Wonder Woman

My parents were pretty far ahead of the curve in terms of health awareness and nutrition.  In addition to promoting an active lifestyle and mindful snacking (only one sweet or soda per day), my mom cooked and served a healthy, complete meal (and salad) every night-- an impressive feat that shames me on those days when the best I can manage is to warm up leftover leftovers. 

There was no official list of forbidden foods in our house but there were many processed goodies that never crossed the threshold: including all sugar cereals, anything by Hostess, and Wonder Bread.

I work hard to instill healthy habits in my kids.  Be active and eat right.  I'm not inventing the wheel here: if they develop good habits now hopefully they'll keep them up for life.  The activity side is easy-- both kids are happily  involved in lots of different sports.  The food side takes more effort.  I feel like I'm always at the store buying produce.  And reading labels. And trying new recipes. And searching for the perfect luunchbox foods.

Bread is particularly tough.  It has to be wheat (whole grain).  No HFCS.  No "hearty" texture.  I've determined that there is only one kind of bread that meets all my needs and my kids' particularities (at least until someone markets a crust-free bread, which would be a huge hit) and sometimes I can't find it on the store's shelves.

The other day I was faced with that very problem.  No bread.  I started half-heartedly to check the other loaves on the shelves.  It was slim pickings.  Seeds, nope. Extra Hearty, seriously? Corn syrup, nope.

Wait, what's this?  Wonder Bread Wheat?  I picked up the happy red, blue and yellow package assuming I'd soon be sneering and putting it down because c'mon, it's Wonder Bread.  The devil's bread would have to have high fructose corn syrup in it, right?  But guess what?  It passed all my tests.  In what felt almost like a rebellious move I bought the Wonder Bread.  My kids are so lucky, I thought, remembering the few times I made squishy yummy dough balls out of Wonder Bread at other kids' houses.

And.... my son hated it.  The pieces were too small for him.  He called it mini-bread.  And he celebrated the end of the loaf.   "No more Wonder Bread!" he happily cheered to his sister.  Thirty-seven miles away, I imagine my parents were high-fiving.

The Daily Grind

The guys working on my house dug a four foot deep hole in my basement last week. The dirt that filled that hole? It's lying on a tarp next to the hole. Which means that for more than a week the playroom has been off limits. No Xbox. No Wii. No treadmill. I don't know who is having worse withdrawal symptoms, me or my son.

Oh, and over the course of the past two weeks each of my kids has been hit with both a stomach bug and a fever virus. Tag team style.

So, yeah, I'm grinding my teeth at night.

The thing is, I have a mouth guard that I wear when I sleep so it's okay. Last night, as I lay back down after administering some pre-dawn tylenol to my fireball of a daughter, I was thinking about how awesome my mouth guard is.

What other bad habit do you get to continue to engage in without suffering the repercussions? There's no such thing as a tar-absorbing lung shield, no nail tips that provide biting satisfaction while preserving your cuticles, no "do over!" at the craps table, no removable saddle bags to collect the extra piece (or two) of cake.

The humble mouth guard stands alone. It allows my stress to manifest itself in grinding but without hurting my teeth. And I actually sleep better too. If only they could figure out a way to make it a little more attractive....

The Super Bowl

We're deep in the third quarter here in the Weaselsnark household.

And, by that, I mean that three out of four members of the family have now been struck by the stomach bug.

It started on Sunday night after the Giants victory (woo-hoo!). My husband woke up in the middle of the night and was violently ill. Food poisoning, he surmised, based on prior experience. My mind raced to what food we'd eaten that day. I couldn't think of anything that he had eaten that we hadn't all shared in our Big Game Smorgasbord. Uh-oh.

For the next few hours I vacillated between lying in bed in a state of wide-eyed panic waiting to dash to the bathroom myself and running upstairs to check on the kids to make sure they weren't "going number three" (my neighbor's euphamism for vomiting).

But the night passed without (further) incident.

Cut to Tuesday night. My daughter came downstairs at about 10:30pm covered in foulness. It was even in her hair. So gross. After getting her cleaned up, changed and settled in my bed I went up to her room.

