Usually, I lead a fairly charmed life. Now, you're looking at past posts and saying, but you had that computer virus fiasco, and the medicaid stuff, ADD, insomnia, childbirth, husband unemployed, etc. I know. I still feel like I have a charmed life (think how much worse it could be!). I used to say that life isn't fair--and I got the long end of the stick.
That said, I think this week was designed to even things out.
Sunday, despite our best efforts, we were ten minutes late to church. By the time we got there, every person in the family had either cried or shouted or both, so nobody was happy. And ten minutes was apparently too much too late, so we didn't get to bless our baby, even though it was on the schedule. They said, "Get here sooner next time." Um, we can't. We really did do our very very best (after only 4 hours of sleep). I cried for hours, but eventually felt better after praying a lot.
Then, after all the work I did rewiring the swamp cooler, Sunday Night it developed a short and I couldn't find the broken spot. So Monday I went up on the roof (while the kids were sleeping and Tim was gone to Utah) to fix it, and the ladder slipped. I managed to jump to the roof and grab the ladder, but then it took me 20 minutes on a 180 degreee roof to find a stable spot to put the ladder down--it only worked after I prayed that I could get down.
My fix only worked for about 20 minutes, and then the whole thing shorted again, so I unwired it from the wall. It was only keeping the house 81 degrees cool anyway....
So I turned on the window-mount air conditioner I had already dragged up from the garage and installed in Ben's window. Then I went down to figure out if the central air was fixable. I read the instructions and cleaned it, reset it, and turned it on. Nothing. So, at Dad's suggestion, I followed the wires into the house and discovered....they'd been cut. I finally figured out where they belonged, but I needed the thermostat installation instructions to fix it--and I'd told Tim to throw them away Sunday night, and my computer wouldn't open the pdfs to read the online ones (way to go adobe update!).
So on Tuesday Tim was home and I spent all day in the heat cleaning the house and folding laundry because one of the moosebutter guys and his girlfriend were going to spend the night here before they all left for the next tour block. Good news, though: I found a product that we could paint onto our flat black roof that would reflect up to 90% of the heat that the roof is currently absorbing and putting into the house, plus it would seal the leaks we've developed after the blizzard last winter, and it has a 7-year guarantee (and lasts up to indefinitely). And we could do the whole roof and garage for $150. For a whole new, energy-star rated, efficient roof. Not bad. The bad news: no way to get it here, and nobody to watch the kids while I put it on because....
Wednesday morning early Tim left again, not to return until Sunday night.
So we're sitting in the heat, with no car, and me alone with four kids, and so what happens? I get sick, naturally. As sick as I've been since I had that horrid sinus infection when I was 7 weeks pregnant with Daniel. I caught the intestinal flu that Anda had, except (mercifully) I haven't been throwing up--yet. But literally every time I stand up I have to run to the bathroom, and nothing is really staying in my system long enough to give me an nutrition. Plus everything aches. It's bad enough that Caleb noticed and got worried about me.
Of course, after 12 hours of this (it lasts a week) I became concerned about my milk supply. So I prayed that I would have enough milk.
It worked.
Now, to add to my discomfort everywhere else, I am thoroughly engorged with milk--as bad as when Ben was a newborn.
Fortunately, my earnest prayers that the house stay cool enough to live have been answered with massive rainstorms and nice cool breezes every afternoon this week.
Caleb got accepted to one of the online schools I applied for, but now he doesn't want to do ANY school, which I wouldn't mind except that I think he'll actually like the online school (has anyone heard of Calvert Math? Is it any good?). The one I really want him to go to hasn't gotten back to me yet--it was the more flexible, less-required-of-the-parent option. The one he's accepted to requires me to schedule our lives, and I'm not good at that. I can enforce 5 hours of school a day, and help with lessons, but I'm not good at saying the lessons have to be in the same order and start at the same time each day...).
So I'm counting the days until Sunday. I should feel better by then. Tim will be home. My milk supply will have settled back into a pattern. Monday morning, Tim said he'd go get the roofing stuff at Home Depot and paint it on, and with another adult in the house to watch the kids, I should be able to find the short in the swamp cooler and rewire the air conditioner back to the thermostat (if I can access that one pdf.....).
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