Sphere of Worry

The world is getting smaller.   It’s getting strangely smaller sometimes when we worry about things that aren’t even remotely close to us simply because they’re close to us from a media perspective.  I’ll give you an example that’s in the middle of happening right now.

There is a hurricane that landed in Florida.   We live in North Carolina.    The projected path for the hurricane was hitting just the south eastern tip of our state.   It wasn’t even projected to get close to where we live.    The weather forecast for our city was rain—not hard rain, not heavy rain, not high winds, just rain.  

We have a board retreat tomorrow.   The retreat is in town, with trustees who all live in town who only need to drive to the campus to attend the retreat.    And yet there was a question if we should cancel the retreat—two days before it was scheduled—because there was a hurricane states away.

There is significant impact from the hurricane, it’s just not near us.   But the media coverage makes it feel closer than it is.    Our sphere of worry is getting smaller as our world is of media is shrinking.

The Big Boy Update:  My son had a dream the other night he wanted to tell me about.   He’s told me about dreams before but this was the first time he was someone else in his dream and realized he had been someone other than himself as he was dreaming.   It was interesting hearing him describe his dream.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and her friend, Madison, apparently ran a bath and may or may not have had a bath this afternoon.   Clothes were changed, towels were wet and re-hung, but no one could confirm if a bath actually happened or not, even though I walked into the bathroom as they were draining the tub.  

Why Can’t I Go To Detroit?

My daughter very much hates some medical things.  Other things, like taking a trip with one or both of us to Detroit to go to an operating room and have her eyes looked at or have surgery preformed doesn’t seem to be on the “bad things” list for her.   She even likes to go.

This is in part because we try to make the trips fun for her.   This upcoming trip she’s already planning to take her pennies from Joan and John for the fountain at the mall.   We’ve only casually mentioned she would be going, not even bothering to say the appointment was moved up a month.   She’s just excited to go.

My son is disappointed.   He complained in the car this morning, “why can’t I go to Detroit?”   It’s hard to explain to a five-year-old but I told him he and I would do some special things together while his sister was visiting her retina surgeon with dad.

My son has been wanting to get his hair cut.   I’m hoping I can work a hair cut and new shoes (which he needs) into part of the special times we’ll have together while his sister and father are in Detroit.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Chore Chart Plan:   We started a chore chart today for both children.   The “chores” are fairly loosely defined right now with completion of anything deemed “chore worthy” meriting a stamp on their paper chart.   When their chart is complete, they will get a small allowance. As we move forward with this they are going to be required to do more of the chores.   For now and for today, they were quite motivated over a little tiny heart stamp on a piece of paper.

Moved Up EUA

My daughter’s vision has been declining lately.  I know, you’re thinking how can it possibly get worse than it already is, right?   It’s the cataract in the left eye—or at least we think that’s what it is.  

Before jumping to conclusions my husband and I watched her behavior carefully.   We talked to other people who were around my daughter a lot.   I spoken with teachers and staff at our school and I’ve had conversations with the two vision impairment teachers who work with my daughter.   We all agree, it’s getting worse.

Aside from things being more difficult to discern in general, she’s having color differentiation difficulties.   This means dark pink and red might get sorted into the same group or something that’s peach might be labeled orange.    Silver, black, brown, grey and some other colors are harder still to tell apart.    These are things she could do in the past, but is struggling with now.    These are also things that would be harder to see through a clouding lens.

So I sent an email.   I always have a plan, but I’m not a doctor and I’m not trained in all things eyes and basically I’m no expert.   I have observational information and a vague idea of what could possibly be the cause, but I need to engage our favorite eye doctors to have them confirm, make plans and take action.   And I need to do all of this by not crying wolf too often, or hopefully never.    It’s a fine line of being a forceful advocate for my daughter’s health and waiting for time to tell and let our doctor’s decisions play out.

This has been brewing for a while but specifically after seeing just how challenging this weekend was for my daughter camping out, it was time to send the email.   As an aside here, my daughter didn’t know this weekend was challenging, we knew it as adults who worried about her mostly the entire time because sometimes in unfamiliar environments, she just doesn’t know how much she can’t see.

Back to the email.   I sent it to our pediatric ophthalmologist.   She thought the concerns were significant enough to contact our retina surgeon in Detroit, who decided it would be good to move her EUA up to, “see if there is a treatable option”.  

So we’re off to Detroit on Monday.    I have no idea what type of good or bad or wait a while news will come out of it but we’ll know more then.

The Big Boy Update:  This morning at breakfast my son said, “I have green eyes and that means I’m sick and can’t go to school.”   My husband told him, “good try”.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was supremely happy coming home from school today.   She and I stopped into the grocery store and she happily helped me select things and then assisted the check out person by putting things on the scale.   Then, no sooner than we’d walked into the door of the house, she turned into “Super Whiny Child” alternating every ten minutes or so with the “Crazy Crying Child” personality.    Food typically helps, but even today she just had to work it out on her own because nothing seemed to help.

The Toe May Live:  I’m not going to post another picture, what with all the, “I almost vomited!” messages I got after the last picture, but at this point I think I’m going to be able to keep the toe.   It’s not happy, but it’s getting better.

Embarrassed As a Factor of Age

Am I getting older and care less or am I more confident because I’m just older?   I don’t know the answer to this but I do know I don’t get embarrassed very often.   Sure, I get embarrassed from time to time, but usually it’s for something I did I should have known better about.   It’s rarely from feeling like I don’t fit in or worrying if people like me or if I’m, “cool”.

