My husband says "flashlight," I say SONIC SCREWDRIVER!I mean, right?
(Image of David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor from geek.com)
(Image of David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor from geek.com)Saturday, May 7, 2011
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
The Sick Kid Drinking Game
Just in time for Cinco de Mayo (aka The White Person's Mexican Independence Day), it's the drinking game parents all over my apartment have been waiting for! W00t w00t, and whatnot!
Last night our 2 1/2-year old son, the Juban Princeling, scored a pretty high fever out of nowhere. Like, literally, he pulled it out of his ass just in time for bed. I saw him do it, too, saw him reach back, grab a fever, and smack it onto himself. Great.
So I did what any good parent would do: I dumped some baby Motrin down his gullet and kissed him goodnight.
This morning I took him to the pediatrician, who checked his throat, which was easy since he was screaming his head off. Might be strep, she said. Then the nurse came in to do a culture while I was forced to hold my frightened, crying, screaming son down on the table. Five long minutes later we got the results: yes, strep. Yay! All that torturing my child was not for naught!
Last night our 2 1/2-year old son, the Juban Princeling, scored a pretty high fever out of nowhere. Like, literally, he pulled it out of his ass just in time for bed. I saw him do it, too, saw him reach back, grab a fever, and smack it onto himself. Great.
So I did what any good parent would do: I dumped some baby Motrin down his gullet and kissed him goodnight.
This morning I took him to the pediatrician, who checked his throat, which was easy since he was screaming his head off. Might be strep, she said. Then the nurse came in to do a culture while I was forced to hold my frightened, crying, screaming son down on the table. Five long minutes later we got the results: yes, strep. Yay! All that torturing my child was not for naught!
The rest of the afternoon was spent feeding my son baby Motrin, snuggling him, and trying not to kill him. Know what's worse than a kid going through a hard dose of the Terrible Two's? A sick kid going through the Terrible Two's.
He'd whine for me even while he was on my lap snuggled into my bosom. He didn't want to eat. He didn't want to drink. He wanted this toy, but then he didn't want it. He wanted to lie in bed. He wanted to get out of bed. He wanted the light on. He wanted the light off. He wanted a Band-Aid on his shirt. (I don't know, either.) He wanted his grandma (who lives in Miami). He refused to eat or drink anything except jelly beans and lollipops even though I know he's on both Motrin and antibiotics and I don't want his stomach lining to, you know, shred. He wanted a bottle of 1945 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild Jeroboam. Oh wait, that was me.
I used all the tricks from "Buddhism for Mothers" I could to keep calm and carry on during what was, to my son, the most wretched of all times for anyone, ever. I reminded myself that he is sick and miserable, that strep sucks, and that I am his Mommy and that for the rest of his life when he gets sick it'll be me he wants. And then when he refused to put on PJs I lost it a little bit and snapped at him just a teensy bit, which I think is what Hitler's mother used to do and now my son will surely grow up to make war and genocide. Great. I couldn't hold it together for just 45 more minutes until bed time, and now an entire race of people will suffer for it as some point in the future.
So I came up with the only way I know how to deal with a crisis of this level: a drinking game!
A little medicine for baby, a little medicine for Mommy
(photo courtesy of WikiCommons)
Here's how you play:
Don't bother drinking every time your child moans, "Mommy!" or you'll be passed out in under five minutes.
Open a bottle of your booze of choice.
Drink once for every...
*Refusal to eat real food
*Degree of temperature above 98.6
*Reversion to babyhood (in my son's case, he actually asked for a bottle for the first time in over a year)
*Day of antibiotic
*Request for a lollipop
*Voluntary snuggle
*Hour of quarantine
*Request to watch the same damn video yet again
When the bottle is empty, mash it over your head as hard as you can to knock yourself unconscious for a while. Repeat as necessary.
He'd whine for me even while he was on my lap snuggled into my bosom. He didn't want to eat. He didn't want to drink. He wanted this toy, but then he didn't want it. He wanted to lie in bed. He wanted to get out of bed. He wanted the light on. He wanted the light off. He wanted a Band-Aid on his shirt. (I don't know, either.) He wanted his grandma (who lives in Miami). He refused to eat or drink anything except jelly beans and lollipops even though I know he's on both Motrin and antibiotics and I don't want his stomach lining to, you know, shred. He wanted a bottle of 1945 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild Jeroboam. Oh wait, that was me.
