Admission

I have frequently have fantasies about living a life where I only take care of myself. 

Island Adventure Highlights

I've had people tell me I was crazy for going to the Caribbean in the summer, but I prefer it. "It's warm at home," they've told me. Yeah, but seriously... the sprinkler and the public pool look nothing like this. 

Wait, What is this Feeling I'm Having?

Could it be? It is... it's worry. Where did this come from? And why do I have it? Last week I was calm and a bit zen about the whole upcoming kindergarten experience.

And now I'm worrying. What if my kid is a behavioral problem? What if he is below average in the classroom? I swear I don't have any more energy left to deal with trying to inspire a "me-crazed" five year old.

Yes, I know I registered him for kindergarten today, which is probably why I'm all a mess. His teacher for next year is Ms. Dramado. He was kind of whatever about the whole thing until he said to me that he was sad he didn't get Mrs. White because she had two kitchens in her room when they took the tour. And I figured if that's what he was qualifying as his must-have priority list for kindergarten, I think he's going to be horrified to learn that he's not a little boy any more. That kindergartners get in trouble for rough housing and yelling.

I went over some of the rules from the handbook that came in my registration packet. The one he was most concerned about was not being able to wear hats in the classroom. "Well, I guess I can dress up and just leave my fireman hat at home."

Shit. It reminds me of when I was 8 and I spent the whole night before third grade up worrying that I was going to do something stupid and get detention (because you couldn't get a detention before third grade). I worried about it for weeks.

I explained that he couldn't dress up in costume and go to kindergarten, except around, maybe, Halloween. My son was not amused with this discovery.

He's placed in a room where I think we only know one other child. He's an old friend from Next Generation, so that will work fine. To be truthful, I was a little afraid that if he and all of his best buddies ended up in the same class, it would be a lot of rough and tumble and figuring out that they were in school and not on a play date. But he had friends like Special K's boys who were in different classrooms at Next Gen and he was always happy to see them in the building and on the playground. I don't think it will be any different here.

Right now he's in the bathtub. I'm putting him to bed by 8:30, the estimated school bedtime. And I'll wake him up at 6:30 a.m., the estimated school wake up time. We're going to aim for this every weekday night until school starts.

Tomorrow, I won't have time to think about it. After I drop him off at sports camp at 7:30 a.m., I'm working out for an hour I'll pick up the book drop books, and then head into MMO to start going through my room. KTDID is going to come over and help. We're going to move things around, and I'm going to try to figure some things out that I'll need. Then I'll pick X-man up and get him some lunch and then drop him off at Little Gym Under the Sea camp so that he can have fun there, while I'm mowing my 3' high weeds and trying to some outside yard maintenance. It was so pretty before the three week-long heatwaves and now, I'm the saddest yard on the block. Sigh.

On Wednesday, X-man and I are headed to the pool. He's excited. He showed me in St. John that he can swim (via doggie paddle and underwater) across the width of the pools (around 12 feet). Yeah, there's no freestyle yet, but he can do it. So he's going to give the yellow slide a go at Sholem.

And here I thought that was going to be our biggest challenge this summer? As it turns out, I'm the one that's a wreck and he's just -- normal.

Return from the Land of the Still and Quiet

X-man and I returned home from our five-day excursion to St. John in the U.S.V.I. It's his second trip down there in a year, and we were encouraged to visit again thanks to a wedding invitation for my cousin. Destination weddings are expensive, and our family plus my parents were the only ones able to really make it down. But the three of us don't turn down beach time in crystal blue waters -- ever.

This year was actually more exciting than last because my child who cannot float at the pool by himself without first somehow filling his swim shorts with air was able to float in salt water just find. He was a buoyant baby. Want to know how I know... perhaps the cutest thing I've ever seen him do (besides when he got his eyes tested for kindergarten) was throw on fins, a mask and a snorkel, dive into water head first, kicking his way out into sea. We stayed closed to shore, but some of the beaches easily got over his head. And he totally didn't care. When he had enough, rather than standing up, he swam back to shallower waters. Except the one time we saw a puffer fish eating a dead crab underwater. He was so excited at the size of it that he stood up, grabbed on to me shouting and pulled me under. Doh. I'm a pretty okay swimmer, so I got him calmed down and back into shore without too much trouble (that's why we didn't venture more than 40 feet away from the beach or over any coral with him).

