Artsy Fartsy Poem

And So To Be A Mother

You put yourself aside.

Shoulder many burdens,

Grasping onto pride.

Often times our pockets are filled with hidden tears.

And from our lips a million prayers to get us thru the years.

Mothers give and mothers save and when it’s said and done,

There is no stronger anchor than a Mother’s love.

Nothing lasts forever and when our lives draw nigh,

The legacy we leave behind shines in our children’s eyes.

Whether born of the womb, or born of the heart

Our babies – Our reason to live.

And even if there’s nothing left

Somehow, The Mama will give.

-D. Feisty Housewife

Things Daddy’s Do (Or Don’t Do)

When The Mama must be away, the darling Dad’s are in charge. This can lead to some unconventional methods of clothing the children, feeding them, “watching” them, etc. Over time I have amassed a small treasure trove of stories from my gal pals – and I’m hoping people will comment and add more because I know the stories are out there!

Story 1. The Mama must be away, leaving infant first born daughter with attorney father. Attorney: Implied intelligence, finished college (even if he drank his way thru, he still finished). Now, Dad did not have to watch the baby all day, only get her to day care. Simple, right? So at the end of the working day Mom showed up to the day care provider to reclaim said baby girl. It’s like….July, and the baby is dressed…..as Tigger. Head to toe, warm & fleece fuzzy (in JULY), a Tigger suit. Embarrassed, The Mama realized that her husband had chosen ( out of the myriad of adorable, matchy-matchy-froo-froo outfits, out of a stuffed closet full of first born cuter-than-crap bordering on baby couture choices) that Daddy in his infinite wisdom, had chosen the baby’s Halloween costume from last fall! Say what? The new Mom, only using day care a couple of days a week as it was, uncomfortably reclaimed her Tigger baby and headed home to ‘question’ The Daddy. 😉 But Tigger didn’t care. She just sucked her fist happily, bouncing along for the ride as Tiggers do.

2. The Mama must be away for the day. The dad had his hands full with 3 boys under the age of 9. When mom reconvened with the family for the evening meal they ordered pizza because Mom had been sick and running all day. The older two boys in particular were wolfing down their pizza – gorging with inspirational gusto. Mom said, “Hey, what’s up? What did you eat for lunch?” Son #1 said, “Nothing.” Dad, feeling a bit perplexed and perhaps beginning to feel the heat said, “Oh, I’m sure we had something.” Now here’s the beauty part. Confidently and with a shade of indignance #1 lets the cat out of the bag with, “Sure, 2 Oreo’s.” Two Oreo’s? Hahahhahahaha. This dad, Mr. CPA, apparently forgot how to count the meals he needed to provide for the day. But no one starved to death. Tho Mom got the chance to shoot her *very special look* at Daddy. And perhaps she acquired some future ammo….

You know, it makes you wonder about leaving the house??? The basics!! We’re talking the basics here!!

In general, the thing I’ve noticed that separates the Mom’s from the Dad’s most obviously is a phenomenon I like to call “glance time.” When a mother is with her children, whether it’s at home but especially in public, she glances at her children about every 3-5 seconds. Understand, that you can glance with your eyes or your ears, but no matter how many directions the crap-is-aflyin’, that Mom – is glancing. Dads? I’ve observed dad’s going many minutes without glancing. I think they assume that if no one is screaming, things are fine – and truth be told, that’s probably more correct than I’d like to admit. Today’s children are micro-managed like fragile cells in a petrie dish. We hover over them like neurotic scientists with OCD. Oh yeah, you were 20 seconds too late collecting your kid from the yard when she was almost murdered by the riding mower. There’s no accounting for diligence. You can be diligent as hell and still get your kid killed or stolen.

Back to the fluff. The clothes, the food, and should we even GO to ‘the hair’? If the Daddy has daughters, there is NO TELLING what their hair is going to look like. Trolls gone wild?

I guess we could all relax a tad and use the yard stick: If it isn’t life endangering or morally threatening to their immortal souls, maybe it’ll be all right. And now, I’m wimping out. I’m frankly too tired to share more stories – – – I had to take Estelle back to the surgeon yesterday so they could remove a cast, look at the leg and then apply a new cast. Problem being, the new cast was applied WRONG, and she was awake crying last night because it hurt, so this morning I got up and took it off my damn self. Dr. Mom strikes again. And it’s the weekend, so good luck getting any health care, right? Right.

