In Which I Am Sleep Deprived And The Ivy Is Gone At Last

Don't expect this to be the most coherent of posts tonight.  Connor decided to stay up until 4:30 in the morning, and then I had to get up at 6:00 because the landscaping company was coming.  So I'm running on nothing but the dregs of coffee and delirium at the moment. 

I'm not sure why Connor decided he needed to stay up until (literally) dawn, but then he decided to sleep in.  Unfortunately for him, we had to go get his blood levels drawn at Children's Seattle this morning, so he was only able to snooze until 9:00, which is when I woke him up and got him ready to go.

Or at least I tried to wake him up.  It didn't work out so well.

He had a small seizure just before I put him in the car, which I suspect was brought on by the sleep deprivation of the night before.  Then he dozed in the car on the way up, which was a nerve wracking experience for me.  Connor almost never sleeps in the car, and I generally think this is a very good thing.  I mean, I have this little tiny mirror trained on him in the van so I can see him while I'm driving, but it doesn't show me a whole lot of detail.  And a kid desperately fighting sleep who keeps slumping over and going limp looks a whole heck of a lot like a kid having a apneic seizure when I'm glancing in that little tiny mirror.  It didn't help that he'd already had one that day. 

So needless to say I was on a bit of an adrenaline high.  It probably helped keep me awake for the drive, along with my gigantic cup of Emergency Coffee (as in-- Emergency!  I will fall asleep and drive off the road if I do not drink coffee!) and my phone conversation with Julia, who tells good stories and is generally very helpful in the not-falling-asleep-at-the-wheel-on-the-highway department.

We got to the hospital without dying or anything, and Connor fell asleep on my lap in the waiting room.  Luckily we got Hector The Amazing Phlebotomist, and so the kid didn't really even wake up that much for the blood draw.  And then he did that nodding-nap thing pretty much the whole way home, and once we got there he had another very short seizure and then conked out for the rest of the day.  He's been asleep for about nine hours now, so we'll see how tonight goes.  If he wakes up at two in the morning tonight or something, Jer has graciously offered to deal with it.  I have my championship game tomorrow and it would be nice if I could play without first having to drink so much coffee that I vibrate around the track rather than roll.

We did have one nice thing waiting for us when we got home; the front of the house was completely transformed.  The ivy is gone!  Whoo hoo!  Well, for now, anyway.  They dug down and pulled out as many of the roots as they could find-- and this ivy had some serious roots, roots as big around as my calf-- but ivy is pretty tenacious stuff and I'll probably be waging a war with it for many years to come.  I'm pretty sure that I won this round, though; they pulled enough ivy, salal and blackberry out to fill an entire dump truck to the brim!  Then they planted the Howard The Tree along with the shrubs I bought yesterday.  They look sort of lonely in all that space, but I'm sure I'll be getting them some friends soon. 

All of the rest of the existing shrubs are trimmed up and look lovely.  Tomorrow they're mulching everything, and the transformation will be for the large part finished.  It really opened up the view of the house (you'd be amazed at how high 35 year old ivy can get) and I can't wait to see the space in a few years when all the stuff we're going to plant fills out.  Of course, that's if the ivy doesn't sneak in while my back is turned and eat the house or something.

And now I'm off to bed.  I need some sleep for the big game tomorrow!

~Jess