Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Pandemic, Eh?

So, I realize that the health complaints I was experiencing last week (fever, chills, sore throat, extraordinary fatigue) are on the list of Swine Flu symptoms. I feel 100 per cent now (OK, 99 %), but perhaps we should put me down to Ground Zero of the Canadian pandemic?

Naturally, the media is all over this story. Ad nauseam like everything else. If I recall anything from SARS, it's that the media loves a good burgeoning pandemic. Toronto, as you may recall, was hit quite hard by SARS several years ago, and hit even harder by SARS-related panic. The Chinese origination of the disease made all local Chinese Canadians - and probably anyone looking vaguely Asianish - quite suspect. Poor Eric couldn't even clear his throat in public without people glaring and pulling out their Purell. At least this time, we can turn our (hopefully) irrational fears onto spring-breakers who just spent 7 days guzzling Coronas at a Cancun all-inclusive.

One upside to SARS, (a very, very narrowly-focused upside, mind you) was that our company made a LOT of money. When your job is providing facilities and equipment to visiting news agencies and networks, crisis events like that tend to make the company's soul-less bean counters very happy. Ours and the aforementioned Purell executives were probably the only people that were privately rejoicing at every new outbreak.

Anyway, here we go again. If you need a camera crew or a feed point let me know. Otherwise, please don't cough in my general direction. Especially all you tanned, rested travellers. This time, we are targetting you.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

The Duck

Kaya doesn't really say any words yet. I know that by his first birthday Kieran was already pointing at cars and saying, quite definitively, "Cah!" but Kaya doesn't have any predictable words. And she's way past a year old already, I mean, it's been like almost 10 days since her birthday.

So, last night I decided to take matters into my own hands, speaking-wise. Kaya's splashing around in the tub, loving her bath as usual.

I hold up a rubber duck.

Me: "Kaya! It's a duck! Can you say DUCK?"

Papaya: "Duh!"

Me: "Right! Duck! Very Good!"

Papaya: "Duh! Duh! Duh!"

Me: "Yay! Duck! OK, here's a boat, say BOAT."

Papaya: "Duh! Duh!"

Me "No, boat, with a B. BOAT."

Papaya: "Duh!"

Me: "OK, how about book. Can you say book? Say BOOK."

Papaya: "Duh!"

Me: "Oh forget it."

Papaya: "Duh!"

Friday, April 17, 2009

The New Normal??

I've had this post sitting in draft status for about a week now. I can't seem to put a coherent thought together lately. I'm finding the adjustment back to work to be bit harder than I expected.

So, I think I've been back to work now for about 3 and a half weeks. So, yeah...this is it. The rest of my life. It just seems really hectic. We're still working on a decent routine - one that gets Eric to work on time in the morning and get us both home at night in time for have some sort of life. So far, all of that has been fairly elusive. The mornings have been more or less OK (not the total nightmare I expected) it's the evenings that are chaos. Dinner. Crying. Dishes. Bath. Kids to Bed. Clean the House. Workout. Collapse. Blech. Not enough hours in the day. Not enough sleep at night.

All of this is compounded by the fact that I'm a bit of a physical mess. As you may recall on my third day back at work I snapped my neck. It has taken me several weeks to get back to normal. After my neck went, it was followed by equally bizarre back spasms (which weren't quite as debilitating as the neck thing but were still horrible.)

Then, last week I was hit (as was Kieran) with some sort of seemingly malaria-like fatigue issues. I could not say awake past 9:30 at night and could barely drag myself out of bed in the morning, which has since morphed into a mini-flu. I have a low-grade fever that leaves me feeling like crap, but still able to go to work.

I'm assuming these issues will all resolve themselves. I remember being quite sick when I came back to work after my mat leave with Kieran, but this adjustment has been harder I think.

Also, seriously, enough of this stupid cold weather!!!!

Monday, April 13, 2009

One Year Old

Today is Kaya' s First Birthday. We have not bought her any gifts, which I sort of feel badly about. In my defence...we went out looking for something for her, but I couldn't find anything that I thought she would love. The Easter Bunny did leave her some presents yesterday, although he mistakenly bought sidewalk chalk because he thought they were big baby-sized crayons. Bunny needs glasses.

Of course, we did celebrate her birthday properly(well it was a family Easter/birthday dinner) so she did get lots of gifts from other people. I made her a little bumble-bee cake. The bee was sitting upright in front of a miniature regular birthday cake with a candle on top. At least, that was how the cake was when I finished decorating it and prior to lifting into the box. When I went to lower it into the box the cardboard cake board folded in the middle, smashing the little purple birthday cake into the bee's face and belly. I managed to salvage/repair the bee, but the mini-cake was a goner. Of course, Kaya did not care and I realized as she shovelled handfuls of cake covered in yellow and black icing that most people do not give their one-year olds black icing for the first birthday. I am not one of those mothers. We have lots of photos of my little one-year old looking like a baby goth.

Happy Birthday Kaya Papaya!

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Robaxa-bot

So, I'm back at work. As I suspected it's been a bit chaotic, but nothing out of control and I'm sure we'll find a groove and go with it. We need to work out a reliable morning routine but otherwise it's been painless.

Or I should say, its been painless in the non-physical sense, at least. Actual physical pain? Lots of that.

You know how sometimes you sleep funny and when you wake up in the morning your neck is sore and you can't turn your head? Multiply that by about 500 and you have me today.

Last night at three am, I innocently turned my head on my pillow whilst fast asleep and I swear to God, my neck snapped. All of a sudden there was a shooting pain radiating from the side of my neck down my shoulder and into my back and up into my head and brain. I would have sat bolt upright in my bed in agony except that would have required upper body movement and at the moment I was quite paralyzed.

I finally whimpered my way out of bed and clawed my way to the kitchen where I tried to down some ibuprofen but I couldn't properly put my head back to swallow the pills so I just sort of gagged them down and hoped for the best.

I would have called in sick but it's only my third day back and I just couldn't be that much of a wimp. So this morning we unearthed some muscle relaxants in the cupboard and I sat patiently in a chair waiting from them to kick in while Eric got the kids ready to go. (Which, obviously, was the most enjoyable part of my day thus far). The bottle said the pills were good for neck spasms but all they did was make me sleepy, nauseous and did a great of job of relaxing my tongue but did nothing to the huge knot in my shoulder.

It's actually a bit better at work. Thank you Ergonomic desk chair for holding my spine exactly where it should be. As long as I don't have to turn my head in any direction I can pass for a normal person and not a robot. I may have to wheel this baby home with me tonight in order to get some decent sleep.

I've decided that I'm going to blame the change in routine for my current state of agony, even though its probably not related. But it makes me feel better to think that. Otherwise, I might have to admit that its age-related or something depressing like that. No, I won't go there.

Stupid office job. This is your fault.