Flotsam

Allow me to clear up a misconception about my love of exercise:
True, after I have finished, I feel calm and rejuvenated and proud of my Soreness of Virtue. Frequently during this period I can be heard making wild proclamations about my intention to take up running, or something equally outlandish, as I bob around the apartment on a springy cushion of endorphins. Even during exercise, I am often almost joyous, though certainly some of this is a by-product of feeling smug.
BEFORE, exercise, however, I hate it, just like any good American. I am getting better at remembering the after part in order to trick myself into getting started, but when I said exercise was possibly my favorite part of the day, I meant a collection of moments some during, but mostly following the event itself, and I want to make it clear that I in NO WAY look FORWARD to putting in a DVD and lurching around like a damn fool when I could be eating a bowl of berries in heavy cream. But I cannot deny that I like it once I have gotten past the initial shock to the system.
I would like to officially register a complaint, however, about the lack of timely—and by timely I mean immediate—change in my shape following physical exertion. It’s a good thing I enjoy the process, because otherwise I would be VERY PERTURBED about the fact that the sight of my naked thighs still serves as an effective reminder that I never did read Moby Dick, and whatever happened to that copy from high school?

Beyond a grudging fondness of exercise in general, what I have recently discovered—or rediscovered, really—is a fondness for yoga. I started doing yoga in elementary school, from a book of my mother’s, and with the exception of the breathing part (breathing has always been a challenge for me), I enjoyed a pleasing level of competence at the activity on and off for the next 15 years. There was even a time, long ago, when I thought about becoming a yoga teacher. It seemed like a nice sort of job to have, one that would leave me time for my writing. And then I met Scott, and one thing led to another, and suddenly it had been four years and fifty pounds since I found myself in Upward Facing Dog in anything like a regular fashion. I have returned to yoga now, but only in the privacy of my living room. I am not ready to be confined to a room for 90 minutes with a flock of sinewy young yoginis.
Truthfully, yoga probably isn’t the best exercise for someone looking to lose weight, even the Vinyasa sort I have been doing lately. But it doesn’t inspire the same dread as, say, a treadmill, and afterward the Soreness of Virtue is pleasantly diffuse. During yoga I come as close to calm as I get, and the familiarity of the poses builds my confidence.

HOWEVER. The video I have been doing lately is one I got at Target, called “Power Yoga,” featuring a shirtless ponytailed man named Rodney Yee. It’s about an hour long, and Mr. Yee does the routine outdoors in a peaceful natural setting, never speaking or acknowledging the camera in any way. Instead, he leads you through the poses via soothing, hypnotic voiceover. The poses are all ones I have done before, though the last time I did most of them my belly was concave and slung between my hipbones like a hammock, so several times I have had the startling sensation of running into a piece of flesh during a twist or bend that simply was not there before. But most irksome, for me, are the many repetitions of the Standing Forward Bend.
As I have noted before, I have a short torso. A very short torso, attached to long legs. The only time I have been able to touch my toes was when I was nineteen and doing ballet and Pilates four days a week. My earliest memories of gym class involve me sitting with my legs spread in a triangle, utterly failing to reach even the top of my foot with my outstretched arms. That common PE evaluation that required you to sit with your feet against a box and lean forward, sliding your fingers down a numbered board? I failed that too.
When I was very young I drew people as giant heads, with legs protruding directly from the neck area, and arms protruding from the middle of the legs. With the exception of that last part, my drawings of myself came close to physical accuracy. So, to sum up, here is a picture of me:

And here is a picture of Rodney Yee:

Note the differences.
Now, here is a picture of Rodney Yee doing a Standing Forward Bend:

And here is me doing the same:

