Update

Today would have been my Dad's 78th birthday, so Happy Birthday, Dad, hope you're celebrating.

The first week back from vacation is always tough, mostly for Micah. He who loves his babysitter, Lisa, almost as much as his family wailed piteously both Tuesday and Thursday when I dropped him off. So I got to go off to work cloaked in that mist of Mommy-guilt. Of course when I checked up on him, he snapped out of it once I was out of sight and got into playing with the other children. I don't know if it was truly traumatic for him, or if he was just being a bit of a Drama Queen, which he does seem to have a certain flair for.

Last Wednesday Thea and I had a wonderful afternoon on the beach and playing in the water -we had to stick pretty close to the water's edge or be eaten alive by green-head flies. I have never, ever had the experience of seeing a small dot of blood well up from a fly bite and if there was a system of voting on next species to be wiped off the planet, these pests would get my vote. We made sand castles, buried each other in the sand (to hide from the aforementioned blood-sucking pests) and collected shells. Thea started getting brave about letting the surf come up and wash over her legs. When Steve and Micah came down to the beach, Steve brought our bottle of Off!, but this brand of insect repellant seemed to be more of a marinade/condiment or aphrodisiac for the damn flies because there were more bites rather than fewer after applying the stuff.

Friday we were back at the beach, after going on a fruitless quest to both Seaside and Point Pleasant looking for miniature golf. Despite threatening skies, we had Kite-y with us, and I managed to get it airborne, though with the sky greying and a few drops of rain falling, Thea's vote was for reeling Kite-y in and going back to the beach house. Fortunately, even though we reeled Kite-y in, we stayed on the beach and the clouds and sprinkles passed and the kids had a blast terrorizing two abandoned sand heaps complete with moat and throwing shells back into the waves. And since most of the wind was coming off on the water, the green-heads were not out en masse.

Since I worked last week while commuting from the beach, getting back into the routine wasn't too hard - and the drive was cut in half even with two separate drop-offs for school/daycare. Tuesday I had a patient with a really angry sebaceous cyst between the shoulder blades. With just a little help from a #11 blade and despite being covered with two gauze 4x4s, it blew, spewing its contents three or more feet at which point it splatted on the wall. Then I covered it even better and reapplied a little pressure. And again it spewed a swath through the room. It was simply amazing. Unfortunately, our rather small exam room soon smelled like someone opened a Limburger cheese shop, and the aroma lingered even though we washed down the wall, the exam table and sprayed enough air freshener to asphixiate half the office. Even Micah knew something was up, because I got "Mommy stinky" when he put his head on my shoulder when I picked him up from the babysitter's.

And somehow word must've made it back to the Sebaceous Cyst Fairy, because Thursday I had another patient with a nice bump at the nape of the neck with a nice little puncta in the middle. This one emptied more like Silly String or Cheez Whiz, but that same tell-tale odor hung in the room afterwards. I wish the Ear Lavage Fairy would send a few people my way, that has the same delightful ookiness factor, but without the smell.

Thea is being a 'five-day' kid at school, practice for starting Kindergarten in the fall, so today was just me and Micah-man. He's going to be banned from grocery shopping soon, at least from going with me to the Lawrenceville ShopRite. Damn the grocery stores with their displays of balloons and Beanie Babies. Micah is currently in a Mylar balloon and puppy phase - and unlike Thea who is steadfastly loyal to her two white tigers, Micah is a stuffed animal polygamist. He has his #1 lovey, Bunny Bear, and then he has a small horde of sister and brother stuff animals that he also seems to be devoted to, and his philosophy is the more, the merrier. If all of his 'favorite' stuffed animals were put in his crib, there would be no room for Micah.

I was privilege to Micah's first in-mall sit-in outside of Pottery Barn Kids on Monday, protesting his mother's lack of sensitivity to his need for a life-size toy dog (and mind you, if this were the real deal, wagging its tail in front of him, he'd be quaking in his booties and clawing his way up my leg and into my arms.). I was scoping the sale items and he found two dogs, a Jack Russell and a Boston Terrier, both life-size and he was in love. He carried the Jack Russell around the store, playing with it in the PBK toy kitchen, babbling away to it, until we put it back ($34 for a stuff animal, I love my son, just not in that way). I put it back, picked Micah up and strolled out of the store and then put him down again. And he promptly sat his shapely little butt down on the pavement and pouted. So he got picked up, tucked under my arm like a football and carted back to the car. Mommy can be such an insensitive b*tch a times, all in a day's work - one more thing he can share with his future therapist if he ever gets through being adopted, the ears issue and whatever other trauma to his psyche we have inflicted on him.