Well, that went well

"Do you remember Bill from when we go to Mom-Mom's house for Thanksgiving or Easter?"

Of course! He's the old guy who tries to give me high fives.

"That's right, he's your great-grandmother's husband, the guy she married after your great-grandfather died a long time ago. Remember how Bill has seemed sort of sick the last few times we've seen him? Well, this weekend his body got too sick to keep working, and he died."

So now great-mom-mom can marry somebody else!

"Well, I guess she could if she wanted to. But right now, it's okay to feel a little sad, because we're going to miss Bill. But even though Bill's body is dead, his soul is up in heaven with God, and that should make us feel sort of happy. Because in heaven, nobody's sick or sad or hurting, so Bill is probably really happy to be there."

But what if Bill feels sad?

"Well, in heaven nobody feels sad. I think it's sort of a rule up there. Maybe if you start to feel sad, God finds something to make you happy again."

So if Bill feels sad, God can find somebody to give him a high five, and then he'll feel better.

"Sure, sounds good to me."

One of these days I'll remember ...

... that there are entirely too many kids in Liza's preschool class for me to be going, "Oh, fer shur, I can crochet everybody an Easter bunny out of scrap yarn in my stash, no problem."

I love the insane zombie twins in the back row, and the fact that by the end I had decided I liked the decapitated rabbit heads better than making the whole bunny (because it's faster! and, um, cuter, right?).

Well gee, thanks for that advice, Dr. Helpful

Yesterday I gave in and took Liza to the doctor. She's been complaining every night for the last two weeks about having a sore throat, but the complaints only come as part of the litany of reasons she can't get ready for bed yet, so I've been ignoring them. Yesterday she started with the runny nose and cough, though, so I figured it would be a good time to get her checked out and find out what the doctor recommended for seasonal allergies. Humidifier and Zyrtec for the win!

I also wanted to talk to the doctor about the anger management issues that Liza has been having recently. I know that the time change messes with sleep schedules, and stress can make kids do weird things, but the tantrums have just been out of control for the past few weeks. It's not just that she gets upset about normal things, like getting ready for bed - it's things like having a 20 minute screaming/kicking the wall/throwing things fit because "one of the kids started eating his snack before I was done making it into a smiley face on his plate" (not that she had told the kid to wait, or that she was doing something special with snack, or anything). And once she decides she's upset, it spirals out of her control, and we're in for seemingly endless inconsolable screaming over every. single. thing. She won't look at us, she won't be consoled, she won't stop flailing around - it would be entertaining if it was some other person's kid on YouTube, but it's my kid, and she's pissing me off.

Luckily this sort of crap just happens at home, not at school or at the park, but it's still not getting any better despite our attempts at helping her through it. Rationalization doesn't work, ignoring her doesn't work, consoling her doesn't work, deep breaths don't work, threats don't work, and we're starting to run out of ideas. Jason and I have both had to restrain ourselves from attempting to beat some sense into the kid. We know it won't help, but on the 10th day of "I-huh-can't-huh-stop-huh-crying-huh-because-huh-I-huh-don't-huh-want-huh-to-huh-brush-huh-my-teeth-huhwaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh" it starts to sound like a reasonable option.

Unfortunately, we got to see the "sick kid" doctor instead of Liza's regular pediatrician - yes, the practice is large enough that they have one doctor just for handling the kids who are sick and need to be seen the same day - so we didn't get the usual sympathetic ear. Instead we got:

• This is very common in kids her age. [yeah, common in everyone except every other child she has ever played with]
• Don't send her to her room, she has to learn to cope with the frustration where it happens. [that's going to be fun during playdates]
• Hold her arms firmly in front of her, [did I mention it takes two of us to hold her down to brush her teeth some nights?]
• Look her in the eye [you weren't paying attention to the "won't look at us" part, were you?]
• And explain to her why her reaction isn't appropriate [you also tuned out the part where we already do that and it doesn't do squat because she still can't calm herself down, didn't you?].
• Set a timer and tell her she has 10 minutes to calm herself down [also fun during playdates]
• And ignore her during the 10 minutes but stay nearby [I guess you also missed the part about how she crawls up the front of me bodily, using my clothing as handholds if I refuse to pick her up? And what am I supposed to do when the 10 minutes is up and she's still not calm? Do I get to whack her then?]

