cool beans

Friday morning I took the children to the doctor’s office. The oldest two have strep throat. Yay. Joy. Woo.hoo.

Though they were probably no longer contagious Saturday afternoon, we skipped the community trick-or-treating because it was chilly and insanely windy. The children were very upset by this and had driven me completely mad by 4:00. Their father didn’t get home until 7:00. I am happy (and surprised) to report we are all alive and I didn’t break anything.

This morning, my daughter woke us up before dawn and complained that her stomach hurt. By “complained” I mean “wailed at us”. We tried lots of stuff to help her tummy and by noon, we decided a trip to the ER was in order. All the tests and x-rays said she was fit as a fiddle and perhaps she needs to poop?

Ugh.

Once we were home again, she started running a fever and continued with the screaming. “It’s Halloween and I’m going to puuuuuuuuke!” and “I don’t want to be sick on Halloween!” and “I hate being sick on Halloween!” and “SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEAM WAAAAAAIL UNHAPPINESS!”

But the day wasn’t entirely bad. Everyone we know set aside a little extra candy for her and she did get to knock on a couple of doors (since she hadn’t actually puked, see) and her brother has promised to share a little bit with her, too. Since I told him he has no choice. Because I’m mean.

The Toddler had a great time. The doggie costume was a huge hit. We’ve been working with him for weeks to wear it and not flip out. Tonight, he seemed to understand that he was supposed to dress up and cooperated when it was time to put it on! He enjoyed going door-to-door and I had to hold the tail on his costume to keep him out of several homes. He’s a very friendly pup.

FYI: If you have to take your child to the ER for a belly ache on Halloween, don’t be shocked when EVERYONE asks you if maybe she’s just had too much candy already. Because you have “MORON” stamped on your forehead, you know.

Remember that one movie? The one with the girl? And then the girl gets a roommate? And then the roommate tries to be the girl?

Well, between the camera and the house and the dog and the bamboo and the legs and the fancy blog and now the HATE MAIL, I’m about to go all SWF on her ass.

My daughter woke up this morning feeling just peachy keen and had no complaints whatsoever. Well, she complained when I brushed her hair, but she always does that.

My eldest, on the other hand, woke me up complaining that his throat “felt stuffy” and his head hurt. I pretended it was because he was allowed to stay up much too late (no school today) and suspected he wanted to stay home so he could experience a miraculous recovery and play with his friends.

Um, no. He really was under the weather. Oops. So he is in bed full of Advil sleeping it off. Hopefully this isn’t the first case of influenza* in our neck of the woods. Cross fingers, por favor.

I was thinking how crappy it would be if he were sick for Halloweenie and remembered that last year my daughter had pneumonia at this time.

ARGH! Why can’t they just stay healthy?

*We don’t do flu shots even when they are in abundance. Last year when influenza hit our house (really, really hard. My GOD. It hurts to think about it.), we had really good luck keeping the healthy family members healthy by using Oscillococcium. Give it a Google if you’re unfamiliar.

I’m up with my daughter who couldn’t stop coughing. She’s slathered with the eucalyptus and full of cough medicine - both naughty and nice.

This is the time of year for this. Leaves on the ground, chilled air filled with dust and other such nasties. She always got croup each autumn. Croup that crept in around 3AM and made her turn a little blue and required a trip to the ER where she’d cough no more than twice, having been relieved by the change from indoor to outdoor air.

Each Fall, I begged the doctors to tell me she had asthma. Please, just admit it to me so I can deal and get on with it! I was sure they were lying to me. She really did have asthma, but they didn’t want to send the hysterical mother over the edge.

Now, she isn’t asthmatic and I can see that for myself. But still this coughing mess in the autumn. Sigh. What to do about that?

She hasn’t coughed in the last five or seven minutes. I think the liberal application of Lizzie McGuire has done the trick. Hurray! I’m going back to bed.

I hope everyone enjoyed reading second order approximation. Thanks, Dave. Happy belated birthday. Again.

I’ve had a blog bookmarked for a while and I’ve been casually checking in now and then to see the updates. I decided I wanted to say something about this blogger, because he said a couple of things I thought were funny, and because he’s definitely uncensored. Two things I like a lot.

When digging deeper to put together the hotspot links, I realized I hadn’t been paying attention when he talked about parenting. I thought he had a baby, perhaps a small toddler in his house. But as I read on, I realized his path to fatherhood was rather unique and incredibly moving. Reading along, I laughed, cried and swore out loud.

I hope you’ll pay a visit to the Good Doctor Noyz and enjoy his story.

(So that our world can be balanced. Good with the bad and all that.)

1. Watching my mother buy more books for my kids than she can carry. Cha-CHING, baby. (It’s particularly nice when one of the books is this one. Really, it’s for The Toddler. I swear!)

