Month: July 2011

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Are you there God? It’s me, SM

A few weeks ago I stumbled across a post on the blog Not-Calm, and after I read this paragraph from it I felt like my head had been struck by lightning. Or 1,000 light bulbs had gone off inside it. Or something along those lines. (emphasis added by me)

When Lex was in kindergarten and went through a time where he couldn’t sleep at night because the idea of dying was upsetting him too much, I told him that before he was born his whole world was inside of me.  He could hear my voice, in an underwater, warped way, and he maybe knew that he wasn’t alone, that there was something else keeping him company.  And, I told him, it would have been impossible for him to imagine the world that he was about to be born into.  Light, colors, air, trees, smells, cars, houses, seashells, rockets, food, even his mother – everything he could think of – all of it was so close to him all the time but he had no way to know.  I told him that we have no idea what happens after we die, but that if we have the sense that there’s more out there, then I think it’s because there is.  That there’s something holding us that we can’t see or imagine, but we can still feel is there. It seemed to help him.  I know it helped me.

That part in bold is basically the exact view I hold of religion, yet have been unable to put it into words. Thank you, Jenijen, for doing it for me. Now that we have a daughter and will hopefully give her a sibling or two someday, the concept of religion and my feelings toward it has been in my thoughts a lot more often than it used to be.

I do believe in God, or a god of some sort, but my religion basically stops there. Which may seem pretty odd, considering I grew up going to Sunday School and church pretty much every week, was baptized as a baby, and went through Confirmation in my church. I was raised Presbyterian, and R and I were even married in a Presbyterian church. It was a very non-denominational church, but a Presbyterian one nonetheless.

I have never denounced organized religion or anything like that, nor have I ever had a bad experience with the church either. I guess I basically just got bored with it, and never saw the point of having a book that was written thousands of years ago govern my way of thinking and living. Although we attended church regularly, my family was not overly religious when I was younger, so it’s just not something that was deeply ingrained in me with much importance. And quite frankly, the highlight of the sermon for me each week was counting the pipes in our church’s organ. There are 152. That is a number I don’t think I will ever forget.

So when we decided to have kids, I knew I probably wasn’t going to feel the need to raise them with a strong emphasis on religion either. I felt I may get a little pressure on this from R’s family though, who are pretty devout Catholics.

And for some reason, and this will probably totally expose my religious ignorance, Catholicism has always seemed to me to be a religion that wants to push you until you join them and follow their rules. And man do they have a lot of rules, something I’ve discovered in the 11 years R and I have been together. He’s not even a strict Catholic anymore either, more along the lines of barely even practicing. He’s given up on the no meat during Lent thing, and neither of us has been to church in years. And no, he has not forsaken his religion either, it’s just not something that is high on either of our lists.

Some people may be gasping in horror at this lack of faith in our lives, but it just is what it is. It’s not even a complete lack of faith really, but maybe a lack of practicing that faith actively anymore. And personally, I don’t see this as having had a negative impact on our lives at all.

But back to the having kids without really having religion. What then? From the start I just assumed we would not have our children baptized as infants, but let that be a choice for them to make on their own when they’re old enough to make it.

Seems fair, right? I mean, why force a religion label on a baby who has no idea what any of it means, and whose parents are not only 2 different religions but don’t really practice either of them anyway? Which one would we choose, and why?

I know scads of people will disagree with me on this, but I kind of find the notion that God will shun any life simply because it has not been baptized ridiculous. Many people hold the baptismal rite as something profoundly sacred, and I fully respect that. It’s just not for me. I think if, god-forbid, D passed away before she was baptized, she would not spend eternity rotting in hell simply due to that fact. It just doesn’t jive for me. I think if there is a heaven, her spot has been reserved for almost a year now, no matter what happens from here on out.

There are so many different religions out there, 99% of which I know extremely little about, it just makes sense to me to allow our kids to discover them, learn about them, and see if there’s one that they really feel drawn to. Just as long as it’s not some crazy unibomber kool-aid-drinking cult, I’ll be satisfied. And who knows, maybe someday I’ll feel the need and/or desire to go back to church, and then maybe I’ll even see if D wants to be baptized into it, but right now I’m happy how we are.

