A series of unfortunate... well, you know.

My family is in the clutches of a man named Murphy... you know, the guy with the law. This weekend was supposed to be a time of family togetherness, a chance to get away, a mini vacation. Alas, that's not quite the way it turned out.

We (Husband, Bear, and I) were supposed to go to my cousin's wedding. It was in another state, and so we were going to make a weekend of it. We both took off on Friday so that we could drive down, and we planned to come back on Sunday. This was a fairly big deal to us, since we don't get out that often. We bought a new dress for the Bear to wear, since she only ever wears jeans and t-shirts. With the dress we had to buy tights and shoes, since she had neither. Husband had to get a new suit, since he's, um, grown a bit since our marriage. I had to get a dress, since all my dresses are for skinny people, and I definitely don't qualify for that right now (18 weeks today - the belly is definitely making its presence known). Then we had to get a gift, a card, fill the car with gas, buy snacks for the road, etc. Let's just say that we had invested some serious resources into this trip.

Well, Wednesday at about 3:30 the Bear's daycare calls me at work to tell me that her temperature is over 101 and we need to come pick her up. We give her Tylenol, let her run around naked, push lots of water, and put her to bed at about 5:30. She wakes up intermittently during the night, and her fever fluctuates between 102 and 103.6. She still eats and seems happy, so we're not extremely worried. Thursday morning her fever is down enough that we can legally take her to daycare. I bundle her up, give her more Tylenol, and hope she'll make it for at least an hour, long enough for me to whip up some sub plans. Husband ends up having to go get her around 10 because her fever is up, and she spends the rest of the day sleeping and running a pretty high fever. When I come home after school, we call the doctor and make an appointment for Friday morning. I've pretty much decided by this time that we aren't going to make it to the wedding, because who wants to spend 7 hours in a car with a sick baby, and what if she got sicker, it's really not fair to her, etc. etc. etc. I'm already off on Friday anyway, so I can just stay home with her.

Thursday night around 1 a.m., she wakes up and her fever has spiked to 103.8. We're very worried, but we give her more water and medicine, and put her back to sleep. She's up again at 5, and as soon as I walk in the room I can smell her. She has had the most explosive poo I think I've ever seen her have. It was like something died in there - way worse than normal poo smell. Anyway, we end up changing her, her clothes, her sheets, her blankets, you name it. We had to throw her onesie away... up her back, up her tummy, in her belly button... It took us half an hour together to clean her and get her back in bed. Then, when she woke up at 8, her temperature was back down to 98. She was happy, normal, she ate a good breakfast. We thought we were out of the woods, so I called the doctor, cancelled her appointment, and we started packing up to leave. It took us all morning to pack and get the three of us ready for the road. By the time we finally got going, it was after noon. We drove and drove and drove, and stopped for gas in The Middle Of Nowhere. And I mean Nowhere.* When we stopped, I changed the Bear and checked her temperature again. And lo and behold, it was back up to 102.

So, we turned around and drove *back*. Four hours and half a tank of gas later, we ended up in the exact same place we started from. We put the Bear down to nap at 4:30, and she slept for 16 hours straight. (Well, we woke her up once to make her drink something and give her more medicine.) Since then, the Bear has followed a pretty predictable routine. Her temperature breaks in the early morning, she's ok until after lunch, and then by 2 it spikes back up again, and stays high for the rest of the day/night.

At any rate, I'm pretty bitter by this point. I know it's not the Bear's fault that she's sick, but I had really wanted to go to this wedding, plus now we're out several hundred bucks for nothing. Grrr. So, most of my weekend was spent growling at people.

Then, Saturday night, as I'm sitting on the couch in my jammies, grading papers, my dad calls. My 86 year old grandmother fell down on the dance floor at the wedding and broke her hip. So now she's in the hospital and has to have a hip replacement, since they apparently can't just patch it up. And that worries me, because she's old and fragile, and we're very close. It worries me a lot.

So, instead of dancing, eating cake, and hanging out with my family, my weekend has been spent wrangling a grouchy sick Bear, eating junk food, and sitting on the couch in my jammies, feeling sorry for us. Yeargh.

Well, I had more to say, but the overall tone of this is so negative and making me feel sorry for myself all over again, that I'll have to save it for another day. Although I do feel slightly better for having vented.

Next time: my thoughts on the new Cub - boy or girl?

*Oh, and in my wanderings, we stopped at the only McDonald's in North America without a changing station in the ladies' room. I was so incensed by this that I went out to the front, berated the manager, and threatened to change the Bear on the front counter, right between the cash registers. Ok, their food is bad for you anyway, and they're poisoning America's children, but this was the last straw. I refuse to ever patronize one of their establishments again. And, if you have children (or know someone who does), I encourage you to do the same. These morons should know that most of their business comes from moms with small kids anyway, what with the Happy Meals, what with the PlayPlace. What self-respecting business wants to alienate its core demographic by forcing them to change sick babies in the backseats of cars in the middle of their parking lots in the hot sun? Not to mention the oh-so-bad-for-you food. McDonald's = pure evil.