The Bates MoTELLA

Pediatric Medical Record Terminology

 (first published in Greater Expectations, the newsletter of CEA of Tacoma; reprinted in The Tacoma News Tribune by Denny MacGougan)

•  "Baby feeding well" -- Your newborn nurses every 45 minutes for the first three months of life.
•  "Baby voiding well" -- You are washing six loads of diapers a day.
•  "Loud lusty cry" -- Loud cry timed with cunning and malice to discourage lust between parents.
•  "Father plays active parenting role" -- Once he handed you the baby powder.
•  "Mild fever" -- 106-degree fever which remains high when taken rectally, orally, or anywhere but the doctor's office.
•  "Common cold" -- Most easily recognized by dried mucus covering child's face from hairline to chin. NOTE: This condition cannot be treated, but with any luck at all, within 24 hours condition will become acute ear infectino or bronchial pneumonia, both of which are easily cured and get you more respect from the receptionist.
•  "Simple teething symptoms" -- Child sleepless for three days and nights, drooling or foaming at mouth; diarrhea, vomiting, unable to eat or drink; fever, rash, coughing, glassy eyes, colic-like crying; hair falling out, delirium tremends and schizoid tendencies; child comfortable onl when chewing padded dash of in-law's new car or neighbor's piano leg.
•  "Mother tends to over-react" -- You called the doctor at home once when child went into cardiac arrest.
•  "Verbal skills moderately delayed" -- Child can recite GettysburgAddress at home, but in doctor's presence, oral cavity restricted to place for insertion of thumb.
•  "Activity skills moderately delayed" -- Child can build Winchester Cathedral with Tinker Toys at home, but in doctor's presence, fingers restricted to removing foreign matter from nose.
•  "Patient not cooperative during exam" (usually refers to toddler, although mother could be the target) --Broke thermometer, would not stand still to be weighed, urinated on nurse, opened all cabinets, turned on all sink faucets, pulled out all paper towels and Kleenex, unscrewed seat from doctor's exam stool, screamed Banshee-like during stethoscope examination, bit doctor on kneecap, racked naked out of exam room, waiting room, and parking lot.
•  "Child needs firmer discipline" -- See above.
•  "Patient perfectly normal" -- Has all the above written in his medical records.
  

 

 

In honor of Baby Kai and his new parents...

 ... I went searching through a cache of papers to find an article I wrote.  I don't know where the original is, but I found a copy of the newspaper that gave it fame.  That is, my article was read by a columnist for The Tacoma News Tribune and he published it in said column on May 7, 1979.  It had to do with pediatric medical records.  I had a four-year-old son, a two-year-old daughter, and was ending my first trimester of a Bonus Pregnancy.  That is to say, I knew something about baby doctors.

We were military, responsible for picking up our own medical records ("Take a number. If you can't find an empty chair, stand against the wall."). We were responsible for holding said records while we wrestled a restless, irritable, fevered child and waited to see a doctor and, in my case, carried in a Baby Pack or discreetly nursed a second child. A hand-scratched sign near the intake desk indicated the estimated wait time to be seen, and it always bore that sideways figure eight on it -- the medical icon for infinity.

While military medical records weren't sealed, the folder carried a stern warning against peeking, WARNING: GOVT PROP DO NOT OPEN, under which was a recapitulation -- those jokers, the government! -- of what they called our "right to privacy".  Essentially it said that the Army used our SSN to identify us, which we were not obligated to allow them to do, in which case they were not obligated to acknowledge our existence.  I was brought up by parents who believed in the chain of command and the heirarchy of authority; in other words, I was a Minder.  Though I resented being known as XXX-XXXX-XXX, I granted them permission rather than die unrecognized and unnamed. And I might never have opened my records or those of my children if not for the influence of another mother, stuck beside me in Pediatrics for six hours one day, who was not a Minder.  She opened said Govt Prop.

"Oh... my... LORD!" she gasped.  "Oh... NO, oh NO, OH NO!!!!"  She had my attention now, and that of every person sitting in the room and standing against the wall. Only the staff remained impervious.  The mother shifted her snuffling child in her arms to better read the handwritten notes within her son's medical records, then began to sob.  "Why didn't they TELL me?" she wailed.  My two-year-old, accompanying me with her sick four-year-old brother, reached out and patted the woman's leg in sympathy, and the gesture propelled me from the hiding place of my own helpless silence.

"Is there something I can do?" I asked softly.

She closed the records and wept. Underneath WARNING: GOVT PROPERTY DO NOT OPEN, I saw the name Swenson, Harold G. "Is something wrong with your Harold?"

"N-noooooo," she wailed.  "It's -- it's my Devin!  He's -- he's got --"  She stopped talking, stopped wailing, and eyed me suspiciously.  "Do I know you?"

My daughter was still patting the woman.  She looked at me suspiciously, too.  "Uh, no, I don't think so," I admitted.

The woman's rage at the fickle finger of unwellness turned toward me: "So how do you know my husband?" 

And that's how we discovered that, no, her four-year-old son Devin did not have the heart, lungs, and liver of an average 40-year-old, but rather her 40-year-old husband, Harold, did.

Had the woman not been yelling as she carried her child and her husband's records to the counter, you could have heard the veritable Seventh Seal being ripped away as every other mother in the Pediatrics waiting room opened and read the Govt Prop they held.  As far as I know, we each had records that matched the child we'd brought in, but most of us were annoyed just the same.

I learned, for instance, about myself: "Mother sets no firm boundaries."  I remembered the episode that provoked that professional, scientific, medical observation: We'd waited about an hour in Records, four hours in Pediatrics, and once in the Doctor's Office, a young assistant announced that the doctor needed to take a conference call. Turns out, it was a call about a conference, and we waited another quarter hour while he discussed which hotel to stay in based on the proximity of gyms and malls.  The entire day I had been carrying a hyperactive three-year-old with an ear infection, on my hip, and held him by the hands in my lap now lest he touch any thing or any body and get something even more dire, and believe me when I say there came the moment when I was D.O.N.E.  Penicillin, I figured, would wipe out the worst he could do. I set the boy loose. He scurried around the room like a crazed cockroach. He'd scarcely opened and slammed all the cupboards, spun loose the stirrups from the end of the exam table, and tipped over the hazardous waste before the doctor decided to hang up the phone.  We got our exam and antibiotic; he got his revenge in the medical records.

Reading medical charts that day, we were all pretty angry, as I recall -- although not as angry as Harold's wife when the MPs were called to escort her out -- and not at the actual treatment charts, but at those casual observations that shouted "Ignorant Mother Here, Folks!"  We discussed together exactly what it meant when they wrote, "It's m's 1st baby" -- as though perhaps when we reported things like, "He's crying all the time", we were not yet aware that the orifice below the sniffer could actually render sound, and that we didn't know the difference between burpy spit-up over a shoulder and projectile vomiting that cleared the sneeze bar at a buffet.

