Musings from My Hospital Bed - part five

. . . OF five.

Let's bury this dead horse already! Not that the saga isn't continuing  . . . still. But my inspiration around writing about it is somewhat waning and I'm sure you're totally tried of hearing me snivel over it!


Suffice to say, the "rapid dilution" plan worked, as you've no doubt guessed by now. Else how would I be sitting here writing this? After which, how would you be sitting there reading it? Right? Right.

During the course of the night and well into the next day, I offered up so much blood that I began to wonder whether the lab had more of it than I did. We all watched as my sodium level jumped around, finally settling at around 127. Which was acceptable based on where it'd come from. 

Tuesday the nursing staff changed and I was watched over by the lovely, caring team of Tracy and Nikki. Here they are here: 

Fred popped back into my room a few times just to check on me. I heard a couple comments about myself from outside the door. Something about not being your typical ICU patient since, instead of lying there watching T.V., I'd again rearranged the room so that I could sit at the desk and work on my laptap. 


Dr. SP came in a couple times for more "serious" conversations, at one point offering a mildly disguised warning of steering clear of too much on-line reading about my symptoms and such, lest I start thinking I have everything I find. 

I thought . . . wait a minute. You haven't really given me a lot to go on here. Why wouldn't I want to do a little checking on my own? He introduced me to his daughter who is interning there and he told me that sometimes, people just get SIADH for no apparent reason. That was a tad reassuring. 


The Rons came back and spent some more time with me, fooling around with stuff they could find: 

And we all added our own little missive to the board Nikki had penned so neatly for me earlier that day:

Tuesday night I slept sort of okay. But for the few times I had to shuffle out of bed, tilt my heart monitor such that I could drag my leads over to the tiny bathroom and feed them under the door which let me close it to pee in private. The leads were about ten inches shy of allowing me to sit up straight so I sorta had to lean to the left to get-er-done.  

In the wee hours of the morning as I unfurled my leads from the bathroom door and waddle back to bed, I happened to glance up at the monitor. My heart rate was 84! From the excursion of going to the bathroom?! C'mon. What had I become in those short seven days? Some kind of weenie?! I've always had a very low heart rate and this was alarming, to say the least. 

The rest of the morning I spent in meditation, trying to relax my errant aorta, which, for some reason, caused some other doo-dad to go off and sent the night nurse in to check on me. 

"Nope, just trying to get a little OM time," I'd say and she'd leave me alone.

My mind went someplace pretty dark that morning. I suddenly got it into my head that I'd done what I never wanted to do: I'd allowed myself to be a guinea pig for modern medicine. And, by doing so, possibly locked myself into a life of doctors, hospitals, tests and illness. Those of you who know me, know that I do not like doctors. And hospitals. And tests. And especially illness.  

So, at some point that morning, I finally broke down and started to cry. Something I didn't stop doing for the rest of the day. When I cried in front of Ron he told me to stop. 

"There's salt in those tears and you need all of that you can get!" 

I laughed, stop leaking for a while and looked forward to discharge (more than a little!) It was a wonderful feeling! The lovely nurse insisted on taking me out in a wheelchair and then waiting while Ron brought the car around. 

"Are you kidding me!" I said, "I'm walking out of here." And I did: 

After that we went to Walmart for a couple prescriptions then on to LOWES for a few needed items. Going home to the house on the mountain was like being folded up in a soft, warm blanket. I breathed in the air, played with my dogs and then decided to take that much needed shower. 

Now here's a thing . . . I had not been naked in front of a mirror in a week. It was somewhat of a shock to see how much weight I'd dropped just lounging around doing nothing! I got to thinking how my visit very well could have been just an expensive trip to a fat farm . . . not that anyone wants to lose weight that way. But GOSH! 

And when I looked into my face I had to start crying all over again: eyes sunken into my face, and when I tried to smile, well . . . it just looked plain creepy!

That night made up for it though. I slept for nine hours straight and woke without tears, absent the creepy smile and sporting a whole new outlook on things. I was free! Finally! And I had two glorious days to enjoy my two weeks vacation. We spent them slowly and really (REALLY) enjoyed the little time we had left at our lovely mountain home.

And FINALLY: 

Saturday morning we packed up for home, taking our usual two days to drive: 

So ended my glorious Hospital Vacation. It's certainly an episode in my life that I'll never forget! 

Things are still happening now that I'm home and my local doctors are working with me to see if they are side effects or somehow related to what put me there in the first place. Or (heaven forbid) something altogether new!

But, remembering my earlier disclaimer - how I've grown uninspired over writing about it and YOU'VE certainly grown tired of hearing it - I'm ending the continuing saga here.  

Thanks for listening everyone! Have a wonderful, healthy, joyful life! I'm going off to work on that same thing myself. Wish me luck. 

