Last night, before bed, I had put newspapers down in anticipation of the mess, having spent the day before dodging doggy-do and mopping the floor with Tilex. Still, the dog managed to hit the few spots that were un-papered – remarkable aim considering the dire circumstances that must have compelled the beast to soil the house in the first place.

What’s wrong with the dog, what’s making her ill, you ask. My answer - I don’t give a shit (I realize this is a pun, one I intended). I’ve given her half a bottle of Pepto Bismal and stern talking to about the consequences should she defecate even one more time inside the house.

I know the old adage, feed a cold, starve a fever. And feel, somehow, betrayed that the old, wise folk who develop and deliver such truths forgot to generate any catchy saying pertaining to a house-pet’s GI distress. So I’m going with the starving bit and have decided not to feed the damn dog until I observe a noticeable weakening in the shit storm.

For those of you who’ve been wondering why it’s been taking me so long to publish my next post, just imagine me down on my knees, holding my breath while dabbing ineffectually at the god-awful mess my dog has left me. Imagine how it is to be so lightheaded and exhausted from all that scrubbing and lack of oxygen and the effort expended swallowing back your own vomit, that you have no choice but to return to bed immediately after cleansing the mudroom. It’s like a swoon, an enduring faintness that really fucks with a person’s motivation and eagerness to meet the day. Imagine me hanging the Gone-Back-to-Bed-Because-This-Morning-Is-Unbearable sign on the door knob and forgive me the spotty blogging.

(Just a little part of me is currently dreaming that this bout of tummy trouble just might usher in a doggy-ending. I can hear myself saying, Natural causes. Couldn’t be helped. Doesn’t the house stay clean a lot longer without our canine friend who we remember fondly but, on days like today, could probably live without?)

As evidenced by all the leaves in this picture, I have tried a different approach this year. The close your eyes and pretend there’s not a thing wrong with the lawn approach, the hold your breath and hope someone else finds this leaf mess intolerable and eventually borrows the neighbor’s gas blower. The Who, Me? approach seems to be working so far and every other weekend the yard is restored to temporary tidiness by My Better Half who has thankfully settled in to his role as temporary but constant gardener.

And to be perfectly honest this laissez-faire attitude I have adopted is not entirely due to a new and more laid back me but more to the fact that I have serious wrist and forearm problems stewing and can proudly declare myself a winner of several fine diagnosis – De Quervian’s Syndrome, Wortenberg’s Syndrome, the beginnings of tennis elbow – all of which are orthopedic euphemism for, “Wow, your hand-wrist-arm apparatus is really fucked up. Let me give you a Cortisone shot and hope for the best because if that doesn’t work we’ll have to consider amputation.”

Simple tasks like raking, flipping pancakes, vacuuming, scrubbing the tub and folding laundry have all become excruciating antagonists to the things already gone wrong in this skinny arm of mine. And so I’ve been sidelined from some of the more banal but necessary tasks in life and, like anyone riding the pine, I’m anxious to participate. But I’m also enjoying the imposed break, nothing like a little doctor’s note to help a person settle in to a sabbatical from household chores. There is something liberating about letting things go just a little longer than I would usually. It’s so unlike me. I could get used to this slovenliness.

But then there’s the difficulty and attendant pain associated with tennis. And we all know how unlikely I am to give up the game. So I’m icing and pumping the NSAID’s and fully committed to getting this thing healed up so that I can continue to work on my court skills. And if amputation is necessary then I will be forced to play left handed. It worked for Nadal. No reason it can’t work me, right?

Each time she pushes all that emotional energy up and out, hauntingly suffering through the refrain,

Though I’ve tried, I’ve fallen…
I have sunk so low
I messed up
Better I should know
So don’t come round here
And tell me I told you so…

there’s a wretched nest of cotton that settles in my throat and the blur of tears in my eyes. It’s positively masochistic this putting myself front row at her concert of melancholy. Totally incongruous on a May day with fragile sprigs of lawn poking up through the moist and fertile earth, with rabbits sniffing around the perennial garden and robins hopping through the grass in search of fat, fat worms. The sky is the very shade of blue reserved for Spring and sea shore weddings. I am alien and awkward in this brilliance that surrounds me.

And possibly, just possibly this sadness has a wee bit to do with the two fliers that came home in O’s backpack this week. One informing us of another lice outbreak and the other about the presence of pin worm in the school.

Now please pop on over to the scene of Sarah McLachlan drowning herself in the bath tub and her wrecked lover tearing apart their pied-a-terre and you’ll need not imagine the depths I’ll sink to should either of those vermin enter our home.