Well, now I've worked myself into a state. And though I realize my irritation is aimed at a system drawn from 1979, I'll wait until tomorrow to share my Pediatric Record Medical Terminology.  For now, I'm bored and young and poor and my husband is in the Army, so I know! -- for old times' sake, I believe I'll manufacture an ailment so I can spend a full day at that fun-filled venue, the hospital, with the first baby I've ever laid eyes on in my whole life, yay!

"Save the Popcorn, Kirsten, it's too late for the boots!"

All right, my friends, here's the story:

Players: Our daughter, oldest son, me, youngest son; Daddy is messing with the camera in preparation for Christmas morning.

Setting: Christmas 1980, Tacoma, Washington, in what we called our Grown-Up Sitting Room

The curtain draws open.  The children and Mom are watching "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" while Daddy puts batteries in the old Kodak, takes out the full roll of undeveloped film, and practices taking pictures in preparation for Christmas morning.

The Big Kids are eating popcorn in harvest gold Melmac bowls their parents got for their 1970 wedding, and see the littlest one in their peripheral vision.

 

Script: 

Daddy -- Watch it, here comes Samurai Baby.

(Children, eyes still glued to TV, place bowls of popcorn immediately out of reach.)

 

The End 

 

Georgie's in Mourning -- and The Sawtooth Pack

At our house, we all are in mourning. Mickey, our old red dog, is gone; there remains Georgie, a two-year-old Border Collie mix, and the new pup Maggie. We cried, and a part of us is still crying.  But my husband has his job and the countless things he does at home that I'm unable to do; my father-in-law has his church and clubs and computer and projects; I have grandchildren to dote on, and prayers to release, and dinners to make, and physical therapy to attend, my Artella work and Artella play, writing and editing to do, and eyedrops to put in Georgie's eyes, and a puppy to feed and discipline, and the meaningless, mundane, and magnificent minutiae of life to fill my moments.

For now, Georgie has only to mourn.

I've seen the Sawtooth Pack documentary a number of times, and I'm forever moved by the mourning.  The wolf pack heirarchy, in theory, always shocked me -- much as I felt first learning about a caste system, with no understanding of reincarnation -- like facing liver and lima beans on the table, with no knowledge of nutrition. Senseless meanness was what I saw (especially in the liver and lima beans): The baddest and most hateful wolf eats until full, determines who else eats and what and when, and snarls and attacks without reason or restraint the weakest wolf until the whole pack joins the victimology.  Mob violence at its lowest and mobbiest.

We see it in humans, of course -- the person who "looks" or "acts" like a "victim" and thereby "attracts" actions that distance the person from "peers", or "asks for" escalating acts of hazing and sometimes assault.  I've seen it as a teacher, and not only amongst students.

It was that personal experience I brought with me to the Sawtooth Pack documentary.  Why, those mean wolves! Who says that one gets to be boss? Why, too, when one female had clearly been his choice of mate, did he suddenly warm up to the left-out gal, the almost certain choice for the lowly Omega, leaving the next-least-liked to fall into that horrible bottom spot?  The lesson here, dare I assume, was that the loudest and largest and bossiest wins?  I'd spent my life trying to upset that thinking and equalize life for those less accepted!

There, of course, was the flaw in my logic: (a) Those I was drawing into the fold were humans; and (b) I wasn't the prescient creature canis lupus is.

For, within the course of that first Sawtooth Pack study, I saw that the "mean", "bossy" wolf led, and guided, and disciplined, and needed both the sustenance and the respect of the others to do it.  The female he chose for his mate produced fine, healthy pups. The Beta was not thrown aside, but was now in what I first unthinkingly called 'the Babysitter slot' -- nurturing, protecting the youngsters, and gradually introducing them into the adult pack... that is, teaching. (Hm.) And the wolf who by default became the Omega, the lowest caste in the canis lupus system, accepted her role.  But she was not, as I first thought, merely the outcast.

She (I think -- at this point in a wolf pack, gender scarcely matters) ate last, was snarled away from important pack meeting business, and in nearly all things, was ignored and her efforts to join in repulsed.  But -- and here I sit up, my ears peak, my sense of smell grows keen -- she was the leader in play.  Comic relief, one might say.  When all were fed and full, the work of the day done and no longer remembered, she teased and ran and drew the others in for some well-deserved gaiety.  It may have looked like more snapping and snarling, but there was romping involved.  And the Omega initiated it.

Those documenting the pack were puzzled and saddened when one morning the Omega was not with the pack.  The pack itself was mystified, sniffing and nudging at her body when they tracked her down.  And with the removal of her carcass from the grounds came about an almost mystical mood: For weeks, there was little movement among the others.  There was little eating.  There was no playing.  Much howling accompanied the nights, haunting calls to whatever spirit a lifeless wolf leaves behind.  That little Omega was not a nuisance after all: she was beloved by the others, for all that she was.  She was sorely missed and her loss was monumentally mourned.

Such is the way our Georgie mourns now. 

 

Until recently, I never knew...

Until recently, I never knew quite how to interpret the Daily Kaleidoscope.  You'd think this wouldn't be difficult, since I was once researching and writing it.  But I was stuck.

You see, as much as I love those original Crayola colors -- the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, black, brown (white, in the era of the eight-color box, meant you left that place uncolored) -- there is nothing for those of us who are riding the rainbow where colors mesh.

Here are my colors:

A side note... When Color Seasons were in vogue, countless folks tried to help me recognize my colors: "Black hair, pale skin -- oh, that's easy!  You're a -- wait, you don't have blue eyes..."  With age and Lady Clairol, and depending on the phase of the moon and how late I make my salon appointment, my hair runs between strawberry, honey, and ash (or straw and dishwater and dregs, depending on "Good Hair!" or "Bad Hair...").  The Season survivalists, clueless that I'm not born-and-bred a sorta-blonde, have me pegged: "Oh, reddish-blondish-brown hair, brown eyes, you're a -- oh, you don't have freckles -- give me a minute here...")  If I weren't confused enough, given my knowledge that I'm sporting an entirely artificial hair look and today couldn't predict whether I'd be brunette, salt-and-pepper, or salt mine, at 57 I've developed what my tactful doctor calls 'Cafe Au Laite drops' -- what in my youth we brashly dismissed as 'liver spots'.  Do THOSE count as freckles?  At the rate they're multiplying, pretty soon I'll just be fully darker complected, light-haired, and dark-eyed, once again slipping into an uncategorizable Season category.  Kind of like the Dog Days of Summer with hail.

It's always been hard.  Even though I haven't tanned since my youth, I remember when I was tanned -- and the rage I felt at not being able to wear the favorite color of my school days: lavendar.  You see, I tanned "olive".  And despite my folks' assurances that many great beauties were olive-skinned (Sophia Loren), even I realized that she could have appeared in black-and-white movies and worn what she liked.  I had to appear daily in technicolor, and lavendar gave my olive-toned skin a sickish green sheen.  At least 13 years in the Ray Bradbury All Summer in a Day/ The Illustrated Man science fiction realm of Washington's Puget Sound gave me that clear, light (okay, white) skin that, while it took me out of the running for a true Season, awarded me with to right to wear lavendar.

Of course, the Daily Kaleidoscope does not deal in Seasons.  But it's still problematic.

