Author: NouveauSoileau

Optimistic mother, devoted lover, careful writer

Beating the holiday rush

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Now that Thanksgiving’s over, we’ve officially skidded into the most perilous part of that steep slope that began gradually back in October with Halloween.

And that is, the downward spiral of eating, eating, eating — which doesn’t end until you find yourself on January 1, bloated and popping out of all your fat clothes and swearing that, as God is your witness, you will never eat another brownie again.

Of course, it all began innocent enough, really. Some candy. A little snacking out the bowl for the trick or treaters — which rapidly progresses, after a night or two, to full-fledged scarfing out of the kids’ bags. (Not that I did any of these things, you understand.)

OK, maybe a little, but by mid-November I had vowed — VOWED, I tell you — that it’s Not Going to Be Like That This Year and I won’t gain 10 pounds over the holidays … or as I like to call them, the Twelve Days of No Fitness.

This year, I made it through Thanksgiving fairly well. Despite baking two apple pies from scratch, I consumed only one piece when the actual day of eating arrived. There was some ice cream on top, I admit it — but I felt positively virtuous next to my brother Mark, who topped his piece with not a decorous scoop of ice cream, but a veritable SLAB of pecan-toffee goopy-gob Breyer’s Yumfest — or whatever it was that Paul bought — taking up practically his entire plate. For dinner, I had a modest plate of turkey, dressing, broccoli casserole, corn pudding, ya know … and I think I went back for seconds. A small seconds.

But that’s not the point. I was trying to take it easy, and early Friday morning, I was up and ready for a good, healthy vigorous walk. If you call noon early, but hey: I was up.

Christopher and I hoofed it around the track, battling the wind but otherwise enjoying the sunny, though cold, day. Kristoff dropped off after one lap and I — still on my virtuous high — galloped through another lap, iPodless and Christopherless, but hey I can entertain myself for 15 minutes just dreaming up ideas for blog posts.

The park where we walk is at the bottom of the hill outside my neighborhood, which means after exercising, one is faced with the joyless task of dragging butt up the hill to the top, where the house awaits. It had been several weeks since I’d walked so buddy, I was tired. I climbed the rather gentle slope at a dead slog.

All was well until the next day, when, fool that I am, I decided to venture out shopping. It wasn’t Black Friday,  I know, but similarly bad from the shopper’s point of view … sort of a Dark and Moody Saturday. I set my sights on Target for a few errands, then vowed to do my weekly grocery shopping at Meijer. Trassie and I set out.

Things went fine for a good solid 10 minutes or so, and then my left foot began to ache. Then throb. Then, agonizing pain shot through it when I merely lifted the foot from the floor.

The aforementioned errand took me all the way to the back of the store, which is where they conveniently put the toy department. I foolishly thought Trassie could point out some things he was interested in, which Santa could be persuaded to bring him come Christmas Morn. This he translated as I GET A GREAT BIG GIANT TOY RIGHT NOW.

We lapped the toy department several times, me leaning more and more heavily on the shopping cart as we limped, er, strolled along. When the inevitable meltdown occurred, I was in no shape to perform my Sworn Mommy Duty, which would be to snatch the screaming child up and haul ass out of the store. So instead, I caved and permitted the purchase of an overpriced race car. There was peace in the valley once more but, unfortunately for me, this didn’t extend to my metatarsals, which by now were positively howling.

Somehow, I limped to the checkout, paid for my goods and got them and the now-sunny Trassie out to the car. There my doom awaited, for I knew this: a trip to the grocery must be accomplished, if my brood  was to be fed in the coming week.

At this point, I experienced a simultaneous flash of brilliance and flush of embarrassment. Call it what you will — but I called it a plan.

Scooter.

That’s what I’d do — I’d acquire me one of them thar scooters, direct from the Scooter Store for Grocery Stores, and have it tote my gimpy butt around Meijer for the few necessities I had to get.

Honestly, I was mostly prompted by the fact that one of the items on my list was milk. Have you ever been to Meijer’s? It’s approximately the size of the Chicago O’Hare International Airport. And the milk is on the far back aisle.

Believe me,  I didn’t undertake this scooter thing lightly. I am, after all, an active and healthy young (looking) woman, and I can certainly negotiate a few hundred thousand square feet of mega supermarket.

Most of the time.