After all, what mother hasn’t cooed with pride over their infant’s first mecomium stool, that greenish black slick that is all the evidence an anxious new parent needs that their darling new baby possesses the very same digestive track as all other healthy babies the world over. There is comfort in this sameness. Expectations fulfilled. One off-colored elimination and the entire family is exhaling a collective sigh of relief.

And then there is the issue of the new mother’s own ability to defecate. Without a proper bowel movement, she is a prisoner in the maternity ward. More stool softeners are administered. Nurses talk in hushed whispers about her inability to poop as if it is a sign of this mother’s mental weakness. They have forgotten just how startlingly and scarring it is to pass a watermelon size creature from the vagina. They are focused on forcing this poor woman with the stitches to produce yet another expulsion that will surely tear her insides out, will lead to internal bleeding and the end of a perfectly good birthing experience. There is a stand-off. Armed guards stand at the bathroom door and order her performance. She will weep softly and pretend she has shat. They will rush in and insist on seeing the evidence and the new mother is forced to admit she has lied. Back to toilet for another attempt. Hours drag on before she achieves the successful void which is celebrated and admired and practically wrapped up along with the flowers and the teddy bears and the swaddled infant as souvenir of this important life changing event.

Now safely home with baby in arms, the true shit talking begins. There are long battles waged about whose turn it is to drag themselves from bed to change yet another diaper, change the whole outfit, the entire crib, in fact, because another runny infant stool has crept beyond the gathered leg pleats of even the most absorbent nappy and has stained the sheets and spoiled the cute footy-pajamas with the moons and stars.

This ritual grows tiresome, like Ground Hog day with diaper genies and Huggies’ wipes and changing table pads.

And somehow, in all its shit-filled sameness, life just sort of flies by until a person finds themselves suddenly parenting a child capable of crapping their pants at a zoo-themed birthday party even though they’ve been ‘potty trained’ for months. Just as quickly, they are Mom to an eight year old little boy who is crying as he clutches the porcelain, ‘It hurts Mommy, it hurts. Make it stop.” And without reaching up there to extract the compacted stool herself, she is powerless to help the child experiencing the distinct pain of his first anal fissure. Apricots are administered. A Sids bath is drawn. There is hand holding and supportive cheers while the boulder of poop is finally excreted. It is a monumental turd that refuses to be flushed away. It threatens to remain their as evidence of the ill effects of too many chicken finger/french fry combos for time eternal until someone gags their way through the process of breaking it up into flushable sized portions.

Because this defecation thing is something we all must do on a regular basis and because we parents have become sort of inured to the relative disgustingness of such discussions, 225,000 copies of What’s Your Poo Telling You? have been sold and the Poo Quality Index has become a popular topic at dinner parties, on episodes of Oprah and at play groups alike.

(I am happy to report that I have yet to discuss the PQI with anyone over tapas and dirty martinis or while standing attentively just to the right of the monkey bars. I’m not sure the suburban town in which I reside is ready for discussions about feces. But have no fear, I will probably make this social blunder very soon as I have a compulsive need to bring up shocking matters at regular intervals just to ensure that I am not too well liked in this town of 30,000 judgmental mom-types.)

Perhaps I am so comfortable with discussions of colon performance because I endured months and months of undignified testing in order for doctor’s to determine that my intestines are truly unique and mysterious and that no matter how many colonoscopies are conducted or stool samples collected and placed into small vials and stirred with little plastic spoons in preparation for lab analysis, no one is going to be able to determine the exact reason for my inner turmoil. The ability to sit in a room with a male doctor and exchange colorful commentary about one’s recent performance on the seat-of-ease is definitely an acquired skill. No matter how professional and gravely serious this doctor is about the topic, initially, there is that awkward silence that is you trying to determine just how much is too much information. I mean he’s asking but does he really, really want to know?

There is a distinct feeling that anything you say or do in regard to your bowel movements can and will be used against you in a future episode of Candid Camera. Such is the nature of the topic. But the success of the book and my ability to discuss poop for an entire and lengthy blog posting is evidence that we’re all in this together. To void or not to void has never been at question.

But I couldn’t salvage my lips. Blisters formed, cracking ensued. By week’s end I was forced to drink everything from a straw. Now, two days home and I am still straw dependent. This is the way I consume everything: coffee, wine, my meals – straw inserted to a place within the mouth that ensures no liquid will touch the yellowed pustules that weep and bleed and were once my lips. I am taking medication to dull the pain of second degree burns. I avoid outings. Afraid of what the cold and the wind will do to my fragile mouth. I made one trip to the grocery yesterday. I wrapped a scarf around the lower half of my face to protect the sores. The wool got stuck in the wounds and I wept while unwrapping the fuchsia scarf, wet with blood.