Inevitably, twice a week, I'm faced with the question on what I'm wearing: "What is the predominant color of... the top? the bottom?... you are wearing..."  And I look down out of habit, but the answer is pretty much always the same.  Pink or aqua.  Less frequently but just as predictably, coral or lavendar.  That's it, folks.

You might note that in the Daily Kaleidoscope, as in the original eight-color Crayola box, there is no pink or aqua.  No coral or lavendar.  At which point a normal person would shrug her shoulders and turn the page.  Or the more imaginative would think of what they'd LIKE to be wearing, and ascribe themselves that quote or note.  The more pragmatic folks read the Kaleidoscope, pick the answer they prefer, and dress accordingly.

Not me.  Faced with such an unresolvable dilemma (can't lie, can't cheat, can't make it work, can't leave it), I have my own coping tool.

I fret.

Now, considering all the things I need to fret about, colors in the Daily Kaleidoscope seem like a small thing.  Even I admit that.  The country is facing ever more socialistic trends, the news is laced with daily drive-by shootings, the Arctic shelf is melting into the sea, Arizona's aquifer is disappearing, and Tiger Woods may not win the next PGA tourney, and the lack of pink and aqua and coral and lavendar in the Daily Kaleidoscope, one would think, would slip off the list of daily worries.  But I'm nothing if not inventive and tenacious about fretting.

And my fretting has finally paid off.  Just days ago I resolved the problem.

Now, in addition to not being a Summer, or Winter, or a Fall or Spring, I am not a Math Person.  Just ask Aunt Bobby.  Or my friend Dianne.  Or my 9th grade Algebra teacher, who hollered at me as I quietly cowered in the very back seat, "Connie Millah!" (Distinct Southern accent, ex-Marine drill sergeant.)  "If you add one Hahse to one Cow, you do not git one Hahsie-Cow!"  Or ask my 3rd grade teacher, who tried to teach me fractions.  (A bigger number makes it smaller?  That goes against all logic, my friend.)  So I can imagine your surprise to discover that I use Math to calculate my Daily Kaleidoscope.

But I use my vast artistic knowledge as well.  And here's what I came up with.

Say I'm wearing pink.  I take the quote or note for Red, add the quote or note for White; then, because there are TWO, I take every second word, scramble them up, and make one intelligent statement.

Today, I'm wearing coral.  So... I take Red, Orange, and White; take every third word, scramble them up, and Voila!  Use them to make my very own DK statement.  I add these rules: Leftover words are freebies. Verb tense can be changed. Use something from each offering to create my quote's author.  Here's today's:

Red: What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a (new dish)." - W. H. Auden
Orange: Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." - Francis Bacon
White: Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of (the ordinary)." - Cecil Beaton

is, taste, digest, are, be, be, be

and, and

to, against, of

a

mass, art, some, dish, some, integrity, creatures

new, impractical, commonplace

which, like, that

 

Daily Kaleidoscope:

If you're wearing coral... Here is the quote you should keep in mind:

Art is to impractical creatures like some taste of a new dish. -- H. Cecil Bacon

 

Why, my day IS looking up, with THAT fantastic prediction!   

 

If I Never Hear These Words Again...

I know, I'm supposed to say "... it'll be too soon".  That would finish the title to make one sentence.  Note that I didn't say "intelligible  sentence".  That particular phrase has puzzled me since I was old enough to know whether what I just heard made sense or not. This one does not.

How can an event that does not happen... happen too soon?  There's no answer. I won't try to provide one, and if you think there's a way to explain it, I can assure you I won't think you make sense - I mean you as a creature that breathes my air and uses up my precious and dwindling resources.  But it does raise some important questions. See below.*

Why do people keep saying unintelligible things?

I just got another email touting "The Feel-Good Movie of the Year!"  The obvious question here is, "Why did this particular piece of junk mail make it past my spam filter?"

I've already read reviews of several different The Feel-Good Movie of the Year - which raises another question: Dare we write, "The Feel-Good Movie of the Years" when referring to them in ponderous bulk?  Or is it more correctly written, "The Feel-Good Movies of the Year"?  Or possibly, "The Feels-Good Movie of the Year", in which case you can find it in the section of the video store with the curtain across the door and the minimum age requirement.

Point being, it should be obvious that there can be only one "The Feel-Good Movie of the Year".  I propose (I'm still running for office here - see earlier blog) a law, or least an administration policy, that limits use of this title to only one movie at a time.  Furthermore, I recommend that the officious title "The Feel-Good Movie of the Year" not be used until the last month of any given year for which it wins the right to wear said title.

Nominees will go before the public, and the public will be heard.  Aunt Bobby will post a forum in the Café here, and (promise you'll play fair) each person can vote only once.

There will be a new vote, with all new submissions, the following day, and you can vote again.  At the Forum site, Marney will place a Light Bulb (new contest), a Thumbs Up (cast your ballot), or That Other Thing to show the polls are closed.  "The Feel-Good Movie of the Year" will be announced on the last day of the year at 11:59 p.m. (2359 in military hours) for that year, and for ONE PRECIOUS SECOND (my administration doesn't like wasting time), the winning film wears the title "The Feel-Good Movie of the Year".  At precisely midnight, we the weary public are not subjected to that phrase for any reason, and especially not in my email box, until the following year at 11:59 p.m. (2359 hours).

If you approve of this plan (I'm checking my presidential ratings here), please DO NOT email me with the subject title "The Feel-Good Movie of the Year".  I will assume the popularity of my plan given the absence of the phrase from my sight and hearing.

 

Electorally yours, Constance Bates ("The Feel-Good Candidate of the Year")

 

* Authors write "See below" because presumably some people read along and then suddenly, for no apparent reason, their eyes fly to the ceiling or dart across the room or just fall out of their face.  So yes, dear child, keep reading in the ever-downward left-to-right manner to which we've become accustomed. **

 

** I'm not being politically impolite here by saying "we've become accustomed".  If you read Chinese or Hebrew or some other language that is clearly backwards and/or upside down, you wouldn't be reading my blog.  Or if you are, it wouldn't make sense.  Which is the topic of my blog - things that don't make sense -- in case you don't read English and could use some hints here.

And The Oscar Goes To... !

 

The gala gorging is over.  The six-figure gowns and jewels are once again with the merchandisers, or they've been sloughed off for work-out clothes with the tip-of-the-hat to ingenuous invisibility -- the Hollywood hottie adds a casual Hermes scarf or Fendi bag, and the Hollywood hunk dons a three-day beard & worn Ferragamo loafers.  (Oh, we'll never recognize them!)

The tears of joy have dried, and the lukewarm applause from the Also-Rans no longer echoes from off-stage.  

I can afford to be cavalier here, having never been close to a Red Carpet.  But every year, I'm just a little surprised that I wasn't mentioned.

There's a category, you see, where I expect to at least hear my name pitched.  It's not quite an Oscar statue category, but has taken  on a life of its own, sometimes eclipsing the ceremony itself.  That would be the longer-lived Oscar-night category of Best Dressed.

That's my field.

