Written 15 January 2014

Today, I was busy all day going from task to task with incredible efficiency.  I am still smarting from yesterday’s discovery that Julia is once again scratching and picking on the sores on her arm.  Last night after her shower, I rubbed her down with baby oil, gave her an extra antihystimean (She is taking one a day but can go up to three.  So, I am going to try two although I still find it hard to believe that anything itches.)  I put a bigger bandage on her wrist that included her palm, and this morning I gave her fingertip-less gloves to wear in school.  The report from school today was that she left her sores alone.

Yesterday, Marilyn tried to get me to opion on what started this round.  It started in school, but she quickly began doing it at home, so it is not just a school thing.  It is this behavior more than any other that drives me insane.  Marilyn also said some real zen-like thing, urging me to take this behavior as a practice.

All I can do is try again.

Julia will be 13 tomorrow.  We are redecorating her room — she wants a Harry Potter room to replace her dinosaur room.  I was a bit concerned about the all encompassing obsession but a part of me was pretty relieved.  Julia is (1) not using her room, (2) has no intention of ever sleeping there again, and (3) it is not at all appropriate for a 13 year old thinking that she may eventually really have a friend to invite over.  But I wasn’t going to change it on my own partly because I had no idea of what to do.  But last week she came up with the Harry Potter theme and I jumped on it.

She helped me clear everything out of the room.  I picked out some straw colored paint — trying to use the dark red and gold of Gryffindor.  I wasn’t going to redo the wood work but I never touched up the upstairs wood work after the floors were done.  I had trim paint in the basement so I repainted.  This had the feeling of really slowing down the momentum.  I started the day today taping the ceiling, baseboard and around windows and door and then gave half the room a first coat.  I bought a decent paint but I think I will still need a second coat.  This weekend we go to Chicago to see the eye doc.  I’m using that trip to visit Ikea and bring home most of what I don’t have at home — rug, throw for chair, duvet and drapes.  I plan to repaint her bed and the ceiling fan, set up a real wooden bookcase, push a white-gold reading chair into her room, and drag my old travel chest upstairs (I’ll get help with that one).  We ordered a sorting hat and a Gryffindor pennant.  I’ll find some rustic shelves for the hat and her wand, and something with hooks to hang her robe on.  She wants some stick on images but I want to wait until we get the rest of the stuff in the room to see what kind of space we have.  I am hoping for a pretty quick transformation.

I wasn’t going to buy other birthday presents but I caved today.  I bought very little for Christmas because of our trip and her wand.  I hate to do that again for her birthday.  So, I stopped in Old Navy for a sweater, two shirts, and pj bottoms, and Barnes & Noble’s for a CD and books.

After I painted some this morning, I baked cupcakes for Julia’s class.  I’ll ice those tonight.  I suspect that this might be the last of the class cupcakes.  I remember missing that with Cheshire.  I’m sure if I’m really aching to make cupcakes I can find some harried parent with a birthday kid.  While the cakes were in the over, I rushed outside to shovel away our dusting of snow.  I am rather impressed with myself for getting all that done and not being late for picking Julia up.

Julia a teenager.  Amazing and scary.  She is like no teen I’ve known and perhaps that is as it should be.