Plenipotentiary

This always struck me as something of a bizarre holiday. It’s supposed to be a celebration of the American worker – celebrating work by giving the entire country the day off. Hmmm.

 I’m glad we have it, though. Otherwise, I’d never know when summer was over…

You’re A Prayer for Owen Meany!
by John Irving
Despite humble and perhaps literally small beginnings, you inspire
faith in almost everyone you know. You are an agent of higher powers, and you manifest
this fact in mysterious and loud ways. A sense of destiny pervades your every waking
moment, and you prepare with great detail for destiny fulfilled. When you speak, IT
SOUNDS LIKE THIS!

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

For those of you who didn’t get my Paul Potts reference – this song has broken my heart since I was a young girl. Dead dreams break my heart.

Thank God for AAA.

There I was, idiot extraordinary, stuck on the side of the road and out of gas. 1/8th of a mile from the gas station. The boys thought it was hilarious (we were on our way home from middle school orientation).

Hubby didn’t think it was so funny.

AAA came and gave me some gas. I – and the boys – are home safe, with gas in the tank.

Thanks, Hubby, for paying for the AAA membership. Thanks to the skinny pimply kid who got me to the gas station. Thanks to my boys for not making me homicidal on the side of the road.

Thanks to all the motorists who did not hit me, kill me, or make me want to kill them. There is good in the world, after all. (Even if not one of you ass-wipes bothered to stop for a stranded woman and her children, and made me wait over an hour for AAA to come rescue us. At least we didn’t have to call 911, you wankers.)

Ah, good in the world…

Middle Son got a little bit bent out of shape because when I make a music CD for the boys, I haven’t been asking for his input. (This may be because the songs he asks for are akin to “Hit Me Baby, One More Time” and “Genie in a Bottle”.)

So I’m making him his very own disc, but I need help. He’s asked for Naked Brothers’ Band and Britney Spears. I have to change his perspective. (Just in case you think M.S. is completely insane, he also asked for Nick Lowe, so all is not lost. He also likes rockabilly, but I’ve pretty much exhausted that genre.)

Help! He likes lyrics-driven pop with a happy beat. Anything worthwhile out there?

Edit: I’m sorry – I forgot to mention that Middle Son is seven, and going into second grade. This makes a difference. An occasional swear word I can handle, but Gwen Stefanie singing “It’s my shit” through the whole song isn’t gonna make the cut.

Same child – ya’ know, the sleepless one? (we’re creeping up on 1:30am) - just stolled to the john singing this song. Someone kill me. Now.

Gotta love Seth Green and Donny Osmond (!) cameos on this, though!

Youngest Son decided to stay up all night. I decided to let him. There were a number of factors involved in this decision:

 #1: I tried this on my parents when I was about his age. They let me try. I fell asleep about an hour later on the floor.

 #2: This is the same child who fell asleep sitting up during dinner at Outback just two nights ago. This child would sleep upside down dangling from a drain pipe. This kid hits the wall hard – often – and I figured it was all bunk and he’d be asleep in nothing flat.

Bad decision making on my part. It is 12:48am, I am completely knackered, and the urchin is still awake, occasionally wandering into the bathroom. I’m ready to go bonk him on the head with something to make him sleep. I am seriously questioning my parenting skills.

Unbelievably enough after the week we’ve had, Hubby and I and my best friend brought our assorted progeny to Busch Gardens, and I met the challenge Hubby set for me oh so long ago…

I rode the Gryphon! Yea, me!

Actually, it wasn’t anywhere near as scary as I thought it would be, and Hubby agrees. But what the heck, as a metaphor, it works great! Dangling in the air, no floor under us, side by side and praying, and then thrill! - and when it’s over we just want to hop back on again…

This is my nephew – the newest member of our family. What cheeks!

(Oh, and this makes 8 boys and no girls for this generation. Wassup with that?)

So I think this will go down in history as the worst vacation evah.

We arrived at the Vacation House Saturday evening. Hubby was feeling pretty bad, and throwing up. He’d eaten a sandwich for lunch, but nothing else. I was pretty irritated with him, actually, thinking that he was playing up his illness to shirk work. I can’t tell you how guilty I feel about that now.

