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<\/a><\/p>\n#7<\/p>\n
Friday hath come at last. This is exactly how I feel about it, too. Too weary to be excited, but also too grateful that the Ogre will be around to let me sleep in tomorrow to stand upright today.<\/p>\n Sienna just informed me that I look like this bear, as well. \u201cBut fatter.\u201d Out of the mouths of babes, indeed.<\/p>\n I guess another package of Smarties won\u2019t really make a difference, then.<\/p>\n Here are some things that have contributed to my current exhaustion. (I\u2019m purposefully leaving out the words Tropical Storm Debby <\/em>since you\u2019re probably sick of hearing them. You\u2019re welcome. But that is <\/em>one of the things, just so we\u2019re clear.)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n #6<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n That whole thing happened.<\/p>\n Justice Roberts summed up exactly how I feel about this decision:\u201dIt\u2019s not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s no question we need health care reform. We do. But this is a bad law, crafted hastily by people who wanted to take advantage of a political moment instead of taking the time to craft legislation that would truly help the American people. So basically it\u2019s like every law that\u2019s been passed lately, or at least in the past decade when partisan screeching has replaced actual political dialogue and debate.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not a Constitutional scholar. I have no idea if it was constitutional or not. I trust the Supreme Court, though, more than I trust the other two branches, so I wasn\u2019t disappointed in them yesterday. I was disappointed in all those throngs of people in the picture above, and the ones on facebook and on Hot Air and everywhere else, including me. Somehow we\u2019ve created a country in which the actual merits of laws can\u2019t be debated, by either <\/em>side, without someone yelling \u201cyou\u2019re a liberal and you just want to kill babies!\u201d or \u201cyou\u2019re a conservative and you just want all the poor people to starve and die off!\u201d That exhausts me. It exhausts me that some otherwise intelligent people wouldn\u2019t even consider the idea that the law might actually be constitutional\u2026they just knew it couldn\u2019t be, because it was liberal legislation. <\/em><\/p>\n This is why I don\u2019t blog about politics. I sincerely enjoy discussing politics, especially with our best friends in the world who live in Northern California, work in the Silicon Valley techie world, and are as liberal as the day is long, because they\u2019re rational people who discuss things without assuming that 1) we\u2019re conservative because we\u2019re stupid and religious because we\u2019re stupider or 2) they\u2019re going to convince us that we\u2019re wrong and they\u2019re right. Actual discussions, where people clarify their positions and come to understand and\u2026dare I say it?\u2026respect <\/em>the other person\u2019s point of view are awesome. Unfortunately, they rarely happens in the internet. If ever. Honestly, I\u2019m starting to doubt that they happen much in real life anymore either. And that makes me sad, and it makes me tired.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n #5<\/p>\n Why, Calah, <\/em>you might be saying, isn\u2019t that that half-finished dress you started a month ago<\/a>? <\/em><\/p>\n Why yes. Yes it is.<\/p>\n In the month that has elapsed between my first introduction to sewing and today, the dress has sat on our dining room table, along with the sewing machine and the instructions and the books the Ogre bought me and my shiny new sewing kit. All of it in the same position it was in when I hit \u201cpublish\u201d on that post.<\/p>\n I have studiously avoided the dining\/sitting room for the past thirty days. (An impressive feat since you have to walk through it to get into the rest of the house.) We\u2019ve eaten breakfast, lunch and dinner at the breakfast table. We\u2019ve had guests over, and they\u2019ve eaten at the breakfast table. I haven\u2019t curled up into my comfortable reading chair and read a single page. I\u2019ve read on the couch instead, or standing up in the kitchen. I haven\u2019t swept the sitting room. I haven\u2019t dusted it. I haven\u2019t even ventured in there to open the blinds on sunny days.<\/p>\n The sitting room has become no-man\u2019s land. The dress sits on the table, mocking me with it\u2019s unfinished-ness, and I remain safely in my trench(es) in the rest of the house. We are at a stalemate.