well, I didn’t get back to it. Instead, I kept eating like I was on a Road Trip. (Plus, I ate ALL the beans. Turns out the food I miss the most when I am doing keto is… beans. Black beans, navy beans, chickpeas. Burritos, tacos, stir fries, soups. ALL THE BEANS.) And now I am back where I was when I started this particular Keto journey in February. UGH UGH UGH. 

I don’t know what to do now. Do I try Keto again? I think if I were really strict with it, it might help. But my husband refuses to follow it strictly, which makes it difficult for me to do so. He is all for doing low carb again, but that wasn’t working for me. I feel like the only two options are 1) Keep going the way I am going, which is unpleasant for many reasons or 2) Start counting calories again, which makes me want to walk into the sea. There are probably other options, but those seem like the most currently workable of them all.

Listen, we all know how FRAUGHT the topic of weight loss is. I don’t have the energy to rehash it here. But I DO want to lose weight. I do. So… I don’t know what I’ll do. We’ll see. That’s my Keto update, I guess: not doing Keto, not sure if I should try it again, not sure what to do instead. (Except stopping eating like I haven’t seen food in months.)

In the meantime, it’s clear that I NEED my Dinners This Week posts. Otherwise I end up staring despondently at my husband every night asking him, “What should I make for dinner?” And then we stare at each other, neither one of us offering any ideas, occasionally lifting our eyebrows hopefully in the other person’s direction, until we turn to stone. 

Plus, groceries are SO out of control expensive right now that I absolutely CANNOT continue doing the thing where I come up with an idea for one single meal and go to the store and get ingredients just for that meal and end up spending $75. That’s not financially responsible. Nor can we eat takeout as much as we are currently doing. It’s not helping anything, weight-wise, plus it no longer feels like a treat, plus ALSO expensive.

Another reason I need to get back to planning is that my in-laws are coming to visit and I expect they will want to eat with us a good number of nights (they are staying in a rental)… and I really need to plan that in advance or my sanity will crawl out of my ears. (My current plan of AHHHHHHH and lots of takeout doesn’t seem reasonable.) Plus, we are having friends over for dinner at some point and I need to plan THAT. (Tacos. There, planned.)

Dinners for the Week of August 1-7

Salmon Cakes with Something Green: I don’t know why, but I’ve had a hankering for salmon cakes lately. My husband is not a salmon fan, but perhaps since it’s cakes and not straight salmon, he will eat them without too much complaint. I’m not sure what to have on the side. Green beans? Let’s say sauteed green beans.

Oven Baked Pork Chops with Broccoli: My husband requested these specifically, so on the plan they go, along with some steamed broccoli. I have some freezer potatoes (more appetizing than I am making them sound) to add if we’re feeling carby.

Chicken and Ginger Stir Fry: Here’s another one for weird cravings – I am really in the mood for a very ginger-y stir fry. Maybe this one would be better. Or this one. What I really want is a stir fry with no sauce (yes, it is me writing this; no, do not call the police) but instead just lots of fresh ginger and maybe some garlic in there. I haven’t found a recipe that meets these standards though, but I will keep looking.

Parmesan Garlic Fish with Something Green: This sounds yummy. Maybe I would try it without the breadcrumbs. And as for a side… sauteed spinach? Or maybe some roasted Brussels sprouts? Carla picked out a Brussels sprout at the grocery store and said she wanted to try one – JUST ONE, she made sure to clarify.

Baked Chicken Breasts with Zucchini: I love Nagi’s oven baked pork chops (and pretty much any of her recipes I’ve tried), so these are bound to be good. And the preparation seems very simple, which is always nice to have in one’s back pocket.

What are you having for dinner this week?

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Visiting My Childhood Home

Remember how I told you that I had the chance to visit my childhood home? We stayed overnight in my hometown on our Road Trip! and got to see my longtime bestie. I was really on the fence about visiting the house – I thought it would be a bad idea.

It was a bad idea.

But my father had contacted the new owner (they stay in touch because my dad still owns a quarter section of land) and asked if we could stop by… and then my dad had shared such detailed instructions for how to get in touch with the new owner that I felt like it was A Done Deal and I couldn’t back out. 

We drove out to the house. It’s in the country and the drive was exactly as I remember it. I’m sure it looked like generic prairie-mixed-with-badlands to my husband and daughter, but to me every curve and hillock still has meaning after all these years. 

