sick & tired

oh. i’m tired. so very very tired. last night sleep was a deficit. kaspar slept, but barely. kept waking every half hour or just tossing and turning. i didn’t sleep much at all. between the times, when i was holding him and the times, when i was trying to make sure he does not wake up, i might have had a few minutes of shut eye. finally at 6am my mom gave me a break and i slept for an hour. bless her soul, i don’t know what i would do without her!!!

yeah, he’s still sick. we finally went to see a doctor (just our luck, that our doctor was away this week) at the ‘just for kids clinic’ on monday. he appeared to be healthy, said the doctor, but due to the prolonged fever made us take some tests. oh. it’s absolutely grueling having to hold your screaming child while his blood is being taken from the tiny arm. and the vein is so very small, that it makes you wonder how the nurse can even see it. and the needle going into the arm so big. oh man! he was hot and sweaty from screaming and i was too, just from listening him scream. i had a massive headache afterwards, too. and kaspar developed a runny nose and a cough. I don’t think it was the needle. not the heat. i’m blaming it on all the other sick kids in close proximity. germs, germs, germs!!!

the clinic had a small-ish sized waiting room with a large structure in the middle of the room, like a small play house. the room was packed full of sick children and their distraught parents and the temperature in the room was a good 5-6 degrees above 20+ celsius. yeah! imagine… it was like florida on a hot spring day! and all the kids were dressed for winter, hot and miserable and sick. we had to wait for our turn to see the doctor for about an hour and a half. it was pretty bad. i took kaspar out into the hallway for most of the time, because it was a little cooler there and less intense. the kids, who were old enough to be crawling, were on the floor of the waiting room on all fours. do you have any idea how much dirt a sweaty palm can pick up? or the knees of a white sleeper? boy, oh boy…. were those floors dirty. one of the kids, wearing a pale blue sleeper was gray in minutes! no, i’m not exaggerating. he was so dirty that one might wonder if he had been living in the same sleeper for months. it all happened right in front of my eyes. crazy!

these days i really admire women that bring up two, three, four kids on their own (or mostly on their own). there was this one mother at the clinic, waiting. she was probably my age. pregnant – probably at least six months. she had a year old and a three year old with her. apparently there was another older girl at home and then the one she was expecting. and she handled it just fine. i was so impressed with her ability to cope and handle the kids and the heat and everything. it was amazing. no, forgive me. SHE was amazing!

anyhow… i could talk about the four hour long hospital experience for another day or two, but i’ll spare you. I do have to say one more thing, though. the doctor was awesome. thorough. nice. intelligent. listened. asked questions. absolutely great!

but, speaking of doctors. do any of you have a good family doctor, who still accepts new patients? or maybe you can beg, plead, coerce, threaten or pay off your nice family doctor to accept two more very nice patients  we’re losing our family doctor. she’s going back to school and closing her practice. i’m devastated. i had heard that getting a new doctor can be very hard, but i had never imagined that it might be this hard. i have been cold calling many of the doctors in our neighbourhood (wider neighbourhood – all the way to spadina and bloor!) with no luck at all. there is simply one answer: we’re not accepting new patients! misery oh misery. i want a family doctor! i don’t want to go to the hospital every time kaspar is sick. help…

what else have we got on the go at this household? i’ve finally done taxes. not only taxes for myself, but for steve too. and not only for this year, but for 2004, as well. yeah. the pregnancy really threw us off last year. we never did taxes for 2004. yikes! i feel like i’ve just moved a mountain and i want someone to give me a pat on the back for the job well done. i don’t think most of you understand the undertaking of having to do taxes for steve. the man piles all his bills in a box for the whole year (this time for two years), without any rhyme or reason and then come tax season, he has to go through them all, record them, count them and file them accordingly. it’s nuts! it took me about 18 hours to get it all organized. after two years in a box (and i’m sure before the box, it must have been at least a week in a wallet in the back pocket of the pants!) some bills become unreadable! the ink simply is not meant to last the torture  but, i’m proud to say, i’ve organized a file for future tax dealings for steve. i just hope he’ll use it. or i’ll have to start charging him accounting fees. hi, hi, hi!

oh boy. i’ve done quite the rant today. must be the lack of sleep. anyone looking for an apartment or a station wagon? our basement neighbour is moving out. just found out last night. and we’re trying to get rid of our old car. probably both, in fact. but that’s a story for another day. i think i will go for a nap now.