In Which I Sort Through Improbable Animals

Connor didn't feel well today; I suspect he might have caught something on the plane ride home.  He had three seizures and was running a bit of a fever.  Hopefully he'll be feeling better tomorrow.

So we stuck close to home; since the little guy spent a good portion of the day napping I took the opportunity to clean his room.  The nice thing about having a Deaf kid is that when he's got his hearing aids out you can haul stuff around, run the vacuum cleaner, etc. and you aren't going to wake him up.  I reorganized his closet and all of his storage areas, so his room is all nice and neat now.

Over the course of the cleaning, I collected up a huge pile of all Connor's stuffed animals.  I'm not exactly sure how many he has because I didn't count them or anything, but there are a lot of them.  I started actually paying attention to what they were when I was going through them, and he's got some really, really strange stuffed animals.  I have no idea where most of them came from, either.  Maybe they're multiplying in the bins.

Some examples of the interesting wildlife Connor has collected include a gray goat (with a white goatee, as is appropriate for goats), and a gray gorilla (also with a white goatee, which is less appropriate for gorillas).  I suspect maybe they are related due to the whole multiplying-in-the-bins thing, and if any more goatee-wearing animals show up in the bins my theory will be confirmed.  I'm not sure who the mother is, though, as we don't have any female gorillas in the bins.  The most likely suspect is a bear with some gorilla ancestry. 

A bear is most likely statistically because Connor has way more of those than any other animal.  So many bears.  Bears wearing things no respectable bear would be caught dead wearing, like army uniforms or little tiny sports jerseys or bunny ears.  The only way a bear would actually wear bunny ears was if it had just finished eating the rest of the bunny and was saving some for later.

He has a couple of little birds, a sea turtle, not one but two hedgehogs, a few frogs of varying sizes, a leopard, and several kinds of dogs, some of whom are wearing clothing in a similar fashion to the bears.  I was okay with the clothing on the dogs as people really do dress their pets up in all kinds of ridiculous outfits, until I got to the bulldog.  It's a bulldog wearing a raincoat and carrying a pumpkin.  What the heck?

Okay, so I had to go get the bulldog just now to take another look at it, and on closer inspection he might actually be wearing a weird squished pilgrim hat of some sort.  Oh, and also according to his tag he apparently fights cancer.  This makes much more sense.

I'm pretty sure that this is one of the animals some random person on the street gave us.  This sort of thing happens at least two or three times a year and I still don't know quite how to react to it.  We'll be sitting at a coffee shop, reading a book (me) and pointing out every single car that drives by (Connor) and somebody will walk up to our table, pull a stuffed animal out of their purse and present it to Connor.  Then they'll tell me what an absolute angel he is and how they just had to give him something because he's such a "poor dear lamb." (the last person who did this was elderly and British, and that's the actual expression she used). 

And it's not just animals-- he's been presented with candy, paper flowers, stickers, balloons, and on one memorable occasion a miniature disco ball that played a tinny electronic version of "Staying Alive" when you pressed a button on the top. 

Don't get me wrong; I don't have any problem with stuffed animals or with people giving Connor presents-- people we've at least interacted with, anyway.  It's the whole "complete stranger walking up to us and presenting Connor with a gift thing" that throws me for a loop.  I haven't figured out a way to graciously refuse yet, and for that matter many of them simply present Connor with whatever they have instead of asking me first.  While I know they mean well, I'm never sure exactly how to respond-- especially since I get the impression that many of them are giving him things because they feel sorry for him.  That isn't exactly something I want Connor to internalize.

Is this something that happens to other people?  Is it just people who have children with special needs?  Or do parents with typical kids have complete strangers pop up out of the woodwork and give their children small pilgrim hat-wearing, cancer-fighting stuffed bulldogs every once in a while too?

~Jess

In Which I Am Not Top Chef

Today was a Crock Pot Surprise sort of day, which is when I am cleaning the kitchen and making dinner consists of throwing a whole bunch of things into a pot and hoping the result is edible.  I actually make most of my meals this way, come to think of it.  I've managed to come up with some pretty tasty stuff every once in a while, though I've also served some pretty spectacular failures.

The problem with cooking like this is that you never end up with the same meal twice.  There have been a few times that I've made really tasty meals that I've never been able to duplicate because I don't measure anything and I never write any of the ingredients down.  I've considered writing up some recipes, but that never works out both because of the whole not-measuring-anything issue and also because I get off on huge tangents and my recipes end up being three pages long.  Take tonight's dinner, which is something I'm calling beef stew because it happens to have beef in it.  I liked the results and tried writing it down, and I ended up with this:

1.) Peel and chop 1/2 onion, a parsnip, some carrots, a few small potatoes or substitute whatever root vegetables you happen to have in your kitchen and 1 apple and put in crock pot.  Cut up a whole mess of beef chuck, dust with a heaping spoonful of sweet rice flour (regular flour will work too) and add to pot.  Pound a couple of garlic cloves, a smallish chunk of palm sugar and a piece of fresh ginger about as big around as your pinky together in a mortar and pestle and then add to the other stuff.  Brown sugar will work too if you don't have palm sugar, but don't use plain because what's the point. 

