Primarily Primary

Spiff and I are the ward's newest primary workers (CTR4). When I was released from the nursery, I found myself surprisingly broken-hearted by the loss of my coworkers, my wonderful class and the familiarity of something I felt like I finally had gotten the hang of. As I prepared the lesson for today, I became less and less excited to try my hand at something so new. Spiff on the other hand is looking forward to a change of pace. This is the first time he hasn't been in the Elder's Quorum presidency since he returned from his mission six years ago.

Our first day went quite well, considering that we both felt like fish out of water. I also think we both enjoyed it. I had to hide my face several times to hide the fact that I was cracking up at the silly things the kids were doing. And as an added bonus, the kids listened really well! They participated, and we ended in about the right amount of time, so we didn't have to scramble for boredom busters at the end of church.

The highlight of the day was singing time. The chorister is a genius and brought a game for the kids that she made at home by cutting eight holes out of a large cardboard box and covering them with pieces of tissue paper. She calls it "Singing Time Punch Out". Like a game on the Price is Right, kids are called up and they punch out a hole, which has the name of the next song behind it. Not only do the kids get to take turns participating, but they get to legally punch the crap out of something! Pure genius!

Anyway, we're in new territory, and we need your help. My question to our faithful readers and anyone who has experience teaching primary classes:

What are your genius ideas? What do you do to make your lessons interesting? Do you have any awesome tricks or games that engage the kids?

Swing

"Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth becasue one we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters." Thus wrote Scott Peck in his work The Road Less Travelled. I would not say that my life is particularly difficult, far from it really. Like you, I have friends and aquaintances who have survived or are currently living through hellacious trials. In particular, I have two friends whose children are sick with diseases which may them within the next 6 months or 16th birthday. I cannot conceive of the grief and pain that such a burden must be for them. Obviously, life can be punctuated with periods of great pain and anguish, which are tempered by periods of joy and elation.

As we raise little Gunner, I see just how much inner dampening of our emotions happens as we age. He has no filters or coping mechanisms to suppress rage, fear, grief, sadness, joy, and exuberance. As a consequence, he throws tantrums, and two minutes later gives us a hug while belly laughing. He feels the full spectrum of unfiltered emotion. I think he is acutely aware of how vulnerable he is in the world, because to be 18 months old is to be utterly powerless. I recall as a child my mother would tell me that adolescents think they are immortal. As a teen myself, I recalled those words, but never felt myself immortal, but perhaps invulnerable and supremely confident in my own strength and intelligence. As a parent myself I realize now that nobody is spared heartache and pain and that my invulnerability of adolescence was an illusion founded in ignorance. Now that I have friends who have survived tragedy the fact that Bad Things can happen is more real than it used to be 10 years ago.

Though there is pain and hardship in life, there are occaisionally moments of perfection as well. In popular psychology this is known as "flow", but as a rower, my coaches identified this concept as "swing". In rowing this would be those all too rare moments when the boat was perfectly balanced, when everyone was concentrated on their technique, the boat was surging smoothly through the water and bubbles from the bow-wave were audible under the hull. Time slows down, physical pain may be present but is irrelevant, and for a few brief minutes, there is perfection. Inevitably the spell is broken and we return to the real world where things break and don't go according to plan. As Scott Peck elucidates in The Road Less Travelled, these moments are the exception, rather than the rule, although we frequently lead our lives as though the reverse were true, and that any deviation from perfection is the aberration.

Where do I find swing? There are times when biking when my feet turn effortlessly despite intense exertion and the pedal stroke is smooth and perfectly round, the bike is rolling as though pushed by a tailwind. Downhill skiing is the perfect mixture of danger and concentration that allows me to swing. Recently I have found it in brief moments while inline skating. And professionally, I have experienced during my anesthesia rotations. I am not a very emotive person, but there have been times during these last two rotations where things felt as "right" as they did when my lightweight men's four man shell was perfectly balanced and slicing through the water. Since I have never yet felt this way during any of my other rotations, I can say that anesthesia is definitely for me, without reservation.

Editor's note:

It has come to the attention of the editorial staff that there was an erratum in the previous post. Windy did not in fact have an accident after her prolonged journey.

