Because I Need A Laugh

Frank took the day off today so we could see the new, long awaited movie, The Watchmen. We went out for breakfast then took in the 10:30 show.

It's been a long time since I've read the Alan Moore-Dave Gibbons landmark graphic novel and I think the film is faithful to its origins (the comic's better) but some of the performances were a little flat and that may have been due to the script, which I thought was pretty lackluster. The best performance of the bunch was that of Jackie Earl Haley as Rorschach. Excellent. Some of the dialogue was a little stilted and not very genuine (it reads better on paper - some of the lines were lifted directly from the comic). It's very, very dark, gritty, grimy, and bloody. It was a little much for me, but Frank really liked it.

"That was the comic book movie equivalent of The Lord of The Rings," said Frank commenting on the movie's length.

After nearly 3 hours of superhero gore I need something funny.

So in homage to LOTR, I give you Flight of The Conchords' "Frodo, Don't Wear The Ring". Which is even funnier because Bret McKenzie (one of the Conchords) played an elf in LOTR, The Fellowship of The Ring and The Return of The King.

Back Among The Living

After being pretty much bed-ridden for the past two days, I can safely say it's good to be up and around again. Man, that cold was/is wicked bad and knocked me on my ass, messed with my sleep and generally made my life miserable.

Today, I feel much better. My energy has returned, if not to my regular level then it's nearly there. I can breathe (with the help of Mucinex D) and I slept much better last night than the previous two.

And while I felt close to my regular self, I didn't overdo it: no gym, no vigorous housework. All I did was clean up my vapor trail of dirty Kleenex in my bedroom and the family room and allow myself to become engrossed in an America's Next Top Model marathon on Bravo.

We can resume our regular schedule of after-school activities, from which we've been absent for the past week and a half.

Tomorrow is a franknmisc day: Frank's taking the day off work and we're going to see the new Watchmen movie and hang out together while the kids are at school.

I'm happy to be back, but I'm wondering when Evan will come down with the ick.

Hopefully, not tomorrow. Or ever.

I Feel Like Death Warmed Over But She Looks Good

It's official: I have the ick. I believe I have what Frank had - serious congestion, general malaise, and overall cruddiness. Last night I had my pj's on and was in bed well before 8 o'clock. I did not rest easy last night, between fits of hot and cold and an inability to breathe through my nose. Bleah.

This morning, I got up at my normal time, showered, got dressed, fixed the kids' lunches.

"How do you feel today?" inquired my loving husband.

"Like crap."

"Do you have anything you need to do today?"

Not really, only try to power through a strength training workout, drop off the dry cleaning, run by the post office, clean up around the house, I thought. "No, nothing much."

"Good. You should take it easy today. Go rest. I'll bring dinner home tonight."

He knows me well enough to realize that I needed to hear, "It's OK to take care of yourself. Go do it." I'm used to running on all cylinders, illness be damned. Moms have to keep working even when we feel like hell.

But I heeded Frank's advice. After he piled the kids into the car and they headed off to school and work, I sipped a couple cups of tea, ate some breakfast and then headed back upstairs to camp out in my bedroom until it was time to retrieve Evan and Flynn from school.

A couple of weeks ago, Frank was told to take Mucinex D for his congestion. He had some left over so I choked down a pill the size of a small submarine that tasted like how a vet office smells (that sharp, unmistakable odor from my childhood: part medicine, part disinfectant, part animal).

That stuff works. I have been able to breathe without looking like a neanderthal all day.

And while I did not sleep (I'm not a napper by nature, just ask my mom), I did finish one book and nearly another. I rested.

********

Flynn's new boots arrived today! She could hardly wait to put them on (they look great with her school uniform, but she wanted to change into play clothes before I took a picture).
Snazzy, no? She especially loves that they have a bit of a heel on them and the silver bit on the toe. Luckily, they fit just right.
She loves them so much, it might be difficult to get her to take them off tonight. She may just sleep with her new boots on.

