happy fall

I love love love fall. My favorite season by far, too bad it's gone by in a blur, how did it get to be October 17th all of a sudden? There's a lot I want to write about; venting about work, the failings of our current healthcare system, my hiatus on looking for love (I'm just happy that my kids are so great and love me, it's enough for me right now), women in binders, you name it, my mind is always going, although most of the time I just feel like I'm cerebrally spinning my wheels. But right now I'm way too tired because I stayed up late watching the debate and then the post debate debriefing (I feel tight with Gwen Ifill and the PBS gang having watched them so much this season), Charlie Rose and Co.'s take on the debate and then a little Craig Ferguson to lighten things up. So yes, I did drop my kids off at school wearing the clothes I slept in sticking a winter cap on my head to hide how bad my behead looked, I was only partially successful in this. Then I ran over to the grocery store and who should I see strolling out, looking delectable with an ice coffee in his hand, but the hot guy from the gym. Note to self, make a concerted effort to wake up at least fifteen minutes earlier so you can look at least reasonably presentable and age appropriate.

lively

My daughter never ceases to make me smile. I know everyone with children is charmed by the things they do, well most of the things they do, I just love how creative and happy and industrious Oona is. She's very good at playing by herself, without a TV or other friends. She's one of those children with a great imagination who really sees things through. Last Thanksgiving she decided to have a pet show, after watching the Westminster Dog Show, so she roped the man I was seeing into being a handler for her menagerie of stuffed animals. It was quite adorable to watch him carrying a pink guinea pig (named Jellybean) around the dining room while she sat in a chair with paper and pen in hand judging them.

During my back pain debacle of August my judgement was rather impaired, I blame the steroids. Oona watched the first two Twilights (I own them because I think I got them super cheap at the grocery store) and she really enjoyed them so I decided to go out and buy the other two on DVD (at Barnes and Noble so they were like four times what I paid for the first two) then we watched them together. Now I'm one of the few woman that hasn't read any of the twilight series so I had no idea that part 1 of Breaking Dawn 1. contained very suggestive sex scenes for a 6 year old (I later learned some people jokingly called the film breaking headboards) it was much more than I was expecting from a Twilight film and 2. that the birthing scene was like Rosemary's Baby meets Alien? I was traumatized watching it and I kept having to stress to Oona that the film was nothing like what happens when you actually give birth to children. Holy shit it was awful.

Well, apparently I was the only one who was traumatized because I picked the kids up from school yesterday and Oona was begging me to make a count down poster to the opening of Breaking Dawn part 2 and that the two of us go on opening night. Oona is seven going on seventeen, wanting the older girls to like her, she is positively enthralled with older girls/women, especially if you have long, pretty hair. She gets upset at the farmhouse when the fifth graders snub her and my friend Kathleen is like 'If they only knew, Oona can talk Twilight with the best of them.' So I was straightening papers on my coffee table last night after the kids were in bed - my living room is a tornado of homework, mail and such, when I found a little booklet Oona made, she was imitating the camp flyers I get in the mail. Her booklet was 'Camps Magisene' I wish I could scan this 'camp' below, which was my favorite, because it had a cute red mouth with fangs on it, plus her fancy g's, her penmanship at 7 is better than I think Owen can ever hope his to be, alas my latest version of photoshop is snubbing my scanner.

Vampire Club!

Ragh! If you're scared, it's okay. 

We're hunting for Vamps and even the Jersey Devil! 

Sent by Camps.org $1 This is scary!

Sign up.

I just love her so much. I think it's adorable. All her enthusiasm expressed in exclamation points and her writing that it's okay to be scared. Here she is below modeling at the farmhouse last month. Mind you, this porch tends to reek of urine in certain areas during the warmer months so as soon as this pic was snapped I told her to get her head off the floor. Nursing has made me even more neurotic with germs. I wish I had my daughter's indefatigable energy and enthusiasm - the world could use more people like her. 

happy birthday oona bean!

I can't believe my little Beanie is seven. It seems like just yesterday she was in her crib scrunching her legs up and arching her back as she wiggled around while sleeping so that she looked like a little bean and thus her nickname was established. I frequently call her Bean, Beanie or Oona Bean, never Oona Beanie for some reason, it just sounds like heresy to me. She asked to sleep in my bed last night so she could be with like she was on the night she was born, bright and early at 3:16 am. We celebrated her birthday before school with a donut lit with seven slender pink candles on it.

Since Oona isn't with me tonight so I made her a celebratory breakfast with a birthday donut

I stopped by her school to serve brownies and cookies to her class. This serving the kids treats for her birthday didn't go off as seemlessly as last year. I let the secretary know my plan and asked her to check with Oona's main teacher, I heard nothing until I was called at quarter past two when the secretary called and asked if I could come in tomorrow. Um no because I'm working and it also won't be my daughter's birthday then. So then the she asked if I lived close by and would be able to come over now. So I drive over only to find Oona in art class and the teacher less than welcoming of me, the brownies, and cookies. Oona's music teacher took me down to Oona's main teacher to see if we could serve them down there. No go. Back upstairs and the art teacher said the children could get some treats right before class ended and they had to go to gym.

Oona shows  off her first present

So I took out my Christmas napkins (sad I know but for whatever reason I have an abundance of Christmas napkins) and started doling out brownies and chocolate chip cookies. The cookies looked awful, they were flat but they tasted good. I lost half of my second batch of brownies to a fracture, it was like the San Andreas fault of baking, when I turned over the pan they were in. I don't know that that batch was thoroughly cooked anyway so I guess it was no great loss- especially since I can quickly envision worst case scenarios, I saw myself having to explain how a class had succumbed to salmonella due to my not thoroughly cooked brownies. What would the headline be? Mom Sickens School would probably be sensational enough for TV. I was silently lamenting how pitiful my birthday treats for Oona's class looked when I heard the music teacher walking behind me with an older student, 'Look at that. She is on top of it. Supermom.' Perspective changes everything. They weren't aesthetically pleasing, but the kids ate everything I gave them and quite a few wanted seconds. I didn't have enough for everyone so I said we couldn't do that. As far as I know at 9:18 pm, no one got sick. I let all the kids choose what they wanted and it was pretty much a fifty fifty split with the cookies and brownies, and then I brought the leftovers to my neighbors house with the caveat that the 7 brownies on the last layer closest to the plate might be a wee bit underdone. To which my neighbor replied, It's never good when somebody brings you food over and they're apologizing. Mom Sickens Neighbors! story on eleven at eleven. I might not be the best cook but I don't think that makes me a bad Mom, although with the pervasive foodie culture, I sometimes feel scrutinized as though I'm feeding my kids a steady diet of ho-ho's, coke and cheetos (for the record, no) because my culinary skills are, shall we say, lacking.

