The Up-Down Lifestyle

In the past 24 hours I’ve . . .

1. Learned how to play pick-up sticks.
2. Lost all my Words with Friends games.  Literally and figuratively literally.  I can’t find the link anymore.  Facebook Fail.
3. Discovered that I score just as well at Mancala if I randomly pick a handful of stones when it’s my turn, while checking e-mail, as I do if I concentrate and try to win.  Only I enjoy it much more.
4. Did Mrs. Darwin’s Immediate Book Meme.  Answers posted at the blorg bookshelf.
5. Figured out that I have no clue how to pace myself.

#5 We’ve always known, haven’t we?  It’s just more dramatic now. I’m thrilled to be off the mandatory complete rest thing, because: Insomnia.  But what seems to me like a very light activity level really isn’t.  Serious intervals-action going on: When I’m up, I’m more up than I’ve been in ten days.  But a couple hours of acting vaguely like a normal person, and I’m completely wiped out. Brain. Body. All of it gone.

I’m sure such a thing as a ‘happy medium’ exists.  I’ve never actually experienced it, but I’ve heard about it.  Okay, strictly speaking I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s mythical.

Time to Order Chocoloate

PSA: My son reminds all you southern-North-American-types that it is time to make your last chocolate order before melting-season is upon us. Don’t let nasty corn-syrup laden, blood-tinged bunnies into your Easter basket.  Invest now, multiply your Lenten penances by not eating the peanut butter chocolate bars until Easter Sunday (goes great with bacon!), and get a minute out of purgatory for every dollar you spend  invest in duct tape for an assist when the flesh is weak.

Seriously.  The Equal Exchange folks put out good stuff.  You can set up an individual or a wholesale account (different pricing, but a higher threshold for free shipping if you order wholesale), and yes your private buying co-op of just you and your friends / family qualifies for the wholesale rate, if you do in fact eat that much chocolate among yourselves.  Feel free to link to other fair-trade suppliers in the combox.

***

Speaking of chocolate, for those who are following the vexing situation, here’s today’s FB update:

Details from yesterday, per Jon — not a lot to add, but some good spin. TEE was looking (in particular) for evidence of shunt in my atrial septum, which it did not find, nor anything else suspicious. Let us pause right now to observe that Dr. W *came in on a vacation day* to do that. Serious point-accumulation there.

–> Afterwards, he said that he sometimes runs into this — patients with definite symptoms but no obvious explanation for them. Sometimes it clears up on its own. (ER Doc pointed out last weekend that sometimes the tests don’t come back positive for a while after the symptoms show, too.)

And since we’ve ruled out everything imminently life-threatening, he proposes we take 10 days to attempt “rehab”, that is, Jen-directed gradual increase in activity level, and see how things go.

If symptoms persist, the next thing to do is refer me out to someone who investigates really nutso inexplicable stuff.

Day 1 Rehab report: Um, yeah.  Anyway.  It’s nice to be allowed to do stuff.  We’re a long, long ways from walking and talking on the phone at the same time, kids.  But I’m allowed to clean my desk, not a moment too soon.  You who are waiting on paper-based correspondence from me, there’s a light at the back of that cave.

Time for a New Novena: What’s Vexing You?

The Nine Annoying Things novena has been very successful, but we need to take it up a notch.  TEE was normal (for me – nothing there that should be causing my problems, I’m told), and we’re waiting to hear back on the labs measuring arterial blood gases.  Follow-up appointment is on the 26th, so that gives you a perfect nine days of vexation between now and then. 

Because this situation is more and more vexing by the moment.

Which means we need to invoke: Mary Untier of Knots.  (Warning: If you click the link, it plays music.  Turn your volume down first.  I just went with the first link I found.  Sorry guys. St. Google could help you find a different link if you aren’t already familiar with this particular devotion.)

Advanced pray-ers, have at with rosaries and chaplets and everything else in your arsenal.  Junior team, here’s how the Nine Vexations work:

• Identify something vexing. An unsolvable problem.  A thorny situation.  Anything that’s too big for you.
• Invoke the help of Mary Untier of Knots for your cause, and offer up your vexation for mine.  She’s Mary. She can help more than one person at a time.
• Repeat nine times.  If your life is vexatious, you might have nine different vexations.  If your life is particularly tranquil, you might just have to pray nine times over for someone else’s vexation.  Any kind of mathematical arrangement is fine, and in any case it isn’t a math quiz.
• Just like the Nine Annoying Things, you’re allowed to offer up your vexations retroactively.  We don’t do scrupling around this castle.

