So, update: possibly I hate yoga! And also: I would like to know how many hours, exactly, women are expected to spend per day on exercise and self-care? Because it seems as if men are not expected to “””take time for themselves””” in this PARTICULAR way (which just COINCIDENTALLY has an ABSOLUTELY COINCIDENTAL SIDE EFFECT of working to shape women’s bodies for men’s preferences), and it seems as if this gives men a lot more free time to start wars and harass/assault women and take away rights and so forth! Not that I think that if women get that time back by discontinuing our 11 steps to perfect summer eyebrows, we should use it to start wars and harass/assault men and take away rights! I am only saying that it seems to theoretically be VERY PRODUCTIVE TIME. I am reminded, by perhaps a less-connected mental leap than you might be expecting at this juncture, of how the PTA seems to have been designed to give distracting busy-work and faux empowerment/management duties to the mothers who would otherwise be restlessly bothering the teachers and school office staff, but who are instead now very very busy bothering each other in a separate loop; and running fundraisers that barely pay for their own running, and doing so only if a lot of women consider their time to be free of charge! Whoever came up with that idea was VERY VERY SMART! Probably a joint psychology/business major/sociopath!

No, I did not get any sort of notification from my period tracker today, and also shut up. AND IF I DID: as I understand it, it is AFTER menopause that our hormones are “normal”—i.e., as they are during PMS. Which means that PISSED OFF ALL THE TIME AT HOW EVERYTHING WORKS AND HOW EVERYONE IS is the way women SHOULD BE. WHICH MAKES PERFECT SENSE TO ME.

I feel as if I can’t just Not Comment on the Russian attack on Ukraine, as though it’s not happening / as if I am oblivious to it / as if I think what I am writing is more important. But also: what are any of us supposed to say? It’s a nightmare, right? Stupid and horrifying and dismaying to see people pulling strings and acting as if other people’s lives are unimportant toys for them to play with when they’re bored. I bet some middle-aged Ukrainian/Russian woman would LOVE to be pissed off about yoga and peri-menopause right now, instead of wondering if her kids will survive this and knowing it is NOT IRRATIONALLY ANXIOUS to prepare for the possibility that they will not. I’m all the way over here, and I’m wondering if we’ll survive this, or if we’ll get a little weather alert on our phones notifying us of impending nuclear fallout, possibly because of ACCIDENTAL DAMAGE WHILE TRYING TO TAKE OVER A NUCLEAR PLANT. I read On the Beach a long time ago, but I feel like I remember the gist. Merciful pills for our pets first, and then for our kids, and then for ourselves. But we saw how the U.S. government handled the Covid pandemic, so we know the merciful medication will be plentifully available 1-2 years after we have all already perished from radiation or whatever it is that kills you when it’s a nuclear thing, I AM NOT REAL CLEAR ON THE DETAILS AND NOT REAL INCLINED TO LOOK IT UP, NO I DO NOT WANT ANYONE TO EXPLAIN IT TO ME RIGHT NOW

A little gift of peri-menopause, for me, seems to be the WILD MOOD SWINGS. Not that anyone would EVER have described me as a steady, level, consistent person. But right now I am going from COMPLETELY HAPPY when I remember that it’s the weekend and that means a bonus challenge on my phone game!!! to thinking that really it would be the best thing for everyone/everything if humanity wiped itself out via nuclear disaster. Like, within five minutes. I go from “OH!! I just remembered I have a new sweater I got on clearance and I can wear it today, and now I am wearing it and it’s making me happy and I should tell other people about it!!” (it’s this Lands’ End shaker sweater in Rubellite, and I think the only reason it’s on such a deep clearance is that the wee tiny vertical stripes make it look very weird on computer monitors ((also because Lands’ End prices are doubled, and you should never pay more than 50% off original price to begin with)), and I wish I’d risked buying the Baltic Teal as well even though that color looks even weirder on the monitor; I also got this Lands’ End fine-gauge crewneck sweater in Soft Magenta Heather and Soft Azure, because I love a colorblock) to thinking the only TRULY sensible solution is for me to leave my family and go live in a commune of people who are not men, where we will all SHARE THE CHORES and SHARE OUR SWEATERS and DO NICE THINGS FOR EACH OTHER and HAVE CHICKENS. (Someone other than me is going to have to take care of the chickens, because I only like chickens from a distance. But I WILL CLEAN TOILETS, so I feel like I have a lot to offer. I will also COOK CHICKEN EGGS.)