I was polite and told her I would give it a try, but I also got her to give me the list of pediatric psychologists they recommend just in case we needed to up the ante a bit. Because honestly, she knows she's overreacting, and she understands that she needs to do things differently, but we haven't managed to come up with a coping strategy that will help her calm herself down. I swear, some days its like she's got the Niagara River of emotions going on in there, and she's just the poor schmuck in the barrel going over the falls (again and again).

The doctor did have some helpful suggestions about bedtimes, so we're going to try doing things a little differently. Instead of dinner - play a few minutes - bath - teeth and hair - books - bed, it's going to be dinner - teeth and hair - calm play longer than we used to - books - bed, and we'll do her bath in the mornings. That gives her more time to play outside now that it's light later, moves the toothbrushing so it's no longer part of the going-to-bed battle, and lets me do her hair in the mornings when she's more tractable. Bonus: with her hair wet, it's easier to convince her to let me pull it back out of her face into ponytails or braids, and it stays back neatly for a longer time.

The best part is that doctors of any sort are one step below God in Liza's list of Those Who Must Be Obeyed, so when she whines about the new schedule, I can just pull out the "sorry, the doctor said we should do it this way" card, and she's likely to go along with it. Boy, do I love using authority figures for my benefit!

And I've got that list of psychologists, just in case I need to call in another higher authority* for backup.

* Not sure she'd agree to the authority, though. When we went in to meet my mother's therapist, Liza didn't want to talk to her at all, and I think the longest sentence we got out of her the entire time was, "If you're a doctor, then where are your licenses and stuff?" Apparently having paintings and tapestries on the wall rather than diplomas makes you suspicious, as far as my daughter is concerned. I guess I'll have to pre-screen the potential psychologists for office decor as well as bedside manner ... sigh ...

Nature journal

Things to add to our nature journal, should we ever get off our butts and start one:

• This past Wednesday was our first bee/yellowjacket sighting. First there was one, then a couple, and by nightfall there were maybe 20 of them going to town on the crocus in our front yard. The preschoolers who were trying to pick crocus bouquets were not amused.
• Crocus will actually hold up as cut flowers. We're on the third day now, and they're still not yucky.
• Crocus open when it warms up, then close again when it gets cooler at nighttime.
• Yesterday was our first ladybug sighting. We put it on the rose bushes out front in hopes of jumpstarting the aphid war.
• The squirrel with the three bald patches we're calling "Mangy," and it's probably a female because it's spent all morning gathering dead grass and leaves and trundling them up to a hole in a tree in our neighbor's yard. It's going right past the peanuts and dried corn and only grabbing nesting materials, which I think points to babies being on the way sometime this spring.
• The squirrel with the thin tail appears to be a male, as far as I can tell from 10 feet away through a screen door. It's been going for the food, and running around the yard in a weird way that sort of drags its hind end around on the ground (marking territory? spreading disease? scratching an itch?).
• First robin spotted on Wednesday.
• Hawk spotted in the trees across the street, carrying something long and floppy (snake? grass? yarn?). Was being chased around by smaller birds, but still landed in the same darkened area of a tree several times. Building a nest? Hope it's one of Cinderella Blue Mermaid's kiddos from last year, although that would mean that the nest in our next-door neighbor's yard is probably going to be unused this year.
• First chipmunk spotted today on the back porch. Zach was not amused.
• The third squirrel that frequents our back yard is definitely male. I know this because he just came up to the screen door where the two cats are sitting, peeked past Zach and appeared to case the joint for usable materials, walked nonchalantly to the glass side of the door, put both front paws on the window to get a better look around Bella, and then ran away, giant squirrelly balls dragging behind him. The cats were not amused. I can guarantee you that Zach will puke someplace today from all the excitement.

