la femme follette

parenthetically yours

Monday, Mari was home & some curious alchemy of him + our children got me encrossened (Cross out this family!) and I peeled out of here to go to the gym.  Bye!

On the way to the gym, I realized I could go to the Sadist's class, which I have not done in an age.  I first started skipping because I had some mysterious malady, remember?  For the past year, I have felt well enough (read: not too much like I would fall down) to go, but Mari has been away on Mondays and Sadist Class is scheduled at a weird, mildly-frantic time of day here.  On Monday, I walked away from all that.

I got nervous, ariving at the threshold of the studio, because, yk, Ow.  I weighed my independent-study options -- lap pool, rowing machine, StairGuy -- but told myself that it would all be fine, that Tuesday's time with Pilates Chick would work that all out.  Which it could have, in a way, but the Sadist had two words for us yesterday:  Bosu Balls.  I got through the class, but the jellified feel I was left with when we were done ... portent of doom. 

Then, Pilates Chick today was super-happy to display her merrily sadistic side, even as my locomotion could best be described as slithery.  Man.  It hurts my abs just to type this.  It hurts to brake the car.

However, I am not dead, so I will be stronger and thus, you know.  The Marines used to say, in their recruitment collateral, that pain is weakness leaving the body.  Ok.  I can not even muster up the energy to chew on a slice of cake, is how exhausted I am. 

It did not hurt me to take this photo.  All this baking and picture-clicking was Monday before delayed-onset muscle soreness set in.  I was still euphoric then.  Impervious to the louche charms of baked goods, yes. 

  

 

It is the standard yogurt cake.  I trust you -- fellas, you know who you are -- to all be able to find yogurt & pears where you are. 

Fille said, "Can you make yogurt cake with anything besides pears?"  I thought of this as a ludicrous question until I realized it was not.  It is not called yogurt-pear cake.  But my mother (and later, I) never made it with anything but pears.  It was like banana bread, for pears.  I hate banana bread.  I like yogurt cake.  This one was a little heavy on the fruit; I could have eased up.

Oh, omg, speaking of louche charm, Mr Fox came to dinner Sunday night.  Saturday?  The days are all mixed up to me now that my husband is on a different schedule.  Anyhow, love to dish, but I am not kidding, it is killing me to sit in this chair. 

Take three ibuprofen for me, every six hours.  Thank you.  One million kisses. 

$6 million girl

Can you remember my February?  When my house was full of cats and all manner of contractors and I had bicycles in my dining room and the pantry's groceries in my living room and Mari started being at the office 5 days in a row and it really hardly mattered, since I was rooming with Fifille anyhow?  Remember that? 

 

Right.  God, I remember taking this photo.  I was on the telephone with Kowalski, for the third time that morning, while he confessed a whole confession full of what I already know.  He had been working up to it, you see, so by the third time he called I was feeling less indulgent and way more distracted because look! at my dining room! and then I was just poleaxed.  So that was when that trouble began.  Any old way.  Onward!

 

One of the things that was crammed into the dining room was the freighting package with my brand-new, full-sized, Gratz Pilates Reformer inside.  It arrived in February, but it took five months for us to get around to getting it unpacked and in place. 

 

Mari said, as he unpacked it, You weren't joking about it being red.  No!  Because an upholstery choice was red!  Vrooom! 

I am completely excited.  Yes.

The delay in its deployment was  good, though.  The plan was always to put it in the playroom, to reclaim part of the playroom as Our Own Freaking Home, but once we got the playroom reconfigured, I could see that I did not want to jam this big thing in there.  Not to mention that putting a thing I do not want broken into the playroom is just asking for trouble.  Because if I bought an anvil they would break it.  And stand around the pieces mumbling sentences that started with We were just!  Hisssss. 

To put the Reformer in the bedroom, I definitely had to put the sewing machine elsewhere, right away, and so you know how that ended already.

There was the additional issue of that Naughty, Heart-Shaped Kitten and her scritchy-scratching.  So we waited, and waited, and as we all know, in mid-June, she was finally gone.  Bye, scratcher! 

Already, with it in my bedroom for only a week, I am telling children every damn day not to sit on it.  That is not a bench, get up.  Why are you in here, anyway?

