After School Confessional, Ep. 248

On today's episode of After School Confessional, we had confessions related to the following:

~An opened bag of mini-marshmallows, which was not supposed to have been opened, but was nonetheless open, and admittedly done so without parental permission.

~The hijacking of an Ernest H. Shepard drawings-inspired Tigger (by Gund), who was liberated from the floor of Mommy's office. Because, clearly, he didn't belong there. (Of course not. He belongs up on the desk.)

~The delivery of a missive from a child's teacher, regarding homework uncompleted and not turned in, and the disciplinary action taken, requiring a parental signature. Upon reading, it was determined that Mommy had been lied to the afternoon before, when she inquired about said assignment and was told that no, the child was not required to complete it. Disciplinary proceedings are pending.

~There was tattling on the youngest sibling, perpetuated by the middle sibling, and delivered by the oldest sibling. Youngest's offense seems to have been a gaffe, and Youngest was cleared. Parental supposition is that the middle child wasn't so much looking to protect her sister, but rather to rat her out, and to give herself an alibi of sorts by asking her older sister to do the tattling. New rule established: no asking one sibling to tattle on the other.

Stay tuned for our next episode!

Be sure to ask your cable provider to carry After School Confessional if it isn't in your current lineup!

The Queen of Nothing

Tonight, as I was herding the Fries up to bed, I realized none of them had folded their socks, put them away, and rehung their sock bags like I'd asked them to earlier this afternoon. Furthermore,  there was a pair of dirty socks on my kitchen counter. All three Fries had worn identical socks today, so there was no way to know whose they were. They had to belong to either Large or Medium, both of whom had whipped off their socks within minutes of getting home from school. Small had still been wearing hers when I'd sent them up to change.

Both Medium and Large were sure they'd put their dirty socks away. No problem, saith I. We'll just go upstairs and look. The kids raced ahead of me while I carried all my stuff upstairs, since I planned to go to bed right after tucking in the kids. The driving and grocery shopping and grocery putting-away I did last night was too much. It had been four hours since my last Vicodin, and I was seriously hurting.

Medium followed me up the stairs after coming down to tell me the errant socks in the kitchen were in fact hers. I looked over my shoulder. "Did you leave your socks downstairs in the kitchen?"

Her frown turned mutinous. "Yes." Medium scowled.

"Go get them!" I shouted, exasperated.

Medium fetched her socks. I dumped my stuff on my bed, then began to distribute sock bags. "Fold these and put them away," I barked at Large. She scrambled to do what I said. I went to the twins' room next and repeated myself. Small Fry happily complied, while Medium grumbled and glared.

"This is the most terrible day," Medium grouched after a pair of socks refused to do her bidding.

"Why? Because I'm making you fold your socks?"

"No."

"Because I'm mad?"

"Yes."

"Do you know why I'm mad?"

Her lips curled in an impressive pout. "I don't wanna say."

Uh-oh. "Why not?"

"'Cause you'll get mad again."

Well, that just confirms that I need to know. I pressed further.

"I'm just a bad kid."

"No," I said gently but firmly. "You are not a bad kid. You just made some bad choices tonight: you didn't fold your socks and put them away when I told you to, and you didn't take care of your dirty socks, either."

The grumpiness was firmly lodged in place. Oh, please, God, let Hubby come home soon. I can't even call him and tell him to come home NOW because he left his phone here.

"I fink Daddy is home," Small Fry chirped, looking out the window.  "Yep, he's home!"

Oh, hallelujah. Hubby handles Medium better when she's in a snit.

He prayed with Large Fry while I went looking for the temporal thermometer I was sure I'd stuck in my pocket to bring upstairs.  Small has been home sick for the last two days, sporting a triple-digit fever and massively swollen tonsils. I found it down on the table downstairs and trudged back up. Hubby was in the bathroom, getting Medium a dose of cough medicine.  "Small says you didn't give her any medicine."

"I wanted to check her temp first." I gave him the dosage and then brought the Tylenol in to Small.

Hubby followed and propped his arms against the loft bed rails, studying Medium. "So. What's going on tonight?"

"Nuffin'." The word was mumbled around her thumb as she deliberately faced the wall.

