Crap Day

So in addition to the sad kids making me feel guilty in the morning and the pile o' work crap and my appointment with the boobsmasher...

I got a call around lunchtime from my OB/GYN's office to tell me that my pap smear came back abnormal.

Which is about a 99% certainty that I've got the HPV virus. It's an STD, but something like 70% of adults have it because it tends to lay dormant -- but still be transmittable -- for years. And even when it wakes up, it has no external symptoms. Sometimes (maybe even usually?) it clears up on its own, and sometimes it has to be treated. If left untreated, it can (but does not always) give rise to cervical cancer. Which is why it's important for women to have their pap smear every year. (The 1% chance this isn't HPV is that it's already developed into cancer. Since I do get my smear every year, this is pretty incredibly unlikely.)

In any case, this isn't a panic item at the moment. What it is, right now, is mostly an annoyance -- I have to go back to the doctor in a couple of weeks so he can stick a special microscope up my hoo-hoo and look around ("colposcopy") and extract a sample of the abnormal cells to do a biopsy, just to be on the safe side. Then, depending on the severity and the precise location of the flare-up, he'll decide how to treat it. (The options are typically either surgical removal or cryogenic cauterization. Sounds like fun. Either way, they'd better line me up with the good drugs.) No telling when that will happen, but I'm willing to bet that Murphy will line it up with something incredibly inconvenient, like while my parents are in Mexico and unable to help babysit.

So I had all that on my mind to process while I was getting my boobs smashed. (Not fun, but at least it went quick -- I don't think I was at the Women's Imaging Center for more than 15 minutes, including the time I was sitting in the waiting room.)

Then I came back to the office for the afternoon's run-around-and-be-crazy, and was handed work to take home. (I was told that I could leave it until this morning, but it was in that "sure, you can drown puppies and kittens if you WANT to" tone. I thought about leaving it until today anyway, then thought of the amount of work I need to get done, and that I really, really need to get to the gym today, and decided I'd go ahead and work it anyway. Because I'm a team player. Aheh.)

Today is going to be better. It had damn well better.

It started off better, anyway. Alex started to cry when I dropped him off, but he was diverted by the promise of a book from the teacher he doesn't much care for. Maybe he'll warm up to her, yet.

Penny said, "Mommy, don't make me cry today."

I said, "How did I make you cry?"

"I wanted another hug and a kiss!"

"Okay, tell you what. You tell me, right now, while we're still in the car, how many hugs and kisses you want today."

"Um... Four. No, five."

"Five hugs and kisses?"

"Yes."

"And that will be enough so you don't cry?"

"I think so."

"...Okay. Sure."

And it was. When the bell rang, we went a few steps down her hall (to get out of the way of the other kids) and she carefully counted each hug and kiss, and even giggled a little when I was doing her "special" kisses, and she walked off down the hall without any nudging and in reasonably cheerful spirits.

It's a compromise I can live with.

Smoosh

Today is not shaping up to be my favoritest day ever.

It started off okay. Alex slept until almost 6:30, and was happy to wander around upstairs while I got dressed. Penny was excited about it being "picture day" and got dressed without being nagged. We wound up leaving the house a minute or two late, but not enough to really matter.

We got to Alex's daycare, and he was fine and dandy while I got his coat off and handed over his spare clothes, and then as I headed for the door, he broke down. They're transitioning him to the toddler side of the room, which means he was able to run for me and grab my leg. I gave him another hug and a kiss, then firmly turned and walked away... Or would have, if Penny hadn't been lollygagging. I muscled her out the door.

She was bright and cheerful right up into school, playing with a ribbon she found in the car and pretending she was a cowgirl. But when it came time to go to class, she called me back for extra hugs and kisses. "But I'll miss you," she said. "Why do I have to go to school?"

"Because everyone has to go to school," I said. "I miss you too, pumpkin. Have a fun day! Picture day!" and I left.

I hadn't been at work for half an hour when the nurse called to tell me she'd arrived at her kindergarten class in tears, sobbing, "Mommy left me!" as if I'd just broken up with her.