Thanks everyone!  I haven’t dropped dead and I’m still sane, mostly, so we know your prayers are being heard.

On Faith: Sticking the Corners

The other day I compared the infernal Circle of Pulmonology to bicycle racing, and intentionally communicated one thing — pulmonologists, take care of your immortal souls!, or something like that — and realized I’d also let slip another: I was not a particularly *good* cyclist.  But I liked it.  And so, as with most things I like, I managed to get myself firmly into the middle of the pack by sheer enthusiasm and willpower.

I was so reliably middle-of-the-pack on the road bike that you could literally count the size of the women’s field for the day’s race, divide by two, and know what place I’d come in.  I placed 6th overall one year in the NC-SC State Championship Road Race because 12 women entered.  I medaled — bronze — for SC, because of the field of 12, six were from SC.  It always, always worked that way. Except one time.

The one time was a criterium in downtown Greenville. In a crit, you go round and round a short circuit for a lot of laps.  A typical ladies’ crit would take about half an hour, max, and because the course is short, in a small field of women at a local race, the pack tends to stay tight.  All of us average riders would just hang on and suck wheel, and the better ladies would pull us long grudgingly because they couldn’t quite breakaway. The race would be won at the sprint.

So this course in Greenville was unusually hilly, and the last corner was nuts, as road cyclists see it.  You descended fast, took a sharp left, and then sprinted back up hill again. The finish line was right at the top as you came out of that corner.  Without the corner, the sprint would have begun at the top of the downhill — pick up as much momentum as possible, to get you back up that last hill and over the line.

But because of that corner, you could only go as fast on the downhill as you were willing to move through that corner.  The course was clean enough — no debris or gravel or anything — but too much speed and you’d wipe out on that last turn.  And if you don’t make the turn, the faster you’re going, the worse the crash is going to be.

So Jon and a friend and I rode the course together before the race.  Big question: How fast can you take that turn?  Pretty fast, as it happens. I mountain biked before I road biked, so my bike handling skills were good.  Rock climbing + rugby + scary exposed gravely mountain biking with nutso turns . . . these things prepare you for a crit. Which is something of a combination of all three, accelerated.

And thus a strategy emerged: Sit in the pack for the race, and see how the other ladies take that corner.  And if they’re slow . . . go wide and get ahead of the pack on that final downhill, scream through that turn, and be back up the hill again.

But you can’t waffle.  Once you go wide, you’re committed.  The only way out is through that corner. Period.

This is what faith is.  Sticking that corner.  You know how it’s supposed to go. Everything up until this point in your life has given you reason to believe it’s going to work.  Maybe it’s a stretch, or maybe you’ve got good solid evidence.  But you won’t really know until it’s done. Until you’ve turned that corner, you haven’t turned that corner.

So we got into the bell lap. I hung in the pack, but worked my way forward a bit.  When we got to the top of the last downhill, I went wide and picked up speed.  No one else followed.  You feel a lot crazy when you do something that *should* be the obvious strategy, and no one else follows.

By the time I reached the bottom of the hill with the sharp left, I was all by myself.  No one was on my wheel.  No one was even close.

The only way out is through that corner. Or else through the crowd + signs + buildings. Nice big crowd down there, because everyone always gathers where the crash is going to be.

What do you do?  You stick that corner.

Do it like you mean it, and find out if you were right.

So that’s what I did.

And I’m not dead or anything, so it worked.

Jesus and the Laundry Fairy

Two weeks ago I was still ostensibly the person responsible for doing laundry, though I’ll allow that a party of alpinists had contacted us about permits for ascending Mt. Foldmore.  But let’s harken back to the days of old, when it sometimes happened that a person could toss his clothes into the laundry hamper, and a few days later find those clothes clean, and folded, and waiting in the drawer or closet for their next use.

