Looking back, I vaguely remember commenting to Rob late Saturday that my throat was sore. And, I know I said something to my Mom about it on Sunday. By Monday, the left side of my throat was outright hurting. Bad. Bad enough that I started alternating Tylenol and Motrin every two hours. On Tuesday, the pain continued (as did my Tylenol/Motrin regimen) and my throat and glands felt swollen. The swelling evidenced itself by causing a [oh so sexy] thickening and deepening of my voice.

Rob, Jake, Jenna, and I watched the Big Brother finale Tuesday evening and I was in so much pain that I was barely talking. And when I did speak, it was through clinched teeth because it hurt even to open my mouth or move my tongue. Jenna was being such a sweetheart rubbing my neck and jaw area to help the pain. I got no sleep Tuesday night.

Wednesday, I asked Rob to call my doctor’s office as soon as they opened to schedule an appointment. I got a 9:30 a.m. slot. Thank. God. The Physician’s Assistant I saw, Pauline, took one look at my throat and said I was getting three needles. First, I was getting blood drawn to check my white cell count. Second, I was getting a dose of Rocephin, an antibiotic, by injection. And, last, I was getting an injection of a steroid to reduce the swelling. See, I don’t have tonsils anymore, but the swelling on the left side of my throat was so bad that the tissue hung down to my tongue instead of forming the arc-shape it usually does. [And ewwww.]

Before I left, I asked Pauline to give me a prescription for something with codeine in it. (The bi-hourly Tylenol and Motrin wasn’t even touching the pain.) She wrote me one for Lortab 7.5 [woot!] elixir [ewww]. She said she needed to see me back today. I left with the impression that I had strep throat. I had the wrong impression.

I got to my appointment today at 2:00 p.m. and, naturally, the first thing Pauline did was take another look at my throat. After looking, she said, “I hoped it would look a lot better today, but it should at least be looking a little better. It’s not.” She next put a gloved finger in my mouth to feel the tissue in my throat. Brave woman. Lucky for her, I don’t have a very strong gag reflex.

Pauline looked at me somberly and said, “This is very serious.” Turns out, I have a PERITONSILLAR ABSCESS (in my throat, obviously, since I don’t have tonsils). I won’t even go into the details of that diagnosis. Google it if you’re curious.

So apparently, these abscesses can be resistant to antibiotics and can swell enough so as to cut off one’s oxygen supply. “One” meaning me. As in me not being able to breathe. No kidding.

Oh, and also, a peritonsillar abscess was responsible for George Washington’s death.

Who knew?

Pauline, that’s who.

She wrote me a prescription for a mega-dose of penicillin and said to come back in on Monday. Oh, and, if I start feeling the least bit worse tomorrow or over the weekend, I am supposed to go straight to the Emergency Room–do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars–where they will haul me back to the operating room for emergency surgery. As in cut that bad boy open.

So, I’m pretty doped up on the meds. (Lortab. It’s a good thing.) And, as I am about to drift off to sleep before I can finish this entry, I wonder. Will I be startled awake by a lack of oxygen to my lungs, heart, brain, and vital organs? Inquiring minds want to know.

And in my moment of crisis, guess where Rob is. He’s making the two hour drive back from his father’s house. Rob dropped him off there after he was discharged from the hospital today. After his echocardiogram. Which showed valve damage. Necessitating a heart catherization next Monday. And most likely open heart surgery next Friday. Seriously.

I am left to wonder what will be next.
These things come in threes you know.

Tuesdays are unofficial “Laundry Days” in our household. I say unofficial because, generally speaking, each Tuesday comes and goes with little to no pomp and circumstance. And, even though the event is announced to the public (my husband and kids) in advance (the night before), it seems I am the only person in the house who participates in the ritual. Every freaking week. But I’m not bitter. Much.

So, three Tuesdays ago, I went through my usual routine of: 1. gathering all the kids dirty clothes from upstairs, 2. taking them to the laundry room, 3. sorting them, and 4. performing the necessary pre-treating, washing, drying, and folding, before 5. putting the then-clean clothes back in their appropriate closets and/or dresser drawers.

I finished washing the third or fourth load and threw it into the dryer. Started the dryer, and went back to sitting on the couch eating bon-bons scrubbing toilets. About five minutes passed, and I realized that I had been subconsiously hearing some unknown repetitive noise.

Repetitive noises drive me crazy. Short drive, I know.

I investigated and discovered the noise was coming from the clothes dryer so I went into the laundry room and opened the dryer door. The noise stopped. Which was a big relief really until I realized that the “noise” had actually been my son’s iPod slamming against the sides of the dryer drum over and over and over and over for all of those five minutes.