Signing Out,

Tired Feisty Housewife

BINGO! Sport of The Disabled

So I escaped the house tonight. To do charity work. But hey, it’s still NOT fixing dinner at my house and doing the bedtime routine. An escape of any ilk is still emancipation from the pattern – that one I’ve been sucked into. Suck, suck, slurp and there goes my brain, being vacuumed right outta my wee little head. Anyway –

Our Relay For Life team does an annual bingo fund raiser for The American Cancer Society which garners great numbers and is in honor of a courageous gal from our town who passed away from cancer, leaving two young children behind and THAT should be illegal. I am a cancer survivor myself. (Diagnosed in 1977 with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma which had a nasty survival rate so they gave me odds of 1000 to 1 to survive. HA! Showed them, eh?) Don’t tell me I *can’t* do something….even like, survive. I’ll kick your ass. So I’ve had more chemotherapy than anyone I’ve ever met, hundreds of spinal taps and bone marrow extractions, yadda, yadda, yadda – they inflicted theee most prehistoric chemo on me. Dumped the entire kitchen sink into my veins, and then some. Radiation from hell. No surprise I’m a nut job – I glow in the friggin’ dark. Nothing quite as fun as being a bald 15 year old albino girl. Well, I’m not a true albino but I’m a mere gene twist away. But I digress!! I am not talking about cancer survival in this blog, on-account-a I figure I could write a friggin’ book. What I want to talk about is the phenomenon I’ve observed about BINGO and it’s place in American weeknights.

It’s the sport of the disabled. I say this because of who plays bingo. Gandy’s (my sister-in-law’s slang word for the elderly. I’m not sure where she got it, but we use it around here. Example: Someone’s creeping slowly down the road in front of you in their floater-mobile such as a Towncar or Crown Vic and they are wearing a HAT and they are drifting ever so slowly within their lane to every extreme – so as to not cross over any line but yet you can’t predict exactly where they are going to float to next. You can either call them a “hat driver” or a “Gandy”. It’s a thing. Anyway, Gandy’s play bingo and that’s an internationally known fact, I’m not being prolific here. But who else plays? O.K, I’ll tell you, because I know you are fixin’ to wet yourself with anticipation….People who drag their oxygen tanks behind them, that’s who! And they arrive extra early to get the best seat at the cafeteria tables with the institutional metal chairs. I mean, I’m setting up the kitchen food (I always work the kitchen at this event) – Jeeeesus, I guess I don’t actually get out of the kitchen EVER, do I? Anyway, so here they come, pulling their little tanks of life. They are followed by the “Limper’s”. They are in walkers, using canes or in wheelchairs. They gimp in and make camp in choice locations. As I observe these poor folks, I realize that my daughter who is currently in a wheelchair could also participate. Why, this could be HER sport! She’s 9, not 90, but the crippled-up part applies. Even after her accident where she tried to get killed by a riding lawn mower, bingo was the first thing they dragged her to in the play room at Johns Hopkins. She had 3 out of 4 of her limbs down. Only her right hand escaped the ravages of that goddamned mower. Sigh. Cry. My Stella. Moooovin’ on…..don’t get caught there tonight, you are too tired. In addition to the Gandy’s, the Barely Breathing’s and the Limper’s are the….now DON’T get your panties in a wad over this, but let’s just put it delicately and say the “larger” Americans. By large, I mean they have their own zip code. No lie. I feel sorry for them, as they squeeze their way between the lines of tables and chairs but I also feel sorry for those damn chairs, – stop it! Not nice, not nice. The metal chairs release squeaks of pain and strain as our larger friends take a load off. And of course I’m standing back there in the kitchen/snack bar area with my head into my 3rd helping of nacho cheese dip and chips so who the hell am I to talk? As the evening progresses the irony strikes me that we are here to raise money to cure and help prevent cancer and the entire place is full of colon cancer nominees and I’m serving them hot dogs, nachos and soda pop! To be fair, we also had fruit cups, fresh veggies w/ dip and home made chicken salad that was not too evil. One guess as to what item was most left over at the end of the night? Aw, you got it. Fresh veggies. I finally had to break down and eat a fruit cup and some veggies because I could actually hear my arteries beginning to harden from the cheese sauce I was inhaling.

These people are also very serious about their bingo. They are “hard core”. They do not joke when they play, they do not look as if they are having any fun at all. (Just like people at slot machines who always look like they are at a wake or really boring church and I’m always hopping around at my money sucking machine shouting, “Come on baby, mama needs a new pair of Sunday-go-to-meetin’ shoes” and other highly obnoxious quips that amuse and entertain me.) Do NOT get between these Gandy’s, Barely Breathing’s, Limper’s and Larger’s and their bingo for they have perfected the art of the death glare and they are heavily armed with bingo blotters. Or dobbers. Or whatever the hell they are called.

So as we age my darlings, we can look forward to a fabulous sport that’s tailored to our special needs. A sport that mandates you sit on your ass, eat snacks, and only requires one good hand to make it happen. BINGO! My future awaits. And I hope it waits a long long time.

Yours,

D. Feisty Housewife

Sidebar: Geneva cannot play bingo. The scanning and dobbing specific numbers is simply too much for her brain. She’d have greater success sitting inside the bingo ball blower trying to catch the numbered orbs as they flew by. In fact, she’d rock that out. I’ll probably need to find her a job like that in about 5 years or so….

