Julie Asks – Am I an Adult Yet?

Yesterday we took a family trip to Canobie Lake Park – an old fashioned (although slightly less so than before it’s renovation) amusement park about 45 minutes away.  The weather was perfect, the crowd manageable (albeit skanky) and the experience a blast. 

We started the day waiting in a 37 minute line for the rollercoaster.  Comments from the crew:

Harrison: Georgie was airborn!

Georgie: (While laughing) that hurt my stomach!

Rich: I promise not to have a vertigo attack.  (Not sure if this was for his benefit or mine)

Me: The things we do for our kids!

While it was fun (enough) I must admit it was a little less pleasant than my memories.  I also had to use the bathroom about 17 minutes into the line and, well, suffice to say, one should board these rides with empty bladders for the greatest entertainment.

Next stop, The Boston Tea Party.  The only thing that really happens on this ride, and in line, is that one gets wet.  Soaking wet.  Like just out of the shower wet.  It is also more fun than adults should be allowed to have.  Here is a shot of us immediately after getting off.  For some reason, I am the only one who looks drenched…

But here is evidence of not just the wet factor, but the happiness factor!

I have spent the better part of this afternoon dealing with the laundry closet.  Ultimately, I will be thrilled to have it on one piece, but right now I think it best if I just walk away.

Rich and I are the proud owners of a new washer/dryer combo.  We were given the same pleasure a mere eight years ago when we put an addition off the back of the house (the same house we bought, 14 years ago, with the thinking that we’d live there for three or four years and then move on) and dutifully went, like our parents before us, to Sears and bought a slightly higher than middle of the road set.  With the comfort of the Kenmore name we were confident that it would last at least until Harrison went to college.  Well, now that Sears is no longer servicing their products, and now that Kenmore has proven to, in actuality, be a below middle of the road appliance we had no choice but to replace the unit we had.  The fact that it shimmied across the room and made more noise than a helicopter hovering overhead convinced us to bite the bullet and go for the way better than middle of the road.

As with seemingly everything in my life these days, nothing is easy or without incident.  We went to Best Buy to make our purchase and even persuaded the highly pierced saleskid (cannot call him a man) to not only honor the sales tax weekend which was six days away, but to also take off an additional ten percent since we had gone to another store that was making that offer.  This was going along swimmingly.  As Rich stayed behind to seal the deal, Georgie and I wandered to the other side of the store where he discovered “Finding Nemo” playing on about 15 televisions at once, each, it sounded, complete with stereo surround sound.  I was okay with this – I happen to love that movie and he was being entertained by someone other than me.  I walked a few feet away (what made me think my making a phone call would disturb his cinematic experience, I don’t know) to call Rich across the store (shut up, it’s a big store) when suddenly (and that is truly the only word I can come up with to accurately describe it) I felt something smash into my back with enough force that I lost my footing and let out a scream (thankfully, it wasn’t a high pitched scream, more like a “what the fuck” scream).  I turned to see a highly pierced (and cowering) stockboy (yeah, he was 6′ tall, but probably about 16) standing behind that which had hit me…a 50″ flat screen t.v.  Are you kidding me?

The manager came over (he, although not highly pierced, was all of 21) and said, “sorry, Ma’am”.  DON’T CALL ME MA’AM! As he was saying he didn’t know what to do, I was thinking the same thing.  I told him where I would be and hobbled away.  Fully expecting to wake up crippled the next morning, I popped two Motrin and called it a day.  Had we been buying, oh, I don’t know, a cool new t.v. or a spankin’ new laptop it would have been a little less painful…but this was all in the name of a washer and dryer!

Back to my closet issue.  Now that the new machines are in (and they are pretty swell) I am faced with putting the closet back together – hopefully in a more user friendly way than it was before.  After a visit to The Container Store (which is the coolest store ever) here is what I have come up with so far…

You cannot, from this picture, appreciate the thought I have put into the contents of the closet.  Do me a favor and tell me it rocks!

