(Now with Eleanor update at the end.)

I was planning to post this quick sound byte from our weekend (already written below) but I need to do a little venting first (and I’ll TRY to keep it short since don’t want to be an online whiner).

I sometimes really wish I just wanted to (okay – that’s 50% that we could afford for me to) be a stay at home mom. Sometimes this is just too hard. Work is incredibly stressful right now. We have a seminar taking place tomorrow and the President is speaking. She’s notorious for finding SOMETHING wrong every time she does a seminar, and I’m just bracing myself for this one. Too many things were going wrong at the last minute today…

THEN at 4:00 I got a call from daycare that Eleanor had a temperature. Not too high – just 101 – but she has been having this off and on for the past few days, and it was up to 103 on Saturday. I only sent her to daycare because she seemed fine this morning.

When I picked her up, I planned to leave the boys there and bring her to the store to pick up a few things before the regular 5:15 pick up time. THEN while I was getting details about her day from our daycare provider, she threw up ALL OVER ME. The good news is that while it drenched my top, it somehow missed my skirt and I had just picked up the dry cleaning this morning. The bad news that there wasn’t one of my own tops in the dry cleaning. So I ended up wearing one of Chris’ dress shirts.

By the time I got Eleanor and myself somewhat cleaned up, it seemed ridiculous to leave and come back, so I packed everyone in the car. We carpool with Chris, so even though I called and told him to leave early, we had to circle the metro for almost 30 minutes. Thank god for portable DVD players, and Curious George, and the fact that my kids didn’t feel like watching the WIggles since their songs are already haunting my dreams.

Fast forward an hour – we decided that we wouldn’t wait until tomorrow to see a doctor since she gave us a 105.2 temperature scare last summer due to a UTI. I had a feeling that this might be another one and I’d rather not relive waking up at 3:00 a.m. to find my daughter having a seizure. We agreed that Chris would take her to our local urgent care center since the boys are both convinced that the world comes to an end when I leave the room (and because we naively thought that it would only be a couple of hours).

Now it’s 9:30, they’ve been there almost four hours and it will probably be another two. Eleanor has an IV, a catheter and has had blood taken for testing. Poor Chris has a phobia of needles (he passes out when he gives blood) and has had to be there for all of it. I did it last time and it was hard enough for me!

I’m not worried about Eleanor for anything more than her immediate discomfort. I know that this is another UTI. It’s not the end of the world. I certainly know people that have experienced worse – but it doesn’t make it any less scary for her. It doesn’t make it any less disturbing for my husband. And it doesn’t make it any less frustrating for me. I want to be there. I want to hold her and comfort her and let her know that I will ALWAYS be there if she needs me. That’s my real job. I’m the mom.

This time I will have to go to work. I’ve already exceeded my current vacation time by making the last minute trip to Key West. Chris can stay home with her as necessary tomorrow and I can’t. It’s just not a good day. I hate even thinking that. How can it ever be a bad day to take care of my children. If Chris was traveling for work, I would have to rearrange my schedule. But he can manage taking the day off – so there is no reason for me to stay home. Other than the obvious reason that I WANT to.

Don’t get me wrong – on good days, I like having a job. I won’t go into the history of that because I’ve gone back and forth on the subject. But I don’t want to give the impression that I don’t want to be a working mom. It’s just not working for me today. And I’m feeling a little sorry for myself. And I’m feeling guilty for that since I know that I have so much to be thankful for.

I just wish I could trade for a minute. I want to be at the urgent care center right now. I want to be home with my daughter tomorrow. And I want to feel like I’m giving 100% of myself to my children.

Okay that’s it. Sorry – didn’t keep it short. I did try though.

Back to our regularly scheduled program. This is some dialogue from this weekend that I found “weird on so many levels”:

Conversation over lunch at Chipotle:

Oliver (3 years old): OFF! OFF!

Me: No. Boys don’t take off their shirts off at Chipotle.

Chris: Yeah – what do you think this is? Your mother’s favorite gay bar at the beach?

8/12/08, 10:00 p.m. Eleanor Update:
Okay – so she’s fine. We have no idea what was wrong with her – but she woke up this morning like, “psyche!” (I’m feeling very 80s). But she really did seem to be very sick last night – so we don’t regret the ER drama. I mean they hooked her up to tubes and all…so it wasn’t like they were just humoring us. Anyway – it doesn’t seem to be a UTI like I thought, she hasn’t had a fever in 24 hours and she was tearing around the house causing as much mayhem as ever up to the minute we put her to bed. So for everyone that has been sending words of support – all is well. One last thing. Chris told me that when they were in the ER, she kept asking for her twin brother, “where George?” How cute is that?