Sickness and sunset

About the same time that freezing fog descended on our valley, some sort of sickness struck my family hard this week. The sky was sick; my family was sick. Was it the flu? A cold? Covid? Who knows! All I know is that it was a rough one: prolonged high fever, chills, and congestion, with a body-wracking cough. Jeff fell first, on Tuesday afternoon, followed by Jay on Wednesday night. But Rose was definitely in the mix, coming straight home from school and taking a 2 hour nap every day this week. The full-on fever didn't hit Rose until Saturday. Amber remained unscathed and went to school every day this week. I haven't gotten it yet either, but there's a telltale tickle in the back of my throat... so I feel haunted and hunted, since seemingly inevitable suffering is in my near future. 

After all that, this GLORIOUS sunset from Monday night feels like a lifetime ago.

On Monday, I went to a friend's house to meet for a run. At the door, her abuela told me "ella está trabajando." Her work schedule must've changed, so she was at work. "Gracias," I said. All at the same time, a small black dog in an orange sweater zipped, yipped, and snarled out of the house and went straight for my ankle with its teeth. There was no typical circling dance punctuated with lunging nips; this ankle biter went straight in for the kill. Thankfully half of its teeth were in the back of my shoe and half were on my sock. It wasn't a super strong dog, but its teeth still pinched a-plenty, and I had to try hard not to act mad so I didn't offend Abuela. 

The only other time I have met Abuela was when I went to her house with the missionaries to teach a lesson to my friend last year. Abuela wasn't interested in the message, but my friend was. All of that was in my head on Monday, and I didn't want to make a bad impression on Abuela. It was extremely difficult not to yell and shake the creature off with a strong kick. I shook it off with a smaller kick. Abuela tried bending over to pick up the dog, but she didn't seem fully able to bend that far quick enough and the dog danced away. 

Figuring I had overstayed my unwelcome, I power walked/dodged/jogged back to the car, the dog close on my heels. The dog ran out into the street, with Abuela yelling after it the whole time. "Callate! No! Ven aqui!" (paraphrased in my patchy Spanish). I didn't want to be the reason her dog got hit by a car, but also, I wasn't about to go try to pick the toothy creature up! As I hesitated by my car door, the dog came at me again. Self preservation kicked in, and I acted purely on instinct. Calling a hasty "lo siento!" to Abuela, I quickly jumped into the car and shut the door before the dog could get me again. The dog eventually ran back to the house --I waited to make sure-- before I drove away.

I also took all three kids to the dentist on Monday (2 cavities for Jay) and got the oil changed in our van. fun all around! It was an auspicious start to the week.

On Tuesday, I reserved some time to do some very not fun businesslike phone calls: I called Spectrum to have our internet finally finished from when they started working on it back in November. They sent such an annoying a guy out on Tuesday afternoon -- one of those know-it-all repairmen who was also trying to be chatty and clever but actually was just annoying. Boy I sound so rude. But he tromped into my house wearing dirty boots and left clumps of dirt on my freshly vacuumed floors, across the basement, up the stairs, and across the main floor of our house. I was SO PEEVED and had to vacuum the house again when he left. What's worse than vacuuming the entire house? Vacuuming it a second time in the same day! Anyways, as the guy told me in a self-satisfied way, the internet is all perfectly fixed and finished now, all thanks to him. The amount of aggravation I had to go through to get to that point was vast. The guy was here for over 4 hours! 

While Internet Guy was poking around outside (thankfully he was outside for 85% of the time), I fielded a call from our home insurance company. Last year I asked about bundling our car insurance with our home insurance, but the rates were pretty much the same as our current car insurance, so I didn't make the switch at the time. But Marcos from Farmer's Insurance made a follow-up call to let me know that their rates had dropped 3% this year. Normally I don't listen to salesmen over the phone, but I have been wanting cheaper car insurance, and also to switch to a more local insurance company (our previous car insurance was through Costco, out of like Wisconsin or something, and filing claims was slow and maddening). Since I was waiting on Internet Guy, I had the time to discuss the change fully and ask my [hopefully] intelligent questions. The result was favorable, and we will be saving $1200 on our car insurance this year. Perfect timing, because our monthly escrow just went up by $72. All of that to save us a net of $28 per month. Well.