Owen deciding whether he's interested in Oona's present

I love Oona Bean for her endless enthusiasm, for her love of everything girly (she got a fancy leopard dress and black patent little heels with her birthday gift card to The Children's Place from Grandma Cat and she's dying to wear this ensemble to dress down day tomorrow at her school), for all the delightful drawings she makes, for her singing all the time, for her missing Grandpa Boo, Lily and Frodo, for how much she loves her brother and most of all, for her just being her lovely, slightly wild, self.

Rock & Runway was a hit with Oona, and surprisingly, Owen as well

while you weren't sleeping

The you being me and that will be the extent of my writing in the second person, which I think is one of the harder literary feats to pull off. So the steroids, specifically prednisone, don't think I'll be able to take that any more. I didn't put two and two together, shameful given that I'm a nurse, regarding my mood and lack of sleep until I'd already finished my course of steroids yet I was still staying up waaay too late and crying uncontrollably. And when I say uncontrollably it was about a half a dozen times a day, coming out of nowhere and it wasn't polite little tears but huge gut wrenching sobs. The final straw was when I woke up from a nightmare at 5:00 in the morning sobbing and Oona (the cunning devil that she is, she's been exploiting my ability to sleep like the dead when I do finally fall asleep, Vicodin will do that to you, and sneak into my bed) was like 'It's okay mommy. Don't be sad.' I called the doctor's office, in tears, yet again, and was told yes what you're experiencing is definitely related to the steroids and I saw the doctor the next day and was excused for yet another week of work, 'It's too bad, a lot of people get happy and have a lot of energy from steroids.' she told me. I had a lot of energy, at night, but I was in no way happy. I bought this amazing CD of Lianne La Havas and listened to it nonstop (except track 3 which would make me cry as soon as I heard the first few notes) during my Prednisone haze. The album is amazing, but now that I'm finally clear of the medication induced craziness I can't listen to the CD, as good as it is, it's marked from that time, like when you get food poisoning and have a natural aversion to that food for however long. Hopefully I'll be able to play it again in a couple of months because it really is phenomenal.

Isn't she stunning?! And then you listen to her voice, it's as beautiful as she is and the lyrics are great, can't say enough good things about her (& she's only 23!)

Plus she includes a goofy picture like this on her website, I think she's adorable.

So the kids are back in school and I'm doing a round robin between the gym, physical therapy and the chiropractor's office in order to strengthen my core and hips and avoid my back going out like it did. Because god help me if it does since steroids are now off the list of meds to help cure my back pain. I still have pain, thus the occasional Vicodin at night. The pain in the ass is that it's literally that, a pain in my ass, wrapping around my left hip and making an insidious path down my leg. I'm sitting on a balance ball now, trying to get my ten minutes a day in, trying to engage my transversus abdominis muscle, where are you? I seem to be woefully out of touch with most of the muscles that make up my core.

But back/hip/leg pain and steroid insanity aside, I did actually manage to do something productive during my time off. I started working on a second website for the jewelry that I make. I've only been planning on doing this for over three years now. Oh well, I've got the ball rolling now, so please visit boo and the bean and let me know what you think.

vacation

Well my vacation went up with the spitting remains of Isaac which caused my flight into Ft Lauderdale to be canceled yesterday, even though it seems the storm is gunning for Tampa and the RNC. Now this vacation was going to be 5 days in Florida when it's hotter than hell, my Mom was asking ahead of time about DVDs to rent for the kids so we could keep cool during the middle of the day. It was going to be me and my children in my Mom's two bedroom condo a block away from the beach and even if the median age in Lauderdale by the Sea is well, up there, it was going to be a break for me. From my fucking back pain that caused me to bloat 6 pounds of steroid water weight, and the pain pills and other stuff (read benzodiazapines) that make me feel entirely unmotivated for anything other than crying. And crying is a lot of what I've done the past two days. That six months of working to earn my 29.7 hours of vacation time - poof! and it's gone while I schlep around my house and try to find something useful to do. And my 30.1 hours of sick time for my back - poof! that's gone too. My back is still sore but it is worlds better than before, like I might be able to consider rehab next week. But this weepy, pill haze, maybe it's protective, to keep me from screaming.

I have not had a vacation since 1997. How do I know? I arrived home early from a writing trip to Italy, it was beautiful in Spoleto but I had night fevers that wouldn't go away, with weird rashes that would cover my body at night but disappear by morning. And then I started limping. Fortunately one of the poets on the trip was also an ER doctor who told me I needed to get back home right away. So I switched my flight around to leave early, no chance to visit Rome or Venice, awkwardly slinging my backpack across me because by now the ache in my hip had traveled to my shoulder. I had Lyme disease. Something else too, on top of the Lyme, those tics are promiscuous. And that was my last vacation. What I remember most vividly one late night out, once my Doxycycline had kicked in, and I was taking a taxi home (what a splurge for me) and the cabbie said that Princess Di was dead. This was big news to me because that Monday I started work at a new photo archive and we were inundated with requests for any and all images of the peoples princess. From a vacation cut short by illness to a new job where I was up and running before I finished taking all my Doxycycline. And I haven't had a true vacation since.

Sure I've been to Iowa for a friend's wedding and I went to Kennet Square, PA for my fortieth birthday.  But that birthday celebration wound up making me feel bad; three friends and their spouses came and I learned from one of them that there was basically no way she was going to make the trip out to Pittsburgh for my fortieth being that it's in the middle of the Christmas season. It made me feel really shitty and I hated to feel not worth it due to where my birthday falls on the lunar calendar. I separated from my husband a few months later, and it's hard not to look back on times like that and wonder what I didn't see clearly or what I could have handled differently. In my heart I don't think anything could have been changed but it's hard to see so much anguish for naught.

I broke down when my Mom told me it didn't look good for us coming on Sunday, the gale force winds (60 mph) and that she already had all her patio furniture inside and did we really want to fly in weather like that. Well, hell no. But I want someone to take care of me. Just for a little bit. Occasionally. Like when I'm blitzed on steroids, vicodin and all the pain pills I'd like someone to do my laundry or just offer to carry the basket to the goddamn basement. For now, I'll settle on it being my Mom on annual trips to Florida if that's all I can muster.

There's so much I want to see Maine again, and Iceland, England, Scotland, France, Spain, more of Italy, and India too. So many places, too many to list, but I don't want to do it all alone. Or, if I have to do it all alone, I don't want to be at a point where I'm fucking worrying about eating into my vacation hours that don't amount to all that much in terms of my hourly rate. It can be very demoralizing.

