the modernity ward

Kansas City, Here I Come

How could you not sing that every time you go to KC? Unfortunately my main memory of that song is from some local Wichita newscaster singing it, every post-Wheel of Fortune commercial break, as a promo for some shopping-themed Kansas City excursion story, circa 1991.

But. Yes. I am going to Kansas City to visit my dad, who is currently still in ICU following his liver transplant and several subsequent "bumps in the road" -- none of which seem to be related to the liver itself, as it reportedly seems to be functioning well. There has been some mysterious bleeding, possibly from the GI tract but nothing showed up on endoscopy. He has an enormous, complicated hernia, so his intestines are not in good shape, so that's a possibility. Anyway, I am abandoning Sean and the girls for a couple of days to fly out there.

Meanwhile my own body seems to be rebelling -- there are the previously blogged 'roid problems, and while my hallux rigidus correction is doing what it's supposed to be doing, I seem to have sustained some nerve damage from the ankle block I received for the surgery. Instead of the usual 24 hours of numbness from the block, I got about three days of dead leg, plus gradually returning sensation along the nerve pathways -- and then about a week ago (presumably as the nerves started to heal up) I realized my foot was hurting all the time, especially at night -- everywhere except the surgical site.

You know what NSAIDs do for nerve pain? Not a dingdang thing. I got two nights of decent sleep with the last of my Lortabs, but didn't have any left so spent last night waking up uncomfortable-to-miserable.

So, um, yeah. The next foot is planned for mid-July, but if this nerve pain hasn't resolved itself by then, either I'll have to reschedule or talk about different anesthesia options. Because if I had two legs like this, I would not be a very nice person AT ALL.

I am waiting to hear back from the surgeon and the anesthesiologist about this, but you are invited to weigh in.

Guitars and Cadillacs

(Start it up now for musical accompaniment.)

I'm so old that I was listening when Dwight Yoakam's debut album hit the radio. It was 1986 and I was ten years old, wearing my shorts hiked up too high and my souvenir Padre Island t-shirt tucked into them. My dad gave me his old radio, a paint-speckled shoebox-sized thing that got AM stations only.

And what was on AM radio in Wichita, Kansas? Country music. I fell asleep at night to the Charlie Daniels Band, and woke up to Reba McEntire. Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn,  Hank Williams Jr. -- is it any wonder I feel at home in Nashville? It was a time when my musical tastes and my father's musical tastes aligned perfectly. Tooling around Wichita in his pickup truck, headed barefoot for Baskin Robbins, we listened to Dwight Yoakam sing about how guitars and Cadillacs and hillbilly music were the only thing that kept him hanging on.

My dad got a new liver yesterday morning. It's an unimaginable gift from a stranger, a transplant team, decent health insurance, an incomprehensible universe. It's a long road ahead -- a transplant is never the end of the story -- but it is his only chance at any kind of a life.

Whatever it is that's kept you hanging on so far, Dad, hold on to it. I haven't given up hope that my kids will hear you play Doc Watson on the guitar someday.

UPDATE: My dad is back in surgery as of late afternoon -- there's a hematoma on the new liver (I think). Please keep him in your thoughts.

UPDATED AGAIN: Second surgery went well, hematoma cleaned out. Dad will stay sedated and intubated in ICU through the weekend at least, just so he doesn't move around too much.

Our Piece of the Pie

A mother is a person who, seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.

-Tenneva Jordan

I saw a lot of that quote around Mother's Day, especially on Facebook, and at first I was all, "Yeah! That's awesome!" and then I was like "That's aweso...well, hold on a minute."

Because you know, I like pie.

I like it a lot. In fact, I would cut you for a slice of pie right now. Even if it wasn't strictly necessary. Even if you were offering me a piece of lemon meringue, I might shove you out of the way and take the whole pan.

I can see the appeal of the quote. Gracious sacrifice for the sake of others can be a lovely thing. It's generosity without martyrdom, an everyday kindness freely given. Lord knows we give up a lot as mothers, big and little things, and it's nice to see a funny quote acknowledging our constant tiny sacrifices.

On the other hand, though, why couldn't we just divide up the pie a little differently so everybody gets some? Or why can't the toddler go without pie? She'll just cram it into her ear canal anyway. The four-year-old won't eat anything involving cooked fruit, and would be happier with honey on toast. Or you know, maybe Dad was served lunch at a symposium, and there was dessert. Maybe Mom gets two pieces of pie.