I have pictures to show you, but they're in a camera in some luggage that didn't make the drastic gate change from D49 at one end of Miami airport (still my least favorite airport) to E-5. So, we're waiting on them to come home. One of these days, I'll be rich enough to afford a ticket from ORD to STT direct without having to make transfers. But since airfare for three was $1,800 and we got to go for free with MacTroll's miles, I'm not complaining. Our whole trip was maybe $800.

The wedding was lovely. We couldn't stay too much for the party, but X-man was full of his 1,000 questions at the wedding ceremony, which my parents found very entertaining. X-man went swimming at the pool at my Aunt's resort with MacTroll while I got some exercise walking around town. Then we dried them off and got them to the reception at Rhumb Lines. (Self service rum available. I made myself a coconut raspberry martini.) But you could also make use of the open bar.

Also, turns out my kid has the sweetest blood ever. Every night he'd emerge from his room at the house we were staying in with giant welts from mosquito bites all over his body. I sprayed him with some mosquito repellent but that stuff only lasts 3 hours, and, of course, the first night I got his arms and legs but forgot his feet... and no one likes bites on their feet.

The house itself was on the south side of the island, but it was at one dead end on top of a cliff -- great for cool breezes, but a kind of a distance to drive to the beach. The road this house was on didn't connect to our normal south end beach, so you had to drive all the way around the other side of the island and come back to visit any of our usual places. But the house was free thanks to a family friend, and we were very grateful for their hospitality and that X-man got to see my dad and stepmother for a few days. He's had the honor of vacationing with all of his grandparents this summer.

Our 18-hour trip home yesterday was very taxing. My child had enough brains to wake up at 7 a.m., pee and go back to sleep. His mother did not. I was was up at 6:15 a.m. I've showered, done some laundry and opened the mail. Wait, I even ate some oatmeal. MacTroll on the other hand, never made it to Austin. His day of travel stopped short in Dallas.

Mother nature really screwed us yesterday. But today, today is going to be a wonderfully productive day.

I Want a Do Over

Today was a LOUSY day.Yes, life is always this way the night before you go on vacation. But, I really didn't need a 3-hour medical detour in the middle of my day. I don't really feel like rehashing the whole thing, but let's just say there was pain and blood and profuse apologies from multiple medical personnel, and it's made me decide that after I'm done with hematology and whatever their best swing is at my low ferritin, I'm pretty much going to avoid doctors for a while. Because I've seen enough of them. They're very nice people and they're doing their best, but shit just falls through the cracks or things don't go my way. Or there's a lot of pursing of lips, as they admit something that they thought would be super easy -- really wasn't. Because let's face it, as a person, my body is apparently not just rebelling -- it's breaking.

And I wonder, as I hand over my credit card to pay a $20 copay for something that they couldn't actually make happen, why am I paying?

Okay, I have to get up and get my kid up at 4 a.m. to get on a plane at 5 a.m. My butt won't be on the beach until Thursday morning, but it'll be in a beach house tomorrow night with my parents. And really, I'm just going to float around the freaking ocean until all the crankiness melts away from my body. It may take longer than the 3 days we'll actually be there, but I'll do the best I can.

Who Knew?

Yesterday, X-man made a new friend "X-man +1." We knew there was another X-man in town because we saw his name on something in one of the elementary schools that we toured. X-man +1 is one year older than X-man. He's a very sweet little boy who loves to go swimming and play Legos. Mmm, sounds familiar.

Yesterday, we went to X-man +1's house. He has a pool in the backyard and the boys played Legos for an hour and then swam for 45 minutes. When X-man got out, his eyes were bright red from diving for rings. This has been happening more and more lately. At Grizzly Jack's I had to hold a cold compress to his eyes to help him out. And he had some eye rubbing issues at Sholem when we're there for a while, he had them after Magic Waters, too. Well, it turns out the home pool was the last straw, and X-man couldn't open his eyes because they itched so bad. He sat through snack okay (because really, who passes up the opportunity to try a Ho Ho for the first time) with the cold compress on his face. X-man +1's grandfather kept apologizing. But we were doing okay, until we weren't. So I swept X-man away to Walgreen's to get a sterile eye wash. He was holding his own until the pharmacist said, "If he starts to have trouble seeing, taking him straight to the hospital."