Linda  

Musings from my Hospital Bed - part four

The Mamas and the Papas were famous for a few songs. One of them went “a little” like this:


”Monday Monday, so good to me.
Monday, Monday, it was all I hoped it would be.
Oh Monday morning, Monday morning couldn’t guarantee.
That Monday evening, 
the hospital 
would not kill me.”


You can check it out here if you want.





You might notice the tiny change in lyrics I made. In truth, kill might be a little strong. It was more like, neurologically alter. But that would sort of mess with the tempo of the song and . . . well, I’ve already TALKED ABOUT THAT!


Back to my Monday. While it started out good, it went horrible awry around 6:00 pm-ish. Remember how they’d hooked me into the red pill? The one that had been dripping into my arm since noon. Well, 6ish is when the really nice nurse with the cute hair and the cute clothes came roaring into my room (where I’d been finally able to catch a bit of sleep), woke me up and unplugged the Conivaptin.


“We’re cutting this off!” she said with a smile.


“Why?” I asked with a frown.


“Because you’re at 133!” And she left.


Now I’m not really good at math but I counted on my fingers really fast and figured out that the difference between 133 and 116 is a tad beyond the safe escalation rate. What freaked me out the most was the case study I’d read earlier on-line about a woman whose sodium had been escalated 7 points in a 4 hour period. Ten days later, she was back in the hospital with little of her former self left.


Needless to say, news of my impending “death” came as a bit of a shock. 


Not one to take bad news alone, I called my husband who, along with my son, were on their way for a visit anyway.


“I think they just killed me,” I said (expletive omitted).


They were there when Dr. Salt Pounder (bless his tenacious little heart) came in for the second time, saying things like “uncharted territories” and “wasn’t suppose to do that” He defended his orders to the nurses, even showed his hand-written notes to my husband. How a 2 hour blood draw was ordered . . . and missed. My first draw had been 4 hours after the drip started and then it took another 1 1/2 hours to get the results back.


Hence the need for panic. 


I have to tell you that, when the doctor is a little freaked out, it’s not very reassuring for the patient. Dr. SP went away to devise a plan, leaving the three of us to laugh at the absurdity of it (me) or cry at the severity of it (okay, me again). The Ron Squared held up pretty good and were completely supportive while we waited for a plan.


And a plan there was! I was admitted to ICU for two nights and a treatment of rapid dilution.


My first nurse was wonderful. Here he is, Nurse Fred whom I came to adore over the next couple days as he took wonderful, gentle care of me.

Our first experience together was of him asking me to change out of my lovely clothes (damn it . . I sort of liked being dressed!) and dawn the sexy gown again. So I took my gown, my re-installed drip line, my skinny pole on wheels and myself into the tiny bathroom and tried to maneuver my way out of my tank top. It went over my head just fine. After that though, it just hung there, limp from my drip line. Then there was the gown - I couldn’t put my arm through the arm hole because of the drip line so I had to unsnap the shoulder and then try to re-snap it with one hand. Which wasn’t working at all.


Fred knocked. “Is everything okay in there?”


“Well I’m having a little bit of trouble.”


Fred’s seen worse, I’m sure and he saved me right away, got me plugged into the heart monitor (annoying thing that hated the way I’d keep rolling over and unplugging a line). And then we all begun what I like to call the pincushion effect. I had blood drawn every hour for the first 6 hours and then every 2 hours, reduced down to 4 hours by the time I was released. I had one young phlebotomist who told me that he just had to come up and see me.

“When I saw the order come through, I thought, who is this poor woman.”


Meanwhile, in an attempt to dilute my wildly askew sodium, clear water dripped into me at a very rapid rate.


Settling into the next leg of the journey all I could think was how this was where I wanted to be:

While this was where I really was:

More to follow. 

Oh, yes. It does continue. 

Musings from my Hospital Bed - part three

Did I mention how hard it was to sleep in that place? You get these little plastic boots that wrap around your legs from ankle to thigh and velcro on (tightly if you’re lucky). They plug into a thingie that’s hooked to the back of your bed. The thingie blows air into pads, first massaging the right leg and then the left, deflating one leg as it moves to the next. It’s actually a very good thing - designed to avoid blood clots as you lazy around in your hospital bed. It’s very methodical and dedicated to its task. You tend to lay there, awake from the noise down the halls seeping into your room through the thin walls, and you time the progress of the thingie . . . fifteen seconds on leg one -  rest a bit - fifteen seconds on leg two - rest. Etc, etc...


The thingie has a little brain too. It knows when you’ve been unplugged from it for too long. It starts complaining and won’t shut up. At first I called the nurse.


“I took too long to pee and now my thingie won’t shut up.” 


