2+2=4

I'm not much a fan of formulas. I don't like prediction and for a to always proceed b followed by their trustee amigo c . I like a little unpredictability in life. For example, I hate red roses and broke up with a serious boyfriend one time over them because if I figured he didn't know by now that I hated cliche's then he wasn't trying hard enough. I like movies with twists and turns. Who Done It's are my favorite where you don't know the killer until the last few pages. I have often said I would love to be a spy but have too big of a mouth and could never stand up to torture. I loved when in college and I thought we were super broke, that Mike surprised me with a secret savings account he had been putting money into for a new computer. I like to change things up now and then, go for the unexpected. This is why today turned out to be so incredibly lovely.

I thought I knew how today would go for sure. I mean,two sick kids with scarlet fever and strep throats no less. Their mother, me, also sick with the same. Their Father unable to take off from work. Not a grandparent or helper in sight. It was going to be me in charge all day long and I knew it was going to be another tough day. I figured a lot of holding of hot, smelly, sticky children, administering of antibiotics, Popsicles and food requests for stuff that doesn't hurt my "froat". A lot of whining about being hot/sick/bored/tired from all sides and by the end of the day me seriously wondering why I paid $30,000 to modern medicine for the opportunity to procreate. But see, it didn't go down like that at ALL.

At 7:45 Katie awoke to a desperate need for hot chocolate and a gooey ham and cheese croissant because it was soft and would not hurt her throat. I laid there staring at her eager face. "Come On Mom. Get your jeans on and let's go pick food up from La Bou." The fact that she knows about picking up breakfast foods from French boulengeries at age 5 is a different story for a different day. The fact that she knows these particular croissants have been my single breakfast weakness since I had one at 10 years old is just about paying attention. "Go see if Jessica really wants one too". Not long passed before two ratty hair, stinky kids were jumping on my bed begging for warm croissants, french ham and melted guyere along with shaved belgium chocolate melted into fresh dairy milk and steamed to the perfect temperature. My kids are foodies. I grabbed my jeans, stuck on a hat, told them to put on their warmest footie pajamas and we headed out. I wondered about the wisdom of doing this when we were sick but we had been not hungry for a lot of days now. I think I was just overcome that there existed a food option out there that sounded good to all three of us and I could go get it without having to comb my hair. I called the order in so it would be all ready and all I had to do was pay and lug a bag of warm croissants and three cups of not too hot, not too cold chocolate to my van which was parked in front of the shop. I had eyes on the van at all times as the whole place is glass fronted and there were like two pepole there just in case you were going to leave me a hate comment that I let the girls stay in the car.

We were happy to have food that tasted and went down easily. We ate much less than usual as we were still not feeling great but it was still a far better cry than the bowl of milk soaked wheaties I thought was in our breakfast plans for the morning. Score one for Katie, her bright ideas and excellent palette.

I hunkered down with a book actually entitled "Happy Ever After". Not my normal thriller genre. It was actually the forth book in a quartet about four best friends who grow up playing pretend wedding day. Fast forward to adulthood and they form a business in which they plan and execute lavish weddings in Greenwich Connecticut. The first book as the best friend/wedding photographer meeting a groovy lit professor and having her "Picture Perfect" love story. The next features the best friend/florist getting her Bed of Roses. The third installment has the best friend/pastry chef Savoring The Moment as she falls in love with a guys she's known her whole life. Now in this one the best friend/wedding coordinator gets her Happy Ever After with a tough no nonsense mechanic who happened to be educated at Yale. I normally do not like these types of books. They annoy me. But when I am sick, I like the comfort of the simplicity of when love runs smoothly and the guy gets the girl. I put on the free babysitter known as the PBS Sproutlette channel and the girls were snuggled up with me with their own 5 year old version of formula stories. We normally never spend time like this. But today it was called for. And it was so nice. We had long conversations about Uncle Steve and Auntie Vanessa's wedding coming up. They wanted to know what the deal was and why the heck they weren't the flower girls because don't they know "we are EXCELLENT flower girls cuz we have TOTALLY DONE IT BEFORE!" I explained that there were two nice little girls were hadn't met yet who hadn't gotten a turn to be flower girls yet so Auntie Vanessa is going to give them a turn this time but that they still had a very important job. They had to check out Uncle Steve before he went into his reception and make sure he was perfect from head to toe. They were the groom checkers. And they are highly excited about this new job. They spent the rest of the day making ghetto gifts to give out at the reception to people that are coming to the wedding. We shared popsicles, talk about cigarettes and how they are bad, new rules about the handling of aluminum cans. The most exciting news of the day was Jessica has an officially loose tooth. Katie asked me if she would get money too when Jessica looses her tooth and the tooth fairy comes. I told her the Tooth Fairy is going to pay Jessica for her tooth and then whatever Jessica does with the money is her business. It was not even a question. They are going to share the proceeds from Tooth Fairy Collections 5050 no matter who's tooth it is. I was surprised but in a good way.
It was a day where I really got to see the love parts of our family and how we are happy to take care of one another. I did my fair share of taking care of them but they took care of me just as much, fetching water, medicine and reminding me to rest. All in all, it was a nice little day. The kind you don't remember but then, years later, you wish you could have back.