Crunchy Thoughts

You would think I would have copious amounts of time to sit about and write blog posts while being on maternity leave, but I have managed to keep myself busy with other parts of life. There was also the most horrible sickness I think I’ve ever had, a foul thing known as mastitis, which had me convinced one night that we were all Vikings and the books were levitating off of the shelves.

Nothing like a little delirium to start off your month.

I had mentioned that the hospital tried to kill me while I was there with Sam. It did almost seem like deliberate negligence, especially after my first experience with them when Lydia was born. While in the hospital with Lydia, I was very impressed with, of all things, their hospital food. It was tasty, filling, and above all, they took extra care to avoid my many food allergy pitfalls. With every meal there was a printed ticket that listed every food item I had received, the caloric content (not that I wanted to know those pancakes were 800 calories), my name, room number, and a list of my food allergies I had verbally told them when I was admitted. The entire time I was there I saw nary a nut.

When Sam arrived and I got set up in my room, I was looking forward to all the feasts they would bring again. Oh boy! I now pronounce us Ready To Eat!

The next morning I’m met with a resigned food lady by the name of Rhonda, who has come bearing me breakfast. Rhonda has brought a big plate of EGGS, toast sitting in the egg juice, sliced up CANTALOUPE, a banana, and a NUT BRAN MUFFIN. No spiffy ticket to be seen. No smile, no good morning. Here is your Plate of Death; enjoy.

Being nice and optimistic, I attributed the mistake to a delay in the transfer of information and hoped for better tidings in the future. At lunch, Rhonda showed up again with a mediocre plate of some version of Mystery Meat and a nutty dessert. No spiffy ticket. She gives me the option of choosing tomorrow’s breakfast — EGGS! or cereal, muffin and banana — I go with the non-lethal choice and mention the reasons for doing so. Dinner brought more Mystery Meat sans ticket.

A non-ticketed breakfast came with a slight detail that ol’ Rhonda failed to mention — the muffin was covered with nuts. Come on, lady. When my regular nurse came in I reluctantly mentioned to her that I needed something else to eat as a quarter cup of cereal and an unripe banana just wasn’t going to cut it, and did I mention that I CAN’T EAT NUTS?? This was the morning after The Laughing Incident and I was already feeling a bit beaten up.

Rhonda saunters back in and asks with a sweet voice that reminds me a bit of Professor Umbridge from Harry Potter, “You don’t like my breakfast?”

“I have a nut allergy,” I deadpan. I’m in the process of being put on a gurney to go be wheeled to some test. She asks what I would like and I go for pancakes with bacon, which I finally get to dive into around 10:30 that morning.

Later that day I’m in the room with my sister and Ken when Professor Umbridge Rhonda saunters in with lunch. It some meaty pile of I-don’t-know-what with a dessert topped with nuts. NUTS! We all have a giggle while I poke at the few good tidbits, joking that when Rhonda comes back to get the plate she will ask why I didn’t eat her dessert.

“Do you want me to leave the dessert for you?” Rhonda asks sweetly as she picks up my food tray an hour later. You’re kidding me, right? Mental or sadistic, this one.

I knew better than to look at Ken or Cathy; it was all we could do to keep from busting into laughter. I had to swallow many potential sarcastic replies and just say, “No, thank you.” Laughter had about killed me the day before and I wasn’t eager to test it out again so soon.

The weekend came and Rhonda does not torture people on the weekends. There was a different food lady who, though nicer, still had not seemed to have gotten the memo. There were more eggs and nuts tossed at me. I had long since given up on educating them and was relying on family and friends to toss food at me.

On Sunday morning I actually met the Weekend Food Lady. Our paths had not crossed before since I had either been in the shower or the NICU whenever she showed up with the egg and nut assortment. She asked how I enjoyed the food. “Well, truthfully,” I replied, “I haven’t been able to eat much of it, since I have some food allergies. I’ve tried to list them out but the information seems to get lost.”

“You know, I saw that on this ticket,” she replied, gesturing to some piece of paper she had, but shrugged, as if to say she just didn’t know what to do with that kind of information.

Oh ho ho really.

Well, I guess if I ate some nuts and went into anaphylactic shock, I’m in the right place! Nothing like a hospital to cure what ails you.

I have been writing a lot, it’s just all been on the kids’ site. You can go over there to check out the story of Samuel’s arrival, from the countdown to the liftoff and the ascent. There will be an orbit as well.

Not only have I been getting Sam used to the camera, we also had Breanna Fogg — who took such awesome shots of Lydia last year — to come by and get portraits of both children. They’re wonderful, of course.

Soon I shall tell you a side tale of the food people at Brookwood and how they delighted in trying to kill me.

It feels good to say, “my children.”

Over the past few years the soil around our house foundation settled, which created an annoying cave underneath our sidewalk and front porch. We’ve been meaning to get it filled back in, but it’s in a tricky spot so we still have our cave.

The cave now harbors a mama cat and six (at least) itty bitty baby kitties. Ohhh, how cute they are! Both Hermione and Renton have been watching them — thankfully without having a fit. They roll around and tackle each other, bat at our many weeds, check our our irrigation system, and prance around on our porch.

I am trying to not feel responsible for these cats, but oh, what shall I do with them? The life of a stray is so hard.

Earlier this evening I think I got a few people curious by tweeting that Renton did the nastiest thing ever. So nasty, in fact, that I wasn’t sure if I could write about it . . .

Well, I’m over that, so if you still DON’T want to know, then read no further. Seriously.

Early this morning Renton birthed one of his small children after much strain and consternation. We rejoiced since each small child means no vet trip. Unfortunately all the strain got to him and he barfed in the basement. Hey, at least it was in the basement this time!

