Category Archives: The Boy

Sparky: Seven Years Old!

Is anyone else in denial about Sparky being seven? Because HRH and I are having weird time-fluctuating flashes where he cannot possibly be seven, because we remember what it was like when he was born so very clearly. And yet, at the same time, we are very aware of how much he’s grown up, and that takes a lot of time… so is he only seven? Really?

Seven years ago today, during a humid heatwave, we unexpectedly found ourselves with someone who wasn’t scheduled to arrive till after the Wicca book proofs were handed in um till after the first draft of the green witch book had been handed in er till the nursery was ready well till we were fully unpacked from the move for another nine weeks.

One…

Two…

Three…

Four…

Five…

Six…

SEVEN!

Seven years ago he was born nine weeks early, and we’ve been trying to keep up with him ever since. (That thing about preemies sometimes being slower at milestones and having to adjust gestational/chronological age expectations? Totally untrue in our case.)

I love his sense of humour. His jokes are starting to make more sense, thank goodness; he no longer comes out with non sequiturs then laughs like crazy. We’ve had to dissect his punchlines and explain why they’re not funny, then offer an alternate and point out why it is. Reading lots of jokes in kids’ magazines and joke books has helped, too.

I am so very proud of how he’s worked on cello. Most of the time he whines and drags his feet, and getting him to actually start practice is like herding something worse than cats, but when he steps up, he steps up, and he mostly enjoys it while he’s actually doing it. HRH tells me every once in a while that he wouldn’t be able to handle managing the practices, that he’s impressed we keep on, but I know what it’s like to practice because you Have To, and there’s a natural resistance to doing it even if you like playing. He did brilliantly in his little piece at our recital yesterday, remembering to reach for his F sharp and his G, and reach back so his E was in tune.

He is reading at an early grade six level, according to the final reader assigned to him by his language arts teacher this year. That means he can read just about anything. There are hilarious mispronunciations sometimes, because he does sound a lot of stuff out and doesn’t know where to put the emphasis, or sounds the whole word out all at once as a unit instead of doing it slowly, and so misses some sounds or jumbles them up. It’s hard to choose books for him now, because his reading level is above his level of comfort or interest with the potential subject matter. We have this problem with Lego, too. He’s gotten to the point with Lego that because he’s seven, he loves the superhero sets and the police sets and that sort of thing. However, he whips the sets for 7-14 year olds together and it’s over in five minutes, while the 14+ stuff is too complicated for him and really can’t be played with once it’s built. He can play with the 7-14 year sets afterwards, but since the main fun is in the building… well, we’re looking for something a bit different. Maybe some Knex, or Meccano.

He’s wearing size 6-7 shirts, size 6 pants for length (we cinch the waists; in fact, he’s wearing a lot of his size 4 shorts this summer, because they fit the waist and the length doesn’t matter the way it does with pants). He’s in size 13 shoes. His appetite is finally slowing down. In fact, Owlet often eats more than he does at a meal. We need to remember to adjust our servings sizes and our expectations regarding how much he’ll consume.

His imagination runs non-stop. He is constantly pretending to be something or someone, and narrating a story, like he’s a living storyboard artist. Fortunately our lines are handed to us, which eliminates the need to keep up with him by thinking on our feet. He does exhaust us physically and runs us to the edge of our patience, though, with constant repeated requests for things which have already been denied and a reason provided, or by ignoring us when we call or give him instructions because he’d rather be doing whatever he’s doing at the time. But that’s a general kid thing.

He’s got a lot of challenges ahead of him this year. He’s going to an arts-focused day camp for the first time; he starts at a new school this fall, in French. His reading skills and strategies are already helping him, though: I brought home a couple of easy French picture books from the library last week and he either outright read some pages, or sounded words out and puzzled out the meaning from the context of the words around them that he knew and the accompanying pictures. It’s going to be hard for the first month, and the trick will be keeping him optimistic and his outlook positive when he feels like he’s behind instead of leading the class, like he’s used to doing. Then everything will fall into place. He’s a bright kid. It won’t take long at all.

