How is it that I can be sick as a dog for a good week and not lose more than one bloody pound! (Said with the best fake British accent I can muster to camoflauge my Southern drawl.) Losing weight should be a fringe benefit of being sick, I think.

It’s too bad our neighbor down the road with the pool hates us (due to the hubby accidentally letting the dogs pee on the flowers around his mailbox) because he had a rockin’ Jimmy Buffett party Saturday night.

For the first time I can remember I am taking advantage of my boss telling me to take it easy and not push it. I’m working from home most of this week. It is a nice feeling to know I have that kind of flexibility, if I only I could do that more often (minus the sick part.)

Why in God’s name will the dogs just not eat the Cheerios that Amelia has tossed all over the kitchen floor already?

Psssst….Club Mom has a new fab contest for a Dodge Durango! See that ad up there in the right hand corner? Good. Now click and enter! I get a big fat dollah if you register for Club Mom through my site and that would help eradicate the unpexpected Pathfinder repair, refrigerator repair, and ER visit bills. Damn, no wonder I’m not going to BlogHer! (My funny “faux” BlogHer graphic is courtesy of the extra awesome Mrs. Flinger who is trying to get knocked up. Go visit her and send her some get prego pronto vibes.)

Cinderelly

Originally uploaded by blondemom.

Well, it’s official. As of today I am a SOCCER MOM! I’m not sure whether to laugh or run shrieking down the cul-de-sac as this is just the beginning of many organized activities I’m sure. The hubby took Caitlin today to sign her up for the fall league in our community. Interestingly at age 4 they don’t have a goalie on the teams; it’s more about learning the ins and outs of the game. I still don’t own any mom jeans, though, so watch out! But seriously, as someone who doesn’t have an athletic bone in her body I’m very excited that one of my offspring has expressed an interest in playing a sport. We’re not sure if this interest in soccer came from watching hours of Dora or not, but as long as she has fun we’re willing to see how it goes this fall.

I had this brilliant idea last Saturday to take the girls to the revamped Super Target near us. Caitlin needed shoes for water play at daycare so we headed straight for the shoe department. Immediately I saw that all the infant sandals were on sale and I started searching for Amelia’s size. Mistake number one. Caitlin knew we were there for HER shoes. She started whining, but it was tolerable. I recruited her to help me find shoes with a size 4 on them for sissy and she was a happy camper as soon as she had a mission. After getting on my knees to find the only pair of size 4 sandals on the bottom of a lower shelf in the wrong bin, we searched for water shoes. Caitlin wanted the bigger girl water shoes but I explained that they were too big and she had to get the pink ones or blue ones in her size. There was a little more whining, but she was happy when I put the new pool shoes on her feet. Then we headed to the toddler sandals area. I tried to sell her on one of the many pairs on clearance but who can compete with clearance when there are Dora shoes on the same aisle? And Dora light-up shoes no less! Of course, as luck would have it, they didn’t have the light-up sandals in her size so we settled on a normal, boring pair of non-light up Dora sandals. Then Amelia started fussing. Amelia has always been the world’s easiest baby but lately she must climb over, run over, and topple over everything in sight. I let her down and she immediately runs down the aisle, glances back mischeviously and toddles out of the shoe department. I chase her down and try to put her back in the cart but she will have none of it so I let her explore the shoe department for a bit so she can get her damn ya yas out. By now my patience has run thin, my sinus headache is back like a bad boyfriend and I’m sweating like I’ve been eating extra spicy buffalo wings so I decide it’s time to get the heck out of there. And also, apparently I was coming down with pneumonia so no wonder I was a little pissy.

(Read on …)

The hubby picked the girls up from daycare yesterday and Amelia immediately popped her thumb in her mouth as is her custom when she is tired.

“Awww Caitlin, Amelia’s sleepy. She’s sucking her thumb,” he said.

“Daddy, she’s not sleepy. She’s drinking milk!” said Caitlin, matter of factly.

Now I wonder if I sucked my thumb if I would get a taste of margarita?

p.s. Does anyone remember this book? I had it when I was a kid and loved it.

So, have I told you about my PNEUMONIA? Sigh…

I think had a false sense of feeling “okay” when we left the ER yesterday due to the IV of drugs and fluids they pumped through my veins. I did not sleep well last night and took two Tylenol PM at 12:30. I didn’t want to eat dinner but forced myself to eat a half a deli turkey sandwich because I never ate lunch and threw up when we got home from the hospital. Probably because I had so much medication in me and no food. Today for lunch the hubby brought me a cup of chicken noodle soup from a local cafe and it was the best thing I’d tasted in days. I may eat that soup for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Bear with me, but this ranks as one of the worst things I’ve ever had. I had the flu once about 12 years ago. Luckily (see, there I go being positive) I’ve only been to the ER one other time in my life and that was after I had Caitlin and due to some complications.

