ALERT: This post contains talk of blood and nail beds and heated paperclips, so don't say I didn't warn you.
Anyway, yeaaaaah, yesterday afternoon I shut my own thumb in the car door. I still am not sure exactly how that happened, but clearly I am some sort of door-shutting-contortionist who was able to manage this feat one-handed. You can hire me for parties.
By the evening, it was starting to be really uncomfortable and swollen, with the nail turning purple, or as M put it, "Yucky." Like nature intended, I spent some time on Google/Facebook trying to figure out the best course of action and read about a common treatment that involves (ALERT ALERT ALERT) heating up a paperclip, piercing the nail to drain the underlying blood, and thereby relieving the pressure on the nail-bed and subsequent pain. (SORRY.)
Now, unless things are getting bad, this sounds like crazy talk. You want me to push a red-hot paperclip through my fingernail!? To STOP the pain? Excellent. Sign me up.
I waited until the kids had gone to bed to give this a whirl (since there's nothing like a fear of paperclips to set you back in your career), but it turns out that you have to press REALLY HARD to get a paperclip to go through your nail. I quit after a few singe marks and opted for the Red Wine-Tylenol solution.
By this morning at 6 am, after approximately two hours of sleep, I couldn't take it anymore and woke Husband and kids up for a trip to Urgences (or French ER, which, honestly, functions slightly less urgently than it sounds.) We spent an hour and a half or so in the waiting room, and then I went in for Proper Medical Treatment.
Me: J'ai ferme le pouce dans la porte de la voiture. Je suis stupide. I slammed my finger in the car door. I'm an idiot.
Doc: Oui, ca se voit. Infirmiere, le trombone! I can see that. Nurse, the trombone!
Me: Wait a sec, isn't "trombone" French for....
Doc: Oui. Paperclip.
So they heated up the paperclip and stuck it in my nail.
And that is why I love Google. And Facebook.
PS - Special shout out to awesome real life Doctor Elizabeth who backed up the paperclip thing as Husband was saying helpful stuff like, "This is insanity, you might get an infection and die." And to which I can now reply, "Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyaaahhh."
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
Summer. Or, That Time of Year School is Closed
We are in Normandy this week, enjoying the half term holiday. Yes, another holiday! While the English summer break may be short (only six weeks) they make up for it with Half Terms and Inset Days. And apparently there are about 24 half terms holidays per year, and approximately 237 inset days, so pretty much M goes to school on September 16th, January 20th, May 7th and that's it.
Because I haven't been working this past year, I've been able to enjoy some extended time in France with the kids and often with Husband, who gets the standard European five weeks of vacation. But I get the feeling we won't all be able to take six weeks off this summer, so I'll have to come up with something else to keep M entertained. Art class? Check. Sports camp? Check? Take her to DC and get her grandparents to keep her occupied? CHECKITY CHECK.
It's funny how school vacations conjure up very different sentiments once you are a stay-at-home parent. As a kid, you look forward to that last day of school before a summer break, thinking of all the freedom you will have, the sunshine and lack of homework. Long, lazy days stretch ahead! As a parent, you also think about those long, lazy days, but it isn't quite as nice a feeling. So you say they aren't in school for six weeks? That's 42 days. 1008 hours. If I spend an hour a day at the playground *pulls at collar*, that only leaves me with 966 hours left to entertain her! *wipes sweat from brow.* Is five too young for overnight camp?
And in thinking about going back to work (yes, please!) I sort of forgot about all the time off she gets. We have always gone the daycare route, and when both kids were preschool-aged this worked fine. Once you have a child in school (and one toddler), the schedule is harder to juggle unless you have a full time nanny, which is expensive. There are multiple drop-off points, and school days start at 9 am and end at 3:15 pm, so if you are commuting you will need to find both early morning and late afternoon childcare. We really want to keep O involved in some sort of day care/preschool, but the juggling act is overwhelming to think about. So I'm not! I'm putting it off! And since I don't have a 100% sure job yet, that's fine. Besides, there's still that long, lazy summer topanic about enjoy.