I'm feeling very old

Today I signed up for Liza's kindergarten registration meeting and sent away to have her join the Girl Scout Daisies.

sniff

The Lecture

"Of course I don't want syrup. These pancakes have a great deal of butter on them. Pancakes should have butter OR syrup, not both."

Actual conversation from bedtime tonight

L: Mom, can two girls get married?

Me: Depends on where you live, sweetie.

L: What do you mean?

Me: Remember how we talked about how people believe different things sometimes? Well, some people believe that girls should only marry boys, and some people believe that two girls or two boys can get married. The government is in charge of saying whether people are allowed to get married, and each state has its own government. The government in each state figures out what the people who live there believe, and that's the law. So in some states, girls can marry girls, and in some states, girls can only marry boys.

L: What about here?

Me: Well, in our state, a lot of people believe that girls should only marry boys, so that's the law here.

L: So I have to move if I want to marry Leah when I grow up?

Me: Remember how we talked about how sometimes what people believe changes, and laws get changed? Like when we read that story about slaves last week? Well, maybe before you're grown up, people here will change their minds about who can get married. You never know.

L: So it's okay if I want to marry a girl?

Me: Honey, as long as you love the person very, very much, and they love you very, very much, I don't care who you marry. Now go to sleep.

(pause)

L: Can grandmas and grandpas have babies?

Me: Depends on how old they are. When women get older, the parts that make babies stop working, and then they wouldn't be able to have any more babies.

L: What about Grandma?

Me: Nope, she's not going to have any more babies.

L: When will you be a grandma?

Me: When you have babies ... but that's not until you're all grown up.

L: Will I have babies when I'm a grown up?

Me: You probably can, if you want to. And if your body can't make the babies, you could adopt one, if you wanted.

L: But what if I don't want any babies? Then you wouldn't be a grandma?

Me: That's right, I wouldn't be a grandma. But that's okay, too - it's your decision whether you want to have babies. I'm fine with just you - you're perfect as you are. Now go to sleep. We have a big day tomorrow - we're meeting Miss Judy at the coffee shop.

L: Miss Judy, the rocket scientist **?

Me: Yep, that's the one. Sleep well, little girl.

Add that to her earlier request for me to explain exactly what a tampon is and what it does and what the little string is for and what if you can't reach the string, and it's been a fuuuuuuun day. (That sound you hear is me banging my head on my desk repeatedly, in case you were wondering)

**That's how she differentiates Miss Judy, my knitting buddy who works at NASA, from Miss Judy, the mother of one of her friends from dance class last year.

The Bear and the Rabbit, by Liza Woods

(Liza drew the pictures, did the title page, and narrated the story; I wrote down what she told me so it didn't take 6 months to complete a book)

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Yet another experience I don't want to repeat

This morning I woke up in a pool of urine ... and then realized it wasn't mine. Thanks, kid.

Yep, it's wild and crazy around here when Jason's on a business trip. Lucky for him (and the laundry, and my sanity) that he's due home any minute.

I guess Naked Knit Night will have to wait until his next trip ...

Say what?

I may have the only child on the planet who, when expecting and dreading a vaccination, freaks out at the idea of getting the inhaled version instead. The nurse at the county board of health H1N1 clinic that was in town today had no idea how to handle that one. How did I handle it?

"Look, I can't be the line leader today, I'm not in the high-risk group. Oooh, a lady with a bag of lollipops! I'll let you eat one even though it's 9am if you just shut up, sit still and sniff when the nurse tells you to."

She got grape.

Parenting skillz - I haz 'em.

Also ... every time she reads any flu literature, Liza calls it a "vacation" instead of a vaccination or a vaccine. Understandable mistake, but it's pretty funny when you're following the "vacation" route signs to get to the clinic.

Displaying her ridiculously awesome balance skills

Okay, so we know Liza was pretty good on roller skates, but how is she on ice?

Keep in mind that the kid's total experience with ice skates before today was to clomp around on them for five minutes last year before refusing to come onto the ice with me. I think this year she was ready, although I'm starting to question the wisdom of watching the ice dancing videos on YouTube right before we went to the first class ...

