We are a sorry lot
Finally, after suffering for weeks, Irving was sufficiently convinced that he needed medical advice; yesterday morning he telephoned his urologist whose nurse, after hearing his symptoms, suggested he see our family doctor as it sounded to her as though he had a bladder infection. Although I had said the same thing a week earlier, he was convinced it was his prostate acting up and he would tough it through. Our family doctor, seeing his urine sample was aghast and said he couldn't understand how my husband could have restrained himself so long from seeking medical help. Now he's on an antibiotic regimen and guess what? condition relieved.
As for me, that odd subcutaneous hard flat dime-sized lump I noticed about a week and a half earlier had metamorphized into a flatter, softer region under my skin which speedily became fairly painful, and angry. As there is a barely-visible pinprick-sized aperture in its centre, my husband-the-doctor has declared it to be a spider bite, and I concur. Or, he hedged his bets, a wasp bite?
And sure enough later that evening Angelyne telephoned to tell her Bubbe that she had just suffered a double-whammy. Out in the backyard, just out of her swimming pool, a wasp had got her in the toe. Later, in the house, she sat on a bee. No kidding.
This morning when she arrived Irving asked Karen our daughter, whether there had been a bee stinger left in Angie's behind after the sting, and evidently not, so he is convinced she too had been savaged (like that?) by a wasp, top and bottom. And to look at the huge swelling, over half her hip, down her leg, angry, itchy you could only feel for the child.
She has such a prodigious interest in food and an appetite to match that concerns about the state of her breakfast overtook her concern about her discomfort. She had a small bowl of blueberries, I prepared some chicken strips (she will not eat red meat of any kind) and did banana-blueberry pancakes for all of us. My that little girl (about two inches shorter than me at nine years just this past June 25) can certainly eat. Did I forget the hot cocoa? She loves helping, and turned over the strips in their pan, flipped the pancakes and prepared her cocoa herself. After breakfast she remembered just how itchy she was, so we took out of the freezer, one of those pliable freezer bags, wrapped it in a small towel, and adhered it to her leg with one of those tension bandages and she realized immediate relief.
It was time for our ravine walk, the dogs were restless and so was I. I had changed into a pair of soft puffy white shorts designed to make Twiggy look like Miss Piggy, but they were roomy and least likely to aggravate that damn spider bite which just happened to be on my midriff. This would be a semi-solitary walk. Neither Irving nor Angelyne was in any shape to accompany me and the dogs, although both offered to, themselves reluctant to treat this day differently than most. Button kept pulling back on her leash as she walked up the street toward the ravine access. She wondered where Irving was, and didn't want to proceed without him. Riley didn't much care and in any event I always carry him up to the ravine entrance as he usually dawdles so much on the street it drives me mad. It was by then about 24 degrees, heading for 31; another hot day, but pleasant enough in the forested ravine, with a slight breeze. We came across only one other walker with a black part-Labrador retriever, and she would have no truck with my cheery greeting, studiously ignoring and walking right past us. She uttered a command in French to her dog. My sin? Speaking English. I have lately realized that too many young francophone women disdain to speak with English-speakers and turn away with grim faces. I sizzled with annoyance at this utter lack of civility.
Later, Angie and I sat out on the deck, still in the shade. We were on the glider, Riley beside us, trying to lick at the vicinity of Angie's swollen leg and we dissuaded him finally, so we could settle in to reading one of the Magic Schoolbus books, this one about a school play, a riff on Jack and the Beanstalk, giving Miss Fizzle the opportunity to discuss photosynthesis. Angie had some problems reading and pronouncing the name "Phoebe". We shared the reading; she one page, me the next, and we lasted until roughly the 12th page, and then she pooped out. It was hot, she was itchy, needed to change to the other freezer bag as this one was already warm, and she wanted some chocolate milk.
Upstairs then, to visit Zayde, laying out on the bed in one of the spare bedrooms (the one we call "Jody's bedroom", where the on-line computer in its work-armoire is). He's been quite without energy for almost a week now, and spends most of his time resting, reading. He just finished reading a book about Anthony Blount which Randy and Andrea had brought for him, on their visit two weeks earlier. I've been reading the one they brought me: "Madam X", about John Singer Sargent. The thing is, Irving recounts to me as faithfully as possible, the gist of every book he reads, while I do not return the compliment, nor am I expected to. He doesn't expect me to read the Blount book, but I do expect he'll want to read the Sargent book. Since he has finished reading the Blount book, though he has taken to reading some Somerset Maughm books, re-visiting some of them, first-time for others.
Angie is happy to find him there. While I was out in the ravine earlier, she had been upstairs with her Zayde, and while he rested, she was playing Solitaire and Spider Solitaire on the computer. Now she wanted us to play together. She's excruciatingly slow at it, and I'm forever prompting her, but incredibly, she has discovered some short-cuts achieved by mousing in various ways which had been unknown to me. Soon, though, she wants to know what's for lunch.
