Ella started coughing last night.

Actually, it was more like barking. Ella started barking last night. The night before, she had nursed almost constantly and felt warm. Now she felt hot. Her eyelids were droopy and she was lethargic, of course with the intermittent bursts of energy that sick kids always, inexplicably, have. Mostly though, she just cuddled against my chest and dozed in my arms. Occasionally she would rouse to ask for water or to nurse, always in a voice that I barely recognized, raspy and weak.

It worried me so much that I thought to wake Chris’ aunt to take a look at her. Annette, a Nurse Practioner, was asleep by the time I worked myself into a real state of worry and I decided to wait until morning. Morning came and I sheepishly asked Annette to look at Ella. Sheepish not because I doubted that Ella was very sick but because I know that medical professionals must tire of being asked for free advice from friends and family and I was wary of overstepping my bounds. Annette unhesitatingly pulled out her stethoscope and took a good look at her.

As Annette listened to Ella’s wheezy lungs, Chris shuttled our luggage out to the minivan on our way to the airport. The plane would be boarding in an hour. Is she well enough to travel? Is it pneumonia? Do we need to get her to an ER? Do we simply dose her with benydryl and hope for the best?

Sometimes you just need someone else to make the call. She advised us not travel and instead suggested we bring Ella into her office. In my quest to do the best thing for Ella, my ability to make good decisions had devolved into a myriad of half thoughts. Maybe Chris and Jay should go home and I stay in Alaska until she is strong enough to travel? …What if she stops breathing in the airport? …What if she stops breathing on the airplane? …How sick is too sick to travel? …Will insurance cover a doctor visit? …Will insurance cover the prescriptions? …How will I get my baby home? My baaaaaaaaaaaby is sick. How sick? What’s wrong? What do I do?

We skipped our flight, that's what we did. We took Ella in to Annette’s office and had her looked over more thoroughly. At this point we have mostly ruled out pneumonia and are zeroing in croup. We had to push our flight back two days and will be taking a red eye when we do fly home. Still, we get to stay in Alaska for a couple more days, see more of the family, and we do not have to haul a miserable little one through four airports in a twelve hour period.

I am extremely grateful for Annette and to the rest of the wonderful, warm, kind family that I have been lucky enough to be welcomed into. Pictures of Alaska to follow, I swear. Maybe even more to share now that we are on an extended vacation...

Five minute post

Five minute posts are fun because they are total streams of consciousness without a thought or care for grammar or punctuation or structure or logic. The day has once again gotten the best of me, and I find myself with five minutes at the end of the day to collect my thoughts. They are pretty scattered, so this is a difficult job.

The weekend:

We went up north this weekend and spent the night at a bed and breakfast in Bayfield, Wisconsin, on Lake Superior. We went cross country skiing and snowshoeing and enjoyed the beautiful snow that covered the town.

Today:

I started today as the sole employee of the organization and it feels weird and sad. But, I continue to hold out hope that we will turn things around. I am keeping my head down and my feet moving. We’ll get there.

Tonight:

Tonight is my first community garden meeting of the year, and I will face the guilt that comes with over-committing myself and then not making good on promises. It keeps me humble.

Tomorrow:
Who can think that far ahead? Really.

Camping pictures

We’re back from our UP trip and we are now warm, dry and clean. Pictures and video below. A few highs and lows:

Lows:
-Ella had diarrhea for five of the six days we were out. I don’t need to say much more except that oh my god did that suck and I will never ever go camping again with anyone who needs me to wipe their butt.

-The cabin had a woodstove that made fun of us and smelled like dead mice. Ick.

Seriously.

Ick.

-We had to pull stakes in a storm yesterday. I hiked back to the car with the kids and dogs while Chris fought the whitecaps in the lake to get the canoe and our gear back to the landing. It was forty-five degrees and raining and took us two hours.

-I fed the kids Hershey’s bars for breakfast yesterday because the rain prevented us from cooking oatmeal (I realize that, depending on who you ask, this might technically be filed under “highs”).

Highs:
- The Ottawa National Forest Visitor Center. This warm, dry building was staffed by nice, decent folks who gave us hot coffee, our first flush toilet experience in four days, and even provided a little luxury called “toilet paper”. Also, they had soft places to sit (if memory serves these are called “chairs”) and, and, and I love them all so very much, I could weep.