Which is just fine with me as I plan on going to bed early.

Like now. I have stuff to do tomorrow...

The Kid's Back In Business

Saturday saw Flynn's fever back down to 101 and her energy level, when she was on Motrin, was fine. She played Little Pets vs. Star Wars with her brother, they built a super fort, and got on each other's nerves like siblings do, regardless of health.

Sunday Frank took Evan to early mass and then out to breakfast. They also had a mission to accomplish: acquire the tools necessary for building a Pinewood Derby race car. They'd spent the bulk of Saturday afternoon designing said race car and wanted to get building. They have a week or two to finish.

Flynn slept pretty well and woke in a good mood. I took her temperature and it was back to normal. Yay! (Except for the croupy cough that goes along with the virus, but I'm hoping that makes its exit soon.)

Showered and dressed, we had breakfast then went to the grocery store as we were in desperate need of cereal, milk, lunch meat, and fruit.

Flynn's energy level is back to pre-illness levels; she's back to spinning like a top. She's happy she returned to school today and got to see her friends and her teacher. But we're taking it easy this afternoon and playing hooky from swim lessons.

And now I'm all congested and I can feel my energy waning.

I'm going to go eat some oranges now and pray I don't come down with the crud. I have lunch plans later on in the week with a friend I haven't seen in a long time and I really don't want to cancel.

But I'm glad Flynn's back in (relatively) good health.

Adventures in Modern Medicine

Flynn's temperature has been steadily creeping up since Wednesday night; 100 degrees, then 101, then topping out at 103 this morning.

She slept fitfully again last night, tossing and turning and she'd developed this raspy breathing that reminded me of her bout with pneumonia last year. So I thought to err on the side of caution today and take her to see the doctor.

This morning after getting Evan and Frank out the door, I showered and took Flynn to Convenient Care. The nurse's aid took Flynn's vitals and since her throat has been hurting and strep is cutting a wide swath through the kindergarten classes, we decided to have a rapid strep test done. Flynn opened her mouth wide, the aid jammed the long swab into her little throat and Flynn promptly barfed all over herself, the aid, and the examining room.

The strep test came back negative.

But Flynn had to wait out the rest of our time there wrapped in adult-sized hospital gowns, stripped of her vomit-soaked jammies & shoes.

The nurse practitioner gave Flynn the once over and then ordered up some blood & urine work (Flynn had just used the bathroom so we brought home the cup for her to pee in. I'll be dropping that off at the lab later on this afternoon). She also gave Flynn a dose of Tylenol to help get the fever under control. Her initial diagnosis? A virus. But we'll see what the lab says.

Speaking of lab work, Flynn was amazing as the phlebotomist drew her blood. Ever the cool customer, my little girl watched rapt with curiosity as the needle punctured her skin and the blood worked its way into the test tubes. No flinching, no tears, no nothing. "She's going to be a doctor when she grows up," said the phlebotomist as he covered the teeny puncture wound with a band-aid. "Animal doctor," Flynn corrected.

I carried her out to the car, hospital gown flapping in the wind ("This is embarrassing," she said) and we drove home. We weren't even out of the parking lot when I glanced in the rear-view mirror to check on Flynn and noticed she was asleep. We live at most 5 minutes from the doctor's office.

At home she woke up and immediately wanted to take a bath. She did then told me she needed "a tray with lots of food on it for me to eat." We loaded up on blueberries, vanilla yogurt, and a Lunchable.

She's now eating from her tray full of food, coloring, and watching WALL-E. And I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she does, indeed, have only a virus and not something worse requiring antibiotics.

She's Not Too Sick To Shop

My daughter has inherited my love of shoes and is known in several circles as "the girl with the pink cowboy boots." For years she's had a pair of either hot pink or metallic pink boots. They remain her very favorite pair of shoes, just edging out the black patent leather "party shoes" (ie, mary janes) with the "high" (1") heel. Had I known how much she'd love those boots I would've bought a pair in every size Target stocked. Ah, hindsight.

