I am a creature of routine and habit. It's the Taurus in me. Routines and regular rituals are comforting to me. If I have my routines down for everyday things, it frees me up to be more creative and add more activity to my life because the basics are already sorted. It's also incredibly comforting to know that when I wake up at 5:45, I have most of my activities sorted out and I don't need to spend a lot of time thinking about them.
The past few weeks my routine has gone to shit, and I'm really suffering from it.
Jonathan has been working on tearing down the home office (which we need to do because it violates a setback law). I've been working part time in the mornings so he can tear down the building in the afternoon. I haven't had much of a break for me-time because I know that I can't tear down a building, but what I can do is give J time to work, so I've been watching Hannah so he can work every extra second possible.
So I'm way behind on work. No fun. The upshot is that the deadline to have the building down is this Monday, so I know this will all come to an end then either way.
Thursday was Hannah's birthday, and we had fun for much of the day, but she also seemed kind of "off" - not eating right, not going to the bathroom, generally fussy...when I finally took her temperature, it was over 101, so I took her to the ER and spent the whole night there while they ran tests, waited to see if her fever would break (started at 102.9 taken rectally - which was really awful - in the hospital) and to see if she would eat and not get dehydrated. The ER is pretty much an exercise in hell.
They got her in to get vitals and see a nurse practitioner really quickly, but then when they decided she needed to be seen by a doctor, and we had to wait for a bed to open up, the fun began. We were told to go back out and wait for a bed at about 8pm. We finally got called back at 1am. During that five hours (which was way past her bedtime, of course) I walked her in giant circles in the parking lot, drank a ton of diet coke, played with her toys with her, carried her back and forth, practiced walking with her, and then, as the night went on, tried in vain to avoid the crazy people. There was the homeless guy, Darren (named after the Bewitched character) who arrived at the ER with a broken rib, and also had seizures, but he was still waiting after 7 hours. Then there was a lady, Sylvia, who wanted to sell me solar panels, and followed me around on our parking lot Circle Walk to extol the virtues and ease of solar panels.
I kept going up every hour and asking for the status, wondering whether I could go home without seeing a doctor, or if I should just wait it out. They gave her Motrin, she seemed to be not so hot, and so a big part of me really wanted to just go home and make an appointment with her pediatrician.
Eventually we went back, though, and they ran a battery of tests including needing to get a urine sample (inserting a catheter), throat cultures, and lots of other fun stuff. She was hooked up to wires, which meant that she couldn't move around the way she wanted, and she also just wanted to eat the wires, so I had to try to keep that from happening. For some of the tests they swaddled her so she wouldn't flail around so much. Also not a good time.
Finally at about 3:45 she fell asleep on my chest sitting in the chair. She dozed like that until around 9 when we got released, though of course she woke up every hour when they took her temp with the stick up the butt.
We had decided that J would stay home and rest, and I would go alone so that one of us was rested. So when I got home, I could just crash out and sleep all day. During some parts of the night (the Circle Walk of Agony) I really missed him and could have used just 10 minutes to sit in the car in silence without a screaming baby. But I really appreciated being able to crash at home, so that worked out. When we finally got home (after a Jack in the Box breakfast) Hannah slept all day (and, blessedly, all night) and I slept for 2 hours, and then also all night.
So Friday was pretty much a waste. And this morning I slept in until she got up at 7:15, so I lost my morning quiet time. And we missed doing our 10K this morning.
Really, I'm just a wreck without my routine - I haven't been meditating, I haven't been doing Morning Pages, I haven't been writing... but I guess that's life, and hopefully I'll start to get some semblance of it back this coming week.
It never ceases to amaze me just how much I fall apart when I lose my routine. I never thought I was a creature of habit or routine, but apparently I am.
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