Evolution has favored a special kind of parent adrenaline that kicks in to help in times of severe body fluid events. I know this to be so because there is no way I could have tackled what I found waiting for me in my daughter's bed if it weren't. Suffice to say, one pillow and several stuffed animals made the ultimate sacrifice. Ironically, the one thing left completely unscathed was the bowl I had given her ("just in case") to throw up in.

Whether my husband's food poisoning was merely a coincidence or whether, in fact, he was patient zero, I figured it was only a matter of time before my son succumbed to the stomach bug. So last night I took extreme preventative measures: I removed the comforter, books, extraneous pillows and his one beloved stuffed animal from the bed. And, ever hopeful, I left him with a big bowl and instructions to try to aim for it should the need arise.

And he did! That superstar came down at 11:30pm last night with clean hair, clean pajamas, and a bowl full of puke. My heart swelled. I was so pleased about not having to strip the bed and stay up doing loads of wash that I almost forgot to comfort my poor sick son. Although, in my defense, because he had avoided getting any throw up on himself he wasn't particularly freaked out or upset. He just washed out his mouth and went right back up to bed.

With a clean (super) bowl.

And then there was one.... tick, tick, tick....

Chalk It Up To Old Age

As further proof that Weaselsnark and I are morphing into one person, I too had a physical right after New Year's. I went to my doctor with a list of concerns straight out of a Shel Silverstein poem, determined to uncover the mystery ailment that is preventing me from having the girlish figure I enjoyed at 16.

Alas, she found that everything was within the normal range. Not even an under active thyroid to blame. In fact, she consoled me by saying that not being Kate Moss, I was at low risk for osteoporosis which would have had more weight (ha ha) had I not already got osteoarthritis. What's one more osteo?!

On the way out she took a final look at the little white bumps that have appeared on the skin under my eyes and declared that they weren't milia after all, but calcium deposits, which is the same diagnosis I got from my last mammogram. I am now concerned that I am turning into a piece of chalk. Possibly (I didn't do so well in chemistry) this make no sense whatsoever. Either way, I am calcifying inside and out.

My doctor suggested getting tested for food allergies (I think to get rid of me) so I went and did that. Twelve little drops were applied to my forearm, then the skin underneath was broken. Imagine my excitement when #12 started to form a nice hive and itch like crazy! I have an allergy! This could explain EVERYTHING!!! Sadly, it was the test sample, given to make sure you haven't taken antihistamines in the past 48 hours and thereby, skewed the results.

Alas, it's back to sensible eating and exercise. WAH-wah.

Weight for It....

Happy New Year!

In one of the more dunderheaded moves of 2011, I booked my physical for January 3, 2012. What better way to ring in the new year than by worrying about all the sugar and alcohol you consumed non-stop for the last two weeks of the old one?!

"We got your bloodwork back, Weaselsnark. I'm afraid there has been a mistake at the lab. The numbers they've sent appear to be a recipe for hard sauce."

My doctor isn't one to beat around the bush either. Even though I'm relatively fit and thin, she always pushes me on how I need to do more work with weights. She basically calls me out on being a skinny fat person.

So, it being the time of the year for resolutions and all that, I came home and Amazon'ed the book she wants me to follow. It hasn't come yet but my doctor promises me that if I actually do the exercises I will see and feel real results in just 28 days. We'll see.....

What I really need is to resolve to stop spending so much money on Amazon.

I Am Yours, MRI, You Are What You Are....

I had an MRI today. (Weaselsnob caled it the hypochondriac's dream.... funny because it's true!)

Happily it was first thing in the morning so I didn't have time to get all worked up about it. Not the results, the actual MRI itself. I've always heard stories about people freaking out inside the machine-- which is why I suppose they asked me if I get claustrophobic (and whether I have any shrapnel in my body).

Fortunately, I answered all their mental-- and metal-- questions correctly and was permitted to continue. Liz, the very helpful and friendly tech, explained what was going to happen and what I should expect over the course of the next 40 or so minutes. She then gave me some headphones and asked what kind of music I would like to listen to.

