Rollercoaster

“Time can take nothing from the Bible. It is the living monitor. Like the sun, it is the same in its light and influence to man this day which it was years ago. It can meet every present inquiry and console every present loss.” – Richard Cecil

What a day! I've taken the new, lower dose of medication a couple of times now and my body is not pleased. I woke up this morning with my head full of weird dreams, and covered in a cold sweat. I got out of bed and faced waves of dizziness and nausea.

None of this was very motivating, as you can imagine. I decided that dizziness and BodyPump were not a safe combination, so I skipped my normal trip to the gym. I just slogged through the morning routines of getting the kids off to school and then plopped my funky tummy on the couch.

At one point, I was forcing myself to finish watching a mediocre movie. It ended up being really sad at the end and I started crying. That, in itself, is not strange. But the 10 minutes of uncontrollable sobbing that followed were a little odd.

At another point, I decided that it was warm enough outside to open the windows and get some fresh air flowing. I opened ONE window and then got distracted. TWO HOURS later, I realized what I'd done.

I tried again. This time, I managed to open two windows before I got distracted. Seriously out of control. I told Doug that he might want to stop by the house before band practice tonight, just to make sure that we still have two children.

I was actually feeling halfway normal by the time I picked Eli up from school. We planned on going to Petco on the way home, to stock up on guinea pig supplies. As I was driving away from the school, it hit me...

I was supposed to come and read a Dr. Seuss book to Eli's class this afternoon and I totally forgot.

It was written on the calendar. I was excited about it. Eli was excited about it. It just slipped my mind. I felt like the biggest jerk EVER. Eli hadn't mentioned the mistake and I wasn't sure he was even aware of it, so I didn't say anything.

It was all I could do to hold myself together and not dissolve into tears again. I was objectively aware that I was over-reacting, but my grasp on rational behavior was tenuous (at best). I sent a message to Eli's teacher to apologize and beg for a chance to come and read a book next week instead.

It will all be fine, of course. Eli finally did mention it, much later, and in a very casual way. I told him how very sorry I was and assured him that Mrs. Gump (whom I'd heard back from) was going to find a time for me to come in next week. [sigh]

There is often a dog rescue/adoption group that sets up outside Petco, and today was no exception. Once we had gotten all the goodies we needed inside, we spent some time out with the pooches. There were two tiny Chihuahua puppies and Eli fell head-over-heels in love with one of them.

We sat by the cage for a long time, while he gushed over the awesome cuteness of this puppy and talked about how much he wished we could adopt it. I sent Doug a text message, asking if there was anything I could say to convince him that this was a good idea.

His response was, "Not that spontaneously." That's not a no...

It's worth noting that I kind of hate Chihuahuas. I've always declared that they are not really dogs and I'd never want to own one. But somehow, this one just seemed right with Eli. They looked so sweet together and the puppy was just the right size for my Little Dude.

Anyway, things went on fairly normally as we went back home, picked Lila up from school, and went to the library. After the library, we stopped by a park. It's the only park I know of that still has dangerous metal playground equipment and we all love it!

I got a little manic at this point and started running around and playing on the equipment with the kids. I went down the (hazardously tall, narrow, and steep) slide, ran to get the old-school merry-go-round spinning and jumped on with the kids, climbed across the monkey bars (i'm pretty sure this provided some sort of healing from the childhood trauma of not being strong enough to do it), went as high as I could on the swings, and even hung upside down by my knees on the monkey bar.

It was pretty awesome.

Once I started approaching muscle failure, we loaded up and went to Mighty Fine for dinner. I was still feeling sort of manic and didn't want to go home and face the grumblings about eating leftovers for dinner. Plus, Doug was gone for the evening, which is a good excuse for surprises.

At the restaurant, it was Lila's turn for a wild mood swing. We were standing in line, about to order our food, when her face just crumpled and she started crying. Turns out, she had been reading one of her new library books and it had a sad beginning.

The story starts with a litter of kittens and their mommy cat. The pet owner took the kittens away from the mommy and dumped them on the side of the road. This was breaking my poor little girl's heart! I was totally sympathetic. After lots of hugging and talking about it, she felt better.

Still, when she came downstairs from changing into her pajamas this evening, her face was all red and covered in tears again. Sweet girl.

Now the children are in bed in their room sleeping having a wild party. Doug is home, and things are pretty low-key. My only problem right now is that I keep swinging between being too hot and too cold. I was freezing a little while ago and now I'm almost sweating.

Good times.