Hills… and Valleys

Yesterday was a bit of a valley. That is, in the sense that it was a rather low point in the week. At least, I sure hope it was the low point of the week and that the rest of it will be much better!\’c3\’82\’c2\~Judah caught a cold early last week and\’c3\’82\’c2\~Ezra and I came down with it on Saturday. Sunday we went\’c3\’82\’c2\~to church, though we probably shouldn’t have. But we started out Monday fairly well, considering our health. The kitchen was relatively clean and the schedule unhurried – it promised to be another regular Monday.\par
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But in the morning we had some service people come and check out the\’c3\’82\’c2\~hole in our bathroom ceiling to see if it\’c3\’82\’c2\~needed to be dried out or anything. They said that it was dry but that there was mold, elaborated on the dangers of said substance, and quoted us $2000 to removed the contaminated sheetrock\’c3\’82\’c2\~and eliminate any other lurking mold spores. I\’c3\’82\’c2\~guess that’s what they were going to do anyway. Which would leave us with an even bigger hole in our ceiling which we’d have to pay somebody else to sheetrock. Well, that was a downer.\par
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Ezra was feeling really crummy yesterday, too – he coughed a lot and it looked like it really hurt and he wanted to be held whenever he was awake. I felt bad for him but didn’t know how to relieve him.. I gave him tylenol and dimetap which helped in the afternoon but in the evening he was just miserable. I finally let him cry himself to sleep after trying everything and not being able to even get him to stop crying in my arms!\’c3\’82\’c2\~ I was really worried about him too… He’s normally not like that at all!\par
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Well, between holding Ezra all day and blowing my red nose all day and trying to do my normal Monday chore (laundry) I didn’t have time to do much at all, but I had to try to make rigatoni sauce\’c3\’82\’c2\~anyway, since I’d thawed the meat 2 days before for the recipe.\’c3\’82\’c2\~Making rigatoni sauce\’c3\’82\’c2\~is normally a 40 minute process.. it took me at least an hour and a half yesterday, since I was somewhat handicapped by the baby in the sling on my hip and a very interested 2 year-old. Judah actually was helpful, for a change though, because he could be my extra arm sometimes, as long as I watched him like a hawk!\’c3\’82\’c2\~By the time Michael got home a little before 9:00 the kitchen still had prep dishes all over the place, the couch had 4 loads of unfolded clean laundry on it, and his exhausted wife was toting a heavy but stubbornly\’c3\’82\’c2\~awake baby.\par
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So anyway.. a bit of a valley. But today the sun is shining, Ezra is obviously feeling somewhat better, Judah is in fine form (or was until he dosed himself with dimetap in the kitchen while I in another room.. that made him sleepy, but I don’t think he had very much – I’m going to have to make sure that the child-proof caps are completely twisted on from now on!) and I’m starting to feel like I’ll be able to taste my food again soon! The irritations of life can kind of get you down, when they gang up on you like that, but it’s such a wonderful feeling when things start to look up, that it’s almost worth the misery!\par
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\’c3\’82\’c2\~Enough – my kitchen and laundry are calling to me!