Tool Time

A few weeks ago, my darling boy yanked the kitchen phone's cord, which connected to the wall via a plastic connection in a metal frame (made for a wall-mount phone) ; the plastic did not resist the boy tugging on it with all of his almost 30 pounds and a piece of plastic holding the cord in the socket snapped off. And the phone wouldn't stay plugged in without a small quantity of packing tape.

So...I went to ACE Hardware, home of the helpful hardware man, who must've been on a coffee break and was replaced by the idiot, pimply-faced adolescent hardware man wannabe who pointed me to a $5.98 replacement - not an exact copy the part (which I dutifully brought along in my Teutonic "I want one JUST LIKE THIS" mode). Once home, with screwdriver in hand, I found that the nitwit had steered me to a connector with SIX wires and in the wall was FOUR wires, so once all was said and done, screwed and connected, there was still no dial tone. May his face remain a festering topographical map of the Rocky Mountains well into his twenties.

So...a few more days go by, and Micah and I went to Home Depot on our Monday shopping rounds. I wanted the above-mentioned thing for the phone and a winder-up thingy for the garden hose, which had been sitting on our front walk like a trip-and-fall lawsuit waiting to happen. This time I found a phone wall receptacle, manufactured by GE, which definitely brings good things to life because the packaging was transparent so I could easily see that there was a red wire, a green wire, a yellow wire, and a black wire - all for the bargain price of $4.99. We went home and the screwdriver came back out and lo and behold, the phone works. I am so proud of myself, therefore I'll keep the story of how much I hate the Self-Checkout at Home Depot and the bad words that I said over what was an amazingly slow and time-consuming pain in the rear of a process to myself.

So...Micah's tab is now one toilet and one phone receptacle, so his first five years or so of allowance is basically a big IOU. His tab stands at about $500+. Plus time lost for two ER visits.

Photos to follow - I've go to put them on the computer first. Another day, I am done. I brought the kids' medical charts home tonight to put their immunization histories into their medical records - now I just need to find my immunization history and fill in all the dates and shots.

Happy Anniversary, Micah!

Wednesday was the one year anniversary of when we met Micah in person and were granted 24 hour custody by Hubei Province, followed the next day by the one-year anniversary of his actual adoption. Fesitivities were rather sparse Chez Us - Nancy came for two hours to work with Micah. She's replacing Ela whose due date is Monday, so we'll be waiting for word on when Elzby makes her entrance into the world. Thursday Micah was back at Lisa's while I was at work.

Micah's sitter, Lisa, has another child in her care who has a smaller version of Micah's Buh-Buh (bunny bear, given to Thea by Lori and Jamie but never loved by Thea as much as her white tigers). I have been wanting to find a back-up Buh-Buh for awhile, and Lisa called the other mom to find out where she bought it. And there is was on Amazon, just sitting there waiting for me to buy it . In pink and in blue. Bunny Bear is a bear wearing a hooded track suit with rabbit ears. Obviously designed by someone having some sort of cross-dressing animal fetish. Micah has since discovered that the manufacturer has cut costs by not having the track suit come off - and he was sorely disappointed at this and still can't figure out why the blue bunny bear can't get nekkid.

Thea marked the occasion - or some day right around the anniversary - by telling me that it was time for Micah to find a new family. Sorry, dear daughter, but despite his occasional naughtiness, I've sort of gotten used to having the little pest around.

Happenings and other miscellany

1. Thea lost her first tooth on Monday, June 30 while at Oma's. It had been loose for about six days. It was a slightly traumatic event, for both of us - for Thea because it bled a little bit and came out somewhat unexpectedly and for me because she's not even five yet. The tooth fairy had to be contacted so that she could delay her visit until we were back in Princeton the following night. (I was attending the AANP conference through the 1st.) She got the Tooth Fairy's 1st tooth bonus of $5. Future teeth will be compensate at the regular rate of $1 each (4x the quarter that Mommy used to receive. . . )

2. AANP - what a great conference! I have to thank my mother a thousand times since she made it possible for me to attend What a great birthday gift. And aside from the registration fee, my mother, who took on babysitting both children for the last two days of the event. Both kids were on their good behavior on day #1, but one who shall remain nameless acted up a bit on day #2. (And my money was on Micah giving her grief, and he actually was the better of the two. . . ) And I got lots of CME credits so things should go smoothly for renewal of my NP certification - smoothly other than coughing up $400 or so for the privilege of renewing for another five years in addition to paying for whatever classes I have to take for the CMEs. What a racket.

