Ear infection

I came down with "swimmer's ear". Either that or my 2-q-tip a day habit had finally caught up with me. Now I had an ear infection that was getting worse by the minute. My ear canal had swollen up and was oozing yellow gunk. And I couldn't hear out of that side. I was freaking out. Was this my Meniere's disease returning, this time for good to eradicate my prized residual hearing? And what to do? My wife is a doctor but her specialty in Medical Genetics hardly prepared her for this challenge. Her diagnosis of 'dysmorphic ear syndrome' was not helpful in the least and, I must say, a little stigmatizing. Seriously, she looked in my ear and diagnosed me with 'otitis externa', an outer ear infection. Well, at first she said my ear was "gross" but I already knew that, and when pressed she gave me her professional opinion.

But diagnosis is but the first step. What to do next? I suddenly missed my ENT and audiology friends back home. They would surely take care of me. But here I was a foreigner in the US healthcare system, granted post Obama-care, but still a foreigner so I didn't count. Would I be put before one of Barack's "Death Panels" and deemed too expensive to treat? To make matters worse, my daughtner had come down with the stomach flu. Misery and darkness descended.

As I read once on a church billboard in Oak Bay, the darkest hour is only 60 minutes long. And soon, through somewhat illegal channels, I had procured some powerful narcotic agents to quell the inferno of pain in my ear. Soon the agony and disgusting discharge subsided and I was on my way to healthy hearing once more, vowing to never q-tip again.

Shanika

We got to see Elise's friend today. Shanika works at McDonald's. We went there to get ice cream. Shanika lit up when she saw Elise. "I haven't seen you in a long time, girl!" Elise was happy to see her too. I felt bad that I had no idea at first who this person was. Later I convinced myself that I remembered her. Elise placed her order and she and Georgie and I sat at a nearby table and ate our ice cream cones. It takes them a really long time for my girls to get through a soft serve. It's a sacred ritual. Each step is taken very seriously. Carefully licking the cone to reduce in a somewhat uniform way, getting down to the cone, removing the paper wrapping and ensuring there is no residual paper or glue, biting around the cone, liking out the remaining ice cream and finally polishing off the bottom of the cone. Elise cares very little about the mess on her face or clothes. Georgie doesn't spill a drop, unless we are outside in the heat. Shanika came by a couple of times and said 'hi', and said she had to restrain herself from giving the girls a big squeeze.

On the way home Georgie was pondering something in the back seat then came to the conclusion that, "if vanilla was brown, then chocolate was white!" Hard to argue this logic.

Ballet and gymnastics and moms

I took Georgie to her ballet class. Elise and I watched. Afterwards, her teacher, Miss Kalela instructed me to put Georgie's hair in a bun for the performance on Saturday. Gudrun is a away and I can barely manage a pony tail. "No problem", Kalela said. "I'll do it. Georgie already told me that her mom doesn't know how to do a bun". What? Something Gudrun can't do? And how did Georgie know?

Georgie was keen to tell me that Kalela, did I know, is actually a teenager and not a grown-up! At the coaches performance last weekend, Kalela did a beautiful dance to the song "Too late to apologize". Georgie was mesmerized and fathers of daughters got all choked up.

At ballet and gymnastics, I am the only dad. All the other little girls come with their mothers. I get along very well with the moms. At the Atlanta Gymnastics Centre, there is a lively group of the real housewives of Decatur. Though these real housewives rarely resort to name-calling or hair-pulling. No, they are very well-behaved and fun. I don't think any of them work so I fit right in. Except when the subject is online coupons or stupid men. I know men are stupid but being one of them, I have nothing to add.

I look forward to our Thursday mornings together. They have accepted me into their social circle (actually, that's the name of a town east of here!). The other day I was talking to one of the women as she was breast- feeding her little girl. She was standing really close to me because it was really noisy in there. Her baby came off and was hanging upside down smiling at me as we talked. She continued on telling me about her job (she is an occupational therapist) and took a very long time to cover up. She seemed unconcerned by her overexposure. Or maybe unaware, but how could that be? It was a little like that scene from 40 Year-Old Virgin, except not as funny.

