Category Archives: Illnesses

Rainy Day

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I’m writing this on the couch, accompanied by a sick, sniffly Jake, who is busy watching Phineas and Ferb. Oh, September, the return to the petri dish that is the elementary classroom. Actually, the boys each had a minor bout of the sniffles during the first week of school, which turned out to be only a one-day affair, which I, sadly, made worse for Mark. His colds always morph into coughs, and I gave him some over-the-counter cough suppressant, optimistically thinking that this would actually suppress his cough. Instead, he continued coughing and just passed out on the couch for a few hours, feeling lethargic and pale for the rest of the day, and, eventually gagging on his own cough and barfing. Note to self: don’t try to medicate the children unnecessarily.

I’m hoping this cold is as equally short-lived as the first one; I’m still scarred from the cold-that-morphed-into-pneumonia event of 2011. I also have a hair appointment tomorrow and I don’t want to miss it – my roots are insane. I feel like a scarecrow, with orange straw-like hair and startling grey roots, but with non-ragged clothing.

In any event, I’m pleased that the colds are going on this week, instead of next week, when I’ll be out of town for the Blissdom Canada conference. I’m going to be out of town for five days, which is by far the longest I’ve been away from the kids. I’m getting pretty excited to see all my Yummy Mummies and bloggy friends – Hannah and Allison! – and as my excitement grows, my husband’s wanes. He’s always supportive of my endeavours, but I think he’s getting worried about the ensuing to-do list resulting from me not being there. I keep giving him little reminders about what needs to be done while I’m gone, and I think it’s starting to overwhelm him. I don’t totally blame him. After all, I didn’t do any laundry this weekend – I usually do a load a day – and the resulting laundry mountain was immense.

Buoyed by my kitchen reorganization, I’m newly motivated to reorganize and purge my entire house. I’m setting a goal to spend an hour a week reorganizing/ purging one area of my house for the entire winter. First stop: my closet. My closet is a cesspool of clothing, shoes, and bags. It’s really out of control. I oscillate between feelings of despair and regret – for the love of god, no one needs this many sweaters – and a feeling of complete unwillingness to part with a single thing. But I must part with a few things because my drawers and shelves are literally overflowing. And again, I’m faced with the question of how many of a similar item I need. Do I need twenty five black sweaters in different cuts, lengths, and trim? Do I need eight black t-shirts with different necklines, along with twelve black tank tops and seven pairs of black yoga pants? Should I consider buying something that isn’t black? What is wrong with me?

Right now cleaning out my closet feels like some sort of weird psychological experiment, or like I’m on a reality show where someone is going to admonish me for my clothing choices.

Mermaid flounces and acid-wash jeans. Oh my.

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Wednesday night I had a bit of a scratchy throat, which I chalked up to my School Council meeting; waking up Thursday morning feeling like I’d been run over by a bus, I realized this was not the case. I get sick so rarely that I always feel a little affronted by it, like my immune system has become a grave disappointment. On the urging of my husband, I took Advil Cold and Sinus at four hour intervals, and then spent the day either frantically typing out recipes and uploading food photos or passed out in a stupor, depending on where I was in the medication cycle. You know it’s bad when you sit down to rest a little and wake up an hour later in a puddle of drool with one side of your hair completely flattened.

I went to bed last night at 7:30 and woke up at 6:45 and while I am certainly not completely myself, I am feeling better, so that’s something. I feel like I could write some kind of medical manual: just sleep lots! And eat guacamole! You’ll feel better in no time. I probably have as much medical credentials as some of these people who purport to have all the answers in the “wellness community” but ah, I’ve already said too much. No need to start a war.

My cousin’s daughter posted photos of herself the other day, modelling dresses for her upcoming (well, in the spring) graduation from high school. I stared at the photos for a while, realizing that 1986 is now back with a vengeance. If there’s anything that makes a me feel like I’ve been around the block a few times, it’s being faced by a fashion repeat from my youth. I wondered if mermaid dresses with lots of flounce and colour are indeed back in style, and a quick search on google tells me that it’s true. All the pieces fit.



