Marlo Armstrong

Our temporary triage center

We are Day Seven into Tonsillectomy Recovery 2017, and I’m starting to think that the people who told me their kid bounced back within a couple of days misunderstood what we were talking about and were instead referring to the time they aggressively picked their kid’s nose.

I’m glad I haven’t yet finished writing about this experience because it has been so ongoing and relentless. There’s a ton of advice I have to share, and each day it’s something different. Just when I think she’s out of the woods she gets sideswiped by a bear. A Vomit Bear. A 5-Hour Gonna Puke Up All the Scabs that Dared to Think They Would Start Forming Bear. The worst kind of bear. Worse than the Bad Breath bear, by far, and everyone knows the Bad Breath Bear is friends with Jason Chaffetz and shit talks “the gays.”

My mother has been helping out a ton this week, stepping in when I need to work and showing up when the vomiting got so bad I thought we’d end up back in the hospital. Earlier this week when she was watching her so that I could catch up on several hundred emails, my mother texted this:

Love the little butternut. She told me that’s your nickname for her. (Which I knew)

Oh my god my heart! My child is paying attention! Which reminds me! That is the whole theme of the second installment of My Very True and Important Book Report on Charlotte’s Web! SNEAK PREVIEW:

If my teacher reads this to the class, I wonder what will happen when everyone realizes the spider is dead.