Under the Same Sky

My week has been hectic so far! Not bad, mostly, but we've been on the go quite a lot more than usual. I had to go pick up my girl on Tuesday. Instead of going all the way to my mom's house to get her, we met halfway. Well, if halfway is what you would call one hour for me, half an hour for her. ;) We had lunch and talked and then did a tiny bit of shopping before Evie and I headed home. We were only here an hour before we had to leave for ballet, though. As we were driving there, my car started making strange scraping noises upon application of the brakes, which struck me as a problem. Brake pads, I was informed when I got home.

Normally if a car breaks down, we take it to the shop after M gets home from work and then pick it up after work the next day (or when it's ready, anyway.) For a number of logistical reasons, that wasn't the optimal solution this time--I wanted to take Evelyn to the doctor, for one thing, and then gymnastics this morning. So... I got to take it to a different shop by myself and wait for it to be done. With a four-year-old. FUN! But actually, that wasn't too bad in the end. I called one of my friends from my old job, and she spread the word a bit, and a group of girls met me for lunch at a Mexican restaurant (almost) next door. The fly in the ointment was the severe thunderstorm and tornado watch going on at the time, but I actually managed to time it really well, and it wasn't raining while we were talking over there or back. Plus, by the time I got back from having a fun lunch, the car was just about done. I had just enough time to call the pediatrician and make an appointment for later in the afternoon and then they came back with my keys. It really couldn't have worked out much better, except that when I got home, I had a text message from M telling me that I should only let them do half of what they were doing--I hadn't had a chance to see it before it was all done with. Oops. Apparently the back brakes did not need replacement as urgently as they said. How was I supposed to know? He sent me to get them fixed and I did. I mean, ya gotta have brakes, right? ;) Oh, well.

Evie is not exactly sick right now, but she's not really NOT sick, either. Back in January, she started acting all weird and then she got sick and then she got better and then she got sick and then she got better and then she got sick and.. etc. Through it all, she's kept a runny nose and a really nasty cough and a fussy attitude and she's tired all the time. Finally, I decided that I had had enough when it occurred to me that another symptom was probably related--she can't HEAR stuff anymore. I will be talking to her and she will keep asking me, "What did you say?" or just not responding. My mom was really concerned about her hearing and I started noticing it more. So, I made the appointment yesterday, which was a total waste of time and effort and money. I am really, really not one of those people who require antibiotics for things they won't help, but the child has been sick for six weeks. She has something that is not going away on its own. However, I think the woman saw a mostly healthy child (after waiting 45 minutes, E's patience was wearing thin so I had her standing on one foot, etc, when the doctor walked in.) Her opinion is that Evie has allergies. My opinion is that we won't be seeing this doctor (think she's not an actual doctor, actually) again if I can help it. Her hearing test was fine, when they inserted the thingie in her ear and played beeps at her, so she completely dismissed the hearing thing. She does have fluid in one ear, though, and that can cause temporary hearing loss--not that SHE said that, but Google did. I don't know. I really could have been okay with a "this is not an antibiotic issue" if presented in the right way, but the kiddo really doesn't seem like she has allergies. She seems like she's been sick since January. She seems, in fact, like she's had a raging sinus infection since January, based on my extensive experience with raging sinus infections. But..whatever. Bring on the Zyrtec, I suppose, once we actually make it to the store to acquire said Zyrtec (her official recommendation.) I had asked M to buy some last week, but he couldn't find the kids versions. I've had some success with keeping sinus infections at bay with allergy meds in the past so I had been planning on trying it already.

Have I mentioned that I am very disenchanted with ballet by now? It's not exactly that the child for whom I am dragging myself out into the cold for every week doesn't even enjoy it, but it's... sort of like the child for whom I am dragging myself out into the cold for every week doesn't even enjoy it. She doesn't particularly want to leave the house. Ever. Even when it's one of her fun activity things. She drags her feet and there's a fight to get her ready to leave. (Yeah. Kindergarten. I KNOW.) She seems to have fun after she's there. After we're in the CAR she seems to be cool. But, she's very meh about it mostly. It's not fun and exciting and the culmination of her life's dream anymore. It's more like "oh. Ballet again. Whatevs." This is not worth sixty bucks a month to me. I'm glad she got to do it, but I will be so relieved when it's over, and I think she will too. I think it's occurred to her that it's WORK, and they want her to dance the way THEY say, not the way she wants. She actually has a pretty good sense of rhythm for a little kid, when it comes to dancing. She dances better than I do (although, this is not saying much.) They do ballet in sort of a school-year arrangement, September through May, with a recital at the beginning of June. We are going to make her see the year through in a honoring-your-commitments sort of way, but she won't be doing dance again in the fall unless something major happens to change my mind, and I really can't imagine what that would be at this point. Gymnastics, however, is still something she enjoys. She told me recently that she wants to be a gymnastics teacher when she grows up. Unlikely to be what she settles on, but cute nonetheless. :) I can sort of see her being a teacher, actually. She's bossy enough for it, certainly. Of course, she kind of doesn't like other kids but maybe they'll grow on her.

