Peripheral Covid Stuff and My Weird-Ass Kids

 So Angus texted us this the other night:

So I had a minor heart attack. Then he texted this:

So naturally I disowned the little shit. 

Taking Eve to get tested was easier than I expected, considering we had been hearing about five-hour lineups at testing centers in Ottawa. We called a place a little further out at nine a.m. and got a window of between eleven and twelve. She was supposed to be in school, but for math she is able to follow in online if she can't be there, so she was listening to the lesson on her phone as we drove. 

We found the place and parked. 

It was a community center and the parking lot was surrounded by little apartment buildings, so we sat for a a bit while Eve's class was on a break looking at how people decorated their little entrances or balcony railings - window boxes, a line of inukshuks, patio lights. Then a truck pulled up with a really cute dog hanging out the window, so we squealed at him for a while. Then we talked about nonsense. At one point Eve said "do you know that if you pet a bird under its wings it messes it up and it will chronically masturbate?" I lifted my jaw off my chest and whispered "how... does a bird masturbate?" Eve threw her arms out and yelled "I DON'T KNOW! It must have a penis, right? Does the bird have sex? Where the bird penis at? WHERE IT AT?" Then I looked at her phone and said "you're on mute, right?" and she lunged for it in desperation.

They called us and checked her health card number and told her to come to the back door. She went in and I drove around to the front door and she came out almost immediately. She'd been pretty nervous about the test but said it wasn't bad at all (she had the two nostrils and throat swab - I have since been tested in just the one nostril and I did not KNOW my nostril went up that high, so I am glad she had a better experience).

So that was all good. Then we got home and I went on Twitter and experienced the weirdest instance of Bader-Meinhof phenomenon of my entire life:

And Then Angus Got Covid

 I spent the afternoon driving around doing errands, looking at pretty fall trees and listening to Blue Rodeo. I spent nearly a year listening almost exclusively to the Hamilton and Waitress soundtracks in the car and generally I regret nothing, but recently I've started feeling like I was cheating on all the other music, so I started letting my phone play a random mix of songs. This is highly entertaining, since we still have a family iTunes account, which means all of my music, all of the music we used to play for the kids, and all of Angus's music are combined. A random selection is apt to feature Ingrid Michaelson, Sara Bareilles, The Wiggles, David Bowie, Juice WRLD and YoungBoy Never Broke Again, leading to text conversations like this:

Anyway, Blue Rodeo was good medicine today, particularly "I see a world so tired and scared of living on the edge too long" (also gratifying to see the 'u' in "Rose-Coloured Glasses", fuck you Google Chrome).

So after the nightmare of the Urgent Care ward, my dad was moved into a still-pretty-nightmarish different Covid-safe ward and I couldn't visit for a day and a half until his Covid test came back negative. Then he was moved into a palatial room in Acute Care - spacious, only two beds, two windows with a killer view of the green space. We settled into a nice visit routine - I would come, bring him anything he needed, take away dirty laundry and whatever else, sit for a bit, make his bed if he was in the chair. I found an old ipad and took everything off it except Netflix, and loaded a couple of books onto his Kobo. 

I loved the simplicity of his plan for the first couple of days:

We also had fun trying to emulate the pain scale faces:

I was mistaken for his wife for the first of several times, which everyone assured me was because he looks so young and not the obverse. I found it pretty funny either way.

Then he was moved to a less-nice room in less-acute care, which was okay - good, in fact, because it meant he was improving -  but we were getting a little frustrated with the lack of information. I always kind of knew this, but it was made even more clear how you can show up to the actual hospital every day and still leave knowing very little about very much. The nurses are great, but they are overworked and not given all the information. The doctors are overworked and not around much, so unless you happen to time it right, it's pretty hard to get an answer about how things are moving. 

The O.T. staff were working pretty hard to convince him that he should go to a rehab centre for a few weeks. I didn't think this was necessarily a bad idea, I just knew he wasn't going to go, no matter what they said. Also, they said it could take a month off his recovery, which didn't seem like a great return for how much I thought it would impact his mental state. We were all getting the impression that they thought we were rushing to get him home for our own convenience, which, I mean, they didn't know us, so we weren't offended, just frustrated. 

