Rip Van Kasha

As I mentioned earlier, we've been down with the flu and you could say that its getting pretty ugly around here. My house is a disaster; the livingroom floor is covered with blankets and pillows, the kitchen floor is sticky (I have been sweeping but don't have the energy to mop), I'm about four loads behind in laundry, and the bathroom... *shudder*... I'm not even going there.

So yesterday, I had a tiny ounce of energy and I used it to do a little cleaning, mostly laundry and vacuuming. Just doing that drained me again and all I wanted to do was lay on the couch and doze. Not likely. Did I mention that the only ones not affected by the flu-bug are the two babies? Yeah, the two children with the most P&V are perfectly fine, while the rest of us, mostly me, have zero energy. This makes looking after No.4 a freakin' nightmare!!

He's constantly into something, whether its the cabinets and cupboards, pulling out tupperware and utensils and appliances; or pulling out the DVDs and CDs and opening them and throwing the disks on the ground; or taking any item he can find, running over to the baby-gate at the top of the stairs and throwing them over, down into the front entry; or sneaking into any room that the door has not been shut all the way and totally trashing that room as quick as he can, because he knows he's gonna get busted right away; and he especially loves tipping over the garbage bin and wading through the mess, rooting through everything to see what's edible and what could potentially be a toy. These are just a FEW of the many many things he does to occupy and entertain himself, on a daily basis.

So you can see how someone feeling perfectly well would have a hard time keeping up with him, let alone a mom who's been looking after a family of sickies and not feeling so shit-hot herself. Yesterday was a definite low-point for me. Once my initial burst of energy went out, I was an exhausted, dazed mess. You know when you get so tired that you start slurring your words and everything gets blurry and you feel like your legs weigh a hundred pounds? At one point, I just layed on the couch and weakly yelled at Ryder to get out of the kitchen and come lay down on his couch. Did he listen? Of course not, *sigh*.

He finally went down for his nap and the second his head hit his pillow, so did mine. I snoozed for a couple of hours until he woke up. And you know, sometimes, when you are that tired, having a nap merely teases your body, makes it think its going to get its 8-hours of sleep. And when you have to drag that body out of bed to "be a mom", you honestly think you are going to die. I have no idea how I managed to do my "mom stuff", look after the kids, make supper, and all that.

Around 6:30, the three youngest decided they wanted to bath together. I dragged my butt to the bathroom, ran the water, plunked them all in, and promptly fell asleep on the bathroom floor (ewww! OMG I can't believe I did that!). I used a towel as a pillow and I was out. I could vaguely hear squeals of laughter and delight coming from all three as they happily splashed and played in the water. Every so often, when the water splashing on my head and the voices reached a certain decibel level, I'd whisper to them to "stop it or else", then I'd pass out again. When the dead silence penetrated my unconsciousness, I woke up and saw all three standing over me, naked and dripping. "Mom, you're laying on our towels." Doh!

Fed them their supper, settled them all on the floor amid the pillows and blankets, put the baby to bed, and told Tyler I was going to lay down "just for a bit". Well, we all know what happens whenever I say that. Yep. I went to bed at 7:45pm (which is UNHEARD of for me) and woke up around 5am to get Ryder a bottle. Crawled back in bed until the alarm went off at 7. So that's almost 12 hours, people! Man, did my body ever need that. I actually feel human today.

Until I went downstairs to do some laundry, taking both little ones down with me. In the amount of time it took me to switch out the laundry, put more in, fold the clean stuff (so, about ten minutes) here is what my darling boy-child did: emptied the box of picture frames all over the floor, somehow figuring out how to remove the glass part from three frames; dumped out the entire bowl of kitty food that I had JUST refilled, all over the black shag rug in the laundry room; scooped a couple of handfuls of said kitty food into their fresh bowl of water; climbed on a chair to reach the sewing machine, grabbed the thread off the spindle and unspooled almost the entire thing; dumped the hamper of dirty laundry out onto the clean pile I had just taken out of the dryer; ran back into the toy area and tipped over the huge bin containing all the ninja turtle stuff; got into the boys bathroom and came out with a bottle of shampoo, which he promptly spilled out all over himself and the floor; and last but not least, squatted down and let loose a huge stewy one in his diaper.

So that's it, ladies and gents, I am DONE. The motherhood brochure never mentioned all this. I'm switching careers. I think I'd like to be a professional ice-cream taster. Or maybe a photographer who takes pictures of really hot, hunky men for romance novel covers. I could do that, easily....