A new entry for the “things that are not fun” list

Trying to stop your daughter from tearing out her IV while she screams hysterically and cries (literally) bloody tears.

Other than that, Zoe’s eye surgery went fairly well.  More info (if you want it) here.

Further thoughts from being home sick in the future

One of the worst things about being nearsighted is my inability to see my alarm clock from my bed without sitting up and squinting. This is especially aggravating when you’ve been largely in bed for four days, and you’re not entirely clear what day (President’s) or time (afternoon?) it is.

My mind wanders when placed in these situation, and tries to come up with suitably effective-but-lazy solutions. Fundamentally, the problem is that anything close enough to see is close enough to reach, and placing my alarm clock within my reach is a bad, bad idea. If there was only some way of separating the physical display of an alarm clock from its alarm-controlling features…

“Wait”, I think, “Rich and Patsy bought us one of those alarm clocks that project the time in light on a ceiling or wall”. Now, I already know that I can’t see these clocks projected on a ceiling without my glasses, but maybe I could project it on the wall next to my bed. This triggers a series of thoughts which leads me to the conclusion that this is feasible, if I build a shelf and get an extension cord. Since this requires me to a build a shelf, I immediately reject it as too much work and go back to plan A – eventually getting around to having eye surgery done with lasers.

What sort of crazy world is it where building a shelf seems unreasonable and permanently having the shape of your eye changed with LASERs seems like a perfectly reasonable alternative?

2 + flu / gazebo = 3, monkey 145!

I’m hopefully towards the end of what I grudgingly have to call the worst collection of flu-like symptoms that I’ve had since the legendary Martian Death Flu of 1997. It’s been a real joy in all the usual ways, but I’ve also had some really cool fever related stuff happen. At one point I woke up and all of my words and numbers were gone.

Or rather, disconnected from meanings – just a pile of abstract symbols. Talking or trying to assemble an internal monologue was like pulling heaping handfuls of scrabble tiles out of a big bag containing all my words and numbers and trying to juggle them into the sentence I wanted. I can’t juggle.

You can guess why I found this disturbing and sorta cool at the same time.

“Numbers – over here!” wordlessly commanded the part of my brain that still had some control over things. “Time to count!” The counting helped – I’m better now. I’d probably have been better anyway, but the counting stopped the freaking out.