PB4UGO

Spiff often tells me that when he is an anesthesiologist, he wants a personalized license plate that says N2B8R. He also wants one that says PB4UGO. I thought of that today when I was stuck in bumper to bumper construction traffic on the highway and I regretted my decision to just hold it until I got home.

I went to a mall with a good friend today so she could retrieve the purse she left at Cabela's last night. It was supposed to be a short trip, there and back, with a stop at the play structure so the kids could run around. Out and back, before lunch and naps.

But it wasn't.

We missed our exit on the way there and had to call a friend to give us directions. My friend's camera was dropped and broken on the way into Cabela's, one week before her son's 1st birthday. We stopped to play at the structure only to discover that all three kids were ravenously hungry and weren't up to playing. We went in search of food and missed the entrance to the food court. By the time we got them all fed, they were tired, and we were in a hurry to get them back in the car and home before a meltdown occurred. I thought about visiting the ladies' facility, but in my need to avoid critical mass, I decided to hold it for the relatively short drive home.

And then we missed our exit on the way home (purely because we weren't paying attention) and ended up across the river and into the neighboring state.

Since we had gone so far from our missed exit, we decided to keep on going and go home on a different highway, which turned out to be 12 extra miles. After finding that highway, we turned homeward and got stuck in construction traffic, 15 more miles from home. At which point both younger kids woke up from their way-too-short naps. Sigh.

It was a terribly funny day, and we got a good laugh. And when I got home, I was oh so happy to see my bathroom, though naturally it was too late.

So it begins...

There is a story in Spiff's family that is told again and again. When Spiff was a young child, he found the slots on the dishwasher (the vent) to be the perfect size for coins. He proceded to fill the front of the dishwasher with various pennies, nickels and quarters which then lived inside the dishwasher door for the rest of its existence. They never retrieved the cash.

This morning, while I was doing laundry, and going up and down the stairs to our treacherous unfinished basement, I noticed Gunner playing with the doorknob to the basement door. Months ago, before he knew how to descend stairs safely, I turned around from doing laundry downstairs, and I found him sitting as quiet as a mouse at the top of the stairs. We immediately put a doorknob cover on the door.

As he was playing with the doorknob this morning, I thought for sure that he was figuring how to open it with the cover on it. I imagined him tumbling down the stairs onto the concrete basement floor, and dread filled my heart until I took a closer look and found this:

It must be a boy thing. And cute or not, I fear for my dishwasher.

New Hobbies

I've decided to take up speedskating. Why? Because there's spandex involved. Well, not really, but it does seem like all my other sports do involve an inordinate amount of lycra. Swimming-speedo, Cycling-shorts and jersey, rowing-unisuit (think modest wrestling suit), and now speedskating which involves essentially more cycling gear. Why speedskating you ask? Hmm, again, true to form it's a relatively obscure endurance sport rewarding technique and stamina and filled with lactic acide and pain. It's fast and graceful. My real wish is to do long-track speedskating like the olympics, but there are only a handful of 400m ovals in north america, and none of them are here in town. Short track can take place on any regulation hockey rink, so that is a possibility. There is a speedskating club here in town, but I'm not sure I can justify the club dues and the equipment on our student budget. So, that leaves us with off-ice speedskating, which is inline skating.

In the good ol' days of 8th and 9th grade, I used to skate frequently on my trusty Bravoblades by Rollerblade. Since I no longer sport a men's size 7 shoe, those skates are long gone. I have instead decided to work my way into speedskating from the ground up, using cheap-o recreational skates until my legs are ready for more advanced skates. Craigslist was good to me on thursday, and I got a pair of skates, pads, and a bag all for $60.

I tried them out in the park that evening and fell back in love with skating. It's like running only faster. I went to the larger park here in town and managed to skate the 5 mile circumference in about half an hour. At least now I have a baseline to compare myself with.

Since there don't seem to be any local inline clubs, I have been using Youtube for technique and tips, although I might have to spring for a book and maybe try to find some real people to work with as well. My current goal, pending a match at my #1 in Minnesota, is to to do the North Shore Inline Marathon near Duluth. We'll see...

