Important concepts, explained

Winton:  "No, Mummy.  In this game, there are good points, bad points and Hot Lava points."



Clara: "Let's see the wrinkles on the backs of your fingers, where they bend."
Me: "You mean my knuckles."
Clara: "The backs of your fingers, where they bend.  Oh look, see?  You have lines there.  That means you will come back as an animal.  You won't stay dead.  You'll come back as a cat, or a dog, or an elephant."

Pee

1) On Winton, who stank of it ("I had a bit of an accident at school, but it dried out").

2) On my bed, discovered by the girl who sat down in it and started screaming.

I am here at the computer so I don't put the cat out into the freezing cold and can't hear the bath tub running water over Winton's urine-stained and stiff pants/ underwear.

MLK Day and Clara's stomach flu

Me: "Winton, what do you think MLK day is all about?"
Winton: "Martin Luther King JUNIOR had a birthday once."
 Me: "Yes, true.  And you Clara?"
Clara [who's had stomach flu]: "Martin Luther King thought people should be judged by what's inside them not what's outside.  Today I would rather be judged by how my outside looks."

The joys of not medicating

So I've had this chest cold thing.  I went running on Tuesday morning, which added a fever to the mix.  Then I went out Tuesday evening and stayed out slightly too late.  And then on Wednesday night Winton vomited from midnight til 2.30 AM, so sleep was "disturbed."

Consequently, I attributed last night's crippling headache to sinuses and tiredness instead of migraine.  Last night's nausea was assumed to be either a result of swallowing too much mucus or the onset of my version of Winton's stomach ailment.  And when I woke this morning with the same pick-axe through my skull feeling, I thought "Damn!  I have to look after my health better.  These sinuses are killing me."

Headache abated around 9 AM . . . and by 10 I felt quietly, soporifically euphoric if a bit unable to string sentences together.

That's a tell: if I have a migraine and don't treat it with imitrex I get a really relaxed and unfocused euphoria afterwards.

I've had that all afternoon.

It's almost worth the bloody migraines to feel this sedately happy afterwards.

Maybe that's why my children are flooding the bathroom with a mid afternoon relaxa-bath and I am not yelling at them.

Mmmmm.

Today's news

Of the household, I am probably the sickest (ie the most capable of horking up green slime from somewhere in my lungs) . . .

 Clara is also home "sick" from school today (or, she is the reason I am home).  She had a minor fever and a major melt-down and voila: she is downstairs building traps for the cats Pepita and Pumpkin.
She is going to teach them math sentences.

It is also sunny outside so I feel gross, frustrated not to be at work, and frustrated to be inside when finally the weather is pleasant (after more than a week of it being too terrible to be out in).

Today's bathroom story comes courtesy of Winton:
W:"Ooops.  Mummy I peed on the wall by mistake."
Me: "Where?"
W: "There."
Me: "Oh, gross."
W: "And also there, there and there."

Winton: Telling Jokes

W: What did one butt say to the other butt?
Me: [fart noise] ?
W: Nooo!  "I'm a little fruit!  Orange party!!"

[I think the humor of five year old boys might need a bit of weed or something to make sense to grown-ups]

Business Idea

"At your leisure: Medically Induced Comas when you need them"

Would rather skip Christmas through New Year's Day?  We can offer you sound sleep though that entire week.

Temperatures cold enough to freeze nose hair?  Come hibernate with us.

Birthday Week? Check!

Winton's actual birthday: Monday of last week. I made a big chocolate cake with white frosting.  I took the kids swimming.

Clara's actual birthday: Friday of last week (a school day cancelled because of snow . . . but I had made 40 chocolate chip cookies on Thursday night in case school was on that day and Clara wanted to bring treats for her classmates.)

Their father's birthday: Saturday.

Winton's birthday party (at a duck-pin bowling alley, with 13 friends): Saturday.  I hosted and provided veggies and fruit to round out the bowling alley's pizza and soda party package.

Winton's friend's party at the street car museum: Saturday, immediately after Winton's own party.

Dinner for their father (not a huge deal, but a nice meal I made of sausages, egg noodles and greens): Saturday.

Clara's My Little Pony birthday party: Sunday.  I made a life size Rainbow Dash drawing which the children coloured in.  I hosted.  I made fruit and veg and Mac' n' Cheese and we ate ice cream cake for dessert.

Monday: Clara brings Friday's cookies to school.

Now I am at work, resting.

Lost Luggage and Voice

One thing about the Vancouver trip to my parents' was that I lost my bag on the way there.  Well, not lost exactly.  I was flying Baltimore to Toronto to Vancouver.  In the height of the excitement about the ice storm, my trip was re-routed from Baltimore.  I flew from Washington DC instead (which meant an unexpected ride on a commuter train the morning of my departure).  So, I was rattled and delayed and had been to two airports before I had actually really left.

Then, there was Toronto's Pearson Airport, designed, apparently, to control population  size by causing aneurisms in passengers hoping to make connecting flights between the US and Canada but needing to clear customs, immigration and a security line first.

In the melee at Pearson, I claimed someone else's check-in baggage off the belt, cleared it through customs and had it checked (to myself) in Vancouver. I lugged someone else's luggage for close to an hour.  It felt like mine in terms of weight.  It looked like mine in terms of size and colour. 

On arriving in Vancouver (surprisingly, after all that, only 6 hours behind schedule), my father drove me to their house.  We wove in and out of our lane.   It was dark.  It was scary.

And then I assembled dinner for my father, mother and myself out of the items painstakingly procured by my father (rye bread, salami and prosciutto or, as he refers to it without realizing he has it wrong, promiscuitto).

Then finally it was bed time, and I opened "my" luggage, to discover dirty woollen men's socks and a cell phone and laptop with keyboards in cyrillic.


Air Canada had the whole mess sorted out by Christmas day. (Which was remarkable: the baggage handlers are very clever and kind; the clerks helping transfer passengers at Pearson are deliberately slow and cruel.)

And now I am back.  And my luggage is here at the House, and the children are prepping for their respective birthday parties (Winton's is tomorrow, Clara's is Sunday).  And I have lost my voice.

Happy New Year.