In Which I Make A Poor Beverage Choice And Connor Feels Better

Connor seemed to be feeling quite a bit better today, which is good!  He didn't have any seizures today, and I think he's firmly on the road to recovery.  He's conked out right now, which is pretty great since it's our night nurse's weekend.

It may not matter for me though, because I made the mistake of ordering a chai latte off the menu at a restaurant I don't normally frequent.  At pretty much any other restaurant I've ever been to around here, this would indicate that I wanted chai with steamed milk in it.  Apparently at this restaurant, it means chai with steamed milk and a double shot of espresso added to it.  That drink is known at pretty much every other place around here as a "dirty chai," and I am not a fan.

Really, really not a fan.  Ew. 

Unfortunately, I'd gotten it on the way out and didn't take a sip of it until I was already halfway across town and well away from the restaurant.  Despite it being past five in the evening, and also despite the fact that the drink tasted horrible, my dang-it-I-paid-for-it-so-I-can't-just-throw-it-away instincts kicked in and I ended up drinking about half of the terrible thing.  And of course now I'm paying for it again, as I'm pretty sure I'll be up until four in the dang morning.  There's a reason why I used to use coffee to keep me awake during Connor's glorious marathon insomniac sessions pre-night nurse; I have a very low tolerance for it and it makes me wired.  A single cup of black tea is about all I can do after mid-afternoon and expect to fall asleep. 

Seriously, why didn't I just pour the dang thing out?  This was not the best judgement on my part.

Oh well.

~Jess

In Which Connor Is Hot Stuff

So Connor apparently decided we just needed a little break, because he's up to his usual tricks again.  He had two seizures today (thankfully small) and has decided that since he didn't have school today he's going to stay up all night in revenge.  Oh well.  At least he was still in a pretty good mood today and, other than being a little tired after the seizures, played the day away. 

Since I actually got sleep last night and Connor was feeling pretty good, I spent most of the morning catching up on the housework I'd been putting off in the last couple of weeks while Jer and Connor hung out.  Then in the afternoon the three of us strolled down to one of the local playgrounds and spent some time hanging out there.  This particular playground is not the best one for Connor-- there are no swings (his favorite activity) and the slides are a little too high and long for him to really enjoy them-- but it has the advantage of being in full shade.  This is pretty essential for the little guy when we have hot, sunny weather and want to spend any amount of time outdoors because he can't sweat, so he quickly overheats.  Even though we stuck to the deep shade we only spent fifteen minutes playing before he started getting too hot and we walked back home.  We stripped him down and had a play session with some ice cubes wrapped up in a few paper towels to cool him off.  He had mixed feelings about the put-the-ice-pack on Connor game. 

Then this evening Joanna came over to take care of Connor so Jer and I could go out for a date!  We kept it simple-- we stopped and ate at a local restaurant, drove to a bookstore in Tacoma where we spent an hour or two browsing, and then finished the evening up at a local cupcake (and coffee, of course) shop.  That could be the description of any one of hundreds of dates we've been on over the years, but our routine never gets old. 

I hope we're still going out on our bookstore-and-coffee-shop date for many years to come!

In Which Jer And I Have A Date

Jeremy and I went out on a long date today!

It's the first time we've spent a whole day together in a while, and we had a really great time.  Our respite care worker came by the house just before lunch time, so Jeremy and I took off to one of our local sushi places and ate a whole bunch of yummy raw fish.  Then it was off to the bookstore.  No date of ours is ever complete without a bookstore and of course, a coffee shop, which is where we spent some time reading our new additions to our library. 

After an hour or so we made a brief stop at the house and then we were off to Seattle to watch a men's roller derby bout.  This was the first men's derby bout I'd seen, and in a lot of ways it felt like we were watching a completely different sport when we compared it to women's derby.  The men have a very different playing style, and the game seemed to be more chaotic and moved much faster than what we usually see out on the track with women.  This is the only men's derby bout we've seen though, so it might have just been this particular bout.  At any rate, it was really fun to watch!    

