Sunday, December 11, 2011

Wish you were here

Seriously, I really I wish you were here. Not in a “Look at this beautiful postcard! You should be here having an umbrella-adorned cocktail with me,” way. In an “I’m crawling through dirt and spider webs in a dark basement and you should be here doing it instead,” way.  Not in a “This place is fantastic! You would love it,” way. In an “I’m ankle deep in sewage and trying to talk shop with a couple of burly plumbers,” way.



Wish you were here!
I should back up a bit . . . My husband does a lot of traveling for his work. He’s been gone four of the past six weeks. And when he’s gone, he’s really gone. He’s not in L.A. or Houston or anywhere that would involve a quick flight home if absolutely necessary. Oh no, he’s in Egypt or Saudi Arabia or, currently, China.
The travel in and of itself wouldn’t be so bad. Of course I miss him and so does our son. We would certainly rather have him home with us than constantly gone, but we’re thankful for the fact that there is work to be had, international as it may be. For the most part, Chester and I have become accustomed to Matt’s trips and while we don’t like them, we’re a pretty good, highly functioning little team when he’s gone. It isn’t the travel that’s a problem; it’s the fact that all sorts of issues arise during the travel. If something drastically difficult or trying is going to happen, it happens when Matt is gone and it happens almost every time he is gone. It’s a variation of Murphy’s Law – if anything can go wrong, it will – and it will be when your husband is far, far from home and you are keeping the house, your job and an extremely active child held together and moving forward on an unstable combination of sheer determination, crossed fingers, caffeine, pinot noir and popsicles. (The caffeine and pinot are for me; the popsicles are for Chester. Just to clarify, lest someone think I’m gorging myself on sugary frozen treats and letting my five year old drink wine.)
I used to think the catastrophes that occurred in Matt’s absence were a crazy coincidence, but at this point there are far too many to rationalize with such an innocent explanation. I’m convinced a dark force of the universe is at play. I’ve lost track of all the episodes. But these are some of the highlights (if that’s the right word).
Matt was on a trip when Chester’s first stomach flu struck at eight months old. Chester was playing quietly and happily in his Pack n’ Play, which, now that I think about it should have tipped me off that something was wrong. (That was the first and last time Chester was quiet or happy while confined to the Pack n’ Play.) I looked up from whatever I was doing just in time to see him puking. I had no idea such a tiny being could produce that much vomit. I spent the next hour trying to keep him from crawling into trouble, while I thoroughly cleaned the Pack n’ Play. I can’t imagine this task taking an hour now, but at the time I was profoundly sleep deprived and a psychotic new parent who was certain the world would end if everything was not 100% sanitized at all times.
Illness struck again while Matt was on the road shortly before Christmas when Chester was three and a half. Ah, the Christmas Fiasco of 2009, one of my all time-favorites. It all started when Chester woke up one morning with a nasty case of pink eye. I had a babysitter come over to watch him while I went to an evening meeting at work. I was just finishing around 7 p.m. when my phone rang. It was the babysitter: “Hi Ronda, this is Karen. You don’t need to rush home or anything, but I wanted to let you know that Chester has been throwing up every 15 minutes for a couple of hours now. You might want to pick up some of those Pedialyte popsicles.” By the time I arrived home, Pedialyte popsicles in hand, he had thrown up on the couch, on the floor, on the coffee table and all over himself multiple times. Karen had done her best to clean up and nearly every towel in the house was in the laundry room. By the time Chester stopped puking at 5 a.m. I hadn’t slept a wink and had done more loads of laundry than I could count. A couple of days later, he was on the mend and I thought we were out of the woods – another disaster dealt with. I was mistaken. Shortly after going to bed on Friday night, Chester woke up complaining of an “itchy leg.” I thought he was having a bizarre dream, but his complaining persisted. When I turned on the light to see what was going on, I found an angry, welted, red rash not only on his leg, but over his entire body. A phone call to the after-hours nurse and a lukewarm bath later, we were in the car, headed to the 24 hour pharmacy for Benadryl. We passed through a bar-hopping portion of town and I’ll never forget thinking, “It’s one in the morning! What are all these people doing out?” It took me a while, but I figured it out, “Oh yeah! Friday night . . . I remember that!”
