Yes, Today Is All About Me (and what's wrong with that?)

I announced last night to my almost 15-year-old son D. that I had great plans for us for Mother’s Day.

“There is something we are going to do together tomorrow, and we are going to have a lot of fun, and we are going to do it without a single complaint from you,” I said.

D. looked at me. “What is it?”

“We are going to the movies, and we are going to see We Bought a Zoo.”

He groaned. I’ve been asking D. to go see this movie with me for about three months now. He never wants to go—he doesn’t want to go to the movies in general with his mother—he would much rather play Xbox Live with his buddies.

Fortunately—or unfortunately for him maybe—We Bought a Zoo still running at our old-run local theater. I love this place, because I greatly respect its fight to stay alive against the newer, multiplex stadium-seat monstrosity down the road. This theater is where my mother and I took D. to see his first-ever movie, Winnie the Pooh. I remember having to hold down his seat with my arm because he kept getting folded up in it. I saw some classics there—Jurassic Park, and Forrest Gump, and we saw his first Harry Potter movie there, too. In fact, I probably saw Thelma and Louise at this cinema, and if he doesn’t respond to my request just right, I might start feeling rebellious and take off in a convertible somewhere.

“Can we see The Avengers instead?” he asked.

“Are you kidding me?” I repied. I gave D. my most incredulous look. In fact, if my face were analyzed for micro expressions, the FBI would be fascinated by the twitch, sneer, and eyebrow lift combo. They might even dedicate it to mothers everywhere and name it after us. My expression revealed what I was thinking: “What happened to no complaining?”; “Really, on Mother’s Day?” and “Are you seriously my kid?”

“Okaaaaayyyy,” D. said. He could tell this wasn’t a battle worth fighting for.

Of course, I still had to remind him this morning that it was Mother’s Day. I think he was trying to forget. He’s probably worried about running into some friends at the theater, who he is sure will be going to see Project X and he’ll have to say he is going to see We Bought a Zoo. 

The seriousness of this possibility made him give it one more shot this morning. “How about you go see We Bought a Zoo and I go see something else?”

“Absolutely not,” I said. Just once, I have to win.

I think there should be more than just one day a year dedicated to mothers. For all the trauma, suffering, and selflessness, don’t we deserve at least a fortnight?

If he says one more peep about going to this movie today, no popcorn for him. 

The Great Spring Sport Controversy

There has been a war going on in my house.

Well, maybe not so much a war, but a major disagreement.

If you ask my 14-year-old son, he would say things are just fine. He’s in perfect alignment with the adolescent that he is and has great clarity on what he wants. But his mother is slightly traumatized at the fact that after being a bit of a couch potato all winter, he has chosen not to play a spring sport.

My son D. is naturally very athletic. He is more athletic than his father and I—and whether it was T-Ball or Babe Ruth, a house hockey league or a travel team, he always played with great passion and sweat. The counselors at his after-school program used to laugh at the fact that every day when I picked him up, his cheeks were hot and pink and his shirt was drenched from the floor hockey or dodge ball game that they were playing.

D. also played hockey as a goalie for a travel team, but after three years of that, at the wise old age of 11, he decided to give it up because “it’s not fun anymore, mom.” How can playing five days a week, private goalie lessons, tournaments up in Canada, and 9-hour-long summer hockey camps not be fun?

Okay, maybe hockey can be a little over the top. Kids who choose to do it love it, but if you don’t love it anymore, you should give it up. Which he did.

Now that he’s a freshman in high school, he has settled on football and tennis as two sports he loves. He plays football for his high school team, but he decided last week not to join the tennis team. When I asked him why, he said, “The boys’ team has 27 kids and no one ever gets cut.”

“They don’t have 27 kids,” I said. “The school only has 380!”

“Wanna bet?” He said, sticking out his hand.

“I’m not going to bet you,” I said, pushing his hand away. “But as a freshman, if no one gets cut, isn’t that an advantage?”

“No,” he said, sticking ear buds in his ears.

D. played for a competitive team at our Y this spring and did very well. So why wouldn’t he play for high school? Doesn’t he know that there’s a direct correlation between the number of activities one does in school and the likelihood one gets into college?

But I forgot. D’s logic is focused on what is happening in the next three days. Conceptualizing what consequences his freshman choices will have on his life is virtually impossible.