Gunner

Gunner has been doing some very cute new things that I don't want to forget about. Here's a small update of our almost-18-month-old.

He jumps. He can get both feet off the ground! He stops just about anywhere at any time of the day and jump, jump, jumps. He knows he's cool. And I'm pretty proud of my little athlete.

He started singing! I will say to him, "Can you sing, La La La?", and he will respond, with a curled up tongue, "daa, daa, daa", or stick his tongue way out and say "laaaa, laaa, laaaaaaaaa." And of course, he has to applaud for himself.

He nods his head when he wants something. For example, if he sees you with a cookie, he will come up to you with his head nodding, like he's saying, "Yes, you will give me some of that, please, now, thank you."

He likes to knock on doors. He likes it so much that he will start "knocking" as soon as we pull up to someone's house, while he's still in his car seat. And of course, he keeps on knocking all the way to the door.

He plays the piano with us. He sits next to us on the piano bench and adds his contemporary flavor to any piece we play. When he gets tired of me playing, he grabs my arm and hooks his around it...and holds me captive. It's so cute, but it sure makes it hard for me to get any real practicing done while he's around.

He loves balloons. We brought two helium balloons home from a party a couple weeks ago, and he loved them so much that he would not let go of the string they were attached to. We had to pry his hands open to get him dressed, which sent him into hysterics until his arm was through the sleeve and we could give the balloon right back. He even went to bed with them one night (don't worry, we took them away just after he went to sleep).

He also loves little cars. He clutches them almost as tightly as he clutched the balloons, and won't let go until he's asleep. He is also starting to play imaginatively with them. So fun!

He grabs my hand and takes me places. If he wants to go somewhere, he'll grab my hand and pull me along. He even does it when I'm holding him, although it doesn't work very well.

Some of his words:

Dad "Da"

Mom "mommy"

I Want That "mommymommymommymommy"

Car "car" (he said "car" about five times one day, but hasn't said it since.)

Usually car, truck, train, plain, helicopter, or any vehicle is "brmmm brrmmm"

Airplane and helicopter are "brmm brmm" with a flying hand motion.

Duck "duck duck duck duck" (always with a head bob)

Bird "bir"

Dog "doggie" or "dah"

Cat, a high pitched squeal

Fish "whish"

Ball "ba"

What is that? "Thisisthat"

No "nah no" (or when he's tired, it's a whiny, "Noooooooooooooo!" to everything.)

More, not a word, but a hand motion (think "milk" in baby sign)

I'm loving being his mommy. He's so cute and fun, and I love his happy personality and enthusiasm for live. He makes me happy every day.

Deepest Desires of My Heart

I am not a garage sale-er. I have been to a few yard sales, but I generally don't go out looking for them. I have friends who find amazing things at amazing deals at garage sales, and I sort of wish that I would do it. Apparently, my subconscious thinks so, too.

I have had my eyes on a few items for Gunner. I have looked in stores and online a bit, but haven't purchased anything since they seem like such a luxury. And what are these items? A tricycle and outdoor play equipment (namely a water table) for Gunner. I didn't realize how much I desire, want and covet these things until I had multiple dreams where I find happen upon a garage sale and find perfect deals on these toys. And then I wake up and realize that it wasn't real.

And Gunner is still without a bike. A bike which I thought I bought for him, but that he can't yet figure out how to ride.

I can't tell you how disappointed I have been when I wake up from these dreams. Or how strange I have felt to have dreamt them at all.

I guess I want these things so badly because my boy would love them so much. He loves loves loves other children's bicycles. He's not big enough to actually ride them, but he sure does love to climb on them, sit on them, scoot around on them, and it's an extra special treat if someone will actually push him around on them.

The water table is just an extra. We don't own our back yard, so I don't feel like I can put a kiddie pool out there. A water table sounds like a super fun and easily-storable Summer Fun option for us. I know he would love it.

It's funny that my apparently-very-deepest desires revolve around the potential commercial happiness of my son. I wonder why I'm not dreaming about a month-long vacation with Spiff, say...in Hawaii...without Gunner. Imagine the sleep we'd get! That sounds like a better dream to be having. But I sure wouldn't see Gunner's amazing little smile and hear his contagious laugh if I left him with Grandma and went off to Hawaii without him.

