My Arthroscopy

This past June, I went back to my doctors in Kingston for the zillionth time since my knee first start acting up last October. OK, maybe it was only 8 visits, but it was over a long enough period that we weren't seeing any lasting improvements. If I took things really easy, my right knee was fine. But as soon as I did any moderate exertion -- running a few feet, unicycling a few blocks, and so on -- it started hurting again. Sometimes the pain came instantly, often followed by noticeable swelling, and sometimes the symptoms showed up the next day. The doctors admitted that I wasn't healing and finally ordered an MRI.

These days, many doctors are quick to order tests and surgeries; after all, they pay a lot better than office visits. But my docs are pretty conservative -- almost annoyingly so. And I wasn't in great pain for the most part, so we all played it safe and waited. But when the MRI came back positive for a tear of my medial meniscus, I was scheduled for surgery just days away. I wound up opting for a slightly later date because I was concerned that the operation would have put me out of commission for too long while I was still working with students in NYC. I chose July 8.

Shirra drove me to the hospital in Kingston (just across from the doctors' office) on the morning of the 8th and came back for me that afternoon at 2. In the meantime, a nurse shaved the area around my knee and chatted about the difficulties of working in that particular hospital, which isn't unionized. By 10am I was wheeled to a sort of waiting area near the nurses' station, and 20 boring minutes later, an anesthesiologist explained that he was going to give me a mild sedative.

The next thing I knew, I was back in my room with my leg covered in both gauze and, underneath, three small bandages. Apparently I don't drink enough alcohol to put up any fight when it comes to anesthesiology (this according to a woman calling from the hospital who informed me that, in her experience, the drinkers tend to do better than the teetotalers when it comes to post-op nausea). Back home, I was woozy and struggled mightily just to read a few words in a book. I eventually chose to attack a Sunday Times crossword puzzle. I would read a question and then fall back to sleep while coming up with the answer. When I awoke moments later, I'd pen in the word, look at another clue, and fall back to sleep. This went on for hours.

I had rehab scheduled for the following morning, a Friday, and by the next Monday I was off my crutches, doctor's orders. The doc also took out my stitches and showed me cool pictures of the inside of my knee. I didn't even have a limp, and within another week, I was back on my unicycle. It's amazing how fast a person can recover from arthroscopic surgery.

Now if I can just get my left knee into shape....

A Fuck for a Dollar

I love being able to find lyrics on the internet at a moment's notice. It used to be that you had to own the liner notes, which meant buying the album, and I remember being disappointed whenever I'd get a new record and the sleeve was blank. How were we to know what Queen was singing in Bohemian Rhapsody?

Later, we all found that most CDs had the lyrics printed inside the cover of the disk, but then came the days of Napster and, eventually, iTunes. Gone were the days of liner notes, records, or even disks, and gone, therefore, were the printed lyrics. How were we supposed to know what Whitney Houston was singing in "I Will Always Love You"? So I was thrilled to learn that there are plenty of websites devoted to distributing lyrics (for free!) -- tho many of them contain errors, as I have noted in a previous blog entry.

Last month I was listening to some of my daughter's favorite tunes by a group called My Chemical Romance. In "Mama," an antiwar ditty, I couldn't make out some of the words, so I looked them up. I came across an F-bomb that I hadn't recalled hearing in all the times I'd heard the song:

"But there's shit that I've done with this fuck of a gun. / You would cry out your eyes all along."

I listened to the tune on my iPhone. The word was definitely missing; in its place was a lengthy pause. I mentioned this to Fiona, and we both agreed about how annoying it is that we'd accidentally downloaded the expurgated version. A few days later, while we listened to the song as I drove her to school, I noticed that this time, the 'fuck' was loud and clear.

Me: "You paid the extra dollar so that you could hear the word 'fuck' in the song?"
Fi: "Yeah."
Me: "Good for you, Fiona. I would have done the same thing."

I love the fact that she just had to have the correct version. It wasn't that she needed to hear the word. We are totally open about language in our house. It's that she couldn't bear having a version of the song that the artist hadn't intended.