Then I learned that you only have to turn your thingie off before you unplug your legs. Only then are you free to shuffle around the cabin in your plastic boots. 




But that’s not all. There’s a very popular patient in the room on the other side of the wall. Of course, it’s the wall by the head of your bed. This person is so popular that his/her visitors never want to leave. They love their popular patient and they stay late. And they talk loudly. And they laugh often. And they never go away. And you never sleep.


However, sometimes you get so tired, you think that you’ll be able to push through all that and finally catch some much needed shut eye. And you’re anxious to get back to that great fantasy you’ve been reading. So you velcro up your boots, plug them into your thingie, you lean way over to turn your thingie on. You make sure you can reach the strap that shuts the light on and off. You push the button that raises or lowers your bed into a comfortable position. You pull your table over onto your lap where your book awaits. Then you realize that your glasses are on the table . . . way the heck over there where you cannot possibly reach then. Uff! . . . Maybe you should just forget about trying to read yourself to sleep. But you really like the book and want to fall asleep in that “fantastical place” rather than the one you’re really in.


Sure you could call the nurse to come fetch your glasses. But who wants to be one of those kinds of patients? So you push the button that lowers your bed, you roll the desk off your lap, lean over to unplug your legs. You’re pretty sure you can get to the table and back before the thingie knows your gone so you leave it switched on. You manage to snag your glasses, plug yourself back in, pull the table back over your lap and crank your bed back up into a comfortable position. You read for about five minutes and then realize that . . . yep, you have to pee again.


And that says nothing about trying to manipulate the mobile pole that you’ve been attached to for days via an IV drip.


Anyway, that was how Saturday and Sunday night’s “sleep” went. Pretty non-existent. And when the Rons came that morning for a visit, I learned that they’d done about the same thing (absent the thingie and the pole that is). They were still with me when the doctor came for his morning visit. He told us the Conivaptan stuff would be there at noon and that’s when they’d plug me back into the Matrix and feed me the red pill.


“Okay,” I told him, “But I have one little requirement first.”


He gave me a suspicious eyeball. “What’s that?” he asked.


“Let me out of here for a little while.”


See, the hospital regulation is that patients are not allowed off the floor of their confinement. I had come to the mountains to taste the sweet, clear air and I’d not had the pleasure of its touch for four days. I was not about to take no for an answer.


But the doctor agreed! So, with my sweatshirt on to cover up my IV drip line -- lest I get stopped by security for escaping -- I wandered the grounds for a blessed 45 minutes! It was amazing how weak I felt. But it was wonderful.

When my 45 minutes were up, the Ron Squared delivered me back to my room and they left, planning to come back in the evening once the drip had been dripping for a while. The doctor gave orders to start drawing blood every two hours to check the progress of my errant sodium.


And that . . . was the end . . . of sanity for a while.


There'll be another leg of this epic journey. I’m not sure what I’ll call it. Maybe "When life gives you lemons" Or "Hey! . . . that wasn’t supposed to happen!" Or maybe even "Linda’s body does it’s own thing . . . again" 

Musings from my Hospital Bed - part two

Also known as . . . My Vicarious Vacation. 


I forgot to mention that my Brother and Sister in Law came down from Pittsburgh for the weekend. They almost didn’t make it. When they learned about my hospital vacation, they considered staying home instead. But I’m glad they stuck to the game plan and came. It gave everyone something else to do besides worry about me.


So John and Peg drove down Friday and stayed till Monday morning. They stopped in to say howdy when they got there then the four of them went out for dinner. Waynesville has this great little restaurant called The Sagebrush Steakhouse and we always make it there at least once. Saturday, while I was hanging out, happy to be unhooked from salt water, they went rafting down the fresh kind! It had been our plan all along. Of course, normally I would have been with them but, well . . . you know.


Now, my son (the newly hatched Eagle scout) has been rafting a lot. He even went on some Level Fives in Colorado with the Scouts a while back. He always has fun but I think he enjoys going with family the most. They all stayed in the boat, had a blast (in spite of a wayward oar handle that no one will fess up to and an ensuing nasty bruise or two). And when Ron brought me my Talapia dinner that night, he also brought these:

Sunday rolled around and, since I had NOTHING to do, I wandered around the hospital, taking more pictures:  Not sure what the cage was all about!

And I elbowed my way into the boat, setting everything RIGHT! 

Sunday was also the day Dr. Salt Pounder (bless his tenacious little heart) told us they’d finally got the results back from the test they had to send out. I had somehow developed a thing called SIADH (not to be confused with the other kind of ADH). Given that I had all kinds of spare time on my hands, I’d already done a little bit of internet reading about it. Enough to know that it’s a hormonal imbalance that makes the body think it doesn’t need all that nasty old sodium so it all gets flushed down the toilet (literally). So THAT’S what my body had been doing with it! Pretty cool that they found something wrong with me though. It explained why my sodium level wouldn’t stick in spite of all the doctor’s efforts.

