April Fools? Please?

My kindergartener told me he had a terrible day at school. It was picture day and he told me the photographer made him say “I love you” and all his classmates laughed at him (except for his friends). I kept questioning him and he told me more and more and I was trying to be motherly and helpful by saying, “Well, sometimes people aren’t laughing at you, they’re laughing with you.” And he said, “No, they were laughing at me.”

We talked at length and then he finally grinned and said, “April Fools!” He was so pleased that he “got me.”

TwinBoyB brought a friend home with him from school. He and Dustin played basketball outside, rode bikes around the block, played the piano. For two hours, they played and played. The second Dustin left at 5:30 p.m., TwinBoyB grabbed his forehead and declared he was sick, very very sick.

I laughed. He said, “Mom, don’t laugh at me.” Apparently, he is actually sick? Why can’t my kids all be sick at the same time? Why do we have to drag it out for weeks and weeks? Please, please let this be an April Fools joke.

TwinBoyb later said, “Mom, sometimes I worry that when I’m dead I will really miss you.” I said, “When you are dead?” Tears filled his eyes. “Yes, and it makes me really sad.” Then YoungestBoy piped up and said, “Yes, I’ll miss you, too, when I’m dead!”

I said, “Hey, I’m not going to die until I’m an old woman and you won’t die until you’re an old man.” God, please let that be true!

On a completely-not-joking note, my throat still hurts, though a bit less than yesterday. I might survive this sore throat.

Tammy Faye Bakker Messner

Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker Messner are on “Larry King Live” tonight. I used to work for Jim Bakker, back in 1985 and 1986 when Heritage U.S.A. was at its heyday. I was just a college student, then, with no awareness of who the Bakkers were, but some recruiters came to my college to find students to work for the summer. I had no plans–and I didn’t want to work as a nanny again as I did during my first college summer–so I went to the interview.

That’s how I ended up driving across the Smoky Mountains with a guy named Bill Potts in May of 1985. My roommate was a girl from Iowa named Lisa Beasley and we lived in student housing in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Our apartment complex had once been a Motel 6, I think. Our door opened to the outside, to a balcony. We had aqua shag carpet. It was a cheap hotel room. But we loved it anyway.

Once all the students had arrived, they herded us all into interviews to determine exactly where we’d work. All the girls with really big hair and small waists wanted to work in Public Relations. I had hoped to work with children, but when it came down to it, I volunteered to work on the grounds crew, because the grounds crews were promised overtime and overtime meant lots of money and I needed money. Besides that, the alternative was to work at a restaurant on the grounds of Heritage and I didn’t come all the way to South Carolina to work in a greasy fast-food place. I already did that in high school.

A girl named Kendra and I volunteered to work on the grounds crew, so there we were, two college girls working with a bunch of men. After the first day, I hardly even noticed them staring at us. I kind of liked working outside, digging around in the dirt, smoothing long pine needles into little nests around trees. I’d only been working a couple of days when I noticed Jim Bakker and his entourage driving up to the Grand Hotel. I said to Kendra, “Hey, I should go introduce myself to Jim Bakker.” And she said, “I dare you.”

She dared me. So, I did it. I put down my gardening tool and marched my dirty self right over to Jim Bakker and stuck out my hand. I said, “Hi, my name is Mel and I think you know my uncle.” My uncle was a well-known missionary, and in fact, he was now employed by Heritage U.S.A. Jim Bakker did not really acknowledge me, but another man said, “You’re S.J.’s niece?” And I said, “Yes.” And then he told me that he knew my uncles and my grandparents from way back. His eyes crinkled as he smiled at me. His name was Dick Dortch.

A few days later, all the college students attended an orientation of sorts. By then, I regretted my work on the grounds crew (no days off, working ten hour days) and I wondered if there were some way I could finagle myself a job working with the daycare. I spotted Dick Dortch when the meeting was over, so I made my way to him and said, “Hi, remember me?” He did, so I said, “Hey, are you important here? Because I really want to work with children.”

He burst into laughter when I asked if he were important. I didn’t realize then that Dick Dortch was the number two guy at Heritage U.S.A. In fact, he served prison time when the whole empire collapsed a few years later.

