We are both sick here with the same symptoms so we are sick and isn’t just something we ate and isn’t simply a bad day. I pretty much literally crawled out of bed this morning and then pulled myself up. The bed is on the floor so that’s one thing, but my body hurt too much to do anything but complain that I was thinking of moving it at all. And I feel, in many respects, better than I did at 2 am when I woke up really ill and had to literally crawl over H.o.p. (who’d crawled in next to me) and off the bed and then pull myself up and realized oh man I’m sick. Fortunately, Marty feels just as bad and believe me I do take solace in that. I know I shouldn’t, but I do. Wrong of me. “Oh, good, you’re miserable too!”
Do seven year olds go through some strange period where they must break everything by accident? I thought we were through with the breaking stage at three and four. The other day H.o.p. yanks a blind up and I hear a crash and I realize oh no. I go in and find a beautiful raku vase Marty got me 20 years ago for a wedding anniversary is on the floor in pieces. H.o.p. simply wasn’t paying attention when he raised the blind, had yanked it out, and despite that being a deep window and there being plenty room for the vase, out it flew and down onto the floor it went.
The vase was by a fine raku artist who was local 20 years ago. I don’t know where he is these days. I’m going to miss that vase.
So this morning I drag my complaining body off the bed and step out the bedroom door to find Marty had gotten up early sick and had drug himself to the couch-futon to pass out there after several hours of being sick. And as I absorb this and realize oh maybe there’s a reason I feel so lousy, I mysteriously decide to go up front to look at my cactus for some reason. It’s not the first thing I usually do in the morning, I don’t get up and think, “Cactus!” but today it was. Today I dragged myself out of bed and I went in and saw the door that leads to the room with the cactus and my simple mind said, “uhhhhhhh can’t think go see cactus uhhhhhhh” and I walk in and out the window I see three police outside and think nothing of it. We have a paper from our landlord saying exactly what two days it’s not ok to park on our street due to some construction some company is doing–he’d checked with them and found out what the days were. So I see the three police smiling and laughing as they walk by and then notice the books are off the shelf and have been toppled onto a large pot of cactus in front of the window, including a nice 12 inch one I’d been growing for a while that was very pretty and is now completely crushed. I go in and ask H.o.p. about it and yes indeed he’d done it yesterday and didn’t want to tell me about it. In the meanwhile, Marty goes out and sees every car on the street has been ticketed by the police who I’d seen walking by and the police are now gone. Never mind that no construction is being done today, they ticketed everybody on the street for parking there when no construction was being done. We know for a fact that it’s Friday and Monday that the work is being done. What happened is first the police said we couldn’t park on the street for several weeks because of the work being done, then backed off and said it couldn’t be for a shorter period of time. Our landlord found out exactly what days the work was being done and it’s only Friday and Monday, and talked with the company and it was cool if we kept parking on the street except those days. But the police went ahead and are now ticketing everyone anyway. And Marty is furious because of all the times our van has been busted into and the times we’ve called them with disturbances and they don’t show up for two hours. But they had three officers to spare to ticket all the cars on a day when no construction was being done
So, do seven year olds just go through a phase of breaking everything in sight accidentally? Because it seems like H.o.p. has been going through this phase for the past month. Every time he turns around he’s carelessly knocking something off something. I do know he’s going through another insane growth spurt. Suddenly he’s all skinny and long long again. He’s tall for his age. He doesn’t need to get a whole hell of a lot taller for his age. Makes me wonder just how tall he’s going to be when he grows up. A friend of ours, I’ve known his son since he was small and then he was 18 and he had to literally bend his head when walking through our doors. It’s amazing. How the hell does that happen? Huge guy. I’m only around 5 foot 7 and Marty’s only around 5 foot 11, and that same friend once looked at H.o.p. and asked where he came from, what side of the family he was pulling his genes from, because he’s so big for his age. I don’t have a clue.
I was going to say something else, I’m sure of it, but don’t recollect what now. Maybe if I try and force myself I can manage something productive today. But right now it looks like my day is going to be simply a matter of me convincing H.o.p. he’s not a bunny and that no he doesn’t have to eat all those popsicles. I will be ignored. He’s ignoring me a lot these days. And chirping, “It was an accident!” a lot these days. When he realized I really was upset about the vase he tried to tape it together. As for the cactus, he said, “It was an accident!” but that I should be glad he wasn’t hurt as the cactus is so prickly. I agreed. I also told him we’d had enough accidents to last me for a while. He broke a number of things last week and lost some earrings of mine when he upset a basket for a third time and sent its contents everywhere and the air absorbed the earrings. And he knocked our small camera off the shelf a second time. The first time I didn’t know he’d knocked it off and I spent a week looking for it before finding it under the bookcase. He’s just all arms akimbo flailing everywhere these days and he leaps to do something or whirls about or whatever and bang something else breaks. I knew there was no way the camera could have vaporized but had no idea why it was no longer on the shelf and no where in evidence.
He is, at least, in a great mood today and very happily disagreeing with me on everything and not letting me thwart his jubilant spirits at all. Which is good. When I’m feeling so nasty I’d far prefer for him to be jubilantly disagreeable than grouchy. He was in a very bitter mood for several days there and once said he felt sick but he had no temp and his sniffles were minor and I thought it was allergies. Now I think he had what we now have. It’s a pity that when Marty and I manage to feel better, we will still only feel 1/4 as good as H.o.p. does now.
H.o.p. is full of ideas now. He’s planning trips to the bank and the police station. He says he wants to learn about the bank and police station in “real life”. He has been of course to the bank many times but now has decided hre really really likes ATM machines.
“Maybe not the police station,” he says after a moment’s reflection, “maybe the fire station.”
Ok.
“I like to go to the bank!”
Yeah. I know.
We argue about something and H.o.p. says, “That doesn’t sound like my mommy. That sounds like me.” I tell him right. So…? I say I will try to not be grouchy.
The first conversation I had with H.o.p. this morning was a bit disconcerting.
“I’m so glad there wasn’t a cockroach on my pillow this morning and it was a flower petal instead!” H.o.p. chirped happily, running into the room.
“What?” I said.
“This morning, you told me there was a cockroach on my pillow but it turned out to be a flower petal instead. I’m so glad.”
“I told you what?”
“That there was a cockroach on my pillow. But there wasn’t. You said you were joking and said it was a flower petal.”
This took a second to register. In my sick, trying-hard-to-be-here state it did sound utterly reasonable for a second that there could have been a flower petal on the pillow, despite there being no flowers in the apartment. Then I realized that no this wasn’t reasonable.
“Uh, there’s not a flower petal on your pillow now, is there?” I asked.
“Nope!”
H.o.p. ran off smiling and happy that there hadn’t been a roach on his pillow, that it was instead a flower petal that was no longer there.
I am known to talk in my sleep. In fact, I do it a lot. I’m hoping I was just talking in my sleep and that I didn’t kind-of-wake-up at some point and see a roach on H.o.p.’s pillow and then in my not-so-lucid not-really-awake state decide for some reason it was instead a flower petal or that it was preferable if it was a flower petal. I don’t know. We don’t usually have roaches. Occasionally a large waterbug comes in from outside but only infrequently do they appear and usually don’t go further than the kitchen.
Yuck. I’m going to go and distract myself now with something.
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