casa loco

The dreaded twin banes of stay-at-home parenting have descended upon us, sinking their poxy, evil claws into our vulnerable psyches. What are these dual plagues that have been visited upon us? Cabin fever and thrush.

The case of thrush was diagnosed on Monday after a call to the lactation specialist and our pediatrician. Thrush is essentially a rampaging yeast infection passed along in breast milk. Death to yeast! The boy remains blessedly symptom-free for now, his nether regions unrashed, but Sweet Wife has been Sore Wife for a while now. Meds were prescribed and administered; Finn is on a suspension mixture of Nystatin squirted into his mouth four time a day, most of which is immediately spit back up. The only noticeable effect of this intervention so far is an upset stomach, or so we infer from his uncharacteristic fussiness.

Blame the cabin fever on a pernicious temperature inversion---everything is gray, sloppy, and faintly stinky. The city rebreathes its own stale exhalations. We slug through slimy humidity while somewhere up in the stratosphere, above the inversion ceiling, birds cavort in fresh, cold, crisp air. The sun disappeared hours and hours ago. Inside, the walls inch closer together. Time has no meaning. The boy, drunk on milk, sloshes charismatically around like a newborn Dean Martin promising a hell of a party after the show. Piles of laundry magically appear and vanish again like subatomic particles. Afternoon passes. Our planned walk down to the library goes unrealized and is never mentioned again. Walgreens is an exotic destination, Target an impossible dream. Cupboards are opened, then closed, then opened again in search of enlightenment, or peanut butter M&Ms. The dog idly surfs the internet, Googling sunny vacation get-aways and pawing through her email. I briefly consider learning Spanish to justify the recent rash of Espanol-themed blog posts, but then discard the idea. Hours are spent avoiding the fitted sheet, which, with its wavy scalloped edges and lack of defined corners, is an unfoldable, insoluble laundry paradox as elegant in its own way as that whole Cosmos-y business about the fabric of space-time; luckily, the situation is saved in the nick of (space-)time when it is determined that the clean fitted sheet can just go right on the bed. Hey. . . no need to fold that confounding sucker after all! Crisis averted. We sterilize everything, beating the bushes and pulling out every stop in our thrush abatement campaign. Household clutter magically renews itself, papers and dishes and stray socks multiplying like. . . yeast. We rejoice in small victories, moments of grace, like the crispness of the 4-inch hole cut through the back panel of our new TV cabinet, the culmination of our attempt to convert salvaged alley junk into a treasured piece of furniture using only willpower, ingenuity, and spray paint.

Luckily, tomorrow is a new day.