We ended the night with a stroll around the mall and dinner at a Thai restaurant.  All in all it was a lovely day; it's so nice to get the chance to spend a bunch of time doing things I enjoy with my husband.  Everybody needs a day like that sometimes!

~Jess

In Which Connor Is Still Sick And Jer Turns Thirty

Well, today was day four of the inexplicable Connor Fever And Seizure Saga.  We actually thought he was on the mend-- he wasn't really running a fever when he woke up this morning and he only had one 15 second seizure in that period, but then he made up for it shortly after noon, when his temperature spiked again and he had two seizures within a half an hour period.  And I completely forgot to call his physical therapist and tell her he wasn't doing well and that we were canceling, so that was fantastic.  Also I couldn't get Connor a doctor's appointment until Friday. 

This was not one of my more successful parenting days.  I'll start my phone call blitz at six in the morning tomorrow and hopefully make myself annoying enough that someone will find us a cancellation and fit us in.

So it was also Jeremy's 30th birthday today!  I asked him how it felt to be 30, and he said that it feels pretty much exactly like being 29.  I think I was more excited about the birthday than he was.  Oh well.  Connor and I gave him some nice socks and super soft house slippers (our laminate floors are awesome for Connor's chair and my skates but hard on Jeremy's bare feet) and a thick bath robe.  His big present from me was a new coffee grinder. 

When Jeremy bought his very first espresso machine a few years ago I didn't realize it was going to be like a gateway drug to fancier and fancier coffee apparatus.  I upgraded his espresso machine last year for his birthday, but then his grinder no longer ground the coffee fine enough so he needed a new grinder to match.  His latest toy (for those of you who are interested in this sort of thing) is called a Rancilio Rocky Doserless Burr Grinder, and I'm pretty sure it comes with more features than our car. 

It has a similar price point, too. 

At any rate, he's pretty excited about it because this means that he can start roasting his own beans again instead of having to buy them preground, which is apparently sort of horrible sin in the world of coffee snobbery.  I expect to hear the happy sound of our fire alarm going off in the near future!

I'm glad he likes it.  Happy birthday to Jer!

~Jess

In Which I Clean ALL The Things

I spent about seven hours today cleaning my poor, much neglected house.  Since Connor's been sick and I've been spending all my spare time after he's asleep skating instead of doing the dishes and/or cleaning up after myself, my house has been looking steadily shabbier as a result.  I think usually my house tends to be a reflection of my mental state; the more stress I've got piling up the higher the resulting piles of clutter.  Now that Connor is feeling better and thus my worries are cleaned up, it's time to clean up the physical side of things too!

But the first thing I did was go to the bookstore and coffee shop.  One has to prepare oneself for this sort of cleaning job.  It's important.

I was helped along in my quest for cleanliness by the fact that Jeremy got to leave work early today, so he could watch the boy for me while I sprayed everything in our house that wasn't moving with some sort of cleaning solution.  He knows to keep out of my way when I start brandishing dust cloths with that sort of gleam in my eye.

I finally ran out of steam around six in the evening, which is when Joanna came over to watch the boy so Jeremy and I could go out.  Our first stop was the bookstore, and then after dinner we went to a coffee shop.  The fact that I had done both earlier in the day was completely irrelevant.  Jeremy and I will probably continue to buy books until we are forced to build little tunnels though them to navigate around our house and we perish when we accidentally bump into a wall of them and there's a cave-in. 

It could totally happen.

Anyway the house is finally looking halfway decent again, and I'll be working on the rest of it tomorrow.  I still have to do all the mopping and work on decluttering our bedroom and our master bathroom, which currently have every available horizontal surface covered in bits of paper, books (of course) and detritus, but that hopefully won't take me too long. 

And then I can enjoy the bliss of a clean house and a peaceful mind!  Not that it ever lasts very long-- I get complacent and let it all build up again-- but I'll make the most of it while it lasts!

~Jess


If you don't know what that title is in reference to, you should go look at this blog.  Pretty much this is my stance on cleaning and adulthood responsibility in general.  Also it is hilarious.

