It was not the best of times, it was not the worst of times. I suppose this could often be said of many situations, but in this moment I am referring to Sarah’s sleep this past week. In addition to the weighted blanket, Sleepytime tea, and one of us sleeping next to her, I bought her a penguin stuffed animal that plays music and breaths with a little light in its belly. It is really adorable. I’m not sure if it helps with Sarah’s sleep, but I do think she finds it soothing. When she came home on Thursday and I showed it to her, she sat on the sofa in her school uniform, coat, shoes, and backpack for half an hour just holding the penguin while it did its thing. Normally as soon as she gets home she makes a beeline to change out of her uniform, so you can tell she was really interested in the penguin. Eventually I removed her backpack and coat, but she focused on the penguin, undeterred by my actions.
I can’t actually say how Sarah’s sleep was the past two nights because she was at a retreat at the place where she attends summer camp. She is always eager to go and often packs many days in advance. Normally I am the sort of person who is always ahead of the game for, well, just about anything that needs to be done. So if ever I fall short of this I am shocked and embarrassed. This recently happened in a way that pertained directly to Sarah’s weekend retreat. Friday morning I was packing her meds, including the rescue nasal spray in case of a seizure lasting more than five minutes. I looked at the expiration date and realized it was expired. While this wouldn’t send me into a panic about the efficacy of the medication, given the recent expiration, I was suddenly panicking that the camp would turn her away when I went to drop her off. I emailed and called to get a message to her neurologist. After a couple of hours I got the message that a new prescription had been sent to the pharmacy. A couple more hours passed, and I got an automated message from the pharmacy that the prescription needed to be approved by insurance or Sarah would need a different prescription. Ack! I waited. Then I called the pharmacy and left a message. I called the doctor and left a message. I called the insurance company. As I was talking to the insurance company, the pharmacy called to say it had been approved by insurance, but… they didn’t have it in stock. Luckily, one of their other stores had it in stock. However, because it is a controlled substance, they couldn’t just transfer the prescription. They would have to get the doctor to call it in again. But we were nearing the end of the working day on a Friday and I had yet to be able to speak to a person the first time I tried calling anywhere. The pharmacist said she would call the doctor, and then she called me back to say she had gotten through and the prescription would be issued anew. We had an hour and a half before we needed to leave for the camp. We waited. I called the new pharmacy and they said it was pending insurance approval. Cue me wanting to scream. Luckily the new pharmacist was able to get the insurance to go through quickly and we were told it would be ready in twenty minutes. Sarah and I picked up the new rescue med en route to her camp and all was well!! But oh my goodness, this is why I prefer to do things early. I was so embarrassed to have an urgent situation of my own making since I hadn’t noted the expiration date sooner. Once Sarah gets home I will look at the new expiration date and enter it in my calendar with a note a month ahead to renew it.
For Amy’s art class at school she has been working on drawing portraits. To facilitate skill in that department, her teacher gave the students prints of a skull, a side-profile skull, and a side-profile picture of the head and neck muscles. Amy was to copy these drawings, and she did an incredibly thorough job of it. My anatomy nerd self was resurrected, if ever really dormant, and I loved this assignment. I was horrified that the muscle chart labeled the SCM as the sternomastoid. What?! The nickname is SCM for a reason. It is the sternocleidomastoid. Amy labeled it correctly as per my instruction. I also gave her some of my anatomy books so she could see the labels more clearly than on the prints with font so blurry you couldn’t tell an “a” from an “s.” She also had me double check everything to make she got all of the names written correctly.
Amy dyed her hair pink and purple yesterday. The bottom tips of her hair and bangs are purple and the rest is pink. It looks amazing, as if it was the hair she was meant to have all along. As we prepared to go to a middle-grade author panel featuring Caroline Carlson, one of my favorite authors, Amy transformed herself into a pink and purple sparkly unicorn cat with elaborate face paint. I love how in this house we never know what magical look is going to emerge from Amy’s room, just as we never know whether it is going to be Computer Mouse, Baby Pendulum, or Tick Tock coming out of Sarah’s room.
Carl went to a concert Friday night, so after I dropped Sarah off for her retreat, Amy and I watched Marcel the Shell the Shoes On. I highly recommend it if you want a heartwarming and adorable story to watch for 90 minutes. Last night Carl, Amy, and I went to a show at the Glitterbox theater where Anna was performing in a locally written sci-fi play. It was hilarious and wonderful, and we didn’t know until we were there that Anna was the main character. The other plays were equally delightful, and because Pittsburgh is the small world that it is, I saw one of my massage students from years ago. Earlier in the day I had run into a college acquaintance. When I was growing up it was always my stepfather who would run into people he knew anywhere and everywhere. This is still true of him, but apparently it is now true of me too.
Wishing you all the equivalent of soothing penguins, easy advanced preparation for life, and sparkly unicorns emerging when you least expect them.
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