Add a generous dollop of fish sauce, a pinch of pepper and a heaping spoonful of Thai roasted red chili paste-- that kind made by Thai Kitchen that comes in the little glass bottle with a black lid. It's mild enough to eat right off the spoon-- it adds just a bit of a kick and a nice smoky flavor. Yum!  If you don't have roasted red chili paste for Pete's sake don't use more than three fresh Thai chilies unless you really like spicy food or you will sear the roof of your mouth right off. 

Stir up the whole mess and then throw in a single bay leaf, because it's a rule that all meals identifying as stew have to have a bay leaf in them.  Pour in plain apple cider until you're halfway up the ingredients and then top off with water until all the stuff in the pot is covered.  Toss in a packet of mulling spices and a small hunk of frozen beef stock (if you are out of homemade beef stock you can use the paste, but skip this if all you've got is the cubes because they're too salty).  Throw in a shot of Tuaca or Fireball for added flavor.  Shot for the cook optional.  Cover and cook until done.

Just realized I put all of that as one instruction.  Whoops.  Anyway, this goes really well with a big ol' hunk of dark bread with lots of butter and a glass of milk on the side. 

After reading that, not only is that meal kind of bizarre (Mulling spices and fish sauce?  Really?) but it's pretty well useless as a recipe because unless you speak Southern Cooking Dialect you probably have no idea what a 'whole mess' or a 'generous dollop' would look like.  I don't speak with a southern accent, but apparently I cook in one. 

So yeah, I don't think a recipe book is going to be happening any time in the near future. 

~Jess

In Which Our Day Is For The Birds (But Was Actually Just Fine)

Connor had another great day today!  I think he's got some allergies going because his nose is running a mile a minute, but since he still seems to be feeling pretty good and he had a great day at school I'm not too worried about it.

While the little guy was off having fun at preschool, I made some serious headway on cleaning out Ellen's room.  It's amazing how much stuff we've managed to fit in there in only two years!  Once I've got everything that's not Ellen-related moved out of the place, it will be time to paint. 

After his nap we drove up to the new wild birds store that recently opened up in a nearby shopping center.  Gus, our in-resident hummingbird, refuses to let any other hummingbirds eat at his feeder, which is hung in our front yard.  So I got two feeders for the backyard so that some of the other hummingbirds can catch a snack once in a while.  I hung one of them in a tree, but the other one is a window feeder kind of like the one we had on our house on post.  I hung it up on the side window of our sliding door so the whole family can enjoy watching.  I might get one for Ellen's window too, but we'll see what she thinks about the hummingbirds first; They can get pretty noisy sometimes. 

I also picked up some suet and birdseed for our big feeder, and since this was the store's grand opening they gave me a finch feeder for free, which is now hanging in another tree in our backyard.  We're going to have some serious fun birdwatching this year!

~Jess

In Which We Do Not Have A Particularly Great Day

Well today was perhaps not the most fun day I've ever had in my entire life.

Connor slept in until almost 11:00 today, so while he was out I spent the morning taking the shelves down on the wall we're painting in the garage.  I thought it was only going to take me half an hour or so, but it ended up taking almost two because the fifteen screws were stripped on the eight foot long shelf closest to the ceiling.  I don't own a screw extractor either.  Balancing on a ladder and removing those was not nearly as fun as it sounds.

Once everything was down then it was time to clean the wall.  This wall was incredibly dirty.  At one point during the existence of the house there was apparently a wasp infestation, and apparently they'd made the mistake of trying to land on the deserted homes of the eight hundred generations of spiders that once lived there.  I thought there were a bunch of thumbtacks up near the ceiling, but instead it turned out to be the dead bodies of about twenty wasps (and one bumblebee) stuck to the wall with old cobwebs. 

Ew. 

After I did an initial sweep, I dust mopped and vacuumed and washed the whole thing and I would like to tell you that it made a huge difference.  It didn't.  The wall still looks terrible.  However, it's more the "that wall is really banged up and hasn't been painted for ten years" kind of terrible now and less the "that wall is really banged up and hasn't been cleaned for ten years" kind, which I guess is an improvement. 

I keep telling myself I'm going to have a craft room after I get all of this stuff out of the way.  But it's probably good I was doing this while Connor was asleep, because I'm pretty sure some of the language I was using during the whole unscrewing-shelves-and-dewasping-walls process was not appropriate for tender ears.

After that the little guy started making some "Hey I'm waking up now but I still don't feel so hot" sort of noises, so I stopped work in the garage for today.  He wasn't running a fever anymore but he still obviously felt lousy; I had to put his g-tube pump on really low because he kept trying to throw up.  He did okay for a couple of hours, and then he had an eight-minute long seizure and I had to use the Diastat and was literally picking up the phone to call the EMTs when he snapped out of it.  Then he went back to sleep and spent the next six hours or so completely conked out on my chest.   

So that was not the most fun day ever. 

~Jess

In Which Much Gets Done

So today ended up being relatively productive. 

