Paul R. Potts
This week Grace is attending an insurance sales class in Lansing. This means that our pattern for the summer so far – in which I get up Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at about 6, and leave about 7, and Grace and Isaac get up after I leave – is all scrambled. Now we’re getting up at 5 and we’re both commuting. Veronica and Isaac are both getting sitters or day care, and Grace is pumping milk for her. Although Vera likes day care (she loves to play with other babies), when I come home it reminds her that Grace is not there, so she starts to cry “mama” and is very hard to distract. By that point I badly need a nap. She seems to be on strike as far as drinking her mom’s milk from a bottle goes (although she is eating and drinking other food before Grace gets home, and nursing when Grace gets back). All the pumping isn’t going to waste, exactly, since it is relieving Grace’s engorgement and ensuring that she will keep up milk production, but now we seem to have an oversupply that the baby won’t drink.
Meanwhile, we’re all recovering from a nasty cold/sinus infection. Veronica fortunately seems to have stopped throwing up on Grace and the bed during the night, and no longer has a high fever. My cough is just about gone. In addition to comforting Veronica in the couple of hours between the time I get home and Grace gets home, helping Grace get some dinner on the table and clean up afterwards, I’m also trying to complete a consulting project, writing a Windows installer. To help make sure neither of us drives off the road after waking up at 5 following a night of broken sleep, we are trying to get to bed by nine. That isn’t working terribly well. Grace just had her fuel pump replaced, and her van now smells like gas, so there may be a leak somewhere, as if she didn’t have enough to worry about, without the fear that the van will blow up or catch on fire.
Fortunately, it is Wednesday already, so the crazy week will be done soon, and perhaps we can get back into a routine. Veronica will get her mom back. With luck and some concentration I can finish this consulting gig successfully, which will pay for Grace’s class and the day care this week, and also make it through the next month at Visteon. Grace will take her licensing exam and with luck pass it, which will make the class worthwhile. Veronica will make it to ten months, Isaac will get through the week without losing his mind, and everything will be back to normal… just in time for me to start worrying again about what I’m going to do when this temporary work assignment ends, around October… Urgh…