I am approaching my second solid week of medical leave with my son. This is, I believe, the longest contiguous break I've had from work since he was born and my maternity leave ended. So far, so good.
T-man is healing up really well. He is still sore right at the surgery spot but has continued to refuse any pain medication. The soreness only affects bathroom stops and wiping (hey, you don't want to hear about body functions, go find another blog, LOL). He's still on a bigger-than-before dose of Miralax to make sure that nothing hurts coming out. He is about 50% in underwear, 50% in pull-ups. The extra Miralax sometimes gets things moving a bit too fast for him. Before his surgery he wore a panty-liner in his big-boys every day because the prolapse would rub and bleed through his pants. This past week, when not fighting liquid stool, his pants are staying dry and clean!
Besides that part, it's just summer break. He can't sit in a bathtub or pool, but showers are fine, so we have gotten out the sprinklers and water guns. We decorated kites then flew them at the park. He did play at the park, but knows not to go down a slide on his bottom (yes, for once I'm telling him to go on his tummy, feet first of course). The kids have had way more screen time than average (because what's a good old fashioned summer break without some mind-numbing couch potato time). Every morning at breakfast time they also do a couple of pages out of school workbooks (multiplication and division practice for the soon-to-be 4th grader, and a variety of reading/writing/math/clocks/time/etc sheets for the little guy). We've been to the library to sign up for their summer reading program, and collected a prize each. We went to a concert (Casting Crowns, at Six Flags, in the pouring rain and thunder).
We still have a few to-do's on our wish list to check off. Paint pottery, see a movie, go to the zoo, do some drawing. And finish writing the novel I've been working on for 1.5 years. (Seein as how I've been known to hammer out a first draft in like 3 months, this particular story is driving me insane) I'm down to 2 scenes before I can type The End and set it aside to "rest"...I think editing this one will be a breeze because my self-editing process takes more of a fixed amount of time. Also, I abhor this story. It's either the worst thing I've ever written or it's brilliant (my money's on "worst").
I think by the follow-up visit next week that I will have little to no vacation or sick time left, so my husband will be the primary sick-day-parent for the next several months. I'm not upset with that. I'm a little sad that I'm unlikely to have enough vacation left for an actual Vacation this year, but 2.5 weeks off in June isn't bad. Wish I could do this every year (minus the surgery of course).
Showing posts with label Working Mother. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Working Mother. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Monday, June 10, 2013
Number Six
Last week was my son's sixth surgery. Granted, #5 was tubes in his ears, a procedure that was fast and very commonplace. But #6 was yet another bowel-related one, this time for a rectal prolapse--to repair a small amount of "mucosa" that stuck out his bottom. Looked a lot like a hemorrhoid, and it was constantly irritated. Poor kid had to wear a pantyliner in his big boys so that the bits of blood and mucous didn't bleed through onto his clothes. And though he actually has really good bowel control (amazing, given that he didn't actually have an anus at birth), the prolapse got in the way sometimes of him feeling when he needed to go or when he was finished.
Wednesday, he got to do a "bowel prep". If you've ever had a colonoscopy, then you can empathize. Instead of the "golightly", they had him drinking large quantities of Gatorade with Miralax. This approach is apparently as effective as the golightly but gentler and tastes better. We started around lunchtime, and he got to choose his flavor of drink for each successive glass (we had like 6 different colors on hand to pick from). We played video games. We watched TV. For a good long while, he sat on the toilet and played on a tablet or Leapster. I set up a small folding table in front of him so we didn't lose any electronics into the potty (something that has happened in the past..)
Thursday morning we arrived at the hospital at 7:15. He changed into hospital jammies, and tried (vehemently) to decline having his blood pressure taken. For some reason, those silly blood pressure cuffs terrify him (makes cardiologist visits load of fun). He told everyone who walked in the door that he didn't want any shots. They gave him a relaxer, most of which he spit out because it tasted bad. He got to choose the scent for the mask they would use for the gas that would put him to sleep. The IV went in when he was already out (and it was more of a soft tube rather than a stiff needle).
The surgery went well. He slept for quite a while He was awake and ordering lunch by about 2pm--pancakes and sausage. Unfortunately for us, he had a roommate for the hospital stay. The other little boy had had some sort of spinal surgery and had already been there for a few days (and would stay a few days longer). That kid was not comfortable, and frequently fussed, sometimes outright crying. It bothered my husband and I more than it did our son. The two boys were of similar age, and they did occasionally watch the same TV show and talk a bit through the curtains.
T-man could go on "adventures" as soon as he felt up to it, and the nurse found us a sort of car-type wagon complete with steering wheel. The IV pumps can run on battery for hours, so we'd just unplug and try not to run over tubes as we explored. St. Louis Children's Hospital has a gorgeous rooftop garden that overlooks Forest Park. They also have a patient playroom. The first floor has a big ball track machine where rubber balls travel through a maze of tracks and spirals, sometimes bouncing into baskets, sometimes ringing bells. We visited it a couple of times.
I spent the night in the hospital while my husband and my mom (who visited from Indy) drove home to sleep. There is a chair that pulled out into an approximation of a bed. It would have been better if our roommates had actually turned out the lights on their half of the room, or at least turned off the TV before midnight. My little guy fell asleep around 9:30 and stayed out all night. I woke up about every hour all night as something beeped, someone fussed, the lights were on, a nurse came into the room for one kid or the other.
Thankfully, we came home on Friday. T-man is doing great. He has some restrictions on activities, but nothing horrible. No tub baths. No climbing. Try to not sit straight on his bottom for too long. Be careful of the area (no itching!). For the moment he's wearing Pull-Ups, but even with his digestive system still off-balance from all the Miralax, he's continent. So we may be back in big-boy underwear pretty fast. Ideally with no liners, but only time will tell if the surgery completely fixes that problem, or if he will always need a little extra backup.
I'm off work with him for about two weeks while he heals enough to go to summer day camp. By the end of it, I will be out of sick days for quite a while, but that's fine. As a happy side effect, my daughter gets a 2-week break from summer camps. Neither of my kids have ever gotten a true summer vacation where they play outside and sit around the house feeling bored. That's a big downside to having a non-education career--I don't get summers off either. We can't go swimming or do big exercise-intensive activities. but it should still be a decent little break. And if the weather cooperates, we may get to watch our deck being built before we start back into the daily grind.
Wednesday, he got to do a "bowel prep". If you've ever had a colonoscopy, then you can empathize. Instead of the "golightly", they had him drinking large quantities of Gatorade with Miralax. This approach is apparently as effective as the golightly but gentler and tastes better. We started around lunchtime, and he got to choose his flavor of drink for each successive glass (we had like 6 different colors on hand to pick from). We played video games. We watched TV. For a good long while, he sat on the toilet and played on a tablet or Leapster. I set up a small folding table in front of him so we didn't lose any electronics into the potty (something that has happened in the past..)
Thursday morning we arrived at the hospital at 7:15. He changed into hospital jammies, and tried (vehemently) to decline having his blood pressure taken. For some reason, those silly blood pressure cuffs terrify him (makes cardiologist visits load of fun). He told everyone who walked in the door that he didn't want any shots. They gave him a relaxer, most of which he spit out because it tasted bad. He got to choose the scent for the mask they would use for the gas that would put him to sleep. The IV went in when he was already out (and it was more of a soft tube rather than a stiff needle).
The surgery went well. He slept for quite a while He was awake and ordering lunch by about 2pm--pancakes and sausage. Unfortunately for us, he had a roommate for the hospital stay. The other little boy had had some sort of spinal surgery and had already been there for a few days (and would stay a few days longer). That kid was not comfortable, and frequently fussed, sometimes outright crying. It bothered my husband and I more than it did our son. The two boys were of similar age, and they did occasionally watch the same TV show and talk a bit through the curtains.
T-man could go on "adventures" as soon as he felt up to it, and the nurse found us a sort of car-type wagon complete with steering wheel. The IV pumps can run on battery for hours, so we'd just unplug and try not to run over tubes as we explored. St. Louis Children's Hospital has a gorgeous rooftop garden that overlooks Forest Park. They also have a patient playroom. The first floor has a big ball track machine where rubber balls travel through a maze of tracks and spirals, sometimes bouncing into baskets, sometimes ringing bells. We visited it a couple of times.
I spent the night in the hospital while my husband and my mom (who visited from Indy) drove home to sleep. There is a chair that pulled out into an approximation of a bed. It would have been better if our roommates had actually turned out the lights on their half of the room, or at least turned off the TV before midnight. My little guy fell asleep around 9:30 and stayed out all night. I woke up about every hour all night as something beeped, someone fussed, the lights were on, a nurse came into the room for one kid or the other.
Thankfully, we came home on Friday. T-man is doing great. He has some restrictions on activities, but nothing horrible. No tub baths. No climbing. Try to not sit straight on his bottom for too long. Be careful of the area (no itching!). For the moment he's wearing Pull-Ups, but even with his digestive system still off-balance from all the Miralax, he's continent. So we may be back in big-boy underwear pretty fast. Ideally with no liners, but only time will tell if the surgery completely fixes that problem, or if he will always need a little extra backup.
I'm off work with him for about two weeks while he heals enough to go to summer day camp. By the end of it, I will be out of sick days for quite a while, but that's fine. As a happy side effect, my daughter gets a 2-week break from summer camps. Neither of my kids have ever gotten a true summer vacation where they play outside and sit around the house feeling bored. That's a big downside to having a non-education career--I don't get summers off either. We can't go swimming or do big exercise-intensive activities. but it should still be a decent little break. And if the weather cooperates, we may get to watch our deck being built before we start back into the daily grind.
Tuesday, April 09, 2013
Project Backyard - Take 3
Being impatient, busy, and picky is not a good combination.
In round 2 of our patio/yard planning adventure, we had a
very nice and seemingly very knowledgeable landscape designer come and draw a
plan and give an estimate. His plans for
fixing drainage in the yard, for the plantings, and even somewhat for the patio
itself. But of course, there’s a catch.
Our yard has a couple of design challenges, and so far
neither of the two contractors we’ve talked to have (in my opinion) adequately
addressed one of those. Our breakfast
room is in the middle of the back of our house, and bumps back into the yard,
with an additional bay-window-shaped bump. The glass door (currently a slider,
though I’d like to swap it for a French door) is in the middle of the bay. The threshold of the sliding door sits about 40” above the grass level. That’s too high for a simple step or two down
to a ground-level patio. Our current,
temporary, wood staircase required 5 steps down to the grass, and juts about 5-feet
into the yard (remember that the whole breakfast room already juts into the
yard).
In short, because of how our breakfast room sits on the back of the house, the stairs out of it to the yard cut the yard in two.
In short, because of how our breakfast room sits on the back of the house, the stairs out of it to the yard cut the yard in two.
The stamped-concrete contractor suggested we have a nicer
set of decking steps built. We could
choose composite for the stairs, handrails that were vinyl or pvc (and these
days those come in several colors that would coordinate nicely with the house).
Great, except that what we end up with, looking down from above, is basically a
6ftx6ft square out of the middle of a section of patio that is approximately
12x12 (there would be another larger section of patio where we could actually put the
table and grill). That’s a lot of concrete whose sole purpose seems to be
making a focal point out of stairs, since the space around the stairs is too
narrow to actually put furniture on.
