Cooped loop

Time is blending together in a long blur (a cooped-up-loop) this week, and it's only Tuesday. Why on earth am I having such cabin fever during Amber's tonsillectomy recovery?? I am a home body. I love being at home. There's hardly anything I like better than having an ironclad bonafide excuse to stay at home. But simply staying home is completely different from being cooped up with a small stubborn whiny death-breath human who requires several force-feedings of medicine daily. The medicine keeps the pain and fever at bay so Amber can drink enough fluids, but it also tricks her into thinking she can do normal things like jump on the couch and jump down the stairs and the image of dislodged/torn/ruptured throat scabs has me cringing and restraining her down to calm coloring books and cartoons, which she succumbs to less and less willingly with each passing hour. Thus begins the cooped loop.

As the morning progresses, the medicine slowly wears off and she becomes more and more fractious, but by lunchtime her throat hurts too much to eat anything else, even the yogurt I spiked with more ibuprofen. She goes down for her nap pathetically, because she has no more pain medicine helping her out. When it's time to wake up from the nap, She does so screaming and sobbing and lashing out at me. Then right when I'm at my wit's end and trying to force/coerce/compromise more medicine down her throat, two more children come crashing through the door home from school, both talking over each other all at once. Chaos reigns. My house-haven begins to feel like quicksand: slowly sucking me down, down, down. I must get outside and MOVE! But I have to make dinner instead, so I chop up some potatoes and sausage, throw it on a pan, and roast it in the oven. A text from Jeff gives me the opportunity to get out of the house--he wants a ride home--but the sudden, forced, unexpected, errand-type outing does not alleviate my cooped-up madness. Instead of relief at an outing, I feel inexplicably grouchy. Pausing Amber's cartoon causes her to cry and hefting an unwilling, fragile-throated 3-year-old out across the yard and strapping her into a car seat in the gale-force winds is less than simple.

The high pollen count currently waging war on my respiratory system is not helping. I don't remember being this allergic in springs past.

Jeff is feeling on the edge mentally after his day too, so we are in for a doubly difficult evening since we are both feeling stretched thin. Eventually we have dinner and even enjoy some normal, amusing family conversation at the table together. We clean dinner up (mostly) and there are still 45 minutes until the kids' bedtime. Usually lately the kids like to dash out to the trampoline and work off all the rest of their daily energy allotment before bedtime, but the trampoline is a banned substance for the next 2-3 weeks while Amber heals, so what next? I have to resort to a triple decree of strict rules: no teasing or chasing or screaming, all in the name of Amber's throat. But how to pass the time till 7pm? I consider playing the piano, but I already did that twice today (cooped up and restless), so I settle down onto the couch with a book, with low expectations of how much I'll actually be able to read. Rose starts trying to talk to me, and I tell her "I'm reading, why don't you read too?" The next thing I know, it's all quiet and looking up from my book, I see the couch lined with readers. Amber is playing quietly on the floor with an Elsa Barbie. Just as I'm wondering to myself if such a quiet scene has ever occurred in any family during the witching hour, the bubble bursts and everyone starts making noise again.

Everyone gets ready for bed, we read our nightly column in the Book of Mormon, and have family prayer. Amber only escapes once and it is a tender mercy, both for her throat's sake as well as her exhausted parents.

I have no idea why all of that came out in the present tense, but it did and I'm not changing it. This is today. The only parts not mentioned are: I did not run (physically needed a day off, but totally mentally needed to run--ugh), and I spent the bulk of my cooped-up day at home plowing through photo files and organizing them on my computer--a giant task I have been putting off for months. Amber delighted in grabbing my mouse arm or sneaking her finger in and rolling the scroll wheel on my mouse, making me lose my spot.

Tomorrow the cooped loop starts again.

Time for another allergy pill.

Reading, reading, reading.