I’m Not ALONE, I’m Not ALONE!

Well have mercy!! Praise God, Alla, Buddha, Lao Tsa, Zeus, Jimmy Carter, WhoEVER!

Some other mothers, treading water with ankle weights strapped to their tired feet, have chimed in to my lowly little blog spot and made my day! Mothers of adopted children who are faced with problem children and all the emotional duress that comes with them. It’s a chore sometimes, loving Geneva. I mean, imagine the most irritating person you’ve ever known. Stop now and think.

Who is it? An “ex”, a former roommate, a co-worker, your mother-in-law, your little brother? Take that most irritating human being and ZAP, make them your child! It’s rather nightmarish, really. Our younger daughter Estelle – she’s the axis to our universe. She’s the easiest person to be around. I could list flowery adjectives to describe her all dang day long, but I’ll spare you that. Let’s just say that if everything else in the world ceased to exist, yet I still had my Stella, all would be well and good.

Once upon a rock band, I used to be a chick singer. For about 20 years I made music, traveled, did what I wanted, when I wanted. I finally got mighty sick of that, sick of ME. I was tired of myself. So I got married and then had to answer to “him”. O.K. Guess I can swing with that. Then we traveled to China and brought home Estelle, tiny and underdeveloped, but the most darling baby and so dreamily easy. For several years we enjoyed the most picture perfect of lives. Boy, I was really swingin’ with that. And then….dum dum dum dum….*yes, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb…..I insisted we fetch a sister. Now here’s the scoop on this: We adopted children instead of having bio kids because – frankly, I’m not that proud of my gene pool. Seriously, who needs more of this? Damn it! This is where I wanted to insert the absolute worst photo of myself ever taken and this computer-wack-a-doo system won’t do it!! I’m still so new at this blog world stuff, I get stymied very easily.

Anyway, so that’s how we ended up with The Gypsy Geneva and how I ended up with certainly not very much ME time or ME anything. God is laughing. He gave me the easiest baby in the world who’s turned into the most charming creature imaginable, and to counter that and for His own, sick amusement – he brought me Geneva. Funny guy, that God. He didn’t want me to escape parenthood that easily I guess. Congratulations Big Guy, mission accomplished! For there is no escape from THIS!! A girl who still has ‘bathroom issues’, can’t tell time, has no linear thought, lies like a cheap rug, only loves others as an application, not a feeling – does not understand why people cry and makes me repeat basic parenting mandates over and over and over like she’s never heard them before. And as far as that goes, maybe in her swiss cheese brain each moment is shiny and new.

Glorious day, a gal pal just phoned and forced me back to the real world and asked me to lunch. Panera, here we come! It’s not a tamale, but it’ll do pig, it’ll do….

WOW! I’ve got several new blogs to check out and I’m very happy about it! MOMS, ROCK ON!!! And thanks for checking in with me – I’ll try to get your links into my post…I’m so technically challenged it’s frightening. Hand me a microphone, it’s all good. Hand me a modem…we’re in deep doo doo.

Problem Child

Do you have one?
We have one.
It’s a girl and its name is Geneva. Beautiful name for a Tasmanian Devil, yes?
And it’s entirely not her fault, due to the fact that she was dumped at birth in a 3rd world orphanage. The institution was basically a step up from a concentration camp, and I’m not foolin’ with that description. Anyway, we flew half way around the world and adopted this poor creature when she was almost 7 years old. She’d spent her entire life, her developmental years, neglected and starved and when we found her she weighed a whopping 29 pounds and wore 2-3T clothes at 7 years of age. It was beyond sad. She had a bloated belly with flaccid spindly legs, she boar open soars all over her body, her hair had fallen out in chunks, her lips and nail beds were blue. Later, back in the good old U.S. of A. and in the care of a wonderful pediatrician at the KU Medical Center (Rock Chock Jayhawks!) , the doc said, “I’ve never seen someone with so few red blood cells still be alive.”

Geneva had but one thing going for her; a sizzling smile and gung-ho attitude (from hell, we’ve discovered) – o.k, so that’s actually two things. The smile kept people from killing her and the attitude she used to keep herself alive. Her caregivers back at the Kazakhstan orphanage had given her the nickname “Chuda”, the Russian word for miracle, feminine form. It was her cheerful disposition in a wretched life which earned her that nickname, and God bless the orphanage workers, really. They often work for weeks at a time without pay, trying to keep the children alive on paltry excuses for food. Anyway, time to put away the violins and get to the meat of this here blog.

