Author: charlestess

wee the people

yesterday carys and i had a sitoff at the wee wee corral.

i have gotten rather intolerant of her laissez faire approach to toilet training.  it’s not so much a spirit is willing but the flesh is weak situation, it’s more like she doesn’t want to be toilet trained and i want her to be.

ding ding (sound of shooter glass against grey goose bottle) let BATTLE OF THE WILLS begin.

we’ve had these before, young carys and i. remember last february when she refused for five hours to return a shoe to the cupboard? same child. same attitude. same mother.

so yesterday when she woke up from her nap, for the fifth straight day, she had a dry nappy. enough. i informed her, "carys, you can wear knickers". she was thrilled.

but, i warned, in my best fairy visiting little rabbit foo foo voice, "no weeing in your knickers. only wee in the toilet."

her colleagues chimed in the benefits of weeing in the potty, and i sat carys on the toilet, thinking that a post nap wee would shortly be coming. nothing.

fair enough. so out to the playground they went. NOTHING for four hours. NO WEE WEE. at 5pm my fingers started itching and i wondered if i should be looking up on google the symptoms of kidney failure. did the endocrinologist warn this would happen and had i tuned him out? we were putting her on the toilet every 15 minutes, and NOTHING was happening. AND I HAD EVEN GIVEN HER JUICE TO MAKE SURE SOMETHING WOULD HAPPEN. you try giving one child juice while hiding it from three others, and then having that one child not tell the others. tough stuff.

we trooped up from the playground at 6pm. usually, bath time is right after the playground, but i took carys along with the dora the explorer toilet ring into my bathroom and sat her on it. i prayed with her and sat down, and sort of zoned out. i didn’t bring books and games, which was a calculated mood. the child obviously had to wee, and i wasn’t going to show her how much fun we could have over a prolonged period on the loo.

someone once said, "what is the point of taking an earlier flight if it’s a longer route and the later flight will get you in at the same time as the longer one." oooh, an analogy.

why am i toilet training carys? because i think she is ready. she was weeing on the toilet before the summer, and then we all stopped making it an effort, realising that a nappy reliant summer made for an easier one.

and because this is a battle. she is NOT scared of the toilet, she loves flushing it, she loves watching her siblings wee while perched on the toilet. she begs to wear knickers. this is an I DON"T WANT TO, vs MUMMY WANTS IT. and right or wrong, mummy is going to win. she just needs to get started and then old iron bladder will be a dream, i suspect.

then again, given that we have yet to master the art of scat and the toilet, i suspect i am in for another few rude battles.

in case you are wondering how today went, dry nappy at the end of nap, sat on toilet every 15 minutes very happily until 6.02pm, when she we’ed, wiped and flushed and very happily informed lita of the fact. i told her i was very proud and let her select the knickers she will proudly wear tomorrow.

i got a fantastic email from a young friend the other day. she is in her first year at university, and from all reports, enjoying herself tremendously. 

when i was talking to her mother, she wistfully said, "well, these will be the best years of her life."

looking back on my existence, i disagree. like frank sinatra, just about every year has been a very good year since university, and PARTICULARLY the last dozen. better than university, even.

my young friend was quick to mention the FREEDOM that university affords her. and her parents aren’t jailers, i might add. but i remember what she means. the freedom to linger, the freedom to eat paratha eight nights in a row at island experience because the guy who worked behind the counter was cute, the freedom to make the right decisions and feel good that you were doing them not because you had to, but because you wanted to. the freedom to make bad decisions and know you had the right to make them.

listening to debates in one end of a hall, while a struggling band played at the other. in the days before you could register online, standing in a queue trying to land  tuesday thursday wednesday classes, that would leave you monday and fridays free. getting involved in a cause. either because you thought the fellow running it was cute, or because you were really interested in it. i remember back in 1989 i helped get a fellow my age get elected the student body president. we upset the current president and she was fuming. truth is, we ran a better, slicker campaign and we made it fun. his name was sandeep dhir. our poly sci teacher gave us tips, and was enchanted when we made it happen. now take it further, he said. and i think we have.

