Fine Young Fauves

 I know you'll be as pleased as we are to learn of the cat's anal tone. It's perfect! Really there's not a thing wrong with it. The bleak prognosis of a lifetime of fecal incontinence has not been at all the case. Nor the business about manually expressing her bladder four times a day from now on. Instead, she's using her litter box with scrupulous perfection, and all her pee-poop parts are seemingly undamaged by her ordeal.

I picked her up on Sunday morning from the very comprehensive veterinary hospital (veterinary opthalmologist… veterinary oncologist… veterinary cardiologist… etc). She was alert, but looked and still looks frankly ridiculous. You think she looked funny when she had the lion cut? Well, you should see her wearing an Elizabethan collar, and with her once beautiful ostrich-plume tail reduced to a bald sewn-up little Franken-stump. 

Okay, it would be funny if it were not so pathetic looking.

Okay, it would be heartbreaking, if it were not a million times better than the way I found her. The horrible broken stick tail she's been dragging around for months is gone. She's no longer literally about to die of starvation. In fact, she's really, really, really happy.  She's bright and perky, mostly lying around in her heated cat bed and purring, only occasionally lifting up her head to eat some more delicious premium cat food. 

My mom has been here this weekend and after surveying the geography of our new place, formulated this very plausible explanation of what happened: the cat was lying in the driveway under a car the day she disappeared (first weekend in July). Someone drove away, crushing her tail without realizing it. In terror and excruciating pain, she ran into the nearest hiding place, the garage. There she found some way to get under the garage into a crawl space. Whereupon she hid there in terror and pain for ten weeks, occasionally drinking rain water or eating a mouse or bug if it walked right up to her. When I searched the garage (of course I did– I searched everywhere), instead of meowing for help, she heard my feet clomp-clomping over her head and made herself as small and quiet as possible. (She's always been somewhat agoraphobic and this experience did her no good.) Until finally, on Friday, on the brink of dying of starvation, she came out. There I found her, sitting on the grass near the garage, almost too weak to walk. (I thought her foot was broken, but it was just that she was collapsing with the starvation and dehydration.) 

Yes– I think this all fits together well. It was so abrupt, the way she disappeared. Not at all like a cat who was happily roaming the woods and living on chipmunks. I think a cat like that would have gone for a few days, come home, gone for a few more days, come home, etc., more working up to her new life in the woods. Not just flat out vanishing…

Anyway, her prognosis is really good. She may come to have a fluffy bunny rabbit sort of tail. But the broken tail and the starvation are her only problems, both on the mend. We've had our differences in the past, lord knows, but she's just so happy and so relieved to have her long nightmare behind her that she's incredibly affectionate. Humans! They're wonderful! That's her new attitude. I feel just terrible thinking about what she's gone through and so glad that she made it back to the fold before winter. (I think the first frost would have killed her– there just is no there there on her.)

It's been really busy the past few days, but when I get time I'll post some photos of this wonder kitty. It is a miracle that she survived all this, it really is. Right now she's living in Lena's big dog crate, with litter box and bed and food in it, but we have it the real house rather than down in the basement. I put her there because she needed a lot of care and it was easier on me, but I think it's helping her recovery a lot to be included in the family again. We come over and pet her frequently. (Elias calls her Lena, as he does all members of the animal kingdom.) We're a far cry from releasing her back into the house, but for the moment it's working well.  Maybe some day… eventually.. she'll be our real stumpy-tailed house cat! we do have mice she could help with.. 

 The latest cat news is pretty good. Throughout the day I've been getting up-to-the-minute reports from the vet. I've never met this vet, and we are getting to know each other under unlikely circumstances, but I really like her. She seems to care a lot about the poor kitty, and also on her business card is says she has an MA and an MFA (!) in addition to her DVM, so this makes her a winner in my book.

Anyway– here's the good news. The surgery is done and went well. The cat had hypothermia for a while following it, but they put her in this special cat warmer called a bear-hugger and surrounded her in warm air, and after a while she went back to normal. Earlier today it seemed that she would need to be fed with a syringe for a few days, and that I would need to give her subcutaneous fluids now and again (with a needle– got used to this during Mr. Cat's final days), but then I got a call saying that she's eating on her own, and drinking and seems to be really recovering rapidly.

