A little sunshine

I realized today that it's been exactly six months since my parathyroidectomy (July 23rd, 2021), so that means my scar is supposedly as healed as it's ever going to be. So I thought I'd take another picture of it. Sure enough, just like the doc promised me, it's vanished into my neck wrinkles. Actually, if I look in the bathroom mirror, with the light turned on, I can see a very distinct white line. But as this picture shows, in the right light, the scar is basically gone. And honestly, how many people are going to stare at my neck in a strong light? 

I probably should have made more of an effort to make it disappear -- rubbed vitamin E oil into it, or whatever. I never rubbed anything into it. I just didn't care. Still don't. 

So here we are, January 23rd. A little over a week left of January. I think I can handle it, though it's going to be a busy week. Tomorrow I have a surprising addition to the year's plans and goals: an orthodontia consult! I finally managed to see my dentist this week, kids too, and even though it had been a year since our last visits, nobody had any cavities, thank goodness. Actually, Teen A had a cavity, but it was in a tooth that was about to fall out -- and fall out it did, the next night. So, no cavities. 

The dentist was working alone the day I went -- his receptionist was out, hygienist was out sick, so he was answering the phone and accepting UPS packages and doing the cleanings. I said, "You're going to clean my teeth?" and he said, "Yep. I'm good at it, too." He was OK, my teeth felt good afterwards, but he got an awful lot of water on my shirt. 

Anyway, since it was just me and him, I asked him a lot of questions about my funky teeth, and he took a closer look than he usually does. "Ah, you're developing a crossbite," he said. "Probably need to see an orthodontist sooner rather than later." We chatted about that, and the upshot is that I have an appointment for a consultation with the kids' orthodontist on Monday morning. According to my dentist, I need actual metal brackets, not Invisalign or anything like that. We'll see what the orthodontist says. But I suspect that my life is about to change dramatically. 

Monday night it is supposed to snow, on into Tuesday, and of course, because Life, on Tuesday the twins both have doctor appointments, Teen A at 11 and Teen B at 1. I mapped this all out: I'm going to show up at the school at 10:20, collect Teen A by 10:30, drive across town to the appointment, hopefully arriving by 10:50, have the appointment, drive Teen A back to school, pick up Teen B and drive him across town for his appointment, hopefully arriving by 12:50, have the appointment, drive Teen B back to school, go home, collapse, and wait for them to come home on the bus.

But if we're having a heavy snowstorm, this might not work. I will just have to see how it goes. I hate driving in snow. When it snows, I like to stay home and look out the window, not ferry people back and forth across town like an unpaid, unappreciated Lyft driver.

This past week we had a couple of precipitation events, the most dramatic being the ice storm that took place all day Wednesday. They really should have cancelled school that day, but I don't think our new superintendent understands Colorado weather. The kids were supposed to have their dentist appointments after school that day, but fortunately the dentist moved them to Thursday. However, I still had to pick up the kids, because they thought they were having dentist appointments and thus wouldn't have gotten on the school bus. Driving to and from their middle school in an ice storm is one of those little moments of motherhood that I'd be fine missing out on. 

Things were still terribly icy on Thursday, and then we had a few inches of snow on Friday. It was warmer yesterday and lovely today, supposed to get to 50, a little bit of sunshine in our lives -- but there's still a lot of patchy ice and snow everywhere. Today I parked my car on the street to give the driveway a chance to melt. 

The kids don't have PE this quarter -- it's "Health" instead, which means sex education, drugs, suicide, all the good stuff -- so instead, they're supposed to exercise at home. They have a weekly exercise log that I have to fill out and sign every Sunday. This is a problem when they don't get home until 4:30 and it's snowy and icy out there. The exercise has to last at least 20 minutes to count, and it only takes them 10 minutes to walk home from the bus, so I've tried to get them to go out for a little more of a walk after they get home, but they're not interested. We go for walks on weekend days, but I slow down the proceedings immensely by being terrified whenever I see a bit of pavement that looks like it might be icy. "Mom! It's not slippery! Come on!" and similar comments erupt from the twins every time I slow down to a crawl. 

The thing is, it would be very bad if I fell and broke something! I probably wouldn't be able to drive. I might not be able to cook, take care of the cats, all that stuff (depending on what, exactly, I broke). It is very important for mostly single parents not to break their limbs. So I'm being careful. And on the plus side, slowing down our walks means the twins get extra minutes on their exercise logs. So what if their heart rates aren't going up as much as they're supposed to. I think yelling at me probably raises their heart rates, at least a little.

My mood has improved since earlier this month, which is a relief. For a while there, I thought I was heading down into a serious depression, but now I think maybe that won't happen. The main thing that helped is to distance myself from the fires a little, just force myself to stop thinking about them so much. This Friday was payday, so I donated another $100 to the wildfire relief fund. Just doing that made me start crying again. Also, I got an update from a go-fund-me account that I had donated to, a renter who didn't have renter's insurance and lost everything, including everything for their small business that they ran out of their home, and the person has only received $13,000 ($50 of which was from me). That made my heart hurt too. How can you rebuild your entire life with $13,000?

The kids and I have been reading a (pretty stupid) book called Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson, finished it last night, and some of the characters in the book have very odd super powers. Alcatraz (who is a 13-year-old boy) has a grandfather whose super power is that he arrives late to things. This turns out to be very helpful when he is tortured by an evil librarian, because he is able to arrive late to the pain. Later, after the evil librarian is vanquished, the grandpa is able to dole out the pain to himself in small, manageable bits. I'm thinking of the fires that way. I'm not forgetting that they happened and that thousands of people lost their homes and are struggling. I'm doling out the knowledge to myself in small, manageable bits. Or trying to, anyway.

As a distraction, I've started reading my first book for the Classics Challenge, The Tale of Genji, because I figured if I didn't start now I'd never do it. The book is 1155 pages long! And even though it's a paperback, it's so heavy! It's divided into 54 chapters, and I'm trying to read five chapters a day. I started reading it Friday night, but couldn't possibly finish the first five chapters, so I decided my official starting day would be yesterday, and I did manage to finish the first five chapters and also the sixth, giving me a head start on today. I'm on page 129 and I need to read up through page 222 by tonight to stay on track (this is very unlikely to happen). I'm also dipping into books about Japanese literature to help me understand what's going on, plus I found a useful website, ditto.

The point I'm trying to make here is that this is going to be very difficult. 

The book is actually quite enjoyable so far, but the reading doesn't go quickly. And I keep looking at how much is left and thinking OMG, how can I ever read all of that? It's a library book, so I can't keep it out forever. On the other hand, probably there isn't a long line of people waiting to borrow the book. My guess is that I might be the second or third person to have read this copy. Not the first -- the book has been handled -- but I don't think it's been checked out a lot. 

So maybe I'll be keeping it for a few three-week periods (you can renew it twice before you have to take it back). It certainly takes me away from Boulder, Colorado in January 2022, and that's what I need right now.

OK, it's 7:30 pm and I need to finish this post and go make dinner. We're having many-times-leftover veggie lasagna (me) and Trader Joe's chicken nuggets (the twins). Tomorrow I'll go to a real grocery store and get ingredients to make real dinner food (the lasagna was real, but it made too much -- we've been eating it since last Tuesday, I think). The King Soopers strike is probably settled -- they'll vote on the latest offer tomorrow -- so it would be wonderful if I could shop there before the storm. 

Plans for the week: my orthodontia consult, the twins' doctor appointments, getting my hair cut on Thursday, cooking, cleaning the bathroom, working some more on the files and piles, reading The Tale of Genji, and whatever else pops up.