Earthmovers and Sandcastles

I’m drinking coffee with foamed milk and a little vanilla. It’s my attempt to brighten up an afternoon that’s just downright dreary inside my head. I don’t know why; it certainly started out grey and yucky outside this morning, but now it’s sunny and pleasant. Somehow, the more dismal weather penetrated my skull and refuses to leave.

Or maybe I just miss my kids a little.

They came home yesterday full of energy and stories. Gabe had brightened up a bit from his fears this morning (fears to which he readily admitted, when I told him I’d seen him), but his bigger gripe was that he hadn’t had enough time to finish his lunch, and when he got up to go ask the lunch lady where a trash can was (ever the proactive kid), the rest of his class got in line and filed out of the cafeteria…without him. He was quite frightened when he found himself alone, but he was rescued shortly with no major harm done to his spirits.

Sam went to school. That’s about all I could get out of him.

They went back again this morning, without needing to be dragged out the door, so I suppose it was a net positive experience for them in the end. I, on the other hand, have discovered in myself a propensity for talking out loud to myself, now that nobody’s around to hear me for so many hours each day. This morning, I had to take Eric’s car to the garage (sway bar bushing needs to be replaced, no big deal), and I found myself blabbing away to the mechanic, as though somebody forgot to shut off the valve to my mouth. Pathetic. Usually, the garage magically transforms me into a bubble-headed Valley girl, twirling my hair and widening my eyes involuntarily whenever anybody starts talking about car parts; I don’t know why, but I do it every time. This was no improvement, I think.

Going to call Mom here in a bit to check in on Dad, but I predict that I’ll hear the same thing – a good note, for a change: his numbers are still elevated, but there’s steady improvement. They’ve said he might be able to come home in a couple of days, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed for that.

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Debating about future races, and then musing about my dad and about my boys’ first day of school. Yay for less running in the pitch dark!

Music on the show comes from the Podsafe Music Network. Tracks used were:
42 shades of grey – State Unsteady
Hoverfly – Crash Land

You can subscribe through iTunes or download the show here (mp3 version). Voicemails are always welcomed at (NEW NUMBER!) 206-339-0556, or you can email or leave a comment!

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First we had Dad in the hospital, having surgery, recuperating. And I was very down.

Then Alysia came.

I think it’s safe to call that an “up.” We had so much fun all weekend long, including retrieving a giant aviary she’d bought on eBay. (Good friends don’t point out when their friend has obviously lost her mind, devising ways to house, not just one, but MANY birds inside their home…)

And then she went home. (Down again go I. ) And we got ready for school, and there was much excitement for my boys as they chattered eagerly about the fun they’d have. I, too, shared in the joy, and it came down to the first day, this morning, when all was in readiness, and they’d met their teachers last night, and it all seemed a definite “up.” I put their happy little butts on the bus, and I ran (yes, literally) the two miles to their school, beating them there so that I could see Gabe into his classroom.

Unfortunately, their bus was running late, so almost everybody was in the class already. I stood in the courtyard outside the window, peeping in to see if I could see Gabe. Finally, there was commotion at the doorway, as they arrived from the other side of the building. Gabe stood still in the door…chin ducked, eyes huge, lower lip wobbling.

Oh, dear.

An adult helper whispered in his ear, talked him into the classroom, and he began getting out his things. I started on the run home, not nearly as light in my running shoes as I had been on the way there. I didn’t cry when I took Sam to kindergarten, and I wasn’t going to cry today…until I saw that face. My baby is scared and sad at school. You can tell me about how quickly he’ll get over it, and about all the wonderful things he’s doing there, but until he’s home this afternoon and telling me himself, that’s the picture I’ve got in my head. It’s why my own lower lip is a bit wobbly now, too.

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“Mommy? I sort of…I spilled some…I’m sorry.”

Gabe loves salt. This morning, trying to go behind my back and steal a pinch to eat, he managed to spill the entire salt cellar (thankfully a small one) all over the kitchen floor. He tried to clean it up, futilely, before finally breaking down, finding me and confessing.

Dad had his surgery yesterday. The inflammation was too great to go in through his side and manipulate the stone, so they placed a stent in his urethra instead, which had the effect of pushing the stone back into the kidney, anyway. The urologist said, “He’s hanging in there; he’s a very sick man.” Now they say he might be in the hospital another week; the stone was giant, and it was producing gas in the kidney, and the infection was massive and will take time to clear. But we believe it will clear, now that the blockage is out of the way. The pain level, thankfully, should improve soon; Dad’s not in pain now, he says, but that might be due to meds.

Mom said yesterday that, after the surgery, Dad kept saying, “I don’t know why I’m here…I don’t know why I’m in this hotel. I don’t know why I have to play cards for money.” Ah, anesthetic.