Here’s kind of how I see things. Like I said, I do believe in a god figure of some sort. Is it the exact God I learned about in the Bible, the one who we all grew up picturing as a grandfatherly man with an enormously long gray beard dressed in enormously long flowing white robes who lives up in the clouds? Eh, maybe not. But I definitely think there’s something out there.

I do believe in evolution, and the Big Bang theory makes much more sense to me than the story of Creation (a person from a rib? does not compute), but something had to have caused that spark that ignited the Big Bang. Something had to make that second in time happen so that the entire universe could then spill forth.

That something is kind of more how I picture god. And I think I’m more comfortable with it being a lower case g god, too. I’m not convinced it’s a human figure, but more of a spirit. Like those words above say, it’s that sense we have that there’s more out there, because I totally have that sense.

And you may find this part really weird, but yes, I do say bedtime prayers. In fact, I say the exact same “Now I lay me down to sleep…” version that I made up with my mom when I was little that includes all of my family members, pets, and my youngest sister at the end since she came along after I already had the list solidified. I have come to add my own touches here and there too as I feel the need, especially now that I have my own little family. D always gets a shout-out for protection, and R makes the list too on those days when he’s being nice to me.

But what about Baby Jesus? I don’t know, what about him? Did he exist? I don’t know. Why do we celebrate Christmas as his birth then? Good question. Don’t ask me, I didn’t devise the religious calendar for that part of the world’s population who believes in it.

See here’s the other thing. I don’t know why, but for as long as I can remember I have always gotten the weirdest feeling about the Bible. Like, how do we know it was really written by the people by whom you believe it was written? I know there are the Dead Sea Scrolls and all, but still. And how did its words come to stand as the law of the land? Um, that’s why it’s called faith, SM. Yes, I get that, and I guess that’s just where mine differs from many others’. I place my faith in the something more out there instead of those ancient pages.

This kind of turned into a jumbled vomit session. Sorry about that. Point is, though, that no, we’re not baptizing D. At least not anytime in the foreseeable future. And fortunately we never did get the push-back I was expecting about that either. R’s mom did ask him a few months ago if we were going to, he said no, we hadn’t planned on it, and that was pretty much that.

And as for my religion/faith, I think it’s better described as a spirituality that I have, and I have finally found the right words with which to express it. It’s not a rock-solid foundation that I turn to in times of need or weakness like many people have in their own spirituality, but it’s the sense that there’s something bigger than all of us out there keeping tabs on everything and maybe giving a little nudge here and there so things don’t get utterly cosmically out of whack.

I have no idea what happens at the end of it all, but it will work itself out when the time comes. And to me, that strange little notion is kind of comforting.

 

 

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A light shade of green

Before I get started here, I just have to whine again for a minute. You’re probably sick of hearing about D’s nighttime crap by now, but too bad. It’s my blog and I can cry if I want to.

So last night she fell asleep on R when I was at the gym and he was actually able to put her down after that fairly easily. A little pulling her legs out straight so she wasn’t in a ball and keeping a hand on her back for a minute were involved, but point is she didn’t wake back up. Cool, good start.

Ehh – WRONG!

At 1:30 the sirens sounded from her room. I rocked her for a few minutes and thought she was asleep, but of course she popped right back up when I tried to put her down. Then I realized she had a diaper full of poop. Oops, no wonder. Tried the rocking again. Nope, I don’t want to sleep, Mom. Duh, it’s 2am, don’t you want to play too? NO, I DON’T. So I had to sleep with her on the couch again for the remainder of the night.

Now here’s the thing. I don’t think it’s an illness this time, although she has been pulling her ears again sometimes. I think it’s teeth, and more specifically, molars. Did anyone else’s kids have molars come in around the 1 year mark? Would these be some symptoms – teeth grinding, messing with her face/ears, fingers and hands in her mouth, overall general crankiness?