Halloween

You know, if you take your four-year-old to a kids' orchestra concert on the morning of Halloween, you may end up with a kid who decides to go trick-or-treating dressed as "orchestra girl."

Apparently Orchestra Girl wears a polarfleece shirt, an adult-sized purple sequined mardi gras dress, silver slippers, and grey yoga pants. Light-up wand from Sea World is optional, and just gets in the way when you try to carry 48 pounds of candy in a little plastic pumpkin.

At least her partners in crime (her best buddies from the neighborhood, who were super nice and asked her to go with them to trick-or-treat on our street) were properly outfitted in recognizable costumes, somewhat mitigating the "WTF are you supposed to be?" response Liza might have gotten otherwise.

Add to this the flower-girl-dress princess outfit she came up with for the party at Jason's friend's house the previous weekend, and the Sleeping Beauty Fairy Princess With A Wand Made From a Silky And A Tinkertoy from preschool, and the kid came up with four Halloween costumes.

And not a one made any sense to anyone but her. Sigh. And all I wanted was to make her a pirate costume ...

The Pirates Who Do Aarrrrr-ithmatic

Liza really, really wants to learn addition, but she doesn't quite understand that you basically have to memorize the answers so that you don't have to count on your fingers every time you're asked what 3+4 is. She doesn't want to do the flashcards if we just sit down with them, and she can't do the addition worksheets if she's wearing mittens, so I had to come up with another approach.

That's where the pirates come in. A few weeks ago Liza decided she wanted to play pirates, complete with a boat (sofa), Jolly Roger (silkies tied to a yardstick) and both swords (pvc pipe) and bandannas. I put together a treasure map, hauled Jason's chest-shaped toybox out of the basement closet, and we were in business. We searched for hidden treasure, fought off sea monsters, ate goldfish-shaped sea rations, and tried not to whack each other too frequently with the pipe.

So yesterday I made up a new treasure map. It's a key of which rooms various numbers are in. She gets a flashcard "clue" to start, and she has to figure out the answer, go to that room, and check under the number to see if she's right. If she is, she finds the next flashcard, which leads her to another room, and another, with the final clue sending her down to the toybox in the basement.

You would not believe how fast the kid is catching on to the +3s when there are pirates involved.

Also, she refuses to practice her handwriting ... unless I write out some of the words from a "science experiment" we did this morning, and then she's happy to copy them until they look right. Which is why we've got a sheet of paper that says in very decent preschool handwriting, "rub balloon salt pepper oatmeal electricity." We've also got a journal page with a drawing of me blowing up a balloon, and thanks to the wonders of really crappy preschool drawing perspective, my lips are coming out of my ears. That would be a pretty good trick if I could pull it off, though, wouldn't it?

Reason # 56 to never stop by my house unannounced

The houses Liza builds for the cats have gone viral, taking over entire rooms in the length of time it takes me to, say, use the toilet. Yesterday I announced that I was going to ride the exercise bike, and before I could get into my workout clothes, she had built a shantytown in the family room that depended on the exercise bike for its main structural integrity.

And don't even get me started on Liza's room. She wrote a sign that says "No Mom or Dad" which she tapes to her door all day, which means we're not allowed to come in. She reinforces the idea by tying a piece of plastic lanyard from her doorknob to the dresser next to the door and then hanging Bob the Blanket from it, leaving the door open but effectively roping off the room as if it was in a museum or something. The only time we're permitted to enter is at bedtime, and even then we have to wait for her to take down the sign before we can come in to read her stories.

On the positive side, though, if I can't go in, I can't clean her room, which means it's not my responsibility anymore. Hurray!

So, how was your day?

I woke up with my side of the bed looking like an abattoir, on day 3 of The Sinus Headache That Laughs At Medicine While Bludgeoning Me Between The Eyes With A Cricket Bat, to a child that has done virtually nothing all day but drag her feet, whine, and defy me. The stains did not come out of my pajamas or my sheets. I have about 40 books checked out of the library, and she refuses to read anything by herself other than a Baby Max and Ruby board book.

