the modernity ward

I Am Thinking I Could Probably Handle Public Office

Somebody must have turned the heat up under the pot that is my life, because I feel like I never sit down except to pay the bills. The second my ass hits that chair, Daphne opens the front door and takes off running, or a pain-medicated dog pees on the floor, or Sophia uses her fend-off-attackers scream to notify me that she does not wish to watch Cyberchase.

I mean, I kind of feel the same way about Cyberchase. But come on, kiddo. Save it for when it's truly needed. I told her the story of the boy who cried wolf, except that I was so peeved I told her the wolf ate the boy, and I should have know better, because she looked at me in horror and said, stunned, "I hate you!"

I knew just what she meant. I knew so well that I couldn't even pretend to be upset about hearing that, so I apologized and hugged her and told her that the wolf really just ate the sheep and it was only a fable anyways. Poor kid.

Yeah, so last week, well, you know about last week. We spent the weekend building a kickass swingset, and by "we" I mean "Sean," because my job was to keep Daphne out of the way. (I also made mini knockoff Hostess cupcakes that were amazing.) It was almost as hard as building the swingset. He actually involved Sophia as much as possible, which was just, I mean, wow, dude. So now we have an amazing swingset, and then I don't remember Monday at all, and Tuesday the dog had a mass removed from her shoulder and I spent the day scrambling to get an appointment at one place and then canceled it because the regular doctor's office got me in (more on that in a minute). Started a pot of goat stew (yes, really) and then ran out the door to pick up Sophia from preschool, intending to go straight from preschool to the vet to get the dog, and remembered that I had left the stove on, so had to come home in the middle of the trip. Got the dog. Drove home. Made rice to go with stew. Noticed it was awfully hot in the house.

Somehow I knew it was the compressor that died, and I have no idea how I'd know that but I did, and the first place I called couldn't send anyone until Friday because it is suddenly mid-July around here, and then I found a local guy. He came Wednesday after I got to enjoy a morning with friend Rachel talking about paint colors, made plans to come back Thursday. Took the kids out to pick mulberries down the street. Wednesday night was spent baking cupcakes in the hot kitchen; thought I'd be awesome and dye the icing with mulberry juice. Totally forgot about the way mulberry juice smells after a while. (You know that smell when you first open a bag of M&Ms? Or maybe an old cardboard box? Funky.) Anyway, didn't discover that until I'd made and frosted (quite beautifully) about thirty mini-cupcakes. In the hot kitchen. Late into the night. For Sophia's preschool tomorrow.

WHICH BRINGS US to today, when I sent Sophia off to her LAST DAY OF PRESCHOOL EVER with Sean, and Daphne and I headed for my 9 a.m. doctor's appointment with the Other Guy in the practice. He sees my weird name, asks if I know Sean LeeryPolyp, and it turns out he was a big fan of Sean's comic strip back in our college days. We enjoy a little Wahoowa time, he looks at my foot and tells me it's fine (oh by the way D has been screaming ever since I got weighed, big stranger anxiety). I think I have time to go to Target so I pick up some pretzels for preschool, dixie cups, new jug of bubbles and a hula hoop. Race home to find A/C guy hard at work. Tell him we have until 2:30 (it is now 11) and then I have to go. Would've made it if the first compressor hadn't been defective, but he has to go back out for another one, so Sean comes home and I take D out to get S at preschool, where I serve the Funky Cupcakes and the pretzels to a bunch of four-year-olds who are NO FOOLS and are not interested in your STINKY CUPCAKES, lady. Have a pretzel then.

Then I took both kids to Whole Foods to buy the only shampoo that keeps my entire scalp from disintegrating into flakes (Sean's too), and boy, was that fun. D is now at an age when you CANNOT STOP HER from, say, pushing the damn tiny cart, or running away, or accidentally dumping a dozen eggs on the floor during the second you look away. And no, she will not ride in a cart. If I can even get her in, she climbs out and tries to fling herself backwards. That belt? It doesn't even slow her down.

BUT at least the air conditioner works now. And I think we can squeeze a few more years out of the system; fifteen hundred bucks is a lot easier to swallow than the seven or eight thou it would take to replace the whole thing.

