Private Practice

And now...for the rest of the story.

Sure we had a great day on Thursday, but Thursday night brought on a whole new story to share.

My sinuses have been bothering me, but they were so bad on Thursday my top left-side teeth were hurting. Now many of you may be wondering...How can this be a story? Why didn't you just take a Zyrtec and call it a day?

Well, it's not that simple. You see, I'm a product of a mixed marriage. There's my dad who has no problem going to the doctor, and has a shelf of meds that I affectionately refer to as "the drug buffet". Then there's my German Jew Presbyterian Somewhat of a Christian Scientist mom. If she's going to the doctor, there's something seriously wrong. Throw in a 3-year stint in Beijing where I found some of the Eastern Medicine practices completely fascinating, and yeah, my personal health care beliefs are confused.

On top of all my issues, Jason was out of town this week, so I wasn't going to be able to take anything and "call it a night" until I had everybody in bed. So I thought to myself, "What would the Chinese do?"

Here's what I came up with:
I have a pillow that came with a spa package and it said to put it in the microwave for 3 minutes. Now, I'm guessing this pillow is filled with popcorn, cause I'm fairly certain a couple of the kernels popped.

Reed: Mommy, what's that smell?
Me: It's my pillow. My face hurts.
JR: Is there popcorn in that pillow?
Me: I think so.
JR: Can we open it and eat it?
Me: No. It's not for eating.
Reed: Popcorn? I like popcorn. I want to eat popcorn.
Me: Yeah. But we don't have popcorn.
Reed: What's that smell?
(Similar comments continued until bedtime.)

I put the pillow over my eyes and nose, which essentially left 3 kids unsupervised. Thankfully, they were watching Wipeout so I told JR, "JR, I can't see anything. If anybody runs away, you're in charge of telling me."

So as a homage to Terri Hatcher's "I don't use botox" self portraits, here's what I looked like Thursday night.

I don't know if it was the pillow, the Chinese face massage I performed on myself, or the knock-out drug I finally got to take about 8:00, but I woke up Friday feeling a million times better.