3. Micah's assessment from the speech therapist was that he has all the appropriate sounds for a two-year old and his expressive language is in the 21-month range, so he's made some amazing progress considering that his initial assessment last August put him in the six to nine month range.

4. After 45 minutes on the phone with a computer geek for our EMR software, my laptop for work finally works at home. Doesn't sound like much of a big deal, but it gives me access to medical records and the ability to send prescriptions electronically while on call. Of course I was on call from the 4th through this morning and the laptop was here all weekend waiting for me to have time without someone trying to interrupt. What a pain in the butt - and all this work so I can work at home on days that I am not in the office, oh rapture.

5. The box from the new stove has been refashioned into a house, a project started last Friday and continuing through the weekend. Yesterday Thea and I went to Michael's to buy paint, spray paint and tempera, to spruce up the drab brown. It's architectural style is more shack/out-house than Architectural Digest, but Thea is quite taken with it. This afternoon we made a paper fireplace to put inside, but I am getting attitude from the homeowner because the glue stick didn't do a great job in getting the project to adhere to the walls. If she can work this much attitude at four, I am dreading fourteen. This semi-artistic monstrosity, too large to fit through the front door or the door to the garage, is now sitting on the landing, listing to one side - I've got to come up with some way to shore up the one side with the door cut into it.

NP Conference, Etc.

I'm in the weird vacuum of a professional conference - the sort of time-warp where days start to blend together and you get to know all the obscure restrooms in odd corners of the conference center, and we're not even staying at the conference hotel.

We drove down late Wednesday night, after our first dinner with the brand new stove. Unfortunately it was just quick spaghetti and broccoli, the oven was unused other than the 30 minute trial after installation. We also have a new dishwasher, which, if all goes well, will not flood the kitchen on its maiden voyage.

Mom/Oma made us a reservation at the Sleep Inn; she was due for another of her injections for macular degeneration and her eye usually bothers her for a few days afterwards, so the hotel seemed to be a good alternative to having four house guests and feeling miserable after an injection to her eye.

Thursday we came to the conference center at National Harbor so I could register and check out where things were. Most of the attendees had gone to Capitol Hill for visits with their states' representatives, so it was pretty empty. The Gaylord is very nice, though grossly overpriced (bottle of water $3.00; large cup of coffee and a plain croissant $7.00). I feel sorry for those actually staying here because there is no easy access to a Wawa or grocery store - I could make a killing by bringing in provisions for people or shuttling them to the supermarket if I were so inclined.

The Sleep Inn has an indoor pool, which is nice if the weather is bad. Micah seems to love it; Thea had a slip and dunk in the whirlpool so she's a little water shy. Yesterday was day one of the 'real' part of the conference so Steve had to entertain both for the entire day - and I stayed for the 5:30 performance of the Capitol Steps, which was funny and fabulous. I think I saw them almost 20 years ago at another conference and they were just as hilarious then. Imagine a Robin Williams-ish rapid fire wit with a political bent.

Anyway, I'm sitting around waiting for the exhibit hall to open at 6:00pm. Both the sessions I went to yesterday and the ones today were really good; it's nice to feel somewhat energized and enlightened. Steve and the kids will be coming down and we'll have dinner later on.

Sorry this one is mostly about me, me, me.

L.

