Trying Times

Oh Man, is this becoming a weekly blog again? Sorry about that. Too much going on. Evan was still sick all the way up until Friday the 15th, and on Monday night/Tuesday, I started coming down with it too. Then Tuesday morning I woke up with every plan to take Ardyn to daycare, go to the doctor, and then go HOME to bed, and then Ardyn started coughing too, so we were all one sick family. Ardyn and I went to the doctor, and I got some antibiotics. Then I went again yesterday, so it's pretty much been sickness this week. Evan brought us pink roses for Valentine's Day, and we pretty much spent the week eating soup and crackers and drinking gallons of water. Evan did run out for us once and brought back 7-up and popsicles. It's been especially eventful.

I felt a little better and tried to go to work on Thursday, and made it through the day, but Friday felt worse again so I took Ardyn to daycare and then came home and rested myself.

I did manage to find a rug to match Ardyn's big girl room, I wasn't looking but I just saw it and it was like, well, fate, so it's been added to the pile of things.

Today when I got up I am feeling much more myself, and when I went to let the dogs outside for the morning, their little heater had been knocked face down by someone throwing a newspaper inside the front porch and hitting the heater. Luckily the heater has a shutoff and didn't start a fire from being face down, or from having a plastic covered newspaper 2 inches from it. Duh. So I was all upset about who the hell would open the door and do that, especially when we have made COUNTLESS calls to the news tribune to ask them to STOP littering our yard with free papers that we don't ever read. Then Evan says "well, that's my Sunday paper that I subscribed to." Wha?! Subscribed? When? I insist that he never told me that, he insists that he did. I know that if he did it was in a moment when I wasn't even paying attention or something, because that's just not something I forget. Silly. So now we have a Sunday paper. I thought I might read it, but there it sits. Not sure I am up for hearing more bad news. Maybe I could just read the comics and clip coupons or something. the Sunday paper seems so.... Adult or something.

There has been alot of depressing stuff in the news lately. It's hard to be a mom when people are dying everywhere, sometimes in senseless acts of violence, and sometimes in random accidents. Friday night there was a fatal car accident nearly in my backyard. Of course I live in town, so the thought that someone could roll their vehicle so near to my house is a little bit amazing, but being as how I am an anxious person who has always dramatized the worst, I have certainly thought of it. And after I heard about the accident I of course started to think about how terrible it was that it happened, and how terrible it was that someone died, but at the same time thought about how close the accident was to my daughter's crib and to my own bed, and what if that car had rolled just 500 feet closer to our house, or had hit our house, god forbid.

Then on a random trip to the mall yesterday, an older lady with "grandma" on her license plates, passed us and then a few miles later lost control of her car and ramped a snow bank in the median going 75 miles an hour. She was out of control and her car was spinning and we just watched in absolute horror, and waited for her car to come back into our lane or connect with someone in the oncoming lane of traffic. When she finally stopped, she was missing bumper plastic and her wipers were going, and it was downright scary. She was so lucky to be alive and to not have collided with someone else. Evan said over and over how he couldn't believe the car didn't roll. It was unbelievable.

And then just 10 minutes later outside the mall, some asshole in a Jag blew out of a store entrance and almost hit us on the side where Ardyn and I were riding. This all, of course, happened right after the DeKalb shooting at NIU this Valentine's Day, where 6 people died. NIU is just about an hour from us. I was at work when my mom called to tell me the school was on lockdown and that they were looking for a gunman. I got online and saw that there had been shots fired and of course all of my coworkers knew at least SOMEONE who was/is a student there, and in most cases we all knew someone who was a teacher or staff member there. Talk about making you feel sick.

So really, I am not sure I want to read the Sunday paper and see more about people dying and young girls being sexually assaulted and children being abducted. What is the world coming to, you know?