scott’s spot

I’m in Target today, walking in with Olivia, Nay carrying Maggie behind me. We’re getting two carts, one for stuff, one for kids. In walks a mother with a cell phone crooked in her shoulder, trying to talk on the phone, holding a little boy, maybe two and a half or three, and he crying.

So what? Kids cry all the time. You get used to it kick as a parent.

Or so I would have thought, at least from my own experience.

But then I hear the mother say in a biting way to the boy as she’s trying to get him into a cart “You know I hate it when you cry.”

What?? Did I hear her right. I finish getting my own cart. Get Maggie up into the seat, and lean over to Nay.

“Did you hear that? Did she say what I think she said?”

Nay nods.

Made my blood boil.

Now, I know I’m not the most patient father. I struggle with patience and my moods. I’m a fairly moody bastard sometimes and when I’m up I’m Father of the Year, and when I’m down, I have to keep myself from snapping at the girls over every little thing. Saturday I was in a shit mood. I woke up with the girls and didn’t wake up very well, and despite trying to pull out of it, I never turned it around. I was short and snapping, at the girls, at Nay, at every little thing that I dropped (I’m clumsy when I’m grumpy), at the dishes, the toys in the living room—like everything. Sunday was better. I woke up early, real early, and had some time to myself before everyone got up. That seems to be the key. Get up before everyone else and have enough time to sip a mug of tea without worrying whether the girls are killing each other.

But to say something like that. It’s just hurtful. It made me think of Saturday, and how short my fuse was. I ran through the day to see if I could come up with anything that sounded as shitty as that. I came up with nothing, which is pretty good. I struggle with wording a lot of the time. I have to learn how to speak to the girls without wrecking them or their self-esteem. Things like saying “what happened” when the girls are playing rough and Maggie’s bursts into tears, rather than saying “what did you do”? It’s tough and a lot of work and I don’t always succeed. But I’m so conscious of their sense of self, that I could never imagine saying something like “I hate it when you cry.”

This is why they say parents should have to be licensed to have kids.

So, the whole pissing contest between Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema had me (and millions of other fans) biting my nails about the fate of the new movie adaptations of Tolkien works, The Hobbit, and a movie comprised of material compile from the additional external writings regarding Middle Earth.

For those who don’t remember (or know), Jackson, and his company Wingnut Films were demanding an audit of New Line’s books, claiming New Line failed to pay them previously specified monies relating the money The Lord of the Rings made.

New Line responded by giving Jackson and Co. the finger, saying they would never work or deal with Jackson again, as it related to additional movie based on Tolkien’s writings.

Thus the pissing contest ensued.

Peter Jackson cut out of The Hobbit? Say ti ain’t so. Say that New Line was really so stupid as to freeze out of the production the man (and his team) that made New Line a (pardon my French) fuck-load of money. Not to mention double digit Academy Awards, including Best Picture for the final installment, The Return of the King. Tell me New Line was that prideful that they couldn’t work it out.

Apparently not. They made a decision to reach out to Jackson, who reached out in turn. Together they came to an agreement that Jackson would produce the new films.

But who would be the direct???

Apparently they have made a choice, and, in my opinion, the choice is a great one. Guilermo del Toro has been tapped to direct the next two movies. For those who don’t know him, he’s directed Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth. Visually, it’s a nice and bold style that should fit right in with Jackson’s own style. But also, he’s done big budget (Hellboy, and soon-to-be-released Hell boy 2), and he’s done fantasy (Pan’s Labyrinth). In addition, in this interview, he’s clearly on board with keeping up continuity.

I was worried when I heard Jackson wasn’t going to be directly. I’m not worried any longer.

Maggie went back for her second round of antibiotic shots today. That kid is such a trooper. When she got home (which is when I first saw her this afternoon), despite the fact that she had been stuck in both legs by needles, she was running and bouncing and jumping around.

The doctor told Nay that she had been watching the blood sample every half hour to see if anything had started to grow. Nothing. We don’t get the official clean bill of health until tomorrow, but the doctor told Nay that if nothing has shown up by now, the chances are infinitesimal that they would.

