Shhhhhhhh, the universe is listening

I don't want to jinx it, so I'm just going to say: I DON'T feel a little bit better today. My throat is NOT a little bit less raw. And I certainly am NOT down to mild sore throatedness and a canker sore on the inside of my cheek that I possibly caused by biting the inside of my cheek while asleep.




Landon subscribes to the age old adage: "If at first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer."

Snotwatch 2008

Singing the blues.

I am sick.

Of course I am. We're supposed to take a vacation next week. And who in their right mind goes off for vacation feeling, like, good and stuff. GRRRR. I have been taking more drugs this week than Anna Nicole ever took. And also, drinking more orange juice and grapefruit juice than the law allows and taking zinc and eating raw freaking garlic all in the name of clearing my damn nasal cavities. God help the person who has to stand next to me in line anywhere, but at least the vampires will leave us alone.

Anyway, I only mention it because I'm setting up autoposting. Lots of pictures, not a lot of words. I should return to my normal boring dribble on October 20th.

P.S. if you try the garlic thing, cutting it into pill sized pieces and swallowing seems to be an easier way to get it down than chewing, except the chewing might release some of the good stuff faster, so it's a trade off I think. Also chewing adds to the garlic aroma I am now putting off. Nevermind, maybe this was TMI.

85%

I went home Tuesday from work in the middle of the day.

I did not go to work yesterday.

I watched entirely too much TV.

I am back.

At 85%.

But at least I think I'll live.

Signs, Signs, everywhere are signs

Don't even get me started on this one.

This one warms my heart. I am a sucker for a good pun.

And finally, a sign that the apocolypse is near...my sinus cavity has now fallen prey to the bug that has crippled our house for the past month. All it took was one stinkin' night in the same bed with Clint...breathing on me. GAH.

Sicko

Remember when we were kids, and we got a virus, and the doctors used to give us antibiotics? Even though what s/he was really doing was have us wait 10 days for the virus to run its course? Or maybe, they knew that the virus would give way to an infection and we’d need the antibiotics to fight that off.

They said we were over antibioticized. So they’ve stopped doing that.

Now we leave the doctors office with nothing more often than not. But we make more return trips, because whatever it was gave way to something else, and now – we need medicine.

Landon got taken to the Doctor yesterday for the 3rd time this month. (We are totally making good use of our insurance this year.)

The first time was his 18 month check up. The second time was because of a cough he had picked up (probably while there for his 18 month check up.) And yesterday, because 3 weeks later, he still has that cough.

He held on to it for so long that he managed to get a throat infection. An infection that probably could have been prevented by some antibiotics given at that second appointment.

At any rate, after 3 weeks of this, I'm ready to go back to this:

Third Time's The Charm

I hope.

So I definitely feel better about the test this time. I changed my study policy (procedure? plan? approach? yeah it's approach.) I actually reviewed everything in the breadth section and as much as I could for the depth section.

Although, as always as the test date appraoches, I start freaking out a little bit about what I don't know.

The change in the test (addition of the construction section, reduction of environmental and water resources) means they will probably take longer to grade them this time. Their grading system is weird - from their description of it, it's a curve, but they are adamant that it is NOT a curve. They're pretty vague about it, but from what I've gathered. They basically grade everyone's test (scantron) and then if a bunch of people got one answer wrong they go back and look at the question to see if there's a problem with the question (i.e. parts are unclear, assumptions can lead to different answers, etc.) If they find the question to be the problem, they throw it out. Now for the people who got the question wrong, this is great...but for the people who got it right - it sucks, because they may have gotten other questions wrong and this one right and it doesn't even help them. They also do some analysis on questions the first time they are put in rotation (like all the construction questions). THEN (and here's where I believe the thing to be a curve) they pick a number of questions to be answered right to achieve a passing score, assuming that the past percentage of people passing should remain relatively constant and grade based on that number of questions being a 70%. So while there are 80 questions total, and in a straight out situation you would need 56 to pass, you may only need 45 or 47 or 50 depending on their analysis. Anyway, I think it may also mean I have a better shot at passing. Hopefully. I'm trying to be cautiously optimistic. It's hard. It's not my forte.

Landon has a cough. It sounds like he's got a little congestion in his chest, but nothing gooey is oozing out of him, so hopefully, my being loaded up on vitamins and Zicam, I can survive without getting sick before the test.