2. A good hard rain at the end of a bad day to wash away all the yuck.

3. Taking a hot bath and slipping between clean, cool sheets.

4. Beating my husband at Hold ‘Em and trivia - every time.

5. The end of the World Series.

6. Bug bombs. (Take that, fly bitches!)

1. People who are 100% oblivious to the whole idea of “sexual harassment”. No matter how you pronounce it.

2. People who have to say everything they think. Especially when I DON’T CARE.

3. The expectation that I will always be cheerful and bubbly at work. (Who sits at her desk smiling all day? WHO? Tell me. So I can go beat her up.)

4. Machines that are supposed to do things they just do.not.do. And the people who sell such machines.

5. St. Louis making it to the World Series and then crapping out. What is WRONG WITH YOU!? Stop being crappy! Do you see how your crappiness is affecting my husband? When you lose, I’m sending him to live with YOU GUYS because you deserve that much misery.

6. Teeny, tiny, totally unswattable flies.

1. Blackout::California
   
2. Platinum::Gold*
   
3. Leather and lace::Stevie Nicks
   
4. Court::TV
   
5. Mind your own business::Butt out
   
6. Gambling::Rules (as in guidelines, not as in, “Gambling RULES!”)
   
7. Lily::flower
   
8. Evasive::abrasive
   
9. Turn-on::turn-off (The Clapper)
   
10. Suspect::Victim
    

*My parents owned this album and I used to play it when I learned to operate my own record player.

1. Dimension::Desktop?
   
2. Roger::Daltrey
   
3. CSI::Lame ass writing
   
4. Passenger::Vehicle
   
5. Thankful::Children
   
6. Has-been::My Mom (ACK! Why did I say that?!)
   
7. Bambino::Baby
   
8. Wrinkles::My face
   
9. Cable TV::Gone forever
   
10. Voicemail::Annoyance
    

I hate to do this, since it’s making all my comments go bye-bye, but as much as I love comments, I hate Blogger’s comments. Sorry, Blogger.

So, thank you for leaving all the comments that are now invisible. I’m looking forward to new (and more abundant!) comments with direct links and fewer “Anonymous” remarks. WOO!

I’m also looking forward to the end of the World Series. It’s so very painful. Heaps of stress I don’t need. It will drive me to drink. I’m sure of it.

Anyway, enjoy the new commenting doohickey!

One of the Friday Forum Questions this week is:

Name three things that you’re looking forward to in the near future and why.

1. A “Harvest Dinner” at my favorite restaurant that includes fancy schmancy food and a different wine with each course.

2. Going to bed tonight and snuggling with my boys. I’m very sleepy.

3. Finding some time for myself to do something creative. Like, um, write more, maybe?

Work is oppressive right now. I’m not feelin’ the love there and it’s difficult to keep my chin up. This is the longest I’ve ever stayed in one job and I’m getting restless. I mostly like my job and this should pass, but it’s annoying me right now. I’ve had nightmares the last few nights and night after night with a bad dream usually means there’s something going on when I’m awake that needs to be fixed.

Last night I dreamt I was trapped in my grandmother’s house with alien people. They looked like regular people, but they weren’t. I know this because regular ladies can’t stick their tongues in your husband’s right ear, through his head and out his left ear. While laughing and sending you telepathic messages. I mean, that doesn’t happen around here, anyway.

What could this mean? The guy in the dream was a stranger and while it was my grandmother’s house, there weren’t other familiar people in it. So, I dunno. I’m still trying to work it out. Now, my grandmother did have surgery this week…and I have been feeling ishy about my health…and I did talk about frogs and their tongues before I went to bed last night…while we were killing the Flying Kitchen Invaders.

We have a fly problem, see. Because we have flies. Lots of them. It’s like Amityville up in here. I spent half an hour killing bitty baby flies by squirting them with “Merlin’s Magic” (a recipe from this book) because they’re too tiny and fast to swat. I couldn’t find where they were coming from, but I did find out that it’s a good idea to wash window screens more often than never. (Wow, that’s really gross!) That one area of my kitchen is super clean now. Except for the flies flying around over there.

Because we don’t live in a trailer but my husband wants to he bought that fly paper stuff and hung it where we’re having the most fly sightings. After supper, he took me downstairs and said, “There’s a LOT of ‘em right here!” and pointed to the fly paper strips he’d hung above the trashcan. I said, “Why don’t you take out the trash and clean this can?” He said, “Well, I sprayed it with bug spray.”

(We all know it’s because he knew that’s where they were coming from and he wanted to see how many flies he could catch with the fly paper. It’s the fisherman in him. “WOO! This here’s some good bait!”)

Then The Toddler reached in and tried pulling poisoned stuff out of the can.

My husband took out the trash and washed it up. Pronto.

So, I think we’ve found the nest and might have a bit of control over the situation. This’ll learn us to leave a trashcan nearish the play area in the mostly unfinished basement where adults rarely venture. Snacky items end up in that bin and we don’t know snacky foods ever made it down the steps! Sneaky snacky kids!