Ok, so there’s no new design. I gave up. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that a kindly elf will come and do it for me, since my muse has decided to abandon me. *sniffle*

At any rate, I have uploaded a new design for my photoblog and posted a bunch of photos of our home. It was actually clean enough to do this recently–well, all except the loft where we have our computers set up and the bedrooms. Some day, I’ll get around to straightening them up and taking photos

I had my answers to the 100 questions meme saved as a draft, but unfortunately, they were lost when my site was moved to a new server. I may try to recreate them this week, since they were a lot of fun!

The emergency room of the hospital in Lake Tahoe is nice and staffed by competent caring people. Thank goodness. As nice as it was, it wasn’t exactly the place I envisioned myself visiting in the middle of the night during my vacation. But, that’s where Robert, Sam & I ended up during one of our first nights there.

When we first arrived, I noticed Sam wasn’t acting like his usual perky self. I attributed this to the fatigue of travel and possibly overstimulation by all the new sights and people. I thought he would perk up a little bit after a good night’s sleep. Unfortunately, he seemed worse the next day and seemed to be running a low-grade fever. We gave him some children’s Tylenol, kept him hydrated and crossed our fingers.

After a few hours, the fever seemed to have abated a bit and we breathed a sigh of relief. It isn’t easy traveling with a child in the first place. It’s even less fun to be away from home with a really ill child.

We didn’t do anything else, since we thought his fever was under control; however, by ten p.m. that night, it was apparent that it most certainly was NOT under control. In fact, it was becoming worse and worse. We gave him another dose of medicine, placed cool cloths on his forehead and hoped for the best. His fever kept escalating. By midnight, he was running a temperature around 104.7. We didn’t know what to do. Robert’s cousins, Lydia and Shawna, encouraged us to take him into the hospital to be checked out. Shawna told me she had a friend whose child experienced brain damage from having a fever spin out of control. She didn’t mean to scare me, but it freaked me out. We took off for the hospital right away.

The nurse and doctor on duty checked Sam over pretty thoroughly. They came to the conclusion that he had a bad ear infection (the doctor described his ears as being “icky,” so I assume that’s what he meant although he never said so in as few words). They gave him a combination of Motrin and Tylenol to help bring down the fever. I didn’t know you could use them in combination like that, but apparently, they work on the body in different ways and don’t interfere with one another. The doctor also prescribed an anti-biotic for Sam to combat the infection that was causing him so much distress.

We spent close to two hours at the hospital. All three of us were falling-down exhausted. This, of course, took a toll on our ability to enjoy the remaining days of our vacation. I stayed with Sam in the condo most of the time, although I did get out for a little sight-seeing one day. You can see some pictures of this in the photolog.

The positive side to having such a crappy vacation is you’re uncommonly excited about being home again and even returning to work. Heh heh.

Since I’ve received a couple of e-mails asking me whether everything was all right since I haven’t been online much, I thought I better make an appearance and reassure all my friends that everything is just fine. One reason I haven’t been doing much around here lately is I’m getting bogged down in the every day tasks of a working mom. On top of that, I NEED a new design for my website. The freshness of new images is a big factor in how inspired I feel to post. I’m not sure why, but that’s the way it is. Unfortunately, time and inspiration are in short supply for me right now.

Since I’m so erratic , you might want to consider signing up for my mailing list (it’s on the sidebar somewhere). I only send out one or two e-mails a month, so there’s no need to worry about being spammed to death

Thanks for your concern! You guys mean so much to me!