Let's imagine for a moment that your beloved gives you a Valentine's Day gift that includes a small balloon on a plastic stick. You stick it in the cup that holds your pens, next to your monitor. Contrary to your expectation, the balloon does not begin to grow sort of tired and limp after a while, but remains as perky as the day it was given to you. Now, at what point is it okay to, you know. Remove the pristine balloon from your desk and put it in another location? Such as a trash receptacle? It is nearly September over here and I am still loking at decorations from February. Please advise. ;)

(Since Evelyn insisted that it was also for her when he gave it to me, I told her that we'd share it but it'd live on my desk. I contemplated just handing it over to her because there's no limit to what a four-year-old can't destroy, and then I wouldn't feel bad about trashing it. That made me feel sneaky though.)

My family makes fun of my memory, which is quite capable of filling you in on details of great importance, like what I wore on the first day of high school. (Pale blue jeans, pink Guess t-shirt, white socks, which I snagged a hole in during homeroom on the metal rack under my desk.) However, I have a tendency to forget what I want to tell people in the middle of conversations. I am probably really annoying to talk to sometimes. M went to take the trash out and while he was gone, I decided to post something. The first thing I wrote, though, was "Remind me to tell M about UPS delivery.", which I then deleted after he came back. It wasn't much of a story but it was driving me crazy because I kept forgetting to tell him this thing. (Short version: poor internet guy finally had a TouchPad delivered to him, except he was home and it WASN'T delivered. He called UPS and eventually discovered that the UPS guy had thrown the box over an eight-foot privacy fence, onto a concrete walkway.. Cracked screen. This was after six other orders were canceled, and though he'll get his money back, he certainly won't be getting a replacement tablet because there ARE no more replacement tablets. Man, it sure sucks to be that guy, I bet.) I think that mking lists is a wonderful thing to do but I like to think I'm too young to be making lists of conversations that I want to have.

I had a coupon for Mr. Gatti's today where Moms eat free with the purchase of a $3 kids meal, and so we took the little one down for terrible pizza and overpriced games. It was pretty fun. She's still a little young to do those games but of course that doesn't stop her from enjoying them. I have decided that I should be able to have a skee ball machine at my residence someday. M has always wanted a pinball machine. I think it's a fair trade. I inexplicably love skee ball, when I'm at places like that. I suppose that I don't actually think that I need to have one at home but I do think it's a lot of fun. I get this feeling it wouldn't be as much fun if there were no tickets popping out. This Mr. Gatti's is new and all electronic, with cards that you swipe instead of tokens, and they'd raised their prices randomly. It was all $.33 or $.50 or $1 (or more1) to play each game, and that also means, of course, that you get stuck with unusable cash at the end. I think there was six cents left on our card at the end. That sort of thing makes me want to hit someone. We also had a couple moments of near-disaster. M tried one of those claw machines, and of course didn't win anything. She was very disappointed, so we found one with a better claw and smaller toys for grabbing. Those turned out to be play-til-you-win, but we didn't know that at first. Evie grabbed a rubber duck and it came up into the air...and then fell off. She was heartbroken to have come so close! We ended up winning two ducks and a mountain of small, worthless stuffed toys. They made her happy, at least. I will try not to think about how little she needs more plushies.

Ballet lessons start tomorrow. I am kind of nervous about the whole ballet thing. We've decided to take a break from gymnastics for the month so she can focus on ballet. Dosen't that sound nice and navel-gazey? She's just mentioned skipping gymnastics a couple of times, so I thought a break would be good for her, to remind her that she likes it and hates to miss it. It's unfortunately timed, though, because she is actually starting to make some progress lately. She's more focused than she used to be, and she's doing things she couldn't do not long before. The little kids are no longer in her class, and actually, she's had a few classes where she was the only kid there, so two instructors for one child. I will most likely start again in October because I want M's parents to come to class when they come over. The ballet class has a gymnastics portion in it, though, which makes me interested to see how that turns out. Seems like it would really help to have the same skills taught to her in another setting with different methods. Not that I'll know, I guess. Parents are apparently not allowed to watch the ballet lessons. I'm a little unhappy about that. Looking forward to seeing her all dolled up in her ballet clothes and shoes, though. :)

