Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

You never forget your first.

We cooked our first turkey this year.

Since we started spending Thanksgiving as a team, we've eaten out or we've made just a little turkey breast (sometimes wrapped in bacon). This year we decided to conquer a full bird, a 10 pound bird, but still.

When I say "We" I mean Logan made our first turkey. I can't seem to stomach preparing a full bird.

I once, with friends, decided to conquer my fear by roasting a chicken together one night. I went in, armed with rubber gloves, and an hour later Logan found me hiding under the island whimpering softly.

Not a fan. Logan though, he's a trooper.

We spent our Thanksgiving cooking all day long, together. I worried this kitchen would be too small to cook together. That it wouldn't be as fun as it was in the old house. But it was fine, even with less space.

We took breaks and played board games with the kids. When we weren't playing with them, they...GASP...got along.

At one point Logan asked, "What are your pet peeves about me?" And Holy Shit you guys. I couldn't come up with a single thing.

It was a warm, cozy, content day in our little house.

Many years ago when I decided it wasn't wise to keep the relationship going with my in laws, I worried about holidays. I still wish my kids had other kids to hang out with for these days. But all those years ago I didn't know we'd have a day like Thursday.

I kind of always thought I wanted, needed, busy frantic holidays with lots and lots of people. But this year I realized our life is full of friends and friends who are like family. Spending the day playing games with the kids and cooking with Logan in our pajamas was the perfect place for us to be.

I finally feel like we have our own traditions we're handing down to our babies.

Thankful.

Pretty thankful for these baby faces, with mustaches that make them just a little more mature.

Also a talented husband who can make Bar Mitzvah invites for a friend's kid and get us back a photoshoot with Joe Vaughn. (Granted it helps if the Bar Mitzvah invite is for a kid who's step-dad is Joe Vaughn.)

Max chose to wear that fedora and the blazer. He already has more fashion chutzpa than his mother.

Maddie is wearing a hair tie around her wrist because I forced her to wear her hair down. And I forced her to let me blow it out. The minute this torture (you can see from her face the torture she endured) was over she threw that hair back in a pony tail. 

We did this shoot on Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. Our kids don't usually like having their pictures taken but something about that night made them relax and have fun with the process. Also Logan was there and he helps make things fun.

After the pictures we made pizzas and talked about sleep away camp and ate salad and talked about business plans and played hide and go seek.

Maybe the adults should have played less hide and seek and listened to more business plans.

Still not getting the answer I want

My doctor's office is insanely busy. I pulled in yesterday and it looked like a mall parking lot, with cars following people to their cars so they could have their spot. The waiting room is insane, the phones are ringing off the hook and I'm standing there thinking, 'I just want to know I don't have cancer and while we're at it can we get rid of this cough?'

If you want to have a health scare, I'm going to suggest you don't do it in the midst of a flu epidemic.

On Friday I had a skin test for tuberculosis. From what I understood, if I'd been exposed to TB in my life the injection would cause no reaction on my skin. So it didn't react, which I thought meant that I had had TB.

Now when I write that out I realize it makes no sense. Especially since they gave me a note telling (my employer) that my TB test was negative.

Because I am the smartest person in the world, I thought that meant I didn't have a current TB infection but since my body didn't attack the TB I thought that meant my immune system was used to it. After announcing to my family, my husband and a bunch of people on the internet that I did have TB, which could be the reason I have an opaque spot on my lungs.

After all that I realized that when the nurse gives you a note that says, "Negative" it means you don't have TB and you never did. I guess I misunderstood the doctor, she must have meant if I had TB in my lifetime, my body would try to fight it off when it was injected under my skin.

I'm not a fan of waiting but it looks like that's what I'm going to have to do. I kind of wish all this would stop being part of my life because it's unpleasant.

I'm pretty disappointed.

Portrait and an update

A few months ago I came across Jennifer Maher's custom toy portraits site via a blog I can't remember now. That's the problem with a reader, I can never remember which site lead me where. I'm looking at my feeds and then blam-o I'm at an excellent porn site and I can't even remember who led me there.

Or maybe I just ended up there.

I love these toy portraits because Maddie is a huge fan of stuffed animals and has had a couple favorites over the years. Now that she's ELEVEN (!!!) I'm sure she'll be feeling the pressure to put them away soon. I want her to have a memento.

I shared this find on Twitter and mentioned how nice it would be to have a portrait of Choppable. Remember Choppable? Here's the story if you don't remember.....but how could you forget. 

