Baby had a bad day...

This kid is not having his best day.

I'm so ass tired. I mean, tired as ass. My ass is fine, really. It's my brain that's lagging. I can't believe it, but I just fell asleep on the couch from sheer exhaustion. I've pushed myself to the limit the past 5 days or so - plus the week and a half alone 24/7 with a very mercurial toddler. I suppose the two bottles of wine in as many nights didn't really help either.

But I'm wineless tonight and the exhaustion has caught me. It's crawled up my back and slowly wrapped its long, stinging tendrils around my head and covered my face. I feel like I can barely breathe... and yet, I write.

I write to purge myself of listless, senseless worry. I'm sure a lot of you have felt it, too. It's hard not to. We're at a level 5 warning now. Sweet Jesus. I was just on a plane from Phoenix where lots of people have come from Mexico. I live in Austin and again, lots of people have just been to Mexico. So, Hollis' hot skin and tiny running nose has had me on uber high alert. It's not because he's been running around like a chubby little banshee, it's because he might have the flu: THE flu.

Somehow I manage to calm myself down from that one. I'm not that out of my mind with fatigue that I can't be rational, but I do have to be careful. The only death in the US occurred less than 3 hours away from here.

Ok, so there's that.

Then Hollis fell today and cracked his head on the corner of a cabinet in the kitchen. He was excited to be going to the garage with me to switch laundry over (yeah, I'm working on him early) and he tripped and slammed his head on a sharp wooden corner. His screams were instant. So were my arms. Thankfully, no blood, just an abrasion and a huge goose egg lump. His first ever.


Of course he wouldn't let me put anything cool on it. He just squeezed out big, fat tears and wriggled and fussed then clung to me intermittently for 10 minutes. I don't blame him. That was one hell of a crash. I called my mom, a nurse, to recheck what to look for in severe head traumas (dizziness, vomiting, sleepiness). I said, "Mom, he's a toddler, of course he's going to be sleepy."

"Oh, I'm sure he'll be fine..." (pause) "Really, go ahead and let him nap. Just watch for the vomiting."

I took it as a supremely good sign that he snapped to the music while in the car running errands with me. He wasn't losing words or anything, either. Color was good. But what about that runny nose? Eesh - no, it's not the flu, Jess, calm down. I mentally mapped routes to all the ERs I could think of. Did I even know all of them? When he put his head on my shoulder as I carried him through the store I determined then and there that there was no way in hell he was taking an afternoon nap.

Snapping to "Blue Skies".

So, we pushed through and relied on bananas, fans, nice sales people, and grandma and grandpa to get us all the way to bedtime fit-free.

And now I'm beyond spent. Hollis is sleeping the sleep we all pray for: deep and silent and rejuvenating. I hope to be doing the same in T-10 minutes....

I hope Hollis has a better day tomorrow. One without a mommy who makes him march for miles beyond his limits and who leaves his nose alone and quits taking his temperature every hour. Not to mention a day without teeth rattling head bangs.