We have a house that was built in 1885. The house was five years old before they got around to adding indoor water, at the same time they hooked it up to the city water/sewer lines. As a result, taking a shower here was a little like trying to bathe in a gentle rain. Even worse, flushing the toilet while someone was in the shower did not just result in all the cold water being rerouted to the toilet, leaving the shower-victim screaming in rage and pain. No, it rerouted all the water, leaving the shower-victim standing there with shampoo running down into their eyes as they squinted painfully at the dripping shower head.
The only plus to this is that it was easy to let DaBoy know that his 30-minute shower was over. What is it with teenagers and showers? No…wait…forget I asked.
Last fall, we heard a rumor being circulated around the neighborhood that our water utility company had begun to force homeowners to change out their main water line from the street to the meter. At, of course, the property owner’s expense. They were doing this by refusing to switch the water bills over to the name of a new owner/tenant until the line had been changed out, but had plans to just start sending out demands to everyone. Property owners were being given 30 days to comply or face huge penalties. So, Randy and I decided that, since we’d recently paid off the car, we could use it for collateral on a loan. We put the car in hock, got the loan, and began calling plumbing companies.
What is it with plumbers not returning phone calls? Of the 10 companies I called, only three - 3 - of them called me back. And of those three, only TWO actually showed up to do the estimate.
I met with the first one, who proceded to explain to me what the job entails: “Well, first, see, we have to cut a hole in the street. Then we need to hack about four holes in this here driveway - ”
“Why do you need to cut four holes in my driveway?” I demanded.
“Well, now, see, this is a big job <ptooey> and we have to bring in some big equipment.”
“Uh huh,” I said, eyeing the glob of spit next to my feet.
“Yep, big equipment,” he went on, staring speculatively at the retaining wall that keeps the vacant lot next door’s front yard from collapsing into our driveway. “Not sure <ptooey> if we can manage it. Might have to take out that retaining wall there.”
“What?” I gasped. He’d begun wandering over to inspect the retaining wall. I followed, weaving around spit blobs.
“This here wall is in our way,” he said.
“Well, there is a vacant lot next door,” I pointed out. “This is a 50-foot long driveway and wall levels out and stops about 10 feet away from the street. It doesn’t come anywhere near the spot the water line has to go. Can’t you just drive your big equipment through the lot?”
“Hmm,” he said noncommitally. He turned, spat, and gazed at the vacant lot as though he hadn’t noticed it until now. “Wal, I spoze we might be able to do that,” he finally allowed reluctantly. “We can try it, anyway. But if we have to take out that wall, it’ll cost a lot extra.”
Then he informed me that the job - with the wall left intact - would cost around $6000.00. I just nodded, keeping my face blank: I have no idea what a good price for this job would be. When I told Randy how much they’d want, he turned white. “Check with somebody else,” he said firmly, when he got his breath back.
So I had the second company who called come out. This plumber stood in our driveway, eyed the distance between the street and the house for all of about 15 seconds, and quoted me a price of $3500.00.
“What about that retaining wall?” I asked.
“What about it?” he asked.
“Well…isn’t it in the way?”
“No,” he said, looking at me like I shouldn’t be allowed to run around outside without supervision, “we’ll just use that vacant lot next door.”
So I hired him.
Within three days, it was done, except for filling the holes in the driveway and the street. I have to say, I was really impressed. You know how long most construction jobs take? I’ve figured out why: it’s because they spend at least 50% of their time on the job waiting for someone to bring them something. And the reason I figured that out is because it just didn’t happen with these guys. They were so well organized that the item they needed was either on their truck, or pulling up in front of the house as they got to the point they needed it. Up to and including the water company coming out to “locate” the water main. Four times.
Now, this is not to say the job went smoothly; no job like this has ever gone smoothly since the very first plumber hooked up the very first faucet in the cave. They discovered that there are two water lines going into the house, both of which are equally corroded, and only one is live. But they can’t tell which one is live and which one isn’t, so they had to shut it off from the street. Also, the sewer line was damaged, so it had to be repaired, too.
The utility company came out four times, located our connection to the water main under the street in a different spot each time, and the hole at the end of our driveway got bigger and bigger until it’s wider than the driveway itself. Finally, the plumbing crew found it by - what else? - hitting it with the Caterpillar while digging a new hole for the new emergency shutoff in the middle of the yard. It was nowhere near the street, and necessitated them shutting the water off a good two hours earlier than expected with no warning.
But we have water pressure now! You can actually feel the water hitting your body in the shower! As soon as Randy got home, we rushed around the house, giggling like little kids as we turned on the faucets and flushed the toilets to watch the water pressure not vanish. We called our friends and told them to come over so they could flush the toilets - and they came! The first time I got into the shower, Randy waited, rubbing his hands and cackling until I’d been in there for what he thought was long enough before reaching for the flush handle. Just as his fingers touched it, I finished my shower and turned off the water. The next time he was in the shower, I rushed into the bathroom, flushed the toilet on him and waited for him to come boiling out of there. But he didn’t notice I’d done it; we have actual water pressure!
Of course, now we run out of hot water in half the time, but, hey. It’s a fair trade.
But overall, the job went fine until the city came out, inspected the hole in the street and took responsibility for it. It’s one of four holes we have to live with: the massive one at the end of the driveway; a small one where a new…something…is going to go (not sure what that hole is for) in the driveway on our side of the sidewalk; another large hole in the middle of the driveway where the old meter and emergency shutoff was located; and another massive one just off the driveway against the side of the house. The plumbing company is responsible for filling up the holes in the driveway, but the city is the only one who can do the hole in the street.
When I say the hole is massive, I’m not kidding. It’s about 7 feet deep by 4 feet wide by about 11 feet wide. You could drop a car down there. And given that we have a little car, that’s not a good thing. You’d need Bigfoot to negotiate that hole. The plumbing crew filled it with the dirt, but that left it about a foot and a half deep; too much to try to get across with the Kia.
