A Very Silly Thing I Am Angsting Over

Through a combination of targeted approaches over the past six months, I feel like I have effectively reduced my overall anxiety level. I notice some anxieties no longer really bother me at all – they only linger in expectation form, like a phantom anxiety that I expect to bubble up but never does. (Perhaps this is a brand NEW anxiety, although it doesn’t ACT like anxiety.) 

Other anxieties remain. I think it is impossible to live a life 100% free from anxiety; even the most laid-back people in my life, after all, have their Things. But sometimes the things I stress about are so SILLY, worrying about them seems completely inexplicable… and yet I cannot stop bumping up against them, like a ring I twist unconsciously on my finger or a mosquito bite I can’t help but scratch. 

I am going to share the current mosquito bite with you, in hopes that a) putting it into words acts as a sort of soothing salve and b) I am not the only person who angsts over things that are ridiculous yet nonetheless persistently irritating. Please. Please. Tell me all the ridiculous things that keep you awake at night.

A bunch of my loved ones are gathering to celebrate A Momentous Occasion and I cannot join them. Out of some sort of mishmash of FOMO and Wanting To Show I Care, I suggested to the host that maybe I could supply breakfast for one morning when everyone is together. 

The host responded with positivity and gratitude. Yes, my overture would be welcome and appreciated.

Almost immediately, I regretted giving in to this generous impulse. Because I am NOT GOOD AT THIS KIND OF THING. This is a task that requires phone calls and guessing what other people might want in terms of quantity and flavor. This is a task that requires, possibly, using DoorDash or UberEats or one of the many food delivery services I have never once used in my life. This is a task that requires evaluating, based on online information, whether a caterer/restaurant/café is going to provide good food and good value. 

The Occasion is taking place in a state I have never visited. Everyone is staying in an Air BnB together. It seemed, in my head, like it would be fairly easy to order donuts or bagels or breakfast sandwiches for everyone to be delivered to the house. But I was wrong! 

My first thought was to use Goldbelly to order something. I’ve used Goldbelly for various food gifts in the past, and it always seems to work out. (Unless my parents and sibling are shielding me from the awful truth…) But a) I couldn’t find what I wanted for under $250, which was more than I intended to spend, and b) my husband thought I was a huge weirdo for choosing that option when I could just order from someplace local. 

Oh. Okay. Right. 

So I researched some local places. Is it reasonable to put all my faith in online reviews and personal reaction to company websites???? Reasonable or not, that is where I put my faith. 

The first place I called took a message and never returned my call. When I called back, they said they were in the middle of a busy period and could I call back later. The second place I called rang and rang and rang. The third place I called was an on-site caterer, and they apparently only cater to their specific site. The first place, which I called a third time, once again took my information and never called me back. 

I decided I would order from Panera, which has a simple online order form and would deliver the food for me. And also, Panera isn’t, like, special or anything, but it’s decent. However, I mentioned this plan to someone whose opinion I trust. The response was an instantaneous and very firm, “Don’t do that,” and a quick google search to locate a fourth place (well, fifth, if you count Panera, which I am not counting so I’m not sure why I’m typing this parenthetical) for me to call. 

If I could have had this friend call the fourth place for me and place the order, I would have. I was Done, Dee Oh En Ee, with this task, except I wasn’t because the only thing worse than calling yet another breakfast place was telling the host I was reneging on my offer. Don’t think I didn’t strongly consider it. 

The fourth place answered the phone! They could put together a breakfast that sounded good! And they could deliver! They quoted me a price, although they “didn’t have the price sheet in front of them, so they were just estimating” and I said let’s do this. 

I emailed the host of The Occasion and let her know what I was planning, and confirmed the correct date and time and location. She responded with a thumbs up. (Not a literal or emojical thumbs-up, but with an affirmation that I was doing something that worked with her plans.)  

It seems to me that Other People have no problem with tasks like this. Either they would call Panera from the get-go, or they would quickly and easily find the exact perfect place to order breakfast from and order breakfast from that place, or they would tell the host “sorry, it’s not working out, can I contribute another way,” or they wouldn’t offer to provide breakfast in the first place, like a chump. So part of the anxiety stems from feeling like I am making a big messy ordeal out of something that should be SIMPLE and STRAIGHTFORWARD. And the other part of the anxiety stems from fear that I am going to fuck it up somehow. 

Today, the fourth place called me and took my credit card information. The price they charged me was quite a bit higher than the quote, but at that point, what could I do? I was already locked in. The date of The Occasion is too near to go back to the drawing board, and I am too worn out from calling all these places and thinking about this for WEEKS to contemplate doing anything else. 

And now I am waiting, very anxiously, hoping that the delivery goes as planned, and the food I ordered is good, and that I ordered ENOUGH FOOD, I am not even going to TELL YOU how much I ordered or for how many people because I am so stressed about it and so worried you will say OMG SUZANNE THAT IS WAY TOO MUCH/TOO LITTLE FOOD.

