The Saga Continues...

So after dealing with pneumonia for the last three weeks, I went to the dentist yesterday morning with my daughters. They both got a thumbs-up, as neither of them had any cavities or any problems with their teeth. I too, got a good report as far as having cavities, but when my dentist took a look at the two top teeth (I have no idea what their technical name is), she gave me a horrified glance and said, "Ok, we need to take an x-ray of that tooth!"

Now the thing is this...a few years ago, one of my children (I think it might have been Jamie) head butted me while sitting on my lap. At the time, I went to see my dentist because the top teeth felt a bit loose to me. And in fact, they had been slightly loosened from the blow. During that visit, Dr. Telang told me that she had seen a lot of mothers who came in with chipped teeth or missing them altogether...the cause? Their children. (Fathers apparently don't suffer the same fate as mothers and I'm not sure why this is...maybe they don't hold their kids as often? Or maybe it's because they are more aware of the potential for danger and keep their heads well away from the aforementioned children?)...

The teeth in question healed just fine.

A few weeks ago, another child managed to throw her head back (yes, this time it was Emma), and hit me square in the mouth. She cried, I yelled, all seemed to be fine.

And then I noticed (around the time I was dealing with the pneumonia) that my top teeth seemed to be a bit looser than the surrounding teeth. I decided to wait until my dentist's appointment to bring the matter up...which led to the x-ray taken yesterday morning.

And then I learned that not only was I not imagining the teeth being looser than usual, but I would have to exist on a soft food diet. No biting into anything. Not even a sandwich. For ten days. After the ten days are up, I am to check the teeth again, and if there is no improvement, then I have to go back to the dentist, whereupon I may be sent to a root canal specialist.

I took the girls to school and then went home and complained loudly to my husband about the diagnosis and the diet prescription. Brian suggested that I should try Boost (a meal replacement drink thingy).

Last night for dinner, while trying to eat a hamburger (On a bun. Cut into tiny pieces. With a knife and fork.), I casually asked my husband what exactly was involved in a root canal. He put down his fork and pointing to his front tooth, he began, "Well, they drill up through..."

That was as far as he got before I yelled something incoherent and jumped up out of my chair.

"Now are you on board with the soft food diet?" he asked me calmly.

Yes...yes, I am...

What A Month...

I haven't posted a thing here in three weeks, and this time I cannot blame the children for it. Nope, this time, I place the blame squarely on the pneumonia that I somehow came down with at the end of April.

For two weeks, I ran a low-grade fever, had a cough, had no appetite and felt such low energy that it was difficult to climb out of bed every morning. During this time, Brian was at constant swine-flu updates. By the end of the first week, he started telling me to go to the doctor. Neither one of us believed that the H1N1 virus (as it came to be known by the media, due to fears that pigs were somehow going to be offended that a disease was named after one of their bretheren), but we knew something was up...or rather, Brian felt that something wasn't quite normal; I kept insisting that it was just a normal cold and that it was running the same way that any cold I have developed over the last three or four years had gone.

About ten days in, just to make my husband happy (read: get him to stop nagging me), I went to a walk-in clinic near our house. I had to take Emma and Jamie with me, and we sat in the waiting room for an hour, while I hacked into my sleeve and the other patients eyed me warily. The twins were none to happy to have to sit and do nothing, and kept demanding that we leave because "they're not even calling you in, Mama!"...I was just about to give in to their demands (and was thinking up ways to explain my leaving to Brian) when my name was called.

Emma, Jamie and I walked into the examining room, and I had them wait there while I made a two minute run to the bathroom (8 glasses of water in less than 6 hours will do that to you)...when I got back to the room, we waited for another five minutes or so and then the doctor came in. I explained to her about the fever, the weird sensation in my left ear, about how I didn't think it was swine flu, and that while neither my husband (the reporter, for those of you new here) nor I thought it was the virus, I thought I should get checked out (especially since I am also a type 1 diabetic).

I was asked if I had come in contact with anyone who had it, and I said, truthfully, "I don't know."

"Well," said the doctor. "Then you don't have it."

Which is lovely to hear, but how on earth would she know? I mean, if I didn't know if I'd been in contact with anyone who had swine flu, and the media was rampant with reports of how easy it was to catch it, how the hell would she be able to say definitively, no?

Moving right along, she listened to the top part of my lungs and told me that I had a cold. She gave me a prescription for a puffer (not sure if there's a more technical term for it) and that was it.

I saw her for less time than it took me to go pee.

She didn't look in my ears, check my temperature, take blood, do a swab...nothing but the puffer prescription.

I left, Emma and Jamie in tow, thinking, man, I should just have gone to see Dr. Barry. (He being our family physician, where there is also a walk-in clinic, but they had said they were extremely busy that particular day, and Barry wasn't in anyway)

That was on Tuesday.

By Friday morning, I still wasn't feeling any better, despite the puffer. (And in fact, I think I may have been slightly allergic to it, since every time I took the prescribed dose, I ended up feeling so dizzy I couldn't stand straight) I had an appointment with a different doctor at our regular doctor's office, and so when I got there, I asked about the walk-in clinic and found out that since I was the first one in the office that morning, I would be able to see someone without having to wait for hours on end.

After my first appointment, I sat in the waiting room for five minutes and then saw a lovely young lady (who I thought looked way too young to be a doctor, until she generously showed me the many grey hairs sprouting from the top of her head)...she looked in my ears, checked my temperature, and listened to my entire lungs...and lo, and behold, what she discovered was that I had fluid in my ears (hence the strange sensation there), a low grade fever (nearly two full weeks after the original onset of symptoms) and fluid in the lower regions of my lungs.

