DUOFILIA

Ok, so I’m not going to just start blogging again for the first time in eight months and not mention the reason why I took the time off. I just am not going to do it today. All I want to do today is write.

I currently have a stomach bug and I was laying in bed at 0300, with some radical heartburn, like I’ve never had in my life, and I wrote this blog entry in my head. So after an eight months absence I come back with a title of “Head Sandwich.” What can I say.

All of us possess genes we recieved from our parents. Brown hair, short, predisposed to back pain and sci fi. My parents, actually my father specifically, gave my sister Mia and I two bizarre genes: the dominant must-sleep-with-fan gene and the more wily head-sandwich gene.

The first gene was expressed early on. My sister and I slept in the same room growing up and for as long as I can remember we had a fan on at night. We didn’t have air conditioning, so that was a factor, but we ran it 365. It’s the white noise we require, although the air movement is a plus. Since childhood I’ve personally kept the fan industry in business in the Great Northwest. Well, me plus Mia and Dad.

I’ve passed this gene on to my daughters, who at six also sleep with a fan. Turn a fan on any time of day and we feel strangely sleepy. Must nap. We’re Pavlov’s people.

The second gene remained unexpressed for at about 32 years. As a child I recall tiptoeing through my parents room where Dad was napping. The fan was on high and you couldn’t actually see any of him, except occasionally his chin and nostrils. The covers were pulled up high, no matter what time of year, and his head was sandwiched between two pillows. My sister slept the exact same way. I never knew this was unusual until a friend of mine once saw Dad napping and had an incredulous look on her face.

I grew up, went to college, got a job, got married. And never once did I have the urge to put a pillow on my head. Then I became pregnant with my twins. I remember laying in bed, wide awake despite the fan and thinking, “it sure would be nice to have a pillow on top of my head.”

Ack! No! It cannot be! I refused to allow the expression of the head-sandwich gene. Head sandwich behavior was for nerds. Ok, I’m a geek and I have some nerdy qualities, but if I went the head sandwich route who knows what would pop up next! I’d probably start arranging rug fringe, taping my glasses, and pulling my pants high over my umbilicus.

Months went by and every time I lay down I felt the urge. It was incredibly powerful. Put pillow on head, put pillow on head, put pillow on head. By the last couple months of pregnancy I was already using five pillows: one under my head, one under the giant belly, one tucked in my back, one between my knees and one at my feet. One more pillow and I would appear as a moderately-sized cumulus. I refused.

After the twins were born our lives changed forever and the first year was just a struggle to remain sane and awake. The didn’t sleep through the night until about eight months. I pumped breastmilk for a year, which is actually a type of torture in some countries. Sometime within that year I gave in. I had the rare opportunity to take a nap during the day and as I lay down I felt the now-familiar urge to put pillow on head. I grabbed an extra pillow. And I put it on my head.

Ohhh! The glory of it! The soothing pleasantness! Sounds were muffled, all I could hear was the fan. Light was shut out. My head was warm. All you could see of me was my nostrils. As the gene became fully expressed I fell into grateful oblivion.

I’ve slept with a pillow over my head ever since.

Don’t tell anyone.

 There’s a lot of people who fly a lot. Every week and sometimes every day of the week. I’m not one of them. Generally, I fly once a year on business. Occasionally twice. This year, I’ve flown more in the past three months than I have in the past few years. I’m getting to know certain airports way too well, specifically Portland, Phoenix and San Francisco — but there have been others.

I enjoy the people watching. In these days of the blue tooth, people walk around the airport, holding conversations with the voices in their heads. This is a handy development for those who hear voices in their heads and don’t own blue teeth or cell phones at all. These people can purchase a fake over-the-ear receiver and talk to their voices all day and no one cares. Although content of conversation does tend to tip one off.

Years ago, I was exiting the subway beneath the Twin Towers (yes, those Twin Towers) and a man behind me kept saying, in his New York accent, “gotta find my cah, gotta find my cah, gotta find my cah.” This would not have sounded more normal if he had a blue tooth, although the only mobile phones back then were the size of a shoe box. Perhaps he didn’t want to forget where his car was parked, and I’ve certainly done that, but my chant is usually along the lines of, “Blue Lot Row 3, Blue Lot Row 3, Blue Lot Row 3.”

