Learning Opportunities

Wow, I think everyone learned something yesterday!

I learned not to take two cold, tired toddlers on a long walk home by myself. Too big to carry. Too small to get pissed at and demand they just suck it up and walk home quickly. My arms hurt.

M learned that the ~l~ house vortex is a reality.

M's toddler learned that you do not lick crabs.

My toddlerness learned that it is not a good idea to take a flying leap from the top bunk. Yes, she landed on her feet. No, there wasn't anything softer than, well, the carpet, there to catch her. She's in the other room telling her daddy about it now. "My legs, a sleeping bed, a JUMP! Look a my toes! Look a my feet! A JUMP! A hurt!"

Boyness learned that Mr. P could kick his ass.

DH learned that if he knows the camera is about to run out of batteries, but doesn't charge it, and all the more pictures I get to take of awesome beachness are the above preliminaries, I might just be a little irritable.

Ah, a learning kind of day.

A poopie, a poopie

Because life just isn't complete until your toddlerness demonstrates just how like her daddy she is and starts making up her own songs. You write what you know, right? And toddlerness is toilet training, right? So her song:

A poopie, a poopie
Poopies, poopies
Flush a toilet, flushit!

Poopie, a Poopie
Poopies, poopies
Poopies on a floor, POOPIES!

Ah, doesn't your heart just melt? Or, um, not?

She's doing a fantastic job with the whole toilet training thing, so I guess I can overlook this bit of craziness. Kind of. As long as the older kids don't start singing with her.

Scissors and the Internet

No, they aren't related. Well, not in the cause-and-effect sort of way.

This morning things were going so phenominally well in kidville that I decided to go ahead and take the gyn exam. I might have even gotten most of the way through it before the kids ran out of energy on their projects and started bugging me again.

But nah, instead, Comcast picked this morning to simply stop working. No way to blame this on anyone tangible (and available for strangulation) like my husband - the neighbor's internet and phone didn't work either. Comcast has worked and worked and worked so solidly for us for so long that I was just FLOORED that it happened...this morning...while I was taking a final exam. I was a grand 'ole 14 questions in, already wondering how on earth I was going to finish it in the alotted time, when it happened. And I sat. And sat. And it didn't come back.

And I fumed.

And I called people.

And somewhere in this fuming and calling people, Boyness stopped using his scissors on his art project, and used them on Toddlerness' hair instead. Snipped a couple of times roundabouts her right ear. Some first haircut, eh?

Furious kind of touches the edges of how I felt. Kind of. But not quite. Be proud, be very proud - I did not beat the living shit out of my son. Matter of fact, I didn't even look at him. I sent him off to his bed, collected fallen hairs in a ziploc, and tried not to look at toddlerness' head until I wasn't quite so mad. Not her fault, after all. Somewhere in this time, toddlerness decided life was peachy and went about her toddlerific paper-fish rearrangements, which kind of left me without so much pissy ammo.

I got internet back, bitched at people, gave Boyness his reprieve, got the test reopened, took the test. Booked a hair appointment at the kiddie salon for Toddlerness. Got her there...and there was no consoling her. OMG she acted like she was being TORTURED. There was no holding even remotely still. Even on my lap she sobbed and flung and carried on. The poor woman who cut her hair did an admirable job and offered to touch it up if I thought I could coach some not-so-hysterics out of her for a return visit, but I don't know if that is going to happen. I think I'd rather have her hair be uneven than go through that again. I may try to fix it myself - she got a nice under layer in there before Toddlerness went completely into hysterics, but couldn't get anything remotely resembling "even" accomplished after that.





After spending too much money on a haircut, we spent too much money on lunch. But at least we all enjoyed the lunch part of the day. It is now 5:10 and I have accomplished almost nothing in my list of things to do today (which is imaginary, as anyone who knows me and my aversion to organization could have guessed).

I Love/Hate Coffee

Oh, magical stuff that gives me the staying power to sort through and reread gynecology LOs and articles until nearly 1am.

