..with explanations in italics when the deepness of my poetry gets too... deep...
Today, it was my birthday
They brought me out a cake
They said, "Hey look, Rome's burning!"
Cuz I'm old, I'm 38
It's true, the candles were many
My cake was covered with tallow!
We said, "Hey let's roast weiners!
And a fluffy white marshmallow!
I got a really good present
A fabulous CD
The surprise, it almost killed me:
I'm such a spoiled girlie
Unfortunately:
Alas, I am a'suffering
From Relapse #2
I think this means I'm dying
And soon must say adieu.
For yes, again a fever
Is raging through my bod
My throat is raw and red and sore
Like someone snacked and gnawed (*like, on my throat flesh)
This heat wave isn't helping
I'm sweating like a pig!
But morgues are very, very cool,
Ah death! Please take me: Quick!
(Wow! That was terrible! Forgive me, I'm ill again.)
(I WILL ask for a blood test this time, I WILL ask for a blood test this time...)
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Friday, July 27, 2007
Finally!
...the moment you were (probably not) waiting for...
Yeah, so, uh, here it is... the penis wall hanging:
Here's, uh, a close-up of the offensive middle part:
As I said in the last post, I had this thing on my wall for quite a long time before that casual and world-changing remark destroyed my idyllic vision of it. I had spent hours staring at this and never seen the damn penis: Now, thanks to that soul crusher, it's all I see.
I'm happy to say, though, that just yesterday I purchased something new to put on my wall as a replacement. Phew! Has it ever been a relief saying good-bye to that stupid purple spotted rag of perversity!! My new piece is quite modern. Although I've hunted for it, I haven't been able to find the name of the artist. It hasn't been signed. I figure it's probably a Jackson Pollock or something like that.
I'm quite excited about my new work of art. Is this a conversation starter or what?? I've never been one to get too deep about things or spend a lot of time searching for hidden meanings, yet even I can see it's a bold piece: amorphous, yet symmetrical, the basically indecipherable shape symbolizes the order in chaos and the odd predictability of this crazy little game we call life! The furrowed brows at the top, combined with the Stygian shades serve as a somber momento mori, but then the little round blobs, which represent bubblegums, help keep it playful and light. And you'll notice that even though there's no face, the big blob is wearing earrings. Honestly, I don't know what that's supposed to mean at all. That's OK, though, not everything in this world is meant to be understood. I mean, a little mystery never hurt anyone, right? All I care about is that it's not a penis wearing earrings.
I couldn't handle that at all.
Yeah, so, uh, here it is... the penis wall hanging:
Here's, uh, a close-up of the offensive middle part:
As I said in the last post, I had this thing on my wall for quite a long time before that casual and world-changing remark destroyed my idyllic vision of it. I had spent hours staring at this and never seen the damn penis: Now, thanks to that soul crusher, it's all I see.
I'm happy to say, though, that just yesterday I purchased something new to put on my wall as a replacement. Phew! Has it ever been a relief saying good-bye to that stupid purple spotted rag of perversity!! My new piece is quite modern. Although I've hunted for it, I haven't been able to find the name of the artist. It hasn't been signed. I figure it's probably a Jackson Pollock or something like that.
I'm quite excited about my new work of art. Is this a conversation starter or what?? I've never been one to get too deep about things or spend a lot of time searching for hidden meanings, yet even I can see it's a bold piece: amorphous, yet symmetrical, the basically indecipherable shape symbolizes the order in chaos and the odd predictability of this crazy little game we call life! The furrowed brows at the top, combined with the Stygian shades serve as a somber momento mori, but then the little round blobs, which represent bubblegums, help keep it playful and light. And you'll notice that even though there's no face, the big blob is wearing earrings. Honestly, I don't know what that's supposed to mean at all. That's OK, though, not everything in this world is meant to be understood. I mean, a little mystery never hurt anyone, right? All I care about is that it's not a penis wearing earrings.
I couldn't handle that at all.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Of Tongues and Fingers and Penises (but no Cabbages or Kings)
...the human body sucks...
For the first two years that we lived in this house, one whole wall of our living room remained bare. It was a big chunk of wall, right above our couch, and I just couldn't find anything good to put up there.
So I didn't.
Then one day, I found a fabric art wall hanging for sale in the hippie neighbourhood of town. I loved it immediately! I put it up on the wall and it made me feel like I was in an art gallery. I loved it. I loved lying on the couch and just looking at it. Aaaaaaah, my beautiful wall hanging. How I adored you.
That's right, "adored", past tense. One day someone came over and said, "HEY! Check it OUT!! What's with the big PENIS on your wall?" He (she? Lucky for this person, I can't remember who s/he was) pointed to my precious, beautiful wall hanging, and, sure enough, right there in the middle of it was a big stupid penis. For some strange, psychologically interesting reason, I hadn't seen it before!
My piece of art was destroyed!
It's still there, of course, hanging on the wall and covering what would otherwise be that big empty space above the couch, but looking at it no longer makes me feel like I'm in an art gallery. Now it makes me feel like I'm in a bordello or a Turkish bathhouse or something, only with toys all over the place, so, like a weird bordello or Turkish bathhouse or something. Anyway, I don't like it so much anymore.
The fact is, I'm not a big fan of the human body, male or female. I wouldn't be crazy about girl parts hanging on my wall in a swell fabric art design either. And in case you think I'm a prude, I should add that I would find a cute button nose or a pancreas pretty unacceptable as well. Especially now. Like I said, I'm off bodies at the moment, thanks; they're horrible things. They have to be fed. They have to be rested. (My own, particularly lazy body is especially insistent on this point!) The things they force us to do each day are disgusting. Their care and maintenance drive me crazy, especially all the hairy bits. And I'm sorry, but pregnancy and childbirth are just ridiculous processes. Why so much nausea? Why so much pain? Ridiculous. It's been over a year since I closed the book on that soul-crushing but necessary reproduction chapter of my life but I'm still traumatized by it. Honestly, I think I always will be.
And I hate being sick. Everything just shuts down when you're sick. (And the getting well part is just as yucky. These antibiotics I'm on for my virus [???] have given my pee an odour that could crush armies.) (You're welcome for sharing.) Did you know that this year alone I have been sick four times? And that's not even counting stupid bladder infections. This is ridiculous, too. So I've decided to fight back. Health nut Whippersnapper is going to now go OVER THE TOP in her efforts to remain hale and hearty for the rest of the year. My goal? To not get sick again in 2007.
My plan is threefold:
1. Develop a hand-washing obsession. I was in Chapters bookstore last month and when in the bathroom was witness to a pretty Japanese tourist go through the most bizarre ritual I have ever seen. I couldn't help but stare, and in retrospect, I can only say that I hope my tongue wasn't hanging out while I did it. It was pretty fascinating. First she exited her stall and turned on the sink. Then, leaving the water running she went and got some paper towels. She then washed her hands in a very complicated and elaborate fashion and then turned off the sink with the paper towel. Then she got more paper towels and used them to open the door to the bathroom to leave. If old High Intensity hadn't been sitting in her own stall at that moment howling for me to come wipe her potato, I would definitely have followed her to see what she did with those paper towels. The whole thing was sort of a revelation for me, like the first time someone told me they always flush public toilets with their feet. Like, oh, duh, of course, why didn't I think of that myself?? I think perhaps the protected door opening procedure might be over the top, but the rest of it... well I'm pretty desperate for some solutions here.