The passing-of-the-hole-baton to the city happened on a Friday at about 4:30 PM. The inspector measured it, nodded at the plumbing contractor, scattered six of those blinking barricades around it, and they all left. When Randy got home that night, he drove in through the vacant lot next door and parked in our garage.
The next morning, it began to snow. A lot. We got over a foot of snow, blizzard winds and we were trapped. There was no getting out through the vacant lot; it is just sloped enough that we’d have slid all the way across it and into the woman’s house across the way. She would not have appreciated it. On Monday, I called the city and asked them to bring out those big, metal plates they use to cover up holes in city streets. I was informed that they don’t own any of those. I must have been dreaming every time I’ve driven over them, then. So I called the plumber, who said he has two plates and would send someone out to lay them down for us. Which he so did not have to do; that hole wasn’t his problem anymore. But he didn’t know exactly where the plates were and wouldn’t be able to send anyone out with them for at least a couple of days.
So, we spent a total of five days trapped in our house. Finally, the plumbing company arrived in an enormous truck with a hydraulic winch. These two guys fought and wrestled the plates into place over the hole for almost an hour before finally getting them situated. Then the winch froze solid, and they had to fight with that for another hour before getting it secured enough to drive away.
That was in the beginning of December. Since then, we have had at least one more blizzard and several more inches of snow. The barricades are situated along either side of the hole, straddling the gaps where the plates don’t cover. It’s just exactly wide enough to get the Kia in with maybe an inch on either side to spare. No room to manuever. The location and size of the hole also means that the street is down to one lane in front of our house. We keep expecting to look outside and see our neighbors all standing there with torches, ready to attack us.
It is now February. Three days ago, the city finally showed up to remove the plates and fill the hole with concrete. I discovered this when I was cleaning the kitchen and kept hearing crashing and thudding noises that shook the house. I looked outside to see a guy driving this little, white tractor. You’ve seen them: they look like what your child would make with Legos. Like one of the big Caterpillar tractors brought his little son to work one day, and it spends the day trundling importantly around the job site, bouncing erratically and getting in the way.
So, here was the Lego tractor trying to move steel plates that are as heavy as the tractor is. The guy kept trying to get his bucket under the edge of one of the plates to pick them up, but only succeeded in shoving them around a little. Finally, after several minutes of bouncing around and almost tipping the whole thing over, he managed to get his bucket under the corner of one of the plates. As it rose precariously in the air, I noticed one of our trashcan lids was sitting on it.
Aside: That’s what happens on Trash Day. The trash-picker-uppers like to use the lids as Frisbees, so they fling them around. Half the challenge is racing outside to rescue your empty cans out of the street before a passing motorist runs over them; the other half is finding the lids. They don’t want us to be bored, after all.
Anyway, straining hard, the Lego tractor picked up the metal plate with our trashcan lid on it, looking like a waiter trying to move a table without disturbing the place settings. Then he drove off down the street with it. Before I could figure out where he thought he was going, he was back. He dumped the plate - and the lid - down into the gutter, then went after the second lid. The only thing I can figure is that he was so proud of himself for getting the plate picked up without losing the lid that he did a victory-lap up the street to show off.
By this time, I had called Randy to share. Randy’s version of that conversation would be that I called him just to gasp, shriek and laugh hysterically before hanging up on him. The Lego tractor kept almost tipping over into the hole, bouncing uncontrollably around (I could see the driver flopping around in the cab like a rag doll. I kept waiting for him to puke, but maybe he likes being seasick, what do I know?) and finally managed to move the second plate out of the way. Then the rest of the crew showed up, filled the hole with asphalt that caused huge clouds of steam to billow around.
The funny thing is, that patch of asphalt has had about 5 inches of snow dumped on it in the last three days - and there is no snow on it, still. The whole street has snow, ice and slush covering it, but this patch of asphalt is totally clear and dry. Creepay!
Right about now, sixteen years ago, I was in labor. Sort of.
Today, sixteen years ago, it was a Monday. I had been, by this time, having contractions for three days. I had gone to the hospital on Friday, been hooked up to all those monitors, been promised I’d have a baby by the time I went home, and then was sent home sans baby. The nurse promised me I would be back well before Saturday morning, but here I was, on Monday, still pregnant. Enormously pregnant.
My mother had borrowed my car since hers was in the shop, Randy had gone to work, my estranged husband was also at work a good 40 minutes away, and I had decided that this was okay, since I was going to be pregnant for the rest of my life. I would spend my remaining years in maternity clothes, unable to see my feet or even my legs. I would be forced to develop a remote-controlled razor to shave the legs I couldn’t see - because I’d be the only one who couldn’t see them. Even sitting down didn’t reveal them to me; my stomach rested snugly on my thighs, almost all the way to my knees. I knew they were there - my legs - because the baby enjoyed lying on my sciatic nerve, causing one of my legs to ache while somehow going numb at the same time, which in turn caused me to suddenly grab on to anything or anyone in my radius to keep from going down like a building being demolished. It’s amazing how helpful some strangers can be when you’re pregnant.
I took a shower that morning, sixteen years ago, shaving my invisible legs and telling myself that I needed to just get used to doing it by Braille and to stop whining about it. Afterward, I walked back into my bedroom, my stomach preceding me through the house, entering rooms long before the rest of me. I felt like I was moving through a waist-high lake, pushing against the weight of the water, unable to see what might be under my feet, and knowing it would be that way for the rest of my life. It had been a miserably hot summer and was showing no signs of cooling off anytime soon. The house we were living in made an excellent oven, holding in the heat without losing so much as five degrees at night, somehow managing to repel anything resembling a cool breeze from outside in spite of the presence of windows on every side.
I reached my bedroom still toweling off and unable to determine if I was wiping away water or sweat, then reached for the phone. I had an appointment with my OB scheduled for that day, but since I had loaned my car to my mother and anyone who could take me was happily living their non-pregnant lives, I needed to cancel. Plus, who needs an OB when you’re never going to deliver? I called the doctor’s office and was told by a very surprised nurse that she’d already cancelled my appointment since I’d had the baby over the weekend. I looked down at my stomach, upon which was resting a saucer of cookies, and assured her that I was indeed still pregnant. “How do you feel?” she asked me.
