Monday, April 30, 2007

Airsickness problem solved

We just got back from vacation, which involved two plane flights and much trauma for my daughter. She gets airsick and often throws up on landing, leading her to be understandably unenthusiastic about air travel.

This time around, we tried Dramamine for the tummy troubles, and it made her nicely sleepy for the flight and not nauseated at touchdown time. Unfortunately, it did nothing for the ear discomfort she feels, and without the distraction of vomiting, the ear pain had her crying and moaning. No amount of yawning, chewing, ear tugging, ear massaging, or jaw-working seemed to help. So on the way home, we gave her some Advil along with the Dramamine, and that took care of all nasty landing difficulties. Hooray! She was a little loopy for most of the evening, but otherwise unaffected.

Just thought I'd share this solution for those with noise-sensitive, pressure-sensitive, movement-sensitive, pain-sensitive teens, who need their young people to be unafraid of flying, and also don't like to be thrown up upon all that much.

Monday, April 23, 2007

Comic strip returns to adoption theme

Just a quick note to mention that the comic strip Funky Winkerbean is returning to a periodic adoption story-line, and it looks like this time they're finally going to go through with having a child placed for adoption by one character, Lisa, look up his birthparents.

Funky Winkerbean originally followed Lisa and her classmates through their high school adventures, then took a generational leap and showed those kids as adults with a new group in high school. Lisa's son was adopted by a teacher who is now the high school principal, while Lisa later married a classmate, Les, who teaches at the high school.

The strip has periodically teased the possibility of the boy, Darin, looking up his birthparents, but now, with a push from his girlfriend, he seems poised to do it. If your paper doesn't carry the strip, you can access it online from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer site, among others. The strip has a pretty decent track record in handling dramatic storylines in a restrained way, so it will be interesting to see how this plot thread is woven in.