I am taking tomorrow off. I am not studying or cramming tomorrow. I know what I know and I don't know what I don't know.

Wish me luck!

UGH

Scarlett ate a Roundup laden leaf and we've been dealing with the ensuing crap from that (pun intended) ever since. FYI, if your dog eats a leaf on which you have sprayed roundup - it is not poisonous. But it will upset their gastrointestinal workings. And you may have to clean their crate 2 nights running (possibly more, it's just that we're only working with 2 days worth of data here). And throw away 2 blankets and a towel. And wake up at 3 am, when they urgently need to go out (or alternatively you can clean up 2 piles of runny poo and 2 puddles of pee the next morning - your choice.)



I think we're on the backend of this illness (pun intended again.) Thank god.



And now that I've grossed you out, here's cute picture to tide you over until I think of something less gross to write about.



(I heard on the radio this morning that kids are starting to like classic rock because of the game Guitar Hero...classic rock like Pearl Jam...Pearl Jam is considered classic rock now? How old am I?)

Rosy what?

Hey, remember that fever last week?

Yeah, that one.

When we got home from work Thursday night, we had a pink kid. And I'm not talking about flesh colored pink, I'm talking a splotchy rashy pink. Kind of like this:

That's not him. I didn't take a picture of it on him.

We thought it might be a heat rash, so we gave him a little Tylenol. Friday morning it was pretty much gone, so I went down to do my errands in LJ. I told my mom about it and she suggested it might be a result of the same virus that caused the fever...and then she started saying funny words that started with "rosy" and I thought she was just making stuff up.

By the time I got back home, he was pink again. So I called the Dr.

His doctor said Roseola (sorry for doubting you, mom). He said that his symptoms, from the high fever to the rash, and even where the rash was, were typical. He said it was a viral strain similar to chicken pox, less dangerous, therefore not vaccinated for. He said kids normally get it right around 1 year of age. He said they are usually fine through the fever, but are ornery when the rash appears. He also said they are not contagious once the rash appears. Also, the rash doesn't itch and there's nothing you can do about it, but wait it out. And once you get it, you aren't supposed to get it again.

Oh, and ornery, means screaming for something. Then screaming at you when you give it to him. And then screaming at you for taking it back. And then screaming some more, just for good measure. Almost like returning to the days of colic.

By Saturday morning he was 100% ok physically, with only a little left over ornery.

By Sunday he was his normal demanding self.

100°

I never thought I'd be so happy to see 100° in my life.

He ran a low grade fever all night. I think we're on the downhill side of this illness.

Bullets

• I took 10,000 pictures this weekend and have none with me, because I emptied my camera onto the laptop.

• Landon has a spot of ringworm. It’s healing now that I’m administering Lotrimin that did not expire in January of 2006.

• I was asked what toys are safe for buying. And I found a few resources. There’s this one and this one. Toys R Us has a list you can get from the service desk (here it is online) but it’s not user friendly – it doesn’t have pictures and you can’t just order stuff directly from it. So the deal is that, while there are resources out there, they suck – but beware if you complain too much, they will make you design the next website or list.

• I’m meeting with my potential sponsor on Friday. He’s very excited about me, he’s optimistic about my potential and my goals, including the one where I want to work part time and still make enough money.

The Whole Spectrum – Also, longest post EVER

As bad as the weekend started out, it got much much better. (And the pictures don't exactly match the story, but you don't really care about that, do you?)

Thursday evening on the way home from work, I came down with the virus that Landon had. I picked him up, and found Clint to be in much the same state as me when I got home. Knowing that I could not handle him overnight, the night before a test and expect to feel any better, I called my mom and asked her to come get him. I had him packed by the time she got there. And we shove him out the door in a matter of minutes. I think she may have been at our house for all of 10 minutes.

I went straight to bed. I woke up at 2 and took Pepto. I felt slightly better, better enough to get some decent sleep.

I was still very queasy and I tried to eat a piece of dry toast, but it took me nearly an hour to eat 1 piece.

I got to the test and was pleasantly surprised to find that we were not taking it in the Reliant stadium and we were not going to be overcome with noise like last time. I got my books out of my truck and started heading towards the building. I poured my Sprite that I was sipping all over my pump bag on the way in, and I was having trouble with the handle of my cart.

