Down the rabbit hole

November 26th, 2009

Which is where I’ve been for the last couple of weeks. Way down the rabbit hole. Deep, deep, deep into the rabbit hole.

I’m usually quite happy to be Wylie the Kat. But lately, my body has been conspiring against me. Lately, I’ve been less Wylie and more:

 

Between my silly spine and my late-breaking development of a coldish/fluish thing – I’ve been less than happy and less than healthy.

The good news is that I’m slowly coming back to myself. It’s been a process. I visited some very dark places in my own mind over the course of the last few weeks, but I guess that’s what happens when you’re learning the fine art of patience. I’ve never been especially patient with anything, up to and including my own body, but now – now I’m learning. I’ve had no choice but to accept my limitations, because the consequences of not accepting them has been pain, more stress and more inability to do the things I want and need to do.

It may have taken a while, but hey – I’m learning. And I’m accepting, even if that means that I had to miss work one week because of my spine and the next week because of a cold. Normally, I’d have dragged my sorry body in and not given it any time to heal, because the guilt would be enough to eat me alive. Not anymore. Consequences – I get ‘em.

My peace offering for my extended absence? Food pr0n from my very own kitchen.



This below is the food pr0n equivalent of the money shot. Messy, but tasty.


Truth is, we just love the light that flows in on my cutting board. All photos by the artiste in residence.

Posted in Health | 4 Comments »

Product reviews by my four-year old

November 9th, 2009

Product: Leapster 2’s Ni Hao, Kai-lan

Review: It’s supercool! You get to torture Kai-lan - for money!

Please note that any and all questions arising from this review will be answered with the phrase: I have no earthly idea.

Posted in Odds and Sods, Rant | 2 Comments »

I suppose there’s something vaguely funny* about this

November 4th, 2009

I took Rosebud for her four-year old check-up yesterday. Those of you who recall that her birthday is in August might be wondering why she’s having her four-year appointment a full two months after she actually reached the milestone, and as to that well . . . in my defense, I did make the appointment before her birthday. However, when you’re seeing the doctor for non-emergent purposes, the wait can get long.

Those of you who are opposed to free medicine in the ‘States can go ahead and make the obligatory comments about state-funded medical care. I’ll carry on with the post while you do that, mmmmkay?

So anyway, this very nice doctor - the very same lady who came into the hospital room four years ago to have a looksee at my shiny new person (complete with new person smell!) - is someone with whom I’m certain I would have had an excellent working relationship.

If only Rosebud ever actually required the services of a doctor.

She was weighed and measured (41 inches and 43.4lbs, in case you wondered. This puts her in the 90th percentile for both height and weight. Also, just in case you wondered.), poked and prodded, tested and questioned - throughout all of which she stood calmly, leaning against me for warmth (she’s always made to strip down to her underwear. I left), telling the doctor about everything, including school, Buddy, Juniper, counting and beyond.

The doctor couldn’t seem to stop saying “healthy”. Healthy hair, healthy eyes, healthy blood pressure, feet, fingers, ears . . . we heard the word healthy so many times, I thought I’d accidentally tuned into a Weight Watcher’s meeting down the hall.

And then, her doctor looked at the contents of her extremely slender chart and said, “You know you can bring her to me whenever she needs something, right? Anytime. Really.”

I nodded.

“That’s what I’m here for.”

I nodded again, more vehemently this time. I wouldn’t want her thinking we were seeing some other doctor behind her back.

She took another, last look at Rosebud’s chart and said, “She just doesn’t get sick, does she?”

No doc - she really doesn’t. And I’m very glad of this fact, though I sometimes wonder when we’re going to catch up on the backlog of childhood ailments. And I know my doctor is grateful, too. I’m certain that the slightly mournful note in her tone when she made the observation was entirely incidental.

* Funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha. And only because I really wanted to use the word “ironic”, but can’t because SOME people are everso up in arms about the appropriate usage of the word, rather than allowing more liberal interpretations - which this would have been. This makes me very cranky, because it would’ve been the best-suited (loosely interpreted) word for this header and I’m more than a little grumpy at the language restricting ruleniks of the world.

Ahem.

As you were.

Posted in Health, Rosebud | 2 Comments »

Better living through pharmaceuticals - reprise.

November 3rd, 2009

In the winter of 2007, I started taking anti-anxiety medication. After being on it for about six weeks, I wrote a post about it. This is an excerpt:

I’ve now realized that what I previously thought of as “managing”, was really cripplingly difficult and often left me with giant holes in my self-esteem.

