Seriously, I don't remember when I was this sick. I actually thought I was getting better -I had given it the two days it usually demands- and then I went to work yesterday and nearly killed myself. Fool! On Wednesday I even phoned the customer and said I couldn't be there because I was sick, and I never do this, but on Thursday I had invigorated myself with so much acetaminophen that I thought I could handle it. I crashed Big Time last night. I excused myself from the dinner table and wasn't heard from again until this morning.

I'm pretty sure it's the flu. I was hoping I could get some media sympathy being a West Nile case (there were a lot of mosquitos out at camp) but I don't have the truncal rash and lymphadenopathy associated with it. I ruled out Typhus, too, since I don't have the rash, but there were lice at camp, so it had to be considered. Other common symptoms of stupor and delirium I get all the time from camp, so I discounted those out of hand.

Anyway, this flu is exactly what they say: that it's like you've been blindsided by a cement truck. I just hurt from neck to heel and want to hold and rock myself until my soul splinters off and frees me from the suffering. It's the kind of sickness where you actually consider if all the bases are covered in the event of your untimely death. And last night I dreamt of snakes and militant Muslims, and I was trapped in some bird's nest of ropes and sticks, unable to pull myself free, whilst the laughter of teenagers at summer camp echoed all around me, out of the darkness. It was awful.

And the fevers! The incessant clamminess of midnight, that comes in wave after wave, sticking nightshirt to bedsheet. Mrs. Ditchman wisely slept on the couch last night, and it was an uneasy night. She said the teenager was up at 3:15 pawing through the kitchen cupboards with a flashlight, looking for snacks. And then the cat, locked out of the room with the litter box, relieved himself on Dr. Seuss' ABCs a short time later. Also, just as the twilight of dawn begged its way in, the Little Ditchman sat up in bed screaming. She wouldn't say what it was, and laid back down, shuddering. So the devil ran his fingernails down the chalkboard in my house last night, is all I can say.

It's really painful. I don't remember feeling anything like this in the past. The rest of the family had their flu shot last year, so I'm not too concerned about them, but to everyone else I say: Those who value life and health, keep ye distance! The Spanish Flu killed 50 million people ninety years ago, and it doesn't surprise me. Please list your home remedies in the comments section. I'm ready to try anything.



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Turned on the news this morning to hear about the Georgian crisis and all the world's leaders in heated negotiations over Russian borders and withdrawals, but they were nothing compared to the negotiations in my downstairs kitchen to get my two-year-old to eat her pancakes. Through some sly parental diplomacy, including abject dismissal of all distractions brought to the little melamine kid's table, we ate to live another day.

Today, little Grace Weaver turns one! So a big congratulations to her. Also, the Little Ditchman turns 29 months (though it's something of a non-event.) Also significant is that TMST turns one year old today. I was going to herald it with a big wowtastic video and new page design but acchhh... there are other things to do, bills to pay, priorities, etc. Also, I'm not feeling so well and I'm hopped up on meds and I've got a full day's work ahead of me and the family didn't go to Jazzercise so they're here in the office crafting distraction.

So here's a TMST flashback, from a year ago, writing about the new baby Weaver. It all still applies.

Before I got married weddings were just free booze-fest excuses to wear a tie, and a good place to pick up chicks. Now, of course, I recognize them for the momentous, nay, significant occasion that they are. I remember now the difference between the unmarried and the married at my wedding. It was a solemn, content nod that, yes, this New World was a green and fertile one, with a harvest unlike any you've ever seen. And the unmarried? They scamper around like sex-crazed weasels at sun-up. I doubt I'll ever skip out on another wedding the rest of my life. There are some grand days to be had in life -and they are not to be missed.

The births of children are the same. You just can't grasp the overwhelming joy that's felt with the arrival of a newborn unless it's yours. That's why we drove a hundred miles after a day working in the August heat to see this little one. Pure, unblemished joy! When our little Ditchman came into the world, it was quite nearly the happiest day of my life, rivaling only the wedding day. These are the things you want to see, over and over again. You want to see if you weren't so blasted nuts for being so giddy when she came into the world. "I'm not crazy, right? This is a miracle, right?" It is a miracle.