Dick Dortch led me to another man, Eric Watt, and explained to Eric that I wanted to work with children. He told Eric to make this happen. Eric did. The Human Resources woman was extremely perturbed with me and yelled at me in her office, but she transferred me to the day camp, where I worked for the rest of the summer.

Later in the summer, I met the man who would become my husband. My roommate, Lisa, pointed him out to me one day. I peeked out from behind our curtains and saw a dark-haired man, sweating profusely, dressed in shorts and running shoes. And then he spit. She thought he was cute. I thought he was a sweaty guy who spits. Yuck.

Tammy Faye Bakker Messner has now been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.

I only have a sore throat which will not go away. When viewed in this light, that is good news, indeed.

Ouch

Please kill me now. My throat is so raw, so painful that I need a neck transplant, which I’m pretty sure they don’t do in this neck of the woods. Besides that, I’m sure my worthless insurance wouldn’t cover it anyway.

I sent my husband to buy the stupid, overpriced antibiotic and Claritin. I swallowed the pills and added a few more ibuprofen to the mix and I’m still in agony.

Besides that, no one is commenting on my journal and even worse than hearing voices in my head, I’m hearing nothing but the sound of silence.

My poor baby. Today, we were in the driveway where she was sitting on a little tricycle. I was mere feet away, but I was looking at TwinBoyB who was incessantly talking–he’s still not watching television–and Babygirl tipped her trike. She fell so suddenly that she didn’t even put her hands up and so she fell directly onto her tiny, little nose. She cried and cried and cried. Much later, when I settled her down, we went back into the driveway. She pointed to the trike and said, “Bike” and then prepared to ride it. She paused, pointed to her nose and said in a sad voice, “Nose.” No more bike riding for her today.

Her nose is swollen. She looks like a homely version of herself. Poor kid. Like Kathy Griffin, before her nose job.

Ouch.

Ouch-ouch-ouch.

Race and the Moon

I’m in the back yard with my baby girl and my oldest son. He’s chatting with me because he’s joined his class in going “television free” this week. It’s about to kill him.

He says, “Mom, why are all the black kids at school mean?”

I say, “They are all mean? Like how?”

He says, “They just say mean stuff to me. They think they are all cool and everything.”

I really don’t know what to say. I tell him that being mean to other people makes some people feel better about themselves. I tell him to ignore them. I think to myself that if you are a minority, you sometimes have a greater responsibility to be kind. My kid has encountered only a few black kids at school (maybe ten percent of the school population) and they are all mean. He will obviously extrapolate that finding to the greater population. What’s a mother to do about the mean kids?

I have noticed black boys sauntering down the hallways like they are starring in a rap video. These are suburban boys raised by middle-class parents. What’s up with that? The influence of the media, I guess. My boys just don’t understand it. They are sheltered from so much of the media. If it’s not on Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel, they don’t see it.

When I went to high school, there was exactly one black family. The two black siblings were exemplary students. He was the homecoming king. She was in my P.E. class and was such a friendly, kind girl. I saw that these two kids were just like me, only with dark skin.

I honestly never understood racism, never, ever saw racism until I lived in North Carolina. Then one day I unwittingly ventured into a black area of town. I needed to do laundry and looked in the yellow pages for a laundrymat. Found one close by, drove over there. Put my clothes in washing machines. Then it dawned on me. Everyone was staring at me. I was the only white face in the laundrymat. The only white face in the parking lot. Oh. I wasn’t welcome there, in the black section of town. It never occurred to me that towns might be divided racially.

I like our little town now because the schools are diverse. We have white students, black students, mixed-races of all kinds, Hispanic students, Asian students, Native American students. I like my kids to sit side by side with a variety of children, to learn with them, and work with them and play with them. I think it’s healthy.

When we lived in Michigan, the racism was glaring to me, yet invisible to the natives. Nearly everyone was white, and one woman boasted to me about leaving Detroit way back when they started busing in minority students. She left her fancy home and came up north to get away from the minorities in the schools. She thought of that as a sacrifice. I thought of it as prejudice.

