Happy Freakin' Halloween

I'm home blogging while I wait for trick or treaters. My kids just left for their own short stint around the block. With one just recovering from nearly a week of illness, and one just plain old tired, they're not going to be out there long.

Secret confession: while I love Halloween, I really hate handing out candy. I don't have any real logical or philosophical objection to it, I like the tradition, I just don't like DOING it. It annoys me. Yeah, I'm a curmudgeon.

The awesome White Witch costume didn't pan out. I didn't get to finish it in the weeks leading up to our trip, then we went away, and then we came home with the plague. So I started working on the back zipper today, and threw it down in disgust. I went to Target at the last minute to get costumes.

I totally love it when total strangers make comments about you in public. Don't you? It's expected (though still unwelcome) when I have the kids with me, but today, shopping alone, some snarky old hag wandering by the costume aisle said, "Better hurry up, it's already Halloween you know!"

She is so lucky I was bred to be polite. After the week I've had, I was ready to tear her a new one ... or three.

I'm disappointed that once again, the month flew by and I didn't prepare for Halloween the way I would like to. I have no costume, but I'm getting used to that. The kids look cute in their cheap, pedestrian Target costumes: Annika is Wonder Woman, and Cel is a "nice witch." Yeah, I don't know what that means, either.

Sorry to be so cynical, I'm just awash in disappointment in how this month has turned out. I didn't do most of the things I enjoy doing at this time of year, our trip away was much harder than I anticipated, and then you know, everything else this week. I so wanted to be Mrs. Gideon this year. (I have the accent down.")

Oh well. It's Halloween, everyone's returning to health, we did all the requisite Halloweeny things, got the necessary pictures, and now I'm sitting here queued up with goth music videos to keep me company while I hand out candy. Could be worse. Oh, and, we're having the same abnormally mild weather we've had nearly every Halloween since my kids were born. And THAT is just bitchin', every single time.

YouTube Nostalgia

I watched an unholy load of videos today. Old music videos. Lots of them were videos I loved as a Young Whippersnapper, and others were from songs I loved but I had never seen the videos. I mean, I had never seen the video for Tainted Love? How is that possible? But perhaps that is a good thing, because I think I'd have been totally creeped out. But now I'm old and jaded and nothing creeps me out. Not even Dead or Alive.

(Well, that's not exactly true. Seeing the way that guy has abused his face over the last twenty years IS somewhat horrifying.)

I'm also pretty sure that either Don't You Want Me, Baby?, by the Human League, or Genesis' That's All was the very first video I ever saw on MTV. I kind of prefer to think it was the Human League. This is probably because I didn't especially like That's All, but I did think (at the ripe old age of 9) that Phil's mugging in that video was HI-larious.

But really, how could anyone not love the 80s? The days when women wore boy haircuts and boys wore eyeliner? Come on. I want some big shouldered sport coats now. I may have to suppress the urge to tuck my jeans into my socks before I leave the house tonight.

This Message Brought to You by Rage(tm)!

Long story short(ened): Ani got sick while we were on vacation. It was our last day, and she started to falter at the Children's Museum, complaining of stomach ache, nausea, becoming feverish.

She slept in the parking lot outside for an hour, then we brought her back to our hotel to rest the rest of the day/evening.

As of yesterday night, she hadn't eaten anything in two days, was taking very little liquids, and wasn't keeping those down. Her total malaise was what scared me, and she seemed dehydrated, and her pediatrician told me to bring her to the ER. (I mean, she was watching a cooking show. And she wasn't complaining. That is not my child.)

That kind of sucked, but it was one of those necessary sucks. We got in fairly quickly and got a room, and she got to watch TV. They gave her a chest xray, put an IV in (that really sucked), and took blood and gave her fluids. She also got Tynenol suppositories. Yes. The staff there was scaring the bejesus out of me, talking about running a CAT scan if her WBC count was elevated.

Her doctor wanted her to stay longer for fluids and observation, because of her blood test results, but the hospital I went to doesn't keep kids overnight. So they transferred us to Womens and Children's Hospital by ambulance. That was kind of scary; fortunately, she was so tired by that point, and the Tylenol had kicked in, so she slept for most of it, and slept for almost all the rest of our time at W&C. They gave her more fluids and some IV anti-nausea medication, and sent us home.