I even texted a family member who will be in attendance at this Occasion, and let her know that I’d placed the order and it was all set to be delivered at a specific time and directed to the host… even though this family member did not ask for this information, or volunteer to help in any way, and I do not want to make her feel like it’s now, somehow, HER responsibility. 

Also: let me be clear. I fully realize this is not about me. The Occasion is… A Momentous Occasion for my loved one, and there is a whole big to-do going on that has nothing to do with my measly breakfast contribution, and a crappy breakfast is not going to make or break an entire long weekend of celebrating. I GET THIS. My brain understands. But my body is not on board! It is all riled up. The My Breakfast Contribution aspect of The Occasion is all I can think about! What if the food is terrible? What if it feeds only half of the guests? What if everyone gets food poisoning?! (Food poisoning could break a weekend, I suppose.) Why am I worrying about such a small slice of the overall pie of The Occasion? WHY?????? Whatever it is, it will be a blip at most. (Unless food poisoning.) (Please, God, let there be no food poisoning.)

My husband says, “It’s the thought that counts.” And. Well. Sort of? But also… I don’t want to be The Person Who Sent Shitty Breakfast (or diarrhea, which is an entirely different kind of shitty breakfast).

I should have just kept my dumb mouth shut! I should never have offered to do anything! I should have simply offered to send cash to help fund An Event! 

This is the kind of thing that is itching and ITCHING and I cannot scratch it. I want to moan about it to my husband. I want to text about it to my friends. I want to call the host of The Occasion and triple check that I got all the details right and get her to tell me that it won’t even matter if it’s crap because everyone will be drunk on mimosas, or have her tell me that a third of the guests suddenly can’t make it, or have her assure me that there’s tons of other food in the house just in case I didn’t order the right amount (HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT AMOUNT TO ORDER OMG). I want to call my family member who will be on site and ask her to text me photos. I want to FLY TO THE STATE AND BE AT THE OCCASION AND HANDLE THE WHOLE THING IN PERSON OMG.

At least The Occasion will be over soon and I will no longer be troubled by the possibilities; I will know the outcome (because you know I am going to pester my family member until I get a report), and hopefully the reaction will fall somewhere in the range of “meh, that was okay” to “well, that was a pleasant little breakfast spread!” 

At the very least, I hope no one thinks, “Wow, we should have just gone to Panera.”

Read Full Post »

Worry Hamsters, Flayed Face Syndrome, and Melodramatic Petunias

My usual methods for lulling the worry hamsters to sleep are not working. 

• I have tried making lists: seems to awaken additional worry hamsters, plus I keep forgetting about the lists I’ve already made and making new ones.
• I have tried long solitary walks: more time for thinking and worrying!
• I have tried distraction via TV, book, and endless scrolling of the internet: these work with varying degrees of success, but leave me feeling yucky.
• I have tried comfort eating: see above re yucky. 
• I have tried retail therapy, which is certainly fun. (By the way, Stitch Fix is KILLING it right now. I have liked nearly every single item they have sent me recently and I keep clicking, “yes, send me a new fix!” as soon as I pay for whatever I just bought.) I have a bunch of new clothes, including several new dresses and a very long skirt I love but have yet to wear. I dislike how people say “you’re so dressed up!” when I wear a sundress. Also, is age 42 too old to wear a shirt that might once in a while show a small sliver of your stomach? Kae influencered me to buy this shirt, but I have a very long torso and so the shirt doesn’t go quite to the top of my high-waisted jeans. My daughter and, I’m sure, my mother would say an emphatic YES, 42 is too old, or more particularly, I am too old (my husband’s take: “just don’t raise your arms”), but I have a friend who is in her later 40s who says WEAR IT and I’ve already taken off the tags and purchased a second shirt in a different color so I guess I’m a belly-shirt wearing person now. My mom and my daughter can go shake their heads sadly about me in another room. I did, however, return the dress to which my husband’s response was *a very tender and carefully worded version of* “I think you might be in an age range where a dress this short no longer looks appropriate.” But I didn’t return it because of that; I returned it because I hate my knees. And this dress – well, you know how some dresses are designed to showcase your décolletage or your back or whatever? This dress was designed to showcase your knees. And my knees get me around and do a great job of getting me up stairs but they are not show-worthy knees, you know? So I returned the dress, which was otherwise adorable and extremely comfortable.
• Oh right, I was listing things that I have tried to help prevent all the endless anxieties that keep scurrying around my brain.
• I have tried complaining to my husband, who has limited patience with reassuring people; why did he marry me when I need near-constant reassurance about everything????
• I have tried sending ridiculous hyperventilatey emails to blog friends, whom I hope have enough of an existing familiarity with my all-caps style of hyperbole to not think that I have completely unhinged. I am still semi-hinged. For now.
• I have not yet tried therapy, although I have broached the topic with my husband and have asked some offline friends for recommendations. Who has time for therapy, though?!?!?