But I can't end on a downer even if that's all I feel right now. So let me include this quote from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which I never saw but I love the quote and got it from my favorite feed that sybaritic need site

what a difference a week makes

I've gone from my endorphin saturated high of having completed the triathlon to the low of not being able to do anything without pain. A paranoid me could start ruminating about who stabbed the effigy of me in the back and leg. I hope I haven't pissed anyone off to such an extent they're reveling in the schadenfreude of my setback. I went with the kids this morning to get them school shoes and I was catching my breath from the pain in my back sitting up in bed, getting on and off the toilet, trying to put my clothes on (it was less painful to lie on my bed and get my pants on that way). I was hovering at a 4-5 out of 10 when I was standing or lopsidedly sitting, I couldn't put weight down on my left side. But if I bent in any direction the littlest bit it spiked to a gasp worthy high.  The same goes for trying to lower myself and get my left leg into and out of the car, entering and exiting the car was my fucking cruciatus curse for the day. And then I would make some infinitesimal twitch in my body while driving and the knife in my lower back would twist to take my breath away. I probably sounded like I was in a porn film except my gasps were from the agony of my back spasming, knotting my muscles so much my left leg felt like a barbie doll leg that had been snapped on the wrong way. The pain ripped across my ass (I know I'm a nurse and should use proper terminology but I can't write buttock or say it for that matter, it just sounds long-winded and false to me) around my hip and down the front of my thigh.

This pain started Friday when my night rotation started. I don't think it was work related because there was no one heavy that I had to move that shift. I called my doctor Saturday morning to get an order for flexeril, so I could sleep Saturday, hopefully relax my muscles, and work that night. I slept without a problem but was still really sore that night at work and getting sorer by Sunday morning. I was due to work Sunday night too but told them that morning I didn't think I'd be able to because doing any bending was really bothering me, but that I'd come in if they couldn't find a replacement for me, fortunately they did. I slept close to twenty four hours hoping the pain would go away but by Monday morning it was worse. I called the doctor again for Vicodin, they didn't get back to me until Tuesday but finally called it in and I had a couple that day and it did nothing. The flexeril, vicodin, ibuprofen, heating pad, bio freeze, heating patches on my back and thigh - nothing helped even a little bit. So this morning I called and got an appointment for another doctor in the practice at 2:15. So we got school shoes and picked up school pants for Owen, who could wear size 8 waist but needs size 12 legs, my son with the model body. I tried to take it easy with myself getting into and out of car, so I resembled someone twice my age in desperate need of a orthopedic surgery, but there was no way to avoid pain. I figured walking should help out even if it hurt, I favored my right side because  putting weight on my left side wasn't working for me, but all the studies say that you shouldn't lie in bed, that you should work through back pain. Fucking studies. Then I was waiting in the doctors office and Dr. D came in and shook my hand, said she'd reviewed my file and then asked 'why aren't you sitting on your left side?' 'I can't really, it hurts when I sit properly.' That's when I knew I probably had waited too long with toughing out this back pain. She asked me to lie back on the examining table and I couldn't lay back without starting to cry. Raising my legs while lying wasn't much better. It seemed so cruel to go from an event where I was really proud of what my body accomplished to being hampered to the point where I couldn't do basic activities without an awful lot of pain.

So I got a shot of depomedrol in my left hip and an order for prednisone and klonipin to add to my vicodin and flexeril alleviate my back pain cocktail (the doctor said there's another med much more effective than flexeril as a muscle relaxant but that most insurance companies won't cover it). Ahh the tangled web that is American healthcare. Here's hoping that my pain is gone before I'm due to go to Florida Sunday morning. Although the way tropical storm Isaac is developing it looks like my trip to Florida might be canceled even if my back makes a miraculous recovery in the next four days. Although it's almost worth the canceled trip to Florida if Isaac dampens the Republican National Convention. A little schadenfreude on my part but can you blame me with the dynamically out of touch duo that is Romney & Ryan.

try hard

Well, even though I had my period, could we pick a more inopportune time, and a belly full of dread about this triathlon, I went over Saturday afternoon to get myself bodymarked for the event. I figured going over a day early would give me a chance to finally survey the course and that there would be people to answer my myriad questions about the event. One remarkably good stroke of luck was that I got someone to work my Sunday night shift, and I'm eternally grateful to Kimberly for this (especially helpful given that my heat didn't start until 10). So I drove around North Park until I found the pool (could really use GPS), signed my waiver against injury and then waited my turn to get my shoulders marked with my race number (416) whilst my calves were marked with my age as of December 31st of this year. Yes, I was slightly chagrined to have 44 on my calves when I'm only 43 but I better get over it being that in four months I will be that age. So I was magic marked up and felt a little dismayed that I'd have to forego my nightly shower, I like to be squeaky clean before going to bed. I said that I had a lot of questions about the triathlon, this being my first time and was directed to speak to an extremely tan, blonde and fit woman around my age. She was very patient and super helpful in answering my questions, the best advice she gave me was to show up early so I could see how the earlier heats handled transitions between the events. This woman would be in the first heat and judging by her less than 10% body fat I assumed she'd probably fare very well. I checked out the pool and drove around the bike part of the course then went home and posted on Facebook to get as much virtual support as I possibly could given that no one would actually be cheering me on the day of this event. I don't know if anyone has read The Atlantic cover story about Facebook but I always half dread putting a post up there, it's like waiting to be picked last for kickball. It's an awful feeling to be ignored while reading others enviously rich lives, even if that's a lot of artifice or it's a richness that I in actuality wouldn't crave, it's just far too easy for the grass to always look greener in the world of facebook. But, lo and behold, I actually had a lot of people write back support, which really bolstered me. My summer has been looong. I promise myself I'll put my house in some semblance of order once the kids are back in school. My intelligence seems to have an inverse relationship with the heat and humidity.  I've had one person call wanting to do something with me, basically my phone does not ring unless it's my ex husband calling for the kids. I'm either working or with my children and I love my children dearly but when they're your only source of social interaction, well, for example, Oona has an imaginary twin that's close to two years younger than her that she calls Melon, real name Melissa, clearly your perspective can get skewed if you're hanging out with Oona, Melon, the two invisible dogs, and my son who wants to recount every page in the many books he's reading, how to say I love that you read so voraciously but I don't need a line by line retelling of Diary of a Wimpy Kid?