Photo from seventeen.com

 So, there’s that. Next thing you know we’ll be seeing acid wash jeans and pegged ankles…oh wait. We’re already seeing that.


Before you think I’m being all uppity and judgey based on clothing choices, here is a photo of me at my high school graduation – cropped to protect the innocent.

 

Please note the dyed-to-match clutch I am holding, also the wrist corsage. Not shown: dyed-to-match shoes. If 1986 mermaid gowns are in fashion right now, then maybe early 90s gowns should be in fashion when my middle niece graduates high school. I hope I still have this dress, maybe she’d want to have it. So shiny!

Hey, it’s Thanksgiving weekend! We should all list the things we are thankful for. I guess I’m thankful for the fact that I no longer think I’m the bee’s knees while wearing a red satin off the shoulder gown, or a light denim jacket that perfectly matches my light denim jeans. Personal growth.

This episode brought to you by The Simpsons

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Did you check the traplines? is a question that my husband and I have been asking each other since Saturday, like we’re old-timey settlers trading furs at the Hudson’s Bay Company for blankets and tobacco. Happily for us, the answer has been they are empty which is good for both my mental state and for the general atmosphere of the household. My friend Julie reminded me of the scene in Little Town on the Prairie, before the Ingalls get a cat, when Pa’s hair gets nibbled off by nesting mice. I did not need for her to remind me of that, because I had already thought of that, which made me feel like this, substituting the word “boogeyman” for the word “mouse”.

But, we are happily mouse free, I say confidently and hopefully, and not at all in a traumatized way. I spotted a dead mouse in our backyard, and envisioned Barkley eating the dead mouse, and me having to deal with the aftermath of such a situation, and I went inside to talk to the boys. Boys, your mother is having a nervous breakdown. Mark, after assessing the situation, asked for me to fetch him the large shovel out of the shed, and then neatly picked the mousey corpse up and threw it out into the alley where a “car would flatten it”. I wasn’t entirely pleased with this conclusion, but I was pleased enough to not have to deal with it one way or another that I baked some chocolate chip cookies for him and Jake to take to school for snack for the remainder of the week. 

Tomorrow I’m heading to Toronto for the Blissdom Canada conference, and boy, am I excited. I’m especially excited because I’ve gotten all of my to-do items done, and also we have the vermin situation under control. These are equally exciting to me. I’ve been working hard to cross all of those things off the list, and at some point I was behaving exactly like this. I was a bit worried since a) this is the longest I will have ever been away from the children, yes I KNOW they are eight and nine years old, and b) I’ve never been away from the children during the school year. We all know things are much simpler in the summer, when there are no scholastic nor activity schedules to navigate. IT’S GOING TO BE FINE, I say to myself. What’s the worst that could happen? And then I come up with some strange worst-case scenario that makes me think I should just go ahead and open a bottle of wine.

The kids have had colds, and then my husband – who was possibly a wee bit run down due to work pressures and also sobbing hysterical wife pressures – came down with the cold, but in massive form, so that he basically looked like this, minus the sandwich. I have been so worried about getting sick before my very first blogging conference, and meeting all these people, that I have been sleeping over NINE HOURS A NIGHT and consuming possibly toxic levels of Vitamin C. Also oil of oregano, so much so that it’s not even gross to me anymore. Happily and knock on wood, I seem to have escaped the worst of it, only dealing with a tickly throat and fatigue.