You see the problem. I suppose I should accept that the laws of physics do not permit me to contort myself in this manner without the aid of Photoshop, but I am finding such acceptance hard to come by. The form of yoga I practice is known as Pointlessly Competitive Yoga (Stressana, in the Sanskrit), born of my high pain threshold and inability to physically excel at anything else. Everyone has seen an instructor demonstrate a basic pose, and then follow it up with “More advanced students can try this variation,” said while calmly wrapping her arm around her thigh like a tourniquet. A sensible student would chuckle bemusedly and ignore her, but I see that twisted arm and think, “If human anatomy is capable of such a thing, so am I!” And then I wind my arm around my leg, cheerfully breaking the bone in three places. But with the standing forward bend, no amount of brute force will induce my lips to kiss my knees while my palms fondle the floor. So for now, this part of the video is an exercise in accepting my limits as much as anything else. While I’m at it, maybe I’ll accept that my thigh fat will never drop spontaneously from my bones. And let’s be honest: I’m NEVER going to read Moby Dick.

Did anyone else notice mysterious episodes of The Golden Girls appearing on their DVR? Scott swears he didn’t set them to record, but the only other explanation is that I am being haunted by the ghost of Estelle Getty. Unless this is some sort of memorial orchestrated by Comcast? I suppose the more likely explanation is that my husband is attempting to gaslight me. Or perhaps I am sleepwalking—you may recall that last year I ended up with a mysterious subscription to Popular Mechanics, a subscription that has yet to be explained. It could be that I am getting up at night, watching Golden Girls, and reading automotive articles. Perhaps I have Multiple Personality Disorder, and my other personalities are an elderly married couple named Edna and Merle.

It has been a difficult evening here. Simone cried for hours for no apparent reason. Not her angry hunger cry, not her usual reflux scream: instead the saddest, most mournful wails and sobs, with REAL TEARS. I could actually feel the fibers of my heart rending. I took her temperature, and it was normal. She had scarcely napped all day, and was obviously exhausted. I managed to nurse her to sleep, only to have her start crying again as soon as I moved my arm. What finally worked was swaddling her in a Miracle Blanket (now that she has outgrown the blankets used for the Gypsy Swaddle I am beginning to appreciate how miraculous these Miracle Blankets really are) and clutching her to me as I crooned—first Fly Me to the Moon, and then endless repetitions of the song I sang to her in the NICU. The song is one my mother used to sing: Hush-a-bye, there’s a fly/We will watch him you and I/How he crawls/Up the walls/Yet he never falls. I sang it again and again during Kangaroo Care, clutching Simone’s be-tubed two-pound body to my chest, and it seems to soothe her even now that she is a very grown up nine pounds, nine ounces.

So what could be the matter? She is 10 weeks adjusted. Is there some sort of 10th-week baby depression and sleep drought that sets in about now? I’m going to have her Prevacid weight-adjusted tomorrow on the off chance that it was reflux related—which reminds me, someone wanted to hear about our long and wearying reflux battle (hopefully in a not-so-long-and-wearying entry), but I will have to get to that tomorrow because what with all the crying I haven’t had any time for studying.

I’m taking a CLEP test on Saturday. IN MATH. I hadn’t initially planned to study for it, as I am taking the “College Mathematics” test, which is more or less the equivalent of “Math for Poets.” I used to teach SAT courses for The Princeton Review, after all—math included. Sure, that was six years ago, but how hard can it be? Ha! Ha ha ha! Oh ho ho!
It turns out I remember very little of this magical number combining science. The last time I took a math class was precalculus in the 10th grade, and I can’t remember what a rational number is, much less what in god’s name I’m supposed to do with an inverse function. Also, for the test I’ll be given access to a graphing calculator, a contraption I’ve never used before. I don’t care for calculators, personally, but for all I know they won’t allow scratch paper and I will have no choice but to contend with all those confounding buttons.
Thus I’m off to stare at equations. I hope you all have a lovely night filled with anything but algebra.

