The Queen's Rambles

Does an ER visit take hours because the hospital staff is all off plotting murder and romance, a la soap operas and medical dramas?

Elsa woke up with a bright red eye this morning, and I immediately knew we were in for a long day. The doctor had told me that if there was any increase in redness it was an emergency and I had to take her to the ER.

I didn’t really think it was a proper emergency and tried to get her back in with the ped. The bug bite was clearly infected (bright red, warm to the touch), but I didn’t believe it was going to damage her eyeball. I figured a round of antibiotics would take care of it.

The ER doctor seemed to agree to me. We were examined by both an attending (or resident?) and her supervisor and they both seemed surprised that the ped sent her to the ER this morning without taking a look at it herself. The ped said she wanted imaging done on the eye, but the ER docs said it was not necessary. We caught it early, so at this point the best treatment was a course of antibiotics. It was not time to panic just yet.

While I am very glad it is not time to panic yet, I am not at all happy that we had to sit around in the ER for four hours. And, of course, the ER staff all told us cheerily “You caught us on a good day! There’s hardly any wait time at all!”

Now we just have to hope the meds do the trick and we don’t end up in the ER at the beach, though the supervisor told me he’d be at the same beach so if I find him on the beach he’ll look at her eye. I find that almost a cruel joke to make. At least give me your number, if you really would be willing to look at her eye! How am I going to find you on the beach? He’ll probably be at the old man golf course.

Thankfully I was able to take Erik over to a friend’s house for the day and she took them to a bouncey place for a couple of hours–except a kid rammed into him and his little pinky is swollen. he can bend it, so I don’t think it is broken.

I knew Elsa wouldn’t go blind if I spent 15 minutes getting Erik to a sitter, and it was definitely a good investment in time. I can’t imagine trying to keep both of them entertained in the ER. Elsa was very curious about all the moving parts of her bed. If Erik had been there they probably would have been racing a hospital bed down the hall, while I screamed like a crazy person.

We finally got home around 1 pm. I made lunch, took a shower, and thought I had plenty of time to fill Elsa’s prescription before the next dose was due.

Little did I know that we were about to start a trek into hell.

First, I hate going anywhere alone with both kids. I’ve finally figured it out. Erik is a touchy, feely boy who loves his mother and wants to be in constant physical contact if he is not in front of a screen. When we go out and about he inserts himself between myself and Elsa and she gets away from me. I need her to be right by my side so I can grab her when she darts away. She is only three–she’s obviously not aware enough to be trusted to dart through a parking lot like a little Frogger. Erik’s seven. I don’t feel like I need a hand on him, but he gets right in there and gets his body between me and Elsa and I lose control of the preschooler.

Also, the whole time we were in the stores he was touching me–patting my belly, head butting me (gently, but still annoying), rubbing my legs, putting his head up the back of my shirt. I wouldn’t mind holding his hand, but the head butting, shirt lifting and belly patting were about to send me into orbit.

And yes, I did says “stores” plural. First pharmacy didn’t have the particular drug we needed. Second pharmacy didn’t have the drug. THIRD pharmacy didn’t have the drug and I started crying. I could not bear the thought of hauling my kids back to the car, driving somewhere in the now rush hour time of day and then hauling them out of the car and traipsing across another parking lot. And how many more times was I going to have to do that? Did this drug exist anywhere in Germantown? Was my daughter’s eye going to fall out because we couldn’t find the prescribed antibiotic (clintamoxilyn or something like that)?

Fourth pharmacy, Safeway, had it! Whoo-hoo! I cried tears of relief and the clerk probably thought I was a loon when I thanked her over and over again. She said it would be 30 minutes, so off we went to entertain ourselves.

We started by looking at the cake book in the bakery (Erik’s choice), but had to leave when the kids started fighting over what cake to get. We were not even getting a cake. But the fight must go on!

Then we went to the very nice, quiet private pharmacy waiting room but the kids wanted a book to read. We found the book section and both kids picked out a completely lame book with lots and lots of noisy buttons to press.

I took my blood pressure and it was through the freakin’ roof. I think I need to re-visit the blood pressure question with my doctor. It was fine when I went in by myself, but I am not usually by myself.

I went back to the pick-up line after 30 minutes and they did a bunch of fiddle-farting around and announced they hadn’t started it yet b/c it was $210 and did I really want it?

I about fainted.

My insurance brought it down to $140, and of course I wanted it. My daughter’s sight could possibly depend on it! But still. Yikes. Glad we don’t really have to worry about it that much. I’m just incredibly grateful that it wasn’t a choice between the medication and groceries for a week.

We settled in for another round of waiting. The kids were starting to go wild. Erik was dancing and singing to Living on a Prayer way too loudly. A creepy redneck hick was staring at the kids and kept telling me how beautiful they were and wanted to know why Erik knew Living on a Prayer.