Anyhow, it is super-exciting because now Pilates Chick can give me homework and I can get even better, faster, stronger than before.  It is going to be so amazing!  

So, reviewing August so far:  not ready for back-to-ballet-school; eggplants on grill; sewing machine in playroom, being used in its appealing, appropriate space; weekend getaway and/or interstate travel; Joe Pilates in the bedrooooom (not like that).

 

Check in on wry & pretty Becky in her BeckBloPoMo endeavor.  Blogging every day is a heck of an undertaking, but it can be done.  Also, this beautiful (and related) piece from pretty (& also wry) Orangette about making something where there was nothing before, to put it out for the world.     

gainsbourg. bardot.

This soup is the one that rescues me any time I realize I have overshot my time for lunchmaking.  Especially on a Ballet Day, where the game is all about shoveling as many calories into my tiny dancer as possible.  Big breakfast!  Three-course lunches!  Four snacks! Two dinners -- one after ballet & a top-off when we get home! 

 
 

Anyhow, if I already have cooked or canned chickpeas -- and I always do -- it is a 10-min endeavor, tops.  The downside is that it is probably the one thing I can cook that my son will not eat.  Bummer.

I went to get a physical last week because after my friend Susan died at 39, from the ravages of metastatic breast cancer, I could not sleep for all the anxiety of my own impending doom.  After a couple of weeks of this thrashing around & fretting, it came to me in a burst of reason that I could just make an appointment to see a physician!  Yes!  Then I would a. have nothing to worry about or b. something to worry about in a known quantity.  But free-floating anxiety is a sucker's game. 

It was fine ... I actually calmed down quite a lot while I was filling out the new-patient forms and remembered that I had a complete workup in pretty much every direction while I was a medical mystery and that was all fine.  I mean, except for the part where they said, "Oh, you have this!"  But then I thought about it & I said, "Yeah, no, I don't want that.  Plus, I feel great now anyhow!  It was nice meeting you, see you!"  It was totally like that part in Romy & Michelle's High School Reunion, where Mira Sorvino flimsily excuses herself with a steely resolve because her shoe is filling up with blood.

So, that is how it goes with me.  Anyhow, I went to see the doctor.  Ok, first of all, she was 12.  Ok, she was not 12, but she was not 30.  Anyhow, lalala, after the exam, she wrote an order for an ultrasound of my [redacted].  She said there was an enlargement on palpation.  Ok, sure.

Chinese Medicine knows all about my enlarged [redacted]; it is part & parcel of my diagnostic pattern there.  We are on it.  But I did not want to go all chinese-medicine on Dr JuiceBox, so I went for her ultrasound.  Just to be polite.  I mean, she is new in the world.  I want to be supportive of a young, female physician.  Sisterhood is powerful! 

Saying I went for an ultrasound just to be polite is, for me, kind of like saying, I let the skeevy coke dealer from the biker bar give me a ride home in his truck with no door handles on the inside because I didn't want to hurt his feelings.  I mean, dumb.  I knew where this was going.  I should have waited for a cab.  Especially because I was not wearing panties. 

Anyhow, she called and left a message last week, the day after I consented to -- and participated in -- her ultrasound test.   I do not usually check voice mail messages -- I was looking for a message from Eve -- and I am worse about returning calls.  This week, Tuesday, I got a phone call from a Major Player in the local Medical-Industrial Complex, in their Radiology department.  Some secretary who had my name all mixed up with someone else's, wanting to schedule an appointment because Dr JuiceBox called them to say I really needed to be seen there. 

I believe in process, and sometimes I even believe in protocol, and for the most part, I never, ever believe in putting the cart in front of the horse.  So, I said, "I have no idea what you are talking about," and hung up the phone.  It was extremely Bonnie & Clyde.  You want me?  You need to come for me.  

As it happens, Dr JuiceBox had left 3 voice-mail messages.  I called her, Tuesday, some time after I hung up on her minions, and left a message.  She called me back in about 10 minutes.  "Omigosh!  You need this thing & that is why they were calling!  Call them back to schedule the thing!"

I was all, "Hang on, slow down ... who said I even want the thing?  I don't even know what you are talking about.  I do not have the radiology report, fax it to me."

She said (oh, JuiceBox), "I don't have the report either."  This is where things started to fray  between me & Dr JuiceBox.