The only thing that works even slightly is exercise – strenuous HIIT or strength training – but the downside is that the worry hamsters wake up immediately upon my heart rate returning to normal. And I just cannot exercise every second of the day. 

Speaking of exercise: do you have, as I do, Flayed Face Syndrome? (Which is a totally made-up non-disease that is not to be confused with Scalded Skin Syndrome, which is a real and horrifying thing.)

Every time I do something that raises my heart rate for a prolonged amount of time, I end up looking like a character in Game of Thrones whose facial skin has been peeled away to reveal the tomato-pulp flesh beneath it. Is Game of Thrones still a relevant reference point? Feels like a million years ago that it was the hot thing, but then again I don’t consume a lot of other media where “peeling off someone’s face” would be a reasonable plot point. 

The effect is quite alarming, let me assure you. Every time I have exercised in public to the point of my skin scarleting itself, people approach me to ask if I am okay. It is highly embarrassing. The redness lasts for a long time; I am writing this an hour after I finished a very heart-pumping exercise routine with Tracy Steen (this 45-minute HIIT workout) and my face is only just now cooling off to the “moderate to severe sunburn” level of redness. 

One of my friends keeps asking me to go to barre class with her. I would love to – I used to love barre, and haven’t been back since March of 2020, hmm wonder why, but I am pre-embarrassed about my tomato-y complexion. 

(Also keeping me from barre class: I am an extremely sweaty exerciser. And while that is tolerable at home in my own house, at least to me; I have not asked the other members of my household, I feel super self-conscious about it in public.)

I have been like this – a deskinned tomato person – for as long as I can remember. I don’t think there’s anything to be done about it, but maybe YOU have a solution? Perhaps that solution is simply, “avoid exertion,” which makes sense to me.

Recently, Lauren shared some rules to live by. One of them is that everyone deserves flowers. And even though buying flowers doesn’t soothe the worry hamsters, it does bring me a little ping of joy every time I see said flowers. So I am buying the flowers and I hope you are too. 

Currently, my dinner table has some lilies and some delphinium (at least, I think it’s delphinium) in a vase. But I also bought a bunch of flowers for outside my house. Including two hanging baskets of bright magenta petunias. There’s nothing like a basket of magenta petunias to lift a mood, if temporarily. 

Of course, one of them fell from the little hook that dangles the basket above my porch, and the basket broke. I transferred it into a pot and it seemed to be doing okay. Then I forgot to water both pot and basket for two days – two days during which we got significant rain, by the way – and when I went to check on them, the flowers had all wilted in an extremely distressing manner. I couldn’t bear to throw them out, so I watered them. And it turns out they were just being melodramatic. They look glorious once again. (Phew.)

In a fun twist, these petunias are the same hue my face turns after intense exercise.

Read Full Post »

Five (or More) Things Friday

1. It’s Friday: Is that a good thing? (I mean, it is Good Friday.) But I find that weekends have a whole different feel to them now that I am a parent who works (very) part-time from my home. No longer do I find them relaxing, as I did when I was not a parent. Nor do I find them as stressful and exhausting as I did when Carla was wee. Now, I kind of see them as My Time to Do Stuff with My Family, Whom I Do Not See During the Week. I have spent the week working and storing up plenty of solitude, and now I want to get out and do fun stuff with my husband and kid. My husband and kid, however, do not feel the same way. They want to retreat to their separate corners and play video games and build with LEGO and make elaborate crafts and tool around on their guitars and watch endless episodes of Bluey on their iPads. I try to give them space, and sometimes I succeed in flopping on a couch and reading a book all day. But other times, I end up doing laundry and making meals and feeling like I am doing the exact same crap I do every other day when I want something different and fun. Not something social, mind you – something different and fun with my family. Really, I want to force them to spend time with me. Maybe now that the weather seems to be turning toward pleasant, I can lure them away from devices with the promise of… what? Bike rides? A trip to the [Local Attraction we’ve visited too many times]? A day trip to see one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural gems? I would be delighted by any of these options. Maybe what I need to do is come up with a big list of Fun Things that we can choose from. BUT WHAT? What fun things are on your agenda for the warmer months? What are some of your favorite ways to occupy yourself (and your family) on the weekend?

2. Overeager Emailers: When I got these two back-to-back emails from Take 5 Oil Change, I had to screenshot them. Which was difficult to do because I was rolling my eyes so hard. Have some chill, Take 5. Also, I have never set foot in a Take 5, which I am assuming is a place where you go to get your vehicle’s oil changed, so I am baffled as to how the company got my email address. Perhaps I should have taken their survey, in hopes that one of their questions might be, “Are we inexplicably spamming you?” 

3. Comment Concern: My blog is eating a bunch of legitimate and lovely comments, and sending them to spam. This is happening to multiple commenters, for no apparent reason that I can see (like, it’s not every comment from a specific blogger, and it’s not comments with links or specific terms in them). If you are not seeing your comment, it is because of this, NOT for any other reason. I love you and your comments and I appreciate your taking the time to read and share your thoughts. Meanwhile, I will try to keep an eye on the ol’ spam folder. 