Joanna came over this morning and I did a tiny bit of cleaning and then headed out to run errands and play.  Mostly I played.  Because hey, it's still technically Christmas vacation, right?  Then after she left and Connor had his quiet time we went out to the hair salon and the little guy got his hair cut, thereby instantly rendering him eighty gabillion years older.  At least his hair isn't in his eyes anymore, though, and he is no longer dangerously close to sporting a mullet.  Here's a ridiculous picture of us post-Connor's haircut so you can see how it looks; me making a crazy, slightly squinty-eyed face, Gobo looking extremely traumatized and Connor looking kind of put-upon and embarrassed for us all. 

At least his hair looks good.

I also commissioned a painting today, which I'm pretty excited about.  While we have a lot of Asian-influenced artwork in our house we don't have anything that's specifically Thai related.  That's something I'd like to change before Ellen gets here.  We don't need to cover our house in elephants and Khon masks or anything, but I do think it's important that we show we're proud of Ellen's culture and heritage.  And also I think Thai-influenced artwork is beautiful in its own right, so I'd want it in our house anyway.  While I'm sure we'll probably pick up some artwork in Thailand when we travel, I'd like a piece or two already up in the house before we go. 

In particular I've been looking for portraits of Thai women.  I love paintings of strong, interesting women that tell a story, but I hadn't been able to find any I liked that weren't way, way out of my price range. 

For that matter, it's kind of difficult to find interesting paintings of Asian women period.  Oh, I can find all kinds of paintings depicting the exotic, submissive, delicate-flower stereotype, but that's not exactly the kind of thing I want hanging up in my house, you know?  Ellen will have enough problems with that stereotype outside the house: no need to perpetuate it inside our walls.  I turned to Etsy, my favorite place in the universe for amazingly affordable, incredibly gorgeous art, to solve my problem. 

So the incredibly talented Renee Nault, whose paintings I absolutely adore, will be taking on my commission.  I can't wait to see what she comes up with!  You should go check out her artwork.  Seriously.  It's beautiful stuff. 

Anyway, I'll continue to slowly build my collection of Thai-influenced artwork over the next few months.  It'll give me another way to feel connected to her as we continue our long wait to bring her home!

~Jess

In Which I Narrowly Avoid Death By Laundry

Listen closely.  Hear those gentle thumping and swishing sounds?  That's the glorious noise an actual working washing machine makes after it's been put back together.  That's right: after nine days the part we needed came in the mail, Jeremy put things back together, and so we can finally wash our clothes again.  And the machine doesn't dump water all over our floor or anything!

I never thought I would be so excited about being able to do laundry.

Seriously, laundry is my least favorite chore in the entire universe, even though Connor still thinks me folding anything larger than a hand towel is hilarious.  It just seems so completely pointless, as approximately eight seconds after I take the laundry out of the dryer it somehow manages to become completely covered in cat hair, whether or not the cats are anywhere in the vicinity.  Cricket usually moseys on over anyway once I've started folding to give the clothes an inspection just to make sure they're thoroughly coated, and also to defend us from the dreaded Static Snakes that lurk in the innocent looking pile.  So really I don't know why I bother.



Crazy cat.

Anyway, after almost a week and a half of not doing laundry, I have changed my mind and decided that laundry is my favorite chore in the universe, and also one of the most important.  You know why?  Roller derby, that's why. 

Every once in a while I mention going to practice, or a bout or whatever on here, but I don't usually talk about it every day so you all probably don't realize just how much skating I do in any given week.  The short answer: a lot.  I do a whole lot of skating, both at regular practices and on my own.  And know what else I do a lot of?  Sweating, that's what.  Yes, not only do I have super fair skin that turns beet red whenever I exercise for more than five minutes so I look like I am going to keel over at any given moment-- making for gloriously attractive Derby Action Photos-- but I also sweat way, way more than is proper for a woman raised in the south to ever admit to in public.  No, really.  I can usually wring out my shirts by the end of the night. 

Ew.  I'm sure you all really wanted to know that.  It totally makes me wonder how the heck I ended up with a kid with no sweat glands.  Don't think that means he produces less laundry, though; he makes up for his lack of sweating by drooling all over everything.  No doubt he just wants to do his part to make sure I fold as many hilarious things as possible.

Yeah.  So anyway, so after a solid week of unwashed derby gear along with Jeremy's daily weight lifting clothes all sitting in the hamper, my bedroom is starting to lose any resemblance to a romantic adult retreat.  Instead, the room is rather disturbingly beginning to channel a feel that I can only call "eau de high school boys' locker room." 

This is not exactly a mood setter, if you know what I mean. 

So I'm extremely glad that I have my washing machine back now and don't have to haul that entire nine days worth of, um, fragrant clothing down to the laundry mat, which I was either going to have to do soon or otherwise start making daily trips to the mall in my pajamas in order to buy a clean outfit for the day.  Especially since I was clean out of sports bras, and while I won't hesitate to wear a pair of, say, blue jeans twice in a week, wearing the same sports bra would be really, really gross.  It might improve my derby game because no one would be able to get within ten feet of me without passing out, but I'm pretty sure I'd be unconscious too so I wouldn't really be able to take advantage of that.

