Hello from a Vicodin haze

So it really wasn't all that bad. My dentist had gotten me all worked up when I was in his office last week for my pre-surgery x-rays, talking about "impacted this" and "infection that" and, my favorite, "cutting through sections of tooth and bone." The latter, of course, sent me straight to Google, where I encountered woe-filled tales of poor wretches whose faces had been paralyzed upon a wayward tooth-and-bone-cutter striking a nerve.

When I got to the oral surgeon's office, though, the nurses looked over my x-rays and were all "no sweat." The oral surgeon walked in right on time, patted me on the shoulder, and said "Four easy extractions. Let's go!" Then they knocked me out, woke me up about twenty minutes later, took me for a walk down the hall, and sent me on my merry way.

The pain has been manageable, what with the help of my friend Vicodin. I pop one every four hours and the world is a lovely, albeit slightly dizzy, place. I spent most of yesterday on the couch, watching "Mad Men" on DVD and eating Magic Bullet smoothies. A work crew came out to install sliding storm windows in our upstairs sleeping porch, and I must have looked like the laziest of lounging housewives, calling out instructions from my mid-day nap.

Lest I become complacent, however, my child stepped in to remind me that parenthood stops for no ailment, wisdom teeth extraction included. Cletus the Former Fetus came home from daycare in rare form yesterday, ultimately throwing a thirty-minute temper tantrum -- centered around the indignity of being forced to eat two bites of broccoli -- that involved several pieces of furniture and a grilled cheese sandwich crust being used as weapons. The warrior retreated from battle only when faced with the threat of a 6:00 PM bedtime.

I would like to stay in bed for another day, but I just can't justify it. I've got to try and bring some order to the chaos that is my household. There are stacks of papers to be filed. There are little bits of freelance projects -- the annoying detail-y bits, the bits I left for "after vacation," whatever that means -- to be finished. There is filth to be eradicated. Speaking of which: I resolve to never make fun of people who shop at the Yankee Candle Company again, as I have just become one of them. Last weekend I visited a cousin of mine, and upon stepping into her home I was enveloped in a smell so amazing that I immediately fell over and died three times. She peeled me off the floor and pointed at her little electric air freshener wall unit, then drove me to the mall so I could buy my own. Now my whole first floor smells like cinnamon instead of dog pee, and I just can't tell you how happy that makes me.

Wise

Four hours from now, all four of my wisdom teeth get yanked.

Have a lovely day.

Rage of the day

Upon returning from vacation, I called my mom to check in on the homefront. She shared with me the following heartwarming tale -- curl up with a cup of tea and enjoy:

Ever since my brother Daniel's... whatever you call it (accident? disaster? ouchie?) two months ago, my family has been waiting to be scheduled for an appointment with an elusive Group of Specialists. In the hospital ICU, Daniel was under the care of two physicians: one a general surgeon, the other a cardiologist. The physicians worked together on Daniel's surgeries, and both pressed upon him the importance of followup care with the aforementioned Group of Specialists in order to begin solving the mystery of "Why Are My Veins Like Those Of A Really Old Man?".

This Group of Specialists, located in a city about five hours from where my brother lives, is one of those fancy operations that you can only actually contact directly if you have a secret password and a gilded invitation. To set up an appointment, my brother would need a direct referral. Now here's where things started to get dicey. The cardiologist thought the surgeon was making the referral. The surgeon thought the cardiologist was making the referral. When weeks passed with nary an appointment in sight, my mom made some calls only to find the heads of my brother's collective care team members lodged firmly up their asses. We were, it seemed, still resting at Square One.

Eventually the cardiologist's office assumed responsibility for making the referral. One of the office's nurses assured my mom that she had faxed The Paperwork over to the Group of Specialists and that now, all we could do was wait. These things can take awhile, she said. Many factors and forces would need to align over at the Specialists' office in order to facilitate my brother's appointment, she said. My mom asked if she could call every day, since things had been so bungled thus far in the process. The nurse said that would be fine.

And so she did. Call every day, that is. For several weeks. After a few days, she was told that The Paperwork had not gone through and that they would fax it over to the Specialists again. A few more days passed, and she was again told: these things take time. Before long, the cardiologist's nurses began to tire of my mom's daily calls. They asked her to stop, told her that they would contact her when they heard from the Group of Specialists. My mom, not wanting to piss anyone off, reduced her calls to every other day.