I argued with him some. I cajoled. We had the same conversation about 4.6 times. I pointed out all of the wisdom of the way I see the world. I pointed out how kids who play three sports a year are more well rounded (although he thinks basketball is boring so there’s not a lot of hope for him playing a winter sport). I did fall short of bribing (although I thought of offering to buy him a new racquet; that might have put him over the edge. But I resisted. I have to be a grown-up sometimes).

I remember having similar conversations with him about why he didn’t want to try out for All-Stars after baseball season: He would say, “Nah, I’m good. I think I need a break.” And I’d bite my tongue.

The last time we had the tennis conversation, I felt myself getting more and more irritated. He was being so obstinate. His clarity about who he is and what he wants is so annoying. I wanted to shout out, “Don’t you want to distinguish yourself?”

But then I stopped, laughing. I heard a tiny voice in my head answer my question: He is.

Brilliant Car Trick #63

I was leaving work a few weeks ago, walking down the block, when I heard a car alarm going off. “Gee, I hope that’s not mine,” I said, half joking. But as I walked toward the parking garage, I saw the taillights of my Nissan Murano were lit. “That’s weird,” I thought. Was a goofy teenager tampering with my car? Was someone trying to steal my Garmin, which I had so wisely concealed inside the secret compartment/armrest?

I touched the handle to unlock the driver’s side door, got inside, and buckled my seat belt. But then I noticed something seemed odd—the dashboard was lit up.

“What’s that smell?” I asked. Something seemed to be burning. Wait a minute…the engine? What was the engine doing on? I hadn’t turned it on yet!

My new Murano has a really cool feature—keyless ignition. I never imagined how much I would love this—I can leave my keys in my pocket or in my purse, and as long as I have them on me, I can unlock the car by pushing a button on the handle. I also can start it by putting my foot on the brake and pushing the ignition button.

It’s very convenient not having to pull out your keys, find the right one, and stick it in the door—especially in New England when it’s 18 degrees out and the wind chill factor is -2. The only problem is, you have to make sure you have your keys with you—because if you leave them in your jacket pocket in the backseat and try to lock the door, it won’t lock—it will just rudely beep at you.

Or, hypothetically, if you leave the car running and get out with the keys, it will also beep at you, to remind you that you shouldn’t go far. 

I remembered just then that I had been on the phone when I parked the car—and I stayed on the phone the entire time walking up the block. I must have carefully disconnected my Bluetooth instead of shutting the car off. I didn’t hear the car beeping at me because I was too embroiled in whatever fascinating conversation I was having. 

New insight about my now-well-broken-in Nissan Murano: I can leave my car running, walk into work a good 300 feet away, and sit in meetings for over two hours in my office and my car will keep on chugging. Brilliant!

I find car troubles to be interesting metaphors for life. If my brakes on my old Volvo were squealing, I saw it as a sign that I needed to slow down. My check engine light seemed to come on when I was not tuned in with myself—a good reminder to make some changes in my life. When I once had a car that had constant steering problems, I realized I wasn’t giving myself enough direction and I better start listening to my instincts.

So what does it mean that my car kept on running for two hours when I wasn’t inside it?

Simple: I just need to stop being a dope.

A Little Cup of Something

My mother’s Pyrex 508 one-cup measuring cup has been loved. The once-red writing has faded to white, and the 1/4 cup measure mark on the glass has completely disappeared. You can still see the 1-cup mark pretty clearly, and have a hint of the 2/3. But I use the cup anyway because I’ve been using it for 35 years. I’ve measured milk for pancakes, oil for brownies, and water for our favorite cake: white with chocolate frosting.

When I was in second grade, my mother started teaching me how to cook. She showed me how to loosely spoon flour into a dry measuring cup and drag a knife blade across the top to get the exact amount. I learned how to beat egg whites, but not overbeat them, into a meringue. I learned how to fry chicken livers and bacon, and how to make the perfect pancake, waiting to flip until the bubbles on top had popped. And, I learned how to measure liquid in her cup. We’d bend down next to the glass at eye level, peering inside to make sure I had the right amount.

