Commissioners and Soy Sauce

My normal daily life is pretty much over the top busy. I try to not think too hard about it lest a nervous breakdown show up on my doorstep some morning. But this week...um...ya. Way, way, way over the top.  

First, there is the spilled milk sorts of things. Only try a Costco sized bottle of soy sauce basically exploding in the kitchen when a unnamed person sort of missed the counter. Of course, it had to be just as I was on my way out the door to meet with city officials to beg for mercy or common sense, whichever they are willing to come forth with first.

And my favorite part of the week has been the summer version of the flu. Flu in the summer is twice as wrong as flu in the winter. And I'm now viewing the 24 hour throw up flu as the friendly version of the flu. It's way more pleasant to puke every half hour all night long rather than sit on the couch with a fever for seven days. And, it couldn't be just one person with a fever for seven days. It has to be four. So far. Which says nothing of the severe seasonal allergy turned to bilateral conjunctivitis along with a suspect bacterial infection AND the flu. Poor Ania. So, of course, you go to the doctor, which just about gives her a panic attack (I'm not kidding), and then when you go to fill the $200 dollars worth of prescriptions they smile nicely and tell you the system is saying you have no medical insurance as of June 30th. So you take your VERY sick person home without medicine and start making dead end phone calls for hours, to no avail. You end up asking the doctor for cheaper medicine, which includes the need to dispense eye drops (um, dropped into her eye!), which is pretty much not an option because of last year's allergies which still produces post traumatic stress syndrome if you even TALK about it in front of her. And, of course, it's hard to get past pink eye when you can't drop eye drops into a person's eyes.

Plus it was my birthday. Which, of course, is mostly a happy thing, except when everybody is too sick to celebrate it, which is totally fine because the next best thing to celebrating your birthday is to keep thinking that you are going to celebrate it TOMORROW and then postponing it another day and another day so that all week long you are about to celebrate your birthday. And looking forward to celebrating your birthday is way better than actually doing it, so it turned out great for me. But the sick people end up feeling a little bit bad about it, and guilt of any form is the last thing you need when your tonsils are almost cutting off your ability to breath. So there is then all the psychological soothing that needs to happen.

And a great thing that happened (but still took hours and my friend says that even good things are stressful sometimes) was that we sold the van and bought a new car. Cody pretty much gets Favorite Person for the next 7 months because he was the impetus behind all of it and now it's no longer hanging over my head as 'one of the big things that needs to get done before I start classes in the fall.' My favorite part of selling the van was the guy I sold it to. I couldn't understand his English to save my life. Like, if someone said, "We're going to shoot you unless you can tell us what this man is saying," I would be dead. And how many polite ways can you say, "What?" on the phone? I felt quite horrible about it. And because he was getting a bank loan and he was a careful buyer with lots of questions (which Cody answered), we had to talk a LOT. By the time we were done we were pretty much best friends because I just flat out told him on the second day at the bank, "Hey. I'm so, so sorry that I can't understand a word you say." And he smiled, explained that he was from Africa (I had figured it out) and from then on out we were tight. I basically babysat his adorable one year old in the bank lobby for over an hour while the banker woman worked up the paperwork. He told me I was a "strong lady" when he found out I have 5 children and no husband and that his wife complains with one child. I assured him that I also complained when I had one child. In the end, they got a great van for a good price and I had money enough to go buy a car that gets decent gas mileage.

Favorite Person had done research to find the PERFECT car for me. I needed great gas mileage, not a white car, and not an old lady car. Cody picked out the year, make, and model of the car he thought would be best. We test drove one in Lynden (while sick people were babysitting sick people at home), then drove to Woodinville to drive another one. Cody won rewards in heaven when he did not take the ripe opportunity to mock me when, after we decided to buy the car in Woodinville, I realize I hadn't brought my checkbook. (I don't carry one anymore, which is a fabulous method unless you are buying a car out of town.) The next morning, Collin and I drove back to Woodinville, paid for everything, completed all the paperwork, became best friends with the kind Russian man, looked at 40 pictures of his 18 year old daughter on his cell phone, said all our goodbyes, got into the NEW (to me) perfect car...only to be unable to start it. *sigh* It so fit my week. Collin comes over, "Mom, push the gas pedal down!" (Really? Oh, duh, silly me! jk I had been pushing the gas pedal.) He tried it. No start. Probably my favorite moment of the week was when I walked back into the office at the little dealership to tell them the car wouldn't start. It was SO worth the look on all their faces!!! Haha. The car was out of gas. It's been perfect ever since. LOVE my new car. Thank you, Codance!

And all of that doesn't even get into the biggest, horriblest thing. It's really the topic of another blogpost. Or, actually, a letter to the editor of the Herald (which I've already written). We've spent hours trying to find someone with guts enough to stop posturing against lawsuits from their political counterparts and just acknowledge that the city and the water district have both given prior approval to my parents to serve the completed, short platted lots with water. We've had a lot of people in different offices glance over their shoulders to see who in the office can hear them, move in a little closer, lower their voices, and say, "You have water. You have documentation. There is no question here." And then refer us on to someone else. We're slowly working our way up the chain of command. We've been to water district meetings with commissioners, to city hall over and over again...ugh. It's criminal. And my tax dollars are paying their salaries. My dad spent 5 years completing the short plat, along with over 50k dollars.

And of course, because the short plat was my dad's project, it's stirs up missing him, which stirs up grieving losing him, which colors all the other stuff I've already written about my week. I can only imagine how badly my mom is hurting through all of this. I know that the kids are far from done working through the sadness of losing him.

A few more weeks like this and it will feel like a vacation when school starts up in the fall. Public apologies to my neglected friends if I've failed to connect or left details unfinished. I think we'll have time to catch up in heaven. Or maybe next week.