Assorted Traumas

Ian is sick. This is blogworthy because it so rarely happens, despite his limited diet. On the way home from a birthday party this afternoon (which had its own trauma*), he told me that the headache he'd started to have earlier was now "really, really bad" and sure enough, he has a fever to go with it and he's super pale and asleep in his bed at 5 PM, and because I'm this psychotic combination of laid-back and paranoid when it comes to my kids' health, the very first thing I could think of was, "HE HAS A BRAIN TUMOR!" After all, he did complain the other day about having a big bump behind his ear that was sore. Yikes, what if it was a tick embedding itself in his skull, and now he's experiencing the early throes of Lyme disease?? What if it's bacterial meningitis??????

Then again, it could just be a headache with a fever.

But then again, maybe not.

(*OK, if you must know, because I know you're dying to (or more like, I must write about it so I can calm down about it): Everything was fine at the party in these friends' dream of a backyard, complete with two-story Swiss Family Robinson treehouse, brand new (and safe) trampoline, tire swing, blah-dee-blah. Then I took Eliza to the bathroom inside and when I came out Ian was up in the treehouse with his two friends, the two boys of the house, including the birthday boy, and apparently they were (what a shock!) tossing things down from the treehouse. Next thing I know my friend the hostess, who really has just been the nicest friend ever to me, comes charging into the yard yelling at them to stop throwing things and ordering them to come down right now or she'll spank all three of them. (She proceeded to threaten her child, the birthday boy, more along these lines later in semi-private.) I'm not sure what was more bewildering to me or to my son -- the fact that he was being so severely called to task and inappropriately threatened for breaking a rule of which we had no idea (after all, the tree fort was neatly stocked with "grenades", or the realization that my friend was just ... different from who I thought she was. OK, I don't care what your philosophy on spanking is, we don't need to go there, but surely you'll agree that it's, oh, just the tiniest bit jarring to have another parent threaten, at top volume and with no previous "boys, we have a no-throwing rule in our backyard" to give your kid a wallop. She later apologized to me for "freaking out," and I really, really don't want to hold this against her or be one of those moms who can't POSSIBLY associate with people who parent differently, and I know that I"ll get over it and have grace for her but I tend to be a pathological brooder so just bear with me. With apologies to Pumbah, I'm a sensitive soul, and I don't even seem thick-skinned. Writing helps. Honest prayer helps. I'm doing both right now.