With good news came bad. The hospital pharmacy did not have the medicine used to treat SIADH. It would be available the following day and had to be administered via drip (oh, Yay! the skinny pole attachment again.) And it had to be dripped over a 24 hour period (oh Yay! I’ll be here till Tuesday).

In spite of all that, I felt pretty good the rest of the day until I really started reading more about SIADH. I learned that it’s a SYMPTOM disorder usually brought on by things that are even more nasty than itself. Like brain tumors, liver or kidney failure, lung cancer, heart disease. But I didn’t have any of those things! So what the heck was up with that?

It would become yet another in a series of serious conversations with my doctor . . . 

Serious conversations are all we had after the next turn of “interesting” events.

  

Musings from my Hospital Bed - part one

Long about Friday I started feeling better. In spite of the downward trajectory of my errant sodium. Sure, there were some discomforts that never eased off until I got back to our mountain cabin five days later. Like the constant buzzing in my head. And the fact that I couldn’t sleep on my left side for the jabbing pain in my upper chest cavity. Not a clue what that was all about!

But compared to Wednesday’s blinding headache and suspected bleeding gut - those things that brought me here - well, Friday came in feeling pretty strong. Comparatively speaking, that is - in reality I was actually sicker, with a new sodium count of 111, four points lower than when I’d checked myself in.

If truth be known, I was clueless about the importance of salt until I was forced to educate myself. Up until then, I pretty much took my sodium for granted. In fact, like a lot of us, I assumed it was sorta bad. I assumed it was responsible for all that nasty bloating in the past. I assumed that, what little salt I did need, was busy doing its job while I was off doing mine.

So yeah . . . I had lots of time to think about my salt while I was "lounging around" in the hospital. I got to thinking how our bodies are a huge percent water and, one way of looking at it is that it’s salt water. We need our levels to be in something called mEq/l . . . 135 to 145 of these. According to Wikipedia, anything lower than 125 mEq/l is considered “sever” hyponatremia. To have a sodium level of 111 and still be standing - well that was baffling to the staff and doctors who saw me. I was an anomaly and I suspect that later I was elevated to a different status . . . I'd become a challenge.

Here’s something else to keep in mind about sodium - once it dips, it’s important to bring it back up s l o w l y. Safe is a maximum of 10 to 12 points within a 24 hour period. That little bit of info will come in handy as you follow the rest of this story. Any faster and it’s like salting a slug - all the fluid rushes to the concentration of salt and the poor thing shrivels up into a potato chip. Just not a very tasty one. Unlike a slug though, when the concentration is in the brain cells, you end up drowning them which results in a surprising plethora of neurological issues.

But being at 111 that Friday wasn’t cool either. Not cool at all. I should have been in seriously bad shape - 110 and below and you’re in danger of things like seizures, comas and other bad stuff like . . . death. But not me, oh no. I was feeling pretty good on Friday. Then, on Saturday, when my salt jumped all the way up to 116, I got to feeling really, really good. In fact Saturday the doctor got a little worried about the jump from 111 to 116 and took me off the heavier drip and onto salt tabs.

So I’m finally free of my companion bag of salt water. The one that dripped into my pincushioned arm for the past three days. I get to tape a plastic bag around my I/V stick and take a nice, hot, wonderful shower! 

I’m up and clean and dressed and walking the halls, free to start laughing at how fun it’d been to tote my companion pole along with me like a skinny shadow on wheels - wires tangled, tripping over this one or that one, left hand wrapped around trying to keep my naked bottom behind its sexy little gowned curtain.

And free to start complaining. Like . . . why am I still here? If all we’re going to do is take sodium tablets, lasix, magnesium and other sundry pills, can’t I do that from the lovely porch of my mountain home? I promise, promise, promise that I’ll come back every morning for my daily blood letting. I pinkie swear!

But no, my doctor, whom I shall lovingly refer to as Doctor Salt Pounder (bless his tenacious little heart), could not, in his professional opinion, outpatient me while I was sill considered sever. This is where I started singing that song: 

"Welcome to the hospital Carolina. It’s a lovely place, such a lovely place."

"There's plenty of room at the hospital Carolina.

"You can check out any time you'd like.  

But you can NEVER LEAVE!

Captive as I was, I set up my hospital room as a workstation and tried to get some writing done. 

My super wonderful husband (whose vacation I was ruining), took to bringing me dinner to help compensate for the food the hospital was giving me (sort of hard to feed a pescatarian on their menu). So dinner on Saturday was rosemary/garlic grilled Talapia, wild brown rice and hand hewn fudge from a local Cherokee chocolatier for dessert!