PS: On the Wednesday before we left for Maryland, in addition to the new stove and dishwasher being delivered and installed, going to Sound Beginnings with Micah in the morning, we also met with a speech pathologist to have Micah evaluated. He's more or less on track for sounds that he should be producing at this age, but she'd like to see more spontaneous production of language rather than response to our prompting, so she'll be seeing him for an hour a week for awhile.

One month later. . . .

It's been almost a month since I last wrote anything here - I've written numerous witty, amusing posts in my head that have never survived long enough to be typed into the computer.

At work we've moved into the world of the EMR, electronic medical record, so now in addition to my prescription pad, stethoscope and PDA, I drag a laptop along with me into the exam room. It's been an interesting transition, and I'm not sure whether I love it or hate or am somewhere in between, but I do know that I am so bleeping tired of hearing "It's going to be great, eventually. . . ." The amount of time I now spend on the computer at work definitely lessens the amount of time I spend on the computer at home. And yesterday I found out that the additional time we get in our schedules to catch up is going to be phased out over the next few months. It's definitely making me think that if I ever move to another practice, it had better be one so small, poor or non-profit so as never to be able to afford instituting an EMR system. There is something so much more deliberate in writing down what one did and said rather than ticking off a bunch of boxes.

Meanwhile and far away, we've made another trip to Washington last weekend, Thea finished up Pre-K and will be starting summer camp next week, Micah is going to be evaluated next week by a speech pathologist to see if he has any other impediments to acquiring and producing speech other than his hearing impairment, the kids are going in for their check-ups Monday and Monday evening our social worker will be making a visit to be able to write up our 12-month post-placement report for Micah, which will officially end our relationship with the adoption agency and is a cause for celebration since there isn't a whole lotta love flowing in either direction. (Fortunately, we love our social worker - she's not affiliated with the adopton agency.)

Two weeks ago on the 6th, in the midst of that hot spell, the kids and I went to Target to get a pump to inflate the pool we got from Aunt Shannon last year - and upon opening it discovered that the pump had to be charged for ten hours before using. So we hauled out the pump that came with the pool. Whether due to the heat, general crabbiness or just because, Thea and Micah fought like badgers in a sack over pumping so we resorted to ten pumps for one, then ten for the other - and if you've seen the size of this pool, it was going to take a lot of pumping to get it anywhere close to blown up. I was ready to lose it because Micah wanted to 'drive' the pump (spin the pump handle) rather than contribute to the cause, so I said to him, "Micah, I am going to kill you." Which passed unnoticed, until Thea piped up, "And if you get up, she'll kill you again." Fortunately after an hour of torture, the pool was up and ready to be filled. The down side is that once in the pool, it's hard to get Micah out, even when his lips start to acqure a purple-y blue tinge from cold. I had to lure then to the front lawn with a promise of bubble goop and chalk to get them out of the water.

New ENT for Micah - Dr. Choe

Wednesday we made an early morning trip up the NJ Turnpike to Englewood to ENT and Allergy Associates. While at Oma's last week, I called to make an appointment with Dr. Choe for Micah, figuring that it would be sometime later this summer. There was a cancellation and I was offered 8:45 on Wednesday morning.

Which meant the Turnpike, in rush hour. Rand McNally estimated travelling time at 1 hour, 20 minutes - but I don't think that factored in traveling at the peak of rush hour. So Micah and I left at about 7 am, and we got there with a few minutes to spare - enough time to fill in the four pages of patient registration paperwork before Thea and Steve arrived.

Dr. Choe was one of the nicest specialists I've met. No lab coat, no suit and tie, and he introduced himself with his first name. I think he spent almost an hour going over the options for us (rib graft followed by atresia surgery, atresia surgery followed by MedPor, or prosthetics.) He has cared for 70+ patients with microtia, according to what I read - and he's young enough that he won't be retiring any time soon.

So next year, around his third birthday, Micah will have a CT scan of his head done and after Dr. Choe evaluates the scan the first atresia surgery can be planned for the best of the two ears. Then six months or so later, the second surgery will be in the works. Then after that we can figure out who'll be doing the MedPor.

