Tragic Sandwich

Category: Health and Fitness

  • Turn and Face the Strange Ch-ch-changes

    candle holders in the shape of the numbers 5 and 0, arranged to show the number 50

    I don’t believe that anything I’m going to write about here is unique to me. But I haven’t read a lot about it, which is why I want to write this.

    In February, I turned 50. And leading up to that, I could feel a shift within me. It felt positive, it felt interesting–but I wasn’t sure what else it was, or what it meant.

    I think this is pretty common at 50–I suspect a lot of people start looking at where they are, how they got there, and where they want to be. I think that this is particularly true for a lot of women. And I want to talk about it.

    I also want to learn about it. So I’ve been doing a lot of reading, and I’ve started meditating and journaling (although I haven’t done either for several weeks, but more on that in some other post).

    Let’s see what happens, shall we?

  • Sick Day: Live-Blogging “Julie & Julia”

    I’ve had this cold for almost two weeks. I’m pretty sure bronchitis is in the mix. Should I go to Urgent Care? Maybe. Instead, I took a sick day and slept for four hours.

    My usual sick day movie is “When Harry Met Sally,” and I was thisclose to watching it. But for some reason I have a DVD of “Julie & Julia,” so I’ve decided to watch that. And because I’ve read Cleaving and don’t like Julie, I’ve decided to live-blog it as well. Because I am nothing if not timely.

    I have read Julie Powell’s book about her blog, and I have read Julia Child’s My Life in France, so here we are.

    DVD cover of Julie & Julia

    We open the movie on a woman who is delighted to be just where she is (Julia Child) and then move to a woman who is miserable where she is. This is kind of the whole point.

    Julie’s friends are awful. Why are they friends? Did they go to college together? I don’t care. I never want to see them again.

    Oh, wow. She got “Single and Fabulous?“ed. By one of her alleged friends. Urgh.

    I like Julie more than I expected to, based on other reviews. And on Cleaving.

    How did they make Meryl Streep look so tall? I’m sure there’s an article that explains the technique.

    Oh, god. That was the best “I love my life, but oh, I so wish we could have a baby” moment. This is why Meryl Streep is Meryl Streep.

    Mary Lynne Rajskub needs bigger roles. She’s great.

    Well, who DOESN’T want Julia Child’s life at this point? I mean, it sounded incredible in her book, and seeing it recreated? Magical.

    Julie got 12 comments, and none of the readers were people she knows. I know just how that feels! It’s a good feeling.

    This lobster sequence is everything.

    Full disclosure: I have never killed . . . err . . . cooked a lobster, either.

    “I think you should do the PayPal thing. That way we can have more lobster.” I’m with Mary Lynne Rajskub. Says the woman who has intentionally not monetized her blog. I know.

    “Like if I didn’t write, they would really be upset.” Is this where you started to go wrong, Julie Powell?

    Aspics sound awful. My mother, who was a good cook, took to one aspic recipe for a while. It was underwhelming.

    Is there anything more delightfully happy than Julia Child and her sister Dorothy reuniting? I can’t imagine.

    Dorothy is pregnant. Oh, Julia. I know.

    I have never wanted to make beef bourguignon so much, and the one time I had it, I didn’t care for it. Possibly because I don’t like wine.

    Surprise: I don’t like Eric.

    After Julie’s New York Times article, there are 65 messages on her answering machine. It’s 2018, and my answering machine won’t hold 65 messages. Yes, it’s 2018 and I have an answering machine. I know.

    I think Julie got some new friends. Good. Only Mary Lynne Rajskub was worth keeping around.

    She made it! And so did she!

    I liked this movie more than I expected to. It’s a good sick day movie. But I’ll probably watch “When Harry Met Sally” next time.

  • So Long, 2016

    I wrote 14 posts this year. Sometimes I wonder if I’m still a blogger.

    What can I say? It’s been a hell of a year. A lot of this is known to people; we all heard about the election, and no matter how you feel about the results, it was a big damn deal. We all know about the celebrities who died; Carrie Fisher’s passing hit me particularly hard.