4. Upgrade or Not?: In addition to the comment eating, my blog has also become overly exuberant with the ad serving. It is driving me nuts. I cannot even see my post title on my homepage anymore, all I can see is an ad or the space where an ad should be. Sometimes there are even POP UPS, which makes me so teeth-grittingly annoyed I can hardly stand it. I put up with the ads – even though they have, unfortunately, offended some of my beloved readers in the past, for which I am so so apologetic – because I am cheap, and I don’t pay anything for WordPress to host my blog, and I recognize that nothing in life is truly free. HOWEVER. I am growing very weary of the ads. Plus, I have been posting in this space for nearly fourteen years, and maybe it is about time to put some money into it? I don’t know. Maybe I could figure out how to get ads that are in some way relevant to the people who show up here? Or at least get rid of that big banner ad that’s BLOCKING MY CONTENT? Anyway, this is all to say that WordPress is forcing me to consider I am starting to wonder whether I should upgrade to the premium version of WordPress. Have you done that? And, if so, are there pros and cons you care to share? 

5. Spring Clean: Carla’s class did a spring cleaning recently and she cleaned out her desk. This is all the writing utensils she found inside her desk. The desk that only she uses. They were, of course, hidden beneath piles and piles of paper and “treasures” and worksheets and brochures for school events and paper plates and craft materials and folders and pencil sharpeners and bits of yarn/pipe cleaner/rubber band. I keep reminding myself that I used to be just as messy/hoardery/disorganized as she is, and yet I have become a moderately tidy adult. I can only hope she follows a similar path.

6. Enduring Grumps: I am in a writing slump. I am in a reading slump. Friendship angst, about multiple friendships. My face looks like I am in the throes of peak puberty. My heels have been hurting again. I have been trying to lose weight and am not losing weight. I went on Facebook for five minutes to check on a friend’s vacation photos and saw a post requesting recommendations for bulletproof backpacks. We keep having thunderstorms (but no tornadoes, so I am counting my blessings) and the wind and lightning stress me out. I still feel pressure to Make Holidays Magical but my husband is the founding member of Dads Deeply Against Excessive Easter Baskets and I don’t want to, like, openly defy him. Except I already bought a few things beyond the few things he knows about. But I didn’t get anything to hide inside Easter eggs, which the Easter Bunny still hides around the house for Carla to find. Is she just going to find empty eggs this year? Is that the most depressing thing ever???? Carla’s new schedule is AWFUL, and even though it’s better than her fall schedule was and even though I am pretty sure we will get used to it based on the fact that we got used to the fall schedule, it’s awful RIGHT NOW. I need new shoes but I feel like all I do is spend money. I have tasks that MUST be completed and yet I keep dragging my feet. The school year is almost over and I have loved this year, and so has Carla which is obviously more important, and I don’t want it to end. The school year is almost over and there is a flurry of end-of-year everything cropping up and every day I get a new event to add to my bursting calendar and it seems like we will never have a free moment again. It is only April and already the humidity makes me want to die. 

7. Merlin Bird ID: Do you know about this app? Carla has it on her iPad, and she’s talked about it for years. If we see a bird of uncertain heritage in the wild, she will take note of its characteristics and then look it up in the app later. I guess I always thought that it was similar to a bird book – useful for identifying a bird based on size, shape, color. And it is! But it also has an auditory feature which I discovered after Carla had been regularly leaving her bathroom window open in the middle of winter. When I asked why she was opening her window, she said that she likes to hold her iPad up to the window so it can tell her which birds are in our yard. This feature is SO COOL. My husband and I used it to identify a weird trilling noise that we kept hearing outside our bedroom at night. I thought it was a raccoon and my husband thought it was some sort of creepy insect, but it turns out it was an Eastern screech owl. This app is completely free (although make sure you download it while connected to WiFi omg.)

8. Mail Melee: We have a new mail carrier. I know this because we went on vacation and had our mail held while we were gone. And then when we came home and the mail resumed, we never got the pile of mail we normally would have had after a ten-day absence. I went to the post office to inquire after our missing mail, and the supervisor said we had a new mail carrier. He couldn’t get ahold of her, but when he did, he would ask whether she had our mail. I left my phone number and never heard back. We have since had two days with very full mailboxes, so we are hoping that all the held mail has been returned to us. Although… I am not sure how we would know??? (Usually, it comes in a big pile, held together with a massive rubber band or sometimes stacked in a Post Office bin that we have to return. And it’s always been delivered to the stoop rather than into the mailbox, so it’s very clear that it’s the held mail. The two days of excess mail could have just been… heavy mail days.) My husband said something about going through our bills and seeing which ones we get via mail and then looking in our files to determine about when they normally show up… but that sounds very complicated and also not foolproof. We have also gotten a rather alarming amount of mail that belongs to various neighbors, and at least one neighbor has commented that he has also been receiving mail that doesn’t belong to him. So. Our poor mail carrier seems to be facing a rather steep learning curve.