But! I’m all packed (including a baggie full of Vitamin C packets, along with Advil Cold and Sinus JUST IN CASE) and for once I feel that I’ve packed just the right amount of clothing. Shoes, however. I have four pairs of shoes packed, not including the boots that I will be wearing on the plane, nor the fabulous hippo slipper-socks bought for the occasion. What is wrong with me? How can I possibly feel that FIVE PAIR OF FOOTWEAR is appropriate for a Thursday to Sunday trip? Well, there is no going back now! Tomorrow morning I’m going to be taking my well-heeled (literally, shoes, see what I did there?) self on the plane. And I’m going to read a book the whole way! And not think about what I’m making for dinner! Well, I MIGHT think about what I’m making for Sunday dinner….

The toll of shopping at Costco

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Congratulations to Maggie, for winning the random draw!  I picked up the prize yesterday on my trip to Costco.  Can you spot it in my minivan?

No, silly, it’s NOT the case of tetra pak almond milk.  Nor is it the giant family size package of Snapea Crisps – those are ALL for me, family size be damned.  I don’t share my Snapea Crisps (although, this isn’t a point of contention in my house.  I am the only person who appreciates their snacktacular attributes.)  You’ll just have to wait and see, Maggie!

A few weeks back I was shopping with a girlfriend and she reached into her bag to pull out her wallet, when something popped out and fell onto the floor.  We both reached for it and started laughing hysterically when it became apparent that said object was an o.b. tampon.  You’d think we were in junior high, gauging by our level of merriment.  Although, truth be told, if that had happened in junior high, we would have probably died of embarrassment.

I thought of this incident with amusement yesterday while shopping in Costco.  I was in the feminine products aisle, and the gigantic boxes of Tampax Super were stacked underneath the gigantic boxes of Tampax Regular.  I selected a box of Regular but I also needed Super – SUPER!  I know, my feminine mystique is going to take a bit of a beating here – and so I tried to shimmy a box from beneath the flats of Regular.  Slowly and nightmarishly, all the Regular tampons started to tip over onto me.  Now, as a person who has a (probably irrational) fear of being crushed to death in a warehouse setting, this was a bit alarming.  I tried to push the boxes back but several still tumbled to the floor.  Fortunately for me, a box of Super also fell to the floor so I had only to replace the gigantic scattered Tampax boxes and wheel my giant cart away, relieved that I now possessed a two year supply of tampons and that I probably would not have to endure narrowly missing death by tampon crushing until early 2015. 

There are a few more humiliating ways to die – I’m thinking specifically of death via heart attack while on the toilet, Elvis-style – but death by crushing in a warehouse would be one of the worst.  Especially, somehow, death by crushing by giant pallets of tampons.

I actually really like grocery shopping, but the loading up of the van and the unloading of the van and then the putting away of the groceries are big negatives to me.  You may be saying to yourself why don’t you get your kids to help? but they are generally in school when I shop (see also: why I like grocery shopping) but even if they weren’t, the baskets that I load the Costco offerings in are probably half their body weight.  Yesterday was cold and snowy and grey, and by the time I had unpacked my giant cart into the van, driven home, and started to bring the groceries into the house, I was pretty cold.

Slight digression: remember, people, that I have what is called Raynaud’s Syndrome, which is characterized by poor circulation and cold, somewhat painful, purple hands and feet.  By the time I reached home my hands were numb and cold, but since that is their normal state in the winter, I kept calm and carried on.

Once everything was neatly put away, everything in its place, I washed my hands.  Hmm, I thought, my right index finger sure must be cold.  Even the warm water isn’t helping.  Then I looked at my right index finger, which was enormously swollen, purple, and had a giant dent in it.  It started to feel like it was going to explode.  Huh.  I realized that I must have pinched it somehow, bringing in the baskets of groceries, but my hands were so numb I didn’t even realize it was happening. 

If that isn’t reason enough to move to a warm climate, I don’t know what is.  I am a Delicate Flower who needs warmth and sunshine to bloom, people.  Or at least for me to not accidentally and unknowingly injure myself.  It’s still pretty painful today, but what was more alarming is that I was typing away this morning and it spontaneously went completely pins-and-needles numb and tingly.  And I tell you this: do not google these symptoms or you may think that you have somehow become gangrenous or the like.  Is my finger going to fall off? you may nervously ask yourself.  Fortunately I have feeling in my finger now, thanks to me turning up the heat and anxiously washing the floors, on the belief that moving around might increase circulation.

