That Freakin’ Ear Troll is Resilient!

Unfortunately the “ear troll” is raging once more…  It had gotten to the point that the pain had subsided.  I still had all the other symptoms, but at least the pain had gotten under control.  Unfortunately I finished my last antibiotic pills on the weekend, and it wasn’t long after that the pain started to creep back in.  I’m on an antibiotic ear drop now, but it looks like I may end up needing a referral to a specialist as the pain is still escalating.  As always, I’ll keep y’all posted on how things are going.  I am feeling super frustrated though.  This has been going on since the fifth, and it’s now the 31st – that’s almost an entire month for something most folk get over within a week.  Clearly something isn’t right.  😦  The good news though?  The doctor said that my right eardrum looks really good, that it’s weathered it all really well, and he’s positive it will make it through without long term damage (the news isn’t so bright for the left – which is the one which is perforated and causing the most pain).  As always though, I’m determined to focus on the positive.  🙂  Now to text the hubby and see if he’ll heat up the “rice sock” so I can apply a nice warm compress while I wait for some pain killers to kick in.  😉

Our words shape our children, be gentle!

The thing we say to our children now, will impact them for the rest of their lives.  Lily-Ann is five now, but one day she’ll be thirty-five and she’ll hear my words reverberate through her mind.  What I say to her today will one day become her inner dialogue.  It’s a scary and weighty thing.

The one thing I find myself saying, that I try to catch myself on before it slips out, is “How old are you?” in a rather shaming tone.  If she’s acting like a nincompoop, using baby talk, whining, or feigning that something is just too hard (when I’ve seen her do it dozens, if not hundreds, of times before) I’ll ask her how old she is.  If I catch myself after the fact?  I try to goofy it up a bit by wrinkling up my nose and saying in a goofy tone “Are you two?  No…  you’re three.  No, wait, that’s not right…”  I hate the idea that my frustrated “how old are you” may one day be what she hears in her head when she feels needy or stressed.

It’s a heavy thing, knowing the small things we say or do – sometimes out of frustration or exhaustion – may one day shape our children’s inner dialogues.  I do my best to fill her mind with things like “if you work hard enough, you can do anything” or “be gentle to yourself”…  but I’m only human, and, well…  chances are I’ll still mess her up.

Being broken is part of the human condition.  But I’m doing my best to shape my daughter’s view of herself into something positive.  She is strong, she is capable, she is utterly fabulous, and she is deeply and truly loved – THAT is what I want her to remember when she feels weak, when she feels tired, when she feels broken.

Busty Girl Comics – You’re Welcome!

Have you discovered Busty Girl Comics yet?  No?  Ohhhh….  You are in for a treat!

And seriously, even better than the wit and wisdom (yep, there’s a healthy dose of that too)?  She’s totally inclusive and has a great level-headed approach to her work.  She’s trans* friendly, pro-breastfeeding, and all about loving your body – whomever you are.  So yeah.  Definitely worth checking out.  🙂  …and you’re welcome – cause I know you’ll be thanking me afterwards.  😉

Busy Girl Comics is at http://bustygirlcomics.com/

Off to Meeting Lake!

In a happy turn of events, we’ll now be heading out to the lake tomorrow morning!  yay!

We haven’t been out to the cabin as a family since Lily-Ann was a wee thing, so this is a treat.  We’ll be loading all the dogs up, and packing Midge (our wagon) to the brim.  And then we’ll squeeze in even more as we head over to pick up my youngest sister, Jewles.

The plan is to head out for three days/two nights.  And if we have space, I’m going to pack all my camera equipment…  I’m really hoping we’ll have space.  I’d love to find the time to head out with my long range zoom and get some wildlife captures.  I’m not going to hold my breath, but I am crossing my fingers.

The point of this post?  I may or may not be posting while we’re away.  There’s no internet up at the little beach where my parent’s cabin is located.  It’s lovely and relatively secluded – so we’ll be pretty cut off up there…  which is also part of the attraction.  So, if nothing else?  I’ll see y’all when we get back.  🙂

Happy Weekend!

Little Zombie on the Prairie

I feel the need to be brief tonight.  I’m positively exhausted.  The ear infection/perforation is still not completely cleared up, and it is taking it’s toll.  That said, this third antibiotic does seem to be having an effect as most of the pain is gone. My voice still reverberates within my head, and I’m still experiencing the underwater feeling and the dull ache as well as the popping – but I am trying to ease my way back into my processing work.  So today, I sat down for a couple brief periods and gave some edits/enhancements a go.  Here are the results, from Sunday’s Zombageddon movie shoot:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

See you again soon Eva Nine! We’ll miss you!

Okay.  It happened.  I didn’t think it ever would, but it has.  I’ve been ruined.  Yep.  You read that right.  Ruined.  I can no longer read juvenile fiction without comparing it to the amazing The Search for WondLa.   Tony DiTerlizzi has ruined me.  From this point on, his magnificent work is the yardstick by which all other chapter books will be measured.

The truth is, I fell in love with DiTerlizzi’s prose and word-use within the first few pages of The Search for WondLa (which you may remember me raving about HERE).  I enjoyed reading it, if for nothing else, than his easy way with language, the way the words dripped off the page and onto my tongue like some sweet honey made just for my delighted writerly senses.  That would have been enough.  But then he made me fall in love with his characters as well.

Rovender Kitt?  Seriously, seriously love him.  I love the lessons of interconnectedness he bestows on Eva, which so closely resemble the things I’ve hoped to instill in, and inspire with, Lily-Ann.  I’ll miss this particular character even more than I’ll miss Otto, the giant water bear, who speaks with kindness and gentleness telepathically to our young heroine, Eva, whom kid-kid enjoyed so very much.

