Inner Cleansing

Katy’s catch-all for all upsets is a tummy ache. Her tummy hurts when she is frustrated, tired, bored, not interested in following directions and when she is stalling for time at bed (although sometimes she has growing pains to forestall her nightly tuck-in). An aching tummy can mean she is experiencing a grief wave or that she ate too many grapes. This has been such a standard of hers that I almost pay no attention anymore to the physical and skip immediately to Nancy Drew mode to ascertain the true problem. So, it should come as no surprise that occasionally, the kid really is sick. Like the time she complained of a tummy upset before bed and awoke us later at 3 or so in the morning announcing she had “pukey tummy”. She made it as far as the top of the landing outside our door before spewing on and off the rest of the two flights to the bathroom on the main floor (god, I miss my en suite). Last week, her aching tummy turned out to be a bladder infection which I would have missed entirely had she not inadvertently mentioned that it hurt to pee. You would think she’d have brought this up in addition to the tummy ache, but her gut overrides all things most of the time.

Wednesday, she played the tummy card again when I picked her up at the child-minding after my workout. I had to carry her to the car after she did her dramatic belly clutch and walked bent over a few staggering steps as we headed down the hallway for the parking lot. And before you waste too much concern, she wasn’t that sick or in that much pain - she just didn’t want to walk. After I had her buckled into her booster, the interrogation began and by the time I was near the four way by the shopping centre, I had made up my mind to take her back to the walk-in clinic. Her tummy - interestingly - suddenly hurt a lot less.

We have been remarkably healthy since coming to Canada. Given that an average winter had me floored with sinus and bronchitis most of the last several years and that Katy was averaging one whooping cold and an ear infection as well, I would say we have stumbled upon some sort of health Shangri-La up here. This is a good thing because like just about everything else service wise up here, doctors are in short supply, and those who are practicing seem to be able to do so on a part-time basis. Rob’s doctor - who I am seeing now - is a kindly old Chinese man who probably should be retired and works a greatly diminished schedule in an office next to a pizza place in a strip mall (I kid you not when I say you find doctors and dentists in the oddest places up here). I would have taken Katy to see him but the wait can be hours and there are, curiously, no nurses working in his office - just receptionists. It’s a little weird. I took Katy back to the Walk-In Clinic which can be quick or long depending on the staffing, which varies without rhyme or reason, and the various viruses going around. Fortunately, our flu season seems to have abated up here, so we were able to get in quickly.

Last week Katy saw one of the younger doctors. There are two, a man and a woman. My younger step-daughter Jordan looks older than both of them and Jordan could pass for a high schooler without much trouble. Wednesday though we saw the older gentleman who is easily older than Rob’s rather old Chinese doctor. He was fairly certain that Katy was suffering from constipation and wanted to do a quick rectal to confirm. And no, that didn’t happen. There is one thing I never need worry about and that is that my daughter will ever unwillingly have sex. That girl can clamp her two little legs together in a death-like vise. So, off we were sent to the local hospital across the way for a tummy x-ray.

Katy has had x-rays before. Last spring when Rob and I were in Arkansas, she was staying with my folks and caught Influenza-B from my nephew and it turned into pneumonia. That was a long 12-hr drive back I can tell you. Katy had not forgotten what an ordeal the x-rays were. She had been crying and of course for a chest x-ray you have to hold still and hold your breath. A crying four year old, sick and wanting her mommy, is not the best direction follower. She started crying before we even had her up on the x-ray table and she cried all the way through (I am hopeful that the days of using her tummy as a catch-all are over with this experience). Needless to say, I peeked at the x-ray as we were leaving to go back to the clinic and I even could tell she was - as Rob said, chuckling when he heard the news - “full of shit”.

Ironically, Rob and I have been planning to do one of those “cleansing kits” and after the last two of days of fruits, smoothies (laced with prune juice) and pretty much nothing but veggies, I am wondering what might be left in us to “cleanse”. Kate is not cleansing as easily. She balked at the Sennekot after day one to the point that she willing drank a half a glass of prune juice to avoid another dose, but her Valentine’s party at school was nothing but a sugar feast and it probably will come out a wash.

Just when you thought I couldn’t be more TMI.

Valentine's Day

When I would arrive at school last year, one of the first things that I did was to check my email for a missive from Rob. This was before our first face to face meeting in Idaho Falls. After that I rarely waited until I got to work and checking my mail was the first thing I did upon rising. I even kept the computer by my bed for mornings when I was bleary eyed from having been up well past midnight on the phone with Rob the previous night. Our calls usually didn’t start until Katy was bathed and in bed though that ritual evolved over time to the point where we would talk before dinner and then during bath and again after until we were both so tired we had to hang up. Those were the LDR days, and I am glad they are behind us.

