Four small blue reasons to stop the project

I started cutting down a forsythia hedge that was just too wild to manage. Boy helped, but soon decided that wielding the saw on the big main branches was more fun than cutting up the small stuff with a clipper. He enthusiastically sawed springy undead branches, stomping them down when they wouldn't cooperate, hauling them to the compost pile. It's always good to get him out of the house and away from the TV. We got pretty far and I was about to go further when I spotted a nest. I peeked inside to see if it was current or old, and it held four blue eggs, so we called a halt and will wait to let the next generation of robins arrive. I saw the mother burst from the bushes the next time I came around the corner of the house, so I hope she decided to keep at it and wasn't scared away by us. I'll dig up the remains of the bushes and plant coleus (it's the shady side of the house). I know I'll be finding forsythia volunteers for years to come, but they should be easy to handle compared to the tangle that was there.

Twice this week the boy had to stay home with nausea again. It has become a diagnostic problem now - about every two weeks he gets nauseated, usually during the night, spends part of the night on his knees over the toilet, might throw up once or twice, then feels nauseous and sleepy for the rest of the day, sometimes two days. No stomach pain, no headache. Doctor is as puzzled as I am. In between he is fine. This week he was home Wednesday, back to school Thursday (where he nearly threw up after running in gym class), then out again Friday. By Friday dinner he felt fine after sleeping much of the day and feeling lousy. We had changed his form of Ritalin, thinking that might be the culprit since it started about the time we changed the formulation, but obviously that didn't help. It started after his bout with mono, so maybe the virus triggered something else. But why this two- to three-week cycle? Some weird hormonal thing? Abdominal migraine (but no pain)? Intestinal torsion or other abnormality? Stomach emptying abnormality? It doesn't seem to be a food allergy unless it's something subtle like too much fiber. No diarrhea or problems at the other end. For now we are going to try a proton pump inhibitor like Prevacid and see what happens. We will probably get a referral to a pediatric gastroenterologist if we can't figure it out with the pediatrician. Any thoughts?

The girl child got a speeding ticket and tried to hide it from me, but when mail started arriving from law firms I finally got it out of her. So just as I am getting the auto insurance lowered by consolidating all our insurance with one carrier, this will probably undo it and raise it back up again. She has a court date - hopefully she can bargain down to no points. There are now online defensive driving courses that are acceptable for lowering points and insurance costs, so she will have to do that too. She won a vo-tech competition and was supposed to go to the state competition, which involved spending the night in a hotel with her teacher and her team, but she was disqualified because she was deemed "unpredictable" and they didn't trust her not to do something stupid like leave the hotel without permission. She brought that on herself with some of the stunts she pulls in class - I'm not sure she understands that. I felt bad for her, but they had a point. I hope she ends up all right, but until she learns to take advice and accept responsibility, she will keep getting into trouble. I think she did her experimenting with drinking and drugs and seems to have gotten that out of her system, and she has held this job for quite a while (they are forgiving of lateness), so there's some hope. I'm still not taking it for granted that she'll graduate on time or go to the community college in the fall. She still says both are on. She knows that by being a college student she still stays on my benefits as a dependent, which is good for her because she's not ready to support herself.

We are going to get our geek on next weekend. Nearly-ex (that's another whole story - apparently the quality of competence at the courthouse is pretty low, because again they lost a piece of paperwork and scheduled us for an appearance we weren't supposed to have to make and lord knows when this will be over with) will be busy doing some barbershop singing thing, so the boy is mine and we will go to the local Renaissance Faire, him with a sword and me possibly geeked out in my medieval dress, and maybe the science fair at the local state museum. Mother's day both kids will go with their dad to visit Grammy, so I might take the day and go to the Mercer Museum fair. This is at a museum of American tools, which sounds dreadfully dull, but I always like the history of how people used to do things before all the conveniences we take for granted. It's a bit of a drive and I hate to spend the gas, but it's the kind of thing I really like, and I never get to put my full attention on anything when the whole family goes, because it's a constant litany of "Mom, look at this!" and over I go to look at that. If I want to spend 10 minutes watching flax being spun or bobbin lace being made or just staring at old tools, then I have to go by myself. Funny, ex never had that problem, because he never once worried about what anybody else wanted, we had to go where he went. Never turned his head to see if anybody was following, never worried about the rest of us waiting patiently until he finished wandering off without any notice, never checked that kids were comfortable or fed or bored or in need of potty break. That was all my job. I got us a set of family band radios so if the parents went separate ways we could keep in touch (this was before we all had cell phones) but he never learned to use them, and would hand his to the kid who ended up with me so we couldn't reach him anyway. But I digress. It will be sweet to wander one of these events at my own pace for once and not have to worry about anyone else's comfort or level of boredom.

