The Fredösphere

I'm feeling self-indulgent today and may not blog at all.  I'm exhausted, having spent the entire night at the emergency room with my poor darling Maharincess, who decided to stumble while climbing the stairs and jam a wooden dowel into the back of her mouth.  Because critical nerves and an artery are in that neighborhood, the docs decided to give her an MRI, one requiring five minutes of lying perfectly still.  Anyone familiar with four-year-olds knows five minutes of stillness ain't gonna happen without sedation; sadly, the Maharincess turns out to be the type of person for whom sedatives wear off quickly.  The first MRI attempt was abandoned after a half hour of trying to calm the panicked preschooler.  That was around 2:00 a.m.  They waited to allow the first batch of drugs to wear off, then brought out the more powerful stuff and pumped it into her like a gas station attendant filling up a dual tank International Harvester Travelall.  By 4:00 a.m., we were done; the Maharincess slept in Elysium and I waited two more hours for the results, which I never doubted would be the All Clear.  The only book I had grabbed for a diversion was a textbook on poetry:  I need mind candy; this was mind spinach.  By 6:30 we were home, the Maharincess was snug in her own bed, and I was ... snowblowing our driveway, which found a way to bury itself in six inches of snow while I was goofing off.  (Der Drübermensch shares a birthday with a good friend, so they decided to have a joint party, and we'll be having lots of visitors trying to get into our house without falling into a drift.  Thus, this evening I'll be viewing the Narnia movie in the company of 10 -- or is it 13? -- seven-year-olds just as I use up my last drop of nervous energy.  I should really get a dual tank for that nervous energy stuff.)