Can you say Gaylord Focker?!

Last night we had dinner with a family of three girls I babysit for. The week before Zach had come over to visit them with me, and apparently there was a meltdown after we left. I explained that Zach had left feeling overwhelmed, too. For those of you who don't know Zach very well, he is very animated and full of boundless energy. He is great with kids, but they tend to get overly excited around him.
Last night the plan was to order chinese food and eat right away so that there wouldn't be much time for things to get wild and crazy. That turned out to be just foolish thinking. There was a fairy named Sky Dancer, some wisteria, the roof, and a water-filled hula hoop involved.
Sky Dancer, a new birthday gift for one of the girls, spins around quickly atop her cloud perch and then flies through the air when a string is rapidly pulled. The first time Zach tried out this new toy, he launched her up into the wisteria where she hung for several moments before he knocked her down. With the second attempt she was on the roof. All day long she hadn't flown more than 2 feet, and within 15 seconds Zach managed to launch her 30 feet into the air. There was some screaming involved, but M came to the rescue and retrieved Sky Dancer while the rest of us were doubled over laughing. The toy had to be put away by the end of the night.
Later as Zach was hula hooping, the hoop split open at the seam and a stream of water flew out at me and our hostess. Luckily she has a good sense of humor. Who knows where the water came from, but luckily the hoop was easily repaired, but apparently more difficult to use without the water. "This is the story of my life", Zach said. "Trouble just seems to find me".
This morning he woke up with a stiff back. There will be no more tangos with Sky Dancer for Zach.

Things that I've recently (re-)discovered that make me happy

1. Strawberry yogurt
2. Guacamole (be sure to mix the garlic and salt together before adding the avocado. It makes such a difference in taste)
3. Swimming in the outdoor pool with Zach
4. Wearing Ashley's old blue-flowered bikini with boy shorts to the pool
5. Sleeping
6. Driving
7. Napping
8. Getting dirty
9. Drinking coffee in bed with Zach in the morning while listening to the news (if I can lie still long enough)
10. multiplication (and sometimes long division) in my head-it's a challenge and it helps me fall asleep sometimes
11. Trees
12. Thunderstorms
13. The blogging* community that Nancy started
14. Tea

*As Nancy pointed out, blogspot's spell check doesn't recognize variations of the word "blog". It suggested I change blogging to flogging. Thanks for starting our flogging community, Nancy!

One more day that I'm alive and well

It has been a stressful week in babysitting. Twice in the past 5 days two different kids choked and one consequently vomited twice. The first was the 15 month old I've babysat only a handful of times. She has a habit of not swallowing all of her food and just letting it loll about in her mouth an hour after lunch has ended. Her mother knows it's a problem, but unless she's putting her to bed doesn't worry about it. I was sitting on the family room floor with her when she started her "crying because I'm there and NOT mommy" which is a fun cycle that continues endlessly the entire 3-4 hours I am there. This time, however, she started with a gasp followed by awful "I can't breathe" sounds. Since she's tiny, only about 16 pounds because she was born about 3 months too early, I whisked her up, slung her over my arm and gently (of course) whacked her on the back. She continued her usual screaming after that. I only told her mother that she started choking a little bit and that I had to hit her on the back, which is why she is crying more than usual. I figured there was no point in worrying her mother any more than necessary. All's well that ends well.
Yesterday I was watching the two boys aged 27 months and 9 months. The 9 month old had been happily playing on the floor by himself for nearly an hour when I looked over and saw something white in his mouth, most likely one of the dinosaur stickers his brother had been sticking on and peeling off everything. Just as I started to walk over to look closer, he gagged and puked. Twice. He started screaming when I pulled his shirt off and tried to wipe the snot from his nose. He is also getting over a bad cold, so it's possible that he choked on his own phlegm, which is what I told his parents. He seemed fine after a sink bath and some pedialyte.
Here's the thing. Vomiting of any kind freaks me out. I know, nobody enjoys it, but I think there are probably people who don't mind it as much as I do. I've only thrown up a handful of times in my life, and before the last two times it had been 12 years since I'd been sick like that. I start to imagine being horribly sick which makes me feel so out of control. Maybe that's the issue for me-the lack of control over vomiting. With a cold or a headache you can still go about your day, but not when there's puking involved.
Last night, as I was trying to fall alseep and hoping I wouldn't catch the baby's choking-vomiting bug, the only thing worse that I could envision happening to me that night was death. Luckily I evaded both.

