Lent-a-mente

On Ash Wednesday, as we're getting ready to leave for school, the kid asks what happens on Ash Wednesday. I said it's a religious holiday, a pretty serious time for many Christians, and Catholics often make some sacrifice for the next 40 days before Easter to show how serious things are. (I tried to tackle the concept of sin and redemption and then let that one lie. There are some things that a goddessworshipping pantheist is not qualified and Catholic sin is one of them. )

Later, I'm replaying what I said as I brushed my teeth, checking for gaps in my story. I realize that I have not ever given up anything for Lent, and that maybe an example would help him get the idea. Lightbulb! I was a super asshole the night before, with lots of hovering during homework, and slamming the cardoor open so hard when we got home because we were arguing about Harry Potter that I snapped the little metal piece in the door hinge and now I have to manually feed it into the door to be able to close the door every time. I'll give up yelling for Lent, I announced. he got all stern-faced because I yelled for him to come make his lunch and I had to qualify my pledge to give up angry yelling, because there's no way I could go for 40 days without being loud, for the love of Pete! it's molecularly impossible.

On the way to school, the kid announced that he knew what he'd like to give up for Lent. It's not something that I do that's bad, he said. Does it still count? Let me hear it, I said, bracing myself. I'm giving up the after-school program, he said calmly. I'll be a car-rider like (insert friend from wealthy family with giant house and great toys) and we can play together all the time. Ah. I see.

Mama Drama

I have a story.

At the beginning of the semester, I sent a note to the course coordinator, saying that my son's birth was traumatic, and that I was a bit nervous going into the setting again, although it had been several years. She said nervous is normal, and maybe I should let the clinical instructor know how I was feeling. Done, with conversation from course coordinator attached for history and context. I ended the email with this:

I feel confident that I can handle this course and I don't want kid-glove treatment at all! I just wanted you to know that I have really strong feelings about this stuff (in other words, I will cry during clinical at some point this semester!)

No response from clinical instructor, which was fine with me. It was perhaps too informal, I'll admit. But I did just come off Psych, and we all know how it went when I cried in front of that professor.

We've been meeting each Monday since the beginning of January with no mention of any of this, other than an aside on the first pre-conference that she knew I had a child, and who else has kids?
Last Monday, I saw TWO births (amazing, incredible and I'll write them up soon, I promise!). I also was talking about my son's birth briefly with two other students in the break room while we ate, and the CI was in the room. She said, "Oh you did have a traumatic birth." I used to enjoy the shock value a little, but I normally don't talk about it anymore - honestly, people are uncomfortable when they realize the implications of the vaginal delivery of an 11 pound, 11 ounce baby and subsequent fourth degree tear. Even indirectly, one's own rectum is not an easy thing to discuss socially, I've found.

The CI and I left together that evening, and she brought it up again. She said that she wasn't sure how to respond and so just played it by ear. I told her that's exactly what I had hoped that she would do, honestly, that I wanted her to know so that she could be prepared, but not because I thought that she would need to intervene in any way. She said, in her Midwestern drawl, "You know, it's been how long, seven years? If you're still having these strong feelings, you ought to think about getting counseling". I smiled uncomfortably and waited until she stopped talking and I could get away. Again? Really? Am I the world's craziest student?

got an email from her two days later that began and ended this waywith this sentence:

Although your clinical performance has been very good, I think you should seek counseling your issues related to your childbirth 7-8 years ago...

Your unresolved long standing issues impede your ability to learn as a student and grow. Please give this matter some serious thought.

See you next week.

So.

There's that, then.

I've stopped screeching phrases like "how would she know?!" and "impede my ability to grow and learn as a student?!" incredulously. I have stopped obsessing about what I would do if she brings it up again as justification for a poor evaluation. While counseling is in order for me (as it is for most humans who have ever experienced anything), it's not on the wait-list for things to do this semester or even this year, I think. Also, I didn't fucking ask you. I guess since I brought it up in writing, she was obligated to respond in writing. but jesus. This is so intrusive, so cold and clinical.

