This, That and the Mother Thing

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 14:43:44 GMT

Bye-Bye Salon

I’m not giving up blogging, but I am changing blog sites. I had no intention of leaving Salon.com’s blogs despite the fact that we’re getting fewer and fewer new blogs and everyone appears to be getting fewer hits over here.

But then I read that Radioland is no longer taking new customers for Salon, and I thought to myself, “Myself, it may be time to check out some other options.” And since my blogiversary is coming up soon and I don’t want to commit myself for another year to Salon (yes, Salon charges which I’m now learning that others do not), I thought, “Well now is as good a time as any.”

So without further ado, I introduce “This, That, and the Mother Thing”.

See you over there!

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 17:32:04 GMT

“Honey, I’m Human”

I said to the bird as it flew through the open French doors, into my home office, and perched on my wicker chair. I waved my arms. I said, “You need to leave!”

It knew something was amiss, and was hopping from around in circles on the arm of the chair. It looked at me. It looked out into the sunlight. It looked back at me.

“I’m human!” I said again.

It flew out the door to go update its blog on weird things happening in its own backyard.

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 00:28:50 GMT

Ummmm, do you think this looks serious?

I noticed the red spot on Friday. I don’t know if it was on Friday morning or Friday afternoon, but I know that some time on Friday, I saw that Conor had a red spot on his upper arm. I figured that some bug had bitten him. It wasn’t swollen like a mosquito bite, but then again, I knew we were in the desert and he was unlikely to have to deal with mosquitoes.

I checked it again on Saturday and it was still there and it was still red. It was about the size of a quarter, but it really didn’t seem to bother him that much. He wasn’t scratching it and except for us looking at it, he didn’t notice it at all.

Then on Sunday morning, I saw that it had blisters, huge big blisters, swollen to the point of looking very scary.

Seeing blisters the size of a quarter on one’s son’s tiny arm is enough to make this mother freak out a little bit. The first thing I thought of was a spider bite. There are so many spiders in California, and in fact, Dave taking charge killed a big furry one walking along the bed in anger after seeing Conor’s arm. (We later decided it was a mistaken spider murder, but we figure we’ll be forgiven)

The only problem was that we couldn’t call our pediatrician’s office to find out what we should do. We are one of the last people in the world without a cell phone. Conor seemed fine enough but there was a ginourmous blister on his arm of suspicious origin. Should we go to Urgent Care (not right around the corner in 29 Palms, I’d like to add!) or could we wait and see the doctor back in Charlotte. For all we knew, it could be poison ivy from our own back yard!

I can lead you through the blow by blow of what we decided, but I think instead I’ll give you the highlights. They involve a pharmacist friend in the wedding party, an RN who works as the hostess in the Inn’s restaurant and Web MD.

It’s unlikely that it was a spider bite (sorry dead furry spider!) because they blister up quickly, they are very painful, and they are more likely to be a hard lumpish sort of think. Conor had no problem with us touching it (thus not painful) and we could tell by touching it wasn’t hard.

It was, however, likely to be plant poison, possibly from one of the cacti around our Inn or even from our quick trip to Joshua Tree. Plant poisons can take days to blister and we heard from the RN that the points of cacti (I really like saying cactuses better) contain poison. They wouldn’t affect us as we are big people, but a little toddler could react to it!

The whole blister thing has taken nearly a week to resolve. Today, he only has a scar in that spot, but it’s a huge, ugly purplish scar which we are now putting kiddie Mederma on. It never did itch and it never did weep, so we’re ruling out poison ivy. I swear I recall that on the first day he walked into a plant, but I could be wrong.

It’s times like those that make me think we should get a cell phone. But then again, it was Web MD that gave us the list of when to go to the doctor because of unknown rashes and blisters.

OK. I’m off to try to still catch up from our trip out west. Vacations in the middle of the semester suck.

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 01:41:28 GMT

Lots of Firsts

We have been in the desert. Wandering around for a few days and now we’re back.

No, I’m not kidding. We went to Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms, CA for our friend’s wedding. And we took the little guy.

I’ve never been so impressed with our little muffin. He was a trooper on the plane: he only fussed a little and charmed the pants off everyone sitting around us. Of course, it helped having a window seat so he could see the little houses and cars and he loved the dozens of trucks driving around the airport. But honestly he was once again the best baby on the plane.