friend’s mother, if i had to live university or high school over again, i gamble and take high school. (thank you pithy boulder). and hope i do a better job.  i know college was pretty good (except 1996), but despite the craziness, the causes, the cuteness…i would grab a can of final net and head back to high school, and see if i could trust myself more to say what i really believed. and if i didn;t, i know that i eventually wised up and the story has a happy ending.

after i received my young friend’s email, written to me from the crest of happiness, i decided to share the good news and responded,

"the good news is, that life keeps getting better."

sure, "real life" steps in, jobs & taxes aren’t fun and those little crepey folds of skin under my arms are no laughing matter either. but we’ve all lived enough to know someone who has died. it was someone from your english class, a loved relative, a friend. they would have paid their taxes happily if that chemo had worked…if that plane hadn’t crashed….if that car had not hit them.

reality sometimes isn’t fun, but overall, life is. and it is also good.

class over. go enjoy yourselves.

two factors affected last nights insomnia:

1) i went to the dr to have my stitches looked at/taken out and i happily assure you, he did a fantastic job. however, one side was a little lumpy and painful. when i went to bed, i turned over too quickly and wow! super size me pain.

2) misery over carys’ appointment and dread over the following day’s THREE appointments. fact of the matter was, as bad as carys’ had been, i was going to have to live through three probably frustrating and disheartening rounds of testing, the next day.

around 5pm i was msn’ing with the amazing boulder who held my hand through this myomectomy, until she ended cheerily with, "well, i should be heading to bed now". SHE HADN"T SLEPT YET and had to get up and function the next day on three hours of sleep. how?

i found out how that night. at midnight i was awake, and ripped into the halloween chocolates i had purchased, wondering if a little chocolate might assist me in sleeping, or at least comfort me. at one i started cruising through ebay, wondering if retail therapy might assist me in getting to sleep. i found a very nice cream coloured calvin klein sweater. the price was good. i looked it up on the calvin klein website and liked it even more. problem….the auction was ending in three hours….

i went to bed at two and spent a while praying for people, hoping the soothing heat of bed and coldness of my feet dangling out of the bed combined with the prace i feel when talking with God would help drift me off to sleep. at three o clock i realised my attempt was unsuccessful and headed back to the computer, to fine tune a speech i am making on november 5 and determine what visuals i want accompanying it.

i went back to ebay and bid on the cream sweater. someone else had bid on it. i wasn’t too concerned, it wasn’t a LOVE IT situation. if i woke up in the morning and i had won it, super…if not, no worries. no tiredness. i got caught up on emails and did administrative stuff. started mentally writing my next article. reviewed a movie i had seen, GLOOMY SUNDAY.

the auction ended and the sweater was mine. yay, great price. i received an email from charmaine, and i called her to celebrate my ebay victory. i let her listen to the birds starting to chirp outside. and at 5.30am, i went to sleep.

and woke up in horror at 9.50am, 10 minutes before the appointments.

called charles frantically. he must have thought the kids had been kidnapped.

"where are the kids? where are you?"

"they’re at playgroup and i am at work"

"but their appointments? they need to be there andi have to be there. call lita tell her to get there and i will meet them at the hospital."

"we can reschedule, tess, you didn’t sleep and you need your sleep."

"no we can’t and a parent needs to be there, this is important."

i race to the hospital, (dressed but that is my only concession to the outside world), and jump into the room where sela and jasper are about to be tested. amen, the OT has two kits.

and the testing begins. i am not going to go into detail, except to say it could have been worse for all of them, but it was tough to watch.

but i will say, i love my husband, because halfway through sela and jasper’s testing, HE WALKED IN.

to support me. or maybe because he thought i was so unhinged that he couldn’t count on me giving him a proper run down of what the OT said. who knows, but there he was and magnificent, thank you for making us a priority. i love you, bunny.

none of the kids are at their age levels. that’s the bottom line.  all are below median range, another fact. in a couple of days i can take that on, but for now, i just need to process it, and wonder why i didn’t see this coming. and not to feel guilty about it. and remember, like so many of you so kindly pointed out, these children have overcome so much. this is just one more thing.