I was all ready to fire off an email detailing my emotional reaction to her note. My friend said, No! She is asking you not to cry on her! Don't cry on her again! Mom said the same. I am immensely grateful for their translation. One of the things that disturbed me so much was that I was attempting to avoid this sort of interaction by sending the email in the first place. I was trying to construct some distance and professional detachment around an issue that is still tender for me, but I did it in a way that put my guts out there to begin with. In a way, it seems that I invited this intrusion into my emotional state; not literally, but on a sort of cosmic plane. What was I hoping to avoid in the first place here? Would I benefit from spending some time on this? Perhaps not with a counselor, but in meditation, doing some root chakra energy work, focused journalling?

I am practicing my pleasant, competent, yet emotionally detached personna for clinical conferences. I am wondering what this means about my way of being in the world in general and as a student in particular. And I'm thinking of it in terms of the conversation that Loving Pecola and darkdaughta are having about what can be expected from the world of academia.

Tonight went well, but I did give in to the temptation to tell a short form of this story to another student who got a similar nasty-gram. I regretted it immediately - it was purely for one-upping the other student, not because she and I are close or she needed my support. I even wonder about posting it here - but will leave it for now.

The instructor did add a comment at the bottom of my clinical journal entry from last week about the births: "I think this week was therapeutic for you!"

More than you know.

Condition is stablilizing

I have plans for t-day break. Big plans.
I'll be in the car for 12 hours total with my stepfather, who wants to always be the driver, and my mother, who doesn't like music in the car, and my son, who has been a little surly, and my own head, which is spinning at usual nauseating speed.

I'll be spending 12 hours a day assessing or avoiding the assessment of my grandparents, who don't want to be assessed, thank you, but who each want me to assess the other!

I'll be off to the county library if the dang place is open, to use the free wifi and try to get the paperwork sorted through from the national convention (fun, revolving restaurant, iceskating, focus sessions good, met the president of the american holistic nurses association, sad about the lack of cohesiveness on my state's board). I'll work on a day in the life post, and I'll do some research about whether I'm willing/able to write a resolution for the NSNA convention in March. i'm also going to work on a FAQ for poor folks who go to national conventions, and sketch out an article on nursing blogs before ANA gets all in my business with their nursespace.org stuff...

I'll be playing chess with the kid, writing stories with the kid and then passing the kid a Captain Underpants and Super Diaper Baby book and taking a nap on the blessed baby duck-upholstered couch.

I unfortunately will not be working any shifts and trying to get out of this gaping financial maw which is the end of the semester. I will, however, be eating my grandparent's food. I will pay the low low price of wearing a nice sweater to t-day dinner for this privlege.

But did I mention the drive yet? it's the part I dread the most, though it's not going to be as bad as all that. Every time we set out, I think, this will be the trip that I buck up and say that I'm ready to take over driving, so that he can choose either passive or aggressive once and for all. Maybe I'll just do the first leg of it this year, and get all Cesar Milan about it. Shht!

I tell ya one thing - I am pretty damn tired of everything that's coming up for me being something that's playing out in the kid's life now! I am feeling like a giant projection screen, just showing him how to become a steaming bowl of crazy of his own! had a relatively good follow up conference with his teacher today - but I leave there feeling a little slimy, like it's going to take a few hours of steady thinking and writing to get clear about what I think about what she said. too much work, people!

speaking of crazy, it's ridiculous to whine about being tired and looking tired, but staying up. I turned off the alarm this morning, and we slept in til 8:45am because he didn't go to sleep til 10pm and I didn't turn off Scrubs til 2:20am. so. good night.

more emo - who can get enough?!

Peds is still kicking my affective ass. After the shower-sobbing reaction to my shifts in the PICU and NICU, I then had a series of less intense but recurrent crying jags last week after my first 12 hour shift on the unit. I am SO good at dissociating that I can't even really tell you what triggered them - but it was akin to the med-surg crying, based loosely around the idea that during those 12 hours, I could have done something or not done something to hurt someone and would never ever know it.