All the people down at the laundry mat probably should be really relieved that I'm not hauling our clothes down there too.  Not that I'm entirely sure I would have made it there; in the close confines of the car the fumes would probably have overwhelmed me before I even left the driveway.  Goodness knows what Jeremy would have put in my obituary if I succumbed to Death By Laundry. 

At any rate, Jer gets Major Brownie Points for fixing the washing machine all by himself, thereby postponing the writing of my obituary for what will hopefully be quite some time.  Not that I should really be worried about what Jer would put in my obituary anyway, as it will no doubt be awesome whatever my cause of death.  My guess is that he will probably work in velociraptors somewhere. 

Also maybe chickens.  Because chickens are awesome.

~Jess

In Which Connor Doesn't Feel So Hot And We Finish The Deck

Today Connor had a small seizure-- his first in about two weeks.  We think he might be coming down with a virus; our respite care worker's daughter is sick and the timing would be about right.  He seemed a little worn down and clingy today, so it may be that he's not feeling very good.  We'll see what things look like tomorrow.

Can I just say that going for two whole weeks without any seizures has been pretty fantastic?  Seriously-- it's been a huge weight off my shoulders to see a happy, healthy kid for a little while and know that he's had a chance to recover.  I think that it'll make it so much easier for him to bounce back quickly if our suspicions are correct and he is getting sick. 

In between snuggle sessions Connor today I still managed to get quite a bit done.  While Jeremy alternated between playing with the little guy and tinkering with the washing machine I put a second coat of stain on our deck.  So the deck is now officially finished!  Well, until the next time it needs to be restained, anyway.  Hopefully that won't be for a little while.  We found this tool called a

Jeremy also vacuumed the house and cleaned the kitchen, because he is awesome like that. 

After the deck dried and we were able to walk on it again, Jer and I wheeled the boy outside and got to work installing the arbor.  It's been leaning up against the house for weeks now, so it's high time we got it in the ground.  After a lot of digging, checking levels, digging again, checking levels again, filling in holes and so on and so forth we managed to get it pretty upright and even.  It's cemented in place now, so whether or not it's perfectly level it's not going anywhere!  I'll plant the akebia vine tomorrow and then we'll have one more project finished.  Next on the list is staining the inside of the fence.  Hopefully that will go quickly and I'll be able to install our trellises.  After that I'll mulch, and then I think that the biggest construction-type projects we plan to accomplish outdoors this summer will be finished! 

~Jess

In Which We Do A Whole Heck Of A Bunch Of Stuff

I woke up extremely early this morning for some completely unknown reason and couldn't get back to sleep.  So around 5:45 or so I went ahead and crawled out of bed to get started on the day.  I really wanted to get the rest of the mulch spread (we underestimated and were short) and the shrubs planted on our new ivy-free bed so that I could have the project pretty much finished up. 

Jer and Connor stayed in bed a bit later, but once they got started things really moved quickly!  Jer and I started switching off with Connor; whenever I needed a break I'd come inside and he'd go back out to work on his project.  Connor started out the morning a little rough, looking pale and wan, but after a few good cuddling sessions and some stretching and gentle movement he perked up, and by midday he was back to his normal spry self and demanding play time.  Every once in a while he'd end up outside with us while Jer and I discussed some aspect of the yard work, and he seemed very interested in the proceedings, though I don't think he quite knew what to make of the transformation.

Jer borrowed a power washer from one of our neighbors.  Connor was not particularly excited by the noise the power washer made, so we had to go inside for that.  So while we hung out in the living room, Jer washed the moss off our chimney and cleaned all our gutters as well as the deck, which we'll be putting a second coat of stain on sometime in the next week or so.  Then he cleaned and organized our side yard for good measure. 

In addition to mulching and planting the fifteen or so remaining shrubs, I spent a good half hour in an abortive attempt to stain the trellises and arbor.  Rather than do it with a brush, which would take forever to get into all the little crannies and crevices of the lattice, I thought I'd try a technique I'd seen a few places using a pump sprayer to spread the paint.  Unfortunately our hardware store didn't carry filter bags for the inside of the sprayer, but I figured it would be fine since I was only going to be using about a half gallon or so.  Ha!  The sprayer clogged up the first time I tried to use it, and instead of a nice even fan of paint I got a sad little dribble.  I'll try it again another day with a filter bag once I get the chance to stop by a paint store. 

Anyway, I wish I could post before-and-after photos for you here, but posting pictures of the outside of my house in the public domain is probably not a very good idea.  So you'll just have to trust me when I say that the outside of my house is looking about eight billion times better, and hopefully in a few years when everything fills out it will be even more improved!  I'm going to bed still covered in those tiny little prickly splinters working with cedar mulch always seems to produce that keep cropping up for days even with repeated showers, but all the prickly itching that will happen in the next few days will be totally worth it! 

Now if we can just keep the yard looking like that.

~Jess

In Which I Feel Much, Much Better And Get Some Stuff Done

The Herb Garden

I feel much, much better!  This is a very good thing, because I've been ridiculously miserable the last two days.  I'm not going to go into a whole lot of detail about my illness (and believe me, you should thank me for that), but let's just say that I am extremely happy to be on my way back to good health.

