There will be blood

Sometimes I just can't stop from turning into Mommy Hyde. Does this ever happen to you? You know you're going down the wrong parenting path, that what you're doing is sure to cause a major power struggle, that you will unintentionally cause a public scene, that your kids will likely get over it fifteen minutes later but that you will hold the whole horrible thing in your chest for the rest of the day, maybe the rest of the week or even your whole life. But it's like when you're tripping and you know you're tripping because it's almost happening in slow motion, such that there may even be a chance to save yourself from imminent danger and certain embarrassment, but you can't because of all the gravity. Damn you Sir Isaac Newton!

Well such was the case today on our way to school. I was planning to drop off my oldest, then my girl, then bring the baby to the sitter. So it goes with Mondays in general. For whatever reason my oldest, who is now seven and a half and getting very close to having a rational brain, gets hysterical about having to sit in his sister's booster near the door instead of his own backless booster in the middle. Meanwhile he always sits in her seat without issue when I intend to drop him off because it's easier and quicker for him to get out. And it's not even the chair she threw up in a month ago. It's a different one. It doesn't smell. There's nothing wrong with it. In fact, it used to be his chair. But he throws a fit and won't sit down and I tell him I'm not driving until he is seated properly and that we will be late. He continues to refuse and this is where I take a wrong turn.

I tell him I am cancelling his playdate. Why Susie? Why would you engage him like this, you amateur!

That just sends him limbic. I can almost see him turning into a crocodile. He finally sits down but instead of apologizing and pleading in a nice voice to have his friend over, he starts shrieking about it. So instead of just following through with my inappropriate consequence and taking him to school, I turn toward the clinic in town because we've been sitting on a referral for a blood test for him for a week (stomach pains, want to rule out Celiac) so I figure as long as we're late and the lab is only open from 8-8:30 in the morning and I have a little leverage with the play date, he should do the test. Now I'm limbic too and making all kinds of horrible decisions and he's terrified and starting to twitch and I'm starting to twitch but also grin a little because I am evil.

I spend the next ten minutes telling him that he can have his playdate but he has to do this blood test. The power struggle is on. Everything is on the table. The blood test, the playdate, a chance to sit in the front seat (we're one block from school), some kind of chocolate treat after the blood test, boarding school in Uzbekistan, everything. It's all game.

He pulls it together enough to walk in the clinic quietly though he is still snorting and drooling and we go upstairs to the lab. When it is finally our turn he can't stop sobbing enough for the nurse to get the needle in so we have to leave and I fear we will have to repeat the whole exercise tomorrow. On our way out he decides he can do it so we go back and I hold down his arm and try to distract him. My attempts are in vain. Fortunately the nurses attempts are also in vein and she gets the sample. My poor boy is shaking uncontrollably. This apparently did hurt, way more than any inoculation or flu shot. I had lied to him. I tried to explain how fear can cause us to perceive more pain than actually exists empirically. He is not listening. I'm an idiot.

He sits in the front seat and we drop off my daughter. She is glad to be rid of us. I take him into school and his teacher tells him he was a brave hero and generally blows smoke up his ass. Thank god for her. The other kids are happy to see him and he shows everyone his bandage. His friend asks if he can still come over and I almost throw my arms around him to say YES YOUNG MAN. YOU ARE THE PRIZE. NEVER FORGET THAT. I use the filter instead, nod enthusiastically to the friend, hug my son and leave the building.

After I drop off the baby I go to the supermarket and stock up on ice-cream, candy and cookies. That's how I plan to make it known to all in my family that I am an ass and that I apologize. All will be forgiven. Life goes on. I will review the Positive Discipline parenting aid I have on my iPhone and hope for a better outcome next time. The end.

How it hit the fan and then I lost it

Well it was only a matter of time before what all was on the sidewalk, would rise up and hit the fan. We are on the other side of a horrible week. Things were moving along and we were getting everything done but Mr. Rosen was soon to start work and there were still some bureaucratic items hanging in the balance. One of them was our residency status. As returning citizens of Israel we're entitled to certain benefits, one of which is an exemption on the social security we haven't been paying for the last ten years (since we've been paying into another country's system). The deal is that if you've been away long enough and you come back, you pay a bunch of money and then you get reimbursed by the government, half right away and half after a year. And paying into this system means you have health insurance too. Apparently when Israel went universal with health care many years ago they figured it was easier to run it through social security since that system was already in place. Easy peasy.