Therapeutic interventions recently employed:

• massage. wow. I said to the nice LMBT, "I feel like I can't breathe a full deep breath, like there's a little ball of silly putty right *there* in my spine and if I could just bend the right way, it would crack open and I'd be able to breathe again. I've also been doing a lot of crying, and I don't want any of that sadness to get stuck in any crevices of fascia and fester". She said, "I can handle that." And she did. She did something under the edge of my rib cage that made me think of my ribs as completely detachable. And she did a controlled version of a sternal rub that warmed me up for hours. No surprise, I cried on the table. But not out of control, not like I wouldn't be able to stop crying - more like the way you might cry when someone you love tells you a very sad story and you hold their hand while they talk. It was good. I felt so guilty picking up my backpack after she'd just spent an hour integrating my upper body bilaterally.
  
• tea. I don't know why, but I seem to only think of tea when it's chilly outside. I can drink hot coffee through the summer - though with admittedly less enjoyment, I do have to shoulder through it. But it's been a journey through the Stash Herbal Tea Sampler Box lately. The colors of the little packages are almost as soothing to me as the tea itself. And I had enough honey and didn't feel like I had to skimp or be judicious.
  
• art. went walking around a historic neighborhood with an artist friend yesterday, looking at amazing pieces of art. It was a Winnie-the-Pooh sort of sky and blustery wind, I woke up in a good mood and so did the kid, it was good all over.
• a productive-feeling new notecard system for Psych and Peds exams upcoming this week. I'll sign off in about five minutes to do more of these. I'm really hopeful that they will help me turn around the Bs from the second exams back to the As from the first exams of the semester.
  
• journalling. Psych instructor, who I have a complete identity crush on (I love her hair, her shoes, her style of speaking, her humor) mentioned it the other day in class, and I have meaning to get started again. I stopped at some point around the time I left my husband, catastrophisizing about supeonas and whatnot. It was intensely helpful Saturday night when all of a sudden, I was going to turn myself inside out with feeling alone and sad and completely helpless to fix either of those things.
  
• write-ups. I know, it's counter-intuitive that school-work would help me feel less overwhelmed. But what's happened is that I'm less afraid to include this emotional response in my weekly reflections. I think that my experience in Psych a few weeks ago (jesus, it seems like a year ago) helped me get a point of comfort, that yes, I am usually able to judge what's appropriate to disclose, and what's inappropriate. And yes, when I say something, and someone looks uncomfortable, it doesn't necessarily mean that I shouldn't have said it - it may mean that they are simply uncomfortable. And no, I shouldn't avoid writing the story about how the nurse said that some parents should be sterilized to me in the break room because I'm scared of getting her in trouble. It's good information for my instructor to have that this is the kind of thing that I'm trying to integrate on a weekly basis. This is an accurate reflection of the level of emotional processing that I am personally doing. Sure, not everyone is having this reaction; who would expect them to? But I am, and that's okay, and I want the prof to know it.
  

The other thing that's been really helping me this week is reading and re-reading the Love Letter to Nursing Students at Head Nurse. I can see myself in some of the things that she is excited about, and I am vicariously proud. A Love Letter to Nurse Preceptors will be forthcoming posthaste.

Smitten Kitchen is feeding me lately with images of amazing food, and reminders that food is something that I love, not just something that means dirty dishes and rotten potatoes. (though rotten potatoes are hands down the most disgusting thing that can happen in a kitchen, I think. You reach in and it looks okay and then you pull it back and it's... not okay. not not not okay.) I've purchased pumpkin and french bread. I cooked a mini pumpkin for dessert last night for the love of pete! I'm considering stuffing some onions! Come on!

speaking of amazing images, these pictures at deputydog are broadening my horizons and making me sit up and drop my shoulders. love love love them. We already talked about the 7 amazing holes list that he has, right?! wow.