The garden landscape designer basically suggested the same
thing, except that he proposed to build the stairs themselves out of paver
stones to match the proposed paver patio. So his 6ftx6ft chunk out of the middle
of the 12x12 patio would be solid stone. And his way would leave this strange
little 3 foot high by 3 foot wide by 7 foot long crawl tunnel under the bay
window itself. (I'm sure the kids would be thrilled, but it's going to look silly from the side)
*sigh* With both guys, I told them that I hate the stairs
and that I want something else. I didn’t mean just a different material. I don’t
want to spend my money buying stairs and concrete for under the stairs. I want
to actually sit there or grill there or have it look pretty. Patio with stairs
taking up the middle doesn’t accomplish any of those objectives.
If we stick to the patio idea, the best option for "something else" is to make the patio in two levels. The higher level would be 2-3 steps down from the breakfast room, and would require building-up the space with fill dirt and a retaining wall. It would then step down 1-2 more steps to a lower patio off the side. Stairs would still be required, but would be split up, smaller, nothing quite so huge and dramatic and did-I-mention-huge. But building up a retaining wall and laying a patio on it is even more expensive than building giant stone monolithic stairs, and would trade the crawl-tunnel for a 4-5 foot ledge that the kids can jump off of (see, the door is 40" from ground level, but the yard slopes away from the house).
If we stick to the patio idea, the best option for "something else" is to make the patio in two levels. The higher level would be 2-3 steps down from the breakfast room, and would require building-up the space with fill dirt and a retaining wall. It would then step down 1-2 more steps to a lower patio off the side. Stairs would still be required, but would be split up, smaller, nothing quite so huge and dramatic and did-I-mention-huge. But building up a retaining wall and laying a patio on it is even more expensive than building giant stone monolithic stairs, and would trade the crawl-tunnel for a 4-5 foot ledge that the kids can jump off of (see, the door is 40" from ground level, but the yard slopes away from the house).
On to plan C. This
time, a deck designer. If I’m going to give up a chunk out of the middle of
our yard, I want it to be useful. I'm thinking a 12x12 deck off the breakfast room, with
stairs off one side down to the patio (rather than toward the middle of the
yard, further severing it in two). The stairs would only need to be
36 or 48 inches wide, not 72, and that 12x12 foot space in the middle of the yard
become seating area instead of a shrine to the stairs.
Then we call the garden landscaper back to re-work the stone patio at ground level (about 2/3 of the original patio, with no stairs), plus the rest of the grading, drainage, and trees that he proposed. I am probably being overly optimistic that this will be the final iteration of our landscape design.
Then we call the garden landscaper back to re-work the stone patio at ground level (about 2/3 of the original patio, with no stairs), plus the rest of the grading, drainage, and trees that he proposed. I am probably being overly optimistic that this will be the final iteration of our landscape design.
What I would really love at this point is for one of those
tv shows to come in and make me a new yard in two days. The whole thing,
start-to-finish, concept-to-bbq-party. Every communication with a contractor takes
a full week—one week from initial contact to when they show up at your house,
another week before you get a quote back, another week before they come back to
discuss revising the plan. Maybe it would go faster if I didn’t work every day.
But then, we wouldn’t be able to afford to pay for anything.
I should have started in January, and called everyone in the
phone book at once. Maybe then we would have hada nice yard in time for spring. Because right now, I'm not sure we will get this pulled together before Memorial Day.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Working From Home -- The Good, The Bad, The Cartoon Theme Songs
At the beginning of this year, I changed jobs within my company. I'm still in software, but with a different group of software folks. It's new. It's exciting. It came with a laptop.
It has been over ten years since I last had a work laptop and any expectation that I could work from home, at least occasionally. I feel like I'm a bit behind the times, but catching up fast. And I kinda like it.
The Good:
I've had a part-time schedule for years (4 days a week) so I can help deal with the craziness of kids. But even with that, it was still hard to squeeze in enough hours sometimes. With this new job, I have gained flexibility to go with my part-time schedule.
After less than two weeks at my new position, my kids had a day off school and I had a teleconference to attend. I found myself sitting in my home office on my laptop with a headset plugged into my cell phone while the kids watched a movie right above me. It worked pretty well.
Working from home lets me squeeze in an extra 2-3 hours on a school half-day or a day with some other interruption, without having to spend a little over an hour round-trip in the car going to work. That commute isn't too bad, unless you compare it to such a short amount of work.
The Bad
You know how tempting it is to surf the web if you have downtime? Well, from home I have access to the web on my personal laptop, my Kindle, my phone. There's a TV. There's laundry. Having a dedicated office space helps. My space doesn't have a door, but nor is it the kitchen table where I have to look at last night's dirty dishes. Did I mention my personal laptop? It totally lives on the same desk where I set up my work laptop...
Sometimes its just too quiet in here. It helps that my work teammates are just an IM away (and since many of them actually work from different cities and/or occasionally from home, IM'ing is a normal method of communication). But still, sometimes I wish the cats would answer me with words.
Having access to a fully stocked pantry and a fully functional kitchen can lead to much fresher, tastier lunches than what I can fit into a lunchbox and nuke at work. It also leads to snacking. Lots of snacking. No quarters required. Frankly, this could be good or bad.
The Cartoon Theme Songs
With my youngest home sick for three days this week, hubby and I took turns staying home with him. By day three, he had basically no fever and just a persistent cough. And way too much energy. Happily, he can now run the TV remote. Unhappily, his show of coice is Sponge Bob. Or Dora. Or Max and Ruby. Or Umi Zoomi.
Oh the noise.
There is something surreal about attempting to concentrate on work while Dora is singing about the Colores Lindos in the next room.
The Rest
Everyone likes to joke about working in their PJs. I suppose I could, but I feel the need to get dressed in the morning. Helps me wake up. I could totally see the benefits of working a few morning hours in my exercise clothes, squeezing in a Zumba class, and then showering and heading back to the keyboard. Not that I've managed to do that, yet.
Did I mention that in the previous eight or so years I probably attended one telecon total? I have been used to working directly face-to-face with people, or else not at all. For all that working at home can lead to isolation, I was probably more isolated working with a limited group of people in a single location than I am sitting in my home office with a headset and Webex.
I can see how this type of working environment could easily lead to a manager or employer abusing their people's work expectations. So far, I don't see any of that. I'm working with a group of people who are spread out geographically, who habitually flex their hours around family, and who seem to be given the trust and independence to get their job done without undue pressure from above or the dreaded micro-management (which would totally kill any benefits of working from home on a disjointed schedule).
Gosh I hope it stays that way. Because I can totally get used to this.
It has been over ten years since I last had a work laptop and any expectation that I could work from home, at least occasionally. I feel like I'm a bit behind the times, but catching up fast. And I kinda like it.
The Good:
I've had a part-time schedule for years (4 days a week) so I can help deal with the craziness of kids. But even with that, it was still hard to squeeze in enough hours sometimes. With this new job, I have gained flexibility to go with my part-time schedule.
After less than two weeks at my new position, my kids had a day off school and I had a teleconference to attend. I found myself sitting in my home office on my laptop with a headset plugged into my cell phone while the kids watched a movie right above me. It worked pretty well.
Working from home lets me squeeze in an extra 2-3 hours on a school half-day or a day with some other interruption, without having to spend a little over an hour round-trip in the car going to work. That commute isn't too bad, unless you compare it to such a short amount of work.
The Bad
You know how tempting it is to surf the web if you have downtime? Well, from home I have access to the web on my personal laptop, my Kindle, my phone. There's a TV. There's laundry. Having a dedicated office space helps. My space doesn't have a door, but nor is it the kitchen table where I have to look at last night's dirty dishes. Did I mention my personal laptop? It totally lives on the same desk where I set up my work laptop...
Sometimes its just too quiet in here. It helps that my work teammates are just an IM away (and since many of them actually work from different cities and/or occasionally from home, IM'ing is a normal method of communication). But still, sometimes I wish the cats would answer me with words.
Having access to a fully stocked pantry and a fully functional kitchen can lead to much fresher, tastier lunches than what I can fit into a lunchbox and nuke at work. It also leads to snacking. Lots of snacking. No quarters required. Frankly, this could be good or bad.
The Cartoon Theme Songs
With my youngest home sick for three days this week, hubby and I took turns staying home with him. By day three, he had basically no fever and just a persistent cough. And way too much energy. Happily, he can now run the TV remote. Unhappily, his show of coice is Sponge Bob. Or Dora. Or Max and Ruby. Or Umi Zoomi.
Oh the noise.
There is something surreal about attempting to concentrate on work while Dora is singing about the Colores Lindos in the next room.
The Rest
Everyone likes to joke about working in their PJs. I suppose I could, but I feel the need to get dressed in the morning. Helps me wake up. I could totally see the benefits of working a few morning hours in my exercise clothes, squeezing in a Zumba class, and then showering and heading back to the keyboard. Not that I've managed to do that, yet.
Did I mention that in the previous eight or so years I probably attended one telecon total? I have been used to working directly face-to-face with people, or else not at all. For all that working at home can lead to isolation, I was probably more isolated working with a limited group of people in a single location than I am sitting in my home office with a headset and Webex.
I can see how this type of working environment could easily lead to a manager or employer abusing their people's work expectations. So far, I don't see any of that. I'm working with a group of people who are spread out geographically, who habitually flex their hours around family, and who seem to be given the trust and independence to get their job done without undue pressure from above or the dreaded micro-management (which would totally kill any benefits of working from home on a disjointed schedule).
Gosh I hope it stays that way. Because I can totally get used to this.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Digging Out
One year ago, our family had barely hidden most of our moving boxes. We were paying two mortgages and enjoying a short breather in the mad rush of keeping our former home sufficiently kept up for showing. We had painted out the last of the bold colors that had garnered snarky remarks from house shoppers (a butter-yellow dining room and bubblegum pink laundry room were the final victims of the neutral paint). There was, for a month or two, no need to mow grass. We had not yet been invaded by birds or attacked by a massive hail storm.
The Christmas decorations had been put away, leaving corners and walls looking a little sad. School was in session. There were hints of drought, but only in the form of an unseasonably warm winter.
We were getting by. I guess that’s not too bad, in the grand scheme of things.
We were buried under too much credit card debt (too much for our own personal preferences, anyway, though it was a number that seems lower than many “average” credit card debt figures I see online). We were paying too much for a school where both of our children were struggling (despite both being well above average in intellect). Though were certainly paying our bills on time, we had almost nothing leftover for unexpected expenses, let alone niceties. We were frugal with extras for the kids, slow in signing them up for school activities, cringed every time they got a birthday party invitation. We shopped every grocery sale, cutting back on nicer items like steaks and alcohol, focusing on sandwiches and other low-cost foods.
I was stressed out and frustrated everywhere I turned. The house needed a few things (like a patio, and bedroom furniture, and some area rugs), but I had no money to make any of that happen. Lots of ideas, no way to implement them. I had finally achieved one of my lifetime goals—to publish a novel. But instead of basking in the fun of promoting a new book, I had no money to spend on a few basic items for giveaways or inexpensive advertisements. And I was published through a small press and digital-first, and really tired of other writers either rolling their eyes at the situation (after all, I hadn’t received an advance and wasn’t with a well-known press, didn’t have a print run, etc). I was tired of explaining to non-writers that I had an e-book and there were no print copies available. And really tired of folks asking me if that was a picture of me on the cover, or if the story was about me and my husband (its Fiction! Fiction means make-believe! Really! My real-life love story would put a reader to sleep because it is so wonderfully normal and boring).
I had too many people wanting too many things from me, and no one ever seemed happy with anything I did. My book wasn’t good enough, wasn’t legitimate enough, wasn’t promoted enough. The day job was full of conflicts. The new house felt unfinished. No one wanted the old house. My youngest was acting out in school and not listening (we were just learning that he couldn’t pass a hearing test, so “listening” was not his problem—“hearing” was), my oldest thought she was no good at math because she had bad handwriting and a messy desk (!). And all of our spare time was spent cleaning, painting, sprucing the old house, or else working extra hours to pay for its mortgage. There was no money in the budget for hiring a babysitter so my husband and I could have some much-needed adult time (nor was there money for a dinner out even if we had a babysitter).