There’s was something of cycle to it, though, and often the sock and underwear drawers would get perilously empty.  And then one day, just when things had gotten very grim, a certain SuperHusband would wake up and discover his drawers were restocked, and he would proclaim, “Behold! The Laundry Fairy has come!”

And I would remind him that there is no Laundry Fairy. That was your wife who did that for you, thank you very much.

***

This morning’s Gospel is one of those miraculous feedings of the crowds.  (Mark 8:1-10).  What caught my eye today wasn’t the Jesus part, it was the people part.  Our Lord observes, “They’ve been with me three days now, and have nothing to eat.  If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will collapse on the way, for they have come a great distance.”  The disciples up the stakes: “Where can anyone get enough bread to satisfy them, here in this deserted place?”

Those are the miracle conditions.  You’ve stuck around with the Jesus Person until you’ve run out of food and have no way of getting more.  You didn’t bail even as you approached the point of no return.

You’ve let yourself get desperate.  Empty-handed.  No way to make it on your own.

–> There’s an aid to faith here, by the way, if you can stick through the tempting part, the getting-out-while-you-still-can.  Once your case is hopeless, there’s really not much point in trying to turn elsewhere.  Makes it easier to stick the final corners.

And that’s when the miracle shows up.  Not before.  If there’s something consistent in the Gospels, it’s that desperation.  Joyful, hopeful?  Sometimes, yes.  But unequivocal: Jesus isn’t one more tool in the portfolio. It’s got to come down to Him being the only way.

(And yeah: You’re left as your only hope with Someone who’s idea of goodness involves self-sacrifice and an eternal outside-of-time-frame.  If what you want is a patched-up Old Earth, you’re fresh out of luck.  That’s not what He does.  Not how He does it.)

Of course God sends us thousands of natural helps every day as well.  Our very existence — in this life or the next one — is only by virtue of Him keeping us here.  But either way, whether in the day-to-day miracle of ordinary life, or the big moments of divine intervention on this side of the grave or the other, there’s a consistent theme: No Laundry Fairy.  That was Me, thank you very much.

****

Back to practical stuff: SuperHusband’s taken over the mom-jobs like groceries and meals and laundry, but in a pared-back way that makes it not so overwhelming.  Our friends and family are totally showing up to do all the extras, like getting kids to activities, or whipping out dinner when we’re way late getting home from doctors appointments. I had three different people offer to step in and get the girls their valentine supplies. All that makes the load on Jon much, much lighter.

But something specifically laundry-related that we did was to give me a basket in the bedroom where my clean laundry lives. So no one ever has to put my laundry away in drawers and closets, only to have to pull it back out again. The nice thing about my particular state of decrepitude is that it isn’t fashion-intensive*. A pair of jeans to wear and one to wash.  Ditto on PJ’s.  Underwear, socks, a pile of t-shirts, a jacket.  That’s it.  You can store all that in a single laundry basket, no problem. None of it really needs to be ironed.  Works great.

*In contrast, in normal life on any given day I might have:

• Work clothes for doing stuff in the yard
• Normal less-grungy clothes
• Church clothes
• Possibly something business-y, or business-casual.
• Usually not workout clothes, because normal stuff works for that, but maybe yes, depending.

Completely different game.

And as long as we’re playing the gratitude game, you know whom I really appreciate? The people who’ve picked up slack for me on stuff I could do, but they could do instead.  It is remarkable how much fortitude gets consumed on accomplishing very very little.  I’m massively thankful for the slack I’ve been cut in a few places.  Pure luxury.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Ruled out pulmonary embolisms — none of those.  That’s always nice.  Echo looked . . . okay.  As in, nothing there, on the face of it, that ought to be causing anything this dramatic.  TEE on Monday to confirm that.

Summary of conversation with cardiologist:

Dr: “Well, it looks like you’re fine then . . .”

US: “Not Fine!”

Dr.: “Stable, anyway . . .”

US: “Um, no, not exactly . . .”

Dr.: “Well, I don’t see anything that could be causing this . . .”

US: “So there’s nothing else that could be causing these symptoms?”

Dr.:”Well, nothing common.”

US: “Something rare?”

Dr.: “Oh, I’m sure.  Lots of rare things.”

***

So Monday we test his knowledge of rare things.

