She Did It!

Lanes started kindergarten! All the restless nights and heart beat tripping worry over the summer was all for nothing because I was so focused on snapping pictures and meeting other moms and kids that I forgot to cry! I had grand plans to succumb to mass hysteria South Asia style, faint, or shackle myself to her person when I dropped her off. Oh well. Must have been Lanes' lucky day.

Any old how, some moms had clustered outside the class, which was only an hour long for the first day, so I loitered around as well. I realized then that the gradual entry program was good for parents as well as the kids. We could hardly worry ourselves silly or harrass teachers with twenty questions in an hour.

There was another mom there who was raising more questions than even a drama queen like myself could think of. If you give me a situation I can easily tell you a hundred and one ways something could go wrong. I can also walk around your house and point out every single place someone could break into it from. I don't know why. It's a gift. It's my superhero power.

When I was little I thought that I could move clouds by concentrating really hard. I think that's a cooler superpower. But I digress! This mom was fabulous! She gathered up the stray worries I had floating around my head and just blurted them out, adding some more concerns to the bunch. She kept apologizing for being a worry wart but it made my day! It's always nice to know I'm not the only nut standing under the oak tree.

I really didn't want to be the pareCnt that lurks around the school. I'm sure I have better things to do, like tap dance in tune to my neighbor's loud and frequent use of her mortar and pestle or reorganize my Tupperware collection. So I let everything go and trusted that we've given Lanes enough lectures on survival for her to get through kindergarten and then some.

Luckily for Lanes, there are two boys who briefly went to her old preschool in her class.  The dad of one of the boys came up to me on the first day and said 'I know you, you're Lanes' mom!'.  Since I had no immediate recollection of him, I tried to camouflage my blank stare with lots of eye batting.

He reminded me of the connection and pointed to the playground at his son, but to me, there were three boys who looked alike. All were in green no less. I did my 'of course I remember now!' routine, because I did. I just didn't remember what his son looked like and also enough time had passed for him to grow and change. I promptly pointed to and praised the wrong boy, but luckily the father didn't notice.

Turns out his son remembers us too and he was rather happy to see Lanes. She flat out claims she doesn't remember him, but she protested with a little twinkle in her eye so I'm assuming she is being funny.

The other little boy came to her preschool for the last few weeks. I didn't recognize him either. I'd be useless spotting someone in a line up. I spied Lanes talking to him and was so happy she made a new friend but turns out he was an old friend. So much for that!

She said 'he looks a lot like Kevin and he said his name is Kevin, but I'm not sure he is really Kevin. Hmm.' Then she burst into giggles. So I guess she had a good first day. She has been going to kindergarten like she is doing us a favor though!

Meanwhile, I have got myself into yet another pickle. I felt some pain on my right thumb the other day and when I looked down I noticed I had a thorn or something jutting out of the nail on my thumb. Yes, the nail. I went straight through my finger nail, which one would think is not a small feat. Is this how what happend to the person who invented the saying 'stick out like a sore thumb?'

Being seriously right handed, I could not tweeze it out with my left hand, and my dutiful spouse P, who is generally all thumbs when it comes to these things, couldn't help out either. We only succeeded in embedding it even more.

Every night since, I have a throbbing pain in my thumb and I'm finding it very hard to do even simple things like opening the zip on my handbag. I spent literally all morning at the clinic on Saturday only for the doctor to say he doesn't want to cut off half my  nail to take the splinter out.

I was so uncomfortable at the thought of leaving my thumb as is, I decided to ditch vanity and asked him to chop of the nail already. I didn't even care that it would be a painful process. My little brain can't deal with the idea of walking around with some foreign entity wedged in my thumb. Sadly, he said it would be bad for me in the long run and refused.

I'm supposed to see if it will get pushed out on its own when my nail grows or run back and waste another five hours waiting for help if it gets infected. It was not how I envisioned my Saturday. In between all that I had a little boy literally coughing all over me in the waiting room.

After twenty minutes of the germophobe in me shuddering with every retch, I was really trying to find an excuse to stand up and find another seat without seeming rude. Plus, if I stood up, I would have had to stand for goodness knows how many more hours! I had the bright idea, an eon later, when a seat cleared up by the window to pretend I was waiting for someone in the parking lot.

I was happy in my new seat, only to find that the father of that child was depositing all the phegm soaked tissues in the garbage right next to me. No escape! Oh well. The only good thing is that I got out of Lanes' swimming lesson and the usual drama that goes with being finicky in public changing rooms and toilets.

P begrudgingly took her for the lesson. The only reason he didn't fuss was because he was looking rather pale at the sight of my thumb. He had an eventful lesson because for Lanes' level, a parent is required to be in the pool and one of the other kids, who had come with his dad, cried so much his mom jumped into the water--in a salwar kameez!

The instructor looked stunned and P said that he was turning blue trying not to laugh. I was wondering how this woman got home in wet clothes after he told me the story. These are the things I worry about. That and a possible spider infestation in our crazy a$$ ghetto fabulous apartment that has me feeling like little Miss Muffet. That's a whole other blog...more musings from BC next week...any ideas about salvaging my thumb are welcome.