glitches

time to pee.

Sigh.  just, big, sigh.

I feel like having baby # 2 turned me into a true, bona fide adult.  All of a sudden we have a budget and we can't go out drinking, like, ever, and I'm complaining about my mortgage payment and daycare bills and how will we ever pay for it all?  I go to girls night out with my lady friends and we sit around and grouse about our husbands and brag about our kids.  I would diet to get rid of this mommy body I somehow woke up to, but I'm too tired to stop eating chocolate.  I don't have time to play because we need to spend that time fixing the fucking light fixture or calling the termite man.  How did this happen?  When did I turn into a sad approximation of a mom?  I use that voice with my son and threaten to come over there right now if he doesn't shape up or ship out.  I have long agonizing conversations with my husband about whether or not I can buy that damn latte.  I would get a new cell phone to replace my ailing current phone but first I have to investigate all the cell phone companies and decide which one will serve my family best.  And don't get me started on taxes.  fucking taxes.

How did this happen?

I feel like all the play has been sucked out of my life with a sad, disturbing sucking vortex sound.  I can't even pretend to try to be hip anymore because I just don't have the time, money, or motivation.  My version of hip is wearing a t-shirt over a long-sleeve t-shirt, but that's hardly hip since neither fits me very well and I just end up looking chubby and sloppy.  sloppy is not hip.  I may as well stop thinking that I can even watch american idol as an ironic statement.  there's nothing ironic about me or my life.

I'm actually jealous of another mom at my son's school because she just got a new car.  of course, it's a saab station wagon, but whatever.  when we get a new car, it will be a wholesome, unironic minivan.  we've already decided, even though we won't be buying a new car for a few years yet.

I'm not unhappy, just terribly, sadly dissatisfied.  I feel like I went to all this effort to buy myself my favorite cracker and they went and changed the formula on me and it just doesn't taste as good as I want it to.  sigh.

Maybe I just need to go pee.  You can tell the lentil is going to have a huge temper tantrum when he starts pacing around because he has to pee.  He won't just step back and think "I need to pee.  maybe I will feel a little less desperate once I've relieved this pressure."  Instead he will get more and more wound up and scream and rage and then run off quick quick and pee.  And then he feels better and the tantrum is over.   Maybe I just need to have an enormous pee and get all this dissatisfaction out of my body in one long stream of yellow adult ennui.

Camp Robber!

Just when I start to think I have things under control, the rug is pulled out again.  Last week was spent taking care of a pathetic, sad, snotty sick kid.  Poor lentil got a headcold that became an earache and it was miserable for everyone.  While he has been sicker (once, when he got an ear infection last year and spent a feverish night thrashing about in our bed to avoid the fever dreams), he has rarely been so pathetic.  The poor kid's cheeks are red and rashy from wiping his nose.  He didn't eat all week and got to the point where I was holding an electrolyte popsicle in front of his mouth trying to convince him to take a lick.  But he's better now, after a weekend of amoxicillan. 

And now the peanut is sick.  It's raining, it's pouring...

After a week with the lentil in which I got little work done, I started to go a little bonkers.  Sweets and I had made a deal at the start of the week, before anyone was sick.  We agreed that I could go skiing on Friday if I made some sort of respectable progress on my work.  I was living for that.  I spent whatever free moments I had reviewing this manuscript I'm working on, trying to fill in another sentence when I could.  It was nearly impossible, and I think I only got through one or two paragraphs, but those were hard earned paragraphs.  It was enough for me to go skiing, and then the lentil was too sick and sweets had appointments and then I was sick.  On Friday, I was just pissed.  I had spent the week caring for the lentil, taking him to the doctor, taking him to the supermarket just so we could get out of the house, cuddling him and hugging him and trying to help him feel nurtured.  So then I couldn't go skiing because the lentil was too sick for me to leave him and I was depressed.

But Saturday morning, he had been on the amoxicillan for 12 hours and he was a different kid.  And sweets gave me the morning off.  I grabbed my ski helmet and my parka and I was out of there before anyone could reconsider.

