Julia

Mulligan

Some of you pointed out that we might be done with the flu but the flu was probably not done with us and O! how right you were. You know that feeling when you lean forward and it feels like someone is trying to pop your eyeballs out of your head with their thumbs? I have that feeling right now and I could probably stand to have someone take a gander at my sinuses but Steve's out of town and Edward has developed a sad little cough and a streaming nose and the idea of lugging the children off to go sit in the lobby at the doctor's office has zero appeal.

I have just heard that warm honey mixed with cinnamon is an effective decongestant so I am about to try that, perhaps drizzled over some therapeutic ice cream. In the meantime feel free to send me via carrier pigeon something useful like amoxicillin or cloxacillin or pipericillin or whatever you have lying around.

Speaking of sending me things, I got an email several weeks ago from a woman who was struck by my mention of Patrick's need for a cape to send his Snidely Whiplash impersonation into the realm of the sublime. She said that she was a longtime reader and that she has a small business creating things that children need, like capes (and tutus and cute hats and car seat covers to keep them from freezing to death when you selfishly take them to the grocery store.) She said she would like to make a free cape for Patrick and I thought, "Oh no, no, no. How kind! But no, we just couldn't accept it" and I said, "Yes!"

Lately I have realized that just because I have always done things a certain way it does not mean that this is the best way or even a good way. For years I have maintained a rigid distance between the people I know online (with exceptions) and my actual corporeal life. Why? I don't know. Fear, I guess. Fear that I am going to be murdered by one of you (and I have my guesses as to which one - you know who you are) and that when I am murdered people will walk around my memorial service whispering, "It's terribly sad but she DID write that blog you know..." and then they'll trail off because it is not nice to say that someone was too stupid to live at their own memorial. But they'll think it. So there is that. Also - apart from that completely rational dread - there is the fact that I have never wanted to accept offers of ladybug onesies because I would feel like I was exploiting you. I get so much pleasure from writing this and getting comments and advice that it seems like overkill to accept an additional gift, you know? No presents but your presence, as Steve's birth mother is wont to say, and I mean this and I believe this and when I offered ad space on my blog for your various and sundry endeavors I in no way, shape or form intended for it to read as a tacit request for a little baksheesh. 

Where was I? Oh right, throwing all of my strongly held beliefs out the window in my greed for a cape and trying to justify it by saying it is part of my program to bring the disparate halves of my life together so that I feel less lonely.

In truth I just couldn't refuse one of her lovely capes.

Observe:

This is from over a year ago. That is a pair of my tights he has draped around his neck. I confiscated them (and please let me know if you are in the market for a pair of gently used tights that have unfortunately been stretched to accommodate legs that measure 120 inches from hip to toe) and he moved onto a shirt of Steve's which he would wear ditto. Every time the shirt/cape emerged from the laundry Steve and Patrick would bicker over it like a pair of cats with a dead fish.

So Patrick needed a cape but it never occurred to me to actually buy him one. And then this really nice and talented woman started her siren song about size (average boy 7) and color (Liberace tacky) so I said what the hell, yes, thank you, yes. So she made it and sent it and Patrick went bananas and, really, can you blame him?

I mean isn't this exponentially cooler than those awful dangly tights?

In flight

In motion

 

Incapacitated by a villain, our theory is that he was hit over the head with that frog suitcase 

Influenza (note: cape, book on math theory, throw cat)

To say that Patrick loves this cape is an understatement. He wants to get one for Caroline and Edward so the three of them can be properly outfitted for the ongoing adventures of Super Patrick and the Wonderbabies (KAPOW! Menace Girl! and BLAMMO! WonderEdward!) and I think that's a good idea for next year. As we were looking at her site (here it is: www.beebeebug.com - she has hats and car seat covers that are also oh for cute as we say in Minnesota) Patrick saw the tutus and decided that Caroline needs one of those as well. Then he decided Edward would want one, too, which is true but it prompted a somewhat agonized conversation about traditional gender concepts in this country and whether or not simply making a tutu blue could offset the girly connotations of tulle... I let Patrick argue this one by himself. I think Cricket and Eddybear in matching tutus would be divine but I can think of at least three people in my immediate family who might think otherwise.   

