August 24, 2009

Seven Days Makes One Weak

It was a long week.

As if the red biohazard incident were not enough fun, I also caught a summer cold or some sort of respiratory difficulty that may or may not be H1N1 that could possibly kill me.

The peak of said respiratory difficulty coincided with my monthly city council meeting (and I mean that literally... not as a euphemism for something else) during which I had a coughing episode that had people: 1) getting me water, 2) giving me cough drops, 3) giving me gum, 4) asking if I were going to be okay and 5) made me wonder if I was going to have to ask for them to stop the meeting for five minutes while I ran to the hospital and asked for a little green oxygen bottle.

Fortunately, the gum an old guy gave me was what did the trick. I'm sure the Clerk is going to have a nightmare time trying to type up the minutes of that meeting since I was sitting only one chair down from the tape recorder.

I also didn't eat for five days. Not eating is highly underrated. About Day Three or Four the euphoria sets in and for a couple of days the world looks like a whole new light and airy kind of place. Then the pizza cravings start. Can't. Resist. Pizza.

* * *

During the week of poor health my mother had surgery to remove some skin cancer. So extensive was the event that she also had to have reconstructive surgery on her face including a skin graft and a strange moving around of parts that I didn't even think was possible. Remarkably she looks great. The surgeon was brilliant, skilled and looked really good in scrubs. All good vibes for her speedy healing will be graciously accepted. I dare not tell her I spilled the cancer beans or she will be angry with me for talking about her personal business.

But when has that ever stopped me, right?

* * *

My mother informed me this week that my brother will no longer eat food prepared by other people. If it hasn't been cooked in his house or by him personally he will not eat it. Apparently, his many years of working in the food service industry has finally pushed him over the edge. He insists that if any of us eat in a restaurant we have a death wish and it's only a matter of time before something horrible happens to us.

* * *

My oldest son came running up to me yelling, "Mom, there are men attacking our trees!" He was alarmed and nearly in a panic.

I ran to the window and, indeed, there were quite a few men in our yard attacking our trees. They were from the electric company and they were here for the periodic butchering of the foliage. We have four trees in our front yard, three of which are "volunteer" (meaning a bird pooped out a seed and a tree grew where it landed) and not particularly attractive. Especially the way the electric company keeps hacking away at it. The fourth is a very pretty Rose of Sharon.

I assured Julius not to be alarmed... that it was all perfectly normal. I realize later that the puzzled look on his face was him wondering what kind of world he lived in that it was perfectly fine that a whole bunch of men with orange hard hats would swarm over our front yard and start grinding our trees up in a big, noisy machine.

Three days later the three volunteers were hacked down by my husband because we could no longer stand to see the evidence of the massacre. The yard looks naked, but nicer.

Strangely, a house I have listed has a tree growing up through the floor of the porch. It's a gorgeous country farmhouse that's listed around $500K and yet the owner will not pay to have someone cut the tree out of the middle of his porch.

I keep trying to turn all this tree babble into some metaphor on life, but I'm just not smart enough. Feel free to take up my slack and offer your own philosophical musings.

* * *

We own two guinea pigs now. I think this might have been a big mistake.

* * *

Driving to day care the other day, Tristan sat very quietly in the back sipping a yogurt smoothie. When he finishes a drink, he has lately formed the habit of chucking it with all his might across the room, usually AT someone. That day was no exception and I felt something hit me in the back of the head, bounce off and fly end over end flinging yogurt around in the car, bounce off the steering wheel and land somewhere at Julius's feet.

My hair, my face and my shirt were spattered with yogurt smoothie. My first thought was it looked like something else completely inappropriate. My second thought was all this might be good for my complexion if it weren't so embarrassing.

My third thought was "Welcome to Motherhood."

How was your last seven days?


26 comments:

  1. Glad you're feeling better, even if you are wearing yogurt or some other inappropriate substance.

    Hope your mom recoops well, also. and I won't tell her you blabbed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. So glad you are feeling better. My son had a bit of biohazards and was sent home from daycare on Thursday. Thankfully, none of us got whatever he had but the full day I was home alone with him felt like an entire week! I forgot how much work a 19 month old can be....

    ReplyDelete
  3. You have the most wonderful knack for taking those daily moments that in most cases pass without notice, and turning them into a wonderful and funny mosaic commentary of LIFE. How do you do that? Do you have a recorder going all the time, or a tablet and pen hanging from your neck? I always say I'm going to remember this moment, this conversation, this event, this opportunity to blog about, but, more often than not, five minutes later it's gone.

    Gosh, you do sound sick, but I understand there's a respiratory thing and a stomach thing going thru the schools. Actually, I've already forgotten if you said you were sick or if you'd just had a couging fit ... I've had that happen before when I'd swallow my spit wrong and have a coughing fit, and you get get a breath which makes you cough more. Anyway, if you're sick I hope it's already on the mend.

    ReplyDelete
  4. My grandmother had two trees she couldn't bring herself to cut down so she just built the porch around them. I always thought it was kind of cool.