I have to say, your comments were a tremendous relief. Between my lack of a third trimester and subsequent post-birth paranoia, I never got around to buying or reading any baby books, with the exception of my well-worn copies of 101 Potentially Crippling Disorders of Prematurity and Through the Plexi-glass: Alice’s Adventures in Wondering-whether-her-baby-will-live-Land. Normal, everyday babycare concepts remain foreign to me, and for all I knew I was supposed to be spending three hours a day alternately teaching Simone Swahili and taking her on sun-dappled walks through a nature preserve. I exaggerate, of course, but I have felt I should be getting outside for outings and spending more time rolling around on the floor with the baby while also managing to call the insurance company and buy toilet paper and eat my vegetables. Each weekend I plan to catch up on work and writing and home so that in the future I will have only the daily maintenance—a tall order in itself—to dispatch, but it never seems to happen. So it was nice to hear that I am not the only mother who feels the days rush by in a disordered clump. Even right now, knowing that Simone is happily asleep in her bassinet, I feel a little pain thinking about the fact that minutes are passing irrevocably, and shouldn’t I maybe run into the bedroom to pet her cheek a bit? In fact, I think I will.

I do not think much of the idea of holding a baby to a strict schedule, and it wasn’t so much a desire to do so that motivated that last post as my confusion about how a typical day with a two-ish month old baby unfolds, intentionally or un. These are the questions that didn’t get answered in the NICU, along with Tummy Time: how much is enough? and Why do baby socks have skid-proof bottoms?

They are happy questions to have. This afternoon, I nursed my cooing baby (THANK YOU DOMPERIDONE) after which she fell asleep in her swing while I loaded the dishwasher and wiped the counters and then settled in with my laptop to alternately type and watch her sleep, and though there was laundry on the floor and my hair was unwashed I felt I was doing exactly what I ought AND what I wanted—a rare pairing.

I have been trying to eat lots of fresh local produce lately, seeing as how it is Farmer’s Market season, and though I cannot hope to repay you for all you have done for me—patted my virtual head, dispensed advice, forgiven my appalling inability to return correspondence in a fashion anyone but a paleontologist would consider timely—I thought I would share a recipe I made up yesterday that turned out tastily. It is a panzanella, and it will benefit greatly from using the very best and freshest ingredients you can find because there is not much to it, and nothing to mask any deficiencies. I made it up as I went along, so I am calling it

ALEXA’S SEAT OF HER PANZANELLA

For two servings you will need:

Medium-sized container with lid
Olive oil
A nice balsamic vinegar
Dijon mustard—the fancier & stronger the better
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
The crusty ends of a loaf of good bread, torn into smallish pieces (I used a roasted garlic loaf I bought from the Farmer’s Market Bread Man, who is a sort of yeasty magician)
Tomatoes (2, roughly chopped)
Onion (1/2 of one small, diced)
Cucumber (one v. little, or 1/3 to 1/2 standard, chopped)
Olives (a handful or two, torn in half—I used Kalamata)
Pear (some, diced)
Soft goat cheese (tablespoonful)

1. Pour a bit of olive oil in your container—perhaps a couple of tablespoons.
2. Add some balsamic vinegar and a small glop of mustard.
3. Whisk.
4. Add salt and pepper, onion, and cucumber.
5. Put lid on container, shake vigorously
6. Add olives, pear, bread.
7. Shake again.
8. Add tomatoes, adjust seasoning
9. Stir or shake.
10. Stir spoonful of goat cheese throughout.
11. Transfer to pretty bowl and serve with wine.

If, like some, you are a vegan, simply omit the goat cheese. If you are a vegan who wants extra protein, add some chickpeas or pistachios or substitute soy cream cheese for the goat cheese. The goat cheese is awfully good, though, and I promise that mine is from goats who only produce milk in their spare time, when they are not playing whist or taking extension courses at the local community college.

Here is what you should end up with:

MMMMMMM.