On Wednesday I had to confirm our new car insurance over the phone, then call and cancel our old car insurance. 

The things I do for the budget.

I did also have two good phone calls on Tuesday: I got to talk with my Mom and my dear friend Laurs. I love them. I also got to play piano. I let myself play only what I wanted to (so, less finger exercises, more fun music), and it felt so nice. I'm on a Jon Schmidt kick right now with my piano playing. 2026 is THE YEAR that I will finally learn All of Me well enough to play it fast and furious! It was perfect for pounding out a little bit of rage after my various frustrations today. 

Tuesday afternoon, Jeff came home before swim practice with a look in his eye that I dread: the "I'm getting sick" look. He put his ancient ratty green SVU sweat suit on and holed up on a recliner in the bedroom. I spent some time mentally saying farewell to spousal sympathy or support for the rest of the week. Sick husbands are stingy with sympathy and support. Not that I expect it from a sick person, but the lack thereof makes for a long lonely grind.

Wednesday Jeff stayed home from work sick. Blah. On Thursday, he rallied with lots of DayQuil, and went to work and to the swim meet in Yakima that night. Jay stayed home sick with a high fever and had to miss a precious swim meet. He was sad, but too miserable to express a ton of emotion about it. Jeff got home around 8pm with an extra hollow look on his face. He canceled swim practice for the rest of the week (2 days) and settled in to battle the sickness. 

Rose went to seminary and school every day all week. I drove her on Thursday when Jay was sick, and the fog was so thick that I could only see 3 dashed yellow lines on the road ahead of my car! It was thick out there. Jay and Rose switched places with fevers and misery on Friday. Even after the 36-ish hour fever ended, recovery was (is) slow, and it looks different in each person.

I hit a breaking point on Friday night after a day of worrying about high fevers, fetching fluids and medicine, and absorbing fractious grumpy cantankerous sick people words and vibes. I just felt SO TIRED, USED UP, and WRUNG OUT by all of it. And I continued to feel that dratted tickle in the back of my throat grow. I started taking a decongestant on Wednesday, and my head felt progressively stuffier from then on. It was such a slow progression, though, that I managed to keep exercising (a true blessing to my sanity). 

I wrote everything up to this point before church. Then:

I went to church with Amber on Sunday (today) but started feeling shivery and achy partway through the first hour. I toughed it out and taught my Sunday school lesson, then went home to crumble.

All of the good chicken broth I made for sick people this week is gone. My body hurts and I'm so cold. 

More views of Monday's sunset: it set our entire inside aglow with pink.

From the back porch.

Glory.

The sun picked up where it left off on Tuesday morning.

Mt. Adams was popping on the horizon behind our house! That trailer home is right there in our view of Mt. Adams... it keeps things from getting too transcendent.

I cropped out the trailer and it's all sky and sunrise glowing mountain.

The fog on Wednesday morning.

I changed the filter in our barn water fountain in less than 15 minutes! I felt so handy and proud.

For my own future reference, these are the tools I need to change the filter.

I staved off the sickness as best I could, and even made a honey lemon juice apple cider vinegar cinnamon concoction to drink. It kind of helped?

January 16th was the one year anniversary of the delivery of our beautiful piano. I played for extra long that day and felt very thankful for this massive gift.

Rose was miserable with hot fever eyes, so I put some carrots in a baggie to soothe them. It was one of the only things I did that she seemed to like while she was super sick.

This photo memory came up on our digital frame and reminded me how adorable Amber was as a baby. It cheered me up on a tough day.

I dressed up in my neon pink winter running clothes to treat myself to a 6 mile run on Saturday morning. Escaping my house of invalids felt amazing, even though it's been a while since I ran six whole miles. Based on how I feel now, it's going to be a while before I run 6 miles again too, so I'm glad I had this one cold lovely liberating run.