She's despondent almost every morning, mind, but it doesn't usually dissolve into tears. I don't know if she's tired, or if her post-breakfast blood sugar spike is particularly high today, or what. It's not like I can let her get out of going to school. So I'm just sitting here feeling guilty and wondering what I'm doing wrong, that my kids hate school so much. I loved school, when I was little.

To be fair, I don't think Alex hates school. I think he just doesn't like the early morning toddler teacher. Which is fair; I'm not wild about her myself. I'm sure she's very nice, but she doesn't smile very much, and she doesn't show much in the way of enthusiasm or energy. But if he gets in the habit of not liking her, will it turn into a habitual breakdown every morning, even after he's not in that class anymore? Ugh.

And here I sit, at the job I despise (today, I get to write up some meeting minutes, have a meeting with one of the project managers to hash out some details, do some paperwork, review a couple of documents, and then start working on retooling about a hundred pages of processes to specifically fit one of our projects).

But hey, I get a reprieve this afternoon -- I've got an appointment for a mammogram! Whoo! Boy, if there's anything in this world that could make me appreciate being at work, it's an appointment with the boob-smasher!

Illness and snow and more illness sucked up the vacation time I'd been planning to use to take a few days off later this month, but I think I might need to take at least one day, anyway. I need to recharge.

Bitten Off

Just a note.

If you're a software or web development shop, and you're having to call in significant numbers of your crew on the weekend to work 12-14 hour days for multiple weekends in a row... You've bitten off more than you can chew, and you need to back the fuck up and figure out what's gone wrong.

Here's one possibility: Maybe you should actually listen to your crew when they tell you that they can't add "just one more" feature and still meet the build deadline.

Matt did not get to sleep in, or enjoy the gorgeous weather this weekend, or play with the kids for more than about ten minutes a day. The kids did not get to go to the library or the park, and they spent way more time being told "Be quiet, Daddy's on the phone" than kids under 10 should. I did not get to go to the gym or shopping for a new pair of jeans.

Oh, and the build? Still had to be delayed. Grrrr. Seriously, if this happens again next weekend, I'll be tempted to head down there to give them a piece of my mind. I could go into detail about exactly what's going wrong over there, that this is happening, but it would just irritate me again to no good purpose.

On the plus side, the kids were fantastically good (with allowances for their respective ages, of course, but still!) and even Alex was patient with me having to lug him all over town to run errands. And the weather was amazing, so Penny spent a lot of time running around outside with Ray from next door, which cut down somewhat on the number of times I had to tell her to be quiet, and we had the windows in the house open, so Matt at least got fresh air, if not sunshine.

Uck

I'd gotten all excited.

See, I'd tried something new for my breakfast -- I'd brought in a whole wheat, low-fat english muffin and used it to make an egg sandwich. It was working out surprisingly well.

And when I say "surprisingly well," I mean that I was looking up from my work at 12:30 or 1 and realizing that not only had I not gotten hungry before lunchtime, I still wasn't hungry well into lunchtime. Yesterday, at 2:30, I forced myself to eat lunch even though I really didn't want it.

It was the miracle breakfast! Real and lasting satisfaction! I was excited!

An hour or so later, it occurred to me that maybe my appetite was minimal because I was coming down with the stomach uck. Alex had it last week; Matt's had it, off and on, most of the week... it was bound to be my turn. And hey, some of that tiredness and exhaustion that I've been complaining about for the last few days? Possibly also a side-effect of encroaching illness!

By the time I got home from work, there was no doubt: the Uck had found me.

I'm at work today because I more or less have to be, but I'm kind of draggingly exhausted and my stomach is far from settled. I packed myself mostly yogurt and other pap to eat, and we'll see how the day goes. I may end up giving up the ghost a bit early.

Tired

I just feel exhausted this morning. Possibly I need more sleep. I'd actually intended to go to bed early last night, but Matt and I wound up getting caught up on some of our saved TiVo shows. (I'm up to two TV shows, now: Leverage and Dollhouse. Plus if Matt's watching Terminator while I'm in the room, I'll usually end up watching it anyway.)

