Just holding onto a moment

This morning I had one of those moments that was just right.
I stood alone in my cleanish kitchen. Clean, if you avoid looking down.
The boys are well and back in school.
Laundry is nearly done.
Dustin stayed home and took Stella to the doctor as she seemed not quite back on track.
I made a cup of tea. It was hot and really good.
The sun is shining really bright in through the windows.
For just a moment everything and everyone was mostly taken care of.
It is moments like this that allow me to keep going.
They may be small and fleeting, but it is usually enough to keep me going.
This just in: Hubby called. Stella has a double ear infection. Yea, something treatable.

The Hiney Flu is Here

We are on day 10 of our battle with the H1N1 flu. This is not a confirmed case. However, our doctor said that is 'probably' what we have going on.
My Grandma calls it the 'heiny flu'. She is pretty much so deaf and has closed caption on her television. When she sees H1N1, she reads it as hini, and calls it the 'heiny flu'.
I think this may be an appropriate name for this flu, as it has indeed been a pain in my heiny.
Caleb was the first to go down, and he went hard. He ran a fever for several days that reached over 103 and was barely effected by Tylenol. He is allergic to ibuprofen, so Tylenol is our only choice. He mostly just slept, and when he woke up he complained that every part of his body hurt. He looked miserable.
Miles fell next, but went down kicking and screaming. He would take his Motrin or Tylenol and then insist he was good to go. I would find him face down in the carpet a few hours later, burning up, but not willing to go to bed. He would just lay on the floor, near his toys, relentless in his need to play. He told me he was 'broken down'.
Stella was, of course, next and has been very high maintenance. Apparently, the heiny flu had an impact on her ability to walk, because I have been carrying her around the house for the past four days. At least I am finally getting some exercise.
I have washed a lot of sheets and blankets, and powered through many containers of Clorox wipes.
I have been in my pajamas for days.
We have a pile of missed homework to plow through this weekend.
If this was indeed the H1N1 virus, I must say, that it was not as bad as I have heard it rumored to be.
We have the luxury of being close with our pediatrician, and being able to call her on a moments notice helped to calm my fears when fevers seemed to go on and on.
We are now in the stage of, still not feeling quite ourselves, but feeling good enough to fight and whine. Super.
I called my neighbor and talked her into going to a bazaar with me tomorrow. I am pretty sure if I don't get out of the house, I will loose it.
So, that is my plan. Get out. Enjoy the company of an adult. Then come home and finish my fight with the heiny flu.

Can you hear me now?

There are all kinds of reasons why I hate going to urgent care. My co-pay is higher, the people in the waiting area seem sicker and the doctors seem like they would rather be just about anywhere else in the world.
So, when Miles stuck a bb in his ear the other night, I quickly weighed my options.
* leave the bb and play dumb until my husband is around to go with him and sit in the urgent care.
* try to fish is out myself.
* heck, the Dyson has some serious suction, I could always......
Although I seriously thought about the vacuum and even held it up to my ear to see if it would hurt, (it kind of did). I thought I would rather go to the urgent care to get a bb out than have to explain why my son had a bb in his ear and his eardrum had been sucked from his head.
Also, the other kids knew about the bb, so I figured they would call me out if I tried to play dumb and pass the job to Dad.
Three hours later after sitting as far as possible from all the mask wearing, feverish, flu symptomatic sickos, we got our call to see the doctor.
She came in and I think she was like 14 years old, and she says, "I hear someone has something suck in their ear, which one of you gets to see my cool 'light-saber'?"
I thought she was kidding, but she made no move towards Miles, so I kindly directed her away from me and toward my 7 year old son.
Really? Do you think they get a lot of adults in the Children's urgent care to have bbs dislodged from their ears? Apparently.
For the record, her 'light-saber' was cool. It was a little wand that glowed so she could see into the ear while she was fishing out the bb.
But then she stumped me again when she handed the glow stick to my son. Which he promptly stuck into his ear.
If he busts his eardrum, they better not charge me another co-pay.

This is the story about why I no longer use the 'silent treatment' when I am angry

In the early years of my marriage I would often use what I thought at the time was a sly punishment when I was arguing with my husband. And in true 7TH grade mean girl fashion I would stop speaking to him.
The silent treatment.
I thought for sure that this was just horrible for him. Having to sit in silence. Without interruption. Watching television without having to listen anything I might have to say.
Hind-sight being what it is, I now realize he probably did something on a Saturday night to make me angry so that he could watch Sunday football without any interruptions or obligation to make husbandly small talk.
I had not yet realized that I was actually rewarding my husband with my lack of ability to share my feelings with him and so was still using this tactic when I saw what I saw.....
On one particular afternoon, still convinced that the silent treatment worked, my husband and I had to leave one of my family functions early to go to a party for a friend of his that I had no desire to attend.
I was very pregnant, very upset, in serious need of a toilet, and then we got lost on our way to the undesirable party.
Cue the silent treatment.
I was done trying to convince him to ask for directions, I was too proud to admit that I had to pee and was going to just let him drive around in circles until we could all agree that he was unreasonable.
I was staring out my window, because that is where you stare when you are riding with someone that you are not speaking to, when I saw it.
A lion. No joke.
A flippin' lion. It was walking along a tree line and appeared to be kind of be stalking something. It was big and I think it was a mountain lion. Seriously.
I said nothing. I was too angry. The silent treatment was in full swing. I just double checked what I saw and said nothing. Too mad to share my lion.
We eventually found our party, I peed, and realized that maybe it was me that was being unreasonable, but I still didn't mention the lion.
The next morning I opened the newspaper to see on the front page a story about a possible lion sighting.
The story reported that a few calls had come into the the police station about a lion. They could not confirm, as no lion had been found.
I called my husband and tried to tell him that I had seen the lion while we were lost and driving around in circles and he was like "okay..., whatever you say crazy pregnant lady."
To this day he laughs and claims he thinks I saw 'something', but the lion only popped into my head after I saw the newspaper article. I don't know if he claims not to believe me just to make me crazy or if he really doubts me.
Oh how the silent treatment bit me in the ass. I chose not to share something really cool in a moment that I was angry about something silly. Bit. Me. In. The. Arse.
My husband pines for the old days of the silent treatment. Now I share how I feel. A lot. Especially during football games.
I try not to hold grudges or get angry about the small stuff.
I actually start sentences with "I want to tell you how it made me feel when..."
The silent treatment did not end immediately after the lion sighting. It took some time to change that habit.
I did change though, and I have the lion to remind me to never hold anything back.
The next time I see a mountain lion in suburban Ohio, someone will hear about it. Immediately. Before the paper picks up the story.