Much has been said about the size of airline seats. In April when I flew to Austin, TX, each connecting flight was smaller. I think this is part of a greater plan, to gradually force the human body into a size and shape most efficient for eventually packing us into crates. The flight between Austin and Phoenix was the worst. It was an Air Bus 320 Shrimp, or something, and there are only four seats across from window to window, in about an 8 foot space, including aisle. Passengers over 5’11″ had to stoop to get down the aisle.

I sat in my window seat and a tall and wide man sat next to me and promptly fell asleep. Feeling cramped and claustrophobic, I reached up to open the air vent and when my arm jerked to a stop at two inches from the vent, I realized that the large guy was sitting on my suit tail. I pulled and pulled, to no avail. Fortunately, I was barely able to reach the vent with my opposite hand.

To make matters extra horrible, the seats in that airplane were designed by the Humpback of Notre Dame or someone similar. There is zero lumbar support; actually, the seats are very concave, made worse that someone brilliant decided to add head rests that force the chin to the chest. So basically, it’s the fetal position. Maybe it was designed that way on purpose, so as to put one in the ideal position for weeping. So I spent the two hour flight hunched over my tray table, overheated, and stuck under a large businessman.

My last flight was two days ago and I’m glad to say that my next known flight isn’t for three months. By then I should be able to unfurl.

We took the cats to the vet today.

Before all that, however, I worked all day in my home office, and before that, the dishwasher repairman came by to fix the, well, you know.

I’ve never met him before, he’s a friend of David’s coworker. Seemed quite nice. Got in, found the problem. Fixed it. Summerlyn, who must observe all things sat on the floor near him and watched every flick of the screwdriver. Like a good mommy, I stayed close by. After a while, I had to cross the kitchen. I nearly dropped dead doing so, however. The poor man was, uh, flatulent. Very, very flatulent. I retreated back to the family room quickly, where I could fold clothes and keep an eye on my children. I could not understand for the life of me how Summerlyn could continue to sit there. Man, scientists will go through a lot in the name of research, but, word fail me here. I then began to really worry that the girls would announce the stench and demand to know its source.

I could just hear them, “Mama! Whoa! Something stinks BAD. Who tooted?”

They would, too, being of the age of not grasping subtlety, diplomacy, nor privacy. They DID NOT say a word, which really floored me. The repair man then requesting his payment, requiring that I should step back into what was surely a hazardous material leak zone. I tried my best to nod politely through his spiel of what was wrong and how he had righted it. I tried my best not to let him detect that I was trying to beat the world’s longest held breath. He was very nice and maybe he no longer detected the stench, or perhaps it had burned a hole in his senses, and I felt bad for him, but it was delightful to have him go his way, house to house on his repairman mission, lighting little fires along the way.

So. After my work day, we stuffed the cats into a carrier and the whole family stuffed into the family sedan and wound through the rolling country hills to the country vet. Toby is black, fat, and 13. Sera is white and nearly 14. They did not appreciate the lovely vistas surrounding us. Sera yowled occasionally and Toby threw up. And then pooped. Soon, the forested hills and green valleys didn’t look as sweet to any of us anymore.

The good news was that our sweet old Sera is in perfect health. The vet informed us that Toby, the beached whale, on the other hand, is fat. This news was not stunning to us. He also has a rash, fleas, and fur mites. Poor Toby. Then he got a thermometer stuck in his sphincter, to add insult. I bet he was thinking that he’d done a preemptive poop and puke in the car and should have saved it for the vet.

We stopped by Burgerville’s on the way home (the girls call it Burger Bill’s) and got garden burgers and fries. David was in the back seat with the girls and the lady at the drive-through window peaked and thought there were three children in the back and handed me three balloons. She must have the thought the kid with the beard has a glandular problem.

The cats are back home, and are acting like nothing happened. The dishwasher is fixed and the air is odor free. It’s a charmed life I lead.

I am cleaning out my computer files tonight (I do this regularly once a decade) and found the following short journal of my eye surgery two years ago. Here it is, typos, weird formatting and all:

Day 1
March 30, 2005

I decided to write a journal of my leave of absence. I won’t be able to write for several days starting tomorrow, obviously (eye surgery). The idea is that if I am sitting and writing, I’m resting. Sounds lovely, but we’ll see.
Today I am absurdly exhausted from working three days in a row. I have a ton of laundry to do. Fortunately David has totally voluntarily done 2-3 loads. I didn’t know he knew what those machines were in the laundry room. I’m very grateful, please don’t stop now! Of course I have all those loads to fold, now.

