Today I learned that I should have been actually paying attention to my doctor’s advice. Instead of listening to him, we’ve been trying to forge ahead with business-as-much-usual-as-possible.
This morning, for example, I got up early to get the kids all ready for their 8am swimming lessons, and then we came home and got ready for the day. That included doing the girls’ hair (a loud, emotional ordeal every time), wrestling kids into clothes, brushing teeth, and helping them clean their room before breakfast. Because the kids refused to go to bed last night, they were tired. When they are tired, they scream, cry, and protest everything. Every action item listed above was accompanied by a tantrum–sometimes several in tandem!
After breakfast, we headed over to Target. From the moment I stepped out of the car into the Target parking lot, my pelvis or groin or whatever it is that is causing me problems protested, I ignored it and pushed all three kids (the girls, as I mentioned before, were tired and did not care to walk) in the cart around our enormous super Target to get: two fans for the girls’ room (they don’t have AC in their room), baking chocolate (I had grand plans to bake brownies for the construction workers down the street; I felt very antagonistic toward them for a week and then realized they have the hard job. The brownies were supposed to be part of my repentance…), toilet paper, body wash, diapers, a birthday present fo a party the girls had (in less than an hour), a bag for the present, tissue paper for the bag, and card to go with it all,
By the time I reached the check-out, I was almost in tears from pain. The check-out kid was incredibly kind and asked concernedly about the state of my day. I choked out something and tried to stand upright while he rang me up. By the time I slid in my card, I had broken into a drenching sweat, was gagging back vomit, and using every ounce of energy to not pass out. He kindly allowed me to sit down on the abandoned bagging station nearby and got me a garbage to puke in. Thankfully, I just gagged a lot and held back the actual puke. There were a lot of people present, and I was sooooo thankful they did not have to witness/smell that.
Then I lost my mind and called Abe, who is super busy, to come rescue me. He immediately jumped in his car, but as my brain became clearer I realized my mom is closer and also does not have to hit quota by Friday. I cancelled Abe and asked my mom to pick me up. Then I started feeling slightly better and managed to walk back to the car just as my mom pulled up. She relieved me of some groceries before I drove the girls to Pippa’s birthday party in Provo.
Ammon fell asleep on the way home, so he didn’t nap. That was sad. After his non-nap, we went to pick up the girls and bring them to Mary’s podiatrist to check her wart. It is healed! Lydia enjoyed the model foot pictured below:
After we came home, I lay down on the play room couch for hours until Abe came home. Ammon was locked in with me and played with every toy in the toy room. By the time we were done, you could not see the floor.
And now Abe is home, Ammon is asleep, we have planted the girls in front of a movie, and we are going to watch a movie. I am going to cancel everything tomorrow and try to follow the doctor’s orders so I don’t actually end up in a wheelchair. I used to find the thought kind of a joke, but I can feel now that it’s actually not a joke at all.