The Things We Do For Love

Hello friends, it’s me Cranky. That’s right – I got a case of the cranks today, and I’m not afraid to post about it. (Actually, I do feel a little bad subjecting you to the bad moodiness that is me right now, but since I promised myself I’d post today and being grouchy is what’s on my mind, there you have it. I will at least try to spare you the whininess. But really, I can’t promise even that).

To get a few things out of the way – I am not upset, despairing, or in a general state of depression. I’m just irritable - and most likely irritating - but there are no major things wrong in my life.

Zane is healthy. SRH and I both have jobs that are relatively stable. We have a roof over our heads, and none of our friends or family is in crisis right now – that we’re aware of.

In general, things are pretty good around here. So why the cranky?, you say.

Well, thanks for asking.

I think it’s because I really started the day out all wrong. My mom took Zane to the zoo (Ducks! Geese!), and SRH stayed in bed all morning as he didn’t feel well. So, I had about 20 minutes before my yoga class to spend time ALONE *sigh* and read a novel.

While reading, I had the thought, Oh my gosh. When does this ever happen? I’m alone. No child. No husband. Nobody wanting anything from me. I should just sit here for the next hour or so and read.

But then I thought, Come on Zany Mama. You only do yoga two days a week, and this is one of your days. You’re never going to get rid of that junk in your trunk if you don’t have a little discipline. And since you are very antisocial at yoga, it’s still really alone time. Get moving, lady.

And so I grabbed my yoga mat and stepped out the door to Crabby Town.

I will spare you an overly-detailed description of my day, but here are the highlights.

Today my yoga class focused on back bending. (Insert expletive
here, preferably the one that begins with “f”). Not so good for
someone with a back injury (see here). So now my back is killing
me. I have been taking ibuprofen and sitting on the heating pad
as much as possible today in a vain attempt to ease the pain. But
my main point is that it doesn’t bode well for the rest of the day
when you leave your morning yoga class hurting and pissed off.

Also, in case you were curious, spunky toddlers could really care less about how your back feels. Oh, I suppose they care in their little narcissistic pick-me-up-anyway-mama kind of way, but really, that isn’t very helpful.

Potty Training Day 1 was not a complete failure, but we certainly can’t call it a success. (More on this later. I’m sure it will all seem funny on another day).

Since SRH and I have neglected to go to the grocery store this week and I am determined not to spend all our money on eating out, I had plain pasta for dinner. Plain pasta with butter and salt on it. Crud. What am I – in college? Next, I’ll be eating ramen noodles as a snack.

After being gone for about a week, Zane’s face rash is back with a vengeance. The poor kid is looking rough - and I’m still no closer to figuring out what is causing the stupid thing. Lots of mama guilt there.

So as you see, these are not major problems, just really annoying mosquito-bite-like irritations. I’m sure I’ll be better tomorrow.

But in the meantime, I’m going to do what most people do when they’ve had a bad day: I’m going to take it out on my partner.

I am about to go to the video store. There, I’m going to rent a movie which has the line, “Great date movie!” somewhere on the packaging. I’m going to make SRH sit down with me and watch the entire movie while we cuddle. I’m going to make a huge batch of popcorn, because apparently, popcorn – as opposed to pasta – is good with just butter and salt on it. And while I will insist on snuggling throughout the movie, I do not plan to put out afterward.

Yep, that should just about do it.

Say You, Say Me

Some of you may be aware that I am a HUGE Lionel Richie fan. Well, maybe HUGE is a bit of an overstatement – I am not a member of the Lionel Ritchie fan club, I do not have all his trading cards, I’ve never been to a concert, and I don’t know the release date of his next – is there another one coming out? – album. And most importantly, I do not own any of his toenail clippings that I bought from a guy in 1984 who swore they belonged to Lionel. Okay, so perhaps I am not a HUGE fan, but I am a long-time fan.

Beginning with his time in the Commodores (he totally made that group) and right up through the pinnacle of his solo success, which may actually have been that weird “Hello” video where the blind woman makes a freaky sculpture of Lionel as he sings to her from around the corner, I have been able to sing along with every soul/pop/funk Lionel Richie ballad that ever broke the top 100.

My affinity for Lionel began with my mom’s housecleaning routine when I was in grade school. Mom would blast the Commodore’s Greatest Hits while cleaning, and we would both sing along with “Brick House” at the top of our lungs. Later, in college, my favorite song during step aerobics was, of course, “Brick House”. At least 35 of 52 Sundays during a year, I will hum “Easy Like Sunday Morning” for at least part of the morning. I was actually a little angry with Luther Vandross for releasing “Endless Love” with Mariah Carey – why mess with perfection? – and, I swear, I think that “Dancing on the Ceiling” is a catchy song.

So it is with less than surprise, that I began to notice that my life and Lionel’s life have interesting parallels. Forgive the pun, but I have noticed lately that Lionel and I are once, twice, three times a failure in certain areas of our lives.

Our Home Life

Lionel: Lionel was very famously beat down by his ex-wife, Brenda, when she caught him sneaking around with his future wife, Diane. He then married the woman-who-was-just-a-friend-when-my-wife
-found-us-together, Diane, and she asked for a bunch of money when she left him about ten years later.

