I have to postpone my little contest thingy for a week until January 7th because I have been so busy trying to keep my lungs from leaving the building and making sure that Owen’s nose doesn’t turn permanently green and crusty that I haven’t been able to do much else since Christmas.  Oh that’s right kids, we brought home an extra special present from our Christmas Adventure at Grandma and Grandpa’s house:  The Common Cold!

Currently, I am rocking (silently) the no-voice action since I have apparently either completely coughed it away (my voice that is) or the Cold itself has set up home base in my vocal cords or some ugly ugly combination of the two.  Do you know how much fun it is to try to wrangle an almost 18 month old with no voice?  Can you say about as much fun (and just as much progress) as herding cats?!!

After an ugly weekend and foolishly thinking we were past the worst part, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day proved me wrong.  I am cautiously optimistic that really, the Boy and I are truly closer to being on the mend than we were this morning (seriously–you KNOW it’s bad when you’re so congested that you have the nastiest eye goop ever because it just has nowhere else to go.  Would not have been surprised to start oozing out of my ears.  I’m just sayin’, is all) but it wouldn’t really surprise me to wake up tomorrow to find that somehow we have become even more sick and now must again brave the cold cold wind (NEGATIVE TEMPERATURES PEOPLE–IN SOUTHERN VIRGINIA–this is NOT.GOOD.) and annoying people who have no problem overcoming their social graces in order to ask me all about how and what I’m doing in order to take care of Owen and WHY IS HE NOT WEARING A HAT IN THESE TEMPERATURES (answer: um, because his jacket has a nice fleece lined hood and oh yeah–good luck trying to keep a hat on that boy?) in order to procure yet another MegaSuperMassive Quad pack of tissues (at last count we just tore into Quad #3.  That’s with 4 large-ish boxes of tissues being in each Quad Pack.  LOTS.OF.TISSUES) 

Now, I’m going off to drag my sorry sorry carcass into bed where I can hopefully manage to maintain a nice comfortable consistent body temperature (please let me not be the only one to suffer from night sweats when I’m sick) and not awaken  at 3 am to have to prevent Pnuematic and Wheezy (that would be my left and right lungs, respectively) from making a quick and hasty exit yet again.

…just trying to recover from Christmas, staying with relatives for 3 days and making 2 different round trips to North Carolina in the space of 5 days.

 I’m a little pooped.

Be back soon.

Ahhhh….getting away to gain a little perspective, truly away as in further than an hour from home and any computers, can be a truly restorative thing.

I’ve taken out my frustrations on the weeds in my flowerbed and garden, done a little traveling ( here’s to Martha’s favorite little vacation spot) and I’m feeling much better…much more centered and overall in a better place. Really, I’m not as crazy in my real life as I may occasionally (or all the time, depending on your point of view) come across as here. Often I just dump random little bits of this or that from my mind or to work something out that’s bugging me and go on my merry way, never giving a second thought as to how it might make me come across to people who don’t know any more of me than what I post right here.

So–let us move on and never speak of this again. Until you know, I get all emotional and overwhelmed and have another meltdown. So, in all likelihood, in another month or so. I keed, I keed.

We had a nice Fourth. It was just Owen and I for his first Fourth of July this year as my husband was stuck in Tennessee and couldn’t make it home in time. The place that we go to celebrate has a massive fireworks display. I was initially worried how Owen might react to the noise and the smoke. I think he enjoyed all the fireworks, but it was really hard to tell since I had to check to see if he was sleeping several times because of the lack of response. The sparklers were a big hit, until he realized that I wasn’t going to let him actually hold one–from then on out Owen was more interested in trying to wiggle down off of my lap and roam free than to ooh and awe over the sparklers.

Despite the fun, I’m so glad we made it back home all in one piece. There’s nothing quite like your own bed. Or being able to walk around without having to worry about what you’ve got on–or the lack thereof–and who you might run into.