Things would eat away at me for decades. Literally decades. I don’t think there’s an awkward incident in my entire life that I can’t catalogue for you.

And now? Well, I’m still me. I still worry. I still fret over things that I can’t control.

But the huge, massive, gargantuan, insane worries that I could never put down for a rest, no matter how much I wanted to - those are gone.

I still have bad days. But then I can get up off the couch and carry on with my evening.

Now,  I play more with the Rosebud. I worry less about every single thing she does or puts in her mouth. I can relax and laugh a bit.

So yeah - basically, what the hell was I waiting for all this time?


In July of this year, I went off the meds. I did so because I wanted to assess my mental state. I was operating with the theory that the bulk of my heightened anxiety was post-partum related.

Turns out, it was less post-partum and more parenthood. Or aging. Or something.

Bottom line is this: I quit taking the meds and now, I’m going back on them. I am, I realized, a better parent and a happier person when I don’t have the anxiety looming over me.

Even though I’m madly in love with my family, have a job where I’m valued, a home that I love and friends who care for me - I find that I can’t appreciate any of it when I’m constantly in a state of fear: Did I just say something horribly wrong? Was that chest pain a sign of a looming heart attack? What kind of asshole (read: me) shows up 15 minutes late to a meeting?

These thoughts? They’re fairly normal. But the difference between normal and me is that I think these thoughts for days and days and days after I may or may not have said the wrong thing, had a chest pain or missed a meeting. It doesn’t quit. I don’t quit.

As T-dot said so aptly “It seems like you’re doing okay, but you seem really tired from trying to keep it all together.”

She’s right. I’m tired. Time to avail myself, once again, of the miracles of modern medicine.

See you on the other side.

Posted in Being a girl, Getting older, Happiness, Health | 4 Comments »

Reclaiming my humanity

November 2nd, 2009

Well, after magically waking up on Saturday morning in very little pain (from my back), and following that with both dancing and wearing of high heels, resulting in yet more MINIMAL PAIN, I am feeling most optimistic and generally perkier than I was last week.

This is good, because I could’ve brought rain to the desert with the giant cloud I was carting around.

I’m not going to start doing cartwheels or seeing if I can pretzel myself into interesting new shapes - I’m not crazy (much). I’ve been warned that the pain can be intermittent, but if that was an intermission, it couldn’t have come at a better time. My very own Halloween miracle.

Why was this timing so immensely awesome?

T-dot and her freshly minted husband got married on Saturday. It was an absolutely stunning event, and I think it was most definitely worth the effort T-dot put into it over the course of the last year. Her design sense, love for Halloween, and general happiness showed in every fine detail.

Wonderful.

Now, the reason I was in such need of a fully functioning spine? I had the daunting* task of giving the reading at the ceremony. Going up to speak during a person’s one and only special day creates an entirely different level of pressure.

What if I trip on the way up? What if I deliver the reading with so many verbal typos that it becomes virtually incomprehensible? What if I pass out? What if I deliver the whole thing in a nerve-wracked wisp of a voice? What if I just suck? I WILL RUIN THEIR WEDDING WITH MY FAIL!!!!

Suffice to say, I was seriously, deeply and incredibly happy to have gotten through the whole thing with a minimum of disaster, and may have enjoyed more than my fair share of wine in celebration of this fact. I am equally grateful that my dear friends asked me to perform this task, and that they didn’t ask me to read from the Bible (which would’ve resulted in Fire and Brimstone, if I so much as cracked open the tome).

It was a good time, with good people.

As my lovely (and utterly unnecessary) thank-you gift says: A friend is someone who knows everything about you, and loves you anyway.

Too true. I’m grateful for my friends.

*When I say daunting, please read this as TERRIFYING.

Posted in Being a girl, Happiness | No Comments »

Lost: One sense of humour.

October 29th, 2009

Dear body,

Okay, I get it. We’re not as young as we once were. Pregnancy took its toll, aging is an ugly business, breasts are heavy . . .  blah, blah, blah.

All that said, I have a message that I wish to deliver: Fuck you and the spine you rode in on.

Sincerely,

Your tenant

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Posted in Health | 1 Comment »

Battle of the bulges.

October 27th, 2009

No exclamation points today. No all caps moments. No gallow’s humour.

Found out yesterday that I have a bulging disc in my back/sciatica.

It hurts.

It hurts less than it did, because I’m on pain pills in a wonderful array of colours and a tremendous variety of side-effects.

So that’s . . . three different hernias in my innards in the last three years.

I feel like a tube of toothpaste, only I don’t know who squeezed me.

Sigh.