I'm supposed to be headed to the library for storytime, but the kiddo is sick. And speaking of sick, am I completely crazy for being annoyed that certain family members bring their sick kids down to visit at my grandfather's house? EVEN THOUGH we all decided years ago, after he had open-heart surgery, that we shouldn't come if we were sick since he is really not in the best of health? I mean, I always followed that rule, but now that I have a kid, it really pisses me off that they continue to do it because what do you know, I am the one that ends up dealing with the sick kid. Usually they'll say something like, "Oh, it's just a sinus/ear infection, it's not contagious!" (which, okay. except, you are a) self-diagnosing, so how do you know it's a sinus infection? and b) stretching the boundaries of believability by saying that someone throwing up all night long is because of an ear infection. Just an example of the kind of nonsense that they come up with, not a specific incident. Or, "you can't protect them from everything!" Or, "she just won't get around Papaw." Or, "let's just do it and not tell them that she's sick." It's really me, my mom, one aunt and one cousin who are pro-staying-home, and the other aunt and two cousins who are pro-INSANITY, so it's kind of an even mix. You know what always really boggles my mind? The other aunt is a relapsed nurse. Surely SHE knows a little something about basic disease prevention? There was a mini Facebook drama going on yesterday over it. Sometimes, though I love them dearly, my family is exhausting. :)

Let's see, how about something that is not directly child-related? We are making really good progress on the bathroom again! The walls are nearly ready for painting (lots of painful sanding/spackling/priming involved on M's part. I am lucky that he is one of those rare folks who can do drywall work. Long family joke about that being the one thing that my very handy dad can't do... with the evidence being clearly visible in my parents house! But even better... we are nearly halfway done with the floor! We went with laminate in a very light maple color and it's looking fantastic. It was driving me crazy last night because M was working on it and I had to stay away most of the time to keep E out of trouble. My parents are supposed to come over tomorrow and spend the night, and then on Saturday, M and my dad will work on getting the tub in and installed, and after that... it should all be downhill. There'll be plenty of work left to do in the painting and replacing the toilet and vanity (and I have to put a clear coat on the painted vanity before that happens, too) and installation of the light, etc, but those tasks are not going to be as hard as the work that was done so far and the work that will hopefully be taken care of this weekend. IF it happens, due to sickness. M woke up sick this morning and I'm not so sure that he'll be well enough on Saturday to get much done, and I'm not sure that my parents should come down and get sick, if they aren't already.

And, best news yet! I finally finished painting the dollhouse bookcase that we've been working since like January. It was done except for the finishing, and apparently we hate that so it just sat and languished. Until now! It's been sitting in the middle of my kitchen floor for over an entire month because I decided that it WAS getting done. The painting took so much longer than I planned, though, when I decided to do all of the rooms in different colors. Each one needed at least two coats, and two rooms had to be redone because the paint I used didn't work out as well as I had hoped, and one room had to be resanded due to an incident with gunky primer. I spent five hours on it the very first night that I started painting, and countless hours since then. (And even more countless hours ignoring the project as best as I could while skirting around the thing taking up the entire kitchen floor, propped up on three Capri-Sun boxes because I am so classy like that.) Seriously, it took SO much longer to paint than it did to build. Isn't that crazy?

You may have seen this on Facebook already, too, and you may see it elsewhere before I'm done because I AM SO HAPPY IT'S DONE!

My PLAN was to use this bookcase as a...well, bookcase. Evie's plan is to use the dollhouse as a dollhouse. This is the first day that she's had it in her room. Guess who won? :) Maybe when she gets bored with it, I can steal a few rooms for books and pretties.

A few notes on the Barbie action in the house. I tried to subtly point out that horses do not usually go IN the house, but Evie not-so-subtly pointed out that PIPPI'S horse is in the house, so that blonde Barbie therefore became Pippi.

I put the couple in the yellow room, but to get them to stand up, I fear that girl is touching her friend inappropriately. I'm sorry for ruining what should be a G-rated photo.

I gave Evie all of my Barbies from when I was little, and therefore, she has a huge collection of them... but unfortunately, most of them look as if they just stepped out of 1985. The Rockers were having a little reunion there in the pink room..

The reindeer? It is apparently a kitchen table. Oh, to be three again!