Things that are not getting written about this morning - the upcoming parent-principal meeting regarding the kid and his second grade class (still not going well), the fact that I hurt myself with my menstrual cup and feel really annoyed about it, my continual brokeness and the recent crisis proportions, the chance to do an hourlong interview with a grad student doing research on single moms who went to community college and then a four year school, and the upcoming trip for the ANS Mid-Year Convention.

later, tater.

PICU + NICU + forgetting to pick the kid up from school = sobbing in shower

PICU kids were:
one month old boy with hypoplastic left heart, adorable smile, and hard swollen breasts (they were doing an MRI to find out if there was something on his pituitary?) Ventilator, central line in jugular vein, continuous infusion of fentanyl, methadone q6h. Mom and dad cannot come to visit often, and are a little checked out about this child. The nurse I was following (who I had really liked up to this point) described dad's tattoos and said "Some people should just be sterilized, you know."

five month old girl with metabolic disorder. ventilator, concern during the shift that her BP was rising, and that her end tidal volume of CO2 was getting too high. Continuous infusion of fentanyl. Attended a family meeting in which parents were informed that her problem was a mitochondrial defect, and that there was essentially no treatment available, and did they want to call and gather the family now or wait a day or two on the ventilator?

a boy with necrotic pneumonia in right lung, lots of staff in and out of his room all shift, trying to get a tube into his left lung to focus ventilation on that one. On an oscillating vent that was giving 400 breaths/minute.

a teenager who was paralyzed, wearing hand splints and Prafo boots, with a trach. She wanted to be moved up in bed, and so her nurse asked my nurse and me to help, and off we troop. Her nurse wanted our help to turn her, so that she could see her back and assess for skin breakdown. The nurse discovers stool in her brief and so we all help change her and clean her.
Then her nurse wants to change and clean the inner canula of her trach, and asks me to help. Sure, I say, desparately trying to remember the procedures from skills lab. That was the worst possible set-up for trach care I've ever experienced.
The bed was too low,
the patient didn't want us to take her pillow away, so her chin was down and resting on the vent tube,
the nurse didn't follow the inner to outer and throw away process that I'd been taught for cleaning around the stoma,
the patient is trying to communicate with me by eyeblinks and mouthing words,
there's clearish bloody stuff coming from around the stoma behind the trach, and
I can't get the velcro of the trach tie back in.

after the nurse puts the new inner canula in, the patient's sats start dropping after we get the vent tube back on. Like 98-to 87- to 74. She tells me to grab the bag behind me, and squeeze. Oh my god, I think. Squeeze. What am I doing, I think. Squeeze. Okay, back to 80, that's good. Squeeze. back to 94 and we put the vent tube back on, and she's looking at us again, and I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I feel like some sort of hero.

NICU: (nobody on pain meds here)
15 day old boy, 3180 gram born with sacral mengingocele, s/p repair. Two days ago, had a shunt placed from brain to belly to drain excess fluid. No IV access, foley cath from surgery that will be pulled later that day. He is the youngest of 6 kids, and has a 13yo brother who also has spina bifida. It was enough to make me want to take my folic acid right that second, even I never plan to get pregnant again. It wasn't until the end of the shift that I realized that his face really was all scrunched forward like that, it wasn't just because he was laying on his belly with his head turned to the right for the whole shift. Seven seconds into the shift, the nurse tells me to feel his head, and his fontanels. I'd call those full, but not bulging, she says. And here, these sutures, open wide is what I'd document for them. And when I say sutures, I mean the places where the bones of the skull should meet and knit together. I felt like I was touching his brain through his skin. He had never exhibited movement or tremors in lower extermities, no likelihood that he ever will. Mom is breastfeeding. Assisted nurse with cleaning and changing the stack of 4x4's under his butt that serve as diapers several times during the shift, positioning mom for feeding (which involves awareness of his foley tubing, ECG leads, incisions along his sacrum, incision on his head, no pressure on the shunt itself, no pressure on mom's c-section incision and 4x4s and pads under his anus to catch poop). He had a little plastic sheet (nurses called it a mud flap) stuck to his butt to prevent any feces from getting near incision site. I advocated for turning his head to the left, according to Neurosurgery's orders, because it seemed that his neck was starting to show some resistance and his opposite hand was cool and the pulse weak compared to the arm on the side he was facing.

