Category: Sick and sick of it

. . . disinfect your keyboard now.

More Stupidity

Speaking of stupid, let me give you another example.

Me.

Today, I took my boys to Wild Waves. The weather forecast promised cloudy weather, sixty-nine degrees at best. Only a few miles from home, sprinkles of rain dotted my windshield. A perfect Pacific Northwest summer day!

All of this was fine with me. After all, the worse the weather, the fewer the crowds. The fewer the crowds, the less standing in line. The less standing in line, the happier I am.

Only, the clouds parted and the sun shone.

And now I–the daughter of a man who died from skin cancer–I have my first sunburn of the summer. And my kids are kind of pink, too.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. I know better. I even heard that little voice in my head say, “Stick that bottle of sunscreen in the bag, just in case,” but that voice was drowned out by my actual voice shouting, “FIND HIS SANDALS! WE NEED TO LEAVE! I AM BEGGING YOU! FIND THE SANDALS!”

We did have a fine time, though, despite having to pay $35.00 for lunch at Subway inside the park grounds. A small soft drink was $2.99 and a 6-inch sub sandwich was $5.49! Since Six Flags took over the park, everything costs a whole lot more. We rode a couple of roller coasters as soon as we arrived and didn’t have to wait in line at all. The twins refuse to ride roller coasters now, perhaps because of my coercion this summer at Disney MGM, so they waited while my youngest son and I rode each one twice because he loves coasters as much as I do.

I had a moment, a flash of panic, really, when I thought, I am not going to wear a swimsuit in public! And then I did anyway. If you spend your whole life waiting for the day you are fit and cute enough to play at a waterpark, you might never do it. Meanwhile, your kids grow up! And plus, have you ever looked at people at a waterpark? Occasionally, you see a “perfect” body, but mostly you just see all sizes and shapes and degrees of flabbiness. And a lot of belly-button-rings and permanent ink designs on backs and arms and questionable unsupportive swimsuits in dire need of “What Not to Wear” help.

So, we rode tube slides and water slides and floated in the wave pool and meandered around the river rafting pool on innertubes. My youngest son, aka The Reason We Went to the Waterpark, became more and more listless, less and less joyful and finally, when I asked what was wrong, he admitted his head hurt.

He has the virus my twin boys had a week or two ago. Starts with headache, ends with coughing. At least we had some fun before his head exploded and our skin broiled right off our bones.

Make Up Your Own

I am still sick, very sore throat, head-ache, blah, blah, blah.

So, instead of a regular installment of Sarcastic, Snide, Smarmy Mel, I invite you to read the comments under “The View” and make up your own post in your head. Have fun.

Hopefully, tomorrow I’ll feel well enough to continue my annihilation of random strangers who comment on my blog. 😉

Spider-Killing and Kicking Butt at Baby Showers

The hour of David Letterman has nearly arrived and I am still sitting at my computer, peering at the screen with contact lenses still in place. I am creating documents and maps and beautiful works of art to aid me in my presentation tomorrow. I am training volunteers to work during our week of Vacation Bible School. I need to hand them gorgeous hand-outs, complete with cute little clip-art lions and elephants and zebras, oh my.

Even though my throat hurts (only when I swallow . . . must . . . not. . . swallow . . . gulp . . .).

Only two more days of school. Who are we kidding, though? We’ve sputtered to a dead stop. The public school plans parties on the last days . . . and now I know why. The kids have pretty much done all they can do.

I keep forgetting to tell you about the baby shower game. I am a ruthless competitor when it comes to baby showers. You know how you have to do a handful of silly games before the mom-to-be opens her stacks of gifts (“awwwww, how cute!”)? Well, I can’t help myself. Suddenly, I turn into fourth-grade Mel and I must finish the test game first. This time, it was a word scramble and instead of zooming through it with embarrassing quickness, I struggled a bit. This scramble was a challenge! Everyone was finally “cheating” out loud and yet, they still didn’t have all the answers. I puzzled and grimaced and rewrote the letters in the margin and finally shouted, “I’M DONE!”

I won a $10 gift certificate to Cold Stone Creamery.

Usually, I sweep the games completely, but this time the other games were random and unwinnable by simple will-power and brain-power.

As for spider-killing (and, yes, I know–spiders are good, spiders are our friends). Tonight, my mother called and asked if I could come over. I was going out anyway to buy posterboard, so I stopped by her house first. She launched into a tale of a spider, a spider so gigantic, so enormous that she could not walk through her kitchen to her bathroom for fear this arachnid would . . . well, I’m not sure what the spider would do to her since she is ten thousand times the size of a spider, but she is terrified of spiders, especially bigger than average spiders. (None of our local spiders are venomous, either.)

