A little over a month ago I had a Mad-Momma-Moment and absolutely lost it with my son.  Sure, he’s 17, a senior, somewhat responsible, gets decent grades, yadda yadda… We were missing a major component, respect.  He  treated me, and his step-dad, like we didn’t have the right to exist on his planet.  The proverbial straw on the camel’s back was his disaster of a room.  Everyone told me ‘just blow it off, he’s going to be leaving in a few months anyway!’, but I couldn’t.  That fateful night I found his bike in his room.  I discovered my missing Tupperware containers strewn across his desk, with mold covering the lids.  He had all of our towels (including some princess towels of his sisters’), damp, stiff and mildewy, in a stinky pile in his closet.  He had every office supply I’d ever purchased under his bed.  There were dishes and refrigerator contents scattered on his carpet.

Yeah, I lost it.

I packed up every last item in his room into boxes and garbage bags, and sprained a thumb in the process.  I felt a twinge of guilt when he came home around midnight from work, and I faced him to explain. (Just edit out the next few hours….)

After all that, we did come to an understanding.  In a moment of clarity he asked:

“So, I make you feel like a landlady of a sloppy tenant who’s not getting paid?”

Ding-ding-ding, we have a winner, folks!!!! I was pained that it took me losing my last ounce of sanity to get that message across to him. 

Ever since that night, and those hours of talking (and crying, and hugging), we have been closer than ever.  He calls me at work to actually ask how I’m doing, instead of for money.  He bought me some Brie and crackers (my favorite!!!) last week to cheer me when I’d had another rough week (re: ‘Murphy’s Law’).  He volunteered to pick his sisters up from school not once, but TWICE without being prompted, Gah-bless-im.

Last week he got the news that he’s been accepted to the American University in Paris, with a partial scholarship. 

Not Paris, Texas.

Figures.  Now that I’ve finally reached that stage of peace and mutual camaraderie with my eldest child, he’s heading 5,000 miles away. 

At least his room is clean.

The kids are back in school after a wonderful spring break!  Dave didn’t have any time off, so I hauled the girls and our beast of a dog to my in-laws’ cabin in Grand Lake.  Not exactly sandy beaches and drinks with umbrellas, but still a great getaway.

I spend so much of my life in this basement… And when I’m home, I feel the need to do chore after chore. It’s my manic routine.  Last week, though, I was away for five days with my girlies!  We hiked, we painted, we read (we’re now into the second Harry Potter!), we played Yahtzee, we ate junk food… My in-laws were up there, too, and they are a total blast.  They got Allie a ‘bug-maker’ for her 6th birthday, so all five of us made ugly, slimy bugs one afternoon. (It’s like an EasyBake oven for bugs! Totally up Allie’s alley.)

So, now it’s back to the grind. I have a list of To Dos and Should Dos, the laundry is going, dinner is planned.  I do love my routine. But it’s nice to escape it now and then to realize how good I’ve got it when I come home.

Bickering and fighting are a daily occurrence in my house. Ive learned to tune most of it out and let them work it out on their own. But there are times that I am dragged into the argument, or forced to step in because things are getting ugly.

The other day the girls were arguing, about God only knows what. Saadia was calmly stating her case, only to have Saniya respond with the same annoying answer over and over again. Saadia came whining to me that Saniya keeps saying it again and again (still not sure what it was, as I was trying my hardest not to care!).

I told Saadia to please just ignore her sister, that it wasn’t worth arguing over. Saadia looked at me, confused for a second, then walked up to Saniya and WHAM! punched her right in the side of the head. My jaw hit the floor and I jumped to my feet. Saniya, who never backs down from anything, swings back before Saadia could see it coming. BAM! right in the head with a sippy cup. Well, now its an all out Jerry Springer style brawl.

I rush over to them and tear them apart and ask what the HELL they were doing? The girls were winded and still struggling to get at each other when Saadia stops and says “Um, what does ignore mean?”

I explained that “Ignore” means to pretend that Saniya isnt there, just dont listen to her anymore. She responds “Oh, I thought it means to hit her.”

Moral: Define new words before using them in a sentence to a 3 year old.