Problem was, my car (and all our carseats) was still at the suburban hospital. No way could my husband come get us, since he had Cel and no carseats in his car. I explained my dilemma to the nurse, and after a little while, she came back to say that the nursing supervisor was going to get us a cab and the hospital would cover the cost.

Wow! I was so thankful and overwhelmed. I collected my poor, sad sick girl, wrapped her back up in her blanket, and was sent to wait in chairs by the front door of the hospital with some sort of reimbursement form to give to the taxi driver.

At 2:20pm, a taxi pulled up, and we handed him our form and got in. He asked me where I was going, and I told him. He asked me how I wanted him to go, and I said, "Uh, just the fastest way? I'm not really familiar with this area." (Meaning, the area of the city around the hospital.)

So he takes off, and I notice he's not heading for the expressway, he's heading up the main thoroughfare directly north. We need to go east. I figure maybe he's just going to take surface streets and then cut across to the east. It's late and I'm tired and I'm worried with a sick (and carseat-less) kid on my lap.

I do, however, sit up and take notice when he gets on the expressway going west, and then gets on another northbound expressway heading towards Niagara Falls. Perhaps it's my paranoia, but I got this absolutely harrowing sensation.

"Why are we going on 190N?" I asked.

"Oh, I made a wrong turn. Going to turn around, excuse me!"

But then he went southbound and passed the entrances to the east & westbounds, back down into the city. Got off at a random exit, went north again, got back on the southbound expressway, further down into the city, got off again, went north again.

By this point, he had turned off the meter.

I was furious and frightened. I couldn't see any logical reason for him to be doing what he was doing. There was no way for anyone to be that lost. He kept giving excuses to all my questions that made no sense. I said, "Do you even know where Blah Blah Suburban is?" and he said, "Oh, I thought you were going to Blah Blah Blah Circle," which was less than a mile down the street from the hospital I'd just left. Which would mean, if he genuinely thought we were going there, we'd have been there already because he had to pass it to leave the city.

I got out my cell phone, and texted my husband, but I knew that was pointless, since it was late and he'd be asleep. But I wanted the driver to know I had my phone out and I was using it. And then I said, "If we don't start heading east towards the hospital immediately, I am going to get very, very upset."

(Translation: "I am going to call the fucking police.")

I asked him to get off the expressway at the first exit I recognized, because even though it was a long way to go to where I needed to be, at least I knew the way directly, and I did not want to be on the highway anymore. He questioned my judgment, but got off. I told him which way to turn off, and he questioned it. At each intersection heading east, he said, "I think we are going the wrong waaay ..."

Then he said, unbelievably, "I thought you said you weren't familiar with this area."

I sat at the absolute edge of my seat. He tried to blow through my next turn (that I'd given the directions for seconds before), and I yelled, "Right here!"

We finally made it to the original hospital AN HOUR after I'd gotten in his cab.

I made him drop me at the ER entrance, because there was no way I trusted him to bring me out to my car in the parking lot. He was apologizing profusely, but stupidly and insincerely, and when he pulled over he made no attempt to help us out of the cab. I wrapped up my sick kid and carried her through two parking lots in the snow -- after he drove away. We finally got home around four in the morning.

Now, there was no reason for him to do this to run up the meter, because we weren't paying. He already had his reimbursement form, and no matter what he wanted to charge them, there was no reason to cart me and my sick kid all over randomly in the wee hours of the morning. It really scared me. No one I've spoken to likes to think he may have been a really bad guy, but I think it's entirely possible and that it's also possible when he realized I was not going to be docile, he changed his mind. I don't want to think that, but no other explanations make sense, either.

Seriously, I entertained thoughts of how I would strangle him with my purse strap if he stopped in a strange place. No effing shit.

Today, I'm still caring for a sick kid, but I'll also be writing letters of complaint to the hospital and the cab company. That's minor; I should have called the cops.

The good news is, she picked up a lot from the fluids and the rest and the Up the Butt Tylenol, and she's still sick but doing much better.

Seriously, don't fuck with a woman with her child. Because of her, I was that much more on my guard, that much more aggressive, and ready to do ANYTHING I had to to protect her. Yes, that's dramatic. It's also true. I wanted to kill him merely for keeping my sick kid from her bed for so long. I was shaking with rage when I got out of that cab.

And that's the story of my suckass night touring Buffalo and its hospitals.

Will this one make it out of the gate?

I've started and abandoned countless blog posts lately. Maybe I'm aiming too high. Maybe my goal should just be to post SOMETHING, instead of these long rambling missives which then fall into the ether.

