It’s been a looong, looooong, loooooooong week. The kind of long week that induces me to add extra letters to words. Exxxxtra letttters.

There hasn’t been anything particularly bad going on, so I really shouldn’t complain. But I’ll complain anyhow.

Daycare was closed. Seeing as I am crazy about my kids, that shouldn’t sound like a bad thing. However, I am so not cut out to be a stay-at-home mother. I guess much of the problem was in how much we stayed at home. We had various plans for various days, but many of them fell through for various reasons. For another thing, I still had some work obligations to tend to, so it wasn’t actually vacation time.

We did get out on Wednesday for a bit, which was before all this snow started falling. After being out and about for a while, I thought it would be nice to go somewhere for a snack. I found myself hankering for a latte (a decaf soy latte, mind you), and the only place to find such a thing in the towns near our home is a large chain bookstore. That particular endeavor ended in me leaving the bookstore in disgrace with a crying baby, one newly purchased $4.99 Dora book which I had tried to read to Phoebe, but which we couldn’t finish due to said crying baby, and a little less dignity. I did at least get to have my latte first. (Though I burned my tongue on it, and had to wait what seemed an eternity for it to cool, and then had to chug it anyhow when Theo ran out of patience at being stuck at the table after hours of largely being strapped in to a carseat or a stroller. Good times.)

I looked forward to the weekend, when John would be available so we could all go out together on some fun excursion. Friday things were mostly closed for the holiday, so we didn’t try. We made plans for Saturday, but then it snowed, and it set us back. We thought we try for Sunday, but there was more snow. And somehow, we never managed to go anywhere. And while Phoebe likes to go out in the snow, Theo, so far, does not. (Also, I can’t for the life of me find his snowpants. Our house eats things.) The result is that I have not actually left the house in days. I can’t actually tell you where the time has gone. I know I did some baking. I made apple sauce (from baked apples) and a pumpkin pie, and Phoebe and I made bread again. There have been some movies watched. There have been some toys played with. Some phone calls. I’ve had very little time on my laptop, other than late at night, and much of that was for work. I check in for brief spells during the day, but Theo has this tendency to come over to the couch and close my laptop whenever I open it.

I have to say that I am really looking forward to Tuesday, when Phoebe and Theo go back to daycare. It’s not that I don’t like spending time with them. It’s just that I appreciate spending time with them more when I get to have a bit of time when I can focus on other things.

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And speaking of focussing on my children, here are some pictures I took.

I’m pretty sure I haven’t mentioned it here, but I found a tick on me a few weeks ago. Talk about undesirable.

It was pretty surprising to find a tick in November, but we’ve had some pretty unseasonably warm weather up here in the Northeast of the US. We live in a heavily wooded area, so ticks are pretty common. I was pretty skeeved out, but not too concerned otherwise. I thought it was a small-sized dog tick, and not a deer tick. (Deer ticks can carry Lyme Disease, but dog ticks don’t.) I also thought the tick had only been on me for a few hours anyhow, and apparently ticks need to be attached for at least 36 hours before they can transmit Lyme Disease. However, about a week and a half after removing the tick, and well after the initial trauma from the tick removal had healed, I started to get a rash at the site of the bite. So either the tick had been on me longer than I’d realized, or our clumsy removal of it had caused the tick to transfer the bacteria faster.

My doctor prescribed a 2-week course of antibiotics for me. I just took the preantipenultimate pill. I’m happy that I’ve only got another day left to go, because the antibiotics have done a number on me, and I have been feeling pretty wiped out and was actually pretty sick for a few days. On the other hand, I’ll gladly take 2 weeks of feeling awful over the longer-term feeling awfulness associated with full-blown Lyme Disease. The rash cleared up right away, so it seems that the antibiotic is working.

But you know what? It really sucks taking care of 2 small children when you are feeling awful. I have found myself being (even) crankier than usual. It’s hard to be patient and cheerful when you just want to curl up in a ball on the floor. I don’t know how I would have coped if I hadn’t been able to take the kids to daycare some of the days, or if John hadn’t been around. (How do stay at home parents manage when they are sick? Or single parents?)

It was such a relief when I felt better, but then Theo has been sick the last few days. I’m not sure whether he’s got the intestinal bug that a couple of other kids at daycare had, or whether he’s also reacting to the antibiotics getting passed on to him through me. (He’s still nursing.) In any case, he has been sleeping worse than usual. And now it seems he’s getting a cold. Phoebe has seemed a bit under the weather, too. Or perhaps she’s just been more needy in reaction to my crankiness.

Life has generally been more than ordinarily crazy the last couple months. John has been working pretty much around the clock, 7 days a week. I’ve had work deadlines, too. And did you know that there’s some sort of major holiday coming up soon for which we’ll be expected to do things like decorate and purchase (and even mail) presents? We as yet have no tree, and I haven’t even started Christmas shopping.

(If it’s any indication of the craziness of our household, I took the above photo on Saturday for the PhotoHunt theme of “undesirable,” and started drafting the post. And I still have yet to get it finished. I decided not to actually submit this as a Photohunt entry, anyhow, because I doubt most people participating in that really need this much detail about my life. But I figured I might as well still use the title.)