Not Just the Cold of Doom

Instead it's that lovely animal known as "walking pneumonia". Why do they call it that, do you ask? Because if you're ambulatory without help, it's not "real" pneumonia. The way the doc explained this to me was thus:

1. Pneumonia is when one or both of your lungs is packed with goo, and it's gotten infected.
2. Bronchitis is when the bronchial tubes (north of the lungs) are packed/swollen/infected ditto.
3. Walking pneumonia is when the lungs are not packed full, but there is infected goo in them. 

Doc thinks I have the disease behind Door Number 3, although it may be Number 2. Since the treatment is the same (couple of Z-pacs and narcotic-laced cough syrup) he didn't bother with the chest x-ray.

I feel lousy. But as usual, I feel a little better just knowing something is being done about it (I think "rest and fluids" is too vague or abstract for me)

Update: Still feeling punk for sure, but it's amazing what one night of narcotic-induced sleep can do for one...

Bought us Another Three Months

Tonight is Brownie Scout Meeting and it has become a bit of a tradition for Abby and I to go out to dinner before hand, just the two of us. She is learning to like sushi - she'll eat kappa maki and inari at least - and there's that nice little sushi restaurant between our place and the troop leader's place. So we'll go there. I'm girding my loins for more questions about the tsunami, but that's Being a Mom.

Abby got a "red card" for chatterboxing yesterday - this is the system by which her teacher keeps 24 energetic eight-year-olds under some modicum of control. The colors are green, yellow, orange, and red. Red gets a note sent home where the child has to write out what they did wrong and how they can improve, and then they miss a recess as well. Abby's looked like this (I can't reproduce the penmanship, but I can the spelling):

"What did I do wrong?" I tockt to much
"What should I have been doing instead?" Sit quietlea
"What will I do next time?" Sit quietlea and say sory

This is in addition to whatever their parents dream up. For Abby to get one just for talking - she makes me look shy and retiring by comparison under normal circumstances - means that she was talking a lot. And not shutting up when asked to stop. More than one friend with a kid Abby's age said their children were having trouble staying on task yesterday (and her teacher did too!) so we can blame Daylight Savings for that too. Not that it lets her off the hook; she's restricted from electronics and playing with her friends after school until I think she's earned those privileges back. I expect it will take 2-4 days. My friend Tiffany and I were hard put not to crack up laughing in the car yesterday when Abby explained - and she was absolutely serious - that the lesson learned from the last time she got a red card "only lasts for three months".

Aftermath

I don't know what it is about Japanese culture that makes them so kind to each other and polite in the wake of devastation. But I like it. I would like to think that if - God forbid - something like this occurred in my area that I'd be a decent human being. No looting, for instance. I do have a bit of that "would you steal to feed a baby" mindset though - yes, I would steal to feed my girls if I had to. But I'd like to think it would not be necessary.

I got a call saying that my Japanese cousin had in fact returned here from Japan a week before this quake hit, and I got this call while in the car with Abby and Lizzy, on that section of I-5 between Everett and Marysville that is tidal flats. When the tide is in (in Puget Sound) this area is covered with water, but when the tide is out it looks all cracked and crazed. So we were driving north over these flats when the phone rang - that's what Bluetooth is for - and it was my mom telling me that my cousin was fine.

So then the girls wanted to know what was going on and I gave them the G-to-PG version of events. "There was a big earthquake in Japan and then a tsunami, which is a big wall of water that moves faster than a car." After a certain amount of side questions, like, "Wait, Japan, isn't that where the Teen Titans go in the movie?" and "I can count to five in Japanese!", Abby asked if it "could happen here". Um... a really big earthquake could, but we have a mountain range between us and the ocean, so the tsunami notsomuch. Then there was an aside about earthquake drills at school.

This is the first big disaster Abby was old enough to understand that there was something going on, more than just general tension. She asked if we were going to go to Japan and help ("we personally won't but our government is sending people and supplies to help, and I already sent some money"), and whether people "get killed like drowned in the water". Yes, honey, I'm afraid they do.

Lizzy, on the other hand - all three and a half years of her - spent yesterday afternoon "being a pwetend eahthquake". Which illustrates that she does not yet grok any of the devastation. I'm keeping Abby away from graphic pictures and news reports as best I can, but at eight, she's old enough to understand the loss of life and property at least, if not the details.

