Thursday, December 13, 2007

Who Needs Sleep?

All my kids get croup. I blame Larry, who had it himself as a kid. (When all else fails, pin it on your husband.) Rachel is ensconced in the armchair under the open window now, breathing in the cold air and trying not to freeze to death. Susie is upstairs with the window open and what Larry calls the eucalyptus stink-bomb nightlight going full-blast in our room. Larry thinks he is going to sneak off to work tomorrow. Won't he be surprised to see those slashed tires on his van? (insert evil laugh here - I can't spell it) Not so fast, Mr. Croup Genes - your wife needs some sleep.

I feel as if I am in one of those sleep deprivation experiments. My brain feels foggy. This morning, at the Christmas party (which we made it to, amazingly enough), a woman I had just met asked me what Susie's middle name was, and I couldn't remember. I can't remember the woman's name either; but that doesn't matter, because I don't think she is going to talk to me again.

Of course, I could be doing something useful, like housework. Or knitting. But it's hard to settle down to doing something productive when you know you are supposed to be sleeping. So, I'm sitting here, mindlessly surfing mindless blogs ("I went to the dentist today. It hurt." "My 3-year-old drew a picture today. I hung it on the frig."). C'mon, people! Make something up if you have to. Just make sure it's amusing. I need a laugh. Don't you care?

What if famous people from history had had blogs? FDR, say?

Told Congress today that we weren't selling or giving away any war materials to the British, we're just leasing
them.

(next day): Congress passed LendLease today. Suckers!

(one month later): Churchill wants to know why he isn't on my blogroll. Because he's not funny, that's why. I don't care if you're the king, for heaven's sakes; you have to be funny.

(one week later): Eleanor made me delete the entry where I said that she couldn't cook. What's the use of being the President of the United States if you can't blog what you want?

You know, I think I am going crazy. And now I've messed up the font for this post. Maybe I'll just go do that housecleaning after all. It sure isn't going to get done tomorrow.

18 comments:

  1. I think SOMEONE ought to have told me ahead of time that my husband couldn't have regular formula as a baby and had to switch to soy, because maybe I would have been prepared for my firstborn's dairy-induced colic--I gave up dairy for a year. But soy wouldn't have worked either--he had an intestinal infection. (I gave up soy, too. I gave up being a vegetarian, too. I was out of protein sources.) I blame this whole mess squarely on my husband, but that didn't help much.

    The croup traces right back to my dad. I can't shift the blame for that one.

    I hope you get some sleep tonight. I know how you feel.

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  2. I remember those croup days. Standing in a steamy bathroom rocking a barking child.

    I'm glad to know that I'm not the only person who struggles with names. I frequently call my kids the names of my students and my students the names of my kids.

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  3. Things to blame on DH: asthma, eczema, depression, diabetes, hypertension, attention deficit, messy house, german stubborness, dumb dog in the backyard, and the stupid new car payment!

    Phew! I feel better. Let's join Dawn in NYC and leave hubby genes and offspring behind for a couple of days.

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  4. Amy, OMG! Same here! And my passive aggressive MIL? Is a nurse! And the name thing? I call them by each others names, ocassionally the dogs name, and once? I called Precious Oldest "Fannie". I blame my husband for that too.

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  5. Okay, I want more of your if Famous People Blogged bits, they are choice!

    Sorry the kids are sick. Hope you get some sleep. If you have trouble sleeping, read one of those "My kids are so precious and they did this endlessly cute thing today and so I'm sharing it with you and I had to go the the grocery store and blew my nose so much today..." type blogs.

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  6. Doesn't it sometimes seem like when you think that it just couldn't get any busier, I mean every last being in the house has you busy..including the dogs (or cats, or dust mites)..., there's no laundry in the house left to get peed on, no food left in the fridge to get puked up, not an inch left visible on the floor to get messy...ONE MORE THING happens? Just to test your sanity? Just to see what you're made of? It's happened here!!! Happening here!! :)

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  7. amy - that happened to a friend of mine, also - it took her mother-in-law a year to mention that, oh yeah, they couldn't feed her husband tomatoes or dairy the first year of his life.

    toni - glad to see I'm not the only one with Dawn-envy right now. A couple of days in NYC by myself - ooh, yeah!

    fannie mae - I don't get any of my kids' names right on the first try, anymore.

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  8. OY! HUGS! I hope the family is feeling better soon...

    By the way, the evil laugh is spelled: muh ha ha haa ha haa haa!

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  9. My kids too get croup but its hot steam that helps them, not cold air. Weird huh? Just turn the shower on full blast and wait 10 mins.

    I hope its over soon.

    Oh, and my 6 year old, still gets croup. But that is another story all together!

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  10. Oh yikes - the croup is not fun.

    Blame your husband - I'm right there with you.

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  11. p.s. re: your comment the other day on the blog about the Christmas Honey-Do list? I am SO WITH YOU. I would love to get both a thoughtful present AND some handyman jobs done.

    Sadly - it is not to be.

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  12. OMGosh!! I think this may be the best post I have read in a long time.
    My children all get croupe too. When we live in an apartment I actually had a neighbor come knock at midnight because she wanted to know if we had been exposed to tuberculosis. Weirdo.

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  13. Too funny! Not the kids being sick...I'm finding out that's not so fun. My DD is 11 months and has her first official cold...which has her vomiting from mucous...nothing like someone sneezing puke on you. Okay...that got a little out of hand. Anyhow, I think you are super funny. I check your blog daily and am LMAO at your dead president's blog lines! You should work on more of those! Hope the kids get better soon!

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  14. I totally feel your pain with croup... spend many, many years dealing with that. SADLY, it comes from MY side. ::sigh::

    I LOVED the FDR blog... seriously funny stuff.

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  15. All of my kids have had the croup MANY times. I think we're a croup family! It's not fun, is it?

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  16. Oh, now THAT's hilarious! (Damn! I was just going to do a dentist post...or did I? No, that was the doctor.)

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  17. I hate croup. As a kid, I got it every year when the weather turned cold. Later, as an adult, I got horrendous upper respiratory infections...which ALWAYS coincided with that time of the year when the weather got cold enough that we turned our heat on for the first time. I've since learned that the 'burnt dust' smell that comes out of air ducts is a trigger for me, and if I'm in that environment long enough, I'll get a nasty croup-like infection.

    The only house that has never happened to me in was the one we're in now, and that's because the house was new and the air ducts were all clean. I've known of asthmatics in our area that have to go to the extreme of having their duct system in the their home professionally cleaned out (there is a service our area that uses chimney sweep type brushes and vacuums for this purpose), and it's supposed to be effective in preventing that.

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  18. leah - thanks for the spelling lesson!

    anothermomcreation - hot steam has never worked for us. I actually snapped at the doctor on the phone when he suggested it. Poor guy.

    valarie - TB! That's great. I'll tell people that's what they have.

    becky - thanks for the reminder - it's a new house for us, and it used to have a dog, so I probably should have had the vents cleaned out. It's just hard mentioning another to-do item that costs several hundred dollars to my husband right now. It may push him right over the edge.

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