Yesterday was nothing short of absurd. It started at 5am, when Samuel came and got in bed with us, then proceeded to cough and cough and cough until we gave him some Benadryl to help him go back to sleep (he has dual ear infections and the pain in his ears makes him cough).
At 7:30am, Matthew came in to inform me that it was almost time to go to school. Oops – guess I slept through my alarm! I threw on clothes, tried (in vain) to wake Samuel, then ran to make me a cup of coffee to take in the car. Meanwhile, I was pouring milk and cereal and running back to try to wake Samuel. I finally got him up, got him dressed, then convinced him to get in the car.
When I stepped out of the door to the garage, I almost ran right into Peter who was racing back inside to get away from Samuel. I looked up just in time to see a car seat fly out of the van, followed by other smaller objects.
Apparently, Peter had said good morning and it was more than Samuel could take. I had to threaten Samuel within in inch of his life to settle down before we could leave for school.
On the way to school, I noticed both the older boys sneezing and sniffling and it reminded me that I had thrown a box of allergy medicine in the car for just such an occasion. I threw it back to Peter and asked him to dole out a pill for each of them – only to discover that these chewable allergy pills were encased in a cement-like substance. Peter tried in vain to rip the package, then I tried – but it was no use. Of course, I quit carrying scissors in my purse when they were taken away from me at the airport eons ago. So no meds for the boys.
Meanwhile, as I began thinking of the absurdity of it all, my mind went to the other absurd things in our lives right now. For instance, our health insurance. After almost 20 years of having excellent health care, Brad’s company went to a company-run Aetna plan that frankly may be worse than having no health insurance at all. We learned the hard way this summer when Samuel needed a small hernia repair that required day surgery. $3000 later, we were wondering how much the insurance company was paying! We had never paid more than $20 for ANYTHING before! Then we learned that the company is DOUBLING the cost in 2011! Hurray – we get to pay even more for terrible health care!!!
Of course, we got a lot for our money. For instance, these really cool pictures of the inside of Samuel’s body:
And, of course, the best part was that Samuel’s “outie” is now an “innie”:
(Well, in theory, at least.)
That happened in July – the month after we started making our monthly payments to the new building fund at church. Not that we have any regrets for our pledge. I mean, we’re getting way more than our money’s worth out of that deal…
(I tried to embed the video of the implosion last weekend but couldn’t get it to work, so here’s the link: http://vimeo.com/16362064)
Also in July, we had Peter evaluated for braces and saw that he had several of his adult teeth trying to fit into spaces barely big enough for one of his baby teeth. We decided to go ahead and put him in braces – we knew it was coming, just didn’t realize it would be so soon. $2000. After our dental insurance paid their part.
Then, about a month ago, all the lights came on the dashboard when I was driving my van. We took it to the dealership since the manual said this could mean big trouble and they said that yes, it could mean a problem with the transmission. Or it could just be an electrical glitch. They reset the lights and said to just keep driving it until something happened. So we went on our merry way. After a while, I started to notice the van dropping out of gear all by itself. It was hardly noticeable at first, but we eventually decided it was worth looking into. Turns out, if we had taken it straight to someone who knew something about cars (as opposed to the dealership), they could have fixed the electrical problem with a relatively small amount of work and cost to us. But since we continued to drive the car, the problem cascaded and we ended up having to completely overhaul the transmission. To the tune of almost $4000, when you add in the cost of the rental car for a week.
So you can see that the only word I have to describe life right now is absurd.
I just calls it like I sees it.