What in hell do you do when you’ve got a child that is simply the most irritating person on the face of the planet? Wow, that sure jumped gears mighty quick and dirty. And oh, it don’t sound too perty for a mommy to say that, neither. My darling husband and I grapple with this daily, as we’ve spent 5 years trying to ‘fix’ our little Chuda. The first 4 years we did it on our own (well, mostly me, because I’m the mom and everyone knows that the mom is the glue of every damn thing and he just pays for every damn thing. Probably in more ways than one. But I digress…). And so my poor husband, well, he struggles to tolerate her. Her behavior, similar to that of a Labrador Retriever puppy on cocaine – and with Alzheimers – who you cannot please no matter what you do – and with time and age, a defiant streak that leads to violent outbursts of temper, has lead me to eat many a drive-thru fry. Charming, yes? So now, we’re on DRUGS! Yes indeed America, solve it all with some pills washed down with a side of desperation and you’ve got another kid on Ritalin. And do you know what? I’d like to sloppy kiss those drug whores at Ciba-Geigy (whose Ritalin and its sister drugs netted them a modest 3.1 BILLION dollars in 2003). Geneva’s brain, it’s like swiss cheese, man. Information flies around in there, bouncing like super-balls on speed, with no place to find purchase. To watch her try to sit still is painful. And I know kids fidget for Godssake – but this takes fidgeting to a new and harrowing level. She’ll pick at her cuticles until blood pours from them…so then ask her to do a math worksheet. The math sheet becomes history and a lovely example of shredded, bloody paper. The Ritalin has ended those most gory days. I saw her suffering so. If she needed insulin I’d make sure she had it. To me, this is a similar call. She should actually be in the 6th grade now, but can eek along in the 4th grade with lots of help while simultaneously dragging down the Maryland State Assessment tests, much to the chagrin of everyone involved. But I’ve gotta hand it to her – even tho it takes every single brain cell she’s got, that Chuda spirit hangs in there. I tell ‘ya, if it had taken ME a year to learn plus from minus….thats how long it took her. M&M’s on the table, every night for a year, “Geneva, this sign means we ADD M&M’s and this sign means we take them away”….every night, for a year. She got the award for finally learning it and I got….damn old, yep, thats what I got…. Meanwhile, well meaning onlookers, mostly family, insisted that she was “just like so-n-so” who was also very active. Sure.

Well, so what do you do when the most annoying person you know is your own child? And frighteningly, I allow myself to say that out loud because it’s just…it’s just…sooooooo damn true! And I’ll say this again, yet again, its not her fault, its not her fault, its not her fault. She was abandoned like garbage. Unwanted human refuse. Yet when they dumped her, she was still fresh and new. 7 years in a hell hole will turn anyone into a train wreck. Geneva has Reactive Attachment Disorder, Sensory Integration Disorder, severe ADHD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder and we think she was a fetal alcohol baby. So she’s a RAD, SID, ADHD, ODD, FAS kid. WOW! Friggin’ CONGRATULATIONS to all of us!! I’d like to take this special time to send a big SHOUT OUT to the bastards who left her in state care – two sets of family who knew she was there and never once checked on her in 7 years! She could have been better, you know. She didn’t start out with all those acronyms after her friggin’ name. They were put there by poverty, oppressive government, lack of birth control. And now we, as her parents, are trying to erase all those letters after her name and holy crapola it is HARD and is it NOT fun and….and we can’t give up. Even tho we can’t stand her most of the time. And we can’t stand her because all of those disorders I named, all those things WRONG with her, all result in behaviors that are not good. They are not good, my friends. Children can’t raise themselves, they need love, guidance, hell – they need FOOD for pity-sake. My kid didn’t have that stuff, so now she fights an uphill battle in the most competitive society in the world. She’ll give you her last pencil or the only treat she won in class for behaving. Geneva’s birthday presents were mostly opened by her little sister, at Geneva’s insistence. Someone sent her money, she pressed for half to go to her sister. Yet, she’ll steal you blind five minutes later. She’ll shove the hell out of someone not moving fast enuf in the lunch line. She will lie to your face like she went to the O.J. school for sociopaths and took “Deny, deny, deny 101.” So we sit here, between these two really sticky, jabby, uncomfortable boulders which are squishing us until we want to SCREAM. One rock is compassion, the other intolerance. I have no tolerance for liars, I have less respect for stupid people than I care to admit – man whenever I have to go to Wal Mart and observe the teeth to tattoo ratio I feel my own I.Q. drop about 20 flippin’ points – so given that I am such an intolerant bitch, how do I bolster myself to keep working with this child for all eternity? She’s MINE. I signed papers-n-shit. You might be thinking something really mushy and touching right now like it’s ‘love’ or something that will keep me going. Hell no. It’s not about love, because I don’t even know how much I really love her. When someone is annoying you 90% of their living, breathing moments, it kind of squeezes the love right outta there. I, and my darling husband, will keep doing this because if we do not….if we do not…..society will have to ‘deal’ with this child who is a fraction away from being the latest statistic of some horrible sort. She is unpredictable, under-emotional, and disconnected yet angry. What a frightening combination. I will not raise a ‘school shooter’. I will ALWAYS know what is happening in our garage. I WILL monitor her future computer, phone, diary, yes I will. I will dog her thru Mayberry with a pair of cursed binoculars for as long as necessary. She will be dragged to therapy as long as I’m legally able to make it happen. Yet, she has the most gentle ease with developmentally delayed children and she will stand up to stop bullying of others in her presence. Then again, 2.1 nano-seconds later she’ll shove the crap out of someone in her way or simply slug them because they “made her mad.” She is not ‘lost’ yet. We’ve had 5 years to undo the first 7, most developmentally important years. I’ve got about 5 more to go until she’ll be on her way to 18. I promise I’ll do my best to turn out an acceptable facsimile of a person. Since she began medication she has improved at least 60%, maybe even more. Personally I don’t even take aspirin for a headache until it’s been relentless for at least 8 hours, but as far as this little orphan and her whacked out brain go, “better living thru chemistry” I say! What therapy don’t fix, the pharmacy will! Unfortunately, there is no pill for abandonment. No pill for neglect, starved brain cells, or a tortured and lonely soul.

