Wait, That's not right

When we clean a toilet, we *really* clean a toilet.  

A mix, Good, Very Good and Not So Much

Many things running through my mind today.  Little energy.  Will abbreviate.  

1.  New Mystery Stole swatch on US Size 2 needles.  Like it much better.  Really like the orange beads.  Or maybe the purple.  Must decide before Friday.  

2.  Sonar X3 is super cute.  This is the SuperCowboy ensemble, made from some old suedy polyester fabric with McCall’s 8398, copyright 1966 (Batman, Robin and Superman official Costumes).  Made for a family friend’s Cowboy fifth birthday.  She and her folks loved it. 

3.  We’re sick.  Ok, four out of five of us are sick, including me and all of the small people.  Right now it’s general malaise, sore throat and ache ache ache.  I’m hoping we can kick it with a low-key long weekend.  

4.  Go make this Malted Milk Ice Cream.  It’ll mess up a lot of dishes, but it’s so worth it.  So so worth it.  

5.  Deployment socks are progressing slowly, but progressing.  Thinking of a modification of this Pink Lemon Twist pattern in the foot area.  With red and yellow.  Or maybe blue and grey.  Or something.  

6.  I found the major speeches of the Democratic National Convention very stirring, particularly the focus on families.  I find John McCain’s VP choice profoundly troubling.  Inexperience, energy policy, family rights.  Very troubling.  

7.  There’s a meteorological par-tay happening in the tropics.  Gustav.  Hanna.  And a couple of “pre-” storms here and here.  I have something to say about the storm name choices this year.  But I’m not sure what it is yet.  We look to be on the safe side of the named monsters at least.  Check on your friends in Louisiana.  It’s going to be a bad scene for them.  Again.  

Valor

Somehow I managed to miss Sonar X5’s four year immunizations.  Not sure how, but considering how many childhood immunizations there are nowadays, and the certainty of springtime illnesses around here, I suppose it isn’t too surprising.  He must have them to enter kindergarten in the fall, so off we went to get him up to date.  

I believe in letting the kids prepare themselves for hard stuff such as this, so last night we were talking about shots, talking about what he would take with him to help him feel brave, answering his questions, and giving him detailed lessons in immunology.  

X5: Will I get them in the arm or the leg?  

Me:  You’re a big kid now.  Arm for sure. 

X5:  How many shots will there be?

Me:  (feeling uninformed) I can’t remember.  Not more than four.  Probably two or three. 

X5:  Shots hurt, but then it will be over with and I won’t have to think about it again for a while.

Me:  Right.

This morning he chose to bring along a small stuffed elephant, just right for squeezing one hand around the middle in a moment of pain or panic.  He was his usual self in preparation, except that he wanted to sit in my lap in the waiting room, much to Sonar X3’s chagrin.  

When we asked the doc how many shots there’d be, and she cheerfully answered Four at Four, I mentally kicked myself.  Sonar X5 shrugged nervously, wrinkled his nose and asked if they’d do two on each side.  :)  The doc left (aren’t they just cowards) and the nurse returned with the four syringes and Sonar X5 squeezed his elephant and rolled up his sleeves.  Even Sonar X3, who had been climbing and bouncing all over the waiting chair seemed to recognize the gravity of the situation and sat completely still, watching in silent horror as the nurse spread the implements of torture and four banana yellow bandaids around Sonar X5 on the table.  

I asked if he wanted to hold my hand (no), cautioned that he needed to be still, and joked that he shouldn’t kick or hit the nurse (she didn’t laugh).  She told him that if he moved and the needle came out, she’d have to poke him again.  He tersely nodded his understanding.  

With the first poke, he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, maybe a small tear leaked out at the corner.  With the second poke, he took a deep breath, squeezing the elephant within an inch of its life.  Now the nurse was impressed.  She lavished praise for his bravery as she applied the banana yellow bandaids to the injection sites.  Pokes three and four followed in similar fashion.  Not a squeak.  Not a yelp or a twitch.  

He faced down each injection with a fierce kind of bravery, and when it was over, blew out a long slow breath, accepted with a tiny smile all of our praise and adoration and hugs and hair ruffling.  

The nurse wished that all kids were as good and brave as he was (we hoped the same for her), and that she was sure he would be her best patient all day.  

Both Sonars got stickers.  We popped into the grocery store for fresh bubble solution, luscious smelling strawberries (that were on sale!), a small watermelon, and  sherbet for a milkshake.  

We should all face our trials with such conviction, confidence, and fortitude.  Maybe it would help if we got bubbles and ice cream every time we had to do something hard.  :)

Potpourri

In no meaningful order, I’m throwing a little grab bag at you for today.

