FundyNutter

It’s taken seven years, but I finally came up with a dinner so atrocious I really am ashamed to be using the energy resources to cook it. It smells bad, it looks funny. I can’t actually imagine eating it in the next twenty minutes.

It started out innocently enough. I have leftover turkey. And, um, cabbage. And some sausage in the freezer. I got to thinking how a nice smokey polish sausage would be tasty mixed with some leftover turkey. But what to do with it? The cabbage suggested kraut burgers to me. So…

I mixed the dough, I chopped the cabbage. I pulled the sausage out of the freezer. My gaze fell to the label. Italian sausage. Shoot. I knew immediately it would taste terrible with cabbage and turkey. But the dough was already rising. And maybe…? Well, no. I chopped the turkey and the sausage way too fine so it had a disgusting similarity to dog food. I browned the sausage and added the cabbage. The fumes filled the kitchen. It made my stomach turn. I thought perhaps it would taste better than it smelled. It didn’t.

So what did I do? I rolled out the dough, filled it with, well, sludge, and added some cheddar cheese. It wasn’t my first mistake, but I know in my heart it won’t help.

The cabbage/sausage/turkey combo had a bit of a Chinese food taste too it, had I been bold I could have added sesame oil and a little hoisin sauce and maybe salvaged it. But that doesn’t go with yeasty rolls, now does it? So I added cheddar cheese. Because while cheddar cheese doesn’t go with Chinese food it does go with yeasty bread rolls.

Like I said, my stomach turns thinking about eating this and my head aches at the thought of even trying to feed it to my kids. I have a bit of sahm guilt also–this is the best I could do for my poor beleaguerd husband who spent the day embalming and soothing sad people? Really? Barf Rolls? Well, now you are in on it too. Just try to enjoy the delicious and healthy food you are eating right now while thinking the words “Barf Rolls.”

There is a schmaltzy Christian song I hear on the radio a lot. As embarrassed as I am to admit it, I cry every time I hear it.  Kind of the same way the leapfrog commercials with the skinny moms in clean houses with sweet kids playing quietly make me cry.

I hunted for the lyrics, but I don’t know who sings it or what its called. Nonetheless it croons the story of a mom on the bus whose kids are tantruming because they’ve been up all night with their dad at the hospital and now he’s dead. And the old man driving too slow on the highway because his wife is dead and his kids don’t take care of him.  See, I’m choking up just typing it out.  Someone please hit me with the schmaltz stick and end my misery.

Some really not great person didn’t slow down and let me merge on the highway.  Then he shook his head and wagged his finger at me, I assume because I exist.

I wanted to sing him my verse of the song:

Please forgive me.

I haven’t got all day.

The food poisening is acting fast, just get out of my way.

The kids are cranky

their dad’s at work

He won’t be home till next week so don’t be a  jerk.

If only you knew how bad

I needed to get home fast

how one dose of Pepto just won’t last

You’d forgive me

You’d give me right of way

So just move it guy, I haven’t got all day.

Seven years ago, a warm afternoon.  I wore a thin t-shirt and lightweight, khaki shorts.  My cross training shoes were still new. I was as stress free as a girl on the countdown to her college graduation and wedding can be.  I was fueled with a small bag Trader Joe’s corn chips and was ready to climb the mountain.

It was just a foothill, really, of the quite respectable Mt. Hood, off to the south and east. There were no glaciers to be conquered or pending snow to bundle against.  It was, however, the mountainiest mountain I have ever climbed.

This climb, called Angel’s Rest, is a popular climb on the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge.

The trail was carved on the sheer sides of the mountain. The forest sloped steeply down to the river, not inviting hikers to explore the woods. The view to the river side was beautiful. The forest in June. Tall new-growth evergreen trees offered the idea of shade to forest visiters. Sword ferns, maiden hair ferns, piggy-back plant and trillium gathered together in small groups, chatting about the pack of hikers tromping around.  I’m sure they found us large, garish, and remarkable mobile.  Here and there an old snag, split by lightening, was enjoying its midlife career change as a caretaker for forest life of all kinds. On an old snag, small birds, slugs, worms, bugs, lichen and moss and other small green things lived together, a miniature forest in the forest.