We didn’t get home until almost 6:30. It was such a grueling day, and I didn’t get a chance to prepare anything for our upcoming trip, so I guess we will be leaving later than we intended. Good things accommodations are free and flexible! We need to pack and clean the bathrooms before we go. Also, maybe do a dump run. I totally forgot to take the garbage out this morning (wonder why?) and I don’t want it sitting here another week while we are gone. It already smells bad enough. Ugh.

*I’m trying to be a good mom and pay attention to the things Erik is interested in. This means I am playing Social Empire and Dragon Cities on FaceBook. Sorry friends. However, I have to say I am getting just a weeeeeeeee bit obsessed with my empire and may need to cut this entry short so I can go make sure no trolls are attacking my village. Also, I need a shit load of gold so I can build a cool castle.

Only problem? Now my computer is acting really funky and I’m worried the game put a virus on my computer.

*I just signed the kids up for swim lessons! They will be taking them at the same time, though Erik will be Level 1 and Elsa will be level 2. Hope that doesn’t freak him out, but she is willing to go under water and he refuses to get his face wet, so them’s the breaks. This is a new place in town that just does swim lessons. They leased out an old restaurant and put in a special teaching pool. The parents sit outside the pool area behind one way glass. This is going to be so much better than the lessons I did with Erik when Elsa was a newborn (I hope).

*Poor Elsa just can not catch a break. Last week she fell and scraped half her face off. Luckily she is only 3 and has amazing baby skin that healed super fast (with the help of some Neosporin). All that’s left is some shiny pink scar tissue below her eye.

Yesterday she woke up and I noticed her eye was looking a little pink, like maybe she had a mosquito bite. She was scratching it, but the eyeball itself was clear so I didn’t think much of it. I would have liked to put something on it, but what can you put that would be eye safe?

Last night she woke up screaming in middle of the night and when I turned on the light I recoiled in horror. Her whole eye was swollen shut. I tried to give her Zyrtec, the only allergy med I had in children’s strength (I know I had Children’s Benedryl at some point, but it was never used and I couldn’t find it) but she refused to take it.

It was looking really bad this morning, so I had Mike run to CVS before work and get some Children’s Benedryl, then I called the doctor to find out the correct dosage the moment they opened. When they heard my story they asked how fast I could get to the office. Ten minutes later they were examining her and making sure she wasn’t going to go blind. Apparently they take any swelling of the eye very seriously, which is a good thing.

They gave her a Clariton and told me to give her Benedryl tonight. If it goes above her eyebrow or if it starts streaking red I am supposed to take her to the ER immediately because there is a possibility of infection, especially if she is scratching it. Infections that close to the eye need to be controlled immediately.

I went and bought some more children’s chewable Clariton and about had a heart attack. $22 for 20 pills!?!?! I need to get over to Costco and see if they have a version. I paid $18.99 for my year’s supply of Kirkland Claritan.

I’m really glad I thought to ask for a note so she’d be cleared for all activities. As soon as I walked into the gym daycare they told me she had pinkeye and couldn’t be in there. I whipped out my note and stood my ground. Bah. There are some really great things about the daycare (excellent level of care, consistent employees), but some of their administrative non-sense pisses me off. Obviously a child with pinkeye should not be in a daycare setting, but do they even know what pinkeye is? Her eyeball itself would be pink, I think.

*Poor Erik had his share of trouble yesterday. We were at the library Discovery Room, a playroom you can reserve for an hour. He went to the bathroom by himself (I could see the door from the playroom window) and never came out. I was getting pretty worried, but figured he must be pooping. I was waffling between going and finding him or just waiting it out when the librarian opened the bathroom door. It looked like he had been puking or something, he was white as a ghost and had super red eyes.

I feel so, so bad. He was locked in the bathroom and had apparently been screaming bloody murder, trying to get out. The librarian says the door sometimes “catches” and can be hard to open. Now he refuses to go in any public bathroom alone, but he won’t go into the ladies room with me so he’s got a big problem.

*The kids had MyGym camp today which meant I had three hours of free time! I went to Trader Joe’s for the first time in 7 years and finally figured out why people love it. The snacks! Super cheap, interesting, organic snacks! The last time I was there Erik was a little baby. I didn’t need praline pecans or alphabet cookies. Now? Now I could do with cheap organic snacks!

The parking situation is terrible and it’s in the trashy part of the next town over, so it is not a place I would normally think to go to. My friend talks about it constantly and the kids loved some of the snacks they had at her place, so I decided to give it a go. I got three huge bags of groceries, including fresh hydrangeas for less than $90!

I also went to Jo-Ann’s fabrics just to enjoy the atmosphere. It’s not a real quilt shop, but it will do. I ended up buying fabric for Elsa’s story quilt!

You get a plain background and a contrasting fabric for the lines, then put together a bunch of novelty fabrics. The children are supposed to follow the novelty fabrics via the lines and put together a fun story. Erik has never used it in such a way, but I have high hopes that Elsa will get a kick out of making up stories. She already exhibits much more imagination than Erik ever has. He is much more grounded in reality.