2. It's all about the vitamin C, baby. Every time I drink water now until the day I die I'm putting lemon juice in the glass too. I drink a lot of water, so this should be good.
3. Garlic. Wait, I mean, "gahhhhhhrlliiiihhhck," said while practicing my diaphragm exercises. One raw clove daily, taken in the form of a delicious vegetable juice cocktail. If nothing else, people will start giving me a wide berth and stop passing on their stupid diseases to me. I will be lonely, it's true, but while my social life slowly rots away, my body will ripen into a robust and strong tank. You, dear blog world, will be my only friends, but sometimes that's the price one must pay for good health. I'm willing to make the sacrifice.
Later: BLEEEEEEEEEECCCCHHHHHHHH!!!!! Vegetable juice w/ freshly minced garlic clove tastes TERRIBLE!!! I think I'm going to have to explore some alternatives here. Perhaps chilling the juice first will help. Warm generic V-8 on a 35 C day makes your tongue want to pop out of your mouth and give you the finger. You know, if tongues had fingers and all that... Hrrmmph, my body has betrayed me once again, I try to give it something nourishing and healthful and all it does is reject it.
***
I keep putting off posting this because I wanted to include a picture of the penis wall hanging, but Mr. IQ is never home to do it for me. This is pathetic beyond words, I know, but being technologically dependent on him gives me an interesting taste of what it must have been like for women in the past who were financially dependent on their husbands. It must have been hell. Anyway, I think I'm going to just post this now, and tomorrow post the picture.
Off topic: Stay cool Winnipeggers. This heat wave is a killer.
For the first two years that we lived in this house, one whole wall of our living room remained bare. It was a big chunk of wall, right above our couch, and I just couldn't find anything good to put up there.
So I didn't.
Then one day, I found a fabric art wall hanging for sale in the hippie neighbourhood of town. I loved it immediately! I put it up on the wall and it made me feel like I was in an art gallery. I loved it. I loved lying on the couch and just looking at it. Aaaaaaah, my beautiful wall hanging. How I adored you.
That's right, "adored", past tense. One day someone came over and said, "HEY! Check it OUT!! What's with the big PENIS on your wall?" He (she? Lucky for this person, I can't remember who s/he was) pointed to my precious, beautiful wall hanging, and, sure enough, right there in the middle of it was a big stupid penis. For some strange, psychologically interesting reason, I hadn't seen it before!
My piece of art was destroyed!
It's still there, of course, hanging on the wall and covering what would otherwise be that big empty space above the couch, but looking at it no longer makes me feel like I'm in an art gallery. Now it makes me feel like I'm in a bordello or a Turkish bathhouse or something, only with toys all over the place, so, like a weird bordello or Turkish bathhouse or something. Anyway, I don't like it so much anymore.
The fact is, I'm not a big fan of the human body, male or female. I wouldn't be crazy about girl parts hanging on my wall in a swell fabric art design either. And in case you think I'm a prude, I should add that I would find a cute button nose or a pancreas pretty unacceptable as well. Especially now. Like I said, I'm off bodies at the moment, thanks; they're horrible things. They have to be fed. They have to be rested. (My own, particularly lazy body is especially insistent on this point!) The things they force us to do each day are disgusting. Their care and maintenance drive me crazy, especially all the hairy bits. And I'm sorry, but pregnancy and childbirth are just ridiculous processes. Why so much nausea? Why so much pain? Ridiculous. It's been over a year since I closed the book on that soul-crushing but necessary reproduction chapter of my life but I'm still traumatized by it. Honestly, I think I always will be.
And I hate being sick. Everything just shuts down when you're sick. (And the getting well part is just as yucky. These antibiotics I'm on for my virus [???] have given my pee an odour that could crush armies.) (You're welcome for sharing.) Did you know that this year alone I have been sick four times? And that's not even counting stupid bladder infections. This is ridiculous, too. So I've decided to fight back. Health nut Whippersnapper is going to now go OVER THE TOP in her efforts to remain hale and hearty for the rest of the year. My goal? To not get sick again in 2007.
My plan is threefold:
1. Develop a hand-washing obsession. I was in Chapters bookstore last month and when in the bathroom was witness to a pretty Japanese tourist go through the most bizarre ritual I have ever seen. I couldn't help but stare, and in retrospect, I can only say that I hope my tongue wasn't hanging out while I did it. It was pretty fascinating. First she exited her stall and turned on the sink. Then, leaving the water running she went and got some paper towels. She then washed her hands in a very complicated and elaborate fashion and then turned off the sink with the paper towel. Then she got more paper towels and used them to open the door to the bathroom to leave. If old High Intensity hadn't been sitting in her own stall at that moment howling for me to come wipe her potato, I would definitely have followed her to see what she did with those paper towels. The whole thing was sort of a revelation for me, like the first time someone told me they always flush public toilets with their feet. Like, oh, duh, of course, why didn't I think of that myself?? I think perhaps the protected door opening procedure might be over the top, but the rest of it... well I'm pretty desperate for some solutions here.
2. It's all about the vitamin C, baby. Every time I drink water now until the day I die I'm putting lemon juice in the glass too. I drink a lot of water, so this should be good.
3. Garlic. Wait, I mean, "gahhhhhhrlliiiihhhck," said while practicing my diaphragm exercises. One raw clove daily, taken in the form of a delicious vegetable juice cocktail. If nothing else, people will start giving me a wide berth and stop passing on their stupid diseases to me. I will be lonely, it's true, but while my social life slowly rots away, my body will ripen into a robust and strong tank. You, dear blog world, will be my only friends, but sometimes that's the price one must pay for good health. I'm willing to make the sacrifice.
Later: BLEEEEEEEEEECCCCHHHHHHHH!!!!! Vegetable juice w/ freshly minced garlic clove tastes TERRIBLE!!! I think I'm going to have to explore some alternatives here. Perhaps chilling the juice first will help. Warm generic V-8 on a 35 C day makes your tongue want to pop out of your mouth and give you the finger. You know, if tongues had fingers and all that... Hrrmmph, my body has betrayed me once again, I try to give it something nourishing and healthful and all it does is reject it.
***
I keep putting off posting this because I wanted to include a picture of the penis wall hanging, but Mr. IQ is never home to do it for me. This is pathetic beyond words, I know, but being technologically dependent on him gives me an interesting taste of what it must have been like for women in the past who were financially dependent on their husbands. It must have been hell. Anyway, I think I'm going to just post this now, and tomorrow post the picture.
Off topic: Stay cool Winnipeggers. This heat wave is a killer.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Warning: Contains Spoilers
...well, spoiler, singular. Don't read this if you've never seen Easy Rider...