Jennifer saw it and she took me seriously. She likes a challenge.

 

Even better she's sending it to me. It's going in our bathroom so that our guests are terrified.

Thank you Jennifer!

*********

The doctor called last night. The good news is two of the spots are clear. The bad news is one is opaque, which means it can't just be dismissed as nothing. It could be a scar from an undiagnosed case of tuberculosis, it could be a lesion from sarcoidosis, or it could be cancer.

Which? If I have cancer in my lung then fuck you second hand smoke.  

The next step is a PPD test for tuberculosis....and then if I have had TB we do another scan in 4 months to see if that spot has grown. If I did not have TB we look at it again in 2 months.

Overall this is good news, if all three spots were opaque, we'd be much more concerned. But...I'll be honest, I'm not thrilled the doctor didn't call to tell me everything was clear and now we just go forward trying nasal spray and an extra dose of antiacid to get rid of this stupid cough.

Instead I'm still coughing and now I'm waiting another 2-4 months to see if cancer is growing in my lung.

Not bad news and that's good. But not the news I wanted.

I'd never eat sushi again.

Iodine in your veins makes your nether regions really warm, in case you wanted to know. I was told this could happen but it was still awfully jarring, as though I'd just wet my pants during my CT Scan. (I'm sure there's a fetish for that.)

I wasn't sure I wanted Logan to come with me because I wasn't sure what would happen at this appointment. Would they, like they did at my follow up mammogram, look over the data and tell me, "Surprise! You've got a cat in your lung!" on the spot. And if they were going to tell me news on the spot, and the news was unpleasant I didn't really want to be there alone.

But alas, there was no news, only an assurance that my doctor would have a report in 3-5 business days. To which I say, "Bull Shit."

Instead I asked Logan to take the morning off of work to sit in a waiting room for 10 minutes while I laid on a table wondering if I'd wet my pants.

Logan deals with these things, these little moments of health scares in our family, with a lot of grace. I give him credit for that because I can't imagine I'd feel very good if he paniced and I couldn't devote all my energy to worrying.

On the other hand when he says patly, "Everything is fine."

I can't help but feel he doesn't fully embrace the power of worry. He doesn't know everything is fine and yet he claims it as truth. I feel this is begging the universe to clobber us over the head and still, he won't worry or even slightly fret.

I'd even give him a pass if he wasn't worrying because of some supernatural ability to see the future or even just a gut instinct. Instead he bases his total lack of worry on one simple fact. He doesn't want anything bad to happen so he simply believes it won't.

I know. I know I should just leave because he's fallen off the deep end. Unfortunately he's really good in bed, so I'm kind of stuck with him.

Luckily there's a bunch of you guys out there fretting. Some people turn to prayer but I like that you're worried so that when the results come in and it turns out I aspirated some Magnetix pieces I can feel like a real asshole putting you all through this kind of stupidity.

And Man! Some of you guys are really fucking good at worrying. Some of the possibilities you've dug up around the internet are just so awful. So heart stoppingly awful, you've really got me almost convinced the next time I cough my whole body is going to spontaneously combust. This is the kind of worrying I can get behind.

Yesterday I ran around after the appointment getting last minute stuff ready for Maddie's class camping trip. Then I did a lot of laundry and finally went to hang out with my two best girlfriends and a bottle of prosecco. I felt mildly exhausted and a little distracted yesterday but quite honestly each minute that goes by without a call from the Doctor makes me feel a little safer.

A little more like my luck isn't running out quite yet. 

But then that's sort of a slap in the face to my theory of worry. So today I've spent the day in bed covered in a rash over most of my upper body, what appears to be an iodine allergic reaction. The phone is right in my lap and I'm not sure if I should be happy it hasn't rang, it seems like if the spots in my lungs were something terrible I would have heard by now.

Or if I should be terribly worried something fantastical is happening and the doctors can't even identify it yet.

Like my transformation to Mermaid Lady has begun.

Don't get me wrong that sounds fantastic, I just don't know how we're going to afford a salt water pool in the basement. I guess I'll worry about that for a while.

Lucky

On Friday I finally made an appointment to see why the hell I've been coughing for the last 7+ months.

I know you're thinking to yourself, "You've been coughing for 7+ months and didn't think to get it checked out?"

And I know...it's like the time my mother let a golf ball grow in her breast and finally went to the doctor only because her bra strap wouldn't stay put. Boy did I think that was stupid.

And here I am. 