So here's a quickie:

I'm sitting next to Cel, who is eating her lunch. She looks ... funny. On Monday, when we were playing outside on our last day of decent weather, I noticed two small marks on her nose and forehead, and a little bit of swelling.

"What happened to you?" I asked.

"A leaf scwatched me," she said, shrugging.

Yesterday, her bumps were bigger. This morning, her eyelid was starting to join the party. So I gave her some Benadryl before school, and she looks better. She has not complained at all about these lumps, which look suspiciously like wasp stings. And given that there were about ten wasps on our back porch, eating a discarded apple, makes that scenario seem very likely. Yet, she is adamant it was a leaf and it doesn't hurt, and she never cried. Strange? Yes.

I keep waking up at 3am because someone is shoving elbows and knees into my sides. Ani keeps creeping into bed with us this week. This morning, she said it was because of a nightmare that Celyn jumped off something and "her arm broke off." Jeez.

But yesterday, she told me it wasn't a bad dream, it was just a secret.

"The secret is," she whispered, "I just love you."

So I'm trying to be tolerant, although her mere presence messes up my entire "wake up early and be sneaky" routine so I can get things done before they need to be up for school.

I'm also sitting next to my brand new tumbler, which is test-tumbling a pendant that I really hope doesn't get ruined, and washing clothes, and trying hard not to worry about packing for a trip we're taking this weekend. I refuse to worry. Worry gets me nowhere. I think I'd rather be unprepared than waste time and energy worrying. Even if I worry and prepare endlessly, I'll usually forget something anyway. Why bother?

Celyn recently discovered a love for "Itsy Bitsy Spider." Except her spider isn't "itsy" or "bitsy;" in her song, the spider is "itchy" and "bitchy."

And really, you couldn't ask for a better variation.

Catching Up

I should just rename this blog to "catching up." Just like I told someone at karate, I'm going to change my name to, "I haven't seen you around in a while."

For the last two or three weeks, we've been embroiled in trying to buy a used car. This has been ridiculous. We tried a few, found one we liked, started to buy it, felt like the dealership was taking too long and screwing around with us, and walked. Found another car, tried to buy it, felt like the dealership was screwing around with us, and waited. Finally signed paperwork after a week of dickering, and now, one week after that, today, we should be able to pick the damn car up. I am so emotionally wrung out by the experience I'm not even excited. I keep expecting to get a phone call saying, "The mother decided to keep it," as if it were a big, one ton metal baby I was trying to adopt.

I've also been trying to get the jewelry thing up off the ground. Start up expenses for a jewelry business are, I'm guessing, slightly higher than your average crafting business. I've been out of silver for weeks, so I have all these cabs lying around forlornly, waiting to be wrapped. I've finally, finally been able to order some of the finishing equipment I need, but I'm still waiting for it to arrive, so I'm a bit locked in limbo.

See, again with the waiting?

Since we finally decided to go ahead and buy a car because I essentially snapped and refused to chauffeur anymore, while we've been waiting for a car to materialize, I've been going hardly anywhere. Which is actually fine with me, but we have been skipping things we should be going to. Ani hasn't wanted to go to karate lately, which is An Issue, but especially lately, I am not going to force her to go if it means I have to drive 24 extra miles a day of rush hour commuting JUST to take her 2 miles to and from the dojo in the middle of the afternoon. Sorry, not doing it.

Ironically, I am buying a car so that I can stay home more.

Annika has been a handful lately. Well, you know, she's always a handful, but there's been a lot of moodiness and extra intensity and drama, and I'm trying to hit it from every angle, supportively (diet, extra sleep, vitamins, blah blah) but she does tend to cross me at every turn. When she's most in need of emotional support is when she's at her most unsympathetic, and generally when we're both tired, she's clinging for interaction and I'm trying to squiggle away for headspace, and it just doesn't jive very well.

She says she doesn't really want to quit karate, but she feels like karate and kindergarten is too much, and she can't quit kindergarten. Well, and she's right, she really can't. If she actually hated kindergarten, then we'd have to look for another program or school or something, because we can't homeschool. She would kill me and feast on my brains. I've said it before and I'll say it again: she is too much extroverted child for little old introverted me. Anyone who claims there is an easy solution for this has never met her. I've spent MANY MANY a day together with her all day, and whether we're staying home, going hither, thither and yon or somewhere in between, she is unsatisfied and I am totally exhausted. She needs a more communal structure, and short of me buying some extended family to live in our house with us, school is going to have to do.

