Hobson's Choice
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Knitting Report
Holy Moly! I cannot believe it. I have turned the heel for a sock. Without help. Just reading the instructions --Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's magnificent instructions in her new book Knitting Rules . I just cannot believe it. I don't want to get overly confident here, but I don't see why I shouldn't now be able to finish this sock. The foot and toe require skills which I've done elsewhere (knitting in the round, decreasing, three needle bind off). I'm so excited I almost can't stand it.
10:20 a.m. - 2006-07-25
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mouse
You've heard of The Lion in Winter? How about the Mouse in Summer?
And what do you do about the mouse in summer? He's living off the fat of the land; god knows why he wants to come inside. Perhaps he has heard of the legendary dark place from several mice who disappeared last winter.
The dark place is the underneath side of our oven range. We killed off several mice last winter after the heart-stopping afternoon I saw a mice running under a burner. We now have decorative burner covers on top of the burners so more mice can't get in (assuming that there isn't some other entrance to the range deep in the bowels of the kitchen).
And now you know what burner covers are actually for and why old people have them. To keep disease-laden critters out of your oven.
Anyway, this mouse who first appeared on Eleanor's birthday is unbeatable. Why should the mouse in summer be attracted to our trap? He's not that hungry. Apparently, he's not even hungry enough to explore the pantry for which I am grateful. But we don't know quite what to do beyond continuing to set the trap and guard the stove.
10:22 a.m. - 2006-07-24
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What Can Die
E: Me and daddy saw a dead squirrel when we were on a walk. I laughed and laughed.
J: (stifling unQuakerly urge to yell, "You what? You laughed at a dead squirrel? We don't laugh at dead things!!!) Oh? (nonchalantly) How come you laughed?
E: Because... because I didn't know that squirrels could die.
J: Oh, well, yeah, pretty much everything alive can die.
E: Me and daddy talked about it. My dad knows a lot about dead squirrels....
2:46 p.m. - 2006-07-22
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Blech!
Yuck. Who wants to be reminded about how shady human nature can get? Got a call this morning from "the bank," saying that my overdraft was now in collections and that I needed to call a certain number. Breathe a sigh of relief, folks. I didn't call that number. I called my bank, and the teller had no idea what I was talking about. She took down the scam artist's phone number. Ugh.
I've had enough experience with being the wife of Chris Green and therefore fending off calls for the all the other "Chris Greens" on the planet that I didn't think this call was legit even for a moment. But there's something about the words "overdraft" and "collections" that drive your stomach up into your brain and render you temporarily unable to breathe or think. Even if you are certain that you don't have an overdraft; even if you know you have done nothing to send bills into collections. I panicked even while I kept my lips shut and hung up the phone without disclosing any of our personal information.
But just... yuck. I just hate being reminded that there are people out there who are happy to be fraudsters.
4:11 p.m. - 2006-07-21
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Migraines
"Can't you just take a tylenol?" This is for all the folks who asked my mom this question 25 years ago.
I'm coming off a bad migraine jag, what feels now like the worst of my life. While it's fresh, I thought I'd describe what migraines are like. Around 13% of you don't need to read it; you already know. And one in four households include a migraine sufferer, so even more of you know second-hand. For the rest of you here's the skinny on migraines.
I sometimes get asked about childbirth and migraines. "Of course, childbirth is worse, right?" No way. Give me childbirth every time over a migraine. Here are some other painful experiences that are preferable to a migraine:
(1) Falling and nearly breaking a leg and destroying your upper lip.
(2) Having your feet repeatedly stuck with I.V. needles.
(3) Having any part of your body repeatedly stuck with I.V. needles (I'm what's known as a "bad stick.")
(4) Having dye shot deep into your nether regions.
(5) Anything to do with a fundus and making it shrink.
(6)Having your wisdom teeth out.
The only personal experience that I wouldn't prefer to a migraine is being paralyzed and slowly poisoned by a labor-stopping drug when I was pregnant with Eleanor. Near complete paralysis. That's the only thing in my life more painful than a migraine.
And apparently I'm not alone in my assessment of the pain. The World Health Organization says migraines are among the most debilitating health conditions, up there with quadriplegia, active psychosis and depression.
So yes, you could take a tylenol for a migraine. You could also take a jelly bean for all the good it would do. A migraine is like a normal headache in the way that a McDonald's Happy Meal is like a 4-star French dinner.
The kicker about migraines is the way that they strap you to the rack of suffering. While you're having one, there is nothing to do but suffer. With other illnesses, you might be able to distract yourself from the pain. A migraine demands that you surrender to it.
So you think you might try to distract yourself with your latest celebrity crush TV's Craig Ferguson? The light from the television will rachet the pain up a notch and also make you throw up. You might try to work a little bit? Same deal with the light from the computer screen. Okay, then, you'll try taking care of a child, playing quietly. Whoops! Moving will exhaust you and again you'll probably have to puke.
Things that you never notice in your daily life suddenly become prominent and painful. The sound of your neighbor's weedeater seems to be coming from inside your head. And let's not even talk about the clamour of your refrigerator running.
All there is to do is to lie quietly and suffer. If you can lie still enough in a dark enough room, you might be able to think. But maybe not, maybe you will writhe with pain and wish for death.
Migraines also hurt through their irony. The area of your body that's in pain is only about 2 inches square. In any other part of your body, you would be able shrug that off and function. But because this pain is coming from inflammation in your brain, your CNS makes sure that pain will wreak havoc on your entire system. Hence the throwing up.
Well, gosh, that sounds pretty awful, doesn't it? So what works? What's the ray of sunshine here? For about 80% of us, there is a marvelous class of drug that tells your brain to take a chill pill, shrinks those swollen blood vessels and stops the headache pronto. You have to take it in time (which I didn't this past weekend), and that isn't always possible. But many migraine sufferers, especially those who lived through the bad old days, will tell you that the triptans are a miracle drug for our time. My mother has a refrigerator magnet for hers (imitrex); I'm sure some rock band has composed a song for them. These drugs are wonderful.
It's important to remember that for the other 20% of sufferers, it's still the bad old days. They're still reliant on drugs that don't really work as well and mess you up worse. For them we pray for the miracle drug of the next decade and we remember never to mention tylenol.
Although I've heard that a massive tylenol suppository can be somewhat effective -- so there's your humorous windup to the delightful topic of the migraine headache.
9:50 a.m. - 2006-07-20
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Popeye
Popeye
Eleanor: Mommy, you know that superhero where salad comes out of his arms, when does that happen?
This is the child's-eye view of Popeye from a generation which has never seen him except on the bags of spinach in the grocery store.
Eleanor continues her love-affair with spinach, so she may know more about Popeye than your average four year old. Before all you other mothers get jealous of the vegetable eating, please realize that we're still recovering from a Nuclear Meltdown last week over the Rule of Three ("All persons age 3 and over must TRY everything on their plate") as it pertained to a plate of beans and rice. And green beans were recently added to the "misgusting" list.
Salad, however, can be sprinkled with what is essentially syrup, and you can eat croutons with it. What a vegetable.
8:41 a.m. - 2006-07-19
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
Other diaries: > |
