It would be comic if it weren’t so painful.

About five weeks ago, Dave’s right leg began to give him serious grief. Serious enough for him to go to the doctor, have an MRI and actually take the pain drugs he was prescribed. The pain was relentless, poor soul, but it gradually lessened so that he could go from crutches to cane to own steam. Oddly, though the MRI showed a torn ACL and a torn cartilage, there is no surgery in his future.

About four weeks ago, I woke up with a very painful thumb. Once we got Dave stabilized and relatively pain-free, I went to the doctor myself, figuring I had slept on it wrong, or suffered some kind of X-treme scrapbooking injury. My doctor sent me to an orthopedic doctor for cortisone shots. Yeah, right. I am having surgery tomorrow- for trigger thumb (a tendon problem) and severe carpal tunnel.

I was feeling pretty put out- he’s the one with all the torn stuff and I’m the one going under the knife??!!- until yesterday, when his face swelled up until he looks like a walrus. His mouth is now the source of excruciating pain. Yes, he has an abscess. We took him to the dentist, and she started him on penicillin and pain pills, and Thursday, the tooth is coming out.

Dave was going to take the day off to take care of me after my surgery, but I may have to hire someone to take care of the both of us. Like I said, it would be laughable if we both didn’t hurt so much.

Mama is terribly upset that we aren’t well, but due to the perversity of her make-up, her concern takes the form of demanding constant comforting for herself. Forget that the man is in agony. Mama needs cosseting because she is worried about him. In her own inimitable nurturing way, Mama is doing all she can to make herself perfectly miserable. She really should write a book on the subject. I can already envision some of the chapter headings:

“How to be lonely by leaving the room whenever people come over, and by having two phones and never answering either one of them”.
In this chapter, Mama will explain how to get the maximum mileage out of the complaints “Nobody ever comes to see me” and “Nobody ever calls me.”

“How to be banished from the kitchen for setting fire to the microwave”
In this chapter, Mama will demonstrate how to get out of cooking for oneself by nuking a potato until it catches fire. (Frankly, I didn’t think it could be done, but if anyone can do it, Mama can.) An accident like this can be milked for weeks with endless variants of misery; poor me, I’m gonna starve; poor me, I was so scared; poor me, I can’t even cook anymore; poor me, Dave and Kate are mad at me- and, of course, peppered with the inevitable denials of responsibility-“It’s not my fault. It’s that stupid microwave’s fault.”

“How to turn other people’s misfortunes into laments of your own.”
In this chapter, Mama teaches the art of misery one-upsmanship. Apparently, once you live to be 78 (or 98, as she has been telling people she is here lately), no one can have an ailment you didn't have first and worse. David has a bad tooth? “They pulled out all my teeth when I was 18. It was a mistake. My mother was so mad. One tooth they were supposed to pull, and they pulled them all.” Run time for this story so far- 60 years. I have to have surgery on my hand? “Look at my hands. I had 38 operations and I have arthur-it is, and I am in pain all the time.” Heard it. Heard it. Heard it. Damn, here it comes again.

Right now, she is sitting in front of the TV, finally calm after an inexplicable burst of crying. She would not and will not tell me why she has been crying, but she has made herself miserable somehow.

“How to dwell on every slight, hurt or heartache you have ever endured for fun and profit.”

I don’t put too much weight on her immediate sorrow, since it doesn’t seem to have curbed her appetite at all. When she thinks I am not looking, she is chowing down on the Chex Mix snack I made for her. I just opened a can of Pepsi for her; sadness is thirsty work.

In the meantime, the two people who actually have reasons to be miserable right now are typing a blog with her hand in a splint, and working from home, despite a walrus face and mouth from hell.

Honesty, tact and other impossible missions

LIES.
I guess the biggest lie of all is that we are not supposed to lie. What hypocritical horse-hockey that is. We should stop using that lie… totally honest people are not well tolerated, and sometimes tarred and feathered in locales where the practice still persists. We don’t like totally honest people. We don’t want to be around them. We don’t want to be one of them, because they are usually lonely since no one wants to be around them. Face it, we must lie for the sake of our own social survival. That’s why we invented the lie about the “white” lie. All lies are bad, but some lies are less bad than others because they spare people’s feelings, right? Slippery slope, people, slippery slope. Still, if we must be liars, we should lie with

TACT
Tact is basically a tactic for softening or avoiding an unpleasant truth, and is therefore intrinsically a form of lying. Still, tactfulness is more highly prized than bluntness, and in my middling years, I am finally beginning to catch on to that. I am trying to blunt my bluntness.

I will give you an example. Imagine you are in the presence of young parents who are showing you the ugliest baby you have ever seen in your entire life. Pleasant enough looking themselves, they have managed to produce a living illustration of why some genes SHOULD be recessive. The dewy eyed parents look to you for a comment on the child.

