Infection of the Leg and Other Monday Muses

The snow/rain combo is softly knocking on the window to our office as I write this. You will have to forgive me if this seems like a foreign type of post but earlier this year I watched Little Women.

That alone seems like it should suffice as a reason for me being in a winsome mood, but couple that with me getting the "Little Women cookbook" from the library and I am finding myself in a literary knot where I feel I simply must write!

I am the Anne Shirley, the Jo March, and every tenacious Jane Austen heroine wrapped into one. I always have been fiesty and I think my 38 year old ness has simply ripened the condition until I sometimes feel so unsettled that I simply must write out my feelings. Who knows if this will continue but here I am, pouring out my heart to you about today...if nothing else this can serve you a peek into the madness that is a Monday around here.

We are on holiday from school right now. The end of February is not the time that I normally find to take a break from school but as our co-op chose this time, we are obliging citizens taking a nice opportunity of it.

The children slept in. I was so hoping for a day when I could lounge around until noon, eating cheese curds and watching Designing Women (cheese curds because I am Keto...I'd much rather have a bonbon but that is another story for another day!). However Emma was up at 9, and Cal's therapist was due to our house by 11, so I dragged him out of bed at 10.

Thankfully, this morning was not all horse-feather whippings and screaming matches over breakfast temperatures. All of those occurrences are fictitious but you can imagine what occurs around here on regular mornings. Pshhh. Some days, with all of the teenage hormones running rampant through here, I am wondering if I should buy stock in Noxema. Honestly, can we please control our acne around here?

At least I had time to call Cal's doctor's office to make an appointment and hallelujah, even though I had to listen to the same elevator music for 27 minutes, I got through and they had hired someone capable and kind to answer the phone. I right fell over. Because the last girl I think was from Orange is the New Black and she was not having what I was having to say. It was not a fun time to call into the doctor. It never is when you have to use words like puss, ooze, and seepage before breakfast but still, it made it a bit better with the new girl who was so candy sweet I imagined she was originally Cindy-Lo from the Grinch all grown up and living her dream of answering telephones.

My kids are on this oatmeal kick and by kick I mean slightly obsessed. By slightly I mean highly. I think you understand what I'm saying if you've ever seen orangutans at the zoo during feeding time. Which I don't understand at all. We bought this ginormous box from Costco, if for no other reason than because we are going gluten-free and we thought this would be easy for busy mornings. I mean, they have had instant oatmeal I don't know how many times in their lifetime but suddenly, it is like we have a new lease on life and instant oatmeal is the answer to all of their problems.

The kids, even Emma, are eating 4, 5, 6 packets at a time. They are scarfing it down and asking me to make them another bowl at the same time so it will be ready by the time their first one is gone. This is my life now.

Luckily we ended the oatmeal eating competition before Calvin's therapist arrived. What a saint this woman is, to come into our messy house week in and week out and somehow not look around in disgust at the amount of cotton stuffing and dust balls floating around. Did I fail to mention that our dog has now taken to ripping the stuffing out of anything he can get his hands on? I mean, he doesn't have HANDS but if he did, then he would be some kind of polyester-fluff inventory control person because, oh my goodness does it look like someone is trying to create a winter diorama in our home or what.

Cal's therapist is one of these sweet girls who is great at making charts and laminating things. Me being sweet let alone using a laminator are things that I don't do well so it's like she was meant to be in our family. I haven't had the heart to tell her yet that the last time we tried all of these charts Calvin hid the charts or threw them away but hey, its a new day, maybe that won't happen this time.

After the therapist we had to basically throw shoes on and get in the car for the doctors office. Which I can't even say is "across town" but is actually in an entirely different town. One where no one wanted to live when I was growing up around here, and now people want to live because it's hip and vintagey. You know the type. We had to go there but of course when you are running late what do you get? Every stinking light or, as in our case, when we didn't get every light we got every old person who decided that today was going to be the day they get the Buick out of the garage and give it a good roll around to make sure the battery is still good. Oi.

We got there all of one minute late (praise the Lord), we're walking in from the parking lot and I look down. Let me just tell you, ladies...nothing good ever comes from looking down.

There on the bottom of Calvin's pants is a massive amount of dog hair. Like so much I wanted to barf in a public trash receptacle. And I know the dog that it came from. I can't imagine what other people think aside from it conjuring up some Werewolf movie scenes because our son is almost covered with hair. For Pete's sake if he could grow navy blue fleece skin then he had a serious coat coming in for the winter.

Not only did I want to run and hide and die but Nick assured me that I didn't have time for any of those options so I did the walk of shame into the docs office.

While we sat there I proceeded to try to pull his pant leg away from his leg so I could hit it to try to get the hair to come off. But the waiting room is apparently not a place where hair likes to come off of pants because it was staying put. I need to buy one of these and keep it in my purse. Granted it will probably always be stuck to the side of my purse but at least it will be there.

As you can see I learn things the hard way.

Anyway, we went in and our son has an infection on his leg. I will spare you the incredibly gross details. Let me tell you that Nick had MRSA in September from a spot on his leg (he got it from a hot tub...now you wanna crawl into one of those for a soak, right?) so I was not about to let the spot go. I'm thankful that we went in but equally thankful that it was nothing as bad as when I took Nick in and they were strapping him into a bed before we finished our registration paperwork.

While we were there I forced him to hold out his hands to show the doctor the damage he's done from biting his nails. I'm just this kind of mom. Because me telling him to stop biting his nails has clearly been an invitation to do it more.

She said he's permanently scarred his nails they may never grow in again correctly! So there goes our chance of making him a young protege of a hand model. All that, out the window.

After the doctor's office we came home and I made the kids bacon for lunch. I love bacon but they seemed less than thrilled. Whose kids even are these? I don't even know what I'm doing with my life if my kids don't like bacon.

Then it was off to the dog park. Our dog is fairly new to our family. We got him from the shelter, his name was Leroy, and we let him keep that name.

But this dog is weird. Every time we go to the dog park he yawns and whines the entire way time we are driving there. But he loves the dog park. You're thinking that maybe he doesn't like the car, aren't you? But he doesn't do this on the way home at all.

The dog park is a bujo weird place to be by the way if you've never been. You have this weird meeting thing with people and their dogs. Then you have to feel out if its okay for your dog to wrestle with their dog or not. The kids and I were there once with Leroy and a lady told me she didn't appreciate the amount of energy my dog has. I don't know anything about what that means, but she clearly looked old enough that sometime in her life she's done a Sweatin' to the Oldies video once or twice. We let it go that any amount of energy is probably too much for her to stand.

The dog today was nice, however, and we ended up leaving simply because it was cold. No offense to the cute dog.

So now I'm off to yoga and to go get the boy leg infection antibiotics. Which makes me super glad we started probiotics because antibiotics can really mess with your system.

Speaking of probiotics, true story but I woke up from a nap yesterday (Sunday btw) and my face was covered with acne! Nick said I look like I have the plague. Or lepersy. Or both! Anyway, the only thing I can figure that has changed has been that I started probiotics. Has anyone else experienced this because I am not liking the results of improved gut health. I now am stuck in some type of pergatory where I don't know if I should continue with the probiotics and hope that this is a purge of toxins out of my body? Or if I should stop using them all together and somehow figure out how to fix my face! See what I mean about needing all the Noxema around here?

If anyone has any personal experience about this, I am all ears. Well, all zits at this time but you get the idea!