Sick Fest 2010

We are a house of sickness - save for one - Derek-the-teenager - and I think it's because his hormones and teenage angst are protecting him like a heat-shield. Lucky shit.

I am trying to get over a nasty head cold, complete with sinus infection, sinus pain, headache and that irritating dry cough that makes you want to vomit the tickle in the back of your throat right into next year. It puts slicing the left base of my thumb right down to where I could see the bone into perspective. A head cold is way worse.

Danielle has a milder version of the above cold.

Olivia, who is just getting over (getting rid?) of the red, chapped mouth she's had for the last several weeks, and the nasty bump/bruise on her forehead from last week (she was rubbing her tired eyes and walked into our bedroom door...I definitely know this child is from my loins because she is a huge klutz like her mother), now has gross, whiteish looking goopy-pus-stuff coming out of the corners of her eyes. I'm experienced enough to know that it isn't (touch wood) pinkeye (at least not yet), and while I can deal with cleaning up kid vomit and diarrhea, eye-goop definitely makes me squeamish.

And then Jeff started puking his guts out last night. I know he was feeling awful because I heard actual moaning (and not the good kind!) coming from him. His entire body was wracked with pain, and in between trips to the bathroom and barfing in the garbage can every 20 minutes, well, let's say Mummy here got very little sleep. I don't know what your husband sounds like when he's upchucking, but mine? Let's just say that I think the hounds of hell were likely awakened by the noise and they were scared.

Gross.

Good wife that I am, though, I got out of bed each time to empty the can, rinse it out, refill it with fresh water (did you know that puke doesn't smell quite so awful if you add water to the bucket? It also makes rinsing it out that much easier. Far less sticky bits to deal with. I wonder if Martha Stewart knows this handy little tip? Maybe I'll give her a call...)

Oh, and to top everything off? I called the furnace guy at 10:00 p.m. last night because our heater stopped working and it's minus 20 degrees outside. Cha-ching! goes the service call....

So, between the baby and the hubby, and the 5:00 a.m. alarm, I calculate that I got about 23 minutes of sleep last night.

I might be a little bitchy today.

Question For You

I'm pretty sure I've whined about this before, and here I go again....how and when am I going to make me a priority?

This is a constant struggle and I have great admiration for all women out there who somehow find the time to exercise, to do crafts, to spend time with your friends, to volunteer, to read a book - to do whatever it is that gives you pleasure and energy for the demands on the rest of your time.

My day generally starts at 5:00 a.m. with the alarm going off and if you know me AT ALL, you know that I'm not exactly a morning person unless I can be very quiet (at one time I would have suggested "quiet as a mouse" but having heard them in the walls and ceilings of our house I can inform you quite honestly that mice are about as quiet as a 4-year-old's birthday party. Therefore, being quiet as a mouse should actually mean that you are screaming loudly, fighting over a Barbie doll and on a sugar rush that has you speeding around like you've just swallowed your first hit of meth.)

I shower and get ready to leave for work by 6:15 (this routine always includes checking on the three kids and giving little hugs & kisses - hubby too - and double checking there are enough bottles made for the baby because lately she's been waking up a lot - growth spurt-check.)

My commute is approximately 40 minutes long, depending on the traffic and I start work at 7:00 a.m. I eat lunch around 11:30 and weather-depending go for a walk and try to read a bit of my book. Workday ends at 3:00 p.m, commute home is longer because of traffic, pick up the baby at daycare by 4:00, the kids are home from school at about 4:15, and then I'm swarmed for the next few hours. Time to talk to the kids for a few minutes, try to get baby settled so I can make dinner, hubby gets home around 4:30 and he helps with homework if needed, we break up an argument or two over what constitutes an appropriate snack considering dinner will be ready within the hour. The teenager is hugely helpful with the baby and setting the dinner table and then it's dinnertime, clean-up after dinner, playtime with the kids, bathtime, bedtime and before you know it, it's 7:30 and time to put in a load of laundry, make tomorrow's lunches, get everyone's clothes ready and finally GO PEE because I should have done that 2 hours ago, and then it's almost 8:00 and I'm exhausted and ready for bed myself.

