Kiss My Knits!

The doctor turned up an outer ear infection (commonly called swimmer’s ear), which would explain why she has been complaining that her pillow is uncomfortable no matter which pillow we try. Of course, in our desperation we have purchased a brand new box spring and mattress, which goes to show what exhaustion will lead you to. Eh, she needed a new one anyway. The doctor has also recommended some anti-allergy medicine (Zyrtec) which may help with her sniffling. We’re keeping an eye on other possible causes too.

Other interesting tidbits were turned up. For instance, I didn’t know she thought that sometimes there were goblins behind her curtains at night, and she told us that today at the doctor’s appointment. It would have been worth it to learn that, even if nothing else was turned up.

What a rotten day.

Em’s spring program went well. She played the recorder and sang, and I have some pics which I think came out well but I haven’t uploaded them yet.

Unfortunately, the program started at 7 and by about 7:30 at night, my daughter is usually pretty tired and ready to start winding down for the night. She yawned her way through the program. There was a local belly-dancing group who performed first – really! Then there were some technical difficulties with music playback which slowed things, and the program was a little long for her. She had a good time, but after a disappointment (she wanted to pick up a book after the program but the room selling books was closed) she was in tears before we left the building. She was just overtired. We got home and I got her a snack while she unwound a bit. She was already fading, asking “why do people have to sleeeeep?” and other similar questions.

She got to bed at around 8:45 but any little thing that went wrong would send her back into tears. She cried in bed for over an hour. I kid you not. Lest anyone think I am hard-hearted, going in to help was counter-productive, as she didn’t want me to help, no matter how phlegmy she got. What she really needed was sleep and me helping just woke her up more. She was just too tired to sleep. Her statement, “I don’t like anything!” really summed up the situation.

She woke up again about 11:30 and cried for another 15 minutes. Poor kid. She is not a night person under the best of circumstances, and while the program was enjoyable for her, all the activity and commotion was just too much. My husband and I agree that if this keeps up and she’s not doing well tomorrow, she doesn’t have to go to school. Down side: the school was going to arrange for her to get the book she wanted tomorrow, so if she doesn’t go…

Well, we’ll see what we can do. Right now she’s asleep again so I’m going to try to sleep too. Her being awake and crying makes me tense and frustrated, so it’s best to catch a few Z’s while I can.

Poor Em. She really wanted to go to school this morning in spite of being exhausted from another night of waking up at 2am and not getting back to sleep. I let her go, but with a note to her teacher. The teacher called at around 9:30 and Em’s back home again. She went right to her bedroom and lay down under the covers still in her school uniform. She wasn’t able to get to sleep, and now she’s on the couch watching TV quietly.

At this point I’m not sure what’s going on. We’ve changed pillows, gotten an air purifier (although the pollen was very low yesterday), and made as many adjustments as we could without disrupting the regular nighttime rituals. Right now I’m looking at diet as a possible culprit. She’s a little lactose intolerant, and she had ice cream late in the day on Saturday and Sunday. She didn’t show any gastric distress at all but it could still be affecting her. But then, the last time we had a run like this it was a Mon-Wed, so maybe that’s not it after all. Her father and his father both have bouts of insomnia, so maybe it just runs in the family.

I don’t know. I just know she’s miserable. Hopefully tonight will be better.

The little visitor was back last night. It feasted on a piece of toast leftover from yesterday’s breakfast.

You may notice that the toast is wet. That’s because the raccoon upended the “sweet potato in water” experiment to moisten its food. Clever! I refilled the sweet potato and the raccoon came back about 15 minutes later to drag the second piece of toast we made out of the trash.

As my husband points out, this is all very cute now, but at some point it will strew all the trash across the lawn and then it won’t be so cute.

Em had trouble sleeping again last night. She maintains that her pillows aren’t comfortable. I’m wondering if the bedframe cutting into the pillows, or if it’s maybe the mattress. She was also sniffling some yesterday evening, but the pollen count was low, so I think maybe she’s got a little bit of a cold.

Today, Em is lying on the couch and watching Disney Channel reruns that my dad recorded for us years ago. Clearly her energy level is not where it should be, although she does seem to be rallying a bit. My energy level isn’t that great either, what with staying up late and then Em being up intermittently from 3am-4am.

Well at least this happened on a weekend. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for tonight.

