Happy birthday to this blog!

It has certainly taken on a life of its own, and it has sucked me into cyberspace like nothing else has. Still not sure if that is a good thing or not, but I do know that I am compelled to keep writing.

The latest:

I suppose some of you have been wondering what has happened to the pothole from hell on my street. It's still there, folks, and the repeated drive-overs from passing cars have succeeded in displacing a large amount of the gravel filler that was poured in. A big-shot politico needs to drive over it superfast (hopefully, on the way to solving the city's crime problems) and suffer some car damage real soon. Barring that, I saw one of these contraptions on the street in the Garden District earlier today, and I'm hoping against hope that we'll see it on our street soon. Who knows, maybe a Carnival krewe will dress up a spray-injection patcher as a float and give it the respect and acclaim normally reserved for the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. Hey, PotHole Killers - get some PHK whistles shaped like your trucks into production ASAP!

Oh, and for extra fun, play the game on their website.

Yesterday, after a lovely time with my son at the zoo, I began to get weepy over the dishes in the sink. The day before, when I was bathing the little guy, I found some scaly stuff on his scalp. I asked my husband to take a look, largely to confirm that I wasn't nuts, and I made the mistake of asking his opinion on what he thought it could be.

"I don't know," he said, and added, with the utmost of tact, "It could be cancer or dandruff. I have no idea."

"Thanks a lot," I said, offended. "that's real sensitive." God, was I mad at him. Shouldn't he have some clue? Some comforting words? I was freaking out here and all he could suggest was that our son had either a nasty disease or a fairly benign cosmetic problem. I tried to relax, once Dan left for his band rehearsal, and my panic subsided...only to return late the next afternoon, while I was washing the dishes and convincing myself that I was a bad mommy for not seeing this crud on his head sooner. Dan came home, intending to go to another rehearsal, but he saw how upset I was, and, bless him, volunteered to stay at home and look up the symptoms of the little guy's mysterious head flakes.

WebMD was pretty useless in regards to the specifics of scalp diseases, so Dan called up the Health A to Z site (when I saw the URL, all I could think in my hysterical state was that Dan had called up Health At Oz - what the hell was that? Emerald City humbug medicine? Pay no attention to those quacks behind the curtain!) and let me just say that it is exhausting being het up about your child's health, but it is another thing entirely being a "backseat hypochondriac", as Dan has termed it. If you're always upset about the health of a loved one, it means that you must carry around a mental Merck Index in your head so that you can blow any and all symptoms out of proportion accordingly. Call me a bad mom on this one, but I just can't do that. Especially after seeing some of the pictures of the skin diseases Dan had managed to call up though the website.

I got curious only because of Dan's reactions:

"It says: 'Condition exhibits itself through light brown, greasy scales, which can crop up between the breasts, or...' Ooookay, that's not it."

"Ewww, that's disgusting! Moving on..."

"Oh, my God! Who develops that?"

"Oh, he's older than six months, he can't possibly have that..."

"Huh, what was that?" I asked, curious.

"Really, you don't want to see this stuff. It's really gross." Dan said.

"Then you shouldn't be reacting to it like you have been," I said, taking a peek. "Because your reactions have been making me...Oh, my GOD! That's NASTY!" I yelled, as I got an eyeful of a photo of some nasty head lesion Dan had called up.

"I told you," Dan said, grinning.

Yeah, he did. But I just couldn't resist seeing a few more, and I reacted in much the same way for the next few pictures of skin conditions I saw, until I finally excused myself and went out to walk the dog. God help me, I was a medical rubbernecker.

My son has a doctor's appointment tomorrow about his head. I think from here on out, I am going to stay away from the medical websites and leave the diagnoses to the professionals.

Although, if anyone reading this has any clue as to what these light brown, slightly oily, flaky scabs are on my son's scalp, feel free to comment on it. Can't be any worse than all the nasty pictures I've seen. I think I'm going to block out that site once the little guy is old enough to use the Internet more fully...