But I am not immune to its effects. I am now tired but not sleepy. And yeah, that sucks. This is why I usually don't drink anything caffeinated after 5pm.

I love that I've finished reorganizing all my Gyn stuff. I hate how I physically feel right now. Yeah. Love/Hate. Next time I'm out, I'm buying myself some decaf and mixing it in with the regular for these nighttime study sessions.

In the meantime, I'm going to go sit down with a non-school-related book and vibrate randomly until the caffeine clears my system. Or until enough of it does that fatigue overrides it and I drop instantly into an unnatural REM sleep cycle and wake up a million times tonight with random disjointed thoughts running halfway in and halfway out of my conscious awareness. Whichever.

Self-indulgent

My whining seems pretty heartily self-indulgent after listening to Louisa's day/night/day today. Hope you get the lengthy episode of unconsciousness you need, Louisa.

We're all kind of wondering, after the supporting-a-midwife primer we had this week (class ended at 8:15pm on Thursday, and I was literally in that building for over 12 hours...how ya like that one?) how in the fuck we're going to be able to handle it when we're doing both practicum and actual school work. We've been told that THIS is our hardest quarter...but that, eh, well, I wouldn't say the other ones are EASIER, just DIFFERENT.

This sounds suspiciously like the sugar-coated-shit everyone serves parents-to-be. It will be "different."

I hope that for ME, "different" means: "My life is in perpetual turmoil, and I have some days where I want to curl up in a corner and sing Itsy Bitsy Spider to myself (thanks for that visual, Kate), but I would not take it back for the WORLD, because other days are so awesome I can barely contain it...and the rest are just LIFE." Which, incidentally, is the kind of "different" that parenthood brought me.

Oh, this will be fun to read when I'm a senior student...

Vent, Rant, Rave

I'm out of energy. Finals next week, but I'm not really thinking about them. There's a schedule, but I don't know it.

Thinking about what I am doing *right now* and what is happening *right after* and no further.

It isn't even that I'm TIRED so much as I'm out of energy.

Thank GOODNESS we're on our last day of onsite.

Onsite Week Again

Here I am again.

At onsite week again.

*sigh* (again).

I love these because I love my classmates and most of the actual course material, but they are tough to get through.

In other news, I've thought forever that I'm lactose intolerant. On Saturday night, I had a huge-ass bowl of ice cream and on Sunday, I woke up with a raging headache and was an absolute, complete, utter lunatic by the afternoon. I'm thinking...am I Tony, or what? The thing is, I have relatively little dairy just because it isn't nice on me in a digestive sense...but having a raging headache, sinus pressure, and mild psychotic episode makes me think twice about the etiology here.

Not the Best Idea?

Seriously,

I should not have gotten up early this morning, started the laundry, started the fire, cleaned the kitchen, made coffee...

...sat down in front of the computer with my coffee, ahhhh....

And opened a 40-slide gyn presentation on visual findings in Reproductive Infections/STDs.

I just shouldn't have done that.

Now my coffee is all cold.

Purty

In my fantasy online shopping trip for my kids...because L linked me to this site and damn, I like their selection...I would get this:



And this:


And this:


Oh, and like everything on this page http://www.oompa.com/cgi-bin/category/woodten_toys_ba

Oh hell, and like 50 more things from that site. But the above three things, dang, if I wasn't so strapped for cash they'd be on the way here now.

Kings and Queens

Becca has been more than a little interested, lately, in Kings and Queens and how they get to be King and Queen. It all started with one of the "Enchanted Forest Chronicles" books, in which the humans have an interesting time understanding the dragons' practice of considering a King a position rather than a dragon - male or female - so either sex is just as suited to be King. So we talked a lot about human beings and why Queens are different from Kings and blah blah blah blah.

So this morning, Becca presented us with a book she'd written - entirely without my help or input. It was pretty darned long in 7yo land, so I'll supply the synopsis:

King and Queen meet, like each other plenty, get married, have a kid.

They have a fight with the wizards, and the King is killed.

The kid grows up.