And my continuing saga . . . well, it continues! You'll just have to stay tuned to find out what happens next. 

The Absolute Truth About the Absence of Youth

That was the title of the book I was going to co-write with a few friends a few years back. We thought of all sorts of places we could go with it. For example, the whole idea of having an absolute truth in the first place is absurd. In truth, we all have our own versions of the truths. In truth, truth is subjective. Come to think of it, since our truths are so individual, how could any truth ever be an absolute one in the first place! Sure I could have my own absolute truths, and you could have yours. But how could I ever think to impose mine over the top of yours? And then have the unmitigated gall to write a book about it? Absurd, indeed!

But then, haven’t we all been subjected to other people’s truths throughout history? The earth is flat. And the sun revolves around it. Blood-letting is the cure for all major diseases. A woman’s place in the home.

I could go on. But that’s not what I really want to talk about here.

Aside from playing around with the words themselves, I remember going in a completely different direction with it. For me, the absence of youth meant my rapidly approaching “empty nest” status. Yep, my baby will soon be off to college which will leave my home void of its youth. It’s bound to be pretty absolute in the stillness his absence will leave and I can only wonder what kinds of truths it will to reveal.

But that’s not what I want to talk about either. 

I want to talk about my sister’s recent visit. Yvonne and I live a few thousand miles apart and don’t get to see each other very often. So her visit lent itself to all sorts of great conversational opportunities. She and I are both . . .  well . . . let’s just say our own youths are a distant past. I guess you could say they’re absent. Oh sure, we collectively hold the feminine wisdom of many (many) decades—wisdom neither of us would trade for youth any old day. But still . . . Why the heck do things have to go so far south!? I’m reminded of a certain poem I wrote a while ago, one that has yet to be published so copy-write laws do apply:

Deflated

Straight forward

they’d stare ~ no matter what I’d wear.

even occasions

I’d let them go bare!

Happy twins bouncing

in harmony, poised

in precise symmetry,

enhancing the verticals that

once were me.

But alas, age and

motherhood defied the whole

topography.

Realigned their

perfect visibility ‘till the ground

is all the old girls see.

Oh sure, I know about

gravity, and laws of relativity.

But how sad to know

they apply to me.

It’s said that life

can be unfair; a view

no doubt I easily share with

other moms like me.

As we age in deflated

disrepair. 

But no matter that

my perky pair -

condemned to depreciate

with each

passing year.

My spouse and I,

sometimes compare

other things lost

(like his hair).

  

I guess old mother nature

can be equally unfair.

Anyway, back to my sister and I. We decided that we’d start working toward a couple things: first would be the overall reduction in the size of our “wisdom containers.” We decided to weigh in on certain days and keep each other honest by sharing the results of said measurements via e-mail. We also decided to improve the overall health and texture of our containers by increasing our exercise and eating better—which will be a stretch since we both already enjoy some form of exercise at least five days a week. And neither of us eat very terribly . . . we both abstain from fast food, from junk food, from fatty food. But boy, do we like our deserts! And how we enjoy that glass of wine (or two) with dinner. And then there’s me with my love for an occasional (that’s a completely subjective word, you know) cosmopolitan.

So there you go  . . . our plan to ward off the absence of youth. Or at least go “gently into its goodnight.”

And so far, so good! In the past couple of weeks we’ve lost a combined total of eight pounds and our clothes are fitting a tad better since we’re changing the texture of our containers. We are watching our portions more closely and so we feel better after each meal (I have this thing where my nose stops up when I get full. I call it my shut off valve, something I’ve tended to ignore in recent past. But last night I realized that my shut off valve hasn’t been employed in a while – yet another measurement of success!) And then this morning, I saw it! Something I haven’t seen in a very long time.

My hip bone! 

I hope to resurrect the other one soon. Wish me luck!

Sometimes doctors fix ya and sometimes they don't

It was some seventeen years ago when I had a caesarian section. At the time I was under the impression that they were done rarely and only in cases of absolute need. At the time I thought mine was one of those. Since then I’ve learned how pitocin (given to induce labor) actually induces stress in the fetus creating a need for C-sections. (Google Pit to Distress). If mine had been an actual emergency, my C-section would have happened as soon as they discovered the stress in my baby, not three hours later, after office hours, when it was more convenient for my OB.

As a result of my unnecessarian, the muscles cut in my midsections are weaker than they should be, an imbalance that’s caused seventeen years of lifting, standing, running and walking incorrectly. Not totally responsible but certainly contributing to the arthritis I’m now sporting in my lower back.

As a result of my arthritis, I went to another kind of doctor, a rheumatologist who assured me that certain pain meds were safe if taken with food and bla, bla, bla . . . etc. etc. etc . . .  all advice I followed to the letter. “If they stop working,” he advised, “we’ll find something else for you.”