Her quilt will be purple with hot pink lines. I hope the contrast is enough to make the lines really pop. I did a quick search on Flickr for my quilt and several others popped up. One was aqua with red lines. Gorgeous! I would do that color combo for myself! Btw, who hates the new Flickr? What the heck happened?

I also want to make her a quick purple princess quilt for her bed. Just gotta finish up the fabric purchases and find time to sew. The story quilt will have to take a back seat because it will take a whole heck of a lot longer to make. I’ll probably not get started on it until Elsa starts preschool in September.

*And now I should probably do something productive like make dinner or fold towels. Probably make dinner. I’ve been eating too many chocolate covered almonds today. I need to get back to Weight Watchers.

*Elsa ended up screaming bloody murder for an hour, so there is no dinner tonight. Mike is home now and I just popped some of my Trader Joe purchases in the oven. I meant to have them for lunch since I usually do dinner from scratch, but this works since it is almost 7 pm. Did you know Mulan is on Netflix? It’s my favorite Disney movie! Now the kids are down watching it and I am up here listening for the timer. Boooo! I guess I should play it on my laptop. I didn’t know they had Disney movies on Netflix, though it seems like Mulan is kind of the red-headed stepchild of the Disney princess series. She is rarely included in anything even though she is the most badass “princess” of all.

We have a small sum of money set aside for house repairs or a mini-vacation. I was advocating for ceiling fans in the bedrooms or new medicine cabinets, but Erik and Mike are advocating for a small vacation.

I started looking into beach rentals yesterday and we could swing a couple of nights on the Maryland shore. I was talking about it with a friend today and guess what? She has a beach house that is available for FREE for two weeks. Free always fits the budget! Of course I offered to pay her, but she refused to take any money. We will leave it cleaner than we find it and be sure to stock up on groceries and leave her wine or beer or something. We won’t go a a full two weeks, but it is going to be a longer trip than we could otherwise afford. I am so happy!

Speaking of vacations, Mike wants to go to Sweden next summer. At first he asked me if he could take the kids to Sweden since I always tell him he can go and I’ll stay home. Moment of truth, though, hit me like a brick. No way are my kids going to a foreign country without me. I trust Mike 100%, but my babies need me.

Mike has a year to figure out accommodations. Surely there are vacation rental homes in or around Klippan. I absolutely refuse to stay at the family farm. I wouldn’t mind staying with one of the nieces or nephews if they had room for us, but it would be weird to invite ourselves into their homes.

Mike’s sister-in-law has it out for me and I am not even sure why. Before I found my Dealing with the Inlaws forum I tried to make excuses for her or thought she made some mistakes, but after much reading I know that she purposefully does shit to piss me off. Why else would you make octopus pasta for someone you know hates seafood and chop up the octopus into such tiny pieces no one can see it, then gloat about it? Sorry Mike, but that is just bat shit crazy. If I have a guest in my home I try to accommodate their likes and dislikes, as do all normal people. Normal people don’t trick others into eating food they don’t like. I’ve never hidden olives or beans in my dishes and tried to get Mike to eat them. I’ve tried to get him to eat both, but never through subterfuge.

Normal people don’t try to sell their guests their old fat clothes. And they really don’t get offended when their guests don’t want to spend a shit ton of money on said fat clothes. She was selling her old clothes for more money than I pay for new clothes!

So I guess we have a big trip to look forward to next year. I can see a Swedish summer vacation being really fun, but not with the family element mixed in. If anyone has any tips on travelling with kids around the Klippan/Angelholm area, I’m all ears. Mike’s family* has never met Elsa (I was six months pregnant the last time we were there). There are also three new great-grandbabies and another one on the way that we’ve never met. At least that means Elsa will have someone to play with.

I guess I should wrap this up and go take a shower. We went to the splash park this morning, so I was planning on going to the gym this afternoon. Elsa was up super early and managed to fall asleep during Tangled. She’s going on 2.5 hours of sleep and I don’t think I’ll have time for a workout before I need to cook dinner.

*For newer readers, Mike is much younger than his siblings. I am closer in age to his nieces and nephews than his siblings. His niece has two children and his nephew has one and one on the way.

This is the first full week that I’ve had Erik with me 24/7 for the summer. No camps, no playdates. Just mommy, Erik and Elsa all trying to keep it together.

I’m not keeping it together very well. I am not being the kind of mother I want to be.

What do I want to be?

Loving, patient, kind. Using words to solve problems, never violent or nasty. Allowing children to help with things (cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping) so they learn how to do them and are a part of the family. I want to act interested in the things they are interested in so they will talk to me when they are teenagers, even if that currently means listening to video game/pokemon/princess talk for an hour. I want to encourage learning and reading and figuring things out. I want to be a hard ass about them doing things themselves and solving their own problems, while always being available to help them figure out how to do it or lend support when it is a problem they can’t handle on their own.

What am I actually like?

Screamy, arm-grabby, and lecturey.