Sometimes, a 'fuck' is worth a dollar.

Mini-Update

1. We still don't have a generator.

2. After this afternoon, we won't have chicks (or chickens) either. We decided to hold off for a year, so we're giving the adolescent birds to a friend. We didn't quite realize all of the start-up costs involved in having chickens. Even after we got the free coop, there was still a lot of fencing and other material to purchase and set up. I think we just saved ourselves hundreds of dollars and man-hours in costs and labor.

3. Girlyman is coming to play chez Stone in late June. Woo hoo!

How Much Do I Love Girlyman?

Girlyman is a folk-pop group hailing from Atlanta. I first came across their tight, three-part harmonies thanks to my 14yo Fiona. The group has been around for nearly a decade, but we missed them all the years they were performing in Manhattan and Brooklyn (where they had their 2nd and 3rd shows, ever). We missed them even when they performed in New Paltz three years ago at Unison. Darn. I think part of my love for them is the way it connects me to my a capella days at Vassar (1985-8) and Columbia (1990-5). Those were some good times.

But now I'm catching up, with a vengeance.

I've played and re-played some of the songs several dozen times in the past ten days, as this iTunes chart (from my iPhone) shows.

I have a crush on them. I checked out their website, read their blog, and have followed them on facebook and twitter. I've read articles about and watched them interviewed in Slate.

So ... I decided that we need to do our best to support them. I offered to host them at a show here in New Paltz during one of their off days. Amazingly, they accepted!

More details to follow.

Chicks Dig Ticks

We've had a lot of ticks lately. Just last week, Emmett and I were playing catch for a half hour or so. When we finished, Emmett noticed a tick on his leg, which he brushed off. A few minutes later, however, he spotted another. We caught that one before it had bitten him and looked him over for more. In the next 15 minutes, we found another two on various parts of his body, and luckily, each of them was easily removed. In the car on the way to the mall, Emmett found the fifth tick on his leg. We stopped the car and got it off him in time. I decided to check one last place as a joke, and sure enough, there was one under the fold of his shirt collar.

The next day, we were brazen enough to play catch again before heading into Manhattan for a bat mitzvah party. En route to the City, Emmett needed me to pull over once again; there was a tick just under his ear, and this one was burrowing into his skin. I managed to get it just in time.

With this in mind, Shirra was able to convince me that we needed more pets: Chickens. Apparently, they devour ticks aplenty. Even if they don't deliver, at least we'll get some eggs in the bargain.

Right now, they're just a few weeks old and living in a storage container under a heat lamp in our bathroom. In a month or so, they'll be clucking around the back yard, cleaning up our tick problem, or so Shirra says.

Generator?

Power finally came back to us this past Tuesday, just a few hours shy of a full week in the cold and dark. I sent the kids back home yesterday afternoon and joined everyone the same evening. The house was warm and was in surprisingly good shape considering that Shirra couldn't wash a dish or sock or do any normal cleaning for most of the time she was there.

The big question now, of course, is whether to shell out the $3000 necessary to buy and install the kind of generator we'd need in case of another emergency. We've had outages in the past, lasting no more than a day, but even if we get hit again, we could get by if we didn't have the pets. It's not like we're trying to improve our property value -- Shirra and I plan to move out of that house in a box. It's a question of whether we need to shell out big time for another major storm event.

My hunch is that we'll be getting a generator as soon as we can afford it. Maybe over time it will pay for itself in food not wasted and nerves not frayed.

How NOT to Move to New Paltz

We learned, the hard way, that a generator is definitely worth shelling out $2,000 for -- just in case. That 'case' happened this past Wednesday, and it isn't over yet.

TUESDAY, 2/23/10

On Tuesday, Shirra and I looked at the forecast for that evening and decided that I should stay over in Manhattan after tutoring. I've done this only a few times before, and I hate not seeing her and the kids, but with our road already covered in some snow, slush, and ice, the impending downfall would make our road nearly impassible, and the driving conditions were already getting dangerous. I stayed at my mom's apartment in Manhattan.

