Just Another Day...

Last Thursday was an extremely interesting day. Allow me to share it with you...

Mariana and I arrived at the team house in Pipera right on time and ready to head out to Periș for Character Classes.

As we're sitting in the living room, just moments from walking out the door, Jen says (from the other room), "Uh, we have a problem..." The problem being that a pipe on the upstairs sink has decided to explode and there is water dripping into Jen and Jenny's bathroom on the floor below.

Jen turns off the water under the sink upstairs and grabs some towels. I grab a mop. Thankfully this bathroom has a drain so we are able to push most of the water down the drain.

We are able to get things semi-cleaned up and leave a mere 15 minutes behind schedule.

On the way to the orphanage it starts to rain and Jen remarks that she wonders how the kids will be today.

We find out when we pull up and one child tries to shove a sandwich through the window (he was offering it to us) and another calls Jen, "Girl" (not a very flattering remark here).

We attempt to enter the 1st classroom and are told the kids have to finish copying their work and to come back in 10 minutes.

We wait and decide that it may take more than 10 minutes for them to finish (they are in 3rd and 4th grade after all) and go to the 2nd classroom to start with them.

Upon entering we find one child asleep on several chairs because he's sick and the whole room in a general state of chaos.

As soon as Mariana starts to call roll one of the boys throws a fit because she calls the girls' names first (as is polite). This child then proceeds to punch the girl next to him out of frustration. After I make him stop punching her, he begins to throw sunflower seed shells on her. I forcibly remove him from his chair and sit between them. He becomes angry and hides under the desk. This is all before the story for the day is finished, mind you.

Said child eventually comes out from under the desk and completes his craft.

A moment during which things are going well.

Finally making progress...

After the craft another child tries to give their picture to Mariana. She tells him that the craft is for a friend and that he should give it someone else. In a fit of rage he tears up his project which has just taken him 10 minutes to complete (and another 10 minutes for us just to hand out the supplies). For reasons unknown the boy who was hiding under the desk decides to rip his project up as well. Follow this with me lecturing him on Mariana's feelings and his selfishness and, finally, him issuing an apology.

Praise God that during this time my child was one of the few children actually working on his craft and behaving. God bless him.

My child. The angel.

I should also note that during this time there was another boy who decided he was going to be as loud and obnoxious as possible the whole time. He argued, stole the supplies, hit his head on a stack of notebooks, and tried to bite the cover of one of the notebooks.

Right about the time we were getting ready to leave one of the workers comes in with the afternoon snack: tuna fish spread on bread. When I say the smell was horrendous I'm not exaggerating. Even some of the kids turned up their noses. The room is now permeated with the smell of fish.

And then our time was up.

One class down, one to go.

We enter the other classroom and find that, thankfully, all the kids have completed their work and we can begin. However, with the smell of the fish snack, the humidity from the rain, the closed windows, and the general funk of little children, this room reeked. It was so bad my own child (who was coming to help us with the class) wrinkled his nose and said he'd wait outside until we were finished.

We start the class and, as usual, I'm situated next to the boy who has the most issues with paying attention. Also sitting next to him today are the two girls in the class with the most limited attention span. Yep, I got stuck with the ADHD crowd. Not really a problem but it always keeps me on my toes.

The little boy sits in my lap during the lesson and then I get up to help Mariana hand out the craft. At this point I notice there is a wet spot on my jeans where the kid had been sitting. All I can do is pray that it is *only* sweat or pee and not something worse.

The rest of the class is fairly uneventful. I mean, after pee pants what can top that?

Our day was almost over and the only thing left to do was hand out some pajamas to a few kids. Luckily, I was able to entertain the kids by playing hand clapping games and eating chocolate one of them gave me (where this chocolate came from is a mystery but there was a ton of it and it came from a plastic grocery bag...I don't ask questions in situations like that). And I got to see my littlest girl in some super cute p.j.s...even though she refused to change back into her normal clothes.

I mean, who could say it was a bad day after seeing that face?

Sometimes a Shower Changes Everything

Today I am on vacation. And, I have to admit, it didn't exactly go like I thought it would. This is how things were *supposed* to go today:

• Pick up mom, dad, and aunt from the airport very early.
• Come home, grab breakfast and any last minute items, jump in the car, and leave for SAFF.
• Arrive at SAFF, grab lunch, shop for a few hours.
• Head out to bed and breakfast.
• Stop off at grocery store for a few essentials for lunches and dinners.
• Arrive at B&B and spend rest of day relaxing (possibly grabbing a nap if time allows).