So if all goes well, Micah will have his ear canals and his ears by early elementary school, which is right when children start to notice differences and begin to tease.

Throughout all this, Micah was clueless and worked on dismantling the rolling stool in the exam room. We left that chair with two washers and one nut on the floor, but fortunately the chair still worked.

Bite me, Sotterley Quilt Ladies....or the Weekend at Oma's

This post will probably put a curse upon the six raffle tickets that I purchased for the Anne Arundel County Fair 2007 blue ribbon quilt, but I don't really care.

Thursday, the kids and I drove down to Maryland to see Oma, arriving around dinner time. We made a stop at the McDonald's with the groovy play area in Middletown, DE (groovy until the outside temperatures hit the upper 80s, then it's a miserable sauna; note to self: plan alternate route for the summer months.)

Friday, Oma's dance card was already booked, so we made plans to go to the Sotterley Plantation's quilt show with Lorrie, who actually seems to enjoy Thea's and Micah's company (and mine, too, despite being housemates for about ten years). Sotterley is gorgeous, just a really pretty house and grounds; Mom, Thea and I were there about two years ago in December for a Christmas-themed event and we had a blast touring the grounds, picking up stamps on a "passport" to the event that could be redeemed for a prize from Santa and Mrs. Claus at the last stop. There was a horse-drawn wagon ride around the grounds.

The Quilt Show wasn't that sort of event. It had rained the night before, so the grass where the cars were being directed to park was a near-swamp. We paid our admission fee ($7 per adult), got the map (a necessity for Thea) and started with the outbuildings - only one of which had quilts, the others were vendors. Micah was buckled into his containment device, the orange umbrella stroller, Thea was counting ribbons on the quilts and needlework pieces; the day seemed off to an auspicious start.

Until we got to the main house, that is. After purchasing six chances for $5 on an absolutely beautiful quilt, I horrified the person selling the tickets by telling Thea that, if I won it, I would wrap myself in it, grab a pile of books and never emerge from my room. That lady looked like she swallowed a bug or a fried pickle (more on that later). What's the purpose of a quilt, if not to use it? Then we had to park the stroller to go into the main house to see the quilts, so Micah was on the loose. And he promptly went in, ran over to a small quilt artfully displayed over a large embroidery hoop stand and smacked it. No harm done, and I picked him up - he was running loose because I was putting the camera in my purse, finding a way to hold Bunny Bear and getting organized before grabbing him to carry him through the house.

The white cotton gloved lady on duty in that room took the smacking of the quilt rather well, but in the next room, another biddy with white cotton gloves decided that she had to make absolutely, positively certain that Thea would not lay her little hands on any of the precious quilts, so she hounded Thea about half a dozen times, asking if she had pockets in her pants (no, pockets are not standard on cotton knit stretch pants from Gymboree, and if she had used her eyes, she would have seen that) and telling Thea to put her hands in her pockets and not touch anything. (Thea had already gotten her marching orders from me, and I don't need some blue-haired biddy trying to buck the chain of command, and Thea is remarkably good at looking and not touching. Telling her one time was ok, two times not that much of an issue, but beyond three biddy lady needed to push her own "mute" button or let me do it for her.)

So at about the sixth or seventh time, this prune squawked at my child, I had had enough and told her that this child wasn't going to touch the quilts and to stop pestering Thea. Both Lorrie and I felt that the enjoyment had been sucked out of the house tour, where the white gloved ladies seemed to outnumber the visitors and be in the way of viewing the quilts so we went back outside to tour the grounds. Thea took some nice photos of the garden using my camera, Micah tried to remove a few stakes from the garden, but otherwise did not run wild.