One day, I was standing in line at the bank when a tall, black man came in to cash a check. This was a remarkable moment. He was the first tall, black man I’d ever seen in town. He presented his check to be cashed and the teller said, “Oh, we can’t cash that here.” He said, “But the company I worked for in town told me I could.” She said, “No, you’ll have to go to the other bank down the road.” Off he went.

Another teller came out and asked what happened. The original teller explained and the second teller (the manager, perhaps?) said, “That check was written on an account at this bank! We should have cashed it.” The first teller shrugged. I knew she had been suspicious of him and sent him on a wild-goose chase because he was different. Different, tall and black, which is practically a crime in northern Michigan.

The racism was one reason why I was glad to leave northern Michigan for Western Washington. And now, here I am, trying to raise kids who are not prejudiced and the black kids in school are mean. Sigh.

Now, on a completely unrelated note, when DaycareKid left this afternoon, I took Babygirl out for a quick stroll around the circle. She has memorized each yard that has patches of stones and asks for a rock at each place. She says, “Rock!” And then she says, “Thank you.” There are four or five yards with stones and so she exchanges her rock at each place for a new one. We had almost completed our second circle and I was daydreaming about the flowering tree in Sleeping Beauty’s yard which is about to burst into riotous bloom when Babygirl said something. I looked at her and said, “What?” And she pointed straight above her head and said, “Moon!” I craned my head back and sure enough, hanging directly above us in the blue sky was a half-moon. I said, “Yes! That is the moon!” And she said, “Moon, moon” a few more times.

Picture that!

This was our Superbowl party. I just had the film developed. Yeah, so I’m behind. What’s new? This picture shows our twin boys, their twin-boy friends, Lauren (sister to the twin boys), YoungestBoy, Babygirl and my husband. Notice that Babygirl is slouched on the couch, eating potato chips with complete contentment. This is her first Superbowl party and she fully participated in watching the game while eating junk food.

My husband may finally have a child who likes to watch sports with him. As long as potato chips are involved, anyway.

I’m sick and sick of it!

I’ve had a sore throat for eleven days. I have a very high pain tolerance and ibuprofen has dulled the pain so I can get through the days.

But this morning, my son, TwinBoyA, woke up with a sore throat and I thought, Uh-oh, maybe this is strep throat. I’d better go to the doctor. When I made the appointment, the woman on the phone said, “Oh, you are practically a new patient! You haven’t been here since 2001.”

Exactly. I never go to the doctor.

Especially with crappy health insurance. So, off I go, leaving my husband at home with the babies, YoungestBoy and sick TwinBoyA. I actually enjoyed driving out of my driveway, out into the sunshine. Today is the most lovely Spring day we’ve had yet. It’s supposed to reach 70 degrees.

The nurse does the nurse-things, including swabbing my throat. The doctor comes in, listens to my lungs, looks in my ears, nose and throat, remarks that my throat is, indeed, red and says they’ll swab my throat. I said “the nurse already swabbed it.” Doctor leaves the room. Finally, the nurse returns, says, “Good news, it’s not strep.” Then she tells me the doctor wrote me a prescription for an antibiotic anyway “to clear up your sinuses” and one for Allegra . . . though, I am sure this is not allergy-related. I have allergies in the fall and I know what that feels like and this isn’t it.

Fine. Her diagnosis? Basically, sore throat. Duh. How much did that just cost me?

Dear husband calls me from the pharmacy. The cost of both prescriptions is $180. No joke. I said, “NO WAY!” and he said that the pharmacist recommended over-the-counter Claritin and the antibiotic alone is $100–or something like that. By then, my brain had spun around three times and was dizzy. I said, “Just forget it.”

I don’t understand why the doctor would even prescribe the antibiotic in the first place. This is probably just a virus anyway. And I am frustrated and angry that she never returned to the treatment room to let me ask questions.

In my next life, I’m definitely going to medical school. It seems that any idiot can become a doctor, so why not me?