Whew!

I think I may have seen the timeliest piece of televised fiction I’ve ever seen. I had a little bit of ironing to do for the next day (can’t possibly show up to work looking all wrinkled and disheveled!) and I turned on the TV. Nay was TiVo-ing “Boston Legal”.

SIDENOTE: What is the proper conjugation of the recently minted verb “Tivo”?

Anyway, the main non-William Shatner character, Alan Shore, played by James Spader, is arguing in front of the US Supreme Court, whether a mentally deficient man who was convicted of raping a child in Louisiana should be put to death.

Okay, so, not more than a few days earlier (4/16), I’m listening to NPR’s All Things Considered, and I hear this: listen.

The article (in case you don’t want to listen to the whole thing) is all about a case that’s headed to the Supreme Court to decide whether Louisiana has the right the execute a man convicted of rape of a child.

Whoa. Seriously?

I just heard this piece on NPR and a few nights—just a few—I’m watching it play itself out fictionally on national TV. Without going into the particulars of my own belief in the death penalty (that the practice should be discontinued), and avoiding the political diatribe into which Spader’s soliloquy descended (which I ultimately found distracting), I have to say, this is the single most timely piece of fiction I have ever seen on TV.

At about 4:30 yesterday afternoon, Nay calls me to say she and the girl’s are headed to the doctor’s office to check out Maggie’s hands. When I met them at midday for a visit with Animal Adventures, I noticed Maggie had these weird pinprick-tiny spots on her hands and wrists. Nay had noticed it as well and was keeping an eye on it. Later, after naps, she called the doctor who told her to bring Maggie in.

Normally a trip to the doctor’s office is a non-issue. Olivia had one last week when she started to get sick, only to discover she had a case of strep throat. So, okay, no problem.

But, in this case, the doctor’s weren’t immediate sure what it was, so bloodwork was required.

Ug.

Initially they wanted to rule out things like petechia. Then it was for white blood cell counts. So, out came the pinprick and the squeeze tube for Maggie’s tiny little finger. Which she did great with, considering. Then we waited.

The doctor having looked at this “rash” said that the most likely cause was trauma to the hands. Not horrible horrible trauma, but a mild one. I know exactly where that came from. The night before, after getting into her PJs, Maggie came running up to me to “walk up my legs”. She grabbed my hands and I hers, but her feet were moving a little too fast for the rest of her. They both gave out from under her and she went down, literally flat on her back…and head. But I still had her hands. So the motion of falling down so fast and me still holding her hands was the most probable cause of this spotty…thing on her hands.

But…

The white blood cell count came back slightly elevated. Which means that Maggie is probably fighting off an infection of some type. Could be bacterial, could be viral. Could just be fighting off the strep her sister had. But it needs to be tested. And because the spots appear under the skin, the are to be tested for infection is…the blood stream.

Double ug.

Which means drawing out blood and sending it to a lab to be tested and waiting. Oh yeah, and in the meantime, giving Maggie direct antibiotic shots, two at a time (one in each leg) over the course of at least two days.

So Maggie got her shots yesterday, and did great. I wasn’t actually present, as I had to take Olivia home and get her some dinner (we stopped and had a little MacDonald’s date on the way home) and getting her into bed. Because, by the time the doctor saw Maggie, drew the blood from the finger, analyzed it, decided to draw more blood (this time with a butterfly needle), give her the antibiotic shots, and wait to make sure she didn’t have a reaction to the shots—well, Maggie and Mommy didn’t get home until nearly 8PM.

And then there was watching Maggie throughout the night to make sure she didn’t get a fever or that the “rash” didn’t start to spread. Because that would indicate an infection in the blood stream, which is bad and which would land us in the ER.

Maggie is doing beautifully this morning, no fever, no spreading of the “rash”, up and bouncy at the early hour of 5:50AM. So she seems to be good (though she still goes back for a second set of shots this afternoon). But all things being equal, I can think of better ways to end the day.