I guess that's why I dream about garage sales.

Easter

I taught my nursery class our Easter lesson on Sunday. All seven 2-3 year olds were so excited to learn about Easter, and they asked me to tell the story over and over. I told it at least 4 times. We talked about how Jesus died, was put in a tomb (Me: say Tomb. Them: "Tooooom!"), then was resurrected three days later. They especially loved the part about how the stone was rolled in front of and then away from the tomb. They are cute kids, and it was a fun lesson to teach.

Then during coloring time, I remembered that one of the kids had just had a birthday. So in order to highlight the birthday girl, I asked her, "What did you do on your birthday?"

She replied, "Well, I was resurrected on my birthday."

I obviously got the meaning across very well. Happy Easter!

Close Call

This is my dad's plane...

And he loves flying it. Flying makes him so happy that his wife and four children don't really mind his risky hobby. In fact, my mother has worked through her fears and has embraced his hobby. Because Dad is a good, safe pilot, Mom often goes flying with them, and they take small trips together in their little plane.

It was on one of these small trips, just last night, that my dad was forced to make an emergency landing. They lost power, landed on a snow machine road (thankfully not too far from home), and Search & Rescue went to pick them up. The landing was perfect, so my parents and the plane were uninjured. Search & Rescue responded quickly, and their big concern was that Mom & Dad were without heat on a cold evening on a snow-machine-accessible road. They think the plane lost power because the carburetor iced up. This has happened before, and they have taken preventative measures to keep it from happening again.

I spoke with my mother late last night, and she seemed chipper, energetic, and unconcerned. This reassured me enough to be able to fall asleep.

I was at a party when I found out. It was late, and I checked my phone only to find that I had missed two calls from my siblings, who never call that late. I knew something was wrong. The first message I received from my sister informed me that my parents' plane had "gone down", but that they were fine. The second message was from my brother who said, "Why aren't you answering your phone? Pick up your phone! We have news."

These messages left images in my head of balls of flaming metal careening to the ground from the sky, and images of my parents barely escaping the burning wreckage. Of course I was grateful to my siblings for letting me know what happened, and I am so very grateful that Mom & Dad are okay. It doesn't do much to slow my imagination, though.

Ever since our family has embraced my father's passion, we joke that my parents will die together in a plane crash. And quite honestly, for them, I don't think it would be a bad way to go. My dad would probably be smiling all the way to the ground, and my mom would be happy to be holding his hand. And neither of them would be left behind to live life alone.

On the other side of things, anyone who is familiar with Stephanie Nielson's story knows that dying in a plane crash maybe isn't the worst thing that can happen. I have bigger fears than that now.

And last night, when I received those messages, my thought was, "I'm not ready." I quickly found out that everything was fine, but I was still shaken. I'm not ready to live without my parents. I'm not ready for them not to be in Gunner's life. I'm not ready for them to not be a phone call away. It sounds petty, but I'm not ready to go without my mom's cooking advice and Dad's computer, car and building knowledge. I'm not ready to deal with the loss of my parents in any way, and I feel for those people who are dealing with that.

Today I'm grateful for the safety of my parents and that my dad is a good pilot.

Next project: Figuring out how to get their plane off of that snowy road and back to the airport.

Interference

Gunner is a Long Hugger. He is one of those people who goes in for a hug and just doesn't know when to quit. I have had him in nursery a few times and watched him chase down some of the younger kids (older than him), tackle them to the ground with a hug, and continue to hug them while they are begging anyone to help get this kid off them! He hugs babies, and he's mostly soft with them. He hugs older kids, and mostly they just want him to leave them alone. I can tell that he has good intentions, but he just doesn't know when to quit.

Besides that, he is very enthusiastic when he is around other kids. He wants to be involved with them, but they generally don't want to have anything to do with him. This means that when we are together with other kids, I spend my time running interference. I try my best to teach him how to behave around other kids, and to keep him from hurting them (feelings or otherwise). This means that I spend this time keeping him from pushing, taking toys, pulling hair, knocking down towers, and especially tackling with love.