YoungestBoy and His Teacher’s Comments

This was YoungestBoy last year, sitting on the back of the couch, wrapped in the sheer curtains, looking out the window and eating a popsicle. I’m the kind of mom who sees such a sight and thinks, “Oh, I must have a picture!” and then a few days later when the curtains are ripped, I say, “It was worth it! That was such a great picture!”

But enough about me. This is about YoungestBoy. He brought home his kindergarten report card this week and this is what it said: “He continues to excel academically in all areas, especially in math. He always demonstrates great effort into whatever he is doing. He is such a sweet and caring student. He is such a joy.”

And lest I think that I had anything to do with that, TwinBoyB’s report card says, “Continue to work on effort.” TwinBoyA’s says, “He has truly put great effort into completing his assignments neatly and accurately. His handwriting/penmanship has improved! Good job!”

If I only had YoungestBoy, I would think that I was an outstanding parent. He’s that kind of boy. But God knew I needed a reality check, so he gave me TwinBoyA and TwinBoyB. And then, just to give me something to do in my old age, He gave me Babygirl.

What a funny Guy.

More Good News, Bad News

Good News: Baby slept all night. She seems healthy.
Bad News: I woke up coughing in the night.

Good News: The boys cleaned up the kitchen last night.
Bad News: The boys cleaned up the kitchen last night and put regular dishwashing soap in the dishwasher.

Good News: My kitchen floor is remarkably clean near the dishwasher.
Bad News: I had to wash an extra load of wet towels after cleaning up the puddle.

Good News: It’s Friday!
Bad News: Husband will be gone all day tomorrow.

Good News: The kitchen is clean.
Bad News: I have no plans for dinner and it’s already 3 p.m.

Sick Baby

Scene: Last night.

7:00 p.m.: Place baby in crib.
8:45 p.m.: Baby wakes up crying. Nurse baby.
9:00 p.m.: Return baby to crib.
10:55 p.m: Remark to husband from under covers, “I just want to hear the beginning of the news.”
11:00 p.m: Baby wakes up crying. She has chills and is warm. Nurse baby.
11:15 p.m.: Return baby to bed. Crawl back under covers.
11:39 p.m.: Baby screaming. Get ibuprofen. Use bathroom. Turn on t.v. in baby’s room to use light to administer medication. Hold washcloth to baby’s face as she vomits medication back up. Nurse baby.
12:15 a.m.: Return baby to crib. Crawl under covers.
1:12 a.m.: Baby crying. Rock baby, nurse baby. Realize baby no longer has fever.
2:00 a.m.: Return baby to crib. Crawl under covers.
6:20 a.m.: Baby’s awake.

Unlike yesterday, she was clingy and crabby. I didn’t shower until after lunch when dear sweet husband took baby for a ride in the car. This was a long day. I put the baby to bed at 7:00 p.m. I hope she sleeps tonight.

Uh-oh

Baby has been lethargic all day, which in a peculiar way has been delightful. She just wanted to lean her head on my shoulder and sit on my lap. She napped twice. She wanted to go outside, but didn’t want to bother with shoes and a jacket, so I wrapped her in an afghan and we sat in the backyard for a bit. She just sat. All of this is completely out of character for my busy girl.

She’s running a fever, the first real fever of her life. I’m not sure how high it is since I don’t own a thermometer, but I will probably borrow one tomorrow to make sure her brain isn’t boiling. She’s not been crying or fussing, so I don’t think anything really hurts. She’s warmish, but not burning up.

I put her to bed at 7 p.m., as usual. At 8:45 p.m., she was crying, so I went in and nursed her and then realized she was breathing kind of fast and then remembered that fast breathing isn’t good, so I counted how many breaths per minute. Thirty-five. When I put her back down, I consulted my book and under 40 is okay. Apparently, fast respirations help bring down a fever.

I’m not treating it with medication yet. We’ll see what tomorrow brings. The last time I gave her ibuprofen, she threw it up all over me.

I am still hacking up a lung, which is ever so pleasant.

If I drank, this would be a good time for something strong. But I don’t, so I just ate too much chocolate and now I’ll go upstairs to listen and hope that she sleeps all night.