We have no bread or juice or soda or chocolate or decent alcohol in the house, and I'm not about to drag Little Miss Positive with me over to the grocery store at rush hour.

I have 40 tiny rows left on my first ridiculously hard lace project, and The Child will not leave me alone for half an hour to finish them. I'm not sure why I'm in such a hurry to finish it, since it's a bad match between pattern and yarn and it's going to be 8' long after I block it, but I feel frustrated all the same.

And I have "Proud to be Aborigine" stuck in my head.

Swinger

My daughter has learned to use monkey bars by herself, with no parental involvement beyond hands-off hovering to make sure she doesn't plummet to her death from way up there in the air. O. M. G.

Today at a friend's house Liza nonchalantly climbed up the ladder, grabbed onto the first bar, and before I was even over there to help her she was halfway across the set of bars, swinging hand-to-hand like a freaking monkey. To say I was surprised would be the understatement of the week. As far as I know, she hasn't even tried the monkey bars anywhere this summer other than at the friend's house, and there it's always been this big angst-filled whiny entreaty to helllllllppppp meeeeeeeeee moooooommmmmmmyyyyyy.

I believe I may have said, "Holy crap! Tabitha, get out here, you've got to see this!"

And then today Liza went back and did the bars on her own two more times, followed by a complicated trapeze/ring routine that involved her winding the trapeze around and around and then letting it spin her in circles, then flipping upside down on the trapeze, sticking her feet through the rings, and hanging by her knees from the rings, then managing to extricate both legs and her giant feet before all the blood rushes to her head and she has an anurysim. Truly, it was awe-inspiring. And more than a little scary, especially when she was hanging by one ankle and a couple fingers ... but she didn't panic, and she didn't fall, and she didn't even act like she had done anything particularly impressive.

I am totally sending her to circus camp next summer.

And I am totally retrofitting our swing set so that the rings are separate from the trapeze - the way they were when I was a kid - because it's a hell of a lot harder to do skin-the-cats when the rings are attached to a trapeze that doesn't twist when you flip over and keeps trying to grab your feet when you flip through. Ask me how I know this (I say, brushing mulch out of my hair)... And since she's already got shoulders and arms so defined she looks like she's flexing most of the day, and she loved tumbling classes mainly because she got to go on the uneven parallel bars, we might as well assume she's going to be like I was and spend half of the next ten years flipping upside down on the swingset.

From bedtime tonight

Liza: Can we see God?

Jason: We can't see God, but we can see all the beautiful things around us that He made.

Liza: He made all of that, didn't He? He should put his name on the back of everything so we know He made it.

Baby's first poem

When I suggested the other day during our homeschooling work that she could practice her handwriting, she said, "Sure! I'll write a poem!" And while I rummaged around for more practice paper, she made this:

I'll have to see if I can get our own little Beatnik to perform this on camera, because it really is too priceless. According to Liza, the correct reading of this is (descriptions mine):

Picnic! (very excitedly)

Mmmmm ... (like Homer Simpson)

Oh! Oh! (like uh-oh, only with two ohs)

Rain. (disappointed)

(I believe "rain" got written at the top because she ran out of room at the bottom of the paper.)

Well, thank god that's over

Part of the trials of last week included Liza's frequently abysmal behavior. We had everything from ripping the legs off of grasshoppers to drawing on the carpet with markers to screaming "NOOOOOOOOO! ARGHLFLARGLEBLABBLECHHHHHHHHH!" (or however you spell a gutteral scream of disbelief / utter frustration / fury) whenever I suggested anything. Anything. Some days I could have offered to buy her an ice cream cone and a pink pony, and she would have thrown herself headfirst on the floor and whined about how she didn't want that, she hated ice cream and ponies, and all she really wants in this world is ice cream and ponies and I won't give it to her and that's not the right color pony anyway and ARGHLFLARGLEBLABBLECHHHHHHHHH! I have never ducked so many flying objects, dodged so many kicks and fists, or been screamed at full in the face as many times as I did last week. There were days when I ran out of things to use as punishment, as I had already taken away all of her perks like books and songs and videos and time outside and dessert, and she was just as snotty when she came out of time-out as she was when she went in.

