Saturday, June 28, 2008

The Goldfish Incident?

Eric did not get sick or show any signs of gluten exposure from the 3 goldfish crackers he two Sundays ago. It's been nearly 2 weeks so, I can assume we're out of the woods. But why? I've seen him get really sick because a piece of soba got mixed in with his rice pasta at a potluck. The soba and surrounding rice noodles were removed, but the next day he was in too much pain to go to school. Three goldfish crackers would have a heck of a lot more gluten than residual cross contamination from a soba noodle. We are scratching our heads. Act of God? Who knows. Celiac disease is a fickle master.

We went to Cambridge Hospital and switched him to the short cast, instead of the big cast that immobilized his elbow. And they're going to try to get it off a week early so we can be done with it before our vacation.

YES! We are taking a real vacation. It's kind of a short one that will involve way too much traveling. But I'm looking forward to it nonetheless. We're off to Minnesota for my cousin K's wedding. He's the brother of the late, great Eric Gilbert whom my son is named after. And my other uncle on my mom's side is throwing a huge party in honor of my cousin Sam who made it home from Iraq in one piece for which we are very grateful for.

I've informed my office that I will not be available via cellphone or e-mail while I'm away. I feel a bit guilty about it, but guilt is pretty much a constant state for the working mom. You're always shortchanging somebody. I spent most of my sister's graduation party upstairs in my home office trying to deal with a down server. There was simply nobody else available that was qualified to deal with it. And I'm trying to make damn sure that I'm not in that position again. Fortunately my employers seem to understand and things are in the works to get me more help, so I'm so excited about that.

I know I've been really vague here about my employment situation. And that is of course intentional. Never post something to the Internet that you wouldn't want your boss or her boss or her bosses's boss to read.

But it's made posting in general difficult. I've been consumed with relearning this career/family juggle with an intense job plus 2 high energy kids and a husband who still asks me what I'm planning on feeding him for lunch on Saturday in spite of the fact that the answer to that 99% of the time is "You're an adult. Figure it out." I don't want to talk about the intricacies of this internal struggle. I've been toying with moving this blog to livejournal to take advantage of the "friends only" feature. But I like it that people stumble here and that they enjoy my writing. I also don't' think that anybody would "friend" me or read it any more. However the self censorship is a bit more daunting than usual. I don't have anything bad to say about work. In fact, I really love it. I just don't think it's appropriate to brain dump here about it.

Yeah, Guilt is a full time job.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Seven Sixteen and My Kids Won't Leave Their Beds

Last time I checked, they were still 2 and almost 5. When did they become moaning teenagers about getting out of bed in the morning?

This does not bode well for the next 15 years.