One Bad Turn Deserves Another

This has been a tough week. I don’t mean a night out and a good friend kind of week, I mean a bottle of alcohol please just let it be over kind of week. This week has been a cocktail of illness, bad news, and bad luck. The fine Thanksgiving holiday left me with four sick kids (no sleeping through the night, clinging to me during the day, nose gushing gunky unnamed yellow stuff at the rate of Niagara falls, all to the sound track of moaning and wailing sick kids), my own soar throat and eye infection*.

Toss in the bad news about Watson (my dog with lymphoma). His blood work came back poorly and left the doctors unable to give him his next course of treatment. This meant we could only provide him with steroids and antibiotics and pray that the lymph nodes will not grow too large in the next week when he goes back in so that maybe we can give him his next CCNU medication. If not we’ll only be able to give him the steroids until they stop working.

Mix in a good dose of bad luck when I went to pick up my twins from preschool only to find out my tire was completely flat, my husband was a hour away, I could not get the jack under the fancy step rails we installed to keep the kids from falling out of the car onto their heads, the auto club would send someone right away (translation in 40 minutes), my neighbors have had the police at their home no less then three times in the last year for domestic disturbances, and no other local friends were answering their phones. This tire luck was only further enhanced by the preschool program manager who decided to berate me for being unable to pick up my children in a timely manner and for not having a better “emergency plan.” She provided such helpful advice as sending the children’s grandparents. I told her that while I’m sure they would be happy to come the FIVE hour drive from their home might not fit into the prompt pick up she was hoping for. She then suggested the twins other set of grandparents, but I had to tell her that the drive from Texas might again prove a problem. She ran through all options I had already attempted, husband (who was on the way but as stated was an hour away), neighbor (my other two children, myself, and the twins would not fit in their car and police action makes me a bit nervous about sending virtual strangers to pick up my children), and friend (who I was unable to get on the phone) leaving her to simply return to her mantra of a better “emergency plan” and teachers needing to leave on time as if I planned to have a flat tire and not pick up my children.

Today I added some good old self pity to the mix. I went to my Mops group. This should have been therapeutic except that all around me are moms with one or two children talking about their trips to the mall and the trauma of being busy shopping, sending Christmas cards and putting up their decorations during the holiday season. Don’t get me wrong, these are lovely women. They are caring, genuine people and I usually enjoy their company but this week all I could feel was jealous. I have not gone to a mall in about six months since four children ages 4, 2 and 4 months just don’t travel well. After cleaning up my millionth and one dirty diaper, wiped my zillionth dirty hand, face or snotty nose, wiping up more spills, crumbs, crayon scribbles than I care to count the last thing I can even begin to fathom are Christmas cards and decorations.

I’m hoping my cocktail for the week is complete and I can just close my eyes and have the week be over. Maybe then the sound track of moaning/wailing will be done but for now it’s in full force and I need to go try and change the volume from wailing back to moaning.



*By eye infection I mean barely able to open my eye to put the drops in, Christmas red and itchy eyes that could tolerate almost no direct light source. This made driving quite an adventure and leaves me thanking God for the divine intervention that made it possible for me to drive with out any vision and still manage to not leave us wrapped around a tree.