Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Pick your poison

Pick which thing would make for the most trying weekend:

A) Your husband leaves for an extended weekend away with his brothers.

B) Go from feeling just fine when you walk into IKEA to feeling feverish and delusional within an hour, but persevere, purchase, and then make your 7 year old son help you unload boxes into the garage just outside the car because anything else seems impossible.

C) Attend your daughter's 5-hour swim meet in the middle of the summer and attempt to keep two other kids happy in a 3-foot by 3-foot area.

D) Your water heater breaks and the valve shut-off to the water heater is busted so you have to shut off all water to the house. On a Sunday.

E) All of the above.

The answer, obviously, is E and that is how I spent a weekend that was supposed to be filled with covert furniture assembly and walks to frozen yogurt and making the most of a summer weekend. What I did not foresee was that my body is incapable of functioning when Joel leaves the state. The last time he left for the weekend, I got the flu and the car battery died. He left and an hour later I was at IKEA and, as I stated above, before I left there I felt like something had gone seriously wrong. Maybe it's IKEA's fault.

The point is, as much as I lament my children getting older, it is so very convenient to have children who can function by themselves and actually want to take care of ME. Major props to Ainsleigh who repeatedly said, "Oh let me do that for you, Mom," and, "What can I do to help now?"

Yesterday morning I walked (staggered?) into Home Depot to buy a water heater. I shudder to think of what I looked like. A gentleman plumber had promised to try to get to our house that evening to install it (at a fraction of the Home Depot price, by the way) if I could get one to the house. Hence, the field trip. Thank goodness for the "pro loaders" at Home Depot and my kind neighbor who unloaded it for me here at home. In between, as the kids began to go stir crazy while their mother tried to figure out just how much water heater to buy, I began to feel the first prickling of a breakdown. In the car, I began to cry. Now, I know I'm a crier. Stuff to be proud of, stuff that makes me sad, stuff that makes me happy, and pretty much anything related to the Olympics make me cry. Not so much the self-pity stuff. But yesterday, oh boy, I let it flow. I hate doing this because Ainsleigh and Donovan are pretty sensitive to that and it upsets them. Usually Gemma is pretty sensitive, too. Except yesterday. There she sat in her car seat, arms crossed as she muttered, almost disdainfully, "When I'm a Mom, I'm going to cry, too."

If I hadn't been so sick, we could have spent the day at the rec center or the museum or any number of places with running water. As it was, mid-day I turned the water back on for a few minutes so we could fill up pitchers and flush toilets. Then I had to shut it off so the water heater could drain again. You haven't really lived until you've heard yourself say, "I'm going to turn on the water in a few minutes, so please poop now."

The good news is that the gentleman plumber arrived last night after a full day of work and installed that thing in about half as much time as it would have taken Joel to figure out where it was supposed to go (no slam on Joel, I'm just stating probable facts). By 8:30 we had running water. I have taken this luxury for granted.

Today, I am much better, mentally (helped, to be sure, by Joel's return in the early hours of today). If only I could shake these hot flashes and chills that seem to be plaguing me, we'd be in business. As it is, my energy permits me to watch the Olympics. And cry about that stuff instead of feeling sorry for myself.

Hope you had a better weekend.

1 comments:

NancyO said...

Hope you're feeling better.