This particular trail is just under five miles round trip.  It has an elevation gain of 1880 feet.  At the top, after enduring the endless switchbacks and scrambling over the great feild of basalt boulders the resting place of angels greats you. The beauty of the forest that surrounded us was more than enough, and yet at the top, God chose to reward the  determined with  an astounding view.

On the hill top we found a rocky field, open and free, no barrior between climber and the almost 2000 foot fall to the river below.  I sat near the edge, stretched out my happy muscles and was amazed at the greatness of creation.  In front of me was stretched the glories of hillside and mountain and the river that was carved through it. Thy sky was cerrulean, dappled with white clouds–the innocent, decorative kind. The river, far below was saphire. No wind to encourage the wind-sailing that makes the area famous, but the still waters were so far below and so deeply colored that they astounded.  The hills, on all sides of us were emerald green, daring Ireland to be as beautiful.

As we wended our way down the hill, back to our flat ground, boxed in behind, before and above with fir trees and clouds and buildings, I tried to appreciate the forest around me. I chatted with the other hikers. I noticed that changes in the woods as we lost elevation.  I noticed the funny noise I made while I was breathing.

wheesze, whisze, wheesze

It caught at the back of my throat. My breath felt, I don’t know, incomplete. What a funny thing for my throat to do.

It made me think “Health insurance would be really handy about now.”

Later in the week, at an urgent care clinic, I explained to the doctor what happened on the hillside.  He asked questions about my history of allergies.  He suggested the cold I had been fighting for two months was not a cold. He sent me away with Zyrtek (enough for only a month, the most an urgent care clinic can prescribe), albuterol, and the words “exercise induced asthma.”

Earlier this spring, I spent a rather scary afternoon turning my house updside down to find the blasted inhaler (because, um, since I don’t tend to exercise, I don’t need it much.) The doctor told me the next day “asthma can change. It sounds like yours has increased from a relatively minor problem to regular asthma. ”

He sent me on the way with new prescriptions and an annoyed attitude.

My alergic triggers are grass, fir trees, pollen and of course, exertion.

I spent the afternoon yesterday in my mom’s grass lawn exerting with the kids under the fir trees in the pollen.  I still can’t breathe just right.

I didn’t even attempt a  gain of 1880 feet in elevation under the canopy of the forest.

wheesze, whisze, wheesze

I’m glad I climbed the mountain when I did. I plan on climbing more of them.  I plan on spending hours on my own grass lawn under the great fir tree sundial planting things that will make pollen.

I climbed up the mountain, seven years ago, with trepidation, wondering if I could really do it and what I would see at the top. I came down the mountain with asthma.  If I can make it through this post I will get my inhaler.  Then, I’ll plan my day in the garden.

(please visit : www.danbalogh.com/hikes.html for some amazing hiking photos, including angels rest.)

Usually Daniel changes Lucy’s first morning diaper. It is his great act of kindness and grace to me everyday.  She is the kind of little gal that usually only poops once a day, and that in the morning. So when Daniel tells me what a great big stinker her pants were on a given morning I sympathise and feel grateful, but go on with my day, as planned.  Some days she does poop twice. As a veteran parent of almost four years I can handle that. Especially as Lucy usually poops normal poop. The kind that rolls right off the diaper, into the toilet.

We stayed up too late last night and slept in too late this morning.  I offered the gift of grace and kindness this morning and took care of the big stinkers big stinky.  And had a great d’oh moment.

When Daniel tells me, morning after morning, more than seven days in a row, that Lucy has been having lots of nasty pants, I should listen. I should not make the switch to cloth in the middle of a nasty pants phase.

I go back and forth between cloth and disposables. A few months of the one and a few months of the other.  Our false spring gave me hope for sunny weather. Sunny weather made me think of bare toes and tushies and sprinklers and…potty training! It seemed like a prime opportunity to switch back to cloth.  Maybe Lucy would respond quickly to the toilet, and maybe she wouldn’t. But either way her tushy would be comfy and our garbage would be empty.  I didn’t think that maybe she was entering a toddler tummy stage, where her poops would run like a fast food milkshake.