~The smaller Sonars and I recently watched Mary Poppins. The movie was so much more dreadfully boring and weird than I remembered, but we all loved the songs. Sonar X5, in particular, has reveled in deploying the tunes with his own new and delightful body (bawdy) lyrics. No, not gonna share those. But I will share that Sonar X3 can’t seem to call the movie by it’s right name. He calls it Harry Poppins every time. No matter what we tell him. Cracks me up every time. It might help to know that we’ve been reading all of the Harry Potter books out loud. Anywhere from a few pages to a chapter each day for the last YEAR. We have six chapters left of book 7. Harry Poppins. Just a spoonful of magic makes the dark lord go doooown, dark lord go down.

~We went to a minor league baseball game last weekend. The Corpus Christi Hooks are part of the Houston Astros farm system. We had a great time, got a little sunburned and ate burgers after. I loved it. The Sonars were less enthusiastic this time, not sure why. But a baseball stadium always makes me a bit nostalgic for high school. I spent four summers during my teens working as an usher and ticket seller for the Albuquerque Dukes. Great, though often peculiar fun was had. My old team is no longer the Dukes, by the way. They’re now the Isotopes. Because of the national lab-space-military industrial complex in New Mexico? Because of the Trinity site out in the eastern part of the state? Because someone in power is a big fan of The Simpsons? Anyway, minor league baseball games are good fun. Free tickets and special deals often abound if you hunt for them. And you get to experience a lot of the pomp and fanfare of the big leagues for a lot less money. We got Craig Biggio commemorative figurines on our visit. No, I don’t really know who he is either.

~It’s new underwear weekend around here. I handle a lot of laundry and decided finally that the state of everyone’s underwear was just really rather sad. So it was comfort waist boxer-briefs for two Sonars (the third Sonar has really lovely underwear, mainly because he never wears any). Soft, stretchy cotton bikinis for me. Partner’s were also ok, because he replenished the underwear stock a few weeks ago—grey and blue boxer-briefs. I also plan to get a couple of bras. I put on one yesterday and the underwire sprung out and punctured my armpit. Ok, not punctured, but you know what I mean. That leaves me with two industrial sports bras, one bra with a poking out underwire, one with a bent underwire, and way way back in the back of my drawer, three nursing bras that, though I’ve not been nursing any babies for some time, still hang out back there. So let’s just say that it’s time for me to do a little drawer-cleaning and that a couple of pretty bras that don’t necessarily have nipple-flaps might be nice. ;)

~Three more days to sexy new computer. Though apologies are in order for this lovely old gal. It wasn’t her fault at all that the computer wasn’t connecting to the internet properly. It was the evil old phone company. Gr.

~We’re in the throes of deciding on our new internet service provider. We can choose between pricey local company with wireless network and cheaper evil cable empire. You might think that the evil epithet means I will choose the local company, but the decision is not that easy. The cost and the contract and the slightly slower connection add up against them, especially the long contract. Against the cable company: we don’t currently have cable service, and if we opt to keep it that way, we pay a $10 surcharge for having only broadband service. Jerks. Pluses for big cable: speed, no service charge, no gigantic equipment to install. Pluses for the two lovable geeks down the street: personal service by actual human beings, supporting the local economy, and not taking the fast food option and joining the evil empire. Tough call.

~The squirrels around our place are going crazy. Our house, yard, trees, and fences are like this gigantic racetrack right now. They chase each other everywhere, up down around over across. Zoom zoom zoom. Spring fever? Mating time? Nut wars?

~I love the end of a bag of tortilla chips, the crunchy bits down in the bottom. I pour them into a bowl and dollop some salsa on top and eat them with a spoon. The very best part are the bits that get just a teensy bit soggy by the time I get to them. Good stuff.

~So, I knew I was sick. Really sick for a while. At least I thought I knew. And then I got better. And was completely shocked to find out just how sick I had been. It didn’t hit me until I really felt better that I had been so horribly, deeply, miserably sick. Breathing in particular is good. Nice, deep, cough-free, wheeze-free breaths. Breathing makes everything else so much easier to do.

~Partner picked a gallon of ripe cherry tomatoes out of the back yard this morning. No exaggeration. A gallon. He thinks that there are at least three or four more gallons of tomatoes out there on the verge of being ripe. Want some tomatoes?

~Sonar X7 has three more weeks of school. And a birthday coming up. This computer is older than he is.

~We’re having a gorgeous, sweaty Saturday. It’s 83.1F/28.4C with 83% humidity right now, according to Weather Underground. We should get another handful of degrees yet. I’ll try not to melt into the pavement on my way to a shady spot under the tree where I plan to knit (Gryffindor socks for Sonar X7) or read (Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris) while the Sonars build a fort under the yard table and throw things out of the tree at each other.