Last night while I was waiting for the boys at karate, I tried to take a picture of my finger.  I discovered that a) it is very hard to take a picture of one’s right hand when one is right handed, and b) I’m not going to become a hand model any time soon.

There’s an old adage that you can tell the age of a woman by looking at her hands.  By this picture, one might think I’m one hundred years old.  The waiting room at the karate dojo DOES look a lot like a nursing home.  I’m just watching my stories, dearie.

"And then I posted that as my status, and three people liked it."

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Remember that old Simpsons’ episode where Apu went without sleep for several days and then thought he was a hummingbird?  I feel like that, except for the no-sleep thing.  I mean, I haven’t been sleeping that well but I have been sleeping; during the daylight hours I have been flitting around exactly like a hummingbird, going from task to task in a frantic kind of way.  I have lists everywhere and every time I cross something off I do not get my usual feeling of accomplishment; instead I feel like I need to add five items.   

The boys are sick with colds; Jake has a massive headcold and is currently lying on the couch watching Looney Tunes.  Mark has a cough and any time he has a cough I get something like post-traumatic stress disorder from that time he had pneumonia.  He coughs and my heart starts pounding, my entire body gets tense.  Last night I heard him cough, ran into his room – nearly passing out in the process, due to the excellent combination of my super-low blood pressure and jumping out of bed – and asked if he needed his emergency inhaler.  He was sound asleep.  I stood there in the doorway, my heart pounding, feeling like a ridiculous hypochondriac of a mother.

In an interview prior to the Super Bowl, Ray Lewis said “I’m too blessed to be stressed” and I decided to adopt that as a motto for my life.  I thought I should work that thought, in a zen-like way, into my everyday life.  Which means I was practically screaming “I’M TOO BLESSED TO BE STRESSED!  SERENITY NOW!  NAMASTE MOTHERFUCKER!” today, for reasons too ridiculous to go into. 

Oh well, they are sick, they’ll get better.  The other day the boys were at a make-up karate class, on a different day than usual.  On their usual day, all the kids get dropped off and picked up later, but for me, it’s too far to drive home and back, so I normally sit in the waiting area by myself.  At the make-up class, the kids were younger and so there were a number of moms also waiting.

Here I must interject.  I am the chatty, small-talky mom you might meet in a waiting area.  Chances are if we just met I will find out your kids’ names, ages, activities, and favourite movies.  But on this day, in this waiting room, there were three moms that obviously knew each other and settled in for what I assumed was their weekly chat, and I smiled at them and then, not wanting to interrupt them, continued writing in my notebook.  

It turns out that I couldn’t have interrupted if I had wanted to.  One of the moms started talking at 4:15 and didn’t stop for the next forty five minutes.  It was something to behold.  I looked up at one point, and noticed one of the moms she was talking at was busily crocheting, and the other was simply nodding and murmuring “Um hmmm.  Hmmm.” at intervals.  I guessed this was business as usual for this group.  The woman talked nonstop about the following topics: her son’s hockey practice and the schedule they keep, her hairdresser, the frequency with which she speaks to her mother-in-law, the frequency with which her mother-in-law visits or with which she visits her mother-in-law, her Italian lessons and the expense incurred, the Kiwanis music festival at which she was accompanied by someone not musically talented, her son’s field trip to the Calgary Opera and how she was the single greatest chaperone on the trip, her own vast musical talent, fondue, and the weekend hockey tournament that took place at a wonderful venue in Edmonton and the cost of their hotel room.  She told the other women what she posted as her statuses on Facebook for the past week, and how her family liked to spend their time in a relaxed manner at Disneyland.  One of the other moms, at this point, began to talk about her own recent trip to Disneyland, and was instantly cut off when she said she liked to get to the gates early and then stay until close.  “That must be because you’re Asian!” the woman said.  I looked up, startled and horrified.  The crocheting woman was still crocheting madly.  The Asian woman, with what I thought was extreme self-control, nodded politely. 