When I was growing up, there was a ski program through the schools.  For a few weeks every winter, whoever could pay for it was loaded onto a bus and taken up the mountain to the ski basin.  We'd get lessons all morning, then we were free to ski for the afternoon until the bus took us down the hill.  I remember those ski trips with such fondness- I remember the feeling of absolute exhaustion after a day of skiing.  I remember feeling priviledged to have a little pocket change to buy a hot chocolate and a bag of M&M's at the ski lodge before I got on the bus, and I remember feeling like that was so special because I was NEVER allowed to buy candy.  I remember being good at something physical for the first time in my life, and how good that made me feel.  Those ski trips were some of the few times in my elementary school years where I was good at something other than academic stuff, where nobody was yelling at me for loosing the game or dropping the ball.  I remember all that, but most of all I remember the feeling of absolute freedom I had as I careened down the mountain at breakneck pace, testing my own limits in a way I never would on cement.

Then my parents divorced, and I never went skiing again.  At least, not until this year.  This year, I happened to see that the local ski basin was offering a deal too good to pass up.  A punch-card, good for six all day lift tickets, at a mere $120.00.  When lift tickets are normally $50-60 a go, this was a huge bargain.  So I bought one.  Even though I hadn't been skiing since I was about 12, I knew I had to do it.

I've been going up with my mom, renting skis there, and taking it easy.  She's no expect skier, although she loves to cross-country ski and has all the gear for it.  We do mostly easy runs, just trying to have a good time.  She falls a lot, so it takes awhile to get down a hill because I have to keep looking back to make sure she's still there, and she has to haul herself up every time she falls.  We have a nice time, but I was starting to wonder if I could do better if I wasn't worried about my mom the entire time.  So when i had the opportunity to sneak out on Saturday, I ran.  I raced up the mountain as quickly as I could, rented my skis, and hit the slopes. 

I'm still a beginning skier.  I will be the first to admit that.  I haven't had a lesson in years and I would probably benefit from a few.  Since I didn't have my mom with me, I decided to challenge myself and try some of the blue hills.  I can do green, that's no problem.  But blue is new to me, and still a little scary.  The snow was nice, it was cool but not too cold, and the sun was shining on Saturday, and after a few runs I was confident enough to explore the parts of the mountain I can't ski with my mom.  Those are the ones where there is no simple way down the mountain and you have to be slightly competent to ski down without crashing and burning.  So I went up.  It was incredible.  At 12,000 feet, on a slow day at the ski basin, you can feel like you're the only person in the world.  The wind whipped my face, blowing snowdust up and making it hard to see.  I was above the treeline, so it was me, wind, and rocks.  I skied down and felt so good, I decided to go for it.  I would ride up to the very peak, and go down from there.  I would go down the run that excited me- the one that had a few trees sketched in on the map.  Camp Robber.  even the name sounds exciting.

On most of the chairs, you can sort of see all the way to the top from the bottom, so you can get a sense of how far up you're going to go.  On the chair to the peak, that isn't so.  You're riding the chair, impatient to get to the top so you can ski some more, when you think you're almost there.  you can see the peak, or so you think, and you start to think about disembarking from the chair.  But when you get to where you think the chair will drop you off, the ground falls down from below you and instead you're floating over a small, rocky canyon.  The snow is white and clean and there are ski tracks all over the place, but instead of there being a little ski hut it's just mountain.  Trees, rocks, mountain.  And you're riding even higher than you ever expected on that little chair. 

That chair went so high up the moutain, I started to get nervous.  It was incredible, exhilarating, amazing.  I've never been to a place so amazingly beautiful.  The air was so clean, so thin, so cool.  I was floating above something I never would have seen if I hadn't been skiing, alone on that day.  Then the lift ended and I was at the peak and I was careening down the moutain.

Let me just say, Camp Robber says it's a blue run, but they're not fooling anyone.  The second I started down that run I knew I was outclassed.  It was iced over, there wasn't anyone else skiing, and it was difficult.  I had the decision to hike out or to give it a go.  Since I fell the first second I started down, I knew that I didn't have to worry about falling again, because I had already done that.  So I just went for it.  Inch by inch, I slowly slipped down that run, mostly by going sideways.  It was too icy for snowplowing, so I just stepped and slid down, falling occasionally until I made it to the bottom.  But I made it!  I made it, even though it was too hard and I wasn't technically skiing.  I made it, even though my wrist hurt from my fall and I was scared as hell.  I made it.  At times I wanted to look to the sky and yell "Camp Robber!" but that would have been a little silly, so I didn't.  But I felt it.