Climbing the driveway to the house – it’s a gravel drive that’s nearly a mile long – felt exactly the same. And aside from siding that was being repaired on the face of the house, the building looked just the same. The new owner had installed a fence that caused a little tear in the fabric of my memory, but it was easy to overlook. There was a new pile of construction materials near the barn, which was jolting – but I’d been warned to expect that, which helped a teeny bit.

Then we got to the other side of the house. The old house was dark grey siding with white trim. The new owner was in the process of replacing the siding with brick. The enormous juniper hedge outside the dining room was gone. So were the steps leading up to the front door. There was a new fence adjacent to the garage, containing an unfamiliar black dog. 

I went up to the door, feeling sick to my stomach. I knocked and waited and knocked again. No answer, and with relief, I turned back to my family who were still in the car. But they were gesturing at me, and I turned again to face the house and a stranger was opening the door. 

I told him who I was – he seemed slightly surprised, even though my dad had made it sound like he was expecting us – and he opened the door so we could come in. 

My dad had mentioned that the new owner is a contractor, and that he is doing some remodeling to the house. But I was not prepared for the fact that he had gutted it. Instead of entering into a high-ceilinged hallway, with the sunken Special Occasions Living Room to the right and the stairs to the left and the powder room ahead and to the left and the door to the family room straight ahead, with the balcony that connected the bedrooms overhead, it was now one enormous room. The stairs that led to what was my parents’ room remained. He had ripped out the two-sided fireplace that connected the family and living rooms and ripped out the balcony. The entire east wall of the new great room was a massive brick fireplace, with a huge wall of firewood lined up beside it. 

There was no longer a Special Occasions Living Room, nor a dining room. The kitchen had been expanded into what was once the dining room. A new staircase that must have led to what used to be my bedroom climbed up the far west wall. 

Carla was delighted by three enormous dogs that were So Excited to have company, and I am glad she was distracted because I just stared and stared, trying to express approval and admiration to the new owner who was saying words whose meaning never reached my ears. 

The worst thing, maybe, was that some of it was still there. The pantry. The porch. The windows overlooking the prairie, with the same view I grew up looking at, only it had been transported into someone else’s home. It was like being in a nightmare, where everyday things are stretched and misplaced in a way that feels unsettling and grotesque. 

My dad had said that the new owner wanted to give us a tour, but he did not offer, and I am so glad. I could not get out of there fast enough. I hope I stayed there for enough time that he didn’t feel miffed, that I made the appropriate comments in the appropriate tones so that he didn’t feel affronted. And don’t get me wrong – the work he’d done was lovely. I am sure, when it’s finished, it will be spectacular and open and cozy and warm. But it wasn’t my house. It isn’t my house, of course. It hasn’t been my house for twenty years. And now someone else owns it, someone else lives there. Of course he would want to put his own stamp on it, reshape it into his ideal of a home, his ideal that has no resemblance at all to the beloved home of my childhood that my parents built and painted with their own hands. 

I managed to drag Carla away from the dogs – of course she didn’t want to go – and beg off on the owner’s suggestion that we go out to the barn. Luckily, the weather was rotten, but there was no way I was going out there to see what stranger animals had made themselves at home in the cozy little stalls where my barn cats had kittens and I brushed my horse. 

I made it into the car before I burst into tears, and Carla and my husband were shocked, I think. I hope that means I did a good job of faking it. I tried to find the right words for what I was feeling and failed. Finally, I told them that it was a mix of nostalgia and sadness that a time of my life is gone and I can’t get it back. 

I wonder if being an adult has something to do with it, being so far removed now from when I lived in that house, from when I was a child. I know The World was far from perfect and stable back then – there was the AIDS epidemic and Operation Desert Storm and Columbine and so many many other things that were awful and terrifying and completely escaped my privileged child radar. But when I lived in that house, my parents were the ones in charge, they were the ones who knew what was going on, who decided what to share with me and my brother and how to couch it. Now, my husband and I are the ones who have to navigate current events that repel and horrify, we are the ones who have to plan for a future that seems uncertain in so many ways, we are the ones who have to protect and guide and prepare our child to make her way in a world that often feels fraught and perilous. My childhood wasn’t perfect – but it feels perfect, from this vantage point. Perfect and sheltered and safe. Maybe my subconscious thinks/hopes that, if my childhood home is preserved as it once was, the world or at least my perception of it could be preserved as well. I am lucky that my memories are a safe harbor, that I can retreat into the happiness of the past when the present gets too unsettling to bear. But that time, in reality, does not exist. And now, no longer does the place in which those happy years occurred.

