It’s drained.

Come with me on a medical adventure.

I had my appointment with the podiatrist yesterday. Since he wasn’t my original doctor (who is on vacation), I had to explain the whole history of this cyst and the sippy cup debacle. I started out by saying, “I have a ganglion cyst on my foot.” He smiled and said, “Heh, I can see that,” while staring at the prominent lump. (I knew I would like him from that moment on.)

As soon as I got my story out, he explained that this is old hat. He needed to aspirate the cyst and take out the insides. My response to the aspiration would determine whether I eventually needed surgery or not.

[Side-note: You may be wondering where Lolo was in this whole scenario. Well, she was a superstar sitting in her front row seat, the stroller. When we’re in any sort of doctor’s office, she is a wiggle worm who wants to investigate everything UNTIL the doctor comes in. Once the doc is on the scene, she turns into the perfect audience. I think she senses their authority and that they are going to do things she’ll want to watch. Still, I was a little worried. I had my blood pressure taken recently, and she freaked out when she saw the big band around my arm and the nurse doing something to mama. In the end, she found it all utterly fascinating.]

[Warning: This could be a little gory depending on your tolerance for Discover Health shows. If you’re at all squeamish, skip to the sentence near the end in red.]

First, he numbed the whole side of my foot with an injection of lidocaine which I neglected to watch. Then he pumped the cyst up to twice its size with some sort of fluid. And, then for the peak of drama, he used an 18-gauge needle (which in my state of shock looked as thick as a coffee stirrer) to suck out the cyst’s innards. It turns out that you don’t really drain a cyst because the filling is thick like jelly. He even showed me what he was able to pull out, and I was surprised to see that it was less than a teaspoon. He then finished it all off with a shot of cortisone.

To be frank, it was magical. As soon as he sucked the jelly out, I felt no pressure, no pain, and the bump was reduced to half its original size. Even with the lidocaine, I could feel the release. I have a follow-up appointment next week and am supposed to keep it tightly wrapped until then. He said the success of the treatment greatly depends on the compression I administer with bandages.

All was good. I went home. I performed all the normal evening activities and then went to bed.

With a surge of pain, I awoke around midnight startled by the fire in my foot. I guess the drugs finally wore off and the effects of forcibly disrupting the cyst were setting in. I tossed and turned in distress for 4.5 hours. Motrin sort of eased the misery, but not really. I fantasized about hitting my left foot with a hammer so that the pain in my right foot wouldn’t feel so bad. Alas, morning came and the ache subsided.

I will post a picture once I can kick Matt off the big photo editing computer upstairs. In the meantime, I am off to soak my foot in epsom salts. Nothing like a good foot soak to make you feel old.

Seriously?

We’ve finally been inducted into the exclusive, underground homeowner’s club and our platinum membership card is already in the mail. You’ll know you’re “in” when you’re no longer planning your next vacation but rather how much you’ll have to pay a contractor for new drywall installation.

As winter thawed, the ice dams in the gutter over our TV room started to melt backward towards the house. Unfortunately, there were two gaps in the flashing that allowed that trickle of water to flow into the walls. (Yum.) So, apparently, there is good reason to clean out your gutters regularly.

March and April unfolded, and my scary-good sense of smell sniffed out a funk behind the leftover 1970s paneling that no one else could detect. Needless to say, the stink quickly went from an annoying odor to a major tear-out of three walls, new drywall, gutter and window repair, etc.

We went from panic (me), to antsyness (me), to demolition (Steve the builder), to acceptance (Matt) as we dealt with an unexpected home repair. I do feel like a more accomplished homeowner, yes. But, now I am left with this unknowing panic. What else am I missing or not smelling? Do I need to sniff the entire interior of our house?

I now drive around the neighborhood and check out how sophisticated other people’s gutters are. I listen for leaks. I peer at the integrity of caulk around the tub. Seriously, this all came about because of my nose. I’m sure that eventually someone would have come to our home and asked, “Dude, what’s that smell?” But, we caught it early because of me and my olfactory system.

I carry on, though, in my obsessive plight. We did save some money by painting the trim and walls ourselves (myself). The process was long and arduous. In total, it took me over a week because I could only manage to do two hours each night after dinner prep, cooking, cleanup, laundry, etc. But, I did it, and we won’t mention the defeated tears that occurred in the interim. We have Wilmington Tan walls, and they are lovely.

