The Po Show

Hmmmm

I keep thinking I'm feeling better (mentally/emotionally), then things start happening. Like I start thinking, every single morning, "I'd really like to go back to bed and sleep till 11 or so." Then at night, I don't want to go to bed.

I start spending too much time sitting on my ass in front of the computer, reading about other people's problems on the forum I'm on (an offshoot of a Gymboree-enthusiast/addict forum I've been involved with for over a year now), literally letting the hours suck away. Then it's time to pick up the kids, and I wonder where the hell the day has gone.

I guess it's that time of the month to start taking my 5-HTP twice a day instead of once. I usually start this a week before my period's due, but it looks like I need a little tune-up a week sooner.

Hormones really, really suck.

Heyyyy Youuuuu GUYYYYYYSSSSSS!

I said that just to put the theme song for The Electric Company into your head, all you children of the '70s like me. I was actually singing that for Tessa the other night, after she mentioned something about electricity. Despite not knowing the song, she joined in (because it's impossible for her not to be part of a show!), punctuating points in the song with interjections of "Hey!"

But that has nothing to do with the actual topic of this post, which is guys.

I broke down yesterday and went to see a doctor. I actually managed to find an urgent care center attached to a medical group office, which was fabulous because I had been under the impression that there was no such creature in NY. Final word from the doctor: no strep, no ear infection. So that's good, though I remain chagrined that I've been complaining so much about "just a cold." He prescribed Nasonex for my congestion, so I didn't walk out empty handed.

And actually I had a really great conversation with him! He was taken aback from the start, as he was taking my medical history, when he asked me if anyone around me had been sick. I replied that my daughter had had a cold last week, so she had probably vectored it to me.

"What did you say?," he asked, sort of startled.

"My daughter must have vectored her cold to me," I repeated.

He asked me what I did for a living, and I laughingly said I'm a stay at home mom. He laughed and said that he's never had a patient say they had an illness "vectored" to them. He took the rest of my history and repeatedly was surprised that I replied in ways that are standard on medical histories. Then after my exam we talked a bit about my research and about smoking addiction.

It really reminded me how much I miss talking to people about "real" stuff, and how much I miss guys. I know that sounds funny, but all my life, most of my best friends have been male, and now I don't have any male friends close by. All the parents I meet through the kids' school and activities are all moms, so I just don't have any way of meeting men :p.

Someone once told me that there's something special about being a "guy girl," the kind of girl who gets along well with guys. They tend to be either jocks or hussies, she said. The jock girls can play sports and drink beer and feel like one of the guys, while the hussies (who don't really want to sleep with their guy friends) understand and appreciate "guyness," are more in tune with the underlying sexuality of life the way guys are, and are more comfortable because guys are not their competitors for other guys. Being with guys doesn't make the "guy girl" feel inferior in any way, and the girl can enjoy friendship on a more easy-going level. Most of all, the hussy enjoys exclusive attention from guys (in a non-sexual way).

Naturally I'm more in the hussy camp than the jock camp, since I couldn't play any sport if my literal life depended on it (though I am passionate about NCAA basketball, and beer :)). I've always relished being the one girl in a group of guys, and tended to try and "outguy" them when it came to swearing and talking about sex. They would be "my boys."

I really miss having boys.

Breathing

I cannot fucking breathe.

I've had a cold from hell since last Friday, thoughfully vectored to me by my darling baby girl. I feel so lame, because I mention to people that I feel terrible and they all say, "Oh, is it the flu?"

"No, just a cold," I answer. But "just a cold" can't convey how shitty I feel, and it makes me feel somehow indignant that the illness I have somehow merits less impact. I mean, people in the Middle Ages DIED from viruses like this (though of course they didn't have nice warm houses and over the counter meds to help them get better, plus there were a gazillion other nasty germies waiting to attack their compromised immune systems).

Anyway, I spent all of last night desperately trying to breathe adequately enough to fall asleep. I tried EVERYTHING, a million positions (not the fun kind!), decongestants, mucus-killers, warm moist air, warm compresses on my sinuses, nasal lavage. I tossed and turned in bed, then on the couch, and watched every single hour pass on the clock. I just can't breathe through my mouth and fall asleep. I just can't fall asleep when I can't breathe.

So I thought about the nature of breath and breathing (you have a lot of time between 10:30 and 6:45 to ponder things). The other day as I was complaining about my inability to breathe, Ross quipped, "Eh, breathing is overrated."

But it's really not. Actually it's pretty freaking important. We take in not just oxygen and assorted other gasses that we need to live, but all sorts of other things in the air we breathe. Some of it is better left unmentioned (and unpondered), like dust mite poop and other microscopic ick.