<\/p>\n But the situation must be resolved, and it must be resolved this weekend, because my parents are coming to visit next week and I\u2019d like to be able to use my dining room table. I refuse to just put everything away to deal with later, because the dress will haunt my subconscious. But even if the dress wins the battle, it\u2019s not going to be alive to enjoy its victory for long. I must either complete the dress or admit defeat and tear it to satisfying shreds.\u00a0 As soon as I gather my courage and go over the top, that is.<\/p>\n I think I need a nap first, though.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n #4<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s this:<\/p>\n Charlotte is still sick, though she seems to be improving. Her fever is gone, her cough is better, and she looks and smells much<\/em> better.<\/p>\n Fortunately for us, Liam woke up from his nap today with a 101 degree fever. Yay.<\/p>\n Let me say that again: Yay.<\/em><\/p>\n See, not only do I have to deal with two sick, incredibly whiny toddlers, but I also have to deal with this:<\/p>\n The world\u2019s most active child, whose only goal in life is to play outside forever, and who has been stuck inside on account of her sick siblings with the only exception being yesterday\u2019s swelteringly brief trip to the park.<\/p>\n As you can see, she\u2019s angry. And unhappy. And stir-crazy and whiny.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n #3<\/p>\n Bebe <\/em>Lincoln is getting in on the make-Mama-miserable action, too. Just this week he and the hormones that sustain his growth have given me wretched <\/em>sciatic nerve pain (the first time I\u2019ve had that pregnancy symptom! Something new every time! It\u2019s like a grab-bag of fun!) and a zit the size of freaking Jupiter on my neck.<\/p>\n My neck. It\u2019s not even in a normal place like my face, it\u2019s on my neck. <\/em>It looks like I have the bubonic plague. Seriously, if this was 1348, I\u2019d be quarantined. Because of a zit.<\/p>\n Exhausted, <\/em>I tell you.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n #2<\/p>\n There are some silver (or, er, bright orange) linings to these clouds, though, and they\u2019re not even all that hard to spot.<\/p>\n First, I\u2019m profoundly grateful that the children are sick now, instead of next week, when my parents are coming to visit and have rented a beach house on Marco Island for us to stay in.<\/p>\n Second, a beach house! On an island!<\/p>\n Sigh. It\u2019s like a real vacation, and it\u2019s only an hour away. There are serious advantages to living here, even though there are also tropical storms and too many rainy days.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n #1<\/p>\n Also, Whole Foods has consistently <\/em>had Rainier cherries on sale since the season began a few weeks ago. Rainier cherries are my favorite of all favorite fruits ever. I love them so much that I dream about them in the spring, fall and winter. Rainier cherries make the sweltering heat of June and July bearable. They make the summer heat worth surviving. They are miraculous, and during the summer when I was pregnant with Liam I spent nearly $100 dollars on them because Whole Foods never <\/em>had them on sale and they\u2019re painfully, grotesquely expensive. (Whole Foods is the only grocery store I\u2019ve found that carries them, but they\u2019re expensive everywhere.)<\/p>\n Last silver lining? The existence of Cracked<\/a>.com. Anytime I\u2019m tempted to run screaming to my closet with my hands over my ears and lock myself in for the rest of the day\u2026well, sometimes I actually just go ahead and do that. But other times I pull up cracked.com and remember that pregnancy maybe be horrific sometimes, but it\u2019s also pretty hilarious. <\/a>(Please don\u2019t go to cracked.com if you\u2019re easily offended or sensitive to bad language. You will never forgive me.)<\/p>\n Bonus silver lining! Just as I had spent four chaotic, interrupted hours trying to get this post up while baking and administering ibuprofen and changing diapers and breaking up fights and had finally despaired of finishing it at all, my lovely, incomparably wonderful neighbor offered to take Sienna to the waterpark along with her own kids. She knew I\u2019d been stuck with sick kids for days and figured I\u2019d be at the end of my rope. Sometimes the kindness and generosity of my neighbors is just\u2026amazing. I would never consider offering to take someone else\u2019s kid on an outing, since I\u2019m usually too busy dreading how difficult it\u2019s going to be with my own three. But around here, people just act like it\u2019s no big deal. And because they\u2019re likely less melodramatic than I am, it\u2019s probably not a big deal for them\u2026but it\u2019s huge to be on the receiving end of it. That literally just turned my entire day around. I need to make that woman some cookies. (Yes, in my psyche, gratitude = cookies. I think that\u2019s the way it should be, actually.)<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n