I should have been feeling great about myself. New house, fancy school, beautiful kids, two blossoming careers of my own, a scout leader.
Instead I just wanted to crawl under a rock and hide.
If you are wondering what that kind of stress does to a person, well, if the person in question is a writer, it stops her from writing. I barely wrote a handful of pages for nearly a year. I mostly quit blogging (here, at my writing blog, or at my cooking blog). For the family, it made us yell. A lot. (I’m sure that didn’t help with our kids’ self-esteem or behavioral issues).
In some ways, it was good for us. We ate at home together. We got in the habit of having family movie nights (pulling from our collection of DVD’s or a free on-demand movie on TV). We found low-cost ways to play together (and I scrounged a lot of coupons for things like trips to the movie theater). We didn’t shop so much, and we all worked on fiscal responsibility. We appreciated how lucky we were (we weren’t “poor”—poor people don’t own two houses and attend private schools!). My husband and I grew closer, if you can believe it. Sometimes I think stress can drive a couple apart because of hurt and blame. But we both realized that we weren’t blaming each other, and that the way out of the stress was to work together and not against each other. We had to re-assure each other of that frequently.
After way too much time and effort and stress, we finally sold the house in November. No, the house was not the sole source of our stress. But it was the most visible sign of it. Getting it off our minds (and off our budget) brought a huge sense of relief, though it wasn’t really the first change that happened. First, We moved our kids from a more expensive private school to a more local parish school to save money, driving time, and sanity. While the youngest still struggles with sitting still and listening to directions, he has come a long way. My oldest was recently disappointed at her lowest grade—a 94%. My husband’s job situation both improved and stabilized. Then came the sale.
We have regained money, and time, and sanity. My day job has now shifted a little to one that allows me to occasionally work from home (helpful for managing the frequent school breaks and for squeezing in enough hours around the family schedule). I have actually been writing! (finishing one short work and most of another novel-length one, plus looking at my options for getting more of my work published) We started going out to eat again. We are starting to finish some of the unfinished work on the new house—buying some furniture, thinking about landscape plans, putting up decorations (like we intend to stay in the house for a while). We are even evaluating hiring out lawn care and house cleaning so that we can spend our after-work time on things like homework, soccer practice, and actual relaxation.
This year I hope for peace. I hope for a return to normalcy, whatever the new normal is for us. I hope to laugh more and smile more. I hope to help my children laugh more and smile more. I hope to be able to really enjoy my new job, really enjoy the writing and publishing process. And I hope I don’t need to move again for a long, long time.
The Christmas decorations had been put away, leaving corners and walls looking a little sad. School was in session. There were hints of drought, but only in the form of an unseasonably warm winter.
We were getting by. I guess that’s not too bad, in the grand scheme of things.
We were buried under too much credit card debt (too much for our own personal preferences, anyway, though it was a number that seems lower than many “average” credit card debt figures I see online). We were paying too much for a school where both of our children were struggling (despite both being well above average in intellect). Though were certainly paying our bills on time, we had almost nothing leftover for unexpected expenses, let alone niceties. We were frugal with extras for the kids, slow in signing them up for school activities, cringed every time they got a birthday party invitation. We shopped every grocery sale, cutting back on nicer items like steaks and alcohol, focusing on sandwiches and other low-cost foods.
I was stressed out and frustrated everywhere I turned. The house needed a few things (like a patio, and bedroom furniture, and some area rugs), but I had no money to make any of that happen. Lots of ideas, no way to implement them. I had finally achieved one of my lifetime goals—to publish a novel. But instead of basking in the fun of promoting a new book, I had no money to spend on a few basic items for giveaways or inexpensive advertisements. And I was published through a small press and digital-first, and really tired of other writers either rolling their eyes at the situation (after all, I hadn’t received an advance and wasn’t with a well-known press, didn’t have a print run, etc). I was tired of explaining to non-writers that I had an e-book and there were no print copies available. And really tired of folks asking me if that was a picture of me on the cover, or if the story was about me and my husband (its Fiction! Fiction means make-believe! Really! My real-life love story would put a reader to sleep because it is so wonderfully normal and boring).
I had too many people wanting too many things from me, and no one ever seemed happy with anything I did. My book wasn’t good enough, wasn’t legitimate enough, wasn’t promoted enough. The day job was full of conflicts. The new house felt unfinished. No one wanted the old house. My youngest was acting out in school and not listening (we were just learning that he couldn’t pass a hearing test, so “listening” was not his problem—“hearing” was), my oldest thought she was no good at math because she had bad handwriting and a messy desk (!). And all of our spare time was spent cleaning, painting, sprucing the old house, or else working extra hours to pay for its mortgage. There was no money in the budget for hiring a babysitter so my husband and I could have some much-needed adult time (nor was there money for a dinner out even if we had a babysitter).
I should have been feeling great about myself. New house, fancy school, beautiful kids, two blossoming careers of my own, a scout leader.
Instead I just wanted to crawl under a rock and hide.
If you are wondering what that kind of stress does to a person, well, if the person in question is a writer, it stops her from writing. I barely wrote a handful of pages for nearly a year. I mostly quit blogging (here, at my writing blog, or at my cooking blog). For the family, it made us yell. A lot. (I’m sure that didn’t help with our kids’ self-esteem or behavioral issues).
In some ways, it was good for us. We ate at home together. We got in the habit of having family movie nights (pulling from our collection of DVD’s or a free on-demand movie on TV). We found low-cost ways to play together (and I scrounged a lot of coupons for things like trips to the movie theater). We didn’t shop so much, and we all worked on fiscal responsibility. We appreciated how lucky we were (we weren’t “poor”—poor people don’t own two houses and attend private schools!). My husband and I grew closer, if you can believe it. Sometimes I think stress can drive a couple apart because of hurt and blame. But we both realized that we weren’t blaming each other, and that the way out of the stress was to work together and not against each other. We had to re-assure each other of that frequently.
After way too much time and effort and stress, we finally sold the house in November. No, the house was not the sole source of our stress. But it was the most visible sign of it. Getting it off our minds (and off our budget) brought a huge sense of relief, though it wasn’t really the first change that happened. First, We moved our kids from a more expensive private school to a more local parish school to save money, driving time, and sanity. While the youngest still struggles with sitting still and listening to directions, he has come a long way. My oldest was recently disappointed at her lowest grade—a 94%. My husband’s job situation both improved and stabilized. Then came the sale.
We have regained money, and time, and sanity. My day job has now shifted a little to one that allows me to occasionally work from home (helpful for managing the frequent school breaks and for squeezing in enough hours around the family schedule). I have actually been writing! (finishing one short work and most of another novel-length one, plus looking at my options for getting more of my work published) We started going out to eat again. We are starting to finish some of the unfinished work on the new house—buying some furniture, thinking about landscape plans, putting up decorations (like we intend to stay in the house for a while). We are even evaluating hiring out lawn care and house cleaning so that we can spend our after-work time on things like homework, soccer practice, and actual relaxation.
This year I hope for peace. I hope for a return to normalcy, whatever the new normal is for us. I hope to laugh more and smile more. I hope to help my children laugh more and smile more. I hope to be able to really enjoy my new job, really enjoy the writing and publishing process. And I hope I don’t need to move again for a long, long time.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
The First Days
I find myself facing the new school year with a bit of relief for the first time in four years. Although my daughter's former school had much to recommend it, there was a certain unrealistically hight level of expectation to which we as parents were held.
The problem may be all in my head (no doubut it was at least partly in my head). But a simple set of rules was never quite enough--the rules were rigidly, strictly enforced. And a simple call for volunteers was never enough. There was constant pressure, reminder emails, surveys, committees that needed help. And nor was a hefty tuition payment sufficient. No, there were as many phone calls and emails and hand-written letters and postcards all asking for donations. The uniforms were policed to the level where there were exactly two specific styles of shoes in the whole school: one for the girls, one for the boys. We were expected to label every pencil, every marker, every crayon in the box of school supplies. And it was rare that a nightly homework assignment came home that did not require an equal amount of active participation from the parent as well the child.
It was a lot of work. The school prides itself on the level of achievement of its pupils. No doubt. Any kid with the sheer amount of resources and energy behind them cannot help but succeed. (At least until they are set free and required to achieve their own goals using only their own energy and resources).
I don't expect parenthood to be easy. And I don't expect our new school to be lax where they need to be strict. They still have uniforms, they still need volunteers, there will still be hopeful requests for donations (though so far I have seen more information on applying for scholarships than on demands to fund them). There will still be homework that will still require our help.
But I hope there will also be some breathing room. Some expectation that we as parents have multiple responsibilities, and those responsibilities are not all focused on our children. We have jobs and other commitments too. Our money only goes so far. Our label makers only print so fast. And our children need to learn to keep track of their crayons without relying on a nametag. And to be able to choose from an appropriate set of choices when getting dressed in the morning, instead of always donning the one prescribed option.
The problem may be all in my head (no doubut it was at least partly in my head). But a simple set of rules was never quite enough--the rules were rigidly, strictly enforced. And a simple call for volunteers was never enough. There was constant pressure, reminder emails, surveys, committees that needed help. And nor was a hefty tuition payment sufficient. No, there were as many phone calls and emails and hand-written letters and postcards all asking for donations. The uniforms were policed to the level where there were exactly two specific styles of shoes in the whole school: one for the girls, one for the boys. We were expected to label every pencil, every marker, every crayon in the box of school supplies. And it was rare that a nightly homework assignment came home that did not require an equal amount of active participation from the parent as well the child.
It was a lot of work. The school prides itself on the level of achievement of its pupils. No doubt. Any kid with the sheer amount of resources and energy behind them cannot help but succeed. (At least until they are set free and required to achieve their own goals using only their own energy and resources).
I don't expect parenthood to be easy. And I don't expect our new school to be lax where they need to be strict. They still have uniforms, they still need volunteers, there will still be hopeful requests for donations (though so far I have seen more information on applying for scholarships than on demands to fund them). There will still be homework that will still require our help.
But I hope there will also be some breathing room. Some expectation that we as parents have multiple responsibilities, and those responsibilities are not all focused on our children. We have jobs and other commitments too. Our money only goes so far. Our label makers only print so fast. And our children need to learn to keep track of their crayons without relying on a nametag. And to be able to choose from an appropriate set of choices when getting dressed in the morning, instead of always donning the one prescribed option.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
All Our Moments Are Sharp
So, early last week I started a post about the various things we've been up to this summer. Some various new experiences for the kids (Cardinals game, Six Flags, fishing). Some non-news (we still own two houses). We celebrated our eleventh anniversary with an indoor barbeque (because it was 108 outside and we're just not that mean to our friends). We've been busy at work with looming deadlines. I'm totally not writing any fiction (which sucks because I would like to but can't seem to string together more than ten minutes in a week and it takes that long to get my ancient laptop booted up anymore).
Then Monday night at dinner time, my husband got an upset stomach. We had eaten BBQ leftovers for dinner, so I immediately suspected food poisoning and began cleaning out the fridge. Tuesday he stayed home and barely answered the phone. By the time the kids and I got home from work and camp, he hurt too bad to sit up or walk.
We have now visited the nearby hospital's emergency room. And hubby has had his appendix privileges revoked. (Or maybe I should say that he had the most painful and least effective form of weight loss surgery. Or that he had a useless organ removed, though that sort of wording tends to lead to lewd jokes).