And here's the best part– anal tone is already returning. No anal tone, my ass! I'm so glad I didn't follow the gentle lead of the other vet yesterday, who opened the option of putting her to sleep due to the fact that she would never regain her anal tone and would live out the balance of her life fecally incontinent. And yet, only 24 hours later, despite having surgery in between, she's already showing signs of improvement.

I'm going to get her home tomorrow morning, and as luck would have it my mom will be here to provide advice and technical support. This is a moment when her expertise of caring for probably hundreds of ill animals over the years will really come in handy.

Zane Grey's new non-tail will be in the rottweiler/manx sort of range, and I'm sure she'll pull it off with great flair. I went out this afternoon and got her a heated cat bed and special dishes that attach to the inside of her crate. Plan A is that she'll be living in the crate (big enough for food, bed, and littler box) until fully recovered and then free to roam the basement for the rest of the fall and winter.

Also a new possibility as to what may have happened– the vet suspects that a car ran over her tail. Maybe it happened that faithful day she disappeared, and she ran off in dreadful pain and fright, and then– who knows?– got lost? COuldn't find her way home and has been wandering ever since? If only she could talk. But anyway, at least it's going well, and it seems that we're looking at a reasonable rehab and a decent chance of good health afterwards. What an amazing kitty!  

A certain song from my days as a young camper on the shores of Lake Minnetonka has been playing in my head all day. … the cat came back– the very next day, oh– the cat came back– they thought she was a gonner, but– the cat came back. Etc.

Yesterday morning I was in the process of rounding up Lena dog when I saw Zane Grey, sitting on the crest of a hill a little ways from the house. Luckily Lena didn't see her and I was able to contain her in the house before the situation got any more complicated. I approached Zane Grey, talking to her and meowing in a familiar way, and she replied. But as I neared her, I could see that she was hurt. I tried to watch her briefly to assess the damage. First off her right front leg seemed to be broken. She would take a step on that paw and then just topple over. And then, her tail… oh boy. In my 40 long years of life I'm not sure when I've seen anything more disturbing than that tail. A bare, skinned, jagged, broken stick of bones and soft tissue. I won't say any more. Suffice it to say that tail amputation immediately came to mind as a must.

But she could live without her tail. In other ways, she seemed to be fairly normal. Her eyes were bright, she responded normally, and her fur looked okay. I went inside to get her some food and to get my cat carrier, thinking I would catch her and take her to the vet. It was slightly complicated with the baby helping. Zane Grey hid under the wood pile and I left her a dish of canned food to eat while I got the baby, luckily, to take a short nap. She was extremely hungry. After a while, and after some tuna in addition to the canned food, I managed to get her out of the wood pile and into the crate. Only when I picked her up did I realize that she was skeletal, emaciated, fur and bone. My fantasy of her happily living in a log someplace and getting fat on small rodents evaporated. It was replaced by a new image: she left here in early July, immediately got her tail caught in a trap or something like that, and has spent the last ten weeks slowly starving to death. I'm very impressed with her that she made it home. 

I spoke with the local vet down the way, and she referred me to the veterinary emergency room the next town over. I packed up baby and cat and headed over. The initial exam was what I expected– severe dehydration, emaciation, needs tail amputated as soon as she's stable enough for surgery. But her right paw seemed okay, and maybe it was just that she was so weak she couldn't support her weight. I don't know. That piece is still unclear.

However, a vet came in shortly and examined her more thoroughly. He said that often with these severe tail injuries there is nerve damage to the hind end. Since she can walk, that leaves the pee and poop aspect of it. Seems that sometimes a cat can end up with fecal incontinence, or this thing where they can't empty their own bladders and need someone to empty them manually four times a day. (oh dear god!) Also he brought up the issues of possible kidney damage from the dehydration, or other organ damage. We agreed to take 24 hours, rehydrate, stabilize her, do some blood work, and then talk tomorrow afternoon. (Meaning today? Saturday… My days are all out of whack because Elias and I have been sleeping terribly the last few days, due to his nighttime cough. I was doing all this cat stuff on maybe three hours sleep. And now it's almost 5:00 a.m. and I'm awake, even though he's asleep, and there's nothing more maddening than that.)