Saturday morning, my eyes popped open at their usual time of around 6:30 or 7, Logan and Ryan could already be heard having a fabulous round of Mario Karts, Adam could be heard stirring in his room, and I could hear rain beating on the window outside.

It seemed like a typical Saturday until I sat up and realized something was just not quite right.

I was sick.

I don’t get sick that often. Really, I never have. I seem to have been blessed with an amazing immunity that helped me stave off the chicken pox until I was 13, fight off zillions of random illnesses when I was a preschool teacher, and has kept me from calling in Mom Sick Days for the most of the 8 and 1/2 years I’ve held this job.

So here I was, on a Saturday no less, with a mile long shopping list, a birthday party one of my children was supposed to attend (no present bought yet, being the procrastinator that I am), and a weather forecast that was suggesting that we were going to get so much snow, Santa and his reindeer might actually show up on our rooftops.

And I could do no more than put my feet on the floor and realize that was as far as I was going to get. For the next 12-14 hours, I would be a slave to the stomach flu.

This is where Rob is really a great person…a great husband, a great dad.

And this is where my shortcomings are painfully obvious.

Rob, unlike me, is not blessed with that amazing immunity I possess, which means that frequently, he is stricken with strep, suffering from intense allergies or most recently, recovering from an ear infection.  Sometimes this means he takes to his bed.

And I am not at my best during these times.

The most he could ask for from me when he is sick is that I’ll completely ignore him, save for maybe a few times I’ll peek in to make sure he isn’t dead (because then I’d REALLY be ticked).  More than likely I might grumble about him being in my space (if it happens to be a workday) or complain that HIS illness is some cruel joke being played at MY expense, as if I don’t have enough to deal with, now I’ve got a sick adult to add to my to do list.

It’s wrong, I know. I also know that my attitude  is unfortunately a popular one with wives, and I’m guessing in particular with Stay At Home Moms, judging from many many conversations I’ve had with my friends and even my pediatrician (him being a man himself))…”there’s nothing worse than Sick Daddy” (and that’s not usually spoken sympathetically).

Then all of a sudden it’s my turn to get sick and the tables are turned on me.

But if Rob was annoyed or irritated with me and my affliction, I never picked up on any of it. There was no heavy sighing whenever he came in to see how I was doing, no asking if I was ever going to get up, no grumbling about how much work he was doing. None of that. The boys got dressed and fed, the grocery shopping got done, the house stayed reasonably picked up, the birthday party got attended (in the middle of a blizzard, mind you),  all three boys got entertained by Dad within an inch of their lives, and even I got waited on now and then with crackers and ginger ale and genuine concern for my well being.

Unfortunately, more than I offer the poor man when he is down.

So…thanks Rob, I owe you one.

Someone must have uttered those fateful words recently…

“What ELSE could go wrong???”

Last week my middle child complained of a sore back, but she’s a trooper so I gave her some pain reliever, and she went to bed. 

12:40 AM  That same daughter has climbed into my bed, screaming in pain, and hot to the touch.  I’ve been through my share of kidney infections, so I knew what I had to do.   Woke my son from a deep slumber (wish I could sleep like that) to ask him to listen for his youngest sister, as I was taking Annika to the hospital.  He mumbled something that sounded like ‘weeez peeeez’, and off we went.  I’d taken a sleeping pill, and it was foggy as burnt mushroom soup, so barrelling down the highway to the children’s hospital at 1AM wasn’t exactly simple. 

5 hours and one strong prescription later (three cheers for the guy at the 24-hour drive-through pharmacy that felt sorry for me and threw in the children’s pain reliever free of charge!), we were home and sleeping.

After 4 hours of sleep, work was calling me reporting a major system issue.  13 hours later, thinking I hadn’t been that tired since I had newborns, the issue was finally resolved. 

Then it was Thursday. 

Came home from work to find our new puppy curled up in a ball and non-responsive.  Barrelled down the highway again to the emergency vet.  4 hours and many prescriptions later, I’m nursing a sick puppy with droppers through the night.   

Friday was uneventful.  I slept like a teen-aged boy.

Gosh, I can only imagine what ELSE can go wrong this week!!