Apparently, prior to the commencement of Laundry Day the iPod had been tucked in the pocket of a pair of his shorts.

I was fairly calm about the possible damage the dryer had done. It was the 30-minutes that the two-hundred-dollar-piece-of-anodized-metal had spent in the washing machine that I was going batshit about.

Was he in trouble.

When he got home from school, I simply said, “Jake, your iPod is dead.”

He looked kind of sick and said, “What do you mean?”

“You left it in the pocket of your cargo shorts and they got washed. The iPod is full of water. You can see it through the screen.”

“Mom, those shorts weren’t dirty. I only wore them for an hour last night and I left them over the back of my chair to put them on again after football practice tonight.”

Crap.

Not only was the iPod dead, but it was kinda sorta almost nearly possibly entirely my fault. I was sick. I mean, now I couldn’t smack him for it. Not justifiably anyway.

Then I remembered that, in the past, I had read encouraging stories about electronic gadgets that had been sprayed, sprinkled and/or immersed in water (and other various liquids–Rolling Rock comes to mind) and survived. The magic cure, it seemed, was to just let the darn thing dry out. And never, NEVER, EVer turn the sucker on until enough time had passed so as to assume thorough dryness. We figured three weeks was enough.

So yesterday after school, Jake and I proceeded to my closet where the iPod was safely nestled on a shelf between two sweaters. We took it down and immediately noticed the lack of water under the screen. We gasped. Jake pushed the select button to turn it on and we saw this:

Which means “Dude, your battery is totally drained.” We gasped again and plugged it into the charger. After about ten minutes, I pushed the select button and we saw this:

Allow me to introduce you to the “Sad iPod Icon.” Which means “OH CRAP, your hard drive is effed up. Game. over.” We groaned.

But, I wasn’t giving up. If I didn’t fix the iPod, I figured my only reasonable option would be to give him mine. And that so isn’t happening. So I did what I assume all red-blooded Americans do when they need help with a life-or-death situation like this.

I Googled.

Jake went upstairs.

I searched “sad ipod icon” and first read information about fixing the problem by forcing the iPod into disk mode. (I sound all technologically intelligent, but I have no idea what that means.) I followed the instructions word for word several times. No luck. Sad iPod continued to stare at me the way my two-year-old does when I eat the last oatmeal raisin cookie in front of her. [What?? She doesn't like raisins anyway.]

I began mentally preparing myself to chuck Jake’s Christmas present (from less than one year ago) into the trash. I felt ill. As I went to click on the red “X” that would close my Google window, I saw something funny. A search result with the words “spank your iPod” in it. Intrigued, I clicked. And, indeed, found a site called, what else, spankyouripod.com that offered the suggestion for fixing iPod hard drive problems by, yes, spanking the iPod.

But of COURSE. After all, it had been a bad, bad iPod.

What did I have to lose? I held Sad iPod in my left hand, face down, and gave a little smack with my right. Nothing. I repeated the process with a little harder smack. Again nothing. But I was enjoying getting to smack something over this deal. I put Sad iPod to my ear and heard whirring and clicking so I figured I hadn’t totally fried it yet. Or figured I had.

Finally, I took a deep breath, braced myself, and slammed Sad iPod down on my solid wood coffee table. Hard. My ears ringing from the slam!, I slowly looked down at the screen. Instead of the Sad iPod icon, I saw words. Ecstatic but hesitant, I inserted an earbud and, sure enough, heard Green Day cranking out “Extraordinary Girl.”

It was a miracle.

I yelled up to Jake, “Come get your iPod.”

“Did you fix it?”

“Duh. I knew I would.”

“Whatever.”

He snatched Happy iPod from my hand and went back up the stairs.

No “thank you.” No “good job.” Nothing.
Damn teenagers.
See if I fix the next thing of his that I break.

Yesterday, Emma and I were running errands before she had to go to pre-kindergarten. As we drove home, I realized I had cut our time pretty close, and it was going to be a rush to get her fed lunch and out the door on time.

When we were a couple of miles from our neighborhood, I asked her what she wanted to eat. She said, “I don’t know,” and sat quietly thinking about it.

Another mile passed before she spoke up.

“Mommy?” she said sweetly.
“What.”
“Can I have a Happy Meal?”
“No, Emma.”
“Hmmph,” she grunted, then crossed her arms and frowned.
“Fine,” she snapped, “Can I have a MAD Meal?”

Transfer and integration of the sarcasm gene is complete. And she gets that from her father.