In Which Connor Has Way Too Many Seizures

I really shouldn't write posts like yesterday's in which I tell everyone that Connor's seizures don't really phase me anymore.  I'm relatively sure Connor views these sorts of statements as a personal challenge.

So Jeremy had off of work today, it being Veteran's Day and all, so we made plans to go down to Olympia and tool around at the Farmer's Market, after which we would go to one of the restaurants in Puyallup that were offering free dinner for soldiers and have a nice family meal before I had to take off for roller derby practice.  The day started out well enough; Jer and Connor slept in while I drove down to Adamo's and picked up a couple of breakfast sandwiches and some extremely yummy drinks.  Not only did I get a major discount on account of it being Veteran's Day, but my drink actually involved not only peppermint and dark chocolate, but also whipped cream with dinosaur sprinkles on it, so it was quite possibly the best drink ever created in the history of everything.  I mean there were adorably bitsy packs of Tyrannosaurus Rex and Triceratops and Brontosaurus frolicking about on top of my drink and they just made me want to take them off and reenact gruesome little sugary battles on the bar.

Anyway, after a leisurely morning we started thinking about getting ready to go down to Olympia, and so Connor decided that it was a good time to have the first seizure of the day.  It was a relatively short one-- only about 45 seconds or so-- but because of it we decided to hold off going anywhere until after lunch.

When he had his second seizure about an hour later, we canceled our trip, gave him a dose of Lorazepam and called the neurologist.  When he had his third seizure, we decided that Jeremy would run out to get dinner and then bring it back, because going anywhere really sounded like a bad idea.

I seriously debated whether or not it would be a good idea for me to go to practice at all; since we'd already used a dose of one of Connor's emergency medications at home our only choice if the little guy had another seizure would be to take him into the hospital where they could give him higher doses of medication.  In the end I went, and just kept my phone on and out where I could hear it in case Jeremy called me.  I was just a wee bit scatterbrained at practice; I actually had to turn the car around afterwards because I was in such a rush to get home that I left my skates back at the building we practice in.  Whoops.

Connor, because of all the sleeping he did after his seizures, is still awake.  It's almost midnight now.  I have no idea what brought on the seizures; he doesn't have a fever and we haven't made any changes to his medications.  I'm wondering if maybe he's coming down with something and the symptoms (other than the seizures, of course) just haven't manifested yet.  I'm not entirely sure what we're going to do about school tomorrow-- we'll see how he's doing in the morning.  The fact that he's had four seizures in a 48 hour period makes me just slightly paranoid, though.  And also tired, as he shows no signs of going to sleep any time soon.

So if he does go to school I'll probably have to take the opportunity to stop and get something chocolate and caffeinated as a panacea. 

Heavy on the dinosaurs.

~Jess

In Which Our Internet Has Died

I know I didn't blog yesterday, but nothing bad happened!  Really!

Except that our Internet died, which is actually kind of tragic.

I'm writing this from Adamo's, one of local coffee shops with free Wi-Fi who I will be single-handedly supporting until Monday, which is when our Internet provider can get somebody out to figure out what the heck is going on with our connection.  I didn't get back from skating last night until after 10:00pm, which is when I found out that our Internet was caput.  I love all of you very dearly, but I needed to shower before going anywhere, and going out to a coffee shop at 11:00 at night to tell all of you that Connor had a good day of school is slightly above my level of commitment.  Sorry.

So I'll do my best to give you two blogs today to make up for it. 

Connor did have a really good first day back at school yesterday; he was pretty tired when he got home but was pretty good natured; he even got a little bit of occupational therapy at school with no ill effects!  Today he seems to be pretty much back to 100%, other than that persistent cough.  I'm glad to know that he can bounce back so quickly; it must mean that the rest of his body is pretty healthy.