“Like hell,” I said indignantly. “I’m learning to see with my toes. I have a kangaroo in my stomach, my knees ache but I can’t find them, I’m considering strapping a porta-potty to my back, and - ”
“Okay, okay,” she said hastily. “I’m calling the doctor right now. Just let me put you on hold and I’ll be right back.”
I waited, listening to staticky hold music, munching cookies. After a few minutes, she was back.
“All right. First off, don’t eat anything,” she instructed.
“Okay,” I agreed, stealthily wiping cookie crumbs off my hands. “What’s next?”
“Go to the hospital,” she said brightly. “The doctor will meet you there in an hour or so and induce you.”
“He…really?” I asked blankly. The baby kicked, knocking the saucer off my stomach and onto the bed, flinging my half-eaten cookie onto Randy’s pillow. I eyed it regretfully and promised to present myself at the hospital immediately.
I called my mother first, then my estranged husband, Tom, to inform him that he would be meeting his child today, then called Randy and got dressed. Before I had my flip-flops on - I wasn’t about to try and tie shoes - mom was sitting impatiently in the driveway, revving the engine. I waddled out, climbed into the car and collapsed ungracefully in the passenger seat. Without any ceremony, my mother snatched up the hem of my maternity dress, examined my legs and cried, ” Thank god you shaved!”
The ride to the hospital only took a couple of minutes. This is important because my ex worked almost 40 minutes away, yet somehow, he managed to be sitting in the parking lot by the time we arrived. To this day, I have no idea how he did it - I’m not sure I want to know, actually. The three of us shuffled toward the hospital doors, my mother bewailing my lack of luggage, my hair dripping down my face, neck and back because I hadn’t had time to dry it and Tom following along asking me about baby names. We entered the maternity ward like the Three Stooges to be met by surprise. Nobody knew I was coming. Nobody had heard from the doctor, no arrangements had been made for my arrival.
Shrugging philosophically, the maternity staff bundled me into a very nice room, proceeded to attach numerous devices to the underside of my stomach, then sent me outside to walk back and forth across a private courtyard. Mom left to go call my father and everyone she’s ever met in her life and Tom paced along beside me asking how I felt every step of the way. Randy arrived as I marched heroically back and forth, took up position on my other side and we stomped along, hogging the whole sidewalk.
After what seemed like hours, a nurse appeared in the doorway and called me in. Feeling like a kid outside past the time the streetlights came on, I obediently headed indoors. The nurse hooked me up to the monitors and we all stared breathlessly - from exertion, in my case - at the screen. A large spike appeared and the nurse turned to me in amazement. “That was a really strong contraction!” she exclaimed.
”It was? I didn’t feel anything,” I told her.
Putting her hands on her hips, the nurse glared at me. “You might at least pretend to be in pain,” she said, sounding affronted. I was saved from answering by a commotion in the hall. It seemed that The Great Man had arrived to induce my labor, even though by then, it had apparently started on it’s own. Nothing daunted, the doctor slammed menacingly into the room, wielding a knitting needle with the clear intention of using it on me. The nurse turned to leave, shooing Randy and Tom out ahead of her and leaving me alone with a doctor who only became an OB because he’s a misogynist.
“What is that for?” I shrieked, trying to cross my legs.
“How are you feeling?” He asked, ignoring my question.
“Fine,” I said defiantly. “No pain yet, even though the nurse says I should be screaming. This isnt bad, why do movies make such a big deal out of it?”
“Oh…really?” The doctor bent over the foot of the bed, peering up my hospital gown. He examined his knitting needle lovingly, as a torturer examines his collection of bamboo sticks. “Lie back, you won’t feel a thing,” he said, and leaned forward. He was right, I didn’t feel it. Until I sat up, and the first real contraction arrived.
“Oh.” I said weakly. “Okay, I think I get it now.”
The next seven or so hours passed in what is now a merciful blur. I have a few memories: Randy trying to soothe me by rubbing an ice chip across my forehead, which sent freezing little streams of water down unerringly into my ears; arguing with the nurse about why the anesthesiologist felt it necessary to hang around in an emergency surgery instead of being here to stick a needle into my spine: the surgical patient was asleep after all, he wouldn’t miss the anesthesiologist; being asked by another nurse if I had to pee after the epidural had finally been applied and watching the first nurse look at her in contempt while explaining that I couldn’t feel my bladder; them catheterizing me because I couldn’t feel my bladder; Randy sleeping in the chair next to the bed when I realized the baby had entered the birth canal and leaping to his feet still mostly asleep to run out and find a nurse instead of just pushing the call button; being surrounded by people all telling me to do something different at the same time and being unable to concentrate because they’d left the door to the hallway open; not caring that the hallway door was open; and finally, seeing DaBoy.
He was lying on me, stomach to stomach. His eyes were wide and shocked, his tiny hand curling and uncurling against my breast, staring at me as though saying, “What is this all about? This is very uncool, lady. Now put me back.”
I extended one finger and very gently touched the back of his little fist. We both jumped a bit, and he didn’t break or start screaming. I decided that this might just work out, and then they took him away to be bathed and whatever else they do to newborns.
The following morning, after being declined four times when I asked to see him because he wasn’t warm enough yet, whatever that meant, I got out of bed, hauling my IV stand with me and marched determinedly to the nursery.
“What are you doing out of bed?” A nurse demanded, running at me. “You have a zillion stitches, a fourteen-foot long needle in your spine and…and…you shouldn’t be up!”
“Well, you wouldn’t bring him to me,” I declared woozily. “Mohammed and the hilltop, or whatever. Can I sit down?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” she snapped, pushing me into a wheelchair. “Here, mister,” she said to someone over my shoulder, “You deal with her.”
I looked behind me to see Randy. “Hi, there,” I said vaguely. “I wanna see my son.”