Today’s photo is the one that greeted me on Valentine’s last year. It is the view from the dining room window that I see now every morning. Today’s view is overcast with light snow. Jordan’s car is sitting in front of the condo where she lives in Lancombe now rather than out front. I still don’t know the renters across the street. I remember watching them put up one of those giant inflatable pools in their front yard shortly after we moved in. It was up about a day and then their landlord, who lives next door, told them to take it down. The tiny bit of white in the left had corner is the old van. It hadn’t run in a while but Rob got it going and he drove that while I drove his Avalanche last summer. That was before we got the Equinox.

I was reading our valentine emails last night. And no, I won’t be sharing them. They are love letters. The kind you write when you are still fresh in the lust and amazement stage. We still lust awful lot and I find myself amazed now and again, but it is different. It changes even over the short run, becoming more solid and precious and wonderful.

A lot has changed and there will be changes to come because that is life, but change is good when you are with the person you love most and who loves you equally in return.

A Valentine for My Husband, Rob

Every woman needs a Sasquatch of her own
Life being incomplete without one
Earth signs are best
but at least born in an Oxen year
Able to shoulder all manner of burden
Physical and Emotional
Soft
but with firm and unyielding flesh
and principles
Impish, teasing,
able to giggle and explain (nearly) everything
Confident of being able to do (nearly) anything
Beacon bright blue eyes,
furry all over
and with very warm feet
Every woman needs a Sasquatch of her own
Life being incomplete without one

Perimenopause

I have never been a fan of my plumbing. From the day my mother handed me a little booklet with characters out of a John, Jean and Judy book explaining the “exciting and wondrous miracle puberty”, I pretty much knew that girls got more than their fair share of the short end of God’s stick. It starts with not being able to be an altar-boy and just goes down hill from there. I think I was in sixth grade. Not quite twelve. And big for my age. So, my mother assumed, incorrectly I might add, that it was time to bring me up to speed on the whole menstruating thing. As it turned out, I didn’t start having a regular cycle until the beginning of eighth grade and that my greatest source of information about getting my period was not my mother, who’d had a hysterectomy before I was even born and hadn’t ever had what one could call a “normal” cycle, or the charming pamphlet or even the 1960-ish filmstrip presentation the sisters at my school inflicted on all the girls when they reached a “certain age”. No, like most things to do with the nether regions of my body - I learned what I needed to know from my peers. A dubious source of information to be sure but one that has stood the test of generations of young people everywhere. That is to say - the near-blind leading the legally so.
Now that I have once again reacher “a certain age”, I am finding that my peers are once again the leading edge of information as I wander, sometimes willingly and sometimes resentfully, into the valley of the shadow of menopause.

Ironically, it is my husband who has supplied me with much of my current information as he as been down this path, so to speak, before with his late wife. All manner of natural supplements have been suggested for my own good and his comfort. Black Cohosh and red clover for hot flashes, he thinks. The hot flashes are mainly a night time thing right now and only around that time of the month. Too much information? The change is like any other phase in a woman’s reproductive and sexual existence. When it is in season, it is fair game for conversation. That’s why preteens obsess about their breasts and when they will get their firs period and teens and twenty somethings can think and talk of little else but sex. It’s why married women suffer, loudly, about baby hungry and pregnant women will divulge the most intimate (and disgusting) information to anyone without even being asked for it. Labor and Delivery stories, breast-feeding adventures, and the big C of life - we are arguably more fascinated with our bodies than any man could ever be.

I am technically not menopausal. I know this because I was having issues last spring and my wonderful doctor did blood tests and had an ultra-sound done just to make sure that nothing more sinister was afoot (which caused a fair degree of worry for both Rob and I because we are now firmly in the camp of “it can happen to us” because it has). As it turned out I am just experiencing that long and winding down part of the reproductive years. From my reading, I know that it can take up to a decade to wind down to the point of actual menopause and that your best predictor for a time frame is the age at which your mother and grandmother stopped unwinding and ground to a halt. Being adopted, I don’t have that information. But, given that I was about 42ish when I first noticed things starting to change, then 52ish is a good guess. That’s eight years. Good God. That is a heck of a long time to wait for the demise of something I have never been all that fond of in the first place, and the list of symptoms that I am/could experience just bring up the short stick thing I mentioned earlier. One of the symptoms I noticed on the list was memory and concentration problems. Oh great. First it is PG brain, then mommy brain, followed by caregiver brain and then widow-brain. Top these last six years off with the hormonal (or lack thereof) induced thinking blips caused by peri and definitely menopause and by the time I am in my “right” mind again I will be too far gone in senior “moments” to notice.

