Goopy Eyes

You may have noted that I have not posted anything for 2 weeks now--there is a reason for that. The kids have been sick for the last 2 weeks. Not just sick, but sick with complications, as is usually the case with our asthmatic and allergy ridden stock. I'll admit it, it comes from my side of the family--but, while we may be ill, at least we're dominant.
So anyways, it all started when Benson got a cough on Friday the 12th. Kayla came down with it on Sunday. Then about a week in, when normal children would have started to get better, things took a turn for the worse. Kayla woke up with "goopy eyes", more commonly known as "conjunctivitis" or in layman's terms "pink eye". The only way I could get her to let me clean the green bugars expelling from her tear ducts was to tell her that worms would grow in her eyes if she didn't let me. Since this worked for her eyes, I told her if she didn't also blow her nose that the same consequences applied. Then of course, Benson got the goop too. There is nothing more disgusting or more horrifying to a germ-o-phobe like me than goopy eyes. My hands are now dry and crackley from the 100 washings a day.
As if this weren't bad enough, Benson spent two nights screaming bloody murder and was totally inconsolable. Ear infection. We got him on antibiotics on Friday and he is morphing back into my chubby smiling ball.
Kayla meanwhile is on a new treatment from her homeopathic doctor which includes no foods with artificial colors or preservatives, everything organic, fresh produce only, soy milk when she has a cold, and Pulsatilla (a homeopathic remedy for her goopiness). Of course, the first night she was on this treatment she woke up and puked up a ball of phlegm. The doctor said that was a good sign, it was doing it's job of expelling the phlegm from her system--that it was...
Both kids are on crazy allergy and asthma drugs. I say "crazy" mostly because it makes them "crazy", and in turn makes me "crazy". The goal, with the help of our homeopathic doctor, Meenakshi Bhargava (but we call her Meena), is to wean them off of these poison drugs and let their systems heal themselves naturally. It all makes perfect sense really--it does make me a little bit sick when I think about all the crap we consume daily without a thought. We've all heard Dr. Oz say it--"if you can't pronounce it, you shouldn't eat it". However, Ryan is wincing at the cost of the new lifestyle as "Meena" is not covered by insurance and we now shop at Whole Foods.
Today is Sunday--it's been 2 weeks and 2 days since I have had any more than 2 hours of uninterrupted sleep. I didn't know that it was possible for a human to function with this little sleep...

Glorious Water

Oh how we take delicous, cleansing and almighty water for granted... Our water was shut off for 32 hours this week--26 of them were consecutive. Yes, I said it: CONSECUTIVE. Makes it hard to wash your hands, do dishes, flush the toilet, and of course showering, forget about it. As you know, we live in a condo, so we were definitely not alone in our duress. Over 150 of us folks here in the Tradewinds were without such luxuries. Emotions were running high. Luckily, the water main that had the leak was located just a stone's throw from our balcony so that we were able to monitor the gaping man-size boobee trap hole in the lawn and the progress of the morons trying to fix it. Naturally, Ryan was down there watching, as if plumbing were a spectator sport. He would try and act heroic as he threw on his beanie and said, "I'm gonna go see what these monkeys are doing!" when really we all knew that he was thoroughly enjoying himself down there with the dirt, tools and Bobcat Excavator. Sometimes it took him up to an hour to "see what those monkeys were doing". As he left me in the home with the two children, rotting dishes in the sink and a toilet full of stinkie pee.

The water was shut off without warning on Wednesday...all day. It returned by 5, but the problem had only been diagnosed. They sent out a bulletin that it would be shut off on Thursday from 9 to 5. Translation: they were supposed to get the water working by 5 on Thursday...well, 6, 7, 8,...all went by without a drop from the tap. Finally around midnight we looked out our window and what to our wondering eyes did appear?

Something that looked a lot like this. The monkeys obviously weren't doing much of anything down there. I went to bed dirty and constipated. It wasn't until noon on Friday that I was finally able to wash my hands. That is, AFTER we spent the afternoon purging the taps of the brownness that was plaguing our pipes and then scrubbing the tub, toilet and sinks to a respectable shine.
Meanwhile, we had Kayla's dental procedure on Friday morning, on which I will blog at a later date when I can find the exact words to describe the ordeal. For now, I am going to do some dishes and enjoy my tap water (that is PS still spewing microscopic bits of sediment, shard if you will. Last week I might have minded washing my hair in water with bits of dirt in it...today I just remind myself not to open my mouth).

Job Satisfaction

It's the little jewels of motherhood, like this grazing rhinocerous, that remind me what a priceless sense of humor my "co-workers" have. I found this little guy on my kitchen table about an hour after I had put Kayla to bed the other night. When or why she had placed him just so, I know not--I suppose she thought if she wasn't going to finish her carrots that someone should, or perhaps she just thought that he needed to eat in solitude...maybe just a short attention span--what I wouldn't give to witness the thought process of a 3-year old... At any rate, I had a good laugh and was brought out of my "Ryan's going back to work tomorrow and I'm alone again with the savages" slump.