Fumes

At various points over the course of the weekend, I tried to get a couple of mental reminders to stick in my own brain. One was to charge the portable DVD player and load it with the DVD for the next of the 1001 Films on my to-watch list. Another was to put together something like a reasonable lunch for Monday, since I’m running a little low on stockpiled meals here at the office. Of course, the whole weekend blew on by in a hurry (for various reasons both typical and out of the ordinary, some of which I will explain below) and my mental reminders went unheeded. Nevertheless, somehow, in the midst of getting ready for work this morning in the usual amount of time I allot myself for the task, I managed to shove some leftover rotisserie chicken in a baggie, and gather up all the parts of the DVD player as well as the aforementioned Netflix selection, and still make it to the train on time. No doubt there’s some kind of metaphorical life lesson about wasting time inefficiently trying to get ahead when the last minute breeds perfectly acceptable results, but I am way too tired to suss it out right now.

The big development of the weekend was a nasty illness afflicting the little girl. She was up and down and up and down with screaming fits all through the night on Friday, but my wife and I assumed it had to do with teething and resolved to give her some infant analgesic the following night to take the edge off. But even with a dropperful of ibuprofen in her system, the little girl’s Saturday night was every bit as rough as Friday, so Sunday entailed a trip to the urgent care where she was summarily diagnosed with an ear infection. Not terribly shocking, and as my wife so aptly pointed out, in reality the little girl is kind of a slacker because she’s ten months old and finally getting her first ear infection, whereas her big brother had his first at four months. (Even less surprising when you consider that the little guy was born in the fall and was four months old as of January; this has been a milder winter but we’ve hit the coldest part of it now and lo, the head colds and complications arrive like clockwork.) Our daughter had her double-dose of antibiotics yesterday and a painkiller parfait of both ibuprofen AND acetaminophen last night, but still couldn’t sleep in a horizontal position for much more than an hour at a go before the pressure would build up in her ear and make her cry out miserably. She’s fine, happy and intermittently energetic when she’s awake in the daytime, sitting up or pulling herself to standing or whatnot, but the nights have been the suck. So there’s that.

On a positive note, now that she’s being properly medicated she could theoretically turn the corner at any moment. But in the mean time my wife is engaged in the heroic work of holding down the fort at home with a slightly needy baby and a very needy three-and-a-half year old who maddeningly dials it up to eleven when he suspects his sister might be getting a little extra coddling for some unfathomable reason. Meanwhile I’m at work on my normal routine schedule, but if the blogging goes a little light and low-content this week, you now know the primary reason why. But hopefully I’ll be able to check in semi-regularly with more info about the crazy weekend and such.