Do not say “Omigod! What possessed you to bring that home?” Don’t do it. These people LIKE the baby. They may even think it’s cute. They certainly see it as a gift from Heaven, especially since they haven’t been parents long. They expect their spawn to be beatified by all who see it, so it would be bad to say “Honey, when the nurses said “Jesus Christ!” when they saw him, they were NOT announcing the second coming.”

Do not be tempted to say that the creature looks like either, or both, of its parents. One of the parents may actually be wise to the fact that the baby is a horror and take offense. And, for the same reason, do not tell an outright lie. I tried that once. I looked at an ugly baby and said, with a straight face and a falsetto voice, “Oh, what a beautiful baby!” and the father looked up at me and said “What, are you nuts? He looks like five miles of bad road.”

Now, learned reader, should I have agreed with that statement or not? See what I am saying here? Mendacity (AKA tact) is required in these situations. A tactful person would think of something innocuous to say and then change the subject. “Oh, my goodness, look, a baby. How about those Mets?”

It is not cool to respond to a dinner invitation with “Dinner with you? I’d rather have my teeth drilled.” Too honest. Or with “No.” Too blunt. Try “I am touched and honored by the invitation but regret that I must decline at this and all future times.” Now that’s tactful.

Other examples… When someone is stupid enough to tell their proper age, an honest person might respond with “Damn! You ARE older than dirt”. Once again I must ask, do you believe anyone would appreciate that level of truthfulness? I think not. The blunt person might respond “Bet you wish you’d taken better care of yourself, huh?” Tsk, tsk, tsk. The tactful person would respond “Oh, the history you have seen. How about those Mets?”

This is the end of today’s lesson. I know that to some people, my teaching tact is like Mother Theresa teaching belly dancing, but I am learning from my mistakes and want to share my insights with you.

Okay, so that’s a white lie.

Wine and whine and the dramatic arts

I really do not travel well. I wish I did. Like a fine wine, I am susceptible to changes in altitude, temperature, pressure, and am bruised by buffeting. This trip was really uncomfortable, since both Dave and I were walking wounded. Dave’s knee has stopped screaming, but is still protesting LOUDLY, and he can’t walk without a cane. I have tendonitis in my right thumb and am wearing a brace to keep it immobile. Imagine us negotiating security in any given airport and weep. Or laugh- we looked pathetically laughable, I am sure.

Segue - For some reason, people seem to think I am dramatic. Grant you, I can emote, mug, and ham it up with the best of them- I think most good teachers are really frustrated actors, and I am a really good teacher- but I don’t think of myself as dramatic. My emotions may be relatively binary, but they are genuine, and I don’t see that as dramatic. Unfortunate, yes. Dramatic, no.

Because of this general misapprehension on the content of my character, I have been “blamed” for my daughter’s dramatic tendencies. I am proud of her tendencies, and in awe of her talent but I have often said, and quasi-believe, that I was just the container for the thing contained when it comes to Kelly. I harbor a secret suspicion that despite my carrying her in my body for nine months and loving her with all my heart, she is really Dave’s sister Rita’s child. There is so much that is deep, strange, unfathomable- and similar- about the way Kelly and Rita’s minds work. Rita would have been one hell of actor had her interests bent in that direction. Since they did not, everyone assumes Kelly’s flare for the dramatic comes from me. Balderdash, I say. I really don’t think that with Mama around, fingers should be pointed at me.

I suppose it didn’t help, really, that I was gone Friday night and half of the Saturday before Dave and I returned to San Diego. I was attending the GFWC of Tennessee Summer Board meeting. As President of the Highland Rim District, I am a de facto member of the State Board. The meeting was in Cookeville, and was very instructive and great fun. I was home by 1 pm on Saturday. Mother was where Mother usually is unless the Western channel is playing on the living room TV- she was in her room, eating and watching old movies. I popped my head in to let her know I was home, and was thoroughly snubbed.

Here we go, I thought, and I was right. The rest of the day was spent enduring a concerted effort on Mama’s part to get us to cancel our trip. Dave’s leg was no good. Travel would be bad for it. (I happened to agree with her on that point). Then she worried about my poor thumb. As we spent the day preparing food for her, making hair appointments, setting the thermostat to her comfort level, etc., we reminded her that Stephanie would be there every day. (“No she won’t. She never comes when you are gone. She never cleans the house. She never cleans my room. I will be all by myself. I’m gonna cry”.) We reminded her that Jake would be dropping in. (“No he won’t. He never comes when you are gone. He never comes to see me. Becca doesn’t even talk to me. The baby spits at me. I will be all by myself. I’m gonna cry”.) I reminded her that Marcia and her crew would be there every Wednesday. (“No they won’t. They never come when you are gone. They never come to see me. She doesn’t even talk to me. I will be all by myself. I’m gonna cry”.) At which point I stopped talking to her.

Sunday morning, we fixed her a good breakfast and tried to spend some quality time with her… through her closed bedroom door. Dave set the TV to the Western channel and hid the remote so that she couldn’t screw up the TV while we are gone. As I was putting the finishing touches on my packing, I heard her sobbing away in the living room, and heard David “comforting” her. She apparently wasn’t comforted. She wailed her way into the kitchen where I was, and I made no attempt to comfort her, so she went out and wailed on the front porch. It was a nice quiet Sunday morning. I hope all my neighbors were in church.

