What would happen if they actually called it “lesser emergencies”?

When I started blogging, I decided I didn’t want my blog to be a place for ranting about all the tiny dramas of a day. I didn’t want to send all my unnecessary negative energy out into cyberspace where it would multiply like a gremlin in Iowa. After all, this is why God created sisters and best friends. These people can listen to me whine, and I can save this blog for more thoughtful reflection.

So you can blame HLS for this post. I think her cell phone battery is dead.  She’s not picking up.

Last night, while 5 was playing T-Ball, 6 had a playground accident that resulted in a sizable rip on the inside of his lip. I was about to declare this a wound for icing and a peroxide wash, when we lifted it up and, seeing the tear, all the moms gasped “ooh, I’d take him in.”

After a stop at the pediatrician, whom I sort of expected to prescribe ice and a peroxide wash (but they pulled it up and gasped “ooh, you should probably take him to emergency for sutures”) we headed to the closest ER … in North Minneapolis.

Unless you want to leave your car in a no parking zone, you have to park about a mile from the ER. As this didn’t seem like the kind of injury that justifies law-breaking, we parked in general parking. We were quite a sight really, me wrestling an overtired Kong into the hospital while 6 trailed a few steps behind clutching a bloody ice pack to his face.

When we got to ER, there was no one else there, but, still, we received a little beeper. It was one of those light-up, vibrating devices they give you when you’re waiting for a seat at TGIFridays. We took a seat in the waiting room. I wrestled with Kong, while 6 sat quietly and clutched a bloody ice pack to his face.

About 20 minutes later, our beeper beeped. We were checked in by a nice woman who gave us some papers and told us she was sending us to “Fast Track.”

I wrestled Kong into the elevator, and 6 followed with a bloody ice pack clutched to his face. “You can just have a seat,” said the nice woman behind the desk at Fast Track. 10 minutes later, she checked us in again and took us to a room where we were seen by a nurse. The nurse pulled back the lip and said “ooh, yeah, we’ll need to suture that. Wait here and the doctor will be in soon.”

We turned on the TV, and I wrestled Kong off of various pieces of medical equipment, while 6 clutched the bloody ice pack to his face.

A few minutes later the ER doc arrived. She looked at the lip. She asked some questions. She did not stitch.

She did, however, prescribe ice and a peroxide wash.

Posted in Ranting and Whining | |

Here’s a riddle for you.

I’ve noticed some bloggers like to post trivia questions, puzzles, tricky math problems and the like. Math has never been my best subject, but here’s my offering to the genre.

Take a [relatively] normal suburban family of five.

Subtract dad (send him, oh, say, on a corporate environmental awareness building exercise to the northern recesses of Canada.)

Next, subtract his cell phone and Blackberry service

Multiply that by nine days.

Immediately before he leaves put mom in a 6.2 mile practice run for “The Race” … with a chest cold … in the rain.

Subtract mom’s ability to move her legs … and breathe.

To the tornado toddler add a case of strep throat, subtract 48 hours worth of sleep and ramp up the “no-momma-I-no-gonnas” by an exponential power of he’s two.

Send in one grandma on loan from her home afar. Add an arthritic flare up in her back and subtract her ability to extend her arms above shoulder height.

Take the princess preschooler and add a fever, stuffy nose, upper respiratory problems, a sore throat and multiply by several gallons of whiny. (But not, apparently, the streptococcus bacteria. Just for fun, be sure to give her the rapid strep test anyway so that you can add in a few choruses of “you said they wouldn’t stick that thing in my throat”).

Subtract more sleep.

Add one online work project (due Friday).

Subtract an Internet connection (is it road construction? is it weather? is it just me? They don’t know).

Multiply by THREE DAYS.

Measure in a six year old’s birthday and add a new remote control robot from the aforementioned grandma. Give the robot the ability to do all kinds of things, including burp loudly.

Now, subtract the instructions. (But don’t worry, even though the six year old won’t be able to do much with it, he’ll remember how to make it burp. Loudly.)

Finally, add 6 days of straight, non-stop rain and subtract the ability to go outside.

So what do you get? Is it:
a) Pity. Party of One.
b) The explanation for my bloggy drought
c) Justification for the huge piece of chocolate cake I’m about to eat
OR
d) All of the above.

Posted in Ranting and Whining | |

Every Pro Has a Con.

My silence of late should not be interpreted as lost interest in blogging or, quite assuredly, lack of material about which I’d like to pontificate. My failure to post here is not even due to my lack of organizational skills.  Quite the contrary, in fact.  Recently, I got organized; and when I did, I lost time.

