Category: Daily living

I have a flu. I’m running a temperature of 99.2, slept until 3 pm and generally feel like a dishrag. I don’t think there’s anything dangerous going on, I just feel crappy. I’m really not up to any parenting at all. My husband has felt better in his life too. It’s a gorgeous day and we’re really in no position to enjoy it.

Based on zero evidence, I don’t think this is swine flu. I’m pretty sure it’s not a dangerous flu — it certainly doesn’t feel like the worst one I’ve ever had.

Did I mention I feel crappy? Thane seems a little under the weather too. Grey is cranky because no one will pay attention to him.

Fun!

This period in my life has been full of contradictions. Privately, this has been a wonderful period for my family. My sons are both great. Grey is entering that fun conversational stage, where he starts being useful and asking interesting questions. Thane has, for his short life, been a ray of sunshine. My husband and I are both healthy and employed. We are surrounded by a network of people and have opportunities to do fun and interesting things. (For example, due to surprise babysitting this weekend we got to go see “A Winter’s Tale” on Friday!) Last night we spent at our neighbors house watching our kids play together and sampling the takeout from the new restaurant in town. Frankly, our life is about as good as it could be within the parameters of how things are set up.

But outside the walls of our house and family it is a scary — terrifying — world. For months people have been losing their jobs. I’ve come to dread Fridays as the days when I hear from my friends that they have had layoffs in their company, pay cuts, hours cut, or they have lost their jobs. The drumbeat of climate change hasn’t disappeared. The financial stability of the world is undergoing convulsions. It feels like we’re in the middle of an earthquake and none of us know when the shaking will stop or what the topography will be when it’s done. We also aren’t sure if or when we’ll get knocked in the noggin by falling bricks. Not only that, but this was a very bad weekend for people I love. My brother-in-law shattered his femur (not easy to do) taking roller skating lessons. As in titanium pin, in surgery for hours, will be in rehab for months shattered. Then I heard that a dear and beloved friend from college’s daughter was born this week … and it isn’t all ok. He used the word “life support”. She is in respiratory distress and that sounds terrifying and up in the air and all I can do is pray for them.

And then this Swine Flu thing pops up. I have to admit, flu pandemics are one of my personal nightmares. Everything I’ve learned about the 1916 pandemic scares the skivvies off me. It was worse than WWI, in terms of fatalities. It mostly affected people my age. You could go from fine to dead in like 12 hours. Usually I talk myself out of panic attacks using reason and preparation. Reason isn’t helping me here, and preparation would pretty much require that I hunker down at home with my family and bathe in hand sanitizer.

So today I pulled my boys out of daycare and took them home because of the flu thing. Seriously. For real. I’m writing this during naptime at home.

As I walked in the door at daycare with my boys, I heard Pablito’s voice. As I drove in to work, I thought “Wait a minute. Didn’t Pablito spend last week (Spring Break week) in Mexico on vacation?” I got to work and read about 8 articles on the flu. I finally buckled and explained the situation to my manager and LEFT. I got to daycare and attempted to explain in Spanish that I was having a panic attack over the flu issue and the fact that they’d just flown home from Mexico and I was taking my boys for today and probably tomorrow and to please call me if she heard that anyone was sick. I wiped Grey’s hands and toys with an alcohol swipe. I stopped by Target on my way home and bought baby food, bread, milk and hand sanitizer. I stopped at Starbucks to make sure we had an adequate supply of true necessities. (One pound Sumatra, ground for a flat bottom drip.)

I think this might qualify me as a bona fide loony. But if I hadn’t done that I’d be sitting at work feeling sick to my stomach about whether my sons were contracting fatal diseases while I added a “run now” button.

But then I look out my window and it’s like 70 degrees and gorgeous. Tomorrow is supposed to be 90, and you can’t catch the flu by getting out the inflatable pool and sitting in the back yard drinking Mike’s. It’s a beautiful world and I have a beautiful family and Ellsbury stole home last night and I continue to enjoy myself.

What a strange time in the world!

