Daddy Zine

The cookie or the stick.

Well, there's a lot less hugging in the ICU, which is a blessing of course. We're getting more of a grip on what's going on physically with mom and things seem stable at this point. I stopped this morning at one of the panaderias in the neighborhood of the hospital to implement my usual strategy of buying cookies for the nurses -- I am willing to drop the occasional two or three bucks by way of thanks for all that's being done for my mom and only wish I could do more. I've made a conscious decision that the cranky Manichean pulmonologist* gets no cookies. This chance to exert some small measure of control over this whole sorry episode has cheered my spirits.
___
* I trust the pulmonologist to do a good job with the treatment and he appears to know his stuff; nobody however would accuse him of euphemism and he tends to present his opinions as rather stark dualities -- do what he says, you live; ignore his advice and you die.  To his credit, he in fact seems correct in this assessment. So I can grudgingly accept that we are not in need of new buddies, and we will settle instead for a hard-ass doctor. So it works out OK. 

(Though it is some measure of my relative levels of fatigue and its concomitant punchiness that I briefly entertained the notion this morning of tickling this doctor -- nothing extreme, just a quick little "cootchie-cootchie" up around his rib cage -- because I became briefly obsessed with the image of him giggling, if only a little bit. Upon reflection I dismissed this strategy. In any case, the pulmonologist will only get a cookie from me once he softens up a little bit. And thus the Machiavellian aspects of managing my mother's care continue.)

The good things about feeling terrible.

One of the stranger things about having my mom in the hospital for an extended period of time is that the weird ongoing stress and worry of being down here in Tucson has apparently given me the look of an amiable ox being led to the Hecatomb; people are thus treating me with a certain deliberate friendliness. I will come wandering a little dazedly into a lunch place or a deli and the service personnel will assume a sort of delicately hearty geniality and then slip me extra food or comp me some small treat. I am even getting the occasional hug from a nurse or social worker -- anyone who knows my views on casual hugging will understand that all the confusion and worry has made my usual boundaries a little porous. Despite the myriad irritations of daily life which beset us all, most people generally want to be kind. Which is encouraging.

We have found that we are a weepy family.

Well, as of lunch-time in Tucson this afternoon, my mom went back into the ICU at St. Mary's hospital. We're all pretty discouraged. It might be taken as some measure of how little control I am feeling over the situation right now that I am willing to settle for making this entry pithy rather than sparkling. More updates as time and energy permit.

Zoom!

  Zoom 
  Originally uploaded by Garrett2.

My kid and I ran up and down in front of the house this evening in an effort to master the subtle art of the two-wheeler. She is trying to leverage her age into increased agility. I'm simply trying not to pull any major muscles. The silent cost of the social upheaval triggered by America's move toward later childbearing years -- 37-year-old dads who stagger about behind little bicycles without the spring in their step that was so common back in Laura Ingalls' day when they had their kids at 19 and the little ones learned to ride their bicycles at the reins of an ox.

Anyway, I'm dragging my sorry carcass off to Arizona tomorrow to visit my mom and dad. Mom's out of ICU these past five days and in the rehab wing of the hospital. I'll be back in the swing of things next week and whipping you all into a consumerist frenzy in time for the 45th Michigan Antiquarian Book and Paper Show in Lansing on April first. Stop by my booth and be the first to mention this blog and you will receive a cheap piece of ephemera! (Offer not valid for my colleague Marc, a regular reader who will be staffing the booth beside me.)

Throwback!

  Throwback 
  Originally uploaded by Garrett2.

One advantage to having married into a family as well organized as that of my wife is that her mother is possessed of an inordinate number of t-shirts from the halcyon days of yore. (Which were the late 1970s -- given what I recall of the late 1970s I find it somewhat dispiriting that those days might be considered either halcyon or of yore.)

This thrifty trait of my mother-in-law saves me a certain amount of shopping for t-shirts for our kid, contemporary t-shirts now all sporting ringed collars and ersatz retro decals anyway. These old hand-me-down tees appeal both to the antiquarian and the scrounger in me.

Anyway, today was the first day of the newly-minted spring in which the kid could freely wander about the front yard in her shirt sleeves. (She chose to do this in part because she is a hardy soul who has tired of winter.) She pulled on one of her mom's vintage t-shirts and suddenly I was all like, "Craig Morton! I love Craig Morton!" This sudden fugue did not detract from the overall sweetness of the moment, pictured here.

