Peas on the Floor

So, yesterday was my big day. I turned 40 and finalized my divorce. Two huge milestones for anyone to go through in one day. The day itself was crazy as usual, what with trying to clean and do the usual mom-stuff that I deal with every day. The confusion was added to just a bit by having my 6 year old son home from school with a low-grade fever.

Anyway, after the usual running and whatnot and after the rest of the kids got home from school, a friend came over and stayed with the kids while I went to the courthouse to take care of business. The judge was awesome, and after he and I reviewed the papers and tweaked some of the information, he granted me my divorce. I did a little happy dance in the hallway and then immediately grabbed my phone and changed my relationship status on Facebook – after all, it’s not official until it’s posted on Facebook, right? ;)

I went back home and proceeded to make dinner (chicken parmesan with a side of peas – my birthday, my choice) for me and the kids. My son still wasn’t feeling 100% so he had part of a PB&J. Baths, laundry, cleaning, etc. continued, as usual. At 9:00 I gave him another shot of acetaminophen and the sat down to relax a bit. By 10:00 his fever spiked to 103.5 degrees and by 10:15 he was hallucinating. I debated for a bit and then called a friend and her husband, and he came over and stayed with my sleeping kids while I raced across town to the ER with my little 2-footed furnace. With any of my other kids, I don’t typically panic, but this little guy likes to spike fevers and then get really really bad really really quickly. He did this 5 years ago and spent the night in ICU because of it.

I called my ex-husband (the first one, since I now have two) and he and his wife arrived at the ER shortly after I did. It took a while and a lot of cold wet cloths to get the fever to break, but it finally did around 1:00am. Blood work came back normal, the flu test was negative, and although the strep test was negative, the doctor opted to put him on antibiotics in case it was a false negative and because his throat was so red and irritated. Plus, we found out yesterday that he had been exposed to strep earlier in the week at school.

We got home around 2:00am and I got to bed at about 2:30, hoping and praying that I would wake up at 5:30. Yeah. Didn’t happen. Go figure. At 6:15 I flew out of bed and started getting kids up and around. The girls actually moved quicker than usual, and helped get the other 2 boys ready while I let Sicko sleep a bit longer. I jumped into the shower, threw on some long underwear and ran out to the kitchen to scramble up a dozen eggs with cheese. The cheesy eggs got tossed into bowls and handed out with orders to Just Eat This As Quickly As You Can Because We Are Really Late. Packed two lunches, got Sicko dressed, almost forgot to put my own clothes on over the long undies, and loaded up the She-Beast and took off for school by 7:15. I dumped the girls at school and turned around and headed back home, with a quick run to the drug store to grab more acetaminophen and ibuprofen (and picked up a movie at the same time).

When we got home from all of this and walked in the door, I paused and took a look around. Dirty clothes and towels on the floor (I admit, some of them are mine), dirty dishes on the coffee table, coats and hats and gloves everywhere, dirty dishes covering the kitchen, and yes, peas on the floor. Peas. Little green snot-like blobs all over the living room floor.

So, today’s agenda includes, but is not limited to: running the dishwasher at least once, cleaning the disaster that is the kitchen, cleaning out the fridge (that scares me), cleaning up the living room (and quite possibly downsizing the quantity of toys in the toybox), sweeping and mopping all of the floors, attempting to scrub the bathroom, running back into town to get my now-expired drivers license renewed with my correct name AND address, and hopefully running to the library so that I can post this without having to do it with thumbs alone (or maybe email it to someone and have them do some copy/paste/upload magic for me), and then dealing with supper and baths and laundry and everything else that has to be done.

But if nothing else gets done, I will at least get the peas off of the floor.