I do some things right. I listen to their never-ending talk about the latest kid thing that I don’t give two flying fips about. I make them problem solve. I have their back when someone causes trouble. I spend a lot of time letting them help me cook and clean and do other tasks that would be much quicker if I sent them on their merry way and did it myself.

But I have got to stop with the screaming. I scream because they are screaming. I scream for them to stop screaming. I scream because they will not. stop. making. noise. Wonderful example I’m setting, isn’t it?

Yesterday I completely lost it and did something I’ve never, ever done before. I started yelling “Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up.” at Erik, which was awful and I still feel terrible about. I have never told either of my children to shut up. I have apologized several times and feel even worse because Erik says “I don’t care. Why would I care? People tell me to shut up all the time at school.” Breaks my heart!

So yeah. Summer is driving me bonkers. Why did I scream for him to shut up? Elsa got in “his” side of the van and he wouldn’t stop screaming about it. I am so over this “my side” thing. I know that is just what siblings do and I wouldn’t care if they talked about it, but the screaming sets my teeth on edge.

Erik has also developed this charming habit of making a scream like a dying robot* at random times. It makes me want to slap him across the face (for the record, I have never slapped my children nor will I ever slap my children).

I’m very sensitive to sounds and the yelling and screaming and random robot noises are pushing me over the edge.

It also doesn’t help that Erik is 7, the age of judgement. He thinks he’s the boss of everything and Elsa is only three, thus she can do nothing right. Of course she can’t do things like a grown-up does, or even like a 7 year old does. She can’t scoop out the cookie dough and line it up correctly. She can’t slice strawberries correctly. She can’t put puzzles together exactly right without doing a little testing. She’s THREE. She is learning and we must give her room to learn.

But he’s SEVEN and he doesn’t care. He’s a bleepity-bleepin’ drill sergeant and doesn’t care about gentle parenting. He’s not a parent and it’s not his job to care about such things, but it is also not his job to police every move made by his little sister. It is driving me in-freakin’-sane. I know it is pay-back, because I was exactly like that when I was a kid, but it has to end. I need him to chill.

______

Several hours later:

This afternoon was so much better! Probably because I threw away my “no screen time from 10 am-6 pm” rule and let them vegetate for much too long this afternoon. Later when I instituted DEAR** time, I pretended I didn’t notice when they banded against me and silently did a puzzle together instead of reading. I am sort of a control freak and have a hard time letting them purposefully do something that goes against something I’ve specifically instructed them to do (read a book), but I am trying very hard to get over that and view it as a positive that they were able to use their sibling bond to silently thwart me. Silence was the key, here, by the way. Sometimes I just need a little silence.

We went to my friend’s house for a BBQ yesterday and my friend made some Rosemary Ranch chicken, which Erik thought was totally delicious. He’s completely obsessed with this chicken. Today at the library one of my friends mentioned my chicken friend and Erik lit up “Did you say Amy? Chicken! Chicken! Let’s make chicken! Amy makes delicious chicken!”

Also, he’s in love with Amy even though she’s pregnant, and has two children and a husband. I’m sure that has something to do with his chicken love.

Our MOMS Club was doing our monthly picnic-in-the-park family night this evening and Erik was dying to take the delicious chicken, even though I didn’t want to go.

So guess what we did? Off to the store we went and we bought a gigantic amount of chicken thighs, rosemary and ranch dressing. Since this was Erik’s obsession, I made him mix the marinade, which he was quite happy to do. We then took the whole she-bang to the park and grilled it. I must admit, the chicken was totally amazing and Erik was floating away on cloud 9 since people were paying attention to him for his mad chicken making skillz. He is so in love with my friend, though, that he told her that her chicken will always be better than his. He is such a charmer (when he is not driving me crazy with the sibling rivalry).

I need to sit Mike down with a calendar and figure out when he can take some vacation days. He needs to bond with his children this summer too. I can’t be the only one bonding the hell out of these kids. I love Erik dearly and would do anything for him, but his personality is just a little “extra” and takes a lot of mental energy to keep up with. Plus, he totally loves me (which is great) and wants to be on top of me all. the. time (not so great). This has always been true, but when he’s at school seven hours a day I don’t notice it. I kind of liked having my body back. Elsa will jump on me and have fun, but she can also spend lots of time by herself, playing independently. We have our own groove during the school year and it has not been easy integrating Erik back into our days. Doesn’t that sound terrible? It is not meant to be a complaint about him, just a complaint about the general difficulty of having the structure of our days completely changed because of summer break.

Right now the majority of my friends are people who have young children. Irish Lad and his family are out of town most of the summer and Erik’s other pea-in-a-pod friend is in camp for most of the summer. That means Erik is not having a whole lot of fun when we go places because he doesn’t have anyone to run around with. I know it is not easy and I try to make sure he gets to play with his friends, but I can’t put our whole life on hold because he has joined us for the summer. We have places to go, people to see, things to do! We’re going swimming and splash parking and BBQing. Fun stuff, but not as fun as it could be if he had a kid his age along for the ride.

Six more weeks. We can do this! But can we do this with the TV and computer turned off for most of the day?