I am not fond of spiders myself. I don’t like how they look at me. But I rarely kill them. I’m too scared to kill them. (I know, irrational. What a girl! What’s wrong with me?!) I ignore them if they are not bothering me or have someone else kill them if they are lurking in the bathroom sink or something, standing between me and my toothbrush.

But my mother is beyond mere fear. She cannot sleep in an apartment if she’s seen a spider crawling around. So she called me.

As we chatted a while later, sitting on her bed, clipping her new kitten’s claws, the spider lurched toward us. She began to babble and scream incoherently, leaving me to be the brave rescuer. I had to spring into action. I grabbed a crockpot box sitting on her bedroom floor (why? because she’s a packrat) and slammed it down onto the spider.

Then we both clutched our hands to our chests and felt our hearts pounding.

Eventually, I gathered enough courage to lift the box, poke at the smooshed spider with a fly swatter and flush it down the toilet.

I hate it when I’m forced into being the Brave One. Aren’t mothers supposed to do this? I mean, shouldn’t my mother be the one protecting me? When did this shift happen?

Eight! Six! Four! Two! Zero!

I am sick. Nothing life-threatening, of course, nothing warranting a full day in bed, just a sore throat–a really sore throat–a nagging cough, a stuffy nose and a headache.

And in the next week, I have to:

1) Finish up school with school-at-home boys;
2) Meet with decorating team for Vacation Bible School;
3) Run two separate meetings for Vacation Bible School volunteers (Saturday);
4) Type 40-60 pages of transcription;
5) Keep house tidy enough;
6) Stay on top of laundry;
7) Send two packages in the mail;
8) Prepare to leave town on June 23.

I have realized there is no way I will ever:

1) Get all the closets in the house cleaned out;
2) Sort, purge and organize storage room;
3) Pull all the weeds;
4) Lose sufficient amount of weight to look cute in my new swimsuit;
5) Leave house in pristine condition;
6) Win the Pulitzer Prize.

What I wish for:

1) Perfect health;
2) A clever birthday gift for my husband (44 years old today!), along with a delicious meal and perfect dessert;
3) The immediate end to school;
4) One entire day alone in my house;

What I have to do now:
1) Clean kitchen;
2) Wake up pre-teenagers still snoozing in their beds.

My motivation:
Zero.

Ouch

Please kill me now. My throat is so raw, so painful that I need a neck transplant, which I’m pretty sure they don’t do in this neck of the woods. Besides that, I’m sure my worthless insurance wouldn’t cover it anyway.

I sent my husband to buy the stupid, overpriced antibiotic and Claritin. I swallowed the pills and added a few more ibuprofen to the mix and I’m still in agony.

Besides that, no one is commenting on my journal and even worse than hearing voices in my head, I’m hearing nothing but the sound of silence.

My poor baby. Today, we were in the driveway where she was sitting on a little tricycle. I was mere feet away, but I was looking at TwinBoyB who was incessantly talking–he’s still not watching television–and Babygirl tipped her trike. She fell so suddenly that she didn’t even put her hands up and so she fell directly onto her tiny, little nose. She cried and cried and cried. Much later, when I settled her down, we went back into the driveway. She pointed to the trike and said, “Bike” and then prepared to ride it. She paused, pointed to her nose and said in a sad voice, “Nose.” No more bike riding for her today.

Her nose is swollen. She looks like a homely version of herself. Poor kid. Like Kathy Griffin, before her nose job.

Ouch.

Ouch-ouch-ouch.

I’m sick and sick of it!

I’ve had a sore throat for eleven days. I have a very high pain tolerance and ibuprofen has dulled the pain so I can get through the days.

But this morning, my son, TwinBoyA, woke up with a sore throat and I thought, Uh-oh, maybe this is strep throat. I’d better go to the doctor. When I made the appointment, the woman on the phone said, “Oh, you are practically a new patient! You haven’t been here since 2001.”

Exactly. I never go to the doctor.

Especially with crappy health insurance. So, off I go, leaving my husband at home with the babies, YoungestBoy and sick TwinBoyA. I actually enjoyed driving out of my driveway, out into the sunshine. Today is the most lovely Spring day we’ve had yet. It’s supposed to reach 70 degrees.