She taught me that you have to pack brown sugar when measuring it, but not confectioner’s sugar. I learned when to use margarine and when to use Crisco. Measuring Crisco—how satisfying! We’d put that brilliant white lard into one of her Tupperware measuring cups and pack out any air bubbles, listening for the tiny satisfying sound when the air released.

My mother laughed at me the first time I tried to make brownies on my own. She was off in another room, and not long after I read in the directions, “Fold the mixture by hand,” she found me in the kitchen with my hands covered in the thick, sweet batter, stirring it with great enthusiasm. She thought that was so funny. I remember getting angry. I said, “If Duncan Hines didn’t want me to use my hands, then they should have been more specific!”

I safely store my mom’s Pyrex cup with its D-shaped handle in my baking tools drawer. It’s there along with a cheap two-cup measure I bought, because my sister ended up with the Pyrex 516. Even though it’s impractical, as often as I can, I pull out the 508. I use it every time I need less than a cup of something. I use it when I make my son D’s favorite Annie’s Shells and Cheese, even though I have to estimate the ¼ cup mark for the milk. If it comes out a little soupy, at least we made it together.

My Kind of Champion

The AFC championship game in January marked the four-year anniversary of my father’s accident. I remember it was frigid outside, well below freezing that day, so he probably put on his parka and his snow boots before he went out to get the newspaper. He made it down the front steps okay, because he had sprinkled salt on them. But then he fell on the sheet of ice in his driveway, and hit his head. He ended up with a subdural hematoma, and pretty much lost everything.

Dad was lucky—he managed to get himself inside the house after a while and into bed, where I found him a few hours later. Of course, he didn’t call any of us—he just put on his pajamas and crawled under the covers, ignoring the fact that he was bleeding a little from a cut on his head. I was going to watch the game with him, so when I found him several hours later, I immediately called my sister to let her know. Within 15 minutes, he was vomiting and so we brought him to the hospital, suspecting a concussion.

Within 12 hours, he was in the operating room, having brain surgery. This surgery saved his life.

He now has a long scar on his frontal lobe. We had to sell his Ford Ranger, most of his possessions, the house where he and our mother had lived for 20 years, their furniture and antiques. When you’re trying to fit someone’s life inside a nursing home, there’s not much room for trinkets.

I went to see him last weekend at the Veteran’s Home where he now lives. I reminded him about the AFC game that would be that afternoon, even though it was written in black Sharpie on his calendar. I also reminded him that it had been four years since the accident.

He looked at me, puzzled.

“Don’t you remember the accident, that it was on the AFC championship day?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

So I started telling him the story about the accident. How we brought him to the hospital that afternoon. How after a CAT scan and a few hours, they immediately transported him by ambulance to Dartmouth-Hitchcock in Lebanon for brain surgery. That was an awful night—my sister and I tried to sleep in one of the waiting rooms on chairs that really didn’t recline, watching bad television through the night.

Dad didn’t remember any of it. He didn’t remember the rehab center, with its sterile white walls and shiny floors, where the nurses shuffled him down the hall using a walker, trying to keep him walking. He didn’t remember moving to that dumpy post-rehab facility, where he spent Easter that year and one of his roommates died in the middle of the night.

He couldn’t even remember his favorite place after that—the assisted living facility where he had his own studio apartment and privacy again. His room was in the memory care unit because he needed so much help from staff. They had a dining room like a cruise ship and we’d go there many Sundays to have lunch with him. But that was also where he stopped walking completely—the contraction in his knees from sitting in the wheelchair for so many months eventually kept him from being able to straighten his legs ever again.

They eventually told us he had to move on because he soon required two-person assists and by state law, they were unable to give them. So we eventually found the Veteran’s Home, where he could live for the rest of his life. Once he ran out of money, the government would help pay for his care because he was on active duty during the Korean War.

I was shocked that he didn’t remember any of it. Not the accident, none of the centers he had lived since then. Maybe his lack of memory is a gift—maybe his brain is shutting out some of those details in order for his life to be bearable—for him to be able to experience the present where he is now.

He’s always interested in hearing about what is going on in our lives—he likes to hear the news. That day, when I asked him what had happened at the Vet’s Home that week, and said, “Anything exciting?” He said, “Well, we didn’t bury anyone this week!”

