Sunday, February 10, 2008

Onigiri and Nose Stickers...



So - I've finally gotten around to trying my hand at a blog. I'm not sure yet how this will work, since I'm notoriously bad about being consistent in my personal life, but figured that it was about time I gave it a shot. I'm writing this up while I wait for the rice-cooker to ding. I've been wanting to make onigiri (oh-nee-gee-ree) at work for a while, but haven't had the time in the morning, nor the forethought in the evening to cook the rice. I finally remembered to set everything up tonight, and now just have to make them. If you haven't had onigiri, you're missing out. It's a pretty simple dish, and is easy to make. The trick, my wife tells me, is using freshly steamed rice (i.e. not the rice in the zip-lock bag that I'd been trying to use). They're easy to take to work, and to eat at a desk.

So, now I'm on to the nose stickers. For those that know me, you know I have two kids - 1 daughter, Mia who is 4, and my son, Ethan who's 18 months. My daughter, who is the more...strongwilled of the two, provided us with our first trip to the emergency room not too long ago. My daughter has found a deep love of all things stickers. If it has a sticky backing on it, she's going to find it, and put it on something. The walls, her brother, your arm. I think there are still The Little Mermaid stickers on the floor at our old house. In any case, my wife turned her head just in time to see Mia sniff a gold-foil sticker up her nose one quiet afternoon. For the life of me, I can't figure out why she did this, since it wasn't a scented sticker, but, there you have it.

Mia, coming to the realization of what she'd just done, and I suspect upon seeing the look of utter horror on her mother's face, immediately screamed and launched into hysterics. [side note - I now have three onigiri for lunch tomorrow, as well as burnt hands...] Anna called me at work and let me know what our cherubic child had just done, and to find out what I thought we should do. When I got home that evening, we determined that neither of us could see anything. We spoke to a nurse, who told us that, since she didn't seem to have any trouble breathing, that we should leave well enough alone. Likely, she had simply sniffed it back down her throat, and was processing it along with the yakisoba she'd had for lunch that day. We didn't really think much of it after hearing those comforting words.

Until...Anna had to stop by a clinic by the house for some booster shots, I think. By chance, the physician on at the clinic was an ENT (Ear Nose Throat), and so Anna mentioned the sticker incident. The doctor was kind enough to have a look, and after Mia was subdued, screaming, he figured out that the sticker was indeed in her Nasal cavity, and would have to come out. But he couldn't do it at the clinic. To make a long story short, two nurses and Anna held Mia down while the doctor went fishing with a pair of forceps. After all of this, I spoke to her on the phone from a meeting, and asked her: "So you're not going to put stickers in your nose again, right?" to which I got a resounding "Meh."

I was torn by her response. Part of me was horrified to think that we'd likely be making a series of trips to the hospital for her. The other part was...I guess proud that she'd had this clearly unpleasant experience, but that it was not going to slow her down for a second.

Long story short - encourage curiosity, be thankful for resilience.

1 comment:

gmac_oboe said...

Wow, great to see that you have a blog! Keep it up...I shouldn't talk because I used to have a blog a couple of years ago that I couldn't seem to keep going, but hopefully you will be different?