Tuesday, October 1, 2013

A whole lot of irritating . . .

Last week was ridiculous.  Ridiculous.  It was one of those weeks where nothing terrible happened, everyone is still alive and life turned out alright but it was one of those "first world problem" after "first world problem" weeks.  Everything turned out good, however, and I'm grateful for that!  We have lots to be thankful for, for sure.
The girls started feeling sick the week before.  I was able to keep both girls relatively healthy and felt like the colds they came down with didn't last nearly as long as usual, thanks to Essential Oils  I used.  When Ashlyn started to come down with it, I rubbed lemon oil on her with some fractionated coconut oil and diffused it in her room.  She was considerably better in the next day or two.  Claire was hit next and I did the same, although I added a bit of the Protective blend to the back of her neck and feet.  When I started feeling terrible I started taking capsules of the Protective Blend and Oregano Oil.  I still felt sick for a day or so but was much better by the morning of day three.  Christian started getting sick but he wasn't hit with it long at all.  He definitely got the least of it.  He did, however, have much more warning than the rest of us and was able to fight it off early with the oils and some Airborne.  So from about Saturday to around Thursday, the virus moved through each of us, but didn't completely knock us down and for not terribly long.  And not a single co-pay did I have to shell out for any of us.  I'm a firm believer.  But since the sickness didn't totally evade our house, throughout all this we had the cloud of the common cold hanging over our house.
Monday morning, Claire wasn't feeling great and we didn't want to pass the sickies on to her babysitter and her little boy so we had Christian stay home with the girls while I went to work that morning.  On my way home, I stopped at the chiropractor and turned the key to my car and. . . nothin.'  Noth.ing.  Soo, I turned again, shook the steering column but after a few tries, it randomly started. . . .Oookaaaaaaay.  So I drove it to Vons to pick up a few things (namely chicken soup for my kiddos) and when I came back out, same problem.  Car. won't. start.  I jiggle the key, try several different ways of maneuvering the key and, presto, the car starts.  I'm concerned but the concern fades as soon as I get into my house and begin dealing with my home and family.
The next morning, I get up, get ready for work and get out of the house by about 6:15.  I turn the key. . .nothing. I try all my tricks.  Nothing.  I get Christian out of bed and he comes down and tries to give the car a jump.  Nothing.  By now, it's about 7am.  I contact my Booster Club President and the Band Director to let them know I won't be in for 0 period and send a last minute mass email to all my  Vocal Ensemble parents.  I email the school secretary and tell her, "sure hope a sub shows up since it looks like I'm not going to. . . "  The choir kids watched High School Musical that day, I'm told.   Christian only had until around 10am to get ready and to figure out what to do about the car. Which, after taking out the battery, getting it tested and then looking up on youtube tutorials on how to take out and replace the starter, getting IT tested, discovered that it was, in fact, the starter that was nearly totally dead and needed replacement.  So each night Christian would come home at 8pm and work on my car.  In the meantime, I borrowed cars from family to get around.  First it was my mom's car one morning while she babysat my kids while I went to work and then I borrowed my grandparents' Buick the rest of the time.  My great aunt and uncle were kind enough to let my grandparents borrow THEIR car so I could borrow my grandparents' car.  Good things.
Amid all THIS, Thursday night I was doing some laundry and picked up a large pile of towels. One of the towels got caught on my engagement/wedding ring.  I went to pull it away and found my center diamond gone.  Just gone.  I sat down and carefully touched and folded every single towel.  And found nothing.  I looked all over the bathroom before deciding to get Christian to help.  The thing is, I had no idea if I'd lost it in the bathroom that minute or earlier in the day or at work or in my car or. . . where.  I pulled him into the house and told him.  He washed the grease off his hands from the car and flipped on a flashlight and we began to search the house, starting in the master bathroom.   Eventually, after crawling all over the house, I found it.  Sitting on kitchen floor under a horse shaped push car that belongs to the girls.  Just sitting there, looking like a rhinestone or sequin from a dance costume. Later during the weekend, we took a trek out to my inlaws and tot he jewelry store to get it fixed.  Turns out 3 of the prongs were in need of repair so the whole head is getting replaced.  My mother in law plans to pick it up tomorrow and I'll figure out when I'll be getting it back.
Friday, I still had my grandparents' car and due to the fact that my own car (that was now working thanks to my industrious, smart, hard-working husband) had no gas and I needed to leave for work in the morning.  This translated to me using it the rest of the afternoon (too lazy to move carseats) and mentally agreeing to fill it up with gas prior to returning it to my grandparents.  After work, I picked the girls up at the babysitters at around noon and then too them home.  Unfortunately, Claire brought her bear (the one we can't live without, THAT bear) to the sitters and forgot it on her way out.  We didn't realize it was gone until we were home and about a half hour away and really couldn't turn back since Ashlyn was already sound asleep for her nap.  Claire's nap consisted of a very sad little girl who whined and cried and, eventually, woke up her baby sister.  It was a complete loss.  So, I called Christian, told him to get the bear on the way home from the sitters and decided to brave the Carter's store for their sale since both of the girls needed pajamas.  What did I have to lose now, right?   Well, the girls got pjs (and a few other impulse buy items) and we got back to the car to head home and make some dinner and the Buick wouldn't start.  I mean, it would start but then it would die in about 5 seconds.  This happened over and over and over again.  Are you kidding?!  So, I called my grandparents, partially afraid that I'd done something to damage the car over the course of the week and partially aware that it was, most likely, more bad car luck.  I felt horrible to bother them but they insisted on coming out. They live, with no traffic, about 40 min away, but, see, this was a Friday evening at around 5pm.  So, we had some serious time to kill.   We walked over to In N' Out for dinner and then I let the girls wander around Best Buy for a while.  I kept thinking how perfect life would have been if there had been a Pet Store in the Chino Spectrum.  Ultimately, they came out and they had the car towed.  I felt bad they had to do that but it turns out it was some sort of computer glitch inside the car.  I don't know the details or what it all really was about but, thankfully, they were able to get it fixed soon and it was back up and running early the next week.
All this on top of the normal, everyday stresses of our life (Christian getting off so late every night, my crazy job, dance class, swim class, diapers, preschoolers, homeschool, etc.) was a little nuts but we made it.  I DO have a homeschool week post to do for last week. That's what this was supposed to be.  But I remember a college professor I had in a Travel Writing class talk about how we come to a piece of writing with an agenda and then you find out that the piece really wants to be something else.  And that's what's happened here.  Christian has a book from his childhood called Too Much Noise about an old man who complains to a wise man about the noise level in his house.  The wise man, over the course of the book, tells him to add a cow, a donkey, a sheep, a hen, a dog and a cat into his home.  Obviously, things only got worse for the man so finally the wise man tells him to remove all the animals and, suddenly, the house that was so loud and stressful in the beginning was, suddenly, exceedingly quiet and he was happy.  So, this week's stress is "back to normal" and, surprisingly quiet.
So I'll be doing my usual homeschool blog either tonight or tomorrow afternoon, I imagine.  I'm off to Back to School Night and our predictable chaos at the Herman House

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