So, I’m throwing a pity party. I’m trying to rest. I’m still in my pjs. I’m trying to watch a little TV. The Painted House was just on HGTV but Debbie Travis was annoying the heck out of me. I think she was flirting with this cute contractor in the way that she said, “I’ve never done tongue and groove before.” And the way she says “porous?” Blech. Now Decorating Cents is on and the husband speaketh of things you’ll never hear uttered by my hubby: “I’m more of a color person. She’s more into taupes and neutrals.” What?!

I promise this won’t become The Pneumonia Blog. Maybe the HGTV Critique Blog?

So remember how I wrote last week that I was feeling funky? I took a sick day Thursday and then was off Friday and felt almost normal. Saturday I started feeling bad again and I was running a fever, which topped out at around 102 that night. Sunday night my fever hit 103.8 and I had a splitting headache that would not go away so the hubby called my doctor first thing this morning and we headed over at 10. My head was still pounding and I had had a dry cough since Saturday. I felt like I had the flu; that was the only thing I could compare it to. They ran tests including bloodwork, which won’t even be ready until tomorrow, and the physician’s assistant prescribed an antibiotic primarily used to treat tick borne illnesses. He asked me twice if I’d found a tick on myself recently and I told him no, but apparently my symptoms were similar to Lyme Disease or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

Awesome. But it gets better.

We went home around 11 and I called my boss and curled up in bed. I was freezing even though it’s 90 plus degrees here. I then started burning up and could tell it was getting worse by the second. Took my temp and it was over 104! So I started to panic a little a lot but the hubby, God love him, was still home and we headed for the emergency room. There was talk of meningitis (yikes), but the ER physician ordered chest x-rays first. And that’s when they realized I have pneumonia in the lower portion of my left lung. No wonder I feel like dog poop on a cracker! They gave me an IV bag of fluids and of an antibiotic and potassium and Tylenol. I’ve been in bed here at home for an hour and a half and I’m actually a little hungry despite the worst coughing jag ever a few minutes ago and feeling like I had literally coughed up my lung. And now my headache is back. I’m very thankful I don’t have Lyme Disease or Meningitis, but only I would get pneumonia in July.

Oh, and ladies be sure to wear your “good” bra to the ER in case you need chest x-rays and then your every day bra gets hung up on your IV tubing and you end up hiding it under your blanket because you don’t really want your bra waving around like a flag.

p.s. Special thanks to our families (including my sister who works at the hospital where we headed to the ER) who have offered everything from picking up food to watching the girls. Thank God for daycare this week.

Kristen of the wonder blogging duo Manic Mommies (be sure to check out their Podcasts) sent me a Design-her Gals e-card for Mother’s Day. You should check out the cool custom stationery you can make. It’s like virtual paper dolls for grown women. OK…that sounded somewhat freaky. You know what I mean all you Avatar creatin’ women. And Oprah has now discovered Designhergals, so you know they’re on the A list.

Colleen at The Delaney Diaries (who has a new Jimmy Buffett inspired template that I love) recently wrote about using Blogbinders to archive the first year of her blog into book form. It seems like a neat idea although her review was somewhat mixed.

Fast Company magazine has a cool slide show on the Toys of Summer for the geeky/tech-minded.

I’ve been thinking that at some point I need to catch up on my digital scrapbooking. I ran across this beautiful kit which is a charity fundraiser for photographer and mom Laura Vanderbeek who has been battling Hodgkins Lymphoma.

Horchow has Ralph Lauren towels on sale for $9.99, including monogram! Whenever I see Ralph Lauren towels at TJ Maxx I try to buy at least one, since they are the best towels I have ever used. We had them on our wedding registry and 9 years later they are still holding up great. When you have company you can put the WalMart and Target towels away and set out Ralph’s and somehow look classier despite all the tub critters and the baby potty that are permanent fixtures in your bathroom.

And, did you know that July is National Ice Cream Month? I did not, although I’ve been celebrating every night by eating way too much ice cream. MaggieMoo’s is giving away their Twizzlers ice cream next Saturday, July 22. I’ve never been to MaggieMoo’s so this seems like the perfect excuse to take the girls on a “field trip.”

Hope everyone is having a great Saturday. I am still feeling under the weather, but I hope to do something fun with the girls this afternoon while the hubby is working. (Maybe a trip to the library Tarjay since it is so hot?)