"What, did he post about it on Facebook?" I said.  "How are you calling for follow-up tests of more incursion when no one has a radiologist's report?"

She seemed stymied by this very reasonable request.  I made her start at the beginning & talk through to the end, none of which told me anything I did not already know.  Which is to say that it told a tale of nothing actionable.  I feel like if there is nothing actionable, and I feel fine, then there is nothing to do.    

"No," I said.  "I'm not going to make an appointment to do yr thing.  I'm going to make an appointment with a [relevant specialist] and I will see what he says and I will go from there." 

So Dr JuiceBox goes through a whole thing about how she will get me an appointment with a [relevant specialist] at the local Medical-Industrial Complex, because they have a Whole [redacted] Specialty Center.  I felt a little bad for Dr JuiceBox, because it was obvious that I was the first time she had encountered a patient saying, "Um, wait, slow down, and also: no."  Instead of Omigod, save my life, whatever you say, I'll do!

 So, I gently explained to her that I do not do medical-industrial complexes, that having a bunch of doctors in a facility where medicine is a consumable product, working all under the same grant money and wanting to bear up the legitimacy of their latest technology does not serve a patient who may or may not be at entry-level -- who may not even be a patient! -- who wants to take her time and evaluate her options, some of which are old -fashioned, like waiting and seeing and nothing doing what in the face of nothing actionable. 

I told her, "It's like they say: when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

I mean, I have encountered these people, these experts, over & over with my son, and you know ... I'll take a pass.  There is a branding thing going on with these Centers -- they all have a thing that they do & that is fine to enter their machine when you know you want the thing they are doing, but before that, you really need counsel from someone who has a bigger picture in their mind, and a crikey-buttload of experience.  Dr JuiceBox & the shiny teaching hospital in the neighboring town are not my preferred advisors. 

To say she seemed flabbergasted, Dr JuiceBox, is almost an understatement.  God, and since I have refused her, I read about this very thing and it seems like a clusterfuck of the highest medical-flimflam order!  First, you have an observable thing.  Second, an on-the-inside image of the thing, which is mostly inconclusive.  (That is where I am right now on this timeline.)  After that, they get you in for the next thing -- the thing she wants me to schedule, which I did schedule & then canceled after I read about all this, because I am just wasting an appointment a person who thinks this is a great idea might want to have -- which turns out to be inconclusive.  After that, there are two more things and it ends with a thing that ends in -ectomy.  Then!  There is medicine for the rest of life because of the -ectomy taking away a thing that is necessary.  You can keep all that predetermined nonsense.  I am not a Calvinist. 

So, that.  I made an appointment with a regular-speed [relevant specialist] who has more than a hammer.  I think he might keep bees or poultry or something.  Metphorically speaking.  It happens that Medical Mystery 2008 put me in touch with him.  I kind of liked him.  Also, I am pretty sure he already made a note of this "trouble" and -- since he has been practicing medicine since before Dr JuiceBox was born -- decided to leave it, as it was "asymptomatic."  (In chinese medicine, it is all symptom; it is a waving red flag of everything else that so mystified the M.D.s of my area.) 

That specialist was the one who wanted me to take medicine for something that might be wrong with me, writing on his prescription pad at the same time he wrote up the labwork order for his granular, confirming bloodwork.  I never filled that prescription.  I could not even figure out why he would write it!  Like, wtf, did someone stick a sign on my back that says, "Love Canal?" 

Then the fine bloodwork came back and I did not have the thing he thought I might have!  He said, "Have you been taking the pills?"  I told him, "No."  I particularly loved how he said nothing, but raised one eyebrow & waited, patiently.  He was so nice.

"I'm sick," I told him, "and no one knows what is wrong with me.  I am not going to muddy the waters with your prescription I turn out to not even need."  And what could he say to that?  So, at least he already knows how I am; that he's going to have to come and get me.     

early show

Looky, looky who has arrived.

 

Also, more exciting that Mme Alfred Carriére is this:  I have all the feeling back in my hands.  It had been two years my hands had been numb.  Honestly, I do not remember what having all the feelings feels like, but I am pretty sure this is it.  I am so excited!  It feels like a great gift of something I never really took for granted.  I burned myself today, making lunch, and was like, "Hey!  Ow!  Heyyy!"  Good.