*If you are familiar with LEGO Star Wars you know the noise R2D2 makes.

**Drop Everything And Read

I’ve been working really hard on talking about diversity and the science behind different skin tones. It is not falling on deaf ears, but there are defintely some issues with our materials and Erik’s perceptions. Case in point:

Erik pointed out that the white children are crying and look miserable.

He pointed out that the black and biracial children look super happy. Clearly the white children would be happy if they could just be black. Just like he could be happier if he were black.

Like all parents, I just want him to be happy with the skin he is in. I am flailing around here, not even sure what to say, do or think.

I had to call the police today. Why is my life always so full of “experiences?” I don’t want to be the person calling the police! I want calm and peace and happiness.

There’s a teenager in the neighborhood who causes trouble. It’s kind of obvious that he’s not all there, mentally. He likes to hang around the young kids, even though he is 15. We have tons of teenagers in the neighborhood and most of them are nice to the kids and will say hi or let them have a turn kicking the ball, etc. They do not ever try to hang around the little kids. They just aren’t interested–perfectly normal.

This kid hit Erik with a metal stick a few weeks ago and also told Erik that no white people are allowed in the playground. You can guess how that went over. I had some very harsh words with the teenager.

Today I went out and he was trying to take down a real estate sign in my neighbor’s yard. We had words again and I told him he better shape up or ship out–that I was calling the police the next time he caused trouble.

I took Elsa down to the playground and a big group of kids, including this teenager were hanging around the on the porch of the house that was directly across from the park. Suddenly I hear a bunch of yelling “that’s so disgusting! You can’t do that! That’s just wrong!”

This 15 year old kid was making a four year old boy hold his juice box in front of his [4 year old’s] crotch area, and the 15 year old kid was about to take a drink from it.

I went nuts and started yelling “Stop it you pervert! Get away from him!” I went charging up to the house and banged on the door. The people inside probably thought it was an FBI raid, from the strength of banging.

The grandma of the little boy answered the door and I explained what was happening. She went bat shit crazy and the teenager is lucky he escaped without a scratch. The mom of the little boy started crying (she is also the mom of my “bonus child” so I sort of know her, but not really). There was a man in the house and he calmed the grandma down. We all made the teenager take us to his house, though he lied about where he lived. Finally he took us to his real house and the grandma started going ballistic on the lady who answered the door. We had no idea who she was or how she was related to him. It turns out she was his aunt and legal guardian. We didn’t find that out until much later.

I finally left and went home to call the non-emergency police line. I don’t know if it was my place, but we absolutely can not have a pervert running around the neighborhood.

***TRIGGER WARNING: ONE PARAGRAPH****

When I was teaching we had a mentally ill 16 year old boy rape and kill a six year old girl. She was a friend of his families and they had sent him out to babysit her at the park.

***END TRIGGER****

So yeah. . .I can see something like that happening. I have children in this neighborhood. I know this incident was not a crime, but it needed to be reported and he and his family need to know this is serious. We will not stand for this kind of thing in our neighborhood.

The police sent an officer out pretty quickly and I walked him through what had happened. He thought it sounded pretty bad that a 15 year old was doing that with a four year old–not something you want happening in your neighborhood. He went down and talked to the four year old’s family and the four year old himself. He had a really wonderful manner about him and I think he must have been trained to work with kids. Several of the middle school students knew him by name and came up and talked to him. At the end, he asked me to go back to my house because he wanted to talk to the family of the teenager alone. Totally ok with me!

He talked to them for over an hour (or at least his car was parked in front of my house for over an hour). I was dying to know what was said, but was pretty sure he would not report back to me. As he was leaving the neighborhood, he pulled in and talked to my neighbor. My neighbor is a volunteer fire-fighter and knew him from that. The neighbor said the officer had a long talk with the family and let them know this is super serious. The teen has no parents and lives with an aunt and uncle. He has mental issues, which was already pretty obvious. We are supposed to call if anything else happens so they can keep an active file on this kid and get him out of here before something really terrible happens.

I’m just glad he wasn’t doing that to Erik or Elsa. I would be in jail or dead right now if I caught a teenager doing that to either of my kids. I know I would go straight up ballistic and . . . well. . .honestly I don’t know. Just the thought makes me so angry that I start shaking. I’m just so happy that I saw it happen. Who knows what that boy has been doing or might do in the future? Now we know to keep a close eye on him and our children.

We had our annual year-end MOMS Club bash yesterday and it went really well. I said I absolutely was not planning the party and suggested we ask for volunteers for a party committee. We had a couple of volunteers, but they completely disappeared. Guess who planned the party? Me and my friend, of course. Honestly, though? I like being in control.

