…did happen last night. With the usual results.
Sample:
Aleanghi: Flambe hangs back, out of sight as much as possible, and probably wondering what the hell he does if these two get killed.
I’m on vacation so I probably won’t be able to get an update posted right away. More adventures of Torkal, Palin, and Flambe the bat will be up… eventually!
Green snake, thinner than my pinky, crawling up some rusted metal leaning against the side of our house. It’s not the tree you think it is, little snake, but you can probably still catch some bugs.
I wonder how you got that rough patch on your back.
Em was brushing her teeth yesterday evening and looked out the window.
“Fireflies!”
She was so excited. We went out and caught them in our hands, and then got a mason jar. We both poked some holds in the lid with a screwdriver. Em wanted to catch ten, but they kept trying to crawl out of the jar when the lid was opened, so I suggested we just catch three. We settled on four.
Em brought them in and went into her closet and closed the door. The fireflies didn’t want to light up. We opened a window and set them free. We’ll try again tonight, weather permitting, and maybe put a little grass in the bottom of the jar to make them feel more at home.
I told Em how my mother’s birthday is in June, and she always used to look at the fireflies as a happy sign that her birthday was coming.
It was a pleasant evening during a time when things haven’t been going so great for Em. Let’s hope it’s a corner turned.
You may remember Em’s tooth pain from Friday night. Em went to the dentist today. Turns out that cavity she had already had filled extended down so far that it had created an infection under her tooth. We’re continuing with the amoxicillin, which the dentist estimates has a 50/50 chance of knocking the infection out.
If the amoxicillin doesn’t get it, the next course of action will be a root canal.
Everybody keep your fingers crossed that the amoxicillin does the trick.
I stayed up late last night to work on that sweater, since tomorrow is the last day of school so it really has to be done by then. Opted to split the difference with a lavender stripe.
Unfortunately, I screwed up the sleeve before ever starting that part. See how the diagonal line runs directly to the right armpit on one side? That’s what it’s supposed to look like. On the left, however, the line runs into the body of the sweater. That’s because I didn’t reserve enough stitches for the arm. That sleeve is smaller than the other. The only way this’ll work is if the kid has a tiny arm.
I’ve made this type of sweater several times before without having all these problems. Clearly I just shouldn’t knit when I’m tired. Although, as my husband said, “Then you’d never knit.”
I could do just a hat and some booties, but if I screw that up then there’s no hope of getting anything by deadline. So I give up. I found their baby registry online, I’ll just get something off of that. It’s usual for me to get a token of appreciation for her dream team of experts too, but I think we’ll just go with gift cards this year. I clearly need to save my energy.
I love you all, but you people were zero help on the baby sweater. Half of you like lavender at the edges, half of you like a purple stripe. At least I don’t feel so bad for being indecisive myself.
For the most part, Em slept through the night last night. Weirdly, I am more tired after almost getting a good night’s sleep than I was when I was getting two hours a night. It’s like my body was struggling to get juuuust that little bit more that would help. The doctor gave us Tylenol with codeine but we didn’t have to use it. Apparently Motrin is the wonder drug that we hadn’t tried that helped. The doctor said he thought she was a little swollen along her jaw so there’s probably some referred pain there. She has a dentist appointment tomorrow right after school, which was the earliest we could get in. I’m not entirely satisfied with the level of responsiveness from the dentist’s office, so if you happen to know of a good pediatric dentist in the Charlotte area, send that info my way.
To give myself a little stress relief, I’ve purchased the Sims 3 and have actually found a little time to play. My two roommates, Pravmati Shah and Tiphanee McKenna, are getting along surprisingly well. It’s a fun game, but I have to allot myself a certain amount of time and then stop because it’s easy to get sucked in.
As part of a Girl Scout badge, Em and I put a sweet potato in water and watched it grow. It was doing pretty well before the raccoon started gnawing on it. Here’s a picture of one of its sicklier leaves. I took the picture because of the gold beetle on it. It was so tiny that at first glance I wondered how a jewelry bead had gotten on it. I don’t know what it is, but it’s very pretty. Hopefully it’s not out of a Poe story.
The good news is that Em didn’t complain about her tooth late last night. The bad news is that she did complain about her ear. This morning she even said, “I think I might have to get someone else’s ear.” So apparently it’s bad enough that she wants an ear transplant. This is troubling because we went to the doctor on Monday, so you’d think that in the course of a week it would have healed more. But no, she says it feels just as uncomfortable (she seldom uses “painful”) as before she went, and she feels like she doesn’t have any earwax. I’ve got a call in to the doctor’s office and am waiting for a nurse to call me back. They do have weekend hours so we might be seen today.
In non-sad news, I’m knitting a baby sweater from my handdyed yarn. It’s knitting up well and looking great for a nice traditional pastel blue sweater for a baby boy. The problem is that I don’t think there’ll be quite enough to make it as big as I’d like. I’m going to have to stretch it by adding something else.
I’m really tired after a couple of days of no sleep, so I don’t know that I trust my judgement. I knitted it too small at left and added this purple stripe to see how the colors looked together. Then I ripped it out and started it over again at the proper size, and am considering using lavender for a 1×1 ribbed edge at the cuffs/collar/hem.
In your opinion:
The husband has ventured out for a treat we haven’t gotten in a couple of years: Waffle House waffles. Em and I love these. It’ll be a nice comfort food for her. He just got back, so it’s waffle time.
ETA: We’re seeing the doctor today. I’ll keep you posted.
Em had a great time at the reading celebration yesterday. They moved the games indoors and the kids got to do things like root through a tub of sand using their toes, searching for marbles. They rotated through activities in different classrooms, including using the SmartBoard interactive whiteboards to show Toy Story and 101 Dalmations. She got cotton candy and even tried a hot dog.
Em: “I wasn’t crazy about it.”
At right: her after school. Obviously there was face painting. Her hair looks so lank because I’ve been washing it less often, trying to be sure her ear doesn’t get wet before it’s full healed.
It looks like somewhere in all the activity and food she may have knocked a filling loose. In the afternoon she started saying that her teeth felt uncomfortable when she “clicked them together.” She got to sleep with a little bit of trouble but woke up again at about 11:30 saying her tooth was “extremely uncomfortable!” She had some Tylenol and went back to bed and slept pretty well from midnight to 6am. When she got up, she was crying and kept asking, “Why is this happening? What can make it stop?” We have a call in to the dentist, but they don’t keep weekend, hours, so we’ll see how all this shakes out. She was pretty miserable, but the hubby went to the grocery store (thank you, big city store hours!) and got some benzocaine swabs which I rubbed on her tooth. And now she seems fine, if sleepy. Thank God.
All this illness is throwing my kit orders a little off because I’m spending less time winding yarn and more time just being with her, but what can you do? Em has had such a rough time of it lately. Ear infections, sleep disruptions, toothaches, allergies… it just keeps coming. She’s a sweet child and just wants to be feel healthy. Poor kid.
Right now she’s wearing her Snow White nightgown (which deserves its own avalanche of awesome entry) lying on the couch watching Little Mermaid and coloring a Disney Princesses Invisible Ink book. I may pop out later on to pick up a couple more activity books. Those are always very comforting to her when she’s feeling bad.
ETA: The dentist suspects an abscess from the filling in that tooth. I’m not sure I agree, but I’m not a dentist. On the other hand, at least I’ve actually seen the child in question within the last 24 hours, so I’ve got that advantage. Ahem. Anyway, she’s calling in a prescription for amoxycillin to the dentist’s office and we’ll try to hold on until Monday morning. Em seems totally fine now with regard to her tooth, so we’ll keep up with the swabs.