How things actually went:

• Wake up at 4:30 and immediately begin researching where to find the cell phone lot (because you have no idea where it is and need to go there in an hour).
• Leave 15 minutes early in order to get gas for car.
• Arrive at airport. Wait. Wait. Wait some more.
• Pick up parents and aunt who are very tired (because they just came in on a flight from out west and their times are all screwed up).
• Drive aunt home.
• Drive parents home.
• Get breakfast, put on make up, obsess over details of caring for high maintenance cat, pack car, and leave.
• Be totally jazzed for your trip for the first hour and half.
• Start to feel a little more tired and run down the closer you get to SAFF.
• Park a half a mile away from the venue (not really but it felt like it), shake off any tiredness, head into show.
• Get "lunch" (chilli cheese fries and a large Dr. Pepper) because blood sugar is kind of low.
• Shop for an hour and half before you start to feel woozy (probably because "lunch" didn't help that blood sugar problem at all).
• Make sure you run into an old friend when you are feeling half drunk and more than a little nauseous.
• Try to carry on conversation with friend and pray that she doesn't think you are totally off your rocker.
• Finish shopping after overspending.
• Remind self that this is supposed to be an indulgence and to stop fretting about it.
• Drive to B & B.
• Get almost to B & B and realize that you need to stop at the grocery store and that one you passed like 5 miles ago was the one.
• Go to "interesting" grocery store (it was reminiscent of Aldi...only more country).
• On way back to B & B get call from host. She is in town and won't be there when you arrive but she walks you through how to find your room.
• Arrive at B & B.
• Come in to find family dog on couch (you knew he'd be around somewhere).
• Dog begins to bark.
• Since you have been assured that dog is harmless begin to approach dog, speaking softly.
• Dog continues to bark.
• Hold out hand so dog can smell it and you can become friends.
• Dog bares teeth and looks like he might lunge.
• Withdraw hand extra quick, yelp, and have small heart attack simultaneously.
• Retreat to room.
• Unpack car giving dog the side eye the whole time.
• Try to lay down for a nap.
• Other guest begins playing various instruments downstairs, directly under your room: piano, something that sounds like an auto harp, and a violin. None of these are executed with any finesse.
• Give up on nap.
• Have panic attack because you have been around people all day, you took some medicine that increases your chance of being anxious, you got snarled at by a dog, you have a headache, and you are tired as all get out.
• Come down to make dinner.
• Make peace with the dog.
• Eat dinner.
• Go to room and knit.
• Start to feel very homesick and sad for yourself because the day hasn't really turned out all that well.
• Think about going home.
• Text best friend.

This, my friends, is when the day turned around. Why? My bestie told me to go for a walk. Forget about it. Forget about anyone else. Hit reset. And it hit me...that was exactly what I needed to do. Not take a walk per say, but hit the reset button. This could still be a nice vacation for me. Even if all I did was lay in bed because I was feeling under the weather. I mean look at this view from the window in my room:

I realized I was sitting around in my stinky thinking still (literally) reeking from the day. I needed to literally get clean so I could clear my mental slate. So I gathered up my toiletries, towel, and pajamas and headed to the shower. It totally helped. My head still hurts and I'm still really tired but I can head to bed now looking forward to the next few days of my vacation.

P.S. I am leaving out the part about where I tried to get the AC to work in my room and it was blasting hot air and I thought I was going to roast to death.

P.P.S. My host and her husband did eventually show up...just as I was getting out of the shower.

Story Time: Part I

I know I have been away for awhile. I have been training a co-worker who just joined my department, carefully monitoring my recovering cat, and, to top it all off, we got slammed with an insurance audit about 4 weeks earlier than anticipated. September was off to a great start!

The last few days have been a comedy of errors and I feel that they warrant a little story telling. So gather round children, tonight I bring the first tale.

Yesterday, my parents had planned to grill out for dinner. However, my dad wasn't feeling well. As soon as I got home he fired up the grill and went to bed. First, I must tell you how we got the grill started: my dad cranked the propane tank up until it was full open. He then stood there trying to strike a match for a good 2-3 minutes. As soon as he stuck the match into the grate a blaze whooshed up and nearly singed his eyebrows and some low hanging tree branches. Then he closed the lid and went to bed.

I go inside and my mom comes home. I set to pattying out the hamburgers and my mom decides to throw the chicken on the grill. She steps outside and proceeds to yell, "Oh my gosh! The grill is on fire!" I look out the door and there are flames coming out from under the lid and from under the bottom of the grill. And they are flaming in the direction of the propane tank. I yell, "Get the fire extinguisher!" and mom and I take off running in opposite directions.

I head for the garage because I just happened to notice we had a fire extinguisher out there when I was getting trash bags from the cabinet last weekend. My mom has placed a large box in front but I use my Herculean, adrenaline-fueled strength to shove it out of the way. In the meantime my mom has run to the basement and is yelling, "Where is it?!?!" because she can't find the extinguisher down there. She does manage to find it and comes barreling up the steps as I'm tearing back through the den, ripping the extinguisher from the box. We're both pulling the pins and throwing them on the nearest surface and arrive at the grill about 10 seconds apart.