I love to hear my girls’ tiny voices in their conversations and singing. Sometimes their songs are one I know, sometimes I don’t. They make up songs, or hear others from friends or from church. They sing happily while they do their little activities of daily living (ADL). Today I heard them singing “Love Your Mother and Your Father” which is a song I don’t know, but I’ve heard them sing it before. Of course, it sounds more like tiny mice loudly singing “Love your Mud-der and your Fah-der!” And what, you may be asking, was the ADL they were doing while they were singing that today? Why, it was Application of Daddy’s Lip Balm Upon the Cat.

Which brings me to a dilemma. Do I tell my husband about his lip balm, or now that we’ve removed the wad of cat hair, shall I leave him blissfully unaware?

I periodically bring home educational videos from the library. They usually stimulate lots of playtime activities, which from my point of view do not always turn out to be very brilliant ideas. Although my children may disagree. One of the latest was a video on how to build a dam. An excellent presentation, actually, including how they build the Hoover Dam in Arizona/Nevada, the Itaipu and Eta dams in Brazil, and the Saad el Aali dam on the Nile.

The girls are fascinated by this video and I am delighted, on one hand, to watch them drawing their own diagrams of the cross-sections of dams, meticulously including details such as sloped sides for stability, waterproof cores of clay and grout curtains down to the bedrock. They draw lines indicating how pressure from the water is dispersed as it hits the sloped sides.

On the other hand, they then proceed to the bathroom where they make all sorts of dams, thankfully in the sink. One often finds large containers of water perched perilously close to the edge of the counter. Liquid soap is used as some sort of binding or lubricating agent. Many big messes are cleaned up and big sighs come from Mama. It will be a while before I get that dam video again.

Other than that, they’ve been very good little 3 ¾ year old’s today. Today they did their gymnastics in the living room (couch and floor). They don’t call it gymnastics, though. They call it “vaulting” and today told me “we are doing our compulsories.” Then they took a blanket, called it a lion and proceeded to shoot it with a tranquilizer and fit it with a radio collar. All this before lunch.

The Spirit
In my devotions today I read in Patriarch’s and Prophets, by E.G. White that Joseph took his trials with faith and grace, and although he didn’t know why he underwent such harsh trials, his faith in God led him through them without asking “why me?” This is so applicable to my current situation, although I can hardly compare my situation with what Joseph had to endure. Yet everything has a purpose. Joseph’s life in both Potipher’s house and in prison fit him to be the ruler of Egypt, second only to the Pharoah. While I’ll never be the ruler of a country (yes, you can all breathe a sigh of relief) or even my household (that title goes to the cat), I believe my hardships will help make me into a better person, fit for whatever purpose He has planned. . The very event of a trial means that God sees something valuable in me, something worth refining. As an inspired person once wrote, God doesn’t prune brambles. It is my job to actually learn from experience, recognize my faults, and make changes.
 

March 31 Surgery Day
(as written several days later)

David came home from work at noon to take me to the clinic. The girls came with us. The OR has a large window in the front of it where family members and sadistic friends can come and watch people get their eyes peeled on a monitor that hangs over the surgeon’s head (but is presumably not part of the surgeon’s head). This surgery was worse than the first for several reasons. When I had my right eye done I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. This time I did. I requested two valium for pre-medication instead of one this time and that turned out to be a wise decision. I pride myself (perhaps too much at times) on being rationale, calm and collected. As I sat on the edge of the operating table this time, I was extremely anxious. They put numbing drops in and then the surgeon takes a pen and makes mysterious marks directly on my eyeball. Then I lay down on the table and they masked off my right eye and taped the sterile dressing around the left. Then they applied the retractors to force my eyelids to stay open. I stared at an extremely bright light. Knowing what was in store for me, I wanted to run (Breaking News!! We focus our SkyCamera 8 on what appears to be a one-eyed woman running down the freeway in a surgical bonnet and shoe covers…)

They applied a chemical to dissolve the top layers of my cornea. Then he started scraping the remaining cells away, using a tool that reminds one of a miniature cheese cutter, you know, the one with the wire? At least from my blurry one-eyed perspective. He had to do a lot more scraping this time because I have so much scar tissue from my RK (radial keratotomy) I had about 12 years ago. Scrape, scrape, scrape. Like taking mold off cheese (ooh, now there’s a visual – I wish I could shut off the brain sometimes). Then they applied more chemical, lasered me up, flushed with copious amounts of battery acid (I mean saline) and that was that.

