In space, no one can hear you complain

. . . and that's probably a good thing, since no one likes to hear other people complain about their problems. But I'm going to spend some time looking back over the very difficult, turbulent week and I might slip into some complaints before it is all over.

The week has mostly been dominated by three very different, yet interconnected things.

First, Sarah has been sick all week. Yes, ALL week. She has been running a fever every day since Tuesday. And yes, we did call the pediatrician. And, yes, as always, they said that they wouldn't do anything until she had maintained the fever for a week. Which we finally got close to this weekend, when we finally gave up and took her to the urgent care and they told us that they suspect she's got an ear infection and might be developing a slight infection in her lungs. (I think I got that right, as Lynda was the one that took her to the U.C. and when she told me this, the blood was pounding in my ears and I might have missed some of the details.)

So, not only was Sarah at home all week, completely missing each and every day of Girl Scout Camp, but she was probably feeling worse and worse. But not that we'd know it because our doctor wouldn't bother to see her until she was . . . oh, I don't even know.

Now, because Sarah was home all week, missing Girls Scout Camp, that meant Lynda and I were scrambling every day to figure out who was going to stay home with her and manage to try and do our 9 to 5 job that simply won't make the courtesy of going away and making our lives easier. Nope, instead, our jobs have decided to get progressively harder each and every week, dumping more and more work on us while we juggle sick kids and all of the other responsibilities that we are foolish to take on.

Which leads me to item 3--Vacation Bible School. It starts tomorrow night and I am (foolish enough to say I'd be) the organizer this year. I might have done a better job at it if I hadn't been faced with items 1 and 2 this past week and if I'd been smart enough and organized enough to start thinking of all of the details and problems sooner. But I hope in the end that the kids find enjoyment and learning in it and that is more important in the end than the decorations or the food or whatever else. (Though I would be entirely sunk if I had not had the help of several people in our very nice church that were willing to take on leadership roles early on and have been working on their own to handle their part of the event.)

In combination, these things have really screwed me up this week. And while I could have handled my VBS duties more effectively and probably I could work EVEN harder to attempt to catch up at work, I don't know that I could have done much about Sarah's predicament.

It's just be so confusing and trying and frustrating all week long.

(And I didn't even tell you what a disaster occurred yesterday thanks to the worst FedEx driver this side of Memphis.)

I have been very down on myself and certainly I haven't been any fun to be around or to live with, either at home or at work--the few days I managed to get into the office. I hope that as VBS kicks off each night this week, I can see that things will go fine and that the kids will find the importance behind the decorations and food and whatever else is there. And I hope that accomplishing that task, I can try to focus a bit more on work and try to make some sense out of the mountain of a project that looms over me every day. And I hope that Sarah gets better and can get her summer back. It's her 10th birthday coming up this Thursday, after all. She certainly deserves better than she's gotten this week, either from a health perspective or from the companionship she's gotten out of me.

So, I hope to put some of this worry and frustration down into this post and walk away from it after I hit PUBLISH. I need to move on mentally and emotionally.