What's worse than a root canal?

TWO root canals. Thankfully, I only had to have one.

Apparently, when life is already at the peak of anxiety producing events, the mere thought of a root canal will push you over the edge. I could feel it coming when I was sitting in the waiting room watching The View, a 1/2 hour past my appointment time and trying in vain to ignore the whine of the drill on someone else.

The office lady checked in with me to ask me how I was doing..."Umm..okay I guess. A little freaked out." I could feel my heart rate rising and said "You know...this might be everyday stuff to you guys, but I promise I won't tell you you're condescending to me if you all treat me like I'm five. Really...I won't."

The assistant finally called me in and I took one look at all the instruments and vials laid out and I lost it. I sat there in the chair...37 year old me...and started crying. She was very nice, but a little misguided..."Oh...it's not that bad...just imagine yourself on a beach. With one of those little umber-ella drinks."

On a beach. So...root canals can be conquered by the thought of sunburn and sand up my ass! Why didn't I think of that?? And as far as Umber Ella drinks, I'm not sure who Umber Ella is, but if she's not sharing, I don't want to hear it.

Then the dentist comes in, sees that I'm crying, and delivers the same strategy. "Imagine you're on a beach....like in Jamaica!" and then as an aside. "I've never been to Jamaica, but I hear it's nice."

Wait....If you've never been to Jamaica, then how to you know that it's not just a tropical version of the movie SAW or... or...like a dread-lock version of a visit with my Rebublican, Christian-Right relatives? *sigh* No time to ponder that because out comes the needle, which I'm pretty sure is the same size they use to innoculate elephants.

"You're going to feel some heavy pressure..." she says. Um...no...heavy pressure is when my cat lays on my back in the middle of the night. That's pain, honey...and telling me to breathe through my nose and not hold my breath is all well and good when you're on the other side of that bad boy. Feel free to inhale and exhale to your hearts content. I'm going to hold my breath and hope that that stuff works fast or that holding my breath will make me pass out. Either way, I'm golden.

At last, the entire left side of my face (and probably portions of my frontal lobe) are comfortably numb. This is good....this isn't so bad, I say to myself as she attaches some sort of tent fly to my mouth, cutting my tongue off from the outside world, and I begin to imagine that the region south of my nose now resembles the Sydney Opera House.

What follows is a rather one sided account as - with some sort of jaw jack holding my mouth open and the latex topsail over my mouth - I couldn't have gotten an intelligble sentence out anyway. So, these are the thoughts I had somewhere between the drill that looked like a mini-dry wall screw and "You're done! Let's rinse that mouth out."

Why yes, that suction hose is a little far back. I'm glad you were able to discern that from my widened eyes, panicky grunts, and gagging.

No, it's not the suction hose again. You're leaning on the jaw jack. I don't have a cleft palate, but I will if you keep it up.

An Ipod! What a great suggestion! I will certainly remember to bring it next time.

I don't have to sneeze. I don't have to sneeze. I don't have to sneeze.

You want me to go ahead and pull that chin hair while I'm down here? No really...it's the least I can do.

Antibiotic? No........you didn't. Wonderful. I'm going to get brain rot now, aren't I?

Define "okay".

I think you've reached my cerebellum! Nice job. Do me a favor...if you're going in...map it for me would you? Ta!

Thanks for the charming anecdote about the patient who requires three shots of bourbon before he gets his teeth worked on. That's comforting.

Wait...is that what a human being on fire smells like? If so, irrigation would be perfect right about now.

Umm....your sleeve is in my face. In my face. Your sleeve. Sleeve!! Face!!!! POSSIBLE SNEEZE HAZARD!! helllooooooo???? I'm okay with the sneeze, but are you prepared for what happens when the latex thingie snaps back!!???

So...a full two and a half hours after my original appointment time ended, I was drained, packed, sealed and ready to roll out of there. Now, it wasn't as bad as I had originally psyched myself up for, but it still rates on the list of things that are H. U.F (highly un-fun) like...child birth, staff meetings, and the rare occasion when a panty liner shifts and exposes the adhesive.