On the way home I ran through the possibilities: she could need to be put to sleep due to any number of serious problems. If her bladder had ruptured, or her kidneys were failing, or she would need me to express her bladder four times a day for the rest of her life, I think I would put her to sleep. But if it was just a case of amputate the tail and nurse her back to health in terms of food, I could deal with that.  Shortly the vet called me. He said she has no "anal tone" which to him suggests that she will be fecally incontinent for the rest of her life. "Living with that with kids would be real hard," he said. He wanted to know whether I wanted to call it quits right there. I said that I needed some time to think about it.

Upon reflection, her previous house-soiling problems worked to her advantage on this one. I had already established her a life in the basement, and didn't really picture her in our living space ever again anyway. And then I thought about all she's been through, I mean, the suffering, pain, and fear, and how heroically she made it home to me. I thought, how could I KILL her, after all that? No, I would give her a chance. I called the vet back and said to go ahead with the blood work to see if there's anything else going on, but that the pooping thing wasn't a deal-breaker for me.

I may regret this!!

Later on in the evening I got a call from the normal non-emergency vet, who said she would perform the surgery this morning. She said she's doing well, the rest of her blood work was normal, and the tail must go as soon as possible. I asked whether she thought that the cat could get through this, and go on to basically have a normal life. She said, yes, pretty much, except for the pooping thing. And then she said, "Isn't this a MIRACLE? That she made it home? I really think this is just a miracle."

On the one hand I think so too. I think, my god, the poor little thing. What she's been through, how close she has been to the brink, how briefly we lived here before she disappeared, and yet she got herself back here, alive. On the other hand I think: great, a tail-less, poop-spewing cat and a huge vet bill. I think, oh god, like I need a complicated project to fill my empty idle hours!

But what can you do? She's here, she needs help, and when you get right down to it, she's my cat. My first reaction when I saw her was tremendous relief. I'm glad she made it home. 

Several talented folks in my immediate family have products and services that you need to know about.

There's my husband Ben, with his fabulous corrugated bookshelves. You should have one in each color: shelves2go.com

My dad, Warren Park, has been writing music lo these 40 years. Buy something he's already produced, buy a score, or commission a piece for a special occasion: warrenparkmusic.com  

My mom, Doris Park, and my step-dad, Steve "Max" Maxon, are bronze artists. My mom makes primarily very realistic animals, and Max's work defies description. Max's biography alone is worth a visit to the site: max-cast.com  

I've received no compensation for this endorsement, save a lifetime of good company!

Go forth and buy much…

 UPDATE:

the links are working great now– thanks blog-city for sorting it out!

I'm tired so I'll be brief. Poor Elias was stung on the tongue today by a big horrible wasp. He was sitting on the terrace, happily eating an apple. I was about two feet away from him, working on this birdfeeder project for Isaac's school. Then Elias started screaming. I saw the wasp and began to search the baby everywhere for the sting. His mouth was wide open with the screams and so soon I located the sting, right on the tip of his tongue. There was a small puncture there that was bleeding a little bit, and it was starting to swell. (Apparently the wasp wanted to eat the same apple at the same time…)

Now I've recently had occasion to read up on stinging insects and one thing that I recalled was that even in a non-allergic person, stings to the mouth and nose are medically dangerous because swelling can block the airway. I really didn't know what to do– my standard approach to stings these days is baking soda and water paste or slurry, which seems to work better than anything else I've tried. But I couldn't really put that in his mouth, nor sting-eaze or these other things like that. I got an ice pack and tried to press it into the squalling little mouth to get the swelling down, then rushed upstairs for some reason. I wanted to call nurse on call and also to get the baby cleaned up to take him to the hospital. Honestly!! What was I thinking? His little shirt was much filthier than usual (he goes through several outfits a day, usually) and his diapers had just then become filled with poop. But once I had him on the changing table, I realized that this was ridiculous. No time for fashion. He was screaming such that his whole face and chest were mottled red and his breathing very ragged. He seemed to be gagging on — what? apple bits? spit? Or was his throat closing up? I rejected the idea of taking him to the emergency room because it's incredibly far away and complicated to get there, and what would be he doing in the backseat by himself during the drive? So I dialed nurse on call , thinking I would ask for first aid advice on this situation, but was put on muzak hold, and then listening the the $&@*(#&% recording for a few moments came to the "If you believe this to be a medical emergency, hang up and dial 911." 