It's not that I try to look over-dressed.  I don't work at shabby chic or glam.  As a matter of fact, I'm not trying to do anything but look beautiful.

I blame it on teaching school.  See, they had these Spirit Days -- Dress Goofy days, I used to call them.  As a kid myself, I don't believe I ever participated.  But as a teacher working for enough Spirit Points to win an ice cream sundae party, or an end-of-the-year trip, who could resist?  My closet and cupboards and craft feathers and beads cried out to help.

And I made a discovery.

It's this: You can start out playing Dress Goofy.  But somebody, somewhere, won't see it that way, and it will change your life.  That's what happened to me.

I taught school, and it was Spirit Day.  I'd run into the office searching desperately for an unused computer, thrown myself into an empty chair, and was tapping away, oblivious.  Then I got that feeling you get when you know somebody's watching you.  I glanced around -- there were very few adults, all busy themselves, and a couple of kids hanging at the counter.  I lowered my eyes to my chore, and tapped the keys best as I could with the fake plastic nails with the heart stickers on them and the heavily glittered eyelashes I was wearing.

I blew feathers out of my eyes.  They were dangling from my sunhat.  Aqua feathers, with rounded white and black and red beads on the cords.  Blew them again, lifting my chin -- and realized it was the kids: They were now hanging over the counter, staring at me without blinking.  I recognized them -- a first grader and fourth grader, sons of the custodian.

I smiled at them, then tugged at the triple-length pop-bead necklace I'd wound from my wrist to half-way up my arm, to keep it from catching on the keyboard.  Typed.  Blew at the feathers -- straightened the hat so the feathers fell over my ear instead of in my eye, and got feathers caught in my earring.  Well, it wasn't quite an earring -- it was a Christmas ornament, one of two glittering six-inch Santas that I'd hung from earring findings.  I unclasped it to untangle it from the feathers, a little miffed, looked around for a safe place to put it, realized it would probably roll off and break, and settled for fastening it to one of the necklaces I was wearing.  I chose the longest and sturdiest of the gold chains.

The other long necklaces wouldn't have worked.  One was simple lengths of yarn with dried hand-rolled semi-round clay balls at the ends. The yarn ends were loosely knotted over, and a clay cylinder my youngest son had scratched his initials in kind of latched it -- no place to put a Christmas ornament earring; it wouldn't match.  And, the fifth necklace I had to be very careful with; I would not have tried to make that necklace carry a fist-sized Santa, lest it break off pieces of the dyed macaroni.

With all the fussing, the boa had slipped off my shoulders, so I slipped under the desk to pick it up, and smoothed the net petticoat I was wearing over my skirt.  When I righted myself, I was surprised to see that the boys had skittered around or over the counter, and were hanging over the computer monitor.  I nearly jumped, and covered my mouth with one hand to keep from yelping.  Nearly scratched myself with the ink-pen spring I'd twisted into a pinkie ring.  I said hello to the boys as I turned the spring-ring outwards, and straightened my wedding band and the Cubic Z anniversary ring, shined the mood ring on my index ringer, and touched the birthstones and five-and-dime cocktail rings on my right hand to make sure they were all still there.

As the boys stared, I became a little self-conscious.  I was, after all, just a teacher, and clearly these children thought I could actually help them with something.

"I don't work in the office," I apologized.

"We know," the big one said soberly.  I smiled again, and finished my typing.  I hit Print.

They edged even closer.

"Gentlemen," I said, scooting my chair back, "I'm not sure you're supposed to be back here -- and I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to be..."  I looked about.  Nobody was coming to my rescue.  Parents were streaming into the office, and any minute I feared I'd be expected to do something helpful.

I tossed the end of the boa over my shoulder with an air of finality.  The littlest boy slipped snugly beside me.  He had my silver sequined clutch bag in his hand, and handed it to me.

"Oh!  Thank you," I said.  "I forgot I had that."  They stood, still staring.  "I, uh, have to get something from the printer... but -- Is there something you need?"  The boys looked at one another.  Then the littlest one spoke.

"Mrs. Bates..."

The oldest one said, "We just wanted to say --"

"We think you're beautiful," the first-grader finished.

I was so surprised, I could hardly stutter my thank-you's.  As I made my way out of the office, the older boy called after me, "And we like your shoelaces."   They matched the aqua feathers; I'd made sure of that.

It was that day that I adopted the beauty scale of the elementary child.  It's quite simple: One necklace, you have a nice necklace.  A necklace and a hat, you look nice.  Five necklaces, feathers, netting over your skirt, pop-beads, a boa, sashaying Santas, rings on every finger, and turquoise shoelaces, and you are... beautiful.  It was true, I figured: Beauty is ageless.

I  wear everything that my grandkids give me now, from Cracker Jack rings to coloring-page brooches.  And if a little one puts lipstick on me, I don't touch it up.  When I have a pedicure, my Pedi-Person paints polka dots and sparkles on my toes.  Sometimes grownup people look a little startled.  But later that day, I'm sure to meet a toddler who'll see my grandma-toe polka dots and smile at me in vast delight.

No mystery here: She thinks I'm beautiful.

"And the Oscar goes to...!"  Some day, I'm sure I'll hear my name.

 

 

 

 

 

List The Ten Most Important Things You Learned in School

That's the topic in my 2008 Planner (or Non-Planner) for the Creative Procrastinator.  The page is actually wedged between this week and next, but a creative procrastinator can be forgiven for thumbing ahead.  Remember: "Procrastinators avoid one thing by doing another; it's much more productive than doing nothing." (p. 1)

This is not the simple topic you might think, by the way.  I've spent a lot of time in school.  It took me 17 years to earn a four-year degree -- and soon afterward, I returned to school to earn the right to go to school every day.  So, many things I've learned "in" school, I've learned from the opposite side of the desk.  Then there's the organizational challenges here.  Do I list the things I've learned chronologically? In order of importance? And my continuing problem: What if I have learned more than ten equally important things?  What happens then?  The instructions say "Ten"... but what if I learned that if there's an A+ to be had, doing more than required is one way to get it?

I've decided to simply list them.  When I'm looking for something to organize -- that is, when I need something to do to avoid having to do something else -- I'll create a timeline or flowchart here.  Or alphabetize the list. Or count the words and list the points in ascending and descending order.

 
The Ten Most Important Things I Learned in School

1. Any time you have the chance, regardless of perceived need, use the restroom.

2. If there's a prize for napping, it probably isn't a really cool prize.

3. Not everything you do in school or in life is worth taping to the refrigerator.

4. The difference between FAIL and ZERO can be up to 59 points.

5. Teachers are older and better educated than students, but not necessarily more mature or smarter.

6. No teacher wants to hear Number 5.

7. Two things that are stupid to do in a group: Piano lessons and showers.

8. Scientific thought is most threatened by the limitations of the Scientific method.

9. If you want to use your Foreign Language forever, take a language with popular songs and plenty of menu items.

10. High school counselors are to mental health what high school cafeterias are to food.

11. "Open campus" is a more appealing concept when you're 16 with a crowd of friends than when you're grown-up with a 45-minute lunch, standing in line behind a group of 16-year-olds.
 

