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This is how this morning was supposed to go:

I wake up around 6:15 am. My Dad’s girlfriend Jean drops him off at the hospital at 6:45 am. She then drives the five minutes to my house to spend the day watching my kids. I am showered, dressed, have my bag packed and am ready to go. I kiss my husband and kids goodbye, and leave.

This is how today actually went:

6:40 am “Shit! Chris! We overslept, Jean will be here in 20 minutes! Shit!”

6:45 am “Shit, I forgot to make formula last night and the pitcher is empty. I’m putting water on to boil and hopping in the shower.”

7:00 am “Shit, is Jean here already? I’m not even dressed. Why is the dog barking like that?”

7:00.1 am “ELIZABETH!! ELIZABETH!! OH MY GOD!!!”

7:00.2 am “WHAT? WHAT’S WRONG? OH MY GOD IS THAT SMOKE???”

7:00.3 am

Apparently I have not given myself enough reasons to believe that I might need a new antidepressant this week.

Don’t ask me why I didn’t hear the smoke detector going off. Just don’t.

It wasn’t the saucepan boiling dry, it was the coffeemaker which was sitting on the stove next to the pan. The glass cooktop surface gets very hot, and the plastic started melting and then whooooosh. Chris said there were flames shooting up around the coffeemaker. FLAMES. Edited to add: As if I don’t already feel like enough of a dumbass, it turns out that what I actually did is turn the BACK burner on, the one the coffeemaker was sitting on, and not the FRONT burner under the saucepan. And I turned it on High to get the water boiling. I still can’t wrap my head around just how lucky I was that the kitchen curtains or cabinets didn’t ignite.

Not wishing to subject my loved ones to spending the day in a house that smelled like burned plastic, we had to quickly throw together everything three children would need to spend the day at a different house, including:

A fully stocked diaper bag, a can of formula, four clean bottles, a bib, a baby spoon, two jars of food, the Pack-n-Play, a change of clothes, toys, more toys, books and DVDs, snacks, toys, toys, and toys. Jean and the kids spent the day hanging out at my Dad’s house (more room than Jean’s), and the dog spent the day hanging out in our backyard with access to the garage if needed for shade. According to the neighbor kid, he whined a lot.

The dog, who I have been bitching about for weeks because he barks all the damn time? SAVED OUR FUCKING LIVES TODAY. He can bark all he wants, and have cooked chicken breast for dinner tomorrow night. And sleep on my bed.

You can never have too many conversations with your children and loved ones about what to do if there is a fire in your house. You must discuss all possibilities-what to do if the fire is right outside their bedroom, what to do if they are up watching cartoons and smell smoke and Mom and Dad are still sleeping, whether or not to worry about saving the dog, cat, XBox or Bionicles (NO), whether or not to go back into the house because they can’t find Mom or Dad (NO), whether or not to try to carry the baby out of the house (NO, unless Mom and Dad are obviously unconscious). Man, there is just no way that is not going to be a hell of a conversation to have during dinner.

Please, for the love of God or whomever you find holy, check every smoke detector in your house RIGHT NOW. Drive to Home Depot and buy a small fire extinguisher for your kitchen. And whatever you do, do NOT, I repeat NOT, store your plastic coffeemaker on your glass cooktop stove, just because you’re too lazy to find another place to store the toaster.

This morning could have been a very, very, VERY bad day for me and my family, in more ways than one. Tomorrow, I’m refilling the Wellbutrin XL.

edited to add: Javajabber’s comment reminded me of something else that you need to discuss during the what to do in a fire conversation-HOW to get out. We live in a Ranch-style house, so we told the boys to climb on the dresser and kick out the screen in the window if they can’t get out of their room. If you live in a two-story house, you can buy fire ladders that hook on to the windows to climb down. Practice doing this.

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Hey guys, just wanted to update you all o my Dad’s surgery today. I’ve been sitting here for six hours, and then in come these two guys with wireless monitors and keyboards and now I’ve got an Internet connection. Because being unplugged was going to kill me, you know.

My Dad is out of surgery, we are waiting for the surgeon to get a pathology report back and for my Dad to be taken up to the ICU. The surgeon was able to remove the entire esophageal tumor without having to remove any stomach. He did, however, find a piece of small intestine that looked and felt abnormal, so he removed that as well. i don’t know yet what “abnormal” means exactly, but whatever it was it is out now.