Anyway, I have a reader who makes really neat things and she sent me a free cape and it has been a huge hit in our house so I thought I would mention it and her and point out that the holidays are just around the corner so if you have a child on your list you might want to check out her site. It's really really hard to go wrong with a cape, people. Or a tutu.

--

Edward's cough went from sad to aggressive as the day progressed and when he failed to nap I realized he was starting a fever as well. I took him into the pediatrician and... he has pneumonia. Nothing terrible, just a crackle in his right lung but enough to warrant starting antibiotics and keeping a close eye on him. Poor little monkey.

This has been a tough few weeks.

PS This has nothing to do with anything but Caroline has one thing she cannot say correctly for the otherwise infallible life of her. She calls pumpkins "cupkins". It's adorable.

PPS I hear that a few of you are having trouble with the cape website. Feel free to send me your contact information via email and I will get it to her while she works on her site issue.

My Cash Drawer

I have watched enough Tom & Jerry to last me the rest of my natural life so it is not surprising that I am thinking in cartoon visuals. Right now I am picturing a dust cloud and from it emerges a white flag on a stick. Sure this indicates surrender but it also implies survival. Like when Francis Scott Key was so pleased to see the Stars and Stripes still waving over Baltimore's harbor and the British looked at the same flag and said, "Oh bother" and promptly sailed down to DC and torched the place.

Like that. I feel like that.

Patrick and I were talking about disease in general and viruses in particular. I told him that one of the major differences between a bacterial infection like the one he had during the summer and a virus such as the one that just leveled our family like a field of corn is that bacteria are alive and viruses are dead. For the record my entire knowledge of biology can be summarized by a plethora of these random, unrelated and not fully understood bullet-points: Viruses are dead and shaped like needles, maybe! The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell! Kingdom phyllum family order (or is it order family) class genus species! Hydrogen helium lithium beryllium boron carbon nitrogen oxygen fluorine neon!

It almost goes without saying that I did not do very well in biology. In fact, that final D was generous.

But Patrick doesn't know this so I am able to lecture him with a straight face on the relative suckitude of viral vs bacterial infections. You know, it is lovely to see the respect with which he treats my discourses (my biology teacher never managed to get much beyond pity) and even lovelier to hear him synthesize what I tell him into his own random cue cards:  "So, basically, viruses are like zombie germs?"

And I said, yes, yes that is exactly right.

So hello from the far side of Zombieville.

I have been trying to decide if I have any H1N1 wisdom to share for when you get it (and you will get it) but it's such a funky illness that it is hard to characterize.

Patrick returned to school today after being out all week and half of last week as well. It's second grade. Big deal if he misses - well, all of it really as far as I'm concerned. He wasn't deathly ill but he would spike a fever every afternoon and he was lethargic and coughing a lot. So he stayed home and it wasn't until yesterday when I discovered him placing large plastic bowls over Caroline's head which he then proceeded to bang with a ladle that I realized he really needed to return to the bosom of his little school chums. Edward started a delicate cough on Sunday night which was all I needed to break out the Tamiflu and I am so glad I did. By Monday morning he was a small disaster: high fever, rashy, horribly congested, screaming and screaming and screaming. He spent a day sitting on my lap with both his blankies, a pacifier which prior to this has been a bedtime only indulgence and one hand wrapped in my hair. Tuesday he was a thousand times better and now he is completely well except for an inability to sleep through the night which is killing me. Last night I rocked him to sleep, gently transferred him to his crib, slammed to the floor when he stirred in hopes that he would not see me, crept on my stomach toward the door and then... gently rocked him to sleep again when he sat up and started howling. Caroline also started Tamiflu on Sunday, largely because Edward did and there is virtually no way for Edward to have a virus that Caroline does not also host. They sit across from each and push their cups and forks back and forth and just the other day I watched Caroline walk over to where Edward was reading and she licked his face. Why? Why not, I guess. She never got a fever, by the way, just a stuffy nose.

Steve, of course, was fine although this did not prevent him from drinking copious amounts of herbal tea and lying down with his book every few minutes. An ounce of prevention I guess.

