Oh! It is going to be a fun weekend!

The phone rang at 7 a.m. this morning. We generally wake up at 8. Yeah, we have the kids trained for a late schedule.

For a minute I thought "who is that?" Then I knew.

"Jenny?" said my mother-in-law "I missed my flight." "OK," I said. "I'll probably be there at 3," she said." "OK," I said." "I called now so you wouldn't go to the airport to get me at 9." "OK," I said. "I'll call later and let you know what is happening. I'm on stand-by." "OK."

In my groggy brain I wanted to say "but, see, I wouldn't have gone to the airport at 9 ...."

Because your flight was getting here at noon.

zzz

All Clear

Note to self: when taking your child for a procedure that involves, basically, drinking chalk, do not wear a black shirt.

The upper GI showed nothing bad. This is good. The procedure itself involved strapping LittleSister to a board, forcing yucky chalky barium stuff in her mouth with a syringe, and turning her from side to side and taking pictures. Needless to say, she didn't like it.

I take LittleSister to a big teaching hospital nearby, because BigSister had such a positive experience in the NICU there. I truly believe they have the best care around. But every time I go there it is the same experience: the administrative staff are evil and surly, then the doctors are patient, informative, and lovely.

There's also a very evil parking deck that involves circling, but not circling exactly because that would be too organized. It is more likes swirling. In a toilet. And you aren't ever quite sure where you are, but you finally put the car somewhere and hope to find it again. Then you can wait for a shuttle, which may or may not come, or walk a very windy bridge carrying a grumpy hungry child to the hospital.

I got there and asked at the "outpatient clinic" where I should go for an upper GI. She said "downstairs" so down I went. At radiology they said "you have to check-in upstairs at the outpatient clinic." Do you think they could have mentioned that. So we go back. "Do you have your patient card?" says the woman. "She doesn't have one," I say. "She's never been here!?!?!?" says the woman, as if I'm trying to score another plastic card because I so like having duplicate cards in my wallet. "She was born here, but she hasn't been back," I say. The woman sighs deeply. I've been through this before; I have a patient card and BigSister has one. Once the nurse dropped my card behind a machine and I found out they are very easily replaced. But I don't say this. I just wait and in less than 30 seconds she produces a card.

Then we went back downstairs for the strap-to-the-board experience. I'm glad it is over. LittleSister is glad it is over. Now if she'd just quit throwing up.....

Real Life

I'm not good at the level of open discussion that seems to be required of blogging, especially when it comes to my kids. I dote on every cute action, and worry about lots of things, but that's about my kids. I don't observe other peoples' kids at the same level. Do you?

But it is hard to avoid talking about LittleSister right now. She has a lot of minor issues going on. Several months ago I noticed a little lump at the base of her neck. At first I thought it was a swollen gland, but it didn't go away. When we got to the pediatrician she said "not a swollen gland" probably not major; watch it. She said she'd like to discuss it with my sister, who is also a pediatrician (they trained together). My sister took a look and also thought "not major, but can't quite identify the type of cyst."

Then LittleSister started having episodes of vomiting. She'd be asleep and wake up very grouchy. We couldn't calm her. Then she'd throw up, and then she'd calm down. It happened four times over about a week and a half. So we went back to the pediatrician, who went ahead and gave her a referral to a pediatric ENT for the cyst, and gave us some heavy-duty antacid for LittleSister.

And, oh, has getting that into her been fun. She purses her lips and twists her head and yells while I hold a syringe over her mouth and try to get it in before she spits it out.

Despite the antacid, she had another episode of vomiting. This time it was about 10:30 p.m. She'd been asleep and woke up and wouldn't settle. We took turns walking her around, then she threw up all over my husband. Unfortunately, this time it still didn't settle her and she kept crying and contorting her little body until we all finally passed out around 2 a.m.

So I called the pediatrician again. And tomorrow we go in for an upper GI. LittleSister must fast for three hours before the 8:30 a.m. appointment, so she promises to be in a very good mood. And I have to get some kind of barium drink into a 14-month-old who can't be persuaded to drink any kind of medicine or really anything except water or breastmilk. Wish me luck.

It Is 9/11

It hadn't struck me yet, because it is after midnight and I was thinking it was still 9/10.

On 9/11/01, I heard on NPR "a plane has struck the World Trade Center." It sounded like a small plane. I thought "strange" and I went to vote.

