Hot Dog, Hot Dog, Buggers in Your Ears

I should have threatened Taye months ago that if he didn’t blow that three year old nose of his really honking good that he would get buggers in his ears. You must give a three year old a very concrete image if you want them to buy into your requests.

Taye woke me up at 3:30 a.m. saying, “Mom, let’s wake up early.” I strongly encouraged him to go back to sleep.

He squirmed and squirmed and finally he said that his ear hurt.  Then began the hunt for the Tylenol and I came up dry.  I had some numbing ear drops, so I pursued that route until I could get to a store combined with sit on mamas lap, head erect therapy at 4 am.  Mickey Mouse Playhouse was creating an early morning ambiance by then ,” Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggedy dog”  and amazingly enough the clock was inching towards 5 a.m.

We just had to make it until 6 a.m. when Safeway would open and we could get the Tylenol.  That stuff works miracles on 3 year old pain. 

Fast forward to 11 a.m:  after visiting the doctor who let me look in Taye’s ear and see this little red bulging bubble—poor boy- we were home, now armed now with Amoxicillin.  I filled the spoon with that magical pink liquid and asked Taye if he wanted to do it himself. He replied he did and I looked away and when I looked at him just one or two seconds later he had the spoon at his ear and was trying to figure out how to get that magical pink medicine into his ear canal! Hot diggedy dog, I saved the day and explained he must drink that pink stuff. Didn't make much sense since his ear hurt.

 

Did I mention that when we were at Safeway some Girl scouts were selling cookies.  Bulging ear or not Taye was up for buying some cookies.  My mama heart wants to buy him whatever he wants because of his pain, but I am thinking of myself and  if I buy those cookies I will eat two thirds of the box.  So, I told him he could get something special in Safeway.  I was still soft hearted.  First he wanted a Mickey Mouse cake.  I steered him towards cupcakes.  Do you know that Safeway wouldn’t sell me less than 12 cupcakes?  12 cupcakes, uhh, Girl Scout cookies.  Yes, please question my decision making process. In retrospect I should have just paid for 12 cupcakes and taken one home, but that didn’t occur to me at the time. Or any of a plethora of alternatives. 

Cup Cakes and Amoxicillin are good medicine!

In the end Taye has agreed to be the best nose blower ever, because he doesn’t want that to happen again. 

Now if I could only make the same connections for myself with food! Yet, cupcakes are great with a cup of coffee, yet those concrete consequences, but until next time, yum, yum, hot dog, hot dog, hot diggedy dog!

Welcome Maci!

Give a big warm trailer park Howdy to Maci Gray! No, no, no need for you to get out the  hunting rifle and fire off welcome shots, no, no just leave the snowmobile on the front lawn, please don't start yelling at your woman. Okay, crack another beer and listen to Maci's story.

Maci  is a little sensitive because she was left in a backyard, without much food and no shelter, somewhere in  Nebraska, ever since she was a pup. She is now 1 1/2 years old. Maci was rescued from the pound in Nebraska from being euthanized. She is so pretty, loving and well behaved.  We found each other due to Rocky Mountain Lab Rescue. Maci, me and Taye, being together, has that feeling of  a "meant to be" relationship.

So when she leaps  over the coffee table to the couch where I lay and awkwardly places her paws on me, I here her whispering:

Here is my confession
May I be your possession
Boy I need your touch
Your love, kisses and touch
With all my might I try
But this I can't deny...

Love ya Maci.

Now you can pull out the hunting rifles, fire up the snowmobiles and since you've had a few beers, give someone close to you a big wet kiss.

Trailer Class Crash

If this was the first time that I had confused my prescription drugs it might be funny, but now I just look like an idiot.  I now have taken the wrong medication two times in the last six months.  It’s not like confusing your Vitamin D with your birth control pill it’s actually confusing your cholesterol lowering medication with a class of medications called sedative-hypnotics, specifically Ambien.  

One of these is Ambien and the other Lipitor

 Ambien works by slowing activity in the brain to allow sleep, but you can feel the  affects in less than 15 minutes. There is nothing better if you’re having trouble sleeping and nothing worse if you’re trying to start a busy day.I was all dressing for work, had refilled my pill box with medications for the week, popped my pills for the day, the kiddo was ready for school in his favorite green shirt with dolphins on it and we were off. On the drive there I found myself weaving a bit.  I corrected it and told myself to pay attention.  It became a pattern I was having difficulty controlling the closer I was getting to my sons school. The reality of what I had done began presenting itself as I did a little walk and weave into the preschool.

