May has been a doozy of a travel week and a wild cry of the self-liberating mom. At the turn of the month, it was Washington DC with the hubba hubba. As noted, I pretty much chilled the f out, went with the flow and had a wonderful time. This time was the next obvious trip: totally solo trip back to Northampton. First time I'd traveled all by myself in about 5 years which is quite strange to a younger version of myself.
I admit as I hopped into the car after Chaya's bedtime to start my Odyssey with a red eye, I had some moments of panic and a "what on earth am I doing??"
But, pump the music up and give in to the placelessness of travel and off I went stripped down to the bare essentials, some protein bars, and a few packs of gum... off the rope and out into the open air.
...
Was there a late night ER trip to cut up a piece of my leg so good it made my host almost faint and then puke... yeah sure, but survived. With gauze and antibiotics.
Gotta get that out of the way, because it was an amazing trip, but when you lose a ton of blood and get stitches, that tends to obscure the mellower points of a visit.
It was pretty amazing.
Karen and Fidel (or - as my sleep deprived brain has celebrity-couple-named - K-Fid) took ridiculous care of me. Not only providing entertainment and sleeping quarters, but attending to my every need. Like food. Water. Couches to sit on. Cats! Coffee. Chocolate. S'mores. Camp chairs. The company of "somebody else's children" who were both charming in their own right and in being "not my business to take care or or discipline" (which is often waaaaay cuture). And, of course, transportation to and from the ER.
Getting back into the wilds is brutal, man.
Driving to the airport actually was pretty ok. Wound around a bunch of back roads to avoid the tolls and staggered through a fairly easy security line at the airport. Delta is impressng me this trip - free food and video monitors in the back of the seats so I don't have to deal with the fact that the charger and the outlet for my pixel is the same frigging port. I was a fan. Yeah my leg shot out pain signals left and right and I was a pretty sloshy emotional soup from the stew of strong and random emotions involved with leaving one home to go to another.
By the time we landed at Seatac, I was delirious, so the ride home was interesting. Before getting there, I discovered that going down stairs HURTS like hell. Which I thought was pretty hilarious once i was on the stairwell and couldn't turn back. And, well, driving was just tickling me pink. I did have a brief conversation with my car, but mostly the laughter was unprompted and grounded only in the occasional vocal objection that laughing made no sense, because nothing was actually funny (so funny).
Between leg pains and jet lag, I didn't sleep much last night, but I did get to be the homecomer who announced "Hi honey I'm home," sweep my husband off his feet, kiss him repeatedly and then whisper in his ear "my leg stitches aren't oozing right now, baby."
This morning I'm a bit jet-lag jittery and simultaneously excited and terrified to spend the entire day with the beast. She's already seen my leg in real time, since I did a video chat with them from the hospital and it's all she wanted to see. I'm sure it will be a fun day of trying to keep her from ripping off the bandages and trying to paw at my stitches.
But I'll say this: I'm ready to move to Boston. Been assuming I'd end up there since I was 11 and we visited.. I told Andrew this earlier and he gave me a smiley face. Not sure we'll be packing our bags this week. Ah well.
I brought back a Kinder Egg from Stop and Shop Noho and have told Chaya that it came from Massachusetts so she should go ahead and start telling daddy about how we need to move there so she can have more of them. Yes, it's manipulative, but it's darned cute when she says "we're moving to BOOOOOSTON"
It was a blast. Now I just need to get through this week without getting leg gangrene or passing out at the wheel trying to get back to my day-to-day. Odds are roughly 50-50%
To be continued...
Gotta get that out of the way, because it was an amazing trip, but when you lose a ton of blood and get stitches, that tends to obscure the mellower points of a visit.
Lord knows how (mostly that I am typically a self-maiming klutz and certain people seem to stoke this tendency right up to a face-in-parking-meter-food-covered-self-stabbing-disaster-damsel) I walked right into a broken part of a picnic table and stabbed about 2 inches of splinter into my leg. It being just a flesh wound, I washed it off, put a bandaid over it and limped back to finish up the graham crackers and milk that had just been put out.
Coming back to it later, I realized that this friggin' plank of tree was not gonna come out of my leg without a fight. So after Fidel and I managed to splinter the splinter trying to extract it, off we went to the ER with only a brief suggestion of just getting a knife and trying to cut it out ourselves (I mean, there was whiskey in the house and belts to bite on, so it wasn't totally half-cocked).
It's possible we were a little punchy at this point, as we spent the next several hours of waiting laughing hysterically in between very detailed updates on the "gushing" and "disgusting" status of my injury from Fidel. He bet that they would have to slit my leg open and cut it out. I bet that we may never actually be attended to and I'd just have to amputate and get one of those cool prosthetics the athletes use. Actually this would solve many problems. No more plantar fasciitis! Back to running! I'm on it. Let's do this.