Turns out that my status is a little different since I am technically a new immigrant whose status was frozen when I left Israel eleven years ago and now resumes as do some of my new immigrant rights. Some of the rights are useful like financial help setting up my studio. Others are less useful. One thing is for sure: I have a six month waiting period for my residency to kick in and I used up my six months of free health care in 1998 when I moved here originally so we ponied up for private health insurance for me. Mr. Rosen and the kids were supposedly insured the moment they returned, so said everyone with whom we spoke. Not true. It took us two full weeks to get all of our residency paperwork in order, not to mention the strike, so the earliest we could pay this chunk of money was a few days ago. Then the website where you pay was down. FAAAA!!! Meanwhile the insurance we had through Mr. Rosen's former employer was going to expire November 30. And that's exactly when the baby and my older son came down with 103 fever and a horrible rash. Less horrible for the seven year old. Full blown on the baby.

I posed the question of how to get my kids seen by a doctor to a Facebook group I found of English speakers in my town and everyone was sure we could be seen in the clinic. Not true. I went to the clinic and explained our very complicated situation but the receptionist insisted we go somewhere else because we didn't have magnetic health insurance cards. That is when I went all mama bear and started shrieking about how my baby might have measles (it did in fact look like measles and about four other viruses according to Dr. Google). No dice. I walked out hysterical and a nice young woman offered to drive me to another town where she was pretty sure they would take us. We followed her through a checkpost into what is technically the West Bank to a religious town where everyone has twelve kids with rashes so they probably wouldn't even ask for a magnetic card. At this point I am on high alert having forgotten after being away for eleven years that it's totally normal to drive into the West Bank and go to a health clinic in an ultra-orthodox town. Our tour guide sits with us while we wait to be seen except they won't see us either. The kids national identity numbers are not yet in the system. It can take two weeks from the time you established residency. And this is when I ask why on earth would it take two frigin weeks for the country-wide computerized system to be updated? I mean it only took god one week to create all the world! How does it get updated? By hand? Courier pigeon? Maybe a tiny gnome writes the numbers down on a paper and brings the papers by bike to the Ministry of Health? I decide to take pictures of my baby and send them to my brother in law and my pediatrician friend and they both give the same diagnosis which I pretend is the same as being seeing by a doctor in person. Because our only other option is urgent care, which I would only resort to if the rash randomly turned into appendicitis or something.

We're on day five of the rash and it's slowly fading. And my disbelief and disappointment in what I once considered an exemplary national health care system is also fading. Every system has its cracks. We happened to fall into more of a crevasse. And all this during the same week that our kids started hating school. It was a little more than my delicate system could handle. It seems all that time in California made us soft. Got to get me some thicker skin, the kind with long, pokey spines. Stat.

Totally tubular

This picture has nothing to do with anything except it's my daughter snuggled up with another mammal who has equally distinctive ears. 

My daughter had her fourth set of tubes put in on Monday morning because there was apparently a wall of infection behind her ear drums. Delightful. She's gotten so accustomed to this routine that she woke up, put on something comfy, came to give me a kiss goodbye and said, I'll see you after my ear surgery mommy. Just as casually as if she was saying, I'll see you after preschool. But this time she felt some of the nasty side affects of anesthesia. Namely the nausea. She was vomiting and had to stick around for a while. But by the afternoon she was awake again and in good spirits and retelling her ordeal to her brother - how she threw up on the nurse and in the toilet. Then she asked for matzoh with Nutella so we headed out to the porch to enjoy a mid-afternoon treat. And during our conversation she turned to me and asked why we were yelling. I guess she can hear now. And all of my yelling over the last few months has been medically validated.

The drain

I am considering this contraption instead of tubes next time around.

