Every afternoon, I hang out with my best friend Beata. Sometimes we go to Target or TJ Maxx's, and sometimes we go to the pond and feed the geese.
At some point, we always go to Beata's house. When I arrive I open her 'fridge to check out the soup of the day.
Beata has homemade soup at her house. Always.
Sometimes it is borscht. Coincidentally, I love borscht. Sometimes it is beef soup. I love beef. Sometimes it is cucumber soup. I love cucumber soup.
I am very serious about soup.
Today we spent a long time at the pond and then went out for a snack at a Middle Eastern restaurant. We did not have enough time at Beata's house for me to have my soup.
I was concerned.
So Beata made me a to-go container. In the car, I checked many times to make sure the pickle jar was with us.
(I totally understand Polish now.)
When we got home, I gave Mommy the jar and she heated it up for me.
Today's soup was sorrel with little potatoes and carrots, and I ate:
Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you
Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.
The beautiful changes as a forest is changed
By a chameleon's tuning his skin to it;
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.
Your hands hold roses always in a way that says
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes
In such kind ways,
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things' selves for a second finding, to lose
For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.
***
I have a poetry repertoire of around five: there's Prufrock, The Art of Losing, I Move to Keep Things Whole, The Soul Selects Her Own Society, and the poem transcribed above. These poems can be applied to just about any situation I may find myself in, and to learn any more poems would overflow the very small section of my brain relegated to poetry. To put it another way, this is all I know on earth, and all I need to know.
Ye already know that I dislike change. My need for things to be the same-the same borders on neurosis, and I blame this in large part to face-blindness and place-blindness.
For example: When I was a freshman in college, I lived in a dorm. My dorm was at the bottom of a hill, and if you went to the top of that hill and turned left, you were on campus. Turning right would lead you into Collegetown, where there was a very handy convenience store. This store had an ice cream counter in the front where they sold Purity ice cream, which I adored. Now, my sophomore year, I lived in a Collegetown apartment with five other young ladies. As luck would have it, our apartment was also very near a convenience store where, oddly enough, they also had a Purity ice cream counter in the front of the store.
You see where this is headed, don't you?
I'm not sure how many trips I made to the convenience store to get ice cream during my sophomore year before I realized that it was the same convenience store, simply approached from a different angle.
At any rate, change frightens and confuses me. So when I'm faced with it, I think of this Richard Wilbur poem and it makes change slightly more bearable. Those roses? Not all mine to begin with. This house? Not mine, either. We are all of us tenants, really, but to put it in Orwellian terms -- some of us are more tenant than others.
Disliking change isn't such a bad thing. When I learn that something I care about is going to stay the same, I'm that much more grateful.
Leah and Larry don't want their house back for at least another year: no packing and moving for the Sullivans this summer! Dieter and his family are staying in the Chicago house -- no need to seach for new renters.
Olive just had her IEP and three-year review at Keshet. It went very well, even though the occupational therapist changed her seat at the beginning of the meeting, thus sending me into a state of confusion that temporarily erased my brain.
Olive will be able to return next year. (Private school is expensive, and our ability to keep her at Keshet is something we can never take for granted). All of this sameness-sameness is excellent news, because if there's anyone who likes change less than I do, it's my little Miss O.
I did indeed finish my rainbow shawl in time for teacher appreciation week!
This is the "North Sea Shawl" from Folk Shawls by Cheryl Oberle. My main change was to cast on invisibly beginning with the center panel, then knit both ends starting from the center out instead of from the shawl edges.
This way I avoided any grafting, and the pattern points towards the center of the shawl instead of all going in one direction.More info and the chance to pepper me with hearts here:
A few days ago I began a thank-you shawl for yet another essential member of Team Olive.
It occurred to me that for the past several years, the bulk of my knitting has been thank-you gifts for members of Team Olive, ranging from Keshet ladies to Teacher Em, Magical Realism Maria, and beyond. They have also been my most rewarding projects and for a very practical reason: I know that any hand-knit gift I give to someone who works in Special Education is going to "land." The very career choice of Special Education implies an appreciation for hard-won gains and the small victories that come after long periods of time in which nothing seems to progress. The recipient understands that I am trying to show my gratitude with a physical manifestation of time and patience, and the recipient knows the value of time and patience.