33 week GA baby born 10 days ago, 1818 grams. She looked tiny, but so healthy. However, an echo had showed that she has no pulmonary artery, and the only way that blood is getting oxygenated is because the hole between her two atria hasn't closed yet. cardiology is deciding plan for surgical interventions. Currently on prostaglandin to keep ductus arteriosus patent. Some history of necrotizing enterocolitis. Pt has been NPO since last echo, and mom's questions are all focused on when she will be able to take a bottle again, without much insight into severity of cardiac condition. Observed bedside rounds while mom was present, holding baby, and realized how little of what was said would be comprehensible. Tried to translate after rounds were over. Even nurse greeted mom with news that she had only had 3 bradys overnight, so that was good. Mom indicated no understanding of what 'bradys' were, and I said to the nurse, Do you mean that her heart only dropped three times over night, and it was happening much more frequently? Nurse realized why I had asked when she looked at the relief on mom's face, and adjusted her language afterward. Come to think of it, though, her heart rate dropped to below 90 several times during our short shift and I don't remember seeing the nurse document. Fellow in rounds seemed to think that the apneic episodes and bradycardia were SE of the prostaglandin, and there was an order to cut the prostin in half by the time I left the unit.

Observed a PICC insertion performed on a 26 week premature infant. No pain meds on board, or any evidence of local anesthestic used. When needle was inserted, baby (who was completely covered by sterile towels except for her elbow) jerked and curled toward the arm. Nurse stated that she did have fentanyl PRN on her MAR, but that she's never had opioids before and you want to avoid them as long as possible because of her fragile state.

How do you care for a person that you don't think should be alive? How does it change your care to know that this person's lifespan will be only weeks long and contain no joy as you know it?
If you believe that some people shouldn't be alive, is it ethical for you to be a nurse?

So, yeah, sobbing while the kid did homework. I finally got in the shower so that I could feel like he couldn't hear me as loudly. He was all worried - I think he worries that I'm going to hurt myself and he's going to have to do something about it - and I just said that I had a really awful day, and that I needed to cry some of it out. I asked him if he would give me a hug in a minute when I caught my breath. I love that kid.

The situation with the dishes and the house is not funny and quirky anymore. It's not sexy-messy. It's rolled right into calling Oprah for an intervention. When the kid was a baby and after my dad died, my mom would come over on the weekends a couple times a month and we'd clean my house. I wish that she still did that. I wish that I didn't wish that at 33yo.

grumble.

I've been working hard to drag myself out of a trip to the sucking thought-spiral of despair for the past couple weeks. I had been feeling sad and lonely, and sort of on the verge of tears - the kid wouldn't go to sleep, I was being a raving angry shrew anytime we were together, and then teared up when he told me he wanted to go spend the night with his dad. That's the first time he's said that, and though I knew it would happen at some point, I just figured that point would be in five years when I wouldn't let him go bungee jumping or something. All my free time had been taken up with writing essays about how super super great of a student and a human being I am so that nameless bureaucrats would award me some money, which other nameless bureaucrats in the Fin Aid office would then process in such a way that I couldn't get my hands on and pay my cell phone bill, which somehow was doubled this month because of usage charges since I was out of class for three weeks and everyday was a holiday!

