give it a rest Murphy...

Murphy's law... something about if anything can go wrong it will. Well, that seems to sum up my last few days in a nice neat package with a bow.

I discovered last night that I had overdrawn our business checking account at our new bank by erroneously recording a deposit for double the amount. I also found out, when I went to set up the new checkbook with the lovely, new, made-from-recycled-paper checks that I had put the business checking number on the personal checks. Went back and forth all day with the bank and found the deposit/overdrawn error to be mine (remember in Monopoly bank error in your favor? never happens to me) and had to bite the money for the fees, the new checks and the lost deposit amount that was never deposited and the two weeks it will take to get new, properly encoded, checks,. This set my day off right...

The girls and I waited for 45 minutes with a sick, clingy, lethargic, feverish and by the end crying, Maya at the doctor's office- a never-before-seen-occurrence at Husson Pediatrics. Turns out the third time is a charm- she has a sinus infection and fluid on her ear drums. Sounds painful? She thinks so too.

HAD to go to the store because we ran out of toilet paper YESTERDAY and were using tissues. Also had to get Ibuprofen and $100 worth of other essential items (despite having spent $120 at Hannaford a mere 4 days ago) and then make ANOTHER stop (at Hannaford again) to get non-chlorinated diapers because Maya's bum is fire engine red again. Was told antibiotic might make it worse. Great.

Next stop the pharmacy where we wait an eternity for the woman ahead of us to resolve her prescription issues. Now a very crappy feeling, but up until now, very tolerant Maya, begins to unwind. The crying starts. It is 4 p.m. I have fed the kids lunch and snacks in the car, dragged them all over town, let them play in the van in the grocery store parking lot so I could confer with the bank, and at least felt I had balanced the scales by taking them to the park before the whole escapade began at 11:30 after preschool pick-up. Ella left the house at 8:30 this morning and didn't come home until 4.

In addition to all of this, I got a ticket- an actual written TICKET- on Easter Sunday at the Togus VA hospital for walking my dog illegally (and ignorantly as it turns out), Ella asked me tonight if I was going to apologize to her in the morning for being grumpy (when I told her, quite sternly, that I had had enough of her talking back to me AND had held it together REALLY well despite the stress of the afternoon), Maya had a 102.4 fever when we got home, and I never got a much needed re-caffination this afternoon.

But all it takes is just a drop of perspective to turn it all around. And here are several:

It was 55 degrees out today!! After all our craziness the kids and I came home and played for the first time on the recently snow-uncovered playset in the backyard.

An elderly woman with orange lipstick was admiring our girls last week at the pharmacy and said to me, "Oh, they grow so fast. My babies are 55 and 61 now." And then, wistfully, "I swear I had more fun than they did."

But, most poignantly...I met a woman of at least 50 years today while we waited at the doctor's. She was rocking a sleeping boy in a stroller and told me she hadn't had much sleep since she had been at the ER until 3 a.m. and gathered I hadn't either given the sick state of my child. (I truly appreciate when people can see this and acknowledge this.) She then told me the story of 19 month-old Joshua who was born into this world perfect and was so severely abused by his parents that he now has extensive brain damage. His spine was snapped so he had the motor control of a 6 week old and always will. He has a feeding tube, will never walk or talk and will likely only live to be 4 or 5. She is in the process of adopting him. She had 3 kids of her own, an adopted girl who is an adult now, another special needs child she adopted who died last year and now this little angel of a boy who, when he woke and began to cry, she scooped his little body up and placed him on her chest and rocked and soothed him back to sleep. She told me when she got him he cried when he was touched because it was so unfamiliar to him. She spoke of him with such tenderness and love, I was in tears. Tears for her beautiful heart, for a world where parents could do that to their child, for the shame I felt at begrudging so many hours of much needed sleep to my sick and hurting, but otherwise perfect, little girl.