I had basically stopped doing yoga, not on purpose but just by getting less inspired to do it, and then doing it less and less until I was hardly doing it at all. I had a few favorite videos, but I was getting tired of hearing the same patter every single time; and I was getting bored; but also kept getting discouraged when I tried to do new ones, and even by trying to FIND new ones to try. I was still doing the back-pain ones when I had back pain, but otherwise not.

Then I was assigned a shelf-reading-type task at work. You are familiar with shelves: tall at the top, medium-height in the middle, short at the bottom. So when I am reading the top shelves, I can stand; but at a certain point in the middle-shelves region I am stooping uncomfortably, and it becomes more comfortable to kneel; and for the very lowest shelves, it is most comfortable to sit on the floor.

Well. My goodness. I CERTAINLY NOTICED that I had not been doing yoga. When I was doing yoga, I DID notice that it was easier and more comfortable to sit on the floor, etc., but I didn’t think it was THAT big of a difference. (IT WAS THAT BIG OF A DIFFERENCE.) So I have started doing yoga again. The first day I went back to the 12-minute core video, my muscles complained for SEVERAL DAYS afterward, but also I could FEEL how it motivated me to stand up straighter. The first day I did the back pain video I like (which I like even more for leg/hip/knee stretching/flexibility), I was like whyyyyyyyy haven’t I been doing this when it is so NICE??? (And I was alarmed by how much progress I’d lost on some of the poses, including such classics such as Sitting Criss-Cross-Applesauce, as well as pigeon pose.)

But I do need to add more videos to the rotation, because I can now anticipate nearly every word of the scripts, complete with errors, and that is annoying. This morning I tried the first of a 30-day series, so that I could have 30 days of not having to figure out which video to watch. (I am not going to do yoga every day, but I mean I intend to work my way through this series on the next 30 days I DO do yoga.) (Or maybe it will take more than 30 yoga-doing days, because if I happen to LIKE one of the videos, or feel motivated in any way to repeat it, I will repeat it, thereby extending the number of days I don’t have to figure out which video to watch.)

On Day One (all I’ve done so far, so my report is…early), I hated it the way I almost always hate new yoga videos, and also it was a lot of my least-favorite things: downward-facing dog, three-legged dog, planks, and a lot of rotating quickly (for me) AMONG the things I don’t like, so that I ALSO felt as if I could barely get INTO a pose I hate before she’s already done with it and heading into the next pose I hate (often saying “No need to rush!,” INFURIATINGLY). As usual I got frustrated enough to cry, and wanted to quit, and thought viciously about how much I hated the way everything felt, and how much I hated yoga in general, and also hated all exercise. I felt my body and mind were in perfect alignment on these views. Plus, I have been watching older Adriene videos, so I hated the “new” intro (I don’t know how new it is) and the whole vibe of it, and also I felt as if Adriene herself had changed, and was now doing much more…of her…speaking…pattern where…she puts…irregular…pauses…in…her talking which…seems to go…on…and on…as if she doesn’t…know what…she is going…to say…or how…to stop.

BUT: I also thought about how with some exercises, the ONLY way to go from “hating the way it feels” to “liking the way it feels” is to keep doing it until the necessary muscles/skills develop. And I thought about how I DO WANT to get better at these poses and not hate the way they feel, if that is within my abilities; and I won’t know if it IS within my abilities or not until I’ve tried for awhile. And how “working on getting better”/”trying it to see if it improves” are achievable goals, absolutely INSTANTLY achievable goals, even when “doing it the way the instructor is doing it right now” is not. And how I really am not required by any law to do what the instructor is doing, and no one is going to force me, but I can at least TRY! I can just TRYYYYYYYY. If she says to do this odd plank thing, and I look at her and think “I cannot do that,” I MAY VERY WELL BE CORRECT—but that doesn’t mean I can’t just TRY it, just to keep myself from getting bored as I wait for the next thing. And sometimes it turns out I CAN do it A LITTLE BIT, for A FEW SECONDS, which is A START!; and other times I CANNOT do it, but it feels like the TRYING is still working on the very first step of those muscles/skills; and other times I find to my surprise that actually I CAN do it. So even if I hate it, and I hate the way it feels, and I hate being so frustrated, I still feel motivated to keep working on it, at least for now, and to make the “working on it” and “feeling better sitting on the floor again” the point.