I had to laugh. His sense of humor is there some days—which makes all of us grateful that we have some of our father back. But we never know what to expect. I have read that’s pretty common with head injury patients. Some days he’s his old self, bright and intellectual—others he is quiet and barely responsive. He’s getting out of his bed less frequently—when I go visit him on the weekends, he is often dressed, but sleeping under the covers.

I don’t know if he will now remember the story of his accident, now that he’s heard it again. I told him that the hardest part was that first year or two.

“You barely talked at all. We would go visit you, and ask questions and try to engage in conversation, and you just didn’t say anything.” I became teary, remembering.

He looked at me, very deliberately. 

“That must have been really hard on you guys,” he said.

“It really wasn’t that bad,” I said. But I looked away. 

Pictureka! Hopes for 2012

I hope I touch the bottom of my mega-sized holiday peanut M&M bag. I know I won’t find happiness there, so all I can wish is that my fingers will soon touch plastic and I’ll find only tiny bits of chocolate shell remaining. At that moment, I’ll start my new-year eating regimen. Or at least soon after.

I hope to improve my Pictureka skills. I am woefully pitiful at this simple board game, where the silly task is to find newspaper hats, diamond rings, and people with crazy hairdos. A few days ago, when my son D. won the fifth round in a row, he said, “You are really bad at this,” minutes before giving up and putting the game away.

It was a miracle that we were even playing to begin with, because D. is not much of a board game aficionado now that Modern Warfare 3 was invented. I’m not much better at Modern Warfare, which he humors me by playing as well. Even when he puts me in a juggernaut suit, which makes me almost indestructible, I still lose badly.

But that’s not a negative thing, right? It’s virtuous to be unskilled at Modern Warfare 3 and games that have caused the downfall of the millennial generation. It’s might even be Zen-like to fail at them. So in 2012, I hope to study Buddhism, and practice loving-kindness. This is my strategy to counteract the times I have bonded with D. over the Xbox.

I hope to practice loving-kindness with my significant other. He’s the yin to my yang. He’s the science to my poetics. I have to remember this when I get irritated with how methodical he can be when adjusting the pellet stove or when shopping for whole-house humidifiers. It’s the scientist in him that can tell me exactly how much snow we will get or that makes perfect patterns when mowing the lawn. But he also will butter D.’s bagel every morning and make me a K-cup when we are flying out the door. His loving-kindness is sweetly engineered every day. 

I hope in 2012 our kitten Tuna tires of the stuffed mouse we put in her Christmas stocking. She throws the mouse on the pile of newspapers every morning around 4:00 am, and plays with it until we yell at her to stop her crinkling. New fact I learned that I hope to quote sometime in 2012: Cats are crepuscular, meaning they are most active at dawn and dusk. Otherwise, they pretty much sleep. What a schedule! I hope to try this out sometime in 2012 (the sleeping part, not the mouse part).

I also hope to inquire a little more and advocate a little less. Especially at work. I asked one of my direct reports recently, “So what can I do to support you, besides shut up?” I laughed as I said this, because I know I can have good advice. That’s how I became a manager. But I share that advice a little too freely sometimes, which can suck a little air out of the inspiration in the room. I want to allow the smart people around me to form their own thought bubbles. Then I can simply follow them where they go, in case they need a little backup. That’s my hope—to help hold up others—but only when they need it.

Speaking of holding up others, I hope I can nag my son D. a little less about his grades in 2012. I want to find conversation starters other than, “How’s your homework looking?”  I hope he tells me more about who wrote “AH” on his arm and why he’s texting with her all hours of the day. I hope he goes to a high school dance, that they eat potato chips and drink Mountain Dew, and that he puts his football jacket on that girl’s shoulders. I hope the DJ plays “Stairway to Heaven” as the last song.

I hope Sundays will still be spent with my dad at the Veteran’s Home, watching the Pats or the Red Sox to fill the long afternoons. My sister S. and I will faithfully change Dad’s calendar, so he always knows what month it is and when we might be coming next. I hope he still needs us to clean his eyeglasses, and that we have plenty of seed to fill his birdfeeder so the chickadees will visit his window this winter.

And I hope before long, there will be plenty of warm summer days. Those are the best days, when we’ll bring him his favorite strawberry ice cream from Dipsy Doodle Dairy Bar in a cup. 