When I got home that afternoon, I was a different person.  The weariness and exhaustion of holding court for an ill three-year-old had passed and I was happy again.  The cold, thin air had cleansed me of the bitter, the grump, the crank.  I was back, alive again.  I'm ready to start anew, thanks to a day on the mountain and Camp Robber.  Thanks, Camp Robber.  I owe you one.

woe is me

I hate to be all woe is me all over the place, especially since this is a holidailies post and who wants boring wah wah all the time?  But seriously?  woe is me. 

Today's topic of woe:  making friends, keeping friends.

When we moved here I made a pretty big effort to try to build and keep friendships.  Part of the appeal of moving home was the fact that many of my childhood friends were also in the process of moving back.  My oldest friend had a baby about a year younger than the lentil, and other friends were also having kids.  It seemed like it would work out beautifully- that we could step into an already established network of friends and playmates for our kids.  I couldn't have been more wrong.  Some parents just didn't seem at all interested in having playdates and get-togethers, and others were too busy.  We set up a weekly dinner party with some of our friends, but that has slowly pittered out.  Since I need people around me, I started a mom's group email list in hopes that moms would naturally start to network and set up playdates.  To date, I'm the only person who has proposed activities to the group. 

We have a few good friends here, but it's starting to feel pretty isolating.  I want people who are interested in hanging out, having our kids hang out, and just feeling comfortable.  Instead, it feels like we're always the ones making the invitations, and then once the invitations are made it's so hard to get people to respond.  I'm getting really frustrated with it.  Clearly, I need better friends.

Last week another one of my very old friends just moved back.  She has a baby who is five weeks older than the peanut.  We've gotten together a few times since she moved back, but she doesn't seem at all interested in developing any sort of ongoing relationship.  Old friends always come with issues, I realize this.  But I expected her to at least show interest in trying to build a relationship.  Maybe I'm speaking too soon, expecting too much.  In fact, I probably am.  But I'm just so tired of working to build friendships and getting very little in return.

Oh, woe is me.  Will someone please RSVP to our invitations?  Or better yet, invite us to do something?  please? 

Another stinking rotten day

I don't know what it is, but I'm having another bad day.  Not a good time to post on the blog, because I get all cranky and then I sound like I'm just having a serious bitchfest with nobody.  bitchfesting solo is just boring.

I realized today that I spent the majority of my time trying to make other people happy.  It's taxing, this people-pleasing.  I try to make my kids happy nonstop because nobody wants a whiny tot around.  I try to make my husband happy because when he's happy life is good.  I try to make my family happy because that's just my role around here.  But I'm not very happy today, and nobody is going out of their way to make me happy.  I sent out invitations yesterday to a party this weekend and nobody responded.  I hate that.  I should admit that sweets just took the kids for a walk in the freezing cold probably to make me happy.  I should go play piano.

Anyway, it's a rotten day and I'll be glad when everyone's in bed and I can zone out on television and finishing this damn quilt that I'm making to make my sister in law happy.

gripe gripe gripe. 

Oh- I wanted to add that I'm on facebook now so if you know my name, look me up!

Getting Organized

If you ever wanted to know how my life was going, all you'd have to do is look at my desk.  If the desk is clean and pristine, with neat little piles for each active task, then you'd know that I was dead.  If you check and I'm not actually deceased, then it's probably option B:  I have a really tight deadline looming.  I'm one of those people who can't concentrate when I'm surrounded by clutter, but I cope with my life by avoiding organization and thus surrounding myself with clutter.  As you can probably guess, I'm not very productive.

One of my late-night indulgences is tivo'd home organization shows.  I love them.  They make me crave see-through plastic containers and modular shelving units.  I daydream about neatly stacked boxes that aren't brimming over with crap, garbage, and scraps of garbage.  I wonder sometimes if they have just taken all the garbage out of the rooms and hidden them just behind the door.  Like, if you were to enter that house after the film crews left you'd find hallways waist high with all the stuff they'd just "purged" from the showcase room.