After double-checking with some employees lounging around that you didn’t need a handicapped parking tag or any other officially sanctioned disability seal of approval — “Hey, take it! That’s what they’re for!” I was told — I timidly sat my behind in the scooter, sat Trassie upon my lap and laid rubber toward the back of the store.

That was just a figure of speech.

The rest of the trip you can probably imagine — my eyes constantly darted around, waiting for the inevitable accusation from some frail old lady, wheelchair-bound amputee or otherwise legitimate gimp along the lines of, “And what do YOU think you’re doing in that scooter, young lady?!” Eyes downcast, I would have to plead my case: “My foot is ouchie. I walked too hard on it yesterday.”

Trassie thought it was all pretty fun, and, sympathetic soul that he is, he finally took in that I had a temporarily bad foot, and tried to make me feel better. I did, a little. And after a while it got to be kind of fun, especially executing 180s mid-aisle and then flooring it toward the produce.

Throughout, I did, of course, arise from my seat and actually take items down from the shelves. I made sure to perform a full limp as I carried cans of beans and bags of apples back to the cart, should any sharp-eyed busybody decide to challenge my status. After a while I was reminded of another holiday, years ago, when I uncharacteristically lost my voice and found myself a disabled holiday shopper. I was looking for a pillbox for a vitamin-popping friend, and no store in the free world, that year, appeared to carry them. “DO YOU HAVE PILL BOXES???!!!” I’d shout in an inaudible whisper to thousands of clerks, who would whisper back, “Any WHAT?” 12 hours later, I found one, and I think my voice finally came back around President’s Day.

Now, several non-exercising days later, my poor foot is still ouchie, and I really don’t know what I did to the blame thing. I feel sure more rest will bring it ’round — and if you’re certain these symptoms are a precursor to the dreaded deterioration metatarsalitis, please refrain from letting me know. The ignominy of my scooter-aided shopping trip is still just a little too fresh.

Hit me with your best shot

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You may have heard of this little bug going around called H1N1, or more disgustingly, swine flu. Midwestern pig ranchers, or whatever they’re called, prefer we stick to the more ominous string-of-letters form of disease identification because they claim “swine flu” is hurting their business. Perhaps — but I have yet to hear of one person letting some dumb bug stand between them and their bacon.

Be that as it may, I heartily do not want to come down with a virus most of my species has yet to encounter and therefore there’s no herd immunity. So my entire clan arose at dawn and hauled butt down to a local high school for a mass inoculation, administered free courtesy of the Fayette County Health Department, AKA, your federal tax dollars at work.

Here you see the scene.

The health department announced the shots would be available beginning at 9 am. I live approximately 1.5 minutes by car from this school, and so about 8 o’clock we loaded up the Prius and did a quick zip over there.

There were cars, cars, cars as far as they eye could see. Every few feet people stood to direct vehicles and, once we were parked, to herd us toward the entrance. Once inside, more CAUTION tape funneled us toward our doom.

Which is how this one was seeing it. No he wasn’t interested in avoiding a potentially deadly disease, a hospital stay, coma, pneumonia or any other dire consequences of contracting H1N1. No, he just didn’t want a shot, poor lamb — the news of which I had avoided as long as possible to ward off just such a moment.

And so we herded along like that a while and then, aburptly, the line stopped. Time read 8:20 am. We all sat down and I broke out the breakfast bars and the Clementines (oh, and by the way — YUM) and we settled in for a wait. A woman from the health department then started working the line, passing out our registration cards which, interestingly, turned out to be printed in Spanish on the side which required our names, addresses, etc. Fortunately, a form is a form is a form and we more or less could figure out what was required of us — and we had additional fortification in the person of Claire, who is mostly fluent in Spanish after nine years of it in school now.

We settled in to wait. Food had been dispensed and Nintendo DS’es extracted from various pouches and backpacks. We were parked and ready for a long wait and then — lo and behold! A doctor with a loud booming voice swept by with the glad tidings that the flu shots would soon commence! We arose and began the long march to the gym, there to meet our destiny at the end of a needle.

Why the term “swine flu” anyway? For a little clarity, let us turn to the New York Times, which published this article last spring.

Researchers say that based on its genetic structure, the new virus is without question a type of swine influenza, derived originally from a strain that lived in pigs. But the experts are still sorting out how long ago it infected pigs and how much it might have mutated when it jumped to humans.