So I did. I looked at the baby, his tongue increasing in size by the second, his screams seeming more like gasps with gags and chokes mixed in, and called 911.

When I got the man on the line, I realized how terrified I was. I couldn't speak. "My baby—" deep breath– "my baby has been stung on the tongue by a wasp…"

It helps to know that a scant two blocks away there is the Bath police, fire, and EMT station. I pass there several times each day and have often been struck by the bright shiny newness of their row of vehicles, and their near-constant idleness. They truly are there exactly for this sort of emergency. 

I carried the poopy diaper- no shirted baby downstairs and waited for them in the driveway. In a moment they rolled up. But by then the strangest thing happened. The baby stopped crying and in effect went back to normal. Instantly. It was bizarre! The transformation. The EMTs I'm sure have seen many a nervous mother in their day, but I felt sort of sheepish. There was nothing wrong with this baby! Whatsoever! (But I didn't know– better to have them here for no reason than to have the baby turn blue and limp and THEN call…)

They brought us into the ambulance and tested this and that, and sat and observed him for a while. He smelled horrible due to the poop situation, but otherwise was a) not crying; b) not gagging; c) his tongue seemed a little swollen, and his lip did too, but not epic; d) no hives; e) heart rate normal; etc. etc. etc. After several aspects of the evaluation, the lead EMT called the whole thing in to the emergency room to decide whether he needed to be transported by ambulance to Akron Children's Hospital. (Clearly not!) And soon they let us go on our way, with some cautions to watch for drolling or wheezing or ANYthing unusual at all, and to not delay whatsoever if there's a concern. They made me feel a little better by having me sign a paper that said, among other things, that if I freak out again I can call them again and they will come again. I guess this is their job. 

Anyway, it was all in all ten minutes of sheer terror. I'm completely drained after it, and going to Isaac's school half an hour later to install the birdfeeder was really incongruous. But so it goes. He's asleep next to me now and seems completely unaffected by the whole thing. But me– still a bit rattled. 

The other night something set off the motion-detecting lights and lit up the yard. At the same moment, the same something set the dog to barking. I was awake with the baby and so peered out at the apparently empty lawn. But so pitch dark around the edges. … Impossible to see what lay beyond the pool of light. And then today I was out looking at our downed tree, which has turned out to be a huge cherry and may have valuable wood, and there I found some unusual poop. Or "scat" as we like to say out here in nature. It wasn't deer poop, which has a signature black jelly bean look to it. But I'm no scatologist and so I figured it would be some other logical creature.

This evening I was idling at the computer for a few moments and thought I'd look it up. Well, I ran through all the obvious ones, like raccoon, possum, groundhog, coyote, fox, etc., etc. and amazingly it looked like really none of them at all. So I took a moment to look a bit further. Then I came across this:

http://www.bigfootforums.com/index.php?showtopic=15227

The scat looked exactly like the scat in question! Finally a match! Only then did I read the page more closely. "The Web's Most Popular One-Stop Shop for Sasquatch Talk!" Oh great: BIGFOOT! Now we've got the Yeti roaming around out there in the dark. Just terrific. Setting off the motion detectors, making the dog bark, and who knows what all else out there in all those trackless woods.

Ah, country living.

A recent conversation:

Me: Do you think that's fireworks, or gunfire?

Ben: Probably just a hunter.

Me: But… at night?

Ben: Sure, if he's drunk.

reassuring!

Then there's the hornet/wasp situation. It's stinging insect season! Elias has been stung by a yellowjacket now TWICE. Seems they walk around on the kitchen floor, where he tends to crawl. Then he picks them up. Zap. Isaac got nailed when he set his hand on the back of his chair, and ZAP. For my part, I had the ill fortune to get some other sort of big nasty wasp inside my pajama bottoms. Unfortunately this happened to occur the other morning when Ben was leaving and we were having an uncharacteristically spirited and some could say hostile discussion. Well, my authority was greatly undermined when in the midst of the fray I suddenly was obliged to strip from the waist down and throw my pants out the door! I was stung seven times down one leg and a fine sight it was, I'm sure. I'm just glad that none of us is apparently allergic. 