Years ago I knit a blanket for a close friend of mine who was having a new baby. I used a hand-spun, hand-dyed angora and merino blend, which is a lot like saying I knit the blanket out of twenty-dollar bills. It was beautiful: the Elizabeth Zimmermann garter stitch pattern where you knit four triangles into a square and then graft the beginning to the end. I also knit the baby a matching garter stitch surplice: another EZ pattern, the one with a row of eyelet buttonholes along the bottom of the sweater so that the button can be moved to new holes as the baby grows.
My friend made the appropriate oohing and ahhing sounds when I gave her the blanket and surplice at the hospital, but then I went to visit her and the baby at her home a few weeks later. She said to me, "The funniest thing happened to that blanket you made!" She went to her baby's closet and brought out what was now a potholder. "I'd forgotten you said it needed to be hand-washed. I don't suppose there's any way to fix that."
I didn't think it was all that funny. Accidents happen, but why would she make a point of telling me about it? And why would she present the accident as something amusing?
Then she said, "We were at the park last week and I saw a little boy wearing a hooded sweatshirt with one big pocket in the front. His mom told me her mother had knit it. Could I commission you to make a sweatshirt like that, but in washable yarn so I can toss it in the machine and forget about it? What would something like that cost?"
I said, "One million dollars." I resisted the temptation to ask the location of the matching surplice so that I could confiscate it, or at the very least, contact Hand-Knit Garment Rescue Services to step in.
After I left her house, I sat in my car for a minute and thought about what had just happened. Her behavior and her ensuing request felt like such a slam that it could not have been what she had intended. It was simply too unkind to be deliberate.
Then I remembered an incident that had happened between us years earlier: I was knitting and my friend asked, "When you're all done, doesn't it depress you to think of how many times you've made that same loop sequence (here she paused and pantomimed a slow and dramatic series of hand gestures which any knitter could see would not result in a stitch), and how you've touched every inch of that yarn?"
Another incident: not long prior to baby's birth, my friend had asked me what I was getting LB for Christmas. I said I was knitting him a sweater, and she said, "It's good you can do that, because then you don't have to feel like you're just buying him a present with his own money."
I'd like to say I had an epiphany right then in the car: our friendship was over, and had been for some time. But the only epiphany I had was that I probably shouldn't give her any more hand-knit gifts.
Several years later this friend had another baby. I went online to a children's clothing boutique where I pointed and clicked. Then I clicked a little extra for gift wrapping, and put my friend's address on the order form so that the gift would be mailed to her house directly from the shop with as little effort on my part as humanly possible. Hah! That'll show her!
My friend was absolutely thrilled with the gift. It would not be exaggerating to say she was bowled over. In fact, in all our years of friendship I don't think I've ever given her a gift that hit the spot the way that little outfit did. Right or wrong, there are people who need to be able to ascribe a dollar value to the gift in order to appreciate it. There are also people who -- don't laugh, fellow knitters, I'm being serious here -- are under the erroneous impression that it is cheaper to knit a blanket than it is to buy one.
It wasn't until Olive was six or seven years old that I understood we were not friends anymore. We would often talk on the phone about our children. I liked hearing about hers and she seemed interested in mine, but I found myself unwilling to talk about Olive and her achievements. When I was on the phone with my friend, even the most exciting passages in the Sacred Notebook sounded hollow and inconsequential. Olive's progress, to the reluctant observer, could look like the repitition of a series of tedious loops. And if said observer did not have the patience to watch and listen for long, her progress would not be visible at all.
Some friendships end dramatically and some fade away with no animosity, but this friendship was like a box turtle who'd been sickly a long time: you don't realize it's dead until it starts to smell.
You think back to the last time you fed the turtle. She didn't wake up when you put food in the terrarium; maybe she hadn't been "just sleeping." When was the last time you changed out the turtle's newspaper? Did you fill her water bowl very recently, or is it full because the turtle is no longer drinking?
When Sabina was just shy of two and Daisy was about six months old, LB and I took the little girls to a night-time carnival in Concord. It had corn-dogs, a midway, rides--everything you could want in a small town carnival. We were about to put the girls on a kiddie ride when a woman standing in line grabbed my arm. She said, "You don't know me, but my name is Denise and I'm here to tell you everything is going to be okay. I've gone one hand just like your little girl," she held up her short arm, which was indeed just like Sabina's. Then she pointed to the teenage girl at her side. "This is my youngest daughter; I have two others who are grown." The girl smiled sheepishly. "I'm happily married and I have a job I love. I just want you to know there are probably times you worry about the arm and her future, but it's all going to be fine. No big deal at all."
The moment was over as quickly as it started. I barely had a chance to thank her before she and her daughter were on their way and it was time to strap our girls into the ride.