These are all completely fictional examples, of course.

It's a truism that mothers sacrifice. It's the reality of our daily life, it's something the sodden-with-sympathy conservative right trots out to venerate us on one hand while snatching away support with the other. The job we do is so important and it doesn't pay has long been twisted to read the job we do is so important that it doesn't pay. And no mandated extended maternity leave or decent affordable child care, either. Be sure to breastfeed but be sure to get back to work after six weeks too! Stay home and don't let strangers raise your kids, but earn a paycheck and don't drop out of the workforce and don't waste that degree!

Being a mother -- indeed, being a woman -- in our culture means getting screwed six ways to Sunday, and told you're doing it wrong in the bargain. I am happy with the choices I've made and grateful that I had the opportunity to make them, but you know what? If there's pie to be had, I am damn well going to have a piece.

Needful Things

I'm all balled-up unfilled needs inside right now, and while some of them are par-for-the-course Mama needs (fifteen minutes to self, peaceful shopping trip as have few well-fitting clothes) some of them are harder to pin down. We'll call those the "Daddy Drank" needs. Not that our dad was cruel to us or violent, ever -- but there's something about an unpredictable adult presence that's just good to the last drop, forever and ever. Today Dad was calling each of his daughters in succession with increasingly weird requests. "Write down everybody's middle names and birthdays, because I forget otherwise." Later, "I want you to take down this letter and email it to your sister so she can send it to her mother-in-law."

The family is in unity right now with regards to Dad's ongoing treatment and prognosis, and we all find this stuff hilarious if aggravating in the moment, but argh.

It makes me need to shop.

Not that I can actually go anywhere in person, because there is the matter of the little burdens beloved children, but I can tell the well's running dry when I elect to hide at my desk, hunched over eShakti or Anthropologie, imagining a life in which I wear fetching dresses while I stand in line at the taco truck, bopping ever so undetectably to the music from the record store. Also I wouldn't need prescription glasses so I could wear cool giant bug glasses, and my hair might be thicker.

No matter that I had that life and spent my free moments dreaming of dirt-smudged kids and spaghetti and the park and little pajamas. (I really did. My daydreams were nothing if not realistic.) Wouldn't trade it blah blah blah. My capacity for happiness has only grown.

But honestly? The clothes were better. And cleaner. And there was a lot more free time. These are just facts.

I did buy some new nursing bras. Why buy nursing bras when you have a 15-month-old? Well, for one, it's hard to find my size in a non-nursing bra at places like the Gap. For two, all my old nice-quality bras are just a little too small for my enormous rack, and even as I squeeze into them I hate having to actually deal with nursing in them. The bras that I can find play it fast and loose with the underwire placement, and man oh man. I do NOT need a plugged duct. You know what else? Most bras are just really, really uncomfortable to wear. I'm too big to go comfortably braless right now, and dude, when it's hot and muggy, I do NOT like skin touching skin.

Lucky for me, Bravado is making some awesome bras. I've been wearing the Bodysilk bra exclusively since Daphne was born (which is actually extremely flattering on me), and only now are they starting to look a little played-out. I got this and this. Let's hope they feel good and make my Lady Friends look fabulous.

Whoa. That was a digression, right? I was actually going to tell you about how we're lining up sitters left and right so I don't lose my frickin' mind trying to go to doctor appointments and the occasional haircut. I was scheduling all my doctor appointments (there are a lot, with the orthodontist and the surgeon and also the foot surgeon!) at weird times so I could borrow Sean from work, but that is just not the way I want to roll. And I was getting haircuts late at night (well, like eight), so after the kids were in bed but before they closed, and that sucked too. So I scheduled everything all in a block and Daphne is just going to have to deal with a four-hour babysitting session. Even if she cries the whole time. Which...she might.

Why is it every time I do anything away from the girls I feel panicky and selfish and horrible? Sean is supportive and happy to do whatever I need -- I just feel like, hey, this is my only job right now, why do I suck so bad at it? I tried to go try on clothes, and realized what time it was (almost 5, Sean was home with kids) and ran out of the store in tears. Because I had so totally fallen down on the job and dinner wasn't ready. That's weird. And unnecessary.