In the meantime, it's Half Term, and today's Holiday Child Entertainment was a trip to the Parc Zoologique de Cleres. (If you are ever in Normandy, I highly recommend it. Not only is it a beautiful botanic garden, but they also have an interesting variety of animals, many of which are endangered and are being raised as part of a conservation program.) You can wander freely among flamingos, peacocks, wallabies, and deer.
Both kids had a great time, until the end of the visit when M realized that they only had "boring animals." Apparently, being 10 feet from a hopping wallaby is not enough of a thrill, and she was hoping for free-roaming tigers or lions or something. This does bode well for art camp. Maybe I can find an alligator wrestling class she'd enjoy.
OK then! I've been trying to think of a good finish to this post, but I slammed my own thumb in the car door about a hour ago so I feel like I have a good excuse to just leave it at alligator wrestling. (Seriously, OW. The nail is PURPLE. Also, WTF? How did I even do that?) So yeah, the space bar is my enemy right now, and there is a large glass of wine in the kitchen with my name on it. It's medicinal.
Because I haven't been working this past year, I've been able to enjoy some extended time in France with the kids and often with Husband, who gets the standard European five weeks of vacation. But I get the feeling we won't all be able to take six weeks off this summer, so I'll have to come up with something else to keep M entertained. Art class? Check. Sports camp? Check? Take her to DC and get her grandparents to keep her occupied? CHECKITY CHECK.
It's funny how school vacations conjure up very different sentiments once you are a stay-at-home parent. As a kid, you look forward to that last day of school before a summer break, thinking of all the freedom you will have, the sunshine and lack of homework. Long, lazy days stretch ahead! As a parent, you also think about those long, lazy days, but it isn't quite as nice a feeling. So you say they aren't in school for six weeks? That's 42 days. 1008 hours. If I spend an hour a day at the playground *pulls at collar*, that only leaves me with 966 hours left to entertain her! *wipes sweat from brow.* Is five too young for overnight camp?
And in thinking about going back to work (yes, please!) I sort of forgot about all the time off she gets. We have always gone the daycare route, and when both kids were preschool-aged this worked fine. Once you have a child in school (and one toddler), the schedule is harder to juggle unless you have a full time nanny, which is expensive. There are multiple drop-off points, and school days start at 9 am and end at 3:15 pm, so if you are commuting you will need to find both early morning and late afternoon childcare. We really want to keep O involved in some sort of day care/preschool, but the juggling act is overwhelming to think about. So I'm not! I'm putting it off! And since I don't have a 100% sure job yet, that's fine. Besides, there's still that long, lazy summer to
In the meantime, it's Half Term, and today's Holiday Child Entertainment was a trip to the Parc Zoologique de Cleres. (If you are ever in Normandy, I highly recommend it. Not only is it a beautiful botanic garden, but they also have an interesting variety of animals, many of which are endangered and are being raised as part of a conservation program.) You can wander freely among flamingos, peacocks, wallabies, and deer.
Both kids had a great time, until the end of the visit when M realized that they only had "boring animals." Apparently, being 10 feet from a hopping wallaby is not enough of a thrill, and she was hoping for free-roaming tigers or lions or something. This does bode well for art camp. Maybe I can find an alligator wrestling class she'd enjoy.
OK then! I've been trying to think of a good finish to this post, but I slammed my own thumb in the car door about a hour ago so I feel like I have a good excuse to just leave it at alligator wrestling. (Seriously, OW. The nail is PURPLE. Also, WTF? How did I even do that?) So yeah, the space bar is my enemy right now, and there is a large glass of wine in the kitchen with my name on it. It's medicinal.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Neat Freak
I'm a tidyer. (And also, apparently, a maker-upper of words.) I tidy a lot and frequently, finding something really satisfying about putting things in their rightful places. As I go from room to room, or upstairs to downstairs, I'm inevitably taking something with me to put away or clearing off surfaces.
While he might not realize it, Husband is a very lucky man (and frankly, somewhat of a tidyer himself.) Not only does he live in a clean house, but The Tidying has all kinds of useful consequences for him. Need to diet? No problem. Let me clear this plate away before you finish eating. How about a little exercise? Try sprinting around the house in the morning before work, looking for something you left on the counter but is no longer there. I tidied it! Isn't this a fun game?! Wheeee!
