Sunday 28 October 2012

Ear Infection Week

This week Jack has had an ear infection. Most people would agree with me that this is one of the worst ailments a person can experience. It's like having an ice-pick stuck into your head, it's excruciating and inescapable.

It started off on Sunday night after a swimming party with his friends. By Monday morning he was in so much pain that we kept him home from school and took him to the doctor for antibiotics and all that. He was up most of the night with the pain despite regular doses of calpol.

Jack spent most of Monday morning lying on the chair crying. The calpol that we'd given him hadn't made any difference and sadly with an ear infection there's not really much that can be done.

After seeing the doctor we were armed with antibiotics and permission to use a little bit more powerful pain relief. So we drugged him up and hoped for the best. The first antibiotics made him sick so we had to go get some other stuff, which made him less sick. By dinner time he'd been getting regular doses of a variety of medicines and had had enough. During the night the infection burst and a fluid started to leak from his ear. This is a good sign, sort of, it usually means that his ear drum has popped. But the infection drains and the pain goes away, it was the first step on the road to recovery.

Through Monday night didn't sleep much better than the night before. I stayed up with him this time and assured him that Id get him some more medicine as soon as I could. He moaned and groaned saying I don't want to be sick anymore, I just want to sleep, I... and then suddenly stopped and fell asleep.

In the morning Jack was much more like himself. My lectures weren't until the afternoon so he stayed home with me. We spent the morning watching TV and playing video games. At about 10am a pinkish green fluid dripped out of Jack's ear and onto his arm. It really grossed him out, you'd have sworn it was some kind of acid. I cleaned off his arm and his ear and Jack insisted that I find something to plug it with so to prevent something like this happening again, so I stuck a cotton ball in his ear. He also insisted that we have spare cotton balls, and an extra tissue. After an hour or so I noticed that the cotton ball was looking a little... green, so I decided that we'd replace it. I won't go into the details suffice to say that it was gross and colorful. Jack and I both were gagging at the sight and smell and we were glad when his ear was plugged again. Thankfully it got better pretty quickly, hourly changes became four hourly etc.

Wednesday he was back in school, still taking the antibiotics and still harbouring a cotton ball in his ear but otherwise he's all better. The only real problem now is that Jack is practically deaf with that cotton ball in his hear.

Sunday 14 October 2012

Too many hours

30-09-12

Jack and Helen went off on an over night mother and son excursion this weekend. I'd been looking forward to having time to myself, I'd got a lot of work to wrap up before I shift my focus exclusively to my studies. So the moment the plans were official I meticulously scheduled all sorts of things I could get done and hopefully even left some time for a movie.

Saturday came and at 3pm I hugged them and waved them off. The house went quiet, so after a few minutes relaxing and getting used to the stillness I set too with my schedule. I had a lot too do, three apps to finish up and submit and quite a bit of preliminary research to do for uni. I'd planned on it taking most the night so in order to leave myself some movie time I opted to start with the smaller thing and walk the dogs.

An hour later I sat down and got to work. I started with the uni stuff.
5:00 and I could do no more. I'd built up a lengthy reading list and got to a point where I was going to need lecturer input. Excellent didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would. I hopped up and made myself some dinner and took care of some housework.
6:15 I finished my dinner and sat back down in front of my computer... Here we go... I hacked away at the computer in a programming trance and pounded through the apps. As I submitted the last of the work I sat back and looked at the clock. 7:00...
So now what? It's just gone Jack's bed time and I'd finished everything. 4 hours ahead of schedule.

Never in my life have I had such a hard time filling the time. I hadn't decided on what movie I would watch because I wasn't sure I'd have the time. I had such a hard time finding one to watch that I gave up twice, only to resume the search after 10 minutes of not being able to find anything else to do. I tried to play some WoW but with it being a very busy time for the game there was a queue well over an hour long. Of course now I can think of a list of things I could have done, but you know how it it, the bored have a hard time getting un-bored. It was a long night.

Children take so much more time than you realise, they take all your attention and sap all your strength. Normally with Jack in the house my night doesn't start until 7pm at the earliest, and that's if everything goes smoothly. At which point it's a race to get everything done with what energy you have left. By the time you start your focus is already waning. I sometimes try to get work done with him around but I'm slowed to such a pace that I might not as well not even bother. Even when it's just Helen and I at the end of the night I struggle to concentrate if I have some work to do, we talk and watch TV and it really slows the progress.

So it turns out that in a quiet setting I can get work done at a phenomenal pace. Maybe this is something I should arrange closer to the end of term.

Sunday 7 October 2012

Not even the soul can escape

Jack and I, from time to time, discuss astrophysics. It's something of a study hobby of mine and Jack finds it very interesting to think about. He goes through phases where he'll relentlessly ponder something we've discussed in the past until he feels he understands it fully. This morning he was in one of those phases. Whilst walking to school Jack started enquiring about the end of the world, then sun and how long we had until it burned out. I assured him that we had a long long, long long time before the sun burned out so he needn't worry about it.
Yeah we'll all be dead by then anyway.
Long dead.

We the moved on to the andromeda galaxy and the fact that it's on a collision course with the milky way. Again I assured him that it w a long way off.
We'll probably be even deader by then.
Yes probably.
Is there a black hole in anromega?
Yep, right in the middle, sucking everything up.
So when we crash together will we be sucked in?
Eventually everything will, there's a black hole in our galaxy as well.
And we could get sucked into that.
Eventually yes.
I don't want to get sucked into a black hole.
Yeah it would suck. *badum chi*
Because then you wouldn't get to go to heaven.
You wouldn't?
No you would be stuck in the black hole. Nothing can escape a black hole, not even light. Your ghost would just get sucked in and stay there in the black hole for ever and ever. You'd never be able to escape.

I thought about that for a minute... Could a soul escape a black hole? Religion and philosophy aside, if your soul exists, assuming it's made of energy, then it has mass, all mass is affected by gravity...
I think I need to get in touch with Professor Hawking.