I left the New Paltz Fire Department this past December, but I still get the pages on my cel phone when a call comes in. Tuesday night, I saw these text messages

11:31 pm: 22 ROCKY HILL RD. TREE AND WIRES, POWER OUTAGE IN AREA.
11:48 pm: 1 BONTICOU VIEW. FIRE ON THE POWER LINES.

Both of these addresses are quite close to our house, but Shirra told me that we still had power. I went to bed nervously.

12:49 am: 30 N. MANHEIM. WIRES DOWN.
1:43 am: 120 N. OHIOVILLE RD. WIRES DOWN.
2:04 am: 30 N. MANHEIM. WIRES ACROSS ROADWAY.
8:19 AM: 225 S. OHIOVILLE RD. WIRE IN DRIVEWAY.

By then, the house had already lost power. I spoke with Shirra early that Wednesday, and she guessed that we'd lost power before 6:30. We haven't had it restored since.

WEDNESDAY, 2/24/10

Naturally we assumed Central Hudson, the Con Edison of Ulster County and its environs, would quickly be on the scene. After all, it's snowed plenty in the past, and the longest power outage we've endured was no more than half a day. The kids' schools were closed, so they hung out at home, watching DVDs on the computer with whatever power it still had and going about life pretty normally. But the forecast for Wednesday night was even worse than the previous night's. Again, it made sense for me to stay in Manhattan. I spoke with the kids a few times during the day and kept an eye on NOAA, an excellent website for weather forecasts. Things were not exactly looking up, but at least we'd heard that Central Hudson was supposed to restore our power by Thursday afternoon. That would mean we'd be without power for about 36 hours, but Shirra made sure we had plenty of water in the basement and food in the pantry. Meanwhile she walked Jack, our dog, in the backyard.

THURSDAY, 2/25/10

Central Hudson's forecast for our power restoration changed three times this day. First it was pushed back to 8 pm, but later it was bumped up to 1 pm. When those times came and went, Shirra checked the site again and found that our power outage was no longer listed in their computer. She took care of that, and we hoped for the best.

I had to make a big decision, and I took a gamble that didn't pay off. I drove home Thursday evening, leaving Manhattan at 7 pm. I didn't arrive in New Paltz till 10, having driven in the worst conditions I've ever put myself thru for such a lengthy ride. When I made it to our road, I figured I'd leave the Smart Car at the bottom of the private road in the area we call the lollipop. But then I thought that I might even make it the nearly half mile from there to our house. I gamely plowed on, making it nearly to the top of our driveway before backing the car to the bottom and leaving it there.

My reason for heading home in such hostile weather was that I'd done my sister-in-law a favor by keeping her car for two weeks while she visited China. I had to get the car back to her by Friday, so my plan was to take her car back the following day, when the weather forecast called for clear skies. This plan nearly worked.

Unfortunately, these texts came in:

11:12 pm: DUBOIS RD. TREE ON WIRES BURNING
4:08 am: NURSING HOME. ODOR OF NATURAL GAS IN THE STRUCTURE. UNABLE TO EVACUATE
... These were followed by a car accident and a flooded basement. These last three meant that the fire department would be pulled in too many directions at once.

In addition to the texts, a good deal of snow came in, too. Here is what Manhattan cars looked like on Friday morning.

FRIDAY, 2/26/10

I phoned AJ, our plow guy, and he was happy to oblige us by plowing our road that morning. I didn't have to be in Manhattan till 2 pm, but I figured an early start might be a good idea just in case the roads were poor. By 9 am, he was on the scene. By 9:10, he was stuck. His truck, not heavy enough for the work and not equipped with tire chains, had slipped off the road partially. He'd have to be towed. I decided the only way for me to make it into NYC was to schlepp to Route 32 and to hitch a ride to the bus station on Main Street. I had 45 minutes to catch my bus. I made a little sign, packed a few things for the day and for possibly another night, and waded thru snow and slush for a few minutes until I came out on the big road. It was clear that the conditions were fine. If only I'd left the Smart Car in the lollipop! Instead, I started walking toward the Village with my little sign for all to see. Just a few cars later, I was seated beside a lovely older woman who often takes the bus into Manhattan for her work. We chatted amiably, and by 10:30 I had my round-trip ticket.