Finally, after a couple weeks of this ridiculousness, my mom called the cardiologist's office and broke down crying to the nurse. "I just don't understand why this is taking so long," she said. The nurse said she would go and get Daniel's file, just to double-check whether anything new had come up. And then. AND THEN. The nurse got back on the phone and said, without a trace of remorse: "Oh. It looks like we did hear back from the Group of Specialists, and they said that the only person who can refer your son to them is a Primary Care Physician."

My mom, her head having swollen to twice its size and spitting smoke from her eyes and ears, gently inquired as to when they had received this correspondence. The nurse hmmm'd a bit, checked the chart. "Two weeks ago," she replied.

My mom hung up the phone and called our family physician, the unassuming old man who had cared for me and all of my siblings since we were born. Forty-five minutes later, my brother was scheduled for an appointment with the Group of Specialists. Almost two full months after his hospital stay.

Can you imagine?

It was hot.

Let it be hereby noted: when taking one's child for a weeklong vacation in The South, one should pack double the clothes one would normally bring in anticipation of the child sweating through everything she touches. One should also pack double the diapers (should one be so fortunate as to have an almost-three-year-old still rejecting the toilet), as children apparently soil themselves more frequently in warm weather. While travelling. In sealed-up cars, on New Orleans ferries, and at crowded tourist attractions alike.

My wee little family and I spent the better part of the past week in New Orleans, where we were lucky enough to be included in our dear friend K's wedding celebration. We also took an overnight trip to Jackson, Mississippi, where my husband spent most of his childhood riding bikes around the block unsupervised, playing baseball in neighboring yards, and generally revelling in Americana.

Rather than bore you with all the details, I thought I'd share a brief photo essay, entitled "Cletus in the Southlands, or, Chicken-Fried Cletus." Observe:

Immediately upon arrival, Cletus embraced the spirit of New Orleans. She adorned herself with beads (but left her top on, at my request) and accompanied us to K's rehearsal dinner party, where she threw back a few drinks (lemonade) and passed out in her seat (temper tantrum, followed by exhaustion).

At the party we caught up with BFFs Robyn and Dori, as well as finally met longtime blogfriend Marigoldie, she of the Currently Private Blog That Knows No Linkage. Hanging with Marigoldie was like being reunited with a dear friend after long absence -- which I guess, actually, is exactly what it was. She and Cletus were fast friends.

Over the next few days, Cletus led the husband and I on a meltdown-dusted tour of New Orleans. The child weathered the heat with equal parts unbridled excitement (A park!! An aquarium!! A boat ride!!) and age-appropriate fury (I don't want to leave the park!! I don't want to leave the aquarium!! I don't want to sit still for the boat ride!!)

We attended K's lovely traditional Jewish wedding ceremony. Cletus sat quietly with us for approximately 2.5 minutes before shouting something about Care Bears and being escorted from the room by a babysitter.

We also went out for a snoball at the legendary Hansen's Sno-Bliz. Cletus did not agree with the establishment's credo of "There are no shortcuts to quality" and expressed her disdain over waiting in line thusly:

Marigoldie soon joined her, because that's just how she rolls.

Ultimately, the end result was worth the wait and subsequent roll on the floor:

I don't have many sharable pictures from Jackson, where we stayed the night with the mother of my husband's childhood best friend. We had dinner at a delicious pizza joint with his grade school chums, all grown up now and with families of their own. We drove around his old neighborhood and spent time at a museum. And then, the next morning, we got back in the car and drove home.

A couple of days later, we're all still basking in the hot, sunny memories:

Only now we're indoors. And air-conditioned.

Found in the stacks

I want to meet the woman responsible for this, and I want to shake her hand:

How could it get more awesome, you ask? Let's take a look at the close-up.

Watch out, Nurse Barrie, you innocent young thing! The circus life may be "in [your] blood for keeps" (as the book jacket suggests), but look o'er yonder! A nefarious clown approaches!

Although the promise of future titles in the series (Desert Nurse; Border Nurse; Jane Arden, Space Nurse; and Listen, Dr Galahad among them) is enticing, I plan to savor this one for the full three weeks of my library loan.

Unclean

Yesterday, at around 11:30 AM, I experienced a moment of complete and utter self-revulsion. It was prompted by the State of My Floors. The hardwoods on the first floor of my house are a bit scratched and worn; that is not the problem. The problem starts with the good half-inch of dog hair with which they are constantly padded, and continues to the formerly fluffy area rugs that dot their surface -- once a bargaining tool for the home's former owners ("we'll leave you these pretty things if you let us slide on the poisonous radon...") they're now matted and stained with a year's worth of apple juice and pug dribbles.