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Dad has a serious infection in his kidneys. He also has a kidney stone; initially, the doctor said it would be the least of their worries, but that wasn’t true, since the urologist found that the stone is causing blockage from the kidneys and preventing the infection from being successfully treated by his antibiotics. After he’s had more fluids by IV, and when a spot in radiology opens, he’ll have an ultrasound to determine the best treatment for removing the blockage. The urologist is hoping to go in from the side and manipulate the stone back up into the kidney, to be removed later, since apparently the current location of the stone would make it riskier to go in the urethra and try to pulverize it that way.

But the hospital is slammed with patients, so we have to wait our turn, and in the meantime, Dad is in bad shape. His heart rate is up, his blood pressure drops when he’s moved, and he’s in a lot of pain. He’s in Critical Care right now, and there’s not a lot to be done to speed things up. Complicating matters, Mom has her own doctor appointment this afternoon, an important one she’s been awaiting for more than a month.

I talked to Eric’s brother last night, and he reassured me that despite the scary-sounding words (and despite the doctor’s urging my mom to establish a Living Will for my dad; apparently, those are standard cautions for everybody in the ER), it should be a resolvable situation. He said he wouldn’t rush to travel unless things took a turn for the worse; right now, so long as things stay like this, it’s better to sit tight. Better, maybe, but not easier. If you pray, please send some in our family’s direction – that treatment would move quickly, that the meds would improve Dad’s level of pain, that everyone’s minds could be put at ease.

In the meantime, Alysia’s coming to visit me tomorrow on the spur of the moment, which…I can’t begin to say how much that’s going to make me feel better right now.

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When I was a teenager, my goal was to Get Out of Dodge. I wanted to graduate and leave my hometown, which felt claustrophobic and slow to me; the world was waiting, and I wanted to see it all.

And so I went as far as I was allowed, about two hours away. And then I got married, and I went to grad school, which was seven hours away. I had a child, and my mom had a serious health scare, and I had my first inklings of doubt about whether being far away was all it was cracked up to be. It brought me good, and we began to really set down roots and establish ourselves as a family, but being even a firmly rooted tree can be disorienting when you realize that the other trees which might have sheltered and been sheltered by you in storms, had you gone a different path in life, are nowhere near. You make new connections, but there’s nothing quite like family.

And then we moved another seven hours away. Seven hours was far enough, if a bit of a haul by car; fourteen is very, very daunting. We moved for good reasons, ones that I cannot see having ignored or second-guessed, but…

Today I got a phone call from my mom, and my dad was in an ambulance being taken to the hospital. His blood pressure was scarily low; his blood sugars were insanely high. He was retching and in intense pain in his abdomen. As I type, he’s in the ER, undergoing tests as they try to solve the matter of what’s wrong with him, besides dehydration. My mom is beside him…alone. My brother and I are phone calls away, but too far to hop in the car and join her immediately.

The world is small these days, but it’s still a big, big place, particularly when you’re a long way away from where you want to be at the moment. I wish I could be holding Dad’s hand, hugging my mom, talking to the doctors myself and understanding what they’re saying with my own ears. I wish I could bring my mom a drink, get my dad whatever will bring him comfort. I wish my brother was there with us, so that we could all support each other – four firmly rooted trees, protecting each other from the buffeting winds.

When Eric’s dad had heart surgery a while back, he was lucky to be able to fly down to be with him. We weren’t so lucky to be able to fly down quickly when he got married this month, which felt wrong in countless ways. Wisconsin has become our home, though it took a long time for it to be that way (seven years, the same amount of time it took for Toledo to become “home” before this), but the thing it lacks is Our People.

I haven’t felt this alone here in years.

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I forgot to mention this from about a week ago. We stayed at a hotel in town for a couple of days during the worst of the heat wave, and while we were there, we did some lovely relaxing in the pool. At one point, I had to go out to the hotel lobby from the pool to ask the desk clerk something, and I didn’t feel comfortable doing it in my swimming suit…so I pulled on Sam’s shirt. And it fit. I can’t decide whether I’m more boggled about being small enough to wear me son’s clothing, or to have a son large enough to share his shirts with me. Really, I’d like to go back to not knowing.

Eric’s on his way to Mexico. I’d rather not know about that, either. Mexico is not a nice place to be these days, at least according to news reports, and it’s scary to send one’s spouse to places that require armed escorts as a matter of daily business.