9. Planless Purchase: I bought these spice mixes at Trader Joe’s… and now I have no idea what to do with them. I tried mixing some of the umami one into sour cream to use as a dip for potato chips… it tasted like nothing. What would you use them for? 

10. More Controversial Pronunciations: I loved everyone’s responses to my Enduring Marital Arguments post. It was especially enjoyable to learn how many people have strong feelings about the pronunciation of Don and Dawn (my strong feeling, again, is that they are identical morphemes). I remembered another homophonic disagreement my husband and I have: the pronunciation of the three words Barry, berry, and bury. THESE WORDS SOUND THE SAME. Unless you ask my husband, who says they are all separate and distinct. 

Well, that’s all I have for you Internet. Hope you are enjoying your holidays, if you are celebrating this week. Have a wonderful weekend.

Read Full Post »

Being Social

I am feeling stricken with social anxiety, Internet. STRICKEN.

Here’s the thing: At the beginning of the school year, a group of parents from Carla’s school decided to get together semi-regularly. Varying numbers of these parents have met several times already and I have been unable to attend a single event. I have been sad, but also relieved because OMG dealing with people. But I have also been getting more and more anxious because I realize that the more this group meets, the more cohesive it becomes, and the harder it will be to join. I already feel like I am on the fringe of any group, and my inability to attend any of the events so far has already pushed me further to the edges of this group. Does that make sense?

Now, finally, the group is getting together on a night when my husband can watch Carla! So I took a deep breath and responded that I could go. And now: stricken. 

I am Not Good in groups. I mean, I am barely okay in one-on-one situations, but in groups I just flail. I have never mastered a non-awkward way to squeeze into an already-going conversation. I feel like my small talk game is poor. I am not adept at discussing current events. I am not an interesting storyteller. Not that I even have anything interesting to say. I become overly aware of how I talk and my tongue fumbles all over itself. If more than one person looks at me expectantly, my face will burst into flames. You know how it is. (Maybe you do not, in which case can we exchange personalities for a night please?) 

HOW do I do this? My 100% serious plan is to make a (mental) list of topics I can turn to in a pinch, but… what are those topics? I feel like I am pretty good at asking people about themselves, and since I don’t know a lot of these moms very well I can ask them who their kids are and what activities they’re doing and how their holidays were and whether they have anything exciting planned for our upcoming four-day weekend seriously we JUST had two weeks off and what their kids think of their teachers and what books they’ve read and whether they saw any good movies over the break… but I don’t necessarily know how to move from “bombarding a person with questions” to “real conversation.” I have a hard enough time carrying on a conversation with my hairdresser, and she’s just one person, and I am fairly comfortable with her. I have a hard time responding to the emails without feeling like I am dumb and everyone thinks I’m dumb. Going out to dinner with multiple people is like… more than that. Ugh ugh ugh. 

And if it’s a sit-down restaurant, where do I sit? And what do I wear? And and and…? 

There are a couple of parents I do know fairly well who are in the group, and I could probably try to hang near them. But I don’t want to be a GLOMMER-ONNER, you know? Plus, it would be nice to get to know new people. 

I don’t even know what I am asking you. I am just nervous. And determined to go anyway, because it is good to be social and it is good to meet new people and presumably most of us will know each other and each other’s kids for the next eight years at least and it is good to push outside one’s comfort zone now and again… but I’m also really nervous.   

Read Full Post »

Fire Dreams, New Schedules, Dinners This Week

I woke up at 3:00 this morning from a bad dream. In the dream, I was in my childhood home with my husband. Somehow, my horse had gotten into the house, and we were trying to get him out but he was stomping around and bumping into the furniture and getting very riled up and upset. In the confusion, a fire started in the dining room. My husband was yelling, in a very loud monotone, “Fire! Fire! Fire!” That’s when I woke up.

My father is a volunteer fire fighter, and he’d told me yesterday about a recent fire that had devasted a dwelling. Plus, my husband and I started watching a new show this weekend and last night’s episode featured an explosion that resulted in a house going up in flames. So I think it’s safe to say that I had fire on the brain.

Nonetheless, it’s easy for a dream like mine to have the weight of prescience, foreshadowing, and I lay there in the dark house taking long deep breaths through my nose, trying to smell smoke, listening intently for the crackle of flames. I finally got up and did a walk-through of my home, which allowed me to fall back to sleep after an hour or so of troubled thoughts about my loved ones and whether the dream fire had escaped into any of their homes. 

We’re also about to begin the new school year, and, along with it, a new schedule of extracurricular activities. So perhaps my brain was merely venting its feelings of facing the unknown in an uncontrolled way. 

Carla will be doing extracurricular activities FOUR DAYS A WEEK, sometimes five, and that sounds completely bonkers I am aware. But these activities are ones she has been wanting to do for a long time, and we discussed the time commitment at length as a family, and my husband and I think they will be good for her. 