I managed to get my cart up to the second floor and was standing there looking to see if I recognized anyone, and I only recognized 1 guy from work. I started to go over to talk to him when I broke the handle completely off my cart and spilled everything on the floor.

I picked it all up and decided to stay put.

The guy in charge reminds me of Macolm X – I think it’s his glasses (he was in charge last time too.) He’s also very. Uh…anal. And while I understand that you need a lot of procedural exactness when giving a test of these sorts, his demeanor in the test, I hope, is not his demeanor in his social life, because I’d hate to be his friend. I mean, the test is over, everyone has turned in their booklets, and in one particular area the proctor guy had begun handing out the confiscated cell phones, and he about bit that guy’s head off. FOUR TIMES, not because the guy continued to do it, but because he felt like he had to say everything 4 times in increasing meanness, for the fun of it.

The test part was pretty uneventful, the morning session was harder than I remembered if from last time, but I feel decent about it.

At lunch I was able to stomach one of the sandwiches I made, and spilled my Dr. Pepper on the floor. I had no paper towels or napkins, so I used my sweatshirt to mop up the spill.

The afternoon was easier this time around, I think I was much better prepared for it.

I headed home after the test still feeling icky, I called to tell my parents that I was not coming for Landon, but would be there in the morning. When I got home I watched some TV and went to bed, still feeling slightly bad.

When I woke up Saturday morning, I felt great. But Clint had a re-lapse, so I took off. I gathered stuff for me to spend the night in LJ, I played the role of the mean Mom and called to cancel Clint’s play date.

Landon had decided that this was the weekend of hugging. He was hugging everyone. Dos included. And while Dos seemed to hang around for the dropped food, he didn’t appreciate the hugs like Scarlett and Fiona do.

Kathleen and Zoey showed up and we went to the pumpkin patch for pictures, and pumpkin buying.

A little girl waved at him and tried to shake his hand, and Landon lumbered towards her arms outstretched wanting to hug her. She pulled back and was not about to let that strange boy hug her.

He had a great time.

Sunday morning we cut the pumpkins for carving, and he helped pull the seeds out of them. I’ll have pictures of the pumpkins tomorrow.

We went shopping for a Halloween costume and I learned my lesson. Next year, we buy something in early October or I have to make it, because I spent entirely too much on a bear costume because it’s the only thing available in his size. And what I really wanted was a monkey costume.

Anyway, we should have lots of pictures this week and back to regular posting and I realize this was the longest most boring post, but all of it needed to be said.

How to have an awful PE experince in 4 easy steps.

Hey thanks for all the good lucks and happy birthdays! I really appreciate them.

I feel better about the afternoon this time and worse about the morning, so I guess we'll see how that goes. They changed the wording on the website from 12 weeks to 90 days. I guess they needed 6 more days, even though they send out results in about 11 weeks last time. So I'll know something in mid January.

On to the How to:

1. Get really sick the night before, on the drive home. Puking. So sick that you call your mom to come get your kid because you think you might actually die.

2. Break your cart with 50 lbs of books first thing in the morning.

3. Spill your coke at lunch, and finding nothing to wipe it up with, use your sweatshirt, only to discover that you're really cold when you re-enter the room, but have no desire to be sticky.

4. Do it all on your birthday. End up leaving your kid with your mom for another night because you still feel that bad.

Wish me luck.

I know I didn't promise a post this week, but I have a few minutes, so here we go, highlights from my week.

On Tuesday on my way home I peered out the window into the median at a major intersection and saw panties. And I wished I had my camera with me. Because who loses their panties like that?

Landon tried to re-enact that scene from Poltergeist on Tuesday afternoon. So I stayed home with him yesterday. He seems ok now, and there is something going around. I wouldn't normally have panicked, but he's never been this sick (vomiting, I mean clearly the pneumonia was worse than this) and he was listless, which was the scariest part. We called the after-hours doctor number and ended up talking to a nurse at Texas Children's Hospital. She said they were getting a LOT of vomiting calls. So I followed her directions and he seems to be recovering nicely. He managed to get either puke or poop on every sheet in the house and we each went through 4 outfits yesterday (granted my outfits were pretty much pajamas, but that's neither here nor there). After washing everything, I layered his sheets, so I can change his sheets by removing 1 sheet and 1 absorbent pad without having to remake the whole thing again. Unfortunately I can't do that with our beds, since I only have one mattress cover for each matress. Anyway, He's better.

