In addition to my forced hunger sit-in, I was subjected
to a couple of ladies in their early 60’s who arrived at the office all ready
for a little afternoon of ‘Since-you-agreed-to-drive-me-here-for-my-procedure-I’ll-tell-you-in-great-detail-about-my-grown-children-and-who-is-addicted-to-what-drug-and-whose-boyfriend-might-turn-out-to-be-a-wife-beater-and-how-I-refuse-to-allow-my-grandkid-to-control-me-and-other-dark-and-annoying-secrets-about-our-messed-up-clan’
in as loud a voice as they could muster.
I suspected the fish wanted to hurl themselves to an untimely death by
flipping let’s-save-Dorie-style onto the floor of the
over-the-top-decorated-Puritan-themed waiting room. I cannot make this up. I whipped my head in the woman’s direction
and gave her a save-it-for-your-therapist’s-office look, but she didn’t take
the bait. Shock.
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'I can't feel my mouth,' Mini's attempt to eat oatmeal. |
I have been trying a new thing where I eat dinner as
close to 5:00 as I can, and then not another morsel of food till morning. Without getting gross, my body does not
always allow me to sleep if food is in my system. Good times. The doc just says it is IBS. I don't think that is what I have, but whatever. This early dinner plan works well for me, but it is not always practical.
Well, a late salad (AFTER racing to the pharmacy for
drugs and administering said drugs to kids who had to eat something first but
couldn’t feel their faces – well, Mini couldn’t, meant I ate LUNCH terribly late,
like close to 4) led to a slightly late dinner where I stress-ate a bigger
plate of leftovers than I needed to, ‘cause hello – recent salad, but hello so
many leftovers that need to be eaten.
Now my insides are anything but happy.
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It wasn't pretty. She could not grasp that half of it was on her chin. |
Add to that the fact that Coach kept getting out of
bed tonight and leaving the room, then coming back to bed. Then repeating the same thing for what felt
like 10 times. This is a signal of
college kids (this was Eddie, not Laddie) stumbling around downstairs after a night of too much fun with
friends and I try to ignore whatever is alarming him thinking ‘he’s
got this’, but since my gut was shouting at me anyway I decided to take
some Tums, chug a couple gallons of water, and describe my day to you.
I have already decided to postpone the remainder of the
Ding-Dong-Ping-Pong table that got a tad sappy at the end, and share this with
you on my birthday. It’s my birthday
gift to you, and I hope you like hyphens since it seems I am trying to win a hyphen-insertion award of some kind.
I got an early gift this evening in the form of a
laughing fit, the likes of which I do not know that I have EVER
encountered. And I thought I would share
it while my stomach still hurts from laughing.
(Separate pain than the cluster-eating, over-doing-it pain I have in my
gut right now).
Much of today was not funny. I think I needed to laugh. Hard.
So when I got a chuckle out of the remarks from my pain-management
patients, I allowed it to rumble until it was simply out of control. The bummer here is that I do not anticipate
you will find my hysterics as humorous as I did. If you do, bonus. I have already scolded my puffy-faced friends
for not capturing my own laughing-gas moment with their phones, because the
other family members missed it and it was something to behold.
Coach and Ed were invited to our friends’ house
tonight. Coach’s buddy – we will call
him Buddy – is Ed’s good friend’s dad.
Because Buddy is very much still a kid himself, his own kids have never
called him ‘dad.’ They call him ‘Buddy’
like everyone else.
Buddy is one of the
most social people I have ever met. He
would host people at his home every night if his wife would allow it. Turns out, as my luck would have it, Buddy’s
wife is an introvert. She will
entertain, but more often than not, Buddy will host the guys to watch a game
and she will not agree to include the wives.
That was the situation tonight.
Coach enjoys Buddy’s company and I enjoy the wife’s company . . . . when
I am included. That Seinfeld episode does
not lie - it is hard to find a couple that you both like to spend time with, so
it does bum me out that she is missing the socializing chip. Ironically, Coach tends to be a bit more
content to avoid social settings. He is
not always up to hang out with Buddy when Buddy texts and suggests they meet
out for a drink. Whereas I am usually
ready to get out and be social. Granted
I spend my days with tots and Coach TALKS with patients all day long which pushes him to the edge at times.
