One Thing On Top Of Another

When last I posted I had a fluish daughter. Since then we have sent the Peanut back to school for two whole days only to have her shivering and miserable at the end of the second day with a renewed fever, more puking and another week of elevated temperatures.

On top of the Peanut being ill, the Bean got her first cold and spent two weeks coughing and honking like an angry little goose.

On top of that, the husband caught his own flu (luckily not the stomach emptying kind). On top of that I contracted another bout of mastitis.

The Peanut and Great Grandma hanging
out on the garden swing two years ago

And just when I thought things were at their worst, after taking the Peanut in to the Doctor for the second time in two weeks the phone rang and it was my Mom. She'd called to tell me that my Grandma had passed away in her sleep. So... We're a still a little sick around here, no more fevers, but coughing galore and we're sad too. And amidst the sadness life travels on. We learn from the girls and life as we move along with it.

This isn't the first time we've introduced the concept of death with the Peanut. My cousin gave up his fight to a brain tumor a few years ago, and there have been a handful of family and friend's pets who have passed on over the years so the explanations have been built on over time. So what did I get out of our conversation? A tear filled conversation about how many apple trees are in the Summerlands (definitely more than 20) and a reminder that when we lose someone important in our lives that we are not mourning the death of our loved ones so much as we are mourning the loss of the chance to see, hear and talk to our loved ones again.

So, while we brush away the odd tear here and there; if you have lost dear loved ones how has explaining that loss to your kids (if you have them) changed how you look at that loss?

An evening Out

So I'm still sans computer and because I've got me a sorry sad case of Mommy Brain keeping track of passwords is not my strong suit at the moment which means that I have a big rig-a-ma-roll to go through in order to sign in and upload a post here which is my long winded run on sentence way of letting you know that I'm still breathing and why it's been almost a month since my last post.

So anyway, Sunday night was my very first night out( that wasn't school related) since the Bean made her momentous debut last January. I went out for Dinner with one of my best friends and then out to An Evening with Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer. It was awesome. Sitting in the packed theater it felt as though all of us in the audience had been invited into home, the effect heightened by the random false starts and stumbles made during songs, it was as if we were a group of friends all there to celebrate with song some dance stories and laughter. As a couple they are charming and the affection that is between them is damned near romance personified, the kind that allows for wisecracks, silliness, liberal use of the F-bomb and love poems.

Before last night's outing I had not been very well acquainted with Amanda's music but the moment she opened her mouth before the festivities began and then to sing the duet Makin' Whoopee with her husband I knew that I'd found my new girl crush. If you need to know why just take moment to watch this youtube video of one of the songs performed while I escaped for an evening (warning: the song below does make use of questionable language, if you don't approve of the f-word I'd love you to go and find Amanda's version of Radiohead's Creep"



And once my evening was over I was sent back to mommy land where the Peanut had been busy puking all over the place in my absence and the Bean who had been sleeping soundly since 7 had woken promptly at 11 to have to fight for attention from Daddy who was awash in sick Peanut (and the laundry that comes with a sick peanut) so she began to scream/cry herself back to sleep until I managed to get home at 1am.

It is Tuesday and the Peanut is still home with a delicate stomach and the Bean is out of sorts because the time change and I've managed to steal a few minutes to write about my amazing night and all that followed behind it... I'm hoping to steal more time here and there to post again soon but until then how have you been? I've missed keeping in touch you know.