The Queen meets a man with lots of muscles who works out every day and looks really good, and they decide to get married. But he's not the King, he's just the Queen's husband.

LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO OH, pity that she didn't illustrate it...

FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKK

It is 70 degrees in here and I'm freezing. My hands and feet are frozen, my ears are burning, and the toilet seat is painfully cold. Last night, my husband placed a hand on my hip and said "you're hot," and not in a husband-fishing-for-sex kind of way, either. In a horrified, are you seriously getting sick AGAIN kind of way.

If I am sick again I am going to cry. And not a pretty, shed a couple of tears kind of cry, either. An ugly, snotty, OMG should we be calling mental health services kind of cry.

In other news, my kids have been outrageously cute today. I think I'll be burying this pitiful wail of a post under some stories about them in a second here.

Hitting A Wall

I am pretty sure that my brain is finished for the quarter. Sometime around last Friday, my brain ceased to work. My ability to create a mental map of when assignments are due has completely and totally short-circuited. I forgot to turn two in and forgot another two existed. I went about my weekend blissfully unaware of my uncompleted shit, only to face the pileup on Monday. Yesterday, I managed to gather enough of my whits to author a LO for Gyn, but I'll be damned if I didn't wake up this morning thinking "fuck, I forgot to even discuss homeopathics!" But we haven't had that course yet and, well damn, it feels like I'm constantly overstretching my knowledge to write gyn LOs. I may have had enough with that class. Which is what this post was about in the first place, no? I've had enough learning for one quarter. Done. I don't really have control over it, my brain says so.

It is totally not helping any that it has been over a month since I've woken up feeling like I've had enough sleep. Every night, Her Royal Toddlerness wants to nurse a couple of times (she regressed from the nightweaned state during the flu, and hasn't yet recovered adequately to not need that extra 'meal' - I've tested it, she seems to really be hungry, waking again in a short while if I don't feed her but sleeping another good solid chunk if I do). Every morning, well before I'm ready, Boyness is invading my space and smiling at me, waiting for me to create his day for him. You'd think he'd know better, since the answer is some gentler version of "bug the fuck off!" every morning, but nah, smiling Boyness RIGHT IN MY FACE every morning, over and over again. You'd think that his happiness would be contagious, but honestly, there are mornings when it just makes me want to launch him bodily out the nearest window, to go spread sunshine somewhere ELSE and let me SLEEP, damnit.

And of course, I feel like I can't complain to Fran, because he gets even less sleep than I do. Nevermind that he NEEDS less sleep than I do...the simple fact that every morning when he leaves I am still asleep and can expect to continue being asleep for at least another hour makes it hard to complain and not feel like a big fat whiny-ass baby.

In other news, I sat in the sun for an hour yesterday and watched my kids run around at a park. Sitting in the sun, in short sleeves. Kids not demanding ANYTHING, dancing around happily, burning energy willingly. Best mental therapy I've had all month. I was actually able to sit and write something lucid in the evening.

Toddle-Logic

Toddlerness almost stole my coffee this morning. Almost. With great stealth, she slid it off the desktop, hiding it against her chest, and then...

The urge hit! Oh, the nature of Toddler! "MY COFFEE!" she shouted.

Damn, foiled again.

But this is just another of many times that the Toddler Possessiveness has destroyed what might, otherwise, have been a perfectly toddlerific time. "MY spiderman!" Really, ya think so Toddlerness? Don't you think Tony might argue that point? And there's nothing like screaming "MY MAMA!" when Boyness hugs me to get me to hug him back...extra-long.

The older two didn't do this. I swear it. I'm told everyone does it, but they didn't. Why? Beats the fuck out of me. Obviously, since Toddlerness does it, it was no stroke of genius on our part.

I half want her to grow out of it...'cause really, there's nothing like a toddler screaming "MINE!" and running away with your textbook...and half don't. I mean, there's something cute about something so small being so adamant. And she doesn't do it to pick a fight...she just, DOES it. Like she can't help it or something. I mean, really, is there any place other than Toddler Brains where screaming "MY COFFEE" would make sense?