Enough about the flu. I am done with the flu.  

So want to hear one of my favorite stories? I wonder if I have told you this one before. Probably.

A person of my acquaintance who is a Big Deal at his place of employment once decided to treat, oh I don't know, let's say the accounting department, to lunch at the completion of a particularly arduous project. So he had someone order pizza and when it arrived he went to the young man who was in charge of petty cash and said, "Hey, give me a couple hundred dollars from petty cash so I can pay for some pizzas."

And the petty cash guy said, "No."

"No?"

"No. You haven't filled out a request and it hasn't been signed by Even Bigger Deal so, no, I am not giving you money from the cash drawer."

The person of my acquaintance was annoyed, one might say irked, and heatedly asked the guy, "Look, do you know who I am?"

"I know who I am."

"And who are you?"

"I'm the guy who is in charge of the cash drawer so... I guess that makes you the guy who isn't getting any cash."

Every time I think about this I laugh and every time my mother and I are talking about someone who has their own particular field of interest we say, "Well, you know, everybody's got their cash drawer... ."

Speaking - loosely - of jobs I have an idea for another article I might want to try to sell but I need some help from you. Remember a couple of weeks ago when I asked if you liked your job? A couple of comments made me tingle a bit and I would like to revisit that question. Specifically, could you leave me a comment or email me if the thought of what you (or a friend - it's always nice to refer a friend) do for a living (or a partial living) makes you pink with pleasure or you can say the words 'dream job' without rolling your eyes? You don't have to be making a fortune or anything, I just want to talk to people who find joy in what they do.

PS

Pre-influenza pictures:

We went to pick pumpkins. I said, "Patrick! Please keep Edward out of the parking lot."

His hand shot out and he proceeded to use Edward's hood like a leash. I admit it was effective.

 

Patrick took his pumpkin very seriously.

 

Sometimes Caroline and Edward seem more like twins to me than others

Hope you are well.

H1NWhatever

Patrick came home from school on Wednesday with a blinding headache and the need to fall asleep at five in the afternoon. By Thursday morning he was throwing up. A trip to the doctor on Thursday afternoon landed him with a flu diagnosis and me with prescriptions for Tamiflu for Caroline and Edward. We had the option to get Tamiflu for Patrick as well but I thought he would be ok without it and I would hate it if we took Tamiflu now and there winds up being a shortage of the stuff and at-risk people who really need it are unable to get it later. I don't know; it made sense to me at the time and although Patrick is sick he is not nearly as sick as he was last summer - I guess it takes more than a couple of symptoms to impress me now. By Thursday night he was feverish and starting to cough. Friday was my birthday and all I wanted to do was sleep. Saturday all I did do was sleep, feeling as I did like utter death. 

Patrick is getting better. Edward is starting to cough and I administered Tamiflu to him and Caroline tonight on the strength of it. Steve is rallying like a Kappa. I am going back to bed.

When I recover my capacity to stay upright, my ability to breathe freely and my sense of humor remind me to be amused all over again by those flu vaccine discussions, ok?

1X1

Patrick's school had some sort of peace ceremony the other day and he came home all saintly and thoughtful. At bedtime that night he said, "I have just written a message of peace. Would you like to hear it?"

So I said, sure.

"We might all look different on the outside... but inside our hearts are all the same."

And he clasped his hands together and looked at me like a particularly well-behaved beam of light.

Then he resumed his normal expression and said, briskly, "It's true you know. And it's not just our hearts... all our organs are alike. Lungs, intestines... and of course we all process food the same way. Breaking down food particles with stomach acids that eventually turn everything we eat into po... ."

I thanked him for his lovely message of peace and left.

+

I know we shouldn't try to pigeon-hole our children at an early age. Caroline has years until she decides what career path she wants to follow and - truth be told - the Neil Diamond impersonator field is already pretty crowded what with the King of Diamonds and Super Diamond and Black Diamond. However, I think her version of "Sweet Caroline" brings something pretty special to the arena and I just want to start sewing sequins onto her turtlenecks.

What do you think about Tiny Diamond as a stage name?