Two Restaurants and a Baby

I made a quick trip to see my new best friend---the nurse practitioner at my doctor’s office. My Popeye’s elbow didn’t go down with the round of antibiotics---the one that came with a guarantee I’d get diarrhea. (It was not a fun week.) She repeatedly called me ‘sweetie’ and I didn’t even care because she kept a running dialogue going on what she was doing and her voice is like liquid sunshine. She took out a large hypodermic needle and drew 11 C.C. of thick grayish-red pus out of my bursa and put 7 C.C. of steroids back in it. My elbow looked smaller for a half day but now you can’t tell she even touched it except for the black and blue marks I didn’t have before. I’ve got such a busy couple of weeks coming up that I’m not sure when I can get back in but I suppose I should try. She mentioned they might have to schedule me with a specialist for minor surgery if the procedure she did doesn’t work. She also said the stuff she drew out usually looks different than mine did. Good grief, I hate being “special” when we’re talking random medical crap!

On the way home from the doctor’s office I took myself out to the Breakfast Only Café where I love the food and they offer the best opportunities for eavesdropping on my end of town. I hit the jackpot and got to hear a smug, twenty-something girl talk about the baby she’s expecting. She’s doing a home birth with a mid-wife. “I don’t see why I need a hospital or drugs. Women have been having babies for thousands of years.” If I had been her dining companion I would have said, “Hey, Chickie-poo, women have been dying in childbirth for thousands of years, too!” But her companion was a good little listener and she didn’t even laugh out loud like I did when the mother-to-be said her friends with babies tell her she needs to buy a rocking chair but she thinks rockers are “too unstable to trust.” She’s not afraid of having a baby without drugs but she’s scared of rocking chairs? That still cracks me up. 

She also said the baby will absolutely not sleep in the room with her and her husband like her friends with babies did in the first few weeks. Her companion said, “You can use a baby monitor” to which Ms. Mother-to-Be cut her off with, “Not in my house! I’m a light sleeper and I need my sleep.” She’s not going to raise a spoiled child! Yadda, yadda, yadda. One of her friends, she said, even had her baby hooked up to an alarm and the parents took turns sleeping on a futon in the baby’s room. “That’s just crazy,” she said and I’m thinking, Hey wait minute! There must have been a medical need for that alarm. Usually, when I eavesdrop I have no trouble acted disinterested and involved in my own little writing world but this time I was tempted to jump over the pony wall and give her the aunt Jean/Socrates treatment. Would you listen to me, the childless woman who used to say I won’t babysit anyone who can’t say, “My stomach hurts and I need to go the hospital.”

The next day I went downtown with two of my Gathering Girls friends and a bus load of others from the senior hall to the culinary college’s fancy-schmancy restaurant. It’s the 3^rd year I’ve signed up and it was just as fun this time as the others. I ordered the “Salvadoran Style Pork and Cheese Pupusa Chismol, rice, platanos maduros, salsa roja, corn relish, curtido and lime crema” not knowing what half those words meant. I still don’t but it was wonderful. It came with a small salad that included steamed sweet potato slices, baby spinach and quinoa with a white salsa plus a three ounce sized bowl of pureed black bean soup and a bread basket to die for. If I were a panda bear I would have used the bread to anoint myself. If you’ve watched a panda cam you’ll know all about how they roll around on the enrichment treats they love better than sex. And for dessert I got a yummy, dark chocolate fix---a wedge of heaven topped with raspberry sauce and chocolate ‘candy paper squares’ and served with a dab of chocolate ice cream and a chocolate whoopie pie with raspberry filling. The five star style service makes you feel great but for half the cost you’d pay at a ritzy restaurant.

