Care for a lick?
Today is the one year anniversary, or blogiversary if you will, of Shoes on the Wrong Feet. According to Word Press the one year mark actually fell on July third when Husband confirmed the creation of the domain name and money exchanged hands but I did not post for the first time until July fifth. This two day discrepancy is much like the one of America’s Independence Day where the resolution for independence was approved on July second but was publically declared on July fourth (not that I am at all saying that my little blog and the Declaration of Independence are anything alike, mind you.) I, like my great nation, choose to celebrate on the latter of the two dates; America celebrated with fireworks while I celebrate with, well, this blog post.
I remember sitting on the front steps of our house with Husband. I think we were drinking Coronas with slices of lime and watching the boys run through the sprinkler in the front yard. I had been thinking of starting a blog for a while but I was not exactly sure what one was and how a person went about acquiring one of their very own.
We kicked around ideas for names, several of them were a play on words using our last name. Some of them included mention of coffee or beer or moonshine but none of those felt right. I wanted to write about the boys but I did not want to limit myself to that. Shoes on the Wrong Feet came to me and I warmed up to it right away.
It can have many meanings, Shoes on the Wrong Feet. It can refer to a child’s innocent mistake when it comes to putting on their footwear. It can mean that someone is wearing shoes meant for someone else (figuratively, of course) as they walk through life. The shoes of mother, daughter, wife, sister, friend, microbiologist are they suppose to be on these feet of mine? Is this who I am? Am I comfortable in them, have I outgrown them or is there still room in there for my toes to wiggle?
I have enjoyed blogging more than I ever thought possible. I thought it would be a place where I would write about the boys’ fun little antics and post pictures of them as they grew. It is that but it has become so much more. I had no idea I would start writing about such personal things as Cody’s seizures or my dad’s struggle with Alzheimer’s and finally his death. I had not considered the healing properties of blogging. I had also not considered the social aspect of blogging. I find myself with a network of people who care and are interested in my life just as I care and am interested in theirs. I have made some amazing connections with people.
So on this day, I would like to say thank you for being a part of my life and for sharing in your own way a part of yours. I have greatly enjoyed this journey and look forward to where the next year will find me.
Yesterday was the lowest tide of the year in our area.
The boys and I went on a tide walk hosted by an organization dedicated to educating the public about marine wildlife and preservation of our beaches. The gentleman who heading up the tour was an older man, a retired university professor and a specialist in marine biology. He was energetic and genuinely excited to be there to share his knowledge with adults and children alike. He reminded me of my dad.
We got there an hour early as we had been informed that parking at that narrow stretch of beach was tricky and filled up fast during one of Ernie’s talks. We parked easily, accidently meeting up with Ernie and his small group of helpers as they were collecting specimens in large white buckets. We joined in the search: sand dollars both alive and dead, crabs of many varieties, small fish, clams, jingle coins, chitons, sun stars, whatever sparked an interest in the gatherers.
As our collection grew, Ernie spun tales of laboratory experiments and would give out little tidbits of information. He suggested to the tisk-tisking parents trying to keep their kids from walking in the water to let the beach water overflow their children’s boots, “Let their boots fill with water early so you don’t have to worry about it the whole time.”
There was a spark in his eyes as he talked and I felt my own eyes sting as I fought back the tears from memories of my dad giving similar talks on similar beaches.
We saw some amazing sea critters, a non-scientific term my dad was fond of using. We met some great people and we had a wonderful time. It was strangely hard for me to say good-bye to Ernie as we thanked him and prepared to head home. The wind picked up as we walked away and Cody and Carter started calling out good-bye to the various sea life we had seen. Good-bye sea stars! Good-bye crabs! Good-bye sea anemones! Good-bye sand dollars!
I dumped the Puget Sound out of the boys boots and stripped them of their wet pants. As I was buckling Cody into his car seat he told me that it was the best day of his life. When I asked him why he told me because we get to ride home in our underwear!