My daughter is not usually like this. Usually she's fairly reasonable, fairly good at following directions, fairly easy to redirect when she's pissed about something or other. But every few months she falls apart, just like Ames and Ilg predict. They suggest that children's minds need to basically fall apart in order to make any major progress forward, so any major milestone is usually preceded by weeks of uncoordinated, unreasonable, unpredictable behavior. Liza has been like this from day one, only instead of doing it every six months, she does it every six weeks or so.

It's comforting to know that most of the time Liza isn't acting out because she's suddenly turned 15 ... when I remember it. Of course, usually when she's falling apart, I'm so far into damage control mode ("Must not decapitate child with bare hands. Must not run child over with car. Must not use four- or five-letter words to describe child, at least to her face.") that I forget that these phases are short and usually worth it.

After a week or so of, um, challenging behavior, culminating in a couple bath/bedtimes that were so bad, both Jason and I were ready to trade her in on a ferret, Liza finally cleared the hurdle sometime last night. Here's an example of what I got today, versus what I would have gotten on, say, Friday:

Liza wanted to go to the bakery to buy breakfast this morning, but I wanted something healthier. I suggested we go to the other donut store that's across the street from a bagel place, so we could both get what we wanted.

Friday: "NO! I WANT THE BAKERY AND I WANT IT NOW!"

Today: "Do they have sprinkle donuts there? Okay. Can we get my donut first?"

We've been doing the Hooked on Phonics Master Reader program, and we're at the point now where all she needs to do to finish the first level is read the easy chapter book that came with the program. She's been too intimidated to try much of it, refusing to read more than about half a page at a time. This sucker is 100-plus pages, so we'd be here forever at that rate. I've been trying to entice her into working on it by offering to let her do workbook pages (and she looooooves these workbook pages) as a reward when she finishes a page in the chapter book.

Friday: "NO! I DON'T WANT TO READ THAT! I DON'T WANT TO READ ANY BOOKS!"

Today: "Okay. If I finish this chapter all at once, can I do a few extra workbook pages?" And she finished a four-page chapter in one sitting. And later that day when I wanted to read a few pages from my book, she sat down and read another chapter to me, two pages of which she did without me helping her keep her place or assisting her with sounding out words. And she was so excited about her progress that she tackled her father with the book when he got home, and read another page to him, just to show off. And she was reading fluently, with comprehension - she gave a decent (for a 4-year-old) plot summary to Jason before she started reading to him.

She's been drawing so much that we've been shipping a lot of her art off to family members so that our house doesn't become a watercolor- and crayon-colored fire hazard. She's recently discovered the idea of a drawing "looking right" or "looking not right," which has had predictable consequences. And no, I didn't put the idea into her head that any of her stuff is wrong - she came up with this on her own.

Friday: "ARGHLFLARGLEBLABBLECHHHHHHHHH! I CAN'T MAKE A SUNFLOWER LOOK RIGHT! I CAN MAKE ROSES AND PETUNIAS AND LADYBUGS BUT I. CAN'T. MAKE. A. SUNFLOWER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (punctuated by stabbing the paper and finally throwing the box of crayons across the room ... and that's a direct quote from Sunday afternoon)

Today: "And this is a willow tree, and this is a regular tree, and look! I colored in the whole back part blue because it's the sky and the sky is everywhere, not just at the top like I used to color it, and I got some blue on the flowers, but that's okay, right? And look how perfect the doorknob on my house is!"

One of the workbooks we've been using is a very basic "how to tell time" book. It starts off with where the numbers go on the clock, and filling them in over and over again, so we've been writing a lot of numbers. She's got a very unorthodox approach to how to write them, but most of her numbers are legible ... except for 5. I have never seen a person mess up a 5 in as many ways as she did last week. I would have sworn she was doing it on purpose, they were so bad, even when she had the sample right above it to look at ... except she was getting genuinely frustrated by the whole thing.