Spring Forward Makes Momma Unhappy

Ever had to defend your parenting with "it worked with the other one!"? I have this issue every year at Daylight Savings Change. Because Lizzy is a bad sleeper anyway, and this just makes it worse. And while hubby is - reluctantly - willing to help, she's not willing to deal with anyone but The Momma.

I am a huge fan of Elizabeth Pantley, and in fact, when I was a single parent to Abby, we were a test family for more than one of her books. They worked perfectly for Abby, aside from Abby's apparent need to Cry It Out about quarterly. I could be doing everything right, but she'd still need to just cry at bedtime about once every three or four months when she was a toddler. I could live with that.

Lizzy is another story. A large part of Lizzy's problems with sleeping are because when she was little, she didn't have a quiet space, or a full-size crib we could reasonably expect her to stay in, so we put her in a Big Girl Bed earlier than we should have. At least with Abby, I had a way to keep her in bed (aside from Dire Threats of Doom); she could not climb out until she was over two. The other part of Lizzy's problem with sleeping is sheer personality. When Abby was having trouble, she was still a baby; she was fifteen months old and her father and I had just separated and there were actual reasons one could point to.

Lizzy's just stubborn, over-curious, and sure she will miss something if she (gasp!) sleeps. She also has a mild form of a sleep disorder. When it first occurred, we thought it was some sort of seizure activity; she'd get up and she'd go through the motions of things like breakfast and cooperating with getting dressed (she was only about a year and a half at the time - and already in a Big Girl Bed), but she didn't seem there. She'd shake violently too - the sort of shaking that is reminiscent of a surgical patient coming out of anesthesia - which is what caused us to suspect seizure. We took her to her pediatrician, who said he thought it wasn't a big problem, and who assisted in figuring out the pattern of when it happened; it was only when she had either had a nightmare the previous evening, or when she was suddenly awakened by someone else.

He referred us to the pediatric neurologist at Children's Hospital, with whom we did a phone consult. She reassured me greatly; this is not some form of epilepsy. It's actually sleepwalking behavior; she is not truly awake when it happens. As she was prone to night terrors as an infant and young toddler (night terrors being essentially the same thing as sleepwalking in the very young), this made perfect sense to me. And (as with me as a child) it only occurs when she is extra super duper tired.

But it doesn't make life any easier on nights like tonight. When she - vehemently - declined her nap and is so overtired that the bags under her eyes have bags under them and she still will not sleep. And when we have done the Spring Forward thing so she's short an hour on top of that. It does not enhance her behavior either. Or her mother's mood.

Skipped a Day

I've only been blogging for a couple months here, but it already feels strange to skip a day. Now, if I could only get that sort of habit going with,say, exercise... I'd be in great shape (literally).

Anyway, yesterday was busy, and I was away from my desk, and by the time I got home I just wanted to vegetate. Lizzy and I ran a few errands (credit union, Half-Price Books), took a friend to a meeting down by the airport (friend is temporarily car-free), hung out down there while waiting for the friend's meeting to end, came back here. As the Cold of Doom is still hanging on, that about wiped me out for the day.

We have similar things to do today; dropping Abby off at the Last Cookie Sale of the season one town south of here and then picking her up two hours later... it's not really worth it to come home in between, you know? So we'll run some more errands instead.

Board Game Night

We're short a few gamers tonight so we're not playing our "official" game of GURPS; it's been a rough week for several. But because we are Gamers-with-a-capital-Gee, we have options.

We've decided to play Dominion, although we haven't gotten around to it yet. It's a fun game, and due to the sheer number of expansion packs (four of the five available) we own, it's different every time. At the moment we have hubby rummaging in the kitchen (I purchased dinner at the WINCO Foods deli tonight; too tired with the Cold of Doom to cook), two of us on the couch with our laptops, one at the table with his laptop, and two kids, Greg on his netbook and Lizzy making a 3yo pill of herself with a puzzle.

Some of our other choices - the ones we play often - are:

• Munchkin (and its add-ons)
• Talisman (Hubby says he married me because I have my own copy of this game (the 2nd Edition) - now that is evidence of Nerds in Love)
• Shadows Over Camelot
• Guillotine
• Carcassone (and its add-ons)

There are a host of other games we play when we're off our RPG. But those are the most frequent.