My daughter had her third ear surgery about two weeks before our little winter vacation. Tubes in. Adenoids out. Her recovery was bionic. An hour later she was wanting to go the school playground. No Tylenol. Nada. She did have a slight runny nose which I thought might complicate matters, but we pressed onward and she seemed to be on a steady course for total recovery.

Then her nose became a faucet. For two weeks we blew that thing dry. Except it never dried. It just kept running and running. And I thought, by God, she is surely losing gray matter at this rate. How much snot could possibly come out of her head? A lot of snot. Her nose became a portal to other worlds. The cleft above her lip became raw and peely. She was a vision of loveliness.

It appears her small nostrils simply could not handle the flow of gunk and soon her ears began to drain. Sticky, stinky, infected ear gunk began pouring out the side of her head. She'd wake up with hair stuck to her face in every direction, cemented on by this stuff.

And I'm thinking, I want my money back on that surgery. She's turned into the spawn of Frankenstein because of that damned surgery. And it's not just the goop. Her moods have left the rest of us drained. She saw her otologist and came home with antibiotics but this is where the real drain begins. Having to put drops in her ears three times a day and getting her to wear her hair in pigtails so that the slime doesn't get tangled up in her hair is totally exhausting. Three friggin times a day I have to explain again the importance of this rigmarole. And every time she protests. We are on day ten and I am about to bleed out my own ears from all the drama. I think what we need is a plumber.

Mental Accounting

Well I went to the doctor today because I'm sick. Again. I hacked up a green glob this morning that could have been a spoonful of wasabi. It was that green. And that solid. And I've been trying to stay well because we have some trips coming up. I've been squirting salt water up my nose and out my mouth which, if you've never done this, is really awful but does open up the nasal passages. Unless you have total nasal blockage and then water just sprays everywhere including out your ears because it has no where else to go. So I went to see my doctor. And she said just what I wanted her to say. You have a sinus infection. Go get this prescription filled. Because usually I'd just wait it out. Steam my head a few times a day. Spray some grapefruit seed extract up the old schnoz. But I am driving to my mom's (7 hours) with my kids on Monday and then we're all flying to Santa Fe a week later, so I can't risk it.

And thank god she gave me that prescription and made no mention of the five pounds I'd gained. Um, is your scale off? Yes, five pounds. I suddenly had visions of myself on whoever is replacing Oprah talking about how I didn't even notice that I was suddenly four hundred pounds because it just came on five pounds at a time.

After, I went home to get some work done, all the while thinking, where the hell did those five pounds come from? Maybe it's the bowl of cereal I eat every night at 10:00? Maybe I should exercise more than once a month? Those thoughts somehow stimulated my bowel. And I started thinking, that's a good two pounder right there. So really I only gained three pounds. And then I started thinking about how much my huge hooded sweater and bootcut jeans weigh - maybe a pound or more. The hood and extra fabric for the bootcut make the outfit very weighty, you know. And then I hacked up some more wasabi. Quarter pound at least. So then I didn't feel so bad. I had only gained like one pound, when you round down. Which I do. And since it's Hanukkah and I've been eating only fried food for the last six days, I feel like that's actually pretty good.

Then after I picked up my kids we went to Walmart to fill my prescription and I felt even better since most people there are twice my size. Which is why I had no qualms inhaling this giant potato, onion and green bean omelet for lunch (otherwise known as "leftovers omelet"). I mean the bottle says must take with food. I'm just following directions. It also says, follow with Nutella chaser. Swear to god.

What kind of mental accounting are you doing this holiday season?

Quarantine lifted

Hi. I'm Susie. I write this blog. Remember? Little stories about my family and life? I know. I've been gone a while. Bad blogger. No, we didn't take the kids to Disneyland.