(Speaking of injuries, both these boys are hellbent on self-destruction. Yesterday while I was on the phone consulting about Elias's iron supplement, Isaac climbed up on the arm of the couch, carefully removed a lampshade, and stuck his finger in the light socket! Getting a nasty shock! Then today Elias was crawling around while I was making a tuna sandwich and talking on the phone and managed to cut his tiny finger on the metal part of a saran wrap box, such that blood got all over the place and it was a huge crisis. What no grandmother likes to hear on the phone: "Holy shit– he cut himself– he's bleeding– gotta go–" click.) 

Something strange is going on with the ants in the basement. I can't tell whether they're gathering into some sort of convention, or whether they've all come there to die, or what. But one corner of the room seems to be really littered with a heap and pile of dead and dying ants, and the rest of the floor strewed with them in an oddly even way. Are they hatching? Breeding? Moving from one stage to the next? Did they run into some of the wasp poison I hired a man to distribute? 

I can only wonder what the winter will bring. Lots of critters invading the house for warmth and food, I expect. The garage is actually a remarkable squirrel store house… they have neatly tucked walnuts pretty much everywhere.

Now– to refresh our memories… In the city we had a) squirrels who ate our siding repeatedly; b) mice who at times ran laps around the room in track teams; c) ants going marching across the kitchen floor; d) a vole or two bumbling around; f) LOTS of fleas… so I can't really blame the country for all the vermin. 

I'm sure the Bigfoot scat has some other logical explanation. I mean, Bigfoot's range is MUCH further West from here. (Then again, maybe global warming?) I need a field biologist here pretty much daily (what is the life cycle of the carpenter bees? when can I putty up their holes? is that spider venomous? etc.) and I'm sure that if I had one, he or she would quickly identify the scat as some totally normal harmless creature. I only wish I had one. Add that to the list of desired staff (friend number 1: "Can't you just get a really ugly au pair?" Mom: "Can't you get an Amish girl?") 

Oh yes, and the other day I found a real dead snake in among the shoes by the front door. In a house dominated by boys, one gets used to toy snakes here and there on the floor. But this poor little fellow had come in and probably died of fear or thirst while trying to escape from the shoe pile.  Isaac showed no squimishness at all, picked him up and toted him around to show people. Maybe I'll just have to train Isaac to be the staff biologist. I'm sure he'd take to it quite well. Although he's never heard of Bigfoot, he is already fascinated with Nessy. 

Concerning Isaac's gender ambivalence… I've been thinking about it since I posted that and feeling ill at ease. There are boys I've read about who really are in the position of being trapped in the wrong body. The ones who refuse to get their hair cut, change their names, and wear dresses exclusively. There are other boys who maintain their boyness, but wear, say, a long velvet gown while playing trucks. (One dad wrote about this in Parenting Magazine.) There are boys, such as the one written about recently on Babble.com, who insist on wearing pink sparkly tights and bell bottom jeans with ruffles and sequins.

Isaac is like none of these. Fashionwise he's pretty much a jeans and t-shirt kind of kid. He likes to wear khakis like his dad, and his black cowboy belt, and sometimes a tie and blazer for parties. His litany of boy interests is long and varied. Trucks, construction, transportation, guns-n-ammo, wars, sports of all kinds, superheroes of all kinds, rockets and space, dinosaurs, lizards, tree houses, bugs, etc., etc. He has one rather neglected doll. He never thinks about fairies and rarely expresses any interest in princesses.  

Really the problem is not HIM. It's US. It's Toys R Us, with their starkly divided pink girl aisle. And every clothing store. And shoe store. And the movie theaters and cartoon industry, headed up by the Disney death star. I'm sure their marketing departments would defend themselves by saying that the children WANT to differentiate themselves in clearest terms. Maybe so, but it's a chicken and egg thing now and it's hard to say which came first.  

One blog I read, Mimi Smartypants, has a similar problem with her tomboyish girl– who wants tighty-whitey Thomas underpants, a boy bike, and freaked out about her "beach cover up" when it suddenly occurred to her that it might secretly be a dress. 

Isaac will figure it out. He's just in touch with his feminine side, and that's not a bad thing. We need sensitive men with a flare for fashion in this crazy world.