If someone were to come and organize my home right now, they'd have a pretty tough task ahead of them.  Our clear plastic boxes would have such labels as "magic wands" and "homemade paper puppets" and we'd probably need a subset of boxes for "staffs" and "maces" as well as "Nemo Puppets", "Peter Pan Puppets"  and "Wizard of Oz Puppets."  The lentil went through a stage where he would ask us to draw pictures of characters from his favorite books and movies, then he would cut them out and tape them to wooden skewers.  We have a whole box of these puppets.  Now he takes anything that resembles a stick or rod and turns it into a magic wand.  Each wand has its purpose, and it's a very dark day when one gets lost.  In fact, that's why we still have all these wands and puppets- because any moment he might innocently ask if we've seen his Dorothy puppet and then will scream like he's been skewered with the very same puppet we're all searching madly about the house for.  We should also set aside a clear plastic container for "Invisible Jets", in anticipation for the next obsession.  Those invisible jets take up a surprising amount of space when you put them all in one place.

So my house is packed full of very neat things.  Neat, if you're a three-year-old.  For me, it's nice to have these little bundles of creativity laying around, but I still need to be able to find my desk.  The organizing shows are slowly starting to rub off on me- I've been finding myself wandering the aisles at Target and Staples looking for the perfect home office organizing system.  I'm a big fan of the perfect system, and I have yet to find one that works for my office.  We have a great system for hats and gloves, a pretty good system for laundry and clothes in general, and an adequate system for mail.  I don't have much of a system for my desk, and as a result I lust after the perfect system way more than one person should.

The perfect system leaves my desk clean as a whistle at the end of the day.  The perfect system makes it easy for me to file my papers as I finish them, so they don't end up in an enormous and precarious pile at the end of the year.  the perfect system has nooks for knick knacks yet isn't at all cluttered.  The perfect system doesn't lose a thing.  The perfect system incorporates my notes to myself without leaving post-its stuck to every available surface.  The perfect system has a dedicated spot for my tea mug and my can of club soda.  The perfect system allows me to work seamlessly.  The perfect system doesn't exist.

Why do I have an Archie comic on my desk?  Why can't I throw away the poem that is printed on the inside of the chocolate wrapper sweets bought me two weeks ago? 

If I were to change careers this instant, I think I would become a home organizers.  Did you know that's an actual profession?  That's what I'm talking about.  I would love to be able to go into people's homes, dig through the detritis of their lives, and leave with a clean, useable space in my wake.  Wouldn't that be cool?  Now, why can't I do it in my own home?

Your life in photos

One of the patients in the support group I co-facilitate died not long after the peanut was born.  We had all sorts of grieving sessions because the other co-faciliatator is a bit of a freakscene.  All the women with cancer were handling it really well, but the facilitator was acting like the deceased patient was her sister.  I know everyone handles grief in different ways, but I think this person needs to get a grip.  When you work with people who have cancer, people die.  If you fall apart every time you lose a patient, you're going to have a lot of trouble going to work to do the important work you've set out to do in the first place.  Different clinicians have different ways of handling the grief, some people have rituals that they do every time a patient dies, some go to funerals, some refuse to go to funerals, the options are endless.  Everyone I've worked with has really stressed the importance of self-preservation.  It's hard not to get too caught up in the drama, especially when you have a patient who you really, really like.

Anyway, it's been a few months since the patient died, and her husband asked if he could come to the group one week and show a photo show of the patient's life.  We were happy to have him, mostly because a lot of the women in the group didn't go to the funeral and wanted to see the photos.  We also understood that the act of showing the photos and talking about the patient was therapeutic for the husband.  Happy to oblige, we had him come to the support group last week.  He brought his powerpoint and his stories and we sat back for a nice slideshow.

The patient had a pretty great life.  She traveled a lot, she had an interesting career, she had lots of good friends.  She was beaming in almost every photo he showed.  From when she was a little baby to the week before her death, there was the proof of her existance.  I loved to see those big smiles, to see time passing in her face.  I saw the photos of her from before cancer, when she had a lot of hair.  I saw photos of her from after two years of grueling treatment for her ovarian cancer, from the point when I first met her.  She was a happy woman, and she brought laughter to our group.

