So I hurt myself this week. I pinched a nerve in my neck. I would love to say it was doing something exciting, like making a spectacular dive in flaming dodge-ball or rescuing a family of four from a freak runaway golf cart accident. In reality I slept on it funny. In my defense I was hopped on Nyquil when I went to bed so I could have been sleeping on my head in a box of nails and I wouldn’t have noticed at the time.
When I woke up Monday morning I couldn’t move. I looked like a cross between the Hunchback of Notre Dame and Medusa. (Oh I fell asleep with wet hair too, not a pretty look the morning after.) After a trip to the doctor I was put on medication and sent straight to bed, leaving my husband in charge of the kiddo.
Greg is not what you would call the domestic type. Granted, he is great with a grill or a take-out menu so I knew that we wouldn’t starve; but I was a little concerned. You see I tend to be pretty, well what’s the nice way to say it… Type A. You could call it bossy with a touch of controlling on the side. So relinquishing the reigns to dear old hubby took some restraint, pain be damned. Here is what I learned this week:
1. It doesn’t really matter if your daughter’s clothes match completely… or at all. She will function just fine at school even if she is wearing black leggings with a brown, pink and blue striped shirt and orange socks. On the plus side we can always just tell people she dressed herself.
2. There is always an episode of Law and Order on somewhere, and there is nothing better if you are stuck in bed for a couple of days.
3. Even though it seems like it, the pile of dirty laundry can never actually get taller than you. Gravity has a way of fixing that. Living with a ginormous pile of laundry for a few days is better than nagging your husband into doing it, especially if he has the tendency to shrink sweaters and turn white t-shirts pink.
4. There seems to be a trend with the girly pop stars’ videos. One that involves explosive bras… shooting sparks, fireworks and whipped cream. I am not sure where they purchase these bras and what purpose they serve… Oh and I need to buy some new bras. Your mind tends to wander weird places when you are on pain medication.
5. It is really sweet to sit and listen to your husband and your child just play. This week they had a tea party and a wrestling match. They watched some movies and she colored pictures for him. I have to remember how important it is for her to have some time with just Daddy, important for both of them.
6. It is also important to remember how hard Daddy tried this week; cooking, “cleaning”, and taking care of me in general. Even when I was crabby and mean and only wanted to point out that he got more food on the stove then he got on the plate. Or when he spilled milk all over the counter and “forgot” to clean it up. Instead, I have to remember he spilled cooking for me and caring for our daughter.
7. Even if I am hurt I need to reign in my crabbiness. It is hard for anyone to want to take care of you if you snark at them non-stop. This is the toughest lesson to learn, one that I am still working on. So today I am looking for a sweet little thank you for my dear husband. I am thinking nothing says I love you like chocolate covered bacon… But then I may be nursing him back to health from a heart attack. Maybe not. He can be such a bear when he is sick.
Okay, okay. I admit it. I have been gone for a while. Life just snuck up on me and before you know it a couple weeks had passed me by why my blog sat… lonely and neglected. And for what? Well, I am not sure really. I mean, it has been hectic in the “life is crazy just get used to it” kind of way. Hmmmm, here is what I have to show for the past few weeks:
When my daughter says you look sparkly it is not a compliment. Sounds counterintuitive right? I firmly belong to the “more bling is always better” school of thought. And who doesn’t want a little sparkle in their life? The other day however, my kiddo was just finishing in the bathtub. “Mom, my fingers are sparkly,” she said looking at them quizzically. I held her water-wrinkled little hand looking intently for some rogue glitter that Johnson & Johnson may have missed. (I will cry when we outgrow the ubiquitous pink bottle by the way. It smells like baby heaven.) She pointed to her pruney fingers; “see they are sparkly like great mammo’s fingers.” (Sigh.) I will not tell my grandma the new meaning for sparkly. After all, she is the one who taught me to love the bling.
My dog’s strength is directly proportional to how much he hates something. His name is Hank, and he is 35 pounds of personality. I am convinced he is half beagle and half demon, sent to punish me for my sins. (I am Catholic, okay. Guilt is part of the package.) There are days when Hank is too weak to drag his body off of the couch to go outside. He has whined to be helped onto the bed and then lacked the strength to do anything but flop onto the pillows. And yet, in a recent trip to the vet, it took my husband AND the vet tech four sets of arms to hold him down while the vet gave him… wait for it… nasal spray. Then Hank had the strength of 10 beagles, and was not afraid to use it. Whipping his head back and forth he barked as if the devil himself was trying to vaccinate him. If there were only some way we could harness this power for good and not evil, I think the whole energy crisis would be solved. We would be a beagle powered society. That’s green, right?
I suck at economics. This semester it is my whole focus. I thought I would get my economics requirements out of the way. I thought the plan was pretty brilliant, if I do say so myself. Might as well keep my brain in economics mode all semester, right? I have Microeconomics on Mondays, Macroeconomics on Tuesdays and “Panics, Depressions and Recessions” online. Doesn’t that sound fun? There was only one flaw in my plan. I am not an economist. Therefore there is a limit to how much a non-economist can absorb any given week. It is a problem. The main problem is the reading. Not that it isn’t interesting, it is… sometimes. It is just that I can’t get more than three or four pages in without falling asleep. Which brings me to my next point:
I am very well rested.
Finally, my daughter turned four this week. We had a party (I will tell you all about that later) and we ate a LOT of cake. (It was delicious.) This week has been a mix of emotions for me though. My baby is getting BIG. (sob) It really hit me this week, watching her strut her four-year-old stuff. She is not a baby anymore. She is not even a toddler… she is a little kid. Excuse me while I go sit in the corner and cry a little. Pass the chocolate please.
a life just ordinary 