Bad Habits And Typhoid Mary

   Don't you love it when you have a three day weekend and you have some plans to get shit done, to manage to finally check a few things off on the eight mile long to-do list that you have been trying to get to for months and then BAM!!! -- sickness. I cooked myself a pot of crockpot lima beans, some of the best things ever, and I got sooooo sick after eating them. I thought I had managed to give myself food poisoning. How did you manage to poison yourself with lima beans, you might ask. Well, I'm Southern, and while lima beans might seem like a nice healthy option, nothing remains healthy after a Southern person gets a hold of it. My lima beans were cooked with ham hock, to give them flavor, and I thought the ham hock had gone bad or something, because I was sick, bad sick, and my stomach felt like it was trying to escape.
   So I slumped around the house, whining, got on facebook, and whined, and did my usual 'curl up at the bottom of the shower', with lots of hot water, as a method of pain management, and I whined there too. There was an awful lot of whining going on, and I even went over to my sister's and whined as well. What can I say? I used to be all stoic and 'eff you pain', but I've gotten soft. Don't judge me.
    Needless to say, my to-do list was ignored. But as I slumped around the house, sick as a dog, unable to keep anything in my stomach, trying to find something, anything, that wouldn't come up, I realized that my daughter has a really, really bad habit. I've known this for a while, because I've been cleaning up after this habit for a while. but for some reason this habit just hit me as I fought this war with my body, trying desperately to force my digestive system to fall back in line. I went to get a package of saltine crackers, and I knew that we had some because the box was still in the cabinet, so I reached in for a package and found -- air. The box sitting there in the cabinet, bold as you please, was empty. Because my daughter had taken the last pack, but she left the box as a kind of momento: crackers were here. But now, they were gone. And I realized that this wasn't the first time either, because I started recalling empty hot pocket boxes, empty pop tart boxes, and a long, long list of other food items, whose empty boxes I have been culling from the cabinets, fridge, and freezer for months. Ack! How did I not nip this in the bud already? I am death on cleaning; I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! So anything that reeks of me having to clean up some one else's mess when they are perfectly able to doing said cleaning on their own is usually nipped in the bud. All I can do is repeat what I have already said: I'm getting soft. However, I have not gotten so soft that I am allowing this habit to continue. Now that I acknowledge the problem's existence, the problem will be eradicated.
   And the three day weekend, which wasn't really a weekend at all being as these days off fell on Tues-Thurs, passed with me believing that I had poisoned myself with my own cooking. Then came today (Friday), which was my first day back to work, and my daughter is being considerate and asking me if I am feeling better and I am telling her I do feel better and thanking her for asking. The next words out of her mouth are, "I hope I don't get sick. Kids in class have been getting that stomach flu all week."
 

Treacherous little Typhoid Mary. 

   

Moms Don't Get Sick Days

   When you have a job, and you get sick, the expected thing to do is to go to the doctor's, get medication, and if necessary, call in sick. No one wants those germs. But even if you can't call in sick, because you can't afford to and are out of sick time, or you have an important project deadline coming up, or for whatever reason, there is still the expectation that when you get home, you will be able to rest. Take some medicine, get in your jammies, put your feet up and rest.
   This is not the case with moms. Whether single or working, moms don't get to call out. No matter how sick we are, the kids need feeding, housework needs doing, and no one seems to believe that the world will continue to turn if you take a rest. This is true for all mothers; we have all been there.
   This is the truth that I face today. Of course, I have always known this, but I like to complain. And this week has not started off in the best manner. Saturday, I suddenly came down with the cold from Hell, and there was no warning. I was fine one hour, the next hour my nose was a leaky faucet. Are you kidding me??? How did this happen? Well, both my niece and my daughter were sick a few weeks ago, but then my sister caught the dreaded cold, so I made sure to stay away from that sick-o. She can keep her germs, and when she recovered from runny nose hell while I only experienced a sore throat, I thought I had managed to evade that little germ, everyone has been recovered for a while and I was still going strong.
    Nope. No such luck. Saturday, I went from being fine to being sicker than a dog, and so I decided that I needed to stay the night at my sister's apartment, so she could take care of me. (Considerate, right? I thought so, hehehehe <----evil laughter.) But that wasn't really helpful, because we stayed up most of the night watching horror movies, so I didn't get much rest. That Sunday at work, I was miserable. But when  I went home, what did I do? Well, I had to hold off on the Nyquil, because Monday was my daughter's field day. Since someone has been feeding that child Miracle Grow behind my back, she currently only possesses one pair of shorts that fit, which needed to be washed, but she had to have them for field day. So I had to do laundry. She also needed something to eat. Since I am not in the habit of serving up a nice, tasty dish of Miracle Grow, I had to fix her something to eat. Well, I eventually went to bed, and earlier than usual, but then I got woken up because the shower curtain had fallen down on my daughter while she was showering and getting ready for bed, so I got up and put the shower curtain back up. Then someone knocked at the door, so I stormed to the door and opened it only to immediately slam said door in some person's face. I don't know whose, because I didn't really look. In my defense, at this time I was under the influence of Nyquil, and I had only been asleep for less than two hours. I am really a bear when I wake up, so this unidentified person was lucky, in retrospect: I didn't eat him.
   Since I was up and in a pissy mood anyway, I put the dishes in the dishwasher, and then I went back to bed, only to have to get up at seven. I didn't have to be to work until eleven, but there is this little thing called getting my daughter to school that I have to do every weekday. I work shift work, so sometimes I go in at nine, sometimes I go in at noon, and sometimes I go in at four in the afternoon, and every other time between, but regardless of when  I have to go in, I have to get up at seven in the morning to get my daughter to school.
   These are things that all moms are familiar with. Even when sick, we still find ourselves taking care of the family, getting housework done, nursing other sick family members, and all the other little things that keep our homes running smoothly. We don't get to call in sick because apparently if we did, the world would stop in it's tracks. This is being mom; no sick days. Good thing we are a hardy breed, full of strength, the backbone of our species, and it's a really good thing that we love our most important work: our family.