I had to get into the garden yesterday.  I had 4 peonies and 12 dahlias to plant and then I had to make special accommodations and rush on out there, before the inevitable delayed muscle soreness of Pilates set in and I would be unable to use my butt in any sequence of gardening postures.  Seriously. 

I know I said this a week or so ago, but Pilates has been so hard lately.  I mean, I am working with Pilates Chick, everything is fine, she is super-good at what she does, and I feel bionic, every day, plus also taller, all the time, it is for the best.  But on Wednesday it was again all so hard.  So hard!

Kowalski, who was called to receive Hand-Recovery Report and then lingered on for the chatting -- asked me to quantify how hard is so hard, and the answer is, I was at the brink of whining.  Oh, yes.  So hard.  Because I might complain and I might even cry, but whining?  I mean, that just means it is hard in a different direction.  Like, there is something going on besides lack of physiological mettle. 

That is when the whining comes on, every time, is when I can not just put my shoulder to the wheel and do.  There is a subtlety and wholeness to Pilates I do not love.  Being strong can be a weakness.  Aauugh!  Just typing that makes me want to whine!  And yet, this is the lesson from which I recoil every time it comes to me.  Which is why it keeps coming.  Oh, life.  Why must I be so yielding to your lessons?  I mean! 

5 things about January & a recipe

 
1.  We do not like turnips, but I have found a way to make them edible.  It is the same as my go-to carrot recipe.  Last week, while lifting the lid on a panful that would accompany a Saturday lunch, the children came in and demurred.  I had not expected they would eat them once served, so I shrugged, but also casually observed that people in Haiti would love to have them.  A half-hour later at the table, they ate them.  We have not known what to say to them!  Or if we should say anything.  I think this is one of those times, where my friend Fish says, "Good behavior is its own reward."   

2.  There was, at the consignment boutique in Ballet Town, a Chloé handbag -- the Paddington Satchel -- for about two-thirds of the original retail price and about half of the going "last-season" price it is selling for right now.  I held it and petted it a little, but I had no intention of buying a handbag at that price.  Except I keep dreaming about it.  Not a metaphor, no, I lie down and wake up having deeply considered it in the night.  I have not been back to the store since the first dream, but I do not even want it.  Except somewhere in the universe, I obviously do.  Maybe in a parallel life I spend that kind of money on handbags.

3.  My children went out yesterday when it was 18 degrees and a windchill temperature of 10 degrees, and they did so voluntarily, plus then when they came in to attend to an administrative detail at my behest, they nanced around at the door wanting to know if they could go back outside to play.  I am so proud of them.  Then today they did not let similar conditions deter them from going ice skating with Mari.  Obviously, their endless exposure to Prairie Home Companion is working. 

4.  I was supposed to have gone to NYC this weekend for an extended brand of R&R hijinks with Fat Sal, but then I was feeling unwell, with a reprise of the malady from which I have not recovered but for which I have neither relented, so I bailed.  I held out for a long time, dreaming of the 90-minute tui na massage + reflexology I had planned, but in the end, I realized that was silly and there are bodyworkers here.  I saw one late yesterday afternoon for reflexology only and her attentions were vigorous.  I was lying on the table, breathing deeply and talking myself out of crying "uncle" and the next thing I knew I was in that hazy, anaesthetized space between waking and dreaming, but I think it was because I was passed out from the pain of it.  I feel remedied, however.  No pain, no gain. 

5.  As far as I am concerned the accident thing is over.  No one was hurt, the car made it back from the body shop last week, and our insurance company is denying liability.  Crazy Moby Dick man is also now claiming that he was bodily injured in the 8mph collision between my (moving away from him) car and his (gigantic, fully-outfitted Ford F350 pickup), and if you are super-familiar with the laws of our universe, you can do that math and deduce that if he was at a top speed of 8mph and I was moving away from him at, say, 5 mph, that means that the speed at which we collided was practically nothing, but in the words of my husband, "Carpe diem, dude, whatever."  We are out our collision deductible, for now, but whatever, this way I am not even a little bit tempted to blow that sum on a Chloé handbag. 

Carrots with Garlic (adapted for turnips) 
from the sadly out-of-print Ronald Johnson book Simple Fare

Trim & peel 1lb carrots (or turnips, or radishes, or daikon, or parsnips, or rutabagas). Slice on the diagonal into 1/2-inch pieces.

