Sunday, September 28, 2008

How does she make it through childbirth?

I think Frankie is giving up naps. This is almost the equivalent of someone saying to me "every one of your dearest loved ones has just perished in a fiery inferno." The last three days I have put her in her room and listened to her play for a half an hour and then she is busy yelling that she is all done sleeping. I have resisted telling her that she doesn't have to sleep, that she can just stay in her room and play, because I didn't want her to realize that was an option. I'll guess I'll have to give in and stock her room with the cardboard bricks that Aunt Molly sent to her for her birthday that required approximately eighty-five hours of manual labor, tedious folding and tucking of unwieldy cardboard edges, to put together (you actually owe me about $2400 based on my hourly wage, Molly).
Speaking of hourly wages, I am seriously underemployed. I haven't worked in about three weeks. Where are the sun-freckled, age-spotted women hiding? I suppose the current economic situation is not fostering an environment where people are eager to smooth their brows when they are worried that apple juice has gone from 99 cents to $1.65. But the less I go to work, the less time I am in the medical spa, and the less time I can spend my after-work hours giving myself various procedures. For those of you who have not invested in laser hair removal, let me be the first to feel deeply sorry for you that you cannot don large goggles, slather yourself with gel, and shoot laser beams into the recesses of your armpits. It is good times.
Once, my boss kindly said that I could give my sister a photofacial when she was in town. A photofacial, for those whose age or lack of vanity has kept them in the dark thus far, is a procedure where pigment in your face is zinged so it will come to the surface and flake off. It feels a lot like a hot rubber band being snapped on your face. Hurts, but tolerably. Molly, being a blue-eyed fake blonde, has lots of freckles so she jumped at the chance. I laid her down on the table, gently frosted her face with gel, and put the goggles in place. Immediately she began with the complaining. "Don't hurt me, Saskia. Wait. WAIT. I'm not ready." Deep breathing. "Wait. Don't do anything. Are you doing something? WAIT." Meanwhile, I fire up the machine and get ready to start. Soon long spindly white arms are waving indiscriminately in the air, batting at the handpiece. "Hold on. I'm sweating. SASKIA, HOLD ON. HOLD ON." Finally, with the aid of Lamaze breathing, I give her the first zap. She begins bucking off the table and tearing away the glasses. "I NEED SOME TIME. HOLD ON. I am sweating. Just wait. Saskia, NO, NO, NO. Just wait." She eventually began getting full body shakes, like she was in transitional labor, and kept trying to knock the thousand dollar handpiece out of my hands so many times I had to give it up. None of this is hyperbole. Let her progress to looking like leather, so help me I will never go near her face again.

2 comments:

lrwn said...

why am I not surprised by your sister's ultra-woosiness?

Molly said...

can i just say for the record that i did birth an 8 lb. 4 oz. child with a 98th percentile head (sans timely or functioning pain medication)? so you'll excuse my aversion to submitting, voluntarily and without the reward of new human life, to the sensation of freshly-lit cigarettes being put out on my cheek flesh and the smell of smoke coming from my pores.