Tomorrow we have to begin another book.  The second book in the WondLa trilogy, A Hero for WondLa, isn’t available at our local library, and we don’t have the funds just now to run out and purchase it (or I would).  We would so like to linger on Orbona a little longer, but it is what it is.  I know whatever we choose to read, it won’t absorb us like the fluid, easy, natural flow of language that is Mr. DiTerlizzi’s masterpiece.  However, I also know that we WILL make it back to read more about Rovender, Otto, and Eva…  even if we are pulled away for a while, and that?  It’s a very nice thing to know.

Zombageddon Filming!

I’m a little late with today’s post because I fell asleep while putting the kid to bed.  It has been a very long day (starting with a five a.m. wake-up call).  The only reason I’m awake now is because the husband and dogs woke me.  Today marked the culmination of a perfect birthday trifecta:  birthday, party, zombies!

We were up at five in order to be on the highway by six for the three hour drive to Swift Current, Saskatchewan…  where the community has come together to help make a zombie flick.  And that was something we just had to be a part of!  Low budget and likely campy?  Right up our alley.  After all, what five year old girl shouldn’t have “zombie movie extra” listed in the career experience on her resume.  😉

It really was a cool experience, and worth the six hours of driving today.  But yeah…  soooo totally exhausted.  So much of my sharing is going to have to wait for another day.  Hopefully this ear infection will subside enough that I’m able to get back to my photo processing and then I’ll have a bunch of Zombie makeup photos to share.  For now though?  You’ll have to content yourself with an iPhone capture my husband managed.  I have no idea what happened with the lighting here (phones do crazy things at times) but it made for a rather interesting effect:

Zombie Me!

 

I promise to share all sorts of details another time, but until then?  Head on over to the Zombageddon FB page at https://www.facebook.com/Zombageddon

 

 

Kid-kid is Five!

Well, it happened.  The girl turned five…  and a lovely time was had by all.  LOL  Seriously.  It was.  🙂

Yesterday was her fifth birthday, and it was spent sewing, crafting, shopping, and visiting.  Getting ready for her party (which was today) and just enjoying being five.  She woke up, threw the blankets off, looked at her legs and exclaimed that they were super long!  After all, she grew!  She is five now, ya know.  😉

Today was just as nice…  okay, well… ALMOST just as nice.  It was a little busy and exhausting for me (I’m not actually over the ear infection yet, so it was a bit of a struggle, but I don’t think too many people noticed).  She had a great time at her party, playing with Parker and some of her cousins and extended family.  And I think everyone who came (including her great grandparents) had a really nice time too.

I’d love to be sharing some pictures from the last two days, but I’m still not well enough to be working through any of my photography edits.  However…  I do have one little iPhone capture and a video (both from yesterday).  Enjoy!  It’s off to bed for me, we’re going to be extras in a zombie movie tomorrow.  😀

Snow White and Mingo… catching a few Z’s at The Bay after our annual trip to Build-a-Bear to get Mingo a birthday outfit.

At some point I’ll start remembering to hold my phone the OTHER way when I take video.  Oooops.

Summer Birthdays Stink!

I don’t care what some folk try to say (generally in a reassuring fashion to a child), it stinks having a birthday in the Summer.  Seriously!

Kids who have their birthday during the school year get to enjoy celebrations at school with their classmates.  When they are young their teachers always make a big deal about their special day, when they are older their chums decorate their locker and arrange surprises during the day…  Kids born in the Summer don’t get any of that.  Heck, they’re lucky if they get to even have much of a party.

The girl’s birthday is tomorrow, and her party is on Saturday.  She’s going to be five.  Which, honestly, I can hardly even believe.

Before school let out we gave out cards to her school friends with her email address, asking them to drop us a line so we could invite them to her party once we had plans in place.  Only two of the eight kids she gave her address to actually contacted us with their mailing addresses.  Thankfully she’s got friends from the year before whom she still loves, as well as lots of cousins.  Except that only one friend has actually RSVP’d saying he’d be there… one friend, one cousin.  Like I said, birthdays in the Summer stink for a kid.  We’re hopeful that some people just don’t know what “RSVP” means, and that some people will just show up on the day.  We’re actually banking on it.

My birthday was always awesome.  Every second year it would fall on a school day, and on the alternates it would be during Easter break.  So half the time I was on holidays and half the time I got to celebrate at school.  It really was the best.  I absolutely loved it.  And even as a kid myself, I always felt bad for those kids who had their birthday during Summer vacation.  In theory it may seem like a great time to have a party, but as a kid?  Those parties pretty much always fell flat.  😦

Hunting down the ear troll. :)

Today I started a third antibiotic…  one that is actually used to prevent malaria of all things.   For a couple hours after taking a dose I’m on the floor in the fetal position, sick as all get out, but that’s better than being sick all the time as I was on the previous prescription.  LOL  And as of this evening, my one ear is popping and snapping more frequently than rice krispies in milk.  It’s really strong, really painful, and my ear is leaking as it goes…  but in between all of the “static” I’m actually getting small snippits of clearer sound.  So I’m very hopeful.  It feels good to actually hear things again, even if it is just in 1/4 second bursts.  😉

I’m envisioning a strong female warrior, clad in viking armor, hunting down and and slicing off bit after bit of that nasty ear troll.  So it’s getting pretty raucous in there, which accounts for all the pain and clamour, as well as the fluids…  But she’s hunting it down, and soon enough?  This will all be over.  LMAO

I am sooo looking forward to getting back to my work, I really do have the best clients in the world.  Everyone has been so patient as I’ve been dealing with this infection.  I’m hopeful that this is a small bit of light at the end of this very long nasty tunnel.  I’ll keep you all posted!  🙂