In other news we're home sick today– sore throats all around. 

Elias can now say two words– Mama and Lena. I'm honored to be at the top of the list, and I'm sure Lena dog is pleased to be a close second. Also, he's really walking, step after step, three or even five in a row before toppling over. He can climb stairs in a twinkling.

Last night he actually choked. It was scary– but a long-ago CPR/first aid class we took when I was pregnant with Isaac kicked in. I turned Elias onto his stomach and smacked his back five times, hard. Didn't work. I repeated the process and the little square cracker popped out. Breathing resumed– his and mine and Ben's. We've been so lucky so far that he hasn't choked on all manner of choke-worthy things he's picked up and popped in his mouth!

I count our blessings once again. 

For a while there, it seemed that all was well on the pink front. Isaac moved on to his new favorite color– gold. He wept when the guys came to mow our new lawn this spring, because "but they'll cut the dandelions, and they're my new favorite color!" (forlorn wail, face in hands). Then he added red. And went on to suggest that pretty much ALL the colors are his favorite color. This boded well for the demise of the pink shoe and puffy shirt debate in this house.

I was further heartened when my mother gave him a pair of hot pink, lighting up cowgirl boots and Isaac's first reaction was to say, "They're a bit girly." (In answer to Ben's question, "What possessed her?"– you see Isaac has long dreamed of having a pink gun. My mother found a pink cowgirl gun– really the market for pink guns is limited to cowgirls– in a catalogue and then just went along to fit him out with a matching pair of boots, pink cowgirl hat and pink holster. In her own defense she said, "Well, at least I didn't buy him the little vest and skirt!" That is to say, he wanted a pink gun and she was down with that, being the doting grandma that she is.)

He wore the pink flashing boots, though, all the time, and with great pride. As we were making our way through the Minneapolis airport home from visiting grandma, et al, he turned a lot of heads with those flashing boots. He had to take them off for security, for instance, and everyone noticed. At one point, he actually held up his hand like a traffic cop and stopped a little golf cart full of weary travelers as it proceeded down the concourse. I scolded Isaac gently, saying, "Hey, these people are going someplace. You can't just stop them." But the driver of the golfcart, an elderly black man, said kindly, "What is it, son?" Isaac said simply, "Watch this," and stamped his foot to display the lights. The old man smiled and said slowly, "Son, you got some unusual shoes."

Isaac noticed that the only people in his life with pink cowgirl boots (none of which flashed like his) were in fact GIRLS. He wore them for a while, and then moved on. So it went until recently when the resurfaced amid all the packing and unpacking. He found them and clasped them to his breast as a long lost friend. "My boots!!" he cried. And so began wearing them everywhere again, despite the sad fact that they don't flash quite as, well, vigorously as they once did. Then one day as we were getting out of the van, he suddenly announced, "I'm not sure whether I'm a boy or a girl."

I said, "Well, you're a boy."

He said, "No, I haven't decided yet."

I said, "What do boys have that girls don't?"

He said, "A penis." (I should add that he never hesitates to point out the benefits of being able to pee standing up– "Good I have a penis!" he says proudly.)

I said, "And do you have one?"

"Yes."

"Well, so, you're a boy. There's nothing to decide."

[Insert silent apology to the transgendered community….]

Still he seemed unconvinced.

A few weeks elapsed without any gender discussions. The boots once again began collecting dust in the corner. Then Ben took him to visit some friends who have a seven year old daughter. She had her fingernails painted. Then Isaac wanted his fingernails painted, and the whole can of worms was opened up again. Ben insisted that in our culture boys and men don't paint their fingernails. Well, not usually… But. This troubled Isaac no end, and he kept begging to have his fingernails painted and really couldn't seem to move on. "I'll paint them yellow!! That's my favorite color!" He said brightly.

I managed to stay fairly neutral on the subject, but silently thought, well, what's the harm. Just paint the fingernails on Friday and take it off before school on Monday or something like that. Probably better to paint them than to make it into a forbidden fruit thing. But I also hoped that the topic would sort of, you know, go away of its own accord. Then the other day, Isaac and I were having breakfast. While staring at his cereal, he began to daydream aloud: "Wouldn't it be great if there was a magic pill that could just turn a BOY into a LADY?"