I shouldn’t have gone. I shouldn’t have gone. And it’s so stupid to be sitting here crying, again, over a house and an era that exist shiny and whole in my memories, where they are both probably brighter and bigger and more beautiful than they ever were in reality. I don’t mean to say that I always have such a dark view of things. I do believe in beauty and goodness and hope. I don’t mean to be so melodramatic over such a small, insignificant change. It was just a house. I know it’s just a house. But seeing my past like that. Windblown and ruined and forever changed. It felt bigger.

Carla was quiet and thoughtful as we were driving back to town, past the shelter belt whose trees were double or even triple the size they’d been twelve years ago, through the wind that whipped around us more violently than it ever used to, alongside the river that was more full and more turbulent than the river of my childhood.  She said, “Mommy, I think you are past-sick. Like homesick, but for the past.” And I think she is exactly right.

A view of the house, from very very far away.

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Complaints, Frets, and Small Annoyances

I woke up at 4:00 am with a splitting headache and then couldn’t fall back to sleep. So I am feeling a bit fretful and complainy this morning. 

I don’t want Carla to get Covid. I have been doing my very best at isolating, but it is slightly tricky with my husband being back at work and me, you know, having to feed and care for my child. I wear a mask any time I venture out of my bedroom. I spend as little time in the “main house” as possible. Carla cries at bedtime because I can’t hug and kiss her goodnight. We have a little stash of rapid tests and have been making good use of them, and Carla and I went to the pharmacy the other day to get PCR tests. (That was nerve-wracking – we both wore masks AND I kept all the car windows wide open the whole time.) (My husband calmly reminds me that we were all just in a car/hotel room together, windows closed and maskless, for fifteen days.) Carla’s PCR test was negative, mine was not. I don’t know how I could manage to be the only one to get Covid, but if that’s how it works out, I will be very glad. Carla did just get her booster before we left, so I’m hoping she was at Peak Immunity when she was exposed to me and my germs. 

Here’s what I want to know about isolating in a home you share with others. How does it WORK? My bedroom is not magically on some alternate air circulation system. Every time I open the door, surely germs are escaping into the rest of the house. My mask isn’t trapping 100% of all the little Covid particles. HOW can we avoid getting Carla sick? It seems impossible. And yet, some people manage? I think? 

The next two bullets are Deeply Boring and yet I cannot bring myself to delete them.

I have been trying to do a little work from my bedroom. This means phone calls, my least favorite task of all. Do you recall the bank that charges us an annual “inactive” fee for an account whose sole purpose is sit there as collateral until we pay off a loan? (All the mind-numbing details are here.) After three years of arguing with people who cannot grasp simple concepts who work there, we sailed through 2020 AND 2021 without a late fee, and I was so delighted! They’d finally made a note on my account that there was no reason for me to make a deposit in an account that I cannot access, and had stopped charging me! You can sense what’s coming next, right? My husband alerted me this past May that we had now been charged a total of $12.00 in inactive fees. (Which means they DID charge us in 2021; we just didn’t notice.) Perhaps the bank had waived the fee in 2020 because of The State of Things. And apparently we simply did not notice when we began to lose $2.00 a month from the account. Whoops. As I have mentioned a billion times, normally I HATE making phone calls. But this one particular issue makes me practically giddy with wanting to tell someone how ASININE and RIDICULOUS it is. I was Let Me Talk to a Manager level irritated, after FIVE YEARS (minus the 2020 exception) of this nonsense. So back in May I called the bank and gave the lucky person who answered my spiel about how we should not be charged an inactive fee because the purpose of the account is to remain inactive. Unlike all the other brainless fools everyone else I’ve spoken to at the bank, she IMMEDIATELY understood that it was ridiculous to expect me to add even a single dollar to an account that I cannot touch. Not just ridiculous, but virtually impossible, considering that I don’t have checks or a debit card for that account, nor do I have digital access to the account, nor do I live within a 20 minutes’ drive of the bank. The account is under the control of the bank until we pay off the loan. The woman I spoke to Got It. Like, without my having to do anything but sketch out the basic issue, she said incredulously, “Well that’s ridiculous. Of course you wouldn’t want to add funds to an account you can’t touch! There’s no reason you should be paying an inactive fee on an account that’s meant to be inactive!” It took the bluster out of my Let Me Talk to a Manager sails, but it was SO mollifying to be understood. She said that she would talk with the bank supervisor and get the charge reversed AND she would have them make a note on our file. I was very pleased with the interaction. (Usually, the person I speak to says that ALL we have to do is deposit something in the account! It can be as little as a dollar! Once a year! And there are branches in X and Y and Z cities! Which, yes, I get that this sounds like a small amount of time and money and a very minimal hassle, but THE PRINCIPLE.) You know, perhaps, where this is heading. We came home to another statement which, alongside the credit of the $12, included a debit of $2 for a new inactive fee. ENDLESS SCREAMING.