We packed the car and kissed her good-bye and I genuinely felt bad because this time she had produced genuine tears. It can’t be easy living alone for two weeks at her age, I thought, though a part of me wondered what was going to be different when we left. She rarely interacts with us. Maybe just HAVING us there, whether she engages with us or not, is all she wants. I was feeling pretty low when I remembered I had forgotten my glasses. I tried to get back into the house. She had locked me out. When she came to let me in, she was not crying. She was eating.

No sign of tears whatsoever until I stepped back out the door. What an actress! I am sure she will be fine. I am also sure where Kelly gets her flair for the dramatic. She learned at the feet of a master.

My world... and welcome to it!

The pattern of things going wrong in Tullahoma whenever I am in San Diego has taken a turn.  I hope all is well in San Diego, because everything HERE has gone to worms.

First off, my housekeeper Stephanie took a week off to be with her beautiful niece Amanda and I was left to my own devices taking care of the house.   I actually was doing semi-okay on my own, except that my hubby came up lame in a big way, and threw a spanner in the works.  His leg was so painful that I couldn’t share the bed with him, so I was sleeping on the couch or on the recliner.  That was the second can of worms- I am not a pleasant person when I am not rested.  And I am never a pleasant person when my hubby is unwell.  It scares and frustrates me when the man is ailing.

I have been dealing with fear and frustration since we got back from California two weeks ago.  Dave has had another in a series of leg “flare-ups”, attributed variously to arthritis, tendonitis, and a damaged (local) lymphatic system , a complication from the bite of a black widow spider.  Yes, he has been bitten by a black widow spider.  Don’t ask.  He doesn’t get sick or injured often – which is a good thing, because he will not take care of himself in either case- but when he does, it is always picturesque.

And this time is no different.  A limp became lameness became a horrendously swollen leg; an ache became a twinge that became raging pain.  Through it all, he went to work.  By the end of each day, he was barely able to walk.  When a week of raging pain finally drove him in to see his doctor, the doc barely recognized him, it had been so long.  Doc injected cortisone into the knee and sent Dave home with an appointment for later in the week, but no drugs other than OTC ibuprofen.  An additional week of suffering, and Dave was back in the doctor’s office.  This time, instead of driving something into his knee, Doc now tried to pull something out- the excess fluid that was making Dave’s right leg look like he had elephantiasis- but it couldn’t be done.  He prescribed some medications, at LAST, so the man could at least get some sleep and scheduled Dave for an MRI the next day.

And the results are in.  Turns out Dave has both a torn ligament AND torn cartilage in his right knee.  All this damage was caused by an old fracture to the tibial tubercle, (a large outcropping of bone at the head of the tibia).  As the bone remodeled over the fracture, it became a dense mass with spurs that shred ligaments and cartilages.  But here’s the kicker.  Dave cannot remember breaking his knee.  To the best of his knowledge, Dave has never broken his knee.  And here’s where my frustration comes in.  I can remember at least two instances over the years where he “hurt” his knee badly enough to have fractured it and refused to go to the doctor.  He just stayed off the leg for a few days- you know, like you do- and let nature take its course.  MEN!!!  Now he’s telling everyone that I knee-capped him while he was sleeping.    

Of course, Dave being laid low has upset Mama.  She manifests upset in unique and peculiar ways.  First, she goes into what I call “babble and shout” mode.  She wanders through the house, making bizarre noises- gobbling like a turkey, shouting “YEAH, YEAH, YEAH” at the top of her lungs… If that doesn’t get her some attention, she sings in her shrill tuneless voice… for hours…   and hours…  The latest expression of concern is to imagine she has been robbed.   She has been obsessed about losing a necklace I have never seen her wear, so we tore up the house looking for it.  She became convinced she lost it at church, but it wasn’t in the lost and found, and the altar guild is pretty thorough.  She thinks its been stolen.  She thought her wedding rings had been stolen about three years ago, and after filing a police report, she found them in her purse.  I’m guessing the necklace is either mythical or in her purse.

Today, as Dave remained sequestered in our bedroom keeping his leg elevated, she insisted that Stephanie and I search her bedroom for an 8 X 10 portrait of herself that has gone missing.  We have searched for this before.  I am fairly certain she sent it to her daughter, but what the hell?  My time has no value anymore, so I helped search.  We didn’t find it, of course, so now – don’t get ahead of me - she is convinced someone has stolen it.  Since the only people who come into the house are friends and family, it would seem that she suspects those nearest and dearest to her of being thieves.  YOU have NOT been robbed, I say firmly.  Why would anyone leave your cash and jewelry and steal your portrait ? I ask, being the damn fool I am.  

Because it ‘s beautiful, she replies.  

Kinda hard to respond to that.

Off to bed, me, to cap my hubby’s other knee.  I think I’ll use Mama’s cane.