Busy Busy Plans Plans Plans

I made a plan for yesterday, and it was quite ambitious, but it was the first Saturday in forever that there was nothing on the calendar. I went over the plan with the kids -- cleaning rooms, laundry, hair cuts, shopping for shorts, doing that nagging yard work in front of the house...

2 hair cuts. Shorts for 3 kids. Underwear for 2 kids. 2 pairs of shoes, 1 pair of sandals. Bakugan purchase to celebrate excellent school week. Ice cream to celebrate straight As. Venti shaken lemonade iced green tea (barely sweetened) for mom, because Mother Nature turned on the heat and it is suddenly 85 degrees. 2 rooms vacuumed. Small amount of yard work done because I ran out of lawn bags. 3 loads of laundry completed (only because the venti iced tea was absorbed too late in the day and I couldn't sleep). Lawn bags purchased at Home Depot, but they didn't have any phlox. 1 child delivered to playdate. 2 kids got 2 burgers, 1 fries, many peanuts at 5 Guys. Mom ate the peanuts.

I wanted to do some cooking/baking, but time ran out. I borrowed a pasta machine from a friend -- one that fits into my Kitchenaid mixer -- so I could use it to once again make the GF ravioli (after I told her about my difficult hand-rolling experience). It was very kind of her to let me borrow it because she never even used it yet! Perfect for me, as that means there is no gluten in the machine for me to worry about. But it has been sitting on my counter for 3 weeks and I haven't had a chance to give it a try. Typical!

Today I will involve the children in housework and cage cleaning as much as humanly possible, grade papers, hunt for phlox, and shop & cook for the week. Mow the lawn? Make more ravioli? Bake GF bread? I'm pushing it. Plan for the week, when I will be counting down the days until Friday again, when my husband comes back from his trip and I can perhaps get a moment of quiet...

Sleep is SOOOO Overrated!

If only I didn't have to sleep. There's so much to explore! So I just joined Twittermoms, and now I wonder if I have the time to actually tweet.

I love the tech words that are now in common usage... I can tweet, blog, twitter, youtube, and add to my delicious. With a dongle, wiimotes, and a light pen, I can turn any surface into a smartboard. I don't need a dongle to iphone an update to my facebook.

Just a small sampling... cracks me up.

Ouch.

After I got the dinner on the table, I started cooking again so Daniel could have empanadas for this week's school lunches. I also popped some GF brownies in the oven because I was out of desserts other than a few chocolate candies and the last of a bag of some verrrrrry crunchy Midel ginger snaps.

Rolling dough, remembering the laundry left in the dryer from yesterday, catering to children's requests, general juggling. I said to Daniel, "what did I used to do with my free time? I can't remember."

And he hit back with, "Two years mom. Then I'm going to college. I'll be out of here and you'll have less to do."

Ouch. That was below the belt.

I suggested that he might consider going to University of Maryland and commuting from home. Good GF food here, and his local endocrinologist to boot. But he said, NO WAY, I'm GOING. Echoes of me at that age.

What will I do with my spare time? Miss him terribly. And work on creating delicious gluten-free care packages.

Where's the Gluten? or A Touch of Serendipity

I was supposed to go on a field trip today with the lower school. We were headed to a bilingual theater performance in Washington, DC. After we returned, I was going to broadcast the dvd of my 4th graders' news program, which they had been working on over the past couple of weeks. I burned the dvd yesterday right before I left school. This morning, before going on the field trip, I tested out the dvd, and it had a problem. The sound wasn't tracking with the movements. So I had to re-save it from windows movie maker in a different format, and reburn the dvd. All of which was going to take more time than the 20 minutes I had before the busses left on the field trip.

My boss said it was okay, there were enough teachers on the trip, just go ahead and work on the broadcast. So I got the problem fixed, and had just finished burning the last of the dvds to give to the kids when my cell phone rang.

It was Daniel's school nurse, calling to let me know that he had just lost his lunch and had terrible stomach pains.

If I had gone on the field trip, I wouldn't have been able to rush out of school to go get Daniel. I would have been stuck downtown, waiting for the school bus to take me back. Frustrated as I was with the dvd this morning, I was so happy that it kept me close to my car!

Daniel thought he was glutened somehow, because he threw up right after eating lunch. But everything in his lunch was packed by me, and it was leftovers of stuff that he had before. Baked beans and rice. Gluten free corn chips. A kiwi. A choco-loco bar (GF). He said he started feeling really sick when he was eating the kiwi, and that he didn't want kiwis in his lunch anymore.

I wondered if he was suddenly allergic to kiwi. Or if there was gluten on the table, and it got on his hands, and in his mouth when he ate the kiwi. He said that he and his friends were throwing around some Easter candy. Sometimes candy has gluten on it to keep it from sticking. Maybe that was the case. Anyway, we can't figure out where the gluten came from, if it was gluten. It could have been a stomach bug. After going low, having sugar, rebounding high, and taking pepto bismol, he's on the mend now.

He can make up that major test that he missed tomorrow.