And Now, What’s Up With Sparky

Poor Sparky. He’s kind of getting the short end of the journalling stick, what with someone small and determined developing so quickly. (Someone started crawling for reals on Friday, all four limbs moving in proper sequence and her tummy off the ground part of the time, even. Child gates are in our very near future. The same someone also figured out using a sippy cup on Saturday, namely that you have to tip it up to get the liquid out. But we digress.) (See? Poor Sparky can’t even have his own blog post without her getting underfoot.) So I thought I’d throw down a few things going on in his life right now.

He split his chin open at school three weeks ago when he missed a step going up a concrete staircase into the building. The school secretary called me and asked if I wanted to take him to get a stitch put in, but I thought the trauma of having to sit in an ER for gods know how many hours before having a couple of needles to anesthetise it and then have it sewn up would be worse than the scar it might leave, so we didn’t. We used a combo of butterfly strips and plain bandages to cover it at various times, and it has healed rather well.

He got his new bike last month, an early birthday gift from his local grandparents, and he has taken to it much better than the last one. He went out for a ride here with Grandma last weekend and HRH said he was flying along. He’s finally clued in to the fact that speed helps you balance on a bike. Now of course he needs to slow down a bit to work on the finesse and subtle parts of balancing, but it looks like he’s well on his way. We passed three of the kids who are on his school bus this morning, riding their bikes to school instead of bussing, so that little seed has been planted in his head. It would be great if we could walk/bike the kilometer to the new school next year on nice days instead of driving every day.

The first weekend in May I picked up a toy archery set for him at the dollar store while buying crepe paper streamers to use for the maypole. He asked if I would teach him how to shoot it properly (as properly as suction cup arrows and a plastic bow strung with elastic can be shot), so I got my bow and arrows up out of the storage room and showed him the basic stance and such. (The next-door neighbour was very interested.) He stuck one of my arrows in the ground to serve as a measure for distance, I held back a lot, and we each shot a few times. By the third shot or so he’d clued in to the fact that you have to actually aim above where you want your projectile to land, was actually listening to me when I showed him the way to hold things and stand so that his draw was more efficient, and was getting decent distance for non-aerodynamic arrows. He was terribly excited. And then he asked me to really draw my bow, and I banged an arrow across the yard into the window of the shed. Um, oops. (Both arrow and window survived the ordeal, but it did make a very sharp bang.) He just loved it. The only disappointment for him was that the targets that came on the cardboard backing were too small to use, and that he couldn’t get his arrows anywhere near them. He wouldn’t listen when I told him there was no way even I could hit those targets; they were about six inches across.

He’s terribly into playing Pokemon Pearl, and is suddenly a fount of information about Pokemons and their evolved forms, and what type best beat other types. Blade lent him a strategy/guidebook and he studies it very seriously. We have to watch how emotionally invested he gets with it, but he’s learning a lot about managing his time, making choices that will affect his playing experience later on, and understanding that there’s a loose storyline with certain events that has to be followed in a rough order; he can’t just jump to the parts he wants to do.

Sparky brought home a card in his agenda the other week advertising a day camp run by the local fine arts centre for kids, and at first we were really excited about the idea, until we saw the cost for a two-week session. He cried when I told him we wouldn’t be able to do it (and also tossed out the dramatic “I’m going to be the only one not going to camp!” statement, which we know perfectly well isn’t true, even without other parental confirmation). But last week I looked at the school’s website, and holy cats, this is a fabulous program. And coincidentally, the mum of his best friend from preschool (who is still very much in his heart, and came over for a playdate this weekend) is working with the centre, helping with registration for the camp. I asked her for her opinion about the centre and the camp program, and she gave it all a glowing review. I talked to HRH about it, and now knowing that we can break the payment into two parts (one at registration, one a week before camp begins) and also knowing that our tax refund will arrive at the right time, I think we’re going to go for it. It’s just under thirty dollars a day, and the quality of programming will be more than worth it. And the great thing is it’s not only arts like music, painting, and choir; he’ll get to do physical stuff too, like karate (or fencing, if he chooses it, but he’ll be in the 7-14 age bracket, and I’m not sure giving him even a bated épée is a good idea), and things like science or languages. We haven’t mentioned anything to him yet, but I know I’m excited. We’ve never been in a position to give him a camp experience. (And since I wrote that, Nana has offered to handle one of the payments as a birthday present, so he is definitely going.)

