I had it all planned out, which is no doubt where it all went wrong.
My husband has agreed to watch the kids on the Saturday mornings that I don’t work so I can get out of the house and have some Me Time. Guilt-free Me Time, too, because the kids have swim class anyway and I meet them for lunch and we all do family stuff afterward.
I was looking forward to the time this week, because I had a section of Fun Project due and my First Reader gave me a chapter of her fabulous new WIP to beta. I’d sleep in until 6:30am and be at the Panera down the street by 7.
Friday night, Sunny threw up at the dinner table. Lots. She spiked a fever, too, so it was decided that she probably shouldn’t have swimming class. My husband offered to give me my Me Time after Janie and he got back from her friend’s birthday party that afternoon. And would i pick up a pizza for dinner on my way back?
Sold.
So I read to Sunny and played Barbies—which is always a weird reenactment of our family dynamic, as seen through a three-and-a-half-year old’s eyes—and let her watch just a leetle more tv than I normally would have, in the futile hopes that she’d drop off.
My husband and Janie came home at 3, and I went roaring off with Netbook and notes. I bought a large green tea, doctored it, plugged in my Netbook and fired it up.
Nothing. I rebooted Nothing. I offered a few prayers, some cursing, and counted to ten before jabbing the button again.
Nothing.
I was philosophical about it— the Netbook had been limping along and bringing up fatal errors and blue screens of death for about a month while I applied cold compresses and, more and more frequently, the defibrillator, so while I was angry and betrayed, I remained fairly calm . . . until I realized that while I’d done a fair amount of work Friday, I hadn’t done my daily back up that night.
All I can say in my defense is that spending your evening comforting a toddler who is yarking up things you didn’t remember feeding her will rearrange your priorities.
I left Panera and hied me to the computer shop. The repairperson managed to reanimate the corpse long enough to get some of my files out, including the one I really wanted. He said it would cost more to repair my little buddy than I’d paid for it in the first place and did I know they had this great payment plan deal on laptops?
While I was filing out the financing paperwork, hoping for one hour of writing time with pen and paper, my husband called. “Forget the pizza,” he said. “I have Sunny’s virus. Could you bring soup and Pepto Bismol instead?”
Sure. I could catch up on my writing time Sunday afternoon, when Janie had another birthday party to attend and my husband would, I hoped, be feeling well enough to watch Sunny, who’d dropped into a three hour nap five minutes after I’d left—life of the party, that’s me—and was feeling much better.
But the virus really took hold of my husband, who spent most of the day shivering in bed when he wasn’t in the bathroom.
Long story short, the first thing I did on my new computer was send apologies to First Reader and the people waiting for Fun Project so I could start working again tonight now that everyone else is asleep . . .
But I don’t feel so good right now.
I think bedrest is the better part of valor. I’ll be sleeping on the couch, just in case my nausea is sympathetic, with the metal trashcan on hand, in case it isn’t.
Good. Night.
Earful of Cider 