When you are four, every thought that floats through your head is Very Important. In fact, your thoughts are so important that, no matter what time it is, day or night, you must share them immediately. With the nearest adult, if possible. Questions are also Very Important, and also of a time-sensitive nature, and should always be preceded by, "Mom? I have to ask you something," or the equally useful but more urgent, "Mom? Mom! MOM!" Perhaps most importantly, questions are not required to make sense.
At least, the above explains the following conversation, held at 5:15 this morning.
Boy Wonder, whispering: Mom? Mom? (whispering loudly) MOM!
Me, startled awake: Bathroom's across the hall, honey.
Boy Wonder: No! I need to ask you something!
Me, sighing resignedly: Okay, shoot.
Boy Wonder: Do crabs have tails?
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Friday, February 08, 2008
There's no business like snow business
So, we got some snow this week.
Okay, we got a lot of snow this week.
All right, we got SEVENTEEN DAMN INCHES of snow this week. Eighteen, if you count the extra inch our fair suburb got. Everything closed except Dragon's office, and we have no idea why they stayed open, as the weather made much of their normal day-to-day work impossible. Even my office, which is not known for closing, told everyone to go home at 2:00. (I was already home, as my very own supervisor had told those of us who made it in to get the heck out of there before we ended up stuck in a snowbank somewhere.)
And the wind chill this weekend is supposed to be -35. As in, 35 degrees below zero.
The global is not warming. At least, not here in Wisconsin. When Great Cthulhu emerges from the depths of Lake Michigan (why not?) to begin his journey to the Oval Office, he will no doubt whack his head on an ice floe on his way up, and become just as cranky as most of the people in southeastern Wisconsin. It's not like we're not used to snow here, but this winter has so far featured a touch more than usual. I believe our fair city, which generally averages about 30 to 35 inches of snow per winter, has just hit 60 to 65 inches.
Boy Wonder is very pleased with the snow, and enjoyed "helping" us shovel on Wednesday. Action Hero does not like it much, getting weepy and saying, "Colda. Colda. Wet!" when taken outside. Dragon is half-dead from exhaustion, after shoveling three times on Wednesday and chopping a whole bunch of ice yesterday. And I really, really miss Tucson right now.
Update on the ears: oddly enough, the eardrums are not actually busted. Apparently, my sinuses are so messed up that they a) caused all the ear drainage and b) are somehow responsible for the hearing loss. My doctor drew a little diagram for me, to illustrate what exactly was going on, but I neglected to take it with me when I left the exam room. At any rate, my left ear started working again on Wednesday, but I STILL can't hear out of the right ear. Things are going to seem very loud when this all clears up.
Okay, we got a lot of snow this week.
All right, we got SEVENTEEN DAMN INCHES of snow this week. Eighteen, if you count the extra inch our fair suburb got. Everything closed except Dragon's office, and we have no idea why they stayed open, as the weather made much of their normal day-to-day work impossible. Even my office, which is not known for closing, told everyone to go home at 2:00. (I was already home, as my very own supervisor had told those of us who made it in to get the heck out of there before we ended up stuck in a snowbank somewhere.)
And the wind chill this weekend is supposed to be -35. As in, 35 degrees below zero.
The global is not warming. At least, not here in Wisconsin. When Great Cthulhu emerges from the depths of Lake Michigan (why not?) to begin his journey to the Oval Office, he will no doubt whack his head on an ice floe on his way up, and become just as cranky as most of the people in southeastern Wisconsin. It's not like we're not used to snow here, but this winter has so far featured a touch more than usual. I believe our fair city, which generally averages about 30 to 35 inches of snow per winter, has just hit 60 to 65 inches.
Boy Wonder is very pleased with the snow, and enjoyed "helping" us shovel on Wednesday. Action Hero does not like it much, getting weepy and saying, "Colda. Colda. Wet!" when taken outside. Dragon is half-dead from exhaustion, after shoveling three times on Wednesday and chopping a whole bunch of ice yesterday. And I really, really miss Tucson right now.