After the tragedy of Crabby Patty the VIK, I went in search of a good system with which I could organize my life: my calendar, my husband’s calendar, the kids’ calendars, the various to-do list items I have for work projects, home projects, etc.  I discovered Google’s Personalized Homepage. 

I set up separate, but linked, Google Calendars for my events, my husband’s events, and the kids’ activities, and I put the calendar on the homepage. I placed links to all my favorite blogs.   Finally, I popped on a Google Gadget To-Do List.  I put all the tasks I’ve been long failing to accomplish on the list, and I congratulated myself on my new foolproof system of life structure.  

With this new orderly method of planning - with my calendar, my links and my list of tasks now accessible from any computer - I was certain my life would be linear, logical and organized.  “Now,” I thought, “I can really start getting things done.”

It’s been a couple weeks, and I have discovered some unfortunate glitches in the system.  I’m not sure whether I can blame Google, but I’m hoping I can find a solution to the system errors. 

For example, “post on my blog”, (much like all the tasks I do primarily for myself and thus instinctually label with Google’s ‘low priority’ tag), seems to sink quickly to the bottom of my new Google Gadget List.  It gets continually stomped down as those irritatingly snooty ‘high’ and ‘medium’ priority administrative tasks elbow their way to the top.  Just when I can ceremoniously delete the “make dentist appointment” item that has needed attention for at least two or more dental seasons, I have to add a somewhat urgent “take limping dog to vet.”  Just when I can cross off “grade papers,” I have to add “return several student inquiries about extra credit.” 

Sometimes blogs I really like to read just stop updating or disappear altogether, and it’s rather unsettling.   When I’ve been tuning in to read a blog, I’m prone to worry.  Where’s Mombat - is she ok, did something happen, did she give up blogging or go on to blog somewhere else?  Did the News Moms get sent away to cover a story and never return? Were the Urban Mommies abducted due to rising crime rates in their big cities?  “Where have all these great blogging mothers gone?” I wondered.

Now I have a potential theory: their lives, lives they describe with labels like ”working mothers in the big city” simply come with so many to-do list items that they have to turn several pages to even find “post on my blog.”  

Posted in Ranting and Whining | |

Sabotage by Omission

It’s Hunting Season. Around these parts, hunting is a tradition passed from generation to generation in which apparently normal working men assemble into groups, wear coordinating orange and green outfits and pay homage to the days when men brought home the gamey-tasting-deer-bacon and women … piled it up in the deep freezer.Every year in November, my husband, as the provider of food, ventures forth into the wild to hunt and gather while I stay back and mind the home. This year his travels have carried him to a place where the temperature dips so low he has to wear special, insulated covers over his winter boots. He doesn’t get cell phone or Blackberry service, and he is rendered blissfully unavailable to the routine troubles of both work and home for several days. Usually his group returns victorious, carting with them enough venison to feed a small country (or at least to fill the freezer until we guiltily throw it away next fall to clear out room for more).

While the idea of spending the whole day in a deer stand in subzero temperatures with nothing but my Hand Warmers and Boot Blankets to keep me company as I wait in stealth to bring an untimely end to the lives of Bambi’s parents doesn’t really appeal to me personally, I do appreciate the draws: the tradition, the relaxation, the natural quiet, and even the challenge of sport. So I support the hobby – entirely – for my husband and all those who partake.At least I did. Until it occurred to me that this is a tradition that might get passed down to my children. In which case the only vision I can conjure is my babies wandering lost in the wilderness with weapons. There may be several years of peace before the option presents, but already the idea causes me panic.I blame the panic for my act of early sabotage. I had no intention of planting seeds of resistance, at least not yet. It just sort of happened.

We were just driving along, and I heard a little voice pipe up thoughtfully from the back of the minivan.
“When I grow up, I don’t think I want to go hunting with Daddy,” he mused, and my heart leapt with happiness.
Can it really be as easy as that? I thought, One down, two to go. I knew I had to choose my response carefully - too much anti-hunting enthusiasm would be noted and repeated.“Well, that’s ok, honey, you don’t have to hunt if you don’t want to. It’s your choice,” I said. (No one can argue free choice.) He thought a moment, then continued, “Yeah mom, you know, I just don’t want to kill any reindeer. Reindeer are my favorite animal. And Santa needs them.”I thought about correcting the mistake. I thought about explaining that Daddy wasn’t out plotting to assassinate Dasher and Dancer (certainly not this close to Christmas). But I couldn’t. A mother will do whatever it takes to protect her young.

“Yeah, I suppose that would be kind of sad,” I replied.

Posted in Ranting and Whining | |