There are moments of funny in all of this. The current one centers on the fact that when we arrived at the ICU on Saturday there was a sign on the waiting room door, stating that the Waiting Room Is Out of Order. All the furniture had been moved into the hall, so obviously they were serious about it. But it struck us as funny – the waiting room was out of order. They have since moved some of the furniture back in and opened the door, and it is pretty obvious that the room suffered from, as my little sister puts it, a ‘Water Event’. The smell of mildew is so strong in there that eventually my little sister and I dragged chairs back to the hall. We weren’t alone – there was another family there who had the same idea and we all shared a few smiles and small talk about the room.

I’m noticing that everyone we run into – in the waiting rooms or the elevators – seems so quick to make small talk. We all share the same exhausted, worried expressions, but the chance to chat about something as mundane as a damp carpet, or the fact that the elevators tend to make us nauseous, means that it’s just a few more seconds of not having to think about the real reason we are all there.

When we are there, my knitting helps keep me sane. It seems so silly to write that, but it gives me something to do with my hands, so I don’t pass the time while we are in the waiting room focusing on how slow the time is going while my dad is undergoing some new procedure or test or assessment.

My little sister, being a pastry chef and a lover of all things pastry, bakes when she is stressed or worried. So this afternoon she whipped up a bunch of things. My mom and dad were supposed to have friends over for dinner Friday night (obviously it was cancelled when this all exploded at us) and my mom had a batch of pretzel dough rising in the refrigerator. We weren’t sure how much longer the dough would last, so my sister cooked those up, along with brownies and muffins and other things, and brought them in to give to the ICU and Surgery staff. They tease that they are finding ways to keep my dad in the ICU longer just so they can get more goodies. They are lovely, wonderful, talented people in the ICU and they have been taking great care of my dad, but I am so looking forward to being able to put the ICU behind us, and never seeing them again. I suspect that this is a desire that they completely understand.

The whole thing is very much a roller coaster, and today was a day with a lot of downhill. My dad had been having problems moving his right leg, and they thought they’d taken care of it by giving him some blood thinners to clear any potential clots, but he woke up this morning and it was worse. So this evening they called in a neurologist to assess the situation. He talked to the three of us (my mom and my sister and I) to let us know how things were. The bad news is that it seems pretty likely at this point that my dad suffered a stroke during the surgery. The good news is that it was mild. His mobility on that side is limited, but the key here is that he does have some mobility, which means that the neurologist thinks the situaton is extremely rehabable, and he will (eventually) be okay. It doesn’t make it easier for my dad right now, since he’s frustrated and exhausted and a little scared, but it means that there is hope, and that is the thing I am holding on to very tightly right now.

My little sister called last night to say she was flying down because she needed to be *here* for this, so I picked her up this morning and we went to the hospital pretty much straight from the airport so we could be with my mom. The surgery took over five hours, and I cannot imagine having to sit there, waiting, alone. I think it was better for all three of us to be there together. We talked and laughed and asked the cardiac nurse a million questions when she came in to give us an update and we did a little bit of crying too, but managed to time it just right so only one of us was crying at a time. I brought my knitting because I knew I would do better with something to keep my hands busy – just focus on the stitches and the pattern and not on the clock and how it was going so slow and how it seemed like they should have come out to tell us it was done by now, minute after endless minute.

My dad had six bypasses done, which is a number that is high enough that if I think about it long enough I will start crying again so I am just thinking to myself ‘multiple bypasses’ and when it comes to the number there is a little bit of ‘la la la la’ going on in my head and maybe that makes me silly but I don’t care. The important part isn’t the number anyway; it’s that he went through the surgery with flying colors and the surgeon came out to say that it went really well, and everyone else kept telling us how well it had gone and how pleased they were with how he was doing.

They took him to ICU and told us we could see him in half an hour, so we got lunch at the hospital cafeteria and then went upstairs. I thought I was prepared for it because the cardiac nurse showed us a picture of what we would see – this figure in the bed with all the tubes and the machines – but I wasn’t prepared for how it would look on him. He looked so small and frail and still and my sister and I kind of lost it a little in the hallway outside his room, standing there holding each other without making any noise until we could pull it together again and not cry. He was still pretty much out when we saw him and he was doing a little coughing from the tube and my mom and I could tell it was really freaking out my sister even though she was trying really hard to stay calm. So my sister and I went and sat in the waiting area and we talked a little about all the crazy things that kept popping into our heads ever since we first found out about this, last night.

My mom wanted to stay until he woke up, so my sister and I headed home. We stopped at Ben & Jerry’s on the way because we were both in serious need of some comfort food and ice cream is definitely comfort food. Then we went to the grocery store and bought all the ingredients for pizza fondue and peach pie and came home and my little sister, who is a pstry chef, made the pie. My sole contribution was to hand her things from the cupboard and also take care of the crust, and let her roll her eyes at me because I do not own a pastry brush.

