Thankful Tuesday (Ignore the posting date. It's really Tuesday. No, really!)

This next sentence is going to sound awfully familiar. I'm sick. Again. WTF?!?  I'm flat out irritated that since Thanksgiving, I've had the flu, strep, a stomach virus, and now I'm pretty sure it's strep again. What kind of toxic dung hole did the military move us to this time? Yeesh.

So for Thankful Tuesday, this is my offering:

I'm thankful that, for my kids to be as young as they are, they are skillfully self-sufficient. Today I dropped off the kids at school, came back home (skipping a waxing appointment and the gym, so you know I felt horrible), went back to bed until time to pick up S.

Picked up S, came home, made her lunch, sat on the couch huddled in blankets, and we read books and colored. After about an hour, I laid down on the couch and turned on Dora. I dozed off and on for the next hour, occasionally opening an eye to make sure S wasn't having a linoleum carving contest, or coloring the walls with a Sharpie. To my immense surprise, she wasn't.

T comes home around 3, and is content to spend some time on the computer. All I have to do is read the occasional sentence he can't figure out or look at something neat that he's found. S is so interested in what T is doing that there's peace and harmony all afternoon. And for that, I'm thankful to the point of tears.

R gets home, takes one look at me, and sends me up to bed. He deals with dinner, homework, and the bedtime routine while I alternately freeze and sweat until the kids' bedtime. I tuck them into bed, then come down and try to spend some quality time with R. And by quality time I mean sitting clear across the room from him and trying to avoid any possible way of giving him my sick cooties. He's got a huge project going on at work right now and cannot afford to miss work.  I'm thankful that after the stressful day he had, he jumped in and took over with the kids without my having to ask him to do so.

I'm also thankful for ice water, extra blankets, hot showers, and advil. I'll be really thankful, however, when I'm not freakin' sick for at least a month.