I digress, maybe that two year long gestation of Oona and Melon has affected my attention span. I had all my stuff packed and ready for the morning. My bike had a last minute trip to Performance bikes when the chain came off and something weird happened to a piece I can't identify to save my life. Suffice it to say the bike guy fixed it and just shook his head 'don't worry about it' when I asked how much I owed him (I think he was trying to cut me a break given I was doing my triathlon on a twenty year old mountain bike). I went to bed early and woke up at 6:30, picked up coffee (since caffeine can enhance performance- yee haw) and a bagel and made it to the pool in a far more direct route this time. I got there just as the second heat was in the pool. Having the time to curb my butterflies watching the earlier heats compete was invaluable. It was also inspiring to see a man in his sixties, one of the first ones out of the pool, unzip his wetsuit and take a hit off his inhaler before heading to his bike. And he wasn't the oldest competitor. There were people in their seventies competing. A lot of people wrote to me about how they could never fathom doing a triathlon but there were people of all shapes, sizes and ages doing it and it's was truly incredible. There was a woman in my heat, the last one because I had no idea what time I'd come in at. I could tell she was 60 (or 59) by the number on her calves. She was slender but had very soft, dimply legs and a cute black and hot pink swimsuit with jolly rogers all over it. She was one of the first people out of the pool when my heat went, when I was literally sucking chlorinated water and still had 3 more laps to go.

So my performance. It wasn't pretty. I did finish, although when I was in the pool I wasn't sure that I would. Seven hundred fucking meters swimming. I swallowed and snarfed so much chlorinated water I fear my lungs may resemble someone rescued from a near drowning. The swimming was, without a doubt the hardest event for me, and I was a water rat as a kid, you had to drag me out of the pool, but I guess summers filled with Marco Polo don't qualify for triathlon training. I've since read that swimming should be the relaxing leg of the triathlon where you go at a steady pace, conserving your energy for the cycling and running portions of the triathlon. I was very scared about the swim because 1. It was outside and it was cooler this past weekend (in the seventies) and all my training has been at my gym and the pool water is the equivalent of bathwater. 2. I have raynaud's and was concerned my fingers and toes would flip out on me, especially since it can be painful in my fingers when they react to the cold so my hands would be like inert clubs. But here's where adrenaline was my friend. I jumped in the pool 30 seconds before the horn went off and lifted the left side of my bathing cap, I couldn't hear jack out the right side because I had a earplug in my breathing side. As soon as the horn sounded I took off swimming way too hard, just like I anticipated that I would. The pool was twice as long as the one I trained in and the sun was breaking through clouds and directly in my line of vision every time I lifted my head to take a breath. Ten feet into that first lap my goggles filled with water but I waited till I reached the end of the lap to adjust them. I think I did two laps freestyle, then switched to backstroke, whacked my head against the side of the wall doing backstroke on my fourth lap. Changed to side crawl for a couple laps and then half  freestyle and then back to the backstroke and I finished the last lap freestyle. I wasn't the first one out of the pool but I wasn't the last either. I was right in the middle for my heat, which was fine with me. Honestly I just didn't want to get the shoulder tap that I was a 'slow swimmer' and had to move to the slow lane so the last heat (there were two last/untimed heats) could go. I ran along the pool corner (right where it screams in all caps, NO RUNNING) around the cone, down the stairs, across the parking lot (barefoot the whole time, just waiting to stub my toes) and over to my bike.

Yes I had goggle marks around my eyes two and a half hours after the swim and I won't be winning any awards for best hairstyle after a triathlon (or before one for that matter since I slather my hair in Kiehls silk groom prior to swimming and look like I haven't washed my hair in months)

Now the night before I packed a nightgown, underwear and a sports bra to change into because I was sure I wouldn't be able to tolerate the last two legs in a wet swimsuit (I'm tactilely challenged) but everyone was doing it and, once again, the benefits of adrenaline, I just dealt with it, put bike pants and a top over my wet swimsuit, got my socks, sneakers and helmet on and ran towards the marker for the next leg. I had a chip around my ankle that went off when I entered certain zones of the event. I hopped on my bike and was just starting to peddle when a couple yelled at me 'your helmet's on backwards'. Truth be told I never used to wear a helmet biking back in college, twenty years ago when it seemed that no one did. But it was my nerves that made me put it on backwards, I honestly don't know how I got it on that way so quickly, but I straightened it out, the man shouted, 'Bet that feels a lot better' I smiled an okay I'm embarrassed enough smile and headed out on the course. Four and three quarters laps around half uphill and half down. This was the easiest leg for me aside from adjusting to the wee small bike seat that's nothing like the cushy seats on the stationary bikes at the gym and the ache in my lower back (this fall is core strengthening season for me). Oh yeah and that this was the first time I actually did the full twelve miles cycling, training I always stopped after a half hour, or about an eight mile ride. But another wonderful thing about doing this triathlon was that it made me realize how much more enjoyable it is to exercise outside where I can marvel over the simple beauty of sunlight filtering through the trees, where I don't need to hold my breath when someone squirts cleaner all over their stationary bike and half my face. Alas, hot Eddie Munster/Tim Roth man won't be there on the trip but that man is married, maybe I'll bike into a single Hugh Laurie doppelgänger on some lovely Pittsburgh trail. It was also fun from a competition standpoint when 49 year old male passes me on the downhill clip but then I pass him on the uphill portion. Or passing people in their twenties and thirties, although I had no clue what lap they were on. So all in all the bike portion went well. I just got a wee bit nervous about wiping out and losing my teeth on the steep downhill portion where you had to cut a sharp turn and then start cycling uphill. I have this same losing teeth fear watching my children cycle down softest of inclines.

For the running portion I grabbed my shuffle and my son's baseball hat from The Children's Place, because it's mesh in back so I figured I wouldn't get overheated in it and I didn't have a hat of my own, never mind that it's for a size 4-7 child's head (which makes me truly reflect on the size of my adult head) or that it has a skull and crossbones on the front. My triathlon style was ghetto fabulous, well more like phantasmagoric, it was a pastiche of whatever I could find or make do with. Running was yet another, ahem, adjustment for me since I'd trained on a treadmill (which has a lovely spring to it) at zero incline with a built in fan fanning me in the air conditioned gym. Triathlon reality, it was a trail that went up and down slight hills, very slight except for two portions of the run that were considerably steeper, but when you've done all your running on a flat surface that's more than enough for you to hit a wall, the steep grades were the two portions of the run where I walked. The real wall I hit was forgetting to take a drink of water when dropping off my bike and getting my son's hat. All I had had to drink was coffee and chlorinated water. I was parched. I was lucky to have two other women running with me (19 & 49) and we kept pace with one another which made the running portion a lot easier for me. There were a couple water stations set up and I took full advantage of them, but I would stop and drink the water then put the cup in the trash bin. The second cup I took with me but I couldn't just chuck it on the ground, even if I knew the volunteers would clean it up, I had it crumpled in one hand and my sunglasses in the other hand. The hardest part of the run for me, aside from being very thirsty and, at that point, slightly nauseous, was that I had no idea how far into the run I was or where the finish line for the run was. I didn't have a watch on for pacing myself, I just tried to gauge the distance based on the amount of songs I listened to - Snow Patrol, Beck, Moby, Eminem (the song where he disses Moby), Doves, Foo Fighters and I finished right when Lily Allen was starting to sing.