We're coming up on the last two weeks of Connor's seizure titration schedule, which is pretty exciting!  He'll get his medication levels checked at the end of those two weeks and then they can adjust the medication as necessary to make sure that he's at a proper therapeutic dose.  I'm really hopeful that the Lamictal is going to do the trick; it's certainly having some sort of effect considering that the seizures we've seen in recent weeks have been really weird and different.  Even if we can't get rid of the seizures entirely, I would be really happy if we could at least modify them to where he doesn't stop breathing in the middle of them.  Though I think that habit I have of glancing at Connor in the little mirror we have set up in our van for the purpose every ten seconds whenever I'm driving is probably so ingrained that it's never going to go away.  I do it whenever Connor isn't in the car, too.  Oh well.

It's been a gorgeous couple of days here; fall is my favorite time of year in the Seattle area and weather like this is why.  It's currently in the mid-fifties and the sun is beaming down.  I threw open all the windows in our house yesterday and spent a lot of time dancing around in the middle of our living room with a broom singing Ingrid Michaelson songs at the top of my lungs.  The neighbors have already figured out that we're the eccentric couple of the neighborhood, so they probably weren't too surprised if they glanced in our windows while walking their dogs and saw me pirouetting around in the there. 

Connor had a great time too; I taught him how to "waltz" (we counted one-two-three while I swung him around in the air in circles) and then I did a bunch of laundry-- always a favorite pastime of his because I wave the sheets in his face.  He uses the sign "peekaboo" for laundry and asks for it by staring in the direction of the laundry room.  It's adorable.  I washed a bunch of fleece sheets and so whenever I pulled them off his head it looked like he'd stuck his finger in a light socket. 

So all in all it was a wonderful day yesterday, and I was so looking forward to telling you all about it.  Oh well; maybe an at-home Internet hiatus will be good for me.  I'll probably get a lot more done because I won't be sitting around looking at YouTube all day instead of doing the dishes.  And now I've got the excuse to go hang out even more in our local coffee shops. 

Sounds like a quality problem to me!

In Which Jer And I Have A Date

I didn't take any pictures today, so here's a totally irrelevant shot of the top of Connor's bookcase, which I am posting because I feel like it.  Enjoy.

Today Jeremy and I went out on a long date, from eleven in the morning until seven at night!  It was pretty nice to be able to spend a solid block of time with him like that.  The first thing we did was went over to our local conveyor-belt sushi place and had some lunch.  Then we headed down to the movie theater.

Jeremy and I don't watch a whole lot of movies, but every once in a while one will hit the theaters that gets good reviews and looks intriguing enough to check out.  So we'd heard quite a bit about Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and decided it would be worth seeing in theater.  It was a pretty awesome movie, though anyone over the age of about forty probably isn't going to like it as it leans very heavily on the gaming, indie, hipster crowd sort of culture and has a lot of references and humor that people outside that demographic probably aren't going to catch.  But Jer and I really enjoyed it. 

So after the movie we ran a few errands together, which doesn't really sound terribly romantic.  More than anything, though, I just enjoy spending time with Jeremy; it doesn't really matter what we're doing.  So a visit to the pharmacy and the bakery outlet store were perfectly fine date activities as far as I'm concerned. 

After that, of course, if you've read about any of our previous date nights you can probably guess where we went.  I'll give you a hint: it involved literature and hot beverages.

Really there are very few dates that cannot be improved upon by the addition of a good book and a cup of tea.

That kind of a quiet, leisurely day was just what we needed to relax!

~Jess

In Which Jeremy Brews Up Trouble, Or Coffee Or Something, And Also I Want A Trained Squirrel

Remember that post I did about Jeremy needing a new coffee machine because his old one broke due to being shipped back from Afghanistan in a cardboard box with no padding?  Me neither.  This is because I blogged about it way, waaaaaaay back in April, and I neglected to research the company I ordered it from.  Turns out this was a bad idea, because they kept claiming it was back ordered and then extending the date it was back ordered to until finally a couple of weeks ago I just canceled our order and got it from someone else.  Anyway, it finally came! 

It's the Rancilo Silvia**, which is apparently some sort of awesome machine but I can't tell you why because I don't know anything about coffee, and when I ask Jer to explain it he always pulls out all of these fancy words, like "first crack" and "pyrolysis" and "chaff," and so I don't know what he's talking about.  Except maybe for that last one, which is what I think happens when your underwear gets pulled all out of whack.  Oh, wait-- that's "chafe." 