One day, a long time ago, I was lounging back and watching Easy Rider for the first time ever when suddenly I received a phone call from Mr. IQ. I told him I couldn't talk right then and explained why I was busy.
"Oh," he said, "Has Jack Nicholson died yet?"
That's how I came to find out, well in advance of it actually occurring on my TV screen, that the Jack Nicholson character dies in Easy Rider. Was I pissed off? Oh, you have no idea.
As you know, today was the release date of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and it's all CBC radio talked about all day. (That's not even remotely true, but whatever. "One must never let the facts get in the way of a good blog post!" Whippersnapper, 2007)
Finally Mr. IQ snapped.
"I've just got to know!" he muttered and disappeared into our (still ridiculous-looking) office. He emerged about 20 minutes later and, once again without asking me first if I cared to be privy to this little golden nugget of info, said, very casually, "Well, it looks like ******** gets killed."
For you to understand the significance of this thoughtless action, you have to understand that the question, "Is Jack Nicholson dead yet?" instantly became a part of this household's vernacular the moment it was first uttered. If someone good is being interviewed on the radio and one person rushes in late and asks, "What did I miss?" the other person is sure to respond with a pleasant, "Well, Jack Nicholson died." What I'm saying is, it's not like he's forgotten the first incident, it comes up every time we don't pause a movie for someone's trip to the can! How could he do this to me twice?? The fact that I have absolutely no plans to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ever in my lifetime is entirely beside the point. I was steamed.
About an hour ago, while stumbling to get to the computer in our (still nightmarish) office, my eyes happened to fall on a brand-new CD still in its wrapper.
"What the heck is this?" I asked, because we are in what you might call the "abject poverty" phase of our lives together and will probably remain in this phase until Baby Fangs hits Grade One. Buying brand-new CDs is verboten, ja. Hell, it's a wonder we can afford diapers these days.
Mr. IQ looked at it. "Oh!" he said, "That's for you, for your birthday next week! Oops, sorry, I guess I should have hidden it better!"
Because money is scarce, we've agreed that he will still wrap it up and present it to me on my "special day" as if nothing has happened. I've agreed to still be "surprised."
Good old Mr. IQ: Taking the fun and suspense out of everything since 1999.
One day, a long time ago, I was lounging back and watching Easy Rider for the first time ever when suddenly I received a phone call from Mr. IQ. I told him I couldn't talk right then and explained why I was busy.
"Oh," he said, "Has Jack Nicholson died yet?"
That's how I came to find out, well in advance of it actually occurring on my TV screen, that the Jack Nicholson character dies in Easy Rider. Was I pissed off? Oh, you have no idea.
As you know, today was the release date of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and it's all CBC radio talked about all day. (That's not even remotely true, but whatever. "One must never let the facts get in the way of a good blog post!" Whippersnapper, 2007)
Finally Mr. IQ snapped.
"I've just got to know!" he muttered and disappeared into our (still ridiculous-looking) office. He emerged about 20 minutes later and, once again without asking me first if I cared to be privy to this little golden nugget of info, said, very casually, "Well, it looks like ******** gets killed."
For you to understand the significance of this thoughtless action, you have to understand that the question, "Is Jack Nicholson dead yet?" instantly became a part of this household's vernacular the moment it was first uttered. If someone good is being interviewed on the radio and one person rushes in late and asks, "What did I miss?" the other person is sure to respond with a pleasant, "Well, Jack Nicholson died." What I'm saying is, it's not like he's forgotten the first incident, it comes up every time we don't pause a movie for someone's trip to the can! How could he do this to me twice?? The fact that I have absolutely no plans to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ever in my lifetime is entirely beside the point. I was steamed.
About an hour ago, while stumbling to get to the computer in our (still nightmarish) office, my eyes happened to fall on a brand-new CD still in its wrapper.
"What the heck is this?" I asked, because we are in what you might call the "abject poverty" phase of our lives together and will probably remain in this phase until Baby Fangs hits Grade One. Buying brand-new CDs is verboten, ja. Hell, it's a wonder we can afford diapers these days.
Mr. IQ looked at it. "Oh!" he said, "That's for you, for your birthday next week! Oops, sorry, I guess I should have hidden it better!"
Because money is scarce, we've agreed that he will still wrap it up and present it to me on my "special day" as if nothing has happened. I've agreed to still be "surprised."
Good old Mr. IQ: Taking the fun and suspense out of everything since 1999.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
RELAPSE!!! **WITH UPDATE**
....okay, we have definitely reached the WTF stage...
WTF???????
Fever: 101.1 F
Throat: More elves, more curlicue knives
Body: Chills, followed by sweaty misery
Head: POUND! POUND! POUND!
Bones: Achy
Mood: Helpless despair
Thoughts: Terribly profound
Example: "The human body is a #@%&*$!!!! prison!"
Pretty: Deep, huh?
Best part: Swallowed pride and phoned parents. They came and took care of kids and, even better, tidied the house
They are: Swell
Worst part: I worry that my blog is suffering, what with all this sickness
(I realize this is: Pathetic)
Theme song: Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Only I'm think-singing it with the word "relapse" instead
Actually: I can't get it out of my head, and it's driving me freaking crazy
I am going to my doctor's tomorrow to demand a blood test.
Anyone willing to bet a fiver with me that this is West Nile??
**UPDATE**
So I went to my doctor. Naturally, I chickened out in her presence, and did NOT demand a blood test. (I'm sort of scared of her.) She roughed me up a bit and gave me a hard time for coming to see her for a virus. (She's tough.) Then she ended up giving me a prescription for antibiotics. (Huh?)
The subject of West Nile was not brought up. I couldn't bear to face her sarcasm.
Perhaps this is indicative of some latent masochistic tendencies, but the funny thing is, I absolutely adore my doctor.
Go figure.
WTF???????
Fever: 101.1 F
Throat: More elves, more curlicue knives
Body: Chills, followed by sweaty misery
Head: POUND! POUND! POUND!
Bones: Achy
Mood: Helpless despair
Thoughts: Terribly profound
Example: "The human body is a #@%&*$!!!! prison!"
Pretty: Deep, huh?
Best part: Swallowed pride and phoned parents. They came and took care of kids and, even better, tidied the house
They are: Swell
Worst part: I worry that my blog is suffering, what with all this sickness
(I realize this is: Pathetic)
Theme song: Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Only I'm think-singing it with the word "relapse" instead
Actually: I can't get it out of my head, and it's driving me freaking crazy
I am going to my doctor's tomorrow to demand a blood test.
Anyone willing to bet a fiver with me that this is West Nile??
**UPDATE**
So I went to my doctor. Naturally, I chickened out in her presence, and did NOT demand a blood test. (I'm sort of scared of her.) She roughed me up a bit and gave me a hard time for coming to see her for a virus. (She's tough.) Then she ended up giving me a prescription for antibiotics. (Huh?)
The subject of West Nile was not brought up. I couldn't bear to face her sarcasm.
