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Snow Days and Stomach Flu


Have you ever woken in the middle of the night for what seemed like no apparent reason only to discover that the vague feeling of unease that tickled your consciousness away from your dreams was more than a headlight driven shadow or the cat prowling? I had one of those night. It began with the a start. One minute I was sleeping, dreaming about needing to be somewhere and not being blessed with nocturnal OnStar and the next I was having a conversation with Rob, who was clearly still asleep. After ascertaining that it was indeed safe to ignore his nonsensical interest in our open window, I had no sooner closed my eyes when Katy was at the side of the bed announcing to no one in particular that she needed to puke. Can any utterance get a parent out of bed faster?

Kate made it to the top of the landing with me still battling the armholes of my robe when I had the first tell-tale gags followed closely by retching. When I arrived on the scene she was done – for the moment – and the cat was eyeing the small piles of barely digested pizza like it was manna from heaven. That was 3:30 A.M. and aside from about an hour and a half between 6 and 8 A.M., I didn’t get back to sleep until close to 11 A.M. by which time Katy had finished emptying the contains of her tummy throughly and Rob had called in sick with not so vague tummy rumblings himself. (My poor but wonderful husband did all the clean-up by the way from mopping up the floor to emptying and rinsing the waste-baskets.)

The day itself turned out to be snowy and blowy and a good day all around for not venturing out. I napped til late afternoon and awoke to find both my patients as I had left them, watching videos and sipping liquids and having pretzels. I am not sure the last part qualifies as light fare for troubled tummies but as long as it isn’t coming back up – it’ll do.

Unfortunately, Katy will miss her winter concert performance tonight. She was to be the jingle bells and stand in the front row. Luckily the kindergartners had given the same performance yesterday for the grades 1 through 3 and she still has her ballet performance on Saturday afternoon.

Not exactly the way you want to spend the day after a great birthday but I’ll take it anyway. Home with my loveys who are now on the mend and thankful that my own bout with this on Sunday means that perhaps we have jumped this winter hurdle and can look forward to a healthy, happy Christmas.

My Birthday


I was born at 7:36 A.M. forty-four years ago today. That – is a long time ago my friends, and yet if you asked me if I feel old or to define “old”, I don’t know if I could. Sure I recently berated a poster on my DM-Register blog about the delusional tendencies we “boomers” have about age and how that relates to us (not at all if you were wondering), but 44 is a considerable number of years. I don’t feel wiser though I am a bit creakier of joint and stiff of muscle at times. I have gray hairs (I may have mentioned this before) and I have wrinkles (of which I am not fond but I deal).

The celebration of me and my birth has gone through changes since that first birthday, a bittersweet day for the 17 year old who bore me and gave me up, I am sure. Over the course of my childhood it was duly noted by my immediate family and some extended with just three parties ever been held in my honor – my 1st birthday, my fifth and my thirteenth. I would not have another birthday party until my 37th. Will, my late husband, gathered our friends for a dinner celebration out at a new restaurant in Cumming, which is no longer there and where he is now buried. Throughout my teens and twenties my birthday was a hit and miss affair. During my college years it always fell during finals and no one could be coaxed away from books and notes for even the tiniest party. Once I was teaching, I might sometimes be feted by a class or a group of coworkers but the day was by and large just another day. I haven’t celebrated my birthday with my mom since high school, but I do remember one year in college when she actually got my gift and card to me on the very day of my birthday. The book was a fictionalized biography of Henry the VIII by Margaret George. Mom inscribed it even and I still have it. It’s sitting on the bookshelves in our living-room. Will always made a big deal of my birthday because he loved me and because he knew how much I still resented the birthday slights of the past when I had gotten combo birthday/xmas gifts and usually neither one was very nice. It made me wonder if anyone I knew had any idea at all of who I really was.

Today, Rob surprised me at lunch with a carrot cake (it’s the only kind I can eat without getting sick) and presents from Katy that he had picked out for her to give me. Books. Ken Follett’s World Without End which I had requested from the library about a month ago already and was still 43rd in the queue. I also got Helen Humphrey’s The Frozen Thames which is a collection of short stories whose setting is the River Thames during those times it has frozen over – something it doesn’t do anymore. Rob is getting me a rebounder which he thought was an odd thing for me to want for my birthday but that’s me. I received three phone calls. One from my friends Meg in Iowa and then a call each from my parents. There were birthday greetings and wishes on my Facebook wall as well today from friends and my two wonderful step-daughters. And I have to say, that 44 is suiting me but that’s not a surprise. Age in general has always seemed a better fit than youth did.

Really Old


If 32 is old than I am on the verge of becoming Abraham’s wife when I turn 44 next week. I say this because I just finished reading a blog piece by reallyexcited at the Des Moines Register, where I also blog (as anniegirl1138) these days though it is more topical stuff. He was lamenting his loss of youth (and hedge-like eyebrows, I think). I understand what he means about gauging one’s own mortality by measuring it against the relative youth, or lack thereof, of others. As a firmly planted in middle-aged woman, I am painfully, at times, aware of the fact that I am considered “day old” or worse in terms of my appearance. When I am not being assaulted every other page of Oprah the magazine by remedies for my sagging skin and paunching belly, I am running across article after article in the life sections of the Globe and Mirror or the Daily Journal advising me on the proper attire for someone “my age”.

I shouldn’t wear my hair long. Nothing gives off more of a desperate odour than a woman who doesn’t crop her locks with the birth of her first child. A symbolic shearing to remind her (as if everything else that pregnancy and nursing do to the body isn’t enough) that she is not a girl anymore. Tight clothing is out. Form-fitting is permissible, but only if a woman maintains a form that won’t offend with rolls and curves and less than perky boobs.
Personally, I don’t think anyone is truly ever old. On the inside anyway. I still marvel at the fact I held down a job for twenty years and no one questioned my ability to do so even once (to my face and that I know of). I’ve owned two pieces of property in my own right. And I drive. Right out in the traffic with everyone else. Funny but this last is the thing that most signifies the beginning of the end in terms of youth for me. The day the state of Iowa, in all its wisdom (and it’s way older than I am) deemed my old enough to drive. I was telling my younger step-daughter not long ago that I still sometimes am as amazed that I can drive a car as I was on the very first day my father let me take the car out on my own.

Nothing tips the scales irredeemably into “old” as becoming a parent.I remember the first weeks as a mother to my now five year old and wondering how it could be that I was being allowed to raise her. I wasn’t grown-up enough yet. Surely someone would notice any time and come and take her away. Give her to some grown-up woman who didn’t still walk the Barbie aisle at Target with longing. Someone who cut her hair short just in anticipation of motherhood and took notes during the birthing classes. Someone who didn’t forget her just learning to speak in sentences baby was in the backseat while she was listening to Eminem (though to my credit I did quit when she began requesting the “stand-up song”).

It’s an eye of the beholder thing like nearly everything else. I have never longed for my teens (and my recent 25th high school reunion reminded me again why) or my twenties. I was smooth and grey-less and my knees didn’t creak like the stairs, but I wasn’t nearly as strong or confident or happy with myself. Why go back? Why even think about it? Life is meant to be lived in a forward progression with each birthday finding us a wee bit closer to the enlightenment or at least the wisdom to recognize who we truly are behind the wrinkles that block our morning views.

“I’ll be old until I die” is what I think reallyexcited said, but the reality is that you will be old when you think you are and how near or far that is from your ending days is up to you.