We also lucked into the best travel time to help him adjust to west coast time: we arrived 12 pm their time (3 pm ours) which was entirely too late for him to be awake without a nap (hence the fussing), but he was able to take a good nap from the Palm Springs Airport to our inn, which included a trip to Taco Bell (real Mexican food now that we were back on the west coast!) en route to the Inn. Food for us, nap for him.

Then we arrived at the Twentynine Palms Inn, a charming group of cabins on an oasis. Yes, a real oasis in a real desert. Besides the fact that it was the best restaurant in the city (they grow their own veggies), it was way cool.

And 30 minutes after we arrived, Conor got his first dip into a real pool.

He is a water baby. Even when his teeth were chattering from the cold of this unheated pool he wouldn’t leave. We took turns floating and twirling him around the water. After more than an hour, when we were all water logged, we took him out and back to our cabin. Can I tell you how adorable and heartbreaking it was to have our little guy sob “Bye-bye pool. Bye-bye pool” hugging our legs, waving and crying to his new favorite activity.

So we dressed him and took a tour of the grounds at which point he saw his first live ducks. (way cool!) We went to the fancy restaurant where he behaved like an angel and afterward sat out at the pool (he told him it had gone night-night) and listened to a classical music trio which enthralled him almost as much as clapping with everyone else between the songs.

Can I tell you how in love I am with my little guy? Two planes, a pool, ducks, a fancy restaurant, new music and a new place to sleep and he completely rolled with it. He was up for and excited about each new thing. What an amazing little man.

All in all, it was fun. There were some “interesting events” but we had a good time.

In the next entry, I’ll talk about our debate about whether to go to Urgent Care or not.

And btw, yes, I’m behind in blogging. Things are going on.

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 18:10:25 GMT

Off to Get My Hair Cut

We leave for a friend’s wedding in a few days and I’ve got to get my hair cut. It’s entirely too long and is broaching the length of curly, out-of-date-stuck-in-the-80’s-woman-who’s-seen-better-days mullet. It’s not my best look if you know what I mean.

I leave you with this incredibly cute picture of my long legged son sleeping from last week. Sometimes I think he looks 6’ 5” already. He looks enormous in this picture and pretty much he is.

The oddest thing about it is that Conor is considered the “shrimp” among Dave’s nieces and nephews. Add to that the fact that Conor already has a reputation as the sweetest boy in daycare, mainly because he is a complete snuggle bug, and you can see the challenges he faces as a teen giant who wants to kiss and cuddle.

Oh, please, don’t let his girlfriend be 4’ 11”. It’s just not going to look good.

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 14:30:40 GMT

I’m still alive

Yes, I’m still here. And things are fine, just busy. The sleep issue has gone away and been replaced with…sleep. Lots of long, uninterrupted glorious sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep! YAY!!!

Conor’s sleeping almost completely through the night; there was one “Mommy!” at 11:00 last night but a quick pat on the back and he was back down until 6 am at which point the family engaged in a snuggle-fest.

But oh, the joy of restorative sleep. The sun shines, the birds sing, and my head is as clear as the cloudless sky. Ahhhhhhhhh.

We’ve also been doing a great deal of work around the house. On Sunday, we (along with our enslaved house guests) spread nearly the entire truckload of mulch over the beds and the garden. There are still a few more places that need a thicker mulch cover, but we smacked that mountain of mulch down to molehill with one energetic whomp. Usually it takes Dave and me nearly 6 weeks to make that much of a dent in it.

It also helped that Conor wanted to do his fair share, which after my return from Home Depot with herbs to plant and I spotted his red sweaty cherubic face carrying mulch in his toy wheelbarrow, I decided he had done well beyond his fair share. Let’s just say that in addition to last night’s good sleep, yesterday’s nap was quite strong too. (Videos will follow of Conor playing follow the leader with Dave and the wheelbarrows. I warn you that when you watch it your heart will explode)

I hope to blog more again soon, but I can really only focus on the amount of work I have to do and that’s just generally not the most exciting topic of a blog.

I will share that we are not pregnant this month. It’s not the happiest news, but we’ll keep moving on and hope for better news next month. Meanwhile, I’ll sleep and work and blog witty entries in my head which will never see the light of day but which amuse me and delude me into thinking I'll have an audience again when I can get back to regular entries which shed some light as well as humor.