To a 10-inch saute pan, add the vegetables, 2 cloves flattened & peeled garlic, 1 tablespoonful each of butter & olive oil, 2 bay leaves, and 2 tablespoonsful of water. Bring to a boil, cover pan, turn heat to a simmer and cook for about 10 minutes.

Stir at it, every now & then. When done, the water will have cooked away, the vegetables will have started to brown, and they will be tender, but not soft. Remove the lid, turn up the heat, etc, as necessary to achieve this ideal as you wish. The recipe is really quite forgiving.

avant. après.

Sunday night, it occurred to me that I am recovered enough from my fracture/sprain to do yoga, which is good, because I have been restless and thinking of it, wanting the practice and its discipline to guard against the creeping anxiety I feel in the face of my workload flooding back to me.  Monday morning, I was bewildered & surprised to realize that I could not remember how to do a sun salutation.

I have done hundreds of times, if not thousands of times, the grouping of postures called Surya Namaskar.  I stood on the mat and waited, because some part of me should know it by heart.  I waited for a long time.  I started and then found that I did not know what to do next.  I knew that I was up & I went down and in the middle there was Downward Dog ... but nowhere in my body could I remember.  This was an incredibly emotional event, this failure to recognize. 

When I was sick last year, with my mystery illness of which we shall never speak again, I was in the office of a third or fourth specialist, the only doctor out of the dozen or so I encountered during the ordeal who had any sort of kindness to express.  I said to him, in an answer to his very gentle concern, "I am afraid that this has been so long that I will never remember how to be well again."  Then I cried.

Since then, I have discovered that ideas of wellness and normality are tricky.  I have not yet recovered feeling in either of my hands, and yet I will say when asked, that I am well.  I feel like, in many ways, that I have to choose to be well, that I have to create it for myself.  But also, I have to remember -- and this is why the yoga mat revelation was so hard for me -- that I am not going back, that I am going forward, that the road I am making by walking?  I have never before been here.  I know this from yoga, that every day is new, all-new, and at every moment, I have everything I need.  

So this moment of being on the mat and not knowing what to do when I was there and realizing that I am never the same, it was a lot.  In fact, it felt like too much, inasmuch (insofar?) as it dovetailed with some other questions I was trying to unravel about personal and also interpersonal growth, relationship histories, etc.  So that when I ask myself, why does this process of losing people to the grave hurt so much, not the loss, the freaking process, the answer is obvsly because I have never felt this before, mais non, non, for every time is new.  This is salving or a serpent's tooth, depending.  I go back & forth, but I have to go along, choosing for myself. I can be present or I can hide behind the back of my middle finger, but in any case, I remain.

This somehow at the keyboard turned quite a bit heavier than I intended.  I have been avoiding posting here for this very reason, which is this fear of who-knows-what depress-o-grams just tumbling out into the ether and who in the hell needs that, I ask! Who?

I really only meant to post about Fifille's haircut.  Or, as we call it here, The Baby's Big Chop. I call her The Baby all the time, as does her brother.  Last weekend, at the pool, I was explaining the future plans of the Baby to him, and one of my girlfriends said, "You do know The Baby is over there, packing her own swim stuff up, and getting ready to walk home with her friends?"  Yes.  I do.  I really do.  But she gets very bent out of shape when anyone suggests she is not the baby.  Anyhow.

She grew nine inches of hair to donate to Pantene's Beautiful Lengthsprogram and then we brought it home in a zipper-lock plastic bag from the salon and we promptly misplaced it in the house.  Ahaha. 

She is relieved by how much less hot it is.  I am relieved by how much less of my labor is needed in her daily grooming schedule.  Everyone says What about ballet? 

Whatever, is what she & I say.  But seriously, she does not perform at this grade level and also, I sensed she wanted to push back a little, hairwise.  Before, the girls who were serious showed their game by suiting up without the princess paraphernalia, but now the proof is in the showing up.  Which is what I was just saying about everything else. 

garden-variety

The children's birthdays usually go like so:  whatever they want for dinner (anything!  even a menu of potatoes cooked in 7 different ways!), an outing of their choosing (they typically select a museum or a movie in the theatre), cake of their own design, and some small present, generally something I have knitted.  Lest that sound too Franciscan, I hasten to point out that they get a balls-out birthday party later in the spring with all kinds of indulgences and any of their pals who can attend.