I WILL find a hat that fits and doesn't look this ridiculous for the next triathlon.

I finished! I might have looked like an absolute disaster in sneakers but I did it, I could 't train the way I wanted but I made it across the last chip marker. BEEP! I was shaking taking the velcroed chip off my ankle to put in the chip bucket. I went to the post race station to get a slice of orange and I cannot tell you how good that piece of fruit tasted or the bottle of water I had afterwards. I think the triathlon really helped me appreciate the challenge I gave myself, how totally inspiring older generations are to participate in this (there were older people totally kicking it time-wise in this triathlon, a fifty four year old finished in 1:03 while the winner, 18, did it in 57:56) and just being mindful of my body, what I do to it and what it's capable of. I didn't find out my time in the race until Monday afternoon, a volunteer had given me the wrong website to check my time on. I had wanted to do it under two hours, secretly wished I could do it under 1:45. And my time was 1:43:48. I did it, with one minute and twelve seconds to spare. Never mind that I finished in the bottom quarter I made my secret goal time and it's given me a shorter secret goal time to aim for next year. But I'm going to find someone who can help me with my swimming technique, the only part of me that ached the next day was my neck from swimming, I gotta fix the whiplash swim.

hubris

My triathlon is this Sunday and as the date draws near this goal of mine is looking more and more like an impulsive and regrettable decision on my part to. I haven't had enough training, if I'm not working I have my children with me and I started out strong but I've sort of lost steam because I feel guilty having them in the care center at the gym while I do exercise, even if it's only for an hour or so. I can't pace myself to save my life with swimming. I always start out way too fast and by the sixth lap my lungs are ready to explode. They say that swimming is an excellent sport for asthmatics because it helps them with breathing. I think I sound like an asthmatic when I swim, I seriously sound like I'm wheezing or dying I'm swimming so hard. And then yesterday I switched to backstroke, to catch my breath, and my head was somewhere else while swimming (actually, I was ruminating over why they put me on to work Sunday night when this was the one and only weekend I requested off because my fucking triathlon is Sunday morning, which means I'll go from a triathlon, to bed, to working 12 hours overnight, incentive to do it in a good time at least) well I backstroked the back of my head right into the pool wall, fortunately I wasn't all that quick so it didn't hurt too bad. I've got my twenty year old mountain bike for the cycling part and my flat feet for the 5k which involves trail running (harder than pavement, infinitely harder than the treadmill) I haven't been able to train anywhere but inside the gym, since when I don't have my children I'm working and exercise is the last thing I want to do after 12 hours of work, sit in front of the tv and watch Monk or House while stuffing my face (drowning my emotional/physical/psychological stressors of the day) is what I'm more inclined towards. So if you read this before Sunday morning EST please send good thoughts my way that I make it through this triathlon and fingers crossed that I get downstaffed that night so I needn't go to work.

good stick

picture from ignitelight.tumblr.com

This is a picture that I've had on my desktop for ages. I've been wanting to write about it, there's so much I'm always wanting to write about, a constant dialogue I want to type out when I'm near a computer but creating time to do this is hard for me right now. Excuses excuses, from the little I've read of Outliers Malcolm Gladwell would tell me that I need to find the time, like 10,000 hours of time and then I will have mastered it. Ah, life gets in my way. But this picture I got from a site that I look at pretty much daily. I love to check in and see the pretty pictures, which seem to be anglophile heavy landscape wise, gorgeous pictures of green green mountains with lovely little cottages tucked into between them. Maybe I thought they're anglophile heavy because during the summer they were posting so many pics of women in hunter boots, looking impossibly stylish in rubber boots. They have great pictures of beaches, thoughtful quotes, stylish white kitchens, slender woman looking impossibly chic, it's an envy/inspiration heavy site for me. Except for pictures of England and Scotland's cliffs, which make my heart beat faster just looking at them online, because I fear my children leaping like lemmings off of them. Not because my children have no sense so much as my brain likes to torture me. Now this photo above showed up about a month or so ago and when I saw it I thought - 1. cute top, because I'm a sucker for heathered grey anything 2. interesting jewelry because that's a rather uncrunchy take on crystal jewelry, I like the simplicity of it 3. she has nice clavicles and what appears to be nice hair (the hair envy never ends for me) and 4. and what I really honed in on, she would be a good stick. I don't have to do many peripheral sticks on my patients because most of them have PICC lines or central lines but occasionally I do have to and I always get a bit nervous unless someone has a vein that is this obvious and easy. She doesn't even have a tourniquet on but you can see the vein clearly in her antecubital space, it would be a ridiculously easy or good stick. Angelina Jolie, Sarah Jessica Parker and Madonna all three of them are also very good sticks because they've got prominent veins all over their arms and hands. In nursing school a guy in my class that I first auscultated a blood pressure on had antecubital veins so good I could see them pulsate. Young men are in demand for bone marrow donations because it is so easy to harvest peripheral stem cells from their antecubital (a/c for short) veins. But when I clicked on the picture to see it better I saw all these other people that had reposted this picture and I can't tell you how many of them were people, I'm assuming young women, coveting her thinness (thinspiration, ameliaslowlydisappearing, keeplovethin, iwanttobetheskinniest, thinisthenewperfect, gracefullydisappearing) that's just a sampling. I felt sad seeing that, for those girls and for myself because although that wasn't what was entering my mind when I looked at the photo God knows I've been in that place before. And still am whenever I see someone with impossibly slender legs or the tiniest of stomachs. I mean I thought that she had nice clavicles but I didn't covet them, my clavicles are pretty prominent and my chest is pretty bony. If I need anything shot in heart, a la Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction (which isn't likely given I don't really even drink much anymore) no one would have a problem finding my intercostal spaces). But my chest is thin from age, from the chest up I've lost my youthful plumpness but from the chest down things aren't so bony.  It makes me sad that so many of us women are expending so much fucking energy fighting with our bodies. If I had channeled that energy towards anything else, school, writing, medicine, anything positive, well it would easily exceed ten thousand hours and I'd have something to show for it.

my little songbird

I've got to work tomorrow through Sunday and I've got the familiar pit of dread in my stomach that comes every Thursday evening. I want work to get to a place where I don't get so stressed out about it, but I think that would entail having a different job. Nursing, permanently twisting the knife in my wound that is worry. My stress pit is larger tonight, I imagine it's blossomed beyond the tight fist the usually resides between my umbilicus and xiphoid process because I had to drop Oona off and I really had such a lovely time with her this week. She's such a sweetheart and we really bonded having four days where it was just the two of us. I loved listening to her sing; in the car, at home, in a store, she just sings her little heart out and she really has a beautiful voice. Her repertoire includes Adele, Lily Allen, songs from Mary Poppins and this week she added Juliana Hatfield to the mix. We had such a nice little routine, just the two of us and I let her and her favorite stuffed animal monkey, which is, surprise surprise, a pink knitted monkey, sleep with me. I'm going to miss her because she's off to the ex in-laws to have her own week in the country with them and her cousin, who's the same age. I'm sure Oona will have a blast but I'm going to miss my baby girl. She told me that monkey could sleep in my bed while she's gone, I think she believes we look after each other since will both miss Oona. 

