April 2011 Archives

Last Saturday the girls and I dyed Easter eggs.  I thought the boys were going to join us, so I made 4+ dozen eggs the night before (oh, 5+ dozen if you count the ones I boiled for deviled eggs for Easter lunch, and I do count them, definitely).  Willow made nice, pretty eggs that said things like Happy and Family and MOM (awwwww).  You know those wax crayons that the egg dying kit comes with, right?  And how you can write on your egg and it'll keep the dye from that spot so you can make designs and words?  See:



On Friday, the day before we dyed the eggs, Sophie's class watched what we're all calling The Puberty Video.  She already knew pretty much everything there is to know, but still the whole thing is inherently filled with wonder and dread and all-consuming fascination.  I think I remember that feeling, but I only knew a smidgen of what she knows when I was her age, so for me it was more, uh, vague, I guess. And dreadful.

Anyway, Sophie was making striped eggs and pretty blue ones and then she wrote on one and slipped it into the dye.  When she was ready to lift it out she said, HEY!  LOOKIT MY EGG! and pulled up this gem:



There are so many, many humans on this planet, and yet I am willing to bet that this is the world's first and only Easter egg that says Tampon. 

Here are a few others from her series



You'll notice that Pad has a heart around it, and period is red.  I sent the above photo to Jenny via a text message, and she named them Ironic Feminist Eggs.  I'm not 100% sure of the artist's intent here, but they made us laugh and then they made a damn fine egg salad for Monday's lunchboxes.  

Ok, so before you play this video, here's the setting:

Jenny and I took a cab to Cafe du Monde for some midnight beignets and we grabbed the table in the corner front of the outside seating because it gave us visual access to the sidewalk and street and the paved area next to the restaurant.  What can we say?  We like staring at people.  Having a view of the street turned out to be a bad thing, and not just because the wind was blowing the smell of horses right to us, but also because that was where the drunk dude with all the dressed up ladies got into the front seat of a cab, shut the door, then opened the door, wretched in the gutter and closed the door before they left and, yeah, that still makes my stomach flip to think about.  Also, the wind was blowing so hard that we were both covered in powdered sugar - really it was everywhere.

Anyway.

On the paved area next to Cafe du Monde there was a couple, maybe early twenties or something, and they had their beignets in a bag.  I guess they ate them all and had the bag with all the powdered sugar in it still, and the guy, he kinda busted the bag open on the girl and covered her in powdered sugar.  Then she went to the trash, got out another bag, opened it and dumped that all over him.  This went on for awhile, and then there was a fairly hot makeout session and then they got on their bicycles and rode off into the night.  Then this happened: 

I'm back from Mom 2.0 minus both my suitcases and half my voice.  I am so far crashing and burning on the reentry and don't want to get out of bed.  Why doesn't California have beignets?

(I wrote this at the airport in Houston on Tuesday)



I can't remember if it was yesterday or today, but I was scratching my dad's arm for him and I had such strong memories of scratching his back when I was a little kid.  He'd tell me where to scratch, eyes closed and as relaxed and happy as a bear with a belly full of salmon who's found the perfect tree to scratch his back against.  My dad is a pretty private guy, (Hi, Dad!) but of course our stories overlap so I hope it's okay for me to include part of his when I'm telling mine.  Right now I am at the airport in Houston, waiting to board my flight home.  It's Tuesday, April 5th.  I came to Houston early Saturday morning because my dad was admitted to the ICU last Friday and things weren't looking so good for him.  When I arrived, my brother, who had caught a red eye from Portland the night before, picked me up from the airport and took me straight to the hospital.

It is really, really hard to see someone you love so much on a ventilator in the ICU, unable to speak.  Really hard.

I've spent the last four days with my stepmom and my brother and one of my dad's sisters and a couple of his wonderful colleagues and friends, one of whom flew in from Colorado when he heard the news.  We stood around dad's bed, telling stories and scratching the itches he could not reach.  When you are on a ventilator, they sedate you to make it more bearable, and because you are sedated there is a high likelihood that you'll reach up and pull out the vent tube, so they use wrist restraints which really and truly sucks especially when you have an itch.  His neighbors (she's 75 and he's 86) came to sit with him and she brought so much food to the house my stepmom and I were laughing about how we could ever eat that much.  Then we proceeded to do a pretty good job of it.

Since my dad couldn't talk, he used a clipboard to write notes to us.  Sometimes it was a request for us to scratch his itches, other times he was telling us he loved us.  Lots of the notes were him cracking jokes.  Best jokes I have ever heard in my life.  He wrote one to the respiratory therapist (a dude) who came in and woke him up that said, "You aren't as cute as my sister - before you woke me up, she was bringing me a beer!"

At one point, my stepmom told us all the story, at dad's request, of their very eventful and hilarious first date.  Dad listened with a pen and clipboard, and added in details.  He wrote us a note and said he was happy.  

Today they were finally able to take him off the ventilator and put him on a CPAP machine.  CPAP stands for continuous positive airway pressure, and helps you breathe after spending a few days having a machine do it for you.  He needed some things and wrote notes to the nurse.  My stepmom and I decided to go get lunch and let him rest for a bit, so I leaned over and gave him a kiss, squeezed his hand, and told him I loved him.  I love you, too, he said under his mask.  I was shocked because I thought it would be a few days before he could speak, and I can't explain how good it was to finally hear his voice again.  I forgot I could talk!  He said, laughing, Isn't that stupid!?

I don't want to leave.  But I need to get on this plane in a half hour and get back to taking care of my kids and work and all that stuff.  I'm counting down the days until I'm back here, with my brother, at the end of the month.  My dad had as close a call as a person can have, and he told me as I was getting ready to leave that he is lucky to be so loved and that he's got our visit to look forward to.  Really though, we are the lucky ones.  The older I get the more I have learned that there aren't a whole lot of us who have wonderful fathers who we love and love us back.  My dad is one of the best people I know, and I know a whole lot of people.