I Miss You, Face Sleepers.

My plans for the week got derailed a bit when Simone threw up last Tuesday night, taking her virus airborne and infecting Scott. Why a sick husband should cause more challenges and disruptions than a sick child is a mystery I am not qualified to solve, but there you are. Our household descended into chaos, and I was just beginning to claw my way out yesterday when I stupidly decided to call my clinic about the weird pain and numbness I’d been having in my calf-y shin area since the day before, and the nurse I spoke to more or less insisted I go to the ER at once. It turns out that when you add calf pain, numb skin, a clotting disorder, and lots of recent air travel, you get MA’AM, I NEED YOU TO BE SEEN RIGHT AWAY MA’AM ARE YOU HAVING ANY CHEST PAIN?
(I wasn’t having any chest pain, but while I was waiting for an ultrasound I had a panicky moment in which I was convinced that my heartburn was something else, and then all at once I seemed to be having trouble breathing and had to talk myself down from Pulmonary Embolism! to Highly Suggestible.)

As irksome as it was to spend four hours in the hospital on a Monday on which I had multiple deadlines, I will admit that it was nice, for once, not to be the alarmist. I only called the clinic in the first place because of a rule I have—it’s complicated, but basically I use a formula to weigh the embarrassment/inconvenience of a thing against the awfulness of the possible outcome of NOT doing it (and the likelihood of attendant guilt/thoughts of if only). It’s the reason I do not drink and drive, even a little, even though it results in a lot of securing rides just to go out for dinner. (I know it’s legal to have a small amount of alcohol before driving, but the way I look at it, should I be in a car accident and hurt someone, how would I feel knowing that I’d had a drink, however small? Short of buying a personal breathalyzer, how can I know that the wine I am certain has failed to render me even tipsy hasn’t impaired my reflexes?)
Anyhow, I used this system to decide that though I felt silly calling about my leg, I’d feel much sillier if I didn’t and then had, say, a massive stroke. And you know the rest.

Happily, I am clot free, and the doctor’s best guess is that my knee’s sac of joint fluid got pinched off and ruptured, sending knee juices (hope you’ve already eaten!) into my calf. The human body is truly a revolting contraption. This is an injury common to arthritics and sporty people, neither of which I am, but it’s what we’re going with for now. Of course, just to keep things interesting, I woke up with a fever last night and seem to have contracted whatever the rest of the family was infected with, which I predict will subside just in time for Simone to start preschool (whole ‘nother post, that) next Tuesday and bring home a fresh crop of microbes.

None of this was what I meant to write about, however. In Seattle, I promised my lovely readers I would do another Google search post, just for them, and that I would do it by the end of August. Imagine my surprise to realize that the end of August is NOW, and so this morning I propped my feverish, tingly-legged self on the couch and, for the first time in ages, reviewed my analytics. I limited the search to the past month, and scrolled through the 500-or-so search terms that had led people to my humble website. There were sad, worried queries about IVF or miscarriage, practical ones about girdles and bikini waxes and my book, but…where were my face sleepers, my girls with organisms?
They were nowhere to be found. There was nothing. Not one amusing search. The closest I came was a house does not rest upon sand but rather upon a woman which, I will admit, sounds awfully uncomfortable, but I suspect that this is merely a misremembered quote.

A few months ago—okay, six—I went through my analytics, and though I didn’t have time to write a post, saved some of the choicer search terms in a Word document. There were the disturbing [“fresh beat band" +"mindy cohn”] and electric boa constrictor corset. The oddly ethnically specific swedish flashers and adorable yet poignant how to write a true story about myself. There were the earnest and misguided is my house hunted and should congratulations be all caps before first name with exclamation point. There was meerkat bathroom habits. There was what may have been a search conducted by an alien coming upon a human baby for the first time (screamy creature), and the eerily appropriate solipsistic whimsy, which domain name I should probably just go ahead and register, already.

Now, though…nothing. Mostly variations of my name and my blog name: alexa flotsam, alexa floatsom, alexa half baked, alexa simone preemie book. Is this the price of mild success-ishness? I remember installing my first stat program and seeing my first bizarre Google search, back in 2006: getting sex from strangers in the woods. I suppose it’s a good thing, that more people are actually coming here on purpose, looking for me rather than amorous woodsmen. But…at the price of meerkat bathroom habits? Is this a sacrifice I am willing to make?