So, the morning after I finished the room, we had a scheduled delivery of a washing machine to replace the dilapidated one rusting in our basement. The guys decided to shut off the water supply to the entire house to hook up the washer. In order to completely drain the line, he asked me to flush all the toilets upstairs and turn on a couple faucets. Unfortunately, he neglected to tell me when he was turning the main water line back on. While I was on the second floor attending to Lolo, the sink on the first floor was flooding the first floor bathroom and raining down into the basement. When I walked down to the basement to see how everything was going, they looked at the water gushing and said, “Something’s wrong.” As soon as I realized what was happening, I raced upstairs, put Lolo back in her crib, and grabbed the first towels I could find. In my nice jeans on my hands and knees, I began to sop up water frenetically just imagining the possibilities of disaster that this could cause. I began to sob in an extremely pathetic way. It wasn’t pretty and the delivery guys were a little taken aback.

In the end, the washer was hooked up. I had my contractor come to look at the floors and called the delivery company about possibly filing a claim if the slats started to buckle. But, I got the tears out and took care of business.

The very next morning (which was Saturday of course), the trash guys took our trash from the bins as usual and proceeded to drag them along the entire length of my neighbor’s driveway to the truck. Unfortunately for me, he was dragging one of the bags that had the discards from my painting escapade. Leftover white paint from a “trim cup” spilled in a perfect line down the asphalt all the way to the street.

Inside, I laughed a hysterical cackle. How else could I top off the week? In my pink and white “heart” pajamas, I put on my rain boots and set to scrubbing the driveway next door with an old mop head and bucket. It was perfect. Priceless even.

The paint did come up and the problem was solved, but not before giving the neighbors a very perplexing show.

Just call me Erin Brockovich

I thought my life was lacking its usual drama until two weeks ago happened. (Sidenote: You can relax a little bit. It’s not so big of a deal that I couldn’t write about it for two weeks, it’s just that Easter and other visitors have come in between “then and now” so I’m tardy on my dramatic reporting.)

I woke up one morning and saw that a house across the street had workman setting up for some type of home improvement job. With all of the houses around here being close to a hundred years old, lead paint is definitely a hot topic. Everyone’s worst nightmare with young kids is for a neighbor to have their house sanded in preparation for a new coat of paint. The lead tainted sawdust gets everywhere and easily travels into neighboring homes through doors, windows and on the botom of shoes that enter the house. So, our town has ridiculously strict codes including ones that require contractors to use sanders with HEPA vacuums attached to them. Painters are also supposed to completely encase a house in tarps to prevent the dust from traveling, and they’re supposed to wear protective clothing themselves with masks and respirators. Better yet, they are supposed to give all neighbors proper notice of this kind of work being done.

With that background established, as I brushed my teeth, I leered through the bathroom with my eagle eyes. I could tell it was definitely a painting job but there was only one tarp so I assumed that no sanding would be done. I went off to music class without a worry only to return to see the neighbor’s house covered in dust, one measly tarp blowing wildly in the wind and the dudes sanding without any protective gear. Their shoulders and faces were covered in dust. I immediately called my neighbor who has young kids and learned that she had abandoned her house with her two little ones earlier that morning and planned to be out all day.

I was still in my car a good distance from our house to minimize exposure and started to quickly freak out. Was I supposed to go into the house and just hope it wouldn’t travel? Did I have to check into a hotel? Lolo was overdue for her nap, and I didn’t really have the energy to stay out all day especially since I didn’t have enough supplies to last me. Staying out all day doesn’t really help either because if it’s in your house, you have to come back to it eventually. My neighbor called back and said she would meet me to talk about our plan of action. I called Matt and he connected with the painting company who was sending out the job’s supervisor to see what was going on.

He arrived and immediately took me for a paranoid and irrational mother who would eventually cause him extra work and a doozy of a headache. While this isn’t far off from reality, he didn’t have to show that he knew I was a lunatic. In a completely condescending way, he told me that he couldn’t help that it was windy and couldn’t control the weather and that he was complying with all codes. In fact, he was working with an inspector on this job.

Wha? By that logic, if you don’t control the weather but it’s raining, you would still paint a house. No, you wait until it stops raining. If the one tarp you have is waving horizontally in the wind, you either add more tarps or adjust to the current conditions and postpone work.