I spent a good portion of today just trying to catch up on all of the things around the house I let slide while I was being The Sickest Sicky Person In The World.  It's amazing how quickly the laundry and dishes pile up when I don't stay on top of them!  You can usually use the inside of my house as a barometer for how well Connor is doing-- if it's trashed, he's not so good.  It's weird to see it look that way because I was wiped out; I don't get sick very often. 

Connor felt great, and he and I spent some time outside, where thankfully it seems that whatever was making him break out in hives is either done blooming or taking a break.  So I did some weeding (another chore that very quickly gets out of control if I don't stay on top of it) and trimmed up my herb garden a bit.  With the exception of the dill, which apparently doesn't like me this year, all the rest of the herbs I put in are growing like crazy.  Here's the photo evidence-- this was the herb garden back in April!  I don't do anything to them except water them every once in a while and pull a weed or two, but that seems to be working just fine because they are growing like gangbusters.  They're already big enough that I can actually start using them without worrying about whether or not I'm trimming too much.  I made myself some lemon balm and mint tea from the garden today and it was just lovely.  Fresh herbs are just one of those things I feel like I need access to in order to properly cook anything, so I'm really happy I've been able to put in a huge herb garden like this one instead of being stuck with pots on an apartment patio. 

It's been almost a week since Connor had any seizures, which feels like a pretty good break considering the run of them we've been having lately.  I'm hoping that he'll have a reprieve from being sick and that it'll give him the chance to really recover so we can have a fantastic summer like we did last year!

~Jess

In Which We Have A Pretty Great Day

Connor took it easy today; yesterday's Diastat lingered in his system through the morning and into the early afternoon so he seemed kind of drowsy and quiet.  Of course, the one exception to that was when I put him down for his nap, and then he spent the last twenty minutes or so of his quiet time yelling at the top of his lungs.  He didn't need anything; he apparently just decided that quiet time should end early.  Once I got him up he lapsed back into quiet mode.  Go figure.

During his nap time our respite care worker, Joanna, came over with her massage table.  Joanna is a medical massage therapist by trade when she's not watching little guy, and she is very, very good at what she does.  So Connor had his not-so-quiet time, and I had an hour long massage.  Really, I'm not sure I would have survived this long if I didn't get a massage like this every once in a while.  I'm pretty sure that otherwise my neck muscles would be so tight my head would pop off like a cork or something. 

It could totally happen.

Anyway, so after my massage I oozed off the table and spent the rest of the day either cleaning or holding Connor, who perked up in the afternoon as much as a teething, still-cranky-from-yesterday's-seizure kid was going to do.  He got all cute and started giving me tons of hugs and snuggles to keep my attention, which he knows I have no immunity against.  Because I still needed to be productive today we worked out a deal; I would clean for ten minutes and then play with him for five.  We used the kitchen timer to keep track, and every time it went off for Mommy And Connor Play Time he applauded.  It was adorable.

So to sum up the day: no seizures, a clean house, a massage and tons of Connor hugs and snuggles.  All in all it was pretty great!

~Jess

In Which I Am Really, Really Tired

So today I was supposed to spend some time cleaning up the house, because my parents are coming to visit us in a few days.  Instead, all I really wanted to do was take a nice, long nap.

I am so ready to not be sick anymore.  Being sick does not help me get myself motivated about doing anything (except for nap, of course)-- let alone be motivated to clean, which I have a hard time being enthusiastic about when I'm in peak condition. 

It does not help that Connor is no longer sick in the slightest, and he has zero interest in cleaning or in taking naps.  Luckily we had respite care today so I got a little bit done (lack of motivation, remember?) but that won't be the case for the rest of the week.  Mostly Connor wants to play, and play hard.  He is not remotely interested in playing any of the games I suggest either, like the "nap game" or the "quiet time game" or the "please let Mommy sleep just a little bit longer game."  He wants to play the kind of games that involve large amounts of high-pitched squealing and as much interaction with Mommy as possible.

Thankfully I think I'm over the worst of this bug, and so with a little luck I'll be able to pick up the pace later in the week.  Tomorrow Connor's got school and therapy, but the rest of the day should be devoted to cleaning.

And maybe a nap. 

~Jess

In Which I Clean House And Connor Is Happy

Today was extremely productive!

I don't know about you all, but I often find that the state of my house is very indicative of how things are going in my personal life at that particular moment.  When I'm stressed and worried I have a lot less energy to devote to things like dusting and picking up after myself, and as a result the house ends up looking, shall we say, less than stellar.  I'm not saying that it gets unsanitary-- I don't stop cleaning the toilets or anything-- but the laundry definitely piles up and the floor doesn't get mopped as often as it should.  I also tend to do a lot of my cleaning and housework while Connor is in school, and so my routine gets interrupted when he's home all day.  I go into survival mode, and somehow scrubbing the baseboards and cleaning the grout in my shower doesn't seem that important anymore.