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."  matthew 11.28

i’ll be taking God up on that promise.

big smack attack

from december 6 2001, when magnificent charles’ paternity leave ended and he had to head back to work to september 2004, when my tiny little sebastian headed off on the school bus (at 2.5 years!) to work/school, often when sebastian and i were alone, i kept up a ridiculous monologue with my little butter bean boy.

if i was setting up for a dinner party, i would have him strapped to my chest and i would chat with him about the proper way to hold your soup spoon. or what to do with mint sprigs that accompany sorbet. how to sober up someone who is drunk halfway through a six course meal.  we had lots of quiet times, young seb and i, and lots of music as well, but the monologue continued. i think in the back of my post partum brain i was certain that one day he would be sharing one of these snippets of information with a friend, and all of a sudden an aged lady from the table next to him would turn around and say, "by goodness! that is a lost art, young man!" and it would be lady astor or someone of that ilk, and she would be so bemused and impressed by this young man that she would leave him several million dollars and he would give me and his father a hefty chunk because we taught him all he knew.

add three kids and helpers into the house and those one on one conversations are a bit rarer. and the fact that sebastian talks back and his response might be, "well mr incredibles’ friend frozone could skate over his soup". he’s not learning the lessons anymore, sadly. shhh…listen carefully, can you hear the millions skating away?

today sebastian was at school and sela and jasper were off at PPA! (exclamation mark necessary). carys was home with me because she had an endocrinology appointment at 10.30. we read books, read to BEBE, discussed why we don’t draw on ourselves, and as i loaded up the bag for our appointment, i found myself discussing with her why we were taking the straw sippy cup instead of the avent sippy cup. good HEAVENS. she was obediently answering yes everytime i paused, and if my eyebrows went up she would change her answer to no. but basically i was monologing the same way i had with sebastian. it was easy, it was fun, it was sweet, at least for me.

i have been to a lot of hospital appointments and i think i can say i have gotten rather blase about them. it has been a while since we received any bad news from the queen mary hospital. i had gotten out of the nicu tango, one step forward two steps back, when it came to my children making progress. which is why today’s appointment was such a smack attack. it was totally unexpected me.

it started before we got into the waiting room. we were walking from the payment centre down the stairs to the clinic and a doctor passed us, and said something like, "she has trouble walking". i thought he was in a hurry and didn’t pay attention, i was more concerned with the grime carys was collecting on her hands from the railing.

that same doctor was the doctor we saw in the exam room. "we meet again" he said suavely.

he left the room and came back with a box of stuff, and started testing carys. giving her blocks and asking her to build similar buildings, pick out a block the same colour as the one he was holding, to identify the picture where the boy was sitting next to the pillow (not on the pillow) and to put the dog underneath the table. when carys apparently failed to do any of these things he sighed.

he asked why the kids havent seen an occupational therapist. i said, "because you are the people who make the appointments." he lifted up the phone and barked into it, then informed me that we have appointments tomorrow.

then i got the talk about how i have to stop seeing my kids as premature. they are now ADJUSTED. and DELAYED. or at least carys is, he doesn’t want to speak for the others. he knows i don’t have time to spend one on one, but i need to read more. ARE YOU KIDDING I READ A LOT TO THESE KIDS! but i liked the guilt, that was nice.

then he decided he had had enough of that, might as well save some reproach for the OT (tomorrow) and became an endocrinologist again. said her muscles were good, bla bla bla, and then just as i was relaxing, half paying attention to what he was saying because i was plotting out how i can get some more one on one reading time with carys and get her talking more, he said

according to these growth charts, your daughter will be very small.

yes, carys is not growing well, friends. she is expected to be between 4’11 and five feet if all goes according to what is happening now. magnificent andi need to be considering if we want to put her on puberty delaying hormones in a few years, like when she is nine.