The nurse does the nurse-things, including swabbing my throat. The doctor comes in, listens to my lungs, looks in my ears, nose and throat, remarks that my throat is, indeed, red and says they’ll swab my throat. I said “the nurse already swabbed it.” Doctor leaves the room. Finally, the nurse returns, says, “Good news, it’s not strep.” Then she tells me the doctor wrote me a prescription for an antibiotic anyway “to clear up your sinuses” and one for Allegra . . . though, I am sure this is not allergy-related. I have allergies in the fall and I know what that feels like and this isn’t it.

Fine. Her diagnosis? Basically, sore throat. Duh. How much did that just cost me?

Dear husband calls me from the pharmacy. The cost of both prescriptions is $180. No joke. I said, “NO WAY!” and he said that the pharmacist recommended over-the-counter Claritin and the antibiotic alone is $100–or something like that. By then, my brain had spun around three times and was dizzy. I said, “Just forget it.”

I don’t understand why the doctor would even prescribe the antibiotic in the first place. This is probably just a virus anyway. And I am frustrated and angry that she never returned to the treatment room to let me ask questions.

In my next life, I’m definitely going to medical school. It seems that any idiot can become a doctor, so why not me?

Sick Baby

Scene: Last night.

7:00 p.m.: Place baby in crib.
8:45 p.m.: Baby wakes up crying. Nurse baby.
9:00 p.m.: Return baby to crib.
10:55 p.m: Remark to husband from under covers, “I just want to hear the beginning of the news.”
11:00 p.m: Baby wakes up crying. She has chills and is warm. Nurse baby.
11:15 p.m.: Return baby to bed. Crawl back under covers.
11:39 p.m.: Baby screaming. Get ibuprofen. Use bathroom. Turn on t.v. in baby’s room to use light to administer medication. Hold washcloth to baby’s face as she vomits medication back up. Nurse baby.
12:15 a.m.: Return baby to crib. Crawl under covers.
1:12 a.m.: Baby crying. Rock baby, nurse baby. Realize baby no longer has fever.
2:00 a.m.: Return baby to crib. Crawl under covers.
6:20 a.m.: Baby’s awake.

Unlike yesterday, she was clingy and crabby. I didn’t shower until after lunch when dear sweet husband took baby for a ride in the car. This was a long day. I put the baby to bed at 7:00 p.m. I hope she sleeps tonight.

Uh-oh

Baby has been lethargic all day, which in a peculiar way has been delightful. She just wanted to lean her head on my shoulder and sit on my lap. She napped twice. She wanted to go outside, but didn’t want to bother with shoes and a jacket, so I wrapped her in an afghan and we sat in the backyard for a bit. She just sat. All of this is completely out of character for my busy girl.

She’s running a fever, the first real fever of her life. I’m not sure how high it is since I don’t own a thermometer, but I will probably borrow one tomorrow to make sure her brain isn’t boiling. She’s not been crying or fussing, so I don’t think anything really hurts. She’s warmish, but not burning up.

I put her to bed at 7 p.m., as usual. At 8:45 p.m., she was crying, so I went in and nursed her and then realized she was breathing kind of fast and then remembered that fast breathing isn’t good, so I counted how many breaths per minute. Thirty-five. When I put her back down, I consulted my book and under 40 is okay. Apparently, fast respirations help bring down a fever.

I’m not treating it with medication yet. We’ll see what tomorrow brings. The last time I gave her ibuprofen, she threw it up all over me.

I am still hacking up a lung, which is ever so pleasant.

If I drank, this would be a good time for something strong. But I don’t, so I just ate too much chocolate and now I’ll go upstairs to listen and hope that she sleeps all night.

I need a waaaaaambulance!

I wish I could stay in bed all day without responsibilities. Yesterday my throat began to feel scratched, literally like someone scratched the roof of my mouth in the back. During the night, I woke repeatedly and realized that I have caught the same cold the babies have. Ack! This is the major downside to taking care of a daycare baby. My own family is never as sick as other families. Last year Babygirl didn’t catch a single cold. Since DaycareKid has started coming over, she’s been sick about four times. At least.

Anyway, so I feel whiny. I don’t want to take care of runny-nosed kids. I don’t want to make dinner. I certainly don’t want to balance the checkbook.

The worst part of it is that YoungestBoy’s birthday is tomorrow and his party is on Saturday. I have to get creative and come up with some fun party activities. I need decorations, supplies, food. I found a brand-new Bingo same on sale for a dollar, so I bought it last week. At least I have one thing planned. Last year’s party was so much fun. It was Sponge-bob themed and everyone had a blast.

Here’s YoungestBoy last year:

But, this too, shall pass. I will be healthy again, someday. The party will come and go. YoungestBoy will only be five for one more day.

Oh wait. It really is too much to bear. My baby boy cannot grow up. Waaaaaaaaaah!