In the Pink

On Friday Kate had another x-ray related to this little ankle twist she performed while coming down the slide (on the nanny’s lap, no less!). And even though they couldn’t detect the actual fracture even two weeks and three x-rays after the event, they did see new bone growth, which means something was broken that was mending itself.

Even though she was walking on the leg again at this point–after 10 days of us using her stroller in the house like a wheelchair–she was limping. And they wanted to make sure the bone healed perfectly, and that she didn’t keep up the limp.

Yes, the poor lamb. But here I was, one eye closed still and trying to act/look normal, and having a Momentary Parental Responsibility Quandary (TM).

The thing was, a cast meant no swimming on our much-anticipated summer visit to RI. And what’s worse, we couldn’t even bring her to the beach and taunt her by swimming ourselves and not letting her in the water (my hastily hatched Mental Plan B). Nope. No sand could get anywhere near the cast. Just a couple grains in there could really be itchy/scrapey/hurty.

I actually whined to the doctor at one point. “But we’re going to Rhode Island. To the beach!”

I know, I know. Pathetic! Selfish!

But in short order I pulled myself together and went to the waiting room to wait for the “cast tech” (another job they never tell you about in school) to call us.

I happen to know you can get a variety of cast color options these days, since my nephew Rory did his fair share of bone-breaking in his younger days. When they asked me what color I wanted for Kate, my mental answer was, “Pink. Duh!” (I left the duh out when I said it out loud.)

My little Sweet Tart was so innocent and easygoing getting her cast on. There was a “big boy” of about 14 years in the same room getting a black cast. His was a skateboarding accident and I decided that was a much cooler story for Kate to use than having had a mishap on the playground slide.

In my best Kathy Lee Gifford cheerful Mom voice I cooed over the cast for Kate. “It’s pink, honey!” I said encouragingly, as I bid adieu to my Ocean State beach time. But really, she didn’t seem phased by the cast at all. She wasn’t fussing or crying. Of course, her naivete about it all made it all sadder, and made my childish summer fun lamentation that much more reproachable.

In fact, the only time she has mentioned the cast at all was that first day when Mark was putting her down for a nap. She looked at him pointing to the cast (head tilted for cuteness no doubt) and asked, “Dada, Pink off? Pink off?” Clearly all my talk about it being pink had her thinking that was the word for cast.

If I have one maternal regret aside from having asked if 14 layers of plastic bag might just make the whole beach thing workable, it’s that we went for the pink cast. As I pushed Kate out of Children’s Hospital in her stroller that day I realized the horrific mistake I’d made. We were on our way home for Fourth of July–Fourth of July!–and I got a pink cast? Pink?! What was I thinking that I didn’t request for a customized red, white, and blue number? My God, that would most certainly assure us photographic coverage in The Bristol Phoenix!

Well, perhaps I can work some miracles swaddling it in patriotic bunting. All hope for this vacation is not yet lost.

Remind Me Why I Like it Here Again

I swear I’m not sitting around the house wallowing in a sea of one-eyed self pity. But I must say, there is something in the air that’s got me in a mild funk, and I think it’s the growing number of friends who seem to be high-tailing it out of the Bay Area.

Monday the Politos packed their bags and bid SF an adieu after 16 years. School issues, the high cost of living, job stuff and general city-attitude malaise wore down Julie’s will to continue on here. And after a night of discussing whether a move to Marin or some other part of the Bay Area might be the antidote, the idea of Boulder, Colorado leaped to mind, and next thing you know they were on an exploratory mission looking at housing. Two months later their flat is sold, their kids and possessions are packed, and they’ve become our friends who used to live here.

In the time they were prepping for their move, they did what I’m sure I did when I decided to move out of NYC. They kvetched and complained about every element of this place that they couldn’t wait to be rid of. They lamented the public transit, the pushy people at the gym, the school system and the job environment. Granted, they had had a spectacularly crappy year for a number of reasons which may or may not have been directly associated with San Francisco. But at one point I had to sit Rick down (over email) and entreat him to suspend the Bay Area bashing until they were out of earshot from all of us they were leaving behind. Part of it was I didn’t agree with everything they were lamenting, and part of it was I agreed with some of it and just couldn’t deal with hearing it. I wanted to stick my fingers in my ears and drone, “La la la la la la” until they stopped talking and decided not to move after all. (That never happened.)

The thing is, that things don’t suck for Mark and Kate and I here. Mark loves his job. I have a great gig too (when I have two functional eyes and am able to do it, that is). And even though we don’t own our house, it works for us and is in a great little ‘hood with neighbors we’ve come to know and a great library, restaurants and shops just two blocks away. Somehow, the shift just from SF to the East Bay has had an impact on some of the kinds of things it seems were getting the Politos down. People truly seem to be friendlier here. We’re not ensconced in fog. And where SF has an almost weird lack of children–babies, sure, but no kids ever to be seen–we’re in a vertible family wonderland here.

But sometimes, despite all this, I feel like my emotional attachment to this place is tenuous. I think about all those places where successful professionals and their families are living happily in large homes they own, in good school districts and with friendly neighbors. And no one is working 70 hour weeks to sustain the dream. Beyond the fantasy image of this place though, I come up against a roadblock when I try to determine just where this Utopia is. And when you add Mark’s career in the limited magazine realm to the picture, our potential pool for paradise locales dwindles to even fewer places. And let’s face it, New York City ain’t going to solve our real estate woes.