Hubby chuckled. "Oh, I know better than that. What's wrong?"

"Nuffin'."

"You know something? Your mommy used to be the Queen of Nothing. I'd ask what was wrong, because I knew there was something, and she'd say, 'Nothing.' But I knew that was wrong, so I would keep asking her until she told me."

"I don' b'leeve you."

"Ask her." Hubby turned to me. "Mommy, were you the Queen of Nothing?"

"Oh, yes."

"See? She would say 'nothing' when it was something. But she's learned that I want to know. And you know what? She doesn't do it as much anymore. So...what's wrong? What happened tonight?"

There was a momentary pause.

"Ask da Queen of Nothing," Medium mumbled without belligerence.

Didn't we just do this?

"My toofbrush went krrrrght and it came out!" (For the record, Medium lost the tooth below tonight's on Friday night.)

Post-Myronectomy

This is just a quick post to let you all know I'm recovering nicely from my Myronectomy.

However, I am vividly reminded that bone pain and tissue pain are very different. I tried scaling back my pain meds to just the OTC stuff today, after overworking my poor hand yesterday, and I'll admit it was a dumb move. Yes, both the overuse and the OTC pain pills.

Of course, forgetting when I took my last dose of pain meds is also dumb.

I'm blaming the Vicodin.

Innyhoo, there were no complications to the surgery. Myron hadn't caused any additional problems to the ligaments running over him or the joint beneath him. At least, that's what Hubby says the surgeon told him after the procedure. I didn't actually see Dr. M. after surgery.  I spent about an hour in the recovery room, got to eat some graham cookies (yum), and they sent me home with a prescription for Vicodin.  Yay, good drugs!

Mom was baking a cake when we got home. (My house smelled SO yummy.) She'd come out since we weren't sure if Hubby and I would be home before the kids got out of school. As it turned out, we got home about 45 minutes before school got out. I waited until the kids got home before I went up to bed to rest.

The twins were ecstatic to see me.  Large Fry? Not so much. She refused to even look at me. She wouldn't talk to me. She was mad. Mom finally got it out of her: Mommy was supposed to still be at the doctor's. I wasn't supposed to be home! Large had apparently been looking forward to having time just with Gramma, and I foiled that by having a quick procedure and being home early.

So, I went upstairs and snoozed until Hubby came up and asked about dinner. He was kind enough to bring it upstairs. Mom brought me a slice of the peanut butter bundt cake that she made. I slept between Vicodin doses.

Mika takes his job seriously, albeit sleepily.

And my feline nurse hovered worriedly. He even tried to block me from going downstairs when Mom left after helping me tuck the Fries in bed. Mika hasn't been far from me since, although he doesn't hover nearly as closely as he did the first couple of days.

My wrist is growling severely at me, and reminding me it's been too long since I've taken any pain meds.

Innyhoo, I'm feeling better, which is why I'm clearly able to do too much and pay for it later, and I see the surgeon for my follow-up on Tuesday.

Mika just hopped on my lap. I think he's telling me it's time for bed. And I agree.

Priceless

Since Mom and Hubby have birthdays six days apart, and we wouldn't be able to get together closer to Hubby's birthday, she and Dad came out for church today to celebrate both birthdays in one swell foop.

Large Fry, due to a previous indiscretion, is required to sit right next to me in church, and not with her friends.

I am horrible, I know.

However, today it wasn't so bad because Large Fry got to sit between Mommy and Gramma, so all was right with her world.  She snuggled into Gramma and looked generally delighted that today she would get to celebrate the birthdays of two of her favoritest people in the world: Gramma and Daddy.

Well, Daddy was on the platform, still leading worship, when Large got especially gooshy-feeling in the heart.  She had Gramma's arm wrapped around her, but that was no longer enough.

She grabbed for my hand, and at first tried to wrap it around her shoulders, too. She quickly discovered that wouldn't work.

So she stacked our hands together.

Mom made a frantic gesture to Dad, who (after almost 45 years of marriage) promptly decodes her message and pulls out his cell phone.

Large grabbed our hands again, to get them just right on her lap.

And Dad captured this:

Three generations.