Posted in Health | 1 Comment »

Oh dear, sweet, shrieking neurosis.

October 23rd, 2009

As I mentioned in a previous post, I finally became enough of an adult to seek out a family doctor for Buddy and I. Recently, we went for our annual check ups. I say annual and try very hard not to laugh, because it’s been a lot more like DECADES since I’d been to a doctor for just a check-up.  It’s just one of those things I’ve let slide for a very long time. I’m not proud, but it is what it is, and you should really stop tutting me from over there because I can hear you from over here, okay?

I digress. Anyway, according to my doctor, things are generally good by me. I haven’t done all the ominous bloodwork as yet, but all the other tests checked out just fine.

Except one.

Scene: There I am, laying around his office with my shirt pulled up and my pants unbuttoned, so he can poke around my belly area. Fingers rummage around in my vital organs (through my skin, always a treat) and he says “cough”. So, I cough. He rummages around a bit more and then asks me to cough again.

I oblige.

Then (and I swear, I’m not making this up), he STUCK HIS FINGER IN MY BELLY BUTTON.

Yes, yes he did. And if you’d been in his waiting room, or even in that neighbourhood, you’d have heard my howl of protest. Not because I like being mean to my doctor, or howling randomly in doctor’s offices, but guys - he put his finger. In my belly button.

Just as I was recovering from this gross violation of my personal space and general mental health, he went in for the kill.

“Oh, it looks like you have an umbilical hernia. You’ll need to discuss it with a surgeon.”

(Please find the most vivid memory you have of a scream of horror, and place it here.)

If I haven’t already established this fact in the post, let me be clear. I hate, loathe, detest, abhor, despise and fear anything coming into contact with my belly button. I always have. I likely always will. It’s not even funny, or cute, or ticklish. It is HORRIFYING IN THE EXTREME to have anyone touch my button.

In short, the fates could NOT have found a more neat and tidy way to give me the single largest case of the wiggins EVER IN MY LIFE, even if they tried. Since yesterday, I’ve been working very hard to convince myself that keeping a hand on my stomach at all times will not actually prevent my belly button from bulging when I cough. And if I ever happened to feel it bulge, I might actually lose what remains of my rational mind when it comes to this subject.

So now I have to spend the next several months with my belly button neurosis at high alert, until the surgeon can meet with me and I can tell him that I CANNOT LIVE WITH A BULGY BELLY BUTTON. Further, that he has to FIX. MY BELLY BUTTON. Even if that means using KNIVES AND NEEDLES.

P.S. DO YOU SEE THE UPPER CASE LETTERS? IMAGINE THAT EVERY TIME I USE ALL UPPERCASE, IT IS BECAUSE I AM FFFFRRREAKING OUT, OKAY? BECAUSE I AM. REALLY.

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Posted in Being a girl, Getting older, Health | 2 Comments »

It ain’t exactly a glass slipper . . .

October 22nd, 2009

I wandered over to my local mall (a tiny mini-mall that somehow perseveres in this era of big box stores and mega marts,  owing in part to having the best movie theater in the city) last night on a mission.

The mission:  Shoes that don’t exacerbate our aches and pains.

I did this because I have one knee that has tendons sliding over it with every step I take (which results in a cracking sensation and THX sound effects), a pelvis that doesn’t seem to want to get better any time soon (though my chiropractor didn’t suggest that I stop with the nookie*, thusly sparing Buddy the inconvenience of having to picket the chiropractic office) and ankles that cannot be relied upon to walk a straight line.

All of this has been making my 4km walk home from work a leedle less than comfortable.

So I got these:

Lovely, aren’t they? I could’ve had any pair of white mesh-top runners with blue striping in the store (and there were hundreds. Boo to you if red or green were more your colour preferences, or if you’d like a nice non-white runner), and these are the ones I chose.

They were not inexpensive. Therefore, I have some pretty high expectations for these runners.  I left them in the kitchen overnight and they didn’t cook breakfast  or take out the trash or fix our dishwasher, so they’d better perform miracles on my legs as I walk home today.

*Okay, fine.  It has nothing to do with nookie. My pelvic joints are messed up  because I have a desk job and sitting as much as we do was never part of our genetic plan.

Posted in Getting older, Health | 4 Comments »

Anatomy with a four-year old

October 21st, 2009

Rosebud: Mama, I’m gonna blow you a kiss.

Me: Okay.

Rosebud: But you have to swallow it.

Me: Swallow it?

Rosebud: Yes, that’s how it gets in your stomach and then to your heart.

Posted in Odds and Sods, Rosebud | 1 Comment »

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