Randy, knowing better than to argue, asked the nurse where the big visiting window was. She pointed, still glaring disgustedly at me, and marched away. Randy wheeled me over to the window, where a group of people obligingly stopped making monkey faces and silly noises at one of the babies and stepped aside to give us room. DaBoy was one of four babies in the room, and the only boy, which made him easy to spot. “He’s right there,” I said, as though Randy wasn’t able to distinguish between the blue and pink bassinets. One of the visitors craned his neck to see where I was pointing.
He looked at DaBoy, looked back at me and said, “That’s your baby?”
“Yes,” I said proudly.
The man looked back at DaBoy for a moment, then turned to me. “That’s a big baby,” he said solemnly.
“Yes,” I told him. “Believe me. I know.”
We got to do another drill last night. This was for a local city’s fire and rescue and was a lot smaller than the last one.
This time, the age limit on it was 10 years old, so I signed up DaBoy and his cousin to play, too. Randy refused this time; said he would just stand on the sidelines and watch because he’s a spoilsport.
At the last minute, we learned that the cousin couldn’t go, so Randy offered his services to take the cousin’s place. We signed in, got our tags and went to moulage where we learned, to our chagrin, that we were only covered with scrapes, bruises and lacerations. The scenario this time was a bleacher collapse, so there wasn’t a whole lot of carnage, although there were a couple of people who got to be dead and some that had pieces of metal sticking out of them. One of the makeup artists showed us a Bingo ball in a cheesecloth sling, meant to represent a dangling eyeball because he was disappointed that he wasn’t going to be able to use it.
Randy got all the skin scraped off one of his arms; DaBoy got bruises, scrapes and a bloody nose, and I scored with my makeup artist again, getting a cut on my throat, a torn t-shirt with bloody under it (that blood is *cold* inside a bra, let me tell you), and had apparently rolled in the dirt. We were the first there, so after we were made up, we had to wait while the other 100 volunteers were done. By the time they were ready to start, DaBoy’s nosebleed had peeled off. As they were ushering all the volunteers to the field, Randy and DaBoy went to their makeup artist to get more bloody. The artist grabbed DaBoy by his upper arms, plopped him down into a chair, and reached for his fake eyeball. Nevermind that DaBoy was classified as “minor injuries”, the guy just really wanted to use it.
The remaining handful of volunteers all gathered around and watched in awe as the artist slapped two-sided adhesive to my son’s face, stuck the cheesecloth to it, covered it with more adhesive, and then proceeded to coat the whole thing in about a gallon of gore. DaBoy, naturally, was delighted.
Finally, they turned us loose and we walked across the property to the bleacher site, being stopped several times so people could take pictures of the eyeball. When we arrived at the scene of the accident, the other 90 or so volunteers, getting a look at DaBoy, froze. Then a chorus of “ooooh,” and “aahhh” filled the stands followed by scattered applause and a rush to grab cellphones for pictures. That boy hasn’t had so much fun in years.
The coordinators told us that the firetrucks and paramedics were on their way, so we all positioned ourselves accordingly. They’d asked us to be combative, disobedient, unintelligible and generally not helpful. They didn’t want us to make it impossible for the rescuers, but they did want it to be difficult. So I decided to be the Mom From Hell. Randy wandered around like a zombie, and DaBoy plastered his hands over his face and began to scream.
The first firefighter on the scene grabbed me by the arm and tried to get me to go over to the “walking wounded” triage area. I screamed at him that I had to find my son, snatched my arm away, and he left me alone. Hee. I was waiting for one of the rescuers to discover DaBoy so I could run over there, shrieking like a fire alarm and get in the way, but before that could happen, I saw that DaBoy’s cell phone had fallen out of his pocket, and was being picked up by some little punk. He was turning away with his prize when I arrived and snatched the phone out of his hand. Without even so much as a glance at me, he walked away. I passed the phone off to Randy, who, since he hadn’t intended to participate, was the only one wearing clothes that actually fit and had pockets.
Deciding to stay put, I plunked down on the ground next to my screaming, writhing son and began hollering for help. The ground was damp and cold (we found out later that one of the volunteers had apparently gone into real shock or had a convulsion or something, needing real emergency care. We were told it was because it was so cold out there, and she’d been assigned to be unconscious, so she was lying there, not responding. Luckily, someone realized she wasn’t acting, and got her help. I guess if you need medical care, a disaster drill is the place to do it).
The first paramedic to approach DaBoy knelt down beside us and asked, “Are you okay?” DaBoy, covered in blood, with an eyeball smacking him in the ear every time he turned his head, began to giggle. I burst out laughing and even the paramedic laughed at himself. He circled DaBoy’s wrist with a strip of red tape, circled my wrist with green tape and went off to find another victim. There was a man lying behind me with a piece of metal sticking out of his stomach, shrieking for Jimmy John’s and wanting to know why nobody was taking his order. Beyond him was another victim, yelling at his mother, who was paralyzed about twenty feet away, that he’s never cleaning his room again. On the bleachers was a girl who had draped herself over a seat, hollering about being dead. And then I saw Randy.
He wandered over with this total blank look on his face, leading a paramedic. He stopped next to DaBoy and I, pointed at us and said, “Eyeball.”
“Yes,” said the paramedic, “that’s an eyeball. Now why don’t you come back over here…again…and sit down.”
“Eyeball,” Randy said more forcibly. The paramedic grabbed him by the arm and led him away and I collapsed across DaBoy’s chest laughing until I cried. “Was that Randy?” DaBoy asked, beginning to giggle again. He turned his head so he could watch Randy with his one eye. Randy had escaped his keeper and was zombie-walking back toward us again. Another medic approached, looked at Randy and then down at us. “Eyeball,” Randy informed him, pointing at DaBoy.
“Get him OUT of here,” I howled. “He’s scaring my boy!”
“Eyeball.”
“Okay, sir, it’s an eyeball,” agreed the medic. “I need you to come over here and sit down.” He began leading Randy away. Randy pulled away from him, extended his entire arm, pointed at DaBoy again, and said, “Eyeball!” The medic grabbed him more firmly, led him away and then came back with a stretcher. He left again to get someone to help and by the time they came back, Randy had come back as well. I grabbed the new medic and began babbling about DaBoy’s eyeball lying on the ground getting dirty.