He was obviously annoyed and wanted to disperse with us as soon as possible and said, “Fine, I’ll tape your windows.”

So, work stopped as the men traveled over with ladders to tape the windows on our two homes. At this point, I’m leading the charge with Matt covering from his office by making calls and researching on the internet.

As they tape our windows, I call the painting company’s main office and say that while this guy is trying to manage the situation, what they’re doing is still not making sense. The one tarp, the lack of protection for the men sanding, not adjusting to the weather, etc. I said, I’m concerned and I don’t think this guy is going to appease me. So, Matt gets in touch with the town inspector who is on his way to check out the work. While we’re doing all of this, we realize that this house is just over an invisible township line and they live in a town with no lead restrictions and their inspector is out of town for the Easter holiday.

However, I think I barked loud enough at the main office to cause others to intervene, and the job was shut down for the day. Bam!

While our town’s inspector did come over, he couldn’t do much because it was outside his jurisdiction. But he did allay some of my fears and was glad they had agreed to tape our windows.

The next day, the painters showed up with full on Tyvek space suits, masks and plenty of tarps. They overlapped the tarps around the house and actually anchored the bottom edges to the ground so they weren’t waving in the breeze.

The job supervisor never showed up again to check on anything, but I was defintely more satisfied. I couldn’t quite relax as the sanding progressed through the weeekend, and I did end up calling once again when a tarp detached from the house. But, all in all, I am glad I spoke up. What’s a few more people in town thinking I’m out of my gourd if it saves Lolo from lead poisoning?

Intrigue on the block

Shades of Wysteria Lane*. I’ll take the intrigue where I can get it.

I received a random invitation in our mailbox yesterday for a “Ladies Night Out” from a neighbor way up the street that I have never laid eyes on before. It says it’s a casual get-together for the women on the block over coffee, tea and dessert, and it starts at 7:30.

My thoughts are:
A. She is probably a decade or two older than me simply because I haven’t eaten dinner before 7 pm since I was 7 years old. And, dessert is to be guiltily inhaled at 10pm whilst watching “The Real Housewives of Orange County”
B. She asks for an RSVP to her AOL email account. Need I say more?
C. It’s a ploy to raise money for a charity or to sell her homemade jewelry.
D. There is no alcohol. Need I say more?

My hip mom neighbor called me and asked if I was going. I told her I was only going if she was chained to my side and I had 2 glasses of wine prior to walking down the street. She agreed that it would at least make a great story and that we should leave our wallets at home in case we’re asked to contribute to the Poor Chimpanzees of Antarctica fund or worse yet, purchase Tupperware.

*Disclaimer: I am only able to reference Wysteria Lane because the Desperate Housewives were frequently featured in US Weekly when I was a proud subscriber. I have never seen the show … for more than 2 minutes. Honest.

Keeping up with the Seinfelds

All of a suddenly I have a toddler on my hands.

Last week she took her first solo steps to reach and pet Zoe. Amazing! However, she quickly realized the safety and ease provided by holding onto our hands and walking instead. She’s not shy about latching on and taking you for three laps around the house.

I don’t know how to explain it, but she’s suddenly more independent and ready to test the limits. All of them. (Aside from walking, her new favorite skill is pointing … as in, “I want that over there on that table.”) She knows what she wants, where she wants to go and what she does and DOES NOT want to eat. It could be the fourth molar she’s cutting, but my eager eater is now a lot more discerning. And, while I have only had to struggle with the question of “What will this kid eat that isn’t bread-based?” for a week now, it’s stressful for someone with obsessive tendencies. I could just wait and see if she returns to normal after the tooth arrives, but that’s not me. Why wait it out when you dive in guns a-blazing’ with how-to books, hours of internet research and gadget purchases from the internet.

My new approach is the Disceptively Delicious one. I’ve got a rice cooker/vegetable steamer on the way, and I am stocking my freezer with little bags of vegetable and fruit puree that soon will be hidden in our food. I don’t want to jinx myself, but she ate her first deceptive meal at lunch today which was mac-n-cheese laced with sweet potato and broccoli. On top of that, she willingly ate raisins. Maybe she was on a veggie high, and she couldn’t stop the inertia. Whatever it was, I’m taking it.

How do I manage to complicate things so …?