Yes, I have a second bullet point about the banking thing. This morning, I called the bank and asked specifically to speak to the person I’d spoken to in May. Her name was similar to a fairly common name, but one syllable was different – like “Carlotte” instead of “Charlotte” or “Car-ree” instead of “Carrie” or “Samintha” instead of “Samantha.” I love her with my whole heart. She made things happen AND fully grasped why this situation is so stupid/frustrating. The person I spoke to put me on hold and then said that Samintha was not available but he would connect me to customer service. Sad, but okay. Customer Service means, as I discovered, the customer service line for the entire national banking system, when really I wanted to talk to someone (Samintha, sob!) in my local branch. Oh well. The customer service agent was very nice. His name was Tryin’ with a B. I explained to him that this is an annual problem, and gave him the quick and dirty details, and then he explained to me what was happening. “Oh, I think what the issue is, is that you have a LOAN, and this is a CHECKING ACCOUNT (it’s not, actually – it’s a money market account that we cannot access), and since you haven’t made any deposits or withdrawals, they are charging you an inactive fee.” Yes, thank you for repeating the exact same thing I just told you. And, nice as Tryin’ was, he couldn’t DO anything about it because the only person who can DO anything about it is the manager of my local branch. Tryin’ promised me he would call me back but I’m not holding my breath. I think I will see if I can get a hold of Samintha tomorrow.

I get canker sores about once a month and they are GOING WILD right now. I think this is a hormonal thing, but maybe it is a Covid thing? Who knows. Seems like EVERYTHING could be a Covid thing. And yes, canker sores are different from cold sores. They are basically little ulcers that occur inside the mouth, usually on the cheeks or under the tongue. Sometimes I get them on my gums, too. They are AWFUL. I have a massive one under my tongue and one on the very back part of my tongue right where my tongue brushes up against my bottom molars. 

The news is so enduringly turbulent. I just typed and erased a 634 word diatribe about one of the various Hot Button Issues that is driving me mad/making me worry that I have made a terrible mistake bringing a child into this fraught world. But I don’t like to write about Hot Button Issues on this blog, so I deleted it. (If I want to torment myself gnash my teeth and rend my garments over The State of Things catch up on world events, I will look at the news or go on Twitter.) Not that I have anything new or groundbreaking or interesting to say anyway; just vents/frets/threats of walking into the sea. There are SO MANY things going on and I have Feelings about many of them and yet I feel like it is utterly pointless to talk about them. The people I might discuss them with either disagree with me strenuously, which means voicing my own thoughts would lead to the type of confrontational encounter I HATE, and not to mention there’s no way I can convince anyone to feel differently from how they do; I don’t know enough of the background and facts, nor am I well-spoken enough to craft a convincing argument… or they already agree with me, and discussing things will just drive us each deeper into the pits of despair/rage we are already existing in.

I have eaten the last of the Reese’s peanut butter eggs.