Perhaps this is indicative of some latent masochistic tendencies, but the funny thing is, I absolutely adore my doctor.
Go figure.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Because It is My Life and Because I Suck
...okay, well, I wrote the title and then I wrote the post, and now I'm thinking the two don't exactly mesh; however I'm going to keep the title anyway because a) I just like it and b) I'm a really, really lazy person...not that one should EVER admit that to ANYONE...
Several years ago, I took a road trip to California with two friends of mine, "Bill" and "Bob." It was the brilliant idea of "Bill" to scout out a watering hole everyday to swim in.
One day, we stopped at a beautiful swimming place, which also happened to be the local town's water reservoir. It was a smoking hot day, and we wasted no time getting on our bathing suits and into the water. After a while, a large black dog came and joined us. He padded in, sat down in about nine inches of water and then turned and stared at us with the most mournful I AM HOT expression I have ever seen in my life.
We watched him for a while, pretty amused, and then naturally the wisecracks started, and someone joked about how he was probably peeing in the local town's water supply. I should have just laughed (ha ha ha!) and changed the subject, but no, dumb old me had to go and open my big mouth.
"Oh, come on!" I said gaily, because, after all, I was with friends, and friends can supposedly be honest with each other, "Let's face it, ALL of us have peed in the water at some point during this trip!"
There was a long, uncomfortable silence.
"Actually," said Bob finally, "I HAVEN'T peed in the water. Not even once."
"No," admitted Bill slowly, "I haven't either."
Arghghh. Total humiliation. You'd think I'd learn from incidents like this, but no, I am a fool and do this sort of thing all the time.
For instance.
Last month at my local thrift store I stumbled upon a, um, Best of Styx CD that I just couldn't resist snapping up. Hey, it was only a dollar, STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT!!! After our visit to the thrift store we went to the park where we ran into a friend of High Intensity's who was there with her mom. She's a pretty nice mom, and at least as old as me so I had no reservations showing her my new purchase. I'm very naive in my own way, I guess. I knew it was crap, but it was guilty pleasure crap, right? I always assume people understand the difference.
Obviously not. "Ew," she said when she saw it, wrinkling up her nose as if she was smelling a dead pig. "Why would you buy that?"
I could have still saved myself. I could have said, "Oh, it's for my mom!" or, "Baby Fangs likes destroying CDs and it was only a buck!" But no, I'm an idiot. "Oh, come on!" I said, nudging her and giving a little conspiratorial wink, "'fess up you coward! Everyone likes the songs Babe and Come Sail Away deep down secretly! Right?"
"No. No they don't," said the other mother, smoothing down her tight Ramones t-shirt over her perky little boobies and giving me a look of terrible pity.
Hrrmmphh. So I guess I humiliated myself again. Obviously the secret to life is to keep absolutely tight-lipped about anything, and I mean ANYTHING that might make you look less than perfect in this world, and I really need to learn to do that. If my dishwasher is on the blink and the dishes don't ever get done until the weekend, I mustn't laugh and tell my co-worker that every Friday I put my week's worth of dishes in the bathtub to soak overnight before washing them. This will garner strange looks! If my dinner the night before consisted of a can of chick peas mixed with ketchup (unheated), for God sakes, I shouldn't tell the in-laws!! They'll think I'm crazy! And whatever I do, I must never, ever admit to anyone that I like to yodel loudly while in the shower! That's one thing I could never, EVER live down!
I've thought for a while now, though, that where I really need to learn to just bury the truth and start lying a lot is in the area of my crappy parenting skills. Whenever I get down and dirty with other mothers and we start into the hard core confessions about what terrible, negligent, irresponsible moms we are, I've found that, more often than not, when it's my turn in the confessional booth, my own disclosures are always rewarded with a stunned, embarrassed silence, followed by a rather quavery "Oh....my...."
In other words, they may suck, but I really suck.
Yet my stories are so innocent. When I shared pictures of my kids frolicking naked on a kitchen floor covered with cinnamon, they were like, "ugh, why did you let them do that?" When I broke down and confessed that I once gave Baby Fangs my brand-new lipstick to play with and destroy they were appalled. And yet it had bought me ten minutes of peace! I mean, she would not leave me alone that day! I was desperate! What was their problem?
One good thing about all this crappy stuff that has happened lately is that, corny and cliche as it may be, it certainly has given me a lot of perspective. When your life is sort of falling apart at the seams, and your basement smells like a rotting sewer pit and the government informs you that you owe them $780, little things like the world thinking you're a big crazy bad mom with crappy taste in music and a weird penchant for peeing in lakes, well, you just don't give a damn about it. And I'll be honest: that's a lovely feeling.
Yesterday, while still convalescing, I managed to get myself together enough to take the kids to the park. While I sat limply on the grass, High Intensity played on the play structure and Baby Fangs plunked herself down in the sand and began snacking. Several ants disappeared between her sweet tender rosebud lips and were not seen again. I couldn't stop her. I just couldn't. Frankly, I wasn't sure how I was going to get the energy to drag myself back home; keeping a very willful baby in check was totally out of the question.
Of course, other people were around to remind me of my negligence.
"Your little baby is eating sand!" a little old lady told me.
The Old Me would have scrambled to put on a Good Mom Act, yanked Fangs away from where she was sitting having fun and kept her miserably on my knee for the rest of the visit. But the New Me Whose Head is Wrapped up in Other Things didn't care.
"Hmmphh," was all I said, "and you'd think she'd be all full after that large colony of ants she just consumed!"
Misery, it would seem, can set you free.
Several years ago, I took a road trip to California with two friends of mine, "Bill" and "Bob." It was the brilliant idea of "Bill" to scout out a watering hole everyday to swim in.
One day, we stopped at a beautiful swimming place, which also happened to be the local town's water reservoir. It was a smoking hot day, and we wasted no time getting on our bathing suits and into the water. After a while, a large black dog came and joined us. He padded in, sat down in about nine inches of water and then turned and stared at us with the most mournful I AM HOT expression I have ever seen in my life.
We watched him for a while, pretty amused, and then naturally the wisecracks started, and someone joked about how he was probably peeing in the local town's water supply. I should have just laughed (ha ha ha!) and changed the subject, but no, dumb old me had to go and open my big mouth.
"Oh, come on!" I said gaily, because, after all, I was with friends, and friends can supposedly be honest with each other, "Let's face it, ALL of us have peed in the water at some point during this trip!"
There was a long, uncomfortable silence.
"Actually," said Bob finally, "I HAVEN'T peed in the water. Not even once."
"No," admitted Bill slowly, "I haven't either."
Arghghh. Total humiliation. You'd think I'd learn from incidents like this, but no, I am a fool and do this sort of thing all the time.
For instance.
Last month at my local thrift store I stumbled upon a, um, Best of Styx CD that I just couldn't resist snapping up. Hey, it was only a dollar, STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT!!! After our visit to the thrift store we went to the park where we ran into a friend of High Intensity's who was there with her mom. She's a pretty nice mom, and at least as old as me so I had no reservations showing her my new purchase. I'm very naive in my own way, I guess. I knew it was crap, but it was guilty pleasure crap, right? I always assume people understand the difference.