The Long March.

  The Long March 
  Originally uploaded by Garrett2.

The kid rallied her immune system in time for her birthday party this afternoon at the local science center. Here you see them embarking on the teddy bear tracking activity. Anything that gets kids slogging through the muck for an hour on a Sunday afternoon is OK in my book. I think nearly everyone had a good time.

And with God as my witness, I had no idea that I had put trick birthday candles on the kid's cake.

The trials of an ailing thespian.

Our kid has been battling some viral affliction that started as a cold and progressed to a sore throat, vomiting, etc. She seemed somewhat improved this morning. Then I noticed she had broken out with spots. I have suggested that perhaps she lobby for admission to the zoo. She has vetoed this idea.

When I spoke to the nurse on the phone this morning she assured us things would be OK. We are doing our best to nurse the child back to health in preparation for her birthday party this Sunday afternoon at the local science center. We have considered baking a BRAT-based cake, perhaps layering the wheat toast slices with applesauce, though my guess is this would also fall under critical executive scrutiny.

The most confounding symptom has so far been the kid's occasional dizziness (which in truth seemed to pass once the fever had resolved on Wednesday), though even now if we ask our kid to walk a straight line she will stagger dramatically across the room before turning and scampering back to the warmth of her bedclothes.

(As an aside, you may have noticed that vomiting comes up with some frequency in these columns; each ailment that enters this house eventually seems to provoke nausea in our child. I apologize for falling back on it as a recurrent theme but if nausea has an upside it is that it has made us readily adaptable to contingencies. Now, even when dealing with a relatively minor case of the sniffles the kid will be on her guard against what seems her basic existential condition. "You are probably all wondering when I'm going to start throwing up," she will announce at bedtime. "Maybe you should bring in the metal bowl.")

Standing in what my kid has taken to calling "The Grandfather Tree."

  Grandfather tree 
  Originally uploaded by Garrett2.

Jeezus, as we might say were we feeling particularly vernacular, finally a day where it's over forty degrees (by M. Fahrenheit's estimable scale) and the sun is shining!

So I loaded the kid into the car and we headed out to Bird Hills Park which at 147 acres is the largest park in the city, its hilly woods are a sanctuary for hikers and bicycles are prohibited. (Copyright the City of Ann Arbor, all rights reserved.) Also, the lower trails turn into a series of rushing icy streams when the thaw begins. Which is pretty cool when you are wearing rubber boots, which our family had the foresight (which is the equivalent of being four-armed) to wear. We built fairy houses by the rushing stream until my kid fell into the snow-melt water and began to cry. She cried until I pointed at the impression she made in the slush where she fell and told her that people would flock from the earth's four corners to marvel at the callipygian beauty of Lake Daughter L.

Anyway, we came home and she took a hot bubble bath and I need to take a shower. I hate E. E. CUMMINGS (as I like to type his name just to spite him though I tend to leave Ms. hooks alone for whatever reason) so I will not say anything about mud-luscious because as I noted before I hate E. E. CUMMINGS or rather much of what he has written. So perhaps I will jump the gun by a couple of months and just say

broken
branch
come

white
sweet
May

again

Woo hoo!

(NB. The "Woo hoo" is a later interpolation and not from Dr. Williams' original text.)

Our address has been given to Akbar and Jeff.

Things have been a trifle suboptimal around here of late -- Mom's still in the hospital and the earliest I can get back down to Arizona is in a couple of weeks. Friends and acquaintances alike have been beset with misfortune. I've got a stuffed-up nose. Cash flow is down. My name has recently appeared on a list of waifs and strays for my high school class's 20th reunion, leading to an uptick in random Googling and unexpected emails.

But amid all this drear and gloom a small ray of light has broken through; this afternoon we received a marketing postcard for a certain cosmetic procedure which promises to "improve skin tone and texture while effectively smoothing, tightening and contouring skin for an overall younger looking appearance." The procedure itself does not bring the hope back into my life; it is rather this bit of promotional logistics, buried in the text of the card:

"Attend our Evening of Beauty on Thursday, March 15 -- 6:30 PM at Mac's Seafood Shack."

And suddenly I feel I can go on.

Shag.

  Shag 
  Originally uploaded by Garrett2.

An old snapshot from ca. 1991, recently forwarded from an old housemate. I appear to be wearing a bathrobe and a Santa hat. I believe I am discussing nullification.