clearing the decks

It's February already, and I'm seized with a feeling of doom. Back in December my fabulous surgeon scheduled me for "the first available surgery date", which was mid-February. Back then, that seemed so far away. Now all of a sudden it's here, and I am not feeling ready.

I scheduled a couple of fun things (next weekend we'll go out for a night of hardcore drinking with my favorite hard-drinking couple, the husband of which once said to me, "Open another bottle; I'm Scottish!". I held a brunch for the 'funemployed" members of my Warcraft guild, where we drank mimosas and ate a fresh-baked coffee cake and frittata while annoying the on-line strangers who ended up completing our dungeon group). I meant to declutter the house, get rid of all those bags of books I always claim I am going to take to the used bookstore, and finish some partially-done quilts, and I haven't done that. I wanted the Sober Husband to take a day off and go hiking with me around Muir Woods, while the children were stowed away at school, but that isn't going to happen. Instead he ended up doing two business trips (he's up in the frigid Northeast right now). I also wanted to see a play which just opened at one of my favorite theatres, but I don't think that's going to happen, either.

While most of the "have some fun before several really crappy weeks of convalescence" hasn't panned out, I'm trying to get a variety of child-related things taken care of before my surgery. I'm wrangling a variety of of obligations related to our applications to a school for gifted children [I took Lola for hours of additional testing; I drove Lola down the peninsula for her day visiting the school in the worst storm of the winter, hydroplaning twice and blurting out that classic prayer, "OhGodohGodohGod"; Iris also spent a day visiting there on another stormy day as well]. I've got a playdate finally set with Lola's new best friend from school, a delightful and very highly-scheduled child. I chaperoned a first grade field trip and helped the fourth grade do a sewing project. The art teacher invited me to come back and help more over the next several weeks, but I can't.

I wish I hadn't known so far ahead of time about this surgery. It just gives me too much time to dread it. The first time I had surgery, it came out of the blue: I was admitted to the hospital one night and operated on right off the next morning. If I'd had time to worry, my worries would have been washed right away by the handy morphine injections they were giving me.

I'm not finding much comfort anywhere or understanding of my dread, either. My own darling husband said, when I first told him that I was worried about having surgery, in a judgmental tone, "Well, you chose to go down this path by getting that ultrasound." [My psychiatrist first said, "What an odd thing to say!" but after pondering it, found the logic in it. "If you had just sucked it up and endured the pain, it is true you wouldn't have had that ultrasound and wouldn't be having surgery"]. Another loved one questioned why I would be spending two to three nights in the hospital, saying incredulously, "I thought they'd have you out right away!"

"It IS major abdominal surgery," I said defensively.

"I know someone who had that surgery, and two weeks later, she just repainted her whole house! She just went right outside, and she repainted that whole house! By herself!"

After that I had very little to say whatsoever. My surgeon has advised me to take an entire six weeks of convalescence, the first three weeks of which I should do absolutely nothing whatsoever, but I felt like the hero of "The Magic Mountain" when he was called upon to explain why he was spending the flower of his youth secluded in a sanitarium.

Indeed I stopped asking for help, since it didn't seem to be doing anything other than making me feel worse and to realize that people I like to think love me don't really, at least not as much as I like to think they do. This depressingly leads me to the conclusion that I am a supremely unlovable person. But! Support is coming from unexpected quarters. My mother-in-law, with whom I have always had a pained relationship, is flying in to be with the Sober Husband and the children while I am in the hospital. This will allow the Sober Husband to visit me in the hospital, which has strict rules forbidding child visitors. She also sent me a signed Mary Karr first edition to read during my convalescence, a very thoughtful gift indeed. A beloved friend from high school is flying in for a few days the second week after my surgery to do some cooking and drive the children around (this isn't unexpected because this friend is really very kind and conscientious, but unexpected because she's going to trouble and expense to help).

And then again, I feel like a loser for wanting help. I should be able to figure this out. If I were a different sort of person, a less lazy one, I would cook nutritious meals for my family for every day of my convalescence and freeze them all. In reality, the freezer unit on my refrigerator is very, very tiny, and it is almost entirely taken up with my ice cream maker (which I like to keep at the ready, in case someone gets a whim to make ice cream), several pounds of coffee, a couple ice cube trays, a bag of popcorn (Handy Hint: all the kernels pop if you keep them frozen), and the ends of puglieses I save for when I need good bread crumbs. Also, I don't cook the sorts of food which freeze well. The kind of food I cook tastes fabulous fresh, usually pretty good the next day, but just becomes a horrible mess if frozen. I remember some amazingly difficult Barcelonan dish I made in a large quantity and froze, which the Sober Husband said of dismissively, "Isn't this going to make us sick?"

If I'm not cooking gourmet, I'm having the children eat canned lentil soup or macaroni and cheese out of a box, and those things don't need to be frozen ahead of time. I like to excuse this sort of laziness and child-pandering on the basis that it's compensated for on the other days of the week, when I present the children with a delicious labor of love with a variety of fresh ingredients. In this case, they'll just have to have a few weeks under their father's care, whose skill is capped at making Ramen noodles.

The other problem is the driving. I won't be able to drive for a few weeks, and the children require driving, quite a lot of driving. I suspect at the least they'll miss their art classes and Lola's dance classes, Iris's book club and Lola's special comic book drawing outing. A few weeks of living on Ramen noodles and not being enriched shouldn't harm them too much, but I'm not looking forward to it myself. One Ramen meal a week is more than enough Ramen for me, personally.