I haven’t seen or felt any in there yet, but my hunch is those suckers are lingering just under the surface right now, causing her these fits. And how long did they take to cut through? I don’t like this little turd that’s taken over my daughter.

But back to my point. Check out this post from Endurance Corner. It’s written by Gordo Byrn, the husband of a girl I swam with at Madison, and they are both absolutely ridiculous triathletes. Check out some of his accomplishments:

  • World Champion Ultra Distance (2002)
  • Multiple podium finishes at international races (2003/2004/2005/2006)
  • Swim, bike, run across America (2004) and New Zealand (2010)
  • Personal best of 8:29 at Ironman Canada (0:51 Swim, 4:48 Bike, 2:46 Run — 2004)
  • Co-Author Going Long (over 50,000 copies sold)

I mean really? Sick. In a good way sick, not like uh-oh I’m gonna barf sick. He also coaches for this stuff, which I think is the main purpose for that website. In all honesty I haven’t dug through the whole thing, I was just amazed by that post about Monica, his wife.

I remember seeing a picture of her from her first pregnancy that was taken at I think 39 weeks, and she looked like I did at about week 30, tops. Minus the butt, of course.

And I am not even exaggerating. I thought is this for real? She actually gave birth like one week later? Her stomach was TINY. And? And she left the hospital in her pre-pregnancy jeans. Um, you’re only in the hospital for like 2 days after delivery, assuming no complications. That article above says she was back down to her pre-pregnancy weight this time around by 2 weeks postpartum, too. Hmpf, bitch.

But seriously, I am just in awe. She is obviously an elite athlete, whereas I am nowhere close, but reading about her exercise regimen during her pregnancy made me feel like a total sloth. I know I did a very poor job of maintaining my workouts when I was pregnant with D, and that is the main thing I want to improve next time. Even if I get sick and feel crappy again, I want to try to at least do something on as many days as possible. Like Gordo says, “Do something every single day, even if it’s a walk or easy float in the pool.”

Now, every single day may be pushing it. Ok, that’s definitely pushing it and is unrealistic for me personally, especially since I have cut swimming from my agenda pretty much permanently for a while. But almost every day, that is a goal I would like to set.

The picture in that article was taken again at the very end of her pregnancy, and besides the amazing body and complete lack of belly that I was carrying around at the end, all I could think was holy boobs! Check those puppies out! So yeah, there are a couple things in there of which I was jealous.

 

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Things they don’t tell you about pregnancy – #5

Wait, wait, wait. Where is #4? you may be asking. Remember, I tricked you and called it “The first time” instead. Duh.

Before I get started, though, how are all you mamas-to-be holding up in this heat wave? Especially those of you so near the end? I hope you’re staying cool and as un-swollen as possible. Is that even a word? Eh, it is now. I totally lucked out last summer – it didn’t really get super hot until right when D was born, so I was able to hole up in air conditioning permanently with good excuse. The heat and the lake did make an exquisite combination this morning, though. As I was driving over a bridge, it must have been the cool air coming in off the lake that made almost an envelope of fog over the end of the bridge. Kind of like you were driving straight into a huge cotton ball. Very cool.

So anyway, this one can be summed up in 2 words: Mucous. Plug. Yep, you read that correctly. Mucous plug. Holy hell, SM, you get more disgusting by the minute. Whaaaat? It’s not my fault. Blame nature. Or evolution. Or something. It’s just one of those things, those nasty beautiful things the female body does while pregnant. I warned you from the get-go that this little series of posts was not for the faint of heart. So quit your bitchin’ and follow along here. Seat belts fastened? Good.

First off, what is it? Basically it’s just a big wad of snot that builds up in your cervix while pregnant to make sure everything that’s supposed to stays inside and everything that’s not supposed to stays out. Very scientific explanation, yes, but you get the gist. So by the end of a pregnancy as the cervix starts to shorten and thin to prepare for delivery, the mucous plug is no longer held as tightly in place, and eventually SLURP! Out it comes.

