Life Oh Life

If you remember that song by Des’ree you are probably waking up with a sore neck and a dodgy knee while you sing Life Oh Life in a resigned tone.

Well if you weren’t, I was. But it was quickly followed by this, sung through tears of frustration.

You’re still in bed at ten and work began at eight
You’ve burned your breakfast, so far things are goin’ great
Your mother warned you there’d be days like these
But she didn’t tell you when the world has brought
You down to your knees that

The past 10 days have horrible. I can’t remember a time when a week was this horrible.

EMMA

Emma woke up last Saturday with a raging fever, sore ear and a headache. In general all 4 kids are generally pretty healthy – they get sniffles here and there but aren’t getting frequent flyer miles at the Drs office. But Emma, sweet Emma, is not only the youngest but the one who is pretty familiar with the inside of an ER and hospital. She doesn’t get sick often but when she has a medical issue, she does it properly – bleeding eyes, almost burst appendix, coughing fit until she throws up, fractured wrist. So when she wakes us up with a problem, it’s a little bit of a trigger.

Back to the issue at hand – she was clearly not well. We are fortunate enough to have a host of medical professionals in the family who helped us treat her over the weekend. The fever broke but she was still not happy so we headed to the Dr on Monday who threw in an antibiotic and a new list of meds on top of the basket full we had at home.

Cue me singing “Life, oh life, oh life, oh life Doo doo doo doo” as I watch our bank balance disappear.

She started feeling better thankfully but it took the whole week. Poor kid.

UNTIL she woke up on Monday (yesterday) crying with a sore ear. When I say I went a little crazy, I mean it. Fortunately my husband is not about my shenanigans and sorted things out. By lunch time her ear was fine, she had no pain and went to karate. But it did make for a chaotic start to the week. 0.0.

JACK

While this was happening Jack started his new school curriculum. I knew it was going to be an adjustment but I just didn’t know how much of an adjustment. We have been doing our own thing for 6 years with a very loose routine and structure. This new curriculum has a lot of subjects (9) which means we need to follow a pretty set structure.

I gave Jack the week before to get used to the system, look through each subject etc. I also worked through the stuff I had to as the facilitator.

Monday we started with a schedule and a plan. Except Emma was sick and David needed stuff done during school time and the borehole wasn’t working so I had to sort some stuff out there. CHAOS. Jack took full advantage of that but we managed to get some stuff done. I got up early on Tuesday to make sure I was ready and we had a much better day BUT its still a big adjustment for us both and he is not exactly embracing it, making it a little more challenging.

DAVID

David and I in many ways are complete opposites and it works because we can pick up the slack for one another. He is really good with sick kids and manages the Health and Wellness Portfolio and he makes sure our pooches are walked every day. But he is also extremely driven and focused on work which means he tends to get caught up in his little work bubble. And rightly so, he literally puts the food on the table so I get it.

Sometimes he gets a little caught up in his bubble and misses the chaos (or ignores it) going on around us.

ME

Sick kids stress me out. Emma getting sick stresses me out. She also kept waking up for about 4 nights. So I was stressed and exhausted – not a happy combo.

Wednesday morning I woke up with a sore throat. I ignored it and put it down to allergies, went for our Wednesday walk and then met Eve on Thursday morning for our hike. My plan was to walk the sick out of me. Which I thought I had done but by 10h00 on Thursday it was clear that that was not going to be the outcome. I was very clearly sick.

By Friday I was mom down. The pressure in my head was something else so I stayed in bed, dosed myself and left the kids to fend for themselves. Fortunately by Saturday I was feeling a bit better but I still spent the weekend resting.

In between all of this, a pipe burst in the complex early on Thursday morning. As the chairman of the body corporate this is very much my problem. This meant water pipes were dug up, water was turned off and as is usual for this complex, it is a bigger issue than just fixing pipes.

The borehole was fixed, then it broke again. As mentioned above, this is my problem. Fortunately one of the owners offered to help with this but it went from a R980 issue to a R9000 issue in a few hours.

Jane couldn’t come to work on Friday, not a big deal really but there was no water on Wednesday when she did come so she couldn’t do the washing.

We had no power on Friday night which is fine we have solar but not for our oven or stove, which meant Jack had to cook burgers and chips in our little air fryer. (I did order gas for our little gas stove but missed the call from the delivery guy so he left).

Are you also crying at this point because I was.