Nine Eleven

The date known by three digits, at least for this generation...

Yesterday I was driving down the road close to my house when I saw a black kitty-I of course pointed it out to Kaylee, who noticed at the same time I did that the kitty was chasing, and catching, a baby bunny. Kaylee was really unhappy with that, so I stopped the car off the side of the road and tried to chase the cat away from the baby bunny, to no avail. Kitty wasn't giving up its dinner. It picked the bunny up by the scruff of the neck, and Kaylee was outraged, so I go chasing this cat carrying a bunny up to somebody else's front porch, where it drops the bunny and hides. Bunny is too freaked out and dumb to let me help it, so it runs behind the same thing kitty is hiding behind, sees kitty, and runs close by and huddles. I can't get to either kitty or bunny, and I'm on some stranger's front porch, so I inform Kaylee that the bunny is out of the kitty's paws now and that we can go. Kaylee shoots distrusting looks at kitty over her shoulder, and says "I love cats, but that was a BABY BUNNY. I mean, COME ON!"

I spent a lot of the day returning phone calls, emails, doing some accounting, the usual lunch at the airport, and some pre-planning for a trip tomorrow out east where "direct" just won't do. Of course it has to look like rain and fog in the morning as of right now. Steve is on a flight down to Dale Hollow (TN) with a customer. He should be back shortly here if all went according to plan, but he didn't file IFR again, so I can't track him. I think he does that on purpose. ;)

After school today, I took Kaylee right to an eye doctor's appointment. She has been complaining of straining to read at school, of having trouble seeing smaller letters, but while at home reading books and stuff we've never noticed her having trouble. So today was the day to be checked out. We enjoyed the 40 minute wait to get in, just sitting in the waiting room goofing around and talking, and I ran into someone who used to fly with us that I haven't seen in about 8 years, and he was married now and has two kids, so that was pretty neat. But once we got back into The Room, it got a bit harder. For one thing, they dilated her eyes with those drops, and after the first eye got "dropped", I wasn't real sure they were going to get that second eye done. Kaylee came real close to telling the assistant to forget it, was half panicked, but she took a deep breath and handled it, and I was proud of her. But then we had to wait 30 more minutes for the eye drops to take effect, and by now we'd already been there an hour. Kaylee hadn't eaten since lunch, she was right out of school and tired and hungry and getting cranky fast. So while we were in the room, her sitting in the little blue "throne" chair, these were part of some of our conversations:

"Hey Mommy? What if the door is locked and we are trapped in here?"
We're not trapped in here.
"But if we were, what would we eat? I know, we could eat some of the extra off of your jeans."
I'd chew on your flip flop.
"Where would we go to the bathroom and what would we use for toilet paper?"
There's a sink, and a trash can, and paper towels.
"I don't want to be trapped in here!"
We aren't trapped in here.
"Okay."

silence.

"Mommy, I think the walls are closing in! They are! Look, the walls are getting closer together!"
If they were, they'd have hit me by now because I'm sitting right up against one.
"The ceiling too! The ceiling is coming down! The whole room is getting smaller!" (accompanied by lying down in a ball on the chair and hyperventilating, and repeated for five minutes over and over)
The room is not getting smaller, Kaylee.
"Okay."

silence.

"Hey Mommy. What if these machines came to life and attacked us?"
We'd have to fight back I guess.
"They're bigger than we are. And that one is sharp."
We're stronger. Besides, we'd just open the door and leave.
"What if we can't get the door open?"
(I get up and open the door) The door opens, we are not trapped, the room is not getting smaller, and the eye machines aren't going to come to life and eat us.
"Okay. But it feels like it."

These were interspersed with increasing periods of jumping, dancing, trying to touch things, and overall "I want outta here NOW" behavior while still behaving very well for a hungry, tired, sitting for almost two hours right out of school 8 year old with a vivid imagination and eyes dilated so she couldn't even see anything clearly. (Which also freaked her out, and I don't blame her!)

Bottom line? Doc Mike says her eyes are less farsighted than they were last time, that they are in the "normal" range for her age, and that if she wants to get a pair of reading glasses to take to school and wear "as needed" that's fine, but she doesn't really need anything. I think she was half looking forward to getting glasses, so we looked at frames. The "cheapy" reading glasses were $30, and the "frames to fit your face" reading glasses would have ended up about $100. I told her she'd need to wait until she was a little more blind than "normal", or see if we could find a less expensive pair at Walgreens or something. :)

Kaylee spent the evening on my cell phone. I had to make a bunch of calls too, and I ended up using our land line so she could hide in various parts of the house and talk to her friends from school. She called three of them, and they sat and chatted for at least an hour. At one point I was on my phone with Chuck for just five minutes, and in that time period I had two calls and one voicemail...all for Kaylee!! Little girl one minute, little teen the next...