Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen...

Hopefully this posting isn't a total downer, as that is not my intention. It's just been an extraordinarily rough week and a half around here.

Which explains the gap in my otherwise fairly regular blogging schedule.

Here's a rundown:

1. Our toddler son got sick with the flu. In our bed (where else, I ask you?). That evening before bed, he didn't seem his usual self, and complained, "I feel icky". Call me crazy, but rather that not sleep at all worrying he'd puke in his own bed and choke on it while I slept soundly in my own room, I just brought him into our room to more closely monitor the situation.

Mind you, he's never been sick before (except with a case of the sniffles at about 6 months old), so I took this chance figuring that this, too, would be a false alarm. Not so.

He got really sick, which resulted in one of those lovely 2 am work parties, whereby not one, but two grumpy, sleep deprived parents were rousted from their 'slumber' and had to tag team getting our bed stripped of every last shred of bedding, toss it in the wash, all while getting Judah's clothes off of him, running a bath, cleaning the poor kid up, cleaning our mattress off, then getting the bed made up again, our boy dried off, dressed and tucked back in (this time on a stack of flannel receiving blankets as a precaution).

Of course, there was very little point in my even trying to sleep the rest of that night, so I read while Jeff opted to put up with the intermittent 'sleep'.


Judah, who did not know what on earth was happening to him while he continued to toss his cookies every 15 minutes or so ad nauseum (which I'm pretty sure was a latin phrase coined by some parent after just such a night), freaked out, and wanted to hang onto my arm (for moral support, I suppose) and only my arm. Though this kid regularly bypasses me in favor of daddy, nobody but mom would do when sick.


Finally, around 8:30 am, Judah's tummy finally calmed down and we got to sleep for a solid three hours.

We were rudely awakened later that morning by yet another episode of sickness. That was when Judah did something that nothing in all my days of babysitting, nannying and parenting over the last 2 1/2 decades had prepared me for. Judah, my sweet little cherub, was so grossed out by the taste left on his lips that he looked piteously at me and proceeded to spit 'raspberry' style (or zzerbert if you live in the Midwest)...all. over. my. face! Ewww! Lucky me.

Now ya'll already know I don't do puke well. Add to this that I'm a bit of a hypochondriac where germs are concerned. If I even hear of someone getting some illness, and they've breathed the same air I breathed, I'll worry. And fret. And think I'm coming down with it. And take Airborne. And lots and lots of vitamins and supplements. And scrub my hands (or in this case) my face until there could not possibly be a germ left.

I'm also known to routinely wipe down cart handles and door handles with disinfectant wipes, and to insist on each person with me washing hands with baby wipes in the car as a second line of defense. And don't even get me started on the notes sent home from school alerting parents that there have been cases of lice or scabies or some such thing reported at school.

As it turns out, while I did have the characteristic aches of a flu bug, as well as the roiling digestive upset, I never did actually get sick sick. I'm not sure which is worse though...worrying about it and feeling like you're coming down with it for several days, or just contracting it and getting it over and done with in a day or two. Ugh. Lot of good all that extra handwashing did me!

Little Judah, being a hardy kid, seemed to be on the upswing after 36 hours, so we all rallied and ventured out to the grocery store for some supplies. He asked daddy for a cookie from the bakery (where they give free cookies to the kiddos), and happy to see some interest in food again, daddy complied. Judah took a couple of bites as they were walking away, and while Jeff turned to look down each aisle for me, Judah proceeded to, um, toss his cookies (and I don't mean the one in his hand) all over Jeff's shirt and the grocery store floor. Lucky Jeff.

Meanwhile, I'm dashing through the store trying to make short work of shopping, because I'm feeling pretty yucky and achy myself and just wanted to get home to bed, when my mommy radar intercepts an incoming signal.

Or maybe it was just the intercom in the store, blaring "Immediate cleanup needed on aisle 8".

Though my kids have never puked in public before, somehow I just knew that call had something to do with our clan, and that was before our older son Jericho skidded to a stop at the end of the cereal aisle arms flailing, then came dashing breathlessly towards me to give me the lowdown, complete with a very descriptive re-enactment and to inform me that daddy had promptly taken little brother to the car.

We headed straight for the checkout. Where Jericho couldn't help but to keep looking at the scene of the accident on Aisle 8 (where they had cordoned it off with caution tape and cones until some poor soul was brave enough to clean it up).


By the time I got out to the car, poor Jeff was sitting there, green around the gills himself, and our poor little guy was already strapped in his carseat, half clothed and covered with a spare sweatshirt that was in the backseat, because apparently, our diaper bag was MIA. As in left behind at someone's house a couple of days earlier.