Happily, we got him there before the thing ruptured, and nowadays appendectomies are done laproscopically. So he is now the tummy-scar-winner of the family, with three individual incisions vs my single (though twice-used) C-section one and Trystan's dual scars from colostomy and his own emergency laproscopic bowel surgery at age 3 months. I hope to God that Charlotte never attempts to follow the rest of the family's lead and get any of her own. Her unblemished belly is quite nice as it is.
This is the first time I've had to deal with an adult in the hosptial besides myself. I had a funny moment when I realized that every doctor, nurse, aide, anesthesiologist, etc were directing their questions to my husband instead of me, and that I didn't need to answer anything. Which makes sense, of course, as I am married to a competent adult who is capable of taking charge of his own healthcare. But prior to Tuesday/Wednesday we had a total of eight surgeries in the family over eight years that involved either me or my children. I'm always the one answering the questions. Now that I think about it, my husband did have one outpatient procedure a couple of years ago, but I wasn't really there for it.
He is home and doing really well. We are both just tired--me from staying up all night in the hospital and doing a crazy amount of driving to keep the kids on a normal-ish schedule. And hubby because he actually had all the pain, inflammation, and surgery and all that.
So, hopefully soon we will be back to our regularly-scheduled crazy lives. We have a groupon for Rascals tickets that we haven't yet managed to use. And a new roof and hopefully siding (plus a bonus ceiling repair due to leaky roof) coming soon on our old house. I guess I need to hire a landscaper to start mowing it, as I have proven myself incapable of doing the hill, and my husband is barred from doing that sort of thing for a few weeks. And, of course, the stores are starting to get school supplies in so I guess I need to start thinking about class lists, school uniforms, and backpacks.
Then Monday night at dinner time, my husband got an upset stomach. We had eaten BBQ leftovers for dinner, so I immediately suspected food poisoning and began cleaning out the fridge. Tuesday he stayed home and barely answered the phone. By the time the kids and I got home from work and camp, he hurt too bad to sit up or walk.
We have now visited the nearby hospital's emergency room. And hubby has had his appendix privileges revoked. (Or maybe I should say that he had the most painful and least effective form of weight loss surgery. Or that he had a useless organ removed, though that sort of wording tends to lead to lewd jokes).
Happily, we got him there before the thing ruptured, and nowadays appendectomies are done laproscopically. So he is now the tummy-scar-winner of the family, with three individual incisions vs my single (though twice-used) C-section one and Trystan's dual scars from colostomy and his own emergency laproscopic bowel surgery at age 3 months. I hope to God that Charlotte never attempts to follow the rest of the family's lead and get any of her own. Her unblemished belly is quite nice as it is.
This is the first time I've had to deal with an adult in the hosptial besides myself. I had a funny moment when I realized that every doctor, nurse, aide, anesthesiologist, etc were directing their questions to my husband instead of me, and that I didn't need to answer anything. Which makes sense, of course, as I am married to a competent adult who is capable of taking charge of his own healthcare. But prior to Tuesday/Wednesday we had a total of eight surgeries in the family over eight years that involved either me or my children. I'm always the one answering the questions. Now that I think about it, my husband did have one outpatient procedure a couple of years ago, but I wasn't really there for it.
He is home and doing really well. We are both just tired--me from staying up all night in the hospital and doing a crazy amount of driving to keep the kids on a normal-ish schedule. And hubby because he actually had all the pain, inflammation, and surgery and all that.
So, hopefully soon we will be back to our regularly-scheduled crazy lives. We have a groupon for Rascals tickets that we haven't yet managed to use. And a new roof and hopefully siding (plus a bonus ceiling repair due to leaky roof) coming soon on our old house. I guess I need to hire a landscaper to start mowing it, as I have proven myself incapable of doing the hill, and my husband is barred from doing that sort of thing for a few weeks. And, of course, the stores are starting to get school supplies in so I guess I need to start thinking about class lists, school uniforms, and backpacks.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Choosing Schools
When we started our house search last year, we narrowed down the search areas in order to keep our kids in the same school. Ironically, it is that decision to move that has ultimately prompted us to change schools for next year.
The home we ended up falling in love with is in a wonderful community in a consistently top-rated public school district, with a large, growing, and vibrant parish school nearby. The closest public elementary is about two minutes from our house. The parish school is three minutes away (almost exactly one mile). Add another six minutes worth of drive time and we come to two more good parish schools. The independent Catholic school our kids have attended is about 20 minutes away, closer to 30 in rush hour. But for the first half of the school year, we didn't seriously consider moving schools.
We knew our youngest would have a rough transition from daycare into a highly-structured pre-k program. Add the house move during the second week of school, and I'm impressed the kid didn't implode. He actually held up really well, in my opinion. We had some potty challenges to overcome. He is potty trained, but due to his assortment of bowel surgeries and non-standard musculature "down there", he has more trouble than the average kid. That is never a good start.
Then his pre-k teacher told us that he was hard to understand and probably needed speech therapy. That was a bit of a shocker to me, personally. I could understand my son perfectly. In fact, he had been speaking in long paragraphs with multi-syllable words for quite a while. But after I thought about it, I realized that I was frequently repeating his words to others so they could understand him. Our school district evaluated his hearing and speech and found that he did, indeed, qualify for speech therapy. He also failed their hearing screening.
He eventually failed three hearing screenings from the school district. We didn't fully count the first two results because of ear infections (our little guy has a history of many, hard-to-kill ear infections). But the results were confirmed by our pediatrician, who referred us to an ENT, who diagnosed him with temporary hearing loss due to persistent fluid build up behind the ear drums. In four months of speech lessons, his intelligibility has markedly improved.
Meanwhile, we had another conference with the pre-k teacher who began the conversation with "Would you give him the gift of another year in pre-k?". That just floored me. She went on to show us his "academic" work--he knew every letter, every sound, every number, could count to 30 or higher...can you see my confusion?
I have a child who is, in all likelihood, gifted. He had been evaluated by Parents as Teachers since babyhood and consistently tracked as a kid one or two years older than himself. When I started researching the characteristics and needs of gifted kids, it was like a chorus of angels singing (hokey, I know, but when you get one of those "aha" moments, sometimes those silly cliches are true). And I wasn't grasping at straws here--as a kid, I personally was evaluated and deemed "gifted", my husband likely is too, as are all four of my sisters (if not officially across the gifted mark, then certainly way up there on the IQ scale). I'm not qualified to make that determination for my children, but I read articles like this, and am pretty convinced.
Back to T-man and the question of holding him back from entering Kindergarten. He has a March birthday, so is "young". We realized that much of his pre-k class are actually old for the year. Many turned five before the school year started (our son just turned five this spring). My son is also small, physically. That's not due to developmental reasons. Its pure genetics. My son has been consistently bigger and taller than his older sister when you compare their growth charts, but he is still at the bottom of the scale for boys.
So his classmates were taller, older, heard better, and spoke better than he did. The teachers called his social/emotional development immature. There might be a good reason for that. He is difficult to motivate if he isn't excited about an activity, but when he gets engaged in an activity, it is difficult to get him to let it go before he has mastered it to his own satisfaction. I can well understand why he is a handful when sitting in a classroom full of children who are eager to please the teacher.
Eventually, the current school decided that they would accept our son for Kindergarten next year. But the whole conflict had already sent us researching our options. From the local highly-rated public school system (with actual gifted education options), to multiple nearby religious and independent schools, we have lots of options. Lots. I toured the nearby parish school. They do have an out-of-classroom program for advanced kids. They also have a big student body and still offer the option of half-day or full-day kindergarten, expecting that some of their youngest students will need extra social/emotional nurturing the first year. They have band and art and sports and after-school foreign language classes, and really most of the same offerings that our existing school has.
And they are three minutes from our house. Our children spend most of an hour every day in the car, commuting to/from school. Next year, they will have about 10 minutes a day. And the parish school draws from the local neighborhoods, where the independent school drew kids from a much wider area, making playdates difficult to arrange.
Our daughter has done wonderfully at her current school and is sad to leave. She had her First Communion this year, and got to dance the Maypole during the May Crowning at school and I've been her Girl Scout leader for the year (something for me, personally, to feel sad about leaving behind). She has bloomed academically this year too--I suspect she is also gifted, though in slightly different ways than her brother. Her talents include a lot of deep insightful thinking, which tends to work really well in a classroom setting.
This is the right decision for our whole family for now.
I can't predict whether this will be our last choice of school. Perhaps we will be with the parish school until both children have moved on to high school. Perhaps we will re-evaluate after only a few years. I hope that we will not regret the decision, but somehow it seems that the events of the past year keep leading us down this path. Yes, I do believe that sometimes there are larger forces at work in our lives, leading us to where we belong.
The home we ended up falling in love with is in a wonderful community in a consistently top-rated public school district, with a large, growing, and vibrant parish school nearby. The closest public elementary is about two minutes from our house. The parish school is three minutes away (almost exactly one mile). Add another six minutes worth of drive time and we come to two more good parish schools. The independent Catholic school our kids have attended is about 20 minutes away, closer to 30 in rush hour. But for the first half of the school year, we didn't seriously consider moving schools.
We knew our youngest would have a rough transition from daycare into a highly-structured pre-k program. Add the house move during the second week of school, and I'm impressed the kid didn't implode. He actually held up really well, in my opinion. We had some potty challenges to overcome. He is potty trained, but due to his assortment of bowel surgeries and non-standard musculature "down there", he has more trouble than the average kid. That is never a good start.
Then his pre-k teacher told us that he was hard to understand and probably needed speech therapy. That was a bit of a shocker to me, personally. I could understand my son perfectly. In fact, he had been speaking in long paragraphs with multi-syllable words for quite a while. But after I thought about it, I realized that I was frequently repeating his words to others so they could understand him. Our school district evaluated his hearing and speech and found that he did, indeed, qualify for speech therapy. He also failed their hearing screening.
He eventually failed three hearing screenings from the school district. We didn't fully count the first two results because of ear infections (our little guy has a history of many, hard-to-kill ear infections). But the results were confirmed by our pediatrician, who referred us to an ENT, who diagnosed him with temporary hearing loss due to persistent fluid build up behind the ear drums. In four months of speech lessons, his intelligibility has markedly improved.
Meanwhile, we had another conference with the pre-k teacher who began the conversation with "Would you give him the gift of another year in pre-k?". That just floored me. She went on to show us his "academic" work--he knew every letter, every sound, every number, could count to 30 or higher...can you see my confusion?
I have a child who is, in all likelihood, gifted. He had been evaluated by Parents as Teachers since babyhood and consistently tracked as a kid one or two years older than himself. When I started researching the characteristics and needs of gifted kids, it was like a chorus of angels singing (hokey, I know, but when you get one of those "aha" moments, sometimes those silly cliches are true). And I wasn't grasping at straws here--as a kid, I personally was evaluated and deemed "gifted", my husband likely is too, as are all four of my sisters (if not officially across the gifted mark, then certainly way up there on the IQ scale). I'm not qualified to make that determination for my children, but I read articles like this, and am pretty convinced.
Back to T-man and the question of holding him back from entering Kindergarten. He has a March birthday, so is "young". We realized that much of his pre-k class are actually old for the year. Many turned five before the school year started (our son just turned five this spring). My son is also small, physically. That's not due to developmental reasons. Its pure genetics. My son has been consistently bigger and taller than his older sister when you compare their growth charts, but he is still at the bottom of the scale for boys.