Our chapter has grown so much this year that we couldn’t host it in someone’s backyard. Our president lives next door to her community pool and worked out a deal where we could use the pool for $100, so we decided to charge each family a set fee and supply everything. That worked out so much better than counting on potluck. So much better. No worries that the person who was bringing the plates wasn’t going to show or that we’d have four pasta salads and no main dish. In the end, the pool only charged us $15, so we are issuing partial refunds to those who paid. The pool was super unorganized in regards to the party, obviously. However, it was basically like having a private pool party so that was a big plus. There are two pools in my friend’s community and we were at the small one. It was a hot Saturday afternoon and there were only six other people at the pool! Crazy!

I guess I am really and truly a grown-up now. I’ll be 40 next year, so it shouldn’t surprise me that I have the tools and knowledge to handle the food at the party. My mother and grandmother were not party throwers and never developed any skills for packing up a bunch of food and taking it to a park/pool/kiddie party place so it all seems kind of foreign to me, but these days I’ve got it down to a science. The only thing I will do differently at my next party: take along several disposable tupperware containers and load up the left over cake in containers and encourage people to take home a container. We had a ton of cake left, which is kind of funny because I thought we wouldn’t have enough. One of the other moms served as cake cutter and gave out super tiny slices.

We even had a bit of excitement when the lifeguard had to get in the pool! Unfortunately, it was my kid he had to save. Except I had already saved him, so the point was moot.

I was in the pool, but had turned to talk to my friend. Big mistake! The kids had been doing so well and everyone was so happy that I didn’t have my usual water anxiety.

Elsa swam over to Erik (she was in a puddle jumper, he had a kickboard) and started wrestling with him, climbing up on his back and pushing him under water. His kickboard got away from him and he was out of his depth. She thought she was just having some fun with her bro-ey, but she was about to kill him. Mike yelled out, “Elsa get off him!” and I turned around to see what was happening. I made it to Erik very quickly, lifting him up just seconds before the lifeguard splashed down beside us. Erik was totally ok, but they had to shut the pool down when the supervisor arrived, and we all had to stand around while the lifeguard shakily filled out an incident report. He was very, very young and that was his first “rescue.”

I was afraid Erik would never get in the water again, but we convinced him to come back in a little later. He is asking for swimming lessons, so I think that’s a good sign that he isn’t totally scarred for life. I’ve been meaning to get both kids into lessons, but haven’t gotten around to it. This is the impetus that I needed. I’ll go get them signed up on Monday, I guess.

In other news, Mike has been working his butt off on getting Elsa’s new bed put together. Several weeks ago and LJ friend posted a link to a loft bed on Amazon. Amazon! Who knew? I found Elsa a loft bed with a slide for about 1/3 of the price as the local baby furniture store. It’s metal and seems sturdy. Most importantly: it has a slide! If I was a kid, it would totally be my dream bed.

I also bought a big castle wall cling, so once we get some of the other stuff out of there I can work on making her room appropriate for a little girl, not just a storage area with a bed. I want to put a big mirror in there and some hooks on the wall for all her dress up clothes. I think that would be really fun!

If Mike gets the bed finished today, I guess we’ll have to run over to the mattress store and pick up a mattress and box springs. It is so nice to have the van and be able to cart things like that home without paying for and arranging for delivery. Have I mentioned how much I love my van? I could write an ode to my van, but who would want to read it?

I really hope I don’t have high blood pressure! I don’t want to go on meds. I’ve been really proud that despite my weight, my blood pressure has always been in the normal range. Both of my parents had to go on meds before they turned 40, but both of them had some really bad health habits. I eat too much sugar, but I do exercise regularly and I don’t smoke.

Anyway, remember that Elsa knocked into my chin and caused my jaw to hurt? I woke up in a lot of pain yesterday so decided it was time to consult a professional. I hate going to the doctor, but sometimes it must be done. The doctor had a horrible bedside manner and was mean to my children, telling them to sit down in the chair and behave (they were sitting on the exam table and I was in the chair). She was not at all concerned about my jaw and said it would be fine in a week. Good to know; I just hope she’s right. She gave me a prescription for Tylenol3, but I’m not going to bother to fill it. Advil is good enough for me. My primary concern was not the pain; it was the fact that the pain was not going away. I was afraid there was some sort of serious damage.

The main concern of the appointment was my blood pressure, which was completely unexpected. It was through the roof when the nurse first took it, then went down considerably but was still high at the end of the visit.

I’m supposed to go back next week and get it taken again without the children. The children were crawling all over me. Elsa was using my arm as a bar to do flips over. The room was tiny. The doctor was not child friendly. It was a great situation for high blood pressure.

Hopefully if I can manage to go in without the kids (and how am I going to manage THAT? I have several friends who can take the kids, but I hate to do that to people) my BP will be normal and we won’t have to consider meds. I really really really really do not want to go on meds. I know it’s not a big deal and if the doc says they are necessary I will take them and be fine with it, but I just don’t want to admit that A) I am getting to be of an age when I need meds and B) I’m going to stroke out at any moment without the help of meds.

I should check and see if Claritan increases BP. My Claritan use is really the only thing that’s changed since my health check last year.

I am contemplating ordering a BP monitor to have at home. I occasionally check it at the grocery store and it’s always fine, but I am not sure how accurate those are.