After Coach left, Tank happened to glance at the instruction sheet from the doc. It said a good first meal suggestion is a shake. Tank and Mini felt robbed. They begged me to go out and get them a shake. I invited them to eat the ice cream in the freezer. Same difference! Meanwhile I texted Coach to let him know that anarchy had ensued over a missed shake opportunity, but I assured him that he should have a great time with Buddy and not to fear for my well being.
Curly is sleeping over at a friend’s house –was at a
different friend’s house sleeping over last night. I envy her as she escaped the drool-face,
blood-spitting theme that we had going on over here today. Last night she (and Reg and Mini) missed the:
this-is-our-house-follow-our-rules drama
that ensued between Coach and I and Lad.
That ended with a little ‘I will never speak to you again once I leave
here to go back to school in early January.
I mean it -NEVER’ talk. This stemmed from a sneak-out-of-the-house late Christmas night situation but ballooned from there into an array of confused topics.
I will leave that long story at that, but know that the
finger-pointing about his childhood (same delightful childhood the other 5 kids
rave about by the way) and how I managed to ruin his break because I was not ‘happy-go-lucky’
enough for him (he actually used those words) when I was busy racing around to
get things done (and he was busy playing Xbox for hours and working out for hours and
requesting the car be available for him but then sleeping till noon while we all
jumped thru the only-one-car-available-for-us hoops) ruined his break and other
confusing, hurtful tidbits (while Coach is accused of nothing since he was
always at work when I was busier than busy with the gang at home) led to me
sobbing in my car as I left Tank for his surgery and drove 40 minutes round
trip to collect Mini for her surgery.
Lest
you think my stress eating was centered on the temporary discomfort of two
teens drooling their food on my island and begging for more pain pills. That was a cakewalk compared to the Lad shit.
Anyway, Lad hung out in the basement in an attempt to
steer clear, I guess. That left Tank,
Mini, and Reg and I to watch a movie.
Tank chose ‘The Devil’s Own,’
which I had not seen in years.
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compliments of pintrest. This is what I was picturing, so maybe I didn't make it up. |
After the movie, the night was still young. Reg went to play Xbox in Lad’s ‘Lad-cave’ and
I finally remembered to text my brother a happy birthday message. I included a photo of the two extraction
victims. Pat texted back: ‘Tank too?’ (Evidence that he does not read my Christmas poem because the last lines mention the upcoming wisdom teeth pulling of both kids). I texted back ‘Yep, it set us back close to
$7,000.’
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Ice packs, swollen faces, pain meds, good times. |
Fingers crossed that insurance
will reimburse for some of it. (And for
that amount of dough you would have thought they would have included a
truckload of gauze, but they skimped on it which had Mini in an all-out panic
till her mouth finally stopped bleeding after we had scraped together some gauze
left over from Ed’s wisdom teeth extraction in July. Yes, 2019 was a real kick in the pants over
here, or maybe that should be kick in the gums).
Mini and Tank were up moving around doing their best imitation of Ebenezer Scrooge when he had that toothache (or did he just sleep like that? What am I thinking of?) and he had a white cloth tied around his head. They have a Velcro ice pack that they stuck in the freezer for 30 minutes and then wore it for 30 minutes.
In order for them to have more pain pills I insisted that they eat a bit more. Mini was ingesting like her 15th pieorgie. I made these for the kids when they were really small, but Mini does not remember them. Today she fell hard and fast in love with them, but could NOT remember what to call them. She mumbled things like: ‘Can I have another Patagonia?’ ‘Will you make more peleogosists?’ ‘Is it OK for me to eat even more papaorias?’
I wish I could remember all of the comments Tank made as his pain was never as bad as hers. Coach and I both assumed it would be just the opposite. Mini remembers waking up a bit during the procedure. Kid you not – I woke up during my extraction 20 plus years ago, and saw the doc using all of his weight to break apart the damn teeth in my mouth till they pumped some additional sedative in me. I think hers were harder to extract than Tank’s thus more pain.