The group has lots of different personalities. One of the RHOD is a Lauren Holly look-alike and has the biggest and best southern accent of the bunch. She owns a candy shop in town and is a friendly, smily person. It seems amazing that a candy store owner should be so thin. Especially here in the south. Then there is the somewhat brash, ex- new yorker. She has lots of positive energy and is not as focused on her outfits as Lauren Holly. She always has lots of stories about her out-of-control life is but actually seems to be doing pretty well. She is loud and a bit dominant but the other women seem to like her and so do I. And she was friendly to Gudrun when she came to class. There are two others who, like me have little ones to watch while the five year-olds are doing their class. Theirs are babies though. They have their hands full and less time to socialize than the rest of us. One other woman is a transplant from Germany who moved first to Texas with her American husband before relocating to Atlanta. She's afraid to go south of Memorial Drive. It got a little quiet when she said that. Like she insulted their town or something. As if there is no crime here. Civic pride, I guess. The few times I have been to south east Atlanta, I often find myself humming, "In the ghetto". And that is one of the worst songs ever. Elvis really could suck when he wanted to. Next is little Miss Intense who talked about the dirty looks she got while visibly pregnant and at a bar drinking wine. I asked if it wasn't the tequila shots that drew the nasty looks but she seemed not to get the joke. Why not? That's frickin' hilarious! I mostly talk to Jen, whose daughter Catherine is in class with Georgie. She was the first one to talk to me, the lone male, and kind of broke the ice for me and the group. They saw that a man, while often crude and offensive, can serve a useful social purpose. And now look at me! I am the life of the party, or gymnastics viewing lounge, as it were. Jennifer has given me a lot of good tips about where to go in Georgia and we share the guilty pleasure of Disney World. Gudrun is convinced that I have fallen madly in love with her and that we are planning to run away together to Valdosta. This is of course ridiculous. I don't even like Valdosta.

And then there is ballet class. Again, all moms and me but a smaller more reserved group. Plus there is a really annoying older nanny of one of the kids who constantly interrupts my conversations with the other parents. This week I spoke more with a women whose two girls are in a dance class in the adjacent room. She is from Peru and has made several references to her and her daughters' petite -ness. Elise is a giant chubby monkey next to her little girl the same age. "My girls, they are tiny, just like me!" Gudrun takes exception to this claim, the part about her being tiny. Anyway, Ms Peru told me she was having an 80s party this weekend. She said she likes 80s music but has always been into more "rougher" music like 'Guns and Roses' and 'Journey'. Yeah, that Steve Perry was a real bad ass. She told me her husband is a whole seven years older that she and is not so into the whole party idea. Just then she got a call but rolled her eyes and said, "Mother-in-law. She can wait!" While on the subject of gymnastics and she told me that she is "crazy flexible" and "can do things I just should not do". What things? I should have asked. She wasn't nearly this chatty when my wife was here last week.

Ballet is over now and Georgie had her recital. It was wonderful. All those little girls in their tutus doing their twirls. They ran across the stage and did their jumps and threw flowers toward the audience. At the end they all hugged Kalela. Georgie said she wants to do another ballet class in the summer with Kalela but by then we'll be back in Canada.

Rain

The weather here continues to fascinate me. The rain, the heat, the humidity. It is getting warmer. In a few short weeks it has gone from being too cold to eat outside to too hot. Restaurant patios have a very short window of operation here. There are a few crazies that are out there, eschewing the AC, in the 90 degree heat. Probably the same loonies who run at mid-day in August. It's like they have a death wish. Or at least a heat stroke wish.

During the week it seems to get hotter and hotter as the days go by. And the hottest time of the day is around five or six in the evening. I guess with no ocean to cool things off it makes sense. Also, the buildings and the pavement absorb all the heat and re-radiate it. The 'heat island' effect. But my neighbourhood is all trees and it still stays warm well into the evening and even the early hours of the next day.