Maybe it was high because I did Zumba before the appointment? I haven’t done Zumba in 3 years. The last few times I tried, my back started screaming about 10 minutes in and I had to leave. My back has been doing much better lately, and I was already pumped full of Advil for my jaw so I decided to give it a whirl. I made it 40 minutes before the first twinge hit! Whoo-hoo! I made it through the whole class and my poor calves are SORE today. I forgot just how painful it is for my calves the first few times.

I am hoping I can get back into Zumba and get back into BodyPump two times a week. I’ve been faithfully going every Tuesday, but now my schedule has opened up so I’ll be able to go Tuesday and Thursday. I’ve only been doing it 2x/week twice now and I have already noticed a major difference in my muscles. I’m going to be buff soon! Fat, but buff!

Now, if only all these classes and my childcare situation stays the same. Gold’s Gym bought out my local gym this morning. Everyone is in a panic, but I don’t have time for that. I’ll worry when we get official word about what they are doing. Obviously they bought the chain because it was doing well. The chain was owned by an old man who was just tired of running it; it wasn’t a move because the business was sinking. I don’t think they want to piss off their current membership. Right?

The living room ceiling is completely painted! I just need to remove the tape and the plastic sheets off one of the walls. Whoo-hooo!!!! All that’s left is the trim. Lots and lots and lots of trim.

Also, Mike needs to watch a YouTube video to learn how to replace outlets. He’s done all the light switches for me, but the outlets look a little more complicated. I’ll put it on his to-do list and see if it is ever done. Hopefully YouTube instructions won’t burn my house down.

School’s been out for two days and Erik is already bored and ready to go back, despite spending three hours at camp this morning. Apparently sitting around watching Elsa play princess while I paint is not very fun. Also, having your little sister wrestle you to the ground then demand over and over “giddy up, Purple Horse, giddy up, Purple Horse” while jumping wildly is not the stuff of dreamy summer vacations.

I was also super mean and made him do two math worksheets and the whole family sat around for 20 minutes of DEAR time (drop everything and read). He sounded like one of my high school students, “so what am I supposed to do? Can I just stare at the page? Do I actually have to read it?” They do DEAR every day at school so I’m not sure why he couldn’t figure it out. Well, that’s not true. I know why he couldn’t figure it out–he was trying to get out of it. No dice, son. We’ll be doing it every day. We’ve got to keep our brains from turning into mush.

I am extremely disappointed with his cooking camp. It’s through the county, so I didn’t expect it to be super fabulous, but I did expect it to be COOKING camp, since that’s what it’s advertised as. They only meet four times for three hours each, but that’s enough time to actually cook a few things each day. Instead, they are doing totally lame stuff that does not live up to my little chef’s expectations. Today they learned about the food pyramid (not even the modern healthy plate version), made their own food pyramid, decorated an apron and made ranch dressing. They didn’t even each make their own. Two of them went to the front of the room and “helped” make it.

To say I am pissed is an understatement. Erik didn’t even get to taste the dressing because they ran out before they got to him.

I wanted to pull him out and demand a refund, but he wants to go back. It’s only three more days, so I guess I’ll let it ride but the evaluation form I fill out at the end will be smoking from the heat of my rage.

The real reason I am angry? This was the only local cooking camp we could find, but it is not that local! It is a good 30 minute drive down to the school at 8:30 in the morning. I never would have signed up for such a far-away, early camp if I would have known it was going to be totally lame.

Also, they gave the kids free t-shirts, which I thought was a nice touch until I opened it up and saw it was just an ad for the childcare center that is running the camp. Bah humbug.

Thank you to everyone who commented about PTA fundraisers. I’ve been talking to local parents as well and I am really going to push for a Read-a-Thon or Run for Education type thing. I don’t know a single person in the world who wants to buy crap from a magazine. I really like the read-a-thon idea since the kids can feel like they have some control in racking up funds from parents (even though I know most people will just give a flat amount).

Of course, it is not my call to make and I am not the fundraising chair (hallelujah!). I’ve figured that we need each child to pull in around $20 to run all our programs. Sounds doable, until you consider that a lot of families have more than one child in the school (and at other schools). Hopefully the newsletter and directory sponsorships will pull in a lot.

We’ve been crazy busy, yet again. Same old song and dance, right?

We spent most of Saturday painting and cleaning, with an adult birthday celebration thrown in. The birthday celebration was very low-key–just our family and another family at the bowling alley and then at their house. It all would have been pretty good, but I was behind Elsa and she jumped really hard, knocking me in the chin with her head. It was such a good knock-out that I saw stars. I didn’t lose consciousness, but I was woozy enough to lay down on the bowling alley floor instead of trying to get up. I’m sure it was an attractive sight.

I let Erik finish my game for me (I was literally on the last ball of the last frame) and he was sad that he didn’t hit anything. He came over to me and saw tears pouring out of my eyes and thought I was crying because I didn’t break 100 and was mad at him. Poor kid!

