I think that those of you who know me well would agree that I am generally a pretty positive person. I tend to see the glass half full for the most part and I try to play the roll of the optimist as much as I can. So believe me when I tell you that a few weeks ago, I had a truly HORRIBLE week. It's taken me this long to even be able to write about it!
As part of Jason's job, he travels a good bit. This is something we've prayed about alot and even though we agree that it is not ideal, we are both comfortable that he (we) are doing exactly what the Lord would have us to be doing at this phase of our lives. Well. He had a 10 day trip planned to the states during the week and a half leading up to Easter. He would be returning Easter afternoon. I was not looking forward to this particular trip for selfish reasons. One being that he was going to be in Georgia with a lot of our family. Also, we had just come off of an emotionally trying month, and I was just feeling kind of pity partyish and not really wanting him to leave-- not a great attitude to begin 10 days of Daddy being gone. But I did. Oops. Combine my rotten attitude with everything that went wrong and then combine that with barely opening my Bible one time to get what I needed from my God and you end up with not so great results...
Those of you who have small kids and a husband who travels know that what "they" say about everything going wrong while Daddy is away is absolutely true. I can't even count the number of times that I have locked myself out of the house when Jason is gone (ok, so that may be more of a personality thing and a story for a different day but I'm just sayin...). Thanks to all my prayer supporters specific prayers, I didn't lock myself out this particular time, but plenty of other stuff happened.
For starters, I don't sleep well while Jason is gone, I just don't. I don't know why, I"m definitely exhausted but sleep is hard to come by. Add to that the fact that my children, who pretty much always sleep in their own beds because I don't like being attacked by flying limbs in the middle of the night, seem to migrate to my bed in the middle of the night when Jason is away and leave me very little room. (but hey I'm not sleeping so what does it matter, right?).
About 6 days into this particular trip (already past the halfway mark so things should be smooth sailing!!), things took a turn from me just being whiny, not in the Word and generally grumpy, to me feeling like I was being attacked by the "daddys' gone and we're out to get you " goonies. I woke up with a HORRIBLE crick in my neck. I mean horrible. I've had these before and for the most part, I am a push on through there's too much to be done for me to be pitiful kind of person, but this was BAD! I was nauseated from the pain, couldn't turn my head any way etc etc. This lasted about 36 hours. THankfully, my girls rose to the occasion. Came to me in bed for their homeschool assignments, helped fix lunches and clean the kitchen etc. Friday (Good Friday actually) came around and I was feeling a little better but still had this awful stiffness in my neck but there was much to do so I had to press on. It was Easter weekend after all and I had lots of fun Easter things planned for the girls- resurrection eggs to tell the story of Jesus, dying easter eggs, oh and we were having around 20 people over for a big easter brunch on Sunday morning. So I headed off to the grocery to get what I needed for the meal thus beginning another avalanche of "poor me" moments... (let me just say, by the way, don't feel sorry for me about hosting a large group for a meal. That is my joy and somehow a stress relief and I was really excited about that part of the weekend. Plus, Jason would be getting home that day- a big celebration). Anyway, I digress. (sorry, I probably should have put a disclaimer at the beginning- Jason is traveling and I am short on adult conversation, thus the rambling...). Anyway, the next avalanche of events. For one thing, the stress of making a big grocery run here could be a blog post in itself. Once you have fought traffic, gotten to the store, loading your groceries back in car and gotten home, you then have to unload the groceries from behind the building, walk them to the front, pile them by the elevator, load them into the elevator, THEN get them into your house. Not exactly a stress free event. ESPECIALLY when you set one of your bags down a little too hard in the elevator, thus breaking the glass juice container and spilling pineapple juice all over the groceries- ughh! Then, I get home only to find that Naomi is pitiful and running a fever. Poor, sweet little thing...
So she had a high fever and bad cough but really no other symptoms. Since she had just had pneumonia about two weeks before, I assumed it was some sort of relapse of that.... WRONG! Unfortunately I didn't find out that I was wrong and it was actually a stomach virus until Naomi woke me up in the middle of the night throwing up all over my bed, then throwing up in the hall in a pile of clothes in the laundry basket, and finally making it to the toilet. Bless her. The whole following day she seemed a lot better and I thought we were on the mend, WRONG AGAIN! That afternoon she proceeded to throw up all over the couch (somehow she managed to miss the towels and blankets I had laid out). Thankfully she missed our persian rug so that was a plus. Poor pitiful thing. That was the last of it though, thankfully. She rallied Saturday evening and Sunday morning was ready for our Easter celebration. But the avalanche of craziness wasn't over yet! Saturday evening when I was fixing food for our Easter brunch on Sunday, I dropped a knife into the container of cooking oil that I had just bought and was trying to open. (see picture below). Instead of trying to fish the knife out of the oil, I figured I would just wait until I had used enough of the oil to reach it easily. So I put in back up into the cabinet above my spice cabinet. If only I had known what a mistake that was!
Saturday night after I went to bed, our sweet little Mia puppy who usually sleeps quite quietly and soundly under our bed was FREAKING OUT and irritating me to pieces. She kept charging through the bedroom jumping on my bed- was just very frisky. I didn't get up because I was so tired and just assumed she was stir crazy or something. Got up early Sunday morning and walked into the kitchen to find a very greasy pool in the middle of my kitchen floor. I soon realized it was also running down the side of the cabinet, pooling on the counter, and dripping through the spice cabinet. Oh my word, about one fourth of the oil contained had slowly seeped out. Apparently the knife that I dropped just barely pierced the bottom of the container and it slowly seeped out all night. Good grief! It took me about an hour to clean up the mess sending me into a panic as I hadn't exactly factored that in to getting ready for our 20 guests! About the time I got it all cleaned up, Mia emmerged from under the bed where she had been sleeping. Trouble was, she didn't exactly look like Mia.... Her head was a huge mess of cooking oil and I realized that there was no telling where she had spread the mess in my house! Thankfully by this time I knew Jason would be home in a matter of hours so I was actually able to laugh at the comedy of errors I was experiencing. A few hours later all our friends arrived for our Easter celebration and a little while later Jason was home.
He was home for about two weeks and is now traveling again. Thankfully things have been much less eventful this go round and we all seem to be keeping our sanity a little bit better!