I decided to walk across the street to check on the condition of our Odyssey. Shirra's car had been damaged when she drove over a boulder on our road after the snow, some time Wednesday morning. She managed to get the car picked up by Triple-A, and it's resided ever since at the Citgo Gas Station and Garage, waiting for the expensive part to arrive (scheduled for this coming Tuesday). I looked at the underbelly of the car, examining the damage, and suddenly realized that I needed to deposit a few checks at the bank before heading to The City. I hitched another ride for the quarter-mile uphill to the bank, and a few minutes later I ran back to the bus, arriving in plenty of time. By 12:30, I was at Port Authority, Manhattan, and a few minutes later, I was in my mom's apartment once more.

Chances of our power getting restored were further diminished as more texts came in.

3:14 am. 43 S. OHIOVILLE RD. TREE AND WIRES DOWN.
5:40 am. 217 N. PUTT RD. TREE AND WIRES.
7:55 am. 182 N. PUTT RD. WIRES DOWN IN FRONT OF RESIDENCE.
12:36 pm. 217 N. PUTT RD. WIRE DOWN.

As the day wore on, Shirra and I had to make some decisions about the kids and pets. Luckily, the kids were pretty easy. Shirra put them on a bus to Manhattan, and at 6:30 that evening, I picked them up after seeing a few students during the day.

The pets proved much trickier. We currently have 3 cages housing 5 pets (including Ambrose, our hedgehog, who was nearly left for dead after he curled into a hibernatory ball to try to keep himself warm). Then there's the dog. Unlike the two cats, he needs a good deal of attention and couldn't be left with friends or at the vet's. Shirra elected to stay in the house with the pets rather than to scramble to find them different homes. It didn't help that the towing of AJ's truck damaged our road a bit, because between the excess unplowed snow and the poor condition of the road, Shirra was unable to get our remaining cars over to Route 32. Essentially she was trapped.

As if this wasn't bad enough in a house with the interior temperature plunging into the 40s, we also depend on an electric pump for our well water. Luckily ours is a propane stove, so it works as long as you have a match to replace the pilot light. This meant that Shirra had to boil snow in order to have water with which to flush the toilets, give liquid to the pets, and, of course, make her tea. She also made use of the snow outside for some of her other needs. This woman is her own reality tv show.

Without the kids to worry about, Shirra could get a few different things done. She managed to trudge thru waist-high white stuff in order to visit our closest neighbors. Tho they're only a tenth of a mile away, they've had power the entire time, leading me to suspect that the outage was caused somewhere in the lines near the lollipop of our road. Shirra had her first shower in days, but her ordeal was far from over since our neighbors have also been relying on AJ for their plowing. As a result, they were trapped, too. So in order for Shirra to put the kids onto the bus that afternoon, she and the kids had to slog thru all the snow and slush until they could catch the cab Shirra had called. The driver took them to the station and then dropped Shirra back home, where she trudged the half-mile home once more. Central Hudson updates were inconsistent and inconclusive.

SATURDAY, 2/27/10

Somehow the hits keep coming:

8:52 am. 70 S. OHIOVILLE RD. WIRE IN DRIVEWAY.
3 pm. 212 PLUTARCH RD. TREE ON WIRES BURNING.

Shirra phoned Central Hudson and heard that we might be getting power restored by late this evening. That time has come and gone. It's still possible that we'll have power, light, water, and heat by morning or at least by afternoon, but I'm not counting on it, and the forecast is calling for a bit more precipitation over the next few days.