So his classmates were taller, older, heard better, and spoke better than he did. The teachers called his social/emotional development immature. There might be a good reason for that. He is difficult to motivate if he isn't excited about an activity, but when he gets engaged in an activity, it is difficult to get him to let it go before he has mastered it to his own satisfaction. I can well understand why he is a handful when sitting in a classroom full of children who are eager to please the teacher.
Eventually, the current school decided that they would accept our son for Kindergarten next year. But the whole conflict had already sent us researching our options. From the local highly-rated public school system (with actual gifted education options), to multiple nearby religious and independent schools, we have lots of options. Lots. I toured the nearby parish school. They do have an out-of-classroom program for advanced kids. They also have a big student body and still offer the option of half-day or full-day kindergarten, expecting that some of their youngest students will need extra social/emotional nurturing the first year. They have band and art and sports and after-school foreign language classes, and really most of the same offerings that our existing school has.
And they are three minutes from our house. Our children spend most of an hour every day in the car, commuting to/from school. Next year, they will have about 10 minutes a day. And the parish school draws from the local neighborhoods, where the independent school drew kids from a much wider area, making playdates difficult to arrange.
Our daughter has done wonderfully at her current school and is sad to leave. She had her First Communion this year, and got to dance the Maypole during the May Crowning at school and I've been her Girl Scout leader for the year (something for me, personally, to feel sad about leaving behind). She has bloomed academically this year too--I suspect she is also gifted, though in slightly different ways than her brother. Her talents include a lot of deep insightful thinking, which tends to work really well in a classroom setting.
This is the right decision for our whole family for now.
I can't predict whether this will be our last choice of school. Perhaps we will be with the parish school until both children have moved on to high school. Perhaps we will re-evaluate after only a few years. I hope that we will not regret the decision, but somehow it seems that the events of the past year keep leading us down this path. Yes, I do believe that sometimes there are larger forces at work in our lives, leading us to where we belong.
Saturday, May 05, 2012
A bird in the hand is worth...
Every time my husband goes out of town, there is a minor family disaster. Last time, it involved back-to-back fevers by my kids that took me out of work for most of a week, using up more vacation and sick time than I could afford.
This time, instead of Mother Kristi, it was Mother Nature. Hail. Baseball sized hail fell on our old neighborhood last Saturday night. By "old neighborhood", I mean "location of our previous residence, which we still own and desperately wish to sell". Yeah, thinking that the holes in the roof, siding, deck, landscape lighting, and trees are not going to be highlights of the home tour.
Yes, we have insurance. No, we don't have contractors working yet. Yes, the insurance companies are massively overbooked with the damage. Yes, I could start setting up appointments before an adjuster gets a chance to total it up. No, I don't have time.
I do have a job. And two kids. And running drop-off and pickup singlehandedly all week, plus morning and evening routines, packing all the lunches, etc takes a lot of time when there aren't any extra credit assignments to complete. (Single parents, please stop throwing tomatoes. Yes, I'm whining. But most of you don't have to deal with a dead bird).
Yes, I said dead bird. Inside the house. Inside the hail-damaged house-for-sale. Dead. Inside. (All together now: eeewwwww!)
At least the thing had the presence of mind to keel over on the laminate floor instead of the carpet. Never fear, though, he did nail the carpet pretty good. And the bathroom. His method of entry: bathroom vent. I know this because the bathroom was by far the smelliest place in the house, because the vent cover was hanging down from the ceiling, and because we've had trouble with birds attempting to make nests in that vent before.
So Thursday I spend a precious "vacation" day (of which I have like 2 left, no exaggeration) to drive all over town, meeting with my son's speech pathologist about transitioning to Kindergarten, going to the eye doctor for new glasses, and doing a little yard cleanup at the old house. That's when I found the bird. If I had to guess, he got freaked by the storm and flew into the nice, safe-looking hidey-hole of the vent, found his way into the house, and wasn't smart enough to reverse course after the sirens stopped. And then died of some combination of starvation, dehydration, and banging his head desperately on the window in an attempt at escaping.
I have scrubbed the bathroom from top to bottom (most of a bottle of disinfectant), cleaned every window sill in the house (I think he checked them all), cleaned the kitchen (just in case), mopped the entire family/kitchen/breakfast room laminate floor, and steam cleaned the rest of the carpet in that house. I still need to go back and vacuum up the chunks of fuzz that the steam cleaner left behind (why does it always do that?)
I have also rigged up a bird-proofing system on the external vent cover that involved window screening and a staple gun. The hardware stores sell nice-looking plastic vent covers specifically for this purpose. Alas, the vent in question is in a tight spot under the deck and the pre-fabricated ones don't work without leaving a gap wide enough to keep out, say, a bird-who's-scared-sh*tless-by-killer-hail. (Engineering friends will not be impressed with my handiwork as I neglected to include duct tape in the final solution).
My husband is now home. My house-with-furniture is a mess. My tummy is full of a yummy steak dinner. And we have two yards to mow and a million errands to run. Plus the likelihood of arranging for new roof, gutters, siding, window screens, and deck railings and post caps.
I guess the minor family disaster is over and we are back to our regularly scheduled chaos.
This time, instead of Mother Kristi, it was Mother Nature. Hail. Baseball sized hail fell on our old neighborhood last Saturday night. By "old neighborhood", I mean "location of our previous residence, which we still own and desperately wish to sell". Yeah, thinking that the holes in the roof, siding, deck, landscape lighting, and trees are not going to be highlights of the home tour.
Yes, we have insurance. No, we don't have contractors working yet. Yes, the insurance companies are massively overbooked with the damage. Yes, I could start setting up appointments before an adjuster gets a chance to total it up. No, I don't have time.
I do have a job. And two kids. And running drop-off and pickup singlehandedly all week, plus morning and evening routines, packing all the lunches, etc takes a lot of time when there aren't any extra credit assignments to complete. (Single parents, please stop throwing tomatoes. Yes, I'm whining. But most of you don't have to deal with a dead bird).
Yes, I said dead bird. Inside the house. Inside the hail-damaged house-for-sale. Dead. Inside. (All together now: eeewwwww!)
At least the thing had the presence of mind to keel over on the laminate floor instead of the carpet. Never fear, though, he did nail the carpet pretty good. And the bathroom. His method of entry: bathroom vent. I know this because the bathroom was by far the smelliest place in the house, because the vent cover was hanging down from the ceiling, and because we've had trouble with birds attempting to make nests in that vent before.
So Thursday I spend a precious "vacation" day (of which I have like 2 left, no exaggeration) to drive all over town, meeting with my son's speech pathologist about transitioning to Kindergarten, going to the eye doctor for new glasses, and doing a little yard cleanup at the old house. That's when I found the bird. If I had to guess, he got freaked by the storm and flew into the nice, safe-looking hidey-hole of the vent, found his way into the house, and wasn't smart enough to reverse course after the sirens stopped. And then died of some combination of starvation, dehydration, and banging his head desperately on the window in an attempt at escaping.
I have scrubbed the bathroom from top to bottom (most of a bottle of disinfectant), cleaned every window sill in the house (I think he checked them all), cleaned the kitchen (just in case), mopped the entire family/kitchen/breakfast room laminate floor, and steam cleaned the rest of the carpet in that house. I still need to go back and vacuum up the chunks of fuzz that the steam cleaner left behind (why does it always do that?)
I have also rigged up a bird-proofing system on the external vent cover that involved window screening and a staple gun. The hardware stores sell nice-looking plastic vent covers specifically for this purpose. Alas, the vent in question is in a tight spot under the deck and the pre-fabricated ones don't work without leaving a gap wide enough to keep out, say, a bird-who's-scared-sh*tless-by-killer-hail. (Engineering friends will not be impressed with my handiwork as I neglected to include duct tape in the final solution).
My husband is now home. My house-with-furniture is a mess. My tummy is full of a yummy steak dinner. And we have two yards to mow and a million errands to run. Plus the likelihood of arranging for new roof, gutters, siding, window screens, and deck railings and post caps.
I guess the minor family disaster is over and we are back to our regularly scheduled chaos.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Updates
After 5 months in the new house, I hereby announce that our decorating style is no longer "Neo-Cardboard with Touches of Dust and Bare Windows". Instead we are back to our "Neo-Traditional with Touches of Barbie and Zhu Zhu Pets".
It seriously took us until Christmas to unpack all the moving boxes (or carry them down to the basement and out of living areas). After Christmas, there was a secondary wave of box invaders from gift shipping and packaging (and the inevitable un-packing and re-packing in order to decorate). Cardboard is like an infection. It spreads if not treated aggressively.
Most of our windows now have window coverings. We were able to move a lot of drapes from our old house because red and deep purple are not considered to be "neutral" tones. I have a fondness for fabric window treatments, coupled with bargain-hunting instincts and sewing skills. What that means is that I left the old house properly-draped in neutral tones (primarily in sheers to allow for maximum light), and I also own at least two large storage tubs of drapes that did not find rods in the new house. The few windows that aren't yet dressed are odd-sizes (like the 2-story windows flanking the fireplace in the living room—those are gonna need a lot of fabric). I don't do blinds, except in very limited circumstances (namely, inside closets or other areas where I don't have to look at them).
The kids' rooms look properly kid-like. Charlotte is already lobbying to paint her room, but she has shelves and pictures hung, plus fuchsia curtains to brighten the place. Trystan's room got a brand-new bunk bed set that gives us a little extra sleeping space for guests. Since out-growing his crib, he had been sleeping on a queen-sized bed that I had dubbed the Once and Future Guest Bed. I could have let him keep it, but it's really hard to find kids bedding in queen size, and the bunks are a lot more fun to climb. The queen bed has resumed duty in the guest room. (We have a guest room!)
We haven't done a lot else to the new house. We have grand plans. And a second house payment. The old house is still on the market, and is annoying the crap out of me. We have had several offers to rent the place, but we really don't want to be landlords. We don't have the time, and I don't have the heart to see what kinds of horrors a renter could potentially inflict upon my former home.
The old house is looking pretty nice. We painted our dining room white (it had been a conversation- and appetite-stimulating golden color). We painted our laundry room white (it had been bubble-gum pink). We have removed additional nails and patched and painted the walls. The landscape is in its winter-dormant state, though some of the spring bulbs are starting to come up due to the warm weather. The price is about as good as it gets (less than what we paid for it, and we are throwing in a free deck, flooring upgrades, and appliance upgrades with purchase). We are just waiting on a buyer.
I hate the words "bad economy".
But I have a wealth of ideas for gardening, decorating, and basement finishing. As we frequently say, "When the house sells."
It seriously took us until Christmas to unpack all the moving boxes (or carry them down to the basement and out of living areas). After Christmas, there was a secondary wave of box invaders from gift shipping and packaging (and the inevitable un-packing and re-packing in order to decorate). Cardboard is like an infection. It spreads if not treated aggressively.
Most of our windows now have window coverings. We were able to move a lot of drapes from our old house because red and deep purple are not considered to be "neutral" tones. I have a fondness for fabric window treatments, coupled with bargain-hunting instincts and sewing skills. What that means is that I left the old house properly-draped in neutral tones (primarily in sheers to allow for maximum light), and I also own at least two large storage tubs of drapes that did not find rods in the new house. The few windows that aren't yet dressed are odd-sizes (like the 2-story windows flanking the fireplace in the living room—those are gonna need a lot of fabric). I don't do blinds, except in very limited circumstances (namely, inside closets or other areas where I don't have to look at them).