I said, "But why would you want to turn into a lady?"  

"I'm tired of being a man!!"

I said, "What? Why are you tired of being a man?"

"Because I have to do MAN THINGS all the time."

I said, "What 'man things'?"

"You know– MAN THINGS!!'  

I tried a different approach. "What would you do if you could turn into a lady?"

"Have FINGER POLISH."

Okay, so I think I get it. Being a man means that beautiful sparkly pink lighting up boots are sort of frowned upon, and painting your fingernails almost forbidden. So rather than being happy with a polishless manicure a la Jerry Seinfeld, or having light-up running shoes (silver and red, all boy, which he does have), he's decided to renounce his gender. (Or not renounce it, really, it's  not that extreme. Waffle.)

So soon thereafter he found some fingernail polish of mine someplace and asked to have his nails painted. Trust me– I painted them! Ben insisted that the polish be removed before they went to the baseball game, and Isaac was fascinated with the chemistry involved in the nail polish remover– how does it MELT without being HOT?– but didn't seem too put out to have it removed. I would much rather allow that sometimes little boys can paint their nails and still be BOYS, rather than insisting that the two are mutually exclusive and hence driving him away from boyhood altogether.

I think he just has mostly girlfriends, few boys to play with, ME around most of the time, all women teachers at his new school. I think that it's hard to imagine joining the man camp, when it seems to be mostly about getting into the car and leaving all day to do dull MAN THINGS someplace else.

Robert Bly, where are you?

It bodes well that in his new school, he's been phasing in with a group that happens to be all boys. He's signed up for Tae Kwon Do after school, which may attract more boys than girls, and has at least one very imposing MANLY instructor. In the meantime, he's growing out of the pink lighting up boots. There's a black and red version that is stunning and has flashing moons and stars, yet masculine in a Neil Diamond sort of way. (If they help bridge the divide, it will be more than worth the $39.00.) And of course he has the infamous "Dangerous Book For Boys," which is teaching him much useful information. He's very proud to own that book and refers to it often. 

I think the challenge here is to make boyness seem as appealing as girlness, without in any way devaluing the girls. 

Black nail polish, maybe? To go with the new black boots? Sort of a Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines type of deal? That could be a good look for fall. 

It's been a hard week for Elias. He's had roseola, and so has been feeling rotten. He had a fever all weekend– not scorching, but  in the 102-103 department. (When Isaac had roseola, he topped 104.) And then on Saturday he was stung by a yellowjacket. He was sitting on the kitchen floor while I was doing the dishes, and apparently picked the yellowjacket up– it stung his little plump thumb. So sad! But I was grateful that at least he hadn't gotten it all the way to his mouth (which surely was the plan), and that he didn't turn out to be allergic.

On Tuesday he woke up with the rash that comes at the end of roseola, and looked horrible. My question was whether it was Fifth Disease (which we've had plenty of chances to get familiar with in recent years), or roseola, and so I called the nurse. They wanted to see him to make sure it wasn't something more sinister (measles?) and wanted to see him. So I brought both boys up to Cleveland and made a day of it! What fun.

As you may know Isaac had pretty bad anemia as a youngster, and lead exposure apparently from our collection of lead soaked antique chairs. (I'm glad to report they are out of the house now and so pose no threat to our current teething/crawling one.) We needed to get his blood drawn while we were there, in order to make sure that he's still on the right track. I told him that after his blood draw he could have a toy– we were planning to do it even before Elias got sick– and so Isaac had been going around saying, "I want to get my blood drawn now!" (the lure of the toy being so great). And while we were at it, Elias was due for his blood to be drawn to check for anemia and lead also.

Isaac was very calm and chipper about the whole thing until we got into the little room with the needle lady, at which point he went hysterical. He sat on my lap, I wrapped my legs around his little blur of kicking feet. I pinned one of his arms, one nurse held the other arm in place, and a second nurse (phlebotomist, more likely) did the sticking. Somehow I also held the baby, but I can't recall how. Anyway, Isaac was a complete screaming, fighting mess through it. And even afterwards, with lollipops and stickers, sat on the table and sobbed as we repeated the ordeal with Elias. (The needle lady clucked over both boys' striking good looks– "What are you gonna DO?" she asked me. "You're in for TROUBLE… Those eyes… cleft chins… oh boy!")