“He’s got beautiful eyes!” I shrieked. “You have to stick it in a styrofoam cup and tape the cup to his face! I read that in a pamphlet! No, don’t TOUCH it, you’ll bruise it! Where’s a cup?” The medic looked at me like I was crazy, gently elbowed me out of his way, and they put DaBoy on the stretcher.
“I am unconscious from the pain,” DaBoy informed us. “He’s DEAD,” I screamed.
“Eyeball,” Randy announced.
“He’s not dead,” the first medic said, trying not to laugh. Then he looked at Randy. “Come on, sir, we need you over here. Follow the eyeball.”
“Eyeball!” Randy said happily, and began to shamble along behind us.
They took us to another area with all new personnel. By the time they got DaBoy settled, Randy was gone. I looked for him and discovered him sitting on the ground in a group of people with a large firefighter standing over him to make sure he didn’t wander off again. DaBoy and I were stationed next to a couple. The husband was on a stretcher and the wife was lying practically on top of him, trying to keep him warm. “Get a room!” I snapped. “Watch your kid better!” the woman replied, grinning.
“Where are we?” my son asked, trying to peer through the blood with his one eye.
“I don’t know; we’re still in the parking lot,” I said, looking around.
And then I saw him.
Randy, staggering toward us, arm extended, finger pointing…and a fire station commander in tow. Randy stopped at the head of DaBoy’s stretcher, tugged the commander forward and said, “Eyeball.”
“That’s right,” the commander said, looking frantically around for help, “That’s what that is. Now why don’t we go over here…” and he led Randy back to the area that everyone had been trying to send him since the beginning. He told me later that two other victims had thrown a screaming fit about being cold so that Randy’s guard would go get them a blanket. As soon as he turned away, they hollered, “Go! GO!” at Randy and he made his escape. Again.
At last, they loaded DaBoy up into an ambulance. One of the paramedics tried to get me to go away, but laughed and gave me the front seat when I told him that I am the mother from hell. “Nice to meet you,” he said, escorting me to the front of the rig. Then the wife that had been next to us was put in the seat with me. As soon as she got the door closed, she leaned over me and shouted, “I’m HERE, Kyle! I’m right HERE!”
The ambulance took us back to the station. When they let us out, one of the other medics came over to unstrap DaBoy. He got a good look at his face, and said, “Oh! Did you see the eyeball guy?”
“He IS the eyeball guy,” I said.
“No, the other one. Guy with glasses. Never said a word except ‘eyeball’.”
“Oh, THAT guy!” said another medic who happened to be standing there. “I saw him.”
“Everyone saw him,” said the first medic. “Do you know him?”
“I red-tagged him for transport,” said the second medic. “He’s obviously disoriented, plus he was making us crazy.”
And on that note, the drill was over. They gave us dinner, thanked us profusely, and waved cheerfully at us as each rig left the parking lot.
On the way home, DaBoy informed me that the next time we get invited to participate in another drill, he definitely wants to go. But even with the eyeball, Randy definitely stole the spotlight. Other families go on vacation together, or bowling.
Today, Randy and I participated in a state-wide disaster drill.
This involved getting up at 5 AM, over 90 minutes before the sun got up, showering, shaving (me), gulping coffee and hoping it would miss our bladders, and driving to a church we’ve never been to…in a thunderstorm.
The scenario was a plane crash. The way it’s supposed to work is volunteers get all bloodied up, lay on the ground crying and yelling, and the entire medical/rescue community treats us like we’re real patients in a real crash. We have injuries they’re supposed to treat, we get sent to local hospitals, and then the hospitals have to treat it like its real, too.
So when I got the invite for this, it took me all of about 15 seconds to click the “Register” link. And it took that long because I had to talk Randy into it. I think that was only successful because I read aloud the part about some patients being Life-Flighted to the hospital. Who could pass that up?
At first, it lived up to expectations. We didn’t think it would be canceled due to the storm - after all, planes crash in storms, too - and it wasn’t. We got to the registration center, got in line, had to elbow people who felt they were “too gooood to wait in line” out of the way, and finally got to the woman behind the desk. She looked us up and said she’d take me first. So she handed me my patient card to wear around my neck, glued a brilliant orange paper bracelet around my wrist, and then did the same to Randy. When I looked at the list of my injuries I was so happy that I won’t tolerate being cut in line! “Has 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree burns over entire body. Open broken bone in lower and upper left leg.” Plus, I was contaminated with jet fuel. Randy got “Smoke inhalation. May have been exposed to fuel.”
After we all got checked in, they loaded us on a bus and drove us out to the military base where the drill was to take place. Everyone was comparing their injuries to the people sitting around them, and I discovered that the guy across the aisle had the same as me, except his shoulderblade was to be broken. We got there and found controlled chaos. I spotted the closest makeup station and got in line while Randy went to get us coffee. They had sweet rolls and fruit out for us, but I was too excited about getting my makeup on to eat.
I sat down at the station and the makeup artist read my card, eyed me with awe, and began plastering my arms, legs and face with some kind of cucumber face-conditioning mask. Then she sent me away until it got stiff. So I went to get in line for the bathroom while Randy got his makeup done. Coffee, you know. The people in line at the bathroom looked at my shiny extremities and the fact that I was holding my arms away from my body and fanning my face - and let me go ahead of them so I could get back to makeup. Which was REALLY nice, considering that there were over 200 people there, and exactly one…count it, ONE bathroom.
I got back to the makeup station, and the woman proceded to make me utterly horrifying. And she was damned GOOD, too. There were a zillion reporters there, and I’m pretty sure that every one of them got footage of me getting my burns and broken shin applied. The cucumber mask was the perfect thing. Without getting too graphic, it peeled. Not neatly, like dried glue, either. She covered me with red makeup, peeled and rolled the mask stuff, then applied black makeup to my actual skin. It looked AWESOME. The she put glops of Vaseline on me to make it look like my burns were oozing, and turned to my shin. She put skin-colored putty on my leg, then split it unevenly, making a long crater down the middle of it. Then she put a roll of white clay in the crater, smooshed it together, dappled stuff that looks exactly like congealed blood on it, then finished it up by spraying liquid fake blood over the whole thing. There was one reporter who was squicking out even while taking pictures of the entire process.
