January 30, 2008

Wednesday

Henry woke up at four am screaming because he has an ear infection. I still find it difficult to believe, even though we’ve been to the doctor and she looked in his head and confirmed that yes indeed, he has a TERRIBLE infection in his right ear.

I just cannot believe that someone in this house is STILL SICK.

I am exhausted from all this sickness. It’s not really the virus that has worn me out, it’s the constant drain of needy sick people. Henry started screaming at four and screamed pretty continuously until nearly 7:30; he dozed off long enough for me to take a speedy shower and started up again as soon as I stepped foot on the bathmat. Most of the screaming was directed at me, in the form of a long incoherent rant about how I could CURE his ear infection if I would just TRY. There was also a complicated story about how the first time he had an ear infection, as a baby, I put my hands over his ear and a big ball of light appeared and he floated away in it and the ear infection was cured. And then there was a lot of screaming that I hated him because I wouldn’t do that again.

I have no idea what that was about.

Henry is a terrible sick kid; he gets anxious and overwrought and irrational. He is convinced that he is going to die from whatever ailment he has — stomach flu, fever, ear infection. And it both breaks my heart and infuriates me, at the exact same moment, because it is impossible to comfort him and also impossible not to be aggravated by the screaming.

The doctor gave him some drops to numb his ear, and he came home and fell asleep. But I’m having a hard time bouncing back from that first few hours this morning, and from the entire last week.

And the real irony is that today is the FIRST day that I’m feeling all better.

January 29, 2008

ONLY because you asked

While I did not mean to leave that last post up there for so many days (hello, virus that will not die! and also sick child who stayed home from school yesterday! which made a FULL WEEK of some sick person in the house with me all day!) I really appreciate all of your incredibly nice words. You all are truly the best, and I would buy each one of you a drink, if the idea of alcohol didn’t really skeeve me out right now.

Because I am still sick! How is that possible?!? I have no idea.

I do, however, have some Big Ass Antibiotics (yes, that is what they are called; says so right on the prescription) so I should be all better ANY MOMENT NOW. At least I hope so because this is really ridiculous.

In with all your lovely compliments on how I did not look like I was dying (Prescriptives Flawless Skin foundation and Girlactik Star Powder in Lace) were a whole bunch of questions about how to go from girl with a blog to paid blogger. And since I’m finding myself writing the same e-mail over and over, I thought I would just toss the whole thing up here and be done with it.

And then we can get back to talking about really important things, like when it’s okay to drop a kid at a birthday party and leave.

If you are really serious about wanting to be paid to blog …

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January 25, 2008

it turns out “dilettante” actually IS a career (at least, according to ABC)*

In the spring of 2000, I left my last full-time job, as an instructor in the English department at the University of Puget Sound. I was expecting a baby, and Wade and I had decided that it made the most sense for me to stay home full time. We agreed that of course I would go back to work — when the youngest child was in school full time. It was going to be so easy, I thought, this little break from working.

Henry was born in June, in what was the hottest summer on record in Oklahoma. We only had one car with air conditioning, and Wade drove it to work every day, which meant that I pretty much just stayed home with the baby. I read a lot, about the opt-out revolution and about how women weren’t really giving up on their careers, they were just taking time off and then stepping back on the work treadmill right where they had left off. And I started to panic a little because how on earth was I going to do that? I didn’t have a “career” to speak of — I had been a university adjunct, without health care or even an office, but still, I loved teaching because it made me think, and that mattered to me.

And I started to wonder: what was I going to DO with myself when my kids grew up?

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January 22, 2008

I will probably not live long enough to care about the dining room paint

Henry woke up at 5:20 yesterday morning, apparently yelling about how he was going to THROW UP. I missed this because I was already up and dressed and downstairs working.

Good morning!

He did not throw up, but by lunch time he was running a 101 degree fever and was listless and quiet, which is a clear sign that he’s sick. We loaded him up with Tylenol and called the pediatrician to check in, only to find that the office was closed for the holiday. So we assumed that he didn’t have the flu and got on with our lives, which mostly consisted of plopping the kids in front of the TV so that I could work and Wade could nap.

By bedtime Henry was feeling a little better, but still not back to himself; instead of strapping on his headlamp and crawling under the covers with a book, he begged me to snuggle with him and then curled up in my lap, where he proceeded to rub his germy, Vaseline-covered face all over my cashmere sweater, and use my arm to cover his mouth when he sneezed or coughed.

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January 21, 2008

DIY (and then do it again when it doesn’t turn out right)

Once upon a time, our dining room looked like this:

And then we got tired of the white walls, and we painted, and it looked like this:
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January 17, 2008

it’s for you

Charlie refuses to learn our phone number, or rather ANY of our numbers, because we are the generation that has an entire phone book of numbers (home, work, Mom’s cell, Dad’s cell, etc etc). When Henry was in pre-K, we had him memorize our home number, only to later realize that we almost never ANSWER that number, because we just assume that anyone who REALLY needs us will call our cell phones. So then we had to teach him our cell numbers, which was fine with him because he likes doing stuff like that (memorizing! and numbers! ooooh!) so that we could be certain that if he were ever lost and had to call us, he could.

Which assumes of course that I am EVER going to let him go anywhere alone, which I so am NOT. But whatever.

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