...And Then Things Got Worse

Where I left off in my last post about the crazy beginning of my week: 

Me alone sans husband for the week again.  Sam vomiting like crazy over everything the night before two house showings.  Me taking the day off work to clean like mad.  Getting locked out of our house after the showing.  More bad weather predicted for the following day.

If only I knew then the storm of misfortune that was a brewin' that I would have to weather in the days ahead...

Wednesday morning, I went to work.  The winter storm warning threw down 9 inches of snow atop the ice skating rink-like roads that day.  But still we had school although many around us did not or were delayed.  Sam and Anna went to daycare.  I got called midday about a house showing request for that evening, which isn't supposed to happen because we required overnight notice. I approved it anyway, because I hate to turn someone who might buy our house down, and I rationalized that I could pick up late from daycare and frantically clean for an hour after work.  Most of it was clean from the day before, I just had beds to make, curtains to open, vacuuming and stuff to pick up.   I forgot to add in the snow blowing of the 9 inches that had been dumped upon our driveway in my mental list.  And I forgot that the roads would be treacherous so my usual 30ish minute drive would take twice as long.  Thankfully, I was able to leave work right after the buses left, which bought me an extra half hour of time.  Without that, I would have had 15 minutes to get our house showing-ready only.

So I drove as fast as I could, which meant I had only 45 minutes to do it all.  I had my husband call a neighbor to quick snow blow our driveway and I was on track to get it all done in time.  And then our daycare called me, and informed me that Anna was now vomiting all over.  I quickly finished the last few things and headed over with a bucket, fully aware that I would have to be sitting in my car in below freezing weather, while my daughter sat in her car seat throwing up into a bucket for a hour while random strangers walked around our warm house.  Thankfully, our daycare offered to let us hang out there for the hour and I just sat on the couch holding a bowl for Anna.  Sam kept playing, and our dog had a blast playing with their dog in the backyard.  We headed home as soon as possible, and Anna laid on our couch while I quick threw dinner together for Sam.  Bedtime was only a little late. 

Anna stopped vomiting after I put her to bed, but she started the waking-up-every-half-hour-or-so routine that Sam did Monday night.  I started to feel a little queasy too, and ended up writing sub plans after midnight once I was sure that Thursday we wouldn't all be miraculously better.  Unfortunately, since I left right after the buses left Wednesday, I was less prepared for the following day at school than I usually am.  I also had a big meeting after school that had been rescheduled a bunch of times already that would need to get rescheduled again.  Thursday Anna was mostly better and acted like herself, just with some diarrhea.  But then our daycare provider called and told me that they all came down with the flu and would not be able to watch Sam and Anna on Friday.  I was still queasy and bracing myself for the vomiting on my end so I wasn't sure what to do.  I also could not be gone from school a third day if I could help it, so my husband agreed to take Friday off of work and travel home a day early.  Daddy stayed home with then healthy Sam and Anna on Friday while I took my queasy self to work and pushed through it.  I never threw up.  I'm thinking it was from sheer willpower because I simply could not afford the time to be sick.

Saturday morning we had a Open House scheduled so we cleaned once again, but this time I at least had some help.  15 parties reportedly came through.  (Here's the count so far with our house on the market in a month and a half:  13 showings.  2 Open Houses with 20 total groups through. And yet zero offers.  Nada.  Nothing.  Not even one second showing.)  Then Sunday, I'm sure you can guess what happened... Daddy caught the bug and started throwing up.  Lucky him, he got to lay in bed all afternoon while sick.

It has been an epic week.  An epic week that I really, really, really could have used a little break from this weekend to recharge and get down time before heading into another long week of solo parenting it Monday through Friday with double the standardized testing in Kindergarten and a long 12 hour work day on Thursday because of conferences.  I hope, hope, hope that will be it with the above-and-beyond challenges though, because I'm all tapped out.  And ready for a vacation someplace warm.  Like Hawaii.  Yes, Hawaii sounds very nice...