My damn clicker hasn’t been working on my truck, but yesterday I got it to click locked. Also, the hydraulics in the rear gate has been weaker than usual. So this morning I opened the trunk with the key and immediately bent over to help my kid. The alarm started screaming at in my quiet suburb, and I immediately jumped upwards. The gate, which I hadn’t realize didn’t go all the way up, was about 2 foot over my head. I cracked my skull into the metal edge and pain immediately shot through my head and down my spine. I rubbed my head furiously, and Claire began to cry. I forced myself to push the pain from my head as I tried to show her that I was ok. When I brought my hand into the light it was covered in blood.

I ran back in the house and had to yell out that it was Not Claire! before anything else. Donna cleaned my wound, laughed at me, and kicked my butt off to school. I mostly forgot about the cut, other than the throbbing pain. A few hours later I felt something uncomfortable on my head, reached up instinctively, and ripped open what had become a huge scab. It immediately began bleeding again, and I walked over into the nurse’s office. She cleaned it off, and told me that in her professional opinion I needed to get my butt (errr… I mean my head) to Urgent Care. I’d planned a nice afternoon at home with a movie and my daughter, but instead she and I headed off to the local urgent care. The nurse there wasn’t sure what they would do since it’d been 6 1/2 hours now since I cracked my skull open. A little while later the doctor came in with a surgical stapler and mater-of-factly informed me that she’d be shooting three solid, sterile, metal staples into my head!! Claire was mindlessly playing in my lap as this lady came at me with this gun-tool. She said it would hurt more to numb me up that to just shoot me toward the brain, which she proceeded to do quickly. It was one of the oddest things I’d ever felt. I’m kinda glad she did, because I sure didn’t wany any brains to fall out anywhere. I need all I have.

Dear reader, I am sure the solitaire reader of this blog would be curious to know the outcome of today’s surgery and even though I am horribly busy tonight, I don’t want to leave you out cold. My mother’s surgery was brief and successful. When they cut open her back they only found a cyst, and it was in a place where they could remove it quickly and easily. They did so, sewed her up, and a few hours later she was walking around. I equate that with a C-section. They make those women walk, too. When I got the news early this morning, I sobbed. My sister sobbed, too. I guess we were expecting worse, or at least less reassurance from the doctor. I’ve talked to my mother from her hospital bed several times tonight, and it was like I was talking to her on her cell as she bargain shopped at the Good Will or played with her kitty on the couch. She will go home tomorrow morning, and she will be back at work in 2-3 weeks. Meghan is relieved because she gets to spend more leisure time in Pittsburgh with her family and friends, than kowtowing to Mum’s every need.

Tomorrow morning my mother will have spinal surgery. I say it so straightforward because I don’t know what I think about all of this. Part of me knows how much pain she’s been in and I am very relieved that they figured out what’s going on with her. Another part of me thinks that some doctor cutting into my mother’s back, chopping away part of her vertebrate, and scopping some goo out of her back is kinda scary.

She had her hip replaced a few years back, and she’s had problems with her siatica for a couple years, but this whole back thing was an issue. An MRI last month showed a huge mass at the base of her spine, and the neurosurgeon said he’s pretty sure it’s a cyst (which is a helluva a lot better than a tumor!). He also seemed like this procedure was pretty commonplace for neurosurgeons.

My sister, Meghan, took time off work and flew home for two weeks to take care of mum. Now it’s 1AM, and at 330AM MST she is headed to the hospital. The procedure begins two hours later while I am still asleep here in Arizona. I made Meghan promise me that she’d at least text me every hour to give me updates (even if nothing at all is new). Meghan is an even more level headed person to be there with my mother, but asking Meghan very awkwardly to make sure paperwork is in order and wishes are known just-in-case wasn’t very fun tonight. Mum’s the glue of the family and it’s such a hard job. That’s probably caused a lot of this, and it doesn’t help with such selfish, hard headed people in our family. Mum, I love you and know you will read this blog post tomorrow night while relaxing in your hospital bed with Meghan there at your side.

Tonight I was cooking up some jalapeno cheddar bacon burgers on my George Forman grill when I decided to throw a couple of the chiles I got this weekend at the famer’s market. I figure they were the kind they dice into my green chile concotions I buy at the local grocery store. While I was savoring my dinner later, my lips began to burn. They were on fire, and I began sucking ice. I told Donna I only added a couple chiles from this weekend, and her eyes got big.

"You put hatch chiles on your burger?!"
"No, I didn’t. I ate them with a fork. Plain. Next to my burger. Why?" I answered in tears.

