A Big Moment

Disclaimer:  Bodily functions ahead.

This may not strike anyone but Cat as a momentous occasion, but there you have it.

Elastigirl has had the stomach flu for the past three days.

She was not at school on Wednesday.

Yesterday, she came and had diarrhea twice within an hour, but although we called home, she was not picked up.

Today, when she got off the bus, she went to sit down and wait for the rest of the kids.

After a few minutes, she kinda rolled down onto her belly.

After that, she would not sit down.

She got up on her knees, and I noticed a tell-tale mark on her clothes.  She'd had a little diarrhea again but had mostly urinated.

But here's the kicker.

She was uncomfortable because of it.

In other words, she was aware of being wet and made uncomfortable by it.

Elastigirl has, for years, been able to communicate having had a BM (in a...um...less than conventional and less than...pleasurable...way), but the real obstacle to any kind of toilet training was that she just didn't seem to notice or care if she was wet.

Today, she cared.

Yee-haw.  :-)

Holy Relapse, Batman

Oops.  Spoke too soon.  I feel like I've been hit with a truck, my eyes hurt, and I had one of my not-fun stomach aches this afternoon while at the same time being so tired that all I wanted to do was lay down and sleep.

(Apparently, I eventually did...but all I remember is laying there hoping it wouldn't get so bad I had to get up and move.)

Meanwhile, io9 has a teaser poster picture of Sy--whoops, I mean Spock.

I rather wish, now, that I hadn't watched Heroes.

(I am now re-watching Heroes with Patrick, so that hopefully we can have a weekly "date" and watch it together, so he can protect me when Claire is flayed alive and such (blech).  We have made it up to the first instance of "Flying man!" and Patrick is very amused.)

Anyway....while Zachary Quinto's facial features do, indeed, bear a striking resemblance to Leonard Nimoy in the 60s...those eyes...those eyes are Sylar's.

(I think I've said before that I can spot actors even under many layers of sci-fi makeup, often because of the eyes.)

And, you know, Spock wasn't a brain-eating sociopath.

So, you know, "Shi'Kahr, we have a problem."  Especially, I imagine, when Spock is at his most restrained and emotionally controlled -- given that Sylar at his most sociopathic tends to be quiet and emotionless.

And we won't even get into "McCoy, Leonard McCoy."  (And, yes, I have more trouble with the fact that Karl Urban was "Caesar, Julius Caesar," than I do with the fact that he was Eomer and Cupid.

It does worry me a bit that the main poster (all four parts here) includes a bad guy, Spock, Kirk, and Uhura.  I mean...what the heck?  It was always Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. Sure, Nichelle Nichols deserved a bigger part (or, at the least, to have her character's name spelled right in the credits of Star Trek VI), but...Uhura?

(By the way, and totally unrelated:  yay.)

Ow

Note from me to Motrin: WORK FASTER PLEASE.

Note from me to science:  Please invent the fake pregnancy thingie Huxley talked about in Brave New World, 'cause then I wouldn't have to take 3 Motrin every four hours for three days a month.

Thank you.

TMI

Dear reproductive system,

Really?

I mean...really?

First, you run a week and a half late and yet now you're right smack dab to-the-hour on time?

Two and a half weeks, reproductive system.  I want more than two and a half weeks.

No love,

Me

Ow

I'm lucky (if you tilt your head and squint really hard and remind yourself that there is something about a tendency to migraines that is "lucky") in that I usually get an aura before a migraine -- I nearly always get photosensitivity, I frequently get sparklies in my field of vision, and once in a while, I get this weird echoy feeling to my hearing.

I'm also lucky in that if I catch a migraine early enough and either medicate it or sleep it off, it usually goes away without getting too excruciating, which makes the auras a useful thing indeed.

So having one come on full blast without an aura as I was getting agenda books ready for next week?

I am not amused.

After a nap, I feel good enough to be bored (hence this post), but I've got the laptop screen (Data's big beautiful bright screen, even dimmed to its lowest setting, would be torture) dimmed to one notch above "off" and it's still too bright, so g'night all.

Easter, Writing, and TMI

So, as has been the case for a few years now, the only folks in my family nearby that celebrate Easter had other plans.  Which, to Patrick, means one thing: Disneyland.