Yeah. There are no words.

And if you can't tell, Large has both of her hands surrounding mine and Mom's.  It's a hand sandwich: Large, me, Mom, and Large again.

Further Misadventures of Myron

Okay, so, Myron being named as a migrant is something of a misnomer...

Myron came into being as I said, during the accident in July of 2009.  I was mistaken as to his point of origination, however.

Myron is technically a bone spur, born of an avulsion fracture of the triquetrum bone (bone C) that occurred in the accident...and got totally missed.  Never having been put back into the proper place, the chipped-off bone (that'd be Myron) remained where it was, floating above where it belonged, and the natural regrowth of new bone that happens after a fracture ultimately tethered Myron to the triquetrum from whence he came.

So, Myron extends out from the triquetrum bone, right under the ligaments and tendons, who are now quite cranky about his presence.  Four years of rasping against Myron during wrist motion was more than enough.

Myron does not have long to live.

Surgery is scheduled for Monday, just before noon.  It should be a relatively simple procedure, and my surgeon will look at the ligaments that have been irritated by Myron, and check the joint beneath to make sure it's okay.

I had my preop appointment today, and I'm good to go.

Dr. M says that I should feel a lot better once I'm past the surgery and healed up.

I can't wait.

You just keep that attitude, sweetheart.

One afternoon last week, as I was walking the Fries home from school, a whole passel of shirtless teenage boys ran past.

There must have been twenty of them or so.

Cross-country, no doubt.

"Yuuuuuuck!" Medium proclaimed, averting her eyes from the runners.  "That's so gross!  I never want to see THAT again!"

Now if we can just keep her thinking that for the next thirteen or fourteen years...

Myron Update

I saw the hand specialist again on Wednesday.

I reported that I had had some pain relief due to the cortisone shot, but it was not necessarily significant, and moving my wrist the wrong way (I have to keep the brace on to protect it, but loose so that it doesn't aggravate Myron) will cause flare-ups of pain.  And the relief I felt from the constant pain, at the height of its effectiveness, lasted only about a week.

"Well," Dr. M. said, "that much tells me that I got the cortisone in the right place."  He tapped his fingers together.  "That leaves us with two options.  Option one, live with it.  Option two, remove it."

Option one is untenable.  I can't function like this.

"I'm gonna have to go with option two."

"Okay then.  We'll come down here and get you set up.  I will want to see you before the surgery, just to listen to your heart and lungs."

He said that surgery will be either next week or the week after, but since no one has called to schedule it, I'm guessing it probably won't be next week.  He said he usually operates on Mondays and Wednesdays.  And I was told that the surgery center (right next door to Dr. M.'s office) where I'll have the procedure had some flooding issues last week and all of the surgeries this past week had to be canceled as a result.

So, at some point in the next two weeks, I'll be having a Myron-ectomy.

Feet on the Ground

Awhile back, I got an email from my crazy Aunt Pat (who will be honored to be featured as such here).  Crazy in this case is a very good thing.  Her completely offbeat sense of humor and delight in choosing the perfect silly gifts are just two of the things I love about her.

In her email, she explained that she had plaster casts of her feet.

Would I be interested in having them for the Fries, who could use them as sidewalk chalk?

Okay, we just had to have these.  Somehow, they are just better than Easter-egg shaped chalk.

So I emailed her back that we'd love to have her plaster feet, and the kids would really enjoy being able to use them.  Yes, we sure do allow them to scribble all over the patio, driveway, and sidewalk with chalk.  It washes away when it rains.  What's not to love about sidewalk chalk?

Aunt Pat emailed back to say that she would send them back with her sister to deliver to my mom, after my other aunt was there to visit.  I brought them home with us when we were out at my folks' for Labor Day.

Medium was the first to attempt using one of the feet to draw outside.

And she wanted me to be sure to send the pictures of her efforts to Aunt Pat:

Foot chalk requires a two-handed approach.

Form suffers when the chalk is bigger than both your hands.

Medium does know how to spell the important words.

Such long legs.

This sentence is incomplete without a heart.

"I need to draw a heart here, Mommy!"

"Take a picture and send it to Auntie Pat!"