Also a darn good motivator to get on the back-to-school train. I think I might be saner juggling a work schedule and kids, much as I love being at home. I don't know. What do you think?

Also, how do you know your well has run dry? Do you window shop online? In real life? Read In Touch or Life & Style?

Time to heat up the leftover lasagna now. Only one more day of chopping up everything until it looks like Alpo! Yay!

Topeka Means "A Good Place to Dig Potatoes"

There's this ongoing thing with my dad in which he is, despite his best efforts, growing healthier, thus revealing the depths of his decades-long untreated mental illness, and blah blah I wrote an impassioned heartfelt letter blah blah blah. Because I'm tired of the way we talk around him and tiptoe around his crazy behaviors and enable him and I'm just done. So of course he thanked me for my insight and caring and immediately proceeded to rationalize why he is not going to do any of the things I suggested and why he doesn't have a problem but maybe we could work on our relationship? Which made steam shoot out of my ears. Steam and those weird sea creatures who live around deep volcanic vents.

So with strange mollusks and many-legged eyeless things coming out my ears I wrote back "BULLSHIT, DUDE. NO MORE BULLSHIT. ENOUGH WITH THE BULLSHIT." and some other things more or less along those lines, because I have literally been hearing the words he used since I was a tiny child, words about how we're gonna do that later, and "that" sometimes meant "arranging for one's retirement" and sometimes it meant "fixing that hernia before it engulfs Topeka" but never once did "that" get done. Not once.

And I am all done pretending that hollow promises are worth anything, and I am all done going away after hearing them, and I am all done pretending like I even believe them just a little. I am going to loom over my Dad's life like a slag heap over a picturesque Welsh town. I don't even care if he hates me forever, because if I don't do it, I will hate myself. I love him too much to let him bullshit me any more. I love him so much I don't care if he hates me.

But, you know, hey. I'm not one to spill my private business all over the internet!* And you don't really want to hear about all that stuff anyway, do you? Naw! So let me tell you some hilarious stories about my children. 

So, Sophia. Sophia has recently become enamored of our next door neighbor Mark, a middle-aged single man who is friendly and better still, easily visible from our back yard when he is on his deck. Poor man has been trying to build a lattice screen between our porches but it is very difficult to run your saw when a four-year-old is chirping at you about Calvin and Hobbes. "Remember the time he went outside naked?" she says. "And the snow goons? Remember the snow goons? And he went to Mars?"

Mark does remember, but Mark also wants to finish his deck in the few minutes of daylight remaining. I drag Sophia in for dinner, though not without a good show for Mark about how she does NOT need to mind her mama, oh my no, who do you think calls the shots around here, that old bag in the cutoffs? No way! After dinner, she overhears his saw start up again, and she literally GASPS and runs to the back door to dangle in Mark's general direction.

I'm not sure what he did to win her affection so completely, but I wish you could have heard that gasp. A lifetime's worth of longing and joy was in it. It broke my heart a little.

Oh, and also: I have video of Sophia performing Magnetic Fields' "The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side" while playing a guitar. Will have to post that.

Next, Daphne! Apparently she is so busy working on all her crazy developmental skills like brushing teeth and spitting PPTTTT into the sink and flushing toilet paper and sprinkling salt from a salt dip and fitting the rings onto the ring stacker (not to compare, but Sophia was not able to do that until she was like 3, for reals) that she's not devoting a lot of attention to talking. Fifteen-month-old Sophia was uttering sentences. Daphne growls. She growls really, really well, with a variety of tones and volumes. She can also meow. She can sing the ABC song without words, and Dayenu without words, and wave bye-bye while saying "Dah!" and say "MUH MUH MUH" when she wants something. She calls me "Ma ma ma" or "Da da da" and she calls Sean "Da da da" and she calls Sophia nothing at all. Although she does like to push her. She also likes to come up behind you and grab your hair and pull and yell "OW OW OW!" She does it to herself too. You can tell her to go find Dada or go find Sophia or throw the ball or shut the door and she'll do it, too.

So clearly the receptive language is all there. I hope she keeps the growls as she adds words.

*Except for the time I spilled my private business all over the internet. By which I mean "live blogged childbirth twice" or, you know, something. I don't really remember.