So if you see me in the drive thru, wave and pray will ‘ya? I need all the fries and angels I can get my racked little hands on.

Later, On Tamale Day….

And so I go to the school to pick up my one daughter in a wheelchair, only to find myself standing next to my other daughter who has been sent to the principals office because she wrote, “You should go shit yourself” in another child’s eyeglass case. Apparently another charming little child “told” her to do this after he took the case from another girl’s desk. He got a very succinct finger wagging from me as he sat there in the office and I called him “naughty” right to his smug, nasty face and in front of everyone who happened to be in the office. He looked like he wanted to pop me one, and boy….I just DARE him. He’s in 4th grade and almost as tall as I. Of course, my kid’s not caucasian but this other charmer was black and I’m thinking “race card, race card.” Nobody better pull it. Besides, I don’t t h i n k so. I don’t care if the other brat involved was polka-dotted with horns sticking out of it’s head, as a mother type, I am not about to simply walk past this rugrat like nothing happened. Besides, my ‘lil darling’s written English is still so bad the likelihood of her getting the entire phrase “You should go shit yourself” grammatically correct is astronomically impossible. Thanks for the help, little man. Her version would have gone something like, “Go shit self” or some other caveman-esque variation on a theme. I believe her partner in crime is the same adorable classmate who keeps calling her attention by spouting, “Yo, bitch.” My daughter spent 7 years in a 3rd world orphanage and she’s an absolute train wreck, there’s no doubt about it. But we’re ON IT. We’ve got her in therapy, she’s on med’s, behavior modification is a way of life around here and it wears us the hell out! And she gets away with NOTHING. There are consequences for every misbehavior, and there’s no allowances for greed, disrespect or blatant disregard for the rules. No leeway. However – Huge rewards for good behavior, the life of a Kazakh Queen when she gets it right. But right there in school, little demon children whisper in her warped ears the things she’s not clever enuf to think up on her own. And she does them, because she doesn’t have an original thought in her empty little mind. Something as simple as dropping the “f” bomb in the lunch line, sure, she’s got that covered. Throwing paper wads in the bathroom? You bet. She could go semi-pro. My point being… well, I told the Principal with whom I have a great working relationship, that Geneva needs to be far far away from other naughty doers. She can’t stand up to them, she wants to please them. It’s pathetic. I told her right there in the Principals office, “We are not followers in this family. We are leaders. And we try to make good choices so we can have the best life possible.” I think she heard, “Boing, boing, bang, bip, doo-wah-ditty-wap-ditty-wap-doo”.
If only I had a dime
For every time
She’s heard Mommy’s
Diatribe.

I know for a fact that the Dominican Republic is full of little islands with lots of livable caves inside – I’ve been there, I’ve seen them. Betcha I could hide out there for quite some time, unfound by the masses.

I went to the yummy Mexican eatery all by myself today because I couldn’t find anyone who was free for lunch. I proudly walked in and said, “No one could come to lunch with me today, but I need a tamale, so I’m here anyway!” The staff smiled. Ahhh, the lure of the tamale. Say no more, say no more.

I am so glad I had my tamale today. I just kept thinking about it as I fought the urge to throttle Geneva right there in the front office of her elementary school. It got me thru. And I softly reminded myself, “Yo, beeotch, there are no tamale’s in prison, there are no tamale’s in prison”…….

Eat a Tamale, I say!