She just laughed.

Ok so I know I need to eat better, and I’ve begun to really admit this to myself and others. So I decided I want to eat more meat, veggies, and fruits. I’ve been on a farmer’s market kick recently because I went to a really cool on in San Francisco this past spring and loved it. Now that I’ve been off work for a week or two I wanted to do more stuff with my kid and got one of those magazines about what stay at home moms can do during the day to keep from going crazy. I thought it was pretty sexist because of the whole forgetting about the dad thing, but I did see there are famer’s markets in AZ!

Last weekend Donna and I hit the one in Ahwatukee together, and it was ok although it was small. We got some cabbage, peppers, hummus, etc… Not too bad, but we were done in 10 minutes. Tonight Claire and I drove to downtown Chandler for another one that is Thursday afternoons. I knew where the park was, and it wasn’t that bit. But when I got there I couldn’t really see the market. What I did see was a few small tables set up with tupperware crates on them. Eventually I pulled over and walked over to the crate. Low and behold they had veggies in them, although they looked wilted and pathetic. A man stumbled over from God knows where and looked eager to sell his wares. I asked about the peppers that looked amazing and he wanted three times more money than Sprouts organic grocery store, but I didn’t want to leave him high and dry since it looked like I was the first person to buy from him in a coon’s age. I picked up some snap peas, a grapefruit, and a zucchini that looked like it was on steroids. That one was for Donna since I hate zucchini, even though I sure do love typing the name Zucchini. hehehe.

Ah life, or what becomes of us once paranoia, assumptions, anxiety, children, work, and others enter the equation…

Earlier this month we received a vehicle registration renewal notice.  I tried to renew and pay online, but was told that an emissions test was needed.  I was extremely annoyed because this is an incredibly busy month (for Devon and me) and I knew that the car had a good chance of not passing emissions.  Somehow Devon managed to squeeze it in and we did, indeed, fail.

Mixed between weekend activities, work meetings, evening events, switching schedules to make sure someone is watching Claire, preparing agendas, eating, breathing, and the like, Devon and I arrange to take the car to our local car repair guru.  Now, please note that this involved pleading with many wonderful co-workers to pick me up and take me to work, drive me to meetings, and even watching Claire for a few hours!

The car needed to stay overnight at the repair shop and was fixed for a very reasonable price.  (The environment thanks us).  Devon was able to switch vehicles on Friday to re-test the car for emissions.  It passed!

Later that night, I logged on to the servicearizona.com website to process the registration.  Strangely, I received the same error as before about needing the emissions test.  I assumed the system had not refreshed recently and decided to try again in the morning.

Did I mention that I had found a large slash in our left front tire the day we took the car to the repair shop?  I was scared to drive on it, but did not want to invest in a new tire if the car didn’t pass emissions…  So, the  plan was for Claire and I to go to Discount Tires Saturday morning since Devon was working.  Not wanting to wait forever with a two-year-old, I contacted the store and made an appointment at 10:30 am.  Having more time before we needed to leave the house, I logged back online to process the registration.  It still said "emissions test needed".  Now I’m frustrated.  I call the phone number on the form.

After speaking with the woman who had the misfortune to answer, questioning why their system couldn’t identify our car, I was put on hold.  I needed to move around, so I went outside to get the mail.  For some reason right then part of our conversation had registered.  The woman had asked me the plate number listed on the renewal form.  I gave her the information earlier without really thinking about it, but now, wait, Devon had child abuse prevention plates on the car.  Something was off.  The number I gave the woman was the license plate number of our truck!

This couldn’t be!

Could it?

Still outside, I crouch behind the car and review the plate.  SEP 07.
..  sniff

What?

I look again.

SEP 07

We were trying to renew the wrong car!

I run back inside to review the paperwork.  The woman gets back from hold and starts to apologize for their system, offering suggestions such as faxing the paperwork to her office, going to the emission place and having them fix it.  At this point I’m too embarassed to say we messed up.  I thank her for her kindness, hang up and text Devon:  "We are idiots.  The truck is due for emissions, not the car.  Need you to switch cars and fix problem".

Now I’m late for the tire appointment.

I grab everything related to anything and get Claire in the car.  We get tires, text Devon a few more times, and make arrangements to meet for lunch, errands, and "the switch".

By the end of the day, the truck passes emissions and is renewed online, the car has new tires, the bellies are full, and the heads are aching.

While in Pittsburgh for Grampap’s funeral, we often congregated at Grandma’s house with the family.  Little kids often lighten events like these, because they innocently are clueless to the gravity of the situation.