Obviously not. "Ew," she said when she saw it, wrinkling up her nose as if she was smelling a dead pig. "Why would you buy that?"
I could have still saved myself. I could have said, "Oh, it's for my mom!" or, "Baby Fangs likes destroying CDs and it was only a buck!" But no, I'm an idiot. "Oh, come on!" I said, nudging her and giving a little conspiratorial wink, "'fess up you coward! Everyone likes the songs Babe and Come Sail Away deep down secretly! Right?"
"No. No they don't," said the other mother, smoothing down her tight Ramones t-shirt over her perky little boobies and giving me a look of terrible pity.
Hrrmmphh. So I guess I humiliated myself again. Obviously the secret to life is to keep absolutely tight-lipped about anything, and I mean ANYTHING that might make you look less than perfect in this world, and I really need to learn to do that. If my dishwasher is on the blink and the dishes don't ever get done until the weekend, I mustn't laugh and tell my co-worker that every Friday I put my week's worth of dishes in the bathtub to soak overnight before washing them. This will garner strange looks! If my dinner the night before consisted of a can of chick peas mixed with ketchup (unheated), for God sakes, I shouldn't tell the in-laws!! They'll think I'm crazy! And whatever I do, I must never, ever admit to anyone that I like to yodel loudly while in the shower! That's one thing I could never, EVER live down!
I've thought for a while now, though, that where I really need to learn to just bury the truth and start lying a lot is in the area of my crappy parenting skills. Whenever I get down and dirty with other mothers and we start into the hard core confessions about what terrible, negligent, irresponsible moms we are, I've found that, more often than not, when it's my turn in the confessional booth, my own disclosures are always rewarded with a stunned, embarrassed silence, followed by a rather quavery "Oh....my...."
In other words, they may suck, but I really suck.
Yet my stories are so innocent. When I shared pictures of my kids frolicking naked on a kitchen floor covered with cinnamon, they were like, "ugh, why did you let them do that?" When I broke down and confessed that I once gave Baby Fangs my brand-new lipstick to play with and destroy they were appalled. And yet it had bought me ten minutes of peace! I mean, she would not leave me alone that day! I was desperate! What was their problem?
One good thing about all this crappy stuff that has happened lately is that, corny and cliche as it may be, it certainly has given me a lot of perspective. When your life is sort of falling apart at the seams, and your basement smells like a rotting sewer pit and the government informs you that you owe them $780, little things like the world thinking you're a big crazy bad mom with crappy taste in music and a weird penchant for peeing in lakes, well, you just don't give a damn about it. And I'll be honest: that's a lovely feeling.
Yesterday, while still convalescing, I managed to get myself together enough to take the kids to the park. While I sat limply on the grass, High Intensity played on the play structure and Baby Fangs plunked herself down in the sand and began snacking. Several ants disappeared between her sweet tender rosebud lips and were not seen again. I couldn't stop her. I just couldn't. Frankly, I wasn't sure how I was going to get the energy to drag myself back home; keeping a very willful baby in check was totally out of the question.
Of course, other people were around to remind me of my negligence.
"Your little baby is eating sand!" a little old lady told me.
The Old Me would have scrambled to put on a Good Mom Act, yanked Fangs away from where she was sitting having fun and kept her miserably on my knee for the rest of the visit. But the New Me Whose Head is Wrapped up in Other Things didn't care.
"Hmmphh," was all I said, "and you'd think she'd be all full after that large colony of ants she just consumed!"
Misery, it would seem, can set you free.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Non-Royal Proclamation
...da da daaaaaaah!...
Our basement pipes have exploded again, so, uh, I guess that makes it official.
Summer 2007 totally sucks!
Our basement pipes have exploded again, so, uh, I guess that makes it official.
Summer 2007 totally sucks!
Friday, July 06, 2007
Illness, not as Metaphor
...because, quite frankly, I'm just not that deep...
In the last post I wrote something about having some profound thoughts about illness, but if there is one thing I've learned from this 13-day bout of viral hell, it's that being sick is a lot like going on a big boozy bender. You only THINK you're having profound thoughts. In your fevered, delusional state, you're pretty convinced you're bloody Voltaire, Hobbes and freaking Wittgenstein all rolled up into one hot-thinking little sausage. But oh no, trust me my friend, you're not profound. You lie there in a miserable hot fever, a baby screaming in your ear and a fruit fly infestation buzzing in circles around your bed and you think, Oh I get it! I'm -- we're -- in HELL! Hell is life here on earth!! It all makes sense now!! You think you are a genius. But you are not a genius. You're just sick and pathetic.
Two Saturdays ago, June 23rd, while lying comatose in the blackest of sleeps, I was suddenly yanked into semi-consciousness by the presence of a soggy-assed baby sitting on my stomach, purring loudly.
"Ahraaaaaaaah," Baby Fangs meowed, poking her big curly head into my personal space and exploring my barely conscious face with her prodding, sharp-nailed fingers. Blearily I looked over at the clock. It was 6:30 am. I was so terribly tired.
"Oh God," I thought, "I'm going to die."
Just as I was thinking this, High Intensity bounded into the room. "Good morning mom!" she shouted and jumped onto the bed.
"Ooooooooooow," I thought desperately, "Talk about rubbing salt in the wound."
I was so tired I did not even feel human. My brain felt like a bottle of oozy glue. My lethargy went beyond the usual realm of sluggish inertia and into the surreal zone where misery, fatigue and vague thoughts of suicide meld into one terrible, terrible mood that always keeps Mr. IQ hopping to prevent me from killing someone. His efforts come mostly in the form of helpful advice to the kids, warnings like "Just Stay the Hell Away From Her!" and "Get Out of the Room, She's Going to Blow!" Actually, it's moods like these that remind me why we're still together. I could never be a single parent.
But unfortunately, when I woke up that Saturday morning, Mr. IQ wasn't there. He was working an overnight shift at this place where he gets paid to, well, sleep. He wasn't scheduled to return until after 11:00 am, either. There was only one thing to do, and that was to somehow get my butt downstairs to make coffee. It took about 15 minutes to muster my forces, and when I finally got downstairs I discovered to my absolute horror that the worst of all possible scenarios had happened: We were out of coffee. That this was a crisis of epic proportions cannot be overstated. Simply put, my day just doesn't start without coffee.
Hazily, I stumbled my way to the couch and collapsed on it, thinking, "How how HOW am I going to get through the next four hours until Mr. IQ comes home without coffee??" I lay there in a paralyzed stupour while High Intensity destroyed the living room and Baby Fangs crawled over my body and breakfasted on small chokeable lego pieces. (Note: Did you know "chokeable" is not a real word? Weird.) It went on like this forever, and I realized I had to do something. I needed to get it together and fast. Groaning, I asked High Intensity to read me the numbers from the stove. It was 8:13 am. Mr. IQ wasn't due back for three hours. I had no choice. I was going to have to make the trek to Seven Eleven.