Ok, now here’s the thing. I had read about the mucous plug while I was pregnant, and knew full well that I might meet it toward the end of my pregnancy. Even armed with that knowledge, however, it still scared the living shit out of me when we finally did come face-to-face. Because I was soooo not ready for such an early sign of labor when it came out, 16 days before my due date. 16 days?!!? No, not fair, not fair. We desperately needed those 16 days sans baby to keep working on our house. For we were in the throes of a full kitchen remodel when D was born. And I just kept praying to that little baby (we didn’t know she was a “she” until she came out) inside me to just stay in there, just stay in there, pleeease just stay in there until your due date. Mommy and Daddy need to get more shit done! Actually, I secretly made a deal with it (yes, i called her an it before she was born because constantly typing or saying him/her and he/she is really annoying) – just stay in there until August and we’ll call it a deal. I guess she heard me, for sure enough, August 1 rolled around and out she popped (which ended up being 8 days after the mucous plug did). I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain very well though – we still didn’t have any counter tops in the kitchen at that point.

I think one of the reasons I freaked out when I saw my mucous plug on the outside of my body, was that you really have no idea how quickly things will progress once it happens. Once I saw that huge glob of snot in my underwear (and yes, that is exactly what it looked like. huge and snotty) I immediately looked it up online to see what happens next, right after I started breathing again when the panic attack subsided. And that was no help whatsoever – everywhere said it could signal labor in the next 12 hours, or it could signal labor in the next 2 weeks. Well what the hell am I supposed to do with that? Go to the hospital and tell them hi, my mucous plug just fell out so I need to sit here and wait for oh, maybe 2 weeks? Yeah, didn’t think so. We did have a family picnic to attend up in Sheboygan that afternoon, though, so I told R we might want to think about skipping it and sticking close to home just in case, since I’d just had my very first labor sign. We kind of gave each other the “holy shit, we’re having a baby” face, but decided to go to the picnic anyway. I was having no other signs of labor, no contractions of any sort, so we figured it’d be fine to go. Turns out that may have been the one time in our lives when we were right about something.

So yeah, the mucous plug. You might see it when it falls out, or you might miss it if it just heads straight for the toilet water when you’re doing your duty. If you do catch a glimpse of it when it comes out, though, you know you’re approaching go-time. Unfortunately you just don’t really know exactly how much longer you’ll have to wait. At least you’ll know that you’d better get that bag ready, and you’ll probably perfect your “holy shit, we’re having a baby” face.

 

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Where’s his whistle?

I currently have a spider monkey climbing around my legs. Oh no wait, it’s my daughter. My mistake. And this is almost an hour after I literally crawled out of her room on my hands and knees after putting her to bed so as not to wake her back up. ‘Twas no army crawl, mind you, but it was a crawl nonetheless. Apparently I could have back flipped my way out, for that “bedtime” lasted approximately 5 minutes. Superb, here we go again, after a grand total of 3, maybe 4 hours of sleep with her last night.

But to the real point of this post, today was the Milwaukee Challenge, that urban adventure race I mentioned, and it was awesome! It ended up being me and 4 other girls, and we were team “Jolly Green Giants”. None of us had ever participated in one of these races before, so we had no idea what to expect. The description said the top teams usually finish by about the 1.5 hour mark, so personally, I was considering a sub-2 hour finish a success. Plus, they posted hints on their Facebook page at midnight last night, and all they did was confuse the hell out of us. Here’s what we had to go on going into this thing:

  1. 360 degrees of blades
  2. “DD”
  3. Elroy
  4. As You Like It 2/7
  5. Where’s his whistle?

You’re kidding right? So let me get this straight. Each of those hints is supposed to correspond to something in Milwaukee that we had to find? Um, yeah right. I think you can see why we all had a mixture of anticipation and trepidation brewing by the time we got underway. Here we were, about to start a race that was billed as “part 5k, part ‘Amazing Race'”, and our preliminary hints were utterly vague and confusing. Sweetness.