It is exhausting.

I babysat a good friend's 2 1/2 year old for most of the day a month or two ago, and she and Gunner spent the entire day fighting.

I get together for play dates with friends, and I spend the entire time chasing him around, trying to keep him from doing any of the above things. By the end of the play date, I am so tired, frustrated, and stressed that I have wondered if it is worth it for us to get together with other people at all.

But not yesterday. Yesterday I babysat two children. The older one is 3 1/2. I'm not sure whether it's an age thing, or a combination of age and the fact that she is a big sister, but she was amazing! He did his regular tricks, including tackling her with long hugs.

And she just laughed. She hugged and wrestled him back. She played soccer with him. She encouraged him to play with her. She and Gunner actually played together all day long. It was actually easier for me to be at home yesterday while babysitting all day than it normally is because Gunner was being entertained, and I didn't have to constantly referee.

Really what it comes down to is the fact that Gunner should have been a second child. He needs an older sibling. I don't know how we're going to accomplish that, but in the mean time, I'm going to insist that he play with this little girl. A lot. Which is extra good for me since I love spending time with her mother.

"Illness"

I had an intersesting patient this week. JM (we'll call him) is a 43 yo male truck driver with history of asthma, depression, and alcohol abuse who was admitted from clinic after a pulse oximeter (hand held device that measures O2 in the blood) read his oxygen saturation as 78% (normal is 98-100%). At home he has been prescribed multiple inhaled bronchodilators, inhaled steroids, theophylline, and 5 L of 02 via nasal cannula. He was taken from an oustide clinic to the ED, treated with albuterol inhalers, his pulse ox checked again, and it was decided that he should be admitted. His past medical history is significant for numerous admissions for asthma exacerbations, but under names with different demographic information (eg birthday).

The story gets interesting when the pt is admitted to the unit, a blood gas is done which showed a respiratory alkalosis. This means his blood was basic (high pH) with respect to the physiologic norm. Asthmatic patients in crisis are generally unable to sufficiently expel all of the accumulating CO2 due to their constricted airways, and treatment is aimed at opening those airways so that efficient ventilation and thus gas exchange can take place. In the absence of good ventilation, CO2 builds up in the lungs and makes the blood acidic. This patient had the opposite problem, however, which called into question the diagnosis of acute exacerbation of the asthma, which would typically present with an acidosis, rather than an alkalosis.

A respiratory alkalosis can be seen in the case of hyperventilation. When the respiratory rate increases, more CO2 is blown off, decreasing the amount of CO2 in the blood, thus increasing the pH (rendering the blood alkalotic or basic). Why would the respiratory rate increase? In the case of an acute, pure respiratory alkalosis, panic attack is high on the list of possible causes.

The patient was dishcarged to be cared for by us on the floor team after a brief stay in the unit. We checked his blood levels for some of his home medications which showed that he had not been taking them at all. While staying on the floor, the patient rested comfortably, but when visited would complain of chest tightness and would have very poor respiratory effort, shallow breaths, and appear to be in moderate distress. At night and during the day, the patient could be seen to be napping or sleeping comfortably without any evidence of shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, or increased respiratory effort.

The clinical picture I have painted you led us to suspect that his current condition was not an acute exacerbation of asthma. The tricky thing about taking care of patients such as this is parsing out how much of their illness is organic (i.e. deriving from diseased lungs), and how much is psychogenic, i.e. what components of his symptoms were derived from his mind. Despite being psychogenic, the symptoms the patient complained of and the signs he demonstrated on exam are nevertheless real, just not fully explainable by an organic process localized solely to the respiratory tract and consistent with a diagnosis of asthma.