The problem with the car turned out to be an assortment of things, in fact. The emissions monitoring computer had gone on the fritz, and three of the four sparkplugs were misfiring, and (due mostly to the 'plugs) there was a buildup of carbon and oil in the fuel system gumming up the works.

Luckily, the emissions monitoring computer was still under warranty, so I managed to get out for less than $500. Still, I'm pretty sure I could have thought of something more fun to do with the money. (New pants, for example.)

At least I got my car back, and I made it to the gym last night. It wasn't my best workout ever, but it was nice to get a break from the Wii. It's cute and fun and all, but I'd never intended to use it daily.

Penny was all over the place emotionally this morning -- she wanted to snuggle with me, she was furiously angry that I couldn't make the pair of pants she wanted appear out of thin air; she was playful and happy; she was clingy and whiny. I would have bet cash money that her sugars were out of whack, but her pre-breakfast check was a near-perfect 101. Sometimes, five-year-olds are just moody, I guess.

(Still, the part where she stomped into my room, completely naked, clenched her little fists, and snarled, "Different pants. Now!" nearly bowled me over with laughter. Also, I was kind of amused a bit later when she came in wearing a skirt and gave me her "how do you like my outfit" look, and then when I started to tell her it was cold and she'd need to wear tights to keep her legs warm, held up a finger and interrupted me, "Ah!" in her best imitation of my own "I'm not going to listen to this and you'd better rethink what you were about to say" tone.)

rrRRrrrrrr

Got in the car this morning to the sight of: you guessed it! the "check engine" light and the little red triangle-and-exclamation-point warning sign.

(You'd think, since the display is a freaking touchscreen computer, that they could display some vaguely useful information. I'm not even asking for sophisticated analysis here; just the name of the system that triggered the warning. Fuel? Air intake? Carburetor?)

Well, that's annoying, I thought. But easy enough to deal with. I'll take the kids to school and make another appointment to bring the car to the shop.

I backed out of the driveway, then put the car in Drive and stepped on the gas. rrRRrrrrrr, said the car. It lurched into motion, but then refused to speed up past 3mph.

Um.

I checked to make sure I was in the right gear, stepped on the gas again. rrrrrr, said the car, and we made it up to 5mph.

This... was not good.

Maybe the engine just needs to warm up a bit, I thought. I drove to the end of the street, and the car made it up to 10mph. An improvement! I stepped on the gas a bit harder, and the car... slowed down.

I drove around the block that's situated at the end of our cul-de-sac. Not once did I get the car over 15mph. But it was slowly improving. I decided to drive aimlessly around the neighborhood a little longer and see what happened. Every time I tried to accelerate quickly, the car slowed down, as if it was doing the reverse of what I wanted it to. I turned down the street perpendicular to ours. The one with the big dip and hill.

Going up the hill, the car slowed down again. The emergency brake light came on, though I hadn't actually touched the brake. I set the brake and released it, but the light stayed on, and the car pulled to a standstill. Then it started to drift backwards down the hill.

It handled like a car that wasn't turned on, but I managed to wrestle the wheel around so that it at least backed sideways. My dashboard display was starting to look a little weak, like its battery was dying. I turned the car off, whispered, "Come on, baby," and turned it back on.

The dash display was bright and shiny again. I hit the gas, and the car lurched twice, then started to drive almost normally. A tad sluggish, but I made it up to 25mph before I got to the end of the street.

I drove around the block again, just to test. Managed to get up to 35 without any problems.

Okay. Now what?

I headed toward Alex's daycare, thinking furiously. Halfway there, I called Matt. "Car's busted again," I told him. "Can you meet me at the Toyota place and take Penny to school, please?"

I got Alex to school and took Penny to the Toyota shop. Matt showed up while they were getting me checked in. He's in the middle of a bignasty mess at work, so I told him not to wait for me -- get Penny to school and get on back to work. About ten minutes later, when they'd finished checking me in, the shuttle pulled around and took me to work. I wound up only about ten minutes later than usual, so it's not so bad.