Meanwhile, David and my 3 y/o daughters are watching on the other side of the window. Well, David is. The girls have seen this before with my other eye and are no longer impressed. There is a fountain in the room with them and they are more interested in sticking their hands in it than watching their mama’s eye peeled. David was actually not paying strict attention either. He was listening to the surgical tech whose wife is going to have twins soon. The tech was discussing how he wasn’t too concerned about it because his wife does most of the “inside work” and “I do the outside work.” Knowing David, he wanted desperately to add his opinion to the conversation. David, as you may know, is capable of taking twin infants to Costco by himself and not cry. It’s ok, honey, you and I both know – YOU the man.

Thanks to the valium I don’t remember much of the remainder of the day. I remember being at home, going into the bathroom and throwing up, but that’s about it. I wish the next two days were as blissful.

Next Two Days
(aka The Wailing Days)

Naturally they wanted to see me the very next morning, bright and early. The pain of having no epithelium on one’s cornea is severe so it is a balancing act between taking enough narcotic pain medication to ease the pain but not so much you vomit. I didn’t exactly succeed. I made it through the post-op appointment (“looking good!”) but afterward I cried and tried not to throw up on the way home. Then I cried some more. David felt bad and I felt bad for him. And I cried some more.

After PRK one has to apply 50 million eye drops all day long every day. I am only allowed to use the tetracaine (numbing drops) only six times a day, which is tragic. Fortunately I can use them before using the other drops because they feel like hydrochloric acid otherwise.

I’m not going to go on and on about those two days. Awful, sums it up.

Day Three: Post-op

Eye only moderately painful now. I can use less narcotics and am therefore less nauseated. Having terrible headaches though.

I have made an anthropological observation. If you see someone with a callous over one ear you may assume he (or she) is a pirate. That’s where the strap of the eye patch chafes. While pirates probably didn’t wear their eye patches while they slept, I can attest that if they did it may account for their testy natures.

David, like all good daddies, plays rough and tumble with the girls. Today the girls came into my room and got on the bed to greet me, since David had just taken them to Costco. David came in, pretending to be a bear. The girls did their joyful screaming and then I heard one say to the other “let’s get things to bam him!” David must have heard this, too, because as soon as they ran out of the room he hid on the floor next to the bed with the covers over him. They came running back, each wielding a child-size broom. Not born yesterday, they immediately recognized the lump on the floor as the Daddy-Bear. They took a wide stance and swung their brooms. I had a vision of what Tiger Woods must have looked like when he made his first 200 yard drive at age five. BAM! David yelped a very realistic yelp and perhaps I should have stopped them sooner but for the first time in days, perhaps weeks, I was laughing hard. I was laughing too hard to speak, so I couldn’t stop them in time. Yeah, that’s it. David good naturedly lived through the experience and doesn’t seem to have any permanent injuries.

Ok, so the stupid flu turned into stupider bronchitis and then really dumb left lower lobe pnemonia, as seen as the fuzzy stuff in right side of the this xray (although it is not my own xray). That took a long time to get over and I’m not yet fully recuperated from it, but much, much better.

Nearly two weeks ago, my sister Mia flew down to San Francisco to see the surgeon who did her neck surgery. This time they opened her up through the abdomen and removed disks and two days later they flipped her over with a large spatula (kidding!) and made a large incision on her back and inserted some rods and screws.

Six days ago I flew to SF to join her. I’ve only been in a smaller plane once before, and I appreciate the small cattle cars even less than I do the larger ones. I don’t mind flying, but the seats of the small commuter plane where even bittier than a 737, which is saying something. Ironically, one of my dreams is to become a pilot someday, but I’d feel so much better if I’m in control (or at least I think I am) than when I’m stuck in the back between Bob who smoked 5 cigarettes and ate a Honkin’ Huge burrito just before boarding and Betty the World’s Champion in High Speed Chatter. (more…)