My sister and I were planning on eating dinner and then going back to the hospital to sit with my mom and see my dad if he was up to it, and also to bring her some pie and a tomato from her garden (because we stopped by my parents’ house on the way home and yes, this time I not only remembered that they have the alarm system, I managed to enter the right code and turn it off before any alarms went off and police were called) so she could share a little of the comfort too. But my mom just called and she is headed home, or actually, home first and then to our house to join us for fondue and pie. They’ve removed the breathing tube several hours ahead of schedule and my dad is responding to simple questions and he recognized my mom and has even been doing just a little teasing with the nurses, although he doesn’t stay awake for more than a few minutes because he’s still feeling the effects of the anesthesia. About halfway through the conversation my older sister called so I had one phone on each ear, on the line with my mom on the house phone and my older sister on the mobile phone, and it felt really good to pass on the good news and have such a good reason to laugh.

I am feeling a little bit jumbled right now. I’ve been dealing with some kind of lovely pressure headaches all week that keep slamming me down – had to leave work on Monday because I felt like I was going to throw up from the sinus pressure, and more have come, one for every day of the week. So I have not gotten a lot of sleep this week and I am feeling fuzzy and drained from that, but that is all very unimportant compared to the latest, which is that my dad went from going in to the doctor for a routine physical this afternoon to being scheduled for a stress test and then an angiogram and then for quadruple bypass surgery first thing tomorrow morning. My sisters and I are all trying to remain very calm and we are reminding ourselves that people get this kind of thing all the time and they come out perfectly fine, but it’s one thing to know that about random people we do not know, and another to face it when the one going under the knife is our dad.

So I am taking deep breaths and I am knitting lace because it requires me to focus on just the yarn and the needles and that doesn’t leave room for my sinus pressure-addled brain to go racing through all the what-ifs, and somehow we will all make it through tonight and tomorrow morning and come out the other side still okay. Please let this all come out okay.

Checkers has a service announcement for you

Really. She needs to know. Who?

(The paper bag she is sitting on, by the way, is my extremely high-tech cat hair and hairball repelling protective covering for my laptop bag, which is underneath. We are all about providing high quality lounging areas for the cats around here).

I went to a knitting group Friday night and it was lots of fun. We all got to discussing the importance of financial planning, especially for women, and then segued the conversation, completely seamlessly, into kntting with cobweb weight yarn. I do so love going to knitting group. You never know what topic is going to come up next, but it’s always guarenteed to be animated and fun.

My parents went to pick up the youngest nephew yesterday morning, and he spent the whole day with them. The first task of the day was to make a birdhouse, so when I went over to meet them for lunch, he proudly showed me all the birdhouse parts. He is 5 now, and chatters away at a mile a minute and I don’t always catch entirely what he’s saying, but it’s kind of fun to watch him go. I introduced him to the joy that is dipping your grilled cheese sandwich in ketchup, and then he and my dad went outside and washed cars, mine included. Or rather, there was some scrubbing, but there was also a lot of ‘grandpa, you can’t get me! grandpa!’ until my dad sprayed him with a hose and then he would tear across the lawn, squealing and laughing hysterically before racing right back to do it all over again. He is the goofiest little kid – I can see he inherited his sense of grace from the same place I got mine (or rather, my distinct lack thereof) because he is just as prone to oblivously walking into things as I am. He’s learning to read now and I suspect he’s going to be just as voracious a reader as his older brother is, once he gets the hang of putting all the words together.

I spent the rest of the day mostly being lazy, curled up in bed either napping or knitting. I’ve got this idea that I can finish a lace stole by next Sunday, as a donation for a silent auction (it’s also a great way to use up some lace yarn from my stash). Richard was off at a writer’s group brunch, so I had the house to myself, and spent the day watching fluffy shows on HGTV and occasionally poking at sleeping cats just to hear them squeak.

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Three fun things we’ve recently discovered:

The first one is Library Thing. It’s a really cool site where you can catalogue your entire book collection online. Naturally we did this (or rather, Richard did a majority of ours) because there are far too many times when we have a hard time remembering important stuff like which Terry Pratchett books we do or do not own. I also did a separate one for my knitting book library, just because I can.

The second thing we’ve recently discovered is the online cartoon Two Lumps. We’ve both read through the entire archive, and I’ve added it to my daily reads, mainly because the author has somehow managed to capture Azzie’s personality completely in Snooch.

