khooooohhhh, khoooohhhh

That there is the Darth Vader breathing sound, in case it's not obvious. I'm happy to report that this household successfully survived the flu and is pretty much on the mend. I'm fairly certain Garion and I had H1N1 since everybody I've talked to says if you got the flu in October you had H1N1. And also, I was sicker than I have been in many, many years; I had a fever for 4 days. That is pretty much unheard of in history of me and my kick-ass immune system. And Garion missed an entire week of school. So, I'm willing to grudgingly admit we caught a new virus. And really, I feel so trendy. Clearly H1N1 is the thing to have this fall. I'm just grateful that in the grand scheme of things, we had relatively minor cases.

Oh, yeah Darth Vader. Garion's going to be Darth Vader for Halloween. He tried his costume on yesterday and the first thing he he did was come up to me and hold out his hand in the force/choke hold thing Darth Vader does to keep his minions in line. I'm not kidding, that was FIRST THING. As in, "hmmmm, I am now dressed like a preeminent agent of evil....I think I will try using the force of my mind to strangle my mother." I played along and pretended to suffocate (I don't know-is that good parenting?) and Garion laughed hysterically. On the one hand, I love watching him play dress-up and he is clearly excited about his costume. On the other...he tried to strangle me! We might have to have a post-Halloween debrief just to make sure that the lines of morality are once again clearly delineated after the holiday.

Reinforcements!

My friend Anne came over this morning bearing popsicles, a Jeff Corwin video, and pictures for Garion that her son drew. Saved! The wrapper theory proved correct--Garion immediately sucked down a strawberry popsicle and I am feeling much better about the state of his stomach. I think there is some DNA-level evolutionary impulse in every mother that starts beating out "child must eat . . . child must eat. . . child must eat" every time they go for more than about three hours without measurable caloric intake. Garion said the popsicle made his throat feel better so he'll probably be living off popsicles for the rest of the day and I am just fine with that.
Garion is sorting through the pictures from his friend right now and giggling. There is one in there titled "President Peanut" that looks like a cross between a cat and the Incredible Hulk--I have no idea what it is but apparently Garion gets the joke. My favorite is the one titled "P.J. Elkdorf" --again I'm a little murky on the visual but the title cracks me up.
Garion's doing better this morning, his fever is a little lower (although still hanging out around 100) and he's perkier than yesterday (thus the giggling). I'm guessing we'll have one more day at home tomorrow and Garion will be back at school on Wednesday. Garion's school requires a kid to be fever-free for 24 hours before sending them back...I strongly suspect that not all parents follow this, but I am nothing if not a rule-follower. I am so grateful to Anne and also to everybody else who offered assistance: my parents (who live in Camp Verde-that would have been a long drive for popsicles) and Moses's boss who offered to pick-up medicine or whatever else we might need. How great is that?

The Ick

My friend Stacy frequently posts that whenever her husband leaves town, bad stuff happens. Ditto that. Must be part of Murphey's law. But only for moms. Moses is presently at a conference of geologists in Portland and will be off conferencing with other people who care about rocks until Thursday. At Garion's suggestion, we headed to the Grand Canyon yesterday and had a great time futzing around and looking at....rocks. Anyway, Garion crashed in the car on the way back. I assumed this was a typical bad wake-up from a middle of the day nap but he went to bed insisting that he was sick. He woke-up this morning with a sore throat and temperature and had been wilting in various places around the house (couch, floor, back porch couch) for the rest of today. The only thing I've managed to get him to eat was an english muffin this morning. I am therefore finding that most frustrating part about this is whole situation that we cannot go to the grocery store and I therefore cannot buy popsicles, which I think is probably the only thing I could convince him to eat. I could try making popsicles with juice, but nothing is so enticing to a kid as food you normally don't let him have that comes in a wrapper. I suspect he would take one look at the homemade popsicle and promptly return to disinterested wilting. The wrapper is critical. I'm hoping that tomorrow ice-y orange juice will appeal to him.
On a lesser note, all my favorite technology chose to kick the bucket today: my laptop battery has died (I am therefore rendered less mobile, although my desktop works just fine) and for some mysterious reason my cell phone will not call out, everything else works on it, but not the part where can, you know, CALL PEOPLE. We have a land line, so it's not like I'm cut off from the world but seriously, what gives?

Friday Photo

I was feeling a little bad about not sharing the toothless grin, so thought I'd better toss that up here today. That's our friend Chris in the background on the left and Chris's brother, Peter, on the right. The photo was taken on our killer Saturday morning hike while camping last week. (We walked about a 1/2 mile up hill and started losing children left and right. We hauled them up another 1/2 mile and then turned around). Hey, look! A lost teeth and camping photo, all in one!