elfs | Mid-Week Adventures

I can't believe I forgot to note this. Sunday, when I was on the roof cleaning out the gutters, an eagle flew overhead. It was one big bird and it had a fish in its claws. It took a straight line over the trees and over my property, heading for Normandy lake. It was a big fish, too. And there was something else trailing it; maybe entrails. I was amazed at how clearly I could make it all out.

Sunday was also Yamaarashi-chan's first day at my house for an entire week. It started Sunday night, and there wasn't much to do for her other than feed her, bathe her, and put her to bed.

Monday was insane, with my running home in the car and getting the kids and Omaha from the doctor's office. Omaha had some kind of rash, and there's apparently a fast-developing possibly fatal reaction to one of her medications that first manifests itself as a rash, so she has to have every one of the checked out. Kouryou-chan hasn't been sleeping all that well recently; waking in the night and crawling into bed with us, so she was terrible when we herded her into the car. She got massively upset because Omaha insisted on buckling her in while she was fretting about one of her shoes becoming undone. Yamaarashi-chan, on the other hand, was delightfully complacent about the whole thing.

For Yamaarashi-chan, it's a shame she has the voice of an anvil because she likes to sing. For her parents, it's a shame she likes to sing because she has the voice of an anvil. She's also apparently learned that, to be heard over three teenagers and the television set, she has to be LOUD. This doesn't work at my house, though; it only makes us ask her-- and eventually tell her-- to tone it down or take it outside. Usually we only have to ask twice, though.

I got Omaha to her evening appointment at the studio where she records a weekly radio show on Macintosh games. She said the show went pretty well. But I also had to herd the kids into the car at nine that night to head over to the airport bus complex and pick her up on her way home. In between, I made tortellini and sauce (using up the very last of my Shiraz in the process of making the sauce... damn!) while the kids got their parentally-limited one hour of television a day-- Arthur and Dragon Tales, I think.

I'm so unbelievably happy with my PVR, I can't begin to tell you. It's already figured out that there are PBS kids in the house, and after we told it that Pokemon and The Simpsons weren't appropriate for our kids, it settled down and now dutifully grabs and keeps one day's worth of Arthur, Dragon Tales, Cailou, George Shrinks, Clifford, Sagwa... it gives the kids a smorgasbord they can watch at any time, not just when the show's on. It's television shows like sushi boats... you can watch when they first come by, or any time until they get stale. It's amazing. I already don't know how I lived without it.

And in the middle of the night, for the first time in three weeks, she wet her bed. Fortunately, it was her bed, not ours. Omaha had to rise in the middle of the night (Kouryou-chan always wakes her up, not me, probably because I sleep on the far side of the bed from the bedroom door), shower her down (potential parents take note: a shower massage on a hose is not a luxury when you have kids), and re-dress her for bed. Bleah.

Tuesday, we had another hectic day as, after work, I hurtled home and we took the kids grocery shopping. What a thrilling evening, huh? Kouryou-chan was the pain this time-- it seems to be her week to be a pain. We have this little toy shopping cart, and she kept pushing it loose and rolling it around and running into people. Annoying little kid. Yamaarashi-chan, in contrast, was much better.

After we got home, the kids got their baths, and Kouryou-chan went ballistic on us. She was being naughty about getting ready for bed, instead playing downstairs. We did the parental counting thing: "You have three seconds to come upstairs or you lose one book for bedtime." She didn't come upstairs. We escalated. "If you don't come upstairs, you'll lose both books."

She pushed it, and lost both books. Yamaarashi-chan had brushed her teeth and picked her books and was ready, and Kouryou-chan was so far behind... and Omaha was just mad because Kouryou-chan wasn't just disobeying, she was actively playing "I'm not listening to you." When Kouryou-chan learned that we were serious about not letting her pick her own books to read and that Yamaarashi-chan would get to do all of the selecting, she lost it. Flailing, crying, screaming, quickly ascending into the "I'm screaming because I don't know how to stop screaming" stage that can last an hour. It took twenty minutes to calm her down enough to listen to the book collection Yamaarashi-chan picked (and to be honest, they're all book Kouryou-chan likes: Thomas the Tank Engine, Nantan's Good Morning, Beatrix Potter).

But she seemed to sleep OK. Still crawling out of her bed in the kids' room and joining us at 3:00am, but that's understandable.