I was on a real streak with books there for awhile, finding tons to bring home among the ones I was supposed to be re-shelving at work, and reading them one after another like sleeves of Thin Mints. After finishing Plainsong by Kent Haruf, I read Eventide and Benediction, both of which I liked—though neither as much as Plainsong. Eventide was a sequel, sort of, but it made me half-wish I’d stopped with the first book (though not really) (but sort of), and Benediction was not really a sequel, but only a book that took place in the same town, with some very light character overlap. Then I was reshelving Benediction (it is oddly pleasant to come upon my own returned books on the reshelving cart) and saw Our Souls at Night, another book by Kent Haruf, about two elderly acquaintances, both widowed, who begin having platonic sleepovers because nights are so lonely and difficult, which I thought I hadn’t read but it turned out I had, and I enjoyed re-reading it, though I felt the conflict was forced and required more justification, and shouldn’t have been written as if it’s a normal thing that happens. (And if it IS a normal thing that happens, then I am sad and outraged and I wish to find a solution.)

(image from Target.com)

Now that I work at the library, I try not to take home New Releases, because New books are checked out more than any others, and once they are no longer New they tend to go dormant, which is when I will definitely see them and remember I want to read them; and Elizabeth Strout’s Oh William!, which I have been waiting to read, was moved off the New shelf AND was hanging out on the regular shelf (sometimes a non-New book has a long hold list so will still be absent from the library), so I checked it out, but first I re-read My Name Is Lucy Barton to remind myself of the gist (Oh William! is not exactly a sequel, but it is another book about the same woman), and also because My Name Is Lucy Barton is one of my favorite books, and I’ve read it at least three times, despite the title being so odd and unappealing to me (the title Oh William! is also odd and unappealing to me). Then I read Oh William! and liked that too—not as much as My Name Is Lucy Barton, but I don’t know if I liked My Name Is Lucy Barton the first time as much as I like it now. Oh William! is about an older woman and her relatively friendly relationship with her ex-husband, which is the sort of plot I like very much. My Name Is Lucy Barton is about the same woman when she is younger (though still an adult) (and married to William), and experiencing a lengthy hospital stay, and her mother comes to visit, and they chat about people they used to know; gradually these stories reveal the extreme dysfunction/poverty she grew up in, and you would not think I would like this book, considering I have said I will not even CONSIDER reading any more memoirs about people’s dysfunctional/neglected/abused childhoods, and yet here we are. Fiction is different; but also, this author does it in a way I can stand.

(image from Target.com)

Let’s see, I think that is when I had three or four books in a row that I really disliked, and I persevered with each one for awhile because I really wanted the promised plot, but just could not chew through them. I don’t want the authors to search themselves online and end up here, but in case you are interested, one was emoC htiW eM by neleH namluhcS (I spent quite a chunk of time trying to decide if the order of the words should also be backward, and I still don’t know what’s right, likely because both ways are, clearly, wrong), which was supposed to be a book about getting to see what your life would have been like if you’d made different decisions, but I dragged myself through almost 50 pages and it just seemed like the author was trying very hard to be cool, and was doing that thing where there’s one line of a conversation, then two full pages of backstory, then another line of conversation, then two more pages of backstory, and can we just have the conversation and stop interrupting it? I also tried ehT repaP ecalaP by adnariM yelwoC relleH, which was supposed to be about a middle-aged married woman having a fling with an old crush, and I only got through 20 pages before realizing I hated everyone: all of the characters, the author, even the setting.

Those are just the two books I still have here at home; I can’t remember the others I tried and returned, but in any case I was starting to get worried. Did I not like books anymore? Would I read 20-50 pages of every book from now on? Well. On to the next one in the pile.

(image from Target.com)

Poison for Breakfast, by Lemony Snicket (Target link) (Amazon link).

