Monthly Archives: April 2011

What makes a happy couple? Not outdoor soccer.

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Last week I was applying makeup while wearing my robe and Jake peered over at my exposed legs.  “Mom, you should go put your stockings on,” he said in a voice of concern.  I assured him that I didn’t need to wear my stockings anymore!  Happy news!  He repeated his request, slightly louder.  I repeated my response in a slightly different way, simplifying it as I thought he didn’t understand, like maybe he had an issue with comprehension of the English language.  Finally, he tearfully snapped.  “MOM!  Please just put your stockings on!  Your legs are creeping me out!”
Ew!  And this is after a week of healing.  It’s like Frankenstein’s monster’s legs, but paler.
I went and put on yoga pants.
Yesterday was a lovely day and I spent the majority of it bundled up and sitting out in the sun, reading, like the elderly person I have now become.  The boys rode their scooters and bikes and dug holes in the dirt while I wondered how much longer it will be until I can clean up the yard a little, plant a few things, cut back the old dead perennials.  There is still snow on the ground although it’s trying to melt.  My husband watched the Master’s, and for those of you who are not golf fans – I suspect that I’m talking to most of my readership here – it is being touted as the most exciting Master’s EVER.  At one point there were six players who were tied for the lead, which is evidently quite rare.  Tiger Woods even was a contender – I coulda been a contender!  I coulda been a somebody, instead of just a nobody. – but he did not win.  It is a little amazing to me that he still has a large fan base and that people were clapping (in the muted, golf way) for him.  I guess this gives hope to Charlie Sheen.
It’s funny about relationships.  I’ve been reading a few articles lately that have addressed the issue of how to “keep the spark alive”, and while I have a hard time keeping the ribald jokes to myself (Blowjobs! Pornography!  Alcohol!), I think it’s an important topic.  My husband is, obviously, an avid golf fan and an avid golf player, while I, most clearly, am not.  I am a yoga practitioner, whereas my husband, most emphatically, is not.  But yet, I find that our separate interests are part of our keeping said spark alive, even if we frequently “parallel talk” – i.e., “I shot a birdie on the tenth hole, then bogeyed the eleventh.”  “My back’s a little stiff from Kapotasana.  I think I should stretch.”  There is no way that we are ever going to be a “golf couple”; I am never donning one of those little hats and killing myself with frustration.  We are also never going to be a “yoga couple”; my husband is never going to “inhale happiness exhale peace.”  We’re a happy couple, though.  Even if I know, against my will, that Rory McIlroy completely fell apart on the back nine.
Tonight is soccer evaluations, and the single greatest email I received last week informed me that the evaluations would take place indoors this year, given the plethora of snow.  I was almost hysterically happy with this news.  Next week the season starts and let me tell you a little secret: outdoor soccer in this city is terrible.  Every year I sit on my little folding chair dressed for a blizzard, with a giant cup of tea and a sleeping bag wrapped around me, and it feels like, indeed, hell has frozen over and I am living in it.  But the kids are happy out there in the fresh air and light evenings, running around, and that’s what matters most.  Now, if only that snow would melt.

High Maintenance Girl

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Sally: Which am I?
Harry: Oh, you’re the worst kind.  You’re high maintenance, but you think you’re low maintenance.
Sally: I don’t see that.
Harry: You don’t see it?  Waiter, I’ll have the house salad, but I don’t want the regular dressing.  I want the balsamic oil and vinegar.  But I want it on the side.  Then I’ll have the salmon with mustard sauce but I want the mustard sauce on the side.  On the side is a very big thing for you.
Sally: Well, I just want it the way I want it.
Harry: I know.  High maintenance.
Once again, I feel that movie is actually all about me and my life.  My husband is constantly telling me that I am high maintenance and although I protest, my protests are weak because I know that this is an accurate way to describe me.
I’ve been feeling somewhat guilty about complaining so much about my surgery because really, what am I really complaining about?  Things could be so much worse.  My beautiful, very active and sporty neighbour and friend was hit by a car while riding her bike, and ended up with a broken back.  A broken back!  She was out of commission for a long time, unable to do the things she loved.  And not just the sporty things she loved, but things like getting in and out of cars unassisted.   Another friend of mine had surgery in which her chest was cracked open and she couldn’t care for her two small children for many weeks, and a year later she still is feeling the effects of it.  So I feel a bit spoiled and high maintenance for complaining about something that is making me walk like I’ve been riding a horse for the  past month non-stop and is making me unable to wear anything but yoga pants.  I mean, a week ago I was clad in only pajamas and tensor bandages, so yoga pants are a very large step up. 
I’m still going to complain, though, and this one might be filed under an excess of information, but if one cannot impart an excess of information on one’s readers, then why have a blog to start with?
Here’s the thing: I can’t shave my legs.  I’m not sure when I will be able to shave my legs.  I feel like a sasquatch, or, alternately, a hippie.  You know, dear readers, I am all about peace, love, and happiness, but pass the damn razor.  And also the lip gloss.  Did you see the picture in the previous post?  That is what happens when there is no makeup.  I would have been a terrible hippie.  When I think about Woodstock I immediately get shivers thinking of all those people, all that rain and no toilets.  Not to mention the brown acid.  And all the guys wearing leather fringed jackets with no shirts underneath and without a doubt no showers or deoderant. 
But back to the issue at hand.  I feel like an actual yeti.  I don’t even want to hear from you people who regularly do not shave your legs because you don’t feel the need to.  Almost everyone I know who doesn’t shave a) is blond, or b) has little body hair anyway.  At the risk of disgusting everyone, I am not only fair skinned and brunette, but I am also of partial Scottish ancestry, and apparently my body still thinks that I need to keep warm in the Highlands. 
That’s that.  I’m not going to complain anymore, I promise. 