This is the complicated way to avoid getting a real Christmas tree. I don’t know how I manage to make things more complicated than they need to be in my specific quest to simplify. But, I do it consistently, and I do it well.

I didn’t want a big Christmas tree this year even though it will be Lolo’s first. In my defense, it would only be up for a week before we left town, and I didn’t want to spend that week vacuuming tree needles and convincing Lolo that it was not for eating.

I wasn’t a complete scrooge, I just wanted a tabletop tree. So, sue me. Matt wanted a full fledged tree but didn’t have the energy to protest especially since he knew I would be the one on the front lines wielding the vacuum.

The weekend after Thanksgiving, we took a trip to Home Depot in search of the family tree. However, because it was the first weekend after the holiday and we didn’t make it to the store until Sunday afternoon, the supplies were more than low, they were non-existent. They did not have one tree that was under 6-feet tall. And, the ornamental shrub trees they had were only suitable for sitting on your front porch railing.

Fast forward to the next weekend. We sought out Lowes this time figuring their poor store location may lead to more tree selection. And, we played it safe and went on a Saturday morning. Again, no luck. We seemed to always be 10 minutes behind a group of fanatical tabletop tree shoppers bussed out from the city searching for their perfect studio apartment tree. Our only options were three pathetic “tabletop” trees that looked like branches cut from larger trees that were stood on end to look like something that was worth $20. Buuuuuuut … there were also three “holiday spruces” that were meant to be planted outdoors. (Yes, they were giant shrub trees.) My idea was to buy an outdoor planter and bring the “tree” in for a week and then plant it outside after the holiday. We could dress it up, put lights on it and then have a living tree after all was said and done.

We didn’t think we had any other options. Time on Lolo’s good shopping cart mood was running low and there was no way we could make it to Home Depot without a meltdown. So, we went with it. I also bought a 17-inch plastic spill tray that would catch the water overflow when I watered the tree indoors.

Really, if you think about it, I was being incredibly environmentally friendly. Renewable Christmas tree shrubs are the way of the future. Just you wait, you’ll see Cameron Diaz and Leo DiCaprio doing it in US Weekly next year.

Later that afternoon just as it was getting dark, I decided to transfer the tree to the planter and bring it indoors. It’s fun planting a giant shrub tree in wooden planter in the dark when it’s 20 degrees out. Really.

Matt and I hauled it in while Lolo watched from her high chair. We placed it on the plastic saucer that would catch the draining water and the wooden planter just smashed it. The outer edge of the planter was at least 6-inches wider than the 17-inch dish. And, no, I didn’t check to see if the dish fit the planter beforehand. That’s far too logical.

(Sidenote: Matt had to run out while Lolo was napping earlier that day to get soil to plant the tree and wouldn’t you know it … Home Depot had a plethora of small trees ranging in size, shape, price, beauty, astrological sign, etc. They couldn’t have had more of a variety of small trees.)

In the end, we have a lighted tree and a good story of Lolo’s first Christmas.

Oh, lighted shrub.

Cranky

It’s been wicked cold these past few days and both Lolo and I are fighting some sort of bug. (I know that my fine friends north of the border and west of the Rockies are simultaneously rolling their eyes as I comment on how cold it is at 19 degrees. No, it’s not the coldest place ever, but an Old Navy polar fleece isn’t gonna get you through the day either.)

We’ve been cooped up inside either for cold weather or relentless rain. And, Lolo has been banned from playdates until the river of snot recedes a bit from her nostrils. Needless to say, I’m a bit stir-crazy.

I try not to complain on my blog as I reserve that for conversations with my loved ones. <wink> But, I took yesterday afternoon as a sign that it was time and also perfectly normal to vent about my funk when I was walking “the girls” around the neighborhood in a slight drizzle. Suddenly the misty rain turned into an outright downpour halfway through the walk.

While I had the plastic canopy over the stroller and my trusty rain boots on, Zoe and I still got soaked. My cordouroy jeans were as wet as the pavement and I felt like I was the opening scene of a “Chic Lit” book turned into a feature film. It would have been about some perfectly nice, new mother who left the corporate world to be a stay-at-home-mom and was “having a time of it” in the burbs. The movie would, of course, have been set just outside London and my character’s name would have been something like Jemma. Throw in a single friend in the city who smokes, some struggles with weight, a few martinis, and an adoring husband who tries to help in my plight and you have yourself a feature film. As long as Kate Hudson doesn’t play my character, it should be a hit.

