Sheep Guarding Llama

Liesl had another tough night last night.  Not as bad as the last few nights but definitely not good.  Francesca had something wrong with her eye this morning so they all planned a trip to the clinic together.  Dominica, Francesca and Liesl headed off to CareNow early before I was even really up.  Madeline, Emily and I took care of Garrett and Clara.

This is a really busy work weekend for me.  I am heavily backlogged on stuff that really needs my attention so I am trapped in the office for pretty much all of it, which is no fun.

Liesl turns out to have a very minor ear infection.  We are pretty sure that she had Clara’s virus last week and with the extra sinus action that she saw that it turned into an ear infection.  Fortunately we caught it really early.  Unfortunately we don’t have sick visits covered on her insurance so that little visit cost $189 while we are really, really tight on funds (still no word on whether or not I am likely to be getting paid anytime soon.)

This afternoon Dominica, Francesca and Emily went out for what they thought would be a quick trip to Walmart for groceries and medicine.  That ended up taking a few hours which they were not happy about.  Madeline and I stayed home to watch the little ones.

I did manage to get lots and lots of work done today, it was quite productive.  I did not get very much time to spend with the family, however, which sucks.  This weekend is going to be a pure work weekend for me even with everyone visiting.

I did manage to get a Fedora 14 development box built for Emily running in VirtualBox on Francesca’s laptop that she can use for learning Python programming.

I worked until everyone went to bed then went to bed myself.  Remember that tonight is daylight savings time.

Overall Liesl is clearly feeling much, much better today.  Not one hundred percent but she is happy and playing and isn’t all stuffy.  She was so much better today, in fact, that tonight she is sleeping in her own bed again for the first time in several days.  She was very excited to get to go to bed in her own bed.  At most she likes to sleep with us maybe once every fortnight.  Maybe even less frequent.

Liesl got much better sleep last night than she has for the last few nights.  Hopefully that extra sleep means that she is on the road to recovery.  Her sleeping means that Dominica and I slept much better last night as well.

I had to get up a little early this morning as I had a conference call an hour before I normally start working.  Today is going to be a very long day at the office.

The day ended up being absolutely crazy.  I had to skip lunch and work straight through just trying to keep up.  At two thirty I finally had a chance to run to Rockfish and get take out which I then ate at my desk while I continued to work.

I was in the office until around eight this evening.  What a long day.  Then I drove Nicki home and headed to the gas station to fuel up and then off to home.

Once I got home we had about an hour and a half before the Grices would arrive so it was a mad cleaning frenzy as we attempted to do all of the things that Dominica was unable to do by herself.  Mostly this was moving furniture, storing a ton of boxes and bins behind the bar and getting beds set up.

It was nearly ten when the Grices arrived.  We got them unpacked the Francesca and I ran over to Jack in the Box to pick up dinner for everyone.

Shortly after eating, everyone was off to bed.  Liesl is definitely seeming some better tonight.  Fingers crossed that she will be better tomorrow.

Finally, around six this morning, Liesl actually fell asleep and she and Dominica were able to sleep in kind of late – like until around ten.  So they actually got some sleep.  I got up and went in to work without waking them up.  Even Oreo was still buried in blankets, snuggled in between them when I left.

So my paycheck didn’t come again today.  Normally it comes on Tuesday.  But sometimes not until Wednesday.  We didn’t really panic until it didn’t arrive today.  We already knew from two weeks ago that there were issues with my paycheck and that we were only going to get half pay this week and, if all goes well, it will get made up in the next check.  But the bulk of the time needed to get the accounting fixed for the next pay check has been burned up and there is little or no progress so I am down to just a few days yet before the accounting disaster causes me to not get paid for another two weeks making the total, as it seems, push out to a total of six weeks without pay.  A month and a half is a long time for a single income family to go without seeing a paycheck – especially when we have two mortgages to pay since we can’t sell the house in New York.

We confirmed that no money is coming for another two weeks.  This is going to be a tough month for sure.  Fortunately the bills are paid and nothing is really due until the very end of the month so it is just the interim liquid funds that are really an issue.  Not the end of the world, just extra stress and stuff that I have to follow up on or else it gets missed and months would go by before anyone noticed.

So we had to do some monetary maneuvering today.  Dominica finds this stuff incredibly stressful.  It’s really not as bad as it sounds.  The past year has been really tough and we are not where we should be with our finances but certainly sounds far more bleak than it is in reality.

When I got home Liesl was sleeping on Dominica’s lap in the living room.  She had not managed to take a nap today and this is the first sleep that she was getting.  Even asleep you can really see how sick she is.  Poor little girl.

Liesl did not sleep for too long.  I barely had time to feed Oreo and warm up dinner for myself, but not get to eat it, before she woke up.  We spent most of the evening with Liesl sitting on my lap on the couch in our bedroom.  She is still very sick but seems, to me at least, to have improved since yesterday.

Her fever continues to go up and down.  For a little while she will be fine then she will be awful again for a few hours.

Off to bed early tonight.  Hopefully a good night of sleep will get Liesl over the hump.  The Grices come tomorrow evening for almost a week.  They will be here from tomorrow evening until Wednesday.  Then I head off to Maryland on Friday evening, one week from tomorrow.  The new office carpeting comes in on that Saturday.  It is a busy week ahead of us.

Liesl had a temperature above one hundred and two this morning.  Poor little girl.  I got up around seven to start work.  I had already taken this morning as a work from home morning because I was going to be going to the doctor with Dominica for her late ultrasound so that I could take care of Liesl during the appointment so the timing worked out well.  Dominica got up about an hour after me, got ready and headed off to her appointment while Liesl stayed asleep until after eleven!

By mid-morning, Liesl’s fever seemed to have broken and she was feeling some better.  She ate a tiny bit and drank some water and stayed in our bed watching “Wonder Pets” until Dominica got home.  She continued to stay in our bed until after I went to work and on until the middle of the afternoon.

The ultrasound went well this morning.  Little baby-to-be Miller is doing well and is on track.  We are most likely going to be meeting the newest member of the family on April 22nd or 25th.  The doctor was supposed to be there today to make the final schedule details with Dominica but was out today so that needs to be done yet.

I ate lunch, attended an Oracle M-series webinar and then went in to the office.  I didn’t actually get any time off for lunch at all – I just ate while attending the webinar for work.

Dominica had a really busy work week up until today but fortunately, with all that there was going on today, she didn’t really have to work too much.  So that really worked out well.

Dominica’s video game, Dragon Age 2, arrived this afternoon as did a book for me and a new USB headset for my computer as the one that I have been using for years and years got totally destroyed when the wire got wrapped around my foot and I tripped over it a few days ago.

This evening we just hung out with Liesl who swung back and forth between feeling pretty decent and feeling awful.  For about thirty minutes she would play and be mostly okay and then she would feel terrible and just need to be held and cry.  If this fever runs like Clara’s, we are looking at having a sick child until maybe even Saturday.

Liesl put herself to bed in our bed around ten but was unable to sleep and kept getting up.  I got into bed with her and Oreo and tried to get her to relax while Dominica started her first round through Dragon Age 2.  She didn’t get very long to play but maybe two hours.  The install and update process took forever so she probably lost half an hour or more just getting up and running before getting to play at all.  She has been looking forward to this game for so long, though, that I knew that she needed some time to get to play it today.

It was a rough night.  Liesl tossed and turned and just cried and cried.  Her fever was very up and down all night long.  We all got very little sleep.  This is one of the few times that we have had to go through Liesl really being sick.  She is generally a really, really healthy toddler – much healthier than I think of kids at this age tending to be.  So we are not as prepared for her being really sick as we might be.