Sorry, Kid, There Is No Santa Claus

It’s quite convenient that my son D. no longer believes in Santa Claus. He’s 14, and eventually it came time for him to face the reality of the brutal, responsibility-laden life of being an adult. Might as well start the training now.

Sure, some of the holiday magic went out with the milk and cookies and the carrots he used to leave for the reindeer. But at least now I can legitimately tell him, “No, you won’t be getting the Xbox 360 Limited Edition Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 Console because you don’t need another Xbox and no, I am not getting you the Beats by Dr. Dre High Definition noise-cancelling headphones because who needs $300 headphones?”

He now understands that his parents actually have to fund all of his Christmas presents and we therefore have the last word on all gift-related matters.

But sometimes I miss those days when we all used to believe.

I asked D. the other night if he remembered when he learned there was no Santa. He grunted and said, “Yeah,” and pulled a blanket over his head. We were sitting on the couch watching “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” (actually, I was watching while he was watching and texting).

D. was 9, and I had brought him with me to a Unitarian Universalist Church service for the first time. I was generally a Congregationalist, and had checked out a few other churches. But I liked what I had heard about the Unitarians’ open-mindedness to different religions so I figured I’d give it a shot.

D. didn’t want to go to children’s church since he didn’t know anyone, so he stayed with me in the service. We sang a Christian hymn (with all the “Gods” taken out), listened to announcements, and then it came time for the sermon. There was a lay person giving it that day. I don’t remember exactly the topic—I was too busy studying the little Zen garden and collection of rocks on the altar up front and the interesting tapestries on the wall. But at some point, I heard him say, “I always thought God was like Santa. So, when I found out Santa wasn’t real, I started wondering if God was real.”

I snapped to attention, and jerked my head toward D. He was sitting in the pew on my left, looking straight ahead. Could it be that he missed it? I squeezed his hand. But when he looked back at me, I saw the shocked expression on his face. Oh no.

I didn’t say anything, hoping maybe he’d forget, or that maybe he misunderstood.

When the service was over, we headed out to the car, and started driving home. We made it about halfway there. But then I heard him say from the back seat, “So, there’s no Santa?”

“Oh, D. Santa is…he is…um…Santa is…Santa’s whoever wants to surprise you with special gifts on Christmas. So me, and Daddy, and Menga and Bapop…”

“You’re Santa?” There was a long, disappointed pause. “Oh.”

I didn’t know what else to say, so I stayed quiet, and kept driving.

 “So if Santa isn’t real, what about the Easter Bunny?”

Oh, boy. Not just Christmas, but now Easter, too? What would I say? I wished my mother were there. She would have made up something.

“Well, D…I guess….um….no, there’s no Easter Bunny either. It’s something we do as parents to make the holiday extra fun for you…Easter, and Christmas…”

“Oh.”

We drove a bit further. But of course, it didn’t end there.

“Mommy?” I looked in the rearview mirror.

“Yeah?” I said.

“What about leprechauns?”

Leprechauns. So there went the Irish heritage, too. Those little leprechauns followed Santa and the Easter Bunny right out the fictional door.

Now that I think about it, maybe I should get D. those noise-cancelling earphones after all. There’s a lot of noise in this world.

Time for an Intervention

My sister took the call from the Veteran’s Home. Our father wasn’t cooperating in taking his medications; he was outright refusing them at times. Shocking.

Our dad has always been a bit stubborn—he has a righteous sense of justice, and a clear idea of what he will do and not do. He has had 82 long years to develop this strong sense of self.

I knew what he was thinking: If these pink and white things won’t get him of his wheelchair and out of this place, and let him tool around town in the bright yellow Ford Ranger he used to drive, why take them?

But, he needs most of these dozen or so pills every noon and night, for everything from his bones and his eyes to his heart and his prostate. To make them more palatable, the staff even mix them with applesauce—but fish oil and applesauce is almost worse than fish oil on its own.  

The intervention was my job. He would listen to me, maybe. Probably because I’ve never been afraid to tell him what I think—I get that part of my personality from him.

“Dad,” I said, “I want to talk to you about your medications.”

The nurse had left a list of his meds tacked to his bulletin board. Pills for when he’s healthy, pills for when he’s sick, everything from cough syrup to Celexa. Oh my.