Readers, I am not making this up. It really happened: this visitor seemingly sent from the future. She spoke with the speed of Millie serving carrots and peas, which will only make sense to my fellow old-timers who watched The Dick Van Dyke Show. If you're not familiar, watch the below clip starting at the 7:40 time mark:
This story from the carnival will be important later: I promise.
Yesterday, Beata came over at 8:30am and began cleaning the house. In addition to sitting for Olive, she has also replaced our housecleaning team at a much more reasonable price. When I came back from dropping off Olive at school, I saw Beata had laid a bunch of ingredients on the kitchen island: parsnips, carrots, celery, and a large array of spices in special jars:
Now I see why she rolled her eyes at me when I told her I did have a few spices of my own she could use. Most of the ingredients were things she had told me to purchase, but apparently I misunderstood about the parsnips: she wanted the greenery at the top. She asked me if I had capers and garlic, and when I hung my head no she said she'd be going shopping later.
While she cooked and cleaned, I went to a long meeting at Olive's school. This was a meeting that takes place apparently once every three years (it feels like it happens more often), and involves sitting with a social worker and going through a long list of all the activities your child cannot do. The social worker made it as painless as possible, and we realized that although Olive has made less than no progress on the speech front, she does use tools effectively. The social worker was very impressed when I told her that if Olive encounters a locked door, she will find herself a wire coat hanger, unbend it, take the point of the wire and inserts it in the tiny hole in the door handle to release the lock. This, apparently, puts her ahead of many of her autistic peers and skews her testing results considerably. In most areas she tests at an 18-month old level, but not this one.
When I came home from the meeting, a large brisket was simmering in an enormous pot of water, Beata had already shopped and returned home with the capers, garlic and parsnip tops, and she was using her own cuisinart to chop the vegetables. While the soup simmered, she continued her cleaning. In the end, she finished both the basement and the second floor yesterday, and is working on the main floor today as I type.
Later I went back to Keshet to pick up Olive from school. She'd had another good day. Operation Hyperspace has been -- knock wood -- a success. Olive's anxious behaviors and impulsive ones are way down, and she is happy now when dropped off at school. I told her, "There's someone special waiting for you at home." She did askancers-askancers and I let her mull over the question of who? during the drive.
When we got home the soup was finished and Beata had magically whipped up a large pot of Bechamel sauce in a separate pot.
Frequently Beata takes Olive to her own house when she's watching her, so Olive has seen Beata cook before and is familiar with her food smells. Beata served Olive a large bowl of soup. Olive ate all the meat and vegetable of the soup first, then tapped me very gently on the arm to indicate she wanted more soup guts. After another hearty serving, she lifted the bowl and drank all the broth.
Then she stood up, patted her rather large stomach in satisfaction, and led Beata to the front door to indicate she was ready for an outing.
They went to Beata's house where Olive got to hold the Guinea Pig. Here's a photo Beata emailed me:
LB actually came home before Beata and Olive, and we had the soup and pasta with the Bechamel sauce for dinner. Olive ate two bowls of the pasta, and then a separate bowl containing just the sauce.
There's a day I think about from time to time, when Sabina was four, Daisy was around two and a half and Anatole was about eight months old. I had the two girls in a double stroller and Anatole in a backpack, and we were going to see the pediatrician for the girls to get well child check-ups. Anatole was just along for the ride.
As we were waiting in the exam room I overheard the doctor say to one of his nurses, "I really hope I don't have any more double appointments today." Sorry, Pal.
Sabina was going through a brief yet annoying phase of shyness, and she actually screamed when the doctor entered the room. Daisy, who looked at the world filtered through her sister, began to sob piteously. Anatole woke up, and, not to be outdone, began crying, too. Crying is not the right word. Anatole never cried in the conventional sense. He bellowed like a musk-ox, holding his face heavenward and taking deep breaths between yells. Did I mention I was expecting Agatha at the time?
It was a difficult appointment, a difficult day, but I took comfort in thinking things would only get easier and I would look back at that day as being as hard as things ever got. That's a lot like a woman in early labor thinking that the pain is strong but manageable, and that she's already been through the worst of it.
Many years later I was in another pediatrican's waiting room, this time with eight year old Agatha who had an ear infection. LB and I had spent the morning touring Autism Academy. We had fallen in love with it instantly as simply the ideal learning environment for Olive. Then we were told the tuition, which had, at the time, made the entire possibility of Olive going to Autism Academy disappear in a puff of smoke.