Well, they never stopped working, they kept me happy, pain free, and functioning normally. Until the day I wound up unconscious on the floor and had to be hauled away in an ambulance. Turns out I had three bleeding ulcers and had lost two pints of blood. Turns out NSAIDs are actually responsible for some 16,000 deaths a year. (see previous post about that.) 

  

While I was in the hospital getting my bloody stomach fixed, I was assigned a GI doctor who I like immensely (in spite of the places he’s been). He helped heal up the holes in my stomach and then kept seeing me for regular check-ups. Every time we talked he asked if anything else was going on. So I eventually got over my embarrassment and told him about a certain “other” chronic problem I was having (and I’ll spare the details here).

I told him how doctor number one (the OB) had suggested that this "other problem" is caused by a tilt in my uterus and the sure-fire fix would be to take the thing out . . . said I’d be fine without it since my baby making days were over and I didn't need the thing anyway. He said artificial hormones would compensate for what I’d lose and they’d be safe as long as I took them according to directions. And bla, bla, bla, . . . etc, etc, etc . . . 

Gee, where had I heard that before?

In the long run, my GI doctor (did I mention how much I adore him?) has suggested certain dietetic changes and other sundry, natural stuff that has everything working as it should. No surgery, no drugs. Just me, my weakened ab muscles, my arthritic back, my compromised stomach, and my diet.

So yeah, I have some back pain. I have some issues with my posture. I have a few regrets—okay, maybe lots of them. But I also have a big strapping seventeen year old boy. And what could be wrong with that!?

And I have a much more cautionary relationship with our "healthcare" system.

Dust Bunnies . . . where do they come from? what are they made of? and why won’t they go away!?

I admit I’m not the best housekeeper to walk the face of the earth. Maybe not even the state of Texas. Or the city of Houston. Or my subdivision. Probably not even this cul-de-sac.

I am, however, the best housekeeper of this house. Of that I can be proud.

Even so, I know my “skills” (which were never stellar) have waned over the years. Oh sure, there was a time when I was maniacal about a spotless house. But with the mellowing of age, came the shifting of priorities. I no longer have the time, energy or desire to polish stuff on a daily basis. Oh, did I say daily? More like weekly. And lately . . . monthly. 

Even that was put on hold when we decided to invest in a three week project to remodel our two baths. It didn’t make sense to clean when the worker dudes would be traipsing in and out all day, trashing everything in their wake. So, what meager housekeeping I used to do was ignored during the remodeling.

The promise of three weeks turned into five, then seven, then nine. Next week will mark the tenth week of our three week project and, while I have dusted and cleaned in the rest of the house, I’ve neglected the areas being worked on . . . and I had the dust bunnies to show for it!

I couldn’t believe how they’d taken advantage of my neglect. They were everywhere! And they’d grown . . . I had bunnies the size of my Boston Terriers! If I’d waited another day, they might have taken over the house. Then who'd be here to enjoy those new bathrooms? So this morning, even with the shower door and lighting due Monday, even with the cleaning crew coming on Tuesday, I just couldn’t take one more second! I had to break out the Bunnie Buster!

I’m left thinking that Dust Bunnies, whatever the heck they are, earned their name from their ability to breed like rabbits. And I’m eternally grateful for my Dyson with it’s amazing bunnie busting capabilities.

All clean . . . again J  

At least for a month. 

Or so.  

Everybody's Grand

I was walking today, listening to a talk I'd downloaded onto my MP3 player. The discussion was about the ego and how full of it we are. There was a comment made, comparing us to our parents and/or grandparents, suggesting that we take a moment to ponder the differences between their lives and the lives of us narcissistic baby boomers. While I didn't do much pondering over that, the comment did make me realize something that I'd never considered before - how I'd never had a "normal" set of grandparents.

First there was my dad's mom who, as near as I could tell, never had a husband. Over the years there were hints made of one but the impression I got was that he was a useless, shiftless excuse for a man whom grandma either divorced or killed. I never really knew which but some part of me could imagine the later, especially given Grandma's wild, Irish tempter that would flair and curse and throw things. Of course, none of that was ever directed toward us grandkids. But the mere mention of dad's dad and sparks would fly from Grandma's eyeballs and all us grandkids would scramble for cover. I never did find out what happened to him, but, as I grew older, I found myself wondering how the man ever got close enough for Grandma to have born him three children.

Then there was my mom's mom who stirred that same question in me. But Chub (which is what everyone called her - don't ask me why), unlike Grandma, did not limit her wrath to just her ex husband (grandpa Pop who I'll get to in a minute). Nope, Chub believed that all men were created equal and none of them were good for anything. There's not much else I remember about Chub, other than the fact that I managed to become her favorite grandkid. Maybe it was my own devil-may-care, hell-bent-for-trouble attitude that she could identify with. Whatever reason, she would always have a gift waiting for me whenever I'd go for a visit - odd things like a lace shawl that was so out of style all I could do was love if for its beauty and then hang it in my closet with other things I never wore. Or a set of silverware with three pronged forks that reminded me of mini pitchforks. If QVC were a thing back then, I'm sure Grandma Chub would have been all over it.