In the meantime, I've been living as a virtual single dad in Manhattan. I took the kids to see The Flying Karamazov Brothers in Greenwich Village Saturday afternoon, and we walked two miles up to Times Square afterward in order to check out the disappointing prices of the big Toys R Us store there. Our trek wasn't a total loss, however, as it took us past Madison Square Garden, where Emmett discovered that Fiona's favorite band is playing this Friday. An hour later, we have tickets for her and Shirra. I've also begun planning for various scenarios. Basically, until the power is restored, the kids are living with me and my mom. The kids are getting a great taste of NYC life. We've taken subways, buses, and cabs, walked miles of downtown streets, and done a bit of shopping and restaurant hopping. And I've gotten to spend more time on my own with them that at any other point in our lives. I wouldn't ask for a storm like this again, but I'm glad that some good has come out of it.

SUNDAY, 2/28/10

2:33 pm. 436. N. OHIOVILLE RD. TREE LIMB ON THE WIRES

Luckily that's the only further problem with wires since Saturday, but it gives an idea of what Central Hudson is up against. Early on, they reported having over 150,000 homes without power. By Sunday, that number was below 40,000. Not surprisingly, small roads like ours, where the outage only affects a few homes, are way down the hierarchy of importance, so I wasn't holding my breath when Shirra announced that the most recent forecast was for service to be restored by 10:30 Monday night. This peccable timing meant that I couldn't put the kids on the bus today because if the power was not restored, we wouldn't know about it until it was too late. It's not like the kids couldn't survive another chilly day in New Paltz; rather, the problem is that Shirra isn't ready to take them back if power doesn't come back on. There isn't a clean fork or plate in the house, we're low on food, and she's still boiling snow for water -- she's not in a position to welcome back the hordes. With this in mind, we decided that I'd homeschool the kids on Monday and continue until the force is actually with us.

Having made these decisions with Shirra, I was happy to take the kids around the City some more. We went to the Natural History Museum, where Fiona and Emmett spent some time exploring together while Maeve and I took in the Hall of Biodiversity. Her favorite fish was the Queen Triggerfish, as much for its fascinating colors as for its awesome name.

After an hour at the museum, we ran back to my mom's for a quick bite before all of us walked over to the Green Flea flea market. That's where I met Diego Paz a few years ago, the man who has sold me most of my currency collection since 2003. I bought a Philippines 1-Peso note from 1912. My mom pointed out some attractive diorama-type constructions, one of which showed a small scene of a sewing room, so I picked that up for a certain wife who was at that moment living in Starbucks, New Paltz in order to stay warm and to charge the computer. At 3:15 we cabbed it over to Shirra's folks on the East Side, where we spent the next two hours playing games and eating Chinese food for an early dinner. That night I brought them down for a few minutes to the lobby of my mom's building, which was host to a party celebrating the building's 80th anniversary as a structure. They left early, but I hung out for till nearly 10 pm, hobnobbing with neighbors in a way that few of us get to do in the nearly anonymous city of New York. I put the kids to bed a bit on the late side and made sure to get a decent night's sleep in anticipation of our first day of homeschooling.


MONDAY, 3/1/10

The end of the month came and went, leaving us in the dark. The only good news from home was that the text messages stopped buzzing in.

Homeschooling three children varying in age by 8 years isn't as challenging as some might think, tho it helps that I've taught all three ages in schools and privately for nearly two decades. We had fun. I gave the big kids some reading and math passages from age-level materials that I have while Maeve and I worked on handwriting. I gave all of the kids their own composition books, and we had fun working separately in my mom's dining room.

Later, I took Emmett and Maeve to the playroom in my mom's building, where they spent over an hour playing nicely together. Meanwhile, our good friend Dave Altman ("Uncle Dave") took Fiona to the Apple Store nearby to see about a minor computer glitch with her laptop. By 3 pm, the kids were all back up at my mom's, and Fiona ended up taking the little guys to the playground across the street for an hour or so. I saw my students and the kids mostly kept to themselves, tho the first girl I saw was happy to show the kids the dissected owl pellet that she'd brought from school.

