Vanity

Linda really prefers not to go out with her wheelchair when she can avoid it. Basically, that means she doesn't go a lot of places she might because there is too much walking. The movie theater is about the only thing that can entice her out.

Her daughter is vain too. Ellie scratched her eye tonight. I think she may have done it this afternoon, but I didn't figure out what happened until later. In the end, I took her to the after-hours clinic to have the doctor look at it. I figured that he would say it will heal on its own, and he basically did. Most heal fine in about a day.

He did however give me a script for something to make it hurt less and he called the pharmacy (personally) to tell them we were coming so they wouldn't close. They were really cool about it. Before we left, he said to Ellie, Do you like pirates? Ellie does indeed like pirates. He said, Good, because we're going to make you look like a pirate. A great big gauze patch.

In the car, Ellie told me she didn't want to get medicine because she'll look silly as a pirate. I told her that the medicine would make her eye hurt less, but she insisted that she would look silly. They will laugh at me. She also doesn't want to go to day care tomorrow looking like a pirate, because Loujean will laugh. That's probably true, but it wouldn't be mean laughing.

I suppose I should have guessed. Ellie is quite picky about the clothes she wears. I didn't identify this as caring about how she looks, though, because she is just as likely to don brown and pink as she is to match her outfits. I had no idea that she was so aware of what people think about how she looks. Being constantly told how pretty you are leaves its mark I suppose.

I finally told her she doesn't have to wear the patch to day care if she takes care not to rub her eyes.

Flashback

Speaking of gauze. I had a flashback to the hospital. When Linda had double vision, we cut down square pieces of gauze, just like Ellie's, to cover one lens of her glasses. Ellie asked me to make her patch smaller and I was instantly reminded of that.

A night of nightmares

The whole family had nightmares last night. I dreamed that I was in a big city and Ellie kept wandering off. Linda didn't tell me what her dreams were about, but she mentioned that Ellie dreamed about her mother. Apparently, Ellie called out in her sleep twice for Linda and only once for me. Go figure.