I forget what the next round of this dental drama is called, but I hear tell I'm getting stitches.

Anyone know Umber Ella's number?

"Your Visit"

I arrive with a pepper box full of Chinese food and someone bellows “Ian your visit is here!” The side door opens to admit me.  I am greeted with a kiss and an admission that he was worried that I wasn’t coming.  A large black woman pulls us aside and asks in a librarian’s tone would I please, while we have our lunch, have a discussion with him about disrespecting.

I have to lay my hand on his chest twice and remind him to let her talk. He talks over us anyway as I try hard to focus on her voice while she tells her story about a refusal of medication and his harsh words in response to her insistence.   In the end, I stand between them while they talk out their perspectives.  I remind him to apologize and he does.

Usually, we go to the ping pong room and this time, I’m ready with a new set of paddles and a dozen new ping pong balls since the last time I was here, we got a little enthusiastic and lost the ping pong ball in the eaves.  His is roommate is at home for the weekend and we can go to the room his shares with one other boy.  I put the box of take-out down on the desk. 

“It’s a little messy.” He says.

There is popcorn all over the floor, his bed is unmade, and the closet is topsy-turvy but it doesn’t look anything like the room at home.... the room I left the way it was so when I miss him, I can open the door and remind myself why he needs to be away. We talk again about his medication and he says he didn’t want to take it because he didn’t want to be sleepy when I got there.  

His hands shake while he rifles through the box of food for the white rice he knows is there.

They shake like his father’s hands. They shake like MY father’s hands. I push those thoughts aside. This time will be different. This child will be different. This time we know more. This child will not drink himself to death or end up an unemployed hermit battling a world who doesn’t understand.

We talk about his week. He shrugs and doesn’t offer much detail.

After lunch, I offer to help him clean up his space and he goes in search of a vacuum cleaner. We find it in the closet. Here, there are shelves lined with plastic bins where they keep their shower supplies. His is not there.   When I ask about it he says he doesn’t want to give them the chance to steal his soap any more. Two bars in a week.

We clean his room and I notice a scrawl in blue permanent marker on his desk. I WILL NOT AWOL EVAR AGAIN. He says there is nothing stopping him from jumping out the window and running and the other night.   He really wanted to, but wrote that on the desk instead.

I remind him that there's nothing but trees around him for miles.

“Yeah, you’re right.” he says. “Besides, they took my shoes anyway. I wouldn’t get far in flip flops in the middle of February.”

His room clean, we play ping pong for a while and one of the balls gets away from us. A small, black boy in Chuck Taylors walks by it, picks it up and examines it. He tucks it into the inner pocket of his jacket and disappears down a hallway. Ian says he’ll get it back later or maybe he’ll let him keep it. He hasn’t decided.

Soon, he grows tired of ping pong and we go back to his room.  We are met in the hall by a boy dressed in leafy camouflage who speaks and walks as if time moves faster than it does. “Ian you have a visit. I haven’t had a visit since Christmas. Not since Christmas” he says admiringly.

“Maybe they couldn’t get time off.” My son offers.

“No!” he shakes his head. “My father is a cop. The Chief of Police. And he could get off anytime he wants but they haven’t come to see me since Christmas, but that’s okay because the staff are going to bring me a PS2 cord because I don’t get visits that often. Do you like Techno or Metal?”

I look at Ian who I can tell isn’t really sure what Techno is. “I think you’re more of a Metal kind of guy.” I suggest and Ian accepts it.

“Yeah, Metal.”

The young man moves to speak again when a staff member calls down the hall that he’s to leave Ian’s visit alone.

Back in his room, we spend some time blowing a ping pong ball back and forth at each other across the desk and I notice the paperback of Lord of the Flies I brought him last time.