Update on the ears: oddly enough, the eardrums are not actually busted. Apparently, my sinuses are so messed up that they a) caused all the ear drainage and b) are somehow responsible for the hearing loss. My doctor drew a little diagram for me, to illustrate what exactly was going on, but I neglected to take it with me when I left the exam room. At any rate, my left ear started working again on Wednesday, but I STILL can't hear out of the right ear. Things are going to seem very loud when this all clears up.
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Something's busted
I have lots of things to blog about, including the holidays, cute things Boy Wonder is doing, cute things Action Hero is doing, and cute things Charming Bungalow is doing. However, the latest development is so odd and unexpected that I feel the need to share it first. Reader discretion is advised.
It began almost two weeks ago, when Boy Wonder developed a high fever and spent the next three days flattened by some sort of virus. Sure, we want kids to rest when they're sick, but it's eerie when a usually energetic four-year-old says, "I'm too tired to play. I just want to sit in your lap, please. Can we rest now?" The virus then commenced its infiltration of our entire household, felling the rest of us one by one. Dragon started coughing so hard that he couldn't sleep, and Action Hero and I got our fevers last Sunday. His didn't go away until yesterday morning, and mine visited on and off during the week, along with lots of coughing, sneezing, and general unpleasantness. We bought lots of tissues, juice, and cough syrup. Everyone except me went to the doctor.
I was finally starting to feel a bit better on Friday. Then, midmorning, I suddenly noticed that I couldn't hear very well out of my right ear; it sounded like I was underwater on that side. Two hours later, it was seriously hurting. I mean, seriously. A friend once mentioned that she'd had a run of ear infections during college, and found them quite painful indeed, and man, do I ever concur. I have no idea how Boy Wonder contended with having all those ear infections when he was an infant and toddler. And I have NO IDEA AT ALL how Action Hero has managed to have two stealth ear infections, which weren't revealed until at the doctor's office for some other unrelated reason. Anyway, speaking of doctor's offices, I went to mine, where the following conversation took place.
My doctor: You have a lot of congestion at the back of your throat.
Me: I had even more there before the cough syrup kicked in.
My doctor (looking in my right ear): Yes, that one's infected. Very irritated. We'll get you some antibiotics. (looking in my left ear) That one's clear.
Me: I've had this cold all week, and my ear didn't even hurt until today. Can ear infections come on that suddenly?
My doctor (looking up my nose): Yes, because you don't have a cold, you have a sinus infection. It's very easy for bacteria to travel to the ear, once the sinuses are infected.
Me: Oh hurray. I haven't had an ear infection since I was five, you know.
My doctor: Uh-huh. Once the medication begins working, the pressure and pain should decrease and your hearing will return to normal levels.
So I trotted off to the drugstore, with my ear hurting like holy hell and my sinuses feeling grosser by the second. Upon arriving at home, I dosed myself with a variety of medications and sat down to wait for my ear to quit hurting. It didn't, and the other one started hurting too. Somehow, I managed to fall asleep anyway.
Until two o'clock this morning, when I awoke to the calm, soothing sound of the ocean. However, since I live in Wisconsin and haven't seen an ocean since I was 11, I quickly realized that something was amiss with my ears, which were trying to convince me that I was either on a beach or perhaps riding in the back of an airplane. Yes, really. Apparently fluid whooshing around in your ears makes a whole damn load of noise. I sat there for an hour and a half waiting for the sound effects to go away. They didn't, and the situation developed an unpleasant new dimension: every ten minutes or so, it would sound like someone was softly tapping on the outside of a seashell, and something would start oozing out of my right ear. (Hint: it wasn't the ocean.)
I began to suspect that my eardrum had gone and blown itself up, and wondered if I ought to do anything about that. After some consideration, I decided to take the time-honored course of going back to sleep and dealing with it in the morning. And deal with it I did. I'll be kind and spare you the details of exactly how the right side of my neck, and the hair behind it, looked when I woke up, but it was certainly enough to convince me that my eardrum had indeed ruptured. As an added bonus, my left ear--the one that wasn't supposed to be infected--staged a similar blowout two hours later.