The culinary college outings always come with a mystery tour and this year our senior hall director took us to a 75,000 square feet warehouse called ‘The Store’ that is run by a mega church. They get shipments from World Mission of school supplies, hygiene products, diapers, cleaning supplies and overstock goods that could be anything from chairs to vacuums to boots. All brand new. The church opens the warehouse to people on a fixed income including college students, charity groups and school teachers who all pay a $50 fee for a year’s membership and members can go to ‘The Store’ twice a month and take whatever they need for free. Our tour guide told us a lot of stories about how they’d pray over a large shipment of say pillows and the next day someone would come in who was setting up a shelter. What a HUGE and curious place it was! ©

Falling Apart and Getting Together

I am lucky that I don’t have a major health issue but that’s not going to stop me from writing a whiny post about all the little stuff that’s keeping me from popping out of bed each morning with a great attitude and my arms outstretched and singing Sound of Music style. Why can’t I be like that? Maybe if I could throw open the windows and listen to the sounds of spring it would be different. But the furnace still runs, my winter coat is still needed and we’ve even got a chance of snow back in the weather forecast! The Canadian Geese haven’t even been by yet on their way up north. Skip the robins, honking geese is my signal that spring is on the way. Come to think about it, I haven’t seen a robin either. They’d have to have microwaves to defrost worms for their dinners. I want spring and if it doesn’t show up soon I’m going to have a hissy fit!

I have so much to be grateful for yadda, yadda, yadda and yet it’s a collection of petty stuff that’s dragging me down. Remember the Popeye’s Elbow (Olecranon Bursitis) I wrote about a month ago? It didn’t go away on its own like Dr. Google predicted happens in most cases. It got bigger and redder and I called the doctor’s office. They got me in the same afternoon to see the nurse practitioner. I’m allergic to some of the (shotgun type) antibiotics commonly prescribed and the one she put me on has this written in all caps on the bottle: IT’S COMMON TO HAVE DIARRHEA WITH THIS DRUG! Yippy I oh, won’t that be fun! I also have to use heat on my elbow four times a day and go back next week to get it aspirated if it’s not gone. It’s not going to be gone. My Lucky Human Being Card is expired.

Then there are the hives I’m starting to wake up with again. This has happens like clockwork every 4-5 years my entire life. So I’m taking Zyrtec to limp through until I see my internist in April. I blame him this time for messing with my thyroid meds. It’s a balancing act. According to an autoimmune specialist I saw a few years ago, thyroid antibodies are causing the chronic hives aka I’m allergic to myself. Also going on: I broke off the side of a tooth and I’ll probably need a cap. Thankfully, that doesn’t hurt because I don’t dare to make an appointment with the dentist until after I’m finished with the round of antibiotics for my elbow. Same goes for the foot doctor that I need to see about two different issues going on that interferes with me falling asleep. And speaking of sleep, when I wake up in the morning I have an eye that’s getting crusted over and doesn’t want to open without a warm compress. I feel like a one-eyed minion from Despicable Me. And if anyone brings up the fact that a year ago I was preening about going to the gym and losing the weight I gained back over this past winter, I’m going pitch a probiotic Activia cup at their head. On the good side, a split fingernail I’ve been trying to grow out for over a year is nearly to the point where I’ll no longer need to put a nylon patch on it every Sunday. See, I can still appreciate my first world blessings. 

The complaint department is closed. Now on to some fun I had this week at an Irish Pub with four of my Gathering Girls friends where I had a great corn beef sandwich and a decadent chocolate dessert. They still had green beer but I’m not a beer kind of person. Though I miss the days of having a designated driver because I would have loved having a grasshopper, if people even make those crème de menthe drinks anymore. We laughed as if we’d been drinking, though. Boy did we laugh and I managed to dig out my rusty flirting skills and practice on a couple guys who were going by our booth on the way to being seated near-by. One of the guys paused and said, “We could just sit with these ladies. Their food looks pretty good.” “I’ll slide over and share,” I said, “I can’t eat it all.” He bantered back, “You’re not shy. I like that.” I took a little teasing from one of the ladies about talking with strangers. “Quiet Jean! Who would have ever guessed you had that in you?” Answer: Almost anyone who knew me in my twenties.