I have been remiss.  I have not blogged in quite some time, mostly because I have been overwhelmed with parenting duties.  In the midst of all the turmoil I got several voicemails/emails telling me that the caller/writer was going to check my blog to see what was going on (which simultaneously flattered and frightened me).  Alas, all those readers found nothing.  I am here now to give the highlights…I still don’t have the energy to supply a narrative.  So here goes:

1. Last Wednesday night Georgie was asleep (let’s all take a moment to appreciate the beauty of that) and Rich and I had settled in to watch a DVRed episode of “Wipeout” (the big balls never get old!) when the phone rang.  A glance at the caller ID left me perplexed.  While the number was not familiar, there was something about it that rang a bell (if you will excuse the pun).  Upon answering here is what I heard:

Mrs. Ross (already knew I was in trouble)?  My name is X (I really didn’t catch it the first time) and I am the nurse at Camp Kingswood.  I am with Harrison on my way to the Emergency Room

That was all I needed to hear.  I handed the phone to Rich.

2. Faithful readers will recall that Harrison had a strange episode with “blebs” at the end of the school year and it sounded like they were back.

3. I called my mother, told her about the call and she announced she would be over in half an hour.  (Thanks, Mom!)

4. Our original plan was to hop in the car and take the three plus hour drive up to Bridgton, Maine right then and there (by now it was 10 pm) but decided that we’d all be better served to get up at the crack of dawn and shoot up there.  It turned out to be a good decision as Harrison wound up being transported, via ambulance, to Barbara Bush Pediatric Hospital at Maine Medical Center in Portland.  We arrived in his room just moments after he did. (The picture below was taken upon his release…he was in no position to pose for anything when he got there!)

5. After more CT Scans, MRIs, Chest XRays and Blood tests than I care to recount, Harrison was deemed “stable” and we were given our walking papers back to Boston.  Harrison was feeling well enough to take a detour into Portland for a lobster lunch:

6. We arrived home Friday afternoon (I omitted the part about Rich taking the drive up to camp to collect, two and a half weeks earlier than expected, all of Harrison’s belongings.  Camp was over for him for this summer.) and all seemed fine.  Georgie was thrilled to see his big brother (the ecstasy lasted about half an hour and then they were at each other…) and we assumed it was over.  And it was, until Saturday afternoon.

7. It had  been a lazy day all around, and while Harrison was way better, he was still sluggish.  He made plans to go to the movies with nana and she was going to arrive at 5pm.  At 4:45, Harrison told me that he didn’t feel very good – his chest hurt (the telltale sign of the bleb issue), he had a headache and was dizzy.  His feeling “not very good” quickly escalated to feeling “horrible” and off we went to the ER. 

8. We arrived and Harrison was immediately taken in and, as it turns out, the ER doc was the same one who had admitted him back at the beginning of the summer when this all started.  It was great for us as he knew the history.  Another long night lay ahead of us and we were admitted at about two in the morning (but not before Harrison had an allergic reaction to a medication they gave him to alleviate the headache…that sucked!)  He was miserable, but I did snap a picture just for posterity: (despite how it looks, he was not being held hostage, just suffering from terrible photophobia – light senstivity – and this was the only way he could tolerate being alive.  (when he started feeling better he took issue with the name photophobia and repeatedly protested that he wasn’t afraid of the light, it just hurt!) Anyway, lest you think I am a sick and twisted mother, I must point out that he was asleep at the moment this was taken.  Really, he was!)

9. So we settled into another hospital stay (ugh, the nurses recognized us!) and more testing to see why this was happening again.  Poor kid was poked, prodded, questioned, tested, scanned, xrayed, you name it, for another two days.  By then he was feeling better, and off we went, back to the  comforts (?) of home. 

10. We met a few days later with out thoracic doc who told us that now that Harrison’s had two “episodes” we need to be prepared that, should there be a third, he will need to have the blebs surgically repaired.  We are hoping that two will be the end of it and we can call it a day.  One of the more civilized (and funny) tests he put Harrison through at the appointment was a breathe test (fortuntately it was a test of breathing ability and not breathe!).  Of course, it has been documented.  And, again in my defense, the technician told me that people take pictures of this all the time.  Really, he did!

11. For now all is quiet.  Harrison has another test on Tuesday to be sure there isn’t a hole in his esophogas and we are hoping/praying/assuming that this won’t happen again.   If it does, I might just open a vein.  If not, I will try to blog in a more timely manner.