But I am fretting, as usual, about dinner. Dinner is a thing I can – usually – control, in a world that increasingly feels uncontrollable, but I haven’t quite figured out how I will make it work with our new schedule, so I am out of sorts. Horse-in-the-dining-room, fire-breaking-out out of sorts, it seems. 

Some weekdays will be normal – by which I mean Carla has no commitments after school is out. One day each week, she will have an extracurricular commitment that takes place after school but ends before dinner. I suppose on those days, I will need to have everything prepped and ready to go so that we can come home from the activity and I can immediately get food in the oven. Some weekdays, we will have a couple of hours of free time after school, and then the extracurricular activity takes place in the evening. My plan is to feed Carla dinner before we leave for her activity. But then, it will be quite late when we return, and she’ll need to shower and go to bed immediately upon arriving home. (To accommodate the new activities, we’re pushing her bedtime back a teeny bit to 8:30, as long as she still gets adequate rest.) So… when will my husband and I eat? 

(Recall, if you will, that our normal school-year dinner schedule is: Carla eats at 5:30 and is in bed by 7:30-8:00, my husband arrives home between 6:00 and 8:00, my husband and I eat between 8:30-9:00. Thanks, I hate it.) 

I wailed to my husband that we might be eating a lot of Lean Cuisine this year, and he very kindly said that that was FINE, we would make it work. But I don’t really LIKE Lean Cuisine (or its brethren), so I would prefer to find an alternative that isn’t a) fast food or b) nothing or c) me making dinner at nine o’clock at night or d) some variation on Lean Cuisine. (Although all of those are options occasionally, I don’t want to do any of them ALL the time.)

Making meals with built-in leftovers sounds like our best option. That’s why I have chicken fajitas on the menu this week. That way, I can eat before the activity and my husband can eat whenever he gets home. But I’m not great about knowing which meals will produce leftovers, and it seems to me that most of them (not all, but a lot of the ones I love: chicken paprikas! pizza! chili! spaghetti and meat sauce! tacos!) are the more decadent, less I’m Trying to Lose Weight ones that I would prefer to be eating lately. Sigh. Maybe Lean Cuisine is the way to go. 

Dinners for the Week of August 22-28

• Slow Cooker Chicken with French Wine and Mustard and Green Salad: Maybe this will produce leftovers? Also, the slow cooker is going to be my bestie this year, I can already tell.

• Sheet Pan Chicken Fajitas: I can definitely amp up the chicken and veggie quotient to get at least one, maybe more, days of leftovers out of this. 

• Thai-Style Pork Tenderloin with this Quinoa: The quinoa is leftovers-friendly, but I’m not wild about reheated pork. Hmmm. 

• Honey Garlic Sheet Pan Salmon & Brussels Sprouts: I’m fine eating leftover salmon, but my husband doesn’t particularly like it even on Day One. Hmmmmmm.

• 20 Minute Korean Beef Sesame Noodles: This doesn’t seem particularly leftovers-friendly, although that could be my own bias against reheating beef, but it sounds really tasty. 

What are some of your favorite Plentiful Leftovers meals? Also, your favorite make-ahead meals, quick meals, one-person-eats-now,-the-other-person-eats-later meals?  

Read Full Post »

Emergency Room (Everyone Is Fine)

I got a call from the nurse at Carla’s camp. I feel like school/camp nurses should be contractually obligated to begin ALL phone calls to a parent with “Your child is FINE, but this is the nurse and I am calling because…” I mean, unless the child is not fine, but we are fortunately not going down that path today. 

Apparently, Carla’s eye was bothering her. The nurse went through the steps she’d taken to relieve the pain: flushed the eye, applied a compress, looked at it. I didn’t have any other advice for her (am not a nurse) and we were about an hour out from the end of the camp day, so I said, “Okay, sounds like we should keep an eye on it. But I don’t think I should come get her early, do you?” The nurse said she didn’t think so.

I mean, things get into eyes, right? Dust and eyelashes and contact lens solution. And it can be irritating or painful, but you flush the eye and blink a lot and just… let it resolve. 

This was my attitude as I went to pick up Carla from camp. Her eye was still bothering her. She kept it half shut and it was red and a little puffy. Otherwise, she was cheerful. She had no idea what happened to the eye! All of sudden, it just started hurting! 

Just to be safe – you know, to consult An Actual Doctor instead of relying on my admittedly lacking Mom Skillz – I called the eye doctor on the way home. No answer at his office. The answering service said there was a Dr. C on call and took a message. 

Carla and I went home and she lay on the floor and I gave her a compress to put on her eye. Boy, she’s really milking this, I thought affectionately/exasperatedly. I took a photo of her and sent it to my parents along with my (near) daily report of Carla’s activities.  