It’s EOG time for the local schools, the end-of-grade testing that determines so many things. They really stress it. Emphasis on stress. I was talking with the moms of Em’s Girl Scout troop yesterday, and one said that she was so freaked out about it that morning that she was crying. It’s a lot of pressure.

All of which led to this e-mail exchange.

We’ve got my husband’s Windows machine set up so that he has his password, I have my password, and Em has her password, and we can all access our respective sides of the computer without Em accidentally causing problems on the adminstrator side. Emily really wants to know my password.

Em: “If I guess, will you tell me?”
Me: “No! It’s my password, it’s supposed to be a secret.”
Em: “What if I guess?”
Me: “You won’t be able to guess it, but okay, go ahead.”
Em: “….is it ‘knitting’?”
Me: “Ooh, good thought! But no.”
Em: “Hm… …is it ‘coffee’?”

Hee! No. We explained how passwords are supposed to be something hard to guess, so she wouldn’t be able to guess it. But I LOVE that she immediately came up with two things so near and dear to my heart. I guess I’m an open book.

Several times over the last few months my daughter has mentioned that she wanted to go inside a particular office building near our house. I can’t blame her. It’s big and shiny, with a mirrored glass and polished marble exterior and a fountain out front. She mentioned it again on her way to the dentist yesterday, and she was so anxious about going to the dentist that I suggested we go visit it the following day. Which was today.

I learned a lot of valuable lessons from my mother, most of them by her example. But one of the ones she taught me which was stated expressly was, “If you look like you belong somewhere, people won’t question it.” Very true. I put that to good use many times working in TV. With that in mind, I put on “business casual” attire for our trip. Em belongs everywhere, so she needed no dressing up.

We roamed around the halls, with me directing us so that we didn’t pass the same place too many times. Then I said, “Would you like to go to the top floor and look out the windows?” Answer: yes!

We took the elevator to the 14th floor. (Em: “This is like a ride!”) Just off the lobby was an office occupying all of the window views. I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me. Window offices must be in high demand, they wouldn’t just put a window on a hallway when they could charge big bucks for it instead.

We went to the receptionist, and I said, “Hi!” with a big smile. The receptionist said, “Oh, hello!” I said, “I’m wondering if I could ask a favor. She (pointing to Em) was wanting to see the view from up here, I’m wondering if there’s a window we might be able to look out of for just a minute.”

The big conference room with the best view was right behind her and obviously in use, but she thought for a moment and looked around and said, “Sure!” and added, “Oh, I can’t believe she’s so big!”

It was at this point that I realized she thought Em was the daughter of someone who worked there. Two choices presented themselves. One, correct the misunderstanding and possibly have her tell us we couldn’t go into the office, or two, just roll with it.

You know me. I’ll do anything for my kid. I chose to roll with it.

The receptionist gave us both visitor badges and showed us to a smaller conference room. And the view was great! We could see all the way to center city and beyond, and Charlotte’s famous canopy of trees was stretched out as far as the eye could see. Really spectacular.

Once we’d had our fill, which didn’t take long with a ten-year-old’s attention span, we went back to the reception area and gave our badges back, and I thanked the lady warmly. She said, “I just can’t believe she’s so big. Do you think she looks like Angie?”

I smiled and said something like, “Just look at those eyes!” which could work as “not at all, Angie doesn’t have eyes like that” or “yes, of course, Angie has eyes just like that!” and technically I wasn’t telling a falsehood. Thankfully somebody else came up and in the confusion the response was lost. Unfortunately, the receptionist said to the newcomer, “Look, that’s Angie’s girl!” We beat a hasty retreat to the elevators, where we shared a car with the lady who thought Em was Angie’s girl.

Mentally, I was saying, “please don’t know Angie, please don’t ask questions” but the polite silence of the elevator saved us. She got off and we continued down, our excellent adventure at an end.

Em had fun, saying, “That was like a dream!” She wants to go back again. Unfortunately, we can’t go back to that office, since before we get back Angie could come in and hear that her daughter had visited. I’d rather not have security called on us.

There’s a nearly identical tower right next to the one we visited. We’ll sneak into that one next time.

I stayed up way too late last night finishing up a project, which I hoped to have ready this morning. It’s 90% done, but it needs a finishing touch and probably won’t be ready until tonight, so I would have been better off going to bed early. Oh well.