“It’s fair to say that at some point the virus passed through a pig,” said Dr. Paul A. Offit, an infectious disease expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “It could have been months; it could have been years ago.”

Even if pigs were the original source of the disease, experts said they did not appear to be playing any role in its transmission now. The virus is passing from person to person, they said, most likely by the spread of respiratory droplets.

It’s amazing to me that anyone would think you could get it by eating pork; that’s like thinking chicken pox is spread through chowing down at KFC.

And so we, untroubled by misinformation, sallied forth into the inoculation arena and took our medicine. It was quick, painless and efficient — at least for four of us. Trassie, remembering his seasonal flu shot from a couple months ago, set up in an impressive wail that lasted until we’d all been stabbed and shuffled over to the Wait and See area.

Things were much happier here.

And certainly by the time Mario and Luigi came out to play, we were, you might say, in hog heaven.

Your Wednesday afternoon cute

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A couple weeks ago — through circumstances unforeseeable by an average adult couple attempting to leave the house of a morning with all of his and/or her belongings, children and electronics intact, packed and secured — a carseat was left behind.

My 5-year-old son Trassie attends preschool, after which he spends the afternoon at his aunt’s house. So does his little partner in crime, Josh. The two of them have been best buddies since they were babies. How many people can say they forged their most long-term friendships over teethers and drool bibs?

And so they still are together as they being the journey of Education. On alternate weeks, Josh’s mother picks the two of them up and deposits them at my sister-in-law’s house while we do the honors the other weeks.

This particular day, it was our week, and the seat Josh occupies sat alone and shivering in our garage. This fact became clear to Tras and I as we pulled in the pickup line, moseyed to the trunk of the Prius and found it substantially lacking in spare car seat.

After some discussion of logistics — should we take the two sequentially? — I was booted out to wait with the two urchins while Tras went home to get the second seat. That left me and two wiggly boys sitting on the curb for an exciting 20 minutes or so.

They sat like this a while, but then presently the sitting got to be too much for them and the running about commenced.

Unfortunately I didn’t get any more pictures taken; I was too busy trying to capture on video the two of them singing one of the more incomprehensible songs in the oeuvre of Phineas and Ferb. I never did get a good version.

This shot of the two of them sitting there wiggling, though, is too priceless not to share.

Open! I approach

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You remember the Prius, the first brand-new car Tras and I have had in decades. It’s a darling little thing, all energy-efficient and all — and for that reason alone, we love it. We do.

We also love it because it is extremely pimped out.

Oh, it’s no Mafia Car, our name for the Chrysler 300, which to me looks extremely intimidating with its gun-slit windows and menacing grill.

And when the Mafia goes on vacation, there is the convenient wagon version.

Anyway, one of the bells and/or whistles which came on the model Prius we selected is keyless entry. It’s not just keyless, though; it’s completely keyless. You need never remove the remote from your pocket or purse. Stand next to the car and open the handle; it knows you’re there. Get in, press a button, the thing starts. Get out, lightly touch your finger to the handle (with the remote on your person, of course) and beep, it’s locked.

I now require this for every aspect of my life. And I’m almost there.

Arriving home, we push a little button on the rear-view mirror, which has been programmed to our garage-door remote. Open sesame. The garage opens. I enter my home.

Similarly, when I get to work, I wave my purse, containing my pass card, at the electronic door lock; the door unlocks and I sweep into the building.

Through the day, wherever I go, doors unlock and open as I approach. The crowd parts, as it were. I’m getting used to this.

Until I get to the door to my office. It’s a big heavy wooden door, equipped with this … this … metal thing. Perplexed, I stand there a moment, then gently push on the door.

Nothing.

I try the doorknob. Nothing. It will jiggle slightly, but that’s it. I set down my purse and bowl of oatmeal (tip #3) and stare for a while. How am I going to get in?

Then it dawns on me. I HAVE TO USE A KEY.

It’s amazing how quickly I got used to key-free living. Sure, every once in a while I start digging in my purse for my keychain as I head out to the parking lot to get into the car. But more often, it’s the other way; I stand before doors, waiting for them to sense my presence and admit me.

It’s as close, I suppose, as I’m ever going to come to achieving full-blown deity status.