Claire was getting a kick out of running around to everyone in the living room and interacting on many levels.  At one point she stood up and ran about six feet – fast – right towards Uncle Ernie.  Now, Uncle Ernie is a big, shall we say teddy bear shaped man.  When Claire reached him, she immediately bounced off his belly and landed flat on her back on the floor.

After the initial daze, and as the entire room was cracking up, Claire stood up and stumbled back to the middle of the room.  As she gained perspective, Claire realized that we were laughing at her and that she must’ve done something amusing.  Loving the attention, Claire quickly turned and ran back to Uncle Ernie and, consequently, repeated her previous performance.

At this point, I’m laughing so hard that I’d damn near peed myself.  I think Uncle Ernie was a little embarrassed, though, because he got up a few minutes later and didn’t return to that chair for the remainder of the day.

In September 1986 I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, and today I realized that I recently missed my 20th anniversary. As I realized that, I was walking into an x-ray room with Claire who was getting an Upper GI, something I am all too familiar with from my last two decades of testing. I remember the first time I got sick. I was walking along the creek at Eleven-Mile Run in Potter County near the New York State border, and a fine mist of rain poured down on us. By the time we walked to the car and drove three hours to Pittsburgh, I was hot and fluish; it took mere months until I was diagnosed. At first they thought I had Leukemia, which now scares the heck out of me since people die all of the time from that.

Now it’s 20 years later and my daughter has had cylic vomiting and who knows why. So we took her to the pediatric gastroenterologist, and I had these nightmare flashbacks of when I use to see a ped GI myself. I hated it, and I use to run out of his office and lock myself in my parent’s car. My mother actually brought that up to me today.

So now Claire is doing some of the tests I did when I was younger. Of course I was way sicker and a bit older. It freaked me out because I was a teenager and dealt with all of that concurrently. All we know for sure is she has some reflux problems. And the white poopies we had tonight were really fun.

Snowball fight! You’re it.

So food poisoning sucks, totally. Donna made a good point the other day; since we moved here to Arizona, we’ve had food poisoning more than before. And Donna mentioned that she has spent 1/3 of her entire life in this state. Wow.

So as you can tell from the subject, we had food poisoning. WE. Yes, both of us. And, yes, it sucked. We went over our friend’s house Saturday night, and we decided to have leftover chili beforehand so we wouldn’t pig out on snack food. Well, we ended up pigging out on snack food anyway, and we fed it to our daughter, and our friends ate it too. So it had to be the chili. That’s it. Yick.

So imagine chili and red wine, and many other non-digested thingies. Yick.

That was Sunday morning, and then Donna got sick. I started it, and then it was a fad. She got sick, too. And then later we woke up Claire, and we prayed her crib was clean and puke-free, which it was! So that was good. And then we took turns running in and out of the bathroom all morning (and so forth for 24 hours). At one point I laid on Claire’s bedroom floor and Donna laid on the couch. And Claire would run between us, and mumble in her 31 words conversation.

And then I told Claire to go find her clothes and get dressed, and she looked at me, turned her palms up, spread out her arms, and asked, "Me?" Ha ha ha. I just smiled and closed my eyes again before I went cross-eyed again.

Our friend Amy came over at 4pm. We forgot we had plans that afternoon, and we were sorry she came over, but very happy she came over. And she made us chicken broth, and it was yummy. I felt a ton better by evening time. Donna and I then went to bed at 8PM and we all slept until 9AM. It was so great, and Monday was still difficult but now it’s Tuesday and we survived, and Claire never did get sick. Thank, God.

Have a healthy fat-free no-puky kinda day.

As usual on vacation, Claire acquired new language skills.  In her repeated stumbles this past weekend, she began saying "owie".  After tripping, Claire grabs her knee "owie".  Music too loud in the car, "owie"; bumps her elbow, "owie"; bored and looking for attention, "owie". 

Additionally, Claire communicated more heavily regarding bathroom phrases – literally.  When asked, "Claire, did you go potty?", she’ll shake her head yes and respond "pee-pee" or "poop" or "poopy" or a combination.  Then she’ll grab herself or reach her hand in to help out.  She has begun laying down or going in search of diapers when I tell her that we need to change her diaper.  Claire tries to flush the toilet when in the bathroom or wipe herself when on the changing table.  Of course that is not a good thing when toilet paper is not involved or when only one parent is in the room.  She has been really entralled by the whole potty process lately.

I’m now waiting for us to start potty training so that we can combine the potty experience with "owie!" when she learns to push out her first load…