Thinking back on our trip I am for some reason reminded of the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird when Scout and Jem are heading home from the Halloween party and there's a sentence like, "And so we set out together on the longest journey of our lives." Absolutely nothing happened on our walk to the local Seven Eleven, so I don't know why my mind conjures up that particular scene.
Except that it WAS the longest journey of my life.
What a sight we made. Baby Fangs, sitting in her filthy, pathetic squeaky wreck of a stroller, wore nothing but a diaper. Conversely, in perhaps an unconscious attempt to balance things out, High Intensity went commando. As for me, barely conscious, I managed to climb into the first items of clothing I happened to stumble upon, a pair of Mr. IQ's underwear that can sort of pass for shorts, and a somewhat soiled t-shirt emblazoned with the word "SLUG".
("Oh boy. I bet you were SEX," said Mr. IQ later that day when he came home and I was relating all this to him.
"Oh God, you have no idea," I said, cringing at the memory.)
So we set off. I have since taken note of the distance on my odometer, and I now know the Seven Eleven is exactly 1.1 km away from my house. How we made it there, I don't know. Each step was torture, and thoughts of the Bataan Death March kept flashing through my head. Well, perhaps that comparison is not quite apt. The Bataan Death March involved intense prisoner suffering at the hands of sadistic Japanese and Korean soldiers. There were beatings, outbreaks of dysentery and malaria, and a malicious withholding of food and water. I know the heat was unbearable and thousands died. It's a crude comparison, I know, but sometimes you just have to work with what history has to offer to make your point, okay? Don't lecture me! Obviously what I suffered on my trip to Seven Eleven for coffee was at least a thousand times worse than any wimpy Bataan Death March! Hello! I'm just trying to give you some generalized idea of what I went through, calm down already! I feel your outrage, really I do, but I've got a blog post to crank out here! Leave me alone!
Anyway, we made it there, and I got my coffee and we left. "We're going to sit here for a minute," I told High Intensity, pointing to the curb right outside the store. "Mommy needs to drink a bit of her coffee first." She eyed the broken glass suspiciously and then gingerly sat her panty-less buns down beside me. (I had bought her an apple juice, a pretty rare treat for her, and obviously the desire to drink it in comfort overrode any safety concerns she might have had regarding shards of glass in her ass. Heh.)
So we sat on the curb guzzling our beverages, a sad, sorry sight if there ever was one. And even after I'd finished my whole liter's worth of java I had to admit my fatigue was still there. Oh, the coffee had taken the edge off, that's for sure, but I certainly didn't have my usual euphoric "Hey Yowza, There's Coffee in my Bloodstream and All is Right in the World!" feeling. We plodded home. I went back to the couch. I waited for Mr. IQ's return like some await the Second Coming. My head hurt. I didn't know what was up.
Of course what was up was that I was in the beginning stages of one DOOZY of a flu bug. Mr. IQ came home and I slept all afternoon. Then he left again for his other job, just as I was entering the crazy fever stage. Baby Fangs spent the evening crawling over my 102 F body. "Oh God," I thought, "if only this baby would fall asleep, then I could possibly stand this." When she finally fell asleep I suddenly became aware that High Intensity was still awake and being particularly obnoxious. "Oh Gee," I thought, "Please, please, please make her fall asleep too. Then and only then can I be happy." When she finally passed out I gave a sigh of relief and sank down onto my bed. Only then did the full magnitude of my illness hit me, and I suddenly realized that I was really sick. "Hey, the kids are both asleep and I'm still miserable!" I thought. "The human condition is to be miserable!" The brilliance of my words overwhelmed me, and I suddenly realized that I was a genius. "Hey, I should write that down somewhere!" I thought. Then I too passed out.
And so it began. My horrible two weeks of hell. Mr. IQ was working what felt like 18 hours every day, so for the most part I was alone with the kids. It was awful. Everything has been a bit of a blur, but briefly, here are some highlights (lowlights?) of the last 14 days:
Day Two: More fever. The house is already a pit. Despite my fairly delusional state, I nevertheless take a vague, purely hands-off interest in what my children are up to, and realize something important. I've read that kids of non-functional adults end up being either super responsible, crazy workaholic types or else super irresponsible. I can see these roles being assumed right before my eyes by High Intensity and Baby Fangs after only 24 hours of benign neglect. Old H. I. is bustling around, telling Fangs what to do, bringing me glasses of water and preparing light snacks every fifteen minutes for herself and her sister. The baby just crawls around, filthy, not a care in the world. It makes me sad, and I cry a bit. This is a precursor to:
Day Three: The weepy stage. Everything, and I mean everything, makes me bawl. ("Ball whom?" my buddy Nitroglycol once asked me politely. Ha ha.) The dirt encrusted on Baby Fangs' neck makes me bawl. A bird on our lawn makes me bawl. A glimpse of my copy of Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz makes me bawl. It's all so weird and inexplicable! The fruit fly infestation makes me -- well, actually, it makes me want to kill someone. When Mr. IQ returns from work I am a mess. "I'll take the kids and get them out of your hair," he says, and they go have a picnic. While I appreciate the respite, the fact that he does not stick around to do at least some superficial tidying means that I am left to bake alone in a squalid hovel. I try to get up to clean but find I absolutely can't do it. This makes me bawl.
Day Four: High Intensity gets down the bucket of ice-cream from the freezer. I am too weak and apathetic to stop her. Pow-wow style, she and Baby Fangs sit around it on the floor, eating their way to the bottom. They have a blast. Baby Fangs is wearing a diaper that is swollen with urine to 17 times its regular size. She is surrounded by chaos. I watch them helplessly from the couch. "Hey," I whisper, my voice cracking a bit in self-pity, "aren't... aren't you going to bring me some?"
Day Five: High Intensity stops wearing clothes.
Day Six: I stop wearing clothes too, at least when no-one else is around. I insist on keeping my bra on at all times though. It is a maternity bra, and the flu bug has sapped the necessary energy needed to reattach the flaps that unhook for nursing. This means my naked breasts hang out of it like grotesquely huge hairless rodents gasping for air. This is not as sexy as it may sound, I can assure you.
Day Seven: High Intensity's Last Day of Nursery. I bring her to school not realizing that there is a big celebration planned, and the parents are expected to stay. The other parents and kids are all dressed to the nines. I am wearing Mr. IQ's SLUG shirt again. "I'm sick," I croak at the teacher. "Oh dear," she says, crinkling up her nose in disgust. I look terrible. All the parents stare at me, and give me a wide berth. We watch a video showing everything the kids have done over the school year. There is a nice shot of High Intensity picking her nose and eating it. I am embarrassed, and look over to where she is sitting. She is on the floor with her classmates picking her nose and eating it. She is filthy, and her hair needs a good wash. You are a failure of a parent, I think and then have a coughing fit that lasts for the remainder of the film.