Yesterday was Patriot’s Day. For those of you not blessed enough to live in the Hub of the Universe (as Boston sees itself), that’s a holiday that is dedicated to Patriots. Most notably, those Patriotic boys in Red playing at Fenway, and the Patriotic masochists who run the Boston marathon. Patriots Day is a state holiday, and oftentimes school break week is designed to fall on Patriots Day. Due to the dyed-in-the-wool Red Sox fandom of my organization, Patriot’s Day is also a holiday for us. (Not President’s Day, not MLK day, not Columbus Day, but Patriot’s Day.)

I celebrated by bringing the boys to daycare. I planned on relaxing. As I told a friend, my intention was to turn into a pile of gelatinous goo.

But first, I wanted to do a little work on the attic.

I managed to get the attic storage space completely cleaned out, vacuumed, identified the bat-entry-zone, laid down old carpets, organized the stuff that belonged in the space appropriately, labeled where stuff went and sanitized the things that were appropriate for Thane either now or soon.

Then I had lunch and watched the Sox wallop on the poor Orioles.

Then I organized the guest room, found new homes for most of the extraneous items, cleared out storage space and checked out the crawl space. I made plans for the modifications we’ll make to the room to make it more hospitable to our guests.

Then I got my hair cut. (An entirely forgettable but acceptable bob.)

Then I refinanced the mortgage. It looks like we’ll save $200 a month. Yay!

Then I left to pick the boys up from daycare again.

The crazy thing was how pleasantly relaxing I found the day. When small children are in the house, you’re always on alert as to whether they need you. The minute you put them down for a nap you hear the tick-tick-tick of grownup time whirring away. Last night as I went over the mortgage stuff with my husband, Grey apparently got out of bed. Not finding us downstairs or in the basement (we were in the attic) he was weeping bitter tears about having lost his parents when we finally heard him on Thane’s baby monitor. That moment did break my heart, but it also points out how a parent is always on-call when their children are around.

I am almost never at home when my children are not. I found it incredibly relaxing! And now the attic is all sparkly clean!

I haven’t been writing much lately because I really don’t feel like I have much to say — at least not much that others would find very interesting. My work life has been worky in a not-very-interesting-to-chat-about way. The boys are great, but I am not finding new and interesting ways to tell you how great they are. Church has been extremely consuming (web projects, Session, membership committee, trumpet for holy week, etc. — I’m at church 4 of 8 days this week), but again not in an interesting to talk about way.

I’m falling behind in most of my chores, so any night I have that isn’t devoted to kids, church or falling into a gelatinous goo is dedicated to laundry, bills or dishes. My husband was gone all last weekend, so that put me even further behind.

And then this morning, Grey goes and gets sick. The nerve of some kids, I tell you. Actually, I’m having trouble figuring out when he started getting sick. He threw up Monday (all over the car), but he throws up all the time. Then he threw up last night at midnight — more unusual. Then twice this morning as I was getting ready to go to work. Yeah, not so much with the going to work. I have a high tolerance for him throwing up, but he’s keeping nothing at all down.

Um, on the plus side, he gets himself to an appropriate receptacle before throwing up? I came downstairs this morning to find out he’d thrown up …. because he told me so. Not because it was all over everything. This is a true, unmitigated blessing. Also, he has diahhrea (I think I’ll just add hs and rs to that until something gives — it’s on the list of words I simply can’t spell and don’t even try to anymore. I can’t even get it close enough for spelling suggestions.)

Thane is constipated and has had a stuffy nose for about three weeks now.

I have a doctor’s appointment at three (aka in the middle of nap time). Guess which of the above conditions merits that? The not-bothering-anyone stuffed up nose. Medicine is weird.

Basically? I have the blahs. I feel like at work I’ve tipped over the edge from experience to cynicism. I’ve decided that experience gives you ideas about how you should attack a problem. Cynicism is when you don’t even bother to attack it because it’s just going to fail again. I do not wish to by cynical. At home, I’m behind and falling behinder. My boys are sick. I’m probably a little sick too but neglecting myself too much to notice.