When I am an old woman

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When I am an old woman, I will wear an excessive amount of Chanel Number 5.  I will wear thick, bright layers of lipstick that will feather and bleed into my papery skin.  I will make wildly inappropriate jokes and sexually harrass all the male orderlies at the home and earn the reputation of being the creepy old woman in room 14. 


What I have discovered about myself, disturbingly enough, is that when I am an old woman I am going to relentlessly discuss my various health complaints.  Yes, I’m going to be one of those horrible old people who talk about my less savoury ailments to random passerby.  I’m discovering this about myself as right now it is all I can do to not roll down my thick, dark beige compression stockings to show people my stitches.  “Want to see my scar?”  Anyway, my legs have become somewhat fascinating to me, and so I must think that they are fascinating to everyone else, despite the fact that my long suffering, beloved husband turned slightly green at the sight of my unbandaged, revolting legs. 

Speaking of my long suffering, beloved husband, he went back to work today and I think he was quite relieved to do so.  Not only has he had to take care of me and my random, irrational fits of sobbing – But I don’t WANT my legs to hurt anymore! – he has also been running the house and dealing with the children.  I do not think that he has a glamourized view of the stay at home parent.  If any of you are feeling underappreciated these days, I totally recommend complete convalescence and to have your husband do load after load of laundry and wash sinkful after sinkful of dishes to really get some drudgery based recognition.  Or maybe I don’t.  Because it’s kind of depressing to realize that this is how I spend my days.

Anyway, back to my fascinating legs.  Other than the stitches scattered over the length of them – Do you have bugs on your legs, Mom? – they look, disturbingly, as though someone has taken a crowbar to them.  I’m like Nancy Kerrigan!  Why?  WWHHHHYYYYYYYYYY?  I feel a kinship with Nancy.  Perhaps she and I could hang out, discuss the pros and cons of Minnie Mouse ears. 

I ran out of my good drugs yesterday.  This is good and bad.  On the good side, as much fun as it was sleeping sixteen hours a day and being in a state of non-pain, my brain was just completely fuzzy.  I could barely concentrate enough to read a Candace Bushnell novel.  As it was, I did finish Mockingjay and I’m not sure if it was me or the book, but I couldn’t really get into it.  I kept wondering if this was a different battle scene or the same one, or what area they were in, or if anyone important died.  When I finished the book I was just totally confused.  Did Gale die?  What actually happened?  I tried going back and re-reading and just became more confused.  So I think that was me. 

On the bad side, of course, is the pain.  It’s like the House of Pain around here, but without the jumping around.  But you can still take Tylenol, I was told, which to me is the same as saying You can take nothing.  Bitch, please.  Tylenol?  Unless I can down the whole bottle, Tylenol is doing nothing.

So there’s that.  This weekend it snowed, thirty centimetres, and I stared out the window in drugged-out bliss while Mark enjoyed it:

Those are almond eyes, a carrot nose, and a banana smile.

See?

And lest anyone accuse me of only posting flattering pictures of myself.  Here I am, completely high on Percocet, enjoying the lovely fruit bouquet sent by my girlfriends.  Note my awesome hair and pajamas.

STRIPPING! Boom chicka wah wah! UPDATE

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So here’s what you may not know about getting your varicose veins stripped: it really, really hurts.  I know!  News flash!  But honestly, I was unprepared for how much it would hurt and how difficult it would be to walk afterward.  I am happy to tell you that today I am moving around and even getting up out of bed by myself without thinking that a crane and/or hydraulic lift would be handy. 

My strongest – and yet still vague and fuzzy – recollection from the recovery room is whispering to my nurse that I didn’t expect it to hurt so much.  “I just didn’t think it would hurt like this,” I whispered sadly as the nurse upped my morphine dosage.  The nurses kept asking me to rate my pain on a scale from one to ten, and I kept saying, passionately, SIX.  It is a SIX.  Mentally I rationalized that I’d had two babies with no pain medication, and that hurt way more, so I could not go above six on the scale, but I did not explain that to the nurse who I assumed could understand that SIX IS AS HIGH AS I WOULD GO. 

Good times.  So the last few days have been marked by my stumbling around the house – “walking” to avoid blood clots and the like – sleeping a lot, and counting down until it’s time to take pain medication again.  My husband has been handling things amazingly well, making meals and even keeping the house clean.  The kids have been good and have made me several dozen pictures in the past couple of days.  I was sent a gorgeous fruit bouquet by some girlfriends and one lovely friend dropped off sourdough and scones just today.  So I feel very thankful for my wonderful friends and family.

Here’s my complaint about convalescence: it is very boring.  Daytime television is atrocious.  We have a couple hundred channels and almost everything is either a) some sort of strange reality program, b) a crappy talk show, or c) sports.  Since it’s spring break and the kids are around, I can’t really watch reruns of NYPD Blue, either, or not without fear of scarring the children.  I did watch Chris Rock on David Letterman and laughed so hard at his criticism of foreign policy – “There’s a guy over there having a heart attack!  Let’s go kick him in the balls!” – that my stitches hurt. 

Thanks everyone for your well wishes.  xo