I used all the tricks from "Buddhism for Mothers" I could to keep calm and carry on during what was, to my son, the most wretched of all times for anyone, ever. I reminded myself that he is sick and miserable, that strep sucks, and that I am his Mommy and that for the rest of his life when he gets sick it'll be me he wants. And then when he refused to put on PJs I lost it a little bit and snapped at him just a teensy bit, which I think is what Hitler's mother used to do and now my son will surely grow up to make war and genocide. Great. I couldn't hold it together for just 45 more minutes until bed time, and now an entire race of people will suffer for it as some point in the future.
So I came up with the only way I know how to deal with a crisis of this level: a drinking game!
A little medicine for baby, a little medicine for Mommy
(photo courtesy of WikiCommons)
Here's how you play:
Don't bother drinking every time your child moans, "Mommy!" or you'll be passed out in under five minutes.
Open a bottle of your booze of choice.
Drink once for every...
*Refusal to eat real food
*Degree of temperature above 98.6
*Reversion to babyhood (in my son's case, he actually asked for a bottle for the first time in over a year)
*Day of antibiotic
*Request for a lollipop
*Voluntary snuggle
*Hour of quarantine
*Request to watch the same damn video yet again
When the bottle is empty, mash it over your head as hard as you can to knock yourself unconscious for a while. Repeat as necessary.
Monday, May 2, 2011
See You in Hell, Osama Bin Laden!
...except that I won't, because I'm a Buddhist and I don't believe in Hell.
Being a Buddhist, I realize that I should not take pleasure in someone's death. I should pity him or meditate for him or something like that.
But the fact is that I am a 15-year New York City veteran, and I earned my Hardcore New Yorker card on September 11, 2001, by being right here when it happened. I breathed the smoke from the fallen towers, I read the thousands of gut-wrenching Missing Persons flyers that Guiliani finally had taken down, I walked the streets near Ground Zero weeks afterwords when the ground was still torn open from the impact, even blocks away.
And so, I cannot let this one go. Bin Laden was as evil as they come, and this is how I feel about his death:
Being a Buddhist, I realize that I should not take pleasure in someone's death. I should pity him or meditate for him or something like that.
But the fact is that I am a 15-year New York City veteran, and I earned my Hardcore New Yorker card on September 11, 2001, by being right here when it happened. I breathed the smoke from the fallen towers, I read the thousands of gut-wrenching Missing Persons flyers that Guiliani finally had taken down, I walked the streets near Ground Zero weeks afterwords when the ground was still torn open from the impact, even blocks away.
And so, I cannot let this one go. Bin Laden was as evil as they come, and this is how I feel about his death:
Maybe the universe will forgive me for this one.
Meanwhile, I have some Conservative friends (what? You should get some. They're fun, and certainly make life more interesting.) who are STILL hating on my man Bar (I assume Barack Obama would let me call him that if we were FB friends, which we technically are, but he has yet to answer my invite to come over for gluten-free pasta and Tasti-D-Lite). I mean, what's it going to take for these people to just STFU for a few hours and enjoy the good news? Will the man have to hold up Bin Laden's bloody, lifeless head for them to be happy?
I also made Husband promise to be careful today while going to work in Manhattan.
Him: "What, exactly, should I do?"
Me: "Avoid gathering masses. If you hear or see anything even remotely suspicious, you run home, OK?"
Him: "How am I supposed to avoid crowds if I have to take the subway to work? Walk?"
Me: "YES!!!"
It's a good day. But still kinda scary. Let's be careful out there, people.
On that note, I leave you all with one of my favorite odes to my absolute favorite city in the world:
Meanwhile, I have some Conservative friends (what? You should get some. They're fun, and certainly make life more interesting.) who are STILL hating on my man Bar (I assume Barack Obama would let me call him that if we were FB friends, which we technically are, but he has yet to answer my invite to come over for gluten-free pasta and Tasti-D-Lite). I mean, what's it going to take for these people to just STFU for a few hours and enjoy the good news? Will the man have to hold up Bin Laden's bloody, lifeless head for them to be happy?
I also made Husband promise to be careful today while going to work in Manhattan.
Him: "What, exactly, should I do?"
Me: "Avoid gathering masses. If you hear or see anything even remotely suspicious, you run home, OK?"
Him: "How am I supposed to avoid crowds if I have to take the subway to work? Walk?"
Me: "YES!!!"
It's a good day. But still kinda scary. Let's be careful out there, people.
On that note, I leave you all with one of my favorite odes to my absolute favorite city in the world:
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