This was on my shelving cart, and I was surprised to see a book of adult fiction by a children’s-book author. I didn’t think I would want to read it, because I didn’t like the Series of Unfortunate Events books—though really that was an issue of plot and not style. But then I saw two things. On the front flap: “In the years since this publishing house was founded, we have worked with an array of wondrous authors who have brought illuminating clarity to our bewildering world. Now, instead, we bring you Lemony Snicket.” And on the back cover: “Some people might call Poison for Breakfast a book of philosophy, and hardly anyone likes a book of philosophy.” So I got it, because it is free to try books from the library and, since I work there, also very easy. It is a small book, and it is only 158 pages long, and there are illustrations, and in the back there are notes that include things such as “The author I said I would not identify is _____.” I think this book IS in some sense a children’s book; I can see how there may have been a struggle to decide how to publish it and where to shelve it. It is written simply, and with big words still defined as he does in his children’s books (“Sally’s suitor, whatever his name was, seems a bit impulsive, a word which here means ‘too quick to leave town just because Sally didn’t show up at a certain time'”). It feels as if the author is chatting to you: he mentions books he’s just thought of, and conversations he remembers, and why he likes specialty shops. There are little remarks phrased so simply and directly and purely, I had to stop, and blink, and wonder why I had never thought of saying it like that before—but that is the gift, to be able to say things that way, so that other people stop and blink and wonder why something so easy wasn’t easy to come up with themselves. There are little looping asides, where he reuses a word he defined earlier, as if trying to help you learn it. I was charmed by it all, and bewildered. I finished it and walked directly to my computer. If your library has it, I think you should try it, even if you don’t work there and so you have to make a special trip.

I continue to find it satisfying to do a pick-and-choose Valentine’s Day each year, based on inclination and mood. Last year, which was the first Valentine’s Day of the pandemic, I felt like buying cozy/at-home Galentine’s Day gifts and leaving them sneakily at local friends’ houses, and doing a Galentine’s Day care package giveaway that got wildly and beautifully out of hand. This year I am doing:

• heart sweater
• heart sneakers
• heart earrings
• heart mug for coffee
• classroom-style paper valentines (candy taped to each one) for co-workers
• giant Hershey Kisses for the kids
• Valentine care packages for the college kids
• Valentine care package for niece/nephew
• heart-shaped plastic plates

Which looks like a lot when I list it out, but FEELS very low-key: I already owned the sweater and the sneakers and the earrings and the mug and the plates. The co-worker valentines were a last-minute decision, half an hour before I left for work, when it suddenly seemed like it would be fun; I already had a bunch of paper valentines on hand, and I had a bag of heart-shaped York peppermint patties, so I combined them real quick and they were fun to hand out / put at people’s work areas. (I knew from previous years that a few co-workers hand out similar things, so I wouldn’t be the only one.) I always get the giant Hershey Kisses for the kids, so that was very low mental effort. The care packages were small and casual, not elaborate.

In previous years I’ve ordered myself a shipment of See’s Candies to arrive in time for Valentine’s Day. This year I didn’t, because I’d ordered myself some See’s back in the fall, and was still working on it in January, so it seemed less special/tempting. Also, I’d wondered if Paul might suddenly order some, because recently it seems to me that he senses a disturbance in the force and has been attempting to do some of the things I have finally given up on him ever doing. Probably I will buy myself some sort of Valentine’s Day candy, maybe See’s or maybe a box of something at Target, but I will buy it on sale/clearance this year.

And I have flowers, because I like flowers, and happily I like grocery-store flowers, so in The Difficult Months (January and February and often well into March) I try to have two bouquets going: one $3.99 misc-but-mostly-carnations bouquet, and/or one $4.99 tulips bouquet, and/or one $1.89 daffodils bouquet, depending on what is available. The vase with the $3.99 misc bouquet starts out looking pitiful, because a $3.99 bouquet is fairly thin; but the NEXT time you go to the grocery store and get ANOTHER $3.99 bouquet, part of the FIRST $3.99 bouquet (including usually all of the greenery) is still fresh and good!—so you just pull out the wilty items, freshen the water, trim the stems of what’s still good, add in the new bouquet, and now the bouquet is much fuller! This is how it works with the daffodils, too: $1.89 worth of daffodils is pretty okay, but it’s even MORE okay if you go back and get another $1.89 of daffodils, and get rid of the wilty daffodils from the first batch, and keep doing that every time. (I have a THIRD vase, a small one that is in fact a surprisingly prettily-shaped a Starbucks frappuccino bottle and I highly recommend acquiring one, for the flowers/greenery that have lasted longer than expected, but have been trimmed so many times they’re now too short for the regular vase). The $4.99 tulips typically last at least a week, but they all blow out at once; so I let them do their thing, and then I throw them all away, wash the vase, and start with a new batch.