The real challenge is also trying to differentiate whether the pt is conciously faking, i.e. malingering, in order to get some secondary gain i.e. time off work, disability, drugs, or something else, or whether the psychic gain is unconcious. In patients with conversion disorders, a psychic stressor manifests itself through physical symptoms. It is possible, then, that our patient has some stressor in his life that is so profound that his body manifests physically what the mind is feeling psychically. Alternatively, our patient is faking his symptoms or exaggerating them in order to recieve care and to be placed in the dependant role of "patient". What makes this kind of patient especially trying is that it is very tempting to disregard all of their complaints as being psychogenic, when of course they may actually be genuinely sick. It's the old problem of crying wolf. In Aesop's fable, the villager's eventually turned their back on the boy who was eaten by the wolf in the end. The same thing can happen to patients with factitious disorders who every now and again will be genuinely sick, but have cried wolf so frequently that they are disregarded. Trying to sincerely engage a patient in whom you are questioning the legitimacy of their symptoms is very challenging. Those who have cared for a factitious patient will know what I mean, those who haven't may think I am callous for even entertaining the possibility of considering that a patient may be feigning illness. What do you do when this patient comes back to the ER short of breath?


*Editor's note: the patient presented is a composite and the information presented does not reflect the clinical course of any one person for whom I have cared. JM is a pseudonym.

It's all in the details

I played for the high school solo/ensemble festival yesterday. I am very happy that it's over, and the kids did very well. I even managed to talk people into switching their schedules around so that I was done before noon. It was a pain for a lot of people to switch around the solos, and I feel bad for being demanding, but I couldn't justify being gone from Gunner all day long. It worked out in the end, and even the parents ended up being happy about things.

I have grumbled a lot throughout this experience about learning the music and about scheduling issues. And they really are issues for me. But after rehearsing with the kids and their awesome teacher, I remembered how much I enjoy it. Not all of the music is horrible, and even the horrible stuff is sort of exciting when it's played well. These particular students are fantastic. They're smart, they work hard, and they're talented, and I love being their coach/accompanist. I thought at one time of pursuing a career in coach/accompanying. I don't think I could ever do it for professional musicians, but I do love doing it in the student to teacher/coach situation.

One of the things I love about it is the attention to detail. I remember a piano lesson in college when my professor pointed out to me that I wasn't holding a note long enough. I was completely shocked that I hadn't noticed the full note value. Or that it even mattered that I notice that particular note value. And then I went to grad school and realized that everything about music is about the nuances. Every little note has to be held for a precise length of time, every rest released at an exact moment. There must be attention paid to every accent, staccato or slur. Not to mention the numerous musical directions slathered around the pages.

These are things I didn't pay attention to as a high school student, and like I said, I was shocked to find out that they were important. I enjoy teaching students about these things and watching them figure it out. I enjoy coaching them on ensemble issues, including cues, transitions, tempos, rhythms, especially since most of the kids haven't played with an accompanist much, or at all.

Anyway, this is a long way of me saying that I'll probably do it again next year. I will most likely go to the state festival later this Spring to play for the five kids who scored high enough. And I have told their teacher that I will accompany for his middle school students in their solo festival coming up in April.

Medicine

It's been a while since I've written, mainly because I haven't felt like anything noteworthy has happened. I'm currently doing my medicine rotation and enjoying it far more than I thought I would. I'm not sure where I came to the conclusion that I wouldn't like medicine, but I carried that prejudice with me for most of the first half of this year. I have done one inpatient rotation at a local private hospital, as well as an acute care rotation at the VA. I have to say, the VA rotation was pretty cush. 8-330 everyday is a pretty nice schedule. It's going to be hard to get used to getting up early and rounding all day again.
Medicine has been a pretty pleasant surprise. In fairness, however, I was at an outside hospital with residents who let me act somewhat like a sub-intern, so I learned a lot without having to spend all day rounding. I doubt that I will enjoy the endless cogitating and head scratching that constitutes the in-patient medicine at our university hospital.
We are currently in the midst of planning our fourth year schedules which is pretty daunting. All of a sudden I have to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Since before starting med-school, I've always thought I'd be an anesthesiologist and am still about 90% sure that's what I want. There's a nagging 10% though, that is thinking hard about cardiology. We had a really cool grand rounds lecture this morning on the physiology of the heart and it was more interesting than anything I"ve heard in a long time. I'm thinking hard about putting a cardio elective early in my 4th year in order to muddy the waters. Cardiology has a few problems with it, however. It's a longer road than anesthesia by 1-3 years (depending on if I do a fellowship after anesthesia), and I have to outcompete my other fellow Medicine residents to make it in. I'm pretty tired of competing and jumping through hoops. On the up-side, however, it's really fascinating, acute, and heavy on physiology.