Until recently, the whole aging thing hadn’t been a big deal to me. I look a tad younger than most of my peers - which I attribute to good genes and a near shunning of the sun when I was a teen and in my youngest adult years (fat girls don’t wear bathing suits). But, the white hair is getting harder to hide with just highlights and the physical things I once did without thinking need to be thought about it, and I am not sure that when you throw hormonal imbalance on top of this that I am as indifferent to getting old as I have been in the past. Rob is always talking about having this finite number of “good” old age years. As he sees it, one can still be okay - as in fit and healthy - enough to do as they would like during the 50’s and into the 60’s but that one gets maybe about 15 years max once you reach the top of the hill and round over. That is so depressing and what is worse is that I appear to be under the elder Boomer delusion that I will still be functional as a 70+ year old. Of course, perhaps I will. I read an article in the Globe yesterday about a couple of studies down with centenarians that determined it is not simply good genes that help people live into their 90’s and hit the 100 mark. Lifestyle is key as well and that they really can’t say when it is too late to improve one’s lifestyle.

It is not easy. Undoing the damage of caregiving and the stresses of the last years. Going on six now since Will’s first troubling symptoms began. I have started Yoga and I find that if I ignore the Mahareshi side of it I enjoy it quite a bit. I walk. I even have Rob walking. I can run again but try not to overdo it as it is hard on my knees. I lift weights. Heavy ones. I am Zena. I am a near total vegan but I need to work on the fruit thing. I hate out of season fruit. It’s squishy during the winter. How can anyone think about putting squishy fruit in her mouth without gagging?

Perhaps I will do okay. 102 is a good age to shoot for, don’t you think. One can’t set too lofty a goal where living is concerned, in my opinion.

Another Service Issue and an Internet Update

The Equinox’s driver side airbag indicator light has been indicating a need for service since October. We bought the vehicle in September, so we assumed it was simply a matter of scheduling an appointment at the dealership and the problem would be remedied. But, it is now February and the problem remains unchanged. It’s not that we couldn’t get an appointment. I think we’ve had it in twice between then and now but the first time, they didn’t have the part that was needed, and the second time the part that was ordered was the wrong part for the type and make of the vehicle. Rob tried phoning the service department yesterday to see if the part was in since we haven’t heard from anyone is over a month but he was shuffled through “can you hold, please?” hell for 25 minutes and then gave up.

It’s like everywhere else up here in Alberta these days. The “service” part is lacking and mainly because there are more jobs than people. When it’s just as easy to quit and walk across the street (or even relocate half a province away) without penalty, you find that those who do have jobs aren’t working as much as the job requires and those who aren’t working are simply waiting for their funds to deplete to the point where working is necessary again. The Chevy dealership in Fort Saskatchewan is having a hard time finding mechanics and hanging on to them. They are having a hard time finding people to answer the phones and man the service counter too. After Rob’s wasted phone effort, I decided just to go there in person today. It’s a bit harder to “can you hold, please?” to a customer hovering around your desk - though not as impossible as you might think.

When I arrived at the dealership, I found a basically deserted service area. The glass cubicle offices were empty. There weren’t even names on the doors because currently they have no service department manager or receptionist. A middle-aged Middle Eastern with understandable diction but a limited (it seemed) ability to comprehend English was manning the counter. I told him what I needed. And then I told him again, but more slowly. After a bit more confusion, I ended up in the garage speaking with a harried young man whose hair style reminded me of Will’s. Too much hair gel and combed back. Will had curly hair and hated it. He was always trying to subdue it. I wondered if the young man had the same problem. Hair gel on men with fine hair gives them a scalpy look, but still reminds me a bit of Al Pacino in The Godfather (either part).

As soon as I managed to ascertain that the part my vehicle needed had indeed arrived, I called Rob to make sure the appointment date would work. He then asked me to inquire after the on order parts for the Avalanche as well (same saga really just shorter time frame, though not by much).

So, I left the Southfort Chevy dealership with one service appointment, Shawn (the young man with the wet look) hot on the trail of the parts for the Avalanche, and the realization that service is a do-it-yourself thing in this neck of the prairie.


*Internet update: Our provider called back last evening! (I wonder if he read my blog?) He finally admitted that there does indeed appear to be something wrong with the receiver on our roof and will be out to look at this weekend but only if Rob clears the snow from the roof. (We have a VERY steep roof and this scares me - and him a little too.) He also has decided not to charge us for the repair. Hurray.