Carla lay there for a long time. I looked at her eye. It was red, yes. But the pupil looked normal and she seemed otherwise fine. She’ll blink it out, I thought. She said, “I think I’m going to go swing,” and I agreed, feeling satisfied that she was Fine, and was done playing the Woe Is Me card. 

My father called. He doesn’t often call out of the blue – my parents are schedule-a-time-to-talk folk. He said that my mom had read my email, and told him immediately that something was wrong with Carla’s eye. OVERREACTING MUCH, MOTHER? I thought, exasperated. She’ll blink it out eventually!

But my dad had a bunch of concerned-sounding questions. And while we were talking, Carla came inside from swinging – after maybe two minutes, which is Very Unlike Her – and lay back down on the floor and asked for another cold compress. 

My husband was now texting me about Carla’s eye. He, like my dad, was asking a lot of questions in a way that made me nervous. Suddenly, my Wait Until You Blink It Out plan seemed foolish.

My dad said that I should call the on-call ophtho back if I hadn’t heard from him in 30 minutes. It had been… 45. So when I got off the phone – significantly chastened and now feeling kind of worried – I called him back. I waited around for a bit – 15 minutes, maybe? And then I texted my husband that we were going to pick him up on the way to the Emergency Room. 

We have been to the Emergency Room a handful of times. Once, my husband sliced open his thumb (if you drop a glass dish in the sink, do not try to catch it in your hand is my hot tip of the day). Once, I was holding Carla’s hand while we were in Target and she sat down and dislocated her elbow. Once, I was working on a project with a friend and she sliced open her finger. There were a couple of other times: Carla’s cheek met a dog’s tooth (it was not a bite, it was a collision); I drove an ATV through a barbed-wire fence neck first; my father-in-law had sudden onset chest pains. It is never pleasant and it always takes a million years. 

I had not even considered bringing something for Carla to look at/play with (see above re: Mom Skillz), so the three of us sat in the ER and my husband allowed Carla to play a video game on his phone. 

Of course, her eye was starting to look SO MUCH better. The redness had faded, and she was looking at the screen of the phone with both eyes rather than keeping the one squeezed shut. My husband and I exchanged Significant Looks.

We only waited an hour. (In addition to forgetting about entertainment, I also forgot about FOOD [Mom Skillz!] and so it was now seven p.m. and none of us had eaten.) A resident checked Carla and did a full physical exam, which is pretty rare among doctors these days and therefore notable. She wanted to a) flush the eye and b) check it with a special dye to see if there were any scratches. But she needed to consult with the attending physician first and see if they needed to call in the on-call ophtho (presumably the same guy who NEVER called me back harrumph). The attending physician came in. She was cheerful and friendly and agreed with the resident’s assessment. She left. After more time passed, a nurse came in with saline solution and a special syringe. Carla required A Lot of Discussion and several demonstrations before she would allow the nurse to flush her eye with the solution. And then she would only do it for several seconds at a time. It was very cold, apparently. She and the patient angel of a nurse would count to seven out loud together and then take a break. It took ten million years to get 100 ml of saline into my child’s eye. Then we waited for awhile until the attending came back. After a lot of coaxing, she got some of the bright yellow dye in Carla’s eye, turned off the lights, and examined her eye with a special light. She didn’t see any scratches, she said. 

Carla said her eye felt a little better! It was only when she looked straight ahead and blinked that it hurt. She was very cheerful. The attending was very cheerful. She said that someone would be in to flush Carla’s eye a second time, and then we could be on our way.

We waited another while. Carla watched a Disney show on Netflix. (There was a TV in the room, but it was off and no one had said we could watch TV. But… My husband just reached behind the bed and grabbed the remote and turned on the TV! I would never in a million years think to do that without explicit permission.) 

A fourth person came in. She was a EMT, she told us, and she was there to flush Carla’s eye! Carla was much more amenable to the flushing this time. 

After the EMT left, another nurse came in with our discharge papers and we left. 

As we walked out, Carla started complaining that her eye still hurt. 

The next morning when Carla woke up, her eye was still red and now it was all crusty. To be expected, after undergoing whatever trauma it had undergone. But she was still keeping the one eye closed and complaining of pain when she looked forward and blinked.

So I kept her home from camp and got her an appointment with her eye doctor. 

He came in, flushed her eye, put the special dye in… But he said that he could see a bunch of scratches on her eye where something was irritating it. And he LISTENED to her when she said that she was fine when she kept her eyes closed or when she looked to the side, but that it hurt when she looked forward and blinked. Also – and this is a skill I deeply admire – the ophtho managed to listen to Carla and be sympathetic to her fears about being touched/having Things Done to her, while moving things along at a good clip. He did not allow Carla to stall and delay, he did what he needed to do. And it was all over SO FAST! 

After MUCH (but efficient) COAXING, he flipped her eyelid inside out. And there it was, plain as day: a little speck of something, minuscule but visible even to my untrained eye. The ophtho used a swab to remove it. He and Carla speculated that it was a little piece of tree bark, although I have no idea how they came to that conclusion; it looked like dust to me. He gave her a prescription for an antibiotic (because of the scratches) and a special ointment and sent us on our way.