I felt bad for her when health forced her into my parents' home. She took my old bedroom, which obviously meant I'd moved out by then. And she stayed tucked away in it as much as possible, far from my father - the man. Chub died right there in my room, in the chair in the corner by the window.

Grandpa Pop, her ex, might have been the reason for her deep seeded hatred of men. He went on to marry five more times after their divorce. This in spite of the fact that he was paralyzed from the waist down and was "useless as a eunuch" as my uncle used to say. But Pop never let a small thing like paraplegia stop him. He'd had his accident at 34 when a motor boat he'd been fixing up slid off its braces and toppled onto him, crushing his pelvic area. He lived out the rest of his 29 years in a wheelchair that me and the rest of the grandkids thought was wonderful. We'd wait 'till he was out of it and then push each other up and down the ramps that peppered his customized house.

His car was a cool thing too. He'd heft himself up into it and then lean out far enough to fold up his chair. Then he'd muscle it into the car behind him and off he'd go. Of course without the use of his legs, he'd had to have the car modified so that, instead of a brake peddle, there was a hand brake up by the steering wheel. Pop drove himself everywhere he needed to go.

His favorite thing to do was to travel. And collect wives. I remember once, when I was about eight, he went to Mexico on a fishing trip. Came home with a boatload of different kinds of fish that my mom cooked up and we ate on for weeks. He also came home with a wife named Maria who was younger than my mom. Maria's two kids were younger than I was too and for a while there, my older sister had an uncle and an aunt who she got to babysit. Then there was Junga and Shumbay from Korea. Don't ask me how Pop ended up married to a Korean woman. All I remember are their names. And the time Shumbay tricked me into sticking my finger in a light socket, the mean little jerk.

I can't remember the rest of Pop's miscellaneous wives but it sure seemed like there were enough of them. Even so, between my five step-grams and four biological ones, I never once had a normal sense of grandparentcy. Don't get me wrong, I loved them all (the biological ones at least). And I have to admit, they had a collective spice to them that kept life interesting.

I wonder now whether that's the kind of pondering the guy on my MP3 player was thinking of. But I kind of don't think so.

Mums the Word

Okay, so if you’re not familiar with Texas, you probably won’t get this. Trust me, I didn’t get it either until recently. It’s about a common custom here in the lone star state and, if I was interested enough, I might explore its origins. But I’m not… interested. Just caught up.

The first time I learned of it was when my daughter was in high school and was actually going to a homecoming dance. I say “actually” because my daughter in high school was much like her mother in high school - completely ambivalent when it came to the popular social gatherings like dances, glee clubs, sleepovers . . . neither of us gave a flip about such things. But on this particular occasion, my daughter was going and I had driven her there and was dropping her off.

“What the heck is hanging off all those girls?” I asked, watching a herd of teenagers cross the parking lot, headed for the school gymnasium. Not only were they dressed in Roper style jeans, cowboy shirts and boots (that particular dance happened to fall during the rodeo), but several of them sported massive arrangements that swung from their overly proportioned chests. From my vantage point, they looked like corsages on steroids. While a few were more delicate and modest, most were ornate to the point of being gaudy. I saw a full sized teddy bear glued to the center of an artificial flower and from it hung a multitude of streamers, ribbons, and bells. ‘Is that actually a cow bell?’ I wondered. Most of them centered around the school mascot - a fluffy stuffed eagle crammed into the middle of the flower. But the dangling mass of jiggling bobbles remained the same. Some were so large they had to be worn around the neck like a tie, suspended by a thick, decorative cord.

“Oh those are mums, mom.”

“What do they do?” I asked.

“They just hang there. The girls wear them to school on homecoming day and then to the dance.”

“Why?”

“It shows they have a date to the dance.”

‘Like a label?’ I wondered. A huge, heavy, dangling label. I couldn’t help but wonder what it said about all the mumless girls like my daughter. Did it scream wallflower like some stamp of disapproval? Not that my daughter gave a flip about that either. We gave each other a smirk and a hug and I told her to have a good time before I drove home thinking what a silly tradition was all this mumery.

Fast forward about ten years and you’ll get to this time last year when my son was a freshman at his sister’s alma mater. However (and isn’t there always a however?), unlike his sister, my son loved the social aspect of high school and couldn’t wait for the homecoming dance. He’d asked a little friend of his and I was tickled for him. Then, about a week before the dance, some of the other moms were talking about the mums they made for their son’s dates. ‘What?’ I thought, feeling a rush of panic spread from my gut up to my face. Was I supposed to make a mum?! I asked my son when he got home that day and he said his friend would be ‘okay’ without one. But I sensed a hint of dejection in his answer.