“You want to talk about my medications?” he said, picking up his head a bit. My dad is tall—6 feet—but these days, he’s usually slumped in his wheelchair, and seems shorter.

“We were thinking maybe we could cut some of these medications out, so you don’t have to take so many.”

His face brightened. “That would be good.”

The nurses agreed that cutting out some of the less essential ones might help him to stomach the meds he really needed.  He can’t skip his insulin or his blood pressure medication, but giving up calcium would not kill him at this point. On the other hand, continuing to force him to take a dozen pills twice a day might.

“What do you think? Fish oil, calcium, vitamin C? Would you like to cut all those out? That’s six pills a day at least,” I said.

“Sure,” he said. I noticed his glasses were dirty. I didn’t know why the staff don’t think to clean them.

I took an index card and a black Sharpie out of his drawer, and wrote NO FISH OIL, CALCIUM, VIT D in large letters. And I initialed it, and tacked it to his bulletin board. 

“So dad, you can refuse these three, but you have to take the others, okay?”

I might as well be telling him he can have dessert only if he finishes his vegetables.

“Okay,” he agreed. He seemed happy with the idea. 

The nurse told me they couldn’t take them off his list right away, though. That would be too simple. It would have to wait until the next time the doctor did a medication review of his chart.

“Since you are his power of attorney, however,” the nurse said, “You can tell us it’s okay for him to refuse those three.”

I thought this was amusing. We all agreed he should stop taking these medications, but they had to continue to give the pills to him for a few days, so we had to give them permission to allow him not to take them. Seemed a little circuitous.

“It’s okay,” I told the nurse. “Just don’t give them to him in pudding; he hates the pudding,” I said. “And you might want to tell the others about the ice cream.”

The nurse had told me she never has trouble getting him to take his meds. She dissolves them in warm water and then puts them in ice cream. And he takes them happily.

I can see why my dad likes her. He thinks this sweet blond nurse simply brings him a treat on a regular basis.

“I have a little ice cream for you,” she’d tell him, as she bustled into his room those days, and he would smile.

That’s pretty much what he has to look forward to—other than the times when we come visit. In between the grayness, the Mondays blending with the Thursdays, people coming in to play bad music and his roommate muttering about nothing, there are days that are good days. These are the days when this nurse is on duty and she comes to see him with a little paper cup of cold vanilla. On these days, he doesn’t argue at all.

Dear Hives

Dear Hives:

What are you thinking? Here I have been battling with you for over a year and you seem to be back with a vengeance. What the heck are you doing to me? Trying to get my attention? You have it!

Dear Kellie:

Please don’t yell at us. We are all about inflammation and yelling is just one more thing that gets us inflamed. We are trying to get your attention, yes. You seemed to get the message when you did that detox and you were taking such good care of yourself, eating no sugar, no chemicals, no coffee, nothing fun, taking care of your body—and you did that for just three weeks! What were you thinking? You’re 42 years old. You think that three weeks is enough to reinvent yourself?

Dear Hives:

I have been meaning to talk to you about the over-a-year thing. It’s a bit excessive, isn’t it? And you are preaching to the choir….I know, it comes down to a lack of discipline, right? I think I can stay on a track of eating purely but then I run out of time or energy or money or I get stressed or just busy…who has that much time to buy and cut up all those vegetables? And if I eat no gluten or yeast, what can I possibly eat? It’s getting cold now…how I can have frozen protein shakes every morning when it’s cold outside? It snowed in October, for heaven’s sake! Plus, my other supplements ran out so I had to pull out the oregano oil and all that does is remind me of fifth grade when Amy K  and I used to make English muffin pizzas and sprinkled oregano on the top as if that made us so worldly…

Dear Kellie:

The snow has nothing to do with us. Not our fault. We may be able to get pink puffy spots to show up randomly on your body but that’s about the limit of our special powers. We got this histamine thing going, but that is about it. We’re here to help you.

Dear Helping Hives:

Seriously? Just like a fever is good for the body, right? Feels good. Yeah.

Dear Kellie:

Yes!

Dear Hives:

I met with my women’s group last week—we are so good at asking challenging questions of each other. Somehow we can always see what is going on with each other, even when we can’t see it ourselves. When I told them about you, they said, “So, what are you itching to do?” What a great question! I have no idea…other than it probably has something to do with writing, that’s what I always wish I had more time to do.

