After I had finished my blog last night, ladened with strep throat, a massive headache, swollen glands (And not the good kind); coming off of my second day of horizontal-ness (again, not in a good way), my children arrived a few minutes later and I had to magically turn back into a Mommy. Seriously. Dear god, single motherhood blows when you are sick, but then again, I think back to when I was married and realized being sick back then totally blew as well. Don’t ask. Seriously. Not even worth going into. No, I am not still holding a grudge. No, really. Whatever.
Anyway, with help from my wonderful pal Moy, we wrangled my children to do homework and eat dinner. He left, I bathed them, counted to three about three hundred times until they finally got into bed after I used that powerful tool known as “Jewish Mother’s Guilt”. By the way, never even knew I was good at JMG until I had children. Super awesome tactic that I try to use sparingly.
So, then my sweet son Max knew I was still sick and apparently wanted to earn some bonus points, so he read to Dash and me. It was a great book about sharks. Oooh. Scary. I fought diligently to stay awake through the fascinating shark story, and then promptly went to sleep in my own bed and fell into a weird and wicked night of half-assed sleep. I prefer full-assed sleep. Ah, come on, that was funny.
My dreams were wicked and symbolic and encompassed every dating scenario I seemed to have this year. There were high rises and my back yard and my school and I think the rain forest, not sure. There were nice men and not so nice men and some hot dream sex and some weird dream sex (not in a good way). Not the most restful nights of sleep. I blame the antibiotics. Not really enjoying them. Plus, there is that no wine thing. Not like I am going to go par-ty with strep throat. Crap, just saying the phrase “par-ty” makes me tired as well as sounding like some middle aged person.
So, the 5am alarm went off Friday morning and after thinking my face looked far too puffy to actually be my own, I summarily downed two cups of coffee, the antibiotics that my stomach doesn’t seem to appreciate very much and of course, posted a snarky facebook update. Let’s face it, for the past two years; my snarky-ness has gotten me through my silly, little life. This is the crap that keeps me sane. I love that I have a place to stick all of the non sequiturs that pop into my head. I love the definition of non sequitur too, as it is just plain old French for “does not follow”. That could be used to describe most of my instincts as well as my status updates.
At 6am I was dressed and pseudo-ready for the day; woke up my kids, noticed some sniffles from them, fed them, dressed them, hugged them, drove them to school. The caffeinated high from not have tasted coffee in two days was working for me and I arrived only three minutes late to school. My principal looked at me with surprise, apparently not having received my email announcing my reemergence from my cocoon of strep throaty-ness. Does anyone at my school actually read my emails? Ever?
My morning was a barrage of “Oh, Ms. Levine, you look terrible” to “Oh, crap, you’re back”. Several attempts at “but we didn’t have homework because the sub didn’t give us any” but that doesn’t really work unless the entire class plays along. The only masterful deception was from my sixth period eleventh grade English class, who worked well as a team. I am now allowing them to take the vocab quiz on Monday simply because I enjoyed their performance. Of course, by the time I reached sixth period, I nearly passed out in front of that specific eleventh grade class. I actually had to sit down. I was seeing double which increased my class size (badump-ah) and was totally dizzy. You would think the eleventh graders would have felt badly for me and stopped their stupid charade. I had to hand it to them for continuing on with the “we didn’t get the homework” farce. Little do they know, by Monday, I will have made the little quiz into a big ass test just to mess with them. What can I say? It’s a living.
It was about that time, I received a call from Dash’s preschool telling me he had a fever. I was able to leave early (apparently the rumors that I had fainted had reached the principal’s office) and high tailed it over to Dash’s school, calling his doctor as I drove (yes, with a headset). I called my mom and started to cry. Started, but would not allow myself to continue. Instead, my mom let me rant and rave and vent. I like her.
I arrived at Dash’s school picked up my fevered boy; he hugged me and said, “Mommy, you gave me your sick.”
I apologized and we picked up Max and headed back to Kaiser Permanente for the fourth time in the past month. Because of Kaiser's lab, their wait time and their ridiculously expensive co-pays for urgent care, I have begun calling them Kaiser Soze. (Just so you know, I don’t have the little umlaut thingie that is supposed to go over the ‘o’. But I looked it up and that is how you spell Soze. I thought it was Souzai. Weird.)
Long story short (too late): the first strep test for Dash came back normal and he is sound now asleep. Max has the sniffles and is also asleep. For some reason I am completely awake now. Which totally blows. I realized that the minute I picked up my sick kid, I stopped being sick. I mean, I still feel kind of crappy, but it was put away until he was okay. I guess that’s good. I switched into Mommy-mode and made sure he was snuggled and medicated. Like any good mommy does I guess. I am not super-mommy, just a good mommy, I hope. At least that is what I tell my kids. And myself. I guess it’s that idea that your children are more important that yourself. They are. Any parent reading this blog is nodding right about now.
I just wish all people would understand this. Especially single guys who are not fathers (not that they know of). I actually told a guy I was dating once, "you may make me come first, but my children will always come first". I know. It was funny at the time. Not actually dating him anymore. Hmmm…
There was also one guy who was dating another woman besides me and couldn't decide between the two of us, so I told him that he couldn't have his cake and eat me too. Yes. Totally snarky.
Alrighty, I am now coming down from the oh-crap-I-gave-my-child-my-stupid-illness-guilt.
Hey, look at that. I can make myself feel guilty too. Man, I am a true Jewish mother.
Seriously.
No comments:
Post a Comment