We finally realized that trying to be kind and unbothersome was getting us nowhere, so we (and by 'we' I mean 'Matt' who did all the hospital telephone liaising - did I betray my gender, or just leverage patriarchal structures, or a mix of both? Whatever, it worked) adopted a slightly sterner tone. We also got some help from a friend who's an OT and got mobility aids in place in the bathroom and spare bedroom. 

So, after almost two full weeks in the hospital, we busted him out on his 80th birthday:

Getting him up the driveway was still a bit of an ordeal, but nothing like doing it at three a.m., with no walker, while he was bleeding internally. 

We parked him on the couch on the main floor for the day and came back to help him upstairs after dinner. He's been home for two weeks now and he's doing amazingly well - he's done the stairs by himself both yesterday and today. I actually panic a bit thinking about how lucky it probably was that the stomach bleed manifested itself so violently when it did, because if it hadn't he would likely still be feeling dreadful and we would assume it was just because of the fall. This kind of bleed is often very slow too, so who knows how long it's been affecting him. He's eating more than he has in months.

So just as this was winding down, Angus's girlfriend's suitemate at school tested positive for Covid. Angus and Mary both got tested and found out they were positive the same day I took Eve to get tested here because she had a slight fever. They were both pretty shaken, but asymptomatic except for loss of smell and taste - fully for Mary, partially for Angus. They went to her family's trailer which is at a lake halfway between their college and Mary's parents. Her mother was delivering food and they had internet so they could be online doing coursework. Once he got there he said he realized the world wasn't ending and it wasn't the worst spot to hunker down and work (he's in third year biochemistry, which was always going to be tough, and obviously this bullshit on top of everything is not helpful). 

There were a few days where I would wake up and get confused about which thing I was supposed to be worried about. I couldn't remember which kid was positive and which kid was waiting for a result, and which one meant I should be monitoring myself for Covid symptoms and which one meant I just had to monitor myself for maternal guilt and fear. 

Anyway, between Mary's parents taking care of those kids, and our friends checking on us and bringing us groceries and apple crisp and flowers while we were isolating, it would have been sheer self-indulgent drama-seeking to freak out too much. Eve tested negative. Angus and Mary were released by the New York board of health on Tuesday - he went golfing, she went for a smoothie bowl. Things are still uncertain, of course (when are they not?), and the next crisis is probably not far off. For today I'll keep my rose-coloured glasses on.

And THEN

 So my dad had a good night on the couch, and we got him a walker and got him upstairs the next day. Then our friend Chris came - he was the best man at our wedding and we hadn't seen him for a couple of years. We had a great night, had several drinks, went to bed with our cellphones off, and in the morning realized my mom had called at 3 a.m. because my dad was vomiting blood. We have a landline, and she knows that, but for whatever reason she didn't think to call it, and honestly it was probably for the best because she called the ambulance and there wasn't much we could have done at that point anyway. 

So we waited again - we all walked over to my mom's and picked plums, actually, because they have a plum tree that was overloaded and it was a simple thing that we could get done while waiting -  and eventually they called and said I could go in, but because he had gastro symptoms the Covid protocol had been tripped, so I would have to wear full PPE to be with him. Which was fine, and it was good that they told me that, because when I got there and was directed where to go, he was in a room with the curtain open and there was no one around, so if I hadn't known I would have walked right in obliviously. 

I put on a gown, and gloves, and a face shield over my mask. I was worried that he wouldn't recognize me, but when I walked in he woke up from a doze and smiled at me and I gave him his glasses and the other stuff I'd brought. He was thirsty but was due for an endoscopy so he couldn't drink, but a nurse gave me some ice chips for him. The PPE was hideous - hot, itchy, cumbersome - and I had an overwhelming wave of gratitude for the health care workers that have to wear it for long hours, and an overwhelming wave of rage towards the morons whining about wearing a piece of cloth over their face to go grocery shopping.

