She Doesn't Know How It Got There

So, a few nights ago, I'm about to leave work and I get a call from Jon. His voice is flat, always a bad sign.

Jon: Sophie has a bead up her nose.

Me: How did THAT happen?

Jon: She claims she doesn't know. She claims she did NOT put it there, but it got shoved up farther when she tried to get it out.

Uh-huh.

All she could report was that she thought it was purple. (Presumably she caught a glimpse of it as it jumped up her nose.) When Jon looked with a flashlight, he could see sparkles. Sophie responded, with authority, that it must be a RED one, then, because only the red ones have sparkles.

Oooookay.

Jon was pretty frustrated with her for not fessing up, so I offered to rush home and take her to Children's, so he wouldn't have to. When I got there, he was making dinner and suggested I call the Nurse Line first.

I did, and the only thing she suggested that Jon hadn't done was try-- very carefully-- to get it out with tweezers.

Sophie, already tweezer-averse, did NOT sign off on that plan. Jon took her upstairs anyway, while I researched nearby Urgent Care centers. There was screaming, easily heard downstairs, of the kind not heard since Jason marauded on that first Halloween. I finally determined that our only chance at Urgent Care (and a $25 copay) ended at 8:00, half an hour hence. Otherwise, it was the ER for $100. (And, since Jon had recently taken a screaming-in-pain Baxter to the ER at 4 AM only to discover he had really bad gas-- a $100 fart-- Jon was loathe to repeat the process for "a $100 booger.")

I went upstairs to see if there was progress, and to tell Jon it was now or $100. He'd barely been able to touch her with the tweezers, but in desperation asked her to blow her nose one last time. The problem had been that the bead (a plastic pony bead, in case you're wondering) had been aligned with her nostril, so she was blowing right through it. Apparently, though, he had just touched the bead enough to move it, and with that last blow it popped right out.

Whew. I couldn't find my camera, so you are spared a photo of a snot-covered, red, sparkly pony bead in a tissue.

Lucky you.

Static

So, sometimes Jon and I just don't seem to be on the same page. I complain from time to time that "we never used to have such a hard time understanding each other." You know the problem-- one of us says something, and the other misunderstands, and the first one thinks what he or she said couldn't possibly be clearer, and the second one thinks his or her interpretation was completely reasonable... I sometimes fret that we aren't connected like we used to be.

Jon said, in response to such a complaint a few days ago, "There's a lot of chaos. Is it any wonder?"

And, suddenly, like a bolt of lightning, I understood: Static. It's not that we are disconnected, it's that there's lots of interference. And, when the chaos dies down (when will that be, exactly?), the static will subside.