So that is what my week has been like so far. And you know about last week. Next week, I have plans to use precious babysitter time to visit the dentist to see about THE TOOTH THAT IS TURNING GRAY AND WILL PROBABLY CAUSE ME TO NEED A ROOT CANAL IN THE NEAR FUTURE. YES. YOU READ THAT RIGHT. A ROOT CANAL. THAT MAY OR MAY NOT BE COVERED BY INSURANCE. Nobody knows why, either. The tooth isn't near a screw or incision or anything.

On the upside, my dad is in the hospital again. You can probably imagine how bad his condition had gotten if being back in the hospital is considered the upside of things.

You Know What Your Problem Is?

Your problem, because clearly if you're here reading you are sufficiently invested in my life that this would matter to you as much as if not more than it matters to me, is that I'm funnier late at night. Like that dude you hung out with ten years ago who made you weep tears of weed-fueled hilarity every night after ten p.m., but who in the morning seemed sort of pathetic and squinty and wait a minute, man, did you wake and bake? Really? You told us you were all out! 

Except not stoned and with better period jokes.

Why is that a problem? Because here it is, a perfectly respectable 10:09 on a Thursday, and I'm thinking about ordering clothesline and building supports for my pole beans and maybe disassembling the pillow fort. Although, I don't know about that. It keeps the the ravioli from getting on the carpet when I'm eating and watching Wife Swap, and people think it's charming in an "oh-what-a-whimsical-fun-loving-mom" kind of a way, the way I leave the pillow fort up. But then they probably think the kids built it and get to play in it and stuff, too.

Anyway, late last night I was reading The Bloggess and weeping, as one does, because one is just not as funny and prolific and never will be and shit, she has a kid too, and where's my newspaper-backed blog? and then I got up to brush my teeth and the Funny Pistons were just firing like crazy, making amazing jokes in my head and I was writing a week's worth of incredible posts in my head and you guys were laughing and laughing and my BlogHer ads check was more than thirty bucks next month because I was so funny!

But I was too tired to post it. Also the Funny Pistons is a great band name. So is Fish Mitten. You can have those.

So here we are and I have some very real life things to deal with, things greater and grimmer than laundry, even. I will leave you with a quiz and with a story about my teeth.

The Quiz: What Would You Like to Learn From Me

Okay, so imagine I am teaching a class. (I imagine this all the time. It looks like a series of photo stills from a college brochure. I smile and bend slightly from the waist a lot.) What is that class?

a) Life Drawing with Naked People

b) Green on the Cheap: Build a Compost Pile for Ten Bucks and Other Awesome Green Things that Do Not Have to Come from the GAIAM Catalog

c) How to Be Funny in Writing, Some of the Time

d) Something Else

A Story about My Teeth

The surgeon removed my bite splint on Tuesday. It's hard to tell what's going on in the picture, but imagine that you took a five-inch roll of Play-Doh about half in inch in diameter, arranged it so it covered your top teeth from molar to molar, and bit into it. Oh and then attached it to your teeth and braces with a lot of steel wires. It wasn't uncomfortable, and it kept my palate from contracting back to its previous width, but it was impossible to keep clean. There was a little shelf behind my front teeth where stuff would get stuck (tiny wads of meat, bits of pasta) and almost nothing would dislodge them. Swishing water, poking tiny stick between teeth from the front, bending up pipe-cleaner-like brushes to gouge from behind -- sometimes I never could recover them. Plus there was also the stuff that was too small to be particulate, like a thin haze of protein shake. Top that with the inability to floss, and you're talking serious funk, my friends.

When the horrible plastic tray was finally removed, my teeth were coated in something like small-curd cottage cheese, only more tenacious. The surgeon was unfazed and had a toothbrush waiting for me. I still felt a little bit like throwing myself through the plate-glass window in an effort to escape the humiliation. And the smell.

Tomorrow I will tell you what it's like when your teeth touch for the first time in a decade. It's a moving and inspirational story, kind of like that movie about the blind guy who was finally able to see but got all confused because his brain didn't know how to interpret visual stimuli. You'll cry when you read it. I just know it.

(Also, I remember that I said I would talk about the new breastfeeding study. I'll get around to that. Sure I will, Timmy.)

I Can't Eat Salad, But I Can Post It.

1) Cherry Dump: a very good thing. It may or may not cause me to experience its...not namesake, exactly, but a thing of the same name. What's that called? But who cares! It was delicious. And I didn't even have to go to Girl Scout camp to get it!