Ah well. I hope that Holy Week helps me kick it. And spring. I have daffodils and crocuses blooming. The grass is greening. The willows are yellowing and there are thick red bud-clusters on most of the trees. It’s over 50 and sunny today (a sure sign I’m not stepping outside with the plague-ridden).

Baseball is on for real. We got a new big HD tv in December at Circuit City right before they went bankrupt. (It was an amazingly good price when combined with some discounts from Comcast for switching to their service.) I’d been really looking forward to seeing baseball on it. Fenway has almost entirely HD cameras and oh my goodness. Last night’s was an ugly game but I hardly noticed because the image was so beautiful! It seemed more real than reality!

This will pass. I’ll catch up, slide back down to mere experience, get a few good night’s sleeps and start thinking interesting thoughts again.

So during Lent I’ve been working really hard to look at the good side of things — to pursue the positive and let the negative I can’t change wash past me.

Well, I’m all out of Pollyanna today.

Top 10 reasons today sucks:
10. The laundry and dishes aren’t done.
9. I forgot my iPod at home.
8. Another coworkers returned from maternity leave so now I have to share the pumping room.
7. The pumping room is also the server room. It has a beeping server today and probably will for some time. (They’re working on it.)
6. It’s supposed to rain all day.
5. I had to walk a mile in “office shoes” to get to work this morning. It made me late to work.
4. I don’t see a day on this week’s schedule when I can spend quality time with my husband. We’re also both completely wiped out.
3. Thane keeps crying bitterly and I can’t figure out why or make it better
2. The Red Sox have already postponed today’s home opener
1. Vomit all over my car — the champion’s way to start the day!

PS – If you’re here because you had a terrible day, you might consider reading Gives Me Hope to feel better!

Having my mother-in-law come to visit is a little like having the Discovery Channel come to my house. She combines the best qualities of “What Not To Wear” and “Designing Spaces”. (Let us take a moment of quiet to remember my father-in-law, who in his better days could be counted on to do his own version of Mythbusters with black powder, and who ate things in an attempt to get healthy that rival Bear Grylls downing a random sheep eye-ball boiled in a geyser.)

Last time she came, a week after Thane was born, we redecorated my living room and dining room. This time, it’s “What Not to Wear”.

We went through Thane’s wardrobe together on Tuesday. It’s rather sparse for this size because this is the size that Grey was when he had his little vomit issue. You know. The one where he cheerfully barfed 3 – 9 times a day for six weeks? Baby clothes get stained easily enough as it is. Adding that in, and most of his clothes were a disaster by the time he was ready for the next size. So we went shopping for some nice, cute, new warm outfits.

Ha.

You know, I grudgingly accept that the fashion world is always a season ahead for grownups. But people. Babies and pregnant women do NOT buy a season ahead. You should be able to go into a store and buy an outfit appropriate for the weather that is currently happening.

I swear that Target didn’t have a single fuzzy pj set in the infant size. Nor did it have a single Grey-sized sweater. Hrmph.

So we bought some cute warmer weather outfits.

Then this odd gravitational shift happened and we suddenly found ourselves in a shoe store. “How did that happen?” I asked? “What size are you again?” she responded.

Now, I suck at shoes. If you are one of those people who judges other people based on their shoes, your opinion of me is very low. I’ve worn the same pair of sandals since I was pregnant with Grey. I have like two pairs of scuffed brown shoes I wear everywhere that I don’t wear the sandals. Every time my MIL sees the shoes I wear to church, she informs me that she won’t be seen in public with me if I ever wear them again. (Happily, she doesn’t follow through on the threat.) My criteria for shoes is the following:

1) Comfortable
2) Comfortable
3) Comfortable
4) Can walk a long ways in them
5) Comfortable
6) Cheap
7) Durable (since I’ll be wearing them for years)
8 ) Good looking

I think you see the problem.

Well, in this shoe store, a miracle occurred. I found a pair of shoes that met all those criteria and got the MIL stamp of approval. I bought two pairs (one brown, one black). Then I found two more pairs of shoes that meet the criteria — a pair of brown loafers and a pair of brown sandals (to replace the older-than-Grey ones). Four new pairs of shoes, for $25 a pair. Now I don’t have to buy shoes again for years!