Because his lungs had to be deflated during the surgery, the plan is to keep him sedated and on a breathing machine, I assume at least until tomorrow. Five hours in surgery is a lot of trauma for a person’s body, and they want him to rest without having to struggle to breathe. So I am bracing myself for the sight of him covered in tubes and wires, but I’ll take that over the alternative any day.

Thank you all for your suportive comments and emails. Just knowing that you are all out there thinking about me and my family today helps so much. I love you guys.

In a separate post, I have a story to tell you. You are NOT going to believe what I did this morning.

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Today marks the 37th season of Sesame Street. And while I’m still reeling from the fact that I am older than Sesame Street, I’m also joining Mrs. Davis from The Lovely Mrs. Davis Tells You What To Think in commemorating the occasion by posting about my favorite childhood books and TV shows.

How old am I? I am SO OLD, when I was a kid there were only four channels on TV. FOUR. ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS. We also had this huge box that sat on top of the TV with a giant dial that turned the antenna on the roof (remember those?), and on really clear days we could pull in CKLW, a Windsor, Ontario station that showed “Bill Kennedy at the Movies.” My parents dictated everything we watched, except on Saturday morning when my brother and sister and I watched cartoons. I know Sesame Street was on, but I honestly don’t remember watching it. When I was a pre-schooler, I have no memory of watching TV at all.

I do, however, have a crystal-clear memory of being in the second grade, during a rainy day when outside recess was cancelled, and we sat on the floor in our classroom and watched “The Electric Company” on a TV that was wheeled in on a cart. I’ve looked at the DVD of the show, and none of it rings any bells, except for one thing. There was a song, used to teach kids how to pronounce “tion” at the end of a word. The only part of the song I remember is the chorus, which went “t i o n shun shun shun shun!” So I would like to buy that DVD, and share that little bit of my childhood memory with them.

Books, however, are an entirely different story. I started reading when I was three. I progressed from Golden Books to chapter books by first grade. The first book series I read was “Little House on the Prairie”. My Mother had to write a note to my first grade teacher giving permission for me to check out those books from the “older readers” section of the school library, and I had to read a page out loud to my teacher to prove I could read all the words. This, I remember doing.

My boys have shown no interest in the “Little House” books, not even the “boy” ones like “Farmer Boy“. I’m hoping Kaitlyn will want to read them, and will be careful with my first edition paperbacks. My Mother saved every book she ever bought me, and I now have them in carefully packed boxes in the basement. I’m hoping Kaitlyn will want to read “Harriet the Spy“, “The Moffats“, “All-of-a-Kind Family“, and “Understood Betsy“. I want her to read “B is for Betsy“, “Papa Pellerin’s Daughter” (out of print), and “Laura’s Luck“.

There’s “The Good Master“, and “The Singing Tree“, “A Wrinkle in Time“, and “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler”.
And then there are my Raggedy Ann and Andy books. I have first edition hardcovers of every book in the series. These are extra-carefully packed away. I got them out once to show Nathan, hoping he would share my excitement at the wonder and magic of the stories. But he didn’t, because the stories are about dolls and stuffed animals. If Kaitlyn doesn’t want to read them either, then I will just keep them for myself. Because there is NOTHING that will make me part with those books.

Even though I have much stronger and fonder memories of the books I read as a kid, I still have great respect for Sesame Street. We’ll be tuning in to see the new season and meet the new Muppet Abby Cadabby. In fact, my husband, who I never think is paying attention to things like kids’ TV shows, told me about it today, and said “they have a new cute little Muppet this season.” Awwww! He is such a Dad.

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Subtitle, courtesy of Fancypants: Happy, Shiny, BULLSHIT. Scroll down for parts I & II

PART THREE:

Bullshit: Running around in my head, I keep hearing that song-”Back to life, back to reality, back to the here and now, yeah”. The warm fuzzy feeling that I brought back from BlogHer and kept wrapped around me has been replaced by my old familiar friend anxiety.

This is going to be another one of those really sucky months. Three days, in particular, that shall suck to the highest degree, and bring all kinds of fresh hell to the thoughts that keep me up at night.

Starting with Sunday, August 20th. The double funeral, double memorial service for my Mother-in-law and Grandma-in-law. Two women, who died under very different circumstances, both cremated, both to be laid to rest in the same cemetery.  A gathering of the remaining daughter, the children and grandchildren, siblings and cousins and their families. The circumstances of one death almost overshadowing the unfortunate timing of the other. A picnic, at a park famous for it’s gardens, with food and children running and playing, and yet the cloak of sadness and loss on top of everything else. A sad day.

