Yes, You Should Have Gotten a Flu Shot

But don't worry, Ryan Gosling's got your back.

It's been a wild week in the McCanless household. Under-parented children, over-medicated adults, and some kind of pink sugar-related holiday stuck in the middle of it all. I don't know if it's the flu or the Tamiflu, but I've been in too big a haze to even read, let alone write. So I'm keeping it simple tonight with ten things I learned over the last week:

1. Husbands are awesome, and mine is extra-super-special awesome, but they can’t be trusted to buy Valentines. That's why Kid #2 had to pass out Dora the Explorer cards to his mostly-boy Preppy Kindergarten class. There wasn't even any sort of compensating candy attached.

(Corollary: I do not like the little boy who refused to accept my child's offering because it was "for girls". He's on my poop list. I usually have another name for this list, but the kid is five.)

2. One day of gorging yourself on candy while your mother dozes in a semi-comatose state, with only her own hacking cough keeping her from complete oblivion, won't hurt your health. At least not measurably, in the short term, as far as the aforementioned mother can tell.

3. Argentine ants like to kick me when I'm down.

4. A five-year-old can figure out how to do his own temporary tattoos. So if you keep murmuring something about "Maybe later, honey, mommy's really sick," while he keeps asking for you to help with one of his Valentines, you may discover the next morning that he's got a tattoo on his neck. This may not strike you as terrible until you take him to his school in the slightly rougher part of town, where a significant number of parents have their own, permanent, neck tattoos. You may still decide that you are too busy sucking air into your gunky lungs to bother washing it off for a full 3 days.

If you're treating your fever like a slot machine,
that might be the fever talking.

5. Adults aren't allowed to run fevers as high as kids do. When you see your temperature climbing over 103, the appropriate response is to call the doctor. It is not to waste all of the (surprisingly expensive) plastic covers for the ear thermometer by obsessively betting against yourself on how high you can go.

6. The forehead-kissing method of fever detection does not work if the one doing the detecting also has a fever. This should be obvious, but somehow... Well, I apologize to everyone who comes down with this illness because I thought Kid #2 was fine.

7. How I Met Your Mother is funny.
8. I am blessed with people in my life who are kind and caring and there in a pinch. I couldn't have survived this week without friends covering carpools for me and inviting the kids over for playdates, teachers forgiving forgotten homeworks and missed volunteer shifts, and my husband being all-around wonderful even when he got the two days of sore throat and sniffles that were his version of "sick." (Corollary: I married hardy stock.)

9. Kid #2 is five now and not a baby anymore, but he's still the best little nap companion in the world. I mean, I hope he feels better and stuff, but until then... SNUGGLES!!!

10. I totally, absolutely, 100%, without a doubt should have gotten a flu shot.

Once I've sprayed the office with Raid and cleaned up the thousands of tiny dead ants, I will begin clawing my way back out of the hole I sank into this week. So, in the spirit of overdone Internet memes...

Nanowrimo and Christmas

Yesterday, I was stomping through the store, searching for something--anything--that would bring a sparkle of delight to my youngest son's eyes on Christmas morning. Everything I'd already bought seemed awful, everyone was going to hate it all, and I just knew I was going to forget how I wanted my novel to end before I got a chance to finish it. I wanted to go home and knock the stupid Christmas tree on the floor.

Christmas can be stressful, but add in packing for a move to a new city and a Nanowrimo novel that just won't end, and you can imagine my stress level. Even without the move though, Nanowrimo and Christmas butt up against each other in stressful ways every year. I would never give up either one, but I know I should do some things differently. Perhaps it's an odd thing to post about on Christmas Eve, but while it's fresh in my mind, here's a letter for me to open again in 10 months.

I hope you find something useful in it, even if you aren't a Nanowrimo fan. Merry Christmas!

December 24, 2011

Dear Melanie, 

When you open this, it will be October 31, 2012. Halloween. A little early to be thinking about Christmas, I suppose, but if I know you, and I know I do, you're starting to think about it--maybe even to dread it a little. You know what's coming--the exhaustion, the aches and pains, even the panic...it's all part of the Nanowrimo/Christmas deluxe package, right? 

I don't think so. This year can be different. You can give yourself something special for Christmas this year, but you need to start TODAY. Are you with me? Here's the plan. 

October 31, 2012: This is the make it or break it day, right here. Somehow you always manage to push it out of your mind, but you have a serious sugar addiction, and if you aren't tough today, you'll spend the rest of the year with your blood sugar soaring like a kite. So, as a gift to yourself for Christmas this year, make Halloween a sugar free day. DO NOT buy candy until moments before the Trick or Treaters arrive, and let someone else pass it out. Or give out pencils. 

November 1, 2012: Nanowrimo, Day 1!!!! I smile just to think about it. You've been training for this for months, and I know you've got a lot to say. Give yourself an early Christmas present: DO NOT buy candy when it's marked down 75% and tell yourself you'll save it for Christmas. You won't. Besides, if you're not in the store, you'll have more time to write.  

Throughout the month of November: 

Exercise. I'm serious. I know what you've got to give up in order to find time to write a novel in November. Trust me. I've been there, done that. But exercise. In the morning. It doesn't have to be a ton. In fact, I'd say that 10 minutes 6 days a week ought to cover it. 3 days of strength training, 3 days of running a mile or doing Zumba or jumping rope. Just break a sweat. You try for any more than this, and you'll probably decide to skip it altogether. 

When you're in a writer's haze, you won't even notice whether it's carrots you're chomping on or Laffy Taffy. For some reason you never remember this until the last week of November. Instead of stocking up on bargain priced candy, stock up on healthy foods. Whatever's easy to grab--that's what you'll eat. 

And a month of eating green salad with chicken and walnuts for lunch never hurt anyone. If you get sick of it, Italian Peasant Stew is always a pleasant alternative, though I recommend leaving out the Italian Peasants. They are awfully expensive this time of year, and you'll hardly miss them. 

Moderation has never been your strong suit. It may look like one candy bar to you, but it's really two months of swirling in a vortex of bad health choices until you are spit out onto the rocky shores of exhaustion. You're not a spring chicken anymore, you know, and those days of trekking back where you belong are getting tougher. 

November 26, 2012: Cyber Monday. No matter how far behind on your novel you think you are, stop what you're doing and order Christmas presents. You'll be glad you did. Remember how long the World Soccer Shop and Deseret Book take to fill your orders? 

December 1, 2012: Time for another early Christmas present. Finish that book. Even if the last half of the book is encapsulated in two pages, get to the words "The End" and leave it alone. You've got the rest of the winter to edit and tinker and add to your book. That's why you write a novel in November in the first place. But December is for family, and trying to add novel writing into the mix is a well-known recipe for transforming yourself into Scrooge! Everybody needs an occasional vacation from writing, and December is yours. Let the guilt go.  

Merry Christmas, my future self! If all went the way it was supposed to, your back didn't go out on you the day before Thanksgiving, your Christmas preparations didn't exhaust  you, you didn't gain lots of weight between Halloween and now, and you spent more time enjoying the things that really matter.  

January 1, 2013: Go on, open up that novel and start editing. You know you want to. 

With love,  

Melanie