Oh and I realized this morning that he somehow figured out how to unlatch the crib rail. Which means he's one short "safely getting out of the crib" lesson away from us waking up to someone staring at us from the edge of the bed (or yelling at us from the top of the gated stairs.)

I am loaded up on vitamins and Zicam as a pre-emptive strike, because the last thing I need for a test is to feel bad during it.

It occurs to me that those of you who don't know me and don't know what I do for a living are all "Why is she so worried about a PE exam? And what's this studying stuff? I took PE in elementary and I did fine." The PE exam is Professional Engineer exam. After working for 4 years minimum and gathering up info from at least 3 supervisors who are PEs who will corroborate your experience, you can apply to take the PE exam. I am a structural EIT (Engineer In Training). I work in offshore at the moment and it's not as highly a coveted achievement within that market, primarily because offshore work hardly ever requires a stamp of any kind. Drawings are still stamped 99% of the time because the lead engineer is usually a PE, but I have been on projects where nothing was stamped. Anyway, if the market dies (a la mid 1980s) or if a person wants to take a different path in life and try something new (a la inspector and self employedness), having a professional engineer's license is a big advantage. To build anything on land, you have to have a PE stamp the drawings. Signifying that they checked them, blah-blah-blah. So it's a big deal. It won't end my career if I don't get it, but it will certainly help if I do.

At my new project I ran into someone I met at the first PE exam I took. Since I didn't get the congratulatory email about her that I got for the others who passed, I asked if she was taking it again and she is. She also missed a passing mark by only a few points. She has decided that if she doesn't pass this time that she's not meant to be an engineer. Which I find sad, not that she can't change her career path, but that she's letting a test dictate to her that she's not worthy of her original choice. Plus she'd still have 2 more chances on the same application. I say, you get 4 chances to take it without having to re-round up your references, and I'm going to take all 4 if I have to. I may reevaluate at that point, but not before then.

I have a new approach to the exam this time, and I think it will serve me well. I feel better prepared this time, and I feel like I know what I did "wrong" last time around.

My birthday is Friday, and I'm turning 29. I don't like it - but everybody's doing it.

If ever I needed comments, it's now. Good lucks, and happy birthdays and the like. I know I told everyone I wasn't going to post this week, and I can tell from my stats that almost all of you took that to heart. So I don't expect much.

Snotwatch 2007 Round 1 – Kristine: 1, Snot: 0

I am asking for a relapse just by typing these words, I know – but after the last post, there was some concern about how the little dictator was doing. And you should all know that he’s doing much better now, and was no where near the condition he was in for Snotwatch 2006.


Zicam is quite possibly the best working stuff I have ever stuck up my nose. I never would have tried it if I wasn’t breastfeeding, because it’s so expensive, but hot damn it works! And it doesn’t mess with Landon’s system or my milk production like decongestants and antihistamines do when I take those. There’s a lot of crap on the internet about losing your sense of smell after using them, but I have a feeling that those people did not follow instructions and seriously jammed the Q-tip thingy way up their nose, instead of just inside. I am finding these days that a lot of people must have gotten the “Does Not Listen To or Follow Directions” note on their elementary report cards.

We did a bunch of things I found on the internets to help Landon in his snot battle. Which one worked? I don’t know. Will I do all of them again next time around? Yes, because something in that combo worked, and I don’t care which one it was, and I’m not going to do the “elimination diet” on them to find out, I’ll just do them all. And I have a few more up my sleeve that we didn’t get to yet. So if next time these don’t work – I have some alternatives.

We washed – or at least placed in the dirty clothes – everything that he touched each day, his sheets, his blanket, his clothes, any burp rag that he used, and the towels we changed him on. Philosophy: the GERMS!! They are ON his clothes!!! I was watching Rachel Ray’s talk show a few weeks back – she had Dr. Harvey Karp, M.D. as a guest. He wrote The Happiest Baby on the Block, which SAVED. MY. LIFE. He said that one way to keep your school age kid from getting sick so often is to make them change clothes when they get home from school or day care, because the GERMS!! They are ON their clothes!!! Also hand washing.