the two of us squeaky clean from a shower after being at the pool

uncle

Yesterday I was beginning to think I might have been infected with the rage virus. Not that I was going off on anyone just that the littlest things would upset me. It was one of those days where bad things just keep piling up on you, and you're wondering if you should have just pulled up the covers and ceded that day. I went to the gym and as I'm getting stuff from my locker a morbidly obese woman sitting naked right next to my locker lets out a huge fart in my direction and absentmindedly says 'sorry'. I'm trying to hold my breath and collect my stuff when she lets out another, even louder and longer than the last one. She doesn't even bother to apologize that time and I'm thinking,  is it really that hard to control your flatulence until no one's face is anywhere near the vicinity of your ass? It was just a day where the interior monologue is heavy on profanity with God and Christ getting thrown into that mix. I didn't curse out loud until an idiot in her CRV almost backed right into Oona and I. Even then I didn't curse at her, just said look where you're driving you almost hit us. But under my breath I muttered a fuck heavy diatribe getting Oona safely into the car. The way people drive in parking lots makes me rabid and it was just one loooong day where I felt like I was in a parking lot with bad drivers. And do I really need to be friend's with my ex on Facebook so I can see how wonderful his life is? And how everyone likes that? I mean it's great, do not get me wrong, it's not like I don't wish him well, I'm truly glad he found someone and is happy. But I don't need to virtually be told how peachy keen things are over there while I'm ready to a. weep   b. pass out   c. devour carbs   d. join a cult.  I'm just kidding with the last one since I'm not much of a joiner. Tuesday was just a fucking nightmare day filled with rage but always I rage hardest against myself. My insides feel clawed.

So I talked to Owen last night and had a nice chat with the ex mother in law, who apologized that Owen had hung up on me the night before and she filled me in on the fun Owen is having. Either everyone is reading my blog and correcting their behavior or I just took things too personally. Hmmm, wonder which one it is?

lessons from my daughter

Somehow I feel that Oona is on to something. Although this probably has more to do with genetics and the way her alleles lined up than any sudden realization that dawned on her at the time she started speaking. Both of my children have no trouble talking to adults, they're confident and comfortable speaking with them, something I never was at that age. I'm still probably working on this, which is why I'm writing about Oona.

But first I need to mention Owen. Owen is away for the week at his grandparents in the country. Oona goes next week. My mom will most likely never take them for a week because that would be too much for her, at least that's what I was told this summer. But that's a post for another day. So I'm calling the ex in-laws, and I dread calling there because, let's just say my ex-in laws aren't real interested in small talk with me. I called tonight asked how Owen was and if he had fun today and the reply was 'Oh yeah, here I'll pass you along to him and let him tell you.' Owen gets on the line says hi and then tells me there's a movie that just started on tv. I ask what he did today and his response is 'nothing much' then 'Iloveyouhaveagoodnight.' I told him he was being a turkey and that he'd have to talk to me more tomorrow. And then the phone just hung up. No one took back the phone to tell me what had actually occurred today or, God forbid, turned off the tv so he could focus for two seconds on a conversation with his mom. Mmmm, can you just imagine how much I look forward to calling them tomorrow.

Oona got the one and only fancy pink chair

So today was a day just for Oona and me. We went to get mani/pedis because Oona's never gotten one before and I must have mentioned this idea very briefly (like a nanosecond) in passing a couple weeks ago but Oona homed in on it right away and it's been mentioned frequently since then. So Oona was knelling over all the colors and it was tough for her to narrow it down to just four shades, two for the toes and two for the fingers, but she somehow managed. I think she had a better time than me. I put my feet in my boring unchanging water and was promptly scalded. Seriously, it was so damn hot I don't know how I escaped second degree burns, guess I got them out quick enough. Then I asked that they not cut Oona's cuticles or mine because, that's supposed to be an easy way to get a fungal infection, you don't want to break the skin's protective barrier. And yes having a fungal infection would suhuhck (have you ever seen how nasty peoples toenails get from them?) but the even worse thing, in my opinion, is that you have to take oral anti fungal pills for a long time (months) and they have horrific side effects just check out lamisil here. A little liver failure for you? Or how about sporanox with the small but very real risk of congestive heart failure? To be honest the one side effect of lamisil that I learned about and which scared me the most was ageusia or loss of taste. I read an article somewhere or other about a woman that got a toenail infection from a manicure, treated it and wound up with ageusia. Fortunately it was only temporary but just reading how profoundly it affected her was terrifying to me.

and yes not only is the chair fancy the water changes colors
from teal to blue to purply blue and back again WOW

I thought I had a fungal infection on my big toes over the winter, it turned out to be the my clogs for work were too small and rubbing the tips of my toenails ($125 down the drain for those white patent leather Sanitas) And, if you were to ever get a fungal infection on your toenails don't use fungi-nail, which is like a nail polish thing. Because even though it says fungi-nail in big lettering all over the goddamn package and shows an awful fungus ridden toenail, you will find somewhere on the bottle, in 4 point font, that it doesn't actually work for fungal infections of the toenails. Seriously. I kid you not I returned a bottle for just such a reason. The lady in lace didn't do the cuticles on Oona but the lady in what appeared to be a knock off lacoste started on me and I said no and damned if five minutes later she didn't use it on my pinky toe when I had very clearly said 'do not cut my cuticles. no cut. I don't want that.' Then I get the manicure and she says I should save money and just get a polish change because I don't want my cuticles cut but I did want the flipping hand massage stuff, yet didn't get it. Fucking waste of my money, especially considering my thumbnail smeared before I walked out the door. Grrrrrrrrrr

supercuts for men, women & Oona mismatched socks, only Oona

After the mani/pedi, if I get a fungal infection so help them, I took Oona to get her bangs cut because she won't wear them pulled back in a barrette and I can't stand them in her eyes. I cannot even stand seeing stars with bangs cut at eye level, it's a huge pet peeve of mine, hair in the eyes I think it  makes people look at least 40 IQ points less intelligent, and with some of those said hair in eyes banged stars they don't have much to work with on the IQ front. But watching Oona at Supercuts was something to behold. She is more comfortable talking to those ladies than me. I could hear her chatting with the lady doing her shampoo the whole time, telling her about watching Rugrats, and that her brother is out in the country with grammy and paw paw, and that her best friend is Chloe and she wants her to come over for a play date. And the lady doing her shampoo, another customer, the guy shampooing that woman, they were all totally charmed by her. Oona just says whatever comes into her head and never thinks twice to edit herself. She doesn't have concerns the way I do where I will over analyze (nobody cares what you think) and edit (don't say that you'll sound dumb) until I don't say anything. And the thing is Oona is really bright and articulate when she talks and I think she has so much passion for life and all the stuff she's talking about, it just bubbles over and infects those around her in a delightful way. Everyone seemed happier when she was around.