But we did depart from our usual routine, and even had dinner at the Wine Country Trattoria -- which is a very nice table service restaurant with (get this!) reasonable prices.  Not just Disneyland-reasonable-prices, but semi-good-Italian-restaurant reasonable prices.  Wow.  Of particular interest is the orange sorbet dessert, served on a frozen navel orange.  Yummy.

Anyhow, it being a holiday, Patrick...ahem...permitted me to use (my) point and shoot camera to take a few shots, on the condition that I also shared the next in his self-portrait series.

(See if you can guess which shot is his.)

In other news, I have been writing up a storm.  I'm just not sure if it's any good -- it probably isn't yet, and probably won't be without a significant re-write, but it's nice to shut up my inner critic and just get the ideas out.

Meanwhile, I find myself watching the beginning of season 9 of Stargate to determine the extent of Cam's injuries...and 'cause that's when the whole Ori thing started.

(Did I mention I liked the Ori storyline?  Yeah....)

Now, as far as the TMI stuff....

Men are babies.

My grandfather has developed a touchy stomach in the last year or so, and often when he goes on dates with his girlfriend, he ends up throwing up the next day.

He threw up today a couple of times, and called my mom this afternoon to say he's going to go to the emergency room 'cause he just can't keep getting sick like that.

Now, far be it from me to be unsympathetic, but....

When I was in 8th grade, I had a rare form of mono that manifested itself with months of excruciating stomach aches that kept me up for hours at a time because the pain got worse when I laid down.  It was literally unbearable laying down; I'd have to walk in circles until it died down enough to sit, where I'd gingerly curl up with a pillow (because if I got too horizontal, it'd all start over again) and try to sleep.  A few hours later, I'd be able to lay somewhat flat.  A few hours after that, I'd go back to bed, only to get up an hour or two later and try to make it through a day of school.

Then, one Friday morning in...it must have been early February (the stomach aches had been going on since August or so), I was getting ready for a half-day of school.  My parents were picking me up afterwards, and we were going down to Anaheim to stay at the Disneyland Hotel for the first time in several years (my dad had started his own company four years or so before).

I woke up and threw up.

(I warn you -- I said TMI was coming.)

I threw up.  To the point that there was only stomach acid, and I kept throwing up.  I threw up until I was literally screaming from the stomach cramps as my stomach tried to keep throwing up when even the stomach acid was gone.

I didn't keep solid food down for a month.

But after that, the other stomach aches tapered off.  For years, I'd get one or two a year, always accompanied by other TMI symptoms that I associate with what was going on when I was in the worst of it.  Over the years, I figured out what I could and couldn't eat -- for instance, I can only eat kosher hot dogs because something in regular hot dogs will trigger a stomach ache.

I know it's no fun to be sick.  And I remember being in the middle of two or three of the worst stomach aches, wanting to go to the hospital -- if for no other reason than that they could sedate me and I wouldn't be aware of the pain -- but literally terrified of the pain that sitting in the car would provoke.

I remember that -- and I remember sitting on the steps outside of my Spanish class during lunch because the smell of the cafeteria was just too much, hoping the yard supervisors or whatever we called them, wouldn't catch me until the library opened for lunch and I could hide in there.

I remember when the fatalism caught up with me on Patrick's birthday and I figured, "What the heck.  I'll throw it up anyway; might as well have a hamburger."

It was the first solid food I kept down in 30 days.

And I know it's awful and uncharitable, but part of me says, "Give me a frelling break.  So you threw up a couple of times.  Come talk to me when you're throwing up stomach acid and not food."

Thank you.  I just had to get that off my chest.  This way, I can be the nice, sympathetic, dutiful granddaughter.

Back to your regularly scheduled program.

Almost Spring Break

So, the plan was to get most of the stuff for after spring break done over this past week, so that I could clean up the room and leave in time for my 3:30 appointment to get a hepatitis B booster predicated by the bite incident.

That was the plan.

I left around 3:15 or so and headed to the worker's comp doctor's office, where I signed in for my appointment.

And waited.

And waited.

And chatted (yay me with the social skills!) with the lady next to me, who had been there since one freaking o'clock.

At 4:45, I finally go back to an exam room, where they tell me that Bulldozer's parents had never given them the results of his blood test, so I not only get to get a shot, I get to have another blood draw.

Me = needle phobic.

Me = petrified.

Anyhow, I survived the booster -- which hurt a heck of a lot more than the first one did.  The nurse takes a look at my veins (after trying a "nifty new toy" -- a cuff for your upper arm, like when they put the latex band around your arm -- that clearly did not, and would never, fit my upper arm, short of emergency liposuction surgery).

