Monday’s Madness

I started to tell you about this Monday night but it was late, I was tired and I just didn’t have the gumption to relive the day. But since, the material for the post is still ongoing, I think I can share it now.

A Monday after a long weekend away, especially a long weekend away that was busy with caretaking duties and wee ones, should never be busy. That Monday should be a quiet day to slide back into your duties and whatever is coming up next on your plate.

My Monday was the opposite.

The fridge that has been beeping away for a month now finally conked out. It started beeping continuously and there was no stopping it except to pull the plug, which I did. But that meant that I needed to accept that my fantasy of keeping it alive until the Thanksgiving Black Friday deals revealed a replacement fridge for, let’s say $100 – it WAS a fantasy after all – was never going to happen. I needed a fix now. The day was partly spent trying to get that problem solved and it was very similar to a Seinfeld skit. Exhausting! I still can’t relive that rigamarole (is that how you spell that?), but I spent too much time being transferred on the phone over and over with the company that had been out here a few weeks ago to fix the fridge but the repair tech had not found anything so told me to wait until something else happened…only to finally get an apt for Thursday. My fridge was out of commission on Monday. That was not going to work so I made new arrangements with another company who could make it out that day. They did but they did not have the part that I needed so they would come back on Tuesday.

My son also presented with a low fever that morning so I kept him home and medicated him. I noticed later that he had a giant swollen bug bite on the back of his leg – yowzers! I wondered if that was the cause of the fever, but later in the day he came down with a super high fever and other symptoms that made me think they were separate issues. In the late morning he seemed better so I had dressed him up and brought him to school figuring that he needed to save his sick days for later in the season when he was REALLY sick. He only has 3 days of school this week so I did not want him to get behind. Luckily the school has a policy, that I probably had read somewhere but that information was lost in my mental fog, that said he has to be out 24 hours with a fever. Since he became worse by the afternoon I would have felt awful thinking I had sent him to school! The pediatrician’s office was booked solid so I carted him off to Urgent Care. They too were booked so we had to wait an hour and a half, but we exited with treatment for all possible issues, fevers, ear infections and even in the event that the bite was something that needed attending to.

I bipped back and forth all day between the fridge, my sick son, my other children, and my regular duties, in addition to the extra unpacking and unloading from having been away all weekend. Our house guest was still with us so it eased my burden with dragging all of my children around and keeping them happy while dealing with the various issues. I still had the task of moving our food to my neighbor’s house to save what I could. She had been my backup plan for weeks and I now needed to get it in motion. But the day wore on as busy as ever and it wasn’t until evening when I was able to show up on her doorstep with all of my groceries. She was more than gracious and I will definitely need to give her a “thank you” gift when this is all over…which I thought would be by Tuesday evening. It’s not.

After I dropped off our groceries I needed to run to the pharmacy to pick up my son’s prescription. There were 6 cars ahead of me. There’s a lot of sickness going around. I also had to stop to buy bags of ice so that I could fill a cooler or two at my house (I could not bring myself to have my neighbor figure out where to put the 15 bags of frozen corn that had been recently husked from the corn stand nearby in one of my corn frenzy moments) and to put in my freezer to keep whatever coldness it had going. I picked my house guest up a Pumpkin Latte too since she totally deserved it from playing back up all day long!

I had mounds of laundry on my bed to be put away that I just tucked on the floor. It would have to wait. I still didn’t even know what was going on this week and had to spend some time late last night catching up with “domestic operations”.

Tuesday came and I was hoping for some breathing room. I knew that I would be keeping my son home based on doctor’s orders, so that was easy. The fridge repair technician arrived only to find out that the part that he had ordered yesterday did not work at all and he would need to order a new part. It will come the next day now, Wednesday.

My weekend in the farmhouse pretending I was a true country girl (but realizing I never would have made it) has followed me home. I am living out of an ice cooler outside on my front porch. For once I am not complaining that the 80 degree day on Monday turned to 60 degrees that night and into Tuesday. That temperature drop kept my groceries alive much longer than a balmy 80 degrees would have. Phew.

That’s not beer on my doorstep, although I could have used it. It’s lemon lime soda for a pound cake recipe that was on the Pioneer Woman/Food Network On Demand. It’s part of my “thank you” gift for my neighbor so I will keep you posted.

Our food is at our neighbors, but they are not truly a “Next Door Neighbor”. It’s a little bit of a production to go and get things. I kept a few things close by on the porch in coolers, but not enough to make it through another day. I spent much time today going in and out to refill milk cups and to see what we needed to eat up. It was nice to get some fresh air more often than I normally do though!

We have been spoiled with filtered water from the fridge that is now not available so we are all turning our noses up at the chlorine water from the sink.

And dinner was interesting to say the least. I told the kids that they would have “Breakfast for Dinner” and they were thrilled with that. I told the grownups that it was not going to be pretty but more of a mish mosh of foods that needed to be eaten or were of the available remnants left behind at home.

As I perused my freezer looking to see if I needed to eat anything, I came across 2 packages of bacon. I decided I may as well cook 1 package, at least it went with the “Breakfast for Dinner” theme and I threw the other package on the porch in the ice cooler.

While cooking the bacon, I had a grand idea. We also had tomatoes from our neighbor’s garden that were desperately calling to be eaten. I knew what dinner would be!

BLT’s!

Of course. It was wonderful and I felt like I had accepted a challenge and had won.

What will Wednesday bring? I am exhausted from my vacation weekend, from the madness on Monday, from being up much of the night at my son’s side making sure he was ok, from missing my nap 3 days in a row (Sunday was a travel day, and the fridge repair tech came at nap time both days…you knew that was going to happen!) and from trying to catch up today.

I suspect a trip to replenish my ice supply will be in order, but at least the cooler temps are holding.

Pure craziness.