 

(BTW: I like this guy.  I asked for dogged, and he seemed willing to be that.)

So. Death. That’s a writing topic.

I wouldn’t be much of a writer if I let opportunities to write about death slip through my hands.  So here we go.

A week ago Saturday I was a normal person.  I made a deal with the SuperHusband that if he would knock out four kids’ science projects on a Saturday morning four days before the Science Fair, I’d keep him fed and clean the house.  No problem.  Fetched things, ran errands, produced the goods.  I was tired by the middle of the afternoon — tired enough I kinda slacked off on my end of the deal, he having come through on his . . . but it was just tired.

Dragged myself to the church in the morning, because tired really is not an excuse, and it was fine. I could sing.  I could stand around and chat.  Normal person.

Sunday afternoon I pushed myself out the door and into the yard to say that Rosary.

Dear Legion of Mary,

I have missed very many rosaries this winter.  Fortunately I came up with new, worse sins, so that I could rather gloss over my neglected prayer life in the confessional.

You’re welcome,

Jennifer.

I like to walk around while I pray, because I am very bad at praying.  Sunday a week ago, that did not work out.  Even walking very, very slowly, I couldn’t finish a Hail Mary without needing far too many deep breaths.  Not only does this increase the amount of time you spend praying (silver lining there, I’m sure), but if you can’t walk and finish a phrase at the same time, you really are supposed to sit down.

I sat down.

Now this has happened before a few times, intermittently over very  many months, but it has always passed. I didn’t worry about it very much.

Monday I was so incredibly tired.  Too tired to be a decent housewife and homeschooling mom.  You only get so many Exhausted Passes before you have to call the doctor, and I’d used all mine up.  So I called.

Went in to the see the GP in the morning, and everything checked out AOK, other than the tired and the short of breath at the least exertion.  We made follow-up plans.  It really wasn’t that bad then.  I decided to be serious about resting.  I had this retreat coming up, but no problem: Married to a sound guy.  He could mic me, I could sit while I talked, it would be fine.  Fine.

I called in sick to everything, laid around all week.  It would be fine.

Saturday, as I mentioned, shortly after I’d finished catching up on e-mails, it ceased to be fine.  Went to the ER, where they spent the weekend determining I wasn’t having a heart attack.  They don’t look for much else than that.  Consider relaxation.  Call your cardiologist if you’re really worried.

They did do a stress test Sunday AM in the holding tank at the ER, and I walked the thing.  I knew I could walk it, because (a) I’d spent 20 hours lying around doing nothing so I was very rested up, (b) there was no way no how they were putting that nasty chemical in me that simulates exercise without actually exercising are you kidding? Just No., and (c) I used to race bikes.  So I don’t care how hard it is, for ten minute I can do anything.

So I did that.  It actually felt *great*, in surreal sort of way.  Standing there on the treadmill, walking slowly, and breathing like I was running sprints.  2nd hardest run of my life, though I hadn’t done the first hardest yet.  Felt awesome, because sprinting does feel awesome, even if you’re doing it slow motion.  Heart did great, lungs sucked wind: Maybe you’ve got asthma, ma’am?  Sir, this isn’t asthma.

Went home. They told me to come back to the ER anytime I liked, but of course they weren’t going to do anything new, they’d just rewalk the same territory.

Laid low Monday, and let me tell you: When I’m sitting still I feel perfectly normal.  Normal.  I completely, absolutely, forget that the body’s gone AWOL these last eight days.  SuperHusband lined up the follow-up with the pulmonologist (see: “maybe you’ve got asthma?”) for this morning.

***

There’s a pulmonology circle of Hell, I’m sure of it.

So we go in, and I’m still feeling more or less like a normal person, since the SuperHusband has figured out how to keep me from walking or standing any more than absolutely necessary.  Normal person.  Albeit a tired one.

So they call you back to do these breathing test things.  There’s this room, and a very nice lady with a computer, and this thing like a space-age telephone booth, with a bench in it.

The bench is the killer.

It’s a normal bench.  Padded. Like something at an airport.

The really nice lady gives you instructions on the test thing you’re going to do.  There will be deep breaths, and inhaling and exhaling and all this stuff. It reminds me of dance class, where the instructor would show us this elaborate thing I could never keep straight, but fortunately during the recital she always stood in the wings and you could look over and see what you were going to do.

