Another week… December 17, 2008

…another trip to the doctor and more antibiotics. Sigh.

I was volunteering not too long ago, and was reading on tape. The book I was reading was recommended by another reader — a book by Suzanne Somers. This guy said “You remember that show she was on — it was fluff. This book, though, it’s got substance. She survived breast cancer and has lots of good stuff to say.” So, I thought it was her biography or something. Au contraire. It is her southern California advice on staying young with human growth hormone injections, other hormone replacement therapy, some weird cream you rub on the skin over your liver to help get the toxins out, etc. She talks about how healthy she is, and gives you a sample day, beginning at 6am after sleeping for 9 hours. Her yoga instructor then comes over for an hour yoga lesson, and then for breakfast she has (this was so incredible to me that I wrote it down so I could quote verbatim) “Two fried organic eggs sitting on top of a nest of crispy browned fried onions, sauteed organic chicken sausage, and yummy sliced heirloom tomatoes topped with a drop of olive oil, basil pesto and a little bit of crumbled feta.”

As in my last post, this advice is not that helpful. If I had the time to sleep 9 hours every night, then take a yoga class, rub cream on my liver and make a bird’s nest for breakfast, I’d probably be pretty healthy, too.

Hopefully, some time in Delaware, across the street from a sod farm, eating scrapple, will do much the same thing.

I’m giving Darwin a cold for Christmas December 10, 2008

I heard all the stories about kids in daycare, and how sick they get all the time, and how rough the first winter is. Of course I thought they were exaggerating. Of course I thought that, since Darwin didn’t go to daycare until he was 6 months old, and was solely breastfed, he would fare better. Of course I was wrong. You may remember that in early October, Darwin went to the ER for an ear infection that swelled up his head, and we went home with antibiotics and ear tubes. He was then healthy for approximately 2 weeks before we went back to the doctor with another ear infection, and got more antibiotics. They had us come back 2 weeks later on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to make sure he was OK, and he was — until the Sunday after Thanksgiving, when we had to take him in again for a swollen eye. Turns out he had a skin infection, a leftover from his ear infection, and got more antibiotics. Yesterday at daycare, he started getting a rash, and since he’s still on the antibiotics, the doctor needed to see him, so I made the 1.5 hour commute out to the ‘burbs in the snow, picked up Darwin, then drove back into the city for the appointment. Sure enough, he’s allergic to Penicillin. As Colleen says, he is the bubble boy.

Luckily, none of these are horrible diseases or anything, so we have a lot to be thankful for. The worst part (other than the commuting out of, into, and back out of the city every time we have a doctor’s appointment) is that we are living with Joe’s parents, and Joe’s mother gets very stressed out about Darwin’s illnesses, including diaper rash. She often says how she doesn’t remember ever having these problems. Her kids didn’t get diaper rash, because she made sure to wash their bottom with each diaper change. They never got sick and had to go to the doctor. Etc. etc. She scolded us for not keeping Darwin’s room clean enough, and thought maybe that’s the reason he’s “so sickly.” I know that she has Darwin’s best interests at heart, and I do too, and so we should be allied in that. But….

I think that if she were commenting on something that I was totally confident about — telling me that maybe I should be a better friend, or give more money to charity, or be nicer to people on the bus, or something like that, I’d just brush it off and say Ok and write it off as crazy Korean talk. But because the comments are about my mothering (OK, so they really aren’t directly, but in my head they are), which is something I’m already completely paranoid and insecure about, they really get to me. Maybe Darwin is sick more because we don’t vacuum enough. As you probably all know from visiting at one time or another, our house is a staph infection waiting to happen. But, if it’s a choice between playing with Darwin for 10 extra minutes or making sure his toys are put away in his room, I’ll choose playing with him every time. Not to mention that there are bills to pay, cats to feed and hang out with, friends to talk to, dinner to eat, sleep to get, blogs to write, laundry to be done, and so on and so forth, all between the time Darwin goes to bed and the time I fall asleep before getting up at 5am to start it all over again. And that’s with a LOT of support from Joe, who is also stretching his time thin. Joe’s mom said to him once, when he was getting sick “You know, when Mrs. Lee starts getting sick, she rests for 4 days.” That advice is not all that helpful when one has a full time job and a small child. Agreed — if Joe and I could rest for 4 days every time we got a scratchy throat or a sniffle, we would be healthier people, and Darwin would probably be healthier, too. We would also be living in a refrigerator box on Lower Wacker, which is not conducive to good health, from what I’ve read.

The doctor’s office, in addition to the wonderful evening and Sunday hours, has an attached parking garage, and you can get your parking validated and only pay $2.  Last night, they asked everyone as they left “Do you need validation?” I thought to myself “Yes!  Desperately!  Tell me I’m a good mother!”  But I don’t think that’s quite what they meant.

So, maybe we’ll ask Santa for that boy-sized bubble this Christmas and a lot of Clorox wipes.

I wish… December 1, 2008

…I had taken a picture of my boobs before this all began.  The dessicated, deflated footballs I have now are not the legacy I want to leave.

And, on a related note, is the word “pendulous” ever used except to describe breasts?