work from home – My Truant Pen

Mother’s Log: Star date Friday

Home… the final frontier. These are the ongoing adventures of the Maternal Parental Unit. Her continuing mission: to get her children to productive adulthood without too many crippling emotional scars.

Mother’s log:
Thursday May 10 4:05 pm: Just received word from Paternal Parental Unit that Smallest Progeny has been stricken by a fever. Vast experience reveals that he will not be permitted back to the Progeny Containment Center until normal temperatures have been attained for at least 24 time units. As an experienced Maternal Unit, I have packed all my critical notebooks in my bag to prepare for tomorrow’s inevitable challenges.

Thursday May 10, 7:55 pm: Checked Youngest Progeny’s forehead temperature with Thermal Lip Technology and verified presence of elevated thermal levels. Appearance of Youngest Progeny is very cute and sweet. Enjoying moment of quiet, cute sweetness, knowing it is of a temporary nature.

Friday May 11, 6:05 am: “Sick” progeny awakens and heads downstairs for marathon Scooby Doo until Elder Progeny proceeds to Progeny Education and Normalization Center (Kindergarten).

Friday, May 11, 7:30 am: Maternal Parental Unit recipient of high quality snuggles from unusually quiescent Youngest Progeny.

Friday May 11, 8:30 am: Maternal Parental Unit restores contraband legos (removed for throwing) in order to distract Youngest Progeny for several hours of positive and educational spacial reasoning. Maternal & Paternal Parental Units log in to computers and begin keyboard movements associated with work email.

Friday May 11, 8:35 am: Youngest Progeny needs to use the bathroom.

Friday May 11, 8:36 am: Youngest Progeny does not need to use the bathroom

Friday May 11, 8:37 am: Youngest Progeny needs to use the bathroom.

Friday May 11, 8:39 am: Youngest Progeny can’t possibly use the bathroom.

Friday May 11, 8:42 am: Youngest Progeny uses the bathroom.

Friday May 11, 8:46 am: Youngest Progeny uses the bathroom again.

Friday May 11, 8:50 am: Youngest Progeny actually starts building with restored blocks.

Friday May 11, 9:45 am: Massive civilization has been discovered on second floor, consisting of train tracks, legos & building blocks. Am summoned to inspect giant Platypus that appears to be the leader of the civilization. Giant Platypus is an indifferent conversationalist, a gap of noise made up for by Youngest Progeny.

Friday May 11, 10:20 am: Youngest Progeny insists he can help debug my javascript. Although not primarily responsible for finding case mismatch between variables, he is satisfied with his contributions to the cause. Maternal Parental Unit sets him up with iPad.

Friday May 11, 10:20 – 10:40 am: Youngest Progeny plays every single iPad game, up through the part where the game actually loads. Asks questions every 15 seconds and has learned how to turn up the volume. Maternal Parental Unit laments that 3 year old is not more skilled at video games.

Friday May 11, 11:20 am: In sick day record, Video Entertainment Device is not enabled until now. Youngest Progeny chooses automotive selection, which his elder sibling refuses to watch since it is a favorite movie of Eldest Sibling’s Closest Co-Conspirator. Silence reigns, or at least a Disney soundtrack.

Friday May 11, 12:22 pm: After consuming energy-producing units, the Youngest Progeny is placed in his Dormation Receptacle. The Parental Units anticipate blissful hours of quiet ahead.

Friday May 11, 12:57 pm: Youngest Progeny is actually asleep. Experienced Maternal Parental Unit was anticipating five minute intervals of resubmitting sleep protocol to Progeny in order for successful execution. He must really be sick.

Friday May 11, 3:33 pm: Begin wondering if Youngest Progeny is still alive. Experience teaches that yes, he is still alive and it is a high order of foolishness to go check. Enjoying non-Kiss108, non-KidzBop, non-Disney music while writing 243 SQL insert statements.

Friday May 11, 4:09 pm: Perhaps a transporter accident has put Youngest Progeny beyond time. Contemplating offering him award and promotion for Longest. Nap. Ever.

Friday May 11, 5:37 pm: This adventure concluded, the people of Homeistan come together in celebration of another day accomplished, and celebrate by setting up an entreprenurial lemon-sugar-water related endeavor on the front porch, to the merriment of all. The universe is safe for another day!

