The Grind
I was back at work last night, and some of the people whom I work with seemed genuinely happy to see me back and shocked and horrified when I gave the overview of my two weeks away (surgery, doctors' appointments, 2 car accidents, a head and neck MRI with contrast and being told I had a stroke.) The night was busy in the Medical/Surgical ICU: I cared for some patients with very difficult and complex diagnoses and needed to help make some big decisions regarding the plans of care.
Toys
I mentioned in my last blog that I've found Tolo toys at Marshall's and that I like the inventiveness and quality and relative old-fashioned-ness of this line of toys. The other toys that I've also found at Marshall's is Tomy, and they manufacture some innovative, well-engineered, under-microprocessor-run fun toys. The Push-n-go toys from Tomy are very cute: Jack has a little airplane with a pilot in it and you push the pilot down and the plane goes forward on its wheels, taxiing before takeoff. I also bought, for $6.99 at Marshall's, the cutest little train: the toy includes a circular track and a little train engine; when you pull the train backwards, the wheels are wound tightly and when you let it go, it goes around and around the track. It also came with two tunnels! and two trees! I think that I like this toy more than Jack does. It's just so nice to see some engineering and thought going into toys rather than software and lights and noise.
Size Matters
It doesn't really, but it was a good title.
Last week, I had final and complete confirmation of something that's been in the media before and a truth that all women know: women's sizes are corrupt. That is, a size 10 is not a size 10. For many of you, this will not be news. It wasn't for me, either. I am a person who has been fortunate enough to have maintained the same weight, plus or minus 3 pounds (except when I was pregnant) since I was 25, almost 20 years ago. Back then, I was a size 8. Suddenly, about 10 years ago, without any effort on my part, I became a size 6. Then, again, without exercising any more than I was and while maintaining my daily intake of Twizzlers and M&Ms, I turned into a size 4. Furthermore, I wear a lot of vintage clothes, and so I knew that, in the 50's, without a girdle, I would have been a size 10. Hmmmm.
I was watching the Today Show last week and they had a story on this old story, and what was different about this take on the story was that they had clothes: a size 8 skirt from H&M was an inch and a half smaller than the size 8 from Banana Republic and 3 inches smaller than a size 8 skirt from the Gap. Even more galling is that BR and the Gap are owned by the same company. Bah!
The thing that I learned and that was newsworthy, though, was that size inflation is happening to men's clothes, too! I had always thought that men had it better: if your waist measures 30 inches and your inseam measures 32 inches, then you buy a pair of pants that are 30x32. Brilliant! Except that now, a 30 isn't a 30; in some places, it might even be a 34! So men are finally falling victim to marketing, too.
I find this whole thing absurd (clothing manufacturers indirectly flattering fat Americans by making their sizes smaller), interesting (this is really some brilliant marketing; almost as brilliant as some of the crap that Karl Rove has cooked up for Bushie), funny (c'mon. I weigh 127 pounds. I have boobs. I am NOT a size 4, even if the Gap wants you all to think that I am), annoying (I shop on the Internet. I don't have time to try things on) and, for the first time, gloriously non-sexist! How refreshing that men are being pulled into this game, too. I imagine a world when Jack starts dating where all of the women want to wear sizes that are negative numbers and where the men wear pants marked with their neck size rather than their waist size. Silly, silly, silly vanity.
Right, so Back to Motherhood
If you haven't gone back and read the comments that were left after I lambasted the whole idea of potty training a newborn (or even an 18-month-old) and you're interested in the other side, Randi left a nice comment about her efforts to hold her littlie over a pot a few times a day. Zoinks. So not for me, but more power to you! Jack continues to be so random with his poop frequency and so clueless about the whole process, that I am sure that I will be blogging about the whole poop-conversion thing more and more as time goes on. And if THAT isn't reason to read again, I don't know what is!
Quickly
The numbness is now confined to the outside of my right ankle and the top of my right foot. I noticed that it became uncomfortable last nigh, but no one ever told me that staying up all night and running around an ICU would be comfortable. I see the neurologist, Dr. H., again next week. I'll keep you posted.
Also, and now it isn't so quickly anymore, after this whole healthcare incident, I had made up my mind that, as much as I love my PCP, Dr. K., the care at the hospital where she works is subpar. Jack's pediatrician is at Mass General, and I had planned to ask him for a referral to an MGH PCP the next time Jack had an appointment. Then, Dr. K. called at 7 in the evening to see if I was doing ok since I had cancelled an appointment with her (for my eye, which, by the way, got better) because I had the car accident. And she was so shocked to hear all of what had happened and spent 20 minutes on the phone with me and was so concerned and kind and smart and good that I still love her and I don't think that I can leave. I won't have any other procedures at that hospital, though.
8:24:48 PM 
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