And finally, the third fun thing we’ve found is the Sci Fi reality show Who Wants to be a Superhero?. I normally shy away from reality shows because they’re just so annoying (we will not discuss my current fixation on HGTV’s Design Star, because even the most determined of reality show avoiders have their weak moments), but this one had us both laughing hysterically from the start. We have even talked my parents into watching it (assuming we can ever figure out how to extricate the older episodes from our DVR to a videotape so they can catch up). It’s over-the-top cheese, and it’s silly and fun, and I am not-so-secretly rooting for Major Victory to win, if for no other reason than his delighted exclamation, when he saw his costume make-over for the first time, of ‘Captain Shiny Pants!”.

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Finally, one more brief note about my girly parts (if you want to avoid, check out Kitten Wars instead!).

When they were done with me yesterday they gave me a bunch of paperwork, most of which I did not look at because they also gave me some very happy drugs which made me kind of spacey and floaty, and also, bizarrely, they gave me a picture. I am not sure why they gave me a picture of the inserted plugs, because I didn’t ask for it and I have no idea what I am supposed to do with it, but now I have this picture. Brightly colored, no less. So far the best suggestion for what to do with it has come from an online acquaintance, who suggested that i silk-screen it on a t-shirt and write on the back ‘Ask me about my Fallopian Tubes!’.

Before I begin, a quick warning. This entry has to do with girl parts. If you’d rather not read about this kind of thing, now’s your chance to flee (I recommend checking out Cute Overload because the sheer cute can make you forget *anything*).

I remember when we were first given all the information about ‘becoming a woman’ back in elementary school. My mom gave us her own version of the talk so by the time the elementary schools got around to it it wasn’t all that much of a shock, but I still remember it anyway, because the information came with little booklets about what would be happening to our bodies. And I remember very well that the booklets discussed the possible side effects. Mild cramping, is how they put it. Nothing to be concerned about. Do a few sit-ups and they’d all go away just like magic. Otherwise, becoming a woman (and all that it entails) was going to be a magical, marvelous journey and weren’t we all lucky we got stuck with the double-X chromosome and got the joy of experiencing it.

What the books never told us young women-to-be is that sometimes the cramps are so bad that you end up doubled over in pain and no amount of asprin or Motrin is going to make them go away once they kick in. And sometimes the flow is so severe that no amount of padding will prevent you from ruining yet another pair of pants or shorts or skirt. And that sometimes ‘becoming a woman’ comes with a premenstrual dose of suicidal depression that makes you ponder all the ways you might want to off yourself until it finally dawns on you that this happens about once a month and maybe next time you can be better prepared for it when you feel like knocking back a bottle of pills, just because. And the books don’t tell you about a whole lot of things that come marching into a young woman’s life, hand in hand with good old Aunt Flo, because the writers of the books think that if they don’t tell you these things, why, they won’t ever come true, and also, that all those nasty side effects are just in your head because you are a silly emotional girl and you don’t know what you are talking about anyway. So you spend years wondering what the hell is wrong with you, and only if you are lucky enough to have someone in your life who has experienced this kind of ‘joy’ in becoming a woman, do you ever know you aren’t alone.

So based on all of this I went on the pill in college, because I was sick and tired of the emotional and physical side effects and truly, there is better living through chemistry after I got over the initial few months of the body adjusting to the hormones and me being a complete bitch to live with in the process.

It’s not been the ideal situation – I’ve tried a few other options over the years (the most memorable being the brief stint on Depo, which required a shot in the butt every three months and which came with the nifty benefit of a rather quick weight gain, and also a level of bitchiness on my part so high that even *I* could see it) but I have always ended up going back to the pill because at least I knew what to expect. But there have been side effects of being on the pill, both physical and emotional, and if it was just me all by myself maybe I would just grin and bear it, but that’s not been the case for some time now, and so I have spent a bit of time over the past few years pondering other options. I knew that whatever I ended up with, I wanted it to be permanent, because while the ‘better living through chemistry’ was effective for a while, the negatives have been far outweighing the positives for too many years now, and I didn’t want to just switch to yet another temporary method, again and again and again.

Alas, no doctor out there is willing to take out girl parts unless there is a valid medical reason. And when I was younger, any inquiry into getting something more permanent done was met with the equivalent of a fatherly pat on the head that I might change my mind (being female and thus, of course, prone to fits of indecision, especially when it comes to the subject of children, hormones, and other emotional things like that). But once I passed the magical age of 30, suddenly the attitude started to change. I found a doctor who didn’t automatically assume that I coudn’t possibly know what I am talking about when I say I really do not want to be a mom, and I found a procedure that seemed like it would be a good fit, and after doing a lot of reading and a lot of soul-searching and talking with Richard about it, I decided that it was time.

There have been referrals, and appointments, and even a last minute pregnancy test because they want to make very sure that they weren’t sterilizing a woman who might be pregnant (this last part amused me the most, since this is the one test I sort of assumed I’d never be taking), and all of this has been going on since before we left for Ireland. Because the procedure I wanted is something fairly new, it took a little extra time, but the doctor I spoke with was very excited because she wanted to get it started at the hospital since she learned of it, and I ended up approaching her at just the right time.