Sore and sorry for myself, I am ill equipped to deal with the children’s questions about why we decided to move away from South Florida. “But it’s so much fun there, Mom. Why did we have to move HERE where there are no leaves, no sunshine, no beaches strewn with exquisite shells – Venus Sun Rays, Calico Scallops, Conchs and Sand Dollars?” The gesture to the scene beyond our icy windows. All is bleak, brittle with brown and gray and patchy white.

I decided to skip the condition of my face as adequate explanation and instead began a protracted discussion about how the life we once lived in South Florida had nothing to do with the vacation we just enjoyed. How our everyday existence there was not spent at heated pools or taking Catamaran trips to uninhabited beaches, that we rarely visited the zoo and everyday had school and mosquitoes and the dreaded commute to and from work with which to contend. I explained that our daily, non-vacation lives in Florida was much the same as our life in Massachusetts save for the fact that our house was much, much smaller, the schools abysmal and our weekends were spent conjuring ways to invite ourselves to use pools and boats that we ourselves couldn’t afford to possess.

For awhile this convinced them, until G blurted out that she’d rather attend a BAD school and wear sandals every day then have to go to a GOOD school in snow boots. It’s a sound argument. Foot wear is as good a gauge for mental health and general attitude as any.

But then I reminded them of the giddy rush that is the first warm day of spring, the seasonal shift that offers up warmth and sunshine and the opportunity to wear open toed shoes that is, after a long winter of fleece and water proof Kamiks, like the first embrace, a thousand flirty kisses, this tickle of new love. Here, unlike Florida, I explained, it happens year after year. That one day each spring that ushers in the flush and flutter of new beginnings. The giddy gleeful start of something better. We do not have to remarry or adopt a puppy or purchase a new car to experience this thrill of new love. We just have to endure a long winter and wait for Spring. It will come, kids, I assured them, and you will be positively feverish with the glee of it. And, if all goes well, by then I will be drinking from a glass and free to go out doors without applying Vaseline and lip prophylactics. All will be well again.

But it’s got to get worse before it can get better, right? As you’re reading this, I’m probably sitting in the airport terminal enduring a lengthy delay due to inclement weather in the Northeast. It would figure that it’s got to hail and sleet and snow on the one day, after the 670 days I’ve sat home staring at my laptop, that we actually plan to evacuate for parts more tropical and breezy.

It’s not just the weather that poses a challenge to the Madmarriage plans. It would also figure that one day before departure, a battery of tests come back positive for chronic inflammation of the uterine lining. Turns out theres some itty bitty micro-organism thrashing around in there and only an antibiotic regime of startling complexity will remedy what ails me. If this isn’t a case of the cure being worse than the disease, well I don’t know what it is. A pill must be swallowed four times a day, one hour before eating and two to three hours after a meal. I am not to lay down for thirty minutes after taking the medication which pretty much rules out the plan of taking two of the four doses in the middle of the night so I can resume normal levels of nutrient consumption by day.

Trying to follow the medication schedule only highlights the fact that I must, on a normal basis, eat absolutely all day. I’m practically starving with the limitations of this pill taking regime. And I can’t wait for the other side effects, aside from starvation, to kick in. I kid you not, the following ailments are listed as possible side effects of the drug: nausea, vomiting, diarrhea (great fun on fully booked flights), mouth sores, a black hairy tongue (yes, I did say a black hairy tongue. WTF?), sore throat, dizziness, head ache, rectal discomfort (again, WTF?), sensitivity to the sun (perfect for my beach vacation), nail discoloration, muscle pain, difficult or painful swallowing, brown/gray tooth discoloration, numbness of the hands and feet, fatigue, hearing changes (What’s that you say? Someone is trying to kill me?), oral thrush and yeast infection, and that’s just if all goes well. I’m supposed to just sit back and endure the black, hairy tongue and the tooth discoloration but should sit up and take notice, call my doctor (who is obviously trying to poison me) if I should develop a fever, the chills, acute abdominal pain, bloody stool, white patches in my mouth, trouble breathing, chest pains and a fast irregular heart beat.

I’m trying to accept the inevitability of all this. It’s Murphy’s Law, right? Plan a trip to Florida and the Gods will smite thee with pestilence and dramatic weather events. So wish me luck, on-time air travel, a pink healthy tongue and cooperative high pressure systems for the next seven days.

