Friday, December 02, 2011

blowing in the wind

I honestly did not sleep last night.  Maybe I did a little.  Unless I get a good solid 8 hours, I am not a happy camper the next morning.  Our bed is against our bedroom window, that runs the entire width of our house.  Our bedroom is an addition, that legend has it, was originally created as a sunroom.  So, with many reincarnations, the room has become a master bedroom.  But the giant single pane piece of glass that runs across the entire south wall of the room, stayed...possibly as an homage to it's roots.  More than likely because everyone's cheap.  It's great when I want to watch the kids while they are playing.  Lovely when I want to get some vitamin D while napping in the summer afternoon.  NOT SO GREAT when trying to get a good night sleep during a wind storm that is like something out the movie Something Wicked This Way Comes.

That piece of glass shook and rattled, like it was about to shatter right over my head.  Another thing that gave me extra knots of anxiety all night was the fact that we are surrounded on all three sides by giant, GIANT, trees, whose branches I could hear snapping off like popcorn popping on the apricot tree.  I kept thinking about which of the trees was going to come through our roof, right down on our head.  Needless to say, morning came, and when Shelby came in complaining of a stomach ache, before she even got the words out of her mouth I had given her permission to stay home.  Yeah, one less person to get out the door.  Dalton got ready and with Gavin's help made it out the door.  I think he was just motivated by the fact that his funky school was having a field trip to the Leonardo Museum that just opened.  I think I was in my pj's until about noon today.

I would have stayed in them all day, except for the fact that as I woke from the living dead around ten o'clock I noticed that Shelby looked downright miserable.  The first thing that came to my mind is, "She has the flu".  Cause why wouldn't she?  I sinned, and didn't get my kids their flu shots yet, and now the master of the universe is showing me what a lame mom I am, and is going to curse me with a repeat of that winter whose year will not be named, because we like to pretend it never happened (that and I can't remember if it was last year or the year before that), when all family members had swine flu, pneumonia, step, bronchitis, and other forms of hell in differing orders, just because why be just sick, when you can go all out, like balls to the walls style, and feel like death in 101 different ways instead of just the generic one?  So, we went to the pediatrician and it turned out that my little ashen, lifeless, child had strep throat.  Oh happy day, strep throat.

Here you go strawberry flavored amoxicillan, work your magic in 3,2,1...presto!  Both Shelby and Garrett got the flu mist.  So THERE karma...too late for swine flu with these two.  The kids also got little drawings done by our fill-in-pediatrician, who is cuter than our normal one, which was an added bonus.  Fast forward about two hours, when I get to pick Dalton up from school, and he looks equally haggard.  My kids are blessed with the genetic gift to me, the mom, where the second their body starts contemplating whether or not it should feel sick, their eyes glaze over alerting me that indeed, something wicked this way comes.  And Dalton had the glassy eyes.  So, it was off to the pediatrician for him and I.  Yes, hello same cute fill-in-doctor.  Who honestly, was not that cute.  But with this kind of a day, anything positive I am taking.  How ironic that I just, 24 minutes ago, finished up an essay on discrimination against those who are not considered beautiful- lookism.  Oh, the irony.  Me and my enlightened self.

So, Dalton's strep test comes back negative...bummer.  So his is just some funky bug that we get to wait out.  Doc thinks it's not the flu though so we both get the flu mist.  Oh yeah, my family is safe.  Oh yeah, I pass the decent-mom-test this year.  Now I just have to get food storage, start brushing my three year old's teeth, and clean out the condiment drawer in the fridge and I am on track to mom-sainthood...har

Shelby was at about 60% by the time she got her second dose of antibiotic tonight.  Garrett begged me to sleep with him like he does every night.  And now that he has this twin size mattress, I often give in, just to get him to go to bed, and end up waking up in a panic, an hour later, like I did tonight, with the realization that I had about an hour and a half to get an assignment in via email that I was not prepared for.  But then 11:59 rolled around, and so now life is good.  I have two of our street's street lamp covers on my living room floor, because they were rolling down the street and I made Dalton run out and grab them before they made it down the next block.  I think that if the wind did accomplish one thing, besides clearing out the inversion (thank goodness) it motivated Gavin to get our home remodeled already.  He's sleeping in Shelby's other twin bed right now, so the single sheet of glass doesn't drive him bonkers tonight.  I am so tired that I might just sleep through it tonight.  I am hopped up on jr mints and rootbeer...my drugs of choice when I have to pull a late one.  I will turn on the Daily Show so that I can unwind before I try to go to sleep.  We survived.  Life is good.

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