Pink Hearts Started the Week... A Full Moon Ends It

Valentine's Day started out the week (or Valentimes Day if you believe the sign in a store window in our small town.)

A gorgeous full moon is ending the week and the last few days have been an absolute weather delight.

I never liked Winter when I weighed 120 pounds, and I HATE it weighing in at 100 pounds fully dressed and in combat boots.

I don't like my feet being cold and my hands always seem to be cold. The only warmth I get it from hot flashes and they are temporary (so I am told.)

My Jonquils have poked their heads out of the dirt searching for warmth and I don't blame them. The sun has felt fabulous the past few days and at least the dogs aren't soaking wet and covered with mud every time I let them in the house...they are just covered with stink and I don't have to mop that up, I just stick in a new Glade plug in and rub them down with a dryer sheet.

We have had a run of illness stampeding through the house. Massey got sick about ten days ago and for about five days she hacked like she had a five pack a day habit. Luckily no fever was involved so I put her through the routine my Mom did when we were little. Soup, juice and since she hates oranges I introduced her to Clementines. She has eaten an entire bag full and after switching her to Delsym she sounds and feels much better.

Then my husband got sick and my sympathy simply ran out. Number one he is a terrible patient and the minute he becomes ill, turns into the biggest sissy on the planet. He comes home from work in the morning and never takes medicine but goes into the den and shuts the door to sleep until he has to get up to go to work again. I guess I should make him soup and a glass of juice and carry it to him on a tray but if he is happy going to sleep sick and waking up sick, who am I to argue with him?

It took him five days of being sick to finally listen to me and take something for it.

He's not well but better... who's fault is that?

He is at least now taking medicine and complaining a little less when one of us will listen.

Today Zach called me from the school office..."It's my turn" is all I heard when he asked me to come check him out.

Brought him home, felt his head and sent him to bed with some throat spray and a 500 mg Advil.

Three hours later he was in the back yard with a BB gun hitting (hopefully only) trees in the woods and I scratched him off my nursing list as well.

Men and women are so polar opposite when it comes to being sick. I was sick for three weeks before I broke down and went to a Doc in the Box. I never missed one shift at work and only went to the doctor when the owner's sent me home and said sweetly "You look like sh#t. Go to the doctor." They even offered to pay for my visit.

Massey didn't miss one day of school. She hacked her way through and probably had hoodlum students offering her a Camel unfiltered as she walked from building to building on campus, thinking "Dang, she sounds like one of us."

Tim was actually pretty sick but refused to listen to me...guess he's become conditioned to that over 23 years. I tried to give him money to go to the Doc in the Box I went to but he refused saying we needed the money for bills. I think it sunk in when I said "Yeah, that hospital stay will be a LOT cheaper."

He has been taking the meds I have bought and eating better. I have tried to help by being nicer but after 23 years of marriage and two years of living in an episode of "Helltown" my sympathy has been stretched so thin you could call it gauze.

Where my kids are concerned I am all over it.

I guess I should save some of that sympathy for Tim, but he's an adult like me (although no one is TRULY like me) and I guess I push him as hard as I push myself. In hindsight, that's probably why he married me.

I bet he's re thinking that strategy!!

We are all on the mend and I haven't woken up to Tim with a noose around my neck (yet.)

Spring has poked it's head out and I have embraced it like a lover on the side. I am pleading with it not to go away or leave me. We all need the healing of it's warmth and sun.

I feel like I have been living in Winter for almost two years.

I am ready and waiting for the Spring.

I have had so many people help me through these horrible Winters and when I emerge again in Spring it will be with a vengeance.

I made it through " The Winter of My Discontent ."

My family is healing and our lives are healing, thanks to the greatest medicine on Earth.

"Take two heaping doses of God, take help from family three times a day and love from your friends as often as they offer it."

It has been the prescription I needed and am beginning to feel whole again.

Before you know it I will be back on my "Johnny Dear" in a pair of hot pants that say "AARP" across the butt and moving on into my fifties feeling like a "Spring Chicken."

Thanks be to everyone that helped me get here!

Til next time...can't wait to be "Hot Cotton"