Exhaustion, with a side of levity

Whoo boy! Has this been a loooooong couple of weeks around here. I’m so tired I can barely see straight. I do, however, have some funnies to share with you before I get to the rest of the story. I figure you’d be too tired to read the funny part if I didn’t put it first…

Here are some conversations I’ve jotted down throughout the week, hoping to someday blog about them.

Belle says to me while singing away to her High School Musical 2 soundtrack:

“Sometimes when me and “Grabiella” (Gabriella) sing, it sounds nice when we sing together!”

Little Bear threw a tantrum one day (I forget which day it was now) because he wanted to play in the snow. Snow. When it was mid 70’s and sunny. On a day when I, terrible as it is, have no control over the weather!! Oh the crying and whining that brought.

Belle is allowed to buy her lunch one day a week. When I asked her this week what she had for lunch she replied, “Grilled Cheese”, which sounds suspiciously like Girl Cheese. Little Bear retorted, “No, Boy Cheese!”

J happened to be home the afternoon the space shuttle took off. He watched the NASA channel and even pulled up a video of the take off on the computer. As J was clearing the table for dinner, he showed Little Bear the clip on the laptop. However, LB got a little lost in the terminology. Here’s how the conversation went:

LB: Daddy, I gonna watch the space ship.
J: Watch it launch?
LB: No! Dinner!

That’s all the funny I have for now. Now for the exhaustion portion of the program. We have very nearly survived J’s two week rotation in OB Anesthesia with hours from hell. The work itself is nothing extraordinary, but the schedule is 24 on/24 off. Meaning he works for 24 hours-sleeping at most 3 hours, and then is off for 24 hours-sleeping at least 13 hours, not counting all the times I have to wake him at the table and on the sofa. Keeping the kids quiet while he sleeps is something I’ve dealt with for years and isn’t such a big deal any more. The part that’s been the hardest is we have had absolutely no rhythm to our lives. I’m not much on a rigid schedule, but a rhythm is something I really need.

It hasn’t helped, either, that the kids have had a cold. They were all on the mend until Friday night when Belle took a downward turn. I’m guessing she picked up a second cold. She does this crazy thing when she’s coming down with something big-she cries out in her sleep, sort of like night terrors, where she thrashes around in bed and cries loudly but isn’t awake. Eventually she will wake up, so I have to keep checking on her waiting for the time she really is awake. Last night she started crying around 10 and woke up Little Lamb. I moved her to LB’s room (who sleeps like a rock) and she continued crying on and off until about 10:45. She finally woke up and began complaining of pain in her mouth. She moaned and whimpered about an hour or so without any real idea of why she was hurting. I think it was about 1:45 before she settled back to sleep, on the sofa this time-I was tired of the constant up and down the stairs routine.

This morning she said things sounded funny in her right ear and she had some wet stuff in her ear, but no pain in her ear or her mouth. It wasn’t much and J was busy when I paged him, so I put it aside. She had a mild fever so I gave her Tylenol. It helped a bit and she napped for about 1.5 hours. If you know Belle, you know that any nap at all is completely rare except in the car. She pretty well stayed glued to the sofa all day. Around 3, I noticed more fluid running down her ear lobe and immediately paged J. He said we should bring her in to the ER to get checked.

Poor little Belle was soooo freaked out. She knows that hospitals are for serious things and she was really scared to go. She complied with everything the nurses and docs did, but she had this fearful scowl on her face the entire time we were in the hospital. Our suspicions were correct- she has a perforated ear drum due to an infection. We got the scrip for the antibiotic and were on our way. By the time we got the scrip filled and got back home it was 8:10pm.

So I’m sure I’ve made you tired just reading all of this. I must go collapse in bed and pray that no one wakes me until at least 6:30 in the morning!

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