When I was done, I had 3rd degree burns on my forehead, cheeks, nose, chin, arms and legs. I felt like a molting snake and it tickled. Plus the shin sticking out through fake skin. I was supposed to have another one on my thigh, but there wasn’t enough time. Randy was coated in black greasepaint with fake blood coming from his ears and a bit on his forehead. They got the black in his ears, up his nose and he really looked like he’d been breathing soot for a week by the time they were done. Then we wandered over by the door, where Randy managed to buy us a couple of cigarettes from an enterprising soldier.
And that was the best part of the day.
We were supposed to go out onto the tarmac for the drill and lie down, but it was storming too hard. They weren’t going to be able to use the mortars to simulate explosions, and the smoke machines would have been a total failure. Also, they told us that the rescue choppers had been grounded and they’d waited as long as they could hoping the storm would clear. It refused, so they put us back on the buses and drove us to their indoor soccer court. We all sort of wandered in, sat down on the floor and waited. And waited. And waited. While we were waiting, Randy figured out how to take pictures with his cellphone and got some good ones of our injuries. They’ll be in the Gallery under the title “Drill”.
Finally, a man shouted, “Here we go!” and the drill began. I laid down and Randy was immediately taken off somewhere, since he could walk. After a couple of minutes of me laying there trying to figure out how to act, a couple of paramedics came over to me. They read my card, saw that I was pretending to be unconscious - I hope I would be! - and started trying to put me on the litter. Except they never checked my neck or my back. One of them, the one who was at my head, let me slip out of his grip three times before finally managing to get me on the litter. I had to help a little; I was afraid he’d drop me on my head and I’d have a real injury! I don’t think I’m overweight; I think the problem was him not wanting to get too personal. Well, hell. I signed up for this thing, knowing I could end up getting my clothes cut off and/or hosed down in a decontamination chamber; did he really think I’d scream and object to him touching my breast by accident? I hope he’ll be a little less careful with a real patient.
They started to pick me up, then put me back down to strap me in. The chest straps went around my arms - right over both sets of burns. The leg straps went - you guessed it - right over my exposed bone, mashing the clay down. I should have started screaming hysterically, but wasn’t 100% sure until later that they’d done it.
They trotted me over to triage and I felt like I was on a sling attached to a couple of pogo sticks. They plunked me down on the ground and vanished. Then two other people come over to me, have to pull my injury card out from under my shoulder because the corpsmen let it fall under me, read it, toss a couple of wrapped bandages on my arms and legs, talk about splinting my leg, don’t, then leave and never come back. Then a lady from the Red Cross comes over, grabs my hand on the burn, squeezes it, and assures me that I’ll be taken care of, then she disappears. Two more people come over, one pretends to intubate me, another steals one of my bandages, and off they go.
In the meantime, Randy had been taken to triage as well. They asked him how he was doing and he gasped at them. The woman says, “Oh, you’re crowing. That’s not good. What else is wrong?” Randy pantomimed chest pain and tightness, gasped at them some more and they begin to do things like take his pulse, pretend to intubate, tell him he is unconscious and write notes on his patient card. He had to get up at one point to go to the bathroom - they had him lying there for two hours total - and looked around to find me. I was…
All alone in a little sea of emptiness. They’d taken all the patients who were near me away, and I was lying there waiting for someone to notice that my card was marked “Immediate” or whatever. Finally, a soldier walked over to me, leaned down and said, “Ma’am, we’re out of ambulances and stretchers. We need to transport you, so can you follow me outside?” Uh, okay.
So he has to unstrap me, help me up and we march out to the parking lot where there are a zillion other people milling around. Another soldier walks up to me, gets my name, patient ID and asks for the last four digits of my social. I glare at her, tell her “1234″ and that, no, I am not on active duty. Then she sends me over to stand with another group of people outside a van to wait. Finally, yet another soldier strolls up, collects six of us, puts us in his van, and off we go to the hospital. No lights, no sirens, just 8 people crammed tightly into a passenger van with the driver asking us to please not get blood on the upholstery. The guy sitting next to me makes my burns look like I need a Band-Aid. He’s black. And I don’t mean he’s African American, I mean, burnt black. He looked incredible! Another guy had metal sticking out of his neck. So clearly, we would have gotten a helicopter ride if they hadn’t grounded them. And of course, by now, the sky is clearing, the rain is gone and we *could have flown. Dammit.
So we get to a hospital. We pull up outside the ER, decide not to block the ambulance bay, and get out of the van to see…
Nobody.
Not one single person. No gurneys, no ER staff grabbing us and shouting instructions, nobody. So we wait. Finally after about five minutes, the driver and another soldier stomp into the ER to find out what is going on while the rest of us stand around wanting a cigarette. After about another five minutes, they stomp back outside and yell at us to follow them. We all blink at them for a minute - aren’t we supposed to be, I don’t know…DYING?? And finally follow them.
Through the ER waiting room. That is full of patients. Real patients with real families. And we troop in, with our bloody, bone-showing, burned flesh-flapping injuries on full display. Gods, the looks we got! And then through the ER into the halls, through the halls, to the other side of the hospital and into…
A classroom.
With desks. And chairs. Not a hospital bed in sight. We mill around, blinking some more, and the nurse shoos us in to sit down. So, we shrug and go sit down. The nurse immediately starts filling out paperwork, and asking us questions. Which we can’t answer, because we’re INTUBATED. We all finally tell her that we can’t talk, so she starts reading our patient cards and writing our injuries down verbatim. Except for the guy next to me, who had shrapnel injuries and a tourniquet. She wrote down “Transfer to burn unit” on his paperwork and moved away. He sat there, shaking his head. I leaned over and asked, “Are you burned?”