It just hasn't been a constant problem. I've been on trips and overnights with friends who never heard me cough in the night. So I'd think, "Oh maybe it's finally over."

I didn't go to the doctor because I hate when I go and they can't find anything wrong with me. Like all the times I went in because I was exhausted all the time and we did all these tests and there was nothing wrong. Well, except that my tonsils were slowly trying to kill me but no one figured that one out.

My cough was very dry and really only happened at night or if I was up late and happened to laugh too hard. Laughing too hard is one of the things I enjoy the most about my life, so this was more than a mild annoyance but still seemed like something a little silly to complain about.

"I like laughing really hard and this cough won't let me."

It's only been in the last month or three that the cough has made my husband secretly hate me. Loud sighs and dramatic roll overs have become the norm when a coughing jag takes over around 2am waking up the entire neighborhood.

He says he's only annoyed because he has been telling me to see a doctor since last June and I ignored him. But the truth is it's a really annoying cough and sometimes when I get going I can't stop for an hour. And worse than a constant coughing jag, I'll get it under control and everyone in the neighborhood will start to drift back to sleep and then, oops! There it is again and the cat is hanging by its claws from the ceiling. And so is Logan.

I finally went to the Doctor on Friday armed with a couple very logical explanations for my cough. In the comments Reflux Cough was mentioned and this made a lot of sense to me since the medication I take for Crazy gives me heartburn which I treat with antiacid medication. Also Max and I are sniffly a lot this season so I thought, perhaps I have some allergy issues that have been causing this cough.

I did not even turn to DrGoogle to search for life threatening ills you could possibly have. Because I'm smarter than that you see. I don't need to get all worked up about nothing. 

I walked into the doctor confident it was reflux cough or allergies causing this Laugh Suppressing Cough. I told the doctor this and she said, "Well let's try this allergy medicine to see if that helps. If it doesn't, we can try increasing your antiacid medicine but I don't think it's reflux. Before you go though, we should do a chest xray to make sure there's nothing going on in your lungs."

And I said, "But....the internet said I have reflux cough. And everything I read on the internet is true."

And she said, "We check out your lungs if you've had a cough for more than 4 weeks so I'd be very negligent if I didn't check yours after seven months."

I had the xray and saw the outline of my boobs and as I watched the xrays develop I thought to myself, "You know, they're just not as sexy when see through."

I went back to the exam room got dressed and tried to leave, but the nurse said the doctor was still looking over my xray. Probably debating how much less sexy my boobs look when transparent and placed against bones, I thought.

And then two doctors walked in with my x rays and that doesn't bode well does it.

They said, "3 small masses, two in one lung and one in the other."
I said, "Reflux cough."
They said, "Enlarged lymph nodes all over."
I said, "Reflux Cough?"

We parted with "You need to have a CT Scan so we can get a better look at what is happening in your lungs and around your lymph nodes."

I said, "So, it's reflux cough?"

They patted me on the back and said, "Maybe....let's just have another look, okay."

Then I stood in the lobby saying, 'Reflux cough?"

Tomorrow morning I'm having the scan and, listen, I've been through "Ruling Things Out" and "Getting a Better Look" about, oh, a thousand times.

We spent an entire year of Maddie's life ruling out: Cancer, Cerebral Palsy, Various Muscular Dystrophies, Cystic Fibrosis, etc and so on.

I made my way to each scan, MRI, x ray, blood test....calmly reminding myself that we were only ruling things out. Only getting a better look. Nothing was wrong. Nothing would be wrong.

But every time there was that tiny voice, there IS that tiny voice, that says, "Eventually they'll find something." 

The first 16 years of my life were horrible. People have lived and are living far more terrible lives than I did but still, it was a terrible life and occasionally I have nightmares that I'm still in the middle of it, clawing to survive.

When I was about 20 I started to feel my life getting better. I started to feel normal, with normal decisions to make and normal heartaches and normal annoyances.

I'm not the kind of person who blows rainbows out of my ass with gratitude and it's true I often have abnormal responses to normal things people every day have to deal with.

However, since my father died, my life has gotten richer and more beautiful. Everything I thought I didn't deserve has become part of my normal every day life. These things have become so much a part of my normal life I have the luxury of taking them for granted.

When we have to take a closer look, or rule something out...it brings up the fear that my life will not always be this good. That it's true, there is something wrong with me.

I am keenly aware I am a lucky person.

Eventually.....

my luck will run out.

At this point Swine Flu would be like a dream come true.