One other thing, if you don’t mind. Last night I had a dream about my dad. It was vivid. It was the first time I had dreamed of him since his death in February. He was standing in the middle of a stream in the woods and he had a twinkle in his pale blue eyes. He was wearing his tall black boots, jeans, and a faded blue long sleeve button-up shirt with a white undershirt peeking out from the top. His John Deer cap was slightly askew on his head and he was smiling. He had found something of interest in the water and wanted to show it to me. It was the first time my memory had given me such a clear image of my dad that had not been of him on his deathbed. It was wonderful.
I do not hold dreams up to be something otherworldly nor do I try to read meaning in them but I think that our tide walk helped me remember him during the good times, the healthy days before Alzheimer’s. I have been struggling with this. It feels sometimes as though the image of his frail and failing body has taken hold of my mind and has squeezed out the hundreds of thousands of good images from all the years before. It was nice to have such a solid and lovely image of my dad this morning.
In a move that will further complicate my life but make the boys ecstatically happy, we have a houseguest staying with us for the summer. He is twelve years old, and since our house is small and Cody already knows him, he will be bunking in Cody’s room. The weekend before last we went as a family to pick him up. I was apprehensive about this endeavor because we have more than enough going on in our lives as it is without adding to it. To be honest what has been keeping me up at night is that extra mouth to feed. In particular, Bungee’s mouth.
Bungee is a twelve year old corn snake who is used to eating live mice every couple weeks. He is one of Cody’s kindergarten class pets. Every summer Cody’s teacher looks for suckers victims bleeding hearts families who want to keep one of the class pets for the summer. Since I was one of the kindergarten room moms (oh yes I was, and oh no I am so not doing that again) I told her we would take Bungee if no one else wanted him. I felt pretty safe in saying this because she had told me that he is usually the first one to be claimed, being that he is a snake and there is a cool factor involved with that.
The three fish were the first to go followed by Shorty the stumpy legged turtle. Then nothing. She asked again in a general email to all the parents but there were no takers. So it was that on the the first day of summer vacation we found ourselves back at the school getting a lesson in how to feed and care for him.
Corn snakes, sometimes called the red rat snake, are typically found in the eastern parts of the United States. They are usually dark orange or brownish yellow with large splotches of red down their backs. Their underside look like a checkerboard with alternating rows of black and white little squares and they can range in length from two to six feet. They are constrictors. First they bite their pray and then, squeezing them tightly in a warm inviting hug, suffocate them before gulping them down whole.
Bungee is used to being picked up and generally manhandled (or is that kidhandled?) by several dozen adoring five and six year olds. He has never been so rude as to bite or suffocate anyone that is not mouse-like. He is used to the loud chaos that reigns in a kindergarten class. It is all old hat to him and he takes it in stride. He is a gentleman among snakes.
I am not a snake person. They rather freak me out. I am sure I have touched a snake a time or two but have never held one until two weeks ago. And you know what I found out, he is kind of neat. I find myself talking to him in that high pitched sugary voice one reserved for babies and puppies. I have given him nicknames and find myself checking on him multiple times throughout the day worrying if he is warm enough or perhaps too warm. I feel guilt if he is not taken out of his cage and played with on a daily basis.
I think having Bungee as a summer houseguest will be fine. Plus I am scoring huge cool- mom points with the boys. I will be feeding him for the first time in the next day or two so I reserve the right to change my story about how nice it is to have him around. I will let you know how things go (don’t worry there will be no picture of him eating, I promise.)
A week or two ago Carter called me outside to look at a sun rainbow. I grabbed the camera and took this shot. Yesterday a friend of mine posted this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson on Facebook and it struck a chord with me. I have been grumpy about canceling our road trip to warmer places and tired of feeling stuck inside with sick kids while watching the rain fall outside my window. Emerson’s quote made me immediately think of Carter’s sun rainbow picture. The two seemed perfect for each other.
