The Monday Morning Epistle

It's usually considered a bad sign when you wake up about 4 am to find the sixteen year old lying on the floor and moaning outside your bedroom door. This was the opening salvo in Alex's battle with severe tonsillitis, and it earned him several days out of school and a generally dismal weekend. It was bad enough that even the tiniest swallow was intensely painful, but when Alex received double shots of anti-inflammatory steroids and antibiotics directly into his butt, he had a hard time not being two. (I had a gamma-globulin injection years ago, and fully sympathize…those injections hurt!) But three straight days at home in bed—with a parent in attendance and Ben & Jerry's to ease his throat—made life bearable, and by Sunday he was able to venture out for an all-day classroom session at Master Drive. Since this the second severe throat infection in as many months, the doctor strongly recommended that Alex's tonsils be removed as soon as he is healthy, so Alex may be celebrating Thanksgiving in the hospital. Stay tuned.

We doubled the number of doctor visits last week by having Liesl scheduled for minor surgery at our local veterinary clinic; we discovered a pea-sized growth on her hip a few weeks ago and wanted it removed and biopsied. Since she was going to be under general anesthetic, we also had the vet finally settle the question of whether or not Liesl has ever been spayed; the answer turned out to be “No…but she is now.” and while the surgery was uneventful, it turned our sedate little old lady dog into ‘spastic psycho needy dog’. She returned home Saturday morning with an oversized plastic collar—the kind that looks like the dog is now receiving satellite TV—and spent the rest of the weekend either lying in her bed whimpering, or catching the edges of the collar on random walls or pieces of furniture. (You could hear both cats snicker to themselves every time the dog suddenly smacked her own face into the wall…) To make matters worse, whenever Liesl now goes down a flight of stairs, it becomes a one way trip because she can't keep her chin up high enough for the collar to clear the steps on the way back up ; consequently, she would go down into the basement looking for us, only end up stuck downstairs by herself. It would be funny if it weren't for the fact that she is so obviously miserable, and Alex, Mary, & I all took turns gently manhandling her back upstairs or repeatedly consoling the distraught dog in the middle of the night.

Happily, we still managed to squeeze Halloween in before being overrun with sick children and spastic animals, although the holiday has certainly changed from when Mary & I were kids. Gone are the hordes of costumed children going door-to-door through the neighborhood, these days you wait for the minivan to pull into the driveway and disgorge a handful of kids, who then rush the 10 feet to the front door under Mom's watchful eye. Once candy has been dispensed, the same kids pile back into the minivan, which zooms off down the street in search of another friendly, unthreatening porch light. As for Garion, he and Mommy went Trick or Treating at the local mall, which at least allowed him to wear his Spiderman costume without having to put a winter coat on over it. He came home proudly lugging full pumpkin basket of politically-correct treats (a plastic What Would Jesus Do? ruler for Halloween…egad) and was given parental dispensation to keep his costume on for the rest of the evening. Naturally, this largesse was promptly revoked when I caught him trying to jump off his loft-style bed while pretending to web the ceiling fan, but by that time Monkey-Boy was so tired that he accepted bedtime with only a token protest. The two older boys celebrated Halloween in their own way by discretely emptying the entire bowl of left-over candy the next day, for which my waistline profoundly thanks them.

KidBit: Alex and I were watching the movie Blood Diamond over the weekend, and he expressed dismay and disbelief at the cruel treatment of the African ‘child soldiers’. When he realized that boys his age live in torment elsewhere in the world, he groused “I guess that means I can't really complain about being sick right now…”

PotW: Your friendly neighborhood Spiderman: Garion in his Halloween costume.

Until next week…Tschüß!

,,,^..^,,,

2007.11.03-16:22