Sick Days

Since I worked for 10+ years after college and before having children, I was used to personal days, paid vacation, weekends and holidays off, and sick days. I remember the first reaction that I had to parenthood after being in it about seven days is "Wait, you mean I don't get weekends off?" Of course, I knew that going in, but you really don't realize how 24/7/365 parenthood is until you're smack in the middle of it.

But I still get sick days. They're a little different now than they were back when I was working 9 to 5 (cue the Dolly Pardon). Now sick days consist of a lot of sitting around taking care of other people and watching way too much Scooby-Doo vs. resting comfortably in a serene, quiet apartment with no real responsibilities that can't wait until work the next day. Or even the next day if I wasn't quite feeling up to it. My last job was with the Salt Lake Olympic Committee, and I loved it for a lot of reasons, but I think I loved it most of all because of the extra cool boss I had who suggested sick days if you just weren't feeling in the mood. She was a gem, and the best boss you could ever ask for.
This week as been full of sick days. As I mentioned before, Max had strep for the second time in a month, and this morning at 4 AM Jack woke up with a fever. I figured he had strep, so I made an appointment with the pediatrician. As we were driving to our appointment this morning he started throwing up while I was driving on the freeway, and by the time we arrived at the doctor's office his puffer coat was half full of vomit. As I took it off in the parking lot (luckily we had another one in the car), all the vomit got in his hair, and face, and even in his ear. I did what I could to clean him up, and the receptionists were nice enough to give me a big roll of wipes when they saw the state we were in as we walked through the door. In the end he didn't have strep, but some other lovely virus that we just have to wait out. The worst part of all this, other than seeing Jack so sick, is Steve and I had planned a weekend getaway to the city tomorrow night while the kids slept over at their cousins, so that's off. I was majorly disappointed, but at the same time, sacrificing for them somehow makes me love them more, whether I want to or not.
So now on sick days I work. And part of the work I did today was a spring redesign of my blog template, which I'm sure will receive a few tweaks over the next few days. I've been learning how to customize templates lately, and thought I'd try my hand at making my template look a little more springy, (thanks to Orla Kiely, who's stem print I stole. It was stolen out of utter love and devotion though, so I'm sure she won't mind). I'm dreaming of spring for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is no more winter + no more school = less sick days. Hallelujah!