My Life Has Been Saved by the Miracle of Vagina

Before the movie "Robots" (which was entertaining my kids while I made lunch today) there is a preview for the Garfield Movie - Garfield says "my life has been saved by the miracle of lasagna."

And my 5yo Boyness comes up with the completely out-of-left-field comment:

"Lasagna is like penis for a girl."

So I respond without thinking too much:

"Honey, lasagna is something you eat."

Oh, crap, maybe that wasn't the best way to clarify things for him...

"I mean, you eat lasagna, it is a food...you are thinking of a girl's vagina I think. The vagina is the part for girls that is in the same place the penis is on boys."

Job go buh-bye-all-gone

So they announced today at my husband's work that the layoffs over the last month or so were just the beginning. They are pulling out of the Sound altogether. Those lucky few that still exist right now will "get" to stay on to close down the stores and receive a severance package when it is all over. They estimate that this will take less than three months.

Fran has been less than enthused about his job for quite a while now. And true, it is good to be given the time to look for a new job while being paid. But dude doesn't adjust well to this kind of change and we were stressed out...very much so...already. AND this will place his new-jobness and my practicum-starting-ness into the same time frame.

And there's the possibility that we'll end up having to make do with even less income than we have now. Which might well be impossible.

Suckage.

Morality My Ass

http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/health/feeds/hscout/2007/02/07/hscout601704.html

So standing around in the kitchen making pizza (a monster of a task, I need to make it totally from scratch to oblige dairy-boy) gave me the opportunity to rattle these thoughts around in my head a bit. And fume.

To whoever would take a 16yo girl's confidence and vulnerability and hold her hostage to her parents, FUCK YOU.

To the doctors who not only do not trust their clients to think for themselves, but also don't trust them to have their own morals...FUCK YOU.

You know who gets the short end of this stick, EVERY.FUCKING.TIME? Women, that's who! You don't see any MEN being denied treatment on moral grounds, that's for damn sure.

29%...TWENTY-NINE PERCENT...of doctors would have trouble referring patients to someone who could help them. Fucking asshole self-aggrandizing pompous BASTARDS!!!!! You fucking WHAT?!

You cannot...CANNOT deny a patient a treatment they need simply because YOU have trouble fitting it into your narrow, happy little world-view. And yet 14 percent - an utterly humongous, unexcusable 14% when you consider what we're talking about - wouldn't even MENTION the availability of that treatment! WHAT. THE. FUCK.

Morals come easily to those in a position of power. It's easy to say what's right and wrong without compunction when you've never been personally, directly challenged with the necessity of doing something outside your belief system.

It is funny, oh Doctor-People, how when you follow your happy comfy little morals, WE suffer.

One week and counting?

So Toddlerness has been sick for a week and a day now. Fuck. I've resorted to something I've never done before - cycling motrin and tylenol.

If I don't get the max dose of ibuprofen at the minimum interval, I turn into a basket case. In fact, I tried the "regular" dose this morning and am sitting here feeling like a living, maybe-kind-of-breathing, pile of SHIT. Did you know that case says "do not exceed 6 tablets in 24 hours unless directed by a physician"? Well, damn, if I take the max dose at the minimum interval, that's 12 tablets a day. I'm more irked at the labelling than anything, though. The idea isn't so much that it is dangerous to take that much, as that you should go see the all-powerful doctor because obviously, you're too stupid for words and need his input.

Anyway, Toddlerness is dehydrated. She's not peeing but once, maybe twice a day. And she's complaining of "stuck poopies." But I can't get her to drink anything! She'll nurse, but my supply is downright pathetic right now. I'm drinking all the water I can handle, but I'm feeling pretty gross and it sloshes around unpleasantly when I drink it, so that isn't a whole lot. I might have to run out to the store and do the unthinkable - buy her some soda. I think she'd drink THAT.

Argh

Kids are still quite sick. That sucks.

I'm sick too now. This doesn't touch the time I probably had pertussis (and was far away from any sort of treatment whatsoever), but it is actually drawing close. I didn't have to dry my skin after my shower, it dried itself, I'm so hot.