2) I made up something awesome and mushy. You take some mashed potatoes, inundate them with any kind of cheese shreds called Fiesta! or Mexicano! or the like, and then apply my special sauce, consisting of two large blobs mayo, one large blob yogurt, a dash of hot sauce, tablespoon of V8, and a sprinkling each of chili powder and chipotle powder. Hot DAMN! Tastes like something Taco Bell might sling, but it fits into my tiny hadrosaur mouth! (Side note: can now open my mouth about 1.5 fingers. Believe it or not, that's an improvement.)

3) Postpartum depression is so popular, she gets to have ALL the fun. Well, no more. Other postpartum mental disorders such as postpartum anxiety and -- my personal favorite -- postpartum OCD (see? it's a thing!) gotta represent. Check out this organization, spreading the good word. Additionally, Marcie Ramirez of the Middle Tennessee chapter will be on The Dr. Oz Show on April 1, talking about OCD (apparently just regular-old, although she will be a guest again if they cover PMDs in particular). If I'd had any inkling that my crazy was related to postpartum, I might have done a better job getting help. Heck, if I'd known that postpartum anxiety and OCD even existed! Isn't that shameful?

4) I know, I know. You want to see the grill. Well, you'll have to wait! Until I decide to get up and find the camera and take a picture and find the cord and plug it in and...urgh. Someday. Someday, dudes.

5) Breaking Bad: I tried. I really did. I can't watch it. It's too unrelentingly bleak. It makes The Wire look like DragonTales.

6) It didn't take long: Sunday I was reading the paper and counted three people either quoted extensively or running a byline and photo that I actually know -- like, I could walk up and say hi and they would know my name. Small town, Nashville. I likes it.

7) Do you have a swing set you like? We want one that's under $400 and not huge, but it does have to be safe and sturdy enough to last some years. Doesn't need lots of bells and whistles, just a couple swings and a glider, maybe some rings.

8) Oh, and #5 up there reminds me: my surgeon looks like a clean-cut bespectacled version of McNulty from The Wire. Mmmyeah. You know you wish he'd peel your face back and move your bones around!

Unbound

Y'all, I am in light bands now and I can take 'em out to eat! Well, mushy stuff that doesn't require chewing, but YAY!

There is nothing so appetizing as seeing an X-ray of your own head with twenty new little screws in the face part, lemme tell ya.

Bit of an Adipositive Funny

So obviously it's hard to eat when your jaw is wired shut. My orthodontist told me that "Even if you live on Haagen-Dasz, you're gonna lose weight." Well, I certainly would, since an ice cream-heavy diet would cause me to be a diarrhea-powered rocket person. Take a minute to savor that mental picture. Okay.

Everybody foists Boost and Ensure and all kinds of oil-rich high calorie stuff on you for recovery, and the papers I got from my surgeon's office instruct me "not to lose more than two pounds per week if overweight," and not to lose any weight at all if you're at your ideal weight. Try four to six small meals a day, plus a can of Boost, they say. A quick perusal of various surgery offices' websites revealed a caloric recommendation of -- ready? -- 2500 calories a day! That's for everybody. Ladies too. 

For comparison, a recent (some tabloid magazine I read in a hydrocodone haze) article about how much stars really eat listed one (god, what was her name?) as consuming 1,350 calories per day.

That's borderline starvation rations. By the way. In case you'd recently read any diet propaganda recommending that kind of intake for weight loss or (gasp!) maintenance. It's actually just under what my dad's doctors recommend he consume if he wants to not die. And while metabolism goes up when you're healing, you're also spending a lot of time lying around watching TV post-surgery. It's not like we're Magnus VerMagnusson over here, pulling school buses with our wired-shut jaws. We're roaching on the couch drinking gravy, watching Magnus VerMagnusson drag a bus with his teeth and wondering if this will be the time his head tears right off his neck and goes bouncing down the road.

I just love when they break it down to numbers, and the absurdity of it all becomes so obvious. If you want to lose weight, eat three lettuce leaves a day! And some lean turkey! If you want to not die, eat 1,150 more calories than that.

You Have Four Minutes Until Wife Swap is On

That's about how long before I drag my sorry ass into the living room and set up camp in front of the teevee. The downside to having my bands loosened is that now my face hurts a lot more; the downside to that is that Lortabs gives me disturbing dreams. Graphic, unpleasant, disturbing dreams. Sleeping in front of the TV kind of heads that off, although the downside to THAT is that I have attempted to watch the most recent episode of LOST twice, and...nothin'.

