At the leper colony

When I was a little girl, I thought I would grow up and marry a nice man. We would live in a very large white Victorian-style house with wraparound porches and have a passel of children, most of whom would be girls, and a big Labrador retriever that would never poop, or at least not poop within miles of the big white house with wraparound porches. I would have a big garden with acres of flowers and a few vegetables.

I never had visions of being a career woman. The nice man was going to take care of me. As a teenager, that life plan continued, except that it grew to include regular sex with the nice man, and that sounded like fun.

Never in a million years did I see myself living with Papa, a contrary geriatric Pekingese, a nervous Nelly rat terrier, and two little male hoodlums who had been conceived through the help of a nice man with whom I did not have sex. And God forbid, there was certainly no plan of being celibate and going to an office every day.

But, alas, that’s where I am these days, and I am a Bean, and we lay back, have a cocktail and enjoy life as it comes, except that sometimes life gets a little zany, and then I have to ask God, Why ME?!

About a week ago, Papa came to me and asked me to examine his back. There were a few little lesions about the size of a dime. I told Papa to go to the doctor, so he got on his bike and rode to the Quack-Quack Office. The Quack-Quack Office was boarded up with no forwarding address. Then Papa turned his bike around and headed over to the Doc in Box that he’d gone to once before when the Quack-Quack Office was closed. It, too, was boarded up, so Papa returned to Maison Bean where he pondered his next course of action.

Luckily for Papa, I am resourceful, although living his retirement years with me and my two little blanket toters and my obnoxious bitch was probably not in his life’s plan either. I told Papa to go to the Acme Medical Clinic, which had a good reputation.

Papa returned later that day from Acme with an antibiotic. He was in good spirits and whistling a tune. He’d contracted something called mersa at the hospital during one of his follow-up visits and the antibiotic would clear it up. Life was good.

I didn’t think much of it. Cocktail hour was nearing and Papa was going to be okay, so I poured myself a glass of wine and went outside to watch the grass grow. Papa took his antibiotic and got on the phone with my Aunt Lilly who told him to make a poultice of honey and Epson salts.

Sissy, who is a saint, made up the poultice, applied it with a Popsicle stick and bandaged Papa up.

On Sunday Jax got Papa’s lesions, and that’s when I discovered that Papa didn’t have mersa—he had leprosy.

Something actually called MRSA, which Google says is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a staph infection that is antibiotic resistant.

WTH?!

Poor Papa was terribly upset that Jax got infected. Sissy fixed him some pineapple juice (for vitamin C) with rum (for his nerves), and I called the after-hours nurse, who said we didn’t have to rush to the emergency room but that Jax needed to go to the doctor Monday morning. Saint Sissy fixed Jax up with a poultice and then we commenced to Cloroxing Maison Bean, slathering Bactroban on Moose’s mosquito bites and the place on my wrist that looks like I tried to commit suicide, but which was actually an attack by a rose bush with bad manners.

By Monday, Jax’s lesions looked much better from the poultice, but the good doctor agreed that Jax, too, had MRSA, and so we’re in quarantine over here at Maison Bean, except that I snuck out to go to Total Wine for fortification, and I’m on my 13th draft of an email to God in which I’m respectfully trying to ask him what HE is thinking.

Does anybody have God’s email address?

Addenda

* The antibiotic/poultice treatments are working and, so far, Moose is MRSA-free.
* I’m still drinking wine and watching the grass grow.
* Next week is the Bean family vacation, and I’m going to need a vacation after the vacation, so I’m meeting Betsy at BlogHer in NYC. Betsy likes wine too. I just don’t know if she watches grass grow.