Do-Overs, AKA Week from Hell…

You ever wish you could just call a do-over? I hated that term as a kid. Only those annoying kids that wanted to cheat everyone else out of a turn called do-overs. Mom’s need do-overs and last week, I would have done just about anything to get one.

So last week started out okay. On Monday, my mother and I made 40 pints of salsa and I ended the day with a blood donation date with my husband. I know, doesn’t sound like much of a date. It counts in my book since we managed to unload the kids on my MIL and I even got dinner out of the deal. (Those of you are who are laughing, I’m betting you don’t have kids.)

Then Tuesday came around, along with a sick cat. We’d noticed that he was getting skinny, but on Tuesday he didn’t come in all night and he wouldn’t eat. He laid around sleeping and wouldn’t even purr when we petted him. The purring is what really got me, this cat rolls on to his back and starts purring himself into oblivion if you even look like you’re going to pet him. After consulting my dad (he used to work in a vets office and has a B.S. in Zoology - and you’d better say it right or he will correct you) and my neighbor (who breeds cats with extra toes), I called our vet. At this point, I was convinced that we’d have to put him down.

So after getting the kids to school and dropping them off at their grandma’s, I dragged a very skinny cat to the vet. I’d spent most of the car ride preparing the kids for the possibility that Gadget, our cat, wouldn’t be coming home today. Two hours later, and $200, the doctors decide that he has an infection and that it will be necessary to force a pill and some liquid down his throat twice a day for two weeks. I thought getting kids to take medicine was hard…geez.

Tuesday night is a complete blur. N started throwing up around 11:30 pm and didn’t stop until 3 or so. Isderf finally just laid on the couch with him and a bucket so that we wouldn’t have to change any more bedding.

Wednesday morning had us all awake, not willingly, tired and a huge pile of laundry to do. Oh yah, and my daughter and I both were nauseous and spending a lot of time on the potty. So everyone stayed home from school and work, cause even though Isderf wasn’t sick, he was exhausted and running around taking care of the three of us.

Thursday dawned with everyone still tired and both the kids had slight fevers. So Isderf abandoned me with two semi-sick kids with too much energy to sit still and get better, or even let me take a nap. By the end of the day, I was googling military schools.

Friday was actually pretty good. The kids went to school (thank you God!) and we already had plans to unload J at a friends for the night (I know, kind of close to being sick, but at this point, I was in bad mom mode). Then my son decided since J was having a sleep over, so was he - at grandma’s house. Thank goodness grandma decided that sounded like fun.

So Friday night, Isderf and I had an actual date night - no blood in sight. We went to dinner and got a movie and we were just about to lie in bed and watch it, when we discovered that our water heater was leaking. Isderf tried blaming it on me, said if I hadn’t used the bathroom downstairs I wouldn’t know it was leaking. I say it’s his own damn fault for being in the upstairs bathroom so I had to go downstairs. Anyways…it didn’t look too bad so we decided to leave it for the night and tackle it in the morning.

I know, most of you are sure that a major disaster struck in the night and we had a huge mess to clean up. You’re wrong.

It still looked the same as it did the night before. The problem is that we were only seeing a little bit of it. Turns out, it had probably been leaking for a while. We had to remove the water heater - drain it and then lift it over some piping that couldn’t be moved. Remove the dry wall behind it, from the floor up about 3 feet. We also had to remove the floor edging and about 3 feet of drywall along the entire back wall of the bathroom. The water heater had been slowly leaking and the drywall had just sucked it up and mildewed. So now I can do the laundry and look through the water heater closet to make sure my kids are washing their hands after using the bathroom.

The worst news (cause all weeks been full of bad news) is that it took us ALL day Saturday to cut out drywall, remove edging and the water heater, and clean up the mess. The good news, well for the kids anyways, is that taking hammers to walls is very therapeutic. Now we just have to get the kids to understand that putting holes in walls isn’t an everyday event.