If it's not one thing

I never did get much sleep last night. Omaha was miserable for most of the night; we sat outside in the cold, misty air, which made her coughing stop long enough we decided to implement it in out bedroom: open windows, heater vents closed. It was freezing. Although I slept well when I was sleeping, I was awakened repeatedly by Omaha's coughing and Kouryou-chan's coughing. The latter, fortunately, responded well to cough medicine, but Omaha's cough didn't respond to any treatment other than cold mist.

This morning, I took Omaha to the emergency room on the advice of the insurance company nurse. She was miserable and unable to sleep, and this morning she woke up with a rash all up and down her arms and legs. According to the inserts for her epilepsy medicines, she's supposed to go to the ER whenever that happens. So that's where she is now. I hope she's okay. I've fed the kids leftover pancakes and am trying to get caffeinated, but it's not working. Later this afternoon I have to take them to the library so Yamaarashi-chan can finish her homework.

I hope Omaha's okay. She'll call me when she knows anything.

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So, I decided to try Hero Machine, and create my inner hero. Note the Clue Stick (also good for pointing things out during presentations), and the Brass Knuckles of First Principle. In fact, what a great name for a superhero: First Principle.

( My Inner Hero. )

The day wears on...

Well, Omaha is getting sleep, I think, doped to the gills on codeine. She has a pair of viral infections, one opportunistic on the other, the primary in her lungs. She's now taking some inhalant and a guafenesin/codeine mix and it seems to have knocked her out. I hope it's doing her some good.

We ran to the library after lunch and picked up some books for Yamaarashi-chan to use in her research. On the way over there we passed by a sports bar with an Irish name and a shamrock on the sign, and underneath it was a sign that read "foster girls".

I tried to figure out what "foster" meant there. The verb, "to nurture"? If so was it imperative? "You will foster girls." I felt briefly threatened; I thought I was doing a good job already. The noun? Did they mean they had "foster girls", children in need of nuturing, and... what? They'd be selling them or something? I felt briefly uncomfortable. Then it occurred to me: the beer! Of course! Sometime soon they'd be hosting a collection of women known for their nubility (is that a word? It is now) in an effort to sell more beer. I felt vaguely amused.

Yamaarashi-chan and I worked our way through the library. I gave her a brief introduction to the Dewey Decimal system (King County Libraries haven't gone Library of Congress yet) and we tracked down the kids' section books on South Africa, which we then took home. I also picked up a collection of Chekov's short stories, since he has such a reputation as a master of the form.

After we got home, Yamaarashi-chan used the larger book as a reference and the smaller book as a comprehensive source, and made her annotations. Her handwriting was a scrawl, the facts she wrote down disconnected and unconscious, but it was pretty good for a seven-year-old. Both books had "brief facts" pages that were, more or less, directly quoted from the CIA World Factbook. She didn't seem to understand the whole history of apartheid; I don't know if that's a good thing, in that she found the whole idea incomprehensible, or a bad idea, in that she doesn't see the suffering that it represented and doesn't know how to avoid it. I suppose she'll grow into those horrors of our past. She even cited her sources, and I printed out a copy of the recipe we made. I had to run to Staples for some printer ink, and there are some loss-leader blank CDs for sale, 20 for $5. I bought two spindles' worth.

Kouryou-chan and Yamaarashi-chan played for a little bit. Omaha slept. Good for her. And then it was time to take Yamaarashi-chan back to her mother's house. I dropped her off without incident and then headed back home, sticking my Japanese Lesson 51 into the MP3 player and making my way through it with relative confidence.

Dinner was more leftovers: thanksgiving cauliflower with cheese and bobotie for me, ravioli and sauce for Kouryou-chan, tomato soup (Campbells! I'd be horrified, but it's comfort food) for Omaha. Omaha and Kouryou-chan worked their way through a round of Stratego-- Kouryou-chan still doesn't "get" it, although Yamaarashi-chan does.

"Excellent Service," my eliminative sphincter!

Remember the "excellent service" post I made a couple of days ago? One of the details I left out of the post was why I was calling: I was trying to replace a damaged credit card. I asked the woman to make sure that I would be getting a photo ID card replacement. I asked her twice because the last time I'd had to replace the card they had sent me one without my picture on it, and I had had to reorder it.

You got it. It came yesterday. No photo.

Bite me, Bank of America.