Morning Rambling

I turned on the news last week as I fixed breakfast and heard that a man on a bicycle had collided with an SUV making a turn not far from here. He died at the scene from massive head injuries. When they announced his identity, I gasped. He was a member of our church congregation whom I see regularly. What was worse, however, was that he was the son of my author-friend who has been so kind to me and Erik. You might recall that she is also the mother of a woman with severe developmental disabilties that resulted from a bout of childhood meningitis. She wrote a book about her family, and that's how I came to reach out to her and ended up sitting in her home eating freshly-baked scones last winter. You would think there would be a limit to the amount of pain one could experience, but apparently there is not. I can't help but feel frightened by this.

I have a head cold in the heat of summer. Actually, all three of us are sick with it. It was over 100 degrees yesterday, and I stayed on the couch watching Food Network challenges. There was a dry, windy storm of some sort in the middle of the night, and the gusts whipping through our bedroom windows and doors were almost deafening at one point, making it sound as if we were riding on a stagecoach in the dead of winter. I opened things up even more, and the whistling at least ceased. The air smells like a campfire, so I assume something nearby is engulfed in flames. This does not result in high-quality sleep. I'm sitting in my office now, and rumbling thunder and sheets of lightning are beginning over the desert. It certainly doesn't feel like five in the morning.

Erik's bowel has been malfunctioning lately. One of the wonderful symptoms WS often manifests in children is constipation so severe that it can result in prolapse of the rectum. Erik briefly had constipation as a infant when his calcium levels were probably sky high and we were completely unaware of his syndrome. I remember seeing blood once when a nurse took his temperature. Since then, however, things seem to pass right through him, sometimes undigested. I have to change his bedclothes almost daily, as the amount of what comes from him easily maxes out and overflows his fluffy little diapers. I change him often. What comes from him has little to no at least normal odor and looks, to say the least, alarming. There is a lot of mucus. I will call the doctor today. Three things that come to mind are (1) food allergy, (2) Crohn's disease, and (3) thyroid problems, although it could be anything, I suppose. This has gone on for months to some degree but only seems to be worsening in intensity and might make school more than a little dificult at this point. I'm terrified he has a food allergy. The last thing we need is to be subtracting things from the relatively short list of items he eats.

Erik has discovered the joy of attending barbecues. He loves everything about them and says "barbecue" in his usual Cajun accent. I can just visualize his cute little face on a bottle of BBQ sauce on a supermarket shelf someday. Hey, it could happen.

And now, as promised, CHIA: DAY ONE.

1) Submerge small terra cotta cat in bucket of water. Leave overnight, ensuring kitten is good and dead.

2) Mix a portion of the seeds from provided packet with one-quarter cup water. Let sit overnight until the mixture thickens into a gel reminiscent of the opening scenes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Tell family what is sitting on windowsill so dark muck does not get spread on toast or dumped down garbage disposal.