I stayed home with my daughter last Wednesday and made some headway on Project Garbage House. I also took her to see Dr. Murray who said she had an upper respiratory tract infection and a gunky ear. I'm not clear if that was a separate thing or what. Not important. Here's where it gets hairy for your protagonist (that's me). We both develop fevers Wednesday night. 102.5. For the next three days I could not regulate my body temperature. I was freezing under my covers, then sweating like crazy, then frozen from the evaporating sweat. And my daughter was basically her happy go lucky self with a little more apple in her cheeks. During this time I sneezed so many times I basically made myself incontinent. TMI? Too bad. My blog. On Thursday morning I decided there was no way I could take care of my daughter since I could hardly get out of bed so I kept my son home from preschool to entertain her. Brilliant move it turned out. They left me alone to sleep all morning, I fed them lunch and then my unbelievably wonderful husband came home at 2:00 to take them all on a field trip and away from Mommy. On Friday I sent my son to school and stayed home again with my daughter. We managed somehow and my husband came home early again and took the kids again. Love him. And the whole weekend was more of the same. Lying around in our pajamas, taking temperatures, administering fever reducing agents. On Saturday night my son developed a fever too. So we took it easy again on Sunday and by Sunday night it seemed like he'd be able to go to school on Monday but then I noticed the eye booger.

GEORGE JESUS! So I vigilantly cleaned his eyes out and made him wash his hands a hundred times and washed his pillow and his kitty and prayed to God that he didn't have pink eye. Monday morning, no gunk but slight fever. So I kept him home but sent the girl. At this point I don't have a fever either but plenty of post flu nasal garbage. And also keep in mind it's been three weeks since I've had any time during the day to work on my business or paint or anything so I'm very close to having a major come-apart (although I did paint Tiny Village on Saturday night. Dab painting, dab nose, repeat). The text says "spread over us a shelter of peace". This was literally an S.O.S. painting.


Someone heard my painting prayer. This morning everyone was fever and gunk free and back to school/work. When the kids left this morning at 9:00 a hush came over the house. I made myself a cup a coffee and just sat on my couch listening to myself breathe. I'm actually so relieved that I work for myself now because trying to juggle sick kids when you don't have a nanny is awful.

In other news, I gathered up the kids on Sunday morning and we went room to room setting aside baby toys to give to our new baby friends. Five boxes of stuff these kids were willing to part with! And guess what we found during the great purge? Softie the scarf!!! On the very same day that my husband switched the mezuzah. Coincidence? We'll have to ask the carpet cleaners.

Buried

My daughter's had a runny nose the last few days and her school asked me to keep her and her nose home tomorrow because I think they're tired of wiping it every three minutes. I know I am. So that means I'm home from work for the day and I could not be happier. My home has reached a state of disarray that it has not seen since we moved in here and I just can't get on top of it. I apologize for ranting about my domestic chaos for the last several posts but it's really all consuming. I have basically ceased to function normally. Now I take out jars of jam and just leave them out. With the lid off. Sometimes even the milk doesn't make it back into the fridge. My clothes are all over the place. There's a giant pile of shoes and socks at the front door. Toys are everywhere. And there's laundry in every available position. Washer. Dryer. On the top of the dryer waiting to be dried. On the futon in the guest room. In the laundry basket. And in the hampers. And the worse it gets, the less I am able to deal with it.

WHAT THE FUCK PEOPLE!! WTFP!!

Now I am starting to understand those people who are just buried under the junk in their homes. Because once you pass a certain point you almost need an Oprah style intervention. You just lose all motivation. Like right now, for instance. I could be straightening. But I'd sooner put a pen in my eye. And I have a housekeeper who comes once a week so I have no right to complain. But she ends up putting whatever's out back in bins willy nilly and now we are going on three weeks of random stuff going into random places which is why I still can't find my soft scarf (see previous post)! And in all honesty it's not even bad by normal standards but I am a very tidy Virgo and believer that everything has its home which brings me to another issue of worldwide proportion that's been on my mind and that is what to do with all this stuff that I want to get rid of because no one's home should be a landfill. I am dying to get rid of a ton of our things - a ton of toys, appliances, just crap we don't need. Little things. Hangers, for the love of ginger! Who the hell needs this many hangers! But how to do it? You can't just throw shit away anymore. You have to give it to Good Will so it can be thrown away in Africa.

But back to my daughter, who as it turns out needs to see Dr. Murray again since my husband looked in her ears with a microscope and saw one ear looking shiny and happy with its tube in place and the other ear looking like Chernobyl. So I'm more than happy to take a sick day with my daughter, for her sake and mine. And while she's playing dress up in her room, I'll be casually putting away her clean clothes. And while she's playing top chef in her kitchen, I'll be cleaning mine. And next week, when I'm back to being a Work From Home Artist, I'm sure I'll have something else to write about. If not, I will make something up for your entertainment.

