Blue-Footed Musings

• My parents visited us over the weekend. It was great to see them
• It didn’t feel like Christmas, though. I was hoping that it would somehow, and I had even left the tree up, but the magic wasn’t quite there. Anyway, my parents seemed to like their gifts, and we liked ours. I got some new books to read, which is of course the last thing that I needed but still one of the things I like most.
• I had thought that when my parents left they were going to take their car and leave us with their SUV, the reason being that the car is easier for my mom to drive. So I was really confused when my father insisted on taking the SUV instead. Oh, well. I prefer the car anyway. And it just goes to show that you can know people for your entire life but still not always be able to predict what they’re going to do.
• My father accidentally left behind his hiking gear: scarf, gloves, hat, jacket, and shoes. Now that I could have predicted! This is not the first time we’ve had to mail their stuff back to them.
• The house is cleaner than it had been for a long time. I hope we can keep it up for a while.
• Alas, now I have to put the Christmas tree away. 🙁

I spent a lot of time over the last two days shuttling back-and-forth between home, doctors’ offices, and pharmacies. Both of the kids tested positive for strep. My husband and I tested negative but were prescribed meds anyway, just to be safe. It took seven trips to the pharmacy to get all the necessary meds, thanks in part to ongoing staffing problems at the local CVSs (they’re always short-handed, and have been for years). I am exhausted and feeling on the verge of getting sick again. I need to rest today.

I spent most of yesterday in bed. I had a fever, and I wasn’t feeling up to much.

Today my temperature is still elevated, but it doesn’t classify as a fever anymore. So I guess I’m cured and had better get to all the Christmas prep that I dropped when I got sick.

Yeah, that’s not going to happen. What is going to happen is that I’m going to do a couple of necessary loads of laundry, and I’m going to do a bit of necessary cleaning, and I’m going to wrap the presents, and that is probably all that I’m going to do.

I don’t feel very Christmassy, but I am feeling grateful, because there’s a lot of bright side today. I didn’t finish my Christmas shopping, but the kids will each have several presents to unwrap tomorrow. And even though we hadn’t planned to spend Christmas here, we decorated the tree last week, so we have a place to put the presents. The storm knocked out our power twice, but it came back fairly quickly both times. The storm also took down a tree and assorted limbs around the property, but did no real damage otherwise. We have plenty of food and drink. If we can just get a little more Christmas spirit going, maybe it will turn out to be a good holiday after all.

Marshall came down sick with a cold on Sunday night. Now he’s recovering, but the rest of us have caught his bug. My parents don’t want our germs anywhere near them, so we had to postpone our trip northward. We’ll be spending Christmas by ourselves this year. 🙁

Meanwhile, there’s a big storm bearing down on us. It’s not going to bring us any snow, sadly. Instead we’re supposed to get rain and heavy winds. Power outages are expected. School for tomorrow has already been canceled.

My cough isn’t too bad unless something triggers it, but I’m so tired. After spending most of the day in bed watching Christmas movies, I scraped up just enough energy to do dishes, laundry, clean off the counters in the kitchen, and prep for the storm. That wore me out, though, and I had to go back to bed to save up energy for Craft Night. For Craft Night we made our own set of “Punishment Dice.” That was fun, but tiring. Now it’s late, and I’m going to bed again, this time to sleep.

Maybe we’ll feel better tomorrow.

• Parent/teacher conferences were today. The teachers had nothing but good things to say, and I’m so proud of both children.
• I noticed that a couple of things were missing from my top desk drawer. I was certain that I’d put them there, so I took the drawers out to see if the things had fallen behind. Not only did I find what I was looking for, but there was a whole bunch of other stuff lurking in that dark, dusty place. I found a $10 bill, a Target receipt from 2017, a picture of my son from 2012, a walker pass for the kids (who knows which year), a magnifying lens, a packet of stickers, a camera case, a small notebook, a whole pad of Post-It notes, and at least a dozen tickets for previous years’ Advent calendars. Quite a stash!
• Speaking of the Advent calendar, I already printed enough tickets to get us through the 24th. That’s the benefit of having done this so many times before. The designs are all there on my computer. All I have to do is pick which ones I want to use, tweak them if necessary, and print. At least that’s one less thing to stress over at this time of year!