I have one more month of medicine before I start my two three week anesthesia electives this spring. I guess after that I should have a better idea of whether I want to spend my professional life doing anesthesia.

Drug of Choice

I couldn't fall asleep last night. For two hours, I tossed and turned in the bed next to Spiff, who was sleeping as soundly as I have ever seen him. The more I tried, the worse it got, and the madder I got that Spiff was sleeping so peacefully as I thrashed around next to him.

I finally gave up trying and in my desperation, I took some Tylenol PM, the miracle drug of my pregnancy with Gunner. During said pregnancy, I took one pill almost every night to fight off the insomnia that haunted me for 9 months. Last night, I took two. And sweet relief, I slept like a champ for the rest of the night.

The recommended dosage on the box is two pills. But Wowzah! Two pills! I'm chasing Gunner around this morning, feeling like I could fall asleep every time I blink.

Poor Gunner has an impatient, tired mommy. Oh, so tired.

A Few Things

Here are some things I've been doing and thinking about lately. Not very interesting (or positive, really, because that's just how I've been feeling lately), but here you go anyway:

I am training for another half marathon. I have been struggling with finding the motivation and a good schedule to run. Spiff has been working early in the mornings most of the year, so I have had to resign myself to running at the gym in the evenings. This is double hard for me since I'm not really a treadmill runner, and it is hard for me to exercise in the evenings. But I'm grateful to have a membership at the gym to give me a place to run. And I ran with a group of girls on Saturday at the park, and I felt like a piece of my soul that had been missing from my life was handed back to me. I guess I really do need this, and that will be my motivation.

Gunner is going through a new phase. He is finally making the transition from two naps to one, and it's a tough one. He has really been struggling with sleep in general. I think it's a combination of teething, coming down with a cold, and sleep deprivation, but it's causing some very poor behavior from an extremely grumpy child. I can't figure out what to do to help him.

Also, it is high school instrumental festival time again. I have accompanied for some students in this event for the past few years, and I have enjoyed working with the kids and their super duper nice teacher. However, I'm feeling a bit tired of it this year. I'm just not excited about doing it. I'm not excited about the music itself, which tends to be difficult for me to play, unpleasant to listen to, and difficult to put together with the kids. Plus, this is the schedule I just received for the kids' performances on festival day:

8:18

8:59

9:17

9:30

9:45

2:32

3:42

Anyone else notice the LARGE break before the last two students? I have a baby and just can't be available all day like this! And it happens every year. Grumble grumble.

I have committed to doing it this year and can't back out, but I think I'm done with this event for a while.

On the plus side, I just read a gloriously good book. It was the kind of book that is so good that I read it really slowly, just so it would take me longer to finish it. It was also so good that now I'm really sad it's over and just want to read it all over again.

I also made a really yummy dinner yesterday and shared it with some friends. Gunner enjoyed destroying my kitchen while I cooked all day, and I got the benefit of doing some service and enjoying good food.

And my sister-in-law, Mhana (for those who read her blog), is coming to visit us in a month! I can't wait!

Now I guess it's time for me to go clean up my kitchen and think about which book to read next.

Pick-Me-Up

So, I have had a pretty rotten day. My feelings were hurt in a way that made me question my abilities and spirituality. I'm dealing with it.

And in so doing, I found this blog entry that made me laugh out loud, several times. I bet that the "Voice of Reason" had no idea she would be the pick-me-up I so desperately needed today.

Make sure you read the comments. My favorites are the ones about the squirrel, Mormet, and the "recipies".

I'm sinking

Appreciating My Two Hands

Spiff and I went ice skating last night. It was pretty much an awesome night to go ice skating at the outdoor rink in town. It was snowing (a fairly wet, slippery, sloshy snow), and so there weren't a whole lot of people out and about, which means that there weren't a lot of people at the rink. But it wasn't very cold, and it wasn't snowing very hard, so it was really quite awesome. Spiff is a pretty good skater (surprise, surprise), but I have only been on ice skates a handful of times, the last time being two years ago. I was surprised last night to find that it wasn't as hard as I remembered. Plus, my rental skates seemed to fit better and were way more comfortable than the last pair I rented, and it left me feeling all empowered and daring.

