Don't tell my children

I have to confess something. As I lay awake listening to my youngest cry at 12:30 AM a few nights ago, I realized something. Crying works. It gets you what you want. I don't think that it would work for me, but for my children certainly. I have little to no resistance to it. It tugs at me. When I here that cry there is a compulsion to do whatever possible to make it better, to make it stop.

Aleah has not been sleeping through the night. She wakes up two or even three times, cries, gets fed, and then goes back to sleep. We have tried inconsistently to grit our teeth and try to get her to fall back to sleep by herself, but by 2:00 AM I am too tired to be tough. I just want to go back to sleep.

We have continually told Emily that tempertantrums are not the way to get what she wants, but that is not true. Of course it is the way. It isn't a good way, but sometimes the desired result is acheived. Crying and tempertantrums, most of the time work. The other thing she does that works is go boneless. She just collapses into an amoebal state. It helps to get out of practicing her violin.

One last picture from Emily. There are about 8 closeups of plastic cows.  

Another of Emily's photos. Actually pretty good pictures.  

Emily has found where the camera was hidden away and took a series of pictures of her toys and my shoes. 

Job decision and skin disease

I am going to be a popcorn breeder after graduation! Leila and I really agonized over the decision, well I have at least. Leila has felt good about this from the beginning. I have been unsure, mostly because the potentiality of the Bayer position was so good, but it just didn't look like it was coming to pass.

So last Thursday I called Ag Alumni and accepted the offer. Within the hour, my face and neck were burning and red. My eyes had been itching earlier, but now I looked like I had a sunburn across my face. Then in a few hours it had spread to my chest, arms, legs, feet, hands, etc with a burning itch like poison ivy complete with tiny blisters. I went home early and went to bed. The next day it was worse and I went to the doctor. He told me it was an allergy and probably not rubella, unless I had been exposed in the last 72 hours, and gave me antihistimines which made me very tired and ferociously grumpy.

My logical conclusion to this was that I was allergic to my new job and I had made the wrong choice. I stewed and worried, while trying not to scratch, for three days. Then, I decided, while lying in bed that I would turn back down the job, but I still needed to hurry and start to write. Deadlines are here and I have been anxious about writing my dissertation for a long time and it has been building like pressure inside of a geyser. At that moment, as I lay in bed thinking about what I needed to finish my proposal and get started on my first chapter, The rash spread like fire ants across my body and I could feel the blisters swell. The itching was tremendous.

So from that fun experiment, I decided that I had better get up and start writing. So I got out of bed, plastered myself with calamine lotion and headed for the computer. The closer I got to the computer, the worse the itching. By the time I sat down at the computer my hands and fingers were so swollen that I could barely type and couldn't concentrate. I gave up and went back to bed.

So either I am allergic to my new job or to writing my dissertation. It could also be the Cashew fruit I ate for dinner the previous night. I use to eat it in Nicaragua, mostly in Villa Venezuela, where I did break out in a nasty skin rash also come to think of it. OK, so I am either allergic to cashew fruit, popcorn breeding, or finishing my PhD. Let's hope it is cashew fruit since I can cut that out of my life with little pain or sacrifice.

I guess it all could be a psychosomatic anxiety attack. Some people hyperventilate, some people get dizzy, I break out in leparous rashes.