(Yeah, she did just have a five day weekend. How did you know?)

Celyn gets short shrift in my blog just because she's so darn easy going. When we stay home all day together, she's totally happy with that. And she's happy to go out. Happy to play near me while I make the bed or write or knit, asking for something every once in a while, or just hang out. My biggest problem with Celyn is that she hates pants.

I thank the Universe every day for Celyn, for without Celyn, I'd have continued to think that my head-butting with Annika was just proof that I was and am totally unsuitable for parenthood. It's a little easier for me to accept it's temperamental differences, since my relationship with Celyn is pretty much how I imagined parenthood to be, before I actually had a kid. Annika is a terrific kid, but she's also turbocharged. It's really exhausting to be her center of gravity for long stretches of time.

Celyn is doing amazingly well at preschool. She loves it, can't wait to go on school days. She adores her teachers, and plays every day with her "best friend Owen." Owen is actually in the older kid class, he might be nearly four now, and oddly enough, he and Annika were good buddies buddies over the summer. Celyn lets me know, however, that she does not like the boys in her class, because they are clumsy and rough when they play.

Celyn also started writing her name recently, which really surprised me because I wasn't even sure she knew very many letters on sight yet. I guess Annika showed her how, and now she writes her name almost every day, and points out the letters in her name whenever she sees them.

"Dere's a Y! Dere's a Y in my name, too!" she'll cackle gleefully.

She'll be three in just a few months. Three? How can that be?

I have also kept busy lately selling as much excess stuff around the house that I can find on eBay, to further help fund the purchase of precious metals and semiprecious stones. Unfortunately, with several moves over the last few years and much clutter purging, I don't have a lot of things worth selling. Now, worthless junk? I've got all kinds of that.

Now, I better stop wasting time and do some laundry and finish touch up painting in the foyer before the littlest gets home and wants lunch.

And I really could use some coffee.

Your crystal ball is dusty ...

You'll allow me a tiny bit of snark, won't you?

"While Zoe says she was "excited" by the prospect of a natural delivery, she underwent an elective C-section because of baby girl's large size. "Lilly was growing so much inside me, it would have been really difficult," Zoe explains. "I didn't want to go through a long labor, then have a Cesarean, so it was the right decision." Upon Lilly's entry to the world on September 2nd -- at a healthy 8 lb, 12 oz [...]"

Okay, that's a baby that's on the larger side, but just below the definition of "macrosomic," and certainly not an undeliverably-large baby. It just seems like a strange reason to willingly accept all of the additional risks a c-section brings, especially when it's your first and you really have no idea if you can deliver that baby or not, and most likely, you can. She's additionally upped the risks of all her future pregnancies. Seems like it would have been wiser, had she been concerned about big baby, to prepare by reading up on best techniques for a vaginal delivery with a big baby. Honestly, though, she was probably misled.

Having had an 8lb14oz'er and an 11lb'er, I feel like I have a leg to stand on in reminding people that big babies are not necessarily harder to deliver. Yes, my 11lb baby did have dystocia, but she also was a brow and a compound presentation, which probably had a lot more to do with it than her size. Generally, heavier babies are heavier because they have more body fat, not because they're growing big thick abnormal bones, or a giant round fused skull. And fat is squishy. Come on. Many (24-58%) babies with dystocia are of average size, and many dystocias may be caused by standard obstetric practice ("let's squash your pelvic outlet by having you lie flat on your back," anyone?), rather than because the baby is actually "too big."

Preventive cesarean section for "big baby" is not evidence based medicine. As far back as 1996, some people knew it:

For the 97% of pregnant women who are not diabetic, a policy of elective cesarean delivery for ultrasonographically diagnosed fetal macrosomia is medically and economically unsound. In pregnancies complicated by diabetes, such a policy appears to be more tenable, although the merits of such an approach are debatable.

But what really made me go ahead and snark on all this was a comment later in the article:

"Until the end of my pregnancy I couldn’t get my head around the whole breastfeeding thing, but that was completely instinctive," she says. "It's amazing how brilliantly your body responds."

Yeah, surprisingly, the body does that with a lot of things. Digestion, elimination, breathing, birth. Funny how the body can step up to the plate when it comes to biological functions. NEAT!