Words that Help, Words that Hurt

You, by which I mean "y'all", have been immensely helpful on my rough days, and I don't mean to give you short shrift by passing you over in the "Most Helpful Comment on Pending Surgery" category, but better luck next time, kids.

When I told my sister Gretchen, musician, mother, and retired blogger, that I was going to have not one but THREE surgeries over the next six months (jaw, foot, foot), she burst out laughing and said:

"You are going to be SO addicted to PAIN PILLS!"

And then she went "HAW HAW HAW HAW" for three or four minutes. In fairness, I did too, because dude. HAW HAW HAW. Of course that was the first thing she thought! In the context of our family, it's pretty shocking that my addictions are limited to the socially acceptable 1) coffee and 2) Wife Swap. I guess the "socially acceptable" part is debatable on the second, but hey, somebody out there has to be watching it if it's on for seven hours a day on Lifetime, AM I RIGHT?

There was even one pathetic stretch of summer which was actually very awesome, during which I had a month of nothing to do in Charlottesville (it was summer, I'd finished working, class didn't start for a while, housemates weren't around yet) so I just sat on my front porch and smoked cigarettes. Every morning I crossed the bridge over the tracks to the JPA Fasmart (no, there's not a T in there) and bought a pack of cigarettes, then walked back over to sit on my porch and smoke them. I even worked on my smoking-a-cigarette-while-riding-a-bike technique, which is possibly the single stupidest thing you could do. Especially when you have undiagnosed asthma. And you live in a hilly town. Anyway my point is that even after all that effort I failed to become addicted to cigarettes, and went back to purchasing Zapp's Cajun CrawTator chips and weird sale beer.

As for words that hurt, there have not been any I can think of lately, either directed towards me or issuing from me. We had a hilarious Purim and a three-day dance party, and were woken up at six this morning when the security system alarm went off because Sophia was attempting to exit the side door in a pajama top and a smile (which was quickly replaced by tearful confusion) (to which we were sympathetic as we were experiencing the same thing ourselves).

Oh, and we had a hell of a time at the Nashville Flea Market. And I decided that we have to paint the living/dining room some low-VOC variation on Bedford Gray. 

And it is one week until my surgery. Eep!

Rated M, for Medium Crappy

Sophia was doing so well after preschool pickup until she chucked a shoe at my head. We have a strict "no throwing things in the car" rule, punishment being that whatever you threw, you lose. Once she lost a new jar of Play-Doh, some little party favor, and BOY was there crying then. Evidently the lesson didn't stick because some nice Salvation Army box is about to get a pair of red sparkly shoes. Maybe. I don't know. I'm kind of waffling on returning them next month or something.

Anyway, that was followed by some illicit front-door-unlocking, baby-releasing action, and every defiant thing a four-year-old can dream up. I installed a hook-and-eye lock up high on the door and left Sophia banished to her room for the next twenty minutes, for both our safety. Not before I turned into Scary Yelling Mama, though.

We worked it out from dinner on into bedtime, had some lovely chats and singing, and I told her (I was yelling this before, but I said it nicely this time) that I was always going to be her mama no matter what, and I love you even when you make mistakes (to which she reciprocated) but god. I always wonder what I'm never going to get back after one of these days, you know? What exactly have I ruined forever, what thirteen-year-old confidence will remain unshared?

I'm not at the top of my game today.

* * * * *

In twelve days I'm having surgery, and it's kind of like trying to imagine childbirth and life after, when you're 39 weeks pregnant. You're so done with the waiting, you've watched all the YouTube videos of strangers undergoing intense bizarre things with their bodies, but godDAMN it is terrifying, the basic unknown. I hate the idea of general anesthesia not just because of the slight statistical risks but because I have such a tenuous hold on my world right now -- every minute of my day goes to managing the kids, the house, worrying about my dad, making sure the pets don't starve -- it's all of my energy, every shred of it. What might happen if I relinquish control for the three hours it'll take?

Not control, really. The illusion of control, which is far more difficult to let go of than the real thing.

* * * * *

My dad thinks he's on top of things. He thinks he's managing his caloric intake (in reality, he's taking in 700 calories a day), he thinks he's swollen from sodium intake (which is below minimum), he thinks he's itchy because of the detergent (and not because of advanced liver disease). He thinks about cars obsessively, he thinks about Jack LaLanne fitness books. I don't know what he thinks. Does he think he's going to die? Does he think he isn't? Does he know what to do with himself if he doesn't? Can he even imagine a life that's anything but physical and psychic pain? How long since his world was anything different?