Healthy for a sick kid

Thane is awfully healthy for a sick kid. Alternately, he’s awfully sick for a healthy kid. Something like that. After Thane’s three days of vomitin the week I was off, we had a week of general good health as I started my job. Then last weekend it was Grey’s turn to throw up.

But on Monday when I went to pick up Thane, the nice daycare lady had a piece of paper for me to sign. After two – ahem – liquid stools a day, a kid can’t go back to the Y for at least 24 hours. So Thane was verboten to go back Tuesday. I’m having trouble remembering now if that’s when the problem really started, or if it stretched back to the weekend. Usually I would check my blog, but I periodically pretend to make attempts at taste and discretion and failed to chronicle this fascinating issue. Anyway, my patient, long-suffering husband worked from home with a constant Scooby Doo sound track in the background. Wednesday morning my husband took my son to the doctor for another issue. While there, Thane – ahem – demonstrated his digestive problems for the doctor.

The doctor recommended immediately discontinuing all dairy products for at least a week after Thane got better. This threw us into a tizzy since 80% of Thane’s calories come from dairy products. His favorite foods are milk, cheese, yogurt, butter and bacon. (The bacon being the 20%) But the very idea of a long term dietary constraint terrifies me, so I comply. I’m not strong enough for a life without dairy, or an elimination diet. No! Thane returned to school – briefly – before being sent home again. Once again, my husband manned up to the task.

Thursday dawned with no improvement. My husband now has the dialogue memorized for all the Scooby episodes, including that one with the Speed Buggy. I called my brother, figuring hey! He’s part time! It’s totally, like, pastoral to drive 8 hours in a 24 hour period to watch your sister’s child with digestive problems, right? Anyway, he gets several dozen hero points for taking Thane today, and moreover having dinner ready for us by the time we got home.

Now I simply exist in fear. What if Thane isn’t ready to go back to school on Monday? Or Tuesday? Or ever again? I’m in week 3 of a new job. My husband has a wonderfully flexible company, but there are limits. (It’s also tough on the ol’ patience to have a three year old with a Scooby fixation while you’re working on some complicated code bug.) Ugh. Anyway, Thane is eating a diet entirely comprised of constipating foods (would you like another banana?) and I’m crossing my fingers.

Which brings me to his other issue. As I mentioned, he was taken to the doctor on Wednesday for another delicate, but unrelated problem. After long soul-searching, I think it is not TOO inappropriate (or at least no more inappropriate than usual) to tell you that we’ve learned that Thane has a hydrocele. Given his age, it is not unlikely he will need the surgical remedy, since it hasn’t resolved itself and it might lead to complications if left untreated.

So here I have a little boy who’s been sick from school several days with – ahem – diarrhea (and hey, I actually wrote it out this time because this bout has been bad enough that I have FINALLY ACTUALLY learned how to spell diarrhea!) and who probably needs surgery. And yet this kid is the least sick kid around. He’s full of vim and vigor (I almost said piss and vinegar, but that’s too close to the truth…) He’s FINE. He’s bored. And he sooooo needs to go back to school on Monday!

24 hours late

In the last months, we’ve missed 2 Sundays of church due to overnight snow, falling heaviest during the church-commuting-hours. This is unprecedented. This morning, we awoke to a tapping on our windows.

The Sunday morning snowstorm was a day late.

One of the truths about working in technology is that you can work from anywhere, as long as you have your trusty laptop and high speed internet access. So on one hand, this is great news for a snow day. Both my husband and I are staying safely off the treacherous roads. Five years ago, this would’v been a fantastic and relaxing opportunity. We would’ve looked gooey-eyed across the table at each other while writing our SQL scripts and complaining about the latency of the VPN. But, as you all recall from my incessant complaining, daycare is at the same location work is. So if I’m not going in to work, the kids aren’t going in to daycare.

What this means for me NOW is that I have two full time jobs I’m supposed to pull off today: full time getting coding done, and full time keeping people alive and reasonably happy. (So far this morning, Thane’s been able to trap himself in his toy bin and irritate his brother by playing with noisy toys while Grey was watching tv.) Add in undigging the driveway; a two hour job I’d guess, assuming this doesn’t turn to snow with a layer of ice on top. Happily, my husband is home to share the pain. Sadly, he didn’t bring his laptop home, which means he’s in the attic where the desktops are while I keep the home fires burning in the living room.

Thus the excitement of my life! So tell me, what do you do on snow days? Do you look forward to them? Dread them? What day of the week would you most like to have a snow day on?