mostly shitty week

It turns out there's a full moon this week.

Monday I had to have a cavity filled. I'm not usually afraid of the dentist, but maybe I should be. Maybe it's been several years since I've had a filling and they've made their drills LOUDER and SLOWER to drill since then. I was initially told that it was a small cavity. But after drilling for 10 minutes the dentist said "well, I'm glad we got that one. It was deeper than I thought. You might have some sensitivity in that tooth for a while."

Tuesday someone must have slipped some speed in my coffee. I decided to do some Christmas shopping AND grocery shopping on my lunch hour. This entails bringing all the refrigerated stuff into the office kitchen and then taking it back home at the end of the day. I also decided to take both boys to Kate's basketball game by myself.

Bill and Kate had games at the same time, and after our success last week, I thought this would be easy. Hello? Why, exactly, did I think that? Yes, we sat through Kate's games last week. But Bill was with me at both games, and Tommy's godmother was with us at another. Gosh, that's a higher kid/adult ratio than 2:1.

Needless to say, it went terribly. For one thing, we weren't allowed to eat in this school's gym. Food from the concession stand is a sure-fire way to get the boys to sit still. Instead, they ate in the hall outside and I watched through the gym door. Until, that is, I turned around to see Henry dragging his brother down the hall. They do this irritating brother thing where Tommy bugs Henry until Henry grabs him and then Tommy screams and whines and then I break them up and then they go right back for more.

Henry's awesome bus driver (she greeted him on Monday with some ads from the newspaper- he LOVES those- how did she know?!) had driven the basketball team's bus that night. She came over and tried to talk to us, and Henry's behavior just got worse and worse. I don't know if he was showing off for her, or was freaked out to see her in a different place... Whatever it was, he and Tommy tormented one another for another 20 minutes or so, and then we left. I lectured them all the way home. (And then needed to unload the groceries that had been in the van for hours.)

I snapped at Bill when he got home, telling him that we were having a bad night and the boys were in trouble. So that put him in a shitty mood right there with me. Then, when I tried to tell him about what had happened, I got all dramatic about "every other family goes to these games and watches and why can't we just do that like a normal family?!" He gave me the look that I usually give other people (the "you are the biggest idiot I know" look) and said "we aren't a normal family."

I forgot to mention here that while I was running my errands at lunchtime, my dad called to tell me that one of his brothers had passed away. Dad comes from a very large family, but I knew this uncle a little better than some of the others. One of my brothers has his middle name. He was a Lutheran minister and has a daughter my age that I spent time with in the summers. He had been sick with Alzheimer's for years, so it is one of those situations where the family has been grieving for him for a long time. What a horrific disease.

This news was not a surprise, but sad nonetheless.

The final straw in my day, oddly enough, was when a friend called to tell me that she had to have her dog put to sleep.

Man, what a rough night. I wanted to blog about it right then, but our computer wouldn't boot up and then gave me an error message and then I decided to download some virus protection software instead of blogging...

The next morning (Wednesday) Henry woke up with a fever. It turned out that he had an ear infection! I was actually relieved, because I thought maybe that explained why he was being so "bad" the night before.

Today I am attending my uncle's funeral service.

But I wanted to end on a positive note:

Henry has been putting his fingers in his mouth all week, and saying his mouth "itched". I finally looked in there last night, and his two front teeth are coming in, behind the baby teeth!!! How exciting! I can remember the same thing happening with Kate- her saying that her teeth felt funny, me looking in there and screeching with excitement about the big teeth! What a big boy Henry is.

And best of all, here's what his notebook said yesterday:

12-7 Great Day! Henry was in a good mood - did all assignments without asking for help! Went to first grade and could answer all the questions about words, and won word bingo!
Super Day - didn't have to remind him of the rules once.

I sure let Henry know how proud I was of him! Funny what a change an antibiotic can make, eh?

Have a good weekend.