Reflections in the Dragon's Eye: A Journal

So, as we finally got our building permit, the guy we hired to build our deck started work yesterday.

As revenge for my calling them every single freaking day for two weeks, I guess, the county decided two things.

They're requiring us to have bigger support poles - 6x6, to be precise. 3x3s are more usual; 4x4s if you want to overbuild a bit. What the hell do they think we're going to do on that deck, anyway? Park our cars on it?

And instead of a single county inspection when the whole job is done, they also want what's called a footer inspection. To make sure we're using the 6x6s for the base, I guess. I dunno.

So it's going to take a little longer to build than the contractor thought, just because he'll have to wait for the county to send someone up to do the footer inspection before he can really get going. Still, we should have our deck within the next couple of weeks.

Here's the post holes. The deck is going to run more or less the whole length of the house. You can also see in this picture the fairly steep angle of our yard, which is one reason we're putting in a deck: the yard itself is practically unuseable.

Peering into the abyss... The holes are a good foot, foot and a half deep. The collars are there to keep cement from spilling into the yard when he pours it in around the posts.

Matt tried to soothe her and put her back to bed without a bottle. No dice. So he made a bottle, and I gave it to her.

I tried to put her back to bed at 11:45. No dice. And she didn't want to be soothed when I picked her back up, either.

We made her another bottle, and she dozed off at the end of it. Whew. I held her for a bit longer, then tried to put her back to bed. She woke up as I was putting her down, but stayed quiet, so I put the blanket over her and turned out the light. Sometimes that works.

No dice. Not five minutes later, she started fussing. Matt got up that time, only to discover that she'd gotten up on her hands and knees, and then spit up all over her crib. Whee...

After laying in bed and listening to her fuss and cry for another ten minutes or so, I got up. We'd been up for an hour at this point. "Should we try some Tylenol?"

"What, you don't think I can hold her under water long enough?" Matt quipped. I got the Tylenol.

She didn't want it, and spat it back up as soon as I got the first half-dose into her. We abandoned the Tylenol.

Matt got the carseat, since she was sounding congested, but every attempt to put her in it resulted in screaming.

I finally took her downstairs and sat her on my lap while I played on the computer. A little after 1, she finally dozed off again. At 1:15, I judged she was sufficiently deeply asleep to withstand being moved.

I carried her upstairs and put her in the carseat in her crib, and put the blanket over her. Whew.

Then, for no good reason, my brain wouldn't settle down, and it took me another half hour to fall asleep.

So I was up for over 2 hours in the middle of the night. And I don't even know why.

I just wish she could talk. I wish she could say, "My tummy hurts," or "I'm scared of the dark," or even just, "I'm not sleepy," because until I know why she's awake, we're forced to make random guesses as to how to get her to go back to sleep.