My father (a physician for 40+ years) (I don’t know why I feel like I have to make sure you know he’s qualified to give advice) suggested that I make sure Carla is getting enough calcium. This is an ongoing concern, but one I haven’t properly fretted about recently, so I’m in Full Fret Mode right now. Apparently, she needs 1,300 mg of calcium per day – or four servings. She doesn’t get enough calcium. She refuses to drink milk – yes, even chocolate milk. She eats a bunch of cheese, and there is 200 mg of calcium per ounce of block cheddar or per 1/4 cup of shredded cheddar, so that helps, but it’s not enough. She only eats yogurt occasionally. She doesn’t even really like ice cream (and has never liked milkshakes) (she IS related to both me and my ice cream loving husband, I assure you). She eats cream cheese – it’s one of her non-pork camp foods this summer – but, despite having both “cream” and “cheese” right there in the name, there is only 26 mg of calcium per two tablespoons of cream cheese. (And NONE in the whipped cream cheese!) My mom and I walked through a whole list of foods that contain calcium and of that list Carla eats two things with moderate consistency: chickpeas and cheese. And sometimes yogurt. Very rarely, almonds. My mom was being really creative, too. What about calcium fortified orange juice? What about almond milk and almond butter? Carla does not drink juice and she will not touch almond milk with a ten-foot pole. I have no idea if I could get her to eat almond butter but my confidence level is low. Some people have suggested Ensure, but my guess is that if she refuses milk/juice/milkshakes, she will refuse Ensure as well. My current plan is try to coax her into drinking a smoothie every day. I can pack it with yogurt, almond milk, AND calcium fortified orange juice. She likes smoothies. We used to drink a mango smoothie together every week on the drive to ballet practice. But I am not sure if I can get her drink one every single day. My father thinks we should start giving her Tums. (We cannot do the Viactiv chocolate calcium chews.) Probably we will have to use a multi-pronged approach, with smoothies on one prong and roasted chickpeas and plenty of cheese on another prong and Tums on another prong. If you have any magical calcium ideas, I will prong them right up. 

Our refrigerator is unplugged and empty right now. This is something we’ve been planning to do, for awhile, and it’s not like I’m making big elaborate dinners at the moment, so it seems like a good time. We bought the fridge in 2011. It has some real advantages, like that it is beautiful and also it holds a TON of food. But it’s been plagued with issues almost from the beginning. To name a few: the door closing mechanism fails on a regular basis (I have learned how to source the replacement part and repair it myself), the ice maker broke and had to be repaired, the water dispenser pressure dropped off precipitously for no discernible (or fixable) reason, the bottom of the fridge fills with water that then turns to ice, the ice maker and dispenser chute are often coated with a slick black mold, the electronic panel frequently disconnects from the temperature readout and makes an incessant tinkling noise. ET CETERA. The most recent repairman I had in the house informed me that the ice problem was A Known Issue with this brand of fridge (GE/Samsung) and that it is unfixable. (He also said that if he’d known in advance this was the fridge we had, he wouldn’t have come out because he knows it is unfixable and wouldn’t want me to have to pay the service fee his company charges for sending someone to our house; he declined to charge me the service fee.) He suggested that best thing we can do is unplug it for three days, wait for the internal mechanisms to thaw, and then plug it back in and hope it works for about six months before we have to do it again. So that is what we are doing: we are thawing out the fridge in hopes that it will magically reset. We are lucky enough to have a second (though much smaller) fridge in the basement, so I have relocated the foods we cannot live without/cannot bear to toss. It is a jumbled mess down there, but at least it functions. However, now I have to run downstairs for every little thing and it’s a pain. (My husband keeps asking me, “Are you breathing heavily because you just went down two flights of stairs to the basement to get a plum and then walked back up two flights of stairs to the bedroom or because you have Covid?”) My father thinks, in a non-pressurey way, that we should just replace the damn fridge already. But I am one of those people who wants a key appliance to LOOK a certain way, and I have grown accustomed to how spacious it is. And have you SEEN how expensive refrigerators are?!?! I am not in the mood to spend one-, two- or three-THOUSAND dollars when a refrigerator should be a ONE-TIME purchase. Of course maybe we will plug the fridge back in and it will refuse to work and we will have to buy one anyway. Fun times! 

Speaking of fun times, summer feels like its coming to a close. I feel like there was so much anticipation about the summer, and our Road Trip!, and now the Road Trip! is over and Carla only has two weeks left of camp and then school will start before we know it and then it’s practically Thanksgiving, which might as well be Christmas and then a WHOLE YEAR will have passed.