 

 

The first ten things I would do if elected president

This exercise was prompted by a page in my Do It Later! calendar (A 2008 Planner [or Non-Planner] for the Creative Procrastinator).  Procrastinator Wisdom for January 1 proclaims, "Procrastinators avoid one thing by doing another; it's much more productive than doing nothing."  My planner offers a few ideas for productively wasting time, in the event that we're unwilling to waste time trying to think of more ways to waste time.

I decided to use FDR's New Deal "alphabet agencies" as my model.  Here's Roosevelt's list (courtesy of Wikipedia.org):

1. AAA - Agricultural Adjustment Administration
2. CAA - Civilian Aeronautics Authority (now Federal Aviation Administration)
3. CCC - Civilian Conservation Corps
4. CCC - Commodity Credit Corporation
5. CWA - Civil Works Administration
6. FAP - Federal Art Project, part of WPA
7. FCA - Farm Credit Administration
8. FCC - Federal Communications Commission
9. FDIC - Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
10. FERA - Federal Emergency Relief Administration
11. FHA - Federal Housing Administration
12. FMP - Federal Music Project, part of WPA
13. FSA - Farm Security Administration
14. FTP - Federal Theatre Project, part of WPA
15. FWP - Federal Writers' Project, part of WPA
16. HOLC - Home Owners Loan Corporation
17. NIRA - National Industrial Recovery Act
18. NLRB - National Labor Relations Board
19. NRA - National Recovery Administration
20. NYA - National Youth Administration, part of WPA
21. PRRA - Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration
22. PWA - Public Works Administration
23. RA - Resettlement Administration
24. REA - Rural Electrification Administration
25. RFC - Reconstruction Finance Corporation (originally a Hoover agency)
26. SEC - Securities and Exchange Commission
27. SSB - Social Security Board (now Social Security Administration)
28. TVA - Tennessee Valley Authority
29. USHA - United States Housing Authority
30. WPA - Works Progress Administration

I'm a modest sort of campaigner here -- not to mention, I only expect one four-year term, so I'm happy to present just ten alphabet agencies in my administration.

1. OSIS - OutSource Inside the States  (Do you really want to hear hardly intelligible instructions for rebooting your p.c. after a failed recovery attempt? Of course you do, so I propose sending all telephone helpline jobs to underemployed regions in Louisiana and New Jersey.)
2. TPOT - Ten Percent Off the Top  (10% good enough for God? Then it's fine for the government. Under the TPOT umbrella: DLD - Dotted Line Dollars so that 1/10th of each dollar can easily be stripped away for immediate disposition to the government.)
3. REFF - Return to the Education of the Founding Fathers  ("Local schools will reflect values of surrounding community." Rural schools a little backwards? Urban schools overcrowded? Well, duh. Save your pity and your pennies.)
4. RFI - Real Food Initiative  (No gas-ripened tomatoes and bananas, which should save a lot of gas and bring down prices at the pump, my friend. No hormone-pumped plumper cows; I just don't like it, not one bit. Under the RFI umbrella: VGI [affectionately known as "veggie"] - Victory Garden home-grown foods Incentives.)
5. ZWPG -  Zero Welfare Population Growth  (With the success of my other alphabet agencies, this one will take care of itself.  If it doesn't, we'll re-educate welfare recipients in Social Services master's degree programs; with their newly acquired expertise, they can resolve the problem & earn a salary while doing it.)
   
6. DWP - Displaced Workers Program  (Can't drive a truck filled with gassed unripe tomatoes and bananas? You qualify for training in installing solar grids at schools and mini-wind turbines in paid parking structures, where folks' electric cars will be recharged as they stop and shop.  )
7. HUD/H4H - Housing & Urban Development will become an arm of Habitat for Humanity  (I would provide explication here except that there's not a person on the planet who doesn't applaud the move, facts or not.)
8. OSPCP - OutSourced Penal Colony Plan  (You're requesting that you be institutionalized closer to the college campus and fitness gym of your choice... So, which is closer: Botswana or Bosnia?)
9. CUTI - Clean Urine Test Incentives  (This program is umbrella'd under nearly every other alphabet agency.  Don't do drugs and just SEE all the great stuff the government will toss your way!)

I know I promised you ten.  But this is, after all, a presidential election.  And if I told you all my hot licks, some other candidate might steal them.  (Wasn't it Nixon who got away with that one?)  To be honest -- and I know how the voting public honors honesty -- I'm waiting a while to do number ten.  A quick review of my alphabet agencies reveals an overuse of the letters O, S, P, and T, and a lack of the letters A and Z.  There is no further page in my Procrastinator's planner dealing with positive uses for the alpha and omega letters.

My next subject is the importance of the underused letters of the alphabet.  In fact, when I have time to write it up, I may provide a treatise on the topic.  I may make my own calendar planner, based on tasks, chores, and ideas for avoiding them, for every letter of the alphabet.  Every letter, voters!  Every A... B... C... D... E... F... G... H...
    

 

 

 

 
 

This morning, the first thought in my head was...

 ... the dream.  I awoke, alert and sharp this morning, and already thinking.

This is a new mode for me – now closer to 60 than 50, I no longer float gently to consciousness; burrow in and slip back to the relaxed respiration of sleep; rouse, wrestle with myself, and surrender to oblivion a second and third time, as though my mind were equipped with an autonomic snooze button.

In these, the mature years, my eyes pop open to greet dawn or dark and meet the sharp black eyes of the Border Collie studying my face and searching for signs that vitamins, a bit of cheese, and a Large Breed Biscuit are in short order.  The sound of the elder Chow-Wolf impatiently huffing from his safe spot on the floor assures me that my good husband is off to work, all is well, and that I’m the last to linger.

All that remained the same today.  But something else happened, and it rushed me to instant analysis.

I had the dream, now consistently about him, the man I didn’t marry in college.

At the time –18 years old, struggling in the small-fish-big-pool environment of an upper class private college, uncertain of who I was and unable to trust that he was who he insisted he was – I ran.  Hid.   Burned the bridge.  Didn’t looked back.  Then married a man I’d known just eleven months.

And before long, within my soul and psyche, I slipped from that laurel-resting perch of high school's Most Likely to Succeed to stumble along with the unfamiliar and unheralded hoardes of Those Most Likely to Remain in Poverty and Clinical Depression for Life.

I dreamed often, detailed, richly visual, emotive, uncomfortable dreams, in my Supporting A Husband In College days, my Babies And Children At Home tenure,  and the more recent Empty Nest And Yawning Emptiness and Uncertain Future era.  Among the recurrent dreams were one of drowning (the Air Pocket dream), one of slipping and edging toward a fall from a sky-scraper (the Earthquake dream), and variations of The Missed Marriage… to high school crushes, work acquaintances, or strangers. Those dreams were the cruelest -- blissfully happy, confident that I was adored, filled with assurance at the cherished role I would fill, fey and floating in whispery white, radiantly alive in a garden celebration, coasting comfortably through the oohs and aahs, and among the observers, meeting the eyes of -- oh, no!  The husband I already had!  I would awaken, rousing slowly and grieving, so unhappy I felt physically ill, convinced I had truly, irrevocably, ruined my life.