I have the world's most annoying cold. It refuses to develop into anything more than an energy sucking/sleep depriving annoying sniffly nose cough thing with occasional "Please I'd Like To Tear My Face Off To Relive The Sinus Pressure" moments.

The cough, I've had off and on for months.

When I went to Florida with my friends last June I was nervous about sharing a room with the friends I hadn't shared with before. I worried they'd be loud sleepers because I am a very light sleeper. I used to snore at times, because of my tonsils, but when I got rid of them I stopped snoring. I felt pretty confident about my fitness as a roomate for anyone.

It turns out my roomate is the world's quietest sleeper. Like I think she completely powers her body to "Off" because you can't hear anything. I held a mirror under her nose to see if she was even still alive. I don't even think she was breathing, that's how courteous a sleeper she is. Her breathing might be a bother, so she'll just stop for the night.

It turned out I was the annoying loud sleeper. I didn't snore but that annoying cough apparently kept my roomie awake the entire time we were there. Even worse I talked in my sleep demanding pizza in a very mean voice. (Saturday night I woke myself up laughing about a dish I read on a menu in my dream called Cob on the Coleslaw.)

Next year I'm going to have to sleep in the shed.

At this point it's pretty safe to say I have allergies but I can't seem to find the medicine that will reliably fix my symptoms. It's pretty obvious I'm allergic to Gary. Anyone want an enormous cat? 

Max is suffering from a similar malady, what I thought was the beginnings of swine flu has dragged on and on for two weeks. I kept him home yesterday just waiting for the fever to start, for something to happen. Instead we sat on the sofa watching movies and coughing on each other. With loving feelings in our hearts. This morning he didn't cough at all, and was only mildly sniffly....so I sent him to school.

....where he'll surely catch the flu so that's just wonderful.

=============================

I've started knitting again, something I haven't done in years. I did not teach myself before you ask, I took a class that sort of developed into a knitting circle where the teacher would show me how to do everything 50 times because I could never remember things like making increases.

I bought my yarn on Thursday afternoon and, thanks to the wonderful world of free knitting tutorial videos online, I've been able to refresh my memory without having to walk around the block to the knitting store every four rows to ask for help.

I knit furiously for 5 days, staying up until 3am one night because I created beautiful raglan yokes (for the sleeves) on this sweater and the triumph was like crack cocaine. I didn't think I'd ever sleep again. Finally, after knitting for 4 hours straight yesterday, (while coughing in Max's face), I put the knitting down.

When I went to sleep I began to dream about knitting the sleeves, because it's a technique I've never done before and I can't seem to wrap my brain around how it will work. I have a lot of lame dreams, I dream I forget to pay the babysitter, I dream about running the errands I have on my list for the next day, I dream about inexplicable menu items like Cob on the Coleslaw.

But this dream about knitting a sleeve was just intolerable. I kept waking up and trying to think of something else to dream about, something more exciting like how I was going to do laundry the next day, but inevitably my brain would go back to knitting. Which also happened when I first discovered that sudoku is an excellent mind numbing puzzle game. 

This concludes Explanation #1: Why Melissa Has Never Touched Illegal Drugs (I may have lightly grazed one briefly. But I don't even count that as illegal.)

Yes I realize I haven't posted in a while.

Monday was a fine day of relaxing and trying to recover from my weekend which involved a night at a concert where I caused my husband's friend to say, "You know, I've known you for five years and I've never seen you drunk, until tonight."

And it was true, I "let loose" as the kids (may or may not say). When we arrived home (via a sober designated driver) I chatted with the babysitter which is the adult version of talking to your parents while pretending like you haven't been drinking.

We had a nice conversation most of which I don't remember. And in the morning I couldn't recall if I had paid her as I pretended to be a not a little more than tipsy responsible adult. That was a fun phone call. "Hi, Emma? Uhm...Not that I had more than a responsible amount of alcohol or anything. Actually I have amnesia, it comes and goes. Who is this?!" 

Tuesday was the election and so the kids had no school. I was okay with this as long as Maine kept their gay marriage laws intact. But no....the kids stayed home for nothing. I mean aside from preventing a crazy person walking unfettered into the school to vote and making a detour to shoot innocent kids. 

On Wednesday I spent a greater portion of the day than I'd like to admit talking to myself (and Twitter) about what utter bull shit it is to deny adults the right to marry who they love.

I stated it nicely.

"I have very little patience for people who think they are entitled to anything they justify denying others."

And I was also a bit prickly, which probably horrified the moms from school who have unknowingly "friended" me on Facebook not realizing what a crap shoot that is. 