She was completely pain free by the time we reached the car.

The moral of the story is: ALWAYS HAVE THE DOCTOR FLIP THE EYELID. We could have saved SO MUCH time and money and trouble if we had asked the resident or the ER attending to just flip! the! eyelid! Or, even better, if we had thought to have my physician husband flip her eyelid himself at home!

Okay, okay. I am going to take a deep breath. This is why we have health insurance (thank goodness) and this is what money is for. Breathing. Breathing.

The secondary motto is DON’T UNDERESTIMATE EYE STUFF. Because even if you think it is just a dumb eyelash that will blink out eventually, maybe it is a piece of metal that could cause serious damage.

Meanwhile, the on-call ophtho never called us back. Never. I am still mad about it. My husband calls people back at 2:30 in the morning when he is on call. Because that is what it means to be on call. You take patient calls and you return them. The returning of the calls is a critical part. My husband suggested that maybe the ophtho wasn’t accustomed to getting emergency calls! And so he wasn’t paying attention to his phone! To which I say PAH. Even if my husband is delayed by doing a procedure or being with a patient, he calls patients back. Even if he gets a call from a patient that is frustrating in its non-urgency, he still calls that patient back. And I called this on-call ophtho TWICE! Still. Mad. About. It. 

Read Full Post »

Calcium Again

The other day, Carla had a very specific request for dinner: “May I please have a bowl of white [iceberg] lettuce and a separate bowl of [shredded] cheese and another bowl of tomatoes so that I can put them together and make a salad?” 

Sure, child. Why not. 

I mentioned a while back that we are trying to increase Carla’s calcium intake. And by “we” I mean “me” because my husband seems wholly unconcerned by the issue. Not in an “I’m a Physician and Am Unworried” way, but in a “this is not my problem” way ARGH. And a teeny bit in a Thwarting Efforts way. My father (ALSO a physician) suggested we simply give Carla some Tums (calcium carbonate) and so I suggested to my husband that he grab a roll of Tums next time he was at the grocery store. He said a) we already have Tums at home and when I brightened and said “Oh! We can give Carla those!” he said no, that those Tums were for acid reflux. Blink. Blink blink. 

All of this is to say that I am continually working on getting more calcium into Carla. 

Smoothies, as I think I mentioned before, seemed like the perfect vehicle. Especially considering that Carla likes smoothies, and dislikes most other things. 

But there have been two problems.

1. She hasn’t been in the mood for smoothies. Almost every day I say, “You’re going to have a smoothie for breakfast!” and she says, “No.” And then I argue with her a little bit, and make pleading noises about calcium intake, and she remains firm, and I give up. Because I am not going to waste a smoothie on her when she is clearly going to Stand Firm. And I get it! I like… chili, but I don’t want to eat it every day. If you told me chili had specific life-extending properties, I would still have a hard time drumming up enough enthusiasm to eat it every day. So I get it. I do. But also: JUST DRINK A SMOOTHIE.
2. Smoothies do not contain as much calcium as I think. I made one for her with 1/4 cup of yogurt, 1/2 cup almond milk, 1/2 cup calcium-fortified orange juice, and 1 cup frozen mango chunks. That makes a LARGE cup of smoothie. And it contains about 40% of a person’s daily calcium. Sigh. It’s a big swoop forward on the calcium-intake-o-meter, but it’s not even halfway, and HOW do I get the rest of the way EVERY DAY?

I wonder if I could mix Carnation Instant Breakfast (200 mg calcium per packet) into her smoothies? 

I found a recipe for frozen yogurt treats that I might try. I broached the idea to Carla and she was a little suspicious, but it would be worth trying at least. Maybe I could mix some Carnation Instant Breakfast into some yogurt and pipe it onto cookie sheets and freeze it? I may give it a try.

I have been Googling like crazy, but the food sources of calcium seem to have so little (50 mg here, 125 mg there – and that’s for a FULL serving of foods she DOESN’T EAT), that it seems impossible to get them to add up to 1300 mg per day. And there is a lot of pooh-poohing of calcium supplements. I get it. I understand that most vitamins don’t have a whole lot of calcium anyway, and that you need to be taking Vitamin D as well so that you can properly absorb your calcium. But it would be really useful to just give Carla a chewable something and be done with it. There are Reasons that I don’t want to get the Viactiv chews (650 mg calcium per chew), but maybe I need to get past them. 

I know I tend to catastrophize. I know I do that. But I keep picturing Carla as an adult, with bones that shatter at the least provocation, and her wan little face asking the heavens, “Why, God, why did my mother not force me to get enough calcium when I was small? Why?” 

Now I understand why my parents were so adamant about me drinking a FULL GLASS of milk every day. (A cup of milk is only 300 mg!)

Read Full Post »

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.

Read Full Post »

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?

Read Full Post »

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.

Read Full Post »