And I looked at myself in the mirror and I just looked sad. Like that absolutely revolting drivel Cindy Crawford spewed about the face you have at twenty being what god or genetics (secular or non-secular, I can't be compelled to get the actual quote) gave you, but the face you have at forty being the one you earned. So she has earned an overly tweaked look that lifted the sexiness right out of her lovely ever so slightly hooded yet sultry eyes. But can that trite cliche be true? Had the past twenty three years earned me this face where my eyes always look sad and, yes, very tired. My previous post about the incident with the fellow last week. I came in friday and he was fine with me. Like it didn't even register to him and briefly my blood pressure spiked and I thought I've got to delete that post! What if he finds it. Because I'm sure my blog is something he's going to happen upon and read in his infinitesimal downtime. I'm taking things way way too personally, or I'm overly sensitive and when people flare up and get nasty but then cool down and are their happy go lucky selves five minutes later I'm still hurting from that flare up. Or it's some combination of the not registering, taking things personally, highly sensitive person perfect storm of melancholy. I feel like I try so hard at everything and it gets me nowhere near where I want to be. I wonder if I'm trying too hard. Do I have to let go somewhat?  I wouldn't even know how to go about doing that. This is when I want some of what my daughter has, that innate confidence and fearlessness.

play nice

into the woods, this is how I feel facing each work week, except the woods are much more foreboding

I have been so mad and upset for most of the week, still kicking around the hurt from work this past weekend. The odd thing is nothing absoltuely horrible happened. Friday the 13th sucked, I got an admission with change of shift which is always a huge pain in the ass. It's not difficult so much as I hate leaving my patient just sitting there wondering why it's taking me forever and a day to get around to them. But, this patient and his wife were understanding. Things went smoothly with them, the patient got a central line placed, foley put in (for continuous bladder irrigation because some chemos can cause hemorrhagic cystitis) and the chemo was up by 4:00. I got through it all without a problem. I had to deal with the rude IV nurse whose lack of industry and rudeness is such a slap in the face when the other two IV nurses are so friendly and helpful, seriously I sometimes wish I could find out this shrew's schedule just so I could make sure to schedule myself when she isn't working. But so I paged her about a patient and she did the absolute minimum, just slapped a dressing over the existing leaking one and didn't bother to change it, it's lazy and stupid but not entirely unexpected given who it was. 

Saturday I had four patients. I was busy busy and one of my patients handles fear of the unknown by being terribly mean-spirited, making comments about basically everything I do. Saying 'overkill. overkill' when I'm examining their feet, palpating for the pedal pulse. Talking about how golfing is for fools that don't know how to fish and then saying 'Do you golf Kim?'  I just try to deal with it and not let it take too much out of me, but I find behavior like that, well it's sort of like having a dementor for a patient, it can be wearing. My central line guy's dressing was leaking. Again. No surprise given the half assed way the dressing was taken care of yesterday. The IV nurse was on the floor and asked if anyone needed help before she left, behavior that was noteworthy for it's rareness coming from her. I said, yes my patient in room #- needs his dressing changed. To which she replied, what's the problem. Well it's starting to leak again and the dressing is coming up near the biopatch (an antibacterial foam disk near the insertion site to decrease the risk of infection). Her reply, if the biopatch is exposed it's your responsibility to change the dressing. I say but the line was placed less than 24 hours ago it was my understanding that only IV team can change dressings within that time. She makes some other comment about how she can't do this and how it's something I should take care of and then I say 'Didn't you just ask if anyone on the floor had anything you could take care of?' That silenced her and she asked what room number and said she'd look at it on her way out. Fifteen minutes later I saw her walking off the unit and I went in my patient's room to ask if she had checked in on him. No she hadn't. 

I gave her another hour but she didn't come back and by that time I figured 'fuck it' I might not do these changes as often as IV team but I'm anal to a fault when it comes to them so I just got the supplies and did it myself, and as nervous as I get about doing the dressing changes I do really good work, lines that seem to have an issue with leaking stop when I change the dressing. It's like glorified cleaning but using sterile technique and being on a person. I'm good when it's very important to make something clean and neat. The IV nurse showed up five hours later to change my patient's dressing at which point he said 'no it's already been changed.' This nurse then tried to remove the dressing I had done saying I shouldn't have put gauze where his steri-strips were, that I just should have put the dressing directly on top, that it would heal better that way. His skin at that site was a bit boggy (soft and moist) and I figured that it would be make more sense to put the gauze there to get the moisture and feel much better and if that area was moist how good a seal could you make with the dressing without gauze and why are flipping showing up hours after the fact and then acting all righteous and indignant at the fact that I changed the dressing. The patient got annoyed with her and told her to just leave it, he was fine. This patient, my admit from Friday, got discharged early Saturday evening, he gave me a hug on leaving. He was such a nice man and so delightful to take care of. He was a much harder patient than my walkie talkie dementor but I will take a challenging complete care patient any day if they're friendly. I don't mind working I have a harder time with emotional vampires.

Sunday my patients were easy, no blood, platelets or replacements. I only had three after my discharge yesterday evening. I couldn't beleive my luck. Then I saw it was at the expense of another nurse who had an assignment from Hell. I told her I would help her as much as I could and I tried to do my best, to help her out. I was getting pain medicine for one of her patients when my day took a nosedive. I went in the room and the patient was bleeding from the mouth. I knew he needed blood and platelets so I became concerned about a spontaneous bleed and hollered for the nurse. My old preceptor, who I love, came in to help me out and she called for the doctors. The resident came in first and then the fellow, I was trying to draw up the patient's morphine into a syringe. Now the problem was the morphine wasn't in a regular glass vial (short and squat that you place an equal amount of air as what you want to draw up ) but in one of the long slender vials that's supposed to be used with a carpuject but no one does that they just draw it up with a syringe (my first night working during orientation I accidentally put air in this vial and the bottom exploded off, along with my morphine, leaving me panicked that they'd think I'd taken the medication. fortunately others have made this stupid mistake). So I'm trying to draw up this med and I hated doing it from these slender vials and the fellow is looking at me like I've got three heads and I don't do well performing tasks in front of watchful eyes. The fellow suddenly says 'How long have you worked here?' And tone is everything. It wasn't friendly, or conversational or even humorous, it was a wafer thin veil of contempt. He might as well have said 'what the fuck are you doing?' I said, 'I'm new here, I started in February. Why?' All the time I've got this fucking syringe in one hand and vial in the other still trying to draw up the med under his black eyed scrutiny, sweating in the gloves and yellow gown. His response was because I've worked here over three years. 

perhaps I would have gotten a better response if I just looked at him like this? would go over much better if I was as cute as my daughter.

