Nothing you can't fix

Sunday, March 4th (My Two Year Blogging Anniversary):

It's been a long bad week, and thank God it's Sunday. Thank God it's March. I love March and all things Spring, green, and Saint Patrick's Day well on its way, and I suppose I'll celebrate, not by drinking, but by building some strange and secret shrine to my beloved Frank McCourt.

I'm watching the sunrise.

Life has been reduced to cleaning, bleaching, washing, disinfecting walls, sheets, crib slats, toys, clothes full of throw-up and "yuckiness", mattresses, toilet seats. Yesterday, I walked into the bathroom armed with an industrial-strength cleanser and sprayed till my little germaphobic heart's content.

It isn't me who's sick, or was sick. In fact, I was lucky not to ever catch it.

Baby Girl, though, she was sick all week, throwing up, and running fever, getting violently ill on herself, or in the bathroom with tears of pain, and Mommy, it's hurts! Tummy hurts!! And me, sitting on the tub ledge, crying myself, feeling her forehead, contemplating a trip to the clinic or the emergency room...I usually regret the latter. It's a forty minute drive, with a two hour wait, just to have someone poke and prod my child, tell me what I already assumed, and then stick me with a nine-hundred-dollar doctor bill my insurance may or may not cover, and if they DO, I always have to remind them of that fact long after the Creditors start calling 'cause God knows the Creditors love my name and number.

And the clinic. We just went the week before, when she was sick with a cold, and fever, and I was sick also, but I don't see doctors unless I have to.

We went to a new clinic. New to us. Out of town.

As I walked through the waiting room with those damn forms to fill out, one fat woman leaned over to remark to another fat woman: Heels shouldn't be that high.

Perhaps women shouldn’t be that fat.

I sat down next to a black man who teased my child by telling her all the chairs in the room were his, and she couldn't have one. She looked at him for a second, then smiled and climbed into all the empty chairs, which were scarce, and surely covered with germs.

He told me she was cute. I agreed.

The black man nodded off to sleep, and two hours later, a skinny white nurse appeared, shouting out a name that only somewhat resembled Baby Girl's. When no one else moved, I looked at the nurse, and repeated the name. She said, I guess that's it. You should spell it with a C.

Yes. Why don't I change my two-and-a-half year old's name so incompetent illiterates can pronounce it. No thank you.

We were sent to another room with other nurses. More patients lined up on the floor in the hallway, coughing. An older blonde woman sat next to me by the scales, and was friendly. I asked her, Does it always take this long?

She said it did.

Another twenty minutes, and skinny nurse reappeared to usher us into a small room with a wooden birdhouse Baby Girl adored. House! she cried, and tried to demolish it with her sweet little fist. The doctor walked in, and my God if he wasn't gorgeous!

He apologized for the wait. Asked me what was wrong. Made a couple of stirrup jokes as Baby Girl tried to play with them. She went back to hitting the birdhouse, and he said not to worry; all kids try to break it. He checked out my cleavage at least ten times.

I tried not to blush. That's the hard part about having a big chest and the fondness for displaying your cleavage: you can't let 'em know that you know they're looking. Otherwise, they'll get embarrassed, and they'll never look again. You won't feel attractive. You won't have the confidence to wear skin tight black shirts, and skirts, and three inch high heels that rival Lauren Bacall's in The Big Sleep.

He told me there was nothing he could do for her. It looked like she was feeling better, but is she got sick again, call him. Give her the medicine I was already giving her, and make sure she drank plenty of water. Did I have any questions? Are you sure??

That was too easy, he said.

We smiled, and shook hands, as his eyes slowly drifted southward.

As for Baby Girl: She was over her cold that very day.

This past Monday is when she came down with the stomach flu. She remained sick until Saturday when she awoke screaming for Cookies.

As any mother can tell you: that's a reassuring sign.