I squirted breast-milk up his nose instead of saline (although occasionally I used saline) – and used the Angry Blue Snot Bulb. Philosophy: Breast-milk contains antibodies; antibodies will fight the snot battle for us!!!

I put him down to sleep in his carrier in his stroller, so he was at an incline. Philosophy: Aim snot at his belly, rather than letting it stay in his nose, and he’ll either digest it or it will irritate his stomach and he’ll puke it up – either way it leaves the system.

We set up and turned on his humidifier and ran it every time he was sleeping in there. Philosophy: Keep the snot from forming giant hard man-sized boogers.

Clinton held him in the shower for a few minutes with the Sudacare Shower Soother The box says not for use by children under 12, so I called my own personal pharmacist – what, she’s not at my beck and call every time I have a drug question? You mean she actually works for CVS? Surely you’re kidding, right? RIGHT? She said that exposure for the entire time would be too much for him – something about toxicity and menthol and eucalyptus, but a little bit of exposure would be fine. We only put him in there for a few minutes and then I took him and Clint finished his shower. Philosophy: loosen the snot.

TA DA – I’m going to keep him sleeping in the stroller for a few more days, just to make sure, and we’ll leave the humidifier on too.

The circles, they are vicious

It has been a merry-go-round of snot at our house for the past month. First I got sick, then Landon got sick, then Clint got sick, then I got better and Landon got better and Clint got better and then Clint got sick again and now Landon is sick again.

The blue snot bulb syringe is his arch nemesis. He sees it now and gets mad before I even touch him with it. Tonight will be the third night he sleeps in his carrier in his stroller, trying to aim the snot at his stomach instead of letting it be stagnant in his nasal cavity. So between the bassinet, the TV tray with the CD player, the TV tray with his diapers and wipes and changing towels, the TV tray with his elephant humidifier, and the stroller, I’m lucky I can get to my side of the bed at all. I did kick Clinton out into the guest room, because I have a one snotty man limit in my bedroom.

You're so Vein

Or in Landon’s case, not vein. He’s been congested for 2 weeks and the doctor said to suction him out with saline, but as long as he didn’t have a fever – or that his fever couldn’t be broken with Tylenol, that we were ok. This past Friday his fever reached 102.9°F, I gave him Tylenol and after 2 hours it had only come down to 101.5°F. We were in Gun Barrel, so we headed to the ER at the hospital where Grandma Wood works. First order of business is to rule out RSV – so they did the swab and it came back negative. Then they ordered a CBC. The kid has ninja veins. They tried twice to start an IV – and when that didn’t work, they collected the blood from a heel stick. The CBC came back with a really high white blood cell count, so he was clearly fighting off something. Then they ordered the X-ray. The X-ray showed pneumonia. So they arranged for an ER to ER transfer to Children’s in Dallas. Where we were treated like we had come in with a kid with the sniffles. They ordered another CBC – which meant another try to get a vein, they got the blood sample, but couldn’t get the IV. Their CBC still came back high – but that doctor thought it was viral. They deep suctioned him, cleaned out his nasal cavity, and sent us packing.

Luckily for us, the doctor who saw him first called to check up on him the next day. He had shown the X-ray to another doctor locally and one in Houston, and all 4 (including the second one from the night before) agreed that it was pneumonia and when he heard we had been released from Children’s and not admitted, and not even been given anything to deal with the infection, he called in a prescription for him.

All in all – over the weekend, he had his first ER visit, his (and my) first ambulance ride, his first X-ray, his first dealing with a Doctor who didn’t seem to know what she was doing, and his first Christmas.

Yesterday we went to check in with his pediatrician, and he said what we did was good and that the antibiotic we had for him should be plenty, he agreed that with that high of a white blood cell count that he would have had the same diagnosis. And as we left, we were checking out, and the mom in front of us turned as said “Does your baby have pneumonia too? We spent Christmas in the ER.” And in a weird way – it was kind of comforting that we were not the only ones.

So the good news is that we caught it early and he’s recovering nicely – we still have a couple days of antibiotics to go though. He’s a trooper and was called the “best looking sick kid ever.”

When I enrolled him in day care I completely expected that he’d have ear infections and get sick – I did not expect pneumonia. We went to get all his stuff from the day care yesterday. While we figure out our plan, his Grandma Logan and his cousin Ashley will be taking care of him during the day for the next month.