    For us, we’ve had a triathlon to train for (Mr. Sandwich) and support (Baguette and me), multiple IEP meetings, changes in leadership at Baguette’s school, lost teeth (the sixth came out this week), family drama that warrants assessment, and lice.

    Oh, the lice.

    We were supposed to travel to visit my dad and stepmom for Thanksgiving. But I had a bad cold, and based on much prior experience of making that trip sick, we decided not to. As it turned out, that was a wise decision. Because on the day we would have been driving, I discovered that Baguette and I had lice.

    We called a service to come over to the house that night and comb all three of us, and scheduled the follow-up for the Monday after the holiday. But as it turned out, we couldn’t wait that long, so we also went to a lice-combing salon on Friday for an additional come-through.

    There are, by the way, a lot of businesses providing this service in Los Angeles.

    That was our hair; we also commenced on an astonishing amount of laundry, washing and drying on hot things that we often don’t even put in the dryer. We vacuumed and lint-rollered and bagged and froze and did everything we could think of to halt this in its tracks.

    It was exhausting. It was not a vacation. It was not a break. But ultimately, we were successful–although we now are completely fixated on checking our heads on a regular (and probably unnecessarily frequent) basis.

    We delayed our trip, planning to visit the week after Christmas. And then I got bronchitis. So we didn’t go. But we did have Christmas dinner with Mr. Sandwich’s parents, as planned. That was nice for a bit, and then discretion is the better part of valor, and also of family harmony on Christmas.

    Now we are two weeks into Baguette’s three-week winter break from school. In case you were wondering, three weeks is too long. It’s not that I don’t love and value the time with her–it’s that we don’t have any other care for her, which means we have to take more days off from work, and it means that her routine is significantly disrupted in ways that are very difficult for her. And with my bronchitis that first week of the break, we didn’t do a great job of creating a different routine. We’re getting into one now, but that still doesn’t keep us from having rough days.

    Long story short? I am ready for a new year. So Happy New Year to all of you!

    And know that while I may not be able to stay up the whole time (among other things, Baguette got me up at around 4:00 this morning), I am definitely feeling this:

  • Kindness

    We took Baguette to the doctor yesterday, to check on a minor concern. While we were there, we decided to get her flu shot–none of us has gotten it so far, because we’ve all been sick through the fall and into the winter, but she’s pretty healthy at the moment.

    As always, Baguette screamed a lot about the shot. And this year’s shot is a doozy, so it had an even more extreme effect than usual. She and I waited outside the pharmacy while Mr. Sandwich went in to pick up her prescription. It took about 20 minutes. She was still in pain, and screaming.

    People moved in and out of the courtyard where we were waiting. I tried to calm her, offering her distractions, singing to her (that definitely didn’t help), and walking around while holding her. After a while, I noticed a young boy looking at us and smiling.

    He said, “Hi. Is it okay if I come over and talk to her?”

    I said, “Yes, but she may not talk in return. She doesn’t talk much sometimes.”

    He said, “That’s okay,” and came over.

    He never lost the smile. He talked to her, and suggested games they could play, and put “pixie dust” on her arm, and let her play with his tablet.

    After a couple of minutes, I said, “Do you have a brother or sister with autism? Because you really seem to know what you’re doing.” He answered, “Oh, I just really like little kids.”

    Eventually his mother came up, and I introduced myself and told her how helpful her son was being. She said he was in a peer support program at his school, where he helps kids with ADHD and autism. I told her that it showed, because he was really good at it. She said, “I heard your husband mention it in the pharmacy, and my son asked me if he could go talk to your daughter. I said I didn’t know, but apparently he did anyhow.” I smiled and said, “He did ask first!”

    Apparently Mr. Sandwich had to endure a long stretch of snarky, irritated, and exaggerated comments from the other adults in the pharmacy, several of whom seemed to feel that 15 minutes is the same as an hour, and that no one was doing anything about the upset child in the courtyard.

    But let me tell you, that 12-year-old was a real grown-up.