“No,” he said. “Just bloody. And I’ve had a tourniquet on my leg for over two hours now.”
The door opens and an ER doctor sticks his head into the room. He looks at all of us, then asks a nurse why she paged him. She tells him that he’s supposed to be taking care of us. He looks us over again, shakes his head, announces that he hasn’t got time for this, and leaves. The nurse sighs and pages another doctor. He comes in, looks at all of us and then has to be led through the procedure by another nurse.
This is not instilling us with a great deal of confidence. Finally, the doctor finishes with us and we all sit there staring at each other for about ten minutes. Then someone says, “What does that red stripe down your patient cards mean?” Well, it says CONTAMINATION on it in very large letters. So we explain: we are contaminated by jet fuel. Oh. Gosh, they were supposed to take us to decontamination in the basement. Why didn’t anyone do that? Now they have to pretend to decontaminate the ER, the ER staff, all of the patients, everyone who came into contact with us (even though nobody touched us), and the floors and walls of our entire route. We all blink at each other, then someone else says, “Doesn’t somebody need to transfer them, or something?” So they page someone to come get us, and after another fifteen minutes or so, four people show up and escort us to a small cafeteria.
Meanwhile, Randy’s group has been transported to a different hospital. They get there, are greeted by ER staff, placed on gurneys and rushed inside. They take his blood pressure, put the little oxygen monitor on his finger and take him to an actual hospital room, where they actually examine him. The only things they don’t do is cut his clothes off and actually draw blood, but they tell him they’re doing it anyway, just for the sake of verisimilitude. Apparently, one of the women in Randy’s group really *did get her blood drawn by an ER doctor who didn’t realize they weren’t supposed to go quite that far. I do wonder what the lab is going to test it for, though. Finally, the head of the ER for the day apologizes and kicks them all out because they have real patients who need the rooms. They get shuttled back to the center without lunch, and are fed by the Red Cross personnel.
We, on the other hand, are still waiting in the little cafeteria for something - anything - to happen. We have a babysitter who doesn’t have any more idea what’s going on than we do. One of the guys pipes up and reminds her that they’re supposed to feed us. She looks surprised and calls someone to ask about lunch for us. They bring in those hospital sandwiches that somehow manage to include dry bread and soggy lunchmeat. I elect not to do that to myself and I use one of the hospital phones to call Randy, hoping he’ll answer and tell me he will come get me. I have not had a cigarette in about three hours by this time, I’ve had no food all day, am getting a headache and my face is peeling off, which tickles like crazy. Randy doesn’t answer his cell. (He told me later that he was on his way back to the center when I called and hadn’t turned his ringer on yet.)
I decide they’re not going to do anything else with us, so I go to the bathroom to peel off my face. I am leaning close to the mirror, trying to find an edge to the makeup on my nose when some poor innocent woman walks in. She glances incuriously at me, does a double-take and stops dead in her tracks to watch me peel what appears to be burned flesh off my nose. Her horrified gaze travels slowly down my body to my shin, which still appears to have bone sticking out through bloody skin. Then she transfers her wide eyes back to my reflection in the mirror. I can’t bring myself to toy with her, she looks so shocked and the blood is draining from her face, so I tell her, “It’s just makeup.”
“What?” she gasps, turning whiter.
“Makeup,” I say reassuringly. “There was a drill today. I’m taking off some of my makeup.”
“Oh,” she replies in a tiny, breathless voice, and rushes into one of the stalls. I head out and can’t help giggling all the way back to the room. I tell my fellow sufferers about this, and they all laugh hysterically. It’s been a very long day.
A bouncy soldier comes in, tells us that the bus is on it’s way, and that we can go wait in the main lobby where it will pick us up. So we all trek across the hospital again, collecting horrified stares on the way. We get to the lobby and…
No bus.
Well, we’re getting used to this. So we all sort of shrug philosophically, find places to sit and wait some more. And wait. And wait. We are in the main lobby of the hospital, so there are lots of patients, family members and visitors coming in. Their reactions were almost universally priceless. After almost two hours - seriously - I ask our personal soldier if the bus might not be waiting for us at a different entrance. He blinks at me, then calls on his radio. Why, yes. It seems that the bus is sitting outside the ER. Hoo, boy. Off we go. This time, for some reason, we all have to pack into an elevator. I’m not sure why; we didn’t have to on the way in from the ER. By now, there are 14 of us, 8 who are active personnel and got to fly in on Black Hawk helicopters. Needless to say, this creates a bit of friction. Anyway, we all tromp through the hospital again, back through the ER again, where we get to shock and startle a whole new crop of people. We get outside, and…
No bus.
We all mill around, not quite wanting to believe it, and some people begin to talk half seriously about comandeering the helicopter sitting on the helipad about 100 feet away. Luckily, two vans show up before the talk can turn to action, and we are finally, FINALLY, on our way back to the center.
Which is all but empty, because we are the last group to come back. Randy has been sitting there waiting for me for at least two hours by that time and I am grabbing for his cigarettes before we even get outside. We finally get home just in time for me and my shin to scare our next door neighbor into a shriek of fear. And she’s a tough lady, let me tell you. That makeup artist really rocked it!
So now we’re sitting here all showered, fed and nicotine-d. We’ve learned some valuable lessons today: First, I am never allowed to sign us up for anything like this again. Second, I really, really need my own cell phone. And Third, if we *do do something like this again, we both will take our cigarettes and lighter!!
This time last year, things were going well for us. We were living in a nice neighborhood with nice neighbors. Everybody mowed their lawns at least once a week; each weekend was kind of a race to see who could get out there with the mower first. After it snowed, within minutes of the end of the snowstorm, everyone was out there shoveling driveways and helping others who weren’t home from work yet or couldn’t manage to shovel their own driveway. People took care of their property, they were quiet and polite. Randy had a dream job: working for an R&D lab, and being paid an almost obscene amount of money with little or no stress. Even the guys he worked with were a lot of fun. DaBoy was going to one of the best schools in the best district in the state, and doing well. He had friends who were nice kids, who spent their free time playing basketball, baseball and video games. I was making friends, slowly to be sure, with the other SAHMs in the area in spite of the fact that I had nothing in common with them: my husband was a computer nerd instead of a realtor or lawyer. My son played football rather than basketball or track. I don’t garden, bake for fun or consider my kitchen floor to be a reflection on my abilities as a good SAHM, but in spite of that, I was accepted.