Monday, August 21st.  A visit to a pediatric urologist, to see if there is a physical reason why my son occasionally wets the bed at night. And I’m sorry in advance, honey, if some day in the future one of your friends unearths my archives and finds this post. I suspect the doctor won’t find anything, but I still have to take all three kids to the appointment, and then figure out what to do with Nathan and the baby while Ryan and I see the doctor. There may be unpleasant tests involved, I don’t know. I really hope not.

Tuesday, August 21st. The biggest cause of my feeling like a load of bullshit has been dumped directly onto me, eradicating any residual good feelings I had. At 6:30 am, my Dad goes into surgery for an esophagastric resection. I tried to find a good link, but reading what Google returned in the search made me so upset that I couldn’t continue. Dad has a tumor where his esophagus meets his stomach, at the gastric sphincter. It is very small, so small that it didn’t show up on a CAT scan, but did show up during  whatever that test is called where they put a tube down into your stomach with a little camera on the end. The surgery involves cutting out a section of both esophagus and about a third of the top of his stomach, and then joining the sections together. His surgeon told him that it was considered “very difficult” surgery, but that it is the best way to ensure the removal of the tumor.

Afterwards, he should be able to eat regular food the next day, but will also have a feeding tube for supplemental nutrition. He will leave the hospital with the feeding tube in place. He is hiring a nurse to come every day to treat him. I don’t know the details of that yet. Here’s what worries me the most:

1. My Dad does not handle anesthesia well. When he had surgery after he broke his back, he experienced post-anesthesia hallucinations. He spent two days talking nonsense, at one point loudly ordering the “nazis” out of his room. This scared the bejesus out of me, and I don’t look forward to it happening again.

2. He lives alone. And although he has a wonderful girlfriend who I’m sure will do everything she can for him, she won’t be there every minute of the day. He is 72, needs a cane to get around, and eats lunch and dinner out. So this will require a major lifestyle change for him. Not to mention that the only way I can be with him during the day is IF I can find someone to watch all three kids.

3. “Very difficult” surgery. The fact that they are removing a TUMOR. We haven’t even heard about the likelihood of chemotherapy. The word CANCER. The fact that I am his designated patient advocate and may be called upon to confirm his D.N.R. order or sign papers that say no, he does not want to be kept alive on machines.

So there you have it. Between now and then, I plan to continue on as normal. But I’m sure I’ll have an even harder time sleeping next Saturday night, and then I don’t know what I’ll be doing. I may find lots of time to lose myself in the Blogosphere, or I may stay off entirely to preserve my energy.

Sigh. Thanks for listening. I’m so glad I have you all to talk to.

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Subtitle, courtesy of Fancypants: Happy, Shiny, BULLSHIT. Scroll down for Part One.
PART TWO:

Shiny: One of the items in our BlogHer swag bag was a free 3-Month trial of Weight Watchers Online. It had a promotion code that needed to be entered at signup to change the cost of the program to zero dollars. It was like a sign from the heavens. I had started a new “eating plan” (sounds better than diet, right?) right before my MIL died, and had since gone waaaay off the track. But after seeing the photos from BlogHer and wishing I was happier with the way I looked, I decided to take the plunge. Besides, I’ll be 40 in January, and I want to lose 40 pounds by then.

So I enthusiastically went through the sign up process, except I made one teeny mistake. After entering the promotion code, I didn’t click the “Update Pricing” button. Without the clicking of that button, the registration program doesn’t recognize the promotion code at all, and my confirmation page showed that I was charged the full price.

I immediately fired an email to Weight Watchers Customer Service. I explained all about BlogHer, about the tote bag and the free 3-Month trial, and how I accidentally didn’t click the button, and how I didn’t want to be charged, I wanted 3 months FREE.

I was EMPHATIC in that email. I threw CAPS around as if I were punching the air for emphasis. I made sure that IMPORTANT WORDS AND PHRASES like “free” and “promotion” and “FREE” were properly capitalized. I was sure it was clear as day why I was emailing them and what the problem was.

Oh, the confusion on the part of Weight Watcher Customer Service. They didn’t understand these words I was using, like “free” and “BlogHer sponsor” and “HELP”. It took several exchanges before I finally begged for someone who could understand what I was saying to please respond to any further emails.

Today, I received an email from a wonderful lady named Rosa at WWCS. SHE UNDERSTOOD. She cancelled my not-free membership, issued a refund to my credit card, and asked me to sign up again using the free promotion code. Getting something for free and having someone go the extra mile for me? Shiny.

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