The kids' rooms look properly kid-like. Charlotte is already lobbying to paint her room, but she has shelves and pictures hung, plus fuchsia curtains to brighten the place. Trystan's room got a brand-new bunk bed set that gives us a little extra sleeping space for guests. Since out-growing his crib, he had been sleeping on a queen-sized bed that I had dubbed the Once and Future Guest Bed. I could have let him keep it, but it's really hard to find kids bedding in queen size, and the bunks are a lot more fun to climb. The queen bed has resumed duty in the guest room. (We have a guest room!)
We haven't done a lot else to the new house. We have grand plans. And a second house payment. The old house is still on the market, and is annoying the crap out of me. We have had several offers to rent the place, but we really don't want to be landlords. We don't have the time, and I don't have the heart to see what kinds of horrors a renter could potentially inflict upon my former home.
The old house is looking pretty nice. We painted our dining room white (it had been a conversation- and appetite-stimulating golden color). We painted our laundry room white (it had been bubble-gum pink). We have removed additional nails and patched and painted the walls. The landscape is in its winter-dormant state, though some of the spring bulbs are starting to come up due to the warm weather. The price is about as good as it gets (less than what we paid for it, and we are throwing in a free deck, flooring upgrades, and appliance upgrades with purchase). We are just waiting on a buyer.
I hate the words "bad economy".
But I have a wealth of ideas for gardening, decorating, and basement finishing. As we frequently say, "When the house sells."
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
In St. Louis, Bill McClellan is known for his opinion pieces that run in the Post Dispatch. He uses a dry sense of humor and a kind of every-man approach to tackle tough subjects. I enjoy his columns in part because he talks about issues that I just don't see elsewhere, and in part because I can never predict what the next one will be about. Today he isn't trying to save a criminal from unjust prosecution or to help a family struggling with unfair medical insurance decisions. Today, he told sick employees to go home. Work can survive without you.
Its a timely discussion given that my husband and I spend a great deal of energy negotiating sick kids and deadlines. We did so this week, even, as Trystan got his first ear infection of the cold season. (Plus a cough and some wheezing. Par for the course).
McClellan got many of the facts dead-on. That schools are a petri dish of infection (things are improving now that we are out of the daycare age). How parents have to decide whose work is more important ("My deadline is in three days and we are behind" "I have a conference call that will determine whether my contract is renewed"). But he missed one rather important fact: Sick days are a scarce commodity for parents.
I miss sick days. Days where I, myself, am allowed to stay in bed until the throbbing head subsides or the cough abates. I think its been two or three years since I last called in sick on my own behalf (whenever Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull was in theaters, because I drugged myself up and sat in a mostly empty theater sipping soda before the Dr appointment that diagnosed a particularly nasty strep ear/throat infection...figured I could convalesce at the theater as well as at home in that case and I get few chances to go enjoy a movie).
With my work schedule, I get about 8 sick days and about 9-10 vacation days a year (there are strange little decimals involved there because it's a percentage of another number). I already negotiated a 4-day a week schedule to be able to handle the whopping 37 days off school that the kids get every year. With full time work, I would need a nanny (which I would have to work overtime to pay for), as between my husband and I we don't have enough days off to cover the kids. And that's just the healthy time off. 8 sick days doesn't go very far when you count tonsilectomies, 2-3 ear and/or throat infections, the odd flu and RSV, times two children.Oh yeah, plus the regular doctor appointments (pesky doctors don't like to work on Labor Day or Thanksgiving either).
Once parents have traded off sick-days-with-junior two to three times in one week (For the first child. And repeated it the following week for the second child.), there is little left in the bank to draw from when you come down with your own scratchy throat and chills.
I would love to never infect my coworkers with the various and sundry viruses that my children so kindly cough into my face. And maybe someday, both Corporate America and Education will agree on a standard set of "days off" for both parents and children thereby making "working mom" not feel so much like a circus juggling act. Maybe I should just plan on winning the lottery instead. To help pay for all the hand sanitizer that I need to disinfect my cube so that I don't make anyone sick.
Anyway, I enjoyed McClellan's column. I just felt compelled to add my own commentary to his commentary. And to remind everyone to be kind to the parent who's hacking up a lung in the next cube over. Chances are, she doesn't want to be spewing disease around the place any more than you do.
Its a timely discussion given that my husband and I spend a great deal of energy negotiating sick kids and deadlines. We did so this week, even, as Trystan got his first ear infection of the cold season. (Plus a cough and some wheezing. Par for the course).
McClellan got many of the facts dead-on. That schools are a petri dish of infection (things are improving now that we are out of the daycare age). How parents have to decide whose work is more important ("My deadline is in three days and we are behind" "I have a conference call that will determine whether my contract is renewed"). But he missed one rather important fact: Sick days are a scarce commodity for parents.
I miss sick days. Days where I, myself, am allowed to stay in bed until the throbbing head subsides or the cough abates. I think its been two or three years since I last called in sick on my own behalf (whenever Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull was in theaters, because I drugged myself up and sat in a mostly empty theater sipping soda before the Dr appointment that diagnosed a particularly nasty strep ear/throat infection...figured I could convalesce at the theater as well as at home in that case and I get few chances to go enjoy a movie).
With my work schedule, I get about 8 sick days and about 9-10 vacation days a year (there are strange little decimals involved there because it's a percentage of another number). I already negotiated a 4-day a week schedule to be able to handle the whopping 37 days off school that the kids get every year. With full time work, I would need a nanny (which I would have to work overtime to pay for), as between my husband and I we don't have enough days off to cover the kids. And that's just the healthy time off. 8 sick days doesn't go very far when you count tonsilectomies, 2-3 ear and/or throat infections, the odd flu and RSV, times two children.Oh yeah, plus the regular doctor appointments (pesky doctors don't like to work on Labor Day or Thanksgiving either).
Once parents have traded off sick-days-with-junior two to three times in one week (For the first child. And repeated it the following week for the second child.), there is little left in the bank to draw from when you come down with your own scratchy throat and chills.
I would love to never infect my coworkers with the various and sundry viruses that my children so kindly cough into my face. And maybe someday, both Corporate America and Education will agree on a standard set of "days off" for both parents and children thereby making "working mom" not feel so much like a circus juggling act. Maybe I should just plan on winning the lottery instead. To help pay for all the hand sanitizer that I need to disinfect my cube so that I don't make anyone sick.
Anyway, I enjoyed McClellan's column. I just felt compelled to add my own commentary to his commentary. And to remind everyone to be kind to the parent who's hacking up a lung in the next cube over. Chances are, she doesn't want to be spewing disease around the place any more than you do.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
My yearly masterpiece
(I hope the photo link works OK. I have no idea what it looks like through Facebook. You might have to actually click through to see the entire thing, the twitpic link seems to be cropping funny)
I used to sew a lot more than I do. I've made drapes and upholstered ottomans, quilts, stuffed animals, clothing, even my baby sister's flower girl dress for my wedding. I did stop short at making my own dress (though I still have one pattern that is gorgeous...I just need an excuse for a ball gown...).
Before my daughter was born, I imagined myself sewing all sorts of clothes and home decor and crafts for her. I have books and patterns and even piles of uncut fabric stocked in my office. Ok, other working moms, stop laughing at me. Really, now. Stop.
Actually what killed my sewing hobby wasn't Charlotte's birth, or the fact that my sewing room became her bedroom. It was that my new sewing space (our home office) shares a wall with Charlotte's bedroom. For years you could barely sit in a squeaky chair in that room after bedtime without waking her up. And then came her little brother.
In the past twelve months, I have sewn exactly two items. Charlotte's white dress for Kindergarten and now, as of last night, Charlotte's white dress for first grade. She goes to a Catholic school and for special mass days throughout the year, the girls all must wear an all-white dress. With sleeves. And not a beaded-satin-and-chiffon-mini-bride white dress. Something so "basic" that no store bothers to sell them :)
But I can sew, so sew I did. I had no time, and no space, and was up till the wee hours of the..oh wait, till 11:30...that's still late for me :) Her dress is done. Its adorable. I'm biased. I only had to cut the front out twice thanks to a little help from a scissor-wielding 3-year old. I did my first invisible zipper ever (something other sewers/sewists/seamstresses might understand...and that's a whole sewing-geeked out post of its own).
And I have no idea if it fits because my darling daughter was sound asleep when it was finished. And it still lacks the finishing touch: a good coating of stain repellent because white dresses attract chocolate milk like kittens to a crystal vase of flowers.
Photo of the completed dress on its new owner shall be forthcoming. First white dress day is tomorrow.
Friday, August 13, 2010
The best way to recover from a trip
The best way to recover from a trip is by turning around and going on another one. Right? Uh, sure.
Two weeks ago I went to the RWA National Convention (Romance Writers of America) in Orlando. Yes, I'm a writer. No, I'm not published. I'm working on that :) That, in fact, was the purpose of the convention. Though at times it felt like a vacation (no kids, no cooking, no laundry), the point was to attend workshops to improve my writing and to network with other writers, editors, and literary agents. The first photo is from the last night when the Golden Heart and Rita awards are presented. Its kind of like the Oscars for romance novels, only 99% of all of the awards attendees are female :) The first photo is my weekly critique group (minus Dawn, who had already headed back to her room). From the left are Shawntelle Madison, Jeannie Lin, myself, and Amanda Berry.
After a week back at the day job, and not quite catching up on dirty laundry, we drove to Indiana for my husband's family reunion. The second photo shows my kids (facing the camera behind the table), their cousins (backs to the camera), my sister-in-law (right side of the table) and mother-in-law (left side) working on crafts during the heat of the afternoon. There were lots more cousins and second cousins there that I didn't get photos of. Most of them blondies like my kids :)
We left the reunion close to dinner time and drove up to Indianapolis to visit my mom and two of my sisters. On Sunday, we all went to the Indiana State Fair. We took the fair train, run by the Indiana Museum of Transportation, which also happens to leave from about 5 minutes away from Mom's house. Trystan is a train fanatic and loved every minute of the ride. I got pictures of Charlotte and my sister Katie because they were in the seat across from mine, but not Trystan (who was in my lap or running down the aisle most of the trip).
The kids rode a bunch of rides, and it was Charlotte's first time on a Ferris wheel. We walked through some of the livestock barns. The kids especially liked the chickens and bunnies. For lunch, we had rib-eye steak sandwiches that were delicious. Except that the tent was right next to one of the doors to the cow barn, where the cows were being primped for show. As my husband phrased it, "There is no second place." We drove home Monday afternoon, exhausted, and still haven't tackled the mountain of laundry.
I have an unexpected day off today. Unexpected because we have a deadline at work next week, and I was mentally prepared for stress and overtime. But (fingers crossed!) we are running ahead of schedule, so I'm home.
And I plan to spend the day lazing by the pool eating chocolate, since the kids are at daycare.
Or, I could do laundry, buy groceries, clean the house, pick up supplies for tomorrow's girl scout day camp, and finish polishing one of my manuscripts (fancy word for those unpublished books) to send off to a requesting agent.
Two weeks ago I went to the RWA National Convention (Romance Writers of America) in Orlando. Yes, I'm a writer. No, I'm not published. I'm working on that :) That, in fact, was the purpose of the convention. Though at times it felt like a vacation (no kids, no cooking, no laundry), the point was to attend workshops to improve my writing and to network with other writers, editors, and literary agents. The first photo is from the last night when the Golden Heart and Rita awards are presented. Its kind of like the Oscars for romance novels, only 99% of all of the awards attendees are female :) The first photo is my weekly critique group (minus Dawn, who had already headed back to her room). From the left are Shawntelle Madison, Jeannie Lin, myself, and Amanda Berry.