Great. Thanks. My child had a total freak out for the next 35 minutes. As he's panicking as we leave Walgreen's, I'm trying to call my husband to put him on alert that he'll be holding down our kid while I try to wash out his eyes. (It's a weird feeling if you're not a contact wearer.) I rinsed out both eyes very, very good when we got home, but he was still panicking and screaming, so I called the Ask-a-Nurse line at Carle.

And guess what -- I didn't get a nurse. Why do you call it the Ask-a-Nurse Hotline if there's not actually a nurse at the other end. If I wanted to get put on hold while someone found a nurse, I'd call a main switchboard. But apparently, all the nurses were with patients and busy. Wait, what? It's an Ask-a-Nurse hotline. They offered to "take a message" while my child screamed in the background.

So, I took him to Convenient Care. Because, as with all things X-man, I have to balance his emotional anxiety over things with what I know from First Aid to be true. I knew his eyes stung. I knew that he wanted to keep rubbing them. I knew that as soon as the word hospital came up he thought bad things were going to happen to him, and it was clear that as much as he loves his father, MacTroll was having trouble convincing X-man to calm down. He offered to rinse out X-man's eyes again, but X-man kept screaming, "It's not working!"

So I picked him up and carried him to the car. MacTroll drove us. On the way, I was describing to X-man where we were on the way to the doctor's. That calmed him down immensely. When we got there, I put his flip flops in my purse and carried him in. I let MacTroll register him at the desk and then we went to the waiting room, where X-man sat in my lap and listened (and then 10 minutes later watched with a lot of blinking) Spongebob Squarepants, which he'd never seen.

Some time later, the triage nurse came and got us. X-man still had 1" round circles around his eyes, but the whites of his eyes were -- white again. Goooo eyewash!

He was able to tell the nurse his birthday and answer her questions. He had no idea what to do with an under the tongue thermometer though. We had the ear one before I just upgraded us to the kind where you don't have to touch the child's forehead.

Then we went back to the waiting room... and then we saw Dr. Kirby. I like Dr. Kirby. He's my favorite Convenient Care doc for kid stuff. We've seen him plenty of times for strep throat and pink eye. He's efficient and thorough and polite. So thorough that after he did his physical and eye exam, HE came out to the pharmacy to find us when he noticed the medical assistant didn't do a vision test.

We have a prescription for steroid eye drops, and we now know for sure that X-man has a sensitivity to chlorine. So, now I just have to find a pair of goggles that he'll keep on his head.

As for X-man +1, chlorine sensitivities aside, the playdate was a hit. We'll be contacting them when we get back in town from the Virgin Islands to see if the boys want to come over to our place. :-)

I Think I had a Brain -- Once.

In my dreams and twisted memory, there was a time when I had game. I could out multi-task anyone. Seriously, I had eyes in the back of my head, super ears and an instinct that was pretty dead on.

Now, I'm like a wilted spy. The instinct for information and how to best use it is still there, but my extra eyes are reserved for people under four feet tall, my ears appear less adept at hearing (probably due to the noise volume of my iPhone when I exercise), and my instinct, well... it's -- distracted is putting it nicely.

For the last several months, I've been using Powerstep inserts as a way to help with my Plantar Fasciitis. I only got to run once in my shoes with them, and then I noticed that I felt like I was loading my right foot heavier. The inserts were perfect in my left foot, so what gives?

Today, I decided to take the inserts out of my shoes and put the original brand spanking new Mizuna supports back into my tennis shoes. It was a great plan. When I first got the shoes I remember sitting on the stairs and putting the Powersteps into the shoes and putting the Mizuna bottoms into the Mizuna box, which I then dutifully carried upstairs and put on the top shelf of my closet.

When I went to retrieve them, I only found the left one. Well, crap. It has to be around here somewhere. I started to search. Then I decided to put the left one into the shoe before I lost it. I pulled the shoes out, and I noticed that there was already a Mizuna support in the right shoe. Thus, I was wearing two levels of support, which explains to me why my foot felt so heavy and way too lifted when I wore them. It also might explain why I had so much trouble balancing on my right leg during physical therapy. So, now I'm trying the insert without the Mizuna bottom in. It still feels way heavier than the left foot, but then again, my senses down there are a little messed up from the nerve entrapment.

Sigh. I feel like a moron. Where is my brain?

Next week, I plan on going to the ARC at the U of I to look into a membership, so I can use their 50 meter pool at my leisure rather than having to abide to specific early morning/late night lap swim times. We'll see how it works out.