Those are questions I can hardly ask, and that he won't answer anyway.

I keep trying though. I listen to whatever he has to say, which is usually some variation on the cars-Jack LaLanne-OCD endless loop, because even if we can't have a meaningful conversation I can have the experience of listening to him talk. I can't remember the words to the songs he used to sing me, and he can't sing them. I can give him my attention for a moment, I can give him the ephemeral experience of being attended to. I'm sure it slips away a half-second before he hangs up the phone, I can hear him tuning me out and tuning the pain in his body back in.

I keep vowing never to do this to my own kids, this slow starvation through gardens untended.

And then I scream at a four-year-old.

It's probably a good thing my jaw will be wired shut for a while.

The Dashboard Melted, but We Still Have the Radio

The housing search continues unabated. And I'm sorry, nice people with the pretty Victorian, but I am just not going to pay you $300K for a two-bedroom house. I'm just not. Also, Nashville home owners in general, please see the following list of Things That Are Not Other Things:

-room tucked under hipped roof with maximum height of six feet but only right in the middle, and no windows: NOT A BEDROOM.

-stall with sink you can wash your hands in while you sit on the toilet AND soak your feet in an infant tub, all without stretching: NOT A FULL BATHROOM.

-living room bounded on one side by the front door and on the other by glass French doors: NOT A MASTER SUITE.

-concrete-floored basement with open stairway and door to garage: ALSO NOT A MASTER SUITE.

-hot plate balanced on the back of a toilet: NOT A KITCHEN.

I only made up the last one.

* * * *

My dad, well, I just don't even know where to start. As long as he's in the hospital he's okay. When he's out, he declines. He's in inpatient rehab right now (the physical kind of rehab) and he's mighty pissed about it, because they make him feed himself and walk and things like that. And he can't demand Neosporin and baby powder and soda and hot blankets all night long like he did at the hospital. I am dead serious when I say that I am markedly more gracious and accommodating when I am nine centimeters dilated and vomiting onto my Birkenstocks.

I get my information from my aunt and uncle. Sometimes I get three pages of positivity and happy stories; when I call to discuss the good news, things have taken a turn for the worse. Soon as my feelings are all lined up and mournful and resigned about that, suddenly everything is amazing again.

It's exhausting. And I'm not even there in the trenches.

On top of this is the expectation that I'll go visit while he's in the facility (for the next week or so). Which I was all ready to do until I remembered that Sean has yet another conference this week, meaning the only way to leave town is to find a petsitter and drag both kids along, which won't go over too well with the no-children-allowed facility. Oh, and airfare for just me would be around $400 on such short notice.

So that's not happening. Which means that I am unsupportive and neglectful, and probably to blame for all this misery in the first place.

Gosh, I kind of feel like I could use...a drink.

(Oh my god I am kidding.)

* * * *

The stress is beginning to literally erupt from my body. In addition to some seriously sexy pimples (really, universe? Right on my nose? What am I, a seventh grader?) I am suffering a bout of episcleritis, which I haven't seen since the days of infertility stress. The whole Rudolph the Red-Nosed and Also Red-Eyed Reindeer look is set off nicely by my new halo of white hair. Yes, every new hair growing in along my forehead and temples is white. Which brings me up to maybe 10% gray in patches. I'm down with the grays, but not so much with the patches of flaming red on the face. Anyway my point is that I am totally at the peak of hotness, and trying to keep my stress eating to things in the microwave popcorn-flavored seltzer family. 

* * * *

The free cable is back on (yay! and we are not stealing it!)so I'm watching Roseanne whenever possible, and very much enjoying it from the perspective of Married Adult Mother-Type Person, even more than I did the first time around (I was almost the same age as Becky). I am realizing that whenever my firsthand role modeling for various adult situations like, oh, money troubles and whatall was lacking, I took my coping mechanisms from Roseanne. I can't decide whether that's awesome, unfortunate, or a goddamned shame*. Thoughts?

*Those are the three categories of things.