I will try to post a few times from my parents’ retirement community but I’m not sure they’ve discovered wireless access down in those parts. It’s still dial-up and regular cable television. It’s simple living. I will adapt.

You Are Totally Anal Retentive

Yup, you’re so uptight – people definitely have called you “anal.” You’re the type of person who’s so OCD you organize your M&Ms before eating them. You have so many rules and rituals, it’s hard for you to let loose and enjoy life. So go ahead and mix up your alphabetized CD collection. Live a little!

(Go ahead, click on over, take your test and then come back. I can wait.)

So I am totally, hopelessly, stiflingly anal retentive. This is not shocking or new information but it underscores a certain low-level of anxiety I’ve been feeling lately while eating with others. It seems that I have become increasingly intolerant of the sounds people make when chewing – the smack and burble of someone speaking with their mouth full, dribbles of food falling out onto the table or the floor, the snorting whistle from the nose made when those who tend to be mouth breathers are forced to use their nasal passages because there is a big hunk of steak blocking their airway of choice. It’s all I can do not to cover my ears or hurry from the room to cower in a quiet, dark space and wait for the meal to be over.

This eating aversion can make dinner with my children excruciating. O likes to shovel food towards his face, bringing his mouth to plate level, hunched and hungry, he consumes food much like Cookie Monster, a sort of frenzied crumb fest ensues. G is a dabbler. She never seems to fully approve of the meal set in front of her so she compensates for her displeasure by swirling and stirring and poking at the food on her plate in a sort of dinner dissection ritual. It’s an active dance of avoidance which often ends with her eating choice items with her fingers and spilling her milk. I like to eat my dinner standing up at the kitchen sink, so at the very least, I am five feet away from the very audible experience of dinner with others.

It’s always been there, this irritation. I can remember being adolescently-annoyed by the way my father ate his dinner. The family dining room filled with the sounds of his mastication and I was ill with intolerance. My head threatened to explode. But I was sixteen, I was supposed to harbor a nuclear hatred for everything parental, even chewing habits. But sixteen no longer, now more so than ever, if I’m tired or sick or even slightly off my game, this kind of thing can threaten to unhinge me.

And it makes me nervous because I hail from a long line of Obsessive Compulsives. The most dysfunctional among us is my very own brother and we share half our DNA. On good days, medicated days, he brushes his teeth repeatedly and checks to see that the stove is off and counts the calories he has consumed in a day and then promptly goes out to run for the exact amount of time it will take to burn off every calorie that has passed his lips.

On bad days, things are dicier. He suffers harm obsessions that center around driving and the possibility that the little bump in the road was in fact the thud of a human body bouncing off the front fender. He has been known to circle the car inspecting the exterior for signs of collision with human flesh -for days and days and days. And then, weeks into the obsession, he will begin searching the woods by the side road for the body of the person he is now certain he has killed while driving. Newspapers are collected and carefully culled for reports of hit and run accidents. When none of these efforts turn up a body, he quietly drives himself to the local police station and turns himself in. It’s a cycle that the law enforcement folks have grown used to and they patiently explain that they are quite sure of his innocence and turn him away which is, in some ways, crueler than locking him up just long enough to let his brain reset.

So I’m afraid that this chewing obsession may blossom into something less banal, more unusual and debilitating. There’s a fine line between anal retentive and obsessive compulsive and I’m losing sight of the distinction. I will gladly accept anal retentive as my diagnosis. I’ll receive and own it and hope that the other, more distressing mental disorder, remains at bay for just a little bit longer.

How’d your test trun out? Do tell.

When I took a step back to dissect the day, retracing the time line of events to determine how to approach these problems in the same effective manner again (what works bears repeating), I was struck by the truth. There was one obvious ‘thing’ that made my urging and reminders effective – that ‘thing’ was sex.

Even though this ’sex’ strategy was not a deliberate plan, concocted to ensure he’d resolve the conflict surrounding his changed policy number, it seems that my rebuffing his recent attempts to ‘faire amour’ has provided motivation for him to please me. He figures, I make her happy and she’ll show me just how sexy she finds my binding life insurance.

I can’t believe I’m just figuring it out, after ten years I’ve finally connected the dot. He who hopes to get lucky crosses thing off the to-do list with great gusto.

I’ve been feeling ill and tired lately ( a bit off my game). And after googling my vague and common symptoms, I have become convinced that I am dying of some terminal disease. This is the beauty of the internet. It’s such a simple leap from sore throat to Ovarian cancer. It takes less than two minutes to make the self-diagnosis. It follows that, since I’m dying of advanced, metastasized cancer, I have little interest in sex – it’s been a few weeks.