When you get married, you resign yourself to the fact that you will never fall in love again. When you have a child, you realize how wrong you were, and you realize it every single day, and you get down on your knees and thank the Good Lord that you were wrong all along.

~

The Ant Man cometh. Again. We entered into a pact some time ago. I was ready to surrender, but for $40 a month I could get some mercenary forces in who swore they could do the job. Wipe 'em out. Well, the first campaign was on and did a decent job, but the ants had them flanked from the tree, from which they rose again a day or two later. They charged and took the pots on the corner of the patio, and within a few days were sending scouts back into the house. Mercs resumed operations this morning. They were friendly about it, and gleeful even, when another swarm was found out back on a corn stalk. Those sugary roots covered with aphids were as a beacon for the enemy. We took it down.

40 bucks a month gets you some real peace of mind. The Ant Men come every other month, actually, but will show up whenever you call at no extra charge. Whatever it takes, said the man with the pesticidal artillery.

I also spend 40 bucks a month on the security system. And 40 bucks a month on the Sparklett's. And I believe 40 bucks a month on each cel phone, and 40 bucks a month on high speed internet. "40 bucks" must be the amount that marketing research bureaus have found is the cost an average family in the suburbs won't think is too much and will be most willing to pay, but I think I'm getting nickel-and-dimed to death. 40-bucked to death. 40 bucks is also what I would spend to have a gardener mow the lawn and trim back all the plants next to the house that the ants use for entry, but I'm all out of cash. You have to draw the line somewhere. I had the teenager currently living in our house do it.

This teenager sits and stares at MySpace all day long (and by that I mean on my computer which is actually my space.) He has to be dragged off it. When he got home from camp, he went straight to the computer and began myspacing out, and he's been trippin' ever since. Last night we got a few phone calls from other campers who wanted to talk to him. They chatted on the phone, while they both stared at MySpace. My, how the Internet brings people together. He leaves Saturday. I'll get my space back.

I've been watching the Olympics. Mrs. Ditchman loves it. What do I think about it? Well, I think we could do without synchronized diving. Sure, it's neat to watch and all, but if only 20 people in the world do it, it's not a sport, it's a novelty, as in "something intended to be amusing as a result of its new or unusual qualities". Somehow I don't see ancient civilizations competing in synchronized diving (or synchronized anything, for that matter.) Call me when golf is an Olympic event. Or surfing. Is racketball one? Oh well. Look for the HALO event in 2012. (I am happy for that Phelps kid, though.)


~

Man, you leave town for a few days and the world changes.

It's exhausting. I looked up at my calendar and noticed I was still somewhere in July. I could flip the page, but that would involve a certain amount of committal to all that has transpired (like I have a choice in the matter.) I think I had a hundred emails, and I wasn't exactly able to respond to all of the ones on the bottom of the list before I left. These things just drop off, eventually, and people seem to disappear for a while. I don't much like it. I'm sure there's a system application that would remind me that I failed to write back to so-and-so, but then I'd get all sorts of pop-up windows that read: "YOU HAVE NOT RESPONDED TO "V1agruh4lyfE". WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEND AN EMAIL NOW?"

The Russians attacked Georgia. I bring this up only because I'm avoiding writing about Annabelle and Camp Fox, the things that have overwhelmed my heart. I know little about Georgia, except that it's not just a state but a democratic country that was denied entry into NATO and that China is watching closely how the world will respond because they have a similar situation with Taiwan. Russia did it during the Olympics, which I find suspicious in its timing while the world's attention is elsewhere. Couple that with the tension building between Israel and Iran and the current election cycle and all the other unknown quantities and dictators with oil and you have a Perfect Storm brewing beyond the horizon. I don't want to be a doomsayer, but this is the stuff World Wars are made of.

And then there's our own problems at home. They all seem to line up by height, and you go at them as best you're able. I came back from Camp totally spent, as was expected, and woke up the next day and headed down to the NICU at the Children's Hospital. I don't believe I've ever been in a more intimidating room in a hospital, with its cables and tubes, screens and buttons, stainless steel and ultraviolet lights. And there in the morass -tiny babies the size of your hand, struggling for life in this world. Annabelle is beautiful. I was told this beforehand and took them at their word, but she actually is. You immediately love her, and a certain burden of worry just drops away -as you suddenly find yourself willing to do whatever it takes. Whatever it takes. Her parents had the glow, in case you were wondering, and given the circumstances and all that has happened over the past six months, I found this an uplifting, cheerful relief. I thank God for it.

