Fordham Miller Fare

please stand by. we are experiencing technical difficulties...

on the few occasions i have tried to run over to the computer and file a quick post, i am envariably dogged by technological mayhem.  internet too slow, computer hung up on memory hogging virus detection software, or the computer just plain crashes.

anyway, where was i?  oh yes.  lice.  the post below was written in early march.  i managed to resolve the bug problem with my own head in two easy treatments, but inexplicably madeleine's remains a constant battle.  i simply can not understand the tenacity of these creatures.  no matter what i do, they come back, after weeks of checking and seeing absolutely nothing.  here's what i have NOT done:  i have not tried mayonnaise; i have not tried olive oil; i have not tried the electronic Robi Comb; i have not tried combing through her entire head every single day of the week, which by the way takes an hour at a minimum, and washing her sheets every day, and cleaning the entire house every day, and getting rid of all hairbrushes and headbands and hats and all whatnot.  i HAVE tried Rid, cetaphil (the Rid plus cetaphil combination worked on Morgan), Resultz (which cured me), and just plain combing on an every two to three days schedule.  i clearly will NEVER get rid of them, so i might as well just get used to it!  i'm going to try next the "Head Lice to Dead Lice" program, which involves olive oil, and is meant for 'persistent infestations.'  and i promise not to bore you with any of the details anymore.  ugh, on top of everything is the tediousness of it all!

in sickness and in health

happy thanksgiving.  we are in lake placid, new york, reliving a family tradition of ours: the vacation illness.

   

thinking back, it probably all started in the summer of 1995 when bill and i (newly minted as a 'we') travelled from the east coast back to madison, wi.  we stayed over with some friends of bill's in ithaca, ny, one of whom had just whethered a stomach bug.  sure enough, 2 hours into our drive to madison, bill came down with it.  i'll spare you the gorey details.  we made it just shy of ann arbor, michigan, where we pulled into a super 8 motel and called it a day.

   

of course, kids only added to the likelihood that a vacation would involve a trip to the local hospital.  so in welfleet, july 2005, we were in town for about 4 hours before bill and maddy headed to the hyannis ER.  diagnosis: scratched cornea.  camping in vermont, august 2004, 4 hours in, morgan came down with sore throat and fever of 101.  after two hours in burlington's fletcher allen medical center, the doctor agreed it was likely strep, although morgan refused to open his mouth for a throat culture.  turns out: hand, foot and mouth (which is NOT to be confused with hoof and mouth disease).  we spent the night at my dad's house in hineburg, thankfully avoiding a whopper of a thunderstorm.

   

but bill and i have had our share of ER visits as well.

   

when i was seven months pregnant with madeleine, i threw out my back.  the pain was so severe that it radiated across my abdomen, and as we were on vacation in the relative sticks of upstate new york, i thought a visit to the local glens falls ER, where their labor and delivery department has the unfortunate name of 'the snuggery', was in order.  several thousand hours and 4 surgery sodas (so as to induce fetal activity at 2 a.m.) later, after determining that all was well in utero, i left with a prescription for codeine, realizing quite quickly why people might find it addictive.  after taking the appropriate dose, i didn't so much feel as SEE the pain disappear, like a heinous pirate ship slowly sailing away over the horizon.  someday soon i will tell you my latest, and perhaps last, experience with the opiate family.  but not today...

   

okay, trip to austin texas, january 2001, first morning there, bill pulled down a metal vertical blind on his wrist.  this one was pretty severe - bill suffered some permanent nerve damage, although the damage was sensory, not muscular, thank goodness (but still no picnic).  it meant he was wrapped up in bandages our entire trip, and had neurosurgery (neurosurgery for goodness sakes!) upon our return to new england.  yipes.

   

narragansett, ri, july 2003.  stomach flu.   another trip to austin, february 2007.  strep AND croup (three doctors visits in three separate cities).  and now, lake placid.  stomach flu again.  oh, that and the fact that we are on 'lice watch II - 2007.'

   

so there is a big pavlovian reaction to the beginning of a vacation, pretty much wherever we go.  if we are settled in, if things look like they are smooth sailing for the next several days, our spines tingle in anticipation of the calls to the 'triage nurse,' the search for the local medical facility, the hopes and dreams temporarily shoved aside for the more immediate matter at hand.   

   

today, madeleine is feeling better, and eating progressively more complicated solid food.  the heads are, by my best estimation, lice free.  and we are settling into some quiet family time, the kind of which we rarely have at home.  the weather, it's kinda schmutzy, but the town is pretty and devoid of throngs of tourists, the christmas lights are up, and overall, it's kinda cozy.  so far, so good...

en garde, existentialism! take that, nihilism!

on passing the hospital where he was born, morgan remarked, "it's a good thing i got borned, because [if i hadn't], how would i love you?"

oh, and speaking of getting borned, congratulations to our cousins/friends/new parents wendy and jonathan, who welcomed their first child, a girl, on march 23rd.  welcome, little anya.

pop kiddie culture OR don't say i never took you anywhere

i wisely waited for kristen, bestower of dora tickets, to have the first say on the event.  i think i wanted to hear her take before coming out with my own.

first off, i argue that dora was not necessarily played by a woman.  true, true, i googled as many Dora Live! pictures as i could, and they all pointed to decidedly female actors.  but i still say that should the lead have fallen ill twenty minutes to show time, adam sandler's Lucy the Gap Girl would have made a great understudy.  and if peter pan can be played by sandy duncan, i say it's time for men to start filling Dora's shoes.

on dora itself (and mass media, pop culture and parenting), i'm a mixed bag.  on the one hand, i want to be pure.  no sugar and no tv and no computer and no saturated fats and no bratz dolls and no gendered clothing and no white flour and all that jazz.  on the other hand, i am weak.  so there's television and cookies and computer and pink jackets* and flashing tennis shoes and let's not even talk about family Survivor night.**  oh, but still no bratz dolls.

ironically enough, going to Dora in my rented monster truck was remarkably un-pc-guilt-inducing.  and the show was somehow decidely non-nightmarish.  two factors helped immensely.  (1) we had free parking about 5 blocks away, so we skipped the traffic jams on the way in and out, plus the kids had to work for it ("back in my day, kid, i had to walk 2 miles in a snowstorm for the ice capades."). (2) i seem to have effectively trained my kids not to drive me insane with pleading for toys and treats (tho' maddy and i did get in a tussle over what size of popcorn to get).  so we got to focus on the show, which the kids clearly enjoyed, and not the smoke and mirrors that serve to drain one of a good $40-60 bucks before the evening is over.

just so you don't get the idea that this was any kodak family moment, on the way back to the car maddy kicked a rather large abandoned styrofoam tub of ketchup lying in the street, and got condiment all over her white dress shoes.  she then proceeded to hissy fit the rest of the way to the garage, and she and morgan almost boiled over on the way home, to the point where i thought maybe we'd lost kristen as a babysitter for good.

but all's well that ends well.  next stop, disney world.

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*pink jacket for maddy, pink shoes for morgan.

**i live in fear of maddy betraying our Survivor secret in the wrong company. say, for example, at nature camp.  we'd have to go around with a red 'S' on our fronts, heads bowed in shame.