So I can’t remember where I was, perhaps it was the CBS 5 Blogger Mixer? (which was great by the way) and someone told me I was funny. And then they asked, “Is your blog funny?” and as I contemplated a witty answer, my dear friend Squid volunteered
“No. It’s about her life.” And then the conversation moved on.
Yeah. It’s about my life, which lately is just not that funny. I mean I can make most things sort of sound funny…
like this one, ready?
Beware of Safeway meatloaf, it nearly killed me. It was so tough I almost took off my left index finger a few weeks ago and had to go to the local emergency room to get four stitches to staunch the bleeding. The wait wasn’t very long. I asked them to triage me last so I could actually get a nap. As I see it that visit will end up being 40 bucks a stitch and $200 an hour for a bed to nap in.
What really happened?
Jake was so upset, as he has been for weeks and weeks and weeks now that I was hurrying and watching him thrash at the counter with his aide and I stopped looking at what I was cutting and sliced my finger. It bled through a kitchen towel and I still finished making his dinner so I could feel comfortable that I was leaving the aide with as little else to manage as possible. At the hospital I fell asleep on the gurney so hard that they were a little worried about me, as it seems they would leave the room for 20 seconds and I would fall sound asleep before they returned.
and then here’s another good funny story:
My younger brother Gerard came up for the weekend. He arrived just in time on Thursday to go out for drinks with all of my mama friends from SEPTAR, scaring them with his amazing white teeth and strong beach body builder physique. On Friday night we decided to eat dinner at home because Jake was having such a hard time. He yelled for me after he went to check on Jake who had gone to bed early. I ran down the stairs only to find my brother with blood all over his hands and when Jake slid a bit to the side, trying to wriggle away from Gerard, blood all over the floor. Dude.. welcome to my home.
okay I can’t even make that story funny.
After we put Jake to bed he continued to thrash about. I gave him the max on the benzodiazepine that was recently prescribed by the Psychiatrist. Apparently, this stronger and “smoother” drug takes more time to kick in and more time to wear off, than the other one we had used sporadically to control extremely out-of-control, dangerous, thrashing. We kept checking on him, but Gerard was the one who found him covered in blood, coming from an unidentified head wound.
Head wounds bleed a lot, and after carrying Jake upstairs and putting him in his 5 point car seat in the car, which the only place we can truly hold him down without hurting ourselves, we cleaned up the wound and decided not to go to the ER. Staples that would probably get pulled out by Jake would inevitably be harder to deal with than waiting until the swelling in the little know went down and the 1cm would closed up. It wasn’t long before the bleeding stopped, but it was several more hours until we felt comfortable that Jake wasn’t going to bash his head into another wall downstairs, so he sat in the living room with us, belted into his thank-God-we-have-this wheelchair. It was awesome. Jake’s car seat still has Descartes’ shirt over it covered in dried blood.(which Descartes stripped on and held against Jake’s head as soon as he saw the blood.. God I love that man who knows how to react…)
okay so you can see…not that funny.
I also have an injured shoulder from Jake ripping my arm out of the socket (practically) which, while it is healing, and I am going to PT, makes me incapable of doing many household tasks well or at all… and my house was not looking good to begin with. And then I had an IEP for Jake, which led to the need to have another one (those went very well, just took a long time).
And I had a really emotional day after getting Jake into Camp. You would think that it would just make me happy, but it is a really bad process to sign kids up for 1:1 aides. I know I must be first my son’s advocate, but it makes me cry (while driving friends on the highway in my Not-so-mini van at 75mph.. not good)
and did I tell you about the 2 inch nail Jake stepped on last week? I don’t think I did. Went into and back out of his foot. His high pain tolerance meant that he did it while I was 12 feet away from him, and did not know expect for a strange drawing-in of breath that he took loudly. It was an odd enough sound that I watched him for a minute noticed a slight limo and asked Descartes to check out his foot as he passed by. He just scooped Jake up and said we are going to the hospital. I called Sage and she came for Lucy without waiting for me to tell her why I needed last-minute babysitting. The ER was great. They “got” Jake, and didn’t insist on numbing his foot all up with a bunch of needles before we took out the nail. It came out as it had gone in quickly. Jake only cried when they washed his foot, and I am guessing it is only because we held him too still. We were able to spend the entire next day focused on Jake because Squid took Lucy home with her to play with Mali.
I haven’t been laughing a lot lately.
I am okay. Good things have been happening too. I know they have. We decided on the list of contributors for the next Can I Sit With You? book due out in November. Jake continues to say more words at school– “No! Applesauce!” when offered yogurt. Lucy is starting to sleep a little better. My closet is clean. I have amazing friends who jump at the chance to help us. We went to the new California Academy of Sciences which the kids loved.
Those things aren’t funny either, but it is my life.
This is all just one part of my life, which will pass. Hopefully I am in a learning phase right now so that the next part is really really easy, and less physically painful, and funny. Maybe it will be funny.