With the boys being too sick to go to their karate lesson today, I am not particularly looking forward to taking them to the make up class and being subjected to this kind of asinine one-sided conversation again.  Although I’m kind of curious: will this obnoxiousness be a Groundhog Day-like occurrence?  Does this verbal spewage happen every Tuesday from 4:15 to 5:00?  If I flit around the waiting room like Apu the hummingbird, will it be noticed, or will everyone be too busy listening to “And then I posted on Facebook that happiness is a family marshmallow fight.”? 

One Week

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The first week of January is gone, and I’m completely scattered, so here are some random things going on in the Boyhouse:

1) The boys go back to school tomorrow, and I am having my usual last-day-of-vacation mixed feelings: happiness about the return to routine, and melancholy about the fleeting nature of time, and what city will the kids go to university in, and will it be close, and god, I sure hope my future daughters-in-law like me.  Physically this manifests itself as me cheerfully filling in my calendar for the week with errands and appointments that are unpleasant or impossible to do with the children, and also me randomly grabbing and hugging the nearest child, or screaming “I LOVE YOU!” down the stairs where the children very patiently say “Thanks, Mom.”  THANKS MOM.  It’s like my life is a weird sitcom episode. 

2) My appetite, which has been absent all week, has returned with a vengeance, so in between my week planning and my melancholy, I am also thinking near-constantly about FOOD.  Let’s see, I should go to Costco on Thursday, and maybe make quesadillas tonight, I have to remember to make up the School Council agenda, should I maybe make some of that eggplant dip right now, hmmm…do I have any crackers?  Because the kids were disappointed that I baked brownies to take to a baby shower yesterday rather than for their own consumption, I baked another pan of them this morning, combining my food obsession with my over-indulgence due to the aforementioned fleeting nature of time.

3) Yesterday I actually got teary eyed watching Ray Lewis come onto the Ravens’ field for the last time.  I would blame hormones but I can’t really, which reminds me of the evening not long ago when I was lying on the couch, tearful with hip pain, with a heating pad on my back, washing down Tylenol for Body Pain with red wine and Christmas chocolate, crying to my husband about being sad, so very sad, since my incredible back and hip pain indicated that I would now have to spend the rest of my life in a chiropractor’s office.  I became annoyed with my husband for not being more sympathetic to my plight as a cripple.  Then I started googling chiropractors, acupuncturists, and scoliosis.  Maybe 2013 will be the year where I finally recognize ladies’ holiday symptoms rather than concluding that life as I know it is over and the rest of my life will be all about pain management and sadness.

4) Speaking of Dr. Google, I fell down the rabbit hole last night by looking up “rashes and stomach virus” since Jake had developed a rash on his stomach and chest.  Instead of concluding reasonably that Jake, being prone to rashes, simply had a bumpy red manifestation of the virus that we had – probably Norwalk – I started clicking links that were, frankly, terrifying.  Consulting Dr. Google is never a good idea.  I blame my undernourished brain.

5) If there is a bright side to contracting a virulent stomach virus such as Norwalk, it is that a post-Christmas cleanse becomes completely unnecessary.  Not that I was really contemplating a cleanse; I did the Wild Rose cleanse back in 1999 and although that is now nearly fourteen years ago, I still get the shivers thinking about it.  That cleanse was the reason why, whenver anyone tells me that they are doing a similar detox, all I can think is exploding intestines, and I hope you have a nice bathroom.  But in any case, being sick has made post-Christmas weight-loss plans unnecessary, which is a minor upside to a deplorable week.

How was the first week of January for you?

COME ON DOWN!