What are you up to?

Full Disclosure

A few updates and then no more whining.

No, I do not have a plastic surgeon. That was sarcasm.

No, in spite of all experience indicating the contrary, I did NOT have the flu OR pneumonia. An invasive nasal swab and an assay of blood and urine tests confirmed against the flu, favoring instead “Pyrexia of unknown origin” and “Viral Infection NOS (not otherwise specified).” I am a conundrum. Doctor called it ‘ILI’ or Influenza-like Illness. Bastard virus.

Besides a persistent stuffy head and phlegmy cough, my cesarean scar feels like it has been ripped apart on the left side, sending shooting pains up under the mama-belly fat on the left side. No, it has not actually been ripped apart. The coughing has just yanked on the abdominal muscle incessantly and pulled at the tight bit of scarry tissue there. But heed this, oh ye who might consider ELECTIVE cesarean: It’s not a teeny little scar. It’s a big, honking, baby-sized scar. Mine is a big sweet smile that stretches almost from hip to hip across the top of my pubes. I wouldn’t give it up in a heartbeat, representing as it does the gateway into the world for those three awesome Sonars. And scars heal, but they don’t always heal in predictable ways, and I have to think that doing your best to push that kiddo out au naturale has less of a chance of leaving you feeling like your stomach is being split in two every time you catch a bad cough.

On the up-side… I wrote 63 pages on a script that was a lot of fun until it ground to a screeching halt with the onset of ILI. ScriptFrenzy ends tonight with the page count thus. I am really proud of what I wrote, and proud of my ability to crank out ideas and words when the universe conspires to grant me healthy working conditions. The story is one that I think I will work into novelly form rather than trying to finish the script on my own time. I really encourage any of you who started a script (ILEANA!), even if you only wrote one page, to head over to the ScriptFrenzy site before midnight local time and enter a page count. Do not discount the warm fuzzy power of the page-count widget, even if you only enter the number 1. Okay, full disclosure, the page-count widget for NaNoWriMo is more warm and fuzzy, but ScriptFrenzy is on a budget. Still!! Your page-count is awesome and it is yours! A year ago, could you have imagined that you’d even try a script? It’s so cool.

*sigh*

Ok, back to disclosures.

April (hereafter known as the Month of the Endless Demon Virus) was a bitch. I am having a seriously hard time feeling good right now. It would be easy to blame it on the bad bout of viruses, the long slog between getting myself and the rest of the family nominally healthy over the past few weeks. Spiced with the disappointment about falling short of the writing goal. But the truth is, I think I was struggling with enthusiasm and satisfaction even before The Month of Endless Demon Virus went awry.

I am trying to remain hopeful. My family is awesome. I have good people and good things in my life. (count yourselves among them) I know this. I am trying to remember to be patient. To let myself heal. To get through all of the sick drugs and start eating normally again. To not get frustrated when I can’t do all of the things that I normally do.

The patience is a struggle for me.

While I wait around trying to be patient, I’m trying to do a few things that might help things along. I’m taking all of my medicine (which is thankfully almost finished). I’m trying to eat good food and drink gallons of water, and a lot of chocolate. On the theory that my body might be missing something, but I can’t figure it out because I can’t smell or taste anything yet, I am planning to bring home a variety of flavorful foods from the grocery store tomorrow, including some spicy nori rolls with wasabe, the fixings for lasagna with Italian sausage, the fixings for a key lime pie, a jar of hot salsa and some good tortilla chips, and a bag of doritos. Yeah, ok, the doritos might be a bit redundant with the tortilla chips. I’ll get a coke instead. Right now, I am enjoying my first beer for three weeks. It is good. Heck, maybe I’ll even get the ingredients to take up the Yummy Mummy’s hot dog challenge. If I can manage to breathe, I might even run.

Sonar X5 has counseled (sweet child) that I should try doing something crazy. With a wrinkled-nose-smile and a giggle he shrugged off specific suggestions though, so I’ll have to get back to you on that one. Sonar X3 suggested that it would help if everyone tried to be nice. Hear hear. Sonar X7 suggested the lasagna. Partner suggested a strategic application of hot oil, though the language he whispered in my ear was much more colorful.

Bring it on. I’ll try it all. It would just be so nice to feel a little bit good for a change.

So spill it. What do you do when you feel a little blue? What strategies and rituals and tips do you employ for a little warm fuzzy, for a little bit of good when everything else gets you down? I’m only asking because I suspect the next step might involve velcroing the children to the wall and throwing plates, and nobody really wants me to be THAT person. Not even me.