We are now headed into week 3 of the husband being gone--he leaves at 4:30 am and doesn't get home until about 8:30-9 at night. This is very taxing. On the both of us. The rumor is that this should be over by Sunday, but we heard that last Sunday, so I'm not holding my breath. And today he is supposed to be able to leave after lunch, but seriously, that could still put him home at like 4:00.

The Magpie was out of school basically all last week. Sick. She had bronchitis, but RSV was going around her room, and one of her little mates was in the hospital with it. Now a couple have sinus infections. We'll see how long I can keep her well.

The bronchitis treatment involved round the clock breathing treatments. I could space them out at night depending on how much she was coughing to six hours, but she goes to be at 6:30, so generally that meant going in at 8:00 to do a breathing treatment and then again at 2:30am to do another one. I know, you might be asking, well, why didn't you do one at 6 and then at midnight so you didn't have to wake her up twice? Because 1) she was sleeping until 8 in the morning, and the risk of pushing the treatment 8 hours early one increased the risk of her chances of her getting RSV or pneumonia. 2) during the day, because she got up at 8, I was very strict about keeping the treatment to every 4 hours especially since one of her mates was in the hospital. So the way that the timing worked out, it was best to do a 2-2:30 am treatment in case she slept in. Nebulizers are loud. Very loud. Once she got used to them in the daytime, at night, even though I had it outside the door, it still woke her up. Then she would be frightened and upset at being woken up and screech for the duration of the treatment. Sometimes it was after 3 before she fell asleep again, and then the husband's alarm was going off by 4 am. Between illness and stress, before Wednesday night, I had only gotten 2 full nights of uninterrupted sleep in the last SIX WEEKS! Which explains why the weight won't budge. Why I'm behind on my work. Why I'm super depressed. I did not get a full night last night because of the dog. What's wrong with him? Nothing. He had gas and kept farting and it freaked him out. Seriously. And I'm not a very kind person to him when I want sleep and he wakes me up.

I've tried to deal as little with my boss during this ordeal. Boss is a micromanager of the worst degree. As a person--lovely. As a boss, and I've said this before--abysmal. The expectation is that in the event of missing class for illness or whatever, we continue the class on-line. We give and assignment, we post a forum for discussion, assign a paper, whatever so that we don't have to look for subs and we can keep the course on track. That's the department and university expectation. I did this. Boss: Are you going to grade the assignments you posted? (Are you kidding??) Boss: You've missed 1/10 of the quarter already. If you're going to keep missing, you need to find a substitute. Boss: You're sure your husband can't miss his national guard duties to help you out (Uh, he's been working 18 days in a row. He'd so rather be home with a sick kid so I could go to work). Boss: Why aren't your parents back in town yet? (Because my dad just had surgery, and it's an 8-10 hour drive!) Boss: why can't you push the treatments back? Why can't you just go to the daycare and do it during her naptime? Why can't you tell your 2:00 class that you're going to go give your daughter medicine and that you'll be back by 3 and just tell them to wait?

I'm a 40 year old woman! Let me do my job and tend to my family!

To my students' credit, all of them (but seriously one on-line student, the one who told me that he guesses that my "critique" of his paper was "valid." Seriously dude? "I'm a business major and that's not how we do things in my business classes." Me: "Yeah, well, this is an English class and I have different expectations." Anyway...) have been fine with the schedule hiccups. Like any of them are going to be like, "I don't give a shit about your kid. I want to be in class!"

Our diligence with the breathing treatments paid off. Lungs completely healed. No secondary infections. Because it's a steroid, we can't just quit them, so for the next few days we're down to one treatment in the morning, one before bed. Whew.

In any case, I had made some headway last week until my freaking internet went out Sunday morning. Had that not happened, I would have gotten caught up before the holiday, and I'd not be in the position I'm in now and even further behind. And because it was just me, I couldn't go anywhere else to work because the kid's not going to sit in Starbucks or my office for an hour or two while I work. At least at home I can tend to her, work, take a break, work while she's napping, etc. Then Monday was chewed up waiting for the internet people. I've spent most of the week crying. The house is a mess. I've got to get to the grocery. I'm exhausted. And I've got a stupid meeting this afternoon that is going to be just a PITA, most especially because I could be at the grocery or putting clothes away or cleaning the kitchen, whatever. On top of this, I'm fighting my own cold that I know won't go away until I can relieve some stress and sleep.

Anyway, I guess what I'm going to do now is try to bang out some work here before the kid gets up. I've got a short window of time to do things today, and I'm going to work out. And I have a massage therapy appointment this morning, too. I'm just exhausted and behind.

I hope, I mean, I really really hope that the schedule that I asked for for next quarter works out. I hope it leaves me less exhausted than I am now. I hope it gives me more time to work and take care of household things. I've only got about a month left--five weeks really--of this quarter. My goal for this weekend is to get the on-line class finished. I mean, get all the notes for the stories up, the quizzes done, everything. So that way all I have to do is grade and look at the forum posts for like a half hour a day or something. That's the goal.

So I am going to get to work.