How often do you all clean your floors? Because we just can't seem to be bothered with it. I could count on my fingers how often I've mopped since we moved in. And the vacuum... ohhhhh, the vacuum. See, it's just so heavy, and I have to drag it all the way up the stairs to do the second-floor carpet, and then I have to empty the damn cartridge, and that is why there is a dead moth carcass resting next to my foot right now as I type. I wish I were kidding.

I am the queen of picking up. I also excel at bringing order. I firmly believe that it is because of these two things that I am able to get away with being So Damn Filthy. I believe I have written about this here before, about how I basically change my sheets with the seasons and use the same hand towel until it becomes so stiff that it actually walks itself to the washing machine. It would be one thing if I were out-of-my-gourd busy and just didn't have time to worry about things like, you know, dust and mildew. But yesterday I found plenty of time to read a book for two hours, mess around on Facebook while listening to Car Talk, and play cards with my friends. Yes, I've got some work, and yes I'm raising my kid, but... I'm not that busy.

This morning I was taking a shower and noticed for the first time how disgusting our shower curtain had become. Its filth stood out, given that I had scrubbed the tub and tiles the day before, prompted by the aforementioned fit of self-revulsion. The liner was yellowed and dirty and the curtain itself had a long faded stain running its length, marking the spot where it rubbed against the tub. Clearly this was not an overnight thing; it must have been like this for awhile, and I had not even noticed. Not even a bit.

The thing is: I am not remotely interested in having a pristine home. Any house I live in will probably always boast mismatched furniture and stacks of half-read library books, will always invite people to describe it as looking "lived-in." I'm cool with that. But man. You can't, like, opt out of basic home hygiene. Unless you want mice and earwigs. Which I don't. If I lived with someone who gave two thoughts to the idea of cleanliness, it would help. As it is, my husband could assemble an entire week's wardrobe, including socks and undergarments, from the articles of clothing he has left strewn, crumbled, and/or stuffed in random locations throughout the house. He would describe this as absentminded habit. I would describe it as another reason I'm not disinfecting those countertops.

There are just so many things I'd rather do than clean. Plus, I'm not good at it. I get bored and abandon tasks half-finished. When Cletus gets old enough to do chores, she's going to realize that whatever she's scrubbing is the only clean thing in the house. We'll pass along our lack of household skills to her! She'll go to college with one set of linens to her name! Her freshman roommate, like mine, will have to leave notes reading "Empty me!" on their dorm room's overflowing trash can!

Or I could just hire a cleaning person twice a month and turn the shower of self-loathing into a veritable swim.

Beat it

It does not bode well for my future sanity that I have already reached my Michael Jackson saturation point on this, the sixth day after his death.

Oh man. I am having one of those days. Cletus the Former Fetus woke up this morning and refused to put weight on her left foot, saying it was "ouchy." I checked it for swelling and discoloration, wiggled it around to see if it was tender or stiff, couldn't find a thing wrong with it. Still, she took a step and winced and stumbled.

I called my mom, who told me to check for bug bites. She also told me that my brother's CAT scan had gone fine on Tuesday, but that his surgeon wouldn't let him return to work until August, and that they still hadn't been able to get him an appointment at the fancy specialty clinic for the disease they think he might have, and that Daniel was depressed and scared that he might lose his job. And then she started crying.

I checked the bottom of Cletus' foot and found two faint pink circles where some creature apparently feasted. I took her in to see the doctor. Cletus' doc gave her a quick exam, glanced at her foot for about.006 seconds, and diagnosed with authority: "She's limping." I was all "Yeah, so, I thought we'd covered that when I walked in the door and called your attention to her limp, but... thanks!" And he was all, "Yes, and those are bug bites. Would you like some lotion for them?" And I was all, "Yes, some lotion and proof of your malpractice insurance, which you will need when these bug bites infect my child's bloodstream."

[The only up side to the appointment was the knowledge that I wouldn't have to pay for it, since we've already maxed out our deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses for the year. And it's only July! Wheeee! For the rest of the year, we are living like Canadians!]

And then I took Cletus to daycare (where, upon seeing her friends playing baseball outside, she experienced a sudden and miraculous recovery) and went home to write. Except I didn't write. I puttered around and did laundry and worked my volunteer shift at the resale shop. And now I feel that big blah empty feeling you get when you spend your day accomplishing not a damn thing.

I'm gonna go get my kid now.