{SQT} Consumption and Corrections

1. I had a lot of big plans for this week. After realizing I’d gotten out of many of the good habits I developed earlier in the year, I resolved to get back on track. Then this tickle developed in my throat. After a very long stretch of not being sick, I got hit hard with a nasty cough. I’m not really congested, I just have a persistent hacking cough, which also makes me sound like an 80-year-old who’s smoked a pack a day. The worst have been the coughing attacks at night which keep me, and occasionally Tony, awake for a while. What mom can afford more sleep deprivation???

2. I’m really trying much harder than usual, to rest and get better. I cancelled the boys Science and Adventure Club for the week and even a trip to Ocean City, NJ to visit with family. My big fear is that Fulton will get sick since he’s set to go to MDA Summer Camp on Sunday. Even if he’s healthy, if I’m still coughing, I won’t be able to go drop him off, which, while not the worst thing, will be hard on me. Thus far, a couple of kids have shown some symptoms, but not nearly as severe, which makes me think maybe this bug will spare them. If you could say a quick prayer we get Fulton to camp with no problems, I’d greatly appreciate it.

3. On the plus side, I’ve got lots of reading done, which means I’m now 30 percent through The Brother’s Karamazov, the unabridged edition. I like the story a lot, but I could do with a little less of Ivan yammering on about God.  And seriously, I get it Dostoevsky, you dislike the Jesuits, move on.

4. I haven’t been on my Feedly to catch up on blogs for weeks though (as usual, I’m trying to get through at least some of the QT linkers!) What good stuff have you read online lately? And please nothing bathroom, gorilla, election, or Stanford related. Bathroom gorilla election posts are always welcome. For the record, I’m in favor of primates electing a gorilla who uses the bathroom that coincides with his God-given species.

5. We do family movie night every week, and lately, Tony and I have tried to pick movies we enjoyed when we were younger and share them with the kids. The original ‘Tron’ movie was a pretty big hit, though I must have said at least a million times “These special effects were a big deal when this movie came out!”. They also enjoyed ‘Back to the Future.’ Last week, I forced them to watch the original ‘Parent Trap’ with Hayley Mills. Although they were apprehensive, because it was SO OLD, all the kids enjoyed it. This week, I selected ‘Big’ with Tom Hanks, because I remember enjoying that movie, and the older kids have been to FAO Schwartz in NYC and have seen the big piano. However, I did not remember many, many scenes that led Fulton to scream out “Language!” and one part that Edie needed to cover the screen with her hands. Does this happen to anyone else? I believe Kendra’s written about this. I don’t know if I only watched TV edited movies, or certain jokes and expressions went over my head at a young age or what. I was going to show them Mrs. Doubtfire and Sister Act in the coming weeks, but now I’m wondering if I should prescreen, and when will I have the time to do that?!?

6. Before my cough became too bad, I took Fulton and Teddy to follow-up appointments with a specialist. I was so happy I managed to get back to back appointments (only four months out.) But of course, you can’t just got to a specialist appointment. It’s a whole process that still usually involves at least one meltdown and a parking fiasco. Plus, these appointments always end up taking three times as long as the scheduled time. By the time we were done, I could look forward to scheduling four more appointments and lab work  for Teddy. And this is for ONE specialty. The icing on the cake was driving home in a thunderstorm with Philly traffic. I guess it’s no wonder my health went downhill afterwards.

 

All this waiting is why I’m so bad at scheduling follow up visits. #aintnoonegottimeforthat Teddy just asked “Is the doctor dead?”

A photo posted by Kelly Mantoan (@kellymantoan) on Jun 7, 2016 at 11:28am PDT

7. I’ve managed to  finish up my retreat book, despite my brain being like mush, and my continued coughs contaminating the keyboard with what feels like consumption. Thankfully I had a lot of great friends, and my husband, to look everything over. Everyone was so helpful and forgiving of the fact that the autocorrect on this new laptop is a nightmare! I still need to figure out how to turn it off. Autocorrect is slightly helpful when you’re typing with your fat thumbs and need a quicker way to get ‘nervous breakdown’ in a text, but less help compiling a book that largely uses two 19th century manuscripts as source material. As I corrected typos I was mortified to find what must have been a mistyped or historical word, corrected to something that made no sense whatsoever in the sentence.  So, before I caught it, my book advised people to:

“give not thyself up to polish mirth” …cause Polish people are the worst with mirth

“find subjects enough for mounting and weeping” …this could just be taken in the worst of ways

“then thou mayest labeling to live with Christ” …keep the label marker handy

“Thou wettest forward my salvation and my profit only” ….sounds like a slip and slide to salvation

How’s your week been? Write it down then link it up below! Be sure to include a link back to this post so your readers can find the rest of the Quick Takes. I look forward to reading your posts!