And then my clinical instructor wrote "Very interesting! Let's discuss!" on the top of my write-up for Psych, and I cried on her when we had our midterm conference. I figured she meant interesting like "I'm speechless with how poorly you have completed this assignment! Let's talk about how you can get some points for this by re-doing it entirely! You actually have no empathy and should consider a new professional track immediately. " I cried, and stammered that it seemed like she was telling me that I didn't listen to my patient, and of course I listened to my patient, I had just written 500 words about how I want to be a nurse because my inherent capacity for empathy and attentive listening that I will provide my patients from traditionally underserved groups.
She suggested that I seek counseling, because as I had shared with the group, these patients and their PTSD and alcohol abuse issues were obviously close to some emotional issues I hadn't yet resolved with my own father. She didn't say anything that I hadn't said in post-conference to the whole group, honestly - she just linked all that I had said to the fact that "I was moved to tears by feedback on my first paper" and said that "my reaction suggested that I have a bit more anxiety about this rotation than I thought I did". She was calm and compassionate. My reaction to her suggestion that I seek counseling, when I had, in fact, sought counseling in the past, and was currently medicating my way through a bout of depression/anxiety, was to instantly feel like I am much crazier than I thought, and that I had embarrassed myself in revealing what it was like to grow up with a father who had PTSD.

In fact, it turns out she wrote that on everyone's paper, because it was the first time any of us had done an IPR (interpersonal recording - patient said, nurse said, was nurse therapeutic, how is patient's diagnosis exhibited?).

What I'm really proud of is how I handled it. Not initially, of course. For three days or so, I mucked around in a shallow pond of self-doubt and pity. I had imaginary conversations with her, and started arguments with my ex-husband about the cell phone bill and our custody arrangement. I told the story of our conversation to any friend that would listen, and filled in any boring places with sarcasm and dramatic analogies. I felt betrayed by this professor, who I had for a class my first semester and for whom I had much respect.

But then, I went for a long walk in the woods on the cross country trail near my house. I took my mp3 player and listened to the Non-Violent Communication files I have saved. I realized how far removed from reality and the present moment I had become lately. I sweated and swang my arms and stomped along the hills of the trail. I ate an entire huge slice of chocolate cake and checked out two discs of Scrubs to watch back to back. I made notecards for the house to remind me to say "I feel --------- because I -------." instead of "You made me really mad!" and "It's none of my business what anyone else thinks of me." and last but not least, "You can't MAKE anyone do anything. You can only make them regret it." And I decided that I had shared my experiences appropriately at the time, and that my embarrassment was about exposing my tears and emotions to my instructor. And that my sense of betrayal was based on an assumption that because I already had a level of comfort with her, that she wouldn't push me at all during this rotation, when I explained that there was some real potential to get sad while talking to veterans that reminded me a lot of my dead father.

I also remembered that each semester so far has had its own teary day. Remember when I burst into tears because of I couldn't inject saline into the hotdog! How much fun was that?! I realized that I thought that the Wellbutrin was going to protect me from emotional outbursts - and decided that I had experienced the emotional equivalent of breakthrough bleedings. I'm actually grateful to know that I can still have super sad experiences while taking the meds; it would be scary to think of never experiencing strong emotions again.

And that when one, who shall nameless, walks around looking for things to mock and deride, then she will get really really good at mocking and derision. And one who is really really good at mocking and derision will be tempted, nay, compelled to occasionally mock and deride herself.

And then I was not an asshole to the kid for one whole afternoon, and made oatmeal cookies with him, which he pronounced "surprisingly delicious".

All is well.

Shhh, that doesn't hurt!

At the park yesterday, I was trying to study Patho while the kid was playing on the big slide. I wasn't having much success. There seems to be a cloud around this particular park - I can't relax and let the kid play here. I'm always watching the other kids, sitting on my hands, and biting my tongue to keep from yelling at kids that aren't mine to stop jumping on their little brother's head. Why I brought my notebook and that ginormous textbook I can't figure out.

This dad puts his daughter up on the swing. She's less than 6. The dad already put the under 2 yo in the baby swing and she's happy and safe. The dad pushes the swing, the girl slips out and lands flat on her back on the ground. Wham. Silence, and then a gasp and crying. Now, in my head, I'm rooting for the dad. Get down, I urge, down on your knees in the dirt right this second. He complies to a certain extent, crouching, but still looking around him, not at the baby, but for witnesses. Dude, I think, it's cool, I saw it and I've done it before. Everyone who has pushed a kid in a swing has had at least one time that they weren't ready, or you pushed too hard on the first push. Get down on the dirt and pick her up in a big hug. Now.