Fortunately, once we got our sheet of actual clues at the start of the race, those ridiculous hints became much more clear and appropriate. Here’s how it worked: each team captain stood in a big circle outside Rock Bottom in downtown Milwaukee, the race staff handed each captain a sealed envelope, and when the clock struck 2:00pm everyone was able to rip open their envelope, make their way back to their respective team, and it was off to the races. Literally. There were 12 clues in all, 11 of which had to be completed for a successful finish. I must admit, as soon as we started reading through everything I was kind of lost in a cloud of wtf? Each clue was its own little paragraph, and 5 people all trying to read the same list of 12 paragraphs was slightly awkward. We finally decided that we had a good enough idea of what a couple of the clues meant, headed off in that direction, and just tried to decipher the rest as we went. It was a pretty good strategy, for we were able to complete our first handful of clues in no time. A couple were definite stumpers, and a couple of us tried using our phone-a-friends (totally allowed, per the race rules), but they turned out to be pretty much worthless. Ha, sorry phone-a-friends! But we did end up figuring all  the clues out on our own.

And get this… We took 5th place!! Read that again. We, the 100% inexperienced, 110% confused team, came in in 5th place!! Out of roughly 160 teams that finished (about 170 entered). BOOM! Take that, Milwaukee. The Jolly Green Giants turned out to be a force to be reckoned with, and we Jolly Green Giant-ed all over your ass! Our official time was 69:28, and we ended up doing at least a 5k’s worth of running through downtown to get to our clues. And I think that was definitely the difference for us – those extra jogs through the streets instead of the leisurely saunters some teams were doing. It was so much fun. I was so unbelievably proud of us and just simply amazed that we did so well. None of us expected anything like that, but when we ran up to the finish line and saw they were just then beginning to bring the water bottles out for the racers and the finish line sign wasn’t even hung, I think we all got a little twinge of butterflies, like, we actually might stand a chance here! And we so did. We got 5th!! Sorry, I’m still riding that high.

And what did we get for placing 5th, you may ask? A $50 bar tab to be spent at Rock Bottom. Why yes we would like to spend that right now, thank you very much. How nice of you to offer. 1st place got $200 cash, 2nd place got $100 cash, 3rd place got $50 cash, and then both 4th and 5th places got the $50 Rock Bottom tabs. We were so stoked, I can’t even tell you. All I can say is watch out Challenge Nation – next year we’re out for blood. It’s 1st place or bust, and yes, we will knock you down and run you over to get there.

Here are pictures from our day, and I’ve tried to give you some idea of which clue we were completing in each caption. Even with a heat advisory we rocked this.

Find the "DD" duck statue
Find someone from a state that starts with L, M, N, O, or P
Form a pyramid in front of "The Calling" statue
Find a donor brick with the same name as any team member's first, middle, last name, or last name of a U.S. President
Find a building built before 1900 or completed and occupied in 2011
Find someone in non-WI sports apparel
Find an outdoor stage and work w/another team to act out a scene from an Oscar-winning movie
Find the plaque dedicated to "Crazy Legs"
Find the 9' abstract referee statue
Unscramble an anagram to get "Public Market", then go find the clock in the middle
Then take another picture there 5 minutes later
Find the firefighter statue and pretend to put out a fire
5th place, baby!
See, the final list even says so
Putting our prize to good use
Once again, we got 5th!!

 

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Army crawl

That’s what I was almost forced to use as my exit strategy from D’s room tonight after I put her to bed. Seriously, what is going on with this kid? Bedtime is turning into wartime again, and I am not amused.

She has to fall asleep taking a bottle, and if she rolls over and wakes up when you put her in her crib, forget it. You’ll have to start all over because she’ll stand up and start crying. Tonight it took no fewer than 5 tries to finally get her to sleep. And on that last time I held my hand on her stomach so she couldn’t roll over when I laid her down, or else I might still be in there, on round 476.

Why has this happened? She used to be fine going to bed – when she was nursing we could even put her down with no issue if she was still awake after her last feeding. She would put herself to sleep no problem. I want that D back. This one isn’t as nice.

I want to just let her cry it out, but R usually can’t take it as long as I can and goes in to rescue her. The other night he even said, “Oh, we’ll just spoil her until her birthday.” Meaning we’ll keep going back in to get her and continue giving her a bottle to go to sleep if she starts crying at bedtime until she turns 1 in a few weeks. Ugh. I don’t think that’s called “spoiling” her, I think that’s just teaching her a bad nighttime habit.