An elderly man in the waiting room approached me and said, in an Italian accent so heavy it sounded put on, "Why you looka so sad?" I said, "I'm just tired," and thought, Nope, that other pediatrician appointment was easier than this one.
Two years later I remembered that first visit again, this time when I was in the pediatric dermatologist's waiting room with Olive. We had been waiting close to an hour when Olive, who was about eight years old, extremely mobile and completely incapable of reason, decided she had waited long enough. She gently laid herself on the carpet, then commenced to kicking and screaming. I had to carry her out of the office without her ever getting to be seen by the dermatologist. By this time, that doctor visit with Sabina, Daisy, and Anatole seemed more like a romantic vacation in Jamaica, complete with partaking in the ... local agriculture.
It would have been nice if a stranger from the future had visited me and said, as I bustled our of the office carrying a shrieking Olive, Don't worry! In a few years an amazing Polish woman is going to come into your life and charm Olive like an autism-whisperer while simultaneously cleaning your house and cooking four nights worth of dinner for your family.
Maybe in this case no stranger appeared to reassure me because I would not have believed her.
I know I've told you that for a time, the Ex and I lived with a third party: a friend of his from work who had to suffer the horrible fate of living with two people who fought like rabid weasels. We tried not to include him, but looking back, I can see our living arrangement took its toll on him. He developed a habit of grinding his teeth at night. He saw both a dentist and a psychiatrist, but the mouthguard was soon ground to shredded plastic and this being the era of Halcion instead of Ambien, there was no acceptable long-term sleep aid.
In the end, he discovered that making himself an enormous strawberry daiquiri before bed did the trick. Sure, it was harder to get up in the mornings and in those days an aerospace engineer was either unemployed or working 70 hour weeks, but it eased the grinding and the headaches. He and the ex were always gone for work long before I woke in the morning (I had the schedule of a grad student and a waitress) and I would wash out his daiquiri glass and blender for him from the night before. It was the least I could do, seeing as how it appeared we were slowly killing him.
We weren't the only difficult thing going on in his life: he had a boss who did not believe in him. Our housemate's last name was Greek and uncommon -- uncommon but not difficult to pronounce -- and his boss never learned it. He called him "Coronas," like the beer, which sounded nothing like his real last name at all, and no amount of correcting could ever convince him to even try to get it right. This boss liked to go around the empennage section and say things to my future ex like, "You'll eventually go back and get your MBA and go on to better things." Then he'd turn to our housemate. "But you, Coronas," he'd say, slapping him in the back, "You're a lifer."
Aside from the nightly daiquiri, our housemate had one other stress reliever: a Defender machine. Yes, I lived in an apartment where I could play Defender for free, as much as I wanted. I was no good at it, and I much preferred to watch our housemate play. He was stupendous and I never approached even one of his high scores. And the thing that was the most amazing about ... Coronas is that when his last human would, as they always do in the end, die, he'd make a small, silent gesture of annoyance with his arms -- a sort of fluttering motion -- as opposed to letting fly a string of expletives, as my Ex would in the same situation.
You see this fellow standing next to the Defender machine?
That's not Coronas. That's Giuseppe, yet another member of the empennage group. There was a very strange time in my life when everyone was either an aerospace engineer or a creative writing grad student. During the seven months of our marriage the Ex and I attempted to throw two parties, and trust me: these two groups of people don't mix well.
Giuseppe was, perhaps, even more miserable at work than Coronas. He hated the sprawl that is the Southland. He was from Staten Island, and went back at every opportunity. It didn't matter if the child having her first communion was the step-daughter of his third cousin twice removed: Giuseppe would be on a plane back to New York.
I maintain his troubles began on his first day of work, when he told the lady who typed up the security clearance badges that his name was Giuseppe V********, "That's G-I-U-S-E.." She cut him off immediately and said, "From now on, your name is Joe."
Here we are together, on his couch, about to watch the VHS tape of the David Letterman show he saw live. There was a brief pan of the audience where you could see a glimpse of him in a red tee shirt -- not clearly enough to know it was him if you hadn't ben told -- and we watched it many, many times.
There really isn't much I can say about my hair in that photo except the fall-back defense I give when my daughters gasp in horrror at old pictures of me, It was the Eighties.
I feel bad when I think about Giuseppe and "Coronas," two very nice guys who no doubt think ill of me now, so I try not to. But on Monday, that damned Defender machine dreamed me up again.