I remember high school, junior-high even, where I feel like I was nerve ends all over and the slightest thing was a worry if I was doing the best thing to fit in, or even if I was fitting in.    I think most of us felt that way during our school years.   Maybe you were in the super popular crowd and were prom queen but I fell more in line with the Math Club and Computer Science Geek groups than I did the popular crowd.

I had friends though and my friends were well and true friends.   That doesn’t mean I didn’t spend a reasonable portion of the time feeling embarrassed for things I did, didn’t do, said, didn’t say, wore or didn’t wear.  

This all occurred to me because I got embarrassed about something recently.   Funny thing is, I don’t even remember what it was as I’m writing this, but I know it happened.   Is there some sort of diagram for this?   As you grow older your confidence increases while caring what other people think decreases?

The Big Boy Update:  While we were camping my son was running around on the shore.   He told Papa he was doing T.P.   When Papa asked, my son said it was getting his heart beating.   Papa asked, “do you mean, ‘P.E.’?”   My son said, “yeah, P.E.”.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  One of my favorite readers asked me what happened with my daughter’s bedding change.   He was right, I’d talked about it, ordered the new bedding and then hadn’t reported results back here.  We had ordered a mattress pad that we added to make my daughter more comfortable from below.  She then selected all purple sheets with purple owl motif comforter for the upper parts of her bedding.   It arrived in the mail and she has liked it all so far—especially the owl stuffed animal included in the bedding bag.  We have had nights with less incidents where she arrives downstairs, upset, cold, or scared.   But my daughter’s not okay every night or all through the night yet.   We have flash lights on our night stands so she can walk herself back upstairs.   Last night the flashlight I gave her (which she had selected from the dollar store) was apparently too bright and she started crying immediately upon turning it on and moving it around saying, “it’s too creepy!”   I took her upstairs in my arms the traditional way and put her back in her bed, which she immediately was happy about as she cuddled up to her owl and was warmly wrapped in her purple comforter.   Overall?  The new bedding has been a win.  I like the purple owls.

What, No Pancakes?

We’re home from camping.   My in-laws know what they’re doing, have all the camping gear and know how to run a camp site.   I have no camping things and know nothing about camping.   They made it easy for us though and my children had a good time the entire time.

There were some good comments from each of them over the past few days.  My daughter wanted me to call her “Tiny” and after some thought, decided I should be named, “Biggie”.  

We went to the shore of the lake just across from our camp site multiple times each day.   There was a “climbing tree” that leaned out over the water and provided lots of entertainment for the children.    We did some fishing which consisted mostly of trying to fish and not catching fish.   My son discovered how exciting bobbers could be and figured out how to connect them together.   He was particularly pleased when he found one left on the ground after our fishing neighbors departed.

There was a lot of digging in the sand.   I started digging and proclaimed I was going to dig to China.    My son got a stick, started digging and said, “I’m digging to Indonesia”.

We found a butterfly wing on the ground and discovered butterflies are my daughter’s favorite animal.     Later, when it was getting close to bed time my daughter asked me, “what’s that room that we’re going to be sleeping in called?”   A tent, I told her.

My son was talking to Nana about what would happen in the morning.   She told him about the muffins and cereal she had available for breakfast.   I heard him exclaim from across the camp site, “what, no pancakes?!”   Nana laughed and told him not this camping trip.

The Big Boy Update:  This morning before we left to go home my son said, “I just want to say goodbye to the climbing tree.”   He and I walked back to the shore, using the shortcut he’d discovered, and spent some time at the climbing tree.    When time was up we walked back together to say good bye to Nana and Papa to head home.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter’s vision is worse we’re all thinking.   It’s likely the cataract progressing, but we don’t know for sure.   She had a difficult time at the camp site finding us, things, not falling or running into things, basically most things.   It was low contrast in the woods, but she had to be assisted and monitored to be safe.   It would be really nice if her vision would take a turn for the better at some point.    She wasn’t overly bothered by her vision deficit though—she had a great time.

Still Camping

I'm still camping.  They haven't let me go home.   There are leaves and trees and a fire from time to time.  The only sign of civilization is our daily trip to Wal*Mart for things we forgot or ran out of.  

There was an incident where the pot of pasta all fell in the ground and a leg was scalded but it was deemed okay and we stayed and ate the pasta without noodles.

But so far, no ticks, no broken bones and no bites from snakes.  There are a lot of sounds in the woods at night.  My husband thinks he can hear them crawling on the outside of the tent.  

My children have never been so happy to be so dirty. 

Tomorrow we go home. 

The Big Boy Update:  We were at the edge of the lake, about to leave when my father-in-law said to my son, "don't forget your stick" (which my son had been playing with for some time).  My son replied, "it's not my stick, it's natures"

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been wanting me to call her, "Tiny" lately. She told me her favorite part of the day was going to take a shower with me and singing songs in the walk back to the camp site.  

They Made Me Camp

This post is for tomorrow because I won’t be here tomorrow.  I wrote this yesterday and set it for delayed posting since I’ll be without my computer or blog-posting devices.   Why, you ask?

Because my in-laws, my husband and my children are making me camp.   I don’t camp, or rather I didn’t camp or I haven’t camped since I was a youth in summer camp.     I don’t know that I dislike camping, but my impression is I would prefer to be inside in a climate-controlled environment over outside with biting bugs and uncontrolled humidity.

That being said, I am probably having a good time right now.  I’ll let you know when I get back.

The Big Boy Update:  My daughter is telling me, “my brother is on the scooter while daddy is doing the drone.”  (it appears they’re outside in the front yard.)

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter asked our friend, Tim, why he has his own car.   He told her he needed it to go to work.    She thought that was a good answer.