We had a homemade dinner with Grandma, and the kids talked with Shirra while I got them ready for bed. The big moment was fast approaching: Would Central Hudson manage to get the power back to us by the appointed hour, 10:30. At 10:34, Shirra phoned me, unable to check her emotions. I commiserated with her as much as I could, given that she is spending yet another night in the dark and cold and I'm living the life in Manhattan. We confirmed our decision to keep the kids in NYC until the power has been restored in NP, and Shirra later that she'd spoken once more with someone at CH who told her that they're still on the case and that all of their remaining jobs are little ones like ours. We have nothing against the power company, which has done everything it can to ameliorate the situation, including having an operator on hand 24 hours a day to speak with customers even while crews work thru the night to repair downed lines and busted transformer boxes. The latest estimate is for late Wednesday night, but I have a feeling that Shirra could end up seeing the Muse concert on Friday before the juice is flowing thru our wires again.

Smart Car Breakdown, Part 2

Not a month after the clutch plate failure, I had virtually the same problem with the transmission: The car began again to shift choppily between gears, and I had difficulty getting it into Reverse. My hunch was that the earlier problem had only partly been fixed. I'll never know for sure. But once again, the car had to be towed into Manhattan. Each time, this happened right before a Scrabble tournament.

This time I didn't waste time; I called Triple-A and arranged for the car to be towed on the following Monday. A snafu or two later, the car wound up at the dealership, and I waited to hear the prognosis. Happily, the problem was found to be with the 'clutch attenuator' (responsible for getting the gears to shift), and this part is covered by my extended warranty. I paid the $100 deductible and saved $950 on parts and labor. Phew.

Meanwhile I'd had to drive to Manhattan in my Aztek. That behemoth wasn't too bad for parking until Wednesday, when I had to be in a spot before noon. I left with over an hour to spare and ended up using most of my extra time finding an alternate route into Manhattan when all four lanes of the George Washington Bridge's upper level were shut down. Once in Manhattan, I made good time and would have been on time for my student except for the parking issue. Grr!!!

I retrieved the car a few days ago, and it's been driving fine since then. But on Feb 7, I have another Scrabble tournament. EIMT ILLW ELLT.

Update on Cheewawa. A Smart Car is Reborn

Amazingly, the dealership and Smart USA (the national version of the international company) agreed to foot the entire bill even tho the clutch plate was no longer under warranty and wasn't covered by the extended warranty. This saved me at least $900. The car has been fine since I got it back just before Xmas.

Hip hip hooray for Smart Center Manhattan!

Knee Feeling Keen

Pained on Wednesday, drained on Thursday. I couldn't have picked a better time to get sick. I was able to see the doctor, have a blood test, and start a monthlong course of antibiotics all within 3 hours, and since the kids are out of school and I'm not seeing students (who are all on vaca), I could sleep till 9 or 10 every morning. And voila! I'm feeling almost like new. I actually ran when the phone rang yesterday and took the stairs two-at-a-time today. My knee still locks up a bit, but moving it slowly and avoiding weird sitting positions basically keeps me feeling good.

Part of my convalescence has also involved doing normal things. Since Lyme (which I'm assuming this is) has symptoms that include irritability, it's been important to avoid sulking or doing lots of nothing. We put up shelves yesterday (ok, I helped Shirra put them up), I broke up some ice (well, actually that was mostly a total failure, but at least I got out), and I took Fiona to a friend's house and ended up having a lovely chat with the folks. Then today, we took a trip to the village to check out a restaurant in Water Street Market. The food was fine, and we had a good time thanks to a Mad Libs-style app that I downloaded for my iPhone.

Fireman No More

I resigned from the fire department. I was upset about having to do so, but the minuses easily outweighed the pluses.




I joined the department in December of 2006, so I resigned almost exactly 3 years after joining. In the interim, I answered over 550 calls and helped deal with a few house fires, a handful of car accidents, two cats-in-trees, and many many false alarms at the university (and a few elsewhere). Since joining, I also started collecting items related to fire fighting, including patches of local departments as well as many different kinds of antiques (old helmets, extinguishers, pins, and even artwork). All of that's going to eBay now, with the exception of my own badge (#952, on the right side of the photo). I think I have a few hundred dollars worth of stuff - maybe close to $1000.