The biggest challenge was helping him stand up so he could pee - he really felt like he needed to, and couldn't do it lying down. I was less worried about the embarrassment - we're both adults, shit needs doing, we do it - but it was painful getting him up and back down and he was gray with pain and it was all horrible, but it was done and that was good. Then he said "have you been here long?" and I said "what? No, I walked right in ", and he said "no, I mean employed here long" and I was like "DUDE, I'M YOUR DAUGHTER". He burst out laughing and said he thought Matt had just dropped stuff off. I said "Did you not wonder why I was hanging around so long? And why I suck so bad at all the nursing stuff?" He said "I was about to say 'my daughter is built just like you' and I said "DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES SAY THAT EVER". A little while later I was trying to get his oxygen sat thing back on his finger and it kept beeping and he said "it must be almost midnight" and I was like "Dad, it's almost seven, are you losing it?" and then realized he meant because the beeping sounded like a clock chiming and it was up to twelve. 

Thankfully, the endoscopy nurses showed up with the machine, and then the (insanely hot) doctor, and they did the endoscopy and then he came out to talk to me (took his mask off, which I guess was not totally kosher but maybe he sensed that I just needed a little pick-me-up) and said it was a bleeding ulcer in his stomach that was now cauterized, and he did great. 

They had given him some super-good drugs - after they took the tube out and asked him how he felt I heard him yell "I feel AMAZING!", so I waited until he was asleep and then went home. Matt had barbecued, and we sat with Chris outside until it got dark and all our twinkly solar lights came on and the weather was perfect, and we listened to the ball game. 

It felt like the day had been four days long, but on the whole it all trended to the positive. Both things that happened to him could have turned out to be much worse, so there was that to be grateful for. 

Vivian is All of Us, We Are All Vivian

 I think I have this problem where if I am in crisis, I don't want to blog about it until the crisis is resolved and I can tie it up in a single post with a witty bow on it. I am aware anyway that this is not really how life or blogging really works, but never has this been more apparent than in the past few months. Apart from the little fires of parenting and being the child of aging parents, there's -- *gestures broadly at everything* -- so, here I am, in varying degrees of varying crises, to share some fragmented thoughts and stories, with the caveat that my family tends to deal with grief and stress by deploying inappropriate humour, and not everyone finds us as charming and hilarious as we find ourselves.

So my dad fell down a few stairs while trying to put away the vacuum cleaner (like I always say, housework is ass, don't do it, it's dangerous). He couldn't put any weight on his right leg, and my mom was scared he'd broken his hip. He has back pain issues so, although he still goes grocery shopping and does other errands (as long as he can lean on the grocery cart he's okay), any other kind of walking or standing causes him a lot of pain. This means he's lost a lot of strength and mobility, so we were pretty worried. My husband and I went over to hang out while he waiting for the ambulance, on the floor in the entrance. One of the paramedics looked about his age (he just turned 80), but was calm, competent and funny - he told this joke about NASCAR standing for Non-Athletic-Sport-Centered-Around-Rednecks and also told us about that joke not going over well with a retired police officer he was treating. Just before they closed the doors of the ambulance, as I was heading to my car to go to the hospital, I yelled "hey Dad, Mom says you fucked up happy hour", and they laughed. 

At this point, Covid didn't affect our hospital experience a whole lot. I went and waited in the waiting room for about an hour and a half, then asked if they were going to let me see him or if I could just drop off some stuff for him. They let me go back and see him, but after about twenty minutes someone came to take him to x-ray, so they told me to go home and wait for a call saying what they'd found. So I did. Thankfully, this time he had a cellphone with him and I brought him a portable charger, so we were already miles ahead of last time. 

I came home, and within the next few hours we were told that he didn't have a hip fracture, which was awesome, and that he did have a hairline fracture in his femur, which was not, but still, no surgery and he could probably come home soon. We waited and waited and finally got the call to come pick him up at 11:30. We were overjoyed. This was very stupid of us on a number of levels.

So we got there around midnight and my husband parked in the parking lot and I went in to emerg to get him. Of course, the ortho guy had to sign off on him leaving, and this took three more hours. So we sat - him on his bed leaning on his walker, me in a chair. Around three, the guy showed up - he was actually very apologetic for being so late, which I didn't expect or require. Waiting is just what you do in hospitals. Then I realized that we were taking my father home at three in the morning with no walker, with a cracked pelvis. How the fuck did we think we were going to handle this?

