The pediatric ward hosts a feminist princess party

I don't know that I've ever been so happy to see my funky little house, bread crumbs on the floor and all. Oh joy, hallway rug that slips and burbles. Oh joy, broken soap dispenser and crowded bathroom sink. Helloo, paint-warped kitchen cabinets that won't quite close, come to mama!

We are home! Maggie, despite still looking pale as a Victorian orphan, is healthy and happy and catching up on her sleep and fresh fruit. Hurray! As grateful as I am for the wonderful care she received in the hospital, that place sort of sucked.

Maggie summed it up best in her thank you card to the staff: "the worst part was the needle. The best part was the playroom."

Below is a sample of how I managed to entertain myself in said playroom. Upon seeing my handiwork, the Mister said: "you really need to get out of here." Duh.

I am also, in my way, grateful for Joan Rivers

I, like Joan Rivers (have you seen the documentary? It's surprisingly good), believe there is humor to be found in absolutely everything. Your husband committed suicide (as Joan's did)? There's a zinger in there somewhere. Lost your job? That one's just easy. Teenager's a drug addict? A veritable gold mine of jokes. It's been said a million times, but seriously, if we can't laugh, where are we?

Except now I can't laugh. I am sitting in a dark hospital room watching the mesmerizing blinking of my daughter's heart machine while she tries to sleep tangled in the various cords and wires coming off her body. Before you get too worried: she's fine. They are figuring it out. We should be going home with our rapidly growing collection of My Little Pony stickers very soon and that pale, feverish girl with the dark circles under her eyes that they've swapped for my daughter, will go back from whence she came and my vibrant girl shall make her triumphant return. Possibly even tomorrow.

So it's not worry that makes this unfunny. I am surprisingly calm and unflapped about all the poking and pricking and monitoring she's been through in the last 24 hours. It is a feeling of intense gratitude that makes this all so seriously unfunny. I am thankful for everything right now. I'm positively gooey with it.

For medical insurance for one. For pediatric nurses who stand in a line as you enter the ward for the first time and greet your child by name as if they have been waiting all day just for a glimpse of her. For Japanese restaurants that deliver to the seventh floor of the hospital. For handsome Korean orderlies who push you and your daughter around the hospital in a wheelchair. For toy rooms with baby dolls and volunteers who read books. For doctors who introduce themselves using their first names and then take such detailed medical histories you feels as if they really, really care about figuring this out. I'm thankful for ibuprofen and antibiotics and in-room DVD players.

But mostly, of course, I am so thankful to have kids who are not chronically or critically ill. I am awed and bowled over by the good fortune that is good health. Every time I think about riffing on this hospital experience (and it's ripe with cute ice cream jokes and "buh-gina" references, let me tell you), I think about parents who have to spend a lot of time in the hospital with their children and I am snapped right back onto the straight and narrow. Because that, my friends, is suffering. And if you are not suffering in that particular way, you have much to be thankful for. And that's what I'm left with: one giant thank you, thank you, thank you Buh-Jeezus!

Sicko

Can we just talk about colds for a second?  I don't mean to whine but I have been sick, more or less, since November.  It's now mid-March.  That's, let's see, 4 months.  Four months of hacking and sneezing and snuffling and croaking like a toad.  I've had bronchitis and a sinus infection and something that left white pustules on my tonsils.  I've coughed so hard I've gagged. I've had a fever and the chills. I have been sick so often I am actually embarrassed about it.  I show up at work and feel as if there is a collective recoil.  And can I blame them?  No.  Truth is, I'm kinda gross.

Today I went to the doctor to see if maybe there was a reason behind my incessant germiness.  I was hoping they would find something obvious like an unrelenting sinus infection or a horrible black mold allergy.  Even something truly terrible like lupus would have at least been an explanation.  But I'm here to tell you that going to the doctor is no episode of House or page from the New York Times' "Diagnosis" stories. No one is interested in your medical mystery.  No team of doctors approaches with clipboards and medical journals to try to figure out your problem.  Nope.  Instead you are informed that colds are caused by viruses (um, I know) and give a prescription for cough medicine (no current cough). In short, my visit to the doctor was a wholly unsatisfying experience and I still can't breathe through either nostril.  

Any advice out there?  Because I am starting to forget what it feels like to be healthy.

A thing I like

This lovely and true poem about why death is such a loss by the late, great John Updike. It makes me cry.  I hope someone reads it at my funeral. 

Perfection Wasted 

And another regrettable thing about death 
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic, 
which took a whole life to develop and market -- 
the quips, the witticisms, the slant 
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest 
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched 
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears, 
their tears confused with their diamond earrings, 
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat, 
their response and your performance twinned. 
The jokes over the phone. The memories 
packed in the rapid-access file. The whole act. 
Who will do it again? That's it: no one; 
imitators and descendants aren't the same.