Friday: "I QUIT! I AM NOT DOING THIS EVER AGAIN! I AM SO BAD AT MAKING A 5! I CAN MAKE 9 AND 8 AND 3 BUT I CAN'T MAKE A 5! ARGHLFLARGLEBLABBLECHHHHHHHHH!"

Today: "Mom, can you help me practice my 5s on this scrap paper? I know it's not in this lesson, but I want to get better." And she made two passable 5s with only minor assistance.

Swings. Oh my god, the swings. She's been so into swings lately that I actually ended up with cramps in my arms from pushing her for so long at a playground a week or so ago. And since the weather has been so mild, she's been out on our swingset every day. And despite the fact that I have seen her start swinging and get herself going as high as I ever push her, all by herself, she spent last week insisting that she couldn't do it.

Friday: "I WANT TO GO ON THE SWINGS, AND I WANT YOU TO PUSH ME NOW! NOW! ARGHLFLARGLEBLABBLECHHHHHHHHH! I QUIT! NO FAIR!"

Today: "I'll just go swing myself while you read in the hammock, okay?"

After dinner today she wanted to play "little girl and a fairy," and since she was in the fairy costume, I was supposed to be the little girl. I needed to clear off the dinner dishes, so I pretended to be a little girl who had too many chores to do who really wanted a fairy to help her. Liza was not on board with this at first.'

Friday: "NO! NO FAIR! I QUIT! I WANT TO PLAY THIS WAY!"

Today: "But I wanted to play 'lost little girl who needs a fairy to help her get home.'" And then I convinced her to play along with me, and she did, helping me clear away the table and putting away all of the clean dishes, too. At some point near the end of the clearing, she said (in character, to my character) "I hope you're enjoying this, because don't expect it to happen again any time soon."

Liza has been using lots of stalling tactics to avoid getting ready for bed. She's managed to dredge up so many things that we had previously mentioned maybe doing each day, and get indignant when we refuse to do them right at bath time, that it's getting really funny.

Friday: "YOU SAID WE COULD READ A BOOK, AND I WANT TO READ THIS 80-PAGE CURIOUS GEORGE BOOK RIGHT. THIS. MINUTE. NO FAIR!" And then she would latch onto some part of my body with a death grip worthy of a snapping turtle.

Today: "But you said we could do our nature craft today! Arghhhh!" I whispered that we would do it tomorrow and make it look extra nice and write the descriptions really fancy so that Jason would be impressed when he saw it after work, and she said, "Can we use glitter glue?" and trotted upstairs to the bathroom.

Thank god that's over. If her pattern holds, I'm safe until about, oh, the first week of school. Hurrah!

Not exactly the trials of Job, but annoying all the same

Last week of July: My father doesn't feel so well for a few days and finally goes to the doctor, only to discover that he has pneumonia (again). Doctor puts him on a double shot of antibiotics, and he seems to be recovering well.

Friday, July 31: While searching for change to pay the toll on our way to the family reunion, I discover that my American Express card is not in its slot in my wallet. Frantic searching of my wallet and purse do not turn up the card, but I'm reasonably sure I just left it in the pocket of my pants when I got gas on Thursday.

Saturday, Aug. 1: My father passes out while taking a shower, gashing open his forehead and wrenching his shoulder. He's only marginally coherent when my mother finds him bleeding on the floor in the bathroom*, so he gets an ambulance ride to the hospital, where he gets eight stitches and gets held over for a couple of nights to try to figure out why he passed out. My mother doesn't call me with the news, since they don't know how severe the problem is, and it's not like I'm going to be able to do anything from Indiana, anyway.

Sunday, Aug. 2: I get to sit next to my grandmother at the family reunion. She does not say one coherent sentence the entire time she's there, but she does look pleased as punch to get a shiny package to unwrap for being the oldest attendee. When we get home from Indiana, I get my mother's message about my father being in the hospital. And my American Express card is not in my pants pocket. But nobody has charged anything on it since I bought gas last week, so I doubt it's been stolen.

