Half-Crazed Mom seeks Single White (or any color, for that matter) Germ-Zapper

photo: My and Brady's trouncing by Jonathan, future real estate tycoon

On the blog section of MySpace (yep, I have a page) there is an option to list your "current mood," with the choices ranging from accomplished to recumbent to worried. (Recumbent? Maybe if I had a laptop?!) If I were to select one right now, it'd have to be "half-crazed" after five weeks - yes, five weeks - of tending sick kids and a trying-really-hard-not-to-get-more-sick self. We're having one of "those" winters - where as soon as one gets better, another gets sick, and once it's run through all the options it starts back at the beginning again.

Brady's second doc visit in less than a week, due to getting a fever *after* meds, resulted in bad, worse, and much worse news. Possibly bronchitis he can't kick, or mono, but he wheezes "at the bottom of each breath" which means he needs to get checked for asthma. Hold on a minute - this is my child whose last fever was so long ago we can't recall him ever having one, my child who eats extremely well and never overeats, my child who has such a mindfulness and self-aware relationship with food and health it puts me and my constant striving to eat healthier to shame. So, it's to the internet I go, to figure out what our options are before a pile of meds are shoved at us, and before we go the route of "difficult to insure" diagnoses and haggling with insurance companies.

Jonathan is the one who started the downturn, with a week-long bout of strep and high fevers, followed by a short break and then a foray into bronchitis with high fever, forcing us to cancel our Super Bowl Party festivites - an extra slap in the face for good measure. As if that wasn't enough, he's sick again, perhaps having never fully recuperated, perhaps having re-caught something, perhaps trying on a new bug just for kicks - I don't know. All I know is I had to buy 15 boxes of tissues at the grocer's yesterday, and am making pots of food heavy on the garlic, onions, veggies, and cayenne, and preparing herbal tea remedies that are "nasty," according to two snuffly boys.

When I started to get sick, I ignored it and kept going... through the intense and tiring homeschooling conference, through two days of running the kids, through a day of skiing... and then I woke up the next day at noon, feeling like I'd been run over by a truck. Ok, I give.

So here we are, for the fourth time in five weeks, hunkered down, a kid to each couch, movie player at the ready, library books scattered 'round, carefully measured mega-water allotments nearby, and me fetching snacks, laundering everything but the stapled-down carpet, tucking in cold bodies, rubbing aching heads, and cleaning up piles of used tissues.

I've gotta say, I'm going a little batty.

Poor Brady - he got it last and when my mama-nurturing vibes are running close to empty. Yesterday, I had to choke down my rising anger at the craziness of it all. Sometimes, I almost relish a small fever or sore throat that forces us to slow down and cancel commitments and spend a day cozied up by the fire. But enough already!

The thing that almost broke me was when Jonathan unknowingly slept with his silly putty on the new couch and the entire egg of the stuff got smashed into the cushion. Really, I had to go into the other room and shut the door and take deep breaths and rub my eyes to keep from crying or screaming or driving away into the sunset. I wasn't angry with him so much as just pissed off about the situation of being cooped up and tired of sickness. (Oh, and I'm starting a campaign to ban silly putty. Sign my petition at www.motherovertheedge.com. LOL)

So today, after Jonathan's insistence that I "never play" with him, we dragged out the Scrabble game and gave it a whirl. Jonathan queued up a whole mess of songs on iTunes, and we turned them up and sang really loud and danced around the kitchen in between scrabble turns. It was so fun!

And it was the turning point. At least for today. We might be home-bound until the gunk passes out of our systems, but I don't have to spend the days being grouchy. We can still be silly with chest colds. We can still sing with clogged heads. It doesn't sound so well, but we're germy and you're not invited over anyhow. (You really don't want this!)