Oh, and I ordered heart-shaped boxes of See’s to be delivered to the unit where Edward was in the hospital for a week, and I see that those were delivered today, so that’s fun!

I do miss going out for dinner with Paul: we’d get cocktails AND dessert; and, because we don’t usually eat out, it felt special enough that then we could stop having the discussion about what we were doing for Valentine’s Day. But we are not yet eating in restaurants, and it is not warm enough to eat outdoors, so we got take-out yesterday, and that did not feel at all the same. Well, perhaps next year.

I keep mentally composing yet another post about how I don’t have a chore partnership in my marriage, but I am so extremely sick of thinking about that and writing about that. Usually the way it seems to work is that once something like that occupies my mind, I HAVE to write about it before I can write about anything else; but I deeply don’t want to, and it doesn’t feel as if it would be therapeutic to do so. Maybe it would work to pretend I already wrote about it, or pretend that this paragraph counts as writing about it. Or what if I just say that one of the other things I’ve been mentally composing is a little speech that begins “I’m leaving,” and then goes on to explain why actually I should have left 25 years ago / why nearly anyone should be able to understand, without 25 years of explanations, that they need to do their own fair share of household chores / the many, many ways in which men systemically and societally and personally exploit women. Okay, let’s call that “written about.”

We have been home from the hospital for a week and a half. I don’t remember if I mentioned that, when we’d been home several days, and it had been a week and a half since Edward’s surgery which led to a hospital stay, we got a letter from our insurance company explaining that our doctor’s request for the emergency surgery and hospital stay was denied, because it was not medically necessary. As if it were not FAR TOO LATE at that point, and as if they were not WELL AWARE OF THAT, and as if they did not KNOW that such a letter would stop the heart of anyone receiving it.

The main reason I did not need to be scraped out of the batty attic is that this has happened before, and what has happened each time is that, without my needing to get involved at all, our doctor has called the insurance company and, I like to imagine, used some colorful language to explain to the insurance company that ONE OF THE PEOPLE ON THE PHONE is the Chief of Pediatric ENT at a large children’s hospital and knows what is medically necessary, and THE OTHER PERSON ON THE PHONE is not and does not.

And that is what apparently happened in this situation, because we got another letter yesterday, two and a half weeks after the surgery, saying that the doctor had provided them with “new information,” and the procedure and five days in the hospital were now approved. We spent either seven or eight days in the hospital, depending on how they count it, so let’s see if we get another letter soon. In any case, imagining having to pay out-of-pocket for two or three days in the hospital (which will not happen) is a much nicer nightmare than imagining having to pay out-of-pocket for surgery plus seven or eight days in the hospital. (My understanding is that doctors actually get all of these things fully approved before the things happen, because they know, as the insurance companies do, that almost literally no one can afford to pay for them out of pocket, and doctors/hospitals would like to be paid; and that this paperwork is just the late-arriving chaff of those long-since-made decisions.)

We are home from the hospital and have been since Wednesday afternoon. I feel as if I have barely stopped moving since then. There was one day when I got to bedtime and realized I had NOT PLAYED ANY OF MY PHONE GAMES ALL DAY; I had to hurry and log into each of them, just to avoid losing my streaks. Paul and Elizabeth and Henry kept up with dishes and so forth while I was gone, it’s not like I came home to a big mess—but there are a million little things that accumulate surprisingly quickly: the dish mat needed cleaning, and the toothbrush cups needed to go through the dishwasher, and the flowers needed fresh water, and the clock needed winding, and there was laundry and grocery shopping and bill-paying to be done. That’s not a very impressive list; I don’t know why it’s been keeping me so busy. I think part of it is that thing where once my Feeling Busy detectors get triggered by a certain level of responsibilities (giving Edward his antibiotic three times a day; monitoring his incision and putting more ointment on it; making sure he’s catching up on his schoolwork; asking my boss for yet another day off to take him to his follow-up appointment next week), any additional responsibilities, even normal/small ones, tip me over the edge into Overwhelmed. And when I’m Overwhelmed, I see Overwhelming Tasks EVERYWHERE. Obviously the toothbrush cups can wait another day, but IT FEELS LIKE THEY CANNOT.

