Perfecting The Schedule….Or….Vibrating Beds

Being the parents of four children means that G and I often sound like we’re playing a game of baseball. “I’ll run and get second if you take first and third”. Even with the limits of one sport and one activity per child, throw in a couple of birthday parties, an orthodontist appointment, and an impromptu play date, and the result can mean a schedule comparable to Kate Middleton.

As the years have gone by I think I’ve got better at perfecting the schedule. I’ve learned to say no, I’ve leaned to ask more questions about why and how long. I’ve also worked out how to request modifications “we can do that, but we’ll only be able to stay for two hours.” We double up where we can, and try and block book. There’s only a couple of things now that will have me unstuck. G traveling, or me getting sick.

This week we’ve had the double whammy.

I started to get sick last week and made a conscious decision to ignore it. I was not going to get sick on my holiday. It’s one of those annoying grown up comments isn’t it? I can’t tell you how many times I heard my own mother talk of not having “time” to get sick. She actually didn’t have time to get sick though, like most women who are working – sick days were saved for luxuries like children getting the chicken pox, pap-smears and mammograms.

On our last night in Paris I admitted defeat. I knew G was really keen to go to the restaurant at the end of the street, he’d been talking about it all week, but my body had other ideas. “If I just lay down for about thirty minutes I’ll be fine” I muttered in a comatose state with a double barreled snot gun running from my nose. I’m pretty sure I made a choice that night between the duck or the pneumonia. I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t physically get myself there.

For the past two days I’ve wandered around in a daze with a packet of sudafed in one pocket and a Vicks inhaler in the other. It was no big deal and completely manageable until this morning when I woke up late, sick(er), and nearly voiceless. Everything suddenly became a chore. Putting knickers on, finding a hair band, barking whispered instructions and remembering how to butter toast. It was all too hard. I was officially sick.

Later that afternoon, when I was laying in bed with the children downstairs supposedly doing their homework, I felt a shudder. The bed seemed to be gently vibrating and it had nothing to do with my, ahem, iPhone. I knew immediately that it was a tremor, there had been one last week while we were away. I’d made jokes about missing out on all the action and now I was getting a little bit of earthquake karma.

“Great, now we’re going to have a bloody earthquake” I mumbled under my breath while wiping my rudolfesque nose and finding my shoes. I was mentally mapping out where we’d be better to stand while we watched the house fall down when I made it to the bottom of the stairs and found all four travellers in front of the television.

“Did you feel that?” I asked.

I was greeted by four blank looks.

“Did you not feel anything?” I focussed in on the first traveller.

“How many of those cold and flu tablets have you had?” she said with an eyebrow raised.

I was too sick to argue. I went back to bed, pulled out my laptop and within seconds saw that someone was reporting the 7.8 magnitude quake in Iran. I wasn’t delirious after all.

G gets back tomorrow night, in the meantime we have school followed by basketball practice and a double appointment at the orthodontist (yes one child will lose her braces possibly just in time for the next child to get them). I think the orthodontist just likes to catch up for a chat once a month.

There will be no more tremors. I’m going to wakeup feeling human. I’ve penciled it in, written it down and made a booking.

It’s all in the schedule.

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Comments

  1. Get better soon honey x

  2. You see your mistake? The conscious decision to ignore it.
    Start the treatment at the first sign of symptoms-extra Vitamin C, more sleep and fluids, cold and flu tabs at the first (second, third) sniffle, before your nose resembles a waterfall or your sinuses become filled with lead.
    Hope you’re feeling much better now.

  3. Hope you are feeling better soon. S x

  4. Hope u feel better soon. ♥

  5. Next time you feel the earth move, I hope you feel well enough to enjoy it.

  6. Get well soon! Being sick and “on duty” is the worst!

  7. Horrible isn’t it – I had to haul myself out of bed for a 20 mile drive to collect my son once, doped up to the eyeballs and with a coat on over my pyjamas. My main worry was that I would pass out, my next that the police would pull me over and accuse me of something. I knew I shouldn’t be driving, but how many people get done for driving while under the influence of Day Nurse?

  8. Feel better! It’s horrid when you know you just have to keep going when you’re much rather not.
    When we heard of the quake in Iran our thoughts went to friends in Japan – having been there for the ‘last big one’ and they too have had a huge shake this evening/morning/time difference who knows when it was ….. and apparently it shook for ages and in several places. STAY SAFE and get better
    x

  9. I’ve said those same words: “four children, one sport each, a couple of instruments, you do the math.” I thought it gets only this crazy in the U.S., where we’ve just repatriated to, so now I feel slightly better that its the same phenomenon elsewhere. I now realize how lucky we were in our previous location where the kids could all walk to school and, consequently, to all their sports. To all prospective parents: if you are planning to have four kids, put all your energies into finding a job and a house right next to a school. Or hire a driver.

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