Emotional Monday

I really ought to go get my hormone levels checked or something. It doesn't take much to get me weepy on a Monday morning! I read a story that popped up on my Comcast news page about how diabetics (and of course it didn't differentiate between type 1 and type 2) are cutting back on medicine to survive loss of or cutbacks on health insurance because of this economy. Those who are insulin dependent are switching to less expensive kinds of insulin that don't give as tight control as the more expensive brands. One woman went into DKA because, the article said, "she stopped taking most of her drugs and cut her insulin doses in half to stretch her budget."

I got very emotional, sitting here at my computer on a Monday morning, preparing for my classes, preparing to greet the kids with a smile. Deep breath time.

I guess Daniel must be using one of the cheaper insulins. Is Novolog one of the cheaper ones? When I went to pick up his prescription on Friday, I took out my wallet, ready to pay $35 as I have done since switching to this insurance, and the pharmacist said there was no charge. Something switched this month.

Shouldn't I have been informed that something changed? I'll have to check through my emails, and junk emails, to see if there was a notice.

Anyhow, I hope that this country makes strong progress towards a better health care system. It is past time, and people are dying every day because they can't get the care that they need. I know I'm focusing on diabetes, but of course there are so many other chronic conditions, so many patients in desperate need.

*sigh* Monday.

It's exhausting.

It's exhausting trying to make myself understood to teenagers. Or preteens. Or youngsters. Or anybody. Sometimes I think I'm speaking an alien language, and the people to whom I'm speaking are smiling and nodding just to humor me until I go away.

I don't even feel like going into the details. Suffice it to say that I thought I made myself clear, and Daniel thought I did not. Until I blew up, at which point I was, of course, overreacting. Because I initially did not make a clear request, so how could there be follow through?

Oh, yeah, and just ignore all those low insulin warnings and let the pump start sucking air, while you're at it.

ack. Calgon, take me away.

Lost

Yesterday we had friends over for dinner, wonderful old friends whom we haven't seen in a while, so that was lovely. However, a few minutes before I was going to sit everyone down, I got a phone call from the kids' dentist. We had been there earlier that afternoon. They said, "I believe I have a bag that belongs to you... it has glucose tablets and a small machine..."

"Yes! I need that! That's my son's diabetes kit. How late are you open?"

The lady told me that she would stay in the office until I got there. I looked at my old friends and told them that I had to leave them to go pick up Daniel's kit. They were wonderful, didn't mind staying with the kids, and even finished the prep for dinner.

I was pissed off, of course, because I had to leave my own dinner party. And worried that some day Daniel is going to leave his kit in a place where he can't get it back. We have extra glucometers, but they are not the ones that "talk" to his pump. Everything is replaceable, I suppose. It's just that various scenarios run through my mind -- usually going something like 'he leaves his bag somewhere on a field trip, and on the way home he goes low and needs glucose tabs.' Danger danger emergency emergency.

Has this happened to you? Have you lost your diabetes stuff and found yourself in a sticky situation? Have you had trouble replacing what you've lost? Do you only carry your diabetes stuff in your kit, or do you stuff it with other things, as my son does?

I suppose it is easier for women, because we are used to carrying things around in a purse. But what do all the guys do?

Growing Pains

It was one of those days. First day back at work after spring break, so I started off tired. After work I had to pick up Daniel, drop him off at home so he could do his job and his homework, run to pick up my glasses because I got the call that they were ready, but got interrupted en route by a call from Nora who was ready to be picked up from school earlier than scheduled because rehearsals were over. So I told her to be ready with all her stuff outside the school so I wouldn't have to go in and find her.

She jumps in the car and we go to get my glasses, stopping off at Game Stop so I can replace a game of Daniel's that I broke last week. Get the glasses, swing by weight watchers to weigh in (the same for the past 2 weeks, argh!) and then pick up some roasted chicken because there is no time to make dinner tonight.

Nora put the chicken on the floor of the car and as I turned to back out of the parking space to head out and pick up Dominic from his after school care, something catches my eye. A lovely scarf, which is on a beautiful black leather jacket. That I don't recognize.

"Who does that jacket belong to?" I asked Nora, thinking, rather ridiculously, Who would put a jacket in my car?

"Uhhh, did I pick up the wrong..." Nora says. And then a phone rings. It's not my phone. It's coming from the jacket.

I find the phone, a nice touch-screen blackberry, and the caller ID says that a friend of mine is calling. I try to figure out how to answer the damned phone, and finally get it. Turns out it belongs to another friend (the mom of one of Nora's friend) who is frantically looking for her jacket and phone.

We arrange to have her pick it up after she does her car pool run. I turn to Nora and say, "How could you mistake this jacket for yours?" She does not have a leather jacket. "I don't know. I was tired!"

She's leaving her stuff all over the house. The ice cream on the counter. Her sweaters on the floor. A hammer on the driveway. Despite the straight A's, her brain is sometimes turned off.

I guess she's becoming a teenager!!!

April Fool!

At breakfast Nora said, "Oh no! I just remembered that I have a five-paragraph essay due today in English class!!!"

Dominic stayed sound asleep, even after I whispered, "Panera breakfast?"

Daniel lost his brand new expensive glasses and his flash drive with all his code for his game development class.

Which one is NOT the April Fools joke?