Holy Sick

I've been sick.

Usually, my sick the last, oh 15 years, has been colds. Sinus colds, strep throat maybe. Might have had an ear infection or two.

Have I ever mentioned how much I despise being nauseous? (Or is it, nauseated?) I would frankly rather go through labour than throw up. Pain, I can handle that. Vomiting, not so much. If I had been so blessed as to have morning sickness, you can bet that I would not have four children at this moment. If I should ever get cancer, God forbid, I'm going to be one sad and pathetic chemo patient.

Seriously, it's been more than 17 years since I last had the stomach flu. I can remember specifically when it last happened.

Last Tuesday, Wednesday-ish, I had been having the odd queasy feeling that would prompt me to take a reeeaally big breath. One of my coping mechanisms for nausea.

And then on Thursday morning after taking Jairus to school, I hit this wall. Suddenly all my energy was gone. It was time to put the baby down for a nap and I told the girls that I needed to lie down with her. They were thrilled to postpone school for a few episodes of Scooby Doo. When I woke up with the baby about an hour and a half later, I felt no better, in fact, worse.

I managed to get the girls some lunch and then things took a turn for the really worse, prompting a series of texts to James to hightail it home, in no uncertain terms. Fortunately he was able to do this. He got home just in time to get Jairus from school.

I'll spare you the details of the following 12 hours.

And of course, the best time of year to have the stomach flu is leading into Thanksgiving. I thought I'd be fine by Saturday, but by noon, I was still incredibly energy-less (effects of the Gravol I think), dizzy and lots of other negative type stuff. (yeah, I'm still sparing you). So James took the kids and went off to my side of the family's dinner.

Sunday was somewhat better but I was still rather dizzy and had no strength. Still, I packed pillows around myself and we went up north for James' side of things.

By Monday I could honestly say "almost", when the girls asked me if I was better yet. Almost was good enough to get up and put the house back in order....

Hhyyeah.

You know, a while back my very good friend introduced me to Flylady. But even before that, I had read Managers of their Homes, a home-organization-while-you're-homeschooling book. It showed how to lay out a week of activities and schooling on a nice big colourful schedule, ensuring that everything needed to be done had a time and a time for everything that needed to be done. (Sorry, that's my wordy variation of a place for everything....)

Many proponents of this kind of scheduling insist that with all of your life on a lovely clockwork schedule, clearly laid out with a colour for each kid, if you should fall ill, anyone could pick up your schedule and fall into place, directing all the little soldiers into their proper order. Likewise with Flylady, although she of course focuses on keeping your house clean. With a schedule of cleaning tasks laid out in your 'control journal', hubby or MIL, or whomever can easily take over the running of the household and keep all in order while you are sick or away.

It just sounds SOOO....organized? Coordinated? OCD???!

Well, whatever it is, I wish I was it. For the state of my house after a few days of being incapacitated was truly frightening. After our marathon of cleaning yesterday, things feel MUCH better but somewhere deep still lurks that nasty pessimism that it's only a matter of time.....I like to think about a statement I read somewhere that trying to keep a clean house when you have young children is about as sensible as shoveling while it's still snowing outside.

******************JOB UPDATE**********************

It's now been a week since the job listing closed and I'll admit, we were a little discouraged not to hear anything by last weeks end. But discussing this with James' brother and father yesterday yielded a fresh batch of ENcouragement as it was well agreed that they might not have everything ready to start contacting possible interviewees. They both agreed that James should call, even though there's no contact person on the listing and it might amount to talking to an HR Dept. Administrative assistant.

Sooo, this is just what he did today. He called the department and spoke to said AA who gave him the name of the person in charge of hiring for the job. He left a message for this person who called him back shortly after and said that they were still organizing the resumes and hadn't yet started contacting people. This person (he, she? dunno) invited him to call back in a week if he hadn't heard anything. Yay!

Meanwhile James is considering starting the process of getting his A+ Certification. This was one of the "would be an asset" notes in the job listing. It's a basic computer knowledge/IT kind of training. James did a little research and found some sample questions....put it this way, I was answering some of the questions. We figure it would look really good if he could get the first of the two tests that make up the certification under his belt and be able to say that he was well into the process of getting the whole thing during an interview.

You'll never guess what I did today. I reactivated my Facebook account. I started thinking of it a few weeks ago when a friend announced a serious health crisis concerning one of her kids on FB and my mom had to tell me after reading it there. And, there have been a few situations over the past almost two years since I got off that I kinda wished I was still on. Mostly seeing photos of friends and events. So, I'm giving it a try again....my first status update was that "I caved....but I won't be here much, so email me if you really want to talk". I really hope to stick to that because I really truly can't take another thing in my life that needs to be done. I'm still thinking it's kindof a big thing that I'm doing any blogging.

And often still feel guilty that I'm doing that.....