At this point I'm trying to aim and spray my extinguisher but there is a mounting bracket attached to the back that is making it impossible for me to spray the darn thing. My mom does not have this hindrance and manages to spray the flames and put out the fire before anything explodes or the deck catches fire.

We then proceed to stand there panting and going, "Is it out?" "I need to turn off the propane. Is it safe to go over there?" "Why is the grill still smoking? Is it still on fire?!?" After 5 minutes of debating my mom goes inside, gets an oven mitt, comes out and shuts off the propane. She then yells, "The food!" and has to rush back inside to make sure the dog isn't eating raw meat off the counter. After another few minutes (in which I was standing on the back deck still very concerned that something was about to blow up) my mom comes outside and opens the lid of the grill. A whiff of smoke slithers out but the fire was really and truly vanquished.

Mom and go back inside to cook dinner (on the stove and the George Foreman grill) and my dad eventually pokes his head out of the bedroom (remember, he was in bed this *whole time*). My mom tells him, "Oh, in case you're wondering, we just put out a fire on the grill. It was coming out the sides and the bottom." My dad kind of shrugs and says, "Yeah, that's happened before. I think there's something wrong with the connecting line. You just have to turn the propane off and then turn it on real low." Then dude eats a hot dog and goes back to bed.

Mom and I stand there a little stunned...does a "bad connection line" sound like a good thing when we're talking about propane and fire?!?! Does this mean the grill could have exploded in a fiery blaze before?!?! Why do we still have this death trap still near our home?!?!

Needless to say our little fire extinguisher episode was the final nail in the coffin for the grill. Looks like we'll be grill shopping soon...

Worrywart: Hypochondriac Edition

I am a bona fide worrywart. My incessant anxiety issues will probably come up multiple times on this blog in various forms. I can find anything to worry about and often do. There is almost always something I can find to work myself up about. This weekend, for example, I had a brief episode of hypochondria.

My Myers-Brigg's personality is an INTJ. I thrive on logic and order and I value intelligence. However, because I can get stuck in my own head and I like to come to a conclusion before fully fleshing ideas out, sometimes I come up with the "worst case scenario" and assume that to be the truth. At various points in my life I have been afraid that I had botulism, a brain tumor, AIDS, and various forms of cancer (never mind the very obvious reasons why I would have none of these issues). Take, for example, this classic freakout about the brain tumor...

Me: I'm totally freaking out!
Best Friend: Why?
M: I think I might have a brain tumor.
BF: Why would you think that?
M: I've been having these weird migraine-type headaches for the last few weeks.
BF: You don't have a brain tumor.
M: I might!
BF: You don't have a brain tumor.
M: I could!
BF: You don't.
M: Well, I'm going to the doctor and I'm going to ask them and what if they tell me that I have a brain tumor?!?
BF: They're not going to tell you that you have a brain tumor because you don't have one. You are more likely to have a tumor on your ass.
M: Yeah!!! Well, what if I go to the doctor and they tell me that I have a brain tumor on my ass?!?! What then?!?!

Just a sampling of my ridiculous thinking.

Needless to say, WebMD has become a frienemy of mine. It offers hope in one paragraph ("Migraines can be a sign of the following: stress, lack of sleep, looking at the sun too long..." Excellent! I'll just take a nap everyday!) and life destroying damnation in the next ("...cancer, leprosy, and brain eating bacteria." Great, I'm pretty much dead.)

It also really helps that my mother, aunt, and grandmother enjoy watching true crime and hospital horror shows. They have a weird, soul crushing story for everything. Cut your finger? They saw a story about someone who lost the entire right side of their body after an infection seeped in through a paper cut. Feeling dizzy? They watched a program about an entire school of children who contracted a rare disease that caused them to feel dizzy and then suddenly drop dead two days later. If you are looking for comfort from them you are likely not to find it. The icing on the cake is mentioning an ailment to them and ending up in a 2 hour conversation about all the horrible and bizarre things they have heard about people who had the exact same thing that you did. Oh, and P.S. they all ended up dead. But you're likely to pull through! :::pat on the back:::

This weekend I was pretty sure I had contracted some awful disease. I won't even tell you my symptoms or what I thought was going on because, thinking about it in hindsight, I can see how it was all simply crazy-pants. I'm not saying that there isn't cause for concern when things do go wrong. But let's face the facts: I've had good check ups from my doctor for the last several years. I eat relatively healthy and work out 4-5 times a week. I take supplements and vitamins. This doesn't make me invincible by any means but I have managed to escape several rounds of respiratory issues and stomach viruses this winter.

So, no. I'm pretty sure I don't have pneumonia of the pinky toe. But since I've just proclaimed my current, healthy state of existence I'm pretty certain that next week I will come down with the flu.