So, we skated a bit, and we even tried a few tricks. For me, that includes turning around in very large, slow circles, and then feeling super triumphant. I even tried skating backwards. And as I doing these bumbling tricks, I thought, "This is so fun! And I'm probably going to end falling on my face."

Not two seconds later, I fell flat on my face. A kind rink-worker dude saw the whole thing and came right over asking me if I was okay. Sadly, Spiff missed it, and turned around to find his dear, sweet wife on the ground, and he came rushing right over. They helped me up (yes, I needed help up), I brushed the snow off the entire front of me, and sporting a nice new bruise on my chin, I tried putting on my brave face.

I wish I could say that I hopped right up and continued to skate because, seriously, how embarrassing is it to break into tears after something like that? But I did something to my left wrist when I fell, and it left me feeling like an weepy, insecure eight-year-old, for the second time in two weeks. With my newly hurt wrist, I hobbled off the rink to have Spiff take a look at it. (Somehow, hurting my wrist causes me to hobble.) We did continue to skate for a while, and it really was very fun. I skated more conservatively, and Spiff was the perfect gentleman and held my hand so I could keep up with him and so that we could skate around the rink together.

So, my wrist is not broken, but it sure does hurt a lot. Little things that I take for granted are so very difficult today. Like picking up my son. Putting on gloves. Getting dressed. Grabbing and holding on to anything. Anything that involves twisting my arm or grasping in any way.

I'm just feeling so grateful for my general health today. I'm grateful that I have two hands and two arms to help me with my daily tasks. And even though I'm frustrated that my stinkin' wrist hurts and that things are difficult for me today, I'm grateful that I will heal and be able to go back to taking advantage of that fact that I have two working arms. And then I think I just might carry Gunner all day long, just because I can.

Doing My Civic Duty

I served on Jury Duty today. I did my civic duty. I am slightly disappointed to report that doing my civic duty involved me doing absolutely nothing at all.

I arrived at the Civic Courts building at 8:00 a.m., where I was herded into a large room and given a badge. As Juror #289, I sat in my chair and waited for an hour while they got organized. During that hour, the government workers occasionally called people up to the front desk, and I thought it was going to be a busy and interesting day. Boy was I wrong! I made myself comfortable in my chair and tried to read my book. But between the TV that was spewing its inane daytime programming, the man sitting behind me who fell asleep and snored for hours on end, and the fact that my chair did super-human feats in making my buttocks numb, I found myself lacking the attention I required to get into my book. It felt like I was on a really long flight, or a bus or train that didn't end up taking me anywhere. Plus, the front desk workers stopped talking at 9:00 and didn't address us until 11:30, when they dismissed us for an almost-two-hour lunch.

When I got back in my seat by 1:15, I thought that surely something would happen. I was again disappointed. The front desk workers didn't address us until 3:30, when they finally called a jury pool of about 30 people. I sat in my seat, my little heart pumping, feeling a bit like an 8-year-old hoping to be picked for the dodge ball team during P.E. I was so hoping to be picked. I wanted to see what the court process was like. But mostly, I wanted something to end the maddening boredom that was the waiting room. My number was not called. And The Chosen Thirty received their assignment to return for court the next day at 9:00, and then they were released!

And the front desk workers, again, said nothing to the rest of us.

Just when I thought we might just end up living and dying in that soul-sucking waiting room, Heavenly Angels came down from above, in the form of a front-desk worker, and told us that we were released to go home at 4:00. And that we don't have to return tomorrow!

Hoorah! I have fulfilled my service to the court system for now. I think that as long as I will myself to think of it as SERVICE, I won't feel like it was the biggest, fattest waste of a day in my entire life. But since I haven't yet convinced myself that I did any sort of service at all, I currently do think that it was the absolute biggest, fattest waste of a day. My Jury Duty Experience= Not interesting or fulfilling in any way, shape or form.

But Thank You to my awesome friend, Angela, who took care of Gunner for me All Day Long. You are a Super Goddess Mommy!