LB and I were at a meeting at Keshet to discuss Olive's increasing anxiety in school, which has escalated from the diarrhea and impulsive behaviors to relentless scab picking and occasional vomiting. We went over the long list of schedule and activity changes made by the staff designed to help Olive transition more easily and someone very insightful took one look at my weary, shoulder-slump of a response and said, "How about this: we move Olive to the other classroom."
It isn't that there's anything wrong with her current classroom: this was understood. Both her teacher and aides have worked so very hard to make things less stressful for Olive, but now, she's had so many fits -- or as Olive seems to see them, failures -- that everything and everyone in that room has become a trigger for her.
Suddenly, it was 1989 in Huntington Beach and I was playing Defender. My little spaceship was surrounded by dive-bombing mutants and exploding dots (bullets?) and I saw that beacon of hope: the hyperspace button. Hitting hyperspace means your spaceship travels at warp speed out of its present danger, but there's always the risk that the new location will be even worse. In fact, your spaceship could materialize on top of a projectile or a mutant and explode upon landing. A good Defender player avoids using the hyperspace button but eventually, there comes a time when it's the best possible option. Yes, it was time for us to hit that hyperspace button for Olive.
Today Olive had her first day in the other classroom. There were a few tears, a small blort of vomit and more trips to the toilet than usual, but it was better. I could see it in her face when she skipped to the car, smiling the tricky Olive smile that these days we only see when she comes home from outings with Beata.
It bears mentioning that I didn't lose all my male friends in the divorce.
Here we have a commemoration of the first time LB met Reader Tom, in my tiny apartment in the Tenderloin. We went out for Thai food, and then we stopped by LB's apartment so that Tom could see LB's impressive collection of classical CD's. Tom had gotten along well with the Ex, and gets along well with LB.
I fall in love very easily. I have, at various points, wanted to adopt Aliza, Teacher Emily, Sally the aide, Stalwart Cate, and Magical Realism Maria. In fact, the only person I knew who fell in love more easily was my brother Abel. In his case, it was Eros love. Every woman he saw was, "Drop dread gauugeous." He fell in love like other people fall down flights of stairs, and with similar results.
This time, though, I know it's real. Beata's the real deal. That fleeting romance with the girl we found at Starbucks who decided that maybe Romania wasn't such a bad place to live after all, despite having waited eight years for her green card -- that was a flash in the pan. Pure folly on my part.
I can say -- or I'd like to say -- that this has been the worst week of my life. It was worse than the week Abel died, because at least then I felt no sense of personal failure: just grief. The same goes for when I found out my friend Rich had died.
Come to think of it, this week was when I found out how exactly Rich died, and it didn't help my current mood. (A Google search revealed his cremains are buried in a Jewish cemetery, in a separate section. 'Nuff said). It should have come as no surprise, but I had thoroughly convinced myself he died as a result of a complication from a prior suicide attempt, like perhaps a stroke from the original head injury. You know, the result of something that happened before.
The reason I can't say it's been the worst week is because, as we all well know, things can always get worse. There could be rain, snow, or killer bees. It is, however, the first week when Olive was sent home from school for behavioral reasons alone. No diarrhea, no wheezing: just an inconsolable, uncontainable fit.
Today LB took Olive to PUNS to get her registered for special services, like respite care. Or better yet, for the state of Illinois to pay Beata. If you've been through this process then you know it's a long, long wait before you get anything at all in the way of services, but it turned out Olive did all her tricks: tearing at her arms, crying, trying to flee the room, etc., and the PUNS lady told LB she'd put us on an expedited list.
Today I was in the waiting room of Olive's psychiatrist when a total stranger said to me, "You look tired."
It seemed odd considering I'd just woken from an embarrassingly long nap (today Beata picked Olive up at 9am and, bless her, kept her out until 5pm -- they made gluten-free chicken nuggets and soup at Beata's house), so I told her, "Not tired, but I'm definitely weary."
Whenever a stranger says something like this to me, and I seem to be a magnet for this sort of personal remark, it gets me wondering if there's a grand reason God put that person in my path, on that day. Maybe it has nothing to do with me; God simply needed a time filler. Or maybe the point is that I'm being given insight, for what its worth, into what the world sees when it looks at me.
But what, pray tell, am I supposed to do with this information?