Salmon, I tell her. Yuck! she responds. You'll like it, I tell her, then she proceeds to inform me how much she hates the smell of canned salmon and I certainly sympathize, as I'm not fond of it, either. This is different I tell her, and she believes me, nice little kid. I've earlier taken the salmon out of the freezer, drizzled it with lemon juice, olive oil, pepper and garlic powder. I had par-cooked a few potatoes in the microwave, and now all I had to do was stir-fry onions and the chopped potatoes, microwave a small dish of greenpeas, and ask Irving to barbecue the salmon. Angie took great care in setting out a particularly nice placemat, a special platter from a set which I usually use in the dining room - and catsup! Never without catsup. A fresh sliced peach for dessert, I suggested. No, no, I can't stand peaches, they're too soft. Not these, these are Ontario peaches, they're delicious and they're not hard. She ate her peaches before the rest, but she ate each and every morsel of her lunch and I groaned for her.
Outside to look about the gardens, to deadhead a few flowerheads, tie up a few of the zinnias whose stalks had grown almost as tall as me and to observe that there were a few garden areas, a few hanging pots which could certainly use watering. The window installers next door were just finishing up installing all new windows in that house. When there are workmen about Ihave to be especially vigilant about Button in particular and Riley sometimes, as they're both nosy as hell and want to know what's going on; Button quietly and Riley aggressively as befits their genders. I don't see Button and begin to call her, and a disembodied voice responds: "Do you mean the little black poodle? she's over here". One of the window installers has come to my rescue and I thank him. All this while Angie is trailing about after me, ensuring that the slip-sliding ever-warming freezer pack is gripped firmly against her bum/hip/leg. She gets tired of this and goes back into the house to resume Solitairing solitarily.
We sit down together in the family room, as she wants to look through a new book with me, this one mine, about doll collecting. We look through the plates and read bits and pieces of information on wood-peg dolls, wax dolls, papier mache dolls, Googly-eye dolls, French and German porcelain dolls, Japanes gofun dolls and we discuss our personal impressions with respect to the colour plates. We don't much like most of these dolls, but are impressed at the stated prices. Then we go on a tour of some of my collection, which is fairly short-lived as her interest rapidly wanes. We had opened the folding doors of a rosewood Buddhist shrine as a few small dolls were in there, and she espied the singing bowl. Out it came, and she held the bowl flat on her damp outstretched palm, while I circled its edge with the wooden pestle. She shivered, as the bowl began to quiver on her palm and send its eerie sound reverberating through the two-story room.
Can we play Scrabble upstairs, Bubbe? Why upstairs, why not in the breakfast room on the table? Because in the library, she explains, we can play on the large table while she sits on the upholstered loveseat, it's easier on her large patch of itch. So I agree and we set up the board and the letters and go at it. She is incredibly lazy, turning to me continually for ideas on how to convert the disparate letters into acceptable words, asking me from time to time if impossible combinations are legitimate words. She soon tires of this, as it requires too much concentration and I tire of it, as I'm doing all of the concentration and she seemingly none at all, happy enough it seems to have me instruct her on where to place her letters, dammit.
Rescue is at hand, as Karen walks in at 4:00 pm, and soon they're off. But not before Angie, carrying the Scrabble box manages to drop it in the hallway, rousing Irving from a restful doze. He comes downstairs to dispense kisses all around, and there, they really are gone off home.
First thing I do is go back upstairs, determined to write that letter to the editor, to the daily newspaper which I had formed in my head through the last half of my ravine hike this morning. In it I fumed about the lack of courtesy, the uncivil attitudes of some people. So there. Then I checked on my email, and trudged downstairs to catch up on the two newspapers we receive daily.
Goodness me, lunch revisited, as we had almost the same thing for dinner that Angie had for lunch. We had waxed beans with the onion/potatoes and salmon, and leftover blueberry pie from my baking on Friday. We shared a small bowl of still-warm cherry tomatoes picked off the vine in the backyard; the other, carrying full-size tomatoes hasn't yet seen fit to ripen any. Irving also had a small dish of Balkan-style yogurt in an attempt to restore the balance in his stomach, given the effect of the antibiotics.
As I cleaned up the kitchen, dry-mopped the kitchen floor, flossed, then brushed my teeth, Irving followed me about much as Angie had done throughout the earlier part of the day. She did so to entice me to entertain her, he did so to entertain me. Fact is, Irving cannot seem to read a book without imparting its contents to me, so he read to me verbatim Maugham's take on Buddhism, then told me in detail about some of the incidents in the book describing Maugham's travels through Indo-china.
We're both feeling a bit better. Hope Angie feels a whole lot better by tomorrow.
The image at the top of this posting is a little bit of garden whimsy. It is a facsimile of the Great Daibutsu, and it sits at the bottom of our rock garden, which itself runs along the south side of the length of our house. It's a silly kind of conceit to call this an image of the Great Daibutsu. The original sits in a temple courtyard in Kamakura, Japan. It dates, I believe, from between the years 900 to 1000 ad, and is constructed of bronze. To stand beside this behemoth is quite the experience, and we appreciated the opportunity. It stands exposed to the elements, having had, in its long history, buildings "protecting" it, which were swept away in various violent ocean-driven storms. It was finally realized that to cover it was futile, and it stands now as it has done for quite some while, in the open courtyard, a symbol of the world's kindest religion.
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, August 10, 2005
<< Home