Coincidently, in the few weeks that I’ve been convalescing, My Better Half has finished painting the side of the house, has been seen folding the laundry on several occasions and has even woken early enough to send the kids off to school on two occasions. Currently he is reading them a bedtime story…this abstinence thing works wonders.

The only catch is, having done all these good deeds, he will tuck the children into bed and slink downstairs to stand beside my computer where he will look at me longingly, with pleading bedroom eyes. And, well, I couldn’t possibly entertain his advances. I just ate too much and have several hundred blogs to read and, of course, there’s that lingering terminal illness.

So I struggle. If I continue to withhold favors will his efforts increase (I mean, my car needs a good cleaning and the basement needs organizing and a back rub would be nice) or will all the partnership and domestic help eventually cease as hopes dwindle and longing fades to desperation and resentment?

How long is too long?

I know I’m not alone. Those of you who have also been married for several hundred years must recognize the situation I describe. Please, pass some wisdom along.

Until then I’ll send My Better Half the link to the Flight of the Conchords video, Business Time. So apt, so bitingly true. It’ll make him feel better. He’s not missing much. I, too, wear oversized team building t-shirts to bed and leap up in the midst of the action, remembering that it’s recycling day. (If you all have been under a rock for the past year and haven’t seen this clip, you must head on over and check it out. It’s absolutely hilarious.)

Until future notice, I’m still closed for business.

I save these missions for desperate times, times like this Saturday when G was complaining her bum hurt and O was itching at a rash that had cropped up in his groin area. (Yes, he showers by himself and probably just runs the water, eschewing soap in the private region and thus developing some nasty jock itch type of thing). And I figured that, while I was at it, this buying of Preparation H and Jock itch spray, I might as well purchase every other humiliating item we might need in the next six months. I piled my carriage high with tampons and panty liners and infection remedies and sexual lubricants and over the counter contraceptives. I was pushing a veritable cornucopia of elixirs and pastes and latex goodies when I turned the corner of the nearly abandoned grocery store in Nowheresville and ran smack into my tennis coach, the one I see three times a week and talks too much and tells mere acquaintances the intimate details of his own personal life and will, therefore, have no problem reporting to all his clients at the racquet club just what various and sundry items I had stashed in my carriage that morning.

I immediately launched into my most animated small talk while hurriedly opening the freezer door nearest me and piling gallon after gallon of ice cream right on top of my carriage-full of hideousness. Chocolate chip, Moose Tracks, Coffee Heath Bar, whatever. Must cover up the evidence. Must divert attention. Would rather talk about my horrific ice cream addiction than my yeast infection. It didn’t occur to me until I was safely at the check out that he must have thought the incredible amounts of ice cream my personal cure for menstrual cramps, hemorrhoids and jock itch.

I was quietly waiting for the bookish looking older woman to finish with her customer before joining her line when I heard it, the words I most dread, “Ma’am…Ma’am? I can take you over here.” The words chilled me to the core, spoken as the were in the distinct tone of a very male person. Shit. Fuck. Damn it all. I slowly wheeled my carriage to the young man’s aisle, all the while thinking, Should I leave. I could just walk away. But then he’ll have to re-shelve all this stuff and he doesn’t deserve that type of shame. Just be a big girl. Get in line. Don’t make eye contact. Pay with cash. Get it over with.

And so the Emo-ish young man with the eyebrow piercings and mascara and the rakish black hair watched me pile the counter with my purchases and patiently scanned each horrifying item and placed it in a thin, single shopping bag. And though I know I have had no influence on his future sexual leanings and I know that he has only been taking his own sweet time digesting his homosexuality, I still feel responsible. That poor, poor check out boy will never look at a woman the same way again. I could hear the echo of his inner shriek all the way out to my car.

Next time I’m shopping out of state.

I feel for O, I really do. There’s nothing worse than spending the morning all tingly and warm and inordinately interested in the Jibbitz on your Crocs only to have the veil lifted. He has returned home with a throbbing hole in face to deal with his bored and slightly hyper sister who has insisted on making a well insulated home for the extracted tooth in her jewelry box, complete with colored tissue and glitter and a few stuffed animal friends, until tooth fairy time.

And I’m feeling a little ill and uneasy myself. If any of y’all have ever witnessed your child under the influence of twilight anesthesia then you can relate to my feeling that I have spent the morning watching the high-school version of my O enjoy the effects of a thousand whippets or worse and am now responsible for helping him master the effects of excess. Oh help me God, he really, really liked the Nitrous. Adolescence promises to be a rough ride.