What does it take to kick the last dregs of this virus?

Yesterday, after picking up Kouryou-chan from school (and she was so thrilled to have school again!) we stayed home for most of the afternoon. I gave her an hour of television (Dora the Explorer and Maisy) and we did much more of the kitten puzzle. That was a lot of fun, although there was also a bit of getting in each other's way. I managed to get two loads of laundry done and changed the bedsheets in the middle there somewhere. Then, after a while, it was time to go get Yamaarashi-chan from her mother's house for our weekly date.

I'm afraid I wimped out. I was tired of trying to keep the house running and I didn't want to cook anymore. Kouryou-chan had been so good through this whole episode that now that we could drive, I took the kids out to Sizzler (cheap, but reasonable, although now I think about it, that's Mad Cow city ain't it?) and then over to Kidopolis. Good. Let them run their arms off climbing around inside a child-sized hamster cage.

What do you tip at a Sizzler? I hate to ask, but because we pay up front for the meals, and because I only had two bucks in cash left on me, I only ended up leaving a 10% tip. I felt bad about that, but I didn't know what else to do. It's not like we were "served" in the traditional sense although the wait staff did keep the drinks refilled.

Not that that mattered. Although I've had no trouble eating, I haven't been hungry-- oh look, here's a half-drunk glass of Pepsi, and a half-finish cup of coffee, and a half-eaten sandwich. I just can't maintain any interest in food. And eating even that little bit of steak that I did was a bad idea; I feel like someone has transplanted a small brick in my transverse colon.

Yamaarashi-chan was pretty good the whole trip but, man, what is it with her and that damned Pokemon show? According to a friend of mine who's something of an expert on all thing Pokemon, the Pokemon universe is fundamentally evil: first, the rise of the Pokemon was the result of an ecological disaster created by humanity; second, the Pokemon universe is run by trial-by-violence, and third, even the "good guys" are essentially slavers. After hearing her chant the word "Pokemon!" for the ten thousandth time I'm ready to tear my hair out. And she doesn't even own any of the cards! Thank goddess for that.

Maybe that's just an extreme example of a bad habit of hers. She's so easily hypnotized by screens. As we passed by the arcade next to Kidopolis, A Marvel vs. Capcom video game in non-play mode was so attractive to her she stood there, glued to it, watching the words flicker by. The restaurant next to this place has a big-screen TV that can be seen through the window. While Kouryou-chan buckled herself into her car seat, Yamaarashi-chan stood there, staring through the window. I could have driven away and she would never have noticed. I had to drag her away. All she ever talks about is television; she tells me she doesn't have any real friends that are as interesting as her TV. I hope she outgrows this. It's driving me flaming crazy.

After a day of school, an afternoon of various indoor pursuits, and an evening of romping about in the coolest playset this side of Lake Washington, Kouryou-chan went to bed without a complaint. She was nice to me, put on her pyjamas and brushed her teeth (and I took care of her injured gums), picked her books (abridged versions of Disney bowdlerizations of Snow White and Peter Pan, and Elf sighs heavily) and dropped right off.

And I'm still dealing with the dregs of whatever's attacked me. My fever is 99.0 this morning, and it's hovered between 99 and 100 all day yesterday. This tells me that my immune system got most of it but there are still small insurgency battles going on inside my body. Unfortunately, the holdouts all seem to have barricaded themselves in my tonsils-- I've got nodes the size of ping-pong balls, making it painful but not difficult to swallow. Dayquil shall be my food of the gods today.

Jenkitty's not gonna like this...

I walked into QFC this morning to buy milk and grapefruit and walked by a stand of Traditional Medicinals, the herbal tea company that makes all sorts of nifty things, some of which actually work. I noticed that the design on "Breathe Easy," their hot tea that really does work, had changed a bit.

You got it. The ephedra is gone. Already. Crud, that's one of the few of their line that really did anything for me. Now it's just a blend of woo-woo herbs that probably doesn't do much at all.

News and other stupid stuff

First, the scary news: A man in Texas has been arrested for possession of 65 pipe bombs and remotely detonated explosives, along with 800 grams of pure sodium cyanide and dispersal agents, and 500,000 rounds of ammunition. The tipster who turned him in claimed he was only "collecting" these things.

If the man had had a name like Jamal or Mohammed, you can bet this would have been front page news. But no, he's a bigoted white-supremacist who doesn't fit the BushCo script for "what is a terrorist," so he's being quietly swept under the rug.

( And now the stupid stuff. )

And now one near and dear to my heart: The International Network for Cultural Policy is soon going to put forth a treaty stating that "cultural goods and services" are distinct from ordinary goods and services and should be exempt from free trade agreements. This is nothing more than protectionism. The list of things that can be made "cultural good and services" is endless: Italian wines, French cheese, Swiss chocolate.

But what this really amounts to is protection for local entertainment markets. American movies and music will be subject to outrageous taxation to defend "local cultural expression," and if the treaty goes through there won't be a damned thing we can do about it.

Ooh, baby, do you know what that's worth?

"... Heaven is a place called Earth."

Kouryou-chan had a blast at school. The teacher said that she integrated so well into the class and her only problem was that she wanted to learn everything right now, even the things that were reserved for the five-year-olds. And I met an old friend at the school, one of the women from Kouryou-chan's original "baby's get together" group.

At one point this afternoon, while I was trying to take a nap, there was a knock at the door. The neighborhood kids wanted to know if they could take the tree branches that had fallen into my yard and "use them in our fort." Hey, free labor! I agreed. They never got any of them out of the yard, sadly; they were all too heavy. But at one point I heard the youngest daughter crying and my second thought was, "I should go and check and make sure she's okay." As evidence of what a sick, sad world we live in, my first thought was, "Oh, heck, if she's on my property I could be liable." Anyway, she wasn't on my property and it was a personal crisis-- a brother had taken something she wanted.

At another point in the afternoon, the nice girl from down the street stopped buy and asked if we wanted any Girl School cookies. I told her to come back tomorrow. I know Omaha will want to negotiate with her.

Yamaarashi-chan is over and she's still going on and on about Pokemon. I got her a gift, probably a bad decision, a Faustian one but it seems to be working. As long as she's got it on the brain, banning it outright is just going to make it attractive. So we stopped at a second-hand store and picked up The Pokemon Enyclopedia. The deal is that she can have the book, but she has to stop talking to grown-ups about it. If she breaks the deal, I'll take it away from her. And if Kouryou-chan says she's tired of it, Yamaarashi-chan has to leave her alone too.

It seems to be working. Like all kids with terrible attention spans, I keep having to remind her, but she's honoring it as much as she's able.

Tonight was risotto with-- you got it-- ham. Not too much, and slivered really small so the girls couldn't pick it out. I used up the shallots, and some celery, and half a carrot, and an onion, and half a green bell pepper. I was out of white wine, so I tried Amontillado instead since we had some in the wine cabinet and this amazing smell, warm and buttery and so reassuring washed over me. I waited for the alcohol to boil off and then I started adding the chicken stock, a little at a time.

It was delicious. The girls love risotto. I also found a can of Vernor's ginger ale in another cupboard, so I made the girls pussyfoots, which of course they also made go away. After all those carbs, though, the soporific effect combined with the wearing off of the Dayquil has left me somewhat sessile and unable to motivate myself well.