Some not so nice things have been happening the last three for four days, so anyone who passes through that might have a problem with assorted bitchings and whinings, you are hereby warned and advised to read elsewhere.

I've been having some of the worst headaches I've ever had. usually I can get one to go away fairly quickly, or at the very least quiet down enough that I can continue having a life, but these have really been hanging in there. As soon as I can get it under control it returns, not with a small stab of pain as a "Yo, I'm still here," but with the force similar to being struck in the temple with a ballpeen hammer. On Thursday I was also dizzy and even less coordinated and graceful than usual, so I took this as a sign that I needed to see my doctor, which I did. Turns out I have a raging sinus infection, which no doubt stemmed from the infection in my piercing. I was not aware that my piercing was infected because it wasn't showing the regular signs and symptoms of infection except for a little pus. But then I noticed that the skin around my nose was breaking out, with some fairly serious looking bumps directly under the pierced nostril. Teriffic.

So the doctor gave me some decent antibiotics and some meds for the dizziness (which pretty much knock my tail in the mud and make me so evil there's a petition currently circulating to keep me out of hell). The headaches do seem to be letting up a bit, for which I am most completely grateful. The worst of it for me was taking out the piercing. I really wanted it. I liked it for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that it drew attention away from the rest of my face.

There, I said it.

Does having said it make me feel better?

Um, no.

In other news...

I discovered that the marks going up and down Zoe's arms are not from her biting herself. She's teething, we know she bites and figured she'd stop it when she made the mental connection between biting herself and pain. I've seen her with fresh marks and told her, "No-no, biting hurts babies," several times but nothing seemd to be making the situation better. yesterday I found out why.

I already knew that Trent tries to take things from her and pushes her down if she refuses to let go. I also knew that she has taken to pushing him to get even and that she will hold on like a pit bull if he tries to take something from her hands. Until yesterday I was not aware that he has been biting her to make her let go of what she's holding. I saw him do it, and it broke my heart.

She has bruises on both arms, not just welts, but bruises. I spanked him for it and less than five minutes later he bit her again in the same place, so now there is a double ring of bruises on her wrist. Her crying was the worst. I almost couldn't stand that because I knew it was from the pain. It makes me feel so useless and so awful when the kids are hurt, and that's so much worse now because I know the pain is being inflicted purposefully. It took me back to a lot of things my brother did when we were kids that not only hurt me, but got me in trouble. I'd be bruised or bleeding from whatever sharp object my brother had hit me with, but because I was the older child I was still in trouble because I was older and older kids are supposed to know better. It was my job to see the argument, fight, whatever, coming and stop it before it ended up with someone getting hurt. So in essence, whatever happened was going to be my fault, because if I didn't start it, I wasn't able to stop it and therefore wasn't holding up my responsibility as the older sibling. There was no telling my dad otherwise.

So Trent got another spanking and hasn't bitten Zoe again since yesterday.

A definite, sudden and screeching halt is being put to that shit right fucking now.

There's going to be no playing of favorites or letting one child play drill sergeant over the others here.

Other than fight this headache and try not to kill anyone with my meds-induced drop-dead-and-rot-vision, I've just been playing around with some journal designs and working with a few images. Not sure if I like all the results. In fact, I don't think I do.

But then, nothing looks good when seen through drop-dead-and-rot-vision.