Why I could not shake that last dream, I do not know.  Release from the other two made me a believer in dream analysis, so I felt I had the tools.  A college course I took in adulthood, Dream Images in Poetry*, made sense of the two recurrent dreams I’d had since earliest memory, the two I dared share.  His were, I believe, reiterated theories of Karl Jung, far from the superstition or causality/coincidence interpretations we hear, those one-size-fits-all symbol-filled renderings (“Dream of a wedding, you’ll have a funeral” or “The number five represents mercy.”)

Dr. Seal insisted that the dreamer not only scripts one’s own dreams, but plays all the parts. (“You aren’t having sex with your father,” he told us all by way of example. “You’re expressing a need for a characteristic that is already within you, latent and unexposed, that he represents.”)

Now so many dreams made sense! I no longer felt myself drowning in my sleep, holding my breath until I felt I'd burst... now that I know I have a more difficult time with self-referral than most and therefore must remind myself consistently of each personal achievement. I don’t repeatedly slip toward the edge of a missing wall on the 40^th floor... now that I don’t crave mindlessly the fame and fortune that I’m coincidentally too frightened to pursue.

But I could not understand the The Missed Marriage dream, and particularly this latest rendition -- to the man I didn’t marry in college, which I lived over and over in my nocturnal life – in any but the basest, most elementary fashion: I should have married him.  Life would have been better. I would now be the person I was meant to be.

But last night provided a landmark moment.  This morning, when my eyes opened, my first thoughts were alive and bright and looking through intellect’s microscope at that dream.  Because in this rendition, for the first time, the marriage actually happened.

We were in our honeymoon suite, and he embraced me, vital and virile and – I stepped back.  “I’m not ready for this,” I told him calmly.  Then, at his look of disbelief, I said, “I’m married.” And bracing against his shock and anger, I continued, “And look – you’re 24, and I’m 57.”  He strode away, muttering, "I'm going to have to think about this."  I started to count on my fingers: “He’s 24, and I’m 57.  That’s…” But I couldn’t make it work, and struggled to count, over and over, without success.  The fact that kept getting in my way, stalled my thoughts, making me count again and again, was this, and it seemed forever that I worked to understand: As I aged, he would have aged.  He was not 33 years younger than me (“Wait!  33 represents The Jesus Year!”).  He would still be older than me – that is, ahead of me -- having aged, too.

The one I didn’t marry? Why, it wasn’t him at all.  It was me --– the personal, professional me I mistakenly thought I’d lost with my youth.  Accomplishments, and the goals that produce them, change, alter understandably with age.  And with my active, not passive, proclamation – “I’m not ready for this” – I realized that it is not too late for me, as George Eliot assured us all, to be what I might have been, when I am ready.  Until then, I can know who I am, with self-assurance, inward security, self-appreciation, the beauty and grace that greets the future with sure-footed excitement and enthusiasm, and grow into my most delicious role yet.

Goodbye, dream of The Missed Marriage; my friend, I no longer need you.  I’m alive and in the present at my own wedding feast, today and tomorrow, and I’m the bride and the groom, the pastor and the congregation, the husband I recognize, the fluttery white dress, the flowers bright and brilliant, and the blue, blue sky.

I’m Constance Bates.  I’m a writer, a lover of coloring books, a woman who impulsively buys a discount wedding dress and decorates a wall with it.  I’m drawn to childish things and prone to outlandish laughter.  I’m married, for 37 years now, to a good man; I’ve had children and grandchildren, known the resultant joys  and grief.

I remain my best self, the best Constance Bates I know, and I do believe I will become better.

The Very Real New and Improved Me, Part 3

I had the half-altered picture from 1992 on the screen.

I also had displayed a paragraph from Part 2 of The Very Real New and Improved Me -- the monologue in response to Hemingway, who at the moment was occupying my celadon chenille-draped computer chair with the ruffled and fringed Norfolk Garden cushion on it.  I breathed deeply in preparation for battle.  You know what he did?  He read aloud one phrase, with just the faintest tinge of sarcasm:

" ...here I lift smooth translucent silver-rimmed China teacup to tongue and lips, tip my chin to one side and muse... "

Ignoring completely the 1992 photo with the alterations that had irritated him earlier, crunching, then brushing neon orange-dusted fingers against his shirt, he said, "Do that and your tea will spill out."

The first thing I noticed was that each word he uttered, as always, was one clipped syllable.  Then I realized that, in the most absurdly linear, concrete, adherence-to-dead-fact way he has of thinking, he was right. 

I hate when he does that.

Perhaps I'd have allowed him to engage me in debate, but this particular discourse would have been dreary and far from impromptu -- not even extemporaneous.  It was, in fact, already well scripted.  And it would end, finis, where he reminded me that I failed Intro to Logic, Phil 101.  In my first year of college, well before the first Apple was on the tree, much less on a desk in the living room and plugged into the wall.  It did no good to remind him that I failed Phil 101 due to no error in logic of mine: This "class" met at 7:05 a.m., scarcely hours from the typical bedtime of any Journalism, Drama, or Art major I knew.  The fact that the Registrar and Scheduler deemed it possible to awaken, much less think, at that hour pointed to a sad lack of logic on somebody's part, albeit not my own.

Discretion being the better part of shutting up, I did that.  Eventually my husband left to chainsaw something.

 

 

The Very Real New and Improved Me, Part I

I work at Artella, on The Artella Daily Muse.  Artella is more than a job to me: It's a support network.  It's like-minded spiritual seekers.  It's friends.  It's family.  It's home.

My husband will never understand this.  He keeps saying, "But you've never met these people."

In the most insignificant factual sense, that is true.  We PM, my Artella people and me.  We email. We Instant Message. We meet at online Webinars, teleconferences. We telephone.  Never met them?  Why, only in the most superficial way could it be construed as Truth that we've never "met".

The only real glitch, a mere misplaced pebble in the cobblestone of virtual reality, occurred when Zura asked me to provide a photo for the staff directory.  A small thing, really.

But...

See, these Artella people really know me.  Photos, as you know, lie.

After wading through boxes, bins, baskets, and bedroom overhead shelves and underbed drawers for my neatly organized Creative Memories-destined photos, unfortunately wedged amongst wedding and birth certificates, tax returns, Christmas cards I'm going to do something with some day, a now classic TV guide or two, a needlepoint kit with parts missing, some crocheted daisies in a color I've never taken to, an empty nut can with stale salt and settled grease still in it, and a couple of bills I'd have sworn I mailed three years ago, I settled on the most eye-pleasing photo I had.

The truth is, given my choices, this School Year Teacher photo best represents Me.  But my husband, the little bad-mouthing demon that sits on my left shoulder arguing typically against the supportive, sweet angel-husband, all reason and light, on my right, kept agreeing with one another: "It's a great photo. Send it. So it's from 1992.  These people don't even know you."  The fact that both Hims were for it gave me great pause.