The whole process of getting him up the driveway and up the stairs into the house, and up the stairs from the entrance, and over to the living room couch, where he would spend the night, was an odyssey unto itself. We found a stool with handles that he used kind of like a walker. We had a wooden chair with arms that he could rest in every few steps. It was terrible, but we managed it. We got him settled and went home to sleep for a few hours before going back to see if we could get him up the stairs to the second floor where he could stay for a few weeks and recover. 

Then the shit hit the fan in a whole different way, but back to sitting in the emergency room limbo, waiting for the ortho doc. It's basically a constellation of beds surrounding a nucleus of nurses and doctors at a cluster of desks in the center. At one point a man a few beds down came out of his cubicle with no shirt on. A nurse said "why aren't you dressed?" and he said "I can't find my clothes!' She said "no, your gown". He said "I'm going home now" and the nurse said "not quite yet". He said "it was a VERY RELIABLE SOURCE that told me I'm going home now." Beside us was an older woman who had actually broken her hip, and sounded like she had pretty advanced dementia. Her granddaughter was with her for a while and then left. It was sort of sad listening to her and the lack of privacy was upsetting - I shouldn't have known that her name was Vivian, but now I do. The nurse kept telling her that she was there because she'd broken her hip and said "you're sundowning" sympathetically. I did admire, though, how done Vivian was with everyone's bullshit. "You're in the hospital"; 'NO I AM NOT". "I WANT TO GO HOME" - at this point my dad was like, Girl, Same. Finally, one of the nurses asked her if her leg hurt and she said "No, I DIDN'T get a cookie." 

I really hope Vivian is okay, and also I might adopt this as my universal answer to all questions going forward. 

Various Dysfunctions

 I was just going to read my friends' blogs and not post today because I have just been limping along being sleepless and cranky and dumb lately, and who wants to read about that? But I promised myself I was going to try really hard to post every week no matter what, so here we are. 

Eve has her first bladder infection - I didn't specifically check that I could blog that, but she's pretty chill about her bodily functions being discussed, so she probably won't sue me. It's been miserable - she got one round of antibiotics and they didn't kill it, so we called the clinic and the after-hours doctor called her again and gave her a stronger antibiotic and asked us to come in so she could give a urine sample - also a first for her. 

So it was a weird morning. I slept like absolute garbage again and she woke me up from a dead sleep to leave - I'm not sure if my alarm didn't go off or I slept through it. It was fine, we didn't have a firm appointment, just a suggestion to show up around a time. I don't enjoy driving with the state of my brain right now. I can follow the rules of the road okay, but I can't remember where I'm going. Last night I was driving Eve to hang out in one friend's backyard and we were supposed to drive another friend. I got almost to the first friend's house when Eve reminded me to pick up the other friend (it wasn't far away, but I was going in the wrong direction). I turned around and drove to the second friend's house, and as I approached their driveway I suddenly thought "what the hell am I doing driving to Marianna's house? We're going to Davis's!" So. Yeah.

So we made it to the doctor's office, which is in a big plaza with a giant parking lot, which is currently half torn up (this is relevant, unfortunately). I drove one way thinking I could get around to the end and get near the office we needed, but there was no exit. Eve said "just park here and we'll walk over". Which you'd think would be fine. So we did, and everything went fine except, well, if you remember the first time you tried to give a urine sample as a woman, or any time trying to give a urine sample as a woman, or maybe Eve and I are just clumsy and not in tune with our bodies, whatever, shut up - it was difficult, but she managed to present enough urine to dip whatever they needed to dip in it. 

We walked back across the parking lot and as we approached the car - which would have been in a WHOLE-ASS DIFFERENT LOCATION if not for the torn-up parking lot, THANKS A LOT, CONSTRUCTION -  I saw Eve kind of duck and felt something hit the back of my head. I turned and saw a giant flock of birds and felt the back of my head and Eve said "omg, I'm so sorry!" and yes, a motherfucking bird SHIT ON THE BACK OF MY HEAD. Fortunately, because of Covid, we have Lysol wipes in every vehicle so Eve helped me clean up. On the drive home she giggled and said "I was going to wait until you washed it off to say this, but it kind of fits the theme of the day - first I got pee all over myself and then you got shat on". And honestly, even before I showered, that is funny.

