The past week and a half in our house has been awful.  It all came to a head last Friday when our two-year-old got sick in the car.  Last weekend, when she wasn’t sleeping, she was throwing up or in the words of Chandler, played by Matthew Perry on the tv show Friends, “visiting a town a little south of throwing up…”.  Later in the weekend, her baby brother was afflicted with the same illness, and now we had huge messes x2.  Big sister Sammie got it later in the week, but luckily, the little ones started feeling better.  Add in a snow day and a couple of weather delays, and our house was chaos for what seemed like forever.  On top of everything, I had some sort of extreme fatigue.  I was so worried about it that I even made a doctor’s appointment and went in, where the doctor ran some blood tests and even gave me a neck xray since I had a strange achiness accompanying the fatigue.  I guess it didn’t occur to me that I could have the same virus that struck down the kids, mainly because I didn’t have the same (disgusting) symptoms they had, but I did look up some stuff on the internet in an attempt to scare diagnose myself.  The good news is, my xrays and blood tests came back normal (well, I’m actually still waiting on one of the tests, but it’s Friday and the nurses are out to lunch and won’t be back until Monday afternoon – what is that?  Can I have a job like that?), but the tests that did come back show that there is nothing wrong with my thyroid or my iron levels, both of which I thought were possibilities.  So that’s good…  I guess.  If there was something wrong with my body chemically, we’d be able to fix it, and then I’d have the energy I need to keep up with my 4 little kids.  Now that most things came back normal, I don’t know where to start to feel better…   Although I do feel much better today, but still no where near normal, and that makes me think it might be the illness my kids had after all.  But it was a bizarrely lengthy version of the stomach flu, and it will take us weeks (at least!) to catch up on all the work that didn’t get done in the week and a half of illness, sigh.

My husband had to take off from some of his work so he could watch the kids while I rested, and especially with all the laundry we’ve had to do around here, Mt.  Washmore is once again threatening to take over the second floor of our house.  All this catching up, and I’m still exhausted…  My husband seems to think I have sleep apnea, mostly because I snore often and loudly and I’m always needing more sleep.  I forgot to bring this up to the doctor, but if I ever get ahold of her and that last test comes back normal, maybe we can go from there…  I do seem to need an awful lot of sleep to function.  Well, anyway, that’s my story – sorry if I grossed anyone out (especially body-function-joke-hater Derek), but I thought people should know where I’ve been for the last two weeks.  At least the kids are feeling better – it was beyond sad to see them crabby, lethargic and not able to keep anything down…  Is it time for summer yet?!?

It happens from time to time that I will only get a half day.  Due to the advent of online systems though, it is relatively easy to accept a job and then later cancel when a better one comes up.  I don’t do that too often, but a half day is one reason I try.  Since this half day was for the afternoon I could try even the day of, as long as it’s early enough in the morning that they can get another sub easily.  As it worked out though no other job was to be found.  I was up until about 11 and then woke up just after 6 to try again.  Nothing.  Finally, at around 7 I decided to give up and go back to bed, mostly due to not sleeping well the last couple of nights.  As I write this I am exhausted again.  I don’t know why I usually wait until the end of the evening to write.  Oh, well.

So as it worked out, not only was it a half day but it was at probably the furthest school from me, at the opposite corner of one of the further districts.  It took me about 25 minutes to get there.  It was in one of the mentally impaired rooms, but I knew this at the outset as I have subbed in this school many times.  It was easy.  Silent reading followed by computer time.  Then they wrote a letter to a classmate that had transferred schools (moved I guess) a couple of weeks before.  The writing varied, but generally the kids were pretty slow, letters not well-formed- but remember these are mentally impaired kids.  One couldn’t really write at all, but that didn’t matter.  It will get sent with the rest to the girl’s new school.  After that they went to language lab where it should have been a nice rest for me since it is run by another teacher.  Nope- I was told I would be needed in another classroom while their teacher went to a meeting.  It was another mentally impaired room.  I had worked with several of the boys in that room before, but oddly enough I do not remember ever being in that room.  Maybe from last year?  I will have to go through my past positions to figure this out.  I do remember subbing for that teacher in the past so maybe my memory is just bad.  Anyway, they cooked some muffins.  Well, the boys only got to stir a little, taking turns, but that could be considered a life skill for them anyway.  One of the IAs brought them to the lounge to cook in the oven.  In the meantime, we played some bingo while waiting for the muffins.  The teacher still wasn’t back from her meeting by the time the original class was back from the lab, which by the way is simply working with the kids on communication skills in case you were wondering, so the kids actually stayed in the lab a little longer since I couldn’t be with both classes and a certified teacher or sub is required to always be in a classroom.

As it turned out the teacher never did come back so I stayed until the end in that one room.  I’m thinking the language teacher came back with the other class after a while, but I’m not sure on that.  I do know they came back eventually.  I pushed one of the wheelchair-bound boys to the bus at the end of the day.  It’s interesting that at that school there are about a dozen short buses lined up at the end of the day, half of them wheelchair-capable, as the kids come from all over the district.  So that was it, end of the day.  Until tomorrow folks!