Um, anyway I just kind of start tuning him out after a little while and so I haven't actually learned anything about making good coffee, other than the fact that if you roast coffee beans in the house you set off the fire alarm and have to stand up on a chair to take out the batteries before it gives you permanent hearing loss.  I relearn that one about once a week.  Fun times.

So while I've learned all about the inner mechanism of our fire alarms, I haven't learned anything at all about operating the coffee pot, and believe me-- this thing looks like it would involve some sort of advanced degree to operate.  It's got a ton of buttons on the front, with mysterious pictographs that I have yet to decipher.  I'd read the directions, but they're probably in Italian.  Or French.  Or Frenalian or something.  Also I don't care enough about coffee to actually want to learn how to operate this machine, which is why we'll still holding on to the French press. 

We're keeping it because that way when we have guests who drink coffee and Jeremy is gone, I don't have to try and figure out what all the pictographs on the new machine mean.  After having spent four months making Jeremy coffee on the French press when he couldn't get into the kitchen to do it himself, I have totally got pushing that little plunger thing on the top of it down to an art form.  Except when I forget to set a timer and have to sort of guesstimate when the coffee is ready based on color, since I'm not going to taste it.  Also when I forget to heat the water.  It's not really my fault that my French press skills actually suck, though-- Jeremy gave me directions on how to work the press while on extremely large quantities of morphine.  But that's okay, because it gives me the chance to demonstrate my amazing drive-through coffee ordering skills.  I am awesome.

Anyway, Jeremy got this thing set up on the counter in the place of honor, and apparently it makes coffee that is greatly superior to the French press variety, or at least makes it with a lot more noise and button-pushing.  I'm glad that it's finally here, because it means that we can put our enormous drive-through coffee budget into something more productive.  I'm thinking we could use it buy a trained squirrel that could take the batteries out of fire alarms as needed.  Or maybe we could just keep the money and train the squirrel ourselves.  I wouldn't think it would be too hard-- all we'd have to do is fill the fire alarm batteries with birdseed. 

It would totally work.

~Jess


**Yes, we're choosing the American name for our future daughter partially based on the name of a coffee machine.  That was Jeremy's idea.  But I'm sure there are worse ways of picking a name.  Plus we spelled it differently.  We spelled it like the name of the poet who committed suicide by sticking her head in the oven.  That was my idea.

See?  Much better.

In Which Everyone Has A Birthday, And I Get Jer A Present

April is like second Christmas around here. 

There are a ridiculous number of people in my family that have birthdays in April.  There are nine family members that have April birthdays, including Connor and Jeremy. 

I ordered Jeremy's birthday present today.  He already knows what it is as he picked it out, so I feel perfectly fine in sharing it with you.  He's getting a new espresso machine.  A really, really nice espresso machine.

I wasn't about to try and select one of these for him, as I know next to nothing about coffee and he's really particular about the equipment he uses.  Jeremy is just slightly into coffee, and when I say "just slightly," I mean that not only does he roast and grind his own beans (usually setting off the fire alarm in the process), but when he deployed he had his espresso machine shipped to Afghanistan and once a month I'd ship him unroasted beans so that he could continue to make high quality lattes in the middle of the desert. 

I'm sad to say that 120 degree temperatures do not do good things to espresso machines.  Nor does the Afghanistan sand, which the guys call "moon dust," that gets into anything and everything over there.  The last straw was when the poor, much-maligned espresso machine was shipped back from Afghanistan in a cardboard box with no padding.  As a result Jeremy now has to use a wrench to turn the steamer on, and I believe some portions of the machine itself are currently held together with duct tape. 

So I informed him a while back that he'd be getting a new espresso machine for his birthday, and he's spent the last few weeks doing research to figure out exactly what model he wanted.  The one he picked out is about one step below a commercial machine-- it is for serious coffee drinkers.  The good news is it will pay for itself after about six months of Jer making his own Venti Caramel Macchiatos.  It should come in a week or so and he's pretty excited about it.  I'm sure he'll be cranking it up straight out of the box.