I have been working on this double-sided blanket now for months, doing most of the work in the Schechter parking lot while waiting for Olive to get out of school. It's also come with me to Olive's psychiatric appointments, since, odd as it sounds, Olive usually does not. It's been to the waiting room of my dentist, Dr. Teenie-Tiny, all the way in Andersonville. Sometimes it's gone on car trips where I thought I was going to knit, but only ended up adding mileage to the blanket's soul. You might assume it's been to see Dr. Bow-tie, but it has not because he has excellent news magazines in his waiting room (People and Us Weekly).
It's made several sojourns to the back porch to be photographed.
Last year I spent an ungodly amount of time working on this blanket, for Henry:
It took roughly as long to knit as it took for the Prozac to kick in and give me relief instead of spilkes. Now Olive is the one with the spilkes, and since it's so much harder to pinpoint what is and is not working for her, it makes sense that the accompanying Supplemental While-U-Wait Project should take even longer.
I've been dragging this blanket around with me so long it's actually showing signs of wear, on the Kidsilk Haze side.
It would have been wiser for me to knit the two sides separately instead of attached, but who knew the switch from Zoloft to Paxil would cause such difficulty for Olive? Hopefully some aggressive blocking will make the finished product less careworn. You can see the places where I've put in temporary basting stitches, to ensure I don't knit the merino part longer than the Kidsilk Haze part.
Today is the day we officially give up on the Paxil, and hopefully, Olive will have some relief soon. If I showed you the pick marks she's made all over her left arm and on the inside of her mouth you would cry, so I won't do that. She is, quite literally, not comfortable in her skin.
Instead we'll have a little contest to divert us. Usual rules: Perlman DNA okay this time; make your guesses in the comments section. Resist the temptation to Google but if you must, make sure you make your guess sounds extra tentative. Feel free to piggy back on someone else's guess.
The prize is also the usual: yarn for knitters, or a Starbucks gift card for those who abstain. I'll do the drawing on Monday.
Here's the question:
What great opening sentence am I, very roughly, paraphrasing in the opening sentence of this blog entry? Title of novel and author, please. Clues: for once, American readers don't have the advantage here, and I'm pretty sure I've listed it before as my favorite novel of all times next to Yates' Revolutionary Road. I'm pretty sure it was also the favorite novel of Richard Yates himself.
Oh, and since I can hear Reader Tom from here, complaining, Dammit! I know this one but I don't knit and I find Starbucks coffee overly bright and cistrusy, I offer a third prize option: a hardcover copy of the book itself. Unsigned of course, since the author died in 1939. Whoops, another clue!
I was on the phone with Lo today and I said to her, "As unlikely as it sounds, I fear I may have come to the end of people's interest in reading about Olive's bowel habits."
Lo said, "Oh, I'm good for a few more entries." She was kidding, just as she was when she suggested the name "Olive" to LB and me as a name for our sixth child. But that's the thing about Lo: she's always right, even when she's not even trying.
This past week I've found myself with one word in my head, a Mantra if you will. Having LB as Nurse Keshet's contact person hasn't lessened my own concern over Olive's bowel movements at school. Are they formed? Are they frequent?
The word is there when I wake up, when I pick Olive up at the end of the day, and when I, in spite of my oath to take a week off from this worry, ask her teacher how the day went. We pretend I'm asking about Olive's behaviors, but we both know what I really want to hear.
The word comes to me in song. I often sing this ditty to Olive when she is on the toilet:
Or this one. I don't know what it means to be on the "solid" side of the line, but it must be good.
YouTube searches of my Mantra yield some interesting results, like this classic, actually written in my lifetime:
I've never seen this cartoon before, but apparently, I'm not the only person obsessed by this turn of phrase:
LB gave me roses today, but that was not my Big Valentine's Day Gift. The gift was for him to be the contact person for the week, when the school calls to discuss the ongoing concern of Olive's bowel habits. Naturally, Olive's psychiatrist did not get this memo and I was fated to spend a good chunk of today focused on the issue of Olive's inability to make ... good chunks.
Apparently the changes in diet, medication and the negative blood test results have not changed that Olive needs to spend too much time in the bathroom at school, to the detriment of her learning and socialization. At home she does her business in a solid and timely manner, but she's a much different person at school. I was under the impression last week had been much improved -- an upward trend, a harbinger of good bowel movements to come --- when it was more like a good snapshot in an overall bad film.
I am trying to view this as a difficult chapter in a very long book, a wind-sprint in the marathon of understanding and helping the complicated little person that is Olive. I am trying to find humor somewhere, anywhere, in this situation. Benny Bell helps a little. But I don't think the roses are what I'll remember about Valentine's Day, 2012.