And no way could I try letting her cry tonight because R’s still sick and had gone into the bedroom about 3 hours before I was playing bedtime ranger. His Highness with the Sickness would not have been pleased. I was already chastised earlier today for making too much noise as I was responding to D’s little squeals and noises with my own.

As if.

I don’t know how much more of that I can take either. His doctor did put him on antibiotics yesterday for rheumatic fever (eh??) and strep throat (although his throat doesn’t hurt), but then he started feeling worse after taking them. Um, that’s not how they’re supposed to work. Then his side starting hurting because he thinks he fucked it up sleeping on the futon so often this week.

Splendid – that’s the same futon upon which I will be sleeping tonight so he can have the bedroom to himself.

Oh, and don’t tell me D has another ear infection. I know that was the diagnosis when she first pulled the bedtime crying stunt back in March, but I find it really hard to believe that it’s back just 2 weeks after the doctor gave us the all-clear.

When I took her in right before we went to Canada the infection was totally gone in both ears. There was just a little bit of fluid left in one of them, but her doctor said that was completely normal.

Sooo… what gives here people? Tonight she even kept lying down like she was going to go to sleep as long as she could still see me each time she picked her head up. What the? Finally she was like f this, I’m just going to get up. And there we went again.

So finally at 9:30, about an hour and a half after I first started trying to put her to bed, I was able to take a shower. And then since I had the house to myself at long last I gave myself a pedicure. Don’t laugh at either my gross feet or my horrible nail painting skills. There’s a reason I don’t do this for a living:

This little piggy

It’s a rad color I picked up at CVS yesterday, and is much more aqua than it looks in that picture. For some reason only the blue hue got picked up, none of the green. I did take it with my iPhone, though. I wanted a change of pace for the urban adventure race I’m doing tomorrow with my trainer and another girl. Not that anyone will be able to see my toes through my running shoes, but still.

And now I’m going to go eat some Kopp’s frozen custard. I cleaned out and up the whole garage today, walked up to the grocery store with R and D, mowed the yard, and played single parent for a while.

Damn, I hope R’s meds kick in soon. I don’t need 2 babies to take care of in this house.

 

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I Stormed

Last night I ran a 5k that kicked off this weekend’s downtown festivities, Bastille Days. It was called Storm the Bastille, and dudes, I stormed the shit out of that Bastille. I haven’t done this run in a couple years, but it’s a pretty easy route that winds through the city streets of downtown. I always had a fond remembrance of this race, but had forgotten that it’s actually pretty annoying. Here’s the sitch.

It’s a fun run, so it’s not chip-timed, and if you want to know your time you have to just keep it yourself. They do have a clock, but it’s so ridiculously crowded that the time you see when you cross the finish line is nowhere near accurate unless you were the very first person to start the race. (side note – of course my watch was dead when i pulled it out to wear last night, as was my old sport watch, as well as ryan’s sport watch. awesome. so i ended up wearing his clunky gps watch. very stylish) Everyone is crammed into a 1 block space at the beginning, so by the time I finally made it up to the starting line the clock already read 3:18. Then for I’d say the first solid half mile you’re barely able to keep a jog going, since most of your time is dodging people and jockeying for any clear pavement. The runners and walkers are all mixed in together, so each time you think you’re going to be able to get moving, you practically slam right into the back of a walker you didn’t see as someone else narrowly missed knocking them over too. Yeah, fun run.

They also had a ton of beach balls flying around and over everyone’s heads the whole time, which I could have done without, too. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for them at, say, a Jimmy Buffett concert, but not while I’m trying to run. I know, I know, stop taking it so seriously, it’s a fun run. But I wanted to try to make it a real run.

