Tuesday Happy

Feeling happy. Cheerios and hot coffee in a quiet house after putting a sparkling chatty J on the bus.

My schedule today includes keeping an eye on work while wrapping Christmas presents, doing laundry in anticipation of my trip to the Grand Canyon this week, and delivering cupcakes to neighbors helping with J while we're gone.

It's still snowy outside, and our enormous Christmas tree waits patiently in a bucket of water, leaning against the house down on the patio. Too big for the garage, even. Hope it doesn't freeze...

Speaking of the tree, I have no idea how we're going to get it inside. It wasn't put into one of those plastic mesh sleeves, and it's current diameter is easily three times the width of any doorway we have. The effort to bring it in will involve significant cutting to narrow the trunk for the stand, a tarp to wrap it in, lots of duct tape, and prayers. From JBL, there will be cursing. Surely help from neighbors will be called for. If only I had that Bewitched nose-twitch-magic thing...then I might actually be able to help.

Speaking of neighbors, Sarah with the Six Kids (that's usually how I refer to her, yes) has embarked on her usual winter odyssey. She informed me last night that 3 of the kids have pneumonia, and one just has a really bad cough. Having lived through last week's vomit-fest, I simply cannot fathom caring for that many children when they are that sick. How can you hold them all? How to manage to let the healthy ones sleep while the others cough all night since, as you can imagine, there are a lot of shared bedrooms? The littlest one, just 3, had chest x-rays as part of her ordeal. My hair falls out just typing that.

She manages spectacularly well - one of those women who is just a natural superstar mom. Even with her skills, I don't envy their life between November and March. Hopefully my cupcakes will brighten their morning a bit. Hopefully some of my Tuesday Happy will be delivered to them...