Busy being sick
This week has been all about sickness. Dodging it, dealing with it, ignoring it. It began with O. They're in preschool, this is fall, sickness is to be expected. Though snuffly, O was fine. I'm the kind of person who just keeps going, so I expect that of my kids (with a few extra cuddles, hot cocoa, and longer naps). We all just keep going these days. I've read articles about how people don't call in sick anymore, the culture of the American workplace is such that we expect people to be having chemotherapy if they call in sick. It even has a name, "presenteeism," as in the opposite of "absenteeism." There's a backlash, even, people who advocate -- gasp -- staying home when you're sick. At any rate, especially with two, I tend to rely on our friend children's tylenol and push through a cold. But then, of course, funnydad and M got sick, too. I guess I had a low-grade version of late last weekend, but I dodged the bullet.
We had visiting grandparents for halloween, and I'm happy to say that the sickness only interfered at the end. Which may mean we were all together when the contagions were still flying around, but I hope not. Lots of fun, and they discovered a great little breakfasty brunchy place in what passes for downtown here. A gem called Lucille's.
But, this cold thing and the stress around it has gotten me thinking about how fully we cram our lives, and how when one thing, like a cold, interferes, we resent it. How another thing, like a car that needs new license plates, can throw things into a tailspin. Super busy doesn't seem like the smart way to go, so logic says trim the calendar, the art classes, the music, the commitments to laminate the play money from preschool in contact paper, the expectations of how the kitchen should look, or how quickly laundry gets done. Don't expect so much. But what really happens is the laundry still gets done, and the kitchen stays fairly neat, we make it to music class, but I never have time to read the New York Times. Or sit down to eat. Or call a friend back east.
Then, as if God wants to create a stark contrast to the days when I'm so busy I get kids in and out of car seats five times in two hours, I have a day like today. A day when I'm trapped alone with two sick three-year-olds all day with nothing to do and nowhere to go, and that's misery too. Our venture to the playground ended with all three of us in tears. I broke out all my mom tricks. We tried leaf rubbing, making banana bread, all whiney, feverish disasters. A full-time stay-at-home mom job is often jokingly referred to as the hardest job there is -- though we all know it's not a joke, it's just that there's nothing to do about it. And I only have two kids. There are moms out there with many more who do the same thing.
I'm not really going anywhere with this. My life was crammed to the hilt before I had kids. I can't for the life of me remember with what, though I do remember something about yoga classes. I must like living this way, so it's probably not going to change. Colds come, and luckily, colds go. I'm not the first one to wonder if they're nature's way of making us slow down, if only for a day or two.
In other news: Just when I'd kind of stopped looking for things in Boulder to be out-there weird, I came across an ad in the Boulder paper for a place to rent a llama. Seriously. Who needs to rent a llama? And if you need to rent one, would you rely on a random display ad in the newspaper to direct you to your source?
We had visiting grandparents for halloween, and I'm happy to say that the sickness only interfered at the end. Which may mean we were all together when the contagions were still flying around, but I hope not. Lots of fun, and they discovered a great little breakfasty brunchy place in what passes for downtown here. A gem called Lucille's.But, this cold thing and the stress around it has gotten me thinking about how fully we cram our lives, and how when one thing, like a cold, interferes, we resent it. How another thing, like a car that needs new license plates, can throw things into a tailspin. Super busy doesn't seem like the smart way to go, so logic says trim the calendar, the art classes, the music, the commitments to laminate the play money from preschool in contact paper, the expectations of how the kitchen should look, or how quickly laundry gets done. Don't expect so much. But what really happens is the laundry still gets done, and the kitchen stays fairly neat, we make it to music class, but I never have time to read the New York Times. Or sit down to eat. Or call a friend back east.
Then, as if God wants to create a stark contrast to the days when I'm so busy I get kids in and out of car seats five times in two hours, I have a day like today. A day when I'm trapped alone with two sick three-year-olds all day with nothing to do and nowhere to go, and that's misery too. Our venture to the playground ended with all three of us in tears. I broke out all my mom tricks. We tried leaf rubbing, making banana bread, all whiney, feverish disasters. A full-time stay-at-home mom job is often jokingly referred to as the hardest job there is -- though we all know it's not a joke, it's just that there's nothing to do about it. And I only have two kids. There are moms out there with many more who do the same thing.
I'm not really going anywhere with this. My life was crammed to the hilt before I had kids. I can't for the life of me remember with what, though I do remember something about yoga classes. I must like living this way, so it's probably not going to change. Colds come, and luckily, colds go. I'm not the first one to wonder if they're nature's way of making us slow down, if only for a day or two.
In other news: Just when I'd kind of stopped looking for things in Boulder to be out-there weird, I came across an ad in the Boulder paper for a place to rent a llama. Seriously. Who needs to rent a llama? And if you need to rent one, would you rely on a random display ad in the newspaper to direct you to your source?
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