Today I was home with Micah, who had a fever on Sunday and who probably had whatever had gotten me last Tuesday. He was a pale shadow of his usual self yesterday, and was still in low battery mode this morning.
He spent the morning in his pajamas, being spoiled sick boy in our bed joined by his Star Wars Legos characters and Bunny Bear. I finally got a chance to load his iXL with the Batman and Toy Stories games. The iXL seemed like a really interesting device, and one of the accessories was a set of headphones that were the old fashioned kind (not the ear bud type, which I wouldn't want Micah to use and which probably wouldn't stay in his ear canals without the support of an auricle.) What I should of checked out was how the games get into the device. Not by a tiny cartridge like the Nintendo DSi, but onto the computer, through the USB port and into the iXL. Major timewaster, though one of the fun features is photos can be loaded into it, and then Micah can both flip through them, and also draw on them as well. It made for decent enough entertainment to keep him parked in the bed, under the covers - or he just felt lousy enough to stay put.
Mondays are usually my day to pick up Thea and Jackson to drive them to Ying Hua for after-school Chinese tutoring, so around 2:30 I got Micah dressed and organized (meaning he packed his backpack with the 'necessities' for travel: his iXL, a few Legos guys and whatever else interested him at that moment) and we set out.
The routine after meeting Jackson and Thea at Parent Pick-Up is to take them for a snack. Today the request was for hot chocolate, so rather than go to It's A Grind for cafe hot cocoa, it was Dunkin Donuts. Which still can be rather pricey if you're buying for three.
And since it was three versus two, Thea and Jackson got more grief from me than they usually do because they were trying to exclude Micah, and Micah wants to just be in the middle of what he perceives as their bigger kid wonderfulness he puts up with it. Usually I enjoy taking the two out for their snack, but today it was more of a referee job whose only benefit was the nice large coffee.
As we were finishing up, a large new model, white Yukon pulls up to the curb and the passenger door opens and two kids who are smaller than my two (who are 5 and 7) get out, the older of the two has a coupon and a credit card in his hand. No coats on, one of the two is wearing slippers without socks, both kids are a little on the chubby side. The two got to the counter, place their order and take it back to the car. I'm just sitting there taking it all in, somewhat stunned.
There is a woman behind the wheel of the Yukon, also on the more than just chubby end of the spectrum.
Once we finally get our table cleared and out the door, the Yukon is still there. The two children make another trip in and by the time everyone in my car is buckled in and we're pulling out, the lady who is working the counter at D-n-D comes out to the car.
OK, I'm no better than she is, I just bought some of the same high fat, high sugar snacks for children. But at least I parked my car, got out with them, sat down with them, talked to them instead of sitting for more than ten to fifteen minutes in a no parking/no standing area barking orders at two little ones who looked to small to even know what a credit card or a coupon are.
I wanted to smack her over the head with her designer knock-off bag.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Motherhood's Not So Shining Moment
Gripes
I purchased the book, 'Home in the Morning' by Mary Glickman for my Kindle and it is the first book I think I may delete from the device. It was a good story, or at least it held my attention. Right up until the storyline moved to 1965 and the main characters were in Washington, DC and one of them got out of the hospital AND TOOK THE SUBWAY HOME.
I lived in the Washington, DC area from 1960 to 1974, and I remember the construction of the Metro system which started around 1969. I also remember riding the Red Line with my grandfather and brother in 1976 when we had come back to visit for the Bicentennial.
At the end of the book I went to read the end notes to see if the author would make any explanation for this glaring error. Nothing. Not that I would be totally forgiving, but at least if she said she was exercising a bit of artistic license, I could dial down the annoyance.
This ranks right up there with Kevin Costner running on the towpath along the C&O canal in Georgetown and then zipping into the Georgetown Metro stop and then hopping on a train that is clearly part of the Baltimore subway system in 1987's No Way Out. I don't remember much from the plot, but those little moments of movie magic live on.
Amazon owes me for recommending 'Home in the Morning' to me.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Out Damn Virus
Written January 11, 2011
I've been down with a cold since around Christmas, and I'm just about the limit of my patience for the tiny little gnome I am imagining lives in my sinuses who is ladling gunk down the back of my throat. I thought I was done with NyQuil and Advil LiquiGels last week, but tonight I caved in and opened one of those allegedly child-proof blister packets. Thea's down with a cough, but no other real symptoms so she's just taking PediaCare Cough Syrup or Mucinex, and Micah's beginning to fake a bit of a dry cough because he thinks he's been left out.
If this is the immune system at age 50, it sucks. I have drowned myself in several gallons of orange juice or Simply Limeade. I have been taking my vitamins. I have been washing my hands or using hand sanitizer gel to the point where the backs of my hands verge on reptilian. All that is left to do is just wallow in misery and self-pity.