My mind blanked. Liz started rattling off the options in their CD library: "Classical, Jazz, Light Rock, Classic Rock...." I chose Light Rock (Lite Rock?) figuring it was a safe bet and then made a nervous joke about how awful it would be to hear "Macarena" over and over. Liz parried with "Not as bad as 'Hot Hot Hot!'" I actually banned that song from my wedding. I could hang with this Liz.

Headphones, collar and head gear in place, I entered the machine. And the music started. A classic Crosby Stills & Nash song. Not bad.... about what I expected. I was happy with my choice. Then the next song came on. I didn't know it but recognized the CSN/CSNY harmonies. And then "Our House" came on. Oh good god. A whole Crosby Stills & Nash CD?!!!

I contemplated squeezing my Emergency Stop Bulb but decided to tough it out.

ADVIL!

Boy, do I have a headache. My daughter had a friend over for a playdate after school today and he brought his trumpet. I guess they decided about a month ago that they were going to perform a duet for the rest of their class at school (she plays the piano) but conflicting schedules meant that we didn't get the practice-makes-perfect playdate until now. And of course it was at our house because, natch, a trumpet is more portable.

OMG. It was like sitting on an aircraft carrier next to the horn for the Fleet Week kick-off and it lasted for an hour. We ran through 'Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gun Tree', 'Mary had a Little Lamb', and 'Yankee Doodle.' I think. And sometimes they played in a round, just to maximize the cacophonous discord. I had to smile encouragingly while inside reeling off a string of bad language that would mortify a pimp.

My daughter had a great time and her friend is terrific. But when his mother came to collect him, she offered to reciprocate and have the kids at her house next time, "not to play music, just to play." My jaw fell open. That was an option???

This Wasn't in the Manual

Yesterday my son had his tonsils and adenoids removed. The dentist pulled a 'while you're in there' ... and so the surgeon also cut his lingual frenum (the thingy that attaches your tongue to your palate). And by the way, I might pull a 'while you're in there' if/when I next need surgery. How great would that be?! But back to my son.

I had been told that he would be pretty much laid up for a week with little to no appetite and not much energy so I completed my external to-do list, filled the fridge and pantry with liquid temptations and raided Target for puzzles and coloring books. I was a Girl Scout, you know. I'm prepared.

Firstly, we were in and out of the ambulatory center within four hours. What ever happened to staying in a hospital? Then he gets home and is all jazzed up! "What do you want to play, Mom? You want to do Wii with me?!" He even wanted to stop at Borders on the way home from the surgery. And he was ravenous. He ate and ate and ate. All day. This wasn't in the post-op list of symptoms! I was afraid I might run out of appealing mush! I was afraid of getting Jello elbow!

Things went pear-shaped at about 6pm (so what's new?) when the pain became almost unbearable and we were two hours away from the next Tylenol/Codeine fix. He went to bed and only woke once in the night for more medicine. Today, he's much more reticent and subdued thank goodness. As horrible as it is to see him suffering, the pain is forcing him to slow down and heal in a way that I couldn't. What happened yesterday was just plain weird. Today is by the book which is how I like it.

UNCLE!

Lately, I've been feeling sad. Some mornings I just don't want to get out of bed and, honestly, if I didn't have to get the kids to school, I probably wouldn't. Why the sudden blues? Am I trapped under a pile of rubble in Haiti? No. Have I lost a loved one to the war in Afghanistan? No. Do I work for an airline? No. I have a loving family and the best friends a person could ever hope for. So what gives, princess?

Depression is a funny old thing. It can creep up on you when you least expect it and it can make you feel so guilty. On my doctor's advise, and with every fibre of my being screaming, "NOOOO, we agreed to keep our own counsel!", I went to see a therapist. It was surprisingly empowering. It felt good to relinquish control for a while and have a professional tell me that it is okay to not be perfect always.

So here goes: I spend every hour of every day caring for three children and a husband. I handle 12 loads of laundry a week on average, despite chronic pain from arthritis. I gave up a great career to cook and clean and babysit and coordinate and console and cheer and chauffeur, chauffeur, chauffeur. I try to take a little bit of time for myself but I forever have one eye on the clock. Oh, and I'm turning 40 next week.

Don't even think about questioning how much I spend at Starbucks.