Watching that slideshow, I started to wonder what photos I would use in a slideshow of my life.  Most of my baby photos are gone, the victims of a swimming pool and a spiteful neighbor.  There are a few photos in other people's collections, so I suppose I'd have to call up relatives to get them to search out those photos.  Would I include the photos from my very unhappy adolescence, of can I just skip that part?  What about all those bad hair days?  Would I put those photos in, just for honesty's sake?  I also don't think I would put in a lot of photos of past boyfriends.  I don't have a lot of them, but I think I can come up with photos from those periods without adding the confusion of ex-boyfriends into the mix.  That would be very confusing for my kids, besides.  I guess the bigger question is whether I would want to have photos of myself from unhappy periods included in the slideshow of my life.

If you could pick the photos of a slideshow of your life, what sort of inclusion criteria would you follow?  Must be happy, no ex-sweeties, only good photos?  One photo from each year, ex-sweeties if necessary, bad haircuts included?

getting sick

It's 8:43 and I wanted to be in bed by 8:45.  I haven't washed my face, brushed my teeth or put on my pyjamas.  I'm stressed out and sweets is sitting next to me bugging me for a godforsaken christmas list so his sister in law doesn't have to look at my amazon wish list.  the sister in law with no children, a decently nice house, and nothing but time on her hands.

I never understood just how crazy-making parenting could be.  I have been stressed beyond control lately because there are never enough seconds in the day for me to simply breathe.  If I'm not holding a fussy baby, I'm nursing a fussy baby.  If the baby isn't fussy, I'm frantically trying to wash clothes or check email or prepare a meal.  Sometimes I'm lucky enough to have a fussy baby while I'm trying to do those things. 

I used to take long showers.  That was my recharge-time, when I could relax, breathe, and feel somewhat rejuvinated.  Lately the peanut has been demanding to the point that the only way I can get a shower is if I have him in the bathroom with me.  He sits in his bouncy seat just fine for about 5 minutes, but then he starts to fuss.  I just can't relax and enjoy the steamy silence when it's not at all silent.  I can't relax and enjoy myself at all.  I feel like I'm going quietly insane.  My entire shower routine, from when I closed the door to the bathroom to when I emerged refreshed and clean was about 20 minutes.  Now it's 10, and that's with a screaming baby in the room.

I need to go to bed.  I'm getting a cold, and no amount of echinacea seems to be helping me avoid the headache and fatigue that I suspect are the precursor to the main event.  I need to sleep, I need to breathe, and I need to exercise to feel human.  I am getting none of the above.  Someone!  I need help here!

tivo

Now that I have tivo, I'm discovering all the glorious television that I was missing for all these years.  Why didn't someone convince me to get a tivo years ago?  I can't believe how much more satisfying television has become for me.  granted, I don't get to watch the junk I used to guiltily indulge in, but I'm actually okay with that.  The quality of my life has improved so much, I find myself not looking forward to those night when I will be able to sleep all night again.  Because I can watch whatever I want at 4:00 in the morning now.  No more channel surfing past roomba commercials and goils gone wyld parental nightmares.  (yes, I did sort of obfuscate that one.  I'm still getting hits from other temporary lapses in blogging judgement and I don't want to invite one.)  Now I can watch Ellen, and fast-forward past the bad interviews and boring performances by the latest big names.  One of my favorite parts about watching Ellen on tivo is when she does her little dance at the beginning of the show.  I put that on the slowest fast-forward setting and then laugh as she jumps around on the screen like a little leprechaun.  It cracks me up almost every night.

My tivo suggestions are wierd though.  I get a certain amount of disney on the list, as well as almost every CSI-type show that exists.  Sometimes I indulge the tivo and try to watch them, but mostly I just delete.  Because how many times do I need to watch an innocent bystander find the body of an attractive young woman/child in a dumpster/abandoned building/hole/grassy field/playground?  Not so much my thing, tivo.