Ahem.

Anyway, she takes a look at my veins and comments at how thin they are.

"Actually," I say, trying to be helpful, "the lady at the lab last time said they were just very deep, but she did go get to get a smaller needle."

The nurse looks at me doubtfully.

Me = petrified x 2.

She looks at my arm one more time, decides that she doesn't want to miss and "blow out [your] vein" and sends me to the lab at the hospital...again.

Where I am met by a different tech, who also has trouble finding veins in the normal place.  So, she takes my right arm, slaps it -- yeah, slaps it -- a few times to make the veins...puff up, I think is the word she used.

She sticks the needle in.

HOLY FREAKING MOTHER OF GOD!

Ouch!

So, at this point, it's 5:15, and I head back to school, turn everything off, and leave it in the disastrous state it was in.  I'll head back tomorrow to finish up agenda books and copy the beginning of Matilda, and then spring break'll start.

Costco, Here I Come

I have found my new Seldane.

Let me 'splain.

When I was 12, 13, and just starting to have really bad allergies, my friend's mom -- a nurse -- totally didn't give me and my mom free samples of a nifty allergy medicine called Seldane.

It was awesome.  It worked beautifully.  Stopped my itchy throat (the one allergy symptom I just can't tolerate) in its tracks.

There was only one problem.

Some people didn't read the drug interaction warnings, took Seldane and...something, and died.

No more Seldane.

I have been making do with 4 hour Chlor-Trimeton (only 4 hour; the other dosages just don't work for me), which is difficult to find and only sporadically available, since.

Then, last time I was at Costco (to buy this; yum) I saw that Zyrtec is now available over the counter.  After some investigating, it seems that the double pack at Costco is more or less what Walmart charges for one pack.

But $25 is a lot to spend on something that might make me loopy like Claritin or not work at all like the Allegra I totally didn't borrow from Patrick once.

Well, Ralphs had a packet of five.

Oh.  My.  God.

Unless I wake up with a green forehead or some other ridiculous side effect...I finally have my Seldane back!

(Those of you who don't have allergies will not understand my elation.  Those that do...will.)

Also: Memo to Vampire

Yes,  you.  The one who first tried to take my blood.

I sympathize with you.  I really do.  I know my veins are deep, and thus, hard to find.  Really.

But knowing that failed blood draws can leave painful bruising should have at least led you to NOT put a very adhesive, cheapie band-aid (that meant it was virtually impossible to bend my arm, thus making me want to take it off and replace at the first opportunity) with Super Glue adhesive.

Cotton ball and tape.  Good things.

Things that don't hurt like a mother-you-know-what-er to pull off.

Our Office Managers Think My Priorities are Skewed

Why, do you ask?

Well, I was bitten on the arm today, hard enough to break the skin -- which, per district policy, meant I had to go to the worker's comp place and get a blood test.

Being very much not a fan of needles, I was very freaked out about this.

The bite?  Meh, not so much.  Yeah, it hurt, but here's the thing.

It's not pleasant, but one of the realities of dealing with kids with special needs in general and kids with more severe disabilities in particular is that often they have moments with undesirable behaviors.  Most often, those behaviors are an attempt to communicate something, to fill some need, and it's my job as a teacher to teach alternatives.

But you know going into it that there's risk.  I've been scratched, had my hair pulled, had my...er...chestal area pinched, been pinched, been head-butted.  A friend's foot was broken when one of her kids stomped on it.  It truly doesn't bother me -- I'd rather deal with a kid that scratches than a kid that whines all day.

Oddly enough, even though this is my fifth year of teaching, and even though I had a child for two years that bit everybody and everything, including himself, and even though I had a different child for a year and a half who was famous for biting a tree one day, I had never been bitten before.

It hurts, but not for a while.  My arm went numb for about twenty minutes, then started to ache.  It's swollen now and is going to bruise, but what hurts worse is the spot on my arm where they tried to draw blood and failed (ouch).

So, in my left arm, I have a poke from the Hepatitis B booster they made me take, as well as the poke on the inside of my elbow from where the good technician at the lab took blood.  In my right arm, I have my rapidly-swelling tetanus booster (I got it about 4.5 hours ago now and it's already visibly swollen), the very painful poke where the guy at the worker's comp place tried and failed to get my blood, and the bite itself.

