Happy New Year 5768

It's that time of year again; today is Rosh Hashanah. Or as they called it when we lived in Georgia, "Jewish New Year." At which we ate "Jewish Egg Bread," which the rest of the planet just calls "challah." Good times, those years being a Jew in Georgia....or not.

Anyway--L'Shanah Tova to all the Jews in the house. Happy Thursday to everyone else. :)

I've been AWOL from the Haggis, as the three of you may have noticed. Busy days, my friends. Busy days. You know, sitting around the house and all that. Although still looking for a new house that is neither a complete teardown nor $1 million dollars. And still doing my weekly forays to Dana Farber. Yesterday was a miserable day. I had signed up to do a clinical study of a drug that might prevent GVHD. The drug itself has almost zero side effects and the upside, if it works, is all sunshine and lollipops (ie, reduced GVHD) for me. So of course I was game to do it, even though they said it would be a 6-8 hour infusion. I was still game until I got there, got the IV in a good vein, settled in to watch TV and blog all day, and heard, "Okay, I'm giving you 50 milligrams of benadryl by IV so you'll be sleepy very soon." I don't recall if I've ever written about the hell that is Benadryl via IV. Back in the bad old days when I was getting platelet transfusions twice a week, I always got benadryl as a premedication to prevent hives. Every single day I got home from those transfusions I was in a complete fog, suffered narcolepsy, and in general felt like barfing. That was with 15mg. Good Lord, y'all. 50 effing milligrams of Benadryl in a 110 pound woman just about finished me off. I slept for 3 hours at DF, slept from 4 till about 6 at home, then slept again from 7 till 9:45. And THEN fell back asleep from midnight to 7am!

The worst part? I missed the Rosh Hashanah brisket (for my southern friends: "Jewish slow-roasted meat") and potato kugel ("Jewish savory noodle pudding"), missed the holiday blessings ("Jewish grace"), missed the whole d*mn night ("the whole d*mn Jewish night"). That's the last time I sign a study consent form without adding a No Benadryl clause. In fact, when all of this is over, I swear I will never even look at another bottle of benadryl again. This is good news for you, my friends, because it means I'll be too afraid to surreptitiously check out your medicine cabinet when I come to visit and have to go to the bathroom. Everybody wins!

I'm breaking the rules ("Very Serious Jewish Holiday Rules") by blogging today. But G-d won't mind since I'm blogging about the holiday. And because I'd otherwise be doing other prohibited things much worse than typing on a computer... The rest of the clan is at temple ("Jewish Church;" Okay, I'll stop now!), including Bambina. She has been on fire lately. Every day she says she is someone else. Mostly it's been "Miss Catherine" her teacher from The Little Gym, and I have to be Bambina learning to walk on the balance beam. That seems like a pretty thin plot doesn't it? And yet we have to do it for 2 full hours. Until she decides she's someone else and I have to be that person's dog or baby or something. Everyone in the house is desperate for this phase to pass because if I hear her shout out at 2am one more time, "Mama! I'm Miss Catherine!" or if we have to pretend to be looking for a hiding Miss Catherine at the gym one more time, I'm going to poke my own eyes out. And I'm going to go back to that Little Gym and punch Miss Catherine in the face.

I was trying to get her off Miss C and onto someone else, so I said, "What other teachers could you be? What about Man Teacher Pat?" (Man Teacher Pat is what she calls the one male teacher at the gym). Her response? "No. I not want to be Man Teacher Pat. I not like Man Teacher Pat. He has yucky breath." I then asked her if she was going to be Miss C "on a daily basis" now. She flipped out: "No! I not a daily basis! I Miss Catherine! I not a daily basis!" No amount of talking could get her to understand that Adaily Basis was not a strange person being sneaked into the Story of The Little Gym. So I abandoned my explanation in favor of being Miss Catherine's fellow teacher Miss Nicki, who apparently had breath of a quality that qualified her for inclusion in said story.

Once I finally managed to get her off The Little Gym one-act play, we started talking about dreams because she's had a few night terrors of late. She recalls nothing of them but they are incredibly distressing to witness. So she says she knows what dreams are, and that there are good dreams and bad dreams. Hers are "mostly good." She recently woke up and told me she had had a dream. I excitedly asked her what happened in the dream. Perhaps more disturbing to a parent than seeing a night terror, she replied, "I dreamed I was a meatball!" and then laughed like John Belushi. Chilling, I tell you. Chilling. Although less chilling than when I asked her what she wanted to be when she grows up and she answered, "An ear."

So that's my story. Now I'd better log off and get reverent. Which means, "go take a shower before my Future Ear gets back and I have to learn the balance beam again."

Happy New Year, y'all.