At camp there were troubled youths of a different kind. I have seen kids have the best week of their lives, only to be picked up at the harbor by the parents that abuse them. We sent one kid home mid-week for possession of marijuana (nothing new.) As he was packing his bags, he actually asked if this meant that he couldn't be a counselor next year. Camp is everything to some of these kids. They look forward to it all year, have fun for a week, they get some much-needed love and attention, and then they go home where they are lost and neglected again. They turn to drugs, or something like it, and eventually they bring these vices to camp. When he was disciplined for it all -whereby we had to take from him the only two things that he really cared about: pot and camp- he flew into such a violent rage that it actually had me scared for my safety for a moment. We had to call in some heavier directors to apply restraint. When the boat showed up at the harbor in Long Beach after camp -he was there, waiting at the top of the ramp. He hugged his friends. He hugged the camp director who sent him home. He looked haggard and worn and depressed. I've seen it a hundred times.

And it's one of a thousand stories. You get home and someone whines about cutting their finger or a screw is missing from their dumb patio cover and you just want to slap them. Don't you see your petty troubles are meaningless nonesense in this world of real lovers, fighters, and survivors? Don't expect people to care about your little pains, but take solace in the fact that love is a never-ending fount. Any mother with more than one child will tell you this: that the love is not divided amongst the children. There's plenty to go around.

Just don't waste it.




~

A bunch of us hiked in to Avalon the other day for root beer floats...

(Click me.)

~

The first day of camp...

(Click me.)


~

The Little Ditchman may be finding her sense of humor, and it may well catch up with mine sooner than we want, but this comes as a very welcome and joyful discovery, for there is no more uplifting sound in the world than your child's laughter. The old adage is most likely true: you are as happy as your most unhappy child.

So she has taken to singing "Ring Around the Rosies" lately, which is pretty cute. She'll lay in bed in the morning and just start singing it, and then move on to "Happy Birthday" or "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". "Pop Goes the Weasel" she often sings too, though there aren't really any words to the thing for her (it just goes: "dunh duh-dunh duh-dunh-dunh-dunh-dunh... POP! goes the weasel..." and on and on.)

So we're singing "Ring Around the Rosies" and "Pop Goes the Weasel" the other day and she was really getting into it and at one point she accidentally messed up the words, so she said, "...ring around the wozzel" -a wozzel being some kind of half-breed love-child of roses and weasels, I guess. Anyway, the Little Ditchman found this utterly hilarious: ring around the wozzel -and she can't make it through the song without laughing so hard she froths at the mouth. (No, seriously. She froths at the mouth. There's no explaining it.) Now, if I ever want to make her laugh, I just sing ring around the wozzel... It makes me laugh too now, just thinking about it. I sing it on my own, at work.

We won't go into the themes of deadly plague, poverty, child labor, and alcoholism from which these nursery rhymes originate.

Another thing that makes her laugh: driving back from Vegas a few weeks ago we were doing whatever we could to keep her from going insane on the drive, and I spontaneously picked up the Little Einsteins dolls we had and set them on the dashboard. They didn't quite fit up there, and a lane change or fast stop would make the dolls fall off. Every time they fell I would make the Wilhelm scream and add "Oh no!" and she would laugh her head off. (Poor Einsteins.) At one point, I opened the sunroof and closed it on their little hands where they would swing around, hanging there. Then I would click open the sunroof where they would fall (cue Wilhelm scream: "Aaaahh!") Of course, she thought this was the funniest thing in the universe and we had to do it OVER AND OVER -but it was funny every time. As we got tired of the game, the Little Ditchman would yell out, "I wanna see June hang! I wanna see Annie hang!" I found this oddly morbid, but when she demanded that Quincy hang, it got pretty funny for me, too. "I WANT TO SEE QUINCY HANG! MAKE QUINCY HANG!"

Quincy is the black one.




Preschool will be interesting. Have a good weekend. (There will be no lynchings.)


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