Call Me Complicated

I'm complicated.

Truly. 

I can't eat anything with dairy in the morning or the evening within two hours of taking doxycycline. I already don't eat pork or scallops or cheeseburgers. I avoid gluten. I avoid high-fructose corn syrup, soda and fried crap. Usually. 

I mustn't lie down an hour after taking said doxycycline. 

I mustn't be out in the sun too long lest my face start to burn. Even with sunscreen on for a one-hour walk, I get enough pink in my face to last into the next day. I long for a vacation or even a bike ride but I'm thinking I'd need to wear a burka to the beach unless I get off of this medication.

Yes, I long for a warm, beach vacation with relaxation and cocktails. Oops, there's another no-no. I've gotta schedule those cocktails around the tindamax. But here's the paradox: when that day of the week comes that I can once again imbibe an alcoholic beverage without losing my supper, I no longer want one. 

All I want to do is lie down when I get home from work but at least one child needs me to help with homework so I have to remain semi-vertical (sitting position.) I'm writing this while helping that child now.

I need a half hour every Sunday to distribute medicines for three family members into little medicine boxes. My husband calls me "The Pharmacist." Someday, there will be a horror movie with that title. I will not star in it. 

I need sleep. Eight hours is nice, but nine hours is sweeter. I've always been this way and have never been able to pull an all-nighter, despite 4 years of college and two bouts of graduate school. Actually, I loved graduate school. It so wasn't the real world. I'm better at getting As in grad school than in the real world. 

Just call me Mother of the Year now and get it over with. You know I've got you beat. My kids always know where I am. IN MY BED. OK, so it's an open-door office-type situation with a king-sized bed that fits all my visitors. We're a modern family. 

Naps and rest-periods beckon. I fold a load of laundry and have to lie down for ten minutes and read. I take a shower and lie down for ten minutes with towels wrapped around my body. I wash dishes, standing in one place, and my hip hollers at me to lie down and stretch (and read again.) Heck, even when I'm teaching, sometimes I lie down for a few minutes during my lunch hour (40 minutes)  when the students are out of the room. Shh! Don't tell anyone. It's kinda weird. No, it's kinda complicated.

I must always, always, always have a book. If life is calmer, I can read more literary tomes. When my homelife is tumultuous, I need a book with a happily-ever after or mystery solved. Take me away! In lieu of Calgon baths, I submerge myself in the product of countless trees. I keep the library system working and librarians employed.

If I'm complicated, one of my children is a downright conundrum. A friend used that word earlier today and it stuck in my brain like a chicken claw. Which is cool because vocabulary and the names of recording artists are slipping through the bars of my mind like water down a sewer lately. Right now, my kid does not want meat or fish or almond butter for lunch. He wants nutella and no-nut butter. He doesn't love his hamburgers anymore but he loves lamb. He withers away from eggs and leftovers like a dog backing away from a crazy-eyed monster. He will eat sushi as if it's penny candy.

My family is complicated. Just when my husband and I get invited to a fun party, guess who gets sick? Do my kids do it on purpose? We have very few date nights. Rather, we tend to steal away for a morning at the riverfront with a bagel (gluten!) and cream cheese (dairy!) and then I have to skip my morning dose of doxycycline. And just when we visit someone in the midst of a kid-flare, the dog decides to take a dump on that visitor's floor. I'm coming to your house next. Pick up the carpets.

My friendships are complicated. What do I have to talk about? pandaslymepandaslyme LYMEDISEASECHALLENGE pandaspanspandaspanslyme plus barteonellababesia blah blah blah. And teaching. My lovely, purple classroom with my lovely students and our exciting projects and the core curriculum and the standardized tests from hell that they're goin to use to decide if I'm a good teacher or not. Don't get me started. I can only feel for the teachers of my own kids should they take the tests. We're complicated. My kids are opting out this year.

Exercise--I need plenty of it. Makes me happy. Makes me sleep the next day also. I was told I should NOT do yoga with my back and I was told I should do yoga with my back. Arthritis and herniated disks and scoliosis, oh my. Lyme complicates things. Still, I bicycle when the weather is warm. 

Technology is confusing but I'm totally capable of learning it, you'd think? So now, you're gonna call me lame brain or Lyme brain or complicated or technology-challenged, but I just discovered something by accident. Out of nowhere, I came across pages of pages of comments just awaiting my approval to be published. THREE years worth of comments. I am so very sorry if you were one of those people and I never responded. And I thank you for sticking with me and still reading! By the way, I approved all the comments except for the ones trying to sell me designer-like bags with stripes going in the vertical direction to make me appear taller and the ones in Chinese that were probably selling me designer bags or thinking this was a site for the black and white pandas that aren't really bears.

Call me dumbcoff. Call me complicated.

Just keep calling.