Chunker

Chunker update:

Well, Lolo had her 9 month checkup and two things came out of it.

1. She is a milk-a-holic.

2. She is in the 75 – 80 percentile in weight and height.

The doctor asked that I add in more snacktimes with solids to help her need less milk but said her growth is right on track and she’s happy with how proportional she is.

She may not be saying “Dada” or “BaBa” yet, but she can drink you under the table and put you to shame.

What do you do when you can’t call in sick?

It finally hit. I got sick last weekend (whilst Matt was away in West Virginia) and then Lolo got sick, too. Wanh, wanh, wanh …

It’s a ridiculous proposition to take care of a baby alone while you are sick. It’s not like I can use the boob tube to entertain her with Nick Jr. either. She wants active play, active play Mama. Oy.

So, I had to turn to drugs.

Once again, those silly commercials marketed to moms finally make sense. You know the one I’m talking about … The mom gets sick and the whole house falls apart. The dog is eating the laundry, the baby is climbing on the TV and the dad doesn’t have any dinner to eat. But, as soon as “mom” takes the magical, advertised medicine, she’s back on her feet so her family can get back to normal.

So, I visited my local CVS for some meds so that I could get back to normal. Who knew that I would have to sign my life away to get anything with real active ingredients? I shopped for the medicine card displaying the product that I wished to purchase since they can’t keep the powerful stuff out in the open lest someone steal it for recreational purposes. I checked out with my cards and they brought me the cold medicine that is kept under lock and key behind the counter. But before I could swipe my debit card and make my sniffly exit, I had to show my driver’s license, the cashier had to scan in my license barcode and I had to sign a waiver submitted by the state! Holy legalities. I couldn’t read the waiver because my eyes were watering profusely from the hay fever I get with colds.

Now the state will know every time I get a cold and that I only buy tissues with lotion because my nostrils are too sensitive for regular Kleenex. So invasive.

Gnawed

Since when do squirrels slaughter pumpkins?

The neighborhood squirrels completely demolished my poor pumpkin. And, I'm not alone in my sorrows. The whole block is filled with pumpkins showing their open wounds.

Snubbed

This is a good one.

I met a cool mom in the town next to ours outside of the local Starbucks as I was feeding Lolo her dinner in the shade. She came up and introduced herself and said she felt compelled to say hi since we were both feeding our kids outside. I thought, “How nice is this woman?”

I had actually just decided the day before that I was no longer going to throw my phone number and e-mail out to any and every woman that passed by with a kid. My desperation to meet someone was getting stale, and I needed to rein it in a little.

But, low and behold, just when I pulled back, someone else reached out.

So, she told me that she and a bunch of other “Next Town Over” moms got together every Friday for a playgroup with wine. She said it was a crazy mix of both shy and eccentric moms who were stay-at-home and working parents.

I met my new friend at her apartment and we walked over together. I was a little nervous as it sounded like a big group. But, I thought, “Hey, at least I have met one new mom. If the rest are purely entertainment, then so be it.”

We made it to the playgroup and had a great time. Lolo had a blast with the kids as there were 10 of them running around wild and hopped up on starchy puffs. I started planning in my mental datebook that from now on every Friday afternoon would be booked with my new found playgroup. I shopped in my head for what kinds of snacks I would prepare for my guests when the group rotated to my house. I thought I was in.

The next Friday was a bust because one of the women was having everyone over for her daughter’s first birthday party in lieu of the playgroup. The Friday after that I was in VA. So, when I got back, I called my new friend to hang out and she started telling me that the other moms were quizzing her on her “new friend.” They seemed a little miffed that she had strayed outside the circle. From the tone she was mimicking, it didn’t sound like they were blown over by me and Lolo either. And, the email announcing the next Friday playgroup specifically said “NEXT TOWN OVER MOMS” playgroup.

So, I said, “Looks like we’re not being invited into the playgroup …” She replied, “I don’t think so.”

Oh well. So weird. I feel like I blew an audition, but I didn’t even know that it was an audition.

It’s not like these chics had on Tod’s driving loafers next to my flip flops. Just when you think you’re out of the third grade, the clubhouse door gets slammed in your face.