I was hoping to get a good run in and try to beat the time of my last 5k, so this logjam beginning kind of got on my nerves. Fortunately I was able to weave a pretty good path through the sea of bodies, didn’t run into anyone, did spend more time going sideways and around for a while instead of forward, but was finally able to pick up the pace by the middle of the route. And pick it up I did. I realized that the majority of the mid-section of the race was downhill, so I took full advantage of gravity and tried to just go as fast as I could. I never do this in races – go balls out that early – and now I remember why. By the last couple blocks it took all my steam to keep going just to make it to the finish line. And you couldn’t even cross that line, it was so crowded again. So I stopped my watch within just a couple feet; I figured that was close enough.

So my time was 27:20. Not the sub-27:00 I was hoping for, but it did take me 17-18 seconds to get to the actual starting line/clock after I started my watch, so that puts me close to 27:00 right there. Then with all the sidestepping and non-race-pace running I did for a while there in the beginning, I think I could easily have broken 27:00 again had I had a clear course the whole time. So I wasn’t too disappointed. Plus it felt like I’d gotten a good run by the end, and I was able to get right out of the parking lot in which I’d parked with no delay on the way home. In my run mapping program, it was a total of 3.22 miles in 27:02 (i just went ahead and took the liberty of knocking off that 18 second lag at the start), for a 8:23 pace. Decent.

I was also pleased with this time because I haven’t been getting much running in lately in preparation for it. I ran once in Canada a week ago, but no runs the week before that, so that’s pretty slacking. I did get out Tuesday this week, though – I ran 3.45 miles in 30:57, for a 8:59 pace. Getting better. I still feel like I just need to knock the cobwebs out and really get into good shape.

I’m doing another race on Sunday – an urban adventure type race with my trainer and another girl. The description of it says part 5k, part “Amazing Race”, so it should be fun. You go all around the city trying to solve clues, and you can only travel on foot or by public transportation. Great, the bus, my favorite. It sounds like it takes about 2 hours to complete, and it begins and ends at Rock Bottom. At least we know the beer will be good.

 

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The fairer sex?

All right, let me preface this post by saying that I love my husband beyond words. Really, I do. He is an absolute gem of a man, my best friend, and the most amazing father I could ever have dreamed of for our children. But I’ll be goddamned if he doesn’t turn into a total wiener when he gets sick.

Yesterday morning he said he didn’t feel too hot when we were getting ready to leave for work, so he took some ibuprofen. By mid-morning he was feeling much better, and we both thought maybe it was just a crappy morning. You know, those first-week-back-after-vaca blues and all.

Then all of a sudden he sent me an IM around lunch time saying he was going home. Eek! That was a quick turnaround for the worse. Achy, chills, just all around blech. Plus he had to bike home feeling like that. Total yuck; at least it was a nice day.

By the time I got home his fever had spiked to 104.5, which I learned by reading his Facebook status while running errands after work. When I saw that I was like oh great, I really don’t want to walk into a hotbed of sickness tonight, but I can’t exactly drive around forever with D. She needs supper.

When we got home I was trying to keep D out of the living room, where he had sweated all over the futon and not opened any windows to let the much cooler and fresher outside air in. Gross.

As I was toting her around the back part of the house I heard what I thought might have been R saying something. I wasn’t sure though, it was such a faint sound.

So we continued waving at ourselves in the bathroom mirror, when I heard it again. Yep, that’s definitely R saying something, but what?

I walked back out toward the living room to try to decipher his distress signal, when again, and slightly louder, I heard a croaking, “waaater“. Wtf? Did I miss the part of the afternoon where he dragged his near lifeless body through the Sahara Desert?

I’m not kidding – this was the most pitiful croak of a word I’ve ever heard. (and yes, i know i used “croak” twice in that description, but that’s literally what it was) In all the times R has been sick, he’s never gotten to the point where he’s had to just kind of open his mouth and let words crawl out.

So I was a little taken aback. “Did he just hoarsely whisper an order at me?” I wondered. Weird, but ok, he must be in pain, so I’ll refresh his water with new ice cubes and all. Wasn’t that nice of me?

When I took his water cup out and set it on the coffee table I asked if he wanted to move into the bedroom so D and I didn’t disturb him. I’ll do whatever I can for him when he’s ill, but trying to corral an 11 month old in 1 room for an entire evening is a near impossible feat that I’m not willing to attempt.