We were still there laughing and talking when the guys left after their lunch and the friendly one told us to “behave yourselves, ladies.” He got ten paces away, then turned back to say, “No, don’t do that. Have fun!” We always do. The funny part is that “behavior yourself, ladies” line is one I often use on young service people---at the hair salon and in restaurants---but it’s the first time someone used it on me. Ohmygod, it was a match made in heaven and I let the old guy walk out of my life without a second thought. Just kidding. I caught up with him in the parking lot and slipped him my phone number and if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. But sixty years ago? ….well, I might have done that. It's fun to remember what it was like to be young. I just can't be it anymore. More's the pity and disappointment in that admission. ©

Popeye’s Elbow, Flashers, Babies, Jumanji2 and the Flu

Dr. Google says I have Popeye’s Elbow otherwise known as Olecranon Bursitis. Leave it to me to get something weird. What is it? It’s a golf ball sized lump at the tip of my elbow. Apparently there’s a body part there called a ‘bursa’ which is a cushion in between the bone and the skin that gets inflamed and fills up with fluid that sometimes gets infected and needs to be drained. Fortunately most of the time they go away on their own in 3 to 4 weeks with a little rest and ibuprofen and by using alternating ice and heat pads. The weird part is I could also have tennis elbow because before I noticed the Popeye’s ball of warm flesh at my elbow I’ve also been experience mild pain in my forearm. I haven’t played tennis since I was fourteen and batting a ball back and forth in the middle of the street with my best friend when a guy stopped his car by each of us to “ask for directions.” He was totally naked from the waist down.

Being naïve teenagers who giggled over anything remotely funny we nearly split our sides out laughing as we ran into the house to tell my mother. When we finally got the story out Mom called the police. Ohmygod, that poor, young Officer who came out to the house. We were still laughing and his questions just added to our amusement. Of course, we didn’t remember any other details but his penis staring up us. Did you get a license number? What kind of car was he driving? How old do you think he was? What color was his shirt? Was he wearing shoes? Wearing shoes? I doubt we’ve have noticed if he didn’t have any feet to put them on. Yadda, yadda, yadda. What I remember most from that interview is my mother giving us a stern directive to get a hold of ourselves and stop laughing. But how was that even possible when the policeman had to explain what he meant by ‘erect’ or ‘flaccid’. Like I said, we were naïve kids and we didn’t know what the guy was doing. But he definitely didn’t have both hands on the steering wheel. And they say back in the ‘50s everyone lived in Mayberry where things like that didn’t happen.

Speaking of sweet innocence …I got a good dose of babies on Sunday. One of my nine great-great nieces and nephews (all under two and a half) was having a first birthday party. It’s amazing to see their little personalities forming already. One boy was on the selfish side wanting to take toys away from the others, one would try to take them back, but another would have a look on his little face that said, “What the heck just happened?” And when a boy was quietly pilferaging all the Mardi gras necklaces out of the other kids’ party swag bags his great aunt snagged him and said, “Aren’t those pretty! Let’s share the pink and purple ones with the girls and share the red and green ones with the other boys.” When one boy slammed a toy frying pan down on the top of another child’s head and the crying started, the pan swinger said, “Sorry” and hugged his victim as per his mother's directions. I saw some wonderful parenting going on, always watching, always stepping in with teachable moments.

It’s been a good week for socializing. The day after the party I was sitting in the Guy Land Cafeteria with two of my Gathering Girls pals and after a long lunch two of us went to see the movie Jumanji2. Neither one of us had a clue what it was about other than what we could pull up on our phones which was, “Four teenagers are sucked into a magical video game and the only way they can escape is to work together to finish the game.” It was starring Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart and Karen Gillan and we laughed from beginning to end. We didn’t expected that. In fact before going in we joked about being too old to understand what was going on since neither of us was into video games.

I wrote the above paragraphs when I got home from the movie theater. Two hours later the flu hit. And the next fourteen hours I spent alternating between projectile vomiting and projectile diarrhea and sometimes doing both at the same time. At one point in the night I woke up to find myself on the bathroom floor and I had no idea how I got there. The worst seems to be over but all I did on Tuesdays is sleep, sip Gatorade and take the flu meds I, thankfully, had stocked up on last fall. I did manage to get a shower and do a load of laundry but some clothing I just threw out. My goal for today is to eat something and hope it stays inside my body but from what I've read I'm progressing on the flu timeline right on schedule. I can expect to be weak and tired until the weekend. This is a terrible strain of flu! ©