 

This year, we decided to get Fille the longed-for American Girl Doll which she is so not expecting.  But with her, everything is an excessive challenge.  She asked me a few weeks ago if I would write down her birth story for her, which I, uh, actually have been unable to accomplish.  

She knows the story -- always on each birthday I tell the respective story of the days & nights I spent getting them born. I will talk about it any old time it is relevant.  I remind her lately, when she is sassy & frustrated and stomping or giving me major teen-preview attitude, I will tell her, softly and deliberately, "Please do not talk to me like that.  I let them cut a hole in my body so you could be born safely.  Please, please, do not take that ugly tone with me."       

I am unclear about the parameters of this assignment.  Is it more of a creative nonfiction endeavor?  A rambling, magazine-style narrative?  Is it about me?  About her?  Which parts?  It is quite dramatic, the story.  Does she just want a 10-inch AP brief?  I am absolutely unable to find a way in to this project each time I sit down.  I have written about it many times, but as an adult, using adult language for myself.  Does she want the young-adult version?  Do I need to illustrate it?  

I think I should just be happy she did not ask me for a poem.  Egads.  All this tonight & cake-baking, too.  I might need to crack open my sample of Starbucks VIA. 

Today marks a year since I fell mysteriously ill.  I feel anniversary-reverberative + anxious about it.  I am trying to stay focused on how in a couple of months I will mark a year since I have started to feel more & more made of awesome every day. 

cured

Tomorrow is the last day of camp.  I have been pretty xx-busy trying to get the last of things propped up for the next 10 months of children never going anywhere.  Mostly car errands, just a lot of driving.  Ugh.

My acupuncturist, who is excellent, finally cracked the code on Chinese medicine & my wtf medical mystery.  I had been scheduled to see her for some shiatsu work because I was feeling like I wanted someone to get real handsy with me.  I gave her the update to the journal I have been keeping for her between visits and she asked me a few questions and suddenly I was on the table for bloodletting and fire-setting and since then I feel like I am made of awesome.   

I left with an order to eat beef (which I hate) and micro-algae (which, wtf?) and neither has made me feel less awesome, even allowing for all the rushing around, so all right, I guess.

Finally, I bought the fabric for the reupholstering of a long-absent, greatly-missed chair.  For a long time I have been trying to swallow the reality of the price of eight yards of mohair.  I had such sticker shock over the price, I just could not get it down.  Last week, I said, "Aargh!   Over it!" and then stormed into the internet's marketplace to buy it and choked again in the shopping cart at the total.  (Previously, I had been choking at the per-yard price.)

At the last minute, I decided to check on the eBay and got exactly what I wanted for a fifth of the retail price.  So exciting.  It came Tuesday and I ran the package up to the workshop today.  The upholsterers crowed and exclaimed over it while we unwrapped the bolt and went totally silent after I answered the question of what I paid.  A low whistle and that was all.  I will be so excited to get my chair back; it has this month been gone for two years. 

Also, this month, but 10 years ago, I quit smoking.  Before I quit, I smoked more than one and usually closer to two packs every day.  I loved it, I felt born to the task.  Smoking cigarettes was a hobby and a pleasure and a diversion and a daredeviling doddle.  I never tried to cut back nor lamented nicotine's hold on me, but instead for a decade smoked and smoked and smoked in great and delighted, unapologetic draughts.

When I found out I was pregnant, I spent a whole week savoring my last package of 20 cigarettes and that was all.  I have not had one since, but I have wanted one nearly every day. Some days are more unbearable than others.  Five years ago, I discovered the Ciganot, of which everyone makes fun, all of whom are people who never smoked and have no idea.  I am also not above standing near a smoker while feeling weak and inhaling deeply.

 The feat in the fact that a sooty old smoker like me just up and quit cold turkey got lost in the whole life change of the baby, but I will occasionally poke Mari with my index finger and demand recognition for the accomplishment.  I think at a decade, now that I have not smoked for as long as I did smoke, it is appropriate to call everyone I know and require their accolades. 

still, life

I bought patty pan squash today at the farmers' market and then was sad to see it going.  I love the shapes and colors of patty pan.  I grew it as an ornamental one year, but that was dumb, and vine borers got them anyhow.

