Super Tuesday.

by Alexa on May 10, 2008

I keep sitting down to write and then jumping straight back up again because write?
THERE IS NO TIME TO WRITE.
Simone is coming home on Tuesday, less than 72 hours from now.

After the swallow study she was still having trouble with any bottle not given in the presence of a highly-paid radiologist, so we added Simply Thick and Voila! Au revoir le tube de nasogastrique! This was our last homecoming prerequisite, so in the last two days we have had oxygen training, medication training, reflux classes, and infant CPR—not to mention a pseudo baby shower wherein my insurance company and a medical equipment supplier deluged me with nasal cannulae, a pulse oximeter, and a jaunty nebulizer shaped like a panda bear. The lowest setting the home tanks can deliver is more oxygen than Simone needs, but the pulmonologist felt there was no point in pushing her to come off entirely before discharge. We will likely ditch the O2 at her first outpatient scan in a month.

Last week was rife with small frustrations. Riding the elevator with a gaggle of pillow-clutching, birth-class-bound third trimester women and their partners made me want to cry or possibly extinguish a cigarette with someone’s face. Later I spent a full 30 minutes in my (ill-starred, now panic-inducing) perinatologist’s office waiting for Ames’s autopsy report, only to be told that it is still not back, after three months. Strange, especially as I have already received the bills from pathology. I don’t think they should be allowed to bill you for tests before producing the results, do you?
The point is, it was a hard week, but when those magic words “Simone,” “home,” and “Tuesday” were spoken, I rose into the air and flew high above the city, whistling a melodious tune and leaving a trail of gamboling kittens in my wake. I was happy, is what I am saying, and I don’t see myself coming back to earth any time soon.

Which doesn’t mean I have lost my ability to whine about the mundane: yesterday I went to Ikea, and was foolish enough to do so (a) alone and (b) in heels. Limping towards checkout pulling one cart and pushing the other with arms shaking from muscle fatigue I realized that I had left my purse…somewhere.
Luckily, Ikea comprises only 336,000 square feet.

Speaking of which, Scott and I realized yesterday that save a bookshelf from Target, Simone’s crib is the only piece of furniture we own that was not made by those particular Swedes. If all the Ikea items in the world were beamed into spaceships by a race of frugal, design-conscious aliens, we would be SO SCREWED.
And speaking of that, once home I realized that the wee shelves I bought for Simone’s room are unfinished pine. Does this mean I have to finish them, or can I just leave them all rustical like and do it later?
[Ed. Note: The correct answer, should you be tempted to give one, is "do it later." “Or not at all” will also be accepted. Partial credit will be given for “maybe just rub a little oil soap on them.”]

My grandmother would roll in her grave to hear it, but last Tuesday I had a visit from a professional cleaning person. The downside to the renovations turned out to be that the floors of our new apartment were caked with construction grime, and it seemed the management’s post-construction cleaning consisted of nothing more than a quick whisk with a broom. A broom missing most of its bristles. And possibly previously used to smooth the walls of a wigwam.
I was not in the mood to complain, seeing as how this management company has treated us very well, but neither was I in the mood to spend hours on my hands and knees with my Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, which is not nearly Magical enough. Hence the cleaning person. And my ensuing middle-class guilt. Now, this cleaning person, though she was loaned to me by a friend, was not to my knowledge an indentured servant. I paid her handsomely. Yet while I was waiting for her outside on the stoop, I found myself wondering whether I should run upstairs and put a bottle of wine in the fridge in case she got thirsty, or maybe just pretend I was not the resident of the apartment at all, but merely a personal assistant dispatched to unlock the door at the appointed time. I could commiserate as the cleaning person paused in her labors, one hand on her back massaging the sore muscles she had acquired from years of toil.
“I hate that you have to do this,” I would say, “I think the sloppy bitch should scrub her own damn floors. More wine?”

Tonight I am putting the rest of the furniture together, washing loads and loads of baby laundry, and arranging a bouquet of bulb syringes on my bedside table. I think I might be nesting, which the pregnancy newsletter I still get from my former OB’s office told me to expect this week, so I’m right on schedule.
Somebody should tell that to Scott. “You need to be less crazy,” he said to me this morning as I nattered on about lists and schedules.
“[REDACTED]!,” I shrilled. And then I returned to alphabetizing my bobby pins.

We’re as ready as we’ll ever be, parenthood. BRING IT.

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