On the way back to the swamp where the car was parked, we asked the two guys collecting the entry fees (poor suckers obviously conscripted by their Quilt Nazi wives) where could we find a child-friendly restaurant nearby. St. Mary's County has changed a lot - there is now an Outback, a Ruby Tuesdays; it's gone from rural/quaint to being almost anywhere else in the US. Near the Outback there was a Cheeseburger in Paradise, so that got our vote. And it was pretty good: Micah ate almost all of his grilled cheese, Thea got macaroni and cheese, I had some sort of salad with coconut, pineapple and chicken on lettuce with a curry dressing. Lorrie got fried pickles, which just seem like something that came about as a part of someone going on a culinary-inspired acid trip. Right up there is fried Oreos. Blech, blech, blech, phtooey. (In all honesty, I have no right to write this, because I couldn't even bring myself to try one.)

The coconut and pineapple layer cake for dessert almost made me able to forgive the Quilt Nazis, but not quite (for that the magic formula called for coconut, caramel and chocolate to be present.) Both kids zonked out on the ride back to La Plata and Thea awoke in a thoroughly grumpy mood and it took some work to get her to snap out of it since I try not to smack some sense into my children when friends and family are around no matter how richly they deserve it.

I read in the quilt show program that the group that runs this event needs a board of about fifteen members to be able to successfully plan and organize the show; it has nine members now and a few will be retiring so the group is desperate for members. Maybe if the members were less obnoxious, others would want to join. Stay tuned to see if there is a 19th annual Sotterley quilt show in 2009.

The next day we took Oma to the National Lutheran Home in Rockville for the Ladies' Auxillary's Spring Festival. The Spring and Fall events are sort of a ritual for us; my grandmother used to volunteer at the Home in the stamp room. I remember her bringing backs of the torn off corners of envelopes, which she soaked until the stamps came off and then she put them between sheets of newspaper and then put the newspaper under the table pad on the dining room table to flatten them. I used to go poking through her bags of stamps as a child, hunting for foreign stamps for my album. My mother took me out of school for the afternoon for the Spring Festival; once upon a time it was held under tents in front of the old NLH at 18th and Douglas Streets, NE in Washington.

Nowadays, it's indoors - and it doesn't seem to hold the same thrill it did when I was little, but we still go because we can see Miss Ida Mae, who is almost 101 and who attended Sunday School with my grandmother, and the former neighbors from Hyattsville who live in the independent living community on the grounds surrounding the Home. All of this entails about an hour's travel, some of which is on the Washington Beltway, which works Mom's nerves (and her BP, too) even when my driving is not the problem, she's always on the watch for the other idiots on the road.

Part of my mission was to pick up a couple of nap quilts for baby gifts - these nap quilts and the children's book Sheep in a Jeep have become my almost standard baby gift. Unfortunately, given a choice of five by Eleanor, I bought four of them so I'm stocked up - though I may not be able to part with the sock monkey quilt. It is just too funny and makes me think of 7th grade home economics with Miss Castle. We had to buy those brown socks with the red toes, I think Mom and I went to G.C. Murphy's to make a sock monkey doll. The sock monkey fabric is far cuter than the one I made in 1972 or so. I also wanted to get a picture of Thea with her 100 Good Wishes Quilt and Eleanor, but I packed the quilt along and forgot the camera (and the cell phone, so sort of Freudian slip re: technology I guess.)

That evening we went out to Oma's Special Park (which the locals call Laurel Springs Park) so the kids could blow off some energy after the long car ride back to La Plata. I like that park better on weekdays without the hordes of people. Micah got run over by some older child, completely knocked down - and the little beast who flattened my kid didn't apologize, didn't look backward so he got an earful from me (nothing impolite, just a reminder to watch of for those smaller than he, and that saying sorry for making someone fall is considered the polite thing to do; pretty good for me considering my instinct was grab the brat by the scruff of his neck, waggle my finger under his nose while giving him a lecture on manners.)

Sunday we got to see Christine and Elise, which was nice. Micah and Elise got to hang out and play with each other, babbling nonsensically but each seeming to 'get' what the other was saying. Trying to get the three of them to sit on the couch to take a picture was nearly impossible - to get a good print I'd have to cut and paste from about ten pictures to get each of them looking at the camera, smiling (or at least not pulling a face) and sitting still.