A final Covid fret (for today, at least): My husband and Carla are following all the Covid protocols set forth by the CDC, my husband’s workplace, and Carla’s camp… but I am still fretting. I am being Very Strident about Carla wearing her mask, and her camp is mainly outdoors, and they only admitted children who were fully vaccinated, but ACK. I am fretting that Carla (despite having no symptoms and still testing negative on a rapid test) will somehow spread this stupid disease to others. (Also, I am very grateful for my little stockpile of rapid tests.) I hate being contagious. It is STUPID and I HATE IT. Well. As of tomorrow, according to the CDC, I am okay to leave isolation and rejoin the public, as long as I wear a mask. I haven’t taken a rapid test since the one that read positive, so I don’t know that I am negative yet, and that seems Kind Of Important, even though no one else (CDC, I am glaring in your direction) seems to agree. Anyway: I don’t have anywhere I plan to go, but the reasons that I COULD are positive: I have no fever (I don’t think I ever did) and my symptoms are improving. Except for the crankiness. That has, if anything, increased.

What are you fretting about? What’s making you cranky? Any complaints to share?

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Souvenir

Well, we are back from our Road Trip!, which was fabulous. Ten days of driving that paused for a five-day stopover with my parents in the middle. My husband planned the trip in such a way that we didn’t get tired of being in the car until the very end. And then we arrived home, and it was wonderful to be back in our own beds, with a weekend to recover before getting back to normal.

And then I woke up with cold symptoms and rapid tests confirmed that I have Covid. The worst souvenir. 

So far, I am feeling crummy. But mainly CRANKY. 

Cranky at myself. I always anticipated getting Covid at some point; it’s long seemed inevitable. I thought that when I finally got it, I would feel resignation mixed with relief. But I don’t. I am MAD. I got Covid because I took unnecessary risks, and that’s just a fact. Did I expect that * I * was somehow invincible? That Covid would look at the fact that I’ve been pretty measured and cautious over the past two-ish years and say, “Let’s skip her”? That residents of the rural western United States are all roaming around unmasked because Covid doesn’t exist in those areas? Apparently I did expect those things because we relaxed our typical restrictions on our trip and I got Covid. We ate out in restaurants A LOT. We went into museums and gas stations and gift shops and sometimes we just left our masks in the car. We attended events with lots of other people and pretended that the outdoor venues would protect us. I was uncareful and I KNEW I wasn’t being careful and I got Covid. So I feel cranky and mad and a little ashamed and my head feels like a stress ball that’s being squeezed so intensely you can see the little beads inside it through the membrane. PLUS I somehow forgot to do the Wordle yesterday and it RESET my winning streak.

For posterity’s sake, my symptoms: It started with a scratchy throat. So lightly scratchy that it was easy enough to write it off as irritation from staying in so many hotels (I was getting irritated with being on the road, those last couple of days; why not my throat, too?), or the change in atmosphere/climate as we drove eastward toward home. Then a day of an even sorer throat, with an irresistible tickle that could only be soothed by chain-lozenging menthol cough drops. Then a day where the throat felt better and the cough was less persistent. Now, Day 4, I am in the Head in a Vise stage. I am isolating in my bedroom, which fortunately has its own bathroom, but I am resentful and grumpy and have to get up to staunch my runny nose every few minutes. 

Covid. Ugh.

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Podiatry Talk

In highly exciting news, I have recently had occasion to visit a podiatrist for the first time. 

Relatedly, I want to talk about my foot. The thought of doing so bores me almost to tears, so I feel deep empathy for YOU, whose foot it is not. The thing is, it has been causing me enormous grief for months now and I better just talk about it and get it over with. 

Sometime in December of 2021, I started having heel pain when I woke up. It would be worst when I first got out of bed, then would gradually subside throughout the day. My runner friend told me it sounded like plantar fasciitis, which is a term with vowels that look incorrect even when I know they’re in the right places. I looked up plantar fasciitis and found some stretching exercises to do; I did them; they seemed to work. 

But then after maybe a week or so, the exercises stopped being effective. And the pain got worse and worse, so that any time I sat down (and as a person who writes for most of the day, I sit a LOT) and then tried to stand, I would hobble around with serious pain. It started waking me up in the night. It started affecting my ability to drive (I would get sharp shooting pains in my arch when I pushed on the gas or the brake). It made it difficult/painful for me to do my preferred type of exercise (walking). 