I felt pretty off the rest of the day, but managed to eat a giant piece of chocolate cake in between wondering if I needed to go to the ER for x-rays. My ears were my main complaint–it felt like they needed to pop.

Today I have a tiny little bruise on my chin, but the whole area is swollen and sore. My jaw was really sore this morning, but seems to be ok now. If it still hurts tomorrow I’ll call my primary care and see if they want to see me.

Today was Father’s Day in the US, but our family is not big on celebrations so we didn’t do much except give Mike cards and pictures of the kids. And painted, of course. The painting will never end. Current job: putting the finishing touches on the ceiling. I’m trying to be careful and not get white paint all over my fresh blue walls, so I’m hanging plastic drapes all over the walls. It looks like I’m prepping for a bloody murder.

Erik brought home a birthday party invitation for today on Thursday, which should have been my first sign that this party was not going to be organized. It was for his best school friend and we didn’t have any other plans, so we RSVPed yes and went to the party. I’ve been a mom for 7 years so I’ve been to all manner of parties. Some are better organized than others, but this was by far the least organized party I’ve ever been to.

I was so confused when we first arrived because there was a Hispanic family using the reserved picnic shelter and I was 100% sure that the birthday boy was from a Middle Eastern family. I had no idea what to do, but finally I asked if we were in the right place for XXXX’s birthday party and a lady popped out from behind a pole and told me I was in the right place.

The Hispanic family was not supposed to be there, so they had to put out the two grills that they’d started and go find somewhere else to have a picnic.

It was really awkward because we were the first ones there and we were not even early. In fact, we were about five minutes late, which isn’t much I suppose. The mom was at the park alone, so Erik didn’t have anyone to play with. The birthday boy showed up about a half hour later, which was just weird.

The mom handed me some streamers and told me to decorate, then she also said I would have to think up party games for the kids to play. I hoped it was just a miscommunication, but maybe she really meant it. I don’t know!

We kept waiting and waiting for the party to start, but hardly anyone showed up. Even though we were at a park, the picnic shelter was set far away from everything so there was really nothing to do. At one point I took a few of the kids to the playground, but then one kid left after ten minutes, so we had to go back to the party to make sure he was with his parents and not kidnapped by a molester in the woods.

All the kids were complaining that they were hungry, but no food was being offered despite a buffet on the picnic table. No drinks were offered, either, until a mom finally went and asked if there was any water anywhere. They had two full coolers of drinks, just had not thought to share it with us.

F-i-n-a-l-l-y the dad showed up with pizza and cake. But! We were not allowed to give the kids the pizza because they wanted to cut the cake first.

There were four classroom moms, the celebrating family and then a bunch of their friends. The four classroom moms were getting buggy eyed and cranky because this was such a poorly executed party. It’s not like we were even all friends or anything like that. I’d never met them before. We were from four different countries with four different cultures. But we all had one things in common: we wanted our children to get a g-damned slice of pizza.

Someone decided that cutting the cake before serving dinner was a bad idea, so we were finally able to give the kids pizza.

But what about the buffet?

No, no. We had to wait another 30 minutes until some more friends arrived. This was about 20 minutes before the “official” end of the party listed on the invite, and 2 hours and 40 minutes into this never ending party with zero entertainment.

Finally they let us eat, though most of the food was so spicy that I couldn’t handle it. They didn’t have any forks, either, which was not the end of the world but was sort of a pain.

Eventually they served cake, but there was not enough to go around. Also: no forks or spoons, so if you wanted a piece you had to eat it with your hands (or face, as Erik chose to do).

They never did play any party games or let the kids do anything fun. The boys kept asking me to take them back to the playground, which I would have been fine doing if someone would have asked me to do so. I couldn’t exactly take off with the party guests without the hosts’ blessing. I told them to ask the mom or dad, but they were completely ineffective and disorganized (obviously). Their four year old son threw a Fanta can at my head. Good thing it was not as hard as Elsa’s skull. The other three school moms and I all boggled, but none of us knew what to do about it.

I spent most of my time talking to a lady from Slovakia. She has four kids and only does laundry once every three weeks. She says she can’t have Erik at her house for a playdate because the floors are not safe to navigate. Also, she tried to give me a “healthy” recipe that was basically smashing up avocados and sardines and spreading it on toast. She was a nice lady, but I’ll give that recipe a pass!

We left at the same time and as we were talking down to the cars she goes “don’t say a word. Not a word! The children, they talk! We should consider it an honor just to be invited since they usually never invite anyone outside their own culture.”

So yeah. That happened. I’ll never get those four hours of my life back. The lady kind of jokingly asked Erik and her son if they enjoyed the party and they were both enthusiastic about it, even though they didn’t get to do anything but run in circles around the picnic shelter.

I can’t even really chalk it up to cultural differences. I’ve been to several parties hosted by people of this culture and they were definitely not like this party! I was actually the only native American (not Native American, but you know what I mean, right?) but I was certainly not the only one completely irked by the lack of organization.