Evening time

I have a warm, furry cat butt pressing against my right shoulder as I type. Earlier today when I was on the computer, I had a warm, fuzzy cat butt pressed against each of my shoulders. Why, you may ask, do I have warm, fuzzy cat butts against my shoulders? Because I'm sitting in the upholstered chair in the corner of our bedroom with my feet up on the ottoman and the window behind me is open.

It's the window that faces the neighbors that live closest to us and they have two dogs who have the run of the backyard. That alone would be reason enough for the cats to spend a good part of their day watching. I think they're waiting to see if the dogs trespass into our yard so they can run downstairs and kick their fuzzy asses.

Oh, who am I kidding. Our cats are housebound. I feel sorry that their lives are so constrained. Not sorry enough to let them run outside and have their lives shortened by at least five years (or so the statistics say), but sorry enough that I put up with warm, fuzzy cat butt pressing against my shoulder. At least for awhile.

My little girl

Julia has been attending preschool one morning a week since last September. It's gone very well. She has made at least one best friend that she talks about, Ava. That's a cool thing because Julia has been at the same family daycare since she was 10 weeks old and she had only before really known the kids there. It turns out that Ava lives on the opposite side of our block, a few houses down. You know, so our backyards would connect if our houses were a little closer?

Ava and her mom came to our door a few weekends ago and they asked if Julia could come to their house and visit. Ava's mom took pains to tell us that her husband is a school principal. That did make me feel better, actually. He should be less likely to be some kind of molester, right? So we let Julia visit them for an hour or so and the next day Ava came to visit and play at our house (despite the fact that we don't have as strong a set of non-molester credentials). Both girls had a great time.

Now Julia wants to go and visit Ava pretty much every evening. She says, truthfully as it happens, that Ava's mommy said she can come over any time she wants. We're just trying to convince her that that doesn't mean after every meal, every bedtime, and every morning. Julia says she knows where Ava's house is and that she can walk there by herself. This is also true. Fortunately for our piece of mind when it comes to Julia heading out to the backyard and then disappearing, there are two big dogs who live in between the two houses. It looks like Julia's going to keep needing us for a little while longer. Thank goodness.

Together

There's something to be said for being sick with a cold at the same time your spouse is sick with a cold. Sure, there's competition for the box of tissues, but there are all kinds of advantages.

If I wake up Greg by coughing in the middle of the night, he wakes me up by coughing in the morning. If I disturb Greg's sleep by getting up to try to clear some of the gunk out of my sinuses, it's not that big of a deal because Greg needed to take some more cold medicine at 2:20 a.m. anyway. When we feel chilled while watching TV, we can share a blanket. If one of the girls calls for us in the night, I'm not automatically the one who gets out of bed, because Greg was awake anyway, trying to breathe.

We're never going to be able to get anyone to visit us ever again, in our germ-ridden house.

Pamela Sue

My sister Pam reads my blog religiously, seeking updates on her little sister's life, anecdotes about her only nieces, and laughs from the latest things her brother-in-law has done. This is despite the fact that she doesn't have a cable modem. She doesn't have a dial up either. Broadband, nope. In fact, she probably doesn't know the difference between a cable modem and dial up. Pam doesn't own a computer.

Pam relies on my sister Claudette to call her (which trust me, she would be doing anyway) and to read her my latest blog entry. Pam hears about the latest photos that are online and about the movies Greg has posted on his blog, and she doesn't see any of it, unless she makes an effort to look the next time she's at Claudette's house (which trust me, she would be visiting anyway).

So this one's for you, Pam. Happy birthday (yesterday). I'm so glad you'll always be older than me.

Long, long day

At work today, there were only two of us instead of the normal eight. Once again, the company is on shutdown. It was a very, very long day. I got in at 7:30 and the phone rang for the first time at 9:00. And then it was a telemarketer.

Greg is always very polite to telemarketers at home. I am the exact opposite. At work, because it's work, I'm more polite by a minuscule amount. I listen to the first part of their spiel and then say, thanks, but I'm not interested, goodbye. Almost always, they're still talking as I put the phone down.

I started my day with another visit to the dentist, my dentist this time. He seemed rather impressed by the size of the sore in my mouth, which appears to be slowly healing. He measured it, speculated about what it could be, and gave me a thorough oral cancer screening. Even though I just had a thorough screening at my six-month checkup in January.

Then, he told me he wants to see me back in two weeks. You know, it would be easier to be calm about whatever the hell this thing is if dentists didn't keep wanting to follow up on it.

15,625

I would like to commemorate this momentous occasion by remembering all the other occasions, all of the other instances of me waking up for another day. Yes, today is the fifteen thousand, six hundred and twenty-fifth day I have been alive.

This compares to the only 15,230 days that Greg has been around and the paltry 3,039 days that Allie has graced her presence with. Julia, well, she's only been around for 1,762. She's not even in the two thousandths yet.

The point of this blog? There isn't one. I could make up something sentimental about how I look forward to every additional day of life and how I yearn to see my children reach the daily total I've achieved (and then some). All that's pretty obvious.

So I'll just say, on Memorial Day, I'm grateful for the people who have died so I can have more days of peaceful, safe life. We remember them.

Feeling better

I slept better last night than I have in two weeks. Yesterday, I saw a dentist in my dentist's practice for an emergency visit. Is your own physician or dentist ever available in an emergency? The good news is that because my mouth sore came on so quickly, he doesn't think it's a tumor. Well, gosh. That is good news!