Saturday's jobs await. Bread to bake to turn into crumbs, coleus to plant, tree helicopters to vacuum off the rug, dirty farmer's market lettuce to wash. And I'm hungry. Time to forage.

Of stupidity and future money

Or, my $12,000 adventure. Over the years I had accumulated lots of EE and I savings bonds through payroll deduction. When I went through them recently they added up to about $25,000 current value. Nothing to sneeze at. But if I ever want to use them for something like college, I can only cash in $1000/day at a bank. So to be able to use them I have to convert them to virtual bonds, thus putting them at the mercy of some computer. So I go to Treasury Direct and figure it out, and after lots of registering and requesting and reregistering and having verification questions and receiving login information in several separate envelopes and after the most unusual login security procedure I have ever seen, I can start converting my bonds to virtual bonds, which can be cashed and sent to my bank account in any amount. You have to type in the serial numbers of the bonds, generate a Manifest, then mail them in. Regular mail. According to the FAQ, no certified mail, etc. Just regular mail. Because they never lose anything and they're entirely reliable. So I carefully made manifests with no more than 25 $100 bonds or 10 $200 bonds, and started mailing them one at a time so if any did get lost, it wouldn't be all of them. But still, the face values were large. Eventually I got the sets of 10 mailed out, with trepidation, and then it was time for the sets of 25. But these envelopes were heavy, so I put the last set of 10 in my mailbox and took 4 packs of 25 to the post office to see about extra postage. Bought the stamps, then realized as I drove home that I had $10,000 sitting in the car with me. Good lord, there has to be a better way. Then (not sooner) I realized that you can insure things you mail. So back to the post office, grabbing the one in the mailbox as well. I explained it to the lady at the counter, who was sympathetic and also thought just mailing them was risky, so for $140 I sent them Priority mail, insured, and delivery confirmed. Maybe not necessary, but a little peace of mind. I only wish I had thought of it sooner. Now I feel stupid. I can go online and check each manifest to see if the bonds are now identified as "converted", but that will take a while. At least one set got there. I hate to turn them over that way - at least with the papers in my hand they were real, but now they're just numbers in a computer. Ever since I read "The Handmaid's Tale" I have been suspicious of having anything important entrusted to a computer.

Spring is here, and the cat only bit the heads off of half of my seedlings, so maybe I'll have some climbing flowers to hide the old fenceposts. Made bread today, some of which went into the boy's birthday meatballs and the rest of which is now croutons. Next weekend I'll have to make another just for crumbs, which are now all used up. The meatballs were great with some homemade sauce - why did the price of tomato puree go from $1.59 to $1.89? I don't remember hearing anything about a tomato shortage. I mowed, lay in the hammock and read, continued to cut apart unruly forsythia whose end is near, went back to the hammock to search for my phone (darn pockets on these pants), got daughter's cell phone number changed due to harrassment from ex (note: if you claim harrassment, they don't charge you the $15 fee to change numbers), wrapped birthday presents, changed the litterbox, put together a tiny charcoal grill, picked up a prescription, cooked sauce, did laundry - the usual exciting weekend. Then I can tackle rat brain parts tomorrow. A rat hippocampus is very small, in case you were wondering.

I turned down an invitation to a friend's baby shower. It's in Paramus at an Italian restaurant, and I think there would be maybe one other person there I know. Hmmm, 2 hour drive each way, food I probably can't eat, 4 hours with strangers oohing over baby clothes. Sorry, my inner autistic child gets crazy just thinking about it. I like her, worked with her a year or two, had dinner with her last week, but I just can't face this many anxiety-provoking situations in one day. Driving, gluten, cutesy baby stuff, strangers to schmooze with. Like I said, my inner child is largely autistic and guides me more and more.

Now if I can just find that Borders gift card I bought for a birthday gift and then hid too well.....