Because the Kings Among Men who are patching and painting our house are still (yes, still) trudging bravely onward, Simon and I will again be going back to Nonna and Papa's. The poor little guy was crawling down the hallway last night, and halfway to his destination I realized that the floor is still lightly coated with plaster dust. I grabbed him up and saw his entire front dusted with white. There was a lot of screaming in our house last night. Because there was no clean spot for him to safely explore. I'm not a neat freak by any stretch of the imagination, but when my child starts looking like a mime, the game is over. Sandra Bernhard once said, "I have no time for mime." I agree. Also, how f***ing healthy is it to breathe this dust? Every day there's a new f***ing deposit of the stuff. I don't have time to mop down every inch of floor every few hours. Simon's in the pull-up-on-everything-and-possibly-fall-over stage right now.
Sidebar: Who do I think I'm fooling with this "f***" crap? Why don't I just follow convention and go with "f*ck"? I don't know. Okay, you talked me into it. "F*ck" it is.
So, Simon will be carted to my parents' house and back home for awhile. It's a 30-minute drive and Simon hates being locked in his carseat for that long. So, I try to drive only at nap times so he can sleep most of the way. Simon only naps twice a day, once around noon and again around 5 p.m. This limits my travel options. He also only naps for 35-to-55 minutes at a time, which limits travel to a 30-mile radius. Unless I want to hear constant screaming. I don't. I need to come home tomorrow for awhile, so I'm planning that for his first nap, around noon. Then I'll go back to my parents' house during his second nap. Heads will f*cking (see?) roll if Simon changes his napping habits. I guess only one head will actually roll, and it will be mine. What if Simon decides he only wants one nap tomorrow? I'll be trapped at home. This ever-dusty hellhole of a home.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Simon "Walking"
Simon and I stayed at Nonna and Papa's house over the weekend. Simon had a blast. Here's Papa helping Simon walk around:
Simon Passed All His Tests
Medical tests, that is. A couple of weeks ago I took Simon to a pediatric gastroenterologist. His doctor just wanted to make sure his low weight isn't being caused by a medical disorder, so she referred him to this specialist. This guy ordered a whole slew of tests, even though he assured me they would all most likely come back negative.
They took 4 vials of Simon's blood for something like 12 or 13 tests. One of the tests was for cystic fibrosis, a condition I've been afraid Simon might possibly have--you know, in the wee hours of the morning when you obsess about doomsday scenarios. So, I now have confirmation that Simon is CF-clear. Woo-hoo!
Then there was the stool sample. Anyone ever have to do this? They gave me a biohazard zip-lock bag with a specimen jar and two wooden tongue-depressor-like sticks. Nice! I was instructed to collect the sample, put ice cubes in the bag, and deliver it to the lab within two hours. No problem, right? Well, it took me 10 days to get that sample to the lab. The lab in pediatrics closes at 5 p.m., is closed from noon to 2 p.m., and is closed on weekends. The timing was always wrong. I was on diaper alert during the daytime, but Simon prefers to do certain things in the evenings, I guess. I eventually had to take it to the central hospital lab, which stays open until 11 p.m.
So, after all these damn tests I feel confident that Simon is just fine. He's healthy and strong and smart. I'm not going to constantly weigh him. I'm not going to freak out when I see chubby, large-headed babies. I'm not going to see any more specialists or run any more tests. We're done with that shit.
They took 4 vials of Simon's blood for something like 12 or 13 tests. One of the tests was for cystic fibrosis, a condition I've been afraid Simon might possibly have--you know, in the wee hours of the morning when you obsess about doomsday scenarios. So, I now have confirmation that Simon is CF-clear. Woo-hoo!
Then there was the stool sample. Anyone ever have to do this? They gave me a biohazard zip-lock bag with a specimen jar and two wooden tongue-depressor-like sticks. Nice! I was instructed to collect the sample, put ice cubes in the bag, and deliver it to the lab within two hours. No problem, right? Well, it took me 10 days to get that sample to the lab. The lab in pediatrics closes at 5 p.m., is closed from noon to 2 p.m., and is closed on weekends. The timing was always wrong. I was on diaper alert during the daytime, but Simon prefers to do certain things in the evenings, I guess. I eventually had to take it to the central hospital lab, which stays open until 11 p.m.
So, after all these damn tests I feel confident that Simon is just fine. He's healthy and strong and smart. I'm not going to constantly weigh him. I'm not going to freak out when I see chubby, large-headed babies. I'm not going to see any more specialists or run any more tests. We're done with that shit.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Endless Hell
I think there must be a curse on this house. There is always some home improvement activity going on. It never ends. They're patching and painting the walls--and it's been going on for weeks. How is this possible? I hate it here. We've had someone here working on the house at least once a week (with maybe a week off here and there) for over a year.