Friday morning, after a few months of referrals and discussion and waiting for appointments, I went into the hospital and was their very first patient to go through this procedure at that location. It’s not like I was in any danger – the methods they use are things the doctor’s done before, so this was just one little extra step, and it’s such a simple little process that none of us were worried at all.

It feels a bit odd now, to have it finally be over, but it’s a good feeling, to know that everything can finally settle back into place and sort itself out. I am mentally preparing myself for the return of the killer cramps and possibly even the one-day-long suicidal depression, but the chances of either of those returning after being on the pill for so long are pretty slim. Even so, I know how to handle those. I am okay with those. I dealt with them before and I can deal with them again, especially since this time around I’m not some naive young thing reading a little book full of lies about how wonderful and exciting ‘becoming a woman’ will be.

Checkers has been off the Paxil entirely since last weekend, because she finally figured out the pill-in-the-wet-food trick and that was the end of any hope of pilling her any further. And Rosie is back down to pills every other day.

What this means is that things are finally getting better. In fact, they’re getting a lot better. Rosie’s back to wanting to play and even doing a tiny bit of skittering, which is a huge relief. There’ve been one or two screeches from Checkers’ hideout in the linen closet, but as near as we can tell, it only happens when one of the cats pokes his or her head in, and Checkers gives them the benefit of her opinion. Even Rosie’s been screeched at, but the big difference is that now Rosie just walks away. She isn’t lying in wait for Checkers any more, or chasing her down. She’s just shrugging her shoulders and walking away. The drama is now only on Checkers’ part, and not on Rosie’s and wow, what a difference and what a relief.

The best part of all of this is that Checkers is finally coming back out of her shell. She’s not a carrying kind of cat, but she will let me cart her around tucked under one arm for short distances, and I’ve been taking her further and further out of her little self-imposed exile. Yesterday it was like the doors were opened for her for the first time – suddenly she’s coming out of the bathroom on her own, trotting around the computer room, rummaging in the maze of boxes under the desk with the server, hopping up and down from the windowsills, and even hanging out on the cat tree, hopping from one level to the next and peering around the corner to see what’s going on in the rest of the house, all the while keeping up a running commentary on the whole experience. She’s spending a lot more time sprawling on the floor and a lot less time lurking.

I’m feeling like it’s too soon to declare this a permanent change, but oh, I am really hoping that it is. It’s obvious she’s feeling more confident now that Rosie’s stopped the harrassment, and Rosie’s feeling a lot better now that we’re tapering her off the medication, and even if Sebastian still feels the need to hiss at Checkers when he sees her (sigh), the important thing is that Checkers doesn’t care. The progress we’ve seen in the past week has been amazing and I am really, really hoping that it continues.

The house call vet came over Friday morning, and for the first time I was faced with an interesting dilemma. Usually when she comes over, I chase down Zucchini and lock him in the bathroom upstairs, but this time I couldn’t exactly do that, because that’s where Checkers is still hanging out. So I decided to take a chance, and when I noticed he was lurking in the kitchen cupboard in the corner, I stuck a chair in front of the door so he couldn’t escape and figured I’d see how that worked out. Unfortunately, when I tried to extract him, he freaked out completely. I’d hoped to drag him into the laundry room, but that wasn’t going to happen. So we let him go and the vet and I decided that, based on the speed at which he flew up the stairs, he was obviously feeling well and healthy and could forego the usual yearly checkup. Instead, she left me the syringe with his booster vaccinations and I managed to corner him two days later so I could inject it.

For being the smallest cat in the house, Checkers required the most restraint. I burrito-wrapped her in a towel and between the two of us we managed to get her checked and vaccinated and also clipped her claws (something I’ve not been able to do on my own). The rest of the cats were almost boring by comparison to Checkers and Zucchini. Looks like we’ll need to take Rosie and Sebastian off for some tooth work, but otherwise everyone’s in good health.

Too bad the cats can’t take any comfort in the fact that we’ve had to go off for our own tooth work. Both Richard and I had three cavities each to deal with. He got his filled last week; I had mine done this week. Between us and the cats it’s been all about health maintenance lately, but the important part is that it’s just the usual stuff. No one shows any sudden weight loss or other weird symptoms. The only issue we’ve still to deal with are Checkers and Rosie (and the medication seems to be working better, enough so that we’ve been able to start slowly weaning them both off), and some antibiotics for Tangerine. After the past two years of issues with Allegra and Rebecca, it’s a bit strange to be faced with such mundane issues that can be dealt with by the mere act of giving a pill.

You wouldn’t think, to look at him, that he just spent the past HOUR hollering at the top of his lungs, at absolutely nothing.