Full Disclosure: Despite my passion for order, we still have someone clean the house once a week. When the cleaning gets left to me, I tend to do it in stages: toilet one day, shower the next, stove never, so it isn't ALL clean, all at the same time. Which frankly, doesn't leave me with the same blissful, brand-spanking-clean-home feeling. It's a luxury, to be sure, but I'm also going to chalk it up as an entertainment cost. Some people go to movies. I prefer having my oven scrubbed.
I like to blame this freakishness on living in a relatively small house. If you don't pick up after yourself, you can find yourself knee-deep in misplaced junk pretty quickly. When the washer and dryer are in the kitchen (Yes, Americans, the KITCHEN. England does not do "basements." Or "laundry rooms." Sometimes, if I'm pressed for time, I like to throw the lettuce into a spin cycle) it doesn't take very many loads of laundry to make all of downstairs look like a closet. Our open-plan living/dining/kitchen area can quickly turn into a living/dining/laundry/dumping ground very fast.
If I'm really honest with myself, it's not about the small house but mostly about me being a Neat Freak. And probably having too much time on my hands to care about this nonsense.
I do hope that I won't pass this too much on to my kids. Because while I kind of want them to be tidy(ers), I also want them to be able to enjoy mud and muck and messy paints and a roomful of toys strewn everywhere. They should feel free to dig into a big basket of toys and just start chucking things out all over the place until they find that piece of plastic crap they were looking for. And then run downstairs with the plastic crap, and drop it in the middle of the living room, because it's snack time. And eat their crumbly snack while racing around the living room, grinding pieces of cracker into the carp...oh my God, I don't even think I can finish that sentence without taking the vacuum cleaner out.
*deep breaths*
But you get my point, and there's a happy medium in there somewhere. Childhood is best with mess and dirt and joy and then perhaps a massive clean-up at the end of the day. I'm promising myself to work on it.
In the meantime, I better run. I can see a raisin on the floor.
While he might not realize it, Husband is a very lucky man (and frankly, somewhat of a tidyer himself.) Not only does he live in a clean house, but The Tidying has all kinds of useful consequences for him. Need to diet? No problem. Let me clear this plate away before you finish eating. How about a little exercise? Try sprinting around the house in the morning before work, looking for something you left on the counter but is no longer there. I tidied it! Isn't this a fun game?! Wheeee!
Full Disclosure: Despite my passion for order, we still have someone clean the house once a week. When the cleaning gets left to me, I tend to do it in stages: toilet one day, shower the next, stove never, so it isn't ALL clean, all at the same time. Which frankly, doesn't leave me with the same blissful, brand-spanking-clean-home feeling. It's a luxury, to be sure, but I'm also going to chalk it up as an entertainment cost. Some people go to movies. I prefer having my oven scrubbed.
I like to blame this freakishness on living in a relatively small house. If you don't pick up after yourself, you can find yourself knee-deep in misplaced junk pretty quickly. When the washer and dryer are in the kitchen (Yes, Americans, the KITCHEN. England does not do "basements." Or "laundry rooms." Sometimes, if I'm pressed for time, I like to throw the lettuce into a spin cycle) it doesn't take very many loads of laundry to make all of downstairs look like a closet. Our open-plan living/dining/kitchen area can quickly turn into a living/dining/laundry/dumping ground very fast.
If I'm really honest with myself, it's not about the small house but mostly about me being a Neat Freak. And probably having too much time on my hands to care about this nonsense.
I do hope that I won't pass this too much on to my kids. Because while I kind of want them to be tidy(ers), I also want them to be able to enjoy mud and muck and messy paints and a roomful of toys strewn everywhere. They should feel free to dig into a big basket of toys and just start chucking things out all over the place until they find that piece of plastic crap they were looking for. And then run downstairs with the plastic crap, and drop it in the middle of the living room, because it's snack time. And eat their crumbly snack while racing around the living room, grinding pieces of cracker into the carp...oh my God, I don't even think I can finish that sentence without taking the vacuum cleaner out.
*deep breaths*
But you get my point, and there's a happy medium in there somewhere. Childhood is best with mess and dirt and joy and then perhaps a massive clean-up at the end of the day. I'm promising myself to work on it.
In the meantime, I better run. I can see a raisin on the floor.
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