It’s been a couple weeks since we’ve last spoken because last week was, well, a real doozy. Not to turn this newsletter into an old-school personal blog (who am I kidding, it already is), but our kiddo came down with a super-nasty virus, had a fever that wouldn’t go away, got extremely dehydrated, and ended up in the hospital to get fluids and go through a barrage of tests. Everything is fine and we’re home now, but it was a stressful week.
I want to emphasize that I’m grateful that he’s totally fine and I’m not trying to make our two-night stay sound any worse than it was…but no parent wants to even dip their toe into the world of the children’s hospital. Of course I spent a lot of time thinking about the parents of children with chronic illnesses, the kids who don’t get to go home for the holidays, the families getting scary diagnoses, babies in the NICU…it all just brought up a lot of what I refer to fondly as My Hospital Trauma. I mean, I assume none of us have a ton of great memories of being in hospitals, but being in one emergency room made me flash back to being in the emergency room when I was 14 after my family was in a car accident, being stuck talking to a man with red-stained teeth who told me all about how he’d driven into a ditch again (it took me years to realize that man was likely drunk) as it slowly dawned on me that things were probably not okay. Or being in the cancer hospital when Hollis’s mom was sick, walking down the hallway and realizing that most people I passed were probably having one of the worst days of their lives. Or being in the hospital after my son was born, which was a great and non-traumatic time except for the fact that it was a “baby friendly” hospital (I will not give you my full rant on that concept), which meant that no one would help me with my baby, so whenever Hollis wasn’t there I just had to sit there holding him all by myself, afraid that I would fall asleep and drop him. In retrospect, could/should I have called a friend or family member to come help me? Yes, but I also refused all offers of help during last week’s hospital stay, so it’s safe to assume I’ve learned nothing in the past six years!
Anyway. The point here is, I don’t like hospitals. Duh! No one is hanging out in a hospital in hopes of finding a good time. In addition to all of the actually bad stuff, one of the most frustrating parts about being in the hospital is that you spend a lot of time waiting. Waiting for the doctor, waiting for test results, waiting for someone to help you pee because you got an epidural and can’t walk by yourself, etc.
It’s tempting (if you’re me) to think of that time spent waiting as time to catch up on things. But also it’s almost impossible to focus in the hospital. I clearly remember that when I was in labor, Hollis pulled out an iPad with several episodes of Sherlock downloaded, like he thought we were going to entertain ourselves with Benedict Cumberbatch’s bad attitude as I had contractions. Eventually I had to be like, “Listen, this isn’t gonna happen.” Instead, we passed the time by watching Christmas in July movies on Hallmark.
And that’s what I’d recommend when you’re watching things in the hospital, because it’s the only thing I’ve ever been able to do: give in. You think you’re gonna be able to make a dent in your TBR or watch a movie you’ve been wanting to see? Absolutely not. It’s simply not the time. You need to let the hospital tell you what to watch. The hospital is running the show.
Since I truly haven’t been doing much of anything the past 1.5 weeks other than hanging out with my sick kid, here’s a brief summary of our sick day viewing.
The Bad Guys
We watched this early on, when we thought he just had a regular old kid fever and he was still feeling pretty okay. He loves these books because they have plenty of bathroom humor, and the movie was a slightly smarter version of that. The main character is a wolf voiced by Sam Rockwell, and I couldn’t tell what he was more influenced by: George Clooney in Ocean’s Eleven or George Clooney in The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Also, Marc Maron voices a snake and I found that very comforting!
Brave
The reviews for this one are so bad and I don’t really get it. I guess that, as Pixar movies go, it wasn’t as innovative as Toy Story or Wall-E (there’s only so far you can go with “the heroine has curly hair and it took forever to animate it!”), but it was fun, short, and entertaining. However, my kid did get scared of the bear. But also we were watching this one when his fever was VERY high so I don’t know if any of us really remember much about it.
Bluey
I can’t even tell you how much Bluey we watched, both at home and at the hospital on the iPad. Honestly, thank God for Bluey and her dog family. I’m not turning into a Bluey Adult or anything, but it was so nice to have something on that was kind of quiet.
Big City Greens
I had never heard of this show but apparently it’s wildly popular and we watched MANY episodes while we were waiting in a tiny room before we could get transferred to a bigger room at the hospital. Now my son is super into it, and it does seem to have actual jokes which I appreciate but…it’s loud. It’s so loud.
Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse
I only saw bits and pieces of this but I did enjoy hearing Jake Johnson’s voice.
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
So our kid actually loved this movie when he was three, but at the time he had an issue at preschool where he wouldn’t stop turning every item he could grab into a sword/lightsaber so we had to take a long break from movies that involved fighting. But all bets are off in the hospital, so How to Train Your Dragon is back in rotation, baby! He watched this one twice. I sort of paid attention.
The newest Spongebob movie
I barely paid attention to this but I did see Keanu’s face a couple of times. However, I have to admit that I love Spongebob! It was really at the height of its popularity when I was in high school and my youngest brother was squarely in its target audience, so I saw a lot of it and find it very comforting.
Zootopia
This was the only movie I was actually fully paying attention to and, uh…have you guys seen this movie? This is one of the weirdest animated children’s movies I’ve ever seen. It’s really dark and I don’t understand what it’s saying about predators/prey but also…we didn’t finish it because my kid got scared. So now I’m going to have to finish Zootopia all by myself. Just an adult watching the last 40 minutes of Zootopia alone!
Luckily, we were able to go home after two nights, and I told Hollis that all I wanted to do was take a walk, take a shower, and watch You’ve Got Mail. I read about 15% of the book Burnout so I feel like I know all I need to know about completing the stress cycle, and I thought that crying over You’ve Got Mail would be a healthy way to deal with my jangly nerves. There are four parts of You’ve Got Mail that make me cry or, at the very least, tear up:
-When Kathleen is decorating her shop’s Christmas tree and Harry Nilsson’s “Remember” is playing and she talks about missing her mother.
-When Kathleen is closing up her empty store and she says “And no one can ever make it right.”
-When Joe Fox says “for as long as we both shall live” and “oh, how I wish you would.”
-The ending! Duh! Don’t cry, Shopgirl! Too late, I’m crying!
Anyway, this time I only eked out one tiny tear in the shop closing scene, but I’m still glad I watched You’ve Got Mail again because it’s a perfect movie. The only part I don’t like is the fat-shaming, but everything else is perfect. I’ll stop myself here because I’ve talked and written extensively about what makes this movie work so well, but just know that I have a lot more to say! As always!
That’s it for this week! Next week I hope to be back with something more coherent, and I’m optimistic that this will be a slightly more normal week. Until next week, I’ll be listening to Harry Nilsson on repeat and crying as I think about Tom Hanks.