A Smeddling Kiss

In Which the Heat Addles Everyone's Brains

I'll be generous and blame it on the heat, but it's been weird nonetheless. It has the surreal feeling of a post-apocolyptic everyone-out-for-themselves movie, and I half expect to be hunted down for my water or batteries or whatever the fuck people from over the bridge want. But I'll get back to that later.

This week has been crazed, full of appointments and running hither and yon and back to hither, with each trip taking much longer than it should thanks to the crush of tourists on Cape Cod.

I've been busy with kid stuff and house stuff and BlogHer'10 stuff and life stuff, some of it fabulous and some of it crappy. It seems like for every taste of emotional sugar I've been given this week, a blast of sour has come from out of nowhere to temper the sweet.  

Much of the off-kilter feeling is due to the steroid regimen I'm taking in an attempt to tame the plantar fasciitis before I get to BlogHer'10 next week.  I've been energized and a little shaky all week, no doubt the result of sleeping around 4 hours each night, but life events have certainly contributed their share. 

There was the short-lived panic about the well-being of a family member, subsequently assuaged by treating him to an all-you-can-eat buffet lunch and hashing out his problems. 

Then there was the feedback session for Peanut's neuropsychological evaluation, which was interesting. His profile has changed considerably from the last time we had him tested and while it was mostly good news it is still a lot to process. And even though I know that he is the same child I have raised for the last 7 years, hearing about some of those gains and deficits - and what they might mean for the future - is hard.

And there was also my rising excitement for BlogHer, as I prepare to focus on only myself for 4 days. It's so much fun when my on-line world comes to life for a few days, as I've learned from previous years.  The flood of invitations to private parties at BlogHer is something that is new to me. This is my 3rd BlogHer conference and I've never been invited to any of the private sponsored parties before, but I've somehow landed on some pr lists and my in-box has been deluged. It's ridiculous and puzzling, since I'm not a very active blogger and I don't give stuff away or have a large audience to influence, but I have to admit that it is fun to open up the in-box and have that "No waaay! Cool!" rush.

Back to the weirdness.  In all of this here life stuff, there has been a lot of driving around, which means a lot of dealing with traffic, and heat, and tourists... which means a lot of handling the CRAZY PEOPLE. I have seen two accidents happen right in front of me and multiple incidents of reckless bicycle operation which should have resulted in serious maimings. I even had my cart rammed in the grocery store by a nasty old lady who used her cart to shove mine out of her way instead of asking me! To top it all off, I've been personally flipped off by no less than 3 separate angry, pinch-faced old white men in the same afternoon for letting someone merge in front of me.

I never thought taking a trip from Cape Cod to New York City would result in my having contact with less crazy people.

Beach Break

I had to take Pepper in for a dental cleaning this morning, and she was a little extra crabby on the way back to school.

"I'm sooooo tiiiiirrrreeeedd!  I... don't... feeeeel... good. Do I have to go back to school?"

"Yes. You aren't sick, just tired."

On the way, I pulled into one of the beach parking lots and had her hop out for 5 minutes to clear away the cobwebs. She still moaned when she had to get back in the car, but after we had watched the town workers bring out the lifeguard chairs for the summer we both felt a little better.

 

Whew.

Well, The Big Secret Activity That I Can't Blog About is over for another year. This year was a heartbreaker - the kids did really well, but then the scoring system screwed them over. And that's all I can say about that. 

In other news, we have been medicine-hopping with Peanut, thanks to the insurance companies insistence that he "fail" on two of their approved meds before they will pay for the one that worked great. Once again, I find myself so grateful for Peanut's special ed. teacher and aide. They have seen him progress through kindergarten and into 1st grade, and they have been tracking his behavior for me in 1/2 hour increments. We are now in the fortunate position of having a chart that details exactly when he showed multiple problem behaviors (yelling at a peer, crying, etc.) clearly indicating an escalation in those behaviors on the alternate medicines. 

 Pepper's 10th birthday was nice. We had her ears pierced after school on her birthday, then went out to dinner. For her party, she had her first sleepover, which was fun - except for the whole "sleepover" part. Although I tried to convince them to sleep in the family room, they spread out on the floor of her bedroom instead. An hour later, she came down from her room on the verge of tears, wailing "THEY WON'T STOP TALKING!!!" and ended up sleeping with me. Sounds about right for a first timer, huh? 

In other news, we are all crazy about "American Idol" here on the Cape these days, thanks to local girl Siobhan Magnus doing so well. It's so cute to go into the elementary school and see all of the "VOTE 4 SIOBHAN!" posters the kids have made. She used to warm up the little kids in one of the big musical productions Pepper was involved in, and it's wild to see her on television singing her heart out. 

 Now we are looking forward to Spring being sprung and all that stuff. Thank goodness the sun came out today, because I am heartily sick of 40 degrees and rainy. I just got a call about the CSA farm share this summer, and it was amazing how good just talking about summer plans made me feel. Hopefully the sun will stick around and help me shake the winter out of my soul this week.

Labels: ADHD, birthday cake, BSAICBA, cape cod life