  • Made-Up Rules for Our Imaginary Children

    When Mr. Sandwich and I were married, but before we had Baguette, we made many pronouncements, as you do. Some of them still hold, like leaving the restaurant when we cannot keep her quiet and calm. Some of them remain untested (we are not fans of demanding MORE candy from people when trick-or-treating, and yes, we’ve seen that happen, but she’s not really a fan of trick-or-treating). Others have fallen by the wayside.

    “No junk food before age 2! There is plenty of time to eat french fries later, but they don’t need them that young!”

    At just under a year, Baguette reached up and pulled a french fry from Mr. Sandwich’s mouth and ate it. She loved it. Now I just wish she’d eat fries, because that would mean one more thing she eats.

    “No TV before age 2!”

    At about six months, she came home from day care with a fever. She felt awful and was exhausted, but could not quite tip over into sleep. I looked for something age-appropriate and stumbled across Yo Gabba Gabba. I thought, “Wow, this show is awful.” A minute later, she passed out on her own lap, and I thought, “This show is GREAT.” From there we found Pajanimals and Sesame Street (well, I knew about that one) and Wibbly Pig and Stella and Sam. We have never watched Yo Gabba Gabba again. That show is awful.

    “We will never get a portable DVD player or own a car in which one is installed, even if we have to take a hammer to it. Our children can look out the window and play the Alphabet Game like we each did.”

    We are seriously considering buying a portable DVD player for the car.

  • Sick Days

    Last Wednesday night, I felt bad. It felt like the beginnings of the flu, with muscle aches. I emailed work and told them I’d be taking a sick day. This is very unusual. I don’t usually decide until the morning. But I was pretty sure the night before.

    Thursday morning I had chills, and that afternoon I spiked a fever. I felt so bad that I didn’t take Tylenol until Mr. Sandwich came home, because I needed him to get the Tylenol from the bathroom cabinet. Getting it myself was too hard.

    Then I started throwing up. That was fun.

    I took another sick day on Friday. Saturday evening, we went to urgent care. They said it was probably bronchitis, gave me antibiotics, and told me to see my regular doctor on Monday and stay home from work until Wednesday.

    I felt too sick on Monday, but I made an appointment for Tuesday.

    On Tuesday, our street was being slurry-sealed. That meant we had to park around the corner. It’s not too far, but it’s not as close as our actual driveway. I headed out to the car, and as I walked down the street, could not help but notice the four police officers and maybe a sheriff, plus the guy sitting in the back seat of one of the police cars. Possibly this explained the helicopters I’d heard earlier. I also realized that my wallet was not in my bag. Since the situation on the corner appeared to be coming to a close, I decided to check the car. My wallet wasn’t in the car. I went back to the house, just as the guy in the police car was allowed to get out of the police car. My wallet wasn’t in the house, either. That meant it was probably in the car Mr. Sandwich had taken to work (long story short, it was). But I didn’t want to drive to the doctor’s office without my wallet, and I didn’t want to walk back to the car. So I punted.

    On Wednesday, my doctor gave me a new antibiotic and an inhaler. You know it’s going well when you get an inhaler. She also said that if I wasn’t feeling better on Friday, to call back and she’d send me for a chest x-ray.

    I wasn’t feeling better. Weirdly, I kind of had to argue to get the chest x-ray. But I got it, and you know what?

    I’ve got pneumonia.

    I’ve also got yet another antibiotic (don’t worry, every time I get a new one, I stop taking the old one, AND I’m taking probiotics). And two days in, I’m still freaking exhausted and coughing. My left lung still feels like it’s stuck to itself when I breathe.

    Now, mind you, through all of this, Baguette still needs to go to school. And while I may want to spend all day sitting on the couch, she really can’t. So there are still outings and whatnot.

    But after stocking up on Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce, and then making minestrone, I have easy food for the next few days. So that’s good.

    bowl of homemade vegetable soup

  • Thoughts on Measles

    I have been vaccinated against measles four times.

    FOUR!

    The first time, I was one year minus three days.