A typical pattern is ever increasing temperatures throughout the week, then big thunder storms just in time for the weekend. Most of Georgie's Saturday soccer games have been cancelled due to rain. One theory I have heard is that all the pollution from the commuters builds up the particulates in the atmosphere and "seeds" the clouds. So, you get more rain near the end of the week.

Last night we had a big thunder storm. I was sleeping and I remember the start of the rain. Not rain like I am used to. I've never experienced rain like this. And I am from a rain forest. It really should be called a drizzle forest. No, this is real rain. It rains so hard that it wakes you up, it disrupts your thoughts, it keeps you in your house or your car, it causes accidents, washes away roads and cars and people. Back home rain is an annoyance. Here it is a worry.

After the rain came the thunder and lightning. They call it an electrical storm. I was aware of the flashes of light in our room, followed closely at random intervals by the thunderclaps. It seemed to go on forever. I kept trying to go back to sleep. Sometimes so close it rattled the windows. Then it would move off and I could here only the distant rolling thunder. Not such a crash, more like a far away rumble. Now I can go back to sleep, I thought, but then it would come back and shake the house again. I don't know how the girls slept through all that.

Ray at the coffee shop said his rain guage registered 5 inches overnight. And he pointed out that his guage wasn't one of those cheap ones. Nashville, not that far away, got 13 inches. They are literally underwater. The rain stopped just in time for me to take the girls to school. Then I went to the driving range with Jim. It was better than usual since it was flooded and it was fun hitting balls into the new lake.

A few nights ago the power went out. There was a loud explosion sound (blown tranformer?) and then it went dark. Both Elise and Georgie started crying. I went and picked them up, Superdad-style, one girl in each arm. (Georgie told me recently that I am the strongest man in Atlanta, so that's another thing I have going for me). Gudrun came in to hug the little girls but it was pitch black and she couldn't see a thing. I had already stood up with them in my arms so instead she hugged my legs. I almost fell over.

We all huddled in our room with candles. The girls actually fell asleep in our bed and Gudrun and I slept in the guest room. I moved them back to their rooms at 3 am. Elise recounted the story the next day: "It was dark and it went boom!"

Before the rain, the girls and I, and Chris and his little girl, Magnolia enjoyed a Sunday afternoon in the Georgia wilderness. We hit the interstate at 9 am, heading up the GA 400, and then US 157 to Amiacalola State Park, near Dawsonville. It is a lovely wooded area around a waterfall and river. The girls had a great time. It was a wildlife bonanza. We saw a number of caterpillars. Really big fuzzy guys. Also we saw a stick bug and some hawks. Five possums too, but they were all dead on US 157.

There was a long wooden staircase beside the water fall. It has 650 steps. The trip down was easier than the return, but still not easy carrying a 30 pound chimp on my back. On the way back up, Elise was in the backpack carrier, poking me in the neck with a stick. I asked her to please not do that. "Ohhhhh-kaaayyyy!" Then a few minutes later, poke, poke, poke. "Stop that!" "Ohhhh- kaaaayyyy!"

Georgie hiked the whole way back up and Elise entertained us with her broadway-style songs. "Whenever I want to do, I want to do what I want to do" and "You and I and I and you" are her current favourites. At the songs' big moments, she has her arms outstretched and looks to the sky. She really knows how to bring it on home.

Does this look infected to you?

Yesterday Elise woke up with Croup. We are very familiar with this wheezing, barking monster but this is the first time it has hit Elise. She cleared up quite well after a spell on the front porch. That sounds pretty southern, doesn't it? Setting on the front porch for a spell with the little one, her on my lap wheezing away next to the azalea bush.

So I kept her home from school and she spent the day with me, happy as a clam, no sign of croup. We had a great time together, going for coffee, grocery shopping, hanging out in the front yard, saying hi to the mailman. She told anyone who would listen that she was "a little bit sick". A little bit loco is more like it. Maybe the pollen had something to do with it. The croup, not the loco-ness. Pollen counts above 130 are said to be "very high". The count hit 5700 here last week! That has to be a mistake. Today was 300 and something.