After a week back at the day job, and not quite catching up on dirty laundry, we drove to Indiana for my husband's family reunion. The second photo shows my kids (facing the camera behind the table), their cousins (backs to the camera), my sister-in-law (right side of the table) and mother-in-law (left side) working on crafts during the heat of the afternoon. There were lots more cousins and second cousins there that I didn't get photos of. Most of them blondies like my kids :)
We left the reunion close to dinner time and drove up to Indianapolis to visit my mom and two of my sisters. On Sunday, we all went to the Indiana State Fair. We took the fair train, run by the Indiana Museum of Transportation, which also happens to leave from about 5 minutes away from Mom's house. Trystan is a train fanatic and loved every minute of the ride. I got pictures of Charlotte and my sister Katie because they were in the seat across from mine, but not Trystan (who was in my lap or running down the aisle most of the trip).
The kids rode a bunch of rides, and it was Charlotte's first time on a Ferris wheel. We walked through some of the livestock barns. The kids especially liked the chickens and bunnies. For lunch, we had rib-eye steak sandwiches that were delicious. Except that the tent was right next to one of the doors to the cow barn, where the cows were being primped for show. As my husband phrased it, "There is no second place." We drove home Monday afternoon, exhausted, and still haven't tackled the mountain of laundry.
I have an unexpected day off today. Unexpected because we have a deadline at work next week, and I was mentally prepared for stress and overtime. But (fingers crossed!) we are running ahead of schedule, so I'm home.
And I plan to spend the day lazing by the pool eating chocolate, since the kids are at daycare.
Or, I could do laundry, buy groceries, clean the house, pick up supplies for tomorrow's girl scout day camp, and finish polishing one of my manuscripts (fancy word for those unpublished books) to send off to a requesting agent.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
New toys
Have I whined about my cell phone in a while? I don’t think I’m allowed to do that any more.
Gone are the days of the phone-that-does-nothing-but-call. Really, nothing. No camera. No Bluetooth headsets. No web browsing. Not even a chintzy game. It placed and received phone calls. And performed its duties honorably for over 5 years. Yes, 5. My cell phone is an antique. Not quite a car phone, though (remember those?)
It kind of like my car: I didn’t want to replace it until I had to. My car’s 7 years old, now, btw. With last week’s cell phone purchase, I have now owned more cell phones than cars. This one is phone #3 (I’m still driving car #2).
I actually didn’t have to replace my cell phone (*gasp*). My husband had to replace his. After spending an entire weekend “updating” itself (and running out of battery half-way through the update, then re-starting), it quit behaving at all like a proper little phone. Some days it would not respond at all to any buttons (even the power button). Some days it would buzz at him and then shut itself down.
He needed a new phone, so I got one too. After all, I’m the one who’s been drooling over friends’ web-browsing, calendar apps, texting, cameras, etc. Hubby really just wanted a phone that made calls, but he refused the offer of my old-but-functional one, LOL. Funny, but we had the same discussion when his old car needed help. I wanted the big fancy kid-hauler, and he wanted something less soccer-mom-ish. But he declined the offer of my Accord, so he’s driving the new Highlander and I’m still in my car. Hmmm…
We both got the new HTC Evo’s. I’m going to have to buy a pink case for mine to help me tell them apart :). They were both activated last night, and I got Facebook and Twitter and my google account all hooked up and running. I think he may have been downloading games or possibly an Android SDK. Not really sure.
Ok, so I do get one last cell-phone whine. There is no way to transfer the phone numbers from my old phone to the new one automatically. Really, none. No, the old phone doesn’t have a data cable of any sort, and No, the Sprint folks can’t do it for me either, even for a fee. So I have an hour or so of manual text entry to do so I don’t lose people. Guess that’s the end of that little rant, huh.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Who are you again?
This whole "digital age" thing is great. Really. No, that smile's not fake at all. Its great. Hey, it pays our bills. It must be great.
I love having like six different email accounts, most of which cannot (or should not) be combined. Work, home, writing, the spam-catcher. The other spam catcher. The super-secret spam catcher. I can't get to the home email from work, and can't get to the work email from home. And the Yahoo email (the one I've had since the early 90's) is half spam catcher and only half works from either Work or my Netbook (small screen resolution vs big ads). Facebook is a twice-a-month activity for me. Hubby hasn't bothered yet.
And calendars. The paper one on the fridge. The paper one in my purse. Outlook on my laptop. Outlook on hubby's desktop. Outlook in our individual work accounts. Calendar apps on Hubby's iPod touch. Google calendar. And the best part is that there is no single calendar or calendar app that my husband and I can share at the moment that can actually go everywhere with us. I cannot take a PDA to my desk at work (or a cell phone, or any other electronic device), and internet access there is spotty, controlled, and monitored (hello Big Brother).
I can (usually) connect to Google, but since I don't have any sort of smartphone or PDA, I can't see it at home. I can get online at home, but computers are to small children what bug lights are to mosquitoes. That Windows startup chime will draw a 3-year old to my lap faster than the word ice cream. Check email? Check Facebook? Read or type a single sentence? Not without two more hands (2 for the keyboard, 2 for the child).
And then there are those old-fashioned ring-y things called phones. I have one at work. It has a curly cord and no caller id, and is attached to my desk. If you call it while I'm sitting at my desk, we can talk. If you call it and I'm not at my desk, you must leave voicemail (there is a little light that sometimes blinks to tell me about a message...or at least it used to). My cell phone is turned off during the workday, and buried in my purse while I'm at home (not intentionally). The home phones work great. We even have an answering machine. And caller ID. Few people ever leave us messages though (most of the calls are from charities asking for money).
Texting? Yeah, I've heard of it. My phone kind of does it, though I pay PER TEXT sent or received. My husband's phone does not text.
Funny, even though there are like 1000 ways to talk to people, I still have as little time as ever to actually do any of it. Divide 5 free minutes a day by 50 different devices/accounts to check, and its no wonder I miss stuff.
Digital age? Lovely. Wonderful. Joyful. Its bringing the human race closer together. Or so I have read in the newspaper.
I love having like six different email accounts, most of which cannot (or should not) be combined. Work, home, writing, the spam-catcher. The other spam catcher. The super-secret spam catcher. I can't get to the home email from work, and can't get to the work email from home. And the Yahoo email (the one I've had since the early 90's) is half spam catcher and only half works from either Work or my Netbook (small screen resolution vs big ads). Facebook is a twice-a-month activity for me. Hubby hasn't bothered yet.
And calendars. The paper one on the fridge. The paper one in my purse. Outlook on my laptop. Outlook on hubby's desktop. Outlook in our individual work accounts. Calendar apps on Hubby's iPod touch. Google calendar. And the best part is that there is no single calendar or calendar app that my husband and I can share at the moment that can actually go everywhere with us. I cannot take a PDA to my desk at work (or a cell phone, or any other electronic device), and internet access there is spotty, controlled, and monitored (hello Big Brother).
I can (usually) connect to Google, but since I don't have any sort of smartphone or PDA, I can't see it at home. I can get online at home, but computers are to small children what bug lights are to mosquitoes. That Windows startup chime will draw a 3-year old to my lap faster than the word ice cream. Check email? Check Facebook? Read or type a single sentence? Not without two more hands (2 for the keyboard, 2 for the child).
And then there are those old-fashioned ring-y things called phones. I have one at work. It has a curly cord and no caller id, and is attached to my desk. If you call it while I'm sitting at my desk, we can talk. If you call it and I'm not at my desk, you must leave voicemail (there is a little light that sometimes blinks to tell me about a message...or at least it used to). My cell phone is turned off during the workday, and buried in my purse while I'm at home (not intentionally). The home phones work great. We even have an answering machine. And caller ID. Few people ever leave us messages though (most of the calls are from charities asking for money).
Texting? Yeah, I've heard of it. My phone kind of does it, though I pay PER TEXT sent or received. My husband's phone does not text.
Funny, even though there are like 1000 ways to talk to people, I still have as little time as ever to actually do any of it. Divide 5 free minutes a day by 50 different devices/accounts to check, and its no wonder I miss stuff.
Digital age? Lovely. Wonderful. Joyful. Its bringing the human race closer together. Or so I have read in the newspaper.
Monday, January 25, 2010
A week of single-motherhood
Last week, for the first time in over ten years, my husband had to travel for work. He left on Monday and got home on Friday. And, of course, something went wrong at home. Not like burning embers or ambulance wrong. But we couldn’t just have a normal week. Oh, no. Never that.
Trystan got sick. Not just a one-day feeling-a-little-off. RSV. My least favorite virus. The one that takes a kid down for a week at a time with fever and leaves them coughing for a month. He started just coughing on Sunday into Monday, and at first I hoped it would be no big deal. After all, Char was off Monday for MLK day, so I was already taking a day off to be home with the kids.
Monday night, he ran the fever. After two unsuccessful attempts at getting him to sleep in his own bed, I brought him into mine, and I was kicked and climbed on pretty much all night. No daycare for him on Tuesday. I dosed him with ibuprofen and stuck him in the car to drive Char to school. The ibuprofen helped a lot. Trystan and I then spent two hours at the doctors office (plus a 35 minute drive on either side of it), because they were running behind. RSV tests require a q-tip up the nose, which Trystan did not appreciate in the least. And both of his ears were infected as well. He was, of course, sound asleep when we got home, which gave me just enough time to put air in one of the tires on the Highlander (the darned thing had been giving me tire pressure warnings all morning—think we have a leak), and then stuff him back into the car to go pick Charlotte up from school.
Tuesday night,
My in-laws came and sat with Trystan on Wednesday, thank goodness. I really needed to get work done at work, and I’d postponed some meetings and reviews for my team already. And, luckily, it was a longer day because Char has after-school piano lessons that day. So I got about eight hours in. It would have been less than seven with me doing the normal drop-off/pick-up routine myself.
Thursday was the annoying day of his illness. He was still feverish Wednesday night, so it wasn’t worth chancing taking him to school. So I took yet another day off, and he was an absolute toddler terror. He had high energy right up until lunch time when he crashed hard and I later had to put him, still sleeping, in the car to pick up his sister at 3. He was fever-free all day. Of course.
Friday was “normal”. Everyone left the house. I worked. The kids schooled. We picked my husband up from the airport around dinner time.
This weekend was about trying to catch up on life, although the house didn’t fall too far behind. I had plenty of time for laundry and dishes all week. What I didn’t get was any quiet time for myself. Even after getting the kids to bed every night, I was up packing lunches and starting the dishwasher, and setting out clothes so that we could get moving on time the next morning. I missed my weekly writer’s group night, and skipped my aerobics class on Thursday (I might have worked out earlier in the day, but Trystan took that marathon nap).
I think on a truly “normal” week, my husband’s business trip would not have been a big deal. Keep me from sleeping a couple of nights in a row, withhold exercise and adult conversation, and super-glue a fussy toddler to my hip, and I start getting pretty cranky. I am glad that I’m not in this parenting-gig alone. I think I’d go batty without my husband around.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
What do you do with a not-so-sick sick toddler?
What do you do with a not-so-sick sick toddler?
Take him to the grocery store. Buy him a donut and a new Thomas the Train book. Play choo-choos, race cars, blocks, puzzles, cooking, magnetos, and watch too much Max and Ruby. Then give him fruit snacks and feel serious mom-guilt about it when he falls asleep thirty minutes later having refused an actual lunch. The donut wasn't much of a factor in the lunch embargo--he had only nibbled some of the icing off a few hours earlier.