We’re working on pitch and rhythm in his cello lessons, and he’s surprisingly good at being able to sing a note name at the right pitch. It’s not an easy thing to do at any age. Last lesson his teacher turned the page of his workbook and said, “Oh, this is a new note to add into the ones you already know, this will be a bit harder.” “I can do it,” he said confidently, and sang the line correctly. He’s such a contradiction. When we ask him to focus or practice (or even just sit still, dear gods), he resists, but then he tosses things like this off and makes us all blink. Ask him to play a descending D scale and he can’t, but he’ll throw one off with an arpeggio while you’re sorting through sheet music and say, “I just wrote that. It’s called ‘Ducks Hopping Home in the Rain, Quacking’.” So he’s internalizing things; he just can’t pull them up on demand yet.

Speaking of making us blink, I finally looked up his current reading level. His school uses a popular system of readers that are sorted into various levels. By the end of grade one, I found out, they’re supposed to be able to read and understand books at level twelve. Well, Sparky’s been bringing home level 26 chapter readers; that’s equivalent to late grade four. He goes up a level every couple of weeks — his reading teacher is being thorough, so she’s not leapfrogging him, just making sure he can handle each level before she assigns the next one — so it will be interesting to see where he’s at by the end of the year. I knew he was reading way beyond his grade level, but finally having the data in front of me brought it home in a very different way. I was a bit dazed.

The problem with these more advanced readers is that they take about half an hour for him to read because they’re more sophisticated, which means he’s got an hour of homework every day. This is partly because they’re more involved, partly because half of them are non-fiction (on topics like the solar system, volcanoes, geysers, trees, that sort of thing) and we spend a lot of time talking about the information in it… or dealing with fallout from more emotionally advanced information, like learning that the sun will eventually go out in five billion years and all life here will cease, which really freaked him out. He knew we’d be long gone, but — “What about all the people here when it happens?” he cried out through his tears. “And all the animals? And plants, and trees?” Sometimes empathy can suck. We’re past it now, after discussing the Big Bang reversing and the changes that the solar system will undergo in the next couple of billion years. We forget sometimes that he’s only six, going on seven.

In other school news, I love that he’s bringing home spelling tests that he has practiced for, and they’re all at 110%, but what I love most is that he’s brilliantly proud of himself. (There’s a short sentence the teacher reads at the end of the test for them to try if they want to — “I like my cat,” that sort of thing — and he has gotten them all correct… although he lost half a bonus point for using a capital P instead of a lowercase P on one of them, which devastated him.) I love that I have to rein him in when he gets a new math worksheet, because he’s supposed to work some of the sums every day and hand the completed sheet in on Thursday or Friday, and he wants to do them all right now.

It’s not all sunshine and roses. He’s having a hard time with keeping his mind on what’s he’s supposed to be doing, and doing what he’s asked or told to do when he’s asked or told to do it. He goes off on tangents and forgets what his initial task was. He perpetually says “I’ll just do this first” and ends losing himself in it, then has to rush or deal with not having completed what he’s been set to do, both of which upset him… just not enough to learn to stop doing it.