Eventually, the end of the day came and it was time to get her sister from school. We arrived and she was taking her usual time getting out of the car. I tried to hurry her along, which I seem to be doing a lot. Impatience is surely my fatal flaw. She made her way hastily to the doorway and I wasn't really watching but somehow, she managed to lose her balance and careen head first out the car and straight toward the pavement. I couldn't catch her. All I could do was stick my leg out to try to brake her fall. She bounced off my shin and tumbled to the ground. Bloody murder was screamed. Her face had smacked solidly into my leg. I did a quick check and she still had all her teeth. And none seemed too loose, although they all seemed a little loose which struck me as odd, but I had other more pressing matters. Anyway, she recovered quickly as she does. She is a tough little girl. She does have a lot of accidents these days. One of her favourite things to do is to walk or run while looking behind her. This often ends badly.

We went inside and told the story to Ms. Miosha at Georgie's class. That's when I noticed I was bleeding. My little monkey's teeth had scraped a gouge in my shin. I didn't think much of it and we carried on with our day.

The next morning the cut looked ugly. It is a little swollen and kind of oozy. The dreaded monkey bite! The girls were both very excited by this and the fact that this meant I needed a band-aid. Georgie made me promise that she could put it on but emphasized that she had no interest in removing it later.

I remember another time when I was worried about getting bitten by a monkey. Gudrun and I and our friend Nigel were standing looking at some baboons that were blocking our path. We were trying to go for a nice little hike in the Drakensburg mountains only to have our day ruined by some ill-tempered apes. Are baboons apes? Well, wherever they fit on the monkey- ape continuum, they grudgingly yielded the trail to us but hung out in the bushes nearby and grunted and growled at us with increasing intensity until we made a hasty retreat (ran away like little girls). We felt rather silly for being scared of them so tried again with similar results. They sounded even more aggressive and annoyed with us this time so we returned to the hotel. We rationalized that we had done the right thing but inside we felt like cowards. I think we told the guy at the hotel that the hike was "great". Tough sefricans like him would not understand. Nigel was concerned that a bite from one of these guys would be a bad thing as they had "dirty mouths, just like people". I was more concerned about them ripping me limb from limb. Those SOBs were big.

Anyway, I am off to put some polysporin on my monkey bite. I fear it has become gangrenous. Get the hack saw. I probably have a night of delirious dreams ahead of me.

April 23, 2010

Yesterday when I was picking up the girls, Georgie told me that cars are not good for the earth. "Bikes are good for the earth", she said. Well I don't have a bike so today I decided I would leave the car at home and walk to pick them up. It is about a 45 minute walk through our tree-lined neighbourhood, Emory Campus and Lullwater Park. I took the stroller and a backpack. It was humid enough to make an 85-degree day seem even hotter. I enjoyed all the beautiful flowers and trees along the way. The lower part of Emory Road is what Gudrun likes to call "the tree tunnel". This is the nicest time of year here, as long as you're not allergic to pollen. The azaleas are particularly nice.

I made my way through Emory pushing the empty double stroller. I stand out on campus amidst the coeds, all giddy about the end of term. A father among children. They all seem to be about 15 years old. Just when did aviator sunglasses come back? And why were they ever in? That's at least three iterations of that silly style in my lifetime.

By the time I got to Clifton Road I was a sweaty monster and was happy to reach the shade of Lullwater Park. Amazing that just a few weeks ago this place was barren. Not a leaf to be found and now it is a jungle. A snake-ridden jungle.

I got to the pool at the Eagle but changed my mind about going for a swim. Apparently, this was "Luau Night" and the place was packed with the aforementioned 15-year olds. I felt very old and out of place. There was one other old fart there but he was wearing a speedo. Poor guy, probably just moved here from some backward country where speedos are acceptable and just doesn't know how lost he is. And it was one of those high-riding speedos, too. I left him and his thinly-veiled genitalia with the partying freshmen and headed up the road to the Clifton School.

