Stuff and Life

I wanted to make a Youtube Video with my 9 year old on How to Make an Origami Hummingbird from this book we have that looks like a children’s book, but is actually for adult engineers with IQs of 150+. It was going to have a lot of weeping and smashing things and eventually us going to the store and buying a model of a hummingbird. But then work got really busy and I’ve had to actually show houses and write contracts and LAME.

So instead, imagine a video where Gray and I are huddled over a stack of origami paper and I’m crying and asking him, “Why, Gray? Why? I just don’t know what a ‘squash fold’ is and I think it’s too early to drink… is it too early to drink? It’s not to early to drink, right?”

Also here’s a general life update to tide you over until I get a chance to put together a fully-formed attempt to entertain:

1. Jonas has been sleeping in a tent in the backyard off and on for the last couple of weeks. It started over spring break, but then last Thursday he was all, I’m going to sleep outside again tonight, OK? And I couldn’t really think of a decent reason why he shouldn’t if he wanted to, so he did. And the night after that, and the night after that, and the night after that. (Saturday night he tried to tell me he was going to take the tent into the greenbelt behind our house and sleep out there, but it seemed like he’d have trouble climbing the back fence with his tent and bedding, so I vetoed it.)

Last night I started to get worried there was something about this I wasn’t taking into account and told him he had to sleep inside for a night. I was worried it wasn’t good for his allergies, or the birds outside wake him up too early and he wasn’t able to get a decent night’s sleep, or it’s not good for a six year old’s back to sleep on the ground every night. Or that he had joined an international drug smuggling ring run by children and was sneaking out of the yard at night to get trained for the eventual operation.

This morning I asked him if he slept well and he said, “No. The tent’s better.”

So, now I’m not even sure what to do with him. Built him a platform out back he can pitch his tent on permanently and rename the backyard ‘Jonas’s Room’? Hire coyotes to raise him in the desert out front of our house? Get him his own reality show where he invites other kindergartners over, forces them to sleep in the yard and votes them out one by one in tribal councils?

2. My Mysterious Illness has culminated in the least satisfying, most anticlimactic story ever.

The Parvo test came back negative. As did the Valley Fever test. In fact, none of the three rounds of blood they’ve taken have shown anything abnormal. Also the biopsy they did three weeks ago (that still hasn’t healed) just showed it’s a ‘vasculitis type rash’. Which apparently means: It’s a rash.

So what I’ve learned is:

I have a rash.

There is blood in my body.

I don’t have leukemia or anything icky like that.

It’s not ringworm or bedbugs (so everyone can stop assuming that, thanks).

The regular doc I went to was all: Yeah… so… yeah… But you’re not dying. I mean I’m pretty sure about that. And the oral steroids we gave you made it better for awhile, so… I mean, I think if the rash comes back you should go to a dermatologist. Because they’re good at like rashes and stuff. 

The dermatologist I went to when the rash came back was all: Um… I don’t really do joint pain, so I’m going to pretend that’s not a symptom. The rash is weird, we should biopsy it. And you should put more steroids on it. Steroids are awesome. Not that I do them recreationally or anything. WATCHMERIPMYSHIRTINHALFRAWR!!!!

One of my friends who’s not a doctor of anything but Internet Googling (she has a PHD in IG) found a virusy rash type thing that sounded right and I called my doctor to ask if that was a possibility. She’d never heard of it (and I asked myself why, WHY, we have doctors when all we really need are friends and The Internet), but ran more blood and said she thought that wasn’t it either.

In other strangeness, my sister also has the rash. But only on one leg. And she’s pretending it’s not a thing because denial is her favorite medicine. Since she and I don’t even get to spend that much time together anymore because she has this terrible Assistant Principal of a High School job that results in awesome stories but a fairly hideous life (did you know that ‘clapping in someone’s face’ is a super harsh insult to The Kids now?) I’m not sure how I gave it to her but not my children or my husband who sleeps in my bed. I shared my steroid creme with her, but I haven’t heard if it helped because she’s too busy dealing with delinquents and developing PTSD.

So at this point, I have a rash that goes away when I’m taking steroids or putting steroid creme on it, but comes back when I stop and migrating joint pain that’s not nearly as bad as it was that first week (this week it’s my elbows) and could be just from working out too much? Both have been going on for 5 weeks.

Neither, however, are making my life miserable (except when I try to wear shorts or a swimsuit, which is annoying because I have abs for the first time ever, now that I’m taking circus class). So at this point I’m just going to use all the refills on the steroid creme and hope by the time they run out this has worked itself out of my system.

(Most boring conclusion ever.)