then it was time to go home.

this doctor was actually a very nice fellow, i kid you not. but what he said wasn’t. i thought we were done this, plus i wasn’t expecting it. i wasn’t wearing my defensive jacket, i wasn’t seeing carys as anything but my delightful little companion who had requested to wear her white church sandals and who had identified my tea as hot.

we’ve had so many steps forward, that a couple of steps back shouldn’t be earth shattering. i just wasn’t prepared. so i am going to do some research tonight to see if stretch racks are available on ebay. or if it is legal in china to have that surgery where they insert bone into your tibia to give you an extra two inches of height. proactive is good.

yuk.

my dad

wee early hours of the morning, 17 march, 1970:

small squalling bundle girl is delivered. exhausted mother smiles as her husband picks up his second child, another daughter, and takes her over to the window, where the sun is just rising. he begins singing, a song he hasn’t sung often before and a song he hasn’t sung much since.

Kathleen, mavourneen, awake from thy slumbers,
The blue mountains glow in the sun’s golden light.
Ah! Where is the spell that once hung on thy numbers,
Arise in thy beauty, thou star of my night!

It may be for years, and it may be forever,
Then why art thou silent, thou voice of my heart?
It may be for years and it may be forever,
Then why art thou silent, Kathleen, mavourneen?

the child stops crying, but everyone else in the delivery room starts sobbing. it could be a movie, but instead, it was my entrance into the world, and the first time i had a conversation with my dad, who named me teresa mavourneen, mavourneen meaning, my darling. my dad, best known in the blogging world as frugal blake.

frugal blake was recently diagnosed with sciataca (Sp?) and i am convinced this was caused during my teen years, when frugal blake formed himself into the letter "C" when hugging pam and i, and graeme too for that matter. lord forbid he he saw a bra strap, and i think he convinced himelf that sanitary napkins were the cat’s pillows (frugal he always was but he NEVER stinted when it came to the animals. they always got first class treatment). he was so respectful of us, and never even cracked a smile the day i asked him, in all seriousness mind, what belly button lint was.

he is also respectful of our bad choices. i could name one VERY bad choice i made as a 16 year old, but too many of you might do an internet search on that person and say, "he’s a pastor! and 10 years older than you!!!" and my dad would say, "Right on both counts…but she was in love and after giving her a warning, i had to let her make her mistakes, and be there to help pick up the pieces."

picking up the pieces doesn’t require a lot of talk.

which is good, because frugal blake isn’t much one for talk. including gossip. if you tell him something unsavoury his mouth quirks downward, and his eyebrows raise, and he says something incriminating like, "is that so" in a bland manner that makes you feel uncomfy for bringing it up. it has really been my dad that has helped me curb my tongue over the years. that and the ever present question, "would i say that about this person if they were standing right beside me?" which of course was "a good rule of thumb" i got from, you guessed it, dad.

frugal and i spent a lot of time together this summer because we happen to enjoy jigaw puzzles. i haven’t managed to get him doing sudoku, but the time is coming. i did get him watching arrested development, so i know i do get listened to.

i;m not associating a lot of frugality with this man, am i? goodness KNOWS frugal blake is parsamonius. reread a july entry if you want examples of frugality. basically, he is frugal because he worked so hard for all he has, and doesn’t want to fritter it away. money he has isn’t inherited, he has made, so he knows its value.

frugal blake once worked as a door to door salesman, selling encyclopedias. he’d come home from the office, eat some tinned soup, and head out to sell encyclopedias. for the last 40 years, frugal blake has been working for his family. sure he enjoys the benefits, but it is mainly for us. how do i know? because i listen too.

on the topic of canada’s immigration system: can you blame everyone for wanting to come to canada? for wanting to give their kids a better life than they have? it’s what i would do if i were them.

and then he takes it one step further, and when he sees hardworking people like lita and de, who live in hong kong and have their sister raising their two year old daughter, frugal blake offers to sponsor them to move to canada so they can be together. "they deserve a chance. they’re hard workers, they want a better life for their daughter. all they need is a chance."

