it’s nice when the pain stops, but it’s not the same as not getting hurt in the first place

Yay, a woman is House Speaker Elect. The first one. In 2006. Sigh.

Don’t get me wrong: I am very grateful for the gains, especially McCaskill who seems right on, and Casey who is awful but better than Santorum. And I am glad Rumsfeld is off to do his harm somewhere else. But this Congress needs to address the deficit, find a way out of the quagmire and reboot international diplomacy. This is not going to be a picnic. This is umpty-tum years of difficult, dangerous and thankless work, that if it succeeds, will take us to… where Clinton left us in 2001.

Sigh. Anyway, I’m kind of beating myself up because I made a bad mistake last week. I don’t usually second-guess my choices as a mother, but that’s because those choices matter to me more than anything else, and so I usually get them right, or right enough.

But Friday’s call – to take Julia to the ER instead of the pediatrician – was the wrong one, and it was Julia who suffered for it. The doctor prescribed stinging eyedrops every three hours while she was awake. It was horrible – Jeremy and I both holding her down and squeezing open her sore eyes to drop liquid in them that made them burn. The pediatrician, when I finally got through on Monday, gave us a soothing ointment instead, that we apply while she is sleeping.

Her eyes are better and she’s perfectly blickety now. But after we did the eyedrops on Monday morning, she stood on my lap and leaned her whole weight against my shoulder, taking shuddering breaths; and I can still feel her little body trembling in my arms.

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