I exercised yesterday for the first time in…well, in a long time, ok? So maybe it’s been a while. WHAT’S IT TO YOU?
The “eat less” part of losing weight is crushing my spirit and I thought I would approach the problem—the problem being, of course, MY ASS—from another direction (Behind?). Focusing on exercise seems like an especially good idea because it isn’t so much the size of my body that bothers me as the shape it is in. Or isn’t.
The point is, I exercised, and it was just as I remembered: painful and exhilarating. Afterward, my poor legs trembled—probably with fear that I would make them do another godforsaken plie—but I felt insufferably pleased with myself, and as if I probably deserved a pie for dinner, possibly a bacon and peach pie with salted caramel ice cream. I just made that up, and the fact that it sounds good should make it clear that my dinner last night was not entirely satisfying. It wasn’t spelt based, or anything, just not the cheesy orgy I felt I deserved after lifting my arms all the way over my head.
Today, however, my legs ache mightily and I am feeling disinclined to move, and thus I have remembered another aspect of exercise that has flummoxed me in the past: what do you do the day after? I don’t know that I could do the same workout again today without a handful of Percoset, and yet I should like to make exercising a daily routine. If I do something entirely different this afternoon, will I still be making progress, or do you need to keep at the same thing for a bit to see results?

On an entirely unrelated note, have you seen the insurance commercial featuring an old man who travels via giant umbrella? For those of you who have not seen it, Old Man Umbrella wanders about helping people, and at one point he happens upon a forest where two tow-headed moppets have broken their bicycle chain. Why they are bicycling in a forest is a matter for another time.
“Well, what’s going on here!?” asks the old man, chortling like a jolly, jolly sex offender. He offers them an umbrella ride home, which they stupidly accept. We don’t see what happens next, but I am certain it involves a child’s blood spattered foot protruding from the underbrush, and the familiar strains of the Law & Order theme song. Did no one ever tell these children not to accept a ride from any strange old man, regardless of how rosy his cheeks or large his umbrella? Do I have to specify to Simone that an unfamiliar person with a magical conveyance still qualifies as STRANGER DANGER?

In other news, I am writing a book. I wasn’t going to say anything, because I am a little embarrassed—I mean really, isn’t every asshole who’s ever taken a creative writing workshop writing a book? —but also because if nobody knows I’m writing a book, no one can sigh and shake his or her head in a disappointed fashion if I fail. But that strategy hasn’t worked so well for me in the past, and I am thinking a little accountability in this area wouldn’t be a bad thing. After all, I have never missed a freelance deadline, presumably because I treat that writing like a job, and not some equivalent of building model trains or collecting milk glass. So yes. Writing a book. Don’t get too excited, though, I have no book deal, and it may be that this manuscript never sees the outside of my apartment. Still, I’m writing it. For sport. For kicks, as the kids say.

Also exciting: I uncovered the purpose of the soft spot on an infant’s skull. Now that the apnea monitor is gone, I get a bit nervous when Simone is asleep at night, nervous that she may actually be sleeping THE SLEEP OF DEATH. I am loath to wake her by turning on the light to check her color, because possible wee corpse or no, Milk Lady needs her rest. Happily, I have discovered that while reclining upon my pillow I can reach through the bars of Simone’s bedside bassinet and check her pulse via fontanel. Well done, evolution!

I will leave you with proof that I am not the only creative type in the family, namely a song I overheard Scott singing to Simone. That MFA in poetry isn’t going to waste, you see. Feel free to sing it to your own children:

Big-Headed Baby/The villagers throw stones at you/You run away to a cave/Your only friend is the eel/He swims in the shallows/Big-Headed Baby

Have a lovely weekend.

On the 25th of June, Simone had her oxygen evaluation, a five-hour test designed to see whether she is ready to ditch the cannula and breathe regular old air like the rest of us. It isn’t the sort of thing you can study for, so I tried to compensate by doing some extra hand-wringing and tooth-gnashing prior to the event. Simone is on a tiny amount of O2 (1/16 of a liter), and the expectation had always been that she would be able to come off after her first evaluation, but I knew from experience that expecting the best only leads to trouble, so I was studiously preparing for the worst.