I loved belonging to our department. I loved helping our community, and my favorite part of it was during Fire Prevention Week, when we visit all of the local schools and day-cares to teach the kids about fire safety and to introduce the little ones to a fire fighter in gear. I also liked being known as a fireman, which carries a certain panache that made me feel proud.

I wish I could have been more helpful to the department. I had trouble remembering where some important items were on the trucks, and only in recent months did I begin to feel like I knew where most of it was. Most likely this was due to my schedule: Because I could almost never be in New Paltz during Monday night training sessions, it took me much longer to learn my way around the trucks. In addition, I didn't get to practice the skills necessary to put out fires or extricate drivers, so most of what I did on a scene was the sort of grunt work that anyone could do. Occasionally I was of some value to the NPFD, but I wish I could have been even more helpful, even more often.

My first full year, I answered about 250 calls. Last year, the number was about 170. The final tally for '09 was 130. A large part of the decline came from my decision not to rush to the calls that came in from SUNY New Paltz. That boy called wolf far too often for my tastes. It didn't help that we live nearly 4 miles (and almost 10 minutes) from our fire house.

I fully support our fire department and hope that they get the funding for the upgraded fire house that's in the works. Maybe if my schedule (and a few other things) change, I can return, but for the next few years, I would count that out.

LYME?

All of a sudden two days ago, my right knee was swollen and painful to move. Initially I was hopping around, but within one day it went from annoying to almost debilitating. To my delight, my orthopedic surgeon (who'd helped with my left knee some months ago) had time to see me today. He immediately notified me that he would be draining the fluid (and that there was a lot of it) and that I might need a cortisone shot.

The weird thing about the onset of this pain and swelling was that there was no obvious cause: no painful fall, no bad twist, no overexertion. It made no sense. Then the doc mentioned that when kids come in with my symptoms, it's usually Lyme disease. I looked it up on Wikipedia, and sure enough, everything fit. The disease can come on suddenly and produces the painful swelling as well as a few symptoms I could also attest to, namely fatigue and mild irritability. Then I remembered that about six weeks ago, I was bitten by a deer tick.

We decided that the chance that I have Lyme is pretty high. Because of that, and because cortisone and Lyme don't usually mix, the only treatment for today was the fluid drainage. The syringe is huge, as is the needle, but they barely hurt going in, and the swelling and pain were mostly gone by the time they came out.

After seeing Maeve at school for a little pre-winter-break party, I went for a blood test and picked up my pills. I'll know the results of the test pretty soon, and in the meantime, just to be on the safe side, I'm on amoxicillin 4 times a day (for a month). Then I came home and took another nap.

Cheewawa is Down, but not for the Full 10-Count

My beloved smart car nearly died last Thursday. I had just dropped Fiona off at the middle school and was on my way back home when the car suddenly lurched. The car behaved normally for a few more turns and then repeated its lurching, shifting between 1st and 2nd gear fairly violently. I turned the car off and on as a possible 'fix' to the problem: no luck; in fact, it got worse. I quickly considered where I could park the car without hindering traffic and where a tow truck could easily pick up the car. Eventually, thanks to the slope of the hill, the car glided into a parking lot and I pushed it into a spot.

Several frustrating phone calls later, I had discovered that my extended warranty company only covers towage up to $300 (better than the $100 that an earlier operator had told me). Still, because the car had to be towed nearly 90 miles, the charge would be over $500, leaving me responsible for the overage. When I called the tow company themselves, the dispatcher suggested Triple-A, since they have a very good policy for towing. Sure enough, the entire trip into and back from NYC was covered, with me responsible only for about $10 in tolls.

More frustrating, tho, was to discover only yesterday that the extended warranty somehow doesn't cover the problem with my car, which resided in something connected to the transmission called the switch plate. This is a piece of metal that was found to be too weak in the 2008 smart cars (like mine) and was, in the 2009 models, replaced. In other words, this is a known problem. It's a rare one, tho, and since I drive like a granny, the problem points not to my driving style but to the defect in the mechanism.

