Whew, can I breathe now?

Well, we all have this idea of how Christmas is supposed to go. And I don't really know why, because does it EVER go that way? Don't get me wrong, I'm not being negative. To me, a predictable life is a boring life. However, sometimes things really go differently than we plan. My family came for five days and we had a wonderful time. On the morning my family left, my husband's family arrived. I had a huge meal prepared, and everything was going perfectly...perhaps too perfectly. My feelers should have gone up. It started when my husband's daughter called to tell us that her three-year-old had thrown up in the car. They thought she was carsick, but made a little pit stop just to be sure. For those of you who don't know me, vomiting is one of the number one things that freaks me out. The reason for this is because if I ever vomit, I can't stop. My husband (Ed) says I remind him of a cocker spaniel he once had. If I get sick once, you can guarantee it is going to happen every thirty minutes until you almost have to take me to the hospital for dehydration. I remember one time when my son was two he caught a stomach virus. I gave him a bowl while he sat on the floor just wretching repeatedly. I knew I should be sitting there stroking his hair and holding him, but I was totally frozen just standing there watching him vomit into a bowl on the kitchen floor. Not my finest moment.
The wimpy side of me was thinking, "He seems to be doing a pretty good job by himself." At that moment I felt like the worst mom in the world. And I have bucked up since then and held my children while they throw up, and I've also cleaned up my fair share of vomit. But on that one night, I was a very bad mom, all because of my irrational fear of vomiting. But if you vomit like a cocker spaniel with a bad gag reflex, then maybe it's not all that irrational. Anyhow, back to Christmas, it all ended up simply being car sickness, so that catastrophe was averted. So half the family would have to heat up my Christmas dinner on my new dishes in the microwave. No big deal. I could handle that. It wouldn't be Christmas at Martha Stewart's, but
it wouldn't be a National Lampoon Christmas either.
     But then, making a long story short, my husband's mom had some very scary symptoms at the dinner table, we had to call 911 in the middle of dinner, and she had to be taken to the nearest hospital by ambulance. I won't go into details, but I am happy to say she is fine, and it wasn't anything serious. But with her in the hospital for two nights, a house full of children that we really couldn't take to do anything fun
because we were waiting on doctors for some answers who made us endlessly wait and wait, and three dogs in the house of different sizes and energy levels, I will say that the weekend was anything but calm.
    And proving that you never know what is going to happen from one minute to the next, in the midst of all of this, I got a random e-mail from a New York agent who is interested in my children's book that I have been trying to publish. After reading that e-mail I should have been screaming and shouting and jumping on the roof, and I am truly excited. This could be my dream coming true! But after getting rejection letters, I think you get really gun shy until you know something is a "for sure" thing. So for now I am just going to be cautiously optomistic:)
   So basically, though the weekend did not go at all as planned, there is so much for which to be thankful. Ed's mom is okay, and that is wonderful. This may be the big break I have been looking for with my book. No one got sick over Christmas. And we were all together.
   Did I plan on helping pull part of a stringy dog toy out of a dog's bottom? Of course not. Did I plan on paramedics sitting at the dinner table in the middle of the meal? No way. But it probably led to one of the best physical's Ed's mom has ever had, and that's a good thing. Did I plan on having insomnia until 3 a.m. last night because I was so exhausted and stressed out? Nope. But on the bright side, I had forgotten how incredibly fantastic Tom Selleck looked in those old reruns of Friends. I also never expected to eat so many toffee bars that I have gained about four pounds in the past week. And I absolutely never expected to be contacted by a literary agent. Especially not in the midst of all the madness. So it truly does go to show that anything, everything can change at a moment's notice. Is that scary? Absolutely. And as they always say, you can't appreciate the good without the bad. And sometimes the good and bad even happen at the same time. And I know everyone has different opinions, but over predictablility and monotony, I will take the scary roller coaster of life any day. Sometimes we just have to hold on tighter than we thought.

Until next time,
Melissa