Aide J was still out today, which was definitely a blessing.  The official Room Mine policy is "don't lie but don't volunteer" because Aide J knowing Bulldozer bit my arm will result in two things: (1) she will freak out and be all falsely mothery over a very-unperturbed me and (2) she will take every opportunity she has to "remind" Bulldozer to be nice and will probably work him back up into meltdown mode.

Meanwhile, my student teacher started today.  She hadn't been there 20 minutes when Bulldozer bit me...but she didn't run away, so that's a plus.

And I'm still more concerned over the "four blood tests over six months" policy than I am over the bite itself...that's just a scrape that happened to be caused by teeth.

The office managers think I'm nuts.

And the Sub Was...

The good news is, Aide K is being reassigned to 2nd-Grade-J (the one who...well, let's just say, "the bathroom thing").

The bad news is, Aide S has strep throat.  Her sub today was Flake Aide D.

Then, at recess, Elastigirl's stomach flu caught up with Aide J, and she fled to the bathroom, where she promptly vomited and went home.

The other bad news is, Program Specialist PM tried really hard today -- as in, came to my classroom and disrupted my routine -- to get Aide Mrs. B to move to one of two other students.

Of course, when Elastigirl had yet another incidence of diarrhea, he fled.  Quickly.

Meanwhile, I'm more or less where I was yesterday -- nauseous all the time...to the point where I wish I'd just get sick and get it over with.

However, Bulldozer's dad brought him today to talk about his bad day yesterday, and I was able to tell him that Bulldozer is much better when he brings him (not that that was true today, but I think the week was more or less a loss).

It Had to Happen Sometime

There's a reason I jokingly refer to illnesses in my classroom as "plagues."  We do our best, but we're talking about kids that don't use tissues appropriately, don't use them at all and require assistance to do so, don't cover their mouths when they cough, etc.  So, when one gets sick, they all -- as well as us adults -- invariably end up sick too.

In fact, in my first year, the only thing that stopped a nasty cold from making its third or fourth round through our ranks was spring break.

So, given that at the moment, we have a stomach flu, possibly strep throat, a sinus infection, and an upper respiratory infection infecting various people, and given the amount of stress this year has caused, I knew it was only a matter of time.

What amuses me -- prone as I am to coughs and bronchitis (thanks, I believe, to growing up with a chain smoker who smoked in the house) -- is that, of everything, I ended up with Elastigirl's stomach flu.

I'm going to bed early just so I won't know I feel nauseous.

(However, kudos to Spirit and Opportunity, for having their mission extended again.  Their ninety day mission began in January of 2004 -- something like 1300 days ago -- and is now approved to continue until 2009, if the Rovers That Could last that long.  Nifty.)

TMI -- You Have Been Warned

An open thank you to my reproductive system for, for once, being exactly on time and thus giving me one less thing to worry about for Disney World (less than a week!).

However.

Ow.

It's Over

Life, I suppose, is all about compromise. Nobody gets exactly what they want, but everybody gets something.

I compromised today to keep the peace with the administration who, after all, is in charge of me. I get that -- I do. Miss T. was happy. The middle school teacher was happy 'cause her life is not inconvenienced by providing curricular modifications or aide support for J to spend extra time in general ed beyond what her program provides. The OT and APE people were happy because she was moved to consult (a decision I actually supported, as her handwriting and sports skills, like everything else, improved around her peers after years of direct service doing not much).

I did put in a plug to get J in clubs at lunch time and after school extracurriculars.

I don't think mom was 100% happy; I wasn't 100% happy.

But it's over.

Mom signed, and if J. has another period like in 3rd grade where she lost lots of skills, no one can say I never warned them.

It's out of my hands. It'll be someone else's Drama.

Meanwhile, I just realized that I left the ice cream K. (a fourth grade teacher) was kind enough to bring back for me after she went out with the other 4th grade teacher and the science teacher, in the freezer at school. :-(

I have more thoughts, but I actually have to get some work done, and I feel a headache coming on. (Ignore this if you're leery of TMI.) I've had my monthly migraine twice in the last week, but the result of that has not happened yet. I wishy my hormones could decide which of my girls to sync up with -- I thought we were getting there a couple of months ago, but either one of the girls is getting irregular and I didn't notice, or one of the other girls is fixin' to start and confuse my poor reproductive system even more.

Anyone else ever wish that the "pregnancy substitutes" in Huxley's Brave New World actually existed?