    The second time, I was going into the third or fourth grade, and my school required that I get the vaccination again because they required that you get it on or after your first birthday, and as I mentioned above, I got it three days shy of my first birthday.

    The third time, there was a measles outbreak at colleges in the Midwest, and my mother decided that this put me in danger in California, and insisted that I get the measles vaccination again. The student health clinic asked me if I wanted the MMR, and I said, “No, just measles, please.” (The outbreak did spread. This in no way prevented me from being irritated with my mother.)

    (Then, when I applied to grad school, they required that I also be vaccinated against mumps and rubella, but I couldn’t get the MMR because I’d gotten the measles vaccine that fall, so I had to get two more shots separately, which I also found irritating.)

    (I am easily irritated.)

    The fourth time was in 2011, when I got the MMR.

    So that’s four measles vaccinations, which seems like plenty.

    If I get the measles, I am going to be so pissed.

    toy syringe from child's doctor kit

  • Things I’ve Been Thinking About

    Baguette has done a lot of cool stuff lately. This will be a post of its own. It’s that much stuff.

    • I’m glad the holidays are over, but I could really use a vacation. Good thing there’s a three-day weekend starting tonight.
    • We’re playing a lot of football.
    • Sometimes we play leopard.

      • Leopard

    • Sometimes we play both at the same time.
    • I had my first session with a personal trainer today, and I am so sore I can’t walk down steps, and no one will sympathize because they’ve all been working out for years.
    • Eating a huge burger and fries with a beer may not have been the most productive response, but it worked for me at the time.
    • Unexpectedly running into John C. Calhoun must have been terrifying.
    • This Christmas, it occurred to me that I don’t know if Baguette knows about Santa. Then it occurred to me that we also haven’t taught her anything about Jesus. Then I started to wonder what, exactly, she thinks is going on at Christmas. So I bought her a book of Bible stories, and am reading her one a night before bed. I also contradict them with my commentary. I am not sure I’m helping.

  • Night-Night

    If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that sleep has always been an issue for Baguette–and, by extension, for Mr. Sandwich and me.

    Baguette naps at day care, but not at home, and nighttime sleep is very hard to come by. Although we never planned to bed-share, it turned out that doing so got all of us more sleep than any other approach we tried.

    But she kept growing, and the bed didn’t. Eventually, none of us was getting enough sleep. And then, on a trip to visit family, she suddenly decided that she would rather sleep on the hotel room’s couch.

    We capitalized on this by moving her to the couch when we got home. One of us has to lie with her until she goes to sleep, and that can still take a while. Our girl does not slip off into dreamland, not even when she’s clearly exhausted.

    And, frankly, the couch is not really big enough for two to sleep, even if one of us is still pretty small.

    Mr. Sandwich therefore took his experience in building a toddler bed and put it to use in building a twin frame. One of my cousins made a beautiful elephant quilt, because elephants are Baguette’s favorite animals. We bought a mattress and some sheets.

    And then this happened.

    twin bed

    Now, if we can just get her to stay there. Wish us luck.

  • Some Stuff About Some Things

    There’s a lot going on, and while I really want to write, it’s hard to come up with a unified concept. So here are a handful of thoughts and recent developments that are not at all unified.

    • Baguette had a low-grade fever for much of the weekend. It turns out that when she is sick, she avoids negative constructions–she would not say “I don’t want Mommy to go,” but would say “I want Mommy to stay.” (She was better yesterday afternoon and hence is at day care today.)
    • I’ve been making simple syrup regularly this summer, and life is just so much easier when it’s around. Want to make that regular tea sweet? Want to make lemonade? Simple syrup to the rescue!
    • We finally caught up on Sherlock. Why are there only three episodes per season? Why is the next season not airing until 2016? Whywhywhy?
    • I need to write more, but my job doesn’t involve writing, but my bosses do give me the flexibility and support that I really do need right now. Yet still I need to write more. It’s a conundrum.
    • We really should get new passports, what with ours having expired and all. Not that we have travel plans, just that we should have them. But why are passports so expensive? Again with the whywhywhy?
    • Time to start working out. But how to find the time?

    That’s it. For now.