He will never understand Truth, my husband, what with his childlike fascination with Facts.  Like "virtual office".  He doesn't get that.  Or "barter pay", which he obstinately insists isn't "pay" at all, but "stuff".  (Query: What does one do with "pay" if not convert it to "stuff"?)  East Coast Going Live vs. West Coast Going to Bed -- he sees no need to meet a deadline that doesn't include a bell ringing and co-workers taking off their hardhats or storing their guns and gear.

I know our problem precisely: It's Ernest Hemingway and Sylvia Plath lunching at The Artist's Studio.  "Whale. Real. 'I am Vertical'. Who isn't? Ooh. Bearmeat Good."

Here's me: Who among us, along our nonoseconds' sojourn on Terra Firma, has not recognized that one's feet are made not of clay, nay, but of basest concrete, the petrified dung of the asphalt streets of William Butler Yeats' Lake Isle of Innisfree -- (here I lift smooth translucent silver-rimmed China teacup to tongue and lips, tip my chin to one side and muse) -- and whilst longing to be soul-kin to the good sweet earth -- real and true Self one with the grass and waters of the cosmos' gem, The Earth -- am helplessly and uncomfortably vertically aligned with foreign-minded two-legged creatures overreaching for goals as unattainable as the skies?  My husband will never, ever understand this, lounging there with a beer lodged securely between the arm of the recliner and his thigh, a remote in one hand and fried leg of bear in the other.

Sighing, realizing my choices were limited, I reluctantly elected to scan the photo and send it -- virtual courier, if you will. 

But a funny thing happened: When that 5 x 7 rose across my high-resolution screen to a larger-than-life pixelated representation of the Me that used to be, I thought, "Why, this isn't me, not me at all!"  True, there was no other acceptable option.

I pondered: How to make Me out of the Me That Once Was...

The Very Real New and Improved Me, Part 2

How...? How indeed.

Did I mention my hair used to be black?  Black as an Indian's, or a Latina's, in my youth.  I spent many a moment barefoot in little corner stores, jumping in surprise at politely but loudly proffered aid: "CAN... I... HELP... YOU... LITTLE... GIRL?" Registered their surprised looks when I answered in the English and economics of the day, "Yeah, a nickle Big Hunk, please."

Years passed.  Over time, marriage, not to mention inflation, and life, effected a hair-raising change.

At each pregnancy, I noticed stray white hairs in my raven crown of glory.  They would nag at me, and I would determine to... resolve the issue of those unruly and unwelcome white, white hairs.

The first pregnancy, I pulled out perhaps a half-dozen.  The second pregnancy, maybe twenty.   I stopped tugging at them by the third pregnancy, realizing my scalp would soon resemble the post-Moses, pre-chariot Red Sea.  I left them.

By the time I began to teach first grade, smack in the middle of what was once obsidian-black bangs, I had a grandiflora bouquet of white. But having never done more than wash my hair, VO-5 hot-oil it, or Dippity-Do and stretch it tautly over torturous brush rollers, I sighed and did nothing.

The final week of that virgin school year, I noticed at recess a few boys ominously holding court.  Being the teacher of the most irritable one, I ambled in his direction.  "I have Miz Jones," one was saying.  "She's mean."  Grumbled agreement between the waist-high.  A second student said, "I have Missuz Smith.  She's tall."  And then I heard the third youngster -- that would be mine -- say, "I have Missuz Bates."  A pause, then these two words wafted through the air, down the corridors, and across the commons: "The old one."

Before the first kid from that class woke up and said, "Hey! First day of summer!", I'd tracked down a box of black stuff to erase that splotch of white.  I'd probably have continued eternally, despite the rapidity of shade change with my affordable over-the-counter color. But I got cocky about this new me: One morning I rubbed in the magic ointment, stepped languidly into my shower, let the warm gentle rain fall luxuriously over my temples, and without warning, that black magic stole into my eyes, an event the coloring industry highly discourages.

Not quickly enough, my eyelids slammed closed.  Only my mouth was open, howling Oh NOOOOOOOO, belatedly recalling the cautionary note about ingesting said vanity poison.  You know how people in fight-or-flight moments maintain that their life flashed in front of their eyes?  At no point was my life flashing in front of any orifice or orb.  Want to know what I saw?  For real?  Headlines.

"Old First Grade Teacher Blinds Herself" 

I saw the subtitle, too:

"95th Percentile in National Teacher Exam; Can't Follow Directions"

So, this brings us to the photograph.  Almost.

Having escaped self-induced blindness, and to avoid future trauma, I sought out a professional.  Despite her ministrations, superior in quality and safety measures, every day, as with my own OTC concoction, my tresses lightened: I'd exit the salon the brunette of my youth, only to return a blonde.  One day my new friend the professional colorist, running her fingers through my hair and tsking, asked, "So why don't we just go with that?"  I shrugged my shoulders, and I was no longer Pocahontas, Chita Rivera, or Snow White: I was Heidi. Sleeping Beauty. Cinderella.  This magnificent quick-change artist taught me to hold a blow-dryer in one hand and a rounded short-bristle brush in the other to make a genuine Hair Style, too.

And along about 1992, a grown-up teacher on a good hair day, I was the proud owner of the only satisfactory school picture in the civilized world.

Then, change. A little trauma, a life issue or two, a tad of infirmity, and an unwelcome respite from teaching.  I remained blonde, but turned blowsy.  The dark waves of my youth and cleverly cropped blonde coiffure of my professional days morphed to longish crimped straw.  I came to resemble one of those massive dogs with the spate of bungie cord curls.  Still I didn't cut that hair; just grabbed, twisted, and thrust a pencil or chopstick through it.  It suited me.

We moved to a beautiful but lonesome high desert property, just east of a place on the map noted starkly as "The Big Windy".  Here I wear cut-offs and a t-shirt with the sleeves and collar ripped away.  I don't bask in the sun, which would renew that youthful tan and coincidentally soothe a person with rheumatoid arthritis, because of a dire sun-caused side effect of a medication I take for rheumatoid arthritis.  I seldom wear make-up, what with winds so strong they can rip the lipstick from your face.  I don't wear shoes for days at a time; I only go outside to hang clothes on the line, string a rope to find my way back to the house, and return through the windstorm five or ten minutes later to bring in the dry board-like clothing.  I type 90+ words a minute, so write, journal, and edit a local business's newsletter at the keyboard. Read at the computer, work at the computer for Artella, attend online staff meetings, converse by email, AIM, msn IM, site private message, a blog or two, and that marvelous invention, the telephone, with these wonderful people I've grown to love who have never seen me.

And then they ask for that darned picture.

Irritation is Relative

 

I'm visiting my son's family tonight.  Before my just-turned-five-yesterday grand-daughter was put to bed, I kissed her and said, "I hope my abhorrent, annoying snoring doesn't keep you awake."  She's a brilliant and loving child.  She hugged me and answered in a heartbeat, "Your abhorrent, annoying snoring doesn't bodder me."