We breathe in a lot of things, though, and how much of them stay with us? Do molecules of things we've smelled, people we've hugged, places we've been, stay in hidden pockets in our lungs? Do they migrate somehow into our cells? Somewhere, in some crevice in my lung tissue, is there a saved molecule of my dad, dead thirteen and a half years now?

I thought about breath, and my dad, last night. I missed seeing him before he died, by 30 fucking minutes. This is something I will always regret, till the day *I* die. I didn't know his condition was quite so urgent. I was living in Hawaii, and when I was told on a Friday afternoon that he wasn't doing well and I should come home, I waited till I could get on a standby flight the next morning. My father-in-law picked me up at the airport, and we waited f-o-r-e-v-e-r for my luggage to come out. Then he drove like 60 MPH the whole way to Oxnard. If I'd known time was of such import, I would have left my damn luggage and asked my FIL to step on it. But I didn't, and we didn't, and my dad died half an hour before I got there.

I missed being there with him at the end. All of my family was there, and my sister later told me that at the very end, she reached over to kiss him on the cheek. He sighed very deeply, and was still, and she realized that he had exhaled his last breath.

What I wouldn't have given to be there, and breathe in some part of that breath, and hold onto it in some place inside, near my heart. Hold it in, keep it from escaping back out, by the power of breath.

Well, that didn't last long...

Just yesterday I was thinking about how it's been awhile since I blogged, and that was because I had nothing to complain about. After we had gotten over the stomach ick, things have been going quite nicely.

Matthew got through the ELA state testing last week with aplomb. He was excited about taking the 2 day test, and felt he did well, rather than being anxious and overwrought about it. These are the hardest subjects for him, and just a few months ago he thought he couldn't read or write, so it's a major accomplishment and a real sea change.

I've been happier with Ross, liking him and cherishing him as a friend, than I have in years. I mean, I've always not only loved him, but genuinely liked him as a person, but in the flurry of our everyday lives and my focus on the kids, it has been less arduous than in our salad days. It may be a testament to my getting my brain chemistry more in whack (LOVE my supplement regimen! I really noticed the difference when I let it slide somewhat during our trip, and then when I went back on in a rigorous fashion again), but I just really, really like him these days.

So I was actually thinking about a blog post yesterday entitled "Nuthin' to Say," since I had nothing to say, nothing to write about, following the initial line of "Damn, I'm happy."

I didn't even *do* it and I jinxed it all!

Last night Tessa obviously was feeling the effects of a cold, as she got very congested and started using 25 tissues an hour. The wastebasket in the livingroom filled to the brim, in a matter of minutes, with barely used tissues, stacked one on top of the other. She went to sleep fine (dosed up on generic Sudaphed), but was up by 1:00AM more or less for good. Considering I went to sleep around 12:20, that wasn't much of a night's sleep.

It was obvious this morning that she was not going to school, so there's another day of errands lost. Now of course she's asleep, too late for me to sleep as well since we have to go pick up Matthew in 40 minutes.

And Matthew. Sigh. His teacher called at 11:30, trying to get him to talk to me on the phone and tell me "what had happened in gym." *Sooooooooo* not the words I wanted to hear. He refused, just hmphing on the phone, so she had to get back on to tell me. It turns out he was being a total jerk to the girl in his class whom he's been locking horns with for several weeks now. She's been teasing him, but today apparently he was the initiator, being very obnoxious, yelling at her across the gym, taunting and growling at her. I've tried to talk to him about his inability to get along with this girl, but it just escalates into him getting very upset and shutting down. His teacher has moved into "What are we going to do about this?" mode and frankly I have no idea. He starts therapy sessions with his psychiatrist (whom we saw last week), but not till Feb.

So now I feel like I'm drowning and ineffectual again, and I'm looking back at my happy buzz of yesterday and wondering "Where, oh where, did you go?????"

Happy New Year

We got home last night at 11:00PM, after a wonderful trip. It was real fun getting up this morning, as we're still on PST.

Tessa was very tired this morning, not surprisingly, but she also complained of a stomachache. She ate a couple of nibbles of waffle that I fed to her, but wasn't hungry at all. She did willingly get dressed and ready for school, though when she went into the bathroom to brush her teeth, her eyes got red and teary and she said, "I hope I have a good day at school today." I felt shitty for making her go, but figured we had to power through, to readjust to the old routine.

At 10:00, I was about to leave for Costco, when the phone rang. It was the school nurse, saying that Tessa had just vomited. Ugh, talk about feeling like shit for making her go!

She's on the couch now, asleep. Not an auspicious beginning to the New Year.