Hubby helps out a lot too, but he's swamped with renovating our flooded basement (I still haven't told you about that, but I will) every spare minute he has and he's also on call 24/7 with our local fire department, as well as being a captain there and in charge of training (which they do every other week.)

And somewhere in this long day I am supposed to be exercising my soft ass into rock-hard shape, or do some stamping/scrapbooking crafts, or finish that damn blanket I started knitting some time ago.

Am I really this lousy at time management? HOW DO YOU DO IT? That's not a rhetorical question by the way. I would like to hear your answers.

Obsessed or Possessed?

I've been debating in my head for some time on whether I have the courage to write it down here, in this unknown but public space, my struggle with food. Struggle may be too light a description. It's more or less an obsession - and not the good kind.

I think about food ALL THE TIME. It is a mostly hate relationship. As in, it's behind every single thought I have throughout the day, it's the first thing that pops into my head when I wake up and it's the last thing I think about when trying to go to sleep. As in, I can't believe I ate that, why didn't I push myself harder during my workout, why didn't you work out yesterday too, why didn't I eat an apple instead of 6 cookies...why? Why? Why? I understand on an intellectual level that eating good, healthy food puts proper fuel in my body so that I have energy for everything.

The problem is that I am addicted to sugar and cannot seem to shake it. I cannot get through a single day without it. I start off with all good intentions in the morning by eating a good healthy breakfast (usually old-fashioned oatmeal with a few walnuts, blueberries and cinnamon thrown in), and of course a cup or two of coffee with 1/2 and 1/2 and tiny bit of SUGAR mixed in. And by tiny bit, I do mean so little that really I could do without it at all, which I'm working towards. Then, mid-morning that little white devil in my ear starts thinking about anything and everything sweet that might be in the house and the nibbling starts. I have read everywhere that when cravings start the best thing to do is do something else. Except in my case? Trying to focus on something else (the laundry, cleaning the bathroom, oh, right, the BABY) only intensfies the cravings.

Willpower, willpower, where art thou?

Quelle Surprise...

This has been a very unexpected development in our lives, and I will write more soon about the highs and lows of what I've been going through with this knock-me-on-my-ass-what-the-FUCK situation.

In the meantime, pass the damn hot sauce already...Mummy's got a craving!

Humble Pie

It's never easy to admit that you're wrong. It can be even harder to acknowledge when you're hubby is right to call you out on your lousy, bitchy behaviour.

So, Honey, here is a public apology for screeching at you this morning, undeservedly.

And by screech - what that really means is I sounded like a hound from hell - complete with wild hair, hoarse voice, and general nastiness spewing out of me because hubby dared to stay up late socializing with one of his best friends and then, gasp, the HORROR, he fell asleep in the family room.

And to further apologize, I promise to make you a nice dinner tonight followed later on by a nice massage.

Prior to that, I should probably think about filing down my nails. And teeth. And double check there is no full moon scheduled tonight.....

Head Colds Can Just Suck It

So remember I mentioned in an earlier post that I got sick over the holidays with a cough? Its nasty next door neighbour has now moved into my sinuses and while I'm generally a fairly nice-but-cranky individual, I'm one snotty Kleenex away from turning into Super-bitch because I HATE being sick. Quite possibly it's already happened, but you'd have to ask my hubby about that, although being the sweetheart he is when I'm sick, he'll deny that it seems as though the devil has taken over and my head's about to spin around 10 times à-la Sybil....

My ears are blocked as though I've been swimming underwater for hours, and the post-nasal drip, drip, drip at the back of my throat causes the coughing fits to start all over again, only to have my head pound, pound, POUND from the build-up of pressure, except that only the left side of my nose is blocked but that's the side the runny nose is on too. My hands and feet are freezing, while the rest of me is too warm, and why is it that I have to pee constantly when I have a cold?

My god, the POWER I EXERT. Even urine is afraid to stick around for this party.