So before I got Lydia up for school I ambitiously went downstairs to take care of the barf, lest Lydia be amused by it. Being pregnant did not help that endeavor and I quickly tossed the messy paper towels into a little trash can near the litter box and hightailed it back upstairs. Eww eww eww.

This afternoon I arrived home with a very thirsty Lydia, who had been chanting, “Juice. Juice. Juice,” all the way home. As we rounded the corner to head up the basement steps, I see that the little trash can is knocked over. “Odd,” I think, “maybe Steven accidentally knocked it over.”

But the messy paper towels are missing, save a small little piece . . . and I used a LOT of paper towels this morning to clean up all that barf.

Do you see where this is going?? Oh yes.

Apparently Renton was feeling quite peckish after clearing his system earlier, and really I’m quite thankful he was all cleared out and ready to go, because that fool cat ate FIVE PAPER TOWELS. I hope he enjoyed them.

I know that they have already gone all the way through his system because as Lydia and I began to go up the stairs, we were met with the sight of his, err, leavings there on the landing. Pure paper towels, all balled up into the form of little small children, just how his body likes to make them.

Not only did those paper towels go all the way through him, they did it in less than 12 hours.

This is the point where Lydia and I both started screaming, “Ewwwww!”

This evening, Renton has been in the best mood I have seen him in years. He has been thoroughly cleansed this Holy Week. I just wish the sight could be cleansed from my memory.

Last night the three of us were sitting at the dinner table together. This is actually a rare event since Lydia insists on eating right when we walk in the door after work and school, but this time she was content to sit with Steven and me while we ate our food.

Lydia amused herself by swirling around a water droplet on the table with the spout of her sippy cup while Steven and I talked about the day.

“Lydia’s the oldest one in her room now,” I told Steven, “They tell me that she is running the class and is telling all the other kids what to do.” He laughed.

I looked over at Lydia. “Lydia, are you the boss in your class?”

She didn’t look up from her water droplet, but replied, “Uh huh.”

“Are you going to be the boss of Samuel when he gets here?”

“Uh huh,” she said, still smearing the water.

“Are you the boss of Mommy and Daddy?”

“Uh huh,” she chirped, still messing with her water.

“Do we let you do too much?”

She finally looked up for a moment and replied, “Nnnnnooooooooooo.”

Later she ate a bunch of steamed broccoli without any seasoning whatsoever on it. This one never ceases to amaze.

I started thinking about it last year.

As the calendar rolled around to 2010, I started anticipating it.

As news stories started popping up, trying to make something political of it, I started getting excited. It was almost time.

And last week, it finally came . . . my very own questionnaire for the 2010 Census. Yessssssss. After ten long years of waiting.

“You’re the only person I know who can get so excited over a census,” Steven said as I danced around with my envelope.

Why so excited over a mandatory count? I really couldn’t care too much about how many representatives we get in Congress (Alabama’s hasn’t changed in years anyway) or how many funds get allocated to Chelsea. For me, it’s all about the genealogy.

Thanks to the power of the intertubes, I’ve been able to see a lot of the census records of my ancestors, and it has been fascinating — not only for the information on the records themselves, but seeing the awesome proof that they truly walked the earth, farming and preaching and raising families.

The earliest census record I have is that of Edward and Elsey Snellgrove, my sixth-great grandparents. They show up on the 1800 Census. Edward died two years later. Coincidentally, they are also Bill Clinton’s fifth-great grandparents.

The latest census records to be released are from the year 1930. I have the copies showing all four of my grandparents. My mother’s father was 14; two years later the tornado was to come through Columbiana and take his house with it (today’s the anniversary of that, by the bye). My mother’s mother was 9 and in Calera. My dad’s father was 9; he would turn 10 a few months later. My dad’s mom is 10; maybe a year or two after this picture was taken:

Census records aren’t released until 72 years after the year of he census, so the first census I will show up in, 1990, won’t be forthcoming until 2072 — I’ll be 92 if I’m still around. I missed the 1980 census by 32 days.

In part I find my own fulfillment of the census information so interesting because I hope my own grandkids and great-grandkids, perhaps even sixth-great grandkids, will one day pull up the information and think, “Wow, Granny Carrie was only 29 and Grandpa Sam wasn’t even born yet! She had to have known he was coming, though.”

Ohh yeah, I know he’s coming. He likes to kick and remind me about every five seconds or so.

Lydia has taken up a new addiction recently — the kids’ show Yo Gabba Gabba. Oh, how enthralled she is!

Thankfully, it’s a pretty snazzy show and both Steven and I are able to sit through it. In fact, it can be rather entertaining. Thank God our child was not born during the Age of Barney the Dinosaur.

Saturday morning found the three of us parked on the sofa watching Lydia’s newest video and learning about Greetings, with the Daddy’s Girl parked in Steven’s lap.

As the characters began a song about “goodbye,” my mind began to travel as it does and I found myself upon a horribly sweet and simultaneously morbid thought. This song, with its words of, “Goodbye, see ya later, we had fun,” would be a good pick for a kids’ funeral.

Why why why do I think of stuff like this? I think a lot of women, especially moms, inadvertently come up with these torturous mind trails. When your kid takes a tumble down the stairs; before you’ve reached the bottom after them your mind has already gone through an entire worst-case scenario that ends up with you having to call everyone in your contact list . . . . only to reach the bottom of that long staircase and your child pops right up, saying,”Uh oh.” And my sister says I don’t plan ahead. Hrmmph.

So there I am watching Yo Gabba Gabba with my husband and daughter, trying with my utmost effort not to burst into tears as they sing goodbye.