I am far, far more swollen than that picture, now. A beautiful blackish-yellow bruise is beginning on each cheek. I'm less direly congested, and supposedly yesterday was the peak day for swelling -- it's true, my cheeks no longer bulge below my chin, they're just about level again -- but you know, if I had more of an appetite, I'd be starting to come around to the idea of a Big Mac in a blender. Ain't much more dull than chicken broth and Gatorade (and juice, and almond milk protein smoothies). Sean is getting some baby food, I made some homemade lemonade with electrolytes -- but damn, when do we get to overcooked pasta? (Answer: about a month. Ha ha.)

Also, liquid penicillin is horrible, horrible stuff. HORRIBLE.

Also I miss my mommy!

Other than that, doing pretty well. Time for meds and Wife Swap! Wooooo!

Two Tips for Making Your Hideous Face Surgery Easier

1) Get sick. Get really sick. Be unsure of the source of the sick: is it nerves? Is it the fact that you ate your weight in Jamaican food and then did an afternoon of heavy physical labor in the yard? Is it a stomach bug?

After the barfing subsides, lie awake tossing and turning wondering whether they'll do the surgery and singing the Facts of Life theme song in your head, really loud. Get no sleep whatsoever.

How does that make things easier? By the time you're due in surgery, you'll be so wrung out and abjectly grateful for the promise of an IV that you won't be able to worry. You won't have anything left to worry with. You'll take your IV and you'll like it.

Also, you'll be so out of it from lack of sleep that you kind of won't notice as they edge you closer to surgery, one procedure at a time, until...

2) You're chock full of Valium! A whole lot of extremely handsome doctors, dentists, and nurse anesthetists have paraded into your room, in which you sit wearing a paper gown with a blower tube hooked up to it. It inflates you like a Mylar balloon, but mmmboy is it toasty under there! One of the extremely handsome men -- I mean really, was it necessary for them to be so handsome? --
adds some Valium to your IV, and you just don't even care that somebody is taping down your hair and wheeling you down the hall and down you go.

I realize these aren't your usual tips, and in fact might be better listed as "Do Not Do's."  I was too sick to be really afraid, and too wiped to be antsy the next day. I was clearly over my illness by that morning, no fever or anything, though I did require reconstitution via IV. Once the fluid was in me, I felt pretty much fine, and a whole day of sleeping (and a night of sleeping solo) was remarkably refreshing. Right now I feel like a person with a terrible sinus infection. And as for how I look, well...

you can see where my nose swelled into my glasses. They apparently straightened my septum a bit, but my nose looks extra crazy now. And my hair looks that way because that's how your hair would look if you had an icepack wrapped around your head 20 hours a day.

Mffm Mrfl Fmmm!

So it turns out that my jaws are kind of fused with heavy rubber bands and a plastic bite plate in the middle, so I can't even really mumble. I eat via rubber tubing attached to a syringe; I kind of trickle it along my molars and some of it works its way in.

By "eat" I mean "drink water or Coke." Attempts at Boost made me super-blerfy (god, that stuff is bad even when you're not post-op) and the strained oatmeal this morning was so thick I had to suction it right back out. I just now, like, five minutes ago, started feeling hungry. Should be going home soon, where all the decent juice is. Who brings cranberry juice to someone on nausea meds? Silly hospital.

The surgery itself apparently went very well. I don't remember going under at all (they gave me some Valium for the ride down the hall, and I do remember feeling that kick in) but I apparently woke up pretty fast -- I recall the tubes being pulled.

Everybody here has been so wonderful that I only have one funny story, involving the nurse in the recovery area, who was a total asshole and couldn't quite work out the whole jaw-wired-shut thing. I kept trying to make her read my notes, and she was all, "Yes, I *know* you've had nose surgery!" And she wouldn't let me have my Afrin (which I kind of need to breathe). They immediately switched me to a resident who stayed with me all night, and was awesome. This morning's nurse is hilarious. In all I'm a big fan of Vandy from a patient perspective.

Sophia has the barfs too, so maybe it was a virus? I don't know. Daphne survived a night without mama just fine. I'd planned to go home if possible yesterday, but it just wasn't gonna happen. Too queasy, too out of it. Not much grosser than barfing up a blood clot when you can't open your teeth to spit it out. I kind of had to keep mashing it with my tongue until I could get it between my teeth. Ick.

Time to pump; should be headed home soon. You know why you shouldn't abuse Percocet? It makes you a boring writer.

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.