I enjoy watching him play with Owlet, who, now that she is mobile, loves to pull herself up on the chair where he’s sitting and grab his feet, pockets, legs, and so forth. He has fun trying to help her walk, although he hasn’t gotten the ‘let her walk a step or two and then rebalance yourself’ idea yet; he takes off walking backwards and she kind of drags along after him if we don’t slow him down. He loves to push her stroller, and read books to her in bed at night. He is the coolest thing in the world to her. She kicks her feet and claps when she sees his bus coming, and if she can’t see him while we walk home she fusses. The best is when he walks next to her and holds her hand; she’s in absolute wriggly heaven when he does that, and tries to grab his arm with both hands and practically pull him into the stroller with her. He’s a wonderful big brother to her, and I’m proud of him for being the person he is.

Friday Photo Post

You need some pictures, just for the heck of it.

I should save some of these for the nine months old post, but hey, let’s live dangerously and assume we’re going to have more fun pictures to use then. Half of these are from our Easter visit, and half are the last couple of weeks here at home.

Owlet got a classic board book in her Easter basket. You can see how into it she is already:

Last summer Sparky climbed to the bottom branch and hung out there. This spring, he was halfway up the tree:

Sparky and his cousins were making pirate hats and taping them onto their heads while playing before Easter dinner. So they made one for Owlet and taped it on her. It’s certainly the most… unique Easter bonnet I’ve encountered. Very Queen Mum:

Last week we had crazy warm weather, so out came the new summer clothes, and Owlet snacked on half an “ah-full”:

Owlet’s new party trick, as of yesterday: pulling up on people, using their fingers to balance herself as she walks to the nearest chesterfield or table, and cruising along the furniture (eek!):

And finally, Owlet today, just sitting and looking lovely:

Minutiae

Stuff keeps happening, and I don’t have a heck of a lot of time to write it down.

1. I got my first royalty statement yesterday. It freaked me out a bit because I wasn’t expecting it. It came in two parts and was essentially a bunch of numbers and terms I didn’t understand, and I tried to read it while juggling a fussy baby, and no one should ever do anything that requires attention and rational thought while juggling a baby. Eventually I figured out that it was for two different editions of the book. One said I’d made back 1/5th of my advance (in just one month!) and the other said I’d made almost an entire mortgage payment, but it was being applied to more of my advance payment. So I’m about 2/5 of the way in to paying back my advance, after which any money made goes into my pocket. I’m a bit boggled by this. In a good way, of course.

Yes, it’s my first royalty statement. It’s an interesting sensation, because previously I’ve done all my book writing on contract. I like it. I’m looking forward to my next one.

2. Owlet had roseola. We thought the fever, crying a lot, refusing solids and nursing constantly was due to her upper teeth (more on that below) but no; the fever broke, and a day and a half later she developed the rash. I thought it was a teething-related diaper rash, because she’s essentially been a waterfall this past week and the rash started on her bum, but then it spread to her legs, and the next day it was on her arms and face. It wasn’t itchy and there were no other symptoms. It’s pretty much gone now. I didn’t bother with the doctor because it happened on the weekend, her receptionist isn’t in on Mondays, and by the time I got an appointment it would be over (as it is). Also, it’s a virus, so there’s not much we could have done anyway. This is the second time Owlet has come down with something five to seven days after we drive home from visiting my parents; I think she’s picking stuff up at the rest stops, probably from the changing tables. I’m going to carry antibacterial wipes or spray to wipe them down before we use them from now on. Even better, with the weather warmer, we can change her in the car or on a picnic blanket outside.

Sparky had the sudden fever last night, and a couple of hours later I started with the body aches, sore throat, and hot/cold thing. He woke up this morning with his temperature just about normal again, so off he went to school. HRH handled him this morning and took him to the bus stop, for which I was deeply grateful because I could barely move. I napped with Owlet this morning, and woke up feeling much better. I don’t know if what we have is connected to the roseola or if it’s something else, but I am so tired of everyone being sick.

3. The teeth. Urg, the teeth. All four up top are swollen and descending. Now those two centre upper incisors are so close to being through. We can see the actual teeth through a very thin layer of skin.