Dear Kellie:

And so?

Dear Hives:

And so, I am going to try to write my way out of the hives. I think I may research more about you to find out how you work, what makes you tick…but on the other hand, if I don’t want to attract hives I have to stop thinking about you, and focus my vibration elsewhere. Law of attraction, right? Who are you again?

Dear Kellie:

You are slow, but you’re getting it.

Dear Hives:

I’m actually not getting it, but I’m getting sleepy…that darn Benadryl.

Dear Kellie:

That darn Benadryl!  We feel the same way! It takes the wind out of our sails!

Dear Hives:

Sorry. But you should know my goal is not just to take the wind from your sails, but to make you go away completely.

Dear Kellie:

Yes, we know. Isn’t that the point?

Dear Hives: 

Yes, it is. So, will you promise to give me some respite tonight and tomorrow? I am trying to do the right thing…doing the write thing. I am committed to eating properly, I made an appointment with my doctor to find out more about supplements, AND I am writing to inanimate objects!

Dear Kellie:

That you are. We are glad you listen to somebody, if not to us. Have a good night.

The Great Cast-Off

It had been three weeks since a hot pink splint was put on Tuna’s broken leg. She needed to wear the cast for a month and had to be confined to a crate in order for her to heal properly. We followed the doctor’s orders—for the most part. Unfortunately, this wasn’t Tuna’s plan.

The dope.

I noticed that she was starting to pull at strings at the top of the cast by her hip. Because I didn’t want her to swallow them (that was the end of our cat Skitterbug), I trimmed the threads off.

Little did I know, Tuna was devising a plan to rid herself of her peg leg. She was growing tired of dragging the heavy thing around—planning her escape like a prisoner digging a hole in a concrete wall with the blunt end of a spoon.

So one day, when we had let her out of her cage for a little time in the house, we suddenly noticed she was running around without her pink cast. Where did the thing go? She was whining and crying and slipping on the wood floor with her three legs, the fourth held up out of habit.

How exactly does a cat get a leg cast off? Sure, cats are pretty agile, but that had to hurt—it would be like a human trying to slip out of a cast that goes hip to toe without having opposable thumbs to pull it off.

Somehow, Tuna managed it. We could see that her poor leg was atrophied and looked like it had been mangled in a cat fight. It was spindly thin, red and sore, and was missing a lot of hair. We took her into the vet immediately.

After gently checking out her leg and studying the new X-ray, Dr. Tucker reassured us that Tuna would be fine. Because her cast came off a week early, she would have to be confined to the dog crate for another two weeks (seriously, this time), just to make sure she wouldn’t reinjure it.

He also suggested we do some kitty PT with her when we watch TV. I could see it clearly: “Stretch, Tuna, stretch….now bend that knee, count one and two…back to the stretch and one-and-a two….” Maybe we could watch an exercise channel on Direct TV and work out as a family.

We learned an interesting fact from Dr. Tucker—as agile as cats are, they do have a breaking point. When he was a vet in New York, he used to frequently treat cats that fell out of high-rise apartment windows. He said a cat would be sitting on a sill, and someone would slam a door or drop something and poof! Out the cat went, out the window. He said a cat could generally survive a fall of about nine stories—but once it was ten or more, for some reason, that was the magic number—the cat usually wouldn’t survive.

Fortunately, Tuna survived her first and hopefully last broken bone. Dr. Tucker promised us that she would be back to her old self in no time. She already seems happier—she has been resting her head on her bum leg when she sleeps. I just hope she won’t spend her remaining idle hours in the crate brainstorming ways to exercise her soon-to-be-found freedom. We may have to ban her from her favorite trick of winding through the balusters in the loft railing and taking those flying leaps to the stairs.

On the other hand, Dr. Tucker said this leg will be even stronger than before due to all this new bone growth. In the end, perhaps Tuna traded in her peg leg for a bionic one. Maybe she is not such a dope after all.

P.S. I promise this will be my last blog about animals for a while. I am not that into my pets. I just think a cat with a broken leg is funny. And a cat who takes a cast off her broken leg is even funnier. Fortunately for you, I won’t be writing anytime soon about the parakeet I once had that was named Tiddlewinks. There’s just not much one can say about a parakeet.