So here's a totally unedited, slightly manic little update on the last few days. Please bear in mind, it's 7.45 in the morning and I didn't get much sleep last night...
Thursday - daughter came home from her Acroballet class tired but ok. My colleague had lent me the DVDs of season 1 of Gossip Girl so we spent the evening introducing ourselves to Blair, Serena and co. My husband helpfully explained to her that on the night of April 30th, all the witches climb a mountain in Germany and dance naked. So she was scared of witches all night.
Friday - May day holiday. Daughter woke up with a fever. Great. She and I spent most of the day sleeping. At about 3 o'clock I couldn't stand staying indoors anymore, so I went down into the city. As usual on a holiday or Sunday in Basel, it was absolutely full of people wandering around and desperately looking for something to do. I really wanted to be near water, which always calms me, but the banks of the Rhine were so full of people, it was about as relaxing as a shopping mall at Christmas. So I walked around for a while, listening to NIN, and then walked all the way home.
Saturday - Daughter even sicker and now husband has a bad back. Great! I did a little shopping in preparation for daughter's birthday on Monday and slept a lot. Again.
Sunday - Daughter feeling a little better, hurrah. Husband thought that swimming might help his back so he took daughter with him to St Jakobs while I faffed about at home wrapping presents etc etc. Then cycled to the pool to join them, swam a very little bit, cycled home and then went out for a long run. 13.5 km, 1 hour 20 minutes, once again the longest I've ever run. It was really hot and sticky, but beautiful in the forests. Next Sunday I have a 10 km race, and the weekend after, I think it's time for my first ever 10 miler. Yee ha!!! Then I came home and baked a cake. I do NOT bake (or cook at all if I can help it) so this was more of a challenge than the run.
Monday - My daughter's 5th birthday!!! Cue maternal gushing about how my baby is already 5 and so grown up. I had already asked her whether she'd like me to take the day off so we could spend it together, but she was adamant that she wanted to go to daycare, to play with her friends, which she much prefers to being at home on her own. I wasn't too disappointed, I also wanted to go to work and play with my friends. Hey, I spent 2 and a half years on maternity leave and then last year I spent 4 months unemployed. I do not like staying at home, AT ALL. I'd rather have almost any job, than no job. And right now, I'm so lucky to have a job with people I actually like and with the best bosses in the world. Sometimes I whinge about wishing I had a more prestigious job and more money, but I'm well aware how lucky I am. So I was really, genuinely happy to go into work on Monday morning. After our regular Monday Morning Meeting, my phone ran almost immediately, my daughter's daycare asking me to please pick her up again. She had a fever and was just lying around looking miserable.
She spent her birthday feeling terrible, and ended it with a trip to the doctor's. No cake, no birthday dinner, and a half-hearted opening of presents. After all the planning and buying and organising, it was such a shame, but oh well. Life happens.
In the meantime, my husband's back was getting worse and he was just sitting around and looking miserable too. Which is the worse patient: the five-year-old or the forty five-year-old? I'll leave that to you to decide.
Monday night - A common scenario in our house. Daughter in our bed, me in my daughters bed to escape the coughing/snoring/whatever other noises the two of them can come up with. I woke up suddenly feeling like someone was shaking my bottom half. WTF??? I looked around for daughter, or ghosts, or a cat. Nothing. I was completely freaked out and then I realised EARTHQUAKE!! Nah, I must have dreamt it and eventually I went back to sleep. Turns out it really was an earthquake - 4.5 on the Richter scale. My daughter was born in a thunderstorm under an orange moon, so it makes sense there should be an earthquake the night of her birthday.
Tuesday - Daughter still ill, husband crippled. I escaped gratefully to my peaceful office.
Tuesday night - I am once again sleeping in my daughter's bed. My husband is sleeping in the living room because of his back. My daughter has our double bed all to herself. Around 3, I hear plaintive cries from the living room. Have to get up and call the doctor, because my husband is in some kind of spasm and cannot move. Our doctor is a lovely, perfect, very very Swiss woman. I am quite sure that her house does not have a single molecule out of place. So I run around at 3 am tidying the flat, rather than tending to my suffering hubby. Priorities. She arrives (looking perfect) and gives him lots of drugs and an injection so he can at least move again. He goes to bed with our daughter, and I go back to daughter's bed.
Now it is Wednesday, daughter is STILL sick, and asleep. Husband is moving again and has gone to university and I am at home, writing my blog. So there you go. Who knows what today will bring?