I had a blood donation appointment on Thursday. I’d been sulking/abstaining, because of how EXTREMELY LONG the Red Cross keeps me waiting past my appointment time—and they are ONLY doing appointments right now, so this is not an issue of needing to figure out how to incorporate walk-ins: they are DELIBERATELY AND KNOWINGLY overbooking. The last time I donated, I sat in the waiting area breathing air unnecessarily with strangers for well over an hour past my appointment time; and, while I did that, THREE donors had to leave because they couldn’t wait any longer / had to go pick up kids from school / etc. One of them said he lived right in the neighborhood and asked if he could run home to meet the bus and then come back, and the Red Cross person told him no, if he left his appointment would be canceled.

So it has been A BIT RICH to see all these many, many articles recently about how the Red Cross is DESPERATE for donations, it’s an EMERGENCY. I feel as if change, in this case, should come from within. Let’s not START by nagging donors; let’s instead schedule appointments in a way that makes sense, and not overbook the drives, and KEEP the regular donors we have rather than losing them in droves and then having to harangue them to get them back. I said so online (am I new here), and got a lot of people Explaining to me that a lot of workers have been out sick. Oh, yes, thank you for the news. But this has been going on since LONG before the pandemic, and at MULTIPLE locations, so I believe this to be systemic rather than fleeting/coincidental. (Someone else informed me that SHE has never had to wait longer than 5 minutes. Oh…….good…….?)

Also, it is hardly new to have the Red Cross claiming that there is an emergency. EVERY email I get from them claims there is currently an unprecedented and urgent need for blood.

Anyway, finally I succumbed to the barrage (and the story on NPR) and was like “FINE I WILL DONATE BLOOD, IF IT’S SO URGENT.” I couldn’t get an appointment for weeks, and only at a place half an hour away, which, again, if it is so urgent, CAN SOMETHING BE DONE ABOUT THAT. The happy thing was that at this location, maybe it was a fluke, but I was seen as soon as I got there, and was out of there half an hour afterward. But with the hour of driving, the whole thing still took about as long as when I have to wait for an hour—though, true, I was not breathing air with strangers for that hour, but was instead driving along listening to music and enlarging my carbon footprint.

Well. It is good to be home. Edward can’t shower for two weeks after the surgery, but we are already a week and a half into that time. His HAIR is the main issue, because the important thing is to avoid getting any water or dry shampoo or anything else on his incision, which is about an inch below his hairline. In the hospital they gave us an interesting “shampoo cap,” which was like a microwaveable shower cap lined with soapy no-rinse shampoo—but it didn’t actually work. Or rather, it might have made his hair cleaner, but his hair didn’t LOOK any cleaner. And it was still really difficult to avoid getting anything on the incision. Today I might try bandaging it up and putting plastic over it (but it’s hard to tape it securely, because of his hair) and then washing his hair in the sink.

[Edited to add: The comments section seems to be getting derailed on the topic of How Often People Shower. I hope we can all agree to agree, whatever our own personal bathing philosophies / skin issues / avoidance of consumerism / etc., that for a TEENAGED BOY, two weeks without a shower is NOT GOOD.]

Hello, still from the hospital! This morning when a crew came into the room at 6:30, it sounded as if I might not even have enough time to zip downstairs and acquire a coffee before they’d be whisking Edward away for a second CT scan and then a second surgery. (A nurse told us last night she’d been told to have him stop eating/drinking at midnight, which was our first clue that something might be happening today.) I fairly FLEW for the coffee, then flew back, panting. At around noon, they finally came to get him for the CT scan. We have become familiar over the years with the concept of Hospital Time: things happen when they happen, and not when anyone says they’re going to happen, and the term “soon” means “in the future, that’s all we can say”—but it still fools me from time to time.

What I should have done was race down to get some lunch right after the CT scan, since we knew it would HAVE to take at least a certain minimum amount of time before the results could be evaluated/communicated—but I didn’t think of it. I was still in foolish Poised For Action mode, plus I wanted to update family members. Then it was 2:00 and I hadn’t had lunch, but now it really did seem as if any minute the doctor might come in and want to talk about the CT scan and discuss surgery options, so I didn’t feel I could go.

The ENT doctor/surgeon came in around 3:30 and talked about how things were kind of inconclusive, and that one option was to send us home and have us come back Thursday—so we could at least get a couple of normal nights of sleep. He said he would go talk to Infectious Disease (that’s the department handling the antibiotics, and they decide when it’s okay to switch from IV antibiotics to oral ones) and get back to us. He left, and about ten minutes later the Infectious Disease doctor came in to talk to us, and we told her the ENT surgeon was looking for her, and right around the time she was done talking to us her pager went off and it was the ENT surgeon, and she said she would go talk to him. It is now 7:00 p.m. and no one has come back. I guess we are staying another night? The nurse did come in and say Edward could eat and drink again, so in any case we know surgery is not imminent; he had a nice big dinner and is feeling a lot cheerier.