Day Seven: Mr. IQ takes a picture of me at my most wretched. Once again, it pains me to show off like this, but I have to say that no-one, no-one on this planet can take an ugly picture like me; incredibly, however, this particular picture puts all other snapshots to shame and believe me, that's saying something. (I am almost tempted to post it here, but I'm just not that brave. Besides, then all of you would think I look like a monster. I'd have to post a really stunning picture of me alongside of it just to give some perspective. And that would just be dumb.)
Day Eight: Mr. IQ starts getting sick. Or did that happen on Day Nine? Day Ten? I'm not sure. All I know is that he's still sick. Last night, lying on the couch, he started muttering something under his breath. I looked over at him. The room was hot and dirty. Baby Fangs was sitting on his head in a less-than-crisp looking diaper. There were fruit flies buzzing around his mouth. He was naked from the waist up and sweaty.
"What was that you were saying?" I asked.
"I said I just figured something out," he croaked, "about Hell. It really is here on Earth! We're -- we're all in hell!! I'm in Hell!!"
"You betcha, genius!" I said fondly.
It looks like he's getting better. The profound stage means that the fever is breaking.
In the last post I wrote something about having some profound thoughts about illness, but if there is one thing I've learned from this 13-day bout of viral hell, it's that being sick is a lot like going on a big boozy bender. You only THINK you're having profound thoughts. In your fevered, delusional state, you're pretty convinced you're bloody Voltaire, Hobbes and freaking Wittgenstein all rolled up into one hot-thinking little sausage. But oh no, trust me my friend, you're not profound. You lie there in a miserable hot fever, a baby screaming in your ear and a fruit fly infestation buzzing in circles around your bed and you think, Oh I get it! I'm -- we're -- in HELL! Hell is life here on earth!! It all makes sense now!! You think you are a genius. But you are not a genius. You're just sick and pathetic.
Two Saturdays ago, June 23rd, while lying comatose in the blackest of sleeps, I was suddenly yanked into semi-consciousness by the presence of a soggy-assed baby sitting on my stomach, purring loudly.
"Ahraaaaaaaah," Baby Fangs meowed, poking her big curly head into my personal space and exploring my barely conscious face with her prodding, sharp-nailed fingers. Blearily I looked over at the clock. It was 6:30 am. I was so terribly tired.
"Oh God," I thought, "I'm going to die."
Just as I was thinking this, High Intensity bounded into the room. "Good morning mom!" she shouted and jumped onto the bed.
"Ooooooooooow," I thought desperately, "Talk about rubbing salt in the wound."
I was so tired I did not even feel human. My brain felt like a bottle of oozy glue. My lethargy went beyond the usual realm of sluggish inertia and into the surreal zone where misery, fatigue and vague thoughts of suicide meld into one terrible, terrible mood that always keeps Mr. IQ hopping to prevent me from killing someone. His efforts come mostly in the form of helpful advice to the kids, warnings like "Just Stay the Hell Away From Her!" and "Get Out of the Room, She's Going to Blow!" Actually, it's moods like these that remind me why we're still together. I could never be a single parent.
But unfortunately, when I woke up that Saturday morning, Mr. IQ wasn't there. He was working an overnight shift at this place where he gets paid to, well, sleep. He wasn't scheduled to return until after 11:00 am, either. There was only one thing to do, and that was to somehow get my butt downstairs to make coffee. It took about 15 minutes to muster my forces, and when I finally got downstairs I discovered to my absolute horror that the worst of all possible scenarios had happened: We were out of coffee. That this was a crisis of epic proportions cannot be overstated. Simply put, my day just doesn't start without coffee.
Hazily, I stumbled my way to the couch and collapsed on it, thinking, "How how HOW am I going to get through the next four hours until Mr. IQ comes home without coffee??" I lay there in a paralyzed stupour while High Intensity destroyed the living room and Baby Fangs crawled over my body and breakfasted on small chokeable lego pieces. (Note: Did you know "chokeable" is not a real word? Weird.) It went on like this forever, and I realized I had to do something. I needed to get it together and fast. Groaning, I asked High Intensity to read me the numbers from the stove. It was 8:13 am. Mr. IQ wasn't due back for three hours. I had no choice. I was going to have to make the trek to Seven Eleven.
Thinking back on our trip I am for some reason reminded of the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird when Scout and Jem are heading home from the Halloween party and there's a sentence like, "And so we set out together on the longest journey of our lives." Absolutely nothing happened on our walk to the local Seven Eleven, so I don't know why my mind conjures up that particular scene.
Except that it WAS the longest journey of my life.
What a sight we made. Baby Fangs, sitting in her filthy, pathetic squeaky wreck of a stroller, wore nothing but a diaper. Conversely, in perhaps an unconscious attempt to balance things out, High Intensity went commando. As for me, barely conscious, I managed to climb into the first items of clothing I happened to stumble upon, a pair of Mr. IQ's underwear that can sort of pass for shorts, and a somewhat soiled t-shirt emblazoned with the word "SLUG".
("Oh boy. I bet you were SEX," said Mr. IQ later that day when he came home and I was relating all this to him.
"Oh God, you have no idea," I said, cringing at the memory.)
So we set off. I have since taken note of the distance on my odometer, and I now know the Seven Eleven is exactly 1.1 km away from my house. How we made it there, I don't know. Each step was torture, and thoughts of the Bataan Death March kept flashing through my head. Well, perhaps that comparison is not quite apt. The Bataan Death March involved intense prisoner suffering at the hands of sadistic Japanese and Korean soldiers. There were beatings, outbreaks of dysentery and malaria, and a malicious withholding of food and water. I know the heat was unbearable and thousands died. It's a crude comparison, I know, but sometimes you just have to work with what history has to offer to make your point, okay? Don't lecture me! Obviously what I suffered on my trip to Seven Eleven for coffee was at least a thousand times worse than any wimpy Bataan Death March! Hello! I'm just trying to give you some generalized idea of what I went through, calm down already! I feel your outrage, really I do, but I've got a blog post to crank out here! Leave me alone!
Anyway, we made it there, and I got my coffee and we left. "We're going to sit here for a minute," I told High Intensity, pointing to the curb right outside the store. "Mommy needs to drink a bit of her coffee first." She eyed the broken glass suspiciously and then gingerly sat her panty-less buns down beside me. (I had bought her an apple juice, a pretty rare treat for her, and obviously the desire to drink it in comfort overrode any safety concerns she might have had regarding shards of glass in her ass. Heh.)
So we sat on the curb guzzling our beverages, a sad, sorry sight if there ever was one. And even after I'd finished my whole liter's worth of java I had to admit my fatigue was still there. Oh, the coffee had taken the edge off, that's for sure, but I certainly didn't have my usual euphoric "Hey Yowza, There's Coffee in my Bloodstream and All is Right in the World!" feeling. We plodded home. I went back to the couch. I waited for Mr. IQ's return like some await the Second Coming. My head hurt. I didn't know what was up.