So yeah, I have two ruptured eardrums (hey, at least they stop hurting once they blow), about 50% hearing loss (this will come back eventually, just not till things heal up in there), and an exhaustive supply of ear fluid, which continues to exit stages right and left (presumably this will stop soon, as there can't be THAT much more in there).
Not sure what the lesson is in all of this, but I'll certainly be watching the kids closely for signs of ear infection in the future!
It began almost two weeks ago, when Boy Wonder developed a high fever and spent the next three days flattened by some sort of virus. Sure, we want kids to rest when they're sick, but it's eerie when a usually energetic four-year-old says, "I'm too tired to play. I just want to sit in your lap, please. Can we rest now?" The virus then commenced its infiltration of our entire household, felling the rest of us one by one. Dragon started coughing so hard that he couldn't sleep, and Action Hero and I got our fevers last Sunday. His didn't go away until yesterday morning, and mine visited on and off during the week, along with lots of coughing, sneezing, and general unpleasantness. We bought lots of tissues, juice, and cough syrup. Everyone except me went to the doctor.
I was finally starting to feel a bit better on Friday. Then, midmorning, I suddenly noticed that I couldn't hear very well out of my right ear; it sounded like I was underwater on that side. Two hours later, it was seriously hurting. I mean, seriously. A friend once mentioned that she'd had a run of ear infections during college, and found them quite painful indeed, and man, do I ever concur. I have no idea how Boy Wonder contended with having all those ear infections when he was an infant and toddler. And I have NO IDEA AT ALL how Action Hero has managed to have two stealth ear infections, which weren't revealed until at the doctor's office for some other unrelated reason. Anyway, speaking of doctor's offices, I went to mine, where the following conversation took place.
My doctor: You have a lot of congestion at the back of your throat.
Me: I had even more there before the cough syrup kicked in.
My doctor (looking in my right ear): Yes, that one's infected. Very irritated. We'll get you some antibiotics. (looking in my left ear) That one's clear.
Me: I've had this cold all week, and my ear didn't even hurt until today. Can ear infections come on that suddenly?
My doctor (looking up my nose): Yes, because you don't have a cold, you have a sinus infection. It's very easy for bacteria to travel to the ear, once the sinuses are infected.
Me: Oh hurray. I haven't had an ear infection since I was five, you know.
My doctor: Uh-huh. Once the medication begins working, the pressure and pain should decrease and your hearing will return to normal levels.
So I trotted off to the drugstore, with my ear hurting like holy hell and my sinuses feeling grosser by the second. Upon arriving at home, I dosed myself with a variety of medications and sat down to wait for my ear to quit hurting. It didn't, and the other one started hurting too. Somehow, I managed to fall asleep anyway.
Until two o'clock this morning, when I awoke to the calm, soothing sound of the ocean. However, since I live in Wisconsin and haven't seen an ocean since I was 11, I quickly realized that something was amiss with my ears, which were trying to convince me that I was either on a beach or perhaps riding in the back of an airplane. Yes, really. Apparently fluid whooshing around in your ears makes a whole damn load of noise. I sat there for an hour and a half waiting for the sound effects to go away. They didn't, and the situation developed an unpleasant new dimension: every ten minutes or so, it would sound like someone was softly tapping on the outside of a seashell, and something would start oozing out of my right ear. (Hint: it wasn't the ocean.)
I began to suspect that my eardrum had gone and blown itself up, and wondered if I ought to do anything about that. After some consideration, I decided to take the time-honored course of going back to sleep and dealing with it in the morning. And deal with it I did. I'll be kind and spare you the details of exactly how the right side of my neck, and the hair behind it, looked when I woke up, but it was certainly enough to convince me that my eardrum had indeed ruptured. As an added bonus, my left ear--the one that wasn't supposed to be infected--staged a similar blowout two hours later.
So yeah, I have two ruptured eardrums (hey, at least they stop hurting once they blow), about 50% hearing loss (this will come back eventually, just not till things heal up in there), and an exhaustive supply of ear fluid, which continues to exit stages right and left (presumably this will stop soon, as there can't be THAT much more in there).
Not sure what the lesson is in all of this, but I'll certainly be watching the kids closely for signs of ear infection in the future!