Expect to hear more about fire alarms in the near future.

~Jess

In Which Jeremy Breaks In The Kitchen

Jeremy pulled out his coffee bean roaster for the first time since he arrived home back in August.  It used to be that every Sunday our kitchen would be filled with the grassy, slightly acrid smell of roasting coffee beans while Jeremy hovered over the counter, watching the process with an expert eye.  And like clockwork, every Sunday our smoke alarm would go off because Jeremy, in his zeal to get roasting, would forget to turn the oven vent on.

Jeremy hasn't been able to roast his own coffee for so long because he wasn't able to access the kitchen in the apartment.  The galley-style kitchen wouldn't allow him to use his wheelchair, and standing for a long enough period of time to be able to roast his coffee beans and then use his espresso machine wasn't very feasible.  So he'd been making due with pre-roasted beans and a little French press, which just wasn't the same.  The man is serious about his coffee. 

The new kitchen is wonderful because it allows him to return to so many activities he enjoys that he's been unable to do.  He's cooking his own breakfast in the mornings again, has talked about pulling out the bread maker, and of course the espresso machine-- a little worse for wear after being shipped back from Afghanistan-- has once again been unpacked and now has place of pride on his island work surface.  As I'm writing he's in there doing the dishes-- not an activity that he necessarily enjoys, but one that I certainly appreciate and that he was unable to do in the apartment.

He seems so much more comfortable in this space, which makes me very happy.  Today when the smoke alarm went off in the kitchen the sound to me seemed more like a joyous shout of triumph than an extremely loud annoyance, even if I couldn't figure out how to turn the darn thing off and ended up bracing Jeremy's legs (who as the instigator of the alarms has a lot more practice at turning them off) as he wobbled on top of a chair to take out the batteries. 

I sat down in the living room afterwards and listened to Jeremy putter around the kitchen, making his coffee and telling happy falsehoods* to Connor about the fire alarm.  I didn't have to do a thing for Jer-- he was just fine on his own in there.  It feels like we've regained something that's been missing since August.

Feels like home.

~Jess


*"You should always yell hysterically when there's a fire, Connor.  Like this: AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!  Fires hate that."

These Are A Few of My Favorite Things....

Did I mention that my husband is a darling? Yet another package arrived for me today, this one from my favorite company in the universe, SpecialTeas. He sent me a couple of different types of tea, including Connor's personal favorite-- Jasmine Phoenix Pearls (no I don't let him drink it-- he likes the smell). My husband knows me very, very well.

I would like to say that this is a stock photo, but sadly, it's not. At last count I had somewhere around fifty different types of tea and tisanes. This is well past a hobby and probably into an obsession. I have read books about tea. I have been to tea tastings. I can look at a tea called Dari Singbulli Special Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe 2nd Flush Silver Tip and understand what that means- that's how bad I am. I can't even claim any of those teas are Jer's-- he drinks coffee, and he drinks it the way I drink tea-- seriously. The man hauls his grinder and espresso machine to work every Monday and hauls them back to the house on Friday, which is also when he roasts the beans for the next week in our kitchen with all the windows open. He usually sets all the fire alarms off anyway.

While Jer and I have a little love affair with our respective vices, Connor puts us both to shame. Connor is not addicted to coffee or tea. Connor is addicted to chocolate pudding, and while he is rather unpicky about its origin and preparation, he makes up for that in passion, eating and simultaneously bathing himself in it with a type of single-minded focus that any epicurean would recognize as true appreciation of food. You have to be careful of your fingers when you are feeding it to him. He has a tendency to lunge for the spoon. If he could tell you about it, he would probably scoff at the idea that pudding is just to be eaten. Pudding is to be experienced, and he does his very best to appreciate its every nuance, utilizing it in pieces of performance art that are stunning in their sophistication and complexity. Either that or he was involved in a vicious fight with some sort of custard monster. I'm pretty sure the poor monster lost.

~Jess