The diagnosis?

Atypical pneumonia...aka "walking pneumonia".

I was given a prescription for antibiotics (which worked very well, thank you very much) and told to keep using the puffer.

Without being told, I also learned that I should #1: trust my husband when he tells me something's wrong, and B: never go to that other walk-in clinic again.

There's tons more that's gone on this month that has kept me from updating here...but I'll let you in on that tomorrow...

Somehow It's Hard to Retort...

Emma: "When will it be summer vacation?"

Me: "In about a month and a half."

Emma: "Well I don't want to go to school anymore."

Me: "Well you have to go...you have to...learn things..."

Emma: "I already learned everything!"

Oh to have the self-confidence of a 5 year old...

Things That Send Me Over The Edge...

...that whining you keep doing because you want to go to the train museum, after being told that today is not the day we are going...

...making me follow through on the ridiculous punishment that came out of my mouth when you stuck your tongue out at me, after refusing to do what you were told...

...having to repeat the same thing at progressively louder volume because you seem to have miraculously turned stone deaf...

...watching you spin around the room, arms wide, dancing to the Barbie music...

...sigh...my girls are killin' me...

"Don't Stop Believin'...

...hold on to that feelin'!"

Nothin' funnier than watching four kids jump around the room, shaking their bums to Journey...

God bless Adam Sandler, that's all I have to say...

Happy Birthday to Me...

I am 41 years old today.

For the last few years, many people have asked me when I'm going to start lying about my age. Last year it seemed a lot of my friends and family thought I would be celebrating my second "39th" birthday, and seemed surprised when I told them emphatically, "Oh no! I am turning 40! I've been telling Brian for ten years that I expect a blowout for my 40th and if I don't actually turn 40, how can I get a big party?"

This year again, several people have asked if I am going to fudge the truth of my years and again I feel as though I am some sort of maverick when I state that I am proud of my 41 years and feel no need to hide from the turning of the calendar pages.

My children can't believe that I'm as old as I am, but then none of them have even hit double digits yet, so they have a hard time trying to imagine what it must mean to be my age (and while I may not be afraid or ashamed of my age, at least the kids no longer ask if the dinosaurs were still walking the earth when I was a child).

My parents called this morning to wish me a happy birthday and even they seemed surprised when I told them that I did not feel 41.

"You don't?" my mother asked, almost incredulously, I thought.

"No," I replied, and then we went on with the rest of our conversation.

But after I had hung up the phone, I started wondering, what is 41 supposed to look and feel like? When I was a kid (and even into my early 20s), 41 seemed as ancient as the hills in the valley I grew up in. By 41, humans were starting to fall apart. Grunting to sit down or get up out of a chair, needing glasses to read the paper, grey hair, wrinkles, sensible shoes and old lady hair styles...this is what I thought being past the age of 40 was supposed to look like.

Thankfully, other than needing glasses (and I'll blame genetics, not age for that one), none of those things have come to pass. I don't feel old, and I suppose that goes a long way toward helping me feel like I'm just getting started on this crazy journey we call life. Quite often I get comments like, "Wow! You don't look like you're that old!"...and while the comments are nice, it proves to me that none of us really knows what this age is supposed to look like.

As far as my looks go, I can thank good genes for that one too...and for the fact that because I'm so pasty white (in fact, my husband has told me that he could read without a lamp if I was to sit next to him), I have usually tried to keep my face covered (when you can get a sun burn just by thinking about going outside, it's a good idea to not only wear the spf lotion, but a hat too)...and other than about a month or so in my youth, I am not a smoker...all of which, according to the experts, will help me retain my "youthful" appearance...

But see, the thing is this, and I don't think I'm alone when I say this...I would not go back to my 20's if someone offered me all the money in the world. I still have one or two of the old insecurities that pop out from time to time, but they show up less and less as time goes by. Overall though, I am much happier now than I was then. I am stronger, not because some bad things happened and I survived them, but because of those things, I thrived. I have learned that sometimes I do not have to convince someone else that my opinion is the right one (and trust me, that lesson was, and is, a really hard lesson to learn). I have learned that I am beautiful, not because my husband or children or my family and friends tell me so, but because I can look in the mirror and see my beauty and accept it for myself. And I have learned that what the world tells me I should do and be and think is not nearly as important as what I hold to be true.

And that is a birthday gift worth unwrapping...

A Moment in the Day...

I went to get Jamie and Emma off the bus today and had the following conversation...

Me: "So how was school today, guys?"

Jamie: "It was good. I got to play."

Emma: "I didn't get to play, so it was bad."

Me: "Why didn't you get to play?"

Emma: "Because I was singing with Mr. Hamer."

Me: "You didn't get to play because you were singing with Mr. Hamer?"

Emma: "Yeah. Mr. Hamer is the singing guy."

Me: "So you got to sing with Mr. Hamer and the other kids? That must have been fun. You like to sing and you have a beautiful voice."

Emma: "I didn't get to use my beautiful voice because all the other kids were singing so I didn't get to use my beautiful voice."

Me: "You didn't get to use your 'beautiful voice'?"

Emma: "No. But we're a team."

Me: "Who's a team?"

Emma: "We are."

Me: "You mean you and me? We're a team?"

Emma: "Yeah, you and me, we're a team. Can Jamie sing?"

Me: "Oh yes, Jamie can sing. He has a beautiful voice too you know. He can be on our team too."

Emma: "Yeah, he can be on our team too, but he has to sing with his beautiful voice when I sing with my beautiful voice too."

If only she was always that sweet and accommodating...