We're doing an appetizers-and-group-drink night at a friend's tonight since we didn't get to do our traditional gourmet-meal-and-group-drink at camp. I am mixing a pitcher of palomas and making some kind of grilled-corn-black-bean-jalapeno-cheddar salad with avocado crema and homemade tortillas. I just keep throwing more lime juice and garlic and olive oil and coarse salt in various dishes and hoping for the best. Supposedly a bird crapping on you is good luck so everything I touch in the kitchen should be gold today, right? I'll just make sure everything has a lid on it for transport. 

Eve just came down to tell me something and I said "can I have a hug and can I tell my blog readers you have a bladder infection?" and she said yes to both, so we're cool. 

Camping and the Kindness of Strangers

 I've always felt like campgrounds were a tiny bit like Disneyworld, in that you drive through the entrance and it sort of feels like you're in a semi-magical place where nothing bad can happen. We camped a lot when I was a kid, and we always had the run of the place, and I remember my parents meeting and conversing with people who were set up near us, holding babies we didn't know, sharing food. I still have vivid memories of a Greek woman and a man with a stutter, which I had never heard before. I asked my dad about it later and he said it was good that I hadn't asked in front of the man. 

Even before I started camping overnight, when I would take the kids to Sandbanks to hang with our camping friends, I let them run around the park with the other kids and paid less attention than I would have at home. I'm not really defending this as intelligent or safe, but nothing bad did happen, so it's a moot point. Camping there has generally been a convivial experience. People catch floating  toys that have been taken by the wind (at one point there was a distressing tableau that should have been captioned "Losing Nemo" before a kind stranger intervened). People tell you if you left something in the shower that you just vacated as they're entering (when the showers are in use). This year, people told other bathroom users which dispensers had soap in them so they didn't have to touch all of them (leaving aside the questionable detail of empty soap dispensers at this particular point in time - the bathrooms were pretty clean aside from that). 

One year Eve and I got there the day before Matt and Angus, and while we were deciding where to put up the tent a man passing by stopped and told us that it would be better to put it on the higher ground so we wouldn't get flooded if it rained. Another year there was a group of young people camping next to us that looked like a traveling theater troupe from a Barry Unsworth novel. They asked to borrow mustard for their veggie dogs and were effusively grateful. They were gone when we woke up the next morning. I know they were probably just hipsters, but we suspected they might be time travelers. 

This year didn't feel terribly different. The website said there would probably be more empty sites, but we were in the most popular section, and there weren't a whole lot, which is fine - the sites are not too close together. The bathrooms were never crowded - it was actually rare to be in there with other people. We always try to get a site in the same general area, because it's close to the beach and the comfort station and, full disclosure, because Eve and I have the same appalling sense of direction and it makes it less likely that we will set off and never be seen again. We did get a site in the same area, but it was in an inner loop instead of in the same row where we usually are. This was fine - it was actually a little closer to the bathroom - except at night we had to remember to turn right sooner than we usually did. 

I love walking along the camp roads. In the daytime the pavement is warm and the sun flickers down through the trees making a light that you don't see anywhere else. At night it's quiet and dark except for low voices and firelight from the odd site, and when it's clear you can look up and the stars are dazzling. I usually leave my flashlight off when I'm on the long straight part or walking along the beach, and just use it to figure out where to turn. The first campfire this year, though, my flashlight disappeared. I had my phone, but the battery was low so I was trying not to use it too much. I got back to our site once, but I wanted to wash my face and brush my teeth at the comfort station (I usually do it at our picnic table with a lantern, but the bugs were insane this year and I was tired of inhaling them). So I gathered my stuff and set out again. On my way back, I turned into the really dark part, and suddenly realized that 1) I had no idea where the right turn to get to our site was and 2) I had no idea if my phone was in my overstuffed beach bag or if I had left it back on the picnic table.

I stopped for a moment to gather my thoughts and see if my eyes would adjust enough to see the road. They did not. Just as i was about to set down my bag and start digging through it blind to see if I could find my phone, I looked back and saw a flashlight bobbing along a ways back coming towards me. So I just stood there until it drew level and said "sorry, but could you just help me find the turn here?" 