But for petesake, I'd like things to work correctly for a while after this, 'kay? And also, it wouldn't hurt my feelings if spring would actually show up.

---

And just so this isn't entirely bitching and whining -- Alex was so damned adorable last night I could've eaten him up with a spoon.

We were sitting on the floor in my bedroom, playing while Penny was in the bath, and he was poking at various parts of my face and I was naming them: Nose. Eye. Cheek. Eyebrow. Nose. Chin. Nose. Forehead. Eye. Eye. Eyebrow. Nose. Like that.

I usually take my glasses off for this game, because he does make a distinction between my eyes and my glasses, and if I'm wearing the glasses, I can't tell what he's pointing at. (And yes, he really does include the glasses as a valid part of my face -- even after I take them off, he'll occasionally point at them instead of my face.)

Since my glasses were off, I leaned in close and gave him an "eyelash kiss" -- fluttering my eyelashes against his cheek. He giggled, so I did it again.

He laughed, then looked up at me and -- quite deliberately -- blinked his eyes several times, fairly quickly. I laughed and gave him another eyelash kiss. He giggled and blink-blinked at me again. That went back and forth several times, and it was utterly adorable.

(Of course, there's too much of a good thing... A few minutes later, he picked up one of his mega-lego blocks and smooshed it into my eyeball so I could give it an eyelash kiss, too...)

Murphy

I am a priestess of Murphy, and my god loves me.

"You know what you should do?" Matt said to me about a week ago. "You should take a vacation. Even just a few days off. You need to relax a little."

It was an idea with plenty of appeal. Surely, I thought, surely I can find three days in March that I can take off. Do that cleaning/organizing of the playroom one day, and then spend two days relaxing.

Surely.

So quite naturally, last week, Alex got sick and Matt and I spent pretty much the whole week taking half-days off to take care of him. And he was perfectly fine yesterday, except that it snowed Sunday night and the schools were all closed yesterday, so Matt and I both stayed home to watch the kids. (Both of us because Matt's office is in the middle of trying to get a build to go live -- he wound up working all weekend -- seriously, 12-hour days, which completely sucks, so he couldn't work and keep the kids rounded up.)

So in the last week, I've burned through 22 hours of leave. Hey! That's almost three days!

This morning, I thought we were going to be lucky. Our county is the only county in the entire area that's actually having school on the normal schedule today. Every other county and city is either closed or on a 2-hour delay. And Alex's daycare was open, too. Whoo!

Then Matt discovered that the cat had peed on the carpet sometime during the night. And when I got into the car to drive the kids to school, literally thirty seconds after Matt had backed out of the driveway and headed down the road, I saw that my "Check Engine" light had come on, and my computerized display that usually shows me engine efficiency was set firmly on the screen telling me that the car was broke and I should take it to the shop post-haste.

Sigh.

I drove the kids to school anyway. Got stuck waiting at the railroad tracks for the world's slowest coal train. The daycare teacher suggested checking my gas cap, which I'd heard somewhere else. I tried it, but no dice.

I took Penny to school. She spent the four minutes waiting for the bell whining at me about how she was too tired for school today. And the classroom assistant passed us in the hall as I was giving her a goodbye hug and kiss and told Penny to keep her coat on, because the classroom didn't have heat.

...Faaaaantastic.

Today is not looking like it's going to be my favoritest day ever. Can I get a do-over?

At least Penny got to enjoy the snow.


Edit/Addendum, 12:30pm: Made an appointment for the car, arranged transportation, moved a doctor's appointment that I wasn't going to get to. When I left the office to get my allergy shots and then drop the car off to be fixed... it had spontaneously fixed itself. No warning lights, nothing.

So I called the fixit shop and canceled that appointment, and called my chiropractor and got that appointment back, and my day is back to the more or less even keel on which it started, except for the cat pee on the rug. And the fact that the heat in my office appears to be on the fritz.