‘Okay? Just okay,’ I thought. What did that mean? I vacillated for days until finally I talked to some of the moms at the yoga center. They all gave me the same answer and yet still I clung fiercely to my denial – ‘it’s a silly tradition,’ I thought, ‘one we don’t need to feed.’ Nevertheless, from the parking lot, I picked up my cell and called a good friend who’d already gotten her two teenage girls through high school (and countless mums, I assume).

“Oh Linda, it’s a huge deal,” she told me and the emphasis was hers not mine. “His friend will be the only girl there with a date and no mum. In fact even girls without dates are starting to make their own mums because it’s such a loved tradition and everyone wants one as a memento.”

‘Oh good God!’ I thought. I’m about to commit a Texas-mom faux pas over something I think is ridiculous. But, regardless of how I felt about the tradition, it was my son’s reputation we were talking about here. Thankfully for me, there was a flower shop in the same strip as the yoga center and I popped myself in, asking about mums.

“Your lucky!” the florist said, “we happen to have one left.” And she showed me the gaudy, dangling thing strung with ribbons and garland and artificial everything. It was huge! And so was the price. I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t about to pay that much for something the girl herself would have been ‘okay’ without! It probably cost more than her jeans and cowboy boots combined! (Actually, they no longer had homecoming during the rodeo so the girls were back to wearing dresses.)

“So what are my options?” I asked and the florist told me about a grocery store that sold pre-made mums.

“But it won’t be a custom job like this one,” she reminded me, holding the monolith up to her chest so I could get the full effect of her handiwork.

“I think that’s okay,” I said and I hopped into my car and headed toward the nearest Krogers. The florist had been right, there were plenty left there. And the price was only about half as much as she’d wanted for mum-the-gargantuan. But, it was obvious they were mass produced, not unique in the slightest and not nearly as creative as the one I’d just been introduced to.
‘I can do better than this,” I thought, ‘and probably for half the cost.’ And so it was that I spent the remaining two days before homecoming visiting all the Michaels and Hobby-Lobby stores in my locale, desperately searching for mum paraphernalia. The selection was scant this late in the game (or close to the game as was the case). There were no fuzzy eagles left at all so I had to find something else to stuff into the middle of the thing. And when it came time to find gold letters to spell out the happy couple’s names, the only ones left were Qs, Zs and Xs. I ended up buying gold lame paper and using my Cricut cutting device to create my own lettering. Then I ran the letters through my sticker maker to get the gummy surface on the back (yes, I scrapbook too).

While it probably wouldn’t have won any mum awards, it was passable and from what my son said, his date was appreciative.

I thought of mums whenever I visited the craft store for the next few months after homecoming. In fact, I was tempted to start buying little eagles, teddy bears and other such what-not, knowing there was a good chance I’d be making a mum this year too. But I didn’t. And now, as suspected, the saga has continued, only this time, with a new wrinkle.


See this year, my son has expanded his social networking and is dating a girl from a neighboring school. So, oh my gosh! What’s the mum protocol when you cross boundaries! Does the girl wear the boy’s school colors to show her social sophistication? Or does she stick with her own colors so as not to stand out in the homecoming crowd? And what if they decide to attend both school dances? Am I expected to make two mums, one for each school? And if I have to make a mum with her school colors, well, you know what that means - all different colors, all different gadgets and do-dads! And, instead of a fluffy eagle, I’ll have to figure out what the other mascot is and find a fluffy one of them.

But okay, nothing is worth getting so worked up over. And this was no exception. As it turned out there’s only one mum to be made and yes, it does need to be in her colors. But I learned that I can go to the Hobby-Lobby closest to her school and they will, of course, carry all the mum thingies in all the right shapes, sizes and colors. Whew! Just one trip instead of several. And the best part is that her homecoming is scheduled two weeks after my son’s so, unlike the two days I had last year, this year I’ll have plenty of time.

So I sent an email to a couple friends whose sons are the same age as mine. I asked if their sons were taking dates to the dance and if so, had they planned to make their own mums and if so, would they like to get together for a mom’s mum making party - sort of like a mother’s day in. Of course ours would include a lot of wine-drinking to enhance the whole experience for the mum moms themselves.

“You’re such a good mom!” one of my friends said after declining my invitation and confessing to having bought hers from Krogers. ‘It’s true,’ I thought, ‘I am a good mum mom.’ Silly or not, ridiculous a tradition as it is, I think I’ve done well. And I think even my daughter would be proud – of course, after she finishes razzing me about it.