Hubby went straight to bed at the V.H., and the boys and I stayed up for a while and watched Speed, then we went to bed, too. Hubby was up vomiting every few hours, which also annoyed me, as I hadn’t slept the night before either due to a badly sprained ankle, and now it was two nights with no sleep. Again, I don’t have the words for my current guilt.

Sunday morning, and Hubby is still sick. I took the boys for breakfast, came back with some medicine for Hubby, and took the boys to the pool. Called Hubby a few times to check on him. He said he was OK, just really tired. Then the shit hit the fan.

I get a call from the Sherriff. The paramedics are on the way. Hubby is off to the emergency room.

To make a long, terrifying, ugly story short, Hubby had gone into a state of diabetic ketoacidoses. His insides had turned toxic. He was inches from death. His blood sugar was over 1200 (normal is 90 – 120), his blood pressure was 60/40, and his kidney function was 15%. He is now out of ICU and doing pretty well, and the plan is that he’ll be released in the morning. But it was touch and go there for a while, and I’m still trying to wrap my mind around how close I came to being a widow.

There are a few positive things I can say about this whole experience, so I’m trying to focus on those:

Positive thing #1: Hubby’s mother and brother and sister-in-law were johnny-on-the-spot, and brother and sister-and-law took the boys with them so I could focus on Hubby. What a relief. Picture me running between the ER and the waiting room to check on 6, 7, and 11 year old boys. For six hours. When Mother-in-Law showed up, I finally lost it and started crying. It was too much. But there they were, and there was help and comfort, and God how I needed it right then. And my brother is on his way tonight, to pass the baton. There are times in every life where family shows what family means, and this has been one of those times. I thank God for mine.

Positive thing #2: This is hands down the best hospital I’ve ever been in. Everyone here, and I literally mean everyone, is competant, friendly, helpful, informative, and compassionate. Everyone from the Sherriff to the EMTs to the ER staff to the ICU staff – even the cleaning staff and food service folks – have made this the least stressful hospital experience of my life. Most of us have had hospital experiences, so y’all will understand how rare a thing this is. These people answer my questions. When I had a question in the ICU about what some of Hubby’s lab results meant, the doctor drew me a diagram. I shit you not. Dude sat down with a pen and paper and gave me a lesson in hemoglobin. Who does that? In the ER, when I asked the doctor if Hubby could die, she looked pained but said yes. Armed with the truth, I can process the information and move on. Guessing games don’t help. I am so grateful for these people and their care. I am planning to write a letter to the administrator of the hospital, and sending it to the local paper. I am awestruck by this place. I never want to be sick anywhere else.

Positive thing #3: I was here. This happened while we were together, not when Hubby was away in Atlanta or Princeton or Philidelphia. I was with him. And neither of us has anywhere to be. Reduces Hubby’s stress enormously that he’s not missing work. I know that sounds insane, but it’s true. He’s calmer knowing there’s no where else he’s supposed to be.

Positive thing #4: I have received a reminder that I am deeply in love with my husband. The thought of losing him is incomprehensible. With day to day life, raising kids and doing jobs and paying mortgages, it’s easy to lose sight of the important things. I love my husband and family, and I’ve been reminded of that without having to lose him. I am blessed.

I would certainly have preferred to have a very different vacation experience, but here it is. And at the end of the day, my husband is alive, my kids are safe, and we have family that love us. This experience has taken me through an emotional spectrum that hasn’t happened since I gave birth – though with some very different emotions in play. But I am grateful for it, in a strange way. I am also confident in the future. My husband is Superman. Watching him enduring the unendurable, with humor and grace, has taught me about the kind of person I want to be. He’s flirting with the nurses (the female ones – he’s had a bunch of male ones, too, but he buddies up to them), cracking jokes at the doctors, comforting everyone around him while he’s in intense pain. God, how I love that man.

He’s actually something of a legend in the ER now. He was semi-delirious, in and out of consciousness, and the nurse told him he had to produce urine. No easy task when kidney function is 15%. The nurse said if needs be they’d give him a catheter. Hubby woke wide awake and shouted, “I’ll pee!” The whole ER heard it. Every man there chuckled. One belly-laughed for like three minutes. Unfortunately, they’re referring to him as “The pee guy.” What a handle. But we’ll take it.