Today she is ill, home with a fever hovering between 100 and 101 degrees. She is tired and emotionally fragile. But all that falls by the wayside when I mention the words "new shoes."

It has come to my attention that her current pair of beloved boots will soon be too small for her and as she's told me, she "doesn't like pink anymore."

You read right, my girly-girly girl who used to wear a frothy pink princess nightgown pretty much every day to preschool (when she was 2) no longer cares for pink (or princesses, though Ariel's still OK because she's a mermaid). Nope, red is now the color of choice (I think I see her brother's influence here as red is his very favorite color).

So.

The search for a pair of red boots was on. It was a quick search resulting in Flynn falling in love with these:
I like them, too. But I'm having a difficult time reconciling the fact that Flynn doesn't dig pink anymore. Now I know how my dad must've felt.

When I was a young girl, my all-time favorite color was Donny Osmond purple. I. loved. purple. And my dad, wanting to make me happy, bought me all kinds of purple crap for birthdays and Christmases: a purple bank that looked like a safe, a purple windbreaker, purple Mrs. Grossman stickers, purple this, purple that. He associated me with that particular color.

Then one day, I stopped liking purple and started liking black. And threw my dad for a loop. He could no longer form the equation, purple x + Misc = happiness. Instead, he made more personal gestures that meant more to me than anything purple or black could (a framed newspaper from the day after President Kennedy's assassination that he'd saved for me, books by Twain and Thoreau, his favorite authors, photography books, music, a Japanese paper cut-out of a cat - items I still have to this day, things I cherish).

I know these red boots are just footwear that happen to be in a color Flynn now likes, but on some deeper level, these boots signal her growth. She's letting go of the things she loved as a toddler and preschooler, like the color pink and princesses, and moving on to other Big Girl things, like red cowboy boots and American Girl dolls.

And I'm cool with that. It's exciting.

My daughter and I will both be waiting for the UPS man to bring those red boots. I can hardly wait to see them on her feet.

I just hope they fit.

Almost Made It

Those of you who've been with me since last year know of the ugliness February 2008 wreaked on my family: wicked bad flu (stomach and otherwise) for all four of us, pneumonia for Flynn, whatever other viruses that made the rounds.

It was bad, bad, bad.

This year, though, has been relatively quiet. Frank had a sore throat last week and Evan had a cold, but nothing serious necessitating staying home from school or anything.

Until last night.

The afternoon went swimmingly, pun intended, as the kids dove into their respective lessons at the Y. We came home, they bathed, I made dinner, we ate. You know, the same-old, same-old routine. Then Flynn said, "I'm cold. Mommy, can you make me some warm soup?" She'd eaten most of her dinner, so I did (I tell you I love the Campbell's Soup at Hand). She took her little cup of soup, curled up in the chair in the family room, pulled up a blanket and rested. This is out of the ordinary because she's normally very full of energy; her favorite after-dinner activity being spinning around and around. Huh, I thought, that's strange.

While Evan was working on his math homework, she sat quietly in the chair. Or so I thought but when I looked up from helping Evan and cleaning up after dinner I didn't see her in the chair. I went upstairs and found her curled up in my bed, almost asleep.

Uh-oh.

I took her temperature and, sure enough, she was running a fever of a little over 100 degrees. A dose of Motrin and a good-night book and kiss sent her off to dreamland. She slept fitfully, first in her own bed, then she came and got me sometime in the night (I didn't look at the clock) and wanted me to be with her in the guest room bed. Therefore I also had an uneasy night's rest that I attribute to being repeatedly kicked in the back by size-9.5 little girl feet.

At least she's not vomiting and she has an appetite, though her fever is higher this morning than it was last night.

Presently, she's holed up in the comfy chair in the family room eating her breakfast of oatmeal with honey and cinnamon, some blueberries, and chamomile tea. And she's watching Horton Hears a Who.

I hope this is the worst of it and not a portent of things to come.