This is my norm

A reality of what happens when Mom gets sick.

I feel like I have been sick this entire year. I know this is a slight exaggeration because the whole month of January we were on our Daniel Fast. Two days from the end is when our entire family got the stomach flu. THAT was fun. Then February started and I spent the first two weeks regaining my appetite from being sick for 10 days. Got over that, had a week of church every night which was amazing but left us exhausted, Sunday night Ella threw up all night. I woke up Monday exhausted and by Monday night I had scratchy throat. I first figured that it was just from singing so much lately. But also knew with the lack of sleep issue this could be symptom #1 that my body was about to crater. Through the evening I could feel the heaviness slowly welling up in my head and eyes as the mucus must have started multiplying by a thousand pounds per minute.

I woke up Tuesday and there it was.

Full on sickness staring me in the face. One side of my sinuses were totally clogged from laying there for hours. Niiiiice. So it begins. 

I usually live in denial the first day. Thinking to myself, I can beat this. Just get some vitamin C. Don’t give in. Continue on as usual. Don’t look the sickness in the eyes.

By nightfall, it has overtaken me. I am dragging.  This is when I start my meds. Hoping to wake up in the morning a new person. Totally recovered.

WRONG.

Instead I feel worse. Throat is glue. Now both sides of my sinuses

And then……….the kicker.

My lungs have joined the party. Oh they hurt.  I have decided to invent a suction that I can stick down my throat on mornings like these and suck out all the junk to relieve my aching lungs. Oh the agony.

I want to be in bed for days. I want to bury myself  under my heavy comforter and melt into my fluffy pillow that may or may not have a pillow case on it. I don’t even know. I’m living in a fog. My days are run-on sentences as my mom would say.   I want to only resurface to gulp down the cure-all for all sickness, wonton soup. 

And just as a sidenote…..why is it that every time I get sick, is also the time when I suddenly become completely bothered that nothing is getting done and everything in the house is falling behind? Yet I have no energy to do anything about it. So here I am, once again, sick.

The chores that are piling up, the products of my errands laying scattered around the house. The loads of laundry that need to be done and the ones that are done that need to be put away. The bathroom floors…..oh the bathroom floors. Don’t even get me started on the floors.

After dropping Hayden off at school, I went to pick up a book that was on hold for me at the library. I didn’t WANT to go get the book today, nor felt like doing anything except breathe and sleep, but I have been on the waiting list for this book for 2 months, 54 people deep in the waiting list and this is the last day they will hold it for me.

I decided I would swing in,  park under the carport at the door. Lock the car, grab my book on the shelves by the door, use the auto check out and leaving immediately. I didn’t even plan on getting the twins out of the car.  I was sure that I could convince the twins that Max and Ruby movie day would be sooooo much fun and we’d come back to the library for a longer visit another day. Or my Mom suggested I tell them it was a “boat day”. My brother and I used to do that on rainy days. I figured with all the sick days and freezing cold can’t-play-outside-today days lately they would declare mutiny and sink the “boat”.

Instead, at the first sighting of the beloved library, they begged for me to let the lady read them books at the library.  Toddler Storytime. Immediately my mind starts thinking of ways to let them down gently with promises of going as soon as I felt better. But we drove in right at 10:40 and it had just started at 10:30. So in we go. Hand in hand.

We joined in for storytime and were then informed that the YMCAwould be there for childrens excercise day immediately following storytime.