I had been instructed to bring diapers, wipes, bottles of milk, extra socks, an extra two-piece outfit, a blanket, and a Dani Sling (the sling that holds Simone upright on her angled crib mattress, prescribed for her reflux). The baby was to be free of any oils, lotions, or unguents, and I was told that she would need to have two feedings during the test, and to adjust her schedule accordingly. I was to arrive promptly at 9:15 a.m. This last part was the trickiest, as anyone who has attempted to go anywhere with a baby can attest, because the amount of time it takes to get ready and out of the house is wildly unpredictable, and adding in switching to the portable oxygen tank, the rearranging of feeding schedules, and the prohibition against putting a refluxy just-fed baby in a carseat…there was math involved, is all I am saying, but eventually, weighed down with an overflowing diaper bag, my laptop, the baby, and the oxygen—Madame Penguin clutched in my teeth—we made it down the three flights to the car and away we went.
The test is administered in a small windowless room in the special diagnostics laboratory, down the hall from the PICU. The room is on the third floor, but manages to give the impression of being located in a basement, possibly one reached by a series of dank and progressively more subterranean tunnels. The technicians hooked Simone up to a stunning variety of alarm and diagnostic machines. There were electrodes on her torso to measure heart rate and respiration, a pulse oximeter on her foot, two bands cinched around her chest and belly, and a sticky airflow detection strip under her nose and across her cheeks—all this in addition to a special cannula. She looked like someone’s science fair project, a more sophisticated potato-battery: with only a human baby and an assortment of cables I will provide electricity for all of metropolitan Fresno!

The test’s protocol called for her oxygen to be switched off. The pulmonologist had given the lab a series of parameters regarding how low Simone’s oxygen saturation could fall and for how long, and if she exceeded these parameters her oxygen would be turned back on and then slowly weaned as tolerated.
With the O2 off and wires plugged in, the technicians left the room to monitor the stream of audio and video transmitted via cameras mounted in the corners of the ceiling. The idea was to capture a typical day in the life of the subject, and so they told me to “go about my normal routine.” The room was dim, and it was just me, my science project baby, a crib, and one creaky wooden rocking chair. Oh, and the technicians: “If you need anything,” they said, “just wave at the camera.”

I don’t know what your “normal routine” with a baby looked like, but I am fairly certain that if it involved nothing but an infant, a windowless room, and a rocking chair, you are reading this post from the padded confines of a sanitarium. But then again, just imagine how much more agreeable a diaper blowout would be if you could signal the camera for help and wait for a fleet of technicians to swoop into your living room and whisk the soiled child from your arms.

Though it seemed as though it wouldn’t, the end of the test eventually arrived. And though her alarms rang several times, Simone had made it through without so much as a sniff of oxygen.
“I’m not supposed to say anything,” said the technician, “but she did really well.”
The report would be transcribed, after which the pulmonologist was to look it over and contact me with the results. Until then, Simone would remain on O2.
So I waited. And waited, for days and days, until last Thursday when a nurse called and said “Well, Dr. K thinks that Simone seems to be doing well on 1/16th of a liter, so he’d like to keep her on that amount and do another study in six to twelve weeks.”

The thing about trying not to get your hopes up is that it doesn’t always work. “That sounds sensible!” I said, with a brightness I didn’t feel, “Thank you for calling!” But before I hung up, I couldn’t stop myself from a plaintive question: “How bad was it? I’m just surprised, since she stayed off the O2 for the whole evaluation.”
“You mean on,” the nurse corrected me.
“No,” I said, “OFF.”

It turns out that the transcribed report had neglected to mention THAT ONE PERTINENT DETAIL, giving the impression that the technicians had been unable to transition Simone from the cannula and had thus done the entire test on her standard 1/16th of a liter.
“Oh,” said the nurse, once this had been made clear, “that changes everything.”

The doctor is re-examining the data and will call me with instructions, and while I wait I am imagining an alternate universe in which I hadn’t questioned the nurse and instead simply reported back to the pulmonologist in SIX TO TWELVE WEEKS. While I imagine this, I let out the occasional low growl.

I should hear something later today. I want to expect the worst, but am finding it difficult not to hope for something better.