After a protracted pick-up (Georgie performed her slow-motion snack eating ritual) we were on our way. Georgie has a new teacher who is african-american and has a skin condition like vitilago or something so that her face is mostly white with what looks like dark freckles. Georgie said one of the kids asked her about why she had so many dots on her face. She told them they were "kisses from God". Funny that Georgie didn't ask us who God is. Maybe we've had that discussion already. I think we did, about all the different possible gods and belief systems, etc. From what I recall, she was bored beyond belief.

Anyway, we headed back through the park and ran into Alison's Dad, Chris. Alison is in Georgie's class. Chris is also coach of Georgie's soccer team, The Warthogs. He teaches biology at Emory University gets to walk from his office through the lovely park to the Clifton school. That's his daily commute. We had a nice chat there among the trees and flowers. He told me that the copperhead snakes hide out in the ivy bushes. Except the one that was after me, I guess. He was nowhere near any ivy. Apparently, the last University president, whose house is in the park, had a problem with copperheads biting his dogs. They kept going in the ivy. Kind of like a Darwin award for dogs.

We walked out of the park and to Gudrun's office on campus. We waited outside and sat on the grass. Elise and Georgie went up to some students who were studying and chatted to them about pre-school and Tinkerbell. Georgie reported to me about all the little red bugs she was finding. When Gudrun was done we went to 'Rise and Dine' for dinner. Gudrun ardently loves that place and would happily eat all her meals there. Growing up, she frequently ate pancakes for dinner so I think this formative pattern steers her to these type of establishments. She also loves Waffle House, a southern institution. I think Kid Rock got in a fight in the one here.

We walked home at dusk, still hot enough to make me break a sweat for the third time that day. Nice the mosquitoes are not here yet.

Atlanta headlines and news, 2009-10

They have brown bread here made to taste like white bread. They advertise it right on the package. Brown bread with that great white bread taste! Ok, that's not a headline but it is fantastic and therefore newsworthy. Why put up with the disgusting taste of brown bread? One of the many reasons I love it here. Other reasons include drive- thru everthing and the fact you can put anything out by the curb and someone will take it away.

The Atlanta city jail is closing. The downtown jail. Closing because they can't pay for it not because they don't have enough people to lock up. They got lots of folks that need to be behind bars but I guess they will just have to go somewhere else. Anyway, Fulton County is apparently very excited by this news. So excited that they want to buy the jail. They have even more felons to put away, I guess. This is funny to me because another county just outside the perimeter don't even have enough money to keep paying for their police force. They just laid them all off and are hoping for the best. I'm sure that will work out just fine. Good thing the MARTA only goes to Buckhead.

Oh, and the MARTA, Atlanta's public transit is bankrupt.

A funeral home in one of the suburbs has been fined for keeping some bodies unrefrigerated for more than two months. The owner of the funeral home felt the punishment was too harsh. I mean, if he could stand the smell, where's the problem? It's your classic victimless crime. I remember a similar story from South Africa. A funeral home where they kept taking the bodies, promising to bury them or cremate them and instead they just stuck them in their back yard. Eventually, someone complained about the smell and the owners got charged or fined or something. And just like here, they seemed to not quite understand what they had done wrong. The bodies were piled very neatly.

Not far from here, still in north east Atlanta, body parts starting showing up. An arm in this park, a foot in an alley and so on. Eventually, they had a whole person and a murder investigation was under way. As far as I know they never got the guy, assuming it was a guy.

They have been fighting over water for some time here. Water from Lake Lanier, a big man-made reservoir north of the city. It seems the Army Core of Engineers dammed up the Chattahoochee River back in the 50s and made the lake. Now it is a major supply of greater Atlanta's water. The problem is that folks downstream in Alabama and Florida don't like us using all the water. The once mighty Chattahoochee ain't so mighty anymore and farmers and others who enjoy water are unhappy. They showed some farmers from Alabama on the news. They seemed ticked off, though I couldn't really understand what they were saying. Word articulation is much better when you have a full set of teeth. That's not fair or even true. What's the best thing to come out of Alabama? The I-20. Also unfair but possibly true. Anyway, It seems there was never an agreement to use Lake Lanier for drinking water so there's a fight brewing. Governor Sonny Perdue wants to take it all the way to Washington but he forgets that folks in DC don't really care about the south.