Spring Break

Today, my husband turns 31, the sun is shining, and as a birthday present to her daddy, our daughter slept in until 8:30 this morning.

I cannot quite put into words how extraordinary this is. Our daughter doesn't sleep. I actually suspect that she pretends to fall asleep just as she's pushed us to our breaking point, and when we fall into our own bed, trying not to weep for the bygone days when she'd go to bed at a normal hour and we'd have free time, she gets up and watches all my DVD's and helps herself to whatever's in the fridge and then, possibly, instant-messages all her other toddler friends who are currently working on their plans for World Domination. She slips back into bed just before dawn, where she tousles her hair and puts on her sleepy morning face.

Actually, I suspect her sleeping has been so wretched lately because she hasn't felt well. A couple of weeks ago she experienced a flare-up of her cold, and since then, she's gotten worse and not better, so off to the pediatrician we went. He diagnosed a sinus infection, wished us luck, and sent us home with a prescription for Omnicef, which Suzannah actually loves. It's a weird blessing, I suppose, to have a child who doesn't resist taking medicine -- the gloopier, the better. YUM. (I'll tell you what she resists. She resists all of our attempts to rub a little Aquaphor on her red little nose, which is so raw it makes me want to cry when I look at it.)

I spent much of yesterday feeling bitter and surly about this sinus infection thing, because, you see, this week was my Spring Break. Instead of packing up and heading to Bozeman for spring break this year, we opted to stay home. Well, Matt has to work, as always, and since we're both taking a couple of days off later this month to travel to his brother's wedding it's not really feasible for him to take more days now, but I have time. Anyway, we're here. I thought, hey, this will give me time to catch up on any number of things that will threaten to overwhelm me very soon if I don't take care of them. Like grading massive amounts of papers. I didn't bring them all home, since it is break, but I did bring some home, because my students are handing in comparison papers on Tuesday and if I'm not a little more caught-up than this, I will soon be facing a pile of papers that's taller than my desk. And then I will cry.

So I took Suzannah to daycare as usual for a few hours each day this week so I could Get Things Done. My plan looked something like this:

Monday: Get the car serviced. Run errands. Cook a real dinner that smells good when my husband walks in the door (something I greatly enjoy doing, actually, but don't always do on weeknights).
Tuesday: GRADE PAPERS. Catch up on laundry. Cook a real dinner that smells good when my husband walks in the door.
Wednesday: GRADE PAPERS. Clean the house.
Thursday: Selfishly carve out a few hours in the morning to do something spring-breakish. (In my case, this means curling up with some coffee and some uninterrupted reading and writing time. I'm a simple woman, people. I'm always reading something, and I'm always writing, but out of necessity, I'm a pro at reading and writing in small increments of time when I can snatch them. What if I had, like, the whole morning? Unspeakable luxury!) Cook a real dinner that smells good when my husband walks in the door.
Friday: Possibly go shopping with my sister-in-law. Possibly bring Suzannah. Possibly carve out a few more morning hours for a little blissful solitude. Definitely work on finalizing plans for Matt's birthday.

And that's mostly what the week looked like, right up until Thursday afternoon. I spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday grading papers and cleaning and being all domestic, and I felt good about everything I accomplished. I managed to turn even my busy Get Things Done days into relatively pleasant affairs. I read while I waited for the car. I graded my papers in coffee shops. I watched Gilmore Girls while I deep-cleaned the kitchen. But I was so looking forward to my mornings today and tomorrow. And today was lovely; Suzannah and I took our time this morning, and after I dropped her off I drove up to West Seattle, where I spent two hours at Uptown Espresso before taking myself to a cozy lunch at the Elliott Bay Brewery. It was raining and I was warm and it was good.

But then I returned to find a listless, runny-nosed child waiting for me, and Friday became a Sick Day. Part of me is grateful that at least I didn't have to take a day off work, and I tried, I really tried, to have something resembling a positive attitude. Sometimes sick days with her are all coziness and cuddles. And of course I wish she never, ever had to be sick, but there is a part of me that really loves doing the mama routine, all that active nurturing, when she's feeling miserable. Maybe it's narcissistic, even, because I know that I can comfort her in ways no one else can when she's sick, or maybe it's just that there's a part of me that loves fixing things, knowing what to do, whether it's simply holding her, or placing a cool hand on a flushed cheek, or tucking her into a blanketed nest on the couch.

Yesterday, though, was the kind of sick day in which she refused to nap, cried a lot, yelled at the dog for no reason, went through about eighty-five boxes of Kleenex, and drove me crazy. When we were leaving the pharmacy, she took her sweet time climbing into her car seat, so I not very patiently hurried the process along a little by plunking her stubborn rear in her seat and buckling her in, and she howled about that the rest of the way home. And when we got home, she had to climb out of the car and then CLIMB BACK INTO HER CARSEAT and then CLIMB OUT AGAIN, to make some sort of point. It was that kind of day. I won't even write about bedtime, because the memory is too raw and painful for me right now.

"This is what happens when you decide it's a good idea push a person out of your nether-regions," I grumbled to Matt as I tried, unsuccessfully, to convince Suzannah to let me dab some Aquaphor underneath her raw little nose.

"Yeah," he said. "You never get spring break again."

But she slept in this morning, SHE SLEPT IN, and she helped her daddy make waffles, and she only yelled at the dog once, and the sun is shining, and I have coffee, and life is still, despite everything else, pretty great.