The nice lady is like that.  You put your mouth on the breathing thing, and she tells you everything to do, step by step.

Except it never, ever, ends.

About halfway through I lost it.

It wasn’t the breathing. It was the sitting up, on that bench, all. that. time.

I just couldn’t sit up anymore.  Just no.  It was too much of that infernal bench.

***

She was really nice.  I cried for a bit, because: So exhausted.

I’ve raced very many bike races.  I’ve reached that point in the race where your quad quits working, so you use your arm to push it down each time as you work up the hill.  Not a problem.  I’ve pushed a final sprint so hard I coughed for a week afterward.  Not a problem. I’ve finished training rides so long and intense that I mumbled jibberish to the lady at the bagel shop after.  Not a problem.

This sucked.  Curl up in a ball and cry suck.

(Except no curling up.  That bench.  That blasted pale blue bench with the glass surround.  I hate space travel.  I never ever want to have to make a phone call in a cheesy sci-fi movie.  Never.)

She was real nice, and very patient with me, and we finished all the tests but one successfully, and the one I couldn’t make myself do was the easy one.  But so long.  So much sitting up on that bench.

***

She lets me back to the waiting room, where I get to lay back on the couch and recover and try to finish filling out my forms. We get called to the exam room. Another chair.  Happy.  Bench bad, chair good.  I’m feeling sorta human again by the time the nurse pops in and says she needs to check my O2 sats while I walk.

Hey, no problem.  I have O2, the ER knows it.  And I wanna see what happens when I walk.  And I walked all the way into this place.  I can do this.

***

Or not.

Sheesh, what is this? She clips the pulse-ox on my finger, then takes off on a lap around the nurse’s station. And I’m supposed to follow her? She’s like running.

She’s not really running.  She’s walking like a normal person. Like people who go for walks.  Not like that pansy heart-attack-detecting stress test treadmill at the ER that goes 1.3 miles per hour.  The first lap I’m with her: Workin’ it, breathing hard — hard like running hard even though we’re only walking, but I’m with her.  Lap 2 is a stretch.  I’m coughing.  She’s twice as chubby as me, and looking all cute and pert and I wanna smack her, except, too tired.  Surely this is going to end.

Lap 3 just sucks.  I’ve never worked so hard in my life sucked.  Natural childbirth is a breeze compared to this sucks.  And then.

She does it again.

Another lap.

Yeah, I cried.  I totally cried.

***

So this is sobering. Sitting quietly at home, checking Facebook and writing stuff, I feel like a normal person.  Walking around the nurses’ station is the truth serum to end all truth serums.

***

This is the doctor’s office, which means you wait around a lot.  SuperHusband and I both brought things to do, and both of us don’t do them. I lay back on the pulmonologist’s exam table thing, which really is perfectly angled for people who don’t breath much, or in my case people who breath too much. Eventually I recover from the evil ordeal.  I try not to think about it.  How about we talk about things?

SuperHusband is sober. Sober sober.

“I need to figure out what to do,” he says, “about the kids’ education.  If you can’t homeschool.”

I know what he means.  Exactly what he means.  Neither of us has it in us to say it.

This is my topic.  I run him through the list of options.  There are the Catholic schools – not so bad.  That would be good, and they offer financial aid that takes into account extenuating circumstances, it’s not just your total income they look at.  There are some homeschool places locally the older kids can take classes by the subject.  There are the online homeschool classes.  There’s a K-to-something Christian school I’d be okay with, that’s on his way to work.  The corner public elementary school is not that bad, and here’s the after school program that you want — they send the kids home at dinner time with homework already done.  The older kids cans can dual enroll at the community college their latter years of high school.

We run through all the options.

He’s reassured.  It’s not impossible.  He could do this.  The kids could be okay.

I think to myself: There’s no way he’s going to remember all this.

Should I write him a tutorial?  Or just let one of my friends tell him what to do?

***

My lungs were fine.  Perfectly absolutely fine.  Must be something else, doctor says.

I do not punch him when he asks me if I’ve just been a little stressed lately.  Um, did your nurse not chart what happened out there on those laps, sir?