There are several things that would vastly improve The Hospital Experience for me. One of them is not even something I’d waste a wish on, which is that I would love it if things happened when people said they were going to happen—but I know that is not possible/realistic. I think the more realistic wish (not that I will get this wish, either) would be to NOT HAVE the consistently-wrong predictions. I remember when I worked at a pharmacy, I would start adjusting the time I told people the prescription would be ready, as prescriptions piled up: so, like, if we only had one prescription to fill, I’d say it would be 10-15 minutes (and often we could do it quicker than that); but once we had half a dozen prescriptions, all for people who wanted to wait for them instead of coming back later, I would be saying 30-40 minutes; and if we hit more like 10-12 waiting prescriptions, I would say I was afraid we were rather backed up and it would be about an hour. My boss did not like that, and wanted me to say 10-15 minutes to everyone. But I know for myself, the absolute WORST is to be told 10-15 minutes and have it be an hour! That’s the WORST! If I KNOW it’s going to be an hour, I can choose to come back later! If I am TOLD it will be 10-15 minutes, I will notice and count and resent EVERY SINGLE EXTRA MINUTE! And my BOSS was not the one who would have to deal with those absolutely-justified noticing/counting/resenting people!

Where was I? Oh, yes. So I would not even think to try to fix Hospital Time, because obviously there are always going to be things that take longer than expected, and emergencies that have to be dealt with, and unexpected complications, and so forth; and it is in everyone’s best interest for doctors and other medical professionals to take the time things NEED, and to take care of situations in THE ORDER THAT MAKES THE MOST SENSE. But I WOULD enjoy it if people didn’t make predictions when they KNOW, FAR BETTER THAN I DO, how unreliable those predictions end up being. I feel like a lot of hospital people are like my boss at the pharmacy telling everyone it will be 10-15 minutes even when they know it’s going to be an hour, and that’s not good for anyone. (There ARE some hospital people who will say things like “They say 2:00, but–*HUGE SHRUG*–you know how these things go. We’ll just see!” I love them.) (Their bosses probably tsk at them.)

The second thing that would vastly improve The Hospital Experience for me would be having one or two times per day when I could be assured that no one was going to come in with anything important. If I just knew that between 11:00 and noon, or 1:00 and 2:00, or 9:00 and 10:00 at night, NO DOCTOR WOULD COME IN, then I would know when to take a shower, or run downstairs for coffee, or go for a little walk, or use the bathroom. Just as it is comically uncanny how people in a hospital will come into the room the minute you doze off, it is comically uncanny how we will be in the room for hours and hours and hours undisturbed, and then I will go downstairs to get a coffee, and when I come back 10 minutes later Edward tells me the doctor was there while I was gone. (The doctor, probably: “Nurse, please page me when The Mother leaves the room.”) Or I finally decide I will risk a shower, and I am undressing in the bathroom and I hear a knock at the room door and then I hear the doctor’s voice. For heaven’s sake, what is a person to do?? Just tell me even HALF AN HOUR A DAY when I can COUNT ON being unmissed. Right now, in fact, I would like to take a shower, since evenings in general seem less busy/doctory than mornings. But sometimes a doctor comes to see us after handling their last surgery of the day. When is it definitely safe to take a shower? After 9:00 p.m.? After 10:00 p.m.?

The third thing that would vastly improve The Hospital Experience for me would be if someone came through each day and checked on supplies, just automatically, perhaps when they came to collect the trash. I hate having to tell A REGISTERED NURSE that we need more toilet paper, as if I think she is our personal servant. And you were all SO helpful last time I was here and was afraid to ask about towels, but I was STILL AFRAID AGAIN TO ASK ABOUT TOWELS. (Partly because I wasn’t sure if Covid restrictions might apply to the showers, but mostly because I am as ever a wee sleekit cowrin tim’rous beastie.) I wish there were towels already in the room, and also sheets so I could change Edward’s bed when the medication makes him all sweaty, and really I just wish I had access to all relevant supplies so I could do my own fussing/housework and didn’t feel like I was constantly asking for things / asking for people to do things. I know it’s NOT like this, but it FEELS like I am snapping my fingers and demanding room service. I was so happy and relieved when I realized that I could take our finished meal trays out to a cart in the hall, instead of the nurses having to do it for us. Surely there are other things like that that I could be doing if I only knew! But I think for most of the things I just CAN’T: I don’t have access to the sheets or the towels or the toilet paper.