"Clearly my love has more value because I like a penis in my vagina. Hold on a minute...why can't we let gay people get married again?"

People get a little shy around words like Penis and Vagina. Unfortunately that forces me to say those words more.

I also tried to do a Did They Eat It on Thursday. And, because I get overwhelmed by reading more than 10 sentences in a row, apparently. I failed to notice the part where the chili simmers for 2 hours. Did They Eat It: Middle Of The Night Edition. Logan and I ate the chili at 10 o clock, like we did with the stupid potatoes from last week and oh my it was good. But seriously I have to pull my head out of my ass at some point.

And Now it's Friday and, OH MY GOD we almost didn't have any plans! You guys, Logan and I would have just been SITTING AROUND doing NOTHING! Logan mentioned, "Hey, we have nothing on the calendar this weekend, how did that happen?" And I said, "Wow, that sounds nice. We should get a movie to watch or something."

And now we're having a bunch of families over for pizza. I hope everyone wants to snuggle on the sofa in front of the fire.

Halloween 2009: Bacon Edition

I kind of hate dressing up for Halloween. I know there are people who think I am "crafty" and that perhaps I "enjoy" making things, but this is generally untrue.

Generally I like things to be finished, so however I can get to "finished" as fast as possible is how I go.

I have friends who LOVE dressing up for Halloween, sometimes even throwing in an extra night of dressing up like we looked in the 80's. Except that of course they love this because these friends have had four kids and can still wear their prom dress.

I did not attend prom, my thigh might be able to wear a dress I would have worn to prom in the 80's and also I spent pretty much every day of the 80's thinking my life would always suck as badly as it did right then.

So, ahem, my friends and I are on different pages as far as dressing up in costume is concerned. They love it. I do not.

For the last 4 years I've managed to be something reasonably lame at the annual Halloween party. I slapped a mustache on one year, wore a bandit mask another, oh and there was that regrettable year I was what I like to call, "What was available one hour before the party began."

This year I had big plans to be bacon! I know everyone on the internet is So Over bacon but I live in the Midwest where everyone is just starting to "get" the bacon joke (and the mustache joke), so put a lid on it San Francisco.

I bookmarked this costume months ago and had every intention of amazing my friends with my magical full-on-effort-exerted costume. Until I priced the foam ($15 a YARD?) and started to read through the directions...at step 9 (of 17) I was out.

Like I said, I like things that are finished.

Instead Logan had a friend at work in possession of a Cookie Monster costume which I wore to the delight of my friends.

The costume was fine except that I was hot as hell and I nearly died of dehydration. I had to spend the entire night outside in the back yard trying not to pass out. (I hate Halloween.)

The only problem I was left with after that hot sweaty night proving to my friends that I don't ALWAYS have a lame costume, was that I told Madison she could be bacon after I was done with the costume and now there was no costume.

I procrastinated and thought about how I could get out of making a bacon costume. I tried to buy one but it was expensive and was really just a stupid bacon scarf. I just wanted it to be finished as that is the goal of all my projects. Done, quickly.

Finally, last week after we came home from our relaxing trip up north I braved the fabric store wearing full body armor. I hate the fabric store, I know I'm not alone because I saw the bodies of several small children laying in the aisles, dead, after waiting for their mothers to stop looking at fabric already.

I moved quickly locating red, pink and white felt. If you don't want to die at the fabric store you have to move.

I needed something to make the top of the bacon stay square but I was no way in hell going to buy a full suit of foam at $15 a yard. (Hate Halloween) So I found a square piece of foam that cost $10 (Stop taking my money Halloween) and took that.

I stood in line at the cutting table for 39 hours, when it was my turn I jammed the scissors into my eyeball and then asked for 4 yards of the red felt (eyeballing how tall I think Maddie is), 1 yard of the pink and a half yard of the white.

I didn't even take pictures of the process because I performed the task with such terrible haste and annoyance. But here's how I did it.

I traced around the back of Madison's head and cut a circle out of the foam square. I had her put her face inside the hole, draped the red felt over her making sure the felt covered just the back of her head and most of her front. I marked where to cut the face opening out of the red felt and I then stapled it into place.

The next day I made rough strips of white and pink and hot glued them to the front.

Maddie loved the costume mainly because everyone yelled, "HEY! It's Bacon!" at her as she trick or treated. People also said, "You just take whatever you want." from their bowls of candy because she was Bacon and people can't resist it. 

And best of all, it's finished.