We have a pretty good guess at what it is, and after a few stern words to bring him back to reality, doc straightens up his act and gets us in with a cardiologist, stat.

***

That’s our day.  I came home tired. Very tired.  A few hours of recovery time, and as long as I sit still I feel like a normal person.  I get some work done, and follow-up with retreat lady to explain that no, actually, someone else needs to do the sitting up and talking for me.

***

If our guess is right on the dx, my odds are decent.  That’s nice.

Or not.

I downgraded from “sick but we can work with this” to “call the ambulance” about an hour after I sent the retreat lady the e-mail that I was gonna bring the spouse to help out with the heavy lifting but otherwise it was a go.  Sheesh that annoys me.  So the back-up plan in place is that I send all the cool notes and stuff, and a local guy pretends he’s me :-).

Which means it will still be a very good retreat, which is the important thing.  Might even be a better retreat, you never know who the local guy’ll be.

Meanwhile what I’ve learned:

• County Hospital food is not actually like prison food, but there is a passing resemblance.
• I like Facebook.  I really like Facebook.
• I have the coolest friends and family.

At this writing I’m now home, not dead, and feeling great as long as I sit still.  Also, all labs confirm I’m the healthiest sick person on the face on the planet.  Hoping for a dx by the end of the week, and meanwhile am sitting still and knocking out this and that writing stuff, in between catching up with folks, see: coolest friends and family.

Have a good week!

Plague Journal 2013 – Lite Version + Home, Free to Good Kitten

I keep falling off the internet because . . . we’re only a little bit sick.  We’re in and out of the plague-ridden life just enough that everyone can keep the momentum on the flesh-and-blood obligations, at least for the highest priorities, but not so sick that we get to stay home in bed and play the internet all day.  Yes, that’s right: If only I were sicker, I’d blog more.

(Hush your mouth, we aren’t praying for that.  Bad reader! No biscuit!)

If anyone can read my mind, circa early-December, and remember what my brilliant idea for my next New Evangelizers column was, please speak up. It’s due tomorrow, so I’m counting on you reminding me by mid-afternoon.  Thanks!

***

The next bit of this update tells a story that includes a death scene.  A real one, not fiction.  You might want to go ahead and click elsewhere now.  Especially if thinking about dead cats bothers you.

***

Morbid Dead Cat Story, with handy funerary tips.

So last Thursday night the testosterone wing was safely away at hunt camp, two little girls were in bed, and my little singer was up enjoying the fire and the Advent Tree, and generally getting her internal clock adjusted per the midnight-Mass situation.  Fifi the cat wisely chose this time, when all was quiet and peaceful, to drop dead.

This surprised us.

She was just a middle-aged cat.  Looking back, Ev recalls that Fifi had not quite been her usual self that week, but there was no particular lead up.  One minute, Fifi is sitting at her usual spot by the fire, doing her cat-by-the-fire routine; next thing I knew, she wasn’t.

Note: If a cat were to just slip off into eternal bliss while sitting by the fire, you would not notice.  It would probably be a few days before your realized that your cat hadn’t moved lately.  Fifi did not do this.

Instead, some time after she was last spotted in her Queen Cat location, she was no longer there.  In place of a cat, I noted that mild stench, which those of you who have been around dying creatures know about, coming from under the coffee table.  The rest of you can be surprised later.

We fished the Fifi out from her hiding place, and made a bed in a cardboard box with an old dog towel. We have a dishpan in the linen closet labeled “dog towels”, but they can be used for other pets, too. Every now and then, they make a good burial shroud — more on that later.

Ev extracted a promise from me that we could take the cat to the vet in the morning.  I did not break the news to her right away, but once the rapid shallow breathing starts, you have to at least give your child a head’s up that this is probably the end.  I cleaned up the minor mess under the coffee table, and we sat around watching the cat in her box.  She mostly just lay there panting, but sometimes not.

The dog jumped over her dog gate and came to investigate.  I sent her back to bed. The last thing I needed was for the dog to catch cat-plague, and have Mr. Boy come home to a dead pet, too.