“In a bit,” he sputtered. All righty then, into the kitchen we went to try to pass the time until he moved and to get D some dinner.

Pretty soon he stumbled into the bedroom, where I heard him collapse onto the bed. Seriously, collapsed. I peeked in to make sure he was ok because it was such an odd sound, and sure enough, he was splayed out face down on the bed like he barely made it there.

This was getting weirder by the second. I know he had a high fever and all, but was something eating away at his motor skills too?

A few minutes passed, and much to my surprise he came back out, went into D’s bedroom to get his sweatpants (all his clothes are in there), and I thought he looked a little better. Good.

Nope, just kidding. After about 30 seconds of walking around he moaned, “red shirt”. Ok really, are you joking me now? What’s with the cryptic 2 word phrases?

Fortunately I knew what red shirt he was talking about because it had been in the living room when I got home. Otherwise I would’ve spent an hour trying to find the exact right red shirt in the sea of Badger gear he owns.

So I got him the red shirt and continued feeding D. A few more minutes went by and he was back up again, bumbling around. I have no idea what he needed that time, but when he headed back to the bedroom he barked, “food, vitamins”.

What??

Now seriously, you’re sick, you’re not dying. (p.s. i was very glad he woke up this morning because if i’d had all these thoughts last night and then he really did die, i would have felt incredibly awful) At this point I was still bewildered by and starting to take offense at the 1-word commands.

And these were commands, mind you, not even requests. I wouldn’t even have cared if he hadn’t said please, but was it really that taxing to add just a couple more words to make the complete sentence, “Could you get me some food?”

Oookkk. I gave D a few more pieces of hot dog to settle her squeals, since I could hear R moan louder with each one (yeah, try keeping an infant quiet when she’s hungry and not getting something to shove in her mouth fast enough and has no idea the meaning of the word “shh” nor any comprehension of what it means to be sick), then went in to ask him what he wanted.

Because I don’t know about you, but when I’m sick usually only 1 or 2 things even sound edible, so I certainly didn’t want to run the risk of bringing him the wrong thing. Lord knows what would have been barked at me then.

“I don’t know, just get something,” was his reply. Wow, this was turning into a really fun game.

So I made him a ham and cheese sandwich with a little mustard. I thought that sounded acceptible? And I put a multi-vitamin and a vitamin C tablet on his nightstand when I set the sandwich plate on the floor. Oh, and I made sure to close the bedroom door on my way out since one of the earlier orders was “dooooor“.

All this time I couldn’t help but thinking, “Are you seriously acting this wimpy because of a fever?” I’m sorry, I know how miserable he felt and how god-awful I feel when I’m sick like that (nothing is worse than the summertime flu), but come on. You have the flu. You haven’t lost a limb or just had a major surgery that rendered you bed-ridden.

Was there really a need to bark at me like that? Because in so doing you kind of erased my feelings of sympathy and replaced them with annoyance. And I know that is terrible – he was counting on me to help him and try to make things better, and I was doing what I could, but geez. This is the man who can do anything, literally, and he was acting like he had one foot in the grave.

Plus, he could take the time to update his Facebook status to let the world know how he was doing, yet he couldn’t even answer his wife when she asked him that question out of honest concern when she got home? Hmpf.

Fortunately his fever was down to 100 this morning, but he was still in no shape to go to work. And at least he was starting to form sentences again – my instructions were “Call the doctor. See if I can get an appointment today or tomorrow. Leave a message. My phone.” Yep, got it.

So hopefully I can get him in today and get rid of whatever this monster is that has taken over my beautiful husband and reduced him to a whining, incoherent, rude invalid. (his doctor’s office is only 2 blocks from our house, so he should be able to hobble over there ok) Anyone else’s husband or male partner take on this kind of sissy alter ego when he’s sick, or is it just mine?

I just hope it really is the flu and not some horrible brain-eating, incurable virus, because then I’ll really feel like a bitch. And raising D alone just wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.