This is the hard day of a multi-day illness. The one where the fever is probably gone, but its still within the 24-hour window where you're not supposed to dose them with motrin and send them to daycare (I was sorely tempted...). He's too sick for school, too well to sit still. And too two to be reasonable about simple demands (such as not bouncing on the couch, not climbing on mommy when she attempts to do pushups, and to just pick one of the three identical yogurt cups and move on with life).
I'd actually rather be at work right now than sitting on my couch surfing the web while he sleeps. I can't count on how long of a nap Trystan will take (Yesterday, for his grandma & grandpa, 4 hours. Tuesday for me, 30 minutes). So any task more complicated than laundry isn't feasible. Murphy's law (or is it Scott's Law of Luck? Or just Mom to the Terrible Two's) states that as soon as I become productive or interested in something, he shall arise to terrorize the house. But if I'm a couch potato, I'll have to carry him to the car still snoring when its time to pick his sister up from school.
Ah well, I bought myself a Cosmo at the grocery store this morning (magazines are expensive these days)...haven't read one in years. And now I feel old. Really old. I'm going to start clucking my tongue and shaking my finger at all of the twenty-one year olds who believe any of this crap. Speaking of which, why am I still typing? I'm only halfway through the issue...
Take him to the grocery store. Buy him a donut and a new Thomas the Train book. Play choo-choos, race cars, blocks, puzzles, cooking, magnetos, and watch too much Max and Ruby. Then give him fruit snacks and feel serious mom-guilt about it when he falls asleep thirty minutes later having refused an actual lunch. The donut wasn't much of a factor in the lunch embargo--he had only nibbled some of the icing off a few hours earlier.
This is the hard day of a multi-day illness. The one where the fever is probably gone, but its still within the 24-hour window where you're not supposed to dose them with motrin and send them to daycare (I was sorely tempted...). He's too sick for school, too well to sit still. And too two to be reasonable about simple demands (such as not bouncing on the couch, not climbing on mommy when she attempts to do pushups, and to just pick one of the three identical yogurt cups and move on with life).
I'd actually rather be at work right now than sitting on my couch surfing the web while he sleeps. I can't count on how long of a nap Trystan will take (Yesterday, for his grandma & grandpa, 4 hours. Tuesday for me, 30 minutes). So any task more complicated than laundry isn't feasible. Murphy's law (or is it Scott's Law of Luck? Or just Mom to the Terrible Two's) states that as soon as I become productive or interested in something, he shall arise to terrorize the house. But if I'm a couch potato, I'll have to carry him to the car still snoring when its time to pick his sister up from school.
Ah well, I bought myself a Cosmo at the grocery store this morning (magazines are expensive these days)...haven't read one in years. And now I feel old. Really old. I'm going to start clucking my tongue and shaking my finger at all of the twenty-one year olds who believe any of this crap. Speaking of which, why am I still typing? I'm only halfway through the issue...
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
I am superwoman, hear me snore
Yesterday I:
Worked 8.5 hours
Went grocery shopping
Picked up the kids from daycare
Made dinner
Made and iced 36 cupcakes (Charlotte added the sprinkles)
Ate dinner
Read 15 pages of writing for a critique group (of 30 that were
submitted, doh)
Put gas in the car
Arrived for the 7:30 crit group at 7:45
Bought a first-day-of-school gift for Charlotte
Came home by 10
Rotated laundry
Cleaned up decorating bag & tip that I used to ice the cupcakes (taking
care of a couple of spoonfuls of extra icing...)
Went to bed
Worked 8.5 hours
Went grocery shopping
Picked up the kids from daycare
Made dinner
Made and iced 36 cupcakes (Charlotte added the sprinkles)
Ate dinner
Read 15 pages of writing for a critique group (of 30 that were
submitted, doh)
Put gas in the car
Arrived for the 7:30 crit group at 7:45
Bought a first-day-of-school gift for Charlotte
Came home by 10
Rotated laundry
Cleaned up decorating bag & tip that I used to ice the cupcakes (taking
care of a couple of spoonfuls of extra icing...)
Went to bed
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Normally by Monday i'm brimming with blog post ideas. So many that I end up emailing them to myself to etiher finish or post later, so that I'm not wasting much time at work. This Monday, not so much. I remember feeling kind of mellow, but not inspired to write anything. Or rather, not energetic enough. That should have been a sign.
Trystan had a rough night Sunday night. He slept half the night in our bed, coughing hard. Some kids night-time cough medicine (which appears to contain mostly Benadryl) helped. In the morning he was ok, so we sent him to school. I guess the coughing came back with a vengence, and my husband picked the kids up and schlepped them to Mofallon to the pediatrician's office. And returned bearing three separate prescriptions: antibiotics, for the double-ear infection, and a steroid and albuterol for his wheezing and coughing. When he gets a bad cold, it gets to his chest, and he's probably asthmatic. (a word that I may or may not know how to spell)
So, I warned coworkers that I'd be off the next day, and headed home, and my own head started to feel like it was stuffed full of marshmallows. A sure sign that I'm coming down with something. Then my throat started to feel scratchy.
Suffice it to say that the scratchy throat got progressively worse yesterday. By late afternoon I tried calling my husband to get him to pick up Charlotte from school, but he has a lot of catch-up to do from leaving early. I probably shouldn't have been driving, but we did ok. By that point, I was alternately hot and cold, and flushed, and feeling like I should be horizontal. Around 5:30 I checked my temperature. 101.6. And I'd taken 2 ibuprofin about 45 minutes earlier.
The moment my husband got home from work, I headed to bed, and stayed there all night. I think the fever mostly broke sometime before 10. And around 2am I decided not to have another dose of ibuprofin, since I didn't believe it was doing anything. I was wrong. I took more at 5:30 and stopped using my entire body to swallow.
So, I'm home sick again today. I should be at work, but I'm in no shape for it. I can barely talk, I can't eat anything that isn't icy cold and liquid, and my throat is all yucky looking. Not the way I wanted to start off Memorial Day weekend.
I had been planning to be off on Friday, plus Thursday since we're closing on our mortgage re-fi then (finally!). But I'm thinking that I'm going in on Friday instead, to save myself a sick day. I just hope no one in my workgroup is waiting on me for anything, or they'll be waiting till Friday or Tuesday.
For lunch, I'm already thinking DQ....skipping the burger and going straight for the ice cream.
Trystan had a rough night Sunday night. He slept half the night in our bed, coughing hard. Some kids night-time cough medicine (which appears to contain mostly Benadryl) helped. In the morning he was ok, so we sent him to school. I guess the coughing came back with a vengence, and my husband picked the kids up and schlepped them to Mofallon to the pediatrician's office. And returned bearing three separate prescriptions: antibiotics, for the double-ear infection, and a steroid and albuterol for his wheezing and coughing. When he gets a bad cold, it gets to his chest, and he's probably asthmatic. (a word that I may or may not know how to spell)
So, I warned coworkers that I'd be off the next day, and headed home, and my own head started to feel like it was stuffed full of marshmallows. A sure sign that I'm coming down with something. Then my throat started to feel scratchy.
Suffice it to say that the scratchy throat got progressively worse yesterday. By late afternoon I tried calling my husband to get him to pick up Charlotte from school, but he has a lot of catch-up to do from leaving early. I probably shouldn't have been driving, but we did ok. By that point, I was alternately hot and cold, and flushed, and feeling like I should be horizontal. Around 5:30 I checked my temperature. 101.6. And I'd taken 2 ibuprofin about 45 minutes earlier.
The moment my husband got home from work, I headed to bed, and stayed there all night. I think the fever mostly broke sometime before 10. And around 2am I decided not to have another dose of ibuprofin, since I didn't believe it was doing anything. I was wrong. I took more at 5:30 and stopped using my entire body to swallow.
So, I'm home sick again today. I should be at work, but I'm in no shape for it. I can barely talk, I can't eat anything that isn't icy cold and liquid, and my throat is all yucky looking. Not the way I wanted to start off Memorial Day weekend.
I had been planning to be off on Friday, plus Thursday since we're closing on our mortgage re-fi then (finally!). But I'm thinking that I'm going in on Friday instead, to save myself a sick day. I just hope no one in my workgroup is waiting on me for anything, or they'll be waiting till Friday or Tuesday.
For lunch, I'm already thinking DQ....skipping the burger and going straight for the ice cream.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Inevitable
I shouldn't be surprised that, with all we have going on, and with Charlotte's recent bout of strep, I am now sick.
This sucks. Or rather, I wish it didn't, because sucking (on a thoat lozenge) and swallowing hurts. Add a cold with draining sinuses, the kind that drip down your throat all night (yummy, huh), and I haven't slept much in 2 days.
In the mean time, we still have plenty to stress about. The new french door in the kitchen is mostly installed, minus the door casings which we can't put back on yet. The rotted-out hole in the floor has been repaired, and after last night's hard rain we don't see any new signs of water seepage. Hopefully that means that the old door was the only problem.
My husband was wanting to get started laying the new laminate floor on Friday, but after taking 1.5 sick days off this week, I won't be able to help. And it's going to be a fairly disruptive job--causing us to move many large pieces of furniture, and basically rendering our entire main floor unusable, as all the furniture will be crammed into the dining room (the one place where we're leaving the carpet for now). Hopefully the whole project won't take more than a day (though my money's on 3), or we're going to have a huge headache keeping the kiddos entertained, fed, and out of trouble. This is one reason I'm kind of relieved that we're not demolishing the whole kitchen now--I can't imagine policing a busy nearly-2 year old for months during construction.
We should hear from one of the two Kindergartens in another week or so. We're hoping they'll let Charlotte in--we really like them, and they really like us. Their only potential sticking point is the birthday cutoff. But, we've had a chance to talk face-to-face with the school's head, so she understands our own experiences and expectations. Its the best we can do.
And, at work we're being "strongly encouraged" to work overtime. Given that I work "undertime" normally, once again I don't really know what they expect of me. Between my sick days this week, and Presidents Day next week (when our daycare is closed), I'm not going to be clocking over 40 hour in a single week. Possibly not over my required 32.5. But I guess I just do my best when I'm there.
This sucks. Or rather, I wish it didn't, because sucking (on a thoat lozenge) and swallowing hurts. Add a cold with draining sinuses, the kind that drip down your throat all night (yummy, huh), and I haven't slept much in 2 days.
In the mean time, we still have plenty to stress about. The new french door in the kitchen is mostly installed, minus the door casings which we can't put back on yet. The rotted-out hole in the floor has been repaired, and after last night's hard rain we don't see any new signs of water seepage. Hopefully that means that the old door was the only problem.
My husband was wanting to get started laying the new laminate floor on Friday, but after taking 1.5 sick days off this week, I won't be able to help. And it's going to be a fairly disruptive job--causing us to move many large pieces of furniture, and basically rendering our entire main floor unusable, as all the furniture will be crammed into the dining room (the one place where we're leaving the carpet for now). Hopefully the whole project won't take more than a day (though my money's on 3), or we're going to have a huge headache keeping the kiddos entertained, fed, and out of trouble. This is one reason I'm kind of relieved that we're not demolishing the whole kitchen now--I can't imagine policing a busy nearly-2 year old for months during construction.
We should hear from one of the two Kindergartens in another week or so. We're hoping they'll let Charlotte in--we really like them, and they really like us. Their only potential sticking point is the birthday cutoff. But, we've had a chance to talk face-to-face with the school's head, so she understands our own experiences and expectations. Its the best we can do.
And, at work we're being "strongly encouraged" to work overtime. Given that I work "undertime" normally, once again I don't really know what they expect of me. Between my sick days this week, and Presidents Day next week (when our daycare is closed), I'm not going to be clocking over 40 hour in a single week. Possibly not over my required 32.5. But I guess I just do my best when I'm there.
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