About a year ago, we had another medical emergency involving impact to Chester’s head, repeated vomiting and an entire night at Children’s Hospital ER. The day started well; I took Chester to Rudy’s Barbershop for a haircut and then we headed across the street to Hot Mama’s Pizza. I frequented Hot Mama’s in my young, single days, so I love taking Chester there and marveling at the unexpected and wonderful changes life brings. Hot Mama’s is kid-friendly enough. It’s not the kind of place that passes out coloring sheets and crayons, but it’s a hole-in-the-wall, dive joint that plays good, loud music, and serves pizza and soda. What’s not to love? The only problem is the seating – high barstools are the only option. I tried to impress upon Chester the importance of sitting still and being careful. I know full well that “sit still” and “be careful” are incomprehensible phrases to the little boy brain, so I’m not sure why I bothered. Chester appeared to be listening. He looked at me, nodded his head and then proceeded to wiggle right off the stool, landing smack on his head on the concrete floor. After the initial panic and crying subsided, he seemed fine. Later that evening we met some friends for dinner. We had just ordered our food when Chester turned to me, said, “Mommy, I don’t feel good,” and barfed all over my shirt and the floor. I scooped him up and rushed to the bathroom, leaving our poor friends and the unlucky wait-staff to deal with the mess at the table. I peeled my shirt off and lamely attempted to rinse it in the sink. I wracked my brain about what to do: Wear the shirt? Nonchalantly proceed back to the table in a hot pink lace bra? Neither option seemed feasible. Finally it hit me – I had a coat at the table that was comprised of a shell and a liner. If I could get to the table and retrieve the coat, I could ditch my vomit-soaked shirt and simply wear the liner. I was thinking out loud and noticed Chester staring at me, wide-eyed. “Mommy?” he said, “You’re not going to go out there like THAT are you?” “No Chester,” I said, “I’ll have to put the wet shirt back on just to get out there and back.” He looked extremely relieved. “Oh good, because if you went out there like that, people would see your  . . . um, your . . . THOSE!” he said as he motioned in the general direction of my chest.
My plan worked and we managed to get through the rest of the dinner without incident. By the time we pulled into our driveway, I was blaming the whole episode on sugary snacks. We were minutes, if not seconds, from getting out of the car when Chester started puking again. After several more rounds, I got him tucked in and went to bed thinking it must be a stomach bug. It wasn’t until I was drifting off to sleep that I thought back to the fall off the stool and began wondering if there might be a connection. It worried me enough to get up and call the after-hours nurse who instructed us to go to the hospital immediately. We checked into Children’s Hospital ER at about 10 p.m. And then we waited, and waited, and waited while Chester puked into trash cans and bedpans. For whatever reason, every kid in the city was sick or injured on that particular night. To make a long story a little less long, there was a lot more waiting – waiting for an intake nurse, waiting for the resident doctor, waiting for the attending doctor, waiting for an MRI and waiting for results. Thankfully nothing was wrong with Chester’s adorable little head; it was just a coincidence that he came down with a stomach bug mere hours after a significant fall. We got home around 4 a.m. and a very short two hours later, Chester was up and ready to go as if nothing had ever happened. Of course.  
There has been a laundry list of other minor illnesses and injuries – I’ve thrown my back out twice in my life, both times in the past five years and both times when Matt was out of town – but not all of the bad luck that befalls us in Matt’s absence involves medical issues. Oh no, we’ve had ant infestations, clogged toilets, more flat tires than I can count and a fairly significant car accident to deal with.