So whenever things start looking up-- usually when Connor starts feeling better-- I have a sudden urge to clean my house from top to bottom and make everything sparkle.  I have a lot more energy to devote to housework because I'm not spending it all worrying about the little guy.  So that explains why today I spent about six hours cleaning the house from top to bottom.  Today Connor didn't have a single dose of Tylenol or Ativan and he didn't have a single seizure!  That means he can go back to school and return to his normal routine.  He giggled his way through the laundry folding (his favorite chore), napped happily while I scrubbed the bathroom tile and played with his drum set while I swept our entryway.  It's nice to have my happy little guy back! 

And I have to admit that the idea of reclaiming my two and a half hours of daily free time made me pretty happy too-- happy enough to want a clean house to spend it in!  But also I think that Connor's joy is so infectious and so constant I don't realize how much I depend on it until he gets sick and, for a few days, it's missing.  Despite how syrupy and cliched it might sound, he truly makes my world brighter.  When he's in a great mood I can't help but have a good time, even if all I'm doing is cleaning the kitchen or taking out the garbage.  He startles and then laughs at the sudden bang of the recycling bin slamming shut.  He watches the broom sweep back and forth with an intent, awed expression.  And laundry-- once my most hated chore-- never fails to make Connor laugh so hard he falls over. 

So Connor is happy again and the house is clean.  I'd call that a pretty good day!

In Which I Don't Eat Bacon

Connor had two more seizures today, which means that we're back in another run.  Glorious.  He hasn't shown any indication of being sick yet, so we'll just have to watch him and see.  I'm kind of hoping he's getting sick, as horrible as that is, because if he's not it means his medication change only worked for about a week.  That would not be so hot.

Hopefully we won't see any more tomorrow. 

I spent part of the day today getting some things done around the house and running errands while the little guy hung out with Jer.  Then I made a big pot of potato/carrot/parsnip soup with bacon in it while Jeremy was at the gym and Connor was sleeping off seizure number one.  The hardest part of making potato soup is cooking the bacon and then not eating any of it until after it is in the soup.  Seriously, I sort of wanted to skip the soup making part and just eat all of the bacon.  Jer probably would have been kind of sad about coming home to the bacon all eaten, though, so I restrained myself. 

You know you love somebody when you forsake bacon eating for them. 

I cooked dinner early because around four in the afternoon I left to go watch a roller derby bout up in the Bremerton area (a town a little over an hour away from me) with some friends.  I figure that right now the more derby I see, the better; it'll help me learn strategy, see how the referees call games, and just make me an all around better player. 

Plus I just love watching roller derby!

Anyway, the bouts (there were two back-to-back) were awesome and I had a blast.  I can't wait until it's me skating out there!

~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 And I Have A Great Day

Best. Idea. EVER.

Connor had a pretty great day today!  At school he let them paint his feet for a project.  As in having actual wet paint touching his feet.  And when they washed it off, he thought it was funny. 

Wow this kid has come a long way.

Today was a housecleaning day, which Connor always enjoys.  I was doing the laundry in my roller skates (what, doesn't everybody fold their laundry in roller skates?) and I discovered that Connor thinks it's extremely funny if I hold a sheet around my shoulders and skate so it billows out like a superman cape.  So we both had a pretty good time.

Okay, so even if I wasn't doing roller derby I think I'd be doing my chores from now on while skating because it is just so much fun!  Why hasn't Martha Stewart tapped into this?  Seriously, someone should e-mail her about it, because this is hands down the best way to clean ever. 



Action Shot!!!



This is especially true because we have a vacuum cleaner that rolls behind me on little wheels while I use it.  Connor finds this highly amusing.  And the skating has the added bonus of completely freaking the cats out.  Loki spent most of the afternoon puffed up to three times his size and jumping sideways whenever I rolled by; I think he believes the skates are some sort of bizarre animals that have eaten my feet.

 

Okay, so I got a little bit overconfident after about an hour or so and decided to take the recycling out while I was talking on my cellphone, which was A Rather Poor Decision on my part and did Not End Well.  But never fear, I broke the worst of the fall by running face-first into our van, and so my elbow and knee were only a little bit scraped up.  So I've learned my lesson and won't be doing that again. 

Next time I'll wear pads and aim for the holly bush, which would probably be more cushiony.

~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 The House Is Clean But We Miss An Appointment

Today I threw myself into housecleaning, as I've been neglecting it for a number of days and the previous activity I was doing to get my mind off of Connor's medical issues-- looking at children's interior design blogs to figure out how I wanted to do Sylvie's room-- wasn't exactly going to be a good idea anymore.  So I set Connor up with a mobile play area (so I could move it from room to room while I was cleaning), put on a CD of stories from This American Life to listen to, threw on some old clothes and started turning the house inside out.

You know when you get really involved with something after a while you get into a kind of zone and lose all track of time?  Well, I was halfway through mopping the kitchen floor and singing a rousing version of "Rambling Roarin' Willie" at the top of my lungs when the phone rang.  I picked it up, saw it was Connor's occupational therapist calling and suddenly realized that he had therapy at noon and it was now a quarter to one.

Whoops.