Having been a delinquent auxillary member of the LOM that day, I started into my rosary under my breath, and made it through the first decade before we could no longer see fur moving.  It was the first time I’d ever been praying that “and at the hour of our death” line during someone’s actual death, even if it was only a cat.

Black and white fur, thick for winter, by the light of an Advent tree, plays tricks on your eyes.  You can only watch it go up and down so many times before you think you see it moving even when it’s not.  Ev fetched her stethoscope, and we listened for breath sounds and a heart beat, just like they do on TV.

We made that face that the pioneer doctor makes right before the last commercial break.

It was midnight by now.  After a suitable period of mourning, Ev extracted a new promise from me: Yes, we can get a kitten.

It was not only midnight, it was cold and dark.  Not the time for a burial service.  I sent Ev to bed, and told her I’d sleep out in the living room with the cat-corpse, since I did not want to wake up in the morning and discover that the dog had taken an unusual interest in dead things in the small hours of the night.

The handy pet undertaker’s tip: If you are not going to bury your pet until morning, go ahead and curl up the body in a cute and compact sleeping-cat pose right away.  And get the dog towel cat burial shroud all wrapped around the body, with just a tiny bit of sleeping-cat head visible, but easily covered when the time comes.  You will be glad in the morning, because: Rigor Mortis.

FYI – I was glad in the morning.  Got up, made myself go out and bury the cat before I took a shower (because: Co-op — still had a very long day ahead). On a frosty December morning, you will be happy that you posed the cat in the most compact suitable-for-viewing position possible, because: Smaller hole.

(You do know, don’t you, to fully wrap your child’s pet before you start shoveling dirt? They are going to watch.  Even though they know exactly what’s inside the towel, it’s better to see dirt landing on just a towel.)

That’s my dead cat story.  We told Ev to research the easiest, least-hassle way to obtain a fresh re-supply of cats, and she’s been comparing policies at all the various shelters around town.  Meanwhile, yes we were agressive about washing hands and disinfecting.  Also, I told the kids that if anyone developed acute abdominal pain, I was taking them to the ER ASAP.  But it has not come to that, so I think we’re safe.

The Hard-Headed Life

Snippets since I fell off the internet – no, nothing bad going on, not really.  Just my life.  You know the scene.

1. The weekend before Thanksgiving, three kids are outside playing tag after dark.  Seven-year-old daughter comes inside, weeping and telling us she hit her head.  Mandatory concerned-parents questions, but we determine that it wasn’t that bad, she’s just tired, because what she hit her head on was her brother’s shoulder.  She settles down, though she keeps reminding us her head hurts.

A few minutes later, Mr. Boy comes inside.  His shoulder hurts.  You know — where his sister’s head hit it.  Can’t be that bad, right?

Next morning, as someone who shall not be named is trying to persuade the boy to quit favoring the shoulder and move it around a little so the muscles don’t get tight, the Mom-alarm goes off.  Something is not right with this scene.  Further Mom investigation, followed by confirmation at doc-n-box: Broken collarbone.

PSA: Do not play rugby with my 7-year-old.

2.  I wrote this article at New Evangelizers.  I knew it was slated to run on Thanksgiving, but I wrote it anyway.  Hint: I rant about the usual things I rant about, instead of telling you to be grateful for stuff.

How did writing this column change my life? I resolved to wear hats more often.  Not at church, necessarily.  Just around.  Because I like them.

3. At CatholicMom.com, I answered this post from Rebecca Frech. In my column, which you can find here, I assert that my children are not too sheltered, though I give no particular evidence on that point.  Those who worried that by “being selective about the movies they watch” you feared I was depriving them of sappy puppy-themed formula films, or hyper-violent Korean parodies of Clint Eastwood films, fear not.  We’re covering those bases tonight, that’s why I have time to blog.

4. Awkward blogger moments: I’m at the Family Honor in-town class session that finishes out the course Jon & I took last summer.  Great class.  Highly recommended.  We’re sitting at dinner, and the program director turns to me, and says, “Jen, I just found out you blog.  I just started blogging.  Tell me — how often to you post?”

I had to explain to him that I had recently fallen off the internet.  I went home resolving to post here ASAP, so I’d look more respectable when he clicked on my blog.  But the DSL was out.

