A Limited Engagement (The Prequel)

This post will not be neither schmaltzy nor pus-filled - although I'm certainly not ruling out any other bodily fluids - consider yourselves warned. This one is going to be an exploration of cultural differences. After all these years and many unbelievable experiences - someday I'll write about giving birth in Chinese, now that is a tragically amusing story - this was my first time to attend an engagement party in Taiwan. Since they are traditionally held by the bride's family, I naturally did not have one (apparantly you get off the hook if you are more than 10 time zones away when your daughter is preparing to get married.)

Anyway, Jason's sister is getting married. After having my father-in-law raise his glass to her and mutter, "Here's to you sitting at your in-law's table next Chinese New Year!" every year for as far back as I can remember, she is finally going to tie the knot. She is, after all, thirty-two years old and for a Taiwanese woman that's a big Jeez-it's-about-time!

Seeing as I am a National Chinese Speech Contest Champion (she writes modestly) I was selected to give the speech at the engagement banquet. What better to way to make your banquet special than to have entertainment by a large-nosed, hairless ape that [gasp] speaks Chinese. That would bring the house down. I had prepared my heart-felt sentiments with just a dash of humor sure to please the crowd when the death flu struck.

I had a touch of it at the beginning of January (hence no posts). It was a weird thing where my entire body hurt. I walked around hunching in my clothes because the mere sensation of my clothing touching my skin physically caused me pain. For three days, my co-workers continually asked me, "Why are you all hunchy?" My teeth hurt, my hair hurt, my fingernails hurt - it was pretty miserable. But, after a few days I felt I was on the mend. I was, in fact, the last member of Team Lai to come down with this bizarre flu. It started with Jason on Christmas Eve - he almost ruined our Christmas dinner. We were at our favorite steakhouse and I had to shush him several times, "Honey, do you mind not moaning so loud? I'm trying to enjoy my creme broule." It worked its way through the boys and then, while it was at its most powerful, set to work on me.

I had probably destroyed all but a half dozen of the most diligent and powerful germs when I made my fatal mistake. I stayed up until 2 am grading papers and exams for three nights straight. That's all it took. Those few renegade germs staged a coup and took over my poor body in its weakend state. Fever, aches, chills, and phlegm. Mountains, piles, mounds, gobs of phlegm. So much so that I ended up in the emergency room at 3:00am on a Friday night inhaling vaporized medicine through a hookah pipe while fever reducer dripped through an IV into my veins. And so it was that when we got back from the ER at 5:30 am we had exactly two hours before we had to head up to Taipei for the Engagement Party.

I am convinced that this is retribution for my bitchiness while preparing my speech for the blessed event. "No, seriously Jason. You name one nice thing I can say about your sister in front of those people. One thing. I'm waiting. See? You can't think of anything either and she's your sister!! Honestly, I can't lie in front of all those people!" Seriously bitchy. But I got mine. What they say about payback and all.

As for the Twilight Zone experience that was the actual party. Well, you'll have to wait until the next installment.

Superhuman Powers

It's time to come clean with you all about something. I...well, the truth is, I have super powers. You're running through a myriad of possibilities - flight? super strength? elasticity? (doesn't Jason wish?) but no, if you guessed X-ray vision, you'd be getting warm. In fact, the power that I was born with and was carefully nurtured throughout my youth is Imperfectavision. I have the ability to see the tiniest imperfection in something or someone and then obsess about it for hours. Can I use this power to better the human condition? I haven't thought of any way yet. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

And so it was that I was the first to notice the stye on Jayden's left eyelid - his left, your right. While it was still a tiny pink pinprick I was already obsessing over it. As it grew and increased in size I became more and more obsessed. Finally, Jason took him to the eye doctor who volunteered to poke it with a sharp stick and put me out of my misery. Jason, for some reason, refused. Something about the dangers of a sharp stick even in the hands of a trained professional and a three-year-old's eye...

The eye medicine prescribed by the eye doctor did nothing to improve the stye situation. It continued to grow. I went for three days without looking directly at my son and Jason finally took him to yet another eye doctor who said that poking a three year old in the eye with a stick was a bad idea and gave us drops. The drops caused the pustule to swell to an unimaginable size and I continued to focus my gaze on a point just above his right ear lest the urge to pop it overwhelmed me. In moments of weakness I asked him in my sweetest Mommy voice (yes, I do have one, you've just never heard it) "Jay, honey, can Mommy pop that thing on your eyelid? Please? It won't hurt. Come on!" In my own defense, let me say here that at this point people on the street were starting to gasp at his Elephant Man-like appearance.

Finally, it reached a critical mass and exploded on its own. I still couldn't look directly at him, however, because of the pus stalactite left in its wake. It was like an icicle of pus hanging from the rain gutter of his eyelid which he did finally let me break off as it was obscuring his field of vision.

Of all of the things going on recently, I don't know why I picked this particular episode to recount to you. Perhaps because I've received some feedback lately about my blog being too Happy or Schmaltzy, so what better to counteract that than an exploding eye pustule story?