And then the earth fell away from beneath our feet.
It started in July; the paychecks at Randy’s work started being delayed. There was always a good reason, good communication, and at the very least, they weren’t writing rubber checks and letting the guys find out about it too late. We talked about him finding another job, but frankly, he was happy there. It was worth it to us for him to stay, hoping things would even out. But they didn’t.
Late July/August: DaBoy was staying at his father’s house for his summer visitation. Randy and I were both trying to find other jobs, even though he was still employed. The jobs just weren’t there. Randy and I had been living on whatever food was in the freezer, making meals out of almost nothing at all (Mom, did I ever thank you enough for that crockpot??) and praying that the “deals” the CEO kept raving about would finally come through. But something always went wrong; the deals/loans/buyouts always seemed to fall apart in the eleventh hour. We started borrowing money from relatives to keep the utilities on and buy food. I arranged for DaBoy to stay with his father longer, even though school was about to start: we couldn’t bring him home if we couldn’t feed him. And may you never hear the following from your child: “But, mom, I really want to come home. It’s okay, I can eat light!”
Late August/September: After nobody had been paid for six weeks, the CEO disappeared with his lover and over 2 million dollars in payroll. That was just before we discovered that the medical insurance premiums hadn’t been paid in over 2 months, the policies had lapsed, and we were responsible for all the bills. The last thing he did before vanishing was lay everyone off.
There was no hope of getting that money; all the people who worked there were out in a depressed, specialized market competing with each other and we not only had rent, but a mortgage to worry about. A few weeks later, Randy got hired at another company. We cried with relief and started calling all our creditors to make payment arrangements. They call those “promises”, by the way, and they are legally binding. Then, three days after he started, he was told his services were no longer required. It seems that he’d only been hired to prove a point to upper management about the impossibility of the demands placed on the department. Once that point was made, they didn’t need (and couldn’t afford) Randy anymore.
Back into freefall we went, only then we had made all those “promise to pay” calls - and everyone was more than happy to cut off utilities, start legal procedings, and hound us with several phone calls a day per collection agency. Randy was able to get unemployment, but it was only a fraction of what he’d been making, and with all the overdue bills, each check barely made a dent. The landlords started forcing their way into the house, bringing potential buyers with them, which meant the house had to be ready to show at a moment’s notice: an additional pressure we didn’t need. But the law was on their side; they could have thrown us out 24 hours after the rent was officially late. AND had the police do it, AND kept all of our belongings as well as the security deposit. They were doing us a favor.
October: The land contract sale of our Omaha house fell through. The buyers’ bank went under, leaving them out all the money they’d spent on the house and forcing us to foreclose on them. We had no choice; we’d been counting on the profit from the sale to pay the rent up to current, get the bills caught up and give us some breathing space to find work. Without that sale, we were left with nothing and nowhere to turn. We retook possession and moved back here. The security deposit for the rental house in Iowa paid for the one month’s rent we were in arrears, we left it spotless and managed to end our relationship with our landlords on equitable terms. I’m sure they were as relieved as we were.
And so here we are. Back in a neighborhood where most people seem to believe that everyone enjoys their music, no matter how loud or what time it is; that nobody minds when it’s 5 AM and someone is sitting in the car laying on the horn to let their passenger know it’s time to leave for work and that parties on the porch should go from dusk to dawn, and who is sleeping, anyway? Most people can’t be bothered to tend their lawns, pick up their trash, quiet a party in the wee hours of the morning, and everyone else’s belongings are only still in the possession of the rightful owners because nobody wants to steal it badly enough. Graffiti is decoration, to be cherished by the owner of the garage/retaining wall/building so annointed; police are a nicety that the city provides for show just to keep federal funding; and above all, the streets are privately owned by whomever drives the most aggressively.
But.
We have our beautiful house back. DaBoy is living in the same city with his father and half brother. Randy is living in the same city with his family, and has a newfound appreciation for them. Not because he lost his job, but because we lived so far away from them. He is back working for his old, best boss; for a lot less money, but it’s an income. Our friends were happy to see us come back, but sorry that it was under those circumstances. We used some of the equity in the house to pay the bills and pay off the car, and even though we don’t have much money left over at the end of the month, it’s fun to use what we do have to do things to our very own house.
Randy’s stress is back, but with it comes a measure of security. I’m no longer in the Gossiping, Baking Housewives club, but I also know that nobody is talking about my family’s laziness in not getting outside to weed the yard until NOON last Saturday and asking each other if they’ve ever seen us at church. DaBoy has fewer friends, but the ones he does have seem to be more…I don’t know…*real* in some way. Less like Eddie Haskell and more like Dennis The Menace.
We’ve come full circle from being here to moving to Upper Class Snootiness, back to here again (even though we weren’t snooty). We’re still a strong family unit, we’re healthy, we’re happy. And I guess, we’re tempered. We worked very hard to get that kind of lifestyle, but in so doing, we lost sight of what we’ve had all along. I think it’s human nature to be constantly grasping for something better and ignoring what you already have, but losing almost everything makes you appreciate it more.
We look back all the time, wondering what we could have done differently. What choices we could have made, what decisions turned out to be wrong, what actions we took that put us on the wrong path. You know what we find? Nothing. The choices, the decisions - those were the only ones we could have made at the time. The actions we took were the only ones available to us at the time. We took what we could, we made the most of it, and still ended up losing the round.
Funny. When we left the 40k per year salary range, this neighborhood and all the trouble that comes with it, we were so happy. Then we crashed and we’re right back where we started - and we’re happy. Go figure.
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