I ask what he thinks of it and he says he hadn’t started it yet.  He asks me to read some. A few times the flow of the story is broken by commotion from the hallway. Staff bellowing about broken rules and altercations between kids. “That’s why you’re on bathroom precautions! I don’t want you in there looking at my ass when I’m in there you fucking faggot!”

I say, “There’s always something going on, huh?”

He shrugs and motions me to start reading again. We come to the part where they find the conch shell and the boys come from out of the forest onto the beach and the skull-splitting tempo of techno comes loudly through the wall. Ian bangs on it with the back of his arm but the volume doesn’t change. Ian bangs again and there are answering knocks and increase of volume.

He sighs and his face becomes set. “This is disrespectful.” 

He shuffles himself off the bed and walks to the neighboring room where the music is so loud that he needs to knock twice. I follow in case things get heated. The door opens and the cop’s son’s face appears in the crack of the door.

“Oh, sorry." You’re still with your visit.” He says to Ian. “I’ll turn it down. I apologize.”

I wonder out loud as we walk back to his room “When did I become a visit? I thought I was a person.”

“You are a person.” Ian says. “You’re my mom.”

Ghostbusting, room cleanup style.

I flipped on the light, illuminating a room that was sparse and neat at first glance. I paused for a moment to look around before crossing the cheap landlord-special brown carpet to retrieve the empty Wal-Mart bag on the desk. The crinkle of the plastic reverberated against the bare walls in that buzzy echo that sounds like moving day.

A low-sitting futon style frame supported a made up twin mattress in the corner by the closet. The surfaces of the hand-me-down desk and bureau were bare with the exception of a shoebox that contained a pair of workboots and a grandmotherly side-table lamp.

I sighed and it too echoed against the walls. An iridescent soccer ball. A beat up acoustic guitar in and even more beat up case. Hand-me-down furniture. A bright yellow bookcase held a few books – James Patterson’s Maximum Ride series, Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas, Ripley’s Believe it Or Not 2006, The Zombie Survival Guide, and a handful of trivia books were the only real clue as to whom this room might belong.

This room should have more in it, I thought. It once had. Anger, pain, and sadness had consumed most of an adolescent boy’s possessions.

The barren walls told their own story. Depression had trashed them, staining the paint with a cup of tea thrown in rage. Remnants of a pizza slice that had also gone the way of the tea cup. Blood from a late-lost molar spewed against the closet door and mirror. Gouges. Holes. Singe marks.And the carpet where snake-like indents bore the reminder of string set alight and then dropped when they became to hot to hold.

The walls and carpet would be taken care of next weekend, I thought. Right now, what mattered was how this room had changed. He’s been in treatment for six months and after a few upbeat weekend visits, we tackled his room together.

“Dude.” I said to him mid-Saturday morning. “I’m going to tidy up the house a bit and at noon we are going to start on your room.”His face fell and I could see the memory of pre-treatment attempts to get his room clean play across his face. Yelling. Tears. Door-slamming. An all-day entombment in chaos.

“Don’t worry, dude. Here’s the deal. I’m going to help. We’ll start at noon, and we’ll be done at two. What we get done is what we get done. It’s not going to be an all-day thing.”

“You’re going to help?”“Yep.” I confirmed. “That’s too much for anyone to handle alone. So…about a half-hour more of your game, and then we start. Kay?”

“Kay.”And start we did.We moved furniture. We broke down what wasn’t serviceable anymore and threw it away. He held the dustpan while I swept the under-bed detritus into the trashcan.

Together we, squeamishly pried what might have been a half-eaten apple up off the carpet.

Together, we negotiated the placement of the furniture that went back into his room. He vacuumed. I Febreezed.

Then, we celebrated the completion of the project 15 minutes ahead of schedule.A different outlook in less than two hours. That was my secret goal and I hoped that it would catch on.

Over a late Chinese Buffet lunch, I remarked. “Dude, your room has a completely different orientation now. “Just like my head” he said, not skipping a beat. Not slow on the up-take, this one.