After that it was toy time! We went to a nicer, high end sort of toy store and I was ready to buy something a little nicer than usual. But toy stores are usually dreadful places to bring a child, and I feared that we would be in there for two excruciating hours as Isaac tried to make the faithful choice. However, he more of less walked in, chose his toy and walked out.

The toy in question was a little electronic megaphone type thing, that purported to change one's voice into "robot" voice, high, low, loud, etc., with all these different settings. I was looking for something that would be okay to do inside on one of these endless rainy days, and although I knew it would be hard on the ears, I accepted it.  As we paid for it, the man behind the counter ominously mentioned that it needed 9 volt batteries and he didn't have any. What ensued was more complicated and exhausting that you would ever imagine.  

1) we walked to a nearby grocery store… they had batteries, but only behind the customer service counter, which was completely swamped in people buying lottery tickets, doing money orders, and such like. We waited in line for a while, but with both boys it was too hard and eventually we walked out empty handed. 

2) We went and had lunch, regrouped, and tried again at a nearby drug store. (Note to Clevelanders.. this was in shaker square). There they had the 9V batteries easily accessible! So nice. While paying I asked the check-out lady to do me favor: could she cut open the blister pack the toy was in? It was one of those sorts of packages that you could run over with a mack truck, and the toy inside would be crushed, but the package would still be in tact. She went off to find a scissors, very kindly, and left me and several other people waiting behind me. I apologized to these two nice old guys standing behind me, explaining that we had a long drive and Isaac wanted to play with it on the way home. The lady brought the package back and we left– package opened, battery in hand, home free!

3) But no. Within a moment I had figured out another catch. The battery compartment was held tightly shut with tiny screws set in deep holes. We needed a screwdriver! I went back in, walked the entire store, found only one totally unworkable screwdriver, and decided to buy a glasses repair kit with a tiny screwdriver in it. But after I bought it, it proved to be TOO tiny and wouldn't work either. At that point I gave up. I broke the news to Isaac: we'll just have to wait till we get home. And braced for a category five tantrum.

But amazingly, Isaac took this very well! He just shrugged and said okay! I realized that he had been just amazingly calm and patient throughout the process, cheerful and optimistic. He exuded and unshakable confidence: he lives in a just world. He had endured the blood draw and so would be fairly compensated, and his voice changer would soon be in his hands, working beautifully. He also displayed a touching trust in my ability to surmount any barrier that came between us and our goal. And so it seemed rather sad that all our efforts had led to naught, and we would have to drive home with the toy still nonfunctional. 

We walked back to the car dejectedly.  Then at the last moment we came upon a camera store– surely they would have a screwdriver. Inside the window, too, they had a train set– presumably soaked in lead (et tu, Thomas?)– and so seemed to welcome children. The kind and non-busy woman behind the counter had the perfect screwdriver, got the job done. I installed the batteries, and in no time Isaac was jarring everyone's nerves with a staticy and feedback-intensive din. Hurrah!

In retrospect, I shouldn't have even attempted to do this before we got home… (A comment by George Will comes to mind. He said that the most chilling phrase to parents is "some assembly required." He pointed out, "The Golden Gate Bridge had 'some assembly required.'") I should know by now that getting a toy up and running is usually no light task!

Elias is still out of sorts, although definitely on the tail end of it. He's been sleeping badly by night and moody by day. I've been stumbling-level exhausted much of the time. It's been either pouring rain or suffocatingly sticky and hot. Unpacking is proceeding at a glacial pace… Ben is working all the time, and between the kids and the most rock-bottom basic (food, dishes, laundry) housework, I can count on one hand my unpacking hours per week. This week, I've had none whatsoever, because Elias has been in need of constant holding and TLC. We're all getting tired of boxes everywhere.

I talked to a guy at Ben's Quaker Meeting the other day, who had moved with his family to Bath also. It had been six months since he moved. I said, "Oh, six months, so are you box-free?" He said, "We'll never be box-free! But at least they're in the basement…" Maybe in six months, we'll be able to say the same.

 he would have written this article:

"Adults Have Misclassified Me as a Handful" by Timmy Johnson

http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/adults_have_misclassified_me_as