However, Em did stay asleep all night. Before going to bed, she asked if we could change her pillowcase. One of the thing she’d said a few nights ago while awake in the middle of the night was that her pillow was uncomfortable. But that was one of a litany of things that were wrong, and I figured it was just one more on the list of things to say when upset. The fact that she said it last night before going to bed told me that yes, her pillow probably was uncomfortable. Fortunately, we have a spare. I set her up with two pillows last night and said she could switch them to see which she liked best, or could have them both on her bed. She went with that. So now she’s added another pillow to her nest of dolls and blankets. But hey – she stayed asleep all night. I’m not complaining. Besides, I also had an ungodly amount of stuff on my bed as a child, so I have no room to talk.

In spite of being up late and being very tired this morning, I geared up to run before dropping Em off, then went straight to Little Sugar Creek Greenway and ran. I’m running faithfully again now that the weather is good. I lost the couple of pounds I picked up over the winter, so I’m back to where I was when I started slacking off due to cold weather. Anything else from here on is forward progress.

It was misting slightly when I started. I like running in the mist, but it always leaves me wishing I had little windshield wipers on my glasses. A bonus of going at 7:15 in the morning in the mist is that aside from a couple of dog walkers, nobody else was out. I have to admit that I feel a little superior when that happens. “Ha! You super-fit exercise maniacs who glide effortlessly past me don’t have the huevos to come out in the morning rain, eh? Come back when you’re serious!”

The mornings are good on the Greenway. I saw a rabbit, some ducks, and a hawk which was being chased by a little songbird. On the down side, because of the deluge a few days ago, the waters are still receding and the entire stream area smelled like wet dog. Small price to pay.

My mother is coming over soon. We’re going to see Star Trek at a local IMAX theater together. And because she loves me and wants me to be healthy and happy, I know that she will be okay with my decision to go running instead of cleaning the shambles that is my house. Let’s hear it for Trekkie families with their priorities straight. Live long and prosper, y’all!

And now for something completely different. I haven’t knitted lace for several years, and I’ve never used needles this small before, so this is definitely an interesting change of pace. The needles are US size 00, which translates to 1.75mm in diameter. The Jayne hats are knit on 6.5mm needles. The yarn is Caron Impressions 50% wool 50% silk embroidery floss. Can’t tell you what it is yet, though.

Em’s been having trouble sleeping, which means we’ve all been having trouble sleeping. Two nights ago she woke up at 4am. She does this occasionally. She says she doesn’t want to sleep, but she doesn’t want to get up, which apparently leaves talking loudly about how miserable she is. She asks, “How can I fall asleep?” and our suggestions are tried for 0.5 seconds and then the talking starts again. Nothing we could do would help, nor could she seem to keep her misery to herself for more than two minutes, no matter how hard she tried. Finally my poor husband, who had been in at work at 3am the previous morning, couldn’t even pretend to sleep anymore and had to get up. He’s been working his butt off and he really, really could use a good night’s rest. Of course she went to sleep two minutes after he stepped into the shower, which was at about five in the morning.

Yesterday afternoon I taught Emily some relaxation exercises that I’d learned. Simple stuff, just relaxing your body one bit at a time, visualizing all your tension leaving your body, etc. I sweetened the pot by telling her I had learned them in seventh grade, which was true, so I think she felt like it was a good teenage thing to do. She fidgeted some as we tried it out side by side on the bed, but said she got it.

Last night she woke up again at 2am and it started up again. I got up and went to her door and said, “Can you try your relaxation exercises?” “Okaaaaay!” And she actually went back to sleep. She woke up again at 4am but again, went back to sleep fairly quickly. We could STILL use a good night’s sleep, but it’s progress.

There are a few possibilities here. One is that the relaxation techniques worked. I’d give that a 25% chance of being true. Another is that it was coincidence. I’d give that a 25% chance of being true. The most likely reason things went better, in my opinion, is that she had a way to take control of the situation. I think just knowing that she COULD consciously relax helped her mentally get past her “I can’t sleep!” block. Whether the techniques physically worked probably wasn’t nearly as important. Knowing that you have options brings tremendous peace of mind.

I find this is true for a lot of life. When we feel we have no control, that’s when we sink into despair. When we find a way to regain even the smallest measure of control over our lives and our situations, that’s when we can take a deep breath, relax, and get back to dreaming.