While putting this together I looked up sun rainbows just for the heck of it and learned about sun halos, a much more scientific sounding name than sun rainbows, I suppose. Apparently you need high altitude cirrus clouds which are made mostly of ice crystals. These ice crystals refract the sunlight like a prism would, causing a rainbow around the sun. Interesting and pretty.
Although I think I prefer Carter’s name for this event than that of the scientific community’s.
The bags still sit by the front door and Dexter is beyond confused. He knows that suitcases by the door means that someone, possibly he included, is going somewhere.
Two hours before we were to leave and about three hours after I posted that we were almost off on our road trippin’ adventures Carter spiked a fever. A 103 degree fever. He was radiating heat and covered in goose bumps and immediately fell asleep after I gave him Ibuprofen. Husband and I hemmed and hawed and changed our minds a dozen times. In our minds were were on the road. Everything was in place. The hotel reservation was made and our plans were in motion. Carter would just sleep in the car and we could make it the first leg of our trip. Maybe he would wake up the next morning and be back to normal. Maybe he would not. Maybe he would vomit or have diarrhea while we were driving. He would be miserable and therefore we would be miserable. We could not do that to him.
We made the tough but what I feel is the correct decision. We stayed home. There is a chance that he will make a full recovery come the morning and if so we will load up the car and drive. But I am not holding my breath.
Rats.
The leftovers have been eaten, the newspaper delivery canceled, the trash taken out, and the humming bird feeders filled. The neighbors have been put on alert and a couple of friends have been lined up to pop over and water the garden and generally check on things. An extra litter box has been put out and Delilah has enough food and water to last a herd of elephants for as long as we are going to be gone (although I don’t think the litter box situation would suffice the elephants.) The bags are packed. It was not hard really considering our summer wardrobe is not very extensive living in the Pacific Northwest as we do. We shall be hitting the road soon. I can feel it, another great adventure is just around the next bend.
I wish I could say that I am one of those bloggers who have piles of posts horded up in a dusty cupboard somewhere to be dispensed evenly throughout time. I do have a couple tucked away, a very rare thing for me. I almost consider it cheating to stockpile posts as I tend to write off the cuff about current events in my life (not to be confused with current events in the world.) It just does not feel right of me to post about something random while I am taking a road trip with my family. Since I do not foresee myself having time to blog while singing “Ninety-nine Boxes of Juice on the Wall” for the hundredth time to keep the kids occupied, you will just have to go about your lives and trust that I will return.
I will try my best to post a Simple Sunday although not strictly out of loyalty to you my lovely readers, but due more to my anal retentiveness at having never missed one. I am picturing a breathtaking photograph of a mountain range in Utah that could grace the cover of a travel magazine coupled with a sentence or two of earth shattering poetry. What you will most likely get is a cockeyed, slightly blurry photo of two blond haired boys, the youngest of which will probably be picking his nose, in our friend’s backyard with a furry Dexter butt in the far left corner as he tries unsuccessfully to be stealth about sneaking a bite out of someone’s hotdog. There will be no caption to go with this picture but it will be clear that we are all having a great time.
Cheers!
With a temperature this morning of 98.7 and a request for bacon, eggs, and toast it seems possible that Cody is on the mend. If that is the case than this post is relevant and I need to do some serious last minute panic packing. Never have I so wanted to last minute panic pack.
In a couple days Husband and I are subjecting ourselves to a thirteen (+) hour drive with two boys and one geriatric dog prone to multiple bouts of room clearing flatulence. Our original plan was to drive straight through, only stopping for potty breaks and leg stretching. It sounds like a great plan, we power through the drive so we have more time at our final destination Salt Lake City, Utah where we will spend time with friends. Once I actually verbalized this plan, I saw flashes of crying children tired of being strapped in their car seats demanding goldfish crackers that were gone in the first one hundred miles, a grumpy momma with a crick in her neck from turning around trying to entertain the kids, and a tired poppa from taking on most of the driving who is expected to magically conjure up a rest stop within a minutes notice.