4. The concert was wonderful. We had just about a full house. There was birthday cake at the intermission, and the audience sang happy birthday to us at the end, and the music went really well. The end of the Wagner was particularly magical, and the Beethoven felt like a train that just wasn’t going to stop or slow down for anyone. (I suppose the term for that would be ‘inexorable,’ wouldn’t it. Which is particularly appropriate for the Fifth.) As usual, there was easy stuff I flubbed that I’d never missed before, and hard stuff that I didn’t expect to get that I managed on the fly. Sitting in the back is hard; I can’t clearly see the conductor, or the principal’s bowing, so I end up listening to the orchestra for a lot of my cues. (I’m good at using aural cues for my entrances; in fact, I trust my aural cues more than my counting.) I mentioned that to my teacher this past weekend and she said, “Sitting at the front of the section is easy; you need to be a really good cellist to sit at the back,” which was really nice to hear. And the second half of the concert was a challenge because I couldn’t get my endpin to a comfortable height; I was slightly off all the time, and that played havoc with my intonation. But all in all I’m happy with how I did, considering that I missed just under half the rehearsals and have had no more than a hour or so a week to practice. Our next concert is July 1, of course, and it will have a Northern theme: Finlandia, Peer Gynt, the Ruslan & Ludmila overture, and so forth.

5. Sparky outgrew his bike before learning to ride it properly. He’s a perfectionist, so if he doesn’t think he can do it right or if he’s afraid of falling or failing or whatever, he just won’t do it; he says there’s something else he’d like to do instead, or says he’s tired, that sort of thing. We got the bike out the other week, put the seat and handlebars up, and no go; he’s just way too tall. HRH’s parents will be buying him a new one as an early birthday gift.

6. Sparky has also become a Pokemon fan. The kids at school know all about it and they’ve been playing Pokemon on the playground at recess and lunch, so he kept coming home with all sorts of facts and exciting information. So for the trip down to see my parents at Easter I dug out my DS and the sole Pokemon game I ever played, and he was thrilled. He is taking very good care of it, is having lots of fun, and learning valuable lessons about not hitting buttons when you don’t understand what they do (he accidentally released his starting Pokemon instead of putting it a storage box and was devastated, so we restarted the game from his last saved point), and saving often so you don’t lose a whole day’s activity.

7. We have daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths in the garden. The crocuses are over. And we already have tiny buds that will be flowers on the crabapple tree we planted last year in front of Sparky’s window. We’re getting another tree for this year’s Earth Day tree giveaway that our city does, and we’ll plant it in front of Owlet’s window.

Baby’s awake. That’s all for now.

Catch Up

The flight was fun, and Sparky was thrilled with it all and very well behaved. Apparently he handled it all like an old pro. (Genetic memory?) Owlet travelled decently on our drive down to join him at my parents’ place, but needed me back there with her for the second half of the trip. Coming back was easier (though I expected it to be harder balancing two bored, cranky kids) because Sparky entertained her by just being himself and giving her company. There’s a whole different rhythm to travelling with a baby that I’d forgotten about — you stop every ninety minutes to two hours just to get out of the car and feed them, give them a change of environment, that sort of thing. Good thing she’s half on solids now, because nursing was pretty much a washout as there was way too much to look at. Naps go right out the window, because you gauge your rest stops by if baby’s sleeping, and inevitably they wake up five minutes after you pass one and the next isn’t for another hour… but all things considered, it went well. Sleeping went okay at my parents’ house, too, after the first night where she spent all but the first hour or two in bed with us. The last night she did her usual two wakeups to nurse and went back to sleep in her own bed each time. Of course, back home she was all off again, waking up every hour or so the first night and finally spending the last few hours in bed with me. And there was no morning nap the next day, despite trying twice. But it’s okay; we’ve been going with the flow and are slowly settling in, riding out the bumpy bits that are appearing at odd times.