That was it and for the life of me I started thinking. What did I do wrong? Did I accidentally touch the needle hub with my gloved finger (due to the patient being on contact precautions). Was he mad that I had emptied the emesis basin three times rather than save the bloody water the patient had spit out. What had I done that could justify incurring such invalidating behavior. And it wasn't even my fucking patient. I was helping out. Emptying C difficile bedside commodes (diarrhea heavy and a smell that can make even veteran nurses gag). What did I do? I felt unnerved the rest of the day. And when I went up to the resident, I avoided the fellow, about another patient, very tearful, very depressed, due to be discharged the next day but talking about just wanting to be dead. I'm like this patient needs help. We need to get a psych consult. The resident nodded and the fellow just looked at me with this smile like I was an imbecile unleashed on the floor and the attending, to his credit, nodded and agreed that the patient seemed much more depressed but I felt my wee bit of confidence in my work eroding with this fellow's reactions to anything I did. At the end of the day I steeled myself and asked him about a medication for another patient, and it became this cat and mouse game. I don't think the patient needs this med, perhaps colace but not miralax, he's had three bowel movements today and two yesterday. He told me he had no bowel movements yesterday. Yes, well he had two, he mentioned blood on the toilet paper when he wiped the second time while he was getting  platelets yesterday, I talked to him about not straining. He had told me he hadn't gone. Yeah, well he did go, twice. We don't need the medicine. Which he hadn't ordered, I'd seen it in the progress notes but no order in the computer. I don't know it sounds so inconsequential but his tone, so dismissive and the way he would look at me, like I was an idiot or else he would avoid looking at me. But then the next second he's all friendly and chummy with the registry nurse sitting right next to me. It was awful, honestly I came home and cried. Why can't people be nicer. I so miss Aaron and Jason, two of the fellows from last year. Who were so easy to talk to and Jason went out of his way to tell me I was doing a good job. Now I get to deal with this guy until next July. Delightful. I hate that I get so unnerved by dismissive doctors. Please pray that next Friday through Sunday goes better.

code rugrat

my little rugrat lover

Oona is a very loving, intelligent and strong-willed girl. I don't worry about her the way I do my son, because I think she's got a strong enough sense of self that she'll never let anyone push her around. She is going to set the world on fire, I knew it as soon as her head popped out of me. I can swear that her body wasn't even out of me all the way yet and she let out a surprisingly hearty for a newborn cry. Is that even possible? I feel like the RN in me should know this stuff, it would seem unlikely but that's the way I remember things. Needless to say once I heard her cry a part of me thought, 'uh oh.' like what have I gotten myself into?

She slept most of the first year, slept a lot. We would wake her up, and she wasn't our first baby so we knew better than to chance things like waking a baby that might then be up all night but she was unbelievably easy and very well rested that first year. I think she was preparing. Storing her energy, like a caterpillar biding her time before she burst out of the cocoon of infancy. Look out.

She has a very different personality than Owen. She has been able to charm the pants off of anyone since she was two or three. She's got incredibly big, beautiful brown eyes framed by long dark lashes and the sweetest little angelic face, I feel like this is some genetic compensation that allows her to unleash her fury and not get harmed as a result. Oona knows how to throw a tantrum. Oona knows what she wants and when she doesn't get what she wants heaven help anyone keeping her from getting what she wants.

I talked to a 'talk doc', Owen's name for a wonderful therapist my ex and I took the kids to during our separation and when Owen had some issues after my dad's death and more recently with a kid whose a bit of a bully. The talk doc thought Owen was doing great so I asked her about Oona because, well certain women can take one look at Oona or briefly interact with her and see just what a challenge Oona will be as a child before she takes over the world as an adult and the talk doc had Oona's personality down from the first day she met her. The talk doc suggested getting a box or basket with items of Oona's choosing to help her soothe herself and preemptively avert a tantrum and I would then give Oona much positive feedback for deescalating on her own.

I discussed the self soothing box or basket idea with Oona and Owen in the car, it's seems we're always in the car, while bringing them home one day. Oona embraced the idea, if only because she was quickly filling that box or basket up with so much stuff that it sounded more like Martha Stewart's craft room. Kudos to Oona for at least thinking to put books in her self soothing container. Owen quietly asked if he could have a box and I said sure, knowing he would never have reason to need this box. When I asked Owen what he wanted to put in his box he said, a hole puncher. He didn't even ask for paper at first but after some prodding said he'd like paper and a hole puncher that makes special shapes. Then he said he'd also like a lighter, not because he's a 9 year old pyromaniac but just because he likes to look at flames but he also knew my parenting skills well enough to realize that there was no way I was putting a lighter in that box. I passed the idea along to Toby and his wife and she said maybe they could download the app for his iPhone (he and Oona have their older iPhones at their house). That sounded safe and clever.

So a few weeks later Oona, Owen and I are in the checkout line at Whole Foods and we're trying to figure out a code that I can call, sort of a secret phrase, when I think Oona's getting close to a meltdown. Oona loved this idea, while I was explaining about codes at the hospital and she kept rattling off every color in the rainbow and then it was code lemon meringue pie and then she hopped up and down (the checkout lady was an older non-tattooed whole foods employee, the less than 1%, and was having a good time just watching Oona in action with this idea and, fortunately, there was no one behind us) and said, I've got it! Code Rugrat! We made our way over to the orchid forest (aka the booths where the they've propped potted orchid plants all along the wall the cordons the section off) and I thought maybe this is just what I need to get us through Oona's next few years until the tantrums end, they have to end eventually right? To my way of thinking 6 seems old for tantrums but what do I know some adults continue to throw them and get away with it.

Thus Code Rugrat was born and damned if I can remember to call that code when Oona starts heating up, in her prodromal phase. I really feel that I need a code (code ennui? code apoplexy? code maladroit mom?) because after getting the kids today from Toby's house (they were away for a week in which I did fuck all around the house, aside from sleep in on the day or two that I could) Oona had like three meltdowns and when she wasn't doing that she was being disrespectful and talking at me with attitude, complete with hand motions and eye rolls, absolutely revolting behavior in anyone but especially my 6 year old daughter. And dealing with that all day all does not make me a happy or  nice person so I'm definitely close to a meltdown of my own after enduring that all day. By 6:30 I was count the minutes until bedtime, a huge headache blossoming on the right side of my head.

the unfortunate outcome  if a code rugrat is not called