Back. And, A Question for You

I just don't even know where to begin. The default setting seems to be eating toast and watching Pomplamoose videos on YouTube, so...yeah. I guess I should start with the overdue library books and the baskets of clean folded laundry, the diapers waiting to go in the dryer, the breakfast dishes. I should start with the real estate agent who's waiting for me to schedule viewings (on which subject more below). I should start with getting some things together to send to the people who were so generous while we conducted our whirlwind tour of Tornado Alley. But all I really want to do is sit in a quiet tidy place and not do much of anything at all.

Visiting a gravely ill parent is sort of unspeakably difficult, especially if you missed out on a lot of the intervening decline. Emotional tectonic shifts combined with the riptide drag of a bunch of little kids who want you right in the here and now, providing crackers and strawberries and little plastic toys, they cause you to kind of lose your train of thought permanently. That train derailed and rolled down an embankment and took out a rusted old water tower on the way down.

It was way harder because Sean was away until the day before we left -- I've been on solo parenting duty for nine of the past eleven days, I think. Boo frickin' hoo, I know, but it contributes to the overall...wha? (Although there was a high point: Jenn came to visit, and Sophia has requested her immediate return.)

So that's what's going on. My tether to the right-now is pretty thin, so I have to do just one thing at a time: put a dish in the dishwasher. One folded shirt in a drawer. One email. One library book in the car. Making the choice to be here, to stay here, that's the thing that can keep you alive.

* * * *

In other news: I need your wise consult, internets. We recently learned from our landlords that the house we live in is going to be sold to someone who will most likely tear it down and build new on the site. Our lease will be honored through its end in July, but not renewed. There is also, the landlord mentioned, the possibility of the buyer providing some sort of financial incentive for leaving before the lease runs out.

Hmm.

What kind of incentive, we asked -- and got back "Well, what were you thinking?" as a response. And what I'm thinking is that the buyer is hoping that we'll open the bidding pretty low. And I want to make sure we get as much as is fair out of this, because we were really not as ready to buy now as we were going to be in a year (we'd thought about renting for 2 years to save up a down payment).

So we're wondering what to ask for. One suggestion was to ask for the amount of our rent per month, for each month that we leave early. So if we left six months early, six months' worth of rent money goes to us. No, it's not entirely logical, but it's a starting point. Clearly we'd want to prorate it so that the sooner we leave, the more we get, but how much per month is fair? 

For reference purposes, if someone is buying a house in this neighborhood for a teardown, the lot alone will run you upwards of $200K, and probably closer to $300K. Our rent is $1350 a month (and we will NOT be buying in this neighborhood, as much as I love it -- gentrification hath progressed too far). Would $1350 per month early be too much? $1000? What do you think?

Skeletons

Every time a picture of Zachary Quinto pops up on my screen (why, internet? I haven't seen a movie in years and no, I do not want to receive his "tweets," unless that is a new slang term you kids are using for Thin Mints) all I can think is "Skeletons of Quinto." For the rest of the day. You're welcome.

BUT it's nearing Halloween, and there are skeletons everywhere, including in my own family. Nothing about which we didn't have a general idea, but urgh, the specifics. Anybody who's dealt with an addict for a loved one probably knows the combination of gut-drop and forehead-slap when you kinda knew, but you didn't know. You didn't know about that.

I hate it when people allude to fascinating prurient details and then won't share, because why the hell did you bring it up if you weren't going to deliver? Come on! If there's anything the internet is for, it's the divulging of humiliating specifics! Well, that and YouTube videos of people lancing their own boils. So, um, sorry. Even I have my limits.

And you know what I like to do when I skate too close to my limits? Distract myself! Yes, I like to distract myself with fun, shiny, twirling pinwheels of sparkles and harpsichord music! Whee! This time around the pinwheels are made of real estate listings, and boy howdy, can they suck up an afternoon. Boring old settled married folks like myself can get about real estate, I am learning, like freewheeling single ladies get about the dudes. 

I never stalked a guy, but I drive by houses of interest on a daily basis.

I check their online profiles obsessively; I zoom in on their pictures to deduce key information from the background detail. I pay attention even to the ones that are taken already -- hey, you never know. Somebody might take a job out of state. Somebody might go to a nursing home. Things happen. When they do, I'll be there with my earnest money.

Yeah, yeah, the analogy kind of has its limits. What crazy thing have you done in the name of real estate?