summer daze

So - B has taken his last final of his junior year. Only one more year of high school (theoretically) and off to college?  He is taking the ACTs as I type and then he will be on to summer. He doesn't have much planned, but I guess he is happy enough about that for now. I'd like him to find a part time job but of course there's that trivial burbtopia issue with his not having a driver's license yet. The stores up in town are a possibility and I do want him to complete the application for the grocery store there; but I don't place much faith in much coming of it, even if he does follow through.

Otherwise, he's off to San Diego for a week, spending a week at a computer science program at a local tech college, and tennis camping one or two days a week when he's not away. And of course, the family trip to the shore.

M is still flopping around the house, although she spent a week in Cape Cod last week.  She finally saw a doctor for her stomach issues, which she's had for years, and had some troubling results in her blood work.  But a visit to a gastroenterologist yesterday allayed some concerns, and she's been given a medication to reduce "spasms" which she has to take 1/2 hour before each meal. She took one before dinner last night and miraculously, it worked! So I told her to skip the one this morning, as she's working and side effects may include tiredness, blurred vision and increased sensitivity to light and heat! Not a great combination for a beach lifeguard on the job. But it was encouraging that it had such immediate results.

She has one more week before she starts work full time, so hopefully her symptoms will stabilize before long and she can cut down on the use of those pills and manage with diet. She has been given a clinical diagnosis of IBS. If the treatment doesn't work, she'll have to have a scope for celiac. Although the IgA marker for celiac was low (negative), so was her overall IgA; so the doctor said she might still have it, but he didn't think so. He said that having had this for so long, if she had celiac he would expect her to be anemic (she's not), and aside from elevated bilirubin, all of her other liver numbers were normal. The IgA, according to the pediatrician, is an inherited deficiency. None of this has ever been tested before now, which surprised me.

And this is a busy day - Wilbur and I have our hair appointments, it's the family BBQ at B's school, M is working and Kevin is running around trying to find a place to ride his bike. Just back from his week overseas and then this past week of work, he's trying to get himself back into the groove. He's also revisited the shoulder injury, with another dislocation the day that he left for Europe.

And in other news, my job continues to keep me busy, which I do enjoy although it's been a little harrowing.  And of course, the future continues to hang in the balance as I await the direction of the company over the next few months. But in a week, I will have reached my three month anniversary, meaning I will be entitled to the full allocation of vacation days, and there are indeed many - four weeks to be taken whenever I want to take them (and the office closes for a week in December so that's not a vacation drain), plus 12 sick days so I don't have to use vacation when I take someone to a doctor, or go to one myself - meaning I can finally enjoy an actual vacation without being docked in pay or wondering if I will have any interviews when I get back. It's been many years since that happened!