Eventually a very pleasant doctor came and sliced the shiznet out of my leg as was ever so aptly predicted. I'd been given lidocaine so it only occasionally hurt (though when it did, it sure wasn't subtle about it). I opted not to watch. Fidel was riveted, right up until he suddenly turned pale, broke out into a sweat and eventually had to run to the bathroom to throw up. But only after he valiantly held out in a state of conscious non-regurtitation (it was tenuous) through the rest of the procedure so as to let me continue crushing his hand. Turns out having somebody slice up your leg is pretty scary/stressful even if you only sometimes feel it. Glad we vetoed the whiskey/belt option.
I'm still hearing something about "chunks" of my leg being extracted and how they resembled various meat items that people consume and OH MAN!! Sounds about how it feels today! Chunks. They chunked my leg. It's a gaping hole with stitches molding the cavern back over. You're welcome.
I'm still hearing something about "chunks" of my leg being extracted and how they resembled various meat items that people consume and OH MAN!! Sounds about how it feels today! Chunks. They chunked my leg. It's a gaping hole with stitches molding the cavern back over. You're welcome.
But no, it was an adventure. And appropriate that Northampton will leave another mark on me, after two meaningful tattoos and a world of memories, formative experiences and the occasional parking-meter bruises.
As in DC, I found my travel-self to be unstructured and relatively low-key. My gracious hosts largely planned my visit after my idle shrugging indicated an openness to such and/or a need to shoulder shimmy myself straight into Jazz hands or a seizure. It worked out perfectly. Delegating all the grunt work and just dragging along behind with a hazy smile. Kind of my thing apparently.
What treats lay in store?
Several hours being simultaneously mellowed and devoured (mosquitoes) by a river in Hatfield,
a picnickey kids' track meet, where the grownups milled and socialized and consumed grilled things while occasionally shouting in the direction of their children and wondered if the event would ever actually end
a languorous coffee on Main Street and retracing my most heavily traversed past-haunts, crossing bridges, swimming in a frigid river between bursts of rain and sun... lots of hanging out... and a legit Hot mama's reunion with my favorite coworkers.
a languorous coffee on Main Street and retracing my most heavily traversed past-haunts, crossing bridges, swimming in a frigid river between bursts of rain and sun... lots of hanging out... and a legit Hot mama's reunion with my favorite coworkers.
It was pretty amazing.
Karen and Fidel (or - as my sleep deprived brain has celebrity-couple-named - K-Fid) took ridiculous care of me. Not only providing entertainment and sleeping quarters, but attending to my every need. Like food. Water. Couches to sit on. Cats! Coffee. Chocolate. S'mores. Camp chairs. The company of "somebody else's children" who were both charming in their own right and in being "not my business to take care or or discipline" (which is often waaaaay cuture). And, of course, transportation to and from the ER.
Getting back into the wilds is brutal, man.
Driving to the airport actually was pretty ok. Wound around a bunch of back roads to avoid the tolls and staggered through a fairly easy security line at the airport. Delta is impressng me this trip - free food and video monitors in the back of the seats so I don't have to deal with the fact that the charger and the outlet for my pixel is the same frigging port. I was a fan. Yeah my leg shot out pain signals left and right and I was a pretty sloshy emotional soup from the stew of strong and random emotions involved with leaving one home to go to another.
By the time we landed at Seatac, I was delirious, so the ride home was interesting. Before getting there, I discovered that going down stairs HURTS like hell. Which I thought was pretty hilarious once i was on the stairwell and couldn't turn back. And, well, driving was just tickling me pink. I did have a brief conversation with my car, but mostly the laughter was unprompted and grounded only in the occasional vocal objection that laughing made no sense, because nothing was actually funny (so funny).
Between leg pains and jet lag, I didn't sleep much last night, but I did get to be the homecomer who announced "Hi honey I'm home," sweep my husband off his feet, kiss him repeatedly and then whisper in his ear "my leg stitches aren't oozing right now, baby."
This morning I'm a bit jet-lag jittery and simultaneously excited and terrified to spend the entire day with the beast. She's already seen my leg in real time, since I did a video chat with them from the hospital and it's all she wanted to see. I'm sure it will be a fun day of trying to keep her from ripping off the bandages and trying to paw at my stitches.
But I'll say this: I'm ready to move to Boston. Been assuming I'd end up there since I was 11 and we visited.. I told Andrew this earlier and he gave me a smiley face. Not sure we'll be packing our bags this week. Ah well.
I brought back a Kinder Egg from Stop and Shop Noho and have told Chaya that it came from Massachusetts so she should go ahead and start telling daddy about how we need to move there so she can have more of them. Yes, it's manipulative, but it's darned cute when she says "we're moving to BOOOOOSTON"
It was a blast. Now I just need to get through this week without getting leg gangrene or passing out at the wheel trying to get back to my day-to-day. Odds are roughly 50-50%
To be continued...
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