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Thursday, September 09, 2004

stress and nosebleeds

I have a very good reason for not having updated since Monday night. That reason is that I have been wanting to plant plastique explosives in my head, just to relieve the stress, but I couldn't figure out how to stick it in through my ears.


I homeschool my two kids (that would be the "hsing" part of "hsing-mom", just in case you ever wondered if maybe I was just a very poor speller. Which I'm not). One of the joys of this educational and parenting choice is that I can start the school year when I want to. For us, this is the Tuesday after Labor Day, because by golly that's when school should start. This whole beginning-of-August thing is for the birds. ANyway. That means that this last Tuesday was our first day of school. Tuesday arrived after a really busy wacky extremely-extended weekend involving company, a Wednesday-morning wedding, my first attempt at garment alterations, a trip to Yosemite, a county fair, a destruction derby which was an exercise in anger management, an afternoon sitting in a booth reading for four hours (yay!), a family dinner and walk, and the formation of a pile of dirty laundry which rivaled Mt. Fuji in scope (and smelled much worse.). I had not quite succeeded in gluing my head back on straight after this mostly-pleasant whirlwind of activity when all of a sudden WHAM the Tuesday after Labor Day was staring me in the face. And my two students Did Not Want to start school. School lasted till after four o'clock on Tuesday, and nearly as long on Wednesday, and I was really glad about the way I've always run off at the mouth about how I'll never put my kids in public school, because otherwise I'd pretty much have been wanting to throw my principles out the window and go enroll them as soon as the office opened Thursday morning. However. Wednesday night everyone else went to a potluck while I stayed home to try to regain my sanity. I knew I'd left it around here somewhere. I found it at the bottom of a basket of clean laundry during the scene in "Pride and Prejudice" where Mr. Darcy has just come upon Elizabeth by surprise at Pemberley and he's all flummoxed and asks twice about her family because he's so unlike his usual smooth, under-control self, because he adores her so madly. (that is my kind of man. Those who know my husband casually would never guess how completely he can become undone. But oh boy do I know it.)


So I felt better this morning. And school went much more pleasantly today -- less pulling teeth and more aha! moments. It IS fun to see my little mini-me plowing through Bob books in a way that bodes well for HER future literariness -- I absolutely cannot wait for her to have a crush on a character in a book. yay. My first book-character crush was Justin in Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, followed closely by Stan in Fifteen. Who was yours? :-) And LT had rounding in math today, instead of place value, which was where much of the teeth-pulling and hair-tearing had happened for the first two days. And I just felt much more sane and it's alarming how much this household responds to my moods. When Mommy ain't sane, ain't NOBODY sane. Or something.


I can't believe I just typed the word "ain't", even in a quote-adaptation kind of way. Twice. My fingers are itching to go delete it.


Tonight LT got another nosebleed. He gets them A LOT. We had a doctor's appointment set for him for last week, because in the last month the nosebleeds have really picked up in intensity until they're pretty much a daily or twice-daily experience. But then two days before the appointment, I set up the humidifier in LT's room, and for those two days he had zero nosebleeds... so I thought I'd solved the problem. However, pretty much the very moment after I cancelled the appointment, his nose started plotting Act II, and he's had them again every day or twice a day since Thursday. (which didn't add to the Weekend-O-Sanity, might I add). Tonight he had one that lasted an hour, and they NEVER last that long, they always go away after five minutes, except for the few that continue till ten minutes, which cause a little licking flame of fear to start up somewhere in my lower intestines and work its way upward until the bleeding (which, at least, is never substantial in quantity) stops. Tonight I was successfully putting on the the patented Casual Mom (Let's Not Scare The Poor Kid) act, while inside I was starting to do some serious freaking out. So we will again try to brave the doctor's office tomorrow, just to get things checked out. I'm sure these aren't a symptom of something really serious, because he has, well, no other symptoms of anything serious, but they are an enormous hassle and they're scary (although Anxiety Boy is remarkably cool when they're going on -- he's just gotten so used to them) and they can't be good for him so we're going to see what can maybe be done to stop them. So any prayers and good thoughts you'd want to send our way would be much appreciated. Especially since we don't actually have an appointment, and we get to drive to the valley in the hundred-degree heat and hope we get seen, which is not ordinarily something I ever try to do.


I so totally meant to be in bed half an hour ago. ack.

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