So things got off to a bit of a rough start on the trip. Sunday morning–the morning we’re supposed to leave–Saige and I are in the emergency room because her ear infection is back and she was screaming from 1 to 5am the night before. I am there on two hours of sleep and look like death, but the other moms there look about the same. We get some more antibiotics, finish packing, and are on the road by 1pm. Then it starts raining. Then we hit traffic. By the time we get to our hotel in Santa Cruz, the girls are cranky and hungry as hell, so we settle for the first restaurant we see, which happens to be a Denny’s.

Things were nicer after that. As long as she was on drugs, Saige slept fine. We managed to pack a lot in just two and half days: the Santa Cruz boardwalk, a quick trip to a mall for some shoes, a lunch date with friends, a bookstore trip (where I got this book), and a very short visit at the San Jose Children’s museum. We even managed to squeeze in some jaunts to Bruce’s old favorites, The Staff of Life and The Saturn Café.

They also got to ride the coveted Lowly Worm ride at the Gilroy Outlets, and credit for that excursion goes entirely to stumbling on this photo a few weeks before our trip. (They are extremely fond of Richard Scarry and Arnold Lobel stories, as I was).

The whole Flickr set is here.

So the trip was okay and we’re home now, but the bummer is we’ve almost arrived at two straight months of fucked-upness. This is exactly what I was fearing when I signed them up for preschool.

I have doled out so much medicine in the last couple of months I can do it in my sleep. We have probably deforested half the country ourselves; there about four boxes of tissues in every room of the house. Tissues also have permanent residence in my pocket. The ear thermometer lives in the living room instead of the medicine cabinet. The girls play “sick” and “medicine time” with their stuffed animals now, instead of feeding and diaper time. My desk is crammed with pharmacy printouts, doctor’s appointment cards, and co-pay receipts. All hopes for renewed efforts at potty training have come to a halt, since all time and energy is taken up with just keeping our heads above water.

Saige’s ear is making her so miserable and cranky she’s like a different person. To say it makes her difficult to deal with is an understatement. Most days she is just a giant ball of fits, and yesterday it was both of them at the same time for some reason. By lunchtime I couldn’t even deal with it anymore and left them with Bruce so I could go plant some sunflowers out front. I have lost my temper in the last few weeks more times than I care to think about, and even though I know why she’s acting that way, it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. Even Bruce lost it with her shortly before our trip, which is an accomplishment since he has a Mother Teresa level of patience. I feel helpless. I am hoping the only reasons we are battling this so long and hard is because a) asshole doctor ignored us when it first came up, and b) we got hit with the flu before she even had a chance to recover from either the cold or the ear infection last time.

But there is good news! We got new pimped out cell phones. Now I can send Bruce lots of photos of all the fun he’s missing here while he’s at work. He might just decide to stay there.

P.S. Apropos of nothing, does anybody else find the redesign of All Consuming a little hard to read?

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