I find my television viewing to be in one of two categories:  do it yourself cooking, crafting, or home decorating, or prime time drama- House, Heros, etc.  I would actually like to watch more fiction and less Martha, but I just don't know what to watch that doesn't start with CSI.  Any suggestions?

Okay, I might as well have been discussing my lunch on this entry.  I'm out of practice with this newfangled internet blogging thing.  I'll get back in the rhythm of it all, I promise.  I'm finding myself thinking of great topics to write about, but my mommy memory is so shot, I find myself standing there five minutes later with a pen in hand wondering just what was so important that I had to pause Oprah to write about it.

normalcy

Brother drama:  My brother has been binging now off and on (mostly on) for two weeks.  He seems to have a regular relationship with the police.  Luckily for me, I haven't had to take any more difficult calls at difficult hours.  He did grace the family with an episode of falling-downness on Saturday when he came to my grandmother's 95th birthday trashed.  It was out of control.  But everyone seemed to handle it okay, he was escorted home without a hitch, and life goes on.  I guess I'm just learning to live my own life, as difficult as it may seem.  And when the woman told me that "you need to do something about your brother" I didn't splash my drink in her face, as much as I wanted.  Because see, I'm growing.

Brooke suggested in the comments last post that he had a psych diagnosis beyond alcoholism and I'm inclined to agree.  I'm trying not to get too wound up in his illness, so I'm just passing on information to my parents.  After all, aren't they supposed to be the ones doing all the worrying?  I've realized in the past week that part of my protecting myself is not to get involved in hours long phone conversations about my brother.  It doesn't help me any, and if anything they just make me more upset.  It's all about boundaries.

Baby:  So I'm now just about 37 weeks along.  Which means the baby is term, and could come any time.  It's funny, I've definitely crossed over into the next phase of pregnancy.  For most of the pregnancy people have told me that I'm carrying small, or that I don't look pregnant, or that I'm glowing or whatever shit they come up with.  But this past weekend I heard a lot of people say such friendly things as "you look like you could go any day now."  and "I can tell you're ready to deliver that baby!"  or "are you STILL pregnant?"  (word of advice- don't say these things to pregnant women.  At this point, 3-5 weeks is simply boring, drawn-out torture and your friendly observations about our size or apparent disheveled fatigue aren't really welcome.)  Yes, I do still have 3-5 weeks left, and public commentary about my size is not welcome.

I also got to hear a lot about other people's pregnancies this weekend.  Or more to the point, their birthing nightmare stories.  I heard about the woman who only experienced 20 minutes of labor, and was 2 minutes away from giving birth in the hospital parking lot. She was bitter because the doula (prepaid) missed the birth.  I heard about the woman who labored for 36 hours the first time, then had the second in 2 hours, and hadn't had time to even fill the birthing tub with water before her second was born.  And I heard about the second child who came 3 weeks early.  That would be tomorrow, my friends.  I'm ready to have a baby, but I'm not ready to have a baby tomorrow.  I have a very important meeting on Wednesday, and I really need to be able to drive the hour there and back without worrying about whether I should be breathing through the contractions or I should just pull off the freeway and push.

This is the hardest part of pregnancy.  The nausea sucks, the fatigue is hard, and in general, pregnancy is not a pleasant journey for most women.  But the last few weeks, when you just don't know when it's going to happen and you have more time than usual to ruminate on things like pain, gore, possible complications, and how to break it to your mother that you will not allow her into your home for 48 hours after the birth- that's the hardest part.  Because it could come in a day, with a short labor and relatively little difficulty.  But it could also wait until the very last second, take days of laboring, and then have to happen with multiple medical interventions.  And there's no way to know for sure.

So keep your fingers crossed that I won't be one of those people delivering in their car with the shaking hands of a random passerby as my only support, and that I won't be one of those poor women who has to waddle up to the hospital completely beaten after 43 weeks of pregnancy only to be given an emergency c-section after 48 hours of back labor.  Just make me normal.  That's all I ask.

sick sick sick

I'm sick.  I've been sick since last Saturday, which makes 10 days now.  The lentil had a little runny nose and was a bit whiney, and I seem to have caught it.  Only the little runny nose and whiney-ness on him has turned into bronchitis on me.  I don't wear bronchitis well.