#5 – #17: About the Internet

5. SuperHusband had to take a child to a violin concert Sunday afternoon, so he put Mr. Boy in charge of contacting AT&T to get the DSL fixed. All part of the child’s education.  (So. About all our sincere efforts to not make other people work on Sundays. Isn’t DSL like an ox in the ditch?  Isn’t it?)

So the boy gives it his best.  Of course, he does not himself work in telecom, so he’s fresh meat.  Customer service convinces him we need a new modem.

SuperHusband comes home and rejects this diagnosis.  A new modem is the two-aspirin of the Telcom customer service world.  He starts to make the boy call back customer service and argue more, but I step in and plead mercy, mostly on me but a little bit for the boy and his father, too.  SuperHusband gets on the phone, talks customer service off their ledge, and after a cordial but intense discussion with Nathan in India (is it Sunday in India?), they get the idea that maybe a change of service is in order.  AT&T will send a guy around in the morning.  No, they won’t charge for installation.

I’d been planning to go to Chik-Fil-A in the morning to check my e-mail, but I agree to stay home so the problem can be solved.

6. 8:10 AM the friendly customer service guy rouses me from a sleep even St. Josemaria couldn’t touch.  He’ll be there at 8:40, will that be okay.  Yes.  I lie and tell him yes.  It is not exactly lying if you are also praying that by 8:40 it will be okay.

7. My excuses for being tired include the fact that we are gradually shifting #2’s sleep schedule later and later, so that she can sing at midnight Mass.  Thus, all children are asleep.  Or faking it because they know it’s Monday, always a risk they might have to do work on a Monday.

8. I have no excuses for the way my house looks.

9. So what I need is a WWMDC bracelet. I go to the kitchen and start asking myself, “What would Mrs. Darwin clean next?” I clean that thing, then repeat repeat repeat.  By 8:40, as long as the blinds remain closed, and all the lights except in select cleaned-places remain turned off, the house looks like a place that would not cause a telecom tech guy to call social services.

10. I failed to think about the phone guy when we put chicken prison in exactly the place where the phone lines enter the house.  I apologized.  He pretended it was no big deal.  Tech guys lie just as much as housewives.

11.  He was incredulous when I explained that we had no crawlspace, and yes, the phone lines go through the attic.  A tech had just fallen through someone’s attic only last week.  AT&T does not want to send people into your attic.

12.  There were complications.  Complicated complications.  We eventually get hold of the SuperHusband, who has an intelligent conversation about telecom things with the tech guy.

13.  Tech guy gets permission from AT&T to install the new service on our ancient phone lines. Since running a new cable would involve the attic. And other things.

[Note: During all this time, I am continuing to clean my house. The children wake-up eventually, and I convince them to clean the house, too.  I am acting as if there is some good reason why I woke up to a trashed house on a Monday morning, and that naturally if no DSL problems had arisen, I would not have spent the morning answering e-mail and blogging, I would have done those dishes! Right away!  By the time the tech guy has his marching orders, the house is looking sort of civilized.  My children transition to acting like they are doing school work. They are pro’s at this, and even I am briefly fooled.]

14.  There’s a problem.  The newly-installed service works, but not to the company’s quality standard.  More investigations.  A manager is called.  They visit all the phone jacks in my house.  They are gathering evidence that we have the weirdest wiring in the Southeast.  (There’s a place that’s weirder, I’ve seen the photos, but it’s in Baltimore.)  They need to install new cable.

15.  The manager moves on, the tech guy installs the new cable.  Through the attic, of course.  He sustains no injuries, thanks to my helpful tips.  (Stay on the plywood. Not on the pink stuff.)

16.  It’s not the cable in the attic after all. Maybe it’s the box at the curb . . . the one with the oak roots entangling it, such that the box cannot be opened.

17. More investigations.  Actually, the problem is a few blocks up the road.  Tech guy apologizes for mistakenly upgrading my wiring.

Utterly unrelated. Not really.  #18.  I agreed to be one of CatholicMom.com’s Gospel-reflection writers for 2014.  Lisa H. immediately signed me up for the 16th of each month, before I had time to change my mind.  This means I have to read a snippet from the Gospel twelve times a year, and think about what the snippet says.

Yes.  I know.  It seemed like a good idea to me, too.