I went to a podiatrist, who seems very knowledgeable and who came highly recommended. But it seemed to me that the podiatrist relies a little too heavily on ME and not heavily enough on measurable facts. I suppose that’s how most of medicine is, isn’t it. If I say I have sinus pain and I’m miserable, and the doctor presses on my forehead and under my cheekbones and asks if it hurts, she has to take my word for it that it does. A gastroenterologist has to rely on your report of stomach/intestinal pain. But I hate that. I do. I want to be able to go to a doctor and say, “I am in pain” and for them to be able to VERIFY that, scientifically. I want them to have calipers that measure the pain so they can nod and say, “Yes, I see, this is clearly a Level 5 pain.” rather than making me the sole reporter of painfulness. For one thing, I feel like I have a low threshold for pain, so that what might be excruciating for me would be just a little twinge for you. And I don’t want to overreact to pain, or come across in any way like I am overexaggerating. I want it to be quantifiable. It’s NOT, but oh well. 

The podiatrist did press on my foot to see if I reacted, which I did. And he used an ultrasound machine to check… something. I’m not sure, but he did measure something and record those measurements. (He also took an X-ray, to ensure I didn’t have any fractures or cancer.) (Brief digression: I have been having pain in both feet, but one is much more severe than the other. When I checked in, I explained this. The receptionist said she would send me for an X-ray right away, and did I want X-rays of both feet or one? Um. I don’t know? I feel like that is not the kind of decision I, the non-doctor, am qualified to make? I did say that I would do whatever the doctor recommended, and the receptionist said, “It’s really up to you.” So I told her we could focus on just the one because the pain in the other foot is – currently – livable. But then the whole time I was getting my foot X-rayed I was feeling panicky that I had made the wrong choice, and what if I needed to come BACK in a few months and do it all again, and pay extra to get the other foot X-rayed when I could have gotten it all done at once? I had to use some coping thoughts like, “less radiation NOW is better, when I may not ever need a X-ray for the other foot.” And, “I made the best choice I could in the moment, and there is nothing I can do now.” And, “maybe it would end up costing the same anyway; I don’t know if they charge per foot or per visit, so who knows.” And, “I am fortunate to have health insurance and a health savings account, and this is what those things are for.” I had a good hearty wait before the X-ray technician was ready for me, so I got a chance to repeat these coping thoughts several times. (And panickedly wonder whether I could ask the X-ray tech to do both feet, or ask if I could call up to the doctor and alter the order.) It turned out okay, and if I need another X-ray of the other foot at some time in the future, so be it. But I really wish that the DOCTOR would have said, “Well, I really think that we should focus on the one foot that’s causing you the most trouble.” Or “Well, this thing can develop quickly so if you are having even a little trouble, let’s treat the other foot too.”) 

This is a very complainy post about my podiatrist, when really he seemed very nice. I guess I just get very anxious about doctors’ visits. I don’t want to waste the doctor’s time, I don’t want to overestimate the problem, or make A Big Deal when it’s not a big deal, I don’t want to spend a lot of health savings account money when I could really just be at home icing my foot, you know? 

Anyway. After the podiatrist evaluated my foot, he gave me a little mini lecture about what plantar fasciitis is, using a plaster foot as a visual aid, and I thought it was very useful and interesting and then promptly forgot everything he told me. He then gave me a splint to wear on my foot while sleeping (“gave” – it cost $75; it is possible I could have bought one myself elsewhere for much cheaper, but I did not) and a prescription for a steroid/anti-inflammatory drug, and scheduled an appointment for me to come back in just over a week. 

The first day of the steroid, I had excruciating bone pain in ALL my bones. That was deeply unpleasant. But on days two and three, the bone pain had subsided and I had almost NO PAIN in my afflicted foot. It was MIRACULOUS. Then, as I “stepped down” the dosage of the steroid over the next week, the pain returned. It was dispiriting, to say the least.

Not to mention that the splint for my foot is not… super. It wraps around the ball of my foot and then has a stiff arm that goes up the outside of my shin, and tightens around my calf. Kind of like a shin guard, only a bit more flexible. It keeps my foot in a slightly flexed position, which is not uncomfortable. The edges of the Velcro closure scratch my toes though, and I find it very difficult to sleep with the thing on my leg. Plus, I absolutely cannot walk on it, so I have to remove the whole splint every time I get up to go to the bathroom which is at least twice per night. (Each time, I try to undo the Velcro as quickly as possible, so that I don’t wake my husband. I feel like the sound of Velcro reluctantly parting from itself would be a highly unpleasant way to wake up in the middle of the night.)

When I went back to the podiatrist, the medical assistant asked me how things had gone, and I told her: my foot was definitely better than it was before, but it was not great. She said, “What percentage has your pain been reduced?”

