What Parenting While Ill Teaches You

I just spent three days trapped in bed with round two of the flu scourge of the North Shore. Actually since I'm a parent spending days in he'd actually means doing two loads of laundry a day, feeding kids breakfast and lunch, refereeing fights and occasionally passing out on the couch. But that's a lot to type so we'll stick with the trapped in bed part.

I'm now recovering and able to be mobile. That translates loosely to add another load of laundry, do the dishes and cook dinner and drive around picking up the girls friends taking them to a movie and helping a friend with her computer via the phone while in said movie. Now that last part was the actually the only real fun part of the day for me so I won't complain about that. I will add though that while my friend commented on Facebook how impressed she was with me for doing that I say that is more a commentary on the quality of the movie, rather than my multitasking skills.

During my sojourn in illness hell I had to make some changes in my parenting style to better facilitate an optimal outcome. That translates to I had to give up everything I know and believe in as a parent so everyone would still be alive by the time Ted came home from work and I could crawl up to bed and pass out for the night. When you completely cave in and sacrifice your morals one of two things happen. 1. You feel very bad about yourself as a person and you spend the rest of your life trying to make up for your sins or 2. You have a bit of an epiphany and realize that not everything you believed in was the only way of doing things. I think it will shock no one that I am enjoying the latter of the two scenarios.

Let me share some of the pearls of wisdom I learned this week.

1.  Tic Tacs are a perfectly acceptable choice for Morning Tea

2.  If your daughters watching 4 hours straight of My Little Pony lets you nap part of your fever away on the couch, do it.

3. The annoyance factor of My Little Pony increases by a factor of 2 per episode. So one episode is 50% annoying. That means two episodes is 100% annoying, three is 200% annoying. This pattern continues until all you have to hear is the opening refrain of the theme song and you will dream of gouging your ears out with your sons Xbox controller. However since caring about the quality of music is an indicator of returned health try not to be too angry.

4. Kids are going to argue. You can bribe, threaten, plead or beg and you won't change that. Best to stay out of the way unless you feel the blood splatter.  If noise is too much dole out chores to be done in opposite ends of the house.

5. YouTube is a debilitated parents best friend. There are literally thousands of funny kittens, gaseous creatures,Star Wars LEGO, swearing Care Bears, and yodeling Spaniards ready and waiting to teach your children important life lessons. All of which can searched for, found and viewed without your intervention at all. It's an excellent way to teach yourchildren independence  and resilience.

6. It is not only socially acceptable but adamantly required to threaten to "beat that damn dog's ass into the ground" for barking at every rat dog, bush turkey, cat and pedestrian that walks by. Show your neighbors that you are aware of the barking dog problem by screaming every foul, profane and obscene oath you can think of out the window. Be careful though, this can agregrevate your already sore throat. Be sure to have tea and headache meds ready.

7. Keep sharp implements at least 4 steps away from you. This is a safety measure for when you are dealing with kids in the car after you've recovered enough to put yourself behind the wheel of a car. When driving Connor'sfriend home, halfway there Connor began sobbing that she left her favorite high heeled thongs (flip flops) at the park. Still harboring illusions of being a good parent you turn around to go get them. Once there, it turns out that the shoes can not be found. This is confusing since we've only been gone 15 minutes.  Having a sinking feeling in my stomach I returned to the car, only to find the shoes on the floor of the car. It seems that Connor looked down at her feet and saw no shoes and couldn't be bothered to look 3 inches to the right.  I tell you this because I know if there had been anything sharp within my grasp, even a pencil, I very well might might have gone on a rather bloody killing spree. It's only because I had to walk an extra 5 steps around the car to get to my door and my keys did I have the time curtail my killing instinct.

5.  People can wear the same clothes 3 days in a row and while they are disgusting; they are not life threateningly toxic. That's something people in books don't like to say. Good people change their clothes constantly according to modern hygienic rules.  Utter bollocks. Untermeyer filth and decay is falling off in discernable chunks, the laundry can wait.

I'm back to relative good health so I can type all of this. Tic Tacs are back to being off the Morning Tea menu but I'm afraid I'm still hearing My Little Pony in my nightmares.

Cure Worse Than the Disease

The flu has invaded our house...again. I naively thought we had been through the worst of it last week when Tessi dropped like a ton of bricks for 36 hours and I got a headache so bad I couldn't lift my head.  Sadly that was just a warm up and now we're back on the illness train. Just in time for the school holidays and Ted starts his new job. Excellent. Honestly, I epexted nothing less. All good stories start with "Dad was out of town" or "we were all trapped in the house" -the universe is always watching and ready to get you when you can least handle it.

This week the flu/bubonic plague/SARS virus, whatever it is, slams back into us robbing Tessi of her gymnastics camp; which she was trying to weasel out of anyway and take a day of cricket camp from poor Teddy; who really did want to go. Of course I am coming down with something as well because i was up most of the night with Himself, all these kids keep breathing their germs on me and I have no immune system.  Trying to get ahead of the game I brewed myself a cup of Horehound tea, recommended to me a while ago by a dear friend as a cold remedy.  About a month or so ago Teddy was sick and I made him drink it.  He got better, very quickly. It was like one of those hawked miracle tonics but only it worked!  I was singing the tea's praises to anyone who would listen. Now I should mention that Teddy carried on and whined about the taste being bad.  He took 20 minutes to drink a small cup and acted like it was hemlock or something. So I really didn't pay that much attention to him. I mean, this is the kid who whines about grilled cheese sandwiches tasting funny because the wrong plastic cheese was used to make it.  Be serious.  I wasn't impressed.  I've heard that its not pleasant from other people, but really how bad can it be? I've drunk Milwaukee's Best before and survived. I wasn't worried.

This is where arrogance can be your enemy sometimes. When you think you've reached a point that your life's experiences have trained you do handle everything, Life laughes at you. Laughes at you in the form of Horehound tea.  When I told Teddy I was going to drink the tea he smiled for the first time in more than 12 hours. Head splitting open from the pain of a headache and a fever so high he can barely move. Yet the thought of me drinking this tea brought him back from the dead and nearly dying. "Go ahead Mom, you'll love it. It tastes just like regular tea," this was my first warning as to what was coming. He is never that happy unless someone else is in misery.

Taking a sip, I realized that I have joined a rather unfortunate group of people. A group I call the "tasteless honest." Over the years I've met many different kinds of people in many different places. There is always someone who is brutally; if not tastelessly, honest. For example, ever been around someone who drinks something and says, "Ugh, that tastes like horse piss?" Now, usually I stand and wonder, how do they know what horse piss tastes like? If they do honestly know, why would they admit it? It's something I would be proud to share, even amongst close friends.   Now personally I've never imbibed such folly; Milwaukee's Best notwithstanding, but after this mornings drink, yes, I think I do know what horse piss tastes like. So I can join this group I suppose, with a clear conscience. I hope there are jackets.

It's been two hours since I've drunk the tea. Sadly there are no miracle improvements yet. Unless you count the smile on Teddy's face every time he looks at me and asks me if maybe Tessi shouldn't try a cup.  I just glare at him and tell him to blow his nose and shut up. I think though, that will be my one and only cup of Horehound tea.  Not sure if I'm brave enough to try another cup.  I say this not because it was too vile - again former Milwaukee's Best drinker here. It's that I'm not sure how I would feel about myself being the person who claims to know what horse piss tastes like AND went back for another cup. Usually I make fun of those types, rather vocally.