The good news is that the manager of smart center Manhattan is on my side. He was stunned that I was being forced to pay for the repair of a part that should not have broken and which is just a few steps above being recalled. He phoned the company and got them to shoulder a third of the cost, or about $300. I pick up the car later today. I hope it lasts at least another 65,000 miles before any other major repairs.

The Plowman Cometh

We got a call at 7 am: AJ, our plowman, was experiencing a delay. Apparently there was something wrong with his truck.

Since school had been canceled for the day, this wasn't a big issue. Eventually he'd come to our rescue, and until then, we could hang out at home with some hot chocolate and a dog who loves snow. Emmett and Maeve went sledding and found other fun things to do outside. Fiona got an extra two hours of sleep. On the minus side:

1. Jack doesn't actually like the snow. He's ok with it, but unlike one of his old friends, he doesn't dig himself into a tunnel or galavant about in the fluffy white stuff. He just lies down in it long enough to get wet. Then he comes back in and gets everything else wet. And when he goes for a walk, he'll get everything wetter still.
2. I needed to be in Manhattan by noon. This meant leaving around 9:45 just to leave myself some extra time. By 9:00, we hadn't seen or heard from AJ, so I gave him a call. His truck was back in action (phew) and he'd be by as soon as he could.

Sure enough, he arrived just after I'd dug out my little Cheewawa from its surrounding snow. Shirra and I also spent a half hour cleaning out some of the shed's overhang so that I have my cosy little place to park the tiny car. When AJ arrived, I hopped into the Smart and drove (carefully!) down the road behind him. It was lucky that he had to leave, too, because I got stuck just before our road merges with Rte 32, and he pushed me out of trouble.

I made it to Manhattan with no time to spare, parked in a spot only a Smart can fit into, and called the day a success. Now I just have to hope that the road doesn't freeze over by the time I get home tonight.

Thanksgiving 09

For the 2nd time in our four Novembers in New Paltz, we had Thanksgiving up at our house. Two years ago, we had a less-coordinated effort that still came off pretty well but was nowhere near as much fun as this go-round. It helped that we added "Beatles Rock Band" to the festivities, in keeping with the early settlers and their native American benefactors who, as we all learned in social studies class, played with beetles and rocks and wore (head)bands. Maybe not, but still, I strongly recommend Rock Band for all family situations, funerals included.

Before and after the music, there was a meal. 14 people filled our smallish dining room, requiring us to tilt the table 45 degrees (that is to say, it was diagonal) and to add side tables on either end, trapping window-side guests. Shirra cooked nearly everything we ate for the dinner -- and all of it was delicious -- tho all of the groups of guests contributed comestibles. My brother and his wife favored us with some amazing items from Trader Joe's, and my mom made two tasty sweet potato pies; Shirra's brother and his wife toted along some string beans for the meal as well as some crudite and dips. I ate more in that afternoon than in any three other days of the year.

THE BALLOONS. THOSE FRIGGIN' BALLOONS
And once again, we avoided NYC. Thanks to the circus that the balloon-inflation has turned into, there are sidewalk closures, late-night noise, and a few other hassles that easily outweigh the mild thrill of seeing the huge balloons being blown up just outside my old block. When I was a kid, it was bad enough that John and I would hear marching bands warming up at 6am outside our window (14 floors below), but in recent years, people have come out in droves much as they do for the lighting of the huge Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. The difference is that at least with the tree, what little thrill there is, it's quickly over -- basically as soon as the tree is lit up for the first time. But with the balloons, people mill past all day as if they're excited about watching helium slowly fill up a large piece of fabric. In fact, seeing Dora the Explorer with only her head and limbs inflated might be quite distressing to a little kid and is certainly pretty boring to anyone else.

I guess that people think it's cool to see the balloons in their pre-parade state as if they're catching a dress rehearsal of a big musical, but as I know from personal experience, there is quite a difference between seeing Sweeny Todd before opening night and glimpsing a flaccid Pillsbury Doughboy.