Yesterday wasn’t fun. I had a bunch of mundane, unpleasant tasks to do about the house, and then in the course of peeling a butternut squash for my dinner (while trying hard to ignore the scent of beer-braised short ribs in the crockpot; honestly, vegetarian cooking is delicious, but it just doesn’t have the same olfactory dazzle that slow-cooking meat does, in my opinion), I managed to also peel the tip of my ring finger. Cue bleeding and pain. Cue me, in a brilliant show of calm mind and stalwart will, nearly losing consciousness and winding up flat on my back on the floor while the room spun and turned grey. On the bright side, my sons proved that in situations such as this, they are quite capable of…shooting me with a potato gun and putting me on the phone with a political pollster who happened to call at that moment. (“Mom, it’s Shawn.” “Shawn who?” “I don’t know…”)

So that was delightful.

Sixty-six days until Haunted Hustle. I did 9 miles this morning that would have been more pleasant, probably, without all the wine that didn’t quite save last evening for me, but at least it wasn’t hot. I only looked a little like my bladder had failed by the time I finished.

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We had a good weekend in these parts. Saturday started out a little exhausting, with a 17-miler that left me feeling somewhat drained (I started out strong, but as the warmth and humidity rose, I slowed, even having to take a brief walk break when my heart rate suddenly decided to spike and make me a bit dizzy) and an appointment to discuss our bathroom floor situation. Still, things looked up after that; the person who was looking at the bathroom was the husband of a coworker of Eric’s, and they invited us over to their place for a cookout that evening, also to see their new concrete patio (we’re debating ripping out our deck and replacing it with a patio, since the way it’s constructed has led to some most unfortunate situations in the winter – a story for another time). So that was a lot of fun, and a great way to spend an evening!

Yesterday was sort of a “last hurrah” for the summer vacation, and we went to the local renaissance fair with some more of Eric’s coworkers. The kids were fairly well-behaved, right up until the infamous Mud Show, which was a risky (and risqué) choice that bombed – for Sam, not Gabe. When the actors moved into the audience to kiss folks with their mud-covered faces, I saw Sam draw his knees up to his chest and bury his face in them, hands clamped to his ears, thoroughly disgusted. I took him quickly away from the show, leaving Eric and a fascinated Gabe behind with the rest of the group. (His favorite part: the end, when the “judge” had to eat mud. I think Sam would have spontaneously combusted had he seen it.)

Eric heads out of town for most of this week, which I’m dreading. Glad to have had a great weekend, filling me with a bit of joy and social hum before he leaves, but I wish I didn’t feel like now I need to rest after the activity – I’m not going to get a chance to do that!

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Back, after technical issues! My parents are in for a visit, and then I chat with my boys.

Thanks to Lisa, James, and Dorothy for their contributions. Music on the show comes from the Podsafe Music Network. Tracks used were:
42 shades of grey – State Unsteady
Anthony Rankin – Moving Forward

You can subscribe through iTunes or download the show here (mp3 version). Voicemails are always welcomed at (NEW NUMBER!) 206-339-0556, or you can email or leave a comment!

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Trying to talk with Gabe about fitness.

ME: “Gabe, why do I run?”
GABE: “Because you do races.”
ME: “Okay, that’s true. But why do I do races?”
GABE: “Because you’ve signed up for them.”

We had a nice chat about why one would intentionally sweat and work one’s body, as I pointed out to him that all this is supposed to be fun as well as healthy. Growing up, I didn’t really have that perspective on it – exercise was sort of like eating the vegetables you didn’t like: something you did because people in charge said you had to, and you couldn’t wait to grow up and not have to do it anymore – so I didn’t realize that it could be like everything else I was learning. I studied all sorts of maths and sciences in school, and while the basics of those studies do get used on an everyday basis now that I’m grown, the early studies also offered me the chance to see whether I might develop a deeper interest in them that could lead to a career or hobby. (Answer: heck to the no.) We read and discussed novels, short stories, essays, and missives from all eras and on many topics, not simply to become well-read youths, but to open our minds to wide-flung areas of study. We were not all to be professional artists, musicians, or actors, but gentle encouragement toward extracurricular activities (one or two, anyway; my school was heading toward the “that’s all fine and good, so long as you can squish it in between the ‘important’ classes” philosophy as I aged) was beneficial for creating a balanced young adult.

And physical activity should have been handled the same way, not as a gauntlet for elevating the Alpha Children over those of lower tiers.

Oh, it’s an argument for another day; today, I want to focus on what should be, not what, regrettably, was. My kids and I talk, and will talk, about all their avenues for moving their bodies and keeping the systems in top shape. Whether they’re competitive athletes or not, my hope is that they can find enjoyment in movement. I do try to lead by example, but sometimes actual literal discussion helps, too. After all, I wouldn’t want them thinking the only reason I’m out there, day after day, is because some trick of my psyche leads me to compulsively register for races I’d rather not even do, all things considered.

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