Sometimes Sick Is Okay

Watching "TinkerBell and Periwinkle!" (aka "TinkerBell and Secret of the Wings"").

Watching TinkerBell AGAIN. When you feel like poo, you get to watch a lot TinkerBell, with minimal judgment.

Warning: It's late (10:00 p.m. mommy time, which is like 2:00 a.m. normal-people time), so this post will be cursory and probably not proofread.

This post is about two minor epiphanies I had today.

See, yesterday, Charlotte got a bizarre, pretty high fever (102 degrees), and Lorelei was right on her heels with her own fever. As far as family illnesses go, this one was easy-peasy. No other symptoms, the girls got it simultaneously (MUCH preferable to killing one or two days work-wise and then having the next kid get the disease and REPEAT), and it was not a stomach bug.

Nothing is worse than a stomach bug.

It was a bummer, sure, because Sunday was Church School Sunday (where kids run the church service), which is pretty much Chris's biggest Sunday of the year, and Charlotte was scheduled to do the offering--I was dying to see her do the offering! Alas, the kid was in no condition to leave the house, so Chris handled his part of the service solo while I stayed home with both girls. We also missed the church picnic, which meant we'll all be eating the tropical fruit salad I had made for several days yet.

Anyhoo, Chris HAD to go into work this morning (Monday), and I HAD to go into work to pick up many very urgent packages of page proofs, so Sunday, while the girls napped, we worked in anticipation of an effed up Monday. It sucked, but we knew Monday would suck more. And it would suck less if we moved out some stuff NOW.

Today, I stayed home with the girls all morning, and I worked, sure, but I mostly tended to my little ones. Here was epiphany #1. See, Lorelei's morning nap was incredibly short-lived, because Charlotte accidentally dropped the hair dryer on the tile bathroom floor, resulting in an incredible crash which scared her to tears and woke up her sister--who had only been napping at that point for about 20 minutes. I had some chapters I HAD to move out today, and technically I was on the clock (though I gave myself some leeway, what with the 4+ hours I dumped into my work on a Sunday), so I set up a quilt and whatnot on the floor of the office. Charlotte was instructed to keep Lorelei entertained, and bless her heart, she accomplished just that. I got a good deal of work done, as Charlotte ran back and forth between the office and living room, fetching toys for her sister. I talked to my girls all the while, and at one point, Charlotte pointed to my swivel chair. "I want to spin," she said.

"Not right now," I said.

"Why?" Charlotte asked.

My knee-jerk reaction was to give some vague reason, because GOD FORBID a working mother actually inform her child at any point that she, like, works. See, we working moms feel compelled to PROTECT our dear children from the dirty reality that we actually work and the sting of neglect such a realization would undoubtedly incur.
But the stupidity of this approach struck me, all of a sudden. I mean, I'm not doing my daughters any favors by sheltering them from the fact that their mother works.

So, when Charlotte asked WHY I couldn't hop off my chair and spin her around AT THAT VERY MOMENT, I said, "Because. Mommy has to work right now."

"Why?"
"Because it's Monday, and that's a work day. I need to earn money for our house, clothes, food, and TOYS."

Miraculously, Charlotte accepted this. And I realized it wasn't such a tragic thing to let my child in on the little secret that THE WORLD DOESN'T REVOLVE AROUND HER. I mean, it does, but . . . . technically, it doesn't.

I've always been very careful to work after hours AFTER the girls are in bed, so they never feel my attention being elsewhere when they want it.

But really, how healthy is that? To work so hard to protect them from reality? I mean, I don't think twice before telling Charlotte, chirping for my attention, "Just a second, I'm talking to Daddy," or "Please don't interrupt, Omi is talking to me right now." Why is forcing her to wait a couple minutes for me to handle something work-related so tragic?

So, Charlotte waited, and then I gave her one hell of a spin ride on my office chair.

The other little epiphany I had was around 1:30 as I was finally driving to work, having handed off two docile sleeping children to Chris, who had just arrived home. Our marriage, I noticed, seemed just a tad stronger on the awful working roulette days in which we patch together some sort of plan to get through 24 hours (or more) of having no child care but still having employers who expected us to function as though we had no children.

At these points, we enter survival mode. We actually operate well in this mode. It's a sleep-deprived haze of ALL HANDS ON DECK where we both are taking temperatures and medicating children at 2:00 a.m. (and multiple other times throughout the night), both taking hits on our workplace productivity, both just doing everything we can to keep everyone's head above water. Daily gripes dissipate, as thermometer readings and (joint) small victories (Lorelei took a whole bottle!) become all that are important.

It kind of makes me wonder if the occasional virus works in our favor. Like it's corrective somehow.

Anyway, that's all I have for tonight. The girls' temps are in normal range, and this was an easy 2-day bug. It possibly did more good than harm. Huh.