We had a lovely trip. The weather was great, and the kids were cheerful and well behaved. We saw my cousin and his family (who are moving to BC this summer, so we won’t get to see them often any more). We ate piles and piles of my mother’s delicious food. On Sunday Sparky went with Nana to the aircraft museum where my dad works so HRH, Owlet, and I got to do a quick run to the used baby clothes store and score some stretchy leggings that fit her because suddenly none of her pants are big enough. (PSA: Just give up on buying 12mos size clothes, people. Grandma recently bought two gorgeous 12mos tops for Owlet, and one barely fits, while the other — the one I like more, which figures — doesn’t at all. Both looked plenty large enough, so I give up.)

She’s not the only one whose clothes need replacing. Thank goodness the weather has turned and the boy is wearing splash pants and his raincoat, because his snowsuit is shot. Today we had to send him back to his room twice because both the original pair of pants and the second pair he tried to put on were too short. At least Owlet has boxes of summer dresses waiting for her, which I may switch her into early and put leggings and long-sleeve shirts underneath.

In news about me, I have a fully functional Mac mini again, thanks to the tireless efforts of HRH and the Mac tech at work in combining the one with the failing logic board and the slower, smaller one. They maxed the RAM, which pretty much balances out the slightly slower processor. I have a new to me monitor as well, thanks to Molly Ann. It is such a relief to be able to sync my phone and back stuff up again. The only down side is that the optical drive in the Ariadne mini burns CDs only, so my stack of DVD RWs isn’t much use to me any more. In other news, my client finally got back to me after I sent them a formal message about invoicing them for the work I broke my back to get them on deadline day and to which they didn’t respond at all, and I think I’ve been sidelined. Their reason for not responding to me for two weeks was that they were moving, and the things they asked for quotes actually needed more work, and if they needed me they’d let me know. Whatever. I just wish I hadn’t turned away the project from my publisher because the new client indicated they only needed approval and a purchase order number for the important book-length project before I started on that. It would have been tight time-wise, and frustrating because I’d have been working on the rickety, crashy laptop, but I’d have had work and money by now.

I miss cello dreadfully. I remember now that there was a gap of no-cello-at-all when Sparky was born because I either couldn’t fit practice time in or couldn’t practice because he’d wake up. The location of Owlet’s bedroom and the small footprint of our house means that I can’t practice upstairs or downstairs while she’s asleep, and she only sits and listens to me for about five minutes if I plunk her in a chair upstairs and practice with her right there. Having to drop my private lessons to every two weeks and then stop entirely has depressed me and is eroding my skills, and doing orchestra only every two weeks because we can’t afford the gas to get me out there is awful. I’m walking out of every rehearsal pretty demoralised because I just can’t stay on top of things, and we’re playing stuff that demands a lot of focus and precision. I think I’m going to try to make every rehearsal from now till the concert (which is is ONE MONTH, peoples: April 14! mark your calendars!), just to make sure I absorb as much direction as possible. Part of me wants to give it up to eliminate the stress, but then I’d be giving up the one thing left that I have to get me out of the house sans baby, and also the one cello-related thing left in my life at the moment, and I’m too stubborn to do that.

Our bulbs are poking their wee green heads up in the gardens, and we are very much looking forward to actually gardening this year. Go spring!

Okay, baby’s awake. Off we go on errands.

Growing Up

One of the hardest parts of being a parent is letting your kids make mistakes so they can figure out how to fix them. Tied to this is the need to let them do things on their own.

Today I kissed my son, gave him a hug, and watched him walk through airport security with his black and white stuffed bunny and his Nana, on his way to visit his maternal grandparents.

