On Friday, my monthly stuff was doing things peculiar enough to make me wonder if the dreaded hadn’t happened. Logically I could figure out that it was highly unlikely, but I couldn’t convince the worry center in my brain to STFU. So I did the obvious thing and bought a test on my way in to work & checked. People — I am not pregnant. Whew. The rest of the day was kind of wacky in similar ways at work. Potential cause to be concerned, PANIC, potential cause to be concerned relieved (or mostly alleviated).

M2 busted out in something somewhat akin to strep throat yesterday. The doctor was shocked when the test came back negative, but said sometimes the five minute test threw a false negative. I asked about doing the 24 hour test & she said, “I would normally go ahead & treat it as strep. I really don’t like giving unnecessary antibiotics to children though” (she says all this as she’s writing up a prescription). Then she turns around and looks at me & says, “you can use the prescription or not, (glancing at M2) let’s do the 24 hour test on her.” By that point, 4:30 in the afternoon, M2 hadn’t had tylenol since 8:30 in the morning. It had long worn off, she had an armpit temp of 102, and was a really sad, miserable, tired, little camper. She went on to say it was ok to watch & wait & if she got sicker we could use the antibiotics & if not we could just hold off. Sicker? No — I don’t ever want to see either of my kids looking sicker than M2 did at that moment. So, the sweet nurse that did the swab test the first time came back in. M2 freaked out, crying, wailing, refused to cooperate. She would NOT open her mouth & nothing I could do would make her. I figured, I have the prescription in hand, the doctor was actually shocked that it wasn’t strep so I’m guessing the odds that it was a false negative were actually pretty high, we have permission to treat or not treat as we see fit… why traumatize the kid further? It’s not like we’re chronic antibiotic abusers — this is only the second time either kid has ever had antibiotics in their lives and it just happens to be M2 that’s had them twice now… As long as it’s not meningitis or something. When she gets strep, it causes all the glands in her neck to swell up so much and the fever makes her muscles ache & then she starts talking about her neck hurting (stiff neck! meningitis! Oh my god! medical emergency! Aaaaaghgghhghghghghgh!).

That said, sick kid means we had to cancel plans with my dad to watch the girls today — no point in exposing more people to the gunk & medicine taking and the like. As P says, something always thwarts us — “we’ll have ‘us’ time when they’re both in college or we’re retired or whatever…” Meh.

I tried last night to shift the panic mode over to my fish, the betta’s tail is being fussy. I don’t really want to do partial water changes twice a week, but my suspicion is that if anything that’s the cause of the tail funk because the rasboras are just not nippy critters. Tanks are funny little organic things as they go through their closed system changes over time.

I went to bed early last night, got a good night’s sleep & am hoping for a very laid back quiet peaceful day today. < crossing fingers >

Time to go help clean…

I got some pictures of my pretty too.

It was a very good weekend indeed. Am so very tired now though.

Nothing. Nothing at all. It has been entirely quiet in the house for the last two hours or so. Plenty noisy in my brain, but quiet in the house. I find as I get older that I need more silence. I started noticing this a good 15 years ago, but lately it’s been hitting me again.

It’s been a peculiar week, with both good peculiar & not as good peculiar & starting out with outright stupidity on my part. I won’t get into the particulars of peculiarities, but I will note that I should know much better than to put unquarantined new fish in with happy resident fish. The acquisition of two new harlequin rasboras caused an outbreak of columnaris leaving me with two out of seven fish in the living room. I thought it would take all of them after the fifth died, but the two I have left are just cruising around like nothing is out of the ordinary. So time to spend working on the fishy-tanks since the betta in the girls’ room bit it too about two weeks ago. It never was particularly hardy though, I felt, so it wasn’t so much a surprise. Now instead of just getting froggies for their tank when it was done with a fresh cycle (got new gravel & plants for it), I’ll end up using it as a temporary home for the remaining two rasboras, using the living room tank as the quarantine tank for the new fishies (after putting it through a fresh fishless cycle so it can take a new load of fish). I needed to spend more time up to my elbows in water, right? I love my fishies, they’re very soothing.

Did yoga for the first time in a week last night. Should have done it tonight too probably, but I’m kinda worried that there’s something wonky in my down dog as my right rotator cuff seems to be objecting. Not entirely sure that it’s down dog doing it though, but the pushing away motion seems to be when I notice it most. Might be from lying on it funny at night though. Or weirdness with tension in my mouse-hand/arm.

Now, in the quiet, I realize I am actually very tired. Bath. Then bed. To sleep, perchance to dream.