on perv’s : if anyone ever interferes with your kids, you can’t do anything. the kids need you. leave it to me. i’ll take care of it. what are they going to do to an old man anyway? throw him in jail? fine.

he’s not the godfather, he’s the granddad. don’t kid yourself…they do need you.

frugal blake was always the one we kids went to when we wanted to adopt an animal. he is total soft touch around animals. and it was never frugal blake who took them to the vet on those sad days when they needed to be put down.

when pam, graeme and i were eight, four and six, we spent a good portion of our allowance on slurpees. dad was horrified, and decried slurpees as nothing but sugar and water…. and then one day i clued in, faked a stomach ache and let him have a nice sample of our slurpee. next thing you know, frugal blake was accompanying us on the slurpee runs, and quite the expert, making comments how mac’s slushes were nowhere near as sublime as slurpees.

fast forward almost 30 years, and i had a new habit, wendy’s frostees. again, frugal blake had nothing good to say about them, until the day pam was driving us through vernon and i made her go through the drive through. i ordered three frostees and plunked one down on dad’s lap. after 30 seconds of complaints "i don’t LIKE soft ice cream" he tucked in, "hey kiddo, this is good stuff" and soon was declaring how frostees reminded him of malteds he used to eat in drugstores years ago. but even though he didnt say it, i know he liked the fact that frostees are only .99.

i love you dad.

you don’t need to leave a comment…. i know. you’ve shown it all my life. xo mauvorneen

unconditional love at its best

possibly as a result of my romantic history (or histories would possibly be the more accurate term), i have never followed the popular parent path of talking about toddlers as if they are engaged to other toddlers or will marry them when they grow up.

i think that way of talking is like thinking those precious moments figurines are cute. you either get it or you don’t.

as i have mentioned before, sebastian has mentioned marriage several times. and since he no longer sees anjali on a daily basis, she is no longer the future mrs magnificent junior. not that he has officially declared that she is wife-non-grata, but the silence speaks volumes.

so the other day sebastian, possibly as a diversion to eating the PERFECTLY GOOD summer squash on his plate announces, "mummy, i think i am going to marry annie."

you know annie of course. if you want a quick review of who annie is, please go back to the july archives and you can see pictures of seb, adam and annie getting their shoes shined together. annie has been mentioned as a future mrs sebastian several times, by both parties. annie is hilarious and as cute as a button.

it’s hard when your child, who normally has the conversational attention span of a fruit fly begins confiding, because you don’t want to believe it is a diversionary tactic, but deep down you know it probably is. so i fought back the urge to respond, "really? who did you sit beside today during snack? did you have fun? what did you play on the playground? did you play with anyone? are those new kids friends?" i thought i was quite laid back, responding, "well, that’s good honey, annie is a lot of fun and a good friend to you. she likes squash."

apparently that little snippet of information was enough to stop seb from signing the prenup. he looked at me and said, "but i also might marry olivia."

BEEP BEEP! CODE RED. THIS IS AN EMERGENCY.

"oh no, sebastian" i smoothly assured my son. " you cannot."

my girlfriend steph (as in steph who  brought the amazing race and her vhs to my hospital room) has a son, who is sebastian’s age. from the beginning of his life, and olivia’s life for that matter, they have been best friends. there are pictures of them swaddled side by side, learning to sit together, holding hands, him giving her a little smoocharoo on the cheek…their parents are already coming to terms with the concept of alternate thanksgivings and Christmases. they’ve got it all worked out.

with sebastian seeing the cutie patootie olivia every day, he is getting marriage minded. no doubt olivia still prefers ian, but when sebastian uttered olivia’s name, i was horrified.

stephanie would never talk to me again if the ian/olivia match came undone. she’s one of my best friends! i LOVE HER! i call her every monday between 10-11pm during the commercials of the amazing race to talk tactics. i LOVE HER. i am not having my son be angelina jolie to this much anticipated brad and jennifer match thankyouverymuch. NONONONONONONO. i said,

"seb, there are lots of girls out there. who else do you think you might like to marry?" thankfully, he listed anais VERY briskly. anais is half vietnamese, half french and completley gorgeous. i know seb is fond feelings toward her because he once offered to share snack with her.