In retrospect, I am glad I went to vote. There was a primary in Minnesota that day, and I like to exercise my right to vote whenever possible. But it seems particularly important that I voted then, because the right to vote and be heard is so much of what makes us American.

By the time I was back in my car and on my way to work, people were freaking out on the radio and it was very hard to understand what was happening. By the time I got to work, I only had one thought, the thought we all had "where are our planes?" I worked for a major airline. Planes were dropping out of the sky. It seemed that anything could happen next. And anything did happen as the World Trade Centers collapsed. Eventually we heard that all the planes were on the ground, and it was a relief because then we could just cope without this specter of the unknown lurking. Those few hours, when things just kept happening and it wasn't clear when or where they would stop, were very long.

The world changed that day. I am lucky; I didn't personally know anyone who died that day. But I knew a lot of people whose lives were changed. From that day, we knew our airline would have to lay people off, and a little over two weeks later it did. Good people were suddenly unemployed. We didn't know when we'd be able to fly again. We didn't know if anyone would want to fly again. I loved the airline industry when I started and I had been in it 8 years. It was getting tough before 9/11. After 9/11 it just seemed draining and hopeless. In a sense, my life changed that day, but even now I have a hard time finding the words to express it.

I wanted to try to say something more sweeping, but I don't have the words. The world changed that day.

Answering My Own Question

We caught 13 mice before declaring our garage mouse-free. My husband caught 12 of them in humane traps.

And then there was the 13th.

One night, just as he'd taken the girls up for a bath and I said "I'll be there in just a second," I realized that Diva was inordinately interested in the girls' toys. "This can't be good," I thought. The last time I saw Diva that interested in an inanimate object it turned out I had squrrels living in my walls. In this case, I quickly realized that there was a mouse among the toys. It was a very small mouse, about 2 1/2 inches long, and I think I jumped about 100 times its height. I started to move toys and chase it around, and Diva continued to chase it around too, and grabbed it in her mouth and dropped it. If we'd had a webcam it would have been quite the sight as we both circled the room and I moved objects and jumped. My guess is that Diva brought the thing in from the garage through the cat door for her own entertainment. I tried to find something to trap it, and grabbed a plastic cup. It ran behind the bin-shelves holding toys. I couldn't see it. I feared I'd lost it. Then I realized there was a piece of cardboard on the floor, and I moved it. I jumped again. The mouse was under it. It ran to the corner of the shelves, and I realized I could block it in and get it to run in a shoebox (which I had around for the kids to play with). So I did that and caught it in the shoebox and put the box on the porch.

My husband took it to the woods out back to live with the other mice, though I don't know if "live" is the right word since there is quite the owl population out there. I did find out that my husband's preference for humane traps is not so much because he loves mice, but rather because he once saw a rat partially caught in a standard trap that dragged the trap and trailed blood around the house. Ick. I'm all in favor of the humane traps now. But I still hate mice.

Things Are Not Quiet, Except On My Blog

We had the house painted last week. It looks pretty good, I think, though hiring a contractor for anything always gives me that same warm feeling as buying a used car. I know if I look too hard under the hood I'm going to find something and does that mean I got ripped off, or does it just mean that perfection is hard to achieve in this life?

Meanwhile, BigSister started pre-school (two days a week, 2 1/2 hours a day) with no major trauma, other than LittleSister crying when BigSister left. Unfortunately, BigSister woke up with a very snuffly nose this morning, so I don't know if we'll be experiencing pre-school this week.

I'm also trying to get things lined up for the really big household project: new hardwood floors. I've talked to a mover to move our stuff into our garage, I have the dates (in October), and my main challenge is figuring out what to do with the cat. She's diabetic, and she hates other cats. So generally when we go out-of-town we get a pet sitter. That doesn't work so well when the house is filled with noxious chemicals. I think I may have a solution, but am hammering on the details.

There's more. There's a cyst on LittleSister's neck, we've been referred to an ENT. I changed vets for many reasons but most of all because the vet tech did not know the difference between CCs and Units and I didn't want my cat overdosed. I am scheduling houseguests. I am scheduling travel during the floor debacle. I am doing everything except writing.

I am reading, though. I finished "The Forsyte Saga," which was excellent, though tremendously long. How did I miss this book? It won the Nobel Prize, but I'd never heard of it except as a BBC adaptation. It is very much of its time, but has wonderful characters who are complex and interesting. Now I'm reading Anne Lamott's "Traveling Mercies," which is good because I could use some faith. Why can't I find a church like hers around here?