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend, who casually mentioned that he’s talking to some companies in Austin, Texas. He made it all sound like a remote possibility that he’d move–though he did remark on how damn affordable a 4-bedroom house with a pool is there. Despite his downplaying the potential for the move taking place, I could just tell that he is a goner. In six weeks we’ll be planning his goodbye party and Mark and I will be down another dear old friend.

Ah well. If you love them set them free, right? And maybe someday, when the time is right for us, the McClusky family will find our Boise, or Boulder, or Austin or wherever it is that the grass is greener. In the meantime, we’ll be chillin’ here in Oakland if you’re looking for us.

House of Healing

I could call this entry House of Pain, but I’m trying to be positive here.

Suffice it to say the Thursday before last was not a healthy day in the McClusky household. A headache I’d had the day before turned into my totally weird and unique optic nerve problem by morning. Which is to say that, for the fifth time now, my right eye is Temporarily Out of Service. Essentially there’s some bad wiring somewhere in my brain that results in my optic nerve getting pinched somehow and stopping working. So, my eye lolls over to the side of my head and the eye lid closes over it so I don’t see in double vision.

Yes, it is extremely weird. Yes, it is extremely rare.

And I would really rather that this isn’t the thing that differentiates me in life.

Thankfully it has always gotten better. Though it requires time and patience. Last time it took about 7 weeks to right itself. And by right itself, I mean that quite literally since there is nothing that the doctors can do, no magic pill to take, to make it all better.

In the modern world of pharmaceutical-mania, it’s distressing when your doctor informs you that there ain’t no pill for what ails you.

So, I’m out of work since I can’t drive, shouldn’t really be straining my “good eye” on the computer, and need to rest up ‘n get better.

In the meantime, when Mark and I returned from my doctor’s appointment on Day One of my eye blitz, Kate was lying on the couch with an ice pack on her ankle. She twisted her ankle coming down the slide at the park with the nanny. Now two doctor’s visits and two x-rays later, we are trying to get in to see an orthopedist. After 9 days she was finally able to walk again, but is limping like Quasimoto. They think there could be some kind of hairline fracture that isn’t showing up in the x-ray.

Aside from a toenail related injury which seems to be on the mend, Mark has maintained the function of all his eyes and limbs. Thank God since Cyclops and Hop Along have needed all the help we can get.

Karma is a Bitch

So Thursday night I come back from a dinner out with the mother’s group. And as I start to get ready for bed I walk from the bathroom where I’m brushing my teeth and washing my face to the living room where Mark is sitting to give him the download.

“Some of the babies are still not sleeping through the night!” I reported.

“Some can’t fall asleep on their own in their cribs!” I say between spitting toothpaste.

Not very charitable of me, as my mother would put it. I guess what I was trying to say to Mark was that we are pretty lucky with Miss Kate. She is doing a good job, and some of the things that we’ve now kinda taken for granted, are things that we should be grateful for.

But I didn’t really say that. I was gloating a bit. But I got my pay-back.

At about 10:30 while I was still awake, I heard Kate call out from her bed, “Mama!” as I was walking past. And it didn’t really phase me. If anything I smiled and thought, I’ll go in for a minute, arrange her blankies and she’ll doze back off. She almost never does this, so going in when she calls won’t start a bad habit.

In the middle of the night–God knows what time it was–Kate calls out, “Mama, uppy!” This is the annoying way she asks to be picked up, which dates back to our Easter trip to RI when Aunt Mary taught Kate a little game that had the phrase, “Uppity uppity to the wee house” in it. (The “wee house” of course being the armpit. Long story.) Somehow after that Kate started asking for “uppy” instead of “up” when she wanted to be picked up.

Sooo, back to the middle of the night. Here she is calling out, “Mama, uppy!” clear as a bell in the middle of the night. I was hoping she would doze back off, but she said it about 5 more times.

This was weird. Up twice in one night. But again, since she never does this I figured it wouldn’t hurt for Mark to just go in and quickly tell her to go back to sleep. But that didn’t work so well. First off, Mark didn’t think that was a good idea. So we had a delightful exhausted and grumpy exchange of varying parenting approaches. Then I won and Mark stormed off to Kate’s room.

She was not interested in Daddy, uppy, as it turns out. He tried to calm her down. He picked her up. He even went to the kitchen and got her milk (something we haven’t done in months and months in the middle of the night). When that all failed, he tried putting her back in bed and she was wailing.

But then she stopped. For 15 minutes. And as we are dozing off another, “Mama, uppy!” rang out. This time followed by crying. At this point it’s clear she is getting back at me for the not one but three other children I was gloating that she was sleeping better than.

Mark and I tried to tough it out. Since I won the last argument to go into her room, but that didn’t help, it was Mark’s turn to prevail, and he insisted that ignoring her was the solution.

20 minutes of hysterical screaming of “Mama, uppy!” was essentially Iraq prison torture to me. At one point Mark said he was confident she wasn’t losing steam, and could quite possibly continue bellowing “Mama, uppy” for a good hour at least.

So I went in. And all it took was me saying, “It’s time to sleep. Mama and Dada are sleeping [or should be, damn it]. It’s time for Kate to sleep.” And she didn’t even need to be picked up. Just wanted to know I was there, I guess. So I re-arranged her blankets and gave her a kiss and she was quiet as a mouse.

And I crawled back into bed exhausted and convinced that karma had dealt me an immediate and undeniable blow. Next time the mamas meet, my download to Mark will be all sympathy and no glory. I just can’t risk losing the sleep.