Monday, Aug. 3: I go to the doctor to renew my prescriptions; he tells me I need to lose weight and that I shouldn't tell anyone how good my blood pressure is because I'd be a bad influence on them. And the nurse who draws my blood for routine testing strikes oil on the first try, yet still manages to leave a bruise the size of a 50-cent piece. My father is discharged from the hospital, and I talk to him while I hold the puke bucket for my daughter for the sixth or seventh time in less than two hours. And did I mention the puke in my bra? And my hair? And my hallway carpeting, all across the bathroom floor, and all over the bathtub?

Tuesday, Aug. 4: We stay home all day so Liza can recover her strength. Liza discovers that dry erase markers write really well on the family room carpeting. Liza's older friends from the neighborhood come over to do crafts with us, and I hear the saddest thing I've ever heard in my whole life: "You mean, it's okay for me to make stuff with the clay? My mother doesn't let me do crafts at home. She says it's too messy. ... Can I bring these back in a few days so I can paint them? I'm not allowed to paint at home." The girl is 10 years old. Meanwhile, Tuesday evening someone steals my iPod** out of my (unlocked) car. We got it for free, and I've been thinking of upgrading it anyway, but still ... I hate it when people violate my space. And they didn't even steal the $12 pack of batteries that were sitting right next to it, so they're obviously not very smart (or have never used those batteries before).

Wednesday, Aug. 5: I stay up late to finish the bodice of a dress I've been knitting for weeks for Liza, but when I get it off the needles and hold it up, it looks suspiciously wide. I try it on, and the chest area is too large for my waist, and the waist area of the dress is only slightly too tight for my hips. Whoops.

Thursday, Aug. 6: I wake up at 4:30, puking my guts out, only there's nothing in my stomach, so I get to dry heave about 400 bajillion times over the course of the day. Liza and I watch television continuously from 7am to 2:30pm; I'm so sick I don't even object to watching three hours of Barney videos back-to-back. I'm so sick, I don't blog. Or knit. Or sleep. I do, however, get lots of practice moaning and clutching my stomach. I'm so achy at bedtime that I have to take Tylenol just to get to sleep.

Friday, Aug. 7: Liza wakes me up at 2am and wants to cuddle. I'm too tired to go to her room, and Jason is sleeping downstairs to avoid The Plague, so I let her sleep with me. Liza wakes me up at 4am, having just peed all over herself (and my bed) for the first time in months. I send her back to her bed, pull back the covers over the wet spot, and go back to sleep. During the day, I recover enough to eat some soup and applesauce, and to clean up the squalor in my house. Liza is in rare form, refusing to do anything I ask and trying to find new and unusual ways to get in trouble. At one point she decided that the best way to get a piece of pink fuzz off of the cat was to cut off the cat's fur with a pair of scissors. And the cat let her. And she did it where I had already vacuumed. And the only reason the pink fuzz was there in the first place was because she had taken the scissors to her feather boa.

Saturday, Aug. 8: I'm feeling queasy again and it's raining, which means no visit to the Corn Festival for me today. Jason has taken Liza to the science center, and I'm trying to finish up some Lazy Mama business while not heaving on the poor lady's mermaid tail.

Yes, I know none of it is tragic. Jason has coworkers whose kids have been in surgery for various things this week, and other people have a lot more immediate and serious health issues than a stomach bug.

But still, daaaaaamn. This week has sucked donkey balls. And I can't even wallow in brownie-flavored self-pity, thanks to the queasiness (and my doctor ... asshole).

*So, did you get those stains out of the grout yet, Mom?

** It's a Shuffle, which uses a completely different docking/charging setup than any other MP3 player I've seen, so unless the thief already has one, he's going to have to buy one if he wants to change the songs on his "free" iPod. I hope he really enjoys the They Might Be Giants kids' tunes and Pinky Dinky Doo audiobooks. Rat bastard.