I've got the woodstove cranked and it is 78 degrees in here with the windows open. The woodstove is a PITA to keep going at this rate without letting it get TOO hot, but the fresh air is worth it. The house was starting to smell really sick.

So on Thursday I have this all-day class with the Red Cross, and supposedly you have to call 48 hours plus in advance to reschedule without paying a fee, but the (chatty and friendly) woman on the phone was forgiving. She asked that I call back tomorrow to let them know for sure, though. I am totally alright with going even as sick as I am (practicing rigorous handwashing, sanitizer, and cough/snot etiquite), but I am not ok leaving the kids with the prearranged babysitter: my next door neighbor whose youngest might be immunocompromised although she remains undiagnosed. So unless miracles occur and all three of them wake up tomorrow morning feeling like the world is theirs for the taking, I'm going to have to reschedule. Damnit.

Meanwhile, I am having trouble being coherent enough for long enough to write this post, and homework is decidedly out of my reach. So the shit piles up.

Oh yeah, and Boyness persists in acting like he's frigging being strung up by the toenails, well, all the time, but like he's being bounced by the toenails when he coughs. I love the kid and I feel sorry for him, but listening to him Tony-ghost (a loud, low-pitch wail) is getting on my nerves. Doing my best not to scream at him about it, because it's not like it's his fault he's sick. Tried to teach him a muscle relaxation exercise to use instead, but it's only marginally helpful.

Drawing personality test

What does your drawing say about YOU?

The results of your analysis say:

You are driven and ambitious and tend to make radical moves to reach your goals.
You are a thoughtful and cautious person. You like to think about your method, seeking to pursue your goal in the most effective way.
You like following the rules and being objective. You are precise and meticulous, and like to evaluate decisions before making them.
You feel morose and are prone to lethargy.

I was more than a little lazy and I suck at the drawing thing. But it was interesting.

Interesting side note: I'm listening to Sister Hazel - "Change Your Mind" right now. "If you wanna be somebody else, change your mind..."

Thermonuclear, or something

Well, boyness spent most of yesterday afternoon/evening asleep, but during a few minutes of awakeness I took his temperature and he measured in at an impressive 103.7. This is particularly impressive because it was his first ever oral-thermometer temperature-taking (previously done with an aural thermometer) and I'm pretty sure that the tip of the thermometer wasn't actually where it was supposed to be. If it wasn't, his real temp would be even higher.

I did give him motrin, more because of the restless sleep and uncomfy dreams he seemed to be having than because of the fever, although that number was unpleasant enough to be given weighty consideration. Within half an hour that fever had been beaten into sweaty submission, and he lay as asleep as asleep can be, sprawled out atop his covers. He slept all night and seems markedly better today.

Toddlerness, on the other hand, was doing her best impression of thermonuclear radiation when I woke up to her squirming at around 3 this morning. The thermometer I used on boyness could have been used rectally on her, but I wasn't thinking it was worth it. She was HOT, she was uncomfy, she was getting medicine. Which broke her fever, but didn't seem to get her comfortable enough to go back to sleep. She cried and whined and wiggled until I gave up, got out of bed, and hit her with the one-two punch of "Lilo and Stitch" and a bowl of dry cereal, and shambled to the kitchen for coffee (and, incidentally, to do dishes...pure fucking torture this morning but I knew this might happen when I put them off yesterday). She's sitting on the couch, jealously guarding her hot sock and fleece blanket, and looking a little glazed over but mostly content.

Oh, and for anyone who heard me bitching about LRQ pain on Friday...I am no longer in pain, but there is a palpable mass there. I think it is an ovarian dealie, but what exactly it is I don't know, and I'm going to go research that right now.

Adding: ok, I hear from ~L~ that this LLQ thing is some virus thingy that her husband and several people they know have had. Which makes more sense, because it doesn't FEEL like it involves my ovary, but it was the only thing that I had a lead on at the moment. So it should go away. Good.

Becca is coughing now too. Damniiiiiittttt.