Things now begin to get fuzzy.   I know I dropped him off OK and then I think I talked to the administrative assistant and started crying.  She said she would drive me.  I remember sitting in the passenger seat of my car and crying about my son Jake who has Schizophrenia and what I was going to do next and how unfair the disease is without any laws to help.  I think I decided I had to go back to school and get a law degree in order to make any changes in the system.  Now if getting a law degree doesn’t sound like a hallucination…

She told me about her son that struggles in school and I remember thinking it’s not important, don’t make too big of a deal of it.  Think of his moral and social development. To have your mental health is everything and I certainly didn’t have my mind at this juncture, so why not cry some more.

She took me home. I called work and think I was crying.   I don’t know how my guardian angel got back to work.  I fell in my bed, fully clothed and woke up five  hours later. 

Here I am thinking I better reexamine my life, stay focused on one thing at a time, I need to get rid of the my supreme multi-tasking abilities especially when it comes to organizing my pill box.This is for another post, but I would really like to get rid of pills.

Mpemba Effect

Our hot water was frozen this morning, but not the cold.  I've noticed this happening before, but when I mentioned it to my daughter, Liz, she doubted this was based on any scientific knowledge.  I believe our conversation went something like, "Mom, isn't that completely contrary to principles of thermodynamics?" She didn't really say that, but wouldn't you be impressed if she did. I think she thinks I have been cursed and there isn't a scientific principal to prove this, but let me educate you and her:

Hot liquids sometimes freeze faster than cold.  I think plumbers and ice cream makers all over the world have known this for as long as there have been plumbers and ice cream makers. This phenomena gained attention when a 15 year old Tanzanian student, Erasto B. Mpemba, observed this while making ice cream as a science experiment in his class. Erasto, from the continent of Africa (we are fans of Africa) didn't follow the directions, which stated he should cool his ice cream before putting it in the refrigerator. His classmates did follow the directions and pre-cooled there ice cream.  Whose do you think set faster? That rule beaker Mpemba!

There are  a few theories, but I have not found a definitive answer because it doesn't always happen except at my house!  The theories are: 

1. Faster evaporation of hot water, which reduces the volume left to freeze.

2.  formation of a frost layer on cold water, insulating it.

3.  different concentrations of solutes such as carbon dioxide, which is driven off when the water is heated.

More about Mpemba

My Winter Nemesis

Our Furnace

Living in a town that gets hundreds of inches of snow every year you might guess snow to be my nemesis, but  it is quite the opposite--lack of snow is causing all my winter trailer class woes.  Snow acts as an insulator around the base of trailer. Lack of snow causes my pipes to freeze. But before they freeze the problem is exacerbated by the true evil doer, my furnace.

I'm at work when the wind creeps beneath our floors, rising ghostly towards my pilot light and extinguishing its flame, thus our heat source.That pilot light hides miles away in the depths of that quarter size window attached to a chain.  I travel towards that extinguished flame at least every other day, cursing its obscure location and the emotional control I need to practice as I try over and over to get it lit. 

When it lights the pipes don't freeze, we are warm and Taye and I have a little trailer class celebration, which includes me trying to do some yoga and him trying to ride my back or lay somewhere on my yoga mat where my chest , foot or knee needs to be.  It's all good, its just our trailer class lifestyle.

Turtle Shell Debauchery

I like my neighbors, but I must admit to a contentious feeling I experienced today.  Ed, my trusty fix-it guy and neighbor said to me, "Michelle I saw something the other day that really disturbed me."  My initial thought was, what could I have done, but it was then that I learned about the debauchery that was inflicted upon Turtle's shell.

The Victim: Taye's Sandbox

During the summer months turtle lives basking in the sun of our small front yard.  The neighbor children come and play together here on our lawn and I fill a real sense of community as English and Spanish speaking kids build small sandcastles together and fight over shovels.

Once winter came I emptied Turtle of his sand and leaned him up against the trailer to hold out until next summer.  Maybe that old shell blew away or maybe someone came and took it, but what Ed saw is just wrong.  Everyone knows where turtle lives.

The men across the street placed the turtle shell on its back beneath there car and, and, and, they emptied the oil from there car into turtle.  Not cool, not cool at all. 

We've got water!

 I ran backwards around the trailer three times and then did a lap of sun salutations and it worked!  We now have water! Although, some people think that Ed had something to do with it. 

My thanks go out to my neighbor; Ed. Ed lives two doors down and is always there for us.  He spent the entire day moving heaters around beneath the trailer trying to get the pipes thawed.

Stuff I learned:

1.  If you pour a 5 gallon bucket down the toilet, it flushes—amazing.
2. When Ed refers to needing a Power Bar, he isn't hungry-he wants power strip.
3.  I already knew this, but it’s a good reminder: Ed works darn hard for a 12 pack.