Mommy glows...

Yes, I'm proud of my kid, but that's not exactly why I'm glowing today. Today I had my first ever procedure requiring an injection of radioactive dye- & hopefully my last... Not that it was terrible or anything. And it was for a good cause (IMO :). It was to help sort out the nature of the arthritis that I've had for 30 years, which has gotten steadily worse over the past year & caused me to lose partial use of my right hand last spring. The test was done in 2 phases, 2 1/2 hours apart, & the whole thing was made even more exciting by C's car being in for its yearly inspection & my having a chiropracter's appointment in the middle of it all... In spite of some discomfort, though, it all went well & I was feeling quite able to go pick B up from school after we retrieved C's car. My doctor will have the report in a couple of days & he said he'd call with a plan of action soon after. It's lovely to have it all over (B was disappointed that we haven't a geiger counter to check me out :) & even lovelier to think I might get some relief soon from the arthritis pain & swelling.

B had another good day at school. He found the pokemon cards he made last year at school with Cherie, that they used to keep track of the real cards B could earn by turning-in tacks & pushpins before hurting himself with them. So if he happens to run out of gum again or is tempted to de-stress by shredding his fingers, he'll have good incentive not to... After we got home from school & had snack, he & dad played with his Alpha Team legos, which B retrieved from the basement yesterday on a whim. It's fun to see him revisit his old legos & he has a grand time updating their stories. After that, he did his homework pretty cheerfully, although he said that he felt bad about asking me to scribe part of it, but I assured him that his teachers were fine with it & I don't mind doing it... I'm really pleased that using a charting system has been making such a big difference in B's tolerance of homework. Dad went outside to work in the garden while B did homework. When B joined him afterward he unfortunately took one of the Alpha Team legos outside & lost part of it (he'd forgotten that we discourage taking legos outside for just this reason...) & was on the edge of meltdown because he felt like an idiot for taking it outside. I vividly remember feeling this way when I was a kid... judgement takes a while to kick-in. I used a combination of talking, joshing, & tickling (having cold hands helped, too) & managed to divert him from a meltdown. We looked up the word for "cold" in japanese & used it to say "mom has cold hands!" (& also "Rufus has a cold butt" :). While we were chatting I mentioned that we were having his new favourite, bean loaf, for dinner... & B informed me that it gives him bad thoughts now because the kidney beans are red. Sigh. Red seems to be associated with blood & other scary things these days, & although I've been able to keep him wearing his partly red, tie-dyed t-shirt (nectarines! cherries!) he will no longer wear his red shorts... Big sigh. I warned C about the new turn of events before he made dinner, & he offered B some soup instead.

While we were eating C played an old PDQ Bach cd (1712 Overture) that B had not yet heard. He cued it to "Einstein on the Fritz", which is a hilarious take-off on Philip Glass's "Einstein on the Beach", with some "Well-tempered Clavier" & "Koyaanisqatsi" thrown in for good measure. B thought it was hysterical. The next track, a ballet inspired by the Crimea, was even better by B's standards, including slide-whistle, fog horn, & something called a "wind-breaker" in the instrumentation. B was so inspired by it all that, after he was done eating, he rummaged through the instrument basket & pulled out some of my weirder purchases (plus a slide-whistle) to add to the cacaphony. It was really funny, & fun to see him all fired up by music again. He found his recorder & I took a photo of C helping him to get his fingers on it correctly. I have a wonderful series of pictures from when B was about 2 & discovered the recorder for the first time. C was down on the floor with him & encouraging him to blow into the recorder. Little B's face was priceless as he discovered he could make noises with it, too... It was fun to remember B's first encounter with the recorder as they rediscovered it this evening :)