Me: I lost the futon fight. SRH has wanted to get a futon for about forever, and we figured it would make our third bedroom look a little more useable, so I finally caved. We bought one today. It’s from Norka Futon, and it’s actually pretty whiz bang, but I do think this indicates a troubling power imbalance in our relationship: SRH wants a futon. SRH gets a futon. All I get is to pick which particular futon, the color, the fabric, and then watch SRH assemble it.

Our Children’s Health

Lionel: I don’t think I need to tell you about all the speculation around Nicole Richie and her ever-diminishing frame (anorexia). Apparently, she has recently sought help, which is great. I’m sure that Lionel was part of that.

Me: Zane’s face rash will NOT go away. I am treating it with both yeast and eczema medications, but the stubborn bumps will not go. Rash – 1. Zany Mama – 0.

Our Sales

Lionel: Facing decreasing sales and a beat down by his wife in the late eighties, Lionel decided to take some time off. Since he came back into the public eye in 1992, his record sales have been less than impressive.

Me: After almost 2 months on the market, my house still hasn’t sold. To add insult to injury, Stupid Neighbor’s house went into contract this week. This house on the market thing is getting old fast. I can totally see why Lionel dropped out of the selling things (records) business and just went to live on a yacht somewhere.

So, yeah, Lionel and I are both 3 for 3. The similarities are eerie, huh?

Victory Will Be Mine

Lest I begin to forget that I parent a child with multiple health issues, something always happens to bring me back to reality. Before I can say, Summer is Zane’s best season, we have another trip to the ER (see Chicago Trip 3 weeks ago) or a birthday party that I forgot to make allergen-free cupcakes for. (Cripes, you’d think that I’d just make another batch and freeze them like I did for the first 8 birthday parties, but somehow I’ve neglected to do this).

Not to complain. Summer is Zane’s best season. We haven’t needed to use any rescue asthma medications for him since we returned from Chicago. That means that we’ve only had to do the two “pulmicort-foradil cocktail” breathing treatments a day with two oral medications for a chaser. We’ve been down to using just four different medicines a day for weeks now.

And, really, the food allergy stuff is now a way of life for the most part for us. We do most of our adjustments without thinking. Somehow, though, this relatively hassle-free life has lulled me into forgetting just a little bit that our child is not “typical”.

Two things have happened this week to remind me that, hey, I better get my lackadaisical stuff together and step up to the parenting plate.

1. I attended a meeting for parents of children with food allergies.
2. The rash on Zane's face continues unabated, and I'm starting to feel like it's looking at me accusingly.
   

First, THE MEETING. This group was started about five months ago by a mama whose child has a life-threatening peanut allergy. I went to the first meeting, got freaked out, and didn’t return until this month. At the initial meeting, there were about 23 parents in the room who talked about their kids’ anaphylactic reactions. Well, at our house we were in full asthma season at that time (September through April when I live in a constant state of anxiety and hypervigilance), and I just couldn’t handle any new worst-case scenario images in my head. Also, most of the discussion focused on one allergen (peanuts), and Zane’s got four allergies (including peanuts), three sensitivities, and severe asthma. It was all just a little overwhelming.

But I went back this week, and it was a very pleasant experience. It didn’t feel like a life-or-death-if-you-don’t-have-the-right-information kind of meeting. Zane’s list of allergies was still longer than most other folks in the room, but I got some good information – i.e. Benadryl Fast-Melts in cherry flavor have soy protein in them. (As an aside: How can a medication which is the #1 medication used to treat allergic reactions contain one of the eight major allergens? It just seems to make no sense to me).

Anyway, hearing what other mamas are doing just reminded me that I need to keep up with all the precautions we take.

And then, should I still forget, there’s THE RASH. Zane has had an eczema-type rash on his face around his mouth for the past several weeks. Let me just confess, I completely know what started the rash - dairy. In the space of 24 hours, I let him eat McDonald’s Satan Fries and some popcorn – which I knew had butter on it - at a friend’s house. This is where the whole “lulled into a false sense of security” comes back to bite the junk in my trunk.

As for the Satan Fries, we hadn’t had them in a really long time, and I just thought, Well, he can have them today. He does so love them. I’ll give him benadryl later and make sure he doesn’t have any more in the near future. Which might have been okay. But then the next day we went to a friend’s house, and I let him have the popcorn. Again, I just thought, Oh my gosh. He just wants to eat what the other kids are having. He always has to have a separate snack. I just want him to be normal. And I let him eat the popcorn.

Well, wanting my kid to be normal led to diarrhea 20 minutes later and difficulty sleeping for the next two days, and – oh yeah – a wicked face rash.

So the dairy exposure started the face rash, but the question for me now is: What is making it continue?

Could it just a particularly recalcitrant eczema episode? Could it be exposure to another allergen? But that would mean either he’s been exposed to something I don’t know about or he’s developed a new sensitivity/allergy. Okay, both of the last two scenarios freak me out.

Could it be an environmental allergy or a virus in his system that is triggering eczema? Could it be a yeast infection on his face (caused by the breathing treatments) that I am mistaking for eczema? Could it be a reaction to the sunscreen we’ve been using?

So basically, after about three weeks off the vigilance, I am back to it full-tilt.

It’s me against THE RASH, and I swear I will be victorious.