The reason Kowalski called the other day was to sweetly ask after my health and I remembered that I forgot to follow up with a great many people about this development.  Basically, I was a medical mystery for weeks and weeks, then months and months, and in the end it all came down to two diagnoses which are not mutually exclusive, both vague and very subjective in their diagnostic parameters, wildly variant in their clinical presentations.  Also incurable.  One is progressive and can be unregenerate, but also, can be nothing at all, due to the obvious flaws in its unscientific diagnostic process.  There is also a third diagnosis (from a third specialty) that is benign-ish, but not the point.  It was a collateral discovery in all the endless lab work.

So, after having seen all these specialists, hearing about my options, about which thing to sign onto, Mari and I took a week or so of considering it all (not least of which what kind of scam is Big Pharm running in all this), after which  I just said, "Fuck this.  I am not going out like that."  We went on vacation, I am back in the gym, I am taking my vitamins.  I have (have always had) an excellent acupuncturist.  For the moment, I am on a raw diet, as with the last three summers.  Fuck a bunch of being sick.

I learned a lot because of this, chiefly that I do not take care of myself in the same way I take care of others (and I know that as a mother I am so not alone in this).  I definitely do not rest enough (and that it is possible to take a freaking break already).  I was reminded that people really love me and us and and want to do (and will do) what they can to help.  I found out who it is that can be cool, who cannot handle the truth, who wants to play Ryan O'Neal in Love Story, who will raise hell with me, and who just wants me to sit in their metaphorical lap so they can smell my metaphorical hair. Also, who can manage in the face of news and who it is that just vanishes.    

Lisa B-K reminded me that people like the lists.  (I am one.)  When Kowalski got his answers and gave his staunch support to my sassy rebuff of the health-care system, he asked me to give to him the list of songs I came up with for him to consider for the children's session the Kowalski Brothers are recording this summer.  He wanted to pan a few, but I insisted, reminding him that "Froggie Went A-Courtin'" was my idea and it turned out so sexy when they did it.  Who knew?

I just typed & deleted several too-much-disclosure paragraphs about Kowalski & me and music & us, a more-guarded presentation of which can be found here.  Now I am too tired to type a list. 

I went to the shopping district while the children were at camp Friday, and I wanted to have this Lela Lee tote so much.  I did not, because I knew Fillette would want to carry it and it would become complex and exhausting,  So I took this photograph to satisfy myself. 

   

seedy

I have not been feeling well for months, since March.  Last week, all the weeks and weeks of seeing every specialist under the stars came down to one or two good guesses, but I guess the thing is that I really will never be well again.  Not like the old me.  Sadly, my whole identity has been my whole life bound up in being capable & well. Now, there is this the new me and I have to find new ways to be capable and anyhow, blahblahblah, a whole lot of talk from old Kowalski, for whom there are not enough socks in the world.  I guess I will be ok.  A lot of people love me, more if I would let them.  So much of this is about letting, which is not my best subject.

After Mari and I saw the last specialist, we scooped up the kids and their stack of library books from the waiting room and I asked to go pick strawberries.  It was hot, really, and I was not exactly dressed for the strawberry fields, but it was something I had been wanting to do, and a weekday is a good day for the pick-your-own farm, and I wanted to cross it off my list.

It also occurred to me, sitting in the straw courting a sunburn, that I did not know what else to do and going outside seemed as good as anything else.  It was a funny thought for me to think.  I was raised in the city and had rarely so much as been to a picnic before I went away to university in what seemed to me to be an impossibly pastoral and buggy locale.  Over the last score, especially since I have married an Eagle Scout, I have become more and more of what is called outdoorsy, until it seems a natural turn in times of distress.  Somewhere in my dark heart, I would still prefer a tavern.  Liquor is quicker, mais oui, but it does not involve a lot of grim determination and the doing.  Mari and I are people who prefer doing to saying, but there is now nothing to do and so less to say. 

We picked 10 quarts of strawberries in about an hour and came home to shove the long flats into the refrigerator.  I took them out yesterday to size up what was left (about six quarts) and found myself irritated by them, by what their harvest represented.  At the same time, looking past my resentment, they were so pretty and perfect.  Therein lies the rub.