Full Circle

A friend of mine mentioned the other day (pardon my paraphrasing) that the saga of Molly’s stomach had come full circle.

Indeed it has.

Our little girl is once again on Zantac to help with her apparent antibiotic-induced acid reflux. Zantac mixed with acidophilus for sweetness as well as to help Molly’s intestinal tract work a little bit better. I am very, very unhappy to have to give her the Zantac again, but at least I actually believe it may be relevant this time. That, and because she trusts us now, it is much easier to give her the medicine than it was when she was but a couple of weeks old.

In some ways, it has worked. Molly has not woken up screaming since she started the mixture, and sleeps a little more soundly at night. She also has taken a morning nap for the past two mornings, which before now has been unheard of.

Perhaps she is happier because I am finally off my antibiotics. Perhaps she is finally maturing at long last. Or perhaps it is that horrible-tasting medicine.

However, she still screams in the afternoons for no apparent reason. SCREAMS. I have to wear earplugs.

Is she in pain? Is she overwhelmed from the day’s activities (I try to keep both of us entertained as best I can)? Is she annoyed that I am trying to put her down for a nap or for the night?

This cannot last forever. I just hope that I don’t miss out on her babyhood waiting for this brief, but powerfully difficult and annoying, time to pass.

Brain Freeze

As part of my post-operative care, I’ve been irrigating my sinuses with salt water. The instructions pretty clearly state that I should use warm or room-temperature water.

This morning I made some more “nose water” with the filtered water from the fridge. In went 3 tsp of salt (iodised instead of kosher, sorry) and a tsp of baking soda, which for some reason known only to her and her cadre of winged monkeys, my wife keeps in the bathroom. And up my nose went the “nose water”.

Now I understand why they recommend using warm water: my brain is still frozen.

Mister Clean

I’m a tidy person by nature. My dictionary defines tidy as:

In today’s lax and permissive speech, people tend to conflate tidy and clean, however, the two really are different: a clean room is free of dirt and other dreck, while in a tidy room papers are stacked neatly and the books are put away and not scattered across the couch.

I’m a tidy person. I like to have things put away with only the minimum amount of disorder. I’d like to be a clean person, but I simply don’t have the time or energy to make my environment sparkle. Only sometimes I get a burst of energy and I become Mr. Clean for an afternoon.

Between 11 AM and 1 PM today, a whirlwind descended upon 3 Market Sq Apt #3 and turned me — if only briefly — into Mr. Clean. First I swept the floor (which I include in keeping tidy), then I vacuumed the floor (which isn’t in tidy) to get up the dust the broom missed. To complete my transformation from tidy to clean, I filled a bucket with warm water and a quarter cup of Murphy’s Oil Soap and set to work mopping the floor — definitely not in the realm of tidy.

When I was done, far from basking in the warm glow of a clean floor, I scowled because the floor was marred by a dull film. Murphy claims his soap doesn’t require rinsing, but he’s a foul liar. I emptied the bucket and filled it again with clean water and set to work mopping the floor again. This worked a bit better, but the water left a film of its own. So down on hands and knees I went with a cloth to remove the film.

There’s got to be a better way, or I’ll never do this again.

Maybe this is why my transformations into Mr. Clean are so infrequent.