“Yeah, I’d like to cash a cheque…”

This story made me and my officemates laugh out loud. Here’s how I imagine this man’s internal dialogue leading up to the event:

Hmmm. I really could use a joint. But I don’t have any money. I’ve heard that some people write up fake cheques and then cash them. Sounds like a plan. Let’s see, I need a couple hundred dollars. I’ll write a cheque for, say, $500. That ought to cover it. Hey wait. While I’m getting money for free, why don’t I get lots of money for free. What’s a lot of money? Ummm, a number with ten zeros behind it sounds like a lot of money. Why don’t I write a cheque for 340 billion dollars? That way, when I cash the cheque, I’ll never have to write another one. I’m so dumb. I should have thought of this sooner.

Obviously, it never occurred to him that there are many countries in this world that don’t even have that much money, never mind individuals who walk through the door wearing tanktops and shorts. Did he come to the bank with a 3 ton truck? Or did he think he could carry out that much cash in his pockets. I can see the mental machinery at work:

This will be so cool. I’ll get to see some of those billion-dollar bills. I wonder what they look like. Oh, and I’ll be able to start that record company I’ve always wanted to start. Wait, how much does it cost to start a record company? I’d better make that cheque a little bigger. Why don’t I write one for 360 billion dollars. I hope 20 billion dollars is enough to start a record company.

A Completed Draft!

Many of you know that I’ve spent the past month and a half stressing out about a paper I’ve been trying to write. The goal was to get it written in time to submit April 18th, but it didn’t happen. Contrary to some of the worries I had about this when I started working on the paper, my failure to submit it on the 18th will not end my graduate school career. Phew! Several conversations I’ve had with my advisers have assured me of this. But even though I missed the submission deadline, I still put in long hours last week. I wanted to get a draft of the paper to one of my advisers so that I could get some feedback on it and so that I could take care of some other business I need to look after before the semester ended in May. Finally, after staying up till 4AM on Friday, I finished the draft, attached the paper to an email, and sent it to my adviser.

I celebrated the finished draft by taking the weekend off–sort of. On a mere 4 hours of sleep, I joined a quartet of singers from church to sight-read some madrigals and perform them at a birthday party for one of the parishioners. Then I spent some quality time with Pam and L in the mall. Pam and I each needed to buy a pair of sandals for the summer. We also wanted to buy something to treat ourselves with, so we bought the ice cream maker attachment for our Kitchenaid mixer. (After the bowl spent the night in the freezer, we made some raspberry ice cream with it. Wow! Can’t wait to try some of the other recipes.) On Sunday afternoon, I sang in the second of the three concerts I’ll perform with Novi Cantori. We got a sitter so Pam could come to it. It was L’s first time with a sitter, and he was a very good boy.

I’m looking forward to a slower pace over the next few weeks. This will make it possible to see my family again. Woohoo!

Recovering

L is nearly is old self. However, he still has to follow the doctor’s orders. A few times a day, he has to wear the “elephant” mask. Some medication (ventolin) is vaporized with some pressurized air and fed into the mask. L still associates the elephant with everything bad he experienced over the last few days at the hospital–poor kid–so he does his level best to find something else to do whenever it makes an appearance.

Otherwise, life is slowly returning to normal. Pam caught a cold in the midst of the excitement last week and is busy fighting it off. The paper I was trying desperately to finish by the weekend didn’t get done–some things are more important than others–so I’ll be working to finish it over the next few days. Maybe when I finish the paper I can take advantage of the nice weather we’ve been having and try out the golf clubs I got for Christmas at a local driving range.

Brief Update #3

L (and Pam) slept much better last night. L didn’t need any oxygen and he didn’t have to labor to breath, so this morning L was able to say ‘Bye, Bye’ to the nurses (tormentors) at the hospital in a more permanent fashion. We are all home now. L is still not 100%, but he is close to being the kid he was before the micro-organisms got to him on Tuesday.

Brief Update #2

So it is definite that L has pneumonia. The flu and RSV swabs both came back negative and his ears look fine. L was doing much better today; trying his best to jump around and use the bed as a slide. We will spend another night in the hospital just because when L settles down to sleep he doesn’t breathe as deeply therefore requires oxygen. It might turn out that he won’t need the oxygen tonight, but then everyone at least feels comfortable sending him home, knowing that he will be fine. L’s 2 favourite words now are “bye bye” as he convinces the hospital staff that they should indeed go bye bye and “done done” that whatever the staff was thinking of doing L has declared that they are now finished it.

Brief Update

The bug L caught two days ago has turned out to be a nasty one. Yesterday evening he came down with a fever. He got some sleep overnight, but not a lot. This morning, at his follow-up appointment, the doctor sent us to the hospital so that L could get his chest x-rayed. Turns out L has pneumonia. He’s been admitted to the hospital–they want to give him some antibiotics intravenously–and he will likely spend the night there.

Unwelcome Company

RSV has decided to pay L a visit, bringing along bilateral ear infection just for kicks.

Yesterday we had a regular day, happily enjoying the warm sunshine while we waited for Daddy to get home. Then at bedtime I noticed that L’s voice was getting hoarser as he chatted himself to sleep, followed by a few episodes of coughing after he was asleep. Two hours later as we were getting ready for bed Dad found L struggling for breath. His colour was good and he recovered after a minute or so, but remained wheezy. I may be a nurse, but I am not a pediatric nurse, and further more in this situation I am the mom. So it took a bit for my clear headed assessment skills to click in. After a phone call to Urgent Care it was decided that we would remain at home until morning unless he had another episode or if his colour worsened. So L and I spent the night sitting up on the couch and Dad checked in on us periodically.

Sure enough L’s oxygenation was a little low requiring two ventolin inhalation treatments before they improved. We were sent home with syrup ventolin to open his bronchials and prednisone to reduce the swelling. On top of it he has an ear infection so we brought home antibiotics for that as well. He wasn’t exhibiting any signs of the ear infection bothering him, but we won’t argue with the antibiotic prescription in this situation.

After we got home L seemed to have recovered remarkably well, slightly less energetic then usual, but bouncing back very well. This afternoon the fever arrived knocking him right out.

He is sleeping now so hopefully he will be able to sleep without a repeat of last night.

Life According to Dr Seuss

I never enjoyed Dr Suess as a kid, maybe because I was too old to enjoy the rhyme and not old enough to appreciate pure silliness when I was introduced to them. L on the other hand loves Dr Suess, we have made our way through “Mr Brown can Moo”, “ABC” and are currently enjoying “One fish two fish red fish blue fish”. With this much Dr Seuss in my life it was inevitable that at some time he would show up on the blog. So this week when Daddy is so stressed trying to get his last starred paper finished here is a little taste of Dr Suess.



Grandpa F commented once on how exciting it must be for a child because everything is new. For example one of the days that L and I were outside last week L discovered that a stick could be used for digging. Pretty soon he was having a great time digging a hole in the dirt. So learn a lesson from Dr Suess, try something new and remember to keep your eyes open for the funny things in life.

Wheee!

The temperature has been in the ‘teens the last couple of days; spring has finally arrived. There is a playground not too far away and L has discovered the joy of slides. I thought that L wasn’t a risk taker, but he is not afraid of the slide at all. The bigger the slide the better, in fact mom was more afraid of L going down the big slide then L was.