Sunday, December 30, 2007

Two more days...til Christmas is over.

I remember being a youngster in school, marking days off on the calendar until the Christmas vacation. It was exciting, excruciating, regardless of how vague my expectations of the actual event may have been. When school was out, it was time for fun.

Today I realized the count actually runs in the opposite direction. How many days left of vacation before I can go back to work? It's not that my job is more pleasurable than my family time, or my workplace more comfortable than home. No, it's just that we are driving each other MAD and the walls around our 950 square feet seem to be closing in.

I have to remind myself that out of the last ten days I've worked four; and only two days left before business as usual resumes. But there's been poor driving weather through long stretches of this, which means my husband won't leave the house. The first two days of vacation I was still getting over a bad cold. Weather deferred Christmas at the in-laws for one week, so the actual event was low-stress -- we had a friend over on Christmas Eve, we saw my family briefly on Christmas Day, and that was that. But even with work to break up the time, I'm still going absolutely bonkers. My son seems high-maintenance, my husband seems pesky, they both think I'm really crabby, they are both kind of crabby, they are both also very clingy (it seems) and I run around torn between irritation and shame. My husband and I have declared an indefinite moratorium on all sarcasm, snide humor, jokes that sound disparaging or anything else that's likely to be misconstrued. My son has been denied access to one or two really irritating computer games and toys -- irritating because he refuses to play with them on his own and would rather watch one of us do it. He has so many new things to do by way of Christmas gifts that he's decided to ignore them all in favor of demanding the same two or three tried-and-true activities over and over, and over, and over...The house has been cleaned, fixed on, dirtied up and cleaned some more several times.

I am out of patience. It's awful. But today, I was actually looking forward to the trip across town just for the sake of getting out of the house. UNTIL...my husband almost passed out at the wheel while barreling down highway 94 heading for St. Paul. He had to change lanes rapidly to reach the closest exit, and we pulled off and parked near the Cathedral. His face was grey. He said he wasn't nauseous, just light-headed and breathless, but I noticed he wasn't really sweating. He wasn't complaining of any pains in his head or chest. and finally we decided it was a combination of hangover and low blood sugar. The thing is, he hasn't gone to the doctor once in the ten years since I married him. So we have no idea what his problems could in fact be. I gave him some grape juice that I'd brought for the kid, he rested a bit and we limped the rest of the way into Cottage Grove by avoiding as much freeway as we could. He wouldn't let me drive. He rested silently for an hour and a half after we arrived at the in-laws, but he ate plenty, and was just about normal after three hours. I let his mother nag him into allowing her to take his blood pressure, and it was high, as was his pulse rate. She wanted to test his sugar as well but he wouldn't let her. Once we were on the road and most of the way home, I quietly let him know that I think I've put up with the uncertainty of his health long enough. I'm willing to believe the explanations for today's episode were what they seemed -- but I told him he'd better start eating a damned breakfast bar or something before he drives, because he never eats breakfast at all. Drinks like a fish half the night, gets up and swills two cups of coffee, and he thinks his body is supposed to tolerate that at his age. I am through with that. If he's driving my son on the freeway each morning, I told him, he'd better start taking some steps.

A few days ago, Harper nearly choked twice and then struck his head on the corner of a table while goofing around. SO, I believe we should be done with all this for a while. I hope. When is it time to go back to work?

One more holiday, a non-holiday, to go. One more, two days. Lord give me strength.

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