Success?

Down the tubes

Well four weeks after the start of my daughter's ear infection it appears she needs tubes. After we returned from Santa Fe and it was clear that her ear drum had burst and she was leaking brains onto her pillow at night, we brought her back to see her doctor who peeked in her ears and said, hmmm, pretty soupy. So she prescribed a different antibiotic and some ear drops too which we dutifully administered.

Meanwhile my husband, who is a medical device engineer and builds hearing aids for a living, suddenly remembered that he knows several otologists. So he asked his buddy Dr. Murray, who I met at the holiday party once and found to be very amusing while intoxicated, about it. He was suspicious since this had been going on for already a very long time. So he said I should bring her to see him. Which I did. And he looked in there with his big microscope this time and mopped up a lot of gunky, smelly brains with teeny tiny cotton balls. It appears the perforation in her ear drum was neither big enough to let out all the gunk nor let in the antibiotics. Inner ear infection. And we're pretending the big chair she's in ts a rocket ship and she's having the time of her life and my son is a little jealous but in no way wants to switch places because you even come close to his ears and he has a total come apart not unlike the retarded bother in There's Something About Mary. Dr. Murray says to come back Monday (today) to see if the antibiotics have done anything. They have not. She is underwater. She's drowning in her own ear fluids. She's basically hearing as though she had her two fingers in her ears. And this is likely why she talked so late and why her pronunciation is so funny. She can't hear.

So she's getting tubes. On Thursday. At 7am. I don't know why on earth anyone would want to schedule surgery this early in the morning but she has to be there at 6am for pre-op and that is why my husband is taking her so that he can hang out with Dr. Murray and potentially watch the surgery. And maybe think of a new medical device that he will prototype and sell and we'll be rich. Or not. This is the man who passed out at his nephew's bris.

And the funny thing is that one of my earliest memories of all time is getting tubes in my ears. I was three and back then you went to the hospital. And I remember wearing a hospital gown that was open in the back and being worried that the doctor who transferred me to the gurney would touch my tushy. So I held the gown together in the back. Why I needed to be naked for ear surgery is cause for pause.

(pause)

And while this is wonderful that our daughter will finally be able to hear and at least some of her cranial plumbing issues will be solved (Dr. Murray thinks her tonsils will need out soon too), we will miss some of the words she says. Like cwakwain which is a cracker. And what she calls her brother. Trust me, it's not even close. But hopefully now she'll be able to hear when I tell her to stop hitting her brother. Maybe he needs tubes too. Wouldn't that be the best thing ever if getting tubes made you listen to your parents? My mom will confirm it did not work in my case.


and what a lovely ear it is...

Miscellaneous

OK. Here's what's going on. I just sent out the Mishmish Studio newsletter volume 3 which you can see here if you don't currently subscribe. If you'd like to subscribe (I send them out every few months) then go here.

My daughter's ear infection has returned. Her doctor said her ear looked like pea soup. Never good. So now she has another course of antibiotics which she can't stand and most of it ends up in her hair plus her ear is draining, the eardrum having likely burst during the flight home from New Mexico (I was like what on earth is all of the brown crap on her sheets if it's not actually brown crap). And that pea soup gunk, well it doesn't exactly smell like pea soup. It's putrid. And that's in her hair too. So she's really got a lot going for her right now.

And she's back to creeping under her bed. And calling for me at 2am because she's stuck under there. Her bed is maybe eight inches off the ground! How she can get her big head through? I need a web cam.

Oh, and I started a sewing class! I have my grandmother's old Singer and even though my husband has tried to teach me many times how to sew I still kind of suck at it. So I joined this class with about 16 other old ladies. It's a hoot. Yesterday I made a little wallet and a purple Knapsack. The craftsmanship is hideous but on the outside they look cute! Now I need cool fabrics. Knapsacks for everyone who comes to my surprise birthday party next year!


Notice the fine stitching detail. Is there an opposite to craftsmanship? Like slobmanship?