"good, good, that makes me happy, she’s a nice girl" i breathed, not wanting to say what was really going through my mind, "my happiness is more important than yours"

"does she like squash?" he asked?

and to seal the deal i answered, "i don’t think so"

and then i let him run off and play.

good friends are hard to find.

i snuck back to the 80’s videos site again the other day, just for a minute you understand, and watched the john lennon video, "woman".

no matter your opinion of yoko ono, she must be so grateful that song was written, that in john’s gentle farewell to her she could hear those words every couple, no matter how caught up they are in daily routines: budget balancing, car pooling, nappy changing, ego soothing and making time for love – thinks when we take the time…maybe while folding laundry, setting the table, waiting for them to come out of the office or finish a conversation with a colleague:

Woman please let me explain,
I never mean(t) to cause you sorrow or pain,
So let me tell you again and again and again,
I love you (yeah, yeah) now and forever,

not that i am a john and yoko expert, i have always been rather removed from that particular love affair, but what a beautiful gift that song is.

i recently wrote that i was dealing with a painful aspect to an unavoidable relationship. twelve years ago, i would have delighted in antagonising this person who hurt me, in freezing them out painfully, in simply making them no longer exist in my world. (unless they apologised). people that hurt my family really got my ire up, and i didn’t have a lot of compassion or room for second chances.

i am not like that any more, and the hurt was coming from knowing i was going to have to see them, and having been instructed by magnificent not to discuss the matter, i didn’t. but it still hurt.

and then the other day i realised i don’t want someone knowing they have hurt me and i have not forgiven them. i have to take responsibility for half that statement. me, who has been forgiven for so much, needs to forgive. they can still know they have hurt me, and hopefully they do. but i need to forgive. and even odder, i want to.

my love can’t just be about the day to day events, "i love how much fun we had together today". i want it to be about the abiding, everlasting love i feel regardless of what we have done. it’s not easy…i still sting when i think of the hurt, but wanting to change is the first step towards changing. because one day that person will be gone. maybe not shot by a deranged fan outside their central park flat, but who knows how, or why.

this is a sad world, and a beautiful one. as we get older, as our parents get older, as our realities and responsibilities get bigger, the sadness somehow seems to grow.

i want to be part of the beauty. so instead of sitting here watching the wheel of anger and frustration roll round and round, i just had to, let it go.

but from where i stand

our experiences truly are our watermarks, or ground zero.

the other day i was with two ladies from a neighbouring church, new acquaintances. one was bemoaning that her recent dadughter had been born at 36 weeks.

"oh i am so scared, having a premature baby is filled with such fears. i worry for her health, that she may be developmentally delayed, that her lungs may not be properly developed…." and she continued listing the worries.

while i managed to be helpful and point out some good statistics and websites, and milestones in her daughter’s development that have already been observed, a small part of me asked, "ARE YOU KIDDING? I WOULD GIVE MY HUSBAND’S BRITISH INVASION COLLECTION, AND ANYTHING OF VALUE (not that i am hinting that my husbands british invasion lp collection isn’t of value……) to have given birth to children at 36 weeks gestation."

later on, i was fiddling around an internet board and read a post by a new mother who had given birth to twins at 28w. and her sentiments are exactly the same as the mother of the daughter born at 36 weeks. fear for the babies, the potential health and mental issues. and the responders to her post reply, this is the worst thing, so terrible. and the mother updates, the babies weren’t on vents, but still, cpap is very scary, not breathing on their own…so close to death, yes indeed….

and i am thinking as i read the diagnosis and drugs…no, these twins are doing so well. and while three and one half pounds seems tiny to you, that’s HUGE.

