The Queen of Lemonade

January 31, 2007 8:26 A.M. So there!

So there! I made it through week four. This week was crazy. I started with a faulty syringe so I had to take another whole dose of Interferon on Saturday. So I have been fatigued and nauseous for days. I didn't write earlier because who really wants to hear about that. But I am a trooper. Monday was horrendous but hilarious. See below if I haven't already told you. The temperature here is dropping rapidly; they expect snow and school closings. However, this morning as I left Panera heading to Trickett Honda to have my transmission replaced, I was freezing. I looked beside me and there sat my hat (now the chicken hat: you see on Monday I purchased chicken nuggets for the kids as an after school snack at Chik-Fil-A. Once I bought the nuggets I thought, how am I going to keep these warm for twenty minutes until we pick up the older kids. I noticed my hat. Aha! I had a great idea. Place the hat over my chicken nugget bag and the fleece would keep it warm. It worked like a charm.) So now as I sat there freezing in the car I picked up the hat and smelled it. Yep, still smelled like chicken. Which means my head would smell like chicken nuggets. After an agonizing two minutes, I donned my chicken hat and drove the rest of the way to Trickett Honda hoping they would not smell me as I got out of the van. Don't worry. I am washing it tonight. And I will probably shower tomorrow to get any residual essence of chicken nugget out of my hair.

My bigger mistake was later today when I was once again at Chik-Fil-A (which has the only indoor play area in case you are thinking I've got a thing for chicken). Today, after I picked up Alex, we met his friend there for a play date. I didn't want to seem like a pill popping mama, so while his friend and his mom went to the bathroom I took a couple of sips of milk shake, downed my pills and started sucking down the rest of it as fast as I could. So it will be a bathroom night for me. But on a positive note, Michael Augustus is pulling his grades back up (see story below). Right now Michael Augustus is reading his brother their bedtime story for me. I helped out in the library on Tuesday and helped organize books in Michael's teacher’s class today, had lunch with Alex today too. The boys seem to be happy to see me helping out at school again. I had pulled away from all of that fearing that I would catch an illness since the medicine I am on suppresses my immune system. So I have the sniffles but I will be just fine. Once again, thank you for all of your prayers.

Love to all,

Kim

OK. Here is what happened Monday night:

First, we start off with the fact that my son got glasses two weeks ago and is refusing to wear them in school. Then we have the fact that because he is not wearing glasses he can't see the board, so he is not doing work in Spanish, and music and his own class. If he continues he will go from straight A's to F's. Add on top of this a homework assignment to write, bind and illustrate their own book, which is due in two weeks. By the way, boys do not like to write stories--that would be girls. So we come home after Kumon last night and Michael Augustus makes a lot of progress on his weekly homework pack. I speak to his teacher about coming in to observe in class so I can figure out what to do. Husband calls, feeling on the verge of a cold, is coming home early. No dinner is anywhere in sight because I am the Homework Nazi and must check on my son every 2 minutes to make sure he is actually doing his homework. I give him a play break so he heads to the recreation room where his brother has been crying for me to help him change a Transformer back into a helicopter.

So I innocently go to the bathroom, (You know this is always a mistake. )

Then I hear the crash and screams.

At first I don't panic, because anyone who has children knows that this is not uncommon when a mom is in the bathroom. It is when Alex screams,” Michael’s bleeding!" that I jump out of the bathroom. Grab some Purell and run out to find Michael Augustus crying on the floor and his head is bleeding. He has run into a junk drawer I couldn't close because the junk would not fit back into it. Blood is on the floor, Alex is stepping in it. I look at Michael's head and he has a gouge in his forehead about one-fourth inch wide that is open and for a moment I think I can see his brain. (It was fat tissue.) Luckily, I am not faint at heart. I grab paper towels to mop up the blood. I get Michael situated laying down and have him hold an ice pack on his head. I call his father who is almost home. Michael Augustus keeps crying he just wants a Band-Aid. I keep checking on his head and wonder if he needs stitches.

Husband comes home, tries to get a hold of his dad, the surgeon. We use some medical tape to temporarily cover it. By the way, my job was to hold the skin together while my husband put the tape on. Pop Pop calls back after hearing about it, he thinks it may need some stitches. OK, so now we load the whole family into the van to go to Portland, thirty minutes away. We have to drive by McDonalds so Alex can get dinner. The rest of us decide to hold out for something better. Oh, and I forgot to mention that I haven't taken my second set of pills for the day yet and am also on the verge of a cold.

We get to his office. I get Alex set up eating french fries outside the surgery room. He finishes before anything happens so I give him some Post-its to draw pictures on. Meanwhile Michael Augustus is finally lying down. Because of the deep cut, my father-in-law says it will need a couple of stitches. Michael Augustus now has a blue paper sheet on his head because he said the light was bothering him. Luckily the paper sheet has a hole cut out for the wound. So my mother-in-law (formerly a registered nurse) is dressed in her nightgown and holding his head steady. His father has his arms, which means I am holding his legs. Pop Pop begins the stitches. In the meantime, Alex keeps wandering in to give us the drawings he has just made, completely oblivious to the hooked needle that is going into his brother's forehead. Each stitch has to be knotted about eight times. These stitches will dissolve so he won't need to get them taken out. Finally, we are done and the grandparents have promised prizes so we go outside where there is a big jar of plastic goodies. Each child gets a handful of stuff and then it is off to the car to go home and get something to eat for the rest of us.

On the way home, Michael Augustus mentions how we have been eating out too much and he is tired of all that greasy food. He suggests that maybe if we plan out dinners for the week we could eat at home more often.

HMMMMMMMMMM!

Love to all,

Kim