Monday, January 28, 2019

Week 284: Sinking of the Sea Cow

Well, you know what they say. If it isn't a stomach bug, it's a polar vortex. At least, that's what they say here on the frozen plains of Wisconsin.

The stomach bug dragged on for longer than we would have liked. Even after Lemon's stomach seemed to be on solid ground during the day, and he was feeling fine, he could not tolerate formula at night for several nights. Of course, each night we figured the previous night was just the last dregs of the stomach bug, and were feeling like we had to try for the full feed since he was getting so thin. Anyhow, poor guy and ick. Much ick. But we are now well and truly through it. Of course, Lemon lost all of the weight he gained after recovering from the respiratory thing earlier this month. So now we're back to where we were after Christmas, which is to say 7lb behind where we were at the end of August. This is slightly frustrating. And, with only two weeks to go until our next clinic visit, I think we will count ourselves as lucky if we are just at the same place as we were in December. Feh.



All anyone can talk about this week around here is the weather, so for those of you who don't live around here, let me fill you in. It snowed. Quite a bit. Much to the delight of Lemon and Lime, the city basically connected a plow to every single vehicle in its fleet regardless of intended use and unleashed all of them on the roads. Much to the "delight" of the entire family, there was no school. Tomorrow, school is already cancelled due to extreme cold temperatures arriving courtesy of the polar vortex. By the transitive property of school cancellations, I predict that there will also be no school on either Wednesday or Thursday, as those two days are predicted to be even colder and more vortex-y than tomorrow.






I do chuckle every time I see a news story about "Oh, it hasn't been this bad since the polar vortex of '14." Which, you may recall, struck literally the first full day that we resided in this glorious state. So it's not like we didn't know what we were getting.

I suppose one advantage of not leaving the house again until Friday is that Lemon will be forced to hang around lots of delicious things while not running off all his energy, so he might gain some weight. A disadvantage is that the entire interior of our house may be destroyed, and we may lose our minds. A small price to pay for improved health, right?

As evidence that the weather may already be having an impact on our mental health, Papa Bear has resorted to passing the time by making up Wisconsin origin stories. In particular, we have devoted much dinner-time conversation to the way in which cows came to Wisconsin. You see, milk used to be produced mainly in New York state, and transported by the brave tanker ship Sea Cow across the great lakes to the children of Wisconsin. Tragically, the Sea Cow sank in Lake Michigan under suspicious circumstances, at which point it was decided that it would be better to relocate the cows themselves to Wisconsin, rather than transporting milk in a tanker ship. Thus, all of the cows from New York were transported to Wisconsin, and here we are.

Please send help.