Of course what was up was that I was in the beginning stages of one DOOZY of a flu bug. Mr. IQ came home and I slept all afternoon. Then he left again for his other job, just as I was entering the crazy fever stage. Baby Fangs spent the evening crawling over my 102 F body. "Oh God," I thought, "if only this baby would fall asleep, then I could possibly stand this." When she finally fell asleep I suddenly became aware that High Intensity was still awake and being particularly obnoxious. "Oh Gee," I thought, "Please, please, please make her fall asleep too. Then and only then can I be happy." When she finally passed out I gave a sigh of relief and sank down onto my bed. Only then did the full magnitude of my illness hit me, and I suddenly realized that I was really sick. "Hey, the kids are both asleep and I'm still miserable!" I thought. "The human condition is to be miserable!" The brilliance of my words overwhelmed me, and I suddenly realized that I was a genius. "Hey, I should write that down somewhere!" I thought. Then I too passed out.
And so it began. My horrible two weeks of hell. Mr. IQ was working what felt like 18 hours every day, so for the most part I was alone with the kids. It was awful. Everything has been a bit of a blur, but briefly, here are some highlights (lowlights?) of the last 14 days:
Day Two: More fever. The house is already a pit. Despite my fairly delusional state, I nevertheless take a vague, purely hands-off interest in what my children are up to, and realize something important. I've read that kids of non-functional adults end up being either super responsible, crazy workaholic types or else super irresponsible. I can see these roles being assumed right before my eyes by High Intensity and Baby Fangs after only 24 hours of benign neglect. Old H. I. is bustling around, telling Fangs what to do, bringing me glasses of water and preparing light snacks every fifteen minutes for herself and her sister. The baby just crawls around, filthy, not a care in the world. It makes me sad, and I cry a bit. This is a precursor to:
Day Three: The weepy stage. Everything, and I mean everything, makes me bawl. ("Ball whom?" my buddy Nitroglycol once asked me politely. Ha ha.) The dirt encrusted on Baby Fangs' neck makes me bawl. A bird on our lawn makes me bawl. A glimpse of my copy of Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz makes me bawl. It's all so weird and inexplicable! The fruit fly infestation makes me -- well, actually, it makes me want to kill someone. When Mr. IQ returns from work I am a mess. "I'll take the kids and get them out of your hair," he says, and they go have a picnic. While I appreciate the respite, the fact that he does not stick around to do at least some superficial tidying means that I am left to bake alone in a squalid hovel. I try to get up to clean but find I absolutely can't do it. This makes me bawl.
Day Four: High Intensity gets down the bucket of ice-cream from the freezer. I am too weak and apathetic to stop her. Pow-wow style, she and Baby Fangs sit around it on the floor, eating their way to the bottom. They have a blast. Baby Fangs is wearing a diaper that is swollen with urine to 17 times its regular size. She is surrounded by chaos. I watch them helplessly from the couch. "Hey," I whisper, my voice cracking a bit in self-pity, "aren't... aren't you going to bring me some?"
Day Five: High Intensity stops wearing clothes.
Day Six: I stop wearing clothes too, at least when no-one else is around. I insist on keeping my bra on at all times though. It is a maternity bra, and the flu bug has sapped the necessary energy needed to reattach the flaps that unhook for nursing. This means my naked breasts hang out of it like grotesquely huge hairless rodents gasping for air. This is not as sexy as it may sound, I can assure you.
Day Seven: High Intensity's Last Day of Nursery. I bring her to school not realizing that there is a big celebration planned, and the parents are expected to stay. The other parents and kids are all dressed to the nines. I am wearing Mr. IQ's SLUG shirt again. "I'm sick," I croak at the teacher. "Oh dear," she says, crinkling up her nose in disgust. I look terrible. All the parents stare at me, and give me a wide berth. We watch a video showing everything the kids have done over the school year. There is a nice shot of High Intensity picking her nose and eating it. I am embarrassed, and look over to where she is sitting. She is on the floor with her classmates picking her nose and eating it. She is filthy, and her hair needs a good wash. You are a failure of a parent, I think and then have a coughing fit that lasts for the remainder of the film.
Day Seven: Mr. IQ takes a picture of me at my most wretched. Once again, it pains me to show off like this, but I have to say that no-one, no-one on this planet can take an ugly picture like me; incredibly, however, this particular picture puts all other snapshots to shame and believe me, that's saying something. (I am almost tempted to post it here, but I'm just not that brave. Besides, then all of you would think I look like a monster. I'd have to post a really stunning picture of me alongside of it just to give some perspective. And that would just be dumb.)
Day Eight: Mr. IQ starts getting sick. Or did that happen on Day Nine? Day Ten? I'm not sure. All I know is that he's still sick. Last night, lying on the couch, he started muttering something under his breath. I looked over at him. The room was hot and dirty. Baby Fangs was sitting on his head in a less-than-crisp looking diaper. There were fruit flies buzzing around his mouth. He was naked from the waist up and sweaty.
"What was that you were saying?" I asked.
"I said I just figured something out," he croaked, "about Hell. It really is here on Earth! We're -- we're all in hell!! I'm in Hell!!"
"You betcha, genius!" I said fondly.
It looks like he's getting better. The profound stage means that the fever is breaking.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Still Sick
...can you believe this??...
I'm still sick, and I'm at the point where I can't even joke about it anymore. I'm at the "Coughing So Hard Chunks of Lung are Coming Up" stage of this miserable illness. It's horrible. Mr. IQ is sick now too, he came down with it two days ago. He's in the "Raging Fever" stage, and has spent the last 24 hours lying on the couch, melodramatically taking his temperature every three minutes with the Dora the Explorer children's thermometer we have. Even I was only doing this every four minutes when I was in the fever stage, although I haven't pointed this out to him yet: he's pretty cranky right now. As am I. As am I.
Our children are raising themselves at this point.
And you would not BELIEVE what the house looks like right now.
I think I have some profound insights on all this sickness business, but I can't write about them now, staring at the screen for too long gives me a headache. I just wanted to check in. A lot of people have abandoned their blogs lately, I've noticed, but I suspect this is because they're on fun-filled summer vacations and not because they've succumbed to some nasty virus like me.
*sigh*
Lucky bastards.
I'm still sick, and I'm at the point where I can't even joke about it anymore. I'm at the "Coughing So Hard Chunks of Lung are Coming Up" stage of this miserable illness. It's horrible. Mr. IQ is sick now too, he came down with it two days ago. He's in the "Raging Fever" stage, and has spent the last 24 hours lying on the couch, melodramatically taking his temperature every three minutes with the Dora the Explorer children's thermometer we have. Even I was only doing this every four minutes when I was in the fever stage, although I haven't pointed this out to him yet: he's pretty cranky right now. As am I. As am I.
Our children are raising themselves at this point.
And you would not BELIEVE what the house looks like right now.
I think I have some profound insights on all this sickness business, but I can't write about them now, staring at the screen for too long gives me a headache. I just wanted to check in. A lot of people have abandoned their blogs lately, I've noticed, but I suspect this is because they're on fun-filled summer vacations and not because they've succumbed to some nasty virus like me.
*sigh*
Lucky bastards.
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