Of all the ridiculous fiascos we’ve had, the most current has got to be one of the most dramatic and unbelievable. It ranks because of its one-two punch cruelty, its inclusion of things I hate (namely spiders, coldness and sewage) and its staggering financial impact. It all started last Sunday night after a long day of work. I arrived home to find Chester and his babysitter sitting in the dark. “There was a burning smell so we turned everything off,” Karen reported. I could definitely smell it, but I couldn’t figure out the source. An hour later, I noticed the house was getting colder and colder despite my repeated attempts to crank up the thermostat. A phone call to Matt in the middle of his work day in China confirmed that something must have gone wrong with the furnace. “You’re going to have to go down in the basement and check it out,” Matt calmly instructed. My response was an incredulous “WHAT?!” followed by a swift and firm, “No way!” Our basement is unfinished. (“Unfinished” is putting it nicely.) Half of the basement is concrete and exposed wood, the other half is earth, aka dirt, soil and all the creepy crawlies that live in it. Guess which half the furnace is in? I make a point of spending as little time as possible in our basement and would rather be subjected to all sorts of awfulness than venture into the dirt side. I steeled myself, grabbed a flashlight and outfitted Chester in his rain boots before we made the descent. With Matt on “Face Time” (as if he could protect me from spiders through our phones – the iPhone is an amazing device, but as far as I know, there is not yet an app for that), I did what I had to do. We determined something was definitely wrong and that we would have to suffer through a cold night and call the furnace people in the morning. My final task was to flip the furnace switch to “off.” Apparently there is some mercy, goodness and light in the world, because I was able to do it using a long dowel found in a corner of the basement, thus preventing me from crawling any further into the dirt. We bundled up and had a good space heater upstairs, but when we woke up in the morning, it was 28 degrees outside and 48 degrees inside our house. Brrrr.
I spent Monday morning waiting for the furnace guy to arrive and the afternoon waiting while he fixed it. The computer board was fried – literally a blackened, melted mess. The good news is that replacement parts were available. So, I got to spend $1,500 to repair my existing furnace, instead of $5,000 to purchase a new furnace, and it’s a good thing because the excitement was just beginning.
We had happy, warm, peaceful nights in our house Monday and Tuesday, and I actually thought I might have a chance of catching up at work before all hell broke loose Wednesday morning. Still bleary-eyed, I went into our downstairs bathroom and found myself ankle-deep in sewage – a very bad start to a day. I cleaned up the mess, plunged the toilet and it flushed just fine. Relieved, I tried one more flush to be sure – massive quantities of sewage once again spilled into my bathroom. Cursing and crying, I cleaned up again. “We’ll just have to use the upstairs bathroom until Daddy gets home and figures this out,” I told Chester. This is the kind of thing husbands are for, right? Before we left the house for the day, I ventured back into the downstairs bathroom one more time and . . . stepped into ankle-deep sewage. Clearly, a bigger problem than I had initially suspected. I rushed Chester to school, called the plumber, resigned myself to another missed day of work and waited.
It didn’t take long for the plumbers to figure out something significant was going on. Just how significant was unclear until they jack-hammered open a chunk of my driveway, dug up the main sewer line and cut it open. Well, actually they didn’t have to cut it open, the 87 year old, terra cotta pipe simply disintegrated. (Clay! What were the contractors of 1925 thinking?) A solid mass of roots and muck was revealed, packed so tight it was formed to the pipe’s exact size and shape. The pipe was breaking and clogged for most of the way to the street, where our sewer connects to the city system. The verdict was in – we need to replace the entire thing to the tune of $12,250. The grand total with tax is a whopping $13,463. I don’t know about most people but we don’t have that kind of money sitting around waiting to be spent on something as boring (and yet damnably necessary) as a sewer line. I gritted my teeth as I extended our home equity line of credit, futilely attempting to steady my breath and calm my churning stomach. All I can think about now is that we could have taken several exotic vacations that would have resulted in lifelong memories, or I could have acquired a drop-dead stunning piece of sparkle that would have delighted me forever. We could have purchased a new car to replace one of our rapidly aging ones. I’d even take replacing the roof (which we desperately need to do) over a new sewer line; at least you can SEE a roof. But no, instead, I dropped fifteen grand this week on a part for my furnace and a pipe that resides under the ground and carries poop. Glamour factor: Zero.
In summary, there is a dark force working against me. It causes disaster and destruction while Matt is traveling and I’m home alone trying to be a responsible home owner, a good mom and a competent professional at the same time. This would be worse if I thought Matt enjoyed being on the road, but I know he doesn’t. He crams his 6’6” frame into airplanes for crazy-long flights. He stays in hotels that are, at best, business-traveler-bland. He sleeps very little, stresses a lot and works like a madman. All the while very much wishing he could be home instead.
Of all the bad weeks that Chester and I have had while Matt is away, this has been one of the worst. So maybe “I wish you were here” isn’t the best way to express my sentiments. Heck, I don’t even want to be here! Why would I wish it on someone else? How about this instead . . .

I wish we were both there.