The fourth thing that would vastly etc. etc. would be a good gift shop. Our local hospital is not anywhere near as well ranked as this city hospital, and they do not specialize in children (they’ll take out children’s tonsils or set their broken bones, but as soon as Edward needed a more extensive procedure they sent us here), but they have (or used to have—I haven’t been there since Elizabeth got her tonsils out, and that must be about a decade ago now) a really good gift shop. They have the expected stuffed animals and toys and cards and flowers, but also it’s like a small drug store: they have over-the-counter medications, pads and tampons, a small section of socks and underwear. Here, I have to leave the hospital and walk to a drug store, which does not sound so bad when I type it out, but I am not a city mouse and would prefer to stay tucked into the hospital—especially now, when there are screening stations to navigate at the entrances.

And the final thing is that I would love to be able to order Edward’s meal trays ONLINE. I have to use the phone every single time, and I would say 9 out of 10 times I get someone brusque who sounds like they hate their job, and often it’s someone who is pointlessly trying to correct the way I’m ordering (“No, ketchup is a condiment, tell me that at the very end”), when their colleagues have corrected me the other way (“Hamburger, okay—you want ketchup or mustard or anything with that? And fries, okay—you want salt and ketchup with those?”). And why correct ANYONE, when most of us are merely passing through and no one will be long-served by these educational efforts, and it will only frustrate the employees who will feel as if they SAY it and SAY it and no one EVER LEARNS?

We are still in the hospital. Today is Sunday. We got here Wednesday morning. The incision should be “running clear” by now, but it is not. Bloodwork should be showing decreasing inflammation/infection markers, but it is not. The likely explanation is that some of the abscess is still there—a possibility we were warned about, since it was multichambered, extensive, and not in a location where they could see what they were doing (the surgeon said that in order to see it all, they would have had to take risks that were not worth taking). Tomorrow they will likely do another CT scan to see what the situation is. After that, it seems likely there will be another surgery. This is what happened with his sinus abscesses as well, except that time we went home in between; this is longer, but less hassle, and hopefully will result in fewer weeks of antibiotics (last time he took antibiotics for the weeks in between surgeries, and then for a month after the second surgery; it was a lot of antibiotics).

I have finished another book: Plainsong, by Kent Haruf (Target link) (Amazon link).

(image from Target.com)

I would NEVER have selected this book at the library, NEVER. I would have judged it by its cover (boring/bleak), title (sounds like a reference to either the Amish or The Great Plains), author (older white guy), and plot (sounds depressing/bleak). I was sure that I read it ONLY because Sundry recommended it, but can I find that recommendation to link to it? Can I hell. But I know it was before Henry was born, because I remember I was reading the book when I found out I was pregnant with him; I was thinking about that riveting news for the entire rest of the book, and it got locked in. If he’d been a girl, we were strongly considering the name Victoria, the name of one of the characters. It is one of my favorite books I’ve ever read, so I can’t explain why it took me so long to re-read it, except that there are some difficult/sad scenes, and sometimes when I’m considering a re-read, such scenes loom too large, even if I know at the time I considered them well worth it.

Anyway, I’d bought the book at some point during the pandemic, and it was on my To Read pile, and I brought it along to the hospital; and I just finished reading it, and I loved it all over again. I think it is the kind of book that some people would love so much they can’t stand it, and other people would be like “What the heck? I don’t get this at all”—because so much of what I love is the exact way things are phrased, and that is the kind of thing that can yank one heart all around and leave another heart right where it is. So maybe get it from your library and see what you think. This book too has an Unexpected Baby plotline, which I will go for every time.

I have Eventide with me; that’s the sequel, which I don’t believe I ever read. And there’s a third book, Benediction, which I wonder if I’d better just go ahead and order now so it’ll be at my house if we ever get discharged from this hospital. And the last book I have with me is The Tie That Binds, another Kent Haruf, and one that I have because when I ordered Plainsong and Eventide, used books were buy two get one free, and they didn’t have Benediction.