Which meant no baby-wipes with which to wash our hands. Hands which suddenly felt dirtier than usual. Oy.

To put it mildly, Jeff was not a happy camper, and we roared out of that parking the second the groceries were loaded in. He did manage to laugh a bit, telling me about the poor courtesy clerks expression when she witnessed the puke on the floor at Jeff's feet. She looked up at him with a horrified expression as though HE had been responsible, and Jeff had to clarify, "It was my son!" (Kind of like Jerry Seinfeld that time in the taxi when the beautiful woman saw him scratching his nose and thought he was picking it...). She obviously hadn't belived him, as the puke was on his shirt, lol.

But even just talking about this made me feel sicker than a dog, and just like a dog traveling by car, I had to keep my nose glued to the barely open window to provide sufficient ventilation to prevent any cases of contagious spontaneous puking from occuring in the passenger side of the car, while still preventing the cold wind outside from getting back to where our pitiful (albeit relatively chipper), if half-clothed toddler was covered only by the extra sweatshirt.


We were a sorry mess.

Late that night, Jeff came down with the flu.


The good news is that here a week later, we seem to be much better healthwise.


2. This past Saturday, we took our church youth group on a sledding trip to the mountains, only to get all the way there and find that nearly all the snow had melted. With the exception of a very small shaded patch on a school campus which some family friends that lived in the area helped us to find (thanks Dean & Amber!).

While on this sledding-trip-that-almost-didn't-happen, two of our teen girls decided to sneak off to the nearby town a couple of blocks away while we were setting out lunch for everyone. They were supposed to be sledding on the hill which was close to where we were, just up around a corner and out of sight.

As you can imagine, this caused great anxiety and concern for us, as the responsible parties, for nearly a half hour before they were finally located. These girls had never done such a thing before, and in fact, in all our years of working with the youth group, such a thing has never happened before.

Oy, did they hear it from my husband when they finally showed up! They're also banned from the next couple of outings and got it from their parents when they got to their respective homes that evening.

3. 20 gazillion loads of laundry (thanks to both the flu and the 'sledding' trip)

4. We've had 5 (that's not a typo...five) deaths in our community that have directly touched our lives in the last 10 days. Three of those being dear old folks that attended our church for many years, and the other two being a couple of young people in our community that were recently murdered. My husband had both of these young people as students in his classes at school over the years.


I managed to attend two of the memorial services, but that was pretty much all I could rally for. Though the two I attended were joyful homegoings for two dear, sweet women that I know are now in Heaven, and who were wonderful ladies that left beautiful legacies of faith and love, I now realize that a person is not emotionally equipped to attend more than one or two of these in a weeks time, especially after recent bouts with the flu, severe lack of sleep, and after pondering at length the senseless murders of two young people.

To say I've been feeling a little bit wrung out is a bit of an understatement.


In the odd hours that I was awake and coherent in between all of these events (and wasn't hauling our older son to and from school or had a toddler wanting me to hold him more than usual), I was just plain too weary to do much by way of blogging.

So I blew through my TBR (to be read) stack of books...the Mitford series by Jan Karon. Well, the first seven, anyway. I still have two to go, but I've decided to slow up a bit, as the books are worth savoring. Discussing with others. Mulling over.


I must say, that these were the perfect books to read under such circumstances. I was swept away to a sunny place, and actually laughed a number of times. Her characters are amazing, and you feel like you know (or would enjoy knowing) most of these people after reading the books. I also felt like some of the themes in that series were particularly apropo.

But of course, getting out to my Bible Study helped, too. For me there is nothing as reassuring as being reminded that God is still on His Throne to help put things in perspective.

Please don't think that I'm wallowing in grief. Amazingly, I'm not. There is something... comforting in knowing that the dear folks from our church were all longtime believers in Christ that have now gone on to their reward. From our perspective, there was a striking contrast between them, having lived long, full lives...and then two young people whose lives were prematurely and violently ended. It's more just feeling for their grieving parents, who never expected their children to precede them in death, and certainly not under such circumstances.

There is much more I'd like to say on this topic, but I'll have to save that for another time.

5. On a lighter note, Judah was just disciplined for not staying at the table with his food, and was crying way more than was warranted for the situation because he's overly tired.

Doing his homework in the kitchen, Jericho commented, "Man, Judah cries waaaay too much."

Hearing this, Judah stopped suddenly, mid cry and said, "Shub-up, Jay-co!"

He's not even 2 1/2 for pity's sake, and already we've moved into needing to settle sibling disputes? Oy. Maybe I'll go start that next Jan Karon book after all.