To minimize the road trippin’ rage and make the journey part of the fun, we have added an overnight stay at a hotel to both the outgoing and return drives. I think the extra cost and loss of time with friends is a small price to pay for my sanity. This is our first serious road trip since Carter was born. The boys don’t know what they are in for and as such are pretty excited about it. Little do they know that ahead of them are long hours in the car looking for out of state license plates and madly mimicking horn honking in an attempt to get truck drivers to blast their horns.
The friends we are going to visit we have known a long time. I met Missy in college at ASU and Husband used to work for Geoff. While we can not take full credit for them meeting, falling madly in love, and getting married I think we can take some credit as they met at one of my birthday parties. Missy and another friend had made a replica of a T-4 bacteriophage birthday cake for me out of brownies, complete with double stranded DNA frosting. It was pure awesome. Husband had brought Geoff along, perhaps as moral support knowing he would be surrounded by science geeks. Maybe Geoff was dazzled by Missy’s ability to make science themed birthday cakes and it just went from there. I honestly don’t know.
Geoff and Missy do not have kids and therefore have no idea what they are bringing upon themselves by inviting us to stay with them. Oh the fun we will have! They do not know that we shall decent upon them with what will appear to be a crazed flock of banana eating locusts disguised as cute blonde haired boys. They do not know that Cody and Carter can eat their weight in hot dogs are are picky about the brand of yogurt they will eat. They have not experienced the last minute crotch grabbing scamper that will end in a small puddle of yellow pee on their guest bathroom floor.
At least they know about Dexter and his flatulent ways.
It has been just shy of eight months. During that time he has had two bouts of fever. Each time we crossed our fingers and watched him like a hawk while alternating acetaminophen and ibuprofen like it was candy. Both times he has gotten through without having a seizure. Before this it had been two and a half years since I could say that he had a fever and not had a seizure. Husband and I were starting to think that maybe, just maybe, it was starting to happen. All those doctors and experts kept saying he would most likely out grow them. We started to allow ourselves to hope that he had. He hasn’t.
This one lasted a little over three minutes and he was so tired afterwards. After a cool bath (to clean the vomit from his hair) we put him in shorts, gave him acetaminophen and he was asleep seconds after his head hit the pillow. He snores like a bear which at times like this is very nice. A consistent, normal sound coming from his room means that he is not seizing. We left his door open and got a visual on him ever ten minutes or so. When it was time for me to go to bed I had convinced myself that he was alright, he felt cool to the touch and was calm. I checked on him one last time and noticed he was thrashing around and moaning. That was all I needed to see to bring out the comforters make a little bed for myself on the floor next to his bed.
It was a long night. He did not sleep soundly so neither did I. Around four he coughed. He felt hot to the touch so I ran to get the ibuprofen. Not a minute later it came back up. Crap. Husband helped with the cleaning of child and bedding and we tried again. This time I sat up in his bed so he could sit/lean against me giving the medicine a change to stay down. We have ibuprofen in suppository form just in case, but luckily for all involved it did not come to that.
This morning his fever is still around. He is is good spirits and is currently playing Legos with Carter. I have one ear out for him always and if I don’t hear him I get edgy. He has already pushed my hand off his forehead and told me “I am fine, momma!” twice today. I canceled his PT and OT and called his neurologist so they could update their history of him. I suppose I should call his pediatrician too.
I am tired. I wish I could rant and rave and stomp my feet and cry that I am tired of this and that I can’t do this anymore but that would be wrong because I know that I can do this for as long as it takes. It could be much worse.
Alright, I am done feeling sorry for myself. I will go make another pot of coffee, slice a piece of banana bread and read books with the boys.
What do you get when you give a four year old your old digital camera? Here is a peek.
Shoes On The Wrong Feet 