So that was not so wonderful, and I felt pretty guilty about it-- especially since Connor's missed a lot of occupational therapy in the past few weeks.  And it's not like I had a good reason this time, like Connor not breathing on me or something.  I'm relatively sure that "I was too busy mopping my kitchen floor and singing rousing versions of Irish drinking songs to check the time or show up to our appointment" would not rank high on a list of great excuses.  I guess everybody drops a ball or two every once in a while, though it doesn't really make me feel any better about it.

But on the up side, my kitchen floors look great. 

Connor had a perfectly fine day health-wise, though he spent a good portion of it pretty bored because I was using the time I would normally be playing with him to clean our bathrooms instead.  So he was kind of ticked about that.  He's definitely feeling about eight hundred times better than he was last week, though, as he was extremely vocal today and he had been slipping into this kind of scary apathy during the worst of the seizures.  He hasn't had one since his dose of Ativan on Tuesday, so that's pretty great!  I'll take a bored, whiny, loud kid over an exhausted, zoned-out, silent kid any day.  I did do a good bit of laundry today, so he perked up for that.  You all know how that kid loves the laundry folding.

As you can see, Cricket helped out with the laundry too.  I had to rewash all of our dishcloths. 

Cats are helpful like that.

~Jess

In Which We Make Connor An Activity Board

Today Jeremy cleaned our entire house.  I'm talking from top to bottom-- he even mopped the floors. 

Do I have the best husband in the world, or what? 

I spent most of the day out playing, but I did get one slightly organizational thing done-- I made Connor an activity board.  Pictures tomorrow (Connor is asleep in his room right now so I can't take any) but basically it's a magnetic white board with two large rectangles drawn on it in permanent marker, labeled "today" and "tomorrow."  I considered drawing out an entire week, but Connor's sense of time isn't so hot, so I figured we'd stick with just those two days for now.  Connor has a hard time with deviations from routine and he likes to know what to expect, so I figure this board will be really helpful for him; especially during the summer months when his days don't have the reassuring routine of school.  I have a number of picture cards that have symbols for different activities, and also a trusty black non-permanent marker to draw pictures directly on the board of things outside our norm.  I've hung the board at wheelchair eye-level for Connor so that he can see what I've posted on it every day, and we'll add changing the board and going over the day's activities to our morning routine.  In the evening we'll go over the next day's activities so he knows what to expect. 

Hopefully this will help him with some of the transitions he's been having difficulty with.  I think that even if we do end up changing our plans he'll at least have the comfortable knowledge that the basic parts of his daily routines will stay the same.  It's worth a shot, anyway.

The other half of the board is a brown bulletin board, which I bought some colorful push pins for.  I'll have to think of something else to use when Sylvie gets here-- probably I'll just get a full white board-- but for now I'm not too worried about the push pins, as Connor isn't going to bother them.  I've hung up some of Connor's latest artwork on the board at his eye level so that he can see how proud we are of his creations.  He seemed to like that quite a bit; he kept eyeing the large finger painting he did last week and smiling. 

I think anything we can do to nurture his creative side is a good thing!

~Jess

In Which Sylvie Has A Birthday, and We Get A Lot Done

We had another really busy day today!  Jer spent the day organizing our office, taking care of Connor and doing some general cleaning, which Jake and I worked outside on the deck.  We hauled away just over a ton of debris to the landfill, which was a lot of fun because we'd rented one of those two-axle dump trailers and I got to push the button to make it tilt up and dump its load.  Those things are really cool.  We also hauled a ton of bushes and other landscaping I'd dug out earlier in the week from the site where our new deck is going in.  We spent most of the rest of the day shoveling dirt to level the site so that we'll have proper ventilation underneath the new deck.  This will be my "homework" for the week, and I don't think I'll be needing any additional working out, let me tell you!  The new deck is significantly wider and longer than the old one to accommodate the ramps and wheelchair turn radius while still giving us enough room to have our outdoor furniture out there, so there's a lot of dirt we have to move.  We also did the prep for the ledger board today (this is a board that is bolted to the house which the deck is securely attached to) by cutting away the siding where the board will go.  It's exciting to know that in a few weeks we'll have a beautiful new deck!  Then we get to start on the paver patio and the sidewalks.  We're getting there!

For the whole second half of the day Joanna was here, which meant that we were able to get some significant work done.  I don't regret using some "date time" for this sort of thing; it's often difficult to get everything done that we need to do while taking care of Connor at the same time, so it's great that he gets some undivided attention while we get our projects taken care of.  I think he enjoys playing with Joanna but still having his parents around too, because then he gets to have the periodic attention of everybody!  It was raining most of the day today, so we shut the cats in the laundry room this morning and he spent some time early in the day hanging out just on the other side of our sliding door with the glass open and just the screen closed.  He really loves watching everybody; he especially loves the oscillating and circular saws, which he finds hilarious.  I'm so glad that we're doing this project now because while it's really easy to keep him entertained, it probably wouldn't be so easy to do this project with an active kindergartener who would want to not only watch, but participate as well.