-Swimming in Lake Superior. It was cold, but swimmable this time of year and we all frolicked in the surf.

(Though Chris will insist that he did not “frolick”).

(He so did).

Our cabin was directly on the lake and we had a spectacular view of it through the windows.

-Star gazing with Jay. We started naming stars after people he knows and after getting to both sets of grandma and grandpa, he declared that we had named them all. I guess the other six billion out there just don’t count.

-We heard loons and wolves call at night and watched eagles soar above us during the day. Their call sounds nothing like it does in the movies. They actually sound more like dolphins in real life. Interesting, no? Also, we saw moose tracks and bear poop, but that didn’t bother me too much, seeing as though I didn’t have to wipe its butt.

-On the hike out I kept Jay entertained with stories of a fairy princess who lives in the forest… in a hole in a tree… that looks just like… just like… (pause dramatically as I search for just the right tree)… that one! His eyes would get big and he would insist on stopping to peer inside the hole. Then I would regale him with tales of the fairy princess and her antics with her forest critter friends. It kept him moving, and stopped the complaints about his tired legs and any insistence that I carry him. I would just barely announce, “The End” before he would say, “How ‘bout another one?”

- We had dinner and watched the sun set perched on a huge rock on the shore of Lake Superior, then started the campfire and made s’mores. Clean up was a snap.

-Jay made Inukshooks everywhere we went.

-Home sweet home.

Labor Day

It’s Labor Day and I am in the office. I don’t have to be, but I am banking my holiday so that I can use it in two weeks when we go to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. So, today it’s just me, FaceBook and the coffee pot, staring out the window on a gorgeous day, while everyone else plays in the sun and grills brats and burgers. I’ll try my hardest to write some kick-ass grant proposals and get rid of the growing stack of paperwork that is threatening to eat me, but more likely than not, I will spend an indecent amount of time surfing the web and avoiding doing anything of real substance.

In two weeks we’re heading up to the UP of Michigan to backpack in the Porcupine Mountains and canoe camp in Sylvania. We’ll hike three miles in to a cabin in the state park, located on the shore of Lake Superior.

Here we’ll spend a couple of days hiking around and avoiding bears. I’ll do some grousing about how cold/hot it is and how there aren’t any flush toilets/showers/Ethernet jacks. Jay will probably walk through poison ivy and Ella will insist on eating unidentifiable objects covered in dog hair and rolled in spider poop right off of the floor. When we get back I will no doubt declare it the. Best. Trip. Ever. Because I have a bad memory and will have by then forgotten all about the poison ivy and spider poop finger foods.

In all seriousness, this should be a fun time. For this trip, we bought a coffee percolator, which I am stoked about, because it means no more instant coffee on camping trips. (This is ironic, because my Dad, who doesn’t have an electric coffee maker at home because he actually prefers instant coffee, is “camping” right now- and using a drip coffee maker each morning in his RV. Roughing it, indeed. My parents are also doing laundry as I type this, convinced they are primitive camping because they left the fabric softener sheets at home. We are a family of hard core out door enthusiasts.)

After leaving the cabin, we’ll head down to Sylvania, where we will park the car and canoe to our campsite, about a mile or so away. We’ll spend a few nights there, canoeing around, hiking and watching wildlife. I’ve never canoe camped, so this should be an adventure.

Owing to my bad memory, I will probably forget my camera. So, what I’ve decided to do is pre-post my vacation pictures, so that when I forget my camera and can’t take actual pictures to share with everybody, I can refer to these.

Here’s some place in the Porcupine Mountains that we’ll probably see. When we see it we’ll be all, “Ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhh, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”.



Here’s another picture of that same place:


Here’s a trail that we may or may not hike on. I am sure I will have some story about running into a skunk or something.


Here’s a dramatic picture of the shore of Lake Superior, which we will see but probably not at this time of day, which may or may not be sunrise. If it is sunrise, we will definitely not see this:


Here’s another picture of some random part of the mountain range, which looks all misty and beautiful. I may or may not see these actual trees.


Now should I forgot the camera, we’re all set. It really was/will be a great trip. Have a great Labor Day!