and i am also thinking…oh, and about the vent? try having to have the vent shoved down your child’s throat and knowing each hour it stays there potentially compromises their future health but knowing unless it’s there the child has no earthly future….and again i think thoughts about charles’ lp collection and even throw in my sweet valley high series for good measure…..if only the triumverate could have made it to 28 weeks.

and then i get an email from my friend jilly. i wasn’t expecting this email for a few months, four to be exact. her twins have been born at 23w5d gestation. the little girl has already died. her son, whom she is too scared to name, is wrapped like a mummy in gauze, she can’t even touch him. her aching breasts can’t even provide for him nutritionally, he is only taking sugar water.

the penny drops. i know she would give anything to have carried him and his sister until 26 weeks. 24 weeks is her water mark just as definitely as 26 is mine.

no matter how easy we think others have had it, someone has had it worse than we have. and their fears are very real. it’s their experience. they don’t go into the preemie world with knowledge, they went in hoping for a perfect, "take home baby" like the majority gets.

i don’t know where those flashes of "nicu" impatience came from. as someone else observed, you get it with infertility as well. 

my ground zero doesn’t have any tiny white crosses. instead of criticising other’s, i should be helping them out of the rubble, dusting them off. usually i do, but sometimes i forget.

no i didn’t get a tummy tuck

in ER when they’re rushing a guerney strapped person to an OR, they always show the ceiling, and the lights flashing by, one by one.

i remember seeing that montage monday around 8.50am. however, i don’t remember the return trip. however, my fibroid did not accompany me back, nor did the two cysts the drs found near my right fallopian tube.

pre surgery the doctors and nurses had come in and explained a few things to me, how i would be feeling, why i would hurt, where i would hurt, where i would bruise…did i have questions…and i remember looking at magnificent charles and asking, "should i even ask questions or am i going to forget all this?". mc was tres reassuring, "no, you’ll remember all this, it;s after the surgery you should’t talk because you won’t remember a thing." ah.

i DO remember that we watched four episodes of THE FAMILY GUY, except we only watched one, i DO remember that we slept a couple of hours except it was seven, i do remember that the doctor came in and talked to me (except it was both doctors and four nurses), and i do remember that the drugs were nice except there weren’t enough. (TRUE)

magnificent was knackered by 7pm (i had slept the morning away, his day had been tougher apparently, but i forget what he did), so he went home to get sleep and my dear friend steph came to see me. we chatted for a couple of hours and then she eyeballed me to make sure i took all my medications and then left. i dozed all night long and contemplated if it would be too much trouble to get a catheter at home. i was liking this concept of not getting out of bed despite drinking copious amounts of water.

the next morning, steph arrived early, with her vhs and a bunch of bags. how good friends are we?

1) she had me tie personalised tags on to 175 bags promoting her company, joy distributions

2) she didn’t say a word when she went to the bathroom and had to move my still full bedpan (CHARMING) which was of course threaded with blood

3) SHE HAD TAPED THE AMAZING RACE AND HOUSE FROM THE NIGHT BEFORE.

I LOVE HER I LOVE HER I LOVE HER

then sebastian and charles, louise, terri and cora joined us. terri’s daughter olivia is in sebastian’s class so the kids played happily except when seb fell a$$ over teakettle and hit his head and started crying.

that afternoon i sort of rested. more friends came, odila and i chatted and laughed, the triplets ate their dinner with me, and charles came by.

that night was tougher…pain in my ribs and shoulders was worse, and the bruises were really painful and of course i had tried walking too long of a distance and was really hurting..but i did manage to sleep.

and the next day i talked them into discharging me.

so i am home, walking a little oddly, but glad it is all over. today the day did not get off to an officious start, everyone was out of the house and i was in a fair bit of pain and there was no glass of water by my bedside to accompany my pills down my throat. so i lay in bed and tried to pretend i could tough it out until everyone came home for lunch. that lasted 15 minutes. then i dragged myself out of bed and took the pills with bathroom tap water, yuk.

enough said. it is good to be home. RIP fibroid.

Tess update

DH reporting here… for updates on Tess’ progress please visit my blog.