Today was Sylvie's birthday; she's now five years old!  I thought about her a lot today; wondering what she was doing, whether or not anyone celebrated with her, and how hopefully this will be the last birthday she celebrates without family surrounding her.  Probably it was just another day for her; Thailand doesn't put a big emphasis on birthday celebrations in general, and with the number of children in her large orphanage complex (over 2000 kids) it's not likely that they would single her out and do anything special for her.  Sylvie may not even realize that it is here birthday today; it may not ever have been explained to her as she didn't have any language before she came to the orphanage.  It's likely that she's never had a birthday party or received any presents, as this isn't a Thai tradition.

I also wondered about what Sylvie's birth mom, if she is still living, would be doing today; whether or not she would take any time to commemorate a day that must have been one of the most important of her life.  It must be such a bittersweet day for her, and I hope that she's doing well.   

So happy birthday, Sylvie!  The next year will likely bring big changes for you, and with any luck next year we'll be able to celebrate with you!

~Jess

In Which We Add A Couple Of New Members To Our Household

I spent most of today doing light housekeeping and whatnot.  I've very quickly discovered that our laminate floors need to be vacuumed every day, as otherwise they quickly accumulate little piles of dirt, dust, cat hair, and unidentified bits of detritus that I don't want to look particularly closely at.  So that's the downside of the floors.  The upside is that I can actually see the stuff, so it makes me want to vacuum every day instead of whenever I get around to it.  I have no doubt that in the places we had carpet just as much stuff accumulated on a daily basis, only I didn't know about it because it was hidden in the carpet.  Gross.

Our old vacuum, while very nice, had those super-stiff revolving brushes that are supposed to scratch the heck out of your laminate floors.  So I got us a new, pretty inexpensive canister vacuum, which works really well and has the added bonus of being absolutely adorable.  This is the Herbie of vacuum cleaners.  It's bright orange and it has very large, cheery buttons and since it's a canister vacuum it follows me around like a little puppy while I'm vacuuming.  I find myself thinking about donning pearls, high heels and some sort of flowery apron whenever I use it, which given my usual level of domesticity makes it a really cute vacuum to have that sort of effect on me.

Jeremy and his mom were off at a sign language conference all day, so Connor and I had the house all to ourselves.  Well, except for the cats and our newest two members of the family that is.  Let me introduce you to:

Teke and Lili!

Bonus points for you if you get the extremely obscure literary reference-- especially since we split up the spelling. 

Anyway, they're the baby gerbils we brought home a few days ago!  Aren't they cute?  I think they even beat out the vacuum cleaner!  We got them for a couple of reasons; the first being my complete inability to resist any organic life form with huge eyes, but also because Connor has been sleeping in our room for the last five months since we couldn't turn the heat on in our apartment due to the necessary placement of Jeremy's hospital bed and my paranoid refusal to have a space heater on in a room I'm not physically in.  We felt like it might be a little rough on Connor to transition to not only a new house but to sleeping all by himself again, and so we got him the gerbils so he'd have company in his room at night.  He absolutely loves them, he spends a lot of time watching them, and he's having zero problems sleeping through the night, so I'm glad we got them. 

I apologize for the quality of the photos-- gerbils are hard to take pictures of.  For one thing they were terrified of the camera, and so whenever I moved it or depressed the shutter button they'd dart back into their little house.  As a result most of the pictures I have feature vaguely gerbil-shaped blurs.  There's also the fact that Teke (the brown and white guy) is about 8,000 times bolder than Lili (the all-gray boy), who seems to be shaping up to be a bit of a wimp.  All of Lili's pictures were blurry, so I posted the least blurry picture, which was taken with me standing on the complete other end of the room.  That was the only way I could get him to come out of his hidey hole while I was holding the camera.  Normally they're both pretty friendly, and I'm sure they'll get used to the camera eventually, but in the meantime this is what you're stuck with.  The fact that I'm also a near-incompetent with a camera and for every good picture I take of Connor there are 8,000 bad ones you don't see probably doesn't help either. 

The cats are normally not allowed in Connor's room, so nothing's really changed there except that whenever I go inside now they sit just outside and watch the door.  When I come out there are our two felines looming in a predatory fashion a couple of feet back, completely ignoring each other and staring at the crack under the door like small furry vultures.  I'm pretty sure they know what's up and are convinced that someday I'm going to lose control of one of the gerbils while cleaning the cage and they'll have the chance to rustle up their own fresh dinner instead of waiting for me to dispense it in kibble form from a bag in the pantry.  Hopefully this will never happen; I'm pretty sure that seeing one family member eat another might be mildly traumatic for Connor despite Jer's insistence that everything would be fine if we sang "The Circle of Life" during the chase and subsequent dining. 

But I wasn't quite up for a dog as of yet, and the thought of adding another cat to the mix makes me laugh until I have to sit down for a while and have Jer ply me with some sort of alcoholic beverage.  So we were left with small prey animals, and the gerbils had the largest eyes and as an added bonus were equipped with tails that reminded me of those of characters out of Fraggle Rock, so they were the logical choice.  Also they make very little mess, which is an added bonus.

Even if it gives me fewer opportunities to use my new vacuum cleaner.

~Jess