What? Ugh. While I was just whining a few paragraphs ago about wanting quantitative measurements of medical issues, I do not want to be the one who provides them. I am at a loss for how to evaluate things like this. If you ask me to rate my pain on a scale of 1 to 10, I usually have NO IDEA how to do that. Like, I have in my head the worst pain I have ever experienced, so I assign that a 10. But then… it’s very difficult to know where other things fall. Primarily because pain is so immediate, and because the perception of pain fades with time. Right now, it HURTS, and it’s bearable or not.

Anyway, I told her that maybe the pain was 20% better – which was a wild guess on my part – and she said, Wow, okay, that’s not good. If you had said it was a 70% improvement, maybe we could give you another round of the steroid, but the next step is usually an injection. 

Now, I had heard about the injection before I ever made my first appointment with the podiatrist. The person who recommended him had had an injection for my exact problem, and it seemed like that was the treatment, so the steroid/splint treatment I received was a surprise to me. I’d been prepared from the get go for an injection, and the podiatrist had mentioned at my first appointment that if the steroid/splint didn’t work, I would probably need an injection. So I was anticipating an injection. 

The medical assistant left and when the doctor came in, he said, “I hear you were begging for the injection.” Which made my eyes go all wide until I realized he was joking. THEN he told me that a lot of people say the injection is the worst pain they have ever had; that women who have delivered multiple children say it’s much worse than childbirth. (Not the most reassuring way to begin the injection discussion, Doc!) But, he went on, he has never had any patient say that to HIM. HIS injections are painless, and he uses a specific method that makes them so.  

So now I had two things to hold in my head: 1. That some people find this injection to be excruciating and 2. That I could not in any way tell this guy if it WAS, because he would not believe me. 

He put up a little curtain, separating my eyes from from my foot, which is a weird way to phrase that but I am leaving it, and sprayed my foot with what he called a “cold spray.” THAT was pretty uncomfortable, but bearable. And then he started the injection, which took several minutes and was also fairly uncomfortable but bearable. I had to do some deep breathing, and had to clutch my arms across my chest quite tightly to get through it, and there was some tear-prickling at my eyes, but no actual tears. (At one point, he asked if I was doing Lamaze breathing back there, which made me feel quite embarrassed. He went on to say if I left with a baby, we’d each have a lot of explaining to do, har har har, and as I mulled THAT ONE over for awhile, while trying not to breathe so audibly, I came to the conclusion that I probably wasn’t breathing THAT hard, and that instead the Lamaze thing was probably a bit he does for lots of his patients.) (I feel as though, in describing this to you, I am describing this doctor quite unfavorably. I definitely do NOT jive with his sense of humor, although I can see how many patients would find him hilarious and delightful. But I did feel that he was a good listener, and that he cared that I was in pain, and that he wasn’t judging my particular level of pain tolerance, and that he was determined to resolve the problem. AND that he was an experienced and knowledgeable practitioner.)

Anyway. The injection was FAR from the most painful thing I’ve endured. Dental procedures are much, much worse. But afterward, my foot was sore and I kept getting these little shooting pains in my heel and walking was about as uncomfortable as it had been before I saw the podiatrist. 

The injection did HELP, for a while. The next day, my foot felt significantly better. But I am nearly a week out from the first injection and I am back to hobbling around when I wake up/stand up after sitting for awhile. 

And yes, I said “first injection” because the podiatrist mentioned that, for a LOT of people, one injection resolves the issue completely. But for some people, it doesn’t. And that we needed to resign ourselves (he didn’t say resign; I think he said “commit.” Resign feels more accurate for me, though.) to THREE injections before we pursued a different path. He didn’t even mention what the next path would be, so I’m trying to borrow some of his confidence that the second or, gulp, third injection will do the trick. I am NOT looking forward to another injection. Last time, I had the added anxiety of not knowing what to expect. But now I have a different type of anxiety because I DO know. And it’s hard to go into something, knowing it will result in pain. 

This feels like the kind of thing I had better get used to, as I age. More and more parts of me are going to fail. More and more parts of my body are going to experience pain. I am not pleased about it, but I recognize that this is just A Part of Aging. And I’m really very lucky. I can still walk. I can still exercise, even if doing so is slower and causes residual pain. I can afford to treat it. Hopefully my marriage can withstand my ongoing crankiness/hobbling. 

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