And she might not be entering a phase. From my reading in 2006-2007 I learned that toddler tummy, or chronic toddler loose stool, was generally thought to be caused by a late maturing chemical–the chemical that mixes in your digestive process and creates a solid stool. Since Lucy has been making rabbit turds for ages I can’t imagine she is starting something that will last. But still. If I had listened to Daniel…

Well, if I had listened to Daniel I would have bought a fresh batch of Huggies. I would have increased her banana, rice, apple sauce, and dry toast intake.  I would have waited and watched. I would not have spent the early morning smelling a sewer and beating a diaper against the side of the toilet. Oh yes. This kind of poop only comes off with agitation.  And I was agitated.

Once you have one diaper soaking in the bucket, you really ought to just keep going. It’s one of those cycles of fill the bucket-wash the load that are hard to time just right for stopping.  A lone diaper in the bucket is likely to get forgotten.  And one day’s diapers really aren’t enough to wash. Two days, or even a day and a half seems more efficient (time and energy-wise.)

I suppose beating the poop off of the didy only took a couple of minutes. Rinsing nasty pants is one of the earthly experiences that foreshadows perdition. It is devilishly gross. I’ve done it before, though. And I guess I can do it again, since I’ve started.

Because mucus is a great way to start the morning off right, I’ll give an update on the March Mucus experiment of 08. My chest seems mostly cleared, the mucus, lovingly referred to as rubber cement, has migrated North. No longer shoulders to top of head, it now lives in the space between my jaw and the top of my head. You know, where my brain used to live. The sharp pain hasn’t abated yet–not since it began on Sunday. No cold medicine, steam, sleep nor tincture of opium has proven effective yet. But the low grade fever is gone. And with it the dizziness, confusion and disparing of life.

Gone they are, but not forgotten. Lucy is established on my lap right now, and content to stay their until she graduates college, I think. Because she has the snot and the fever and the despair now. Poor baby.

Not that I keep a venue of the internet up just to complain about our aches and pains. That sounds boring. But since I am taking another moment to share the trials ’round here, I’ll share one more. Poor Daniel has been looking forward to the big game (the one that started airing 17 minutes ago) for days on end. And it was his natural day off too.

But funerals have proven yet again, to be an inconvenient industry. The one day this year (so far anyway) that he actually wanted to be home more than anywhere else, he was needed at work. So while he spends his day filling in three part forms on a typewriter he will be dreaming of the improbable Portland State/Kansas match. And while I dream of uncompromised playdates I will be snatching at tissue all day to stem the tide of snot. The snot promises to make us all feel better as it slowly evacuates. It will make us all feel better, if I can only keep it from attacking anyone else.

Since Sunday afternoon I’ve been suffering from a hybrid cold-sickness-gunk-thing. It would seem that sometime between the coffee break and the closing song in church I got filled up—shoulders to the top of my head—with rubber cement. The rubber cement came with a low grade fever–free with purchase!

I spent all of Sunday afternoon in bed. I didn’t have that kind of freedom Monday. I loaded myself up with cold medicine and did my best. I alternated between lying on the couch and sitting at the computer. When the computer made my eyes feel like theyhad taken an acid bath I would go lay on the couch. When reclining on the couch threatened to make me suffocate on rubber cement I sat up at the computer. I took very small breaks throughout the day to put healthy food into the children at their feeding times.

My only other activity for the last two and a half days has been fevered shivering shaking and dripping in sweat. Very pleasant.

Digging in the mommy drawer of the bathroom this morning I found some Dayquil. Dayquil! And only expired for two years! That made me feel a little better. I mean, if you ignore the headache from the rubber cement that is trying to split my skull in half, Dayquil and its sister medicine Nyquil can really make a mommy feel good. I feel so good, in fact that I think I will forbear to operate heavy equipment today.

I had one other opportunity for healing today. Putting the oatmeal in front of the children called to my attention our desperate need for clean dishes. There was no one else, no way else to do it. I took a deep breath. I established myself before the steaming sink and hoped that my germs didn’t find a home on every fork and spoon.

It wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. The sink was steamy, which always feel good when stuffed up. When you get dizzy at the sink it is very easy to lean on the counter for a moment. While washing I got to listen to Clark Howard on the radio and be mad at monster mega banks and our wasteful government. What steam and little righteous indignation can’t fix, I don’t want to suffer from.