So after finding that the cheapest vacation rental for a beach week would be in a “clothing optional” resort, I decided to expand our search criteria.

I found a cute little house in the historic district of Waynesville, NC for the same price as the nudist cottage.  ($550 for the week…woo-hoo!  Is that Motel 6 money, or what?)  Waynesville is a cute little town and is less than 30 minutes from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  Asheville is about 25 minutes away, so there’s lots of fun stuff to see and do that’s close by.  The house is two blocks from Waynesville’s downtown area, so we’ll be able to walk there.  We’ve been there before and enjoyed Mast General Store, which has a great candy shop downstairs.   There’s even an art festival while we’re in town, so that should be fun.

I booked it yesterday and we leave on the 5th…yes…one week from Monday!  Yowza.  I’ve done some last minute trip planning before, but never this last minute.  We realized that with Doug’s gig schedule through the remainder of the year, only two weeks in October were left for a possible vacation.  The rest of the year is full.  So we decided to grab it and go for it.

In other news…

Noah’s report card came home yesterday and it was wonderful.  It states that Noah has “matured a lot this year” and notes his “great job of generalizations with words”.  (This from a child with minimal verbal skills.)  I credit Soma-RPM with Noah’s progress.  It really has made a difference.  The other night at Open House, my parents asked Noah to show them his seat.  Noah walked over to a table that had his picture on it…along with pictures of the three other students that he sits with.  When my parents asked him, “Who are your friends?”, Noah proceeded to point at each one and say…”that’s Elizabeth…that’s Matthew…that’s Cameron…”.  Amazing.  In the past, we would have had to prompt, prompt, prompt.  And then, maybe just get a name out of him…certainly no pointing and using “that’s” appropriately.  Sweet.  We’re getting there.

Well, it’s time for a Target run.

Ya’ll have a wonderful Saturday…

So I’m trying to figure out a last minute vacation for us…as in less than two weeks from now last minute vacation.

We usually stay in vacation rental cabins or houses when we travel.  Love the space…full kitchen and “homey” part of it all.

I logged on to my favorite “by owner” vacation rental site this morning to check out availability on the west coast for a possible beach trip.  One particular unit caught my eye.

Cute beach bungalow.  2 bedrooms.  1 bath.  Washer/Dryer.  Walk to beach.  Private pool in landscaped courtyard.  Cheap.

Perfect, I thought.  That would be the one.

Then I read the fine print.

Buried in there…ever so casually, were the words…

…wait for it…

“Nudity allowed”.

oh. my.

Now wouldn’t that have made for an interesting week at the beach?

So we had a fun time going to Disney to see Doug sub with the Dapper Dans today.  Amy and two of her kiddos came too and it was a blast to hang out with them.

I’ve got pictures and video posted here on my photo blog.  (If you wanna see Doug shake his tailfeathers, that would be the first video.  The most tap dancing is in the last video.)

He bounced.

24 hours after starting the Zithromax, Noah’s fever was gone and he was feelin’ fine.  So I guess the doc in the box was correct…must have been strep.

Noah and Isaac spent the night at the beach last night with my parents as originally planned.  Woo-hoo for that.

This morning I’m heading out to Disney to see Doug perform and I’ll meet up with the boys there.  Pictures soon to come…

Ya’ll have a great Monday…

hmmm…

So Noah was feeling mighty fine last night.  Happy…running around normally…goofing off.

This morning, I went in to check on him after I woke up and…

uh-oh.

That boy was SICK.

He was shivering slightly under the covers, and looked all pale and pitiful.  The thermometer read 102.

I schlepped him to the nearest Urgent Care Facility, where we waited for 90 minutes to see a doc.  (yummy.  90 minutes in a waiting room with miserable, snotty people who sounded like they were about to hack up a lung.)  The doc in the box examined Noah and quickly determined that he needed to run a flu test on him.

Noah was in no mood to have a Q-tip rammed up his right nostril, so he put every bit of his strength (which is considerable) and determination into resisting the procedure.  The doc finally said, in the most unconvincing manner, “I got it.”  Noah was released, and we sat back to wait for our results.

15 minutes later, the doc came in and said…”Well…we don’t have any proof that he’s got swine flu.  The test was negative.”  He went on to tell me that the false negative rate on the test is 20% and that he didn’t get a really “deep” sample from his nose.  And that he’s “seen a LOT of this…every day.”  Yeesh.  So…basically…it sounded as if he trying…in the most back door sort of way…to diagnose Noah with swine flu (oh, I know we’re supposed to call it H1N1, but doesn’t “SWINE FLU” sound so much more terrifying?) but in the absence of a positive flu swab, he couldn’t do it.  Noah’s poor doc was left with trying to explain how a perfectly healthy child could suddenly pop a 102 fever and look like death warmed over.  He proceeded to move on to the possibility of strep throat, as he said that he’s seen a “lot of cases” of that lately.  He told me that he didn’t want to do a strep test (ya think?), but thought that we should go ahead and treat for strep.

Normally, this is where I would have been tempted to ask for my $50 copay back.  But I realized that treating for strep might not be the worst thing in the world right now.  Noah’s got a history of OCD flares that coincide with strep infections, and over the past few days, he’s been acting some kind of wonky.  The doc’s proposed treatment was for a 5 day course of Zithromax…which is the same medicine that we’ve used in the past to successfully treat Noah’s OCD flares.  I figured that if it’s strep, he’ll need it anyway.  If not…it may help chill this little burst of wackadoo that we’ve had around here recently.

Now, I’m certainly not a medical professional, but I’m guessing that we’ll know in the next 24-48 hours whether Noah actually has swine flu or not.  If it’s strep, the slobber-knocker dose of Zithromax that he is on will do it’s thing, and Noah will bounce back quickly and lose the fever.  If it’s swine flu…well…those antibiotics won’t do squat for the fever or flu symptoms.  And one (or more) of us will surely come down with it over the next few days.  Isaac spent the morning crawling all over Noah while he was laying on the couch.  Nice.

So that’s what’s going on our little world right now.

Anybody else have cooties living in your house?