It bothers me.  I hate it.  I mean, I really hate it. It's unbecoming, for one thing.  And it's humiliating to awaken to a blast of discordant ferry horns and smack your husband just one nanosecond before realizing the horns that awakened you were, alas, your own.

A doctor asked me if snoring was a problem.  Like...?  Well, he asked, does it result in a sleep problem?  I mused. "Yes... first, my husband keeps me awake snoring, and I wake him to complain, then when I go to sleep, I snore and he wakes me to complain, then when he goes to sleep..."

So I had what they call "a sleep study".  Ha.

Imagine, if you will, lying upon a foreign bed, in a foreign room, in a foreign building, in a foreign town.  Wait -- Imagine first that you spent 40 minutes prepping to lie down in that foreign bed.

I've never spent 40 minutes on bedtime prep in my life -- not when I worked and wore make-up and had to take it off, and not when I slept on 56 bobby-pinned-together brush rollers and had to floss around an Edsel grill's worth of metal in my mouth.

But this woman, this Sleep Study woman, prepped me for 40 minutes.

"Oh."  She said that first.  "You're wearing pajamas."   Uh... Don't most people?  "Nah. Lotsa people sleep in their underwear."  Now I said, "Oh."

"See," she continued, looking uncomfortable, "now I have to have you pull your pajama bottoms away from your body --"  Excuse me?  "-- so I can drop these wired tabs down your legs."

I learned some interesting facts that night:

1. There is a skin defoliant that, for skin cell and hair removal, rivals Agent Orange.

2. They can drop a wire down each pant leg, tape wires to your arms, tab your neck with wires on both sides, tab your face half-way into the eyebrow (handy thing to have, that defoliant), place half-a-dozen little gold cups, sharp metal side down, all around the back of your skull right about ear level (defoliant again), tighten a three-inch-wide belt around your waist, cinch a second belt under your arms and above your bosom, and tack a blood pressure monitor onto your finger with a blister-red beacon on the end bright enough to lead those ferry boats with the foghorns through the densest pea-soup on the planet, and people can still fall asleep and snore.  I know this, because I heard the other patient through the walls.

Me?  The Sleep Lady came in and allowed me to take drugs when the sound monitor (did I mention I was wired to a sound monitor?) revealed that I was alone in a bed four inches from what looked like a car battery, bawling and howling.

The sleep study was a success, sort of.  It did reveal that I have trouble sleeping.  It also apparently confirmed that, once heavily sedated, I snore.  Unfortunately, there was not time to try the treatment (Oh, please tell me it has metal suction cups, takes defolient and gel, and has a four-inch lead to a giant electric device!), what with her having to wake me up in the middle of REM sleep to shove me out of the clinic and put me in my car.

But there is a device that might help me; it's called something like a C-PAP. (My daughter-in-law said, "Ohhhhhh, yeah: a nose-hose...")  I'm told it could significantly reduce the abhorrent, annoying snoring.  However, we may never get to find out. 

See, turns out they can only try the device upon immediate evaluation of electronic data determined through defoliant, gel, metal cups, straps, wires, and blood pressure beacon to medically confirm that, yes, that shaking of walls and/or shattering of windows is me, snoring.  Bottom line: I need to schedule a whole 'nuther night with the Sleep Lady.

It may be a while.  Meanwhile, my husband and I bought artillery ear plugs.

 

Real Families

This family at church had befriended us. We couldn't believe it! They must have searched hard to find a reason to like us, since there was such a huge cultural gap.

See, they weren't just a family -- they were a real family.

In our world, a real family had a man married to a woman and they both went to church. The same church -- none of this I'm Southern Baptist but he's American Baptist, much less I'm Hindu and she's Church of the Rented K-Mart. A real family tithed, a sure clue that somebody had a job. A real family owned a vacuum cleaner and a lawn mower, and relatives trusted them enough to loan them a weed whacker. Or, say, a Tupperware with its original lid.

In a real family, everybody's vision and dental and vaccinations and haircuts were up-to-date, including the dogs. And even the husband. A real family paid somebody else to do their taxes, or if they did it themselves, they didn't get a corrected copy with "1 income 0 itemized -- you trying not to get it?" scribbled rudely on the form.

Most important of all, a real family had a big car. Before The Plague Of Vans, a real family had a roomy station wagon. There were a couple of children to stick in carseats, way before carseats were a law, and when the carseat stage ended, they graduated to seatbelts.

And real families had Grandmas and Grampas who fought over who got to watch the grandkids.

                                                                          * * * * * * * * * *

We were hosting. That's what it was called when you had to buy the food and sweep the floor and wear shoes and put on support garments. Had we been a real family, we might have splurged and purchased new table linens and a nice floral arrangement. College students who were real families might have gone out on a limb and bought a five-and-dime tablecloth and marked-down flowers in a plastic vase. Not us. We went money mad and got meat. And not the 78% lean, either: this was high grade stuff, nearly 87% lean. We also got frozen vegetables -- the fancy ones in their own little cooking bag, not sea-weed-textured canned green beans.

Boy, were we excited. We pulled out all the stops, which is to say we sprayed off two chairs from the side yard and dragged them inside. We watched for our visitors like kids watch for Santa. Finally! They were here! Then, as if Santa started tossing white socks and mouthwash down the chimney, these people threw open their sleigh-sized station wagon and unloaded a mega-sack of diapers, a thick cylinder of shiny plastic, two high chairs, two strollers, a playpen and a porta-crib, two baby swings, and something indescribable that needed to attach to something that, it turns out, we didn't have. I failed Philosophy I: Logic in college, but even I figured out early on that they were going to unload Something that needed that stuff.

We looked at each another, my husband and I, dumbfounded. Kids? Did one of us accidentally invite kids? Kids would be in here? Where was Child Protective Services? Where were those old liars begging to babysit their grandkids? And with less leg room in our apartment than in the back seat of their 'wagon, we wondered if they were up for leaving that stuff in the yard.

Suddenly I had a near crisis of faith. "Oh God, let her be breastfeeding," I prayed fervently, and apparently out loud. My husband backed up from me and stared. "The food," I said. "If those kids eat food, we're done for." I jumped into the kitchen (Really. One jump.) and tried to count the beautiful veggie pieces in the boiling, bouncing bag. I gave up only when I got to long division.

You live and learn, they say.

Breathing normally, finally, and watching the station wagon burn rubber down our little street, we shook our heads in amazement: Apparently a real family automatically brings their kids when they're asked over for dinner.

My husband and I remember this day still. We remember that when I said, "Wow! You brought a tarp to protect our floor from your babies!" they looked at me funny. I'm still ashamed that when she asked if I had more of those cute little vegetables the kids liked so well, I was furious and stood at the stovetop trying to calculate how many bites that cheated the grownups. We also remember that when I brought them a stingy little serving of boiling bag veggies, my husband casually remarked, "Hey, why'ncha set it on the floor and save the kids the effort of throwing it there?" We remember that I laughed, and I was the only one.

 

And just one more thing: We remember our surprise to realize that a ton of baby stuff goes into a station wagon twice as fast as it came out, once somebody figures out the difference between a real family and wannabes.