The morning I went into labor we had two f***ing morons installing a door in the master bathroom. At 9 a.m. I was pacing the hallway, doing my breathing exercises and listening to power tools whizzing at top volume. After 30 minutes of that we had to tell them to get the hell out. What made it extra annoying is that the genius who designed and started installing this sliding door had already been half-assedly (is that a word?) working on this project for a couple of weeks. Weeks! It was just a simple door that he had to get fancy with. This door was not finished until about a month after Simon was born. And you know what? It was horrible. It is horrible. It's the crappiest door in human history. It took months to finish. The genius tried to get us to pay him many thousands of dollars for it. We only asked for a regular, easy door. He got experimental with it and f***ed it up and had to restart from scratch, but he wanted us to pay him for all his time. Let me tell you: IT DOESN'T EVEN CLOSE ALL THE WAY! That's all a door has to do, right? This one gets stuck halfway and you have to coax it, and even then it doesn't fit flush against the other wall. Amazing!
We have these other geniuses now doing the walls and they get paint dust (from sanding) all over the place (even though they lay down tarps). I have a baby boy who loves to roam around and put things in his mouth. I don't want him eating paint dust. Also, there are so many paint splatters--on the wood floors, on wool rugs, on furniture. I want to kill these people. There is no end in sight. Some days they don't show up, and everything takes longer than you can imagine. They're working on the master bedroom today. I noticed that they have tracked white paint-dust footprints all through the house. WTF! They still have to do Simon's room. That'll probably take us into next year.
We keep thinking that they're almost done. That's why we haven't gotten someone else to do the work, but maybe we need to rethink this.
Before the walls, there was the Adventure of the Copper Pipes. Before that, the Mystery of the Uneven Floor, the epic Refinishing the Pool saga, the Fixing the Outdoor Tiles thriller, and many more tales of loud noises and disruption. Simon doesn't know a world without construction work. I get so tense sometimes when he's napping because I'm afraid a worker will wake Simon up. There were a few weeks when Simon slept while workers pounded on pipes under the house. I would tell them that my baby son was sleeping, but sometimes they were still loud.
Anyway, I absolutely hate it here right now. The place is a mess, and it's impossible to clean while the workers are mucking everything up. I keep thinking, "just one more day," but I know it's a lie...
The morning I went into labor we had two f***ing morons installing a door in the master bathroom. At 9 a.m. I was pacing the hallway, doing my breathing exercises and listening to power tools whizzing at top volume. After 30 minutes of that we had to tell them to get the hell out. What made it extra annoying is that the genius who designed and started installing this sliding door had already been half-assedly (is that a word?) working on this project for a couple of weeks. Weeks! It was just a simple door that he had to get fancy with. This door was not finished until about a month after Simon was born. And you know what? It was horrible. It is horrible. It's the crappiest door in human history. It took months to finish. The genius tried to get us to pay him many thousands of dollars for it. We only asked for a regular, easy door. He got experimental with it and f***ed it up and had to restart from scratch, but he wanted us to pay him for all his time. Let me tell you: IT DOESN'T EVEN CLOSE ALL THE WAY! That's all a door has to do, right? This one gets stuck halfway and you have to coax it, and even then it doesn't fit flush against the other wall. Amazing!
We have these other geniuses now doing the walls and they get paint dust (from sanding) all over the place (even though they lay down tarps). I have a baby boy who loves to roam around and put things in his mouth. I don't want him eating paint dust. Also, there are so many paint splatters--on the wood floors, on wool rugs, on furniture. I want to kill these people. There is no end in sight. Some days they don't show up, and everything takes longer than you can imagine. They're working on the master bedroom today. I noticed that they have tracked white paint-dust footprints all through the house. WTF! They still have to do Simon's room. That'll probably take us into next year.
We keep thinking that they're almost done. That's why we haven't gotten someone else to do the work, but maybe we need to rethink this.
Before the walls, there was the Adventure of the Copper Pipes. Before that, the Mystery of the Uneven Floor, the epic Refinishing the Pool saga, the Fixing the Outdoor Tiles thriller, and many more tales of loud noises and disruption. Simon doesn't know a world without construction work. I get so tense sometimes when he's napping because I'm afraid a worker will wake Simon up. There were a few weeks when Simon slept while workers pounded on pipes under the house. I would tell them that my baby son was sleeping, but sometimes they were still loud.
Anyway, I absolutely hate it here right now. The place is a mess, and it's impossible to clean while the workers are mucking everything up. I keep thinking, "just one more day," but I know it's a lie...
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