He looked surprised (which is fair - if someone had done this to me I probably would have screamed and thrown a right hook). He looked like he might not speak English (there are a lot of French people who camp there), but was agreeable enough. He shone the light to the right and I found the turn-off and thanked him. He kept it shining for a bit for me to start walking so I thanked him again. He kept going and I kept walking, and I had forgotten that the road bows out sharply to the right before curving back left. I realized I was walking on grass and not pavement and stopped a split second before walking into a tree. I corrected and sighted the light Matt had left on the picnic table for me. The next day the person who had mistakenly taken my flashlight returned it. 

Now that I type it out it sounds kind of dumb, but it was a lovely moment, and I am adding my time with Flashlight Guy to my collection of nice camping moments. Is this some kind of metaphor for how, just when it's too dark to see your way forward, a light will appear to guide you? Or maybe a flashlight is just a flashlight. 

Everything is Fine

HA ha,  no, of course it isn't, I never promised not to lie to you, Radical Honesty is bunk, lies are the WD-40 that grease the machinery of human interaction. Among other things, my blog interface suddenly looks totally different. Do I LOOK like I need a fun new challenge right now, Blogger? DO I? Lucy just scratched at the back door and when I opened it she snatched my gardening gloves off the table and ran outside with them, wtf? The whole world is against me. 

You know which very important movie I totally forgot about when I made my sort-of list of my sort-of top ten favourite movies? The Nightmare Before Christmas. I'm a fake fan. *hides head in shame*

Angus left. We were all so stressed about whether he'd be able to get over the border that we went next door and got totally trashed with our neighbours. Angus - who, over the course of the summer, has had A beer with us, sometimes two - drank most of a bottle of red wine by himself, among other drinks, and was very funny. At once point he was talking about driving on a U.S. highway and said the phrase "portable homes" many, many times until someone figured out that he meant mobile homes. He came inside to go to bed a half hour before us, and when I came in I went to find his clothes and wash them so he could leave with everything clean. I couldn't find them anywhere. I tried to get him to tell me where he'd put them, but, well, if you've ever tried to quiz a drunk person half an hour after they went to bed, you know how successful that was. This might be a mystery for the ages.

He left the next day an hour or two later than originally intended. Our friends had been trying to reassure him that he was going to pull up to the border and some border guard would be snoozing on a chair having had nothing to do for four months and would be happy as hell to see someone. This, as it turns out, is very nearly what transpired. Not even an hour after he left, we got this text:

The guard asked him where he was going, what sport he played, then asked him what he wanted to do after college and when Angus said med school the guard said "you should do it in the Caribbean, it's cheap!" Does that not sound like someone who has been starved for conversation? Or maybe owns shares in a Caribbean med school, idk. 

After that, Matt and I sat around catatonic for a couple of days due to a severe adrenaline withdrawal. Then my sister and her family came for a few days, which was off-the-charts wonderful. We ate some and drank some, but mostly we just talked and laughed at my parents' house, then at our house, then in our backyard, then in my parents' backyard. Somebody tweeted a Ram Dass quote about how spending a week with our nearest and dearest sometimes causes the realization that they are neither nearest nor dearest, which made me realize how lucky we are that we never run out of things to talk about, that we all generally share the same twisted sense of humour, and that we're never ready for the people who have to leave to leave. Also, we got to hear my niece's story about finishing her first university exam at home and then deciding to have her own little party, which involved a bottle of Kraken, some tunes, a Zoom chat and the phrase "I remember getting into my banana costume". 

My smartass niece was taking our picture and we told her to hold the camera higher because older people need help not having multiple chins. 

We haven't done a whole ton of "Summer" stuff, because, well, it's hot as fuck and I hate heat. But we do our weekly bar night in one of the two biggest backyards so we can social distance (two words I have grown to hate and may soon spit on the floor every time they are uttered, wait no, that would be irresponsible, I will only spit metaphorically), and this week-end we're going camping, for less time than we usually do because the showers are closed. It will be strange, because Angus won't be there, and Collette won't be there because she basically gets poison ivy if a gentle breeze brushes past the poison ivy and then brushes past her, and camping with no showers is a no-go. We're also not doing the big communal dinners for obvious reasons, and is camping even camping if you're not roasting a giant hunk of meat on a spit over the fire? So this might be a feeble attempt to say Screw You, Covid, but I love the parts of camping I love slightly more than I hate the parts of camping I hate, so marshmallows ahoy.