The bad news is that I do have some kind of secondary infection on the roof of my mouth, something that probably started with a small burn or abrasion from eating something pokey (like hard crusted bread). It's progressed pretty far considering the level of pain I've had and how abused my upper palate looks.

So I'm on an antibiotic and pain pills and I have to go back for a checkup on Tuesday. I actually think the spot has gotten bigger since yesterday, so hopefully the next dose of antibiotics will sock it good. Regardless, I'm feeling better.

Thank you to all who sent good wishes!

Recovering?

Don't bother reading this, it's boring. Really. Click on Dooce or Allthatcomeswithit or something. Still reading? Don't say I didn't warn you.

In two days, it will be Friday night again. When that Friday arrives, it'll be two weeks ago that I first started feeling like I was coming down with a cold. Sore throat, tickle in my nose, you know the feeling. I really didn't feel like becoming sick, so I decided to try some of those homeopathic cold remedy things. You let the lozenge dissolve in your mouth every two freaking hours until either the cold symptoms go away or you're so busy blowing your nose that you forget to take your next lozenge. I religiously did those lozenge things for two and a half days, until the bottle was empty.

By then, the symptoms had arrived with a vengeance. Two days later, I started coughing and I mostly lost my voice. Another day later, my entire throat became sore. Not just when I swallowed, which is sort of expected with a cold and nasal drainage, but my entire neck. Sore glands, I guess. Oh, my neck hurt. I started taking Motrin pretty occasionally, at least twice a day. And now, a week later, I'm still taking Motrin at least three times a day.

For the last two days, my jaw has been aching. My teeth are very sensitive on both the top and bottom and if I don't take something when it starts to build up, my entire head aches. My neck still aches. And I have a sore spot on the roof of my mouth. My cough is now in response to numerous dry tickles and I'm still not really sleeping.

I know I should probably go to the doctor. I probably have some kind of sinus infection going on or something and/or I do have strep throat (though I don't think so). I just know that if this is a viral cold, my 7-10 days of misery didn't end in 7-10 days and so I am really ready to feel better. After all, I have a date this weekend! And I'm out of Motrin.

Oh, lord

Greg and I are watching a special on PBS that's pretty much guaranteed to scare the crap out of any parent. It's about social networking sites for teenagers, cyberbullying, and kids who have committed suicide as a result. We've been watching it for about 1/2 hour. At this point, my children are never going online unless I'm sitting next to them. Ever.

Caution - sick girl ahead!

Greg and I are going to the theater tonight to see "Spamalot." The tickets were a birthday gift to him way back in September. Thank goodness we didn't lose them in the meantime, which is no mean accomplishment in this house.

So we're off to the theater. You know, turn off your cell phone, no talking, don't get up during the performance, and for goodness sake, don't have a coughing fit and disturb everyone around you. Umm, yeah. About that last one?

I've been fighting a cold since Saturday. It really started kicking my butt on Monday night and I've been exhausted in the evenings this whole week, which makes it fun to try to get up the energy to clean our house (the in-laws are coming this weekend). My cold is now at the coughing stage--lots and lots of tasty, disgusting yellow and green phlegm. Obviously, my coughing can't be controlled to any large extent.

I'm sneaking in a bottle of water and crossing my fingers. Good thing that Greg and the girls got me that huge purse for Christmas.

Early evening play

This evening after dinner, the girls wanted to go out and play. Allie grabbed a blanket from the garage, Greg's hammock pillow, and her umbrella. She set up a lounge on the old bench under our backyard tree. She draped the blanket over the whole bench, put her head on the pillow and laid down, sheltering herself from the wind with her open umbrella. I thought she looked quite comfortable.

Then Greg came upstairs and made an exasperated noise as he looked out the window. "She's practicing to be a homeless woman!"

Simon's saga

Simon is going to be just fine. If you've followed our journey with him for the last three weeks, you know that our cat suffered a serious leg injury when he fell nine feet in our front entryway. We originally thought he might need $2000 in surgery. Instead, it appears that he had a significant sprain/strain with some bad tendon action that he's slowly been recovering from. Last night, I saw him run for the first time. And, he's back to fighting with his brother Rabies.

If you add in the time last summer when he wandered outside for about two hours, I'd say he's now on life number 7. At this moment, he's cuddled up on our bed with Greg and Julia, getting massive love. Not a bad life, even for a cat.

Summer?

It hit 83 degrees here today. The girls wore summer clothes and Julia got to play in a sprinkler at daycare.

Considering that my tulips are still blooming and that my lilacs haven't really formed much into flower buds, let alone bloomed, I don't think it's summer yet.

It is definitely May though. I think it's safe to put away the winter boots.

Visitors

My parents are here visiting their granddaughters. I don't bother to trouble myself any more that they're actually here to see me or my husband. There was one point in time, somewhere between Allie's awesomely-cute babyhood and her not-really-that-terrible-in-retrospect twos when I thought the pendulum might swing back over to them wanting to see me more than my kid(s), but I was deceiving myself. So they're here, visiting and doing us a favor by watching Julia tomorrow (and taking her to preschool, and meeting up with Allie, and maybe doing some of my laundry) because our daycare is closed. Not too bad of a deal for us, obviously.

Greg and I seldom go out alone because we lack evening and weekend childcare and because we want to be with our girls since we're all apart all day, so you would think we'd take advantage of the free and available babysitting to go somewhere, anywhere, without our kids. Instead we had pizza and salads tonight and watched some TV and Allie did her homework. So we did pretty much the same thing we do every weeknight. Except tonight, we had more dishes.

I could get used to it.