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Yesterday I optimistically cleaned the house, sanitizing all the surfaces and disinfecting doorknobs.  I baked muffins and indulged in such self-care rituals as applying moisturizer, blow-drying my hair, and shaving my legs for the first time in many days.  I just finished reading How To Be A Woman, and while I enjoyed it, and felt a strong and hearty agreement with it, I also feel that there are many nice things in life, and having smooth legs, underarms, and bikini line after days of achieving yeti-like status is one of them.  Relatedly, I realized as I plucked them that my eyebrows would, if left unchecked, morph into a blend of Frida Kahlo and Martin Scorcese’s on my face.  There’s nothing like a few days of stomach flu and no sleep to make normal daytime rituals seem like the epitome of luxury.

Oh!  But I was too optimistic too soon, because my remaining healthy child took a turn for the worse last night, causing me to pull a very gross all-nighter with him.  I’m doing a lot of laundry, is what I’m saying.  My husband is also feeling nervous, like there is ominous music playing just for him.  If you hear a strange noise, do not leave the campfire.  Do not go into the dark woods.

The funny thing about kids is how quickly they bounce back, eating freezies and playing video games.  Even while sick, in the middle of the night, Mark both maintained his polite manners – “Please may I have a tissue?” – and his incredulity about the whole situation.  “I think I have the barfing flu” he said after heaving into the toilet for the seventh time in two hours.  Yeah, maybe.  Jake, on the other hand, maintained sunny optimism: “Every time I barf I feel a little better!” he said after the tenth bathroom visit.  “I think I’ll probably feel better tomorrow!”

And he seems to be correct.  Yesterday, while attempting to find a suitable children’s show on television, I came across The Price Is Right!  I was so excited.  The kids enjoyed the show in the same way I did when I was a kid.  The prizes and games were all so exciting!  A barbeque in the shape of an egg!  A new car!  A trip to New York!  A freestanding sauna!  I was kind of disappointed that there were no dinette sets to be won, as in my youth, but maybe I need to watch more.

When I was a kid, I loved that show.  I used to want to be a Barker’s Beauty, and this wish also coincided with my idea that I would, one day, be crowned Miss Canada.  My mother even made a Halloween costume to that effect, complete with red gown, crown, and sash proclaiming MISS CANADA 1982.  But the idea that a whole career – such as it was – could be built out of being pretty, wearing stilettos, and showcasing RV’s and sectional couches was fascinating.  I didn’t know about sexual harrassment, obviously, so it seemed pretty prime to me.

Of course, the Price is Right that my kids are now happily being exposed to has 100% less sexual harrassment – I THINK – and also has a male, um, Barker’s Beauty.  I guess they aren’t called that anymore but I cannot imagine what they might be called.  Anyway, this guy is disappointingly modestly dressed and also, it appears, in charge of driving the New! Cars! to be won.  What’s up with THAT?  The women can still drive cars in the presence of a man, thank you very much.

In any case, I’d like to thank The Price Is Right for the much-needed entertainment for me and my recovering children.  One episode had almost every single audience member in blocks of colour-matched t-shirts, which made Mark think that the audience was made up of “teams”.  “Oh, the red team is up.”  I guess it’s kind of true.  We also saw a woman win $1000 spinning the big wheel, whereas she promptly fell on the floor and rolled around.  “Wow, she’s REALLY happy.” Mark said.  “What would happen if she won one million dollars?”  I’m guessing she would probably die, but die happy, I suppose.

One of the best parts of watching The Price is Right is the commercials.  You have to hand it to the TV executives; they know their prime audience, and it isn’t me and my kids.  In one hour we saw two separate commercials for motorized scooters, several for Ensure, laxatives, and other supplements for Colon Health, and one featuring Henry Winkler advocating for reverse mortgages.  FONZIE.  Have we learned nothing?  Reverse mortgages are a very, very bad idea.  NOT COOL.  Stick with the Colace.