I swear to God, often….but today I’m swearin’ about agony!! All the grief life throws at people, really it’s unimaginable and frankly I’m damn sick of it! Today’s entry is not going to be very delicate or insightful because I do not feeeel delicate or insightful. I feel angry. Friends losing their children to cancer, gal pals with babies to raise heading into their 10th year dealing with tumors and crap, people’s parents going blind, my own crippled up kid – I am NOT finding a lot of grace in my heart right now over these things and I am seeking a way to lash out!!!! Yet, there is nowhere to vent. What – I phone up God and say, ‘Hey, what the hell is going on?” Grab an angel by the tail and swing it around until it coughs up a miracle or two? OH, shut up. You are spoiled and blessed and all this bellyaching is not productive, you are not being prolific and it’s certainly not attractive. Bitch, bitch, bitch. Lovely. Anyway, so can’t we get angry sometimes? Must we always be civil and humbled by our blessings and thankful. That pesky ‘thankful’ thing. I know people who spend an inordinate amount of time being thankful, (myself included, sigh) they strive to appreciate each special moment in their lives and the lives of their children, yet they STILL get whomped in the head by really really really bad things. Then you get these ‘skaters’ – you know the ones – the people who seem to skate thru life unscathed. They barely tend to their business, their kids run a muck and nothing horrible ever seems to happen to them, while more fastidious types run themselves in circles trying to keep everything together and still— whammo, right between the eyes Norton, right between the eyes! I guess what I’m saying is this: Today I’m giving myself permission to be angry. I’m always holding it together for my family, for the public in general – and don’t we all do that? I mean, those of us who reside outside of institutions.

But here again, I’m hitting a wall. O.K., so I’m angry. Now what? Injustice is not a person. Unfair is not a governmental agency. (Tho I’m sure there are those who would argue that point and quite effectively.) Where do I lash out? Who do I flog? Punishment goes where? Lord, I’m starting to see why people drink and do drugs. They punish themselves. Some would say, some who are do-gooders and who would hock me off about now, “Go to the gym. Just take out that aggression on that treadmill baby girl.” Garbage!! Awwww, I HATE exercising….so I’m pissed off at the world and I should go do something I HATE? Like a gerbil on a wheel. Now there’s a recipe for ending up in the bell tower with Mr. Boomy! (semi-automatic of course, but I would decorate it with hearts by using pink fingernail polish. You know, customize it…..maybe a tassel hanging from the trigger….) Now I’m really drifting, because Jesus I HATE guns. SO – After much stewing in my seat here, and seeing the plumbers in and out who just stuck a pipe back together for $98.00 so I could do MORE things I hate (laundry), I’ve come to the conclusion that I simply need a tamale. Yes. I love tamales. I love the Mexicans for inventing them. There’s a new authentic Mexican eatery here in our little Mayberry and they have the best tamale’s I’ve ever tasted. It would make me happy for the 10 minutes it would take to slowly savor the tamale. I would blissfully sway to and fro in my booth to the charming latin beat wafting down from the speakers in the ceiling and I would be “tickled pink” as my beloved-saint-of-a-grandmother West would have said. Tickled pink. That’s what I need to be today. Just FLAT OUT tickled pink!!! Perhaps then I would be gratified, satisfied and maybe even chipper. My wonderful childhood friend Lisa used to have a dog named Chipper and she and her brother used to tease each other and accuse the other of ‘sucking Chipper’s nose’. I myself had never thought about sucking on a dog’s nose but these were creative types and in fact she went on to start her own successful theatre company. But I digress….

So, EAT A TAMALE, I SAY! Or whatever makes you happy today. You could wake up with spots on your brain, tomorrow morning your kid could get hit by a car, your house could burn down. Sweet Jesus, the curve balls can just keep-a-comin’. So follow your bliss, even if it’s just to the local eatery to indulge in a warm, luscious, spicy tamale. Go on! Tickle yourself Pink. Tamale pink.

I miss you Grandma.

I Wish I Was A Walton

So polygamy and polygamist sects are WRONG and sicko -and all those power freak perv men need to be strung up in the town square and forced to gargle peanut butter until they choke to death. That being said, it’s become clear to me in my progressive age that living in larger groups, communal style if you will, is the only way to go. Here is my rational for this:

Every housewife on my block (our little micro-model of American life) is overloaded out-her-ass. She does everything on her own. The chores, the kids, the house, the pets – the darling husbands float thru daily, making messes and requiring to be fed and once in a while they mow the lawn, take a kid to soccer or take out the trash. When the Mama is sick, she STILL gets the kids to school, does the laundry, cooks the dinner, yadda yadda yadda couldn’t you just SO quickly get tired of my incessant list making for godssake. Anyway, my point being – WHERE is Grandma Walton? You know, those people had it goin’ on, man. Sure, they were fictional t.v. characters, but who cares? They are going to prove my point to the hilt!! Back in “the day” extended families lived together, mostly out of necessity due to their rural or po’ in the big city lifestyle. Multi generational, yes indeed. While Mama hung clothes to dry, granny was in the kitchen with a few rug rats hangin’ on her apron while she prepped the fried chicken. And while she fried the chicken, her friggin’ laundry was being done. Bring a spinster or widowed Aunt into the mix and EVERYTHING gets done, but no one has to do it all by themselves!