Next weekend, we’ll spackle and paint to remove the last remaining ghosts of who he was before treatment from his walls. (He’s already called dibs on the spackling job.) Hopefully by the time he comes home next weekend, I will have completed a cotton rug to give a new face to the melt-scarred carpet.

Then, we’ll work on the rest of the décor

Tankgirl wardrobe, here I come!

As first sweaters go, this has all the classic "um...you did it wrong" elements.

Gaping holes - check
misshapen pieces - check (the raglan pieces on the left side of the back sticks up)
Bunched up seams - check

Overall, it looks like wardrobe from a Sci-Fi channel post-apocalypse movie. Which, when you think about it it would be pretty accurate. It's acrylic and I'm sure that somewhere in some landfill, the neon green crop topped acrylic sweater I wore in the 7th grade is still hanging around next to the jelly bracelets and broken Walkman headphones.

This sweater was my yarn Dragon. Up until this point I had yet to complete a wearable and I would be damned if I was going to frog another attempt. This sweater was going to be made regardless of its warts. It was a necessary hurdle and even though it looks like my foot caught and I went down face first on the track, there is one thing this sweater has going for it.

It fits. And it flatters. Even my son said so.

So, I'm keeping it and I will wear it. Maybe for the photoshoot my co-worker swears is in my future after watching me "manage" our psychotic boss.

"You're next months centerfold for Ass Kicking magazine."

A Yarn is Born!

A little while ago, I bought a lot (as in a one-price for many objects deal) of wool yarn. In that lot as a vintage skein in cream, or natural. I thought, well, I didn't pay much for it and I want to see what I can do so I bought some Kool Aid packets, read up on the process and went to town.

What resulted, is this.

A color way I have named Azimuth. I did a little swatcheroo after untangling the yarn barf that always seems to accompany a balling project with no swift.

Stupid Should Hurt...

...and it does.

How many people do you know that can say:

"I screwed up my knee in an unfortunate recumbent biking accident." ?

Here's my kid on the bike in question. It's a jaunty little ride, a bit like pedaling an office chair and it's quite comfortable for long, flat surfaces like the trail near Valley Forge. By design, however, there is no such thing as "Look mom! No hands!" as the front wheel is so small, you need to keep a constant grip on it or it will spin off into oblivion.

I wish I could tell you that I hit a rock or that my son had made a quick move and I had to brake quickly...or that I hurt my knee by stopping suddenly to save a tiny kitten from certain traffic annihilation.

Alas, confession is good for the soul, so I will tell you that I tried to answer my cell phone will still in motion which sent the front wheel into a death roll and I had to put my leg down fast to stabilize myself. The impact rocketed right through my knee.

After swearing in who knows what language, I flipped open my phone.

"Hello." I said faintly, it was my friend Ken.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"I just racked my knee."

"Are you okay?"

It was at this point that all my dignity fell away. "I think I peed a little."

He paused for what I think must have been three blinks and answered, 'Well, do you want to go to an art opening?"

I politely declined after polling my son who assured me that he was "all set" with the art opening idea and I managed to ride home. I spent the evening watching my left kneecap disappear like a boulder at high tide.

I'm better now. I can bear weight and the swelling has gone down significantly. I hope to be pretty much near normal mobility for the weekend.

If not, I'll hobble as much as I can, because it's not my son's fault his mother is a dumbass.

The Fire Within...

I've done it yet again. I packed up the car and let the GPS take me to a place I have never been to do something I have never done for the purpose of allowing it to change me somehow.

When I leave on these journeys, I am always hopeful that I will at least learn something and come home with a new skill. A really good bungee jump out into the world will peel back your skull, and press and prod your gray matter into a slightly different shape. The better to absorb things with, my dear.

If that's the case, the time spent on the Playa opened up my cranium and let my brain walk free with everyone else's.

I would tell the story, but those who were there will understand.

Those who weren't, won't. Not really. Not....really. The Playa is something that can only be experienced.

And even if I tried I wouldn't do it justice anyway..I've tried three times and my mouth is too small to contain it. It feels like blasphemy.