Days 1-3:  fatigued, a little stuffy, and my throat was kind of funky.  I was able to clean out the garage with sweets and we organized the baby clothes, so I felt like I was going to get better soon.  Just a little cold, a minor inconvenience.  On day 3 I had a prenatal appointment and the midwife offered to write me a precription for my cough.  I refused, thinking the cough was just a minor inconvenience and would go away shortly.  I rarely get coughs, so I thought it was going to be some little cold and I would get better.  As long as I got a substantial nap in the afternoon, all was well.  And since I'm almost 9 months pregnant, it's hard to distinguish between the pregnancy stuff and the cold stuff.

Day 4- after spending all night watching television and coughing, I called the midwife back and asked for the prescription after all.  She gave me a 5 night's supply of Tylenol #3 (with codeine) to help me sleep.  Take half a pill, she instructed, and if that doesn't work, take a whole pill.  I skipped my appointments that day and skipped rehearsal, but I still didn't feel any better.  That night I took half a pill, then another half, and was still up most of the night.  I was groggy and sick, but the cough was relentless.  Sweets is now sleeping in the baby's room on an inflatable mattress.  Yet I'm still optimistic, and make plans to get together with a friend later in the week. 

Day 5 - I try to ignore the fact that I'm majorly sick.  I scale back on my activities, but still manage to call a million elder-care agencies trying to find a place to put my alcoholic uncle so my grandmother doesn't go crazy trying to take care of him.

Day 6- I spend the morning at the Indian Health Service hospital, trying to get more cough medication.  The five day supply is running out and I need something stronger.  I'm totally miserable and fall asleep in the waiting room.  I wait 2 hours to be seen, with nary a peep from the outpatient clinic before I lose my patience and leave.  I have to go to a family meeting to report on all I've learned about elder services in the area, and I decide that my cold will just have to wait until after that meeting.  When I arrive my uncle (the narcissistic one) says "you shouldn't be here."  Thanks for the welcome.  I report on my findings, convince alcoholic uncle to move into an assisted living facility, and leave after AAA comes to open the door to my car.  Yes, in the middle of all this I've locked my keys in the car.  Cry all the way home.

Day 7: drag self to urgent care.  Decide that paying for the visit is worth it and I can't wait any longer for IHS to get their act together.  End up spending 1 hour and 45 minutes waiting to be seen.  The doctor refuses to give me any medication for my cough, but does prescribe antibiotics with the caveat that it's probably a virus and the antibiotics won't work anyway.  I agree, but it's my only hope.  Rush to pharmacy, then take antibiotics in parking lot once prescription is filled.

Day 9: spend day in bed.  Watch 3 hours of "My Life on the D-List".  Cry when Kathy Griffin's father dies.  Force self to go to bed and sleep instead of watching more.  Totally addicted to Kathy Griffin.  In the afternoon I picked up lentil from school and went to the bookstore to buy Harry Potter.  Of course, they were sold out.  Somewhere in here I pulled a muscle in my ribs, and now coughing hurts even more.  More than when it hurt my lungs and burned my throat, more than when it made my head throb.  Tell the lentil all about the martini I'm going to enjoy the second the baby is born.

Day 10: wake up with a raging headache, sore ribs, unbelievable cough, useless antibiotics, fatigue, and a houseguest.  Yes, sweets has a friend staying over, so I can't even cough all night because houseguest is sleeping in the baby's room and sweets is back in bed with me.

Oh, and coughing?  This is what it's like:  The baby's head is low, so every time I cough I get this horrible pain in my cervix like it's getting hit with a hammer.  Often I pee uncontrollably.  My ribs spasm with the pulled muscle.  I have sciatica, so coughing also causes a shooting pain down my left leg.  My head feels like it's going to explode.  My chest aches from all the coughing and my throat is sore.  There's a sore lump in my mouth from where I fell asleep sucking on a cough drop.  And my throat itches constantly because I'm trying to cough as little as possible.  Add congestion and fatigue and that's my morning.

I haven't been this miserable in a long time.  I would give anything to just be pregnant again.