He ignores me, and starts talking. Uh-oh, I think, he's shaking off the signs from the catcher. Bad move, skippy. He says, Shhhhh, now. Hush, honey. You're okay, it's okay. Okay, so I get the motivation to reassure. Fine. But the hushing? At approximately 3.2 seconds post-traumatic, scary thwumk on the hard ground? Get real. That is a- not going to happen, and b- ridiculous of you to suggest.
They are about 10 feet from me for this whole encounter, and I am unfortunately blatantly staring while he continued to argue with her about the severity of her injuries and hugged her too hard (which made her cry harder and yell at him to get offa her). At one point, he started saying I'm sorry that you fell and hurt yourself. I'm so so sorry that happened. Hedging, dude. Weasel-y. Bad call.
I really don't get this impulse to blow off kids. You can't win by saying to a kid yelling that it hurts, that no, it doesn't. Um. Yes, it does. No, it doesn't. You might mean that it shouldn't, or that it's inconveinent for you to be yelling about right now, or that I don't have it in me to muster the sympathy that I should be showing you, or that I think you are a big fat baby whiner. But as the person not experiencing the pain, trauma, or discomfort, you cannot say that it does not hurt.

True, this girl made some noises like she was dying. Like she was about to fucking expire. Like Scarlett OHara when Ashley left her and the Yankees came to Tara. In my opinion, she made those noises because she doesn't feel like her dad is listening. She has learned in five short years that she has to ratchet up the drama in order to get him to engage, even though he engages poorly when he finally shows up.

The girl screeches, with raggedy breaths, I want to go home. The dad says, Well, how about this, honey, why don't we - and the girl screams it again. The dad gets annoyed. Dude, you're using too many words. I know that you're thinking out loud. I do that, too, all the time, and I know that it's annoying to many around me, including my kid. There are times when you are better off shutting your mouth and thinking. Anything you say that is not, Okay, baby, let's go get our stuff and go on home - pointless, like that Far Side cartoon about what dogs hear. blah blah blah. So your thinking time needs to be devoted to any reason why we cannot go home right now, and that reason needs to be limited to they are exterminating our house with dangerous chemicals that will affect our neurologic functions.

Turns out that the reason the dad was hedging on the pack-it-up-and-roll-out idea was that he wanted her to get back on the horse. He thinks (I saw it above his head in a big balloon) that if he lets her go home crying because of this fall, that she will always be scared of swings and this will be a weakness for the rest of her life. Been there, too, man. I totally understand. But stop it. First of all, at no point in this process have you, the adult, the one who did NOT just get hurt and scared, not once yet have you shut the fuck up and just hugged the kid. Try it, please. You have demanded that she be quiet, repeatedly commanded her to take a deep breath and calm down, and told her that it's not a lot of blood and she shouldn't be scared. Stop. Take a deep breath of your own. Sit with her. Listen to what she's saying. Look at her eyes. Let her know that what she's saying, what's happening for her is important to you. Hold your own agenda for a second - of not looking like an asshole that just pushed your kid off the swing, of making sure she doesn't develop a lifelong swing phobia, whatever.

I kept wondering if she would respond to me if I went over with water for her to wash her fingers. I kept imagining that I would do all the right things, and like the Dog Whisperer, she would instantly quiet and calm. I think that I did not go over because I didn't want to know that this movie was totally fiction.

What I did do was pack up my own books and kid after the second time he came tumbling out of the slide crying. Apparently, their clog-up-the-slide-halfway-down game had gone awry and he got a foot in the ribs. Okay, I said, matter-of-fact, Time to go. Of course, I muttered 'just like I told you it would be if you kept playing that dumb-ass game with that big kid who was jumping on his brother's head'.

It really makes me wonder what other parents think of me on the playground.