Another week in April

Yes, another week in April, the cruelest month. 

I'm trying to think of anything good that happened this week. The kids had most of the week off, due to testing, and we also had several appointments. On Tuesday, I went to my parent support group and that night my book group came (we read and all enjoyed The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann). Wednesday the kids took the PSAT, the cats got their nails clipped at the vet, and I got a call from the gastroenterologist's office, telling me one of my polyps was a sessile serrated lesion, which is precancerous, so I will have to do the whole thing again, colonoscopy and endoscopy, in only 3 years, not 10. I've spent a lot of time this week googling sessile serrated lesions.

Thursday I saw the orthodontist. I had this great plan for getting him to take my braces off: I told him that we would be losing our insurance later this year (when Rocket Boy retires), and so I needed to finish up quickly. No dice. He said, "Oh, they've probably paid all they're going to pay, so it doesn't matter." And then he redid my wires to make them tighter and more painful, put the chain back on the bottom teeth -- I've had that for a YEAR already -- and put a new hook on a bottom tooth, so now I have a rubber band triangle on my right side to go with the vampire rubber band on the left. Since then I've had several moments of wanting to off either myself or the orthodontist. I said to him, "So you think a few more months?" and he said yes, a few more months. End of summer, maybe. I'm sure I'm going to have to go to California with my braces on. Eat all those meals with relatives with my braces on. Have relatives watch as I use my finger to dig the food out of my braces at the table. Maybe I can just have soup for every meal. Pureed soup. Or I'll tell people I'm on a liquid diet, and just sip a glass of water while they eat. Uh huh.

[On a possibly related, possibly unrelated, note, twice recently I've had people tell me I have a twin. One of the girls at Starbucks told me there's another woman who comes in regularly who looks exactly like me, and she always thinks this woman is going to order what I always order. Then, more weirdly, a male employee at King Soopers came up to me and said, with no preamble, "Where do you work?" I said, truthfully, nowhere, and he was puzzled for a moment, but then said, "Do you take the bus a lot?" I said, also truthfully, no, and he said, "Well, then you have a twin." What I'm wondering is, do I have one or two twins, and also, has the change in my appearance caused by two years of braces done this? Or is this a variation on "older women are invisible," i.e., "older women all look alike"?]

On Friday, Teen A got his hair cut, and Teen B had his yearly physical. He is now 5'7", two inches taller than last year. Last year Teen A was 5'7.5", so I know he's taller than that, but how much taller? We'll find out next Wednesday.

The worst thing that happened this week was that we had snow. Now, snow in April in Colorado is not that big a deal. It would be strange if it didn't snow. April snow showers bring May flowers, etc. It often breaks branches and makes a mess, but it's normal. However, this year, of course, we don't have a functioning furnace. It tries to turn on, and then gives up. Rocket Boy tried to get me to go down in the basement and look at the error codes that he said must be showing up on the furnace -- well, come on. I hate the basement, and it's cold and wet and muddy and there are so many spiders, and there are broken tree branches all over, including hanging over the basement door, waiting to fall on me, and where are these error codes anyway and how would I interpret them on the off chance that I find them? No, just no.

Teen A actually showed some interest in investigating this on Friday, when it was starting to get cold in the house. We came home from his haircut and he suggested we go take a look at the basement. But I wanted to go in the house first, dump my purse and some other things, and by the time I did that, he didn't want to go down in the basement anymore. The siren call of his computer was too strong, maybe. Anyway, Friday afternoon it started to snow. Friday night it was cold in the house -- Saturday morning it was colder -- Saturday night it was colder still. I started turning the oven on and leaving the door open, as a heat source. An expensive heat source, but not a dangerous one as long as you don't have a gas oven, or toddlers, or stupid animals. Our animals are pretty smart; even Sillers is too smart to fall into an oven. Baby Kitty camped out on the stovetop, enjoying the heat wafting up from the oven. 

And of course I turned it off when we went to bed. Sleeping actually hasn't been a problem. I just put an extra blanket on my bed, a thick wool one, and I'm warm as toast. I put multiple blankets on Teen B, but he kicks them off during the night, and last night I put an old comforter on Teen A, but he was horrified, so I took it off. They both sleep very hot, so they don't seem to need extra coverings. 

What's that you say? Why don't I call a furnace guy? Well, a few different reasons. First of all, it's April. Today it's sunny and the snow is melting and it's 54 degrees. Tomorrow it's supposed to get to 75. So this isn't a real emergency. When Rocket Boy comes, he'll look at the furnace and see if it's something simple that he can fix, and if it's not, we'll call a furnace guy, and RB will be here to talk to the furnace guy and understand what he's saying.

I am really looking forward to Rocket Boy's arrival. Six more days.

So, what else do we have to look forward to this coming week?

• Monday the kids have another day off school.
• Tuesday the kids go back to school, finally, thank God.
  
• Wednesday Teen A has his physical, in the afternoon during his free period.
• Thursday I have a dietician appointment that I think I'm going to cancel.
• Friday is Teen A's 504 meeting that I have to attend in person. And the tree guy is supposed to come and look at our disasters. He canceled this past Friday, due to the abominable weather.
  

Not a bad week, I think. I need to call the eye doctor and make appointments for me and the kids, which I keep forgetting to do. I should clean the house for Rocket Boy, but just the usual stuff, nothing special. I didn't clean very much for the book group last week, too depressed, but I was pleased to see that the house didn't look bad, because I had cleaned the week before. This semi-regular cleaning business does make life easier, even if you don't manage to do it every week.

Oh, one more thing. Last week, I noticed that the door on the front closet was the same size as our bathroom door, plus the hinges were on the correct side. I mentioned this to Rocket Boy, and he pointed out that Teen A would be capable of moving it over to the bathroom. I was sure Teen A wouldn't want to do this, but this afternoon he decided he did, so we gave it a try.

The door doesn't fit exactly -- you can't lock it, and there's a pretty big gap between the bottom of the door and the floor -- but it's a big improvement over no door at all. Taking a shower might even be sort of pleasant (it's been awful the last couple of days, with the house so cold). I'm not sure this is going to be the final door, so we haven't removed the hooks from when it was a closet door. We'll see what Rocket Boy thinks. But it's good for now.

So, you know, life is OK. More or less. Even though it's April.