    My kids want a rodent (guinea pig, hampster, etc.) so I'm curious to know how that goes. :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sending your mom all the best wishes for a speedy recovery! :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. I can't stand it when I proof read and still don't catch all my goofs...so, if you don't mind, I'd like to take a red pen to my previous comment: that should be 'coughing fit' and 'can't catch a breath'. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  7. poor you. feel better soon, pamper yourself (you deserve it). watch out for pizzas from Borg; you'll know it when they say Resistance. is. Futile.

    hope no more tree massacres or biohazard events occur this week. i think you folks have had eNOUGH already. take the rest of the week off. :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. You win! Your last 7 days were WAY worse than mine. (My only child started h.s. today. I thought I would cry, but didn't. I'm sure he's very glad.) But, no, your week was worse than mine. If I have a bad week, I'll let you know ASAP. Then you can look back and say, Wow, her week is way worse than mine! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  9. I congratulate you on making it an entire 3-4 days without pizza. I've often told the husband that i could eat pizza for dinner every night of the week. However, I do not desire to wear a muumuu for the rest of my life so I've had to relgated myself to only one night a week, Friday.

    I have a reminder set in my outlook to alert me that it's pizza night.

    I tear up just a little when it goes off.

    ReplyDelete
  10. i'm with you wendy!! WHAT a week it was. i had my own biohazard disaster during our 'anniversary event' off to ER. (its in my blog feel free to read it-i bet you get a laugh)

    hope you're feeling better, the guineapigs don't eat your furniture , and julius breaks his new habit soon...... and no i don't think you have any tattlers here, i won't tell your mom either.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Wanted to cry but laughed instead. Glad you are feeling better and that your Mom's surgery went so well.

    Praying for you both.

    I would pray for your son not to throw stuff after he drinks it but I prefer to laugh with you instead. :)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Hope things can only get better. I hardly want to say that the last seven days were actually rather fun for me. But you have all my sympathies.

    ReplyDelete
  13. you have a most interesting life. . . and family.

    ReplyDelete
  14. "How was your last seven days?"

    Was an interesting, fun week spent with kids. I'm not wearing anything my kids have eaten, however, but from the looks of my checkbook, I'm thinking my husband and I will have a lot more money when they're grown.

    ReplyDelete
  15. You talked about the tree growing through the owner's porch floor. We have a house about an hour away that has a tree also growing through the roof of the porch and is about 2x's as tall as the 2 story house it's attached to. It's still alive, though. All the leaves are there ever year. I'm afraid one day we'll find that the tree fell and brought the house with it.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Wendy

    A tiny tree story for you.
    We decided to extend our backyard, which led to extending our house, which led to extending our deck. There happened to be a very pretty shade tree in the middle of the spot where the deck extension would be built. This tree lends shade and comfort to the backside of the house in the summer, as well as to all who venture outside in the 105 degree heat that we often have in July and August. So....what did we do?
    Of course, we built the deck around the tree. It now grows right through the middle of the deck, and its two main trunks are so large that the "tree attacking guys" had to come install a thick metal wire between the trunks to hold them together so that the tree wouldn't split one day and kill any porch sitters that might be visiting.
    Sometimes I guess it's just fine if we grow and expand around nature instead of hacking and cutting and obliterating it. I was glad we could save this tree and enjoy it as we lounge on the back deck for many summers to come.

    Greg

    ReplyDelete
  17. hmmm. Now I want pizza but I don't particularly want to eat it from a restaurant...

    Thoughts of a speedy recovery for your mom!

    ReplyDelete
  18. My mom always tells me I used to do the chucking-drinks-with-all-of-my-might thing. I always laugh, but then I saw it on a baby video and realized how bad it was.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Oh, my. All I did was host 70 at my house on Sunday for a bridal tea, which I will be blogging about on Thursday. Then I am gearing up for another 40 Saturday night for a casual dinner party.

    I don't think I want to trade with you. My three boys are all grown now. Thankfully they grew out of the throwing of cups phase. Now I just have to ship the youngest one of his dad's white button down collar shirts to wear in a wedding Saturday because he's too cheap to buy his own. Nevermind that it cost $10 to ship the thing to Little Rock.

    ReplyDelete
  20. If I didn't eat for five days, I'd be euphoric too, from the weight loss!

    Sorry to hear about your mother. Best wishes to her.

    ReplyDelete
  21. I am glad you are feeling better but sorry to hear you were feeling so sick.
    I hope you have a good rest of the week

    ReplyDelete
  22. Oh, dear, I didn't need to know that about restaurants. I live for our two nights out a year where someone else cooks for me and cleans up in exchange for money.

    ReplyDelete
  23. When you're feeling better maybe you can get some gross food service stories from your brother?
    I only need a little more incentive to be crazy paranoid about food prepared by others.

    Yogurt shower. Nice!

    ReplyDelete
  24. Hope you are feeling better and that your mom is on the rood to a speedy recovery.

    What's up with Julius throwing the cup? I guess it could have been worse - it could have been a heavy toy or something and knocked you out while you were driving. There's the silver lining. yeah.

    Hope you have a better week. :)

    ReplyDelete
  25. I worked in restaurants for 3 years. I once saw a chef accidentally knock over a giant bin of green beans onto the floor. He took a broom and swept them back in the bin and then cooked them.

    ReplyDelete
  26. well I don't think my week was as crazy as yours. The only major adventure was getting mauled by my cat. I am planning a vacation the begining of next month I will share. stop by and say hi. Good luck to you and your mom. Shhhhh we're going diamond mining.

    ReplyDelete

Tell me what's on your mind!