We have given this up. In fact, we didn’t just give it up, we ran for the hills in desperation. We were vehement, nearly hysterical, thirsty for one singular thing. Privacy. Oh baby, don’t make me share a bathroom with ANYone! Hell, I don’t even want to share a flippin’ SINK. Yeah, I watch those house hunter shows and the prospective buyers go in there and they’re all up in arms and whining thru their spoiled American noses, “ooi, there’s not a double vanity in the master. Oh my Gawd.” You must be kidding me. So now we’re all private and can run around the house pseudo-nude and no one touches our toothpaste tube and WOW, what a bad trade we have made. Mostly the women got the rotten end of that stick, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, but men have lost something as well. How many times have I heard my husband say something like, “Maybe when Bob comes over next week we can move that book case…” Or hows about fixing broken things as a team. Something as simple as hauling away an old appliance, we now pay people to do it because Uncle Joe isn’t just “out in the barn” any more, ready and willing to help. But we have our privacy. And as we age, we have so much privacy that we need to wear little alert necklaces so strangers can be called when we’ve fallen and we can’t get up. If a grandchild were nearby, perhaps even bringing grandma a glass of water and learning about the value of service within her own family, someone would know that granny had fallen. Someone would be there to care. Jobs take people away, this is true. And that’s an unfortunate aside to our very mobile culture. But it doesn’t have to be family (and in many cases it probably shouldn’t be). Friends make the best family ever.

You know, we’re all so isolated. Often we e-mail instead of even calling each other on the phone. Much less drop by like Millie did to Rob & Laura’s house. So isolated, very private. It’s easy to hide our pain that way. Our struggles stay our own, the shameful secrets we think are original to us. So, you yell at your kids? No one has to hear. You and your husband have not slept in the same bed for two years? Who needs to know that? Maybe you wouldn’t feel like yelling at your kids if someone else had your back once in a while and you could think a straight thought. The price for all this seclusion is high. The suicide rate for adult/middle aged persons has gone up 20% between 1999-2004 (for U.S. residents age 45-54). Suicide is at it’s highest peak in 25 years for that age bracket. I don’t think it’s rocket science, but the fact is, the suicide rate for women in that age bracket is the highest. So, while I’m down here in my isolation chamber of a house feeling invisible, gee….maybe I am. See, in the Walton household you didn’t have enuf privacy to fall into a depressive stupor. You didn’t have enuf quiet time to stew and ruminate about your woe’s. If you found yourself sullenly staring out the kitchen window while standing over a pile of filthy dishes, you’d be jarred out of your stupor by the kind voice of your housemate asking, “Would you like some coffee, too? I just made it fresh….” And then you’d have to turn around and smile and say, “Sure. I’d like that.” But women of today, we don’t have someone in our kitchens to comfort us. We stand at the sink alone and have to bolster our SELVES and pep talk our SELVES. And some of us just – don’t – make – it.

I raise my glass to the Waltons. I wish I was one.

Dr. Patient, My Ass!

And so, when did it happen? When did patients become responsible and in charge of securing, transferring, gathering, understanding and analyzing their own medical records?

Recently I have been dealing with this, as my daughter went from her original orthopedic surgeon at one major hospital to another surgeon elsewhere. Surgeon #2 wanted a copy of her CT which had been ordered and completed by surgeon #1’s hospital. So, does surgeon #2 or his minion of underlings acquire this? No, and hell no. I, with the messed up child, am suddenly accountable for getting the correct form of this record to the doc. WTF? In the process, only part of the record arrived. “Well, did you have them send the report AND the study?” WHAT? I am a lay-person, OR lay-bitch, depending on how effin tired I am. With a nasty double-legged surgery hanging over our heads, it has befallen me to know the difference between a report and a study, make sure I have all phone numbers, fax numbers and mailing address to the appropriate surgeons and their organizations! AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH! AGAIN, WTF? And I am not alone in this quagmire of crapola. A gal pal of mine who is unfortunately dealing with unwanted ‘dots in her brain’ is also playing medical hopscotch with transferring her OWN tests, scans and results and she’s a nurse, so she knows mostly what’s going on – but people with no medical background can forget about it! If she didn’t already have tumors in her brain she would likely acquire them from the stress of having the tumor board meet at the world’s #1 ranked hospital only to then reveal to her, “Uhhhh, we didn’t have such-n-such scan”. Really? Really? Even tho she made numerous calls and had things FedEx’d to their asses. ‘Course, the stuff was found later, ‘Oh gee, looks like we really did have it after all. But the disk wasn’t marked.”….(by hospital #1) Even tho it came in the same envelope with her written report they could not seem to connect the dots that it belonged to HER. Whatever, holy crap, my god. And some of these particular doctorly parties work a mere city block from each other, and even tho they are surgeons apparently their hands are BROKEN because they can’t pick up a phone and call each other. And do NOT even use the defense of medical privacy. We’ve all signed so many medical releases we have carpel tunnel. So leave ME out of it! I am not the filling to your medical Oreo. It is NOT MY JOB TO KEEP IT ALL TOGETHER. That is why you, dear doctor, drive a Lexus and I drive a Hyundai.

