Gochisou-sama deshita!

Or something like that. I would say it worse than I type it. My brother in law's birthday feast was held at a combo Japanese steakhouse and sushi bar.

I enjoy juggled knives and onion volcanoes as much as the next guy, but give me sushi any day. Living out here in flyover country, it's pricey, but worth it.

You should know that prior to my pigging out on this delicacy, I had the shit day of shit days. I got the call at work that Mo was seizing again, second time in less than a week. My wife was on the way to her school. Then I got the call that they'd called 9-11 and my wife was going with her to the hospital.

I took off for the hospital, and by the time I got there, of course, there was little to do but wait and be disgusted with the staff of Mo's pediatric neurologist (six unreturned phone calls since our last ER visit).

Should probably also advise you that it is not easy to find pediatric neurologists, and this one is a HUGE improvement over the dork we were seeing before. The previous neurologist would ask more than once in a single visit, in unintelligibly broken English, what dosage of Tegretol Mo was taking. Uh, his name was on the vial, he was writing the script, and he was asking us?

The last time I talked to him, I asked if Mo's Tegretol dose might need adjusting, based on her seizure activity. His answer was that 'Tegretol is a very good drug.' At least I'm 70% sure that's what he said. The Depakote hadn't worked at all, so I wasn't questioning the quality of the drug, just the dosage.

This neurologist, when you can get her, is much better. Her staff sucks ass. I don't mean a little, I mean severed, inverted colons hanging out of their mouths. I'll be sending a letter to the present doctor tomorrow to let her know that if she can't get her staff problems resolved, we'll try yet again. Em sees a different one, for migraines, but he's already been ruled out as barely capable of dealig with a relatively typical kiddo who has migraines. An autistic kiddo who has seizures is a different sport.

Mo set the endurance record (for her) this time, with a seizure that lasted over 15 minutes (even with 10mg of Diastat given at the five minute mark). Diastat, for the uninitiated (that covers pretty much everyone) is a rectal syringe of diazepam. Think of it as a valium the size of a hockey puck shoved up your ass. If any of you think you can take 10mg of it administered rectally (the fastest route to the bloodstream short of smoking it, if you can even smoke the stuff), and still walk, be my guest. I'd function better on a fifth of whiskey based on my limited experience with valium's cousins.

Mo's hands had turned purple by the time Frau Lobster got to the school. You don't breath right when you're having a grand mal seizure. You can't swallow your tongue, but that doesn't make a 15 minute seizure non-serious.

The one other time we've used the Diastat, instead of going into a postichtal slumber, Mo bounced off the walls like she'd been given a few rails of cocaine or something. This time she wasn't as lively, but she was still a lot more alert after a lot less sleep than is usual for her after a seizure.

So with some trepidation we set off for the birthday feast. That first 24 hours after is a sensitive window, and when your kid has sensory issues aside from epilepsy, it's hard to figure a restaurant where they literally juggle knives, set fires on the table and light strobe lights for extra-cool juggling action.

But Mo LOVES sushi. We discovered this the first time we went to Izumi, a place that does that cooking on tables thing and has a sushi bar. I ordered sushi, the rest of the fam had the tempanyaki coming. Mo started scarfing my salmon and tuna, my shrimp. She left me Uni and the rice and not much else.

So when she seemed up to going to dinner, we figured we'd keep the date with Uncle Steve's 41st. We went to the restaurant to find my father in law who'd stayed behind to let us know that we were at the wrong place, we were supposed to eat at Kyoto, not Izumi. We’d never heard of this Kyoto joint, except for a treaty the U.S. looks bad for breaking, though I wonder if it was something we ought to have signed...

Anyway, we trekked down the way through the traffic of suburban sprawl at its worst to Kyoto. We found my mother in law and my wife’s cousin there, waiting for us. Then, my father in law showed up to tell us he’d gotten another cell call and we were actually supposed to be at the restaurant he’d directed us away from.

Confused yet? We were, to the point of marital conflict.

At last we were seated, the eleven of us, four of us unduly stressed out to begin with and everyone a few hours later than we’re used to eating.

I won’t say starving or famished. Because really, there’s at least 200 million people in Africa with a better handle on those terms than any American has with the possible exception of some anorexics and Jane Buddhists.

We were fucking hungry, though, by American standards.

I figured, why bother with a ‘kids meal’ that Mo has historically ignored in favor of raiding my sushi plank? So I filled out the sushi order with two in mind, and then Frau Lobster talked me into ordering her the kiddo shrimp meal. I revised the sushi order, but not as drastically as I probably should have. There was probably still at least $30 worth of sushi coming to the table. Maybe more. Not to mention a couple of large Kirins. Yes, Frau Lobster drove, though Kirin is definitely small beer. Crisp and dry, it’s Japanese Budweiser, but like with a light Riesling it goes great with fish.

Mo ate Grandpa’s shrimp and her own. She also ate almost all the fish off my plank. I’d ordered both smoked and plain salmon, yellow tail tuna, uni, a couple types of shrimp, and a California roll. I got a taste of most of the fish, but the shrimp and urchin was the only thing she didn’t go for. She even grabbed a slice of pickled ginger, taking it for more fish. My wife’s cousin, she asks me if I mind about the ‘raw fish.’

What, because of mercury? I don’t think that cooks out. And the kid loves it. I’m going to try and figure how to make it at home, must be cheaper than ordering it in a restaurant.

If sushi (technically the rice Mo doesn’t touch), was that dangerous, how’d there get to be enough Japanese people to start WWII’s Pacific conflict? Basically, you had 70,000 Japanese people who couldn’t fish or grow enough food to feed themselves. Since the emperor underestimated the market for Mitsubishi cars in the U.S., he sent us their airplanes instead.

So it goes.

Anyway, I shared with Cuz this theory I’ve had for years:

Restaurants are capitalist operations; they function on a profit motive and nothing else. I don’t work for free, why would a restaurateur? If something on the sign or menu seems bizarre (brain sandwiches, blood sausage, raw shrimp, steak tar-tare, roasted sweetbreads, pig testicles, alligator tail, etc.), it’s there for a reason. I let the waitress at a German restaurant talk me out of the blood sausage thing and I’ve always regretted it. Turns out, that restaurant was owned by honest-to-badness Nazi types who got so much bad press for hosting an American Nazi Party meeting that they went out of business.

I bet their blood sausage was awesome.

All the other shit I’ve tried from vegemite to calf-brains-on-rye has been spectacular. Of course it has, otherwise the restaurateur, at least one smart enough to avoid public Nazi leanings, would replace whatever it is with chicken nuggets.

Chicken nuggets may be, if anything, spookier. I heard a news item recently that they’ve figured out how to make white meat from dark. It involves taking the chicken’s dark meat, making it into a slurry, and centrifuging the dark pigment out, leaving plain, white, chicken protein that can be formed into whatever shapes McDonalds or Tyson asks for.

White meat made from a slurry of dark meat, and I’m supposed to be afraid of raw fish?

Still, despite Mo’s raiding, I had my uni, my totally raw shrimp (uncooked, it lacks the pink highlights that identify it for Mo), and my California rolls. I also got Mo’s rice, soup, salad and a bit of my mother in law’s chicken. In other words, I pigged out.

I did finish my wassabi. God that’s good stuff, the Japanese answer to Tabasco sauce. But it goes straight to your nose, like the mustard sauce in better Chinese restaurants.