I finally unearthed the humidifier this afternoon because the master bedroom is drier than dry (and now we know why, the casing for the humidifier unit on the furnace is EMPTY. Thank you to the seller who I specifically remember asking what's that thing on the furnace and being told it was the humidifier and that the second thermostat-like thing on the wall was for the humidifier. A second thank you very sparsely to the home inspector who could have noted it on his inspection even though it was not really part of the structural and safety issues. If I didn't have reason to hate the sellers for there completely questionable taste in decor and their total inability to notice dust (on the mini-blinds, which could likely have been measured in millimeters and above the door jambs of every room in the house), I really wish a blistering case of herpes on them now.
Micah's 5th birthday is less than two months away, and we've finally got a place to hold the party. He expressed a desire to have everyone over to our house for a birthday party play date, but that is just not going to happen. He attends two preschools, each with about a dozen children in the class, plus a few extras including a friend for Thea and it starts to more like an invasion than event.
So Thea and I in the midst of Saturday's snow and with only vague directions set out to check on Pump It Up in Hamilton. We've been to three birthday parties at BounceU and one at Build-A-Bear in the past couple of months, which were all great, but since it's the same group of children another venue seemed to be a good idea. It is typical of those children's party venues, squirreled away at the back of an office/industrial park, but the interior was much more interesting and colorful than the red and purple of BounceU.
The moms who recommended Pump It Up said that the staff was high energy and really focused on getting the guests into the various activities. The guy who gave us the five minute tour lived up to that, I was beginning to wonder how much Red Bull or Five Hour Energy must one consume to be that peppy, and walk backwards while talking and showing us around. (Simple answer: I don't want to know.)
So we've locked in March 5, 1:30 to 3:25 as the date. Now I've got to pray that fewer than 24 cherubs RSVP that they will be coming.
One more item checked off the to-do list . . .
Saturday Chez Snow
And as Thea and I came out of Tiger Noodles where we went for lunch after the Cookie Sale, it was snowing again. Oh joy, oh rapture.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Snow Day, Part 3
You know it is truly a snow day when Princeton University, which usually holds itself above forces of nature, declares that non-essential personnel are allowed to stay home.
This is a good thing because the non-essential Princeton employee in our household was crucial to getting our driveway cleared. It took a solid four hours of work, part of it with both of us shoveling, to dig out. And we were lucky enough to have our two-doors down neighbor and his snow blower do the sidewalk.
Then the phone just rang moments ago, and the news is that the idiot school district that could not make a decision about closing until this morning has already declared a 90 minute late start for Friday.
And thanks to all of this, the Advil is doing double duty, for swollen glands and a sore lower back.
52 days until spring, if I live that long.
Snow Day, Part 2
If the weather forecast was event close to what was predicted, I was wagering that schools would be closed today. The unfortunate thing is that I woke up at 2:30 am, checked the school district's web page and nothing had been posted, and then at 4:30 am still nothing. Then at 7:00 am the phone rang and it was one of the parent's from Beth Chaim letting us know the synagogue's preschool is closed as are the West Windsor-Plainsboro school.
Good thing. Thea was up at around 10 pm last night and lost her supper. I bundled her off with a clean garbage basket and a towel to sleep with me. Steve's on the pull-out trundle bed in Micah's room, without his BiPAP machine so his snoring is shaking the walls.
Tuesday at work I felt a little like I was coming down with something, but it was the first Tuesday of working later hours with Sarah, so I figured just keep moving forward and eventually the day would be done.
But then I asked Robin to take my temperature. 102.9 degrees on a tympanic membrane thermometer, which I've always thought of as slightly under-reporting the temperature. Wow. I don't think I've ever had a temperature like that, or at least not since the early 1960s when I still had tonsils.
I was home Wednesday, feeling a little better at least until the Advil wore off. Chills and cold feet that could not be remedied despite crawling under piles of blankets and wool socks.
A least I managed to get out and clear the driveway. I have never been one for shoveling, definitely something on the to be avoided list, but shoveling with fever was actually not bad. Didn't even need gloves and I got about 90% of it done.
I also managed to complete a survey that awards a $50 Amazon gift card for about 30 minutes of picking around in my brain about diabetes care. Between that survey and one that will credit $85 to my ePocrates Visa and getting close to racking up another 80 Q-points on QuantiaMD for another $100 Amazon credit, I may have about $477 socked away in gift cards and cybercash - or half of an iPad or other tablet computer.
Other than that stuff, I was a guest of slug-puppy city for most of the day.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Frozen Solid
This morning driving the kids to their schools, the dashboard thermometer in my car registered 11 degrees. I have never seen it that low and I am NOT liking it. Old, creaky bones and cold do not get along, especially when forced to walk on ice because some twit with a privileged attitude has taken up the ramp that leads from the parking lot to Thea's school and cannot move until the cones are removed after all the buses have off-loaded and driven away.
Dear Fellow Wicoff Parent with the Air of Entitlement: I am happy that your privileged little darling did not need to walk far in this bitter cold, but if I slip and fall because you are taking up all the non-icy space with your extra large suburban assault vehicle, I am going to punch your headlights out, literally and figuratively. Be forewarned. Love and kisses, Me.
Micah's seeming a little under the weather this afternoon - just as Thea and I are finally pulling out from whatever had us down for several weeks, and more snow is in the forecast. Lovely.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Christmas Photos
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