A Day In The Life Of A Sick Grizzly Mama

It's a school day. Has been all week. Had a terrible night waking up and hacking. Thankfully the girlies slept until 10:00 (for the older one) and 11:00 (for the little one which is very unusual for her). Bacon and toast for breakfast. The morning is the worst with this illness - dang. After an hour or so my sinuses actually cleared up and I could breathe.

The little one gets logged onto the computer and accesses her History lesson while I am on the phone talking to a homeschool mom friend. She thinks I ought to see a doctor and I am inclined to agree. As the day passes, the coughing fits grow fewer and farther between. Last night I must have really strained something because every time I would cough, my left butt cheek hurt. I have been crazy doing laundry to keep up with my little accidents - I am getting older you know - and these coughing fits remind me of when I was heavily pregnant and would laugh really hard. Troll's underwear had to be put to use which is something I probably shouldn't admit on the world wide web, is it? What can I say? I ran out and it takes some time to get everything washed and then dried.

Anyhoo - so I'm doing load after load of laundry and today's first grade history lesson happens to be about the nomads settling in the Fertile Crescent. We talked about Mesopotamia, which happens to be Iraq now, and the Nile river. Rivers in general are important and that is the gist of it. She decides that we need to make mud bricks - just like the settling nomads who now need houses to live in.

2 cups of dirt, 1 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of water later they are making bricks while the oven heats up. They found a worm - eeewwww. I am happy about it because worms are good for the garden, which is where the dirt came from. While they are playing with mud, Troll calls. He is in hell. The Verrazano Narrows Bridge, to be exact. He had to drive to JFK for a training class. North Jersey is a bugger to drive through, unless you do it at - like - two o'clock in the morning. I whip up a batch of mac and cheese and we eat lunch while the bricks are baking.

It's raining. Cold. The wind is just raw and cold. I haven't done any inhalations today because I've been so busy with laundry, dishes, mud, etc. We find out that our neighbor has died. He was 51. Massive stroke. We were just hanging out with him on the block 5 days ago while the kids played. God bless him. The girlies cried - he was always good to them and always remembered their birthdays and always had a kind word for them. No matter how far along I get I am always brought up short by the death of someone I know. They're here one minute and gone the next, never to be seen again. I will never get used to that. We must make a lasagne for his parents and family.

On to math for both girls. Little one is practicing simple subtraction and identifying patterns. Older one is working on improper fractions. Piece of cake - move on. Science for the older one, watersheds and topographic maps. She creates a topographic profile - something I have never done before in my life. It's fascinating stuff for me.

It's just amazing what one can learn while homeschooling ones children!

The phone starts ringing - kids are home from school and want to gab. The older one gabs while the little one and her friend from across the street try to con us into going outside so they can play. Not today - not in this nasty mess. Anyway it's time to get my check and go grocery shopping. Off we go - we don't need much this week. Just stuff to hold us through. The girlies always help and like to find the stuff on sale, they help keep track of cost, scan the stuff at the self scanner and bag for me while I wrestle with the coupons and the electronic payment. Then it's off to get Chinese, home to find Troll back safely.

We eat and watch the new Dr. Who while The Avatar records. Great shows.