I am very excited for him. We all talked about what to expect, and he’s very excited too, as well as being very confident about the experience. There’s a streak of nervousness throughout his excitement, though, that worries me a bit. I won’t be there to hold his hand when the noise and pressure and the new experience get a bit too much. I won’t be the one reading to him and cuddling him in bed tonight. This is the kid who sometimes calls us to come get him from birthday parties because he misses us (that’s kid code for “I’m not feeling comfortable and I want my familiar surroundings back, and that includes people”) so I may be more nervous about him feeling homesick than taking his first plane ride. Not being able to take away a child’s heart-hurt like that is what can drive a parent round the bend.

I told him to call me when he got to Nana and Granddad’s house to tell me all about it. “I’ll try!” he chirped. And from where Owlet and I positioned ourselves, we could see him and Nana put their coats and bags in the bins to go through the security x-ray, and we saw him go through the sensor, and then Nana (who got the extra wand search because her hip replacement always sets it off)… and then they were out of my sight. Owlet and I wandered the airport for a bit (hello bookstore! why do you not have any books I want?) before driving home, just in case there was a problem and I needed to take them back home, but my cellphone was silent.

I know he’s having a blast. They should be landing any minute now, and Granddad will be there to meet them at the other end. I’m so proud of my boy. I miss him already, though, and I’m looking forward to seeing him again tomorrow afternoon, getting a huge hug, and hearing all about his experience in person.

And somehow, I also feel the way I did on his first day of kindergarten, when he climbed onto the school bus for the first time and rode away, waving at me with a big smile. He’s growing up. And he’s not the only one. Apparently one continues to level up as a parent, too, every time you let your children grow up a bit more.

Not Dead

And my computer is still hanging on by a thread as well (not that I get a chance to sit down at it for more than a heartbeat every couple of days). I got the replacement (plus a monitor and keyboard and speakers and wow; I now own a bit of Ariadne Knits history and I am so thankful to Molly Ann!), only to realise that apparently my Mini is a souped up model with a hard drive that is four times the size of the replacement, which only has the standard issue HD. My processor is faster, too. I think the only thing to do is swap the hard drives and take the slight speed cut, but that depends on the Mac tech guys at HRH’s workplace again, so I’m still in a holding pattern.

Still no response from the client I did the edits for over two weeks ago. I sent them a second more formal reminder today saying that as I hadn’t heard from them on this date and this date, in response to any of the submissions or quotes, I had to assume the edits on the first project were acceptable and to please give me the info required for invoicing so I could bill them, and that hey, I can’t sit here and wait for you forever to get back to me after me saying that yes, I was available for you and the projects you proposed. I’m already cranky because I turned down my publisher’s project that was offered to me the same day since I was going to be working on the new client’s stuff. Today I got wise and attached a return receipt to my email, so I know it was received and read, at least. I’m so frustrated with how this is going. Finances are not getting any easier. I just want to be working again.

Health-wise, we’ve been riding a merry-go-round. Sparky had to be picked up from school last week because he got threw up and had a mild 24-hour gastro. Owlet and I developed severe and sudden likely-different gastro this past Sunday night. I’d only been well for a few days after the nasty sinus/head/flu thing the week before that took ages to work through, so it kind of felt extra unfair. It hit HRH the next night, possibly because he’d been up all night before taking care of the two of us so his body was already exhausted. And tonight the boy crashed with a fever, a cough and congestion, and no appetite, and I’m really hoping it’s not the nasty gastro we all had; that would be remarkably unfair, too. Though not entirely surprising, as my doctor said there are a few evil strains flying around this season and it seems a bit worse than usual. We’re all so exhausted.

Looks like March is going to come roaring in like a lion. We need the snow for ground water levels, but I am really looking forward to wearing lighter jackets, putting my boots away, and watching spring flowers bloom.

I completely missed the Owlyblog’s tenth anniversary on February 12. I meant to do a thoughtful post dedicated to it and everything, but I didn’t, so here: Ten years. That’s a long time. Go me. Go owlies. Go you, dear readers. I’d put exclamation marks in, but that suggests energy, which I do not have at the moment.

Excelsior, yes?