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March 03, 2005

diary of a mad housewife

The first thing is that I don't want to get up even though I've been awake since 4:30, and my head feels like a spike is being driven through it. But eventually the good coffee smell comes up through the grate and that is enough to get me to put my feet on the floor.

Coffee, the paper, a shower, down here to work. Except that I can't work because for the second day in a row I can't log on to the Citrix applications. "ACL File Not Found." Shit.

An hour and countless attempts to log on later, she gets up and I stop trying and go upstairs to help her get ready for school. I say to her as I wash her hair, "What on earth have you been in to? What's all this stuff in your hair?" Like grains of sand, except impossible to wash out. I stop, mid-scrub. Shit.

I call work. No, I will not be in today, either.

One call to the school later--they're so understanding that they promise me they won't let her back into the classroom until she's "clean," as if she's not, and as if she somehow manifested head lice through some kind of magic trick, on her own--I am putting on my coat to go out to buy some poison and a bunch of little teeny combs when the phone rings.

It's the lab. "We let your son's blood test clot." And this means what, exactly? "And this means what, exactly?" This means, exactly, that I get to make another trip to the lab and he gets to have more blood drawn.

To CVS and back, the poison shampoo, the poison gel, the little teeny combs, the crying. The phone rings. It's the pediatrician, who managed despite the clotted blood to get some results from the lab. "Well, he doesn't have mono now, but he did have it." Well, so what does he have now? "Maybe pneumonia. Go back to the lab and have a CDC drawn."

Then the laundry, all the blankets and sheets and towels and pillows and everything her head might have touched; the lice spray, the vacuuming, more laundry, her brother and the poison shampoo, and we get ready to go to the lab. She says to Spike, "Have you been eating dog food?" Holds him up to her brother. "Smell his lips. Do they smell like dog food to you? Mom, can I listen to my Bangles cd in the car?" Yes, I say.

But her brother has other ideas and wants to listen to Blink 182, and every time I put the Bangles in, he ejects it. He won't stop no matter what I say and I feel a familiar tearing sensation in the cheesecloth that holds in, just barely, The Mean One. I think Fuck This and tell him "Okay, I don't care if you get your blood drawn or not. You either get better or you don't; if you do you go back to school and if you don't you go back to the doctor. I don't need the bullshit. Now get out of the car." He does.

I drive to Safeway listening to the Bangles really loud and I buy a bottle of wine, and even though it is only 2:00 in the afternoon when I get back home, I open it.

Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)