When you are under medical duress, there is no more helpless feeling in the world. You are forced to rely on other people, people who are trained to help you and your loved ones. We adore our good docs. We love our brilliant surgeons. And I have enuf doctor friends and family to know that they also navigate the wretched world of modern American medicine and find it less than pleasant quite often. Their support staffs deal with angry, grumpy sick people day in and day out. Sure, less than fun. But as patient’s, who have not attended a thousand years of medical school, it would be such a bloody treat if we didn’t have to be sick AND play medical errand boy, or errand bitch, whatever the case may be. Medical hell has already rung me up! Must I also answer the door, fix it a snack and rub it’s stinky feet? I am the p a t i e n t. My child is suffering. SHE needs me, you shouldn’t. And you shouldn’t even damn well ask.

The International Language

Everyone’s heard the saying about love – “Ahhh, the international language.” Well, that’s hogwash. The international language is pain.

Last week I spent some time on a pediatric ward of a very good hospital, Mt. Sinai in Baltimore. My daughter was there for surgery on both of her legs to correct complications from a horrendous lawn mower accident she had in 2006. She was barely 7 then, now she’s 9, and its still not over for her. Much of her childhood will be shaped by her mower story, but I believe it will become more of a badge of courage than a cross to bear.

So, back to the international language. It’s pain. And I know this from sharing a hospital room with a family from Greece, whose 9 year old daughter, a veteran of surgery herself, was recovering simultaneously with Estelle. They were in separate surgical suites at precisely the same time, woke up in recovery together and then suffered the same post-operative maladies. Both girls had grueling pain that was difficult to control, anguishing nausea that would not go away and low-grade fevers. It was so quiet in that room. Too quiet for two little girls and their families. There should have been more chatter, more complaining, more anything. But mostly, a stifling silence which was only broken by the sound of beeping machines, nurses inquiring about pain and then, the occasional international experience of audible pain. “Ouu”. Like ouch, but without the hard ch at the end. Just “Ouu, ouu, ouu.” Every time they tried to move poor Lydia from Greece, whom I never heard speak a word of English, we sadly heard loud and clear, “OUU, OUU”! And then something in Greek over and over, which when I asked her mother translated to, ”I can’t, I can’t”. The halls of the ward were littered with wheelchairs, machines of every ilk, and worst of all, children in pain. They reclined in wheelchairs with their legs elevated, barf buckets resting on their stomachs, their parents hovering over with pained exhausted faces and holding white, styrofoam cups with straws, beseeching their darlings to drink. Please drink. We overheard many languages during our brief stay and enjoyed a cultural array of great diversity. But what we did not enjoy was watching the children suffer. Lydia’s parents: Their English was brilliant. They come to America for her surgeries, now numbering 10 I believe (Like Estelle) and they are often here for months at a time while she undergoes physical therapy. They must negotiate temporary housing and rental cars and friggin’ MEDICAL CARE, in their second language. I felt like a heel, remembering complaining about the traffic on our 40 minute drive to Sinai. Lydia’s parents were stricken down by the travel gods and somewhere over Germany their luggage was lost. And now here they were, “Ouu, ouu” – moans of pain that were knives to their hearts. The perseverance, I can’t even begin to describe to you. A parent with a ‘child down’ will do absolutely every thing required to aid that child and themselves, be forgotten. For days, weeks, as long as it takes. The film Life Is Beautiful comes to mind now.

Anyway, Estelle forced herself to eat and began to recover. Lydia still struggled, tho on 3 anti-nausea medications plus a patch behind her ear. As we were packing up to leave I felt a wash of guilt. Our daughter was up and playing Wii Godzilla in the game room and their daughter was staring blankly at the television, her hollow eyes drifting in and out of sleep, not eating, not speaking. Awful. I gave them our contact information and begged them to call if they needed help of any kind. They had already given me their information with the sentiment, “If you ever come to Greece”…. And I know they meant it, because that’s the kind of people the Greek’s are. My best friend is Greek, tho quite American-Greek, yet she identifies with those people and culture and is extremely proud of her heritage. She even moved there, married a Greek man, became fluent and even tho she’s crossed the globe and is now “Japanese”, she misses her Greek exposure tremendously. (Tho not her first Greek husband) I wanted to help Lydia’s family, but I really couldn’t. You can’t take away your own child’s pain and you sure as hell can’t take away anyone else’s.

So this week I concluded that it’s pain. The universal word we all know is “Ouu”. The only other thing that seems to be completely universal is a smile, implied love. We all tried some of that, too.