San Francisco

My mom and I returned from San Francisco last Friday. It was the first time either one of us had been to the west coast. The trip was spectacular. We spent three days in the city walking up the steep hills to see Lombard Street, the “crookedest street in the world”, Fisherman’s Wharf, Chinatown, Japantown and Haight Ashbury. One day we rented a car and I drove us over the Golden Gate Bridge up to John Muir National Monument to see the Redwoods. From there we drove along coastal Rt. 1 high above the Pacific Ocean and up to Sonoma Valley where we stopped at several wineries on our way back. It was a cool, sometimes chilly 60 degrees the whole week. There were so many things to see. Mostly we sat in Union Square and just watched people. The city seemed almost too good to live in, until we picked up a couple of real estate magazines. At any rate, I would love to go back and see more of California. Maybe for that honeymoon Zach and I never took…

Forming a Dent

I couldn’t sleep Sunday night. I went out into the family room and sat in the reclining chair that we all got my dad for father’s day several years ago when Ashley was still well. It’s the chair I sat in the week she and I spent together. She had herself and all of her stuff nestled into the corner of the big, white sofa where she said she felt a huge dent forming. There were two big pillows propped up behind her and several blankets on and around her. There was a small table in front of her with random pill bottles, gum wrappers, and empty cups piled on top. There was usually a plate of half-eaten chicken or french toast which she would end up feeding to Zoë from her fork. Zoë would gingerly take the morsel of food off the fork without scraping her teeth against it. Ashley was always teaching Zoe new tricks. The cats were never far away, either. Tyler would never miss an opportunity to jump up on a pile of blankets, especially if you didn’t want him there. Under the table was a paper bag with trash spilling out onto the floor. She was never a very neat person. The big oxygen machine was right behind the sofa making its steady whirring noise all day and night. I would miss it when it was gone. Her backpack with the TPN (total paraenteral nutrition), the “food” that was taken intravenously through the artery in her neck, was at her feet. That week Zach and I prepared those bags for her. The time Zach did she didn’t even hook it up to her pump to use. It just sat in the refrigerator only to be thrown away the next day. It was a tedious process to prepare those feedings. The bag, several of which were delivered weekly, had to be removed from the fridge hours before use. I had to use two different syringes to inject vitamin K and other B vitamins into the bag through a little plastic cover near the bottom. This had to be done hours before use so that they had enough time to be infused. Right before use the bag needed to be hooked up to the pump and primed for use. The fluid had about 6 feet of tubing to go through before it would enter Ashley’s body, and there couldn’t be any air bubbles in the tubing. I would stand on a chair and hold the tube above my head as the pump slowly pushed the fluid through, often times spilling over onto the floor before I could flick the air bubbles out and stop the pump. I tried hard not to let any of it spill onto the floor, because it was Ashley’s main source of nutrition. She was supposed to keep the pump on through the night for a total of 12-13 hours. She never did though. She would turn it off every time she got up to use the bathroom and then “forget” to turn it back on. It would make her feel sick, she said. After she died as I was cleaning out her room I found a dozen half-used TPN bags dating from August, September and October, and she died in January. This past Sunday after I sat in the chair for a while trying to remember what it was like 6 months ago with Ashley sitting across from me asking me to please stop rocking because it made her feel nauseous, I went into her room. Her urn sits on her dresser. A few months ago I tried to open it to see what her ashes look like, but I couldn’t figure out how to get the lid off. I figured it out last Sunday. Her ashes were inside in a clear, plastic bag twisted shut with a number attached to it. Here she was, my sister, a number. The ashes were nothing like what I expected. I thought they’d be fine and black, like soot, but instead they were gray and white and gravel-like. The whole back must have weighed about 8 pounds. This was my sister. After crying for a while I felt anger. I’m angry that she didn’t take care of herself the way she should have. I’m angry that she left me here to deal with this. Sometimes I wonder why her and not me, just as I wonder why Alyssa and not me.