Tank did say this: Gosh, like I was totally out of it. They could have hit me in the face while I was out and I never would have known it.
Me: We asked them to do that, but they said they would charge extra for it.
Once when Mini was really struggling, Tank was like ‘Yeah, you have four huge holes in the back of your mouth. It is gonna bleed. Now shut up.’
Oh, and he called out JUST AS SHE WAS TRYING TO SWALLOW A HORSE PILL: ‘Wait, is she still unable to swallow a pill?’
Mini (like her mother before her) had a real issue swallowing pills and used to have to get antibiotics in liquid form, but she has gotten better (and I am fine now too, thanks for asking). Mini proceeded to choke on the pill once he focused on her past ‘issue’. She eventually got it down, but then had that awful pill taste in her mouth since it took a couple of swallows. I rushed over with some protein shake on a spoon to alleviate the after-taste. She only drooled half of it on the counter. Progress.
Then Pat texted me this gem: ‘Why did they have them out? Were they interfering with other teeth?’
I was a bit dumbfounded. I almost texted back something along the
lines of: ‘No, purely cosmetic.’ Or, ‘No, we just thought it might be fun to
watch them suffer.’ Like,
huh? Instead I texted back the truth: ‘Recommended by dentist and the ortho.’
In the background, Mini sang in a sarcastic tone: ‘Notre Dame edu-ca-tion!’
Tank: ‘Like,
what? There is something wrong with him.’
I was lying on the couch with the mate-less socks that
I was attempting to sort arranged all over my blanket. It had been a long day, and I was asking the victims
patients how many pieorgies were left and telling Tank he could eat the
apple-puff pancake still in the fridge leftover from Christmas morning. I couldn’t move. My serving-them-stuff window had closed plus
I was trapped by my unmatched socks dilemma.
In response to Pat’s inquisitive text, Mini
half-mumbled, half-hollered, “Yeah, well some of us believe in seeing the
dentist for our teeth Mr. ‘I-never-had-braces-even-though-I-needed-them-because-it-might-interfere-with-my-flute-playing.’
“
Pat relentlessly teased me for being tall when we were
kids. Eventually I figured out that I
could whip back an insult like: ‘OK,
Bucky Beaver’ because he had some significant chompers. They are still front and center, but hey –
great flute player. If you have any
doubts about his musical abilities, I will hook you up with my folks who will
gladly spout off about that and his many other impressive attributes. (You follow me where I am going here? My middle-child, glossed over self butted up against this
I-do-no-wrong king. He was even born 3 days
shy of my 1st b-day. ‘A king
has arrived’ who promptly bumped me off the baby throne PLUS first born son sort of phenomenon.)
All of a sudden it dawned on me in my on-the-couch-mode
that I was no longer alone in my quest to stick up for myself as the glossed
over, frumpy middle child. I called out to my
gimpy-mouthed teenagers:
‘I
am just so happy to be raising a small army of people who will make fun of my
siblings with me. At last – reinforcements!’
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But under her bandaid was NOT blue. |

Their
pleas only made me laugh harder.
‘It
HURTS to laugh. Stop it Mommy! Ohh!
Bahhhh!!! Eww!! Haaaa!!
No –stop!’
I could not stop, though. It just struck me as too damn funny. Coach came home a bit later and I was all –
Hope you had fun with Buddy. We’ve been
tearing it up over here with pain pills, a repeated DVD, laundry, ice-backs, pieorgies aka petunias and the
longest laughing fit I have ever encountered.’
Tank and Mini begged me not to start up again. Tempting, but I only giggled a little.
I apologize for the length of this post, but it's my birthday and I'll post as long as I want to. Ha. I would love for my birthday to receive a record number of comments. I invite you to share your goofy sibling story, or rough sleep issue, or wisdom teeth ordeal, or favorite soft food, or your best laughing fit, or your request that I either continue to write during all-nighters or NEVER write during a lack of sleep again. I will read your comments while softly singing 'Happy Birthday to me.' I hope to get some Z's now that it is 5 am and I have been awake since before 2 am. Grrr.